--- In [email protected], "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <authfriend@> wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> > > wrote: (snip) > I'm much more interested in whether the materialists are > content that they have successfully seen off the incursion. > Maybe - like we were with the so called "intelligent design" > BS - they react strongly to the ignorance of the argument > to slap it down straight away lest tubthumpers use it as an > excuse.
Doubt it, at least with regard to the "ignorance of the argument." Nagel is a *very* highly respected senior philosopher, not some dork from the Discovery Institute. (He's the author of the celebrated essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" of which I'm sure you've heard.) That hasn't stopped them from *accusing* him of ignorance in some aspects of his argument, but his defenders (some of whom are equally as prominent as his critics) have pointed out that the critics have significantly misconstrued him--in at least a few cases, apparently deliberately. Anyway, yes, they're concerned about the potential use of his book by creationist types--giving aid and comfort to the enemy and all that. They especially don't like the book's subtitle--"Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False." Strong statement. However, as I noted, Nagel doesn't suggest--indeed, opposes--a theistic alternative. And IMHO, that the book's thesis might be misused is a poor reason to attack it. > It took me 20 minutes to dismiss the ID case, and that included > a bike ride to the library for the relevant high school text book. > Simples. But they were a bunch of tubthumpers on a mission to > get creationism taught in schools as we now know. > > No one knows of anything that couldn't have got here under it's > own steam, baffling and stunning though it all is whenever someone > comes a major natural mystery it almost always turns out to be > something that came pre-adapted to do something else and got co- > opted into helping out another part of the organism. > > The mind is a case in point, like I said about music the other > day, it takes many parts of the brain to give us the subjective > experience but none of them evolved to do that, I think it's > that we join things up and our minds just enlarge and link up > emotions and memories or maybe the earliest music played a > different part in our social lives and has just got "out of > hand" as far as whatever it's original intention or use was. > > But it isn't all explained by any means, I get sceptical because > the method of explanation used so far (materialist science) has > done a pretty damn good job so far. Well, if you don't analyze the explanation philosophically to see whether it's logically coherent, it may seem like it does a good job. (snip) > > 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. > > So, it's one of those irreducible structure things then. If > something like the mind can't evolve without help then it's > being helped. Don't keep me in suspense, what is his theory. > Sum it up, we know the brain evolved, you can even watch it > evolve embryonically, so if what the brain does *didn't* > evolve or needed a helping hand from something else then > I'm all ears. I'm going to refer you to the book. It's a detailed and tightly reasoned argument (but only 128 pages). I'm not good at boiling that kind of thing down, and I wouldn't be able to do justice to it. If Robin were here, he surely could, but he ain't. And as I said, Nagel's suggestion as to an alternative mechanism is tentative and incompletely developed. It's just one possible way to approach the problem. The much more important aspect of the book has to do with the explanatory gap. There's no point talking about alternative mechanisms until you see why neo-Darwinism doesn't--can't--fill the gap; otherwise you can't tell what might be successful in filling it. > > > 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. > > I only want to know one thing about it. Do tell all. All I'll say is that it isn't theistic. Nagel goes to some trouble to explain why he would reject any supernatural solution. He's basically a naturalist; he just thinks the current naturalist view is incomplete and inadequate and needs revision and extension in order to encompass what it needs to explain.
