Methodological Naturalism

I don't need to prove those things, I don't need to directly address your argument much as I wouldn't have to directly adress the arguments of a dialectical materialist, which is similar to methodological naturalist. I guess that all proposals to use "one way" to understand much of everything suffer from the problems I set out before, an inability to deal with new concepts, and a tendency to include talk about good and evil in the "one way". I would be surprised if there was anyone on this forum who really doesn't share these doubts about supporting methodological naturalism.regards,
Mohamad Nor Syamsu

What, you feel compelled to engage the boring diatribe of a dialectical materialist or a methodological naturalist? I feel people like that need some ignoring, it's good for them, I don't need that of course And still I would like to know if you don't also seriously share those doubts I talked about in supporting methodological naturalism.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I'm not asking you to give it up, I'm just asking if you share those doubts about mn.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Mr Hambre wrote:
"Speaking in scientific terms forces us to accept the tentative nature of scientific endeavor."But of course evolutionists don't generally speak in scientific terms, and especially supporters of methodological naturalism are very bad at this.You have it the wrong way round. Creationists tend to endorse objectivity of scientific inquiry as an ideal to keep judgements about the value of things outside of science, while evolutionists tend to pervert objectivity into the only right way of knowing about anything.As an example the NABT (USA's National Association of Biology Teachers) statement on evolution some years ago read:(former NABT definition of evolution) "The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments."Unsupervised, impersonal and even unpredictable, and natural are not really objective descriptions. What is really so impersonal about evolution? How did they measure the impersonality? Isn't evolution somewhat predictably patterned? (incidentally fundamental unpredictability would according to modern philosphy denote choice / intelligence operating) How was the naturalness of evolution measured anyway?The statement was really just atheism in another disguise. Some theologians (evolutionists themselves) then objected to the statement saying it was subjective, and the statement was revised to exclude impersonal and unsupervised, for reasons of political expediency. That is the credentialled scientists of the NABT thought impersonal and unsupervised were objective descriptions, but thought better of using the words for not estranging the 40 percent or so of theistic evolutionist Americans, on top of the other 40 percent straightforward creationists who already think they're misguided. Some of the scientists are grumpy that they caved in to the demands of theologians, still thinking they can measure the impersonality of evolution.The authors of the NABT statement are heavily into promoting methodological naturalism, which, as explained before in this thread, is what leads to incorporate subjective language into supposedly objective discourse. Other examples of this incorporation are Lorenz and his book "the socalled evil", or Dawkins and his book "selfish genes", or Haeckel and his monism, and the evolutionist community at large for talking about "goodness", and "success" etc.Syamsu's Law: The measure of endorsement of methodological naturalism corresponds positively with the measure of subjective language in supposedly scientific discourse.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Thanks for your welcome, I'm glad I am back.I never talked about complexity and specifity as far as I can remember.I wouldn't give an alternative to MN, because it would essentially still be the same as MN. What matters is that MN is one way, focused on one thing, and an alternative would also be one way focused on one thing, and therefore lead to much the same errors as MN. I could say as an alternative there are many different ways, but I prefer to say that it's a complicated issue, because not saying what the scientific standards are leaves the least room for anyone misusing scientific standards IMO, and the most room for unknowns to be investigated. So you can then talk meaningfully about what falls within scientific standards and what falls outside them, but those standards would be essentially democratic, and not essentially the outcome of a logical formula.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Right, you understand, but don't see that this will work, or maybe you just don't like it. What it comes down to is saying that personal judgement is a neccesary part of maintaining the ideal of objectivity in science. Acknowledging this personal judgement will not lead to more subjectivity, because it is in service towards the ideal of objectivity. Your alternative of positing a formula for doing science will lead to prejudice in the ways as explained before.What about describing the skincolor of the USA prison population compared to the population as a whole? What "objective" conclusions can you reach with that, while still remaining within MN. What's going to drop out of the formula of MN I wonder? Conclusions which can then be blandly asserted as being objective just for passing the MN test.Your position looks fairly obviously ultra-rationalist to me. It's rather obviously religious, having *one* way as the only *right* way, to understand basicly *everything*. Isn't your acceptance of MN just based on a combination of laziness and a fear to fail in personal judgement, rather then the result of evidence that this methodology was the only way that has worked in science?And I didn't say I wanted to discard MN, or rather I would discard it in favour of the common standard to substiantiate what you say with evidence, as has been practiced throughout human history. I remember now the ridiculous fairytales of methodological naturalists that the Greeks once adopted MN for a while only to discard it later on, as if they were the only ones in history. I don't see how any society could function even minimally, without employing the standard to substantiate what you say with evidence to some extent. The practice is noted in several ancient religions and cultures I know of. However the practice to systemize knowledge with an ideal to leave judgements about the worth of things out of it, that's more uncommon in cultures I believe.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

But it's a strawman, I would still use evidence to substantiate my hypotheses, I just wouldn't limit myself to mn, like some ideologial zealot, and then begin talking about the soul of atoms like Haeckel did, as describing some form of future state of an atom. As explained before, the reinterpretation of spiritual things as natural phenomena follows directly from exclusivist claims of mn or materialism. That is why we can see so many evolutionist racists in history talking about a creative force being based in the blood of people, in stead of contigently placed in the minds of people as a matter of choice.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I have provided much evidence to support my claims, but then evolutionists don't accept any evidence whatsover to the point at issue because of the naturalistic fallacy.Wouldn't you know it, the people who go on and on and on about evidence, don't actually accept any evidence whatsoever when push comes to shove.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

But my description of the selfish gene theory was right, where the description of someone else of it was demonstrably wrong, to the point of how much selfishness there is in nature according to Dawkins.The hypothesis of the book is twofold, first that the gene is the unit of selection that natural selection operates on, which had been mentioned by numerous scientists before, second that genes are selfish, which is Dawkins own invention. The two issues, what the unit of selection is, and whether or not this unit of selection can be said to be selfish, are really separate questions. You could write a similar book entitled the selfish individual, or the selfish group, there is no relation between selfishness and what the unit of selection is.First is to make a hypothesis of selfishness.Dawkins phrases it like this:"An entity, such as a baboon, is said to be altruistic if it behaves in such a way as to increase another such entity's welfare at the expense of its own. Selfish behavior has exactly the opposite effect.'Welfare' is defined as 'chances of survival', even if the effect on actual life and death prospects is so small as to seem negligible. One of the surprising consequences of the modern version of the Darwinian theory is that apparently trivial tiny influences on survival probability can have a major impact on evolution. This is because of the enormous time available for such influences to make themselves felt."Dawkins is describing the relations between individuals in terms of wellfare, based on who produces the behaviour. An overview of the theoretically possible relations between 2 individuals gives following possibilities:sA A- B+ altruism
sB A- B+ selfishnesssA A+ B- selfishness
sB A+ B- altruismsA A- B- ?
sB A- B- ?sA A+ B+ ?
sB A+ B+ ?Where for example sA A- B- is A produces a behaviour which results in loss of wellfare for both A and B. Who produces the behaviour is part of the requirements, otherwise a baboon who get's killed by another baboon, can be said to behave altruisticly. But if it were so that the baboon who get's killed, invites to be killed, then of course that does qualify as altruistic behaviour.What's first noticeable is that there aren't actually any words for half the possibles in Dawkins definition. There is no either selfish or altruist dichotomy which Dawkins presupposes, there are more possibilities then that, which Dawkins ignores. It starts out with a fault of systemacy.Of course any trait or behaviour which negatively affects wellfare would likely be lost in competition with individuals which don't have such traits that negatively effects wellfare, because of the strong relationship between welfare and reproductive rate. It's basicly irrellevant to add that the negative trait has a positive effect on another individual. That part would be cut by Occam's razor, another fault.But still we do see altruism as defined by Dawkins in nature, which Dawkins then reinterprets as not being "genuine" altruism but reciprocal altruism, or kin-selection. That is a fault of making special exemption for evidence that doesn't support your hypothesis.Dawkins is of course your typical methodological naturalist, ranting against religion, meanwhile establishing his own substitute religion by injecting subjective discourse into science, as if it were objective.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu