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Forum Rules: Here
This forum is open discussion between atheists and all theists to defend and debate their views on religion or non-religion. Please respect that this is a Christian-owned forum and refrain from gratuitous blasphemy. VERY wide leeway is given in range of expression and allowable behavior as compared to other areas of the forum, and moderation is not overly involved unless necessary. Please keep this in mind. Atheists who wish to interact with theists in a way that does not seek to undermine theistic faith may participate in the World Religions Department. Non-debate question and answers and mild and less confrontational discussions can take place in General Theistics.
Forum Rules: Here
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Does Materialism Destroy Rationality?
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Originally posted by Sparko View PostI am just enjoying watching Stoic argue (poorly) for materialism by using non-material rationalizing."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
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Originally posted by seer View PostDo you really believe that brain chemicals know about or understand logical inference?
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
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Originally posted by Starlight View PostIn 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.
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
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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
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Originally posted by seer View PostOn a side note, do you believe that our thoughts are material or immaterial?
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?
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
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Originally posted by seer View PostEmergence 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.
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Originally posted by Starlight View PostBoth. But I'm not a materialist. If I was, I would give a different answer.
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.
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.
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
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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.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
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Originally posted by seer View PostBut you have no idea if it applies or how it applies.
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Originally posted by Stoic View PostThe 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.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
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