Naturalism (philosophy)

that laws of nature (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe.[1] Followers of naturalism (naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the universe is a product of these laws.[2] Philosopher Paul Kurtz argues that nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles. These principles include mass, energy, and other physical and chemical properties accepted by the scientific community. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no "purpose" in nature. Such an absolute belief in naturalism is usually referred to as metaphysical naturalism (or philosophical naturalism).[3] In contrast, assuming naturalism in working methods, without necessarily considering naturalism as an absolute truth with philosophical entailments, is called methodological naturalism.[4] Theists challenge the idea that nature is all there is. They believe in a god (or gods) that created nature. Natural laws have a place in their theology; they describe the effects of so-called secondary causes (see History section, below). But, natural laws do not define nor limit the deity(ies), who is the primary cause. In the 20th century, W.V. Quine, George Santayana, and other philosophers argued that the success of naturalism in science meant that scientific methods should also be used in philosophy. Science and philosophy are said to form a continuum, according to this view

Statement On Naturalism Naturalism is the understanding that there is a single, natural world as shown by science, and that we are completely included in it. Naturalism holds that everything we are and do is connected to the rest of the world and derived from conditions that precede us and surround us. Each of us is an unfolding natural process, and every aspect of that process is caused, and is a cause itself. So we are fully caused creatures, and seeing just how we are caused gives us power and control, while encouraging compassion and humility. By understanding consciousness, choice, and even our highest capacities as materially based, naturalism re-enchants the physical world, allowing us to be at home in the universe. Naturalism shows our full connection to the world and others, it leads to an ethics of compassion, and it gives us far greater control over our circumstances.

Next, here are three words that capture the essence of naturalism as it applies to our lives:

Connection - Compassion - Control

Connection: Everything we are and do is completely connected to the rest of the world. Our bodies and minds are shaped in their entirety by conditions that precede us and surround us. Each of us is an unfolding, natural process, and every aspect of that process is caused, and is a cause itself. We are therefore entirely at home in the physical universe. Compassion: Seeing that we are fully caused creatures - not self-caused - we can no longer take or assign ultimate credit or blame for what we do. This leads to an ethics of compassion and understanding, both toward

ourselves and others. We see that there but for circumstances go I. We would have been the homeless person in front of us, the convict, or the addict, had we been given their genetic and environmental lot in life. Control: Understanding how we are caused to behave as we do gives us increased powers of prediction and control. Instead of supposing people can simply will themselves to be otherwise, we concentrate our energies on creating the conditions which promote constructive personal and social change. The ethics of compassion is matched by a practical efficacy based in scientific knowledge.

Now, here's a "trapped in the elevator" speech to give you a bit more detail:

- Introducing Naturalism Naturalism, in essence, is simply the idea that human beings are completely included in the natural world: theres nothing supernatural about us. Naturalism is based on science as the best, most reliable means for discovering what exists. Science shows that each and every aspect of a human being comes from and is completely connected to the natural world, and is understandable in terms of those connections. The naturalist view of ourselves is of course very different from traditional religious or supernatural understandings, and it has profound implications. We dont have souls that continue after death. Instead, we are fully physical creatures, fully caused to be who we are. We dont have free will in the sense of being able to choose or decide without being fully caused in our choices or decisions. Instead, as individuals we are part of the natural unfolding of the universe in all its amazing complexity. By understanding ourselves as fully caused, and by seeing just how we are caused (by our genetic endowment, upbringing, and social environments), we dramatically enhance our powers of prediction and control, both in our personal lives and in the larger social arena. Naturalism focuses our attention on what works, increasing self-efficacy and encouraging science-based, progressive social policies in areas such as criminal justice, social inequality, behavioral health, and the environment. Also, since we see that we arent the ultimate originators of ourselves or our behavior, we cant take ultimate credit or blame for what we do. This reduces unwarranted selfrighteousness, moral superiority, pride, shame, and guilt. And since we see others as fully caused - for instance substance abusers, criminal offenders, the destitute and homeless - we become less blaming, less punitive and more compassionate and understanding. People don't create themselves, so responsibility for their character and behavior isn't ultimately theirs, but is distributed over the many factors that created them. And after all, were we given their environmental and genetic conditions, we would have become what they are, and acted just as they did: there but for circumstances go I. This insight provides the basis for a naturalistic ethics of empathy and compassion that guides personal behavior and grounds effective social policy. As mentioned above, naturalism is premised on taking science as our way of knowing about the world, not tradition, intuition, sacred texts or pronouncements. By illuminating the causal connections between phenomena, science inevitably unifies what it discovers into a single, natural, multifaceted whole. If we take science seriously with regard to ourselves and our behavior, we are led to the conclusion that human beings are fully included in the natural world, and that we are completely physical creatures. More and more, biology and neuroscience show that the brain and body do everything that the soul was supposed to do. Even consciousness and our higher level capacities for rationality and choice are fully embodied, causal processes. Some might conclude from this that naturalism reduces human beings to mere mechanisms, mere automatons, but this doesnt follow. What follows is that the physical universe has produced, in us, marvelously complex and adaptive organisms, with the capacity for self-reflection, wonder, suffering, and joy. Far from mechanizing humanity, naturalism re-enchants the physical world by showing how consciousness and choice dont involve supernatural processes. They are natural processes, understandable by science. Amazingly enough, physical existence produces all these intricate phenomena quite nicely on its own. By acknowledging our origins in evolution, the naturalist perspective also enhances our feeling of kinship with the other species with which we share this planet, and our desire to sustain and nurture the planet itself. All

sentient beings, including humanity, owe their existence to conditions that extend far beyond us in space and time. Seeing this, we find ourselves completely at home in the universe, full-fledged participants in the unfolding natural order.

n philosophy, 'naturalism' is the view that an explanation is justified just so far as it rests on evidence of an empirical kind. It has been very active in the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy, and recently as a tool for the 'conceptual hegemony' of science in opposition to the views of some sociologists and historians of science who would relativise worldviews [Rosenberg 1994]. In the creationist-evolution debate, it tends to mean something else - the view that explanations must not take into account the supernatural or spiritual. These two senses overlap to a degree (because evidence of the supernatural is not empirical, but revelatory). Notice, though, that the second sense is a view about what exists, while the former is a view about what can be known in science. If there is a spiritual realm which is not open to observation, then science cannot use it in explanation, for science is about explaining things that are observed. If science cannot be used to explain things in terms of what it cannot see and test, this doesn't rule out other disciplines using non-natural explanations (like theology). It just means that science cannot use it as it undercuts the very notion of science. There are two ways science cannot be non-naturalistic. It cannot make the assumption that phenomena are themselves non-natural - it has to assume that everything observed is amenable to a naturalistic investigation. Call this methodological naturalism. Science must also avoid non-natural explanations. This is explanatory naturalism. Any explanation that uses a non-natural explanans (thing doing the explaining) fails to be testable. I could propose that some process is the result of an Invisible Pink Unicorn's powers. You can neither falsify nor verify this (in the ordinary senses). The hallmark of science, perhaps the only hallmark, is that explanations are testable. The reason for this lies in what philosophy calls epistemology (from the Greek word for belief, epistem, but used in the sense of knowledge - hence, 'the study of knowing'). Epistemologies from Plato to Kant were infalliblistic - a belief was not knowledge if there was any chance it was mistaken. Science, on the other hand, is often wrong, and is constantly revised. Nevertheless, what science delivers is by far the most successful form of knowledge gathering humans have ever developed. The epistemology demanded by science is therefore a falliblistic view of knowing. The basis for this lies in testing. A scientific explanation must be open to any competent investigator to test and evaluate. Revelatory experiences are not universally open to all, and intuitions

about the universe are wildly different for different people and cultures, so nonnaturalistic explanations are ruled out of the domain of science. A useful way to approach this is to ask what a non-naturalistic explanation would look like. Explanations are equations, of a kind. You explain X by saying it is a Y (and a Z, etc). If a non-natural explanation is to work, it has to put something that is neither empty nor circular on the other side of the equation. What counts as a non-natural explanans? 'Something is non-natural if it isn't natural' is entirely empty until we know how to distinguish between the two. The usual way to define non-natural is that it is not explicable in terms of natural laws; that is, it breaks the causal chain. If we abandon the methodological assumption of naturalism - that everything is open to empirical investigation - we can say that anything not presently explained by scientific laws is non-natural, but that's not what is meant. We can distinguish between our present ignorance and something that's inprinciple not scientifically explicable, surely. We want something that is completely outside the course of physical events [some proponents of the term 'supernatural' use it to mean 'uncaused' - what that actually means is really unclear]. But if we had it, could we incorporate it into a scientific explanation? We could obviously not use empirical observations - they depend on the ordinary course of physical processes. So what else is there? The answer is, nothing. Non-natural explanations are not scientific. A final form of naturalism is ontological naturalism. This is the opinion that all that exists (Classical Greek: on- , root form of 'to be', from which 'ontology' is derived, hence, 'the study of that which exists') is natural. Many scientists are also physicalists. They argue that if we do not need to postulate the reality of non-physical processes for science, then we can conclude that there are no such things. This argument is too quick. The claim that 'if A then B' explains B may be true, but there may also be a C that explains B. Moreover, many things in the physical world are caused by many things together rather than just a few. So, we might say that a physical event is caused both by God and by the physical causes, without being logically inconsistent. Your resolution depends on what you are using as basic assumptions. In science, Ockham's Razor ('do not unnecessarily multiply entities in explanation') - also known as parsimony [cf. Sober 1988] - is used to trim as much away as possible in order to achieve the leanest explanation. Extending this outside science is a risky proposition, unless you are willing to make the methodological assumption also work on metaphysics as well as physics. Many are (including myself), but it is not a necessary conclusion from any form of science.

In the philosophical doctrine known as moral naturalism, moral systems are explained in terms of the social or biological properties of humans. This is often a Darwinian approach. The point I want to make is that not onlyexplaining but proposing a moral system in this way commits what GE Moore famously called the "Naturalistic Fallacy". You can give a naturalistic explanation of morals without either justifying or invalidating those moral principles. Explanation and justification are two different activities. So, too, with ontology. You can accept the methodological assumption of naturalism in science without invalidating non-naturalistic ontologies. They just aren't scientific. In my view, ontologies outside science are a matter of personal choice. And as Cicero once said, in matters of taste there is no dispute. In science, there is (legitimate) dispute. Therefore, science is more than a matter of taste.

Definition of Naturalism

Naturalism is not science but an assertion about science.More specifically it is the assertion that scientific knowledgeis final, leaving no room for extra scientific or philosophicalknowledge. ---R.B.Perry Naturalism is a loosely applied in educational theory tosystems of training that are not dependant on schools andbooks but on the manipulation of the actual life of theeducated. ---J.S.Ross
R eli g i o us value

. The chief religious value of naturalism is that aspect of Nature which makes it possible to realize values and which sustains values which are worth-while. Sinceall other possible values stem from this element in Nature, it is the most wrathfulobject that there is an the greatest value above all others. The most significant lifethat can be lived is the life which is committed to the achieving of values in onesown life and in the world. So that the prime imperative of a naturalistic religion isthat its adherents ally themselves with the valuerealizing force in Nature and helpto bring into existence values which are not actual in the present
N L A C I R O E H T F M S I L R U T A N . M N O L C I S Y H P A T E Con cept o f d G o

Many naturalists do not use the term God , but surprisingly there are Naturalistswho talk about God ,and although they do not advance classical arguments for Hisexistence they go on to give some definition of His nature.
A cc or di ng t oW iesma n,

the renowned Naturalist God is within Nature .He is notall nature nor more than nature .He is that particular structure of nature in naturewhich is sufficiently limited to be described as making possible the realization of value and as the foundation of all values God is that process within Nature which is a kind of open door to all who wouldgrow in richness of life and at the same time God is the stable ground in Naturewhich sustains and constitute the values by which life is enriched ,Because of this,God, the structure of value itself,is the greatest of all values, the most worthyin human experience to which man must adjust if he is to grow in the possessionand enjoyment of value.
Th e Con cept of S el f

Bertrand Russell states the position of naturalism regarding mans origin andnature quite categorically when he says that man has developed out of the animalsand there is no serious gap between him and the amoeba, and that and thatfrom the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behavior. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is alsonowhere a very wide mental gap.The self seems to be an organization of experience in each individual which isconstantly developing and changing. Such a description is quite far from thosewhich state that man is made in the image of God. The human self is seen bynaturalism as an offshoot of Nature, and not as springing from beyond Nature.Two important aspects of the query about man are whether he has a soul andwhether he is good or bad. For Naturalists they are not much interested in the soulof man and his moral conditions . According to Naturalism ,man is a child of nature; yet, nevertheless, he is a most significant child .For in the evolutionary processes that have been at work in the universe so far, man is on the very crest of the wave. He has capacities and has achieved heights common to no other child of Nature

sufficiency are virtues of the educated man. This impression is borne out by thespecific objectives which are now to be discussed.1
.S el fp r ese r vati on

is the first of the five objectives. In order to live completely,as man has first of all to live, he has to continue his own existence. While instinctis the chief guarantee of this objective, education may also help by acquainting thelearner with the laws of health and enabling him to earn a living.2.
S ecu r i ng t h e n ecessities of li f e .

It is especially in the realm of developingeconomic efficiency that education helps in preserving life. Money is not life, but itis a necessity in maintaining life. Education should train directly for success in thisimportant function.3.
R aisi ng c h ild r e n

. Though a bachelor, Spencer held that the most importantfunction that most men and women have to perform is that of being parents.Therefore education should deal unashamedly both with the care of children in thenursery and the discipline of them as growing boys and girls. So much did Spencer believe this that he urged

that education be elevated as a subject of study to a position of supreme importance in the curriculum.4.
M ai n te n a n ce of s o cial a n d p o litical r elati on s

. Beyond the home in the far-reaching social structure, man must have some under standing and mastery of social and political processes if living is to be complete. He must be a wise citizenwho is equipped for effective social and political action.5.
En j o yme n t of leisu r e

. Life is not all serious struggle, keeping physically strong,earning a living, being a responsible parent and an earnest citizen. Complete livingalso includes freedom from struggle some of the time for gratification of the tastesand feelings.
Th e Con cept of t h e T eac h e r

The teachers role is to remain in background. The natural development of childshould be stimulated. Since, Nature is considered to be best educator, the teacher should remove himself from the scene. According to naturalists the teacher is the observer and facilitator of the child'sdevelopment rather than a giver of information, ideas, ideals and will power or amolder of character.In the words of Ross "teacher in a naturalistic set up is only a setter of the stage, asupplier of materials and opportunities, a provider of an ideal environment, acreator of conditions under which natural development takes place. Teacher is onlya non-interfering observer".For Rousseau, the teacher, first of all, is a person who is completely in tune withnature .He has a profound faith in the original goodness of human nature. He believes that human beings have their own time-table for learning. So Rousseau inhis didactic novel "Emile organized education according to Emile's (a boy) stagesof development. For each stage of development, the child, shows certain signs thathe is ready to learn what is appropriate to that stage. Appreciating the educativerole of the natural environment as an educative force the teacher does not interferewith nature, but rather cooperates with the ebb and flow of natural. forces.Significantly, the teacher who is aware of human nature and its stages of growthand development, does not force Emile to learn but rather encourages learning, byinsulating him to explore and to grow by his interactions with the environment..Rousseau opines that teacher should not be in a hurry to make the child learn.Instead he should be patient, permissive and non-intrusive. Demonstrating great patience the teacher can not allow himself to tell the student what the truth is butrather must stand back and encourage the learner's own self discovery. Accordingto him the teacher is an invisible guide to learning. While ever-present, he is never a taskmaster. Naturalists are of the view that teacher should not be one whostresses books, recitations and massing information in literary form, "rather heshould give emphasis on activity, exploration ,learning by doing"., Great

emphasis was placed upon the study which teachers should make of theenvironmental background of each student, since unacceptable behavior wasrooted there rather than in the pupils ill will. Teachers were advised to learn of theracial, national, and religious backgrounds of their students if a pupil causedtrouble or lacked initiative in school, the home conditions should be studied to seewhether a home broken by divorce, death, or marital conflict is responsible for thechilds difficulties. If a teacher were unable to manage a class , he was heldresponsible because he lacked insight into child nature. All of these innovations in pedagogy were based on the revised view of the nature of the child. He was innately good or, at worst, neutral, and one must seek the source of bad behavior inthe environment rather then in the child. Twentieth-century man is so accustomed to hearing that there is no such thing asa bad boy (or girl) or that parents are to blame for the delinquency of their children, that he cannot appreciate fully the furor caused by the naturalisticassertion that man is not morally evil.True, all Gods creation was good, but mans own free acts had ushered in sin andevil. No small wonder, then, the following statement by Rousseau fell uponChristendom like a bombshell :Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man. He willleave nothing as nature made it, not even man. Like a saddle-horse that must betrained for mans service he must be made over according to his fancy, like tree inhis garden.One of the clichs which has been current in education for some time is to theeffect hat teachers do not teach subjects, they teach pupils. Whatever this sloganmay convey in meaning, it does direct attention to the importance of the pupil, the person being taught, the educed. Though philosophies do not teach subjects, theyteach pupils. Whatever this slogan may convey in meaning, it does directattention to the importance of the pupil, and certainly not in understanding hisessential nature, he is sufficiently central that one task of each of the educationchapters in this book is to understand the learner as each of the education chaptersin this book is to understand the learner as each of the respective philosophiesunderstands him.The pupil is to the teacher what man is to the philosopher. For man who isinterpreted by the philosopher also has various practical engagements, one of which is being a pupil at school in his formative years, may be a student ininstitutions of advanced learning during his more mature years, and we hope alearner throughout life. If a philosopher is also a teacher and at the some time isconsistent in both though and practice, he will view man as a pupil in the classroom in the same way he thinks of him when philosophizing. So the doctrineof the pupil is virtually the doctrine of man in the classroom.The naturalist, as Herbert Spencer represents him, first regards the pupil from the physical side. For
. C onc ept Of Student

the child is at bottom a little animal, whatever else he may be.He has a body, or, to be more accurate, he is a body one of his first requirementstherefore is that he be healthy, a vigorous animal, able to stand the wear an tear of living