RE: What makes people irrational thinkers?
December 26, 2021 at 1:40 am
(This post was last modified: December 26, 2021 at 2:49 am by 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.
"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.
Nay_Sayer: “Nothing is impossible if you dream big enough, or in this case, nothing is impossible if you use a barrel of KY Jelly and a miniature horse.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
Wiser words were never spoken.
