Reductive and Non-reductive Naturalisms - Report Example

Reductive and Non-reductive Naturalisms s April 29, Introduction While there are many beliefs, laws and regulations about the structure and the behavior of the natural universe, the idea or the belief that natural laws and forces at the expense of any other, like the supernatural or spiritual, operate the world is called naturalism. Those who adhere to naturalism assert that natural universe is controlled by the natural laws that are governing the behavior and its structure, and that the continuously changing universe is the product of the natural laws. However, naturalism can be divided or separated into ontological and methodological components, where the ontological component refers to the philosophical study of nature that concerns with reality. In fact, a couple of philosophers have equaled naturalism to materialism, like Paul Kurtz. Paul stated that material principles like mass, energy other properties, both chemical and physical are the best shot to account for or explain nature (Jordan, 2013). He further argued that in naturalism, spirits, deities and even ghosts are absolutely unreal and that there is purpose in nature. In contrast, explaining naturalism in methodological perspective, naturalism is assumed in working methods, without the consideration that it has an absolute truth, which has philosophical entailments. The most important aspect here is the philosophy of knowledge acquisition. Philosophy, as it has been vastly held, involved a distinctive method and is capable of achieving knowledge that is different from that achieved by the special sciences, foe much of the history philosophy. For this reason, the position of the original philosophy can be said to have been occupied by metaphysics and the epistemology, creating a platform for the comprehension of the reality and by this, the claims of knowledge are justified. Naturalism seeks to demonstrate that problems that are associated with philosophy are ill-constructed and can be solved by means of naturalism appropriately; whether those problems come from epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, philosophy of the mind or any other areas. More often than, naturalism assigns important tasks to the methods and the findings of the empirical sciences and aspires to reductionism and physicalism. In brevity, reductionism can be said to be several philosophical stances as far as the connections between phenomena, theories and the like, by reducing one theory or phenomena to another to make it simpler or more basic. Reductive Naturalism This section will seek to explain the meaning of reductionism in ethics. Therefore, reductionism is a doctrine in metaethics; where it is not just facts that concern our moral obligations or what things in life are worth going after, but in addition to other things, questions about nature (Jordan, 2013). Moral reductionism demystifies the moral properties, telling us what exactly they entail; it also has the advantage of explaining how we arrive at moral facts as well as explaining why moral facts necessarily depend on the non-moral facts through the moral epistemology and supervenience respectively. Further, moral reductionism rebuts charges of the explanatory idleness of moral facts, but some critics assert that using non-moral facts in the explanation of the moral is wrong in that it arguably leaves what is important and essential about it. Some simple examples of reductionist views can be demonstrated as below: the idea of being morally wrong is the idea or the property of being generally disapproved of something and that the property of life being good is the same property that that very life is an enjoyable one (Jordan, 2013). These theses are philosophically said to reduce a moral, ethical or evaluative property or fact to a non-evaluative property or ethical fact in the same manner that reductive thesis in the philosophy of mind can be said to reduce psychological properties and facts to neurological equivalents. However, since reduction would seem to be an asymmetric relation while the identity thereof is symmetric, reduction of these facts and properties must therefore be more than just identity. Any reductionist theory uses identity as the core nonetheless. Non-reductionism On the other hand, non-reductionism in ethics asserts that at least some moral properties are sui generis implying that the ideas and properties contained are unique; they cannot be reduced to a lower fact or property, neither can they be included in a wider concept, fact or property. The non-reductionists in ethics are the equivalents of dualists in the philosophy of mind, who argue and maintain that at least some mental properties cannot be expressed in terms of non-mental terms or properties. It is important to note that reductive naturalism approach does not have to discuss any theories of explanation at all (Van der Tuin, 2013). If the reductive naturalism approach asserts that moral properties and facts are identical with the descriptive or the non-moral properties and facts, they would show that the power of explanation of the moral properties and facts is preserved, regardless of what the explanation could be. However, this is not the case with the non-reductive naturalism approach, which normally seeks to discuss theories if explanation in the first place and then determine whether the properties of higher order in question can have the explanatory power that supersedes their base realizers as per these accounts if explanation (Sousa, n.d.). Some of the theories of explanation that can be discussed in this study are foundationalism and the positivism. Foundationalism rests on the some justified beliefs and is an attempt to reply to the regress problem of justification in the epistemology of philosophical theories of knowledge. Foundationalism is mainly rivaled by fallibilism and coherentism; whereby a piece of knowledge that requires not a solid foundation can be realized by just interlocking the main strengths of its components which forms the basis for strong foundationalism. An appropriate example for this assertion is the solution of a puzzle arrived at, without a prior certainty that each small segment of the puzzle was solved correctly. (Kershnar, 2015). On the other hand Neurath as cited by Graham (2005) argued that scientific knowledge acts like a raft because it lacked an ultimate foundation. Having put this forth, epistemic foundationalism can be said to be a proper structure of one’s justified belief or knowledge. Some beliefs are believed justifiably because some other beliefs are justifiably believed. For instance, one can know they suffer from a certain disease if they know claims similar to the report presented by your doctor and that they believe that the doctor is reliable. Generally, foundationalists maintain that some beliefs are strategically basic and that the rest of beliefs inherit their epistemic statuses by the virtue of proper support from the very basic beliefs (Kershnar, 2015). Conclusion and Discussion In positivism theory, intuitive and the introspective knowledge is not accepted, and although positivism has been a recurrent theme in the western thought history, the modern approach was developed early in the 19th century by a philosopher called Auguste Comte. He argued that much as most of the world operates according to force of gravity and other automatic force, the society operates in the same manner (Sousa, n.d.). Of the two theories, the one which is the better is the positivism, which attributes the source of knowledge to scientific and empirical origins. Unlike the foundationalism, positivism is scientifically explainable. On the other hand, reductionism asserts that moral facts or moral properties are identical to facts or properties that can be expressed using non-moral wording, while non-reductionism in ethics asserts that at least some moral properties cannot be reduced. Finally, these theories are essential in life for they open the mind to critical thinking, evaluation and analysis, important for the day to day living. References Graham, P. (2005). Review of Lars Bo Gundersen, Dispositional Theories of Knowledge: A Defense of Aetiological Foundationalism, Ashgate Publishers 2003, 150 pp. SATS, 6(1). doi:10.1515/sats.2005.166 Jordan, M. (2013). “Theism, Naturalism, and Meta-Ethics”. Philosophy Compass, 8(4), 373-380. doi:10.1111/phc3.12021 Kershnar, S. (2015). Moral Responsibility and Foundationalism. Philosophia. doi:10.1007/s11406-015-9586-6 Sinclair, R. (2005). The Philosophical Significance Of Triangulation: Locating Davidsons Non- Reductive Naturalism. Metaphilosophy, 36(5), 708-728. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9973.2005.00401.x Sousa, F. Meta-Theories in Research: Positivism, Postmodernism, and Critical Realism. SSRN Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1594098 Van der Tuin, I. (2013). Non-reductive continental naturalism in the contemporary humanities: Working with Helene Metzgers philosophical reflections. History Of The Human Sciences, 26(2), 88-105. doi:10.1177/0952695113480975 Read More