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stealing from god: reason, part 1

5/1/2018

5 Comments

 
In chapter two, Turek elaborates on a point he initially raises earlier in the book, namely that given atheism, we cannot trust any of our reasoning. In a godless universe, he claims, “we are mere meat machines without free will,” and thus “have no justification to believe anything we think, including any thought that atheism is true.”

What he’s essentially arguing, then, is that the absence of free will is incompatible with reasoning — which means he’s now conflating atheism not just with materialism, but with determinism as well. 

At any rate, the idea behind the argument is that reasoning only occurs when we freely accept conclusions. If the conclusions we reach are the result of deterministic laws of cause and effect, then we have no choice but to accept them — and in that case, how can we know that we’ve reached the correct conclusion? As Turek puts it, given atheism, you have “no control over what you are doing or what you are thinking.” 

This argument has actually been around for a while, and many people (including many atheists) find it persuasive — as an argument against determinism. But what, exactly, does freely accepting a conclusion have to do with reasoning? Apparently nothing. 

Suppose that you are asked to consider the following argument: 

All women are mortal; Xanthippe is a woman; therefore, Xanthippe is mortal.

The reasoning here is obviously valid. Does it make any difference whether you “freely” accepted that fact or did so as a result of your brain operating in accordance with causal laws? If so, I fail to see what it is. What makes an instance of reasoning correct has nothing to do with the nature of the thing performing it. Computers and calculators obviously arrive at the correct answer to a problem even though they operate entirely deterministically. And in any case, are you really free to arrive at the conclusion that Xanthippe is mortal — or does the fact that your mind works logically compel you to do so? 

I think the underlying reason the above argument convinces so many people has to do with the different ways we naturally view the mind and other things, including the brain. We experience our minds from a first-person point of view, everything else from a third-person point of view. Turek believes that in order to reason, one needs an immaterial mind. The brain, on this view, cannot do so because after all it is made up of parts, and those parts must work together in one way rather than another. This appears inconsistent with how the mind feels to us from the inside. How could there be something underlying our thought processes if our thought processes are free and due only to ourselves? 

Note that those like Turek never explain how the immaterial mind manages to do what the brain supposedly can’t. How does it operate? They never say. But there’s a very good reason for that: They don’t have an answer because any answer would raise exactly the same problem that they see with respect to the brain. The “magic” of the mind would in that case disappear. 



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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5 Comments
Philip Rand
5/2/2018 05:36:44 am

Wrong again Franz….

You write:

Suppose that you are asked to consider the following argument:

“All women are mortal; Xanthippe is a woman; therefore, Xanthippe is mortal.”

The reasoning here is obviously valid.

[end quote]

No it isn’t Franz; the reasoning is OBVIOUSLY INVALID.

“All women are mortal” -> INVALID STATEMENT

WHY?

Because the validity of the statement cannot be logically deduced, i.e. no number of experiments can prove the validity of the statement: “All women are mortal”

Reply
Franz Kiekeben
5/2/2018 07:14:16 am

So you get banned from DC and come over here to spread your nonsense?

The fact that you can't tell the difference between "the argument is valid" (what I claimed) and "the statement is valid" (what you claim isn't the case) says it all.

Reply
Philip Rand
5/2/2018 10:58:38 pm

Consider this logical syllogism (pre 20th century)

1/ All humans have never been on the Moon.
2/ Franz Kiekeben is an human.
C/ Therefore Franz Kiekeben has not been on the Moon.

Now, is this syllogism valid?

Of course it isn't.... statement 1/ is invalid. Why isn't it valid? Because of the universal quantifier "All"; this means logically the entire argument is invalid, despite the fact that the conclusion is true.

Reply
Franz Kiekeben
5/3/2018 09:59:45 am

I know better than to engage you in conversation, so this is in case anyone else read your comment and doesn't know why you're wrong.

Statements aren't valid or invalid; they are true or false. Statement 1 is false. That makes the argument unsound. The argument is still valid, however (on the standard meaning of "valid") because validity refers to the correctness of the reasoning. The reasoning is perfectly correct: 3 follows from 1 and 2. In other words, IF 1 and 2 were true, 3 would be true as well.

Okay, back to you now. Go ahead and say something stupid and/or irrelevant. I probably won't reply. But if you want to argue against others on such matters, at least do yourself the favor of learning the standard terminology.

Philip Rand
5/3/2018 10:54:11 am

Yes... just as I imagined....you are treating it as a mere tautology but with the proviso that it is a valid tautology i.e.

1/ All men are mortal;
2/ Franz Kiekeben is a man;
C/ Therefore Franz Kiekebon is mortal.

In other words, you accept that the syllogism gives no information about the actual world; you accept such a syllogism is devoid of any substance; you accept that the syllogism is only about the internal relationship of the statements.

You accept that such a syllogism cannot tell us about Franz Kiekeben's mortality or whether to leave the house with an umbrella, or whether Franz Kiekeben is indeed a man.

Reply



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