Physicalism is true.

Ave Rebuttals The rest of this debate will consist of back and forth rebuttals between Con and I. In my rebuttals, I will not attempt to extensively explain all of the ideas that I mention, instead opting to summarize them in a way that is applicable to this debate. A good argument addresses and justifies its assumptions so that a rational person does not find themselves unsatisfied with the argument’s dependence on unproven assumptions. If I omitted any proof that physical entities exist, then my argument would assume that idealism is false. Since a good argument avoids unjustified assumptions, I devoted the section “The existence of physical entities” to justifying this assumption. I was not, as Con states, attempting to make a straw man argument of his position. Rather, I was only making a proper defense of my thesis. I can understand why somebody would limit science to the physical world, as this is repeated through basic science education for quite some time. However, it is a simplification, as you obviously can’t teach theoretical physics to grade schoolers. If one looks at contemporary ideas in physics, many of them include non-physical entities. Max Tegmarks’s mathematical universe hypothesis, for example, makes explicit use of the existence of mathematical, non-physical entities. Alexander Vilenkin’s quantum tunneling model also makes use of non-physical entities. As he writes in his book Many Worlds In One, “The laws of physics must have existed, even though there was no universe”. Contemporary physical theories show that Con’s only refutation against my argument is palpably false, as one might say. Con presents us with a modal argument against physicalism that depends on the use of the modal operator “possibility” from the S5 modal logic system. This is one system of modal logic out of many others, and even the book in which S5 modal logic was first published in (Symbolic Logic) mentions four other systems of modal logic. Con’s argument therefore rests on the unproven and debated assumption that S5 modal logic is true. Con’s argument fails for this reason alone. However, I will go one step further and argue in favor of a modal logic system called TRIV modal logic, in which the modal operator “possibility” disappears entirely (this is referred to as modal collapse). The philosopher Quentin Smith states that “The basic cosmological law is the distance/velocity law and this law requires precise initial conditions at the origin t=0 of the distance scale. We can say that at the big bang, or infinitesimally close to the big bang, the initial conditions had to be exactly as they are to produce a material universe that satisfied the velocity-distance law…..It seems to me that this suggests that the only modal logic system that is valid simpliciter, i.e. that describes the modal logical form of reality, is Triv.” To put it in Con’s terms, we have no good reasons to believe that S5 modal logic is true, and good reasons to believe that it is not true. In regards to Con’s second argument, I can do nothing more than dismiss it, seeing as he makes no effort at justifying its premises. Con’s third argument is Alvin Plantinga’s classic “evolutionary argument against naturalism”. The persuasiveness of this argument only comes from an implicit confirmation bias, as it is only considers examples where evolution is detrimental to truth acquisition (for example, hyperactive agent detection) and never considers examples where evolution benefits truth acquisition. My position is that on balance, the need to survive actually selects for true beliefs more than it does for false beliefs. It is true that evolution has hard-wired erroneous thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions into human cognition, but let us remember that it is the very same cognition that allows to discover and correct these errors. Survival correlates with the ability to solve problems that one encounters in their environment. One’s ability to solve these problems will depend on their ability to avoid such cognitive pitfalls as the mental set, functional fixedness, and confirmation bias. These cognitive pitfalls, which are false beliefs (i.e. “Object X only does Y and nothing more), are detrimental to survival. Therefore, survival depends on the selection of true beliefs over false beliefs. If we categorize beliefs into categories like “Beliefs about one’s environment”, “Beliefs about physics”, and “Beliefs about food”, we would find that the ratio of true to false beliefs is not even, but differs widely depending on the category. For example, in the category “Beliefs about one’s environment”, there will be more true beliefs than false beliefs, otherwise our existence would be implausible. However, as we get to more profound topics like “Beliefs about physics”, the number of false beliefs increases, as beliefs about physics are not as essential to survival. Con’s fourth argument only works if you ignore other possible evolutionary explanations of such behaviors. While he rules out kin selection and reciprocation, this obviously doesn’t entail that there is no evolutionary explanation, but only that two specific evolutionary explanations are false. Con states that he’s heard stories of soldiers “jumping on roadside bombs to save the life of a total stranger”, but this is a rather silly story considering that roadside bombs are clearly not something one can “jump on”. Besides this, “jumping” on a roadside bomb would do absolutely nothing in terms of protecting other people considering the size of the explosion. I included a video of a roadside bomb exploding in Iraq so that the readers of the debate could get some perspective on this. () In any case, Con’s argument really doesn’t amount to anything more than confusing a lack of explanation in practice with a lack of explanation in principle. It effectively ham-fists the notion of a “soul” into gaps of scientific knowledge. Con still needs to provide an example (his only example doesn’t make any sense) where there is altruistic behavior that cannot be explained by such notions as kin selection, vested interest, and reciprocity. And even if he accomplished this, it would be nothing more than a conceptual error. Vale References Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality Many Worlds In One http://plato.stanford.edu... http://www.cc.utah.edu... Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity