"the Truth at any cost"

Monday, December 10, 2007

Defeat by Self-Refutation

The more philosophy I think about/read, the more evidence there seems to be in favor of the following view:
"Every philosophical position is self-refuting." (Which, if true, is itself self-refuting)
I mean, its just bizarre--maybe its just the way I think, but it seems like every original criticism I can come up with against a view is that it is self-refuting.
Verificationism, for example. "All sentences are either true by definition or only true by appeal to possible experience." Self-refuting.
Naturalism...this is too hard to sum up in one brief sentence. wikipedia it. But naturalism is arguably self-refuting, because if evolution is true, our brains were only evolved to survive and reproduce, not necessarily to reason well. Therefore, our theories don't have any probability of being true, only of being conducive to survival. Therefore, naturalism, a theory created by us, has no probability of being true. Self-refutation.

But I have a new one. I was looking into the 'Brights' movement. The Brights are naturalists. A bright is defined as: "A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystic elements." Brights are naturalists. So I'm thinking...am I a Bright? I certainly am a methodological Bright, that is, I don't think science should ever posit mystical entities as solutions or causes of events.
But naturalism originates from skepticism about mystical entities like Gods or spirits. Now I have that skepticism, but I remain utterly agnostic about these entities. Now is naturalism an atheism about these entities? It seems the answer must be 'Yes'--they are the opposite of supernaturalists, who DO believe in the entities. It seems to me the best to withhold judgment on anything of which we have no evidence of. The Brights claim that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence.
Ok, so what is my point?
The Brights are implicitly holding the Universal claim: "All events in the world have natural explanations/causes." But a Universal claim goes beyond naturalism. It is asserting something beyond all possible experience. It is thus, supernatural. Thus, the Brights are self-refuting.
Unless they are just methodological naturalists; in which case, I am a Bright. But so is everyone but evangelicals. That seems to make the movement much less interesting.

Labels: , , , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home