Thoughts of a Critical Naturalist

...Metaphysics asks for the nature of reality and discovers it by definition...

...To which the anti-naturalist naturally replies: Of course, that is just what I've been telling you about the limitations of your scientific method...

...Yet in this area of discourse critical naturalism is of little use...

...Reviewed by GAIL KENNEDY Professor of Philosophy, Amherst College Sidney Hook's new collection of essays, published over a period of years and addressed to various groups of readers, has the pervasive unity of a work conceived and written as a whole...

...Surely the answer to this question is that every pattern of culture implicitly provides the framework for a metaphysics...

...He treats such important subjects as philosophy's relation to human conduct and social affairs, the bearing of our factual knowledge on value judgments, and modern knowledge and the concept of God...

...More specifically, the problems with which metaphysicians deal at any given time are a result of inconsistency, confusion, incoherence and contradiction within the body of common-sense opinion...

...Hook agrees that the actual subject matter of metaphysics—if that word can be divorced from its historical connations—"is not Being qua Being...

...Metaphysical systems may be developed within cultures like that of ancient India (as they were) where there is a modicum of scientific knowledge...

...Although Hook has forensic abilities of the highest order, I doubt if his arguments will convert any one not already half-convinced...

...But they reject the idea that the methods of science are the only reliable source of knowledge...

...Instead they claim that there is another method, or group of methods, which provides access to a kind of knowledge beyond the competence of science...

...To this purpose scientific knowledge can never be a hindrance and will always be a help...

...They agree that scientific method—and common sense, to the degree that it is the prototype of scientific method—is the sole reliable source of knowledge...

...But naturalists are of different kinds...

...If metaphysics is to be not a matter of discovery but of stipulation, then one must ask, why these definitions and not others...

...In this book he is concerned with those who, without benefit of science, take their metaphysics neat: the philosophers of "Being...

...For metaphysical theories are attempts to create a rational system by means of ideas which are derived from and may be again reduced to the basic common sense notions of a particular society...

...It superficially resembles the science of mathematics and professes to have the same peculiar kind of certainty...

...Dogmatic naturalists, including Karl Marx, Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, failed to realize that a synthetic or synoptic view of the world based upon the sciences cannot itself be "scientific...

...Where, though, is a consensus like that which gives its authority to the methods of science...

...Professor Hook's primary intention is to examine the relation between scientific and philosophical knowledge...

...For years, in private and in print, he has endeavored to persuade Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, only to be told in his turn that if he really understood their position, i.e., had their insights, he would be in essential agreement with them...

...They treated contemporary theories as though the results were all in and inquiry had come to an end...

...If Sidney Hook were to accept a label, he might allow himself to be called a "naturalist...

...The "method" you employ consists in an appeal to intuitions bolstered by dialectic...

...If a philosopher who could think in the language of the Trobiand Islanders should attempt using it to develop a metaphysics he would have no difficulty in treating "Being" lucidly, but would find it impossible to make intelligible statements about "Becoming" and "Causation"—categories essential to a Western scientific mode of conceptualization...

...As a group, they would agree with Hook that the methods of science do not reveal the inner nature or ultimate characteristics of reality...

...To such claims the critical naturalist would reply: If your method is indeed a genuine supplement to those with which the practice of scientists has made me familiar, then its application will produce results which are public in character and upon which, if cooperative inquiry is sufficiently prolonged, we must all agree...

...From this perspective, it is apparent that the proponents of metaphysics are right in asserting that it has no inherent relation of either dependence on or antagonism to science...

...His sole recourse, therefore, is to try to show that the arguments they (and other metaphysicians) offer are, at the least, also unconvincing to anyone not already a true believer...

...They differ in their interpretations of its results...

...This distinction exactly locates the problem with which Hook is most concerned...

...But to participate with you in the application of your method I must share those intuitions...

...Cannot there be a metaphysics of a less melodramatic sort, which, though different from it, is consonant with science...

...That was the view of Hook's former teacher, F. J. E. Woodbridge...

...All Hook can say as a naturalist is that scientific methods of inquiry are not applicable to these so-called problems...

...and I believe he would say that Professor Woodbridge, whether aware of it or not, has in effect conceded the point...

...Your method has been in use for a long while, much longer than those now called scientific...

...In turn, a metaphysics of this kind has its own important contribution to make, which is exemplified by Hook's work in this book and elsewhere...

...Those who think that scientific inquiry can reveal the ultimate nature of reality are prone to construct systems in which they hypostatize the theories of their own time...

...bad insofar as they foster illusions, good to the degree that they help us to discern what is of greatest value in our actual lives...

...Still, why cannot one be a naturalist and a metaphysician too...

...Hook quotes his statement: "Science asks for the laws of existence and discovers them by experiment...

...It is rather those features of the world which constitute, to use Dewey's words, 'a ground map of the province of criticism.' " In this view, since common sense notions are inveterately moral, concerned always with matters of use and want, philosophical theories are more or less—not either—good or bad...

...It deals with a group of related themes which have long been pondered by a disciplined, powerful and mature mind...

...Hook has dealt elsewhere as a critical naturalist with the distortions of dogmatism...

...It is only when science, as one institution among others, exerts a disruptive influence upon a pre-established common sense that the idea of a superior way to knowledge is invoked...