That would be my guess. Did they forget that humans are natural beings, and everything we do is natural? If Meyer really does have a degree in philosophy in science . . . I just don’t know what to say.
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Why the “if”? Is his Cambridge doctorate not a matter of public record? Or is it in a subject other than philosophy of science?
Meyer has certainly read and digested masses of material on the term “methodological naturalism” and has written about it in detail on many occasions. I would advise reading what he has written about the term (not snippets or sound bites, but whole articles and chapters) before concluding that he does not understand the term.
Regarding this part of Johnson’s statement:
It seems to me to be balanced, cautious, and reasonable. The use of the expression “may not” (as opposed to “can” or “can not”) keeps things intellectually open. I’m not endorsing everything Johnson wrote, but this particular sentence is both theologically and philosophically cautious and responsible.
And yet he believes that methodological naturalism means that we cannot conclude that the Rosetta Stone was inscribed by human beings. See for yourself. He makes other ludicrous claims here, besides. Listen to how he discusses the issue of observability, for instance. This video is the equivalent of someone how has a degree in evolutionary biology saying “Well, we know evolution is false, because why are there still monkeys? And, also, behold the banana!”
So it seems that he is as inept at understanding the literature in what is supposedly his field of expertise as he in in understanding genetics, paleontology, biochemistry and all the other subjects in which he embarrasses himself by publicly exposing his ignorance.
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That’s really extraordinary. I had not seen that. That is the most bizarre understanding of MN. He’d be closer to the truth if he thought it was a state between the Dakotas and Wisconsin. Heck, he’d still be closer if he thought it was a state between the Dakotas and Idaho.
His weird philosophical pratfalls are numerous, of course. In his latest book he keeps saying that we know divine intelligence is “causally adequate” to design and make living things because humans exist and design things. If ever it turns out that the key to overturning a well-developed scientific paradigm is to tie a bunch of bad analogies together with string and try to make a raft out of 'em, Meyer will be way ahead of everyone else.
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His presentation of his point in the interview was sloppy, and the argument was not rigorous. Even philosophers can be sloppy in short interviews aimed at popular audiences. What he was getting at, however, was important.
The question is, when are we justified in inferring that an intelligent agent, as opposed to unintelligent natural events, produced something? Generally speaking, we look for certain hallmarks of intelligence, e.g., an apparently purposeful arrangement of parts, or words, or symbols. If we find such marks, we make a design inference. In the case of the Rosetta Stone, we find an apparently purposeful arrangement of words, in which the same message is conveyed in three different scripts. We don’t believe that chance or blind natural forces would produce such an object. So we infer that mind was involved. Methodological naturalism does not (if we regard human beings as “natural” in one sense of the word) rule out human beings as causes, so no, it does not rule out the possibility that human beings created the Rosetta Stone.
But what if we found an artifact on another planet, say, a sophisticated electronic device, and one we knew not to have come from earth? Would we be justified in inferring the existence of another intelligent race of beings in the universe – even if no trace of such beings (other than the artifact itself) could be found? If someone were to argue, “You need independent confirmation of the existence of an intelligent race outside of human beings before your design inference concerning this object can be regarded as sound,” we would dismiss the objection, and rightly so. The “purposeful arrangement of parts” in the artifact would speak so loudly for its intelligent design that we would feel quite safe in inferring the existence of an intelligent maker of the object.
Meyer believes (rightly or wrongly) that the informational content of living systems makes them like the hypothetical alien artifact above. He believes that the informational content cannot have arisen, any more than the Rosetta Stone could have arisen, due to blind natural forces, chance, etc., but required an intelligent source. And just as in the case of the alien artifact above, he believes that we don’t need some independent proof of the existence of that intelligent source in order to infer its existence. No prior belief in the existence of such an intelligent source is required; the arrangements of life are sufficient, by themselves, to allow us to infer its existence. But methodological naturalism in this case (unlike the case of the Rosetta Stone) forbids the inference, on the grounds that “science can deal only with natural causes,” and the ultimate designer of life, if there were such a designer, would have to be a disembodied mind, i.e., something that science would not recognize as “natural.” For this reason, a science bound by methodological naturalism would reject design inferences regarding life. So if there were an intelligent designer of living things, a science ruled by methodological naturalism would be methodologically blind to its existence. Such a science would get reality wrong, and it would get reality wrong because of its commitment to only unguided, unintelligent causes as the origin of things.
So the question is, which is more important, knowing the truth, by whatever means available, including not only what is now called science but also design inferences to possibly disembodied intellects, or restricting oneself to methodological naturalism, and risking the possibility of misdescribing the world and of failing to see the truth?
Newton, Boyle, and Kepler all thought that inferences to a disembodied intellect were in some cases warranted, and nobody here, I trust, would say that they were not good scientists, or did not really understand what science was. Meyer’s argument is really quite traditional, in that sense. But the notion of “science” held by most people here comes from the line of thought initiated by Bacon and Descartes, which culminates in Kant, who rigorously separated “science” as we know it from design reasoning. Meyer is in effect calling for a return to the more intellectually flexible, less doctrinaire, early modern attitude of many of the great men who founded modern chemistry, physics, and astronomy. You don’t find any yapping about “methodological naturalism” in Newton’s General Scholium, when he talks about the wise contrivances in nature. He thinks the wise contrivances point to a mind that we moderns would not call “natural.” So Meyer is in good intellectual company, even if Meyer’s own defense of his position is sometimes lacking in clarity and rigor.
Not until you have a clear objective definition of “intelligent” with clear ideas as to what would count as evidence for that intelligence.
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This seems to have drifted far enough from the topic to require moving to another thread. This is all supposed to be about RTB and progressive creation. Even though it’s failed in its purpose (inviting comments from actual progressive creationists), it would be better to leave it as a monument to that failure than to rehash old, off-topic arguments. Or so I see it.
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That is a misunderstanding of MN, and I agree that there are opponents of ID that make that error. But I would expect someone who is an expert in philosophy of science to understand it correctly, in which case they would say something like “There is a claim often made that the scientific method cannot evaluate whether an intelligent being was involved in the processes by which life forms have arisen because MN does not permit such an evaluation. But this would be to misunderstand MN.” That is not what he said. Because he does not correctly understand MN.
The error he makes is in confusing methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism takes the position that all that exists is natural. Methodological naturalism, on the other hand, entails that when one is performing science oneacts as if all that exists is natural while taking no position on whether this is actually the case. So if there existed a supernatural agent that was intervening at some points in the history of life, MN would not require that one ignore any evidence of its existence. Rather, this being would be treated as if it was natural and we would try to incorporate its existence into our existing theories and understanding of how life arose. The alternative, if MN was rejected, would be to simply set this being an its actions into a separate category of “supernatural” and allow for the possibility that it operates outside of natural laws and processes. We would therefore not have to adjust our understanding of those laws.
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No, he does not confuse the two things. He was thinking and talking about the distinction long before you ever posted your first internet comment on origins issues. (As was Paul Nelson, and as were many other ID proponents.)
This does not make sense. If you granted, even for the sake of argument, that a supernatural agent was intervening, why would you think you could treat it as if it were natural? And why would you think the action of such a being could be incorporated into existing theories which allow only natural causes? How would you accomplish such an incorporation? Would you have a mathematical formula for the orbit of Mars that had a “God factor” added to the other factors?
You fail to see the problem that is posed by methodological naturalism. If we want to know, for example, the truth about how life originated, and we insist on methodological naturalism as the arena where this is to be determined, we will allow explanations only via the kinds of cause (matter/energy causes) that naturalistic science allows. And that will work fine if life arose due wholly to natural causes. But what if life didn’t so arise? What if it required a disembodied mind to act, in order to get it going? There is no way for methodological naturalism – as you or most atheists understand it – to arrive at this conclusion. The most a methodological naturalist can say is: If it happened that way, it is outside the scope of science to demonstrate or even investigate it; science simply doesn’t have the tools to deal with that option. The only explanations of origins that science can come up with will be explanations that do not involve disembodied minds; if you want to hear answers involving disembodied minds, go talk to a philosopher or theologian. There is a voluntarily adopted methodological blindness.
And this was precisely what Descartes and Bacon recommended that natural science should become: methodologically blind to all explanations involving disembodied minds, or, more generally, to teleological explanations. Kant strove to codify this requirement. Precisely the tension between ID folks, on the one hand, and atheists and most TEs on the other, is that the ID folks think of science as Newton, Boyle, and Kepler thought of it, whereas the atheists and TEs think of it as Descartes, Bacon and Kant thought of it. This is a major dispute in the area of “history and philosophy of science.”
By the way, the first person to make the distinction between Metaphysical and Methodological Naturalism, at least using exactly those terms, seems to have been Paul De Vries, in his article in Christian Scholars’ Review 154 (1986), 388-396. De Vries was a philosopher who taught at Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian institution, and his interest in making the distinction was apologetic, aimed at harmonizing Christianity with science in such a way as to fend off both fundamentalists and materialistic atheists. A certain Christian organization, which I dare not mention here lest John Harshman accuse me of leading the thread off-topic, has made heavy use of the distinction, whether using its formal language or expressing it in other words.
I have no problem with closing this topic down, or moving the last few posts to a new topic, if some moderator wants to do either of these things.
Good questions, and if the supernatural actually existed we would have to address them.
It is an interesting observation that scientists have never had to deal with these questions. It’s almost as if metaphysical naturalism is actually true.
Not at all. We just presume that naturalism allows for the existence of disembodied minds, There is no reason this could not be the case.
At the moment, science does not usually consider the existence of disembodied minds, not because of any ideological proscription, but because there is no empirical evidence for the existence of such a thing nor any established theoretical framework in which such a thing could exist. But that could change if disembodied minds exist and leave empirical evidence of their existence. I can think of at least one scientific attempt to find such evidence, which is discussed below. According to your understanding of MN this study should not exist.
You are correct in saying that if naturalism is not true then MN gives an inaccurate understanding of the world. That is why science is not properly understood as a means to arrive at The TruthTM in some absolute sense, but rather as a means to best understand and predict what observations will and will not be made in the physical world as we experience it.
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I’m also OK with moving this interesting discussion to a new topic.
Then demonstrating the origin of life would remain beyond the horizon of science. The best that could be said would be “we do not know”. That, however, can never be equivalent to a positive statement that we know that life must have designed origin. Such a statement is outside the realm of methodological naturalism, but it is also outside the realm of science.
I do not see how science can operate out of the bounds of methodological naturalism. If the domain of science is considered to be broader than methodological naturalism, what would in fact be the methods extended? Science measures, tests, experiments, and controls, to eliminate incorrect ideas and establish general principles about nature. What scientific method can be brought to bear on origins or questions which are not natural? All such methods I have seen proposed appear to ultimately reduce to metaphysics or inventive restatements of god of the gaps.
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Again, I disagree. It is possible that the only error made would be to identify as natural something that is supernatural. But for all we know we have been doing that all along. Maybe gravity is a supernatural miracle performed by God so everything won’t fall apart. How would we know?
Well, yes, but that’s the point. Is the goal of people who are interested in the origin of life to answer the question, “How did life originate?” Or is the goal to answer the question, “How did life originate, working on the assumption that it originated wholly by unguided causes?”
If the goal is to answer the first question, then all possibilities should be on the table, whether they are “scientific” or not.
Which group has done more and made more progress to date?
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You are here making the same mistake that Meyer did in that video. “Unguided” is not synonymous with “natural”. Scientists have always been quite free to ascribe the Rosetta Stone, beaver dams and beehives to processes that are not unguided. And when doing so they have not been called up before the Science Court for violating MN.
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Could someone please, seriously, get rid of the off-topic posts? Anyone? Moderators? Could everyone posting them please stop doing it?
It is, when the topic under consideration is the origin of life. Your chosen examples, beaver dams and Rosetta Stones and the like, are special cases (involving beings that are known to have intelligence or something very like intelligence) that skirt the issue.
And of course, when Darwin offered a natural-cause explanation for evolution, he meant that evolution was not guided, in any normal English sense of the word “guided”; when his American disciple Asa Gray tried to slip some “guidance” into the process, Darwin rejected the idea. And when Eugenie Scott consented to the dropping of words like “unguided” and “unplanned” (regarding evolution) from certain biology textbooks and certain statements of scientific organizations, she knew that her position would lose nothing by the purely P.R. adjustment, since when scientists talk about “natural causes” (of planetary formation, of earthquakes, of plant growth, of evolution, and so on), they are thinking about unguided causes. No scientist, when actually doing science, speaks of any mind “guiding” the planets in their orbits, or of any mind “guiding” the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, or of any mind “guiding” the development of an embryo. So she knew perfectly well that even with the words “unguided” and “unplanned” dropped, evolution would continue to be regarded by scientists as an unguided process. So she didn’t make a stink about dropping the explicitly biased language; the implicit bias would continue to be present.
Nor is there any excuse for similar procrastination from IDers (yourself included) who aren’t even willing to state their position, let alone rigorously define or defend it. Yet you don’t apply that criticism to them.
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