Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Joe,

You have to remember the materialist, of the usual scientistic variety, relies on logic and reason to support his position. He's not a radical sceptic or mystic. He can't claim reason and logic are hamstrung and still use them to support science and materialist metaphysics/accounts of the mind.

Yes, my biggest objection to his worldview was the indeterminacy of matter and how it can never instantiate a determinate form. A cookie, a basketball hoop, even a high resolution picture of a circle, are only--at best--'circular,' and they can't in principle ever instantiate the determinate nature of perfect circularity. Our use of formal reasoning is entirely determinate--it follows strict laws of logic and can only function with exactitude. The issue is that if physical things can only approximate the determinate, then it follows that we only ever approximate formal reasoning. But what does it mean to approximate modus tollens (a form of argument I caught my materialist interlocutor using a lot)? It means we just don't do it. But formal reasoning is determinate, you can't reason validly if you only approximate it--much in the same way you can't have a perfect circle if you only approximate it. So, on his view, he can never reason validy, he can never do modus ponens or modus tollens, for instance. Therefore, he can never know the truth of his conclusions, including those that purport the truth of materialism. So, in the end, his worldview undermines his reasoning towards that worldview. 

Last edited by RomanJoe (5/17/2017 2:01 am)