# Is this a straw man?



## T.A.G. (Mar 15, 2010)

I have read a few books, some quotes from the likes of Huxley and Dennet, as well as I have taken both secular and Christian classes in Philosophy. I have always understood the strict materialist believes that all of our decisions, movements, love, hate, choices, likes and dislikes etc. were all from randomly firing synapse...

While witnessing to a guy the other day (not the same guy as the other thread) an atheist told me that this was a straw man argument and they actually do not believe that...

has anyone else heard of anything different, or can they show me how I am making it a straw man? If I am...

Thanks!


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## Osage Bluestem (Mar 15, 2010)

T.A.G. said:


> I have read a few books, some quotes from the likes of Huxley and Dennet, as well as I have taken both secular and Christian classes in Philosophy. I have always understood the strict materialist believes that all of our decisions, movements, love, hate, choices, likes and dislikes etc. were all from randomly firing synapse...
> 
> While witnessing to a guy the other day (not the same guy as the other thread) an atheist told me that this was a straw man argument and they actually do not believe that...
> 
> ...


 
I don't think there are any united atheists in regards to atheistic doctrine. They all believe, or disbelieve as the case may be, something different. Many do indeed believe that man is nothing but an organic machine that evolved by pure chance. It's amazing they even obey laws.


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## jwright82 (Mar 15, 2010)

T.A.G. said:


> I have read a few books, some quotes from the likes of Huxley and Dennet, as well as I have taken both secular and Christian classes in Philosophy. I have always understood the strict materialist believes that all of our decisions, movements, love, hate, choices, likes and dislikes etc. were all from randomly firing synapse...
> 
> While witnessing to a guy the other day (not the same guy as the other thread) an atheist told me that this was a straw man argument and they actually do not believe that...
> 
> ...


 
All materialistic theories of mind make these claims, materialism is just a skip from atheism anyway. But ask him what he thinks they are? If atheism beleives that these things are immaterial then they can explain where the immaterial came from; if they think it is material than the "straw man" argument you mentioned isn't straw man after all, it is only a logical consequence of the idea. 
Your argument is not a straw man if you are only working out the logical consequences of their ideas.


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## bouletheou (Mar 15, 2010)

Not a straw man at all. C.S. Lewis used that argument several times and to great effect. Victor Rippert even wrote a book about it called CS Lewis' Dangerous Idea.

Either the stuff that is our brains somehow is the sum of all that we call consciousness, or there is a "ghost in the machine." If a ghost, then philosophical materialism is shown to be false. If not, then it's upon them to explain what we call consciousness (and explain how they are even going to be able to explain that, given the fact that their own thoughts have no more meaning than a fart or a belch.)

Interestingly, some new developments in neuroscience are beginning to show evidence of the ghost.

FYI, it need not be random firing of synapses. It could conceivably be argued to be a systematic firing of synapses brought about by a random series of events. You still end up in the same place. The discovery of truth is impossible. When we make value judgments (such as true or false) we are only describing the firings of the synapses in our brains and not reality.


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## Skyler (Mar 15, 2010)

T.A.G. said:


> I have read a few books, some quotes from the likes of Huxley and Dennet, as well as I have taken both secular and Christian classes in Philosophy. I have always understood the strict materialist believes that all of our decisions, movements, love, hate, choices, likes and dislikes etc. were all from randomly firing synapse...
> 
> While witnessing to a guy the other day (not the same guy as the other thread) an atheist told me that this was a straw man argument and they actually do not believe that...
> 
> ...



It doesn't surprise me that his randomly firing synapses would make him say that. Because, while I'm not a materialist nor (God forbid) an atheist, I'm pretty sure that most atheists' synapses fire randomly--particularly the Internet variety.


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## Philip (Mar 15, 2010)

I've met plenty of non-materialistic atheists, so let's not make assumptions about atheism based on materialism.

One could conceivably posit a kind of freedom of will associated with the mind, making its thoughts to be observations about reality from the inside, so to speak. Just because the materialist believes that there is a material cause for his thought does not mean that he would say that his thought is meaningless. 

The hole in the materialist's argument is not necessarily here (depending on the materialist)--I would suggest that it is in the question of infinite regress.


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## bouletheou (Mar 15, 2010)

Good point, Philip. An atheist need not be a philosophical materialist. "No God" does not necessarily equal "nothing exists but this universe of matter and energy." There were plenty of those kind floating around in the late 19th/early 20th C in academic circles. 

I have not encountered any myself. What are the contemporary variations you've encountered?


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## Skyler (Mar 15, 2010)

bouletheou said:


> Good point, Philip. An atheist need not be a philosophical materialist. "No God" does not necessarily equal "nothing exists but this universe of matter and energy." There were plenty of those kind floating around in the late 19th/early 20th C in academic circles.
> 
> I have not encountered any myself. What are the contemporary variations you've encountered?


 
But the original post is talking about "strict materialists". So non-materialist atheists are, no offense, not the concern here.


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## Philip (Mar 15, 2010)

bouletheou said:


> Good point, Philip. An atheist need not be a philosophical materialist. "No God" does not necessarily equal "nothing exists but this universe of matter and energy." There were plenty of those kind floating around in the late 19th/early 20th C in academic circles.
> 
> I have not encountered any myself. What are the contemporary variations you've encountered?


 
Many forms of Buddhism are atheistic, yet few are materialistic.

In addition, I have had some discussions with an individual who describes himself as an agnostic non-theistic non-materialist. Really smart fellow, who has done a bit of study in comparative religion (though I think a whiff of Chesterton's _The Everlasting Man_ was enough to demolish a lot of those arguments).


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## bouletheou (Mar 15, 2010)

Yeah, I had one of those seculo-buddhists that wrote on the newspaper's religion blog with me here in Rapid City. So I guess I have met one after all.


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## Marvin Torgeson (Mar 15, 2010)

"Randomly firing synapse" Does that mean that if I were to poke some one with a hot poker in the ribs repeatedly, that at sometime the effect upon the brain would register "a pleasurable experience and a desire to sip lemonade while reading mad magazine?" Does it also mean that if I were to get bored poking that person in the ribs I might randomly hire someone to do this for me? 
Its been my experience that philosophy dies quickly in the face of the harsh realities of pain. Yet incessant boredom is as strong a motivator as pain. Maybe that is just mulitiple realizabilities. Hey, Supervenience wins the day eventually since materialist
philosophy on this level is unsophisticated and ends up getting mocked. 

Its my experience that philosophical rabbit trails are only good for one thing and thats mental gyrations. To me these philosophical inventions are a new kind of rabbit and the new way the rabbit runs. Its my limited experience that all these rabbits eventually run in a circle and they are all doomed to death when the hunter comes back to his starting place. 

Where is the starting place? Its that place where the sinner senses that God is going to invade his life, so in order to save it the sinner runs down its favorite path. For some its philosophy for others its religion, for others its blaming God in order to make him stay away. God knows who you are and where you are at. The running is always from the messenger, God never loses sight of the sinner and at any moment God choses can capture the angry, philosophical, religious heart. This little spec of truth about God is helpful to calm the believer down when the materialist fires more synapeses....


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## T.A.G. (Mar 16, 2010)

bouletheou said:


> Not a straw man at all. C.S. Lewis used that argument several times and to great effect. Victor Rippert even wrote a book about it called CS Lewis' Dangerous Idea.
> 
> Either the stuff that is our brains somehow is the sum of all that we call consciousness, or there is a "ghost in the machine." If a ghost, then philosophical materialism is shown to be false. If not, then it's upon them to explain what we call consciousness (and explain how they are even going to be able to explain that, given the fact that their own thoughts have no more meaning than a fart or a belch.)
> 
> ...


 
Thanks, I am not a big C.S. Lewis fan but I think I will go ahead and buy it now.


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## christianyouth (Mar 16, 2010)

I don't understand why people cannot summarize arguments from books anymore. :/ It would be great help to people who don't have the time to read through 300 pages to get about an argument that could be expressed in 1 page. I've started threads and asked questions and was told to check out a book, but what's the purpose of reading the book if we don't remember the argument and just remember the conclusion? 

And then the people who were pretty philosophical have really scaled back their postings(Steven-Nemes, Confessor, Davidius, Christian Trader). But I'm not sure this thread has actually had anything of substance in it, like any attempt to show that atheism = determinism or materialism = determinism. Sorry OP.

I would suggest giving the guys at The Prosblogion an email on this, since that seems to be the one place on the web where specific questions/arguments are discussed. The people who write for them are accredited philosophers who are Christian. I remember seeing a good video discussion on there about this question, let me see if I can find it and post it back in here. It was very high caliber, If I recall correctly.

edit: found it : http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2009/05/bloggingheads-o.html , I think these two talk about some of these questions, but I'm not positive.

---------- Post added at 02:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:59 PM ----------

I realized I just did what I was saying is not helpful(suggesting another source to answer a question instead of actually answering it)! My take on the question: Most apologetics don't argue things convincgly because they are designed to be read by a Christian audience. If you make the claim that materialism = determinism, then you have to argue for that, p1 p2 C stuff. I think some philosophers do that, but their material is in books that take money and time to access. Here is a book that I know would have some detailed answers on this, not because I trust the author but because it's put out by a prestigious academic press :

Amazon.com: Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument (9780415989534): J. P. Moreland: Books

If you get that book and read it, and find the essential arguments presented and can summarize them, seriously let me know and we can start some type of database that compiles valid answers/arguments instead of generalities and suggestions for further reading.

- Andy


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## T.A.G. (Mar 16, 2010)

also brother, what findings in neuroscience are you speaking of? 

Thanks,


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## jwright82 (Mar 16, 2010)

Contemporary materialist theories of mind all claim that thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc.. all reduce to physical proccesses of somekind.
The three major forms of theories are these:
1. Identity theory
2. Functionalist theories
3. Eliminativist theories

I'll leave it to ya'll to goggle them but the fact remains that these are the three major attempts to solve the problems involved in any materialistic theory of mind. When we critics say that they reduce to random firings of synapses we are simplifying a larger analysis that was used to arive at that conclusion. All ideas have consequences despite what the person holding the belief wants.


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## bouletheou (Mar 17, 2010)

Tyler,

I'm going off memory here. I'll try and get back to you with a more comprehensive answer. 

Awhile back Wes White and I were discussing a book he was reading. In this book, several cases were discussed where there were experiments done involving folks with physical or chemical problems in the brain, which were producing undesirable behaviors. But there also seemed to be a separate "self" which could evaluate and criticize those behaviors and make choices to discount or ignore the influence of the dysfunctional brain. Apparently they were unable to discover a physical location in the brain for this other "self." This seemed to point to an immaterial, rational part of the human being which, in some sense, "inhabited" the body. i.e. a soul.


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## jwright82 (Mar 22, 2010)

It dawned on me that I never demonstrated a connection between random firings of neurons and materialistic views of the brain. So I would like to correct that mistake now. 


All materialist theories of mind agree on at least one thing, our mental phenomenon at the end of day is nothing more than material things or processes of some kind, or else they would not be materialist at all. So this raises the question of what is a belief or some other strictly mental phenomenon. Since they are material in totality they must be some physiological process or thing. This means that when we say we love our family and we love cake the same part more or less of our brain is active. The only difference between the two uses of “love” here may be different parts in the brain. 

But do you mean the same thing when you use these two different words? Probably not, but if they are correct than your insistence on different meanings would be false. This is one area of critique we can use to destroy the materialist theory of mind but another one might be considered right in line with C. S. Lewis’ argument from reason, I consider his argument to be a broad method of critique that can be formulated in a variety of ways. 

No materialist that I know of would claim outright that our mental phenomenon is random or meaningless. Despite this though ideas have consequences and sometimes we may not agree with those consequences but we are stuck with them anyway. So the problem for the materialist is can their metaphysics support a claim that mental phenomenon is more than just random firings of brain? I don’t think so and I’ll explain why.

They only way for the materialist, as I see it, to avoid this charge is to come up with a theory of natural laws that does not violate logic. But how would they do this? They would have to answer a series of questions that I will lay out:
1.	First they would have to account for the regularity in nature, scientific laws.
2.	Secondly they must prove their own assumption about the uniformity of nature, why scientific laws must always be laws everywhere at all times.
3.	To put these two in another way how does the materialist prove that nature is not purely contingent and what was law today may not change tomorrow?

With the advent of quantum mechanics and the application of evolutionary theory to physics this problem has only become more complex. According to quantum mechanics everything is on its most basic physical level purely random, by random I believe they mean without teleological purpose. Also the application of evolutionary theory to physics throws a wrench into the spokes of a theory of scientific laws. If physical laws evolved into what they are today than how do we know that they will not change tomorrow? 

So if only material processes are involved in all mental phenomenon and all material phenomenon is at its most basic level random or without purpose and laws of any kind can evolve tomorrow into something else than all our mental phenomenon is random as well. 

One area in which they try get around this problem is semantics. They attempt to change what we mean by words like purpose and meaning, I have heard evolution described as purposeless purpose, which only changes the meaning of the word mid sentence (fallacy of equivocation). This tactic is put forward to try show that the problem is merely linguistic and therefore not any actual problem at all. But this amounts to mere sophistry, logical gymnastics to try to avoid the problem. Why should we redefine our concepts just because they don’t make sense in a materialistic metaphysics? 

So in summery my argument is as follows:
1.	All materialistic theories of reality reduce mental phenomenon to purely physical processes.
2.	All physical processes are subject to change on a purely random basis. 
3.	Therefore all mental phenomenons are subject to change on a purely random basis, making all thought the product of random brain functions of some kind.

You might point out that a there is a weakness in my argument by showing that materialists might one day come up with a solid theory of scientific laws and therefore be able to successfully redefine what purpose and meaning are on a purely materialistic basis, after all I haven’t criticized each and every possible formulation of materialism so I can’t make blanket statements. This charge would stick if and only if I didn’t have an ace up my sleeve, which I think I do: the problem of induction.

Let’s say they come up with a theory of scientific laws that does not fall into the traps I laid out above, they would still have to show that logically I can count on the same laws being laws tomorrow. In short the problem of induction says that there is no guarantee that the next time I drop an object that it will fall down instead of up. This problem will always overshadow any attempt to develop a satisfactory theory of natural laws. 

I hope I have explained the problem here and I hope it makes sense. So feel free to ask me to clarify anything.


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## SRoper (Mar 22, 2010)

jwright82 said:


> With the advent of quantum mechanics and the application of evolutionary theory to physics this problem has only become more complex. According to quantum mechanics everything is on its most basic physical level purely random, by random I believe they mean without teleological purpose. Also the application of evolutionary theory to physics throws a wrench into the spokes of a theory of scientific laws. If physical laws evolved into what they are today than how do we know that they will not change tomorrow?



I would question both of these assumptions (materialists believe that "quantum mechanics everything is on its most basic physical level purely random" and "physical laws evolved"). Can you show that materialists believe either of these propositions?


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2010)

jwright82 said:


> With the advent of quantum mechanics and the application of evolutionary theory to physics this problem has only become more complex. According to quantum mechanics everything is on its most basic physical level purely random, by random I believe they mean without teleological purpose. Also the application of evolutionary theory to physics throws a wrench into the spokes of a theory of scientific laws. If physical laws evolved into what they are today than how do we know that they will not change tomorrow?


 
Actually, having talked with my physicist friends, "random" here means "apparently uncaused"--teleology has a limited application in science anyway, since it is, to a large extent, unempirical anyway.


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## jwright82 (Mar 23, 2010)

> I would question both of these assumptions (materialists believe that "quantum mechanics everything is on its most basic physical level purely random" and "physical laws evolved"). Can you show that materialists believe either of these propositions?


Actually your point is well taken, but I never said that this is what they all believe. Thomas Hobbes was a materialist and he would never agree to this, but he lived in pre-Einstien/quantum mechanics time so it is understandable. There may be plenty of materialists out there who hold to a kind of newtonian clockwork view of the universe but the only thing to refute them would be a history lesson in modern physics. Also I was simply laying out logically the problem that they all faced and must come up with an answer for. The basic question is how can anything have any order or regularity in a purley contigiant universe? Logically they cannot, which is why I provided a section on semantical attempts to redifine our words to fit their basic philosophy.



> Actually, having talked with my physicist friends, "random" here means "apparently uncaused"--teleology has a limited application in science anyway, since it is, to a large extent, unempirical anyway.


Well you may be correct but this just falls under the section of my post about semantical attempts to resolve the problem. I have heard and read many different redefinitions, so I don't know what the consensus would be on say a graduate level or proffesional one (if there is one). It seems to me that when science just wouldn't back up what they were saying they decided to start redefining things to better suit there P.O.V. This is fine and dandy in science, because our scientific notions get redefined all the time, but when it bleeds over into philosophy, which it has, then they run into some serious problems. I only laid out some of there problems, I have more but I limited this post to a couple.

---------- Post added at 09:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:54 AM ----------

Also P. F. Pugh in quantum mechanics these events only appear uncaused. There is no actual proof that they are absolutly positivly uncaused. Perhaps there is more going on than we can percieve.


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## Philip (Mar 23, 2010)

> It seems to me that when science just wouldn't back up what they were saying they decided to start redefining things to better suit there P.O.V. This is fine and dandy in science, because our scientific notions get redefined all the time, but when it bleeds over into philosophy, which it has, then they run into some serious problems. I only laid out some of there problems, I have more but I limited this post to a couple.



The trouble is that when you get down the the quantum level, the language describing the calculations begins to sound a whole lot like philosophy. I remember watching the play _Copenhagen_ about Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg (or was it Heisenberg? I'm not certain) and was struck by the extreme affinity between the physics the characters were describing and philosophy. Things like Schroedinger's Cat and and the particle-wave paradox are extremely philosophical in nature, so I'm not sure how the physics could not bleed over into philosophy.

The main difference is that where physics has found some apparent contradictions, philosophy knows that such can only be apparent, where physics would say that at least for now they are contradictory. Also, philosophy (at least most philosophy) would assume the principle of sufficient reason, where physics doesn't.



> Also P. F. Pugh in quantum mechanics these events only appear uncaused. There is no actual proof that they are absolutly positivly uncaused. Perhaps there is more going on than we can percieve.



Which is why I qualified "uncaused" with "apparently."


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## jwright82 (Mar 23, 2010)

> The trouble is that when you get down the the quantum level, the language describing the calculations begins to sound a whole lot like philosophy. I remember watching the play Copenhagen about Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg (or was it Heisenberg? I'm not certain) and was struck by the extreme affinity between the physics the characters were describing and philosophy. Things like Schroedinger's Cat and and the particle-wave paradox are extremely philosophical in nature, so I'm not sure how the physics could not bleed over into philosophy.


I completly agree. I am about to work my way through the book by Heisenberg called Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, I let you know how it is.



> The main difference is that where physics has found some apparent contradictions, philosophy knows that such can only be apparent, where physics would say that at least for now they are contradictory. Also, philosophy (at least most philosophy) would assume the principle of sufficient reason, where physics doesn't.



Good point! 



> Which is why I qualified "uncaused" with "apparently."



Sorry I didn't notice that.


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## Peairtach (Mar 23, 2010)

If they believe that mind is an _epiphenomenon_ of the brain, i.e. a phenomenon produced by the brain, the materialist is still in the same bind as the one who believes mind is material, because the impersonal and irrational matter is still in the driving seat.


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