Thursday, December 10, 2009

Rosenberg responds to his critics














  1. "...– in contemporary academic philosophy, what is grounds for failing an undergraduate paper can be Festschrift material for a professional."


    Thank you for the special emphasis in this post on causal effects in the brain and intentionality.

  2. What's both sad and amusing is that none of this (the response/argument you present) is particularly new. As one example, over a century ago, Author Balfour, late PM of Great Britain, in his book 'The Foundations of Belief' covers the fundamental inability of naturalism to account for the mental, to account for thought, to account for reason, to account for "aboutness."

  3. As should be clear from the many critical responses to Rosenberg coming from naturalists, his disenchantment, scientism and eliminative materialism aren't accepted by most (or at least many) naturalists – see Brian Leiter’s commentary for instance. So I don't think that the "quasi-religious status naturalism has taken on in the thinking of so many contemporary philosophers" is playing much of a role in pushing Rosenberg to take such an implausible position. Some philosophers just enjoy being iconoclasts or doomsayers, to the point of self-refutation, and that includes some naturalists.

  4. The problem is, if the materialism is not eliminative - if intentionality and qualia is included in the final accounting of nature, for example - it ain't much of a naturalism, or much of a materialism for that matter.

  5. Hi Tom,

    That's true, but I wasn't saying that most naturalists endorse EM. My point was rather that guys like Churchland and Rosenberg who DO hold or at least suspect -- rightly in my view -- that naturalism ultimately entails EM are, because of the dogmatic commitment to naturalism they share with many non-EM naturalists, going to be be equally dogmatic about EM. In other words, it isn't that the dogmatism about naturalism is pushing them into EM, it's that the dogmatism about naturalism is pushing them into dogmatism about EM.

  6. But naturalism just does entail materialism (and eliminative materialism, at that). Therefore, any naturalist ragging on Rosenberg or the Churchlands for expressing the EM conclusions they express just isn’t thinking clearly about his own naturalism.

  7. I don’t think naturalism entails materialism since after all there are naturalistic dualists such as David Chalmers who think there might well be irreducible mental properties/entities in nature. The way I see it naturalism isn't committed to any particular ontology. See for instance The commitments of naturalism.

  8. Thate there are persons calling themselves 'naturalists' who are inconsistent or incoherent in their naturalism, doesn't change the fact that naturalism entails eliminative materialism.

    The observation that naturalism entails eliminative materialism, isn't about the "-ists," it's about the "-ism."


    Also there are "naturalists" like David Ray Griffin who believe in God and afterlife. Would you call Griffin's position "naturalism"?

    You can call "naturalism" whatever system of beliefs, but if you don't specify what's "naturalism" and what specific propositions that position entails, then the concept of naturalism loss any meaning as a worldview.

    The way I see it naturalism isn't committed to any particular ontology

    I think it's contradictory. In the article you mention, it's explained "As a worldview, naturalism depends on a set of cognitive commitments from which flow certain propositions about reality and human nature. These propositions in turn might have implications for how we live, for social policy, and for human flourishing. But the presuppositions, basis, and implications of naturalism are not uncontested, and indeed there’s considerable debate about them among naturalists themselves."

    If naturalism is a worldivew, it has ontological commitments like:

    -Excluding an ontology based on the Christian God (not debate between naturalists would question that)

    -Limiting the existence to nature as conceived by natural science (otherwise, the label "naturalism" would be superfluous and improper)

    -Excluding the existence of souls.

    In fact, in your article, "supernaturalism" is defined in terms of its supposed explanatory opacity "having prior metaphysical or ontological commitments (e.g. to god, the soul, contra-causal freedom) blocks access to transparent, rational, evidence-based explanations. So, perhaps it’s the inversion of epistemic and ontological priorities that most basically distinguishes naturalism from supernaturalism.

    If supernaturalism has poor ontological commitments, and this is one of its weaknesss in comparison to naturalism, then naturalism is superior because it has strong ontological and metaphysical commitments. And this is inconsistent with your assertion that "naturalism isn't committed to any particular ontology" (If it is not committed to any ontology, how could it has strong ontological commitments which separes it from supernaturalism?)

    When naturalists exclude the "soul" of their ontology, they're adopting a particular ontology (materialism), because no soul can be considered an irreducible entity of nature.

    The fact that there are exist naturalists who think otherwise is not evidence that naturalism doesn't entail materialism. Rather, it could be evidence that they're being inconsistent because they try to avoid the absurd implications that follows from their premises and ontological commitments.

  10. I studied with the man, and this is a fairly universal failing one can charge against large bodies of his work.

    Rosenberg has a research paradigm, and he's going to ride it out, and build what he can, and ignore all the rest.

    "I certainly don’t think he grapples seriously with the main difficulties facing his position"

  11. I laughed very hard when I imagined A.J. Ayer calling himself "A.J. Freaking Ayer".