Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Fallacy of Creeping Omniscience

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Yesterday, in his “Critics agree with Dembski” post, Eric Holloway raised the issue of a fallacy that is so significant in the design theory context that it deserves its own name: The Fallacy of Creeping Omniscience.

He provided a description that with some minor adjustments, can serve as a working definition:

It is commonly noted that when smart or educated or famous, or wealthy or powerful people or the like achieve expertise or noted success in a certain area, they suddenly think they are experts in many others, even when lacking the necessary knowledge. When listening to smart or educated or famous, or wealthy or powerful people, it is always wise to take this into consideration, and listen most closely to their opinions about what they’re carefully studied. (But, even on those topics where they have genuine expertise, we should note that no expert is better than his or her facts, assumptions and reasoning.)

It is always helpful to give a key example or two, and the now notorious NYRB 1997 clip from Professor Richard Lewontin makes a very good first example:

. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people’s heads we must first get an incorrect view out . . .   the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth [[ –> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]. . . .
To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident [[ –> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . ] that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test  [[ –> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . .

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 [[ –> another major begging of the question . . . ] 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 absolute [[ –> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [From: “Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997. (NB: if you have been led to imagine that the immediately following words JUSTIFY the above, kindly follow the link and read the full clip and notes.)]

No wonder, Philip Johnson corrected:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them “materialists employing science.” And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
. . . .   The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

As a second example, Professor William Provine’s 1998 Darwin Day Address at University of Tennessee is useful:

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . . 

The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will . . . .

Natural selection is a process leading every species almost certainly to extinction . . . Nothing could be more uncaring than the entire process of organic evolution. Life has been on earth for about 3.6 billion years. In less that one billion more years our sun will turn into a red giant. All life on earth will be burnt to a crisp. Other cosmic processes absolutely guarantee the extinction of all life anywhere in the universe. When all life is extinguished, no memory whatsoever will be left that life ever existed.  [[Evolution: Free Will and Punishment and Meaning in Life, Second Annual Darwin Day Celebration Keynote Address, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, February 12, 1998 (abstract).]

When major and highly contentious philosophical assertions or assumptions appear “obvious” to adherents of a given theory or model or ideology, that is usually a sign that they have been embedded in it from the beginning and have been swallowed unreflectively.

In this case, following the same errors made by Lewontin, not only has the circle of a priori materialism been begged, so that we move in effect from science “must” think in a materialistic circle — not! — to materialistic science determines what is real, to therefore no God exists, but as a direct worldview consequence ethics has been reduced to radical relativism, and thence to might or manipulation makes “right.” Just as Plato warned against 2,350 years ago in The Laws, Bk X.

These are bad enough, but the real tickler is in Provine’s fifth consequence: freedom to decide and think for oneself has now vanished in the evolutionary materialist circle. While he desperately tries to make this seem to be a good thing (he actually says: “We will all live in a better society when the myth of free will is dispelled . . .”), he overlooks a pretty direct consequence, the disintegration of freedom to think for oneself above one’s genetic, socio-cultural and institutional conditioning. For if one is not free, one is a plaything of blind mechanical necessity and accidents of circumstance that may lead one to things that are adaptive in the sense of promoting reproductive success [including by way of career and bank account success] but that comes at a stiff price indeed. Professor Provine has unwittingly undercut his own ability to think and reason and know above and beyond delusions rooted in genes and memes that happen to help jumped-up apes from East Africa struggling in a Malthusian world to have more offspring. Chance Variation and Natural Selection, multiplied by conscious or unconscious eugenics forces in cultures, reward survival and reproductive success, not truth. (And of course, there is the little challenge that the survival of the fittest does not explain the arrival of the fittest (starting with first, cell-based life), but that is a topic for another post.)

To see the full  scope of that price, let us turn to a third witness and case,  Nobel Prize holder Sir Francis Crick in his 1994 The Astonishing Hypothesis:

. . . that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing. [[Cf. dramatisation of unintended potential consequences, here.]

No wonder, Philip Johnson rebutted, in his 1995 Reason in the Balance, that Dr Crick should therefore be willing to preface his books: “I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and even the thoughts expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.” (In short, as Prof Johnson then went on to say: “[[t]he plausibility of materialistic determinism requires that an implicit exception be made for the theorist.”

In short, reduction to self-referential incoherence and absurdity.

In each of these cases, a well-known scientific and/or academic figure, has traipsed beyond what he has primarily studied, and is essaying, unbeknownst, into deep philosophical waters. Only, to find himself caught up in swirling currents and tossing waves of question-begging and self-referential incoherence.

The root problem is that materialist myth-making while wearing a lab coat is still myth-making, and most of today’s scientists and the like have little or no exposure to, training in or capability to use the techniques that are relevant to critical analysis of worldviews and cultural agendas,where also the border between science and philosophy is rather fuzzy.

It would greatly help if high school and college education in science embedded some basic exposure to philosophy of science themes, and related epistemology, logic and general critical awareness; without imposing evolutionary materialism — today’s reigning orthodoxy — as a censoring a priori. END

Comments
We are disagreeing about what is empirically possible. Short of a rigorous showing of a contradiction, what looks like "begging the question" to you, doesn't to me. Are you positing a capability our minds do have, that isn't possible under the laws of physics? Can you be specific, or at least narrow things down a bit?africangenesis
August 31, 2011
August
08
Aug
31
31
2011
04:12 PM
4
04
12
PM
PDT
Ah, round and round we go, in denial. Pity, really.kairosfocus
August 31, 2011
August
08
Aug
31
31
2011
07:48 AM
7
07
48
AM
PDT
No, because open ended programming is plausible even with digital computers, and because are genes don't exercise that kind of control, they impose a pattern upon chaos and they obviously only have weak control of that part of the pattern we call a brain. They took their chances with intelligence, and it has given them a pretty good ride. Too many people have voluntarily chosen to not reproduce or to reproduce at less than replacement rates to conclude that intelligence isn't "free" to reach its own conclusions. We have free will in every sense that matters, because intelligence would be impotent without the causes that operate upon it, that give it values and make physical demands upon it. There is no contradiction in matter being able to comprehend the laws or logic of the universe.africangenesis
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
05:51 PM
5
05
51
PM
PDT
H'mm: wishful thinking, doubtless programmed by genes and memes through accidents of natural and cultural history, driving the "pack of neurons" known as AG. See the self referentiality problem yet?kairosfocus
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
03:09 PM
3
03
09
PM
PDT
To paraphrase Haldane, given today's knowledge: "It seems to me immensely plausible that my mind is matter. My mental processes have been honed by natural selection to work well in monitoring, exploring and predicting the environment. Because I am the descendent of a long line of organisms that successfully reproduced in the face of happenstance, competition and even malicious intent all governed by the laws of physics, I have no reason to suppose that the brain's processes are not robust to the seemingly chaotic fluctuations in the chemical soup inside our cells. That doesn't make the brain sound logically or statistically, but centuries of advances in logic and mathematics have shown that with disciplined application and cross-checking we can reach logically and statistically sound conclusions. The principles that underlie the development of magnetic resonance imaging, give me good reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."africangenesis
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
02:00 PM
2
02
00
PM
PDT
Onlookers WJM is right. We are right back full circle where Haldane was at the turn of the 1930's:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." [["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
AG gives an unfortunate, inadvertent demonstration of the force of the point. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
07:02 AM
7
07
02
AM
PDT
"It seems to me" = "I have been dreamt by physics to feel .."; while I (on the other hand) have been dreamt by physics to feel the opposite; you have been dreamt by physics to feel you are reasoning, and reasoning correctly, for a finding of "X", while I have been dreamt by physics to feel I am reasoning, and reasoning correctly, for a finding of "not-X"; physics has contradicted itself, and you are again engaging in self-referential, self-contradictory incoherence. There is nothing you can say from the grounding of materialism that is not rooted in the quagmire above.William J Murray
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
06:52 AM
6
06
52
AM
PDT
It seems to me the one “dreamt by physics” to claim X only if disciplined reasoning from the evidence supports X, is in quite a different position from one that just claims -X. Physics seems quite able to support conditionals.
Under materialism, there is literally no difference between the former and the latter. A dreamt bald assertion is fundamentally no different than a dream of an assertion accompanied by a sensation of disciplined reasoning from evidence.William J Murray
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
06:47 AM
6
06
47
AM
PDT
It seems to me the one "dreamt by physics" to claim X only if disciplined reasoning from the evidence supports X, is in quite a different position from one that just claims -X. Physics seems quite able to support conditionals.africangenesis
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
05:45 AM
5
05
45
AM
PDT
AG: You can't see the forest (meta-argument) for the trees (specific argument). The meta-argument is that you have no grounds for confidence that anything you say about any subject has any substantive meaning or value whatsoever, regardless of whether you are making a specific argument about the capacity of physics, the relative warrant of world-views, or ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Being the dreamt manifestation of non-sentient physical material, you think and feel and do whatever physics commands, whether it has any meaning or not, whether it correlates or not, whether it is patently absurd or not, and have no resource by which you can hope to discern "true" from "false" because everything physics dreams is as "true" as anything else, indemnified by the only thing that indemnifies truth - it was produced by physics. Everything you say and claim is necessarily self-referential, because all that exists to make the claim and to prove it by is same thing. That you are dreamt by physics to claim and argue and feel confident in X is no different than the next guy who is dreamt to claim and feel confident in not-X. That you are dreamt to think that various methods and lines of investigation "really" "truly" make your view "more likely to be true" is no different than when I dream that it is entirely normal and unremarkable that I find myself in whatever circumstances I find myself in a dream, and the dream instills me with the feeling that it is true and real. The dreamer (non-sentient physics, in your world-view case) can make any situation, no matter how absurd, feel normal and logical; it can insert memories and ideas that the dreamt manifestation doesn't even question as real or valid. The dreamt have no capacity to to find true "error" in their world unless they can reference something outside of the dream (as many lucid dreamers can do); but in materialism, there is nothing outside of the dream to reference. IOW, nothing you can post here can escape your ideologically self-imposed "system" of self-referential incoherence (material physics).William J Murray
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
04:04 AM
4
04
04
AM
PDT
Gem of TKI, "As the blind product of progrqamming, how do you know this? ... And, have you got any good evidence that such can confer logical reasoning and sound conceptualisation capacity? In short do you see the circles and the self reference that is self-stultifying?" Would the same self reference apply if the conclusion was just, we have no evidence of the origin of life, and our own origins? There doesn't seem to be any self reference at this point. Would the self reference come in if we note that we have no evidence of anything other than natural forces? I don't see the self reference at this point. Would the self reference come in if we note that the genetic code is the same and the genes the same or similar across nearly all organisms? I don't see the self reference at this point. Would the self reference come in if we note that the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that OTHER organisms shared a common ancestor in the past? I don't see the self reference here. Unless you can demonstrate self reference in these earlier steps, self reference only becomes relevant if we note that we are related to those other organisms and the evidence is consistent with us sharing a common ancestor. If would appear that "self reference" component of your argument, is not a problem for the theory of evolution, but just for the inclusion of humans with that theory. So there isn't a self-reference, begging the question issue for evolution itself.africangenesis
August 30, 2011
August
08
Aug
30
30
2011
02:10 AM
2
02
10
AM
PDT
AG: As the blind product of progrqamming, how do you know this? Do you have evidence that complex -- beyond 500 bits --algorithms, codes, languages and the like can be coded by undirected chance plus necessity through trial and error (no shuttling in the back door or begging the question of getting to a shoreline of function, please)? And, have you got any good evidence that such can confer logical reasoning and sound conceptualisation capacity? In short do you see the circles and the self reference that is self-stultifying? GEM of TKIkairosfocus
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
12:57 PM
12
12
57
PM
PDT
re 27.1.1.2.1: Because the physics that we call AG say so. :)William J Murray
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
12:20 PM
12
12
20
PM
PDT
But in the case of the human brain, most of the rubbish has been weeded out of the sensory, route planning, outlier/motion detect and pattern matching processing before it even got to us. We are biased towards a higher false positive rate when it comes to danger, because the cost of being wrong is so high. When it comes to higher level language communication and symbolic thinking, the success was so great that we have arrived only half formed, i.e., aborting at success. We wanted answers from day 1, when the complexity of our universe required centuries of disciplined acquisition of knowledge. We didn't reach a level of development where this discipline is easy. Our mostly socially derived intelligence still anthropomorphises more than it should. We probably should trust our hard won, hard to execute disciplined thought processes more than our hunches. Absent a proven contradiction, there is no reason to assume they can't ultimately be liberating, providing a caused "free" will almost as satisfying as the illusion, because it is caused by who we are.africangenesis
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
12:05 PM
12
12
05
PM
PDT
AG: Remember, as reminded previously, the programs are doing ADD ACC A, XXXX, BRANCH IF Z-FLAG = 1, ADDDRSS. It is the programmers who are doing he decisions and the discoveries. If you had fed in rubbish the computer could not tell the difference, save if it outright crashed. (Indeed, there is a debate out there on how certain popular spreadsheets have certain subtle errors under certain circumstances. There was also the time when errors were discovered in the machine language instructions for some MPUS.) So, please do not commit the fallacy of anthropomorphising the machines. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
06:40 AM
6
06
40
AM
PDT
Cannuckian:
He thinks his tail is outside of himself.
Indeed! And referring to its tail via a personal pronoun wouldn't change the fact that it is chasing its tail.
William J Murray
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
03:20 AM
3
03
20
AM
PDT
Africangenesis, The physics-that-is-me says X; the physics-that-is-you says not-X; physics is contradicting itself, with no means of resolving the issue except self-reference. That is a self-contradiction, not a mere predicament. Under your paradigm, "you" and "I" and "we" and "Gandhi" and "Dahmer" and "Fundamentalist Muslims" and "Richard Dawkins" are all necessarily merely semantic representations of the same thing - physics. Your use of personal pronouns and verbs ascribing actions to those individual pronouns as if they are independent, self-contained entities performing independent, sufficiently-caused-by-self will, allow you to hide from yourself (and others) the distilled essence of your statements - that they are all the same thing believing and espousing self-contradictory ideas. Only if the agents in question are free and independent and sufficient causes unto themselves do they have a chance of escaping self-referential, question-begging absurdity. I'm really going to have to have a talk with Giordi about clearing up this aspect of the holodeck interactive programming.William J Murray
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
02:55 AM
2
02
55
AM
PDT
This exchange between you, AG and KF is one of the best I've seen on here. The wealth of information on the application of fallacies in an argument is unprecedented coupled with KF's clear analysis on comparative difficulties. I'm keeping this whole exchange for reference purposes. One thing is clear. When you break down materialism to basics in reference to first principles of reason you end up with something my cat does for play. Of course my cat doesn't know any better. He thinks his tail is outside of himself.CannuckianYankee
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
01:52 AM
1
01
52
AM
PDT
PS: Projecting to the other one's own problems, is also a fallacy, the turnabout accusation -- though here not in the more typical, overtly hostile form; a kissing cousin of the "you're another" fallacy, but subtler as it does not acknowledge guilt -- the sawdust/plank in the eyes problem. (What part of "inference to best explanation by comparative difficulties analysis escapes circularity through balanced examination of alternatives," do you not understand?)kairosfocus
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
01:40 AM
1
01
40
AM
PDT
AG: Plainly, we can safely remove your "If" to see your actual key commitment:
that [materialism] is the way the universe works, it doesn’t result in a contradiction, just a predicament
I think some questions are in order: 1] Do you not see the closed, locked- in ideological loop of your thinking- in- a- materialist- circle? (I strongly recommend a dose of comparative difficulties analysis as a way out of such a Plato's Cave trap. The vid is especially helpful.) 2] Do you not see that your just now amounts to, "yes evolutionary materialism is indeed absurd but I don't see an alternative [that I am willing to even consider]"? 3] Do you not see that you have reached reduction to absurdity, but cling to the system that is thereby shown to be fatally self-destructive logically? 4] Is that reasonable? (if you think so, why?) 5] Do you not see that there are serious and reasonable alternatives out there, albeit maybe less popular among the materialist elites? Gkairosfocus
August 29, 2011
August
08
Aug
29
29
2011
01:28 AM
1
01
28
AM
PDT
If that is the way the universe works, it doesn't result in a contradiction, just a predicament.africangenesis
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
09:55 PM
9
09
55
PM
PDT
Fortunately, I don't believe all humans have free will, or I would be surprised that you respond to having your question-begging and concept-stealing pointed out by utilizing a reiteration (albeit in new clothes) of your question-begging, concept stealing prior post. To wit, my prior response re your new post: Under materialism/physicalism, to “understand” "conclude" something means “programmed by physics to think and believe a certain set of things about the thing in question”; how does that help your case any? Everyone All computers “understands” "conclude" physics output by that measure, even those who which directly contradict each other. You keep semantically trying to appeal to something outside of the system to arbit the findings of the system; you apparently want to invoke a second ruler to gauge the accuracy of the first, but there is no second ruler in your system, no matter how many ways you try to sneak it in.William J Murray
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
05:42 PM
5
05
42
PM
PDT
If we have computer programs than can conclude things we did not know before, there should not be a contradiction in the laws of physics producing the same. In computers, we have had some success with automated theorem proving, and automated theorem checking, proofs by exhaustive searches, etc. The burden should be upon those claiming a contradiction to prove it. Are you really saying anything more than looking for causal evidence contains the assumption that causal evidence is important?africangenesis
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
04:41 PM
4
04
41
PM
PDT
You're stealing a dualist concept and question-begging again. Under materialism/physicalism, to "understand" something means "programmed by physics to think and believe a certain set of things about the thing in question"; how does that help your case any? Everyone "understands" physics by that measure, even those who directly contradict each other.William J Murray
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
03:28 PM
3
03
28
PM
PDT
I stand corrected, begging the question is a logical fallacy. I can see how assuming god is perfect, and perfection entails existence, includes the conclusion in the premises, but I don't see how the being a consequent of the laws of physics precludes the evolution of an intelligence that that understands the laws of physics. The premises are so few, e.g., the laws of physics. So the conclusion is not in the premises. The laws of physics seem rather liberal in what they allow, however, severe they are in their application. Consider the case of the two predators chasing prey, predator A that follows the prey turning when it turns, etc. and predator B that goes straight ahead instead. Both predator A and predator Bs and the prey animal's decisions are "caused". However, predator A's actions have become contingent upon the preys actions even though their had been no prior coupling between the two, while similtaneously being continent upon its own goals all while determining how long the chase is worthwhile in this instance, and prey's actions have also become contingent upon the predators. The prey that isn't good at detecting when predators are really running after it, my run too much or not enough. As someone who practices evidence based reasoning, lets assume for a moment that it is begging the question, what is the alternative? What is the evidence for it? Would even "miracles" and "design" be evidence for the existence of God? Or would our minds just have been caused to think such things require a cause, since that is the logic of this universe?africangenesis
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
02:44 PM
2
02
44
PM
PDT
F/n: further response to AG, here above.kairosfocus
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
12:58 PM
12
12
58
PM
PDT
AG: First, let us note appreciation for the engagement of the actual issue in the main. This is helpful for all, especially onlookers, who can see for themselves how the issues play out when they are raised in a live discussion. However, a note FYI: [a] question begging and [b] self referentially incoherent and absurd arguments [aka reductio ad absurdum, aka self-refutation via self-contradiction, etc.] -- despite your doubts -- are BOTH well-known fallacies; above, I have simply joined them into one phrase. As, they tend to go together. (In fact, in Mathematics, proof of the contrary by reduction of a claim to self contradictory absurdity is a classic technique. But, one of the noticeable challenges I have observed that materialists often face is clinging to the self referentially absurd, through insisting on thinking in a materialistic circle, even after resulting contradictions show the circle to be plainly vicious. [Cf below for details.]) WJM's corrective is plainly on target. . . . pause for prolonged power cut [almost eight hours] . . . Next, your "escape" by applying "proven concepts of thought" etc, is failing to see what the real issue is, ending up as a strawman. As point r in my analysis shows, the issue is not whether materialists, like the rest of us, use logical techniques; the question is how they GROUND them in their worldview. Let's clip again, and emphasise key points for this exchange:
c: . . . human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this meat-machine [evolutionary materialistic] picture. So, we rapidly arrive at Crick's claim in his The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994): what we subjectively experience as "thoughts," "reasoning" and "conclusions" can only be understood materialistically as the unintended by-products of the blind natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains that (as the Smith Model illustrates) serve as cybernetic controllers for our bodies. d: These underlying driving forces are viewed as being ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance shaped by forces of selection [["nature"] and psycho-social conditioning [["nurture"], within the framework of human culture [[i.e. socio-cultural conditioning and resulting/associated relativism]. And, remember, the focal issue to such minds -- notice, this is a conceptual analysis made and believed by the materialists! -- is the physical causal chains in a control loop, not the internalised "mouth-noises" that may somehow sit on them and come along for the ride . . . . j: Therefore, though materialists will often try to pointedly ignore or angrily brush aside the issue, we may freely argue: if such evolutionary materialism is true, then (i) our consciousness, (ii) the "thoughts" we have, (iii) the conceptualised beliefs we hold, (iv) the reasonings we attempt based on such and (v) the "conclusions" and "choices" (a.k.a. "decisions") we reach -- without residue -- must be produced and controlled by blind forces of chance happenstance and mechanical necessity that [--> by making us out to be jumped up pond scum by way of being apes driven by genes, memes and neural networks shaped by survival and reproduction rather than truthfulness of world picture . . . . as Churchland and Darwin underscore in the clip below] are irrelevant to "mere" ill-defined abstractions such as: purpose or truth, or even logical validity. (NB: The conclusions of such "arguments" may still happen to be true, by astonishingly lucky coincidence — but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we have “proved” or "warranted" them. It seems that rationality itself has thus been undermined fatally on evolutionary materialistic premises. Including that of Crick et al. Through, self-reference leading to incoherence and utter inability to provide a cogent explanation of our commonplace, first-person experience of reasoning and rational warrant for beliefs, conclusions and chosen paths of action. Reduction to absurdity and explanatory failure in short.) . . . . r: So, while materialists -- just like the rest of us -- in practice routinely rely on the credibility of reasoning and despite all the confidence they may project, they at best struggle to warrant such a tacitly accepted credibility of mind and of concepts and reasoned out conclusions relative to the core claims of their worldview. (And, sadly: too often, they tend to pointedly ignore or rhetorically brush aside the issue.)
You have managed to exemplify precisely this problem of evasion on a crucial matter. And, when it comes to the leaky boat metaphor -- BTW, an accurate summary not a hasty or otherwise faulty generalisation, on materialist premises, everyone is in the same situation where the brain is shaped and controlled by forces that are simply irrelevant to purpose, truth, logic etc, and are jumped up apes with genes and memes shaped by chance and necessity, with neurons simply passing charged ions around, in networks where it is physical cause and effect not logical inference on ground and consequent that controls the outputs. No wonder, Plantinga summarises how Churchland and Darwin have put the resulting materialist's conundrum:
[Churchland:] Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in . . . feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive . . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival [[Churchland's emphasis]. Truth, whatever that is [[ --> let's try, from Aristotle in Metaphysics, 1011b: "that which says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not" . . . ], definitely takes the hindmost. (Plantinga also adds this from Darwin: "the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"
As Reppert summarises the consequence:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
Poof, on evo mat premises, rationality has gone up in smoke. So, it is a matter of which delusions you prefer: religious ones, or materialist ones, and that preference is itself shaped by nature and nurture through genes and memes. We only have cause-effect bonds to work with, not ground and consequent inferences. And once you move from picking a fruit to picking a forbidden fruit, the whole issue comes into focus. That is the challenge you face, one that is patently self-referential, and trying to make a self-serving, self-congratulatory "exception" (we are the "brights") would simply be humorous, if it were not so patently sad. All I will say just now is that the answer is obvious: drop the materialist a priori, and start form the first things we know, and through which we know everything else. Namely, that we are conscious, reasoning, knowing, enconscienced contingent beings living in a world that exercises our potentials. That leads to the first principles of right reason, and onwards to a sounder basis for building a factually adequate, coherent, explanatorily powerful worldview. In which process, being contingent beings in a contingent cosmos that evidently shows fine tuning will play significant roles in determining what worldview makes best sense of reality. Thereafter, we can then look again at science and technology as intellectual enterprises and come to a more reasonable conclusion as to what is the best explanation for the world as we experience it, including as we make observations via being conscious, rational, knowing creatures. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
12:55 PM
12
12
55
PM
PDT
How do we escape? We apply proven disciplines of thinking. There is no valid proof or evidence of the existence of God, so it comes down to a matter of faith based upon subjective religious experience.
This is where you are either unwilling or unable to understand the stolen concept fallacy you are employing. There is no escape from being a physics computation in your system, which can produce blatant, absurd error and concurrent confidence that one has said something entirely rational. You have no foundation for confidence that what you have said above is rational, or that your confidences are anything other than the same happenstance arrangements of matter that produce the confidence in any other thought or belief in the world and in history.
“Everyone is in the same leaky boat” is a generalization.
You seem unwilling or incapable of understanding that under materialism/physicalism, this is not a generalization, it is an absolute and necessary fact of existence.
Keep in mind that “question begging self-referential absurdity” has not yet achieved the status of a logical fallacy.
"Begging the question" is a logical fallacy. Your foundation (under materialism, all thoughts and beliefs are equally caused by physics) provides no means to discern between true and false belief and sensations, because nothing is present to "discern" other than the thoughts and beliefs that were generated in the first place, and are continuing to be generated. There is no second, objective or supervening ruler to bring in, under materialism. "Proven methods of thought" is just another utterance of physics, along with "proven results of religious faith", or "I did not have sex with that woman" or "I am not a crook"; your confidence that there is no evidence for god is just another utterance of physics, along with the confidence of billions of others that there is overwhelming evidence for god; your belief that you can use the ruler to validate your views is not different than Hitler or Dahmer using the same ruler to validate their views. It's not a generalization under materialism; your reasoning and confidences are produced from and measured by exactly the same source system as anyone else's throughout history, with absolutely nothing "outside of the system" to refer or appeal to to separate you beliefs and confidences from anyone else's. It's interesting that you appeal to evolutionary product as the mechanism that discerns between true and false views, but when that fails to substantiate your personal views, you change references to "proven methods of thought" as if there is something other than evolution that indemnifies what "proven" means in the materialist context. Your argument chases its own tail.William J Murray
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
04:24 AM
4
04
24
AM
PDT
I agree, it isn't easy to find new responses this way.africangenesis
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
02:00 AM
2
02
00
AM
PDT
How do we escape? We apply proven disciplines of thinking. There is no valid proof or evidence of the existence of God, so it comes down to a matter of faith based upon subjective religious experience. "Everyone is in the same leaky boat" is a generalization. Even within the religions there are those that aren't in the leaky boat, the not true believers, those in it for social or business contacts, or as insurance "just in case", existentialists who want religious experiences but don't believe them, etc. Dawkins didn't claim memes were causes, but rather noted that analogously to genes, ideas had to successfully reproduce to spread. Keep in mind that "question begging self-referential absurdity" has not yet achieved the status of a logical fallacy. Even the believers who practice the disciplines of thinking come to the same conclusions as non-believers. The results are reproducible, e.g., religious experience is not a valid proof of the existence of God, for those who didn't have the experience, there is no valid "proof" of the existance of God belief is a matter of faith, etc. Materialist philosophy and theology reach the same conclusions about the physical world and the evidence.africangenesis
August 28, 2011
August
08
Aug
28
28
2011
01:57 AM
1
01
57
AM
PDT
1 2 3 4

Leave a Reply