tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105844952024-03-18T11:10:20.200-07:00dangerous ideaThis is a blog to discuss philosophy, chess, politics,
C. S. Lewis, or whatever it is that I'm in the mood to discuss.Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comBlogger5320125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-59599156525732555742024-02-06T13:45:00.004-07:002024-02-06T13:47:33.897-07:00Can an evolutionary biologist believe in purpose?<p> By <a href="https://sciencenetwork.uk/think/can-an-evolutionary-biologist-believe-in-purpose?fbclid=IwAR2wgHiCYfqq9l1MgJhIeAsP7A-SJD2yPDTInznp0rhJSX0eMXolMDbyhVA" target="_blank">Zachary Ardern</a>.. </p><p><br /></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-5835732731368083802024-02-01T17:39:00.003-07:002024-02-01T17:39:46.152-07:00Fallacy of composition? <p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">1. Every molecule of the planet Saturn occupies space. </span></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">2. Therefore , Saturn occupies space. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Fallacy of composition?</div></div>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com207tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-61459274559973605792024-01-15T23:46:00.004-07:002024-01-15T23:46:59.299-07:00The rise of anti-semitism <p> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQdpnr6jC9M&t=15s" target="_blank">Antisemitism on the rise</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>A disturbing trend </p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com107tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-76195479201877610682024-01-04T16:09:00.003-07:002024-01-06T01:38:27.816-07:00Burdens of proof<p> <span style="background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Is there a burden of proof concerning the existence of burdens of proof?</span></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-77167002532810361432023-12-28T12:54:00.001-07:002023-12-28T12:54:06.166-07:00Melnyk on naturalism<p> H<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;">ere's a quote by materialist Andrew Melnyk. </span></p><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;">“Naturalism claims that nothing has a fundamentally purposeful explanation…Naturalism says that whenever an occurrence has a purposeful explanation, it has that explanation in virtue of certain nonpurposeful (e.g. merely causal) facts.”</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;">Do you concur with this statement, or not? Do you think a materialist can, or should, reject this?</span>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com72tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-40263103799418667422023-12-21T19:42:00.001-07:002023-12-21T19:42:03.930-07:00God and modern miracles<p> An interview with <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/january-web-only/craig-keener-miracles-today-supernatural-god.html">Craig Keener. </a></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-36597775209204879142023-12-13T18:10:00.000-07:002023-12-13T18:10:02.226-07:00Too smart to believe in God? <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYz50zBu83nPCApti0BtccPP0HS752Od5TtmHi5VES1sdQYnz5lBPvBsKOgD4BA8IYnyehInM5J6ogI-D94UU6YCxAXwZjVUvx2tJOqJK_MnbGI-zW2fJVd-Psvd6i6VRca5nXqe8Ig0BEXKgQ3WVCs888jEV2wA-_Yvrt2SxMasfzZa0Da_fUCg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="800" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYz50zBu83nPCApti0BtccPP0HS752Od5TtmHi5VES1sdQYnz5lBPvBsKOgD4BA8IYnyehInM5J6ogI-D94UU6YCxAXwZjVUvx2tJOqJK_MnbGI-zW2fJVd-Psvd6i6VRca5nXqe8Ig0BEXKgQ3WVCs888jEV2wA-_Yvrt2SxMasfzZa0Da_fUCg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-59136400198070890202023-12-12T23:03:00.000-07:002023-12-12T23:03:24.026-07:00Miraculous Healing: The case of Henrique Mecking<p> The great chess grandmaster from Brazil, Henrique Meckiing, was at death's door from a rare disease. He is alive and well at 71 todya, and attributes this to a divine healing when his disease was at its worst. A devout Roman Catholic in the charismatic movement, he had a rating of 2606 at the age of 60. </p><p>Does Jesus still heal?<a href="https://tartajubow.blogspot.com/2016/09/henrique-meckings-fight-for-life.html" target="_blank"> Here. </a></p><p><br /></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-78520271369775837282023-12-11T22:01:00.000-07:002023-12-11T22:01:02.529-07:00Virtue theory and humility<p> <span style="background-color: #f8f8f8; color: #262626; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Aristotle thought that it was good to think highly of yourself, so long as you don't take it too far. The Christian traditiion says that humility is a virtue and that pride is a sin. How does virtue theory deal with an issue like this? </span></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-20942679954203438092023-11-29T02:27:00.002-07:002023-11-29T02:27:29.079-07:00From Lewis's the Poison ol Subjectivism <p> After studying his environment man has begun to study himself. Up to that point, he had assumed his own reason and through it seen all other things. Now, his own reason has become the object: it is as if we took out our eyes to look at them. Thus studied, his own reason appears to him as the epiphenomenona which accompanies chemical or electrical events in a cortex which is itself the by-product of a blind evolutionary process. His own logic, hitherto the king whom events in all possible worlds must obey, becomes merely subjective. There is no reason for supposing that it yields truth. As long as this dethronement refers only to the theoretical reason, it cannot be wholehearted. The scientist has to assume the validity of his own logic (in the stout old fashion of Plato or Spinoza) even in order to prove that it is merely subjective, and therefore he can only flirt with subjectivism. It is true that this flirtation sometimes goes pretty far. There are modern scientists, I am told, who have dropped the words truth and reality out of their vocabulary and who hold that the end of their work is not to know what is there but simply to get practical results. This is, no doubt, a bad symptom. But, in the main, subjectivism is such an uncomfortable yokefellow for research that the danger, in this quarter, is continually counteracted.</p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-20782707276177554392023-11-25T15:55:00.002-07:002023-11-25T15:55:33.192-07:00C. S. Lewis's De Futilitate <p><a href="https://spaineblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/blog-post.html" target="_blank"> Here. </a></p><p><br /></p><p>This includes different forms of the argument from reason than found in Miracles. Anscombe's rebuttals don't apply to some of what we find here. </p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-5744343533131505402023-11-17T13:35:00.002-07:002023-11-17T13:35:34.153-07:00What was Anselm's argument for God?<p> <a href="https://www.academia.edu/61628324/THAT_ANSELMS_PROOF_OF_THE_EXISTENCE_OF_GOD_IS_NOT_THE_INVALID_ONTOLOGICAL_ARGUMENT_STANDARDLY_ATTRIBUTED_TO_HIM?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper" target="_blank">Here</a></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-22933991395007877162023-11-12T02:57:00.002-07:002023-11-12T02:57:40.804-07:00Do you misgender your pet? Shame on you!<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgHPcLAifBjDAUdHavI_nZJb7bxJ_hQ1j3gZhOnKTwYfUiniR1LachhRM1PQNr_UNadS-8K77WsMma6TP7zWkA42EAfN7LSlxMD3Nzrac12kjLQMy19TMVRtJDJ3yTWf7qQb5J3nWU-k1E_uTdZaZ_9bIbYIHvrH-JU1QVWP4y49UFIbCBXmxxHZw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgHPcLAifBjDAUdHavI_nZJb7bxJ_hQ1j3gZhOnKTwYfUiniR1LachhRM1PQNr_UNadS-8K77WsMma6TP7zWkA42EAfN7LSlxMD3Nzrac12kjLQMy19TMVRtJDJ3yTWf7qQb5J3nWU-k1E_uTdZaZ_9bIbYIHvrH-JU1QVWP4y49UFIbCBXmxxHZw" width="277" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-61854902143060056412023-10-30T21:07:00.001-07:002023-10-30T21:07:05.165-07:00User Illusion<p> <span style="font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps the idea
of a mentalistic explanation requires some explanation. A moment ago I went out
to get the mail. I believed that getting the mail would be a good thing, I know
where the mailbox is, and so I fulfilled my intention to go out to the mailbox
and get the mail. My actions had a purpose which I fulfilled. My feet moved,
due to signals sent from my brain, but the ultimate reason why the atoms in my
brain did what they did is that because they were directed by something
possessing a purpose. Or, perhaps the atoms themselves had an inherent purpose.
Something desired by some entity brought it about that the atoms moved the way
they did.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> But these types of explanations are
typically excluded from basic physics. In fact, not only purpose, but
intentionality or about-ness, normativity, and first-person perspective are
also excluded. The four fundamental forces
postulated by physics, gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak
nuclear forces, are blind forces, which do not act for reasons. If gravity
operates on boulders falling in an avalanche, they will neither avoid my head
to spare my life nor strike me to punish my wickedness. No, the gravitational force has no mental life,
and genuinely physical particles have no mental life either. But what happens
at the mindless level of basic physics, according to materialism, determines what
goes on at all levels. It is true that physical events sometimes produce
results that an intentional agent would choose, indeed that is how natural selection
works. But in the final analysis, if materialism is true, it looks as if the
idea of intentions or purposes or desires or motives producing actions is bound
to be an illusion. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com51tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-30639391404401620512023-10-30T16:27:00.000-07:002023-10-30T16:27:03.637-07:00In honor of my Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series--Sister Wynona Carr's The The Ball Game. <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pR4r7tjQZLs" width="320" youtube-src-id="pR4r7tjQZLs"></iframe></div><br /> <p></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-66729963627717034842023-10-24T15:58:00.003-07:002023-10-24T15:58:59.894-07:00The rise and fall of the new atheism <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f8_Zcmwx-TI" width="320" youtube-src-id="f8_Zcmwx-TI"></iframe></div><br /><br /><p></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-29681049687859486032023-09-24T19:06:00.001-07:002023-09-24T19:06:07.133-07:00Feser on eliminativism <p> <a href="http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/08/eliminativism-without-truth-part-i.html" target="_blank">Here. </a></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com60tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-75237311391256621732023-09-13T22:54:00.006-07:002023-09-13T22:54:53.149-07:00Max Planck on consciousness <p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">I regard consciousness as fundamental. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(80, 151, 255, 0.18); color: #040c28; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgba(80, 151, 255, 0.18); color: #040c28; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">We cannot get behind consciousness.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgba(80, 151, 255, 0.18); color: #040c28; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgba(80, 151, 255, 0.18); color: #040c28; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgba(80, 151, 255, 0.18); color: #040c28; font-family: "Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">Max Planck</span></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-12398646219451451052023-09-11T21:47:00.001-07:002023-09-11T21:47:37.003-07:00Is Introspection worthless? <p>From Patricia Churchland. </p><p><br /></p><p>The brains in our skulls function as they do largely because they are the
product of a long evolutionary history. That fact is, of course, not a fact
the brain's biological evolution gave it automatic knowledge of; rather,
it is something brains have learned as a result of a long period of
scientific evolution. Introspection reveals almost nothing about how ner vous systems work, and from an evolutionary perspective, there is no
reason why it should.
If anything, human brains have a positive tendency to be misled about
their nature. They tend to suppose they are not part of the biological
order, that they are the result of special creation, that nervous tissue
itself is not relevant to the understanding of the mind, and that intro spection yields incontrovertible truths about a nonphysical mind, about
the nature of free will, experience, knowledge, meaning, and language.
What the evolutionary and neurobiological perspective makes evident,
however, is that to understand how the brain works, introspection is
unreliable. Rather, we must do experiments addressing a variety of
levels of organization, and we must engage in real theorizing about how
the brain functions</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00201748608602089" target="_blank">Here. </a></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-81858692833780467792023-08-21T17:24:00.001-07:002023-08-21T17:24:19.089-07:00God and materialism <p> I have argued in defense of God by arguing against materialism. But what if God is just an unusual kind of material entity. After all, matter is just what science describes. If you include God as a theoretical entity in a scientific explanation, then God becomes a an unusal mateiral entity. No skin off the nose of Christians, right? If we can predict the activitiies of God to some extent (and we can) we can form testable theories about God. </p><p>No??????</p><p><br /></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com268tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-40799747427625814482023-08-20T13:36:00.004-07:002023-08-20T13:36:44.200-07:00Behaviorism and the Paradox of the Thinking Behaviorist <p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Arthur Lovejoy, in 1922, describes the Behaviorism of his time. </span></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">With this, of course, images and ideas, as well as 'mind;' 'consciousness,' and other familiar categories of the older psychology, are eliminated from the descriptive analysis of perception and thought. " I should throw out imagery altogether," writes Watson. " I believe we can write a psychology and never use the words consciousness, content, introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like." 1 The researches of Angell and Fernald (aside from other considerations) "pave the way for the complete dismissal of the image from psychology." 2 And this does not mean that these things are merely to be excluded from consideration for reasons of methodological convenience; it means that we have no reason to believe in their existence, that they are not verifiable facts of experience. Those who "grope in a laboratory to discover the ' images ' that the in- trospective psychologist talks about " will find nothing but proc- esses in the larynx. " It is," Watson declares, " a serious misunderstanding of the behavioristic position to say," as one would-be expositor of it has said, "that of course a behaviorist does not deny that mental states exist. He merely prefers to ignore them." He ignores them, Watson explains, " in the same sense that chemistry ignores alchemy and astronomy ignores horoscopy. The behaviorist does not concern himself with them because, as the stream of his science broadens and deepens, such older concepts are sucked under never to reappear." </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz xt0b8zv x1fey0fg" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2178913.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2ommCrSCK9orhYabuvxfvcdrwmp567Gm9emaTCPwNYQ1mthwcVyvF8zH0" rel="nofollow noreferrer" role="link" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-color: initial; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0" target="_blank">https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2178913.pdf</a></span></div></div>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-60771170821161267952023-08-08T08:56:00.005-07:002023-08-09T20:03:43.362-07:00Determinate meaning and the case for God. <p> <a href="https://andrewmbailey.com/papers/bonevac.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1rEgRn0VjCc3x1_pwPGoJBjdi0i9tYHn1NVfRaqwpT6EKrpJ-N3yuXtow" target="_blank">Here</a>. A paper by Daniel Bonevac. This is similar to Ross. </p><p>The early Church Fathers argued that the only answer is that there is a transcendent
causal power making that relation possible. The power cannot be the forms themselves, or the form of the Good, as Plato thought, for our relation to them is precisely the point at issue. Nor can it be generated from finite minds themselves. The
best explanation of our relation to the transcendent identifies the transcendent power
with God.
(17)</p><p> a. If realism is true, then, given a content bearer b, among our possibilities are
skeptical scenarios for b.</p><p> b. Content bearers have specific contents.</p><p> c. A content bearer b can have a specific content only by virtue of some fact.</p><p>d. If there were a fact by virtue of which b had a specific content, there would
be grounds for discounting skeptical scenarios for b.</p><p> e. There could be grounds for discounting skeptical scenarios for b only if b’s
content is grounded in something transcendent. </p><p>f. Something independent of individual, finite minds can ground content
only if there is something with causal power, independent of individual finite minds, that makes such grounding possible.</p><p> g. Only a transcendent causal power could make possible grounding in something transcendent. </p><p>h. Nothing natural is transcendent.</p><p> i. Anti-realism grounds content in some feature of a collection of finite
minds.</p><p> j. A finite collection of finite minds does not suffice to explain the grounding
of content. </p><p>k. An infinite collection of finite minds does not suffice to explain the
grounding of content.</p><p> l. The best explanation for the existence of a supernatural, transcendent
causal power grounding content in the transcendent includes an infinite
mind and, in particular, the existence of God. </p><p>m. So, there is a God. </p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com63tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-57781741877289402342023-08-04T07:32:00.001-07:002023-08-04T07:32:11.959-07:00AI and its limits<p> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Non-Computable-You-Artificial-Intelligence-Never/dp/163712015X?fbclid=IwAR3qy98Yc0cGKlrWpg4crck6OMixzjLXkkn8oO_-M-BDBdooA92oU0eJLuo" target="_blank">Here. </a></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-51516680693492211002023-07-25T14:32:00.000-07:002023-07-25T14:32:07.783-07:00Lewis's AFR and Plantinga's EAAN <p> <span style="background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> Plantinga's is an argument that is designed to be consistent with externalism. I have thought of it as the argument from the reliabillity of our rational faculties, though I think he ends up appealing to mental causation. However, I </span><a style="background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" tabindex="-1"></a><span style="background-color: #f0f2f5; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">think there are some aspects of science that seem to require internalist accounts of knowledge. Sure, there's other knowledge, but for science to work a scientist has to be able to present his or her experimentaal process so that someone else can follow the same process and check to see if the result is the same. There are some kinds of knowledge where wee can say "It doesn't matter about the process so long as it's a reliable one." But if we are relying on that kind of knowledge in order for science to be possible, it won't work.</span></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1446268560716242752023-07-24T21:19:00.002-07:002023-07-24T21:19:11.924-07:00From Lewis's essay Bulverism<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Libre Baskerville"; font-size: 20px;">But our thoughts can only be accepted as a genuine insight under certain conditions. All beliefs have causes but a distinction must be drawn between (1) ordinary causes and (2) a special kind of cause called “a reason.” Causes are mindless events which can produce other results than belief. Reasons arise from axioms and inferences and affect only beliefs. Bulverism tries to show that the other man has causes and not reasons and that we have reasons and not causes. A belief which can be accounted for entirely in terms of causes is worthless. This principle must not be abandoned when we consider the beliefs which are the basis of others. Our knowledge depends on our certainty about axioms and inferences. If these are the results of causes, then there is no possibility of knowledge. Either we can know nothing </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222222; font-family: "Libre Baskerville"; font-size: 20px; max-width: unset;">or</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Libre Baskerville"; font-size: 20px;"> thought has reasons only, and no causes.</span></p>Victor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.com53