The Naturalists’ Conundrum

_{Barry Arrington
December 17, 2012

Intelligent Design

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Intelligent Design}

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Kantian Naturalist writes that almost all naturalists (including, presumably, himself) believe selection tends to favor true beliefs.

I don’t know why he would say this, because Neo-Darwinian Evolution (“NDE”) posits that selection favors characters that increase fitness as measured by relative reproductive fecundity. Per NDE, selection is indifferent the truth. It will select for a false belief if, for whatever reason, that belief increases fitness.

Now the naturalist might say that it is obvious that true belief must increase fitness more than false belief. Is it obvious? Consider the conundrum of religious belief from an NDE perspective:

1. By definition the naturalist believes religious belief is false.

2. The overwhelming majority of people throughout history have held religious belief.

3. Therefore, the naturalist must believe that the overwhelming majority of humans throughout history have held a false belief.

4. It follows that natural selection selected for a belief that the naturalist is convinced is false.

We can set to one side the question of whether a particular religious belief is actually false. The naturalist, by definition, believes they all are, and therefore he must believe that natural selection selected for a belief he thinks is false.

What is the naturalist to do? Indeed, if the naturalist concedes that natural selection at least sometimes selects for false beliefs, how can he have any confidence in his own conviction that naturalism itself is true?

Appeals to “the evidence” won’t save the naturalist here. Both sides of the religion issue appeal to evidence.

Comments

BD states: "God, whose love is perfect (another axiom), can no more judge than He can make a square circle." And yet in extremely deep Near Death Experiences it is exactly by God's perfect love that judgement is made to every minute detail of a persons life in the life review to see if that person's life lived up to that perfect standard: Near Death Experience – The Tunnel, The Light, The Life Review – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4200200/ and To connect Near Death Experiences specifically to Christianity let's look at the Shroud: Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural - December 2011 Excerpt: After years of work trying to replicate the colouring on the shroud, a similar image has been created by the scientists. However, they only managed the effect by scorching equivalent linen material with high-intensity ultra violet lasers, undermining the arguments of other research, they say, which claims the Turin Shroud is a medieval hoax. Such technology, say researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), was far beyond the capability of medieval forgers, whom most experts have credited with making the famous relic. "The results show that a short and intense burst of UV directional radiation can colour a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin," they said. And in case there was any doubt about the preternatural degree of energy needed to make such distinct marks, the Enea report spells it out: "This degree of power cannot be reproduced by any normal UV source built to date." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-say-turin-shroud-is-supernatural-6279512.html Kevin Moran, a scientist working on the mysterious '3D' nature of the Shroud image, states the 'supernatural' explanation this way: "It is not a continuum or spherical-front radiation that made the image, as visible or UV light. It is not the X-ray radiation that obeys the one over R squared law that we are so accustomed to in medicine. It is more unique. It is suggested that the image was formed when a high-energy particle struck the fiber and released radiation within the fiber at a speed greater that the local speed of light. Since the fiber acts as a light pipe, this energy moved out through the fiber until it encountered an optical discontinuity, then it slowed to the local speed of light and dispersed. The fact that the pixels don’t fluoresce suggests that the conversion to their now brittle dehydrated state occurred instantly and completely so no partial products remain to be activated by the ultraviolet light. This suggests a quantum event where a finite amount of energy transferred abruptly. The fact that there are images front and back suggests the radiating particles were released along the gravity vector. The radiation pressure may also help explain why the blood was "lifted cleanly" from the body as it transformed to a resurrected state." http://www.shroudstory.com/natural.htm If scientists want to find the source for the supernatural light which made the "3D - photographic negative" image on the Shroud I suggest they look to the thousands of documented Near-Death Experiences (NDE's) in Judeo-Christian cultures. It is in their testimonies that you will find mention of an indescribably bright 'Light' or 'Being of Light' who is always described as being of a much brighter intensity of light than the people had ever seen before. Ask the Experts: What Is a Near-Death Experience (NDE)? - article with video Excerpt: "Very often as they're moving through the tunnel, there's a very bright mystical light ... not like a light we're used to in our earthly lives. People call this mystical light, brilliant like a million times a million suns..." - Jeffery Long M.D. - has studied NDE's extensively http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/beyondbelief/experts-death-experience/story?id=14221154#.T_gydvW8jbI All people who have been in the presence of 'The Being of Light', while having a deep NDE, have no doubt whatsoever that the 'The Being of Light' they were in the presence of is none other than 'The Lord God Almighty' of heaven and earth. In The Presence Of Almighty God - The NDE of Mickey Robinson - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4045544 God's crowning achievement for this universe was not when He created this universe. God’s crowning achievement for this universe was when He Himself inhabited the human body He had purposely created the whole universe for, to sanctify human beings unto Himself through the death and resurrection of his “Son” Jesus Christ. This is truly something which should fill one who with awe. Hebrews 2:14-15 "Since we, God's children, are human beings - made of flesh and blood - He became flesh and blood too by being born in human form; for only as a human being could He die and in dying break the power of the devil who had the power of death. Only in that way could He deliver those who through fear of death have been living all their lives as slaves to constant dread." John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.bornagain77_{December 18, 2012
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Correction: "How does any creature recognize the [territory] unless two realms exist, the realm of recognizers and the realm of things that are recognized, the realm of the mental map and the realm of the territory (hylermorphic [not Cartesian] dualism). Darwinism allows for only one realm. It is monistic, is it not?StephenB_{December 18, 2012
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And so KN - I come from a different perspective. A man who is as more sure of the truth of Christianity than any thing else in the world - but is also a scientist - Ph.D in physics and current work in computer science. I don't care for hand waving arguments. Have never liked them - whether it be some of the foolish arguments that some of my brethren take for convincing apologetics or the ones that NeoDarwinists swallow whole because they need to believe in the improbable to overrule the obvious reality of the supernatural. So I am not here to try and dazzle you with some new insight that you have not heard or seen. As long as your heart demands your freedom from God, you will find an intellectual escape to allow you to deny the obvious. As has been already well said, "...The fool hath said in his heart, no God..." I will make my argument as quantitative as I can. You may still argue that I am hand-waving, but alas, I have no fool proof arguments. But I ask you to consider something fairly quantitative in nature. Please bear with me for the route to the conclusion will be a little wordy. I know from observing badgers and spiders and what the heck dogs ( which I own ) that animals are quite able to project into the future. Allow my dog to chase me around the house, and he will from experience remember that going around the house means going around the house. He will stop chasing and wait for my circuitous route to meet up with him again. Quite a miraculous mental feat. He will predict by drawing from past experience that if I am headed around the house, he does not need to chase, but can stop and I will come to him. The trick is that he is only responding to real memories in real space. It is not surprising for his brain or ours to be able to make these simple immediate decisions. What he can't do is project these things to an abstract time. Animals can't do it as far as I know. I just can't explain to my dog that I am not going to feed him now, but will feed him in 2 hours, or 3 hours. In fact nothing I have read about any animal study makes me believe that any animal can project forward in abstract time. And why should we think it possible. Nerves, hormones, brains, muscles, can be trained to respond to real stimuli and even respond to circadian cycles - but to project that stimuli into the future world of arbitrary abstract time - how could a mere animal powered only by his experience recorded in nerve cells do that. You would need an infinite amount of circuits tuned to the multitude of possible delays. However, any sentient, normal human being can be asked to "raise your right hand in exactly X seconds" and he will respond correctly when the time comes. The raising of the hand after a precise time interval, is most probably not the response to the vibrations in the air of the command. I can say this because the human could not possibly have enough circuits pre-programmed to fit any delay requested. It makes no sense whatsoever to believe that the right amount of delay in raising the hand has any natural cause, because the quantity of nerve pathways needed would absorb all the cells in his body just for this one action. Rather than believe that the body has all kinds of delay circuitry for just such a situation, it is much more sane and logical to believe that two free will decisions have been made. 1. I have been asked to raise my hand in X seconds, so I will look around for some timepiece or count as best I can, and tie the willful raising of my hand to that tick of X seconds. 2. When that event which signifies the best estimate of the tick of X seconds occurs I willfully raise my hand. This is a rather simple example. Please explain it from a naturalist perspective. I don't see how you can.JDH_{December 17, 2012
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Kantian Naturalist
I don’t think there’s any way into Christianity, from outside of it, through reason alone. Not only am I not a Christian, but I was not raised a Christian, nor is anyone in my entire family. We have never been Christian. So for me, Christianity is something I understand at an intellectual level, just as I understand Buddhism or Hinduism at an intellectual level.
Yes, I understand. One cannot know God by simply studying what philosophers or theologians say about him. On the other hand, one can live his life in such a way that he is open to the prospect, which would be ruled out by atheism or materialism or naturalism.
I was only claiming that much of Christian theology and metaphysics were formed through dialogue with other schools. Here I’m putting the pressure on theology and metaphysics, on which the Gospels are not terribly informative, though there’s an ethical message of the fundamental importance
In this case, the role of philosophy was, among other things, to build a rational bridge between faith and reason, to test (and ultimately confirm) truths that transcend philosophy, and to clarify implicit Scriptural truths which had not yet been made explicit. So, in that sense, yes, philosophical/theological dialogue helped to provide a deeper understanding of the Gospel message and to apply unchanging theological truths to ever-changing historical problems. It did not, however, shape the Gospel message itself. Obviously, this makes philosophy a very important enterprise.
The point is, we are not skeptics; neither of us has any doubt (any real doubt) that our thoughts are at least sometimes in touch with how things really are.
I was under the impression that, as a “Kantian,” you subscribe to Kant’s departure from the correspondence theory of truth and the event that prompted it, namely Hume’s doubts about causality. Otherwise, why would you not accept the rational proofs for the existence of God?
There is something going on in the badger’s mind — but what? There is an “opacity,” I like to say, to the content of an animal’s mind — even when we’re sure that there is any content at all! But certainly the badger has reliable cognitive capacities: it’s behavior instantiates a map of its relation to its environment in accordance with its biological needs and interests.
I am not clear how the materialist Darwinian process could be responsible for even this modest form of animal recognition, let alone provide for human cognition, which consists of self–reflection, moral awareness, and rational thought. How can matter reflect on itself? How can matter get concepts under its own belt? Let's press the point. How can a person made solely of matter--who is instantiated in a material universe, and is, therefore, a slave to the laws of matter--resist matter’s impulses by exercising self-control? How does any creature recognize the map unless two realms exist, the realm of recognizers and the realm of things that are recognized, the realm of the mental map and the realm of the territory (hylermorphic [not Cartesian] dualism). Darwinism allows for only one realm. It is monistic, is it not?
Indeed, I take it to be true (indeed, a necessary truth) that “a normal mature human being is a rational animal”. I doubt you’d disagree, given your proximity to Thomism.
Well, we must define our terms here. A human's rational soul (if you will forgive the terminology) is substantially different from an animal's soul, which is not rational in the same sense [no self reflection, no moral sensibilities, no critical thinking].
On the one hand, I’m fighting against the Epicureans (who have taken over popular expositions of Darwinism, much to my lament) to defend Aristotelian insights, and so to that extent I’m allies with many of the folks here. On the other hand, I fighting against those who insist that the Aristotelian insights receive their best and finest expression only within Thomism. I’m an Aristotelian, but not a Thomist (or Maimonidean or Averroist). I’m a Darwinian Aristotelian, following in the footsteps of Dewey, though I take Kant more seriously than Dewey himself did. If one can be a Kantian pragmatic naturalist, then that’s what I am.
I appreciate the clarification. However, I am not clear on how you reconcile Aristotle’s purposeful teleology, which knows where it is going, with Darwin’s purposeless and radically contingent non-teleology, which doesn’t know where it is going.StephenB_{December 17, 2012
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KN:
I don’t think there’s any way into Christianity, from outside of it, through reason alone.
I couldn't agree more. The fundamental characteristic of rational thought, as every mathematician knows, is that any valid inference, when traced all the way back to its beginning, necessarily rests on propositions accepted as true without proof, ie, axioms. So Christians like Stephen who claim to derive Christianity from reason will have based their reasoning, to the extent that it consists of valid inferences at all, on assumptions accepted as true a priori---assumptions with which non-Christians are unlikely to agree. That said, I must also say that I agree with Barry that the notion of "emergent properties" in this context (mind emerging from brain) is mere hand waving. The naturalist starts from the assumption that all there is is matter. However, he cannot deny the existence and reality of mental, sensory, and emotional experience (qualia), which demands explanation. So he calls these "epiphenomena" or "emergent properties". But unless you can give some specific explanation---or at the very least an hypothesis---of how such phenomena, so fundamentally different from matter, could "emerge", you really have no explanation at all. It was this realization that first opened me to the possibility of the existence of God (although not the Christian version!), and started me on the path from out and out materialist to where I am now---what you might call a New Age Idealist. (The philosopher I most resonate with is Berkeley.) Stephen:
A transcendent Creator who both loves and judges his creatures makes a lot more sense than the pantheistic blob god or the deistic snob god.
On the contrary, it makes no sense at all. I know from direct experience that it is impossible to love and judge (meaning censure or condemn as morally bad, wrong, or evil) simultaneously (one of my axioms). Love precludes judgment, and vice versa. Hence, God, whose love is perfect (another axiom), can no more judge than He can make a square circle.Bruce David_{December 17, 2012
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KN: 1) Did consciousness originate from non-conscious matter? 2) Can the mental properties of an organism survive physical annihilation?William J Murray_{December 17, 2012
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KN: “It should be clear enough, I would hope, that I’m committed to the existence of emergent properties.” The concept of emergence is, as I have written previously, materialist “poofery.” See: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/materialist-poofery/ Of, if you prefer, emergence is a confession of ignorance disguised (poorly) as an explanation.Barry Arrington_{December 17, 2012
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Though you make a distinction between the tendency to produce true beliefs and what you call “reliable” beliefs,” you leave the key word undefined. By my definition, a reliable belief is one that corresponds with reality, which would make it a true belief. In that context, our knowledge would be reliable, but it would not necessarily be perfect. If our knowledge, though imperfect, is not reliable, then any attempt at rational discourse would be impossible.
Fair enough, but let's be clear, there are two different problems here: (1) how can we show that human cognition is (mostly) reliable, i.e. indicates how things are in the world? (2) how can we show that a satisfactory account of human cognition is consistent with Darwinism? It's pretty clear that you and I agree on how to approach (1) and disagree vehemently on (2). Someone who denies that (1) can be done is a skeptic (of some sort). There are subtle varieties of skepticism, but since no one here is a skeptic, we can brush those aside. The point is, we are not skeptics; neither of us has any doubt (any real doubt) that our thoughts are at least sometimes in touch with how things really are. On, then to (2). Here you said, "a reliable belief is one that corresponds with reality, which would make it a true belief." Yes, but I'm not talking just about reliable beliefs; in the case of non-human animals (let's say, badgers), I'm not at all sure that we can talk about beliefs at all. There is something going on in the badger's mind -- but what? There is an "opacity," I like to say, to the content of an animal's mind -- even when we're sure that there is any content at all! But certainly the badger has reliable cognitive capacities: it's behavior instantiates a map of its relation to its environment in accordance with its biological needs and interests. So, whether or not a badger has beliefs, it certainly has reliable cognitive capacities. Take another example: spiders. I very much doubt that spiders have any beliefs or desires at all, and thinking otherwise welcomes a charming (but philosophically unlovely) anthropomorphism. (Still not sure about badgers, though!). But here too, it seems hard to deny that spiders have reliable cognitive capacities. I think there are extremely strong reasons to believe that, in those animals that have beliefs at all, those beliefs will be necessarily connected to reliable cognitive capacities, but it isn't one of identity, because all sorts of animals can have reliable cognitive capacities without having any beliefs at all that we can make any sense of. And what sorts of animals are those, that have beliefs at all? Just the rational animals, which certainly includes us, and might include some other apes and the cetaceans. Indeed, I take it to be true (indeed, a necessary truth) that "a normal mature human being is a rational animal". I doubt you'd disagree, given your proximity to Thomism. I'm fighting a battle on multiple fronts, which is fine by me. On the one hand, I'm fighting against the Epicureans (who have taken over popular expositions of Darwinism, much to my lament) to defend Aristotelian insights, and so to that extent I'm allies with many of the folks here. On the other hand, I fighting against those who insist that the Aristotelian insights receive their best and finest expression only within Thomism. I'm an Aristotelian, but not a Thomist (or Maimonidean or Averroist). I'm a Darwinian Aristotelian, following in the footsteps of Dewey, though I take Kant more seriously than Dewey himself did. If one can be a Kantian pragmatic naturalist, then that's what I am.Kantian Naturalist_{December 17, 2012
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William Murray: (1) a living animal, since it has mental properties as well as physical ones, must be explained in those terms. (I take it that a certain degree of flexibility and adaptivity in behavior will furnish a rough criterion for application of the term "mental properties". Spiders might have mental properties of a very simplistic kind -- not enough to keep me from squishing them if they get in my house, anyway. I'm not too sure what to say about jellyfish, though.) (2) I don't know what it would mean to assert, or to deny, that consciousness has a cause. I'm not sure if the word "cause" applies here. In ordinary language, our beliefs or desires are causally related to various objects and events in the world, e.g. "smelling the chocolate caused me to remember my mother's cooking", etc. I don't think we have a more refined vocabulary than that of ordinary language for talking about the causes of our beliefs and desires. (That's my main objection to eliminative materialism.) StephenB, let's acknowledge that you and I are engaged in fundamentally different projects. I'm not trying to show, or deny, that Christianity is the only rational religion. That claim has no interest for me. I find your considerations intriguing, but I think that I would have to already be a Christian in order to take them as you do. (The stained-glass windows look quite differently from inside and from outside, if you follow my metaphor.) I don't think there's any way into Christianity, from outside of it, through reason alone. Not only am I not a Christian, but I was not raised a Christian, nor is anyone in my entire family. We have never been Christian. So for me, Christianity is something I understand at an intellectual level, just as I understand Buddhism or Hinduism at an intellectual level. Of course there are certain kinds of experiences which lead one from being outside to being inside, but that's just part of my point -- some kind of fundamentally significant experience is required, not just the procedures of argument alone. On a particular point:
It was not socially constructed through philosophical dialogue. If, as you suggest, a passage in the Book of Acts argues against that proposition, I would appreciate knowing which chapter and verse makes that argument.
I know better than to get into a discussion about exegesis with you -- I know you know Scripture far better than I do. However, I wasn't making such an extravagant claim as you make me out to be -- I was only claiming that much of Christian theology and metaphysics were formed through dialogue with other schools. Here I'm putting the pressure on theology and metaphysics, on which the Gospels are not terribly informative, though there's an ethical message of the fundamental importance. As for my allusion to Acts, I had in mind Acts 17:16-34, where Paul talks with the Epicureans and Stoics. But I also would refer the interested reader to scholarship by Pierre Hadot and Karen Armstrong.Kantian Naturalist_{December 17, 2012
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@KN About emergentism. I find the idea that when matter acquires a certain structure (let's say the structure of a brain) a 'real' consciousness will emerge by a totally unknown process, rather unappealing.Box_{December 17, 2012
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Kantian Naturalist, Though you make a distinction between the tendency to produce true beliefs and what you call “reliable” beliefs,” you leave the key word undefined. By my definition, a reliable belief is one that corresponds with reality, which would make it a true belief. In that context, our knowledge would be reliable, but it would not necessarily be perfect. If our knowledge, though imperfect, is not reliable, then any attempt at rational discourse would be impossible. Hyper-skepticism, naturalism, and Darwinism militate against reason precisely because they deny the conditions necessary for rational though. Either we are rational beings who can apprehend a knowable world or we are not. Taking it one step further,the reliability of any knowledge attained through human cultures, traditions, myths, and stories, stands or falls on the individual’s capacity to know and understand the world that is being duly described. We can fine tune our beliefs with new information through interaction with other selves and with our history, if and only if, the added input is, itself, reliable. Because we are rational creatures, we can make rational judgments about a given religion’s truth claims. For that matter, we can also make rational judgments about what people say about those religions. When you write, for example, that most world religions are orthopraxic rather than orthodox, you seem to miss a rather basic point. Any religion—at least any rational religion--is defined by its tenets, which is another way of saying that it is defined by its orthodoxy, not its orthopraxy. Yes, one could make the case that many ancient religions were defined by their rituals, but that is precisely the same thing as saying that they are not rational religions. A rational man shapes his behavior around his beliefs; an irrational man shapes his beliefs around his behavior. Accordingly, when you say that Christianity is “weird” compared to other religions, you seem to be straying pretty far afield from any semblance of a rational analysis. A transcendent Creator who both loves and judges his creatures makes a lot more sense than the pantheistic blob god or the deistic snob god. Indeed, many proponents of the Eastern religions celebrate their liberation from the demands of logic, often rationalizing their irrational contradictions under the aegis of “yin” and “yang.” And whatever one might say about the notion of losing one’s personal identity by “merging into being,” it certainly would not appeal to anyone who yearns for a meaningful existence beyond the grave. Again, you write, “Christianity is highly unusual in the emphasis it puts on intellectual endorsement of a set of propositions, and it’s a terrible idea to form any generalizations about religion based on Christianity alone.” This is a very odd statement since Christianity is the only religion that can survive rational scrutiny or even bothers to try. No other religion can boast of a founder who was foretold a thousand years before his birth, performed miracles, and rose from the dead. There is no such thing as Islamic or Buddhistic apologetics because advocates for those positions cannot provide a rational defense for their beliefs. And what can we say of the religion of Darwinism, which exists solely on the basis of an unexamined belief system with no evidence to support it. Further, you write, “The reason why it’s unusual, I believe, is because Christianity is not just a religion; it is a philosophical system, one that was shaped through philosophical conversation with rival schools in the ancient world.” Again, this is very odd. How can Christianity be weirdly different from the same religions, schools and philosophical conversations that allegedly formed its identity? In fact, the basic religious form of Christianity was shaped by its founder. It was not socially constructed through philosophical dialogue. If, as you suggest, a passage in the Book of Acts argues against that proposition, I would appreciate knowing which chapter and verse makes that argument. In any case, we return to the main theme of the post. Skepticism, naturalism, and Darwinism provide no basis for accepting any truth claim whatsoever, religious or otherwise.StephenB_{December 17, 2012
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KN, If a living animal cannot be explained entirely in terms of physical properties, what other properties must be used in such an explanation?William J Murray_{December 17, 2012
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KN, Is consciousness (and thus thought and belief) caused? If so, by what (in general)?William J Murray_{December 17, 2012
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The ‘whole living animal’ consists of matter and matter alone?
Depends on what one means by "consists of". Of course the living animal has physical properties, but it cannot be explained entirely in terms of physical properties. It should be clear enough, I would hope, that I'm committed to the existence of emergent properties. Now, if there's an objection to emergent properties you'd like to put forth, I'm quite willing to hear it.Kantian Naturalist_{December 17, 2012
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KN:"I would say that consciousness is a property of the whole living animal." The 'whole living animal' consists of matter and matter alone?Box_{December 17, 2012
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"if you’re willing to take me seriously" Got it? No smirking when you write Mr Murray! :)bornagain77_{December 17, 2012
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Box:
So consciousness is a property of what? Mind? And not matter? That would make you a dualist. But if you say consciousness is a property of matter I would answer that matter is not into consciousness, and repeat that it can at best only create the illusion of consciousness.
I would say that consciousness is a property of the whole living animal. William Murray, if you're willing to take me seriously when I argue that your view rests on a false dichotomy, then we can talk. Otherwise, we're better off ignoring each other.Kantian Naturalist_{December 17, 2012
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Kantian Naturalist makes arguments as if logic was something other than how molecules happen to interact in individual humans; as if those he/she was speaking to had some locus of arbitration not entirely dependent upon causal molecular interaction (which would make KN's words the functional equivalent of, say, pepperoni pizza in the digestive tract or the scent of pine in the air); and as if that locus of arbitration has the capacity to override causal molecular interactions and compare them against something objective. KN makes vague appeals that perhaps naturalism doesn't reduce to billion-year chains of causal happenstance. KN wishes to hide from the first principle necessities required by the assumptions that underlie every reason-based argument by waving his/her hands and wishing. IOW, KN makes arguments the same way everyone does - rooted in the assumption that people have libertarian (uncaused) free will capacity to arbit true statements from false by using an objectively valid method - logic. How does a naturalist make the case that logic - a system of thought - is "natural"? How is truth - a concept - a real phenomena under naturalism, when without objective truth all arguments are simply gussied-up rhetoric? How far is one willing to stretch the term "naturalism" simply to avoid facing their non-cognitivisms? Perhaps their childhood perspective of god was too "weird" and they didn't realize they were throwing out a very necessary baby with the bathwater. One either assumes logic arbits true statements from false, or one's argument is essentially nothing but rhetoric. One either assumes humans have the free will capacity to override molecular-caused thoughts and beliefs via some non-caused intrinsic agency, or their argument can be nothing more than an attempt to physically coerce others into alternative thoughts, which they might as well attempt through drugs and torture, because it's all the same molecular, physical, naturalistic causal basis.William J Murray_{December 17, 2012
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So consciousness is a property of what? Mind? And not matter? That would make you a dualist. But if you say consciousness is a property of matter I would answer that matter is not into consciousness, and repeat that it can at best only create the illusion of consciousness.
Box_{December 17, 2012
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Dog, tail, chase, circle, :)bornagain77_{December 17, 2012
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We all know that matter just isn’t into teleology and intentionality. Maybe organisms are producing the illusion of teleology and intentionality, but since there is ‘nobody home’ (but matter) to the naturalist that’s just it an illusion, right?
No, I don't think it is an illusion; I think teleology and intentionality are as real as real gets. But, I think that realism about teleology and intentionality is fully consistent with naturalism, and here's why. All a naturalist need be committed to, I think, is denying that there are supernatural beings. "Ah," you say, "but defining naturalism as anti-supernaturalism is viciously circular!" Yes, if matters ended there. But they don't, and here's why: we can define natural and supernatural in non-question-begging terms, without circularity, in the following way. The paradigm of a supernatural being is a being that has psychological properties (beliefs, desires, etc.) but no biological or physical properties. (Clearly this would need to be refined to accommodate all real-world cases -- it's not clear if the inhabitants of the Dreamtime of Australian Aboriginal culture would count as 'supernatural'.) But if we're talking about the concept of "supernatural being" that plays a central role in Christian metaphysics, this definition will do quite nicely. So all a naturalist need do is contend that there are no beings like that: having psychological properties, but no biological or physical properties. Put otherwise, the naturalist contends that all the beings which have psychological properties, also have biological and physical properties. But that is fully consistent with thinking that psychological properties (intentionality, consciousness, beliefs, desires, etc.) and biological properties (teleology) are just as fully real as are physical properties. So denying that psychological and biological properties are real -- and holding that only physical properties are real, the rest being 'illusion' or 'projection' -- is (1) entirely optional for the naturalist and (2) a bad idea. In short, "reductive naturalism," aka "materialism" aka "physicalism" aka "Epicureanism" is not the only option available for someone who denies the existence of supernatural beings.Kantian Naturalist_{December 17, 2012
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Kantian Naturalist, what is the difference between Naturalism and good old Materialism, or ‘Epicureanism’ if you prefer? We all know that matter just isn’t into teleology and intentionality. Maybe organisms are producing the illusion of teleology and intentionality, but since there is ‘nobody home’ (but matter) to the naturalist that’s just it an illusion, right?
Box_{December 17, 2012
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Kantian Naturalist writes that almost all naturalists (including, presumably, himself) believe selection tends to favor true beliefs.
Unfortunately, you did not cite a previous discussion, so I might have missed the background. Are we talking here about cultural evolution or about biological evolution? If we are talking about biological evolution, I'm doubting that the question ever arises. That is to say, I doubt that beliefs are inherited.Neil Rickert_{December 17, 2012
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Unless truth and logic are things beyond whatever chemical bumping molecules in our bodies happen to say they are, and unless we have a means of accessing them as such, there is no valid argument to be made about anything.
That's perfectly true, but I don't think that accepting that means rejecting naturalism. At best it means rejecting a very simplistic, crude version of naturalism -- a sort of watered-down Epicureanism. As I've contended several times on this blog -- though it seems to fall on deaf ears -- the central problem with the Epicurean philosophy is that it cannot accommodate the very idea of life. And so the basic features of living things, such as teleology, or the basic features of complex animals, such as intentionality, are utterly and completely absent from that system. That's a good reason to reject Epicureanism, but not by itself a good reason to reject naturalism, unless it were the case that all naturalism collapses into Epicurean materialism. And I simply don't see how that argument might go. There's a lovely essay by Owen Flanagan I like called "Ethics Naturalized: Ethics as Human Ecology". It's been a while since I've read it, but in light of these conversations -- and many of the things I've been reading lately -- I wonder if Flanagan's point might be extended to include logic as well -- if we construe normativity as such as intrinsic to human ecology, in both theoretical contexts (logic, epistemology) as in practical ones (ethics, political theory).Kantian Naturalist_{December 17, 2012
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Now, that I've been called out, I suppose I have to rise to the occasion here, don't I? First, the naturalist's thesis is not that "true belief must increase fitness more than false belief". The more precise way of putting it is to say that selection will tend to favor reliable cognitive capacities. I think it's a serious error to identify reliability with "tending to produce true beliefs" -- although there is, of course, a necessary relationship between these concepts. Secondly, we have various capacities that are not cognitive, but play some other vital role in our lives as human beings. Thirdly, that a capacity has some basic reliability or function in the history of a species says nothing about the various socio-historical expressions of that capacity. In the case of most species, we don't need to worry about that, but humans are unique, because humans have cultures or traditions, and that means that a lot of what we know about human cultural traditions lacks a clear analogue in other species. Everything depends on what one takes the relevant question to be. If one assumes a cognitivist theory of religious belief, and if one takes religious belief to be roughly what we've had in Judeo-Christian tradition (this is one of the very few occasions on which I will permit myself to use "Judeo-Christian"), then perhaps one could construct a paradox of this sort. (I once tried to do just that, on a creationist/ID website I commented on for a while, in which I used that argument to show how natural selection could be an ally to their theology. They didn't buy it.) I, at any rate, would take the relevant question to be, "do myth, magic, and ritual play an essentially important role in structuring human cognition?" and say that the answer to that is an unequivocal "yes". And that fundamental role consist of giving the members of that community a map of their environment. That is to say, myths -- stories, parables, epics, poems, rituals, whatever -- have this essential role: they compress information about ecosystems, geography, and history into nuggets that can be easily stored and transmitted. My principal sources for this approach is When They Severed Earth from Sky and The Spell of the Sensuous, though there are many others. That, at any rate, is one of the things that myths do; over the tens of thousands of years that separate us from pre-literate, subsistence-level hunter-gatherers (and let us be clear, that is how human beings lived for over 90% of our time on this planet), the originally unified function of myth was taken over into many different cultural practices: religion, science, art, politics, etc. I might also add that I don't think of "religious belief" as "false belief," because I tend towards a pretty strong non-cognitivism about religion in general. Christianity is just weird, compared with most other world religions. Most world religions are orthopraxic rather than orthodox, about correct practice rather than opinion (doxa). Christianity is highly unusual in the emphasis it puts on intellectual endorsement of a set of propositions, and it's a terrible idea to form any generalizations about religion based on Christianity alone. So, looking at religions as praxis, as orthopraxic instead of as orthodox, strongly supports a non-cognitivist view of religion in general. I don't think of religion as consisting, first and foremost, in terms of beliefs at all, true or false. Of course the notion of belief has a specific role in Christianity, but if I'm being asked to construct a naturalistic theory of religion, the last thing I would do is begin with Christianity, which is so unusual in so many respects. The reason why it's unusual, I believe, is because Christianity is not just a religion; it is a philosophical system, one that was shaped through philosophical conversation with rival schools in the ancient world. (There's a reference to this in Acts, if I recall correctly.) And the debates between Christian and pagan philosophers continued for hundreds of years after. Indeed, if I'm right in thinking that the dominant version of naturalism is Epicureanism, then the whole Darwin vs. ID debate is really just a very recent version of a very, very old discussion.Kantian Naturalist_{December 17, 2012
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If every thought and belief a human has is nothing more than the cumulative chemical translation of aeons of cascading cause-and-effect events under natural selection, then the claim that natural selection "tends to select for true beliefs" is nothing more, and cannot be anything more, than a product of the same categorical processes that claims to the contrary. In fact, every argument a naturalist puts forth cannot be, at root, substantively any different from a precisely contrary argument, because the root of such arguments and the belief that they are sound are categorically the same - molecules bumping around producing claims and beliefs. The naturalist has no means whatsoever to differentiate their argument, or their beliefs, from anyone else's - even lunatics and madmen. What would the appeal to? Evidence? They believe the evidence supports them; they believe the facts support them; others believe the contrary. Logic? ad infinitum. Unless truth and logic are things beyond whatever chemical bumping molecules in our bodies happen to say they are, and unless we have a means of accessing them as such, there is no valid argument to be made about anything.William J Murray_{December 17, 2012
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