Naturalism: Self-Defeating, Unintelligible, and Ungrounded (Among Other Problems) | J.W. Wartick -"Always Have a Reason" Naturalism is self-defeating. Naturalism’s “Grand Story” (I’m unsure of who exactly coined this phrase) includes evolution as the means by which humanity arrived on earth. I’m not here to debate that. Rather, I think that Alvin Plantinga’s “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism” has some fairly hefty weight (see Warrant The Current Debate and Warranted Christian Belief for this argument). The argument basically goes like this: 1) On naturalism, evolution selected for our cognitive system 2) On evolution, it is what is beneficial for survival that is selected (with some exceptions–some animals are just unlucky) 3) Therefore, our cognitive system was selected for survival 4) What is beneficial for survival is not necessarily what is true (in an objective sense) 5) Therefore, we can’t know (on naturalism) that our cognitive system is truth-seeking 6) If we can’t trust our cognitive system, but we come to the conclusion that naturalism is true, then we can’t trust this conclusion Now take 4).
Viewpoint: Why Naturalism Is Self-Refuting. Among the live options for worldviews on offer in modern times certainly one of the most popular among scientists, philosophers, and other academics is the view called naturalism. This view states that all that exists is ultimately explicable in terms of the sorts of explanations employed by scientists. In other words, nature and nature's laws are all there is, there's nothing else. Most worldviews offer a Grand Story for how we got here. In naturalism the Story is some iteration of Darwinian evolution.
Blind, natural processes generated life which evolved through genetic mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift to produce the grand diversity of life including man and his marvelous powers of reason. In a piece in The New Republic critical of his fellow atheist Richard Dawkins Gray writes: Of course, the sheer pressure to survive is likely to produce some correct ideas. But, Pearcy tells us, that means Crick's own theory cannot be relied upon to be true. Arguments from Reason. Thank you for your interest in Patheos newsletters! Please enter your email address below and click the "Subscribe" button. Thank you for your subscription. You can visit your Preference Center to complete your profile and see what else we have to offer. We apologize, we were unable to complete your subscription at this time, please try again later. If this error persists please contact us at communications@patheos.com. Like what you're reading? ShareThis Copy and Paste. The Single Best Argument Against Philosophical Materialism?
Browse > Home / Atheism / The Single Best Argument Against Philosophical Materialism? A Dilemma for Materialists In my experience, it's often difficult for my intelligent atheist friends to seriously consider arguments for the truth of Christianity. An argument from the resurrection of Jesus remains implausible because their worldview fundamentally excludes this sort of event. In light of this, I'd like to engage one popular form of this worldview, namely philosophical materialism. Thus here’s my dilemma for materialists: 1. 2. 3. 4. The conclusion necessarily follows from those three premises, if all are true, so let's examine each premise one at a time.
Premise (1): A Philosophical Axiom Premise (1) is obvious and uncontroversial. Premise (2): A Definitional Point “Materialism” is a term used somewhat inconsistently by philosophers. Dual aspect theorists are willing to admit that mental states are something distinct from physical states and that they are not reducible to physical states. Naturalism is self-refuting. By Matt Slick Naturalism is self-refuting because it undermines the foundation for proper logical inference by restricting the human brain to operation within the properties of the physical laws, yet physical laws do not produce proper logical inference.
In order to expand on this, I must define my terms. Naturalism--"Naturalism is the position that nature is all there is, and there is no supernatural realm. It says that all of human experience can be described and understood through natural laws, science, and human reason. Naturalism undermines the rational basis for proper logical inference because it reduces rational processes to neurochemical reactions of the physical brain. Furthermore, another problem is that if a so-called "logical conclusion" is produced in a person's brain, then the conclusion is automatically "true" to that physical brain because it is the necessary result of that particular brain's neurochemical wiring. So, atheistic naturalism is, ultimately, self-refuting. The Argument from Consciousness Refuted. Many Christian philosophers (e.g., Richard Swinburne) advocate a theistic argument which has begun of late to garner considerable popularity in the literature.
The argument is one from human consciousness, i.e., it appeals to the phenomenon of human consciousness as its main premise. That phenomenon, so the argument goes, is somehow unlikely or perhaps even impossible on the assumption of atheism (or naturalism). Let us call this argument "the Argument from Human Consciousness for the Existence of God" (AHC).[1] There are various versions AHC, some more far-reaching than others. For the purposes of the present essay, however, the argument may be formulated quite simply, as follows: (A) It is a fact that human consciousness exists. There are at least four objections which can be raised against AHC. The onus of proving AHC's premise (B) rests squarely with the advocate of AHC. AHC's step (C) does not follow from its premise (B).
[M]any scientists do make contributions to such a project. By. What Is Materialism? - History and Definition. By Austin Cline What is Materialism? : Materialism is the idea that everything is either made only of matter or is ultimately dependent upon matter for its existence and nature. It is possible for a philosophy to be materialistic and still accord spirit a (secondary or dependent) place, but most forms of materialism tend to reject the existence of spirit or anything non-physical. Important Books on Materialism: De Rerum Natura, by LucretiusSysteme de la nature, by d’Holbach Important Philosophers of Materialism: ThalesParmenides of EleaEpicurusLucretiusThomas HobbesPaul Heinrich Dietrich d’Holbach What is Matter? If materialism argues that matter is the only or primary thing that exists, what is matter supposed to be? Materialism and the Mind: A common critique of materialism involves the mind: are mental events material or themselves the result of matter, or are they the result of something immaterial, like a soul?
Materialism and Determinism: Materialism and Science: Atheism and Materialism: Irreconcilable Differences: The Divorce of Materialism and Truth. According to many today, the advance of the natural physical sciences continues to shrink the “space” for God. The “gaps” where someone can place God are decreasing, and therefore the “God hypothesis” will one day be swallowed whole by the progress of the scientific endeavor. Even more, the “space” where one could posit the human person as something more than just a complex, organized collection of matter and energy is said to have disappeared.
While I find a materialist metaphysics very hard to coherently defend, I do find it interesting that an increasing amount of “secular” philosophers, who have no particular sympathy towards deism or theism, are beginning to question the assumption that materialism is true. It seems the rise of the physical sciences has led to matter and energy being proclaimed as the one true “god.” But there is a key distinction that makes the human person so unique. We will be using the form of a basic logical philosophical proof. The Argument I.
II. III. IV. Consciousness Remains an Intractable Problem for Naturalism | Cloud of Witnesses. Naturalism. 1. Ontological Naturalism 1.1 Making a Causal Difference The driving motivation for ontological naturalism is the need to explain how different kinds of things can make a causal difference to the spatiotemporal world. Thus many contemporary thinkers adopt a naturalist view of the mental realm because they think that otherwise we will be unable to explain how mental processes can causally influence non-mental processes. Similar considerations motivate naturalist views of the biological realm, the social realm, and so on. It may not be immediately obvious why this need to account for causal influence should impose any substantial ‘naturalist’ constraints on some category. After all, there seems nothing a priori incoherent in the idea of radically ‘supernatural’ events exerting a causal influence on ordinary spatiotemporal processes, as is testified by the conceptual cogency of traditional stories about the worldly interventions of immaterial deities and other outlandish beings.
G.E. Naturalism | J.W. Wartick -"Always Have a Reason" “The Knower and the Known” by Stephen Parrish, Part 2 Stephen Parrish’s The Knower and the Known is not merely a critique of physicalism. As we noted in the review of the first part, that critique itself is a decisive, thorough demolishing of major physicalist theories of mind. Here, we will explore Parrish’s exposition of a theory of consciousness. Thought and Consciousness What does it mean to have a thought? Consciousness itself is an extremely complex notion which involves phenomenality: the actual experience of thought; intentionality: the turning of one’s thoughts to consider an object; subjectivity: an agent which is itself the subject of the thought; and rationality: the capacity to order thoughts in such a way as to make sense of them. (206-213). Consciousness has certain phenomenal properties. Consciousness must somehow interact with the physical world.
Qualia are also extremely important when considering consciousness. Our Minds in the World And Then There was More… Conclusion C.S. Failure of Atheism to Account for Rationality | CARM | Atheism. By Matt Slick As a worldview, atheism is intellectually bankrupt and is wrought with philosophical problems. In this video, let's look at the inability for the atheistic worldview to account for rationality. Now, I've already done a lot on this topic on the carm website and in videos. So I'm not going to get into this very deeply here. But, this is not rational, and you and I both know that it isn't.
In the Christian worldview, the universal truth statements are derived from God. Let me clarify. Atheism has no way of accounting for these universal truth statements. So, atheists repeatedly try to respond to the issue of trying to account for rationality founded in universal truth statements also known as logical absolutes. But, Christianity comes to the rescue and states that the universal truth statements reflect the universal mind. __________________________________________________See Related Articles. Why Naturalism Is Self-Refuting. Csl_vs_naturalism.pdf. C.S. Lewis's Argument against Naturalism, part 1. The following series of posts are an adaptation of a thesis I wrote for one of my Master's degrees. ____________________ Introduction and Background Initial statement of argument One of Lewis’s arguments is that our reasoning capacities cannot be accounted for on naturalistic premises, and so we are forced by the fact that we reason to posit a supernaturalist worldview.
His most extensive treatment of this argument is in his book Miracles, but he expressed it many times in his writings. We are certain that, in this life at any rate, thought is intimately connected with the brain. Another example: Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula or the remotest part obeys the thought laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory -- in other words, unless Reason is an absolute -- all [science] is in ruins. These two quotes succinctly express the three aspects of Lewis’s argument. Christian philosopher G.E.M. Further influences beyond this, however, are conjectural. Is Scientism Self-Refuting. Dear Dr. Craig, How would you reply to this argument that scientism is not self-refuting: "Scientism has been always been successful in the past; any supernaturalistic explanations used by our progenitors have been replaced by naturalistic explanations.
Never has a supernaturalistic explanation superseded a naturalistic one. Basically, the person I quoted is a friend of mine who treats scientism itself as a scientific theory and argues that it is inductively warranted and evidenced. Thank you, Neel United States Neel, your friend is confusing scientism (an epistemological thesis) with naturalism (an ontological thesis).
These theses are obviously different. So leaving aside for the moment the question of naturalism, what problems are there with scientism? Secondly, scientism is self-refuting. One final note about your friend’s argument for naturalism: of course, no supernaturalistic explanation has ever superseded a naturalistic one! Notes i W. Arguments from Reason. Searle’s Biological Naturalism and the Argument from Consciousness. In recent years Robert Adams and Richard Swinburne have developed an argument for Gods existence from the reality of mental phenomena. Call this the argument from consciousness (AC). My purpose is to develop and defend AC and to use it as a rival paradigm to critique John Searle’s biological naturalism. The article is developed in three steps. First, two issues relevant to the epistemic task of adjudicating between rival scientific paradigms (basicality and naturalness) are clarified and illustrated. Second, I present a general version of AC and identify the premises most likely to come under attack by philosophical naturalists.
Third, I use the insights gained in steps one and two to criticize Searle’s claim that he has developed an adequate naturalistic theory of the emergence of mental entities. In the last few decades, there has been an avalanche of activity in the epistemology of science. The ordering of these three ingredients is important. The Argument from Consciousness. Naturalism is self-refuting | CARM | Atheism. Naturalism: Self-Defeating, Unintelligible, and Ungrounded (Among Other Problems) | J.W. Wartick -"Always Have a Reason" Naturalism: Self-Defeating, Unintelligible, and Ungrounded (Among Other Problems) | J.W. Wartick -"Always Have a Reason" The Argument from Truth | The Orthosphere. Omniscience could not fail to comprehend all truths, and anything less than omniscience would fail as an understanding of the whole truth.
Further, only omniscience could fully understand the whole meaning of even a single proposition, so as adequately to evaluate its truth value; for the infinite extent of the realm of the possible entails that the potential consequences in experience of the truth of any proposition are necessarily infinite in number, and until one knows all the consequences of a concept, one cannot fully comprehend its meaning. So only an omniscient being can know the whole truth, or the whole meaning of any one truth.
If therefore a proposition is true, it must necessarily be found among that set of propositions entertained by God as the whole truth. So only the propositions entertained as true by God can in fact be true. Put another way: If God knows a proposition is true, then other beings may have a shot at recognizing that truth. Like this: Like Loading...