Natural philosophy is the practice of engaging the natural world with rational or empirical enquiry. Philosophical naturalism is the view that natural philosophy is the only legitimate practice of philosophy, whereas philosophical theology allows for supernatural beliefs to accompany the practice of natural philosophy.
Much of what is understood to be natural philosophy is not natural philosophy. In particular, I will here argue that much empirical philosophy, even while addressing topics of natural philosophy, falls outside of philosophical naturalism, and, in fact, serves the denaturing of philosophy.
Denaturing is the process by which the properties of something are destroyed, such as through the application of heat or acidity, physically and chemically-speaking. In philosophy, as I am discerning here, denaturalization is the denaturing of the living individual in favor of their nurturing.
While natural philosophy certainly concerns itself with nature— in this context, and with the small-n, implying the physical-material world that can be studied inductively as a flow from past to present—, philosophical naturalism, properly-speaking, concerns itself also with Nature— the basic fact of actual existence—, and includes within this realm another form of small-n nature, one which has to do with the basic fact of the existence of a given thing. In this way, nature, even with a small-n, isn’t really limited to physical reality in the way previously stated, but reflects the idea of Nature on the level of mortal reality. That is, as Nature has to do with the fact of Existence of the Whole, nature has to do with the facts of the existence of the parts. As Nature is to the Whole, nature is to the parts. In this way, Nature or nature, whatever the case, may be considered rather synonymous with essence (or Essence), the innate and defining core of what it is to be something.
True natural philosophy concerns itself with the nature of things. This traditionally includes the nature of minerals, plants, animals, and human beings, which constituted the entirety of mortal beings as known to the minds of classical philosophers. The nature of a mineral differs from that of a plant, an animal, and a human being, and the nature of different minerals differ also from one another. This contrast in their essences is, after all, what makes them different to begin with. Similarly, each plant and animal species has its own nature. And while classical philosophers might not have always agreed that each individual plant and animal has its own unique nature, it became increasingly clear that human beings each have their own unique nature, variously called spirit, soul, personality, character, disposition, trade, or etc., leading eventually to the modern embrace of individuality, an embrace that was no completely foreign to the classical or medieval mind but which had not matured into the form we know now as individualism.
The nature of a plant is to utilize water, air, and minerals to grow toward the sunlight. This is not something that plants are commandeered or influenced to do from the outside, but something that springs from out of their own compulsion. It is this fact of their having this innate compulsion, which can never be bestowed from the outside, that gives them their essence as plants. While a paper rose may have the form of a plant, and even may be made from plant material, a paper rose is a mockery of the real thing owing to its lack of an innate compulsion to continue its plight to reach the Sun. The paper rose, that is, has been denatured, the nature of its plant life having been removed from it, leaving only the pretension or memory of a plant. Similarly, taxidermied animals, even if given robotical motion and made into automatons, lose their essence, and are denatured, even while their physical form and their material body are still present (minus some offgasing and such).
The human being, too, has a nature. Yes, including their physical self. But is this really the nature of interest? The nature I speak of here has more to do with the essence. Some of this nature is similar to or overlaps with that of the plants and animals, and so can be considered an extension of the more fundamental nature of living things generally-speaking—such as the pursuit of continuance—, but humans also have their own innate natures, which allow them to achieve uniquely human goals in their struggle to continue their existence. The essence of the human being is the exercise of the will in pursuit of uniquely human ends, most importantly the construction and utilization of human culture to achieve greater degrees of satisfying human fecundity and longevity. The essence of the individual human is the unique, particular pursuit within this abstract, universal one, much the same as the human species’ essence is its unique animal pursuit. This essence includes the innate taste and preference impulses of the human being, which dictates to them what shall be their course of nourishment, employment, sexual release, education, and etc. Importantly, human nature includes the capacity to utilize one’s conscience so as to make long-term decisions. Humans can forego their animalistic passions in efforts of investment, so as to maximize their satisfaction in the long-term. And they are self-aware, being able to reflect upon their own nature. This self-awareness is what enables the long-term decision-making. By reflecting one one’s own nature, one can come to understand how best to satisfy that nature.
Empiricism is an approach within philosophy, or perhaps sophistry, that reduces the philosophical project to the empirical or inductive method of inquiry, whereby one uses repeat observations to infer conclusions. On their own, observation and induction are consistent with the practice of natural philosophy, and are properly considered tools of the trade. Empiricism, however, in demanding that the project be reduced to these tools steps outside of the project of philosophical naturalism, and in one of the strangest of ways. Rather than, as with theistic philosophy, adding supernaturalism to the project of natural philosophy, the empiricists attempt to denature natural philosophy. Perhaps the flagship of the empirical school is the tabula rasa or “blank slate” doctrine, as stated by Locke, that the mind is empty until impressions are made onto it. And this ship floats upon a sea of indirect realism, the idea that one’s connections to the outside world are interpretive rather than reflective, or even (as in the case of George Berkeley) idealism or phenomenalism, the idea that reality is entirely the stuff of ideas or is purely immaterial. The empiricists had their formal beginnings in the medical field, in reaction to rationalists they deemed to be dogmatists for following the advice of the founding thinker of the medical field, Hippocrates.
While the inductive method certainly has its place in natural philosophy, empiricism denaturalizes philosophy. In its support for tabula rasa, it has much more in common with Buddhist religion and its conceptions of emptiness than with philosophical naturalism and the Western alchemical project to square the circle, to better ourselves to closer approximate the Divine. What separates the West from the East, after all, is the difference between one putting one’s faith in something or in nothing. Western philosophy optimistically starts with the One, while Eastern philosophy pessimistically embraces emptiness. This is why Orientalism is destroying the West. In declaring the individual a blank slate subject to indirect impressions from or hallucinations about reality, empiricism de-natures the individual, or rids the individual of the innate impulse to continue and maximize. Strangely, it does this while formulating an individualistic outlook on the world. Locke’s understanding is that individuals’ sensory impressions lead them to prefer independence over control. Yet, Locke does not acknowledge, like Spinoza, that this is due to an innate conatus, or “inner striving,” which comes against negative sensory impressions. This is a major failure on the part of Locke, which leads to his philosophy ultimately undermining the true foundation of human nature. In the end, Locke and the other empiricists ultimately deny that there is a human nature, believing instead that human beings are entirely the products of nurture, or the things that happen to them, of artificiality. Yet, at the same time, Locke believes in a kind of human potential, which itself carries low-key connotations contrary to nurture, and speaks to something more of Spinoza’s conatus. But this was not a focal point and instead represents a faultline in empiricist logic, which has trouble maintaining consistency due to its contradictions.
In contrast to the empiricists, the common sensists and the rationalists upheld conceptions about human nature, believing that the essence of human beings is not impressed upon them by nurture, but is entirely innate, and that the human perception of reality was not indirect or hallucinatory but direct and reliable. Followers of the common sense school, such as Thomas Reid, held that there were certain aspects of the world that could be taken for granted or assumed in an axiomatic fashion, such as that there is an external world, that our senses work reliably to tell us about it, and that there are other minds that can similarly perceive the world and think about it. Rationalists, such as Baruch Spinoza, believed that the existence of the world could be affirmed through deductive thinking. Due to Reid having made rational arguments atop his declaration that some things are immediately apparent without further reflection, and due to Spinoza’s belief that mental objects correlate with material objects in a direct fashion, I like to consider the two together to be under the umbrella of common sense rationalism, which may be identified with some takes on the later-developed concept of pragmatism, itself having developed from a combination of common sense and rationality with fallibilism, the view that humans can be incorrect. Common sense, rationalism, and (certain varieties of) pragmatism have all been considered to be forms of or contain within them direct-realism, in contrast to indirect-realism and strict idealism.
Unlike the empiricists, whose worldview leads to ethical sensibilism, that what is right and wrong are matters of what are found to be tolerated by the formed senses (including especially of others), the ethical worldview of the common sense rationalists is driven by conscience. For Thomas Reid, conscience, or common sense, was an authoritative and innate guide to morally upright behavior, and one that was universally available to humans and to be taken for granted. For Spinoza, the conscience was tied to the deductive capacity of the individual in service of the conatus. I’m not sure that these views are irreconcilable, but instead see them as largely complementary perspectives. What is important to understand is that while the common sense rationalists held conscience to be something that was expressed from out of the internality of the individual, the empiricists basically eliminated conscience in favor of popular sense impressions, or sensibilities. This is a complete denaturing of the human individual, whose very difference from the rest of the animal kingdom rests upon the ability to reflect upon long-term options and choose those over shorter-term ones, that is, to put one’s conscience to work.
It appears that it was figures such as John Dewey and Karl Popper (following after earlier figures like Francis Bacon, John Locke, and George Berkeley) who were largely responsible for the popular reduction of natural philosophy to empirical pursuits in modern times, and who, by extension, killed philosophical naturalism, not in favor of philosophical theism or supernaturalism, but in favor of physical materialism and neo-pragmatism, the first sense of small-n nature. The new approach to natural philosophy, operating under the guise of philosophical naturalism, has been to reduce the essence of the individual and to eliminate the conscience, to deride human nature, in favor of a partially- or wholly hallucinatory external nature, one which apparently itself lacks in the same fundamental inwardness. Whereas philosophical naturalism might correctly characterize certain aspects as relics of conscience, or as purposive in their orientation, natural philosophy reduced to empiricism must ultimately deny that external reality is in any way formed from the coalescence of inner impulses shared outwardly, an option which may otherwise be assumed by the common sense rationalists. The common sense rationalists might be able to be convinced that the human body is, at least in part, identifiable with the concerted will of its independent cells, while the empiricists are likely to deny that such relics of consciousness can explain anything at all, preferring to treat living cells as mechanistic bodies subject to the laws of brute physics and chemistry without inclusion of an inner will.
The empirical or inductive method has served natural philosophy well, particularly as it relates to isolated systems, such as can be experimented upon or dissected in a laboratory setting. It can predict with a great degree of accuracy what range of outcomes are to be expected when it comes to given phenomenon, especially when taken unto itself. However, its utility in dealing with inert matter in controlled settings does not properly establish it as the only mode of natural philosophy. In fact, the attempt to monopolize natural philosophy with empiricism appears to marry empiricism with the dogmatism it so long opposed, while at the same time it most certainly serves to undermine natural philosophy as used in the sense of constructing a rational comprehension of the natural world as it results from the innate nature of things, including the human conscience. That is, in its attempt to reduce human nature to mechanical nature, empiricism denatures humanity and denaturalizes philosophy. As such, and contrary to popular belief, empiricism, especially empiricism as it applies to living organisms, must be declaimed from philosophical naturalism.