Can Meth. Natural & Phil. Naturalism really be seperate?

[Kitsune]

I am both a philosophical and methodological naturalist.
No sure if one can be a philosophical naturalist without being a methodological one.

Still, there are a fair number of individuals who argue for methodological naturalism but not philosophical naturalism
Can you really be a methodological naturalist while not a philosophical without at least a bit cognitive dissonance?

[Esquire]

Could you expand a little? What it is you mean by your terms, what you think the contradiction is, stuff like that.

[SMJB]

I am also unsure of what these terms mean.

[Kitsune]

Methodological Naturalism

Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. To avoid these traps scientists assume that all causes are empirical and naturalistic; which means they can be measured, quantified and studied methodically.

However, this assumption of naturalism need not extend beyond an assumption of methodology. This is what separates methodological naturalism from philosophical naturalism - the former is merely a tool and makes no truth claim; while the latter makes the philosophical - essentially atheistic - claim that only natural causes exist.

Philosophical naturalism
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Philosophical_naturalism

Philosophical naturalism is the doctrine that the observable world is all there is.

Most philosophers of science adhere strictly to this view and positively deny that any supernatural or miraculous effects or forces are possible, though a small minority believe that there are other ways of knowing.

[K. A. Pital]

The answer is practically yes you can, as evidenced by theist scientists and the whole "Catholic evolutionism" thing. I can't get into their minds to see if they experience dissonance, but it is working for a huge number of people. I find it scary, as a full-blown materialist, but that's just me.

[SMJB]

Oh. Well, sure you can be a MN without being a PN. In science you establish proof for a theory by attempting to disprove it and failing. Even if you come across something that you suspect is beyond what science can explain, you still have to come up with alternate hypotheses to explain the data if you're a proper scientist, because that's how you'd disprove that hypothesis.

Not sure how it'd even work the other way around, though.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Bluntly? Yes. Yes you can. Though obviously your theologies are restricted and/or your definition of supernatural will need to be modified. Keep in mind that anything we can see and measure is by definition natural, so ghosts--if they could ever be proven to exist--would be natural. So any belief in those things, provided they can be demonstrated to be true, would count as philosophical naturalism.

The thing to keep in mind is that the Theist/Methodological Naturalist cannot believe in a god who intervenes in the world (anymore). One who set things up, possibly in advance, to run a certain way, and then leaves it alone. One can also, I suppose, be a sort of theo-platonist.

[hongi]

The thing to keep in mind is that the Theist/Methodological Naturalist cannot believe in a god who intervenes in the world (anymore).

Why?

[Alyrium Denryle]

The thing to keep in mind is that the Theist/Methodological Naturalist cannot believe in a god who intervenes in the world (anymore).

Why?

Without being inconsistent or defining themselves out of existence. A being that interferes with the world is by definition a part of that world, otherwise, you violate causality. It would be like having an equation F(x)=52X+27, and then having an operator not in the equation somehow modify the results. A consistent methodological naturalist who is NOT a philosophical naturalist must either admit the proverbial external operator into the equation (Ex: F(x)=X^2+52X+27), in which case he/she becomes a philosophical naturalist by definition, or assume that whatever they are believing in does not modify the equation at all.

[Simon_Jester]

I always interpreted it more as believing that 'supernatural' forces would have something we could term loosely as "root access" to the normal operating of the universe. Physical laws act would be expected to act normally, but there's a separate list of possible actions that affect the universe without being part of the list of rules of the universe we can normally observe.

I mean, suppose you lived in a computer model of... something. You experience certain mathematical and 'physical' laws that describe the evolution of the system in your simulation- a biologist in a cellular automation like Conway's Game of Life would observe certain things about how systems propagate themselves, and might think of this as the 'natural' layer of the universe.

But sometimes, the simulation randomly stops and new stuff gets edited in or deleted. Some of the new stuff being edited in is mathematically impossible and could not have been brought into being by any conceivable combination of cell settings within the game. Nothing within the game universe can explain this. It may or may not be possible to construct equations to model it, and yet it happens: because for anything to exist in that game, someone has to put the initial conditions in place.

To us, both layers of operation of the simulation (its evolution while we keep our hands off the controls, and the changes it undergoes when we edit the starting conditions) are fully natural. To inhabitants of the simulation, one is natural, and one transcends the natural.

[Kitsune]

You appear to be straying into Intelligent Design grounds with the word "Impossible"

[Alyrium Denryle]

You appear to be straying into Intelligent Design grounds with the word "Impossible"

Except he is not. He is explaining the natural/supernatural split. A person can be methodological naturalist while believing in the supernatural if they believe that there are root operations the normal rules we can observe do not explain that nonetheless occur, which would be defined as supernatural. They are in the "code" of the universe, but they are not part of the normal operating code for the universe. A sort of... back-door in the laws of physics that science cannot actually explain because the scientists dont have direct access to the code.