{"id":8520,"date":"2013-08-30T14:24:53","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/08\/30\/pascal-on-materialism\/"},"modified":"2013-08-30T14:24:53","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:24:53","slug":"pascal-on-materialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/08\/30\/pascal-on-materialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Pascal on Materialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

"Atheists should say things that are perfectly clear.  Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material." (Krailsheimer, #161, p. 82)  An atheist needn't be a mortalist, and a mortalist needn't be an atheist.  But let that pass.  Although the one does not logically require the other, or the other the one, atheism and mortalism naturally 'go together.'  (McTaggart, for example, was an atheist but an immortalist with, apparently, no breach of logical consistency.)<\/span><\/p>\n

If it were perfectly clear that that the soul is mortal as the body is mortal, then then why all the wild disagreement among materialists\/naturalists\/physicalists?  Think of all their different theories.  For example, there are eliminative materialists who rely on the (true) premise that no brain state is intrinsically intentional.  They conclude that there are no mental states given that mental states are intrinsically intentional.  But other materialists reject the (true) premise, maintaining that some brain states are intrinsically intentional, namely, the ones that are identical to mental states.<\/span><\/p>\n

So here is a deep dispute within the materialist camp.  Identity theorists affirm what eliminativists deny, namely, that there are mental states.  Members of each camp believe that materialism is true, but they contradict each other as to why it is true.  Now if it not clear why<\/em> materialism is true, then it is hardly clear that<\/em> it is true.  That, I take it, is Pascal's point.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not clear that the soul is material (and thus mortal) and it is not clear that it isn't.  Neither view is ruled out or ruled in by the reason resident in the thinking reeds we are.  So you are free to believe either way.  And you are free to act either way.  If you act and live as if the soul is immortal, then you may come to believe that it is.  (See the 'holy water' passage.)  What's more, if you believe that it is then you will live better in this world if not beyond it.  So why not believe?<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, you may be constitutionally incapable of believing.  In that case you have a problem that is better addressed by a psychotherapist than by a philosopher.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Mortalism<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Eben Alexander: "We Are Conscious in Spite of Our Brains"<\/a><\/div>\n
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"Atheists should say things that are perfectly clear.  Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material." (Krailsheimer, #161, p. 82)  An atheist needn't be a mortalist, and a mortalist needn't be an atheist.  But let that pass.  Although the one does not logically require the other, or the other the one, atheism … Continue reading “Pascal on Materialism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind","category-pascal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}