Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / What will be cast into the metaphysical waste bin in the near future?

**Posted by RomanJoe** 10/05/2018 3:44 pm

I think panpsychism and eleminative materialism won't withstand philosophical scrutiny. I also like to think that a century from now philosophers will look at brute facts and nominalism and ask themselves "what the hell was going on there?"

**Posted by Hypatia** 10/05/2018 6:47 pm

I don't see panpsychism going anywhere, though I hope it morphs back into a genuine idealism.

Is eliminative materialism taken all that seriously in the first place? It seems to be a minority view that people like to focus on specifically because of how extreme it is, and it'll probably continue to have its handful of loyal advocates.

**Posted by John West** 10/05/2018 10:57 pm

It depends on what you mean by "cast into the metaphysical waste bin". The history of philosophy, if it shows us anything, shows us that disputes over philosophical issues tend to not get decided, though everyone living may take one or another attitude towards those issues for long stretches of time.

**Posted by John West** 10/05/2018 11:04 pm

I also like to think that a century from now philosophers will look at brute facts and nominalism and ask themselves "what the hell was going on there?"

I would be interested in learning why you think this. I'll have to, in spite of my natural aversion to it, write a blog article defending blob nominalism some time after November. But with brute facts, it helps to take a step back from the theist community and have a look: the PSR has been becoming less and less, not more and more, popular over the last two hundred years. I don't see any sign of a grand revival of belief in it.

**Posted by seigneur** 10/06/2018 7:43 am

As much as I hope for the decline of nominalism, it seems that nominalism is an automatic background system for mathematicians.

Physicists who avoid straightforward atomism (belief in the primacy of particulars over universals) tend to approach nominalism too.

Sciences that would motivate essentialism or idealism with spiritual focus are not hip these days. Biology will remain in the grip of Darwinism for the foreseeable future. Arts and letters have not yet properly recovered from having discredited themselves with postmodernism.

Theology is simply history + ancient languages. There is some residual mention of God, but it's not much better than mentions of God in physics, where God = grasp of the theory of everything, or in law, where God = force majeure.

The best option currently seems to be philosophy proper, particularly ontology, ethics, logic, and epistemology (roughly in that order). These provide a direct insight into what are the most important things to think about, how and why.

**Posted by RomanJoe** 10/06/2018 2:11 pm

John West wrote:
I also like to think that a century from now philosophers will look at brute facts and nominalism and ask themselves "what the hell was going on there?"
I would be interested in learning why you think this. I'll have to, in spite of my natural aversion to it, write a blog article defending blob nominalism some time after November. But with brute facts, it helps to take a step back from the theist community and have a look: the PSR has been becoming less and less, not more and more, popular over the last two hundred years. I don't see any sign of a grand revival of belief in it.

I honestly couldn't give a solid reason which is why I prefaced it as something I would "like" to happen. I don't consider myself as philosophically well-rounded as most on this forum, especially with regards to certain philosophical trends in academia. That's partly why I started this thread.

Why do you think PSR has taken such a beating in the past two centuries?

**Posted by FZM** 10/06/2018 4:43 pm

John West wrote:
I also like to think that a century from now philosophers will look at brute facts and nominalism and ask themselves "what the hell was going on there?"
But with brute facts, it helps to take a step back from the theist community and have a look: the PSR has been becoming less and less, not more and more, popular over the last two hundred years. I don't see any sign of a grand revival of belief in it.

Except among New Atheist types? I have been listening to some of the debates between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson over the past couple of weeks. Harris talks about depending exclusively on something he calls 'pure rationality' and is apparently committed to the idea that there is no room for any kind of 'irrationality' in our knowledge of reality... I was wondering, what about brute facts here? Peterson was talking about Jungian psychology and didn't touch this issue.

I've come across other New Atheists making points similar to Harris (the ideas may originate in his writings). Anti-theistic polemic which treats the possibility of the existence of God as nothing but ludicrous and dangerous BS, at the same time as appearing to affirm PSR, definitely belongs in the bin.

**Posted by John West** 10/06/2018 7:45 pm

RomanJoe wrote:
honestly couldn't give a solid reason which is why I prefaced it as something I would "like" to happen.

Ah, okay. I thought you meant “I like to think” in more of a “I like to think people would have the good sense to listen to reason and. . .” kind of way.

Why do you think PSR has taken such a beating in the past two centuries?

Superficially, a lot of people admit brute facts because they're naturalists.* Armstrong and David Lewis, for example, are both totally explicit about this when starting their systems. Less superficially, I think you might be able to explain some of this in terms of Hume and early analytic philosophers' influence (see Daniel's discussion of analytic philosophers and modal notions here).

I've seen some scholastic authors suggest that people have moved away from the PSR as a result of their moving away from an intellectualist God, but even voluntarists might be able to affirm the PSR if they're willing to go as far as some contemporary authors and, for example, embrace the idea that free choices (in the libertarian sense) are explanations. I don't know much about the history of the PSR, though.

*N. B. I consider naturalism, the thesis that only spacetime and its contents exist, and atheism, the thesis that God doesn't exist, distinct. I also consider naturalism and physicalism, the thesis that everything obeys the laws of physics, distinct.

**Posted by John West** 10/06/2018 7:53 pm

Ed once called the New Atheists “Nietzsche's Last Man in rationalist drag”.

**Posted by Calhoun** 10/06/2018 11:51 pm

I don't know if PSR is getting more and more or less or less popular , there doesn't seem to be any data on this but I have seen it getting defense from secular philosophers and in non theistic context in recent times.