Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Vorkosigan · 01-12-2002, 02:17 PM

Two great posts, BD. A pleasure to read. Maybe you should write a formal article up for the library...

Michael

Stabby- · 01-12-2002, 04:43 PM

The question posed reveals the strengths of the naturalist/humanist position, rather than weakens it.

It hints at the reason Humanist/Naturalists participate in philosophy and science. The question of identity and consciousness has driven all the greats, and continues to do so to this day. What am I? Can I be confident In what I know? How can I Test what I know, if the facilities used to test them are not verified? Where do I start?

Its Exciting and frustrating. The uncertainty is quite an obstical. But overcommnig obsticals is so much fun!

Yet, it fails to Invalidate the process. It merely faces up to the posibility that human experience(even rationality)is an illusion. It challenges all our intuitions- at the risk of loosing our notion of self.

The question wants an Absolutist answer from a naturalist on this topic. Fortunalty, Naturalist/Humanists are not absolutist Idealist. Any answer provided here, will most likely be brushed off because it isn't Absolutist. The question fails to consider its audience.

If we Rearange the question a bit, to remove notions of Absolutism it may prove more interesting and informative. The way it has been phrased is circular. The begining of the question assumes a truth that is later denied at the end of the question. Its as if the question asks: if X is true then why isn't X true when X is False.

It is bad form to describe Materialism/Naturalism in these Absolutists terms (true or false). Describe the method as a process. The question may then prove very insightful, to Absolutists and naturalist/humanists alike.

stabby-------------

thefugitivesaint · 01-14-2002, 07:37 PM

Having re-read your posts bd-from-kg, i can safely agree with turtonm that they were great posts. I just wonder why you spend the time to construct them when they will just disappear into the depths of "message board nothingness"?

-theSaint

P.S.

It's also a shame to post such obviously time consuming responses since scilvr will never respond to them.

[ January 14, 2002: Message edited by: thefugitivesaint ]

scilvr · 01-14-2002, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by thefugitivesaint:

It's also a shame to post such obviously time consuming responses since scilvr will never respond to them.

Fugitive et al,

I have been out of town until last night and school started back up today. There have been many responses since my last post, so I don't plan on responding to all of them. BD's posts are some of the most thoughtful and well argued. They deserve a thoughtful and well argued response. As I find time throughout the week I will attempt to formulate one and post it.

Until then,

scilvr

thefugitivesaint · 01-14-2002, 09:43 PM

Well, in light of this new "revelation" i must extend an apology to you scilvr. I thought you were going to turn out to be one of those "post and run" types the ii boards get so often. Since this is not the case i'll wait for your responses.

-theSaint

thefugitivesaint · 01-15-2002, 04:24 AM

I just wanted to add the following as a footnote to my previous post:

No animal or human needs to be aware of the ultimate reasons for its activities in order to behave adaptively. Our cognitive decision-making processes were shaped by natural selection to enhance reproductive fitness, not to provide us with the capacity to monitor the fitness consequences of each and every action we take.

The field of evolutionary psychology makes several assumptions that are relevant here:

1. The human mind consists of a set of evolved, innate, information processing mechanisms (`Darwinian algorithms').

2. These evolved mechanisms are adaptations, produced by natural selection over evolutionary time in ancestral environments.

3. These mechanisms are functionally specialized (`domain specific') to produce behavior that solves particular adaptive problems such as mate selection, language acquisition, navigation, social co-operation etc.

4. These information-processing mechanisms generate human culture.

5. The evolved structure of the human mind is adapted to the way of life of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, and not necessarily to our modern circumstances.

Our ancestors faced a wide range of adaptive problems, some of the primary ones being:
1. Solicitation of parental assistance.
2. Parenting.
3. Language acquisition.
4. Modeling the spatial distribution of (food) objects.
5. Navigating.
6. Avoiding predators, food toxins, incest etc.
7. Co-operation and social exchange.
8. Social competition, deception and manipulation.
9. Understanding the intentions of others (particularly threats).
10. Finding a reproductively capable mate.

The more important the adaptive problem, the more intensely natural selection will improve and specialize the mechanism for solving it, in this way Darwinian algorithms become domain specific.

The �external� reality for an animal living in complex social groups is essentially a �social� reality in which the ability to understand and predict another individual's behavior (particularly if hostile) would be an enormous evolutionary advantage. This difficult and complicated ability would therefore require a superior intelligence (as seen in social animals) and both would evolve through natural selection. Self-consciousness in the form of understanding and interpreting one's own body states enables an animal to develop and test hypotheses about similar states in other animals.

Here the emergence of language and the development of communication enables social competition, exchange, alliance building, transmission of important information, culture, and deception.

Human behavior often cannot be taken at face value, but must be inferred from motivations and intentions that could be hidden for deceptive purposes. Individuals who lack such a mechanism will be fundamentally disadvantaged in social situations because they will not be able to predict the intentions of others. The more precise the mechanism that is utilized in interpreting the intentions of others will eventually win out over less precise methods since its effectiveness will be more successful in generating positive results for those who use it.

-theSaint

phaedrus · 01-15-2002, 07:36 PM

Should the question be - " Does a Naturalist feel that his/her system is privileged? If yes, why so?"

Edited to remove the line - Coz "trust" is something very subjective.

On second thoughts, that line looked like a potential quagmire

[ January 15, 2002: Message edited by: phaedrus ]

BerntRostrom · 01-16-2002, 04:35 AM

"Why should a naturalist think that her Reason gives her any real insight into reality? In other words, why should a naturalist believe that her Reason is a reliable guide to truth? "

To me its more on the ethical side or moral side. I trust more in the attitude of naturalists than I trust in the attitude of supernaturalists.

based on "tacit" or silent knowledge from a lifetime of meeting people my intuition tells me that its more likely that skeptical scientist get it right then overly optimistic Blind Faith Born Again people get it right.

very few of all the fundies I met during some 30 years of confrontation with Christians and Muslims and Hindues and Buddhists teached me to take their enthusiasm with a big reservedness.

They are too gullible and too willing to accept almost any claim from their sacred scriptures.

I am no friend of social constructionism but isn't it obvious that every traditional religion is a child of its time. When I grew up in the late 50ieth Northern Europe it was a Sin to be as Sexy as Elvis was on stage. The Christian fundies in US had a hay day smashing his 78 disks.

Now nearly 50 years later its obvious how inappropriately they overreacted to his
trendy stule of being sexy. Communists in Sovjet to oacted like mortal guardians to protect their youth from the decadant western music.

Religion is the collective way of keeping a moral tradition and secular ideologies too try to do that. While religion often refer to the life after this one, the secualr totalitarians refer to this life here and now as the mother of the coming utopian era.

What we need is a humane way of life that is more open to the complexity to grew up. Its the totalitarian views and claims that give fundamentalists fuel for their wars against the modern times changes of sexual moral. even if supernatural faith as such is or could be harmful cause it promise too much its the totalitarian attitudes that is the most harmful. To have the absolute truth is problematic if your secular too. So we need a way to live that is regardful to individual freedom while recognising that as a social animal many of us still need a group to belong to. the power this need gives the leaders of these groups demand that they are responsible to not misuse that power. Seems not an easy task so many are skeptical to any kind of groups.

I'be been there myself for many many years but now as an older man my social needs catch up.

Secular Humanism seem very skeptical to feelings and emotions, they stress that its reason that is important but my take on al lthjis is that we need a good balance between feeling and reason.

Supernaturalism could be a kind of social protest against an overly rational culture. why else the enthusiastic rush to buy tickets the Harry Potter and to movies based on Tolkien's books.

"Live" Role playing is big here in Europe. thousands of youth running around in the woods pretending to be Celtic mythopoetic Sage or Knights or Kings or whatever.

As a specie maybe we need to let out emotional expressions of fantasy now and then?

Maybe its even "rational" in the sense that its a kind of "work out" for our social skills.

Better "play" in a Live role play and still be alive than to meet real enemies in the street?

So to answer your question I see it more as an ethical thing. Why should I trust you as a friend if you believe in such weird thing as the supernatural? You flunked on my reliability test.
30 years of tacit or silent knowledge on whom to trust amongst us.

best regrds

Bernt Rostrom
Sweden

abe smith · 01-16-2002, 07:13 AM

Reply to initial qy: What else is there? {e.g. "authority"? = why shoould you trust someone-else rather than yourself? Abe

scilvr · 01-17-2002, 06:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by bd-from-kg:

Plantinga's basic argument, as I understand it, is as follows:

There are four mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive possibilities:

(1) Beliefs do not affect behavior.

(2) Beliefs affect behavior, but not by virtue of their content

(3) Beliefs are maladaptive, i.e., more conducive to death than survival

(4) Beliefs affect behavior by virtue of their content and are also adaptive

In Chapter twelve of Warrant and Proper Function Plantinga lists five possibilities:

(1) Beliefs don't causally effect behavior.

(2) Beliefs don't cause behavior but are effects of behavior, or effects of proximate causes that also cause behavior.

(3) Beliefs play a causal role in behavior, but not by virtue of their content.

(4) Beliefs could play a causal role in behavior, but be maladaptive.

(5) Beliefs do play a causal role in behavior and are adaptive.

Quote:

He then argues that, on any reasonable assumptions about the relative probabilities of these alternatives, and given that it is far from certain that beliefs produced by our cognitive faculties will be true, the overall probability that cognitive faculties can be relied on to produce true beliefs is, at best, less than 50%.

Almost. Plantinga argues that either (1) the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable (R) given naturalism (N) and evolution (E)is low (less than 1/2), or (2) we are in no position to say what the probability is and should remain agnostic about it. In either case the naturalist has a defeater for any of the beliefs they hold, including the belief that N&E are true.

Quote:

But it strikes me that this argument is the sort of thing that gives philosophy a bad name. It is so absurd that it could only have been thought up by a professional philosopher. The notion that any of the first three possibilities listed above is remotely plausible (in a sense relevant to the argument) is preposterous.

We all have our opinions, of course.

Quote:

Obviously beliefs affect behavior, and they affect it by virtue of their content.

Actually this is not at all obvious to me. It could be that beliefs are effects of behavior, or are effects of proximate causes that cause behavior.

One way that this situation could come about is through pleiotropy, where a single gene codes for more than one trait. It could be that there are genes that code for traits essential to survival that also just happen to code for consciousness and belief, where the latter don't play any causal role in behavior.

As for the idea that beliefs play a causal role, but not in virtue of their content, this appears to be a fairly popular view in philosophy of mind, especially with those who hold to a computational theory of mind. Respected philosophers of mind such as Dretske and Churchland hold this view. Plantinga notes that philosopher Robert Cummins even goes so far as to call this the "received view", in Meaning and Representation.

So, it is at least not so obvious to myself or others much smarter than me.

Quote:

Obviously our beliefs are not, on the whole, maladaptive.

Again, it's not so obvious to me. It is possible that a system or trait that is maladaptive becomes fixed in a population. Take sickle-cell anemia for example. It is certainly maladaptive in most environments, but the genes that code for it also code for traits whose benefits outweigh the negatives in some environments. There are other cases like this that I remember from BIO 101.

So, Plantinga argues that it could be that a creatures beliefs are an "energy-expensive distraction, causing these creatures to engage in survival enhancing behavior, all right, but in a way less efficient and economic than if the causal connections by-passed belief altogether." Or, as with sickle-cell, it could be that beliefs are maladaptive, but the genes that encode for a creatures belief forming system also encodes for some other highly adaptive system or trait.

Quote:

This leaves only alternative (4), which has naturally been presumed by everyone on this thread up to now, perhaps because none of us is a professional philosopher.

Yeah, could be. Or it could be that none have taken the time to think very hard about it because they were too worried about defeating the argument in order to remain secure in their current beliefs. This is a common reaction by True Believer on boards like these.

Quote:

Next Plantinga argues that, even assuming that (4) is correct, the probability that a belief produced by those faculties will be true isnt all that high. Why? Because for any given adaptive action, there will be many belief-desire combinations that could produce that action; and very many of those belief-desire combinations will be such that the belief involved is false.

Correct.

Quote:

This is a remarkably wrongheaded argument. One might as well argue that the probability that evolution might produce an eye that forms accurate visual images isnt all that high because, for any adaptive action, there are many image-desire combinations that could produce that action, and very many of these image-desire combinations will be such that the image formed does not represent reality, even to a reasonable approximation.

Well, if image-desire combinations play a causal role in behavior, then we may now have a good argument for the conclusion that the probability of our visual faculties being reliable given N&E is low or inscrutable. This certainly doesn't help the naturalist.

Quote:

Plantinga admits that this reasoning is pretty weak; as he says (referring to his hypothetical hominid),It is easy to see, for just one of Paul's actions, that there are many different belief-desire combinations that yield it; it is less easy to see how it could be that most of all of his beliefs could be false but nonetheless adaptive or fitness enhancing. He then goes on to give examples of how Paul's beliefs might be systematically false but still adaptive

The problem is that all of these examples are also compatible with his beliefs being true.

To see this, lets refer to a conceptual scheme for understanding or making sense of ones perceptions an ontology. (An ontology would include all of ones beliefs about what things exist, what their relationships - including causal relationships - are to one another, etc.) To oversimplify somewhat, the empiricist position is that an ontology is true (or at least truer than a given alternative) just insofar as it produces accurate predictions (and of course, is consistent with past observations). Two apparently different ontologies that make the same predictions in all cases can be considered to be either the same ontology or equivalent ontologies. Either way, they are equally true.

Now take any of Plantinga's examples, say the last one, in which Paul thinks that all plants and animals are witches. Now either this belief has some actual consequences in the sense of making different predictions from a witchless ontology, or it doesnt. If it does, its predictions will presumably be less accurate than those of a witchless ontology. (Otherwise we would agree that Paul is right: all plants and animals really are witches in his sense.) But an ontology that makes less accurate predictions will put Paul at a disadvantage in terms of natural selection. On the other hand, if the witch ontology makes the same predictions in all cases as a witchless one, it is just as true, so Paul cannot be said to have systematically false beliefs.

It seems to me that if the difference in predictions are subtle enough, there's no way of being confident that natural selection will favor the true belief.

Also, it seems to me that in some cases, a false belief would be more adaptive. For example, the belief that all snakes can kill you from 10 feet away, though false, may very well be more adaptive than the belief that only some snakes can kill you from 10 feet away by preventing members of the group having such a belief from ever getting too close to a venomous snake. The belief that there are evil ghosts that live in the tops of very tall trees may be adaptive in that it prevents members of the group holding such beliefs from making the dangerous climb into the tops of very tall trees. There are many other scenarios like these that are possible.

The probability,then, that our cognitive faculties are reliable on this account, though maybe better than 1/2, is not necessarily much higher. Which, when combined with the other possibilities and porbabilities (1-4), still leaves us with the probability of our cognitive faculties being reliable given N&E as low or inscrutable.

Quote:

So Plantinga's basic argument fails on all counts. There is no reason to doubt (at least on the grounds he advances) that the kinds of cognitive faculties evolution is apt to produce are likely to produce true beliefs with a reasonably high degree of reliability.

Not quite.

Quote:

But it should be noted that, by its nature, natural selection will tend to filter out only cognitive processes that produce false beliefs that matter i.e., that affect survival and reproduction. Since beliefs that do not affect these things will not be acted on by natural selection, we do indeed have serious reason to doubt their reliability.

So,assuming this is true, how do abstract metaphysical beliefs, like philosophical naturalism, affect survival and reproduction? It seems that this gives the naturalist reason to doubt that naturalism is true, no?

[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: scilvr ]

[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: scilvr ]

[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: scilvr ]

01-14-2002, 07:37 PM	#33
thefugitivesaint Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: philadelphia, PA. USA. Posts: 682	Having re-read your posts bd-from-kg, i can safely agree with turtonm that they were great posts. I just wonder why you spend the time to construct them when they will just disappear into the depths of "message board nothingness"? -theSaint P.S. It's also a shame to post such obviously time consuming responses since scilvr will never respond to them. [ January 14, 2002: Message edited by: thefugitivesaint ]</p>

01-15-2002, 07:36 PM	#37
phaedrus Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Indus Posts: 1,038	Should the question be - " Does a Naturalist feel that his/her system is privileged? If yes, why so?" Edited to remove the line - Coz "trust" is something very subjective. On second thoughts, that line looked like a potential quagmire [ January 15, 2002: Message edited by: phaedrus ]</p>

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01-12-2002, 02:17 PM	#31
Vorkosigan Contributor Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Barrayar Posts: 11,866	Two great posts, BD. A pleasure to read. Maybe you should write a formal article up for the library... Michael

01-12-2002, 04:43 PM	#32
Stabby- Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: the west Posts: 161	The question posed reveals the strengths of the naturalist/humanist position, rather than weakens it. It hints at the reason Humanist/Naturalists participate in philosophy and science. The question of identity and consciousness has driven all the greats, and continues to do so to this day. What am I? Can I be confident In what I know? How can I Test what I know, if the facilities used to test them are not verified? Where do I start? Its Exciting and frustrating. The uncertainty is quite an obstical. But overcommnig obsticals is so much fun! Yet, it fails to Invalidate the process. It merely faces up to the posibility that human experience(even rationality)is an illusion. It challenges all our intuitions- at the risk of loosing our notion of self. The question wants an Absolutist answer from a naturalist on this topic. Fortunalty, Naturalist/Humanists are not absolutist Idealist. Any answer provided here, will most likely be brushed off because it isn't Absolutist. The question fails to consider its audience. If we Rearange the question a bit, to remove notions of Absolutism it may prove more interesting and informative. The way it has been phrased is circular. The begining of the question assumes a truth that is later denied at the end of the question. Its as if the question asks: if X is true then why isn't X true when X is False. It is bad form to describe Materialism/Naturalism in these Absolutists terms (true or false). Describe the method as a process. The question may then prove very insightful, to Absolutists and naturalist/humanists alike. stabby-------------

01-14-2002, 09:43 PM	#35
thefugitivesaint Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: philadelphia, PA. USA. Posts: 682	Well, in light of this new "revelation" i must extend an apology to you scilvr. I thought you were going to turn out to be one of those "post and run" types the ii boards get so often. Since this is not the case i'll wait for your responses. -theSaint

01-15-2002, 04:24 AM	#36
thefugitivesaint Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: philadelphia, PA. USA. Posts: 682	I just wanted to add the following as a footnote to my previous post: No animal or human needs to be aware of the ultimate reasons for its activities in order to behave adaptively. Our cognitive decision-making processes were shaped by natural selection to enhance reproductive fitness, not to provide us with the capacity to monitor the fitness consequences of each and every action we take. The field of evolutionary psychology makes several assumptions that are relevant here: 1. The human mind consists of a set of evolved, innate, information processing mechanisms (`Darwinian algorithms'). 2. These evolved mechanisms are adaptations, produced by natural selection over evolutionary time in ancestral environments. 3. These mechanisms are functionally specialized (`domain specific') to produce behavior that solves particular adaptive problems such as mate selection, language acquisition, navigation, social co-operation etc. 4. These information-processing mechanisms generate human culture. 5. The evolved structure of the human mind is adapted to the way of life of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, and not necessarily to our modern circumstances. Our ancestors faced a wide range of adaptive problems, some of the primary ones being: 1. Solicitation of parental assistance. 2. Parenting. 3. Language acquisition. 4. Modeling the spatial distribution of (food) objects. 5. Navigating. 6. Avoiding predators, food toxins, incest etc. 7. Co-operation and social exchange. 8. Social competition, deception and manipulation. 9. Understanding the intentions of others (particularly threats). 10. Finding a reproductively capable mate. The more important the adaptive problem, the more intensely natural selection will improve and specialize the mechanism for solving it, in this way Darwinian algorithms become domain specific. The �external� reality for an animal living in complex social groups is essentially a �social� reality in which the ability to understand and predict another individual's behavior (particularly if hostile) would be an enormous evolutionary advantage. This difficult and complicated ability would therefore require a superior intelligence (as seen in social animals) and both would evolve through natural selection. Self-consciousness in the form of understanding and interpreting one's own body states enables an animal to develop and test hypotheses about similar states in other animals. Here the emergence of language and the development of communication enables social competition, exchange, alliance building, transmission of important information, culture, and deception. Human behavior often cannot be taken at face value, but must be inferred from motivations and intentions that could be hidden for deceptive purposes. Individuals who lack such a mechanism will be fundamentally disadvantaged in social situations because they will not be able to predict the intentions of others. The more precise the mechanism that is utilized in interpreting the intentions of others will eventually win out over less precise methods since its effectiveness will be more successful in generating positive results for those who use it. -theSaint

01-16-2002, 04:35 AM	#38
BerntRostrom Regular Member Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Hudiksvall, Sweden Posts: 160	"Why should a naturalist think that her Reason gives her any real insight into reality? In other words, why should a naturalist believe that her Reason is a reliable guide to truth? " To me its more on the ethical side or moral side. I trust more in the attitude of naturalists than I trust in the attitude of supernaturalists. based on "tacit" or silent knowledge from a lifetime of meeting people my intuition tells me that its more likely that skeptical scientist get it right then overly optimistic Blind Faith Born Again people get it right. very few of all the fundies I met during some 30 years of confrontation with Christians and Muslims and Hindues and Buddhists teached me to take their enthusiasm with a big reservedness. They are too gullible and too willing to accept almost any claim from their sacred scriptures. I am no friend of social constructionism but isn't it obvious that every traditional religion is a child of its time. When I grew up in the late 50ieth Northern Europe it was a Sin to be as Sexy as Elvis was on stage. The Christian fundies in US had a hay day smashing his 78 disks. Now nearly 50 years later its obvious how inappropriately they overreacted to his trendy stule of being sexy. Communists in Sovjet to oacted like mortal guardians to protect their youth from the decadant western music. Religion is the collective way of keeping a moral tradition and secular ideologies too try to do that. While religion often refer to the life after this one, the secualr totalitarians refer to this life here and now as the mother of the coming utopian era. What we need is a humane way of life that is more open to the complexity to grew up. Its the totalitarian views and claims that give fundamentalists fuel for their wars against the modern times changes of sexual moral. even if supernatural faith as such is or could be harmful cause it promise too much its the totalitarian attitudes that is the most harmful. To have the absolute truth is problematic if your secular too. So we need a way to live that is regardful to individual freedom while recognising that as a social animal many of us still need a group to belong to. the power this need gives the leaders of these groups demand that they are responsible to not misuse that power. Seems not an easy task so many are skeptical to any kind of groups. I'be been there myself for many many years but now as an older man my social needs catch up. Secular Humanism seem very skeptical to feelings and emotions, they stress that its reason that is important but my take on al lthjis is that we need a good balance between feeling and reason. Supernaturalism could be a kind of social protest against an overly rational culture. why else the enthusiastic rush to buy tickets the Harry Potter and to movies based on Tolkien's books. "Live" Role playing is big here in Europe. thousands of youth running around in the woods pretending to be Celtic mythopoetic Sage or Knights or Kings or whatever. As a specie maybe we need to let out emotional expressions of fantasy now and then? Maybe its even "rational" in the sense that its a kind of "work out" for our social skills. Better "play" in a Live role play and still be alive than to meet real enemies in the street? So to answer your question I see it more as an ethical thing. Why should I trust you as a friend if you believe in such weird thing as the supernatural? You flunked on my reliability test. 30 years of tacit or silent knowledge on whom to trust amongst us. best regrds Bernt Rostrom Sweden

01-16-2002, 07:13 AM	#39
abe smith Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: springfield, MA. USA Posts: 2,482	Reply to initial qy: What else is there? {e.g. "authority"? = why shoould you trust someone-else rather than yourself? Abe

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