Excerpt from Nancy Pearcey’s new book: “Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself”

_{Denyse O'Leary

March 11, 2015

Culture, Darwinism, Mind}

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ENV is pleased to share the following excerpt from Nancy Pearcey’s new book,Finding Truth: Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes. A Fellow of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, Pearcey is a professor and scholar-in-residence at Houston Baptist University and editor-at-large of The Pearcey Report. She is author of the 2005 ECPA Gold Medallion Award winner Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity and other books.

A major way to test a philosophy or worldview is to ask: Is it logically consistent? Internal contradictions are fatal to any worldview because contradictory statements are necessarily false. “This circle is square” is contradictory, so it has to be false. An especially damaging form of contradiction is self-referential absurdity — which means a theory sets up a definition of truth that it itself fails to meet. Therefore it refutes itself….

An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value.

But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth — which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide.

Astonishingly, many prominent thinkers have embraced the theory without detecting the logical contradiction. Philosopher John Gray writes, “If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true,… the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.” What is the contradiction in that statement?

Gray has essentially said, if Darwin’s theory is true, then it “serves evolutionary success, not truth.” In other words, if Darwin’s theory is true, then it is not true.

Self-referential absurdity is akin to the well-known liar’s paradox: “This statement is a lie.” If the statement is true, then (as it says) it is not true, but a lie.

Another example comes from Francis Crick. More.

But, of course, no intellectual consideration matters once the naturalists can hear the giant maw of the school system sucking it down. After a while, everyone believes what doesn’t make sense, and no one knows why or cares.

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Comments

Zachriel:
However, that doesn’t mean human cognition has no connection with the real world. It certainly does.
"It certainly does", says some chemical reaction in the brain. The chemicals know it for certain. But what is the chemicals opinion of the real world worth? After all it is confined in the brain. It 's never 'out there' - in the real world. It just sits there trapped inside the brain "thinking" that it has a connection with the real world, which is 'out there' - on the other side of the skull.Box_{March 11, 2015
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KF "Your performance over the past little while has now slipped over the border into trollish abuse and slander" Coming from the one who thinks asserting a living system being specified is somehow evidence for it.CHartsil_{March 11, 2015
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KF @ 14 -- it might be good to dust that off, update it with some additional and newer quotes, and do another OP with some extended and related thoughts.Silver Asiatic_{March 11, 2015
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#17 KF, Because if you are completely irrational and burdened with a malfunctioning mind which cannot plan a good course of action in any situation or react effectively to an immediate danger, you'll die early and the DNA responsible for your lethal stupidity will not proliferate. If you can survive, it means that there are at least some elements of realism guiding your behaviour.Piotr_{March 11, 2015
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kairosfocus: By what bootstrap do we pull ourselves out of the muck of the non-rational into the self aware, conscious, reasoning, knowing? As already pointed out, brains have some verifiable information about the world. Touch the fire, it hurts, so don't touch the fire. Your mind might conjure up a dangerous fire demon to explain the fire's hurtfulness, a demon that can be tamed, but the basic relationship is established. The main boot-strap is language, first verbal, then written. As people share experiences, they hone in on the commonalities, as well as expanding the experiential universe. Furthermore, language aids in abstraction, which leads to contemplation. Later in history, the scientific method, i.e. hypothetico-deduction and verification, provides a much stronger basis for separating the facts from the illusions or impositions.Zachriel_{March 11, 2015
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#12 Because for most people being religious makes little practical difference. They nominally belong to one church or another, but don't rely on its doctrine in everyday life. Different world-views may produce similar behaviour. In many parts of the world people no longer take religion (or lack of it) seriously enough to fight wars over it. It has become a kind of nearly neutral cultural "spandrel", invisible to selection. After all, 2+2=4 no matter if you believe in a god. #11 Box, I'm not interested in strawman arguments. The only good point you make is about "any belief that does the job". Yes, such beliefs can produce a provisional model of the world that works to a certain extent, making people's lives safer and more enjoyable -- even if we later find them false. You are yourself a good example. If you don't go about stealing or killing for fear of incurring God's discontent, it's OK as far as I'm concerned. It would only worry me if the same motivation combined with a close reading of the Bible made you want to stone fellow humans to death for collecting firewood upon the sabbath day (cf. Numbers 15:32-36). If you were that religious, if would be a good reason to lock you up. Otherwise, be my guest and believe your magic.Piotr_{March 11, 2015
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Z, on what basis? By what bootstrap do we pull ourselves out of the muck of the non-rational into the self aware, conscious, reasoning, knowing? With what reason to trust our cognitive capacities? KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2015
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News: The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value. Sure, which is why humans are subject to so many observational errors, and hold so many irrational beliefs. However, that doesn't mean human cognition has no connection with the real world. It certainly does. Language and mutual sharing of information has helped to provide some measure of objectivity, while the development of the scientific method has provided a very strong basis for determining facts about the universe.Zachriel_{March 11, 2015
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Piotr: Does Pearcey think that brains producing an arbitrary model of the world completely divorced from reality could be of any survival value to their owners? How? Box: Because it works.
Exactly. Out-replicating one's competition doesn't require an accurate understanding of reality. Survive and reproduce. It's not that difficult. Chemicals don't seem to create models of reality - arbitrary or not. In fact, in the materialist view, chemicals are reality. There's no need to model anything since in knowing themselves, chemicals know all the secrets of the universe.Silver Asiatic_{March 11, 2015
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SA, thanks. The clip builds on thoughts since the mid 1980's, and I remember how excited I was to learn I was not the only one thinking down this line. BTW, Provine's 1998 Darwin Day address is also a rich body of ore on the implications of evo mat thought. I have discussed the above in and around UD several times, back to at least 2007. It is amazing to see how evolutionary materialist scientism advocates and the like respond or try to dismiss or to ignore. Latterly, once I had the extended Haldane clip [the bit on branch sawing], I have tended to cite it and link "for more? - - - News triggered additions today. Let's see if there will be any serious response. This issue, in my long term considered opinion, is the pivotal one. On serious evidence backed up by real life interaction with major schools of thought not oddball individuals, evo mat runs into self referential incoherence and cannot be sound. That is big. Decisively big, and BTW knocks out the props under imposition of naturalistic redefinitions of science and of methodological censorship that turns science into lab coat clad applied atheism. KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2015
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KF @ 10 That was an excellent overview - thanks. The theme (untrustworthy character of the materialist-physicalist mind) is repeated from a number of credible sources.
Steven Pinker writes, “Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.” The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false.
And a step further, we really shouldn't care if something is true or false - but we do care about that.
Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion — and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value.
Great point. Free will is an illusion, consciousness, sense of self, morality, religious insight ... all illusions. But evolutionary speculations, of course, with evidence that is entirely imaginary, are supposedly not illusions at all.Silver Asiatic_{March 11, 2015
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Piotr, If minds evolved to have a truthful understanding of the world, what do you make of the fact that only about 10-15% of the world's population is atheist?William J Murray_{March 11, 2015
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Piotr: Does she believe “the ideas in our minds” are innate, or what?
Under materialism “ideas in our minds” are nothing but chemical stuff. If this blind chemical stuff is formed by DNA or other heritable elements then “ideas” are indeed heritable.
Piotr: At best, it could be argued that the human mind has been shaped by natural selection in such a way that it can produce ideas which help us to survive and have offspring.
For any thought process to take off a basic set of premises are mandatory. Under materialism these are at best based in chemical reactions filtered by evolution – alternatives are worse. Whether these are true or not we don’t know, since evolution doesn’t select for truth. - A strange notion: true and untrue chemical reactions. -
Piotr: As far as I can see, thought processes which allow us to understand the world and make correct predictions (and so are empirically “true”) are generally good for survival. I should also think that any animal with a decently developed nervous system can discover many such “truths” and store them in its memory.
If it is good for the survival of a Zebra to stay away from a lion, natural selection approves of any belief that does the job. Storing *because lions are evil magicians* in the DNA (or other heritable elements) works as well as a gazillion of other nonsensical reasons to not get close to a lion.
Piotr: Does Pearcey think that brains producing an arbitrary model of the world completely divorced from reality could be of any survival value to their owners? How?
Because it works. Religion, which you hold to be “completely divorced from reality”, works doesn’t it?Box_{March 11, 2015
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P, Let me clip: __________ >>3 --> Some materialists go further and suggest that mind is more or less a delusion. For instance, Sir Francis Crick is on record, in his 1994 The Astonishing Hypothesis: . . . that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased: "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing. 14 --> Philip Johnson has replied that Sir Francis should have therefore been willing to preface his works thusly: "I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and even the thoughts expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Johnson then acidly commented: “[[t]he plausibility of materialistic determinism requires that an implicit exception be made for the theorist.” [[Reason in the Balance, 1995.] . . . . . . . This issue can be addressed at a more sophisticated level [[cf. Hasker in The Emergent Self (Cornell University Press, 2001), from p 64 on, e.g. here as well as Reppert here and Plantinga here (briefer) & here (noting updates in the 2011 book, The Nature of Nature)], but without losing its general force, it can also be drawn out a bit in a fairly simple way: a: Evolutionary materialism argues that the cosmos is the product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature; from hydrogen to humans by undirected chance and necessity. b: Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of purposeless laws of chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of happenstance initial circumstances. (This is physicalism. This view covers both the forms where (a) the mind and the brain are seen as one and the same thing, and those where (b) somehow mind emerges from and/or "supervenes" on brain, perhaps as a result of sophisticated and complex software looping. The key point, though is as already noted: physical causal closure -- the phenomena that play out across time, without residue, are in principle deducible or at least explainable up to various random statistical distributions and/or mechanical laws, from prior physical states. Such physical causal closure, clearly, implicitly discounts or even dismisses the causal effect of concept formation and reasoning then responsibly deciding, in favour of specifically physical interactions in the brain-body control loop; indeed, some mock the idea of -- in their view -- an "obviously" imaginary "ghost" in the meat-machine. [[There is also some evidence from simulation exercises, that accuracy of even sensory perceptions may lose out to utilitarian but inaccurate ones in an evolutionary competition. "It works" does not warrant the inference to "it is true."] ) c: But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this meat-machine picture. So, we rapidly arrive at Crick's claim in his The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994): what we subjectively experience as "thoughts," "reasoning" and "conclusions" can only be understood materialistically as the unintended by-products of the blind natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains that (as the Smith Model illustrates) serve as cybernetic controllers for our bodies. d: These underlying driving forces are viewed as being ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance shaped by forces of selection [["nature"] and psycho-social conditioning [["nurture"], within the framework of human culture [[i.e. socio-cultural conditioning and resulting/associated relativism]. And, remember, the focal issue to such minds -- notice, this is a conceptual analysis made and believed by the materialists! -- is the physical causal chains in a control loop, not the internalised "mouth-noises" that may somehow sit on them and come along for the ride. (Save, insofar as such "mouth noises" somehow associate with or become embedded as physically instantiated signals or maybe codes in such a loop. [[How signals, languages and codes originate and function in systems in our observation of such origin -- i.e by design -- tends to be pushed to the back-burner and conveniently forgotten. So does the point that a signal or code takes its significance precisely from being an intelligently focused on, observed or chosen and significant alternative from a range of possibilities that then can guide decisive action.]) e: For instance, Marxists commonly derided opponents for their “bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians frequently dismissed qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? Should we not ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is little more than yet another operantly conditioned rat trapped in the cosmic maze? And -- as we saw above -- would the writings of a Crick be any more than the firing of neurons in networks in his own brain? f: For further instance, we may take the favourite whipping-boy of materialists: religion. Notoriously, they often hold that belief in God is not merely cognitive, conceptual error, but delusion. Borderline lunacy, in short. But, if such a patent "delusion" is so utterly widespread, even among the highly educated, then it "must" -- by the principles of evolution -- somehow be adaptive to survival, whether in nature or in society. And so, this would be a major illustration of the unreliability of our conceptual reasoning ability, on the assumption of evolutionary materialism. g: Turning the materialist dismissal of theism around, evolutionary materialism itself would be in the same leaky boat. For, the sauce for the goose is notoriously just as good a sauce for the gander, too. h: That is, on its own premises [[and following Dawkins in A Devil's Chaplain, 2004, p. 46], the cause of the belief system of evolutionary materialism, "must" also be reducible to forces of blind chance and mechanical necessity that are sufficiently adaptive to spread this "meme" in populations of jumped- up apes from the savannahs of East Africa scrambling for survival in a Malthusian world of struggle for existence. Reppert brings the underlying point sharply home, in commenting on the "internalised mouth-noise signals riding on the physical cause-effect chain in a cybernetic loop" view: . . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions. [[Emphases added. Also cf. Reppert's summary of Barefoot's argument here.] i: The famous geneticist and evolutionary biologist (as well as Socialist) J. B. S. Haldane made much the same point in a famous 1932 remark: "It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (Highlight and emphases added.)] . . . DI Fellow, Nancey Pearcey brings this right up to date (HT: ENV) in a current book, Finding Truth: A major way to test a philosophy or worldview is to ask: Is it logically consistent? Internal contradictions are fatal to any worldview because contradictory statements are necessarily false. "This circle is square" is contradictory, so it has to be false. An especially damaging form of contradiction is self-referential absurdity -- which means a theory sets up a definition of truth that it itself fails to meet. Therefore it refutes itself . . . . An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value. But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth -- which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide. Astonishingly, many prominent thinkers have embraced the theory without detecting the logical contradiction. Philosopher John Gray writes, "If Darwin's theory of natural selection is true,... the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth." What is the contradiction in that statement? Gray has essentially said, if Darwin's theory is true, then it "serves evolutionary success, not truth." In other words, if Darwin's theory is true, then it is not true. Self-referential absurdity is akin to the well-known liar's paradox: "This statement is a lie." If the statement is true, then (as it says) it is not true, but a lie. Another example comes from Francis Crick. In The Astonishing Hypothesis, he writes, "Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive." But that means Crick's own theory is not a "scientific truth." Applied to itself, the theory commits suicide. Of course, the sheer pressure to survive is likely to produce some correct ideas. A zebra that thinks lions are friendly will not live long. But false ideas may be useful for survival. Evolutionists admit as much: Eric Baum says, "Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth." Steven Pinker writes, "Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not." The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false. To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion -- and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value. So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself. A few thinkers, to their credit, recognize the problem. Literary critic Leon Wieseltier writes, "If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? ... Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it." On a similar note, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks, "Is the [evolutionary] hypothesis really compatible with the continued confidence in reason as a source of knowledge?" His answer is no: "I have to be able to believe ... that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct -- not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so." Hence, "insofar as the evolutionary hypothesis itself depends on reason, it would be self-undermining." . . . also tellingly highlighting Darwin's selective skepticism: People are sometimes under the impression that Darwin himself recognized the problem. They typically cite Darwin's famous "horrid doubt" passage where he questions whether the human mind can be trustworthy if it is a product of evolution: "With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy." But, of course, Darwin's theory itself was a "conviction of man's mind." So why should it be "at all trustworthy"? Surprisingly, however, Darwin never confronted this internal contradiction in this theory. Why not? Because he expressed his "horrid doubt" selectively -- only when considering the case for a Creator. From time to time, Darwin admitted that he still found the idea of God persuasive. He once confessed his "inward conviction ... that the Universe is not the result of chance." It was in the next sentence that he expressed his "horrid doubt." So the "conviction" he mistrusted was his lingering conviction that the universe is not the result of chance. In another passage Darwin admitted, "I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man." Again, however, he immediately veered off into skepticism: "But then arises the doubt -- can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?" That is, can it be trusted when it draws "grand conclusions" about a First Cause? Perhaps the concept of God is merely an instinct programmed into us by natural selection, Darwin added, like a monkey's "instinctive fear and hatred of a snake." In short, it was on occasions when Darwin's mind led him to a theistic conclusion that he dismissed the mind as untrustworthy. He failed to recognize that, to be logically consistent, he needed to apply the same skepticism to his own theory . . . . Applied consistently, Darwinism undercuts not only itself but also the entire scientific enterprise. Kenan Malik, a writer trained in neurobiology, writes, "If our cognitive capacities were simply evolved dispositions, there would be no way of knowing which of these capacities lead to true beliefs and which to false ones." Thus "to view humans as little more than sophisticated animals ...undermines confidence in the scientific method." Just so. Science itself is at stake. John Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, writes that according to atheism, "the mind that does science ... is the end product of a mindless unguided process. Now, if you knew your computer was the product of a mindless unguided process, you wouldn't trust it. So, to me atheism undermines the rationality I need to do science." Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality. The reason so few atheists and materialists seem to recognize the problem is that, like Darwin, they apply their skepticism selectively . . . j: Therefore, though materialists will often try to pointedly ignore or angrily brush aside the issue, we may freely argue: if such evolutionary materialism is true, then (i) our consciousness, (ii) the "thoughts" we have, (iii) the conceptualised beliefs we hold, (iv) the reasonings we attempt based on such and (v) the "conclusions" and "choices" (a.k.a. "decisions") we reach -- without residue -- must be produced and controlled by blind forces of chance happenstance and mechanical necessity that are irrelevant to "mere" ill-defined abstractions such as: purpose or truth, or even logical validity. (NB: The conclusions of such "arguments" may still happen to be true, by astonishingly lucky coincidence — but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we have “proved” or "warranted" them. It seems that rationality itself has thus been undermined fatally on evolutionary materialistic premises. Including that of Crick et al. Through, self-reference leading to incoherence and utter inability to provide a cogent explanation of our commonplace, first-person experience of reasoning and rational warrant for beliefs, conclusions and chosen paths of action. Reduction to absurdity and explanatory failure in short.) k: And, if materialists then object: “But, we can always apply scientific tests, through observation, experiment and measurement,” then we must immediately note that -- as the fate of Newtonian Dynamics between 1880 and 1930 shows -- empirical support is not equivalent to establishing the truth of a scientific theory. For, at any time, one newly discovered countering fact can in principle overturn the hitherto most reliable of theories. (And as well, we must not lose sight of this: in science, one is relying on the legitimacy of the reasoning process to make the case that scientific evidence provides reasonable albeit provisional warrant for one's beliefs etc. Scientific reasoning is not independent of reasoning.) l: Worse, in the case of origins science theories, we simply were not there to directly observe the facts of the remote past, so origins sciences are even more strongly controlled by assumptions and inferences than are operational scientific theories. So, we contrast the way that direct observations of falling apples and orbiting planets allow us to test our theories of gravity. m: Moreover, as Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin reminds us all in his infamous January 29, 1997 New York Review of Books article, "Billions and billions of demons," it is now notorious that: . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel [[materialistic scientists] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [[And if you have been led to imagine that the immediately following words justify the above, kindly cf. the more complete clip and notes here.] n: Such a priori assumptions of materialism are patently question-begging, mind-closing and fallacious. o: More important, to demonstrate that empirical tests provide empirical support to the materialists' theories would require the use of the very process of reasoning and inference which they have discredited. p: Thus, evolutionary materialism arguably reduces reason itself to the status of illusion. But, as we have seen: immediately, that must include “Materialism.” q: In the end, it is thus quite hard to escape the conclusion that materialism is based on self-defeating, question-begging logic. r: So, while materialists -- just like the rest of us -- in practice routinely rely on the credibility of reasoning and despite all the confidence they may project, they at best struggle to warrant such a tacitly accepted credibility of mind and of concepts and reasoned out conclusions relative to the core claims of their worldview. (And, sadly: too often, they tend to pointedly ignore or rhetorically brush aside the issue.) >> __________ KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2015
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Piotr, Natural selection is impotent. I can see that it shaped your mind...Joe_{March 11, 2015
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Joe, A mind works well if it gives you a reasonable fit with reality -- guaranteeing at the very least that the consequences of mistakes and misjudgements are rarely fatal. I don't know what shaped your mind, but if natural selection had nothing to do with it, I'd recommend a brain check, just in case.Piotr_{March 11, 2015
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Natural selection is impotent and had nothing to do with shaping our minds.Joe_{March 11, 2015
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P, Pearcey took time to address the selective skepticism involved, from Darwin on:
People are sometimes under the impression that Darwin himself recognized the problem. They typically cite Darwin's famous "horrid doubt" passage where he questions whether the human mind can be trustworthy if it is a product of evolution: "With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy." But, of course, Darwin's theory itself was a "conviction of man's mind." So why should it be "at all trustworthy"? Surprisingly, however, Darwin never confronted this internal contradiction in this theory. Why not? Because he expressed his "horrid doubt" selectively -- only when considering the case for a Creator. From time to time, Darwin admitted that he still found the idea of God persuasive. He once confessed his "inward conviction ... that the Universe is not the result of chance." It was in the next sentence that he expressed his "horrid doubt." So the "conviction" he mistrusted was his lingering conviction that the universe is not the result of chance. In another passage Darwin admitted, "I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man." Again, however, he immediately veered off into skepticism: "But then arises the doubt -- can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?" That is, can it be trusted when it draws "grand conclusions" about a First Cause? Perhaps the concept of God is merely an instinct programmed into us by natural selection, Darwin added, like a monkey's "instinctive fear and hatred of a snake." In short, it was on occasions when Darwin's mind led him to a theistic conclusion that he dismissed the mind as untrustworthy. He failed to recognize that, to be logically consistent, he needed to apply the same skepticism to his own theory . . . . Applied consistently, Darwinism undercuts not only itself but also the entire scientific enterprise. Kenan Malik, a writer trained in neurobiology, writes, "If our cognitive capacities were simply evolved dispositions, there would be no way of knowing which of these capacities lead to true beliefs and which to false ones." Thus "to view humans as little more than sophisticated animals ...undermines confidence in the scientific method." Just so. Science itself is at stake. John Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, writes that according to atheism, "the mind that does science ... is the end product of a mindless unguided process. Now, if you knew your computer was the product of a mindless unguided process, you wouldn't trust it. So, to me atheism undermines the rationality I need to do science." Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality. The reason so few atheists and materialists seem to recognize the problem is that, like Darwin, they apply their skepticism selectively . . .
You have a serious issue with self-referential incoherence, which must be seriously addressed. Without selective hyperskepticism. KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2015
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The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value.
Does she believe "the ideas in our minds" are innate, or what? At best, it could be argued that the human mind has been shaped by natural selection in such a way that it can produce ideas which help us to survive and have offspring. As far as I can see, thought processes which allow us to understand the world and make correct predictions (and so are empirically "true") are generally good for survival. I should also think that any animal with a decently developed nervous system can discover many such "truths" and store them in its memory. Does Pearcey think that brains producing an arbitrary model of the world completely divorced from reality could be of any survival value to their owners? How?Piotr_{March 11, 2015
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MT, do you not see that this is deeply embedded in ALL a priori evolutionary materialist scientism (and arguably, in a good slice of its fellow travellers); as Haldane pointed out coming on 90 years past now? Let's refocus Haldane, if you don't wish to scroll up to no 1:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
Evolutionary epistemology is a direct implication of a worldview -- never mind the lab coats -- that reducess all to blind interactions of matter and energy shaped by chance and necessity, from Hydrogen to humans. Which, is the point where it inevitably self-refers. Which then raises the double issue of circularities and inherent inconsistencies. Here, undermining rationality, reason, warrant and knowledge, thus science. Including, its own views. KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2015
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John Lennox: "the mind that does science ... is the end product of a mindless unguided process. Now, if you knew your computer was the product of a mindless unguided process, you wouldn't trust it. So, to me atheism undermines the rationality I need to do science."
Box_{March 11, 2015
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What is being discussed in the book is Evolutionary epistemology , not ToE ! Which scientist belives that " units of knowledge themselves, particularly scientific theories, evolve according to selection" ?. In any case
For the evolutionary epistemologist, all theories are true only provisionally, regardless of the degree of empirical testing they have survived.
so that includes their own theory too.Me_Think_{March 11, 2015
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News, Correct. Let us point out that famed evolutionary theorist J B S Haldane noted on this at the turn of the 1930's so this is longstanding record:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. NB: cf wider expansion here on.]
I predict, the champions of a priori evolutionary materialism will refuse to address this squarely on its merits. KFkairosfocus_{March 11, 2015
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