--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote: > > --- 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?
Now that you've explained it, yes. 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. 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. > > 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. 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. > > 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.
