(I'm not sure if this got through the first time)
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A long and thoughtful post!
Books have been written on these topics; I'll not attempt one.
I will make some comments (see far below):
> From: Jeff Ricker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> I am still pursuing lines of thought related to my recent posts. The
> goal of this post is to question an assumption, made (I think) by
> many of us, that impedes our ability to justify teaching psychology
> as a natural science. This questionable assumption is that
> supernatural causes are not subject to empirical investigation. Let
> me explain.
>
> My students often wonder about supernatural events, especially as
> causes of some of the phenomena we talk about in class. I emphasize
> to them that, in our class, we focus on natural (material) causes of
> the human mind and behavior. But most of them have religious and/or
> folk beliefs that assume the existence of a supernatural god and/or
> supernatural aspects of mind. It is difficult or impossible to
> justify to many of them my insistence that we focus on natural
> processes. If I can show them that specific examples of supernatural
> phenomena are hoaxes, or that we can give a natural explanation to
> other specific examples that, at first, had seemed explainable only
> by pointing to supernatural causes, this does not show them that the
> supernatural is unnecessary for the explanation of other specific
> examples. This becomes a never-ending litany of still other examples
> that one has to show are explainable as hoaxes or by natural factors.
> At some point, someone will hit upon one that I can't explain. At this
> point, the argument from ignorance comes into play, and they are able
> to sit back satisfied that their supernatural beliefs can be
> retained, and that the naturalistic approach taken in the course is
> severely limited. They equate my naturalistic approach as equivalent
> to their supernaturalistic approach--as something based on faith
> that, therefore, cannot be supported with evidence outside of
> "personal experience" (anecdotes and intuition).
>
> In fact, there are a number of natural scientists who seem to believe
> that blind faith in natural philosophy is required among scientists.
> For example, Mark Cartmill, the president of the American Association
> of Physical Anthropologists, has stated that natural scientists have
> never justified on rational grounds their assumption that there is no
> supernatural realm that can have effects in the physical world: "Many
> scientists are atheists or agnostics who WANT to believe that the
> natural world they study is all there is, and being only human, they
> try to persuade themselves that science gives them grounds for that
> belief. It's an honorable belief, but it isn't a research finding"
> (quoted on p. 92 of Larson & Witham, 1999; emphasis added). Cartmill
> is making the accusation that those who assume naturalism--the
> philosophical doctrine that states that everything is the result of
> natural (physical) processes--of being motivated by a faith in
> naturalism and not simply by the making of a valid inference from the
> findings of scientific research. In other words, natural scientists
> are no different, according to Cartmill, from those who in believe in
> a supernatural realm of existence. This is a damning criticism of
> science and scientists since it implies that natural science is
> fundamentally equivalent to religion: blind faith is required if one
> is to become a scientist. Is it true?
There is a major split in Anthropology between scientists and 'radical
relativists'; those who hold the position that science is nothing but a
politically-derived opinion.
Despite his reasonable-sounding words, Cartmill appears to be one of the
latter.
> No, it is not. In psychology as a natural science, we are engaged in
> the scientific study of "human nature." In other words, we are using
> the scientific method (which assumes the doctrine of determinism) to
> investigate the aspects of mind and behavior that are caused by
> natural processes. Since the only known natural processes are
> material ones, the basic assumption of scientific psychology is
> materialism. But this does not need to be the case. We could ask
> ourselves the following question: are there any aspects of mind and
> behavior that are NOT caused by natural processes? To be more
> specific, is there a human "supernature" that is caused by
> supernatural processes. The discipline that studied such phenomena
> would probably still make an assumption of determinism, but the
> fundamental causes studied would be supernatural ones. Such a
> discipline would not be outside the bounds of science. Scientists
> could still investigate supernatural causes with the limitation that
> they must have effects in the material world....
>
> Thus, the supernatural is not off limits to a scientific approach. We
> should be able to get evidence for such a realm that does not involve
> simply personal experience or intuition--that is, faith. The fact
> that we do not have such a science cannot be due to purely
> sociological reasons (i.e., that scientists as a group are biased
> against such explanations and, therefore, that they force believers
> in the supernatural into other occupations): I, for one, would be
> very happy and excited to pursue such investigations if I had any
> evidence that they could be successful. And that is the point: we do
> not have any good scientific evidence for these beliefs; and that is
> why psychology has developed into a natural science, not a
> supernatural one.
>
> Perhaps I am preaching to the choir, but I think not (as indicated by
> some of the off-list comments I have received as well as the comment
> by Mark Cartmill quoted above). Anyway, I simply am trying to work
> through a justification that would make sense to my students. That
> is, the question I am trying to develop a good answer for is this:
> Does the assumption of a natural-science approach demand blind faith?
A thought question:
How would you explain to your dog that you are not a god?
In other words, how would you differentiate empirically between phenomena
that are inherently beyond explanation by any possible natural law, and
phenomena that obey natural laws of which we are not yet aware?
Further, are there natural laws that we are not capable of understanding
(leading to the classic science fiction scenario of humans constructing a
computer capable of understanding things that they cannot)?
I can easily see being faced with an observation that appears to be
inexplicable by an known natural law, including a being that is capable of
performing acts that appear 'unnatural' but that obey natural laws beyond
my (or any human's) understanding. How would I differentiate this from a
supernatural (beyond _any_ natural law) being?
If we can characterize some phenomenon as lawful (a defined phenomenon
occurs under a stated set of conditions) but cannot provide any explanatory
mechanism consistent with known science, this does not prove the existence
of the supernatural; simply the limits of our knowledge.
On the other hand, if a phenomenon appears to occur randomly we might
hesitate to call it lawful even in principle.
However, one demonstration of nonlinear dynamics (Chaos Theory) is that
events that appear to be random may in fact be determined given a more
powerful and subtle mathematical characterization.
Therefore, I would hate to characterize any phenomenon as essentially (per
Paul Smith) random.
Of course unique events -- such as the classic one-shot miracle -- cannot
be characterized as lawful or unlawful since they are not repeatable; we
cannot assign a conditional probability to their occurrence.
This does not mean that they are beyond scientific explanation; just that
they do not provide the kind of evidence we need for a scientific analysis.
The point of all this is that one cannot prove the existence of the
supernatural through logical or scientific methods -- it rests on faith.
Scientific method does not rest on faith -- it is the inductive product of
millenia of observation and methological refinement through empirical
feedback. It has been demonstrated to work in ways that religion has not.
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Department 507-389-6217 *
* "The University formerly known as Mankato State" *
* http://www.mankato.msus.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *
