Example of a hasty argument:


Another objection the materialist may have is that the soul must be bound by time and space, which are necessary truths. If our soul is our rationality, freedom and consciousness, then it must exist through the creation of free, rational thoughts. They may then argue that since the process of thinking takes a specific time and place, thoughts and the mind - or soul - exist within a specific time and space as well.

A response to this claim may be that time and space are relative to the observer. Perception of time and space is not absolute. If our perception of these is relative then the mind - or soul - could not be bound by space or time.

This paragraph is an attempt to deal with an argument that could be proposed by a materialist. It is good that the student has anticipated this materialist argument. There is one minor error with this paragraph - a small point, but it requires a lengthy explanation. It is not correct though to say that space and time "...are necessary truths". A truth has to be expressed in the form of a proposition. It is true that my office has a window. But the office is not true, nor is the window. They are objects, not propositions. An object can be described as necessary or contingent. My office is a contingent object. Some philosophers would say that numbers, or God, are necessary objects, and therefore could act as truthmakers for necessary truths. (My office is not true, but my office and its window make it true that there is a window in my office. "4" is not true, but for a platonist, the numbers "2" and "4" are what makes it true that "2+2=4"). Time and space are not truths, and it is not even clear that they are objects - Kant would say that they are intuitions that make our experience of objects possible. We say that an object is in a particular part of space, but space itself is not in some part of space - it is what objects are in. (Of course, 'space' here does not refer to 'outer space' - beyond the Earth's atmosphere. We are here using 'space' to include the entire universe - within Earth's atmosphere and beyond). That point aside, the first paragraph is good. I say this point is a minor one, because there was no need to say that space and time are necessary truths - the paragraph works fine without that claim.

The difficulty comes with the response. If space and time are relative to an observer, that places the observer within space and time. The keyboard on my computer is near to me, but far from you. My sixty-fourth birthday is in my future, but when I am 64, my writing of this will be in my past. It is because we are in space and time that some things are nearer to and further from us. But observing is, surely a part of our mental life. If I, as an observer, am in space and time, then my mind is in space and time. According to the student writing this paper, the relativity of perception demonstrates that the mind is not bound by space and time. But if the mind is the thing to which perception is relative, then the mind seems to be very much in space and time. So the argument proves the opposite of what it is supposed to.

How did this mistake happen? I suspect it comes from thinking too quickly. I can see how, with some vague knowledge of Einstein, one jumps from writing about space and time to writing about relativity and perception. But this is then expressed in the simple thought "Space and time are not absolute", without giving much consideration to what it means for something to be relative or absolute. The non-absoluteness of space is just thought of as being an imperfection, a weakness of space: something not absolute cannot be powerful enough to act as a real constraint. That. I imagine, is how the student is thinking. It is easy to fall into this trap of vague thinking - as though whatever is absolute is therefore strong and powerful. It happens with words like "subjective", "valid" or "second-order". When you use such words, think about what they really mean, and then consider carefully the implications of what you are saying.

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