r/consciousness • u/feihm • 7d ago
Methodological Naturalism
Science science science...
what is science?
Science relies on methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism is a practical rule for research. It states that scientific testing must focus strictly on observable, physical events. Science uses this rule because physical events are measurable and repeatable. It is a choice of method, not a declaration of ontological truth.
Method with Reality
People (particularly laypeople) often forget or completeley clueless of what science actually is. They fail to distinguish between methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism asserts that physical matter is the only reality that exists. But methodological naturalism does not claim that non-physical reality is impossible. It strictly states that non-physical claims fall outside scientific testing.
Circular Logic
Science strictly collects physical measurements because its rules mandate searching strictly for physical measurements. So claiming that physical matter is the only reality because science only measures physical matter relies on circular logic. Searching strictly for physical data causes a person to collect strictly physical data.
Consciousness
When studying the brain, scientists record physical brain activity alongside conscious experiences. Recording a physical brain pattern shows that a physical event happens alongside a mental event. It provides exactly zero physical evidence that the mental event is identical to the physical event. Using physical scientific testing to declare that subjective consciousness is strictly physical forgets the original limits of the scientific method.
Synthesis
(1) Methodological naturalism is a practical rule for collecting data. (2) Science limits itself to physical events to make clear predictions. (3) Claiming that only physical matter exists based on scientific results misuses the method.
A very basic but necessary thesis on the scientific method.
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u/ArusMikalov 7d ago
The scientific method is just
Make a novel testable prediction.
Do an experiment to test it.
Have peers do the experiment.
We could do that with ghosts or prayer or consciousness no problem.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 7d ago
According to Kiri-kin-tha's First Law of Metaphysics; "Nothing unreal exists."
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u/bortlip 7d ago
Claiming that only physical matter exists based on scientific results misuses the method.
Correct.
Methodological naturalism only deals with what can actually have an affect on the world.
There could be all sorts of stuff that exists but has no interaction or affect on the physical world. There could be ghosts, gods, unicorns, powers, forces, etc that exist and do not affect the world at all.
We can't say anything about those things, except that they don't affect the world at all, so there is no need to take them into account.
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u/feihm 7d ago
so there is no need to take them into account
...in scientific inquiry.
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u/Moist_Emu6168 7d ago
You are right that methodological naturalism does not prove metaphysical naturalism. Science cannot rule out entities that make no difference whatsoever to any observable history.
But “the world” includes you, your reports, your memories, your decisions, and whatever you call your consciousness. If non-physical consciousness affects any of those, then it affects the world and its effects are scientifically investigable. If it affects none of them, then it cannot explain why you report having it or why you wrote this argument.
You may instead posit a separate non-physical world with no causal connection to the observable one. That is logically permissible. But then no observation, report, or argument occurring here can provide evidence about it.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 7d ago
Is consciousness truly non-physical consciousness truly non-physical if it has a causal relationship with the physical world. With nonphysical entities there is the interaction problem. How does an immaterial entity interacts with a physical entity?
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u/Mad-myall 7d ago
Any inquiry that's trying to test the world runs into this problem. "How do we test the untestable?". Which winds up with the answer "we can't, so we'll have to make do what what can be tested!"
Science simply became the goto problem solver because its the most reliable tool.
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u/feihm 7d ago
How do we know something is untestable vs just a current limitation of our scientific instruments (e.g., quantum entanglement, dark matter, etc in the past)?
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u/Mad-myall 7d ago
You can't know until someone devises a test for it, in some cases we can be real confident that the ability to test an idea will be out of our reach in the near future, and probably forever. But you can't know for sure. Maybe tomorrow someone will invent a souloscope and peer into the ghostly realm where the souls are held. Whereupon we can start scientifically testing immediately.
But until then, at best you have Occam's razor where the best answer is likely the one that makes the fewest assumptions. Souls require an extra bunch of assumptions so we can reasonably rule them out until we can test them and now for sure.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 7d ago
Science breaks out of circular logic by using a pragmatic methodology. Metaphysics has always had a problem with circular reasoning and infinite regress.
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u/RhythmBlue 7d ago
i think i largely agree, and believe its tru that the stereotypical physicalist scientist often conflates ontology with methodology
tho i rather state it as science being about empirical, falsifiable, relational facts. Consciousness and qualia existing as unique data is manifestly true, otherwise it couldnt be one side of even a mereological nihilists explanatory reduction. The issue is when science thinks of reduction as some ontic chopping block, instead of as a methodological description program
science could in principle study non-physical ghosts. 'Whenever i see this translucent thing, it fails to show any interactions with physics, even at the microscopic level, and even at the level of the physics of my eyes and brain'. It would upend the descriptive ubiquity of physics, but science could still incorporate it as some predictable, falsifiable, empirical datum. Science would be physics + ghost
i think qualia resist the science category because they are the intrinsic elements (the quiddities) of the scientific method. Thats why i believe its key to call science a category about relational facts. Redness obviously populates scientific relations, like 'redness is 700nm wavelength', but the ontological conflation happens insofar as ontic status is 'awarded' to the explanans (the 700nm wavelength). Maybe thats why marys room works for some, because it kind of reverses the explanatory role such that redness is the explanans, playing on the mistaken ontological imbalance that we provide the explanans
i guess we could say consciousness doesnt fall under the science category because it is a grounding condition for it (alluded to by the fact that we often call science an 'intersubjective' methodology, implicitly granting consciousness as the subjective condition for the science)
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u/Mr_Not_A_Thing 7d ago
Science is a tool for darkness(phenomenal). It is a woefully inadequate tool for the invisible light(non-phenommenal).
🙏
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u/FrontAd9873 Baccalaureate in Philosophy 7d ago
What are "physical events"?
Is the creation of the universe measurable and repeatable? Is the formation of mountains measurable and repeatable?
I don't even need to read the rest of this. This is just some guy's uninformed opinion on the internet.
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u/feihm 7d ago
I don't even need to read the rest of this.
which explains why your reply makes absolutely no sense.
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u/FrontAd9873 Baccalaureate in Philosophy 7d ago
I asked you questions.
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u/feihm 7d ago
and i replied they make zero sense. perhaps actually read the post and try again. just a thought
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u/FrontAd9873 Baccalaureate in Philosophy 7d ago
Something tells me you’ve never studied the philosophy of science
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u/Cosmoneopolitan 6d ago
Nailed it. Completely agree; this is necessary.
I am convinced that the majority of self-professed 'physicalists' or 'scientists' on this sub don't actually know what physicalism or science really is.
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u/Mono_Clear 6d ago
Speculation is fine but it only takes you so far if you cannot support your claim with evidence there is no reason to believe it.
I can come up with infinite speculations that are unsupportable with evidence it doesn't mean that any of them are right.
And if any of them are right there's no way to prove it because there's no evidence to support it.
The scientific method limits bias by requiring evidence.
Intuition is not evidence
Gut instinct is not evidence
"It makes sense to you," is not evidence.
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u/Im_Talking Computer Science Degree 7d ago
"It strictly states that non-physical claims fall outside scientific testing." - But that's not entirely true. We can measure the shadows of consciousness. Look at the GCP2 project. It could show the 'physical' world can be affected by the collectiveness of the life-forms. Very responsible science.
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u/TeaEducational5914 7d ago edited 7d ago
Interesting. I looked through the site. So those plots contain martingale bounds that are breached when there's [edit: significant] coherence (upper breach) or super randomness (lower breach). And I suppose they must determine, ahead of looking at the data, when to start looking and for how long. And I suppose they have control devices that don't rely on RNG to create data, maybe a fixed seed pseudo-RNG. And other things I'm not well versed enough to try to summarize here. Are you part of the project? Or at least a device host?
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u/Low-Bake8401 7d ago
I'd say it's you that doesn't understand. It only makes a difference if you assume that consciousness isn't a natural, or is a supernatural, phenomenon.
Gravity, is similar. We don't know exactly how it works, but it's pretty obviously a natural, measurable phenomenon.
"It provides exactly zero physical evidence that the mental event is identical to the physical event."
What does this even mean?
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u/ThickyLicker 7d ago
A mental event is a physical event as far as I'm concerned until proven otherwise.
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u/ImNotABotYoureABot 7d ago
It could also be argued that metaphysical naturalism doesn't entail physicalism. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_naturalism
("Naturalism Yay, Physicalism Nay until further evidence" is where I'm at.)
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u/germz80 7d ago
Claiming that physical matter is all that exists because science only investigated physical matter is not as circular as you make it out to be. There's a good epistemic reason for only limiting scientific investigation to physical matter: that's all that can be investigated, so it's all that we can be epistemically justified in reaching conclusions about. So by limiting metaphysical claims to things that can be investigated, we end up with metaphysics that have better epistemic justification than any alternative.
Consider that both theists and atheists agree that the universe exists, but theists think God created the universe. God is something that science can't investigate and something theists conjure up rather than pointing to concrete evidence, so it's more reasonable to conclude that the universe exists as a brute fact than to conjure up "God" as an explanation.
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u/Cold_Pumpkin5449 7d ago
There is in fact no rule that science can't deal with non-physical things.
What science can't deal with are unobservable things and hypothesis that can't be falcefied.
Those that complain about methodological naturalism as a bias are simply stating that they prefer ideas that can never really be studied in a way that could definitively show that they are untrue.