RE: Occam's Razor, atheism, theism and polytheism.
February 8, 2017 at 8:39 pm
(This post was last modified: February 8, 2017 at 8:41 pm by Jehanne.)
(February 7, 2017 at 11:17 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(February 7, 2017 at 7:37 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Just curious, what do you think there is that naturalism cannot explain?
Oh let's see...being-as-such...intentionality...moral imperatives...
Why do you then that naturalism cannot explain those? Can you be more specific?
(February 8, 2017 at 12:46 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Simon's question was if there were things naturalism cannot explain. I listed three. The problem isn't that someday, maybe natural explanations will appear. The problem is that naturalism (based on the arbitrary self-imposed rules of analytic philosophy) either logically excludes any kinds of solutions or wishes away phenomena that require explanation. Maybe you know about a kind of naturalism with which I'm not familiar.
All I can say for now, without knowing any specific theory naturalistic theory of mind Simon Moon or you think will save you from absurdism, is that any appeal to 'emergent properties' (ghosts out of the machine) or 'epiphenominalism' (i.e. ectoplasm) is itself the real magical thinking. Likewise, ignoring the obvious contingency of the physical universe is really just hand-waving. Or thinking that undirected and irrational physical processes can supply rational moral imperatives to a complex electro-chemical reaction is just...to put it diplomatically, not very bright.
Do you think chimps have souls? How about bacteria? Your arguments, to me, as an atheist, sound like the classic "god of the gaps". How about lightning? Do you believe that we need God to explain lightning?
