Friday, July 08, 2011

An Anonymous Commentator on the Evolutionary Explanation for the Success of Reasoning

I put this up earlier, and it didn't get much response. So I'm trying again. 
 
A few comments to some of Ahabs points:

In fact humans do not tend to respond positively to placebos. 70% or more of those taking them will not get better.

If 30% of those taking sugar pills will get better, then humans often respond positively to placebos. That's quite astonishing and fits well with other reasearch in psychology about the influence of positive thought about the future.

Actually, if one found out that they were taking a placebo they would want the real medicine and consequently increase their chances of survival.

I agree with this, but the point is that the placebo effect promoted survival in the past, not that it does now. Many traits don't serve survival well now but did so in the past (adrenaline in a stress situation).

But now you've jumped from an individual belief to a system of beliefs.

I agree that this is the best objection to the "systematic error" argument. I guess this could be turned into a good argument, but nobody has done this so far.

Natural selection does not select for individual beliefs. It selects for the mechanism which is capable of forming beliefs. A person whose brain is able to arrive at enough true beliefs to increase its chances of surviving the hazards of this dangerous world is, all else being equal, going to have a greater likelihood of passing on her genes than a person whose brain is less adept at good belief formation.

This is the typical answer to any argument from reason. I think the problem with this answer is that it requires and presupposes a huge metaphysical framework that is highly controversal and becomes less and less plausible. It requires the "naive" view of mental causation, the idea that the content of our thoughts directly influence behavior. David Chalmers has made a great case against the kind of mental causation required for this view.

Usually it also presupposes that evolution delivers an explanation for our phenomenological mental life. But this is highly implausible and disputed by many in the philosophy of mind. My zombie twin would have the same advante in natural selection that I have.

I can't make a cogent case against this objection in a comment here because it presupposes so much. But overall it seems to me that the premise of the objection is highly disputed and that contemporary philosophy of mind actually moves away from it. This makes the objection useless.

The reason why this objection is so common seems clear to me. It is very simple and fits very well with ordinary common sense convictions about the mental. This makes it attractive to anyone who is not familiar with the metaphysical problems it causes.

19 comments:

Ilíon said...

"This is the typical answer to any argument from reason. ..."

Furthermore, as Alvin Plantinga points out (as do even some 'atheists'), on the "natural selection did it" metaphysic, beliefs don't have to be true to contribute to 'differential reproductive success'; they could even be completely false.

Meanwhile, on that metaphysic, one has no way ever to *know* that one's beliefs are true or false.

Blue Devil Knight said...

Ahab makes a great point, one that appeal to intuitions about the possibilities of zombies doesn't obviate.

Ilíon said...

I can see your point, BDK: it's always a "great point" to assert a proposition which not only cannot be supported by one's metaphysical commitments, but is contrary to them.

Blue Devil Knight said...

Ilion let's see your argument against Ahab's claim (the one about systems/mechanisms of belief formation rather than individual beliefs).

I have responded differently to such arguments, for instance here and here, and here and here.

Especially important is the established fact of the reliability of or sensory systems, and how it isn't hard at all to imagine how that would evolve. I pull on this thread here.

If you make substantive responses to any of those, I will reply. Otherwise, I'll eat popcorn and just enjoy the Ilion show.

JD Walters was a great interlocutor, too bad he doesn't post here any more.

Steve Lovell said...

BDK,

Two of your five links point to the current thread!?!

Steve

Steve Lovell said...

I think I might agree with the anonymous commentator, but I'd like him to try to do what he says can't be done in a comment here.

I must admit to never having read much in the Philosophy of Mind. I have no idea what Chalmers' argument is, and even after long interactions with Hasker on Zombies, I was left thoroughly unconvinced that they pose any threat to Naturalism.

In short, while anonymous may be right, his response is mostly handwaving. At the intuitive level Ahab's points seem to need addressing. Anonymous is not addressing them, he's just saying that it's complicated and Ahab is assuming too much.

But isn't the burden of proof on the defender of AfR? In which case unless Chalmers and the Zombies are conclusive, I think the defender of the AfR still owes Ahab a further response ... and if Chalmers and Zombies are indeed conclusive, we should at least point out where those arguments can be found and preferably give a brief sketch of them here.

Not saying the AfR is wrong, just that this is all a bit quick and easy for my liking.

Steve

Blue Devil Knight said...

Steve thanks. Third link was supposed to be this one. Fourth I simply forgot to delete.:)

Blue Devil Knight said...

Steve I'll bite.

Zombies are logically possible, therefore there could exist molecular/chemical/behavioral duplicates that do not have conscious experiences (by definition of zombies) Therefore, conscious experiences are not causally efficacious.

I see this epiphenomenalist consequence of the zombie argument as a damnation of the whole zombic enterprise.

That's why I never bothered to respond to original post. Poster pulls out a weakness of an antinaturalist view, incorporates it into a response to something it isn't clear it is relevant for (original argument is about intentional content while this is about conscious content), and advertise this as a serious objection to the opponent. Where to begin? Victor you must have seen all this are you just messing with us?

It's like me opening a salvo against Christian moral realists with: "Well you are assuming a whole lot of things, lots of metaphysics there. For instance, you are assuming it is wrong to torture infants, and much recent work by people like Mackie has suggested that this is at least questionable."

You'd high five each other.

Steve Lovell said...

Just re-read my comment, and smiled at "Chalmers and the Zombies". They should co-write a paper, or form a band or something.

BDK and all,

I'm with you. I think the key issue is intentional content, so Chalmers argument is more important than anything about zombies here.

Personally, I'm not even convinced that the naturalist should admit that zombies are possible. Surely the naturalist thinks that the same properties of matter that explain their "non-mental" behaviour also explain (though we don't know how) the appearance of consciousness from the configurations of matter we find in human brains. If that is the case, then we don't really seem justified just saying we can take mental away and leave the material unchanged.

You might as well say, "imagine there's no God, and leave everything else unchanged. There it's possible. That proves that God isn't causally active in nature."

The question is whether you can take away the mental and leave everything else unchanged.

Anyway, regardless of the status of my musings here (I already admitted to being a relative novice in the area), I'm still more interested to hear about the Chalmers stuff.

Steve

Blue Devil Knight said...

I'm not even convinced that the naturalist should admit that zombies are possible.

Exactly.

Chris said...

"If that is the case, then we don't really seem justified just saying we can take mental away and leave the material unchanged."

Thank you for pointing this out. I've never understood the supposed power of this argument against naturalism, since, under naturalism, any putative 'exact' duplicate *must* have consciousness by definition. If that isn't the case, I'd like to know why.

Ilíon said...

On the other hand -- though one knows better than to ever expect more than a token number of 'atheists' to admit it -- if naturalism were the truth about the nature of reality, then zombies is all there ever could be.

That truth is what the AfR is about.

Chris said...

"It requires the "naive" view of mental causation, the idea that the content of our thoughts directly influence behavior."

Isn't this the view of free will advocates?

Blue Devil Knight said...

Barely relevant, but new--gainst the Afterlife: The Argument from the Neural Localization of Mental Functions. I have not read it, so am not endorsing the arguments therein, but I do like some of Gualtiero's other work and think some people here might be interested.

Blue Devil Knight said...

Can't recommend that paper, having just read it. Average reader here would tear it apart fairly easily.

Ilíon said...

Chris: "Isn't this the view of free will advocates?"

Do you not understand that when the truth of your conclusion requires that the thing your conclusion denies be true, your conclusion is probably false (the other possibility being that your reasoning is erroneous)?

Ilíon said...

Don't take it too hard, BDK. The fact that there are no good arguments for atheism -- the fact that it is logically impossible for there to be any good arguments for atheism (*) -- almost implies that there are no good atheistical arguments against the subsidiary things/concepts atheism denies.

(*) the only interesting thing about any argument for atheism is to discover how cleverly its author has hidden its self-contradiction(s).

Ilíon said...

BDK: "Ilion let's see your argument against Ahab's claim (the one about systems/mechanisms of belief formation rather than individual beliefs). ..."

I hadn't noticed this pointless little taunt until now.

Silly, willfully self-deluded boy: I done done it. I "discovered" Mr Reppert (and his blog) precisely because I thought it highly unlikely that I was the first person in the world to realize (*) that the logical entailments of atheism -- among which are that it is impossible for us to reason -- prove that atheism is false.

BDK: "If you make substantive responses to any of those, I will reply. ..."

Oh! There is no need to say obvious falsehoods: we both know you'll do nothing of the sort -- else you'd already have given over your 'atheism'; else you'd not respond to my reference to the logically established non-reliability of reason-as-a-natural phenomena (**) by saying, in effect, "Oh yeah! Sez who?!"


(*) unlike VR's AfR, my version of the argument is not tentative, nor probabalistic, and certainly not defferential to the sensibilites of 'atheists.'

(**) where "natural" in understood as though 'naturalism' were the truth about the nature of reality)

Blue Devil Knight said...

else you'd not respond to my reference to the logically established non-reliability of reason-as-a-natural phenomena

That's the point in question. To refer to X is not to argue for X.