Neutralism, Naturalism and Emergence: A Critical Examination of Cumpa’s Theory of Instantiation

Metaphysica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Forrest

Abstract In his “Are Properties, Particular, Universal, or Neither?” Javier Cumpa argues that science not metaphysics explains how properties are instantiated. I accept this conclusion provided physics can be stated using rather few primitive predicates. In addition, he uses his scientific theory of instantiation to argue for Neutralism, his thesis that the “tie” between properties and their instances implies neither that properties are particular nor that they are universals. Neutralism, I claim, is a thesis that realist about universals have independent reason to accept and their opponents have reason to reject. So, neutralism is not neutral on the topic of whether properties are universals. Nor is Cumpa’s Theory of Instantiation as naturalistic as he claims. I argue that although compatible with Ontological Naturalism, his theory provides a precedent for the non-naturalistic emergence of mental properties. Finally, I argue that because his theory requires a simple physics it presupposes a more rationalist epistemology than that of Methodological Naturalism.

Philosophy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Leng

In the context of the philosophy of mathematics, the term “naturalism” has a number of uses, covering approaches that look to be fundamentally at odds with one another. In one use, the “natural” in naturalism is contrasted with non-natural, in the sense of supernatural; in this sense, naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics appears in opposition to Platonism (the view that mathematical truths are truths about a body of abstract mathematical objects). Naturalism thus construed takes seriously the epistemological challenge to Platonism presented by Paul Benacerraf in his paper “Mathematical Truth” (cited under Ontological Naturalism). Benacerraf points out that a view of mathematics as a body of truths about a realm of abstract objects appears to rule out any (non-mystical) account of how we, as physically located embodied beings, could come to know such truths. The naturalism that falls out of acceptance of Benacerraf’s challenge as presenting a genuine problem for our claims to be able to know truths about abstract mathematical objects is sometimes referred to as “ontological naturalism,” and suggests a physicalist ontology. In a second use, the “natural” in naturalism is a reference specifically to natural science and its methods. Naturalism here, sometimes called methodological naturalism, is the Quinean doctrine that philosophy is continuous with natural science. Quine and Putnam’s indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects places methodological naturalism in conflict with ontological naturalism, since it is argued that the success of our scientific theories confirms the existence of the abstract mathematical objects apparently referred to in formulating those theories, suggesting that methodological naturalism requires Platonism. A final use of “naturalism” in the philosophy of mathematics is distinctive to mathematics, and arises out of consideration of the proper extent of methodological naturalism. According to Quine’s naturalism, the natural sciences provide us with the proper methods of inquiry. But, as Penelope Maddy has noted, mathematics has its own internal methods and standards, which differ from the methods of the empirical sciences, and naturalistic respect for the methodologies of successful fields requires that we should accept those methods and standards. This places Maddy’s methodological naturalism in tension with the original Quinean version of the doctrine, because, Maddy argues, letting natural science be the sole source of confirmation for mathematical theories fails to respect the autonomy of mathematics.


Author(s):  
William Wood

Part IV turns to an extended engagement with the academic study of religion, which is often constitutively hostile to any form of theology. Chapter 12 considers the place of “naturalism” and “reductionism” in the academic study of religion. While individual scholars of religion can—and often should—practice methodological naturalism, attempts to justify methodological naturalism as a global, field-defining norm inevitably presuppose controversial metaphysical claims, and thereby collapse into ontological naturalism—a position that I call “ontological naturalism on the cheap.” The chapter concludes that any barriers to including analytic theology in the wider field of religious studies are local and prudential, not global and methodological.


Author(s):  
Alan Weir

This article focuses on naturalism. It makes one terminological distinction: between methodological naturalism and ontological naturalism. The methodological naturalist assumes there is a fairly definite set of rules, maxims, or prescriptions at work in the “natural” sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, this constituting “scientific method.” There is no algorithm which tells one in all cases how to apply this method; nonetheless, there is a body of workers—the scientific community—who generally agree on whether the method is applied correctly or not. Whatever the method is, exactly—such virtues as simplicity, elegance, familiarity, scope, and fecundity appear in many accounts—it centrally involves an appeal to observation and experiment. Correct applications of the method have enormously increased our knowledge, understanding, and control of the world around us to an extent which would scarcely be imaginable to generations living prior to the age of modern science.


2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Navin Viswanathan ◽  
James S. Magnuson ◽  
Carol A. Fowler

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