From Balfour to Hasker: A Brief History of the Argument From Reason | Dr. Graham Oppy | Ep.

[@alessandrovolta8354]

As a Catholic, I believe that the best argument from atheism Is the opportunity of having dr. Oppy on your side

[@RealAtheology]

As an Atheist, I do agree that having not only Dr. Oppy, but also Paul Draper, J.L. Schellenberg, J.H. Sobel, J.L. Mackie, Erik Wielenberg, Keith Parsons, C.M. Lorkowski, Evan Fales, Robin Le Poidevin, Greg Dawes, and many other good Atheist thinkers is definitely an argument for Atheism in itself.

[@alessandrovolta8354]

@@RealAtheology Let me Say that it's Always Amazing when an important Channel comments my comments! Wow!

[@RealAtheology]

This was an informative stream. Thank you having Dr. Oppy on and allowing him to showcase some of his recent scholarship. Looking forward to your future content.

[@AdherentApologetics]

Thanks for tuning in!

[@ApologeticsSquared]

HE'S BACK! :D

[@jmike2039]

I love how you conduct your interviews Zac. This is the space where theists and atheists can get together and nerd out 😂 and you always attempt to present an unbiased point of view. Thanks for making this interview possible. Cheers 🍻

[@AdherentApologetics]

Thank you for the kind words they really mean a lot!

[@philosophyofreligion]

49:53 funniest moment in the video 🤣🤣🤣

[@classicsciencefictionhorro1665]

Apologist: If you can't account for reality, then God exists. Me: If you can't account for god, then reality exists.

[@ФилософияотБэнни]

My few cents: Why should anyone believe Oppy, the materialist? If ideas are just patterns of nerve impulses, then how can one say that any idea (including the idea of materialism itself) is superior to any other? One pattern of nerve impulses cannot be truer or less true than another pattern, any more than a toothache can be truer or less true than another toothache. Oppy’s subjective feeling that he was able to reflect and choose truth (materialism) over untruth (non-materialism) is illusory: he has been determined all his life before his birth to be a materialist and to hold to that worldview, no matter how right or wrong it may be. Oppy can change his mind if the molecules in his brain, moving solely according to the laws of physics/chemistry, suddenly make He stop being a materialist. The arguments of a materialist/ determinist may be true, but he will never be able to recognize that they are true. Neither will his interlocutors be able to recognize this, for they are determined to believe in their success or failure. His arguments are entirely generated by a deterministic mechanism, and if that deterministic mechanism had not generated them, he would not have made those arguments. Therefore, no one's argument can be presented as true - including the argument for determinism. He can program a calculator or a computer to give "4" to the question "What is two plus two." But the calculator will never KNOW that 4 is the correct answer. It could just as easily give "5" or "125" to the same question if he programmed it differently. In his materialistic worldview, he is a bio-computer, and his programmer is blind reactions in motion, moving solely according to the laws of physics and chemistry. He will never know if he is programmed right or wrong. He cannot surpass his algorithm and evaluate it, bypassing his own determinism by this algorithm. Thus, the concept of "knowledge", "truth", and "untruth" are non-existent concepts in his worldview as He have no justification for any of his beliefs. Therefore, absolutely all beliefs are equally illusorily "true" and "false". As a result, no worldview can be favored. P.S. Postulation of some non-reductive materialism is an invalid move. Something that supervenes on physical processes cannot be ontologically different from physical processes. As David Bentley Hart says - "non-reductive materialism is nothing, but magic"

[@imitationgame2328]

I'd be interested to hear a bit more about why non reductive materialism is "nothing, but magic". It seemed to me as this was Oppy's main defense against this specific kind of argument from reason and just saying that it is false and quoting someone is not really doing any work tbh. The comment strikes me as very interesting but there is also some stuff that did strike me as taking the opposing position in a very uncharitable way or/and there are some things I would offer some ideas about: "If ideas are just patterns of nerve impulses, then how can one say that any idea (including the idea of materialism itself) is superior to any other? One pattern of nerve impulses cannot be truer or less true than another pattern, any more than a toothache can be truer or less true than another toothache." This comparison does not seem to exactly work. I do agree that if we just say is a thing true without any refrence to anything then that is probably saying nothing of substance. Now, if we put in regarding what it should be truth tracking then we actually do have some way to differentiate between those or we could try to make it work with the concept of coherence, ie. some neural states are coherent if they have a certain structure in accordance to the other neural states that are involved in the thing. In the same thing we can do that with your example, one corresponds in the structure more so to x (this would be more so coherence). I highly doubt that it is Oppy's subjective feeling that tells that, if at all it is something alike to what in philosophy is called a seeming and phenomenal conservatism offers quite some defense for that (even though I think that not being certain in metaphysical truths in general should undermine it, my point here is more that this is hopefully not what you think Oppy does here as even under your representation of his view that is far off from what he is doing). "His arguments are entirely generated by a deterministic mechanism, and if that deterministic mechanism had not generated them, he would not have made those arguments. Therefore, no one's argument can be presented as true - including the argument for determinism." Perhaps you are not familiar with his work but Oppy does not belief in determinism. This does not change anything about your argument tbf, indeterminism in form of chance is just as little in his control as that but I wanted to clarify that. "He can program a calculator or a computer to give "4" to the question "What is two plus two." But the calculator will never KNOW that 4 is the correct answer. It could just as easily give "5" or "125" to the same question if he programmed it differently." Okay so that is probably just false. The reason that the computer cannot know anything or hold any beliefs is first and foremost because it is not conscious, right? If it cannot know any proposition then it cannot know whether a proposition is true, yep, but that is not really a point, and I am pretty certain that you will grant that Oppy is conscious haha. Given, you can now argue that consciousness is either not well explained under naturalism (or perhaps more closely materialism even though it should be clear that Oppy is first and foremost a naturalist and then later on a materialist) or that it is just impossible for consciousness to "emerge" out of pure matter or to exist in any other matterialistic way. It does seem to me that, given that someone is conscious they can then have knowledge, I do not think that is controversial. So the two things you will probably want to debate are whether consciousness is possible or expected under oppy's view and/or whether one would be truth tracking under his view given that kind of special consciousness based on matter (I assume the latter? But correct me if not). "He will never know if he is programmed right or wrong. He cannot surpass his algorithm and evaluate it, bypassing his own determinism by this algorithm. " This is interesting! I have constructed a similar argument to this one so I have been thinking about this. There is some interesting line of reasoning given by Hegel, broadly that given that Oppy is part of reality, he "knows" at least that fact and you can go on from there but I am not sure whether that succeeds and reading Hegel to figure it out is rather a difficult thing to do. I am curious though on whether you do not think one can go on and do the same thing with every being in general even if it has free will, even libertarian one. I would broadly put it that way: (pls be charitable with me here) 1. Every being functions regarding to some model. (which can include free will etc as models within it) 2. Each being only knows something about itself or the world through itself/it's own model. C1: Knowing about your model or parts of it will only happen through using your model to figure it out. C2:Figuring out the origins of your model will only happen through using your model to figure it out. As you see as long as one does not presuppose that the model is true, even figuring out with the model itself that the model is true only tells you that the model is correct according to itself. It seems to me that you have that sceptical problem with all possible views, from which would follow that you can either not overcome it at all or just in general. Maybe since you talked about being programmed here, you would only know you are programmed from god for example through your own model from which you cannot know whether it is true. So, the problem does not seem to only occur for determinism. Regarding the last part, maybe you can give me a concise statement of the thing you think does not work, is it the determinism or more so the idea that a material being can have no consciousness/knowledge or that it can have those but cannot be sure about any of those, as it has no reason to belief in the truth (1 and 3 are pretty similar)?

[@a.sobolewski1646]

@@imitationgame2328 "We are compelled to admit between the thoughts of a terrestrial astronomer and the behaviour of matter several light-years away that particular relation which we call truth. But this relation has no meaning at all if we try to make it exist between the matter of the star and the astronomer’s brain, considered as a lump of matter. The brain may be in all sorts of relations to the star no doubt: it is in a spatial relation, and a time relation, and a quantitative relation. But to talk of one bit of matter as being true about another bit of matter seems to me to be nonsense." C.S. Lewis. Also: All physical things are particulars No universals are particulars No universals are physical things Conversion of Conclusion: No physical things are universals No physical things are universals Some concepts are universals Some concepts are not physical things Some concepts are not physical things All concepts are in the mind Some (things) “in the mind” are not physical things Translated Conclusion: Some things in the mind are not physical Some things in the mind are not physical things All things in the mind are part of the mind Some part of the mind is not physical Q.E.D.

[@ФилософияотБэнни]

@@imitationgame2328 Why non-reductive materialism "is magic"? If materialism is true, a thought is a product/byproduct of a brain and its environment. A brain and environment are nothing but matter in motion, which is purely physical/chemical. (One can reasonably claim that chemical is reduced to physical, but that is unimportant to the argument) A product/byproduct of a brain can NEVER be anything except matter in motion. Physical/chemical processes can only produce physical/chemical products or byproducts. Non-reductive materialism says that physical/chemical processes produce something ONTOLOGICALLY different. This position is nothing short of magic. Moreover, even if you grant this magic to the non-reductive materialist, all his thoughts will be epiphenomenal and, thus, absolutely irrelevant to anything else. If the physical realm is causally closed (the central postulate of materialism), it looks on the face of things as if it will go in its merry way regardless of what mental states exist. If this is the case, then mental states do not matter with respect to what events are caused in the physical world. Epiphenomenal thoughts cannot cause other epiphenomenal thoughts. Mental causation, which is necessary for any rational insight, is non-existent. I understand that Oppy may not be a determinist, but he has to pay with incoherence for wanting to have his cake and eat it, too. If everything is reduced to a closed material system - then we have determinism. Bringing quantum indeterminacy will not save the day. Any deliberating and any thought, including the thought "materialism is truth," is the product of blind acts of deterministic physical processes or physical processes that have inherent random-uncertain (quantum) spontaneity. You are still a puppet of a puppeteer called "physical processes," but she may randomly pull the string "A" instead of the string "B." And you are still entirely at her mercy. You are still a fully programmed moist machine if you like. I have a pesky penchant for being impatient with materialists who want to have their cake and eat it. I will respond to the remaining comment a bit later. Have a blessed day!

[@Daniel-cz9gt]

If the patterns of nerve impulses accurately represent some aspect of reality, then they are indeed true. The material nature of the substrate has no bearing on the reliability of these representations. These arguments always fail to explain why an immaterial substrate would fare any better. The claim that a deterministic mechanism for reasoning cannot be trusted never made sense to me, it is in fact the opposite, If a belief is freely chosen, it means that it could have been different under the same circumstances which is a clear detriment for its reliability, on the other hand a perfect reasoning process would always produce the same conclusions.

[@ФилософияотБэнни]

@@Daniel-cz9gt "If the patterns of nerve impulses accurately represent some aspect of reality, then they are indeed true." - So by analyzing the pattern of nerve impulses (chemically, physically) I can understand what they represent, right?