What makes people irrational thinkers?

[R00tKiT]

I have been thinking lately when it comes to how people become rational thinkers.

I think the simplest answer is that people aren't meant to be rational thinkers. We're wired to survive, thrive and procreate. You might even say that all our scientific investigations are a byproduct of these primitive drives. Advances in medicine obviously help extending the human lifespan, for example.

Also, if you look at the history of many sciences, like physics for example, you will notice that our understanding of the physical world mostly stagnated throughout history. This means that, even the best minds that ever existed attempting as hard as they can to figure out what happens out there were stuck a very long time before reaching some valuable insight, and it's always thanks to the cumulative nature of scientific understanding.

[Belacqua]

He gets to make assertions without evidence and nobody else does?

On the contrary. Everyone should support their assertions. 

Can you point to any assertions Hart makes in the book that lack any support? (Note that metaphysical arguments are supported with argument, not with empirical evidence. If there were empirical evidence that would be science, not metaphysics.) 

So far you have made a number of assertions concerning the book without providing any evidence. You take generalized potshots, but don't tell us what argument Hart has made. Normally in reading and analyzing a book one has to explicate arguments that the writer has actually made, show that one understands them, and then explain why they are unpersuasive. You have yet to do this at all. 

As for whether physicalist investigations can resolve all of the issues, all I can say is that we need to continue to do the investigations. 

Hart's explanation of why naturalistic science can't explain why nature exists to begin with is on page 95. It's a very standard argument, which should be easy for actual polymaths to deal with. Would you like to engage with something that he's actually said?

You know that physicalist investigations can potentially answer all issues concerning the physical world, but not in the field of metaphysics, right? That would be a category error. 

Your own metaphysical belief, for example, that there is no truth outside of science, is not provable by science. 

As for his overly simple view being fatal to his argument, if the physical is a sufficient 'support for existence' his whole argument for God falls apart. he never justifies that cannot be the case.

His description of why many people from many different traditions think that the physical world requires a divine non-physical support constitutes pages 99 through 149. 

(Please note that if the interaction of matter is more active than Hart thinks it is, that fact will have no bearing at all on these arguments, which are metaphysical. The fact that you bring up an alleged error of Hart's understanding of physics is a red herring. Even if science demonstrates all possible interactions of matter, the metaphysical arguments are untouched.)

Have you read these pages? Do you have any articulable logical argument as to why all of these theories must be untrue? 

Again, the generalized potshots will be sufficient for people who assume from the outset that Hart must be wrong, but if you want to do more than make unsupported assertions then you'll have to engage with actual pages from the book. 

Earlier you indicated that you wanted to read the book and engage with its arguments. But getting you to quote anything from the book, examine it and rebut it, is like pulling teeth. 

Anyway, I doubt your sincerity. I think you knew exactly what you were going to conclude before you picked up the book, and this (you think) gives you license to ignore what Hart actually said. At least that's the impression you give. 

I'm not going to twist your arm any more to try to make you do a competent analysis. You should have gotten these textual analytic skills as an undergrad.

Winter break is here and I have things to do.

[polymath257]

He gets to make assertions without evidence and nobody else does?

On the contrary. Everyone should support their assertions. 

Can you point to any assertions Hart makes in the book that lack any support? (Note that metaphysical arguments are supported with argument, not with empirical evidence. If there were empirical evidence that would be science, not metaphysics.)

Well, that is one of the many reasons metaphysics is deficient. Argument alone cannot determine reality, can it?

Let's start on page 88: "The world is unable to provide any account of its own actuality,"

What does this even mean? And how do you know it is unable to provide such? This seems, to me, to be the first big mistake: that some 'account' is required for the 'actuality' of the world.

Page 90: "It is the recognition, simply said, of the world’s absolute contingency."

Is there any proof of this 'absolute contingency'? or is it just 'recognized' by certain people?

Further: "If, moreover, one takes the time to reflect upon this
contingency carefully enough, one will come to realize that it is an
ontological, not merely an aetiological, mystery; the question of
existence is not one concerning the physical origins of things, or of
how one physical state may have been produced by a prior physi-
cal state, or of physical persistence across time, or of the physical
constituents of the universe, but one of simple logical or concep-
tual possibility: How is it that any reality so obviously fortuitous—
so lacking in any mark of inherent necessity or explanatory self-
sufficiency—can exist at all?"

Why is it not simply about the physical origin of things?What sort of answer is being expected here? Are we asking for a 'cause' where no cause can be expected? How is it a logical question as opposed to a question involving causes and thereby natural laws?

Hart seems to be trying to state a problem, but from what I can see, he has failed to do so. From the basis of logic, this is certainly NOT a logical question (propositional, quantifier, modal logic), not a mathematical question, but one about what actually exists and can actually exists. That makes it a scientific question.

He then goes on to talk about a man coming across a translucent sphere in the woods and wanting an explanation. Then shifts to saying a similar explanation would be required for the trees, rocks, etc. But the sphere, *because it is outside of what is expected in the woods* requires an explanation that trees and rocks *which are typical things in woods* do not require! The sphere seems to be something quite out of the ordinary, which requires some additional explanation. The trees and rocks, on the other hand, are part of the natural reality and, while requiring an ordinary explanation in terms of evolution and the physical processes that lead to the Earth existing at all, they don't require the same type of explanation as that sphere would.

So, I think that Hart overplays his hand here. yes, the forest requires some explanation based on the physical processes that leads to it. But that is clearly NOT what Hart is interested in. What he wants, though, is very unclear.

Page 91: "The physical order confronts us at every
moment not simply with its ontological fortuity but also with the
intrinsic ontological poverty of all things physical—their neces-
sary and total reliance for their existence, in every instant, upon
realities outside themselves."

Really? Could you go into detail about that? What makes you think that all physical things have a 'total reliance' on other things for their existence? and why would one thing that would be always 'outside of themselves'?

Once again, a large part of the way he states his question is problematical, automatically excluding many reasonable alternatives (like that contingency isn't the main issue at stake here and that maybe physical things are good enough to ground reality in the way he is asking).

page 92: "All things are subject to time, moreover: they pos-
sess no complete identity in themselves, but are always in the pro-
cess of becoming something else, and hence also in the process
of becoming nothing at all."

I call garbage on this. For example, electrons are not composite particles. They are not in the process of becoming something else and, from all we have observed, do not decay and so are not int he process of becoming nothing at all.

What it even means to have a 'complete identity in themselves' is very unclear and, I think, an example of the confused thought that this type of metaphysics leads one into. ALL fundamental particles have 'complete identities' it seems to me. They are defined, as all physical things are, by their interactions. But that *is* their identity.

Page 92: "Both one’s essence and one’s existence
come from elsewhere—from the past and the future, from the sur-
rounding universe and whatever it may depend upon, in a chain of
causal dependencies reaching backward and forward and upward
and downward—and one receives them both not as possessions
secured within some absolute state of being but as evanescent gifts
only briefly grasped within the ontological indigence of becom-
ing."

I think it a great mistake to think of 'essences' as 'coming from' something. The essence of an electron is in its charge (how it interacts via E&M forces), its mass (how it interacts via gravity), its spin (how it interacts in terms of angular momentum), etc. That doesn't 'come from something outside'. is is simply a description of what it means to be an electron.

So far you have made a number of assertions concerning the book without providing any evidence. You take generalized potshots, but don't tell us what argument Hart has made. Normally in reading and analyzing a book one has to explicate arguments that the writer has actually made, show that one understands them, and then explain why they are unpersuasive. You have yet to do this at all. 

Sorry if I didn't give page and paragraph before. I thought you knew the book well enough to know what I was talking about.

 

As for whether physicalist investigations can resolve all of the issues, all I can say is that we need to continue to do the investigations. 

Hart's explanation of why naturalistic science can't explain why nature exists to begin with is on page 95. It's a very standard argument, which should be easy for actual polymaths to deal with. Would you like to engage with something that he's actually said?

Sure. How about this quote?

"It should be no less clear, moreover, that philosophical natural-
ism could never serve as a complete, coherent, or even provision-
ally plausible picture of reality as a whole. The limits of nature’s
powers are the same whether they are personified as deities or not.
It is at the very point where physical reality becomes questionable,
and reason finds it has to venture beyond the limits of nature if
it is to make sense of nature, that naturalism demands reason turn
back, resigned to pure absurdity, and rest content with a non­
answer that closes off every avenue to the goal the mind necessar-
ily seeks. The question of existence is real, comprehensible, and
unavoidable, and yet it lies beyond the power of naturalism to
answer it, or even to ask it."

How is it clear that philosophical naturalism cannot serve as a complete coherent picture of reality? What, precisely, is missing?

it seems he is making a claim that physicalism cannot answer some ill-posed question he has, but doesn't really go into why it can't, let alone
why the question is a reasonable one to begin with.

he attempts to support this claim with

"Physical reality cannot account for its own existence
for the simple reason that nature—the physical—is that which by
definition already exists; existence, even taken as a simple brute
fact to which no metaphysical theory is attached, lies logically
beyond the system of causes that nature comprises; it is, quite lit-
erally, “hyperphysical,” or, shifting into Latin, super naturam. This
means not only that at some point nature requires or admits of a
supernatural explanation (which it does), but also that at no point
is anything purely, self-sufficiently natural in the first place. This
is a logical and ontological claim, but a phenomenological, episte-
mological, and experiential one as well. We have, in fact, no direct
access to nature as such; we can approach nature only across the
interval of the supernatural."

This, to me is just nonsense. First, that a cause is required (or even possible) in the first place is taken as a given, but I would say that it is, in fact, impossible. Causes are, by their nature, part of spacetime, in other words, are *physical* aspects and not something outside of the physical world.

And, in fact, I would say that there cannot be such a thing as a 'supernatural explanation' in part because of what it means to be an explanation: a way of saying why (causality) something is the way it is in terms of more fundamental aspects of reality. But causes, like I pointed out before, are 8always* natural, never supernatural. And, it is *always* the case that the *most* fundamental aspects of anything cannot have a deeper explanation. No reason is given why the most fundamental aspect cannot be physical.

Continuing:

"No
one lives in a “naturalistic” reality, and the very notion of nature
as a perfectly self-enclosed continuum is a figment of the imagina-
tion. It is the supernatural of which we have direct certainty, and
only in consequence of that can the reality of nature be assumed,
not as an absolutely incontrovertible fact but simply as far and
away the likeliest supposition."

This, again, seems to be clear nonsense. Who has *ever* had direct connection to a supernatural? ALL things we know ultimately come through our senses and our thoughts, not from some supernatural illumination.

So, Hart uses clear nonsense to support his claims that physical reality cannot answer his question, while still never really clarifying what the question is or why physical reality cannot answer it.

You know that physicalist investigations can potentially answer all issues concerning the physical world, but not in the field of metaphysics, right? That would be a category error. 

Your own metaphysical belief, for example, that there is no truth outside of science, is not provable by science. 

As for his overly simple view being fatal to his argument, if the physical is a sufficient 'support for existence' his whole argument for God falls apart. he never justifies that cannot be the case.

His description of why many people from many different traditions think that the physical world requires a divine non-physical support constitutes pages 99 through 149. 

And I found those particularly irrelevant. If you want more detail, I can do it in the next post.

(Please note that if the interaction of matter is more active than Hart thinks it is, that fact will have no bearing at all on these arguments, which are metaphysical. The fact that you bring up an alleged error of Hart's understanding of physics is a red herring. Even if science demonstrates all possible interactions of matter, the metaphysical arguments are untouched.)

I disagree. The fact that physics suggests other alternatives shows that the metaphysical argument is, at least, iincomplete and likely to be wrong.

[quote]
Have you read these pages? Do you have any articulable logical argument as to why all of these theories must be untrue? 

Yes, I have. The essence boils down to this:

"All things that do not possess
the cause of their existence in themselves must be brought into
existence by something outside themselves."

This assumes that all things have a cause. I dispute that assumption. Also, I would say that a better statement of what we know is that 'All things that have causes have causes within the universe'.

The natural conclusion is that the universe does not have a cause.

Again, the generalized potshots will be sufficient for people who assume from the outset that Hart must be wrong, but if you want to do more than make unsupported assertions then you'll have to engage with actual pages from the book. 

Earlier you indicated that you wanted to read the book and engage with its arguments. But getting you to quote anything from the book, examine it and rebut it, is like pulling teeth. 

Anyway, I doubt your sincerity. I think you knew exactly what you were going to conclude before you picked up the book, and this (you think) gives you license to ignore what Hart actually said. At least that's the impression you give.

On the contrary, I was trying to engage with what Hart said. I didn't think I needed to quote directly from the book for each thing, but I will do so from now on.

I'm not going to twist your arm any more to try to make you do a competent analysis. You should have gotten these textual analytic skills as an undergrad.

Winter break is here and I have things to do.

Sorry, I didn't know you wanted a completely references exposition. I will try to do better from now on.

The quotes above only go through about page 95-96. But I can continue if you really want me to do so.

[The Architect Of Fate]

On the contrary. Everyone should support their assertions. 

Can you point to any assertions Hart makes in the book that lack any support? (Note that metaphysical arguments are supported with argument, not with empirical evidence. If there were empirical evidence that would be science, not metaphysics.)

Well, that is one of the many reasons metaphysics is deficient. Argument alone cannot determine reality, can it?

Let's start on page 88: "The world is unable to provide any account of its own actuality,"

What does this even mean? And how do you know it is unable to provide such? This seems, to me, to be the first big mistake: that some 'account' is required for the 'actuality' of the world.

Page 90: "It is the recognition, simply said, of the world’s absolute contingency."

Is there any proof of this 'absolute contingency'? or is it just 'recognized' by certain people?

Further: "If, moreover, one takes the time to reflect upon this
contingency carefully enough, one will come to realize that it is an
ontological, not merely an aetiological, mystery; the question of
existence is not one concerning the physical origins of things, or of
how one physical state may have been produced by a prior physi-
cal state, or of physical persistence across time, or of the physical
constituents of the universe, but one of simple logical or concep-
tual possibility: How is it that any reality so obviously fortuitous—
so lacking in any mark of inherent necessity or explanatory self-
sufficiency—can exist at all?"

Why is it not simply about the physical origin of things?What sort of answer is being expected here? Are we asking for a 'cause' where no cause can be expected? How is it a logical question as opposed to a question involving causes and thereby natural laws?

Hart seems to be trying to state a problem, but from what I can see, he has failed to do so. From the basis of logic, this is certainly NOT a logical question (propositional, quantifier, modal logic), not a mathematical question, but one about what actually exists and can actually exists. That makes it a scientific question.

He then goes on to talk about a man coming across a translucent sphere in the woods and wanting an explanation. Then shifts to saying a similar explanation would be required for the trees, rocks, etc. But the sphere, *because it is outside of what is expected in the woods* requires an explanation that trees and rocks *which are typical things in woods* do not require! The sphere seems to be something quite out of the ordinary, which requires some additional explanation. The trees and rocks, on the other hand, are part of the natural reality and, while requiring an ordinary explanation in terms of evolution and the physical processes that lead to the Earth existing at all, they don't require the same type of explanation as that sphere would.

So, I think that Hart overplays his hand here. yes, the forest requires some explanation based on the physical processes that leads to it. But that is clearly NOT what Hart is interested in. What he wants, though, is very unclear.

Page 91: "The physical order confronts us at every
moment not simply with its ontological fortuity but also with the
intrinsic ontological poverty of all things physical—their neces-
sary and total reliance for their existence, in every instant, upon
realities outside themselves."

Really? Could you go into detail about that? What makes you think that all physical things have a 'total reliance' on other things for their existence? and why would one thing that would be always 'outside of themselves'?

Once again, a large part of the way he states his question is problematical, automatically excluding many reasonable alternatives (like that contingency isn't the main issue at stake here and that maybe physical things are good enough to ground reality in the way he is asking).

page 92: "All things are subject to time, moreover: they pos-
sess no complete identity in themselves, but are always in the pro-
cess of becoming something else, and hence also in the process
of becoming nothing at all."

I call garbage on this. For example, electrons are not composite particles. They are not in the process of becoming something else and, from all we have observed, do not decay and so are not int he process of becoming nothing at all.

What it even means to have a 'complete identity in themselves' is very unclear and, I think, an example of the confused thought that this type of metaphysics leads one into. ALL fundamental particles have 'complete identities' it seems to me. They are defined, as all physical things are, by their interactions. But that *is* their identity.

Page 92: "Both one’s essence and one’s existence
come from elsewhere—from the past and the future, from the sur-
rounding universe and whatever it may depend upon, in a chain of
causal dependencies reaching backward and forward and upward
and downward—and one receives them both not as possessions
secured within some absolute state of being but as evanescent gifts
only briefly grasped within the ontological indigence of becom-
ing."

I think it a great mistake to think of 'essences' as 'coming from' something. The essence of an electron is in its charge (how it interacts via E&M forces), its mass (how it interacts via gravity), its spin (how it interacts in terms of angular momentum), etc. That doesn't 'come from something outside'. is is simply a description of what it means to be an electron.

So far you have made a number of assertions concerning the book without providing any evidence. You take generalized potshots, but don't tell us what argument Hart has made. Normally in reading and analyzing a book one has to explicate arguments that the writer has actually made, show that one understands them, and then explain why they are unpersuasive. You have yet to do this at all. 

Sorry if I didn't give page and paragraph before. I thought you knew the book well enough to know what I was talking about.

 

Hart's explanation of why naturalistic science can't explain why nature exists to begin with is on page 95. It's a very standard argument, which should be easy for actual polymaths to deal with. Would you like to engage with something that he's actually said?

Sure. How about this quote?

"It should be no less clear, moreover, that philosophical natural-
ism could never serve as a complete, coherent, or even provision-
ally plausible picture of reality as a whole. The limits of nature’s
powers are the same whether they are personified as deities or not.
It is at the very point where physical reality becomes questionable,
and reason finds it has to venture beyond the limits of nature if
it is to make sense of nature, that naturalism demands reason turn
back, resigned to pure absurdity, and rest content with a non­
answer that closes off every avenue to the goal the mind necessar-
ily seeks. The question of existence is real, comprehensible, and
unavoidable, and yet it lies beyond the power of naturalism to
answer it, or even to ask it."

How is it clear that philosophical naturalism cannot serve as a complete coherent picture of reality? What, precisely, is missing?

it seems he is making a claim that physicalism cannot answer some ill-posed question he has, but doesn't really go into why it can't, let alone
why the question is a reasonable one to begin with.

he attempts to support this claim with

"Physical reality cannot account for its own existence
for the simple reason that nature—the physical—is that which by
definition already exists; existence, even taken as a simple brute
fact to which no metaphysical theory is attached, lies logically
beyond the system of causes that nature comprises; it is, quite lit-
erally, “hyperphysical,” or, shifting into Latin, super naturam. This
means not only that at some point nature requires or admits of a
supernatural explanation (which it does), but also that at no point
is anything purely, self-sufficiently natural in the first place. This
is a logical and ontological claim, but a phenomenological, episte-
mological, and experiential one as well. We have, in fact, no direct
access to nature as such; we can approach nature only across the
interval of the supernatural."

This, to me is just nonsense. First, that a cause is required (or even possible) in the first place is taken as a given, but I would say that it is, in fact, impossible. Causes are, by their nature, part of spacetime, in other words, are *physical* aspects and not something outside of the physical world.

And, in fact, I would say that there cannot be such a thing as a 'supernatural explanation' in part because of what it means to be an explanation: a way of saying why (causality) something is the way it is in terms of more fundamental aspects of reality. But causes, like I pointed out before, are 8always* natural, never supernatural. And, it is *always* the case that the *most* fundamental aspects of anything cannot have a deeper explanation. No reason is given why the most fundamental aspect cannot be physical.

Continuing:

"No
one lives in a “naturalistic” reality, and the very notion of nature
as a perfectly self-enclosed continuum is a figment of the imagina-
tion. It is the supernatural of which we have direct certainty, and
only in consequence of that can the reality of nature be assumed,
not as an absolutely incontrovertible fact but simply as far and
away the likeliest supposition."

This, again, seems to be clear nonsense. Who has *ever* had direct connection to a supernatural? ALL things we know ultimately come through our senses and our thoughts, not from some supernatural illumination.

So, Hart uses clear nonsense to support his claims that physical reality cannot answer his question, while still never really clarifying what the question is or why physical reality cannot answer it.

You know that physicalist investigations can potentially answer all issues concerning the physical world, but not in the field of metaphysics, right? That would be a category error. 

Your own metaphysical belief, for example, that there is no truth outside of science, is not provable by science. 

As for his overly simple view being fatal to his argument, if the physical is a sufficient 'support for existence' his whole argument for God falls apart. he never justifies that cannot be the case.

His description of why many people from many different traditions think that the physical world requires a divine non-physical support constitutes pages 99 through 149. 

And I found those particularly irrelevant. If you want more detail, I can do it in the next post.

(Please note that if the interaction of matter is more active than Hart thinks it is, that fact will have no bearing at all on these arguments, which are metaphysical. The fact that you bring up an alleged error of Hart's understanding of physics is a red herring. Even if science demonstrates all possible interactions of matter, the metaphysical arguments are untouched.)

I disagree. The fact that physics suggests other alternatives shows that the metaphysical argument is, at least, iincomplete and likely to be wrong.

Have you read these pages? Do you have any articulable logical argument as to why all of these theories must be untrue? 

Yes, I have. The essence boils down to this:

"All things that do not possess
the cause of their existence in themselves must be brought into
existence by something outside themselves."

This assumes that all things have a cause. I dispute that assumption. Also, I would say that a better statement of what we know is that 'All things that have causes have causes within the universe'.

The natural conclusion is that the universe does not have a cause.

Again, the generalized potshots will be sufficient for people who assume from the outset that Hart must be wrong, but if you want to do more than make unsupported assertions then you'll have to engage with actual pages from the book. 

Earlier you indicated that you wanted to read the book and engage with its arguments. But getting you to quote anything from the book, examine it and rebut it, is like pulling teeth. 

Anyway, I doubt your sincerity. I think you knew exactly what you were going to conclude before you picked up the book, and this (you think) gives you license to ignore what Hart actually said. At least that's the impression you give.

On the contrary, I was trying to engage with what Hart said. I didn't think I needed to quote directly from the book for each thing, but I will do so from now on.

I'm not going to twist your arm any more to try to make you do a competent analysis. You should have gotten these textual analytic skills as an undergrad.

Winter break is here and I have things to do.

Sorry, I didn't know you wanted a completely references exposition. I will try to do better from now on.

The quotes above only go through about page 95-96. But I can continue if you really want me to do so.

Ah, Bel running his typical bullshit for mystic nonsense. Then demanding a treatise before you get to dismiss it as the pseudo-intellectual crap it is, and it's a perfect example of how divorced from reality metaphysics has become. It's essentially modern mythology where if you make up enough superpowers and fantastical idea's you can make anything true

[Rahn127]

When you have an ever changing environment, that environment is the cause of change.

The idea that something begins to exist doesn't mean that what it is composed of didn't previously exist as something else or as another state of being.

A piece of ice begins to exist because the environmental conditions changed in such a way that caused the existing water to take upon a solid form.

Every cause relates back to the environment in some way or another. The environment of our cosmos is very large and quite complex but our understanding of it all leads us to also think that very long ago it was all very small and less complex in terms of structure.

We have evidence of an expanding environment and then a change of state from energy to the first material atomic structures. I'm over simplifying but it's slightly analogous to ice forming from water vapor.

Snow

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays !!!

[LadyForCamus]

It sounds to me like Hart is making mostly (unsupported) scientific claims about reality rather than metaphysical ones. Also, this bit stood out to me:


"Physical reality cannot account for its own existence for the simple reason that nature—the physical—is that which by definition already exists; existence, even taken as a simple brute fact to which no metaphysical theory is attached, lies logically beyond the system of causes that nature comprises”.

1. Hart hasn’t shown here that physical reality can’t be causeless and necessary. He hasn’t even reasoned to it very well. He appears to be appealing to the commission of a composition fallacy, but no one from the rational skeptics camp is asserting anything about what “outside” the universe must or must not be like, even granting that such a concept is coherent. It’s Hart who is making the assertions. How do we know that the mere fact of stuff exiting is or can be “beyond” itself? I’m not even sure I understand what that means. It sounds like a claim badly in need of evidential support, or at the very least, a more precise explanation so that we may assess the soundness of the argument.

2. If nature cannot account for itself by the fact of its very existence, then this seems to also be a problem for God’s existence accounting for itself. By Hart’s logic (as I understand it), if we aren’t asking, “why does the supernatural exist?”; if we simply accept the supernatural’s existence as a brute fact, then our philosophical world view is incomplete.

Don’t get me wrong; I find the question “why does anything exist at all?” a profoundly baffling and interesting one, but flatly ruling out the possibility that physical reality can account for itself right out of the gate is nothing more than sneaking your conclusion into the first premise of your argument.

[brewer]

I just can't get on the woo woo train, or even wave as it goes by.

[polymath257]

I want to point out one other thing Hart says close to the beginning of his diatribe (page 17-18):

"If, moreover, naturalism is correct (how-
ever implausible that is), and if consciousness is then an essentially
material phenomenon, then there is no reason to believe that our
minds, having evolved purely through natural selection, could pos-
sibly be capable of knowing what is or is not true about reality as
a whole. Our brains may necessarily have equipped us to recog-
nize certain sorts of physical objects around us and enabled us to
react to them; but, beyond that, we can assume only that nature
will have selected just those behaviors in us most conducive to
our survival, along with whatever structures of thought and belief
might be essentially or accidentally associated with them, and there
is no reason to suppose that such structures—even those that pro-
vide us with our notions of what constitutes a sound rational ar-
gument—have access to any abstract “truth” about the totality of
things. This yields the delightful paradox that, if naturalism is true
as a picture of reality, it is necessarily false as a philosophical pre-
cept; for no one’s belief in the truth of naturalism could corre-
spond to reality except through a shocking coincidence (or, better,
a miracle)."

Well, he is quite correct that evolution has not built our brains to find the truth of the world. It has built our brains for survival.
This, of course, ties into the whole thread: what makes people irrational? The answer is that we have not evolved to be rational,
we have evolved to survive.

And the history of our species shows that we *don't* easily see how the world around us actually is.

It has taken a LOT of hard work, a LOT of skepticism about 'obviously true' concepts, and a LOT of testing to be sure we are
not fooling ourselves. We do NOT naturally see or experience a great deal about the world: we do not see radio waves,infrared,
ultraviolet. We do not hear ultrasound or infrasound. We do not detect radioactivity. We cannot see things that are too small.
We don't see with much precision or accuracy. We are subject to many types of illusions, from optical, to auditory, to tactile,
all of which distort our perception of reality.

And, most importantly for this discourse, we tend to see intention where there is none. From seeing faces in toast, to claiming
our computers are 'acting up', to naming our cars, we have a strong evolutionary tendency to misinterpret our environment
in ways that promoted survival at one time, but do not serve any good purpose now.

Furthermore, even our patterns of thought don't necessarily correspond to reality. Simple things like basic logic are hard for
most people, even those who are highly educated and trained. There is a perception that the rules of thought were elucidated
by Aristotle and have been fixed since then. of course, that is very far from the truth. There have been HUGE advances in logic
over the last couple of centuries with the rise of formal logic. The deficiencies of our 'ways of thought' have been revealed and
analyzed in ways that the ancient Greeks could not have imagined.

So, yes, it would be a miracle if our first attempts to understand the world around us actually were correct. And, of course, they
were not. From bad metaphysics to not testing our ideas, to making assumptions that were wrong, we have made many mistakes
along the road to even our present level of understanding.

And we do NOT expect that we have the actual truth even now. We get better and better *approximations* that serve to explain
and organize our perceptions. But new information and new techniques usually open up new aspects to investigate. This is why
ALL hypotheses are held tentatively and *tested* in as many different ways as possible, attempting to show when and how they
are *wrong*.

TL;DR: Hart completely misunderstands physicalism and the way we go about learning about the world around us.

---

Another aspect that goes right to Hart's basic search: the question of whether 'existence' can be 'explained' at all.

So, what does it mean for one collection of concepts to 'explain' another?

Clearly, it means that we can deduce the main properties of the things 'explained' from the properties of the 'explainers'. The explanation is the deduction itself.

So, what could *possibly* constitute an 'explanation for existence'?

it would have to be a collection of things from which we can deduce the properties of all of existence.

But those 'explainers' either exist, in which case they don't explain their own existence, and thereby fail to explain existence.

OR, those 'explainers' do not exist and thereby cannot be an explanation for *anything*.

Ultimately, what that means is that 'existence' cannot be explained: it is a raw fact that cannot be deduced from more basic facts.

And, I want to point out that Hart *never* actually explains existence. He claims that there is a simple entity that 'necessarily exists'
Ultimately, all this means is that its existence is not explained.

In other words, Hart fails in his basic quest. Furthermore, he *must* fail in that quest.

At that point, we realize that there *must* be things that exist that have no deeper explanations: raw facts that cannot be deduced from
more basic principles OR there are 'explanatory loops' OR there is an infinite regress of explanations. Usually, we discount the last two possibilities as not giving 'actual explanations' (although we might want to reconsider these options).

And, at no point does Hart show why 'the physical world' cannot be that basic unexplained explainer.

So he claims, but fails to prove that physicalism cannot do the utmost of what is possible toward his goal.

[Angrboda]

I want to point out one other thing Hart says close to the beginning of his diatribe (page 17-18):

"If, moreover, naturalism is correct (how-
ever implausible that is), and if consciousness is then an essentially
material phenomenon, then there is no reason to believe that our
minds, having evolved purely through natural selection, could pos-
sibly be capable of knowing what is or is not true about reality as
a whole. Our brains may necessarily have equipped us to recog-
nize certain sorts of physical objects around us and enabled us to
react to them; but, beyond that, we can assume only that nature
will have selected just those behaviors in us most conducive to
our survival, along with whatever structures of thought and belief
might be essentially or accidentally associated with them, and there
is no reason to suppose that such structures—even those that pro-
vide us with our notions of what constitutes a sound rational ar-
gument—have access to any abstract “truth” about the totality of
things. This yields the delightful paradox that, if naturalism is true
as a picture of reality, it is necessarily false as a philosophical pre-
cept; for no one’s belief in the truth of naturalism could corre-
spond to reality except through a shocking coincidence (or, better,
a miracle)."

If I recall correctly it was C.S. Lewis who popularized this argument, and other theists have jumped on the bandwagon. The big problem is that it's nothing more than a fallacious appeal to consequences. Yes, it would seem bad if all our reasoning were futile and we were just fooling ourselves. Yes, our arguments for naturalism could well be flawed and unreliable if this were true. But that doesn't mean they would be wrong. That's an example of the fallacy fallacy at a different level. The fact that an argument is flawed doesn't mean that the conclusion is false. That's a fallacious conclusion. So what would be the final tally? Yeah, our philosophical arguments would have a fatal flaw in that one necessary premise, that our reasoning is a reliable guide to truth, would be false, and therefore the entire argument invalid. That wouldn't mean the conclusion is untrue. Yes, it would suck if our reasoning were unreliable, but so what? If it's unreliable it's unreliable; that being a bad thing doesn't make it untrue.

Moreover, I think that anyone who seriously thinks that the utility of our thinking has no relation to its truth is willfully ignoring evidence to the contrary.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Too bad my library is packed away otherwise I would have liked to participate more fully on the book discussion. My question for the physicalists is this. Can a rational person not be a phyicalist? In your world are people in general, allowed to be wrong and have a different metaphysics from physicallism without attributing their beliefs to irrationality, delusion, or malice? And the follow-up to that is has that been the case, in particular, with Hart?