In spite of the snobby attitude that a lot of people have towards Lewis, I would point out that Lewis tutored philosophy at Oxford University before taking a permanent job as professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Oxford. How many of you could get a job as a tutor in philosophy at Oxford?
37 comments:
Maybe I could.
I assume they have a "Philosophy of Drag" class these days. I could teach that with one high heel tied behind my back.
Yes, that is indeed a testament to the bifurcation of what is commonly called the human mind, that a person qualified in one aspect should also have such muddled ideas in other aspects.
BTW, I stopped by DangerousIdea2 but it does not seem to be active. Well, you brought up Lewis and his capabilities in the OP here.
Assertions that naturalism is self defeating are likely to be met with disrespect generally. That really is a very tired and nonsense claim. I am not an advocate for snobbery, but asserting that naturalism is self defeating is likely to generate derision and disrespect for the intellect of anyone who would make such a silly assertion.
It is just so common for apologists to assert that life cannot come from non-life, information cannot come from non-information, rationality cannot come from irrational or nonrational processes, scientists can't claim to be rational while also denying rationality, and on and on. I mean, while one is at it one could assert that humans could not have come from monkeys because there are still monkeys. After a while the junk religious claims in general circulation can become very tiresome.
After being exposed to a seemingly endless stream of such nonsense based on strawmen and ignorance I suppose some people will lapse into pejoratives and snobbery, I try not to.
Victor,
You ask why people are snobby about a guy so brilliant as to be an Oxford tutor.
I often ask myself related questions, say, regarding somebody like Plantinga. There is a person with an obviously bright mind, decades of experience, highly educated, yet he puts forth arguments of the most inane sort. Why is that? What explains this apparent dissonance of cognitive capabilities?
The first thing to notice in such a person is that cognitive capacity is clearly bifurcated along a religious or theistic divide. On matters not directly related to religion the individual displays exceptionally high levels of function, yet on matters pertaining to religious subjects the displayed reasoning capacity drops dramatically.
Thus we get somebody like Plantinga who is otherwise a bright and educated philosopher capable of great feats of reasoning, until he gets on a subject related to religion or theism. at which point he makes the most absurd and irrational sorts of pronouncements, asserting that the human capability to determine truth cannot be accounted for by unguided biological evolution because such evolution selects for reproduction, not truth.
And so it goes for the argument from reason. You say
"The argument from reason says that reason cannot emerge from a closed, mechanistic
system".
You might as well contend that crystals, with all their amazing complexity, cannot emerge from a simple water molecule. I mean, just consider a water molecule, there is obviously no crystal there, it is silly to think that a bunch of water molecule bouncing about randomly would just so happen to join up in just the right way to form a water molecule, just think of the odds against that! It is a statistical impossibility for trillions and trillions of water molecules to just randomly come together to form an intricate crystal, therefore...god!!!
Except for one inconvenient truth, there are snowflakes. Lots and lots of snowflakes.
To see how reason emerges from a closed mechanistic system one need only observe in detail the spectrum of life from the simplest organism to us.
Of course, we cannot go back 3.5 billion years in time, but fortunately we don't have to because there are extant species representative of nearly every stage of evolution. Not precisely the same species as existed billions of years ago, of course, but structurally and functionally representative.
In other words, there is a strong representation of evolutionary stages over time preserved in the spectrum of extant species available today for analysis.
How does a plant "know" or "reason" or "infer" that by leaning in a particular direction it will gather more light? Do you suppose it is a plant soul from god that is the explanation?
How does a plant "know" or "reason" or "infer" that by growing its roots down it will obtain water?
How does a predatory animal "know" or "reason" or "infer" that biting into its prey will provide nourishment but biting into a rock will not?
Organisms have developed the capabilities to sense the environment and act on sense data. That's how reason and inference developed mechanistically, and that is how such reason has converged on truth to the extent that it has, and diverged from truth to the extent that it has.
Yes Stardusty.
I often ask myself "why can't everyone be as brilliant as you?" They won't let you teach at Oxford eh? Must be snobbery. There's no better answer.
I think that's John's best explanation of how random collocations of atoms can produce reasoning, and equally psychosis. I consider that a good try.
Who is John?
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2006/11/incoherence-of-god-and-time.html
https://youtu.be/dva1QYIqxPs
Someone is resurrecting the ghost of John Loftus. Don't think he'll ever forgive me for dismantling the Outsider Test for Faith.
But Stardusty is not Loftus.
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2009/03/testing-outsider-test.html
My fault. I thought it was John.
https://books.google.com/books/about/C_S_Lewis_s_Dangerous_Idea.html?id=iQuoWpUCuWcC#v=onepage&q&f=false
Thanks Brother/Doctor Victor
The Argument from Reason
VICTOR REPPERT
Lewis-Once, then, our thoughts were not rational. That is, all our thoughts once were, as many of our thoughts still are, merely subjective events, not apprehensions of objective truth.
Victor, here is an example emblematic of what leads to snobbery in people of limited compassion for the religiously addled. Religion attacks the rational capabilities of any person in its grip, it seems.
The flaws in the quote of Lewis are obvious.
Our sense data are apprehensions of objective truth, the truth of what our real environment actually is. That simple, clear, and obvious fact has somehow escaped Lewis, Plantinga, and you.
Most scientifically minded individuals understand quickly that the real existent material environment is truth, an absolute truth since reality absolutely must be what reality is, just as surely as I must exist in some form to apprehend that I am considering my own existence.
There is a clear and powerful reproductive advantage to apprehending a realistic internal representation of that external truth. If one goes bumbling about the environment unable to apprehend some fairly accurate representation of it then survival will be short and reproduction nil.
Further, there is a clear and powerful reproductive advantage to predicting the future inductively based on past experience. For both predator and prey the ability to anticipate motion means life versus death.
The gradual development of these sensory and sense data processing capabilities over time is evident by analysis of the broad spectrum of extant species that represent the broad spectrum of species that have evolved over time.
As obvious as the lack of insight displayed by Lewis, Plantinga, and you, is the superficiality of your treatment of objections.
Hasker-Computers function as they do because they have been constructed by human beings endowed with rational insight.
So, it seems you agree that man, with his ingenuity, can defeat god. We can make mechanistic systems that display traits of rationality such as memory, anticipation, and inductive decision making.
Scientists scoff at such suggestions and may well display snobbery given the obvious fact that humans build machines to test nature on the assertion that humans cannot possibly build a machine that defeats nature in any way.
Our machines are made of the same materials and therefore must be limited as any natural assemblage of materials. If humans can build a machine to do X then necessarily X can be accomplished my mechanistic means in accordance with the laws of nature.
As to how such systems could self assemble over the last 3.5 billion years the answer is that a modern digital computer cannot self assemble from wind and rain and rocks, but our biosphere can and did.
The evidence for this self assembly over some 3.5 billion years is so overwhelming and vast that failing to understand the evidence is a marker of some sort of deficiency in such individuals.
That doesn't mean you are a bad or stupid person, just a person gripped by the poisonous effects upon rationality that religion inflicts.
Stardusty: You are committed to the mind virus theory of religion, which prevents people with religious belief from thinking straight when they deal with issues related religious belief.
There is a big problem with this theory. C. S. Lewis, when he first embraced the argument from reason was NOT a religious believer, and did not become a traditional religious believer when he became persuaded of its legitimacy. He went from being a materialist to being an absolute idealist. This was a position quite distinct from any traditional religion.
Thomas Nagel who accepts the legitimacy of many Lewis-style arguments against standard materialism. But while he thinks reason is in some sense fundamental to the universe, he doesn't go from there to actual theism. Same arguments, no sign of a mind virus.
Lewis-Once, then, our thoughts were not rational. That is, all our thoughts once were, as many of our thoughts still are, merely subjective events, not apprehensions of objective truth.
SP: Our sense data are apprehensions of objective truth, the truth of what our real environment actually is. That simple, clear, and obvious fact has somehow escaped Lewis, Plantinga, and you.
My sense data say "I am appeared to redly." Further thought, including rational inferences, support the conclusion that my appearances are caused by an actual red object. Unless, of course, it's an afterimage or even an hallucination. The fact that I see pink elephants on the ceiling and on the walls after several shots of Jack Daniels do not entail that the elephants are really there.
Victor,
"Stardusty: You are committed to the mind virus theory of religion, which prevents people with religious belief from thinking straight when they deal with issues related religious belief."
Actually, I was just trying to be nice, you know, trying to shift the explanation for unsound arguments away from those making them.
"There is a big problem with this theory. C. S. Lewis, when he first embraced the argument from reason was NOT a religious believer"
That commits the fallacy of denying the antecedent, which is really the fallacy of concluding the negation of the consequent having denied the antecedent
If R then I
Not R
Therefore not I
In short, atheists can be wrong too.
"The fact that I see pink elephants on the ceiling and on the walls after several shots of Jack Daniels do not entail that the elephants are really there."
Indeed. Which is why hunter gatherers do not generally go staggering around hallucinating about pink elephants all day long every day, because if they did their chances of reproduction would be nil.
The senses must converge on truth to a sufficient degree to be more advantageous to reproduction than those with less realistic sense data.
Somehow this obvious fact has escaped ID proponents. It is a strong reproductive advantage to have realistic sense data, isn't that pretty obvious?
If it is not obvious to you that realistic sense data that closely tracks the truth of one's immediate environment, coupled with the ability to anticipate the near future using inductive reasoning, is a very strong reproductive advantage, well, have you considered that may be related to your apparent sense that others are snobby toward you?
ID is a fringe pseudo science that is fallacious on its face and fails immediately under scientific analysis. Most of your fellow PhDs understand that, and perhaps have little patience with the unfounded distortions that come out of the Discovery Institute, Alvin Plantigna, and those who offer nonsense arguments that somehow the emergence of rationality cannot be explained on naturalism or that natural selection somehow does not select for rationality as a reproductive advantage.
Consider an animal that senses the event sequence ABCDEFGH.
In particular, H stands for "hurts a lot".
That sequence is stored as an analogous pattern of memory elements in the brain of the animal.
The next day the animal senses ABCDEF. The brain pattern matches and thus anticipates that G and H will follow ABCDEF. So the animal does no do G and thus avoids H. Do you see how that is a reproductive advantage?
It's called learning. Even insects learn. It does not require much of a brain to learn, and it really helps to learn truth, because learning untruth about the environment will likely lead to death before reproduction. Isn't that obvious to you?
Well, these things are pretty obvious to academics outside of the ID community, which is almost all of them. Have you considered that your apparent experiences with snobbery might be related to a perception that you are in the ID community, which is a highly disrespectable place to be in the view of most academics?
But logical inference isn't like other learning. It involves the perception of an entailment, a relation between two propositions. Propositions are objects that are not in space and time. Natural causation involves and involves only objects that are in space and time, so it cannot produce the perception of an entailment.
Plenty of people outside the ID community accept these anti-materialist arguments. J. B. S. Haldane at one point accepted it as a reason for rejecting materialism, and he was about as for from theism as you can get. Ed Feser is not in the ID community. Neither is Thomas Nagel.
Victor,
" Propositions are objects that are not in space and time"
False, propositions are not objects at all, they a brain processes, and can be easily represented and manipulated mechanistically, say, in a computer.
"Natural causation involves and involves only objects that are in space and time, so it cannot produce the perception of an entailment."
False. Probability of an entailment is calculable by machines that are purely mechanistic.
That is how the unschooled use inductive reasoning. Pattern matching and probability estimates. The sequence of events presently being observed pattern matches a stored observed sequence of events, so the estimation of the probability of future events is made based on correlation between near present sequences of events as compared to stored sequences of events.
"Plenty of people outside the ID community accept these anti-materialist arguments."
They are wrong. You are an ID advocate, so was Lewis.
You are advocating a sort of irreducible complexity, that somehow our rationality cannot be reduced to material processes, therefore god. Your premises are patently false and your logic is fallacious.
ID is pseudo science based on fallacious thinking, as you have repeatedly displayed here and in your writing. After a while some academics may get tired of such nonsense and just express their unvarnished disrespect for the pseudoscience you express.
"Ed Feser"
Please. He is still defending ancient nonsense. His "explanations" are tortured.
You are in a very small group along with a handful of cranks in the Discovery Institute, Alvin Plantinga who draws open laughter at his absurd "arguments", Ed Feser who spends his days defending ancient nonsense, and a few others.
Then there is the rest of the scientific community who look down upon your small group as a little bunch of kooks, hence your sense of being treated to snobbery.
Of course, just because you are in a small group that is held in such disrespect by the greater community of academics does not by itself make you wrong, to claim so would be argumentum ad populum.
I am just responding to the subject of the OP, your perception of snobbery cast in the direction of Lewis, and since you are his proponent, then, by association, you.
This is how you and your small band of pseudoscience proponents are viewed:
Why do people laugh at creationists? (part 1)
youtube.com/watch?v=BS5vid4GkEY
I read through the comments.
Here's what I think are Star's best arguments. I found them very compelling:
"Assertions that naturalism is self defeating are likely to be met with disrespect"
"a very tired and nonsense claim"
"I am not an advocate for snobbery, but asserting that naturalism is self defeating is likely to generate derision and disrespect"
"junk religious claims in general circulation can become very tiresome"
"endless stream of such nonsense based on strawmen and ignorance"
"absurd and irrational sorts of pronouncements"
"crystals, with all their amazing complexity"
"there are snowflakes. Lots and lots of snowflakes"
A very compelling argument. I'm nearly convinced. A few questions to help me clarify Star's argument.
[Water] crystals are complex like proteins and contain information like DNA?
There are lots of snowflakes? Sorry, lots and lots (and probably lots more) snowflakes?
How can I avoid derision and disrespect?
Are you sure this isn't John?
If I can get answers, I might be willing to abandon my junk religous claims.
David,
You skipped a couple
*****
" Propositions are objects that are not in space and time"
False, propositions are not objects at all, they a brain processes, and can be easily represented and manipulated mechanistically, say, in a computer.
"Natural causation involves and involves only objects that are in space and time, so it cannot produce the perception of an entailment."
False. Probability of an entailment is calculable by machines that are purely mechanistic.
That is how the unschooled use inductive reasoning. Pattern matching and probability estimates. The sequence of events presently being observed pattern matches a stored observed sequence of events, so the estimation of the probability of future events is made based on correlation between near present sequences of events as compared to stored sequences of events.
*****
Irrespective, the topic of the OP is that Victor seems to think people are snobby toward Lewis, and Victor apparently thinks that is not justified given, for example, that Lewis tutored at Oxford.
"[Water] crystals are complex like proteins and contain information like DNA?"
DNA does not "contain information" DNA is just a molecule. Information is an analytical abstraction.
But just supposing one wishes to abstract the arrangements of molecules as "information". Then yes, a snowflake contains vast amounts of information. Try to mathematically model a snowflake, I mean precisely, describe the molecular structure of a snowflake, that is, describe mathematically the precise location of every molecule in a snowflake.
"How can I avoid derision and disrespect?"
For the ID proponent the best way to avoid the derision and disrespect of his or her academic peers would be to stop making the pseudoscientific pronouncements intrinsic to ID such as:
"Propositions are objects that are not in space and time."
"Natural causation involves and involves only objects that are in space and time, so it cannot produce the perception of an entailment."
Assertions of irreducible complexity will be met with derision and disrespect from nearly all the academic peers Victor has.
That is the source of the sense of snobby expressed in the OP, the derision and disrespect coming from Victor's peers in response to his fringe pseudoscience ID assertions.
"If I can get answers, I might be willing to abandon my junk religous claims."
If you have any further ID claims, such as claims that reason is somehow impossible on naturalism therefore god, I can answer them, because such claims invariably turn out to be pseudoscience nonsense.
"You skipped a couple"
Yep. Derision and disrespect are more persuasive.
"No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes."
Fallacy of composition.
No wheel can roll if it is made of parts that can't roll.
No airplane can fly if it is made of parts that can't fly.
No computer can execute a program if it is made of parts that can't execute a program.
No brain can think rationally if it is made of molecules that can't think rationally.
Why are people snobby toward ID proponents?
Why do people laugh at creationists?
youtube.com/watch?v=BS5vid4GkEY
"That is, all our thoughts once were, as many of our thoughts still are, merely subjective events, not apprehensions of objective truth."
Sense data is an apprehension of objective truth because the real ontological state of affairs of the universe is objectively true and our sense data is our apprehension of that objective truth by use of our senses.
Why are people snobby toward Lewis?
Because Lewis was a cornucopia of stunningly inane statements that are immediately obvious as nonsense to the vast majority of academics, that's why.
"But the knowledge is achieved by experiments and inferences from them, not by refinement of the response. It is not men with specially good eyes who know about light, but men who have studied the relevant sciences."
Right, it is called cultural evolution. It has taken a very long time to develop. Each individual has to have a great deal of education in order to be able to perform such studies. Lacking that education human beings remain at the level of pre-historic hunter gatherers.
All just what one would expect on naturalism. Nearly all your academic peers understand all this, Victor, how did you not get the memo?
Victor,
"Without determinacy of propositional content, the type of rational inference in science cannot occur."
Strawman.
Science doesn't do absolute determinacy. Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of science already knows that.
Science doesn't do proof in the absolute sense, obviously.
Sure, maybe I am god and you are a figment of my divine imagination. You can make the same non-disprovable sort of speculation for yourself. "Everybody" knows that.
It is merely a personal decision to accept the basic reliability of the human senses, the correctness of the basic laws of logic, and to reason about the nature of the cosmos from that basis.
Science can and does proceed with that sort of provisional determinacy, relative to the provisionally stipulated postulates.
Human reasoning is based on an objective standard, not certainty of objectivity. There is no difficulty whatever in representing propositional content within a closed logical system, how did you ever come up with such a baseless assertion as to deny the ability of a naturalistic system to represent logical propositions?
We build machines that do just that, encode prepositional content mechanistically, very, very obviously.
That gets back to me just trying to be nice about the blame shifting for this gross lack of basic insight that is clear to nearly all your academic peers, but not to you and your tiny band of remaining ID proponents.
You told me "You are committed to the mind virus theory of religion". You clearly have no clue what I am committed to, yet you seem to think you do. But, just trying to be nice to you, trying to find some reason other than gross intellectual defect for your repeated nonsense assertions, maybe something like a mind virus as an analogy might begin to shed some preliminary light on your problem.
I mean, obviously you are are really educated and smart guy, and you seem very thoughtful and personable in available videos, so it would be absurd to attribute your gross errors to general stupidity, no, it must be something far more complicated than that.
Noam Chomsky said that the Dawkins notion of a meme is merely an analogy that is not useful analytically, and I tend to agree with that assessment. The notion of a mind virus is pretty much like the notion of a meme. I suppose one can use that analogy, but I don't find it all that useful, except maybe to be nice to you and say that your errors are not your fault, the mind virus did it to you. See how not snobby I can be?-)
"Evolutionary function is essentially fluid in nature, and to get something as determinate as propositional content out of biological function is asking too much of it."
Proposition: If I bite that sort of fruit it will taste good.
Proposition: If I bite that sort of rock it will hurt.
Just exactly what do you imagine about those propositions to be somehow not able to be determined, represented, stored, recalled, and acted upon mechanistically? The system needs sense data, memory, pattern matching, and decision making, all of which are proven to be realizable in mechanical systems.
Somehow a biological system cannot realize or instantiate sense data, memory, pattern matching, and decision making? Really? Do you know anything at all about biological brain function? It seems not.
Why are people snobby about Lewis?
In all honesty, I had not read your paper previously
the-argument-from-reason VICTOR REPPERT.pdf
but reading through it now I am somewhat flabbergasted by the continual stream of baseless assertions that your academic peers undoubtedly recognize immediately as utter nonsense.
"In point of fact, the ruthless naturalist W. V. Quine has argued that the reference of our terms is indeterminate, and that there is no fact of the matter as to what our words refer to (Quine 1960, chaps. 1 and 2). However, this has a disastrous consequence on the practice of science."
Another imagined disaster for science.
Have you ever heard of defining your terms? Creating an objective standard? Problem solved. You didn't know this? How could you not?
"1 If naturalism is true, then meaning is indeterminate.
2 Meaning is determinate (a presupposition of reason and science).
3 Therefore, naturalism is false."
You actually think you have discovered and described some profound flaw in naturalism here? My level of incredulity rises with every passing page in your paper. It is becoming very clear to me how your academic peers might be driven to the use of pejoratives.
On naturalism there is no ultimate meaning to our cosmos.
Meaning is relative. There is nothing outside of our cosmos for our cosmos to have meaning relative to.
In a system of an objective standard terms and meanings are defined, rules are set, meanings are determinate and objective within that system.
Like the rules of a card game which are an objective standard with determinate meanings inside the standard, but the set of rules as a whole are subjective in the cosmos with no ultimate reference as good or bad rules.
Pretty simple. How pedestrian is that? You really need somebody to explain such rudimentary differentiated concepts to you?
And you ask why you are detecting notes of snobbery cast in your direction? Really?
Why do people laugh at creationists?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdwOgc-lR_w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpL1dmfVoGA
I was responding to what snobby attitudes toward Lewis within the philosophical community, coming from people familiar with Lewis as a popular apologist and fiction writer but not as someone who got the same level of education as people who in fact did become Oxford philosophers, and was close at one point (this was prior to his conversion to Christianity or even theism). He was actually close to getting a philosophy post at Oxford, but the post went to another candidate. I maintain that Lewis has suffered some unjust prejudice in the philosophical community in virtue of the fact that philosophy was not his profession, that he present arguments to a popular audience, and that he wrote other kinds of literature, such as children's stories.
You, however, maintain that Lewis is treated with disrespect for another reasons--his defends positions and arguments that are so implausible that they could only be defended by a person in the grip of irrationality. The positions and arguments he defends, like those that Plantinga, Hasker, Feser, and I defend, particularly those directed against naturalism and materialism, as so obviously mistaken that they deserve dismissal. Such arguments are, in the words of Pauli, not even wrong.
But people like Plantinga, and Swinburne do not face the kind of dismissiveness that Lewis often faces, yet they defend many of the same lines of argument Lewis defends. Now, maybe they should be so dismissed. Loftus has argued that philosophy of religion should be removed from the philosophy currinculum and naturalism be presented to students as a kind of assured result. But that is not the mainstream view of the philosophical community. So you may explain why YOU are dismissive of Lewis (or me, or Plantinga, or Hasker), but it doesn't deal with what I was responding to.
But
Victor,
"So you may explain why YOU are dismissive of Lewis"
Really? I should not have taken this in the present tense, in the general sense, and directed toward me?
OP
"the snobby attitude that a lot of people have towards Lewis,
OP
" How many of you could get a job as a tutor in philosophy at Oxford?"
Your post presented a direct challenge to me, yet now you tell a tale of some obscure dismissiveness in some particular community. Rings hollow.
If you don't want a personalized response don't point the finger directly at me in the OP.
If you were talking about philosophers then yes, they could tutor philosophy, so your later claims make no sense.
"Plantinga, and Swinburne do not face the kind of dismissiveness that Lewis often faces"
From who? Some obscure group of philosophers?
How many evolutionary biologists would not fall over laughing at the baseless "arguments" from Plantinga, Lewis, Feser, and Reppert?
I have some university level biology textbooks, there is nothing about ID in them. They are all about describing life as it exists today and our best scientific evidence for how it came to be as it is. How many of the bibliography references lead to proponents of ID, do you suppose?
I am not even an expert in the field and just reading through your paper I spotted error after error that I described above and you apparently have no defense for.
It was like reading the tortured attempts by Feser to apply Aristotelian concepts that are literally two thousand years out of date to physics problems. I mean, the howlers are so obvious one does not need an advanced degree in the subject to refute them immediately.
The other day I heard Jordan Peterson say that to a scientist the theory is the reality. How absurd. It reminded me of your mischaracterizations of science, and what is needed to do science.
You have a PhD in philosophy, yet you do not seem to know the difference between objective truth and an objective standard, or that science is intrinsically provisional never properly claiming to absolutely prove anything. You don't seem to have the understanding that a scientific proof is by definition a provisional proof.
In science we form an objective standard, we provisionally postulate the basic reliability of the human senses and the truth of the basic laws of logic.
We have already built machines that do the things you say cannot be done naturalistically. Do you suppose there are ghosts in those machines?
There are no ghosts in those machines. But they do have intelligent designers, and what they do depends for their meaning upon those who create and use them. They have a derived intentionality. Where does the original intentionality come from? Not the computers.
https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2014/03/03/intentionality/#:~:text=Intentionality%20is%20original%20when%20it,they%20do%20so%20only%20derivatively.
Victor,
"There are no ghosts in those machines. But they do have intelligent designers"
Do you suppose man with his ingenuity can defeat either god or nature?
Can man build a machine that violates the laws of nature?
Surely you would not make such contentions, would you?
In science we build machines to test nature on the principle that it is impossible to build a machine that violates the laws of nature, because all machines are constructed of natural materials that necessarily obey the laws of material nature.
You say it is against nature to do the very things that machines do in fact do, therefore you are wrong, because it is impossible to build a machine that in any way violates nature.
If we can build a machine to do X then it is possible for an assemblage of natural materials to do X purely as a consequence of the arrangement of natural materials proceeding only by natural materialism.
Your attempt at ID occupies the ever receding corner of scientific ignorance and technologies not yet developed. Your only remaining refuge is an argument from ignorance, a mere speculation of irreducible complexity.
The reason there are so very few of you ID proponents left is that the claim of irreducible complexity has become absurd in this era of molecular biology, genetic manipulation, superlative computing power, biological science, and evolutionary science.
Victor,
Link-"Intentionality is original when it is intrinsic to a mind"
Wrong.
There is no more an original mind than there is an original human being.
The rudiments of intentionality can be observed today in simple life forms, analogous to life forms of many hundreds of millions of years ago. Uncountable billions and trillions of organisms lived and procreated and evolved and died over hundreds of millions of years.
Slowly, tiny step by tiny step the rudiments of intentionality self organized into more and more complex systems of intentionality culminating at very long last in us.
Only a person of the most profound scientific illiteracy would for a moment suggest the general characteristics of modern human thought are in any sense original.
Why are people snobby toward Lewis?
Why do people laugh at creationists?
But the link didn't come from a creationist. It came from a University of Illinois philosophers who is following the ideas of atheist philosopher John Searle. How do you solve the Chinese Room problem?
Victor,
"But the link didn't come from a creationist."
Genetic fallacy. I have observed that you employ logical fallacies frequently. I have pointed out quite a few to you that you have used recently.
Many atheists retain the cognitive defects of theism, unfortunately.
For example, there are quite a few atheists who try to argue for objective morality. Their arguments are invariably tortured nonsense.
There is no such thing as original intentionality any more than there is any such thing as the first human being.
Some atheist might be considering only the present era, perhaps with an analysis or AI or something, and for that limited analysis maybe there is a degree of utility in the notion of original intentionality.
But you are asserting ID.
In the context of evolutionary development there is no such thing as original intentionality.
Does the beaver chew a tree intending to build a dam? Does a bird pick up a stick intending to build a next? Does a spider hide in its burrow intending to pounce on its prey? Does an amoeba envelop a cell intending to digest it?
The rudiments of intentionality are observable in very simple life forms. Those extant life forms are analogous to living organisms of billions of years past. That is how we got our complex intentionality, through billions of years of biological evolution by natural processes.
In every instance of supposed irreducible complexity we find upon closer examination that the complexity is actually reducible, rendering your assertion of ID false, like all the rest.
Victor,
"How do you solve the Chinese Room problem?"
It isn't a problem, any more than Zeno presented real problems.
Searle (and many others) commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent, which is actually the fallacy of concluding the antecedent having affirmed the consequent.
If (merely and exclusively a mechanistic algorithm lacking intentionality) then (interchange indistinguishable from a human interchange)
(interchange indistinguishable from a human interchange)
Therefore (merely and exclusively a mechanistic algorithm lacking intentionality)
His thought experiment proves nothing about what humanly constructed machines, in principle, can and cannot do.
All Searle does is assert that one can write an algorithm that mimics human language interaction to the extent that a human being is unable to distinguish such algorithmic interaction from actual human interaction.
It is a non-sequitur to leap from that assertion of a particular sort of written algorithm to the assertion that human constructed machines cannot, even in principle, become conscious or have self awareness or personal experiences or qualia or experience intentionality.
Such a sweeping negative claim of, in principle, machine capabilities in no way follows from the mere assertion that an algorithm can be written to perform a particular task well enough to trick a human being.
You often ascribe informal fallacies to me, usually without understanding them. The genetic fallacy is a good example. In cases of the genetic fallacy, the respondent attempts to discredit the argument by discrediting its source. You attempted to criticize someone for by tarring them with a creationist brush, and I said he wasn't a creationist. Sorry, that's not the genetic fallacy.
SP: It is a non-sequitur to leap from that assertion of a particular sort of written algorithm to the assertion that human constructed machines cannot, even in principle, become conscious or have self awareness or personal experiences or qualia or experience intentionality.
VR: No, but for it to be reasonable to attribute anything but blind mechanicity to the machine, it would have to behave in a way we would not expect it to behave given what it is. If we have a full and complete explanation for the activity of the computer without attributing any understanding to the computer itself, then Ockham's Razor (in this case Ockham's Lobotomy) requires us to say that the computer doesn't have consciousness.
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