Henke 2022cj

Who is Taine? Mr. Lundahl Again Throws Out Names without Identifying Them or Their Qualifications

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

Lundahl (2022m) mentions someone named Taine:

“It is possible CSL's reasons in chapter 3 only involve a refutation of a strongly deterministic naturalism. One found in Taine and not shared by Henke.

If I were to give the opposition a good articulation of what Henke only sketches out, it would go like this:

· matter and energy are ultimately determining all of reality, by chain reactions going back to past eternal or to the Big Bang and CSL is right that this level of determination, described by the laws of physics, would never by itself lead to reason or morality;

· however, against Taine, meaning CSL is strawmanning us by reducing us to Taine, their determinations extend only to certain directions, leaving a certain amount of indetermination, like the sudoku solutions that have 3 or 5 alternatives, given the start and the rules, and this leaves room for complexity to create its own chains of determination, and mind, language, reason, morality all belong to this sphere, via evolution after abiogenesis;” [my emphasis]

He might be referring to Hippolyte Taine, a 19^th century French thinker. If so, once again, Mr. Lundahl relies on someone from more than a century ago with likely outdated views on cosmology, physics, human consciousness, morality, abiogenesis, biological evolution, and other relevant topics. This is typical of Mr. Lundahl’s sources. If his sources are ever properly identified, they tend to be largely hundreds to thousands of years old and full of outdated, often unreliable and irrelevant claims. If he had really wanted to accurately represent the views of his opponents as he desires in these paragraphs from Lundahl (2022m), Mr. Lundahl should have found a 21^st or late 20^th century materialist scientist whose views are more likely to be current and relevant, like Harris (2010) or Dennett (2006; 2018).

As with the totally improper referencing of Bishop Challoner in Lundahl (2022a) (also see Henke 2022g), Mr. Lundahl likes to show off his intellectual abilities by rudely and condescendingly throwing out names without providing any references on the identities or qualifications of these people. Lundahl (2022m) seems to be saying “Look at me, I’m so smart. I know someone that you probably don’t! Like other true intellectual giants, I don’t have to identify who Taine is. Only ignorant idiots like you don’t know who Taine is, etc.” Lundahl (2022m) could have easily taken a couple of minutes to provide his readers with a reference to Taine. Because he refuses to use proper referencing, we cannot check the Taine reference and determine if Lundahl (2022m) is citing it correctly (also see Henke 2022e). No one should have to guess the identity of the Taine in Lundahl (2022m) and then determine which of Taine’s references Lundahl (2022m) might be using.

References:

Dennett, D.C. 2006. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon: Viking: Penguin Group: New York, 448pp.

Dennett, D.C. 2018. “Facing Up to the Hard Question of Consciousness”: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, v. 373, 20170342.

Harris, S. 2010. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Hunan Values: Free Press: New York, N.Y., USA, 291pp.