Dirk the Daring

Taylor's analogy is specious, because -- like Paley and his "divine watchmaker" argument -- he is using a created, purposive artifact to stand in for an uncreated object. The sign that says "Welcome to Wales" cannot reasonably be assumed to have come about through naturalistic processes because its existence implies intent -- in this case the intent of one intelligent language-using being to convey an idea to other similar beings. There is nothing in the universe *not created by man* that displays such intent.

Non-purposive objects such as crystals, flowers, dogs and the human brain can come about through purely mindless, naturalistic processes, as science has demonstrated over the past several hundred years.

Dirk the Daring

You just assumed your conclusion... for the umpteenth time.

Naturalists and theists both agree that reason exists in the world. What they disagree about is whether reason is possible through purely physical means. There is no a priori reason to think that it either is or is not possible. The fact that the processes of evolution aren't purposive is no reason to assume they couldn't produce a reasoning mind, any more than it is grounds to assume that they could not produce an opposable thumb.

Naturalists cannot, of course, account for the origin of the mind with our current state of knowledge. But to assume that means we never will is merely to commit ad ignorantium.

boneyard bill

Posted by Turtonm:

and thefugitivesaint writes:

I think science has a great deal of potential, but I see no potential whatsoever in materialism. The entire history of science has seen the abandonment of one materialist assumption after another. Early materialists objected to Newton's law of gravity because it assumed action at a distance. Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism was severely criticized because it didn't provide a mechanical model. Ditto for Einstein's field theory. Quantum mechanics, of course, was completely off the charts for materialists. But these theories have stood the test of time while mechanistic models have been relegated to the trash heap. As quantum physicist John Wheeler has pointed out, we don't need a concept of matter to describe our universe. We can describe it adequately enough as information.

A materialist model solves no questions whatsoever. It may have been a useful heuristic at one time, but its time is long past. I don't think we necessarily need a dualism. What we need is a mind/matter monism. That's difficult for us to think about because we don't have a word for it, and it doesn't seem to account for our everyday experience which is decidedly dualistic. But our everyday experience is itself partly dependent on the way we think about ourselves and the world.

boneyard bill

Dirk the Darling writes:

The easiest way for me to respond to this is to quote from myself.


The presupposition in question here is the reliability of reason.

Vorkosigan

BB, it looks to me like you switched arguments on us. You were arguing that rational thought processes could not arise from irrational origins. Now you are saying reliable thought processes cannot. This is even more confusing, because above you seem to have conceded, after my post, that our cognitive processes appear to be reliable.

Also, in your reply to Dirk, you still seem to be mistaking a positive feedback loop for circular reasoning. The two are not the same. The key difference in our understanding of our own cognitive processes is that at each iteration, we have more information about the state of our cognitive processes.

You realize you are making an argument about all cognition, not just human cognition. Is it your claim that human cognition is different and special, or that all cognition (bear, lizard, coackroach) is inherently inexplicable in evolutionary terms?

Michael

Michael

Metacrock

Meta =>Not if the original poster is not a metaphysical naturalist.


Meta =>'good point. But as a metaphysical naturalist you also wouldn't think that there are any rational processes there to be found, no meaning to the universe, and no point to it all, so why assume that the accidental gathering of qualia will lead to any rationality?

boneyard bill

Turtonm writes:

It was Lewis who made the argument that rational thought processes could not arise from irrational processes. I have tried to point out, however, that Lewis admitted that there was a refutation to that claim. But Lewis then asserted that the refutation led to a greater difficulty because one had to presuppose the reliability of reason in order to prove the the reliability of reason which is pretty much nonsense. We are not talking about a circular loop here where more information is added. After all, if there were new information, how would you know it is any more reliable than the old? In this context, rational thought processes and reliable thought processes can be considered synonymous.

I have never claimed that our thought processes are not reliable. My point is that, if our thought processes are reliable, if we are capable of reliable reason; then we live in a world that is capable of being reliably reasoned about. This universe, therefore, has rational characteristics. The naturalist position however (at least as characterized by Lewis and not challenged by anyone so far), does not include any rational characteristics in its fundamental description of the universe.

This is what I meant when I said that the naturalist does not want to pay the ontological cost involved in assuming that her reason is reliable.

boneyard bill

Turtonm writes:

Where am I making a claim of circular reasoning? It seems to me that my claim is just the opposite. The naturalist is not going far enough. The naturalist stops with the assumption that reason is reliable without considering what such an assumption must imply about the nature of the universe itself.

I don't claim that cognition is inexplicable in evolutionary terms. But if we accept that, for reason to be reliable, the universe must possess rational characteristics; then neo-Darwinists may be ignoring an important causal factor in the process which would be reason itself. A positive feedback loop, for example, sounds like a rational process to me; but in the current state of affairs, evolutionists prefer to describe it as a mechanical one. So the question of evolution depends far more on the interpretation of data than on the data itself.

Keep in mind that in this discussion I am defending the theist position as being consistent. I am not defending theism in general. And I am challenging the naturalist position as inconsistent. But the naturalist position I am challenging is that described by Lewis. There may be a position that would qualify as naturalistic that I would not challenge. The ancient Stoics, for example, might qualify as a variety of naturalists; but my argument certainly wouldn't apply to them since Reason was central to their understanding of the nature of the universe.

Kachana

I didn't get a response from Scilvr as to what exact processes she used to conclude it was worthwhile posting on the board, but I would hazard a guess that it was as I described above with the added axiom that a God makes her reason reliable. I'm not sure if this is the case, but if it is, don't see how it is any different from her simply defining herself correct, and how she knows she is not being decieved by her God any more than I know that I ma being deceived by my senses.


Well, it is obvious (assuming evolution) that the accidental gathering of qualia has led to a rationality, the question is whether it has led to a rationality that informs us of true ontological statements.

I believe metaphysical naturalism is inherently silent on this issue. Given that rationality is derived from our experience of the world, it is a metaphysical system that defines truth, what I and others experience and confirm via our senses under MN is defined as truth, and I don't see how empirical experiences can speak to whether the whole worldview of metaphysical naturalism is correct, as this would involve making statements that are true or false about metaphysical naturalism from within metaphysical naturalism. If in our metaphysical system we define what we experience via our senses as truth, how can we then by virtue of further sense experience (discovery of evolution) come to the conclusion that what we experience via our senses isn't truth? This would throw in doubt the validity of our first empirical discovery, that we evolved, so we wouldn't be able to come to any conclusion.

I think the topic of what could 'falsify' MN is an interesting one though, and one I don't think I've got my head around. What would I have to experience to believe that the natural world isn't all there is? I've never seen any law of physics broken, but then again, I've never seen any action of any God. If a law of physics was broken, under what circumstances should I favour one explanation for which there is no precedent (a law just breaking) for another of the same nature (a God breaking it)? It could be argued the naturalistic explanation is more parsimonious, but then it would also depend on the nature of the specific miracle.

Anyway I'm getting sidetracked, as to there being no meaning or point to the universe, well, these are pretty subjective issues. Can something not have meaning to the extent that it is enjoyable, interpretable and understandable? Does there have to be an overarching point? If we say there is no point to the universe without God, but God gives the universe a point, what then if we take the set including the universe AND God, and ask what is the point of that?

Vorkosigan

Originally posted by boneyard bill:
Turtonm writes:
Where am I making a claim of circular reasoning? It seems to me that my claim is just the opposite. The naturalist is not going far enough. The naturalist stops with the assumption that reason is reliable without considering what such an assumption must imply about the nature of the universe itself.

I think I understand. But what does reason being reliable imply about the nature of the universe? Nothing that I can see. What is it that you are deriving from the reliability of reason that goes beyond merely working out the results of selection processes?

Michael