Definitions
My comment about begging the question in favor of naturalism was a response to brunumb. Here is brunumb's initial post:
brunumb wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 5:19 pmPlease do. I am also interested in an explanation of the term non-physical. To me, anything that exists in any form whatsoever can be regarded as 'physical'. the alternative is simply nothingness.
Brunumb then asked for a different set of definitions (for physical and non-physical) in post 44. That has (currently) culminated in my post 68 where:
1. physical should be defined as something like: 'that which can be perceived through the senses'(where I corrected 'is' to read 'can be') and
2. non-physical as something like: 'relating to things not perceivable through the senses alone' (where I've added 'alone' just now since sense data could conceivably be used in a wider argument to establish the truth of its existence)
These definitions leave open the question of whether anything non-physical actually exists in reality or not.
Arguments for the existence of the non-physical
The above part of the thread started before we focused on one actual argument for God's existence (the Kalam Cosmological Argument). If that argument is sound, then it would mean that a non-physical entity at least did actually exist in reality at some point.
Critique #1: We have good arguments against the existence of the non-physical.
Diagoras wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:07 amI suspect the crux of the matter might be better debated in the Philosophy forum, in which I’m ill-equiped to make much of a contribution. For example, I went looking for some ideas on
why scientific naturalism might be justified in rejecting the metaphysical and couldn’t find much that I understood. An example’s here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 017-1335-x
No sense in me offering it in evidence if I don’t understand it, or am even sure if it’s relevant!
Bradley's article seems to me to be about how metaphysical claims cannot be justified over against their alternatives, mainly due to a "narrow notion of evidence" that he holds, but here he footnotes other papers, instead of explaining what his notion of evidence is more directly. Both naturalism and supernaturalism are metaphysical claims. So, to apply this to our discussion, I think Bradley's logic would say that we cannot justify the existence of the non-physical
or the existence of only physical things. Theists and naturalists would both be unjustified in their assertions. Trying to justify either position is pointless because it can't be done. But, again, I'm not sure why he thinks that is true. It's possible that he thinks scientific naturalism is not a metaphysical position but, if so, he's simply wrong.