If Heaven is just an illusory way to assuage the fear of mortality, then is the assertion of nonexistence upon death a way to assuage the fear of eternal retribution?
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If euthanasia is so good, why do we try talking people down from suicide?
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If scientific theories do not simply “fall out” from natural sensation and perception, are they purely natural?
If medicine is intended to redress the errors of natural biology, and if medical equipment is an artificial appendage to natural organisms, then is everything even possible wholly natural?
If even one thing is artificial as distinct from natural, can everything be subsumed under nature?
If everything is lumped together ontologically as one whole “sheer Nature,” then is it even coherent to make distinctions? (If everything is the same, then nothing is different, and therefore it makes no sense to ascribe common properties to different objects. If every thing, in other words, is everything, then no thing exists. If I say everything is water, with reference to what do I contrast ‘this’ and ‘that’ as exhibits of water? Insofar as all assertions presuppose distinctions, how we can assert ontological uniformity without presupposing ontological diversity? Is monism, of which naturalism is a type, even coherent?)
Filed under: culture, metaphysics, philosophy of science | Tagged: naturalism
