Goal Theory Update

Here is the latest update on my moral theory work, for those keen on following it in-depth. This post is deliberately long, so those not so keen can skip this one. It assembles notes I've been sitting on for a while for lack of time to get them up.

Calling All Physicists

Over the years I have been mulling a problem in metaphysics: the ontological mysteries of Quantum Mechanics. I have been developing a theory in this regard (see, for example, The Ontology of Time and my unresolved alternatives in Sense and Goodness without God, pp. 98-99, III.4.1), and now, informed by some recent discoveries and publications in the sciences (and finally a stronger understanding of EPR experiments), I am able to write up a proposal intelligibly enough for an actual physicist to evaluate it.

March Course

This March (March 1 to 31) I will be visiting lecturer at CFI's online campus, co-teaching their one-month introductory course in the philosophy of naturalism, this year taught by Dr. John Shook (author of The God Debates) and myself. Anyone can attend and receive a certificate of completion (though only students at UB receive college credit). It is all online and all flextime (you can work at any time of day or week).

Course description: "Introduces the philosophy of naturalism by explaining its core ideas, examining what it is good for, and illustrating why it is a better view of reality than supernatural, mystical, or idealistic worldviews. Course topics include: (1) reasoning and the scientific method, (2) science's understanding of the universe and human beings, (3) how naturalism answers questions about morality, beauty, meaning, and society, and (4) making use of naturalism to better understand yourself and the world."

Students will be able to interact with both of us on a near-daily basis in professional-quality forum discussions of lectures and reading materials (or you can just listen in, although participation is required for a completion certificate). There are required readings but no grades, tests, or papers (we assess your level of participation and comprehension from your interactions with us each week). My book Sense and Goodness without God is the required course text. Tuition is $60 ($50 for Friends of the Center, and only $10 for college students). To learn more, or register, visit the CFI course page: Naturalism (SEC 224). 

Abortion Redux

Recently Vincent Torley (of Uncommon Descent: Serving the Intelligent Design Community) asked the 25 Most Influential Living Atheists what their underlying views were on the issue of abortion and human rights. As I unexpectedly made that list, I received his questionnaire. It was well-formulated and honest (he allows for qualifications, for instance). I found it well worthy of an answer. He didn't ask specifically what our views were on abortion, but on the liminal status of babies.

Factual Politics (4)

(This is Part III of III of the conclusion to a crazy debate on political philosophy. For the back-story to what follows, jump back to Factual Politics to start the whole thread. Or click here to jump back to Part II)

Factual Politics (3)

(This is Part II of III of the conclusion to a crazy debate on political philosophy. For the back-story to what follows, jump back to Factual Politics to start the whole thread. Or click here to read Part I)

 

Factual Politics (2)

(This is Part I of III of the conclusion to a crazy debate on political philosophy. For the back-story to what follows, jump back to Factual Politics)

Factual Politics (1)

After posting on my blog a long while ago on the question Does Free Will Matter? a bizarre anarchist going by the local moniker Benjamin replied in elaborate length denouncing the very concept of all government whatever, insisting that if we got rid of it (all of it), everyone would live happily ever after in perfect harmony. Absurd. But nevertheless. He was insistent. Delusionally, he claimed he had evidence on his side, but he never cites any reliable sources or confirmable facts, just conservative propaganda and hyperbolic armchair assertions and fantasies.

That went so far off the original topic my final reply to him follows here (in several ensuing parts). I'm not even responding to half the insane things he said or claimed, and yet it's still intolerably long for most readers. But anyone interested in political philosophy as a whole, or my political philosophy in particular, will find in the following a useful toolkit for constructing a sound political philosophy from the ground up (whether they follow mine or not), by seeing where crazies like Benjamin go wrong, and avoiding what they do by doing (methodologically) exactly the opposite.

How to Be a Philosopher

In Sense and Goodness without God I open with an impassioned plea that everyone be a philosopher, that they replace all the devotion and time they spend (or are told to spend) on religion, all to doing philosophy instead. To which I'm often asked "How?" Indeed, someone on FaceBook just asked me that the other day.

Defining Naturalism II

Yesterday I posted on my recent article in Free Inquiry on Defining Naturalism, in which I also replied to The Teapot Atheist's response to that FI article. TPA then answered back (Richard Carrier on Richard Carrier on Naturalism...I think just using my last name would have been more economical, but that's just my aesthetics talking :-). He's well in earnest. But still wrong. 

Some of my responses to other comments on yesterday's blog are pertinent (if you want to catch up with those, start here). But now I'll just quote and reply to TPA's latest blog...

Defining Naturalism

An article I submitted years ago has finally made it into the pages of Free Inquiry magazine (issue 30.3 of April/May 2010, pp. 50-51), "On Defining Naturalism as a Worldview," part of their ongoing 'It's Only Natural' column. It was sitting in their queue for ages. It essentially just summarizes the most important points of my more extensive blog on the subject, Defining the Supernatural.

It has already provoked one reply at The Teapot Atheist. But had TPA read the blog recommended in my FI article, he would have known I already addressed the concerns he raised. I just didn't have the room to fit all that into two pages of print.

Does Free Will Matter?

In his thoughtful reply to my recent review of his book Encountering Naturalism, Tom Clark narrowed the differences between us on how naturalism changes the way we should think. We agree on even more than I suspected. But important differences remain, and one is so important it warrants an entire blog of its own.

Clark's Naturalism

Last year I read two important books about metaphysical naturalism, which are very different from each other. I'll review the first today, Thomas Clark's brief summary (only 101 pages) of the naturalist worldview, in aid of his website and institute devoted to the subject, the Center for Naturalism (which has been much updated of late, and now has a rather elegant look and a great collection of articles). His book Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses has the virtue of being a good, brief introduction to naturalism as a worldview, emphasizing the utility of embracing it--personally, socially, and politically (his website continues that theme).

Vote Vetrazzo

Please vote Vetrazzo. Huh? I'll explain in a bit.

Tao Te Ching

Those who read my book Sense and Goodness without God (or even some of my online work, e.g. From Taoist to Infidel, which I updated for my book) will know I was a devout Taoist for many years. It is the religion I am still most fond of, and would soonest return to if I discovered enough evidence refuting naturalism. Unless, that is, such evidence in turn confirmed or more strongly supported some religion other than Taoism. But Taoism has such an enormous explanatory power over against just about every other religion I know, I find it quite unlikely any other is true (if naturalism is false). I discuss this fact in an appendix on Supernaturalism added to my critique of Michael Rea's World without Design.

As far as a summary of Taoism itself, the simplest way to put it is that the Tao is the necessary being that underlies and originates everything and governs all outcomes, but it is not a personal consciousness, like (and probably not by accident) The Force in Star Wars it's a mindless yearning with causal effect, more like a cosmic plant that just does what it does without thinking about it (or any particular concern for us). In my Definition of Supernaturalism it would more resemble a magic potion than a god: it has mental properties like desire but reduced, atomized, to simply that; there is no coherent consciousness. You can't have a conversation with it. It isn't a person. It does not engage in reasoning. It does not "have knowledge" of anything (least of all you). But if we can commune with it and understand its ways, we can live better lives simply because that which moves with it ends up better off than that which doesn't.

Because of my peculiar background in this regard, I often still get asked what the best translations of the Tao Te Ching are. Though one should not overlook the Taoist writings of Chuang Tzu, the Tao Te Ching is the most important Taoist scripture, of which there are dozens of translations of varying merits. I will only list here what I consider the "most useful" of those I was familiar with, for understanding both the original and potential message of Taoism as a worldview. 

Our Mathematical Universe

It was recently brought to my attention that Russell Howell, Professor of Mathematics at the Christian academy of Westmont College in Santa Barbara (California) has taken notice of my article "Fundamental Flaws in Mark Steiner's Challenge to Naturalism in The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem" (2003). He only quotes (in fact somewhat misquotes) a single isolated comment from my article and ignores almost everything else it says, even though the ignored material contradicts his argument in ways he curiously neglects to mention. His paper, "Does Mathematical Beauty Pose Problems for Naturalism?" was published in the 2006 issue of the online Journal of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences (yes, Christians have an association for everything).

I won't bother discussing the rest of his essay, since my article against Steiner already rebuts the same thesis Howell defends, and more than adequately in my opinion. I am only interested here in Howell's lame mischaracterization of my arguments, insofar as he quotes me at all. Since I'm not the actual target of Howell's article, I'm only mentioned on page 9. He brings me up only when discussing Maxwell's use of a particular heuristic to discover electromagnetic radiation: by combining the assumption of a "conservation of charge" with mathematical descriptions of electrical systems that were already empirically established, he calculated (in effect) that energy should be leaking away from electrical systems (he was right: it was being converted into radio waves).

Letters and Radio

It occurred to me recently that many of my fans might not know that I have several significant letters to the editor published in journals, and have appeared on many web radio shows, since none of these are listed anywhere else. So this post is for anyone who wants to obsessively read and hear everything significant of mine, and didn't know about my work in letters and radio.

The Ontology of Time

Ontology is the study of being. Ontologists ask questions like "What does it mean to say something exists?" The ontology of time is therefore the study of what it means to say that time exists or that something exists in time. In other words, what is time? I discuss the ontology of time in some detail in Sense and Goodness without God (pp. 88-96).

In response to what I wrote there, Dave Matson asked:

Why should time be defined in terms of relativity physics where, presumably, it means a fixed future? I would think that time, as defined in quantum mechanics, would be equally preferable. As defined in this latter sense, time is presumably compatible with an undetermined future.

If we accept time as defined in relativity, then it seems that physicists would have to accept that there are "wheels within wheels" within quantum mechanics, which most physicists deny. That denial suggests that time as seen in quantum mechanics is defined differently than in relativity physics. One view seems compatible with a fixed future whereas the other does not obviously fit into that mold, if at all.

So arguing for a fixed future on the basis of relativity theory is tantamount to assuming that its definition of time should be preferred. Therein, I see a problem.

In answering this question I will use RT for Relativity Theory and QM for Quantum Mechanics. And I will not repeat what I said in my book. So if you haven't read it, though you don't have to in order to understand what follows, you probably should read it before commenting on any of this.

Atheist or Agnostic?

Personally, I don't care all that much if nonbelievers prefer to call themselves agnostics rather than atheists. I think by now most everyone knows these are the same thing (after all, either way, you don't believe in God). And eventually the social stigma attached to the latter will float over and latch onto the former anyway, leaving no place left to hide. Well, okay, maybe the squeamish atheists will once again invent some new word to call themselves, so they can confuse a prejudiced society into not realizing they are (gasp!) really atheists. But that will just go the same way. In the end, the advantage will be lost, yet another word will have to be invented to hide behind, and 'round and 'round it goes. Good luck with that.

For me, this is all just a social game, semantic trickery, that is hard to have sympathy for, but I can't honestly criticize nonbelievers who want to avoid the social stigma falsely attached to a maligned word. Prejudice in this country, in some places and situations, is certainly real and harmful enough to justify a desire to dodge it. If black people could pretend to be white, I'm sure some of them would. This is frequently enough true for gays that they have a whole terminology of social disguise (like "in the closet" and "beard"). You can't condemn this until you've walked a mile in their shoes.

There is also a silly and heated debate (even so far as to cultivate outright rage) between atheists and agnostics as to who is really what. Of course, these terms don't even have a single meaning. Just as "atheist" can mean "denier" or "unbeliever" (generating the rather lame, confusing, and misleading terminological distinctions of "hard" and "soft" atheist or "positive" and "negative" atheist), so can agnostic mean "undecided" or "dunno!" The latter is more etymologically and historically correct, since agnosticism is supposed to be the formal position that one cannot know whether God exists or not (whether by definition or as a contingent fact of a particular agnostic's limited access to relevant evidence), but the former meaning is still very common in actual use, and both have crept into other contexts (so, for example, you can be an "agnostic" now, in either sense of the term, as to whether Robin Hood actually existed).

Defining the Supernatural

-:-

This article was entirely supplanted by a revised and updated version on February of 2025: Defining Naturalism: The Definitive Account. The original is preserved below for historical reasons only.

-:-

Update: A summary of this article's thesis has been formally published as "On Defining Naturalism as a Worldview" in Free Inquiry 30.3 (April/May 2010), pp. 50–51; and has been formally employed by Yonatan Fishman in "Can Science Test Supernatural Worldviews?" in Science & Education 18 (2009), pp. 813–37.

-:-

There is a trend in science and law to define the word "supernatural" as "the untestable," which is perhaps understandable for its practicality, but deeply flawed as both philosophy and social policy. Flawed as philosophy, because testability is not even a metaphysical distinction, but an epistemological one, and yet in the real world everyone uses the word “supernatural” to make metaphysical distinctions. And flawed as social policy, because the more that judges and scientists separate themselves from the people with deviant language, the less support they will find from that quarter, and the legal and scientific communities as we know them will crumble if they lose the support of the people. Science and the courts must serve man. And to do that, they must at least try to speak his language. And yet already a rising tide of hostility against both science and the courts is evident. Making it worse is not the solution.

As I argue in Sense and Goodness without God (pp. 29-35), philosophy is wasting its time if its definitions of words do not track what people really mean when they use them. And when we look at the real world, we find the supernatural is universally meant and understood to mean something metaphysically different from the natural. I could adduce many examples of the bad fit between real language and this ill-advised attempt at an "official" definition, but here are just two:

• The underlying mechanics of quantum phenomena might be physically beyond all observation and therefore untestable, but no one would then conclude that quantum mechanics is supernatural. Just because I can't look inside a box does not make its contents supernatural.
  
• Conversely, if I suddenly acquired the Force of the Jedi and could predict the future, control minds, move objects and defy the laws of physics, all merely by an act of will, ordinary people everywhere would call this a supernatural power, yet it would be entirely testable. Scientists could record and measure the nature and extent of my powers and confirm them well within the requirements of peer review.
  

Consequently, we need a proper definition of "supernatural" (and, therefore, of the word "natural" as well), one that tracks what people really mean when they use the word, one that marks a metaphysical distinction, and allows us to say when the word is being used sloppily or improperly, as must be the case for any word we intend to be useful. This is all the more crucial for metaphysical naturalists, who must define their worldview in some manner that actually makes it meaningfully different from supernaturalist worldviews. Critics of naturalism are entirely correct about this.

I define "nature" in Sense and Goodness without God (on pp. 211-12, with a little help from pp. 67-69). But I explain this in elaborate detail, with considerable supporting evidence, in my Secular Web article Defending Naturalism as a Worldview (2003), to which I referred readers in my book. After this, and the publication of Sense and Goodness, I defined the natural-supernatural distinction even more rigorously in the joint statement of the Carrier-Wanchick Debate (2006). Anyone who wishes to interact with my definitions of natural and supernatural must read these two articles.

In short, I argue "naturalism" means, in the simplest terms, that every mental thing is entirely caused by fundamentally nonmental things, and is entirely dependent on nonmental things for its existence. Therefore, "supernaturalism" means that at least some mental things cannot be reduced to nonmental things. As I summarized in the Carrier-Wanchick debate (and please pardon the dry, technical wording):

If [naturalism] is true, then all minds, and all the contents and powers and effects of minds, are entirely caused by natural [i.e. fundamentally nonmental] phenomena. But if naturalism is false, then some minds, or some of the contents or powers or effects of minds, are causally independent of nature. In other words, such things would then be partly or wholly caused by themselves, or exist or operate directly or fundamentally on their own.

Despite all I have written on this, several people have had difficulties understanding how to apply my construction of these terms, so I thought I'd have some extended fun. Analogies and concrete examples always do a better job getting across to people what we're talking about, so that's what I'm going to do today. With a bit of fantasy, I'll show how my natural-supernatural distinction can be used to tell the difference between a natural and a supernatural explanation (a metaphysical question), and how we can know when one or the other actually is true (an epistemological question). I take a look at supernatural beings, substances, powers, properties, and effects, and we'll get to see what natural explanations of similar observations would look like, and how they would be different.

Before we can get to that, we need to get past one other important distinction: the meaning of paranormal.