Thursday, February 08, 2007
Argument from reason page and link to Nunley's dissertation
This AFR page from apollos.ws has link to Troy Nunley's dissertation at University of Missouri on the Evoutionary Argument Against Naturalism
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6 comments:
Only a theist would pervert logic to prove that the rational is actually irrational.
Did you read Nunley's dissertation that quick? And do you really think this is what Plantinga et al are doing? Any reason for thinking this?
'The probability of our being reliable cognitive agents given these origins is low or, at best, inscrutable. But it cannot reasonably be thought to be high. Consequently, the naturalist cannot reasonably hold to the belief that they are reliable cognitive agents'
Certainly the chance of any given species developing highly developed thought processes is very low.
Does this mean it is unreasonable for lottery winners to believe they have won the lottery, because the chance of any named person winning the lottery is very low?
SO if we get a lottery ticket, we shouldn's assume that it was mere chance that we got it, the assumption that we are special people makes it much more likely that we will win lottery tickets.
Until it is proved to us that there was no supernatural intervention in the drawing of the numbers, the theory that we won because we are special is a much better explanation of our win.
The probability that God will grant *some* species cognitive reasoning faculties is 1.
Analagous to the lottery.
So ,as the prior probability of it being any named species is low, this is also analagous to the idea that the prior probability of any named person winning the lottery is low.
So the analogy is perfect.
Lottery winners should think they have been favoured by God.
Anonymous,
The point is that we don't know if we've won the cognitive lottery.
If EvoNat is true, then it's very unlikely that we've won the lottery, or even that any winning ticket has been drawn since evolution, ex hypothesi, has only been going for x billion years and will continue for many more billion years. We may only be in the early stages of cosmic evolution. Maybe the winning ticket will only be drawn after 10x billion years.
All we have is a lottery ticket. We can't know if it's a winning ticket merely by examining it under a microscope, or waving it around in a laboratory.
Ants also have a ticket. If EvoNat is true, the chances are that our cognitive equipment is as poor relative to some alien species as we're inclined to believe ant cognitive equipment is relative to our own.
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