YOUR HOST: Onward, With A Caveat

Stan, in a prior post, looks at the recursive nature of human thought ('we think about thinking about thinking,' ad infinitum...) as suggestive of the poverty of a strict materialism. Hey, I'll buy that, but I'm not sure it proves what he thinks it proves.

Before I go on, though, I should point out it's been nearly two weeks since this last post and I have to apologize for my silence. In my defense, I preached at my church the previous weekend and had a test in my Wednesday night class this week, so this has been an exceptionally busy last week. Going on....

Anyway, Stan writes:

Since thoughts and speech are predetermined, they are not reflective of any personal volition of the owner. As such, the events have no meaning, either to the owner or the listener, and the results of such thought and speech events should also have no meaning.

I'm just not sure that follows. One could reject a strict materialism (as most philosophers, even atheist ones, do) without necessarily concluding that naturalism was false. Many people recognize that there all sorts of emergent properties which do not lend themselves to a reductive explanation, since knowing what atoms are made of or how they tend to bond does not in itself predict anything about complex phenomena which are produced by an interaction between other complex objects. Living things exhibit apparent design, as in the neural networks that manifest recursive thought, but the engineering metaphor breaks down. A good source to read on this would be John Holland.

Anyway, for the sake of discussion, let's go forward from this point, Stan, as long as you understand that I don't think you've ruled out naturalism with this move.

FLORIDA SCRAPES THROUGH

Good news, and the fight continues, both in the Sunshine State and elsewhere.

Betcha the DI and the 'Expelled' folk wish they'd 'joined forces' sooner so they would've had more time to get their misleading 'Academic Freedom' argument out there. I'd crow more, but a 4-3 approval with a sop to those who murmur 'just a theory' is not entirely compelling.

Still, well done, Florida.

PASS THE ST. JOHN'S WORT

Another Ph.D comic that tells the truth. If you're a teacher, don't click if you're in the middle of grading a bunch of papers. Fortunately, I didn't see this little jewel until after I had decided (after grading) to not count 30 percent of my most recent Chemistry test.