I've mentioned that many, perhaps most, metaphysical naturalists and materialists don't like to make explicit the full logical implications of their worldview, because in such case it becomes obvious that their ideology is irrational and self-defeating. They get nervous when you press them to draw the exact implications of their position, and carefully avoid making any explicit predictions (on concrete metaphysical topics entailed) by their ideology.
When exceptionally, they make some prediction entailed by their worldview, and you refute it or question it, they assert that naturalism doesn't entail any such predicition (what refutes the previous position) or appeal to other naturalists who think otherwise about such prediction (without realizing that naturalism, if it's true, cannot entail logically inconsistent implications. This is a clear example of how a monumental faith in naturalism can overpower rationality and critical thinking).
Morever, some metaphysical naturalists and materialistic pseudo-skeptics are professional propagandists for atheism and, therefore, act like lawyers in a court of law in defense of materialism, naturalism and (its ethical corollary) "secular humanism". They don't have the intellectual, emotional and professional equanimity to search the truth; rather, their purpose is to defend their ideology against any possible objection.
As their main existential and emotional motivation is atheism (they want atheism to be true), they try to leave all the possibilities open to naturalism, even is such possibilities are logically inconsistent with each other or (more importantly) with naturalism itself.
Fortunately, there are a few honest metaphysical naturalists out there. They're truth seekers who are not interested in propaganda for atheism or materialism, but in a true inquiry into naturalism itself, and in its metaphysical implications. They're not afraid of critially examining their own position (see for example the book Naturalism in Question as an example of this. And read philosopher David MacArthur's paper on the skeptical implications of naturalism)
One of these naturalist philosophers is Crispin Wright. In his contribution to the book Conceivability and Possibility, Wright writes:
When exceptionally, they make some prediction entailed by their worldview, and you refute it or question it, they assert that naturalism doesn't entail any such predicition (what refutes the previous position) or appeal to other naturalists who think otherwise about such prediction (without realizing that naturalism, if it's true, cannot entail logically inconsistent implications. This is a clear example of how a monumental faith in naturalism can overpower rationality and critical thinking).
Morever, some metaphysical naturalists and materialistic pseudo-skeptics are professional propagandists for atheism and, therefore, act like lawyers in a court of law in defense of materialism, naturalism and (its ethical corollary) "secular humanism". They don't have the intellectual, emotional and professional equanimity to search the truth; rather, their purpose is to defend their ideology against any possible objection.
As their main existential and emotional motivation is atheism (they want atheism to be true), they try to leave all the possibilities open to naturalism, even is such possibilities are logically inconsistent with each other or (more importantly) with naturalism itself.
Fortunately, there are a few honest metaphysical naturalists out there. They're truth seekers who are not interested in propaganda for atheism or materialism, but in a true inquiry into naturalism itself, and in its metaphysical implications. They're not afraid of critially examining their own position (see for example the book Naturalism in Question as an example of this. And read philosopher David MacArthur's paper on the skeptical implications of naturalism)
One of these naturalist philosophers is Crispin Wright. In his contribution to the book Conceivability and Possibility, Wright writes:
"A central dilemma in contemporary metaphysics is to find a place for certain anthropocentric subject-matters—for instance, semantic, moral, and psychological—in a world as conceived by modern naturalism: a stance which inflates the concepts and categories deployed by (finished) physical science into a metaphysics of the kind of thing the real world essentially and exhaustively is. On one horn, if we embrace this naturalism, it seems we are committed either to reductionism: that is, to a construal of the reference of, for example, semantic, moral and psychological vocabulary as somehow being within the physical domain—or to disputing that the discourses in question involve reference to what is real at all. On the other horn, if we reject this naturalism, then we accept that there is more to the world than can be embraced within a physicalist ontology—and so take on a commitment, it can seem, to a kind of eerie supernaturalism". (p. 401. Emphasis in blue added)
Let's to comment this in detail.
1-As a consistent naturalist (and an honest truth seeker and philosopher, not an ideologue or propagandist), note that Wright doesn't believe that naturalism is neutral regarding metaphysical questions about semantics, moral and psychological matters. He fully realizes that naturalism, as a metaphysical position, HAS actual implications for all of these questions.
2-Based on point 1, Wright realizes that contemporary metaphysics faces a dilemma, caused in part because naturalism is the widely accepted metaphysical position and, at the same time, there is not an obvious or clear place for certain phenomena and properties (that Wright calls anthropocentric subject-matters: semantic, moral and psychological properties) in a purely physicalist world (a world where purely physical and material causes are operative) entailed by naturalism.
Note that it's not a sort of argument from ignorance. The argument is not that we ignore or don't know or lack evidence on how to place moral and similar properties in a physicalist ontology and thereby naturalism is false. Rather, the argument is that if naturalism is true, then a physicalist ontology has to be true; and a physicalist ontology by definition EXCLUDES non-physical entities or phenomena. Therefore, if moral or psychological properties are non-physical (=not fully reducible to physical processes or entities), naturalism is false.
3-As consequence, Wright realizes that, if naturalism is true, then reductionism to the physical follows. Moral, psychological and semantic properties are, somehow, "physical", because non-physical entities and properties cannot have a place in purely physicalist ontology. This is entailed logically by naturalism.
Note that this is exactly the same conclusion of another naturalist philosopher Alex Rosenberg. Regarding morality, Rosenberg writes: "If there is no purpose to life in general, biological or human for that matter, the question arises whether there is meaning in our individual lives, and if it is not there already, whether we can put it there. One source of meaning on which many have relied is the intrinsic value, in particular the moral value, of human life. People have also sought moral rules, codes, principles which are supposed to distinguish us from merely biological critters whose lives lack (as much) meaning or value (as ours). Besides morality as a source of meaning, value, or purpose, people have looked to consciousness, introspection, self-knowledge as a source of insight into what makes us more than the merely physical facts about us. Scientism must reject all of these straws that people have grasped, and it’s not hard to show why. Science has to be nihilistic about ethics and morality. There is no room in a world where all the facts are fixed by physical facts for a set of free floating independently existing norms or values (or facts about them) that humans are uniquely equipped to discern and act upon" (emphasis in blue added)
Regarding psychological properties and consciousness "Nevertheless, if the mind is the brain (and scientism can’t allow that it is anything else), we have to stop taking consciousness seriously as a source of knowledge or understanding about the mind, or the behavior the brain produces. And we have to stop taking our selves seriously too. We have to realize that there is no self, soul or enduring agent, no subject of the first-person pronoun, tracking its interior life while it also tracks much of what is going on around us. This self cannot be the whole body, or its brain, and there is no part of either that qualifies for being the self by way of numerical-identity over time. There seems to be only oneway we make sense of the person whose identity endures over time and over bodily change. This way is by positing a concrete but non-spatial entity with a point of view somewhere behind the eyes and between the ears in the middle of our heads. Since physics has excluded the existence of anything concrete but nonspatial, and since physics fixes all the facts, we have to give up this last illusion consciousness foists on us. But of course Scientism can explain away the illusion of an enduring self as one that natural selection imposed on our introspections, along with an accompanying penchant for stories. After all it is pretty clear that they solve a couple of major design problems for anything that has to hang around long enough to leave copies of its genes and protect them while they are growing up" (emphasis in blue added)
Regarding semantic properties and beliefs: " It is of course obvious that introspection strongly suggests that the brain does store information propositionally, and that therefore it has beliefs and desire with “aboutness” or intentionality. A thoroughgoing naturalism must deny this, I allege. If beliefs are anything they are brain states—physical configurations of matter. But one configuration of matter cannot, in virtue just of its structure, composition, location, or causal relation, be “about” another configuration of matter in the way original intentionality requires (because it cant pass the referential opacity test). So, there are no beliefs"(emphasis in blue added)
Like Rosenberg, Wright fully recognizes that naturalism, being a picture of the entire world (a worldview) is not and cannot be neutral regarding metaphysical problems about moral, psychological and semantic matters. Naturalism has to have implications for all of these fields; implications that if are proved false, would falsify naturalism.
I suspect that the latter point is what naturalist propagandists are afraid of. As they're true believers and they WISH that naturalism and atheism be true, they carefully and smartly avoid making explicit the implications of naturalism for concrete areas of inquiry. With this strategy, they avoid that the implications of naturalism be fully and rigurously known and examined.
This is why they prefer to write debunking articles about creationism, God, afterlife or parapsychology, instead of critically and objectively working out the full implications of their actual position and testing the implications with the relevant evidence and philosophical arguments.
They don't want to know the truth, except it if confirms naturalism. They are not intellectually nor emotionally prepared to reject naturalism if the evidence or philosophical arguments force them to do it. It's a sophisticated method of self-delusion and a silly way to avoid cognitive dissonance.
4-Wright concedes that the acceptation of non-physical properties or entities would imply the denial of naturalism and, therefore, provide evidence for "supernaturalism" (he calls it "eerie supernaturalism")
Note that Wright is not talking about a specific religion or God, but simply about a worldview which is incompatible with the implications of naturalism, and therefore can be called "supernaturalism" (beyond the limits of nature). If such supernaturalism entails a specific form of theism, is another (important) question, but it is not the point relevant for Wright's argument.
His point is that naturalism has clear implications that need to be true if naturalism is right. But if the implications are false, then naturalism is false, and some kind of "supernaturalism" has to be right.
If naturalism were false...
What you would expect if naturalism is false? I submit that IF naturalism were false, then we would expect:
1-That consciousness cannot be explained by materialism (because consciousness is not material). And for the time being, everybody agrees that there is not (materialistic) explanation at all of consciousness.
2-That consciousness, intention and mental states are causally efficacious (as seen in placebo effect, biofeedback and psychokinesis). And this is what we found both in our daily life and in some psi experiments:
3-That consciousness, not being reducible to the brain, survives after death (as suggested by some cases of near-death experiences and afterlife literature in general).
4-That believing in materialism (which is false) only can be done by faith or, at least, by partially irrational factors And this is why materialist William Lycan has expressed: "Being a philosopher, of course I would like to think that my stance is rational, held not just instinctively and scientistically and in the mainstream but because the arguments do indeed favor materialism over dualism. But I do not think that, though I used to. My position may be rational, broadly speaking, but not because the arguments favor it: Though the arguments for dualism do (indeed) fail, so do the arguments for materialism. And the standard objections to dualism are not very convincing; if one really manages to be a dualist in the first place, one should not be much impressed by them. My purpose in this paper is to hold my own feet to the fire and admit that I do not proportion my belief to the evidence." (emphasis in blue added)
If arguments for materialism and dualism both fail, then a neutral or agnostic position would be the rational choice. But believing in materialism when the arguments for it don't work, and rejecting dualism when the objections to it fail, it's irrational. (We survivalist, including dualists and others accept psi phenomena and afterlife evidence that warrant our rational choice in favor of some kind of metaphysical dualism, even if we concede, for the argument's sake, Lycan's point that the traditional or standard philosophical arguments for dualism do fail)
The next point (a complement of this) could explain why materialists accept materialism, even if it is not the rational choice.
Let's to comment this in detail.
1-As a consistent naturalist (and an honest truth seeker and philosopher, not an ideologue or propagandist), note that Wright doesn't believe that naturalism is neutral regarding metaphysical questions about semantics, moral and psychological matters. He fully realizes that naturalism, as a metaphysical position, HAS actual implications for all of these questions.
2-Based on point 1, Wright realizes that contemporary metaphysics faces a dilemma, caused in part because naturalism is the widely accepted metaphysical position and, at the same time, there is not an obvious or clear place for certain phenomena and properties (that Wright calls anthropocentric subject-matters: semantic, moral and psychological properties) in a purely physicalist world (a world where purely physical and material causes are operative) entailed by naturalism.
Note that it's not a sort of argument from ignorance. The argument is not that we ignore or don't know or lack evidence on how to place moral and similar properties in a physicalist ontology and thereby naturalism is false. Rather, the argument is that if naturalism is true, then a physicalist ontology has to be true; and a physicalist ontology by definition EXCLUDES non-physical entities or phenomena. Therefore, if moral or psychological properties are non-physical (=not fully reducible to physical processes or entities), naturalism is false.
3-As consequence, Wright realizes that, if naturalism is true, then reductionism to the physical follows. Moral, psychological and semantic properties are, somehow, "physical", because non-physical entities and properties cannot have a place in purely physicalist ontology. This is entailed logically by naturalism.
Note that this is exactly the same conclusion of another naturalist philosopher Alex Rosenberg. Regarding morality, Rosenberg writes: "If there is no purpose to life in general, biological or human for that matter, the question arises whether there is meaning in our individual lives, and if it is not there already, whether we can put it there. One source of meaning on which many have relied is the intrinsic value, in particular the moral value, of human life. People have also sought moral rules, codes, principles which are supposed to distinguish us from merely biological critters whose lives lack (as much) meaning or value (as ours). Besides morality as a source of meaning, value, or purpose, people have looked to consciousness, introspection, self-knowledge as a source of insight into what makes us more than the merely physical facts about us. Scientism must reject all of these straws that people have grasped, and it’s not hard to show why. Science has to be nihilistic about ethics and morality. There is no room in a world where all the facts are fixed by physical facts for a set of free floating independently existing norms or values (or facts about them) that humans are uniquely equipped to discern and act upon" (emphasis in blue added)
Regarding psychological properties and consciousness "Nevertheless, if the mind is the brain (and scientism can’t allow that it is anything else), we have to stop taking consciousness seriously as a source of knowledge or understanding about the mind, or the behavior the brain produces. And we have to stop taking our selves seriously too. We have to realize that there is no self, soul or enduring agent, no subject of the first-person pronoun, tracking its interior life while it also tracks much of what is going on around us. This self cannot be the whole body, or its brain, and there is no part of either that qualifies for being the self by way of numerical-identity over time. There seems to be only oneway we make sense of the person whose identity endures over time and over bodily change. This way is by positing a concrete but non-spatial entity with a point of view somewhere behind the eyes and between the ears in the middle of our heads. Since physics has excluded the existence of anything concrete but nonspatial, and since physics fixes all the facts, we have to give up this last illusion consciousness foists on us. But of course Scientism can explain away the illusion of an enduring self as one that natural selection imposed on our introspections, along with an accompanying penchant for stories. After all it is pretty clear that they solve a couple of major design problems for anything that has to hang around long enough to leave copies of its genes and protect them while they are growing up" (emphasis in blue added)
Regarding semantic properties and beliefs: " It is of course obvious that introspection strongly suggests that the brain does store information propositionally, and that therefore it has beliefs and desire with “aboutness” or intentionality. A thoroughgoing naturalism must deny this, I allege. If beliefs are anything they are brain states—physical configurations of matter. But one configuration of matter cannot, in virtue just of its structure, composition, location, or causal relation, be “about” another configuration of matter in the way original intentionality requires (because it cant pass the referential opacity test). So, there are no beliefs"(emphasis in blue added)
Like Rosenberg, Wright fully recognizes that naturalism, being a picture of the entire world (a worldview) is not and cannot be neutral regarding metaphysical problems about moral, psychological and semantic matters. Naturalism has to have implications for all of these fields; implications that if are proved false, would falsify naturalism.
I suspect that the latter point is what naturalist propagandists are afraid of. As they're true believers and they WISH that naturalism and atheism be true, they carefully and smartly avoid making explicit the implications of naturalism for concrete areas of inquiry. With this strategy, they avoid that the implications of naturalism be fully and rigurously known and examined.
This is why they prefer to write debunking articles about creationism, God, afterlife or parapsychology, instead of critically and objectively working out the full implications of their actual position and testing the implications with the relevant evidence and philosophical arguments.
They don't want to know the truth, except it if confirms naturalism. They are not intellectually nor emotionally prepared to reject naturalism if the evidence or philosophical arguments force them to do it. It's a sophisticated method of self-delusion and a silly way to avoid cognitive dissonance.
4-Wright concedes that the acceptation of non-physical properties or entities would imply the denial of naturalism and, therefore, provide evidence for "supernaturalism" (he calls it "eerie supernaturalism")
Note that Wright is not talking about a specific religion or God, but simply about a worldview which is incompatible with the implications of naturalism, and therefore can be called "supernaturalism" (beyond the limits of nature). If such supernaturalism entails a specific form of theism, is another (important) question, but it is not the point relevant for Wright's argument.
His point is that naturalism has clear implications that need to be true if naturalism is right. But if the implications are false, then naturalism is false, and some kind of "supernaturalism" has to be right.
If naturalism were false...
What you would expect if naturalism is false? I submit that IF naturalism were false, then we would expect:
1-That consciousness cannot be explained by materialism (because consciousness is not material). And for the time being, everybody agrees that there is not (materialistic) explanation at all of consciousness.
2-That consciousness, intention and mental states are causally efficacious (as seen in placebo effect, biofeedback and psychokinesis). And this is what we found both in our daily life and in some psi experiments:
3-That consciousness, not being reducible to the brain, survives after death (as suggested by some cases of near-death experiences and afterlife literature in general).
4-That believing in materialism (which is false) only can be done by faith or, at least, by partially irrational factors And this is why materialist William Lycan has expressed: "Being a philosopher, of course I would like to think that my stance is rational, held not just instinctively and scientistically and in the mainstream but because the arguments do indeed favor materialism over dualism. But I do not think that, though I used to. My position may be rational, broadly speaking, but not because the arguments favor it: Though the arguments for dualism do (indeed) fail, so do the arguments for materialism. And the standard objections to dualism are not very convincing; if one really manages to be a dualist in the first place, one should not be much impressed by them. My purpose in this paper is to hold my own feet to the fire and admit that I do not proportion my belief to the evidence." (emphasis in blue added)
If arguments for materialism and dualism both fail, then a neutral or agnostic position would be the rational choice. But believing in materialism when the arguments for it don't work, and rejecting dualism when the objections to it fail, it's irrational. (We survivalist, including dualists and others accept psi phenomena and afterlife evidence that warrant our rational choice in favor of some kind of metaphysical dualism, even if we concede, for the argument's sake, Lycan's point that the traditional or standard philosophical arguments for dualism do fail)
The next point (a complement of this) could explain why materialists accept materialism, even if it is not the rational choice.
5-That naturalism and materialism, being false, only can be believed and motivated at the bottom by irrational factors (fears, double standards, prejudices or even obsessions and delusions). And this is what naturalist philosophers like Thomas Nagel has realized: "I believe that this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life... My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world"
If you change "religion" by "supernaturalism", you'll see that Nagel is referring to the same topic than Wright. Nagel is not referring to religion as an social instituion or dogma, but to the existence of supernatural (nonphysical) phenomena.
6-That empirical evidence for phenomena prima facie incompatible with naturalism and materialism would exist. And this is why we find, for example:
7-That the evidence for such phenomena be rejected, by rhetoric and irrational arguments, by materialists and professional debunkers (and this is exactly what we found).
8-That true believers in materialism and naturalism will defend many other obviously absurd and false beliefs, without realizing it. (In fact, if they are not able to see the fallacies and incoherences of the materialistic position, it's perhaps because their minds don't function properly. So it's not surprising that they also will believe in and defend many other ridiculously false, irrational and self-destructing beliefs) And this is exactly what we found, for example:
8-That true believers in materialism and naturalism will defend many other obviously absurd and false beliefs, without realizing it. (In fact, if they are not able to see the fallacies and incoherences of the materialistic position, it's perhaps because their minds don't function properly. So it's not surprising that they also will believe in and defend many other ridiculously false, irrational and self-destructing beliefs) And this is exactly what we found, for example:
I could mention another 10 or 20 facts, phenomena, evidence or arguments that exist and we'd expect to exist if naturalism were false. But this post is already too long and I think I made my point clear.
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