If you are reacting to the ideas that are stored in your neural framework, and the ideas in your framework are reacting to other ideas in other frameworks, both in that framework and outside of it, then you are reacting to something other than the fundamental cause and effect like a usual material system.
Further, If you are incredibly more complex than the world around you then the world is reacting to you rather than the other way around.
Your set of assumptions seems to me to be saying that naturalism must blame the paper and ink for the story.
I am saying natural things need not be fully pre-determined. Biological systems do not interact with the world perfectly, and when they get to our level of sophistication, ideas do not either.
Ideas start reacting to ideas and the system is less and less determined by a simple cause effect relationship that you see with predictable material systems.
The idea that we break away from the exact predictability of deterministic materialism should be something apparent to anyone watching such a system.
This remains deterministic. Why on earth would it suddenly not be? The ideas to which you are reacting were materially derived initially, and the cascade of matter that causes follow up ideas, were derived therefrom as well. It merely means that the matter that caused the first Idea thus caused the second as well, as it is directly as a consequence of the first and so forth and so forth.
Likewise if we alter our environment, the impulse to do so, or idea, was as much materially derived and therefore ultimately predetermined by the iterations of our molecules, as a tree falling in the wind or the orbit of a planet. It is merely then a more complex set of natural events, multiple referrents and causes, but all of those would be the direct effects of previous material interactions, even if derived from human desires - which are the same. Even if we could place a wire in your head and give you an idea, both that idea and the preceding idea to put a wire into the head, are fully determined if Naturalism is the case. It changes nothing at all to the argument, or please explain in what manner we have thus transcended the tyranny of physiology in this instance? For I am sure you don't think ideas poof out of nothingness into our minds? Are they not the work of neural physiology, and dependant on other ideas similarly derived or external stimuli received? If that is the case, then following back their ancestry, we would still find determined matter before this and all its progeny would still be the consequence of it, and their own irrational material origins, and could not have been otherwise.
Biological life rooting around still had their activities instigated by the molecules that gave rise to them, and in turn, the unceasing 'striving' of life as you call it, still has a material basis in genetic material and so forth. The blind process of reproduction then, would favour what was better at it, I am sure you have heard of this? Its called Evolution. All the actions of all life, would be ultimately traceable back to the first single cell organism that appeared in some primordial slime, and all its further actions determined by the manner in which its constituent components interacted with its world and its fellows, for the 'aim' (I use the term loosely) of reproduction and of genes. So you would say Evolution is not a blind process? That cells somehow transcend their components? Are you sure you are defending Naturalism, or digging its grave?
As an analogy, though a poor one, let's take a computer. I input commands and it receives electricity and these then have complex interactions within it, and spits out a program for me to follow. While the program can be complex, had many stages of computations in between, it was still determined by its initial programming and my input. It was determined in that manner. If someone was someday to create a program that achieved sentience, it would still be determined by the programming it received and the input that was initially given it. While it would be 'self-aware', its further actions would be necessarily based on the hardware it was running off of, the initial programming it received, and input it received from outside. These would be the cause and underlying constituents of its further actions, and these were determined, and thus so was its later actions, which follow necessarily therefrom. For the only thing that could alter this, would be further 'input from outside' or it would just run a fully internal and determined set of functions, no matter how vast its thoughts would roam or how complex they became. Now all natural events are determined, water flowing downhill or rocks falling of cliff faces, so if each of us are thus a 'computer' of this form, all our external input is thus also deterministic, which thus renders those 'internal functions' deterministic as well. If we interact with other lives, what of it? They are also therefore deterministic in and of themselves, so our interaction with another deterministic entity, in no way saves us from determinism.
Human knoledge is not disestablished by naturalism, as human knoledge is based upon observation and interaction with the world.
Have you read the thread? Naturalism cannot establish true inference and thus validity. I have not heard any arguments that somehow alter this fact. Just restating your position without addressing the criticism of it, is really not saying anything at all.
I think rationality works just fine at our level, and is not mythological at all.
I've just given you a better idea of where it comes from rather than just saying it was poofed in via the God's
Of course you think it does, you have redefined Rationality into a complete nonentity with no meaning whatsoever. This however remains at odds with how it has been understood for millennia, which you obviously would just call an archaicism. To pretend a problem doesn't exist by altering the meaning of the words it is framed by, is really not answering it.
