The Suicide of Thought (Part Eight)
Part Eight: The Matter of Materialism
Please note that the endless and silly debate about determinism and reductionist materialism is nothing but the crudest possible form of science worship as I have here defined it: the materialist takes the intuitive axiom of scientific reasoning, that all bodies act without free will, and applies it to the thoughts and deeds of human beings, and comes to a conclusion that renders all law and punishment simply meaningless.
But the two methods of reasoning cannot apply to the subjects proper to the other.
No one thanks the sun for having the fidelity to hold the beloved Earth in orbit, never letting it slip out into cold interstellar darkness. It is gravity, not fidelity, that is the cause identified. Efficient cause.
Likewise chastity in a young and pretty wife allured by a dangerous Don Juan is of no account if it is merely the outcome of brain chemical actions beyond her awareness or control. It is fidelity, not chemistry, that is the cause identified. Final cause.
The reductionist materialist, of course, cuts off the branch on which he sits, just as all modern simpletons do.
If the words issuing from his mouth and the thought-symbols flickering through his brain are solely the operation of mechanical forces devoid of intent hence beyond human awareness or control, then his belief in materialism is not a philosophical belief, or indeed not a belief at all, but an epiphenomenon.
The belief cannot be debated because it is not a belief, merely a side effect of meaningless material motions. In such a case, a human would and could no more care about the electrical disturbances produced by the convolutions of his brain than a record in a phonograph would and could care about the sonic waves produced by grooves in the vinyl. Those sonic waves are not, strictly speaking, words. Likewise those neural electrical brain-motions are not, strictly speaking, thoughts.
The materialists never actually use scientific reasoning in their debate upholding materialism. They use judicial reasoning only.
Note that, like all philosophical arguments, an assumption is made by all parties to the debate that stare decisis will be followed: if you answer that in one given hypothetical you would decide or believe one given conclusion, you are expected to decide or believe the same conclusion in a second hypothetical unless the cases can be distinguished.
But if materialism were true, only scientific reasoning would exist. There would be no method of judicial reasoning and no subject matter of judicial reasoning.
Indeed, I will be so bold as to state that judicial thinking is what we use for all ethical and moral questions, as well as such judgments as whether to let a boy date your daughter, whether to trust a man to be your partner in business, whether to cosign a loan, whether to wed a suitor, whether to vote for a candidate. All political decisions are based on judicial thinking.
The grinding tedium of debates with materialists is also explained by the source of their error. They are using judicial thinking to appeal as if to a juror ruling on the case they present. The juror is expected impartially to study the pertinent evidence and render a verdict.
Unfortunately, mentally crippled by modern education, the materialists are unable even to imagine that there is a distinction between scientific and judicial reasoning. For them, the word ‘reasoning’ means scientific reasoning only. Anything not scientific reasoning is merely meaningless opinion. The error cannot be pointed out to them. There is literally no category in their mind into to put the debate being debated, to identify the proper means of debate, much less to identify the intuitive axioms without which the debate cannot take place.
Hence no debate takes place. Both parties state their positions and grow frustrated because they cannot identify the intuitive axiom they do not share in common. As if Euclid were to debate congruent triangles with Lobachevski, but neither mentions Playfair’s axiom.
Now the same criticism of materialism applies to all the modern simpleton systems of philosophy here listed: from Hume to Marx, each philosopher is looking at human nature like a biologist or rancher looking at livestock. He attempts to discover facts about men, trying to use wissen or savoir (book learning) instead of kennen or connaître (getting acquainted) to get acquainted. Hence, by the mere logic of the method of thought used, these simpletons eliminate themselves from the equation. The human livestock or the human machine at which they look with their scientific goggles is some object, a thing, unlike the philosopher doing the looking. And so the same logical trap always trips them up: their conclusions apply to all other men, but cannot apply to the philosopher himself.
Their pronouncements are always in the third person, never in the first person. It is never “My opinions are determined by nonhuman historical forces” or “My words are a meaningless word-game” but always “His opinions are by nonhuman historical forces” or “Their words are a meaningless word game.”
The attempt to produce a philosophy which has these two envied characteristics, simplicity and objectivity, produces no philosophy, but abolishes it.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
