Naturalism but not Materialism

Naturalism But Not Materialism

... there is a very strong tendency for people to assume that all change results from some variation on Aristotle's material and efficient cause - material cause and effect - one material thing interacting efficiently or directly with another such that change results. This assumption is the basis for what's called materialism.

... In philsophy and the physical sciences materialism means the doctrine that nothing exists except matter, its movements, and its modifications. Materialsm is the basis for eliminativism, the argument that material cause and effect explains everything, or at least is the only kind of explanation that we should count as vaild.

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Here I'll be pursuing solutions grounded in naturalism, but not materialism. Materialism and naturalism are often treated as synonymous. In a subtle yet crucial way they are different.

Nature includes absences - the absence of material in the spaces between material objects, but more importantly the absence of once-possible dynamic paths that have become impossible, and once-likely dynamic paths that have become unlikely. These eliminated or reduced possibilities are natural though not material.

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Here I'll be paying attention to changes in the likelihood of dynamics taking some paths compared to others. For example, without a rivered to constrain paths, water could flow down various alternative paths. The riverbed limits or contrains the water flow to fewer of many possible dynamic paths.

A reduced probability of dynamics taking certain paths - in other words, a change in relative probability - does not have mass, volume, charge, parts, or any of the other attributes we associate with material objects. The natural world thus includes once-likely, now unlikely possible paths not attended to from the materialist perspective. Changes in likely paths are natural, just not material.

There have been things in the universe that are no longer things, and not by any violation of natural law. There are new things existent under the sun, but there's also the absence of formerly existent things and their absence is not a result of any departure from the natural realm. The dead are not likely to ever exist again, though not because their existence would violate the laws of nature, or because the materials they were made of have disappeared, or becuase they have been transported to a supernatural realm. Their probability of existing has changed. [In other words, the probability that the self can self-repair, self-protect and self-reproduce lowers] That change is purely natural, and not material [The change in probability itself is not material].

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Changes in the relative probability of dynamics falling down one or another path can be initiated in either of two ways: positively, making some possible paths relatively more likely, or negatively, making some possibilities relatively less likely.

For example, if you want to increase you likelihood of achieving your aims, you can either work positively, trying to increase the chances that you will succeed, or negatively, trying to reduce the changes that you won't.

Positive and negative here have nothering to do with which is better, only with how probabilities change. Positive means making some possibilities more likely; negative means making some possibilities less likely. The positive approach yields changed probabilities by processes of production. The negative approach yields changed probabilities by processes of elimination.

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In trying to solve the mystery of purpose, people have long extrapolated from the positive approach, long assumed that something or some higher force made selves and aims more likely through a positive process of production. Even Darwin's reference to life as "breathed into a few forms or into one" suggests a positive process of production, something added to make things come to life. The materialist approach to explaining how things happen emphasized processes of production. To explain what changed something, look for the material thing that produced the change.

In contrast, our approach here will be to explore how selves and aims might hve emerged by a negative process of elimination, constraints that make some dynamic paths less likely, thereby making other dynamic paths more likely. Instead of asking what process of production produced life's self-regenerative dynamics, we'll be asking what process of elimination constrained away myriad alternative nonregenerative dynamics such that self-regenerative dynamics remained.

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We don't tend to think of something happening because other things didn't as often as we tend to think of something happening because something else did.

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Here's our argument is that selves and aims haven't always existed. They truly are something new under the sun. Still, their existence was always possible, as is evident from the way that their behavior doesn't violate any physical laws. There's nothing new about the possibility of them existing, but there is something new about the likelihood of them existing.

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Unpack any self's body and all you are going to find in it is cause-and-effect material dynamics operating in full nonmagical compliance with the laws of nature. But not just any dynamics. The paths that are not present explain the paths that are. Prevented dynamics account for presented dynamics