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To: Aquinasfan
Natural science is an impossible enterprise under a materialist rubric.

I'm sure you believe that, but it doesn't make it true.

51 posted on 12/19/2003 7:31:55 PM PST by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon
I'm sure you believe that, but it doesn't make it true.

Here's why. Assume that materialism is true. Then under a materialist rubric everything must be reduced to matter in motion. Therefore, human thought must also be reduced to matter in motion. Therefore, my thought that "materialism is false" is equally the product of moving atoms as your theory that "materialism is true." Neither assertion can be more or less true than the other. But contradictory ideas cannot both be true, by the law of non-contradiction. Therefore, the conclusion is false. The intermediate propositions are logically valid. Therefore, the premise must be false. The premise is that materialism is true.

Materialism can be shown to be incoherent in another way. Materialism cannot give a coherent explanation for the unified experience of consciousness or the unified sense of self. Is my sense of self reducible to my thoughts? But my thoughts must be strings of chemicals. But if each thought is a discrete set of atoms then there must be as many "selves" as discrete thoughts. Is the self a scanning mechanism in the brain that analyzes these discrete thoughts? If so, then there must be as many selves as discrete acts of scanning, et cetera, ad infinitum.

Empirical science is only possible under a moderate realist epistemology.

56 posted on 12/20/2003 9:22:58 AM PST by Aquinasfan (Isaiah 22:22, Rev 3:7, Mat 16:19)
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