It’s been a while since I’ve been “out here” and I am wondering if materialism is still considered by some to be a rational position to hold. I understand “materialism” to be the idea that every existing thing is comprised of the periodic table of elements (rearranged in a vast number of ways described by the standard model and general relativity) and no more. Is this a fair definition? Thanks.
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From my perspective, “materialism” – in the very simplistic sense that everything is made from tiny lumps of hard stuff – is an archaic usage. The more recent term is “physicalism” which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains as follows:
Good material, Sev. This is important:
Also, the article is clear that there is some ambiguity about the term “materialism”.
I recently discussed this with someone (Querius), distinguishing “old” materialism from “new” materialism. Modern materialism includes everything that modern physics accepts as existing, including all the facets of quantum mechanics, fields, etc. that go way beyond just thinking of the elemental particles that make up atoms as summarized in the periodic table.
Materialism is a view that the world can be explained, admitting no exceptions, by natural laws. Its definition is malleable, if not in flux, hence the nonsense about the “new” materialism and “bits of hard stuff”.
Science has long disputed the classical understanding of matter, and described it as an illusion arising from a false belief that what is obvious and observable can be extrapolated into the sub-atomic world; or, as Nobel Laureate, Hans Bethe, put it, “our intuition is based on our experiences in the macroscopic world. There is no reason to expect our intuition to be valid for microscopic phenomena.”
Bohr, Heisenberg, Planck, …, all conveyed the conception that, at sub-atomic levels, there is no matter as such, only relationships, or potentials; and elementary subatomic particles don’t exist except as an explanatory tool, so an elementary subatomic ‘particle’ is a pattern of excitation in a quantum field. Though abstract, it exists.
In other words materialism has had/is having an agonising time trying to convey an acceptable definition of ‘matter’, and poet, Richard Wilbur, put it well when he wrote, “Cloudy, cloudy, is the stuff of stones.”
“Scientific” materialism is the ‘strong view’ of metaphysical materialism and it, also, asserts that the physical world is all there is; it thus lies in a general philosophy of materialism, but with the word ‘scientific’ added for a cachet of distinction.
Materialism has no scientific credentials. Materialism is a philosophy not subordinate to scientific methods. Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner is one who argues that, while some philosophical concepts may be logically consistent with present-day quantum mechanics, materialism is not one of them. Tacking ‘scientific’ to materialism as Whitehead and James etc., did was as silly as tacking ‘scientific’ to Stoicism, or any philosophy – Positivism imploded when it tacked on ‘Logical’.
The root of materialism today is that everything which exists, and every event that occurs, had a natural cause; it holds that matter/energy interactions are enough to explain any phenomenon, including human consciousness, as the outcome of material interactions. Notions of free will, for example, do not, cannot, exist, for if humans are wholly matter, and matter is ruled by matter/energy interactions, then there is no space for free will. The argument runs that the brain is bits of matter, and matter moves following laws of physics, so what is considered as free will, etc., are mathematically objective outcomes of matter movement. In Materialism, all causes are natural causes, all effects are natural effects.
Cause and effect is very properly at the root of all physics so words like ‘interactions’ and ‘attraction’ and ‘result’ and ‘stress’ and ‘product’ pepper every scientific paper.
And It is the absence of a natural cause for the origin of the universe, and life, and, indeed, for the natural origin of ‘matter’ itself that will eventually cause the jettisoning of materialism as a philosophy of any use to humanity.
Belfast writes,
Yes, this is what I was saying about the modern understanding of materialsim, or physicalism.
The OP was not asking for a defense of materialism as an explanation for everything, but rather just a clarification of what the modern understanding of the term is, which is what Sev and I have responded to.
Belfast, you write, “The argument runs that the brain is bits of matter, and matter moves following laws of physics.”
However, as you and I both agree, I think, “bits of matter” is an outdated concept. Macroscopically the brain is “bits of matter”, but so is my table. What they are at the foundational quantum level is something different.
Let me make it clear, again, I’m not defending philosophical materialism (I am not a materialist), but we are trying to have a consistent view of what modern materialism refers to, and it is that, to quote you (or maybe Bethe: I’m not sure where his words end and yours begin), “there is no matter as such, only relationships, or potentials; and elementary subatomic particles don’t exist except as an explanatory tool.”
VL
Materialism is the talk; but it is not always the walk. A materialist who actually lives as though her husband is an assortment of molecules responding to chemical interactions, who actually lives as though her feeling of free will is merely a cultural artefact and that she really has no more free will than a wheelbarrow, who sees her children as robots directed by their genes and environmental pressures, would likely be regarded as a psychopath.
“Love” might be a reification but it works better than dissolving an amalgam of causes into its possible constituent parts of self-interest, need for approval, youthful imprinting and the rest.
I remember when the Higgs Field was established as not a statistical coincidence and I considered the peculiarity of a thing – a lepton in this case – as having no intrinsic mass, immaterial by one definition, yet acquiring mass when it reacted in a Higgs field, it looked like acquiring mass led to materiality. That led to musing on whether things like Fairness, Justice, Authority, Love , are continuations of the physical world, abstractions which exist acquiring mass in different kinds of fields.
TGP, great to see you popping up, hope you hang around for a bit! KF
PS, Evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow travellers = a description of much of Naturalism, travel in the orbit of physicalism. Lewontin lets cats out of the bag, but maybe Monod needs to be put in the spotlight:
Hey, KF, no one here is defending materialism. Have you actually read the posts???
Viola Lee @7,
Pretty snarky if you ask me.
If you consult online Britannica, Materialism is defined as follows:
For additional information, see https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy
I’ve typically used the term, deterministic materialism. However, theoretical physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder defends materialism by further defining it as “superdeterminism,” denying free will, spooky action at a distance, and supporting the hidden variables (i.e. missing information) interpretation of quantum mechanics.
https://youtu.be/ytyjgIyegDI
I’m seem to remember vigorous (endless) debates here regarding neuroscience and free will. Do you?
Perhaps I should use this less popular term, superdeterminism, in the future.
-Q
But no one in this thread is defending materialism, Q. We’re just discussing what the word means, as is the topic of the OP. That’s why KF’s post was a distraction. Given the extreme language KF often uses to characterize people, I don’t think a little snark is unjustified (and it was also a legitimate question.)
Here’s some more of the article that significantly adds to the part you quoted.
It says,
Everyone in this thread is pointing out that that definition is very out-dated.
Britannica goes on to say,
This is what both Belfast and I have said.
Viola Lee @9,
So I guess you didn’t watch Sabine Hossenfelder’s video on determinism and superdeterminism, right?
-Q
It would appear, then, that physicalists don’t understand quantum physics or what the term “wave” or “field of potential” refers to in that theory.
Materialism to me is the philosophical abuse of reductionism which turns science into the religion of scientism.
Empiricism is the idea that we can only know anything that we are aware of, that has some physical existence. That includes quantum effects, William. And gravity.
VL, kindly note OP:
I responded to TGP on this in a PS, in large part by citing a leading, Nobel Prize holding materialist, Monod. He in effect tries to redefine science as applied materialism. This is right there in his leading bestseller book and in a TV interview. In so doing, he identifies what he understands materialism is, from a leading horse’s mouth.
Notice:
So, I am manifestly on topic.
Now, we can freely go further to flesh out Monod, that the physical cosmos and/or quasi physical extensions exhaust fundamental reality.
That would include things like quantum foams popping up sub universes as fluctuations, it would include multiverses and whatever root reality exists. That’s why there is held to be no plan, no intention in the universe. And that’s why the prestige of science is drawn on to make it seem plausible to the College educated and the secularised masses who look to Big-S Science as the utterly dominant source of reliable truth.
Where of course the origins narrative runs from hydrogen to humans by way of a big bang, cosmological evolution, solar system evolution, chemical evolution, spontaneous origin of cell based life, body plan level macroevolution, human evolution, language evolution, societal evolution, all claimed to be driven by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. (For those who need it, this extends the understanding of materialism beyond our periodic table of elements and associated particles, the four forces etc.)
I have for 35 years pointed out that in effect Haldane is right, such a narrative cannot credibly account for the rational responsible freedom required for us to have enough credibility to be rational and knowing creatures. That is, just on its own terms and what we need to have intellectual credibility enough to reliably warrant and know, it is self referentially incoherent and self falsifying.
As a common example, I noticed how marxist critiques of those they target are self referential. So were freudian and behaviourist thinkers. That extends to their successors today, it is a pattern to the point that we need to watch out for it.
That was long before I heard of an abductive design inference on signs or a theory or a movement.
It was there as I thought about the thermodynamics and information issues that led me to see that the long since known architecture of the cell has to answer to those issues and it fed back into my longstanding interest in astronomy and cosmology. Along the way these things helped me bridge information, systems architecture and the impact of the informational school of thought on thermodynamics.
But that is a personal story in outline.
The key point is, we have from a key horse’s mouth, a clear path to understanding evolutionary materialistic scientism.
KF
AF, the empir-ICAL must not be confused for the empir-ICIST. KF
For William
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation
🙂 Materialism is a ridiculous concept. The biggest problem is that to be formulated you need something that is not in the periodic table of elements: reason.
Who are you arguing with?
Thanks for succinctly highlighting the primary fatal flaw within materialism/physicalism/naturalism Alan.,,,, Under materialism/physicalism/naturalism there simply is no “Who” for anyone to be arguing with! Only “Neuronal Illusions’, ‘Meat Robots’, and/or ‘controlled hallucinations’ of a very distinctive kind’,
You see, as Alan succinctly highlighted in his question “Who are you arguing with?”, (and in a shining example of poetic justice), in the atheist’s denial that God exists as a real person, the atheist ends up having to deny that he himself exists as a real person. Without God being a real person, there simply is nothing for the atheistic materialist to ground the entire concept of ‘personhood’ on!
Moreover, it is not just our ‘sense of self’, i.e. our very ‘personhood’, that Darwinists end up denying the reality of, (as devastating as that is for materialists), Darwinists end up, because of their reductive materialistic framework, being forced to deny the reality of many things that everyone, including the vast majority of Darwinists themselves, accept as being undeniably real.
Thus, although a materialist, Darwinian Atheist, and/or Methodological Naturalist, may firmly, and falsely, believe that he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for naturalistic explanations over and above God as a viable explanation), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists themselves are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
And to put a cherry on top of all this, empirical science has now proven, via the falsification of ‘realism’ by Leggett’s inequality, that material particles themselves, (whatever the ‘particles’ may actually be, and which Darwinian materialists hold to be the ultimate foundation, and/or ultimate definition, for all of reality), are themselves found to not be ‘real’.
Verse:
Like Madonna sings:
Chuckdarwin: Like Madonna sings:
Papa, don’t preach.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
JVL
LOL……
And the answer is?
Sev, that we are embodied is not the issue, that we are self aware, conscience guarded, have rational responsible freedom is. KF
AF, actually, there is a need to clarify the term materialism. Some have taken time to make substantial contributions. Your input is? ________ KF
KF, it’s simple. Anything that impinges on our reality (our ontology, if you like), however indirectly (as examples but not restricted to) such as an image from a scanning electron microscope, an X-ray diffraction pattern from a crystal, infra-red signals from the Webb telescope is part of this physical universe. Some things are only known from their effects, such as gravity and black holes. All are physical. There are indeed limits to our knowledge; what is beyond the visible universe, for instance. There are also limits to our ability to understand ourselves and the reality we inhabit. Humans have a propensity for vivid imagination and, seemingly, an emotional need for stories that fill gaps in our knowledge.
AF, our consciousness is delusional if it is without residue the manifestation of a computational substrate and if it is sufficiently free to be rational it is a sign that reality is more than the material, as Haldane pointed out long since. And your pushing strawmannish talking points about gaps is a naked, prejudice driven fallacy. KF
Hmmm, AF: “Anything that impinges on our reality,,, All are physical”
And exactly what is this ‘our reality’ that all that physical stuff is impinging on?
As hinted at in post 20, Materialism/Physicalism/Naturalism simply is at a complete loss to explain the “our reality’ that all that physical stuff is impinging on. i.e. the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness.
I find George Ellis’s ‘pragmatic’ definition of existence to be far more useful in defining what exists. “If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter)”,,, “The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities.”
Likewise, using Ellis’s ‘pragmatic’ definition of existence, God’s Mind can also be discerned. As Dr. Egnor asks, “What is it about God’s existence that you still consider hidden?”
Verse:
If, maybe. That’s a big if. Whilst I question the concept of consciousness altogether, let’s say for the sake of argument that consciousness is a property of a living, thinking human brain. By that definition, consciousness is a process inherent in brain activity. There’s no need to look for a non-physical explanation.
He’s dead. But a few quotations (and apocryphal) remarks remain popular.
Wikipedia
*He is famous for the (possibly apocryphal) response that he gave when some theologians asked him what could be inferred about the mind of the Creator from the works of His Creation: “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”[121][122] or sometimes, “….stars and beetles.”[123]
*”My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”[124]
*”It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”[124]:?209?
*”Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.”[125][126]
*”I had gastritis for about fifteen years until I read Lenin and other writers, who showed me what was wrong with our society and how to cure it. Since then I have needed no magnesia.”[127]
*”I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: (i) This is worthless nonsense; (ii) This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; (iii) This is true, but quite unimportant; (iv) I always said so.”[128]
*”Three hundred and ten species in all of India, representing two hundred and thirty-eight genera, sixty-two families, nineteen different orders. All of them on the Ark. And this is only India, and only the birds.”[129]
*”The stupidity of the mynah shows that in birds, as in men, linguistic and practical abilities are not very highly correlated. A student who can repeat a page of a text book may get first class honours, but may be incapable of doing research.”[130]
*When asked whether he would lay down his life for his brother, Haldane, presaging Hamilton’s rule, supposedly replied “two brothers or eight cousins”.
“let’s say for the sake of argument that consciousness is a property of a living, thinking human brain.”
Let’s not! “I” am not my brain! (see post 20)
re 14, to KF: My apologies: you were on topic. The modern meaning of materialism would include the idea that there is no plan or intention in the outflowing of causal histories via physical mechanisms, including all the forces and quantum phenomena that have been mentioned above.
VL, appreciated. Materialism is indeed beyond C19 now, as our concepts of the physical world have changed, but it still retains the central rejection Monod stated and thus it becomes an ideological imposition and runs into self referentiality trouble. . KF
AF, the dismissal of consciousness is at once self referential and self defeating. Of course, the trouble is, this is the part that sticks out beyond the Procrustean bed. KF
Doesn’t stick out of my bed, Procrustean or not.
What do you think consciousness is, and where is it located?
AF, to object you used your own consciousness and appealed to mine. That is enough. KF
So, KF, you run true to form. Ask a question that you have no answer to.
Actually, I’m quite interested in the idea of what people think the word “consciousness” actually means. I get the impression some religious folks equate it with the idea of a soul. My current position is there is no need nor justification to postulate that consciousness has a separate existence from the process of thinking, a physical process which occurs in the brain.
Anyone want to argue the point?
We can alter consciousness with chemicals that act on the brain.
Indeed. And, though I certainly don’t suggest they be repeated, some fairly convincing experiments regarding the connection between brain and consciousness were conducted in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
“some fairly convincing experiments regarding the connection between brain and consciousness were conducted in the aftermath of the French Revolution.”
Wait a second, so extremely crude experiments conducted over 220 years ago solved the hard problem of consciousness and we have been missing it all these years???
Stop the presses!
As to altering consciousness with chemicals,
Also see this refutation of the “DMT causes NDEs” claim of atheists
AF, you forget this https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/reference-the-smith-model-an-architecture-for-cybernetics-and-mind-body-free-will-determinism-compatibilism-analysis/ (or even my always linked . . . ) and run true to form with your ill founded superciliousness. KF
PS, did you notice my point that any thought that sees consciousness as dubious and delusional is self referentially incoherent? Where, of course there is a natural general location for the conscious self, our bodies, but also sometimes a bit beyond, on a lot of testimony and experience. In any case by law of identity it is not the brain or an emanation emerging from it, it interfaces with the body. See the Smith Model I have put up ever so many times as a start point for the serious discusion that too many are eager to avoid.
Followed your link. Very handily, Vincent Torley, who I regard as a friend these days though we disagree amicably on many issues, has commented on the OP in comments. He writes:
The model you outline above is a very good way of describing how the unconscious mind of an insect might work, for instance. (“Unconscious mind” might sound like an oxymoron to some readers, but I used the term in my thesis to refer to the fact that an insect uses certain self-correcting representations as an internal map of the world, with which it can steer itself around. Effectively, these representations function as beliefs.)
However, the conscious mind of a mammal or bird is a different kind of entity from the unconscious mind of an insect, and the self-reflexive mind of a human being is even further removed. In these kinds of minds, we can speak of “top-down” patterns of causation in the supervisory controller which are absent in the insect. And in the case of humans, it is quite certain that this top-down control is exercised via higher-level mental acts which are no longer bodily acts.
The late philosopher, Mortimer Adler, had an interesting way of putting it. Referring to the human brain, he said: “You can’t think without it, but you don’t think with it.”
I certainly disagree with Mortimer Adler. The mind is what the brain does and thinking is a physical process happening entirely within the brain.
Q, since for some reason you feel like continuing to ask, I watched the Hossenfelder video. I doesn’t seem to add anything to the discussion on this thread. She does have some interesting thoughts on QM, although she isn’t in the majority on some issues (which doesn’t mean she might not be right.) But I don’t know why you think it important that I watched it. But now you can quit asking me.
BA77@41, scroll, scroll, scroll. At least my thumb is getting a work out. I’m beginning to look like Sissy Hankshaw in “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.”
AF, I disagree with the phrase top down, read the chart and you will see two way interaction and a two port memory; supervisory yes but interactive. In fact I think quantum influence is a possibility. I put up the model as a start point for serious discussion. KF
Sir Giles: I’m beginning to look like Sissy Hankshaw in “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.”
Sigh. Another roadside attraction. Skinny legs and all.
Still Life with Woodpecker. I am going to have to re-read all of them.
The crowd here would become apoplectic over Another Roadside Attraction. Smuggling the body of Jesus Christ out of the Vatican crypts, threatening the collapse of Christianity.
Sir Giles states, “Smuggling the body of Jesus Christ out of the Vatican crypts, threatening the collapse of Christianity.”
Yet, directly contrary to what Sir Giles apparently wants to believe, it is his atheism, not Christianity, that is headed towards the dustbin of history.
Whereas Christianity, again when looking at the entire world population, is continuing to grow at a healthy rate:
To give a glimpse of how putrid Sir Giles’s atheism is as a worldview, “Here’s How Badly Soviet Atheism Failed in Europe”
This is simply remarkable, after decades of indoctrination into Darwinian/Atheistic ideology, and the massacre of countless thousands of Pastors, Priests, and Nuns in Stalin’s purges, in very short order Christianity picked up right where it left off as being the majority belief in the Soviet Union. It is as if atheism had not been constantly indoctrinated into all those people for all those many years.
If anything testifies to just how bankrupt, and repugnant, atheism is as a worldview, the dramatic, overnight, resurgence of Christianity in the former Soviet Union is it.
Also of note:
Verse:
Bornagain77: Yet, directly contrary to what Sir Giles apparently wants to believe, it is his atheism, not Christianity, that is headed towards the dustbin of history.
Too funny, Sir Giles was referring to the plot of A NOVEL, one written in the early 70s by a very famous author.
You really should get out more.
So you and Sir Giles, as Darwinian atheists, are not antagonistic towards Christianity???
Really???
Regardless, I stand by the facts I presented, it is atheism, not Christianity, that is headed towards the dustbin of history.
Verse:
Bornagain77: So you and Sir Giles, as Darwinian atheists, are not antagonistic towards Christianity???
I was merely pointing out that you didn’t get the cultural reference.
Regardless, I stand by the facts I presented, it is atheism, not Christianity, that is headed towards the dustbin of history.
It’s not a fact if it hasn’t happened.
JVL at 52,
In the former Soviet Union, the official State religion was atheism. A look at the various military operations that occurred since the Russian Revolution begs the question: What god were these soldiers dying for? Apparently, Atheism. The goal was to ‘export the Revolution.’ Former Churches were being used to store ammunition. I watched the Soviet Union fall in the early 1990s and religion return. So much for the claim that an ‘atheist utopia’ and ‘workers’ paradise’ was the way forward for mankind.
Relatd: So much for the claim that an ‘atheist utopia’ and ‘workers’ paradise’ was the way forward for mankind.
I don’t think anyone would suggest that the Soviet Union was any kind of real functioning state. And, are you saying it’s a lot better now since they allowed the return of religion? Who ever made a claim about an ‘atheist utopia’ anyway?
You don’t seem to be making any kind of coherent argument, just railing against non-theists.
Also, I have said many, many times I have no problem with faith. I don’t hate God. I don’t hate the church. I’m not advocating the abolition of religion. So, really, I’m not sure what you are complaining about.
Whatever JVL, contrary to what is popularly believed, it is your Darwinian atheism that is shrinking at a marked rate. Whereas, as I pointed out, despite the best efforts of the totalitarian atheists of the 20th century, Christianity is continuing to grow a fairly healthy clip.
That makes me VERY happy. As it should make any reasonable man VERY happy.
And that is not even counting the untold millions, upon millions, of abortions worldwide.
JVL, why you and other Darwinian atheists would even try to defend such a horrible worldview, I have no idea. The science certainly isn’t on your side, and the disastrous social consequences for mankind should make even you recoil in horror at defending such a reprehensible ‘death as the creator’ worldview,,,, even if the science were on your side, (which it isn’t).
As to how diametrically opposed Darwinian ‘morality’ and Christian morality actually are:
Bornagain77: contrary to what is popularly believed, it is your Darwinian atheism that is shrinking at a marked rate.
Not according to most polls about religious beliefs. But again, I’m not fighting against or even arguing against faith. You, on the other hand, are trying to pick a fight with atheism. But, being something of a pacifist, I’m not going to rise to your baited barbs.
Abortions have nothing to do with atheism. As I have pointed out in the past (and is easy to verify) early abortions were generally considered legal and acceptable in England and the US until the mid-19th century. When just about everyone was a Christian or pretended to be one. A fact which you conveniently neglect to point out. Which is, sadly, typical.
JVL, and yet studies have consistently found that ‘the secularization thesis’ promulgated by atheists is false. Go figure. “When we go back to that initial secularization hypothesis and re-examine it, we realize that not only was it wrong, but it was wrongly founded on a white western bias which assumed that where Western Europe led, the rest of the world would follow. And those days are gone.”
“Abortions have nothing to do with atheism.”
Really??? So you really think that Jesus would be championing ‘dismemberment’ abortions?
Bornagain77: and yet studies have consistently found that ‘the secularization thesis’ promulgated by atheists is false.
I am not familiar with any kind of secularisation thesis. The truth is that non-theists tend not to sit around in dark basements in small cabals plotting the downfall of faith. In fact, the matter of faith almost never comes up in my daily life. It’s not something I discuss often nor does anyone (except the Jehovah’s Witnesses) seem to want to discuss it with me.
I can’t quite figure out why you want to conflate political models with theistic or non-theistic ones. Faith is just not a political issue in Europe which is good because it should be a private, personal matter which should not influence the way someone is treated.
But you seem to need to tilt at various windmills. Perhaps your time would be better spent arguing the many Christians who support abortion and other things you disapprove of like same-sex marriage. I’m not going to touch your faith or church at all but your fellow Christians just might help tear your faith apart.
Whatever JVL, now you are just flinging stuff at the wall to see what sticks. You, as usual, got nothing. I’m more that happy to let my comments stand as stated and let unbiased readers, (if there be any unbiased readers on UD), judge for themselves.
From: https://probe.org/faith-trends-in-america-how-is-christianity-faring-as-we-enter-the-third-decade-of-the-21st-century/
Bornagain77: now you are just flinging stuff at the wall to see what sticks.
Not at all. I’ve said over and over and over again I am not anti-faith, that I am not anti-church, that I am not a militant atheist, etc, etc, etc. I have also noted, many times, that lots of my very good friends have a deep and abiding faith and we get along just fine because we respect and like each other regardless of our faith or lack thereof.
You are the one trying to tar-and-feather anyone who you think is an atheist or a ‘Darwinist’. You clearly dislike both of those groups to the point of hatred. In fact, you spend hours and hours every day on this site (at least) posting things which are not only calling some well established science into question but attempting to group atheists and ‘Darwinists’ with Nazi’s and Communists (of the Soviet variety).
If anyone here is just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks it’s clearly you. Your intense dislike oozes out of just about everything you post. It seems to almost possess you. I guess, deep down, you are genuinely terrified of atheism and unguided evolutionary theory. Not sure why but it sure feels that way. And it makes you react viscerally instead of thoughtfully: you frequently misrepresent what people have actually written, you latch onto a few trigger words instead of taking things in the complete context, you generally don’t even read the full text of things you post links about as I have shown several times in the past (even pointing out that one link wasn’t even to the right paper!).
You might get more sympathy and responses if you actually tried to listen more often and really try to understand the arguments you knee-jerk reject. I’m quite sure you won’t do those things but I offer the suggestions in hopes you do.
JVL, a dogmatic Darwinian atheist who steadfastly refuses to listen to any scientific evidence that contradicts his Darwinian worldview, tries to lecture me on listening to others. 🙂
But anyways. his blatant hypocrisy aside, and again, worldwide atheism is declining and Christianity is growing.
And again, what is materialism?
Bornagain77: “According to the Gordon-Conwell report, there are fewer atheists around the world today (147 million) than in 1970 (165 million), with the number expected to continue declining through 2050.”
That sounds very non-sensical to me: the population doubled and the number of atheists dropped? Really? I may take the time to look that particular statistic up.
Fewer Christians are dying for their faith.
Oh so they’re not being persecuted. I could have sworn someone here said they were . . .
More than 90 million Bibles will be printed this year.
More tickets to football (soccer) matches than that will be bought. So what?
Hahahahahahahah.
I tried accessing the first link: https://www.kentuckytoday.com/baptist_life/7-encouraging-trends-of-global-christianity-in-2022/article_6a1f9336-861a-11ec-aab8-dbfeb19c7929.html and I got this message:
So, that website does not abide by privacy laws enforced all over Europe. Lovely.
So, I can’t even read the article. OH WELL!
Actually, I think the “what is materialism” question has been answered, and was done about post 19.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent dramatic increase of Christianity in the former Soviet Union, can readily account for a large percentage of the dramatic drop in global atheism from 1970.
Throw China’s recent ‘Christianization’ on top of that, I am surprised that the percentage drop in worldwide atheism is not even higher than what they reported,
Bornagain77: The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent dramatic increase of Christianity in the former Soviet Union, can readily account for the dramatic drop in global atheism from 1970.
Perhaps. It is somewhat plausible at least. Too bad Russia being Christian again didn’t stop them from invading Ukraine and killing tens of thousands of innocent people. But, you can’t have everything can you?
From the linked article:
So, Putin is protecting Christians . . . sometimes at least. I guess that’s alright then. I’ll stop worrying about the destruction in Syria then.
But wait, there’s more:
Maybe not so Christian after all then. Oh well.
Oh dear oh dear:
Evangelical leaders “face reckoning over praise for Putin”
https://currentpub.com/2022/02/25/evangelical-leaders-face-reckoning-over-praise-for-putin/
And more from: https://ministrywatch.com/franklin-graham-and-pro-family-groups-face-reckoning-over-praise-for-putin/
Huh? Trying to find a silver lining for your atheism in just how anti-moral a country is? And that does not strike you as being macabre?
Do you even think about what you are writing? Or are you really just a ‘meat robot’ as your Darwinian worldview entails?
For what its worth, I think Russia, and all countries, fall far short of the “Christian mark”. None-the-less, however far a country may ‘miss the mark’ of Christianity, it is still orders of magnitude better than what happens to a country under atheism. Just ask the +200 million dead in the 20th century at the hands of their own atheistic governments!
So how many here support Putin and Russia and think we shouldn’t be involved the war in Ukraine?
Bornagain77: Huh? Trying to find a silver lining for your atheism in just how anti-moral a country is? And that does not strike you as being macabre?
I don’t think pointing out that despite Russia’s acceptance of Christianity it hasn’t stopped perpetrating some pretty hideous acts is trying to justify or support the Soviet Union or atheism. Sometimes you don’t make sense at all. You’re like one of those baseball batters that tries to hit a home run on every pitch. Which means you miss a lot.
Do you even think about what you are writing? Or are you really just a ‘meat robot’ as your Darwinian worldview entails?
I think a lot. And I check out stuff, and look for information and data. And sometimes I find things that I didn’t expect or run contrary to what I did expect. And I try really hard NOT to just pick and choose phrases from papers and articles that resonate with some of my beliefs. I try and peruse the entire piece of work to make sure I understand the full context.
Again, you are bound and determined to pick a fight. Sadly, some of your links and references lead to areas and statements that prove to be uncomfortable for you at best and, sometimes, even contradictory to the point you think you’re making. It’s not my fault that actually scanning an entire linked article of yours sometimes makes you look foolish.
None-the-less, however far a country may ‘miss the mark’ of Christianity, it is still orders of magnitude better than what happens to a country under atheism. Just ask the +200 million dead in the 20th century at the hands of their own atheistic governments!
I’ll just ask the thousands and thousands of Ukrainians who were raped and killed by Russians because . . . why exactly? What did Ukraine do to provoke the war crimes now being done to them? Is this any different from when the (atheistic) Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan? Has being Christian made any difference at all in the way politicians in Moscow act?
If Putin decides to use tactical nuclear weapons I just might have a cloud of fallout drift over my home. Maybe you don’t care ’cause you’re a long ways away but some of us who are closer to the front lines are scared. But he supports Christians so you’ll cut him some slack?
I doubt if the real numbers of atheists and believers has changed much over the years. What is more likely is that religious belief was heavily suppressed in The Soviet Union and Communist China so that skewed the numbers. It was assumed that all good Soviet and Chinese citizens had abandoned their religious beliefs at the behest of The Party when all that happened was religious belief was driven underground not erased.
It is easy to commit the fallacy of division. Putin is a psychopath and I’m sure there are many ordinary Russians, despite the propaganda they are fed, who would be glad to see the back of him. I’m also desperately sorry for the people of Ukraine and the destruction of life and property they are having to endure because of Putin’s unjustifiable aggression. Ukraine should be given all possible support to resist the aggressor .
Seversky: So how many here support Putin and Russia and think we shouldn’t be involved the war in Ukraine?
I’m sure many Russian civilians are decent and peaceful people who don’t really understand what’s going on because their access to information is severely curtailed and edited. But the Russian army and its commanders . . . they are acting like animals. Hideous awful crimes are being perpetrated by them. They need to be stopped and prosecuted. Otherwise we condone by silence, we accept by turning away, we let the cancer spread and hope our children figure out how to deal with it.
One of these days Putin is going to be taken out and shot by his generals or oligarchs or both. They’re probably arguing over who’s going to be in charge once he’s eliminated. But if you let up on the pressure and the kickback it will put off that reckoning. This isn’t about ideology, it’s about sheer, unmitigated, raw power as manifested via horror and death.
Putin isn’t going to spare you or protect you because you’re Christian as most Ukrainians are. He will lay you under the ground if he thinks it suits his purposes regardless of your creed.
Got to love Darwinian atheists appealing to Christian morality in order to try to find a silver lining for their atheism.
“I think a lot.”
Hardly.
Bornagain77: Got to love Darwinian atheists appealing to Christian morality in order to try to find a silver lining for their atheism.
Well, let’s hear your authentic Christian moral stance then on the war in Ukraine. Putin has encouraged Christianity in Russia and now the Russians are bombing and raping and killing Christians in Ukraine. I assume you and your church are happy to condemn him publicly?
JVL, you are something of a rabble-rouser.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/02/1126454129/russia-ukraine-pope-francis-plea-peace
By the way, the Russians are pursuing specific military objectives. Warfare has not changed since the Second World War. In my opinion, based on history, nuclear weapons will not be used. The Russians could have done so when they were in Afghanistan and did not. The U.S. could have done the same when they were in Afghanistan but did not.
I’m also sure that ordinary Russians on average are decent people who love their country and don’t want anything to do with Putin and his megalomaniacal ambitions. I’m sure they do care about all the lives that have been lost and the personal and economic hardship they are suffering, things I doubt he cares about at all.
What is both alarming and despicable are the signs that MAGA Republican sympathies are swinging towards these really unpleasant autocrats, not just Putin but Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in Hungary or Lukashenko in Belarus. Tucker Carlson is said to have become almost a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda.
If this is what MAGA Republicans really want here in the US, to do away with democracy and install Trump as President-for-life with a rubber-stamp Supreme Court as an American Volksgerichtshof then there will be trouble.
Of course I am against Putin committing his atrocities against the Ukrainians. What made you think otherwise? Especially given Stalin’s genocide against the Ukrainians, (Stalin stole all their grain at gunpoint resulting in the mass starvation of millions of Ukrainians), I’ve opposed Putin from day one in his invasion of Ukraine. My ‘simple’ point was that in order for you, a Darwinian atheist, to condemn his atrocities you are forced to reach over into the objective morality of Judeo-Christian Theism in order to do it. “Red in tooth and claw” Darwinism simply provides you no objective moral basis in which to condemn Putin’s acts as evil. ,,, If only you really did think deeply about such matters instead of just superficially trying to rationalize them away in order to try to protect your atheism and try to cast a shadow on Christianity.
BA77@49,55,57,58, 63, 67, 70, 80, scroll, scroll? Scroll.
JVL, all of this over the fact that he doesn’t appreciate Tom Robbins. What I would be interested in is whether BA77, KF and others here would vote against having Tom Robbins novels in school libraries.
Kind of like how Darwinists try to forcibly censor any and all criticism of their theory?
Thank you for the non answer. Would you like to try again? Would you support a book that satirizes the Christian faith being in a school library. Yes or no.
Hmm, so pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of a Darwinist griping about ‘hypothetical’ censorship, as opposed to the real censorship that Darwin skeptics face day in and day out, is a ‘non-answer’ in your book? Really???
Perhaps, “remove the beam from your eye” might ring a bell?
“If this is what MAGA Republicans really want here in the US, to do away with democracy and install Trump as President-for-life with a rubber-stamp Supreme Court as an American Volksgerichtshof then there will be trouble.”
The one doing away with Democracy is Zelenski
https://deadline.com/2022/03/ukraine-president-vologymyr-zelensky-combines-all-national-tv-channels-to-combat-alleged-misinformation-1234982814/
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/03/20/ukraine-zelensky-uses-martial-law-to-ban-main-opposition-party-in-crackdown-on-division/
As far as your inane MAGA Trump installation comment one must have institutional power to do such a thing. Trump has no institutional power. The military hates him, the media hates him, the CIA hates him, the intelligence agencies hate him. Many Republicans hate him.Exactly how would this installation happen?
Vivid
Nobody is talking about a hypothetical censorship. His books have been banned.
Your refusal to answer speaks volumes, and not in your favour.
I see its time for a Sunday school lesson,
BA77, your turnabout projection is showing.
RE 85 I forgot to mention the FBI and DOJ all hate Trump as well.
Viivid
“Materialism”, like all “-isms,” does a great deal of mischief — we cannot think without -isms, yet all too often the -isms control our thinking.
One question to consider would be, “materialism as opposed to what?” I mean, what is supposed to contrast with materialism? If one says that materialism contrasts with dualism or idealism, then one is already conceiving of materialism as a definite kind of position. For some philosophers, Aristotelian hylomorphism is a kind of materialism — for others, it isn’t. (This depends on what kinds of causes one can accommodate within “materialism”.)
The logical positivists used “physicalism” but for them this was a choice of language — shall we use a language that refers to physical objects or not? — as opposed to a phenomenalist language, in which all talk about physical objects is analyzed into talk about actual and possible sensations.
From the OP: “I understand “materialism” to be the idea that every existing thing is comprised of the periodic table of elements (rearranged in a vast number of ways described by the standard model and general relativity) and no more.”
I think this is a good definition of materialism, using that term in one of its senses. I think it captures what most materialists are trying to say: that everything that exists could be, at least in principle, be explained in terms of quantum mechanics or general relativity. (Even if such explanations are almost never useful — would a materialist say that if we’re trying to figure what’s driving inflation, quantum mechanics will be more useful than economics?)
I think that materialism, thus defined, is perhaps coherent but a deeply unattractive position. And it has to do with reasons that I haven’t yet seen addressed in this thread.
Why does the materialist think that all explanations are, in principle, reducible to explanations of quantum mechanics or general relativity? It’s because those theories belong to fundamental physics: they are true everywhere in the history of the universe, at all times and places. (Technically, only above the Planck scale, but let’s ignore that for a moment.) We can talk about molecules in terms of atoms and atoms in terms of fermions and boson, but we don’t know how to talk about fermions and bosons in terms of anything else.
Likewise, general relativity is also a theory of fundamental physics — it also purports to be true at all times and places in the history of the universe. But general relativity and quantum mechanics are not logically compatible. They are both true everywhere and everywhen, at every resolution of spatio-temporal scale.
Perhaps quantum mechanics will be replaced by another theory that can be reconciled with general relativity. Perhaps general relativity will be replaced by another theory that can be reconciled with quantum mechanics. Perhaps both theories will be replaced with a third theory. Right now, no one can know.
This puts the materialist in the embarrassing situation of having to say, “all explanations reduce to fundamental physics, but no one knows what that is, we have no idea how we might ever find out, and it’s quite possible that we’ll never find out.” (One might see this as a modern-day version of Hempel’s Dilemma.)
Is that a rational position to adopt? If so, I don’t see how. So my best stab at the puzzle in the OP is that materialism is not an obviously rational position.
Folks, what is going on here? There is a serious issue on the table, at civilisation level. What is materialism. I guess the implication of the red herrings led away to strawman caricatures soaked in ad homs and set alight is that the main focus is just a tad too close to the truth and there is no cogent answer. KF
PS, Mr Putin is an example of someone playing power games while not listening to sound ethical counsel. He may actually at least half believe his propaganda about nazi thrusts through the Ukraine into Russia’s underbelly that had to be fought for at horrific cost in blood in the 1940’s.
PPS, it is time to read about the Reichstag fire incident and how it was used to seize power in Germany. I find disturbing parallels between nazi propaganda targetting Jews etc and how Republicans in the US as well as the people of flyover country are routinely portrayed and are increasingly treated.
Seversky @71 said:
With the state of modern news and information sources, and what we know historically about the kind of misinformation and/or propaganda campaigns we’ve all been admittedly subjected to (and are being subjected to,) I’m not sure how any reasonable person is supposed to even attempt to sort any of it out in terms of what is “true.” So, I don’t bother. I have more practical matters to attend. I have no personal reason to support either dog in this fight – I mean, if there is even an actual fight happening.
WJM: I’m not sure how any reasonable person is supposed to even attempt to sort any of it out in terms of what is “true.” So, I don’t bother. I have more practical matters to attend. I have no personal reason to support either dog in this fight – I mean, if there is even an actual fight happening.
You are a complete waste of space and oxygen, in my opinion. And I shall cease responding to you at all.
JVL, in my day job, for all my sins I am sentenced to do strategic analysis, including geostrategic analysis, where time, place and circumstances intersect with strategic challenges. For the record, since 2016 I have very publicly stated that Putin’s Russia is a wild card; in effect he is likely seeking to rebuild a good slice of Russia’s domination of the Mackinder pivot area in E and possibly C Europe on grounds of the inherent indefensibility of the great European plain, also Germany’s historic challenge. He disregards the post 1918 principle, allow the people to decide, self determination. But then, not entirely without cause he perceives corrupt Western influences.
He is also very sensitive to how Ukraine was a dagger in the underbelly of Russia 1941 – 3.
He is also pretty ruthless, a KGB light colonel with a telltale gunfighter’s walk.
He is rational, though ruthless and he has perceived a threat in Ukraine’s longstanding corruption and attitude to ethnic Russians [cf Russia, 1914 and being big bro to fellow Slavs in Serbia]. Yes, a threat. He gravely miscalculated that a quick push could do better than Stalin’s Winter War with Finland 1939, and is facing similarly unexpectedly stout, plucky resistance.
He has also undone the geostrategic de facto neutrality pacts on his Scandinavian flanks. He is threatening nukes and resorting to bombardment of key civilian infrastructure, maybe he implicitly blames Ukraine and its backers for Nord Stream. That, may be maskirovka.
This feeds into wider conflicts and policy blunders with energy driven by environmentalist ideology and stagflation crouches at the door.
At the same time the Western policy establishments are busily alienating core populations and are playing with pandering to increasingly bizarre proclivities. Not to mention their track record of strategic incompetence. So, one does not have to support or like Putin and his foolish policies to say, we do not want to play chicken with nuclear war, or that we have no confidence in our perverse, demonstrably incompetent policy establishment, or that you pounce on us, you call us racists and fascists/nazis, you trash our history irresponsibly, you call out swat squad hit teams to over charge us for little or nothing (while coddling red guards), you run elections that are open to massive fraud [and criminalise criticism] then you want to turn us into cannon fodder again right after you demonstrated strategic incompetence over the past 20 years?
So, kindly stop projecting demonising strawman caricatures. KF
PS, with that out of your system, can we return to materialism? Or, should we infer from distractors and toxic projections that there is no case on the merits that can make materialism remotely defensible?
PPS, do you want me to document again, on the US State Dept assessment of UKRAINE the danger of widespread correspondence voting?
Sir Giles, “BA77, your turnabout projection is showing.”
Again, a Darwinian atheist complaining about censorship of his atheistic worldview in America is a shining example of the speck and the beam parable.
Censorship of opposing ideas, by supposedly ‘tolerant’ Darwinian atheists, is a pervasive reality in science and academia today in America. Moreover, censorship is necessary for Darwinists to retain their grip on power since a truly fair, balanced, and reasoned discourse would soon expose, for all to see, that the Darwinian king has no clothes on.
Quote and Verse:
F/N: Returning to focus, here is an online comment worth considering, in effect picking up on points in Monod:
https://simplyphilosophy.org/study/scientific-materialism/
In setting such aside, I simply point to the self defeat of self referential incoherence.
That holds, whether or not it is ignored, dismissed or hotly objected to. Any system that ends in this is absurd. Materialism ends in this and it is absurd, false, self defeated.
KF
Kairosfocus: playing with pandering to increasingly bizarre proclivities.
And what would those proclivities be? Oh, I forget, you don’t even like to say the words. Makes it hard to be sure what you’re talking about doesn’t it?
with that out of your system, can we return to materialism? Or, should we infer from distractors and toxic projections that there is no case on the merits that can make materialism remotely defensible?
Not a conversation I have anything to add to.
do you want me to document again, on the US State Dept assessment of UKRAINE the danger of widespread correspondence voting?
Do you mean what is normally referred to as postal voting? I’ll pass on that thanks.
Sev @ 79 – and others.
With all the name calling thrown about, and hatred from the left, we now have a new blanket name for this hatred – MAGA Republican.
But I have been cataloging and itemizing what and who are actual threats to our republic (we are not a democracy).
Read my book on such matters at:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B096XXVDF3?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_1&storeType=ebooks
On sale today at. the Great Courses for $14.95 (video download)
Maybe it will make the discussion on UD more coherent?
Can any of our resident commenters teach this course?
JVL, try u/d 4 here https://uncommondescent.com/logic-and-first-principles-of-right-reason/l-fp-49-the-reichstag-fire-panic-lesson-on-agit-prop-and-lawfare/ KF
The link at https://simplyphilosophy.org/study/scientific-materialism/
contains several mistakes, most of them relatively trivial. But there’s one mistake which is not trivial and which could lead to serious misunderstanding of what is being claimed.
The central thesis of Rorty and Churchland is not the elimination of consciousness as a concept– not at all!
The contention rather is this: begin with the thought that ordinary sense-perception does not tell us the truth about the physical world, because physics tells us that the ultimate constituents of physical objects are fermions and bosons with properties that we don’t detect with our senses (spin, charge) and not having properties that we do detect with our senses (colors, tastes). Then add that introspection is not reliable in just the same way: our ordinary ways of expressing our thoughts, beliefs, and desires, and referring to the thoughts, beliefs, and desires of others, does not capture the reality of what’s causing those mental objects.
So the argument against “eliminative materialism” would need to show that introspection is, if not infallible, at least far more reliable than sense-perception.
But that’s consistent with holding that “folk psychology” or “mentalistic discourse” is perfectly useful for most purposes, just as the vocabulary of referring to physical objects as having properties classified by the proper and common sensibles is perfectly useful for most purposes. (If you ask a physicist where the red car went, it would be odd if she were to reply, “I can’t say because cars are composed of fermions and bosons, and fermions and bosons do not have color.”)
In any event, it’s not entirely clear to me that avoiding self-referential absurdity requires that introspection be more reliable than sense-perception — though Cartesian dualism certainly does require that assumption, and it is Cartesian dualism that is being targeted by the Feyerabend-Rorty-Churchland thesis.
I’m perfectly happy to let people here attack materialism, and I have no interested in defending it, but I do want to make sure that people here understand the views that they are attacking. No straw people, please!
PM1, good considerations. of course, I am of the view that the wholistic, it’s a house is at least as valid as, houses are made of concrete, bricks, steel rebars, fixtures and fittings. The house-ness does use such hardware but house-ness was actually conceived and designed before there were ever foundations dug, walls erected, roof put on etc. Fermions, bosons, quantum effects have their place but so do other aspects and scales. Where, too, any species of grand delusion-ism is self discrediting and self defeating. KF
@104: for sure, we agree that any account of objects needs to account for “structure” as well as “stuff”.
On my view, we should regard the structure of the world is “multilevel”, and that what’s “structure” at one level is “stuff” for the level above it (and conversely — what is “stuff” at one level is “structure” for the level below it) — hence we can think of molecules as both structures of atoms and the stuff of macroscopic materials. (I also think that a multilevel structure/stuff hierarchy is the right way of reading Aristotle’s metaphysics, but that’s a side-issue.)
Wow. Nice. So I think there is some basic agreement here about what “materialism” is so now I’d like for anyone who claims to believe that to engage on the following with particular emphasis on the first item. I’ve looked and looked and looked for characteristics and properties of matter but never have I seen the following as characteristics of matter:
– that it can create itself (yet here we are???)
– that it can decide or choose
– that it can recognize right and wrong
– that it can recognize itself
I could go on but I would be happy to have a “materialist” or as Owen Flanagan says in “The Problem of the Soul” “Humans don’t possess some animal parts or instincts. We are animals. Many think the conflict … lies in our resistance to materialism, physicalism, naturalism, call it what you will… We are, I repeat, animals.”
So calling it whatever we will, any empirical, rational explanations for how matter, lacking these properties, can explain our existence, and the rest will be most welcome. Thank you.
p.s. I get asked all the time when I deconstruct materialism “well what do they say to that?” So I’m compiling a list of specific responses to these questions. Maybe I’m missing something…
KF – thanks. It is exhausting having the same conversations over and over. I applaud your staying power. I’ll last as long as I can. 🙂
Tgpeeler @106,
Good points. The problem is that NONE of the properties you listed have been discovered in the quarks and leptons of the Standard Model.
As to creating themselves, some physicists and cosmologists, realizing that the probabilistic appearance of quantum fluctuations require space-time to exist first, so they speculate . . .
Here’s the truly brilliant theoretical physicist explaining in about 6 minutes what we definitely know about how everything came into existence. Enjoy.
How did the universe begin?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHhUCav_Jrk
-Q
Hi TGP. Interesting to have you drop back in given that the response to your question got fairly derailed starting at about post 20.
You write, “So I think there is some basic agreement here about what “materialism” is.” Back at 2, I wrote,
So metaphysical materialism would then say that everything in the universe is part of the material, or physical, world, as described in the quote above. Or, as I wrote in 32
Added in edit: to be thorough, prompted by your recent post, I would say,
Is this a reasonably accurate statement of what you think the basic agreement is about the philosophical meaning of materialism?
I’ll also point out that nobody in the thread posted in defense of materialism. The goal, as per your OP, was just to get clear on what the word meant.
Since there were no vocal materialists posting comments, here are two informed but radically opposing views regarding materialism (or deterministic physicalism) and consciousness, one by a theoretical physicist and the other by a philosopher.
You don’t have free will, but don’t worry (11 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY
Does Consciousness Defeat Materialism? (13 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI-cESvGlKc
-Q
I don’t know why you would say materialism is deterministic physicalism. Most (but not all) quantum physicists believe that the probability in quantum events is real, and thus the material world is not deterministic.
Also, could you summarize the main opposing views regarding materialism in the videos you linked to.
VL, blind mechanical necessity augmented by blind chance is not capable of causing Orgel-Wicken functionally specific complex organisation and.or associated information, FSCO/I, beyond 500 to 1,000 bits. On trillions of observed cases, intelligently directed configuration can and does. Your own comments exemplify. The physical world yes often shows dynamic-stochastic entities and for a generation the butterfly effect and related studies have transformed understanding of the dynamics side through chaos. Evolutionary materialistic scientism and/or fellow travellers can be understood on saying that the physical, dynamic stochastic world and extensions [this includes multiverse speculations], per the 4 forces, specifies all that exists, reality. Now, account for a fine tuned cosmos, for origin of life, for origin of major body plans, of mind we need as credible to ponder on such terms. Include code and algorithms so language and goal directed process in the heart of cell based life. Do so, on empirically well founded terms. You cannot, instead you will see the sort of ideological imposition Crick, Mahner, Provine, Rosenberg, Lewontin, NAS and NSTA variously document. This is self referentially incoherent and self defeating, self falsifying. Instead, the abductive inference to design on reliable signs offers a fresh departure. But the mutiny on the ship of the academy will not allow it to be seriously heard, even as the increasingly erratic voyage points to shipwreck. KF
@ KF
Nothing prevents you or anyone else from carrying out your own empirical research into whatever aspect of reality or imagination that interests you.
Instead you spend time writing nonsense such as this GEM:
It’s a waste of your time to write it and a waste of everyone else’s time to read it
Another case of severe strawman syndrome?
When a fission event occurs, what determines the timing (and whose time) and what determines the path taken by an emitted particle (and whose coordinates)?
Determinists, please step forward and explain.
Yes it is. There are the universal laws and the matter that blindly obey them.
:))) Bring all your quantum physicists to sit around a rock and make quantum spells so the rock won’t fall down but will fly…because of quantum physics.
Oh no, it isn’t. She’s behind you!
Do you think particles and waves carry a rulebook? Scientific laws are we humans best efforts at modelling the properties and predicting the behaviour of aspects of the physical universe that we are aware of.
Very interesting message from an older UD article
re 112: Irrelevant to my post, which was about defining materialism, not defending it.
re 112: Irrelevant to my post, which was about defining materialism, not defending it.
AF at 116 states,
So apparently AF rightly concedes that it is preposterous to believe that particles and waves can make their own rules,
,,, and yet AF also concedes that humans, mysteriously, look for universal laws that can model and predict how particles and waves will behave.
So, as a Darwinian materialist, these leaves an ‘elephant in the living room’ question hanging for AF.,,, “From whence do these scientific laws come from?” As he himself, inadvertently, conceded, it is simply preposterous for anyone to believe that “particles and waves carry a rulebook”. i.e. that particles can make their own rules as to how they behave.
And yet if you rightly believe that particles and waves can’t possibly make their own rules, and yet you are also an atheistic materialist who believes everything ’emerged’, in a ‘bottom-up’ fashion, from particles randomly jostling, and/or fluctuating, around in the void, then, or course, you will never look for any universal rules governing the particles and waves.
And this belief that everything emerges in a ‘bottom-up’ fashion from particles randomly jostling around in the void is the primary belief of atheistic materialism that prevented atheistic materialists from ever founding modern science, or from ever making a significant contribution to the founding of modern science, since they, inherently, don’t believe “particles and waves carry a rulebook”.
On the following site, starting on page 235, there is a list of the ‘Bible believing’ founders of modern science. You will be very hard pressed to find a single non-believing atheist that founded any major branch of ‘hard’ science, (excluding Darwinian evolution, of course, which is shown, via Robert Marks, William Dembski and company, to NOT even be a ‘hard’ science in the first place that can be realistically modeled).
Of note, although some atheists might try to claim that Ludwig Boltzmann, a Darwinian atheist who first linked probability and entropy, is an exception to this rule of Christians founding modern science, I simply note, via Max Planck, that Ludwig Boltzmann “never gave thought to the possibility of carrying out an exact measurement of the (Boltzmann) constant.”
I hold that the primary reason why Boltzmann, an atheist, never thought to carry out, or even propose, a precise measurement for the universal constant on entropy is that it would simply be unfathomable for him, as an Atheistic materialist, to conceive that the random jostling of particles should ever be governed by a universal constant. Whereas on the other hand, to a Christian Theist such as Max Planck, it is expected that even these seemingly random entropic events of the universe should be governed by a universal constant. In fact modern science was born out of such thinking.
As C.S. Lewis put it, “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.”
And as Paul Davies pointed out, “Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way.”
And although Darwinian atheists often falsely portray Christianity as being ‘at war’ with science,
,,, And although Darwinian atheists often falsely portray Christianity as being ‘at war’ with science, the fact of the matter is that it is Darwinian atheism itself that is ‘at war’ with science.
As Dr. Cornelius Hunter pointed out, “the conflict is the exactly the opposite—it is between the metaphysical foundation of evolutionary thought and science. That metaphysical foundation of naturalism is unyielding and unbending, and it makes no sense on the science. It is the evolutionists who have a conflict between their religious beliefs and science.,,, the scientific evidence is clear, and the genetic and fossil evidence is abundant, but it does not support evolution. Not even remotely.”
Of further note to the Christian presupposition that there should be universal laws governing the universe since there is a ‘universal law giver’, (i.e. since there is a God), Sir Isaac Newton himself stated that, ‘Without all doubt this world…could arise from nothing but the perfectly free will of God… From this fountain (what) we call the laws of nature have flowed”,,
Moreover, at the 16:47 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Stephen Meyer reveals that Sir Isaac Newton himself believed that God was “constantly sustaining the universe by the word of His power”.
Specifically, “Newton’s voluntarism moved him to affirm an intimate relationship between the creator and the creation; his God was acted on the world at all times and in ways that Leibniz and other mechanical philosophers could not conceive of,,”
And since Newton also held the orthodox belief that man is made in the image of God,,,
,,, and since Newton also held to the orthodox belief that man is made in the image of God, (and since he explicitly rejected the mechanical and/or necessitarian philosophy), then I hold that Newton would be very pleased to see the recent closing of the “freedom of choice” loophole within quantum mechanics.
This is simply devastating to Atheistic materialism since it undermines the Darwinian worldview from within.
As the late Steven Weinberg, who was an atheist, stated in the following article, “In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave. Again, the ‘freedom of choice’ loophole has now been closed, via Zeilinger and company, to at least 7.8 billion years ago.
Moreover, when we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders,,,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the “freedom-of-choice” loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”
Verses:
Of supplemental note: Also see George Ellis’s article, ‘Recognising Top-Down Causation’
BA writes, “Sir Isaac Newton himself believed that God was “constantly sustaining the universe by the word of His power”.
In addition,
Yes, Newton was a “theistic evolutionist” in this regard, although the evolution part of it wouldn’t come up for 150 years.
@106
Interesting that you cite Flanagan. I like his work in general and that book in particular.
Flanagan’s project there is summed up in the subtitle: “Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them”. (Interestingly, I just realized that one of the mentors to whom the book is dedicated is the great neo-Thomist philosopher Alastair MacIntyre.)
One of these visions is the idea of human beings as persons. The other vision is the idea of human beings as animals. So the question of a naturalistic philosophy of mind is, “how can persons be animals, and how did (and do) animals become persons?”
By persons, I mean the idea that we are (if all goes well in our biological development and socio-cultural immersion) beings that are conscious, self-conscious, rational and reasonable, choosing to act and of refraining from acting, capable of holding ourselves and others responsible for our actions, capable of making choices based on criteria that are available for public commentary, and capable of revising those criteria based on rational deliberation of what is best for ourselves, others, and the good of the moral community to which we belong.
(This is not intended to be exhaustive — just what I came up right now.)
By animals, I mean living things capable of perceiving various configurations of their surroundings, purposefully responding to those configurations by moving their bodies and especially, in many cases, altering the configurations of their environments, and in many cases, engaging in forms of social behavior with various affects (love, care, dislike, aggression, envy, etc.).
(Again, this is not intended to be exhaustive!)
(And by living things I mean complex dynamical systems that are constituted by an interlocking set of causal constraints that jointly distinguish the organism from its environment, but which require constant exchanges of energy and matter with its environment in order to maintain itself as far from thermodynamic equilibrium with that environment. Once again, not intended to be exhaustive!)
So the question of a “could there be a wholly naturalistic theory of persons?” is the question of how things that are entirely and wholly animals (as defined above) could, under specific conditions, also become persons (as defined above). One could also, with equal justice, call this a wholly secular theory of persons: an account of what persons are that does not require concepts drawn from any religious tradition.
A secular theory of persons does not, so far as I can tell, depend on any claims about the nature of “matter”, nor does it depend on any claims about theories of fundamental physics. It certainly does not depend upon the idea that everything that exists can be explained in terms of fermions and bosons.
In other words, I think there’s quite a big difference between asking the question “what might a wholly secular theory of persons look like?” and asking the question, “can everything that exists be explained in terms of fundamental physics?”
Viola Lee @111,
Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, a research physicist of note, totally destroys your conclusion in the 11-minute video below:
You don’t have free will, but don’t worry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY
The 13-minute counterpoint to Dr. Hossenfelder is provided by Dr. David Chalmers a professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University:
Does Consciousness Defeat Materialism?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI-cESvGlKc
No, I don’t do homework assignments for people. Besides, I’ve already watched them twice.
But go ahead and watch them yourself (I really do think they would be enlightening for you). If you think it would be helpful to the discussion, why don’t you post a summary of their views on materialism with your comments?
-Q
Q, let’s get this straight. I don’t like watching videos, for reasons I’ve explained before. If you can’t write a summary and provide written statements here, then you are expecting me to do your homework, not vice versa.
And I know Hossenfelder is a good popularizer of science, and a legitimate quantum physicist, but her views on the determinism issue are not shared by a majority of quantum physicists, and are certainly not the definitive word on the subject.
And the idea that probability is real is not my view, it’s the view of the majority of quantum physicists. I think it was you who posted a link to a chart of what percent of different physicists believed what about QM, and far more thought probability was real than thought it wasn’t.
And I seriously doubt that you are enough of an expert to conclude that Hossenfelder totally destroys the argument that probability is real, especially in a short youtube video.
So given that we’re at an impasse about youtube videos, I’d like it it if you wouldn’t bother me about them anymore.
Viola Lee @125,
Fortunately, I can easily copy-paste a transcript of Dr. Hossenfelder’s presentation so you won’t have to click a link and watch her presentation. And here’s a even a short summary, which I’ll probably regret spending the time to write.
Summary: Free will is a rubbish idea because everything that exists, including your brain, is made of of particles and that everything that happens to those particles had a cause that can be traced back to the big bang. Dr. Hossenfelder said, “These deterministic laws of nature apply to you and your brain because you are made of particles, and what happens with you is a consequence of what happens with those particles.” She goes on to say that it’s no good to simply label it as materialism or reductionism to belittle the concept. “But this is denying scientific evidence. We do not guess, we know that brains are made of particles. And we do not guess, we know, that we can derive from the laws for the constituents what the whole object does. If you make a claim to the contrary, you are contradicting well-established science. ”
As you can see, Dr. Hossenfelder is fully aware of chaos and that a few quantum events are truly random. It’s pretty obvious that she totally destroys your argument. But you’ll have to read a transcript of Dr. Chalmer’s perspectives to see how he addresses Dr. Hossenfelder’s arguments.
You then wrote:
That’s a pretty ambitious assertion on your part. Can you support it with any references?
-Q
Viola Lee tries to hold that “Newton was a “theistic evolutionist””
Yet, as I already referenced, Newton explicitly rejected the mechanical and/or necessitarian philosophy, (i.e. Theistic Evolution), of Descartes and Leibniz.
Shoot, even wikipedia itself, (which is certainly no friend of ID), states that “(Newton) rejected Leibniz’s thesis that God would necessarily make a perfect world which requires no intervention from the creator.”
Moreover, elsewhere Newton himself stated, “Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing.”
In short, directly contrary to Viola Lee tried to claim, Newton certainly did not believe that God created the universe and then, basically, walked away to let the universe unfold to its own accord. (i.e. Theistic Evolution).
BA, TE is not a ” mechanical and/or necessitarian philosophy”.
You also write, “Newton certainly did not believe that God created the universe and then, basically, walked away to let the universe unfold to its own accord. (i.e. Theistic Evolution).”
That is deism, not TE.
Well Viola Lee, the Theistic Evolutionists over at Biologos will certainly be surprised by your statements since they themselves jumped on Leibniz’s deistic bandwagon
Yet, although Newton held God to be active in creation and not a distant clock-maker, the preceding account of Newton is a bit of Whig history:
Here is an interesting article about the Newton-Leibniz-Laplace controversy that shows Newton’s ‘God of the gaps’ controversy is not nearly as cut and dried as some atheists and/or Theistic Evolutionists have tried to make it out to be:
Even according to wikipedia, Laplace paraphrase is in all likelihood based on folklore not on fact,
Of further note: As to not having to “remedy the defects of His creation”, I hold that both Newton and Leibniz (and even the often misquoted Laplace) would all be very pleased by what modern science has now revealed about the wisdom and power of God in creating this solar system:
I know nothing about BioLogos. Do you have a source about what they believe? ((And by source I don’t mean a series of quotes. I mean a link to an article or part of their website that describes their beliefs.)
Hmmm, Q, if you can easily copy-paste a transcript of the video, then why not just link to that instead of or in addition with the link to the video? And where is that transcript? I looked and couldn’t find such a thing.
Second, Hossenfelder doesn’t deny that probability exists: “What about quantum mechanics? In quantum mechanics some events are truly random and cannot be predicted.”
She also says,
These statements are contradictory if she really means that some QM events are truly random. You can’t “calculate what happens at any other moment in time” from the conditions of the previous moment if in fact something probabilistically random happens in the transition.
Can you explain why this is not a contradiction?
So she doesn’t deny the undetermined probabilistic quantum events happen, but she claims that doesn’t affect her “no free will” argument. But I’ve never been interested in the libertarian free will issue from a materialistic point of view, so this isn’t relevant to discussions I’ve been having. Not sure why you have focused on me about this topic. The part about strict determinism being inconsistent with quantum probability is the topic I’ve been interested in.
I’ll also point out her argument is strictly about the particles that make up the brain. I’m assuming that as a materialist she assumes that consciousness and all the things associated with it arise from those particles, but she nor anyone else knows how that is supposed to happen, but that’s a different topic.
Of further note to post 120.
To further validate the claim that it is preposterous to believe that “particles and waves carry a rulebook”. i.e. that particles can make their own universal laws as to how they behave, it is very interesting to note that, unlike all hard sciences, Darwinists simply have no universal laws to appeal to in order to make their theory ‘scientific’.
As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”
In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same point as Ernst Mayr and states, ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.
And Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
Not having any laws, and/or rules, telling the particles/waves how to behave is certainly not a minor problem for Darwinists.
If Darwinists don’t have any universal laws, and/or rules, telling the particles exactly how to behave so as to conform to any particular ‘biological form’, and/or species,, exactly how is it remotely possible for a Darwinist to ever give us a coherent definition for what a species actually is? The simple answer is that, without any universal laws, and/or rules, telling the particles exactly how to behave, Darwinists will never be able to give us a coherent definition of what a species actually is.
As Logan Paul Gage states in the following article, ”In Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, each particular organism belongs to a certain universal class of things. Each individual shares a particular nature—or essence—and acts according to its nature. Squirrels act squirrelly and cats catty. We know with certainty that a squirrel is a squirrel because a crucial feature of human reason is its ability to abstract the universal nature from our sense experience of particular organisms.”,,, ” this denial (of true species) is a grave error, because the essence of the individual (the species in the Aristotelian sense) is the true object of our knowledge.”
And you don’t have to take Logan Paul Gage’s word for it. In 2019, a Darwinist honestly admitted that “The most important concept in all of biology, (i.e. species), is a complete mystery”
And as the following 2020 article pointed out, Darwinists simply have no rigid, ‘one size fits all’, demarcation criteria for what actually constitutes a species.
And as Logan Paul Gage pointed out in his article, even Charles Darwin himself honestly admitted that he did not have a rigid definition for what a species actually was when he stated, “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience,”
As should be needless to say, if your theory can’t even provide a rigid ‘scientific’ definition for what a ‘species’ actually is in the first place, (in your theory that adamantly claims to be the ‘be all/end all’ scientific explanation for the ‘origin of species’), well then, so much for your claim that you have scientifically explained the ‘origin of species’. i.e. Scientifically speaking, your claim is worse than useless, and as Wolfgang Pauli might have put it, your theory is, ‘Not even wrong’.
Quotes and verse
Theistic evolution, as stated here, is a useless idea. It is assumed that God made something like a wind-up toy, set it on the floor and let it go wherever it wanted. God constantly sustains His Creation, knowing, before it was made, all of its parts, including some that human beings are just starting to investigate, like the quantum world. Science has been discovering the inner workings of atoms and will discover more. But everything was already established by God. We are not at a point where we can find out certain things. The creativity God gives to men will allow us to uncover more and more in the near future. He has seen this. He knows when certain things will happen.
Realtd writes, “Theistic evolution, as stated here, is a useless idea. It is assumed that God made something like a wind-up toy, set it on the floor and let it go wherever it wanted.”
I have had several discussions, with documentation, showing that this is not the Catholic idea of theistic evolution. Just saying, for the record.
I’ve seen catholic Ken Miller’s ‘theistic evolution’ view in action when he tried to refute Michael Behe, also a catholic, on ‘irreducible complexity’.
It was not pretty.
Viola Lee @132,
You can display a transcript as a column on the right side of some YouTube videos. You can copy or save the transcripts, but you can only link to the video itself.
Dr. Hossenfelder, who specializes in quantum mechanics, posted the following video on “superdeterminism” that will help you understand why this isn’t a contradiction:
Does Superdeterminism save Quantum Mechanics? Or does it kill free will and destroy science?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytyjgIyegDI
This video link also comes with a transcript. It starts out like this:
You then wrote:
Yes, materialistim, also known as physicalism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/), asserts that all phenomena in reality can be explained with interactions of particles (mass-energy) in space-time. This includes consciousness and “free will.”
You had previously written:
To which I responded with this question that you forgot to answer:
-Q
Q, either you or Jerry recently posted a link to a survey of physicists about their thoughts about various aspects of QM. I don’t know where it is. I remember that only a small percentage of the respondents believed that what appeared as probability was actually caused by deterministic “hidden variables.” Perhaps you or Jerry will remember what I’m talking about.
I looked at the scrolling transcript at the video you linked to. You posted a complete transcript to the other video. How did you do that? Did you copy the transcripts and then edit out the times and page breaks? That would be a lot of work.
It appears that she thinks the work that has ruled out hidden variables is in error, so she becomes a strict determinist and really doesn’t think probability is real: that it only appears because we can’t see the information that is hidden. She is making this argument to her fellow physicists: maybe her arguments will become widely held, but I don’t think they are now.
Not me.
As least I have no memory of it. I keep away from quantum mechanics.
Ba77 at 136,
I am disappointed with Ken Miller’s views. As a Catholic, he wants to believe in evolution and God at the same time. How he pictures God as Creator of all things, as stated in the Bible, is something of a mystery. I also found the article at Evolution News a little disappointing. At the end, the writer expresses surprise that Ken Miller “gets away” with this sort of poorly thought out, not even logical reasoning. Didn’t he think his publishing a critique of Ken Miller’s claims was helpful in pointing out the kinds of thinking common among evolution supporters, especially when criticizing claims made by ID proponents? Is the author of that article unaware of how deeply embedded evolution is in academia? Or that Ken Miller could have heard that exact same explanation from one or more colleagues, and simply repeated it?
To be more specific, Ken Miller totally ignores the complex information that would have to arise to build a working system in an organism. If I had the opportunity, I would ask him: Where do you think the information comes from to add a useful function to an organism at a specific point? How are the instructions to add that function stored in the organism? How is the specific function(s) carried out in the organism? It’s not enough to say some mutation did it. Did what? Specifically. Be specific. Mutations don’t magically appear and modify an organism. Imagine adding a part to a car’s engine while it’s running. Then imagine trying to replace a part in the same engine that is a few centimeters too short.
While the Catholic Church allows Ken Miller to hold certain views, it does not mean those views are accurate in a practical, functional sense. I suspect, but cannot prove, that Mr. Miller, and others like him, assume evolution is true and have not examined it as closely as they should. After all, evolution is referred to as the cornerstone of biology.
On a personal note, I want to point out the power of authority in making unproven statements. All that’s required is a confident voice and those who don’t think in detail about what they just heard are taken in.
I watched on TV as a voiceover told me that all a planet needed for life was the right distance from its sun, water, and the building blocks of life – amino acids. If all were available, life would appear there. I believed this at first because the word ‘scientists’ was mentioned. Later, I realized that no scientist anywhere could show that this could actually happen. They were describing magic, not science.
Q at 108. Thanks! Anything but God. I hope the scientists eventually realize the metaphysicians have the origins answers.
VL at 109. Yes. I think you’ve captured the essence of “materialism.” I was hoping some of the people I remember from years ago would step forward to defend the idea but I guess they’ve been run off or reduced to lurker status. Thanks.
Tgpeeler @141,
Yep! I love science and the scientific method. One of my most profound experiences in a college lab was looking through a B&L binocular dissection microscope and filled with awe at the jaw-dropping beauty of a tiny flower, Stellaria media, under about 15-45x magnification.
However, most of what we hold in the highest regard–love, integrity, courage, creativity, kindness, generosity, inner peace–isn’t composed of particles nor are they properties of particles.
Imagine that.
While science cannot operate directly in the spiritual dimension, or even account for self-conscious biological tissue, science cannot reasonably rule out its existence, nor can it deliver or produce the precious qualities listed above.
-Q
Viola Lee @138,
If you look around in YouTube UI, you’ll eventually find the button that turns off the time indications in the transcripts.
You had previously written:
Can you support your bold assertion that Dr. Hossenfelder’s views on determinism are in the minority among physicists? Judging by their books on quantum mechanics, I’d have thought that most of her fellow physicists are also deterministic materialists.
-Q
@bornagain77:
Are you joking?? You say they jump on the deistic bandwagon, yet you provide a quote in which the person clearly rejects deism.
And biologos does indeed reject deism, as their “What We Believe” states:
Q, I’m interested in your answer to this question, as it bears directly on the question of determinism: From above
AF, you are right. I was wrong in my initial claim. Deism is somewhat of a subset belief within Theistic evolution. Defining theistic evolution turns out to be a bit like trying to nail jello to a wall. But anyways, I, via Stephen Meyer and company, provided a more robust definition, (and refutation), of the various flavors of Theistic evolution.
I think you mean AndyClue, AC!
Well AF, I did mean AC, you are at least right, and I was wrong, on that. 🙂
@142
I think (as per my comment at 123) that a good deal depends on what we’re really interested in talking about? Are we talking about the prospects for a single grand comprehensive ‘theory of everything’? Or are we really talking about what it means to be a human being?
It seems to me as if “materialism” is being used to refer to both
(1) an account of persons that allows no room for libertarian freedom, qualia, or other concepts that don’t easily cohere with a scientific world-view
and
(2) a metaphysics that explains all observable phenomena in terms of the entities and relations posited by our best theories of fundamental physics.
I gave my reasons above for being skeptical about materialism in the sense of (2). But I’d be quite willing to discuss (1), or what I would call scientific humanism.
Hi PM.
At 123 you wrote,
And you said of persons, they are conscious, rational willful, and capable of moral judgments.
But, irrespective of whether those have a religious explanation, if they are explained by materialism then they are, ultimately, a product of physics, so I don’t quite see how you are separating the two issues you mention: personhood from a larger belief about everything.
Perhaps you could explain more about what you think a secular theory of personhood, or “scientific humanism”, might entail, how it would explain consciousness et al, and how it would relate the bigger definition of materialism.
Viola Lee @146,
The answer to your question in a word is “superdeterminism.”
To understand the issue and see the back-and-forth discussion about randomness and entanglement, see this blog and Dr. Hossenfelder’s responses. No, I’m not going to summarize it for you. Search on jbaxter, read his question and Dr. Hossenfelder’s response.
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solution-superdeterminism.html
However, I noticed that you still haven’t answered my previous question:
-Q
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1612.00676.pdf
Survey of 1234 physicists
From page 3
3. What is your opinion about the randomness of individual quantum events (such as the decay of a radioactive nuclei)?
The randomness is only apparent 12%
There is a hidden determinism 4%
The randomness cannot be removed from any physical theory 18%
Randomness is a fundamental concept of nature 67%
Only 16% of the respondents believe that the probability we see in QM is merely apparent, and that the arguments that hidden variables do not exist are wrong. Such people are determinists.
67% believe that the probability we see is real. Such people are not determinists: they believe every moment does not cause a completely determined next moment.
This is the only point I’ve been interested in making, so I think I’m done.
P.S. You are the person who posted a link to this survey.
@151
Hi! My suggestion was that the very term “materialism” is ambiguous because it’s used in lots of different ways, and that we need to disentangle different senses, depending on what we want to talk about.
I think that one could articulate a ‘scientific humanism,’ or a scientific philosophical anthropology, without being committed to any claims about the reducibility or irreducibility of all sciences to fundamental physics, or the prospects of a unified theory of fundamental physics.
By a scientific philosophical anthropology, I mean only that we take a fairly minimal conception of what it is to be a person — a rational self-conscious agent — and try to flesh out the material conditions of personhood using the relevant sciences (e.g. cognitive psychology, neuroscience, sociology, social psychology, developmental biology, etc.).
I think one could do that while being neutral about the cogency of materialism as a comprehensive metaphysical position.
I say that because I think the prospects for a scientific philosophical anthropology are rather good, esp given how much information we’ve accumulated about how brains function.
But I think the prospects for materialism/physicalism as a comprehensive metaphysical position are really quite terrible, because (as far as I can see), there’s no coherent version of materialism/physicalism that doesn’t require that there’s a single comprehensive theory of fundamental physics, and not only do we not have, we also have no idea about how to get one.
As far as we’re able to tell right now, it could be that a unified conception of physical reality is beyond the scope of our cognitive powers.
Viola Lee @153,
Congratulations, you supported an assertion. Was that so hard?
As you now know, Dr. Hossenfelder believes that determinism is still possible under superdeterminism and that Bell’s Inequality applies only locally.
Yeah, I know. (grin)
-Q
Q wrote, “Can you support your bold assertion that Dr. Hossenfelder’s views on determinism are in the minority among physicists? Judging by their books on quantum mechanics, I’d have thought that most of her fellow physicists are also deterministic materialists.”
I did support my assertion, as Q acknowledges. I think maybe Q has not judged correctly what the books he has read say about determinism. I’m not even sure all her [Hossenfelder] fellow physicists all materialists. I imagine there are some QM physicists that are theists, CHristian or otherwise. Also, I imagine there are QM physicists that consider consciousness an element of the world that is not derived from the material world, and thus would not be materialists. In fact, I bet BA could quickly find a half-dozen or more quotes from QM physicists that show they believe that there is more than just the material world.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2017/01/29/a-physicist-talks-god-and-the-quantum/?sh=293e63362c86
Some interesting stuff in the article I linked to in 156. First Barr, author of “The Believing Scientist: Essays on Science and Religion”, makes the point I am making to Q: that not all, or even most, perhaps, QM physicists are “deterministic materialists”.
Barr writes,
Note well: I am not arguing for the correctness of any particular QM interpretation, including this one by Barr. But I am interested in having a correct understanding of the scope of QM interpretations and their metaphysical implications.
Barr also has this to say about ID, FWIW, which goes along with points I have been making about theistic evolutionists.
‘Very few religious skeptics have been made more open to religious belief because of ID arguments, Barr adds. “These arguments not only have failed to persuade, they have done positive harm by convincing many people that the concept of an intelligent designer is bound up with a rejection of mainstream science.”
What a bizarre statement. The same can be said about Sunday school students being exposed to Biology textbooks where they learn that the idea that “God created life and man” is discarded for a non-God explanation and on that basis, reject their religious beliefs.
It should be clear to all reading, that the primary problem/issue here is not science but adopting a worldview. Finding the correct, truthful answer to human origins and the development of life on earth is the primary concern or should be. Getting the correct/truthful answer about the development of life and the role of intelligence should be paramount.
@VL @158
Thanks very much for your link to Farrell’s review of Barr’s book – so interesting that his book has now been ordered.
Barr decries ID because it does not ‘persuade sceptics,’ but that is not the test; ID is not an evangelising movement, what it does, regarding faith in God, is that it confirms believers in a supervening first cause intelligence by, inter alia, pointing out the inadequacy of a materialistic worldview, particularly the evidence-free component that asserts life happens by sheer chance.
Barr’s preferred option is QM which, he writes, ‘makes it easy’ for he and others to reach a belief in God without proving God’s existence – almost his personal choice of weapons.
King David’s, “wonderfully and fearfully made“ comment is the design argument which confirmed belief for millions before the advent of QM, and both design and QM possibly have their most important part to play with would-be believers who are passing through spiritual aridity rather than religious skeptics, and those inclined to atheism.
Viola Lee @156,
Yes, I agree. Again, the books I’ve read on QM have generally supported materialist points of view, some of which are very open about their assumptions (such as Lee Smolin), which I respect more than those who browbeat their readers. As I’ve said before, I respect Sabine Hossenfelder for her incisive observations of the lack of experimental evidence, which results in the proliferation of QM speculation. However, this is not what the poll results indicate.
-Q
Relatd @159,
Yes, Barr’s statement is indeed bizarre from anyone who understands that ID is entirely pragmatic and doesn’t even need a Designer to make it work better than that presupposition that everything started randomly (AND was eventually guided in tiny steps by natural selection).
“Vestigial remnants of the evolutionary process” always seem to eventually reveal a significant function that “surprises” researchers.
I completely agree and have seen this bias termed ideological poisoning.
-Q
Belfast @160,
Well, it might have happened by sheer random chance, but there must be more evidence for that position than “it musta happened by chance.”
The counter-argument to random chance is “Fine. Show me.” One person put it something like this: “Make a smoothie out of bacteria. Now make it come alive again by subjecting it to chemicals, heat, cold, lightning discharges, cosmic radiation, wave action, and drying out in little pools. Add your can of Campbell’s Primordial Soup and stir over a volcanic vent at the bottom of the ocean under pressure. Whatever it takes. And then report your results.”
-Q
From Barr’s critique of Tom Bethel
Querius at 163,
Thar’s it! Quoted right of my non-existent Primordial Soup Cookbook. Fake, 100% Fake.
Relatd @165,
“Yabbut, it just musta happened by random chance.” Lee Smolin notwithstanding, there doesn’t seem to be any actual evidence that the laws of physics (and physical chemistry) “evolved” over time, presumably through the natural selection of more promising physical laws, not to mention prebiotic natural selection.
Haha! Dr. Tour should consider publishing a satire, The Primordial Soup Cookbook: an Alchemist’s Guide to turning Lead into Life.
I’d imagine illustrations of organic molecules being formed using symbols similar to those used to plot out football plays . . .
-Q
Ah yes, the Yabbut Defense. Used by evolutionists to confuse detractors.
In my copy of the Primordial Soup Cookbook, those football play type lines are a bit less organized. In fact, they zig and zag and turn back on each other, crossing paths along the way. The caption reads: “This is how it happened.” *
*We think, maybe. See page 220.”
On page 220. “That was just a typo.”
As I understand it, inorganic chemicals combined under some unknown early Earth atmosphere under unknown atmospheric pressure under an unknown pool of water. Once they combined, they produced amino acids – the building blocks of life. Assuming, for a moment, that this happened, the amino acids would have to have the right ‘handedness.’ It gets impossible after this. Food source? Additional required chemical reactions? Reproduction?
But, no, no, says True Believers. It musta! It musta! Yeah… right…
As to 153:
As to the question of “how do probabilities get into quantum mechanics?”, the late Steven Weinberg, an atheist, had an excellent article on the subject that explains the ‘probability issue’ in quantum mechanics in a fairly easy to understand manner
Moreover, regardless of the late Weinberg’s, an atheist, rejection of the instrumentalist approach, (since “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and since “the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else”), quantum mechanics could care less how the late Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the world to behave.
As Anton Zeilinger commented in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
Moreover, Anton Zeilinger and company have now, as of 2018, pushed the ‘freedom of choice’ loophole back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, i.e. the experimenters are shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing. (of personal note, I find it to more than a bit humorous that they would even have to experimentally prove such a thing 🙂 .)
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining ‘freedom of choice’ loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are (indeed) brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself admitted, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
i.e. to the consternation of Jerry Coyne, (and apparently to the consternation of many atheists here on UD who deny that we have free will in any real, and meaningful, sense), we are not ‘robots made out of meat’. 🙂
Verse: