Update on Materialism

AD, just wait until they are falsely accused and their protestations of innocence are dismissed. We seem to have forgotten the lessons of the gulag. KF kairosfocus

Relatd, for me the key is to observe the reaction of some objectors to the now seventy year old recognition of coded thus linguistic information in the cell. Unyielding resistance, even denial of the readily documented fact that the code is recognised as just that, a code. That's a tell. KF PS, it seems that deep down, Farina realises he is outclassed by Tour. kairosfocus

The truth matters not to the first world Western social media participant. To borrow slightly from Nike, Just Say It. AnimatedDust

AD at 33, The haters. What a degenerate way to run an internet. I just read a so-called book review on Amazon. It was about a historical figure who wrote a book. One 'reviewer' simply called him a liar without using any documented references at all to show this was true. I no longer regard the majority of book reviews on Amazon as worth reading. I no longer read any comments on Youtube. If people can't behave themselves it's not my fault. relatd

Relatd @32: That would not cause the slightest grief for the haters on that channel. Cause-and-effect is valid only insofar as humans designing things is concerned. The moment it is extrapolated up to life, cause-and-effect no longer applies. Such is the world of the materialist atheist. Rules for thee, but not for me. AnimatedDust

Martin_r at 31, When the profanity appears, it's time to disengage. Perhaps someone who has actually designed something, like a laptop, could post a rebuttal and point out that design in the human body is just like designing a laptop although far more complicated. relatd

Kairosfocus @25 yes, Youtube behaves very strange. Now Farina is attacking me using F-words. No problem for Youtube. It is strange. martin_r

PM1

I know that ID is “officially” supposed to be agnostic about the identity of the designer, but I don’t know of anyone in the ID movement who doesn’t believe it was the God of the Abrahamic religions.

I, for one, am in awe of the ID arguments, but I am not a follower of any of the Abrahamic religions. Origenes

@28

The short answer is ‘yes’. A function is a term that only makes sense in a larger context. The hammer has a function only in a larger context that involves e.g. a carpenter. The eye has a function only in a larger context of e.g. a cat. Function does not come from (does not belong to) the fermions and bosons that make up the hammer and/or the eye. They do not care about function. So, function has an origin external to matter. ID claims that CSFO/I points to intelligent design.

That's what I thought! I know that ID is "officially" supposed to be agnostic about the identity of the designer, but I don't know of anyone in the ID movement who doesn't believe it was the God of the Abrahamic religions. (I once met someone, long ago, who was open-minded about aliens.) Dembski once remarked, I think, that ID is the Logos theology of the Gospel of John translated into probability theory. That might have really startling and fascinating implications for Christology. I'm not a theologian or scholar of religion, so I doubt my musings would pass muster in a seminary. Just something I've been thinking about lately. PyrrhoManiac1

PM1 @26

And I presume you would say that the same is true of biological functions? That just as artifactual functions are a result of human intent, so too biological functions are a result of divine intent?

The short answer is 'yes'. A function is a term that only makes sense in a larger context. The hammer has a function only in a larger context that involves e.g. a carpenter. The eye has a function only in a larger context of e.g. a cat. Function does not come from (does not belong to) the fermions and bosons that make up the hammer and/or the eye. They do not care about function. So, function has an origin external to matter. ID claims that CSFO/I points to intelligent design. Origenes

Seversky @21

Sev: It’s curious how much time critics of reductionism have spent refuting a position they allege is clearly self-refuting, ….

No critics of reductionism here. We all believe that water consists of water molecules, which, in turn, are reducible to H and O, and so on. We do however have a problem with the claim by materialists that everything can be reduced to matter.

…. a charge which was answered back in 1986 in The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.

For clarity, Materialism is reductionistic:

Wiki: Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist.

Sev quotes Dawkins:

For those that like ‘-ism’ sorts of names, the aptest name for my approach to understanding how things work is probably ‘hierarchical reductionism’. (…) The hierarchical reductionist, on the other hand, explains a complex entity at any particular level in the hierarchy of organization, in terms of entities only one level down the hierarchy; entities which, themselves, are likely to be complex enough to need further reducing to their own component parts; and so on.

Dawkins pretends to present a new concept ‘hierarchical reductionism’. However, this is how everyone understands the claim of materialism reductionism: step by step, one level at a time, everything can ultimately be explained in terms of fermions and bosons. For instance: the human organism, organ systems, organs, tissues, cells, molecules, atoms, and fermions & bosons.

Dawkins: The nonexistent reductionist – the sort that everybody is against, but who exists only in their imaginations – tries to explain complicated things directly in terms of the smallest parts, ...

You are debating a straw man Dawkins, no one wants to deprive materialism of doing step-by-step reductionism.

… even, in some extreme versions of the myth, as the sum of the parts!

What? Is there something other than matter? Is there something more than the sum of the parts? ID agrees and identifies the existence of functional specified complex organization/information as ontologically distinct from matter, with an (intelligent) source also independent from matter. However, materialism claims that organization/information also reduces to matter (random interactions and natural selection). So Dawkins, do tell us what it is that, under materialism, can be said to be more than matter. Origenes

@20

The fermions and bosons that make up a hammer do not care about hammering. They do not care about any function. We do. The function does not come from the material that makes up the matter. It comes from us. A hammer is a hammer whether it’s made of stone, metal, or wood: the functional organization is what makes it the kind of thing that it is, i.e. the essence. . . . We can talk about what ‘function’ is, but let’s be clear here: it does not belong to a stone to be a paperweight or a building block of a house. We can give materials various functions and we can take them away also.

And I presume you would say that the same is true of biological functions? That just as artifactual functions are a result of human intent, so too biological functions are a result of divine intent? PyrrhoManiac1

MR, I generally don't even try at YT. You are right, of course, but you are maximally politically incorrect. KF kairosfocus

OFF TOPIC. .... but I don't know where else to post it ... anyway, I just need to share :))) Yesterday I was honored. "Professor" Dave Farina replied to my comment (on his channel). (Actually, I've expected that Farina will delete the comment. Moreover, due to various YouTube AI filters, it is a miracle, that my comment was published at all. I had a very bad experience with commenting on Youtube. It is a mess. Most of the time, my comments don't show up. Many people have the same issue. And I am very careful to not being rude, or politically incorrect, to avoid any hate speech etc ... I know what these filters can ... It is not easy to compose a sentence in Youtube's comments.) Anyway, Farina published a new series on debunking Dr. Tour. In the 3 of 4 part, I commented like follows (as for yesterday).

Hey guys. Whether you like it or not, Tour is right about the OoL-research. You can be 100% sure, that any breakthrough in OoL-research would be awarded with a Nobel price. So far (70+ years), it wasn't. So simple it is.

Farina replied:

Um, he is right about precisely nothing. There have been countless breakthroughs. You just have never looked into the field for a single second. You could watch my videos and learn something, but you don’t do that because you’re a scared little bitch.

to be continued ... PS: This guy dares to debunk James Tour ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ABRu-Dj0e8 martin_r

Sev, you have to first get to responsible, rational freedom, or your output set is little more than the particular outcome of a dynamic stochastic process programmed by differential reproductive success acting on lucky noise. You may reify that into a designer substitute all you wish, it becomes self referentially self discrediting in ever so many ways. Evolutionary materialistic scientism is inherently self refuting, self discrediting and so anticivilisational and misanthropic. KF kairosfocus

Relatd, thanks for your editorial integrity. Unfortunately, there has been a tabloidisation of the publishing space, with sensationalism, ideological polarisation, agenda pushing, direct lying and lying by agenda-serving, manipulative refusal to do due diligence, and worse -- and a lot of this comes from Big Names With Big Reputations. To see part of why, observe in these pages the hostile resistance to the self evident Ciceronian first duties to truth, right reason, warrant and wider prudence etc. Editorship, in large part is of course applied prudence. KF kairosfocus

OP

Here is the key point: If the amalgamation of chemicals called “liver” and the amalgamation of chemicals called “brain,” are essentially the same, the materialist cannot logically say one exhibits intentionality and the other does not. Yet they do that very thing when they say they believe materialism is true. That is why the very act of affirming materialism refutes materialism. It is a self-referentially incoherent belief system.

It's curious how much time critics of reductionism have spent refuting a position they allege is clearly self-refuting, a charge which was answered back in 1986 in The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.

For those that like '-ism' sorts of names, the aptest name for my approach to understanding how things work is probably 'hierarchical reductionism'. If you read trendy intellectual magazines, you may have noticed that 'reductionism' is one of those things, like sin, that is only mentioned by people who are against it. To call oneself a reductionist will sound, in some circles, a bit like admitting to eating babies. But, just as nobody actually eats babies, so nobody is really a reductionist in any sense worth being against. The nonexistent reductionist - the sort that everybody is against, but who exists only in their imaginations - tries to explain complicated things directly in terms of the smallest parts, even, in some extreme versions of the myth, as the sum of the parts! The hierarchical reductionist, on the other hand, explains a complex entity at any particular level in the hierarchy of organization, in terms of entities only one level down the hierarchy; entities which, themselves, are likely to be complex enough to need further reducing to their own component parts; and so on. It goes without saying - though the mythical, baby-eating reductionist is reputed to deny this - that the kinds of explanations which are suitable at high levels in the hierarchy are quite different from the kinds of explanations which are suitable at lower levels. This was the point of explaining cars in terms of carburettors rather than quarks. But the hierarchical reductionist believes that carburettors are explained in terms of smaller units . . ., which are explained in terms of smaller units . . . , which are ultimately explained in terms of the smallest of fundamental particles. Reductionism, in this sense, is just another name for an honest desire to understand how things work.

If a district attorney were to charge a defendant with murder because the victim had been shot and the accused owned a gun, would that be sufficient to support the prosecution case on the grounds that all guns are "essentially" the same - mechanical devices which fire a projectile by the combustion of a propellant?. Mightn't it make difference that the bullet that killed the victim was a .308 high-velocity round most likely fired from a hunting or sniper's rifle whereas the accused only owned a .22 caliber semi-automatic pocket pistol? Wouldn't the competence of a DA who argued as above be called into question? Similarly, wouldn't a "materialist" who argued that all human beings were nothing but an assemblage of cells be equally incompetent? On the other hand, if that view is not held by the majority of materialists then isn't that criticism just a strawman fallacy? Seversky

PM1 @

What makes something a hammer is not its ultimate molecular constituents but whether it has the requisite gross structural properties that allow it to be used in hammering.

The fermions and bosons that make up a hammer do not care about hammering. They do not care about any function. We do. The function does not come from the material that makes up the matter. It comes from us.

A hammer is a hammer whether it’s made of stone, metal, or wood: the functional organization is what makes it the kind of thing that it is, i.e. the essence.

We can talk about what ‘function’ is, but let’s be clear here: it does not belong to a stone to be a paperweight or a building block of a house. We can give materials various functions and we can take them away also. Origenes

Relatd writes:

Good journalism should never be the equivalent of useless opinions found on the internet.

I remind myself of this every time I read one of your comments. Ford Prefect

Ba77 at 16, You don't get it either. A friend of mine spent a number of years in the newspaper business. I edit books. Everything we do is scrutinized. In the past, we got phone calls and letters, now it's literally Joe Nobody on the internet. And I should add that Joe Nobody, as opposed to a real name on a real newspaper article, can, and often does, get away with anything online. A serious flaw. Government documents are different from opinion pieces. I was asked to review draft after draft of a legal document even though I'm not an attorney. I spotted apparent problems as best I could. Legal documents have standards, or lack them. An actual exchange with my employer and our agent went like this in reference to a line of text in a contract: "Does this mean that?" Reply: "No, it doesn't mean that at all." relatd

@15

Time to move on. Your views will not be taken seriously as in, they will not be granted any kind of traction. Time to move on.

Fair enough. I have enough to do in my real job as it is. PyrrhoManiac1

Relatd, Dude take a chill pill. It was, as PM1 pointed out, just an opinion piece. And a fairly obvious opinion at that. (Or do you actually think government documents are not filled to the brim with “gobbledygook” language?) bornagain77

Chuckdarwin and PyrrhoManiac1: Time to move on. Your views will not be taken seriously as in, they will not be granted any kind of traction. Time to move on. JVL

CD, you wish. That the reigning, domineering orthodoxy of evolutionary materialistic scientism is fatally cracked, being self refuting is breakthrough, liberating news for many who have been trampled underfoot by the new magisterium clad in the lab coat. KF kairosfocus

F/N: Let's establish some facts: https://reason.com/2012/03/21/how-does-the-brain-secrete-morality/

How Does the Brain Secrete Morality? Pondering the neuroscience of moral platitudes, free will, and sacred values. Ronald Bailey | 3.21.2012 1:30 PM The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,asserted 18th century French physiologist Pierre Cabanis. Last week [--> March 2012], the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies convened a conference of neuroscientists and philosophers to ponder how [--> not, whether] our brains secrete thoughts about ethics and morality. The first presenter was neuroeconomist Gregory Berns from Emory University whose work peers into brains to see in which creases of gray matter those values we hold sacred lodge. The study, The Price of Your Soul: neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values, was just published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

So, in no less a venue than the Royal Society, we find a continuation in C21 of a trend coming down from C18, even before William James in C19 noted

The phosphorous-philosophers have often compared thought to a secretion. "The brain secretes thought, as the kidneys secrete urine, or as the liver secretes bile," are phrases which one sometimes hears. [Apparently this line of thought was championed by Jacob Moleschott who is noted for "no thought without phosphorus" and "the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile." The reference to phosphorus is diagnostic.]

James' instantly following retort, is withering:

The lame analogy need hardly be pointed out. The materials which the brain pours into the blood (cholesterin, creatin, xanthin, or whatever they may be) are the analogues of the urine and the bile, being in fact real material excreta. As far as these matters go, the brain is a ductless gland. But we know of nothing connected with liver-and kidney-activity which can [p.103] be in the remotest degree compared with the stream of thought that accompanies the brain's material secretions.

So, the matter is on the table and it is inescapably self-referential. Translated into more modern terms, the claim is the brain is a wetware computational substrate. However, while suitably arranged rocks compute, constrained by GIGO, such is miles different from rational, intent-based contemplation. Computation is a dynamic stochastic signal/information process it is not rational, responsible, free contemplation. In our contemplations we may use our brains (see Derek Smith as a first level) but rationality does not reduce to computation. Those who imagine it does, discredit themselves. So do those who resort to poof magic, strong, inexplicable emergentism. The good news is this is unstable, it will either revert to untenable reductionistic evolutionary materialistic scientism or else it will collapse, cracking open like a chrysalis so the butterfly of responsible, rational freedom can begin to fly high, far and free. KF kairosfocus

PM1 at 11, With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. Newspaper editors review "opinion" pieces. Newspapers known for high standards do not get that way by accident. Good opinion pieces contain arguments backed up by credible references. Good journalism should never be the equivalent of useless opinions found on the internet. relatd

@10 It was an opinion piece, in the opinion section of a newspaper -- no one expects those to meet the standards of good journalism (objectivity, neutrality, etc.). PyrrhoManiac1

Ba77 at 9, I'm a working editor. For the record, I am FOR professionalism in journalism. The article in the link was not good journalism. There is also something called standards. Standards not just for journalism but standards in everyday life. The writer of that article did not, in my view, have his work looked over by an editor or 'managing editor.' The community which every newspaper serves should expect and get good journalism. Not, I'll just write whatever. If they still want to hand out awards for "Excellence in Journalism" then those standards have to be met. If that writer was talking casually then maybe, but journalism requires more. Respectfully. relatd

Mr. Arrington, Reading some of the 'no real content' comments from atheists trying to defend the insanity of Darwinian materialism, it reminded me of this, (unfortunately unsuccessful), 'law' that was passed a few years back trying to reign in government “gobbledygook”

Too many words that offer too little meaning Excerpt: I had no idea that a year ago a law went into effect which forbids federal agencies from using “gobbledygook” language. This discovery excited me. I love “cut to the chase” English. But a recent report says the law is off to a very spotty start.,,, https://www.moultrieobserver.com/opinion/too-many-words-that-offer-too-little-meaning/article_1c090802-d8c2-5cd4-ab67-c6ca4b185aca.html

:) bornagain77

BA at 3, I've also been at this type of non-discussion for a long time. Lies? In the minds of some it appears that a defense against "anything that must be God" must be put up regardless of facts. It HAS to be put up. It can't be avoided. Like the Emperor's new clothes, if the defenders of all that is not religion fail in their defense then religion WILL fill the vacuum. But not as the only alternative but as the true choice - the one choice for the good of all. “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. "It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”1 – Richard Lewontin 1 Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997. relatd

BA, after you smacked down Sev about changing the subject, he's gotten very quiet. One can hope you got through to him. But who are we kidding? :( AnimatedDust

BA Assume what you want. In fact, assume arguendo that you are right. Without addressing my point, your "refutation" of materialism gets you nothing..... chuckdarwin

Classic. Pyrrho goes full on “insane denial.” Deny a well understood concept. In the face of correction deny, deny, deny, deny. See here for other examples of insane denial. Don’t they ever get tired of the lies? I know the answer to that question. I have been debating this topic for nearly 20 years. And, no, they never tire. Truth be damned. The narrative must be maintained. Pyrrho, you have nothing to add to the discussion. Move along.

It's a perfectly legitimate question. There's more than one concept of essence, and more than one theory of what essences are. I mean, there isn't even that much agreement between Plato and Aristotle, and philosophers have been arguing about these issues for thousands of years. But, perhaps you're more interested in winning a contrived debate than you are in having a philosophical conversation -- in which case I am more than happy to move along. PyrrhoManiac1

Chuck, Once again, I assume you have nothing to refute the OP. Yes, I understand you want to change the subject. No. Barry Arrington

PyrrhoManiac1

For you, all the work is being done by the word “essential”. I certainly don’t know what you mean by that

Classic. Pyrrho goes full on "insane denial." Deny a well understood concept. In the face of correction deny, deny, deny, deny. See here for other examples of insane denial. Don't they ever get tired of the lies? I know the answer to that question. I have been debating this topic for nearly 20 years. And, no, they never tire. Truth be damned. The narrative must be maintained. Pyrrho, you have nothing to add to the discussion. Move along. Barry Arrington

ChuckDarwin: “at some point you will have to come up with a testable alternative model to explain behavior, including ‘beliefs.’” Nope. If my goal is to refute materialism on its own terms all I have to do is show that materialism is self-referentially incoherent, which I have done. Again, I do not have to show some other proposition is true for materialism to be false.

I should have been clearer in my original post. My apologies. As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum, thus at some point, ideally sooner than later, someone within the community of ID proponents will have to come up with a testable alternative to materialism to explain sentient behavior, including "beliefs" and "intentionality." Failure to do so will leave ID to die on the vine, if it hasn't already. chuckdarwin

I said that under materialism a brain and a liver are not ESSENTIALLY different. Pyrrho asserts that a brain and a liver are FUNCTIONALLY different. And then he “refutes” my argument by pretending I meant the latter when I clearly meant the former.

I was not pretending anything what you meant or didn't mean. I was pointing out that a materialist can avail themselves of a distinction that undermines this "criticism". For you, all the work is being done by the word "essential". I certainly don't know what you mean by that, and the materialists that I've read haven't had much use for that concept, either. In any event, if "essence" is understood in Aristotelian terms as the kind of thing that a thing is, then surely functional kinds are a kind of essence. What makes something a hammer is not its ultimate molecular constituents but whether it has the requisite gross structural properties that allow it to be used in hammering. A hammer is a hammer whether it's made of stone, metal, or wood: the functional organization is what makes it the kind of thing that it is, i.e. the essence. So why can't functional kinds be essences? Why can't the difference in function between livers and brains also be an "essential" difference?

Nope. Pyrrho, no one disputes that a brain and a liver have different functions. Do you really think I am too stupid to understand that?

I have no idea what you are too stupid to understand.

And do you really dispute that under materialism there is no essential difference between a brain and a liver in that they are both reducible to nothing more than their chemical constituents? If you do, you do not understand materialism, because that is the whole point of materialism.

Indeed, so you insist.

Not only is Pyrrho wrong, but also, again, the WHOLE POINT of materialism is that everything, including livers and brains, is ultimately reducible to nothing but its physical constituents.

So you claim. You're free to define and stipulate whatever you wish. It's a free country and it's your blog. But I suspect that on your stipulated definition of "materialism," it will turn out that there just aren't any materialists -- with the possible exception of Alex Rosenberg. PyrrhoManiac1