Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism has attracted a great deal of serious critical discussion (e.g. Naturalism Defeated?) and has had a substantial impact on ‘popular’ appraisals of naturalism. (For example, William Lane Craig frequently uses it, and it also appears in the dismissal of naturalism in The Experience of God.) Many philosophers have pointed out various problems with the EAAN, and in my judgment the EAAN is not only flawed but fatally flawed. Nevertheless, it’s a really interesting argument and it could be worth exploring a bit. I’ll present the argument here and then we can get into it in comments if you’d like — though I won’t be offended if you’d rather spend your time doing other things!
The EAAN has gone through various iterations, but here’s the latest version, from Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (2011). Intuitively, we regard our cognitive capacities — sense-perception, introspection, memory, reasoning — as reliable, where “reliable” means “capable of giving us true beliefs most of the time” (subject to the usual caveats). Call this claim R (for ‘reliable’). But how probable is R?
Suppose that one accepts evolution (E) but also affirms naturalism, defined here as the belief that there is no God or anything like God (N). What is the probability of R, given N & E? One might think it’s quite high. But Plantinga thinks that, however high the probability of R, nevertheless the probability of R given N&E is low or inscrutable. Why’s that?
Now, here’s the key move (and in my estimation, the fatal flaw): beliefs are invisible to selection. Why? Because selection only works on behavior. If an unreliable cognitive capacity is causally linked to adaptive behavior, then the unreliable capacity will be selected for (i.e. not selected against). Even a radically unreliable capacity — that one never or almost never yields true beliefs — can be selected for. Selection only “cares” about adaptive behaviors, not about true beliefs. (More precisely, we have no reason to believe that the semantic content is not epiphenomenal.)
So, Plantinga thinks, given N&E, the probability of R is very low. But, if the probability of R is low, given N&E, then that should ‘infect’ the likelihood of all of the beliefs produced by those capacities — including N&E themselves. So, given N&E, we should it think it extremely unlikely that N&E is true. And so the initial assumption of N&E defeats itself. (Here I’m being much too quick with the argument, but we can get into the details in the comments if you’d like.)
Anyway, it’s a really cool little argument, and it’s not immediately clear what’s wrong with it — and I thought it might be worth discussing, given how influential it is.
Plantinga’s argument is quite good, in my opinion. It should be seen as a reductio ad absurdum of Plantinga’s starting assumptions.
I’m a bit puzzled by his use of the word “reliable”. To me, saying that perception is reliable should mean that we can rely on it. I think “veridical” would have been a better term for Plantinga to have used.
That perception can be relied upon, seems a likely outcome of evolution. And Plantinga’s argument seems to agree with that. His claim is that this does not lead to true beliefs.
I do not see that there are any truth requirements at all for perception. There are only pragmatic requirements — that it should work well in providing useful information about the immediate environment. The related truth questions are in how we “translate” or present what we perceive into natural language statements in order to communicate with others. That presentation in natural language is an ability that we acquire from the culture (i.e. we learn it). So that is outside of biological evolution.
I guess this depends on how one sees perception. A representationalist (we form internal representations of the world, and are really perceiving those internal representations) might see a need for the representations to be true. A direct realist will likely have a view of perception that does not have truth requirements.
Interesting post, but — I have never been able to think of EAAN as a cool little argument, or a clever one. It’s an idiotic argument! You might as well argue that on N&E, seeing evolved not to see things but to enhance survival, but evolution doesn’t care what you see, only that you survive, therefore evolutionary theory is not only wrong but doesn’t exist, because there’s no reason to think we’ve seen it written down if N&E is true. (Ditto for other senses, hearing evolutionary theory, etc.)
It gets fundamental things biologically wrong on like 10 more different levels but I’m going home at the moment. The only reason it gets taken seriously at all is the primitive understanding of evolutionary theory as well as basic biology by almost everyone who thinks it’s interesting.
IMHO of course. 🙂
There seems to the implicit assumption in the argument that belief does not systematically affect behavior.
Which would be strange.
I agree this argument is a fun, intellectual puzzle, which I find reminiscent of the ontological argument: you know it must be wrong but it is not immediately clear why.
Plantinga wrote a 2010 article on Science and Religion for SEP where he summarizes his argument. It is an convenient online summary directly from him for anyone that does not have the book you link to:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/#NatSci
His summary of his argument starts in the fourth paragraph.
As you say, his main point is that evolution is driven by behavior, behavior is set by brain states, and we don’t understand how states of the brain relate to beliefs in the mind so there is no reason to think evolution would produce beliefs with true content.
When confronted by naturalistic theories that attempt to show how they do, that is to show how meaning and belief can be related to brains states and evolution, he replies (according to a review of an earlier book on his argument) that the theories are incomplete and controversial, so not a reply to the argument. So his argument is a form of “God of the Gaps”: we are not sure of exactly how it works, therefore we will never be sure, therefore God must have intervened.
What I find puzzling is that, according to the above reference, Plantinga accepts both (guided) evolution and the fact that the content of beliefs does drive behavior today. He explains this by saying that God intervened at some point in evolution to ensure this was the case for humans. In particular, God created “psycho-physical laws” to ensure “neurophysiology yields true content”. I find it hard to follow that argument: how could such laws exist independently of the rest of biochemistry? And if all of biochemistry (and hence physics) must be set up to accommodate them, then it seems that Plantinga is arguing for Deism, not special creation of man. Given the universality of the laws, they must be in place from creation, so why wouldn’t evolution work with them without later intervention of God?
The crucial premise of the argument is the attempt to erect a some kind of synthetical barrier or mysterious disconnect between “beliefs” and “behavior”. As if beliefs don’t influence behavior? Plantinga seems to image I could somehow imagine I could fly and live highly successfully if only I never acted on those beliefs, and that somewhere underneath this curious disconnected belief-cognition happens to be some kind of unconscious process that evolved in parallel to direct all my actions towards increased odds of survival. This betrays a pretty substantial ignorance on Plantinga’s part with respect to the evolution of cognition. It’s directly tied to environmental response systems. Cognition has to at least to some degree reflect the environment of the organism, that’s the only sensible way cognition could lead to successful decisionmaking that aids in survival.
When we’re talking about the evolution of cognition for survival reasons, that cognition is directly tied to decision making that impacts survival rate. It seems pretty obvious that this cognition then has to at least approximately reflect the environment in which the organism is trying to survive. Which makes sense, since cognition is informed by sensory input, and our senses evolved to gather information about the environment.
I’m with Matzke here, there’s everything wrong with Plantinga’s argument.
I have exactly the same opinion of Plantinga. After trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and plow though his “arguments,” I came away feeling it was an entire waste of time on a straw man. It felt like chasing an imaginary rabbit down a hole into Wonderland.
How in the world did Plantinga ever get a reputation for being a good philosopher? Only among evangelicals apparently.
Am I wrong to think that Plantinga’s argument is basically that
1. If you evolved, your brain is fallible,
2. Therefore your conclusion, using that brain, that you evolved is suspect.
If that’s it, wouldn’t it be also true that
1. If you evolved then your brain is fallible,
2. Therefore your conclusion, using that brain, that you didn’t evolve is suspect.
I know that my brain is fallible (I will spare you the stories). But if we all have fallible brains, we can make our conclusions less fallible by arguing about them. And if an argument is a step-by-step logical argument and we carry out the steps properly, we can use our fallible brains to draw infallible conclusions (and if we don’t carry the steps out properly we can be corrected by other people arguing with us).
Perhaps Plantinga’s argument is something else (please correct me by arguing with me). If not, and it is basically the above, then I am underwhelmed.
A similar argument can be made about “original sin.” If a deity made us that way, then isn’t theology fallible? Why are there so many warring sects all presuming to have the inside scoop on the deity?
More puzzling: Why does science converge yet theology diverges?
Maybe the fact that we evolved explains why being more in tune with the way nature operates increases survivability. After all, the human population has certainly grown since the advent of science; yet the conflicts over ideology still threaten survival.
Mike Elzinga,
Mostly I want to know: is Plantinga’s argument, stripped down to its essentials, correctly described by my summary above? I find it hard to believe that a philosopher would expect to be taken seriously making that argument.
Yes; he does in fact make that argument; and he made it in his earlier versions. It’s just plain weird.
A number of the critical reviews at Amazon also picked up on it.
The general reviews pretty much indicate that it is viewed in awe by many who take Plantinga’s sectarian apologetics seriously.
A further note:
As near as I can track it, Plantinga also made this argument in Chapter 12 of one of his earlier books, Warrant and Proper Function (1993). He may have introduced it earlier.
But then trying to convert it into a probability argument simply makes it a disgustingly pretentious cover-up of a very bad argument in my opinion.
If you really did evolve, you could not have a reliable belief about that because evolution does not result in reliable beliefs? You’re actually correct in your belief, but not ‘reliably’ so because the thing you think happened (and did) cannot result in such a belief? Heh heh.
I wonder (if we did NOT evolve) how we could therefore hold the conclusion we did? The implication of the argument is that non-naturalistic origins should lead to more reliable beliefs than naturalistic ones (Heaven knows why – naturally!). Clearly not, in the case of those of us who think we evolved but are mistaken. It only leads to more reliable beliefs in the minds of those who happen to be correct (in that Created universe).
The one point I’m trying to add to the discussion is that philosophy (among other activities) is a social process. By arguing back and forth, fallible human brains can reach conclusions that are far less fallible. I’ve never read Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, but I am pretty sure it is correct. Why, given that everyone’s brains are fallible? Because lots of good mathematicians have been over the proof, step by step.
Plantinga’s argument’s silliness is made clearer if we take all four combinations of did/didn’t evolve versus concluding we did/didn’t evolve. He seems to say that if we didn’t evolve then our brains must be more reliably able to conclude that we didn’t evolve.
To be fair to Plantinga, this is not his argument as I understand it. His is an argument against naturalism, not against evolution. He is willing, I think, to stipulate that there are valid reasons to believe we evolved (though ultimately he will argue for something like theistic evolution, in which our evolution was guided in some inscrutable way by god). His argument is, I think, essentially that if you believe that we evolved AND you believe in naturalism (the rejection of any gods, spirits, etc, that might have influenced our evolution), then any metaphysical claims you make are suspect. Why are metaphysical claims suspect? Because a purely naturalistic evolution would mold our brains to make good survival decisions, but we’d have no reason to believe that our brains would therefore be good instruments for accurately discerning metaphysical truths that have little bearing on our survival. Therefore, holding a strong metaphysical belief in naturalism (or perhaps any metaphysical beliefs at all) is inconsistent with a belief that we evolved by purely naturalistic means. The objective of his argument is, I think, not to say that it doesn’t make sense to believe we evolved, but rather to say that even given we evolved, one cannot therefore be logically consistent in asserting naturalism and ruling out god.
I think there are flaws in his argument, but the argument is subtle and all too easy to inadvertently turn into a silly straw man.
I think philosophy is pretty good evidence that we should hold metaphysical claims suspect.
Rumraket:
Absolutely. To avoid wading through all the papers can anyone summarise why he thinks that tending to have true beliefs would not lead to adaptive behaviour? There are examples of some specific tendencies to false belief which are adaptive e.g. our well-known tendency to believe that there is intentionality or pattern when there isn't. But in general believing the truth has to be a better evolutionary strategy then believing falsehoods!
Hobbes,
That makes more sense. Presumably someone has raised the point that the mechanisms for determining metaphysical beliefs (basically logical thinking) are a subset of the mechanisms for determining all beliefs – so if we think of evolution as selecting for logical thinking rather than specific beliefs then there is every reason to have faith in our metaphysical beliefs to the extent that they are logical.
Logic — formal logic — seems to be a recent invention. Perhaps not a lot older than the Greeks.
The Egyptians seem to have perfected architecture and engineering using instruments rather than mathematics.
Consider for a moment the infamous compass and straightedge, beloved of geometry students. I would argue that a great deal of formal reasoning is post hoc rationalization, attempting to explain why instruments work.
I would also argue that most non-mathematical philosophy is a critique of language, an attempt to find statements about causation that are as reliable and self-consistent as mathematics is consistent about instrumentation and measurement.
KN says:
Given N&E, we will think whatever the evolutionary, material-causal pachinko machine of existence causes us to think, whether that means creationism or darwinism.
What you neglect to understand is that in a materialistic reading, our perceptions are shaped by feedback rather than by billiard ball causation. Without addressing feedback as causation, arguments are worthless.
If “our perceptions” represent the state of the ball, and “feedback” is what the ball encounters on its path, you have changed nothing in the example I gave but the terminology, as if mere terminology could purchase you a significant variance from the validity of the example.
According to materialism, you are essentially a pachinko ball, physically encountering and reacting as you must as you encounter various pins on your path. Where you end up is nothing but the product of the material system, like the pachinko ball, whether it falls into the bin called “creationist” or the bin called “darwinist”.
This describes why, under N&E, beliefs of any sort have nothing to do with truth, but rather simply with physics. You and I, under N&E, believe whatever physics happens to have shaped us to believe, whether true or false.
Physics doesn’t favor true beliefs. Darwinian evolution doesn’t favor true beliefs. Darwinian evolution can only be said to favor beliefs that aid procreation and survival. Religion seems to be a really advantageous procreation and survival feature.
Evolution is inventive. Feedback is a different kind of causation than billiard ball determinism. This is Darwin’s key insight. That novelty can be constructed by a system that learns.
What living populations do is learn. What brains do is learn.
There is no guarantee that what is learned is also true. Never has been. Never will be. But there are degrees of less false.
Calling a deterministic process (even if the outcome cannot be predicted) “inventive” or invoking the term “learning” when the state of the ball is changed on impact is just more evasion via terminology. All you are doing is finding terms that you can use to avoid the necessary ramifications of your worldview – that you are a pachinko ball, your state (beliefs) determined by physics, not whether or not something is true or false.
It is interesting, however, to watch all the terminological bobbing and weaving as you seek to avoid the ultimate logical ramifications of your views.
I don’t avoid any ramifications. Where Have I tried to avoid ramifications?
Yes, Planting’s arguments are against another one of those evil “isms” that are propagated by Satan.
Plantinga’s “arguments” are from the Calvinist, Dutch Reformed sectarian position. You see echoes of Augustine’s City of God vs. City of Man. You see Aquinas’s concept of Man being at the intersection of a spiritual world and a natural world; in which the “corrupt evidence” from the natural world is to be held subordinate to the “pure evidence” from the spiritual world. And you see Calvin’s predestination.
Naturalism is being portrayed subtly as a consequence of the “Fall” on human thinking; so Plantinga’s “argument” is nothing more than a sectarian apologist’s attempt to rationalize in pseudo-modern language why “naturalists” are predestined to go to Hell and spiritualists are predestined to go to Heaven.
So even if the deity used evolution as a tool, evolution “explains” the corrupted thinking from the “Fall.” Therefore, “naturalism” is really a manifestation of the “Fall” and sectarians are justified in seeing it as the road to Hell.
This is the comforting message being given to a particular branch of sectarianism within the Christian religion.
However, by Plantinga’s “logic,” Plantinga’s mind is also corrupted by Satan. The splintering of a “one, true religion” into warring sectarianism is Satan’s doing, and Plantinga is simply carrying out Satan’s wishes. But Satan makes Plantinga deceive himself by projecting his own sinful fallibility onto scientists by calling it “naturalism” and making it seem like the evil of evolution is the reason for naturalism. Reject naturalism and embrace sectarianism.
It was all foreseen.
It is correct that naturalists need to explain how beliefs in the mind are related to the brain, how they can be about the world, and in particular how they can be true or false.
The above seems to assert that no such explanation can be found. But this is still an open question and an active area of investigation, for example Ruth Millikan’s work. So I don’t see how one can simply assert that it can a naturalist explanation of belief, minds, brains, and behavior can never be found.
I think you are right to say that Plantinga’s argument is more subtle than Joe’s summary. I’d add to your comments that it is not the physical brain and its control of behavior that Plantinga is doubting, but rather how evolution could have built minds based on that brain with beliefs whose truth/falsity influences behavior.
Plantinga agrees beliefs influence behavior and that they can be made reliably true. But he argues that purely naturalistic evolution on its own could not produce that state of affairs.
Who asserted that a naturalist explanation of such things cannot be found? What cannot happen is that such an explanation be at variance with the necessary entailments of that which provides the explanation. IF the mind is the result of N&E, THEN thoughts and beliefs and ideas and perceptions are materially and sufficiently and necessarily caused by physics. There is no internal deliberacy that is not itself caused to be the way it is by physics under N & E.
Materialism cannot provide acausal deliberacy (libertarian free agency). Free agency must be beyond the causal reach of material interactions in order for a human mind to be something other than a pachinko machine believing whatever physics command. You either accept that your beliefs and views and ideas and perceptions are caused by pachinko-like physics – whether they cause you to believe in god, darwinism, or flying pink elephants – or you are not a materialist.
Or, you are fooling yourself with terminology that hides the necessary entailments of your ideology. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
William J. Murray,
William,
How do you know what you know?
This is not a trick question. I’m genuinely curious.
How does “philosophy” explain the temperature dependence of the ability to think and will?
Thus far, every time this fact is bought up, it gets a momentary “blank stare” and a change of subject, or it is simply ignored by the “philosophers.”
I have to ask, not just of William, but of everyone: what difference does it make?
This is not a trick question.
Millions of Christians live under the hammer of predestination. I don’t see that it causes much existential angst. Nor — outside novels — do I see anyone making life decisions based on philosophy.
I do see people gravitating to philosophies and theologies that rest easy with what they want to do.
What I don’t see is the value in worrying about TRVTH. Everyone who ever lived managed to do so without it. It doesn’t appear to be a vital nutrient.
This is a somewhat more interesting argument, but much different than the opening post and at least some of Plantinga’s statements. For example, I think he literally says somewhere that NS wouldn’t favor brains that associated the observation of a tiger with the belief that a tiger is dangerous and should therefore be run away from — he claims that any other belief that resulted in running away would be equally good. He leaves out any consideration of the importance of being able to generalize beliefs, of the fact that beliefs are almost entirely learned rather than genetically specified, and that having brains that learned generalized beliefs (anything with big pointy teeth is dangerous) would be both easier evolutionarily, and would work better, than somehow having arbitrarily programmed random beliefs that just happen to produce the correct behavior in the infinite variety of specific situations that African hominids would encounter.
And that’s just for starters.
As for metaphysical beliefs being uncertain — heck, why is evolutionary origin an important piece of that at all? Metaphysical statements are statements about ultimate reality. To have justifiable high confidence in statements about ultimate reality, any inference system (human, computer, abstract logic, whatever) would have to have good data about said ultimate reality. For anything stuck here on planet Earth for a few dozen years, such good data are likely going to be difficult to come by. This would be true whether humans were made by evolution, aliens, God, or whatever. And the data-limitation problem would probably still be equally true even if humans were somehow made way smarter than we currently are.
There’s a long history in experimental psychology of studying illusions and misperceptions. Brains take shortcuts. But the shortcuts have been filtered by selection.
There are in fact situations in which arbitrary stimuli are mistaken for tigers, both literally and metaphorically. Sometimes social contacts compensate and correct misperceptions, and sometimes they make things worse.
I don’t see any magic solution.
William J. Murray,
Whereas, under your philosophy, these decisions are reached by entirely free agents; happening to be raised in Tennessee has nuthin’ to do with one’s free-choice declaration “I ain’t no monkey!”. No sirree.
I must say, I see little difference between Plantinga’s argument against naturalism and nerd arguments against the implications of certain superpowers in comic books.
It’s clear that like many people, Plantinga wants a world that is different from the one we have. For any number of reasons, having something greater and more consistent than human judgement and justice is a fantasy that most people willingly embrace. It’s just that some of us recognize it’s a fantasy.
I mean, I loved the movie The Avengers and Iron Man and I read all the comics when I was a kid for the same reasons – it would be really cool to have someone righting the perceived wrongs that far overwhelm the human systems. But the fact that it would be cool doesn’t make it either a) a necessity or b) true. And the belief in a god – any god – is no different than the desire for comic book heroes.
So Plantinga wants to try to rationalize the truth of his desire for a superhero by calling into question philosophies that dispense with superheroes. Great. Have at it. Whatever helps you sleep at night Plantinga (and by association William and Brent and others). Those of us who recognize that superheroes are ultimately fantasies do just fine without them being real.
But how does determinism versus libertarian free will relate to EEAN? Even if beliefs are determined, how does that imply their truth or falsity cannot be driven by purely natural evolution?
Example: frogs flick their tongue at at small black objects near by. This behavior evolved. Its function is to catch flies. It is determined (and even be invoked by stimulating an appropriate brain neuron). It can be characterized by saying the frog believes there is a fly to catch. But if the small black object is piece of plastic moved by an experimenter, the belief is false. If it is a fly, it is true.
I understand that human concepts are much more complex than whatever is in the frogs brain and consciousness when it flicks out its tongue. But starting with the frog example is a possible road to understanding how beliefs can be physical, determined, attributable to evolution and true or false.
I’m still waiting for some demonstration that non-materialistic philosophy is better at discerning truth. Let’s have a cage match.
Hobbes,
I stand corrected, it is the use of naturalism that he is refuting.
What I miss in his argument is any statement about people who don’t use naturalism — are their brains somehow less fallible? How exactly does that rest of the argument work?
Also, to repeat myself ad nauseam, one person having a fallible brain does not mean that the outcome of philosophical disputation (or scientific investigation) is correspondingly equally fallible, because we correct each others’ errors.
What is “true” and what is “false” mean different things under N&E. You ask the question as if there is a point of reference outside of the N&E system that can be used to objectively evaluate the truth value of a belief. There is no assumed such point of reference under N & E. There is only the pachinko machine of physics causing whatever beliefs it happens to cause. The ball might land in the X belief bin, or the Y belief bin, or the Z belief bin, driven there by the mechanics of the state of the ball and what it encountered along the way.
Without an exterior frame of reference, “true” and “false” are entirely determined by what bin the ball happens to fall in. There is no objective, exterior means by which to determine which bin is “actually” true.
You are once again utilizing the concept of an exterior, objective means of evaluating true statements from false, which you have no access to under N & E. The proper question is not about “what did the frog do”, but rather “what do I, the observer, believe to be true about what the frog is doing?” If physics causes you to believe that the frog ate a fly, that is what you will believe. If physics causes you to believe it ate a piece of plastic, that is what you will believe. You have no exterior means by which to make such an objective determination of what is a true belief under N & E.
Nobody is claiming that beliefs cannot be true or false, but rather cannot be reliably determined to be true or false. You cannot check the length of a ruler by using the same ruler. You, an N & E system (under the N & E paradigm) cannot check to see if N & E systems are producing true statements.
It’s entirely self-referential, and since we know it produces a plethora of false beliefs (contradictory views), there is simply no escaping the fact that there is no way to evaluate the claims of a self-referential system know to produce all kinds of errors.
TL;DR: Assuming N & E is true, we know that N & E produces erroneous beliefs. The only thing we have to evaluate any belief is the same N & E system known to be error-prone and produce false beliefs, thus our belief about whether or not we have a valid means of checking our beliefs is necessarily self-referential to the same error-prone system, and thus unreliable.
Adding more error-prone, self-referential N & E systems to the mix doesn’t reduce the potential for error; it increases it. There is no means under N & E by which “errors can be corrected” because that would assume some exterior standard none of the parties possess. All the parties might agree upon one answer, but that doesn’t mean the answer is correct. Only that it is agreed upon. Or, more accurately, only that you believe (rightly or wrongly) that it has been agreed upon.
You mean, different from the one you believe we have. Failure to recognize your beliefs as such do not make them a de facto description of reality that doesn’t require defense in a debate.
William J. Murray,
ANOTHER freaking annoying thing about Plantinga’s dumb argument and the way his fans use it: Failure to distinguish between these statements:
1. Under evolution, SOME beliefs may be false (or really, 1a, under evolution, we may have a *propensity* towards some false beliefs, e.g. mistakenly assuming that all snakes are harmful)
2. Under evolution, virtually ALL beliefs about ANYTHING are likely to be false. Furthermore, this condition will remain no matter how much further observation, consideration, discussion, argument, reflection, analysis, data gathering, etc. is done.
(1a) is plausible, but it’s miles from establishing the plausibility of (2). (2) is absurd, but that’s what’s needed for the standard version of Plantinga’s argument to go forward.
Re: this silliness:
Amongst many other problems with these statements, it is perfectly possible for a deterministic physical system to implement logical operations and thus take in information and output correct results. The statements “that system is controlled by physics” and “that system reliably produces correct results” are not contradictory.
Nick is once again thinking that there is something outside of the N & E system that can check to see if the N & E system is producing reliable results, apparently forgetting that there is nothing outside of that system – certainly not the operator or evaluator of the system.
You cannot check the accuracy of a ruler with the same ruler.
Do you think natural selection can evolve a system that can distinguish more of something from less of something? E.g., more food from less food, more predators from less predators? If you don’t, you’re crazy and there’s not much more to say. If you do think this is possible, then blam, we’ve just exploded your argument that there is no way for natural selection to connect external physical reality to beliefs.
William J. Murray,
What the hell are you talking about? I just kicked my chair. Thus, it exists. This kind of thing is the only starting point we need for further development of statements about reality, eventually leading to science and scientific theories like evolution. I don’t think even Plantinga is arguing that if evolution is true then we-are-all-brains-in-a-vat becomes plausible. But maybe you are.
Nonsense. Thoughts, beliefs, ideas and perceptions are cultural constructs. What constitutes a belief is not defined in terms of atoms and energy. It is defined in terms what the culture accepts to be a belief. Physics has nothing to say about belief, etc.
This is where people like William Murray go so far off the rails that it is not possible to communicate. Measuring one’s own thoughts against one’s own thoughts – as William does routinely – is called being out of touch with reality and living in a bubble.
Of course people don’t check a ruler with the same ruler. They don’t check a clock with the same clock. They don’t check any measuring system with the same measuring system. And measuring systems include the sensory inputs of living organisms; including humans.
So how do scientists and other people who live in touch with reality actually do it?
This is the part that William simply cannot answer because it requires at least a high school education in science. How does science validate anything? How does science validate measurements of any kind? How does science decide what data are verifiable?
Living totally within one’s own mind is no way to interact with an external universe and discover what actually works in getting valid data that forms the basis for action.
I would also still like to see an explanation from any ID/creationist for why thinking and willing are temperature dependent. This is a question that goes right over the heads of ID/creationists.
Whereas your furious intellectual masturbation ultimately ejaculates nothing.
The belief I have is that you have no constructive worthwhile project to dedicate your time to as you know that on the topics that interest you, you cannot actually compete on the level required to rise above the crowd of want to be’s.
So here you sit, endlessly repeating the same thing in different ways, ignoring the same things given as counter arguments in the same usual way.
The difference between you and the majority, if not all, of people here on the reality based community side of things is that they have actually achieved something worthwhile with their lives. Each of the people who’s identity is known to me I know for a fact has published, worked in science or otherwise contributed to the sum of human knowledge. Or clowning.
You wrote a few self-help pamphlets that you’ve now disowned, right? Anything else?
Yet here you are, smugly lecturing others, and as far as I can tell your only qualification for such is that you have posting rights at UD. You certainly are not able to rebut all cogent points made against you, so you fail. And you know this, and it’s easier to blow up like a cat making itself look bigger by going round the topics you think you do have answers to, carefully avoiding the ones you know you cannot begin to address.
So keep it up William, but realize that once the bit rot sets in and this site vanishes into the great degausser in the scrapyard everyone else gets to retain their achievements, papers, publications, citations but your “work” will be as the dust from the shattered ceramics. Forgotten, lost, gone like it never existed.
Pachinko machine of physics for the win. Better then the alternative you are proposing, smug madness.