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Does Materialism Destroy Rationality?

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  • Originally posted by seer View Post
    Were you determined to say that? How do natural forces know about such things?
    It's a shame you still don't comprehend emergence, because it really does make your argument look silly.

    Then neither is God, but naturalism is a world view that encompasses everything, just as theism does...
    True, you and I have different worldviews.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
      I am just enjoying watching Stoic argue (poorly) for materialism by using non-material rationalizing.
      If you even feel like arguing against materialism, I'd love to see it.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Stoic View Post

        If you even feel like arguing against materialism, I'd love to see it.
        Been there, done that. You merely ignore me, repeat yourself and refuse to actually defend your opinion. Same as you are doing to Seer.

        Stoic's method of argument: "Nuh-uh!"

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Sparko View Post

          Been there, done that. You merely ignore me, repeat yourself and refuse to actually defend your opinion. Same as you are doing to Seer.

          Stoic's method of argument: "Nuh-uh!"
          Don't blame me if you can't come up with a cogent argument.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Stoic View Post

            Don't blame me if you can't come up with a cogent argument.
            Talking to your mirror again?

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
              I am just enjoying watching Stoic argue (poorly) for materialism by using non-material rationalizing.
              Are you reading a different thread? This one is just Stoic explaining the basics over and over with the patience of a saint while seer ties his own shoelaces together than falls on his face continuously.
              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

              Comment


              • Originally posted by seer View Post
                Do you really believe that brain chemicals know about or understand logical inference?
                In computing, the transistors on the cpu are called logic gates. They're called this because they're designed to implement a very basic logical operation on their inputs. By chaining together massive numbers of these simple logic gates in carefully designed patterns, the computer chip designers are able to implement sophisticated algorithms.

                The computer is thus doing logic. In that sense, logic is absolutely something that could be performed by a purely chemical brain, whose neural connections were joined in a particular way.

                If your emphasis has moved to asking whether brain chemicals "know" or "understand" logical inference or anything else, that seems a very different question to the one you started with, but I don't think it at all helps your argument even one iota, it just shifts it to a different topic. Fully materialistic items can clearly be organized in such a way that they perform logical steps. The only way to try to adjust your line of argument that would make it have any merit at all would be to shift to the topic of consciousness, and abandon any attempts to discuss rationality. Rationality can demonstrably be implemented mechanically. Consciousness on the other hand is very much an open question, and the issue of whether materialism can explain conscious experience or not has been a hot topic in western philosophy for the past 500 years.
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                  In computing, the transistors on the cpu are called logic gates. They're called this because they're designed to implement a very basic logical operation on their inputs. By chaining together massive numbers of these simple logic gates in carefully designed patterns, the computer chip designers are able to implement sophisticated algorithms.

                  The computer is thus doing logic. In that sense, logic is absolutely something that could be performed by a purely chemical brain, whose neural connections were joined in a particular way.
                  Yes logic gates created by intelligent minds. Minds that understand logical truths and aim to create logical responses. Physical laws do not know logical truths nor do they aim or seek to create creatures that do. On a side note, do you believe that our thoughts are material or immaterial?

                  If your emphasis has moved to asking whether brain chemicals "know" or "understand" logical inference or anything else, that seems a very different question to the one you started with, but I don't think it at all helps your argument even one iota, it just shifts it to a different topic. Fully materialistic items can clearly be organized in such a way that they perform logical steps. The only way to try to adjust your line of argument that would make it have any merit at all would be to shift to the topic of consciousness, and abandon any attempts to discuss rationality. Rationality can demonstrably be implemented mechanically. Consciousness on the other hand is very much an open question, and the issue of whether materialism can explain conscious experience or not has been a hot topic in western philosophy for the past 500 years.
                  And I'm not speaking of rational acts. I rabbit will seek to avoid the fox, you could call that a rational act of survival. But it has nothing to do with understanding the laws of logic and reasoning through inference. BTW - consciousness was brought up, because that is the seat or ground of this whole discussion. And much of this discussion revolves around determinism, and if memory serves you believe in free will - correct?
                  Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Stoic View Post

                    It's a shame you still don't comprehend emergence, because it really does make your argument look silly.

                    Emergence is not a magic wand to get to wave on command. It tells us nothing about the how or why. Or if it is really applicable to the human mind, and reasoning.

                    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by seer View Post
                      On a side note, do you believe that our thoughts are material or immaterial?
                      Both. But I'm not a materialist. If I was, I would give a different answer.

                      BTW - consciousness was brought up, because that is the seat or ground of this whole discussion.
                      I think you failed to correctly frame the discussion. You talked about rationality for pages. Had you wanted to talk about consciousness, you should have done so, not talk about rationality where you don't have an argument.

                      And much of this discussion revolves around determinism, and if memory serves you believe in free will - correct?
                      I experience having free will. I firmly believe that I have the conscious experience of having free will.

                      I think any of the mechanistic explanations about how free will might or might not work in practice (compatibilism, LFW, etc) are plausible. If you held a gun to my head and made me pick one, I'd say libertarian free will, and that it occurs through a quantum physical combination of determinism and indeterminism, such that there is a random choice within certain bounds, and that the wavefunction collapse of making the choice means the entity who made the choice is thus connected to the specific choice they made in a way that they weren't prior to making the choice, and that this represents the difference between being morally responsible for the decision after it is made vs not being responsible for it before it is made, as there would be a literal quantum physical difference in your level of connectedness to the choice. But that's totally speculative, and any kind of explanation for the experience of free will is plausible.
                      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by seer View Post
                        Emergence is not a magic wand to get to wave on command. It tells us nothing about the how or why. Or if it is really applicable to the human mind, and reasoning.
                        No, it's not a magic wand, but it does destroy one particular argument, where one claims that a collection of things cannot have any properties that the individual things don't have.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                          Both. But I'm not a materialist. If I was, I would give a different answer.
                          Yes, I remember you saying that. So we agree that the mind can not be reduced to the physical, though the physical is involved.

                          I think you failed to correctly frame the discussion. You talked about rationality for pages. Had you wanted to talk about consciousness, you should have done so, not talk about rationality where you don't have an argument.
                          This thread jumped off another thread where consciousness was focused on. The point is that you can not divorce human rationality from consciousness since we are speaking of conceptual truths like the laws of logic and logical inference.


                          I experience having free will. I firmly believe that I have the conscious experience of having free will.
                          Does that lead to believe that we actually have free will - that it is more than just an illusion - if so then we agree again.

                          I think any of the mechanistic explanations about how free will might or might not work in practice (compatibilism, LFW, etc) are plausible. If you held a gun to my head and made me pick one, I'd say libertarian free will, and that it occurs through a quantum physical combination of determinism and indeterminism, such that there is a random choice within certain bounds, and that the wavefunction collapse of making the choice means the entity who made the choice is thus connected to the specific choice they made in a way that they weren't prior to making the choice, and that this represents the difference between being morally responsible for the decision after it is made vs not being responsible for it before it is made, as there would be a literal quantum physical difference in your level of connectedness to the choice. But that's totally speculative, and any kind of explanation for the experience of free will is plausible.
                          Yes I have heard this before, of course as a non-materialist and theist I would have no problem bringing the ghost back into the machine. Which I believe is the immaterial mind.
                          Last edited by seer; 07-29-2021, 07:39 AM.
                          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Stoic View Post

                            No, it's not a magic wand, but it does destroy one particular argument, where one claims that a collection of things cannot have any properties that the individual things don't have.
                            But you have no idea if it applies or how it applies.
                            Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by seer View Post
                              But you have no idea if it applies or how it applies.
                              The way I apply it is that the fact that "atoms don't care about or aim for truth or logic or inference" doesn't mean that a being made up solely of atoms can't care about truth or logic or inference.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Stoic View Post
                                The way I apply it is that the fact that "atoms don't care about or aim for truth or logic or inference" doesn't mean that a being made up solely of atoms can't care about truth or logic or inference.
                                Well no... The question is how do atoms or brain chemicals come to know about logical truths, after all there isn't anything else. Never mind the fact that even if we care about logical truths, and use logical inference, those things are still determined by forces that do not aim at or care about such things. That doesn't seem to be a recipe for rationality.
                                Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                                Comment

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