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Methodological naturalism and its misconceptions

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Abstract

Methodological naturalism has been defended on both intrinsic and pragmatic grounds. Both of these defenses agree that methodological naturalism is a principle of science according to which the scientist ought to eschew talk of causally efficacious disembodied minds. I argue that this is the wrong interpretation of methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism does not constrain the theories that scientists may conjecture, but how those theories may be justified. On this view, methodological naturalism is a principle of science according to which supernatural methods of justification, such as faith, are eschewed.

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Notes

  1. Several of these articles have been collected in Robert Pennock’s (2001a, b) Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.

  2. An overview of the scientific research of the alleged supernatural effects of prayer can be found in Dein and Littlewood (2008). For an overview of telepathy studies between the mid-nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, see Alvarado (1998).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, 9054, New Zealand

    Tiddy Smith

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Smith, T. Methodological naturalism and its misconceptions. Int J Philos Relig 82, 321–336 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-017-9616-3

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