RE: Rosenberg's Argument Against Beliefs
April 21, 2013 at 9:51 am
(This post was last modified: April 21, 2013 at 10:05 am by Neo-Scholastic.)
(April 20, 2013 at 3:56 pm)Joel Wrote: Great. All religions are redundant, then.Not just that. All beliefs are redundant, even the belief that the earth is round. If physicalism is true then there can be no knowledge.
(April 20, 2013 at 4:20 pm)Lord Privy Seal Wrote: Why not? If naturalism is true, configurations of matter can compose symphonies.Then you do not understand premise 5. Physical things have no meaning in themselves. As a physical object a painting is an ordered collection of pigment and oil on rough cloth. It isn't about anything. But as an object of contemplation at a painting is about something. It has a subject matter to which it refers. The properties of physical things do not point to anything beyond themselves. This is in stark contrast to mental properties. Beliefs, fears, and thoughts are all about something. You can believe the earth is round. You can fear spiders. You can remember the Mount Rushmore. These mental properties are about the earth, spiders and Mount Rushmore. But the earth, spiders, and Mount Rushmore as physical things are not about anything.
The cornerstone of naturalism is physical reduction. Yet intentionality cannot fit into naturalism. Alex Rosenberg is fully aware of this. And yet he does not let this shake his conviction that everything is physical. Instead his intellectual commitment to atheistic naturalism forces him to admit the inherent nihilism of that position.
