What makes people irrational thinkers?

[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