It is counterintuitive but true that the people with their feet most firmly planted on the ground are metaphysicians. Well, Thomist metaphysicians anyway. Here is one of my favorite bloggers, Thomist, with the ultimate take down of the naturalistic nonsense about proving through any scientific means of inquiry what mind or morality "really is":
"A scale proves that man is nothing other than a certain weight."
In other words, the assumption behind the naturalist project of trying to explain mind (or anything else for that matter) that purports to find that mind is merely matter, or that morality has some purely physical explanation, is that the thing measured is somehow limited by the means of measurement.
In fact, is that not the chief presupposition of scientism? That the object of inquiry is limited by the instrument of inquiry?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
1 comment:
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"A scale proves that man is nothing other than a certain weight."
ReplyDeleteI disagree. A scale measures weight. That's science by definition. Whether or not this "proves" anything about "nothing other than" seems like philosophy, not science.
"the thing measured is somehow limited by the means of measurement."
Everything in the natural world is "limited" or "finite" in some sense. Thus everything can be "measured". But the measurement is not "causing" the limitation. The limitation is "allowing" the measurement.
"purports to find that mind is merely matter"
How would one find that mind is "merely matter" or "more than matter"? Is this equivalent to "nature is all that exists" versus "the supernatural exists"? But the supernatural be "beyond science". So no scientist claims that the mind does or does not have a supernatural component. But there can never be an scientific evidence or such a supernatural component. So the default assumption is that it does not exist.