…and this is a 
The more sophisticated creationists like to toss the name "Alvin Plantinga" into arguments — he's a well-regarded philosopher/theologian who favors Intelligent Design creationism, or more accurately, Christian creationism. I've read some of his work, but not much; it's very bizarre stuff, and every time I get going on one of his papers I hit some ludicrous, literally stupid claim that makes me wonder why I'm wasting time with this pretentious clown, and I give up, throw the paper in the trash, and go read something from Science or Nature to cleanse my palate. Unfortunately, that means that what I have read is typically an indigestible muddled mess that I don't have much interest in discussing, and what I haven't read is something I can't discuss.
Well, we're in luck. Plantinga has written a short, 5 page summary of his views on evolution and naturalism, and it's lucid (for Plantinga) and goes straight to his main points. The workings of the man's mind sit there naked and exposed, and all the stripped gears and misaligned cogs and broken engines of his misperception are there for easy examination. Read it, and you'll wonder how a man so confused could have acquired such a high reputation; you might even think that philosophy has been Sokaled.
Begin at the beginning. He doesn't think much of atheism, and as we'll discover, doesn't like naturalism or evolution at all.
As everyone knows, there has been a recent spate of books attacking Christian belief and religion in general. Some of these books are little more than screeds, long on vituperation but short on reasoning, long on name-calling but short on competence, long on righteous indignation but short on good sense; for the most part they are driven by hatred rather than logic.
Hmm. It's not a good start when the author is so oblivious to irony that he opens his paper with a name-calling screed in which he lambastes others for writing name-calling screeds. Especially when, as we read further, we discover that Plantinga is the one lacking in competence, good sense, and logic.
Plantinga's claim is straightforward. Naturalism, the idea he defines as the claim that "there is no such person as God or anything like God", is in "philosophical hot water" and is untenable, and specifically, it is in complete contradiction to evolution — "you can't rationally accept both evolution and naturalism", contra Dawkins' claim that evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
Very straightforward, but it sounds like lunacy. Plantinga's going to have to be very, very persuasive indeed to convince me of that claim.
The way he does this starts off well. He points out that we naturalist/evolutionist types are also materialists who believe human beings are just material objects with no souls, that we operate on principles described by chemistry and physiology, and that we evolved. That's quite right. He gives the impression that he doesn't believe any of this (and I know from his other writings that he doesn't), but that is my position, and that of just about any other modern atheist you might name. Now let us consider the implications.
But while evolution, natural selection, rewards adaptive behavior (rewards it with survival and reproduction) and penalizes maladaptive behavior, it doesn't, as such, care a fig about true belief. As Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the genetic code, writes in The Astonishing Hypothesis, "Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truth, but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive and leave descendents." Taking up this theme, naturalist philosopher Patricia Churchland declares that the most important thing about the human brain is that it has evolved; hence, she says, its principal function is to enable the organism to move appropriately:
Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive … . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival [Churchland's emphasis]. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.
What she means is that natural selection doesn't care about the truth or falsehood of your beliefs; it cares only about adaptive behavior. Your beliefs may all be false, ridiculously false; if your behavior is adaptive, you will survive and reproduce.
Yes, exactly! Just believing in something, whether it is Christianity or physics, doesn't mean it is necessarily true. Our brains attempt to model the world for functional purposes and lack any inherent, absolute means to detect truth. I agree 100% with what he's saying, but now watch as he takes this foundation and runs it off the rails.
He imagines a hypothetical population of creatures living on another planet who operate entirely on these rules. What will happen to their beliefs?
So consider any particular belief on the part of one of those creatures: what is the probability that it is true? Well, what we know is that the belief in question was produced by adaptive neurophysiology, neurophysiology that produces adaptive behavior. But as we've seen, that gives us no reason to think the belief true (and none to think it false). We must suppose, therefore, that the belief in question is about as likely to be false as to be true; the probability of any particular belief's being true is in the neighborhood of 1/2. But then it is massively unlikely that the cognitive faculties of these creatures produce the preponderance of true beliefs over false required by reliability. If I have 1,000 independent beliefs, for example, and the probability of any particular belief's being true is 1/2, then the probability that 3/4 or more of these beliefs are true (certainly a modest enough requirement for reliability) will be less than 10(to the power -58). And even if I am running a modest epistemic establishment of only 100 beliefs, the probability that 3/4 of them are true, given that the probability of any one's being true is 1/2, is very low, something like .000001.[7] So the chances that these creatures' true beliefs substantially outnumber their false beliefs (even in a particular area) are small. The conclusion to be drawn is that it is exceedingly unlikely that their cognitive faculties are reliable.
(First, an amusing aside: footnote [7] is an acknowledgment of the assistance of someone else in doing those calculations. He needed help from an expert to multiply simple probabilities? Does being a philosopher mean you're incapable of tapping buttons on a calculator?)
I think you can now see what I mean when I say Plantinga's ideas are muddled lunacy. This is the same innumerate error creationists make when they babble about the odds of a single protein of 100 amino acids forming by chance; they assume that it's all a matter of sudden, spontaneous good fortune that a protein (or in this case, a brain) has all of its traits fixed, with no input from history or the environment. In Plantinga's imaginary materialist/naturalist world, beliefs are only the product of random chance.
In Plantinga's world, if we queried the inhabitants with some simple question, such as, "Is fire hot?", 50% would say no, and 50% would say yes. This world must be populated entirely with philosophers of Plantinga's ilk, because I think that in reality they would have used experience and their senses to winnow out bad ideas, like that fire is cold, and you'd actually find nearly 100% giving the same, correct answer. Plantinga does not seem to believe in empiricism, either.
What it does mean, though, is that if there are ideas that are not amenable to empirical testing, such as "I will go to heaven when I die", those ideas have a very low probability of being true. We can think of those as being the product of random input, in some ways, and since they cannot be winnowed against reality, they are unreliable.
Plantinga has heard this objection before, sort of. He's heard it, but it hasn't quite penetrated; he recites the common objection with some garbling.
What sort of reception has this argument had? As you might expect, naturalists tend to be less than wholly enthusiastic about it, and many objections have been brought against it. In my opinion (which of course some people might claim is biased), none of these objections is successful. Perhaps the most natural and intuitive objection goes as follows. Return to that hypothetical population of a few paragraphs back. Granted, it could be that their behavior is adaptive even though their beliefs are false; but wouldn't it be much more likely that their behavior is adaptive if their beliefs are true? And doesn't that mean that, since their behavior is in fact adaptive, their beliefs are probably true and their cognitive faculties probably reliable?
Almost. So close, and yet he still doesn't get it. A large part of our behavior will be functional (not contradicting reality) and some of it will even be adaptive (better fitting us to reality), and a lot of it will be neutral (contradicting reality, perhaps, but in ways that do not affect survival), but this does not imply that our cognitive faculties are necessarily and implicitly reliable. We could have highly unreliable cognition that maintains functionality by constant cross-checks against reality — we build cognitive models of how the world works that are progressively refined by experience.
Plantinga really thinks that one of the claims he is arguing against is that materialists/naturalists assume our minds are reliable.
But of course we can't just assume that they are in the same cognitive situation we think we are in. For example, we assume that our cognitive faculties are reliable. We can't sensibly assume that about this population; after all, the whole point of the argument is to show that if evolutionary naturalism is true, then very likely we and our cognitive faculties are not reliable.
To which I say…exactly! Brains are not reliable; they've been shaped by forces which, as has been clearly said, do not value Truth with a capital T. Scientists are all skeptics who do not trust their perceptions at all; we design experiments to challenge our assumptions, we measure everything multiple times in multiple ways, we get input from many people, we put our ideas out in public for criticism, we repeat experiments and observations over and over. We demand repeated and repeatable confirmation before we accept a conclusion, because our minds are not reliable. We cannot just sit in our office at Notre Dame with a bible and conjure truth out of divine effluent. We need to supplement brains with evidence, which is the piece Plantinga is missing.
He's reduced to a bogus either/or distinction. Either we are organic machines that evolved and our brains are therefore collections of random beliefs, or — and this is a leap I find unbelievable — Jesus gave us reliable minds. Seriously. That's what his argument reduces to. He flat out says it.
The obvious conclusion, so it seems to me, is that evolutionary naturalism can't sensibly be accepted. The high priests of evolutionary naturalism loudly proclaim that Christian and even theistic belief is bankrupt and foolish. The fact, however, is that the shoe is on the other foot. It is evolutionary naturalism, not Christian belief, that can't rationally be accepted.
Apparently, because Plantinga cannot imagine a source of information to imperfect minds other than the Christian deities, we're supposed to conclude that microwave ovens cannot be the product of ape brains shaped by evolution, with new and deeper understanding of the physical world derived by trial and error.
I really cannot take Alvin Plantinga seriously, ever.
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Posted by: Sgt. Obvious
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May 29, 2009 10:45 AM
And he started off so well... Disappointing.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | May 29, 2009 10:46 AM
Well, that's just clearly bogus. Everybody knows that reliable minds are a gift from Apollo!
Posted by: James Sweet | May 29, 2009 10:50 AM
I stopped reading as soon as I got to that thing about (I paraphrase because I can't bring myself to go back and read it) the odds of any given belief being true are 50%. I've heard that applied to the specific proposition of whether there is a God or not, and while that is Very Very Stupid, at least there you can make an argument that there is no data, so the 50/50 fallacy at least has a momentary flavor of plausibility... But to say that the 50/50 fallacy applies to all beliefs?????
Wow.
Posted by: Rudi | May 29, 2009 10:51 AM
Another classic example of how indoctrination in Christinanity has fatally incapacited an otherwise thoughtful mind. What a waste.
Posted by: Rudi | May 29, 2009 10:53 AM
Another classic example of how indoctrination in Christinanity has fatally incapacited an otherwise thoughtful mind. What a waste.
Posted by: m5000 | May 29, 2009 10:54 AM
"Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing."
ehehehe
Posted by: Cosmic Teapot | May 29, 2009 10:54 AM
So the 'F' in reproducing is silent then?
Posted by: jgregson | May 29, 2009 10:55 AM
So...he's saying, Christian logic doesn't explain Evolutionary naturalism, THEREFORE naturalism is false?
Ow. There goes my comprehension.
Oh well, easy come, easy go.
Posted by: Mozglubov | May 29, 2009 10:55 AM
One of the things he also fails to take into account is that there are other possible evolutionary forces which could shape the mind, including sexual selection. While a handsome man, Dawkins would not have quite so many ladies fawning over him were it not also for his wit, eloquence, and intelligence. To me, that hampers even his beginning arguments where he quotes Crick and Churchland.
Posted by: Rudi | May 29, 2009 10:55 AM
Another classic example of how indoctrination in Christinanity has fatally incapacited an otherwise thoughtful mind. What a waste.
Posted by: Richard Harris
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May 29, 2009 10:56 AM
It all depends upon what Platinga means by 'beliefs'. His argument is so confused, if he is talking about belief in general, that it can't be taken seriously. And if he means particular beliefs, such as metaphysical beliefs, then believing Bronze Age mythology that is obviously make-believe, can still be advantageous to the faithful, if the social circumstance permit. The social milieu might provide emotional support, business contacts, etc.
In the modern world, it becomes ever more apparent that such beliefs cannot be beneficial for humanity at large.
Posted by: m5000 | May 29, 2009 10:56 AM
"Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing."
ehehehe
Posted by: Sastra
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May 29, 2009 11:00 AM
This argument (often called The Argument from Reason) comes up regularly in comments, and you've done a great job pointing out some of its major flaws. In addition to the false dichotomy (either we have 'warrant' to trust our brains completely, or anything goes), it suffers from the same problem most theistic reasoning suffers from: they can't get away from the childish idea that Like comes only from Like.
Reason, free will, life, consciousness, morals, love, you name it. If things didn't start out there, they can't get there. Nothing new comes gradually out of increasingly complex patterns and interactions. Nothing grows. Nope. We get Reason from a Reason Force which is made out of Reason and has always been and never was anything else. We get life from a Life Force. How does the brain create mind? It doesn't. There's a Mind Force which uses the brain. Morals come from a Moral Force. And so on and so forth.
You hit the nail on the head. Evolution would give us brains which would be 'good enough' for most things, but which are inclined to error. What it won't give us is a sensus divinitus -- a certain way of 'knowing' God through our intuition. That couldn't "grow." It would have to be "gifted."
I find it remarkable that theists and New Agers love to trot out evidence that our biases mislead us as part of their case against science. See, the fact that we're biased entails that science is also a bias, and therefore we can't trust it any more than we trust our intuitions. But of course, the more flawed we are, the stronger the case for our need for objective methods, which evolved over time to help us cope with the problem.
Posted by: Shamelessly Atheist | May 29, 2009 11:02 AM
I had a discussion about this article last night with a faculty member of the department of philosophy at the U of Calgary. She said it was a shame because he used to do decent work, and then the word 'senile' came up...
Posted by: JRQ | May 29, 2009 11:04 AM
Jeez we see a lot of this, don't we, where some theowanker's "criticism" of naturalism/atheism/non-god-botism just boils down some variety of all-or-none fallacy:
1. X cannot be assumed to be perfectly known/reliable/efficient/whatever
2. Therefore, X is COMPLETELY unknown/unreliable/inefficient/whatever!
Do these people perhaps just have a basic deficiency in comprehending continuous variability and sliding scales?
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | May 29, 2009 11:04 AM
Remember when The God Delusion came out, and so many theologians accused Dawkins of being theologically and philosophically naive? So you'd think that when a philosopher steps onto the turf of science, they'd make extra effort to understand a field before commenting on it.
Posted by: Hairhead | May 29, 2009 11:07 AM
There's SO much wrong there -- and what is wrongest is the idea that "beliefs" are either "true" or "false". Most beliefs are contextual, contingent upon environment and situation. E.g. - Belief: The berries are too sour to eat. Answer: No, they are blackberries, and it's July. In August, they'll be sweet and delicious!
Why do "philosophers" spend huge amounts of intellectual energy and verbiage denying complexity; why do they seem to believe that everything can be simplified? Because it can't.
The world is a complicated place, and, woe is us! We actually have to THINK a lot of the time. And THINKING (critically, analytically, doubtfully) is what has given us most of our good stuff.
Posted by: Jason L Robinson | May 29, 2009 11:13 AM
i've seen Plantigna do this shtick before and the one redeeming quality in the middle of this muddled presuppositional appeal to solipcism is his seeming good nature.
It's a bit like a kind old papaw telling you some very very stupid things about which you can't quite bear to correct him.
I think a root problem Plantingna obscures is his definition of "truth". For him, this is some sort of eternal absolute that can only be defined in terms of reference to the christian god. You will find him at times claiming this to be a Truth, other times an a priori presupposition. Either way, it makes for terrible philosophy and it is no wonder that both creationists love him and rationalists deplore him.
Posted by: Jason L Robinson | May 29, 2009 11:15 AM
i've seen Plantigna do this shtick before and the one redeeming quality in the middle of this muddled presuppositional appeal to solipcism is his seeming good nature.
It's a bit like a kind old papaw telling you some very very stupid things about which you can't quite bear to correct him.
I think a root problem Plantingna obscures is his definition of "truth". For him, this is some sort of eternal absolute that can only be defined in terms of reference to the christian god. You will find him at times claiming this to be a Truth, other times an a priori presupposition. Either way, it makes for terrible philosophy and it is no wonder that both creationists love him and rationalists deplore him.
Posted by: RamblinDude
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May 29, 2009 11:16 AM
Sastra #13
Very nice.
Posted by: The Barefoot Bum | May 29, 2009 11:17 AM
Having read quite a bit of contemporary philosophy, it is sadly true that professional and academic philosophers seem generally innumerate and oblivious to irony.
Unfortunately, Plantinga is not the only offender; 99% of philosophers give the other 1% a bad name, and Plantinga doesn't really stand out of the crowd.
Posted by: Ben | May 29, 2009 11:19 AM
I gave up when he declared all statements of truth to be 50% reliable. He clearly has problems with empiricism.
Posted by: africangenesis | May 29, 2009 11:19 AM
Well done PZ!
"What it does mean, though, is that if there are ideas that are not amenable to empirical testing, such as "I will go to heaven when I die", those ideas have a very low probability of being true. We can think of those as being the product of random input, in some ways, and since they cannot be winnowed against reality, they are unreliable. "
Yes, but they can be reliable and/or adaptive. An understanding of a well constructed character for the wind or sea god for instance, might allow predictions that have better than 50% probability of being right. The wind god might live in the west and usually blow from there. The lighting god might hide in certain kinds of clouds, etc. Belief in heaven may charm a potential mate or earn a cushing priesthood, and denialism may mean death.
Posted by: Kingasaurus | May 29, 2009 11:19 AM
In a way, this manner of thinking is analogous to the Design Argument.
These people can't fathom the idea that non-random complexity (that does real "work" in the real world) can emerge out of the non-conscious forces of variation and selection.
They similarly don't get the corollary idea that your brain's model of the world is also non-random, in the same way the structure of your eye or your lung is.
It's a joke that Plantinga actually seems to buy into the idea that a mental model of the world that maps well onto reality most of the time has no chance of being more adaptive than a mental model that never does. Is he really saying that, or am I missing something?
Posted by: SomeGuy | May 29, 2009 11:22 AM
Actually, while on the topic of hatred and twisted logic, here's something that gives Plantinga a bad name: he recently signed a petition (along with Dembski and a number of other such types) in favour of permitting philosophy departments to exclude gays and lesbians if they felt that this violated their biblical mission. The petition along with the list of homophobes and bible-thumpers can be found here:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/apa/
Needless to say, the majority of the American Philosophical Association doesn't see things their way.
As for the point that Plantinga lifts from Churchland -- viz. that we are not 'epistemic engines' but rather 'survival engines' -- yah, that's right. Our brains evolved to get things 'about right' enough of the time that we could duck a spear or outwit a predator. They didn't evolve for perfection and precision. And so (as neurophilosophers note) just how certain cognitive systems that rely essentially on precision managed to evolve and how (in detail) they work is an interesting and open issue for cognitive scientists. I have in mind here such capacities as the use of generative grammars for natural languages and our ability to track truth about intricate mathematical structures. (Apes can sort of do arithmetic, just not precise arithmetic and not reliably.) Anyone interested in the nitty gritty with regard to the first problem should check out Chomsky's Minimalist Program. The second problem still needs a bit of work. At the moment, we don't know how precision is achieved by the brain in these contexts. Newsflash: there's still something we don't know. But open metaphysical/scientific questions are the cheapest kind of objection to naturalism. No sane naturalist has ever claimed that the project was finished. As always, the thing to do is to roll up one's sleeves and get on with figuring out how the world works. Or, I suppose one could switch sides and take the other approach....
We could sit here and hope
We could call up the fucking Pope
Or go watch Oprah
Interview Deepak Chopra....
Posted by: Tom Morris | May 29, 2009 11:22 AM
Hey, I'm a philosophy grad student. And I, err, resemble - no, wait - resent these remarks. And I do know how to use a calculator.
I've had the misfortune of reading enough of Plantinga's book on warrant. He basically says that the way we should grant that something is justified if it was arrived at through a process that is functioning as per the design plan. Yes, the design plan. Just a little hint.
What I can't seem to find out is why we should accept his version of externalism rather than, say, D.M. Armstrong's version of externalism. Perhaps I'm not a very good epistemologist, but if you want to accept Plantingan externalism, why not just - in the spirit of Ockham's razor - chop the spooky "design" bits off and just have Armstrong's causal externalism (or Dretske or Alvin Goldman or whoever). I mean, there are plenty of scientific methods and tools that we use and consider reliable even though they haven't been consciously designed to be useful. It's called serendipity: just by chance, something happened to be useful. Similarly, reliable processes can just emerge socially. If you are wondering what the temperature is like out on the street, and you look out and see a whole bunch of people walk by in big winter coats, you can infer that it might be quite cold. That's a pretty reliable process. If it was like a Miami afternoon, people would take the damn coats off. Was that method of knowing the temperature designed? I have no idea what it would mean for that to be so.
Now, you want something that's a real mindfuck? Google plantinga augustinian science. If you've got Robert Pennock's book Intelligent Design Creationism And Its Critics, his piece about it is in there. Plantinga seriously thinks that there can be a distinctive "Christian science" (not the same as Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, of course), which takes Christianity as it's fundamental axioms. I try and envision what the hell it would actually mean. A bunch of chemists have a weekly departmental meeting and instead of talking about the results of their research, they cite scripture at one another. Grant applications would be refused from the Augustinian Science Research Council because the researcher is Catholic or Protestant or not the right type of Evangelical Lutheran Baptist or whatever.
Posted by: Eamon Knight | May 29, 2009 11:23 AM
Alvin Plantinga would be Exhibit A that human cognition is unreliable ;-).
Like a lot of the religious, Plantinga displays this underlying inability to distinguish between TRVTH -- absolute, eternal, completely objective, delivered from the gods on high -- and ordinary, work-a-day "truth": derived by induction, fallible but corrigible, and good enough to let us muddle through. To be fair, more than few atheists also seem to suffer this confusion. Getting your head into a thorough-going evolutionary mode of thinking, in which all organization arises bottom-up rather than top-down, and all thought is the product of mindless neurology, is a bit of a cognitive leap (and a vertiginous one at that).
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | May 29, 2009 11:23 AM
In Plantinga’s disaffection
For the products of selection
(In genetics or in learning), there’s a note or two that’s off—
His abuse of probability,
Which borders on hostility,
Provides his false conclusions, and convinces him to scoff.
Then his choice of false dichotomy
Which irritates a lot of me
Allows his choice of Jesus, if the science fails to pass;
But his logic and example
Give us evidence that’s ample
His conclusions, every one, are pulled directly from his ass.
Posted by: Escuerd | May 29, 2009 11:23 AM
Shorter Plantinga: "If evolution is true, then we can't know that our faculties aren't deceiving us in some subtle way."
This is utterly worthless, because we can't know that our faculties aren't deceiving us in some subtle way no matter what. All Plantinga has done is come up with an ad hoc scenario in which natural selection wouldn't favor the ability of a creature to understand reality correctly and pretend that this is some kind of new, devastating argument.
Posted by: Badger3k | May 29, 2009 11:26 AM
I was hoping for something more than the same insipid defence of his rather pathetic arguments. He's gone on this before when he tries to justify how we have this "god sense" that is basic (ie, intrinsic and entirely reliable, more or less) that let's us know that his particular religion is true.
It's been said that a stopped clock is correct twice a day. Plantiga's clock reads "apple"
Posted by: Lorkas | May 29, 2009 11:28 AM
"So the 'F' in reproducing is silent then?"
Fucking.
Posted by: TomS | May 29, 2009 11:28 AM
I fail to see how this is an argument against evolution, rather than an argument against reproduction, or against development.
Personal knowledge differs from person to person. It isn't a property a population, something which we possess in virtue of being human, something which we inherit from our ancestors.
Maybe it's an argument against the ability to learn from nature (including material objects like books, or seeing and hearing), and in favor of the direct creation of ideas in our minds by an intelligent designer?
Posted by: gman
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May 29, 2009 11:31 AM
Plantinga developed these ideas back in the nineties and I recall studying them as a grad student - we devoted an entire course to his ideas on warranted belief.
P realized that theistic belief (even throroughly revised theism) wouldn't stand the rigours of modern epistemology, so he set out to remake epistemology instead.
In a nutshell, P argues that no epistemological theory guarantees that any of our beliefs, no matter how well founded, are necessarily true. There's always (one of many possible examples) the chance that our brains are being manipulated by a mad scientist to beleive things that aren't true.
Even granted the premise of naturalism, we do no better, since:
1. On naturalistic grounds, the most plausible explanation for our existence is evolution.
2. But if the theory of evolution is true, our brains are optimised for survival and reproduction, not true belief maximization.
3. Hence, our cognitive assent to evolutionary theory does ensure its truth or even its probable truth.
4. Therefore, naturalism, if it's true, precludes any justified belief in an explanation for our origins, or any belief at all.
PZ's frustrated response that science is the way to correct our mind's unreliability misses the mark, I'm afraid, since scientists rely on their flawed minds to decide how to use scientific tools to eliminate subjective errors. Plantinga is positing a version of philosophical scepticism, and in this case "crosschecking" the brain by using the brain just won't do. It's like reading two copies of the same newspaper to double check a fact. Sorry, PZ gets a FAIL on this one.
Plantinga would not accept that if naturalism is true, then our assent that fire is hot would more likely than not would co-relate with fire actually being hot. Appealing to the scientific method won't establish the truth of metaphysical naturalism, because science already assumes the truth of metaphysical naturalism. This a philosophical question, not a scientific one.
If this sounds a lot like Descartes' sceptical arguments, I think it is. Descartes claimed that the atheist cannot even know that 2+3 = 5.
Of course, Plantinga wants you to think that since either naturalism or supernaturalism is true, and since naturalism can never be shown to be true, then supernaturalism must true, simply by process of elimination.
But this won't work, since even if supernaturalism is true, we could never know it, for reasons very similar to the ones adduced above. And this is the place to attack Plantinga.
There's no way for us to know whether the supernatural being who created us would give us reliable brains or unreliable ones. It might be a benevolent God; or it might be a deceiving evil demon. How would we know? We could philosophize about it, but in doing so we would still be implicitly assuming that the brains making these inferences were reliable. And that's exactly what is being questioned.
In this, Plantinga is exactly like the IDers who shout that evolutionary theory can't offer a detailed explanation for feature X. But when you ask them, they don't have a non-evolutionary explanation, either. So they've simply offered an objection to evolutionary theory (or naturalism, as the case may be) that counts equally forcefully against their own position.
Posted by: TomS | May 29, 2009 11:32 AM
I fail to see how this is an argument against evolution, rather than an argument against reproduction, or against development.
Personal knowledge differs from person to person. It isn't a property a population, something which we possess in virtue of being human, something which we inherit from our ancestors.
Maybe it's an argument against the ability to learn from nature (including material objects like books, or seeing and hearing), and in favor of the direct creation of ideas in our minds by an intelligent designer?
Posted by: TomS | May 29, 2009 11:32 AM
I fail to see how this is an argument against evolution, rather than an argument against reproduction, or against development.
Personal knowledge differs from person to person. It isn't a property a population, something which we possess in virtue of being human, something which we inherit from our ancestors.
Maybe it's an argument against the ability to learn from nature (including material objects like books, or seeing and hearing), and in favor of the direct creation of ideas in our minds by an intelligent designer?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | May 29, 2009 11:32 AM
So what are the priests of evolutionary naturalism high on, and how can we get them to pass some around?
Posted by: Andrés Diplotti | May 29, 2009 11:33 AM
I believe that in the next lottery drawing, the winning number will be 42. Wow! I have a 50% chance of winning the lottery! You can't beat that!
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 11:35 AM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true are roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: dave souza
|
May 29, 2009 11:35 AM
The problem isn't the F in reproducing, it's the F in philosophy.
Plantinga argues that empiricism fails because evolution might make our brains unreliable, but fails to point out the problem with his theism, that revelation is only reliable if the deity is doing the revealing – how does he know it ain't the devil?
Posted by: Badger3k | May 29, 2009 11:36 AM
#15 - the idea that if something isn't 100% accurate/true/reliable, then it is worthless can also be illustrated with biblical inerrantists, whose beliefs are so absolute, and with certain other groups (such as the "you're either with us or against us" crowd). Human brains also seem to have this idea of all or nothing wired in. Makes me wonder if anyone has done research into seeing how pervasive this concept is.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | May 29, 2009 11:37 AM
Having read the whole article, I can't get through the claimed reasoning in this paragraph:
...
math deleted
...
This seems to be a giant piece of circular reasoning obscured by math. He starts with the proposition that beliefs are unreliable, and arrives ath the conclusion that it is very unlikely that beliefs are reliable.
What's his basis for the initial assertion, and what is the universe of "beliefs" of which he speaks?
Posted by: xebecs | May 29, 2009 11:37 AM
No!!! It must be 50%. It's ALWAYS 50%.
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 11:38 AM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true are roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: miller | May 29, 2009 11:38 AM
Plantinga was *the* guy who single-handedly convinced me that "sophisticated" theology is bunk. I mean, I had heard his name thrown around a lot as one of the better theologians. But when I actually bothered to look him up... his arguments may be novel, but they're so bad in so many ways, it's ridiculous. Even though I was atheist already, this was a very disillusioning experience.
Posted by: Berlo | May 29, 2009 11:39 AM
Plantinga should be prosecuted for criminal abuse of the word 'Therefore'.
I did enjoy the words 'enmeshed in a deep and bottomless skepticism'. Yes, indeed. Thank you for noticing. The paragraph that quote appeared in was so imcomprehesible that it left me giggling helplessly.
Posted by: gman
|
May 29, 2009 11:40 AM
"3. Hence, our cognitive assent to evolutionary theory does ensure its truth or even its probable truth."
TYPO in my last post. This should read:
"3. Hence, our cognitive assent to evolutionary theory does NOT ensure its truth or even its probable truth."
Sheesh.
Posted by: jj | May 29, 2009 11:41 AM
Nope, I know plenty of people who believe in crazy magical things. They are called Christians.
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 11:42 AM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true are roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: lose_the_woo
|
May 29, 2009 11:42 AM
Sastra @ 13 - Well done.
The concept they don't quite grasp is that as systems evolve and grow in complexity, new behaviors emerge. We need a nice piece about emergent properties and real world examples of what they are, and how they apply to Evolution. One real world example I can think of is the "caterpillar" behavior that occurs during heavy traffic congestion. It's actually described by fluid mechanics. But even things like color, or taste are emergent. I think it's a good point you make about how they perceive like coming from like. So, when can we expect the piece about emergent properties?
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 11:44 AM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true are roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 29, 2009 11:44 AM
Quite, he's that species of philosophical idiot the "naive realist." Apparently we see "red" in objects because those objects are indubitably, absolutely, and truly, red.
It has nothing to do with evolution, don't you know. The mere fact that genetically we can show that primate "red" evolved means nothing, because some unreliable old book tells of a god that Alvin supposes vouches completely true senses to humans--in spite of all of the known defects in sensing.
So both philosophically and scientifically it's pig-ignorant. He knows a few words to impress people, but that's about it.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: Kingasaurus | May 29, 2009 11:45 AM
I agree with whoever proposed the notion that Plantinga's issues don't disappear if you discard naturalism.
Plantinga has a "belief" that a supernatural entity either implanted "truth" in his brain, or constructed him in such a way that he perceives what is "true."
So...exactly how does Plantinga know that his belief about his god is "true" rather than merely adaptive? Especially since his next door neighbor may, for the sake of argument, believe in a non-Yahweh brand of supernaturalism?
He's stuck in his own box.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | May 29, 2009 11:46 AM
gman,
I don't understand how you get from step #3 to step #4. Can you explain that a little more?
Posted by: PZ Myers
|
May 29, 2009 11:46 AM
You're making the same philosophical error Plantinga is. If all I had was my brain, and I was cycling back and forth rechecking my conclusions, you'd be right. I'm saying something very different: we crosscheck against reality. You might argue, like a philosopher, that maybe reality doesn't exist...but then I would have to say that the scientific method allows many different brains to come to similar conclusions, which suggests empirically that there probably is something out there that we are calibrating ideas against.
Yeah, sure, bring on brains in vats. Don't care. Not very interesting, since it isn't very useful. Vat brains get chopped up by Occam's Razor, anyway, unless you've got something new to add to the discussion with them (I've read a lot of philosophy that bats about those brains, though, so I'll be very surprised if you do.)
Posted by: Tom Coward | May 29, 2009 11:48 AM
Platniga, in common with most Christian apologists, IDists, and creationsits, is addicted to "Red Queen" reasoning: "Verdict first, Trial after!" The giveaway is always the leap from some (usually trumped up) problem with naturalism or evolution or science in general, to the conclusion that "therefore god exists." (Why isn't the conclusion ever "therefore we need more data" or "therefore we don't really know"?) In an essay by Platinga that I read once and now can't lay my hand to, he explicitly started his reasoning from "What we Christians know" and ended up at "therefore evolution is false."
Why does anyone pay the slightest attention to him and his ilk?
Posted by: NewEnglandBob
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May 29, 2009 11:50 AM
Wow, what misaligned illogical thinking by this clown, Plantinga.
He tries to turn facts into feelings and beliefs into reality.
Posted by: africangenesis | May 29, 2009 11:50 AM
gman,
Yes, under philosophical skepticism, we can't know if are beliefs are true or if we can trust our senses. Naturalism is in a sense a leap of faith that at least at a basic level, we evolved to make.
We can know if our mental maps and models constructed from past sensory experience are good a predicting subsequent sensory experiences, and thus confirming our maps and models or allowing us to improve our planning, predicting and control by refining our models. Evolution is a model that does well. It is highly consistent with our experience and even has the merit of explaining our predicament vis'a'vis our dependence upon senses with known limits to infer "truth". It appears that there is some adaptive value in building models and maps that allow us to plan and predict. We reached a point where we can refine these skills with mental disciplines such as the scientific method.
Posted by: lose_the_woo
|
May 29, 2009 11:52 AM
Wrong.
But you get a fail on understanding how science works. I won't ad to PZs response. If you don't understand it, then nothing will get you to acknowledge its basis in fact.
Posted by: Breakfast | May 29, 2009 11:52 AM
This is some truly dreadful amateur evolutionary psychology Plantinga's doing. Completely one-dimensional.
As though that false belief occurs in a complete vacuum of other beliefs about princes, flies, etc., and cannot be modified by observed consequences, or compared to other causal beliefs, etc., etc...
Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 29, 2009 11:55 AM
No, it's more serious than that reality might not "exist," it's the question of what "exist" could even mean.
What we share, apparently (assuming for the sake of argument that you're not all creations of my mind), is an experience of phenomena. Maybe it's all like Berkeley said, maybe something utterly beyond our comprehension as a "Ding an Sich" as Kant often suggested. Doesn't matter, if we can "intersubjectively" agree with each other (even if you are all creations of my mind), we can do science.
"Reality" can suck off for all that matters to science, then. We don't know what "reality" is, or even what it "can means." We have the phenomena, it is highly regular, and so we can deal with the evidence involved in courts, in the labs, and in nature.
Plantinga's the one who really has nothing at all that explains any reliability of his senses, since an unknown god can hardly do so. Evolution explains why our senses are reliable, but not guarantors of "truth."
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: Cosmic Teapot | May 29, 2009 11:55 AM
Lorkas @ 31
That explains it then.
Posted by: David | May 29, 2009 11:57 AM
A guy who can't multiply probabilities by himself bases his argument on badly mangled probability theory.
Posted by: Breakfast | May 29, 2009 11:57 AM
This is some really dreadful amateur evolutionary psychology Plantinga's doing.
As though that false belief occurs in a complete vacuum of other beliefs about princes, flies, etc., and cannot be modified by observed consequences, or compared to other causal beliefs, or checked with other members of one's community, etc., etc...
The arbitrary 50/50 probability assignment - and the assumption that all of the beliefs' probabilities are completely independent - is totally baseless.
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 11:59 AM
Fallacy of Argument from Ignorance and Incredulity. He hasn't proved anything here. He didn't address any scientific evidence of which there are mountains of data about evolution including human evolution.
Posted by: The Barefoot Bum | May 29, 2009 12:01 PM
Having read quite a bit of contemporary philosophy, it is sadly true that professional and academic philosophers seem generally innumerate and oblivious to irony.
Unfortunately, Plantinga is not the only offender; 99% of philosophers give the other 1% a bad name, and Plantinga doesn't really stand out of the crowd.
And you have, I think, missed the point of Plantinga's critique of naturalism; your rebuttal does not address Plantinga's fundamental point, that truth and adaptive functionality are essentially distinct. You're in good company though: Stephen Law makes a similar mistake.
Plantinga is, of course, completely wrong, but I think he's wrong in a somewhat more philosophically interesting way than you believe him to be.
Posted by: breadmaker | May 29, 2009 12:02 PM
#52 Kingasaurus
on the subject of "knowing"
Plantinga is probably relying on Jesus statement 'if any man desires to do the will of my father he will know that my teaching is...'
Posted by: Breakfast | May 29, 2009 12:03 PM
(Sorry about the double post. 'Submission Error'. #59 and this should be deleted.)
Posted by: Victor
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May 29, 2009 12:04 PM
Christian creationism
I suggest we stop using the term Creationism or Christian creationism, and start referring to these folks as "Ancient Judaic Creation Mythologists". It is, after all, not Christian and no modern Jewish sects believe it.
Posted by: heliobates | May 29, 2009 12:05 PM
Exactly. It's not "brain vs. brain", it's "brains-interacting-with-public-knowledge vs. brains-interacting-with-public-knowledge". This is what Tom Clarke calls "intersubjective empiricism".
Posted by: SquidBrandon
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May 29, 2009 12:08 PM
toothpastefordinner.com tackles the topic of intelligent design.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 12:08 PM
I find it amusing how apologist's behaviors become predictable. The new behavior I noticed (new to me) are the mathematical/statistical proofs they offer.
Red Flag Alert:
- Believes in magic? (yes)
- Philosopher discussing empirical reality? (yes)
- Offers statistical tinkering to support their philosophy? (yes)
Kook check passed. Congratulations, you're a kook!
Posted by: IainW | May 29, 2009 12:10 PM
In one of his earlier (and believe it or not technical) versions of this argument, Plantinga indulges in a bizarre thought experiment in which an early hominid (named Paul, curiously enough) has a desire to be eaten by a tiger, but at the same time has a number of false beliefs that lead him to flee a tiger every time he sees one (e.g., to the effect of "This tiger won't eat me, but if I run away I might find another tiger who will").
This is supposed to illustrate how false beliefs can be adaptive, but ends up illustrating just how muddled his thinking really is.
Plantinga almost seems to think that Evolution+Naturalism requires that beliefs and desires would be shaped individually by natural selection, which given the sheer number of possible behaviour-influencing belief/desire combinations, is frankly insane. He doesn't really seem to get to grips with the idea that what natural selection shapes are the cognitive mechanisms through which beliefs are then formed, and that because natural selection can't "foresee" the individual beliefs that these mechanisms are going to end up generating, those mechanisms are going to have to be at least moderately reliable. After all, there's no point in having a belief-generating faculty (e.g., for predicting the behaviour of other agents) that leads you to run away from tigers if the same mechanism leads you to forming beliefs that cause you to run away from potential mates.
Quite apart from anything else, it's so much cheaper and simpler for evolution to produce cognitive mechanisms that model the organism's environment reliably (more or less) than to produce mechanisms that have to twist and turn to produce ad hoc beliefs that will save the organism's skin when its equally ad hoc desires lead it into Darwin Award territory.
Another point worth making is that at least Evolution+Naturalism produces an internally consistent and explanatorially rich account of cognitive error, e.g., the tendency of our agent-identification faculties to produce false positives (so that in a more realistic scenario Paul the hominid mistakes the wind rustling the bushes for an approaching tiger and so runs away). Plantinga, on the other hand, can't come up with anything better than blaming our capacity for cognitive error on "sin" - and I kid you not.
Posted by: matt | May 29, 2009 12:11 PM
His argument reminds me of the guy who said the LHC has a 50% chance of making black holes that will destroy the world. Because it will either happen or it won't. Which was beautifully rebutted by the Daily Show's John Oliver, who asked him if they were the last two people left on earth, could they try to perpetuate the species? Because that has a 50% chance of working.
Posted by: Rick | May 29, 2009 12:12 PM
I'm perfectly willing to accept that our brains and the convictions they produce are, in fact, unreliable. Breathes there the philosopher or scientist who, in some laborious Euclidean process, has deduced *every* belief and conclusion by strict logic from a limited set of axioms?
Neuroscience and psychology are showing more and more clearly that we inhabit a mental world where logic is a thin layer buttered over the hot reptile brain, or, if you prefer, a frosting of rationalization over an emotional cake that has long since set and cooled.
For some fascinating (and scary) informed-layperson reading on the topic, I recommend Dan Gardner's The Science of Fear.
If my religious brethren want to inhabit mental fairyland, I guess I can't stop them. But if we're going to make decisions about the real world, science is the best tool discovered so far to yield correct answers.
Is science emotionally unsatisfying? Frequently. Damned experimental results, they keep wrecking my pretty hypotheses! And to admit the nonexistence of the comforting, embracing arms of the benevolent supernatural is like going through adolescence all over again.
In fact, just as democracy seemed to Churchill, science is the worst system we have for finding truth...except for all the others.
Posted by: Ed White | May 29, 2009 12:12 PM
I am currently reading The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, and in one chapter, he talks about the Kung San, and their amazing tracking abilities. He points out that accounts of their tracking abilities indicate that they use a form of the scientific method in evaluating tracks for age of the track, condition of the animal that made the track, the speed at which the animal was traveling, etc., etc.
Sagan also points out that hunter gatherer societies have to have detailed knowledge of their local environment - which plants are good to eat, which are poisonous, which can be used to treat illnesses, etc. The knowledge of indigenous hunter gatherer societies about local flora and fauna can rival that of any botanist or zoologist. Just don't ask them about the flora and fauna a few hundred miles away.
What Plantinga does not discuss is that while an organism may have a 50-50 chance of making the right choice about something, they have a high chance of remembering a choice that causes them harm (such as a child that burns its hand on a fireplace). There is a great evolutionary advantage in being able to remember the good choices and the bad choices.
I would argue that this same learning process may lead to superstition and religion itself. A neutral belief that is reinforced by chance may end up as a religious belief. A hunter who prays for a meal and is successful may end up praying every time, whether or not the prayer had anything to do with it.
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 12:13 PM
Of course our brains aren't perfect in the xian Plantinga way. If they were, 100% of the world's population would be xian and Moslem fanatics wouldn't be flying planes into skyscrapers. Fundie Death Cultists wouldn't be trying to destroy our Hi Tech civilization to return to the Dark Ages. George Bush would never have been elected twice.
OTOH, they are pretty damn good. If they weren't, we wouldn't have a Hi Tech civilization for some religious kooks to target. And we wouldn't have a century and a half of data about evolution and robots wouldn't be exploring Mars and Saturn.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 12:14 PM
What are the chances, if Plantinga is correct and our brains mislead is, of the overwhelming majority of scientists all reaching the same, wrong, conclusions ?
Even if there were some mechanism that means that those scientists do tend to come to the same, wrong, conclusion, howcome those conclusions prove so useful ? What does it mean to be wrong about reality if that wrong understanding of reality describes it so well ? Surely what is important about science is not the philosophical justification for it, it is the fact it simply works. If the philosophers have trouble working out a philosophical justification then that is their problem.
Posted by: drj | May 29, 2009 12:15 PM
Plantinga's whole EEAN (evolutionary argument against naturalism) is simply an argument from consequence.
The only compelling part about it is our own tendency to be uncomfortableness with the idea that we can't really know "truth".... so he swoops in and says "But don't worry, Jesus gave us reliable brains!" to calm that concern. In other words, he doesnt like the idea we might not be able to know truth, so just declares that we can and says 'goddidit'.
What Plantinga really needs to explain, is why a omnibenevolent, omnipotent god gave us such unreliable brains that really do seem incapable of ascertaining truth, when he clearly concludes that this God wants us to be able to do just that?
Posted by: dogmeatib | May 29, 2009 12:20 PM
This has all the intellectual rigor of Bob the football fan's certainty that wearing his lucky jersey makes certain that his team wins. Just like the faithful, he conjures up excuses why his team didn't win when it "should have," to explain away the reality that his shirt has nothing to do with his team's success. Fortunately Bob has never been guilty of burning heretics at the stake or hanging witches, unfortunately we can't say the same about the faithful.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 29, 2009 12:20 PM
At times like this, it is customary to quote Quentin Robert DeNameland, the greatest living philostopher known to mankind:
Posted by: SomeGuy | May 29, 2009 12:20 PM
What he said (@65).
Posted by: Kraid | May 29, 2009 12:21 PM
Carl Sagan had some insight about the whole 50/50 chance of whether beliefs are right or not:
This is at the core of why science trumps other ways of "knowing" things... when you can test your ideas, your odds of describing the truth increase drastically from that original 50/50.
Posted by: Rick | May 29, 2009 12:22 PM
Plantinga must assume that our cognitive faculties are reliable to make his case. But I'm perfectly willing to accept that our brains and the convictions they produce are, in fact, unreliable. Breathes there the philosopher or scientist who, in some laborious Euclidean process, has deduced *every* belief and conclusion by strict logic from a limited set of axioms? (Show your work, please.)
Neuroscience and psychology are showing more and more clearly that we inhabit a mental world where logic is a thin layer buttered over the hot reptile brain, or, if you prefer, a frosting of rationalization over an emotional cake that has long since set and cooled. All too frequently we make conclusions and decisions intuitively, and apply only enough logic -- after the fact -- to make them plausible enough to accept without undue cognitive dissonance.
For some fascinating (and scary) informed-layperson reading on the topic, I recommend Dan Gardner's The Science of Fear.
If my religious brethren want to inhabit mental fairyland, I guess I can't stop them. But if we're going to make decisions about the real world, science is the best tool discovered so far to yield correct answers.
Is science emotionally unsatisfying? Frequently. Damned experimental results, they keep wrecking my pretty hypotheses! And to give up the comforting, embracing arms of the benevolent supernatural is like going through adolescence all over again.
In fact, just as democracy seemed to Churchill, science is the worst system we have for finding truth...except for all the others.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 29, 2009 12:22 PM
You mean this one?
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 12:23 PM
For sure. It's very practical that humans have 5 senses. At a glance it wouldn't seem that way. They are expensive. They require large amounts of compute cycles, rack space (i.e. brain matter), and infrastructure (nerve networks). But it's practical because they offer our brain a way to cross-check sensory data between sources. They also provide system redundancy since they all overlap to greater or lesser degrees. It would seem scientific methodology is built into us, thanks to evolution.
Posted by: Emmet, OM
|
May 29, 2009 12:26 PM
I don't see how it's ultimately any more complex than “solipsism therefore Jebus”; he just uses smoke and mirrors to con us into believing that he's done something more than fashion a crude cross from a lump of “we can't reliably know anything” Play-Doh.
Posted by: Darren Garrison | May 29, 2009 12:27 PM
Commie Teapot-- it is an ancient joke. I first read it in some Carl Sagan book-- Broca's Brain, maybe?
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&num=100&q=%22feeding%2C+fleeing%2C+fighting+and+reproducing%22&aq=&oq=&aqi=&fp=lW3QMk8TZ5c
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 12:28 PM
And you, I think, have misunderstood what PZ has said. As I understand PZ justifies use of the scientific method on the grounds it works. When we use it we get results that are useful, and importantly, consistant. If Plantinga has a problem with that, then it is his problem, not one for PZ or scientists in general.
One has to wonder if Plantinga ever goes to see a doctor, and if so how he thinks the doctor decides on the best course of treatment for his ailment. In the rational world one hopes the doctors does based on her understanding of medicine, science and on previous experience. In Plantinga's world the doctor would seem to be nothing more than just guessing as the best course of action.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | May 29, 2009 12:28 PM
Something else a case such as Plantinga is trying to advance seems to ignore is the number of times that the Christian god in the Bible is responsible for creating delusional thinking in people. 2 Thessalonians 2:11, for example, says that the Christian god sends sinners a "strong delusion." God gave Nebuchadnezzar over to acting like a wild animal, eating grass. There's the whole tradition of demons and devils tricking and fooling people..."even the elect." And of course in Christian theology, everyone who is not a Christian--the majority of the world's population--is mistaken. So while it is hypothetically possible that a certain kind of god could give humans minds that can always discern what is factual and true, in practice we find that not only is this not the case, but that reality must force us to assume that if there is a god at all, he has not only not designed a brain that functions perfectly well, but also allows, even actively creates, obstacles to our obtaining facts and truths. When it comes to the argument from rationality, god is, once again, useless. God is useless as a source of morality, as a source of meaning, and as a source of reason. From a purely philosophical point of view, is it likely that reasoning would be better in a reality created by a reasoning creator rather than through random forces and necessity? Yes, that is a fair point. But since we do not find ourselves in a reality with anything like perfect (or even sufficient, I would argue) reasoning, this hypothetical fair point is rendered moot. Another failure.
Posted by: R.C. Moore | May 29, 2009 12:29 PM
What concerns me here is that Plantinga is considered by his peers to be a top-notch philosopher. Having just sat this spring through a series of lectures by respected philosophy professors, all from fine schools, all making the same mistakes Plantinga makes, I am left with the impression that something is very wrong with our current methodology of awarding Phd's in Philosophy.
Not a good sampling procedure, I admit. But Plantinga's stature must give one pause -- how could he get so far when his logic is demonstratively wrong by even the armchair philosopher?
Posted by: IM | May 29, 2009 12:31 PM
SPOING!
Posted by: rob | May 29, 2009 12:32 PM
he clearly has no understanding of statistics.
so if i believe in santa, i have a 50% probability of being right? 50% chance the earth is flat? 50% chance the moon landings were faked?
50% chance that his argument is crap? or is that 100%?
Posted by: Kaddath | May 29, 2009 12:32 PM
Plantinga sounds like a good candidate to name a disease.
You've got Plantinga's: The cure is surprisingly simple, yet so difficult to fix once you've been infected (meaning you've lost the ability to reason and build coherent arguments).
Posted by: David | May 29, 2009 12:33 PM
Plantinga, who needs help with multiplication, bases his argument on probability theory. Is it any wonder he gets his conclusion wrong?
Posted by: Pete UK | May 29, 2009 12:34 PM
Hanna #50
A good comment, but it's the end of a long Friday; can I just check I've understood you. You suggest Plantinga is not saying that, on average, the probability of someone believing something is .5, but that the probability of it being true is roughly .5
Which of course means everyone can believe it, although it may be false.
Do I have it?
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 12:35 PM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true are roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: E. V. | May 29, 2009 12:37 PM
Lorkas:
Isn't it funny that no state in the U.S. ends in an "a"...
Posted by: Helioprogenus | May 29, 2009 12:37 PM
Alvin Planting is a waste of cognitive faculties. I don't understand how these supposedly educated fuckers, included among them philosophers, engineers, systems analysts, programmers, and even mathematicians buy into some kind of deity controlling some aspect of their lives, whether it's with an initial input, or constant minor adjustments. It must be in the nature of their work, where one is required to apply external input to a given task to garner a workable model. But if they distance themselves from this tunnel vision, and look at the actual facts, then they need not include prime movers or prime meddlers into evolutionary theory.
You don't need directed external input to have evolutionary adapted behavior, even when an ape with mostly higher reasoning and rationalization evolved to question their role in the natural order. What these narrow-minded fools lack is a basic understanding of biology and natural selection. Natural selection is the external input that allows for adaptive change, and although some of these morons claim it's directed, the evidence to the contrary is that it's random.
Posted by: bric | May 29, 2009 12:38 PM
#25 I see my old philosophy tutor, Roger Scruton is also a signatory; at least he is consistent, he writes in 'The Meaning of Conservatism' that conservatives should be implacably opposed to equality of opportunity, and should support rank and privilege.
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 12:38 PM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true are roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: Philosopher | May 29, 2009 12:39 PM
The only way Plantinga is somewhat highly regarded among the community of academic philosophers is as an epistemologist - where he doesn't spout the ridiculous nonsense he does when it comes to evolution and naturalism. Furthermore, his formaulation of the modal-ontological argument for theism is discussed often, because it appears to be perfectly logically conclusive. It isn't highly regarded as a good argument for theism - but it has served as an excellent example of a deviously logical argument where finding the exact points where it goes wrong can be quite an exercise even for the logician.
That being said, yes - Plantinga does give philosophy an undeservedly bad name. Thankfully, though, his theistic work is treated just like you would expect it among the academic philosophical community: A professional interest mixed with disregard for his blatant absurdities among the non-theistic philosophers interested in philosophy of religion, adoration from a few highly convinced theists, and informed disregard from the large majority who don't even bother to discuss such nonsense, and would rather work on real problems.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 12:40 PM
My commiserations. Did you survive his tutition relativly unscathed ?
Posted by: AestheticsBear | May 29, 2009 12:41 PM
This... "person" gives a bad name to all students of the humanities. This is like a blast of scholastics from the dark ages - I thought David Hume had weeded out these nutjobs centuries ago.
Posted by: Lobster | May 29, 2009 12:42 PM
He does come so close. The lion thing seems like he's brushing right up against the whole empiricism thing. The problem really is that he posits that all beliefs are equal in all ways, and held at random. Not only does he never support that position, but he doesn't even convincingly defend against his semi-interpretation of the objection.
But the red flag for me is his constant accusations that science is a religion, closed to any alternative interpretations and aggressively unwilling to change. Meanwhile it's possible to point to any number of scientific theories that have changed and "evolved" to fit new information over the years. The path of electrons in subatomic particles changed while I was in high school, for instance.
So basically he's saying, "I'm right, it's obvious I'm right, and the reason there's debate over this is because of a CONSPIRACY." The people who think Bush blew up the WTC say the same thing.
Of course all beliefs are equally valid and equally likely to be true... if you ignore all evidence to the contrary.
And he commits the worst "sin" with his either/or statement, that somehow Christianity (not just any religion) and science are the only two options, so if you can poke holes in one then you prove the other true. "God did it" is a very easy answer to very complicated problems but it's unfortunately difficult to support with evidence.
Posted by: Jason A.
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May 29, 2009 12:42 PM
On Truth vs adaptive behavior, who cares? So it's just adaptive behavior, and instead of discovering Truth, we're only approximating reality in a way that's useful. Umm, isn't that what we've said science is all along?
His argument, then, seems to hinge on a belief that adaptive behavior (or better, adaptive cognitive mechanisms, comment #72) cannot correct itself based on performance. In other words, he's a philosopher to the core - he thinks the only way to solve problems is to sit back in his lounge chair and just think really hard. Experimentation is utterly alien to him.
Besides, what's 'reality' if it's not what we empirically sense and correlate with others?
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 12:43 PM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true are roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | May 29, 2009 12:45 PM
Richard Harris touched upon this briefly in #11, but I think one only need to look at the history of our own race for Plantinga's argument to fall apart completely.
It's been said here countless times before, but religious belief as a social construct has had some evolutionary benefits regardless of their attachment to reality.
For example, we know that the Greek and Roman gods of thousands of years ago were complete myth and fabrication, with no ground whatsoever in reality, and yet those cultures, which were built in large part around those religious beliefs of the time, were wildly successful and prosperous, despite beliefs that we now know were utterly silly. The social benefits of a particular belief system (including, of course, those aspects of religion that allow for a society to keep its population under control and subservient) are far more important, from an evolutionary standpoint, than whether or not those beliefs are in any way "true".
Posted by: Holbach
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May 29, 2009 12:45 PM
Just seeing the word theologian after philosopher is enough to evaluate his opinions. He may start off in seemingly reasonable writing, but then he devolves into his true mien, discussing religious crap. So why bother to read what you already know he will puke about? Her's another one who weakens the country everytime they speak.
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 12:46 PM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true are roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: bric | May 29, 2009 12:47 PM
#102 Yes, that was over 30 years ago, I think he was mellower then . . .
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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May 29, 2009 12:47 PM
One more time, Nathan — go for the record.
Posted by: Kingasaurus | May 29, 2009 12:49 PM
on the subject of "knowing"
Plantinga is probably relying on Jesus statement 'if any man desires to do the will of my father he will know that my teaching is...'
Yeah probably, but that's just Plantinga deciding to believe the Bible is correct just because he has a vested interest in doing so. Claiming you "know" because of scripture isn't an argument. "This old book tells me...", etc.
Posted by: Ric | May 29, 2009 12:50 PM
Nathan Hanna, why are you posting your comment over and over again?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 12:50 PM
With regards this 50% thing, it strikes me that Plantinga ignores that fact that humans are capable of learning, and learning not only from personal experience but from others as well. Take for example belief that fire is cold rather than hot. If one has never had any experience of fire before, then why would it be that the chances of thinking it hot are 50% and cold 50% ? You could equally think it at ambient temperture and tickles.
Of course no one is ever in that position. You may not have personally stuck you hand in the campfire, but chances are there someone you know who has, and has the scars to prove it.
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 12:50 PM
Though I'm generally unsympathetic to Plantinga's arguments, I should point out that you've misconstrued his claims about probability. He hasn't argued that belief acquisition is random (e.g., that 50% of people will believe that fire is hot and 50% will believe that it is not hot). What he seems to have said is something like the following: since the adaptive processes that are responsible for our belief acquisition are not conducive to truth but rather to survival advantage, then, in the absence of further information (that is relevant to a belief's truth value) the probability of any given belief's being true is roughly 50% (this is consistent with almost everyone believing the same thing, e.g., that fire is hot). Also, there's room for confusion here about the notion of probability Plantinga's working with. See the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Posted by: Richard | May 29, 2009 12:50 PM
#106 seems to be suggesting that we are unfair to Plantinga because Plantinga was talking about perfectly spherical cows. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow)
It is literally absurd to imagine a world where entities acquire beliefs "in absence of further information." We may as well consider spherical cows when discussing milk production.
I think it's pretty clear that Plantinga is suggesting that either something is true, or it isn't. And that gives something a 50/50 chance of being true.
Either I'll get super powers from drinking a bottle of tap water, or I won't. It's pretty cool that I have a 50% chance of getting super powers each time I drink water!
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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May 29, 2009 12:50 PM
Emmet @ #111.
I hereby issue you a LOL. I was just about to say something myself.
Posted by: Joe Fusion
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May 29, 2009 12:51 PM
Ahhhh... I get it!
His real argument is:
1. Evolution says we've been selected to understand the world.
2. I clearly don't understand the world at all.
3. Therefore, evolution is false.
Posted by: Miguel | May 29, 2009 12:51 PM
I was tempted to stop reading after "As everyone knows". Too bad I didn't.
Posted by: occam's comic | May 29, 2009 12:52 PM
Sense no one has yet mentioned it, you can always take Karl Popper's take on science --- Science is a process for finding (and weeding out) falsehoods not finding the Truth. You can test ideas and determine they are wrong even if you can never know for certain if your ideas are the "Truth".
Posted by: Jeff J | May 29, 2009 12:52 PM
If a higher power gave us all reliable and rational minds, and belief in the existence of a deity is a rational thought... then why are ther skeptical atheists???
Explain THAT one. Guess Jesus did a sloppy job.
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space
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May 29, 2009 12:53 PM
Tell me: Why is it that creationists can't ever understand probability? It's like they learn the product rule and never bother with either the sum rule or the whole concept of conditional probabilities.
So, let us calculate the probability that a species will develop the capacity to discriminate between fire being hot or cold given that if they don't they will burn their peckers off. I'm guessing that for species still alive and reproducing today, we could pretty well approximate that probability as 1.
Posted by: Nusubito | May 29, 2009 12:55 PM
Okay, the world doesn't give us truth, and our senses are unreliable. From where does Plantinga's Truth come then? I'm pretty sure he learned all of it from other unreliable physical sources, like the bible and halfwit theologians. Every bit of his knowledge comes from the physical world, from an assumption, more or less, of naturalism.
"truth and adaptive functionality are essentially distinct."
-Barefoot Bum
Yes, that is a very interesting way to define truth. If by interesting, we mean it tells us nothing, and is a useless concept. This argument seems to be that even if our senses correlate very well with the world, this doesn't even attempt at the truth. In other words, truth isn't the actual state of the physical world. Well then, I'm going to have to say that there is absolutely no need for the concept of Plantingan TruthTM. The onus is on him to show that it is a necessary concept.
All I have ever meant by truth is the actual state of the world. And science does offer a way to become more and more certain of that world, to counter our unreliability. Besides, the only 'truth' our minds are unreliable about is this definition I am using here. If this isn't the definition Plantinga is using, then what the hell is his argument even about?
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 29, 2009 12:55 PM
Nathan Hanna reposts, therefore he is. Still.
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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May 29, 2009 12:55 PM
Alex,
Yep, there's something particularly ironic about someone posting a comment on “close reading” failing the Scienceblogs basic literacy test 11 times.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | May 29, 2009 12:58 PM
FTW!
Posted by: TimG
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May 29, 2009 12:58 PM
PZ and some other respondents have done a good job in pointing out the fallacies in Plantinga's argument. But, even if, you were to acceot them (which I certainly do not) his conclusion is absurd. His final sentence is "It is evolutionary naturalism, not Christian belief, that can't rationally be accepted." Where did 'Christian' suddenly jump into the argument and not Muslim, Wiccan, Hindu, Norse ..... What is so special about his belief system. In fact the vast differences in these belief systems is another nail in his argument.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | May 29, 2009 12:59 PM
Yup Tom #34 and many others here -
Plantinga and his ilk do not get "ars longa, vita brevis" (allow me the poetic license my brain is undertaking - that that means "perfection needs a lot of time to develop painful misstep by fruitful step") but the real world in operation does and it is so bloody obvious.
The elemental inanity of thought of this Plantinga hurts my head bad. Perhaps someday I'll LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES and not subject myself to his writings.
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 1:01 PM
Sorry for the (really annoying) multiple posting - I've never posted here before, kept getting a timeout notice and didn't realize the comment had actually posted.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 1:02 PM
Does anyone know how Plantinga copes with the fact evolution happens ? Does he go out into the countryside and rail against nature for failing to accord with what he has decreed is the philosophical truth ?
The scientific world if your views do not accord with nature then your views are wrong. In Plantinga is seems that it is nature that would be wrong.
Posted by: occam's comic | May 29, 2009 1:04 PM
Sense no one has yet mentioned it, you can always take Karl Popper's take on science --- Science is a process for finding (and weeding out) falsehoods not finding the Truth. You can test ideas and determine they are wrong even if you can never know for certain if your ideas are the "Truth".
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 29, 2009 1:05 PM
I do this not to criticize you in particular, but to highlight the fact that reading the error message will tell you not to repost and hoping that others will not ignore the message as well.
Please see my comment #84
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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May 29, 2009 1:07 PM
I've read enough apologetics to know that I'll probably not be reading very many more. They're all the same. They put you through mental contortions that make some sense sometimes, are absurd at other times, and confusing at other times. Then, at the end they essentially claim that it's impossible for their god to not exist. Oh, and more recently (last couple years or so of my reading) they've started introducing math to make their position look more sciency.
Posted by: Slick | May 29, 2009 1:10 PM
Wow. Notice the words used to describe Plantinga and his thought -- puke, silly, stupid, senile, theologian (he is not a theologian), nutjob, diseased, lunacy.
As the bard said, "Methinks though dost protest too much." Lunacy does not elicit such nasty responses; it elicits pity. Perhaps many of you suspect that his views are much less (fill in the blank) than you claim. Name-calling and bluster can make one feel better, can it not?
Posted by: Drosera
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May 29, 2009 1:10 PM
So, beliefs are arbitrary, independent (therefore potentially contradictory), and immutable by empirical evidence?
All true with respect to religious beliefs. Usually not true with respect to non-religious beliefs.
Posted by: Slick | May 29, 2009 1:12 PM
Wow. Notice the words used to describe Plantinga and his thought -- puke, silly, stupid, senile, theologian (he is not a theologian), nutjob, diseased, lunacy.
As the bard said, "Methinks though dost protest too much." Lunacy does not elicit such nasty responses; it elicits pity. Perhaps many of you suspect that his views are much less (fill in the blank) than you claim. Name-calling and bluster can make one feel better, can it not?
Posted by: littlejohn | May 29, 2009 1:12 PM
My gawd, he starts out coherently and then devolves into gibberish. Here's my theory: He's playing a drinking game. Every time he types a period, he gulps a shot of Jack Daniels. It explains everything.
Seriously, I studied philosophy (many years ago) at a good liberal arts school, and I've had to wade through some weirdly speculative stuff. But I had to quit halfway through that crap.
Besides, I can't trust a man who can't multiply fractions.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 29, 2009 1:13 PM
New here?Posted by: Jonathan | May 29, 2009 1:13 PM
PZ,
Your calculator can really tell you P(X > 75) given X ~ Bin(100,0.5)? Unless you have an incredibly fancy one, you'll be tapping a long, long time. (of course, you can transfer to X ~ N(50, 25) and use tables.)
Posted by: RamblinDude
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May 29, 2009 1:14 PM
sven,
Nathan Hanna reposts, therefore he is. Still.
Or does each reposting further dilute his essence into nothingness? Hmmm...
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 29, 2009 1:16 PM
I'll take that double-post as a "yes."
You think we should pity public intellectuals that spew such self-serving bullshit? Ridicule is easier than point-by-point counterphilosophical refutation, it's true. But it's also more fun.
Posted by: IainW | May 29, 2009 1:18 PM
Philosopher (#101):
It may be formally valid, given certain assumptions about modal logic, but not even Plantinga claims that it is conclusive (instead he likes to call it "victorious", which apparently translates as "capable of convincing somebody who already believes in God and so isn't going to take much convincing").
One obvious problem with it is that when defining maximal greatness (omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection in Plantinga's version) you can plug in any set of mutually consistent attributes, and so use the argument to prove that pretty much anything necessarily exists. E.g., substitute "is a velociraptor", "drinks beer" and "likes to sing" for omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection, and lo-and-behold, you've "demonstrated" that beer-swilling, singing velociraptors exist in all possible worlds. That in itself should be a clue that the argument has something badly wrong with it.
Well, it's really not that difficult to refute:
"There is a possible world in which there are no agents"
If there are no agents, there are no entities which are omniscient, omnipotent or morally perfect (since these are predicates than only be meaningfully ascribed to agents), and if there are no entities which are omniscient, omnipotent or morally perfect, then there are no entities which are maximally excellent in that possible world either. In which case, maximal greatness is impossible (since to be maximally great is to be maximally excellent in every possible world).
The trick is to work out what the necessary conditions are for something being maximally excellent, and then to ask oneself if one can, without self-contradiction, posit a possible world in which those necessary conditions do not obtain. That way it becomes a lot easier to see why Plantinga's core premise (that maximal greatness is possibly exemplified) doesn't hold water, and why his argument is not just inconclusive, but actually wrong.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 1:18 PM
I would argue no counterphilosophical refutation is required. Evolution happens. Reality trumps philosophy everytime.
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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May 29, 2009 1:19 PM
TimG @#127,
I have a basic rule for evaluating apologetics — if “God” can be replaced with “The King of the Leprechauns” and/or “Bible” can be replaced with “Leabhar Gabhála Éireann” (an ancient book of Irish mythology) without substantively changing the argument, then it is bunk. I haven't yet seen an apologetic that passed the test.
Posted by: Aaron Baker | May 29, 2009 1:20 PM
I'm probably missing some philosophical profundity here, but I'll blunder in anyway:
Natural selection surely doen't care about truth; but it doesn't follow form that proposition that our minds are incapable of, say, discerning more accurate information from less accurate; AND, it seems to me, it especially doesn't follow, given that an ability to make accurate determinations about our environment often promotes survival. E.g. the organism better able to determine whether a predator is nearby, or which vegetables are toxic and which aren't, seems to have an obvious advantage in passing along its genes.
Even if we found ourselves with this faculty of discerning more rather than less accurately purely by chance, we wouldn't be justified in saying: "Gee, it seems we got this way by chance events unconcerned with truth; therefore, we can't trust our faculty, even though it's enabled us to make thousands of correct predictions, escape countless predators, have a full vegetarian banquet without poisoning ourselves, not thrust our hands into fires, and so on.
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | May 29, 2009 1:20 PM
Not so slick @ #134
Wow. Was that serious?
Yes... the multitude of different (negative) descriptives coming from the posters here is simply a sign of our fear. Blech.
OR... since those descriptives didn't all come from the same person, one COULD assume that perhaps it's simply a similarly shared view expressed by several different people using the full breadth and width of the vastness that is the English language.
Additionally, your argument might have a shred of validity if all the commentors were doing was simply spouting off with insulting ad-homs without backing up the claims with valid argument... but since there are plenty of backing arguments following those oh-so derisive words, I think you simply fail.
Oh... and the "methinks thou dost protest too much" argument may be the stupidest, most over-used argument ever made in support of lunacy and flat out ignorance.
No... in reality, if you say something, and 100 people line up to call you stupid... instead of thinking you're really clever and on to something, you're probably better off accepting that what you said was stupid.
Posted by: Nathan Hanna | May 29, 2009 1:24 PM
Well, I'm something. Oblivious maybe.
Posted by: gman
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May 29, 2009 1:24 PM
PZ,
Thanks for responding to my post. I agree that science tells us a pretty good story about the world we live in, and I'm far more inclined to believe what scientists say (within their own discipline) than competing non-scientific claims. And I think you're right to say that science has lots of self-correcting features that (we hope) control for our numerous innate biases.
But I'm not sure any of this stands up to Plantinga's critique. Comparing our beliefs with reality or checking with results produced by other thinkers or scientists unavoidably uses the human brain, which wasn't designed (by natural selection) to do science in the first place.
It's as if Plantinga had alerted me to the fact that I'm drunk. If I think this is a real possibility, I can no longer trust my judgements. And it won't help me to ask my friends, since they're likely to be drunk too. And any test we devise to control for the effects of our drunkenness won't help either, since that test is the product of a drunken mind (or could be, at least). Of course, Plantinga is in the same position: his belief in God could be nothing more than a drunkard's dream.
Do scientists have to worry about any of this? Does this imply that I don't understand how science works? I think not, because it's a philosophical problem, not a scientific one.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 1:26 PM
Actually, said bard wrote "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." You could at least say "thou" and not "though", it would sound more like you understand the English language. Of course, the word "protest" in context at the time was in reference to affirming or promising (think protestation). Not objection denial. Comparisons make more sense when they aren't the opposite of the point you're making.
As for lunacy eliciting pity instead of scorn, that's all a matter of taste. And as far as I'm concerned, pity is not appropriate when the subject at hand is an apologist that has spent years ignoring legitimate criticism (pretending it does not exist) so he can use the same flawed arguments and hope that some minds lack enough critical thinking to see the flaws. Scorn is well-deserved.
Posted by: Andrew Moon | May 29, 2009 1:31 PM
Hello PZ,
"It's not a good start when the author is so oblivious to irony that he opens his paper with a name-calling screed in which he lambastes others for writing name-calling screeds." I didn't see any name-calling in Plantinga's opening words.
Suppose I told someone that their book was "short on reasoning" or "short on competence". It seems odd for the author of that book to say, "quit name-calling!" Does that not sound odd to you? Maybe what he said was false, but I don't think he was name-calling.
(I'm less sure about your "pretentious clown" comment.)
Maybe we have different ideas of what "name-calling" refers to.
Posted by: SteveM
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May 29, 2009 1:31 PM
Maybe not a little 4 function calculator, but we are all using computers with ready access to powerful calculations.
e.g.
http://stattrek.com/Tools/ProbabilityCalculator.aspx
specifically:
http://stattrek.com/Tables/Binomial.aspx
Posted by: RamblinDude
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May 29, 2009 1:32 PM
gman,
Are planes, computers, atom bombs and microwave ovens merely the hallucinations of a drunkard’s mind?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 29, 2009 1:33 PM
I'm sorry was that "Though dost protest too much?"
Can you say that again, I didn't quite get it.
Yes always that is the case. When someone disagrees with another's argument vehemently and with virgin ear scalding language it means that he in secret really thinks the argument is a good one.
"Thou dost protest too much" (or more accurately "The lady doth protest too much, methinks") is one of the most misused and overused literary quotes.
Awesome stuff there slick.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 29, 2009 1:35 PM
Perhaps Slick is referencing Bard Simpson.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 29, 2009 1:37 PM
good point
Posted by: SomeGuy | May 29, 2009 1:38 PM
A few points in reply to what has been said:
1. (@90) Plantinga is NOT considered a top notch philosopher, as you put it. He's an outlier and a loon. See my #25 for one reason for this. His papers don't so much as make it onto the syllabi at good schools, though they might at small community colleges and universities dominated by theists (for obvious reasons). As a side note: Smart, well-trained, fresh PhD's can't get hired at such places and flush out the antiquated reading lists because the theists who hold the fort there only hire their own (as do we).
2. (@33) The argument fails in step 4. Beliefs are justified to the extent that they are generated by reliable processes. Having a justified belief does not guarantee having a true belief (as you say in step 3). But naturalism does indeed explain how we can have justified beliefs -- including justified beliefs about naturalism. (Cf. Alvin Goldman for the proper story.)
3. (@105) The issue throughout is just plain, garden variety truth. As in: it's true that you're looking at an electronic screen. Nothing remotely mysterious is at issue here. There is no special 'Truth' with a capital T. It typically takes undergraduate students weeks to get this through their heads.
3 1/2 (@131) Popper had to concede the existence of a World-3 populated by immutable mathematical facts to get his philosophy to work. Not a great move.
4. (@88,83) Plantinga's point is that truth and adaptive functionality are essentially distinct. It doesn't help to show (as several now have) that there are cases -- like scientific research or medical practise -- where the two plausibly collapse into one another. Plantinga could (I suppose) even grant you that the scientific method is reliable and that it eventually yields true results most of the time. The concession just gives us a common ground to start the discussion from.
The challenge for the naturalist at that point is to show that *all* of the mind/brain's activities can be explained as the activities of a survival engine evolved to make decent (but not perfect) judgements in response to external stimuli. The problem is that there are mental capacities that do not seem to fit this model. Combinatorial syntax, our capacity for higher mathematics and perhaps (though I hesitate to say this) our capacity for semantic search seem to be among them. Guess-work driven empiricism fails to explain each of these. And, interestingly, they are what seems to distinguish human minds from chimp minds.
So, like #65 said: "Plantinga is completely wrong, but he's wrong in a somewhat more philosophically interesting way than you believe him to be."
5. And lastly, if you're tempted to say that a typical philosopher has some property X, ask yourself whether it's true of Dan Dennett or Noam Chomsky. Those two are much more typical of the mainstream of the field (as are Akins, McGinn, Noe, Prinz, Chruchland, Pietroski, Fodor, ...) Typically, philosophers are neither innumerate, nor ignorant of the empirical literature. All that 'reality trumps philosophy' stuff is inane. Most philosophers are out to discover what reality is like just like linguists, applied mathematicians, psychologists, biologists and indeed anyone else here who engages in research (an not in 'apologetics' for the inexcusable.)
Posted by: Jadehawk, OM
|
May 29, 2009 1:38 PM
that bit of idiotic prudery made me laugh
Posted by: Aaron Baker | May 29, 2009 1:39 PM
To refine on my remarks a bit:
Plantings says that "the whole point of the argument is to show that if evolutionary naturalism is true, then very likely we and our cognitive faculties are not reliable."
I think you're conceding too much to Plantinga here, Myers when you agree with this. I think you can hold that our brains, without being perfect in this regard, are in fact pretty good at obtaining more reliable information, especially with the help of (mind-devised) heuristics for getting at such information. Note that our understanding of the world around us vastly exceeds that of our ancestors just 30 or so thousand years ago (a mere eye-blink) in geological time. I mean, just what test of reliability our we flunking here that necessitates the kind of complete skepticism regarding our abilities (unassisted by supernatural forces) to get at some of the truth that Plantinga is pushing?
Posted by: Pareidolius | May 29, 2009 1:40 PM
Posted by: Alyson Miers | May 29, 2009 1:40 PM
Pardon me for a little PSA:
Please do not hit the POST button more than once. If you get an error message, go back and RELOAD the page. You will probably find that your comment went through the first time.
Anyhoo. I think I can capture the difference between Plantinga's basic assumptions and ours. Plantinga assumes:
1. Our minds are perfect.
2. Naturalistic evolution cannot create perfect minds.
3. Therefore, God.
As an equation:
Perfect minds MINUS naturalistic evolution EQUALS God.
Whereas a godless scientist basically thinks something more like this:
1. Our minds are not perfect, BECAUSE
2. Naturalistic evolution cannot create perfect minds, THEREFORE,
3. Many people believe in supernatural agency.
Naturalistic evolution PLUS imperfect minds EQUALS theism.
Did I get that about right?
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
May 29, 2009 1:40 PM
Gman, does science work or not? As the tee shirt says "Science, it works bitches". Why does it work? Philosophy without evidence is sophistry. Just like your argument.
Posted by: IainW | May 29, 2009 1:40 PM
Just to clear something up - Plantinga may be an ID fellow-traveller, but his argument isn't an argument against evolution as such. It's an argument that if you accept naturalism and an evolutionary account of the origins of our cognitive faculties, then you must also accept that those faculties are very probably unreliable, in which case you have no reliable basis for accepting naturalism in the first place (or evolution, for that matter, but Plantinga's actual target is naturalism).
However, if you plug God into the mix, then on Plantiga's view, you can have confidence that your cognitive faculties (and hence your beliefs) are reliable. So technically, if those cognitive faculties tell you that evolution is true, then you are warranted in accepting it, just as long as you pre-suppose God to begin with in order to fix the epistemological problem.
It's an argument which is just as compatible with theistic evolution, even the hands-off, non-tinkering variety, as it is with unadulterated creationism.
Posted by: Ditch | May 29, 2009 1:41 PM
The very first time I came across Plantiga's argument for the existence of God, I thought he had to be a medieval philosopher.
I haven't changed my view of him much since then.
Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 1:41 PM
PZ Myers: "We demand repeated and repeatable confirmation before we accept a conclusion, because our minds are not reliable."
If our minds are not reliable, on what basis can we trust the thoughts telling us that we've found confirmation of a belief, or that we've arrived at a valid conclusion? An unreliable mind would be just as unreliable in seeking to confirm a belief as it would be in holding that belief in the first place. On a naturalistic view of the mind, all thoughts are nothing more than mental "secretions" of the material brain induced by irrational material causes (i.e., causes lacking reason and understanding). Those thoughts might have some adaptive value, but they'd be no more likely to conform to external truths than the bile secreted by our livers.
Plantinga is right: naturalism is epistemically self-defeating. It might be true, but if it is, it wouldn't give us minds that could be trusted to know that it's true.
Posted by: Ditch | May 29, 2009 1:42 PM
The very first time I came across Plantiga's argument for the existence of God, I thought he had to be a medieval philosopher.
I haven't changed my view of him much since then.
Posted by: Anri | May 29, 2009 1:44 PM
I have to wonder if we are even allowed to be discussing this. Isn't this exactly the kind of 'sophisticated religous thought' that sceptics never, ever try to deal with?
Clearly, since we are able to dismantle it, and with apparent ease, and from a massive number of different angles, we simply ARE NOT GETTING IT!
...or so we have been told.
In response to the poster who was comparing this to Descartes (gman, I think), I agree with that aspect of what you said. P seems to want to be able to say "We can't know anything at all for sure! Um, expect for these things that we do know for sure, like God and stuff."
That's what the argument boils down to for me.
Posted by: Aaron Baker | May 29, 2009 1:45 PM
Somehow in the last posting I managed to write "our" for "are." Early senility is never pretty.
Posted by: CJO | May 29, 2009 1:46 PM
You have, I think, missed the point of Plantinga's critique of naturalism; your rebuttal does not address Plantinga's fundamental point, that truth and adaptive functionality are essentially distinct.
There are no essences; specifically, there are no "essential truths" that are wholly separable from considerations of functionality. That's where Plantinga's and all such arguments go off the rails. Intersubjectivity, mentioned by several above, is the first reason to believe that this "essential distinction" just isn't. See, we can share beliefs with others, and talk about what is "true." We are not creatures for whom the four F's are prosecuted in a solipsistic vacuum; we cooperate with each other for almost everything, often in ways distributed temporally and spacially (i.e. when you use a tool, you are "cooperating" in a real sense with the inventor and the manufacturers of the tool). So "adaptive functionality" is all wrapped up in "truth," because truth can't be determined but intersubjectively; it comes to be accepted as such because of the adaptive functionality of successfully cooperating groups, not individual minds.
Posted by: Steve_C | May 29, 2009 1:48 PM
Jim. Really? More circular thinking. Sophists chasing their tails again.
Posted by: Gotchaye | May 29, 2009 1:48 PM
I don't think PZ has gotten Platinga quite right here. Nathan pointed out one issue (that reliability doesn't mean the reliability of individual observations), but I think the larger one is that Platinga's central claim is that the truth-content of our beliefs, under naturalism, has nothing to do with the usefulness of our actions. You can't argue against Platinga by starting from some claim about how our beliefs determine our actions - that's exactly what he's denying to make his argument work. For him, our beliefs are just 'along for the ride'. I find this bizarre (I'm not sure how you account for naturalistic consciousness unless it is itself adaptive, in which case you'd think that it bears a certain relationship to our actions), but it seems to me that that's what he's saying.
He stacks the deck too. He's not comparing naturalism and no extra assumptions to supernaturalism and no extra assumptions. He's comparing naturalism and no extra assumptions to the Christian God. This lets him say that his supernatural option guarantees the reliability of our cognitive faculties. But we could as easily put forward a naturalistic system where reliable cognitive faculties are adaptive, in which case I don't see that his argument has any force.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 1:51 PM
Plantinga in a nutshell:
If you think you're fallible, then you have to admit that you might be wrong about being fallible. It's logically contradictory to insist that you are fallible.
Therefore the only consistent conclusion is that you are infallible, and that your belief that you're fallible is a mistake.
Posted by: abb3w | May 29, 2009 1:51 PM
The error is presuming that the probability will be uniform. To the extent accurate belief more probably yields correct behavior, accurate belief is favored.
Plantinga also seems to be confusing use of the word "reliable", to rather than allowing for probabilistically reliable with 0.5
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 1:52 PM
So you think it reality is subservient to philosphoy ? I think you are the one with problems, beginning with being very very stupid.
It does not matter how many philosophers argue evolution does not happen when the evidence shows it does. And if they happen to be right, and we cannot trust ourselves to know the truth, then why are they bothering to try and work out what it is ?
Posted by: Numad | May 29, 2009 1:53 PM
"In my opinion (which of course some people might claim is biased), none of these objections is successful."
Clearly, the idea that one might be biased about an argument that one has devised is preposterous!
Posted by: Dan L. | May 29, 2009 1:54 PM
Oh no! Plantinga has combined with Feagletosh to form Feaglantingletosh! Ditckhins is doomed!
Wait, here comes Daniel Dennett. Ditchennetkins vs. Feaglantingletosh. It's on!
Posted by: Thuktun | May 29, 2009 1:54 PM
"...and therefore...?"
"A WITCH!"
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 1:55 PM
Wow, I'm glad I'm not the only one. It took me 4 or 5 comment threads mentioning Plantiga before I realized he was not a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas (which was my initial guess based on the form of his argumentation). Initially his argument was somewhat interesting from a historical perspective. Now it's just banal.
Posted by: Ignorabiums | May 29, 2009 1:58 PM
I dare you to go down the hall to the math department and tell them that. Maybe they will hold a vote to determine whether the generalized continuum hypothesis is intersubjectively acceptable and conducive to their successful cooperation in a group.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 1:58 PM
If science is such a poor way of understanding how the universe works (which what I understand as "truth") according to Plantinga how does he explain the extraordinary success of the scientific method ?
Also, how does he get to claim there is somekind of objective truth, when what we understand of the universe suggests there is not ?
In short how does someone with so little understand of the acheivements of science, and how science works, thinks he can say it is a load of rubbish ?
Posted by: NoGurus | May 29, 2009 1:59 PM
Beleifs are not coins with a 50 percent chance of coming up heads or tails. Beliefs are only formed after experience. The chances of a belief having a 50 percent chance of being true or not would be extremely low, and hardly ever random. In psychology, specifically cognitive therapy, this rule is expressed as: Antecedent (Activating Event) - Belief - Consequence. This rule has been demonstrated, replicated and empirically tested for more than 50 years. We can see that in the philosphor's case that the Activating event is his exposure to the Bible, the Belief is that it must be true, and the Consequence is that all contrary evidence must be twisted, ignored, rationalized and disfunctionally avoided to keep the belief. So even this philosopher, contary to his wishes, proves that his mind works the same way as all of us other foolish humans. The philisopher would in fact have no belief about the Bible at all had he not been exposed to it.
Posted by: IainW | May 29, 2009 2:00 PM
Jim (#164):
Wow. I thought Plantinga was pretty good at constructing strawman versions of evolutionary naturalism, but compared to you he's a bloody amateur.
Oh, and you also seem to have fallen for the like-can-only-cause-like fallacy that Sastra mentioned earlier.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:01 PM
The thing with mathematicians is that in their world they actually define the rules by which it works. Reality does not work that way.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 2:04 PM
Alvin Platinga is a moran, Alvin Platinga is a Philosopher, Therefore, All Philosophers are morans.
Great scientific reasoning there!
That said, I snipped this little thing from the Philosophers Lexicon [http://www.philosophicallexicon.com/#P]. It is a little dictionary of terms used affectionately to coin terms based on the traits of their peers philosophy.
alvinize, v. To stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim. "His contention that natural evil is due to Satanic agency alvinized his listeners."
Yes some philosophers do ask whether naturalistic evolution necessarily a belief generation system that favors truth. I think that is worthwhile endeavor. The argument: "look how successful we are, it must be because our beliefs are true" is as fallacious when applied to science, as it is when applied to Christianity.
That said, Platinga's conclusions do not represent the majority of philosophers that I know. Just as there are xian scientists that "see" the signatures of design in every DNA molecule, there are philosophers with deep seated religious views that bias their thinking as well.
But this comment was mainly to respond the anti-philosophy trend on this and similar posts. Don't judge us all on the basis of who gets the press. This is not a representative sample.
I am sure we wouldn't want all scientists to be judged on the basis of the later work of such scientific luminaries as Watson, Crick, and Pauling.
Posted by: heliobates | May 29, 2009 2:07 PM
@156
I'm no philosophical wonk, but why does cultural and linguistic accretion always get left out of this equation?
Do we not see "combinatorial syntax, our capacity for higher mathematics..." emerging through the history of thought? These things don't have to be present, fully-formed at the beginning of human social interaction and individual thought. Sastra touched on this in #13, above.
There's no reason to suppose that our capacity for higher mathematics didn't emerge from a few milennia of collective ratiocination. Take simple mathematical formulas, combine them, recombine them, gradually accrete layers of complexity and pretty soon we can have elaborate bodies of mathematical practice. No need to presume that our modern mathematical reasoning has just been lying dormant in us all along.
With combinatorial syntax: bird species do this. So do whales. It's indivdual capability + socialization + experimentation + time, not some genetic switch that suddenly flips in a bird's lingustic centres.
Humans aren't born being able to do higher mathematics. No one gets to do higher mathematics without absorbing the principles and practices of "lower mathematics".
If Euclid had the innate capacity to do calculus, why didn't he?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:08 PM
So utility does not matter ? The fact that science produces useful, reproducible and consistant results does not tell us anything about how valid a method it is for understand how the world works ?
Posted by: Joe Bleau | May 29, 2009 2:09 PM
Perhaps one way to roll up several of the points made on this thread so far is to characterize the controversy thus: while both PZM and AP presume "reality" (as all non-solipsists must), AP's arguments depend on radically severing the connection between the notion of reality and the notion of truth. If we are to take AP's epistemology seriously, then reality on its own has little or nothing at all to do with judgments about whether our beliefs are true.
This is only remotely tenable if, as a poster upstream pointed out, AP is conflating the idea of deep philosophical 'TRVTH' with plain old mundane truth. If you presume some magical epistemological realm where we mortals can really KNOW stuff about reality, and not just think that we know stuff about reality, then I guess it's not too insane to think that you need a God to get you there (although it's more than a little shady that the canonical form that the God of the major monotheistic Abrahamic religions takes is suspiciously similar in attributes to a sadistic early Bronze-age tyrant/king).
Personally, I'm happy to cop the the notion that knowledge or access to the TRVTH requires the supernatural (or at least, a coherent metaphysics). To me, this is precisely what makes the search for TRVTH (not to mention propositions about the Divine) so utterly pointless, if not meaningless.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 2:11 PM
Re #65:
But conceding this obvious point doesn't help Plantinga at all. He needs them to be completely uncorrelated (the whole point of that "50%" nonsense) which is obviously not true. If you're an antelope and you believe (as it happens, correctly) that there is a lion after you and you'd better take evasive action, your belief is BOTH adaptive and true, and adaptive BECAUSE true. A cognitive apparatus that did not tend (TEND- not assure)to produce true conclusions in such instances would NOT be adaptive. (This is the whole point of "Darwinian epistemology".)
Posted by: amphiox | May 29, 2009 2:11 PM
#164 - On the contrary the bile secreted from our livers rigidly conforms to objective truth. It must be capable of emulsifying fats! The objective reality that fats can only be emulsified in a limited number of ways determines what forms our bile secretions MUST take.
Evolution honed our thought processes to be adaptive rather than true, BUT that does not mean that the degree to which our thinking process correlates with truth (reality) versus some arbitrary non-real untruth must be 50-50!
A thought process that correlates strongly with reality is MUCH more likely to be adaptive regarding survival WITHIN THAT REALITY than one which is not. So our minds may not be one hundred percent reliable, but they are going to partly reliable, and much more likely to be reasonably reliable than completely unreliable.
Posted by: Ignorabimus | May 29, 2009 2:12 PM
You'd better hope that's right or your world-view is in serious trouble. Many mathematicians in fact don't buy into this sort of formalism, so you'd better hope that they're deeply deluded about their own field.
Puzzle: if, as you suggest, mathematics (like chess and poetry) involves defining some rules and then watching them unfold then why does it often come to pass that higher math ends up being exceedingly useful to the physicist and chemist long after it has been articulated for purely formal reasons. It's almost like the mathematician is guessing at the rich, hidden structure of the empirical universe. How does she do it? And why do the poet and the chessmaster not achieve similarly impressive results?
Suggested conclusion: formalism about mathematics of the sort you're defending is false.
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 2:14 PM
Another flaw in his reasoning. Our brains might be selected on the basis of survival advantage. But survival advantage for beings like ourselves that make our living by being smart tool users, has to be proficient at understanding the real world, "conducive to truth"..
So big brained survival advantage roughly = understanding objective reality.
The correlation isn't perfect but it is high. Now that there is cultural evolution, it is even higher. Societies that value truth and understanding the real world progress while societies that don't are stuck in the middle ages. That is why some highly religious societies like Afghanistan, the Xian fundies, and Texas are going nowhere while we discover new science and new technology on a daily basis
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 2:15 PM
Amphiox @ 188- funny that we posted the same argument at the same time. Clearly great minds do think alike! ;)
Posted by: Everbleed | May 29, 2009 2:15 PM
Hats off to PZ! He read all five pages! An astounding feat! The courage. The fortitude. The sacrifice. Seriously! I'm not kidding!
I only made it somewhere near the top of page 2. I could feel the cells dying.
I stopped at;
I don't think it's possible at all to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist;
and realized my life was ticking by... and I was reading THIS. Oh... My... Dog.
How does PZ do it? Maybe he IS an alien...
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:16 PM
You seem confused. I did not claim that no area of pure mathematics does not map to reality. I merely pointed out that mathematicians (by which I mean those doing pure maths) do not restrict themselves to constructs that exist in reality.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 2:17 PM
Apologies if this point has been made, but I could progress further in the thread without addressing this, which was really starting to grate:
"You have, I think, missed the point of Plantinga's critique of naturalism; your rebuttal does not address Plantinga's fundamental point, that truth and adaptive functionality are essentially distinct."
If this REALLY IS Plantinga's central point, then he fails here as in every other aspect of his little creed (except to the extent in which he shows solidarity with scepticism).
If we define "truth" as adults, which means considering pragmatic model-building considerations that value predictive power, inter-subjective agreement upon observable effects (e.g. This fruit doesn't kill you when you eat it), temporal ordering for causal statements, avoiding logical contradictions (e.g.,Fire is hot, so it will freeze water), and respect for empirical reproducibility (I've offered that fruit to 374 friends and they have all died), rather than "Truth" as it is known to Platonists, children and theists, then it becomes clear that there IS an adaptive relationship between "truth" and "adaptive functionality".
I should add that Plantinga needs to clarify his understanding of the word "belief", before any of his sentences become coherent, except when discussing humans. Does he mean to say that a frog has "beliefs" that cause it to trap flies? Is it possible for creatures without language to have "beliefs"? If not, then his whole essay is a red herring, because one has no way to examine natural selection of belief, since the selection steps that produced minds capable of belief were accomplished before belief emerged.
In any case, as PZ pointed out, his uncoupling of "belief" from empiricism invalidates the whole project and his failure to deal with it shows that he is not bright or rational enough to understand the most trenchant objection that naturalism has with supernaturalism.
Posted by: frog | May 29, 2009 2:17 PM
Reminds me of the DailyShow investigation on the CERN "mini-blackhole" experiment. They interviewed a high-school physics teacher about why he was terrified that the world would be destroyed.
The guy explained how either the world would be destroyed or not. That implied that the probability of the world being destroyed by the experiment was 50%.
Who gave this Plantinga guy his Ph.D? They should lose their accreditation.
Posted by: Thoughtful Guy | May 29, 2009 2:19 PM
Plantinga proposes an interesting premise but his logic fails towards the end. I don't think he truly understands science enough to do be a valid critic of either naturalistic or theistic evolution.
I could see a fairly good argument for the adaptation of accepting an irrational belief. If the majority of the members of a social group believe in something strongly enough then it is perfectly rational to just follow along; lest you become an outcast. The outcast would have a significantly lower probability of successfully reproducing.
Posted by: Nocturne | May 29, 2009 2:20 PM
Any bets on how long before Vox Day posts something defending Plantinga's mental masturbation?
Side bet 1: how many times will he personally attack PZ or his readers?
Side bet 2: will he bring up his challenge to "debate" PZ on some wingnut radio show?
Posted by: Neko-Onna | May 29, 2009 2:21 PM
Really? What if the hominids believed lions were Wrathful Gods of Death who you wouldn't dare approach? That's completely bogus, but it would keep you alive. And I'd say its a lot more probable, as beliefs go, as "hominids" wouldn't have domesticated the cat yet, and therefore would have no experience with "lovable pussycats", but they would have had a lot of experience with ferocious apex predators making snacks out of their buddies.
Religion, ironically enough, is one of the best arguments ever for adaptive biology/behavior. Even though its unprovable bullshit, religion kept people alive because it kept them in fear- fear of the wrong thing, perhaps, but the fear kept them from taking chances that would have killed them. Example: Tribe A believes in the Lightning God. Lightning God visits his wrath upon the Earth by- you guessed it- raining down lightning bolts on the land. You anger the Lightning God by showing your impertinence and going out to view the Awesome Bolts of Wrath. Rebellious Free Thinker, with a decidedly underdeveloped fear of the unknown, says "screw that", and goes out into the storm. She is killed by the tree that is knocked over in the storm. The rest of Tribe A sees this as confirmation of their beliefs, and RFT never lives to reproduce. So, tribe A produces a lot off offspring with a strong fear response to the unknown AND reinforces that fear with a strong religious belief that forbids tribe members from going out in storms. Tribe A prospers. Now, the fact that no Lightning God exists doesn't matter, only the fear of storms produced by the Lightning God matters. Therefore, the thing that gets transmitted genetically is a predisposition to fear of the unknown. What that unknown is can change, DOES change (Lightning God, Zeus, Yahweh), but the fear stays the same.
Plantinga's arguments are as crap-laden as the superstitions they are based on, but that doesn't mean they won't benefit him in some way- in certain circles, I'm sure they have boosted his credibility significantly.
And the wheel spins 'round and 'round.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:22 PM
If we look at human history I think we can take this as pretty a given. Psychological experiments would also seem to support your arguement.
Posted by: Jud | May 29, 2009 2:22 PM
If each belief has only a 50% chance of being true, then the odds against the successful functioning of anything as complex as a computer are utterly, laughably high.
So if Plantinga is correct -
You
Cannot
Be
Reading
This.
Oh, wait...
Posted by: uppity cracka | May 29, 2009 2:23 PM
excellent rebuttal. that's what we call a good, old fashioned "FACE!" of course, he pretty much walked into it. it's almost as if he only expected fundies to read it and tell him he's a genius, maybe give him some money.
Posted by: Holbach
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May 29, 2009 2:24 PM
gman @ 33
"There is no way for us to know whether the supernatural being who created us..,"
You seem to be sure that we were created by this imaginary being. To be sure, you and the Universe will never know or will ever find out.
Posted by: CJO | May 29, 2009 2:25 PM
I dare you to go down the hall to the math department and tell them that. Maybe they will hold a vote to determine whether the generalized continuum hypothesis is intersubjectively acceptable and conducive to their successful cooperation in a group.
Did not each mathematician siiting there undergo an extensive course of study with his or her elders to arrive at the state of being a reliable assessor of mathematical truth?
Is there not peer review in the mathematics community?
If a given mathematician stubbornly held a position antithetical to the generally accepted view in his field (one held to be "untrue"), would that be conducive to successful cooperation (understood here as the furtherance of mathematical understanding)?
Basically, you're trying to hold up a highly formalized example of intersubjectivity (one, as Matt alluded to, where the formal rules are themselves rarefied abstractions and a result of a lot of temporally and spatially distributed cooperation) as a counter-example, but I maintain that, yes, mathematical truths are agreed upon as such in the same basic way that "fire is hot" and other empirical propositions are.
Posted by: K. Signal Eingang | May 29, 2009 2:26 PM
The phrase "slumbering in the shadow of Aristotle" comes to mind - Plantinga has clearly not moved beyond the Classical attitude that everything can be figured out from first principles by reason alone, with no recourse to such messy, unrefined pastimes as experimentation or testing.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 2:26 PM
It's not COMPLETELY bogus by a long shot, which is precisely why it will keep you alive. Plantinga's argument would require that your belief as to whether or not SOMETHING dangerous is chasing you is uncorrelated to the truth of the matter.
This smells like another confusion of garden-variety truths (e.g. something dangerous IS chasing me) with TRVTH. That right there is Plantinga's most fundamental confusion and falling into it oneself results in giving him too much credit. There is NO part of his "argument" which should not earn a D for a freshman student.
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 2:27 PM
Another dumb flaw. Who says we can't know the truth?
We can. That are minds are either fallible or infallible is a false dichotomy. They are fallible but actually, work pretty well. The proof is all around us. We live in a Hi Tech world and are the dominant species on the planet.
While our minds are fallible we can through experiment, repetition, induction, deduction, cultural transmission, cooperation and other cognitive tools and techniques asymptopically approach the truth about the real world. Including that Plantinga is an idiot who doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.
Posted by: tim Rowledge | May 29, 2009 2:28 PM
It put me in mind of that lovely old cry of the (lower case)conservative "Get back to teaching kids the three Rs". Being, of course, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic..... spelling obviously didn't make the cut.Posted by: Neko-Onna | May 29, 2009 2:28 PM
Really? What if the hominids believed lions were Wrathful Gods of Death who you wouldn't dare approach? That's completely bogus, but it would keep you alive. And I'd say its a lot more probable, as beliefs go, as "hominids" wouldn't have domesticated the cat yet, and therefore would have no experience with "lovable pussycats", but they would have had a lot of experience with ferocious apex predators making snacks out of their buddies.
Religion, ironically enough, is one of the best arguments ever for adaptive biology/behavior. Even though its unprovable bullshit, religion kept people alive because it kept them in fear- fear of the wrong thing, perhaps, but the fear kept them from taking chances that would have killed them. Example: Tribe A believes in the Lightning God. Lightning God visits his wrath upon the Earth by- you guessed it- raining down lightning bolts on the land. You anger the Lightning God by showing your impertinence and going out to view the Awesome Bolts of Wrath. Rebellious Free Thinker, with a decidedly underdeveloped fear of the unknown, says "screw that", and goes out into the storm. She is killed by the tree that is knocked over in the storm. The rest of Tribe A sees this as confirmation of their beliefs, and RFT never lives to reproduce. So, tribe A produces a lot off offspring with a strong fear response to the unknown AND reinforces that fear with a strong religious belief that forbids tribe members from going out in storms.
Plantinga's arguments are as crap-laden as the supernatural beliefs they stem from, but that doesn't mean they don't benefit him in some way. Im sure in some circles, they have boosted his credibility immensely.
And the wheel spins 'round and 'round.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward | May 29, 2009 2:28 PM
I have to say that I've met a lot of philosophy students and I've read quite some philosophical articles and I still think, even after reading all the remarks, and even though he's not just wrong, but completely missing the point, that he is actually quite smart for a philosopher. The fact of the matter is, there aren't many Dennetts, and even though Plantinga is more representative, that still puts philosophy in to flattering a light.
Posted by: Everbleed | May 29, 2009 2:29 PM
I'm dumbfounded!
It seems a lot of you read the whole five pages!
And here I thought the only hero here was PZ.
The room is filled with heroes!
Thank you all. But Damn. The wasted time.
Much ado about nothing.
I'm going to go read something worth the time.
I must be getting old.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:30 PM
,blockquote>Another dumb flaw. Who says we can't know the truth?
Raven,
It is a flaw in Plantinga's thinking you are calling dumb and not mine ?
Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 2:30 PM
I think that British particle physicist/theologian John Polkinghorne neatly captured the gist of Plantinga's argument in this way:
"Ultimately (naturalistic reductionism) is suicidal. Not only does it relegate our experiences of beauty, moral obligation, and religious encounter to the epiphenomenal scrap-heap. It also destroys rationality. Thought is replaced by electro-chemical neural events. Two such events cannot confront each other in rational discourse. They are neither right nor wrong. They simply happen....The very assertions of the reductionist himself are nothing but blips in the neural network of his brain. The world of rational discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses. Quite frankly, that cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so." (John Polkinghorne, "One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology," London: SPCK, 1986, p. 93)
Polkinghorne is mistaken that no one believes that thoughts are mere electro-chemical neural events. PZ Myers and others here (the majority, apparently) take that view of the mind, but one has to wonder why. On the naturalistic view of the mind embraced by Myers and the like, there is no reason to suppose that the thoughts secreted by one brain are in any way epistemically superior to the thoughts secreted by another brain. Nor would we have any reason for trusting that those secretions of the brain are (or even can be) oriented towards truth - especially truths that are not relevant to the Darwinian struggle for existence.
Posted by: Emmet, OM
|
May 29, 2009 2:31 PM
I think it's also worth pointing out that a reliable system can be constructed from unreliable components. It seems to be implicitly assumed by many commenters above that there is an inviolable axiom that the “unreliability” of a system cannot be mitigated or ameliorated in any way.
“Aha!”, they'll say, “but can you know that the unreliability has been ameliorated successfully when the system you use to determine success and failure is the very thing whose unreliability you seek to ameliorate! Gotcha!” — and we hop back on the merry-go-round of sophomoric solipsism again.
Posted by: Thumpalumpacus | May 29, 2009 2:32 PM
"If our minds are not reliable, on what basis can we trust the thoughts telling us that we've found confirmation of a belief, or that we've arrived at a valid conclusion?" -- Jim
Apparently you're unfamiliar with the idea of peer-review. Have you never read a news article which speaks of a scientific theory being modified due to additional observation? Certainly you're aware that there is more than one scientist in the world who performs experiments, no? As Matt Penfold in #77 above put it: "What are the chances, if Plantinga is correct and our brains mislead is, of the overwhelming majority of scientists all reaching the same, wrong, conclusions ?"
You are free to leap off the Niagara Falls in your refutation of these points. Gravity is, after all, a scientific construct.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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May 29, 2009 2:34 PM
Here's a response I made last year to this mind-numbingly awful nonsense from Plantinga:
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:34 PM
You should try reading some A.C Grayling. He is a critic of those philosophers who go in for the philosphical equivalent of the theological arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. He also criticises those philosophers who writings are so opaque that even their colleagues have trouble understand what they are saying, let alone the average intelligent lay person.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 2:35 PM
Jimbulb @212:
Again we have the the same old confusion of truths with TRVTH. There may be certain problem areas like math (though I am not really convinced) but for the most part the kinds of truths about the world sought by the natural sciences are very much relevant to the Darwinian struggle for existence, which is precisely why so many people can now lead so much longer and safer lives than their ancestors did.
Posted by: Jeff Bell | May 29, 2009 2:35 PM
He makes a basic probabilistic mistake in assuming that these are all independent variables.
Suppose that I flip a coin once, and then I look at it 50 times. What are the odds that every time I look it's heads? 50%
Posted by: heliobates | May 29, 2009 2:37 PM
@CJO
[applause]
That's what I'm trying to get at. No one with any level of accomplishment in any field of human endeavour suddenly appears, de novo, as a competent individual. A 45 year-old theoretical mathematician has 45 years of neuro-linguistic-system-in-the-environment experience that can combine with natural aptitude and a measure of fortuitous coincidence to produce the ongoing ability to have a conversation about the "generalized continuum hypothesis".
Naturalistic accounts of mind account for this. Supernatural accounts of mind deliberately leave this out, as if everything observable about a subject and her beliefs is some Platonic "remembrance of things past".
Posted by: Jud | May 29, 2009 2:37 PM
Jim (#212) writes: On the naturalistic view of the mind embraced by Myers and the like, there is no reason to suppose that the thoughts secreted by one brain are in any way epistemically superior to the thoughts secreted by another brain.
No reason to suppose the thoughts of one are superior to the thoughts of another, eh? Did you happen to watch the National Spelling Bee finals last night? There is obviously a way to tell whose thoughts are superior with regard to spelling, and it is, I daresay, "as simple as A, B, C."
Posted by: Jake Fraser | May 29, 2009 2:39 PM
The real difficulty you're striking upon here isn't whether or not we can perceive truth, but what such a concept as 'truth' implies and where it originates. The people who ACTUALLY criticize science, those who do philosophy of science and are somewhat respected within an intellectual community (unlike this blowhard) will take an objection with science as designating that 1.) there is a certain transcendental form of truth to be accessed and 2.)that science can achieve it.
This is why Nietzsche calls science the last bastion of religion in our society. Research into the concept of a transcendental signified might be helpful.
http://www.answers.com/topic/transcendental-signified
The difficulty is that without a God, there actually isn't any source for meaning in the world - this is what this Plantinga guy should have gotten at, but didn't, because he's an idiot. It's not consistent to be atheist but still believe in a transcendental morality (although even claiming God is a sort of supplement in the Derridian sense - we can still claim the non-existence of truth unless we proceed from the ontology that God = Truth, although we can simply decide not to be beholden to it); this is why the real atheists are the nihilists and the post-structuralists.
Posted by: Robin | May 29, 2009 2:40 PM
Is there a convention I don't know about, or do the parentheses in "10(to the power -58)" make it look like it's been written by someone who doesn't know what it means?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:40 PM
Other than the fact some thoughts correspond with what we agree we see happeing in universe better than others, and that we can follow thoughts to logical conclusions and test those conclusions ?
Someone can think the moon is made of blue cheese, and someone can think it is made of rock. We can test which thought is better by going to the moon and checking. Guess what. We did. And the result ? Take food if you are going to the moon, and not just some crackers that go well with cheese.
Posted by: Jake Fraser | May 29, 2009 2:41 PM
The real difficulty you're striking upon here isn't whether or not we can perceive truth, but what such a concept as 'truth' implies and where it originates. The people who ACTUALLY criticize science, those who do philosophy of science and are somewhat respected within an intellectual community (unlike this blowhard) will take an objection with science as designating that 1.) there is a certain transcendental form of truth to be accessed and 2.)that science can achieve it.
This is why Nietzsche calls science the last bastion of religion in our society. Research into the concept of a transcendental signified might be helpful.
http://www.answers.com/topic/transcendental-signified
The difficulty is that without a God, there actually isn't any source for meaning in the world - this is what this Plantinga guy should have gotten at, but didn't, because he's an idiot. It's not consistent to be atheist but still believe in a transcendental morality (although even claiming God is a sort of supplement in the Derridian sense - we can still claim the non-existence of truth unless we proceed from the ontology that God = Truth, although we can simply decide not to be beholden to it); this is why the real atheists are the nihilists and the post-structuralists.
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 2:42 PM
I assumed that is what Plantinga was saying. " We can't know the "truth". Well we can, have, do and will. We even pay people called scientists to do just that. That is why 2009 looks a lot different from 1009.
Another discoverd truth. Plantinga is an idiot who doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.
>
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 2:42 PM
Which is transparently false, since any self-aware symbol-manipulating conscious being- eg. a member of the species Homo sapiens- can create meanings (plural used advisedly). It's the misguided longing for one, universal MEANING that causes trouble.
Posted by: heliobates | May 29, 2009 2:43 PM
Jim @212
You need to get out more.
http://www.naturalism.org/plantinga.htm
http://www.naturalism.org/haught.htm
Posted by: Pen | May 29, 2009 2:44 PM
Unlike some Pharyngula readers, I rarely keel over laughing, but this did it for me. It was that bit about natural selection being unlikely to produce false beliefs. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sunbathe in the middle of the road, because I seem to believe that those things called Vay-ee-cules are moving very slowly, or even more probably, are a simple optical illusion.
Posted by: The good lookin' fat man | May 29, 2009 2:45 PM
If we are merely the material products of a purposeless system then our knowledge about the world is indeed inherently unreliable. And though PZ glorifies the scientific method as our savior from this inherent unreliability of the mind (everyone likes to worship something eh?), he is not taking into account that we can never really tell whether the scientific method as interpreted/imposed by us is anything more than the product of evolved minds reacting to stimuli, the ejaculatory result of random mutations which may or may not remain following successive mutations. Since PZ's knowledge filter (scientific method) is subject to the same limitations as his evolved mind, it is no more trustworthy than his unreliable mind. As committed materialists you can never be sure that knowledge you've gained through your senses is anything more than evolutionary fuzz, be it scientifically tested or not.
Stark materialism traps us within minds of computer code which our central processors will never be able to transcend. Meat robots can never be anything more than meat robots, least of all philosophers.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:45 PM
I am not sure this is what science says.
Science merely attempts to explain how the universe works. What is "true" in science is merely that which best conforms with what we see happening. It is true that science does rely on an axiom, in that science will only work if the universe works in a consistant manner. If the rules are arbitrary then science will not work. We are justified in making that assumption becuase of the success of science in explaining the universe.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 2:48 PM
Interesting how the trolls are incapable of doing anything except merely repeating bits of Plantinga's fallacious argument.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:49 PM
Well it was my understanding of what Plantinga was saying. Reading other comments, including yours, I do not think I am alone in that understanding.
Of course, you and I seem to think that "truth" is the same as "how the universe works and what has happened within it". I have no idea quite what Plantinga thinks "truth" is.
Posted by: The good lookin' fat man | May 29, 2009 2:49 PM
If we are merely the material products of a purposeless system then our knowledge about the world is indeed inherently unreliable. And though PZ glorifies the scientific method as our savior from this inherent unreliability of the mind (everyone likes to worship something eh?), he is not taking into account that we can never really tell whether the scientific method as interpreted/imposed by us is anything more than the product of evolved minds reacting to stimuli, the ejaculatory result of random mutations which may or may not remain following successive mutations. Since PZ's knowledge filter (scientific method) is subject to the same limitations as his evolved mind, it is no more trustworthy than his unreliable mind. As committed materialists you can never be sure that knowledge you've gained through your senses is anything more than evolutionary fuzz, be it scientifically tested or not.
Stark materialism traps us within minds of computer code which our central processors will never be able to transcend. Meat robots can never be anything more than meat robots, least of all philosophers.
Posted by: Jake Fraser | May 29, 2009 2:50 PM
The real difficulty you're striking upon here isn't whether or not we can perceive truth, but what such a concept as 'truth' implies and where it originates. The people who ACTUALLY criticize science, those who do philosophy of science and are somewhat respected within an intellectual community (unlike this blowhard) will take an objection with science as designating that 1.) there is a certain transcendental form of truth to be accessed and 2.)that science can achieve it.
This is why Nietzsche calls science the last bastion of religion in our society. Research into the concept of a transcendental signified might be helpful.
http://www.answers.com/topic/transcendental-signified
The difficulty is that without a God, there actually isn't any source for meaning in the world - this is what this Plantinga guy should have gotten at, but didn't, because he's an idiot. It's not consistent to be atheist but still believe in a transcendental morality. I'm not even convinced that such a concept of "God" necessitates a transcendental anything except concept - we can simply choose to ignore morality or not be beholden to it. It would be so much more fun to be an atheist in a world in which a God actually existed - then you aren't just rational, you're a rebel. Anyway, I digress - there is no truth, there's no reason for atheists to behave in one reason or another. This is why the real atheists are the nihilists and the post-structuralists.
Posted by: Ignorabimus | May 29, 2009 2:50 PM
There are self-taught prodigies like Ramanujan. Anyway, this view explains transmission but doesn't touch original research. There is no original research except in fields where standards of truth are independent of expert opinion. (That's why there is no original research in theology, btw.)
No it would not. In some cases, a stubborn mathematician of this sort would be well advised to keep his mouth shut and to conceal the truth from his community. And this is why Gauss failed to publish on non-Euclidean geometry.
We now know that he was right and his contemporaries were wrong. And that only makes sense if truth and consensus are not the same.
That's a promissory note, not a theory. To make good on it you'd need to show that all mathematical concepts derive from simplifications of empirical concepts. Since we don't have a working theory of concepts, you and I are stuck at this point. But I put it to you that it's implausible that Hamilton extracted his account of quaternions from bouts of successful cooperation. The same goes for Cantor, Frege, etc.
I'm not arguing that Plantinga is right. I'm saying that certain kinds of human capacities are not explained by satisficing.
Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 2:50 PM
Jud: "Did you happen to watch the National Spelling Bee finals last night? There is obviously a way to tell whose thoughts are superior with regard to spelling, and it is, I daresay, 'as simple as A, B, C.'"
I agree that we have rational minds capable of discerning truth. The point of Plantinga's argument is that naturalism provides no basis for trusting that our thoughts are rational or that they can conform to external truths. Science - like all truth-seeking enterprises - is possible precisely because the naturalistic view of the mind is, in all likelihood, wrong.
It appears that virtually everyone arguing against Plantinga here has missed the point of his argument. For example, someone characterized Plantinga's argument as an argument against the possibility that science is a valid way of searching for truth about the natural world. That straw man is utterly irrelevant to the argument that Plantinga actually made.
Posted by: AJ Milne | May 29, 2009 2:53 PM
I am always amused by the contention on the part of various apologists for various superstitions that there is somehow, lurking in the heart of materialism and empiricism, some dreadfully naive assumption, repleate with the obvious hubris this would reveal, that human reason is somehow some extraordinary, flawless, perfect tool for the divining of what is real, and what is not...
Nay, my dear pathetic excuses for thinkers, I have never assumed this. I am very well aware I may well have much to learn about a great many things...
It's just that it's just as obvious that if bullshit artists like you were ever to turn out to be right about anything whatsoever, it would have to be largely accidental on your part.
Posted by: Neko-Onna | May 29, 2009 2:54 PM
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 2:56 PM
Those who criticise the scienctific method do not seem to explain why it seems to work so well.
I guess I am pragmatist at heart. If an expalantion of how something works corresponds with reality then I will grant that explanation the status of "truth", always contingent on the possiblity some better explanation may come along. If science does so poorly as explaining, as some maintain, then how come we can use the equations devised by Newton to send probes to other planets in the solar system, and have them arrive within seconds of the predicted times ? In this regard Newtonian physics is true, at least as far as objects on the scale of the solar system are concerned.
Posted by: SC, OM | May 29, 2009 2:58 PM
Rather than using this as a silly comparison, it might help you to think about the effects of actually being drunk. What's being affected by alcohol? Ehat's different about a "drunken mind"? What might this tell you about our sensory and cognitive apparatus and how it has evolved to contend with material reality?
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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May 29, 2009 2:59 PM
Wrong. They can also endlessly fail to read the message about not posting again, thus repeating their insipid nonsense over and over.
Why people not bright enough to follow the simplest instructions think that they will be mistaken for being able to think, leaves me wondering how dumb they must be.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 2:59 PM
And this argument is fallacious because it assumes, and demands, that selection cannot even produce a mild TENDENCY toward better than random correlation between our beliefs and true propositions about the world. To his credit Plantinga is actually quite clear about this- it's why he has to insist on that p = .5 gibberish. It requires only to see how silly THAT is to see that the entire "argument" is risible.
Posted by: CJO | May 29, 2009 3:01 PM
Meat robots can never be anything more than meat robots, least of all philosophers.
Bilge. You're just trying to use the term "meat robots" to poison the well. The question is, what are meat robots capable of? and you haven't even begun to address it. You merely assert that they're incapable of philosophy or of forming true beliefs. It's not at all self-evident.
Posted by: Eric MacDonald | May 29, 2009 3:02 PM
I tend towards the philosophy end of the spectrum, and I have never taken Plantinga seriously. He is simply too weird to be believed, but kudos to you, PZ, for taking him apart limb by limb. Christian "philosophers" have lately taken to using Bayesian probability to support outlandish claims. Even the ones who can do mathematics get it wrong. You're dead right, though. Plantinga has a reputation in philosophy which has lowered the tone. And no, Jim, the point of Plantinga's argument is not, as you say,
He is saying that, without the theistic assumption, there is no reason to think that our empirical beliefs are true, that is, no reason to prefer one belief over another. Of course, our thoughts do not confirm to eternal truths. There are none. There are analytic truths, perhaps, but that is a different thing.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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May 29, 2009 3:04 PM
OT, but I thought this blurb from evolutionnews.org was more interesting than blithering trolls, so here it is:
Some of us might want to ask a question, assuming they're not censoring them. That's hardly certain.
Glen D
Posted by: Eric MacDonald | May 29, 2009 3:05 PM
I tend towards the philosophy end of the spectrum, and I have never taken Plantinga seriously. He is simply too weird to be believed, but kudos to you, PZ, for taking him apart limb by limb. Christian "philosophers" have lately taken to using Bayesian probability to support outlandish claims. Even the ones who can do mathematics get it wrong. You're dead right, though. Plantinga has a reputation in philosophy which has lowered the tone. And no, Jim, the point of Plantinga's argument is not, as you say,
He is saying that, without the theistic assumption, there is no reason to think that our empirical beliefs are true, that is, no reason to prefer one belief over another. Of course, our thoughts do not confirm to eternal truths. There are none. There are analytic truths, perhaps, but that is a different thing.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 3:06 PM
jim#236,
"The point of Plantinga's argument is that naturalism provides no basis for trusting that our thoughts are rational or that they can conform to external truths."
The trust is earned through repetitive success. Just as the tribe trusts the hunter who has repeated brought home the game, we can trust our thoughts that have formed a coherent model that has predictive success. When the same model that successfully allows us to predict and/or control future inputs of our senses in simple things, is also able to explain our existence, experience and philosophical limitations, it is not very vulnerable to breaking our trust.
So why isn't repetitive success a basis for trust of our thoughts? If our thoughts are unreliable, we may mistakenly trust them anyway. That mistaken trust may not have a basis in naturalism, but that doesn't mean one isn't possible.
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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May 29, 2009 3:08 PM
My view is that “true” as an adjective applied to a particular contingent statement is a convenient short-hand for “the statement is supported by all relevant available empirical evidence”. I think the noun “truth” is worse than useless, and the reification of it as “The Truth®”, beloved of woo-mongers, is really quite stupid.
Posted by: Dave C | May 29, 2009 3:12 PM
Okay, I haven't read Plantinga in any great depth, so my ideas could be wide of the mark. Nevertheless, here is how I approach the argument. When it comes to all possible minds, it seems to be that there is continuous spectrum of truth-finding abilities. On one end, we have a mind that is completely incapable of generating "warranted" beliefs (call this the "pile of rocks" end); on the other end, we have a mind that completely capable of generating perfectly reliable ideas about reality (call this the "god-like" end). I would hope it is safe to assume that human minds lie on neither end of the spectrum, but instead fall somewhere in the middle. I would also contend--and this is probably where Plantinga would disagree--that adaptive processes are able, over time, to mold minds that also fall somewhere on that spectrum. Given that, it seems that if Plantinga's argument is to succeed, he must somehow show that the human mind lies further along the "god-like" end of the spectrum than adaptive processes are able to reach. Has he been able to show this?
Posted by: Eric MacDonald | May 29, 2009 3:13 PM
I tend towards the philosophy end of the spectrum, and I have never taken Plantinga seriously. He is simply too weird to be believed, but kudos to you, PZ, for taking him apart limb by limb. Christian "philosophers" have lately taken to using Bayesian probability to support outlandish claims. Even the ones who can do mathematics get it wrong. You're dead right, though. Plantinga has a reputation in philosophy which has lowered the tone. And no, Jim, the point of Plantinga's argument is not, as you say,
He is saying that, without the theistic assumption, there is no reason to think that our empirical beliefs are true, that is, no reason to prefer one belief over another. Of course, our thoughts do not confirm to eternal truths. There are none. There are analytic truths, perhaps, but that is a different thing.
Posted by: wonderer | May 29, 2009 3:13 PM
Ahh, I see I'm very late to the party.
I haven't begun reading through the huge list of comments here but as Plantinga's EAAN is something I've studied, I'm going to toss in my $0.02 and hope it isn't too redundant.
P.Z. Hit on the key to dismantling Plantinga's argument in his article, and that is human linguistic capability. It is likely the value of communication for members of a social species which lead to our intelligence, and it interpersonal communication combined with inherited cultural information which provides the basis for our capability to reason accurately.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 3:14 PM
If evolution cannot be "trusted" to evolve brains that can understand the world we live, why does Plantinga think that the rest of the human body, or indeed other species should evolve in ways conform with the world they live in. When we look at nature we see organisms that have adapted over billions of years to be able to survive in the type of world they inhabit. We see animals with bodies that are able to withstand the gravity we find on earth. We find plants that place roots into the soil to not only extract nutrients but also provide support from the elements. The environment these organisms have evolved to survive in is the "truth" of the nature of the world they inhabit. It strikes me that evolution is pretty good at understanding "truth".
Posted by: CJO | May 29, 2009 3:20 PM
I'm not arguing that Plantinga is right. I'm saying that certain kinds of human capacities are not explained by satisficing.
Well, it is true that an exceptional ability of the human nervous system not shared to any great degree by other animals is the performance of serial cognitive operations. The fact that we uniquely possess a grammar engine for generating and parsing valid expressions in a discrete, combinatory symbolic system probably has a lot to do with it. Is that what you're getting at?
Posted by: Joe Bleau | May 29, 2009 3:24 PM
Jim @ 236:
You say:
I bolded where the problem is. You (and Plantinga) seem to mean something by "external truths" that most atheists/scientists have no reason to believe in.
Philosophy is the search for TRVTH. Science is a way explain/predict reality. TRVTH (or even truth) != reality.
Posted by: Holbach
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May 29, 2009 3:26 PM
Jim @ 212
Ah, Polkinghorne the religionist who thinks he's a theologian(nothing) posing as a physicist, who means nothing when he says anything, except to his imaginary god.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 3:30 PM
Here I would disagree with you. Certainly I do not think there are external truths, but I would argue that truth (as opposed to TRVTH) is reality. If a scientific theory explains reality well then I see no reason why we cannot call it true, providing we always keep in mind the provisional nature of science and realise that there could be a better explanation as yet undiscovered.
Posted by: Clemens | May 29, 2009 3:30 PM
Plantinga the shorter: "If you don't know exactly where your mom is, there is a fifty-fifty chance she is either at her home or at my place making out with me".
Posted by: Hurin | May 29, 2009 3:31 PM
Reminds me of Dembski, but clearly without the mathematical ability.
But if the existence of information or our ability to use it reliably imply some sort of god, then why is the typical holy book so full of bad, erroneous information?
Posted by: Hurin | May 29, 2009 3:34 PM
Reminds me of Dembski, but clearly without the mathematical ability.
But if the existence of information or our ability to use it reliably imply some sort of god, then why is the typical holy book so full of bad, erroneous information?
Posted by: Slick | May 29, 2009 3:34 PM
Glen, yur not bein fare! I kin reed drections.
Posted by: Slick | May 29, 2009 3:36 PM
Glen, yur not bein fare! I kin reed drections.
Posted by: Alex | May 29, 2009 3:37 PM
"Hmm. It's not a good start when the author is so oblivious to irony that he opens his paper with a name-calling screed in which he lambastes others for writing name-calling screeds."
Where is the name-calling? What the FUCK are you talking about you petty little liar?What the hell are you talking about?
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | May 29, 2009 3:42 PM
Jim #236
"Plantinga's argument is that naturalism provides no basis for trusting that our thoughts are rational or that they can conform to external truths."
WTF!?!
Geez -- ".. naturalism provides NO [my emphasis] basis .." !!!
Holy cow .. what part of "scientists know they cannot trust their senses and conclusions a priori; that is why they make hypotheses and test the living cacca out of them before they submit conclusions to other experts who then work extra hard to falsify their beloved conclusions and steal their thunder" do you see as constituting the least reliable of methods?
What part of scientific naturalism precludes coming up with USEFUL explanations and concepts concerning the real world?
What part of what that bogus antiquated philosopher's ramblings should replace how we launch rockets, develop racetrack computer memory, cure diseases, refine social systems to greater perfection, stay warm, stay fed, etc. presently?
The elegance of an argument speaks nothing to the quality of an argument. Plantinga gives philosophers a bad name because his arguments are useless in the real world to the max - regardless of how presented.
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 3:45 PM
Yeah, I worried about what Plantinga thought the "TRUTH" was for about 5 seconds. And then decided that he probably had no idea and would spend 10 pages of bafflegab explaining that. "No I have no idea what I'm talking about."
He really needs to define his terms like truth, belief, naturalism and so on. I suspect if he did, his whole essay would be much shorter and more obviously just words strung together.
>
Posted by: Stu
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May 29, 2009 3:47 PM
Early senility is never pretty.
True, but luckily, you'll forget all about it.
Posted by: Ignorabimus | May 29, 2009 3:50 PM
That's it exactly.
Now, what needs to be shown is (1) that this capacity for recursion is sufficient to explain our mathematical competence; and (2) exactly how this capacity for recursion is the product of evolution.
(1) is contentious for technical reasons. Basically, it's asking us to believe that mathematics boils down to computation. Unless I'm not seeing something this looks unlikely. (2) has been called hopeless by better thinkers than Plantinga (Wigner for one). God would solve (2) for us nicely but that would be silly. And so we're stuck with the same old standoff: the theist points to some significant lacuna of knowledge -- the naturalist replies that there's a theory that will make it all better just around the corner.
For the record: Plantinga is an scoundrel. But I wish the people on the other side stopped to appreciate the complexity of the task at hand. We might do better research if we let the theists' attacks sink in rather than calling them bilge.
Posted by: Joe Bleau | May 29, 2009 3:53 PM
Matt P @256:
I think that Emmet OM @248 has it right.
'Truth' (and for that matter, 'meaning'), is a property of sentences, not of any 'reality' (external or not). We tend to suppose that propositions that we would like to regard as 'true' have some sort of correspondence with an external reality, but we have no way of knowing this for sure, if by "knowing" we mean some sort of privileged epistemological state of "proof". Philosophy and Religion tend to occupy themselves in figuring out how to reach this privileged state of knowing, whereas many atheists and scientists couldn't possibly care less.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 3:54 PM
What complexity ? Reality just is. If philosophers have trouble coping with that, then it is their problem, not ours. If they construct a philosophical argument that conflicts with reality, then it is they, and not reality, that is wrong.
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 3:54 PM
We are meat robots so we know that some meat robots can be very stupid posters like you or bad philosophers like plantinga.
How do you know what meat robots can do or not do? Article in Science, verses from the bible? Or did you just pull a dumb statement like this out of your ass with no data and no proof.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 3:58 PM
Scientists and philosophers don't work on these problems because they're worried about filling a lacuna in philosophical naturalism, they do it because they're interesting, hard problems. So attacks from the likes of Plantinga are merely irrelevant noise.
Posted by: Jud | May 29, 2009 4:01 PM
Jim writes (#236): I agree that we have rational minds capable of discerning truth. The point of Plantinga's argument is that naturalism provides no basis for trusting that our thoughts are rational or that they can conform to external truths.
Which is precisely the point on which I must disagree with Plantinga. It is trivially easy to show that "naturalism," a/k/a scientific methodology, can indeed provide such a basis. For example, I say that "The good lookin' fat man" has double-posted at #229 and #233, and I assume you will easily be able to confirm for yourself that my thought in that regard does indeed correspond to a "truth" external to me.
Of course, you might say the only reason I am able to do this is because of God, which brings me to your second point:
Science - like all truth-seeking enterprises - is possible precisely because the naturalistic view of the mind is, in all likelihood, wrong.
This formulation is rather problematic. Science is possible because the view of the mind that science has produced is incorrect - i.e., science is possible only if it is wrong?
Posted by: Ignorabimus | May 29, 2009 4:03 PM
@268: Matt, you're exceptionally good at skipping all the hard stuff in posts you go after and then saying something facile. Try rereading the rest of the post slowly. Look up words and names you're not familiar with. Once you get it, ask yourself again that question: what complexity? And then, once you have an axiomatization of ZF set theory in terms of recursive functions to share with us, as well as an explanation how those very functions were selected for in us but not in bonobos, please get back to us.
Posted by: Alex Deam
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May 29, 2009 4:04 PM
What would have better to say here PZ, is that even if we are just "brains in vats", the only way we would "find that out" is empirical research. So we should just continue doing science!
Plus, if reality isn't what I/we think it is, then that also means there's no Bible and no Jesus. Plantinga still fails.
One other point: on the 50% thing, another fallacy is that he assumed that our beliefs are all independent. They're almost certainly not. For instance, if now my belief is that I'm holding my keys in my right hand, and later on my belief is that I'm holding an apple in that same hand, then it's very likely that if I was right the first time, then I'll be right the second time. Our beliefs are not independent.
Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 4:06 PM
Anonymous: "...why isn't repetitive success a basis for trust of our thoughts?"
Because - on a naturalistic view of the mind - the very thoughts that tell us we've achieved "repetitive success" are themselves nothing more than mental "secretions" of our brains induced by electro-chemical neural activity beyond our conscious control. If naturalism is true, rationality (i.e., the possession of reason and understanding) is at best an illusion foisted off on us by electro-chemical activity in our brains (the same is true of our sense that we exercise free will). That illusion may give us some reproductive advantage favored and perpetuated by natural selection, but naturalism gives us no basis for trusting that it is anything other than an illusion. The uncompromising naturalism of his theory caused Darwin himself to doubt human rationality. "With me," he wrote to a friend, "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?"
Posted by: Susannah | May 29, 2009 4:07 PM
And that's where his whole reasoning fails. But for a Christian, reliable knowledge is axiomatic; we must have Truth, certain, infallible, divinely inspired Truth to begin with, as well as the God-given ability to Understand and Believe this Truth.
The belief in the all-knowing, wise Heavenly Father is built on an unstated assumption of the infallible Self.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | May 29, 2009 4:09 PM
But your argument appearing here cannot possibly be superior to mine, unless you reject the reductionist-naturalist-electrical-engineer position that the words appearing on the web page are represented by mere soul-less transistors switching on and off.
Or you could consider the emergent properties of a large set of simple things.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 4:11 PM
Look, science just plain works. That you, and Plantinga et al cannot explain how in philisophical terms is your problem, not mine. Philosophy does not help much in working out how to deal with the parasite that causes malaria evolving resistance to the newest drugs. Science does. It not only allows us to develop new drugs, it also explains why we should expect such resistance to develop.
When you can explain how something that some (not all, not everyone is a stupid as you) philosophers claim does not work manages to to work so well come back to us. In the meantime I suggest you keep your gob shut so we do not realise quite how intellectually vacuous you are.
It will make is a simple as I can for you. Evolution happens. Therefore anyone claiming there are philosophical grounds for saying it does not must be wrong. More generally science works, therefore claims it does not are also wrong. There may well be arguments to be had over the philosophical basis for why science works, but they not alter the reality of the fact it does.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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May 29, 2009 4:11 PM
Anonymous #183
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 4:12 PM
Jim, the Deceitful Demon argument has never gotten anyone, including its inventor Descartes, non-fallaciously past universal skepticism. None of the moves to rebuild a foundation for knowledge beyond that zero point, from Descartes to Plantinga, hold water. If you want to remain stuck there, more power to you. The rest of us will simply proceed on non-insane assumptions, beginning with the assumption that adopting universal skepticism is a stunningly non-productive philosophical move.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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May 29, 2009 4:15 PM
Damn, the link in my post #278 isn't obvious.
Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 4:18 PM
Jud: "It is trivially easy to show that 'naturalism,' a/k/a scientific methodology, can indeed provide such a basis."
The naturalism Plantinga is discussing is a philosophical worldview, not scientific methodology. It's the view that all phenomena can be explained by natural laws and forces. It's a philosophical assumption, not a proveable statement about reality.
I think you've missed the point of Plantinga's argument.
Posted by: Stu
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May 29, 2009 4:18 PM
And then, once you have an axiomatization of ZF set theory in terms of recursive functions to share with us, as well as an explanation how those very functions were selected for in us but not in bonobos, please get back to us.
Well, let's start with a workable definition of what you consider "recursive functions" and "selected for".
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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May 29, 2009 4:19 PM
Jim just proves the statement that philosophy without evidence is sophistry. And he has no evidence.
Posted by: Joe Bleau | May 29, 2009 4:20 PM
Jim, why should 'trustworthy' mean anything other than 'tends to produce really good results' or maybe 'seems to correspond pretty darn well with reality'?
Why does the end result of rationality have to be some logically (in the Boolean sense) incontrovertible, transcendentally unassailable state of knowing?
Isn't it enough that our forbears decisively won the battle to occupy the tippy top of the food chain? Why do you assume that there is something transcendent that humans can not only strive for, but reach, that, say, a shrimp can't?
Posted by: Dan L. | May 29, 2009 4:20 PM
Analogy fails. Let's analyze. You assert that a drunkard cannot be sure of his own judgments (by the way, Firefox has built in spell check). I assume this mean that he cannot trust his judgments to the same degree that a sober man can? If all entities were always drunk, perhaps they could not trust their judgments, but how would they know this? What basis of comparison is there other than a sober person?
Likewise, perhaps our judgments are not valid even when we are sober. But compared to what? You're implicitly assuming, as does Jim and Plantinga himself, that there is some point of view from which objective Truth can be verified. But why must this be so? What is truth in the first place?
You have hamstrung your own argument here. The drunk man's judgment can be shown to be in error relative to a sober man's judgment. A sober man's judgment can be shown to be in error relative the judgment of other men. What other basis of comparison is there?
You're assuming that the two are mutually exclusive which they aren't, but I'll ignore that for now. Scientists have worried about this but don't worry about it any longer because they know it's not really a problem.
Instead of assuming that there is such a thing as the real world and that there is objective Truth there to investigate, let's normalize science to a new context. Science is no longer a study of the natural world; it is now a study of the perceptions of individuals. Individuals perceive things and the question is why and what are the nature of those perceptions.
Our first scientific hypothesis is that there is a real world, and that the properties of that real world are what's true. We arrive at this hypothesis by reasoning as follows: I have a will and by exercising that will I can affect my perceptions (apparently through the intermediary of the body). However, my will does not control my perceptions -- my perceptions are constrained by some entity beyond my will. By conversing with others, I learn that the experiences of others correspond very closely to mine, and furthermore that the constraints that are outside my will are similar to the constraints on others' wills to an astonishing degree of fidelity. The simplest explanation for this state of affairs is that there is, indeed, a physical, material world in which we all live; that this world has persistent properties that are consistent no matter the properties of the observer (although those affect the properties of the observations, they do not seem to greatly affect the nature of the object of the observations itself).
One objection I can think of to this hypothesis is that perhaps the perceptions of all individuals are skewed from reality in consistent ways, such that they're all wrong, but they're all wrong for the same reason. But then, what does it mean to be wrong in this context? Again, there is no basis for comparison. But more importantly, there is no need for one -- a model of the world is true insofar as it is useful. Consider the qualia inversion problem. I claim that it is true that the sky is blue. A friend agrees, but unknown to both of us, each of us perceives blue a different way. My blue is his green and vice versa (although he calls my green blue, so that when we talk about colors we still agree). Is my friend wrong that the sky is blue (when what he sees is green)? or am I wrong that the sky is blue, since I am seeing what my friend calls green?
I would say that neither person is correct. Light traveling through the atmosphere is diffracted by an amount that is a function of their frequency. High frequency visible light is thus diffracted to a greater degree than the other frequencies of visible light, and thus the sky appears blue.
We see here that although my friend and I have mutually inconsistent internal perceptions, the outcomes of the perceptions are mutually consistent. Furthermore, by investigating the consistency that we find, we can find the source of that consistency -- the limited band of frequencies that correspond to the color blue and the impact of photons of those frequencies in the chemical dyes in our eyes. This hypothesis -- that the sensation of blue corresponds to photons of certain frequencies impinging on one's retinae -- explains the consistencies of color experience for both my friend and myself individually and explains why we can agree on what the color blue is even though our internal perceptions of that color are different. Furthermore, presumably we cleverly devised laboratory equipment to do our research into electromagnetic waves; our hypothesis about the nature of blue light is now consistent with the experience of two human beings and a piece of experimental apparatus.
Now what you guys seem to be saying is that since we cannot trust our perceptions, we cannot trust our conclusions about color and frequency of photons. However, we can still be sure that we experience color -- that experience is irreducible. Furthermore, we have to ask why other people have color vision consistent with our own (even peoples with only two color words can discriminate shades of color as well as citizens of industrial nations). The frequency interpretation of color reconciles all these facts.
Compare with the hypothesis, "God made the sky blue." This may explain myperception of the sky being blue, but it doesn't explain why that experience is consistent moment to moment or why it's consistent person to person without assuming that was the motive of this God entity. Note that we also have to posit the existence of a God entity in the first place, which wasn't necessary in the frequency interpretation.
The frequency interpretation of the color of light is in turn based on results from CED, QED, and relativity and is consistent with all those results. It is further corroborated by our application of these principles in engineering. Unlike the God hypothesis, it allows us to make predictions about the result of experiments involving color perception and the frequency of photons, which as far as I'm concerned pretty much puts the nail in the coffin. If my beliefs consistently predict future events in the real world (at, say, a better than 50% rate), then my beliefs must correspond in some strong way to the way the real world actually is. And even if they don't, how could anyone tell?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 4:22 PM
One wonders how the likes of Jim manage to get out of bed in the morning. It must take him an age to arrive at the philosophical conclusion that not only does a bed exist (as a philosphical construct) but also there is a specific instance of a bed that he is in. This is before he goes on to work out what "out" means when it comes to bed, and what the basis is for thinking that "out" is anything more than a product of his imagination.
Meanwhile the rest of us just throw back the duvet and place both feet on the floor with varying degrees of reluctance having decided that since there was bed on previous days, and there was an "out" to go into when got out of it then there is no reason to suppose it will be any different today. And besides, all that thinking is too hard before the first cup of tea/coffee.
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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May 29, 2009 4:24 PM
Please define “function” without using set theory.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 4:26 PM
It is an assumption that seem to have taken us a remarkably long way. That alone is reasonable grounds for accepting it is true. Of course it is not proved to be true, anymore than it is proved that the Earth orbits the Sun, or all life on Earth share common ancestory. Science treats all knowledge as tentative. Nothing can be known for certain.
It is telling that you do understand this point.
Posted by: JBlilie | May 29, 2009 4:27 PM
@105:
"we're only approximating reality in a way that's useful."
Nice, succinct definition of our cognitive system: Senses, brain, consciousness. No one who has seriously considered it (let alone looked at the data) would contend that what we perceive as conscious reality is accurate. It's merely useful. Our models of reality are frequently caught being wrong and we shake our head, look/listen/whatever again and catch the correct approximation (optical illusions, etc.)
The conclusion that some magical critter gave us brains that can detect "truth" accurately is just nonsense on its face.
We have brains that produce a useful model of the world around us. Full-stop. There's no "why" involved. There's no "who" involved (aside from our long line of progenitors.)
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | May 29, 2009 4:28 PM
Jim: others have covered points re: your statements and the others in your camp. They have better presentations then I.
But I'll give my bottom-line again: Plantinga gives philosophers a bad name because his arguments are useless in the real world to the max - regardless of how presented.
The degree of uncertainty your/Plantinga's "philosophy" injects into understanding real world problems makes thinking and acting a dead-end activity. I mean why bother.
To me - I'll speak for myself and be blunt - you (general you) have to be insanely delusional or a god apologist grasping at straws - a purveyor of obfuscation - to even propose this worthless piece of antiquated mental gymnastics.
As Steve in 279 said: ".. adopting universal skepticism is a stunningly non-productive philosophical move."
Posted by: steve | May 29, 2009 4:40 PM
Pretty sure you can define naturalism with out reference to an invisible sky fairy. Why accept a negative definition? A quick visit to wikipedia and we get Naturalism is a philosophical position that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.
Much better.
Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 4:43 PM
Matt: "One wonders how the likes of Jim manage to get out of bed in the morning."
Easy. Because I think naturalism is a false view of reality, I have no trouble trusting that my thoughts - such as the thought that my bed exists - can be rational (i.e. possessing reason and understanding) and valid. You, on the other hand, have no doubt that your bed exists, but you subscribe to a worldview (naturalism) that provides no basis for trusting that what you think about your bed is true. You argue for the truthfulness of naturalism, but you conduct your mental activity as if it isn't true. If it were true, there would be no "you" engaged in any mental activity; that mental activity would instead be nothing more than electro-chemical neural activity induced by material causes, all of which are irrational (i.e., lacking reason and understanding).
Posted by: Ignorabimus | May 29, 2009 4:46 PM
@287: You have my point exactly.
Recall this:
Computational neuroscience is getting closer to explaining how the human nervous system performs serial cognitive operations. Let's be optimistic and say that we will soon have a working account of how arbitrarily complex recursive functions are implemented in brainware.
... and then we come to *your* question.
If ZFC describes a set of facts about the world (and many mathematicians think it does) then, unless set theory reduces to recursive functions, at that point we'll still be short of a naturalistic explanation of at least one phenomenon: the existence and abiding utility of human mathematical research. If you opt for formalism instead then you have the issues I pointed to earlier to deal with. I'm not saying I have the answers -- but it's not simple stuff.
(As an aside: there are those who think that sets of ordered pairs can stand in for functions but are not themselves functions per se. You can define a function independently of set theory by taking mappings as fundamental. See Goldblatt's Topoi for instance.)
Saying that 'science works' is no reply. That's like saying to someone back in 1750: "shut up! Newton's Principia works and so stop worrying about loadstones and amber and lightning and stuff." It's just pig ignorant and wholly unscientific.
And now I'll shut my vacuous gob just as the vulgar Mr. Penfold suggests.
Posted by: The Barefoot Bum | May 29, 2009 4:48 PM
Having read quite a bit of contemporary philosophy, it is sadly true that professional and academic philosophers seem generally innumerate and oblivious to irony.
Unfortunately, Plantinga is not the only offender; 99% of philosophers give the other 1% a bad name, and Plantinga doesn't really stand out of the crowd.
And you have, I think, missed the point of Plantinga's critique of naturalism; your rebuttal does not address Plantinga's fundamental point, that truth and adaptive functionality are essentially distinct. You're in good company though: Stephen Law makes a similar mistake.
Plantinga is, of course, completely wrong, but I think he's wrong in a somewhat more philosophically interesting way than you believe him to be.
Posted by: JBlilie | May 29, 2009 4:48 PM
I assert that there's no such thing as "absolute truth." (Just as there's no such thing as a god -- that does fit nicely.)
Even if there were such a thing, we could not know it. Because our brains are evolved to produce only a useful model of reality (not a true one) and our measurement devices all involve error.
Maybe I'm just saying that ranting on about our being unable to disprove solipsism isn't very useful (universal skepticism isn't a very useful stance.)
You scientists can't prove reality is out there: Therefore God exists and he is Jebus and I know what he wants. Not exactly logical thinking.
Philosophers may fancy themeselves interested in "truth" while we scientists and engineers are only interested in what is useful. Any wonder about who gets more done?
Reminds me of the engineering student asking a question during an exam, "Can we assume zero friction in the bearings?" and the prof answers, "no, all the zero friction bearings are kept in the physics department." (Or in the philosophy department.)
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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May 29, 2009 4:49 PM
Jim #281
You're misreading Plantinga, since he's not a sophist and the worldview you're describing is mere sophistry.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 4:49 PM
Jim may trust his thoughts, but he has no logical basis whatsoever for doing so. Darwinian epistemology may, or may not, be a faulty explanation for why we can (somewhat, sometimes, with careful intersubjective checking) trust our thoughts, but at least it's an attempt at an explanation. Jim has no explanation at all, just blind faith and gobbledeygook.
Posted by: dreikin | May 29, 2009 4:53 PM
Regarding the Devious Demon,
1) Assume Demon
2) Assume No Demon
3) Note that there is no practical difference to yourself, aside from the truth value of Demon vs. no Demon.
4) Note that it is, at this point, impossible to determine whether (1) or (2) is correct.
5) Ignore (1) vs. (2) until such time as they can be tested.
6) Voila - you're out of the ditch.
Alternatively,
1) Assume Demon
2) Assume No Demon
3) Establish those axioms that must be common between (1) and (2)
4) Voila - you're out of the ditch.
Or even*
1) Assume P = ¬P
2) There is no difference between 'Assume Demon' and 'Assume No Demon' - nor anything else. This is unusable, and easily established as not true in at least some cases.
3) Assume P =/= ¬P
4) Voila - you're out of the ditch.
*Ok, this last one would obviously take a lot more work than stated, but it's a potentially viable path to go down.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 4:53 PM
Jim said:
Other than past experience, the bed was there yesterday, and day before ...., and the experience of others, in that they could get into the bed with me. I have an understanding of the general concept of a bed, and I am aware that what I call my bed accords with that concept. Further other people have a concept of a bed that seems to be pretty much identical to mine, and some of those who have seen my bed do not seem to think my bed is in anyway different from their concept. Tht is why my "belief" that my bed exists is rational.
You do not allow yourself the benefit of either your previous experience, or the experience of others. Your position is simply solopsism. You cannot think a bed exists becuase you have no grounds for accepting anything at all exists.
Posted by: Sastra
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May 29, 2009 4:58 PM
Jim #274 wrote:
In addition to what others have pointed out, I think there's another problem with this. In order to argue for the impossibility of reason on 'materialist reductionism,' Jim's invoking a straw-man version called "greedy reductionism" -- the belief that everything must be explainable at the level of the constituents that make it up. If thoughts are the result of neural activity, then they are "nothing more" than neural activity, and therefore you're not allowed to say anything about a thought, that you couldn't say about a neuron. Thus, the emphasis on 'electro-chemical activity' and "meat robots can never be anything more than meat robots."
Reason, evidently, ought to be made out of Reason. That's the only legitimate way to talk about it coherently. Like comes from like. Electro-chemical activity cannot produce thoughts, because that would make thoughts nothing more than electro-chemicals, and they neither think, nor reason.
Once again, it's either/or with extremes, and an inability to understand a bottom-up process.
Posted by: Tom Morris | May 29, 2009 4:58 PM
Yay. The standard selective anti-philosophical stuff is going on, and it's irritating me. The problem is that the philosophers who say sensible stuff don't get written up on blogs for saying absurd things. And so we get things like people saying that Plantinga's argument here is representative of all philosophy.
The fact is, you won't read the works of most contemporary philosophers. They are long, quite dense and technical and well hidden (the stuff with all the funny symbols doesn't get put on display in Borders Books).
One can sit and read a whole issue of Philosophy, Review of Metaphysics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society or Noûs and one won't encounter this kind of thing. Plantinga's article is in Christianity Today which doesn't know an existential quantifier from a magic Jesus cracker.
Rorty had it about right when he said "Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used."
Plantinga gets attention because he is pushing - for religious reasons, of course - some profoundly broken thinking. But we don't dismiss all biochemists on the basis of Michael Behe. We don't dismiss all historians on the basis of the idiots who write those right-wing "the Founding Fathers were all Pentecostal evangelical snake handlers, praise Jeeeezus!" books they hawk to dittoheads. Philip Johnson doesn't invalidate the work of all legal academics. For every Alvin Plantinga, there's a hundred other epistemologists doing well-reasoned sterling work in obscure journals. What the hell have they done wrong to be caught in this dragnet?
What pisses me off more is that everyone's perfectly happy to rag on philosophers, but then Kitzmiller happens and out trots Rob Pennock and Barbara Forrest to help save the day from the forces of stupid (hell yeah). Philosophers give for the most part, as the kids say, mad props to science (except a few wooly postmodernist twaddle-pushers, cranks and guru wannabes). Some love back would be nice. Right, I'll piss off back to my armchair.
Posted by: Slick | May 29, 2009 4:58 PM
So Plantinga is a “pretentious clown” (Myers), “senile” (#14), a “kind old pawpaw” (#18), “philosophical idiot” (#51), and “a kook” (#71).
If his argument weren’t so obviously “ludicrous,” (Myers) “stupid,” (Myers), an “indigestible muddled mess” (Myers), “confused” (Myers), “muddled lunacy” (Myers), “Very Very Stupid” (apparently, #3 has discovered a Platonic Form), “pulled directly from his ass” (#28), “utterly worthless” (#29), “bad in so many ways, its ridiculous” (#44), “incomprehensible” (#45), “left me giggling helplessly” (#45), “misaligned illogical thinking” (#56), “completely wrong” (#65), and “demonstrably wrong by even the armchair philosopher” (#90), one might wonder why all the fuss.
Shucks, don’t you people have anything important to talk about?
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 4:59 PM
In practice he ignores it because it is meaningless, irrelevant BS.
Typical morning. Get up. Spend 10 minutes deciding if the world is real or just that I think it is real. Go make a cup of coffee. Wonder whether coffee is real and will cause alertness for 15 minutes. Stick it in the microwave. Wonder if microwave ovens, as a product of fallible human minds even exist much less works. Turns on microwave. It runs. Or maybe I just think it runs. Drinks coffee. Decides the human mind and senses are an unreliable way to discern the truth of the world. Since there are no alternatives, spends the rest of the day in a catatonic trance.
Posted by: Dan L. | May 29, 2009 5:00 PM
It is a philosophical assumption that there is such a thing as provable statements about reality. It is itself not a provable statement. Guess you can't do philosophy any more, Jim.
Another problem you guys have is that you completely gloss over philosophical theories about mind, epistemology, etc. For instance, what does it mean for a statement to be "about" reality? In my opinion, statements such as "the cow is grazing" are actually about mental representations, in which case they are always trivially true even when the representation of a cow is really the result of seeing a horse on a dark night.
So the statement escapes (in a CS sense) to being something more like, "I perceive that the cow is grazing." The extent to which that perception is consistent with other empirical results (ask your friend, devise an experiment, etc) is the degree to which the original statement (cow is grazing) is true.
By the way, Firefox has built in spell check.
Posted by: Tiger | May 29, 2009 5:02 PM
So his argument boils down to the idea that his god gave us all perfect minds, therefore whatever we believe is true?
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | May 29, 2009 5:04 PM
Jim:
Your homework assignment - Please describe the big difference between dogs and wolves and how it exemplifies (or does not) natural selection driven shifts toward higher plane mental activity.
Hint: empathy.
Additional hint: "You argue for the truthfulness of naturalism, but you conduct your mental activity as if it isn't true." I took your point as reactions to stimuli == lack of reason and understanding.
I'm not playing you Jim. I grant my assignment is not well formed as a PZ might form it. But I bet a lot here get what I am driving at very quickly.
Posted by: Harry Varty | May 29, 2009 5:05 PM
I struggle to understand why otherwise intelligent people believe in the supernatural. However, if ‘brains are reliable therefore goddidit’ is their best effort then I am not about to have a Damascene conversion.
Plantinga admits that there is no evidence for God so he has dressed up a hopeless argument with some long words to make it look like a good reason for believing in God. Still twitching but no pulse.
Are these the convoluted hoops that believers have to go through to justify their belief in a supernatural being? No wonder they are running scared of atheists and their straightforward, logical, intelligble arguments.
Posted by: Tom Morris | May 29, 2009 5:05 PM
It's pretty fucking simple: we do it for the lulz.
Posted by: dreikin | May 29, 2009 5:07 PM
Onto the more general matter:
1) Assume your rationality is perfect
2) Assume everyone else's rationality is perfect
3) Note schizophrenia
4) Note that there are many other obvious instances - mental disorders or otherwise - where rationality is flawed.
5) Note that to people of respectable sanity can come to remarkably different conclusions from the same data (eg, Phlogiston).
6) Thus, everyone else's rationality is NOT perfect.
7) Therefore, either you are the only perfectly rational human is, or you are not perfectly rational
8) Either way, those other non-perfectly rational people seem to come up with an awful lot of stuff that your possibly perfectly rational self believes to be true, without your input.
9) Therefore, Plantinga's wrong.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 5:07 PM
Posted by: Physis | May 29, 2009 5:10 PM
Plantinga isn't the only muddle-headed philosopher at Notre Dame; as an undergraduate I almost choked on my pot noodle to read van Inwagen (an otherwise competent metaphysician) claim that Michael Denton's 'Evolution - A Theory in Crisis' was a balanced read on the topic. Again, most philosophers aren't this foolish, but sadly a minority are.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 29, 2009 5:12 PM
Don't you have anything more important to talk about than pearl clutching whinging about those mean and nasty words?
Posted by: Physis | May 29, 2009 5:13 PM
Plantinga isn't the only muddle-headed philosopher at Notre Dame; as an undergraduate I almost choked on my pot noodle to read van Inwagen (an otherwise competent metaphysician) claim that Michael Denton's 'Evolution - A Theory in Crisis' was a balanced read on the topic. Again, most philosophers aren't this foolish, but sadly a minority are.
Posted by: Tom Morris | May 29, 2009 5:16 PM
Physis: now, that is curious. I knew Peter van Inwagen was a theist, but I had no clue he was into Michael Denton and, presumably, intelligent design or some variant thereof. That is quite sad indeed. I don't think I'll be able to read a van Inwagen paper in quite the same way anymore.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 5:16 PM
Philosophers who say sensible things do get written up in blogs for saying sensible things though, at least around Scienceblogs they do. PZ has written about Janet Stemwedel, John Wilkins, AC Grayling, Dan Dennet and others. He might not always have agreed with them, but has conceeded their arguments are not without merit.
I suspect that is becuase life is too short. People here tend to have a scientific mindset, and whilst what Philosophers have to say about the mind might be interesting, what the nueuro guys have to say is more imporant.
Posted by: H.H. | May 29, 2009 5:19 PM
Jim @ #236
Naturalism may not give us any basis for that trusting our thoughts are rational, but neither does supernaturalism. Supernatural entities could be tricksters which endow us with flawed minds. You have no rational argument to the contrary, only faith, and that's by definition a losing argument. Faith in "benevolent magic" is not a suitable explanation for why things are the way they are, Jim. Your arguments are worse than pathetic. Seriously, do you not listen to yourself?Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 5:23 PM
Jim: "You, on the other hand, have no doubt that your bed exists, but you subscribe to a worldview (naturalism) that provides no basis for trusting that what you think about your bed is true."
Matt: "Other than past experience, the bed was there yesterday, and day before ...., and the experience of others, in that they could get into the bed with me. I have an understanding of the general concept of a bed, and I am aware that what I call my bed accords with that concept. Further other people have a concept of a bed that seems to be pretty much identical to mine, and some of those who have seen my bed do not seem to think my bed is in anyway different from their concept. Tht is why my 'belief' that my bed exists is rational."
On a naturalistic view of the mind, every thought you've mentioned - from the thought that you've previously experienced your bed to the general concept of a bed (and so on) - is nothing more than an electro-chemical neural event in your brain. For all you know, that neural event, which - on a naturalistic view of the mind - must be the product of irrational material causes, may not correspond to reality. What you describe as your previous experience of your bed may be an illusion. You think that your bed was there the day before, but - if naturalism is true - that thought is not something you consciously produced; it is instead simply an electro-chemical neural event occurring in your brain, and there's no reason to suppose that the irrational material causes giving rise to that neural event make it conform to reality.
By the way, solipsism is perhaps the least apt description of my position. I believe that reality exists outside of our minds, but I don't think that naturalism provides any assurance that our thoughts can correspond to reality. I think we simply have to take our rationality as a given, something that naturalism doesn't empower us to do. If, on the other hand, we subscribe to a worldview (such as theism) that allows us to think that our mental activity can transcend natural forces and laws, then we can assume that our thoughts can be rational and valid.
JBlilie: "I assert that there's no such thing as 'absolute truth.'"
Is that true?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 5:26 PM
Naturalism itself does not give us any reason for supposing our thoughts are rational, but employing naturalism in the form of the scientific method does. We we try to explain phenonoma using naturalism we come up with theories that explain not only prior observations but also have a predictive capability in that they are consistant with observations may after the theory was formulated. Supernaturalism, in the form of religion, just seems to be "goddidit", with no means of formulating the means by which "goddidit" and with no predictive powers on what god may do next.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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May 29, 2009 5:26 PM
I am not anti-philosophy. I think philosophy is a very useful (some philosophers would dislike that descriptor, I think) discipline for thinking about thinking. I certainly don't intend to bash all philosophers — that's why this post has the title it does.
Posted by: H.H. | May 29, 2009 5:26 PM
No, theism does not allow you to think that your thoughts can be rational and valid. That's a baseless assertion. Pure fail.Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 5:31 PM
Not only in my mind on a particular instance, but in my mind over a period of time. Also in the minds of others, again not just on one instance, but repeatedly over time.
Other than the fact it works you mean ? Science explains things, invoking god does not. Saying "godditit" can be used to explain anything, and thus it explains nothing. If naturalism is so poor way of understanding the world, can you explain why it is so succesful ?
Posted by: dreikin | May 29, 2009 5:35 PM
Also, and this might be hard for some of y'all to follow without the right background knowledge*,
1) Note that bacteria exist without rationality
2) Thus, rationality is not required for existence and reproduction
3) Note that organisms which better react to/predict/manipulate their external environment may succeed better.
4) Note that a plastic system can react to/predict/manipulate more environments than a roughly equally-sized hard-coded system
5) Note that a plastic system can be easily constructed via a few simple pattern recognition, response, and conditioning routines.
6) Note that those routines are NOT required for survival and reproduction.
7) Thus, a hard-coded or non-coded system can develop a plastic component without necessarily losing fitness
8) Thus, a system with a plastic component may be better off than one without
9) Note that more plastic components may also increase fitness
10) Note that in order to be effective and increase fitness, the plastic components must be able to represent the external environment accurately
11) Note that (10) is only true in-so-far-as the affect the ability of the organism to live and reproduce
12) Note that the system is still deterministic
13) Note that the system does not require anything other than good fortune and selection to develop
14) Thus, the existence of some forms of rationality require no prior rationality.
15) Therefore Plantinga is wrong.
*Yes, I'm taking a lot of short-cuts. Full proofs are left as exercises for the readers. It helps to be familiar with biology, emergent systems, and several other areas not obviously related.
Posted by: Tom Morris | May 29, 2009 5:37 PM
PZ: Sure, I know you weren't. It's some of the overeager folks in the peanut gallery. I see a fair bit of it elsewhere too: people saying things like "philosophy is a load of cobblers" then going on to praise Dan Dennett and AC Grayling, then somehow claiming that because they don't fit their broken understanding of philosophy, that they aren't philosophers.
Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 5:38 PM
H.H.: "Your arguments are worse than pathetic. Seriously, do you not listen to yourself?"
I do, but I don't take seriously the things said by people who resort to adjectives rather than argument.
By the way, before I begin to ignore you altogether, I should mention that I don't believe in "benevolent magic," but I do believe that intelligence, not matter, is the ultimate reality. Thus, I have cause to think that our minds are capable of reason and understanding. As Sastra wrote: "Reason, evidently, ought to be made out of Reason. That's the only legitimate way to talk about it coherently. Like comes from like."
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | May 29, 2009 5:39 PM
Sorry, no. The "God" who is supposedly guaranteeing your rationality could, for all you know, actually be the deceitful demon, guaranteeing that your thoughts are 100% INcorrect. You will never find valid grounds for knowing which it is.
There is no way out of this. The reason why so much of the history of Western philosophy from the time of Descartes to the 20th century consists of attempts to improve on the arguments of Descartes, is that philosophers could see that Descartes had not actually succeeded in getting out of the trap, but mistakenly believed that his strategy- starting from the position that all our perceptions MIGHT be false, then trying to find some bit of bedrock on which one could stand in the swamp- was a useful way to do philosophy. Sadly, it isn't.
And universal skepticism is in fact closely related to solipsism. Both are logical traps- once you argue your way into one of them, there is neither any argument nor any possible observation that can validly get you out again. Any argument attempting to proceed from the supposed possibility that we could be wrong about absolutely everything can safely be ignored.
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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May 29, 2009 5:40 PM
OK, can you point to an example in Goldblatt where the arrows of a category are termed “functions”, but the objects are not sets? I'm not a CT-ist, but since I happen to have a copy of Goldblatt handy and a quick scan doesn't reveal any, I thought I'd ask.
Posted by: Kingasaurus | May 29, 2009 5:41 PM
No, theism does not allow you to think that your thoughts can be rational and valid. That's a baseless assertion. Pure fail.
Correct. It presumes that this "god" makes our minds "rational and valid." Apparently justified by "because I say so," I guess.
Since "god" is a wild card who can do absolutely anything he wants to because of inscrutable motives, there's no basis for claiming that "a god exists" leads to any conclusions at all about our minds or how they work (or don't work). Jim's just making shit up.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 5:41 PM
If I have Jim right he think that a naturalistic world view means you cannot come to any understanding or conclusions becuase our minds cannot be trusted to understand reality correctly.
If he was talking about one person at one particular instance he would be correct. However he would have us believe that not only do we not grasp reality, there is an overwhelming consensus of our wrong grasp of reality in many areas. Further he seems to claim that any utility of our wrong understanding of reality is a figment of our imaginations. Thus it would seem not only do we have no basis for the germ theory of disease, we are also mistaken in thinking it has proven useful in allowing us to implement policies that reduce the burden of disease. I guess eradicating smallpox did not actually happen.
Posted by: CJO | May 29, 2009 5:43 PM
exactly how this capacity for recursion is the product of evolution.
Yes, that's tricky, but hardly hopeless. First, it may be that precursor structures to the dedicated left-hemisphere structures responsible for linguistic processing arose as motor-cortex adaptations to complicated serial tasks like tool making and efficient rock or spear throwing.
In parallel with this evolution could have been the enhancement of short-term memory, attention, and rudimentary serial cognition under selection pressure for navigation, cooperative hunting, knowing where certain foods could be found in certain seasons, etc. Out of this could have arisen a rudimentary "marker" system, sort of a proto-ideolect.
Now, the primary function of the structures in their derived forms is they enable communication with conspecifics, and we haven't even gotten to social interactions yet. But co-opt the above into a communication regime of increasingly discrete and complex signs comprising facial expressions and gesture (inextricable from ordinary speech even in modern humans --watch someone talk on the phone sometime) and take account of what must have been extreme selection pressure for status in the early H. sapiens social environment. I don't think we're that far from a Chomskian engine, do you?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 5:44 PM
Got some evidence or is that just a baseless assertion ?
Posted by: Olorin | May 29, 2009 5:45 PM
There are basically two ways to attack an argument: It’s structure is wrong (it is invalid), or its premises are wrong (it is unsound). PZ’s post and the comments attack the soundness.
Suppose, arguendo, that Plantinga’s premises are true. Seems to me the argument is still logically invalid. He has conflated “false” with “maladaptive” in getting to “unreliable.” P’s example of the frog who, instead of a “true” belief that the fly is good to eat, grabs the fly because he thinks it is a princess who will solve all his problems. Whether true or false, the belief produces an adaptive result.
But his example of the lions jumps the rails: Here, P supposes that the humanoid’s true belief is that the llion will eat him, and that the false belief is that the lion is just a big cuddly cat. Unlike the frog, this belief causes a maladaptive behavior is it is false. A relevant false belief might be that God will smite him severely if he does not escape from the lion. In this case, like that of the frog, the false belief still produces adaptive behavior.
However, this change nullifies the logic of P’s conclusion that beliefs can’t be both false and adaptive. In that case, reliability (i.e., “Truth”) is irrelevant to evolution. I can logically believe in materialistic evolution or I can believe in creationism, and, either belief could possibly be adaptive. Which is, I think, where Plantinga started before he took a turn into the ditch..
(This is not to say that :P’s premises are correct. For example, his probabilities are nothing more than Pascal’s Wager, which has been refuted ad nauseam.)
Posted by: Alex | May 29, 2009 5:45 PM
The question is whether our being the result of evolution affects the likelihood of our cognitive faculties being reliable in discovering scientific fact.
Assuming our cognitive faculties are unlikely to be reliable in discovering scientific fact, any conclusion drawn from the truth of evolution is unlikely to be reliable, as we had to use these unlikely to be reliable cognitive faculties to conclude evolution is scientific fact.
Conversely, assuming our cognitive faculties are reliable in discovering scientific fact and we discover evolution is a scientific fact through these reliable cognitive faculties, but we reason from evolution to the conclusion that our cognitive faculties aren't reliable, then our reasoning from evolution was wrong. Otherwise, evolution must be wrong, but this contradicts the assumed reliability of our cognitive faculties in discovering the scientific fact of evolution.
This stems from the problem of using epistemological arguments to attack specific scientific theories. You either attack an aspect of the philosophy of science, or you attack specific scientific theories on empirical, scientific grounds.
Posted by: H.H. | May 29, 2009 5:47 PM
Proof? You can't simply assert something like that without showing how you arrived at such a conclusion. Remember, you're the one claiming to have a way of knowing that your thoughts are rational aside from faith and guesswork. You hypocrisy on this front is the cause of the jeers against you, so addressing this inconsistency is the only way to way to remedy the situation. Well, that or realize that you started an argument you can't win and slink away.
Ok, first of all, if assumptions were capable of being a "cause to think that our minds are capable of reason and understanding," then we would just assume that and leave out the magic universal intelligence nonsense. You can't fault people for making one assumption simply by making another. Secondly, Sastra was making fun of people who think like you. It demonstrates your limitations.Posted by: Alex | May 29, 2009 5:47 PM
The question is whether our being the result of evolution affects the likelihood of our cognitive faculties being reliable in discovering scientific fact.
Assuming our cognitive faculties are unlikely to be reliable in discovering scientific fact, any conclusion drawn from the truth of evolution is unlikely to be reliable, as we had to use these unlikely to be reliable cognitive faculties to conclude evolution is scientific fact.
Conversely, assuming our cognitive faculties are reliable in discovering scientific fact and we discover evolution is a scientific fact through these reliable cognitive faculties, but we reason from evolution to the conclusion that our cognitive faculties aren't reliable, then our reasoning from evolution was wrong. Otherwise, evolution must be wrong, but this contradicts the assumed reliability of our cognitive faculties in discovering the scientific fact of evolution.
This stems from the problem of using epistemological arguments to attack specific scientific theories. You either attack an aspect of the philosophy of science, or you attack specific scientific theories on empirical, scientific grounds.
Posted by: Olorin | May 29, 2009 5:51 PM
There are basically two ways to attack an argument: It’s structure is wrong (it is invalid), or its premises are wrong (it is unsound). PZ’s post and the comments attack the soundness.
Suppose, arguendo, that Plantinga’s premises are true. Seems to me the argument is still logically invalid. He has conflated “false” with “maladaptive” in getting to “unreliable.” P’s example of the frog who, instead of a “true” belief that the fly is good to eat, grabs the fly because he thinks it is a princess who will solve all his problems. Whether true or false, the belief produces an adaptive result.
But his example of the lions jumps the rails: Here, P supposes that the humanoid’s true belief is that the llion will eat him, and that the false belief is that the lion is just a big cuddly cat. Unlike the frog, this belief causes a maladaptive behavior is it is false. A relevant false belief might be that God will smite him severely if he does not escape from the lion. In this case, like that of the frog, the false belief still produces adaptive behavior.
However, this change nullifies the logic of P’s conclusion that beliefs can’t be both false and adaptive. In that case, reliability (i.e., “Truth”) is irrelevant to evolution. I can logically believe in materialistic evolution or I can believe in creationism, and, either belief could possibly be adaptive. Which is, I think, where Plantinga started before he took a turn into the ditch..
(This is not to say that :P’s premises are correct. For example, his probabilities are nothing more than Pascal’s Wager, which has been refuted ad nauseam.)
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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May 29, 2009 5:52 PM
PZ. Please no more philosophy threads. Reading through these comments is like wading through molasses. Naked. With bugs in it. And old stained underwear. With flies buzzing all around.
Posted by: Stu
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May 29, 2009 5:53 PM
If it were true, there would be no "you" engaged in any mental activity; that mental activity would instead be nothing more than electro-chemical neural activity induced by material causes, all of which are irrational (i.e., lacking reason and understanding).
Wait, hold on. Are you really asserting that it it is impossible to form rational activity from material causes?
I do, but I don't take seriously the things said by people who resort to adjectives rather than argument.
Thanks for the spit-take. Oh noes, ADJECTIVES!
it is instead simply an electro-chemical neural event occurring in your brain, and there's no reason to suppose that the irrational material causes giving rise to that neural event make it conform to reality.
Yes there is, because they can be verified against observations independent from the observer. If you are saying that the observations cannot be trusted, this discussion is completely pointless, because you've gone off into the land of the mental circle-jerk. Red pill, blue pill.
Posted by: Tom Morris | May 29, 2009 5:55 PM
"Got some evidence or is that just a baseless assertion ?"
Neither. I don't have evidence to hand, but it's not a baseless assertion. I was speaking from experience of a fair few years of blogs and discussion boards. I could keep a file on my computer listing all the stupid things people on the Internet say that I disagree with, but I don't. I save the citation and bibliography tracking for my dissertation...
Posted by: Lurky | May 29, 2009 5:57 PM
It's funny when theists reference to scientific theories or atheism in general in religious terms, like "the high priests of evolutionary naturalism". Do they use that in a pejorative sense? As in, "atheism is just another religion"? "Evolution is just another religion"? To me it gives the impression that they claim it's just the same sort of bullshit they themselves believe in and propagate - a competitor. Like the idea is somehow worse of, demeaned, if it is thought in religious terms... oh, I think they are - subconsciously - right!
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 5:58 PM
So you withdraw your claim that people have been making anti-philosopger statements in this thread then. Good, glad we got that sorted. Might have been a bit easier had you just stayed quiet in the first place mind.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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May 29, 2009 6:03 PM
I see Jim is still passing wind. I almost see a *banned fool troll* presuppositional argument he has to believe in. There is a reason science uses evidence rather than pure thought. But Jim doesn't get it...
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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May 29, 2009 6:04 PM
Nerd,
But what if....there is no
spoontroll?Posted by: Otto | May 29, 2009 6:04 PM
What a load of mental masturbation!
Posted by: Ray | May 29, 2009 6:05 PM
@Jim
You have demonstrated that the naturalist world view has not as yet provided proof, to a degree of mathematical certainty, that rationality works. In practice, the naturalist world view pretty much just assumes that rationality works. So what you've really demonstrated is that naturalism has not proven itself to be consistent. You have not however demonstrated that naturalism is inconsistent, which is what Plantinga claims he has done.
You think your world view can be proven consistent because it asserts its own consistency, and you think it is a better world view on these grounds. Both your premise and your conclusion based on it are false. Read Godel for details.
Posted by: Dan L. | May 29, 2009 6:06 PM
I should have been more clear. By "you guys" I meant Jim, gman, etc. -- the resident solipsists.
I'm with you -- science as a study of the natural world at the very least places constraints on what is true, even if it cannot definitively say what is true. It's true than I cannot fly, for a trivial example. Philosophers of the mind have tried to do this, but without reference to empirical results, they're liable to say silly things. (Descartes, for an example, "proved" that his mind is separate from his body because he could imagine his mind being separate from his body. So far, my proof of having a pet dragon has not borne any fruit despite being based on an analogous line of argumentation.)
That's why Dennett has the right approach. The brain seems to constrain the imagination and not vice versa. Therefore, let's start with the constraints as we understand them and offer only positive hypotheses that are consistent with those constraints.
Qualia provide a pretty good example. Observations about EM radiation and colored light suggests that color is not an inherent property of an object, but rather a property of the mental representation of the object. So any model of the mind has to take into account that the color blue is not something which is to be modeled -- it is itself an element of the model.
@Jim:
You seem to just keep rephrasing the brain-in-a-vat over and over again. Why do you think it's such a compelling argument?
It is correct, to some extent, to say that "The true nature of the world may be hidden from us." This could mean several things, however, and you seem to assume it could only mean one thing. One possible meaning is that simply, nature is ineffable. We think mainly in words, and the true nature of the world simply can't be captured by words, so we can't truly understand the nature of the universe. But that doesn't mean that what we understand to the extent that we can understand is true.
Another possibility is that it is contingently hidden from us, i.e. we are brains in a vat, but we are able to learn that we are brains in a vat. If that is the case, then we are merely temporarily mistaken about the nature of the universe. However, this also does not invalidate materialism -- even if scientific truths are only valid within the context of the "Matrix," we still have perfectly valid description of the Matrix; to the extent that we can discover more about the world outside the vat, we again have access to truth.
Finally, there is the possibility that the true nature of the world is hidden from us fundamentally, that no matter what we do, we cannot access it. But then, what is truth? Clearly, something no human being as ever had access to or ever will. So in what sense does it even exist in the first place?
If we define "truth" as "those properties of our perceptions that can be shown to be consistent throughout a variety of contexts", then materialism is absolutely correct and supernaturalism is absolutely incorrect.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 6:06 PM
Thankfully I have not met many solopsists like Jim in real life. I would be seriously tempted to punch them, and then claim the injury was self-inflicted.
Posted by: Drosera
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May 29, 2009 6:07 PM
Plantinga for dummies:
I can prove that bumblebees can't fly, therefore, since we know that bumblebees can fly, there must be a Christian god who keeps them in the air.
Posted by: Stu
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May 29, 2009 6:09 PM
So you withdraw your claim that people have been making anti-philosopger statements in this thread then.
I have been guilty of making blanket statements about philosphy in other threads, and got called on it immediately (and rightly). I've had to amend my position to 99% of it, instead of 100% of it being pointless intellectual wanking :-)
Jim is a prime specimen: repetitive assertions, a pinch of pearl-clutching and sufficiently obtuse to quote someone who was making fun of his position as support.
Posted by: Olorin | May 29, 2009 6:10 PM
Alex: “This stems from the problem of using epistemological arguments to attack specific scientific theories..”
Indeed. Alex’s exegesis seems to be isomorphic to the old legal conundrum. Anaxagoras (this is how old the conundrum is) engaged Protagoras to teach him the law. The agreement stated that P’s fee would forgiven if A lost his first case. When A delayed starting to practice law at all, P sued for his fee. P argued that, if the judge should find for P, then his fee would be due under the judgment. But even if the judge ruled against him, then his fee would be due under the contract, for A would have won his first case. A, in defense, argued that, if the judge found for him (A), then the fee would be forgiven under the judgement. But, if the judge found in favor of P, then the fee would be forgiven under the contract, for A would have lost his first caase.
Logic and philosophy......
Posted by: raven | May 29, 2009 6:11 PM
More meaningless BS. This is the "No Real World or Objective Reality" assertion.
It is simply a belief, not provable or disprovable. It goes nowhere, contributes nothing but occasional delusions. I can fly, the earth is 6,000 years old.
As far as we know, intelligence has nothing whatsoever to do with the existence or not of the universe. The universe is much older than we are and has existed for 13.7 billion years without us just fine.
In practice, in real life, we all assume the world is real and exists. It certainly looks like it was set up as if what we thought about it had zero impact on it.
I
Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 29, 2009 6:13 PM
I think it is worse even than that.
"I can prove that bumblebees can't fly. Therefore bumblebees can't fly and evidence to the contrary is a product of materialists' fauly minds. Therefore god exists."
Posted by: CJO | May 29, 2009 6:15 PM
I do believe that intelligence, not matter, is the ultimate reality.
Incoherent. Intelligence is a property of some systems. There's nothing "ultimate" about it. As far as we know, it's entirely contingent on a material substrate. Or can you give us an example of an observed instance of intelligence, divorced from any material phenomena?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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May 29, 2009 6:15 PM
I'm sure Tom Morris has seen a lot of people make nasty, even rude comments about philosophy and philosophers. That's because of people like Plantinga who make obviously flawed arguments and yet are lauded as being first class thinkers by other philosophers. After enough instances of philosophers congratulating each other for producing bullshit, non-philosophers are going to assume that the primary product of philosophy is bullshit.
In the instances where a philosopher produces intelligible, reasonable arguments he's hailed as a non-philosopher. He or she can't be a philosopher, since they didn't produce bullshit which, as shown above, is what the major end result of philsophy.
Posted by: Ignorabimus | May 29, 2009 6:15 PM
CJO@329: I think you're quite right. Your description sounds plausible. I like Pulvermuller's work on serial processes. And the fact that smart birds can apparently dance to a rhythm looks good for your story also. So something like what you suggest may work. My worry though is that it may not ultimately give us an understanding of the math faculty (pace Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch). For one: some of the math faculty is bilaterally implemented in the parietal so not anywhere near motor cortex or the language areas. But worse still, however the neuroscience goes, recursion alone may not give us all the pieces of the puzzle. Anyway, I guess we'll see. Lots of interesting work ahead.
Emmet@326: I don't have my copy of Topoi handy (it's at the office) and google books is not helping. But I think I recall the passage I had in mind well enough. It's early on in the book. He's explicit on the point of sets being surrogates for functions rather than literally being functions. I remember because it came as news to me. The main thing though is that sets are themselves defined in terms of mappings. So membership need not be taken as primitive. (Which I find a great relief!) If you really can't find it, let me know and I'll get the page numbers tomorrow when I'm back at work.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 29, 2009 6:16 PM
I need a new brain-vat.
Posted by: Brownian, OM
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May 29, 2009 6:16 PM
Can one, as a materialist, survive the winter?
I live in a dwelling made up of two-by-fours and gypsum, but can these constituent things be a dwelling? Let's consider them separately.
Two-by-fours are, by their very definition, 2" thick by 4" wide (less in fact, since two-by-four are the dimensions prior to planing and finishing at the mill.) Depending on where you measure, my circumference is about 44" at the greatest. We can thus assume then my width to be, on average, C/π, or about 14" (wider at the greatest, since my cross-section is more an ellipse than a circle). 14" is clearly much greater than 4" therefore a two-by-four cannot keep even the gentlest of breezes from cooling me.
Gypsum, at least in drywall form, is much larger than 14" (and in fact can be larger than my height, which is just shy of 6'), so it is plausible that gypsum might protect me from the wind. However, gypsum has a hardness of 2 on Mohs' scale, which is the second softest you can be. Softness is a vague term and in this case refers to one material's ability to scratch another material, but a more general definition of softness, a lack of resistance to deformation when force is applied, still fits. Now I weigh [ahem] about 205 pounds, which is a measure of the force I apply by virtue of my mass toward the centre of the Earth (more or less). It stands to reason that no thin collection of gypsum could withstand such a force (as many a hefty drywaller with a messy workplace has found out), and thus gypsum cannot provide the strength required to keep me from crashing through to my downstairs neighbours' dwelling, nor even the ability to hold itself up (if you doubt this latter part, just try to stand a sheet of drywall on its edge.)
Finally, we come to the key term: dwelling. While any historian or ethnographer could point out that dwellings encompass myriad shapes and forms, they do in general share the qualities of protecting one from the elements. As I've shown that neither two-by-fours nor gypsum can do this, it stands to reason that there is more to a dwelling than gypsum and two-by-fours. (And here the astute reader will undoubtedly agree, and probably point to such things as nails and glass, but these are even weaker evidence. Try walking on a drinking glass and see how long it lasts, and count the number of nails you have to cover yourself in to keep out the rain.) As in fact any constituent component of a dwelling is insufficient to consitute in itself a dwelling, the materialists' house could not be any weaker were it to be made of playing cards. I have survived at least 32 Canadian winters, therefore the materialists worldview cannot be correct.
Can I has theology PhD, plz?
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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May 29, 2009 6:21 PM
Win.
Yeah. Me too. I just soiled mine.
Posted by: Sastra
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May 29, 2009 6:22 PM
Jim #324 wrote:
By claiming that "intelligence" is the ultimate reality and that "Reason ought to be made out of Reason," you're making category errors. Intelligence is a measure of abilities, and reason is a process -- they are not things, let alone active agents. Intelligence has never done anything, any more than 'speed' has gone anywhere.
Talking about "reason" as if it were an object isn't coherent. You're reifying abstractions.
"Like comes from like" is not only a cop-out explanation-wise. It's over-simplistic, and, ironically, over-literal.
Posted by: heliobates | May 29, 2009 6:25 PM
@Jim #324
That is the sound of your credibility imploding.
Posted by: J. | May 29, 2009 6:26 PM
Plantinga is generally well respected within philosophical circles, but when he starts talking about science, he really ceases to be rational.
He debated with Dennett at the APA conference a few months ago. Plantinga was trounced in front of a filled-beyond-capacity hall. Dennett pulled no punches with his Supermanism, and was generally as untactful about the whole thing as P.Z. is here. So I imagine readers here would enjoy the show.
I think this is a link to the audio, but I haven't tested it. If it's the same source as went around previously, quality is mediocre. Mercifully, no video exsists: although Dennett's slides were interesting, it was rather heartbreaking to watch Plantinga's face during Dennett's comments.
http://www.archive.org/details/PlantingaAndDennetDebateFeb.212009Apa
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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May 29, 2009 6:27 PM
Not only that, that's a misuse of Sastra's quote ("Like comes from like"). It's out of context.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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May 29, 2009 6:28 PM
322:
Whoah, I can confidently state that biologists who study information in living systems would have a problem with that.
It's not fatal, of course, since life did start from the non-rational. Life has had effective ways of dealing rationally (at least in the broader sense of that term) with the world for most of its existence, however.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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May 29, 2009 6:29 PM
I don't think that's a good career move — with advances in point-of-sale payment technology and increasing cost displacement toward the consumer, specifically the prevalence of “self-service”, there are limited openings for gas-pump attendants.
Posted by: Ichthyic | May 29, 2009 6:29 PM
Can I has theology PhD, plz?
wow.
Posted by: Stu
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May 29, 2009 6:35 PM
Brownian: but I hold that winter is the ultimate truth!
It'll be interesting to see if Jim comes back after that one. Shit, what am I saying -- he'll probably quote you.
Posted by: Brownian, OM
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May 29, 2009 6:41 PM
I doesn't appear to be winter now, and so I wonder how we can even claim that winter exists if all we have are fallible recollections of it.
Posted by: Kel | May 29, 2009 6:41 PM
I think that's going a bit to far. Generally speaking, surely natural selection would make our brains generally reliable. After all, if a lion is approaching then we need to be able to recognise it. But infallible? No. Too many false positives, because our heuristic cognition software is not perfect.Though I'm reading this correctly, his argument seems to be along the line: our senses are either reliable in which case we can't trust our senses because they demonstrate evolution, or that our senses are unreliable in which case we can't trust our senses which means that we can't trust any theory on evolution. So to me he's just saying "we can't trust our senses" fullstop. Which is great, maybe he'll start questioning his beliefs and how he came to them, it's the first step in becoming a free thinker!
Posted by: Alex | May 29, 2009 6:42 PM
I find it absolutely pathetic when intellectually bankrupt twits like Plantinga try to make science look like their silly religion in an effort to make it appear false (like calling evolution a Creation myth). These people just don't get it; you don't insult another belief by taking elements of your own belief and attributing it to the belief you're opposed to. That's just fucking stupid.Posted by: Brownian, OM
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May 29, 2009 6:44 PM
Okay, beer time. See y'all later when I'm tipsy and alternatively belligerent and sentimental.
Posted by: Ichthyic | May 29, 2009 6:47 PM
I doesn't appear to be winter now
*Looks outside at a cloudy New Zealand sky*
I'd say your perceptions are biased, and therefore your entire analysis is invalid.
I said GOOD DAY, sir.
Posted by: Stu
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May 29, 2009 6:52 PM
I doesn't appear to be winter now, and so I wonder how we can even claim that winter exists if all we have are fallible recollections of it.
Well, that all depends on where you are. And your definition of winter. And your definition of definition. And your definition of fallible. And your definition of...
Wait, now I need a drink too.
Hmm, I think I've discovered the point of philosophy.
I can haz bar-tab, plz?
Posted by: Eric | May 29, 2009 6:53 PM
"In Plantinga's imaginary materialist/naturalist world, beliefs are only the product of random chance."
PZ, it seems to me that this is where you get Plantinga fundamentally wrong. He said quite explicitly that he's even considering cases in which our beliefs are adaptive, and he considers cases in which our beliefs interlock in complex, though false, ways. He neither says nor implies that our beliefs arise 'randomly.' Adaptive beliefs aren't random, but they're also not necessarily true. Now, it's true that given some conceptions of the possible ways in which beliefs and actions are related (e.g. epiphenomenalism), our beliefs don't affect our actions, and thus cannot be adaptive. However, Plantinga doesn't in any sense limit his analysis to such cases.
"We could have highly unreliable cognition that maintains functionality by constant cross-checks against reality — we build cognitive models of how the world works that are progressively refined by experience."
You're begging the question here. Plantinga's argument is in essence a reductio: He's arguing that if you accept both naturalism and evolution, then you have no good reason to trust your cognitive faculties, which means you have no good reason to believe that naturalism is true. (Incidentally, the reason he focuses on naturalism is because it's a philosophical position, while evolution is a scientific one. Evolution is well evidenced; naturalism is not. Hence, his argument is intended to be a reductio against philosophic naturalism, and doesn't in any way target evolution.) Now, you can't simply assert that you can test your cognition against reality if your cognition is unreliable. This is where you're begging the question. Note too, Plantinga is not arguing that our cognitive faculties are in fact unreliable. Rather, he's arguing that the conjunction of evolution and naturalism leads to the conclusion that we can't trust our cognitive faculties (i.e. to a low or inscrutable conditional probability that they are reliable), and by implication to the conclusion that if you accept the conjunction of evolution and naturalism, you have no good reason to be a naturalist (or anything else for that matter).
"Plantinga really thinks that one of the claims he is arguing against is that materialists/naturalists assume our minds are reliable."
Of course you think that your cognitive faculties are reliable -- but not in the sense you're mistakenly attributing to Plantinga. When Plantinga says that we assume that our cognitive faculties are reliable (and note that this is a very broad conception that includes memory, perception, etc.), he doesn't mean that we assume that they simply deliver the truth about things, which is what you seem to think he means. Rather, he means exactly what you mean -- that we can use them to work our way through errors in reasoning, apparent errors in perception, misunderstandings of evidence, flawed memories, etc. to acquire true beliefs.
"He's reduced to a bogus either/or distinction. Either we are organic machines that evolved and our brains are therefore collections of random beliefs, or — and this is a leap I find unbelievable — Jesus gave us reliable minds. Seriously. That's what his argument reduces to."
This is where you go way off the rails. The conclusion of Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism concerns the untenability of naturalism when conjoined with evolution. It is not, in itself, an argument for theism. At best, it does away with one of the main, live alternatives to theism. Also, at best it shows that naturalism isn't consistent with one of the best evidenced scientific theories we have. A quite separate claim, however, is that theism is consistent with it. This, however, is not part of the eaan.
In short, you find Plantinga's argument to be ridiculous because you've given it a ridiculous interpretation, which is to say you haven't properly understood it.
Posted by: Kel | May 29, 2009 6:55 PM
Anyone else seeing the absurdity Eric just wrote?Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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May 29, 2009 7:00 PM
Philosophy without evidence is sophistry. As Eric the philosopher proves time and time again.
Posted by: H.H. | May 29, 2009 7:02 PM
Eric @ #372 wrote:
Yes, and as myself and others have already pointed out, even if you don't accept naturalism and evolution, you still have no good reason to trust your cognitive faculties, which means you have no good reason to believe that supernaturalism is true. Plantinga sets a trap that not even himself can escape, making it a senseless argument against naturalism, since supernaturalism fairs no better. Why can't any of you Plantinga supporters ever get around to addressing this?Posted by: Kel | May 29, 2009 7:05 PM
Which we know is silly. See this box you are sitting in front of Eric? It does more calculations per second than the entire human population combined. It was made using naturalism as a methodology. Are you going to literally sit in front of the computer and point out that the brain is unreliable through naturalism?The brain is very reliable for doing some things, we know this because it is needed to survive. Our ancestors needed to drink water, but also needed to survive being eaten. If they were too cautious they would never get a drink and die. If they were too bold, they would get attacked by a lion and die. Natural selection builds a brain capable of reliability - just as long as we recognise the possibility that the heuristic wetware makes a lot of false positives as opposed to false negatives. You mistake a shadow for a burglar but never a burglar for a shadow.
Posted by: dreikin | May 29, 2009 7:05 PM
Indeed - I'm one of them, if it's taken that way. I was trying to separate 'rationality' that Plantinga et al. seem to be talking about, that requires a brain or analogous, from pattern matching and other rational but not 'rational' systems, if you get my drift.Or, I'd like to see a bacteria rationalize why it must be made by god, but I'll certainly bet it's better at finding food than most humans.
Posted by: Eric | May 29, 2009 7:08 PM
"even if you don't accept naturalism and evolution, you still have no good reason to trust your cognitive faculties, which means you have no good reason to believe that supernaturalism is true. Plantinga sets a trap that not even himself can escape, making it a senseless argument against naturalism, since supernaturalism fairs no better."
Plantinga and his 'supporters' don't address this because it doesn't seem to make any sense: How can it be the case that a reductio against naturalism affects supernaturalism? You can make a separate case against the reliability of our cognitive faculties given supernaturalism, of course, but this wouldn't in any way amount to Plantinga setting a trap for himself. How could it, if his argument does not and cannot have any implications for the reliability of our cognitive faculties given supernaturalism? You seem to have mistakenly concluded that Plantinga is questioning the reliability of our cognitive faculties simpliciter, but he's not.
Posted by: Booger | May 29, 2009 7:10 PM
But, Dude...doesn't the presence of stripped gears and misaligned cogs and broken engines IMPLY A CREATOR!!!!!
Gotcha there ,dint I?!?!?!?!
Posted by: Eric | May 29, 2009 7:15 PM
"See this box you are sitting in front of Eric? It does more calculations per second than the entire human population combined. It was made using naturalism as a methodology. Are you going to literally sit in front of the computer and point out that the brain is unreliable through naturalism?"
You're confusing methodological naturalism, which Plantinga isn't addressing, with metaphysical naturalism, which he is addressing. Methodological naturalism is perfectly consistent with supernaturalism; metaphysical naturalism is not.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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May 29, 2009 7:20 PM
Yawn, more sophistry from Eric.
Posted by: Stu
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May 29, 2009 7:24 PM
Eric,
In short, you find Plantinga's argument to be ridiculous because you've given it a ridiculous interpretation, which is to say you haven't properly understood it.
Come on, my man! You are SO CLOSE to the Courtier's reply! Bring it home!
Posted by: Eric | May 29, 2009 7:24 PM
Hello Nerd of Redhead. It's not sophistry, because I'm not intentionally attempting to mislead. I may be stupid, but I'm not a sophist. However, since I'm not a sophist, I would appreciate it if you would point our just where I'm going wrong. Simply calling it sophistry doesn't help me see my errors, you know.
Posted by: Jim | May 29, 2009 7:25 PM
I keep seeing myself described here as a "solipsist," which is the least apt description I can think of for my position.
Apparently my argument hasn't been understood, but that comes as no surprise to me. I've learned from experience that Darwinian dogmatists do not make good-faith efforts to understand the views of anyone who does not believe their dogma. (Before you accuse me of name-calling, ask yourself this question: Am I willing to say that Darwinian evolutionary theory might be wrong in some rather important ways? If not, you're a Darwinian dogmatist, and an apt description is not a gratuitous insult.)
In a nutshell, my view is that the belief that human beings have been made in the image of a rational God gives me grounds for thinking that human beings are also rational, but that naturalism, which attributes all phenomena to irrational material causes, does not. To my way of thinking, it's much more rational to think that human rationality has a rational source than it is to think that human rationality emerged from irrational material causes.
I'll depart with a relevant quote from design theorist William Dembski. I'll check back in to read all the insults that are sure to fly in response to what I've said and to what Dembski says (it's a hoot to watch polemical adversaries shame and discredit themselves by wallowing in the ad hominem fallacy), but I don't see much reason to continue a dialogue with people who seem to be incapable of respectful conversation with those who don't see things their way. In any event, here's Dembski...
"Naturalism...allows no place for intelligent agency except at the end of a blind, purposeless material process. Within naturalism, any intelligence is an evolved intelligence. Moreover, the evolutionary process by which any such intelligence developed is itself blind and purposeless. As a consequence, naturalism makes intelligence not a basic creative force within nature but an evolutionary byproduct....
"Naturalism is clearly a temptation for science, and indeed many scientists have succumbed to that temptation. The temptation of naturalism is a neat and tidy world in which everything is completely understandable in terms of well-defined rules or mechanisms characterized by natural laws.
As a consequence, naturalism holds out the hope that science will provide a 'theory of everything.' Certainly this hope remains unfulfilled. The scandal of intelligent design is that it goes further, contending that the
hope is unfulfillable. It therefore offends the hubris of naturalism. It says that intelligence is a fundamental aspect to the world and that any attempt to reduce intelligence to natural mechanisms cannot succeed. Naturalism wants nature to be an open book. But intelligences are not open books; they are writers of books, creators of novel information. They are free agents, and they can violate our fondest expectations.
"There is an irony here. The naturalist's world, in which
intelligence is not fundamental and the world is not designed, is supposedly a rational world because it proceeds by unbroken natural law; that is, cause precedes effect with inviolable regularity. On the other hand, the design theorist's world, in which intelligence is fundamental and the world is designed, is supposedly not a rational world because intelligences can do things that are unexpected. To allow an unevolved intelligence a place in the world is, according to naturalism, to send the world into a tailspin. It is to exchange unbroken natural law for caprice and thereby to destroy science. Thus, for the naturalist, the world is intelligible only if it starts off without intelligence and then evolves intelligence. If it starts out with intelligence and evolves intelligence
because of a prior intelligence, then somehow the world becomes unintelligible.
"The absurdity here is palpable. Only by means of our intelligence are science and our understanding of the world even possible. And yet the naturalist clings to this argument as a last and dying friend...." (end quote)
I eagerly anticipate supercilious references to "Dumbski" and "IDiots" (and worse), which is the kind of thing that apparently passes for great wit on Pharyngula. As someone who regards the Darwinian explanation of biological complexity as an affront to reason, I'm pleased that this blog exists. Nothing can more certainly ensure that Darwinism remains accepted by only a tiny minority of Americans than the kind of rhetoric used here to defend it. As a rule, people can't be belittled into changing their minds about a theory that strikes them as ridiculous. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: cunning linguist | May 29, 2009 7:25 PM
Has no-one pointed out yet that plantinga, in the West Frisian dialect of the philosopher's father's people, means "small squirrel" or "chipmunk"?
And that he has brothers named Simon and Theodore?
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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May 29, 2009 7:26 PM
That would be great. As far as I can make out, he defines arrows/morphisms early on without sets (necessarily), but not functions. The arrows in Set (and its subcategories) are termed functions, but in that case the objects are, indeed, sets. Remember that my original question was how one can define functions without sets — I'm not convinced that Goldblatt does — at minimum, it seems like “set” and “function” are “co-defined terminology” in the sense that it appears that a category in which the objects are sets, the morphisms are termed “functions” or vice-versa. Admittedly, I could be missing something very obvious — I'm no mathematician, and CT is something I've just looked at a couple of times in fits of enthusiasm.
Posted by: Dan Graur | May 29, 2009 7:27 PM
This letter was send to Dr. Plantinga
Dear Dr. Plantiga
I was surprised to read in your "Evolution vs. Naturalism" that Francis Crick is described by you as the "co-discoverer of the genetic code." As a person who regularly pretends to understand biology, the history of science, and evolution, you should have known that Crick is the co-discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA in 1953. The genetic code was elucidated by Marshall Nirenberg, Heinrich J. Matthaei, Phil Leder, Har Gobind Khorana, Robert W. Holley, and Severo Ochoa. The elucidation of the universal genetic code was completed in 1964. You are not a lover of knowledge as the term "philosophy" implies, you are an ignorant demagogue perpetrating lies and misleading students.
Sincerely,
Dan Graur
John and Rebecca Moores Professor
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
University of Houston
Posted by: Dan Graur | May 29, 2009 7:29 PM
The following letter was also send to Dr. Plantinga's Notre Dame e-mail
Dear Dr. Plantiga
I was surprised to read in your "Evolution vs. Naturalism" that Francis Crick is described by you as the "co-discoverer of the genetic code." As a person who regularly pretends to understand biology, the history of science, and evolution, you should have known that Crick is the co-discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA in 1953. The genetic code was elucidated by Marshall Nirenberg, Heinrich J. Matthaei, Phil Leder, Har Gobind Khorana, Robert W. Holley, and Severo Ochoa. The elucidation of the universal genetic code was completed in 1964.
You are not a lover of knowledge, as the term "philosophy" implies, you are an ignorant demagogue perpetrating lies and misleading students.
Sincerely,
Dan Graur
John and Rebecca Moores Professor
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
University of Houston
Posted by: Sastra
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May 29, 2009 7:30 PM
Eric #372 wrote:
PZ's argument is that, given an evolutionary explanation for brain/mind, we have no good reason to trust our cognitive faculties completely, as if they were little Truth Machines. Reliable Truth Machines would not evolve. Plantinga's right. But we don't have, and don't need, Truth Machines.
Given naturalism + evolution, we would have an explanation for why we can trust our reasoning facilities in most cases, why they make errors, what sorts of errors they make, and what we can do to correct them. Not to get to TRVTH, but pragmatic reliance.
Plantinga is basically saying that atheists can't justify rejecting radical skepticism the way he can justify rejecting radical skepticism. But it seems that when we try to explain or demonstrate why radical skepticism isn't entailed by naturalism, his supporters complain that we can't do that -- we have to start from Plantinga's premise that naturalists can't use reasonable arguments without self-contradiction. But I don't think we're the ones chasing our tails here.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 29, 2009 7:30 PM
And it would be nice if they very loudly laughed at him every time he tried to peddle his BS. Or simply didn't print his inane articles. If there is anger towards philosophy here, it is because on this forum, it is most commonly used as an offhand reference to defend theism, in a very snooty way. (ex: 'You disagree with me? Well, you *obviously* need to read more Aquinas.' That kind of thing.)
And it is all the more frustrating because the theistic philosophy we are directed to so often here takes six pages to say what could be summarized in a sentence, and refuted in another. It is often a waste of time to even read. I'm sick of windbags directing me to take a life course in philosophy whenever I disagree on a simple issue, that can be discussed in simple words. Science is often forced to become complex and arcane, simply because of the complexity of the systems involved, but philosophy too often goes there on its own, and revels in the useless new definitions and verbiage it spawns(this is especially true in theology, where there is nothing to discuss in the first place).
Finally, it is a truth that has been repeated to me countless times whenever I get too high horse about science: science is just philosophy that depends on evidence and empiricism. But this means that armchair philosophers like Plantinga can be said to be scientists who don't use evidence. Which is perhaps the most useless job description on the planet.
Posted by: Dan Graur | May 29, 2009 7:32 PM
The following letter was also send to Dr. Plantinga's Notre Dame e-mail
Dear Dr. Plantiga
I was surprised to read in your "Evolution vs. Naturalism" that Francis Crick is described by you as the "co-discoverer of the genetic code." As a person who regularly pretends to understand biology, the history of science, and evolution, you should have known that Crick is the co-discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA in 1953. The genetic code was elucidated by Marshall Nirenberg, Heinrich J. Matthaei, Phil Leder, Har Gobind Khorana, Robert W. Holley, and Severo Ochoa. The elucidation of the universal genetic code was completed in 1964.
You are not a lover of knowledge, as the term "philosophy" implies, you are an ignorant demagogue perpetrating lies and misleading students.
Sincerely,
Dan Graur
John and Rebecca Moores Professor
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
University of Houston
Posted by: Eric | May 29, 2009 7:34 PM
"Come on, my man! You are SO CLOSE to the Courtier's reply! Bring it home!"
Here's an excellent treatment of the particular mis-use of the Courtier's Reply you're *so close* to being guilty of.
http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2009/04/moran-and-courtiers-reply-ii.html
Posted by: Jeremy Dickinson | May 29, 2009 7:34 PM
PZ,
I think you've done a pretty good job not correctly interpreting Plantinga's argument. See Nathan Hanna's post, which should alleviate your errors on Plantinga's thinking about the probabilities. Since Nathan got that point right, let me say a few things about other ways you get Plantinga wrong, which lead to errors. (Only one comment on your form: ad hominem logic pervades your piece -- this is not good.)
Somewhat small error: Plantinga is not committed to claiming that according to naturalism belief formation is exclusively random. He is assuming for argument's sake that evolution is true, so natural selection plays a crucial role in belief formation, and of course this is tied to his claim that what is crucial about belief formation, assuming evolution is true, is survival not true beliefs.
Second error (bigger this time): You write:
"Almost. So close, and yet he still doesn't get it. A large part of our behavior will be functional (not contradicting reality) and some of it will even be adaptive (better fitting us to reality), and a lot of it will be neutral (contradicting reality, perhaps, but in ways that do not affect survival), but this does not imply that our cognitive faculties are necessarily and implicitly reliable. We could have highly unreliable cognition that maintains functionality by constant cross-checks against reality — we build cognitive models of how the world works that are progressively refined by experience."
You wrote this in response to an intuitive objection to Plantinga's claim that if evolutionary theory is true, then the probability that our beliefs are reliable is quite low. The objection goes: evolutionary theory could well be true and yet the the probability that our beliefs are reliable is much higher because true beliefs is conducive to survival. In your passage you simply respond to the objection Plantinga puts in the mouth of a dissenter from his argument.
Third error. (This is a big one.) You write:
"To which I say…exactly! Brains are not reliable; they've been shaped by forces which, as has been clearly said, do not value Truth with a capital T. Scientists are all skeptics who do not trust their perceptions at all ... "
I think you've conceded a lot here to Plantinga. Plantinga is arguing that the probability that our beliefs (any of them) are reliably true given evolutionary theory is very low. You agree. This means that the probability of your belief that naturalism is true given evolutionary theory too is quite low. This is not good for you. The way to reply to Plantinga is to argue that evolutionary theory is in the business of getting our cognitive faculties reliably produce true beliefs. You haven't done this.
Fourth mistake (another big one): You claim Plantinga is guilty of a false dichotomy at the end of your post. He isn't. Presumably many naturalists believe it is irrational to believe in the Christian God, and as Plantinga makes clear at the outset of his paper, in a sense his paper is targeted at contemporary challengers to Christianity (Dawkins, Dennett, et al.) who claim it is irrational to believe in the Christianity. So, it is fitting that at the end of his paper he end by claiming that the conjunction of beliefs in evolution and naturalism are irrational because they are self-defeating, and that belief in Christianity is not similarly irrational (self-defeating) because Christians can account for having reliably true beliefs. (God made us with cognitive faculties designed to aim at true belief production.) Naturalism and evolution cannot, and the belief in naturalism AND evolution turn out the be irrational.
Posted by: dreikin | May 29, 2009 7:35 PM
Jim:
Humans are not rational. Tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, etc. demonstrate that aptly.Posted by: prof.In
|
May 29, 2009 7:36 PM
The following letter was also send to Dr. Plantinga's Notre Dame e-mail
Dear Dr. Plantiga
I was surprised to read in your "Evolution vs. Naturalism" that Francis Crick is described by you as the "co-discoverer of the genetic code." As a person who regularly pretends to understand biology, the history of science, and evolution, you should have known that Crick is the co-discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA in 1953. The genetic code was elucidated by Marshall Nirenberg, Heinrich J. Matthaei, Phil Leder, Har Gobind Khorana, Robert W. Holley, and Severo Ochoa. The elucidation of the universal genetic code was completed in 1964.
You are not a lover of knowledge, as the term "philosophy" implies, you are an ignorant demagogue perpetrating lies and misleading students.
Sincerely,
Dan Graur
John and Rebecca Moores Professor
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
University of Houston
Posted by: MadScientist
|
May 29, 2009 7:36 PM
"the probability of any particular belief's being true is in the neighborhood of 1/2"
That's already incorrect; for random beliefs on any particular topic, the probability of believing the right one is typically far less than 0.5. For example, a coyote runs off the edge of a cliff; what happens next?
1. coyote plunges to the bottom of the cliff
2. coyote floats in the air
3. coyote sprouts wings and glides safely to earth
4. coyote lights a rocket and is propelled into a large rock
Now which of those 4 beliefs is true?
@PZ: on footnote #7, Plantinga is talking about probability of X or greater than X outcomes, which does require more thought than merely flipping a coin; you need to know the total number of outcomes and the probability of each set of outcomes which meets the criterion. Sure it's not terribly complicated, but Plantinga is just a philosopher.
As for philosophy being 'Sokaled', Thomas Aquinas was a much worshipped philosopher due largely to that mountain of bullshit he wrote in support of his religious beliefs, including Summa Theologica. I assure you, all of Aquinas' celebrated works exhibit a truly profound incompetence and inability to reason. There have also been the "relativists" (and what some people jokingly call the 'absolute relativists') who believe that objective truth depends on your own personal beliefs. But since you mention it, I'd love to see someone pull a hoax in the style of Sokal's on some pretentious philosophical journal.
Posted by: Jeremy Dickinson | May 29, 2009 7:37 PM
PZ,
I think you've done a pretty good job not correctly interpreting Plantinga's argument. See Nathan Hanna's post, which should alleviate your errors on Plantinga's thinking about the probabilities. Since Nathan got that point right, let me say a few things about other ways you get Plantinga wrong, which lead to errors. (Only one comment on your form: ad hominem logic pervades your piece -- this is not good.)
Somewhat small error: Plantinga is not committed to claiming that according to naturalism belief formation is exclusively random. He is assuming for argument's sake that evolution is true, so natural selection plays a crucial role in belief formation, and of course this is tied to his claim that what is crucial about belief formation, assuming evolution is true, is survival not true beliefs.
Second error (bigger this time): You write:
"Almost. So close, and yet he still doesn't get it. A large part of our behavior will be functional (not contradicting reality) and some of it will even be adaptive (better fitting us to reality), and a lot of it will be neutral (contradicting reality, perhaps, but in ways that do not affect survival), but this does not imply that our cognitive faculties are necessarily and implicitly reliable. We could have highly unreliable cognition that maintains functionality by constant cross-checks against reality — we build cognitive models of how the world works that are progressively refined by experience."
You wrote this in response to an intuitive objection to Plantinga's claim that if evolutionary theory is true, then the probability that our beliefs are reliable is quite low. The objection goes: evolutionary theory could well be true and yet the the probability that our beliefs are reliable is much higher because true beliefs is conducive to survival. In your passage you simply respond to the objection Plantinga puts in the mouth of a dissenter from his argument.
Third error. (This is a big one.) You write:
"To which I say…exactly! Brains are not reliable; they've been shaped by forces which, as has been clearly said, do not value Truth with a capital T. Scientists are all skeptics who do not trust their perceptions at all ... "
I think you've conceded a lot here to Plantinga. Plantinga is arguing that the probability that our beliefs (any of them) are reliably true given evolutionary theory is very low. You agree. This means that the probability of your belief that naturalism is true given evolutionary theory too is quite low. This is not good for you. The way to reply to Plantinga is to argue that evolutionary theory is in the business of getting our cognitive faculties reliably produce true beliefs. You haven't done this.
Fourth mistake (another big one): You claim Plantinga is guilty of a false dichotomy at the end of your post. He isn't. Presumably many naturalists believe it is irrational to believe in the Christian God, and as Plantinga makes clear at the outset of his paper, in a sense his paper is targeted at contemporary challengers to Christianity (Dawkins, Dennett, et al.) who claim it is irrational to believe in the Christianity. So, it is fitting that at the end of his paper he end by claiming that the conjunction of beliefs in evolution and naturalism are irrational because they are self-defeating, and that belief in Christianity is not similarly irrational (self-defeating) because Christians can account for having reliably true beliefs. (God made us with cognitive faculties designed to aim at true belief production.) Naturalism and evolution cannot, and the belief in naturalism AND evolution turn out the be irrational.
Posted by: Zarquon | May 29, 2009 7:45 PM
Platinga's arguments are rubbish because he implicitly assumes dualism, that the capacity for belief is not behaviour and hence invisible to natural selection. Everything we know about human and animal minds contradicts this, so his philosophical conclusions are simply worthless. Another ugly theory destroyed on the altar of cold hard facts.
Posted by: Nusubito | May 29, 2009 7:50 PM
Oh my fuck. The p value of PZ holding that belief is...1. Not 'quite low'. And the 'given evolutionary theory too' clause doesn't change this. Unless you've run some simulation universes(within which evolution is true) and he actually doesn't hold this belief in most of them.
What PZ said above isn't that the p value for every belief is low. He said that we can't expect our brains to have special access to the 'Truth' from evolution. We can observe the world, and we can make our mental representations of it quite accurate. This means that we can be fairly certain of our ideas and of the truth of propositions. Plantinga observes that given evolution, we can't be 100% certain, because evolution didn't produce that kind of brain and then claims this disproves evolution, presumably because he thinks we can be absolutely certain. We can't.
To Plantinga, there is such a thing as absolute truth, that we have access to. This is bullshit. Very close is good enough, and is what our brains do.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | May 29, 2009 7:52 PM
Eric
I accept you have every right to slap me down on this. I offer you not a rigorous rebuttal and the comment will be somewhat snarky. But truly I am at a loss for words - I am aghast from your post.
You and my excursion into the mind of Plantinga has lowered my respect for philosophers by an order of magnitude.
I guess I leave it to what has been said above (forms of so WTF is your point guys): "I can prove that bumblebees can't fly, therefore, since we know that bumblebees can fly, there must be a Christian god who keeps them in the air."
You guys (Alvin, Eric, Jim, etc.) - intelligent, polished, well versed in lingo of the trade - are to me no more than purveyors of obfuscation. You must have an agenda and the advancement of useful science somehow I doubt it is. Sorry - but I've lost all respect.
Posted by: Dan L. | May 29, 2009 7:52 PM
@Jim,
Before you try to make any more points, maybe you should try to address some of the holes people have already poked in your arguments:
1) Fundamentally, you are constructing a strawman. You have posited the existence of some objective, Platonic Truth and now you are asserting that the ultimate goal of science is finding that Truth. Lots of people have tried to correct you on this -- science does not presuppose the existence of an objective Truth. Scientific truths are always contingent. Since you can't show me Truth, we're going to assume it doesn't exist and settle for just plain truth.
2) You commit category mistakes like it's your job. What does it mean that the true nature of the earth is "reason". But you don't define "reason." Does it even make sense to consider a world made of "reason"? Or is it like considering a world made of justice, or some other impossible proposition formed by making a category mistake? If you're going to advance a radical epistemology, you should be more rigorous about doing so.
3) You argue from assertion. You claimed that human beings are capable of things that "meat robots" are not, but failed to offer any reasons why that is. But even under your version of epistemology, we have to assume that it is possible for meat robots to do those things, as God can presumably do whatever the hell he wants.
Quoting Dembski does not invalidate any of those criticisms, and certainly isn't going ingratiate you with any of the regulars here.
Posted by: H.H. | May 29, 2009 7:53 PM
Eric @ #378
What, so Plantinga isn't capable of a preparing for the inevitable counter-argument? He just lobs an objection at naturalism for being unreliable without bothering to wonder if his own worldview fairs any better on the same subject? Well, how embarrassing for him, then. I see I was giving the man far too much credit of thought.
First, the "separate case" has already been made. Why do you keep ignoring it? And Plantinga is making an objection about naturalism that equally applies to his own position, though admitted for different reasons. So you're right. Seen in the narrowest view possible, it's not a trap, just stupidly myopic.Posted by: Eric | May 29, 2009 7:53 PM
"PZ's argument is that, given an evolutionary explanation for brain/mind, we have no good reason to trust our cognitive faculties completely, as if they were little Truth Machines. Reliable Truth Machines would not evolve. Plantinga's right. But we don't have, and don't need, Truth Machines."
Sastra, as I pointed out, this is a misreading of what Plantinga means when he speaks about reliable cognitive faculties. He's not in any sense talking about 'little truth machines.'
"Given naturalism + evolution, we would have an explanation for why we can trust our reasoning facilities in most cases, why they make errors, what sorts of errors they make, and what we can do to correct them. Not to get to TRVTH, but pragmatic reliance."
Is it true that they lead to pragmatic reliance? See the problem with substituting pragmatism for truth? Now, again, this is not to say that we need little truth machines if we are to conclude that our cognitive faculties are reliable. Indeed, Plantinga suggests that we could judge them reliable if the conditional probability were greater than 1/2. That's hardly a little truth machine!
"But it seems that when we try to explain or demonstrate why radical skepticism isn't entailed by naturalism, his supporters complain that we can't do that -- we have to start from Plantinga's premise that naturalists can't use reasonable arguments without self-contradiction."
If you can in fact do so, then there must be something wrong with Plantinga's argument. But in that case, why try to avoid it? There are two issues here that we can distinguish, but not treat independently: (1) Can you provide an argument to support the notion that skepticism isn't entailed by the conjunction of evolution and naturalism, and (2) Is Plantinga's argument sound? It seems to me that if (2) obtains, (1) is impossible.
Posted by: Sastra
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May 29, 2009 7:59 PM
Jim #384 (quoting Dembski) wrote:
No, this isn't right. Because they have to build explanations from the bottom-up through trial and error, and can't trust in special abilities and ways of knowing, Naturalists expect that they will not be able to have a "neat and tidy world in which everything is completely understandable." The hope for that kind of simplicity and Ultimate Understanding is the temptation of supernaturalism, not naturalism.
No, the problem isn't that it 'breaks natural law.' An unevolved, disembodied "Intelligence" is inconsistent with what we know about minds and brains, and unnecessary to explain anything. It requires a heavy burden of proof that hasn't been met in science, and can't be met through straw-man arguments like this.
What Dembski calls "the hubris of naturalism" is really the "humility of naturalism." It's a recognition that consistency is one way to avoid error, and therefore we ought to apply Occam's Razor to unnecessary claims -- lest we give ourselves too much credit, over-extend ourselves, and fail to provide a way to find out we're wrong.
Posted by: Dan L. | May 29, 2009 8:00 PM
@Jim,
Forgot a big one:
4) Many commenters have tried to clue you on the fact that emergent properties are part of our existence. A house is not wood nor glass nor any particular material -- it is a system composed of various elements. Likewise, there is no reason not to think that intelligence, reason, mind, whatever is an emergent property of a system.
Another way of thinking about this: in what sense does Microsoft Windows exist? Clearly it does -- we can talk quite coherently about it, and I often do at work. But what is it. It's not a particular binary pattern, since there are different builds and versions of Windows. Any particular binary pattern corresponding to a version/build of Windows moreover only becomes Windows when run on a computer with a particular architecture -- many other architectures won't be able to interpret the binary pattern as anything but garbage. Windows exists, but it is not a thing.
Posted by: H.H. | May 29, 2009 8:02 PM
Eric, in order for Plantinga's argument to mean anything, he would not only have to show that uncertainty is inherent to naturalism, but that's it's particular to naturalism. He has not done this. Nor have you.
Posted by: Dan L. | May 29, 2009 8:09 PM
@Eric:
How does one differentiate between a true belief and a false but pragmatic belief?
Posted by: Mark Povich | May 29, 2009 8:11 PM
Branden Fitelson and famous philosopher of biology, Elliott Sober, have an excellent refutation of Plantinga's argument here: http://fitelson.org/plant.pdf
Posted by: Kel | May 29, 2009 8:13 PM
I don't get the argument, how does adding God overcome this supposed problems of naturalism?
Posted by: Sastra
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May 29, 2009 8:14 PM
Eric #403 wrote:
It seems to me that, stripped to basics, Plantinga's argument goes like this:
1.) If naturalism is true, and our minds evolved from non-rational sources, then the probability of our beliefs being reliable is very low.
2.) But the reliability of our beliefs is not very low.
3.) Therefore, naturalism is not true.
Obviously, we'd be arguing against the first premise, and saying then that the form is valid, but the argument is not sound.
However, I suspect you're going to say this isn't really his argument. If so, can you break it down for me?
Posted by: PZ Myers
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May 29, 2009 8:19 PM
Oy. Anyone who read what I wrote and then claims that I'm making the argument that adapted brains are reliable sources of truth did not read what I wrote. I repeat myself:
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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May 29, 2009 8:20 PM
Still no evidence from Eric, Jim, etc. All are providing sophistry. They may not mean to mislead, but they are. Philosophy without evidence is sophistry. Show the physical evidence, or just acknowledge your error. In case you haven't noticed, none of the regulars are agreeing with you. Yawn, boring gits.
Posted by: H.H. | May 29, 2009 8:21 PM
Mark Povich @ #408, thanks for linking that paper. I particularly liked the conclusion:
That's precisely what I've been trying to get into Eric's thick skull, but he seems to think playing dumb is a winning strategy.Posted by: Don Cates | May 29, 2009 8:26 PM
From http://www.philosophicallexicon.com :
alvinize, v. To stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim. "His contention that natural evil is due to Satanic agency alvinized his listeners."
and
planting, v. To use twentieth-century fertilizer to encourage new shoots from eleventh -century ideas which everyone thought had gone to seed; hence, plantinger, n. one who plantings.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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May 29, 2009 8:28 PM
Some of us don't think he is playing...Post