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Fine tuning and the varieties of naturalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2010

GREGORY E. GANSSLE
GREGORY E. GANSSLE
Affiliation:
Yale University, Rivendell Institute, 15 Windsor Rd, Hamden, CT 06517 e-mail: Gregory.ganssle@yale.edu
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Abstract

Naturalism has been characterized both as a claim about what exists (claim naturalism) and as a commitment to a certain methodology (method naturalism). The fine-tuning argument for God's existence presents a significant challenge to each way of characterizing naturalism. The claim naturalist faces the fact that the best response to the fine-tuning argument (the many-world hypothesis) requires the existence of many universes that are not clearly naturalistic themselves. Method naturalism faces the challenge that it does not have the resources to ground the preference of the many-world hypothesis to the designer hypothesis.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 59 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1. Stroud, Barry ‘The charm of naturalism’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 70 (1996), 43–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Ronald N. Giere ‘Naturalized philosophy of science’, in Edward Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998), VI, 728.

3. John Post ‘Naturalism’, in Robert Audi (ed.) The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 517.

4. ‘Naturalism’, in Simon Blackburn (ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 225.

5. Arthur Danto ‘Naturalism’, in Paul Edwards (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York NY: Macmillan, 1967), V, 448.

6. A. R. Lacey ‘Naturalism’, in idem A Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 1996), 223.

7. Daniel C. Dennett Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York NY: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 164–165. For the particular facts and for statements of the argument itself, one may consult the extensive literature on the subject. See especially John Leslie Universes (London: Routledge, 1989); Robin Collins ‘The teleological argument’ in Paul Copan and Paul K. Moser (eds) The Rationality of Theism (London: Routledge, 2003); and many of the essays in Neil A. Manson (ed.) God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science (London: Routledge, 2003). Peter van Inwagen has a very clear presentation of the argument and the many-worlds hypothesis in Metaphysics (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1993), 139–145. For more detailed discussion of the various laws and physical constants that enter into fine-tuning arguments, see Robin Collins ‘Evidence for fine-tuning’, in Manson God and Design, 178–199.

8. Armstrong, D. M. ‘A naturalist program: epistemology and ontology’, the eleventh annual Romanell Lecture on philosophical naturalism, Proceedings and Addresses of the APA, 73 (1999), 77–89, 86Google Scholar.

9. William Lane Craig ‘Design and the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe’, in Manson God and Design, 155–177, 171.

10. Bas van Fraassen The Empirical Stance (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2002).

11. Michael C. Rea World Without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).

12. This line of thought about empiricism was affirmed by Bas van Fraassen's Terry lectures delivered at Yale University in October 1999, which became The Empirical Stance. I was already working out the argument of this paper at the time I attended these interesting lectures. I want to thank Professor van Fraassen for pointing me to his article, ‘Science, materialism, and false consciousness’, in Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.) Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 149–181. This article develops this line of thought concerning materialism and naturalism.

13. Van Fraassen writes, ‘Physicalism and naturalism are not precisely the same as old-fashioned materialism (all these isms come in various flavors and colors), but in the present context, the differences will not matter much’; Van Fraasen The Empirical Stance, 49. I will also use ‘naturalism’ and ‘materialism’ interchangeably.

14. Van Fraassen The Empirical Stance, 50. See also idem ‘Science, materialism, and false consciousness’, 163, 164.

15. Van Fraassen ‘Science, materialism, and false consciousness’, 170.

16. Ibid., 172.

17. Plantinga's argument is found in the last chapter of Warrant and Proper Function (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1993).

18. Rea World Without Design, 3.

19. Ibid., 6.

20. Ibid., 16.

21. The bulk of Rea's book is an attempt to show that the research programme of naturalism has two disadvantages. A naturalist cannot be justified in believing in mind-independent physical objects that exist in a realist sense. A naturalist also cannot be justified in believing in materialism.

22. Rea World Without Design, 51, 52.

23. Van Fraassen The Empirical Stance, 61.

24. In The Empirical Stance, van Fraassen admits that stances involve beliefs, ‘Stances do involve beliefs and are indeed inconceivable in separation from beliefs and opinion. The important point is simply that a stance will involve a good deal more, will not be identifiable through the beliefs involved, and can persist through changes of belief’ (62). This claim may indicate a development in his view since the earlier ‘Science, materialism, and false consciousness’.

25. Alvin Plantinga ‘Respondeo: ad van Fraassen’, in Kvanvig Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, 347–352.

26. I am grateful to Peter Payne and to Matthew Lee for a slightly different version of this objection. An anonymous reviewer for this journal articulated the objection in an especially strong way that helped clarify this section.

27. W. V. Quine ‘Naturalism; or, living within one's means’, in Dagfinn Føllesdal and Douglas B. Quine (eds) Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 461–477; 462.

28. See especially Unger, Peter ‘Free will and scientificalism’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65 (2002), 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. A very early and rough version of this paper was read and discussed at the conference on Human Nature and Human Freedom: A Christian Response to Reductionist Versions of Materialism, organized by Kevin Corcoran and funded by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. I want to thank Kevin and the other participants: Michael Murray, William Hasker, Tim O'Connor, Alicia Finch, Dean Zimmerman, and Susan Papademetris. A later version was presented at the national meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, Nashville, TN, 16 November 2000, and the Eastern Regional Meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers at Messiah College, Grantham, PA, 14 November 2002. I also want to thank Randy Newman, Matthew Lee, Peter Payne, J. P. Moreland, Roger Trigg, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for helpful comments.