This post is to move a discussion from Sandbox(4) at Entropy’s request.
Over on the Sandbox(4) thread, fifthmonarchyman made two statements that I disagree with:
“I’ve argued repeatedly that humans are hardwired to believe in God.”
“Everyone knows that God exists….”
As my handle indicates, I prefer to lurk. The novelty of being told that I don’t exist overcame my good sense, so I joined the conversation.
For the record, I am what is called a weak atheist or negative atheist. The Wikipedia page describes my position reasonably well:
“Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist.”
I do exist, so fifthmonarchyman’s claims are disproved. For some reason he doesn’t agree, hence this thread.
Added In Edit by Alan Fox 16.48 CET 11th January, 2018
This thread is designated as an extension of Noyau. This means only basic rules apply. The “good faith” rule, the “accusations of dishonesty” rule do not apply in this thread.
Of course they would. And Plantinga is presupposing theism. And that’s what makes his argument circular.
Right. It cannot detect truth, because there isn’t any truth to detect. It has to first invent truth. And Plantinga’s argument does not consider that possibility.
It’s a bit more complicated than can easily be explained in a comment here. But here’s the quick summary version. We make decisions on what is true by applying standards. But those standards, themselves, are human pragmatic conventions.
Entropy,
Calm down, dude.
Plantinga’s argument doesn’t depend on absolutist, binary “true/false bullshit”.
If you want to refute Plantinga’s argument, you need to show that such “better cognitive faculties” can be relied upon to produce true beliefs, including true beliefs about naturalism and evolution.
Plantinga argument is based on the reliability (or lack thereof) of our heritable cognitive faculties.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to understand Plantinga’s argument first, and then attempt to refute it?
Neil,
While Plantinga is obviously a theist, he is not presupposing theism here. He is simply trying to show that under the assumptions of naturalism and evolutionary theory, we have no reason to trust our cognitive faculties. He doesn’t invoke theism.
Might be informative to glance here and here.
ETA and here.
Neil is presupposing atheism. That’s what makes his arguments circular.
Grow up, dude. Try to see the argument for what it is, independent of the one who is formulating it.
The argument states its presuppositions up front. There is no theism there. There is evolutionism instead. And you can see that it does not presuppose theism by looking hard if there is a sudden smuggling in of theism at any point.
You either are not familiar with the argument or you don’t care. Probably both.
Thanks for the quick summary. What’s missing here is any reason why anyone should trust it to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But I know you – Neil does not do explanations. This quick summary is already a bit more than the half-sentences that you usually do, so thanks again.
Is Plantinga’s argument persuasive? Is it well-known? Is it any more than the assertion that one can’t both accept evolution and hold to “philosophical naturalism”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism and also search Youtube. It’s thoroughly discussed.
You will not understand anything about it, so your questions are irrelevant.
Alan,
To some people, yes. To me, no.
Yes.
Yes, it’s much more than that. It’s an argument for why it’s irrational to accept naturalism and evolutionary theory.
I am struggling to care, that’s true. But why should anyone care? Even Keiths tells us it’s “astonishingly lame” or is that just his “modal argument”?
The plain old correspondence theory doesn’t say anything at all.
Must be an “astonishingly lame” one, then.
…says Neil, thus demonstrating Erik’s point:
Alan,
The argument I labeled as “astonishingly lame” is not the EAAN, Alan.
That’s why I asked if you were only referring to his “modal” argument. Do you think then his EAAN has some merit? Seriously?
Given your lack of care, why should you ask ‘why’ at all, ever?
To the extent people ponder philosophical arguments and give thought to their possible veracity and implications, they show their care for truth (truth itself, abstract truth). You are showing you don’t care about truth. Fair enough. Stay as you are.
Read the thread, Alan. I’ve unambiguously stated my views on the EAAN:
Indeed! I’ve often remarked that asking why is a fruitless endeavour.
I’m more concerned with the models we construct being better, more accurate, models of reality. The reliableness of our senses is a limit on the accuracy of those models.
And the aim of EAAN is to establish that naturalism+evolution=low reliability of the senses, thus directly relevant to your concerns. You’d know this if you had cared to read the Wikipedia page.
I rather think it is absurd. (If Wikipedia is an adequate source)
ETA link HT Erik
Alan,
Which is obviously false. Asking why we should, or shouldn’t, accept naturalism and evolutionary theory is a perfectly sensible and legitimate question.
So is asking questions like “why do our neutrino flux measurements give the results they do?”
I’m always reminded of this:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2732-radio-emerges-from-the-electronic-soup/
And this
It’s amazing what evolving systems with different limitations can achieve.
keiths,
Well, then, hotshot, answer that. Why do they?
Alan,
You’re certainly welcome to support that assessment.
keiths,
Because our senses aren’t veridical!
Is it 1.21 Gigawatts?
OMagain,
Don’t think so!
I’ll double check my calculations!
Back to the drawing board…
Alan:
Dude, is your goal to appear as ridiculous as possible?
Your claim was that “asking why is a fruitless endeavour.”
I replied:
If you want to argue that it’s fruitless to “ask why” in philosophy and science, then be my guest.
Scientists and philosophers know better.
keiths,
I’ll note you didn’t answer your own question. Early start tomorrow. Night, folks!
Alan,
Our senses aren’t veridical, therefore Plantinga’s EAAN is absurd?
You’re certainly welcome to support that claim, too.
Alan,
Of course I didn’t. We’re talking about the fruitfulness of asking why, and that question is an example of how science is constantly “asking why”.
Why do total solar eclipses happen as rarely as they do?
Why do we see Bailey’s beads during a total solar eclipse?
Why did the folks in Grand Teton experience a total eclipse, when the folks in Yellowstone did not?
Asking why is incredibly fruitful.
To claim that “asking why is a fruitless endeavour”, as you did, is ridiculous.
OMagain:
Looks like that went right over Alan’s head.
Of course I am not making any such presupposition.
That’s what I have been doing. And the argument presupposes a conception of truth that requires something like theism.
It presupposes that there is some kind of truth that is external (or metaphysical). It does not state that presupposition up front.
Neil:
Would you care to back that up?
The way I would put that is: “Veridical” is meaningless as applied to our senses.
Neil, your ‘the correspondence theory of truth entails theism’ predilection is closely akin both to Plantinga’s position and FMM’s. It doesn’t presuppose atheism, as Erik claims, but it seems utterly wrong to me anyhow, and your defenses of it seem to me no better than FMM’s claim that truth IS god.
If atheists means deliberate denialists, they do exist.
There is a growing number of uninformed atheists I call the new ignorant force of new uniformed atheists , but none of them can even qualify as such, because they can’t pass the first step of the test:
If you don’t believe in a God/Deity/ID, provide one piece of scientific evidence that convinced you the most that LIFE (like you) was the product of random, natural processes.
No atheists has ever passed the first step of this test and provided such evidence, but it is never too late…
There were good prospects however, like Jerry Coyne whose real evidence was:
“…just because science can’t answer now this little issue I the overwhelming evidence it has, it doesn’t mean it will not in the future…”
A story like that has gotta be true…
I’m sure you are aware of Daniel Dennett’s three stances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance
What do you make of them?
I would say that most folks find it easier to predict the behavior of “non-programmable” things when we adopt the stance that there is intention somewhere behind them.
We assume that a cat chases a mouse either because it intends to catch it or because it’s purpose is to catch mice. Doing so helps us to predict what the cat will do even though we don’t “understand” it fully.
peace
Of course you know that I think that when properly understood correspondence, coherence and even pragmatist theories of truth all entail the Christian God.
More importantly I think that at their root these are just different ways of understanding the very same thing.
Probably the best way to define truth is…..What God believes.
The doctrine of divine simplicity holds that there is no separating God’s beliefs from his essence.
peace
Exactly
You simply have to presuppose that it’s the truth based on nothing more solid or substantial than personal preference.
peace
Fair enough.
I’ll grant that I haven’t done much explaining. It’s actually the idea of an “ultimate truth” or “metaphysical truth” that I see as pretty much equivalent to theistic ideas of truth. I see truth as coming from society, and social practices.
It is difficult to have a thoughtful discussion about truth, because people get emotional about it.
I’m okay with the correspondence theory as a theory of realism, but not as a theory of truth. That is to say, we start with true sentences (based on some other account of truth), and then we take reality to correspond to those true sentences.
I don’t need to provide such evidence. Science pragmatic. It isn’t a search for truth. The theory of evolution (or some variant of it) is the best explanation that we currently have for biological diversity. We do not currently have a satisfactory explanation for the origin of life, though I think it likely that life arose naturally.
I’ll agree that I cannot rule out divine intervention. But just about everything that was once assumed to require divine intervention has turned out to be natural.
you say “fair enough” but I doubt you will consistently abide by that concession.
Personal preference is really all that atheists have.
The problem is when they want to act as if their personal preference is some how the neutral default starting position for discussion or that it objectively reflects what is real in the universe.
peace
By “best explanation” of course you mean simply “the explanation that Neil Rickert prefers”.
I like hiking
peace
fifth:
OMagain:
fifth:
He’s mocking you, fifth. You inadvertently described yourself — to a T.
Neil:
That’s silly. I see a characteristic forked flash across the valley, and conclude that it’s lightning. My thought is true, but the truth did not come from society.
If anything, they’re probably just frustrated with your inability to follow the discussion. These are deep waters for you, and you simply aren’t equipped with the skills to navigate them. Others try to explain the concepts to you, but there’s only so much they can do.
Again, that’s silly. I see the forked flash and conclude that there’s lightning across the valley. The belief — and it’s a true belief — follows from the sensory input. I certainly don’t start with the sentence “There’s lightning across the valley”, and then take reality to correspond with the sentence.
That’s just goofy, Neil.
A few quick and unhelpful comments:
1. I don’t think it’s productive to ask whether the senses are (or or are not) veridical. I’m inclined to think that veridicality or truthfulness is a property of assertions, and those come late on the scene in both evolutionary and developmental terms. In animals without language — I shall call them “non-discursive animals” (non-human animals and human infants) — their cognitive capacities can be reliable guides to mapping the local affordances without veridicality in the strict sense. The proper function of sensory receptors is to guide the revision of cognitive capacities just insofar as they cease to be reliable guides to mapping the local affordances.
2. What is true about the correspondence theory of truth is that there is a dimension of cognitive activity which consists reliably tracking local affordances. The difference between discursive animals (us) and non-discursive animals is that we, but not them, can also take this as a criterion for evaluating assertions. The rather striking thing about assertions is that their truth-value does not depend on the psychology of the asserter. They are “agent-neutral”.
3. The underlying cognitive function of assertions is that they are function as (what I call) “co-pictures”. In “basic picturing”, an animal reliably maps its local affordances. In “co-picturing,” two or more animals have to cooperate to achieve some shared goal. To do so, each animal must understand the similarities and differences between its perspective on the situation and that of the other animal. They need to minimize the discrepancies between their perspectives, or else their coordinated action will fail. So each animal needs to construct a mental representation of how its specific action will contribute to a coordinated action that will lead to a shared goal. Assertions play the all-important role of allowing each animal to coordinate its actions with those of other animals by giving them a shared symbolic system in terms of which they can convey, evaluate, and decide their joint plan of action.
4. This allows us to formulate what was true about “the correspondence theory of truth” sans theism. Assertions are true if the shared actions guided by the cortical representations constrained by the assertions can function as reliable guides to mapping the relevant affordances.
5. This allows for the truth of assertions to be both ‘correspondence to reality’ and also as provisional, fallible, and perspectival as pragmatists and others (e.g. Nietzsche) have always stressed.
Kantian Naturalist,
Another one
And another
Let’s have a party!
I am underwhelmed. But let me give some background.
I first heard of folk psychology, at around age 50. It was a casual remark, I think by Jerry Fodor (I don’t remember which book or article). I didn’t pay much attention. But then, further reading in philosophy suggested that philosophers do take it seriously.
If I had made it to age 50 without ever coming across folk psychology, then it is going to be hard to persuade me that we are innately driven to have such a theory.