Kenny

You seem to be requesting some sort of teleological argument for the existence of God based on the existence of our cognitive faculties. However, that would throw us into an evidential argument for the existence of God – something far removed from the topic of this thread. Furthermore, such an argument is not necessary for my argument on this thread to be considered a sound one. Finally, you set up a false dichotomy when you set ‘designed’ against ‘developed naturally.’ Both could be true.

I’ve already shown here that many beliefs we have about the world (and need to have about the world to make any further inferences) cannot be inferred from evidence, even in principle. If God was concerned with us being able to know things about the world He has made, then He had to make it so that such beliefs were warranted in a properly basic manner. Also, if He wanted to make knowledge of Himself readily available, then it is likely that he would have made knowledge of His own existence properly basic.

God Bless,
Kenny

K

Kenny:

You haven't shown this. You've claimed it, but you haven't shown it.

Let's go back to your claim that there is no evidence for the utility of inductive reasoning. If this were the case, we could just as easily assume that future observations would be opposite of what were observed in the past. Without any evidence for the utility of either, it would be impossible to say if either method was useful in predicting future events. Do you still insist that there is no evidence that would suggest inductive reasoning works any better than assuming an opposite correlation between past and future observations?

bd-from-kg

Kenny:

Bingo.

Not by any ordinary conception of “evidence”. This is the sort of case where the Bayesian definition of “evidence” isn’t really appropriate. If Smith says, “I believe that X” and Jones asks “But what evidence do you have that X is true?”, he would be taken aback, to put it mildly, by the reply, “Why, the very fact that I believe it is evidence that it’s true”. And this is so in spite of the fact that very often it’s more probable that Smith would believe X if it’s true than if it’s false (so that it satisfies the Bayesian definition of “evidence”).

Not in any ordinary sense of “positive evidence”. Again, if Jones asks Smith “What positive evidence do you have for X?”, he would hardly consider the answer, “Well, I know of nothing that would tend to show that X is false” to be responsive. It’s evidence, of course, (though ordinarily very weak evidence) but it’s not positive evidence.

I disagree of course, but as you yourself say, that’s not the point.

Yes, I was aware of this caveat. In fact I included it in my first draft but dropped it because it seemed too pedantic, and the point seemed to be covered well enough by including the word “basically”. After all, not only have I not met a single theist who doesn’t believe that God “desires to make Himself known to other rational beings” and therefore made us “predisposed” (in the appropriate sense) to believe in Him, but this seems to be an essential part of the meaning of the term “God”, at least as the term is commonly used in our culture.

bd-from-kg

Kenny:

Well, maybe “peculiar” wasn’t the best choice of words. What I was referring to was the fact that it fails to include anything that would ensure that a “warranted” belief is rationally justified.

Yes, we do - dramatically. I guess I should address that directly in another post.

Technically it’s true; this can be significant in some cases. For example, if I believe that Maryland didn’t play Virginia yesterday, the absence of any articles about a Maryland-Virginia game in the papers today (which would certainly be defeaters for this belief) would be positive evidence for it. But what would be a defeater for a belief that an entity with certain properties exists? Especially when one of the properties of the entity in question is that it is not in the natural world? An absence of defeaters is of serious significance only if there are strong reasons to expect them to be present if the belief is false. (This can be laid out in Bayesian terms too: if P(e/h&k) and P(e/~h&k) are both small, both P(~e/h&k) and P(~e/k) will be close to 1, so their ratio will also be close to 1, and P(h/~e&k) will therefore be only a little greater than P(h/k).)

To justify a positive assertion (such as a claim than a certain kind of entity exists) is true it is necessary to overcome a strong a priori presumption against it, and “lack of defeaters” will normally not be even within several orders of magnitude of being the kind of strong evidence needed to overcome this presumption. That’s why an absence of evidence for claims of this kind is normally referred to simply as an absence of evidence, period.

Only if you abuse language by referring to absence of negative evidence as positive evidence.

Not so. Unlike the “Great Pumpkin” hypothesis, the “Martian mind-control” hypothesis meets Plantinga’s criterion for a warranted belief if it’s true. If it’s true, it was formed through the proper functioning of his cognitive faculties which are part of a well designed plan aimed at the production of true beliefs in the type of environment in which those cognitive faculties were designed to function in the absence of sufficient defeaters ...

The only questionable parts of this are (1) Are his cognitive faculties “properly functioning”?, and (2) Are “sufficient defeaters” absent? As to the first (remember, we are proceeding on the assumption that his belief is true) we can simply stipulate that the Martian mind-control device works by altering the recipient’s cognitive function (CF). Since the new CF is clearly “functioning properly” and is “part of a well-designed plan aimed at the production of true beliefs”, etc., we would seem to be home free on this one. As to “sufficient defeaters”, there don’t seem to be any defeaters at all. (We will assume for the sake of argument that there is no evidence as to whether there is intelligent life on Mars, since we can always move our aliens to another locale.) Am I overlooking something? Let’s see.

So far as I can see, the argument that there are “sufficient defeaters” for the Great Pumpkin” hypothesis is summed up in your statement:

Frankly, this isn’t much of an argument even for people with “standard-issue” human CF: the mere fact that most people don’t share a belief isn’t ordinarily considered a “defeater” for that belief unless one has reason to believe that they have rational grounds for not sharing it: it’s those presumed rational grounds that normally give us pause when we find that our belief about something differs from almost everyone else’s, not the mere fact of disagreement.

But it’s no argument at all for our madman, because his CF is not standard issue. There’s no reason at all to suppose that his CF “includes an element of social interaction”, and if it does, the interaction that it “includes” may such that it requires that the people he interacts with not share his beliefs about the Martians. It’s entirely possible that for him, the discovery of the fact that most other people share his belief could be a defeater for that belief.

In any case, our madman has a perfectly good explanation of why no one else believes the things he “learned” from the Martians: the Martians selected him for the privilege of being the recipient of this information. So from his point of view, the fact that he’s alone in his beliefs isn’t a “defeater” at all; it’s exactly what his beliefs lead him to expect.

Kenny

I think I have, and I’m not sure I know how to bring it out any more clearly. I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Though, I must point out that what I have said concerning our inability to infer the reliability of inductive reasoning from evidence is backed by the consensus of most philosophers. What I have said, in that respect, isn’t all that controversial.

No, that would not be the case. Our trust in induction is such that it is properly basic. We don’t need evidence of its utility in order to trust it. Our trust in the reliability of inductive reasoning is the sort of belief that would require good reasons to doubt in order for us not to trust it.

No it wouldn’t. Since trust in the reliability of induction is properly basic, we can have faith that it will continue to work for us.

Yes, because, in order to project evidence that inductive reasoning has been reliable in the past into the future requires us to assume that there is such a correlation between past and future observations – which is blatantly circular, if we are trying to use such evidence to establish that such a correlation holds.

God Bless,
Kenny

Kenny

bd-from-kg,

There is no large disagreement between us over this issue, except for perhaps a disagreement over semantics. I do not feel that I am abusing language by stating a counterintuitive (but provable) claim in terms that make the counterintuitive nature of that claim clear. But I agree with you, that in most ordinary cases lack of sufficient defeaters is not a good reason to infer the truth of a belief and the sort of confirmation that comes by means of such a lack is typically trivial. The same goes for your comments on one’s predisposition to believe in God as not being good evidence for the existence of God.

The reason I brought this up at all was in response to your comment that my view implied that it would be rational to believe in God in the absence of any evidence or remotely plausible argument for the existence of God whatsoever. I do not believe that it does, insofar as lack of certain forms of evidence might provide sufficient defeaters for the proposition that God exists. I think a belief system like Christianity (because of the nature of what it says about the world), for example, requires a sizable community and a solid historical tradition behind it in order to be rational. In a possible world where, all else being equal, one found oneself as the only one believing in Christianity, I think one would be faced with a sufficient defeater for one’s beliefs in Christianity (of course, that doesn’t matter much in our world since there is such a community and tradition). Yet, such a community does constitute some evidence (not very strong evidence or sufficient evidence, mind you) that Christianity is true.


I think the question of whether the “madman’s” (whether he really is mad, in this example, is unclear) beliefs are warranted is ambiguous.

The madman’s cognitive faculties were probably not originally designed to form beliefs about Martians in an environment where mind controlling rays were being sent into his brain. If the Martian’s altered the original design plan, then that’s not all that relevantly different from the Martian’s creating their own being with a distinct design plan from our own – in which case the madman would have a different design plan than us, and would not make for a suitable comparison. But, perhaps these Martian’s are really clever and the found a way to utilize some aspect of the madman’s original design plan for their own purposes.

Well, I think that’s ambiguous to. The fact that so many of his fellow humans consider him mad might be a good reason for the madman to rethink the issue. But, then again, maybe not – if the warrant provided for his belief is strong enough (this is similar to my murder defendant example).

I think it varies from situation to situation. In some situations, large numbers of people considering one’s belief to be irrational or insane is at least reason to give pause if not to be sufficient to override any claim of warrant for that belief.

That’s possible, but then the madman’s design plan would be so different from our own, that he would no longer serve as a reasonable test case for a relevant comparison to the types of beliefs that we might hold. His beliefs would be warranted, in that case, but so what?

In summary, it is possible that the madman’s beliefs are warranted. I consider it an ambiguous case. That only goes to show that bizarre things are possible and that it is possible for people to find themselves in strange epistemicly privileged situations. I don’t see how conceding that creates any significant difficulties for Plantinga’s analysis, however.

God Bless,
Kenny

rainbow walking

Hi Kenny,
Thanx for responding to my reply. You said:
You seem to be requesting some sort of teleological argument for the existence of God based on the existence of our cognitive faculties. However, that would throw us into an evidential argument for the existence of God – something far removed from the topic of this thread.


Actually I did give that impression by my use of "evidence". To rephrase let me ask if you have any type of sound argument to support a contention that our cognitive faculties were created as opposed to evolved?

Furthermore, such an argument is not necessary for my argument on this thread to be considered a sound one.


I don't know Kenny, you made the assertion part and parcel of the defense of your argument, thus incorporating another premise into the mix. A sound argument requires true premises...yes?

Finally, you set up a false dichotomy when you set ‘designed’ against ‘developed naturally.’ Both could be true.

So you would posit an argument that our cognitive faculties were designed to develop naturally?




I’ve already shown here that many beliefs we have about the world (and need to have about the world to make any further inferences) cannot be inferred from evidence, even in principle.


Yes, you've made that claim. Beliefs that cannot be inferred from evidence, especially in the absence of inductive qualifiers, remain just beliefs from which true premises cannot be formed or inferred.

If God was concerned with us being able to know things about the world He has made, then He had to make it so that such beliefs were warranted in a properly basic manner.

Perhaps in the formulation of hypotheticals, yes, but in the substantiation of these formulations, especially where those substantiations are reaching for so high a standard as "warranting" there is no properly basic manner to accomplish this without resorting to "evidence" of some kind.

Also, if He wanted to make knowledge of Himself readily available, then it is likely that he would have made knowledge of His own existence properly basic.

And if he hasn't? Are you prepared to acknowledge this as a defeater?

K

Kenny:

Again I'll state that we can't prove that inductive reasoning works, but that doesn't mean that there is no evidence that it does.

I think this sums things up pretty well. You have claimed that there is NO EVIDENCE THAT INDUCTIVE REASONING WORKS FOR US, but at the same time, you claim that we can have faith that IT WILL CONTINUE TO WORK FOR US. How can you possibly know that inductive reasoning has worked for us if there is no evidence to indicate that it has?

Kenny

I didn't say there was no evidence that it has worked for us. I said that there is no evidence that it will continue to work for us because we cannot project our past experiences into the future without already assuming that induction will continue to work for us.

God Bless,
Kenny

K

Kenny:

There is no evidence that any tool that is useful today will be useful in the future. There is only evidence that these tools have been useful.

Tools continue to be used as long as the evidence shows a benefit to using them. When the evidence shows that a tool is no longer useful, it is discarded. At least up to this point, the evidence shows that inductive reasoning is a useful tool.