Brian Auten interviews Dr. Angus Menuge on philosophy of mind

Click here for the interview. It’s up at Apologetics 315!

Details:

Today’s interview is with Dr. Angus Menuge, Professor of Philosophy  at Concordia University, and author of Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science. He talks about his background and work, the philosophy of mind, what reason (or reasoning) is, what materialism is as a worldview, things excluded from a materialistic worldview, methodological naturalism and materialism, accounting for free will, materialistic accounts of reason, the epistemological argument from reason, the ontological argument from reason, finding the best explanation for reason, problems with methodological naturalism, implications of materialism, practical application of the argument from reason, advice for apologists, the International Academy of Apologetics, and more.

If what Dr. Menuge says in this interview is true, and I think it is, then a person who believes in materialism can neither ground free will nor rationality! So atheism wouldn’t really be freethought so much as it would be… un-free… non-thought.

In case people don’t want to listen to the podcast, then I’ve got some things for you to read below.

The ontological argument from reason

Dr. Menuge presented a paper at the real Evangelical Philosophical Society conference for students and professors of philosophy, and you can download the paper here in Word format. (here’s a PDF version I made)

Here is the introduction to the paper that Dr. Menuge read at the EPS conference:

The argument from reason is really a family of arguments to show that reasoning is incompatible with naturalism. Here, naturalism is understood as the idea that foundationally, there are only physical objects, properties and relations, and anything else reduces to, supervenes on, or emerges from that. For our purposes, one of the most important claims of naturalism is that all causation is passive, automatic, event causation (an earthquake automatically causes a tidal wave; the tidal wave responds passively): there are no agent causes, where something does not happen automatically but only because the agent exerts his active power by choosing to do it. The most famous version of the argument from reason is epistemological: if naturalism were true, we could not be justified in believing it. Today, I want to focus on the ontological argument from reason, which asserts that there cannot be reasoning in a naturalistic world, because reasoning requires libertarian free will, and this in turn requires a unified, enduring self with active power.

The two most promising ways out of this argument are: (1) Compatibilism—even in a deterministic, naturalistic world, humans are capable of free acts of reason if their minds are responsive to rational causes; (2) Libertarian Naturalism—a self with libertarian free will emerges from the brain. I argue that neither of these moves works, and so, unless someone has a better idea, the ontological argument from reason stands.

The paper is 11 pages long, and it is helpful for those of you looking for some good discussion of one of the issues in the area of philosophy of mind.

You may also be interested in Alvin Plantinga’s epistemological argument from reason, which is related to this argument. It shows that even to have the ability to think, you have to have a certain anthropology and you have to have mental faculties that are designed for reason, not survival.

Methodological naturalism

Dr. Menuge also wrote an article entitled “Is methodological materialism good for science?”.

Intro:

Should science by governed by methodological materialism? That is, should scientists assume that only undirected causes can figure in their theories and explanations? If the answer to these questions is yes, then there can be no such thing as teleological science or intelligent design. But is methodological materialism a defensible approach to science, or might it prevent scientists from discovering important truths about the natural world? In my contribution to The Waning of Materialism (Oxford University Press, 2010), edited by Robert Koons and George Bealer, I consider twelve of the most common arguments in favor of methodological materialism and show that none of them is convincing.

Of these arguments, perhaps the most prevalent is the “God of the gaps” charge, according to which invoking something other than a material cause is an argument from ignorance which, like a bad script writer, cites a deus ex machina to save our account from difficulty. Not only materialists, but also many Christian thinkers, like Francis Collins, worry that appeal to intelligent design commits the God of the gaps fallacy.

As I argue, however, not only is an inference to an intelligent cause not the same as an inference to the supernatural, it is a mistake to assume that all gap arguments are bad, or that only theists make them. If a gap argument is based solely on ignorance of what might explain some phenomenon, then indeed it is a bad argument. But there are many good gap arguments which are made both by scientific materialists and proponents of intelligent design.

So how do you make an argument like that?

As Stephen Meyer has argued in his Signature in the Cell, intelligent design argues in just the same way, claiming not merely that the material categories of chance and necessity (singly or in combination) are unable to explain the complex specified information in DNA, but also that in our experience, intelligent agents are the only known causes of such information. The argument is based on what we know about causal powers, not on what we do not know about them.

Since the inference is based on known causal powers, we learn that the cause is intelligent, but only further assumptions or data can tell us whether that intelligence is immanent in nature or supernatural. It is a serious mistake to confuse intelligent design with theistic science, and the argument that since some proponents of design believe that the designer is God, that is what they are claiming can be inferred from the data, is a sophomoric intensional fallacy.

If you think this is interesting, then do have a listen to the podcast. Dr. Menuge is not an ordinary academic – he is very direct. He calls materialism “a catastrophe” in the podcast! Not a shrinking violet.

Filed under: Podcasts, Apologetics, Science, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Darwinism, Alvin Plantinga, Rationality, Naturalism, Determinism, Free Will, Reason, Body, Materialism, Worldview, Soul, Mind, Brain, Reasoning, Freedom of the Will, Christian Apologetics, Philosophy, C. S. Lewis, Consciousness, Methodological Naturalism, Ontological Argument from Reason, Epistemological Argument from Reason, Angus Menuge, Agent

Is the concept of moral responsibility compatible with physicalism / materialism?

I saw that Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 linked to this post by J. Warner Wallace.

Excerpt:

When examining the causes for an event (such as a death) we can separate them into two categories: event causation and agent causation (prior physical events cause things to happen and free agents cause things to happen). It’s important to recognize that free agents alone have the freedom to act or respond without a prior physical causal event. Physical objects, like dominoes, cannot cause themselves to fall over; they require a prior event to cause them to fall. But you and I have the ability to cause the first domino to fall as a simple matter of choice (we don’t need a prior event to cause this action). You can’t blame a car for running over a victim; the car is simply a physical object subject to a series of physical processes, none of which can be held morally culpable. But we can blame thedriver of the car for driving the car over the victim. The driver is a free agent, and we recognize that his choices are just that: free choices. The driver is not like the car. His choice is not simply the result of a series of purely physical processes, like dominoes falling. He had the freedom to choose otherwise, and this is why we seek to arrest and prosecute him.

Our recognition of the moral culpability of the driver (rather than the car) is an admission that materialism (physicalism) fails to explain who we are as humans. Consider the following argument:

No Physical System is a Free Agent
Physical systems are either “determined” (one event necessarily following the other) or “random”

Therefore No Physical System Has Moral Responsibility
Moral responsibility requires moral freedom of choice

Human Beings DO Have Moral Responsibility
We recognize that each of us has the responsibility and choice to act morally, and indeed, we seek to hold each other legally accountable for each other’s free-will choices

Therefore, Human Beings Are NOT Simply Physical Systems
Our recognition of moral responsibility and our efforts to hold each other accountable are irrational and unwarranted if humans are merely physical systems

If we, as humans, are only physical systems (merely matter), we ought to stop trying to hold each other accountable for misbehavior. In fact, there can be no misbehavior if we are only physical brains and bodies; there can only be behavior. Our actions have no moral content at all unless we truly have the freedom to choose and the ability to break the bondage of physical event causation.

I finally learned what the “Twinkie defense” was by reading that post. It’s worth it for that reason alone.

This quote by JWW reminded me of a famous chapter in Theodore Dalrymple’s famous book “Life at the Bottom”, in which he explains the worldview of the lower classes in Britain. The chapter is called “The Knife Went In“, and it shows how people in the underclass describe their crimes in a way that completely minimizes their own free choices and their own responsibilities.

Take a look:

It is a mistake to suppose that all men, or at least all Englishmen, want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it. They would happily exchange their liberty for a modest (if illusory) security. Even those who claim to cherish their freedom are rather less enthusiastic about taking the consequences of their actions. The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaint, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Listening as I do every day to the accounts people give of their lives, I am struck by the very small part in them which they ascribe to their own efforts, choices, and actions. Implicitly, they disagree with Bacon’s famous dictum that “chiefly the mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.” Instead, they experience themselves as putty in the hands of fate.

It is instructive to listen to the language they use to describe their lives. The language of prisoners in particular teaches much about the dishonest fatalism with which people seek to explain themselves to others, especially when those others are in a position to help them in some way. As a doctor who sees patients in a prison once or twice a week, I am fascinated by prisoners’ use of the passive mood and other modes of speech that are supposed to indicate their helplessness. They describe themselves as the marionettes of happenstance.

Not long ago, a murderer entered my room in the prison shortly after his arrest to seek a prescription for the methadone to which he was addicted. I told him that I would prescribe a reducing dose, and that within a relatively short time my prescription would cease. I would not prescribe a maintenance dose for a man with a life sentence.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s just my luck to be here on this charge.”

Luck? He had already served a dozen prison sentences, many of them for violence, and on the night in question had carried a knife with him, which he must have known from experience that he was inclined to use. But it was the victim of the stabbing who was the real author of the killer’s action: if he hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have been stabbed.

My murderer was by no means alone in explaining his deed as due to circumstances beyond his control. As it happens, there are three stabbers (two of them unto death) at present in the prison who used precisely the same expression when describing to me what happened. “The knife went in,” they said when pressed to recover their allegedly lost memories of the deed.

The knife went in—unguided by human hand, apparently. That the long-hated victims were sought out, and the knives carried to the scene of the crimes, was as nothing compared with the willpower possessed by the inanimate knives themselves, which determined the unfortunate outcome.

I wonder how much the secularism and atheism of the Britain academics has now seeped down to the lower classes and caused them to view themselves as lumps of meat or animals, rather than responsible free agents. Britain is the country of Charles Darwin and the idea of unguided Darwinian evolution. If you believe that you are an animal who evolved by accident in an accidental universe, then you don’t believe in free will, moral choices or moral obligations. The funniest thing in the world to me is how atheists go about their lives helping themselves to moral language that is not grounded by their worldview. Like parrots who have been trained to talk about the stock market. There is no realm of objective moral values and duties on atheism, so why are they using moral language and making moral judgments? On their view right and wrong are just social customs and conventions that vary by time and place, and human actions are biologically determined anyway. There are no choices. There is no responsibility.

You can read the whole Dalrymple book for free online, and I’ve linked to all the chapters in this one post.

Filed under: News, Agency, Agent, Apologetics, Atheism, Darwinism, Dualism, Evolution, Free Will, God, Life at the Bottom, Materialism, Mind, Moral Agency, Moral Duties, Moral Law, Moral Obligation, Moral Standards, Moral Values, Morality, Obligation, Physicalism, Responsibility, Responsible, Theodore Dalrymple, Unbelief

Details of another Fast and Furious massacre to be revealed by Univision

From the Daily Caller, more news about the Obama administration’s plan to facilitate the sale of assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

Excerpt:

Spanish-language television network Univision plans to air a television special that it said reveals more violence than previously known, as well as the stories of how many more Operation Fast and Furious victims were killed, the network announced in a Friday release.

“The consequences of the controversial ‘Fast and Furious’ undercover operation put in place by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2009 have been deadlier than what has been made public to date,” the network said. “The exclusive, in-depth investigation by Univision News’ award-winning Investigative Unit — Univision Investiga — has found that the guns that crossed the border as part of Operation Fast and Furious caused dozens of deaths inside Mexico.”

Among other groups of Fast and Furious victim stories Univision says it will tell in the special to air Sunday evening at 7 p.m., is one about how “16 young people attending a party in a residential area of Ciudad Juárez in January of 2010″ were gunned down with weapons the Obama administration gave to drug cartel criminals through Fast and Furious.

“Univision News’ Investigative Unit was also able to identify additional guns that escaped the control of ATF agents and were used in different types of crimes throughout Mexico,” the network added. “Furthermore, some of these guns — none of which were reported by congressional investigators — were put in the hands of drug traffickers in Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. A person familiar with the recent congressional hearings called Univision’s findings ‘the holy grail’ that Congress had been searching for.”

A video preview published on Friday shows a number of the bodies of people killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as well as victims’ family members pleading with outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon for justice.

Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has now become the 131st Congressman to call for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Excerpt:

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan agrees with presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s call for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, or for President Barack Obama to fire him, over Operation Fast and Furious, a Ryan spokesman told The Daily Caller.

“The congressman agrees with the governor,” Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck told TheDC on Sunday, referring to Mitt Romney’s call for Holder’s resignation or termination over the gunwalking scandal last December.

“Either Mr. Holder himself should resign, or the president should ask for his resignation or remove him,” Romney said in December 2011. “It’s unacceptable for him to continue in that position now given the fact that he has misled Congress and entirely botched the investigation of the Fast and Furious program.”

Ryan’s call for Holder’s ouster over Fast and Furious comes a day after he told a sportsmen’s group that gun owners should be worried about Obama trying to infringe on their Second Amendment rights if he is re-elected. Speaking about Fast and Furious specifically, Ryan said at the Saturday event that such an operation “would never occur under a Romney-Ryan administration,” according to CBS News.

[...]Fast and Furious was a program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, overseen by Holder’s Department of Justice. It sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers — people who purchased guns in the United States with the known intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else.

Fast and Furious guns were used to kill U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 14, 2010, in Peck Canyon, Ariz.

Wouldn’t it be neat if this were to come up in an election debate?

Related posts

• Obama campaign contributor and gun control advocate ran Fast and Furious
• Obama covers-up DOJ operation that allowed gun smuggling to Mexican drug cartels
• Republicans prepare contempt citation for AG Eric Holder over Fast and Furious
• Eric Holder wants to brainwash people against legal gun ownership
• Fast and Furious’ goal was to undermine legal firearm ownership
• Obama administration tries to cover up Border Patrol agent’s murder
• Eric Holder testifies on Fast and Furious gun smuggling to Mexican drug cartels
• Fast and Furious assault weapons seized from drug cartel enforcer’s home
• Republicans call for AG Eric Holder to resign over newly released e-mails
• Did attorney general Eric Holder lie to Congress about gun sales to drug cartels?
• New Operation Fast and Furious e-mails sent to White House official
• Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder and the plan to sell guns to Mexican drug cartels
• Did attorney general Eric Holder know about Operation Fast and Furious?
• Border patrol agent equipped with BEAN BAGS shot dead by illegal alien
• Obama administration allowed American gun shipments to Mexican cartels
• Slain border agent’s family unimpressed by Janet Napolitano’s indifference

Filed under: News, Government, Barack Obama, Gun Control, Crime, Firearms, Guns, National Security, Homeland Security, Mexico, Arms Dealing, DHS, Department of Homeland Security, Corruption, Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, FBI, Election, Obama, Democrat, Brady Bill, Murder, Criminal, ATF, Scandal, Cover Up, Arms, Democrat Party, Arms Deal, Arms Sales, Attorney General, DOJ, Drug Cartel, Darrell Issa, Rifle, Agent, Gunrunner, Gunwalker, Assault Weapons, Gun Smuggling, Fast and Furious, Gun Trafficking, William Newell, Bill Newell, Gunrunning, Sniper Rifle, Machine Gun, Fast & Furious, Wide Receiver, Straw Purchaser, Border Patrol Agent, Tracy Schmaler, Eric Schultz

Obama campaign contributor and gun control advocate ran Fast and Furious

From Investors Business Daily:

A campaign contributor who was an architect of the 1994 assault weapons ban was the mastermind behind the Fast and Furious operation that let guns walk into Mexico, including those that killed two U.S. agents.

Shortly after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 15, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder’s deputy chief of staff, Monty Wilkinson, received an email from U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke telling him just that:

“The guns found in the desert near the murder(ed) BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”

It is an email that helps demonstrate that Holder, despite his congressional testimony — as vague, contradictory and misleading as it was — could not have been ignorant about Fast and Furious and its deadly consequences.

It also brings to light the name of Dennis Burke, a seldom-mentioned Obama campaign donor who oversaw Fast and Furious and helped convert it from a gun-interdiction to a gun-walking program.

Burke, who resigned shortly after the scandal became public, has long been a gun-ban architect for the Democratic Party.

As a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was behind the ineffectual 1994 “assault weapon” ban that sunset in 2004. Burke was also the chief of staff for Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano for a number of years before she became the secretary of homeland security.

Former Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., had high praise for Burke’s 1994 effort: “Dennis had all these pictures of these guns — the street sweepers and the AK-47s. And it passed by one vote. A lot of it was not my eloquence on the bill; it was stuff that Dennis had done.”

Burke also is an Obama donor, a prime consideration in the staffing of the Obama administration. Federal Election Commission records show that on Jan. 9, 2008, while working for Napolitano, Burke contributed $2,000 to Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential primary campaign. Since 1997, according to FEC records, Burke has given $16,350 to Democratic candidates.

Burke would leave that Gov. Napolitano post to join the Obama transition team. He was soon rewarded for his many contributions, monetary and otherwise, when on July 10, 2009, the president nominated him to be the U.S. attorney in Arizona. The Senate confirmed him that Sept. 15.

In July 2010, Burke told the Arizona Capitol Times there had “clearly been direction provided already by President Obama and Attorney General Holder as to what they want to be doing.”

Please see below for more Fast and Furious news.

Related posts

• Obama covers-up DOJ operation that allowed gun smuggling to Mexican drug cartels
• Republicans prepare contempt citation for AG Eric Holder over Fast and Furious
• Eric Holder wants to brainwash people against legal gun ownership
• Fast and Furious’ goal was to undermine legal firearm ownership
• Obama administration tries to cover up Border Patrol agent’s murder
• Eric Holder testifies on Fast and Furious gun smuggling to Mexican drug cartels
• Fast and Furious assault weapons seized from drug cartel enforcer’s home
• Republicans call for AG Eric Holder to resign over newly released e-mails
• Did attorney general Eric Holder lie to Congress about gun sales to drug cartels?
• New Operation Fast and Furious e-mails sent to White House official
• Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder and the plan to sell guns to Mexican drug cartels
• Did attorney general Eric Holder know about Operation Fast and Furious?
• Border patrol agent equipped with BEAN BAGS shot dead by illegal alien
• Obama administration allowed American gun shipments to Mexican cartels
• Slain border agent’s family unimpressed by Janet Napolitano’s indifference

Filed under: News, Agent, Arms, Arms Deal, Arms Dealing, Arms Sales, Assault Weapons, ATF, Attorney General, Barack Obama, Bill Newell, Border Patrol Agent, Brady Bill, Corruption, Cover Up, Crime, Criminal, Darrell Issa, Democrat, Democrat Party, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, DOJ, Drug Cartel, Election, Eric Holder, Eric Schultz, Fast & Furious, Fast and Furious, FBI, Firearms, Government, Gun Control, Gun Smuggling, Gun Trafficking, Gunrunner, Gunrunning, Guns, Gunwalker, Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Machine Gun, Mexico, Murder, National Security, Obama, Rifle, Scandal, Sniper Rifle, Straw Purchaser, Tracy Schmaler, Wide Receiver, William Newell

Attorney general Eric Holder faces possibility of jail after citation for contempt

From Fox News.

Excerpt:

The GOP-led House voted Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to provide key information pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, making Holder the first sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt.

The vote was 255-67, with 17 Democrats breaking ranks to side with Republicans in favor of contempt.

[...]Congressional sources tell Fox News that House GOP leaders will now meet to decide the next steps, but the investigation is expected to go forward with more subpoenas being issued.

“Today’s vote is the regrettable culmination of what became a misguided and politically motivated investigation during an election year,” Holder said afterward. “By advancing it over the past year and a half, Congressman Issa and others have focused on politics over public safety.”

The vote, which holds the attorney general in criminal contempt, was followed by a second vote that held Holder in civil contempt of Congress. The civil contempt vote allows Congress to go to court to seek additional documents.

The criminal-contempt vote is supposed to direct a U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury to review the case and decide whether to indict Holder.

However, considering Holder would be investigated by his own employees, some analysts have said it’s unlikely that would happen. If the case proceeds, though, Holder could face a maximum one year in jail if convicted.

Now that’s bipartisanship you can approve of.

Related posts

• Obama covers-up DOJ operation that allowed gun smuggling to Mexican drug cartels
• Republicans prepare contempt citation for AG Eric Holder over Fast and Furious
• Eric Holder wants to brainwash people against legal gun ownership
• Fast and Furious’ goal was to undermine legal firearm ownership
• Obama administration tries to cover up Border Patrol agent’s murder
• Eric Holder testifies on Fast and Furious gun smuggling to Mexican drug cartels
• Fast and Furious assault weapons seized from drug cartel enforcer’s home
• Republicans call for AG Eric Holder to resign over newly released e-mails
• Did attorney general Eric Holder lie to Congress about gun sales to drug cartels?
• New Operation Fast and Furious e-mails sent to White House official
• Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder and the plan to sell guns to Mexican drug cartels
• Did attorney general Eric Holder know about Operation Fast and Furious?
• Border patrol agent equipped with BEAN BAGS shot dead by illegal alien
• Obama administration allowed American gun shipments to Mexican cartels
• Slain border agent’s family unimpressed by Janet Napolitano’s indifference

Filed under: News, Agent, Arms, Arms Deal, Arms Dealing, Arms Sales, Assault Weapons, ATF, Attorney General, Barack Obama, Bill Newell, Border Patrol Agent, Brady Bill, Corruption, Cover Up, Crime, Criminal, Darrell Issa, Democrat, Democrat Party, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, DOJ, Drug Cartel, Election, Eric Holder, Eric Schultz, Fast & Furious, Fast and Furious, FBI, Firearms, Government, Gun Control, Gun Smuggling, Gun Trafficking, Gunrunner, Gunrunning, Guns, Gunwalker, Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Machine Gun, Mexico, Murder, National Security, Obama, Rifle, Scandal, Sniper Rifle, Straw Purchaser, Tracy Schmaler, Wide Receiver, William Newell