Philosophical Naturalism & Its Implications

source: Philosophical Overdose    2013年3月9日
Alex Rosenberg and Owen Flanagan discuss naturalism within philosophy and whether it eliminates all purpose, value, free will, and meaning within the world. Rosenberg argues that it does. By invoking Darwin, he argues that it not only eliminates such things in the natural universe, but in the human sphere as well. They also discuss some possible implications for ethics and politics. As an epistemological thesis, naturalism is the view that the empirical methods of natural science are the best or only ways of knowing about the world. As an ontological thesis, it rules out the existence of anything immaterial, incorporeal, or spiritual (e.g. minds, souls, gods, universals, forms, abstract entities, etc.). But what does this nationalism imply for things like consciousness, intentionality, morality, free will, the self, and meaning? These also seem difficult to fit within a purely mechanistic, natural material world which contains nothing but mindless, meaningless physical particles. Such issues are discussed here.
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