User talk:Philocentric/methodological naturalism

This page is being created to prevent the current conflation between methodological naturalism and philosophical/metaphysical naturalism. Many of the objections to philosophical naturalism do not in any way impinge on the integrity of notion of methodological naturalism.

Comments

A separate article about methodological naturalism is desirable.

I have problems with the first sentence of your draft:

"Methodological naturalism is a disposition towards scientific inquiry that expects, for any given question concerning physical reality, a natural explanation to eventually be demonstrated and accepted as true."

One problem: Some readers may interpret the word "disposition" to mean that methodological naturalism is a tendency or an inclination to investigate physical reality scientifically. This implies that methodological naturalism is nothing more than a personal preference and, hence, not very important.

Another problem: if natural explanations are the answers to all questions concerning physical reality, then this implies that supernatural beings never intervene in the natural world, i.e., methodological naturalism is effectively the same as metaphysical naturalism.

Third problem: arguably, science can never demonstrate that any particular natural explanation is "true." See the Problem of induction article in Wikipedia.

An alternative start to the first paragraph might be something like the following:

"Methodological naturalism is the search for scientific laws that describe the structure and behaviour of the natural world. Scientific laws are statements that are verifiable by the methods of science."

Ivar Y (talk) 07:31, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your input, Ivar. I'm currently exploring the literature in depth, and I'll make sure that the final version is well-cited and accurately reflects convention. It may be a few weeks before I feel I have adequately researched this concept. If you have recommended readings, that would be appreciated. Philocentric (talk) 08:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]