Jon Curry

I don't see how. Remember, your thoughts and decisions are nothing but physical interactions in a naturalistic world. These thoughts were inevitable, based upon the prior physical interactions. If you are a naturalist, you were determined to be a naturalist. So you are a naturalist not because you decided to be a naturalist, but because the physical interactions that took place in the past lead you to inevitably be a naturalist. It's like a set of dominoes. You are that last domino in the link. You think you are making "decisions" but ultimately those decisions are determined by the physical interactions than the past. You (the last domino) decide to fall down. But you didn't decide freely. The physical processes of the past determined your falling.

Obviously theists believe that their minds were caused by something that exists in reality. I'm not sure I understand you here.

Kenny

John Curry,

I am Christian and I think that the transcendental argument (in various forms) has a great deal of merit, but I’m not sure this argument hits the mark. Perhaps my reactions here stem from the fact that I hold a version of soft determinism -- I believe that both free will and determinism coexist (in fact, I would argue that any meaningful notion of free will presupposes determinism, but that’s another topic).

It seems to me that the naturalist could simply argue here that all that matters in relation to one’s beliefs is that the cause of one’s beliefs be properly related to the truth of those beliefs. The causal chain leading to my forming a particular belief, on a naturalist view point, is long and complex, including a process of evolution whereby my cognitive faculties have been adapted to form true beliefs on the basis of sensory inputs. As long as my cognitive faculties are functioning in a manner conducive to the production of true beliefs and I am receiving reliable sensory inputs, what does it matter that those processes are mechanistically determined?

Now, there may be other causal factors involved in the production of my beliefs which are not conducive to producing true beliefs. However, my cognitive faculties also come equipped with self-correcting mechanisms which are capable of identifying improperly (i.e not truth conducive) caused beliefs both in myself and (given that we are social creatures and our cognitive faculties are adapted to function in a community of humans) in others. These self-correcting mechanisms may allow me to see why other people have false beliefs even if I am unable to persuade them that those beliefs are false. Thus, a naturalist could argue that they have good reason (based on other properly caused beliefs), to regard Theistic belief as a result of causal chains which are not conducive to the production of true beliefs (such as wish-fulfillment, indoctrination, etc.) or, perhaps, even that there are truth conducive mechanisms which have produced theistic belief, but that information from other sources overrides the rationality of that belief.

How might you respond to that?

God Bless,
Kenny

Francois Tremblay

You simply posit that the two are opposite. I explained why both are correct at the same time - because both positions are on different planes (metaphysical vs epistemic). Repeating the same fallacy does not make it any more valid.

Determinism is not only compatible with the human mind, but it is a necessary precondition for it. Without fixed biological and chemical laws, the existence of our volition would be pretty difficult to imagine !

Trying to deny an axiomatic concept with simple incredulity is a silly argument, and this case is no better. I repeat, the question should not be "how can a naturalist trust her reason ?" but rather "how can a non-naturalist trust her reason ?". Can you answer this ? Why trust your mind if it is unconnected to the rest of reality ?

[ March 05, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

Jon Curry

Hey Kenny,

Well, I also hold to a form of determinism, and I also believe in free will, but like you said, that is another topic.

Obviously if your cognitive faculties have been adapted such that you can form true beliefs, and you can know this, then you can justify your beliefs and have knowledge. But the question is, how can you ever know that? You can't. If you ever conclude that, then if naturalism is true you were determined to know that. Others (that disagree with you) were determined to "know" you were wrong. Your knowledge simply is not a function of your sensory inputs and simply is not a function of what is true. Your knowledge is a function of the neurons firing in your brain. Those are a function of the physical processes leading to your birth. Those are a function of the physical processes leading to your parents, the human race, the existence of animals, and the existence of our solar system and universe. As soon as the wheels were set in motion billions of years ago at the big bang, all of your beliefs were determined, whether they were true or false. Hence you cannot trust your beliefs.

This is really not the problem or the issue. I'm not necessarily saying you could never have true beliefs. I'm saying that you could never know that your beliefs are true. You may very well just so happen to believe something that is true. But whatever you believe, whether true or false, you were determined to believe. Even if you are firmly convinced, and have a pile of evidence. You were determined to think that that evidence was enough to establish a belief. Your beliefs may just happen to be true, even though they are mechanistically determined. But the ultimate basis for your belief is not evidence, or your own application of the laws of logic. The ultimate basis is the mechanics that lead you here. If your conclusions are not based on reason and evidence, why should you trust them?

Franc28

I guess I'm not understanding you. Epistemology is a branch of metaphysics. How are they on different planes?

Certainly this has nothing to do with my argument. I don't deny the existence of fixed biological and chemical laws.

Nobody claimed that the mind is unconnected to the rest of reality or (what I think you really mean) the physical universe. I claim that the mind is not limited to physical processes, though it is related to them. I can trust my reason because I deny that reality is limited to the natural/physical. If there is nothing but the natural/physcial then determinism is true. If determinsim is true, then I have no reason to think that my beliefs are true. Whatever I believed I was determined to believe.

madmax2976

If your beliefs are not determined by anything then your beliefs would be random. Thoughts would just pop into your head for no reason. This would hold even if you assume some supernatural element for the human mind. Randomness would invalidate any ability to make choices.

There is a great amount of evidence for the physicality of the mind. Injury, disease, chemicals, etc., all have an demonstrable affect on mental capabilities. We able to map particular mental activities to certain areas of the brain and we know that brain complexity corresponds directly to cognitive capabilities. Given all these things, we have more than ample reason to believe the mind is not independent of the physical brain but is property of it. The only reasons that are offered in support of some supernatural component for the mind is our inability to fully explain how our minds do what they do.

Rather than rest on the existence of a mystery in the attempt to prove the existence that there is "something else" to the human consciousness, I would like to see some positive evidence that "something else" exists. What is this thing made of? How does it function? What are its properties? What color is it? Where does it reside in the human body? How does it interface with the physical brain? How can we detect it?

If you can't present this kind of positive evidence then I am perfectly free to assume there is something about determinism that we do not understand or that we are simply talking about a language problem. I could assume property dualism is true or that emergent properties can solve the mind-body problem.

The point being that it will take more than just pointing out a mystery in order for supernaturalists to support their claims. It seems to me this is all they ever do - concentrate on a mystery and when a naturalistic explanation is lacking assume this actually supports some supernaturalistic answer. Hogwash. All that mysteries do is allow for the possibility of supernatural explanations. They do not justify them.

So I ask you to please offer positive evidence to justify the existence of this "something else" you claim exists. As determinism must be true in order for humans to make meaningful choices, any further belaboring of our inability to fully explain how the mind works in the face of determinism is completely insufficient.

bd-from-kg

Jon Curry:

Unfortunately personal matters are taking up most of my time just now, so I won’t be able to carry on an extended dialogue here, but I’ll try to deal with your original questions at least.

First, let’s consider your latest post:

Well, yes, I have dealt with it, but you seem to be under the impression that I haven’t because you fail to see the circularity in your reasoning.

No that I can see. Lewis simply points out that the Rule is taken for granted in ordinary, everyday contexts and concludes that it is universally valid.

But this is simply a restatement of Lewis’s Rule. Obviously if the Rule is valid your conclusion is correct, because that’s exactly what the Rule says.

The circularity of this argument is about as transparent as it could possibly be in your summary:

This conclusion can only be reached if one makes the Rule itself (or some equivalent statement) a premise.

Now let’s look at your latest post. The main point here seems to be:

That’s absolutely true. You can’t ever know that your cognitive faculties are reliable, and therefore you can’t ever know that your beliefs are rationally justified (much less that they’re true). So what? You have the same problem no matter what your metaphysical system. You could be insane, which is just another way of saying that your cognitive faculties might be unreliable. If so, your reasoning processes are not truth-preserving (even in general), or your initial premises (presumably derived from your perceptions) don’t correspond to reality in the first place. How can you possibly know that this isn’t the case?

Some things simply have to be presupposed – that is, they have to be accepted as metaphysical axioms. One such axiom is that your cognitive faculties are generally reliable. I dealt with the issue of how to distinguish between rational metaphysical axioms and irrational ones in the thread <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=000384" target="_blank">On the nature of metaphysical axioms</a>.

So, as I pointed out earlier, the only real question is whether naturalism is inconsistent – that is, whether it yields good reasons for doubting that our cognitive faculties are unreliable. As Kenny pointed out, it doesn’t. One can give a perfectly good account, under naturalistic assumptions, of why our cognitive faculties can be expected to be generally reliable.

Finally, I want to point out the weirdness of arguing that deterministic cognitive processes cannot be trusted. It seems to me that cognitive processes can be trusted only insofar as they are deterministic. Computer designers are well aware of this and go to a great deal of trouble to make their machines work as predictably as possible: an error rate of even one in a billion is too high. But any significant degree of indeterminacy is going to have the same kind of effect as a significant error rate. If a cognitive process is to produce reliable results, its outputs must be causally related to its inputs. Otherwise it hardly deserves to be called a cognitive process at all.

Jon Curry

I don't deny all forms of determinism. I believe our thoughts are "self-determined." I'm just pointing out that the determinism that results from a pure physicalism eliminates the possibility of knowledge.

I do not deny that the mind is related to and affected by the physical universe.

I'm not really attempting to support a particular supernaturalistic view. I'm not saying that souls must exist. I'm just saying that physicalism is false. Don't mischaracterize my argument. I'm not arguing FOR the existence of a soul. I'm arguing AGAINST pure physicalism.

Bd

This is not simply a restatement of the rule, but an argument for the rule. The rule is, if naturalism is true, we can have no knowledge. This rule is true because if naturalism is true, our thoughts are determined by the physical processes rather than an assessment of reality. That's an argument, not an assertion. Perhaps I am misunderstanding and you are calling "the Rule" the whole argument. But if that is the case, then Lewis' rule is true not because he simply assumes it, but because it is a valid and sound argument.

You state:

Of course not. This is a conclusion that is drawn from the preceding argument relating to our thoughts being determined by the physical laws. Bd, I know you're a smart guy, so I must be missing something here, but I just have no idea why you are saying this.

The problem here is that you are redefining the word "know." You are redefining it to mean a belief that cannot even logically be wrong. This is not what I mean. I simply mean a justified belief. By "justified" I mean that it could be justified inductively. It doesn't have to be a logically necessary conclusion. I "know" that I am looking at a computer monitor in this sense. I know it inductively. But it is logically possible that I'm wrong. I could be insane, or I could be seeing things. But it is still knowledge. The naturalist of course also can't know things in the sense you've defined it. You can't know that you are looking at a monitor either, because it is logically possible that you are wrong. But you also can't inductively justify your beliefs. The ultimate basis for your beliefs is not induction and sense perception. The ultimate basis for your beliefs are the physical processes that lead you here. The sense perceptions and logical laws you use may form part of the physical processes that lead you to a conclusion, but your conclusions were determined by the physical laws set in motion at the beginning of creation. Hence you have no reason to think your beliefs are true.

I agree that we must presuppose them. But after we have done so, I think it is reasonable to consider the logical consequences of that presupposition. And if it leads us to believe that naturalism must be false, then that's the way it is.

This illustration I think shows the very problem with the naturalistic worldview. Yes, outputs must be causally related to the inputs. But what if we were like computers in that our outputs were completely reduced to the causal inputs. Can a computer have knowledge? Can a computer have justified belief? It can't. If you program a computer to think that New York City is in California, then that is exactly what it will think. Its "beliefs" are not a result of a free assessment of the evidence. Its conclusions were determined by the inputs (the programmer) whether they are true or false. There is no reason for the computer itself to "think" its beliefs correspond to reality. The same is true for us if naturalism is true. Our beliefs are a result of the physical and chemical inputs leading to our current state. We can no more trust them than a computer can trust that its "thoughts" are true.

madmax2976

<strong> Saying our thoughts are "self-determined" is just side stepping the issue and is far to vague. Is your "self" the way it is just because thats the way it is? Does nothing determine what your "self" will be, thus making your "self" a random property?

What property of these "non-physical" elements is it that avoids this deterministic problem that you believe exists? Do these non-physical elements have random properties? If so, how does randomness provide the ability to choose or obtain knowledge?

<strong> Quite right. But you are saying the mind is "more" than the physical or a property of the physical. The evidence we have so far gives us evidence that the mind is a property of the physical brain. The only evidence you have presented is determinism, which must exist in order to for us to make meaningful choices. In order to argue that we cannot obtain knowlege you have to assume that emergent properties, which would give us this ability, do not occur, and yet we have ample evidence that they do occur.

<strong> Which means you are arguing for the existence of "non-physical" substances, energies or whatever you wish to call them. Since this is the case, rather than use a mystery in the attempt to prove your case, please present postive evidence for these non-physical elements. Please explain and give support for the existence of whatever property it is that they possess that allows us to escape the deterministic problem you perceive to exist.

The existence of a mystery may allow for the possibility of your hypothesis, but it does not actually demonstrate the truth of it. Yours is only one of numerous possibilities and your going to have to actually demonstrate your hypothesis is more likely.

bd-from-kg

Jon Curry:

1. On Lewis’s “Rule”

Perhaps I can clear up your confusion about this Rule. As quoted in my Jan. 10 post, it is:

(By “irrational causes” Lewis clearly means “nonrational causes” – that is to say, mechanistic physical processes.) The crux of your argument was:

What is this but a restatement of the Rule, or if you prefer, a direct appeal to the Rule?

As for why I believe that there is no good reason to think that the Rule applies to the evolutionary process that (in the naturalistic view) produced our cognitive faculties, this is explained in my post of January 11 (12:24 PM).

2. Can we know that out cognitive faculties are reliable?

Not at all. Actually the statements are true for pretty much any reasonable definition of “know”. You don’t know that it’s probable that you have reasonably reliable cognitive faculties (RCF). You do not have a rationally justified belief that you do. You don’t even have rational grounds for believing that it’s more likely than not that you do.

Fine. You can’t justify the belief that your cognitive faculties are reliable inductively, whatever that means.

Look. How can you possibly know (in any sense) that you have RCF? Let’s say that you decide to run a self-test. Everything passes with flying colors. Great. But the self-test is a part of your cognitive faculties. If they’re defective, it may well be defective. Similarly, you might try to prove that they’re reliable. But the proof involves premises and inferences, and you have no way of knowing whether any of the premises are true (or at least rationally justified) or the inferences valid without knowing what shape your cognitive faculties are in.

Or, you might try looking around to see how many people have RCF. It appears (to you) that almost everyone does. So you conclude that the chances are very good that you do. But again, you used your cognitive faculties to estimate how many people have impaired cognitive function, and without knowing that you have RCF you have no idea whether this estimate is anywhere near the true figure. For that matter, you have no way of knowing whether the inference, from the number of people with impaired cognitive function to the probability that you do, is correct unless you know that you have RCF.

Or, you might argue that God’s benevolent nature (or whatever) is such that He sees to it that everyone has RCF. Unfortunately, assuming that yours are reliable leads to the conclusion that this is false: He does not see to it that everyone has RCF.

Finally, you could argue that you have a direct intuition that you have RCF. But this raises the question of where this intuition comes from. If it is simply an inherent feature of your mind, you again have no grounds for trusting it unless you know that you have RCF. And if you believe it comes from God, the question is what reason you have to believe it comes from God. If you say that you have reasons not based on intuition to trust this intuition, we are back to the same old question: how do you know that your reasons are valid if you don’t know that you have RCF? And if your reason for believing that it comes from God is that you just intuitively know that it does, we’re back to square one. The basic problem is that these intuitions could be coming from some other source (including the underlying structure of your mind itself) which is also creating in you the intuition that they are coming from God. There is simply no way to estimate the relative likelihood of all of these possibilities (and be justified in trusting the results) unless you know in advance that you have RCF. But as we have seen, there is no way that you can know that in advance.

The rest of this paragraph of your post consists essentially of still more restatements of Lewis’s Rule.

How can the fact that this presupposition is a necessary part of any remotely rational metaphysical system have logical consequences for naturalism specifically?

3. On computers and justified belief

But the outputs of a computer are not “completely reduced to” (by which I assume you mean “determined by” ) the inputs. They are determined by a combination of the inputs and the internal state of the computer. And I see no need to speculate as to “what it would be like” if we were like that, because we are like that. And if we weren’t, then to the extent that the outputs (i.e., our actions or beliefs) were not determined by the inputs plus our internal states, to just that extent our actions would not really be ours; they would be the outcome of a random process (or at any rate of something “outside” of us), and so we would to that extent not be moral agents. And to the extent that our beliefs were not determined by these things, they would also be the product of chance and thus obviously would have no rational justification.

Well, yes. I think that, under appropriate conditions, it is reasonable to say that a part or aspect of a computer’s internal state could be described as a “belief” . Even my primitive computer might be said to have “beliefs” about how much money is in my various accounts. Future computers will undoubtedly operate in such a way that it will be possible to say that they have “beliefs” in a much more “realistic” sense. That is, they will arrive at their beliefs and act on them in ways that are recognizably similar to the way humans do these things.

But why don’t we stick to the original question and discuss whether a computer can have RCF? Obviously it can. A computer can be designed such that, given true inputs, it produces only true (or at least rationally justifiable) outputs.

This argument depends entirely on the current state of technology, which is advancing rapidly. A computer with “sense organs” (which some already have) can obtain information from its “perceptions” the same way we do, and could in principle process that information in a sensible way to arrive at its “beliefs”. It wouldn’t have to depend on what it was “told”; it could “see for itself”. Such a computer would have just as much warrant for its “beliefs” as we have for ours. More, actually, since its judgment would not be distorted by emotions and it would not make mistakes in logic.

But ultimately the computer, like us, must assume that the information it receives, in whatever form, corresponds to reality. If the inputs are being manipulated or simply do not reflect reality, its “inner model” of the world will probably not correspond to reality even if it has RCF. So this point has nothing to do with the question of whether a an entity whose operation is determined entirely by natural laws could have RCF; it has to do with whether (and why) we should trust any of our perceptions to have any correspondence to “reality”. This is an interesting question, but it has nothing to do with whether our operation is determined by natural laws.

4. On mechanistic processes and “reasoning”

No problem until the final sentence. It simply doesn’t follow from the preceding ones.

The fallacy here is expressed more clearly in one of your earlier posts:

This is a false dichotomy: either my beliefs are the result of mechanistic processes or they are based on reason and evidence. But in fact (from a naturalistic point of view) they are both. These statements are in fact descriptions of the very same process at different levels of abstraction. This is explained at some length in my post of Jan. 20. (2:14 PM). The key point here is illustrated in the following passage, (which I have revised slightly to make it clear outside the context of the full post):

The same applies to human cognitive faculties. At the lowest level of interpretation we have simply molecules interacting with one another in accordance with natural laws. But at a higher level of abstraction the exact same process can be described as reasoning from evidence, in accordance (hopefully) with the “laws of logic”, to a conclusion. These descriptions are not contradictory; they are just different ways of describing the same thing.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Jon Curry

BD

First of all you need to recognize that I am not “arguing” that I have reliable cognitive faculties. My point is that if naturalism is true, than we don’t have them. You admitted this in your first response to me. I wrote and you responded:

I’m not sure if you are changing your view or if you maintain it. You claim that evolution doesn’t eliminate knowledge. What do you mean if you still affirm the above statement?

Again, my point here is not to prove that we can have knowledge. The point is I have a worldview that can account for rational thought. You cannot affirm both naturalism and also trust your reasoning. You can affirm theism and at the same time trust your reason. This doesn’t prove that theism is true or that we in fact have knowledge. If theism is true then our reasoning capabilities are not the result of irrational causes. This doesn’t prove that we in fact should trust our reasoning faculties. Perhaps naturalism is true. But you can’t affirm naturalism and also affirm that we can trust our reasoning faculties.

You said in your earlier post that you referred me to that there are only two possible reasons for belief in Lewis’ rule. 1-It’s intuitive or 2-It is the result of experience. You reject these reasons. I presume you think that we should trust conclusions that we draw that can be fully explained by irrational causes. Can you give me one example of something you believe to be true that is fully explained by irrational causes besides our rational capabilities that are a result of evolution? For instance, suppose you saw a roadsign that read “Toledo 10 miles.” You know for a fact that this sign ended up where it was located because a tornado had placed it where it was. Would you believe it was actually true that the city of Toledo was 10 miles from the sign? Suppose that my belief in God was FULLY explained by the fact that I need a father figure. There was no rational justification for belief in God. Upon realization of this, should I believe that God does in fact exist? It seems to me that we do reject beliefs that are the result of irrational causes. Do you believe we should affirm them?

I apologize for not being able to respond to everything you post.

[ March 18, 2002: Message edited by: Jon Curry ]</p>