This is where I wonder if a certain logic to the situation is obscured. Is there something practical to the suitcase I can't see? What is the minimum we should need to get on with science optimally? Methodological natualism seems to be the answer to me. But I am open to reasons why more might be needed. — Baden
Right, and I think this is a good way to capture methodological naturalism:
Methodological naturalism says behave as if it were and get on with it. — Baden
I want to ask whether this is coherent, and perhaps the physicalist would want to ask that too. How much mileage can we really get out of "behave as if it were," or, "pretend"?* My nephew recently told me that it was incumbent upon me to pretend that the dog is a tiger. If I had asked him why, he might have said, "Because it will be fun!"
I think methodological naturalism asks us to do more than behave as if reality were measurable. It seems that it asks us to behave as if naturalism were true, at least for the duration of our inquiry. If I asked methodological naturalism why, what would it say? Whatever its answer, I suspect that the answer will betray metaphysical commitments that it purports to not have.
On this account we might have an interaction like the following:
- Methodological Naturalist: "Stop doing metaphysics. We should be metaphysically neutral."
- Physicalist: "No one is metaphysically neutral. You are fooling yourself. Every thoroughgoing methodology comes with metaphysical commitments."
- Methodological Naturalist: "Even if that is so, it remains true that your metaphysics is too thick for science."
(I would say that the second and third statements are both true.)
More succinctly, you seem to be saying, "Methodological naturalism is sound and solid in itself; physicalism is problematic; therefore we should take the former and leave the latter." I think there is a strong argument to be made that methodological naturalism is not sound and solid in itself. The first premise here aligns with your (1), which in the OP is more of a presupposition than an argument.
* It is curious to me how much pretending we are told to do with it comes to religion, both from secularists and religious alike. Apparently this began when the phrase "etsi Deus non daretur" took on a certain meaning.
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'At best, talk of “the physical” acts as a placeholder for whatever we discover, or could discover, to be true about nature.' — Baden
But can't the same be said about talk of "the natural"? Is naturalism any less shifty than physicalism? In each case it would seem that certain explanations are ruled out
a priori for no articulated reason, and whenever phenomena which support those explanations are encountered, the conception of what is "natural" or "physical" is simply broadened to accommodate. My thesis here is that these critiques of physicalism also function as critiques of naturalism, just in a mitigated way.
The supernatural is just that which can't be reliably measured, replicated etc. in principle. — Baden
This is a crucial attempt to articulate a reason for ruling out supernatural explanations, and as always it is bound up with a specific conception of science. On this definition science has to do with what is repeatable, and therefore the supernatural is ruled out (along with, perhaps, the psychological, the sociological, the historical, etc.). For the Western mind supernatural encounters fall into the genus of interpersonal encounters, and it is the interpersonal nature of the phenomenon that is not repeatable.
The alternative is a view of science which opens the door to the soft sciences, including theology. If the repeatability requirement is softened then interpersonal realities can be the subject of scientific study, because repeated interpersonal interactions do yield true and reliable knowledge, even though the repeatability is not as strict as that of the lab scientist who deals with a passive and subordinate substance.