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To: Texas Songwriter; Alamo-Girl; tpanther; TXnMA; Agamemnon; tacticalogic; allmendream; hosepipe; ...
...In conclusion, dear Texas Songwriter: Science will never go for....

I blew the HTML tag there. The passage should read:

"In conclusion, dear Texas Songwriter, Science will never go for panpsychism."

Sorry. It seems I can never check my work sufficiently.... I probably need a copy editor....

229 posted on 09/08/2012 2:21:39 PM PDT by betty boop (We are led to believe a lie when we see with, and not through the eye. — William Blake)
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To: betty boop
"In conclusion, dear Texas Songwriter, Science will never go for panpsychism."

Scientific naturalists explaination for consciousness is as inadequate as in the time of Leibnez's time when he threw down the gauntlet regarding the emergence of consciousness. Geoffrey Madell stated, "The emergence of consciousness, then is a mystery, and one to which materialism signally fails to provide an answer." Colin MacGinn claims that its arrival borders on sheer magic because there seems to be no naturalistic explaination for it: "How can mere matter originate consciousness? How did evolution convert the water of biological tissue intothe wine of consciousness? Consciousness seems like a radical novelty in the universe, not prefigured by the after-effects of the Big Bang; so how did it contrive to spring into being from what preceded it?"

Not only are adequate naturalistic explainations for irreducible consciousness hard to come by, there is a widespread suspicion, if not explicit acknowledgement that irreducible consciousness provides evidence that this is a theistic universe.

William Lyons (physicalist) notes that "physicalism seems to be in tune with the scientific materialism of the twentieth century because it is harmonic of the general theme that all there is in the universe is matter and energy and motion and that humans are a product of evolution of species just as much as buffaloes or beavers are. Evolution is a seamless garment with no holes wherein souls mighty be inserted from above." Crispin Wright states, "If we reject naturalism, then we accept that there is more to the world than can be embraced within a physicalist ontology-and so take on a commitment, it can seem, to a kind of eerie supernaturalism".

So the naturalists are committed. Lyons and Wright's reference to "a kind of eerie supernaturalism" and "a seemless garment" with no place to insert a soul.

Seeing their worldview being invalidated, they reach, in desperation, for anything but what is obvious. Like those who espouse the universe a result of quantum event claiming the universe 'popped into existence', they reach for epiphenomenalism as an explaination of how consciousness was derived. But just as Borde-Guth-Vilkin disproves a quantum origin of the universe, First Principles disprove their assertion of the supervenience of consciousness. Brute matter cannot give up what it does not have. It cannot give what it does not have. Like Alamo-girl often reminds us...'in the absence of time events cannot occur, in the absense of space things cannot exist'.

They are committed to the view that the spatio-temportal universe is all there is. They owe us an explanation of an event-causal story described in naturalistic scientific terms. They owe us a general ontology in which the only entities allowed are ones that bear a relevant similarity to those thought to characterize a completed form of physics and if epiphenomenalism is explained by physical laws then give it up to us. But they cannot. So they apply a word, 'epiphenomenalism' as an ontology. It is not. It is a word which describes an alleged phenomenon. How did that occur. Naturalist are committed to reductionism. So...reduce it so we will understand. But they know consciousness is irreducible. Causal nessitation fits their paradigm, yes, even is required to be a consistent metaphysical naturalist. Our contention is that consciousness is ontologically basic for theism since it characterizes the fundamental being. According to the naturalist, consciousness is emergent, derivitive and supervenient and both its finitude. So...emerged from what, I ask. Derived....from what I say. Complete the story. Reduce it to is basicality by naturalistic explaination or abandon it.

235 posted on 09/08/2012 4:57:14 PM PDT by Texas Songwriter (<)
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