It’s not valid as a deductive argument, but it is Bayesian evidence in favour of naturalism. Also, the details of the observed effects of brain damage provide even more for naturalism rather than nonnaturalism.
It’s not valid as a deductive argument, but it is Bayesian evidence in favour …
You can say that about pretty much anything labeled a “fallacy”.
For example, the “appeal to authority fallacy” --> yes, an authority on the matter is not guaranteed to be right, but their opinion is Bayesian evidence in favor of such beliefs.
Fortunately, a poster already wrote an article with that thesis.
I disagree that Kaj_Sotala’s post applies. Just because you label something a fallacy doesn’t make it a fallacy. Googling the “radio fallacy” turns up this thread and nothing else related.
This ‘radio fallacy argument’ wants to place Harry’s argument into the reference class of ‘fallacies’ and has nothing but a clever label and bad analogy as that basis.
I agree (I think), but I was mainly applying the Kaj_Sotala article to the quoted part of endoself’s post, not so much RichardChappell’s argument, since the quoted part is such a common occurrence.
It’s not valid as a deductive argument, but it is Bayesian evidence
The “not a logical disproof” defense can be used against more or less all arguments drawing on empirical science. It would be more charitable to assume Richard means something like “the probability of brain damage by region delicately affecting particular parts of information processing is reasonably high given belief in souls.” Although that still looks quite wrong. The “radio” analogy would not predict a speech center, or other patterns of brain damage and impairment that look like interfering with computation, not transmission.
That’s surely going to depend on the details of the non-naturalist view. Epiphenomenalism, for example, makes all the same empirical predictions as physicalism. (Though it might be harder to combine with a “soul” view—it goes more naturally with property dualism than substance dualism.)
But even Cartesian Interactionists, who see the brain as an “intermediary” between soul and body, should presumably expect brain damage to cause the body to be less responsive to the soul (just as in the radio analogy).
Or are you thinking of “non-naturalism” more broadly yet, to include views on which the brain has nothing whatsoever to do with the mind or its physical expression? I guess if one had not yet observed the world at all, this evidence would slightly lower one’s credence in non-naturalism by ruling out this most extreme hypothesis. But I take it that the more interesting question is whether this is any kind of evidence against particular non-naturalist views that people actually hold, like Cartesian Interactionism or Epiphenomenalism. (And if you think it is, I hope you’ll say a bit more to me to explain why...)
It’s not valid as a deductive argument, but it is Bayesian evidence in favour of naturalism. Also, the details of the observed effects of brain damage provide even more for naturalism rather than nonnaturalism.
You can say that about pretty much anything labeled a “fallacy”.
For example, the “appeal to authority fallacy” --> yes, an authority on the matter is not guaranteed to be right, but their opinion is Bayesian evidence in favor of such beliefs.
Fortunately, a poster already wrote an article with that thesis.
I disagree that Kaj_Sotala’s post applies. Just because you label something a fallacy doesn’t make it a fallacy. Googling the “radio fallacy” turns up this thread and nothing else related.
This ‘radio fallacy argument’ wants to place Harry’s argument into the reference class of ‘fallacies’ and has nothing but a clever label and bad analogy as that basis.
I agree (I think), but I was mainly applying the Kaj_Sotala article to the quoted part of endoself’s post, not so much RichardChappell’s argument, since the quoted part is such a common occurrence.
Can you point out why the analogy is bad?
The “not a logical disproof” defense can be used against more or less all arguments drawing on empirical science. It would be more charitable to assume Richard means something like “the probability of brain damage by region delicately affecting particular parts of information processing is reasonably high given belief in souls.” Although that still looks quite wrong. The “radio” analogy would not predict a speech center, or other patterns of brain damage and impairment that look like interfering with computation, not transmission.
That’s surely going to depend on the details of the non-naturalist view. Epiphenomenalism, for example, makes all the same empirical predictions as physicalism. (Though it might be harder to combine with a “soul” view—it goes more naturally with property dualism than substance dualism.)
But even Cartesian Interactionists, who see the brain as an “intermediary” between soul and body, should presumably expect brain damage to cause the body to be less responsive to the soul (just as in the radio analogy).
Or are you thinking of “non-naturalism” more broadly yet, to include views on which the brain has nothing whatsoever to do with the mind or its physical expression? I guess if one had not yet observed the world at all, this evidence would slightly lower one’s credence in non-naturalism by ruling out this most extreme hypothesis. But I take it that the more interesting question is whether this is any kind of evidence against particular non-naturalist views that people actually hold, like Cartesian Interactionism or Epiphenomenalism. (And if you think it is, I hope you’ll say a bit more to me to explain why...)