Philosopher Stefan Molyneux reviews his first live debate in years with Jay Dyer. He talks about where concepts and reason come from, why interruptions and mockery weaken an argument, and how logic is grounded in the real world rather than a supernatural source.Philosopher Stefan Molyneux reviews his first live debate in years with Jay Dyer. He talks about where concepts and reason come from, why interruptions and mockery weaken an argument, and how logic is grounded in the real world rather than a supernatural source.
Chapters:
0:00:00 Debate Reflections Begin
0:04:16 Steelman and Concepts
0:13:24 Answering the Question
0:21:47 Rehearsal and Audience
0:27:43 Childhood Cancer Debate
0:37:02 Special Pleading Exposed
0:49:09 Philosophy and Civility
0:57:01 Why Christians Hostile
1:04:05 Spiritual Experience and Q&A
1:06:18 Caller Weighs In
1:15:36 The Problem of Universals
1:26:42 Species and Essentialism
1:38:29 Logic, Burden, and God
1:47:16 Breakups and Debate Critique
1:52:07 Transcendental Argument Under Fire
2:07:59 Where Do Concepts Come From?
2:17:07 Mind, Brain, and Qualia
2:20:26 Humility in Philosophy
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so many wierdos in the comments. Stefan molyneux won. Obviously.
Punching down as always!
the eastern european accent, what the hell was he going on about?
Welcome back Stefan!
Simple question: can you look at some molecules under a microscope and tell me whether they came from a tree or a forrest?
I do not believe that you have to prove the existence of God, I think it is best to interpret religions as knowledge or science learnt and practiced through semantics over millenia. Can we prove dark matter, string theory, spooky action at a distance. There is still so much to be learnt about the earth and we live here, the solar system is a big thing, there is space for a gazillion theories but a few proven facts.
Computers have different molecules but they share programs. The brain encodes information differently than computers do, but ultimately ideas can correspond to one another the same way programs do. Jay Dyer is making a typical God of the gaps leap. It is really pathetic. We know abstract forms can be saved in different hardware because we do it every day. That neuroscience is behind computer science does not justify invoking God.
I think you could have forced him onto the defensive. When it comes to invoking God to explain why ideas cohere, there are a number of problems with that from a Christian theological perspective. If God controls our understanding, why does he allow us to sin and how can we have free will when he is the intermediary? In fact, this means that God organizes and orchestrates the understanding of even the demons: This would ultimately make God an aspect of Satan's thinking and action.
Stefan is too smart and high IQ to believe in God because the belief isn’t absolute, but God gave him this brain so I do have to wonder would God condemn him to hell for not believing even though he is a good and moral person, that’s the ultimate question
I truly believe that it’s very unfortunate for Stefan to not believe in God, God is the reason for existence and sometimes really smart people can’t see this obvious fact, Stefan happens to be very high IQ and since he can’t actually prove that God exists he’s a non believer, but God is everything and has always been everything and I really feel for Stefan for not being able to believe, I feel like if he was a believer he would be even more successful,
Jay refuses to troubleshoot how he communicates things and then uses the misdirection as proof of his debate skill. Between that and liking presuppositionalism, which is a way to have an argument without having an argument (ethologically), we have proof that Vox was right. This isn't how a high status person acts
you rock stef wishing you many happy years ahead
the difference between civility between stef's chats and jay's is substantial. we have a much lower proportion of commentors larping and crashing out
2:13:00 I was put into a mystical experience where I was like Neo, I was given talent, things were explained to me
It good hearing from you again, watched many of your videos and have your books, love the art of the argument.
You've really helped me grow and I see these sophits all over the place, Andrew Wilson is one of them.
Please keep up the good work
If you bake two cakes and one extra of them has a molecule of salt would a god with a perfect ability to taste … taste it?
That’s the molecule question. Is our “concept of 2” actually identical?
I think the issue with Jays questions is, they arent overly philosophical questions, and he wants to frame it as such. Matter and neurons and the brain are more scientific questions. Which is in the realm of "materialism",as he puts it. So i think its just a rather disingenuous way he frames it, because he already rejects it.
Little does he know, when he wants to use scientific terms, he's accepting that science and materialism are valid. And the opposite cant be said with his religious terms, because science doesnt use them.
Wait, Wait! 8? How do we know its not 8 coconuts! Asking the thuper cereal philosophy questions here. Now that I mention it, Doesnt Jay Dyer of philosophy remind you of the Al Gore of climate science? God is his manbearpig.
You could have handled this debate better Stefan. But i think its just that you haven't debated like that for a while. You started to get upset and going on other tangents. But were not in 2010 anymore. Dayer had some good genuine questions.
Damn Stephan is super high IQ. Im Christain and I think most of the hate from other Christians is because they want to see Stephen as one of them and get personally offended when he doesnt conform to the belief in a God. All people are flawed but beautiful in different capacity, and God will be the judhe (if he is real).
I do think Stephan needs to lighten up on Christians. If Christians are a problem, they are like a 6/100 on the probelm scale, and the far left and Islamics are 75+ lol
Good point. The Church of Dyer is full of fundamental hypocrites.
Being a Christian does not make you a rational thinker with the ability to introspect and self-criticize.
Isnt the Is/Ought just a fallacy? The appeal to ignorance fallacy? Its basically saying the statement is true because you cant prove it to the contrary because it sets up a false dichotomy. Not only did Hume not prove it, but he placed the burden of proof on the people trying to argue against it.
Dyers has been arguing a fallacy all his career, and banks on people never being able to argue its contrary truth statement. because the Is/Ought is actually a very complex fallacy.
Its the same fallacy with the God argument. Not only do they not have to prove it, but they place the burden of proof on you. All of the God arguments have this in common,, and Humes argument is no different. Thats why Dyer likes to use it. Stefan portrayed this fallacy when he was talking about his dream story, but that flew over Jay's head.
I'm assuming Stefan never actually reads his comments and will neither see or respond to this, but: what answer do you have for the problem of induction other than "well we just do inductive reasoning really hard?" Saying that medicine works doesn't actually address the issue.
Nice debate! Please do another! With maybe a better moderator
I love how you tear people down and say they're wrong when they're trying to agree with you.Such good manners british gent
Do you have a link to the debate?
thank you for doing this!!
I like your idea that having a god would make things less stable.
We should be focusing our energy on the enemy.
“Filibuster! Storytelling!” Jeez that guy was obnoxious.
I pray you find God Stef, I really think you are just being stubborn at this point. Abandon the Ayn Rand worship, it's serving you no good. Jay was talking about CONCEPTS Stef, and you never answered that one question. The debate performance was a 2/10, 8/10 is extremely generous considering you couldn't answer one basic yes or no question without telling a 5 minute story each time.
Our ancestors never met every lion or mammoth. They abstracted stable traits across different animals, lion means flee, mammoth means coordinate and hunt. These universals worked because they predicted reality. Bad abstractions got people killed, accurate ones were preserved. Mathematics sharpens the same ability, letting us see the “lions” of reality through quantities, patterns and causes. Stable reality gives abstractions their content, evolved brains form them. What does a divine mind explain that this does not?
This is why I've grown tired of the debate sphere. It's become a sewer for conservative trad dudes to dunk on broken vapid lefties who themselves know they are not coming from reason or consistency, or a WWF spectacle where people sling prepackaged catch phrases and shyte at one another so they can go back to their echo chambers and get patted on the back by their incurious adoring devotees (Yes I realize I'm saying this as a Stef appreciator myself). The whole thing went off the rails with the predictable snide remarks and little swaying of the audience was achieved. In so many ways we are in a post debate world. I wish Dyer wasn't a smarmy insufferable frat bro so I could hear his refutations and arguments, but it was giggling, insults, and fart noises while preforming intellectual superiority with theological jargon.
Dyer doesnt ‘debate’ anyone, hes never there to get to the truth of anything, hes just there to get clips.
Modern debates are a joke. Its just arguing for the sake of arguing, when the purpose of debate is to try and get to the truth of something.
Surprised Jay didn't bring up Aquinas' 5 ways. I saw Stefs video on Aquinas and he strawmans him ("If everything has a cause, what caused God?" – Aquinas never asserted that everything has a cause – only those things which come into existence have a cause. There is no refutation of his assertion that there necessarily is an uncaused cause which itself is not caused but which causes everything else to exist – without that you have an infinite regress and thus couldn't explain your empirical observations about things changing around you).
He was so hell bent on attacking Stef that he didn't make any great points. Trust me i was waiting to hear! Id love to believe in God. Haven't heard any good points.
1:15:52 holy shit Kas called in 😂