Silmarien
Existentialist
- Feb 24, 2017
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A pragmatist is completely satisfied with the entirety of what something is being the sum of its parts, interactions, and behaviors. Asking for something beyond that, something more "is" than "is" doesn't make sense. What other descriptive information are you wanting to have about matter?
If this is the case, then the pragmatist is completely satisfied with a falsehood. You can certainly say that it is impossible to come to an understanding of what matter is in and of itself, and we must be satisfied with what our modeling tools can tell us about it, but confusing the two seems like a very ill-advised move.
Ok, but since you're talking to someone who is neither... what do you expect me to be able to tell you? Is there any consensus among philosopher-neuroscientists?
No, there's no consensus on anything, though I think there's been some movement away from reductive materialism.
I don't expect you to be able to tell me anything. I just think you should revisit the idea that it is most logical to assume that materialistic solutions will present themselves. If you can't answer objections, then you can't really make that type of assertion without veering into dogma.
I don't know of any proposed explanation for a universe from absolutely nothing, mechanistic or otherwise, that doesn't sound like magical thinking. That doesn't get us to necessary existence.
If you cannot come up with a feasible alternative to necessary existence, then yeah, that failure actually should get you to necessary existence. Why would you reject the only non-magical solution on the table? We might as well reject the reality of the external world because maybe Descartes' demon exists, toss out all of science because maybe we're wrong about literally all of it, and so forth and so on. Why would you expect absolute certainty here and nowhere else?
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