1 - AKG
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Good Criticism of materialism
Are there any works criticising materialism that anyone would reccomemend? At the top of my head I can think of the work of people like John Searle, David Chalmers, Dr. Feser, and Thomas Nagel. Beside this has anyone read the works of the people I listed along Dr. Feser? If so, are they any good as I've heard Dr. Nagels book Mind and Cosmos recieved a lot of critcism.
- DanielCC
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
Off the top of my head you might be interested in the anthology
The Waning of Materialism
and Stephen Parish's
The Knower and the Known: Physicalism, Dualism, and the Nature of Intelligibility
- AKG
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
Thanks Daniel,
Have you or anyone else read the works of atheist critics of Materialism like Searle, Nagel, and Fodor? If so how was their work, and why do you reject their alternatives such as property dualism and panphysicism
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Thread Starter- AKG
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
Dr. Feser also argues that naturalism is self-refuting due to ultimately collapsing into Eliminative Materialisms, but could'nt a naturalist take a non-eliminative approach instead?
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Thread Starter- iwpoe
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
AKG wrote:
but could'nt a naturalist take a non-eliminative approach instead?
Some "so-called" naturalists do, but it's unclear that they are being consistent. This is only allowed because few people in their camp would require a systematic understanding of the metaphysics behind their particular claims. They are like "atheists" who say only that it's obvious the God of the bible isn't real.
Some people call themselves naturalists more as a factional label, but don't subscribe to anything that rightly entails physicalism. These people are generally merely positivists or intellectual enthusiasts for the natural sciences.
Last edited by iwpoe (9/24/2015 12:17 am)
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- AKG
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
According to Dr. Feser(correct me if I'm wrong) the reason eliminative materialism is incoherent due to denying intentionality( as well as the existence of the mind) which ultimately makes the matter composing everything even us under materialism unintelligent, and gives us no reason to accept any truth's under this materialism or trust our intellect since it is purposeless mindless matter like a rock if EM is true. The alternatives in order to avoid theism are property dualism( which John Searle thinks entails substance dualism) and panphysicism. But isn't property dualism incredibly problematic as well as I saw a video which states that it is basically like having a bunch of red legos become a blue one,(material somehow becoming immaterial) which does not make sense? Is'nt panpsychism a form on pantheism and not really naturalism if everything is some sort of proto-consciousness? It seems to me that naturalism faces a lot of problems which either make it inchorent or not really naturalism.
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Thread Starter- iwpoe
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
It depends upon how you interpret pantheism, but I don't think that panphysicism is properly a pantheism.
Panpsychism takes mind as a primitive property (as do most dualisms), but solves interaction and separation problems by positing the presence of this primitive property in all things.
Pantheism means the presence of divinity in all things. Spinoza actually does practice a logic like the one I've just given for panpsychism to motivate his pantheism, but in his case the emphasis is more on the presence of classical theistic attributes in all: unity, eternity, immutability, immensity, etc. He is concerned with dualism, but not a dualism between knower and world, but rather the dualism between the *ground* and guarantee of all truth that Descartes has identified (i.e. God) and the world. Most people who read the Meditations usually forget that God is also just as separate from the extended material world as is the cogito, and it was God that troubled Spinoza, not necessarily the cogito.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- AKG
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
@iwpoe
Your explanation does clear things up for me thanks for that.
Does anyone have reasons for why they accept hylomorphic dualisms over panpsychism and idealism?
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Thread Starter- Mysterious Brony
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
A good book that critiques materialist theories of the mind is Agents under Fire by Angus Menuge. Dr. Menuge uses really similar arguments that Dr. Feser uses against such materialist theories.
- Scott
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Re: Good Criticism of materialism
A good book that critiques materialist theories of the mind is Agents under Fire by Angus Menuge. Dr. Menuge uses really similar arguments that Dr. Feser uses against such materialist theories.
Looks like a good book. Without having read it myself, though, I'd caution against too hastily identifying its arguments with Ed's. Some of them may be similar to some of his, but Ed's not exactly a huge fan of Intelligent Design and arguments based on "irreducible complexity." (And from the table of contents it doesn't appear that Menuge touches much at all on Ed's most fundamental arguments -- e.g. the argument from indeterminacy.)
Last edited by Scott (10/06/2015 12:57 pm)