Another Entry in an Ongoing Metaphysical Debate · 7:53pm Sep 21st, 2014
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Metaphysical goodness . . . I guess.
I am having an argument with an inanimate machine made out of meat. I rather wanted to leave the discussion behind, because I have seen before how these things go (they never stop, but go on for eternity with two people repeating themselves at each other endlessly), but honor or maybe sheer cussedness compels me. At some point, however, I will have to simply call a halt, because I am not going to have my own version of the four-year Wright-Andreassen debate. At the very least, the debate will have to end when I run out of magical girl pictures.
The argument is over whether minds exist, though I am not certain my interlocutor knows that is what we are arguing about. Here is the heart of his argument:
The atoms in your brain, following the rules of matter, are the cause of your reactions to the words on the screen (you should accept this unless you think that your mind is going out and pushing on the atoms in your brain, to which my response would be that that makes your mind another material thing). In some cases, like this series of comments, the effects would be hard to find because they would go into another encoding.
And my reply:
If this were correct, then you are not talking to a man at all, but to a meat machine moved by blind external forces. Why are you trying to argue with a machine?
You cannot behave consistently with the principles you express. You are reasoning with me as if I were capable of judgment and free choice and could assent to your propositions or reject them based on the soundness of your arguments, but what you are arguing is that I am an inanimate object moved by purposeless deterministic forces. If I assent to your argument, I assent to the impossibility of assent.
Your argument eliminates both the arguer and the interlocutor. Since you have the direct personal experience of making judgments and choices every day, clearly any theory that does not allow for judgments and choices is a false theory. You should find a theory that fits reality instead of trying to cram reality into your theory. Real experience of real people does not allow for reductive, deterministic physicalism, a theory suitable only for a man who never gets up from behind his desk. If you think physics does not allow for free choice of the will, then something is wrong with your theory of physics. Or, more likely, you are trying to apply physics to something that is actually the subject of some other branch of philosophy.
Nonetheless, you are getting closer to making a serious metaphysical argument: what you are trying to state is the metaphysical principle that only like moves like. That is, if something moves something else, the cause of the movement must share some essential property with the thing moved, so if a physical object is moved, the efficient cause of its movement must also be physical.
I do not dispute the principle. An analysis of the efficient causes of the movements of a living body would find nothing contrary to the laws of physics. But the mind, which is the form of the body, does not move the body as an efficient cause, but as final cause. Minds are described in terms of final and formal causes, whereas bodies are described in terms of material and efficient causes. The one cannot be reduced to the other. If a man gets up and walks across the room, you could describe his movements in terms of efficient causes. That would tell you how he moved. But to know why he moved, you would have to ask him; that is, you would have to know his mind.
The actions of our hypothetical man are purposeful, that is, done with intent. Blind mechanical forces, however, are not purposeful; that is, they are not done with intent. Appealing to the principles that only like moves like, that something does not arise from nothing, and that an effect cannot be greater than its cause, it is not possible for purposeless mechanical forces to be the efficient causes of purposeful actions, because then something (purpose) would be moved by something unlike (not-purpose), and the effect (purpose) would have properties not pre-existing in the cause (not-purpose). So Reductive Materialism is refuted on its own metaphysical principles.
The solution to the problem is the existence of emergent properties and different levels of analysis. At the level of atoms, molecules, and even cells, of course our brains are "meat machines" (specifically, computer-like meat machines) responding according to the combination of deterministic physical law and quantum randomness.
But at the level of a whole brain, there is a sentient and sapient entity which displays the behaviors and other characteristics of "free will" and "intelligence." How are these two truths to be reconciled?
Because the meat machinery forms a substrate from which the complex patterns of personality, intelligence and willpower can emerge. The problem of the exact thoughts of an individual is solvable in theory but intractable in practice from an examination of the meat machinery (unless that meat machinery is very badly breaking down, as in severe neurochemical illness or death). The quickest way to find out what a brain will think is to let it think, and the next quickest to examine it at the higher levels of functioning -- the patterns not of atoms and molecules but of the literal "trains of thought" (trains of neurons which have had firing-potentials laid down by previous usage). And the most useful way in which to consider the higher levels of functioning is in terms of thoughts, desires, emotions, and wills.
The two models -- meat machine and free will -- are not really contradictory. They only appear contradictory if you try to jam them together on the same level. But they exist on different levels.
I'm reminded of how I've never understood the concept of philosophical zombies. How can you tell the difference between a person and a meat machine that perfectly replicates being a person?
In any case, best of luck with your argument.
2472813 But that doesn't explain why no two brains function the same way. You can take any two people of the same gender/age/race/insert demographic group here, hook them up to EKG's and subject them to the exact same stimuli, but get different results. And this starts at birth. A computer fresh out of the factory will be identical to all the other computers fresh out of the same factory. Yet, humans are not. There is a unique quality to the organic intellect which is not explained through biochemistry.
2472908
This is because brains grow from a recipe on a schedule, rather than being built with a blueprint. Each brain grows slightly differently, both due to genetics and to environment. Brains are big and complex enough that no two will be identical, short of some artificial duplication technology.
To get back to MLP, brains are an example of chaos with strong attractors. Change the initial conditions very slightly, and the end state will be vastly different -- but it will converge around functional brains. Discord would be happy to hear that.
2472815
I don't think there really is a difference, because we are "meat machines" from which emerge personalities. The likely usage of the philosophical zombie will be to justify abusing different versions of personality-making machines when they appear.
...
The android screamed piercingly as Jeff inserted the red-hot poker.
"That's cruel!" said Mary.
"It amuses me," said Jeff. "And anyway, it's not a real person. Just an android."
...
The Jeff screamed piercingly as the android inserted the red-hot poker.
"That's cruel!" said the gynoid.
"It amuses me," said the android. And anyway, it's not a real person. Just a Jeff."
I think a better response with fewer priors would be: why should the fact that thing A consists of things B-Z mean thing A doesn't exist?
2472813
Define "substrate." It appears to me that you are dodging the problem by taking refuge in vague terminology.
If intelligence arises from not-intelligence, you have the problem of an effect that is greater than its cause. You cannot avoid this problem by appealing to "levels" and "substrates."
Determinism and free will are mutually exclusive. If all my actions are determined by blind forces outside my control, I do not have the power of making choices, of freely deciding for one thing over another, because to have free will is to not have my actions determined by blind forces outside my control. You cannot avoid the contradiction by some vague appeal to different "levels." Speaking of which, define "level."
I have noticed before that my interlocutors on this subject always take refuge in vagueness or in simply changing the subject, pretending they have addressed an argument without addressing it. That is exactly what you are doing.
Allow me to state the argument more clearly: an effect cannot be greater than its cause; that is to say, an effect must exist in its cause virtually, in potential. Purpose does not exist virtually in purposelessness, because purposelessness is without purpose, the opposite of purpose, by definition. If purpose arises from purposelessness, then an effect can be greater than its cause, which is absurd.
Regarding the mind and your terminology, the mind is necessarily immaterial because it can apprehend abstractions, which are necessarily immaterial because they can have more than one referent (the concept "horse" refers not to any one particular horse, but to all horses past, present, and potential). If by "substrate," you mean that which lies physically underneath something else, the brain cannot be the substrate of the mind, because the immaterial by definition does not have physical location, and therefore cannot be physically above the brain. If, however, by "substrate" you mean matter as opposed to form, then you are admitting hylomorphism, and I win the argument.
But I do not think you mean either of these concepts by "substrate." I do not think you know what you mean, because I think you are speaking vaguely. Prove me wrong.
2473105
Because that is unrelated to the argument. The argument is that like moves like, and that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. It is not an argument that composites do not exist.
2473286 I'm assuming you're arguing with a materialist. Trying to convince them based on scholastic metaphysics requires them to accept strong priors that their current view militates against. I know what _you_ believe, I'm saying that there is a simpler response from within their perspective using priors they already accept.
I know you think you've already done that but you haven't; what you've done is accused him of hypocrisy, not a view that refutes itself.
2473179 Step one: read Dan Dennett's Consciousness Explained.
You want to talk about vague terminology, let's discuss what "an effect cannot be greater than its cause" means. Except let's not do that, because your view, which seems so clear to you, is utterly mystifying to four hundred years of real philosophy.
2473334
I did define it. See my response to Jordan. I am not accusing anyone of anything. I am arguing that a particular position is self-contradictory. You, however, are casting sneers and insults again. Once more and I ban you.
Sorry, I tried to respond but accidentally deleted a long and detailed response. I may come back to this but have to leave right now. I urge you to read about
"Emergence."
It's just the wiki article, so it's not horribly long. It is a very good guide to how fundamental a concept this is for many fields of modern science. For instance, evolutionary biology is close to incomprehensible without an understanding of emergent properties.
2473179
I admit I'm confused as to what is meant by saying the soul is the "form" of the body. Oderberg says form isn't just structure, but apparently it's something like that by virtue of which A is A, instead of B or C, the "actualizing principle" that determines what form the material substrate takes. What I don't understand is what this has to do with the human mind or free will.
As far as I can tell, the story is supposed to just be that "rational animal" is the essence of humans. Apparently there is a difference between the form and the essence as well, which as far as I can tell, is that the essence of a hylomorphic entity is the union of its form and its matter.
But anyway. I don't understand what this "form" is supposed to be, or how we're supposed to understand it, if not in terms close to what Jordan suggested. While intelligence might not exactly be an "emergent property" of the brain, it's hard to see what else one could call it to make the concept intelligible while avoiding ghost-in-the-shell Platonism. Clearly human intelligence has something to do with matter, a great deal in fact. As I understand it, you couldn't just take an ape's brain, change its "form" without doing any atomic rearrangement, and, voila, have yourself a sapient ape. What does form mean, if not a ghost moving your brain molecules, and not an emergent property of the brain?
All this is enough to make my head dizzy and I have not been able to come up with any other solution than to reject the incompatibility of determinism and free will, at least in this sense: all material motions are determistic, and all human actions are free. I don't want to reduce human actions to material motions any more than I want to reduce the Mona Lisa to oil on poplar. But just as there is a sort of harmony in the Mona Lisa, such that at one and the same time it really is "a pile of molecules" and also "a beautiful work of art," I think there must be some kind of harmony in human nature, such that a human is at one and the same time "a meat machine" and also "a free and rational agent."
247337
This is what is in dispute. A whole cannot have properties that do not exist in the parts. If the parts are purposeless, the whole cannot have purpose. If the whole has properties that are not in the parts either actually or virtually, then something has arisen from nothing, which is absurd.
2473386 A whole can absolutely have properties that do not exist in parts. An atom can't have handedness, but a molecule can. A soccer player can't have a formation, but a team can. That axiom is laughably bad.
2473360 "Why would you bother to engage in an argument with a machine?" is not self-refutation, it's (at best) a weak reductio. If he accepts that he's a machine engaged in a pointless verbal exchange with another machine for irrelevant psychological reasons, there's no contradiction.
2473386
Hehe, you accidentally deleted the last "3" in your reply number. It's now replying to an irrelevant post from another thread.
2473399
That objection only makes sense if you think of a "whole" such as a molecule as the mereological sum of the physical, atomic units that make it up. I think that on the Scholastic view, a whole like a "molecule" would have its own immaterial form that would itself be a part of any actual molecule, and which would contribute the properties peculiar to the molecule qua molecule, such as "handedness".
2473424 At that point, though, a materialist supervenience view is much more parsimonious.
2473399, 2473373
The physical properties of a molecule are reducible to the physical properties, actual or potential, of the atoms that make up the molecule. The handedness of the molecule is a potency of the atoms. The formation of a soccer team is a potency of the players; that is, the players have the potential, the capacity, of being in that particular formation, in much the same way that the atoms have the potential of being in the formation of the molecule. Molecules and soccer teams do not contradict the principles I am asserting.
I think I must not be explaining myself clearly enough, since Otterbee here appears to think I am arguing that minds really exist even though they are an emergent property of matter. That is not what I am arguing. What I am arguing is perhaps bolder than you realize: I am arguing that this whole concept of emergent properties is false on logical and metaphysical grounds, and the philosophers who have fallen into it have done so because their metaphysics is deficient. They do not have a right understanding of final causes.
A whole cannot be more than the sum of its parts, because the whole is by definition the combination of the parts. If the parts are able to form the whole, then the parts have the properties of the whole actually or virtually. By "virtually," I mean they have the potential, not yet actualized, of forming the whole. If a whole could be more than the sum of its parts, then something (the more) would come from nothing. This is analogous to claiming in physics that matter and energy can be created or destroyed. It blatantly contradicts a necessary and self-evident first principle.
Purpose is not a property of purposelessness, but its opposite. Mind is not a property of mindlessness, but its opposite. Mind cannot be reduced to mindless matter, and purpose cannot be reduced to purposelessness. Minds are immaterial by definition, as I have demonstrated, and the immaterial cannot be reduced to the material.
2473424
Form and matter are not substances, but metaphysical co-principles. The matter of the substance is appropriate to the form. The form of a living organism, called a soul, is fundamentally different from the form of an inanimate object. The living organism has internal powers of movement, whereas an inanimate object does not.
The mind is an emergent property. Let me use an anology:
Mind is to brain as walking is to legs.
That simile explains it all. Mind without brain is as silly as walking without legs. Legs walk and brains mind.
2473468
We are not arguing over whether minds exist without brains. We are arguing over whether minds are immaterial, and whether "emergent properties" are a metaphysically sound concept.
Minds are able to grasp immaterial concepts, and are thus immaterial.
There is no significant resemblance between the walking of the legs, a physical motion, and the thoughts of the mind, which are immaterial. The analogy is false.
2473467
I really wish Discord was a real entity right here, because a spirit of chaos would be completely qualified to answer this. Anyways. There is actual math behind emergent systems. Swarming, for example, can be modeled by maths and has been replicated with bunches of simple robots. Lots of other examples in physical systems too. Does it hold up at all levels of existence? Maybe not. It could explain consciousness, if you accept that sufficiently complicated math is indistinguishable from magic. The distinction between immaterial and material is kinda pointless to me though. I think, therefore some nerve impulses will move down to some muscles and make them move my fingers such that they push a button. What's the point of the distinction here, other than to say that the mind works differently from everything else?
Yeah, forget everything up there. I had a point I was trying to make somewhere but I kinda lost my way in the maze of trying to understand yourself while you're thinking to yourself.
2473614
If by "emergent properties," we mean the reduction of potentiality to actuality, then of course I have no dispute with it. But if we mean the whole can be greater than the parts, that is inadmissible.
The error is, among other things, a category error. Noting that a swarm can be reduced to the locations of the swarming things does not allow the conclusion that mind can be reduced to matter. It is an inadmissible leap in logic.
I notice that nobody ever wants to address the actual arguments I make. Instead I get dodges like appeals to "substrate," or claims that one "level" can contradict another "level."
2473627
I think, if that were some universal truth, it'd be one of the most boring ones possible. Everything in the entire everything would be not as much anything if that's true.
Maybe it's because the arguments you make, in the context they're made in, are completely irrefutable and absolutely correct. So everyone's arguing with other ways of looking at things. Sort of how if there's no errors of logic and stuff with a discussion, people are reduced to slinging opinions at each other?
The blind material forces in xar brain compel xan to attempt to apply known patterns of influence to the blind material forces in your brain.
I kid, but only mostly.
(Sorry. Time to go read the rest of the blog.)
Oh:
The book I'm reading currently has a circuit diagram--yes, electrical circuit, as in electronics, as in computers--captioned "Electrical Model illustrating a Mind having a Will but capable of only Two Ideas". So there's that.
I can't read you talking about causes without a cheat-sheat of the types of 'causes' you're referring to. I'll try to muddle through for now.
2473627
As far as I'm concerned, I'm willing to admit my inferiority to you on the intellectual front and take what you say on authority until such time as I am capable of understanding these issues for myself and reaching my own conclusions.
My problem is not with what you say, but with trying to imagine what the hell it means for my life. Your style of argumentation is very muscular and masculine, inasmuch as it sticks to the point and does not veer from it. But you typically make little or no effort to give those who would contradict you any kind of personal motive for accepting what you say, or any kind of illustration of exactly what it is they are supposed to be accepting, in terms that can actually make sense to someone who hasn't necessarily had several years of philosophy.
My problem, personally, is that I have no fucking clue how to picture a "form" in the Scholastic sense, except either as a kind of emergent property (I am not using accurate terminology here, but I have no idea how to say what I mean, which again is like how the beauty of a painting "emerges" from its molecular structure) or else as a kind of ectoplasm located in, say, the pituitary gland, collapsing the indeterminate waveforms of the nearby electrons. For someone with my kind of problem, trying to actually meet or rebut your arguments does no good and is entirely beside the point.
Edit: I'm not sure why you're so down on the word "substrate". Oderberg says, in "Is Form Structure?": "Every material substance is a literal compound of two elements--prime matter and substantial form. Prime matter is the underlying substrate, itself wholly undifferentiated, which form actualizes to produce a material substance...."
2473489
Since minds are physical changes in the brain, minds are physical.
We know that emergent phenomena exist, so it must be a valid metaphysical concept or metaphysics must be invalid.
The problem with bringing up emergent properties is that by doing so you are completely missing Deej's point. Emergent properties can always be reduced to the properties of the individuals in the group. You can break down the actions of a swarm by describing the actions of every fish or robot in the swarm. By doing so you completely describe what took place. Emergent properties are derived, in scholastic language, from accidental forms. They are a convenient shorthand for talking about a bunch of things at once.
Deej, however, is arguing that the mind cannot be reduced to the actions of the individual molecules in the brain, because the mind is immaterial. We know it is immaterial because it has immaterial powers. Immaterial powers do not come from material things. That is what needs to be addressed. Saying the mind is an emergent property is exactly the same as saying the mind is a meat machine purposelessly driven by outside forces admitting of no free will. Saying the mind is a complex pattern of molecules doesn't address what is under discussion.
2474972
You beg the question. You have not demonstrated immaterial powers. Please demonstrate your claim.
2474024
Or more exactly, the mind is formed by the chemical and electrical reactions of the brain.
2475149
Indeed. The evidence supports that the mind is a material thing the brain does.
2475196
What evidence?
2475203
Oh, ¿where to begin? Rather than write out thousands of words, I shall link you to an Encyclopædic Article:
Neuroscience
If you need more information, the article has both external links and a bibliography.
2475095
I've sure the Deej will forgive me for butting in, but he has offered a demonstration, which might be formalized as follows.
1. Nothing is in a whole which is not in its parts. (Premise, known from logic)
2. Matter does not have purposes. (Premise, known from experience)
3. If all the parts of the human mind are material, then the human mind has no purposes. (1,2)
4. But the human mind does have purposes. (Premise, known from experience)
5. Therefore, all the parts of the human mind are not material. (3,4)
5a. Therefore, at least one part of the human mind is immaterial.
2475260
So, in other words, you don't know, but you're happy to let me waste my time reading what someone else has said about a topic which is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. (Or didn't you know that neuroscience has nothing to do with the metaphysical question of whether minds are material?)
I hope you realize that you have not yet made an argument yourself, but have merely tried to appeal to authority.
2475337
Sorry, but I figured that this is a joke. This argument is silly. If a machine believe that it has purpose, so be it. It does not follow that a ghost lives in the machine.
I referred to research. Appealing to authority means appealing to a famous gurus pulling stuff out of their arses.
2475409
No, appealing to authority means appealing to authority. Notice that I did not say that appealing to authority was a fallacy, or wrong in any way. It just means that you are pointing at arguments other people, namely authorities, have made, instead of actually making an argument yourself. Appealing to authority can be legitimate if the authority in question actually is an authority on the issue at hand.
But neuroscientists are not authorities on metaphysical issues.
The argument is really not silly, and I don't understand how you could say that. It only takes the basics of universal human experience as given. Everyone experiences himself having purposes, and no one experiences matter as having purposes. The argument fails only if the testimony of universal human experience is false.
Yes, you are right in a sense. The fact that we are constrained to believe something because of the limitations of human nature does not, in itself, prove beyond all possible doubt that that belief must be true. But if you reject human experience as a sound method of discovering the truth about the world, then you cannot coherently appeal to science to support your position, because science is based entirely on human experience.
2475445
Purpose is subjective.
2475788
I'm sure you're a very busy person, and have many duties and responsibilities that don't pertain to carrying on pseudo-intellectual internet discussions on abstruse and controversial philosophical conundrums.
But you can't really expect to have a productive discussion if you aren't willing to contribute more than three words at a time.
2476501
Sorry, but it is hard to take this discussion seriously:
The mind is physical changes of electrical, chemical, and physical nature of the brain. Research shows this. The inmaterialists basically argue about the number of angels on the head of a pin. If a Turing Machine decides that it has purpose, that is subjective and does not mean anything. Perhaps, we should ask CelestAI.
2476532
I have a lot to say to this, but since you are not interested in the discussion and are content with leaving drive-by comments, I will not.
If you have a change of heart and decide you want to continue after all, you might start by explaining this statement in more detail, since it seems to form the heart of your position:
First, you need to say precisely what research you are talking about. Then, you need to establish how this research supports the materialist position. Do that, and we might get somewhere. Otherwise, see ya around.
2476549
As stated earlier, I do not want to write a long research paper, so linked to an Encyclopædic Article with citations, references, external links, and a bibliography.
We both know that braindamage effects the mind. I do not say that you will do this, but at this point, some claim that the mind is a like a an immaterial TV-Station and the brain is like a TV-Set. I shall explain why this analogy fails:
If this analogy would be true, brain-damage would impair senses and motorresponses, but not cognition. We know that braindamage can effect senses, motorresponses, and cognition. Indeed, braindamage effects ponies the same way hardwaredamages effects computers.
2476569
The article that you linked me to was the Wikipedia article on neuroscience. No offense... but seriously? Wikipedia?
If you're going to cite a Ramen Noodle website*, at least spring for the top-shelf stuff. Maybe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?
At any rate, yes, brain damage affects the mind. In fact a lot of things that the brain does affect the mind. But, if I may throw some good old-fashioned skepticism your way, this does not prove that the mind is reducible to the material processes of the brain. (In fact, it does not even prove that such an arrangement is possible even in theory.)
Neuroscience does nothing but correlate empirically observable brain processes with empirically observable human behaviors, or more often, biological functions. (Mental states are not empirically observable, so anyone who wants to correlate a subject's brain processes with his mental states must rely on the subject's reports of his own mental states.) When you state that neuroscience has shown that the mind is what the brain does, you are stating that neuroscience has proven something which it is not even theoretically capable of proving, because neuroscience is a science and thus deals only with the empirical, while minds are not empirically observable. It is just as absurd for an empirical science to make claims about the intrinsic nature of minds as it would be for an empirical science to make claims about the nature of angels, because neither one is empirically observable. You cannot see, touch, taste, smell, or hear my mind, but only its empirically observable effects. So no scientific finding, even in theory, can legitimately claim to prove that minds are what brains do. This is a question which it is not within the realm of science to answer.
So, what does neuroscience show? It shows that minds are, at the very least, intimately related to brains. And even a drunk knows that what affects the brain can affect the mind. So in that sense, the television/TV station analogy does indeed fail, because a broken television does not affect the TV station sending the signal.
A better analogy to illustrate the relationship of the mind and the brain, I think, would be the relationship between the ink on a piece of paper and the word it spells. Many different kinds of ink and paper, or even other materials like oil on canvas or urine on snow, can spell out the same word. But a given instance of a word must always be instantiated by some concrete substrate, some material thing that is actually spelling the word. If you mess with the material substrate, you can also change the meaning of the word being displayed, or even render it meaningless and unintelligible. But the word, considered in itself, is an immaterial thing. Just so with the mind.
* Ramen Noodle website: Quick, easy, and unhealthy in large portions. Also, addictive.
2476606
I need to find an adequate article with a citations to sources. It fit the bill.
As for the rest of your post, you argue for immateriality of mind while conceding that the brain intimately effects the mind and citing no evidence for immateriality —— not even an Encyclopædic Article giving an overview with a bibliography and external links. Since we both agree that the brain intimately effects the mind and you presented no evidence of immateriality, I default to Occam’s Razor until somepony presents empirical evidence for immateriality.
2476638
I have given a formalization of a logical argument. Metaphysical questions are like mathematical questions, in that they are not the kind of questions that can be resolved by providing empirical evidence.
If I said that every closed subspace of a compact topological space is compact, would you ask for empirical evidence? Or would you want to see the logical proof?
2476648
Just because something is logically sound does not mean that it is true:
0. All ponies are immortal.
1. Big MacIntosh is a pony.
2. So therefore, Big MacIntosh is immortal.
This simple argument is logically sound, but wrong. The error is on line # 0.
For determining what to provisionally accept as true for plugging into our arguments so that we can make probably true inferences, we use the the scientific method:
0. Observe.
1. Make the simplest possible falsifiable hypothesis capable of explaining the observations.
2. Try to falsify the hypothesis.
3. If the hypothesis survives attempts at falsification preliminarily accept it as a theory; if the hypothesis fails reject it.
4. Go to line # 0.
The simplest possible hypothesis is that minds are something that brains do, so minds are material. I shall plug what we know into your argument:
One must make certain that logical inferences are based on facts and thoroughly tested hypotheses, or better yet, theories. One must use Occum’s Razor when formulating hypotheses.
2476660
There are other methods in addition to the scientific. In fact, if we are supposed to regard the scientific method as valid, then we must admit that there are other methods of finding out basic truths, for the scientific method is not self-justifying: one cannot use science to prove that science is a valid method of acquiring knowledge.
Classical foundationalism has normally held that beliefs can be basic if, among other possibilities, they are indubitable--impossible to doubt. Now, it is my position that premise 4, "The human mind has purposes," is one that is impossible to doubt. To see this, just try to doubt it--the very act of your trying to doubt shows that you have a goal or purpose in mind, namely, the purpose of doubting that your mind has purposes.
As for Occam's Razor, it only applies if all other things are equal, specifically, if the explanatory powers of the different theories in question are equal. But the non-materialist's whole point is that the materialist position does not explain mental things such as purpose (or meaning, or qualia, or rationality, or free will--but let's stick to purpose for now). So it is a little early in the argument to be digging old Bishop Ockham out of his grave.
2476666
I do not accept your premises. We seem to have reached an impasse.
2476699
*shrug* A'ight.