Go back and look.
I already did.
It is fine you believe this, but do all naturalists? If not, then the idea has no point in an attempt to prove the internal inconsistency of their beliefs.
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What did I object to?
Can you elaborate on why you disagree?
I'm not sneaking it in, I've said it directly - irrationality is an inherent property of matter.
Secondly, if something occurs by sole action of impersonal forces
Is a volcano reasoned? Or a rock falling off a mountainside?
Petitio Principii are not logically consistent systems
They are all related concepts. For something is only rational if in accord with reason, reason is narrowly associated with logic, logic has to be valid, etc. and the validity of our senses was necessitated by those who claimed this somehow validated something.It isn't that I don't understand what these things are, it is - as I and others have pointed out - the claim keeps shifting as the discussion goes on. As some times the issue is logic, at other times rationality, at others the validity of our senses, at others the causal nature of beliefs. Makes it really hard to know what the actual argument is about, and feels an awful lot like people are just throwing out stuff which feels like it needs to be magical rather than having any vigorous argument about much of anything.
Reason - which partially has to be so derived or it doesn't exist.That's nice. What supernatural intervention is required for an inductive proof of the sum of the first n integers?
Petitio Principii to assume it 'works' - please I have said this ad nauseam in this thread.Despite these theoretical objections, it works. Looks like the theory needs a bit of refinement.
Exactly - hence Naturalism needs to explain how this is possible, which it has failed miserably to do.On occasion? Isn't that understating things just a bit?
Preferably. Good handwashing is integral to hygiene and stopping the spread of infections.Oportet ministros manus lavare antequam latrinam relinquent.
Oh, so you agree there is a person behind these deterministic forces? Otherwise it does not alter what I said.The question wasn't about impersonal forces, it was about deterministic ones.
Not at all my point. They were examples of agreed unreasoned phenomena and I then explained thereafter why they would be of like kind.Since some material interactions aren't thinking, then none of them can be? Pretty sure everyone can spot the obvious logical fallacy there :
Is a car lunchmeat? Is a boulder? Of course not, therefore lunchmeat is supernatural. Same argument as above.
How do they "work really well in practice"? This is a petitio principii itself, again.Even granting your claim here is accurate, so what? They might not meet some arbitrary criteria made up by philosophers but they seem to work really well in practice. Given that, what reason do you have to assume that your criteria is the correct way to judge them?
No. The approach seems to be more assert a questionable premise, ignore objections to it, and then claim that no one can address it.
Giving a single example where brains don't work perfectly doesn't do anything to establish your premise.
You must have missed my response to the first post, and I have no idea what in the second post addresses the problem I raised.
You are claiming that the argument commits something like the fallacy of composition with respect to the set of causes and the effect. That is to say, even if no cause has property X, it does not follow that the effect of those causes does not have property X. But like the fallacy of composition, this is not universally true. For example, if I construct a wall out of bricks that are not red, I will never produce a wall that is red.
Rational inference is another case where the fallacy does not obtain. If a set of nonrational causes come together to create some belief, that belief cannot have been rationally inferred. Rational inference requires reason, understanding, and an inferred conclusion based on the laws of logic and the premises at hand. Nonrational causes preclude such things. It cannot be the case that the statement, "It is raining outside," is fully explained by brain damage and at the same time is rationally inferred by the subject.
Seems obviously false to me. I believe rocks will roll downhill. The cause of that belief is explained as seeing rocks - which have no reason or understanding - rolling down hills - which also have no reason or understanding.
I agree. Lewis would not say that no nonrational elements are involved in the process of reasoning. He says that if nonrational causes fully explain a belief then it is not rationally inferred. There is no doubt that we make use of the brain in the process of reasoning, but that does not mean that nonrational causes in the brain fully explain our beliefs. A key phrase in premise 1 is, "Fully explained."
Go back and look.
I already did.
Yes, everyone believes this, except maybe people under the influence of something like LSD. Maybe they can temporarily believe matter reasons, but maybe not even then. Don't know, I'm just guessing.It is fine you believe this, but do all naturalists? If not, then the idea has no point in an attempt to prove the internal inconsistency of their beliefs.
Even granting your claim here is accurate, so what? They might not meet some arbitrary criteria made up by philosophers but they seem to work really well in practice. Given that, what reason do you have to assume that your criteria is the correct way to judge them?
Why should we assume that reason is fundamental and not simply yet another observation that we have had and description of the universe as it appears to us?
You are free to abandon reason and rational inference, as quatona attempted here. The result, as the OP points out, is that the belief, "Naturalism is true," can no longer be held as a valid rational inference. Abandon reason all you like; just don't go on to claim Naturalism as reasonable.
I am not abandoning reason, I just think it is derived from describing observed consistency and living as a being in the universe.
The unstated premise of this argument is that reasoning must come before and be more fundamental than observation or interaction, and I do not think that is likely true at all.
The etiology of reason is of no concern here, and I explain why here. What matters is whether you believe a belief can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes and still be rationally inferred.
That's not a premise of the argument at all. Reason need not be an a priori faculty for the argument to work.
We would need to know how rationality comes to exist to believe or disbelieve anything of the sort.
If rationality comes to exist via mundane means then what we mean by "rational" simply goes back to wherever it started and rationality is not purely independent of other faculties.
I don't think we do, but if you think you can produce an account of the development of rationality which makes it possible for a belief to be fully explained by nonrational causes and also rationally inferred, you are free to present such a case. I don't think there's any doubt that you have the burden of proof.
I think our understanding of rationality is fairly clear. If you think we fundamentally misunderstand what rationality is then you are again free to make such an argument.
We would have to know a bit more about how brains are made to do that.
However, simpler models can be found nearly everywhere on earth that are not capable of our type of linguistic rationality, but are capable of all sorts of other functions that are likely to be necessary before such a thing could come to exist via mundane means.
The possibility that rationality might depend on less effective precursors, does not really tell us much.
Our understanding of rationality doesn't extend to how it comes to exist, so an argument that it can't come to exist via natural means fails out of the gate as an argument from ignorance.
An argument that rationality that came out of some precursor would be "worse" than rationality that came to us via supernatural means is an argument from wishful thinking.
But again, you're just misrepresenting the argument. It doesn't say reason can't come to exist via natural means. It says a belief that is fully explained by nonrational causes is not a rational inference. You're stuck in the Plantinga thread. What our understanding of rationality does imply is premise 1.
It isn't an argument about the past, it is about the present. It says there is a present act of rational inference that Naturalism requires; if Naturalism is true then all present acts are fully explained by nonrational causes; if a belief is fully explained by nonrational causes then it is not a rational inference; therefore Naturalism cannot support the rational inference it requires.
Premise 1 is nothing like an argument from ignorance. It is a basic premise of rational discourse, and there are no known exceptions. Every human being holds some version of premise 1, and it is not because they don't know the etiology of rationality.
This is another strawman. Try reading the OP and responding to the argument. Which premise is incorrect and why?
We do not explain rational beliefs fully via non rational causes, they are explained by their own process and the processes that led up to them.
Premise two is also flawed because naturalism does not leave out rationality when explaining rational beliefs.
It looks like a lot of us couldn't get beyond the first premise:
"No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes."
Do you believe rational beliefs can in principle be fully explained by nonrational causes?
I explain what is needed to reject premise 1 here.
Premise 2 doesn't say Naturalism leaves out rationality when explaining rational beliefs (whatever that means). It says Naturalism believes that all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes. In order to refute premise 2 you would have to show some belief that the Naturalist believes cannot be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes.
The wording is difficult because I don't think any beliefs are possible that have no rationality attached, but I also think that life, brains and beliefs are material systems so I am confused.
I think that natural systems would have the ability to approach logic because they can incorporate abstractions and ideas that may be based upon material, but are composed of relationships.
Again, I don't think rationality can be left out in the explanation of beliefs, I think that rationality comes from material systems but is incapable of being left out of any explanation.
Our difference of opinion is over what we think "rationality" is and how it comes to be.
Mine lives within a natural system but is not dictated by non-rational elements, it is a fully functional piece of the system.
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