Monday 3 November 2008

the psychological relevance of logical laws

In his excellent little book C.S. Lewis' Dangerous Idea Victor Reppert outlines several different versions of the 'argument from reason' against physicalism. Besides some of the more well known ones, such as the problem of mental causation and Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (see here for a Plantinga lecture outline on the topic), there's an interesting one to do with the psychological relevance of logical laws. In essence what Reppert argues is that rational inference involves employment of the laws of logic, something which the physicalist cannot give an account for. These logical laws aren't physical (they pertain across all possible worlds, including ones with no physical objects) and they tell us what must be true in every possible world (i.e. the law of noncontradiction holds in all possible worlds). If this is the case then it appears one who accepts the laws of logic (which has to be done if you're to rationally infer one belief from another) must then accept some kind of non-physical, non-spatial, non-temporal abstract entities (at the very least some kind of Platonic forms).
It also has to be assumed we know these laws. But the physicalist can only accept some kind of causal interaction between the brain and the objects of its knowledge. If this is the case then the laws of logic must be physical (or how else can the brain causally interact with them?). But this can't be the case if these laws are, as already argued, non-physical, non-spatial, non-temporal entities. As Reppert points out some philosophers have given this kind of argument as to why we should be non-realists about numbers - we cannot be causally connected to them in a physical way either (numbers are prime examples of abstract objects). If we take this argument and apply it to the laws of logic neither should we be realists about them. But if we are going to contend that the laws of logic do not exist the glaring problem is, as Aristotle pointed out millennia ago, we cannot coherently assert that this is so without presupposing the laws we're trying to deny the existence of (i.e. the law of noncontradiction). So, to quote Reppert: "philosophical naturalism undermines the laws that are presupposed in the very assertion of philosophical naturalism."
More on this later.

No comments: