If, as naturalists claim, there’s no god guiding the evolutionary process, then there’s no reason to think our cognitive faculties are reliable in giving us true beliefs about the world. Since we can’t trust our cognitive faculties, any conclusion we reach about the world is untrustworthy, including the claim that evolution is unguided. Therefore naturalism about evolution (and everything else) is self-defeating and must be given up. For us to trust our own beliefs (and we must, mustn’t we?) God must exist, and must have guided evolution.
I don't know if this is a fair summary of Plantinga's argument. If someone has a closer version, I'd be interested in reading it.
I disagree with the last two sentences. We should not trust our own beliefs; we have multiple studies regarding cognitive biases indication that our beliefs are not reliable. I accept unguided evolution, but I place no trust in it. When a better explanation comes along, I'll accept that instead. Absent this insistence on trusting our own beliefs, and the purported self-defeat goes away.
First let's point out that Darwin did not think evolution to be unguided. He would have said that natural selection, a physical (biological? ecological?) principle, was the thing that guided evolution. With his theory, since natural selection acted as a guide, there was no need for an __intelligent__ guide (God, et al).
Second, there are two levels to Plantinga's argument against naturalism.
The first and best component is the argument that the __metaphysical position__ of naturalism is self-defeating, and this does seem to hold: if there are only naturalistic causes, there is no reason that our rational facilities would tend to take a correct __metaphysical__ set of beliefs, since there would be no evident way that, under naturalism, there could be selection for correct __metaphysical__ beliefs.
The second level uses the same argument against trusting scientific theories, since these are not, Plantinga says, selected for under naturalism either. Here the ground is somewhat shaky: in technical fields such as chemistry and electronics we do indeed trust scientific formulas to correctly anticipate and manipulate events of survival value to us.
The Center writer's argument then uses a common and fallacious tool I often see used in more annoying works of philosophy: arguments that shift coverage of their subject, covertly moving definitions to extend a weaker argument to apply to areas where it does not properly extend.
The writer gives examples of cases where one would doubt the second level of Plantinga's criticism, but then simply and fallaciously equates the metaphysical position of naturalism with scientific theory. This allows him to attack the weaker part and ignore the stronger.
Clark is here responding to a wide-ranging 5000 word book review by Plantinga, in which P covers the EAAN in two paragraphs totalling 300 words. It's not unreasonable that Clark's response be equally wide-ranging. That said, the only mention of the EAAN I found on Clark's site is a reference to the Wikipedia article. This is quite good, I think.
There is a 15 minute video from 2017 on YouTube in which Plantinga explains his argument. At about 4:40 he says 'the neurology that causes their behaviour also causes their beliefs'. His right hand is at shoulder level talking about neurology and at eye level when talking about beliefs. He clearly thinks of the two as distinct and the cogency of his argument depends on this, in order for belief to have no effect on action, and hence for belief formation not be subject to evolutionary forces. But it's open for the naturalist to identify them. Obviously belief expressed in language is something distinct, but utterances may be causally connected to the neurophysiology just as P accepts that action is (from a naturalistc point of view). This, I think, is Fales's objection to the EAAN, according to the Wikipedia article.
William, I couldn't find any use of the word 'guide' in your sense in the Origin. I think there is consensus among contemporary biologists that talk of natural selection 'guiding' evolution is misleading, as it suggests that there is a 'destination'. Also, in my admittedly brief encounter with the EAAN I couldn't find a distinction between naturalism and the metaphysical position thereof. Nor a sense that there are multiple levels in the argument. Could you expand?
"It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were."
Here, "scrutinizing" and "working .. at the improvement" is not expressed by Darwin to be a random process. I agree that the modern synthesis of knowledge of DNA's role and how the DNA can change has resulted in a much greater emphasis on random processes than Darwin originally wrote. It's possible that our current knowledge about epigenetics may move toward a partial return to Darwin's ideas about directions of change.
This may just me my reading of Plantinga, but I think there are two steps in the writings' discussion of defeaters that Plantinga says emerges from (N/naturalism & E/evolution).
The first is that (N & E) is self defeating. The second is that if we nevertheless accept (N & E) with its self defeating nature, that acceptance can undermines our certainty about all other scientific theory, and perhaps further things we otherwise believe.
One can have reservations about parts of the second step, perhaps because of other reasons to know other facts, and still see the first step (directed at (N & E), and therefore most likely directed at N) as valid.
Darwin is explaining the novel idea of natural selection in the language of artificial selection---the animal and plant breeding widely practised in 1850---so his words are to some extent metaphorical. He writes, 'It may be said that'. Do you think of 'random' and 'guided' as exclusive? If he doesn't say a process is random then he must think it guided?
Ah, thanks. I didn't get beyond the first step because I could see an objection to the argument. P says that natural selection has no traction on belief formation, so we are just as likely to form false beliefs as true. This is the critical premise. How does he argue for it?
consider a random sequence from a 10 sided die: (7, 2, 4, 5, 10, 6)
and a sequence that is created by a sum of that sequence: (7, 9, 13, 18, 28, 34)
Darwin in the Origins seems to be saying that the results of variation are acted on by selection in a way that amounts to the guidance of the second sequence : it gets randomly, but directedly, larger -- in Darwin's vocabulary, there is "improvement." The way this is metaphor in the writing is indeed that he excludes the intelligence of artificial selection in the analogy.
I think that's right. Inheritance with variation plus naturally occurring selection entails improvement. But the random, statistical element is always present. There is no guarantee that a fitness enhancing variation survives. Maybe its bearer dies for unrelated reasons before reproducing. Or the variation peters out from the population after a few generations. Then maybe the variation recurs and this time eventually spreads throughout the population. So there is a delicate relationship between the probability of the variation occurring and its degree of fitness enhancement. If both are too small the variant does not take hold.
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If, as naturalists claim, there’s no god guiding the evolutionary process, then there’s no reason to think our cognitive faculties are reliable in giving us true beliefs about the world. Since we can’t trust our cognitive faculties, any conclusion we reach about the world is untrustworthy, including the claim that evolution is unguided. Therefore naturalism about evolution (and everything else) is self-defeating and must be given up. For us to trust our own beliefs (and we must, mustn’t we?) God must exist, and must have guided evolution.
I don't know if this is a fair summary of Plantinga's argument. If someone has a closer version, I'd be interested in reading it.
I disagree with the last two sentences. We should not trust our own beliefs; we have multiple studies regarding cognitive biases indication that our beliefs are not reliable. I accept unguided evolution, but I place no trust in it. When a better explanation comes along, I'll accept that instead. Absent this insistence on trusting our own beliefs, and the purported self-defeat goes away.
First let's point out that Darwin did not think evolution to be unguided. He would have said that natural selection, a physical (biological? ecological?) principle, was the thing that guided evolution. With his theory, since natural selection acted as a guide, there was no need for an __intelligent__ guide (God, et al).
Second, there are two levels to Plantinga's argument against naturalism.
The first and best component is the argument that the __metaphysical position__ of naturalism is self-defeating, and this does seem to hold: if there are only naturalistic causes, there is no reason that our rational facilities would tend to take a correct __metaphysical__ set of beliefs, since there would be no evident way that, under naturalism, there could be selection for correct __metaphysical__ beliefs.
The second level uses the same argument against trusting scientific theories, since these are not, Plantinga says, selected for under naturalism either. Here the ground is somewhat shaky: in technical fields such as chemistry and electronics we do indeed trust scientific formulas to correctly anticipate and manipulate events of survival value to us.
The Center writer's argument then uses a common and fallacious tool I often see used in more annoying works of philosophy: arguments that shift coverage of their subject, covertly moving definitions to extend a weaker argument to apply to areas where it does not properly extend.
The writer gives examples of cases where one would doubt the second level of Plantinga's criticism, but then simply and fallaciously equates the metaphysical position of naturalism with scientific theory. This allows him to attack the weaker part and ignore the stronger.
Naturalism is just another religion according to The Center for Naturalism
Is the FBI their Inquisition?
bmiller,
Naturalism is just another religion according to The Center for Naturalism
That is pretty much the opposite of what they said, which was that spirituality (aka religion) can ditch the supernatural.
Is the FBI their Inquisition?
We all know you love violence by white people.
This seems like it's happened before.
Oh yeah. This comes to mind.
Clark is here responding to a wide-ranging 5000 word book review by Plantinga, in which P covers the EAAN in two paragraphs totalling 300 words. It's not unreasonable that Clark's response be equally wide-ranging. That said, the only mention of the EAAN I found on Clark's site is a reference to the Wikipedia article. This is quite good, I think.
There is a 15 minute video from 2017 on YouTube in which Plantinga explains his argument. At about 4:40 he says 'the neurology that causes their behaviour also causes their beliefs'. His right hand is at shoulder level talking about neurology and at eye level when talking about beliefs. He clearly thinks of the two as distinct and the cogency of his argument depends on this, in order for belief to have no effect on action, and hence for belief formation not be subject to evolutionary forces. But it's open for the naturalist to identify them. Obviously belief expressed in language is something distinct, but utterances may be causally connected to the neurophysiology just as P accepts that action is (from a naturalistc point of view). This, I think, is Fales's objection to the EAAN, according to the Wikipedia article.
William, I couldn't find any use of the word 'guide' in your sense in the Origin. I think there is consensus among contemporary biologists that talk of natural selection 'guiding' evolution is misleading, as it suggests that there is a 'destination'. Also, in my admittedly brief encounter with the EAAN I couldn't find a distinction between naturalism and the metaphysical position thereof. Nor a sense that there are multiple levels in the argument. Could you expand?
David,
here is one quote among many:
"It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were."
Here, "scrutinizing" and "working .. at the improvement" is not expressed by Darwin to be a random process. I agree that the modern synthesis of knowledge of DNA's role and how the DNA can change has resulted in a much greater emphasis on random processes than Darwin originally wrote. It's possible that our current knowledge about epigenetics may move toward a partial return to Darwin's ideas about directions of change.
David,
This may just me my reading of Plantinga, but I think there are two steps in the writings' discussion of defeaters that Plantinga says emerges from (N/naturalism & E/evolution).
The first is that (N & E) is self defeating. The second is that if we nevertheless accept (N & E) with its self defeating nature, that acceptance can undermines our certainty about all other scientific theory, and perhaps further things we otherwise believe.
One can have reservations about parts of the second step, perhaps because of other reasons to know other facts, and still see the first step (directed at (N & E), and therefore most likely directed at N) as valid.
Hello William,
Darwin is explaining the novel idea of natural selection in the language of artificial selection---the animal and plant breeding widely practised in 1850---so his words are to some extent metaphorical. He writes, 'It may be said that'. Do you think of 'random' and 'guided' as exclusive? If he doesn't say a process is random then he must think it guided?
Ah, thanks. I didn't get beyond the first step because I could see an objection to the argument. P says that natural selection has no traction on belief formation, so we are just as likely to form false beliefs as true. This is the critical premise. How does he argue for it?
David,
consider a random sequence from a 10 sided die: (7, 2, 4, 5, 10, 6)
and a sequence that is created by a sum of that sequence: (7, 9, 13, 18, 28, 34)
Darwin in the Origins seems to be saying that the results of variation are acted on by selection in a way that amounts to the guidance of the second sequence : it gets randomly, but directedly, larger -- in Darwin's vocabulary, there is "improvement." The way this is metaphor in the writing is indeed that he excludes the intelligence of artificial selection in the analogy.
I think that's right. Inheritance with variation plus naturally occurring selection entails improvement. But the random, statistical element is always present. There is no guarantee that a fitness enhancing variation survives. Maybe its bearer dies for unrelated reasons before reproducing. Or the variation peters out from the population after a few generations. Then maybe the variation recurs and this time eventually spreads throughout the population. So there is a delicate relationship between the probability of the variation occurring and its degree of fitness enhancement. If both are too small the variant does not take hold.
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