Mental states and thoughts are non-physical. How can something physical cause non-physical entities?
Your implicit argument here is, "If naturalism is true, physical events cause non-physical entities; but physical events cannot cause non-physical entities; therefore naturalism is false." Which means that -- again -- you are not defending your claim that
if naturalism is true, we can't rely on our judgments, and that is the claim I am challenging. Instead you are making the claim that naturalism is
not true. You seem to be refusing to acknowledge this distinction.
If naturalism is true, then judgements are impossible because they are non-physical entities.
No. The naturalist case is either:
1. Mental states (including judgments, etc.) are actually an unusual form of physical states, or
2. Mental states are not physical states, but physical states, operating under natural law, can create mental states (and therefore mental states, including judgments, are also natural).
And again, it wouldn't matter if you could present a good argument for why neither 1) nor 2) could be true. You are operating under the supposition that naturalism is
true, that is, that one of these claims is true.
If naturalism is true then non-physical entities do not exist.
Your premise is wrong, so your conclusion is unsupported.
No, there is strong evidence that men and women even think differently.
"There are ways in which
the average man's thinking about
some matters -- e.g., about how to find somebody's house, or about what are the most important goals in life -- is different from
the average woman's thinking about those matters," which is all that any survey can possibly show, does not at all imply that "no woman thinks like the average man," let alone that "no woman thinks like any man."
So plainly the chromosomes code for different neural proteins depending on the sex of the cells. So if transgenderism is real it is going against every cell in the brain.
The chromosomes which control brain development may code for different patterns in neurons, depending on sex, but that does not at all mean that the chromosomes which control brain development write a code which makes every male neuron blue and every female neuron pink, or however you're conceiving it.
Here's an alternate explanation for transgenderism: the chromosomes which control brain and body development sometimes carry coding errors, so that the sections which are supposed to supply a male self-image along with a male body instead cause a female self-image to develop in a male body. No need at all to assume that the mental state is fighting against its neurons; it would be obeying its neurons, it's just that the neurons didn't develop the way they normally do.
And again,
even if you were right here, all it would mean would be that naturalism does not account for transgenderism, which would suggest that naturalism is false. But -- again -- that is not the claim I am challenging.
(Skipping some points which would only be repetitive.)
Again mental states are non-physical, the naturalist view is that only physical entities exist, so therefore if naturalism is true then mental states do not exist.
Let me try to get the point across this way.
P1 It is possible that naturalism is true. (You have said this yourself in previous posts.)
P2 If naturalism is true, then mental states do not exist. (You said this just now.)
C It is possible that mental states do not exist.
Do you agree with the conclusion?
If not, on what grounds do you reject it? You would have to take back either premise 1 or premise 2. Which one goes?
If you
do agree with the conclusion... what in the world does it mean? It is possible that nobody thinks or feels? That's self-evidently false, isn't it? And please don't say "but that's naturalism's conclusion": it isn't. It's the conclusion
you must come to, unless -- again -- you take back either of the two premises.
The simplest and most obvious way to get out of this dilemma would be to take back premise 2, on the grounds that naturalism does
not in fact imply that mental states do not exist. But then you would have no argument, at least as of now, for your claim that if naturalism is true, judgments are intrinsically unreliable.
Yes, God created your mind.
I'm still trying to understand your account of how we come to correct conclusions. You did not, for example, address the following questions I asked:
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?
So to ask that last question once more: let's say "God created my mind" is the beginning. God doesn't causes the mind to come into existence all at once, obviously, because my mind isn't the same today as it was when I was 3, or even 13. How do you conceive of this happening? God creates something like a seed which grows over time? Grows according to natural, physical law? Some spiritual law? Both?
So, that's the beginning. What's the middle and end? The developed mind then... Can you pick it up from there?