Monday, 13 July 2020

Just finished reading "the soul fallacy".

Just this second finished "the soul fallacy". There was nothing in it that I haven't heard before, but I do read skeptic views on this issue extensively, so perhaps that's not surprising.

His rejection of the soul is parasitic on some form of reductive materialism being entirely unproblematic. If reductive materialism is possible, then it beats dualism in virtue of being the more simple and parsimonious hypothesis. But he never provides any arguments for materialism nor responds to the objections raised against it, he merely effectively says that materialism is what science tells us is true. But he omits to tell us how science tells us this.

He also sees it entirely unproblematic that the world and everything that happens within it is wholly a result of physical chains of causes and effects, including all our behaviour and, by implication, everything we think.

There are compelling arguments against such a modern reductive materialism that I regard as decisive. There are also compelling arguments that necessarily our consciousness per se must have at least some causal efficacy as I argue here.

Simply assuming that reductive materialism is possible and simply assuming that our behaviour is entirely due to material causal chains is entirely unproblematic makes the entire book one huge question begging exercise. Instead he contents himself with attacking interactive dualism. Many of these attacks in their turn though presuppose that the alternative of materialism is viable and hence are also question begging.

I'll write a review, perhaps in differing parts.

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