A college that prohibits gay acts is going to have a hard time finding Catholic priests to teach Catholic theology and hold mass. Maybe they had better just prohibit out of the closet gay acts. It’s hard to believe that a so-called serious philosopher in 2009 in a western democracy signs a petition in defense of prohibiting gay acts. Maybe he could ask the Ayatollah to sign too.

The apologists seem to think it’s a matter of religious freedom for Christian colleges to be able to prohibit certain activities as a condition of employment. Sadly, they don’t seem to be too worried about the personal freedom of everyone else to enter into the adult relationships they find fulfilling.

The dispute is actually about the role of the APA–the American Philosophical Association. They allow these colleges to advertise jobs in their newsletter, despite having a policy against discrimination based on religious orientation. The arcane debate now going on at several blogs is about whether by forbidding gay acts, you effectively do discriminate based on orientation. The apologists say No, and people of good sense say Yes. (Well, that’s a slightly biased summary, but that’s it in a nutshell.)

The fact that the subject is even deemed worthy of debate seems sad to me.

So if I was in a position to hire philosophers and I told them there would be no “worship acts” allowed would that then mean I was not descriminating on the basis of religion? How does such an argument even get off the ground?

Jean,

Here are some of the links to Leiter’s blog, where I’ve been following the discussion for a while. After reading the apologists’ “arguments” (especially from two of my former professors!), I felt physically sick. This debate is actually a great example of how “only religion can make good people do evil things.”

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/philosophy_depa.html

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/02/the-apa-and-discrimination-against-homosexualsagain.html

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/02/a-counterpetition-to-the-apa-emerges-discrimination-against-gay-men-and-women-really-isnt-discrimina.html

Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism is one of the most interesting arguments in modern philosophy: there is a whole book (”Naturalism Defeated?”) by 12 philosophers devoted to it.

Whether it is true of false, any idea that is fundamental to the thinking and worldviews of the majority of the legislators in the country in which you live has to be considered seriously by philosophers. If you can find good arguments against it, by all means engage in the debate. But if “that’s preposterous … just not plausible” is a good enough reason not to consider an idea, then please don’t take the time to wrestle with Quantum Mechnanics, much less Cosmology.

Of course not all philosophers can engage with all important topics. But (if I have not misunderstood you) the suggestion is not that you, personally, don’t want to think about it seriously, but that it is “not worthy of serious consideration”.

Jean: do you mean “sexual orientation”?

NBeale: Why would the fact that an idea is fundamental to the majority of legislators in a country imply that philosophers have to consider it seriously? Imagine that one lives in Cuba (yes, there is a congress in Cuba) and the majority of Cuban legislators consider that Marxism-Leninism (in the version preached by Fidel, not the original writings of Marx, which have some merits) is fundamental to their thinking. Would a philosopher have to consider Marxism-Leninism (version of Fidel) seriously? What leads you to believe that Christianity as you understand it should be taken more seriously than Marxism-Leninism as preached by Fidel Castro. Or say a philosopher lives in Iran and most of the legislators consider the teachings of the Ayatollah to be fundamental to their lives. Should a philosopher take the teachings of the Grand Ayatollah seriously?

Amos: It seems to follow from:
(1) Philosophers should take seriously ideas which have an important influence on their lives and the lives of their fellow citizens?
(2) Any idea that is fundamental to the majority of legislators in a country in which a philosopher lives has an important influence on their life and that of their fellow-citizens.

Both these seem reasonable to me. Which do you disagree with?

NBeale: It depends on what you mean by “have an important influence on their lives”. If I live in North Korea, the ideas of Kim Jung Il will have an important influence on my life in the sense that they will dictate government policies (which I might well oppose, but will affect my life) and will influence my life in the sense that I will probably avoid reading the official media and thus, be forced to seek alternative sources of information. Now, I doubt that the ideas of Kim Jung Il will be an important influence on my life, as have been the ideas of Nietzsche, Aristotle, Spinoza and Sartre, that is, ideas which have changed my way of seeing the world.

Nicholas,

Sure, Plantinga’s written lots of books. He’s an important, highly regarded philosopher. He gave a talk a week ago, I listened, summarized, and offered a few thoughts. So…

What I’m asking is why religious ideas should continue to have a seat at the table. Yes, it’s bizarre to suppose God intended to “create man in his image” and then waited around for millions of years as animals evolved, the hominids struggled their way through the ice age, etc. etc. it sounds to me like a synthesis of two modes of thoughts. There’s literary, story-telling thought, as in Genesis. Then there’s the attempt to explain what actually happened–historical and scientific thought.

It’s a bizarre story for lots of (fairly obvious) reasons. The hominids and early humans must have suffered terribly (a book I’m reading says so). So this was a very high-cost way of creating human beings. And yet it’s a very important part of the picture for a Christian like Plantinga that God is good and loving and of course all-powerful. The whole picture is strained, to say the very least.

If you’re a Christian, I suppose the strain is worth it. The religion has its existential benefits, and you don’t want to reject modern science. But for outsiders like me (and a lot of people who read this blog), the question is…why continue to wrestle with God-stuff, instead of just seeing it like all sorts of other antiquated or beyond-the-pale ideas?

As to the addendum–no, I don’t mean sexual orientation, I mean acts. Complicated issue, maybe I’ll post about it again.

About this “taking seriously” business.

Here at TP we have had innumerable discussions about religion. Nicholas, just click on my name on the left column, and you’ll see that is the case.

So sure–some thoughtfulness about religion seems wise, in a world full of religious people.

But what I’m asking here is about continuing to take religious ideas as serious candidates for truth. That is certainly not incumbent on anyone, just because of the popularity of religion.

Hi Jean,
I read the transcription and admit getting very little from it which is too bad since it’s a topic that I’m interested in.
The word “defeater” was bandied about, especially in the 2nd half. I tried finding an actual definition which might apply to the situation. I got lots of hits where the word was used in the situation but no definitions. Do you have one?
As to your question:
“Should we really take the time to wrestle with ideas like this? Is the God business really worth such serious consideration?”
My answer would be a resounding “yes” depending upon what you mean by “God.” If its the Nicholas, Plantinga one, I’d say I’m not interested. But if you accept the possibility of a non-theistic IDer, I’m all for it. I’ll explain later.

Jean: So it seems we agree that even Atheist Anglosphere Philosophers should take Christianity seriously in the sense of seriously engaging philosophically with the ideas. But you then suggest:
a. That C is “like all sorts of other Antiquated or Beyond-the-pale Ideas”.
b. That Religious Ideas should not be taken as Serious Candidates for Truth.

But, firstly, C meets my criteria (1) and (2) unlike most other ABIs.

Secondly, how can you seriously engage philosophically with C if you are unable to consider the possibility that it might be true. If you assume axiomatically that C is false then how can you estimate p(X|C) or make any rational judgements of the form C => X.

Thirdly, what does it mean, in a free society, to say that an idea, widely held by intelligent people for what seem to them good reasons, is not a SCT?

Everyone here thinks religion should be taken very seriously indeed, but from an observer perspective. Whether we should take it seriously as an idea to live under is a somewhat separate matter.

It seems Nicholas is confounding the two in his criticism. However perhaps he believes it is impossible to truly understand religion without believing in it, or emmersing oneself in it. That may be the case, but the dangers associated with doing so - and the difficulty in surmounting the self-deception which follows any attempt to believe in things solely because we want to believe in them - puts me off straight away.

Nicholas’s main point seems to be that a preposterous idea should not be thought of as preposterous if lots of powerful people believe it. That, in itself, seems quite preposterous.

Paul: anyone who has studied science knows that a great many “preposterous” ideas turn out to be true. Indeed most basic facts about science seemed “preposterous” at some time.

There is certainly a difficulty in understanding any worldview well enough to reason within it without actually holding it. My next article with Colin Howson (which should be in April’s Prospect) goes into this a bit. But with reasonable humility and caution that is at least partly superable, if you read/listen to what people who hold that worldview actually write/say and ask them questions.

“anyone who has studied science knows that a great many “preposterous” ideas turn out to be true. Indeed most basic facts about science seemed “preposterous” at some time.”

But that’s an entirely seperate point to your original one, which I expect you are distancing yourself from now.

Paul: not at all! (1) and (2) cannot at all be summarised in the way you suggest. Even if you think an idea is “preposterous” (whatever that means philosophically) you should take it seriously under conditons (1) and (2). This does not, of course, mean you have to hold it. But you do have to consider seriously the possibility that it might be true. Because otherwise, as I have explained, you cannot actually reason about it

how can you seriously engage philosophically with C if you are unable to consider the possibility that it might be true. If you assume axiomatically that C is false then how can you estimate p(X|C) or make any rational judgements of the form C => X.

Ah, but I don’t “assume axiomatically that Christianity is false.” As I said in the other thread, I have studied it. When I began my study, about 10 years ago, I knew next to nothing about it. I was seriously illiterate. I started learning in a reasonably open-minded spirit. As I read the NT (and many other books), I really loved it as literature. I was astounded, though, by the total implausibility of it all. No offense intended against my Christian friends, but I don’t know how they manage to believe what they believe. (And no doubt they think the same about me.)

Thirdly, what does it mean, in a free society, to say that an idea, widely held by intelligent people for what seem to them good reasons, is not a SCT?

Yeah, it’s puzzling, but you get used to it. On Rachel Maddow last night she intereviewed Tim Lahaye, who has sold 63 million books in the Left Behind series. In the US, vast numbers of people believe in the rapture, the anti-christ, devils, angel, creationism, etc.. (Not to mention the fact that they voted for George Bush not once, but twice.) Many otherwise intelligent people believe things that I don’t see as serious candidates for truth. it’s one thing to pay attention, listen, learn etc, another to act like a sponge and let other people determine what views are worthy of serious consideration.

All (1) and (2) entail is taking it seriously from an observer perspective. That is studying the phenomenon, rather than taking part it in it.

And by your reasoning (which, let’s be honest, does seem to accord a higher value to the popularity of a belief than the reason and evidence supporting it) then ideas which are less popular and less widely-believed should not be taken as seriously. And that’s probably the sort of reasoning Darwin and every other scientist who has contradicted the teaching of the Church had to battle against. Indeed, as you say, “most basic facts about science seemed “preposterous” at the time.” Many were classified as preposterous because they conflicted with religious belief.

I believe, like many others here, that simple theories which explain existing data, successfully predict new findings and are testable have more value than theories which do not yet are believed by powerful politicians and the general public.

Even if we accept your reasoning, why should philosophers like Jean be influenced by what legislators believe? By your own reasoning, why shouldn’t legislators be required to take seriously the views of Jean and the wider philosophical community which appears to be largely secular? I know who I’d have more faith in…

Why should philosophers in Nazi Germany have taken seriously the idea that Jews and others (including homosexuals) were inferior? Why should they not dismiss the idea as preposterous? Well, according to Nicholas….

(1) Philosophers should take seriously ideas which have an important influence on their lives and the lives of their fellow citizens?
(2) Any idea that is fundamental to the majority of legislators in a country in which a philosopher lives has an important influence on their life and that of their fellow-citizens.

Let’s also add in (3), which he is hinting at (correct me if I’m wrong):

(3) Philosophers can only truly understand a Nazi world-view by entering into it and engaging with it. Criticism of such idealogy is only possible by those who take the idealogy seriously.

(I’m certainly not suggesting Christianity is comparable with Nazi idealogy. But I am, following Amos and others, highlighting the sorts of problems that Nicholas’s reasoning leads to.)

Jean: Doesn’t NSCT(X) => ~X? or even Necessarily (~X)? Can you give a definition of what you mean? Would it entail, for example, denying tenure or publication to any philosopher who was foolish enough to believe these NSCT ideas?

Paul: Surely philosophers in Nazi Germany should (ideally) have given very serious attention to the Nazi ideology and explained clearly why it was false. Including esp. its claims to be based on modern science and evolutionary theory. They should (ideally) have studied it carefully and engaged in dialogue with the proponents. Naturally there are severe practical problems in doing this in a totalitarian society - which do not apply in the case under discussion.

Of course (3) is complete twaddle and I don’t assert it for a moment.

I said (1) & (2) => Take Seriously. Not . There are plenty of other reasons why one might want to take an idea seriously. And please avoid tropes about scientists contradicting the teaching of the church. If you study the history you will find that they are pretty much twaddle.

You certainly have asserted that reasoning about a world view or idealogy is only possible if you consider the possibility of it being true. To quote you:

“But you do have to consider seriously the possibility that it might be true. Because otherwise, as I have explained, you cannot actually reason about it.”

It follows you can only really criticise Nazi idealogy if you consider seriously the possibility that it might be true. Clearly neither of us believe this. Clearly therefore you believe there is something else - something about Christianity in particular - that merits us not treating some of it’s assertions as preposterous. Maybe that’s true, I don’t know. I expect this has something to do with there being some supporting reason and evidence. If this is what you think then great; we can return to discussing whether the reason and evidence offered is in anyway plausible, or perhaps more importantly, whether your theory (Christianity) is in anyway necessary to understanding the world.

“I said (1) & (2) => Take Seriously. Not . There are plenty of other reasons why one might want to take an idea seriously.”

I’m not sure if I understand. Is this a concession that (1) and (2) are inadequate reasons to take something seriously?

“And please avoid tropes about scientists contradicting the teaching of the church. If you study the history you will find that they are pretty much twaddle.”

Now we seem to be getting into revisionism. Interesting post at Stephen Law’s blog which might inform any discussion:

http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2009/02/galileo-and-revisionist-history.html

I’ve read the New Testament too. The gospels have a lot of poetry (word used without irony), but as a philosophy of life, they don’t make the grade. The lines which generally move people, “turn the other cheek”, “sell all you have and give it to the poor”, are not sound advice in my opinion, unless one is seeking the kingdom of Heaven and there is little evidence that the kingdom of Heaven exists. I’ve raised three male children and when they faced school bullies, I did not advise them to turn the other cheek, but to hit back as hard as they could. In certain situations, non-violent Christian resistance, such as practiced by Martin Luther King, is an effective political strategy, but in many other cases, say, the Warsaw Ghetto, it makes more sense to kill as many Nazis as one can before they kill you. Saint Paul is a case for Dr. Freud and whoever wrote Revelations needs whatever is the lastest in anti-psychotic medication. In my opinion, the New Testament does not present a wise or sensible way of life. Aristotle’s Ethics is a better guide to a good life. Early Christianity at least wasn’t into burning heretics, Jews and atheists, but with the years Christianity built up an impressive track record of atrocities. So given the above, why should I consider Christianity with more respect and intellectual interest (it is not an especially interesting intellectual system, in my opinion, not even as religions go. Buddhism is certainly more subtle, more insightful.) than I do Scientology? The fact that there are a lot more Christians around than Scientologists is an interesting sociological datum, which could be analyzed, but it has little to do with philosophy or with the search for wisdom and/or clear thinking.

Jean: Doesn’t NSCT(X) => ~X? or even Necessarily (~X)? Can you give a definition of what you mean? Would it entail, for example, denying tenure or publication to any philosopher who was foolish enough to believe these NSCT ideas?

No, of course not. If p is not a serious candidate for truth, the upshot is about us, and how we should spend our time and energy. To wit: not on refuting people who believe that p.

Denying tenure and publication….

Complicated subject, nothing quick and simple to say about it. If p is totally implausible to a promotion committee, it can’t be off limits to take that into account when considering whether to promote someone who writes books saying that p. It seems very delicate and complicated how the implausibility is and isn’t relevant.

But my point here is not about that. I’m really addressing myself to non-believers, and I’m asking why we spend so much time and energy on things we find not even remotely plausible.

Paul: Sorry I wrote the iff sign but it came out as a HTML tag.

As I have remarked before, we are talking in shorthand in blogs. There are of course various levels of engagement with a view and levels of criticism of it. Other things being equal a view that has no serious adherents requires much less engagement than one that has lots that impact your life and that of your neighbours. If you want to seriously engage with a view you have to take seriously (at a philosophical level) the possibility that it might be true. If you want to superficially engage with a view, you only need to consider superficially the possibility that it might be true. And if a view palpably led to a disaster with essentially no redeeming features, then “you shall know them by their fruits”.

Amos: The fact that most of the anglosphere cluture and most of science was developed by Christians, rather than Buddhists, might be thought to have some modest claim to your distinguished attention. As well as points (1) and (2). Do you have many Buddhist legislators?

“Other things being equal a view that has no serious adherents requires much less engagement than one that has lots that impact your life and that of your neighbours.”

For me it depends on the truth-finding abilities of the adherents, not their power and influence. It also depends on reason and evidence. Now the fact that people who reliably produce new knowledge also believe in Christianity is grounds for me to take seriously what they believe. However I also know very few people who are immune to early indoctrination, or existensial crises. This observation and others allows a degree of skepticism in, and when we apply skepticism to Christianity it buckles fairly quickly.

I cannot see anything that seriously justifies the Christian religion in terms of reason and evidence. God(s)? Perhaps, I don’t know. But to argue from the existence of apparent fine-tuning to the complex Christian belief system you try to defend is testament to the constructive power of the human mind and does not convince.

I could equally argue that all that is worthwhile in Western culture comes from the Greeks, Romans, and from the slow process of liberation from Christianity that begins with the Renaissance and which involves humanists, skeptics, Deists, Jews, and atheists, much more than it involves practicing Christians. By the way, I don’t come from an Anglosphere country and I wish that I had more Buddhist legislators, because the ones we have are mediocre and intellectually dead. Perhaps Buddhist legislators might pass a law legalizing abortion. In any case, a Buddhist legislator or two would add variety to the circus.

“What he suggests is that God could have “created man in his image” by initiating exactly the kinds of processes described by the theory of evolution: random mutation, natural selection, and all that.
and
The rest of Plantinga’s argument is a very complicated thing to the effect that if we evolved without any divine planning, we would have wound up with brains that don’t reliably give us true beliefs.

Plantinga is contradicting himself. In the first part he argues that naturalistic processes might have been God’s way to achieve his goal. Later he argues that these same naturalistic processes aren’t enough and God has to intervene. (It doesn’t really matter if he prefers to call it “guidance” rather than intervention. The main thing is that he assumes that the end result of the process is different than it would have been if let alone to proceed naturalistically.)

Hmm, I wonder how much intervening is involved, as opposed to initiating things at the very beginning both so that evolution leads to human beings and so that those human beings wind up with true beliefs. I wish there were a transcript of that talk somewhere. It goes fast on the MP3.

Hmm, I wonder how much intervening is involved, as opposed to initiating things at the very beginning both so that evolution leads to human beings and so that those human beings wind up with true beliefs.

Don’t fall for Plantinga’s bait and switch. If a naturalistic process can produce humans with true beliefs when initiated by God, it should be able to produce humans with true beliefs when initiated some other way. If it is in fact the same process.

Believers can say that evolution is compatible with God, because God in his wisdom knew that bacteria with flagellae and humans with true beliefs would emerge naturally of the purely naturalistic processes he created. Or they can say that the bacterial flagellum and humans with true beliefs are too unlikely to have emerged by naturalistic processes and God must have “guided” or “intervened”. But they can’t honestly argue both at the same time.

Windy: You are begging the question*. Evolution is not necessarily naturalistic. When we do Evolutionary Dynamics we can, if we want to, add processes that adjust the randomization to make desired results highly probable, or indeed certain.

Let me see if I can give a simple shorthand version of P.’s EEAN. Let S+ and S- be the classes of beliefs that give evolutionary advantage/disadvantage *(resp.) to humans that hold them, and TS+/TS- be the sub-classes of such beliefs that are true. Let CTS- be the capacity to form and hold TS- beliefs. Then EEAN goes roughly:
(1) TS- is significantly non-empty
(2) the Capacity to form Reliably True beliefs => CTS-
(3) Naturalistic Evolution => (Humans have Capacity(X) => Humans Evolved(X))
(4) NE => (HE(X) =>Human Survival is enhanced by (X))
(5) ~HS(CTS-)
(6) hence NE=>(~HC(CTS-))
(7) HC(CRT) => HC(CTS-)
(8) Hence NE=>(~HC(CRT))

It might help the discussion if people indicated which of these assumptions or steps in the argument they disagreed with.

* Why do you imagine that a great philosopher like Plantinga is capable of making such an elementary mistake??

I didn’t exactly accuse Plantinga of mistakes - yet.

Evolution is not necessarily naturalistic. When we do Evolutionary Dynamics we can, if we want to, add processes that adjust the randomization to make desired results highly probable, or indeed certain.

yes, “we” can. But my point is that Plantinga’s version abandons methodological naturalism. To say that natural selection is compatible with God causing the mutations is true, but misleading; it only transfers the miracles to another scientific domain. It’s like saying that Thor as the cause of lightning is compatible with electromagnetism, since Thor could “orchestrate” lightning from afar by pushing air masses around.

Let me see if I can give a simple shorthand version of P.’s EEAN.

Let me attempt a reductio to this. Let S instead be the capacity to jump. A sub-class of jumps is to jump to your death from a cliff or a tall building. These would appear to give an evolutionary disadvantage. Substitute in your argument, and you have naturalistic evolution implying that we shouldn’t have the capacity to jump to our deaths from a cliff or a tall building. Do you see a problem with this argument?

Why do you imagine that a great philosopher like Plantinga is capable of making such an elementary mistake??

One elementary mistake he makes with the EAAN is to assume that the content of specific beliefs (if they are causally efficacious) could be dictated by evolution. He may not say so outright, but his “tiger” examples are all muddled by this faulty assumption. We should only speak of capacities to form beliefs, as you correctly do here.

If it’s non-naturalistic it doesn’t transfer miracles to any scientific domain.

But you’re quite right - (4) is over-simplistic [I did say it was shorthand]. A trait can of course be selected for even if some consequences are adverse provided on average it is beneficial. Let’s try a more precise formulation: substituting the following for (4)-(8).
(4a) NE=>If X and Y are Mutually Exclusive Evolvable Capacities and the Human Survival Value (X)>HSV(Y) then the Human Prevalance(X) >>HP(Y)
(5a) CTS+ and CT are MEEC.
(6a) HSV(CTS+)>HSV(CT) {because CT = CTS+ U CTS- and HSV(CTS-) is negative}
(7a) hence NE=>HP(CTS+)>>HP(CT)
(8a) hence NE=>p(a given human has CT) is low

I’m sure Plantinga understands the point about Capacities BTW.

If it’s non-naturalistic it doesn’t transfer miracles to any scientific domain.

I meant that it may not be in conflict with biology but that doesn’t mean that it’s not in conflict with other fields of science. If God intervenes through chemistry or physics to cause mutations, the interventions may be too small to detect but in principle “compatibility with science” is violated.

5a) CTS+ and CT are MEEC.

What is CT, the capacity to form any true belief? I don’t think these are realistic alternatives - it does not seem possible to have cognitive faculties that would only hold beliefs with positive survival value. Short of omniscience, the environment can always change in unpredictable ways, with the result that some previously acquired beliefs become false and/or maladaptive.

I’m sure Plantinga understands the point about Capacities BTW.

Probably he does in principle, but not always in practice, it seems to me.

Your objection to CTS+ would seem to apply equally to CT. No doubt neither CT nor CTS+ are infalliable, but there does seem to be a valid distinction between the two, and if one is evolvable so is the other, it would seem.

As a logical possibility they may be distinguished, but how do you in practice evolve a nervous system that will only always do one but not the other? It’s not enough to posit a possible world, when talking about what naturalistic evolution would be most likely to have produced here on Earth.

It’s probably true, though, that a human is more likely to have a belief from the set CTS+ than a random belief from the set of all possible true beliefs (if that’s what CT is) For example, a human is likely to have a lot of beliefs concerning things on the surface of the Earth and not so many concerning things on the surface of Pluto. Let’s assume there is an evolved bias to form beliefs about things that directly affect us - how much of a threat is this to the reliability to our cognitive faculties in general? We can still form beliefs about Pluto if the occasion arises. There is no need to assume that such flexibility would have been selected against.

Got to go now, I will check back later…

Nicholas, You may be new to talking to the public about ideas, so I thought I’d make a suggestion. Speak English. Granted, academic philosophers understand some of the symbols, but the public is full of non-philosophers. Plus, you’ve invented a code that nobody wants to bother learning. Basic rule of thumb: if you can easily say something in plain English, then do. Everything you’ve said above can be said in plain English.

A very good model is Dennett, on the Plantinga vs. Dennett MP3. Plantinga is full of jargon and technicality, which is fine for a philosophy conference. But Dennett is extremely good at translating it out. He says just what Plantinga said, but accessibly and fluidly.

I suspect you may not want to do this because with all the symbols and codes, your thoughts appear to be technical and formidable, but that’s cheating. You’re basically snowing the reader, as we say here in the US, trying to befuddle them into respect for your ideas. If the plain version doesn’t impress, then you just have to live with that.

The MP3 is instructive in another way. Dennett treats Plantinga just as you were treated by many here. He refers to his notion of God-guided evolution as a fantasy. He calls things silly and preposterous. The mockery is entirely honest and directed at ideas, and so legit, but it’s certainly not deferential. In response, Plantinga maintains his composure. He does not accuse Dennett of misunderstanding Christianity. He does not tell him he’s ignorant. With his dry wit and intelligence, he holds his own.

If you read over the threads you’ve participated in here, you’ll see you do just the opposite–you repeatedly revert to insult and irrelevancy. If encountering skeptics at a blog does that to you, prepare for the real world. There are a lot of them out there. And honestly, we’re pretty nice here, comparatively speaking.

I’ve stopped wanting to talk about substantive issues with you, since (for some mysterious reason) you particularly have a tendency to respond to me with claims about my various alleged failings. So-enough of that. Plantinga’s reliability argument is interesting, and I’d be happy to talk about it with anyone (else) who wants to.

Jean: Thanks. I imagined this was a discussion forum for philosophers or people seriously interested in philosophy. As a mathematician by background I do tend to use symbols, esp. if I want to set out an argument rigorously and concisely. It makes it easier to see where I have gone wrong - as the interaction with Windy demonstrates. Of course it can all be said in english, just takes a lot longer and risks additional misunderstandings.

You’ll be pleased to know that QoT has very little mathematical notation, esp in the body of the text.

Anyway, enough of my failings - I look forward with interest to any other comments. And thank you for drawing attention to the Plantinga/Dennet material.

At last I got to listen to the debate, and then began to go over the discussion on this thread. Now, imagine my surprise to find that the man who has just co-authored a book trying to answer 51 questions about Christianity and science for lay people speaks Martian! If what he has to say, and what Plantinga has to say, can be expressed in English (or German or French), then it might be worthwhile listening to, but, if he insists on speaking Martian, thereby showing himself to be so much superior to other folks on the blog, perhaps he should go back to Mars!

I read the summary too. It said, in the summary, that Dennett was mean - no, more than that, that he was a jerk. Well, now we know where Nicholas gets the word ‘ignoramus.’ But, I’m sorry, I missed this part. Which account of Christianity do ignoramuses have to learn in order to argue against it?

I still don’t get Plantinga’s argument against naturalism, which has been around now for so many years that either it should, by now, have achieved some sort of standing in philosophy, or have left the field. And I’ve read a number of papers, too, with all sorts of arcane modal logic which don’t really convince in the end, either way.

Dennett’s way seems to be much better. Let’s start off from where we are - say, with straight edges - and then see how we got there. Take cars, for instance. Cars have evolved. Early cars looked like adapted buggys or buckboards. Gradually, they began to achieve more and more refinements. Engines became more reliable. And, eventually, instead of taking a new car to the garage five or six times in the first year to be repaired, now they run for two, three years, without any significant breakdown, so long as routine maintenance is carried out. It’s quite amazing to have watched the evolution of cars from the 1940s until today, and to have driven (or have been driven in) everything from a 1947 Chev to a 2006 Chev. Astonishing how that continual adaptation to new competitive environments transformed the one into the other.

Of course, mind was involved in the progressive evolution, though much less so than one might imagine. Each succeeding vehicle simply had to be a little bit more efficient than the last. And, remarkably, each one carried out its expected function in the way desired, or else, of course, the companies went bankrupt.

Plantinga answers a question about frogs and their increased skill at catching flies, and then questions whether the neural functioning necessary to do this more and more effectively constitutes belief. Belief, or justified true belief, apparently, is a completely different order of adaptation, and it is at this level that the argument against naturalism enters the picture. Well, I’m not going to learn or relearn the language just now, but I want to know why and in what way these skills differ?

Take the human mind and trace its history. Watch as, slowly, very slowly, it evolved to be able to consider new perspectives on the world, no longer mythical or emotional responses to environment and social relationship, or practical skills in killing animals and harvesting berries and avoiding dangerous animals and environments. Take the growth of philosophy from Thales to the Hellenistic philosophers and their Roman knock-offs (which is perhaps a bit unfair to Cicero and Seneca), and then watch its slow, sad decline into religious obsucrantism, so that ancient texts were preserved unread in monasteries, or, with limited but interested attention from a short tradition of Muslim scholars. And then consider the flowering of philosophy in the late Middle Ages, with Aquinas and Abelard, Scotus and Occam, and how this transitioned to the Reformation, the Rennaissance and the Enlightenment, and ask whether this can be accounted for by means of an evolution of mind, or whether we have to consider whether some other mind tinkered with the process. And then ask Dennett’s question. How would we know whether it had been tinkered with or not? What would be different, if a god had intervened in the process?

And notice, we don’t need to know a thing about Christianity at all to ask this question. Plantinga argues that, without the assumption of an interfering mind, we could not use the word ‘truth’ of our beliefs, the probability of them being true would be very low. But there’s something just wrong about this. It asks a question that we never need to ask unless we want a whole belief system to be true, and only Nazis and North Koreans, or Christians and Muslims, would want to speak this way. The word ‘truth’ is internal to systems of belief. It’s not something that can be applied to whole systems. Take the system of all my current beliefs (if it is an intelligible and non-contradictory system of beliefs). Is it true? That simply makes no sense. But I can ask, of some of my beliefs, whether they are true. The probability of all my beliefs being true together is probably very low. But the probability of some of my beliefs being true is pretty high.

The same could be said for practically any assembly of beliefs. The probability that Christianity constitutes a consistent system of true beliefs is, I should have thought, intuitively, close to zero. The probability that some beliefs that Christians hold about their religion are true is probably very high. So, the idea that naturalism somehow depends upon belief in a god, say, seems to be outrageously exaggerated, whatever the tricky logic. Whichever way we jump on this one, we’re still doing it with minds which are likely the product of (naturalistic) evolution, and if they aren’t, we can’t say which part is dependent on some outside source, and which is not, so we’re going to have to muddle through with what we’ve got.

Cross-posted with your last Nicholas. Yes, notation can be helpful in order to see the structure of arguments, but it can hide things as well. I have seen logical proofs of the ontological argument as well as logical disproofs of it, and it still seems to me that they both miss the point. You can neither argue things into existence or out. And since the scope of modal and probability operators can be argued about as well, it’s not clear to me that using them helps us to see what the deep structure of our arguments really is, but then, perhaps I am an ignoramus, so fulsomely described on your blog.

I would like to see a reasonably simple explanation of why we should accept Plantinga’s very unintuitive conclusion. And since we have nothing but our own judgement to go on here - no publicly available evidence - we should be able to say this in an informal way. The continued recourse to notation raises suspicions that this is not only unintuitive, but unsupported as well. I can appreciate the fact that mathematical notation may be necessary for relativity or quantum mechanics, but there is experimental evidence to ride on in these cases. The notation itself could not carry it all. But in Plantinga’s case the notation is all we’ve got. We need more than that, precisely because his results are so unintuitive.

Nicholas, I appreciate your very civilized reply to my comment. Very nice to leave it at that.

Eric, Glad to hear you made it through the MP3. Really a lot of fun, I think. Dennett’s a very good entertainer, but the entertainment does serve serious purposes. He actually does reply to all of Plantinga’s main points. He just doesn’t do it in philosophy-ese, which I think throws off the anonymous live-blogger.

Let me see if I can explain this argument…and I’m going to control myself (for the moment) and say nothing critical about it. Alright, so Plantinga admits that naturalistic evolution would have no trouble producing the frog that detects flies, or even a human brain with states that “track” the world. It’s adaptive for an organism to have reliable brain states, so no God needed in the explanation.

But, says Plantinga, it’s another matter for frogs or people to have true beliefs. I think the hard question is why that’s another matter. Why wouldn’t you automatically have true beliefs, if your brain was good at tracking the environment?

His answer has to do with arcane stuff in philosophy of mind. What he’s saying (if I understood the talk….and it did go by fast), is something like this. Having true beliefs is not guaranteed by adaptively tracking some external condition. So here’s an example (not in the talk…he doesn’t offer any examples, as I recall). I have a neuron that fires in the presence of water (and anything that seems just like water) (to greatly simplify what really goes on). That’s adaptive, because I need to drink water or anything just like it.

It’s in the nature of mental content that when I form a belief, the belief is about the stuff I’ve actually been in contact with historically, which is a very specific natural kind–H20. If some mad scientist somehow sneaks fake-H20 into my puddles and cups, and I form the belief that water’s in them, my belief will be false.

Now, what if the world were a very weird one, such that after the age of 35, all the water around you gets switched out for some alien, perfectly water-like substance. Naturalistic evolution wouldn’t prepare you to stave off false beliefs, because it would be perfectly adaptive for you to see this stuff as water and go on drinking it. But you would be wrong about it. After 35 you would start having frequent false beliefs.

God-guided evolution, however, would save you from this. The evolution part is enough to make sure your brain states have a good, adaptive, correspondence with external condtions. But it takes God to save you from post-35 false beliefs.

As I explain this, the connection with Descartes’ famous proof that there’s an external world comes to mind. God wouldn’t let us have too many uncorrectable false beliefs, he assumes. Plantinga’s god has the same concern for humans having true beliefs.

That’s what I gather…again, I’m not a Plantinga expert. I’m filling in some gaps, ignoring some of his technicalities, surmising, using background knowledge, inferring, deducing…but that’s my best guess.

If we all agree that’s the argument, we can “evaluate”!

By induction (admittedly not full-proof) human beings have learned that they generally succeed, survive and do the right thing when they aim for the truth rather than when they simply try to succeed, survive and do the right thing. They have learned to aim high, as it were, to achieve their day-to-day goals. An intrinsically valuable sense of wonder and a strong sense of curiosity also means we look for difficult problems to solve.

The thing is, if a mad scientist replaced our water with an alien substance we could never know if there were no observable consequences. If there were no observable consequences of the change it would also not matter - it would also be hard to say there had in fact been any change. If the alien substance did all the stuff water does and nothing it didn’t, then for all intents and purposes it’s water.

If it had some undesirable consequences then we would know pretty quickly. What would help us find out? The scientific method. What would not help? Praying.

Surely Plantinga’s God would answer our prayers and guide us in the formation of true beliefs. But there is no evidence to suggest anyone forms reliable beliefs on the basis of prayer and revelation. If they did, it would indeed be a miracle.

Jean, according to your account of the argument, Plantinga’s argument seems to rely on a mysterian theory of consciousness and of the relationship between consciousness and action. Presumably, in the case of the frog, there is an immediate connexion between the sensation of the presence of fly in tongue space and the capture of the fly. But, in the case of the human being, we cannot rely on this correspondence, since beliefs or ideas or the contents of consciousness are at one remove from the reality they presume to track. Therefore, we are to suppose, these contents of consciousness will probably not provide a reliable tracking of the world through which consciousness moves.

Talk about experimental philosophy. Plantinga needs empirical verification of this. He just can’t be allowed to probabilicise something that might be tested. But in order to do that, to test the probability here, he would need to rely on his own cognition of what is happening both in the design of his experiment, and in the behaviour of his test subjects. He would have to hold some probability, greater than .5, that his experiment was measuring something.

So, Plantinga’s starting premise that our cognitive abilities are probably unreliable, is false. Or, if they are viciously unreliable (in the sense that they can never be relied upon), his argument doesn’t make sense. But presumably he thinks that it does.

Can he bring god in to rescue him? But god is at least a content of consciousness, and whether god is anything else is open to question (as Anselm observed), though not perhaps an open one (if the ontological proof proves anything). So what would he be importing if he imported the idea of god? Unless he can show us a way of cognising something that does not depend on our cognitive abilities, then he is trapped.

Of course, he could pretend to jump out of his own skin by saying that this presupposition is necessary to get the cognitive project going in the first place - a bit like Descartes - but how does he do more than pretend to do that (the ontological proof is, arguably, only a pretense)? After all, many of those who will be arguing with him will not make that assumption, nor even understand, perhaps, what that assumption achieves, and Plantinga will have to respond to them. (Perhaps he’s a solipsist too.)

Dennett says that he dealt with the first premise, and that that’s the only one that really needs to be answered, and surely that is right. Even Plantinga needs to question that premise in order to get his argument off the ground, but then it is defeated, of course, because the first premise is the one which says that our cognitive abilities are probably unreliable if they are the product of evolution.

Is he then simply claiming that we need god to think at all? Perhaps that’s it. If we do need god to think objectively, it’s strange that religions are so diverse and contradictory. Surely, if god is necessary in order to track the environment as reliably as frogs, the thought about god should be the clearest and most uncomplicated of all. But perhaps I have misunderstood.

Eric, The assumptions Plantinga is making about belief content are actually not so controversial–they have been discussed in the literature about belief and mental content for the last 25 years. He is pulling things from philosophy of mind and using them for theological purposes. Belief content is sort of weird, and does not line up neatly with properties of the mind that are important from a biological and psychological perspective. So many do think.

I’m still struggling a bit to understand the argument. I guess he’s saying we actually know that our beliefs are pretty reliable, and we know we’re not suffering all that trickery–such as the post-35 water-swapping business. So the argument is–natural selection couldn’t save us from that fate, so God must have. (again, I’m ready to be corrected)

One thought (like Paul’s, I think) is to wonder why God would care. It’s pretty damn good just to have brain states that track parts of the world. The difference between that and having true beliefs is fairly subtle. So it’s hard to imagine we’ve been saved from this fate out of the love of God. (I can think of many fates I’d rather be saved from.)

So if evolution doesn’t explain why we’re not constantly tricked by weird environments, etc., and God doesn’t, what does? Hmm. Maybe there are just laws of nature that explain why the world is relatively stable, and not such as to trick us a lot.

Maybe it could even change, and makes our beliefs less often true (imagine technology developing so that there’s a lot of cloning and a great deal of mistaking one person for another.) There are all sorts of movies where people are put in awful situations and their beliefs do become persistently false (the Matrix).

So I’m not buying that we need to believe in a God to explain our tendency to have true beliefs (which is a bit fragile and subject to change to begin with).

I don’t recall having read anything by Plantinga that goes off on this “evil alien” riff. And I have read all of “Natrualism Defeated.” I’m pretty sure that his argument goes along the lines of my posts, which I will give with symbols removed in deference to our host:
(1) The set of true beliefs which have negative survival value for humans is significantly non-empty.
(2) the Capacity to form Reliably True beliefs implies the Capacity to form True beliefs which have negative survival value
(3) Naturalistic Evolution implies that If X and Y are Mutually Exclusive Evolvable Capacities and the Human Survival Value of X is appreciably greater than that of Y then the Prevalance of X in Humans will be much greater than the Prevalence of Y.
(4) The Capacity to form True beliefs only when they have positive Survival value and the Capacity to form True beliefs (regardless of survival value) are Mutually Exclusive Evolvable Characteristics.
(5) But the Human Survival Value of the former is appreciably greater than the latter.
(6) hence Naturalistic Evolution implies that the Prevalence in Humans of a Capacity to form True beliefs only when they have survival value will be very much greater than the Capcity to form True beliefs (regardless of survival value).
(7) hence Naturalistic Evolution implies that the probabiliy that a given human has a Capacity to form True beliefs (regardless of survival value) is low.

As far as I can see this argument is formally valid though like all arguments it has premises which can be questioned.

If there’s any benefit at all to not being tricked, then doesn’t this explain why we have the ability not to be tricked? It’s pretty hard (but not impossible) to imagine a state of affairs where believing something false is desirable (on the other hand, it seems easy to imagine a state of affairs where believing something false is neither here nor there.).

But these debates are always about things that matter. Isn’t it the fact that they matter that means we even care about the finding the truth? If they matter, then surely getting the answer is of benefit - in some way or form. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to think this benefit encourages the development of the brain processes which help us form reasonably coherent beliefs.

I’m not sure, but is Plantinga operating with an idealised view of the human mind and it’s abilities? It’s almost as if he thinks some people have God-like access to the truth, perhaps by virtue of divine intervention. This doesn’t seem plausible. We’ve reasonable grounds, looking back at our mistakes, to believe we’re pretty far from perfect as a species.

Is it even possible to form a rational belief about something without a goal? The goals can be related to surviving or related to finding the Truth, regardless of survival value. Can’t it be that humans have simply evolved the ability to reason towards goals, and we are now reasonably free to pick those goals?

Paul: I can think of many many instances where an illusion may have more survival value than the truth.
Nietzsche goes into that a lot, for example. The illusion that a benevolent Father in Heaven loves me or even that my own biological father loves me may give me strength to face challenges that the truth of this loveless universe don’t. The illusion that the good will be rewarded in an afterlife has a lot of survival value for society as a whole, as it may promote ethical behavior.

But doesn’t that depend on the point in time where the person making the judgement of survival value is located? For a false belief which confers survival value for a few thousand years may quickly lose it’s survival value once new, contradictory information emerges. In several thousand years time the belief might be shown to have had little survival value at all, given it involved someone believing something that was false.

In the long run, we’ll all be dead, said Keynes.
Some illusions may lose their survival value, as you say, but others may not. For example, the denial of death in one or another form (the idea of eternal life being one) seems a constant of the human condition.
Few of us face the world each day, with a sense of our mortality and that keeps us going. The denial of the ageing process in the young is almost universal: how many 20 year-olds are capable of imagining that they will get old? That denial fuels the energy and enthusiasm of youth, which keeps the economy going (until recently) and keeps the universities in business. Then there’s the illusion that you matter to the universe or to humanity besides, with luck, one or two people who care about you. That illusion is almost universal.

A few more useful and omnipresent illusions.

1. that one is making progress in life.
2. that one is growing as a person.
3. that one gets wiser as one gets older.
4. that there is something special about one’s family.
5. that there is something special about one’s country.
6. that one is somehow smarter than others, which stems from the fact that no one else knows the world from one’s point of view as well as one does.
The list is long.

Sure, but those beliefs might help us survive only because they weigh in against beliefs about these things actually mattering. We form defences, I grant you, but rather than saying these defences will always have survival value it might be better to see whether we are in fact at the mercy of a set of false beliefs which do not help us survive.

I still think we can’t really judge the survival value of a set of beliefs without taking a God-like perspective. Indeed, some of the beliefs you mentioned might lead to our downfall at some point - denial of death might link to denial of the damage to the environment our economic activity is causing. Hard to judge the value until we reach the end of time I reckon.

Okay, Jean, I get all that about philosophy of mind. And of course we know that our thoughts are not always reliable. That goes without saying. I bet frogs sometimes get little pebbles instead of flies. But it’s self-correcting. That’s the whole thing about evolution. If it weren’t self-correcting (by selection pressures) we wouldn’t have survived. Isn’t it just that simple? And the most success we have with getting at the truth is when we have critical ways of achieving some kind of intersubjectivity. But we don’t need god for any of this. I mean, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that only god can pull us out of the hole, when in fact statements about god are so diverse and apparently contradictory. Again, surely, if god is involved, our knowledge of god would be the most secure, and it’s not. Brain states - consciousness - track the world unequally, as studies of religion point out, and just to be on the safe side, ascribes agency to all sorts of things that we know, now, are not agents. So, we get a lot wrong, and it’s taken quite a long time to get where we are, but, as we go along we get better at it. Isn’t that what we should expect from evolution? I just don’t seem Plantinga’s point.

Nicholas, Have you listened to the talk? I think Plantinga’s been making a reliability argument for some time and he makes it in many ways. I have listened a second time and taken notes, so I’ll explain again, from the beginning. (The argument’s not the one you gave above.)

The key premise is #1 (I won’t spell out the rest): The probability that our beliefs are reliable, given that Naturalism (no god, materialism etc) and Evolution are both true, is low.

Leaving out unexciting details…he reasons from there that if you do believe in naturalism plus evolution, you inevitably wind up thinking your beliefs are unreliable, and that this particular belief-combination might not be true. So believing in both naturalism and evolution is “self-defeating.”

OK, the key issue is why we should believe premise 1. To begin with, he says that from a naturalistic viewpoint, beliefs are brain states with both neurophysiological properties and mental content. So, for each belief, you’ve got P, the belief’s physical properties, and you’ve got C, some proposition (what the belief is about). Whether a belief is true depends on C and on the world.

The crux of the matter is that natural selection only cares about P. That’s the only attribute of a belief that matters as far as behavior and survival are concerned. It doesn’t matter what our belief contents are, and whether they are true or false. For some set of creatures in some cosmos, the probability of any given belief being true is 1/2, and the probability of the whole belief system being reliable is minimal. Or so he says.

Now, the idea that natural selection cares not about truth is strange, on the face of it, since it does seem very important that a person be correct in a belief that the house is on fire, or pool is empty, or whatever it might be. An organism whose inner states don’t track external conditions is very quickly going to fail. So what’s he thinking?

If you listen all the way through, you find this question is asked by someone in the audience. That’s when he talks about frogs and flies and concedes that yes, adaptive brains track external things. But, he says, that’s not the same as belief. Human brains can track external conditions and still be replete with falsity.

But how so? How is that possible? It was in my attempt to come up with an explanation that I brought in some scenarios in which brains do track external conditions but beliefs go from true to false. I simply made use of some standard stuff about “wide content” as it is called.

He actually owes us his own example. I might be wrong about how it would go, since on a second listening, I see he assumes content is either reducible to or supervenient on brain properties, and that’s a rather odd notion of content. I’m not sure what such contents are about, and thus not sure how to construct examples involving them.

As far as I can see this argument is formally valid though like all arguments it has premises which can be questioned.

Yep. One of the main problems seems to be that the argument applies a very unrealistic view of natural selection. It’s not true that the characteristic with the greater survival value will always evolve. There may be energetic trade-offs, the previous genetic background may not allow for it, or there may not be a realistic way to achieve it biologically at all. For example:

“The Capacity to form True beliefs only when they have positive Survival value”

How would this work? Let’s say that I have the capacity to form the belief “This lake has fish”. This can be true or false, and of positive, neutral or negative survival value (maybe I’m correct that there are fish, but they are not biting, and I will waste time and energy trying to catch them). But I’d say there is no way to guarantee that this belief will only form when it has positive survival value!

He actually owes us his own example.

Are you familiar with his “tiger” scenarios… This is from Wikipedia, I’m not sure if this is representative of his current view or not:

“Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief… Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it… Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour.”

Needless to say, it’s not so “clear” that we could have a belief system that’s made up of these kinds of unlikely delusions and consistently works well in promoting survival.

Ah…that tiger example is from a different version of the reliability argument, here–

http://hisdefense.org/articles/ap001.html

The argument of this particular talk (see 7:15 pm) needs another sort of example–one that can show how a person could have a brain that tracks the world pretty well (since that’s adaptive), yet an unreliable belief system.

It’s from a different talk, but let’s talk about the tigers anyway. Here it seems it’s not that natural selection doesn’t care about truth, as Plantinga says in the current talk. It does. It’s adaptive that Paul forms the belief that tigers are around, when there are tigers around. He also has some false beliefs that happen to be adaptive. But does that show that false beliefs are generally just as adaptive as true beliefs? I don’t see that. Thus, I don’t see that, given evolution and no god, any belief would have a 50/50 chance of being true, which is what he says.

Even if it were true that for any given isolated situation we can find false beliefs that work just as well, a belief system isn’t formed by just sticking a number of unconnected beliefs together. Plantinga seems to assume that there is no such thing as reasoning or constructing plausible models of the world. Why doesn’t Paul notice that he never achieves his goal of being eaten by the tiger / getting to pet the tiger?

windy, Good question!

Jean: What you describe as his “key premise” is surely his key conclusion. What I have tried to describe is the logic behind it, based on how he has developed this argument in the past.

Windy: By “Evolvable Characteristics” I mean characteristics that can actually evolve (given the kind of caveats you mention). The fact that Amos can give such long lists of commonly held beliefs that (in his view) are false but offer survival value (at least historically - evolution cannot select for future survival value) is pretty good prima facie evidence that a capacity to form true beliefs only when they have positive survival value is evolvable.

re Tigers: the point of these kind of philosophical counter-examples is to illustrate a single point, not to offer a comprehensive model of the world.

It seems to me that there is an element of Idealism to the notion that Knowledge is justified true belief. It puts one in contact with a belief in the first instance which is then worked on or it works out sound etc. However if the realist position is taken knowledge is the default position. When knowledge doesn’t work out - ‘I have thee not and yet I see thee still’- we can proceed to - ‘ I only seemed to see a dagger or I believed I saw a dagger’. That is the correct order of business or so it seems to me. It is otiosely stipulative that knowledge is veridical by definition.

“And this leads directly to the question
whether it is at all likely that our cognitive
faculties, given naturalism and given their evolutionary origin, would have developed
in such a way as to be reliable, to
furnish us with mostly true beliefs.”

(from Naturalism Defeated by AP)

You get to vote, you don’t get to have voted in the election of reality.

Windy: By “Evolvable Characteristics” I mean characteristics that can actually evolve (given the kind of caveats you mention). The fact that Amos can give such long lists of commonly held beliefs that (in his view) are false but offer survival value (at least historically - evolution cannot select for future survival value) is pretty good prima facie evidence that a capacity to form true beliefs only when they have positive survival value is evolvable.

No, that latter part does not follow at all! I’ll repeat some of the problems I outlined before and add another one

a) the items on Amos’s list may in many situations be of negative survival value even if they are beneficial on average, so it’s not evidence for your claim

b) there is no way for the nervous system to know and pick in advance only the beliefs which have positive survival value!

c) even if there is an evolved bias towards certain beliefs, this does not imply that the organism is stuck with these ideas forever, if it has the capacity of modifying beliefs upon further evidence!

In addition, Amos’s list can only be prima facie evidence of the kind of biases naturalistic evolution can be expected to produce, if in fact naturalistic evolution produced the human brain. But if someone thinks, like Plantinga, that it originated some other way, they can’t very well point to some of the beliefs we have now as examples of the products of naturalistic evolution!

H/T to Stephen Law for the following link:

http://gatorfreethought.org/witmer%20talk%201.pdf

It seems to me that AP might be classed as a presuppositionlist performing an internal criticism. I haven’t thought it through yet, so I could easily be wrong, but it jumped to mind while I was reading the former. So I’m throwing it out there.

some further thoughts on my objection b) above…

Consider an animal which has the capacity to learn a purely mechanical set of movements (let’s assume no beliefs involved). There are probably plenty of real-world examples where an animal has a special capacity to learn a particular survival-enhancing behavior more readily than the alternatives (for example, “tool” use in the woodpecker finch)

Now if the above argument regarding Evolvable Capacities were correct, we should find that all behaviors are like this. All animals should be such that they were only capable of learning survival-enhancing behaviors. It should be impossible for an animal to learn a detrimental or neutral behavior. …Frankly, I think Plantinga has constructed a ridiculous strawman of evolution.

I was going to comment on Nicholas’ outlilne of Plantinga’s argument against naturalism, but windy has done so for me. This is the point that I would question right away:

(3) Naturalistic Evolution implies that If X and Y are Mutually Exclusive Evolvable Capacities and the Human Survival Value of X is appreciably greater than that of Y then the Prevalance of X in Humans will be much greater than the Prevalence of Y.

Even if X and Y are Evolvable Capacities, there’s nothing as strict as a logical implication that X will be more prevalent in humans than Y. Further:

(4) The Capacity to form True beliefs only when they have positive Survival value and the Capacity to form True beliefs (regardless of survival value) are Mutually Exclusive Evolvable Characteristics.

It’s not at all clear that the capacity to form true beliefs only if they have postitive survival value is an evolvable characteristic. It seems pretty likely this is not evolvable - the “Human Survival Value” of a belief is simply not the sort of property that’s available to the mechanisms of evolution. It’s too hazy and dependent on context; it’s too meta.

I’d also like to thank Eric for his very lucid posts in this thread. Actually I’m not sure I’ve added anything much, but I’m commenting so I can get notifications of follow-ups :)

I’ve copied the outline of the paper that AP used at Biola, and will get down to it. Before I do that, however, I just want to throw in the suggestion that we may be dealing with two evolvables here. We may be dealing the evolving organisms, on the one hand, and evolving memes on the other, and one may have nothing (necessarily, anyway) to do with the other either. Organisms are vehicles for genes, and the purpose of organisms is to perpetuate genes (the selfish gene theory), whilst meme complexes (and on the bundle theory the self may be a meme complex) are inhabited by replicating memes, and memes exist (like genes) mainly for the perpetuation of memes. Does this add a layer of complication to AP’s theory? I should think it does.

Now, certain memes cannot be self-correcting, because they are systematically unreliable. Religious memes seem to be like that. But there are other memes which actually tend to parallel (what for a better word we’ll call ) qualia, and these memes can be checkable by using instruments and other apparatus. The qualia (whatever they are - but they are cognate to what is going on in the frog when a fly enters tongue space) are the things which tend towards survival, and have or do not have survival value. Memes, however, have an existence which, though parallel to qualia, is more or less independent of qualia, and can, as Hume noticed, be joined together to form all sorts of non-existents, from Hydras to University Professors who have proved naturalism to be untrue. The task of science, in some sense, is to make sure memes and qualia interact, and that memes are more faithful in tracking what is the rough equivalent of frogs catching flies that wander into range. Memes, however, can fail to track ‘external’ reality, and end up turning people into willing bombs for non-exisiting all powerful UCs. They might even get some people to write books showing how compatible the analog of tongue space is to memetic structures like gods and demons.

Jean: What you describe as his “key premise” is surely his key conclusion. What I have tried to describe is the logic behind it, based on how he has developed this argument in the past.

Apparently you have still not listened to the talk. He states an argument, with numbered premises, and I assure you that what I’ve called premise #1 is indeed premise #1. He then spends some time arguing for that premise, and gives new arguments. The arguments are what I’ve said. They are about mental content. They are not the old arguments you’ve evidently taken from a book.

General observation about the reliability argument. Apparently Plantinga has an intuition along the lines of Descartes–that God has to be assumed as the guarantor of our veracity. Without God, we’d be in an epistemic mess.

Over the years, he’s been casting about for arguments that support this intuition. Thus, we get the argument Nicholas got out of a book, which is different from the argument in the Biola talk I linked to above (which includes the tiger example), which is different from the mental content argument in the recent central APA talk. In each case, he’s trying to show that naturalistic evolution (no god, etc.) would leave us with an unreliable belief system.

Basic idea–evolution cares about survival, but not truth. In the APA talk he makes a very strong claim–with naturalistic evolution, any belief we form would have no more than a 50/50 chance of being true. He’s not merely saying that with NE we’d wind up with some false beliefs. (Of course…and we do have some false beliefs!) He’s saying 50/50.

I don’t think that the Biola argument (the one with the tigers) really even tries to establish the 50/50 point. It just says false beliefs can have survival value. The book argument also doesn’t establish anything as strong as 50/50. It just says that NE wants us to survive, at any cost, and would stop us from having true beliefs with low survival value.

(Note: it’s not obvious to me what we’re talk about here. Nicholas gives us the premises, but not a single clarifying example. Thus, it’s very hard to make any assessment whether the true-but-low-survival-value beliefs in questions can or can’t be stomped out by naturalistic evolution. Without an example, t’s also impossible to assess whether we in fact have such beliefs or don’t.)

To try to establish the very strong 50/50 point, the recent talk makes a new argument about the way mental content relates to the neurophysiological properties of the brain. I think it’s really the most obscure and least convincing argument of the three, but there you go.

Many atheists would suggest that belief in God has survival value but is untrue.

Heh, I was all set to finally write on the argument outlined by Beale this morning, and I find that Peter and Eric have done it for me. Or at least hit on the same points.

Eric’s point about two evolvables seems to be a challenge to point (4) The Capacity to form True beliefs only when they have positive Survival value and the Capacity to form True beliefs (regardless of survival value) are Mutually Exclusive Evolvable Characteristics.

It doesn’t seem to me that two belief types in 4) are mutually exclusive necessarily. We could argue that evolution proceeded along, as it is wont to do, and then suddenly hit upon the Big Brain and the capacity to form true beliefs (regardless of survival value). Some true beliefs have a very strong evolutionary advantage, some do not, but if the CAPACITY to form the ones that do was so strong that it removed human beings from genetic evolution (which as far as I know has pretty much happened) then all the True Beliefs that are superfluous to genetic evolution (as well as plenty of False Beliefs) would be permited to kick around with no evolutionary penalty since we have transcended natural evolution in the short term.

In other words, why not view True Beliefs (that have no survival value) and True Beliefs (that have survival value) as two subsets of True Beliefs Aquired Through The Capacity to Form True Beliefs, which is a capacity strong enough to essentially end genetic evolution (via extremely powerful and effective true beliefs) and replace it with cultural evolution, something that opperates according to different rules.

Part of the problem surely is that humans have, from an evolutionary perspective, been around for an extremely short period of time, Are we not, in a non-trival sense, simply beyond genetic evolution at this point? We may soon have the capacity to rewrite out own genetic code as we see fit.

Nicholas, For the purposes of eludcidating the book-argument, you need an example of a true belief with low-survival-value, not a false belief with high-survival-value.

Faust–So the idea is that naturalistic evolution produces a big brain and then…what? That (somehow) protects us from paying the penalty for having true beliefs with prima facie low-survival-value. Is that the idea? Just curious–what are you thinking of as an example of such a belief?

How about beliefs about higher mathematics? They are extremely mind-intensive, distracting, and engaging, let’s suppose. They yield the classic absent minded professor. He/she’d be likely to starve to death and be hit by cars, but evolution has produced mechanisms that protect people like this. We protect our head-in-the cloud relatives etc. etc

is this the sort of thing you’re envisioning? The point, then, I take it, is that NE would not, after all, stop us having true beliefs with (prima facie) low survival value. It would find means to protect people who have them. Is that your point?

Yes, Jean, contrary to Nicholas, the argument is as you said, and the first premise is:

The probability [Pr] of the Reliability [R] of cognitive abilities on the assumption that Naturalism and Evoluionary theory are equivalent [N&E] is low.

(Plantinga would make his lecture more intelligible if he stopped using letters to state the premises.) He spends a lot of time arguing for the truth of that premise, because it is, in fact, the crucial premise in the argument, as Dennett notes. Defeating this premise is to defeat Plantinga’s argument.

But Plantinga needs to show that he is not arguing within a naturalistic world, otherwise the reliability of his conclusion is very low (according to him). For this reason he begins with a favourable review of Michael Behe’s latest stab in the dark.

If he could show, independently, that the god hypothesis is the default position, then he might succeed in showing that premise 1 is at least believeable. But he has not shown this at all. The intuitive probability that premise one is true is very low. Quite aside from Plantinga’s talk about neurological states and mental contents and the hazards of a reliable connexion between the two, there is, in fact, a hidden premise here to the effect that, in the absence of a supernatural being who actually did twist the knobs of evolution, there is no reason to think that there would be more than a random relation between the two.

This is an astonishing assumption to make, as Dennett points out with considerably more gentle humour than Plantinga - who actually jokes about the vast amount of suffering that has been and is continuing to be endured by sensitive organisms (a normal characteristic of Christians?). Plantinga’s claim to have escaped the confines of naturalism (Charles Taylor’s ‘immanent frame’) is bogus, because there is no way, aside from biological research, to show that, in fact, the end result of evolution is directed by some higher power.

This escapes the need to posit two evolveables here. But, we should also note Dennett’s point that the point of science is to correct for unreliability by carrying out research designed to produce intersubjectively confirmable conclusions (that is, reliable ones).

Plantinga’s continual reference to truth gives the game away, because he believes that it is truth (that is, absolute truth) that we are after (did anyone note his throwaway comment when he spoke of Pat Churchland’s remark about ‘truth - whatever that is’?), when, perhaps, the best we can do is to discern what is true (T) given circumstances a, b, and c, and observers X, Y, and Z, who confirm independently that T is the regular and observed outcome of those circumstances.

Aside from that kind of confirmation, our cognitive abilities are often quite unreliable (except, of course, in the ordinary course of human life, knowing where to turn to get to A, which store to go to to buy E, who to speak to to find out whether it would be legal to R, and so on). That is why we check them. Some beliefs cannot be checked, such as beliefs in god, the tooth fairy, and the continued existence, 60 years after her death, of my aunt. These, then, are the least reliable beliefs that we have, and can be shown to be so, Plantinga notwithstanding.

Quite aside from Plantinga’s talk about neurological states and mental contents and the hazards of a reliable connexion between the two, there is, in fact, a hidden premise here to the effect that, in the absence of a supernatural being who actually did twist the knobs of evolution, there is no reason to think that there would be more than a random relation between the two.

I think that’s the crux of it, and I agree with you that the hidden premise is not at all persuasive. I also agree with your take on Dennett, who clears away the cobwebs very effectively and makes the case that brains can detect their problems and make themselves more reliable. We get glasses, etc. There’s no reason to feel stuck in a state where each belief we have has just a random chance of being true.

Jean,

I’m talking about basically the same thing Eric does in his discussion of “two evolvables.” Another way to put the argument would be something like this:

What do we need to survive? We need food, water, and protection from the elements (shelter and clothing), and protection from other competitors. We really don’t need that much to merely survive. To be happy? Challenge. To survive as a group? Not hard.

The Big Brain which has the Capactiy to Form True Beliefs (regardless of survival value), is so successfull in taking care of basic needs, that evolution by genetics simply stops. It becomes irrelevant. Therefore there is no room, no TIME for evolution to work on our cognitive capacities as our cognitive capacities hit a “critical mass” which allowed us to remove ourselves from Natural Evolution.

As far as humans are concerned culture is what evolves, not genes. We had a big leap to a particular set of capacities that was so powerful that it basically ended our relationship to natural evolution and therefore natural evolution cannot be said to have any influence on our cognitive capacities beyond that point where the shift from natural evolution to cultural evolution occured. Sort of like a cognitive singularity where genes give it over to memes and the memes become the new agents of evolution.

Is Plantinga still flogging his P(R/N&E)) argument? He should have dropped that some time ago.
Yes, the probability of a human being having an accurate picture of reality IS low. This is why economists have abandoned Homo Economicus (the rational informed actor) and why there is so much research and published work about how we get things wrong. Evolution does not provide us with perfectly reliable means of gathering the truth, but with a lot of heuristics which are good enough to get us through for mundane tasks in the middle world. So, if naturalism and evolution predict this, we can chalk up one more victory for N&E.
This does not mean, however, that we are entirely incapable of knowing anything, nor that knowing the truth is unrelated to survival. This would be an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence. We are all familiar with the expression “Knowledge is power.” Informational disparity is a major source of economic advantage, and know-how is the decisive element for success in virtually any pursuit. Plantinga would have to present a case strong enough to overturn the combined experience of nearly all of humanity.
But to get from what we have to some precise approximation of the truth takes a lot of time and hard work, all of which has to be checked by others and confirmed by evidence. This is what the scientific method does. Reality at very large and very small scales is almost incomprehensible to us; as Richard Feynman put it, if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics. Very few people can even understand the math, let alone the reality it represents. Cosmology at the moment seems to be teetering at the brink of collapse for lack of data. And physics is simple: complex subjects, like human biology, make so many mistakes that they seem incapable of making headway. Look at the history of dietary science. The fact is, we’re just not very good at this. We’ll get there eventually, but we’re really not very bright, and if we were made in God’s image, than He’s not very bright either.
In an effort to refute naturalism, Plantinga has blown his own legs off. Not only is radical skepticism an inescapable black hole (you certainly can’t escape it based upon an assertion of the supernatural followed by a string of non-sequitors based on ancient folk tales), but the flaws in the human mind he so gleefully points out make the very type of philosophy which he pursues–long chains of a priori reasoning, unsupported by evidence, intent on discovering the ultimate nature of reality–effectively impossible.

Part of the problem surely is that humans have, from an evolutionary perspective, been around for an extremely short period of time, Are we not, in a non-trival sense, simply beyond genetic evolution at this point?

No. There has been a huge amount of positive selection in modern humans.

We may soon have the capacity to rewrite out own genetic code as we see fit.

That would be more evolution, not less.

You are however right about the importance of cultural evolution to modern humans. This is something that co-evolves with genetics, though, it doesn’t supersede it.

Mark Fournier–Thanks for the comment…I think that’s all on target.

Windy,

“No. There has been a huge amount of positive selection in modern humans.”

OK that’s interesting to me (and makes sense on a little reflection). I’ll have to look into the specifics of that. Suggestions welcome. I’m particularly interested in “huge amount,” are we talking about things like skin color changing based on geographical location? And is there evidence that some of this positive selection is influencing our cognition? To what degree? Surely the Ancient Greeks are nearly the same as us at a genetic level…maybe not.

As for my science fiction-y example of culture editing genes I’m NOT suggesting there is less evolution overall, simply that (our) evolution is primarily cultural rather than genetic. If culture were to decide the values that we use when altering our own genetic code for whatever reason, isn’t it culture that is directing genes? Doesn’t meme survival become primary as oposed to co-equal? I suppose that could be considered co-evolution of memes and genes together, but isn’t it primarilly a culture driven process that makes genes the means by which culture achieves its ends? So most assuredly MORE not LESS evolution, but no longer driven merely by genes responding to the fitness challenges presented by the environment, but rather genes responding to the values set by cultural forces, values which in some case might not have anything to do with survival in the environment.

Faust, I think the problem with asserting that the evolution of humans is over is that, as you yourself have pointed out, there hasn’t been enough time. i.e. the time-scale is wrong. The whole of human history is a tiny blip in evolutionary terms.

I don’t know enough of the facts, but small evolutionary changes do happen on a timescale that we can see. And cultural evolution, whether it’s as systematisable as meme-theorists want or not, is a big factor in the evolution of our world (although it may or may not effect any changes in the underlying creatures that we are). But it’s on a different time scale from evolution as such, and we’re just sitting here in the present, unable to really see the big picture of where we humans fit in.

That said, the fact that we’ve evolved brains that are capable of doing science - that aspect of cultural evolution that brings us ever-closed to the nature of reality - is worth considering in the context of the naturalistic evolution argument.
I think what you’re saying (Faust) is that Plantinga’s arguments fail to take into account the fact that much of the evolution that occurred in terms of our truth-capacity has been cultural evolution, and as such not subject to the direct survival pressures that drive “naturalistic evolution”. I think this is an interesting point.

Peter:

I think what you’re saying (Faust) is that Plantinga’s arguments fail to take into account the fact that much of the evolution that occurred in terms of our truth-capacity has been cultural evolution, and as such not subject to the direct survival pressures that drive “naturalistic evolution”.

Tha’ts basically what I’m trying to get at yes. Basically culture IS a big mess of beliefs, some true some not, that ride on top of a cognitive system that from a biological perspective was sufficiently advanced to produce things like culture in the first place, and that culture was strong enough to take over the care and feeding of humans and reduce genes to a secondary status. Now windy, who I suspect knows a good deal more about evolution than me, can offer corrections to such a thesis which may or may not hold water.

OK that’s interesting to me (and makes sense on a little reflection). I’ll have to look into the specifics of that. Suggestions welcome.

John Hawks’ blog might be a good place to start:
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/evolution/selection/acceleration/accel_story_2007.html

And is there evidence that some of this positive selection is influencing our cognition? To what degree? Surely the Ancient Greeks are nearly the same as us at a genetic level…maybe not.

For the purposes of this discussion, at least - I’d bet even earlier, pre-Neolithic humans were just as able to hold true beliefs as we are. A lot of the changes are probably related to adapting to different food sources as agriculture spread.

So most assuredly MORE not LESS evolution, but no longer driven merely by genes responding to the fitness challenges presented by the environment, but rather genes responding to the values set by cultural forces, values which in some case might not have anything to do with survival in the environment.

That’s one way to see it, but I prefer not to look at it as an either-or situation, since big brains, learning and culturally transmitted behavior have apparently been around long before humans. If you read Robert Sapolsky’s descriptions of baboon behavior, they spend a huge amount of time on social interaction that’s not directly related to survival or even reproduction.

I agree that we should look for causes to our beliefs mostly in cultural evolution and that this is another hole in Plantinga’s argument. But I would not argue that biological evolution has been superseded, since that seems to concede too much to Plantinga’s argument that belief content could be “invisible” to natural selection.

In some sense, we can say selection is both accelerating and relaxing. Agriculture led to very rapid evolution in traits like lactase persistence in relation to herding and global travel and climate change is leading to exposure to new vectors of disease. We are also exposed to a panoply of human-generated chemicals. On the other hand, technology has relaxed selection on many traits - consider the effect of corrective lenses on eyesight or antibiotics and vaccinations on resistance to disease. Humans may well be harboring more variation than they did in the past for this reason and, of course, the enormous population size.

That said - I find it curious for Plantinga to admit he knows next to nothing about biology and evolution and really can’t be bothered to learn anything (see his comments in Robert Pennock’s “Intelligent Design and its Critics”). Plus he is now trumpeting the thoroughly discredited thesis of Michael Behe. Yet he criticizes Dawkins and Harris for not knowing enough about theology to write books on religion.

Plantinga in his notes on “Arguments for God” claims belief in God to be basic. He doesn’t seem to think any need exists for proving this.

Windy,

Thanks for the link, very interesting.

Hi,

I’m sorry to join this discussion so late. I read your post, and skimmed the comments.

I think there is some confusion here about what Plantinga is saying, but someone may have already pointed this out.

He is not simply saying that our faculties fail to be perfectly reliable if unguided evolution is correct. Clearly our cognitive faculties are not perfectly reliable.

What Plantinga is claiming is that there is no reason to think are faculties are reliable at all. That does not mean they are perfectly unreliable. For any belief we have there is no reason to think it true, but no reason to think it is false either. Evolution is simply not interested in that sort of thing.

This leads to a sort of humean scepticism. Suppose that you have your own personal cartesian demon, and every time you form a belief the demon flips a coin. If it is heads he allows you to form a true belief, if tails, he forces you to believe a falsehood. If this were the case, then we would have no reason to trust any of our beliefs.

This should also not be regarded as an argument for God’s existence. Plantinga does not say, therefore God created us, or anything like that. He merely points out that the theist does not have a similar problem.

There are three ways out of the problem. Deny R, deny N or deny E.

I take it that we would not seriously want to reject R. If you are a naturalist then E is really the only option you have, although perhaps you could simply be agnostic about the origins of life. That only leaves N. It has to go.

Kyle, In the ocmments I did clarify that point….in fact, many times. He’s claiming that given naturalistic evolution, our belief system would be completely unreliable. Each belief would have just a 50/50 chance of being true. That’s what he’s claiming, but the argument for it is another matter. In this particular talk, I think the argument was actually pretty obscure. As we discussed at length in the comments above, other talks and papers make other arguments, but none of them are terribly persuasive.

Ok, I’m sorry I missed that.

Here is my way of motivating the argument (and again, I’m sorry if this has been discussed already).

Suppose that N&E is true, then all that the brain needs to do is receive information about the environment, and then use that information to produce the correct behaviour. But why does it matter what the content of the beliefs are that are produced.

Assuming materialism about the mind (which most naturalists do) then all that is going on is input-brain state-brain state-…-output. It does not matter what the content of these brain states are.

Here is an example: suppose that when you see an apple a certain brain state occurs (S1). Why does S1 have to have ‘there is an apple’ as its content? Perhaps you form the belief ‘there is a fairy’, you also believe that fairies like to be tickled, so you decide to tickle the fairy. But this brain state causes you to pick up the apple and eat it, all the while you think you are tickling a fairy.

I must be brief, but…

You are picturing mental contents as rather spooky things without any connection to the way brain states track things in the world. These spooky mental contents naturally don’t make any difference to survival. It’s immaterial whether they’re true or false.

But what if you have a naturalistic notion of content that connects it directly to how brain states track environmental conditions? (eg Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information) So a brain state triggered by tigers is a “that’s a tiger” belief. If that’s what contents are like, then it makes sense to think that evolution prefers brains that are pretty good at forming true beliefs. if I think “that’s a tiger” when there’s none around, I’ll cower in my cave and neglect to gather fruits and berries. If I think “that’s a tiger” when there’s one around, then I’ll avoid getting eaten.

Of course, evolution has other agendas. It might even be adaptive to have some false beliefs, in some instances. But it wouldn’t make sense to say that true belief has no survival value, if you think of content as I’ve suggested.

I have to say, though, that all these things are vastly complex. There’s a huge literature on what content is, what role it plays, etc. etc.

This leads to a sort of humean scepticism. Suppose that you have your own personal cartesian demon, and every time you form a belief the demon flips a coin. If it is heads he allows you to form a true belief, if tails, he forces you to believe a falsehood. If this were the case, then we would have no reason to trust any of our beliefs.

But what if your beliefs aren’t independent and you have the means of comparing them against each other and against external feedback?

Here is an example: suppose that when you see an apple a certain brain state occurs (S1). Why does S1 have to have ‘there is an apple’ as its content? Perhaps you form the belief ‘there is a fairy’, you also believe that fairies like to be tickled, so you decide to tickle the fairy.

But evolution doesn’t produce beliefs, evolution only equips the brain for learning them. So someone would have had to teach me that apples are fairies and like to be tickled - it’s unclear why evolution is to blame for the faulty belief?

And why are these examples always about a belief that somehow pops out in response to a single type of situation, and not about their relationship to other things? What about other fruit? Do I believe that they are different fairies that like to be tickled differently? Poisonous fruits are fairies that don’t like to be tickled? Do I believe that I get a tummy-ache from tickling too small and green fairies? Do I believe that fairies grow on trees? How does the belief in fairies help me find apples to eat? What if I want to “tickle” my sister’s baby and end up eating it, since that’s what my concept of “tickling” is?

Faust,

For a look at recent evolutionary change from a different perspective (the intersection of biology and linguistics, sort of) you could try Nicholas Wades’ book: Before the Dawn, Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. It’s not a bad overview of some relevant developments inferred from various lines of evidence in multiple disciplines. And the notes are a great jumping off point for the primary material.

Kyle,

I don’t think your input / output view holds together past a few isolated examples due to the interrelated nature of our beliefs. As each false belief would “infect” other beliefs that shared its’ faulty component, there should come a point where observation shows the contradiction. Our “just so” stories of belief get harder to tell as the story gets longer, till at some point we have to believe that the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, which nobody talks about, is actually not there.

We have seen this happen in science with the paradigm shifts that Kuhn wrote about. No doubt this will happen again as we learn more and have to add new observations of our world to our web of beliefs about the world. It seems that any notion of a god anchoring our beliefs to reality has some ‘splainin’ to do with the actual history of how our beliefs have changed in the last few millennia.

An “Alvin” is philosophers rhyming slang for a “whinger”.

Grendel’s Dad wrote:

For a look at recent evolutionary change from a different perspective (the intersection of biology and linguistics, sort of) …

I realize I’m pretty late to this discussion having just found out about the occurrence of this debate, and finding this site via google. Still for anyone interested…

It seems to me that language use by humans is a key point which defeats Plantinga’s argument. Some have touched on that importance here in bringing up issues of culture. I’ve engaged in an extensive dialog with an apologist on this matter here:

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/rfforum/vpost?id=3052771

My perspective is that Plantinga’s argument is reasonably valid in terms of probabilistic expectations of R for a randomly selected evolved species. However Plantinga’s argument ignores the implications for the veracity of beliefs in a species which has already evolved in such a way as to benefit from social cooperation and acquires linguistic capabillities.

IOW, evolution of R for a species, requires winning a lottery, but the empirical evidence supporting our species holding a winning lottery ticket is abundant.

My apologies for getting the blockquote wrong in the above post. Only the first sentence fragment is Grendel’s Dad’s writing.