The Ghost In The Machine

David Chalmers has attained a degree of celebrity and earned the adoration of theists, with his philosophical argument against physicalism.  The argument is based on the conceivability of philosophical zombies (or p-zombies).  Before I get into the argument itself, I should explain what a p-zombie is.  This is not the fictional creature of movies that has returned from the dead, but rather a philosophical concept of something that is physically and behaviorally identical in every respect to a person, but that nevertheless lacks any conscious experience.  A p-zombie can't be distinguished from an ordinary person, because it behaves the same, reacts the same, and gives the same answers to any questions.  It would recoil from pain and say "ouch", for example, but not actually experience the feeling pain.  Another way of saying this is that the p-zombie has no subjective or first-person experience.

Bad Argument: Physicalism Can't Be True

Victor Reppert has come up with an argument that supposedly proves his contention that mind must precede the physical.  According to him, this argument does not rest on any assumption of the primacy of mind, which is the metaphysical notion that mental phenomena, such as rational thought or morality, can't possibly arise from any purely physical source, and therefore mind must exist at the most fundamental level of reality.  In fact, most people who hold this belief are theists who think that physical reality itself is the product of a mind.  This stands in stark contrast to physicalism, which is the metaphysical notion that physical reality is all there is in our world, and therefore any mental phenomena that exist must be a product of that physical reality.  While Victor's argument assumes neither of these metaphysical positions, it still contains a serious logical fallacy  Here it is, in its entirety:

The Anthropocentric Bias of Scientism

In a discussion with Mike Gerow at Metacrock's blog, he made a comment that I thought was worthy of more than a com-box reply.  Mike comes across a an intelligent person, but he still has a woefully uninformed understanding of topics in science that he brings into his own arguments.  In this comment, Mike reveals some serious misunderstandings about what science tells us regarding the concept of self and about evolution.  These failings are driven, at least in part, by his religious training, and deeply ingrained bias toward religious explanations whenever they come into conflict with scientific explanations.  Here is what he said:

Thinking About Logic

I often wonder how a person who is trained in philosophy can be so utterly confused about logic.  It's not that they don't know the rules of logic, such as modus ponens, or that they are unable to apply those rules in a syllogism.  It doesn't take an education in philosophy to be able to construct an argument that follows the rules of logic.  Even an animal can reason something like this:  If I can unlatch the door, then I can escape.  But it does take a deeper level of understanding to be able to formally state what those logical rules are, and express them in symbolic terms.  The animal does not know that he us using modus ponens, despite the fact that he actually is using it in his primitive reasoning process.  But there are philosophers who don't see the distinction between using logic and thinking about logic.

Who Follows the Evidence, And Who Doesn't?

Victor Reppert thinks that if materialism is true, there can be no logic and no "laws of evidence".  And therefore, the claims of materialistic atheists - that they base their beliefs on logic and evidence - are self-refuting.

In my previous post, I agreed with John Loftus that people like Victor Reppert are ignorant of the arguments or philosophical stances of naturalists.  Victor is fond of pointing out what he thinks are logical inconsistencies in the beliefs of atheists and naturalists.  His argument typically takes this form:

1. Naturalists believe A, and they believe B.
2. But A is logically incompatible with B.
3. Therefore, naturalists belief in both A and B is illogical or incoherent.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Philosophers who favor a supernatural or dualistic view of mind have contrived an argument that they think poses a major obstacle to physicalism.  It is the so-called hard problem of consciousness, that claims there is an unbridgable gap between physical substance and mental substance.  It is basically the claim that the stuff of conscious experience - the qualia, or qualitative component of consciousness - the texture of our perceptions - cannot be explained in terms of physical substances and phenomena.  But this is an unscientific argument.  It amounts to an argument from ignorance.  It is saying that because we don't yet know how to fully explain consciousness in terms of physical matter and its properties, then there must be something immaterial about it.  This fallacy gives courage to those (especially theists) who choose to ignore the track record of naturalistic science, and instead posit the existence of things like the immaterial soul as the answer to the problem.

Natural vs. Supernatural

The question seems to arise over and over again.  What is the difference between natural phenomena and supernatural phenomena?  At first blush, it doesn't seem that there should be any controversy about this.  But theists are fond of blurring the line.  Their reasoning seems to go something like this: if there is no clear distinction between natural and supernatural, then there is no clear basis for declaring that belief in the supernatural is unjustified, or that it is somehow less sound than naturalism.  In this way, they seek to make their own belief in supernatural things seem more reasonable.  Here's an example of this line of thinking:

What I meant was this. Suppose the Apostles' Creed is true, but the nature-supernature distinction turns out to be an artificial one, so that there is no sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Suppose all we mean by physical is that it interacts with the physical world. So it turns out what we used to call God, angels, and souls turn out to be physical things, by some definition of physical. We can call them the theon, angelons, and psychons. My reaction to that, is, "So what. No problem." Only when you put limits on what can be natural am I going to be concerned about defending the belief that there is something super-that. - Reppert

Victor is admitting here that he'd rather not have to defend belief in supernatural things, but he thinks it's advantageous to take the battle to the ground of the naturalists and make them seem unreasonable for refusing to admit the existence of things that are part of the natural world.  But his reasoning is flawed, as I shall discuss.

Reppert Misses the Boat (Again)

When I first encountered CS Lewis' Argument from Reason, I told Victor Reppert that the assertion that rational thought can't arise from non-rational matter is unjustified.  His rationale for making this claim is that there are no mental elements (or "psychons") at the fundamental level of physical reality, and therefore there can be no physical structure that comprises a rational mind.  This argument is purely a priori.  It relies on a theistic presumption about mind, with no empirical data, and in fact no scientific knowledge of cognition whatsoever.  It is armchair philosophy at its worst - completely divorced from any empirical knowledge.  I pointed out some literature that might help him gain a better understanding of what is within the grasp of scientific inquiry, but of course he refuses to read it.

Stupid Theist Tricks: Denial of Physical Reality

This is the first of a series called "Stupid Theist Tricks" that will focus on the various ways theists use false logic and similar sleights of hand to support their belief in God.

Today's topic is the denial of what we observe in nature.  Specifically, what we observe is that nervous systems in biological creatures produce various levels of cognitive function, and the most complex nervous systems can produce cognitive function on the level that we would regard as "mind" capable of rational thought.  Theists beg to differ.  They insist that mind can only result from some non-material source.