Re: Causal determinism and non-materialist atheism

On Fri, 3 Jan 2025 12:54:41 +0000, MarkE wrote:

On 2/01/2025 11:20 pm, Burkhard wrote:

On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 10:40:34 +0000, MarkE wrote:
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On 1/01/2025 6:31 am, Burkhard wrote:

On Mon, 30 Dec 2024 11:56:48 +0000, MarkE wrote:
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I'm (tentatively) conceding some ground in this post against CS Lewis.
So no particular argument here; just for your end-of-year enjoyment.
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If causality holds universally, then the universe is deterministic (_in
principle_, and aside from quantum indeterminism).
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Different versions of compatibilism attempt to reconcile causal
determinism with free will to varying degrees. I'm not intending to go
down that rabbit hole here——I'm wondering instead about rationality,
reason, and materialism. Here's a one claimed problem (apologies if
this
is old ground for you):
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"C.S. Lewis, in his work Miracles, builds an argument from the oddness
of reason, claiming that a materialist-atheist view of reality is
untenable. Imagine a purely materialist world: a world of only
particles
and matter, with no purpose or normativity——only causal relationships.
In this world, reasoning becomes just a series of brain states
caused by
non-rational processes. According to Lewis, this means the rationality
of thought processes is an illusion. If materialism is true, then there
are no reasons, only causes. Thus, materialism undermines reason
itself."
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The algorithm read my mind and gave me an answer at Joe Folley's
YouTube
channel Unsolicited Advice (which I highly recommend). He describes
himself as an agnostic/atheist, and offers this response:
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"...Plantinga argues, there is no reason to think that survival and
having access to capital-T metaphysical truth are necessarily
connected..."
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However (and I find this fairly reasonable):
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"...For Fodor, sure, our ability to reason's overall job is to help us
survive, but it does this through letting us know what the state of the
world is—that is, what is true and what we can deduce from what we
already know is true. At the very least, he suggests it needs to be
shown how exactly a creature could have mostly or all false beliefs and
yet still somehow be well-suited for survival. After all, beliefs are a
big part of what guides behavior, and if we want to successfully
interact with the world—that is, to achieve our aims of survival and
reproduction—we had better have true beliefs about how the world will
respond when we perform certain actions. Or, to use an example, we need
to know where the tigers actually are, because if they are there, they
can hurt us."
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Interestingly, he then goes on to disagree that atheism implies
materialism, and discusses the possibility of non-materialistic atheism
with reference to Plato's forms and mathematical abstractions:
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"In a recent video by the underrated YouTube channel Emerson Green, he
points out that in modern popular discourse, we often use the terms
atheism and materialism as if they are totally interchangeable. Lewis
arguably falls into this trap as well when he suggests that if his
argument from reason succeeds, then this is good evidence for God’s
existence. In his video, Green largely talks about the examples of
non-materialist atheism from the philosophy of mind, but I want to
expand upon this point because there is a whole world of non-
materialist
atheism to explore. And a lot of it is far less ridiculous than you
might first think."
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"The Hidden Problem with EVERY Atheist Argument"
https://youtu.be/Q1jQscSNtNU?feature=shared
(Don't be put off by the title)

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Two thoughts on this: equating materialism with atheism is
indeed nonsense. Why should a specific opinion about the
existence of deities prejudge one's view of the existence
of numbers, minds, fictional objects, propositions,
etc etc?
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For TO purposes Godfrey Harold Hardy comes to mind -
an outspoken atheist who nonetheless (In "A mathematician's
apology") embraces mathematical platonism. Bertrand Russell's
neutral monism isn't materialism either. Schopenhauer was
clearly an atheist, but also a key figure in the
idealist movement etc etc.

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Definitions are critical here. If "non-materialist" means belief in the
existence of say numbers and propositions, then that
seems...inconsequential?

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I'm not sure what you mean with "inconsequential" in this
context. Materialism is the metaphysical position that
everything that exists can ultimately be reduced to matter.
There are lots of things some people claim exist that
can't be reduced to matter, including numbers and
prepositions, which means these people are not
materialists, whatever else they might think exists.
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And on the other hand, there are people who claim
nothing can be reduced to matter (all strong forms
of idealism) and who nonetheless don't think a specific
ideal entity - a god of one form or another - exists.
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And that means the while many atheists may well be
also materialists, the two concepts are neither
synonymous nor co-extensional, they are separate issues
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There seems to be a useful distinction to made here between the "thin"
nonmaterial notion that Folley describes, alongside what I'd call a
"thick" version (at risk of handing a pun on a plate).
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The thin version is unavoidable even for a strict materialist. For
example, natural numbers (1, 2, 3, ...) unavoidably "exist"
conceptually, as an abstraction of counting material objects. Does this
mean a strict materialist must deny the abstraction of natural numbers
to remain a materialist?

no, not necessarily. There are lots of "ontologically undemanding"
theories of numbers - for instance "operationalist" approaches
that conceptualise them through the act of counting, or nominalist
approaches that treat them as mere uninterpreted symbols with
rewriting rules.
But some philosophers and mathematicians always argued
for stronger ontological commitments, a platonic, mind
independent heavens of concepts that describe a different
type of reality (great V, the set-theoretical universe e.g.).
And there have been historically theists and atheists
on both sides.

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And how might we define "existence"? As (i) Platonic forms residing in a
realm outside of this spacetime continuum (which seems tantamount to
belief in the supernatural); or (ii) belief that these concepts,
whatever their existence may entail, do not imply or require anything
supernatural.
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It is left to reader to define _supernatural_. And _define_. And _and_.

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Yes, I'd agree that "supernatural" is pretty much a
meaningless "waste basket" category - typically used for
things that current best theories can't explain but where
some might intuitively feel an explanation is needed.
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Whether minds, numbers, propositions etc are then
labelled as supernatural is a bit of  a sema ntic question,
I would say no, in normal word use, but nothing depends on
it. They are however definitely not dependent on the
acceptance of any deity, which was the issue.

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Agree that numbers, propositions etc do not seem dependent on the
acceptance of any deity.
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So most certainly not all atheists are materialists.
I'm not even sure the converse is true, though that
could be more debatable.

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For the major montheistic religions, being a materialist is not an
option. For at least some forms of polytheism and pantheism, yes?
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Yes, and possibly also for the Emperor-gods of Japan and
Rome, and similar down-to-earth religions. Within
Christianity, some radical forms of adaptionism might
qualify, but they were always deemed heretical
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As for the Lewis-Plantinga argument, that has come up
quite often on TO. And yes, one obvious response is:
"mistake the sabre tooth tiger for a pussy cat once too
often, and see what it does for your reproductive success"
At least a significant part of our perception has
to be truth-tracking to enable survival and evolutionary
epistemology (Ruse, Rescher, Vollmer, etc) take this to
the very heart of the epistemological endeavour.
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What is missing in your account is the converse here.
Evolutionary epistemology does not only explain why
our perception has to be truth tracking "often enough",
it also explains why it can sometimes fail, and thus
accounts also for things like optical illusions and
other common mistakes. But these are a real problem
for the creationists' side: if as they argue God is
necessary to cause an alignment between reality and
perception, then He/She/they are also causal for those
situations where perception systematically fails. So
you end up either with a trickster God or dualism
where the anti-God has creative abilities or some
another ad hoc fix that comes at a significant
theological costs,

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I don't see how this implies that God is needed to reconcile material
reality and our sensory perception. E.g., the fact that our visual
system takes clever shortcuts which sometimes leave room for optical
illusions does not make God a trickster. It just reminds us that we are
finite beings.

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But isn't that the entire Lewis-Plantinga argument? According
to them, we need an "additional warrant" to trust our
senses and our reason. which they then locate in the designer.
But that makes the designer also responsible for the
systematic mistakes we make.
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The ToE accounts for both - the relative success of our
perception and reason, and that they sometimes fail. As
with all evolutionary "solutions", it is a compromise that
is "good enough", and also heavily path-dependent (some
things that were good a long time ago are still around and
now, under changed conditions, harmful etc). The
creationist alternative also would have to account for both,
and with that makes the systematic failures of our perception
and reason causally attributable to the choices of the designer.
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hence a trickster God- or maybe a conflict between equipotent
deities
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It would be conventional to say that God makes allowances for our human
limitations and sensory errors. At a fair and just school, a student is
not condemned for not getting 100% in a test; they are in trouble for
cheating, bullying, etc. Our moral accountability suggests that we are
not robots whose actions are entirely bound by causal determinism.

I don't think that works, for several reasons. First, the "human
limitations
and sensory errors" are in the Lewis Plantinga approach a design feature
-
they have to be once evolution as causal explanation is rejected. Which
is of course why Darwin was immediately embraced by quite a number of
Christian theologians, as a way to get God off the hook for quite a
lot of stuff. What you can't do, and remain logically consistent, is to
go down the Lewis Plantinga argument and then treat the systematic
perception errors as not divinely ordained. And that's also John
H's argument - once you think it through, their approach severs
all necessary connections between our environment and our ability
to reason about it.
The second part of the above I find even more difficult to follow.
Why are you now shifting from the reliability of perception and
factual reasoning in a deterministic universe (The Lewis point) to
one about moral reasons and moral accountability?
In any case, you have the same problems there. Yes, some
people claim that determinism and moral accountability are
incompatible with each other. But I'd argue the opposite is true,
and the libertarian model of free will that rejects causal
determinism does not lead to responsibility, but insanity.
Causality is a prerequisite for any type of responsibility,
otherwise you are left with random muscle spasms