The following argument is valid:
- No possible four-dimensional arrangement of mere matter is intrinsically such that it is worth sacrificing one's life to prevent its existence.
- If materialism is true, then there is a possible four-dimensional arrangements of mere matter that is a society consisting entirely of good people who suffer horrible torment forever.
- A society consisting entirely of good people who suffer horrible torment forever is intrinsically such that it is worth sacrificing one's life to prevent its existence.
- So, materialism is false.
Is this a good argument against materialism? I think there is a lot of intuitive plausibility in the idea that arrangements of matter, in themselves, are just not very important, except for possible esthetic value. But nothing is so intrinsically ugly that it is worth sacrificing one's life precisely to prevent its existence.
The materialist, I think, will simply deny (1). Nonetheless, I think that there is some cost to denying (1).
5 comments:
Confused on #2? What do you mean?
If materialism is true, persons are just arrangements of matter, and societies are just larger arrangements of matter.
You can also run a version of this argument against functionalism with a variant of Leibniz's mill thought experiment.
If it's possible for a functional arrangement of matter to be a mind, it's possible for a mind, and hence for a society, to be simply an arrangement of giant cogwheels. But it is absurd to think that one would be necessarily doing grave wrong, the sort of wrong that it would be better to die rather than do, by arranging cogwheels in a particular way. (The "necessarily" is important, since contingently a given arrangement might cause great harm.) Yet if materialism is true, there'll be a way of arranging cogwheels so that by so doing one is producing a society of innocents in horrendous pain for a very long time, who then die.
"If materialism is true, persons are just arrangements of matter, and societies are just larger arrangements of matter." - this is the essential bankrupcy of the Communist system. It is also ultimately the endpoint of the atheist/secularist view.
"A society consisting entirely of good people who suffer horrible torment forever is intrinsically such that it is worth sacrificing one's life to prevent its existence." The World War II generation will agree.
I would like to go to "then there is a possible four-dimensional arrangements of mere matter that is a society consisting entirely of good people who suffer horrible torment forever." Here I want to shed some thoughts. In a material universe, that is a universe without a perfectly good Creator, Who in turn wills our existance and our ultimate good, there would really be no purpose to suffering, and no purpose to an existance with suffering. A Godless universe is basically an indifferent universe, I have heard my humanities professors use the term "Absurd Universe". Two books I read back then - Albert Camus "The Stranger" and Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "Night Flight". "The Stranger" as the professor I had back then explained it to us was about the pointlessness of existance in the indifferent "Absurd Universe". Another professor, with whom I had a good raport, explained to me that "Night Flight" was about the human effort to impose oneself against the indifferent universe. The effort, while heroic, didn't seem to be going anywhere as far as I could see because that's a fight no one in the book was winning. It seemed like a constant struggle with a tie rather victory as the best possible outcome. A Godless material universe leaves us in such a state. Suffering is in and of itself pointless. The end result is either stoic soldiering on inspite of having no real hope or falling into despair. Drs Conrad Baars and Viktor Frankl have both made the observation while imprisoned in a concentration camp, that while everyone suffered terribly, those prisoners who died (not those who were killed) were those who had lost hope and who had no purpose. The survivors all had found some purpose within themselves. Purpose, hope are not the properties of materialism. I have read somewhere that the purpose of suffering is to conform us to a Creator who suffered for us. This is possible only if there is a Creator who wills our existance and who wills our ultimate good.
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