I recently watched your second bloggingheads debate with Adam Frank and the point you make above is one I think you should have stated clearly in that debate. Mr (Prof?) Frank based part of his argument on the feeling of fulfillment that one receives being in a relationship and believing that there is a metaphysical element to the relationship (and similar situations). Yet he does not actually believe that metaphysical element exists...only that the belief has some kind of psychological benefit. The way you addressed your position made it sound like the reductionist view is one in which feelings of fulfillment and “meaning” (a term that I think is fairly weakly defined in these discussions) cannot exist or exist differently. I know this was not your point.
Someone who has a fuzzy warm feeling from a metaphysical belief is still getting warm and fuzzy in a physical world in which their belief is wrong. There is nothing inherent about the nature of the world or knowing things about the nature of the world that precludes feeling satisfied, happy, warm, complete, or fulfilled. Those feelings exist within the substrate of physical material that makes up the world already. As you have pointed out before, those feelings would be all the more genuine and meaningful if they were founded on beliefs that more closely matched the actual working world.
I think in that debate you were approaching this topic somewhat from the side of things.
“I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.”
I recently watched your second bloggingheads debate with Adam Frank and the point you make above is one I think you should have stated clearly in that debate. Mr (Prof?) Frank based part of his argument on the feeling of fulfillment that one receives being in a relationship and believing that there is a metaphysical element to the relationship (and similar situations). Yet he does not actually believe that metaphysical element exists...only that the belief has some kind of psychological benefit. The way you addressed your position made it sound like the reductionist view is one in which feelings of fulfillment and “meaning” (a term that I think is fairly weakly defined in these discussions) cannot exist or exist differently. I know this was not your point.
Someone who has a fuzzy warm feeling from a metaphysical belief is still getting warm and fuzzy in a physical world in which their belief is wrong. There is nothing inherent about the nature of the world or knowing things about the nature of the world that precludes feeling satisfied, happy, warm, complete, or fulfilled. Those feelings exist within the substrate of physical material that makes up the world already. As you have pointed out before, those feelings would be all the more genuine and meaningful if they were founded on beliefs that more closely matched the actual working world.
I think in that debate you were approaching this topic somewhat from the side of things.
“I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.”
Virginia Woolf