I imagine there might be as broad a range of materialists here at Straight Dope as there is of Christians. But we have to start somewhere in a debate over materialism’s metaphysics, and I know of no better place to start than Hobbes. My critiques follow. From The Leviathan, chapter XII, “Of Religion”:
[sup]1[/sup] Hobbes is not the first philosopher (nor the last) to leap from a reasonable premise to an ignorantiam. These are always the moments when a philosopher “gets caught”. A Platonic dialog with Hobbes might have interupted him at this moment to query, “But Thomas, we have yet to establish that natural cogitation either can conceive, apprehend, or comprehend everything that exists or has exhausted all that it is capable of conceiving, apprehending, or comprehending.” In other words, there might be mechanisms other than natural cogitation that can validate an ontology, and there might be ontologies that cannot be validated by natural cogitation. Hobbes has already presumed that supernatural cogitation (or spiritual revelation) must be false because, to his mind at least, it has not been proved true.
[sup]2[/sup] It is always suspicious when a philosopher has failed to state his axioms, but rather forces the reader to presume them when he encounters a sudden assertion. The principle of Audiatur et Altera Pars would suggest that Hobbes ought to have let us know earlier on that he would be dealing with a supernatural as conceived by Aquinas. I’d like to give him the maximum benefit of the doubt, which means I must assume this violation of principle, rather than assume that Hobbes knows that these are metaphorical representations but is presenting them as literal representations. Hobbes says himself in chapter IV, “And therefore in reasoning, a man must take heed of words; which, besides the signification of what we imagine of their nature, have a signification also of the nature, disposition, and interest of the speaker; such as are the names of virtues and vices: for one man calleth wisdom what another calleth fear; and one cruelty what another justice; one prodigality what another magnanimity; and one gravity what another stupidity, etc.” Yet here, he presents just such words to argue against.
[sup]3[/sup] Having already selected the road he intends to walk down, it is necessary that Hobbes stay on that road. But, as you see, he doesn’t. He equivocates. And that is what is so extraordinary about this famous passage. Having already stated unequivocally, particularly in chapter IV, that certain words (e.g., words that describe anything other than material phenomena) are worthless toward cognition, here is Hobbes making a lengthy case against the very entities that such words convey! In other words, how can you prove the nonexistence of something that cannot even be brought into thought? If something is nonsense, then it cannot even be discussed, much less that anything meaningful be established about it. It’s one thing to attempt to prove that earth does not weigh four kilograms, but quite another to attempt to prove that the earth does not weigh fahoza sezitch.
[sup]4[/sup] Hobbes is stuck in a rut about invisible agency. He could not have known this in his time, of course, but there are myriad entities in the universe, quite real, that are not visible. The modern materialist gets around this by allowing visibility by proxy; i.e., if you cannot see a thing with your eyes, then all is acceptable if you can see evidence of the thing with your eyes (or other senses). You might not see radition, for example, but so long as you can hear ticking noises and see needles move on dial faces, then all is well. But this is one great, happy tautology. Whatever will, in accordance with the physical laws of the universe, serve to validate other physical laws of the universe, that thing will testify to the physical laws of the universe.
[sup]5[/sup] More amphiboly. And the essence of materialism’s core fallacy. Encased in the very argument itself is the subsumption that “opinion” is itself something of substance. Once again, Hobbes precurses Hume, having already painted himself into a corner that forces him to use words that express nothing but physically observable phenomena. A man’s opinion cannot be seen. And even the modern materialist faces an insurmountable problem here, since a man’s opinion cannot be seen on LED. The materialist does not have the luxury of validating the existence of opinion — or art, or faith, or beauty — simply based upon a ubiquitous acknowledgment of their existence by the populace, any more than he can accept the existence of God simply because a million people tell him that they have experienced God first hand.
[sup]6[/sup] This is at best a sloppy ignorantiam, or at worst an ignoratio elenchi, or irrelevant conclusion. I am always, for example, hearing students of science trying to describe black holes or strings to me. They are doing the very best they can based on the mathematical models with which they are familiar. The fact that they have not sufficiently conveyed to me an understanding such that I can now turn around and convey that understanding to someone else (i.e., they have not conveyed a concrete understanding) does not mean that black holes do not exist. Were I to follow Hobbes example here, the next time Chronos answers a question in GQ about black holes, I should respond to him, “Since I don’t understand what you’re saying, you leave me with no choice but to decide that black holes are incomprehensible, and that you are unintelligible.”
[sup]7[/sup] At least he gave himself a trap-door for escape.
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