Like e.g. 'the Earth being flat and not moving and at the center of "Creation"'. Human intuitions (e.g. "sense of separateness") are usually naive, parochial and wrong – just adaptively adequate enough for catching food and a mate – which is why your woo-of-the-gaps are so profligate and even somewhat effective, and why modern sciences (i.e. systematicallly learning how n o t to fool ourselves e.g. confirmation bias) developed so late in human history....that sense of separateness, which isfundamental to[an artifact of] the human condition ... — Wayfarer
When Greek & Indian atomists proposed that whatever exists, at the very least, consists of "atoms & void", they did not claim "except human subjectivity". There are only epistemological distinctions but no ontological separations in atomism, sir. Your notion of (mechanistic) "materialism" is derisively called "vulgar" because it is pedestrian, unphilosophical, and patently false – you're just barking at the shadow of a strawman again.Materialism fails in not seeing this dimension of the human condition.
Materialism fails in not seeing this dimension of the human condition. — Wayfarer
Not sure why we must accept intentionality (behaviour) as evidence of an enchanted world. — Tom Storm
:100: :smirk:How small has religion become! Once it explained everything, physical, social, moral and political. Now it is reduced to the hope that neuroscience will not be able to explain why you raised your arm. — Banno
That's because when you believe you are "explaining", Wayf, you're actually just barking at shadows in your platonic cave. :sweat:... it gets tiresome having toexplainthat all the time. — Wayfarer
Materialism disappeared with Newton's action at a distance. And yet you and ↪Alkis Piskas again insist on criticising a position no one holds. — Banno
↪Banno The reason being that 'scientific materialism' is what is left of the 'western tradition' of philosophy, post the Death of God. The picture it paints, of an essentially material universe, explicable with reference only to physico-chemical causes, is exactly the picture you would arrive at if you took Descartes' celebrated division of the world, and subtracted from it the 'res cogitans'. — Wayfarer
It's no straw man. How is saying 'whatever exists is based on matter' different from saying 'nothing exists beside matter'? If something is based on matter then it can be reduced to it, which is basically what all materialism says. — Wayfarer
How small has religion become! Once it explained everything, physical, social, moral and political. Now it is reduced to the hope that neuroscience will not be able to explain why you raised your arm. — Banno
How small has religion become! Once it explained everything, physical, social, moral and political. Now it is reduced to the hope that neuroscience will not be able to explain why you raised your arm. — Banno
Scientific and philosophical illiteracy on full display. Of course, woo-woo is "The Answer". :up:Science isn't even able to explain how, why, or with what intentions, elementary particles move towards each other or away from each other. Maybe already at the fundamental level God-given love and hate operate... — Cornwell1
After all, superstructures exist that are more than just the parts that make them up. But that's not a strong argument. — god must be atheist
Edit: A case in point of that mischaracterisation: — Banno
The picture it paints, of an essentially material universe, explicable with reference only to physico-chemical causes, — Wayfarer
Then why is there no entry on materialism in SEP? — Banno
Materialists don't say nothing else exists beside matter. They say that whatever exists, is based on matter.
— god must be atheist
(Thanks for your response to the topic.)
Yes, there's this interpretation to. — Alkis Piskas
"Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist." — Alkis Piskas
I'm not a scholar of Augustine's works, but I've yet to read anything that he wrote about philosophy that I would consider nonsense. — Wayfarer
The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.
So, tell me, if materialism isn't saying that the universe is explicable with reference only to physico-chemical causes, then what is it saying? — Wayfarer
Look harder. — Wayfarer
Of course, die-hard materialism of that kind may only be a minority view, but in my experience, many people believe in something like it, but they don't really think it through or articulate it. It's more like the accepted wisdom or reigning myth of the secular west. — Wayfarer
So what do we disagree on? — Banno
You are God playing hide and seek with themselves.. — Cornwell1
...why barge in... — Wayfarer
Of course, die-hard materialism of that kind may only be a minority view, but in my experience, many people believe in something like it — Wayfarer
Scientific materialism and/or physicalism is the mainstream orthodoxy of the secular academy — Wayfarer
But if something can be reduced to matter, then matter is all that is real, right? If thinking really is the output of neurotransmitters, as materialists say, then the neural chemicals and their reactions are what is real, whereas thinking is derivate from that, is it not? — Wayfarer
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