Before reading further, may I preface this with the following:
This discussion is largely peripheral to the main one. If you really want to discuss use of the word 'magic' or the implications of dualism, may I suggest opening other threads for them?
The act of redefining an existing term in such a way that it only pertains to a single thing that you wish to associate with the generally accepted definition, and excludes other things that you don't wish to associate with the generally accepted definition is useless at best, and special pleading at worst. So call it what you want.
What redefinition? How did I redefine an existing word? What the hell are you talking about?
Ah, but that was just another little change in definition. Your comment to which I was responding was:
Magic describes unexplainable interactions between two realms of substance where one of those substances is 'mental'. Every use of the word 'magic' that I have ever seen involves the idea of an agent behind the mysterious interaction.
Of course, you only added the word "organized" to your definition later on in order to exclude quantum randomness, which is indeed special pleading. From
Wikipedia:
Special pleading is a form of spurious argumentation where a position in a dispute introduces favorable details or excludes unfavorable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations themselves. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.
First of all that is not what happened whatever motivations you want to project on me. I threw out a quick and dirty definition to highlight the differences between a material monistic account of mental causation and a dualistic account. Both already include the idea of a mind, so I didn't see any reason to repeat that idea in that discussion; the important distinction was the presence or absence of a possible explanation. The dualistic account doesn't provide a causal account and essentially amounts to -- well thinking just causes my arm to rise. That is not an explanation that involves an actual mechanism; it is whitewashing with words.
The definitions of magic I have seen do imply some sort of organizing -- mental -- force, or they imply it. Magic consists in an unexplainable intentional occurrence. Intention imlies a mind behind the workings. Whether we are talking about a magic penny bringing luck or whatever, the intentionality of it implies some sort of mind. No one need think -- there is a genie in my penny.
If you want to play the Wittegenstein game, then go right ahead. We all know that definitions of words share only family resemblences and that one can virtually always find some exception to a definition.
I was not making an argument by using the word 'magic'. Why in the world are we spending so much time and space on a non-issue? I was using a descriptive word to point out one of the prime problems with dualism -- that it does not provide a causal account for how thought can affect the material world. Just saying that it can do it is not a mechanism. The whole point I was making is that dualism necessarily leaves out the mechanism. If it had a mechanism, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I will ask again, if dualism supplied and actual mechanism for how mind affects matter, how could we distinguish it from materialism? If you think dualism supplies a mechanism for thought to affect matter, then please tell me. I would love to hear what it is.
For no apparent reason? I'm not sure we wouldn't.
As I've told you before and now for the third time, if you want to call it magic I don't care. No one is stopping you. I don't though.
So is gravity "magic" then?
No. Why would I think that?
It seems to be organized (non-random). Or are you saying that gravity is unexplained, but explainable?
Did general relativity pop out of existence while I wasn't looking? We have mechanistic accounts for gravity. They are not full accounts, but we have outlines.
I'm really not concerned with definitions so much. It is possible that the natural is made up of the same substance as the supernatural (either property dualism, neutral monism, dual-aspect monism, or something else). That said, I have yet to see a definition of dualism that precludes a causal account. In fact, Wikipedia specifically lists
dualist views of mental causation.
Bri you have been doing virtually nothing but harping on definitions and now you want to tell me that you don't concern yourself with them? Did you look at that link? Are you prepared to explain to me exactly what this mental causation consists of, what its theory is, how it works even in outline? Saying that the mental affects the physical and attaching the word "causation" is not an explanation. There is a reason why mechanisms are not provided -- because mechanism implies causation which implies material monism. How and why is this controversial? Why is this taking up any space?
Nobody but you has suggested that a personal god had to operate via dualism. You'll need to provide evidence that no other model is possible if you want to base your argument on that assumption. Once you've provided that evidence, you'll need to provide further evidence that a causal account would be impossible if dualism was true.
I gave you my arguments so many times I see no reason to repeat them. I have not heard a counter. How is God as a person accountable by another ontology? I didn't create this category -- God as other -- it was handed to us by prior generations. I am simply using that definition.
OK, so you have admitted that if a god were to act in the world it would be evidence for the existence of the god. So, then evidence of the existence of a god IS possible. Are you suggesting that even if we have compelling evidence for the existence of a god it would still be irrational to believe in its existence?
Of course I'm not. Jesus Christ, Bri, will you please stop projecting at me. This is getting utterly tiresome. I stated outright very early in this conversation that dualism is not impossible, that God intervening in the world is not impossible. Of course that would be evidence for the existence of God. The issue is over what would make that evidence compelling; it differs for different categories of beings.
We are generally less inclined to believe something that does not have a good rationale behind it. The physically possible with good physical evidence is believable. The physically impossible with good physical evidence is not as believable (we are inclined to think that someone is pulling our leg first). We require more evidence, often asking for repeatable evidence to be sure since we would need to reorient our thinking or change our paradigm if we run into good evidence that the physically impossible is, in fact, possible (or at least exists in some sense).
Take quantum weirdness as an example. We already had some of the underlying theory in place before the really weird results started piling up. Many folks did not believe some of the initially wacky results until they were replicated several times so that no one could deny them (rationally).
I'd be interested in hearing your definition of "matter" in this context. Do you include scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces, or the curvature of space as "matter"? I suspect you're using a different definition of "material" than theists are.
Yes. That is the more common definition of 'material' now. That theists hold onto a 19th century definition which amounts to a strawman is not my concern.
It is possible that we are made of the same stuff as God but that we have different properties than God (which would account for God being "fundamentally other").
Of course it's possible that we are made of the same stuff. But, again, where is the explanation for how that stuff decides to have one set of properties one time and another set at other times? There is no mechanical explanation for it. There can't be a mechanism for it because mechanism is a word that we use when discussing the material realm.
I'm not saying anything radical here; it simply follows from the definitions of the words substance, mechanism, cause, etc.
Why are we still discussing this?
There's the word "unexplainable" again. Evidence please.
I'm tired of going in circles. Please define "explanation" and "mechanism" without recourse to material, observable entities. General dictionary definitions are not going to cut it because the next question is going to be -- how does that work? Fundamental explanations of how things work (interactions) imply causal accounts.
I have yet to find a source that says that property dualism is unexplainable. Even if property dualism is unexplainable, that does not seem to preclude the possibility of overwhelming evidence for the existence of such a being, which would certainly make the belief in such a being rational, just as the belief in quantum uncaused causes is rational.
I have never said that there cannot be evidence, even overwhelming evidence for the existence of God. What I said was that there a fundamental differences in what constitutes a threshhold for belief that is higher when we can't explain things based on an underlying mechanism. I don't know how to be any more clear. I have no idea where you are getting your opinions of what I have written, but you seem to be way off in left field.
Please post a source that supports any of your claims of unexplainability. Until you provide evidence, it would seem that everything you have described are unexplained, but not necessarily unexplainable. Even if the interaction of a god with the universe was unexplainable, there is the possibility for overwhelming evidence that such a being exists, which would seem to preclude such a belief from being necessarily irrational.
Where did I say that belief in God was necessarily irrational? Where did I even imply that such was the case? I have no clue where you are getting this from. It isn't even close to what I think. Belief in a personal God, because of all that implies, is not rational based on the evidence we now have. That type of evidence is sufficient, I would say for belief in other God-types.
You need to define most of the above terms or phrases. Even the term "material" isn't very well-defined, particularly as it relates for forces. "Physical possibility" doesn't seem to be very meaningful. Anything that isn't physically impossible would be physically possible. If by "physically possible" you mean that it obeys the laws of physics, the laws of physics are of course based on observation, not the other way around. If there is compelling evidence that the laws of physics are wrong, the laws of physics would need to be changed. What I think you may be getting at is that unless there is compelling evidence, there is no reason to believe that something exists that violates the laws of physics. So you might say that something violating the laws of physics, if there is no compelling evidence for it, in light of the fact that nothing is currently known to violate the laws of physics, might be evidence against it. I'm not sure how strong such "evidence" would be, but if you accept that, it's still evidence.
So you're not interested in definitions, but you want precise definitions of every word I use?
What I am getting at is that there are differing levels for what constitues "compelling evidence" depending on the being under discussion. Just using the phrase "compelling evidence" is far too vague. The same sort of evidence for one type of thing is not as compelling as evidence for another type of thing. It depends on how those things fit into the story we already tell ourselves.
All of the things you listed either constitute evidence or are meaningless. Logical impossibility or incoherence of ideas (these seem to be the same thing) would be strong evidence against something (perhaps the strongest possible). Physical evidence is obviously a type of evidence. "Physical possibility" I already discussed above.
If you want to categorize it all as evidence, then fine with me. I don't care what word we use. People throw around the word 'evidence' here frequently and it is difficult to know what they mean by it. What I care about is the vagueness of a phrase like "compelling evidence"; it differs for differing "things". That has been the whole point.
Not so. Whether or not we are inclined to believe it would depend on the nature of the evidence. We are not "inclined not to believe" quantum theory, even though uncaused causes were something that did not follow the known laws of physics at the time. Why were we inclined to believe something that seemed to violate the laws of physics? Because there was evidence for it -- compelling enough evidence that we had to extend our ideas about physics.
Bri, I did not say that we could not or would not believe the physically impossible even if there is evidence. I said that were are inclined not to believe it. Of course it depends on the strength of the evidence. But for something that we believe to be physically impossible, we require better evidence than for something that we believe to be physically possible. We must reorient our entire way of thinking if we find evidence that supports something that we previously thought impossible. I already discussed quantum theory above.
Because of these differences, the evidence that we have for intelligent life likely arising on other planets is in a different ballpark from the evidence that we have for God. That is why I say that it is not just an "evidence issue" -- becasue a phrase like 'compelling evicence' loses its meaning in this context. I do not mean that there is an unbridgeable gap; if there were we wouldn't even have such a conversation. We treat these issues -- God/intelligent life elsewhere -- differently because there are different levels of evidence needed to prove them.
Let's look at an example. Say Ellie, the staunch SETI scientist, hears a pulsed message and we begin to decode it. The message is so complex and meaningful that we conclude an intelligence must be behind it. I think most of us would consider that pretty darn good evidence that intelligent life exists elsewhere. We would, of course, want to rule out a hoax, but good enough. Suppose that we delve further into the message and it clearly says, "By the way, this is God speaking to you." This is essentially the same type of evidence, but do you think most folks would believe that God really sent that message? My impression is that they would not. They would generally like to see better evidence than that.
That's all I'm saying.
It's ironic that you're actually using evidence to demonstrate that a belief in teapots orbiting Jupiter is more likely than faeries in a paragraph meant to convince me that it's something other than evidence that distinguishes the two. It's not. In order to distinguish them, you introduced some fairly compelling evidence of a teapot orbiting Jupiter, and some fairly uncompelling evidence of faeries. If there's no compelling evidence of either one, there would be no reason to believe one more than the other.
I think we have a fundamental problem communicating here. I am most certainly not saying that evidence is not important; what I am saying is that the types of evidence needed differs for things in differing categories. You seemed to imply that the lack of evidence for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe was equivalent to our lack of evidence for God -- that it was essentially all the same. I disagree. The reason I disagree is because the level and type of evidence we require differs for things in different categories.
I gave the same sort of evidence for the teapot and the faeries -- a picture and a backstory. I didn't specify the backstory for the faeries but simply mentioned that it wouldn't matter what the backstory was; I still probably would not believe the pictures. The reason is because faeries are not physically possible. If I am to believe faeries exist I would require much better evidence than I would for a teapot orbiting Jupiter because that is physically possible.
The whole reason I brought up dualism is because it provides one of those breaks that requires more evidence to support than a causal material monist account. I can accept a material monist account of mind more easily than a dualist account because I can appeal to causality in material monism; I can potentilly provide a mechanism. With dualism, I'm stuck with an interaction issue. Dualism could be true, but for me to accept it requires better evidence than a material monist explanation.
It isn't 'just' an evidence issue because the same type and amount of evidence for one category won't work for another.
Yep. If there was compelling evidence of faeries (assuming faeries go against the laws of physics) we'd have to change the laws of physics.
In other words, it all depends on compelling evidence.
But the whole point of all of this is that that term becomes essentially meaningless because the same evidence for teapots and faeries -- a picture and a backstory -- do not lead to belief in each case.
First, you haven't convinced me of this notion that we need more evidence to believe in A than B because of C where "C" is something other than evidence. What would "C" be in this case, that would be unrelated to evidence?
Second, your claim is that "C" above is physical impossibility (which would imply that violation of the laws of physics isn't evidence, but let's ignore that question for now). Just above, you stated:
Again, if you want to call all of this evidence -- including our basic paradigms -- then fine. Again, there are so many definitions of evidnce thrown around on this site that I do not presume what people mean by the word. I am objecting to the notion that the evidence we have for intelligent life possibly existing elsewhere in the universe is equivalent somehow to the evidence for God.
God is not in the category of the physically possible or impossible...
But here you are stating "we can't discuss God as physically possible." So, you've snuck in a little straw man there. Before you stated that physical impossibility (such as a faerie) would be a reason to consider a belief irrational, and now you've substituted it (with no explanation) with "not physically possible or impossible."
What strawman? Without an amazing amount of evidence for fairies, since they are physically impossible, there is no reason for us to change the laws of physics. We cannot use our background of material causality to help us believe that faeries are probable, so we need more evidence to support the notion.
The same is true, but to a much lesser exent with God. I have specifically said that belief in God is not equivalent to belief in faeries because God is not physically impossible. I've argued against people who have raised that equivalence becasue I see it as a strawman argument. Not all categories are the same.
Please provide some evidence that a personal God cannot exist in monism (neutral monism or some other form). Then tell me how monism is any more rational than any other possible theory.
Monism requires the fewest assumptions. It does not falter at the interaction issue.
If you can provide an account for the typical theist God -- the completely other -- that exists properly within theism, then I would love to hear it. Once again, I am not arguing against all versions of God. I specifically mentioned one type, specifically because this thread is headed by the word "theist" which generally means someone who believes in a personal creator God.
But since you asked, here is one explanation. Idealism is one way of trying to maintain God and provide a monist account of reality. Everything that exists is thought. A consequence of this is that "we" are also necessarily thought, so "we" are just part of God. Well, that is not the theist conception of the world. There is the additional problem -- what is God made of then? If everything is "thought" then God would have to be made of thought as well, which implies that thought occurs without a thinker. I've yet to meet an idealist who was willing to accept this.
Some would answer that God is mind and everything else is thought, but this implies either an unstated dualism -- there are two things, mind and thought -- or that 'we' are simply God thinking. So there is no 'us' properly speaking to think since it is all just God doing it. I have also yet to meet a theist willing to accept that consequence.
The other argument is this: God, if anything is the fundamental existent from which everything flows. A fundamental existent cannot be defined -- otherwise it would not be fundamental (we define one thing in terms of another and there is no other thing to define a fundamental existent against) -- but personhood is defined in terms both of what it is and what it isn't. Personhood necessarily implies some sort of boundary. So, if God is a person, He is not the fundamental existent, so there is something more fundamental than God?
Of course the analogy is appropriate, because it is about evidence. As much mental gymnastics as you've gone through to paint this as something other than evidence, you haven't made the case that there's anything other than evidence that would justify labeling a belief in a personal god as necessarily irrational.
I hope I have explained myself above? The other than evidence is simply other things that you count as evidence. There is still a different burden of proof for different categories.
Heh, that's funny in so many ways. First, there are logical arguments for God, so I assume that by logical argument you mean a logical argument for which there is compelling evidence of the premises, which would make the argument itself evidence.
Second, you're now implying that calling something "irrational" has to do with evidence, whereas you've spent all this energy trying to convince me otherwise.
Third, you're assuming that belief for which there is no compelling evidence (i.e. belief based on faith) is irrational. I have no problem with that, but then again I don't know why in the world would any believer in aliens would object to the idea that belief in aliens is irrational.
Um, what? I did not try to convince you that rational and irrational have nothing to do with evidence. Where did you get that idea? I saw no evidence that this sort of analysis was being applied and that differing levels of evidence are needed to prove differing claims. That was my whole point.
It is special pleading to suggest that belief in anything for which a causal account does not apply is irrational except randomness.
But I didn't say that. First of all I never said that belief in anything for which we cannot supply a causal account is irrational. I said that we don't accept such things as easily because we don't have the benefit of a causal account. We don't accept belief in quantum randomness easily either. The only reason I know why anyone accepts it is because of the burden of the evidence. The point is that the burden of evidence for things that fit into our scientific accounts is lower than for those that do not.
seem to be special pleading for materialism. For anything other than materialism, the unexplainable makes belief in it irrational, but not for materialism.
Not to mention the fact that the very term "matter" is ill-defined. In order to include things like gravity, it's often defined to refer to anything that can be directly observed or anything the effects of which can be observed. The problem is that the effects of the supernatural interacting with the natural could be observed.
First of all, no, I am not special pleading materialism. I've repeatedly said that dualism is possible, idealism is possible, God is possible. I still have no idea how you are arriving at these projections.
Materialism is defined, most essentially, as a monism explainable through a set of physical laws. Quantum weirdness doesn't fit into that definition, but it is placed under the umbrella because it has been observed regularly. It wasn't an easy fit, though.
Many don't even use the word 'materialism' now and prefer 'physicalism'. I have no idea if materialism/physicalism is what underpins this world. I'm even to the point where I don't particularly care. For all I know we are just the mind of God contemplating His own existence.
You have yet to provide a definition that states that we cannot provide an explanation for anything that isn't materialism.
So where does this leave us?
I may be completely misunderstanding, but this seemed to have been your original argument:
A personal god must be dualistic.
Dualism is unexplainable.
The unexplainable is necessarily irrational.
Never mind that you haven't backed up any of these assertions with evidence. When it was pointed out that quantum randomness is unexplainable, your argument changed to:
A personal god must be dualistic.
Dualism is unexplainable.
The unexplainable, if it is "organized," is necessarily irrational.
Again, never mind that none of these assertions have been backed by evidence. But then it was pointed out that it is possible for there to be evidence of the existence of such a god. Your argument then has to change to:
A personal god must be dualistic. Dualism is unexplainable. The unexplainable, if it is "organized," and is physically impossible, is necessarily irrational.
But of course there are plenty of problems with the phrase "physically impossible," such as what it really means, whether or not it really trumps evidence, whether or not it constitutes evidence itself, and whether or not it even pertains to a god.
So, 1) you don't have evidence to back up most of your assertions that a personal god must fit into a particular category (dualism) that you consider "irrational", 2) you don't seem to have a valid reason for considering only that category "irrational", 3) you don't have any particular reason for singling out something that's "organized" as being irrational, and 4) you don't really get around the possibility that there could be compelling evidence of a personal god.
Your argument seems to be taking on a pattern. You throw out a criteria for considering a particular belief irrational, I throw out a counter-example of something that you consider rational that fits the criteria, you throw out another criteria, and so on. The hope, I assume, is that after enough criteria are thrown out, only one thing will fit your definition of "irrational." Yet you insist that no special pleading is involved. A much simpler and more useful definition of "irrational" than the one you're working towards would be to tack on "or a belief in a personal god" to a generally-accepted definition and be done with it.
-Bri
Yes, you misunderstood. I was trying to point out that we don't treat all these categories the same when it comes to evidence. It is irrational to believe that for which we do not have good reason to believe or for which we cannot give an account. When we discuss things that do not fit into our general paradigms, those things require more and better evidence to command assent.
That is why I tried to separate out the issues involved. We do not believe the logically impossible because we can't. Such things are, by definition, impossible/incoherent. We can believe in the logically possible, but it is easier for us to believe the physically possible than the physically impossible. With God we just can't use physical possibility as a 'crutch' but God is also not burdened by physical impossibility as some try to argue.
The reason that I brought up dualism is because it provides an additional way of seeing that the burden of proof for a personal God is higher than for something like intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. A personal God in a system where we are separate beings -- that is what most people mean by theism -- implies dualism, that God is fundamentally different from humans and from creation. Since mechanism is a word that applies only the material realm (it has no meaning with the immaterial), I fail to see how it is controversial to say that dualism does not supply a mechanism. It simply cannot; that is inherent to the nature of dualism. Throwing words at the issue won't change that fact.
Because there is no mechanism we can speak of for a personal God to interact with the world (it is considered miraculous within theism itself, so again I don't see where this is controversial) we lose one of the crutches we generally speak of to discuss rational belief. It is, therefore, more difficult for us to accept the existence of a personal God on purely rational grounds with the types of evidence we have now. It would require much better evidence to support a rational belief in that type of God than it would to support belief in extraterrestrial aliens. Another way of saying this is -- it is more rational for us to believe in the existence of extraterrestrial aliens than it is for us to believe in the existence of a personal God based on the evidence that we now have.
