ReasonableDoubt

What's an atheistic reply to the following argument:



If naturalism is true, then the ultimate explanation for anything is either
1. Chance
2. Physical Law
3. Some combination of chance & physical law


If everything is random, then our thoughts are also random. We then have no reason to think our thoughts contain truth or correspond to reality.
If everything is an effect that flows from a prior, natural, irrational cause, we again have no reason to think our thoughts contain truth. Our thoughts are merely the product of chemical reactions and natural causes, but may not correspond to reality.
If everything is a combination, the same effect occurs.

Is this good reason to doubt the deliverances of our belief forming processes? And if so, what are the implications?

ReasonableDoubt

OK- I see that the thread about "Must Theistic Belief have evidence to be Rational"- seems to touch on a lot of these issues.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt :

"If everything is random, then our thoughts are also random. We then have no reason to think our thoughts contain truth or correspond to reality."

There are many different senses of "random." Here I assume you mean stochastic, or without a conscious agent's choice.

An evolutionary epistemologist might reply to your worry the following way. A good explanation for why we behave as if our thoughts correspond to reality is that it's evolutionarily valuable for this to be the case. Organisms with reliable belief-forming mechanisms survived and reproduced more successfully than those without.

Primal

On what basis do you think that everything being physical equals everything being an irrational effect?

tronvillain

If naturalism is true, then all explanations will ultimately be in terms of physical law, and "physical law" may or may not include some degree of true randomness. There may not actually be an ultimate explanation - it may be that there are simply some brute facts that exist without explanation.

ReasonableDoubt

Primal - I'm not sure- this was an argument presented to me, not mine. But I think what was meant by "irrational" is that it is purely physical, or having nothing to do with the mind...

philechat

I think mind is an emergent property of the physical, the way that color, or other "phenomena" are. We must not commit fallacy of composition here, else we will be stuck with the diamond/granite question, where both objects are formed from the same element.

Similarly, hydrocarbon chains can become methane or animal fat, without us constantly pondering about all the mysterious mechanism behind them. So while we will want to investigate the way mind works, we should not jump to any mystical conclusions as to the exact nature of mind.

WWSD

Perhaps it is meant to be taken as undesigned, or without the influence of some intelligent force.

The argument makes some grand assumptions.
I think that the emergent properties that arise from the interactions of physical law are quite "rational." If you want to put it that way.

Jobar

*Any*thing is not *every*thing. In the commentary on the argument, try replacing all the every's with any's.

That argument is a semantic trick. You can't express ultimates with words designed to express specifics. ("The truth that can be spoken is not the Absolute Truth.")

Tercel

I have to admit that I'm always tempted to roll my eyes when I see people saying this. A combination of a few reasons I suppose...

Firstly isn't it... well... unscientific? I mean, the whole point of science is to provide answers: It seems based on the assumption that we are capable of learning anything and everything about the universe and how it works so we should go out there and damn well do so. Since you guys seem to so often tout the almightly science as the great destroyer of religion and make great fun of "God works in mysterious ways" or "God is beyond total comprehension", it seems strange to see opinion presented that we really can't know everything after all.

Which kinda is related to the second reason I think it's a funny comment. Science vs God of the Gaps: A major theme of any smug-backpatting atheist self-contragulation session. But isn't this "agnosticism of the gaps"? It's a stark contrast to the usual "increasing scientific knowledge shrinks god into an ever smaller hole" all the way, or "our ever increasing knowledge will one day remove all possibility of god: Hurrah". That's the normal outlook: Until we get to questions like causality and the beginning of everything. And then there's a sudden U-turn to "well we can't know everything", "it might be totally inexplicable", and my favourite: "it could be an abitrary brute fact". Out the window goes the idea of omnipotent science and our ever increasing knowledge, and the idea of the day is that we are ignorant and hurray for us for being ignorant.
(Now probably what is really happening is that posters who expose the first view shut up when the subject turns to an area which would inconvenience their beliefs, and other posters who have been shutting up earlier due to their agnosticism providing no argument against belief in God turn out in force as soon as the subject matter turns to a situation where agnosticism can be conveniently applied. But the apparent U-turn in belief always strikes me as quite funny.)

And my third, and probably most main point why I want to roll my eyes is that the idea of a "brute fact" is absurd. It's the ultimate complete and utter COP-OUT. If someone asks you a question in every day life, eg "why is that pencil sitting there?": is "it just is" a good complete and comprehensive answer (assuming we're being serious and intending to give a full answer)? No it's a damn stupid one. Nothing at all in our experience suggests that "it just is" is ever a good serious answer to anything. But here we are being asked to believe that for the most important question of all, it's suddenly and magically a good answer? Right...

Now, I'm not actually against the possibility of things existing as "brute facts" but only under very very restricted conditions. eg Logic could well be a brute fact: It's non-existence being both illogical and inconceivable. It's also an irreducibly simple system lacking in abitrary layers of complexity or anything that might ever be consider arbitrary or non-necessary. That's the kind of thing that could, conceivably be a "brute fact" or Necessity (to use the Modal logic term for it).
However I experience serious mental difficulties in trying to get my head around the idea of abitrary brute facts that you guys seem to like so much. I see the ENTIRE Universe: all space-time itself being happily stuck in the basket of "brute fact". Everything that ever happened or ever will is a "brute fact". There's no explanation for it, zip, nada: that's just how it is.
What tremendous faith and imagination some of you guys have. Clearly I lack the faith required to be a skeptic.