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Peter_Plato
Guest
Actually, I read this article and find it not compelling in the least. The author doesn’t engage with Lewis’ argument which was specifically regarding ‘naturalism’ or the notion that all our thinking is reducible to chemical processes. Lewis argues that this cannot be the case because “having a reason for” a belief about reality is not the same as “being caused to” have a belief.
Causal relationships are, from what we can tell, inevitable, in the sense that a causal relationship between two events means that the effect is an inevitable result of the cause. There is no intentionality involved. This is not essentially true about thinking and coming to beliefs about certain propositions.
The other point that ought to be well considered is that “matter” is a conceptual entity. Everything we know or have come to believe about matter is completely hinged upon how our minds apprehend or entertain thoughts about it. Even the nature of causality is dependent upon having reasons for believing it is so.
In terms of any knowledge we have about reality, it is entirely based upon our intellectual capacity for constructing a plausible world view about it. The physical world is at ground, an intellectual construct through which we “interpret” what we suppose is there regarding physicality.
Best not dispose of the very grounds we have for thinking matter might exist by denying the existence of those grounds in favour of a physical explanation about which we can have no real assurance concerning its explanatory adequacy. In particular, when you are willing to freely admit its "meaninglessness.’
