Post-Modern Science: The Illusion of Consciousness Sees Through Itself

Denyse O'Leary: Post-Modern Science: The Illusion of Consciousness Sees Through Itself

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Naturalist philosopher Patricia Churchland puts the proposition most starkly: Evolution selects for survival and “Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”

“Truth, whatever that is”? One sees into the soul of post-modern science here.
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Gobry [previously quoted concerning the self-evident absurdity of the Naturalists' "consciousness is an illusion" assertion] seems not to grasp that absurdity is no longer an issue. We are animals and animals are never absurd; they live and then they die.

Similarly, literary critic Leon Wieseltier [echoing Darwin (*), whether or not he realizes it] writes, “If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? … Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.” Yes, it can. The power invoked is not reason but the rhetoric of reason, a weapon for those who do not believe in the concept against those who do.

(*) This is referred to as "Darwin's Doubt"

“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? [To William Graham 3 July 1881]”

“But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?”

And -- just as his disciples today -- he didn't let the knowledge that his programme logically entails the denial that we even can reason truly/soundly and acquire real/true knowledge get in his way.