Russell,
I understand that there is a great demand for your time on this list but
I have to confess my disappointment with the cursory manner with which
you dismissed what I believe are matters very germane to the debate at
hand.
First, it was not my contention that people who hold to a materialistic
philosophy are incapable of functioning in society so your response is a
bit puzzling to me. My original comment was that materialism as a
worldview is internally inconsistent and incapable of making such things
as science, ethics, logic, and knowledge intelligible. In other words,
it does not and cannot provide the necessary preconditions to account
for such things.
I might also point out as an aside, that the assessment that millions of
people are able to get along "quite well" is a value judgment which
leads me to wonder why you call this a fact. Is it a scientifically
drawn conclusion or a logically deduced proposition?
>
> >> >I'm curious, Russ. Why is it that you regard logic and experimental
> >> >evidence as superior epistemological sources?
> >>
> >> Because they have a very reliable track record.
> >
> >You seem to be relying upon the inductive principle here. Can you offer
> >a rational justification for that principle without assuming what you
> >are seeking to prove?
>
> I don't see that I assumed anything. I merely claimed (and rightfully so)
> that the methods of science are taken very seriously because they have
> proven to be very successful.
My point here was that you are expecting that the methods of science
that have proven successful in the past will continue to do so in the
future. This is to apply the inductive principle which assumes the
uniformity of nature. I was asking you to provide a rational
justification for the belief that nature will operate in a uniform
manner witihout assuming the truthfulness of what you are seeking to
prove (i.e. "Because it's always been uniform in the past"). Why, on
materialistic grounds, is such a belief justified?
>
> >> >The question was asked before but I don't believe you addressed it in
> >> >detail. I take it from your concern for logical consistency and proof,
> >> >that you think highly of logic. What exactly do you believe the laws of
> >> >logic to be (I don't want you to enumerate them but rather to tell me
> >> >what you think their nature is i.e. are they human convention, etc.)
> >>
> >> I think that they are certainly human convention, and that they are one of
> >> the most powerful and useful tools developed by the human mind.
> >
> >If the laws of logic are in fact creations of the human mind, then it
> >seems inescapable that they are contingent and not necesary truths.
>
> Depends on your perspective.
>From what perspective would this not be the case?
> >In
> >other words, they might have been other than they are. They could have
> >been false. A necessary truth, on the other hand, is one that *must* be
> >true in all circumstances. Please keep in mind that I'm not referring
> >to physical but logical necessity here. Laws of nature are not
> >logically necessary. I can conceive of my letting go of an object and
> >it hanging supsended in midair without violating any principle of
> >rationality.
>
> Sure, if you were in zero-g. Otherwise, your imagined scenario would quite
> radically violate principles of rationality.
That's my point, objects released from a height do not fall in every
imagineable situation and therefore the proposition "All objects
released at a height from the surface of the ground fall" is not true in
every circumstance. We can conceive of a situation, as you did, in
which case it is not true and therefore it is not a logically necessary
truth. Comparably, could you please describe for me a state of affairs
in which the laws of contradiction, excluded middle, and identity are
not true?
>
> >On the contrary, I cannot conceive of a case in which the
> >law of contradiction did not hold true. I can't conceive of being
> >totally wet and totally dry at the same time. Neither can I think of a
> >case in which a statement could be both true and false at the same time
> >and in the same respect.
> >
> >If in fact the laws of logic are contingent, then it is possible that
> >they could change, in which case they are not invariable.
>
> Sure, and it's also possible that a jar full of hydrogen will spontaneously
> initiate a fusion chain reaction. But it's not a possibility that's worth
> considering seriously.
>
> >Russ, do you
> >believe that the laws of logic are absolute, invariable, and
> >immaterial?
> >If so, how does such a belief comport with your naturalism
> >and if not, then why do you refer to logic as if it were absolute and
> >invariable?
>
> I have never referred to anything as absolute and invariable. However,
> just because nothing is absolute and invariable, it does not follow that
> everything is chaotic and unreliable.
For the sake of clarification, are you affirming that nothing is
absolute and invariable? And if in fact you are denying that the laws
of logic are absolute and invariable, is it safe to conclude that you
believe they are relative and variable?
I also see that you failed to comment at all about the following
paragraph from my original post:
That's exactly my point. Given your materialistic worldview you will
never come to the conlcusion that an event *cannot* be accounted for
naturalistically. Indeed it would be impossible for you to know that
such was the case given what you've said about the limitations of our
knowledge of the universe. If, as you believe, we can never know all
there is to know about the workings of the universe, how apart from
omniscience could one ever be justified in concluding that a given event
*could not* be naturalistically explained? This is what I meant when I
said that your materialism is practically unfalsifiable. Either you
will offer a materialistic explanation for such an event or you will
claim ignorance of a yet unknown materialistic explanation although you
would be certatain that such existed.
Shall I take from this that you are in agreement with its contents?
If not, can you please explain? Thanks.
Keith P.