--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@...> wrote:
> 
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> 
> > wrote:
> > (snip)
> > > > 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.
> > > 
> > > LOL.
> > 
> > Is that a tic of some kind you've got there? 
> 
> Yes.
> 
> I made a
> > perfectly reasonable statement, regardless of what you
> > think of Nagel. The leading materialists don't tend to
> > come out in droves to burn a heretic unless they're
> > afraid serious people may find the heretic convincing.
> > 
> > Have you read Nagel's book, BTW?
> 
> No, and I can tell you haven't. That's what made me laugh,
> defending something you haven't read using other peoples
> dislike as evidence that he's on to something.

Ah, but you're very much mistaken, I did indeed read it,
have it on my Kindle, in fact. I don't think you quite
got what I meant by "he must have hit close to the bone,"
even after I tried to explain it to you. Let me try
again:

See, hard-core materialists are very unlikely to come out
in force against a book that makes a weak argument against
materialism. So the fact that they *did* come out in force
against Nagel's book is evidence that his argument was
strong enough to make them nervous. They wouldn't have
bothered otherwise. (By "nervous," I don't mean afraid
he's right, but rather afraid that, as I said, his
argument is strong enough to convince those who aren't
already convinced of materialism.)

That has nothing whatsoever to do with *my* evaluation of
the book. I don't need much convincing, so my opinion of
his argument isn't evidence that it's a strong one. That's
why I cited the response of the materialists.

Get it now?

> I haven't read any "materialist" critiques of it either.

Hooboy, there's a ton of 'em.

> I think Darwinism is doing a fine and dandy - if currently
> incomplete - job of explaining things, to say there are
> irreducible structures in nature - whatever your angle -
> is another way of saying "I don't believe it because I
> don't understand it" until we reach the end of possible
> exploration and there are unexplainable gaps. *Then* we
> can get all theological about other entities involvement.

Oh, gracious, no "other entities" in this book. Nagel is
a very determined atheist. I'm not quite sure what you
mean by "irreducible structures in nature," unless you're
referring to mind as a structure. Now, when you say,
"another way of saying, 'I don't believe it,'" what is the
antecedent of "it"? If you're suggesting that Nagel doesn't
understand Darwinism, I suggest you think again.

Nagel's argument is basically philosophical, i.e., he shows
logically how neo-Darwinism cannot *in principle* account
for the human mind.

He suggests one potential (nontheistic) solution to fill
the explanatory gap, but he offers it only as a
possibility, not as a firm conclusion. His main focus is
on why there *is* a gap.
 
> Or maybe Nagel has done just that and provided science with
> an argument it can't explain. Until one of us reads the book
> we won't know. LOL.

Well, *you* won't know until *you* read the book, that's
for sure. LOL.





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