Are Atheists "Philosophically Limited"....?

I'd love to see the case which has Dennett come out as 'philosophically deficient' while Peter Medawar is philosophically astute; and it would strike at the heart of the topic, too.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I do think it is funny to say that a professional philosopher is philosophically deficient and your basis for that seems to be that you weren't personally impressed with his position.But to keep discussion moving I'll accept examples of the deficiency of philosophy with regards to Dawkins so that we might at least know what you mean.

Actually you said you were 'not impressed by his philosophy of science or of God'. You did not say you were not impressed by his thinking about God and philosophy of science, though I grant that is what you meant to say. Which is why I invited you to discuss the philosophical deficiencies of Dawkins, with whom you are more familiar, so that we may at least get a sense of what you are talking about.

We should be skeptical of the reasoning that has come from this process, and history shows us why we should be skeptical. Our natural reasoning is highly flawed, weighted as it is towards propagating genes - not navigating space or building skyscrapers. Our intuitive reasoning in these circumstances is terrible and we have to train our brains for at least a decade to be any good at them. For a species whose natural lifespan is about thirty years - that's not practical. Why? Can an intelligence not create brains that are poor at reasoning? Again you are limiting things philosophically. You are ruling out weighted probabilities as being able to produce animals that survive, fuck and murder, but we are not ruling out an intelligence, just pointing out the lack of support for that notion.

And my view, as an atheist is that it is possible that the simple rules that result in the complexity of the universe were dictated by some divine being, but it is not necessary and no argument has shown that it is.My view is that there is something that is primal to reality that necessarily results in what we see today, but I don't know what that thing is and neither do you.So who is philosophically limited?

I don't believe the answer is unknowable. Only that at present we don't know what the answer is. You seem to be suggesting that it is not possible for simple primal rules to simply exist that lead to the complexity of our present day universe. This seems to be ruling something out which is not yet possible to rule out. This seems to me to be the definition of philsophical limitation.

That would imply that it can never be known. That is why I say it is unknown not unknowable. The two words are suitably different for me to draw the distinction. And there is no reason to suppose this primal rule giver is in some way sentient, though it might be.There is a clear philosophical tension of a sentient being that exists prior to the existence of rules - since sentience is a rule-based process. Without rules, the sentience would just be chaos and random chance, the very thing you are trying to avoid by invoking said being. This tension has never been philosophically resolved. I'm open to it possibly being true, but ruling out the possibility of a non-intelligent rule giver is philosophically limiting. Granted. But I was saying that ruling out what you do not believe is the defintion of philosophical limitation. I do not rule out an intelligent rule giver, you seem to be ruling out a non-intelligent rule giver.

Again, not to be philosophically limiting I should say that I believe it is the case that with present information it is unknowable.I certainly don't know it's unknowable, some genius might be able to take the information we have now and derive the primal facts of reality and explain what has foxed us for so long. Would you concur that it is not philosophically limiting to have a philosophical opinion or position? Nor is it philosophically limiting to have a philosophical reason to reject another philosophical position.And could you explain why 'work so well' is relevant to intelligent rule givers who could also make rules that don't work so well. Are you suggesting that material primal facts of reality are intrinsically unreliable in some fashion?

Game theory predicts that strategies which appear altrusitic can be evolutionarily stable. It isn't a good thing. Genes that don't propagate don't propagate. Those that do, do. If a gene propagates better because one of its possessor's performs an 'altruistic' act then it will increase in frequency. It's not 'good' it's just maths. It matters because we're interested in it. Not at all. Being able to answer a question doesn't make one limited, does it? I am perfectly willing to listen to alternative ideas, and to criticise them as appropriate. It would be limited if we simply stopped testing ideas, which some theists could be said to be doing when they assert that altruism must be 'insert theistic explanation' and that material causes cannot explain it in principle.