A friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous took an account of the dialogue between Plantinga and Dennett at last weekend’s APA. I know that many were interested in this, so I am copy/pasting it below. The account is opinionated (i.e., the author openly expresses his perspective on what went on throughout the account), and it is heavily sided in favor of Plantinga and against Dennett. So I welcome any disagreements about what went on in the comments section.
How important was such a meeting, and of what worth is discussion about it? Did Plantinga or Dennett take away anything new by way of argument or philosophy from the meeting? Probably not. Did anybody in the audience learn anything new by way of argument or philosophy? Maybe; perhaps some people there never heard some of Plantinga’s arguments, and they learned something new.
So I’m not sure how important the meeting was from the standpoint of philosophy. But I’m interested in reading/hearing discussion about the meeting to get a better idea of how theism and atheism are perceived by the philosophical community. I’m curious to hear how atheists might have perceived what went on at the meeting. So comments from that standpoint (and not necessarily only that standpoint) are welcome.
The account of my friend begins below:
The Account
For those of you who do not know, on February 21st, the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association – the main professional body of American philosophers – hosted a kind of debate. I say “kind of debate” because one philosopher gave a paper, the other commented and the first philosopher replied and the floor opened for questions. But in fact the session was a debate.
The debate was between Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett. Plantinga is one of the founders of the Society of Christian Philosophers and one of the fathers of the current desecularization of philosophy. He is widely regarded – even by his critics – as one of the finest epistemologists of the last fifty years and one of the finest philosophers of religion since the Medieval period. Daniel Dennett is one of the New Atheists and is a well-known proponent of atheistic Darwinism and critic of religion. He is widely regarded – even by his critics – as one of the most important early philosophers of mind that opened the field to cognitive science and evolutionary biology. He has contributed enormously to the serious study of the mind and its relationship to the brain. Both philosophers are over sixty and perhaps at the height of their philosophical powers. They have also faced off before but, as far as I know, not in person.
Plantinga was the presenter. The session asked the question of whether science and religion were compatible. Plantinga argues that they are and that in fact the scientific theory taken to be most incompatible with religion – evolutionary theory – is not only compatible with Christian theism (the religious view Plantinga defends) but is incompatible with Christian theism’s most serious opponent in the scientific world – naturalism. Naturalism is the view that physics and the sciences can give a complete description of reality. Plantinga defines it as the view that there is no God or anything like God.
I was at the talk. It was packed with professional philosophers and graduate students in philosophy, most of whom sided with Dennett. I wrote live comments on the debate/session. I prefer to remain anonymous for various reasons, in particular because I am inclined towards Plantinga’s position over Dennett’s and were this to become well-known it could damage or destroy my career in analytic philosophy. This is something I prefer not to put my family through. I almost didn’t publish these comments at all, but as far as I could tell, this would be the only public record of the discussion.
Friends, if you can identify me, I request that you keep my identity secret. I am sharing my thoughts as a service to the philosophical community and all those who have an interest in such debates. But I prefer not to suffer at the hands of my ardently secular colleagues. This is not to say that all secular analytic philosophers are this way; they most certainly are not. But enough of them are that I cannot risk being known publicly.
The talk began at 2:30 pm on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 in the Palmerhouse Hilton in downtown Chicago in the Crystal Room on the third floor. I got there early. What follows are my live thoughts. All opinions are my own. And while I am inclined towards Plantinga’s position, I was once a Dennettian and still admire much of his work. I tried to go in with an open-mind and be even-handed. Perhaps I was unsuccessful, but at least I tried.
2:18 pm – The room was moved because the original room was full thirty minutes before the talk. People rushed down the stairs in a hotel full of elevators. There’s a kind of excitement in the room and it’s not clear the Christian to non-Christian ratio. Dennett has arrived and is setting up his equipment. It seems appropriate somehow that Dennett would be using technological equipment where Plantinga gives a more traditional sort of talk.
2:20 pm – Plantinga enters. The tension between the titans fills the room.
2:21 pm – No immediate greeting between the two figures. Dennett stares at his computer. It is awkward.
2:22 pm – Plantinga’s handouts begin to be passed around. Surely there won’t be enough.
2:23 pm – The room is overflowing. Numerous prominent philosophers on both sides are here. It’s fascinating that a room full of philosophers should be so divided on this issue. It is perhaps the first time in centuries that Christians have been such a high concentration of professional philosophers.
2:24 pm – I can’t find an electrical outlet, but my new little laptop will keep on going throughout the initial remarks. I apologize if I cut out during the Q&A.
2:25 pm – Still no eye contact. Both figures appear uncomfortable. I’m probably reading into their body language, but they seem to realize that something hangs on the match.
2:27 pm – Plantinga attempts to make eye contact with Dennett. Dennett still refuses.
2:28 pm – Dean Zimmerman comes to speak with Plantinga. He’s a reminder to me that the Christians have some heavy hitters intellectually. Michael Tooley, a prominent secularist, is here. So is Eleanore Stump, a prominent Christian philosopher and known worldwide for her expertise in Medieval philosophy, particular Aquinas. Peter Van Inwagen, president of the Central Division is here. For those who don’t know, he is one of the most prominent metaphysician alive and is an Anglican.
2:29 pm – Dennett and Plantinga make awkward attempts at conversation. Dennett still seems uninterested. I wonder what this foreshadows. It is almost time for the talk to begin. The room is stuffed like sardines.
2:30 pm – Organizer tries to get the original group in the session to leave to make room. It is clear that no one will leave – a facile attempt. They won’t move us again.
2:31 pm – The floor in the area around the podium fills up.
2:32 pm – Brian Leiter, a prominent secularist, well-known Nietzsche scholar, philosopher of law, who is quite famous/infamous for his internet blog, enters the room in the back. I am surprised he came.
2:33 pm – Dennett is having technical difficulties.
2:34 pm – The session begins. Plantinga is speaking and Dennett is replying. There will be a half hour of questions after an hour of ‘going at it’, to use the host’s words. Dennett notably doesn’t clap for Plantinga.
2:35 pm – Plantinga begins to speak. He looks like Abraham Lincoln. Dennett looks like Santa Claus. Feel free to imagine these two as those characters.
2:36 pm – Plantinga begins to define his terms. He will speak about whether theistic belief is compatible with science. Christian belief is the intersection of the Christian creeds. He will argue that there is no conflict between theistic religion and science.
2:37 pm – Plantinga discusses possible sources of incompatibility. You probably are aware of these standard lines. They are going by too quickly for me to record in my cramped position.
2:38 pm – Plantinga argues that contemporary evolutionary theory isn’t incompatible with theistic belief. But instead is in conflict with naturalism. He also thinks that theistic religion could be rational even if science conflicted with it (this last is particularly controversial claim, to my mind).
2:39 pm – The conflict is between naturalism and science. Dennett is smirking under his grand beard. If Plantinga missteps his description of evolution, Dennett is going to pounce on him. Ultimately the argument doesn’t quite hinge on all the details of how evolution occurs, so I hope this does not side-track them.
2:40 pm – There is no conflict between theism and the central tenets of Darwinism. God could have used evolutionary mechanisms to create the world.
2:41 pm – God intended to create creatures though, with a moral sense, free will and so on. This intention appears incompatible with Darwinism, but it isn’t. God could have caused random mutation (This initially strikes me as odd, but makes sense later.)
2:42 pm – Theism and evolution are only incompatible if evolution is essentially unguided. And some assert that the assumption of unguidedness is essential to evolutionary theory. (Why would they make this additional, non-scientific but metaphysical claim? Why bother to provoke?)
2:44 pm – Plantinga is talking about Gould. I missed the point. Sorry!
2:45 pm – Are random mutations really compatible with theism? We don’t have to understand randomness as incompatible with theism.
2:46 pm – I have gone from 75% to 65% on my battery. Ack!
2:47 pm – Don’t mix naturalistic metaphysics with science, says Plantinga. Naturalism is incompatible with theism by definition but not evolution.
2:48 pm – Plantinga makes witty joke. He and Dennett both have their own unique style of wit. They are hard to describe. Plantinga has the dry wit of a lighthearted grandfather. Dennett’s wit is more like that of someone aiming directly at communicating concepts in the most creative way he can. Plantinga seems more concerned with careful, methodical, clear philosophy, Dennett with exciting, compelling, shocking ideas. Perhaps this helps explain why they have the positions they do.
2:50 pm – Plantinga cites Dawkins as saying that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist. Dennett nods vigorously.
2:51 pm – Plantinga mentions Michael Behe, calls the argument serious. Dennett appears stunned, understandably. It’s not clear whether Plantinga intended to be provocative by speaking up for this ‘much maligned’ intelligent design theorist. Plantinga says the ID argument is compelling but inconclusive as the complexity of the cell is more probable on theism than naturalism (but it isn’t clear how much more).
2:52 pm – A tendency to believe in God is suggested by evolutionary studies of religion, but Plantinga is shockingly arguing that this makes more sense on theism than naturalism. He briefly mentions the main lines of his book, Warranted Christian Belief.
2:53 pm – The demise of the teleological argument doesn’t speak against rational belief in God. This is a standard argument of Plantinga’s. He believes that belief in God is properly basic, belief in God is warranted even if the believer has no reason for this belief.
2:54 pm – The apparent waste in evolutionary history isn’t incompatible with theism and neither is suffering and death in evolution. It doesn’t even speak against it. It’s a version of the problem of evil, which Plantinga denies is a defeater for theism. There is no logical incompatibility and it has been hard to state a probabilistic argument from evil. It’s not clear what the argument is, particularly as the literature becomes more complex.
2:55 pm – The really good possible worlds all involve divine incarnation and atonement and so all the best worlds have sin and suffering – an old view that many Christian philosophers resist today. He even mentions that outrageous (to the naturalist) idea that the demons are part of the errors in human development. Dennett is clearly stunned and amused. He probably thinks Plantinga’s claims are insane or at least silly. Plantinga’s orthodoxy is completely unabashed. It is commendable that he is wholly without embarrassment, something rare for a modern Christian. Perhaps it signals an attitude to come.
2:58 pm – While naturalistic evolution may be simpler than theistic evolution, this is not an all things considered defeater. There are many propositions conjuncted here to which a probability is assigned. The argument is becoming complicated but the effect is that probabilistic judgments become very difficult when evaluating alternative large conjunctions of propositions.
3:00 pm – The argument is full of probabilistic language. It isn’t complicated for the room but it is complicated to live blog.
3:01 pm – A hard problem is explaining the mechanisms of the cell. Plantinga’s argument never hinged on this view before. He’s arguing this, perhaps, to try to show that even the most maligned arguments for theism have something to them. Dennett will be unaware that Plantinga didn’t advance these ‘bad’ arguments all along. Remember: Plantinga’s argument is merely that the complexity of the cell is more likely on theism than naturalism. This is a very different claim than what most understand the ID argument to be. It’s not a proof of theism but a comparative probabilistic judgment. The argument would work even if the complexity of the cell were 70% likely on naturalism so long as it is significantly more likely on theism.
3:03 pm – To be honest, I think Plantinga would do better not to be so flagrant in his defense of these much maligned arguments, as it shuts off the minds of those he hopes to convince. I can see the value, but why not just make the solid arguments that don’t cause naturalists to scoff?
3:04 pm – He does say, however, that from agnosticism the design argument isn’t necessarily any good. The theist already accepts theism. The claim is merely that the theist’s view is confirmed more by evolutionary biology than the naturalist’s view is. Note though, that he is not yet to the point of providing defeaters for the conjunction of theism and naturalism. He is still arguing that evolution and theism are not incompatible. Also remember that Plantinga makes these probabilistic claims tentatively.
3:06 pm – Just because there is scientific evidence against theism doesn’t necessarily refute theism or provide defeaters. Theism may have evidence on its behalf or it may have a wholly different source of warrant. If the latter is true, then the warrant for theism may outweigh scientific evidence. The Christian doesn’t have to change her views according to current science.
3:08 pm – Now Plantinga approaches the defeater for naturalism. He claims that naturalism is a quasi-religion and science contradicts it. One cannot rationally accept both naturalism and evolution.
3:09 pm – Naturalism usually is tied to materialism, so for now he will tie them together.
3:10 pm – The key claim: the probability that our faculties track the truth on theistic evolution is much higher than it is on naturalistic evolution. Plantinga is now reviewing the formal probability theory that the argument appeals to.
3:11 pm – Plantinga continues to give the argument. Basically, naturalistic evolution selects for belief faculties which form beliefs that track survival – and loosely. But an entirely false set of beliefs might track survival. Naturalistic evolution therefore has no tendency to select for true beliefs. I am radically simplifying the argument; please forgive me.
3:13 pm – Plantinga is arguing that his argument will work on a variety of versions of physicalism, even on a view that mental states supervene on physical states. It is worth noting that theism and materialism are compatible and so materialism could be true. It is the conjunction of naturalism with evolution that causes the problem.
3:15 pm – Plantinga argues, following Pat Churchland, that in evolution “Truth, whatever that is, gets the hindmost.” Dennett is shaking his head and continues to appear amused. Imagine Santa with a sense for the absurd and ironic and a strong snarky streak. Less appealing, admittedly, but still an interesting character.
3:17 pm – I have heard the Plantinga argument from sites on the internet. I’m honestly at a loss to predict how Dennett will reply. I saw him discussing what appeared to be his comments with Stephanie Lewis (the wife of the late, great metaphysician, David Lewis). Perhaps he has something interesting up his sleeve. I will be disappointed if he doesn’t.
3:18 pm – Plantinga holds that if our faculties aren’t truth-tracking then our belief in evolution has a defeater. As a result, we should reject the conjunction of naturalism and evolution.
3:19 pm – Plantinga is finished. Dennett claps! He is eager to begin.
3:20 pm – Dennett is going to use powerpoint to reply to Plantinga. Dennett is a very large man. Not fat, but very large. Plantinga is tall but his form is not imposing. Dennett is going to argue that Plantinga makes some true claims. Evolution is compatible with theism. We don’t have to have a conception of randomness that is incompatible with theism.
3:21 pm – He is quoting himself. His prose is very cute. He is arguing that he agrees with Plantinga but that Plantinga’s claims don’t support his [Plantinga’s] conclusion. How do we tell the difference, say, between bred animals and unbred animals? How would Martian scientists tell? Dennett is getting laughs, and his strategy is interesting, if I understand it.
3:22 pm – It has been over an hour and I am at 50%. I think I will make it.
3:23 pm – Dennett argues that it is hard to tell what is designed and what isn’t. He has some really great examples. He is true to form, very amusing. Plantingian dry wit vs. Dennettian cuteness. My sense for the laughter indicates that Dennett’s supporters are more numerous. Not a surprise. Predictably, each figure gets laughs from their people.
3:24 pm – You can see where Plantinga is going in his arguments, which is a virtue. With Dennett, he is building up to a shock. This is also cool. I like both.
3:26 pm – A failure of imagination is not an insight into reality, a point Dennett makes against philosophers all the time.
3:26 pm – Here comes the punch line – the theistic hypothesis can’t be refuted. But so what? It is independently unlikely. If we can account for evolution without the divine, then we should accept it. Even if we found user’s manuals in junk DNA, this wouldn’t show that natural selection isn’t the answer, as we could have been tampered with by naturalistic intelligence long ago.
3:27 pm – Contemporary evolutionary theory can’t rule out ID. “Except on grounds that it is an entirely gratuitous fantasy.” Is the punchline an insult?! I am concerned that Dennett is not yet addressing Plantinga’s argument.
3:29 pm – Sure, the intelligent theist can keep going on believing. He calls theistic belief a fairy tale. Now he’s getting explicitly insulting. He thinks theistic belief can corrupt our common epistemological fabric and involve theism into politics. He shows a slide mocking the eschatological views of Christians. He calls theism an unrespectable position, and compares it to astrology. He says it is irrational and doesn’t deserve respect. He gets laughs. He doesn’t look good to the theists. Once he got nasty, a cold pall covered the room. He compares theism to holocaust deniers and things have gone off the rails. This is outrageous. All Plantinga must do to beat Dennett now is to reply with grace. For Plantingian dry wit, this is easy.
3:32 pm – “Is Plantinga’s theism in any better position than these other fantasies?” He’s going to create a Plantinga-guided natural selection. It is hard to explain, but the argument basically mocks Plantinga. I am incensed. The response is a long string of insults, and little more. This is pathetic. I had more faith in Dennett. He is just making the Flying Spaghetti Monster argument and getting laughs from real, intolerant jerks. It is going on and on. Sigh. I wanted this to be interesting! Dennett does not understand what a disservice he does his cause by not taking his smartest opponents seriously. He will lose thoughtful acolytes as a result.
3:38 pm – Now he moves to assess Plantinga’s claim that random mutation is not incompatible with theism. He then moves to the third claim that Plantinga asserts that Dennett agrees with but is concerned to mock.
3:40 pm – We are at 43%. Dennett continues to insult. I wonder if any Christian philosophers will go after Dennett. If they respond with firm, but kind replies, they will expose Dennett’s rudeness effectively. Dennett has made himself extremely vulnerable because he is mocking Plantinga, who is arguably one of the finest epistemologists of the last fifty years.
3:41 pm – Plantinga can’t champion Behe and Dennett is going to mock him. I thought so. Behe is a transparent concoction of fantasy, etc. Behe looks like a theologian without naturalism. Dennett claims that Plantinga’s denial of naturalism makes Behe looks worse. Dennett recounts Plantinga and Peter Van Inwagen’s invitation to debate Behe in 1997. He is seriously mocking not only Plantinga but Van Inwagen as well. He thought the Behe book was a joke and this made Plantinga and Van Inwagen look bad.
3:43 pm – Dennett is going after Plantinga by means of Behe. Dennett is now going after Plantinga’s view that he has the mental ability to make the relevant probabilistic judgment about the probabilities of the cells. Dennett thinks that he is making Plantinga look very, very bad. But this is far from clear. For those on the fence, they will likely think Dennett is being a serious jerk.
3:45 pm – Dennett is now attacking Behe. He has an interesting claim that the probability of trusting Behe’s probability judgment is quite low. This is a bit specious, given that Plantinga has other means of making the probability judgment. Again, all he needs to do is judge that the probability of cell complexity is higher on theism than naturalism. It appears that Dennett’s reply is that Plantinga has no justifiable method of making the relevant probability judgments. There’s a subtle implication that because Plantinga isn’t a scientist he should shut up.
3:48 pm – The room is quiet save some snickering, presumably by naturalists. Dennett has effectively made the discussion ideological. Even at most lowest estimation of Dennett, I never thought he would go so far.
3:49 pm – Dennett now goes after Plantinga’s argument that naturalism has a defeater. Finally! Dennett thinks the claim that probability that our faculties track the truth on naturalism is low is false. He thinks we can use reverse engineering to figure out how evolution tracks the truth. So far, this does not address Plantinga’s point but I am still open, though a bit upset by Dennett’s truly nasty comments.
3:50 pm – Evolution can design syntactic engines that track the truth. We need high reliability devices in the biosphere to evolve. Words can evolve and they can represent our reasons. Plantinga is talking about sensory faculties though. It is also still possible that even with the evolution of words we can still be substantially misled by the quality of our faculties.
3:52 pm – I have just realized that Dennett is taking far too long. The session is supposed to end in 8 minutes. Dennett argues that naturalism is an alternative religion. Dennett is ending with a joke. He is now going after the Christian fish. It is clear that something terrible is coming. Dennett tried to come up with an alternative to traditional Christian Ictus. He notes that it is an acronym and so he tries to come up with a latin acronym for Darwin. It translates as follows: “Destroy the author of things to discover the nature of the universe.” This was his last response. Basically, he is talking about murdering God. Dennett has revealed a deep wickedness in his character. I will never take him seriously as a philosopher again.
3:55 pm – Plantinga begins. He claims that he isn’t clear as to how what Dennett said bore on Plantinga’s claim. This is true Plantinga. He first asks what the argument is. He is unphased and was clearly prepared for this. He is exposing the point that Dennett only told stories and really didn’t make an argument against Plantinga’s claim. This is a wonderful way to reply. Ignore the profound insults that culminated in a suggestion that we kill God to understand the universe. Appear un-phased and focus on the philosophy. Dennett was classless. Plantinga is only focusing on the argument. A Goliath ad hominem attack is felled by the simple stone of careful analysis.
3:59 pm – It is not clear what the analogy is between God and Superman and other silly beings. He is just suggesting that there is no similarity between God and Superman, as Dennett claimed. Note that this strategy is very subtle. He is addressing the argument in simple terms and showing gradually that there was nothing to Dennett’s claims. Note that above I had trouble understanding Dennett’s arguments, but not Plantinga’s. I thought that was just me but now it is clear that Dennett built a house of cards.
4:01 pm – I am at 33%. I don’t know if I will make it. Plantinga has a different view about the Behe experience. He thought Behe held his own. Plantinga was disappointed with Dennett’s reply to Plantinga’s argument.
4:02 pm – Plantinga thinks Dennett didn’t mention the argument. Dennett interrupts and says he mentioned premise 1. Plantinga says, “Yes, Dennett did mention premise 1, and I am grateful for that.” The room erupted in laughter. I added my own guffaw. Dennett is collapsing and is clearly furious. It is clear that Dennett just didn’t make any arguments.
4:04 pm – Questions begin. The first question comes from the front. The guy stands. He is having trouble articulating his question. He argues that having truth-reliable faculties is selected for. This is an easy claim for Plantinga to strike down. Plantinga makes the reply that faculties are indeed adapative but that truth-tracking isn’t essential to adaptiveness.
4:08 pm – Question to Dennett about the Superman hypothesis. There are many smart Christians in the room who believe in God rather than Superman and doesn’t that make the difference? Dennett is making the claim that people maintain their faith without rational belief. He is insulting every Christian in the room by assuming that their beliefs can be explained away as irrational.
4:10 pm – Question about some debate at Baylor. The man is talking about his own talk and discussion with Behe. We should be suspicious of Behe’s intellectual quality, he claims. He is then going after the evolutionary argument against naturalism. He defends the view that the content of mental states is fixed by causation. I realize that the man is Michael Tooley, a famous secular philosopher. (Why did he spend his question telling a story about himself? How self-indulgent?) He thinks that the theory of mental state content shows that the probability of truth-tracking on naturalism is high. It is not clear to me why. Couldn’t causality lead to systematically false but adaptive beliefs? Plantinga makes this point.
4:13 pm – Dennett interrupts and argues to combat Plantinga’s wit. Plantinga doesn’t resist. Now Dennett is actually talking about the argument. But he still is not addressing the point. If a mental state ceases to track truth, then it won’t be adaptive, he claims.
4:15 pm – I have decided to try to ask a question but I didn’t have my hand up soon enough. I was going to try to press Dennett on the substance of Plantinga’s argument. The next question addresses the first premise and argues that it proves too much, that the probability of all naturalistic beliefs is low and that this is weird.
4:17 pm – Questions continue and they don’t address Plantinga’s argument. The last question concerns why we should think that the probability of naturalism is high. How does Dennett’s assign probabilities to metaphysical positions? That seems weird, the questioner notes. This is an interesting question.
4:21 pm – Dennett responds by arguing that we have an undercutting defeater from theism from the evolutionary scientific study of religion.
It is clear that most in the room are naturalists. But the questions were not acrimonious. Dennett was the only one who was mean. I don’t know how most people reacted to it. I have to admit that I think Dennett behaved like a serious jerk. I am extremely disappointed in his reply to Plantinga. It is clear that this is a man with serious character defects.
Post-script: It has been about ten minutes since the session ended. I spoke to Peter Van Inwagen about the talk and he said it was an expected performance and that while it was a clash of worldviews, it was an interesting clash in two styles of doing philosophy. Initially, I thought to myself, “Yeah, Plantinga thinks philosophy is about arguments; Dennett thinks it is about stories.” But on further reflection I realized that Van Inwagen had a point. Dennett believes that science can tell us many things about metaphysics and epistemology, that we work from science to these positions. Plantinga thinks of these matters rather differently.
On another note, I walked around and listened to various conversations (not eavesdropping really, just listening for loud reactions to the session). The Christian philosophers were particularly interesting. They were not upset, surprised or even moved. They were wholly unphased. They were so unphased that they weren’t even discussing the session. I was floored at Dennett’s behavior but they reacted as if Dennett’s hateful, childish behavior was to be expected. I thought they would be upset, but from what I can tell they simply expected Dennett to compare theistic belief to holocaust denial and to advocate murdering the Almighty. I guess I was wrong to expect more from him.
In my estimation, Plantinga won hands down because Dennett savagely mocked Plantinga rather than taking him seriously. Plantinga focused on the argument, and Dennett engaged in ridicule. It is safe to say that Dennett only made himself look bad along with those few nasty naturalists that were snickering at Plantinga. The Christians engaged in no analogous behavior. More engagements like this will only expand the ranks of Christian philosophers and increase the pace of academic philosophy’s desecularization.
I share much of your evaluation of the talks. There was a failure of engagement (on both sides) — though Dennett was especially unclear about things.
Additionally, I thought it was quite strange that both of them were content to provide such old arguments. Dennett quoted himself extensively. Plantinga’s paper consisted in the main of old material. I would have thought that in his case against naturalism (for example) Plantinga would have focused on defending/refining his argument against the objections that have been pitched against it since it first appeared lo those many years ago. So… the whole thing was something of a disappointment as philosophy — if not as drama.
I disagree about at least one thing:
I would have thought that the relevant question about the reliability of our beliefs, given that they are the result of mechanisms that issue from unguided natural selection is not whether it might be _possible_ that beliefs might be adaptive, but false. Presumably, everyone but a Davidsonian will accept the possibility of this. The relevant question is whether it is _likely_ that unguided evolution would have eventuated in beliefs that are both adaptive and true.
I went to the talk mostly because I figured the talk would come up on the blog. There were plenty of other PB folks there too. I got a seat in the front row, Moon grabbed some carpet, Almeida was in the second row behind me, and I’m sure Rhoda was there too. It was nice to see Zimmerman and O’Connor grab rug seats up front.
I knew about this talk because Dennett talked about it during a visit to NU. He said that the primary reason that he was doing the response was because he’d been criticized for not interacting with the opposition following the publication of Breaking the Spell. Unfortunately, our anonymous has got things right for the most part. I didnt’ feel like the room was particularly divided or tense. Plantinga and Dennett seemed professionally cordial, though cool to one another. There wasn’t anything new in what Plantinga said, and for the most part Dennett agreed with Plantinga. Dennett just thinks the G hypothesis is a fairytale, and because of that he simply can’t be bothered to take it seriously. I don’t think anyone who knows these men is surprised by how the talk went. I don’t think there is much point in scoring this as a debate. On the core issue of the topic they basically argree. As for the rest, they just talk past one another.
I agree that they were talking past each other and that nothing new was said or presented. I was disappointed in the whole thing, but I found myself ultimately most frustrated with Plantinga. I knew the direction Dennett was going to go and didn’t find it to be an unreasonable direction, so I was bothered that Plantinga didn’t appear the least interested to actually engage Dennett’s objections. Yes Dennett was being insulting, but the insults express an argument. Dennett didn’t engage Plantinga’s argument much because why refute an argument if you can show the argument to be irrelevant? I came away seeing the whole “debate” as Plantinga determined to when a battle while Dennett was interested in winning the war. I thought that ended up being exactly what happened.
If Plantinga can’t defend the relevance of the arguments he’s making for the whole discussion then what good is it to bother to make the argument. Everyone already knows that science is relevant to life. The philosophical commitments of science are as present in cancer research as evolutionary theory. Is Dennett really misrepresenting the project of scientific inquiry or are we Christians really unwilling to admit that the strictness of scientific method and practice makes us appear more like fideists by our own agendas to understand the universe?
This debate served more as a reminder of what exactly the atheists like Dennett have thrown the gauntlet down at. We can either admit to a kind of fideism and irrationality in our belief or we need to provide a defense of Christian belief (not theistic belief) as logically solid and rigorous as scientific law. Seriously, why is our God hypothesis logically better than all other God hypotheses and how and why does it differ with the others in its relationship with scientific inquiry? I can’t blame the atheists for their tactics if we’re not going to make a choice between offering a solid defense or admitting and being willful participants in a brand of fideism.
Another thing, “3:52… Dennett has revealed a deep wickedness in his character. I will never take him seriously as a philosopher again.” It bothers me when the “total depravity” of a person becomes reason not to engage them. What did you expect? Why do we what we do if we expect them to conform to some basic level of decency and morality before expressing Christ’s love to them? That doesn’t seem Christlike. Being in this field means engaging people where they’re at and as they are. We take them seriously as philosophers because we got into the field by taking people seriously. We can’t ignore what enables our witness (our being in the world of professional philosophy) because of a self-righteous standard.
Given the pessimistic meta-induction, or given the fact that we know that at least one of the two central theories in physics (relativity and quantum mechanics) is false (since the two are incompatible), I don’t think scientific standards of proof should be something for Christians to aspire to. We should aspire to something stronger. And the fact is that the Christian apologetic tradition does contain many very strong arguments.
By the way, I find it extremely sad that the author of this play-by-play believes it is true to say: “I am inclined towards Plantinga’s position over Dennett’s and were this to become well-known it could damage or destroy my career in analytic philosophy”. Either the author is right about this or not. If the author is right, then this says something really terrible about the profession. If the author is wrong, then it is still a very sad thing that the state of things is such as not to make the worry ridiculous. My own guess is that the author is wrong about this, but maybe that’s just my native optimism.
I didn’t experience anything like the drama described in the play by play. Dennett was edgy, sure, but funny, well-spoken, very articulate and, I think, sincere. Plantinga was amusing too, utterly clear, and right on point. His apparent austerity seemed (to me anyway) more like he wasn’t feeling all that well. I don’t know either of them at all, so it was quite an important moment personally.
“I prefer to remain anonymous for various reasons, in particular because I am inclined towards Plantinga’s position over Dennett’s and were this to become well-known it could damage or destroy my career in analytic philosophy. This is something I prefer not to put my family through.”
This statement is worrying. How plausible is it that openly being a theist could damage or destroy one’s career in philosophy? Or is the proposal that sympathy towards Plantinga in particular is problematic? I’m a graduate student in philosophy and a theist, and I should know how my religious beliefs could affect my career prospects.
Has this topic been addressed at this blog before?
Well,
It sounds more the case that Dennettâs offense is not yielding to the commenterâs implicit demands of Christian deference and privilege. The subconscious dialogue that goes on with these sorts is âthe non-Christian isnât one; canât act like one; and thus their default disposition is one of rudeness and unChristianly behavior” (i.e no ‘Grace’, no grace).
Unreasonably high standards of conduct are expected for the non-Christian and, often, unreasonably low standards of conduct are granted for the person whom our views are sympathetic with. Of course, this means any implied condescension or rudeness toward the non-Christian is merely the expression of biting, well-placed wit and only in a defensive, reactionary response to the non-Christianâs consistently offensive and pompous comments. There are no reasonable, scholarly objections made by the non-Christian: only rude, hand-waving dismissals and non-sequiturs in response to the Christianâs arguments, which, per usual, the non-Christian misunderstands and/or fails to see itâs seriousness and sophistication. Their “persecution complex” is turned up to ’11’; as the commenter seems to believe that secret, underground, anonymous blog-communications are necessary to prevent their family from being rounded up by the evil Atheist Einsatzgruppen of the APA.
Perhaps the commenter forgets that, though undoubtedly there were many esteemed members of Christian philosophical societies in the room, this was *not* a meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, or the Evangelical Theological Society; maybe the commenter expected Dennett to conduct himself as if he was at one of these meetings and completely failed to observe the tradition of kissing Plantingaâs ring before he spoke.
As for the last remark about the âde-secularizationâ of philosophy, this seems much more wishful thinking than reality. Methinks the commenter has been hanging around with the Lydia McGrews and Bill Craigs too much.
The Best Offense is Taking Offense
An anonymous account of an exchange between Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett is here at Prosblogion. After Dennett’s remarks, the author, who claims once to have been a “Dennettian,” had this to say: “Dennett has revealed a deep wickedness in…
Anon writes, “How plausible is it that openly being a theist could damage or destroy one’s career in philosophy? Or is the proposal that sympathy towards Plantinga in particular is problematic? I’m a graduate student in philosophy and a theist, and I should know how my religious beliefs could affect my career prospects.”
I have a personal friend, professor of -three- scientific disciplines at a major university and chair of a dept. He was effectively denied entry to a small but influential scientific fellows community because of his faith.
Yes, the bias is real. I wrote a blog post about it, here: http://www.microclesia.com/?p=324
I hope this is helpful to you.
I’ll admit, I’m sympathetic to both Dennett and Plantinga – they are both passionately engaged in the conversation on truth. I think anyone who remains this passionate about life, regardless of their conclusions and level of snark (behavior and opinion is always malleable) is someone I can respect and call my colleague in the quest.
I agree:
“I prefer to remain anonymous for various reasons, in particular because I am inclined towards Plantinga’s position over Dennett’s and were this to become well-known it could damage or destroy my career in analytic philosophy. This is something I prefer not to put my family through.”
To someone in UK this is incredible! Is it really like this in USA? Surely not. Paranoia here?
With the permission of Plantinga and Dennett, I recorded the whole thing on my iPod. As soon as I can get the thing online, you can listen it yourself.
The problem is that I’m not a tech guy. So in order to do this, I need some help. The problems are:
1) The recording includes the winding of the engine of the iPod. If this noise can be reduced/eliminated, that would be preferable.
2) Plantinga did not speak as loudly as Dennett; so the parts where Plantinga speaks need to have the volume raised a bit.
3) The file is just over 1 GB large. I have no idea how to transfer this file online (where would I send it?) or how to send to anyone by email. My Gmail account doesn’t have the space for it.
So if someone can help me with these things, I wouldn’t mind posting the whole thing here. You can email me at my Western Michigan account. (Please post a reply to my comments here saying that you are working with me to get this online so that my email does not have a dozen responses).
James Gibson
james.a.gibson@wmich.edu
Idris,
“Plantinga’s paper consisted in the main of old material. I would have thought that in his case against naturalism (for example) Plantinga would have focused on defending/refining his argument against the objections that have been pitched against it since it first appeared lo those many years ago. So… the whole thing was something of a disappointment as philosophy — if not as drama.”
I think some people may share your impression, and I went in expecting the same ol’, but I was actually surprised that there was quite a bit of new material (and I’ve been following Plantinga’s stuff for years). For example, I’ve never seen Plantinga’s arguments that evolution combined with other plausible theses (facts about wastefulness or the longevity of evil) do not provide one reason to disbelieve in God. These I found interesting. I’m pretty sure this material is not in print, and I’ve never heard it in a lecture (though it’s more likely to be contained in one of his recent lectures).
Also, I talked with Omar Mirza (a specialist on EAAN) afterwards, and we discussed how Plantinga’s defense of EAAN, specifically of premise 1, is significantly different from his older ways of defending it. The new defense spends more time developing aspects of the argument as it relates to philosophy of mind. This is at least not old; the defense of premise 1 is far more developed than when the argument came out in Warrant and Proper Function (1993), and even Naturalism Defeated (2001?). I think it’s most like his presentation in Knowledge of God (w/Michael Tooley) (2008), which is a very recent book which only came out last summer.
So I’m surprised that that’s the impression you had of the talk. Were you there or is that the impression you got from my friend’s “account”?
Blake,
“Dennett didn’t engage Plantinga’s argument much because why refute an argument if you can show the argument to be irrelevant?”
“If Plantinga can’t defend the relevance of the arguments he’s making for the whole discussion then what good is it to bother to make the argument.”
I’m curious where Dennett successfully showed that Plantinga’s arguments were irrelevant. Which arguments are you referring to? Which argument should Plantinga have not bothered making? For example, Plantinga presented three (probably of the most) plausible ways one might argue from evolution combined with other theses to the conclusion that God does not exist. He then argued that none of these these arguments make it plausible that God does not exist. Did Dennett show that this argument was irrelevant? Plantinga argues that naturalism is self-defeating. Whether or not it’s a successful argument, is this irrelevant? I don’t think so, but maybe you can clarify.
And irrelevant to what? (the common public? philosophical interest? having a good time?) What did Dennett show that Plantinga’s arguments were irrelevant to?
As far as the bias against theism goes, the commentator may be worried about her/his career not because of the APA in general but because of specifics of her/his position.
For instance, he/she may be worried about the damage done from posting this account on the internet, say if it were to be worked-over and commented on by Leiter, et al.
She/he may be at a prominent university with a high concentration of ardently secular people.
Or he/she may work in a less tolerant part of philosophy like applied ethics or global justice rather than metaphysics and epistemology.
Or maybe any of these. I don’t think there’s a general worry in philosophy this severe but the specifics of the commentator’s situation may make things much worse.
“I was bothered that Plantinga didn’t appear the least interested to actually engage Dennett’s objections.”
I think we disagree. Most of Dennett’s objections just didn’t touch Plantinga’s arguments. So why should Plantinga respond to them? (Recall the discussion about EAAN, where Dennett attacks something like premise 1 and not the actual premise 1. That was the closest Dennett actually got to attacking a premise in an argument.)
I don’t think there was a single argument Plantinga gave that Dennett objected to by way of actually attacking the argument: either by attacking the truth of a premise or arguing that the conclusion doesn’t properly follow from the premises.
“Judas,”
Dennett, like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, & other New Atheists tend to ridicule their opponents, rather than interact seriously with their arguments.(for example, Dawkins practially laughs off the ontological argument.)
I don’t believe that intellectual Christians mind so much the ridicule, as they do the fact that it really is an aversion to seriously interacting with the argument being presented.
And frankly, your comment is also dripping with exaggeration.
I think it’s important to separate the men form their arguments. A really fine man can have a flawed argument, and a real jerk can have a strong argument.
One central issue is that “God did it” is logically compatible with any claim not contradicted by the attributes ascribed to God. So to say that evolution by natural selsection is compatible with theism doesn’t really say much. Being logically possible is merely the least requirement, the first and lowest hurdle, for a claim about the world to be convincing.
Because “theism” is such a broad concept, it can and has survived the scientific refutation of any number of more specific religious claims. “Theistic belief” may not be incompatible with contemporary evolutionary theory, but many of the specific claims made by theists over the ages indeed are incompatible with evolutionary theory. Thus, exactly what is included in the web of claims that comprise “theistic belief” is at issue.
One of the notions that caught my attention is the notion that something can be “more likely” on theism than on naturalism. This strikes me as meaningless. How is it possible to judge the “likelihood” or probability of theism ot theistic intervention?
jwarner,
I recommend Plantinga’s chapters on probability in Warrant and Proper Function if you’d like a better understanding of both traditional theories of probability and what Plantinga means by probability. Also, in the presentation, Plantinga describes a little of what he means by ‘compatibility’, and he also argues that facts about evolution don’t give any reason to think that theistic belief is irrational or unwarranted. See the second paragraph of my 9:41am comment from earlier today.
Update: I have been contacted about fixing the file for it to be uploaded. Most likely, the file will be available (the latest) by mid next week. Thanks again to those who contacted me. -JG
“How plausible is it that openly being a theist could damage or destroy one’s career in philosophy? Or is the proposal that sympathy towards Plantinga in particular is problematic?”
I am a Christian, and I wrote my master’s thesis at a secular university on Plantinga’s epistemology. Half of my committee members were theists, half were not. Not once during my time as a graduate student did I ever feel that my career as a philosopher was threatened due to my theism or my sympathy with Plantinga. I have no idea why anyone would make this statement.
Andrew, you write,
. . . Most of Dennett’s objections just didn’t touch Plantinga’s arguments. So why should Plantinga respond to them? (Recall the discussion about EAAN, where Dennett attacks something like premise 1 and not the actual premise 1. That was the closest Dennett actually got to attacking a premise in an argument
That seems overstated to me. Dennett’s argument went this way, didn’t it? Lot’s of hypotheses are consistent with evolutionary theory (theism, supermanism, etc.), but that does not give us any reason to modify the current scientific views about evolution. It gives us no reason to add to evolutionary theory facts about superman’s gene modifications or God’s directorship or what have you. That does engage Plantinga’s argument, as far as I can see. Plantinga’s response was that his hypothesis differs from the superman hypothesis, since there is more evidence for it. But I’m sure that Dennett would find that tendentious. In any case, Dennett did engage Plantinga, even if you take Dennett’s comments to be unconvicing or flawed in some way.
Mike,
mmm… I may be overstating. I did just hear the presentation once, so if anything, I retract the degree of confidence I may have given off in that previous comment.
You say, “Lot’s of hypotheses are consistent with evolutionary theory (theism, supermanism, etc.), but that does not give us any reason to modify the current scientific views about evolution. It gives us no reason to add to evolutionary theory facts about superman’s gene modifications or God’s directorship or what have you.”
But I don’t think Plantinga was arguing that we have reason to modify current scientific views. He also wasn’t trying to give reason to think we should add to evolutionary theory facts about anything. If he was arguing for that, then Dennett did engage his argument, but I don’t think he was arguing for that.
Perhaps we are thinking differently about what he was arguing for. So I took him to be arguing for those 5 or 6 theses stated in his abstract. He had arguments for those theses, what I’ll call his main arguments, and I didn’t see Dennett significantly objecting to the main arguments (where, S significantly objects to an argument only if (if the objection is correct or justified, then either the premises are seen to be unjustified or false, or the premises are seen to not support their conclusion)). Plantinga may have made other comments and side arguments that Dennett attacked, but I don’t consider those comments to be part of Plantinga’s main arguments, just tertiary add-ons.
For example, Plantinga made a brief, side comment saying things favorable about Michael Behe’s work, and Dennett spent significant time attacking THAT comment. But I don’t take that as an attack on any of Plantinga’s main arguments, much less a significant objection to them. Now Plantinga DID respond to that comment about Behe, saying that he didn’t remember things as Dennett remembered them, but I found that whole discussion to be tertiary and not very relevant to the main arguments. Nothing in Plantinga’s main arguments hinged on whether Behe’s a great scientist or not. Hopefully, these two paragraphs help clarify what I meant previously.
Btw, it was good to see you in person, even if just to shake hands! Physical presence, for me, is a little more enjoyable than blogging w/a person.
Anonymous, it sounds like you were at a pretty unusual department if your committee was half theist! That’s not really analogous to the situation the poster seems to be in.
Dean Zimmerman made some comments in the previous post “Graduate Programs Strong in Philosophy of Religion” that is relevant to discussion here. He writes, “I’m happy to report that each of the top three schools on the PGR has had numerous un-closeted Christian grad students during recent years, and I’ve never heard any of them complain that their department was a hostile environment for religious people. And, knowing most of the faculty at these places pretty well, I can understand why; they constitute a pretty tolerant, broad-minded bunch, all things considered.”
Andrew,
Plantinga wasn’t just arguing for some theses he hoped to get intellectual assent to. Plantinga (I hope) is arguing for something because he perceives an imbalance or problem with some group of people’s attitudes towards theism. Plantinga is arguing for action to be taken, not for mere intellectual assent that doesn’t change anything. The point of making an argument in the context of two opposing views is to demonstrate the relevance and validity of a position so that change occurs. If you “don’t think Plantinga was arguing that we have reason to modify current scientific views” or “He also wasn’t trying to give reason to think we should add to evolutionary theory facts about anything” then what was the value of the argument if it didn’t intend to change anything?
I think a proper response to Dennett et al can go two directions as I alluded to in my earlier post. The first direction is admitting to a kind of fideism as an acknowledgement that we can’t offer an argument for theistic belief in science to the satisfaction of the scientific community.
The other direction we could take is a systematic defense of the Christian faith. We can’t keep talking about theism because it opens up too easily to the “which God hypothesis” critique that Dennett leveled in his Supermanism illustration. If we want a place at the table we need to show that some core set of beliefs, more complicated than theism, has legitimate insight into scientific pursuits that the other God hypotheses do not have and philosophical naturalism does not have.
I doubt that the second direction can produce much fruit, so I think it would be more worthwhile for Christian philosophers (at least those interested in connecting faith and philosophy) to explore the limits of Christian experience. What are the limits of reason? What is the place of our own irrationality in the world? What is absurd about the world? How far can and does reason get us in coming to faith? Where and when can/does the “leap of faith” occur? How is such a leap qualitatively and quantitatively different from having “faith” in other philosophies and theologies? Where does faith get us when we have taken that leap? What does the territory look like from this new perspective? How do we communicate with those who have not yet leapt what the difference is after the leap? How do we communicate/argue why the leap should be taken? I think this is the closest we can come to overcoming the “which GOd hypothesis” critique. I don’t think theistic ID can earn a spot at the table of serious scientific discussion, but if we could answer these questions we could at least draw the line in the sand with regard to our philosophical relation to other religions and faiths.
It seems that there really is a lot of variability from institution to institution in the friendliness towards Christianity. After I wrote my comment in this thread, I got an email from a well-known philosopher at a highly ranked secular institution that while at some point he/she might have agreed with my hope that there was nothing for a Christian to fear, given his/her present institutional experience, he/she no longer agrees.
When I was a grad student at Pitt, I had no problems, with one minor exception (two tenured faculty members politely refused to be Second Reader because of a concern with the theistic conclusions).
I think there are enough anecdotes to show that things do depend a lot on the particular Department and on the particular theist. Thus, on reflection, I find it quite credible that the author does have something to fear in his/her institutional context. But at the same time, just as some Departments may be uncollegial towards theists, some Departments are uncollegial simpliciter. Like people, Departments come in all kinds: some are really nice, some are really nasty, some are bigoted in one way, others in another. And we shouldn’t generalize from merely anecdotal data, lest the dire claims be self-fulfilling (obviously, if a Christian scholar is paranoid, she will not be respected by colleagues).
I took Plantinga to be defending the position that alleged random mutation in evolutionary theory is consistent with God directing such changes. I’m sure he was defending such a view. I took Dennett to be agreeing with that and saying so what, it is also consistent with supermanism. Since we take evolution + supermanism to be at least redundant, we ought to take evolution + theism to be so as well. All Plantinga said in reply to this, as I recall, is that supermanism is a silly view. Which of course it is. But Dennett would say that same about theism. This is why I took Dennett to be at least engaging Plantinga, even if not convincingly or persuasively.
What Dennett ought to have asked is how God manages to direct nature toward his goals and make it all look random! I’ve no doubt that the appearence of randomness can be artificially generated and I have no doubt that God can direct nature toward his goals. What I doubt is that he can do both.
Anyway, it was good to meet you as well (or, to meet you for the second time, I guess).
For those who are interested, here is a recording of the exchange (50 mb):
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WN2X9G6W
Mike,
You wrote: “What Dennett ought to have asked is how God manages to direct nature toward his goals and make it all look random! I’ve no doubt that the appearence of randomness can be artificially generated and I have no doubt that God can direct nature toward his goals. What I doubt is that he can do both.”
Why can’t God direct nature to his goals and make it look random? After all, couldn’t many of his goals be ones we are highly surprised to find that he had? And if so, then wouldn’t it look as if much of the evolutionary process had no point when it fact it had a point to which it was directed?
Why can’t God direct nature to his goals and make it look random? After all, couldn’t many of his goals be ones we are highly surprised to find that he had? And if so, then wouldn’t it look as if much of the evolutionary process had no point when it fact it had a point to which it was directed?
Hi Robert,
Probably I wasn’t clear. Look, here’s the idea: Suppose I have a deck of cards and my goal is to produce pairs. It is very difficult to draw pairs and make it look random. In fact, it can’t be done with any regularity. So, God’s goals have to be such that it’s possible to make the achievement of those goals look like the product of random activity. This precludes lots of sequences of events. It precludes every sequence that even mildly indicates non-chancy goal-direction. My bet is most sequences cannot be made to look random over a finite amount of time. So, say I, the fact that mutation looks random is very strong evidence that it is not being guided to some interesting purpose. Probably the achievement of any interesting divine purpose would involve a sequence of events that does not quite appear random.
I’m curious. Does Plantinga ever discuss the work of Simon Conway Morris on evolutionary convergence? The Conway Morris view provides one obvious strategy for trying to make the chancy elements of evolutionary biology compatible with the sort of directedness Plantinga seems to want to capture. Or is Plantinga’s strategy to argue for the compatibility of theism with the version of evolutionary biology seemingly most hostile to it?
(I recommend John Beatty’s work on whether Conway Morris is right. See his “The Evolutionary Contingency Thesis”, “Replaying Life’s Tape”, and “Chance Variation and Evolutionary Contingency: Darwin, Simpson, The Simpsons and Gould”).
Hi Mike,
Wow, that’s a very interesting claim, one I’ve never thought of before. That said, I still don’t buy it. My main problem (or perhaps it’s just a stumbling block) is that if God has lots of goals, many of which we could never guess, it could be that if we knew these goals, the mutational paths of evolution wouldn’t look random at all.
For instance, there’s a concept biologists (or perhaps just philosophers of biology) use called “morph space”. Morph space, as I understand it, delimits the range of possible forms and adaptations organisms can take on. For instance, given the environments available on earth, some biologists think it was only a matter of time before wings developed. Indeed, the fact that birds and bats, animals that both have very different evolutionary histories, both developed wings indicated that it’s a position in the morph space that we’re likely to arrive at, sooner or later. Perhaps if we knew all the positions available in morph space we’d see that the kind of changes we’ve seen we’re clearly leading to certain outcomes.
But I could just be talking out of my behind.
A more serious question than the question whether God could direct evolution to his goals and make it look random is whether that wouldn’t undercut evolutionary explanations. I have an extended argument that it would. (Al has in the past been friendly to this argument, though I think he has changed his mind since. And while I still endorse this part of the argument, I no longer endorse the overall conclusions of that paper of mine.)
To put the argument in a sound-bite, evolutionary explanations depend on randomness. If things merely appear random, we only have apparent stochastic explanations. If someone carefully and intentionally determines the outcome of every toss of a coin in such a way as to ensure that approximately 50% of them are heads, the correct explanation of why approximately 50% of them are heads is that they were intentionally determined to be so, and the statistical explanation is no longer applicable.
There are some really tough issues here about the nature of statistical explanation and the foundations of probability.
I’m curious,
If God has counterfactual knowledge of probabilistic states of affairs, couldn’t God simply choose one of those worlds that leads up to us (humans) through the process of random mutation? It probably does not matter either as to which world with random mutation is chosen.
I think Craig holds/is open to this view.
Furthermore, being an open theist, I don’t see why I couldn’t hold to this position since I am not claiming that there are true counterfactual propositions of freedom. Besides, when it comes to genuine randomness (unlike free choices), I don’t see why they would need to grounded.
“I prefer to remain anonymous for various reasons, in particular because I am inclined towards Plantinga’s position over Dennett’s and were this to become well-known it could damage or destroy my career in analytic philosophy.”
For real?
Thank you for this great exchange. Hopefully the audio will be up soon. On a side note, this line may be the funniest I’ve ever read on a philosophy blog:
” 2:35 pm – Plantinga begins to speak. He looks like Abraham Lincoln. Dennett looks like Santa Claus. Feel free to imagine these two as those characters.”
Jesse:
I don’t think middle knowledge solves the problem. See the paper I link to in my comment. But, yes, a number of people do think that middle knowledge solves the problem.
If God has counterfactual knowledge of probabilistic states of affairs, couldn’t God simply choose one of those worlds that leads up to us (humans) through the process of random mutation? It probably does not matter either as to which world with random mutation is chosen.
Middle knowledge compounds the problem, as far as I can see. The concession that there are true CCF’s limits the worlds that God can actualize. He can’t simply choose a world in which humans are produced; there might be no such feasible worlds. So now you’d have to assume that among the feasible worlds are ones in which the CCF’s holding for non-free indeterminate events are so arranged as to yield the kinds of beings that God wants actualized. Obviously, this won’t be true in many worlds. So God’s plans (say, to actualize humans) would have to fit what it is feasible for him to actualize in apparently random ways. The chances of that fit are low.
Mike:
I think that if Molinism is true, then it’s very likely for any given possible world that it is at least approximately feasible. What do I mean by that? I mean that if w is a possible world, then very likely there is a world w* that differs from w only very insignificantly (modulo questions of the exact identity of individuals and kinds) but which is feasible.
Why do I think this? It is because I think (cf. Dean Zimmerman’s anti-Molinist argument) that insignificant variation in conditions is going to produce enough variation that, most likely, there will be enough Molinist conditionals to get one very close to where one wants to be.
I think that if Molinism is true, then it’s very likely for any given possible world that it is at least approximately feasible.
I see no reason at all to believe this, and I wonder why you believe it. To offer one simple reason why I do not believe this, take any CFF on which I freely do A under conditions T. There are countless other unactualizable worlds in which I act in countlessly different (probably denumberably many different) ways from the way I actually act in T. Exactly none of those worlds is actualizable. The only way to get them actualizable is to take the CFF’s to be might counterfactuals. And notice that I’ve considered just one CFF!! So I’m sure no where near every world would be actualizable under Molinism.
Hey all,
If this conversation isn’t too worn out, and someone is willing to help me out here, I was wondering what you guys make of the actual exchange itself.
My understanding of what was happening was something like this: Dennett seemed to be arguing that what is most important and perhaps certain is evolution (perhaps that is too broad for how he might describe it). The best off a religious view can get is to be compatible with evolutionary principles, and what have you. But that still leaves you with the question of which religion? If evolution is the really important belief, then religious belief seems arbitrary and unnecessary, after all, it only stems from evolution.
Plantinga I think is saying that there is no essential difference that makes religious belief and evolution mutually exclusive, so believers have free reign. Rather, there is a good argument against Naturalism and Evolution (at least Plantinga thinks so).
So at best it seemed like a clash of worldviews. But that still leaves me with two questions. Though he rejects how Dennett got there, can Plantinga give a reason to suppose that Christian theism should be preferred, especially when doing science? And should we take Dennett’s claim that we can reverse engineer to find “truth trackers” seriously?
Sorry about the confusion, but I’m an undergrad. Thanks for the help in advance.
John
PS- I thought this was supposed to be a debate about science, I was hoping for something like realism/antirealism debate, or something on theory and observation.
Hi John,
What Plantinga endeavored to argue is found in his abstract, which states the following:
“Our question: are science and religion compatible? Many points of conflict have been suggested; Iâll restrict myself to a cluster of issues having to do with evolution. Iâll argue (1) that contemporary evolutionary theory is not incompatible with theistic belief, (2) that the main antitheistic arguments involving evolution together with other premises also fail, (3) that even if current science, evolutionary or otherwise, were incompatible with theistic belief, it wouldnât follow that theistic belief is irrational or unwarranted or in any other kind of trouble, (4) that naturalism, the thought that there is no such thing as the God of theistic religion or anything like him, is an essential element in the naturalistic worldview, which is a sort of quasi-religion in the sense that it plays some of the most important roles of religion; and that the naturalistic worldview is in fact incompatible with evolution. Hence there is a science/religion (or science/quasi-religion) conflict, all right, but it is a conflict between naturalism and science, not theistic religion and science.”
(This is found in the program here: http://www.apaonline.org/divisions/central/2009sympabstracts.aspx .)
Since Plantinga was the main presenter and Dennett was just the commentator, Dennett’s main job was to gives reasons for rejecting Plantinga’s argument for his theses. (On the side, describing the exchange as a ‘debate’ can be misleading (not that you were). The way philosophical presentations go is that the main presenter presents, and the commentator is supposed to stick mostly to critiquing the main presenter’s presentation. It is not the commentator’s job to advance his own theses independent of the main presenter’s presentation.)
I think that (1) is pretty obvious. What was interesting was Plantinga’s arguments for (2) and (3). Plantinga was also using ‘compatible’ in a loose sense, probably where p and q are incompatible if holding p gives one a strong reason to give up q. Also, what also became clear during the talk was that everything Plantinga says about theism could be applied to Christian theism.
Plantinga thinks that theistic belief can be properly basic, i.e., it can be rational and warranted without any evidence backing it up. An intro to his argument is here: http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth02.html . For a full scale defense that Christian belief can be properly basic, you want to check out his book Warranted Christian belief.
The audio file skips throughout. Is anyone else experiencing this? On my end it is unlistenable.
Here is an mp3 of the entire Plantinga and Dennett session, with the question/answer period included (50 mb):
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WN2X9G6W
(I tried to post this earlier yesterday; is there any reason that it was rejected by the forum moderator?)
Stephen, I had the same trouble, but saving it to your computer seems to do the trick. Sometimes just streaming audio can be tricky.
Plato,
It’s been up there and it’s still up there now. Sometimes, it takes a bit of time for me to get around to approving comments.
Josh, unfortunately, I have saved it to my computer and am still experiencing the skipping. Perhaps it is because I run Linux? It isn’t a big deal. I am just curious to judge for myself anon.’s reactions to Dennet. As a Calvin College graduate, I am sympathetic to just about anything Uncle Al Plantinga puts out. Reading this account, accordingly, got a rise out of me. I am, however, interested in hearing the debate in order to have a more objective response (certainly, what I have now could hardly qualify either for objective, or for a response, considering that all I know the exchange is a (pseudo) transcript). Either way, if anyone has any suggestions, I am open to them. Cheers
Alexander Pruss: “given the fact that we know that at least one of the two central theories in physics (relativity and quantum mechanics) is false” That is an amazing statement. Did you tell the physics community? Who is “we”? Or perhaps, rather than “false” you meant “seemingly incompatible”?
Mike:
“take any CFF on which I freely do A under conditions T. There are countless other unactualizable worlds in which I act in countlessly different (probably denumberably many different) ways from the way I actually act in T. Exactly none of those worlds is actualizable.”
There is an infinity of conditions extremeley close to T, say T1, T2, T3, …. Unless one has a probability system on which there are tight correlations between CFFs with similar antecedents, and we have no reason to believe in such tight correlations (remember, after all, that if you rewind the clock, you’re likely to get a different result), it is very unlike that you freely do A under T1, and freely do A under T2, and …. So, if God doesn’t want you to do A, he just chooses that condition, from the set of extremely close conditions, which gives the right answer.
Mike:
Or here’s another version, assuming a haecceitism on which for any individual and any role in the world that that individual fulfills, there are infinitely many possible individuals that could have fulfilled that exact same role. So, God may not be able to get you to do A under T. But it is extraordinarily unlikely that all of the infinitely many possible individuals who could be in T have the same CFF holding for them as you do. So God can just choose to create the one that will give the right answer.
So, here’s how God can get whatever evolutionary history he wants, or at least pretty close to it. Fix the initial state S0 of our universe. Let H be the history God wants. Suppose that H doesn’t include any information on the numerical identities of the entities. God wants, let us say, a human-like species, but he doesn’t care about the particular individuals. (This might be hard to reconcile with predestination, though.) Plausibly, there is some non-zero probability that the following CFF is true: Were S0 to occur, H or some history very close to it would eventuate. Now, consider an infinite sequence of S0, S1, S2, … of possible initial states that are exactly alike but differ in the numerical identities of the entities involved. Or maybe just an infinite sequence of possible initial states that differ in tiny ways from one another, where these differences are tiny enough that the probability of something close H eventuating is roughly the same for each of them. Well, then, given this infinite sequence, it is extremely likely that one of these states will be such that the CFF Si → H-or-something-very-much-like-it holds. And then God just eventuates that one.
it is very unlike that you freely do A under T1, and freely do A under T2, and …. So, if God doesn’t want you to do A, he just chooses that condition, from the set of extremely close conditions, which gives the right answer.
This is not at all the question. The question is whether, assuming Molinism, it’s likely that God can actualize every world. I was answering that in the negative. Perhaps he can actualize a world in which I do ~A, given some other T (I’m not certain about that, but fine), but that is just irrelevant to whether he can actualize every possible world under Molinism. It seems pretty clear that he can’t actualize every possible world under that assumption. I’d say it is not even close.
Mike:
On Molinism, God can’t actualize every possible world. But for any possible world, there is probably a world very much like that world, though perhaps with different individuals filling the roles, which God can actualize. And that’s perhaps good enough (except for predestination).
Mark:
The physics community knows that quantum mechanics and relativity theory are incompatible. They by and large (leaving aside, perhaps, those who play with non-classical logic as a solution to the measurement problem) also know that if two propositions are incompatible, at least one of them is false.
Now, it may well be that there is something like quantum mechanics that is compatible with relativity theory, or that quantum mechanics is compatible with something like relativity theory, or at least that something like quantum mechanics is compatible with something like relativity theory. That’s all open. But a false proposition is no less false for having a true neighbor.
I could be totally wrong here,
but in support of Alexander Pruss’s claim that God (given counterfactual knowledge of physical states of affairs) could actualize a world very much like that one which he desires…
Couldn’t we also say that if a trope theory of properties is correct, then God could practically actualize any probabilistic state of affairs? In other words, suppose God desires for a genetic mutation to occur for a particular organism (for the greater purpose of leading ultimately to us) but that given conditions C, this probabilistic mutation would not occur. But what if this organism had (under trope theory) different microphysical properties that were indistinguishable?
Also, even if we take a universals theory of properties and assume a substance-attribute theory, couldn’t we also hypothesize that microphyiscal objects have thisness? (and thus, that some of these objects will yield the right result)
I attended the talk with my older brother. I am an atheist-leaning agnostic who just got my Phd; he is a practicing Christian who was a philosophy major at a top school. We talked for a while afterwards and both agreed that the talk as a whole was more entertainment than substantive debate–though what high-quality entertainment it was! The first problem was that Plantinga and Dennett are mismatched. Plantinga gives some very technical arguments. Dennett responds with some very funny and more broadly appealing reductios; but the point isn’t really to respond to the details of Plantinga’s arguments, or to contribute something to the discussion, but rather to advocate for his more popular views. So they came off like two presidential candidates talking to their bases but not to each other. Whatever the debate was, it wasn’t a philosophical one. Or if it was, it was more like Socrates v. Callicles than Socrates v. Theaetetus. The second problem was that both Plantinga and Dennett blended all sorts of arguments together over the course of 90 minutes. They didn’t go into detail about any single argument–the exact opposite of how I teach my students to write their 200-level phil. of religion papers. If you weren’t there and want to get an idea of what it was like, go to Youtube and watch Bill O’Reilly debate Richard Dawkins on God’s existence. Highly entertaining, but again, the opposite of what counts as philosophy!
I think Dennett is mostly to blame for lowering the level of discourse. But Plantinga shares some of the burden too. He could have talked about one or two arguments at most in the detail that they deserved, rather than rushing along from one point to the next in the effort to cram in as many provocative talking points as possible. Also, mentioning Behe was just irresponsible of him, in my opinion.
Anyway, I’m very glad to have attended, as was my brother. It was definitely something to see! Maybe it will go down as our century’s version of Copleston/Russell.
Being an atheist, I’m sure that my recollection of the “debate” is somewhat biased. But the report from your friend here is time-wastingly biased. A couple examples come to mind:
1. Notice that the first mention of Dennett’s Superman case isn’t until Plantinga responds to it. Dennett was granting Plantinga’s point that evolutionary biology is not incompatible with theism. But he was also saying: So what? All sorts of false propositions are compatible with evolutionary biology (e.g. that Superman, not God, instigated and guided the whole process). Dennett made the explicit challenge to Plantinga here (which was never met) to tell him why the theism story is any better than the Superman one
2. Read this: “3:59 pm – It is not clear what the analogy is between God and Superman and other silly beings. He is just suggesting that there is no similarity between God and Superman, as Dennett claimed. Note that this strategy is very subtle. He is addressing the argument in simple terms and showing gradually that there was nothing to Dennett’s claims. Note that above I had trouble understanding Dennett’s arguments, but not Plantinga’s. I thought that was just me but now it is clear that Dennett built a house of cards.”
Actually, the “subtle strategy” Plantinga adopted was to dodge the issue by changing Dennett’s example. He did not respond to the Superman case, but changed it so that we had Dennett himself as the catalyst and guide for natural selection. Then, he said, clearly this is impossible since no man can live that long. He never said why theism was any better a hypothesis than Superman.
3. And this: 4:08 pm – “Question to Dennett about the Superman hypothesis. There are many smart Christians in the room who believe in God rather than Superman and doesn’t that make the difference? Dennett is making the claim that people maintain their faith without rational belief. He is insulting every Christian in the room by assuming that their beliefs can be explained away as irrational.”
While I’m sure Dennett would agree that Christian belief is irrational, this was not his response. His response was this: The fact that there are or have been a number of people who believe in God has no bearing on the veracity, plausibility, or rationality of theism. He also said the fact that so many people believed in Thor or Zeus in the past, is completely irrelevant to the truth, plausibility, or rationality of those beliefs. And he’s right.
4. Throughout his “report,” your friend fails to report Dennett’s arguments and replaces them with (roughly) ‘Dennett insults Plantinga and Christians’. Interestingly enough, it’s exactly this sort of willful ignorance and misreport upon which organized religions thrive.
5. “Friends, if you can identify me, I request that you keep my identity secret. I am sharing my thoughts as a service to the philosophical community and all those who have an interest in such debates. But I prefer not to suffer at the hands of my ardently secular colleagues…”
A service? What service was done by mangling the truth and presenting your distortions as if they were the case? I highly doubt your colleagues would hold your theism against you. They might, however, be disappointed by your letting it interfere with thinking neutrally, objectively, and rationally. That, after all, is contrary to the philosophical enterprise, secular or not. So, I take solace in the fact that your anonymity is aimed at avoiding responsibility for your dishonesty. But you know you’ve done this, and (if you’re right about a certain thing) so does God.
May the force be with you.
Your coverage was thorough, although your bias becomes clearer as your transcription goes on. You also place too much emphasis on rudeness as being relevant to the truth of an argument. Many religious people hold this stance and I believe that it is incompatible with good philosophy.
Thank you for your service.
Why does Dennett use the superman argument, when there is good scientific evidence that something different is going on when it comes to humans and religion (via Scott Atran’s work)?
Forget his rudeness, that can be excused. I’m concerned about Dennett’s intellectual honesty.
anyone else worried?
I think it’s very natural for people to assume that if someone had a really good argument, she would just make the argument as clearly and straightforwardly as she could, and without any rudeness, since that would maximize the impact of the argument. If I can say “Positivism is unverifiable; if positivism is true, then only veriable doctrines are true; therefore, if positivism is true, it is not true; therefore, positivism is not true”, I will weaken my case against positivism by being rude in addition to the argument.
I suspect that outside of the academic world, when someone is being rude, it is extremely unlikely that they are in the process of giving good reasoned arguments. So outside of the academic world, the assumption is a pretty good one, and it allows us to save some time when deciding whom to pay attention to. On the other hand, when we’re dealing with people we already know to be smart philosophers, the assumption is no longer as applicable, since there is a good chance that even their insults are well argued (“Either you are a ***!%*(( or a !!@#**(@. You’re not a ***!%*((. So you must be a !!@#**(@.” 🙂
Hey all,
Some of the comments (some which I’ve deleted) are getting a little more mean-spirited, and, in my opinion, are not contributing to the discussion in a helpful way. I guess since I’m monitoring this specific post, my opinion is what counts. So please be more cordial and focus on advancing the discussion.
I don’t know what Plantinga’s goal was in this talk. If it was simply to argue that theism and evolution are compatible, great. Why would anyone care that this is so? Couldn’t anyone with half a brain figure this out? Look, if God can do anything – which he can if standard Christian doctrine is correct -then he can put in randomization via mutation and this and that and the world would be just as this one is. I completely agree.
What I would want – and what I am guessing that Dennett should (if he didn’t) have said – is some independent reason for thinking theism is true. Just because it is compatible with the way things are, doesn’t mean it is possible, but this point has already been made many times in the comments above.
It sounds like the cell-probability argument is where all the action is. I find this argument interesting, but I have no clue how it works. Dennett should (and may have for all the comments say above) have focused his attention on only those independently motivated pro-theism arguments and should have (and seems to have) just dismissed the compatibility arguments as trivial.
I want to know what is true, not simply what theories are compatible with what. Consistency is cheap.
Hi Josh,
See my commments at February 24, 2009 3:10 PM and
February 25, 2009 12:44 PM for Plantinga’s goal (his abstract) and why ‘compatibility’ is not cheap.
To the “so what” question: Isn’t Plantinga’s main thesis that theism is not incompatible with science–in this case evolutionary biology? If so, then he’s proved his thesis. That’s what. He isn’t arguing for theism here. Its not like the compatibility is supposed to be evidence for theism. The point is rather that science is not evidence against theism. If the superman hypothesis is compatible with evolution, too, then great. Its not refuted by science either.
right, and what I found interesting were Plantinga’s responses to arguments that purport to show that evolution plus other plausible premises don’t make theism unlikely, irrational, unwarranted, or whatever (i believe his second or third thesis). I think the ‘compatibility’ language is throwing people off because they’re thinking he is talking about ‘logical compatibility’, when he made clear at the beginning of the talk that he was meaning it in a weaker sense. We sometimes use ‘compatibility’ this way in ordinary language.
“To the “so what” question: Isn’t Plantinga’s main thesis that theism is not incompatible with science–in this case evolutionary biology? If so, then he’s proved his thesis. That’s what. He isn’t arguing for theism here. Its not like the compatibility is supposed to be evidence for theism. The point is rather that science is not evidence against theism.”
This doesn’t follow. If I come home from work and see that our car isn’t in the driveway, the absence of the car is evidence that my wife isn’t home (our son, thank goodness, doesn’t yet drive). Yet the absence of the car is perfectly compatible (and not just logically) with my wife being home. Perhaps it was stolen, or borrowed by a friend.
What about P’s claim #4 that “naturalism, the thought that there is no such thing as the God of theistic religion or anything like him, is an essential element in the naturalistic worldview, which is a sort of quasi-religion in the sense that it plays some of the most important roles of religion”?
This appears to define naturalism as atheism (an odd choice of language, it seems to me), whereas the claim that “naturalism is an essential element in the naturalistic worldview” seems necessarily true, and therefore lacking in content. Then what of the claim that naturalism is a quasi-religion because it serves some of the same roles as religion? This claim is either vacuous as well, or interesting only becaues of how it was fleshed out?
This thesis seems to have received little attention above, and since I missed the conference I’d be interested in hearing either what P. and D. said, or what other readers think.
What a curious passage! ->
“”Destroy the author of things to discover the nature of the universe.” This was his last response. Basically, he is talking about murdering God. Dennett has revealed a deep wickedness in his character. I will never take him seriously as a philosopher again.”
Firstly, Dennett cannot coherently talk about murdering God, since he acknowledges no God to murder. It is preposterous on its face for an atheist to suggest that the opening strategy in understanding the universe should be to murder God! Therefore, we should be disinclined to interpret Dennett this way.
For that matter, it would be odd for anyone to suggest murdering God as a strategy, even if they believed in his existence. For it would be impossible to do, if he existed, and it would do no good, in any case, unless you thought God was deliberately impeding investigation.
Obviously, the anonymous author is getting dialectically confused. S/he is assuming that God’s existence, his putative wonderfulness and his status as an object of supra-human ethical concern are all given, in which case a desire to literally destroy God would be revelatory of a deep wickedness.
But Dennett does not take God’s existence, virtue or ethical status for granted, nor does he mean “destroy” literally. Obviously, by “destroy God” Dennett means “eliminate him as a theoretical posit”. I.e. remove the God entity from your list of explanantia, then you’ll build better theories.
“Obviously, by “destroy God” Dennett means “eliminate him as a theoretical posit”. I.e. remove the God entity from your list of explanantia,”
That’s an odd suggestion since God isn’t a “theoretical posit” put forth by theists as a “explanantia.” That understanding of theists’ belief is simply a product of New Atheist sophisms.
So, who’s Dennett giving advice too? If he meant what you say, then his statement makes no more sense than the non-sensical rendition you say is the anonymosu author’s. Neither atheists or theists treat God as some kind of scientific hypothesis.
Bernard, can’t Dennett be suggesting something nasty that he knows will offend without actually believing in God? Certainly that’s what the commenter is after.
As for the comments about the commenter, I’m still pretty grateful for the comments despite the commenter’s bias. S/he is upfront about it and acknowledges the difficulty of reporting a debate when s/he cares about the outcome. I think folks like Kyle should cut the commenter a break.
To the “so what” question: Isn’t Plantinga’s main thesis that theism is not incompatible with science–in this case evolutionary biology? If so, then he’s proved his thesis. That’s what.
Dennett concedes Plantinga’s consistency claim, but, he doesn’t think anything interesting follows from it. I gather that Dennett believes it isn’t too difficult to show that sort of consistency, since the superman hypothesis is also consistent with evolutionary theory. NBD.
Kyle,
I don’t think the ‘Lots of people think God exists; so that’s good evidence that God exists’ argument is a bad one. Neither is it anything like the ‘Lots of people once believed in Zeus; so that’s good evidence that Zeus exists’ argument.
The good argument relies on a principle something like this: when many, many of our best contemporary philosophers who are pretty well acquainted with science, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science continue to believe P, after many, many years of reflection and considering as many contrary considerations as possible, then that’s excellent evidence that there is good evidence for P. That’s probably not quite right, but it’s close. (See the recent disagreement literature for discussion.)
I think the antecedent of that principle is true today when P = theism. Thus, we who are aware of the truth of the antecedent have excellent evidence E1 that there is good evidence E2 for theism.
Of course, this doesn’t prove that there really is good evidence E2 for theism. In fact, we could also have some truly fantastic evidence E3 that E2 sucks. But it’s not a stupid argument.
The analogous Zeus argument doesn’t work because the antecedent is false.
‘That’s an odd suggestion since God isn’t a “theoretical posit” put forth by theists as a “explanantia.” That understanding of theists’ belief is simply a product of New Atheist sophisms.’
Then what’s this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_theology
all about? From my own personal experience, almost every theist I know—and, coming from a religious family in Texas, I know a lot—(1) initially defends their belief in God precisely through inference to the best explanation arguments such as the design argument, and these arguments most certainly posit God as a theoretical entity—but (2) often give up on this idea and resort to “faith” when their arguments are pushed a little.
Do you see things differently, Paul?
What’s the origin of the Superman argument? It sounds familiar, but my memory’s weak. I recall that Atran presented a version of this in In Gods We Trust (where it was the Mickey Mouse argument) and it sounds like something that’s been around for years. Anyone know?
Is there really a serious question of how Plantinga thinks God is different from Superman? I mean, for one thing he’s claimed that there are “two dozen (or so)” (good) arguments for the existence of the former, and I assume he doesn’t think the same of the latter …
I think the whole “God is a posit to explain things” is true of some theists and not others. It’s certainly true of Richard Swinburne. I don’t know that it would be true of those who believe in God on the basis of religious experience. To some, it would sound silly if I posited a person named Dustin to explain my Dustin-experiences. Even though most of us believe people, in some suitably wide sense of that word, exist, it doesn’t seem like we treat them as theoretical posits either. You’d have to be an indirect realist about perception to think that, no?
Good point, Bryan.
However, arguments of that form are defeated if a certain condition is met—namely, when the percentage of professional philosophers who initially accepted P and who now accept not-P is much higher than the percentage of professional philosophers who initially accepted not-P and who now accept P. The fact that so many philosophers still currently accept theism is obviously, in large part, accounted for by the fact that most philosophers were raised to accept theism. (You can test this by, say, comparing the number of American born philosophers who accept theism with, say, the number of Danish philosophers who accept theism.)
Notice also that this defeater is not present in, say, the “many physicists now accept general relativity, therefore general relativity is probably true” argument. That’s why this argument is a decent argument for general relativity (at least for folks like us), while the argument you cite, unfortunately, is not.
Rob!!! Hey, man! Great to see (see?) you!
And yes, I agree with your point—for many it is probably about “direct perception” of God, or the Holy Spirit, or what have you. But then again, I think that many who might say something like, “I believe in God because I directly experience Him” would probably, if pressed, admit that their experience of God is much more “theory-laden” than, say, their experience of the table in front of them. In other words, I think they would admit that their God-experiences are more open to speculation as to what is causing them than their table-experiences. But I could be wrong about that. I think I have had the kind of experiences that these people have, and this is what I would say about them, but of course it’s possible that these people have simply had experiences unlike any that I’ve had. If that’s the case, I’m so jealous!
dtlocke: that’s a great observation. I plan on using it sometime in an article!
Thanks.
Thanks a lot for that post. An intesting exchange between two important contemporary philosophers.
I wish I could have been there!
Nice to read you too, Dustin (I figured you knew I was a poster here, right?).
At any rate, it occurs to me that there’s another way God’s existence might not seem like a theoretical posit, besides having a religious experience of him. It could be that God’s explaining the universe appears to some people as natural as positing an external world does to others. For many, idealism just isn’t an option, but not because there’s a knock-down argument in favor of realism, and not because they have experiences of an external world (obviously, the idealist could admit all those experiences without being moved to realism). Indeed, they might not even have good arguments against idealism. It might just be “realism just really, really seems true to me. I understand there are worries about making the notion of a mind-independent reality coherent. But it just seems to me that any problems you can throw up, no matter how superficially formidable, can’t work.” You might deny that anyone in the contemporary academy is like this (though why are they like this for realism, which I think many of us are); but surely it’s not hard to imagine some educated person, say, in the middle ages who thought like this?
to dt locke:
>arguments of that form are defeated if a certain condition is met—namely, when the percentage of professional philosophers who initially accepted P and who now accept not-P is much higher than the percentage of professional philosophers who initially accepted not-P and who now accept P.
Not really. The fact you point to has obvious explanations which tend to undercut its defeating role: theist philosophers face intense non-rational pressures throughout their schooling and early careers to drop their views- mockery, bullying in many subtle ways by their teachers, the realization that you aren’t taken quite seriously for religious reasons, well-founded fear of professional consequences, etc. (Comparison: not many come to grad school using “she” as the unmarked personal pronoun, and one doesn’t hear arguments presented for a change of usage. It is just something grad students perceive they must do to look good in the eyes of those on whom their career prospects rest.)
Overseas: I don’t expect that we’ll be able to see eye-to-eye on just how much non-rational pressure there is against theist philosophers. But let me grant for the moment that there is as much non-rational pressure as you say.
I see now that I really presented *two* defeaters in my initial comment. If there is as much non-rational pressure as you say there is, this undercuts the first defeater (the one about percentages of switchers), but leaves the second one untouched: the fact that there are so many philosophers who accept theism is largely account for by the fact that most philosophers were raised to be theists. (Again, compare general relativity.)
Thanks for forcing me to get clearer on what I was saying.
Bryan: you’re welcome! I had better get a footnote at least!
Rob: roger that.
“To someone in UK this is incredible! Is it really like this in USA? Surely not. Paranoia here?”
Such charming naiveté, if not disingenousness.
Try challenging Islamic teachings in the UK.
Geert Wilders tried to, and “the authorities” wouldn’t let him enter your country.
–Dennett believes that science can tell us many things about metaphysics and epistemology, that we work from science to these positions. Plantinga thinks of these matters rather differently.
Really? Dennett thinks that? Because from where I stand, every time we use science to understand things about metaphysics and epistemology, it just turns out that we drop those things out of metaphysics and epistemology and into science. That would seem obvious.
We used to wonder how ideas got “inside” our minds; how we perceive color; whether the morning star and the evening star being the same or different changed something. Science answered all of those questions, so those are no longer epistemological or metaphysical. Yet epistemology and metaphysics remain.
I have posted the mp3 below to avoid the megaupload limit as to number of downloads per day
this location will play the mp3 file as well as permit you to download it
direct link to file
http://drop.io/plantingadennet/asset/plantinga-mp3
if you have a recording less that 50mb one person
http://drop.io/plantingadennet#may add it here.
otherwise make a drop and add it there
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http://drop.io/
“From my own personal experience, almost every theist I know—and, coming from a religious family in Texas, I know a lot—(1) initially defends their belief in God precisely through inference to the best explanation arguments such as the design argument, and these arguments most certainly posit God as a theoretical entity—but (2) often give up on this idea and resort to “faith” when their arguments are pushed a blittle.”
er…isn’t this the point of Christianity, to shed human pride and, in the end, to come to belief through faith, recognizing that the human mind, incredible though it is, cannot reach God on its own terms. A close reading of the Gospels suggests that faith in Christ is what the Christian God values above all. Isn’t that what those folks in Texas are inarticulately trying to explain. Philosophy, among other tools, helps the individual to make that Kirkegardian leap of faith in the light, as opposed to the dark, but in the end, after all arguements are spoken, it is the final “leap” that will save them.
I am of the opinion that Dennett failed to fulfill his rebuttal role while relying on insults, and there is really no other name for them, because in today’s marketplace of ideas, that is what the athiest community and those funding philosophical research are buying; lazy, disrespectful and even cruel though it may be. By abdicating arguement and rebuttal, the athiest, non-theist and naturalists are leaving the field open to Christian philosophers. They may win the battle of funding and best seller list but they are putting themselves in a deeper hole with each passing day.
Regarding anons career concerns, having four degrees, three graduate degrees in both the natural and physical sciences from three different institutions and innumerable organizations, I find his concerns have a definite basis in fact and those who deny it are either biased or unserious. More to the point, he himself believes it, and that should be a point of concern to all those who read.
I don’t know why you would have expected more out of Dennett. He isn’t anywhere nearly as intelligent as his acolytes wish to believe. He regularly commits terrible blunders of logic, such as in his justification of the division of doxastic labor where he declares that one is justified in blindly trusting biologists because physicists have accurate models. Or, in his equation of religion with a lancet fluke, where he gets his analogy backward by failing to note that it isn’t religious individuals, but secular ones whose ideas tend to get in the way of their propagating.
As an complete outsider who nonetheless got sucked into this fascinating argument, (thanks to Jonah Golberg over at National Review Online), I had some observations. The primary one is in line with the poster above who thinks that we theists may have to concede the argument–faith is just that, faith. Kierkegaard asserted the need for a leap–perhaps God does not intend that faith can be explained by science. Such explanation would diminish the commitment to faith. Still, I had these thoughts:
Most of the argument seems to center on the requirement that evolution is random, and yet God, by definnition, is not random. Could God have set randomness in motion and let this particular world evolve as it has? What about all that wasted biological energy, the continual presence of what we call evil and all that? Doesn’t that argue against God? And why bother with God at all, since we don’t need him to explain what we know?
Iâm sure all the commenters know much more about this line of argument than I, but I thought they missed the most obvious point: our minds are not equipped to apprehend the scale on which God works. What to us is random may be an artifact of the limits of our knowledge and the scope of our imagination. God, by definition, is beyond our ability to comprehend; thus his scheme in creation defies our meager intellectual resources.
An analogy struck me. We have three cats. All three cats can be seen to be like these philosophers. Were the cats capable, with their tiny brains, of wondering about how they came to live in the Queendom, it might go something like this:
Horus, the $1000 purebred Egyptian Mau, contemplates how he came to live with me, his Owner. He believes in the Owner, yet he has trouble reconciling the random nature of his life with belief in me, the Owner. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida. He could have ended up anywhere in the world. He would have had a bad Owner, who beat him and abused him. He could have ended up on the streets, where he would, of course, had died, because he is a Useless Cat. Randomly, he ended up with me, the Omnipotent Owner who munificently provides for him. While the random nature of his existence is in conflict with Horusâ drive to believe in the Owner, Horus has decided to believe. (This is evidenced by his continuous plaintive prayers to the Owner and his adoring worship of the Owner.)
What Horus doesnât know, and is incapable of contemplating, is that I intervened in his history and determined his fate. In effect, I caused the randomness that brought him here. To him, the mere cat, his life was totally contingent. To me, the Owner, his life was no accident. Despite Horusâ limited intellectual ability and the conflict between his feline understanding of randomness and probablility and his urge to believe in Ownership (his feline God Hypothesis), Horus has decided he is a believer. Clearly, Owner exists, because he experiences the wondrous workings of Owner. Food in his bowl, clean litter, a warm house, a soft and cozy Ownerâs bed upon which to sleep. Thus, Horus is like the Christian philosopher of science and religion.
Tiger, on the other hand, presents a slightly different example of theism. Tiger also believes in Owner. Having been rescued from almost certain euthanasia, Tiger is unquestioning in his religious beliefs. Tiger is not a philosopher-cat. Tiger thinks philosophers are useless creatures who contribute nothing to cat society. Being a more primitive Believer, Tiger provides animal sacrifices for his Owner, leaving all sorts of eviscerated creatures at the doorstep. Yet, unbeknownst to him, Tiiger has chosen the wrong God Hypothesis. His Owner is Tobie, who in fact, is not The Owner. Tiger sleeps with the pseudo-owner; he follows him to the busstop. Yet, that pseudo-owner, were the True Owner to disappear, would soon prove to be a false Owner. For Tobie neither feeds nor waters nor provides clean litter for the cats. In this way, Tiger resembles some humans, who while believers, have chosen the wrong God Hypothesis.
Then there is Jetta. Jetta, having experienced evil first hand (when a two-year-old Max with a pair of scissors inflicted terrible punishment upon her), rejects the notion of Owner entirely, much the way human atheistic philosophers of science use the persistence of evil as a âdefeatorâ to the God Hypothesis. Jetta is a-owneristic. She believes life is entirely random, with all its events contingent. Yet, despite this, Jetta enjoys the munificence of the Owner. In this, Jetta is like all non-believing humans, who still enjoy the gifts of creation, despite their rejection of its creator.
Clearly, on a much greater scale, since our brains are bigger than walnuts, we are like the cats. We think we know so much, with our understanding of genetics, random mutations, evolution, quantum physics, astronomy, and all that. Some of us, like Horus, are believers nonetheless. We try to use our scientific knowledge as evidence of God (like some of the commenters on the Prosblogion blog), but we never quite get there. Others of us, like Tiger, eschew the philosophical effort and just believe (albeit in the wrong Owner). Finally, some of us, like Jetta, use the weight of the scientific evidence to eschew God. None of us have the perspective or the intellectual capacity, however, to apprehend the total picture, the totality of Godâs working and history. We are all just mewing in the dark.
I’ve read through about half the comments and was struck by how everyone seems to take it for granted that Dennet could posit theism is the intellectual equivalent of holocaust denial and still be thought of as an intellectual. Is philosophy really so far gone as a discipline that one person can be well respected while making debating points in which he pretends to be unable to distinguish Auschwitz from Notre Dame or the Dalai Lama from Alfred Rosenberg?
Also, has there been a serious engagement by philosophers of science about what the popularity and ubiquity of eugenics as scientific approach and public policy tell us about the limitations and potential corruption of science? (Historians in the past 10-20 years have been doing some very important work on this – though it seems scientists are quite happy to simply regard early 20th century eugenics as a “right wing pseudo-science” when it was nothing of the kind.) Similarly, is it just taken for granted that modes of inquiry that might yield insights about relatively less complicated physical phenomenon might be inadequate in their capacity to clarify more intricate realities – like human history or the psyche?
Dear Mr. Rees:
For the UK / Western Europe equivalent (something like the cultural version of miles to kilometers), you could offer to host a debate on âThe Koran: Is it compatible with science?â
Except of course, neither of these men were worried about beheadingâ¦â¦..
In support of Plantinga’s point that beliefs can be adaptive, but not “track truth”, there is one clear example: belief in God. It seems to me that belief in God has likely had great survival value. Think of the elan of the warrior fighting God’s fight! Such spirit! Now whether this belief is true is an entirely different question.
Paul wrote:
That’s an odd suggestion since God isn’t a “theoretical posit” put forth by theists as a “explanantia.” That understanding of theists’ belief is simply a product of New Atheist sophisms.
No doubt you are correct to say that theistic religious traditions have not historically treated God as a theoretical posit. However, in the wake of the Scientific Revolution, many Christians (mainly Protestants) began to attempt to justify theism on theoretical grounds. The culmination of this trend was Enlightenment deism and scientific ‘natural religion’. And thus we find critics like Hume speaking freely of “the religious hypothesis”. And something similar (if not identical) is at work in the intelligent design movement.
So it is just false to style this an invention of the “New Atheists”.
How can an atheist hold that naturalistic evolution can select for truth seeking behavior, While at the same time claiming that religion is false because it arose as an evolutionary adaptation?
Sounds like a great evening. Sorry I couldn’t be there.
As a firm believer in naturalistic evolution, an ardent critic of creationists and their allies, and a fundamentalist agnostic, it is clear whose side I am on here. However, I have deep respect for those of faith and it annoys the hell out of me when those like Hitchens and Dawkins take the road of mockery and belittlement. I understand why they do it – spend much time with Ken Hamm and the Discovery Institute, and you’ll likely think everyone of faith a dishonest imbecile, and not understand why any reasonable person wouldn’t see the same. However, they need to understand their main opponents are not their audience, they are not the people they need to convince, and these are the same people they are alientating with their snark.
Peter, you ask: “How can an atheist hold that naturalistic evolution can select for truth seeking behavior, While at the same time claiming that religion is false because it arose as an evolutionary adaptation?”
What precludes beliefs from taking on any of the four possible combinations of the fit/unfit and true/untrue attributes?
Fitness and truth-seeking might be highly correlated (or maybe not — I don’t have a dog in that fight, even if Dennett appears to have); but even if they are, how would this be inconsistent with the existence of some particular fit and untrue belief?
Ok, so the reply to the Argument from Reason is that evolution could have created minds able to get to the truth.
Well, sure. But do you believe that because it is true or because the atoms are bouncing around in your head a certain way? And that is the Catch-22 naturalism cannot get around.
If you don’t assume you were designed for the express purpose (or at least one of the purposes) of apprehending truth, you can have no confidence in the veracity of your thoughts. Full Stop. There is just no basis for trusting your thoughts. And that is why theism is a properly basic belief.
Dennett believes consciousness is an illusion. In other words, every time he opens his mouth, every time he trusts his thoughts, he is showing that a naturalist can’t live consistently with his own naturalism.
But even if I grant that there was a basis, every other evolutionary psychology article belies this. We believe xy and z because of . I’ve never seen “truth” inserted there.
“The horrid doubt always arises whether the conviction of man’s mind, which has developed from the minds of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.” Charles Darwin
“Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes is not.” Steve Pinker
“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 and leave decedents.” Francis Crick
“Yeah, Plantinga thinks philosophy is about arguments; Dennett thinks it is about stories.”
I liked this wise-crack, it has a lot to it. Dennett really has developed to use story-telling at least as much as argument to convey his ideas, and I think it works for him most of the time. It gets bold ideas across boundaries that would otherwise get mired in obscure logical points.
Sounds like he could have done a better job of argumentation here, and been more gracious, had more of a spirit of philosophical charity here, but then his rhetorical purpose was probably not to engage the argument at all in that forum but to show that it is anachronistic. That would be my speculation.
I’m glad to see so many of my associates blogging here. Wat’s up James Gibson! Long time no see….and a hello to Alex Pruss.
My worries here are aimed at PhD studies at leading institutions.
Well, there is no question, given my experiences, that theists and particularly Christian theists are in some very important ways spoken pejoratively about and looked down upon by some important individuals in the academic context of philosophy departments. While, I can list and point to the existence of conservative Christian theists (who are PhD students) at places like NYU, Rutgers, Michigan, Yale and so on I know from the conversations with the self-same individuals that they would be very reluctant to do something like I’ve done (viz. publish an academic paper in an International Journal which defends the premises of a particular theistic proof). It would seem, as these individuals urge, that professional wisdom would mandate a particular type of silence on issues conducive to theistic belief. Do good work, but do it on non-religious issues, and for goodness sakes if you do work on phil. of mind abstain from substance dualism (which a certain philosopher who presented at the Central APA called “waiving your light saber”), if on meta-ethics let’s either embrace a non-cognitivism or just figure out how ethical norms supervene on the natural world, but please none of this command theory or moral realism stuff, if on metaphysical issues divine conceptualism is out, if on epistemological issues please none of this design plan proper-functionalism stuff, if on philosophy of language Bachian theories of acquaintance please maybe even Russellian acquaintance, but let’s not work out what Bill Alston called partial univocal views which shed light on theological reference and predication, if on philosophy of science don’t even think about defending views of nomicity that would fetter them out in terms of true counter-factuals of divine freedom, or as things which are explained by a deity (a la John Foster), if on philosophy of time and space, please don’t talk about theism’s ability to shed light on whether or not there is a privileged inertial frame that would make plausible the idea of absolute time on Lorentzian interpretations of STR.
It’s not that the views expressed above couldn’t be justifiably rejected by even theists themselves, its just that there is a general intellectual imperialism that would bar the exploration of such views, and this seems to be generally motivated by:
(1) Economy and principle of parsimony concerns
(2) A desire to do philosophy in such a way that it really just becomes an extension of science (conceived as something dedicated to methodological naturalism).
(3) An assumption about the demolition of the explanatoral power and scope of theism by Hume, Kant, and others.
I see this on the contemporary scene:
Affirmation: Do philosophy with motivations (1)-(3), and PhD level projects should commit to these motivations.
This is evidenced by things like the following:
http://bostonreview.net/BR34.1/byrne.php
In my oral exams at Iowa, I was defending a traditional theodicy. All three of my examiners were professed atheists. However, they were quite fair; I think they just wanted to check my preparation level.
On the other hand, I know people who defend ID have run into problems (denied tenure, for instance).
Something I read once… “We don’t want accurate maps, we want useful ones. But accuracy is extraordinarily useful.”
It is really the case that false beliefs are just as likely to be selected for as true ones? Especially when evolution must economize? (All the examples of potential false beliefs that I’ve heard of Plantinga coming up with are rather fanciful and Rube-Goldberg-esque….)
The key seems to come from the definition of ‘theism’ as conceived as different from ‘naturalism’. What does “supernatural” mean?
So far as I’ve ever seen, it means “unknowable” – “beyond human comprehension” – something humans can never understand. Think about the difference between the notion of the ‘powerful alien’ (a staple of science fiction) and the notion of a ‘god’ in a religion. What’s the essential difference between them? In the stories, they both do amazing, astonishing things. But a powerful alien is (ultimately, eventually) comprehensible – often in the story humans are able to figure out some way of duplicating its powers, or interfering with them, etc. Gods, though, are beyond what humans can do, and there’s no point in trying to figure out why or how they do what they do. (Look at the comments by “anon” and “Queen1” above.)
But epistemologically, the ‘unknowable’ is a troublesome concept. How can we, in practice, distinguish between something ‘currently unknown but comprehensible’ and something ‘forever unknowable’? From a practical perspective, the only way to tell which category something falls into is to try to understand it; if you succeed, then it was knowable. The problem is, if you fail, you can’t conclude that it’s unknowable. It might be… but it also might be the case that you just didn’t happen to figure out something knowable, and you or someone else might have better luck on a subsequent attempt.
Accepting that there are things that we don’t know is not the same as accepting that there are things that we cannot, even in principle, know. As discussed above, the notion of ‘the unknowable’ adds nothing from a practical perspective. There is no way we can tell the difference between ‘something we can never understand’ and ‘something we can eventually understand but do not understand yet.’ We’ve seen plenty of cases where giving up on ever understanding something turned out to be unjustified.
To me, that’s a defeater for theism…
Re: Geoff (Mar 1, 12:19PM) “Well, sure. But do you believe that because it is true or because the atoms are bouncing around in your head a certain way? And that is the Catch-22 naturalism cannot get around.”
Nothing gets around Catch-22: Neither theism nor naturalism.
Some species of frogs will always lunge and try to tongue an object moving at just the right speed across their field of vision, regardless of whether the object is a fly or an indigestible pellet. This ‘erroneous’ behavior appears hard wired and is something the frog cannot ‘unlearn’. Our perception appears also based in a physical stratum though it is perhaps a little more flexible. Still, we *know* that our perception of the world is incomplete and not perfect.
The question to address: Can convergence between an external world and mental maps of that world arise via something like selection? How do we learn things and evaluate the apparent ‘validity’ of ideas? Are discoveries cumulative? For example, some people think that if you spin a rock in a sling and release the cord that the rock will continue in a similarly curved path. Some people think that lighter objects drop faster than heavier objects. These are ideas that have persisted among humans for ages. Can these be empirically evaluated? Certainly. Can one remember the outcome of a test and use that information to test other interactions? Apparently so.
It seems to me that most believers perceive any statements of atheism to be arrogant and disrespectful, whether they be flippant or not. I urge them to consider the view from the other side: Imagine debating the existence of Zeus or Odin, and just how difficult it might be for you to take these arguments seriously. It is precisely that difficult for atheists to humor your religious views.
It’s one thing to debate, generally, a supernatural origin for life, but if you believe a specific dogma–Christian dogma, for example, you strike us as being completely silly, for there is no rational basis for such beliefs. Sorry, but it is as true of Christianity as it is of any ancient polytheistic faith. If this comment strikes you as insulting or arrogant, then I suspect your own knowledge of your philosophical vulnerability is manifesting a defensive hostility toward the most basic atheistic arguments.
It is not an insult to call what is irrational, irrational.
ooga wrote, “It’s one thing to debate, generally, a supernatural origin for life, but if you believe a specific dogma–Christian dogma, for example, you strike us as being completely silly, for there is no rational basis for such beliefs. Sorry, but it is as true of Christianity as it is of any ancient polytheistic faith. If this comment strikes you as insulting or arrogant, then I suspect your own knowledge of your philosophical vulnerability is manifesting a defensive hostility toward the most basic atheistic arguments.”
Just out of curiosity, ooga, have you read any of the following books:
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief
Robert M. Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods
Robert M. Adams, The Virtue of Faith
William Alston, Perceiving God
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God
Michael Rea, World without Design
Graham Oppy, Arguing about Gods
Jordan Howard Sobel, Logic and Theism
?
Argon wrote:
The question to address: Can convergence between an external world and mental maps of that world arise via something like selection?
Perhaps it can, but however “accurate” a map would need to be is not an answerable question, because we can only ever know the map.
Note that none of the false beliefs you cite (about motion, or about the frog’s hypothesis that all little moving black dots are flies) have been significantly detrimental to their respective gene pools. We couldn’t have gone to the moon believing in folk physics, but that doesn’t mean we would have died out if we had never had a Newton. In fact the opposite may be true. Our engineering prowess may just hasten our extinction (folk physics doesn’t build nuclear bombs, e.g.). If that turns out to be the case, an observer might say there was a big mapping error in failing to take account of ecology, or systems theory. In failing to see the forest for the trees.
I think it’s important to recognize that total convergence between map and territory is not an option. We must trade in signs, not least because our perceptual apparatus is finite. Putting our beliefs to the test, scientifically, doesn’t test the map against the territory, it tests the map against the map.
Audio and related debates by Plantinga and Dennett are linked in this post:
http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/report-on-plantinga-dennett-debate/
I just finished listening to the Plantinga/Dennett debate. I am a theist and an ID proponent. Nevertheless, I think Anonymous’s portrayal of Dennett was rather unfair, perhaps even slanderous.
Meanwhile, Plantinga’s case for the incompatibility of Naturalism and Evolution seems to be based on the view that beliefs — in a Naturalistic metaphysics — would lack causal efficacy. Thus, regardless of whether our brains produced true or untrue beliefs wouldn’t matter a bit to our ability to survive. All that would matter is our ability to physically respond in an adaptive manner to our environment. Since our beliefs would have no causal efficacy, they would have no ability to make that response more or less adaptive.
However, I doubt most Naturalists would accept the view that their metaphysics precludes the causal efficacy of beliefs.
Hi Bilbo,
Plantinga is aware that most naturalists think that beliefs have causal efficacy in virtue of their semantic properties. (He cites Fodor saying that it’d be the end of the world if that weren’t the case.) He deals with this point in the book Naturalism Defeated?. (This is where he cites Fodor.)
Yes, Andrew, I had that book and read Plantinga’s argument. But I gave away the book and forgot the argument. Did Plantinga actually show that beliefs wouldn’t have causal efficacy, given Naturalism? Or did he just say that so far no one has shown how they could?
Meanwhile, I’ve started my own thread on Plantinga’s argument that a theist must believe in “guided” as opposed to “unguided” evolution over at telicthoughts.com: http://telicthoughts.com/guided-vs-unguided-darwinism/
I think he’s mistaken, by the way.
I can’t remember; I just know he talks about it! (Plantinga’s also been arguing recently that if naturalism is true, then it’s not likely that there are any beliefs! this is in his debate with Michael Tooley, in the book Knowledge of God.)
Bilbo, slanderous? I listened to the audio and Dennett sounded like a real jerk. Perhaps anonymous got caught up in the moment but what on earth is slanderous about her/his comments?
” you strike us as being completely silly, for there is no rational basis for such beliefs.”
Here we get to the fundamentals, in the end all theistic journeys must end in a leap beyond the proveable. Some (the silly) have taken it, some have not. So in the end, that there is “no rational basis for such belief” is an opinion,not fact. An opinion not shared by many, many of the brightest human beings in history..and not shared by others equally bright. It is when that opinion is expressed in a disrespectful manner (such as ad hominem attacks….see “silly” above) that folks object. It is called courtesy. A lack of it undermines ones arguement. As an impartial observer with no dogs in this fight, it seems to be far more lacking in the athiest/agnostic camp.
If all you can say is “you strike us as being silly” you better go back to intro to philosophy and basic rhetoric, you’re not going to convince anyone with arguements like that.
Hi Andrew. I skimmed the Plantinga/Tooley book at a library. It looked good enough to order my own copy.
Anonymous: If all you can say is “you strike us as being silly”
But that wasn’t all that Dennett had to say, and you seem to have forgotten to include what else he had to say.
I first heard Plantinga read this paper at a Christian college. Since he was trying to convince Christians of what they ought or ought not to believe about Darwinism, that was the proper place for it to be read. Reading it in what appeared to be a non-Christian environment, one should expect the type of reaction that Dennett had: “What has this to do with us?”
I hope you enjoy it! If you also look up last summer’s Prosblogion posts, you will find that we had extensive discussions about the book. We actually had a whole reading group on it.
I also got pretty beat up trying to defend Plantinga’s argument against materialism. I still find it convincing, but I’ll have to think more about it… someday… when I have time…
Yeah, I vacillate on the argument, myself. Have you read Victor Reppert’s C.S.Lewis’s Dangerous Idea? A good read. He has a good blog, also: dangerousidea.blogspot.com
Hi. I’m a later-comer to this thread, and I’m just posting because I’m curious about Plantinga’s argument that given unguided evolution we could have no confidence in the reliability of our beliefs.
Actually, I can’t remember what Plantinga said about this in the debate. Perhaps that’s because I skipped a chunk of the recording, as I found it difficult to hear. But I found the argument made briefly in an article on-line:
“From a theistic point of view, we’d expect that our cognitive faculties would be (for the most part, and given certain qualifications and caveats) reliable. God has created us in his image, and an important part of our image bearing is our resembling him in being able to form true beliefs and achieve knowledge. But from a naturalist point of view the thought that our cognitive faculties are reliable (produce a preponderance of true beliefs) would be at best a naïve hope. The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive, but nothing follows about the truth of the beliefs depending on that neurophysiology. In fact he’d have to hold that it is unlikely, given unguided evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. It’s as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/marapr/1.21.html?start=7
Is anyone here willing to defend this position? On the face of it, it seems absurd. Isn’t it obvious that a person who lives in a “dream world” is less well adapted than one who has an accurate understanding of the world he lives in?
I’m not saying that false beliefs can never be adaptive. It might be the case that belief in gods provides psychological benefits even if untrue. It is also apparently the case that we can obtain a placebo effect from treatments that have no direct physical effect. Human psychology is complex and sometimes even perverse. But when it comes to more practical matters, true beliefs are surely more adaptive than false ones. A hunter who has true beliefs about the behaviour of his prey will be a lot more successful than one who has false beliefs.
Am I missing something?
I guess I should add that usually (but not always) on a Theistic view, the mind is composed of a different substance than the body, but is able to causally interact with it.
Hmmm…the short addendum to my lengthier reply to Richard is here, but where is the original reply?
hmm, I can’t find it, and I didn’t erase anything, so it may have just gotten lost because of malfunction.
The question of the compatibility of faith and science
was settled a long time ago. I feel it is an odd question.
Why do people keep asking it? In fact, I would add
that in some way, faith is necessary for science. Faith
offers particular ultimate truths and values in the form
of "mysteries" in the Christian sense of that word, which
seem to drive progress in science and philosophy. Societies
which do not recognize metaphysical and moral truth, such as
Soviet Russia for example, are not really conducive to
science, in my opinion. And this can be seen in history.
Though the Soviets and their supporters lauded the state
of their science, the reality of their acheivements speak
otherwise. I don’t see how an atheist society can continue
to be productive in science or philosophy in the long run. Imagine a
society of Dennetts, Dawkinses, Hitchenses etc, not to
mention the dozens of precursor evolutionists who were
just like them. A good atmosphere for scientific and
philosophic enquiry, you think? A triumph of reason?
The real question that I’d like to see debated is not
whether faith is compatible with science, but whether
science is compatible with reason. Here I mean "science",
not in the classic senses of "knowledge of things by their causes"
nor "knowledge in some way perfected", nor "the disciplined use
of natural reason about created things", but that sense which it
has come to mean in the last 200 years. For as you can see, mockery,
insults and naturalistic fairytales are on the side of "science" these
days. We are told (by some posters above) that mockery, insults and naturalistic
fairytales are to be considered in the same class as reasoned
arguments which call for a response. Is this not an abdication
of reason? Do you think this has a healthy effect on science and
philosophy?
Is modern "science" consistent with reason? Surely some will find
this a provocative question. But it needs to be asked (and investigated)
because there is much evidence that it is not. Here you can find
writings of evolutionary scientists from the time of Darwin up
to around the second World War:
http://www.inbredscience.co.cc
Perhaps the only way to describe this material is that it is
science bereft of reason. For example, you can clearly see that
Haeckel’s work is not science at all, but something else, something
grossly distorted. Yet Huxley said Haeckel’s General Morphology
was among the greatest science books ever written. Surely there
is something very wrong here. What kind of science is eugenics?
In the century after Darwin, eugenics was promoted as a science
by the greatest evolutionary scientific authorities. In fact scientists
have never really renounced it as a science — today, eugenics
is unpopular because it is politically inexpedient to talk about
it in the open. But not long ago Dawkins said that eugenics should
be reconsidered. It is, after all, "science". It seems to me, then,
that a certain element of unreason has been fully absorbed into science.
Scientists themselves are not able to eliminate it. Indeed they encourage
it, as we see from the writings available via the url above. And
that is but a very small sampling.
Beyond that, there are deeper problems between science and reason.
It seems to me that there is an almost universal attidude among scientific
minds these days, that science excludes, much the same
way that Marxism excludes, all metaphysical realities. We are told
that a reasoning process which begins with the evidence of nature and
concludes with the existence of God, is inadmissable and must be rejected
as unscientific. Well, this is very odd because such a reasoning process
is no different, really, from any other reasoning process in science.
But not only that, final causes must be rejected, because they are
"metaphysical" and not "scientific", we are told. In fact all metaphysics
is to be rejected. Is anything so aburd as this? As if scientists do
not use metaphysical principles when reasoning from particulars to
universals and so on. How can they deny that they do? Natural laws
themselves are metaphysical, they are a product of reasoning about
nature and they can only be grasped by the mind. Nevertheless, they
deny that they do, and these denials serve to reinforce the impression
that modern science demands a sort of intellectual lobotomy from its
adherents — where the higher centers of reasoning are cut off from
the rest of the brain, but only selectively, on certain topics which
touch issues that are, not surprisingly, threatening to the atheist
world view.
Perhaps we can say that faith is incompatible with science — with what science has become –, but that this is because faith is compatible with reason, while science, sadly, is not.
Hi Richard,
I tried answering your question once, and it got lost. Basically, the big question in the philosophy of mind is how the mind is related to the body: two separate substances? one substance, with emergent qualities? something else? If mental qualities are emergent qualities, how do they have causal efficacy on the body? If they don’t have causal efficacy, then beliefs, regardless of their truth value, would have no effect on the body. So evolution wouldn’t select for true beliefs. Therefore, it would be unlikely that we have many true beliefs.
Hello Bilbo. Thanks for your explanation. For brevity I’ll refer to the argument as “your” argument, though perhaps you are only paraphrasing Plantinga’s argument and don’t share his position.
As far as I can make out, you are making a distinction between physical brain states and conscious (subjective) experiences. And it appears that when you refer to “beliefs” or “mental qualities” you are referring to consciously experienced qualities. Right?
Now, let’s say we have a computer which is capable of learning facts about the world and making decisions on the basis of these facts. Such a computer would have a store of symbolic representations of facts. Some of the facts may be true and others false. (So I’m using “fact” in a sense that does not imply truth. Substitute a clearer word if you can think of one.) I for one would be happy to refer to these representations of facts as “beliefs”, regardless of whether the computer is conscious (i.e. has subjective experience). But I will follow your apparent usage, and reserve the word “belief” for consciously experienced facts, while noting that this seems to mean you would not apply the word “belief” to any facts we hold only at a subconscious level.
The problem with your argument is that it assumes that (absent a supernatural cause) there is no reason to expect a correlation between the facts stored in our brains and our consciously experienced beliefs. According to this view, even if my brain correctly stores the fact that the Earth is round, I am no more likely to experience a belief that the Earth is round than a belief that the Earth is flat.
Now, I freely acknowledge that I do not have an explanation for the existence of consciousness. But _if_ consciousness is caused naturally by brain processes, surely it would be reasonable to expect there to be some correlation between brain states and conscious experiences. After all, natural causes tend to be systematic in that sort of way. If that be accepted, then your argument adds nothing to the traditional claim that natural causes alone cannot give rise to consciousness. Even if it adds _something_, it’s very, very little. Anyone who is able to accept that consciousness has a natural cause will have no difficulty accepting that the same cause can result in a correlation between brain states and conscious experiences.
After re-reading your post, Bilbo, I realise there’s a more fundamental problem with your argument that I didn’t notice. Maybe this point is already clear from my last post, but let me add a clarification.
You wrote: “If mental qualities are emergent qualities, how do they have causal efficacy on the body? If they don’t have causal efficacy, then beliefs, regardless of their truth value, would have no effect on the body.”
If I understood correctly, this is your monistic alternative (“one substance, with emergent qualities”). The trouble is it still has an element of dualism about it. It seems to assume that there is a brain and then an emergent mind, with beliefs being formed in the mind and decisions being taken there. You’ve omitted the truly monistic alternative, that everything happens in the brain. Somehow what goes on in the brain gives rise to conscious experiences, but that doesn’t change the fact that all the belief-formation and decision-making processes are going on in the brain. So there is no problem about beliefs having a causal effect on the body. (Here I’m reverting to my preferred usage of “belief”, which does not necessarily imply conscious experience. It makes the monistic point of view easier to express.)
Richard, your analysis of the bones of Plantinga’s argument against naturalism is very astute. It is, as you say, nothing but a heavily-disguised version of the argument from consciousness.
Plantinga comes closest to confessing this on page 264 of “Naturalism Defeated?”. After conceding to William Ramsay that “indicator representations” (very roughly, sensory inputs) are “automatically accurate” and furthermore “(in general) enter the causal chain that leads to behavior” [p. 259], he responds to Evan Fales with the words “But these indicator representations are not beliefs. No one in the neighborhood – me, my body, my blood, the structure, the state of the structure – believe that my blood temperature is thus and so [when my body monitors it]” [p. 264].
And in claiming on page 265 that “Indicator representation is perhaps guaranteed to be ‘accurate’ … but the same thing does not hold for belief” Plantinga is arguing that belief content is somehow disconnected from the indicator contect of brain states and is thus – as you noted – presupposing a form of dualism.
Richard writes: “Somehow what goes on in the brain gives rise to conscious experiences….”
Yes, it’s that “somehow” that’s the problem. So far no one has explained how, nor how the conscious experiences have causal efficacy. Yes, I think (though I would need to re-read Plantinga to be sure) that webc is correct: Plantinga’s argument depends upon the problem of consciousness.
A few comments have suggested that by arguing that theism is not incompatible with theistic belief, Plantinga was missing the point or speaking to the wrong audience. “What has this to do with us?” where “we” are non-theists, or “anybody with half a brain” already knows that theism isn’t incompatible with evolution – so go the comments. Perhaps the authors of those comments haven’t noticed, but one of the most popular claims made by ‘New Atheists’ (and their tremendous audience) is precisely that evolution and theism are incompatible. Even though I don’t think Richard Dawkins is very smart, I certainly don’t think he’s got less than half a brain. It’s probably true that belief in the incompatibility of theism and evolution is more common among theists than atheists, but it’s widely believed even by philosophers.
Furthermore, it’s a mistake to dismiss Plantinga on the grounds that he isn’t advocating any changes to evolutionary theory, as someone else did. If a philosopher defended his views in meta-ethics or epistemology against charges that they were incompatible with evolutionary theory, it would be missing the point to object that the philosopher didn’t want to add anything to evolutionary theory. Of course we want our epistemology and our meta-ethics to be consistent with evolutionary theory, but why should we expect those views to be a part of evolutionary theory itself? Unless all true theoretical discourse has to be regarded as a part of evolutionary theory, then the objection fails.
Bob: “Perhaps the authors of those comments haven’t noticed, but one of the most popular claims made by ‘New Atheists’ (and their tremendous audience) is precisely that evolution and theism are incompatible.”
Good point, Bob. I stand corrected.
Bilbo wrote: Yes, it’s that “somehow” that’s the problem. So far no one has explained how, nor how the conscious experiences have causal efficacy.
Bilbo, you’ve missed my point. Given a monist view of the mind, there is no need to explain how conscious experiences have causal efficacy. They don’t. It’s the brain that does everything. Conscious experiences are produced by the brain. They don’t affect the brain.
The logical compatibility of theism with evolution (and with just about any other scientific theory you can imagine) reflects nothing more than the simple fact that theism is unfalsifiable.
Richard writes: “Bilbo, you’ve missed my point. Given a monist view of the mind, there is no need to explain how conscious experiences have causal efficacy. They don’t. It’s the brain that does everything. Conscious experiences are produced by the brain. They don’t affect the brain.”
If that’s true, Richard, then beliefs (if they are conscious experiences), don’t have causal efficacy, either. In that case, there would be no evolutionary advantage to having true beliefs, since they would have no effect on our behavior. For example, the belief that a tiger is in the jungle would have no effect in making me avoid going into the jungle. Therefore, there is no selective advantage in believing that there is a tiger in the jungle, even if there is a tiger in the jungle.
So your solution to the mind/body problem (which pretty much sounds like epiphenomenalism), would support Plantinga’s claim that Naturalism and Evolution are incompatible.
Dawkins is really smart, but not a philosopher. His attempts at discussing philosophical arguments is embarrassing.
Here is a little history on Dennett’s God = Superman and the New Atheism’s God = Superman = flying spaghetti monster = invisible pink unicorn = fairies under the garden. From Erich Wasmann’s Problem of Evolution, 1909.
Haeckel had such an idea of God, when he said that he could think of the personality of God only in bodily form as a gaseous vertebrate. Dr. Plotz, too, had a similar idea, when he spoke of God as an organism. This erroneous idea has spread unfortunately very widely in so-called educated circles, as a consequence of the publication of Haeckel’s Weltratsel [Riddle of the Universe] and similar books. People believe that the Personal God of Christianity must be imagined as a sort of higher mammal, and as an illustration I may quote a letter written in Berlin, which seriously propounds the following objection to the theistic conception of God: “To imagine a personal Creator as the first living being is probably impossible, for the question arises involuntarily: “Whence does this highly developed being suddenly come?” He must as such consist of an organic mass, composed of cells. But, to quote Virchow’s saying, with which you probably concur, omnis cellula ex cellula, it is obvious that this being must have been evolved from some primitive cell. The assumption that the first being was a simple mass like a cell, is far more likely to be correct, and is more simple than your assumption that there was in the beginning a highly organised Creator.”
Hi Richard,
Thanks for referring me to your comment from March 8, 2009 at 3:00pm. Somehow I missed it, and only saw your additional comment beneath it.
Yes, certainly there are questions of whether we have “subconscious” beliefs, and what that means. And whether beliefs are even part of our conscious experiences (intuitively, they seem to be).
Later you assert that our conscious experiences do not have causal efficacy in the physical world. So you would have to either amend that assertion, or make a stronger case that beliefs are not part of our conscious experience. I believe that there are correlations between brain states and conscious experiences,” as you suggest, but it doesn’t seem that there need to be any.
Plantinga argues that theism, but not naturalism, is compatible with Darwinian theory. Both theses are interesting, especially the second one. Dennett grants the first thesis and then bashes theism as a reprehensible fairy tale. He doesnât really engage, or even clearly grasp, Plantingaâs argument for the second thesis. This is a pity because Plantingaâs arguments on both points merit scrutiny. Two parts I wish had been more discussed.
First, consider the engine that drives natural selection. Creatures are born or hatched in far greater numbers than their environment can support, so the young of each species are pitted against their own siblings. Few survive to maturity. Hundreds of millions of years of this pain and terror, suffered by uncomprehending innocent creatures without free will, the possibility of moral growth or the ability to know God, seems to me to create special problems for Christian theismâespecially as God had quicker and less horrific ways to produce human beings. I was unconvinced by Plantingaâs attempt to deploy standard responses to the problem of evil against this most salient argument from evil. Perhaps he would persuade me given more time, but for now I submit itâs implausible that the most benevolent being imaginable would have allowed, much less created and guided, such a process.
Second, Plantingaâs argument that reliable cognitive faculties (which he believes we do have) are improbable given the conjunction of naturalism (which is construed to include atheism and materialism) and natural selection deserves to be taken apart carefully. A suggestion: perhaps the motivating idea is that mental properties cannot be causally efficacious in a system where all causation is physical. Suppose mental properties make no difference to what creatures do; then even if representational content supervenes on physical states that have been selected for, that content couldnât have played a role in their selection. So thereâs no reason why it would be accurate. (Even if we get (as seems most unlikely) a materialist reduction of mental properties, why think those physical properties of neural states are the ones that got selected for?) In short: given naturalistic materialism, natural selection canât get a handle on the mental. So reliable cognitive faculties produced by natural selection are highly improbable. As our faculties are accurate, however, and were produced by natural selection, naturalism is false.
Bilbo, you do seem to have misunderstood Richard’s point. He is not offering a solution to the mind/body problem. He is simply pointing out the remorseless consequences of a strictly monist picture of the mind (which most naturalists would probably endorse). I will attempt to explain it in a slightly different way:
There is a clear evolutionary advantage in the brain being able to store the information that there is a tiger in the jungle, and being able to use that information to steer the body away from the jungle. On a materialist view of the brain, conscious beliefs at the very least supervene on neurophysiological (NP) structures, and we know that NP structures are metabolically expensive to create and maintain.
It is therefore unlikely, from a materialist and evolutionary perspective, that the web of NP structures which support conscious beliefs is parallel to and entirely separate from the NP structures that store information about the outside world. (This seems to be what Plantinga is suggesting in his EAAN, and could be construed as a form of dualism.)
Instead, a materialist would quite reasonably expect that conscious beliefs about the jungle supervene on just those NP structures that store information about the jungle. And supervene in such a way that they reflect exactly the connections between those NP structures. Anything else would require extra NP structure, which would be unnecessary and metabolically wasteful.
So there is a necessary correspondence (given this strict form of monism) between conscious beliefs on the one hand, and accurate representational information and adaptive behavior on the other. Whether this picture entails that beliefs do or don’t have “causal efficacy” is a moot point.
Jim Stone writes: “He [Dennett] doesnât really engage, or even clearly grasp, Plantingaâs argument”
Dennett doesn’t engage Plantinga’s argument because he doesn’t take it seriously. No naturalist (to my knowledge) believes that the probability of R (our cognitive faculties are reliable), given naturalism and evolution, is low, so the argument is a non-starter. Given Plantinga’s limited background in cognitive science, his attempts to argue that P(R/N&E) is low carry no more weight with naturalists than do Dawkins’ opinions of philosophy with philosophers.
Hello Jim. Welcome to the discussion. Bilbo and I have been discussing Plantinga’s argument here, so you might like to read our exchange above.
Essentially, the problem with Plantinga’s argument (as you’ve have described it) is that it only considers a kind of dualist view of the mind, in which “mental properties” (as you call them) would have to constitute a separate causative entity from the physical brain. Plantinga fails to consider the alternative view (which I’m almost certain is Dennett’s) that there is only one causative entity involved, namely the physical brain, and that conscious experiences are an affect of brain activity, and do not have a causative influence on anything.
Helpful post.
‘Information’ is not a mentalistic term. A carries info about B iff A covaries with B (or something like this). So thunder carries info about lightening and vice versa. There need be
no observer. Sure the brain needs to have informational states but, as you note, these needn’t be beliefs or have representational content–they needn’t yet be mental.
Suppose for argument’s sake that the representational content of beliefs (which supervene on neurological states) is causally
inert. It makes no difference to what we do.
Evolution selected for the subvening physical
state because it (a) carries info about tigers
in the jungle, say, and (b) it does make a difference to what we do.
Why should evolution select for that state having the semantic or representational content that there are tigers in the jungle? It does no work. If it had the content that the moon is
beautiful we would still avoid the jungle on
account of the subvening physical state (in
tandem with others).
You suggest simplicity. It would be more economical physically for the content of that
belief to capture the informational content of
the underlying physical state. But why? The brain does no more work in realizing one content by that physical state than another.
Note that, given this picture, the belief that the moon is beautiful itself carries the information that there are tigers in the jungle. It covaries with that fact.
Informational physical states don’t need, and typically don’t have, syntax or semantic content or anything that could be deployed to manufacture one belief as opposed to another.
Smoke carries info about fire.
The point is that, if belief states make no difference to what we do, natural selection
has no way to select for accurate belief states.
Nor is there any account of how particular beliefs would naturally fall out of non-mental states that are selected for. Maybe one can
be given, but we really do need one if this gambit to be a starter.
The best hope of natural selection selecting
for accurate beliefs is for mental content
to affect behaviour. And that, short of a plausible reduction that nobody has given,
is deeply problematic for naturalistic materialism, which insists that causation of physical events is always physical.
ooga: It is precisely that difficult for atheists to humor your religious views.
It’s not difficult at all, it’s called manners.
Imagine debating the existence of Zeus or Odin, and just how difficult it might be for you to take these arguments seriously.
I might find the arguments preposterous, but I hope I could take my opponent seriously. (Otherwise, why am I debating him? To show off? To hear the sound of my own voice?)
It is not an insult to call what is irrational, irrational.
Sure it is — if you can’t do it politely. If you see somebody wearing an ugly dress, you are not obliged to run up to that person and say, “What a hideous outfit! What happened to your sense of taste? Were you raised in a barn?!?” Not even if it’s really, truly, undeniably awful. Sure, some people may be oversensitive to any criticism of their beliefs, but there’s a wide middle ground between that and plain rudeness.
you strike us as being completely silly, for there is no rational basis for such beliefs.
Just as atheists strike theists as being silly (and perhaps wicked to boot). And indeed, this problem is obviously not limited to any particular class of people; it’s a universal temptation to ridicule those who don’t share one’s views. Most of us manage to resist that temptation most of the time, out of simple courtesy.
I said: Just as atheists strike theists as being silly
Oops, that obviously isn’t true! It applies to some, but there are lots of theists, atheists, and any other stripe who acknowledge that other people have beliefs that are fine or plausible or even very wise (if perhaps not quite compelling enough to convince them). Of course, my point is just that even in the case where we sincerely do think somebody else holds silly views, we can still be polite about it.
Hello webc. Thanks for explaining my view better than I did! Having mostly developed this view for myself, and not having read or discussed the subject much, I don’t have a good handle on the standard terminology, as you clearly do. Just one thing, though. I prefer my term “consciously experienced beliefs” to your “conscious beliefs”. I think it makes a little clearer the point that–in the monist view–there are no mental states (including beliefs) separate from NP states. There are only NP states and the conscious experience of those states. And that’s the point which I think we’re having difficulty getting across.
At the risk of making us look like a tag team, I’ll respond briefly to Jim. Jim, the view you’re criticising is one in which there exist mental states (including “belief states”) in addition to neurophysiological (NP) states. But that’s not the monist view. In the monist view, the only states are NP states. There is no separate conscious mind in the sense of an entity with states and properties of its own. (That’s why I put your “mental properties” in scare quotes in my last post.) Consciousness is merely the experience of NP processes and states. A belief is an NP state that represents information about the world and (if you like) the conscious experience of that state.
Bilbo wrote: I believe that there are correlations between brain states and conscious experiences,” as you suggest, but it doesn’t seem that there need to be any.
But Plantinga is claiming there can’t be a natural explanation for our beliefs being acurate. For his argument to make this case, he needs to show that there can’t be any systematic correlation between brain states and conscious experiences.
Correction to my last post. On second thoughts I don’t think Plantinga does claim that there can’t be a natural explanation for our beliefs being reliable. His claim is (apparently) that P(R|N&E) is low, i.e. the probability of reliability given naturalism and an evolutionary origin of the mind is low. Nevertheless, he is the one making the claim, so the onus is on him to show that it is unlikely that there is a correlation between brain states and conscious experiences. Merely to show that there needn’t be a correlation is insufficient.
Incidentally, I’ve found this rebuttal of Plantinga’s argument by Fitelson and Sober:
http://fitelson.org/plant.pdf
The essential point with regard to the argument we’re having here is this:
In general, the way to have two (logically independent) properties be well correlated is to have one cause the other, or to have each trace back to a common cause. If belief and action failed to be causally connected in either of these two ways, then it would be surprising for selection on action to lead cognitive mechanisms to evolve that are highly reliable. However, if belief and action are causally connected, then it takes a more detailed argument than Plantinga provides for concluding that reliable belief formation devices are unlikely to evolve via selection on actions.
The position I’ve been describing here is that actions and consciously experienced beliefs have a common cause, namely the brain’s neurophysiological states and processes.
There’s also a Wikipedia page on Plantinga’s argument that may be of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism
Jim Stone writes: “Why should evolution select for that state having the semantic or representational content that there are tigers in the jungle? It does no work. If it had the content that the moon is beautiful we would still avoid the jungle on account of the subvening physical state (in tandem with others).”
At the risk of simply repeating Richard’s response in slightly different words, I would explain the situation as follows:
Information stored in the brain about the jungle is “about” the jungle because it is created and updated in response to sensory inputs from the jungle, and because it triggers bodily behavior in response to sensory inputs from the jungle. It therefore has relational content, but no semantic content. There is nothing mysterious about this: information stored on computers has exactly the same kind of relational content.
Consciously experienced beliefs, on the other hand, do have semantic content (or intentionality), but they also have relational content. And on a strictly monist view of the mind, this relational content is identical to the relational content of the neurophysiological structures on which the beliefs supervene. So a belief that supervenes on NP structures containing information about tigers cannot be “about” the moon, because the NP structures that contain inforrmation about the moon have a completely different relational content.
To express this more informally, there is (on a strictly monist account) no independent arbiter inside the mind saying “Well, that belief might supervene on information about tigers, but really it is a belief about the moon”. To think this is again to presuppose a form of dualism.
Thanks for this response. Again itâs helpful. Let me quote you sentence by sentence
and say where our disagreement begins.
âConsciously experienced beliefs, on the other hand, do have semantic content (or intentionality), but they also have relational content.â
Right. They have informational content as well as semantic content. This is a matter of what they causally covary with; suppose itâs tigers.
âAnd on a strictly monist view of the mind, this relational content is identical to the relational content of the neurophysiological structures on which the beliefs supervene.â
I understand this to say that the informational content of a belief is identical to the relational content of the neurophysiological structure on which it supervenes. I have no problem with this.
â So a belief that supervenes on NP structures containing information about tigers cannot be “about” the moon, because the NP structures that contain inforrmation about the moon have a completely different relational content.â
Hereâs our disagreement. Suppose the NP structure contains information about tigers. Suppose for argumentâs sake that it realizes the semantic content that the moon is beautiful. As the occurrence of that semantic content covaries with tigers, it carries the same info about tigers.
If âaboutâ (your quotes) denotes information (in our sense) youâre right that the belief carries no info about the moon. But this is consistent with its being about the moon in the straightforward sense that itâs a representation of the moon. Given the sense of information in play, a representation of the moon might carry info only about tigers. That it isnât âaboutâ the moon doesnât entail it isnât about the moon. Thereâs no difficulty unless we equivocate on âabout.â
The larger point is that if the NP structure carries info about tigers, then any representation that supervenes on it, whether of tigers or the moon or God or whatever, will carry that info about tigers. As any representation will carry that info, the NP structureâs information doesnât determine which representation it realizes. Unless we insist that the representational content of the representation just is the information the NP structure carries. But why should that be so?
Information and representational content do seem like apples and oranges. We can represent what
doesnât exist but information must covary with what does exist. There canât be false information
(in our sense). Representation is under an aspect; information is extensional. Also suppose tigers are present because tigernip is present, and suppose thatâs present because the soil contains chemical X. Then any physical state that carries the info that tigers are present carries the info that tigernip is present and that X are present too, because it covaries with these too. But my representation of tigers isnât about tigernip or about X. The NP state that carries info about tigers isnât (so far) about tigers, anymore than smoke is about fire, but my representation of tigers is about something, tigers. Maybe there is some way to show how informational content would select for a matching semantic content, but it is very hard to see how it would, and a straightforward reduction seems implausible. Indeed, it is mysterious why, given informational carrying physical states, we would have intentional states at all.
Jim Stone writes: “youâre right that the belief carries no info about the moon. But this is consistent with its being about the moon in the straightforward sense that itâs a representation of the moon.”
If the belief is a representation of the moon then it carries the information “this belief is about the moon”. Where does this information come from? On a monist view, all information resides in NP structures. So for a belief to be about the moon it must supervene on NP structures containing information about the moon. I reiterate that, according to monism, there is no independent arbiter inside the mind deciding what beliefs are “really” about.
Note that, as Richard has already mentioned, a necessary consequence of the monist position that a belief cannot contain more information than the NP structures on which it supervenes is that a belief is nothing more than the subjective impression that “this NP structure contains this relational content”. Anything beyond this would require more information, and therefore more NP structure. In other words, according to monism, semantic content is just an awareness of relational content.
“Also suppose tigers are present because tigernip is present, and suppose thatâs present because the soil contains chemical X. Then any physical state that carries the info that tigers are present carries the info that tigernip is present and that X are present too, because it covaries with these too. But my representation of tigers isnât about tigernip or about X. The NP state that carries info about tigers isnât (so far) about tigers, anymore than smoke is about fire, but my representation of tigers is about something, tigers.”
I’m not sure what you are trying to demonstrate with this example. You seem to be saying that a belief about tigers does not (necessarily) carry all the information that is stored in the brain about tigers. This is clearly true, but it has no bearing on the monist position. On monism, a belief cannot carry more information than the NP structures on which it supervenes, but it can certainly carry less. And your last sentence seems to be restating the position that relational content is not the same as semantic content, to which we all agree. Intentional states are not identical with physical states.
“Indeed, it is mysterious why, given informational carrying physical states, we would have intentional states at all.”
Agreed. No one has a solution to the problem of consciousness. But given that we do have intentional states, it is a remorseless consequence of strict monism that intentional states correlate exactly with physical states, in the sense that relational content fixes semantic content.
webc wrote: Consciously experienced beliefs, on the other hand, do have semantic content (or intentionality), but they also have relational content.
I think it’s misleading to talk about consciously experienced beliefs having any additional “content” beyond that of the NP structures on which they supervene.
In fact, I think our terminology is still hindering us, so I’m going to suggest a change. I wrote earlier that I thought the view I’m espousing was easier to discuss if the word “belief” was used in a way that did not entail any conscious experience. However, that idea was not accepted by anyone else, so I’m going to introduce a new word, “pseudo-belief”, to refer to something that does all the work of a consciously experienced belief, but without the conscious experience. That means we can now refer to consciously experienced beliefs simply as “beliefs” or “real beliefs”, since the word “belief” will entail conscious experience. And we can talk about beliefs supervening on pseudo-beliefs.
To make this clearer, consider a thought experiment. Suppose that we artificially create a “philosophical zombie”, i.e. a machine which looks and behaves exactly like a human being, but has no conscious experiences. Such a zombie would behave as if it had beliefs, but would actually have only pseudo-beliefs. It would act on those pseudo-beliefs in just the same ways that a human would. To do that it would have to pseudo-understand the meaning of those pseudo-beliefs. It could even be a pseudo-philosopher, doing just the same complex pseudo-thinking as a real philosoper. The data structures and processing associated with pseudo-beliefs, pseudo-understanding and pseudo-thinking could be exactly the same as those associated with real beliefs, understanding and thinking, apart from whatever extra is needed to create conscious experiences.
Now, I suggest that the zombie’s pseudo-beliefs have just the same “semantic content” as real beliefs. Otherwise it would not be able to do philosophy.
(Perhaps I should add that Dennett denies the possibility of a philosophical zombie. And I think he would say there is no difference between beliefs and pseudo-beliefs. But I won’t go there.)
Oops. I think my definition of “pseudo-belief” was unclear. I defined it as “something that does all the work of a consciously experienced belief, but without the conscious experience.” I didn’t mean this to entail that a pseudo-belief doesn’t have a supervening conscious experience, just that the supervening conscious experience (if there is one) is not part of the pseudo-belief.
I also wrote: “And we can talk about beliefs supervening on pseudo-beliefs.” This doesn’t make sense given my definition. It would be better to talk about conscious belief experiences supervening on pseudo-beliefs. In other words, we can say that belief = pseudo-belief + conscious belief experience.
Richard writes: “I think it’s misleading to talk about consciously experienced beliefs having any additional “content” beyond that of the NP structures on which they supervene.”
Consciously experienced beliefs do not contain any more information than there is in the subvenient NP structures, it is true, but they do contain extra “content”, namely the subjective awareness of the relational content of the supporting NP structures. And correlated with this awareness (usually) is the creation of extra NP structure, whose content is the memory (however vague and fleeting) that “I did believe X”.
Incidentally, throughout his writings Plantinga assumes implicitly that “beliefs” are the same as what you are calling “consciously experienced beliefs”, which is why the second term is a bit redundant in the context of the present discussion. And it seems to me that what you are calling “pseudo-belief” is identical to what I’m calling “informational” or “relational content”.
Thanks, webc, for your thought-provoking posts.
webc wrote: Consciously experienced beliefs do not contain any more information than there is in the subvenient NP structures, it is true, but they do contain extra “content”, namely the subjective awareness of the relational content of the supporting NP structures.
I still consider it misleading to use the word “content” to describe this. It implies that some thing is being contained. But that’s dualism. My (monist) view is that experiences are not things. I can’t give a word for what they are, as there is nothing else like them. So I’m trying to just call them “experiences” and nothing else.
Similarly, I find your term “intentional state” misleading. It implies that there is some thing with a state.
It seems to me that Jim is still thinking in terms of a dualist view, and I’m afraid your terminology may be encouraging him in this.
webc wrote: And correlated with this awareness (usually) is the creation of extra NP structure, whose content is the memory (however vague and fleeting) that “I did believe X”.
I disagree. If these memories are so fleeting that they leave no record, how do you know that you’ve had them? For you to be able to talk about them now, they must have left some record that has persisted until now. A philosopical zombie would talk about them just as you are doing, so it must have the same record (or one functionally equivalent). In other words, if you have the belief “I did believe X”, then the zombie equivalent of you must have the pseudo-belief “I did believe X”.
I’m finding it hard to see any reason why a human needs any NP structures, data or processing beyond what a zombie has. The more I think about this, the more I agree with Dennett that the human has nothing that the zombie doesn’t, in which case there’s no reason why one would be conscious and not the other.
I must dig out my copy of “Consciousness Explained”. I only skimmed it when I bought it a few years ago. It’s time I read it properly.
I also found this interesting video interview with Dennett:
http://meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=dennett&topic=complete
By the way, I think you’ve been careful not to let on whether you yourself hold the monist view that you’ve been describing. I’d be interested to know what your view is.
webc: And it seems to me that what you are calling “pseudo-belief” is identical to what I’m calling “informational” or “relational content”.
Well, I don’t recall you having given a definition of “relational content” and I’m not sure that you and Jim both understand it the same way. (And does it mean exactly the same as “informational content”?) Also, I’ve defined (and named) “pseudo-belief” in terms of what it does (it does everything a belief does apart from the conscious experience), whereas your terms appear to name something for what it is rather than what it does. Yours and mine may amount to much the same thing in practice, but I don’t think they’re identical in meaning.
Richard writes: “I still consider it misleading to use the word “content” to describe this [subjective awareness].”
I think our notions of the meaning of the word “content” differ slightly. It’s of no consequence: just a matter of definition.
“Similarly, I find your term “intentional state” misleading. It implies that there is some thing with a state.”
I only used it because Jim introduced the term. It’s not a term I normally use. However, I think it is generally understood that the “thing” that has states is the brain (by monists) or the brain + mind (by dualists).
“If these memories are so fleeting that they leave no record, how do you know that you’ve had them?”
I never wrote that memories of consciously experienced beliefs leave no record. They do leave a record, namely the memory that the belief was experienced. This memory _might_ be fleeting (that is, quickly overlaid by later memories), or it might persist for a long time. (For example, I remember believing yesterday that “Plantinga is incapable of shedding his dualist outlook, even hypothetically”.) However, I do think it is a very unusual person who cannot recall mere seconds after believing something that he or she had a consciously experienced belief.
“For you to be able to talk about them [memories] now, they must have left some record that has persisted until now.”
I agree entirely. I never wrote anything to the contrary. And I agree with pretty much everything you say about zombies, which must make me a monist.
“Well, I don’t recall you having given a definition of “relational content” and I’m not sure that you and Jim both understand it the same way.”
I thought I had been reasonably careful in defining “relational content” in my March 14, 2009 10:32 AM comment: “Information stored in the brain about the jungle is “about” the jungle because it is created and updated in response to sensory inputs from the jungle, and because it triggers bodily behavior in response to sensory inputs from the jungle. It therefore has relational content …” Relational content in this instance is the specification of how the NP structure in question responds to sensory inputs from the jungle (or from anything else, including other NP structures). And yes, I am characterizing it in terms of what it is rather than what it does, because my understanding is that a belief is just stored information, and therefore does not “do” anything. (By contrast, the supporting NP structure does “do” something.) “Informational content” I am using as a synonym of “relational content” (as all information carried by the NP structure is completely specified by the relational content).
Whether Jim understands my position as I do, I cannot say.
webc wrote: I never wrote that memories of consciously experienced beliefs leave no record.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I wasn’t clear what the purpose of your “fleeting” comment was, so I thought I’d better address the possibility that you might mean it that way, just in case. I felt I needed to get that out of the way before proceeding to the main point. But now I think I misunderstood you on the main point too. So I’ll drop the whole matter before I embarrass myself any more. 😉
webc wrote: I thought I had been reasonably careful in defining “relational content” in my March 14, 2009 10:32 AM comment: “Information stored in the brain about the jungle is “about” the jungle because it is created and updated in response to sensory inputs from the jungle, and because it triggers bodily behavior in response to sensory inputs from the jungle. It therefore has relational content …” Relational content in this instance is the specification of how the NP structure in question responds to sensory inputs from the jungle (or from anything else, including other NP structures). And yes, I am characterizing it in terms of what it is rather than what it does, because my understanding is that a belief is just stored information, and therefore does not “do” anything. (By contrast, the supporting NP structure does “do” something.) “Informational content” I am using as a synonym of “relational content” (as all information carried by the NP structure is completely specified by the relational content).
Thanks. That’s more specific than I want to get, so I’ll be sticking with my term “pseudo-belief”.
I’ve always thought the Sosa-style objection was knock-down and people should just leave this argument alone already. But I know there is quite a surrounding literature and I would be happy to see why it’s still up and kicking. Let me put the objection in my own, somewhat different, way…
Suppose our general reliability is inscrutable given naturalism + evolution (setting aside our beliefs about our actual reliability).
Our general reliability is, in the same way, inscrutable on the hypothesis that we are the creatures of some god or other, whether or not good. Call _that_ hypothesis T*.
It seems to me that if naturalism+evolution is self-defeating, then so is T*. After all, both N+E and T* are beliefs about our origins and both in some sense render the hypothesis that we are generally rational — even about the origin stories themselves! — inscrutable.
Since every traditional theist who thinks about T* believes it, theists have a problem too.
What to say? That T* is self-defeating, and that it is logically weaker than traditional theism, and yet that traditional theism is not self-defeating? Strange! Or should we say that T* is not self-defeating after all? Either way, the naturalist has a parallel move.
The naturalist believes more than N+E. He also believes that we got lucky, alethically speaking, and are generally reliable. In other words, just as the traditional theist thinks we won the deity lottery (amazing: out of the infinitely many conceivable deities, we got the only perfect one!!!) the naturalist thinks we won the reliability lottery.
The analogy goes like this:
N+E (Plantinga’s target) : T*
N+E+R : T (traditional theism)
The first pair is impoverished and the second pair is strengthened. They’re both in the same shape, epistemically speaking, but Plantinga compares across the diagonal: the weakened version of what the naturalist believes and the full-strength version of what the theist believes.
In his reply to Sosa, Plantinga says that N+E+R is, I believe, whistling past the graveyard? (Maybe it was whistling in the dark?) It wasn’t clear to me why N+E+R was whistling past the graveyard, while T was not. If that is just a reflection of Plantinga’s own priors, then fine, but I thought it was supposed to be an argument for SELF-DEFEAT!
Plantinga’s *offensive* argument comes down to saying that T is properly basic but N+E+R is graveyard whistling? Is this right? That’s weak sauce.
Everyone is stuck saying we are lucky, relative to *some* impoverished subset of our beliefs about our origins, to be equipped with reliable belief-forming mechanisms. Externalists are typically happy to say that once we’ve got those reliable mechanisms up and running, they give us knowledge. And, so says Sosa, we get a special, human kind of knowledge — as opposed to mere servo-mechanical, animal knowledge — if we build a coherent picture of our place in the world such that it makes sense that we have reliable belief-forming processes. Naturalists and theists alike have managed to do this well enough.
Maybe someone can point me to an article where Plantinga, or some other defender of the argument, has something more interesting to say than “T, hooray! N+E+R, boo!”
Troy:
A couple of moves come to mind for the Sosa objection, though none make me completely happy.
1. Claim that P(T|T*) is high.
Why?
1a. One might try a Swinburne-like simplicity move: T is the simplest of the god hypotheses. Can the naturalist do something similar? Maybe–but it would take substantive work, just as it would take substantive work to run the Swinburne move, and it might be that the Swinburne move would work out, but the parallel naturalist move wouldn’t.
1b. One might try to argue that there are two relevant dimensions to the deity in T*: smart/stupid, and good/neutral/bad. So we have six relevant basic combinations. We may be able to use design-type considerations (fine-tuning, etc.) to rule out the stupid variants. Then we might run some argument from good (the reverse of the argument from evil) to show that P(smart and bad) is less than P(smart and good). Or we might argue that good is somehow ontologically basic, and deities are explanatorily basic entities, and it would be problematic metaphysically if the deity were bad. In any case, if we can show P(smart and good) is bigger than P(smart and bad), we might be able to argue that P(R) is more than 0.5. For P(R|smart and good) is more than 0.5. P(R|smart and neutral) is, maybe, 0.5 (I am not sure–this might be the weak point; maybe we should argue that P(smart and neutral) is low, too, on the grounds of the ontological basicness of godo or something like that). And P(R|smart and bad) is roughly equal to 1-P(R|smart and good).
2. There is a difference between T and N+E+R, in that if in fact T is true, then it is metaphysically necessary that T (that’s: If T, then LT; not just L(if T, then T)) and hence if T holds, the objective probability of T is 1. So if T holds, metaphysically there was no luck to us winning the deity lottery. But if N+E+R holds, metaphysically there was luck: it is false that if N+E+R, then L(N+E+R).
I don’t know how good an answer this is–one might think that the relevant modality is epistemic and not metaphysical. Intuitively, though, metaphysical necessity and non-epistemic probabilities seem to matter quite a bit (certainly they do for reliabilists) for questions of scepticism–if I thought that 2/3 of the members of my Dept were kidnapped yesterday and had their brains put into vats, with memories of the kidnapping erased, I shouldn’t believe my sense.
Maybe the naturalist, though, can run the following parallel line: The correlations between belief and behavior tendencies are metaphysically necessary, so R is objectively likely given N+E. (I’ve always thought this was the best move for the naturalist to make.)
Thanks, Alex.
I think the first strategy just doesn’t align with my instinctive measure over epistemic space. I don’t see any explanatory advantage in taking the creator to be perfectly just, rather than somewhat just, or even wickedly unjust, for example. To me, it seems the probability of traditional theism on the creation-by-something-or-other hypothesis is, if not incredibly low, then inscrutable. But maybe those are just my idiosyncratic priors. I know there is a grand tradition of people who do seem to have had the priors you indicate.
Will Plantinga’s argument boil down to the asymmetries in these conditional probabilities? If so, they may please theists (or non-theists) who share them, but not a broader audience including those, like myself, who do not.
As to the second point, I thought about including it in my original post, but it was already getting over-long. I’m not sure exactly what to say.
It’s true that in the n+e case we have, in some sense, an *actual* alethic lottery and in the t* case, a merely epistemically possible one. (Even saying it’s epistemically possible will require qualification, of course, because theists may say they know t and naturalists, that they know n+e+r. I should say non-zero subjective credence… on *some* views.)
What is the epistemic significance of the difference between actual and merely possible lotteries? I grant that there may be a difference, but I just can’t believe this is what Plantinga’s argument comes down to.
Note first: the naturalist’s lottery is a bit different from your brain-snatching case, because on e+n there needn’t be any ACTUAL beings with unreliable belief-forming processes.
Second, if we won the alethic n+e lottery, we did so long, long ago, and our mechanisms of belief formation, as they currently stand, are highly reliable. In fact, it could be that our belief in e+n tracks the truth in all nearby worlds. (I guess this depends in large part on how we resolve the conditionals in question.)
Regardless of how that claim turns out, something feels like cheating here.
I imagine the Megarians arguing for their strange, necessitarian modality this way:
If we’re right, then if P is truly believed, then P is reliably believed, since whatever is true is necessarily true and, moreover, the way in which the belief was actually formed is robust over nearby possible worlds (because there aren’t any). Therefore, we’re right! All non-Megarian views put themselves in a weaker epistemic position with respect to their non-Megarianism because they admit that using the same, or a similar process, they could have gotten it wrong. (Not because the content is contingent, but because the same process could have yielded a different belief.)
Is that Plantinga’s idea? Rationality demands that among competing hypotheses we choose the one which, IF TRUE, minimizes the modal space of error about that view and maximizes its distance from us, even if only by offering a strange view of modal space itself? Weird!
Troy C writes: “Suppose our general reliability is inscrutable given naturalism + evolution (setting aside our beliefs about our actual reliability)…The naturalist believes more than N+E. He also believes that we got lucky, alethically speaking, and are generally reliable.”
You seem here to be conflating the two cases Plantinga considers in his EAAN: one in which P(R/N&E) is low, and the other in which P(R/N&E) is inscrutable. They do not have the same consequences for the argument. If the probability is inscrutable then we simply do not know what the odds are, we do not know whether there was a reliability lottery at all, and we do not know whether we were lucky to win it if there was one.
Plantinga also conflates the two cases, and his general line of argument (contra Sosa and many others) is that if you do not believe that the probability of R is high (given your noetic base minus R itself) then you have no rational grounds for believing R. Now this is a non sequitur, unless you are committed to a form of presuppositionalism. But if you do accept the proposition, then theists escape the trap (because their noetic base includes a mechanism for enforcing R) but naturalists do not.
webc:
You’re right that the *low* path differs from the *inscrutable* path. But how does it make for disanalogy with T vs. T*? Either way, you believe that something actually came to pass that you assign low or inscrutable subjective probability, relative to some beliefs you have about our origins.
Your second point is that theists have something in their noetic base that entails R, while naturalists do not. I guess this is to say: T gets into the noetic base, but N+E+R does not. As you point out, this presupposes a particular, and peculiar, epistemology. Is this the argument?
Naturalism is self-defeating because it doesn’t have in its noetic base anything that “enforces” R? It’s unclear why R itself can’t get into the noetic base (except for a Plantingian fiat that it cannot). But even if R itself can’t get in, why not propositions that entail R, such as R&P, for some obvious P like ‘I have hands’, or at least, inductively confirm R, like, a bunch of “I have hands and I believe that I have hands” kind of propositions?
If we are subtracting R, how much must we subtract along with it?
For the theist, when you “subtract” R from your beliefs, why aren’t you forced to hold the benevolence and power of God in abeyance as well? On at least some theories, these qualities do *entail* the general, defeasible reliability of our faculties, after all, since God is essentially good.
Anyway, if the argument is that T is properly basic but N+E+R is not, it’s, I guess, a lot like the Great Pumpkin Objection: an argument about what gets to count as properly basic in Plantinga’s idiosyncratic epistemology, only stranger, since the GP is not exactly the upshot of our best scientific theory.
Not the apologetic tour-de-force I would trot out in a debate.
I’ve been thinking of what Williamson must say about Plantinga’s argument. I think he’d say: well, I have lots and lots of *evidence* that R is true, viz., all of the things I know and came to know using my faculties. And that’d be the end of discussion. That *also* feels like cheating.
Troy:
OK, so your priors aren’t like Swinburne’s. I guess I do find his simplicity considerations plausible.
How about this move? It’s not going to be a knock-down argument, and it’s not going to give self-defeat, but it might be a powerful piece of evidence in favor of theism, maybe. Suppose: T makes R likely. N+E makes R unlikely (let us suppose–I am not so sure). Thus, R incrementally confirms T over N+E. Of course, what the final probabilities will be depends on the priors. But if N+E makes R quite unlikely (say 0.00001), while T makes R more likely than not, then this is going to be a pretty powerful piece of evidence. Assuming we’re allowed to use R as evidence. But if we’re allowed to believe R, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be allowed to use it as evidence. (And if we want Bayesian consistency, we’ll have to do something like that.)
I’ve just been perusing Plantinga’s paper “Naturalism Defeated”, where he lays out his argument:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/naturalism_defeated.pdf
I skipped parts of it, and it’s likely this isn’t the latest version of his argument, so anything I write has to be a little tentative. Nevertheless, it seems to me that posters here are misinterpreting his argument.
webc wrote: Plantinga also conflates the two cases, and his general line of argument (contra Sosa and many others) is that if you do not believe that the probability of R is high (given your noetic base minus R itself) then you have no rational grounds for believing R.
Well, ostensibly the probability that Plantinga is considering is P(R|N&E alone), not P(R|your noetic base minus R itself).
He first argues that P(R|N&E) is low or inscrutable. He then claims that (in either case) this means N&E is a “defeater” for R, so we cannot accept both N&E and R. But–at least in the main body of his argument, section I–he fails to give a clear account of why this should be so. He merely attempts the following justification by way of example…
Suppose I believe that I have been created by an evil Cartesian demon who takes delight in fashioning creatures who have mainly false beliefs (but think of themselves as paradigms of cognitive excellence): then I have a defeater for my natural belief that my faculties are reliable. Turn instead to the contemporary version of this scenario, and suppose I come to believe that I have been captured by Alpha-Centaurian superscientists who have made me the subject of a cognitive experiment in which the subject is given mostly false beliefs: then, again, I have a defeater for R. But to have a defeater for R it isn’t necessary that I believe that in fact I have been created by a Cartesian demon or been captured by those Alpha-Centaurian superscientists. It suffices for me to have such a defeater if I have considered those scenarios, and the probability that one of those scenarios is true, is inscrutable for me–if I can’t make any estimate of it, do not have an opinion as to what that probability is. It suffices if I have considered those scenarios, and for all I know or believe one of them is true. In these cases too I have a reason for doubting, a reason for withholding17 my natural belief that my cognitive faculties are in fact reliable.
But the probability he is considering here (“the probability that one of those scenarios is true”) is P(my beliefs come from evil/alien beings and are mostly false). How is this probability analogous to P(R|N&E)? They are quite different. The probability analogous to P(R|N&E) would be P(R|my beliefs come from evil/alien beings).
What Plantinga’s argument ignores is the possibility that we may have other reasons for believing R, apart from N&E. I can see how the absurdity of this might lead one to think that Plantinga is actually claiming that P(R|your noetic base minus R itself) is low or inscrutable.
Plantinga considers this objection to his argument under the heading of “The Perspiration Objection”. However, when he comes to address the objection, in section IV.A, he ends up saying he’ll defer his answer until a later page. He then never seems to get around to it. It’s possible that he covered it elsewhere in sections II-IV, which I only skimmed, but I don’t think so.
Troy C writes: “But how does it make for disanalogy with T vs. T*?”
My two points were intended to be independent. The purpose of the first point was simply to highlight the fact that Plantinga’s argument is even weaker than you were representing it to be. If I believe that P(R/N&E) is inscrutable then there is no need for me to appeal to the belief that “we have won the evolutionary lottery” or anything similar to rescue R (which is in no danger of defeat). However, it is certainly true that a tu quoque response, drawing the analogy between N&E and N&E&R on one hand and T* and T on the other, remains open in this case.
Troy C writes: “If we are subtracting R, how much must we subtract along with it?”
Plantinga characterizes what I have called the “noetic base minus R” in a bit of detail on p. 225 of “Naturalism Defeated?”. A belief belonging to the “noetic base minus R” that rescues R from defeat is in Plantinga’s terminology a “defeater-deflector”. He writes:
“First, neither R itself nor any proposition equivalent to it … is a defeater-deflector here. Second, conjunctions of R with other propositions P that naturalists believe … will not be defeater-deflectors, unless P itself is; more generally, propositions P that entail R will not be defeater-deflectors, unless a result of deleting R from P is a defeater-deflector.* Third, no proposition P that is evidentially dependent upon R for S – i.e. such that S believes P on the evidential basis of R – is a defeater-deflector for R. *(Where P entails R, a result of deleting R from P will be any proposition Q such that Q is logically independent of R, and such that P is logically equivalent to the conjunction of R with Q.)”
I think one could argue interminably whether theism, for a theist, is “evidentially dependent on R”. (Note that Plantinga’s position is not that theism entails R, but only that it makes R very likely.)
Troy:
I myself think that one should not have a metaphysics on which not-R is objectively probable. (But I don’t think one needs the Megarian metaphysics. For we don’t need R to be necessary, just probable, or maybe just not improbable.) Or maybe even more strongly: a metaphysics on which not-R is not objectively improbable. It’s a kind of transcendental constraint.
But back to Plantinga. Maybe Plantinga shouldn’t claim that mere inscrutability of probabilities is a defeater. Here’s why. There is something to the sceptical theist idea that the probabilities of God allowing various terrible evils are inscrutable. Now, if the probability of God allowing human sin is inscrutable, the probability of God allowing not-R (which would also be an evil) is a fortiori also inscrutable (after all, sin is intrinsically a worse evil than not-R). Plantinga should instead try to show that P(R|N+E+C) is low (where C is the claim that there are beings which have apparently consistent experiences, which believe that R holds, etc.–this is an important piece of data that Plantinga’s discussion tends to leave out). He could then say that there are no scrutable objective conditional probabilities where necessary truths are concerned (does it really make sense to talk of the objective probability of Fermat’s Last Theorem holding for all n given that it was proved for all n up to 100?) or more weakly that at least P(T|T*) is inscrutable. That would destroy the parallel.
Richard writes: “I’ve just been perusing Plantinga’s paper “Naturalism Defeated”, where he lays out his argument:”
Richard, the document you have accessed is an unpublished 1994 manuscript by Plantinga. It is the basis for all his later writings on the EAAN, but it does not include many later criticisms of the argument, or Plantinga’s responses to these. A more recent summary of the literature on the EAAN (which is however biased heavily in favor of Plantinga) can be found in Troy Nunley’s 2005 PhD thesis for the University of Missouri-Columbia, which can be found here:
http://edt.missouri.edu/Winter2005/Dissertation/NunleyT-060605-D1612/
Troy C’s objections to Plantinga’s argument are discussed in Sections 4.B and 7.A.
Richard,
With respect to the mental, *prima facie* semantic properties come apart from syntactic properties even on a materialist picture. Of course, some people think they have accounts that show they can be tied together. But it’s a very hard problem for materialists (and dualists). Plantinga isn’t assuming dualism; he’s simply pushing Kim-style problems to the conclusion that there’s no reason to think that evolution raises the probability (significantly enough) that our beliefs are true.
Let me say this, too. I’m a former Christian. I hold Plantinga’s work in the highest regard. I thought that Dennett’s behaviour was deplorable, and, what is worse, the philosophy he did was laughably bad. And I agree with his worldview.
I’m also totally at a loss as to how everyone doesn’t agree with me about Dennett’s performance. But many of my naturalist brethren don’t. I’m troubled by this.
SN writes: “With respect to the mental, *prima facie* semantic properties come apart from syntactic properties even on a materialist picture.”
To believe that semantic content could possibly be _independent_ of syntactic properties is to be committed to a form of dualism (albeit a form of property dualism rather than substance dualism). If there is a neurophysiological structure in my brain which is in one state (“on”) whenever I see a tiger, and in another state (“off”) otherwise, then (on a strictly monist view) the only possible semantic content of a conscious belief which supervenes on that NP structure (and nothing else) is “I do/don’t see a tiger”. For if the semantic content were to be something else it would carry extra information which (on a monist view) would necessarily supervene on some other NP structure.
Now, it is certainly true that naturalists (and everyone else) cannot explain the mechanism by which the mind apprehends consciously experienced beliefs, or explain the adaptive value of such beliefs. But granted that we do have such beliefs, it is logically necessary (on a monist view) that they supervene on NP structure in such a way that their semantic content mirrors exactly the relational content of the supporting structure. (A clear account of the reduction of truth to relational properties can be found in William Ramsey’s defence of “evolutionary reliabilism” on pp. 16-19 of “Naturalism Defeated?”.)
Many people of course do not agree with this picture, and that is their prerogative. But it is consistent and plausible, and I believe most naturalists are committed to a view of roughly this type. It also completely vitiates Plantinga’s EAAN, because he steadfastly refuses to engage the majority naturalist position by conceding that this picture is a living option, dismissing it instead with the words:
“It would be something of a cosmic miracle (or maybe cosmic magic …) if adaptivity with respect to neurophysiological properties were correlated with truth of associated content.” [“Naturalism Defeated?”, p. 219]
So it is hardly to be wondered at that Dennett returns the compliment and dismisses Plantinga’s arguments as unworthy of a serious response.
webc:
The semantic naturalism you are advocating may well run into difficulties vis-a-vis Leon Porter’s Liar-based argument. (Porter argues using the concept of truth, but one can run the same kind of argument using reference or just about any semantic concept.)
[I have already submitted this comment once, but it did not appear. So I will try again.]
Alexander:
Thanks for the reference. I will try to track down Porter’s full article. Without seeing the details, I cannot say whether the position I am describing is necessarily as strong as the “semantic naturalism” Porter defines.
Well, it might be some time before I get hold of Porter’s article, as I have no immediate access to JSTOR. But I’m guessing that he argues that a theory of truth that commits to a truth condition of the form “S has N if and only if S” is unworkable because it is always possible to choose S = “this proposition does not have N”. (Can this be all that Porter is claiming? It seems too obvious.)
I’m not sure why naturalism would be more vulnerable to this type of objection than theism. What seems to be a common theistic position is that “Divine omniscience means that God holds no false beliefs. Not only are all of God’s beliefs true, the range of his knowledge is total; He knows all true propositions” [Ronald Nash, quoted at http://www.enjoyinggodministries.com/article/the-omniscience-of-god/%5D. In other words, “S is true if and only if God believes S”, a claim that is easily undermined by choosing S = “God does not believe this proposition”.
It seems likely to me that any complete naturalist theory of truth would contain some kind of truth condition like that envisaged by Porter. But Liar-type paradoxes can usually be avoided by moving to intuitionist logic anyway.
That’s very interesting. It does sound like Dennett was a bit of disappointment; I think someone with a greater tendency toward rigour would be a better candidate for a debate with Plantinga, like Tooley, say.
Thanks for your courage in posting this!