What we must accept if we accept evolution

Robin asserts that an evolutionist must also accept materialism, determinism, atheism and nihilism.I am trying to make sense of this claim. I am not succeeding.I am not a determinist. Many physicists, particularly quantum physicists, are not determinists. In what way should that cause a problem for me (as an evolutionist).On materialism, robinrohan says "One cannot, I think, be a dualist and accept TOE." I'm not certain that's correct. But it seems to me that materialism is not the same as the denial of dualism. Surely one could believe in a supernatural world without necessarily believing in an immaterial soul.As for nihilism - I never did understand what robin sees in that. Perhaps I still don't understand what nihilism is.

---

Impeach Bush

In that case, nihilism is trivially true and uninteresting. Both "meaning" and "purpose" are inherently subjective. Of course life has no objective meaning or purpose.This has nothing to do with belief in evolution.

---

Impeach Bush

quote:

---

Surely one could believe in a supernatural world without necessarily believing in an immaterial soul.

​

"Supernatural" means incorporeal.

---

Fair enough. But couldn't one believe in an incorporeal God, but not in an incorporeal soul?

You are presupposing that there is such a thing as ultimate meaning.

quote:

---

You are presupposing that there is such a thing as ultimate meaning.

​

If there were a God, there might be ultimate meaning.

---

"Ultimate meaning" is our expression, and references our experience. If there exists a God who does not in any way impact our senses, that existence could have no bearing on whether there is such a thing as "ultimate meaning".

No materialism and evolutionism are not the same.Evolution is materialist, in that it is about physical organisms. But one can be an evolutionist without insisting that everything is material. That's really a different meaning of "materialism". One can enjoy life without being committed to maximize one's material riches.

I'm a bit mystified by this "aura of incorporeality", because the description does not match anything in my experience. This seems quite wrong to me. I don't believe that thoughts are any more physical than the money in my bank account.

But my visualizations are not that good.I wouldn't use "aura of incorporeality" for that. Obviously, thoughts originate in neural activity. The neural activity is partly learned and partly evolved.Why do thoughts have to be made of anything? What is music made of? What are numbers made of? What is the money in my bank account made of?There are lots of things in our lives that don't match what we think of as physical. If you still want to call them physical, then you owe us a definition of "physical" that fits.

Thanks, Parasomnium. As you probably guessed, I was challenging robin to see if he could come up with something similar.In Message 143, robinrohan wrote: Robin's argument would make sense if thoughts were made of physical stuff. But since they aren't, his argument is far from persuasive.

Yes, I agree with that. But I don't see any "aura of incorporeality" because I don't find an aura.There are lots of important things that are not made of stuff. I like to use a river as an example. We could dig up all of the dirt along the banks of the mississippi, and replace it with different dirt. Then we could wait a few weeks until all the water has flowed to sea, to be replaced by different water. But it would still be the same mississippi river. So obviously the river is not made of dirt and water. It isn't made of stuff.

That seems wrong to me. However, I would agree to: I don't see that a thought itself is any kind of event. However, the act of having a thought is an event.

I think your range of choices is too limited.What's a symphony (think of Beethoven's 9th, for example).The symphony isn't physical. A particular performance is physical. But the word "symphony" doesn't refer to a particular performance. And the symphony isn't mental either, because the symphony exists even when nobody is thinking about it.Or what's a number. Think of a complex number such as the square root of -1. What is it? Is it physical? Is it mental? Is it supernatural?It seems to me that there is a large class of things that don't fit your "either it's physical or it's mental". And a great deal of our conversation is about such things.

There are many things that you cannot locate or measure. For example, the number 5. We have many nouns that refer to abstactions of one kind or another. Abstractions have no location and are not made of physical stuff.It really makes little sense to use "incorporeal" for such things.The say that the mind is incorporeal ought to mean more than that it is an abstraction. It ought to mean that if can float free of the body. To say that your mind is incorporeal ought to mean that you mind can be enjoying a vacation in China, while your body is busy at work in the U.S.While the mind is not made of stuff, that does not make it incorporeal in any important sense. It merely indicates that mind is something of an abstraction, an entity invented so serve a particular role in language.

I disagree with your conclusions. I would like to see a convincing argument for this. I don't believe that there could be such an argument.Pretend, for the moment, that substance dualism is true. That is, pretend that we are spirits, temporarily occuping a body. The theory of evolution is a theory only about the body component of that duality. The theory of evolution says nothing at all about whether there is a spiritual component and how that arises. If our reasoning is theoretically suspect, what theory is that which makes them theoretically suspect.What's a logical belief? The term "logical beliefs" sounds nonsensical to me.What's the basis for saying that beliefs are caused? Physicists are telling us that we live in a world with many uncaused events.What, exactly, would be the problem if beliefs are caused? I have a belief that the coffee mug in front of me is almost empty. If that belief happens to have been caused by the fact that the coffee mug in front of me is almost empty, in what way would that causation be a problem? Why is a deduction or an inference being excluded as an allowable cause? A computer doesn't do any logical thinking. A computer can be said to do logic (although that is challengeable), but computers do not think. Or at least current computers do not think. Okay, I'll modify that. If you consider a person to be a computer, then there are some computers that think. You finally said something I can agree with. You need to define what you mean by "physical", and then show the logic by which you reach these conclusions.For myself, I don't agree that we are purely physical. Our bodies are purely physical. And maybe everything we do can be accounted for in terms of our bodies and their interactions with the world. But that word "we" is not a reference to our bodies. And if "we" is not a reference to our bodies, then it isn't at all clear that *we* are purely physical.

Hardly a convincing argument. No. The theory of evolution says nothing about consciousness. It deals only with the biology.The evidence against dualism comes from psychology and neuroscience, not from ToE. And even then, many people find it less than convincing. Can you let us in on the secret? What theory is it that you are referring to here? Hardly convincing. Can you fill in the gaps that get you from that assertion to your statement about beliefs? Is there any reason to say that they are not logical?Let me add here, that I am doubtful about beliefs. We may say that people have beliefs, but there isn't anything that they have which justifies our saying this. Beliefs are things we attribute to people, not things that the people actually have. When was that ruled out?I remember discussing that thoughts might not be physical. But a deduction is not a thought, it's an action.