X-Message-Number: 1079 From: more% (Max More) Subject: Re: Life force and faith Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 23:51:14 PDT I disagree with Charles Platt on the matter of materialism vs vitalism and articles of faith, though the disagreement is probably mostly verbal. I don't think we should say that our materialist view of life processes is an article of faith, in the same way as is a belief in vitalism. To say this implies that materialism and vitalism are equally reasonable, or unreasonable. I agree that the materialist view of the world has not been proven to be true, but I deny that this makes it a matter of faith. At least since philosopher of science Karl Popper [see The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Conjectures and Refutations] it has been clear than scientific theories can never truly prove anything conclusively. As Charles pointed out, Newtonian physics seemed to explain everything for a while (actually I doubt that's really true). Going further back, the positing of a substance called caloric seemed to account nicely for heat - its transfer and conservation. However, no one now believes that caloric exists, because a vastly more powerful theory came along - thermodynamics. Scientific theories differ frm dogma and faith in that they are open to refutation. It is a strength of a theory if it is obvious that there are many ways of testing it, but few sets of circumstances compatible with its truth. The more testable possibilities a theory excludes the better. But faith is resistant to refutation... it will twist itself to become compatible with anything. ("Ah yes, but God put the fossils there to test our faith.") Yet, despite scientific theories not conclusively proving anything, our reliance on them (but not our blind, unquestioning belief in them) is reasonable, and not a matter of faith. Here I am using "faith" to mean "belief in something in the absence of, or contrary to the evidence". Belief in vitalism (or dualism, if we're talking primarily about consiousness) is a matter of faith; belief in (using a working model of) materialism is not. Why the difference? Because vitalism is a superfluous hypothesis. Good old Occam's Razor tells us "Do not multiply entities beyond what is strictly necessary to explain the phenomena." The materialist posits only one kind of stuff - matter, whereas the vitalist posits two. This would not be a count against vitalism if it could explain phenomena that were inexplicable in materialist terms. But it cannot. I'm sure, in this crowd, I don't need to go into the many phenomena that materialism can explain. By contrast, what can the vitalist tell us about vital essence? Can he tell us anything about its internal constitution? Of the elements that make it up? Can he tell us of the laws governing its operation? Of its method of interaction with biological material? Can he explain its methods of operation? Or how it explains illnesses, aging, or development? Besides this, all the evidence suggests that humans have evolved from simpler forms. We see no evidence of vital essence in these simpler lifeforms,and can increasingly explain their natures in purely materialist terms. Why should we believe that humans are different in this respect? Max More Editor EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1079