I agree that if Naturalism is true then our brains will be somewhat unreliable. But, we already know that our brains are somewhat unreliable - just watch the show Brain Games on the Nat Geo Channel to see examples.
Overcoming the inherent flaws in our brains is primary reason the Scientific Method was developed. Whenever we rely on just our brains to tell us about reality, we mess up. That's why no matter how logical a theory or conjecture is, we shouldn't accept it until it has been tested by experiments. See: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2014/05/06/the-unparalleled-power-of-experiment-synopsis/
So, it seems to me, that all the facts deployed in the AFR actually go to show that Naturalism is indeed correct and totally justified by our experience.
I'm ignorant in philosophical matters and an agnostic. The argument looks good to me and I'm not really interested in reading Carriers review since he seems to deviate from the subject a lot there. My question is very simple: why can't rationality come from matter? Don't we see it happening everyday with fetuses and babies? I mean, to me it's very clear that rationality is somehow imbued in matter, we only need the right combination of material stuff to trigger it. So, why not accept that matter has the potential to give rise to rationality under certain circunstances?
Surely this would break the physical causal chain, this I can see, but we're not even sure that there is such a chain anymore after quantum mechanics.
2 comments:
I agree that if Naturalism is true then our brains will be somewhat unreliable. But, we already know that our brains are somewhat unreliable - just watch the show Brain Games on the Nat Geo Channel to see examples.
Overcoming the inherent flaws in our brains is primary reason the Scientific Method was developed. Whenever we rely on just our brains to tell us about reality, we mess up. That's why no matter how logical a theory or conjecture is, we shouldn't accept it until it has been tested by experiments.
See: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2014/05/06/the-unparalleled-power-of-experiment-synopsis/
So, it seems to me, that all the facts deployed in the AFR actually go to show that Naturalism is indeed correct and totally justified by our experience.
I'm ignorant in philosophical matters and an agnostic. The argument looks good to me and I'm not really interested in reading Carriers review since he seems to deviate from the subject a lot there. My question is very simple: why can't rationality come from matter? Don't we see it happening everyday with fetuses and babies? I mean, to me it's very clear that rationality is somehow imbued in matter, we only need the right combination of material stuff to trigger it. So, why not accept that matter has the potential to give rise to rationality under certain circunstances?
Surely this would break the physical causal chain, this I can see, but we're not even sure that there is such a chain anymore after quantum mechanics.
Post a Comment