Re: [asa] Natural Agents - Cause and Effect, Non-Natural Agents

Brier responses (since I got home late from the vigil):

1) "Predictability" needs to be understood in a statistical sense. I'd
rather say "regularity" (if that doesn't make it sound like a laxative
commercial!) You get to this near the end.

2) There's not a one-to-one corrsepondence between refusing to use God as
an explanation & belief in the regularity of phenomena. OTOH, simply
eschewing appeals to God (or the gods) doesn't necessarily imply that there
is such regularity. OTOH it is belief in a God who created a rational world
that provides one reason for thinking that phenomena will display some sort
of order. Empirically, of course, there's little point in trying to do
science if you don't think, or at least hope, that you can make some sense
of phenomena.

3) It's misleading to say "We do study God scientifically all the time".
What we study scientifically is the character & interactions of things in
the world. As Christians we believe (if we have a decent theology of
creation) that God is somehow acting with & through those things but that is
a theological contextualizing of our science. A person can do exactly the
same science with no such belief. If - to use what I think is a good
metaphor - worldly entities can be seen as the instruments through which God
works, then what science studies is those instruments, not the one who works
with them. & the rare cases in which God "takes the gloves off" & acts
directly, without intermediaries (if indeed that evebr happens) are cases in
which science fails precisely because they cannot be explained without
reference to God.

Shalom
George
http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Powers" <wjp@swcp.com>
To: "Keith Miller" <kbmill@ksu.edu>
Cc: "AmericanScientificAffiliation Affiliation" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Natural Agents - Cause and Effect, Non-Natural Agents

> This is getting interestingly involved. For my own sake, let me start at
> a beginning.
>
> Methodological Naturalism is rejecting the use of gods or God (a la
> Murphy) in any "scientific" explanation. Historically, this entailed the
> acceptance of something like a mechanistic description (metaphor) for the
> workings of the universe, or at least in our theories (explanations, or
> stories). More broadly it entails, I think, the rejection of
> unpredictable behavior. I don't want to say that it need be lawful, but
> it wouldn't be viewed as science, I think, if it did not entail some
> regularity. Such a notion follows according to our classic understanding
> of what knowledge is about, while if not universal, at least predictive
> under certain conditions (e.g., Snell's law, or even economic laws or
> regularities).
>
> What in this description makes it "natural" and not god-like?
>
> Consider economic laws or sociological theories. These are theories of
> groups of individuals, even freely acting individuals. Nonetheless they
> have dispositonal properties, esp. as a group. Freedom does not entail
> the absence of dispositional properties. Such properties are incapable of
> describing the complete behavior of freely acting individuals, but they
> are capable of describing ceteris parabus properties of such individuals
> under restricted aspects of their behavior.
>
> What is natural here? I have presumed in this instance of economic and
> sociological theory that the individuals involved are freely acting,
> indeed the theories likely presume that, for otherwise they may not be
> free to express their dispositional natures. So it appears that their
> free wills, even taken in an incompatabilist sense, does not prohibit them
> from being the subjects of a "naturalistic" science.
>
> It would seem that incompatabilist free will cannot be the subject of a
> "natural" science because, while its behavior my indicate a certain
> regularity, the very notion of such a freedom entails a capability of
> violating that regularity, and even acting arbitrarily, despite the great
> majority of our actions are not arbitrary.
>
> However, as I have noted previously, our notion of what is "natural" has
> changed over the course of science's history. Why might monads not be
> "natural"? Why not permit non-combatabilist free will as "natural"? It
> appears to me that nothing prohibits it. Indeed, why not permit gods to
> be "natural"?
>
> The ulitimate objection, it seems, is not whether they are "natural" or
> not. It is, instead, that we cannot make a science, a knowledge, or
> regularity of them. We can know the character of a freely acting agent,
> and as such make rough predictions of its behavior. But inasmuch as it is
> a free agent, it is not bound by that character, or perhaps that its
> character does not determine its behavior (e.g., witness the difficulty of
> determing a Good and All-Powerful God's specific behavior).
>
> If this makes sense, I suggest the following.
>
> 1) We do study God scientifically all the time. Indeed, this is just what
> we mean by science. We study God under certain aspects and constraints.
> Our science reflects a predictable behavior of God. But science is unable
> to investigate God in His totality. Fortunately, God's behavior in many
> of these aspects is expressible in a lawful, and even mathematical manner.
>
> 2) The same goes for the study of humans. Scientific explanations of much
> of human behavior requires no mention of wills (e.g., the nervous system),
> but this is not true of all human sciences. Some presume the existence of
> wills, even free wills (perhaps in a combatabilist sense). Are wills
> natural? As long as the behaviors associated with aspects of that will
> are somewhat predictable.
>
> 3) Simply put, science, inasmuch as it is to remain a science, studies the
> regular aspects of the world. Natural simply entails regularity or
> law-likeness.
>
> 4) Hence, MN simply entails that our explanations involve predictive
> features and entities (even gods if aspects of their behavior is
> predictable). I think we have to say this in order to include humans as
> subjects of science. That is, humans need not be machines in order to be
> proper subjects of science, but they must possess dispositional
> properties, something that God or gods likewise possess.
>
> Well, that was my run at it.
>
> God bless,
>
> bill
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sat Apr 11 22:47:36 2009