When a person first begins to study naturalism with me, I say to them almost nothing that I’ve written in this sequence.

That might very well be a mistake; I might get better results if I knew some short combination of words that would cause them to correctly understand, intellectually, what we are doing and why, before we started.

But in fact I bank on the person’s trust in me a bit, and begin by helping them establish consistent habits of observation.

If they’re interested in studying confusion, I ask them to tap their leg every time they notice they’re confused. I ask them to keep a log book in which they record a few words about their experiences of confusion each day. I ask them to make predictions about what it will be like to notice confusion—what kind of situation will be happening and how they will know in the moment that they are confused—and to compare their observations to their predictions.

And then, throughout what has so far proven to be about a three month program, I never shift our focus away from consistent habits of observation. It’s not just where I start. It’s the entire curriculum.

From a practical perspective, this dogged persistence is the foundation of naturalism. “Direct observation of the territory”, without patience, gets you something like a bag of tricks. Valuable tricks, but still tricks. Isolated mental motions made when they are convenient and enjoyable, not when they are most needed.

With patience, though, you get a life-long practice of epistemic rationality.

So the whole naturalism program, from start to finish, consists of the establishment, improvement, and maintenance of consistent habits of observation. Consistent and ceaseless, without any sense that “and then we’ll be done observing and get back to normal”. When my students and I meet, we are constantly talking about what daily practice looked like over the past week, what was too heavy to implement as a regular routine, and how they personally can slow down enough to thoroughly observe. We continue in this way until they no longer seem to need me to ask those questions for them. The program is meant to introduce a new normal.

The rest of what I talk about in this sequence is sprinkled in, sure. It's implicit in the questions I ask, the approaches I encourage, and "my whole vibe". Like a catalyst, or like spices, those other parts are crucial to the recipe. But p...

MGR

MGR

MGR

MGR