Silent Acorns

I agree with you here Philosoft, but I think this is a better example:

1) 1 + 1 = 2
2) trees are green
3) therefore the Earth revolves around the Sun

The above argument is true in every respect but is also totally irrational.

Philosoft

I suppose so, but I was actually trying to avoid making any specifically logical claims, as arguments like this fall victim to the non sequitur fallacy. In any case, Kuyper seems to think I'm making some claim as to the objective meaning of rationality when I'm only talking about the way we tend to use the phrase "rational belief." As I don't consider Kenny's examples of properly basic beliefs to be actual beliefs in the common sense of the word, I don't think my definition of the phrase "rational belief" is nearly as controversial as others seem to think.

Kuyper

OK. I think I see what you're driving at here. But, I don't think this sort of case is applicable to theistic belief. There doesn't appear to be any connection between the example you give, and whether or not one can hold theistic belief rationally without evidence. If holding theistic belief in the basic way is the result of our cognitive faculties functioning normally, (a al Alvin Plantinga's approach), then that would exclude cases such as you describe.

K

Kuyper

Free will is exactly what is at issue here. The 'either or' choice you presented is a false dichotomy...that was the point of my post. The way you presented the case sounds as if no choice we make has a bearing on the outcome. But it does, and that is where the free will aspect comes in. God's choice has always been clear: He chooses us!

As to "grossly disproportionate" reward/punishment, on what basis can you or anyone else make that claim? I don't even know what you mean by "grossly disproportionate". Disproportionate with respect to what -- how you would prefer it? Its an entirely subjective notion.

My point about debate among scholars rests on the issues of exactly how/when/where we will find ourselves after this life. There's lots of disagreement on details there.

Quote:

omnipresent \Om`ni*pres"ent\, a. [Omni- + present: cf.F. omnipr['e]sent.] Present in all places at the same time; ubiquitous; as, the omnipresent Jehovah. --Prior. Webster refutes your artful dodge. You can't wish this argument away by redefining words!

Webster's definition doesn't necessarily coincide with the theological understanding of the term. Most of the theological teaching I've read on the term define it as I stated it.

Dictionary definitions are useful, but not the end all either. There are nuances of meaning for lots of terms, depending on what dicipline they're being applied to.

Quote:

...not so! It is an argument against the expectation that god answers ANY prayers!! ...but your (non)response IS just the old "God works in mysterious ways" apology. A god that has ignored the desperate prayers of tens of millions of innocents for their very lives isn't worthy of worship! Nor does realization of such a failure engender a reasonable, much less rational expectation that ANY prayer will be answered. Again, I find nothing but theistic apologies in your words.

Theistics apologetics is what we're discussing here, is it not? So what's the point of criticizing it? Also, what you're doing is nothing more than atheistic apologetics. So? That's why we have debate!

Your response above indicates that you did not understand my orginal reply. Perhaps you could tell me what you mean by "unanswered prayer"? Based on your comments so far, it seems to mean only "prayers that don't get answered the way I want them to". That doesn't make a good argument against prayer. Also, your argument implies that you have some special insight as to how God should answer prayers. But since those prayers don't get answered according to the 'should', He must not be answering any, ergo, He doesn't exist. But since you can't make a case for what the 'should' should be, that argument does fair well either.


I'll have to respond to the rest a bit later as I have to get moving on some other things. But thanks again for the exchange.

K

capnkirk

I said that ETERNITY is a DISPROPORTIONATE REWARD/PUNISHMENT for the actions of ONE lifetime! Or in the case of cardinal sins, for a single act! How in Hell (pun is intentional) does that impinge on FREE WILL!?!?! Eternal reward in heaven is just as disproportionate as eternal damnation in hell. Free will is not at issue. Stated another way (in fact the way I originally posted), giving a person the span of one lifetime to determine how they are going to spend the rest of eternity is not the act of a loving father. Compared to eternity, a lifetime is but the snap of your fingers. (ERGO: Reward/Punishment is DISPROPORTIONATE to the acts of a single lifetime.). I never claimed that man didn't get to choose...that's an entirely different argument.

(see above)

I'm not talking about scholars. I'm talking about the millions of practicing Xtians, THEIRS being the DOMINANT belief. I have NEVER had a Xtian from any Catholic or any mainstream protestant denomination claim any ambiguity about the One lifespan followed by eternal afterlife in either heaven or hell proposition. Surely you're not going to fishtail on that, are you?

Webster's definition EXACTLY matches what I (and most all my protestant friends) were taught at our various sunday schools.

Squirm all you like; you've been nailed on this one.
I argue that god doesn't answer ANY prayer. You respond with the std apologetic about why god doesn't answer SOME prayers. There is NO APOLOGY in my assertion, athiest or otherwise! What apology do YOU see in the assertion "god does not answer prayers"?

When a person about to be murdered prays for their life, there is only ONE response that can honestly and unambiguously be regarded as positive. That they be spared! Millions who begged god to spare them were NOT spared! ERGO: their prayers were not answered. Unless you want to defend the position that god DID answer, and the answer was an unqualified NO! IMHO, that response would make god a tyrant, or at least too fickle to depend on for anything. I spit in the face of a god who would do that, and if he banished me to hell for it, I would lead a rebellion from there and overthrow him once and for all! (And don't try to spin me with the idea that he answered their prayers by taking them up into heaven. That's nothing more than a hope that allows you to avoid facing the other two possibilities!)

So, I am left with only two possibilities. Either god DID answer those people's prayers (making him a tyrant), or he didn't (validating my assertion)! Actually both choices are equally unacceptable. The most rational possibility is that there was no god there to answer prayers. I'm a combat veteran, and have seen the utter randomness (there's no other description for it) of who gets killed, who gets maimed, and who escapes unscathed...and I've seen it up close and personal. When you're face-to-face with that terrible reality, theist apologetics fade to utter banality.

Kenny

SRB,

It may be availing to the theist. Though the theist may no longer be able to defend the rationality of her beliefs, they might still be rational for her to hold (as it may still be rational for our murder trial defendant to believe that he is innocent even though he can no longer defend that belief in the face of overwhelming evidence against it).

Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not; it depends on how much warrant for his belief his memory seems to convey to him. Of course, one could also weaken the example somewhat so that the evidence is not so overwhelming, but still such that any other rational person would convict the man, and one could still make a similar point.

Or, that he is lying about it. But, the point is not that it is rational for others to believe the man is guilty. The point is that it is rational for the man to believe that he is innocent. Furthermore, the members of the jury could still rationally conclude that (even though they do not believe it) if the man is innocent and believes that he is innocent, then he is likely warranted in doing so. They might also conclude that if the man is guilty, yet believes that he is innocent, then his beliefs do not have warrant (because, obviously, some sort of severe cognitive malfunction must of occurred in that man for such to be the case). This leads into the comments I make below…

If you have good reason to believe that theism is false (not that I think you do), then you do have good reason to think that theistic belief is unwarranted. My point is simply that if theism is true, then it likely is warranted for many of its adherents. One charge that atheists often make against theism is that, even if it were true, it would be irrational to believe in it because there is insufficient evidence for it. My point (or, rather, Plantinga’s) is that the above charge is false. If theism is true, then it is likely warranted for many of its adherents in a properly basic manner. Thus the question of the rationality of theism (what Plantinga calls the de jure question), cannot be divorced from the question of the truth of theism (what Plantinga calls the de facto question), irrespective of whether or not theism could be rationally inferred from other sources of evidence.

Now, one significant area of overlap between the de jure question and the de facto question is the matter of whether or not theism faces potential undermining defeaters (i.e good reasons to believe that theism is false). If there are significant potential undermining defeaters for theism, then that might undercut a properly basic defense for the rationality of theism in two ways. First, if theism is false, then it is likely not warranted for most of its adherents in a properly basic manner or in any manner; thus, significant potential undermining defeaters for theism may give good reason for outsiders to doubt the truth of theism and therefore to doubt that theistic belief is warranted for most of its adherents. Second, such potential defeaters might give theists good reason to believe that their beliefs in this respect are mistaken and thereby might override any claim to properly basic warrant that these theists might have had (or destroy such warrant if it was, in fact, there). However, as my murder trial example illustrates, it is not necessarily the case that the existence of potential undermining defeaters cancels out the warrant that the theist enjoys for her beliefs. Nevertheless, talk of the existence of potential undermining defeaters for theism moves beyond the de jure question and spills over into the de facto question. Since the main point I am making in this thread is that these two questions cannot be separated, I am content to make that point here and leave the question as to whether there are genuine undermining defeaters for theism for another thread.

One final point I should make, however, is that I personally believe that denial of the existence of God has devastating consequences for human rationality because I am convinced that some versions of the transcendental argument for the existence of God are successful (arguments which attempt to show that denial of God’s existence provides a defeater for the proposition “human belief forming mechanisms are generally reliable”). If such is the case, then any argument against the existence of God would be ultimately epistemologically self-defeating, and there could be no successful undermining defeaters for God’s existence. However, that is an entirely different matter and one far removed from the subject of this thread.

People also tend to universally come to the conclusion that some sort of extra-mundane reality exists, as the near universality of religious beliefs across all cultures throughout human history illustrates. Of course, not everyone comes to believe in the God of classical monotheism, and that does call for some sort of explanation. On a Christian understanding, however, this would be accounted for via the presence of the noetic effects of sin. On a Christian understanding, sin results in a sort of cognitive malfunction that causes humanity to distort or suppress the knowledge of God that they might otherwise have had, but vestiges of that knowledge still keep bubbling to the surface (thus accounting for the widespread religiosity found in the world).

That’s oversimplified. My basic point is that belief in the Great Pumpkin is not a live option in our world because it faces too many defeaters. One of the defeaters that belief in the Great Pumpkin would face for anyone who did happen to hold that belief in our world is that the vast majority of people in our world would consider such a belief irrational or insane. Such a believer would then have to ask himself whether it is the cognitive functions of all the rest of humanity which are malfunctioning in their assessment of the rationality of such a belief or whether or not it is his own cognitive faculties which are malfunctioning, and which of these two options is more likely. Theism faces no such difficulty.

Some of these beliefs may not have been irrational for certain persons in certain times in certain circumstance. These beliefs may have held a great deal of explanatory power for many cultures. Some of them may have even been subject to a properly basic defense for rationality, for certain persons (that does not entail that they necessarily were properly basic, at least not with respect to warrant). Whether or not a belief is rational or irrational is partly a function of the state of knowledge one (or one’s epistemologically relevant community) has obtained. Beliefs which may be irrational in our time and in our culture may have been rational for people living during other times and in other cultures. That of course does not mean that those beliefs were true or even that they were warranted (since warrant depends on more than just internal rationality); it just means that such persons did not find themselves facing the same sorts of defeaters for such beliefs that we do.

Of course, many times plainly irrational beliefs are held by large groups of people. That does not detract from the point I was making, however. The point I was making was simply not that having large numbers of adherents to a particular belief automatically makes it rational, merely that for some types of beliefs, large numbers of adherents may insolate those beliefs from certain types of defeaters (of course, it would be absurd to say that having large numbers of people believing something makes it immune from just any type of defeater) or allow those beliefs to become live options.

Of course they weren’t all warranted. They may or may not have been rational, depending on the circumstances, but warrant is a function of more than just internal rationality. Furthermore, a belief’s being subject to a properly basic rationality defense does not entail that such a belief is warranted.

God Bless,
Kenny

Kenny

I already did. I showed that belief in the reliability of inductive reasoning, belief in the reliability of memory, and belief in the reliability of the senses cannot be inferred from evidence, and yet they are rational beliefs. All that is required to prove a general proposition false is to provide a single counterexample; I have provided several, and I’m not sure if I know how to make it any clearer. I’ll take one more stab at the problem of induction, however.

The principle of induction might roughly be stated: “If, by repeated observation, every instance of P is accompanied by an instance of Q, then it is likely that any future observation of P will also be accompanied by an instance of Q, with the likelihood of such increasing, provided that no counterexamples are found, with each new observation that P is accompanied by Q.” For example, the fact that every morning is accompanied by an instance of a sunrise makes it likely that tomorrow morning will be accompanied by an instance of sunrise.

Vast amounts of our beliefs depend on this principle, and it is true that this principle has worked for us rather well in the past. However, does the fact that this principle has worked well for us in the past make it likely that it will work well for us in the future? To argue such one would have to say something to the effect that: “By repeated observation, every instance of our using inductive reasoning has been accompanied by an instance of our being able to make reliable judgments about future experience, therefore it is likely that any future observation of our using inductive reasoning will likely also be accompanied by an instance of our being able to make reliable judgments about future experience.” Now, let P = ‘our using inductive reasoning’ and let Q = ‘our being able to make reliable judgments about future experience’. In that case the above argument turns into: “By repeated observation, every instance of P has been accompanied by an instance of Q, therefore it is likely that any future observation of P will likely also be accompanied by an instance of Q.” But, that is the very principle which we are trying to argue for! Thus, we cannot argue for the reliability of inductive reasoning based on its reliability in our past experience without already assuming the reliability of inductive reasoning. Thus, the reliability of inductive reasoning cannot be inferred on the basis of evidence.

If you see my point, then I am glad. If not, I think we will simply have to agree to disagree.

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All else being equal, I agree.

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Have you been following the discussion? I never said any such thing, and I expressly denied such a statement in several places. That’s what my discussion of what makes a belief warranted is all about.

No, see my discussion on warrant.

Again, see my discussion of what conditions are required for a belief to be properly basic.

God Bless,
Kenny

bd-from-kg

Kenny:

This is certainly one of my longer posts. But this material is complex and important (to me at least). And at that, it’s not the longest post that has appeared on this thread, so I guess it’s OK.

1. What’s “rational”?

You said:

Correct, or close enough anyway. Rationality consists of a commitment to following a strategy designed to optimize one’s ability to function effectively – i.e., to fulfill one’s desires. The “epistemological” part of this is to follow a strategy best calculated to produce true beliefs (and avoid forming false ones). Obviously this means a strategy that produces true beliefs, etc. in as many worlds as possible (since we don’t know which one we are in) - in particular in those in which there is a reasonable possibility of functioning effectively. Thus I would never say that a particular strategy (for forming beliefs) is rational merely because it happens to produce true beliefs in this world, if it is not well calculated to enhance our ability to function effectively.

I’m not sure that the phrase “function effectively” adequately captures what I’m trying to get at, so let me try to expand on this a bit. Functioning effectively, in the most basic sense (which is what I’m talking about here) means being able to make choices that have a good chance of bringing about desired results. This of course requires that we have some idea of what the results of the various choices are likely to be. And this in turn requires that there must be some patterns or regularities in the world we find ourselves in such that (1) we are capable of discovering them (2) they extend into the future, so that we can use them to predict future events. In particular, there have to be some causal relationships that we can come to know about, so that we can predict (to some extent) what the effects of our actions will be.

Now if the world we find ourselves in doesn’t have any such patterns or regularities, or if they are such that we are incapable of discovering them, there is no way in principle to predict the effects of our actions, so in terms of functioning effectively we are just out of luck. So we might as well assume that there are patterns and regularities that we can discover, and proceed to look for them. If we’re wrong (i.e., if there are no such regularities; if what we’re looking for doesn’t exist), we’ve lost nothing, and if we’re right we may be able to figure out how to function effectively. This is the fundamental justification for assuming that the “principle of induction” holds.

Similarly, if our natures happen to be such that our memories are completely unreliable, we have no way of discovering any patterns or regularities that exist, and even if we happened somehow to become aware of one we wouldn’t know about it later. So again we might as well assume that our memories are generally reliable; at least that keeps open the possibility of being able to function effectively, whereas refusing to make this assumption closes off the possibility definitively.

I could continue in this vein, but at this point it’s more fruitful to notice a couple of features of what’s been said so far. First, we’re developing a strategy that involves assumptions that are justified on the grounds that they are essential to what I call the “rational project”: the project of figuring out how to function effectively (if possible). Second, this strategy is “world-independent”. It doesn’t matter what world we happen to find ourselves in; the strategy I’m talking about is optimal in the sense that it will tend to produce good results in any world where it is possible to get good results, and although some other strategy might work better if we happen to live in a world to which it is “tuned”, there’s no reason to believe a priori that we inhabit such a world. Following this kind of strategy is (IMHO) what it means to act rationally; rationality itself is a commitment to follow it combined with the ability (in terms of cognitive function) to follow it.

Aside: I think that this sufficiently answers K’s question, “I'd still like to know what else [besides evidence] can make a belief rational”.

Since the subject of what beliefs can be considered “properly basic”, it’s probably worthwhile to add that the only beliefs (IMO) that can qualify as “properly basic” – i.e., which it is rationally justified to believe without evidence - are ones (like the belief that one’s memory is generally reliable, etc.) for which no evidence is available and which are essential to the “rational project” – i.e., those without which we have no chance of being able to function effectively. The best candidates are beliefs for which no evidence is available in principle because they define what “counts” as evidence (e.g., the Principle of Induction), or they are rules for evaluating evidence (e.g., Ockham’s Razor). This of course rules out theistic belief, since it is obviously not essential to believe that God exists in order to be able to function effectively.

2. Are the beliefs of the RN beings rational – i.e., do they have rational justification?

You said:

But that’s just the point. We cannot rely on beliefs formed by nonrational processes, even if it happens that these processes tend to produce true beliefs in this world, because we have no way of knowing a priori that we are in a world where such processes tend to produce true beliefs. And of course if we claim to “know” this a posteriori, this alleged knowledge will have been produced by the processes in question, and is therefore (I would claim) not knowledge at all. At any rate, such a procedure would clearly be circular.

Thus I most definitely disagree with your statements:

To see clearly why this must be rejected, let’s imagine that our advanced aliens create a million people, each of them designed to kill one specific person – say that C(n) is designed to kill T(n). To this end, they imbue each C(n) with a very strong predisposition to form the belief that T(n) intends to destroy the Earth. In other respects the created persons are capable of thinking in a way that we would regard as perfectly rational; they scrutinize the evidence carefully and draw reasonable inferences from it. But regarding this particular matter they have a “blind spot”; their capacity for rational thought has been blocked. These beliefs are false for every one of the C(n) except for C(10,001); by sheer chance it happens that T(10,001) really does intend to destroy the world. But the aliens didn’t “program” C(10,001) to come to believe this because it’s true. They couldn’t care less what happens to the Earth; they have their own reasons for wanting T(10,001) killed. Just the same, they happen to know that it is true.

So, is the belief that C(10,001) eventually comes to hold about T(10,001) rational – that is, is he rationally justified in believing it? Here we must be careful not to confuse this with the question of whether he’s morally justified in believing it. He might well be morally justified for the simple reason that he is incapable of thinking rationally about this particular matter. The question is whether he has epistemological justification – whether his belief is rationally justified given the evidence available to him. And it seems perfectly clear that he does not. If we say that he does, we have to say that all of the other C(n)’s also have epistemological justification for their beliefs - that these beliefs are also rationally justified – since the justification they have for their beliefs is precisely similar to C(10,001)’s justification for his. But how could they be rationally justified when the very reason that they have them is that their capacity for rational thought has been short-circuited regarding these particular questions?

Yet C(10,001) clearly passes Plantinga’s test (at least as you’ve described it): his belief forming processes have a high objective probability of producing true beliefs in the cognitive environment in which he finds himself. And therefore, according to you, his belief forming processes are rational!

There’s another related problem with this conception of rational justification. Presumably if you believe that the fact that someone’s belief forming processes have a high objective probability of producing true beliefs in the cognitive environment in which they find themselves makes those beliefs rational, you also believe that the fact that someone’s belief forming processes have a high objective probability of producing false beliefs in the cognitive environment in which they find themselves makes those beliefs irrational. But this leads to a paradox.

Are you familiar with the movie The Matrix? (I hope so; it’s one of the few movies that has ever raised serious philosophical questions and been widely discussed by philosophers.) In this movie the characters spend their entire lives in a computer-generated “fantasy world”. It seems to them that they’re living more or less normal lives in late-twentieth-century America. But in fact this world has been almost entirely destroyed. What’s left is controlled by machines who plug all the humans into this vast (completely realistic) “virtual reality” called the Matrix. OK, now let’s say that Peter really did live in late-twentieth-century America, whereas Paul thinks that he’s living in it because he’s plugged into the Matrix. Both of them have (or had) a number of identical beliefs about America based on their experiences. However, while the vast majority of Peter’s beliefs were true, almost all of Paul’s are false. According to your concept of rational justification, Peter’s beliefs were rational, but Paul’s are not. Yet this flies in the face of what we ordinarily take to be rational justification for a belief. If you are led by cleverly planted false clues into thinking that Smith is guilty of a murder that Jones actually committed, no one would say that your belief that Smith did it is irrational; they would say that under the circumstances your belief is perfectly rational, but that you were systematically misled. But the people in the Matrix are in exactly the same position, except that they are being systematically misled about everything. How is it that this makes their beliefs irrational whereas your similarly caused (but isolated) false belief is rational? Surely something is wrong here. And what’s wrong has to be your concept of rational justification.

3. What about “warrant”?

Later on you make a similar statement about “warrant”:

This is where your argument really goes off the rails.

Let’s recall what the concept of “warrant” was about in the first place. Gettier’s examples showed that “justified true belief” is not an adequate definition of “knowledge”. Let’s look again at a couple of examples to remember what the problem is.

Example 1: John sees someone who looks just like Susan walking across the mall and forms the justified belief that Susan is in the mall. As it happens, the person he sees isn’t Susan but her twin sister Sally. But it also happens that Susan is in the mall, far away where John couldn’t have seen her. So he has a justified true belief that Susan is in the mall. But surely (as Gettier pointed out) he can’t be said to know that she’s in the mall, because his belief that she’s there is based on evidence that has nothing to do with her actual presence there; it’s based on his mistaken identification of Sally as Susan.

Example 2: Dan tells Bob that he’s going to the Honda dealer to buy an Accord. Later Bob sees Dan driving an Accord, sees the same Accord parked in his driveway, etc. He forms a justified belief that Dan owns an Accord. But in fact Dan changed his mind at the last minute and bought a Corolla, which unfortunately was not ready for delivery at the moment. It will be delivered tomorrow. In the meantime he’s using his brother’s Accord to get around. However, based on his belief that Dan owns an Accord, Bob also believes that Dan owns a Japanese car. And this belief is true as well as justified, so it’s a JTB. But clearly Bob doesn’t know that Dan owns a Japanese car, because his belief that he does is based on his false belief that Dan owns an Accord.

The reason that the people in the Gettier-type cases cannot be properly said to have “knowledge” is, loosely stated, that their reasons for believing the things in question have nothing to do (or more generally, do not have the “right kind” of relationship) with the states of affairs that make the beliefs true. Thus the problem with the JTB definition that Gettier put his finger on is that it doesn’t guarantee that this “right” kind of relationship exists.

The concept of “warrant” was intended to augment the concept of rational justification in such a way that a “warranted” true belief would necessarily have the “right kind” of relationship to the state of affairs that makes the belief true, so that if someone had a warranted true belief he could truly be said to “know”. The trick is to figure out just what this “right kind” of relationship is.

But the reasons that C(10,001) has the belief that he does about T(10,001) have nothing at all to do with the state of affairs that makes them true. They certainly don’t have the “right kind” of relationship, because they don’t have any relationship. This is precisely the kind of belief that is supposed to be excluded by the definition of “warrant”; we want to be able to say that even if such a belief is rationally justified and true, it doesn’t have “warrant” because it lacks the right kind of relationship with the state of affairs that makes it true. Thus saying that this kind of belief has “warrant” flies in the face of the very purpose and function of the concept of “warrant”.

4. What about us?

You argued that if the beliefs of RN beings can’t be considered rational, neither can the beliefs of humans, since humans are RN beings: many of our belief-forming processes are nonrational.

It’s convenient to divide this claim into two parts. The first part is that our basic belief-forming mechanisms are nonrational. If this were true we could stop right now (as far as I’m concerned) because we would simply be incapable of forming rational beliefs, and there would be nor reason to trust any of our beliefs, including any that we might form as a result of this discussion. Fortunately this claim is false. Thus, you say:

Let’s take these one at a time. I’ve already explained the justification for inductive reasoning. As for “grue-like predicates”, there is no rational reason to consider them. If the world does not display a regularity that extends into the future in the relevant respect, what use is it to hypothesize one nonregularity rather than another? If the future isn’t going to resemble the past (in the relevant respect) we’re basically up a creek; the “rational project” faces an impassable roadblock at that particular point. (Of course, this is a little oversimplified. There can be more complicated patterns than simply “future resembles the past”, and it may be possible to detect some such patterns. But that’s not what “grue-like” predicates are about. They’re about non-patterns, or patterns that can’t be detected in advance, even in principle.)

Finally, let’s consider the belief in the existence of other minds. It seems to me that this is simply a powerful unifying hypothesis that helps us to make sense of our experiences. Thus it’s no more “irrational” than the belief that the house I left this morning will still be there when I return tonight - or more generally, my belief in the persistence of physical objects. Of course you might object that we can get along without it; that we could just think of other people (and animals) as complex machines that function just as if they were “controlled” by minds. But there are two problems here. First, it isn’t clear that this is really a different hypothesis rather than a different way of describing the same hypothesis. Thus, if I say that massive objects tend to accelerate towards one another because they are acted on by gravitational force, and you say that on the contrary, they merely act exactly the same as if they were being acted on by gravitational force, are we really disagreeing? Isn’t what we mean by saying that they are being acted on by a gravitational force simply that they act in exactly the way that is predicted by the hypothesis of a gravitational force? (2) It may be that thinking of other people as having minds is the most natural (for us) way of conceptualizing and understanding their behavior, and that that there are other hypotheses that would “work” just as well, and are just as simple (if not simpler) in some sense, but that they’re highly uncongenial to the human brain. But even if so, why should we worry about them? We have a way of understanding other people that is highly congenial and intuitive. As long as it works, why think about discarding it in favor of something else that we’d have trouble “getting our minds around”? The point of hypotheses of this sort about the “real world” is that they further the “rational project” I mentioned earlier – that is, they help us predict the effects of our actions. Hypotheses that we have trouble working with would interfere with this project rather than helping it along.

It’s not at all clear that this is an intrinsic or inborn tendency. I have personally observed very young children (between one and three) stuffing “letters” into a “mailbox” and later opening the bottom of the “mailbox” and observing with delight that the “letters” are still there. A friend who has taken courses in cognitive development says that they’re “testing the permanence of objects”. If so, they’re subjecting it to a pretty thorough test, because they often continue this sort of thing for hours and then do it all over again a few days later. Many other repetitive activities of very young children can be interpreted in a similar way. So it seems at least plausible that the tendency to draw conclusions from samples that are seemingly “too small” is learned; as children learn how very regular this world is, they learn that it isn’t really necessary in general (in this world) to do thousands of “test runs” before being justified in making a generalization.

But the second part of your claim is that humans have a number of nonrational belief-forming processes, and as a result hold a great many irrational beliefs. And this can hardly be denied. Any serious defense of the claim that we can trust our reason simply has to take this fact into account and give satisfactory reasons for thinking that we can trust the conclusions we come to, at least under some reasonably specifiable conditions.

At this point I’m not going to give a full-fledged defence of this claim, but will just point out why the existence of nonrational cognitive processes does not lead to the conclusion that we cannot trust our reason. The basic reason why this doesn’t follow is that we are capable of recognizing these processes as being nonrational, and when we do we discount conclusions produced by them. The point is that we (at least the more intelligent ones) can tell the difference between rational and nonrational thought processes and recognize that only the rational ones can be relied on to be truth-preserving. In fact, all of your examples illustrate this very thing: in each case a cognitive process is observed to be nonrational, with the obvious implication that the outputs of it are not to be trusted. These observations were all made by human minds.

But how do we know that we can recognize the difference between rational and nonrational cognitive processes? After all, if my own thought processes are not truth-preserving, there’s no reason to trust the outputs of the form “This thought process is rational (or nonrational)” any more than I should trust any other outputs. We might be quite thoroughly mad in a way that leaves us firmly convinced that we are sane. The answer to this is simple: we can’t know. The assumption that one is sane – at least sane enough to recognize the difference between a simple rational thought process and a simple nonrational one – is yet another properly basic belief. If I am mad (in this radical sense) I have no hope of functioning effectively, so nothing is lost (in terms of the “rational project”) by assuming that I’m not.

Finally, in this connection, I note once again that the line of argument in the paragraph beginning “Well, if our cognitive processes were conditioned ...” is precisely the one examined in great detail in the “Why Should A Metaphysical Naturalist Trust Her Reason?” thread cited earlier. At this point I’m satisfied with the arguments I presented there.

Kenny

Indeed, this material is complex and it is very important. Thank you for your very interesting and thought provoking reply. Given the complexity of the material, I hope you will forgive me if it takes me a while to work up my response.

God Bless,
Kenny

Kuyper

With all due respect, Kirk, I didn't 'evade' anything. Since we have no evidence at all of life existing anywhere BUT here on earth the question is hypothetical from the outset. IF we are it, then who are you to comment on how much trouble God should or should not have gone to create life on earth? Define what "unnecessary work" means? Unnecessary in what sense? How do you know what may or may not be necessary in cosmic terms? You're assigning a completely arbitrary criterion and making appear as thought its some sort of self-evident concept.

Your entire argument boils down to "If there is a God, He couldn't possibly have done things this way." How do you know? (this is same negative theological argument I see used often regarding evolution.)

OTOH, IF there is life elsewhere, that has no bearing on how God chooses to relate to US here on earth. Again, your argument presumes what place God MUST give humans IF he choose to place life elsewhere in the cosmos. IOW, "God wouldn't have done it this way if...." How do you know?

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Evolution IS a fact!!! The only arguments that remain are over DETAILS of the process! The only xtian group still denying the FACT of evolution is the fundies (who are still clinging to the Genesis creation). Your digression evades the point of the argument.

Nothing in science is a "fact". There are theories with varying degrees of evidential support. My "digression" , as you put it, is exactly on point.

Secondly, "fundies" (and isn't at all clear what that label means), are NOT the only group questioning evolution. One does not need to cling to the Genesis story to question evolution.

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AGAIN, I offered BOTH choices (either evolution happened or it didn't). and argued that EITHER choice brings with it a set of conflicts with the dominant xtian doctrines. (I presumed that you weren't a creationist, so I didn't see the need to specify the counterevidence to that myth.). I focused on the threats evolution in any form brings to xtain theology. The most fundamental of these is the "specialness" of humanity in creation (i.e. only humans have souls), rationalized by the recognition that our sentience has given us dominion over the animals (though theists credit god with this gift of dominion). I pointed to the threat that THIS concept is what actually puts evolution permanently at odds with theology. What was that argument? It was: Implicit in acceptance of evolution is the inevitability that humanity will be replaced by a more evolved sentient species, successfully challenging man's claim to being the crown of god's creation. You totally failed to grasp this...or you chose not to address it. For that reason, your "second" and "third" responses are not germane to my point.

There's nothing "implicit" in evolution that requires that humans will continue to evolve into some other more complex or evolved species. It's just as likely (more likely, given earths history according to evolutionary theory) that we'll just go extinct as some point. But even if that weren't the case, why would humans evolving to some "more evolved" species (whatever that is supposed to look like) be at odds with the theology of the specialness of humans? Why couldn't that ability to evolve be part of the pre-ordained 'specialness'?

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Why? One accepted method to disprove a postulation is to demonstrate how that postulation leads to an absurdity. Hence a 1% success ratio is not compatible with a "perfect" creator presumes (for argument sake) the validity of the xtian affirmation of the perfection of god (do you deny this affirmation?). Let me turn the question around. In what way do you (as a xtian) perceive god to be imperfect? I cannot reconcile perfection (or anything close to it) from a "creation" standpoint for an omnipotent god to require over threee billion years of evolutionary progress to produce a sentient species, while along the way creating tens of millions of species that failed to endure (99% of them). If that truly DOES represent god's perfect creation, then xtians don't have a CLUE who god is or what he is about (i.e. you are deluding yourselves), or god didn't play any part in (the fact of or the process of) evolution (i.e. you are deluding yourselves).

This is nothing more than "God wouldn't have done things this way, therefore something else." Define "perfect". Perfect in what sense? How do you know what perfection should or shouldn't look like with respect to all of creation? Why is species survival a sign of perfection?

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Since you FAILED to respond to the SALIENT point in any of my evidences, I remain utterly unconvinced. You will have to do a lot better than that. One must presume that either you can't see the INHERENT threat to xtian theism present in each argument...or you WON'T.

I think you remain unconvinced not out of some evidence that either is or isn't there. It's been my experience that most (I won't say ALL) people who claim to be atheists don't reject the theistic worldview on the basis of evidence. Rather, they reject it simply because they don't WANT to believe it. After all, the same evidence that is rejected by some, has been accepted by thousands upon thousands (indeed millions) as valid.

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To bring this back to the original arugment, here is the quote: I think that the preceding dialog fully illustrates my argument that theistic belief IS of the kind that "holds in the face of disconfirming evidence". I think that it also demonstrates HOW theistic belief endeavors to accomplish this feat. I rest my case.

You haven't presented any discomfirming evidence. All you've actually presented are arguments heavy with pre-suppositions, mostly about what God should or should not have done. But you can't tell me why those pre-suppositions are true.

K