The cat is on the mat. That's a relation. I perceive the cat on top and the mat below it. Now, without any of our five sense to produce this perception, we somehow perceive entailment relationships. We don't have science, mathematics, or philosophical arguments for naturalism unless we can do this. As Lewis puts it, it must be the case that one thought can cause another thought not by being, but by being seen to be a ground for it. That mean's the fact of A's being the ground for B, or even A's entailing B, has to be central to the production of our belief that B. But if look at the forces in the universe that physicalism allows, that kind of fact is ruled out as a possible cause for anything. We have a perception of logical relationship, and since it can't be a sensory perception, it has to be an extra-sensory perception. How is THAT naturalistically possible?
46 comments:
The universe which just so happened to exist also just so happened to have the properties necessary to essentially become self-aware and able to ponder itself. Purely by chance, matter and energy had this capacity.
This, we are told, is more rational than any form of theism.
Bottom line: MIND is non-material, consciousness is a reality not part of the material universe, and the products of mind (reason, art, literature, music, philosophy, etc.) are non-corporeal.
Kevin,
I agree that claiming to have the answer of "no God/gods" is not more rational than claiming to have the answer of "God" or "gods".
Dr. Reppert,
The notion of cats, and of mats, and of one thing being on top of another thing, are things we experienced in the physical plane. Combining these into a single concept is like mixing paints.
However, I wish you were more clear about "physicalism" and "naturalism", as you are using them here. Even though I identify as a materialist, I'm not sure I would fit under either of those words.
A nice argument that brought a smile. Because it's based on a pun. Perception is the creation of thought in an embodied mind by external objects and events. Sensory perception is mediated by sense organs. I'm awake, eyes open, looking at the cat on the mat, and the idea expressed by 'The cat is on the mat' forms in my mind. Extra-sensory perception would be perception of the external world mediated other than by sense organs. But inference is creation of or movement between thoughts entirely within the mind, and is not perception at all. Or so say I. And the movement from x ∊ A, A ⊂ B to x ∊ B can be seen as movement of symbols and can be achieved mechanically. The important point is that thought, whatever it is, can be expressed in linguistic symbols which can be juggled around and translated back into thoughts. So what are thoughts themselves? Maybe they are just unvocalised sentences.
Or are we to think of thoughts as entities in some external Platonic realm that is accessible to the mind by something analogous to perception?
David,
If we define knowledge as the correspondence of what is in our intellect to what is real wrt the external world, then we have knowledge that there is a cat and there is a mat and that comes by way of the sense organs of sight. Likewise we can gain knowledge of the external world by the mediating organs of hearing, touch, and so on. The sense organs mediate the physical attributes of the external world and present them to our intellect.
Yet we somehow have knowledge of entailments that do not come to us by way of any sense organs at all but also correspond to the external world and so also count as knowledge. Since there are no sense organs that are mediating any attributes, then the intellect must be acquiring knowledge of non-physical reality. Since no material mediating is being done, then the process must be purely immaterial.
Of course you'll recognize this as the Aristotelean account for why the actions of the intellect must be immaterial.
Morning BM. In a nutshell, Victor's argument is,
1. Inference is a species of perception.
2. Inference is not mediated by any sense organ.
3. So Inference is not sensory perception.
4. Therefore inference is extra-sensory perception.
A nice argument with a conclusion guaranteed to make a materialist choke on his coffee and Danish! But regardless of whether mind is immaterial or not, my objection is to premise (1). Consider detective fiction. It relies for its effect on the reader making inferences from what he is told. Since what he is being told is mostly unreal, how can his inferences be a kind of perception?
David,
I think Victor may be arguing that naturalism cannot account for inference if all we can know about the external world is what we can perceive. Perception being what comes by way of our senses. He apparently assumes naturalism holds that truths about the external world can only be acquired by physical (material) means.
But I agree. The argument hinges on what naturalists account for perception and inference.
Hi BM. Victor mentions 'naturalism/naturalistically' twice. Firstly he implies that naturalism, to be a half-way decent theory of what there is and how it came about, needs to offer an account of what he calls 'perception of entailment relationships' and I call 'inference'. It doesn't, as far as I can see, but I agree it should. Secondly, he implies that naturalism cannot achieve this because naturalism rules out extra-sensory perception and he has an argument to the effect that inference is in fact a kind of ESP. I do not foresee naturalism changing its stance on ESP. But I think I have good reason---the argument from fiction---for rejecting the claim that inference is ESP.
Couldn't Victor then reply that naturalism can't offer an account of fiction either?
I don't think that would help. Regardless of any commitment to naturalism I might have, I am offering an argument against Victor's premise (1). I don't think that argument depends in any way on naturalistic principles or assumptions. So I am not begging the question. I would have thought that an adjudicator of the debate would be looking for a defence of the claim that inference is perception.
So it appears Victor has assumed something like this (from a naturalist perspective):
1. We can only derive truths about the external world via physical means
2. Our physical means involve sense organs
3. We can derive truths about the external world via inference
4. There is no inference sense organ
5. ???
Perceive
1 a: to attain awareness or understanding of
b: to regard as being such
was perceived as a loser
2: to become aware of through the senses
especially : SEE, OBSERVE
BM, Re your comment at 11:28, I doubt very much that Victor is assuming your (1) or adopting a naturalist perspective.
Re the definitions at 7:37, I have one critical quibble. Victor clearly doesn't mean sense (2) because he explicitly allows for extra sensory perception. And we can rule out sense (1b) because of its subjectivity---merely thought of or regarded as a loser.
So we are left with (1a)---to attain awareness or understanding of. I would say that what this definition omits is that perception is always of an object external to the mind. One doesn't merely perceive the validity of a mathematical proof, say. It doesn't come as a given, as it were, simply 'presented' to us. It requires a deal of mental work checking the steps of the argument. I reject Victor's assumption that making an inference is akin to perception of an externality. But I'd be happy to see a counter-argument.
Obviously I can't read Victor's mind, but I'm trying to understand how he thinks his argument works against "naturalism".
I doubt he thinks that ESP is real or that inference comes to us via sense perception of any kind. He does think that "naturalists" can only appeal to sense perception "to attain awareness or understanding of" the external world. That puts the "naturalist" in a dilemma. He acknowledges that inference gives us understanding of the external world, but at the same time it cannot be an ordinary sense. So either give up materialism or invent ESP.
BTW. Here are some sentences using "perceptive" in different senses.
https://sentence.yourdictionary.com/perceptive
BM: He [the materialist] acknowledges that inference gives us understanding of the external world.
I think that you and Victor and maybe Lewis are tying inference too tightly to knowledge of the external world. I come back to detective fiction once again. The reader can infer things from what the writer says that have no bearing on the external world and afford no knowledge of it. Hopefully they do bear on whodunnit.
It seems to me that inference is a relation between (linguistic) representations, ie, sentences. But these representations may not represent anything in the (real) outside world (*). Clearly when the premises of a (valid) inference do truly represent the world then the conclusion does as well and we may learn something new. But inference works just as well given false premises. It's just that the conclusion is likely to be false too. I simply cannot see inference as intrinsically related to the external world, as it would be if it were some sort of perception.
* That's not meant to be paradoxical. Think of drawings of so-called 'impossible objects'. These are pictures that not only don't represent under present contingencies, they cannot represent.
David,
You seem to be implying that because inference can be used for fictional accounts, this fact defeats the argument that inference gives us knowledge of the external world.
Do I understand correctly?
But inference works just as well given false premises. It's just that the conclusion is likely to be false too.
I think this is just like seeing a mirage that will give one false information of the external world. Naturalists accept sense data don't they, even if there are occasional glitches?
You do indeed understand correctly. With regard to false premises, it's worth noting that language and logic have to work in every possible world. There cannot be any dependencies on the specific contingencies of the actual world. Some premises might be false in the actual world but true in a different possible world. In which case the conclusion will be true in that different possible world. This is why inference works in fiction.
As to our senses telling us what is "real" in the physical world, talk to any physicist and prepare for your head to start spinning
For instance, I say that grass is green, but the physicist will tell you that grass has no color whatsoever, but rather it is the light reflected off the grass that then enters my eye which is green.
You do indeed understand correctly.
If so, I wonder why inference cannot give us knowledge of the external world merely because it can also work in a fictional world. Why can't it work in both?
Let's try this.
Senses can give us knowledge of the external world via physical interaction with it.
Inference can give us knowledge of the external world but not via physical interaction with it.
Do naturalists claim that knowledge of the external world can only come via physical interaction with it?
Ask what it means for inference to 'work in a fictional world'. There are no fictional worlds as such, just this real world. What we have are sentences that make descriptions of a world whose contingencies differ from ours. There lives in London a Meerschaum-smoking consulting detective and his Afghan war veteran medic friend and amanuensis. We can make inferences about this world. We agree about that I think. But how? We clearly aren't in contact with it---we aren't peering into it with telescopes. All we have are Conan Doyle's sentences. So inference (and logic generally) is working on sentences. Can there be any other explanation? What if the sentences are an honest attempt to describe our actual, real world? Same thing. Inference goes to work on the sentences and comes up with conclusions. These conclusions can be useful for us for living in the world, unlike conclusions about Holmes's London (unless you are a literary critic, say). I think this is a pretty convincing argument that inference does not act on the external world at all and has no special access to truths about it. In particular it does not provide us with knowledge about the world. Does reading Conan Doyle give us knowledge about the occupants of 221b Baker Street? There is no 221b Baker Street for us to have knowledge of! Rather, if we give inference truths about the world, ie, true sentences, it will give us back truths, perhaps ones we had not been aware of. But that is down to a property of the sentences, viz their truth, not the apparatus of inference. Inference cares not about truth, it merely preserves it if there already.
I think our eyes give us truth about the world because it provides accurate information of the world. I also think inference gives us truth about the world because it provides accurate information of the world.
If the way inference gives us truth about the world is by way of true sentences it still means that the idea we have in our head corresponds with reality and that counts as knowledge. But it does raise the question about how a true sentence can be distinguished from a false sentence. Don't we have to find this out by inference? If so, then aren't we in circular explanation territory?
Don't we have to find this out by inference? I don't think so. Little children learn the difference between truth and falsehood and can articulate that difference long before they make inferences let alone have any understanding of inference. And there are adults who haven't grasped some of its intricacies. Wason test.
Little children learn the difference between truth and falsehood and can articulate that difference long before they make inferences let alone have any understanding of inference.
Since they do not use inference to distinguish between the true and false wrt the external world, what method do they use? And if the only way knowledge can be gained from the external world is via a direct physical interface (sense organs), then what is that interface?
What method do they use? I have no idea. It seems to be part of learning a mother tongue that you pick up fairly soon (before age five, say) that statements from others can disagree with your own take on the world as given by the senses. And the possibility of lying follows immediately. You have to come to 'map the sense givens onto the appropriate words', though that's a crude and no doubt philosophically illiterate way of putting it. No doubt there are AI types attempting this in silico, but goodness knows how we biological types manage it.
I'm not sure you can conclude that this is not just learning inference and using it.
Learning to lie depends on the victim reasoning from premises to a conclusion and the one lying intentionally uses a false premise to get the desired conclusion from the victim.
Discovering one has been lied to or given false information also depends on detecting false premises or invalid argumentation.
People cannot be everywhere at once.
Santa Claus would have to be everywhere at once to deliver presents to everyone in the world.
Santa Claus cannot be a person.
Well, I'm impressed. I typed 'at what age do children come to disbelieve in father christmas' into Google and it responded with this article.
My 8 year old granddaughter still believes in leprechauns, and has been setting traps for them on St. Patrick's Day since maybe age 5.
What? My example was only #8?
Probably more likely that #1 on the list used #8 as an example.;-)
So what is the difference between Father Christmas and Santa Clause anyway?
Father Christmas is an Eastern European (primarily Russian) folk figure, dating back to pre-Christian days. (His original name was Grandfather Winter.) He was so similar to the Western Santa Claus that the two got confused over here. Father Christmas was associated with the Snow Queen in a Manichean way. The Snow Queen was evil, while Father Christmas was good.
Saint Nicholas was from the East also. Not Western right?
Dropped coins in poor people's stockings.
He lived in the Eastern Roman Empire, but his popularity was always greater in the Roman (Western) Church than in the Orthodox (Eastern) Church.
"Dropped coins in poor people's stockings."
I knew it! A Socialist!! Probably supported universal health care as well
I think you're confusing him with Robbing Hood. St. Nicholas didn't rob from the rich.
Turkish if I remember correctly.
"Turkey" didn't exist in the 4th Century. The Turks didn't move into what is today Turkey until after the Battle of Manzikert in A.D. 1071. Saint Nicholas was what we today would call Greek.
Fair enough.
The "Orthodox" Churches didn't exist at that time either though. East and West considered themselves united. Although there were different practices in discipline, they considered agreement on doctrine essential. Hence the Church Councils when controversies arose.
That's a tough one. From almost the beginning, there was a distinction between those Christians who felt Latin was the "proper" language of spirituality and theology, and those who felt it was Greek. It didn't become a real split until the fall of the Westen Roman Empire in the 5th Century. By that time, although there was no substantive credal difference between what Pope JPII called "the right and left lungs" of the Church, there was a growing chasm of varying liturgies, spiritualities, and (most importantly) attitudes towards the Pope. The Latin Church insisted on the primacy of Rome, whereas the Greek Church considered the Pope to be on the same level as the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria (the 5 Patriarchs). But despite all controversies, the Christian world was essentially united until 1054, when the two halves of Christendom split.
It gets more complicated with the later rise of the Patriarch of Moscow (currently Patriarch Kirill) and the concept of the "3rd Rome" (being Moscow, he first 2 being Rome then Constantinople).
There were a lot of controversies for sure that caused the convening of numerous Church Councils, but the Pope was considered to have primacy (first among equals) over all bishops before the split. There were multiple Rites within the universal church and still are, notably the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church with disciplines, liturgy and spirituality like the now Orthodox Churches. It's not widely known that Catholic priests can marry. But only if they are of the Eastern Rite (with some exceptions for Anglican converts).
I've been corrected more than once when I talked to a Greek Orthodox Christian and referred to him as "Eastern" Orthodox. Each of the Orthodox Churches consider themselves to be in league with if not subservient to the country they are in.
The most serious theological controversy between Western and Orthodox Churches is the filioque. I have to confess that I fail to understand the Orthodox position. What is the difference between the Father begetting the Son, and the Spirit proceeding from the Father? It seems to make more sense to me that the Spirit proceeds from BOTH the Father and the Son. But being a Catholic, I guess it would.
Also, the very fact that the various Orthodox Churches are tied to the nations they're in seems to violate the idea of the universality of Christ's Church.
I think the Filioque is just a convenient point of contention when the real underlying disagreement is political. In other words who's in charge.
The Filioque was added in the West to the Creed in response to a local heresy that didn't affect the East and was not agreed to by an Ecumenical Council so the East considered illegit. It could be resolved in an instant if the political situation could be resolved. In fact the divide was officially resolved, but was rejected by local Orthodox clergy and so was not internally accepted.
I just read this morning the following from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's essay, The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life.
"God does not offer Himself to our finite beings as a thing all complete and ready to be embraced. For us God is eternal discovery and eternal growth. The more we think we understand God, the more God reveals Himself as otherwise. The more we think we hold God, the further God withdraws, drawing us into the depths of Himself."
It reminded me of what Bishop Barron said in his video "Catholicism" which went something like, "When we finally arrive in Heaven, we will be only beginning to realize just how incomprehensible God is."
I love both of those quotes. They make one realize that, unlike what those who cannot imagine living forever think, we will find that all eternity will be far too short a time for all there is to experience.
Post a Comment