Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 18:04:21 -0700 (PDT) From: "Neal E. Westfall" <nwestfal@directvinternet.com> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Joshua Lee <yid@softhome.net>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Fw: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <20020911155742.D45696-100000@Tolstoy.home.lan> In-Reply-To: <3D7FBC6B.C8E2340F@mindspring.com>
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On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Terry Lambert wrote: > "Neal E. Westfall" wrote: > > On a naturalist worldview, human beings are just machines, and > > as such reasoning is just an illusion. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > You keep pulling this one out of your rear. I don't see why > you keep claiming this, when it doesn't logically follow. If > human beings are just machines, there no reason at all that > their reasoning would have to be illusionary, rather than real. > You have simply made an unsupported statement, as if it were > fact, and expected us to be stupid enough to just accept it > with no evidence. When you say, "logically follow", are you saying that you are attempting to conform your reasoning processes to some objective standard? *What* objective standard? Moreover, *where* does the intentionality come from that allows you to conform your reasoning to those objective standards? Automatons do not reason, they do not make choices, they do not commit intentional acts, they only do what they do, without regard to any external standards of logic or ethics. > > All reasoning is just the > > outworking of the electrical-chemical reactions in the brain. The human > > brain could never transcend nature with anything that resembled "reason". > > "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts". Yes it is. But it is *your* premises that preclude the possibility that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I'm not arguing that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I'm arguing that *your* premises lead to that conclusion. > > > > > See above. Your reduction is absurd. > > > > Reductions are supposed to be absurd! That's why they are called > > "reductio ad ABSURDUM" arguments. They are employed to reduce an > > opponent's argument to ABSURDITY. Get it? > > No, that's not how the symbolic logic works. Since I wasn't showing how the symbolic logic works, your comment seems to be irrelevent. > A "reductio ad absurdum" is a "reduction to absurdity" argument. > It works by taking a general argument, and arguing its application > to a specific case where it is false, thus demonstrating that the > generalization itself is false. I know what they are, thanks anyways. > It's possible to perform a reduction that does not result in an > absurdity. This is how it works if the generalization is true. > > E.g. the argument "all fish are trout" is not proven absurd, if > your specific case that you argue to is a rainbow trout instead > of a brown trout, but it works if your specific case is a carp. Interesting, but irrelevent. > The reason the reduction he called absurd *is* absurd is that > you drew a conclusion unrelated to the specific case which you > were reducing. You've just contradicted your own explanation of a reductio ad absurdum. Do they reduce a general argument or a specific case? Make up your mind. If what you meant was "unrelated to the general argument you were reducing" then it seems to me that you need to show that this is the case, not just dismiss it out of hand. If you think that human reason can be accounted for by the action of the laws of physics on matter, you need to show how human reason does not reduce to determinism. Given your premises, there is no way you can know whether *your* reason is correct and that other people's reasoning is fallacious. It may be fallacious according to the internal laws of logic that are pre-programmed in *your* head, but that wouldn't prove anything, since you don't know that what is in your head is what is in anybody else's. Moreover, since you think this is a random chance universe, there is no way you can ever know if by some random fluke that there is not a defect in the programming, causing you to commit logical fallacies without your knowledge. Moreover, if you arbitrarily insist that everybody reasons the same way, you need to give an account of why people make logical mistakes. If you were consistent with your stated presuppositions, you could affirm nothing but skepticism. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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