At 02:07 AM 07/03/2000, you wrote:
>Thanks for the essay, Chris. I'd just like to nit-pick on one point. You
>wrote:
>
> >Naturalism is minimal; it assumes only the already-known natural world.
>
>This statement seems ambiguous to me. It could be taken as meaning that
>naturalism assumes no more than what we already know. But naturalism *does*
>assume the existence of not-yet-known entities and mechanisms in the natural
>world. For example, naturalism assumes that a natural mechanism for
>abiogenesis exists, even though we don't know what the mechanism is.
>
>I would say that naturalism extrapolates from the fact that we have natural
>explanations of many phenomena to the assumption that there are natural
>explanations for all phenomena. Given the enormous past success of science
>in finding natural explanations (often for phenomena which were previously
>claimed to be supernatural), this seems a reasonable extrapolation to make.
>
>On the other hand, supernaturalism does not just extrapolate. It postulates
>an entirely knew type of phenomenon. That's why it carries the burden of
>proof, as far as science is concerned.
Thanks for the comments. I probably should have said "metaphysically
minimal," rather than just "minimal."
--Chris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 02 2000 - 21:41:03 EDT