The Simple Reason Why Determinism and Materialism Fail

[Meleagar]

We know by empirical experience that apparent physical experience can be false (hallucinations, delusions) and thoughts or utterances can be false (in conflict with a fact or the truth).

Our experience that [experience can be false] cannot be false because if it was, then it would still prove that experence can be false. The same with the capacity of thoughts or utterances to be false; so we know that thoughts and statements can be false.

Beliefs (as thoughts) can therefore be false. The belief or thought that one is being logical can be false. The experience of proving to oneself that ones thoughts or beliefs are not false can be false.

Determinism is the belief that all events in the world, even thoughts and beliefs, are the product of cause and effect sequences. We know that cause and effect sequences can, and often do, produce false experiences, thoughts, and beliefs. Classic materialism holds the same view and reults in the same potential for false experiences, thoughts, statements and beliefs.

From the materialist/determinist point of view, what basis does one have for claiming that something they say or believe is true? If their experiences, thoughts and beliefs can be false, and all of those things are generated by material cause and effect, and we know that process can, and often does produce false outcomes, then there is no grounds by which one can meaningfullly assert that their argument is even likely to be valid or their conclusion is even likely to be true, other than that a faulty system of cause and effect "might have" produced a true statement as it was uttered.

Also, it is only by the chance outcomes (chance, meaning ultimately non-deliberate or intelligently guided, since deliberacy and intelligence are ultimately simply the interactions of brute, unsentient physical materials as they march along their interactive path set by the conditions of the big bang) of cause and effect that anyone they are talking to might actually hear what they said, since experience can be false, and might interpret it the way it was intended, since thoughts can be false, and might accept it as valid, since beliefs and evaluation systems can produce false answers and conclusions.

For argument to be meaningful, there must be a way of expecting to deliberately discern true experiences, thoughts, beliefs and statements from untrue ones. Deliberate means intentionally attempted. If deliberacy and intentionality are simply the product of material cause and effect, they can be false experiences, and thus under the view that deliberacy (free will) is a material phenomena within the realm of cause and effect, it can be a false experience. Therefore we would still not have any means by which to expect to be able to attempt to deliberately discern true statements, because the deliberacy, the expectation, the discerning, and the conclusion of truth can all be false experiences, thoughts and beliefs.

Without the premise of a locus of acausal, transcendent deliberacy that lies outside of the material, determinstic sequence that has the capacity to attempt to discern true statements from that perspective from an objective position, uncoerced by cause-and-effect, then there is simply no basis by which one can claim to be able to meaningfully differentiate between true and untrue statements, experience, beliefs, and thoughts, because all one has to evaluate their process with is subject to itself being false.

Thus their argument is defaulted by reason that there is no expectation that their argument is true or that my experience or understandig of their argument will be true. It might be true by chance, and I might understand it as true by chance, but I still have no means by which to meaningfully know it is true or not, because I'm already aware that all of my experience, thoughts, beliefs and statements might be false ... that is, if I believe in deterministic materialism.

Without positing a transcendent source of determining truth that one can access to some degree, there can be no expectation that anyone is uttering a truthful statement, or that anyone is hearing or interpreting any statement correctly.
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[Scott]

I don't think your making an argument against materialism or against causal determinism per se. I think you are instead making a general argument for epistemological skepticism bordering on nihilism.

Few philosophers would say a person can know anything with some sort of absolute, infallible certainty. But for most that does not rationally lead to nihilism. There are different levels of believability based on empirical evidence. Different scientific theories can be more or less validated than each other. Though we may not have some sort of absolute infallible certainty that my past experiences and empirical-based knowledge is correct that if I put my hand on a heated stove I will feel pain, I still feel rational, reasonable and correct to believe that it is far more believable to the point of being considered 'knowledge' that I will burn myself and hurt by touching the heated stove than by touching the regular old counter. Every time I experiment by touching the hot stove I further validate that theory that I will feel pain. There is no perfect amount of validation because more experiments can always at least hypothetically be done to further validate the theory or refute it. I would ask any epistemological nihilist or those bordering on it to touch the hot stove since they cannot trust the empirical evidence that would otherwise lead them to know it would burn them and cause them undesirable pain. For more about these different levels of belief and the various standards used for them, I suggest you read my thread How much evidence does it take to believe or to know?
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[Santini]

Aww, give him a break, Scott. He only wrote that because he had to write it given the prior state of the universe . . . (just like you had to write what you wrote and I had to write this).

BTW, you're exactly correct and I argued as much, contra Meleagar's position, in the "We're machines . . . " thread.

Meleagar's argument does seem to be epistemic in nature not metaphysical.

[Meleagar]

Scott:

My challenge is about the metaphysical basis, not about methodology. Until you can provide the metaphysical basis by which I can expect your statements to be true (other than by chance), any description of your method is unfounded and premature.

Please describe to me how determinism and materialism provide a basis for me to expect that anything you say can be true other than by chance, or how I can expect myself to be able to discern it as true except by chance.
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[Scott]

I'm not sure what you're asking me, Meleagar.

Determinism vs. non-determinism and materialism vs. non-materialism is a different debate than epistemological skepticism vs. any of the other epistemological philosophies.

Like I said, I couldn't even convince an epistemological skeptic or epistemological nihilist that the lit stove is hot. When they place their hand on it and feel the burning pain, they will just deny that that evidence makes it any more likely or believable that the stove is real, that it is burning hot and that it causes pain if and when he places his hand upon it.

Ultimately, I think the epistemological skeptics and epistemological nihilists are just playing devil's advocate. I don't think they actually adhere to that philosophy because they do not actually put their hands on the stove--since they know it would cause pain and want to not feel pain.

I think that trying to use epistemological skepticism in a debate about materialism is a red herring fallacy. It would be like a defense lawyer trying to get his client acquitted based on the epistemologically skeptical/nihilistic claim that we cannot know anything. It's such an absurd and confusing red herring, that I would also compare it to the Chewbacca Defense.
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[Santini]

[Meleagar]

[Santini]

[Meleagar]

[Santini]

[Belinda]

Meleagar:

[Meleagar]

Santini: I think that is a response meant for a different thread; that quote doesn't come from here.

Belinda: Because sentient beings exist doesn't make determinism/materialism true; if your response is that materialism/determinism allows me to expect you to produce truthful statements, and myself to discern them, because materialism produces sentient entities which can produce truthful product by something other than chance, you haven't explained anything, you've only affirmed the consequent.

Is sentience not a chance phenomena, governed by chance materials in chance sequences of cause and effect? If not, why not?
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[Alun]

I agree with Scott. Just because we cannot be certain of things if materialism is true, does not mean we cannot know anything if materialism is true. In fact I do not see how a certain idea about the material world is any more useful than an idea about the material world that is only justified by experience.

For every one of the million instances I can remember, I have been firmly pulled towards the Earth. Yet I concede, it is a distinct possibility that I am not actually firmly pulled to the Earth. Who cares about such a possibility? There is no functional difference; I would not behave differently if I didn't have to worry about it, since there is nothing I can do about such an extraneous possibility.

[Meleagar]

Alun,

Once again, the problem in your answer (and that of others) is that you are conflating the method with the basis.

In order to discern true statements, one must have access to truth. One cannot make a comment on how true something is, or that one thing is more true than another, unless they understand in some way what is true and what is not.

Without an acausal locus that is in contact with actual truth (or can get in contact with it), the best that any biological program can do is is compute how closely the output of other programs corresponds to its own program, and even at that it has no way of independently assessing the correctness of that programmed comparison. It can also only interpret sensory input according to the program; any criteria for truth is just whatever exists as program parameters. Truth is just a label the program applies to whatever meets its entirely subjective, relative criteria; if one program subjectively asserts that only that which is repeatable and apparently confirmed by other programs similar to me can be labeled as true, it is no different than another program that subjectively asserts "whatever I want to be true is true".

The method for discerning truth is not a basis for discerning truth. Only an entity in contact with actual truth can discern actual truths; biological programs can, at best, only discern that which it (the program)agrees with. Calling that process a "discernment of truth" is an equivocation of the term "truth". In that sense, the "truth" is just an arbitrary statement or belief used to compare other statements or beliefs against.

What one is left with in a materialist, deterministic world are biological programs issuing forth computed output (before any illusionary self-identified sentience can even act on it, if it were to exist, and even then would still be the product of unsentient forces and materials) that may or may not even correspond to anything actual (since we know experience, thought and belief can all be false), and other biological programs computing how closely that output matches their own and outputting that the information is "true", but still having no means to independently correspond the information to anything actual or even to ensure its own program of comparison to itself is not faulty.

The materialist/determinist has no means of establishing what is actually true; the only truth available to such an entity is whatever is programmed as true, and we know that such programmed truths can more easily be false than actually true. All one has are program lines labeled as "true", which may or may not be actually true.

Belinda & Alun:

Also, if the "I" is not an independent locus of actual acausal deliberacy, and free will decisions are actually "made" before the "I" even knows that it has made a decision (as per the brain/free will experiment), then it is a dodge to assert that a sentient "I" is involved at all when it comes to discerning true statements or making other decisions. Under materialist determinism, true statements and decision are simply the product of non-conscious computations. If the "feeling" that one is making a decision is illusionary, then so is sentience, because sentience only exists as a post-hoc rationalization for non-sentient computations.

What this means is that both the "I" and "truth" are borrowed concepts when used in materialist/determinist arguments; they are used from an idealist basis, not a materialist one. There is no meaningful sentient "I", nor any discernible, non-relative "truth" in deterministic materialism.

The determinist "discernment" of any statement boils down to: "Your statement is not true because I don't believe it", because that is the actual state of the determinist evaluation; if their program disagrees with your statement, it is computed as not true. There is nothing to access outside of the program to evaluate the statement with, so it is only because one doesn't believe a statement that makes it untrue, not because one has any understanding of actual truth by which to compare the statement against.

Materialists cannot meaningfully claim to be able to discern true statements, they can only rationally claim that the relative biological program that computes the output they call "self" says that the claim in question corresponds or does not correspond with that program, and that there is no meaningful way to ascertain if the program is faulty even doing that.

They have no meaningful way to make or discern a meaningfully true statement at all; they only have an admittedly faulty means by which to assess if a statement corresponds to their programming (their beliefs), and nothing more. Actual truth lies outside of the capacity of a biological program to assess; it can only be somewhat reasonably expected to discern if the statement corresponds to its programming, and even that cannot be meaningfully evaluated.

Thus, materialist determinists cannot be expected to discern or make true statements at all; they can only be expected to make statements of belief that correspond to what is contained in their particular program. If their output happens to correspond to actual truth, there is no way for anyone (under determinism) to assess it as such.

The idealist, on the other hand, asserts that they either are, or can, access actual (objective, absolute) truths, and from a transcendent, acausal locus attempt to independently evaluate statements in relation to actual truths.

Whether their position is true or not, only the idealist (the only sentient "I" in any significant sense of the words) can be expected to deliberately (in any meaningful sense of the word) discern (in any significant sense of the word) true (in any meaningful sense of the word) statements.

All arguments follow the form of, and assume the basis of, the idealist perspective, or else there is no meaningful argument to make, because deterministic materialist have no "I" to argue from or appeal to, nor anything but relative programmed beliefs to argue about, and no means by which to self-correct or independently evaluate their own statements.

From a materialist/determinst framework, an argument is nothing more than the chance noises made when the wind rustles leaves in a tree and whatever "meaning" is derived for each leaf is nothing more than solipsistic, fault-prone programmed interpretation with no capacity to understand anything that is actually, truthfully being said in any objective sense.
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[Alun]

Meleagar, briefly:

The justificatory basis for the empirical method is essentially to assert a principle of value, and ignore things that would undermine that value. I.e. I subscribe to epistemic contextualism. I meant to imply this more strongly in my previous post, but the idea is that we only care about utility in knowledge. Since all that matters to us in the material is what we are likely to experience, the empirical method* is all that is needed. Hence, when we want to learn about material things, we do not need to explain away useless, or extraneous, possibilities.

*The empirical method applies inductive reasoning to our experiences, reaching conclusions about the material in general. This is justified by the above basis because if the frequency of our experiences is not related to the generalities of experience, then our attempts to reason are no more likely to be undesirable than behaving in any other way. I.e. we can simply assume the empirical method holds, since the alternatives are meaningless according to the values being applied.

More specifically: