lpetrich

For all we know, visitors from some other planet could have done the designing, so one ought not to become too attached to one particular hypothesis of designer.

Also, successfully perceiving one's environment has adaptive value, meaning that one would expect natural evolution to try to produce well-performing senses. And there has indeed been work on the evolutionary history of various senses and sense organs.

Though that would reasonably be thought to be the work of human gardeners, it is not clear that human-brain architecture is the same way. Are there some parts with neurons arranged to form some nice pictures? Pictures which might be interpreted as "Designed as an experiment by the Bjqxlpt Organism-Design Team at the Hlkwqxg Genetic-Engineering Consortium."

Automaton

Evolution isn't blind chance. It designed our rationality because it conveyed a selective advantage in our ancestral population to be able to create rational thoughts. A wholly irrational being with every other human characteristic in our environment would surely not survive very long, nor produce very many progeny. Therefore, if evolution is true, we have good reason to accept that our abilities for reason are not flawed.

gus

To take this in a slightly different direction (my apologies if a similar argument was presented in the other thread referenced here), let's examine our knowledge about the two subjects: the origin of the spatial arrangements of flowers, and the origin of the human brain.

Throughout the course of history, we have had a vast amount of experience with all types of flower arrangements, both those produced by the "random" forces of nature and those intentionally produced by our fellow humans to form text to provide us with a message about our location.

I think it is safe to say that an incredibly small percentage of a practically innumerable number of naturally created flower arrangements have ever even come close to mimicking a carefully constructed human arrangement, much less one that clearly spells out a nearby landmark in the native language to that area.

On the other hand, a very small percentage of man-made flower arrangements that spell out the supposed location are misleading (either by error or trickery), much the same as any type of man-made sign. Sometimes they are wrong (certainly A LOT more often than "random" arrangements are "right"), but they are right more than enough of the time for us to trust them.

So it is evident that we have quite a bit of information about all sorts of intances of flower arrangements. We have seen the results of both natural processes, and the results of human endeavors...and a very, very large number of each at that. The results tell us that the ones produced by nature are completely unreliable as to ascertaining location, however the man-made ones that spell out words are indeed generally reliable. Thus we are entirely justified in making rational judgements about a flower arrangement soley based on knowledge of it's origin.

Now as to the human brain and it's capacity to reason. We know of only ONE instance of the human brain. I mean this in the of it's basic blueprint, as of course there are billions of human brains on the planet right now. A simple analogy might be that there are many, many different brands of candy bars, but comparitively all Snicker Bars are essentially the same. The analogy being that there is only one "brand" of human brain. Not a perfect anology, but I hope you get my point. Therefore, unlike the flowers, we cannot look at the countless types of brains known for fact to be created by natural processes and the countless types of brains known for fact to be produced by a designer. We cannot gather such evidence and then come to conclusions concerning to what degree our particular "brand" of brain shoud be trusted based soley on the knowledge (or in this case belief) of origin, because the data is simply not there to support any conclusion reached in this manner.

With our brains and reasoning abilites, we HAVE to decide how much trust we place on them based on our personal experience with them, and to a lesser degree our knowledge of our fellow humans' experiences with theirs. That's simply all the objective information we have about the reliabilty of the one known instance of the human capacity to reason, and our personal beliefs as far as where these things came from are irrelevent to a making a determination (based on logic) of their trustworthiness. And as others have pointed out, our brains and reasoning capacities demonstrably serve us pretty darn well, thank you very much. Certainly more than well enough to trust them in the vast majortity of situations.


[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: gus ]

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: gus ]</p>

99Percent

LinuxPop: 1) "I believe God does not exist" (classic atheism)

2) "I believe that I don't believe that God does not exist" (this is what you claim)

3) "I believe that I have no beliefs concerning God's existance one way or another"

Anyway you slice it, you're stuck with a belief.

The fallacy of your argument lies in trying to establish the affirmative of the negative. So to deny a negative actually involves a double negative - which is illogical. To make it much easier to understand what I mean, substitute "knowledge" for "belief".

"I do not believe that god exists" and
"I believe that no god exists"

become:

"I do not know that god exists" and
"I know that no god exists"

To make this clearer substitute "god" for anything else:

"I do not know that the world is a globe." = The world could be any shape, I do not have knowledge as to the shape of the world.
"I know that the world is not a globe." = The world could be any shape except a globe, but the definitive shape is still unknown.
"I know that the world is a globe" = The world is definitely a globe.
"I do not know that the world is a not a globe." = non-sensical because you cannot not know the non-fact.

Now substitute knowledge with belief:

"I do not believe that the world is a globe." = The world could be any shape, I have no belief as to the shape of the world.
"I believe that the world is not a globe." = The world is necessarily not a globe, I hold a belief that the world most likely is not a globe but it could be any other shape.
"I believe that the world is a globe." = The world is necessarily a globe, I hold a belief as to its shape.
"I do not believe that the world is not a globe". = non-sensical because you cannot have a non belief of a non-fact.

Weak atheism is:
I do not believe that god exists. God could exist or not, I do not hold a belief as to its existence.
Strong atheism is:
I believe that no god exists. God necessarily does not exist, I hold a belief that god most likely does not exist.
Theism is:
I believe that god exists. God necessarily does exist. I hold a belief that god exists.
Non-sensical:
I do not believe that god does not exist.

Strong atheism comes from first acquiring knowledge of what the definition of God is and then considering the possibility of it existing, and finally discarding its existence as not possible. Weak atheism is the default position, everyone was once a weak atheist since we are all born with no beliefs whatsoever. Theists then acquired the affirmative belief in God through indoctrination, strong atheists acquired the affirmative belief in the non existence of gods through reason.

You cannot acquire non-beliefs.

Taffy Lewis

gus:

The analogy is between the flowers as a source of information beyond themselves and our senses/cognition as a source of information beyond themselves. LinuxPup wants to claim that just as we would not trust a pattern of flowers created blindly to give us correct information about things beyond them we should not trust our senses/cognition if they have a similar source.

"If we believe the pattern of flowers was created blindly (by the wind) can we also trust them to give us reliable information?"

In other words, can you accept both the claim that they originated blindly and accept the information you obtain from them?

The proponent of the argument wants you to say "No". Then they want to say you must accept the same thing with regard to your senses/cognition.

gus

No, because as I pointed out, I have extensive information as to the reliability of information given by patterns of flowers created "blindly". Nature has blindly created flower patterns a countless number of times, and I submit that that percentage of which has resulted in an accurate linguistic message is either zero or incredibly small, certainly small enough to completely justify a lack of trust if given no further information. It is obvious that the trustworthiness of a partucular flower pattern can be reasonably ascertained based solely upon knowledge of its origin.

There is no such information about our senses/cognition. We only know of ONE instance of human senses/cognition, and let's face it, it is far from completely understood. Their fundamental origins (in terms of design or lack of design) have certainly not been demonstrated either way. It is obvious that the trustworthiness of our senses/congnition can NOT be reasonably ascertained based solely upon knowledge (in this case assumption, or belief) of its origin (in terms of design or lack of design). On what basis can such a claim be made?


Additionally, from a scientific point of view, the lack of design of natural flower pattern formation in vitrually no way compares to the lack of design found in biological evolutional theory. There is a well-described mechanism in evolutionary theory (natural selection) that assists in explaining how naturally formed senses/cognition can be trusted (and has been discussed rather effectively in this thread). There is absolutely no such mechanism for natural flower pattern formation. None at all.

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: gus ]</p>

Clutch

Linuxpop, I must be missing something important. What evolutionary theorist claimed that the specific beliefs of an organism are selected for or against?

What is quite plausibly an adaptation, on the other hand, is reliable belief-forming mechanisms. Not the content of your beliefs, but the means by which you acquire, refine and reject them, in other words. It is far from mysterious why, if the big furry striped thing wanted to eat my ancestors, I should come equipped with belief-forming mechanisms that can accurately track the properties of fur, stripes, claws, and such, and correctly represents those properties as linked to all sorts of unhappy outcomes.

This whole Plantinga-style argument (that evolutionary theory engenders radical scepticism) is riddled with errors and question-begging assumptions. Not the least of which is that there is an independent conception of true belief that is not defined partially in terms of functional success...

Taffy Lewis

gus:

The intuition behind LinuxPup's argument is that we don't trust the pattern of flowers because they were created by a blind process.

The most obvious response by a naturalist is to argue that there is an important difference between the blind process of flower pattern generation and the darwinian process that generated our senses/cognition.

In fact this is the counter-argument you refer to:

The idea here would be that natural selection would insure that our senses/cognition are generally reliable or we would not survive. Or that a mostly reliable belief generating faculty or faculties is necessary for survival conducive behavior.

The counter to this would be that there is another important distinction between true beliefs and survival conducive behavior.

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga offers a few counter examples that are supposed to undermine that suggestion. He claims that largely true beliefs are not necessary for survival. He gives the example of a person who is about to be attacked by a hungry tiger. Suppose this person believes that the tiger is a cute, cuddly kitten and suppose the person wants to pet the kitten. Also, suppose the person believes that the best way to pet a kitten is to run away from it. His particular belief/desire set could allow him to survive and yet they might be largely false.

So it would be false that largely true beliefs and "normal" desires are necessary for survival. There could be any number of largely false belief sets and unusual desires that contribute to survival just as well as a true set of beliefs and a "normal" set of desires. If this is true then a naturalist cannot appeal to natural selection to pick out our actual belief/desire producing mechanisms as largely true or "normal".

I don't know what else a naturalist could appeal to that would insure that our senses/cognition are generally reliable and truth conducive.

Vorkosigan

The counter to this would be that there is another important distinction between true beliefs and survival conducive behavior.
The philosopher Alvin Plantinga offers a few counter examples that are supposed to undermine that suggestion. He claims that largely true beliefs are not necessary for survival. He gives the example of a person who is about to be attacked by a hungry tiger. Suppose this person believes that the tiger is a cute, cuddly kitten and suppose the person wants to pet the kitten. Also, suppose the person believes that the best way to pet a kitten is to run away from it. His particular belief/desire set could allow him to survive and yet they might be largely false.

Plantinga's view is rather silly. Our belief forming machinery is evolved to solve human social problems; most of our machinery that directly interprets the world outside of humans runs on automatic, like our visual processing system, and is extremely accurate.

Note that in Platinga's example the human has accurately percieved the existence of the tiger and the fact that it is chasing him. In the real world, as opposed to philosophical fables, a lone human running from a tiger would soon become a snack. If humans generally had such views of predators built-in, they would soon die out. That is the beauty of evolution: error is ruthlessly corrected.

Plantinga's view of the mind is also extremely impoverished. Humans obtain information constantly from multiple sources, and update it constantly. The man running from the tiger exists in a society of some kind, and thus has information about tigers from other sources, for example. There is no way he could come to the conclusion that tigers should be cuddled unless he was clinically insane.

So it would be false that largely true beliefs and "normal" desires are necessary for survival. There could be any number of largely false belief sets and unusual desires that contribute to survival just as well as a true set of beliefs and a "normal" set of desires.

This is irrelevant. Human cognitive machinery evolves, beliefs do not. So regardless of what beliefs do, they are not evolutionarily relevant.

Humans DO have a processing bias that gives false conclusions about the world, but it is absolutely important for social interaction. It is also one of the chief fonts for religious faith. It is one of our processing biases that things in the world have intentions.

Remember that evolutionary pressures are multiple and are not just about solving problems in the world. Why is a peacock's tail so big? Because it enhances the ability of the peacock to get its genes into the next generation even though it increases its vulnerability to predators. Fitness is a total expression of an animal's behavior, including sexual selection, not merely the ability to solve problems in the world. Plantinga's tiger example shows how simplistically he thinks about evolution; he concieves of it as mere survival, when in fact it is about getting one's genes into the next generation. Similarly, our erroneous views about intentions and objects in the world enhance our fitness by making social interaction possible and increasing our ability to, among other things, find mates, even though they make us vulnerable to other problems outside of human society. Like silly religious beliefs, for example.

If this is true then a naturalist cannot appeal to natural selection to pick out our actual belief/desire producing mechanisms as largely true or "normal".

Yes, but since it involves a gross misunderstanding of evolution, it is not true. Again, beliefs are ephemeral and do not evolve, human belief-producing machinery evolves.

I don't know what else a naturalist could appeal to that would insure that our senses/cognition are generally reliable and truth conducive.

Nothing else is needed; several billion years of evolution is more than enough.

It's the theist who is in trouble here. The theist has no grounds for assuming that his god is not a trickster god who created everything last Thursday.

Vorkosigan

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

Taffy Lewis

Vorkosigan:

Plantinga doesn't deny any of this. He denies that natural selection would insure that our senses/cognition are generally reliable.

This isn't true. In the example, the person (call him Smith) does not perceive a tiger. He perceives a kitten. But he could as easily perceived a chocolate cake. Maybe he thinks chocolate cakes should be kissed. And maybe he thinks the best way to kiss a chocolate cake is to strongly avoid it.

Sure. All of this is rather silly from our point of view. But natural selection is indifferent to silliness. Our minds could have easily generated these beliefs and desires and we could survive just as well. Our beliefs and desires need only produce the necessary behavior to allow us to survive and reproduce. So we do not need largely true beliefs or "normal" desires in order to survive and reproduce.

First, no where in the example is Smith said to want to cuddle a tiger. He wants to cuddle a kitten. Secondly, with regard to natural selection, insanity is irrelevant. The only important point is that his behavior is survival conducive and that he is capable of reproducing. If insane behavior can allow someone to survive and reproduce then there is no reason to believe it will be selected against.

The argument is framed in terms of sensory and cognitive faculties. Some can produce true beliefs and others can produce false beliefs. Saying the beliefs are not relevant is like saying grasping motions are just ephemeral and what is relevant is the physiology of hands. The generation of beliefs just is one of the functions of our sensory and cognitive faculties.