@T.j_Runyon, I have a question about this section of the abstract of the “How Not to Attack ID Creationism…”
According to one popular conception, MN is a self-imposed or intrinsic limitation of science, which means that science is simply not equipped to deal with claims of the supernatural (Intrinsic MN or IMN). Alternatively, we will defend MN as a provisory and empirically grounded attitude of scientists, which is justified in virtue of the consistent success of naturalistic explanations and the lack of success of supernatural explanations in the history of science (Provisory MN or PMN).
So the abstract contrasts:
“MN is a self-imposed or intrinsic limitation of science, which means that science is simply not equipped to deal with claims of the supernatural (Intrinsic MN or IMN).”
with:
“Alternatively, we will defend MN as a provisory and empirically grounded attitude of scientists, which is justified in virtue of the consistent success of naturalistic explanations and the lack of success of supernatural explanations in the history of science (Provisory MN or PMN).”
QUESTION: How would you respond to the view that MN refers to both sides of that same coin? (Aren’t both summations valid?) After all, the scientific method doesn’t have any procedures or tools which can test for “the supernatural.” (As Francis Collins and countless others have said: “Bring me my angel detector…”) At the same time, MN evolved among Christian philosophers as its development produced impressive results where purely theological explanations had failed to be all that helpful. MN has been traditionally defined as it is because doing so works well and the fact that science is inherently limited in its domain of investigation is actually one of its greatest strengths.
I can see how the two positions differ in how well they explain how MN developed and became the “standard” in science, historically speaking. But it seems like both of the alternatives are simultaneously valid, two sides of the same coin.
I haven’t got very far reading the article yet, and I have so much reading piled up (and a book project that is woefully behind) so that I may never get the time to investigate this topic as much as I would wish. So that’s part of the selfish reason why I’m cutting corners and asking outright what you think about this.
I will admit that my grasp of MN is biased by the philosophy of science atmosphere of my generation’s graduate school “era”. I have not kept up on the MN debates—but a lot of what I have read on the various views on MN strike me as “distinctions without much of a difference.” And that is how the abstract sounded to me, in part because I wouldn’t characterize the problem as “ruling them [supernatural explanations] out by philosophical fiat.” Indeed, the choice of the word fiat sounds like a mischaracterization to me. (However, I would agree that some well-known scientists who “preach” to the public on various topics imply a fiat point of view.)
Philosophers reached certain conclusions about MN and the definition of science not by some arbitrary definition or mere bias. (I prefer “reasoned conclusion about definitions based on methodologies which worked extremely well” to “fiat”. The latter seems like a loaded word.)
Admittedly, I did not have a lot of training in Philosophy of Science courses nor as much philosophy as I might have wished. Yet, I would guess that the average person reading such an abstract might be likely to have similar questions to mine. No doubt I’m missing important considerations.
By the way, I’ve not read all that Dr. Swamidas has written about this MN issue but I really like his “Creator-Creation Distinction” way of considering the boundaries of investigation. I also like what he posted on another thread about “minds are not material”:
@Paul_Nelson is making a legitimate point. It has to do with demarcation criteria for what is “natural” which is often equated with “material”. But “Minds” are not material. So, in some discourse, it seems like “minds” are not proper causal entities. Of course, science does allow minds to be causal entities, even in evolution (see Sexual Selection), but that isn’t material. It all becomes incoherent. He is right.
Yes, I would agree that minds are not material. However, some would say that minds are just the “virtual machine” that is manifested when a material brain does what it does. (Those who have had computer theory courses beyond simple programming probably remember learning about various levels of virtual machines for the first time in some 200-level CS course. Some would even say that the mind is the software that runs on the brain’s hardware—but I’m not so sure that that analogy is all that helpful.)
Long ago I had a startling conversation with Doug Hofstadter concerning his ideas about “mind uploading”, aka WBE, Whole Brain Emulation. It seemed like bizarre science fiction from an old movie: achieving a kind of “eternal life” by porting the “virtual machine(s)” of the human brain into a computer. Because the “mind port” was from a carbon-based material brain to a silicon-based material computer, I got the impression that Hofstadter still considered his work bound to the material world and thereby valid science. But Hofstadter got a lot of pushback from colleagues (especially within his own department!) and many assumed that his unusual tangent was due to his grief over the sudden loss of his wife to a rare disease. Some colleagues accused him of a reckless trespass beyond the boundaries of the MN of science. [I lost contact with Hofstadter around the time I made the transition from science professor to humanities professor so it is possible that he has a very different outlook today. That conversation was probably around 1981 or so.]