conventional wisdom v. ontological wisdom in naturalism

8/14/2019 Conventional Wisdom v. Ontological Wisdom in Naturalism

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Conventional Wisdom v.Ontological Wisdom in Naturalism

In the sense of conventional wisdom, naturalism is the metaphysical position that"nature is all there is and all basic truths are truths of nature."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#cite_note-0

But it also involves reducing life to "strictly physical beings [who] dont exist

as [ ] either mental or spiritual," [and where,] "Thought, desires, intentions,feelings, and actions all arise on their own without the benefit of a supervisoryself, and [ ] are all the products of a physical system, the brain and the body."[italics added] Naturalism.Org

This reductive monism is an ontological nightmare, and a contradiction.

"Ontology is the theory of objects and their ties. Ontology provides criteria fordistinguishing various types of objects (concrete and abstract, existent and non-existent, real and ideal, independent and dependent) and their ties (relations,dependences and predication)." Raul Corazzon http://www.formalontology.it/ For an

introduction to ontology see: http://www.formalontology.it/

The very nature of distinguishing one thing from another under the same genus,e.g., life, presupposes either a dualism of one sort of another, or non-reductivemonism whereby the genus is monistic, and the differentia do not imply dualism,but instead support the axiomatic concept of "Being," i.e., identification of aprimary fact of reality, namely that, "You are an indivisible entity of matter andconsciousness." [italics added] Ayn Rand; "Atlas Shrugged"

Under this theory of non-reductive monism we discard "irrational conflicts andcontradictions, such as: mind versus heart, thought versus action, reality versusdesire, the practical versus the moral. [You] will know that the conceptual levelof psycho-epistemologythe volitional level of reason and thoughtis the basic

necessity of mans survival and his greatest moral virtue." [italics added]"Galts Speech", For the New Intellectual; Ayn Rand

In the "strong" sense, dualism or "the idea [ ] that, for some particular domain,there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles," [StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)] has given empirical science the permission itneeded to create the dualism of the soul/body dichotomy, of the dichotomy ofmatter/spirit; and then to divide the material of cognizant life into brain versusbody and conclude that what the mind is made of is chemical and electrical signalsthat cause us to believe we have souls (spirits).

Non-reductive monism is the principle that consciousness as an attribute ofbiological entities is the means by which they acquire awareness of a reality that

exists outside their consciousness and is not dependent on their consciousness forits existence. This monism puts both consciousness and all that is independent ofconsciousness in the same genus called "Being," or existence; and futher, thatexistence is the given, is primary, and is not contradictory to a non-materialdifferentia called consciousness that is yet predicated of material. This monismdoes not admit of such consciousness transcending or succeeding the existence ofthe life form in which it resides; in other words, 1. it is caused by materialactions; 2. it is itself non-material but dependent on matter for its existence;3. cannot by definition exist without the matter which created it.

It is, therefore, not a belief that souls exist, but instead it is the given that


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we can be conscious of something that Man calls soul whatever it may be, and thatas we are conscious of pleasure and pain in wherever is the seat of our physicalemotions, so Man is conscious of something which he calls soul.

Naturalism, done correctly, is not reductive monism. It is the power to overcomethis reductionism, as well as the cosmological, mechanical, and moral argumentsgenerally associated with creationism or its equivalent. Non-reductive Naturalismovercomes these, wherein

1. cosmology is taken to mean that which treats of the origin and structure of theuniverse; [see below]2. mechanical is taken to mean the explanation of the present and the future interms of the past;3. and the moral argument is taken to mean an argument for God based on man'smoral nature. This is an objective nature recognized by non-reductive monism, andthat it gives Man cause to make moral assertions about existence, but has no basisfor conclusions of the supernatural.

Reductive naturalism does not overcome creation theories, but dismisses them asinvalid, thereby giving creationism room to argue for validity. Non-reductivenaturalism proves the soundness of it's own position, leaving no room forcreationism to argue except to do so either by getting off theme or off subject.

Reductionists will argue with creationists about creation; non-reductionists willargue only about the ontology of its arguments, placing creationism in theposition of being less than the skeptical position of Naturalism. Creationismcannot argue with non-reductive monism because it assumes the moral argument,which requires the extreme position of the defence of faith, which requiresrelinquishing reason.

"Insofar as is possible," wrote Boethius, "join faith to reason." But they cannotbe joined in the extreme because they are diametrically antithetical. No form ofcreationism can argue for faith without using the principles of deductivereasoning. Such reasoning can only go so far in explaining faith and the moralprinciple of God; then it comes up short because faith and reason can be joinedonly as far as is possible, and that possibility comes up short. The argument for

faith always relies, in the end, on the belief in faith to explain faith.

1. Cosmology also refers to the structural view that is the world view of physics.However, as to cosmological origin, let me be clear: there is no origin. Ifexistence itself had an origin, then the pre-existing condition of existence wouldbe non-existence, which by definition can have no existence and therefore cannothave been a state of being prior to existence. It is a contradiction of anaxiomatic concept.

2. The opposite of mechanical is teleological, i.e., the explanation of the pastand the present in terms of the future, i.e., "Becoming." [see above forcomparison]

3. The only moral argument acceptable is teleological, meaning it must be theanswer to the question of whether--not why--Man needs ethics; and what thoseethics must be in terms of the objective nature of Man himself as "that, of whichMan is all there is," in terms of deducing the natural, not the super-natural,existence of existence.Please send all comments to

mailto:[email protected]

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/


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The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm of theAcademy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, the educational arm of the Assemblage.This publication 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing

Posted by Curtis Edward Clark; Dean

conventional wisdom v. ontological wisdom in naturalism

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