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 âintentionalityâ (the âaboutnessâ 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 âmy liver believes materialism is true.â 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 âliverâ and the amalgamation of chemicals called âbrain,â 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: âShow us an immaterial or disembodied consciousness and you may have a caseâ 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: âNaturalists would insist that brains and livers have different biological functions” Here we have equivocation laced with strawman. First, Pyrrho equivocates on the word âdifference.â 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: âat some point you will have to come up with a testable alternative model to explain behavior, including âbeliefs.ââ 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 ânothing butâ 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.
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?
I have no idea what you are too stupid to understand.
Indeed, so you insist.
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.
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.
PyrrhoManiac1
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.
Chuck,
Once again, I assume you have nothing to refute the OP. Yes, I understand you want to change the subject. No.
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.
BA
Assume what you want. In fact, assume arguendo that you are right. Without addressing my point, your “refutation” of materialism gets you nothing…..
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? đ
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.
âWe 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.â1
â Richard Lewontin
1 Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997.
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 âgobbledygookâ
đ
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.
@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.).
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.
F/N: Let’s establish some facts:
https://reason.com/2012/03/21/how-does-the-brain-secrete-morality/
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
James’ instantly following retort, is withering:
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
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
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.
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 âgobbledygookâ language?)
@15
Fair enough. I have enough to do in my real job as it is.
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 writes:
I remind myself of this every time I read one of your comments.
PM1 @
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.
We can talk about what âfunctionâ is, but letâs 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.
OP
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.
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?
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
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
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).
Farina replied:
to be continued …
PS: This guy dares to debunk James Tour —> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ABRu-Dj0e8
MR, I generally don’t even try at YT. You are right, of course, but you are maximally politically incorrect. KF
@20
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?
Seversky @21
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.
For clarity, Materialism is reductionistic:
Sev quotes Dawkins:
Dawkins pretends to present a new concept âhierarchical reductionismâ. 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.
You are debating a straw man Dawkins, no one wants to deprive materialism of doing step-by-step reductionism.
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.
PM1 @26
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.
@28
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.
PM1
I, for one, am in awe of the ID arguments, but I am not a follower of any of the Abrahamic religions.
Kairosfocus @25
yes, Youtube behaves very strange. Now Farina is attacking me using F-words. No problem for Youtube. It is strange.
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 @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.
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.
The truth matters not to the first world Western social media participant. To borrow slightly from Nike,
Just Say It.
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.
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