Allies of Naturalism

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As naturalism makes headway as a worldview, there are many allies of the Center for Naturalism out there doing good work to advance the cause.  Some are listed below, and more will be added as they are discovered.  Are you an ally of naturalism?  If so, please make your presence known, and send us (or direct us to) your papers, analyses, and other items that pertain to applying naturalism to our personal lives and social policy.  Those asterisked* below are on the CFN Advisory Board.

[updated 3/6/06]

Contributors to the CFN qualifying as Allies of Naturalism are here.

Susan Blackmore*, freelance writer and lecturer, has long been skeptical of the traditional dualism of the soul, and the associated assumption of free will that transcends natural causality.  Her books on consciousness, free will, the self, memetics and the paranormal help establish naturalism as a viable personal stance, even as it questions some conventional notions of human agency. 

Paul Bloom*, psychologist at Yale and author of Descartes' Baby, sees that the coming debate between science and dualist worldviews is about the existence of the soul and human agency.  He spoke at Harvard at the invitation of the CFN in February, 2005.

Richard Carrier has long championed a naturalistic worldview, and has published Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism. 

William Casebeer, philosopher, cognitive scientist and author of Natural Ethical Facts (among other books), seeks to show that we need not appeal to supernatural foundations to understand ourselves as moral beings, or to have good reasons to treat each other ethically. 

Richard Double, at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, is an expert on the free will problem and author of The Non-Reality of Free Will and Metaphilosophy and Free Will.  He draws out some of the problematic consequences of the myth of the self-made self in his paper The Moral Hardness of Libertarianism. 

Gary Drescher, computer scientist and independent scholar, has written Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics, now out from MIT press.  This looks to be one of the most insightful and revolutionary explorations of no-holds-barred naturalism we've seen in quite some time.  

Owen Flanagan*, professor at Duke University, has written what might be the best single book on naturalism and why it's not a threat to anything we hold near and dear, but rather the best way forward.  See The Problem of the Soul.

Joshua Greene at Princeton has co-authored a first class paper on the implications of neuroscience for our criminal justice system.  His views are exactly in line with the CFN's recommendations for criminal justice reform.  See "For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything."

Sam Harris, 2005 PEN award winner for his book The End of Faith, debunks contra-causal free will, and shows it unnecessary for our responsibility practices (pp. 262-264).  "We can find secure foundations for ethics and the rule of law without  succumbing to any obvious cognitive illusions." 

Ted Honderich maintains an excellent web page, the Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website.  His own position is decidedly naturalistic and in favor of rethinking common assumptions and policies founded on free will. 

Brian Leiter*, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin (The Leiter Report) is a progressive free will skeptic and takes strong exception to what Nietzsche called the "metaphysics of the hangman".

Thomas Metzinger*, neurophilosopher and author of Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity, takes an exceptionally far-sighted view of how naturalizing consciousness might influence our self-concept and the ethics of creating artificial intelligence. 

Derk Pereboom, a philosopher at the University of Vermont, is author of Living Without Free Will and "Meaning in Life Without Free Will," in which he makes a strong case against retribution, and for the claim that we don't need contra-causal free will to sustain meaning and moral worth. 

Will Provine, professor of biology at Cornell, has long seen the difficulties with our traditional dualistic and supernatural conceptions of human agency.  At conferences and lectures, he memes the positive message of naturalism.  His former graduate student Greg Graffin is working along similar lines. 

Edward Rubin, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has written an important critique of the imminent re-write of the Model Criminal Code which would make retribution the primary rationale for criminal sanctions.  See "Just Say No To Retribution."

Heidi Ravven, professor of religious studies at Hamilton College, is a founding member of the Society for Empirical Ethics and is currently working on Searching for Ethics in a New America.  In her project on naturalizing ethics, which explores the commonalities between neuroscience and Spinoza's ethical and political theories, she questions the doctrine of contra-causal freedom and alerts us to its negative personal and social consequences.

Tamler Sommers*, Ph.D. recently graduated from Duke University and now teaching at the University of Minnesota, is writing a book on free will and moral responsibility.   See his essay for Naturalism.Org, "Darrow and determinism: giving up ultimate responsibility", written on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of trial lawyer Clarence Darrow's defense of Leopold and Loeb.

Julia Sweeny, actress, atheist and playwright, formerly of Saturday Night Live, describes her journey from faith to philosophical naturalism in a play, Letting Go of God, and in forthcoming CDs and book. 

John Symons*, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso, has expressed support for the CFN mission to promote a positive naturalism. 

Bruce Waller has written excellent books on free will and moral responsibility from a naturalistic perspective, two of which, The Natural Selection of Autonomy and Freedom Without Responsibility, are reviewed at this site.

Daniel Wegner is author of the Illusion of Conscious Will, reviewed here.  Wegner gives us important notice of times to come by describing an empirically validated self, whose powers can be understood without invoking contra-causal free will. 
 

Contributors to the CFN qualifying as Allies of Naturalism
 

Rev. Don Fielding - former geologist and a retired Unitarian Universalist minister; also a Religious Naturalist, and active in the Texas Master Naturalist program.

Herb Korpell - a psychiatrist since the sixties, thinks about applying naturalism to psychotherapy if he ever figures it out for himself.

Jody Keeler - CPA and commercial real estate broker in Concord, NH – dedicated student of a discipline in naturalistic personal autonomy and spiritual maturity since the late 80’s.

Ken Batts - a naturalistic psychotherapist working in the Boston area.

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