tl: Agreed. I've seen it argued that methodological materialism should be discarded, and not replaced with anything, which would leave it with no formally declared methodology at all.
Dear tacticalogic, are you arguing that methodological materialism IS the scientific method?
I had thought methodological materialism is merely a PRESUPPOSITION that gets loaded into the front-end of an application of the scientific method. IOW, you could discard that presupposition without affecting the utility of the scientific method.
The PRESUPPOSITION is that everything in the universe consists from "matter-in-its-motions" alone, these motions being somehow "lawful." (Of course, methodological materialism is silent about how the laws themselves came into existence.)
In sum, methodological materialism requires that we begin with a conclusion. To that extent, it is a rigged game.
JMHO FWIW
It's a methodology of observation and emopirical measurement. That means it's only going to work on what can be observed and measured, doesn't it?
In sum, methodological materialism requires that we begin with a conclusion. To that extent, it is a rigged game.
The Dogma of Closed Query... -OR- The Query of Dogmatic Idea Licking..
It appears to be a Religion.. a Club.. maybe a Fraternity...
Faux Open-ness... Sneaky Inquiry.. and Fascist Academics...
to put it nicely...
Spirited: So-called 'scientific' and/or methodological materialism is a type of monism positing a one-dimensional view of reality grounded in the idea that matter is the universal substance. As a philosophical system it undertakes to explain everything existing and every event in the universe as resulting from the conditions and activity of matter: i.e., is matter dialectical? self-acting and improving? can it change one part of itself into an active principle?
As materialism automatically denies the existence of the two-dimensional Biblical view it negates the personal God, the supernatural dimension, soul/spirit, angels, demons, and hell.
The teleological question, so awkward for 'scientific materialism' was thought to be settled by Darwinism, when as K. Vogt cynically expressed it, the supernatural God was shown the door.
Up until the end of the 19th century the dominance of materialism allowed socialists, communists, progressives, and like-minded despots to stir up the deluded and discontented masses. However, the spiritual will not be reduced to the material, thus by the end of the 19th century a rebound toward the opposite extreme--idealism-- began.
Like it's materialist counterpart, idealism (pantheism/panentheism) is a one-dimensional view of reality. Reality is not physical matter but rather the Cosmic Mind, or perhaps Brahma, World Soul, or Void. Since all that exists is Universal Mind, then the material or physical dimension is illusion. Nor does the supernatural dimension and the personal God Who created men in His spiritual image exist.
This way of thinking is captured by Orwell in his book, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in which negation of the physical world is an integral part of the social and political philosophy of Big Brother and his despotic Party. At one stage in the book, Winston stumbles upon the shocking realization that,
“…in the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later; the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.” (Orwell, “The New Spirituality and its Hallmarks, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal, Vol. 30:4-31:1, 2007, p. 19)
When the Thought Police agent O’Brien tortures Winston for “wrong thought” he states,
“We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation---anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to….You must get rid of these nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.”
Big Brother is a pagan Hermetic magician in a long line of magicians going back to Ham in the post-flood world followed by Nimrod and the Egyptian magus Hermes Trismegistus, the early Christian-era Simon Magus and the Gnostic Valentinus, Eastern Tantric sages, Yogis, and god-men on through to Renaissance magicians such as Agrippa, and Paracelsus.
As Big Brother is a pagan magician he holds to the oneness of existence. What this means to Big Brother is that since the universe is a self-creating, self-developing (evolving) living organism (i.e., Mind, Void, World Soul) consisting of interconnected parts (i.e., plants, animals, humans, land, cities, oceans) bound together by psychic energy then physical matter (human body, brain) and psychic energies are mutually transmutable.
This was announced as the Grand Principle of Hermes Trismegistus and found expression in the teaching that everything that is high,
".....is equal to what is low, and everything low is equal to what is high.” (God and the Knowledge of Reality, Thomas Molnar, p. 82)
Hermes formula means there is an absolute although hidden unity, a Great Chain of Being, between the lower world of physical matter and the higher astral realm of the impersonal world soul, the key of which lends to the magician incalculable powers when he earns how to acquire divine intellect.
The Great Chain of Being corresponds to an interconnected hierarchy of different unseen dimensions or astral-planes within the impersonal mind of the World Soul comprising the habitations,
“.....(of all) supernatural entities, the locale of gods and demons, the void where the thought-forms dwell, the region inhabited by spirits of the air and other elements, and the various heavens and hells with their angelic and demonic hosts…” (Beyond the Body: The Human Double and the Astral Planes, Benjamin Walker, 1974, pp. 117-118)
With the help of spirits and occult rituals, magicians, gurus, tantric sages, etc.,
“…believe that they can ‘rise on the planes’ and experience these regions in full awareness.” (ibid)
During the Renaissance, Agrippa taught Hermes’s doctrine of cosmic unity and that with the help of the Magic Way the magician could spiritually ascend the Cosmic Tree to the world soul and make use of things such as deities, angels and other powers above.
This was the core of Paracelsus’s teaching. Paracelsus held that since all that exists is matter 'down here' and psychic energy 'up there', then we are all “products of nature” and “children of the same vital and magic forces” meaning that there is a precise relationship between various organs of the human body and the “organs of the world” or astral bodies. Thus if the human soul is influenced by the astral bodies it in turn exerts a definite influence on the “world-soul.”(ibid, pp. 82-83)
Western science was made possible by the very rational Christian worldview. But from the Renaissance through to our own time it has been incrementally infiltrated and finally captured by pagan irrationalism, first by idealism, then by materialism, and now by idealism again. And not only science but the entirety of the West's traditional Christian-based worldview, which is why every aspect of our obviously insane society is rocketing out of control.