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I wondered if atheism entails naturalism, and I thought about this way:
atheism iff naturalism
I think Naturalism => atheism is obviously true. When I formulated
Atheism => Naturalism, I thought this may not be true. However,
I thought about "How man came to be" question and if God doesn't exist then how did man came to be? What other alternatives does the atheist have? Besides the naturalistic explanation.
I would really apprecaite anybodys thoughts!
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I see. Well, thanks for your response!
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An important philosophical case study would be Nietzsche, who seems constantly to be an atheist of some sort and for most of his working life to be a non-naturalist (despite some analytic commentator's thoughts to the contrary). Most of the French post-Heideggerian tradition would probably also qualify as non-naturalist atheists. Sartre, Foucault, and probably Derrida (in some sense) almost certainly qualify. Atheist idealists also qualify (Schopenhauer comes to mind), though you'd need to talk in more detail about some cases. A case like Marx or Freud is especially hard since these seem like atheistic figures who, despite their self-understanding, are not strictly naturalist.
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If you take Naturalism to mean a thesis that entails physicalism, then Thomas Nagel is both an atheist and non-Naturalist.
Dr Feser commented on the book above, at length, here.
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John West wrote:
If you take Naturalism to mean a thesis that entails physicalism, then Thomas Nagel is both an atheist and non-Naturalist.
Ah, yes, good catch. I was thinking away from analytic thinkers since I didn't want to include 'physicalism +just what we need to do science" non-naturalists who still call themselves naturalists. Bertrand Russell should probably also be included.
Last edited by iwpoe (7/30/2015 3:41 am)
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The question whether one can hold certain mutual beliefs e.g. in atheism and in the existence of disembodied spirits is more of a psychological issue. I took the OP to mean does Atheism logically entail Naturalism.
There has been at least on Atheist philosopher who has argued for the immortality of the soul on metaphysical grounds – I refer of course to McTaggart – and several others who have considered it an empirical possibility e.g. Broad and Ducasse. I believe Santayana also considered the possibility of explaining psychic paranormal phenomena such as ghosts on materialist lines (‘psychic particles’).
John West wrote:
If you take Naturalism to mean a thesis that entails physicalism, then Thomas Nagel is both an atheist and non-Naturalist.
I was planning to go into this at greater length when I post on Oppy's 'Natural and Supernatural Properties' but suffice to say if a Naturalist ontology is one which denies all immaterial concreta then the ‘Naturalist’ camp is going to find itself severely depopulated.
iwpoe wrote:
A case like Marx or Freud is especially hard since these seem like atheistic figures who, despite their self-understanding, are not strictly naturalist.
I agree about Nietzsche (though maybe to say he was an atheist is to attribute him an instance of objective truth he’d have thought meaningless) but how do you get Marx and Freud? The only reason I can see for either is if we’re taking Naturalism to mean Physicalism as both of them wanted to combine Materialism with Positivism, the latter of course being equivalent to Humean phenomenalism on which matter does not exist.
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DanielCC wrote:
but how do you get Marx and Freud? The only reason I can see for either is if we’re taking Naturalism to mean Physicalism as both of them wanted to combine Materialism with Positivism, the latter of course being equivalent to Humean phenomenalism on which matter does not exist.
Well, yes, that would be the core of the ambiguity. How is that even possible and what are you left with when you try?
My main concern is that both of them have, at their core, explanitory frameworks which are expansive and include entities that are by no means obviously material or natural or physcial or merely additions necessary to explain the physical. They seem merely to be materialists by *fiat* and mean simply to oppose this to Idealism in the post-Hegelian sense.
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DanielCC wrote:
I was planning to go into this at greater length when I post on Oppy's 'Natural and Supernatural Properties' but suffice to say if a Naturalist ontology is one which denies all immaterial concreta then the ‘Naturalist’ camp is going to find itself severely depopulated.
Well, sure, but that's what it seemed like the OP meant by Naturalism, so I went with it. I could have launched into a rant on the differences between Oppy and Quine and Armstrong, but that's not what Brony asked.
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No, atheism does not imply naturalism. To put it simply, it's logically possible that (1) there's no deity (atheism) and (2) There's more to the world than the natural world (non-naturalism). I would say that they go hand in hand in our society, but philosophically they could be separate from one another.