Meta question about naturalism-in-general: up until recently the LW tag for naturalism just said “Naturalism”. I gave it a rough descriptor. I’d also like it to have a name like Naturalism [X], where X disambiguates it from other things you might use the word naturalism to mean. (in particular contrasted with “non-supernaturalism” or “liking/being-about nature (without being necessarily about observation). But I’m not actually sure what X to put there. I typically call it Logan-style Naturalism in casual conversation but not sure what’s appropriate here.
I also suspect it’d be good to have secondary tags for most of the posts. In some cases, the right tag is “introspection” (maybe all cases? I’m not sure). We currently have an empiricism tag, we don’t have an “observation” tag but maybe we should?
(I maybe also will take this opportunity to note that I don’t actually find naturalism a very intuitive name for the thing you’re overall aiming at, but, I don’t have a better suggestion and you’re now almost two sequences in so, shrug)
I am curious whether reading or skimming the Wikipedia articles on “naturalistic observation” and “natural history” helps at all with getting where I’m coming from.
I certainly don’t claim it was the best possible term to choose, but to me it seems extremely precise and accurate (though ambiguous, and i recognize that ppl round these parts are more familiar with philosophical naturalism qua ontological claim). In ecology, entomology, etc., the connotations go way beyond liking natural stuff, and suggest an orientation toward research topics and a corresponding set of methodologies. It’s the thing Jane Goodall did, and also James Audubon. My stuff is like “What if the naturalist paradigm, but for stuff that includes rationality and not just for finches? What would that look like?”
[edit: on phone, might add links and mb further reply later]
Those Wikipedia articles helped me understand. I didn’t until then, make the connection between “naturalist” as a descriptor of a person and “naturalism” as a descriptor of that person’s … Focus? Toolkit? Methodology?
Calling it “Naturalistic Observation” would have been much clearer to me, or really anything that doesn’t end in -ism. If you want to expand past traditional nature topics, perhaps focus on the observation part, not the nature part.
That said, naming things is famously hard, and I no longer have objections for myself—please consider those as suggestions for future readers.
Meta question about naturalism-in-general: up until recently the LW tag for naturalism just said “Naturalism”. I gave it a rough descriptor. I’d also like it to have a name like Naturalism [X], where X disambiguates it from other things you might use the word naturalism to mean. (in particular contrasted with “non-supernaturalism” or “liking/being-about nature (without being necessarily about observation). But I’m not actually sure what X to put there. I typically call it Logan-style Naturalism in casual conversation but not sure what’s appropriate here.
I also suspect it’d be good to have secondary tags for most of the posts. In some cases, the right tag is “introspection” (maybe all cases? I’m not sure). We currently have an empiricism tag, we don’t have an “observation” tag but maybe we should?
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/naturalism
(I maybe also will take this opportunity to note that I don’t actually find naturalism a very intuitive name for the thing you’re overall aiming at, but, I don’t have a better suggestion and you’re now almost two sequences in so, shrug)
I am curious whether reading or skimming the Wikipedia articles on “naturalistic observation” and “natural history” helps at all with getting where I’m coming from.
I certainly don’t claim it was the best possible term to choose, but to me it seems extremely precise and accurate (though ambiguous, and i recognize that ppl round these parts are more familiar with philosophical naturalism qua ontological claim). In ecology, entomology, etc., the connotations go way beyond liking natural stuff, and suggest an orientation toward research topics and a corresponding set of methodologies. It’s the thing Jane Goodall did, and also James Audubon. My stuff is like “What if the naturalist paradigm, but for stuff that includes rationality and not just for finches? What would that look like?”
[edit: on phone, might add links and mb further reply later]
That maybe updates me towards ‘yeah I guess Naturalism is a fine name for the study frame’ but still wanting a good shorthand to disambiguate with.
Yeah, makes sense. I’m pretty bad at this kind of thing I think, but I’ll think about it and if I come up with something I’ll let you know.
Those Wikipedia articles helped me understand. I didn’t until then, make the connection between “naturalist” as a descriptor of a person and “naturalism” as a descriptor of that person’s … Focus? Toolkit? Methodology?
Calling it “Naturalistic Observation” would have been much clearer to me, or really anything that doesn’t end in -ism. If you want to expand past traditional nature topics, perhaps focus on the observation part, not the nature part.
That said, naming things is famously hard, and I no longer have objections for myself—please consider those as suggestions for future readers.