What is Faith?

A relatively simple summary of my argument against naturalism can be explained in this way:
1. If naturalism is true, then all thoughts, including the thought naturalism is true, can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes.
2. If all thoughts are the result of irrational causes, then all thoughts are invalid, and science is impossible.
3. If all thoughts are invalid, and science is impossible, then no one is justified in believing that naturalism is true.
4. Therefore, naturalism should be rejected.
Thanks for putting your argument into formal terms; it makes responses and counter-responses easier. Here, I challenge premise 2. Basically, it seems to rest on the claim that "irrational causes cannot produce rational thoughts," which in turn seems to rest on the claim that "a cause cannot produce an effect which possesses properties the cause itself does not possess," a claim which seems positively false, for reasons I've already offered. To put it another way, the naturalist will claim:

1. Chemical actions (which are in themselves non-rational) cause mental states in people such as considering, judging and concluding.
2. A person who is in the mental state of considering, judging and concluding is capable of doing those things well: that is, rationally.
3. Therefore, non-rational chemical actions are capable of producing rational thoughts.

You can of course say "Premise 1 is false, and thus the naturalistic account of human thought is false." But you are not saying anything which implies that the naturalist's conclusion is inconsistent with the premise he believes true, and therefore that applying naturalism consistently would be destructive of all confidence in reason and science.

A non-physical mind not bound and limited by the laws of physics can operate according to the laws of logic.
Again, what does it mean exactly to say that a mind "operates according to the laws of logic"? That it is programmed not to violate those laws? That is just naturally, inherently jumps to logical conclusions without any cause for that jump? Some third thing? In any case, how do you account for the fact that our minds sometimes do not operate according to those laws, as when we commit fallacies?
 
Calculators and computers are programmed and designed to convert questions to on/off switches which are physical entities. Brains are not.
Why does the origin matter for whether a purely physical entity can do calculations?
Because an irrational source cannot produce rationality.
You said,
El Cid said:
One physical state does not logically imply another or prescribe that the other ought to occur logically. It either causes or fails to cause that second state. Physical states simply are, they are not things that ought to be.
That statement has nothing to do with the origin of the physical state. You are saying that, no matter how it comes about, a physical state does not logically imply another, and yet computers have no minds, and are purely physical, but can do mathematical operations.
Computers can be programmed to act like minds up to a point especially for math problems, but they cannot truly reason on the basis of abstract premises and conclusions.
 
Because an irrational source cannot produce rationality.
Of course it can, given computers doing math, and given that math is part of rationality. But see below, in which you narrow the field of rationality down to reasoning from abstract premises and find an area that computers currently can not do.

Computers can be programmed to act like minds up to a point especially for math problems, but they cannot truly reason on the basis of abstract premises and conclusions.
1. Math is truly and actually logical.

2. AFAIK, it is true that, up to now, computers can not reason from abstract premises. So what? That doesn't mean that they never will. Nor does sit mean that when brains reason, they are necessarily using something other than the mere physical substrate of the brain to do the reasoning.
 
Hot and cold and solid and liquid are still PHYSICAL states, true and false are not physical states.
You're apparently agreeing that there is such a thing as an emergent property which possesses properties which are absent from its ultimate cause,
No, they still have the properties it just depends on the level of observation. At the microscopic level, the molecules are moving faster which is just what heat is at the macroscopic level.
but that there's a limit to how far emergence can go: it can't cross the line from physical to non-physical. I'd say the existence of this line isn't obvious or self-evident.
I would say the line between the physical and non-physical is pretty obvious and self evident. One can be empirically observed or measured the other cannot.
And again, even if it naturalistic thinkers were being unreasonable in believing that mental states can be brought about by physical interactions, that is their belief, and you can't say they are being inconsistent in claiming that our brains can bring about the mental state of weighing evidence properly. That is only inconsistent with your beliefs about what is and isn't possible.
No, they are also inconsistent with all empirical observations throughout all of human history.
El Cid said:
Through the non-physical mind operating according to the non-physical laws of logic.
I was asking what was the cause of the mind's logical operations. "Something not physical" is not an account of the cause. Are you saying the mind's logical operations are not caused?
They are initiated by the will of the mind, deciding to reason and analyze something.
 
No, they still have the properties it just depends on the level of observation. At the microscopic level, the molecules are moving faster which is just what heat is at the macroscopic level.
But individual atoms or molecules do not possess the properties of solidity or liquidity.

I would say the line between the physical and non-physical is pretty obvious and self evident. One can be empirically observed or measured the other cannot.
Sorry, I expressed myself badly there. I didn't mean to say "the line between physical and non-physical is not obvious," or "the line between solid and non-solid is not obvious," I meant to say "the line between a possible case of emergent properties and an impossible case of emergent properties is not obvious." That is, if there are such things as emergent properties (and I think the case of solidity or liquidity qualifies), there is no obvious or self evident reason why mental states could not be examples of emergent properties. In other words, it is not self-evident that a physical property can emerge from a physical state, but a mental property cannot.

No, they are also inconsistent with all empirical observations throughout all of human history.
First, this is another way of saying "I think it is impossible for reasoning to emerge from chemistry" and even if that is the case, it does not follow that "if it is not impossible, if reasoning actually does emerge from chemistry, then all reasoning is unreliable." It is the latter claim that I was responding to. Do you dispute that these are in fact two different claims?

Second, "thoughts are caused by the brain, and the brain is obviously a physical object" is the very opposite of something "inconsistent with all empirical observations"; it's as well supported by empirical observations as any account of anything that happens in human biology. For example, it's undisputed empirical fact that damage to certain areas of the brain causes certain very specific departures from normal thinking, such as memory loss.

They are initiated by the will of the mind, deciding to reason and analyze something.
Then the will of the mind is itself uncaused?
 
So why do you waste your time debating with people when you know that everything is predetermined no matter what you say?
Because I have no choice😁.
El Cid said:
Also, if we have no free will then why do you think it is ok to punish people for crimes when they are not responsible? Without free will there is no such thing as morality, crimes, or science. So why keep talking about such things?
See above.
That is a horrible belief, even the Nazis only punished people that they thought intentionally committed a crime. And you want to punish people who are not responsible for what they did.
El Cid said:
We feel like we have free will.
I agree.
So? This does not affect the probability that we are deterministically programmed to feel that way, does it?
Actually it may very well be self evident we have free will.
El Cid said:
While that feeling doesnt prove we have free will it is evidence for free will.
Nope; it is not evidence either way because "only people with free will would think they have free will" is not demonstrably true.
Some things we can know intuitively or self evidently.
El Cid said:
Because then our thoughts and conclusions are not predetermined by chemical reactions in our brains.
What if they are predetermined by something non-physical?
How would you know?
That is a possibility. But our experience tells us otherwise.
El Cid said:
They may very well be. But at least they are not predetermined by fixed physical laws. Because we know that at least 99.9% of the time physical entities operate according to the laws of physics. There may be supernatural laws but they may not be as limiting.
Lots of "may"s in here...
Yes, we dont know everything.
 
That is a horrible belief, even the Nazis only punished people that they thought intentionally committed a crime. And you want to punish people who are not responsible for what they did.
But I'm not responsible either, remember?
I have no choice but to want to punish them.
Actually it may very well be self evident we have free will.
1. It would also be self-evident to people without free will.
Swing-and-a-miss.

2. Calling a thing self-evident (and even that, you hedged with "may") is often code for

"It's obvious to me, but I can't show it."

To paraphrase Daniel Kaffee, I doesn't matter what you declare to be self-evident.
It only matters what you can prove.
Some things we can know intuitively or self evidently.
Knowledge is justified true belief.

You are missing at least one of these, when it comes to free will.
Two, I would argue.
That is a possibility. But our experience tells us otherwise.
And if we don't have free will, our experience means absolutely nothing, because it's not free.

So - how do you prove that our experience does mean anything...
without circularly appealing to our experience, that is.
 
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Then you believe that logical laws do have causal powers, just not physical causal powers? If so, what kinds of events or entities can logical laws cause? Physical force can cause massive bodies to accelerate in a particular direction; valid syllogisms can cause _____ to _____?
They bring about conclusions and inferences.
 
What you are essentially asking is, how do we reason to produce logical conclusions. What we know is that it looks very much like our brains give rise to our ability to reason, because we know what areas of the brain are responsible for particular tasks. In part we know this because if part of the brain is damaged, the corresponding part of the mind is damaged too. We don't understand how the brain produces consciousness and the ability to reason, but because of what I've already said, we know that it does.
It very well could be that the mind needs the brain to interact with the physical world so if the brain is damaged then the mind cannot use those parts any more and of course it affects that interaction. It would be like if half of my keys on my key board didnt work, and I typed a sentence, it would make no sense to you.
 
It very well could be that the mind needs the brain to interact with the physical world so if the brain is damaged then the mind cannot use those parts any more and of course it affects that interaction. It would be like if half of my keys on my key board didnt work, and I typed a sentence, it would make no sense to you.
It could be, but do you have any real evidence that this is so? It could be that what you describe is true but that the mind is still a natural phenomenon.
 
They bring about conclusions and inferences.
I'm still not sure what you are claiming logical laws cause, and how.

Physical causality: a force, when applied to a mass, causes the mass to accelerate in the given direction.
Logical causality: the law of syllogistic validity, when applied to a thought, causes the thought to correct itself.

Something like that? If so, it seems you are treating an abstraction as something concrete, something which actually exists in the mental world the way forces actually exist in the physical world. Are there universal laws for how this works, like f=ma is a universal law in the physical world?
 
Well yes it would just be an accident if a series of chemical reactions produced a logical conclusion.
Claim 1: Chemical reactions cannot produce mental events like drawing conclusions.
Claim 2: If chemical reactions did produce mental events like drawing conclusions, those conclusions would be unreliable.

Do you agree that these are two different claims? Claim 2 is the one you explicitly began with, and the one I'm disputing here. So if you respond to me by asserting Claim 1, that does not weaken my case against your Claim 2, because even if Claim 1 is true, it does not follow that Claim 2 is true and my objections to it must be wrong.
I believe the evidence points to both claims being most likely valid and true.
El Cid said:
No, I didnt say logic causes things, I said logic produces non-physical things.
Are you saying that "producing" something is not the same as "causing" it? If so, what is the distinction? If not, then you are saying logic causes (produces) things, albeit "non-physical things."

And what sorts of non-physical things does logic cause or produce? I don't think logic is a "thing" which "causes" anything to happen; I think it's only a codification of what we have found to be valid conclusions and invalid conclusions. If I draw a valid conclusion about something, it isn't "the laws of logic" which "cause" me to draw that conclusion, any more than it is the "laws of multiplication" which "cause" me to conclude that three times two equal six. These laws aren't angels whispering in my head. If logic really caused me to draw a valid conclusion, would that mean that when I drew an invalid conclusion, it was caused by the law of illogic?
Logic is a process that can produce conclusions and inferences. Logic is how our minds work, though due to our minds being abnormal and distorted away from logic, we often fail to use logic or fail to understand it well. Some of this can be remedied by education, but it will never return to our minds original normal state.
El Cid said:
Natural laws are what causes physical events. If naturalism is true then even those mental activities are just chemical reactions and so are those desires to know those "right" answers. How can chemical reactions know whether something is right or not? Chemical reactions cannot really know anything.
The naturalist claim is not that chemical reactions in the brain know things, but that chemical reactions in the brain cause mental states, and that mental states include knowing or wanting to know things. They say mental states are emergent properties, and that emergent properties have capacities (like judging truth and falsehood) which are not present in the causes they emerged from. (Solidity, for example, is a property which emerged from molecules which are not solid.)
Not if mental states are totally tied to the physical brain. For example, if transgenderism is real, then that is evidence the mind is not very closely tied to the body and brain. Every cell in the body and brain is one gender, while the transgender person claims that their mind is the opposite gender. That shows very little influence of the body and brain on the mind regarding sex and gender. And there are many other evidences that the mind and the brain are not tied closely. There are also NDEs.
I know you reject this, but can you acknowledge that this is a claim made by at least some naturalist philosophers? If this claim is true, does it still follow that we cannot trust our conclusions? Why? (You understand that "but it is not true" would not be an answer.)
I acknowledge that naturalists make this claim but it is very problematic. Because if naturalism is true then our conclusions would be based on the ratio of chemicals in your brain, not on the weighing of evidence.
El Cid said:
[. . .] How can a physical process produce the nonphysical?
Nobody knows. That doesn't make it impossible. It would only be impossible if there were an unbreakable rule that "no effect can possess properties which are not possessed by its cause," and there is no such rule. Theists can hardly believe in such a rule, since they believe that a non-physical being produce the physical.

(And again, this is relevant to Claim 1, but not to Claim 2.)
See above.
El Cid said:
Yes, but logic is not a chain of causes and effects.
My question was whether you agreed that "If there is a chain of causes, in which an underlying cause gives rise to a more immediate cause, the immediate cause does not thereby become irrelevant or gratuitous." If your answer to that is "yes," then you agree that if, according to the naturalistic view of things, chemical reactions are an underlying cause which gives rise to a more immediate cause of considering evidence, then you cannot conclude that, according to the naturalistic view of things, there is no such thing as considering evidence, there are only chemical reactions. I don't see how the fact that logic is not a chain of causes and effects is relevant here.
See above about how no weighing of evidence could occur.
El Cid said:
Logic produces nonphysical things like conclusions, but it doesnt cause anything physical.
I think you misunderstood my question. Your claim was that the naturalistic account of thinking couldn't be right because "the laws of logic are not cause-and-effect relations like chemical reactions." My question was, assume for the sake of argument that you're right: physical things are the wrong kind of stuff to bring about reliable conclusions. So what is the cause of thinking? What kind of non-physical stuff could bring this about?
The cause of thinking is your mind. Philosopher of the mind John Searle, says that 'Mental states are not the same as brain states." As Christians, we believe that the mind is made of spirit.
 
1) "Chemical actions cannot cause mental events like weighing evidence"
2) "If chemical actions did produce mental events like weighing evidence, then such weighing would be unreliable"

I asked you if you acknowledged that these were two different claims. You don't answer this explicitly, but since you say:
I believe the evidence points to both claims being most likely valid and true.
...it seems you are implicitly agreeing that they are two different claims (or else you wouldn't have said "both").

So, again, it is the second claim I am objecting to, as below.

Logic is a process that can produce conclusions and inferences. Logic is how our minds work, though due to our minds being abnormal and distorted away from logic, we often fail to use logic or fail to understand it well. Some of this can be remedied by education, but it will never return to our minds original normal state.
You had said that logic didn't "cause" things but did "produce" them. I said I didn't understand the distinction, and I still don't. What is the difference between saying "logic produces conclusions" and saying "logic causes conclusions"?

I think that when we say things like "logic tells us..." or "logic forces us to acknowledge..." we are just using figures of speech; there isn't really a logic angel which speaks to us or pushes us. Are you saying there is? If not, what is the process which you are alluding to? What is the beginning, middle and end of this process?

The next point is based on the following exchange we've had:

YOU: Natural laws are what causes physical events. If naturalism is true then even those mental activities are just chemical reactions and so are those desires to know those "right" answers. How can chemical reactions know whether something is right or not? Chemical reactions cannot really know anything.
ME: The naturalist claim is not that chemical reactions in the brain know things, but that chemical reactions in the brain cause mental states, and that mental states include knowing or wanting to know things. They say mental states are emergent properties, and that emergent properties have capacities (like judging truth and falsehood) which are not present in the causes they emerged from.
YOU [just now]: Not if mental states are totally tied to the physical brain.

By "totally tied to" do you mean "entirely caused by"? Yes, that is the naturalist claim: that mental states and mental capacities are entirely caused by processes in the physical brain. So how does your "not if" work here? Naturalists claim that the brain is the cause of the thoughts and capacities, but they are not making that claim, if the brain is the cause of the thoughts and capacities? That obviously makes no sense.

If what you mean is, "yes, naturalists claim that these thoughts and capacities are caused by the brain, but that is not true, if it is an absolute claim," then that is simply not an argument in favor of the claim of yours which I am addressing: that if naturalism is true, then our judgments are unreliable. It is just an argument in favor of the claim that naturalism is not true. Again, these are two distinct claims.

If your argument is, "If X is true, then Y follows," then you have to let X be true, for the sake of the argument. If you're given an argument for why Y would not follow, if X were true, you don't get to refute that by saying "but X isn't true!" And that's what you would be doing here, if your "not if" means "naturalist claims are not true."

If you mean something else by your "not if," can you please clarify what you do mean?

Not if mental states are totally tied to the physical brain. For example, if transgenderism is real, then that is evidence the mind is not very closely tied to the body and brain. Every cell in the body and brain is one gender, while the transgender person claims that their mind is the opposite gender. That shows very little influence of the body and brain on the mind regarding sex and gender.
This is not evidence against mental events being entirely caused by physical events in the brain. Nobody is saying that in a person with XY cells, neuron interactions have a male gender, and that in a person with XX cells they have a female gender. The interactions, even if caused by cells which carry chromosomes of one gender, do not themselves have a gender. Heartbeats in people with XY cells do not have a male gender, and immune responses in people with XX cells do not have a female gender.

And there are many other evidences that the mind and the brain are not tied closely. There are also NDEs.
Again, even if this is the case, it would be evidence that naturalism was false, not evidence that if naturalism were true, judgments would be unreliable. I am addressing the latter argument.

I acknowledge that naturalists make this claim but it is very problematic.
That doesn't matter at all for the purpose of argument here. Again, if your claim is, "if naturalism is true, then our conclusions are unreliable," you do not get to support that claim by saying "naturalist claims are likely to be false," or even "naturalist claims are demonstrably false." Again, an argument which starts with the premise that naturalism is true has to treat naturalism as if it is true, for the sake of the argument. You're not disputing this, are you?

Because if naturalism is true then our conclusions would be based on the ratio of chemicals in your brain, not on the weighing of evidence.
You've said this repeatedly, and I've repeatedly replied: no, because the naturalist claim is that chemical activity causes the mental state of considering evidence, so you can't just say that "the naturalist claim implies that the mental state of considering evidence does not exist or has no effect." You can't say that if a chain of causes leads to some effect, the last cause in the chain can be dismissed or ignored. Again:

Naturalist claim: chemical actions in the brain cause mental states and mental capacities.
Naturalist claim: among humans, mental states include the desire to know correct answers.
Naturalist claim: among humans, mental capacities include the ability to weigh evidence.
Naturalist claim: a capacity to weigh evidence well is an adaptive advantage.
Naturalist claim: natural selection will favor brains which provide adaptive advantages.
Naturalist conclusion: as a result of chemical actions in the brain, as honed by natural selection, human beings have a mental capacity to weigh evidence well.

For the purpose of your argument -- that "if naturalism is true, then our conclusions are unreliable" -- it simply does not matter at all if you can provide geometric proof that every one of the naturalist's claims is false. It only matters if you can show that the naturalist account of how we have the ability to weigh evidence well is self-contradictory. You aren't doing this.

See above.

See above about how no weighing of evidence could occur.
I see nothing above which addresses my objections.

The cause of thinking is your mind. . . . As Christians, we believe that the mind is made of spirit.
Does my mind have a cause?

Philosopher of the mind John Searle, says that 'Mental states are not the same as brain states."
I agree with Searle. (Though of course the fact that Searle said it, and that I believe it, does not settle it.) But it does not follow that brain states could not be the cause of mental states.
 
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There's a difference between determinism and fatalism. Fatalism says that no matter what we do, it won't affect the future, which is predetermined; determinism says that what we do causes things to happen in the future, which wouldn't have happened otherwise, though what we do happens because of a chain of causes which too place before we acted. Fatalism says that Oedipus was going to kill his father, no matter what he tried to do to avoid it; determinism says that Oedipus's meeting with his father was caused by previous events (including those in his mind), but that if he had traveled elsewhere, he never would have met his father.
Well I am referring to determinism, and determinism does not allow for free will. And without free will you have all the problems I mention to Eight crackers.
 
Because you would be wasting your time debating with people when you know that everything is predetermined no matter what you say.
But your actions would help define what would happen deterministically. It would be true for some cases that, if a person did A after talking with you, they would have done B had you not talked with them, all of which could happen deterministically.
Yes, but not of their own free will.
El Cid said:
Also, if we have no free will then why do you think it is ok to punish people for crimes when they are not responsible?
There are several reasons for a criminal justice system besides punitive punishment: deterrence, removing the offender from society for the safety of society, rehabilitation, etc.
Irrelevant if all those things are imposed on someone who was not responsible for doing anything wrong. How can someone without a free will be affected by deterrence?
El Cid said:
Without free will there is no such thing as morality, crimes, or science. So why keep talking about such things?
I've just indicated that there would be reason for society to define what is a crime above if there was no free will. You will have to provide some reason why you think that there is no morality or science without free will.
All moral actions have to be freely chosen, there are meaningless if they are predetermined. And science requires the weighing of evidence and logical reasoning. If your conclusions are predetermined then such things cannot occur.
 
Well I am referring to determinism, and determinism does not allow for free will. And without free will you have all the problems I mention to Eight crackers.
You said that a determinist "would be wasting your time debating with people when you know that everything is predetermined no matter what you say." The part in bold is not what determinism implies; determinists do not believe that the future would be the same no matter what you said or did; that's fatalism, not determinism. Determinists do not dispute the fact that what you say or do does cause things to happen, which would not have happened if you hadn't said or done them; they just claim that those statements and deeds are themselves determined by previous events.

To take an extreme example, a determinist sees somebody about to step in front of a speeding truck; of course he yells "stop!" because, by yelling "stop" he may cause the person to stop and avoid being killed. This isn't self-contradictory behavior, because determinism does not say "if he is destined to be killed, he will be killed no matter what you say or do, so yelling 'stop' is futile." Maybe a fatalist would say that, but a determinist would not.
 
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