My previous to last post the other day painted Dennett as an ipso facto inventor of God in the sense of Voltaire's famous line ("if God didn't exist..."), placing him as part of a huge group of naturalists that I would call 'realists'. But where can you find an alternative? I'll try to get to that here but, as usual, here's some preliminary guff:
A little like a previous post I wrote about Dawkins and atheists and the bit about 'eating Islam', the very educated perspective is not necessarily the most active one. The great strength of naturalism in its scientific work is that it can be powerfully presumed true - time and time again science works, technology develops, the world and people's lives are transformed. A weakness accompanies this strength, however, which belongs not to science or to even naturalism proper but just to the conservative nature of the acceptance in society and the conservative personalities of the people involved.
I'm sure it's not controversial to point out that, whilst a scientist can produce a gadget, or at least some apparatus, that demonstrates the reality of the natural function or whatever it is that they have found or worked on, it is the corresponding usefulness of scientific research that matters socially. Therefore, it is not strictly the science itself, but the science as it matters for humans (science works in outer space too!) that provides the vulnerability of a thoroughgoing naturalism. There is also the strict objective standards and tests for scientific theses held by the scientific community that condition scientists not to accept simple intuition even when it can be presumed to be true. Even at the top level of physics, it was not until this year that the Higgs-Boson was found, despite its being implicated within existing theoretical models since the 1960s (and even when it was discovered, the line from the team was the modest 'watch this space').
The reason I'm going into this is because it's important to realise that the productivity of science depends upon following conservative procedure (and it really does), whilst it also has to have some connection with everyday common-sensical life to be socially effective - for example, 'chemistry' as a general scientific interest is not as prevalent as pharmaceutical research. So if the naturalism that gets entailed by scientific success has a social reality, it's of a nagging but certain variety: People really have little interest in the truth of science, which is itself socially awkward although it doesn't go away, but they also have plenty to gain in the growth of technology and medicine, which is socially empowering and liberating and therefore of certain power.
Education in the sense of becoming aware of these relationships does not predispose you to exciting radical thinking, even if naturalism is ultimately an exciting truth (and it is: popular science books extolling how wonderful and beautiful the universe is are not just cash-ins, they actually tell the truth, however partially). The truth of naturalism is more than a nagging concern once it is sought in its own right in every human sphere - which atheists well know. But following a methodological naturalism is historically loaded with the same mixture of rational modesty and unforgiving conclusions that shaped scientific enquiry since the Enlightenment. Another huge feature of that period is the promise of the nation-state as a rational government (Hobbes), and both the epistemological and political models of that era have been overturned in the 20th century (or earlier). I tend to say that the Holocaust was the perfection of the Enlightenment, inasmuch as it was a rational marshalling of industrial forces to solve a social problem. You might have heard that already.
In any case, and since I'm writing about naturalism (so I'll try to stay a little bit on subject), it's not as straightforward as to say 'traditional methodological naturalism = Holocaust' because that's stupid, just as those that say 'Hitler was an atheist' in some sort of triumphant put down to the possibility of atheism. What you should understand is that naturalism has to be a conservative gesture politically, even if it can run rampant behind closed doors in the realm of theory. A naturalistic social or political program recalls eugenics if not all the horrors of dehumanisation of recent history, threatening a future depicted by books such as Farenheit 451, 1984, etc. And so the truth of naturalism simply gets left hanging, as if waiting for a day when it cannot be easily converted into fascism. Education means Realpolitik with regards to any rational conclusions that can be drawn from naturalism.
The simplest socially exciting conclusion of course is that there is no God - there has never been a God and human beings will never discover one. If naturalism is to be a way of life, then there can be no possibility of God. This is very different from the realist naturalists who simply inform why people believe in God, in the trust that 'on one sunny day' the seed of doubt will take root and believers will encounter the divided universe whole and as it is. That latter view is the modest Englightened view of appeals to sovereign reason alone, which incidentally never existed otherwise than as a political motto. Some scientists are religious, and though they never write 'God did it' on their research papers, there really is no contradiction between personal belief and your day job, when the political nature of science licenses both.
20th century thinkers will be able to tell you how education is part of the social machinery that produces such effects. Rather than informing children and adult students that science needs to be carried further, extended and quickened for the betterment of humanity generally, they learn about compartmentalisation, the limitations of science, humility and respect for culture, and so on.
So what is the result of naturalism more generally spoken? Not a lot. I'm not even sure there's a naturalistic way of speaking that isn't conditioned to apathy. Why does it have to be considered a radical politic? Just because it is radically true. For naturalism itself has really nothing to do with human interests, and yet human lives and interests can still have something to do with the truth.
*Apparently most of today's Biological research, carried out by companies with various interests, isn't even reproducable! What! (read this in New Scientist a couple of months ago..)
V
A little like a previous post I wrote about Dawkins and atheists and the bit about 'eating Islam', the very educated perspective is not necessarily the most active one. The great strength of naturalism in its scientific work is that it can be powerfully presumed true - time and time again science works, technology develops, the world and people's lives are transformed. A weakness accompanies this strength, however, which belongs not to science or to even naturalism proper but just to the conservative nature of the acceptance in society and the conservative personalities of the people involved.
I'm sure it's not controversial to point out that, whilst a scientist can produce a gadget, or at least some apparatus, that demonstrates the reality of the natural function or whatever it is that they have found or worked on, it is the corresponding usefulness of scientific research that matters socially. Therefore, it is not strictly the science itself, but the science as it matters for humans (science works in outer space too!) that provides the vulnerability of a thoroughgoing naturalism. There is also the strict objective standards and tests for scientific theses held by the scientific community that condition scientists not to accept simple intuition even when it can be presumed to be true. Even at the top level of physics, it was not until this year that the Higgs-Boson was found, despite its being implicated within existing theoretical models since the 1960s (and even when it was discovered, the line from the team was the modest 'watch this space').
The reason I'm going into this is because it's important to realise that the productivity of science depends upon following conservative procedure (and it really does), whilst it also has to have some connection with everyday common-sensical life to be socially effective - for example, 'chemistry' as a general scientific interest is not as prevalent as pharmaceutical research. So if the naturalism that gets entailed by scientific success has a social reality, it's of a nagging but certain variety: People really have little interest in the truth of science, which is itself socially awkward although it doesn't go away, but they also have plenty to gain in the growth of technology and medicine, which is socially empowering and liberating and therefore of certain power.
Education in the sense of becoming aware of these relationships does not predispose you to exciting radical thinking, even if naturalism is ultimately an exciting truth (and it is: popular science books extolling how wonderful and beautiful the universe is are not just cash-ins, they actually tell the truth, however partially). The truth of naturalism is more than a nagging concern once it is sought in its own right in every human sphere - which atheists well know. But following a methodological naturalism is historically loaded with the same mixture of rational modesty and unforgiving conclusions that shaped scientific enquiry since the Enlightenment. Another huge feature of that period is the promise of the nation-state as a rational government (Hobbes), and both the epistemological and political models of that era have been overturned in the 20th century (or earlier). I tend to say that the Holocaust was the perfection of the Enlightenment, inasmuch as it was a rational marshalling of industrial forces to solve a social problem. You might have heard that already.
In any case, and since I'm writing about naturalism (so I'll try to stay a little bit on subject), it's not as straightforward as to say 'traditional methodological naturalism = Holocaust' because that's stupid, just as those that say 'Hitler was an atheist' in some sort of triumphant put down to the possibility of atheism. What you should understand is that naturalism has to be a conservative gesture politically, even if it can run rampant behind closed doors in the realm of theory. A naturalistic social or political program recalls eugenics if not all the horrors of dehumanisation of recent history, threatening a future depicted by books such as Farenheit 451, 1984, etc. And so the truth of naturalism simply gets left hanging, as if waiting for a day when it cannot be easily converted into fascism. Education means Realpolitik with regards to any rational conclusions that can be drawn from naturalism.
The simplest socially exciting conclusion of course is that there is no God - there has never been a God and human beings will never discover one. If naturalism is to be a way of life, then there can be no possibility of God. This is very different from the realist naturalists who simply inform why people believe in God, in the trust that 'on one sunny day' the seed of doubt will take root and believers will encounter the divided universe whole and as it is. That latter view is the modest Englightened view of appeals to sovereign reason alone, which incidentally never existed otherwise than as a political motto. Some scientists are religious, and though they never write 'God did it' on their research papers, there really is no contradiction between personal belief and your day job, when the political nature of science licenses both.
20th century thinkers will be able to tell you how education is part of the social machinery that produces such effects. Rather than informing children and adult students that science needs to be carried further, extended and quickened for the betterment of humanity generally, they learn about compartmentalisation, the limitations of science, humility and respect for culture, and so on.
So what is the result of naturalism more generally spoken? Not a lot. I'm not even sure there's a naturalistic way of speaking that isn't conditioned to apathy. Why does it have to be considered a radical politic? Just because it is radically true. For naturalism itself has really nothing to do with human interests, and yet human lives and interests can still have something to do with the truth.
*Apparently most of today's Biological research, carried out by companies with various interests, isn't even reproducable! What! (read this in New Scientist a couple of months ago..)
V