“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
― c s lewis
My response: Any naturalist who sees this is going to point out that the evolutionary process can't be compared to the upsetting of a milk jug. True enough, but it isn't mental causation either, it's just trial and error mimicing what we would have thought was mental causation. But science as an activity cannot exist unless there is real mental causation--one mental event is produced in the mind as the result of evidence and logic supporting iit. But, if naturalism is true, it looks as if this never happens. Every event in the universe, according to them, is produced by the previous positions of the atoms, the laws of physics, and, if quantum mechanics is true, a chance factor. Reasons don't literally produce anything in such a world. including the beliefs that naturalists inssts are based on evidence.
21 comments:
I think the naturalist argument can be better argued than you have done. A zebra may not be able to construct the syllogism, "the long grass is waving, therefore a lion may be stalking me". But zebras that react to the waving grass are more likely to live to reproduce. So natural selection can lead to the development of a brain that does logic in a similar way that a compuer does - not because it is actually logical, but because the physical processes produce a result that is logical.
But I thnk the theist can respond that this process produces brains that react even if there is actually no threat (over-reacting will be more likely to lead to survival) rather than lead to truth. So while natural selection can produce brains that do simple logic, it seems much more doubtful that it could ever produce brains that do higher reasoning reliably.
But zebras that react to the waving grass are more likely to live to reproduce. So natural selection can lead to the development of a brain that does logic in a similar way that a compuer does - not because it is actually logical, but because the physical processes produce a result that is logical.
If natural selection weeds out unfit things and ends up producing fit things always or for the most part then it isn't really random is it? It seems to be a process with a natural end or telos.
But science as an activity cannot exist unless there is real mental causation--one mental event is produced in the mind as the result of evidence and logic supporting iit. But, if naturalism is true, it looks as if this never happens.
Mental events are just cascades of physical events, but that does not make them unreal. Neurons repeatedly firing in the same, or similar sequences, create the same, or similar, mental notions. No specific firing of a single neuron creates the mental event, it's the result of the overall effect of the neurons (just like the letters in this comment are the sums of pixels). The combination of multiple, similar phenomena can accomplish what no single phenomenon of that sort can.
bmiller,
If natural selection weeds out unfit things and ends up producing fit things always or for the most part then it isn't really random is it? It seems to be a process with a natural end or telos.
Natural selection is not random. However, there is no end to natural selection, not in the sense of having an end-state, and not in the sense of having an end-goal. In fact, natural selection often causes reversals of previous changes (populations increase in individual size for a time, and later decrease; organs/limbs develop over time, then later disappear or become vestigial). Natural selection continues over the entire existence of a population.
Transference between parts and wholes is tricky. But if there is no teleology in the parts, there is no teleology in the whole. A brick wall is six feet tall because the bricks add up to six feet. But nonteleological activity on the part of basic particles means no real telelogy at the higher levels. The explanation at the basic level provides a sufficient cause, so the mental explanation is otiose.
Sometimes the fallacy of composition isn't a fallacy.
If natural selection is a process that tends toward the natural end of producing fit things and weeding out unfit things then it is simply a telological process. If it didn't have predictable outcomes we wouldn't recognize it as any sort of process at all.
But of course, that assumes we have a true understanding of reality which begs the question of minds formed by a purposeless "process" being able to distinguish between purposeless and purposeful "processes". Not to mention equivocating on the term when calling something an "evolutionary process". process: a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result
OneBrow,
Mental events are just cascades of physical events, but that does not make them unreal.
Of course not, but that's kinda the point, no? Assume that someone decides they will believe in Christianity if a series of coins falls a certain way, and disbelieves in it if they fall a different way. I think we would all agree that their belief, however it turns out, is not based on reason but on how physical causes just happen to fall.
Isn't that the entire point of Victor's book and blog...?
bmiller
If natural selection weeds out unfit things and ends up producing fit things always or for the most part then it isn't really random is it? It seems to be a process with a natural end or telos.
Indeed. When I argue with naturalists, it's a constant battle to keep up a distinction between two things:
* that ends or goals are set
* that they are set by God or blind evolution
Either way, it appears to me that Aquinas' Fifth Way is pretty easy to agree with, and the departure is only when it comes to what actually sets those goals.
What if it was possible to completely eliminate the nauseating stupidity of American politics from the mental space, and focus only on philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, etc?
Heaven.
Victor Reppert,
But if there is no teleology in the parts, there is no teleology in the whole. A brick wall is six feet tall because the bricks add up to six feet. But nonteleological activity on the part of basic particles means no real telelogy at the higher levels.
Bricks are artifacts that do not occur naturally. Stones occur naturally. You can have non-teleological stones that are put together to make a teleological stone wall.
The explanation at the basic level provides a sufficient cause, so the mental explanation is otiose.
The explanation at the reductionist level to explain the tying of a shoe requires at least millions of sentences to track the precise neural firings over a lifetime of stimulus-response phenomena. 'So my shoes won't slip off' shortens that list considerably. That is a practical usage.
Sometimes the fallacy of composition isn't a fallacy.
Sometimes.
bmiller,
If natural selection is a process that tends toward the natural end of producing fit things and weeding out unfit things then it is simply a telological process. If it didn't have predictable outcomes we wouldn't recognize it as any sort of process at all.
Natural selection is not a process in the sense that baking bread is a process, and it does not have predictable outcomes. Looking only at the distant ancestral populations, there was no way to predict that giraffes would breed for long necks or that proto-hippopotamuses would lose their limbs and become cetaceans.
But of course, that assumes we have a true understanding of reality which begs the question of minds formed by a purposeless "process" being able to distinguish between purposeless and purposeful "processes". Not to mention equivocating on the term when calling something an "evolutionary process". process: a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result
Agreed.
Martin,
Of course not, but that's kinda the point, no? Assume that someone decides they will believe in Christianity if a series of coins falls a certain way, and disbelieves in it if they fall a different way. I think we would all agree that their belief, however it turns out, is not based on reason but on how physical causes just happen to fall.
Isn't that the entire point of Victor's book and blog...?
I thought the point was to disprove these notions rather than accept them. :)
A couple of intuitions are being pumped here. The first, which comes out strongly in the Lewis extract, is the Cartesian thought that the mental and the physical are distinct realms following their own quite different causal rules. The second, which I think lurks in Victor's response, is that even if the two realms were in fact one, mental causation could not be 'real' causation. 'Real' causation in the physical world, it is hinted, is that between the fundamental particles. But this would be to abandon the everyday understanding of the world in terms of causal connections between macroscopic entities, ie, aggregations of the basic particles, such as the parts of a clock or car engine. We can hardly get by without the latter kind of understanding. So why should we not see reasons as macroscopic nervous states, say, with causal relations between them?
Hello David: There are four elements of the mental that are deliberately kept out of physics as typically understood. What happens at the physical level is a matter of 1) laws, 2) positions of basic particles at any a previous time and 3) raw quantum chance. The four factors that are left out are
1) Intentionality. Whatever is is that makes the state of a brain about some other thing is left out of basic physics.
2) Teleology. Any purpose that a person might have is left out.
3) Normativity. Nothing happens at the level of physics because it ought to happen.
4) Subjectivity, Particles do not have a first-person perspective, and since macro objects do what the basic particles do, first-person perspective never affects where any atom in the universe goes.
This is Taner Edis' description of chance and necessity physicalism.
Physical explanations combine rules and randomness, both of which are mindless…Hence quantum mechanics has an important role in formulating chance-and-necessity physicalism, according to which everything is physical, a combination of rule-bound and random processes, regardless of whether the most fundamental physical theory has yet been formulated…Religions usually take a top-down view, starting with an irreducible mind to shape the material world from above. Physicalism, whatever form it takes, supports a bottom-up understanding of the world, where life and mind are the results of complex interactions of fundamentally mindless components.
4) Subjectivity, of first person perspective. Particles don't have first person perspectivs, and they do what they do independentof what first person persepctive the agents they make up have.
That is the physical on standard physicalism, and the physical is supposed to be causally closed.
Hello Victor. There is a view in contemporary phil of sci that interdisciplinary reductions, say from chemistry to physics, cannot be completed. Even some reductions within physics may not be possible. If this is so then it would seem we would have to introduce new concepts into physics---a buoyancy field, or some such---in order to explain why waves on water make small boats bob up and down, rather than work our way up from an understanding of the particles that make up H2O. This, I think, is absurd. Likewise, I am suspicious of intentionality fields, teleology fields, and so on. Most physicalistically inclined thinkers see these phenomena as emergent properties of complex nervous systems like mammalian brains, I would imagine. Of course, given our present state of understanding I can offer only hand-waving arguments in favour of this view. For example, it seems to me plausible that if I am thinking about my coffee mug then a neural representation of said mug is active, and another part of my brain, perhaps a representation of myself, 'notices' this activity, and inclines my speech centre to formulate unvoiced sentences about the mug, which also gets 'noticed', and so on. We learn to refer to this 'silent speech in the head' as 'thinking'. Perhaps brain scanning technology will advance to the point where hypotheses like this can be tested. At any rate, speaking philosophically, by starting with an object's representation, the hypothesis explains the chief character of intentionality, namely that all thought is about something, even if that something does not exist---the representation could have arisen from hearing or reading a description rather than by acquaintance. Exactly what neural 'architecture' is required to support these categories of mentation is a huge open question. But it's hardly a problem of physics I would have thought, even if the 'animation' of such structures conforms to physical principles.
If that is true, then physical particles get special causal powers when they get into certain configurations, that they do things they would not otherwise do when these configurations arise. That looks like a miracle to me, and cries out for explanation. In terms of intelligent design maybe.
...then physical particles get special causal powers... Why?
Because in their natural state, particles will do what they do because of a) the laws of physics, b) the prior positions of the basic particles and maybe c) a brute chance factor. None of these factors have any teleology, normativity, subjectivity, or intentionality involved. If those four factors are involved, then some causal power other than law, position, and brute chance explain what they do. And what goes on with the particles, given physicalism, determines everything else in space and time. If being configured in a brain causes the particles to go somewhere they would not otherwise go given law, position, and brute chance, then some special causal powers are at work, and this cries out for explanation.
Victor, May I ask, Do you take Intentionality, etc, to be fundamental features, as it were, of the world, perhaps in much the same way as I regard electric charge? Nagel, in Mind and Cosmos, seems to have this view, at least in respect of Normativity. I think where we differ is that you see no way for these features to get into the world. They have to be built in at the foundations. Whereas I see them as features we find in the activity of our evolved brains. For example, you say, (4:28 PM), characterising the physicalist view,
Particles do not have a first-person perspective, and since macro objects do what the basic particles do, first-person perspective never affects where any atom in the universe goes.
I agree that particles have no first-person perspective, but I don't agree that your conclusion follows. On my view, my first-person perspective is represented in the structure of my brain, and thus, qua physical entity, has the power to dispose my limbs, for example.
OP
"But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? "
You can't.
" I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist"
Reasons and proof are two differnt things. Lewis is very bad at reasoning here, as usual.
" Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought"
How absurd. I experience my own thought. God is irrelevant.
Victor,
" If being configured in a brain causes the particles to go somewhere they would not otherwise go given law, position, and brute chance, then some special causal powers are at work, and this cries out for explanation."
The particles in the brain do not go or do anything new or different or extra. The whole collection of such particles do things the individual particles cannot.
Individual particles of silicon, copper, and plastic don't do much by themselves. Get enough of them organized in a particular way and they can have a conversation with you.
At this point it is believed that such a conversation is actually with a philosophical zombie. Still, that is a very great deal more than what the individual parts can do.
Little bits of silicon, copper, and plastic cannot speak words that you understand, cannot interpret your words and respond to them topically in English.
In this real working philosophical zombie all the particles are still doing only what particles do.
Nothing new is added to the actions of the individual particles so there is nothing crying out for an explanation.
I don't like the term "emergent" properties, rather I prefer the term "aggregate" properties.
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