It would appear so from Stanford Plato:
The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003).
So understood, “naturalism” is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers. The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just characterized—that is, they would both reject “supernatural” entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the “human spirit”.
Even so, this entry will not aim to pin down any more informative definition of “naturalism”. It would be fruitless to try to adjudicate some official way of understanding the term. Different contemporary philosophers interpret “naturalism” differently. This disagreement about usage is no accident. For better or worse, “naturalism” is widely viewed as a positive term in philosophical circles—few active philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as “non-naturalists”.[1] This inevitably leads to a divergence in understanding the requirements of “naturalism”. Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand “naturalism” in a unrestrictive way, in order not to disqualify themselves as “naturalists”, while those who uphold stronger naturalist doctrines are happy to set the bar for “naturalism” higher.[2]
More. [color emphasis added]
So “the term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy” but “For better or worse, ‘naturalism” is widely viewed as a positive term in philosophical circles—few active philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as “non-naturalists”…
Note the preciousness of “For better or worse,” above. It images what is wrong with philosophy today. Better for some, worse for others, and worst for the facts about human nature.
How about, better for some, worse for others, and worst for the facts about human nature.
Meanwhile, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor writes at First Things:
Doctor, what’s that sound?”
The voice startled me. I was performing brain surgery on a woman with a tumor near the area that controls speech. I was removing much of her frontal lobe, in order to remove the tumor. To map her speech area with an electrical probe, I needed her to be awake.
So I performed the surgery under mild local sedation only. The brain itself feels no pain.
It took me a moment to realize that it was my patient, not a nurse, speaking to me from under the surgical drapes. “Just the sound of the instruments,” I replied, not entirely candid. The sound was a lot of her frontal lobe going up my sucker into a canister.
“It’s loud,” she said, half-laughing from nervousness and a sedative. “How’s the operation going?”
The operation went fine, apparently. Things are not going so well with naturalism as an intellectual enterprise. It now rules by main force, not dialogue, and is thus exempt from having to account for evidence.
See also: Would we give up naturalism to solve the hard problem of consciousness?