Scientific Rationality and Causal Explanation

Abstract

This chapter examines the work of Donald Wiebe and the Scientific-Explanatory Method. Otherwise known as the naturalistic paradigm, the Scientific-Explanatory Method insists that the study of religion should operate within a value-free, disinterested, and empirical set of parameters. The chapter examines Wiebe’s ideas and then enlists and expands on insights offered in the previous chapter to show how Wiebe’s naturalism rules out valid sources of knowledge about human experience. Drawing on the philosophical anthropology and hermeneutical ideas of Charles Taylor, it shows how naturalism drapes human conduct under the banner of behaviorism and excludes from consideration the idea that human beings are agents who act according to intersubjective reasons. The chapter concludes by arguing that the naturalistic paradigm relies on a fact-value distinction that reflects and reinforces the commitments to value-neutrality that the book identifies as afflicting the field.