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“If a materialist says that she believes in materialism
because she perceives the reasons for believing it,
then I take it she is committed to the existence
of reasons,”
and therefore has to explain how they can exist in a
materialist universe.
It is really the same argument that Socrates used at his
defense: How can you believe in flute playing and not
believe in flutes? How can you believe in divine effects
and not believe in the gods?
Reppert has updated it and applied it to the existence of
reasons in a useful and persuasive manner.
His refutation on pp. 100-101 of the notion that reason
could have been produced by natural selection
is also good.
The “inadequacy objection,” which argues that non-scientific
explanations do not explain, is one of the biggest hurdles
the argument from reason has to face.
Reppert’s question on p. 111 is an excellent response to it:
“Is it more dangerous to the scientific enterprise to suggest
that a comprehensive “scientific” account of cognition
cannot be correct,
or to suggest that truth should not be the goal of our
rational deliberations?”
That is a question that we need ask more insistently.
..I focused on the fact that a naturalist universe is by
definition a deterministic universe. The laws of physics
determine everything because the universe, being uncaused,
exists a se and therefore by definition cannot be other
than it is.
It seems to me that this fact needs to be stressed,
for it provides a simpler way of defeating Anscombe's
objections.
It really does not matter whether chains of reasoning
caused by non-rational causes can happen to have been
valid or not,
unless we are free to choose between them on a non-deterministic basis:
If nobody can help believing what he believes, whether
it be rational or irrational,
then nobody is in a position to distinguish between
warranted and unwarranted truth claims
or to urge his own truth claims with any moral force.
Valid chains of reasoning might occur, but nobody --
including the naturalist making truth claims for
naturalism -- would be in a position to benefit from them.
Reppert implies all of this when he talks about the
problem of knowing that one is rational,
but it seems to me that his case would be strengthened
by bringing it out more clearly.
( Donald T. Williams , Toccoa Falls College )