Why you shouldn’t make naturalism a tenet of secular humanism

by Stephen Law Introduction I recently wrote a blog post titled “Secular Humanism: DON’T define it as requiring naturalism” [1] in which I suggest that it is a strategic mistake for secular humanists (such as myself) to make naturalism a tenet of secular humanism, so that signing up to naturalism is a requirement, rather than …

Stephen Law on humanism and naturalism

by Massimo Pigliucci This is going to be one of my “a colleague said this, I disagree, and I’m going to invite him to respond” sort of essays. This time the focus is on a recent short piece by Stephen Law, entitled “Secular Humanism: DON’T define it as requiring naturalism” [1], in which Stephen — …

The natural, the supernatural, and the nature of science

by Paul Braterman Science, it is often said, is restricted in principle to the search for natural causes and the rejection of the supernatural; call this intrinsic methodological naturalism (IMN). Here, following the work of Boudry et al. [1], I argue that this view is misguided and damaging. We have not precluded supernatural claims from …

What to do about consciousness

or: How to Deal with Naturalism Without Becoming A New Age Wacko by Mike Trites For people who are not spiritual dualists, we have to eye matter a bit warily. Matter used to be pretty mundane stuff. It sat around and did more or less nothing until some spirit came along to make it think …