Evidence for God: Humanness and Personal Identity

It might be helpful to compare the human self with a chess game. During the game, various physical pieces move, but it’s still the same game, right?

A chess game isn’t just the physical board and pieces in some static position, but a chess game is a progression of physical things, a logical sequence from start to finish.

When you’re born, that’s like the start of the chess game, and when the game ends, that’s like your death. Your life is everything in between. Your self is your whole life, and your body parts are just pieces on the chessboard of your life.

What if the chess pieces just move according to the laws of physics? There aren’t any players, but the pieces just move mechanistically according to physical laws. The physical laws give the system continuity.

It’s like the eternal question about whether God exists. Theists say there must be a player, but atheists say the game plays itself.

Theists say the game without players has no meaning, but atheists say the only meaning is within the game itself.

See, you can use this analogy to argue against atheists, if you want. You can ask the atheist if he really believes the game has no players. Does the thing just play itself?? I wonder what the atheist would say.

Tom,

Look at children. As a parent, looking across the whole show, from there inside of perspective across the stuff of Time, do you see the line of continuity in the particular person that is child A or B or C – and so on.

Well of course.

The line is not in question.

The essence of that line is.

What is it with these weak arguments from analogy that are being used by John and some of the other atheist interlocutors on other threads? I read it as a sign of desperation. It goes like this:You don’t have a good argument so you just start throwing anything that you think will stick, like mud against a brick wall. (I know, that is an analogy, but it’s a good one.)

I feel insulted. Does John Moore really think Christians are that stupid? Does he believe that because he is an atheist that that automatically makes him more reasonable? Am I to be aw struck by the pure profundity of his arguments?

Just a little advice to the atheist: Think! Save us our time and save yourself from embarrasment. Sometimes it’s just better to say nothing at all.

Ray,

Theism accounts for the stuff of death far more robustly than all your false identity claims and equivocations EVER will. AND the stuff of life……. We’ve all seen it Ray – the content you equivocate and confabulate about is an insult to a life’s true content – as all your ends of regress must – in the end – be.

We’ve all seen the brutality of death. Our beloved there in the middle of it all.

The emotional pain there has the power to move us to rage, to anger, to make conclusions which – in the middle of that darkness – the stuff of reason just could not care less about. We saw it in Gautama. If the necessary c-o-n-t-e-n-t that just is the beloved could in fact be delivered to us on a plate of an engineered molecular diagram void of 1) False Identity Claims and void of 2) Equivocation and void of 3) Confabulation there amid the stuff of i-am and the stuff of it-moves, if we actually had a regress which philosophical naturalism could contain without subtle intellectual hedging, then the stuff that is the Self there amidst the stuff that is the Beloved/Other would have a fighting chance to stick there inside of the Naturalist’s regressions. Indeed if such evidence could be brought to the table then all the emotional pain which – in part – moves one to hold onto such a view of all that is self, of all that is other, of all that is singularity’s us there within unity’s embrace would likewise have a fighting chance. But there is no such evidence, and in fact every time we dive in it is brutally repeatable in the opposite direction.

Reality is brutally repeatable and the stuff there inside of science grants us the power, the intellectual and even the moral right to inform the philosophical naturalist, the atheist, that he’d better have a damn good reason to insult and degrade the beloved with what he is telling us about the beloved. God and all the evidence at hand declare very, very different ends within a life and that God means nothing to the atheist is a given, but that evidence means nothing to him here inside of this arena is quite disturbing given the price he is asking. Such a price demands a heavy dose of evidence. If philosophical naturalism means to declare such insults against the beloved, against all that is the beloved in the whole wide world, then that paradigm better bring, with evidence, the actuality – the content – of all that is the first person actuality of all of us little i-am’s and it better get busy presenting it void of 1, 2, and 3 above.

Gautama saw the brutality that is evil for what was apparently the first time in his life. He did as Harris is doing. As many of us do in the middle of that dark hour. “It can’t be”. And therefore – Gautama reasons – it is not. Enter the stuff of illusion. That is fine if one has evidence. But there is no evidence that evil does not exist. There is no evidence that i-am is non-entity. There is no evidence that the beloved is but the content of a con.

The physicalist’s engineering, all the power point slides, just never show us any loss of any some-thing which our beloved ever knew, ever lived, ever encountered. Not once. Ever. We stare with blank stares at his power point presentation of particle in motion and nothing there houses the content of what just was the beloved. Such just is the case past tense exactly because such just is the case present tense. C-o-n-t-e-n-t evades particle in motion. Perceived experience evades particle in motion. Relation evades – necessarily – Identity. (Beware of false identity claims there) Mind evades – necessarily – Brain. Our beloved evades – necessarily – body. Even further is JAD’s mention of another line of critical mass: The properly basic belief that I exist evades – necessarily – philosophical naturalism, and mereological nihilism, and ontological pluralism. The I-AM grounds the whole show. Timelessness. Immaterial. The I-AM. It’s all there in Scripture’s metaphysics.

@Tom Gilson:

Continuity of memory seems more promising; but what about the person with amnesia?

If physical continuity does not work, this cannot work either for naturalists that identify memory with physical states.

Another random comment: your objection in “Question-Begging Assumptions” is a standard one. It can be put in a different way as follows. To remember, say remember doing X, is to remember *myself* doing X. But then it is uninformative to say that I remember myself doing X, for genuinely remembering *myself* doing X already presupposes that *I* was the one doing X.

Twenty five year olds with amnesia house all that is their personhood – ever retained in the Now – the Past being inaccessible in terms of memory – not in terms of personhood’s ties to what made the Past. Memory is a part of us – it is not the i-am.

Yet another false identity claim of Ray. Like mind and brain.

Ever one step of separation.

Ray,

G. Rodrigues made this astute observation of your “means” in another thread and here it reveals (for this thread) an end for which you lack the means – for all the same reasons:

“Then you go on to make an analogy with physical theories like Newtonean classical mechanics. The problem with the response is that it is demonstrably true that Newton’s equations of motion have solutions, that the solution set forms a sheaf, etc. *Because* the equations do have a solution, we can meaningfully speak of approximations, perturbations, restricted problems, etc. But what does it mean to say that there is a “best solution” when by hypothesis there is *no solution* at all? How can we speak of “good enough” when there is no “good” for there to be enough of, or an approximation to? If per impossible it were found that Newton’s equations had no solutions, the obvious tack would be to drop them as a true description of the world, apparently you think differently. Either way, to say “but… Engineering!” just makes the point for me.”

That was comment #334 and still no non-arbitrary ought which transcends arbitrary – shifting – taste buds.

Here now you will spend another 334 comments giving formulas that have no – yield no – solution/ends in the actual I-am we all “know”. No “it-moves” you offer will suffice for the i-am.

Tom: I meant this for here as naturalism denies the very end (solution) under discussion.

Tom,

I edited the end of #35 to reply to your #36 as I had edit time remaining ~~~ we’re in for an array of third person approximations ever coming up short of – one step of separation away from – the first person actuality.

Tom Gilson – Let me explain the “way of elimination” I’m coming from.

What’s left for the soul to do, once the brain is eliminated? The soul’s still supposed to be there, in brain death, in brains ravaged by plaques. Again, I can’t see anything left of the person once the brain’s been wrecked to that level, nothing left of what was loved.

Take a look at things like the writings of Oliver Sacks. Damage to the brain damages consciousness and selfhood, and in fundamental ways. I can’t see a capacity it doesn’t impact.

What’s left when the brain’s gone, and how do you know?

Tom,

Is it your claim that no physical object can ever be said to maintain its identity because it changes over time?

Tom, do you have an answer for the question Ray posed in #32? Specifically, given that you would consider your wife to still be your wife if she got a heart transplant, would you consider her to be the same person if she got a brain transplant?

@Brap Gonk:

Specifically, given that you would consider your wife to still be your wife if she got a heart transplant, would you consider her to be the same person if she got a brain transplant?

You seem to be making the same mistake as Ray Ingles (see below); either way, this type of scenarios is disastrous for the *materialist* — e.g. see P. van Inwagen’s Materialism and the Psychological-Continuity Account of Personal Identity (not for the faint of heart).

@Ray Ingles:

What’s left when the brain’s gone, and how do you know?

You are confused; Tom is not asking about qualitative identity but numerical identity, neither is the question an epistemological one.

@Tom Gilson:

I do not think you are going to get much tracking from this; identity is a notorious vexing problem, personal identity is even more vexing, and especially vexing for materialists, but the reasons strike me more as symptoms of something else.

I don’t think it’s an either/or. We are physical/spiritual beings. In life, you don’t get one without the other. They are intertwined enough that major changes in one effects the other, in some and differing senses, as it seems the evidence points to. And brain transplants?!?! Come on, Mary Shelly would be proud.

@SteveK:

If I’m correct about that then this being-ness remains intact across different physical forms and stages of development.

This just is the standard description of change; at a minimum there is a subject that changes and at the same time persists through the change; we can make sense of diachronic identity and sentences like “X at t_1 is numerically identical to Y at t_2” are not only meaningful, but can express objectively true propositions.

But then there is a different kind of change, substantial change, in which the subject does *not* persist. Obvious examples are death (for the materialist; leave aside the Christian retelling for now) or (a stock Scholastic example) the ingestion of food — we persist, but the food does not.

So the difference is that there are some changes the subject can undergo and persist through and some that the subject cannot, the difference between accidental change on the one hand and substantial, or essential, change on the other. And the word “essential” already hints at the problem: there is no room for essences in naturalism, as there is no room for persons and selves (note: I am not arguing this here; I am just trying to explain why I think the problem of personal identity is symptomatic not essential). Essences, persons, etc. are just artifacts of our linguistic practices and classification schemes. Naturalism does not so much as have a problem with personal identity, but more that there are no persons or selves in naturalism for there to be a problem of identity to begin with.

As for the brain transplant scenario, it is a red herring; a substance dualist (the non-materialist case easier to explain) does not tie the identity conditions of a person with the physical brain, but with the soul. Substantial dualists can have a problem of identifying if the person travels with the brain or stays with the body, or even if it survives at all, in the sense of being separated from the body, but he has no *identity problem*. And this is the important distinction to bear in mind: to have an *epistemological* problem on the personal identity question is bad but bearable, as there are all sorts of questions we do not have the means to answer. But what the scenarios purport to show is that there is no *fact of the matter* about personal identity, and *that* is un-bearable — for example, you can throw out the window moral accountability (“Me? Committed murder? But judge it was *not* me who did that. I admit that it was a similar fellow, with the same fingerprints and all, but it was not me. Here let me show…”).

G. Rodrigues:
Essences, persons, etc. are just artifacts of our linguistic practices and classification schemes. Naturalism does not so much as have a problem with personal identity, but more that there are no persons or selves in naturalism for there to be a problem of identity to begin with.

I don’t see how super-naturalists can escape language use anymore than naturalists can.
We all agree that humans are persons. Ascribing personhood or personal identity to some sort of spiritual substance does not make it any more real than the naturalist’s ascription to a physical being.

G. Rodrigues –

But what the scenarios purport to show is that there is no *fact of the matter* about personal identity

No, I think the scenarios illustrate that the ‘process’ model handles such cases better than a ‘substance’ model.

Tom: ‘I am convinced I was once a younger man, and that the person I am now is, in essence, the same person I was then, even though in many properties and characteristics I am different.’

You are no doubt familiar with the probably apocryphal story of the foreign gentleman who travelled to England, and while there said he would like to visit Oxford University.

Arrangements were made and the visitor was duly shown around some of the buildings and met the vice-chancellor and some of the staff and students. At the end of the visit the foreign gentleman thanked his hosts for their hospitality, but wanted to know whether they could now visit Oxford University.

I feel the seekers after essences are in the same position as our foreign gentleman, assuming that ‘Oxford University’ must refer to some specific entity, a central campus perhaps, rather than the existing federation of a number of independent colleges.

The university does have a central governing body, but it is not defined by that body. And yet the entity has persisted for hundreds of years despite its lack of an essential, unchanging feature. And most people have no trouble understanding the term ‘Oxford University’ and its many resonant associations.

JAD,
Those are good questions because they help propel us toward the answer from a common-sense perspective. But you have to remember that we are dealing with skeptics who are skeptical of their own first-person knowledge and awareness – but only when it suits them.

Take Ray for example, in #54. He has no clue who Ray is and if Ray is the same Ray he was at birth because he can’t answer the 74 questions in that comment. Must. Remain. Skeptical.

I fail to see why that should entail that my self is in reality some sort of ethereal soul that can exist without my body.

The philosophical concept of identity (A=A) is a good place to start in my opinion. If what you know to be true about the self is not true about your [insert body part or entire body] then the two are different things.

Tom,

If I understand what you wrote above I believe we both agree that we are spatio-temporal continuants. In other words, if one had the knowledge he could write a complete history of our existence on this earth from the moment of our conceptions to the present time. He could list precisely where we were at anytime during our lifetimes.

I would take that as being sufficient in establishing each of our identities. But apparently you do not. I take it you do not because our bodies change dramatically over time. But I am having trouble understanding why that should be a problem. All physical substances are in a continual process of change. That doesn’t seem to limit our ability to identify the myriad physical objects we encounter everyday.

In his book, The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers writes that…

“Consciousness is a surprising feature of our universe. Our grounds for belief in consciousness derive solely from our experience of it. Even if we know every last detail about the physics of the universe—the configuration, causation, and evolution among all the fields and particles in the spatial temporal manifold—that information would not lead us to postulate the existence of conscious experience. My knowledge of consciousness in the first instance comes from my own case, not from any external observation. It is my first-person experience of consciousness that forces the problem on me.” (p101,102)

At the beginning of his book Chalmers identifies himself as a naturalist who opposes reductive materialism and sees consciousness as an ontologically distinct category like space/time or matter/energy.

For example he writes: “Trying to define conscious experience in terms of more primitive notions is fruitless. One might as well try to define matter or space in terms of something more fundamental. The best we can do is to give illustrations and characterizations that lie at the same level.”

However, as a non-theist Chalmers, like Thomas Nagel, opts for a “naturalistic friendly” explanation: panpsychism.

I agree with him that consciousness is best understood as a non-reductive ontological category. However, I reject panpsychism.

Hal,
The discussion on identity (A=A) is at about the 2hr 21min mark.

Tom: ‘I am not a young man, but I am in some very significant way the same man I was when I was a young man.’

But surely not exactly the same, i.e. not identical. For one, you are older, so in quite an important sense you are different.

Nevertheless, both of us would say that there is a continuity between the self of 20 years ago and the self of today. From the ‘outside’ we have the physical body, the experienced history and the testimony of others, such as your wife. From the ‘inside’ we have memories of previous times.

There are also other signs, such as the knowledge we have, photographs and so on. In this way, we build up a history of our self.

Positing an ‘essence’ doesn’t add anything to these evidences. They would still exist in the absence of an ‘essential me’.

God’s Simplicity is not Man’s Composition. Nor can it be for any created being. Man has parts. Man changes. Pouring/Filling, or, Amalgamation’s lines may bridge, end, such paradigms, as the mutable swallows, is swallowed up by, the Immutable. Time giving way to Timelessness. And so on, as Scripture’s lines speak of on many levels. But such is a different topic.

The naturalists in this thread are equivocating amid Being’s i-am and Being’s i-have. They seem to mean to assert that the Christian is asserting that God’s sort of Simplicity is how Man is “composed”. They are mistaken on the Christian’s use of “identity” and fail to inform themselves of the stuff of created-ness in the proper context of Theism. Man changes and is composed of parts, whereas God is not / does not and so on. The arena of such change is all the stuff of the physical. Dirt. Being’s (the created being’s) I-Have. Intertwined therein is all the stuff of the soul. The stuff of Immaterial. Or, if it helps (and it does help the Theist), the stuff of Timelessness. Hawking’s Imaginary Sphere. Which everybody knows precedes – and outlasts – our own (physical, material, temporal) universe. Being’s I-Am. The Christian need not sacrifice the paradigm of Timelessness nor must he (inevitably) make the Naturalist’s inane leaps of faith against the grain of Mind. Timelessness is. Mind is. Such is Being’s I-Am. All the stuff of I-Have cannot touch that. Rather, the i-am precedes, touches, the i-have. While such arenas are troubling for Naturalism (on many and various levels and in many fields of science), all are actually expected from eons ago there in Scripture’s varied vectors.

@Ray Ingles:

No, I think the scenarios illustrate that the ‘process’ model handles such cases better than a ‘substance’ model.

The “‘process’ model” does not handle better identity conditions than the “‘substance’ model” because it does not handle them at *all*. Processes like the digestion going on on my stomach or the thinking processes realized on the brain are not “things”, they do not identify anything, neither they have identity conditions, or at any rate if they have, they always resolve to the identity conditions of the material substratum or whatever.

If saying “my digestion” as opposed to “Ray Ingle’s digestion” is meaningful, as it plainly is, it is solely because it is a process in and of *my* stomach as opposed Ray Ingle’s stomach, together with the fact that my stomach bears a special relation to me (including causal relations) as opposed to any other stomach in the world. Processes themselves, any process, are always analyzed as cases of change of the underlying substratum.

Likewise, thinking does not exist in the abstract, neither it identifies a thinker, but we do speak correctly of “my thinking” or “the thoughts I am thinking”. It can be the case that I am not thinking any thoughts (e.g. when I am asleep), but there is no thinking that is not thought by a thinking subject, so it follows that thinking, that which the brain does, cannot identify anything whatsoever. After all, what does *unify* a stream of thinking? Is it not that they are the thoughts of *numerically the same* thinking person? The same goes for any other process you care to name. In fact, in the thread you linked you explicitly say, quite correctly and as you must, that “Variation, selection, and tornadoes are all processes. They supervene on things” which is just to concede that processes cannot ground the identity conditions of substances (but there is also the possibility that you do not know what supervenience is).

I do not know of any serious naturalist metaphysician (Shoemaker, Parfit, Perry, Lewis, etc.) that grounds personal identity on such. There are naturalists that defend four-dimensionalist accounts of personal identity (Lewis) or a mental series conception (Campbell), but that is a different kettle of fish. Either way, I am done here.

G. Rodrigues: And for the record, while I spoke of substance dualists, I reject substance dualism. In fact, I would argue that materialists and substance dualists make the *same* error; they just differ in the proper part they wish to identify the “real person” with.

I agree with this. Most materialist would identify the person with the human brain while substance dualists identify it with the soul.

I share the Aristotelian view that “To say that it is the soul which is angry is as if we were to say that it is the soul that weaves or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks, and rather to say that it is the man who does this with his soul”.

Steve: The discussion on identity (A=A) is at about the 2hr 21min mark.

Thanks for the updated information.

I happen to agree with Mr. Moreland that thoughts are not neurons. But that doesn’t entail the acceptance of his view that we have souls.
He seems to be working with the same Cartesian presuppositions that physicalists work with when it comes to conceptualizations of the mind. Physicalists identify it with the brain while he identifies it with some sort of spiritual substance. Both positions are conceptually incoherent.

It is the human being who has a mind and can think. It is not the brain or a soul that thinks.
Human beings are persons. There is no other thing (like an essence or a brain or a soul) that is inside a human that is a person.

If you watch the youtube lecture I linked to earlier, you will have a better understanding of my views on this issue.

“In February 2011… [an IBM computer named] Watson defeated all time Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter…”
http://www.bobblum.com/ESSAYS/COMPSCI/Watson.html

There is no doubt that Watson was intelligent. There is no doubt that “he” was a savant when it came to trivia. Beating two highly ranked humans on his initial attempt was an amazing accomplishment.

Did Watson know that he had won? Was he conscious of what he had accomplished? Was he aware of his own identity?

The answer is no. None of his creators have claimed that he was conscious. Not even AI enthusiast’s like Robert Blum are tempted to claim something like that.

So what is consciousness? If we were able to create a self conscious machine, what would we have to do to give it consciousness or make it conscious? Is consciousness something that humans could create? If you think they could, tell us how to do it.

Mr.B,

The reason your analogy (A is B) isn’t addressed is because it doesn’t need to be. Things and thoughts are different. You haven’t shown otherwise. No one has. The physicalist hasn’t given a reason to have such thoughts about such reasons. A isn’t B. It’s that simple. Essence A isn’t Essence B. Epiphenominal leaps of faith against the grain of Mind have – so far – found that we are not obligated on reason to believe the naturalist.

I highly recommend to all this wonderful and highly readable book that gently but firmly and totally convincingly debunks materialism and its twins, naturalism and scientism:

Stephen Barr (2003). Modern physics and ancient faith. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

On p. 1, Barr says this “The fact of the matter is that there IS a bitter intellectual battle going on, and it is about real issues. However, the conflict is not between religion and science, it is between religion and materialism. Materialism is a philosophical opinion that is closely connected with science. It grew up alongside of science, and many people have a hard time distinguishing it from science. But it is not science. It is merely a philosophical opinion.”

JAD,

Some think it is the same ship, others do not. The word “same” means different things depending on context.

I’m having trouble seeing why this is such a threat to naturalism.

Hal,

It’s a threat to naturalism because reductionism and its twin epiphenomenalism work with essence A and fail miserably with essence B. Reason leads us further from those and into Timelessness – which Hawking and everybody else knows exists in Being’s end of regress. Theism predicts, expects, welcomes such evidence / logical regression. There is no magical insulation there. And there is no evidence of delusion.

A = B is false – as in mind/particle – and no physicalist has given reasons for us to have thoughts about those reasons which by reason obligate us to believe him.

A “is related to” B ipso facto annihilates identity. Thought isn’t particle.

@87 & 88:

The “Ship of Theseus Paradox” is not a paradox at all.

The ship is an artifact (a thing which only “has” a per accidens nature and hence whose source of motion/change is external to it, and that external source must itself be rational. The ship is NOT a “nature” or a natural thing, whose source of motion is immanent to it and hence “has” a per se nature.

It doesn’t matter out of what the ship is built or how many times it is rebuilt: it remains a ship as long as the artificer wants it that way. The power of the artificer is that he/she can impose a nominal definition upon the artifact. For example, a pen can be a writing instrument… or if the artificer (in fact, even a rational end user!) want it to be a bridge for ants, then it IS a bridge for ants. One can name–that is, define–artifacts to be anything a rational agent wants… hence, the term “nominal definition.” There is no inherent per se identity “in” an artifact because, again, it is defined by the artificer.

One cannot do the same with a per se nature or “natural thing”. A human being cannot be a bridge (artifact) or butterfly (natural thing), and hence can never properly be defined or “named” to be one of these. Moreover, to use a natural thing against its nature is to violate that nature. That’s why it is objectively morally wrong for a Nazi officer to force a concentration camp prisoner to lie down in the mud to serve as a bridge so that the former’s boots would not get soiled. Moreover, as it pertains to human beings, to violate the nature of such an ontological type is to violate the nature of the very creature created in the image and likeness of God.

A similar point applies to, say brute animals while exposing the sheer stupidity of animal rights thugs. We should avoid harming animals indiscriminately not because brute animals have rights (they have no rights by definition: they’re not rational beings, and hence not persons in the first place–they’re not created in the image and likeness of God), but because to harm a brute animal indiscriminately is to harm our own rational nature, i.e., it’s bad for us. However, we can humanely (get it?) use animals for food because, again, we are higher ontological types.

(Important digression: a pile of sand is a natural thing if formed by the forces of nature (but not if formed by a rational agent), but it still does not “have” a per se nature because it is an accidental unity–not an organic [understood logically–not chemically] unity. In other words, while natural its unity is due to external forces–not to internal coherence.)

You are one confused puppy, Hal Friederichs: any confusion over whether it is the same or other ship is on the part of the ignorant–which you’ve betrayed in yourself. It IS a problem for naturalism because that philosophical opinion is monist in its view of ontological types. And, while Prof. Barr makes numerous philosophical errors himself (including the reification of mathematical formalisms), he’s right about materialism: it’s an opinion (doxa) for two important reasons: (1) it limits knowledge to sensory knowledge, hence it is reductionist by its nature, (2) it’s ultimately self-defeating. I don’t expect you to understand much of this… but you could at least pretend to try. By the way, you’re in good company: the Christian apologetic William Lane Craig accedes to the deeply-flawed philosophical notion of the univocity of being, and hence is an ontological reductionist as well: he thinks the number two exists the same way a carbon atom does. Really.

Hal,

The link in #72 covered the terms used in #84/89. They’re fairly standard so I assumed no explanation was needed. As per #73 Man changes but you seem to be mixing terms there with nature or essence. Being and Having are mixing as you seem to be equating A to B in all these.

Holopupenko Says,

You are one confused puppy, Hal Friederichs: any confusion over whether it is the same or other ship is on the part of the ignorant–which you’ve betrayed in yourself.

Tom,
Is there any amount of insulting that can get a Holopupenko banned, or does he have some sort of free pass? In his very first post in this thread he is not attacking a position as ignorant, but directly attacking people who who hold that opinion, including Hal specifically. How can conversation happen like this?

Because, on the part of Hal Friederichs, his assertion regarding the particular point is opinion indisputably based on ignorance. I call em as I see em.

The link in #72 hits the terms I’ve used.

Then #73 is along the “I have vs. I am” – Memory gain/loss is contingent change but is not “me”. Man “changing” in this way (being’s I have) is not touching man’s essence (being’s I am).

Change in fundamental essence isn’t coherent as per #91.

Platonism isn’t actually W. Craig’s stopping point. Nor mine.

At the very top of page 188 of his “Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview”:

“If being is a genus–that is, a univocal notion that applies in the same way to all things that have being–then this means that whatever existence itself turns out to be, everything that exists will have existence or being in the same sense. Being is a univocal notion that means the same thing for all entities whatsoever. On the other hand, if being is not a genus, then what it is for one thing to exist, say the number two, may be entirely different from what it is for a carbon atom to exist. It is most natural to take being as a genus, that is, to hold that a general theory of existence will give us a univocal notion of being that is equally true of all things that do, in fact, exist. When we contemplate all the things that do and do not exist, we seem to have a uniform notion we are using that characterizes the former group but not the latter.”

Read also the next paragraph where he provides the example of a pile of sand vs. the grains that make it up: he limits himself with these to accidental unities AND he neglects other existence like numbers, qualities, and relational accidents.

Worse, Craig in no way can account for the existence of concepts/ideas as anything other than a reductionist collection of time-dependent electro-chemical signals crossing brain synapses (falling precisely into the hands of the reductionist Churchlands).

Worse still, in now way can he account for shadows–which are precisely a privation of being.

Finally, do a simple Google search: while in the above non-rigorous text excerpt (in which he substitutes rigor for feelings: “It is most natural to take being as a genus… we seem to have a uniform notion…”) is an evasive maneuver, Craig comes write out and explicitly claims he accedes to the univocity of being: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/is-god-a-being-in-the-same-sense-that-we-are. Note that in this reference, Craig falls into the trap first year philosophy/theology majors in Aquinas’ time fall into, and which is covered in the very first chapters of the Summa Theologiae: the comparison on the level of aesity cannot be the starting point. William Vallicella and Edward Feser call him out on this as well.

One more try:
(1) univocal assertion: a shadow exists in the same way the blocked light exists.
(2) equivocal assertion: a shadow IS light.
(3) analogous assertion: light and shadows both exist, but in different ways.

The different “claims” to existence can be classified as follows:
(0) God as Necessary Being, i.e., as Beingness Itself
(1) contingent real being (independently-existing extra-mental objects)
(2) essences (exist “in” real beings)
(3) accidents (dependently-existing extra-mental objects)
(4) universals and beings of reason (exist only “in” the mind)
(5) privations (lack of being)
(6) nothing

Now, before someone nails me for this, first: this is not a rigorous exposition but merely a summary to help to get thinking about distinctions started. Second, neither (0) nor (6) properly belong in the above set: the former because God is not a being among beings; the latter because nothingness is the utter privation in any way of existence of any kind (one of the hardest concepts for humans to grasp because the first object of the human mind is being).

As a closer, the profundity of the transcendence symbolized by the logical distinctions above wrt to God should be breath-taking. It’s akin to when one first understands (and realizes the implications) that individual angels are species unto themselves.

Hi JAD:

That’s part of the problem I see with Craig–he shifts to bringing God into what should be a philosophical point. No one is questioning his understanding that God is the Necessary Being. What we do question him on is his “starting” point on aesity to distinguish God and his ontological flat-landing of all other existents. I’m not concerned about his understanding that “two” is not a necessary being. What I am concerned about is his univocity, i.e., that the number two (which he does come out and state exactly what a number is) exists in the same way that a carbon atom does. I’ve gone on way too long about this above, so I’m dropping it.

To be fair to you (and to Hal Friederichs), I realize the topic of discussion is wider than errors he makes. I saw it; I went for it. But this does connect to the wider topic: if Friederichs makes the errors he does, then surely his other views might warrant some criticisms as well… including what he understands to be “identity.”

“Identity” is a modern term that has gained some fad-momentum… that unfortunately avoids rigorous understanding of the four terms I noted to scblhrm: form, essence, substance, nature. The identity of something is “what it is”… but there are better terms-of-art: “form” (being viewed from the perspective of cause in terms of what it is) and “essence” (being viewed with a focus on what it is, but the thing doesn’t need to exist to know its essence, e.g., George Washington doesn’t exist but we do know who/what he was). If George Washington did exist, he would be a primary substance, and the word “substance” is essence that enjoys per se existence. Finally, George Washington, in viewing his being as the source of his ordered actions, had a nature–human nature… and humans behave like humans, not like porcupines. A little more crudely, “nature” is a kind of locus of actions unique to that nature.

Too much writing for a Sunday night in Ukraine…

Holopupenko said (of a Man) this:

“….. in viewing his being as the source of his ordered actions, had a nature – human nature……. A little more crudely, “nature” is a kind of locus of actions unique to that nature…..”

And it seems this is the location of such trouble for the Naturalist. It seems there is no such thing as “me” – as the end of regress is neither local, nor unique. There is no “supra” nature. There is energy. And there is where all the trouble comes for the Naturalist. Asserting that Nature houses I-AM is akin to the Naturalist asserting that there is that peculiar, non-arbitrary Ought which precedes and outdistances the taste buds of tasters. All there is for the Naturalist to offer in both problems is a litany of “close-enough-s”. Nihilism’s absurdity is the only end point therein – “I” not only does not exist as such, but, not existing, it cannot then continue through or inside of the paradigm of Time.

It is worth repeating: The naturalist can make leaps of faith against the grain of Mind. Fine. But no one is obligated by reason to believe the naturalist. In fact, reason leads us elsewhere as neither reduction nor its twin of the “epiphenomenal” ever break free of that final insult. Timelessness exists. We know that. Therefore the naturalist’s fear of Timelessness touching reality – our reality – in real ways – is neither rational nor scientific. Hawking’s Imaginary Sphere need not annihilate our reality, our perception. In fact – there is no evidence that it can or does. Rather, there is evidence, in Mind, in Being’s I-AM, that such an “end”, such a “nature”, actually contains and even affirms our reality.

Holopupenko –

The ship is an artifact (a thing which only “has” a per accidens nature… The ship is NOT a “nature” or a natural thing, whose source of motion is immanent to it and hence “has” a per se nature.

Let’s say I show you two flu viruses – they are identical in terms of composition. And I say, “One of these was collected from a duck in China. The other was assembled, atom-by-atom, using an atomic force microscope and similar tools. Can you tell which one is which?”

As I understand your position, one would have a per se nature, and one would only have a per accidens nature. Would you be able to distinguish between them? Would it, for example, make a difference to their behavior if they were allowed to infect an organism?

Does the answer change if we move to cells? What about organs? What about a whole organism?

That’s why it is objectively morally wrong for a Nazi officer to force a concentration camp prisoner to lie down in the mud to serve as a bridge so that the former’s boots would not get soiled.

What if a parent stretches their body across a gap to allow their child to get across? Is that objectively morally wrong? If so, is it still wrong if they are fleeing Nazis?

Holopupenko –

I’ll provide a simpler example. If you can respond to my question, you might be able to answer your own questions… and please don’t whine that I’m being evasive.

Well, you are. Here’s a simple question: Do viruses have per se natures or not? (Well, okay, one followup: If viruses do not have per se natures, what’s the smallest organism that does?)

In which of these examples (perhaps neither and perhaps both) do the letters “have” meaning… and how can you tell?

Both of them map to the English word “transfigure”, so both of them have meaning relative to English-speakers. In only one case was it intended as a word, though – only one of them is an artifact in that sense.

But that’s why the analogy fails. I’m comparing things with (so far as I can tell) per se natures with things that have per accidens natures. Your analogy, on the other hand, compares things like the pile of sand you mentioned – things without per se natures – with things with per accidens natures.

In the real world, final causes (in this case, actual purposes of rational agents) makes ALL the difference… and hence for you to imply a father playing bridge with his children is the same intentional level as a Nazi officer using a person for a bridge is downright repugnant.

Of course I’m not saying they are equivalent – I’m just making the point that “using a body like a bridge” is not inherently evil because it uses a body like a bridge. Indeed, it’s the intentions that make that difference! The evil of the Nazi has much more to do with the word “force” than the word “bridge”.

Ray,

I’m just making the point that “using a body like a bridge” is not inherently evil because it uses a body like a bridge.

I’m curious. Why did you think that point needed to be made?

Melissa –

Why did you think that point needed to be made?

Because Holopupenko denied it, of course.

Holopupenko didn’t deny innate good/evil. Ray did as he has no final causation – no ability to distinguish. It would help if Ray didn’t misrepresent such things on the presence and absence of “innate” good/evil in these paradigms.

All the virus talk just now affirmed the naturalist’s concession of no final causation. That is: Identity and Ought were just annihilated – declared illusion. On naturalism.

Identity and Ought just are inseparable. “They” are really a singularity . That Singularity is illusion in Naturalism -and is ontological coherence in Theism.

Immutable Love – the I AM – just are inseparable. God is One. God is love.

Hal,

Show your work.

Or even hint at a non-contradiction with your (physical) work.

Show your physical non reducing end of regression.

Borrowing from Theism is fine – at least you’re not afraid to have your eyes open – but on pain of circularity’s death you’ll have to show your (physical) work. Question begging isn’t helpful, of course.

Self-moving agents in a universe where physical effects require a cause?? It’s a miracle, Hal!

Ray,

Because Holopupenko denied it, of course.

No he did not, but if you think that I guess that explains your replies on the subject. It is the attempt to impose your own purpose on another human being that is the problem which is effectively what you argue in #112. I winder whether much of your disagreement comes about because of your own misunderstandings.

@118:

I’m not a reductionist. The only form of physicalism I subscribe to is the position that the only substance that exists is physical.

Ummm… (cue: Jon Sewart’s confused look when faced with the irrational) there it is, folks: atheism at its best. You can’t make this stuff up.

Isn’t that like saying: “I’m not an alcoholic. The only form of addiction I subscribe to is the only satisfaction that exists is in a vodka bottle.”

Memo to the clueless: physicalism IS a form of ontological reductionism.

Curious about a thought experiment regarding comment 114:

“Therefore, on naturalism, any sense of personal identity is an illusion.”

Let’s suppose that naturalism is correct and our individual senses of personal identity are illusory from the standpoint of nature. We nevertheless still have the senses, and the illusions seem real enough to us.

Is it undesirable that our senses of personal identity are more or less consistent to ourselves yet illusions from the perspective of nature?

Hal,
I think Holo’s comment was in response to your metaphysical view, not your Christian view.

@129:

… Nor would we identify the mind with the brain. Humans have minds; it is humans that think, not their brains… But it also makes no sense to say that a mind thinks or that a mind gets angry. It is the person who thinks or becomes angry… These seem to me to be obvious conceptual truths. I’m not sure why you think I cannot think such to be true unless I also believe that there is a God. ¶ I have difficulty expressing my views in the limited space we have in these postings.

Yadda-yadda. You have a “difficulty”? Indeed! Perhaps evidenced by your red herrings “I’m not sure why you think I cannot think such to be true unless I also believe that there is a God” or “I do get rather ticked off at the view that one has to be a believer in order to live a good or worthy life.” Who exactly said–or even implied–such nonsense? Please provide a verifiable reference. If you can’t, keep such deflections to yourself.

This is a site for thinking about deeply-important issues, largely (but not exclusively) in the context of St. Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum. Based on how you’re bandying about the terms, I’ll bet serious money on the fact that you only possess–at best–a wishy-washy (certainly not rigorous) understanding of what the terms “brain,” “mind,” and “person” actually mean (and that’s only for starters)… and hence you could not provide rigorous definitions of them. Yet, you grant yourself special dispensation to drop subjective opinionated sound-bites in these discussions like buffalo turds in the vain hope that you’ll find validation for those opinions.

How about a little humility? How about admitting something like “I don’t have a rigorous understanding of these terms, but I’m willing to learn,” rather than erecting a defensive wall because you “believe it important to defend my positions”? What “positions”? The one’s based on ignorance of important terms? The one’s you protect by deflecting to the false accusation that we demand you believe in God to think on these things? How about actually challenging your own ideas? AND, perhaps most importantly, if you don’t understand these terms rigorously, might it not be possible that you don’t understand the far, far more complex, existentially-lived Christian faith in THE God for whom people are willing to accede to martyr-level commitment? You’re the one–supposedly–with a commitment to “open communication”? Sheesh!

Hi Bryan:

I really appreciate your thoughts. Unfortunately, I must decline on the invitation to tutor:

(1) To support Tom: this is a blog, not a book.

(2) This is not, and can NOT be, sound-bite stuff: the many philosophical nuances are complex… and simply are not amenable for tutoring.

(3) I’ve already spilled lot’s of e-ink over the years here trying to explain these issues, in violation of (1) above. Tom, at least since 2003, has covered many of these topics multiple times.

(4) There are good books out there–off the top of my head, look up Edward Feser’s books on Amazon. (For example, his excellent Philosophy of Mind“.) But, please be aware, even in such “books for beginners” much is presupposed AND further investigation is presumed.

Therein I’ve exposed one of my main flaws in these discussions: it’s not so much that I assume the interlocutor understands such complex issues (although sometimes that is true as well), but my passion for them gets the best of me… and, admittedly, I do tend to run roughshod over the nonsense atheists generally spout in these com-boxes–nonsense for which I have very little tolerance… in fact, none.

So, with apologies to your kind request, I respectfully decline. I’m reduced, as in my latest comment to Hal, to demanding he examine his own beliefs… to at least open the door to normal exchanges.

Finally, I do have a life here in Ukraine to which I must pay attention (including teaching a two-course sequence on the philosophy of nature)… and, which you can imagine, is currently very, ahem, “interesting.”

Cheers and blessings.

Holopupenko, thank you for considering it. I’m disappointed, but I can understand your reservations.

Is it the belief or the action that is immoral? Is it OK / morally neutral to have immoral beliefs as long as you don’t act on them? Or are actions and beliefs inextricably linked? If you don’t act in line with an immoral belief do you actually believe it?

scblhrm
“Now, you were asked for a physical explanation of these lines – reduction or non-reduction – though really it is not expected (on Theism) that the materialist can account for what we observe with material stuff as Identity and Mind are ongoing problems for the materialist.”

Not sure why I should be expected to give a physical explanation. We agree that something like the mind is not reducible to the physical. And I am not a physicist or any other kind of scientist. Nor am I willing to play armchair scientist. I do think that there is only one substance: the physical. However, many other things exist in this world besides the physical.

I am an amateur philosopher. As I view it, philosophy’s main role is to help us understand better the world we live in. And I think it does this best by dealing with conceptual truth, with elucidating the concepts we use to represent the world. It is not a type of science which is primarily concerned with giving us knowledge of the world.

We are dealing here with concepts like MIND, SELF, BODY, CHANGE, etc. These concepts are shared by atheists and theists. So I don’t think that I am doing any borrowing from theism. If I were to say that souls exist then I think you could make a good case for claiming I was borrowing. In fact, I doubt that you will agree with my view of the mind. I don’t see it as being a mental substance like some dualists. I don’t think it is a thing at all. We attribute minds to beings like ourselves because we display a range of intellectual and volitional powers. We have well established criteria for identifying those powers. I do not think the self is something that can exist beyond the death of the body. Nor do I believe that the self is some kind of unchanging essence.

scblhrm:You’ll have to clarify as it’s confusing what you are trying to describe.
Earlier you commented:

These seem to be self-contradictory (and confusing).

Sorry if you find it confusing.
I’ll try rephrasing.
Not everything that can be said to exist is a substance. The mind is not a substance. A law is not a substance. Don’t you agree that they exist?

The only substance that does exist is what is commonly referred to as matter. That substance can take a wide variety of forms. Look at the differences between living matter and non-living matter.

I mentioned that I am not a physicist because you were asking for a physical explanation that I am not qualified to give.

Recognizing that the sciences are the best tools we have for knowledge of the world is not scientism. The sciences rely on philosophy for conceptual clarification and understanding. Philosophy relies on the sciences for the knowledge they provide.

It is through philosophy that we aim for conceptual truth.

If by “powers” you mean something non-physical, then what part of physics do you there appeal to?

Why do you think I have to appeal to physics to recognize the intellectual and volitional powers displayed by humans?

Do you believe that everything that exists has to be a substance?

Hal,

If that seems confusing to you, it should.

Or do you mean to affirm the existence of two realities:

1) Material (Matter/Substance) (the realm of all known physics)

2) Immaterial (Non-Matter / Non-substance) (inaccessible to the realm of all known physics)

If so, then it seems we agree. Hawking too sees the need to exit time and material – else absurdity.

The Theist, of course, always knew the path of evidence would take us there – to the Timeless and Immaterial.

Idealism finds coherence there inside of Necessity. Mind. Law. And so on. Contingency, of course, ends all coherence for the non-theist should he attempt to have it both ways.

scblhrm,
If that seems confusing to you, it should.

Unfortunately I do find what you have written to be very confusing.

I fail to see why because substances like humans have the capacity to reason and think that entails some other realm of existence.

I’m also not sure why you keep bringing up physics as if that is the only real science. I don’t think science is a unity. Not all of the sciences can be reduced to physics.

As far as I can tell there is only one reality: the world we inhabit. In that world we encounter an immense variety of phenomena. Being rational creatures with the capacity to use language we have constructed a highly developed conceptual scaffolding (norms of representation) to help us understand that world.

Apparently you think some other realm of reality must exist in order for us to conceptualize and represent the world we live in. I honestly don’t see why I need travel down that path.

Hal,

Then we agree. Mind exists necessarily – non-contingently.

Or perhaps you prefer ‘inexplicably”?

Bryan,

Motion is observable. In Material. In Microscopes.

I’ve never seen Logic. Nor Thoughts. In microscopes.

Have you?

OK, I wasn’t really asking about motion. I was asking about the laws of motion. Have you seen the laws of motion? I’ve never seen them, but I’ve seen the effects. The same with logic.

Physics uses logic and empirical evidence to formulate hypotheses. The hypothesies / theories / laws of physics aren’t substances (at least not in the usual sense of the word, although arguably they are stored in the atoms of brains or computers or whatever). They are to all intents completely fictional – and worth treating as such. That doesn’t stop them being useful. They are useful to the extent they have predictive power or provide other benefits or pathways to gaining more predictive power.

Bryan,

Stored in atoms. Yes – the reductionist’s path is well established. And problematic. Hence this thread’s topic, discussions, Etc.

Hal,

As best as I can tell you claim mind is contingent on what we perceive with our senses – on Material. If not then Mind exists independently from Material. If contingency – well then contingent on material. Material then precedes Mind. And owns it. Or perhaps you feel Mind precedes Material – as in Idealism?

Bryan,

Mind is an abstraction.

That is sort of like saying Mind is Mind, but the reductionist’s regress would keep going to a more distal stopping point – to Wave/Particle. To material.

Bryan,

On reduction’s path we agree on (its) terminology.

“…..implies you think you cannot perceive your own mind….”

Hmmm… good insight Tom. I missed that one.

Yes, and I would include them in things that have noticeable effects, so I don’t think I am equivocating. I am not a materialist in that sense; I do not know or care whether matter exists and I am happy to accept fictions that are useful (though I am eager to improve them).

If it has noticeable effects then is it not within the realm of scientific exploration / learning (in a loose sense of the word – observing, modeling, reasoning, hypothesizing, testing, empirically improving)?

Reality matters, yes, but I’d argue we can happily live with fictions that gradually approach the truth about reality.

I don’t understand this idea that reality is wider than purely material. I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m saying that I have not seen evidence of it. It seems to be an unwarranted leap and a distinct lack of imagination.

Tom Gilson –

It’s because force applied for bridge-purposes is inappropriate for humans, because we are not, by nature, bridges.

That’s not what Holopupenko actually said, though. What he said was that using a human as a bridge was wrong, period – “why” it’s wrong for the Nazi is because “to use a natural thing against its nature is to violate that nature”.

Except using a human as a bridge is not bad when a parent does it to save their child, or a soldier does it to save fellow soldiers. It’s bad when it’s not their choice – when they are forced to against their will.

Again, Leon Kass is convinced that eating ice cream from a cone in public is against human dignity, is against human nature. I suspect, though, everyone reading this has shown by their actions that they disagree with his conception of human nature in that respect. I wouldn’t dream of forcing him to eat an ice cream cone in public, though – because that would be against his will.

scblhrm,

… all available evidence…

Please explain what evidence (other than scripture) leads us out of time and material with regard specifically to the topic of this blog post – the mind and/or what Tom refers to as the “essence” of a person.

I don’t see evidence that leads there. I see evidence of people with limited imaginations unable to think of (or countenance) natural theories, and resorting to the supernatural. Unfortunately that approach to understanding reality has a long and disappointing history.

Bryan,

Magic insulation?

How?

That would be like asserting that Time/Space has no beginning – is the whole show. But Space/Time isn’t the whole show. Any model of Mind that is fearful of Timelessness cannot hope to be ultimately complete. Magic insulation doesn’t exist. “It” that precedes / out – lives space/time is right now in play inside this universe – our skulls are not immune or “magically insulated”.

Bryan,

Think of it this way: Whatever that Timelessness / Immaterial “Sphere” is which precedes and outlives Space/Time is – right now – present, in play. ANY story which fails to include those tentacles cannot hope to be a complete story. Our skulls are not magically insulated.

Tom,

… there is no coherent way for rational inference to be tied to physical cause and effect…

There may not currently be any well-evidenced theory for how consciousness (or rational inference) comes about, but is a far cry from saying that there cannot be.

There are many theories and simulation evidence that show how learning can occur in neural networks. There are also theories about how “meta” feedback – feedback loops into the process of learning – can cause additional levels of learning and awareness. The human brain has an incredibly dense network of connections and feedback loops. Hardware for simulating anything like this scale is only just starting to become available.

As far as I can see there is no evidence for supernatural causes. That is only a descriptive theory/assertion and it leads nowhere. It is easy to come up with theories that describe effects. Useful theories predict effects that can be tested too.

@scblhrm

Hawking’s concept of pre-big bang is his theory – a fiction that he has created to try to describe the evidence (or lack of evidence) and provides a direction for scientific thinking – how can this model be tested? It does not mean that it is true. It may have elements of truth about it. It may not.

What makes you even think we can have a complete story?

Bryan,

It’s enough that we must include that paradigm – that sphere. Theism PREDICTED that. Eons ago. Definitions there amid his Sphere model and Theism begin to merge. As you noted such may direct our reasoning. As for your hope in some sort of magical insulation inside our skulls, well, Space/Time just can’t be the end of any story – we’re (essentially) certain of that.

Bryan,

Scientism is nonsense. So everything you’ve committed to with Tom is quite troubling for you. And if you believe in oscillations you need to go do more research. Space / Time still fail you.

It’s a problem in principle, the kind of logical impossibility that no amount of new information could turn into a logical possibility. Have you read any of the links?

I read this article, but it seemed to be fighting a strawman, in that I don’t know of any modern neuroscience that models the workings of the brain as logic gates. Simulations such as Blue Brain don’t use logic gates but have simulated neurons and neural circuits that are electrically interconnected and operate on timings not boolean logic.

The article seems to show no appreciation of the fuzziness and chaos introduced by timings, and feedback loops and seems to be predicated on an assumption that physical systems are essentially deterministic. It also seems to neglect the mental “circuitry” evolution has built-in, including a strong orientation towards survival. We are not dispassionate. There are useful models of the mind at different levels of abstraction. You seem to be caught up in the lower-level ones, trying to reassure yourself “it’s impossible”. I don’t know what scriptural reason lies behind it.

And it’s not useful to you to understand your spiritual nature?

As a human, I may have a “spiritual nature” or, perhaps more accurately, a natural desire to explain things around me, but I have no desire to believe in the supernatural as those explanations are useless in my view.

It’s not useful to you to understand your wants, needs, passions.
It’s not useful to you to understand what drives you to do the good and maybe not so good things in you life. What motivates your empathy or your humility (or lack thereof?).

Yes, I find all these things extremely useful.

Does science really help you discern these things.

Yes! Science in a looser sense of the word (not the so-called hard sciences).

Help you understand what attracts you to things beautiful and draws you to (or away from) friends and family.

Yes.

My faith helps me with all these things.

You don’t need it.

I do not claim that science is necessarily the only way to gain knowledge. I also do not claim that answers to every question can be found through science. I definitely do not claim that.

However, I find a scientific approach extremely valuable and use it in all areas of my life. I am always trying to uncover, question and challenge and test assumptions I hold and to change my mind when I see that my previous model was false or unhelpful.

I did not claim to hold to scientism. You are the one handing out the labels.

My view is that I don’t need my models to be coherent. I don’t need them to be right. I accept they are incomplete, fictional, wrong. I don’t care as long as they are useful.

I’m not sure who it was that said: “All models are wrong, some models are useful.” But that fits my view.

You seem to reject any model that is wrong. Well, if you do that you’ll have no models left. A model has to simplify, has to omit our it’s not a model.

I did not claim to hold to scientism. You are the one handing out the labels.

My view is that I don’t need my models to be coherent. I don’t need them to be right. I accept they are incomplete, fictional, wrong. I don’t care as long as they are useful.

I’m not sure who it was that said: “All models are wrong, some models are useful.” But that fits my view.

You seem to reject any model that is wrong. Well, if you do that you’ll have no models left. A model has to simplify, has to omit our it’s not a model.

Bryan,

Your means to justified models of reality is (thus far) only science. But Philosophy’s self-evident bypasses that with quite another means – a means which rescues you from the mistaken belief that science is the only “safe” path to truth (or accuracy). It does this by revealing the sort of truths microscopes cannot ever reveal – like scientism’s innate self-negation.

scblhrm

I use logic and thought experiments too. How is the Philosophy of which you speak practically of any benefit to me? I’m not very interested in theories that are descriptive and elegant but have no use. How is it useful?

Bryan,

If you find the ability to avoid the false (erroneous) belief of scientism to be if no help to you – then we can’t help you. If you want to avoid mistaken beliefs – well you’ll need Philosophy’s self-evident lines to get you there. Because science won’t reveal them to you.

Bryan,

The answer to # 208 is this: you’ll see truth more clearly and also avoid erroneous beliefs (like scientism).

Bryan,

If you don’t want to avoid erroneous beliefs (like scientism) then okay – you don’t care about avoiding falsehoods. Since that is going to be how you develop your models of reality – by not employing means which reveal falsehoods – then you’ll have falsehood-laden models of reality. Philosophy’s self-evident lines carry you to better – more accurate – models of reality.

I am genuinely interested if philosophy can lead to useful answers – answers that can be used to improve one’s life.

This is a philosophical question (re: improving one’s life) that you’ve already thought about and answered for yourself, and now you’re asking if the philosophy that got you the answer is useful? I dunno, you tell me, is it?

If you think that philosophy can prove the existence of a deity, well, with logic, and no ability to check in reality, you can easily have garbage in, garbage out. You can tell me how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. You can believe whatever you like, and maybe it’s self-consistent but does it match reality or have you made a wrong assumption somewhere? You have no means to know.

Would you prefer a true belief that has no practical use or one that is only partially true but that makes your life significantly better?

I have never claimed my models are accurate or anything like it. They are USEFUL. If you think it’s possible to have a model that is wholly accurate, it’s not a model, in my view. A model is by it’s nature only a partial account – ideally the salient parts, the essence.

Bryan,

You ask a question filled with philosophical lines with:

“Would you prefer a true belief that has no practical use or one that is only partially true but that makes your life significantly better?”

Again, if you’re after inaccurate models of reality then we can’t stop you. As for the word “better” – well – SteveK already pointed out the irony.

Hal,

You offer: “It (mind) does not interact with the physical”

Well then we mostly agree. Of course since you concede the universe precedes mind then clearly the (physical) universe “built” or “ultimately sources” the mind. Out of what such “construction” arose you cannot tell us of course… given that the two don’t interact.

It’s not arbitrary if you think about it. The problem is you don’t think about it because you think you already have the answers.

Bryan,

Philosophical naturalism trying to claim that an immutable moral ought exists is intellectual dishonesty.

If you would think about it you’d realize that. But you’re not interested in models truthful to reality. “Better” to just pretend.

If you think anything is immutable about the love in our lives or that love is imbued by an invisible benefactor, you are caught up in your so-called logic, not reality. But as you said, you’ll take your logic over evidence. Sad really. Life is amazing. You don’t need magical thinking to make it amazing.

Bryan,

Well you had said that it all was non-arbitrary with, “It’s not arbitrary if you think about it”. Now it seems you are saying it is all rather arbitrary. It is probably safe to say that what is not arbitrary is that subtle hint of nuisance at the arbitrariness of it all. It seems that subtle felt undercurrent is the work of delusion – if philosophical naturalism – as there just is no thing for one to be frustrated about. A model of reality which embraced the undeniable empiricism of, the brute patency of, raw evil in the world and also accounted for that subtle non-arbitrary tone in all our rejoinders to it just may see past the inaccuracy there of philosophical naturalism’s highly incoherent model of reality – but one would have to be open to a mode of thinking far more robust then scientism to get there – as the brute force of immutable logic and ceaseless love do – as one follows them – carry all our perceptions to the beauty of Truth.

Whether we speak of inductive or deductive reasoning, or of space-time / energy and that utter inability to self-account ad infinitum within that robust anthology of all that just is Physics, or of the brute empiricism of raw evil, or of love’s ceaseless reciprocity there amid I-You – there amid Self-Other – ever in motion there amid that peculiar singularity nuanced inside of e pluribus unum’s singular Us, or of all that is Mind, or of those peculiar and unforgiving vectors of the Self’s I-am there in this threads topic of Identity which forever precedes and therefor survives all third-person probes which mere naturalism hurls at it, whatever it is, whatever the topic may be we are left with all the stuff of blind psychic phosphorescence – of philosophical naturalism’s full and final nihilism on all these fronts as ontological pluralism’s absurdity ensues, or, we are left with coherence, with reality, as theism seamlessly subsumes ad infinitum’s ocean on all fronts and thereby harvests plausibility. It will be absurdity, or, it will be logic’s lucidity. That inexplicable fearfulness of reality driving philosophical naturalism’s unending commitment to its own a priori god despite all these anthologies of evidence against it is nothing short of visionless worship willing to pay any nihilistic price so long as its god somehow, someday, some way, any way, remains the one true god.

scblhrm

Thank you for that response. It is an eye-opener for how oblivious of and distant from reality we can get when we can’t or don’t check our thoughts against reality, when we prefer to believe our “philosophizing” or scripture over the evidence of reality.

Bryan,

If we don’t freely reason – can’t infer / reason – and if “utility” outweighs The Truth – well that is both absurdity’s nihilism and the worship of your a priori god against the evidence.

Which I described to you in that last comment.

But you’ll need to reason – infer – to know that of ourselves. So your model is a hopelessly self-negating religion. Scientism….beware.

Bryan,

As SteveK pointed out – your employed “useful” isn’t a scientific term. It’s a philosophical predecessor to all your modeling. That atop an innate inability to infer truth leaves one’s scientism hopelessly dependent upon Philosophy’s self-evident vectors. Vectors beyond the microscope.

scblhrm

Are you happy? Sad? Tired? Do you have to have scientific definitions of words to be able to use them? You seem to think that unless a theory is complete and completely coherent it is must be rejected. You are suffering from black and white thinking. Do you need to know whether 1=1 is really true before you learnt to count? Before you calculate your tax bill? Of course not. Who cares if 1=1 is really true (whatever really true means). Numbers are useful. Get your head out of the clouds and start living your life.

scblhrm,
So far you’ve asserted that the only substance which exists is the physical.
Then you add another layer to reality:
Other “stuff” exists too – such as Mind, Powers, Forces. Non-Things.
Then you arbitrarily separate these two layers:

Reality seems to be a complex affair. I don’t find it problematic that non-substances exist in it. I take it that you think only substances can exit?

You are contradicting yourself, and, even worse, you are not saying anything other than what amounts to – ultimately – Mind’s reduction to, and contingency upon, its indifferent and deterministic predecessor.

From within your conceptual scheme I’m sure it does look like that to you.
From my perspective you appear to be a reductionist. The only thing I see differentiating your position from a reductionistic-physicalism is that you want to reduce everything to Mind rather than to the physical.

I am not a reductionist. Reductionism is a faulty tool in trying to understand the world we live in. I would appreciate it if you stopped trying to shoehorn me into adopting that tool.

scblhrm,

It is a distortion of what I have been saying. Because humans have the capacity to think and tell others of their thoughts does not entail that those thoughts can be reduced to a physical description. I see nothing contradictory or incoherent in this.

You appear to deny this because humans are physical substances.

Reality is complex. Many different kinds of things exist in it.

Do you believe that the only things that exist are substances?

scblhrm,

You appear to acknowledge that I am not a reductionist, yet you keep insisting I give a reductionistic explanation for the mind. Why?

I have asked you several times to clarify your conception of the mind, but you have yet to answer any of those queries.

Unless you start explaining your position more clearly, I can only assume based on what you have currently said that you think reductionism is a valid methodology. You appear to wish to reduce everything to mind instead of everything to the physical. In other words, the only thing really distinguishing your position from reductionistic physicalism is the substance everything is reduced to: mental rather than physical.

Hal,

That you infer that a Theist reduces everything to “the mental” reveals a strawman of sorts. God creates actual things. Not illusions. You exist. As does your body. And your house and car. Theistic Idealism doesn’t annihilate such. Though in Naturalism of course ontological pluralism’s absurdity remains pesky. Even unavoidable.

Hal,

I know your definition of powers.

“Once physical substances acquired the powers we attribute to living things….”.

That’s not new.

That isn’t the question.

The two questions are where and how physical substances acquired those powers (mechanism of acquisition)?

And then, to clarify the 1st question:

By acquired we presume you mean evolved?

Or by acquisition do you mean a sudden leap out of thing-hood and into non-thing-hood (very rapid evolution perhaps) of what was once a thing? Or, a form of epiphenomenalism as in the link in #72?

Bryan,

Utility, not truth, is the very foundation of “knowledge” inside of philosophical naturalism and in fact anything that “works” will by far – even if delusion – be favored. We see it in those arrays of irrationally conditioned itches which “make us feel as if the life of my child matters even if everyone says it doesn’t” and so on in countless other cons played on Man by nature as nature “gets him to believe” such (arbitrary) constructs (if philosophical naturalism). The very ends of logic, of deduction, of love are all, therein, untenable and of course that is just the old story of Hume’s problem (of deduction and truth) being played out in a new form here in this thread. Useful Models, True Models, Error, Precision, and so on. Necessity and Logic (and let us add Love) bring us to the ends of Truth there in that Hard Stop in ontology’s Necessary Being and as such the phrase, “Truth Matters” rises to the surface whether we like it or not, that is to say, whether I like it or not. While the Christian is commanded by God to embrace methodological naturalism as he is commanded to subdue physicality, the road just never ends there with respect to Truth, to Reason, to Inference. That utility rather than truth wins out in any purely naturalistic worldview brings us to a location, a juncture, at which it just is the case that on force of reason no one can ever be intellectually obligated to believe in philosophical naturalism.

David Hart describes some of this in the quote from his book, “The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss”. Of note it touches on the fallacy of methodological naturalism lending any weight to philosophical naturalism, and, also, it touches on the nature of identity, of being as well. Here’s the quote:

“A straw man can be very convenient property, after all. I can see why a plenteously contented, drowsily complacent, temperamentally incurious atheist might find it comforting – even a little luxurious – to imagine that belief in God is no more than a belief in some magical invisible friend who lives beyond the clouds, or in some ghostly cosmic mechanic invoked to explain gaps in current scientific knowledge. But I also like to think that the truly reflective atheists would prefer not to win all his or her rhetorical victories against childish caricatures. I suppose the success of the books of the new atheists – which are nothing but lurchingly spasmodic assaults on whole armies of straw men – might go some way toward proving the opposite. Certainly, none of them is an impressive or cogent treatise……… The new atheists’ texts are manifestoes, buoyantly coarse and intentionally simplistic, meant to fortify true unbelieves in their unbelief; their appeal is broad but certainly not deep; they are supposed to induce a mood, not encourage deep reflection………..

Regarding the ultimate nature of reality, at least, neither the general consensus of a culture nor the special consensus of a credentialed class should be trusted too readily, especially if it cannot justify itself except by reference to its own unexamined presuppositions. So much of what we imagine to be the testimony of reason or the clear unequivocal evidence of our senses is really only an interpretive reflex, determined by mental habits impressed in us by an intellectual and cultural history………. If we examine the premises underlying our beliefs and reasoning honestly and indefatigably enough, we will find that our deepest principles often consist in nothing more – but nothing less – than a certain way of seeing things, an original inclination of the mind toward reality from a certain perspective. And philosophy is of little use here in helping us to sort out the valid preconceptions from the invalid, as every form of philosophical thought is itself dependent upon a set of irreducible and unprovable assumptions. This is a sobering and uncomfortable thought, but also a very useful reminder of the limits of argument, and of the degree to which our most cherished certitudes are inseparable from our own private experiences……..

……..I have to admit that I find it impossible to take atheism very seriously as in intellectual position. As an emotional commitment or a moral passion – a rejection of barren or odious dogmatisms, an inability to believe in a good or provident power behind a world in which there is so much suffering, a defiance of “Whatever brute and blackguard made the world,” and so forth – atheism seems to me an entirely plausible attitude toward the predicaments of finite existence; but, as a metaphysical picture of reality, it strikes me as a rank superstition. I cannot imagine how it is possible coherently to believe that the material order is anything but an ontologically contingent reality, which necessarily depends upon an absolute and transcendent source of existence. To me, the argument for the reality of God from the contingency of all composite and mutable things seems unarguably true, with an almost analytic obviousness; and all philosophical attempts to get around that argument (I am fairly sure I am familiar with all of them) seem to me to lack anything like its power and lucidity. And the same is true in only slightly lesser degree of the argument from the unity, intentionality, rationality, and conceptual aptitudes of the mind, or the argument from the transcendental structure of rational consciousness.

Even so, I must ruefully admit, I would be deceiving myself if I did not acknowledge that my judgments follow in large part from a kind of primal stance toward reality, a way of seeing things that involves certain presuppositions regarding, among other things, the trustworthiness of reason. Ultimately, though, I know that if the materialist position is correct, there can be no real rational certainty regarding ontological questions, or regarding anything at all; so the very assumption that what seems logically correct to me must in fact be true already presumes part of the conclusion I wish to draw.

There, however, my generosity of spirit on the matter is exhausted. True enough, all of us derive our pictures of the world from certain fixed principles that we take as self-evident but can neither prove nor disprove, either empirically or dialectically. If, however, there is any legitimacy at all to the elementary categories of logic or the discriminatory powers of the intellect (and I think we have to believe there is), we can certainly say which perspectives on reality possess greater or lesser relative logical strength and internal consistency. So it is more than fair to point out that philosophical naturalism is among the most irrational and arbitrary visions of reality imaginable. This much is clear simply from the arguments typically made in its favor, all of which tend to be nothing more than catechetical assertions. Consider, for instance, the very popular but also purely doctrinaire claim that the principle of “the causal closure of the physical” precludes all possibility of supernatural agency in the world: an entirely tautological formula, warranted by neither reason nor science. It is indisputably true, admittedly, that any closed physical system that might happen to exist is by definition both physical and closed, but there is no compelling reason to think that our reality is such a system. And, anyway, a “closed” physical system still could not be the source of its own existence, and so would be truly closed only at the mechanical level, not the ontological; its existence would still have to be explained in “supernatural” terms. By the same token, claims that ………….the physical order is demonstrably devoid of final causality, and so on, are all just so many empty assertions masquerading as substantive arguments. As for the asseveration that naturalist thought has proven its cogency in the success of the modern sciences, this is simply a confusion of issues. Between the triumphs of the inductive, empirical, and theoretical sciences of modern age (on the one hand) and the metaphysical premises of naturalist thinking (on the other), any association is entirely a matter of historical accident and nothing more. Empiricism in the sciences is a method; naturalism in philosophy is a metaphysics; and the latter neither follows from nor underlies the former.

The most egregious of naturalism’s deficiencies, however, is the impossibility of isolating its supposed foundation – that strange abstraction, self-sufficient nature – as a genuinely independent reality, of which we have some cognizance or in which we have some good cause to believe. We may be tempted to imagine that a materialist approach to reality is the soundest default position we have, because supposedly it can be grounded in empirical experience: of the material order, after all, we assume we have an immediate knowledge, while of any more transcendental reality we can form only conjectures or fantasies; and what is nature except matter in motion? But this is wrong, both in fact and in principle. For one thing, we do not actually have an immediate knowledge of the material order in itself but know only its phenomenal aspects, by which our minds organize our sensory experiences. Even “matter” is only a general concept and must be imposed upon the data of the senses in order for us to interpret them as experiences of any particular kind of reality (that is, material rather than, say, mental). More to the point, any logical connection we might imagine to exist between empirical experiences of the material order and the ideology of scientific naturalism is entirely illusory. Between our sensory impressions and the abstract concept of a causally closed and autonomous order called “nature” there is no necessary correlation whatsoever. Such a concept may determine how we think about our sensory impressions, but those impressions cannot in turn provide any evidence in favor of that concept. Neither can anything else. We have no immediate experience of pure nature as such, nor any coherent notion of what such a thing might be. The object has never appeared. No such phenomenon has ever been observed or experienced or cogently imagined. Once again: we cannot encounter the world without encountering at the same time the being of the world, which is a mystery that can never be dispelled by any physical explanation of reality, inasmuch as it is a mystery logically prior to and in excess of the physical order. We cannot encounter the world, furthermore, except in the luminous medium of intentional and unified consciousness, which defies every reduction to purely physiological causes, but which also clearly corresponds to an essential intelligibility in being itself. We cannot encounter the world, finally, except through our conscious and intentional orientation toward the absolute, in pursuit of a final bliss that beckons to us from within those transcendental desires that constitute the very structure of rational thought, and that open all of reality to us precisely by bearing us on toward ends that lie beyond the totality of physical things. The whole of nature is something prepared for us, composed for us, given to us, delivered into our care by a “supernatural” dispensation. All this being so one might plausibly say that God – the infinite wellspring of being, consciousness, and bliss that is the source, order, and end of all reality – is evident everywhere, inescapably present to us, while autonomous “nature” is something that has never, even for a moment, come into view. Pure nature is an unnatural concept.”

It just is the case that on force of reason no one can ever be intellectually obligated to believe in philosophical naturalism.

Bryan,

Show us the non-contingency that is itself void of effect-hood and is itself the necessary and sufficient cause of all effects.

Don’t bother pointing to an effect.

And you’ll need to establish inference, reasoning, in your pointing rather than mere input/output cause/effect. You’ll have to show your work here.

And you’ll need to show us that the IT you point at isn’t a perceptual model – but the ontological end that is that abstraction of self-existing nature.

Don’t bother employing any lines of the self-evident. You can’t afford it.

And:

“To me, the argument for the reality of God from the contingency of all composite and mutable things seems unarguably true, with an almost analytic obviousness; and all philosophical attempts to get around that argument (I am fairly sure I am familiar with all of them) seem to me to lack anything like its power and lucidity. And the same is true in only slightly lesser degree of the argument from the unity, intentionality, rationality, and conceptual aptitudes of the mind, or the argument from the transcendental structure of rational consciousness.”

You’ll need to show your work on all counts. Using only what you can afford.

Bryan,

We’ve already established that philosophical naturalism cannot reach Truth. Illusion perhaps. Hume is merely replayed in this thread. All of us little i-am’s are ceaselessly contradicting the ends of philosophical naturalism, Being’s fountain being there itself a contradiction. Of course to even know these items one must make a truth claim. Agnosticism’s truth claim is as vacuous as is Scientism’s truth claim.

I am.

That troubles Hume’s reach, Materialism’s reach…..as those many lines of the self-evident should.

Bryan,

Assume?

No need for that.

Agnosticism’s truth claim is as vacuous as is Scientism’s truth claim. It’s self-evident.

I am.

I don’t assume I am.

It is self-evident.

You are clearly passionate about this, but you seem to tie yourself in linguistic, rhetorical knots and miss the point.

I am not arguing that we don’t exist. The assumption I’m questioning is “therefore God”, particularly any kind of interventionist God. The idea that our existence requires a God is far from self-evident and throws up far more questions than it answers.

I’d love to hear what truth claims you think I am making, especially with the relevant quote from my words. I believe you are the one making truth claims. I have repeatedly tried to explain that I am after useful models of reality, not logical truths. My focus is on improving my models so that they gradually become more useful. To do that, they generally become truer, but I am not so deluded to think that any model of reality is true. All models are approximations. Some models are useful. Your models seem not to be. That you can’t see the assumptions in your models is worrying, that you think they are not models is worrying, that you cannot check them against reality is worrying but goes to show why I think your approach is fundamentally flawed. I also think that you are caught up in rhetoric and obscure vocabulary to the extent that you don’t even know what you are really saying, let alone able to communicate it to others.

QED

Since Philosophical Naturalism’s own work (PN’s own work) cannot afford to pay the price which PN itself demands even of PN itself, and, given that PN fails to explain by force of reason man’s intellectual experience nor his experience of being nor his moral experience and for that matter that his (or any) physicality exists, we see no need to pay the high, painful, terrible price of surrendering all those costly states of affairs within the contours of the self-evident realities of logic and reason and identity and inference and being and so on just so that we can defend a few irrational a priori philosophical commitments to PN.

That would be very bad science. Justified knowledge just cannot afford to pay that price. The Christian’s embrace of methodological naturalism as God commands man to subdue physicality commits him to follow physicality to its bitter ends, wherever such methods may lead. As described of late in another recent thread the Christian Theist finds no reason to do anything other than diligently track the evidence forward as all sorts of working models come and go as old information morphs and new information arrives. Scripture’s means and ends are wide open. To Time. To Timelessness. To Material. To Immaterial. It all works. The ontological contradiction that is “PN Posited” just never arrives with enough revenue – it is always borrowing – and as such it is clearly the case that the Theist just always will leverage collateral and thereby will never – on force of reason – find it necessary to pay PN its full asking price – a price PN itself cannot afford.

Those contours of the self-evident bring us to that peculiar work done by knowledge, that is, arguing itself, deduction itself, reason itself, inference itself, logic itself – even being itself right there in the middle of all of the above – and so on mandates that – necessarily – we leave PN behind for those very ends of logic, of inference, of reasoning, of being, of identity – and so on – themselves all achieve final incoherence therein.

An interesting development: It seems both Logic and Morality bring us to an interesting “Y” in the road, and that is this: Arbitrary consequentialism within the ends of any Moral Paradigm is just as fatal to that (moral) paradigm (and hence all of its moral claims) as arbitrary utility inside of any Paradigm of Logic is to that (logic / reason / argument) paradigm (and hence all of its claims of coherence). Circular suicide rapidly ensues in either case. That unyielding dyad amid the logical and the moral is utterly catastrophic to the entire swath of ontological geography that is PN’s pathetic “accounting of reality”.

How then to proceed?

It is reason and logic, and therefore not PN, which allow us to follow God’s command to dive into and embrace methodological naturalism to its bitter ends as he (Man) is commanded by God to subdue physicality. And, as we all know, that road just never coherently (and coherence matters) “ends” there with respect to Truth, to Reason, to Logic, to Inference, to Identity, to Being.

That utility rather than truth wins out in any purely naturalistic worldview brings us to a location, a juncture, at which it just is the case that on force of reason no one can ever be intellectually obligated to believe in philosophical naturalism.

It is worth clarifying that for all these same reasons when we then move to the Moral Paradigm we find once again all the same problematic topography inside of any moral paradigm of PN. Seamless lucidity occurs, however, in continuousness of coherence as we – again – follow the patterns and the evidence of Man’s brutal moral experience amid his many painful fragmentations. Such carries us easily, necessarily, even rapidly, out of the murky fog of irrationally conditioned itches inside of PN’s perpetually arbitrary and vacuous open-endedness and into the clarity that is love’s ceaseless reciprocity within the triune landscape of the immutable love of the Necessary Being. On self-sacrificial love we find Necessity’s ontological Hard Stop inside of Trinity’s ceaselessly relational moral landscape where there is no question on the “real-ness-of” such motions amid all that is those contours of I-You. On Self-Sacrifice, on Love, it just is the state of affairs that God “is” – while Man “discovers”.

Truth here is categorically decisive for it just is the state of affairs that as it is in logic, so it is in love. These two eyes are that “by which” we perceive the world in which we awake to find ourselves. Our brutally repeatable physical and moral and intellectual experiences find in the end just no room at all for the bizarre and irrational landscape of PN’s shifting sands of final dis-logic where logic ultimately becomes ontologically necessary in all regressions and for all the same reasons we find just no room at all for that same bizarre and irrational landscape of PN’s shifting sands of final indifference where immutable love ultimately becomes ontologically necessary in all regressions. Ontological final causes relentlessly trump and outreach PN’s final absurdity regardless of which of those two eyes – logic or love – we employ in perceiving reality. Necessarily. Within Christianity’s Metaphysics both eyes are – without fear – wide open.