Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Naturalism as philosophy?

Naturalism fundamentally amounts to the claim that there is no "philosophical" or "metaphysical" theory or data which may, or even need, be added onto our knowledge of the world apart from "the scientific picture" of it.

Since, however, science itself can only get off the ground in virtue of antecedent philosophical commitments, there are ineluctable data which metaphysics brings to our picture of the world, no matter how empirically scientific it may be.

Therefore, naturalism is fundamentally false.

1 comment:

One Brow said...

Just to make sure I understand what you mean by "natrualism": we see five stones on the ground, four of them surrounding a central stone so that there are two perpendicular lines of three stone each. I remark that the stones are in the shape of a cross.

Is the shape that the stones form a collective property of the stones that can be discussed in the naturalism to which you refer?