Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Some further responses to exapologist

When I meant "avoiding theism" I wasn't making a statement about your motives, I was making a statement about what one needs in order to define naturalism. One goal of a good definition of X is that it excludes paradigm cases of non-X. But surely there has to be more to naturalism than avoiding theism.

You had written:

So why isn't this sort of proposal naturalistically acceptable? Granted, it may not me *materialistically* acceptable, but who cares? Why must a non-theist be wedded to *materialism*? Of course, they need not.

This passage makes it sound as if in order for something to be naturalistically acceptable it has to be acceptable for a non-theist. Of course, absolute idealists are not theists per se.

I'm waiting for Absolute Idealism to make a comeback. If it happens, you heard it here first.

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3 Comments:

At 9/18/2007 02:24:00 PM , Blogger exapologist said...

Hi Victor,

Thanks for clarifying about the "avoiding theism" remark. Sorry for misunderstanding your intention.

I'm not sure why you keep referring to absolute idealism. I haven't made reference to it, nor do I find it plausible. The sort of view I'm proposing has little to do with absolute idealism. Rather, the view I'm suggesting is the one suggested by David Chalmers at the end of his The Conscious Mind.

 
At 9/18/2007 03:09:00 PM , Blogger Victor Reppert said...

Absolute Idealism is a way to get a non-theistic position while at the same time admitting mental states into the basic furniture of the world. I don't know if anything less will do. What do you think of Hasker on Chalmers?

 
At 9/18/2007 04:04:00 PM , Blogger exapologist said...

I haven't read his stuff yet, but thanks very much for pointing me to the reference. I'll take a look at it.

Best,

EA

 

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