--- In [email protected], "Seraphita" <s3raphita@...> wrote:
>
> --- In [email protected], "authfriend"  wrote:
> >
> > If you're interested in the debate with materialists, you
> > could do a lot better than Chopra. He's not what I would
> > call a rigorous thinker.
> >
> > You might try Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos: Why the
> > Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost
> > Certainly False."
> >
> > Nagel got in a lot of trouble with the big-time materialists;
> > the book really upset them, so he must have hit close to the
> > bone.
>
> Yes, Nagel's book is already on my to-read list

Oh, excellent. Again, if you want to preview it, probably
a good quarter of it is on FFL in those posts I listed.

> as I've been amused by the way atheist philosophers and
> neo-Darwinian scientists have closed ranks to denounce
> his heresy.

It's been sort of a hobby of mine since the book came
out to read all the reviews I can find. It's a sort of
non-Chopra education in the "War of the Worldviews." ;-)
Except that Nagel himself hasn't been interested in
responding to his critics (can't say as I blame him, but
it would be fun to see his defense).

If you're interested, there's a neat blog by a classical
theist philosopher who made a series of eight longish
posts on Nagel's book, picking a few nits here and there
but mostly taking apart the materialists' attacks on it:

edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/06/mind-and-cosmos-roundup.html

All kinds of interesting stuff on that blog. The guy's
sort of crabby, but he's also a very clear writer.

> It's curious that so many people have a strong emotional
> attachment to whatever the current orthodoxy is.

Well, the nonmaterialists are generally just as emotionally
attached to their UNorthodox point of view...

> My vice
> is the exact opposite - I only enjoy reading people who
> shake the foundations - whether they are right or wrong I
> find that approach is invariably more entertaining.

*And* more educational, I'd say, especially when those
who are trying to hold up the foundations do their best
to debunk the shakers.

> (Of course one has to draw the line somewhere: I need my
> heretics to make a good case and not simply spout wild
> theories like David Icke, for example.)

Oh, jeez. We had somebody on FFL a few years back who was
a big Icke fan, a very intelligent woman, believe it or not.



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