[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

Alamo-Girl extrapolates from methodological to metaphysical naturalism by saying that people who adopt naturalism as a mere working hypothesis often note that they never encounter a case where it is invalid, and thence extrapolate to naturalism as a metaphysical principle. I find that concession revealing, to start with. But arguing, never in thousands of instances having encountered an exception, that no exceptions are likely to exist, is hardly 'philosophy'; it's a valid application of induction that in any other case would be regarded as unexceptionable.

It is a tragic error to construct an ideology, philosophy or theology on a intentionally narrowed field of view.

For instance, we cannot say that something is random in the system if we do not know what the system "is". A string of numbers extracted from the extension of pi would falsely appear random where they are in fact highly determined.

Likewise, in the case of methodological naturalism, one cannot presume that conclusions drawn from an intentionally narrowed field of view reflect truths about the system, because they never ask nor answer what the system "is".

The blind men and the elephant parable is a metaphor for this phenomenon although in this case, the blindness was not intentional and thus, not as tragic:

The Blind Men and The Elephant

A number of disciples went to the Buddha and said, "Sir, there are living here in Savatthi many wandering hermits and scholars who indulge in constant dispute, some saying that the world is infinite and eternal and others that it is finite and not eternal, some saying that the soul dies with the body and others that it lives on forever, and so forth. What, Sir, would you say concerning them?"

The Buddha answered, "Once upon a time there was a certain raja who called to his servant and said, 'Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind... and show them an elephant.' 'Very good, sire,' replied the servant, and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there, 'Here is an elephant,' and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant.

"When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?'

"Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an elephant is like a pot.' And the men who had observed the ear replied, 'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.

"Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.

"Brethren, the raja was delighted with the scene.

"Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing.... In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus."

Then the Exalted One rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift,

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

Jainism and Buddhism. Udana 68-69:
Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant

[Right Wing Professor]

Likewise, in the case of methodological naturalism, one cannot presume that conclusions drawn from an intentionally narrowed field of view reflect truths about the system, because they never ask nor answer what the system "is".

The question is, is the field intentionally narrowed, or do we in fact fail to observe phenomena that show indications of supernatural action? In my case, the answer would be the latter. I've been exposed to all sorts of dubious claims of the supernatural, including people who claimed to have ESP, fortune tellers and prophets who could predict the future, ghostly phenomena, spoon-bending abilities, etc. In every single case the claim turned out to have a natural and generally rather tawdry explanation. At one stage, in fact, I was quite willing to accept supernatural explanations for phenomena.

Methodological naturalism is the stance almost all of us adopt almost all the time these days. We put more confidence in physicians than in faith healers; in meteorologists rather than seers; in radar rather than divination. Our experience is, that as knowledge and understanding of our universe grows, so the domain of the supernatural shrinks.

[betty boop]

...one cannot presume that conclusions drawn from an intentionally narrowed field of view reflect truths about the system, because they never ask nor answer what the system "is".

This is a point that's easy to miss. Somehow.

This sort of thing reminds me of a bloodhound, nose to the trail, sniffing out his prey, following the spoor.... Everything else around the dog is screened out from the dog's consciousness. But that doesn't mean that only the prey and the spoor exist.

Thanks so much for your excellent essay/post, Alamo-Girl!

[Virginia-American]

A string of numbers extracted from the extension of pi would falsely appear random where they are in fact highly determined.

Something to think about:

Consider the number
0.12345678910111213141516171819202122232425....

It is highly determined, in fact one can come up with a formula for the n-th digit.

Given any number, it is obvious that it appears infinitely many times in this decimal.

It is conjectured that pi has the same property; it is known that almost all real numbers do.

Dr S: Anything to add to AG's assertion? or mine?