Materialists Know What They Say is False. They Say it Anyway

_{Barry Arrington

January 21, 2022

Intelligent Design}

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Otherwise, they would have to give up their materialism.

Recently I posted about a woman who was charged with attempted murder when she put a newborn baby in a garbage bag and tossed him in a dumpster to die. Here is an exchange I had with Seversky regarding that post:

Barry:

Is it objectively evil to put a baby in a garbage bag and throw him in a dumpster or is it just your subjective preference not to do so?

Seversky:

the overwhelming majority regard dumping newborns in dumpsters as being evil

Barry:

Suppose the overwhelming majority regarded dumping newborns in dumpsters as good. Would it then be good?

Seversky:

Presumably, it would be good in the minds of the majority who approved of it. It would not be a good thing from my perspective.

There you have it. Sev’s position is this: They would prefer tossing babies in dumpsters and I would not. There is no basis on which to determine which preference is superior. Therefore, the preferences are objectively equal.

As I have said before, no sane person actually lives their life as if materialism is true. But Sev’s religious commitments compel him to pretend he believes it is true. Which leads him to say that he holds an outrageous position that we can be certain he does not truly hold. Sad that.

Comments

No worries, StephenB. We all like to poke a little fun. -QQuerius_{February 4, 2022
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Querius @398, Yes. Thanks. Mainly, I didn't want you to take me seriously when I made the frivolous suggestion that you were being "judgmental" and that you ought to "chill out." I meant it as a joke, but I wasn't sure that it came across that way.StephenB_{February 4, 2022
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StephenB @397,
Once you abandon the law of non-contradiction, all things are possible.
Yeah, that nailed it for me as satire. And I also had a lot of satirical fun with “regurative self generation” of snakes . . . -QQuerius_{February 4, 2022
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Querius, in my second and third comment to you @367, I tried to use satirical humor to demonstrate my agreement with your points. After rereading it, I am not sure that I came across that way. So I just wanted to put it on the record. Thanks.StephenB_{February 3, 2022
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Viola Lee @395, Yes. After doing everything possible to save what he lovingly created, but still preserve our free will, God will provide perfect justice to those who've demanded it and loving mercy to those who've accepted it. -QQuerius_{February 3, 2022
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But it doesn't remove his ability or right to judge those free-will choices. Would you say that was your belief, Querius?Viola Lee_{February 3, 2022
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‘God gave a free person the capacity to move itself on its own’. Like everything else, a free person is not supposed to be able to move on its own.
When you roll a dice, you give it the capacity to display a number at random, but not the number itself. So, I'd say the Primary Mover gave us the capacity for free will, but did not determine the outcome of our free will. Nevertheless, because God created space-time, God is not trapped in space-time and can freely move between past, present, and future. God's knowledge of the future doesn't remove our capacity to make free will choices. -QQuerius_{February 3, 2022
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Origenes
The principle of act & potency informs us that the capacity ‘to move itself without being moved by another’ is non-existent. If true, no thing can be provided by anyone with this non-existent capacity.
No. it doesn’t. It means, among other things, that the First Mover is a necessary factor in establishing the human capacity to think and make decisions. It does not mean that the First Mover is the one who is thinking those thoughts or making those decisions. God can easily provide His creatures with a mind/brain function and a free will faculty that allows them to be distinct causal agents capable of beginning new causal chains. The principle of act/potency does, however, rule out your irrational belief that the human self is the source of its own existence
And this non-existent capacity cannot be sustained through time.
All created things in the universe must be sustained. They didn’t bring themselves into existence and they cannot keep themselves in existence. According to the law of cause and effect, nothing comes to be, or continues to exist, on its own power. It’s interesting to note, though, that you characterize the mind/brain and free will faculties as “non-existent capacities.” You were thinking what? – that they serve no worthwhile purpose? – that they are just there for show?StephenB_{February 2, 2022
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Note 2 to #386 The principle of act & potency informs us that the capacity ‘to move itself without being moved by another’ is non-existent. If true, no thing can be provided by anyone with this non-existent capacity. And this non-existent capacity cannot be sustained through time.Origenes_{February 2, 2022
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SB “Your claims to the contrary are irrational.” Indeed. Vividvividbleau_{February 2, 2022
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Origenes:
It is therefor incoherent to say: ‘God gave a free person the capacity to move itself on its own’.
Strawman. A free person does not move himself "on his own." It requires an outside agent – God or First Cause - to provide that person with the *capacity* to move himself. It also requires a First cause to sustain that capacity through time. This takes place outside the individual and is consistent with the philosophy of Aquinas. Without the capacity to act, a person is not free to act. It is impossible is for the person to create that power for itself or within himself. Your claims to the contrary are irrational.StephenB_{February 2, 2022
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A note to #386 //: If nothing can move itself from potency to act unless it is moved to act by something else, then it is, obviously, impossible to create something that moves itself on is own. It is therefor incoherent to say: ‘God gave a free person the capacity to move itself on its own’. Like everything else, a free person is not supposed to be able to move on its own. That’s why Aquinas proposes a first cause in an attempt to explain the movement of the free person, while upholding the universality of the principle of potency and act. IOWs Aquinas attempts to explain a free person’s movement by something else, that is the ‘first cause’. In #386 I argue that Aquinas’ attempt failed.Origenes_{February 2, 2022
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Origenes:
there is self-movement independent from the alleged “first cause.”
Yes, there is. I am pleased that you learned something from Aquinas. As I said at 264,
You can, as the subject, be the source or origin of your thoughts and feelings, but you cannot, as you seem to believe, be the source or origin of your *capacity* to think or feel.
So are you willing to retract your earlier statement where you said the very opposite of what you are saying now:
If everything about me is created by X, then X is the one and only source, and it makes no sense to say that I am the source of anything. If all I am is a creation by X, then X is the source of everything that comes next.
StephenB_{February 2, 2022
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Today is Groundhog Day. I highly recommend the movie which shows one how to be both good and happy at the same time. One of the great moral movies of all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GncQtURdcE4jerry_{February 2, 2022
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Aquinas on free will and potency & act. Aquinas holds the idea that nothing can move itself from potency to act unless it is moved to act by something else. He argues that a free person causes himself to act, but is nevertheless, not the first cause of the free act.
“To the forth it should be said that when it is said that something moves itself, that the same thing is mover and moved. But when it said that something is moved by another, the moved is taken to be one thing and the mover another. But it is clear that when something moves another, from this is not taken to follow that it is the first mover: wherefore it is not excluded that from another it is itself moved and from this other it has even this, that it moves.” “When anything moves itself, that does not exclude its being moved by another, from which it has even this that it moves itself. Thus, it is not repugnant to liberty that God is the cause of the free act of the will.” “Hence the action of the intellect, or of any created being whatsoever, depends upon God in two ways: first, inasmuch as it is from Him that it has the form whereby it acts; secondly, inasmuch as it is moved by Him to act.”
God is the first mover in the sense that He moves the free person to act – the idea is that this takes care of the divide between potency and act. The details of the act are left to the free person. The first cause moves, and the free person is self-steering, so to speak.
When anything moves itself, that does not exclude its being moved by another, from which it has even this that it moves itself
When anything moves itself, the self has a relationship with self. This self-relationship is pure freedom, because no thing can be between self and self; no thing can be between one thing. From this, when anything moves itself, there is necessarily movement which can only be traced back to self. There is self-movement originating from the self and nothing else, because no thing can be between one thing. Something that moves itself can be propelled in some direction by another, but this other cannot account for the additional movements originating from the self. In order to do that the other must impose himself between self and self. No thing can impose itself between one thing. The relationship ‘between’ self and self is necessarily independent from the other. Concluding: there is self-movement independent from the alleged “first cause.” The first cause cannot come between self and self, because no thing can come between one thing. Therefor the self moves itself from potency to act, independent from the "first cause"; the exact thing that Aquinas attempted to prevent.Origenes_{February 2, 2022
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Barry Arrington @379:
It’s like they never heard of Aristotle, act and potency. Never mind the sophisticated concepts. No one seems to know the basics.
Yes, and there is a penalty to pay for not grasping these basics. In their absence, it is impossible to reason in the abstract without going astray.StephenB_{February 1, 2022
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Origenes @381,
Your example is about an observer causing the state of a distinct thing. I’m talking about an observer/person causing the state of himself. A state of himself that does not exist until after the free act.
Yes, exactly. And moving backward in the chain of states of being as a result of observation, we then conclude that our original state was simply an observation of our non-existence, right?
Can the existence of conscious self-awareness emerge from something other than the act of observing oneself?
Yes, certainly. The free act of God observing our non-existence with His Logos. The Greek word, logos, can be translated as a word as the expression of a thought or concept, or reasoning expressed by words. "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God." - John 1:1 -QQuerius_{February 1, 2022
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Kairosfocus @378
A snake would be macroscopic, well beyond such. Media popularisations of academic papers looking at oddities do not change such.
Well, it looks like you've destroyed my nascent theory of the big bang origin by "Reverse Ragnarok," or the Ouroboros: https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/ouroboros/
The ouroboros is a form that dates back to ancient Egypt. The snake biting its own tail in an endless loop is seen in many cultures as a symbol of eternity, the cycle of life and death, and of both rebirth and destruction.
I hope you're happy. LOL -QQuerius_{February 1, 2022
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Vivid:
Meanwhile it’s been over two days and after repeated requests it’s still “crickets” regarding StephenB’s questions.
Origenes:
Those questions boil down to: how can self-causation be understood in a causal space/time context? I have repeatedly stated and argued (e.g. #336, #358) that this cannot be done.
/ Sorry, but that will not work. It was you who originally described your philosophy in a time/causal context. @265, you referred to time when you said that “there is no person *before* this act of self observation.” First, comes the act of self observation, then comes the person. You also said that the self aware person “comes into being,” which means that there was a *time* when it didn’t exist.StephenB_{February 1, 2022
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Querius @
The closest I can imagine to what you’re asserting is in quantum mechanics, where the free choice of what to observe or measure can be demonstrated to result in the collapse of the mathematical probability wave associated with a subatomic particle. (...) The particle doesn’t physically exist until it’s observed or measured. It has only a mathematical existence.
Your example is about an observer causing the state of a distinct thing. I’m talking about an observer/person causing the state of himself. A state of himself that does not exist until after the free act.
So, back to your assertion about self observation, where one can choose to observe oneself, one can observe oneself observing oneself, (...) can you provide any supporting evidence that existence can emerge from such intense and perhaps recursive observation?
Can the existence of conscious self-awareness emerge from something other than the act of observing oneself?Origenes_{February 1, 2022
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Vividbleau @
Meanwhile it’s been over two days and after repeated requests it’s still “crickets” regarding StephenB’s questions.
Those questions boil down to: how can self-causation be understood in a causal space/time context? I have repeatedly stated and argued (e.g. #336, #358) that this cannot be done.Origenes_{February 1, 2022
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BA @
It’s like they never heard of Aristotle, act and potency. Never mind the sophisticated concepts. No one seems to know the basics.
You may have noticed that I argue that the free person is the exception to the maxim that nothing can move itself from potency to act unless it first be moved to act. You are welcome to discuss Aquinas’ take on this matter.Origenes_{February 1, 2022
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Q, the fluctuations are only significant at the level of Brownian motion and below. Already at 500 to 1,000 bits of complexity, they are minimal. Think coins or elements in a paramagnetic array aligned with or opposite to a weak external magnetic field. Go to binomial theorem to see the result. A snake would be macroscopic, well beyond such. Media popularisations of academic papers looking at oddities do not change such. KFkairosfocus_{January 31, 2022
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Kairosfocus @374, Yes, in mechanics, optics, and the sudden appearances of snakes. (smile) But while entropy of a system always increases, there can be local decreases in entropy without violating the second law. In the case of the principle of "regurative self generation" of snakes or of self observant people-to-become, I'm looking for is some kind--any kind--of evidence that Origenes can produce in support of his assertions. Evidence will allow us to move forward rather than simply pairing imaginative stories in mortal combat against each other. -QQuerius_{January 31, 2022
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SB, How can a person who has not yet “come into being” observe himself? ANS: S/he cannot. What is not cannot act. KFkairosfocus_{January 31, 2022
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BA & SB, we are in a day where pervasive hyperskepticism and radical relativism have caused deep confusion and needless disputes. Disregard for logic's core first principles leads to dismissiveness towards logic of being thence the sort of futile disputing we can see too often in Socratic dialogues; recall, the net result was to try, sentence and execute Socrates at age 70 more or less as a corrupter of youth, thoughtcrime. The notion of circular retrocausation and implication of self-origin as opposed to a going concern agent acting reflexively on himself and initiating a subsequent chain of events in the external world is lost in the disputing and dismissiveness. We need to go back to, we are finite, fallible, morally struggling and too often ill willed. KFkairosfocus_{January 31, 2022
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Q, in simple mechanics or optics, yes. Once thermodynamics enters, time reversibility is not so simple; the second law is called time's arrow for a reason, having to do with probabilities of clusters of microstates associated with observable macrostate due to relative statistical weight. KF PS, fluctuations happen with micro level systems, the PM article is making a mountain out of a molehill. But then, that is directly tied to the complexity-specificity threshold issue in the design inference and what is plausible on blind forces.kairosfocus_{January 31, 2022
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StephenB at 372. It's like they never heard of Aristotle, act and potency. Never mind the sophisticated concepts. No one seems to know the basics.Barry Arrington_{January 31, 2022
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Origenes:
Acting freely is the coming to be of the person you want to be, who wasn’t before. Every free act by a person changes a person, constitutes self-realization. By acting freely the person is self-creating.
The changing person WAS there before, otherwise he could not have been changed. A person that doesn’t exist cannot undergo change. What wasn’t there before is the changed person’s current state of existence, which is new, not the person’s existence, which was already there.StephenB_{January 31, 2022
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Kairosfocus @366,
Q, a snake swallowing its tail destroys itself of course. The problem is that self-motion or acting on oneself . . . where does the regurgitation come from . . . is not self origin. The later has the not yet causing itself.
In physics, observing things forward in time is supposedly indistinguishable from observing things backward in time. Consider this article . . . https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a38390095/could-time-flow-in-reverse/ -QQuerius_{January 31, 2022
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