An argument for the immateriality of the intellect

I honestly cannot recall him doing that. But I would rather take your word for it and concede the point
than have to read that section again. Truthfully, I find him just an atrocious writer. He’s made his point, and then he goes on for another 20 paragraphs making the same point. Dude, hire a better editor.

I am not assuming naturalism. I am just defining science as a method that assumes naturalism. And I might as well just clarify here that I also agree with the position that it cannot be demonstrated that science describes reality fully or, for that matter, even necessarily at all. However, if we want to make it thru our existence for even five minutes in the world as it appears to be, science is all we’ve got.

That aside, nothing in my definition precludes philosophers from making statements about immaterial “realities” that can be demonstrated to be true if those realities exist. They just cannot show that those realites exist, other than thru science (at which point, they then become material realities.)

Trust me, that makes much more sense than it might appear…

True. But the point is: Neither can philosophy

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Just for fun, I re-read the section on scientism that I referenced from the introductory of Scholastic Metaphysics, and didn’t see anything particularly redundant. But anyways, I will consider you to have conceded the point. (In which case you don’t really have an argument that Feser’s refutation of your scientism fails.)

I really don’t see how methodological naturalism saves scientism from criticism.

And I don’t see how you have any basis for this claim. Let’s say someone (such as Feser, haha) gives an account of the laws of nature and some philosophical argument for that account. Then it looks to me that philosophy can give such an account. For you to argue for your position that it can’t give such an account, you would have to show that the argument was not successful - but that would be engaging in the kind of philosophical argumentation that you are saying can’t give us knowledge, undermining your own argument.

Rewinding a ways and bringing things back on topic for this thread, none of what you’ve said here addresses my contention that:


If all meaning was derivative (like the meanings of words), there would be no meaning at all. A dictionary whose definitions entirely use words that no one understands would be meaningless. The meaning has to be derived from somewhere.

And your account of deriving meaning from physical interactions doesn’t work. Let’s say you’ve never seen a cat, or a picture of a cat, or heard the word “cat”, or anything like that. Now, if you see a cat for the first time, you can still think about the cat (maybe you think “I like that thing and I want to pet it, whatever it is”) - and your thought can be about the cat rather than, say the surface of the cat, or the light source that illuminated the cat, or the light rays going to your eyes from the cat, or the electrochemical signal originating in your retina and starting to travel up your optic nerve. Yet all of those have the same claim as the cat itself to having a physical interaction with whatever neural structure and pattern of activation is going on inside your brain at that moment.

In other words, your identification of the relevant end points of the causal chain as the cat on one end and the neural structure on the other is not mind-independent - the meaning you are taking to arise from the causal interaction is actually dependent on the content of your thought, not the other way around.

To be clear, all I am conceding is that there may be some people, somewhere, who make the argument that Feser describes as “scientism” and that he is not just committing a massive strawman. He has not at all addressed the arguments I would make for (a particular form of) scientism.

Accounts are not answers.

If someone gives an “account” of how life may have arisen on earth that is logically valid and coherent and is not contradicted by any empirical evidence, he still has not yet answered the question of how life arose. Has he?

And to clarify my position: I do not deny that we can obtain knowledge of a sort by disregarding naturalism when the issues at hand are not affected either way by whether naturalism is true.

However, we have as yet obtained no knowlege whatsoever by assuming that naturalism is false and supernatural things exist and occur. If I’m wrong about that, please provide an example.

This is why I think Feser is committing something akin to a strawman. He raises some picayune points regarding things that we can learn without using the scientific method as narrowly defined. But none of his arguments amount to a demonstration that the assumption of naturalism limits our epistemic abilities. It seems to me he is saying “Logic isn’t science. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is a real thing.” That’s an exaggeration, but not much.

What I said was that philosophy can give an account (in this case, referring to an account of what the laws of nature are and how they are explanatory) along with an argument for the truth of that account. If the argument provides sufficient justification that the account may be rationally believed (with some level of certainty, say), then yes, I would say it is providing an answer.

There’s no need to assume that naturalism is false, as that can be demonstrated. The argument of this thread, for instance, demonstrates that some aspect of reality must be immaterial, ruling out any form of naturalism committed to the denial of that conclusion - and nothing that has been said here has succeeded in refuting or undermining the premises of the argument.

More directly, arguments for God’s existence demonstrate that naturalism is false, and several of those are successful as well. Now of course you would disagree with this claim. But again, the mere fact that there is disagreement about these arguments does not itself prove that they are unsuccessful and do not confer knowledge (just as the fact that there is disagreement about evolution does not prove that science doesn’t actually show that evolution happened).

We seem to have very different understandings of is meant by terms like “knowledge” and “answers.”

I am referring to something like the answer to the question “Where does the sun go at night?”

I do not accept that theology or metaphysics has produced a single such answer to a single question. And you have yet to provide a single convincing example.

That some minority of philosophers find a particular argument convincing does not mean that argument constitutes knowledge.

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I agree. But conversely, that even a majority of people do not find a particular argument convincing does not show that it does not provide knowledge. What people find convincing can be affected by all sorts of factors, but what is relevant is whether the argument is valid and the premises true and sufficiently justified. And in order to argue the matter either way, one will eventually need to appeal to the kind of philosophical judgements that are neither a priori results of logic and math, nor empirically verifiable by science.

And the only way we can demonstrate that the premises are true and sufficiently justified is thru the scientific method as I have defined it. Once we allow for the “supernatural” we have no idea what may or may not happen, because it cannot be tested by empiricism or anything analogous to empiricism.

So an argument can be determined to be sound so long as its premises entail nothing more than pure logic. But once we include premises that rely to any extent at all on observations and experience (“Everything that begins to exist has a cause” for example), then the argument constitutes “knowledge” only to the extent that its premises can be scientifically supported.

Agreed. That is why any argument that relies on such “judgements” cannot consittute knowledge. It is, at best, someone’s best guess based on his own intuitions and preconceptions.

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That’s not how philosophy works at all. You’re assuming empiricism, but only 35% of philosophers are empiricists. 27% are rationalists instead, and the rest apparently prefer a mix between the two. And even empiricists don’t deny that some things can be learned from intuition (based on sensory experience). I have no stake in this particular debate, but if you’re going to cast aspersions on the entire field of philosophy, at least learn about it first. Otherwise you’re no better than the creationists who cast aspersions on the natural sciences without knowing about them.

I am not casting aspersions on philosophy. I am stating my personal understanding of how philosophy is done. I am using the term “scientific method” in the sense that I have defined it. This does not entail empiricism any more than it does (philosophical) naturalism.

An exception is when some philosophers, usually theologians defending a particular religious view, decide to arbitrarily decree that the laws of nature were violated in a few, rare specific instances, such as when Jesus walked on water or rose from the dead. This is an example of philosophy done poorly.

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You seem to have missed the fact that science itself rests on these kind of judgements. E.g., the validity of inductive and abductive reasoning, or the idea that our experience reveals some kind of objective reality rather than being merely illusory, are not secured by pure logic, nor can they be demonstrated by science - because they are presupposed by any kind of scientific investigation. So if these kind of philosophical judgements cannot constitute knowledge, then neither can the deliverances of science.

Another example of philosophy (or just reasoning in general) done poorly is strawmanning your interlocutor’s position.

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And I do not believe they do constitute knowledge. They are merely presuppositions we hold that serve as the foundations for how we think about and try to understand the world. Who knows why we all seem to hold to these presuppositions, and why it seems to us beyond question that they are true? I certainly don’t. Although one likely explanation is just that they are true. That would certainly simplify things.

However, with those presuppositions assumed, we are then able to use them to determine whether things are true in the world as it seems to us. That, I believe, is what we mean when we speak of “knowledge.”

That is to say, whenever one says “We know that…”, there is an assumed and unspoken qualifier. What we are actually saying is “Assuming that our senses are able to apprehend the universe with reasonable accuracy, that logic and reasoning are reliable, and that there are beings in this world other than myself who perceive and understand the world much as I do and with whom I can communicate my experiences and observations, we know that…”

I don’t know if this is what you are saying, but I think it is easy to get the impression that you believe logic and reasoning is something that was developed solely by philosophers, and that this has been borrowed by scientists for their own use without giving due credit to philosophy. But my understanding is that, at least in the West, for most of our history there was no clear distinction between the two disciplines and the formal laws of logic were developed by thinkers who did not think of themselves as either a philosopher or scientist as we now understand those terms. It is only in more recent times that the two disciplines have diverged. Which is to say that logic is no less a legacy and birthright of science than it is of philosophy.

That said, I must say that this discussion has led me to realize I am not really sure where the demarcation is between science and philosophy even today. One could say that the scientist is distinguished by his reliance on empirical testing. However, we now have an entire discipline known as theoretical physics, whose practitioners primarily spend their time at the whiteboard writing out mathematical equations, and rarely if ever actually conduct an experiment.

At the moment, it seems to me the distinction is primarily that the work of the scientist lies closer to empirical experience and even the theoretical physicist hopes to arrive at hypotheses and models that can be tested empirically, while the questions he addresses are drawn from recent empirical observations. The metaphysical philosopher, OTOH, operates at a further remove that which we can observe empirically. But he does not operate in complete isolation from it.

I did not mean to suggest that you are among those I was referring to. However, it is the case that one cannot argue for, say, the resurrection of Jesus as something that can be demonstrated to have occurred without first denying methodological naturalism and, thereby, the scientific method itself.

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Well, you are very right about one thing:

ithout getting into the philosophical debate on exactly what knowledge is, the commonsense concept is something in the vicinity of “justified true belief” - beliefs that are true and that we have good reason for thinking are true. From my perspective, based on what you say above, you do not believe that science gives us knowledge at all, merely something that you pragmatically call “knowledge” because you deny the real deal. And I see that as a fairly extreme kind of skepticism.

Conversely, I say in fact we know that “our senses are able to apprehend the universe with reasonable accuracy, that logic and reasoning are reliable, and that there are beings in this world other than myself who perceive and understand the world much as I do” and so on, and this is not a tautologous claim as it would be on your conception of knowledge. Because the kind of philosophical judgements which underlie science (that is, judgements which are neither the result of pure logic nor verifiable by science) can constitute knowledge, which is what enables science to deliver knowledge as well. But then the same kind of judgements can also constitute knowledge elsewhere (after all, as you note, the demarcation between science and philosophy is not a sharp one). For example, they can be used in evaluating the support given for the premises of the main argument of this thread.

But the main point is that I do not see how you can possibly give any (non-question-begging) argument for claims such as

or

that does itself ultimately rely on such judgements, thereby undermining itself.

All of this has gone off of the main topic for a while now, though…

(For the record, I do not hold the view that logic and reasoning “is something that was developed solely by philosophers”. Rather, reasoning is something humans are naturally capable of, and clarifying that activity - e.g., by developing logic - is something that falls in the domain of philosophy rather than science, as philosophy and science are conceived today. And it’s not that scientists don’t give due credit to philosophy, but rather that too many scientists fail to recognize the philosophical underpinnings of science, and the presuppositions that guide their interpretation of its results.)

I was referring to the fact that “deciding to arbitrarily decree that the laws of nature were violated in a few, rare specific instances” does not accurately describe what any theistic philosopher that I am aware of - past or present - is actually doing.

And it is question-begging to characterise non-naturalistic argumentation as “denying methodological naturalism and the scientific method itself”. The whole point of contention is that science is limited in its applicability and that there are other (more fundamental, even) sources of knowledge. Saying that doesn’t deny that science, methodological naturalism included, does provide knowledge within its domain of applicability. You are letting methodological naturalism bleed into metaphysical naturalism, without justification.

But that is also getting off-topic… I’ll admit I should have probably let this thread die, but I was feeling stubborn. :wink:

Not exactly. I think it is overwhelmingly likely that a physical world exists apart from my subjective experience, and the reason science works so well to describe it is because this world behaves in a manner identical to how it would if naturalism was true, if not because naturalism simply is true.

I just admit that I can’t demonstrate any of that to be true using the methods we usually use to demonstrate truth, but instead must acknowledge as a real possibility that naturalism is not true, and supernatural things can happen (as we are in this discussion.)

And the point I am trying to make is that we have no epistemic method to determine what “justifed true belief” would be in those circumstance equivalent to what we have if we employ methodological naturalism.

Those positions are not based on any argument, but on simple empirical fact: There is not a single thing we now know by assuming that naturalism is not true. All we get are things like beliefs in people rising from the dead or flying across the planet on a horse with the head of a woman. Not my idea of knowledge, in any event.

If you disagree, provide a single example.

Yes, I didn’t think you did.

Again, I am not denying that. My position, which I perhaps have not stated clearly enough, is that if we assume naturalism is NOT true, then we have no means to determining that a proposition constitutes knowledge of the world as it exists. I don’t deny that we can answer questions like “What would an omnipotent, omnscient being do if…” and come to an answer that we know to be true. But that is just employing logic without denying naturalism because we are not then saying that there exists such a being who actually DID what we have concluded it would do.

I’m actually enjoying this discussion, so I’d rather it be kept on life support a bit longer. But up to you.

I am also slowly working my way thru that Rosenberg article. I’ll give my thoughts when I finish it, in another thread if the plug has been pulled on this one by then.

Okay. I disagree that the world behaves exactly like it would if naturalism were true, and I don’t think this in any way impedes our ability to reason in general or our ability to draw conclusions about immaterial or supernatural realities in particular. (E.g., as philosophical naturalism generally includes physicalism/materialism, I think rational persons are not possible on naturalism as per the argument in this thread.)

And it seems to me that in order to argue for the contrary, you would need to rely on the kind of philosophical judgements we have been discussing - which by your lights are not a rational basis for belief. So, again by your lights, you have no rational basis for your belief, e.g., that it is overwhelmingly likely that a physical world exists apart from your subjective experience. Which is why I said that it seems you do not believe science gives us any knowledge at all, only something you pragmatically call knowledge.

Are you contrasting this with a claim that we come to know things (through science, for example), by assuming that naturalism is true? Because I don’t at all believe that’s true - methodological naturalism doesn’t entail assuming that naturalism is true, it merely entails looking for the natural causes of things.

And besides that, I’m not claiming here that we can know things by assuming that naturalism is false, but rather we can know things without assuming that naturalism is true - for instance, we can know that naturalism is false, thanks to, e.g., this argument that some aspect of our thoughts is immaterial.

And again, I don’t see how you can argue to the contrary without ultimately appealing to judgements that you don’t believe give any rational basis for belief in the first place.

It leaves me to wonder in what ways the world behaves that are not by definition natural.

… I’ll just let myself out …

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I didn’t invent the terminology. :laughing:

(To be clear, naturalism is essentially the negative claim that nothing supernatural exists, e.g., God, immaterial substances or properties, Platonic forms, etc.)

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Could you then explain how you would expect our world to differ if it was true, in terms of what we would observe?

And, to be clear, I do not believe it should.

And I, and many others more erudite than I, disagree with that claim. So I don’t think it can be considered “knowledge.”

I had hoped that I had clarified that is not what I am claiming. But I guess not, so let me try again:

I do not deny that philosophical judgements can provide a rational basis for beliefs, and can even lead to knowledge of certain types (i.e. whether a particular argument is valid or sound.) What I am not accepting is that knowledge of any sort can be obtained by using reason while assuming that naturalism is false.

And I have said, that is a presupposition that we all hold in order to make it thru our lives. If knowledge consists only of things that can be demonstrated to be true, then that does not constitute knowledge.

OK, that is a helpful clarification. So I would revise my position to: Knowledge can only be obtained thru assuming naturalism to be true, unless the proposition in question has no bearing on the question of whether naturalism is true.

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Sure. We wouldn’t observe anything, because it wouldn’t be possible for rational agents like ourselves, or any contingent reality at all for that matter, to exist. That is the upshot of arguments like the one in this thread, arguments for God’s existence, etc.

So what? The mere fact of disagreement doesn’t show there is anything wrong with this argument, or any other non-naturalistic arguments.

As I’ve pointed out a couple times, I am not assuming that naturalism is false when I make the argument in this thread, or an argument for the existence of God, etc. I’m concluding that naturalism is false on the basis of an argument. And if your position is that such arguments cannot provide knowledge, I can see no basis for it that doesn’t simply beg the question.

The whole point of this is to say that you can’t just dismiss arguments against naturalism. You have to actually show what is wrong with them, or at the very least, have a sufficient positive argument for naturalism that you can reject the arguments against it. Either way, you cannot avoid “pre-scientific” (and by that I mean epistemologically more fundamental than science) philosophical argumentation.


Let’s rewind for a concrete example:

The reason I found that somewhat amusing is that you admit that the justification for eliminative materialism is based on the assumption that materialism of some form is true. Which makes using eliminative materialism as a basis for denying Premise 1 of the argument question-begging.

I’ve taken an (albeit brief) look at look at Rosenberg’s paper that you linked, and I don’t find any of his attempts to better justify EM, or to escape the incoherence objection, to fare any better.

So you’re putting all your money on the argument that human thought cannot be accounted for by physical processes. I don’t think there is anywhere further to go on that. You’ve given your best shot to convince me of that, it hasn’t worked. So I think we’ll have to leave it there.

The fact that there is reasonable and informed disagreement suggests it is not knowledge at the level of “The sun appears to set each night because of the rotation of the earth on its axis.” Unless you are arguing that those who do not accept the immateriality of thought argument are as ignorant and stupid as someone who would deny that fact.

Not cannot. Have not. And, I am willing to bet, will not, because believers in the supernatural and the immaterial have nothing even approaching a methodology to determine what will or will not happen in the “immaterial” realm.

Whether EM is true is going to be determined by empirical evidence. It was not a logical syllogism that led to the abandonment of vitalism.

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Not all my money, no, but now is not the time to delve into other arguments.

I’m unperturbed by my failure to convince you, given that you haven’t actually succeeded in pointing out anything wrong with the argument.

People can be badly mistaken without being stupid. For example:

EM can never be shown to be true by empirical evidence, because the existence of empirical evidence, and minds that can evaluate that evidence, presupposes something that EM denies exists - namely, intentionality. Evidence is evidence for something. It is ineliminably suffused with intentionality.

And again, the analogy with vitalism is a poor one. Anti-vitalism does not deny that life exists; it simply gives a different account of how life works. The analogy in philosophy of mind would be something like reductive physicalism, which seeks to explain how intentionality emerges from a purely physical basis.

EM is far more radical - motivated by the failure of physicalist accounts of intentionality, it denies that intentionality exists at all. It is more analogous not to the denial that life can’t be wholly accounted for in material terms, but to the denial that anything is alive in the first place.