Tuesday, January 02, 2024
for im-skeptical
from a fried of mine for I am skeptocal:
"This is a kind of appeal to authority. The religionist claims to be an atheist or a former atheist. Therefore, the audience is expected to believe his theistic or religion-friendly assertions. It works for Nagel. Joe does it. You do it, too."
So how is Nagel a "religionist" or "religion-friendly" exactly? By not being a thorough-going scientific-reductionist? Because his theories can be interpreted in such a way that religionists can use them to support their claims doesn't make him "religion-friendly".
The bigger issue, I think, is science; how much epistemic scope do we assume that science has? To me, that's an even more fundamental question than religion. That's the kind of question that Nagel is asking, and why he's gotten the scientific community so angry, and the kind of question Russell was asking when he proposed neutral monism, before he abandoned it.
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6 comments:
Nagel advances his theories of the immaterial mind. In other words, it is supernatural. Of course this is religion-friendly. His book "Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False," plays right into the hands of religionists. It goes against ANY scientific explanation or theory of mind. In short, it is religious bunkum.
your argument is just party line,
You think yours isn't?
"The bigger issue, I think, is science; how much epistemic scope do we assume that science has?"
I think this question has been asked and answered many times, including by me. Science studies nature and the natural world. Science is about what is observable. Science is not about things that cannot be observed, and that includes anything in the realm of the immaterial, as we call it. Things that are observable are material things. They are part of nature. Things that cannot be observed - that are immaterial, if they exist - cannot possibly be within the scope of science. If you understand what science is about, then you must understand that Nagel's concept of immaterial mind is not scientific. It isn't based on observable (or empirical) evidence. It is based on his ideas about what must be the stuff that constitutes mind. These are not scientific ideas. In fact, there is a vast amount of scientific study and investigation into what mind is and how it works. We don't have all the answers, and that's the opening for religionists to step in and say "It's the immaterial soul." Or for Nagel to step in with his ideas that happen to closely mirror what the religionists are saying. But every day, science gives us more and more evidence-based information about the reality. And we already have more than ample evidence to conclude that the mind is part of the physical world.
Skep I think my arguments are unique somewhat because I am often criticized for not keeping with the set views.My view are generality in agreement with party line,
My party line is this: Objective evidence. Nothing more, nothing less.
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