Metaphysical naturalism
Metaphysical naturalism (also called ontological naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism) is a philosophical worldview which holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences. Methodological naturalism is a philosophical basis for science, for which metaphysical naturalism provides only one possible ontological foundation. Broadly, the corresponding theological perspective is religious naturalism or spiritual naturalism. More specifically, metaphysical naturalism rejects the supernatural concepts and explanations that are part of many religions. Definition. According to Steven Schafersman, geologist and president of Texas Citizens for Science, metaphysical naturalism is a philosophy that  maintains that: 1. Nature encompasses all that exists throughout space and time; 2. Nature (the universe or cosmos) consists only of natural elements, that is, of spatiotemporal physical substance—mass–energy. Non-physical or quasi-physical substance, such as information, ideas, values, logic, mathematics, intellect, and other emergent phenomena, either supervene upon the physical or can be reduced to a physical account; 3. Nature operates by the laws of physics and in principle, can be explained and understood by science and philosophy; and 4. the supernatural does not exist, i.e., only nature is real. Naturalism is therefore a metaphysical philosophy  opposed primarily by Biblical creationism. Carl Sagan put it succinctly: "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." According to Arthur C. Danto, naturalism, in recent usage, is a species of philosophical monism according to which whatever exists or happens is "natural" in the sense of being susceptible to explanation through methods which, although paradigmatically exemplified in the natural sciences, are continuous from domain to domain of objects and events. Hence, naturalism is polemically defined as repudiating the view that there exists or could exist any entities which lie, in principle, beyond the scope of  scientific explanation. Regarding the vagueness of the general term "naturalism," David Papineau traces the current usage to philosophers in early 20th century America such as John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook, and Roy Wood Sellars: "So understood, 'naturalism' is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers. The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just characterized—that is, they would both reject 'supernatural' entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the 'human spirit.'" Papineau remarks that philosophers widely regard naturalism as a  positive term, and "few active philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as 'non-naturalists,'" while noting that "philosophers concerned with religion tend to be less enthusiastic about 'naturalism'" and that despite an "inevitable" divergence due to its popularity, if more narrowly construed, (to the chagrin of John McDowell, David Chalmers and Jennifer Hornsby, for example), those not so disqualified remain nonetheless content "to set the bar for 'naturalism' higher." Philosopher and theologian Alvin Plantinga, a well-known critic of naturalism in general, comments: "Naturalism is presumably not a religion. In one very important respect, however, it resembles religion: it  can be said to perform the cognitive function of a religion. There is that range of deep human questions to which a religion typically provides an answer ... Like a typical religion, naturalism gives a set of answers to these and similar questions". Science and naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism is the philosophical basis of science as described by Kate and Vitaly (2000). "There are certain philosophical assumptions made at the base of the scientific method – namely, 1) that reality is objective and consistent, 2) that humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that 3) rational explanations exist for elements of  the real world. These assumptions are the basis of naturalism, the philosophy on which science is grounded. Philosophy is at least implicitly at the core of every decision we make or position we take, it is obvious that correct philosophy is a necessity for scientific inquiry to take place." Steven Schafersman, agrees that methodological naturalism is "the adoption or assumption of philosophical naturalism within scientific method with or without fully accepting or believing it ... science is not metaphysical and does not depend on the ultimate truth of any metaphysics for its success, but methodological naturalism must be adopted as a  strategy or working hypothesis for science to succeed. We may therefore be agnostic about the ultimate truth of naturalism, but must nevertheless adopt it and investigate nature as if nature is all that there is." Various associated beliefs. Contemporary naturalists possess a wide diversity of beliefs within metaphysical naturalism. Most metaphysical naturalists have adopted some form of materialism or physicalism. Origin of the universe, Solar System formation, Earth's geological history, abiogenesis, and evolution. According to metaphysical naturalism, if nature is all there is, just as natural cosmological processes, e.g. quantum fluctuations from a multiverse, led to the Big Bang , and stellar nucleosynthesis brought upon the earliest chemical elements throughout stellar evolution, the formation of the Solar System and the processes involved in abiogenesis arose from natural causes. Naturalists reason about "how", not "if" evolution happened. They maintain that humanity's existence is not by intelligent design but rather a natural process of emergence. With the protoplanetary disk creating planetary bodies, including the Sun and moon, conditions for life to arise billions of years ago, along with the natural formation of plate tectonics, the atmosphere, land masses, and the origin of oceans would also contribute to the kickstarting of biological  evolution to occur after the arrival of the earliest organisms, as evidenced throughout both the fossil record and the geological time scale. The mind is a natural phenomenon. Metaphysical naturalists do not believe in a soul or spirit, nor in ghosts, and when explaining what constitutes the mind they rarely appeal to substance dualism. If one's mind, or rather one's identity and existence as a person, is entirely the product of natural processes, three conclusions follow according to W.T. Stace. Evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, neurobiology, and other cognitive sciences would be able to provide accounts of how cultural  and psychological phenomena, such as religion, morality, emotions, politics, language, and more, evolved through natural processes. Consciousness itself would also be susceptible to the same evolutionary principles that select other traits. Utility of intelligence and reason. Metaphysical naturalists hold that intelligence is the refinement and improvement of naturally evolved faculties. The certitude of deductive logic remains unexplained by this essentially probabilistic view. Nevertheless, naturalists believe anyone who wishes to have more beliefs that are true than are false should seek to perfect and consistently employ their reason in testing and forming beliefs. Empirical methods (especially those of proven use in  the sciences) are unsurpassed for discovering the facts of reality, while methods of pure reason alone can securely discover logical errors. View on the soul. According to metaphysical naturalism, immateriality being unprocedural and unembodiable, isn't differentiable from nothingness. The immaterial nothingness of the soul, being a non-ontic state, isn't compartmentalizable nor attributable to different persons and different memories, it is non-operational and it (nothingness) cannot be manifested in different states in order it represents information. History. Ancient and medieval philosophy. Naturalism was the foundation of two (Vaisheshika, Nyaya) of the six orthodox schools and one  (Carvaka) heterodox school of Hinduism. The Carvaka, Nyaya, Vaisheshika schools originated in the 7th, 6th, and 2nd century BCE, respectively. Western metaphysical naturalism originated in ancient Greek philosophy. The earliest pre-Socratic philosophers, especially the Milesians (Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes) and the atomists (Leucippus and Democritus), were labeled by their peers and successors "the "physikoi"" (from the Greek φυσικός or "physikos", meaning "natural philosopher," borrowing on the word φύσις or "physis", meaning "nature") because they investigated natural causes, often excluding any role for gods in the creation or operation of the world. This eventually led to fully developed systems such  as Epicureanism, which sought to explain everything that exists as the product of atoms falling and swerving in a void. Aristotle surveyed the thought of his predecessors and conceived of nature in a way that charted a middle course between their excesses. With the rise and dominance of Christianity in the West and the later spread of Islam, metaphysical naturalism was generally abandoned by intellectuals. Thus, there is little evidence for it in medieval philosophy. The reintroduction of Aristotle's empirical epistemology as well as previously lost treatises by Greco-Roman natural philosophers which was begun by the medieval Scholastics  without resulting in any noticeable increase in commitment to naturalism. Modern philosophy. It was not until the early modern era of philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment that naturalists like Benedict Spinoza (who put forward a theory of psychophysical parallelism), David Hume, and the proponents of French materialism (notably Denis Diderot, Julien La Mettrie, and Baron d'Holbach) started to emerge again in the 17th and 18th centuries. In this period, some metaphysical naturalists adhered to a distinct doctrine, materialism, which became the dominant category of metaphysical naturalism widely defended until the end of the 19th century. Immanuel Kant rejected (reductionist ) materialist positions in metaphysics, but he was not hostile to naturalism. His transcendental philosophy is considered to be a form of liberal naturalism. In late modern philosophy, "Naturphilosophie", a form of natural philosophy, was developed by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as an attempt to comprehend nature in its totality and to outline its general theoretical structure. A version of naturalism that arose after Hegel was Ludwig Feuerbach's anthropological materialism, which influenced Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's historical materialism, Engels's "materialist dialectic" philosophy of nature ("Dialectics of Nature"), and their follower Georgi  Plekhanov's dialectical materialism. Another notable school of late modern philosophy advocating naturalism was German materialism: members included Ludwig Büchner, Jacob Moleschott, and Carl Vogt.<ref>"The Nineteenth Century and After", Vol. 151, 1952, p. 227: "the Continental materialism of Moleschott and Buchner