Did your confusion last beyond the first paragraph (or the sixth, if you count the introductory note)
> “Naturalism” is a label for a conceptual framework, investigatory discipline, and semi-formalized way of looking at and learning about the world. I’ve been developing and teaching naturalism for the past couple of years, if you start counting on the day I chose the term, or since 2013, if you take a more historical perspective.
I think my eyes slipped off “if you start counting on the day I chose the term, or since 2013”. If I had registered that sentence I think I wouldn’t have been confused. I remember reading other parts of that paragraph, but the description is vaguely similar to the other naturalism. The reality is I stayed confused with slow bayesian updating towards the hypothesis that this is a different concept, even after having read this + read “Knowing” + skimmed “Naturalism” (skipped to the last post to see if there is a clear definition). At the end I gave up and just fed a couple posts to ChatGPT and ask whether it is the same concept or not.
This has tripped up a lot of people! I could certainly have predicted this if I’d tried to. Oops.
You see, “naturalism” is a technical term in two different fields. In philosophy, it means the thing you’re familiar with, basically “anti-supernaturalism”. The relevant dichotomy is “natural/supernatural”. That’s the meaning LessWrongers typically think of.
But in science, and especially in biology, the relevant dichotomy is “natural/artificial”. “Naturalism” or “naturalistic methodology” is an evolution of what was first called “natural history”: the practice of what we might now call “science” before formalized experimentation was invented. In contemporary use within biology and psychology, constructions with “natural” in them (like “naturalistic observation”) refer to a research approach where subjects are studied in their natural environments, outside of the lab, without interference or manipulation of variables. Darwin, Audubon, and Goodall didn’t really “experiment” much. Mostly they traveled to the animals, watched very carefully, and wrote down what they saw.
I consider the method I describe in the sequence to be an extension of “natural history” into the realm of phenomenology. Rather than pinning down experiences to examine under the clinical conditions of deep meditation and thought experiments, as I think early Western phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger tended to do, the method I describe attempts to train systematic phenomenological attention to experiences as they arise in their “natural habitats”, so to speak. That is why I called it “naturalism”.
Turned out to be a poor choice, but it makes a lot of sense if you happen to have my particular background.
It was super confusing to me that you aren’t talking about Naturalism in philosophy but a different concept
Did your confusion last beyond the first paragraph (or the sixth, if you count the introductory note)
> “Naturalism” is a label for a conceptual framework, investigatory discipline, and semi-formalized way of looking at and learning about the world. I’ve been developing and teaching naturalism for the past couple of years, if you start counting on the day I chose the term, or since 2013, if you take a more historical perspective.
?
I think my eyes slipped off “if you start counting on the day I chose the term, or since 2013”. If I had registered that sentence I think I wouldn’t have been confused. I remember reading other parts of that paragraph, but the description is vaguely similar to the other naturalism. The reality is I stayed confused with slow bayesian updating towards the hypothesis that this is a different concept, even after having read this + read “Knowing” + skimmed “Naturalism” (skipped to the last post to see if there is a clear definition). At the end I gave up and just fed a couple posts to ChatGPT and ask whether it is the same concept or not.
This has tripped up a lot of people! I could certainly have predicted this if I’d tried to. Oops.
You see, “naturalism” is a technical term in two different fields. In philosophy, it means the thing you’re familiar with, basically “anti-supernaturalism”. The relevant dichotomy is “natural/supernatural”. That’s the meaning LessWrongers typically think of.
But in science, and especially in biology, the relevant dichotomy is “natural/artificial”. “Naturalism” or “naturalistic methodology” is an evolution of what was first called “natural history”: the practice of what we might now call “science” before formalized experimentation was invented. In contemporary use within biology and psychology, constructions with “natural” in them (like “naturalistic observation”) refer to a research approach where subjects are studied in their natural environments, outside of the lab, without interference or manipulation of variables. Darwin, Audubon, and Goodall didn’t really “experiment” much. Mostly they traveled to the animals, watched very carefully, and wrote down what they saw.
I consider the method I describe in the sequence to be an extension of “natural history” into the realm of phenomenology. Rather than pinning down experiences to examine under the clinical conditions of deep meditation and thought experiments, as I think early Western phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger tended to do, the method I describe attempts to train systematic phenomenological attention to experiences as they arise in their “natural habitats”, so to speak. That is why I called it “naturalism”.
Turned out to be a poor choice, but it makes a lot of sense if you happen to have my particular background.