In my previous post, I demonstrated that materialism refutes itself because the very act of affirming belief in materialism depends on a denial of materialism. Why? Because purely physical things do not exhibit “intentionality” (the “aboutness” between believer and that which is believed). A liver cannot have any relationship to a proposition. So, for example, it would be absurd to say “my liver believes materialism is true.” And, of course, the problem for the materialist is that materialism claims that brains and livers are essentially the same in that they are purely physical.
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.
Our materialist friends were not able to defeat this logic (it is truly unassailable), but they did jump into the comments with various responses. Here are some examples:
Seversky: “Show us an immaterial or disembodied consciousness and you may have a case” This is a classic red herring. I am not required to show that dualism is true to show that materialism is false. Materialism is false whether or not some other proposition is true.
PyrrhoManiac1: “Naturalists would insist that brains and livers have different biological functions” Here we have equivocation laced with strawman. First, Pyrrho equivocates on the word “difference.” 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. 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? 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. Fail. Pyrrho goes on to blah blah blah about cybernetics and thermodynamic equilibrium. That discussion is not remotely responsive to the question. Double fail.
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.
PyrrhoManiac1 again: This time he asserts that I am caricaturizing materialism when I say it posits that the liver and the brain are “nothing but” their material constituents. Good grief. This is just silly. 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. Not just a fail but a catastrophic fail.