What we must accept if we accept materialism

This is another topic branching off from robinrohan's thread What we must accept if we accept evolution.The argument in that thread goes as follows:A. The theory of evolution implies an entirely physical universe
B. If you accept that the universe is entirely physical, then you must also accept the following:1. Materialism
2. Atheism
3. Determinism
4. NihilismNow any discussion about evolution seems to end up mired in obscure arguments about Judaeo-Christian mythology that, to a third-generation atheist like myself, are as interesting as watching paint dry on the Forth Bridge. So in this thread I'd like to ignore the theory of evolution and just ask the question:If you accept that the universe is entirely physical, then you must accept ... [insert robinrohan's 4 noble truths].---------------------------------------------------------------------My answers to this question would be as follows:1. Materialism
YES. By definition.2. Atheism
YES. If the universe is entirely physical, then there's no room for supernatural beings.3. Determinism.
NO. Not all physical processes are deterministic. The fact that an event has physical causes doesn't necessarily mean that the process that lead to it was deterministic. Therefore the question of whether humans have free will is still an open question even if you accept that the universe is entirely physical.4. Nihilism
I'm not really sure what I'm being asked to accept here.(a) That there is no supernatural being with a hidden plan? YES, I'd accept that definition. Clearly there aren't any supernatural beings.(b) That human beings can't make objective judgements about moral issues? NO, I wouldn't accept that definition. How does it follow from an acceptance that the universe is entirely physical?

These issues are being discussed ad nauseam in the parallel threads. The question posed by this thread is:Assuming the universe is entirely physical, what other things can we validly say about the universe?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

I don't know. What do you think?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Yes, I suppose a physical God would be allowable in this entirely physical universe. But that would raise all kinds of interesting theological and moral problems. I agree. I wasn't really dismissing subjective values and purposes, just standing up for our ability to make objective judgements about moral issues. A nihilist would argue that because there is no absolute, unchanging ground for our morality (e.g. a God), then it's impossible to find objective criteria for making judgements.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Everything we can observe through our senses, or through extensions to our senses like scientific instruments.Materialism for the purpose of this thread means the belief that nothing exists apart form the things we can observe and interact with. Specifically it denies that this material world can be affected by sentient beings that can't be observed, i.e. it holds to the Epicurean principle that "nothing can touch body but body" (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura).This message has been edited by JavaMan, 02-08-2006 12:24 PM

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

People imagine all kinds of things, but a reasonable man has to assure himself that these things correspond to something that isn't merely a subjective experience.When it comes to gods and angels, neither of which he has any personal experience of, what is a reasonable man to do? He can ask his friends and acquaintances about their experiences, but none of them admits to having seen an angel (although that might just be English reticence), and even those who believe in God don't seem to have met him personally (although they do know a friend of a friend who met him once).(Anyway, on reflection, the reasonable man thinks, even if I did find someone with an appropriate experience, what would that prove? I can find people who say they've been abducted by aliens - does that prove that aliens exist?)But look at the evidence of religion, you might argue. Every society in the world has some belief in a God or gods, and in most of those societies every person believes. Doesn't that prove that God must have some objective existence?If there were just one religion in the world and everyone believed in the same god, I might concede that you had a point. But there isn't and they don't. There are multiple, contradictory religions and multiple, contradictory gods. A reasonable man observing all of this can only conclude that ALL of them are pre-scientific Just-So stories.A final argument that clinches it for me is as follows:1. Generally people experience the God that their culture sanctions;2. It isn't possible for all religions to be true, because they're contradictory;3. If one of these religions were true that would mean that the vast majority of religious experiences of god must be false - they must be just imagination;4. It it's possible for the vast majority of humanity to be deluded in this way, then it's not beyond the grounds of possiblility for all of humanity to be deluded.5. Therefore, even if everybody in the world believed in the god their culture sanctioned (which is by no means the case), that wouldn't provide one jot of evidence that any of the gods they believed in had any objective existence. I don't have a problem with the current scientific hypothesis, that thoughts are our subjective experience of neural activity in the conscious areas of the brain. Under this hypothesis, it doesn't make any sense to talk about 'thoughts' and 'thought patterns' as something separate from the brain.In fact, I'd go so far as to predict that within our lifetime we will have developed neural machines that are so complex that they exhibit conscious 'thoughts' and 'thought patterns' comparable to the 'thoughts' and 'thought patterns' of humans. I don't have much to add to what Percy has said, only to caution against taking the words scientists use to describe things too literally. What has primacy is the phenomenon being observed. When electrons were first discovered they seemed to exhibit particulate behaviour, so they were described as 'particles' by analogy with the macroscopic particles we see around us.Now in our common-sense macroscopic world 'particles' and 'waves' are two different types of things, so when it was discovered that electrons exhibit wave-like behaviour as well as particulate behaviour, that seemed like a paradox. But in reality all it meant was that the analogies being used to explain those behaviours were inadequate, and scientists needed a new approach to understanding the phenomena observed. And the new approach they took was the weird and wonderful world of quantum theory.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Apologies for my previous post. I allowed myself to be diverted from the thread topic by the pleasure of a good argument.I concede your point that, hypothetically, gods and angels could be 'material' in an extended sense of the word. If this were the case then atheism would not be a necessary outcome of accepting materialism (as Omnivorous argued in Message 5).Your position is quite rare. Most religious thinkers tend to be dualists, i.e. they believe that the universe is made up of two different substances, the material and the spiritual. The spiritual, in this view, is the 'higher' substance and can act upon the material (which is how your soul can control the actions of your body), but the material can't act upon the spiritual (which is why spiritual things can never be detected by material scientific instruments - when you see gods and angels it is your spiritual self that sees them not your material eyes).The alternative position is called monism and argues that the universe is made of just one type of substance. This is the position that you seem to have been arguing in your previous posts in this thread.Now, which of these positions you take is important when it comes to discussing the questions of Free Will vs Determinism and Morality vs Nihilism (which is the topic of this thread). For all dualists, and many monists, the monist position leads to the following conclusions:1. In a material universe, all outcomes are determined by an unbroken sequence of physical cause and effect;2. If all outcomes have a deterministic physical cause, then there can be no room for free will in such a universe.A dualist would agree with these conclusions, but argue that, while the physical self is constrained by determinism, free will is a property of the spiritual self. Many monists would also agree with these conclusions, and would argue that this means that our sense of free will is an illusion.The argument about morality is slightly different. For a dualist. things like morality and logic are properties of the spiritual world, and so would be absent from an entirely physical world. Many monists, strangely enough, agree with this position, believing that the deterministic chain of cause and effect leaves no room for patently human inventions like morality and logic.As I suggested earlier, your position, as a religious monist, is quite rare. It would be interesting to hear what you think about these two issues.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Of course. My previous post may have been misleading in that it equated monism with realism. As you point out, there are really two general forms of monism, realism and idealism. That's only a problem for a dualist. If you don't believe there are two separate types of things, 'physical' and 'mental', then there's no problem. A realist would argue that mental events are just your subjective experience of physical brain activity.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

I'm no expert, but it looks that way. (Although there does seem to be a strong idealist tradition in the West as well, from Plato and Plotinus through to Berkeley and Schopenhauer). Unless God is material, as Omnivorous and randman have pointed out.Anyway, back to the thread topic, which I originally started to continue a debate with you about determinism and nihilism. So now I've got your attention...Free will and determinismYour argument (as expressed in previous posts) is that free will is an illusion because each action has a physical cause, and if it has a physical cause then it must have been automatic rather than freely chosen. This argument is one I might have agreed with when I was a young man, but now, with a little more knowledge and experience under my belt, it appears faulty to me for the following reasons:1. Firstly, not all physical processes are deterministic. I've argued this point elsewhere (What we must accept if we accept evolution: Message 189) so I won't go into it here;2. Secondly, the premise that a freely-chosen action must be uncaused is false. In fact, if you think about it, if someone did act without cause you would consider them insane rather than free (thanks to the philosopher Donald Davidson for this argument);3. Thirdly, we are only discussing this issue because human beings seem to be freer of immediate stimulus-response constraints than other animals. And there is a good biological reason for this. Without a brain an organism is pretty much driven by immediate responses to stimuli. What the brain supplies is a way of controlling the response to a stimulus by placing a processing mechanism between the stimulus and the response. In a complex brain like ours, a lot of the processing that goes on is detached 2, 3 or 4 removes from the initial stimulus, which is what gives us the relative freedom to act in different ways under a given stimulus. (So, ironically, it is precisely the blind, mechanical process of evolution that has provided us with the capacity for making free choices!)I want to tackle the issue of Morality and Nihilism next, but as I have to earn a living as well as contribute to this board, I'll leave that to a separate post!

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Randman, I'm beginning to feel a bit left out. You seem to be replying to everyone here but me. Have I done something to upset you?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

That's OK. I was just feeling left out . There's no hurry to reply.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

There's no such thing as 'logical' causation. We're talking about a material universe where all causes are physical. The argument goes that if an action (like a human behaviour) is entirely determined by physical events, then we don't have free will. One of the implications of this argument is that we WOULD have free will if the action didn't have a cause. But an action without a cause is not free but arbitrary, and a person acting arbitrarily we generally consider insane (unless you're Andre Gide).The 'physical events' that lead to your actions are your instincts, desires, emotions, reasoning, etc. In other words those physical events are you. Your individual freedom therefore consists in your acting upon these physical events with the least possible external restraint, not in those actions being entirely free from physical causation. (A paraphrase of a paraphrase of an argument from the Chinese philosopher Mencius - hopefully not leading to a game of Chinese whispers!).

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

The argument of nihilism goes as follows:If there is no God or other supernatural basis for morality then man can do anything he wants. This argument has two implications:1. If man can do anything he wants, there is nothing to keep him from doing evil;2. If morality and purpose aren't laid down by God, then we can't have any objective criteria for preferring one action or way of life over another.Let's deal with these arguments in turn.There is nothing to restrain man from doing evilThis assumes that the only effective sanction against evil or immoral actions are divine sanctions. This is clearly not the case. Where the behaviour of an individual affects others we have social and legal sanctions as well. In fact, in most societies these are far more effective than divine sanctions in restraining people's behaviour - it is only where a religion controls the law and social opinion that it has any appreciable impact on individual behaviour.Where an individual's behaviour does not affect others, then no one has any right to impose sanctions of any kind, whether legal, social or divine.There is no reason to choose one action or way of life over another1. Firstly, I would argue that no religion provides a complete guide either to morals or purpose. Those who try to use religions as a complete guide tend to live such narrow, crabbed lives that I don't think any of us would envy them.2. Secondly, there are moral philosophies that depend on appeals to reason and experience rather than the supernatural. For example, both epicureanism and utilitarianism base their arguments on the simple observation that human beings seek out pleasure (or happiness) and try to avoid pain. Arguments about purpose and general moral principles can be derived from these observations, and objective criteria provided to aid in making decisions.Other objective criteria can be derived from general principles such as the following:Do unto others as you would have them do to you (Jesus)Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature (Kant)3. Thirdly, I would argue that a diversity of available moral principles is a good thing rather than a bad. I can't imagine anything more detrimental to the future well-being of mankind than a single set of moral values accepted by everybody.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

We don't generally worry about people doing good. What kind of thing would be an acceptable ground to you?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

I'd argue that the working out of ethical and legal obligations is a purely practical matter. Is it that difficult for a group to work out that it's in everyone's interests to treat murder or theft, for example, as ethically wrong, and to provide some kind of sanction to deter people from committing these acts? How could any society exist without such rules? It's based on reason and experience, and is a libertarian principle that both of our countries hold dear. One can trace the arguments for it through the works of many thinkers, particularly since the enlightenment, but my favourite expression of it is found in John Stuart Mill's essay, On Liberty. I doesn't make any sense to me to talk of the universe being run by moral principles. Moral principles apply to the behaviour of human beings; I wouldn't expect them to have any meaning outside that sphere. Firstly, if there were a single, all-powerful God one would expect to see a single, universal morality shared by all cultures. If ethics and laws arose naturally, as I have suggested, then one would expect some commonality (because it's difficult to imagine any society surviving for long if it didn't outlaw murder or theft, say), but one would also expect a great deal of diversity, because not all cultures face exactly the same conditions of life, or contain the same individuals.Secondly, even a universal moral law such as 'Thou shalt not kill' is not considered absolute by any society (except among groups like the Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses in the West, and by Jains and some Buddhists and Hindus in the East). And the reason why it isn't considered absolute is because the proscription only applies to a limited group, not to all of mankind. If that group goes to war with another group, then very few consider applying the protection of the rule to members of the other group. Although ultimately everyone is completely free to take any action they like, in reality we all live in society and we generally constrain our behaviour (either consciously or unconsciously) to avoid social disapproval or legal punishment.A traditional conservative would argue that there is nothing to be gained by trying to look beyond these traditional values and laws, that these values and laws are somehow infallible, having been revealed by an all-powerful God or fashioned by a group of wise men living in some mythic golden age.However, I think that experience has shown that no set of social values or laws is completely infallible. Our history is full of adjustments and refinements inspired by men who have looked beyond revelation and tradition to search out more solid foundations for our moral behaviour.As to the question of how we choose between different moral principles, well we use reason and experience, as we do in all things. What other means do we have for making judgements about anything? The supernatural, in all its guises, seems to me so bounded by human desires and concerns that I can't feel much awe for the world it describes. When I compare the human-scale universe of Genesis, for example, with the jaw-droppingly complex reality we've uncovered over the past five hundred years, the story pales into insignificance beside the reality.The real world seems infinitely vast, infinitely complex, infinitely mysterious. It is contemplation of the non-human otherness of that world that gives me a sense of the numinous, not the all-too-human stories of gods and angels.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible