The Prosblogion

Reading Group Week 4: Plantinga's Reply to Tooley's Second Statement

2008-07-20T19:15:18Z

In this section, Plantinga responds to Tooley's response to his (Plantinga's) opening statement. Got it? Obviously, we're deep in the dialectic at this point. Plantinga focuses on two issues. First, he argues that Tooley has not adequately addressed his complaint that material beings cannot think. Second, he takes issue with Tooley's response to the evolutionary argument against naturalism.

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The Possibility of Thoughtbots
Recall that Plantinga claimed, "we can see on reflection, just as Leibniz suggested, that thought can't arise from the interaction of the parts of a material object" (218). Tooley tried to explain how a material being could think by trying to explain how a material being such as a robot could have experiences and how those experiences could serve as the basis of thought if the experiences stand in the right sorts of causal relationships to behavior.

Recall that Tooley argued that things other than immaterial minds can have beliefs. Tooley believes it is possible for there to be a robot, Robbie, that has "internal, purely physical states [that] causally give rise to qualia" (202). In defense, he notes:

Well, human brain states causally give rise to sensations and experiences, so it is not easy to see how it could be logically impossible for electronic circuitry to do the same.

Next, Tooley goes on to describe how these qualitative states might serve as the building blocks, as it were, of belief. (See 203-4).

Plantinga, however, will have none of this. The issue, he says, is not a matter of how there could be physical causes of experiences and belief. The dualist can say (and has said) that there can be physical causes of experiences and belief when those physical causes have effects on the immaterial mind. The issue is how a material being without any immaterial soul or mind could have the qualia that serve as the building blocks from which a mind is built in accordance with Tooley's specifications (221).

Now, Tooley anticipated this objection (as Plantinga notes on 222) and cites as evidence for the claim that material beings can think the example of non-human animals that can think, experience, feel, desire, intend, act, etc... Plantinga believes that there are NHA's that have mental lives, but "fails to see the source of his presumption that they don't have immaterial minds" (223). I think this reply is interesting, especially in light of Plantinga's earlier remarks concerning evolution and immaterial souls. He notes (rightly) that it's implausible to think that any of the physical changes that take place that lead to new forms of life will lead to the evolution of an immaterial self or soul (33). But, if the alternative view is that at some point in evolutionary development there are NHA's that receive souls from some supernatural source, I can't think of any reason why a supernatural entity would dole out souls to those and just those NHA's we typically think have minds. I think there might be an interesting issue here. What justification is there for an immaterialist about minds to claim that NHA's have minds if minds only result from some sort of supernatural intervention and the doling out of souls?

I think it's interesting to note that Plantinga does not seem to respond to Tooley's response to the claim that we can "just see" that material things cannot think (195-6). While I think it's heroic for Tooley to try to show how a material being might have a mind, I think it's sufficient for his purposes to have called into question the claim to be able to "see" that materialism about the mental is false. It would be nice to know why Plantinga thought that Tooley's response was inadequate because I take it that many, if not most, materialists about the mental adopt a kind of aposteriori materialist view on which there is no way to "see" one way or the other whether mental powers, properties, etc... require anything beyond certain material things.

EEAN
We've discussed the EEAN previously. Tooley, you'll recall, offered two important responses to the EEAN. First, he denied the following claim, which seems crucial to Plantinga's argument:
(A1) If P(R/N) is low or inscrutable, the naturalist has a defeater for each of her beliefs, the belief in naturalism included.

This seems to follow from a more general principle of defeat, which is that you have a defeater for your background beliefs if the probability of R/background beliefs is either low or inscrutable. The problem, Tooley claims, is that nothing of epistemic importance follows from the fact that P(R/background beliefs) is inscrutable. Hence, nothing of epistemic importance follows from the fact that P(R/N) is either low or inscrutable.

To this, Plantinga responds as follows:

Tooley asks us to consider an ordinary person who "initially believes that his cognitive faculties are reliable, but who has no idea what produced those faculties, or how probable it is, relative to the totality, T, of other things he is justified in believing, that his faculties are reliable" (p. 206). Tooley claims that on my position such a person would have a defeater for his belief that R ... [But on my view] he has a defeater only if he has thought about this probability, and finds himself unable to say what it is.

Now, this initial response strikes me as odd. As I read Tooley, Tooley is saying that his subject has thought about it and has no bloody idea what P(R/T) is AND (this is the crucial bit) thinks it is intuitive to say that this subject does not have a defeater for his beliefs. But, to press the issue a bit, Plantinga goes on to say this:

By analogy, suppose you've just purchased a new sphygmomanometer; naturally enough, you assume that it is reliable. But now you learn that your sphygmomanometer was made in a factory owned by a Luddite who aims to create as much confusion as he can in the medical community, to that end by fashioning instruments a certain proportion of which are completely unreliable. You know this much, but you have no idea what that proportion is. Then the probability of your sphygmomanometer's being reliable, given its origin, is inscrutable for you--and you certainly have a defeater for your initial belief that it is reliable (228)

I suppose Tooley might say this in response: I agree that you have a defeater for your beliefs about your blood pressure once you learn this new fact about the origin of the sphygmomanometer, but that's quite different from the original scenario in which the subject had no specific reasons for doubting the reliability of his faculties.

Anyway, I do think there is an interesting issue here. Discuss.

Tooley's second line of response is to argue that we should reject a crucial assumption in Plantinga's argument if we assume a causal model of content. Recall that Plantinga's argument assumes:
(7) If Darwinian evolution is true, then even if it is true both that neural states of type N are, in an organism H, reliable indicators of the presence of an instance of property P, and also that states of type N have content C, there is no reason why content C need to be related to property P.

Tooley's response:

[I]f a property-dualist, causal theory of content is correct, and if a neural, indicator state does give rise to syntactically structured experiential states in an appropriate way, then that neural state is belief. In addition, if the neural state is an indicator of the presence of a basic descriptive property of experiences, such as qualitative greenness, then the causal relation in question fixes the content of the neural state. Finally, given the satisfaction of a further condition related to indexicality, the content of the neural state is precisely the indexical belief that that's an instance of qualitative greenness. It is therefore false, in the case of neural states that have content, that, "there is no reason why that content need be related to what the structures indicate, if anything", since the content of any indexical belief about a basic observational/introspectible property of experiences logically supervenes upon the causal relation that makes it the case that the relevant neural state is a reliable indicator of the qualitative property in question (210).

That was a mouthful. In short, if we assume the causal theory of content that Tooley advocates we ought to reject (7) on the grounds that the conditions that determine the contents of our belief states will reliably lead us to the truth. The reliable connections between the indicators and the properties indicated will be part of the content-determining conditions for the relevant beliefs, so we have reason to think that such beliefs will likely prove to be correct. Assuming, that is, that the theory of content Tooley advocates is the correct one.

Plantinga's responses:
(i) Isn't the claim that there is a necessary connection between the contents of beliefs and the properties indicated by the relevant reliable indicators "baseless"? (230)

(ii) If this account is extended to cover beliefs about things other than qualitative properties we can access through observation or introspection Tooley's account succumbs to the "disjunction problem" (231).

(iii) There is no reason to think that under the conditions where a certain NP property causes adaptive behavior (e.g., by indicating the presence of a tiger) the belief that supervenes on these NP properties will have a content that is about a tiger because while, "the subvening properties must be adaptive ... they can perfectly well do that no matter what the induced belief content (232).

Now, he's aware that Tooley will say that on a causal theory of content the contents properly ascribed to the beliefs will depend (in part) upon what states of affairs stand in causal relations to the relevant NP's. If that's right, he might have to retract (iii). However, Plantinga says that the claim that the causal theory of content Tooley accepts is the correct one is baseless speculation:

Tooley merely assumes that the content of belief is fixed by causal relations, and, furthermore, so fixed that most beliefs will be true. That, it seems to me, is nothing like a successful response to the EAAN. It would be as if the theist responded to Tooley's antitheistic argument by evil by simply postulating, without argument, that God has a good reason for permitting each of the evils the world displays. This proposition might be true ... but merely postulating it isn't much of a response to Tooley's argument. I say the same holds for Tooley's response to the EAAN.

At this point, I'm getting lost in the dialectic. First, I don't think Tooley's appeal to the causal theory of content is baseless. He presumably thinks that the causal theory is preferable to the intrinsic theory and thinks he has good reason for that preference. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought that there were good arguments for thinking that regardless of whether naturalism is true or not, the causal theories of content are preferable to the intrinsic theories. Why is it that Tooley can't help himself to the causal theory? Second, if Tooley has shown that the EAAN only works if we insist that naturalism is not coupled with the causal theory of content Tooley prefers, I'd think this is a big setback. It's not obviously irrational for a naturalist to accept that theory. It seems the best theory for the naturalist to adopt. If Plantinga is going to assert that naturalism is self-defeating, you'd hope that he'd argue that even if the naturalist helps herself to the best theory of thought content on the market the theory would still be self-defeating. It now seems that the complaint is not that the theory is self-defeating, but that a crucial aspect of it lacks external support. The naturalist will deny this, but that seems now to be where the action is.

As for (ii) I have to confess that I had a hard time understanding the significance of the disjunction problem in this context. (Maybe Plantinga is at this point just throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Tooley?) I thought that the disjunction problem was a problem for certain causal theories of content that took the content of a mental representation to be what caused tokens of that type of representation. If tokens were caused by, say, horses and zebras, how could there be beliefs that misrepresented the situation as one involving a horse when a zebra was present? Why wouldn't the representation represent things as involving either a horse or zebra? While this is an interesting problem, why is this Tooley's problem? Less determinate thought contents are less likely to be false than more determinate ones. (If every time you believe 'That's a horse', I belief 'That's a horse or a zebra', it's more likely I'll be right than you.) The disjunction problem is a problem for causal theories of content, not a problem for those who think that our beliefs will likely be true if that is the proper theory of content. This is a puzzling section.

Reading Group Week 3: Tooley's First Reply

2008-07-16T03:51:14Z

In the previous two weeks both Andrew and Kevin have detailed Plantinga's three pronged attack on naturalism as an alternative to theism. In this post I'll try to sketch the main thrust of Michael Tooley's response, though much of what Tooley has to say by way of criticism has come up in the comments to earlier posts. There are number of deep issues that I don't touch on, but that I'd be happy to discuss in the comments.

]]> Naturalism and the Concept of Proper Function

Recall that Plantinga's line of argument here is that naturalism cannot give a full account of proper function. This is a problem in the first instance because the concepts of health, sickness, and the like, involve the idea of proper function. In the second instance this is supposed to be a problem because warrant, that thing you add to true belief to make it knowledge, depends on proper function. So, if naturalism were true, then concepts like health and knowledge wouldn't apply to organisms.

Naturalism cannot offer a satisfactory analysis of what it is for an organism to function properly.
The concept of an organism's functioning properly cannot be analytically basic.
The concept of health/knowledge involves the idea of an organism's functioning properly.
Therefore:
If naturalism were true, concepts such as health/knowledge would not apply to organisms at all.

The first premise of the argument isn't obviously true. Plantinga tried to motivate one by showing how several analyses in the neighborhood fail, but it isn't clear that such an analysis won't be forthcoming. Tooley, though, picks up on (3) as the weakest link.

Tooley's response attacks the idea that notions like health and knowledge depend on proper function. Here is Tooley's first pass at a counterexample:

Imagine, then, a world where a deity has created intelligent beings very similar to humans, both physically and mentally, and where aging and a rather short life span are part of that deity's original design plan. Let John be such a being. Then parts of John will have functions in Plantinga's sense, specified by the design plan. ... A virus appears, and enters John's body, destroying a certain mechanism in the cells. If Plantinga's analysis of concepts such as health and sickness were correct, it would follow that John was now sick or injured. But suppose that what the virus has done is permanently to disable the cell mechanism responsible for aging, so that John may die in many ways, he will never grow old and will never suffer the mental and physical deterioration involved in aging.

Tooley goes on to point out that, of course, we we wouldn't think John less healthy or sick, but parts of his body aren't functioning in accord with their design plan. The upshot is that health can't be analyzed in terms of proper functioning. Instead Tooley suggests that health, and the like, are evaluative terms that relate to states that are intrinsically either good or bad for the individual.

I was initially drawn to Tooley's argument here, but on reflection it's less clear that we should think John healthy. Tooley's counterexample in some ways mirrors a story line that crops up in number of recent films and television shows, namely those that attempt to give naturalistic explanations of vampirism. Setting aside the vampire peculiarities, it's not clear that such individuals are more healthy for all their long life and miraculous healing abilities. One of the recurring themes of these story lines is an attempt by the infected to return to a life of normalcy, a healthy human life that conforms to the norms of a properly functioning human body with all its frailties.

If health doesn't involve the notion of proper function, then what about knowledge?

[C]onsider three individuals--one created by God, another produced by evolution, and the third the product of an enormous accident in which molecules come together to produce a single cell that is structurally identical to a zygote. Those three individuals could be indistinguishable with respect to their intrinsic properties and also their external surroundings, at every point in their lives. On Plantinga's account of warrant and knowledge, it follows that while the first individual could know many things, the second and third could have no knowledge at all. No other version of externalism has this extremely implausible consequence.

Arguments such as this, and others found here, make Plantinga's account of knowledge implausible. It would be nice to have an account of knowledge that is neutral with regards to whether or not God exists.

Materialism and Belief

Tooley turns next to Plantinga's third objection, to wit that naturalism cannot accommodate belief. Plantiga's target here is materialist naturalism, and as Tooley points out Plantinga's arguments aren't going to have much traction against naturalists that are property dualists. I'd also point out that it feeds into arguments by naturalists mysterians. Like many here, or at least I hope, Tooley doesn't think much of Plantinga's argument that one can just see that material things cannot be the kinds of things that have beliefs. As Tooley notes, philosophers do not have a particularly good track record with regards to such seeings.

Plantinga also thinks Leibniz argument that if we built a brain like machine we couldn't walk around inside the machine and see where the beliefs are. Tooley argues that, when it comes to functionalist style accounts of mental content Leibniz argument simply begs the question.

[I]f a state is a certain type of mental state, not by virtue of its intrinsic nature, but by virtue of causal connections to stimuli, to responses, and to other mental states, then mental states may perfectly well be present in the scenario that Leibniz envisage: all that is required is the right sorts of causal connections, and they can perfectly well be present in a purely mechanical system.

Tooley goes on to detail his own preferred account of how we can have beliefs, but I won't attempt to reproduce that here since I think it's sufficient to show there is reason to think Plantiga's argument isn't fully successful. Even if Plantiga is correct in his attack, it isn't sufficient to vindication substance dualism.

Naturalism as Self-Defeating

Tooley returns to Plantiga's second argument that naturalism can be given a defeater for trusting the reliability of ones cognitive faculties, which leads to a defeater for naturalism itself. We've hosted plenty of discussion of Plantinga's argument here on the blog recently. Tooley focuses on the question of whether it sufficient to show that the probability of our cognitive faculties being reliable is either low or inscrutable. Plantinga thinks that it is the later. Here is a quick argument from Tooley:

[C]onsider an ordinary person who initially believes that his cognitive faculties are reliable, but whe has no idea either what produced those faculties, or how probable it is-- relative to the totality, T, of the other things that is is justified in believing--that his faculties are reliable. If Plantinga is right that N&P(R/N) is inscrutable is a defeater for R, then T&P(R/T) is inscrutable is equally a defeater for R, and so such a person, if he is to be rational, must suspend judgment about everything, unless and until he has a definite view about the source of his cognitive faculties, and is justified in believing that his source would be likely to produce reliable faculties.

As Tooley points out this is to strong to be plausible. Tooley turns to offer a positive account of why, given evolution, we should think our cognitive faculties are in some regard reliable and in expected ways unreliable.

[Apologies for posting this late. Who reminds the reminder? I setup reminders to remind everyone but myself when their turn to post was coming up.]

P.Z. Myers's Retaliation

2008-07-15T13:41:46Z

In a story that concerns the interesting question of how we should take into account the beliefs (especially the religious beliefs) of others that we take to be false in deciding how to treat those people, a University of Central Florida student walked out of a Catholic Mass on June 29 with a consecrated communion wafer. Given their beliefs, this is a rather big deal to Catholics, some of whom seem to have reacted very strongly against the student. Bill Donohue and the Catholic League became involved, calling on the University to take strong action against the student. The biologist, P.Z. Myers, of the University of Minnesota, Morris came to the defense of the student in this post of Myers's blog, Pharyngula, and called on readers to steal consecrated wafers from Catholic churches so that he could publicly desecrate them, posting pictures on the web. Donohue and the Catholic have taken note of Myers's blog post, and seem to have begun something of a campaign against him. From what I understand, despite some very negative encounters with some of those who protested his actions, the student himself was nonetheless able to hear the appeals of others who explained to him why the matter was so important to them, and he responded humanely, returning the wafer.

Readers here may have heard of this case already, because it entered the world of philosophy blogs when Brian Leiter wrote about it in this blog post. However, Leiter's position seems to me very one-sided, so I thought I would post a different perspective. (Thanks to Matthew Mullins and Prosblogion for allowing me to use this forum. For those who don't know, I should make clear that I am a Christian, but not a Catholic, so readers can know where this commentary is coming from.)

In particular, Leiter seems to me to go way too easy on Prof. Myers. To put my opposition in context, please note that I do not support any efforts to get Prof. Myers fired or disciplined at his job over this incident, that I agree with Prof. Myers that the reaction against the Florida student by many was too strong, and that I find it admirable that Prof. Myers would come to the student's defense. However, Myers's proposed retaliation, which would hurt many Catholics who are completely innocent in this whole matter, strikes me as extremely nasty. To my thinking, it is morally more problematic than anything Donohue has yet done in this case. I can understand those who might disagree with that comparative judgment of mine, but have a hard time understanding the judgment of those who see the matter as so one-sidedly favoring Myers as Leiter seems to see things.

Myers's retaliation hurts Catholics because of beliefs they hold that he disagrees with, and, admittedly, it's not easy to say, in general terms, just how we should take the beliefs of others into account in deciding how to treat them. However, Myers's retaliation seems so aimed at hurting innocent parties and so incapable of producing any good, and, well, just so nasty, that this seems an easy call. So readers can judge for themselves, here's the relevant paragraph of Myers's post (follow the link above to read the whole thing):

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them -- my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure -- but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I'll send you my home address.

Is he perhaps just joking? To some extent, this is clearly all a joke to Myers. But it doesn't seem to be just a joke in the sense that it's clear nobody should really steal the items and send them to him. The Washington Times reports:

In an interview Friday, Mr. Myers said he already had received "a double-digit number" of positive responses, from people saying that they would try to get consecrated Catholic hosts for him and that the writer already had one.
"Enough that I could sculpt a statue of them," he said, declining to say what he'd do to desecrate them. "I've got a few ideas, but I want to keep the surprise."

I hope that this is a joke at least to the extent that Myers won't follow through on his sick plan, but it will be very revealing to see people's reactions if he does. In any case, if a joke, this would seem a rather nasty joke -- perhaps to be compared with those who would publicly ask for others to raid burial grounds sacred to Native Americans and send them remains so that they might publicly desecrate them. ("They're just frackin' bones!") "Wickedly funny"?

For the record, I'll paste below the fold the e-mail I sent to Prof. Myers on July 11. It now appears to me too smug and sanctimonious in tone, but I stand behind the position there expressed:

]]> Dear Prof. Myers,
I'm writing about your blog post from July 8 ("IT'S A FRACKIN' CRACKER!"). This is not a piece of hate mail, and I'm sorry that you're receiving hate mail. I don't have a very complete understanding of the incident, but, based on what seems to have happened, while I don't approve of what Mr. Cook did, I disapprove of the efforts to go after him, and I even admire your willingness to stick up for the young man -- while not admiring some of the rhetoric you use while doing so - which I find in places to be needlessly abusive (and yes, I do recognize some on the other side are needlessly abusive, too). But what really concerns me are your proposals in your penultimate ("So, what to do") paragraph. It's as if your goal in writing that paragraph was to see if you could meet (and *perhaps* even surpass!) the stupidity and meanness of the worst of the examples you took to task earlier in your post. I had planned to argue to you that you should rescind that plan, complete with careful analyses of when and how we should take into account the beliefs of others that we consider to be false in deciding how to treat the people in question. But I've read some of your blog posts, and based on my sense of your character, I have faith that you need no argument from me here: If you just take a deep breath and objectively consider what you wrote, keeping in mind the many Catholics (and other Christian too, for that matter) who are innocent in this matter but whom you would be needlessly hurting by what you propose (even if their being hurt depends upon beliefs they hold that you take to be obviously false), I am confident you will be able to see the light. On the other hand, if I have read your character wrong (as I'm often inclined to do, being disposed to being overly charitable [perhaps even gullible] in my judgments of people, as many Christian friends have told me, based on my admiration for important aspects of Prof. Dawkins's character), and you still think yours is a great idea after a little consideration, you are probably beyond the reach of the help of any argument I could produce, anyway.

Sincerely,
Keith DeRose

Seeing that Material Objects Can't Think

2008-07-13T17:01:20Z

Of Plantinga's three anti-naturalist arguments in this chapter, I found his argument against materialism the most persuasive (for me). Perhaps it is because I very much strongly share the intuition he is expressing. Consider the works of philosophers of mind like Colin McGinn (on cognitive closure), Joseph Levine (explanatory gap), Ned Block (the China argument), and John Searle (the Chinese room argument). It seems to me that the intuition that Plantinga is pointing us to is what is driving many of the arguments of these philosophers of mind, and I find that this intuition compels me against materialism.

The crux of Plantinga's argument against materialism, I think, is in this passage (where, in talking about contents, he's talking about belief-contents):

]]> The fact is, we can't see how it could have a content. It's not that we see or know this is perfectly possible, but we just don't know how it's done. When light strikes photo-receptor cells in the retina, there is a complex cascade of electrical activity, resulting in an electrical signal to the brain. I have no idea how all that works; but of course I know it happens all the time. But the case under consideration is different. Here it's not merely that I don't know how physical interaction among neurons brings it about that an assemblage of neurons has content and is a belief. No, in this case, we can't see how such an event could have content--that is, it seems upon reflection that it could not have content. It's a little like trying to understand what it would be for the number seven, e.g., to weigh five pounds (or for an elephant to be a proposition). We can't see how that could happen; more exactly, we can see that it couldn't happen. A number just isn't the sort of thing that can have weight; there is no way in which that number or any other number could weigh anything at all. (The same goes for elephants and propositions.) Similarly, we can see, I think, that physical activity among neurons can't generate content. These neurons are clicking away, sending electrical impulses hither and yon. But what has this to do with content? How is content or aboutness supposed to arise from this neuronal activity? How can such a thing be a belief? You might as well say that thought arises from the activity of the wind or the waves. But then no neuronal event can as such have a content, can be about something, in the way in which my belief that the number seven is prime is about the number seven, or my belief that the oak tree in my backyard is without leaves is about that oak tree. (p. 54) Here's one way I formulate an argument against materialism in my head. It is not exactly Plantinga's argument, but it is suggested by the quote:

1) I can reasonably believe that it is impossible that a number has weight based on "seeing" that it is true.
2) I can "see" that it is impossible that an interaction of physical objects have content or be a belief, and this "seeing" is relevantly analogous to the "seeing" in premise (1).
3) I can reasonably believe that it is impossible that an interaction of physical objects have content or be a belief

(This isn't deductively valid, but an argument from analogy. If we wanted a deductively valid argument, we could add a premise about how arguing analogically gives likelihood of truth and then conclude that (3) is likely to be true or something like that, but I thought that'd complicate things. I hope I didn't make any embarrassing moves.)

How are the two "seeings" relevantly analogous? Well, I think that they are phenomenally the same. They are both motivated similarly: just as it seems that numbers aren't the sorts of things that could have weight, it seems that physical objects (and their arrangements and their interactions) aren't the sorts of things that could have thoughts or beliefs (or be thoughts or beliefs). Clayton's suggested (in a comment in the last post) that the latter seeing would take "special epistemic powers", but I don't see how the powers at work here are any different from the powers at work when seeing that numbers can't have weight. (Furthermore, Clayton, I agree that I can't see how molecules could be arranged so as to have the properties of a computer, but I don't think I have a "seeing" that it is impossible; the exemplifying of computer properties from interactions of material objects seem perfectly possible. Your computer illustration strikes as me as similar to Plantinga's illustration of light striking the retina in the above quote.)

Here's how the intuitions are disanalogous, and this could block the jump from (1) and (2) to (3). There are no arguments out there that numbers could have weight, but there are arguments by smart people that material objects can think. This would make me hesitant to conclude (3). However, Plantinga thinks that materialists simply avoid this problem (what he calls Leibniz's problem, p. 61), and he gives an example with Dretske's theory. I'm inclined to agree with Plantinga's assessment, but only very hesitantly so, since I'm no philosopher of mind and I'm not aware of the arguments out there (nor am I very aware of the contemporary literature). It has seemed to me from what I have read, however, that materialists do tend to make a quick jump from what Plantinga calls "indicator content" or representations to belief. The jumps I have read have struck me as tenuous (or at least they strike me as more tenuous now that Plantinga has pointed them out). Anyway, this is how I see the argument and this is why I am persuaded by it.

Call for Papers: Pacific Regional Meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers

2008-07-11T21:53:32Z

Call for Papers

The Society of Christian Philosophers
Pacific Division

presents

Mind, Body, and Free Will
October 30^th, 2008 – November 1^st, 2008
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA

Plenary Speaker: Richard Swinburne (Oxford University)

]]>

Papers on any topic of philosophical interest will be considered, although papers related to the theme are preferred. The SCP welcomes participation from both Christians and non-Christians as presenters, commentators, and session chairs. Submissions should have a reading time of 20 to 30 minutes and be prepared for blind review—electronic submissions preferred. Please indicate in your cover letter whether, should your paper not be accepted, you would be willing to serve as a commentator or session chair. For further information as the conference approaches, please continue to check the conference website.

Deadline for submission: September 1^st, 2008.

Send submissions and requests to comment or chair to pacificscp@gmail.com (.doc, .pdf, or .rtf format), or to:

UCR Department of Philosophy
ATTN: 2008 Pacific SCP
HMNSS Building, Room 1604
900 University Avenue
Riverside, CA 92521

This conference is made possible by the generous contributions of:

Reading Group Week 2: Plantinga claims van Inwagen has No Beliefs

2008-07-07T07:57:38Z

Plantinga gives three main arguments against naturalism in the opening chapter of Knowledge of God. These are:

naturalism cannot accommodate the idea of proper function (and since warrant essentially involves proper function, if naturalism were true then no one would have knowledge),

naturalism leads directly to Humean skepticism, the condition in which you have a defeater for whatever you believe and cannot sensibly trust your cognitive faculties, and

naturalism cannot accommodate belief; if naturalism were true, no one would believe anything (19).

The first of these was the focus of Andrew's earlier post in this series. Below the fold, I want to summarize and raise some points about (ii) and (iii).]]> Regarding (ii):

According to Plantinga, if you believe that naturalism is true,

you have a good and sufficient reason for doubting that your beliefs are mostly true. More exactly, you have a good reason for doubting that your cognitive faculties--your perception, memory, rational intuition, and the like--are reliable, provide you with mostly true beliefs.... You also don't believe that they are not reliable; you simply don't know what to think--about anything (30f).

This argument is related to Plantinga's earlier presentations of the EAAN, but there are some new twists here (or at least twists that I think are new--I confess to not being up on all the extant literature on the EAAN).

We again see the connection Plantinga draws between materialism and naturalism. This previously came up in last week's discussion, and also comes up in Plantinga's discussion of (iii) below. Plantinga does have some things to say about dualistic naturalism (which he attributes to Russell, Broad, possibly Moore), but I'm going to pass over them.

Here, roughly, is the argument:

If materialism were true, then beliefs would either supervene on NPs (neurophysiological properties) or beliefs would be reducible to NPs.
If beliefs supervene on NPs, then it is unlikely that the content of those beliefs would be true, since the evolutionary processes would likely not produce reliable cognitive faculties.
If beliefs reduce to NPs, then it is unlikely that the contents of those beliefs would be true, since the evolutionary processes would likely not produce reliable cognitive faculties.
Therefore, if materialism were true, then it would be likely that our cognitive faculties were not reliable.

Once to this point, the more familiar EAAN comes in--so if naturalism plus materialism were true, then we would have a defeater for all of our beliefs, including our belief in the conjunction of naturalism and materialism....

The theistic materialism would seem to have at least two ways of rejecting this sort of argument (though I don't recall Plantinga mentioning either of these). One would be a guided evolution in which God providentially ensures that the beliefs that either supervene on or reduce to the NPs are reliable with respect to truth. The second would be do say that beliefs neither supervene on nor reduce to NPs, but instead are miraculously brought about by God in a way that corresponds with the NPs in the brains of those who have the beliefs in question, something along the lines of a miraculous occasionalism.

Regarding (iii):

Plantinga's final main argument is for a stronger conclusion than either (i) or (ii). If naturalism were true, then not only can you not have proper function (and thus warrant) or knowledge, but you cannot even have beliefs:

"[I]f you are a naturalist, then (so I say) you should reject the idea that anyone believes anything" (51).

(I'm sure the Churchland's are pleased with this argument.) Plantinga cites Plato and Leibniz as giving versions of this kind of argument. Plantinga's version in this section goes roughly as follows:

If naturalism were true, then either materialism or dualism (of some sort or other) about human persons would be true.
If materialism about human persons were true, then human persons could not have beliefs, since the truth of materialism would mean that there is no content.
If dualism about human persons were true, then naturalism could not account for content.
Therefore, if naturalism were true, there would be no content.
Therefore, if naturalism were true, then human persons would not have beliefs.

What I find particularly interesting here is that Plantinga's argument for (2) (i.e., if materialism about human persons were true, then human persons could not have beliefs) seems to be independent of the larger argument about naturalism. If sound, the argument would count against theistic versions of materialism as well as naturalistic versions of materialism. (Hence, the title of this post. In fact, Plantinga explicitly mentions van Inwagen is this section.)

And why can't materialists account for content?

The answer, I think, is that one can just see upon reflection that these things are impossible.... One can see that a physical object just can't do that sort of thing [i.e., think]. This isn't as clear, perhaps, as that a proposition can't be red; some impossibilities are more clearly impossible than others. But one can see it at least to some degree. And the same doesn't go for an immaterial thing's thinking; we certainly can't see that no immaterial thing can think (57f).

I would love to see Plantinga explain this to van Inwagen: "You see, Peter, you're just not thinking clearly when you hold both that you are a material being and that you think. I can just see that such a thing isn't possible." While trying to argue for the possibility or impossibility of something is difficult, surely more is needed here.

There is another problem with the argument for (2). Here is a key passage:

Presumably neither [electrons nor quarks] can think--neither can believe, doubt, want, fear, or feel pain. But then a proton composed of quarks won't be able to think either, at least by way of physical relations between its component quarks, and the same will go for an atom composed of protons and electrons, a molecule composed of atoms, a cell composed of molecules, and an organ (e.g., a brain) composed of cells. If electrons and quarks can't think, we won't find anything composed of them that can think by way of the physical interaction of its parts (53).

What is needed are reasons to think that this argument holds for thinking when a parallel argument for other kinds of properties is invalid:

Electrons and quarks lack property p.
Therefore, atoms composed of electrons and quarks will lack property p.
Therefore, molecules composed of atoms will lack property p.
Therefore, macrophysical objects composed of molecules will lack property p.

Run the argument with being visible to the naked eye or being able to shatter a window in the place of p and the argument form clearly fails. Plantinga then needs to give more reasons to think that the argument works when talking about being able to have beliefs rather than being visible to the naked eye or being able to shatter a window.

Dualism does not face this content-problem, Plantinga claims since immaterial selves are simple and thus thinking is basic to them (58). But do all forms of dualism about human persons think that persons are simple? I don't think so. I would think that Aquinas' view of human nature would be a form of dualism, at least as that term is used by Plantinga, and human persons aren't simply on such an account.

[Disclaimer--I completed this post on 3 July. By the time it appears on the blog, I will be away on vacation, my first in 7+ years which does not involve me taking along a laptop. While this is a small moral victory for me, it does mean that I will not be able to participate in the ensuing discussion as much as I would otherwise.]

Plantinga's Hitler Case

2008-07-03T18:00:22Z

Suppose Hitler won the war. Furthermore, there were certain nonAryans who had a mutation such that everything they saw was tinted green and caused a harsh pain. Let 'G' denote this new property of their eyes. Hitler enjoyed this suffering, so he allowed these nonAryans to survive. After a few generations, nonAryans with eyes like ours died out, and the nonAryans with these mutated eyes continued to survive. This mutation spread throughout the population.

Consider one such creature, m. Plantinga asks, "But wouldn't it be wrong (not to mention crazy) to say that m's visual system is functioning properly? Or that its function is to produce both pain and a visual field that is uniformly green? Or that the resistance medical technicians who desperately try to repair the damage are interfering with the proper function of the visual system?" (p. 26) This example seems to work against any evolutionary theory of proper function.

Here's one worry for this example.

]]> On an evolutionary theory of proper function, m's eyes would not be functioning properly when producing G according to an earlier design plan. For thousands of years, humans evolved in such a way that being able to see clearly (the actual colors of objects and without pain) contributed to their survival. Let "S" denote the property of "seeing real colors easily and uninhibitedly (i.e., without pain)". A function of the eye, because of evolution, is to exhibit S. And G interferes with an eye's successfully exhibiting S.

So this point should at least explain why it is intuitive that m's eyes are malfunctioning. They are not functioning properly according to their previous design plan.

But Plantinga could press that it's also odd to think that m's eyes are functioning properly. It's weird to think that the function of m's eyes, according to this new design plan, is to produce G.

But it's not too crazy. If I pinch my arm, I feel pain. It's the function of many mechanisms in my body to produce this pain. The evolutionist will say that this function arose because having mechanisms which produced this pain helped my ancestors to survive.

And is it crazy to say this same thing for a creature whose eyes exhibited G? Call this creature S. For S's ancestors, any time they were about to be killed by Nazis, they saw that the creature exhibited G, and so they avoided them. The mutation which produced G helped these creatures to survive. If we waited enough generations, it seems intuitive that m's eyes are supposed to produce G. If a Nazi were about to corner S, and S's eyes suddenly stopped producing G, S might think, "oh crap! my eyes are supposed to be producing G! What's going on?" So Plantinga's Hitler case doesn't successfully refute evolutionary theories of proper function.

(I used S instead of m in this example, because by the time m exists, the Nazis would no longer be hunting people because the mutation would've spread into their population as well.)

(I'm thinking of turning these ideas into a paper, so please pay the proper respects. However, you guys might have such forceful objections to my ideas that I will no longer want to turn it into a paper. We'll see!)

A Puzzle for the Proper Function Argument Against Naturalism

2008-07-02T15:36:04Z

This is another post about the first thirty pages of Chapter 1 for our Knowledge of God reading group. I hope Wednesday isn't too early to start chiming in with posts. I'm going to focus on that item (iii) that Andrew Moon mentioned in his first post.

In chapter one of Knowledge of God, Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalism cannot account for proper function. According to Plantinga, proper function requires intelligent design.

The Proper Function Argument Against Naturalism
If naturalism is true, then there is no proper function (with respect to human beings).
There is proper function (with respect to human beings).
Therefore, naturalism is not true.
(Note: I'm oversimplifying this. I'm translating all of Plantinga's talk about naturalism can't accomodate proper function" to "there is no proper function" - this oversimplification has no bearing on the puzzle I want to raise.)

I'm interested in the assumption that motivates (1). The thesis is roughly:

Proper Function Requires Design Thesis
(P) If S functions properly, then S has an intelligent designer.

(P) is incompatible with what seems to be perfectly acceptable talk about God. It seems to make sense to talk about God functioning properly - especially if we're working with the concept proper function that we all have and use in ordinary life (p. 23).

If God exists, then God functions properly. If God functions properly, then (P) is false - because presumably God does not have a designer.

I think the main problem for the argument I have given will be whether or not we can sensibly talk about God functioning properly.
]]> Why Theists Should Think God Functions Properly
Here's a reason to think that God functions properly - If God exists, then his creative faculties work. He has some powers and abilities to create the universe and when he attempted to exercise them, they were not broken. They were successful in bringing about the Universe.

Here's another reason. Plantinga wants to limit our analysis of proper function to the ordinary concept that we all use. Ask average-joe theist if they think God has faculties or powers that function properly - I imagine the answer is yes. (of course we should probably call on the experimental philosophers to go out and verify that for us.)

Why Plantinga Should Think God Functions Properly
Even if your run-of-the-mill theist resists talking about God functioning properly, it seems to me that Plantinga should think that God functions properly. Why? Because the God of Christianity has some knowledge. In fact, the God of Christianity has a lot of knowledge. If the God of Christianity has knowledge (and knowledge requires properly functioning cognitive faculties), then the God of Christianity functions properly. So, the God of Christianity functions properly. Plantinga's theory of knowledge seems to commit him to rejecting (P).

I'm sure there are things that Plantinga can say here, but whatever they are - they need to be said. (For example, it might be open for Plantinga to say that the concept of knowledge he and the other epistemologists are concerned with is not the same concept that we use when we say that God is all-knowing. At the very least, that would be a suprising commitment of Plantinga's proper functionalism.)

NDPR Review of "Knowledge of God"

2008-07-02T13:25:55Z

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews today published William Rowe's review of Plantinga & Tooley's Knowledge of God. A remarkably nice bit of timing on the part of NDPR!

Knowledge of God Reading Group (Week 1)

2008-06-30T18:35:37Z

Welcome to the Knowledge of God Prosblogion reading group! Each week, we will read a section of the book, and the section breakdown and ordering is as follows:
C. 1 (1-30), C. 1 (30-69), C. 4, C. 5, C. 2 (70-108), C. 2 (108-150), C. 3, C. 6.

Each Monday, a different Prosblogion contributor will write an opening post. Other contributors can post on that section two or three days later in the week. Everybody is welcome to read along in the book and comment.

It's a pleasure to kick-off all the fun. Let me summarize the main claims that I take Plantinga to argue for in my section.

I) If God exists, then it is likely that many people know that God exists.
II) If Christian belief is true, then it is likely that many people know that it is true.
III) If naturalism is true, then no biological organs function properly or improperly.

Plantinga's defends (I) and (II) as follows:

]]> the proper functionalist conditions are necessary and sufficient for warrant; if the antecedents of (I) and (II) are true, then theistic and Christian belief are likely to meet those proper functionalist conditions; so theistic and Christian belief have warrant.

Although Plantinga specifies his argument to his own proper functionalist conditions (11-12), and while I myself think that something like his proper functionalist theory is true, I must painfully recognize that not everybody agrees. However, this isn't a problem, because it seems to me that Plantinga could have inserted any contemporary theory of knowledge into the argument, and (I) and (II) would have still come out true. So I have two questions:

Question 1: Given that Plantinga's proper functionalist theory of warrant is true, are there any good objections to Plantinga's arguments for (I) and (II)?
Question 2: Is there any plausible theory of knowledge according to which (I) and (II) do not come out true?

Note that if (I) and (II) are true, then one can't attack the reasonableness or rationality of Christian belief apart from its truth (see p. 13). That's a big deal.

I'll make some jabs on (I) and (II) by drawing from the literature on the semantics of knowledge. If contextualists are right, then whether it is correct to attribute knowledge to a Christian will depend on factors like the salience of error or the stakes for the attributor. If I am constantly worried about objections to Christian belief, it may be false when I say that "Billy Graham knows that Christianity is true", but it may be true when my unworried Grandma says the same thing.

This doesn't seem to me to be a problem for attributions of knowledge that God exists or Christianity is true any more than any other attributions of knowledge. So I don't see any special problem for (I) and (II) so far.

Suppose we follow the invariantists (McGrath, Fantl, Hawthorne, Stanley) who say that high stakes for a believer can make it so that one does not know that p, i.e., it will be harder for S to know that Christianity is true if there is much at stake for S for believing it. One might think that these theories predict that it will be harder for Christians in persecuted countries to know that Christianity is true because of what is at stake for them (possible death by torture). Here, it might make a difference as to which invariantist we're talking about.

Stanley seems to think that stakes the agent is ignorant of can make a difference to whether one knows (Knowledge and Practical Interests, 5). Now if Christian belief is true, then the amount that is actually at stake for accepting Christian belief is very little compared to all the good that results from accepting it on faith (according to Plantinga's model, p. 12). So on Stanley's view, I think that there wouldn't be such high stakes for the Christian, and so the Christian would still know.

Hawthorne seems to think that what matters for knowledge that p is whether one can use p as a premise in practical reasoning (Knowledge and Lotteries, 176) and Fantl & McGrath think that what matters is whether one is rational to act as if p (Phil. Review 2002). So I think that the question here is whether it is always rational for a Christian to act on his Christian belief (if Christian belief is true).

But it seems to me that if Christian belief is true, then it is likely that it is rational to act on one's belief that Christianity is true. Now for some, a little bit of temptation or the alluring pleasures of sin might make it seem costly to continue holding to one's Christian belief. Or in many countries, one puts their life on the line for their Christian belief; it does seem that the amount of evidence one needs in order to continue knowing that Christianity is true must be quite high for them (because there would be a higher degree of evidence needed to be able to act rationally on one's Christian belief).

Here, however, we can make another appeal to Plantinga's model, which states that Christian belief is sustained by the Holy Spirit's producing faith by way of divine revelation. If potential loss of one's life makes it harder for believers in countries of persecution to have the requisite degree of evidence (or justification or whatever) required to know (or to be rational in acting on one's belief), it is also the case that God could produce higher degrees of faith in one's life to meet this requirement. Not only is it possible that this happen, but it seems (if Christianity is true) that this is what does happen. I have encountered the strongest amounts of faith and degrees of conviction from people who have suffered the most for their Christian belief (mostly, these were Christians from other countries or Christians doing ministry work in the inner city or...). They seem to know more firmly than I the truths of central messages of Christianity. This is what I've gathered a posteriori. But just by way of a priori reasoning, it does seem that God would produce enough faith in an individual so that it is always rational to act on one's belief in Christianity.

So supposing that the invariantists are correct, whether one continues to know that Christianity is true will be, to a large degree, dependent on the Holy Spirit's continuing to help produce one's degree of faith. And it is likely that this is actually happening if Christian belief is true. (I'm sure that reflections on the arguments for Christian belief could also help one have the evidence/justification necessary to be able to rationally act on one's belief. This is an important component too.)

So I don't think that there are any problems for (I) and (II) from the recent developments in the semantics of knowledge. If anybody can see another problem for (I) and (II) (or a problem with what I've just said), I'm all ears!

I have many thoughts on (III), but I think it's a different enough topic that someone else can post on it later in the week; if nobody else does, I probably will.

Counterfactual Dependence and Molinist Worlds

2008-06-30T00:39:59Z

Assume our world is indeterministic and consider the evaluation of (C),

C. If Nixon had pressed the nuclear button, God would have brought it about that the future was no different from the actual future.

The asymmetry of counterfactual dependence in indeterministic worlds mirrors, as a matter of contingent fact, the asymmetry of quasi-miracles. In the most similar worlds where Nixon pressed the nuclear button he performed some free action. No divergence miracle was necessary. But what was the future of that world like? Do the closest worlds in which Nixon pressed the nuclear button reconverge to the actual future? Re-convergence to the actual future requires a quasi-miracle that, as a matter of contingent fact, constitutes a significant dissimilarity between worlds. A quasi-miracle could bring about re-convergence should an extremely improbable pattern of chance events cover every trace of Nixon's having pressed the nuclear button. But it would be remarkable that just the chance pattern needed to cover every effect of that counterfactual hypothesis is the pattern that occurs.

But, now, are quasi-miracles remarkable under the assumption that we inhabit not some ordinary indeterministic world, but a Molinist indeterministic world? There seems no reason to think so. For all we know about God's purposes and goals for individuals, nations, and humankind, and for all we know about his ways of achieving these goals, God is using quasi-miracles constantly to ensure the realization of his providential aims. After all, quasi-miracles require no violation of law, not even probablistic law. So, it seems to be a contingent fact about Molinist indeterministic worlds that quasi-miracles do not constitute a significant dissimilarity between worlds. If the world we inhabit is a Molinist indeterministic world then, at the very least, we are not sure whether (C) is true.

But now to the problem. If we are not sure if (C) is true, then we are also not sure whether (C') is true.

C'. If Nixon had pressed the button, then there would have been a nuclear holocaust.

But, on the contrary, we do know that (C') is true. So we know too that (C) is false. That is, either we are in radical skepticism about which counterfactuals are true or this is not a Molinist world. Therefore this is not a Molinist world.

Simon Richard Cullison

2008-06-25T01:53:37Z

Congratulations to Andrew Cullison and Sarah Gerkensmeyer on the birth of their son Simon Richard Cullison. Simon entered the world on June 23, 2008 at 1:42 AM and Andrew already has pictures and videos online. I have to agree that seeing your child born is high on the "list of all time coolest things ever"!

So, by my count in the last four years of the blog there has been a baby to Pierce, Rhoda, Timpe, Dougherty, Pawl, and now a Cullison. Who goes next in the rotation? Is it back to me?

Theism and Creatures Accidentally Created

2008-06-24T19:39:18Z

I'm thinking about whether it is possible that Swampman exists, where Swampman is a creature that is created by lightning which hits a swamp and the atoms just happen to arrange in to the exact arrangement of the atoms which constitute Donald Davidson (or some human). I'm also thinking about whether it is possible that Theodore exist, where Theodore is the accidental byproduct of a clumsy angel's trying to create something else (like a statue).

Plantinga gives the following (he calls 'inconclusive') argument:

But if there is such a person as God, it is unlikely that it is possible that a being capable of belief and moral agency should just pop into existence, unintended and undesigned by God. According to the Christian tradition, only God can create beings capable of belief and moral agency; I am inclined to think this is right. But even if it isn't, even if it is possible that God should delegate the task of creating such beings to some of his creatures, it still wouldn't be possible that such a creature pop into existence unintended by God. (1995, PPR 55:2, p. 460)

I have a few questions. First, where in the Christian tradition does it say this?

Secondly, is it possible that a creature that is capable of belief and agency come into existence, and it is not intended by God?

Thirdly, is it possible that a creature that is capable of belief and agency come into existence, and it is not designed by God?

I take it that to design something takes a little more than intending its existence. The owners of Honda could intend for there to be the creation of more cars, but the engineers of Honda might have to design those cars. I also take it that some facts are unintended by God. I am a certain distance from an atom on your left cheek - it's not obvious (and probably not the case) that God intended this fact to be the case. This is probably an unintended byproduct of other things God intended. Both of these points can be disputed.

Mirza, EAAN, and the TuQuoQue Objection

2008-06-15T02:12:06Z

Omar Mirza has a forthcoming paper in Phil. Studies (available in SpringLink in the 'OnlineFirst' section) where he (among other things) examines three standard objections to EAAN, shows that Plantinga's responses are faulty, and then provides his own responses. (For other Prosblogion discussion of EAAN, see here, here, and here. For Plantinga's most important paper on it, see here.)

I want to examine his response to the tu quo que objection. Now it's dangerous to reach into the middle of a complicated dialectic and pull out relevant little bits for discussion, but that's what I'll try to do! (There is a possibility that I will make hermeneutical errors; I take full responsibility and am open to correction!)

]]> EAAN is as follows:
Probability thesis: P(R/N&E) is low or inscrutable
Defeater thesis: The naturalist who accepts N, E, and the probability thesis has a defeater for R.

It then follows that the naturalist has a defeater for all his beliefs, including his belief in naturalism. So naturalism is self-defeating.

The tu quo que objector attacks the defeater thesis. Where austere theism is the view that God exists (but does not include any content about God creating us as reliable knowers or in his image or whatever), he points out the following:
Probability thesis*: P(R/A) is low or inscrutable
Defeater thesis*: The theist who accepts A and probability thesis* has a defeater for R.

So the theist has a defeater for all his beliefs, including his belief in theism. So theism is self-defeating.

The naturalist can therefore push that he has as much reason to accept the defeater thesis as the theist has to accept the defeater thesis*. The arguments fall or stand together.

The defender of EAAN must give a good reason why the naturalist should accept the defeater thesis that is not a good reason for the theist to accept probability thesis* [TYPO, I SHOULD HAVE SAID 'defeater thesis*' HERE. THIS EDIT WAS MADE ON 10:36pm, 6/15/08]. Plantinga has his own strategy for doing this, but I'm interested in Mirza's right now. The sort of defeater that Mirza thinks is relevant for EAAN is an undercutting defeater, which he defines as a defeater that "undermines the trustworthiness of [a] belief's source". How does naturalism do this? Given that Plantinga's reasons for accepting the probability thesis are good (that's a whole other discussion), it is the case that if naturalism is true, then "during the operation of the process that resulted in the creation of human cognitive faculties, there were no conditions that could serve to filter out unreliable cognitive faculties. Or, as we might put it, the process did not involve any filter of unreliable cognitive faculties" (section 2 of his paper).

Now what's the difference between the theist and the naturalist? He writes, "the theist has not been given any grounds for doubting that the process she believes created her cognitive faculties involved a filter of unreliable cognitive faculties..." (section 4.2.5). So while the naturalist, via the probability thesis (and the reasoning for the probability thesis) has been given positive grounds for doubting that the process which created her faculties involved a filter of unreliable cognitive faculties, the theist does not have these positive grounds.

This response seems to me promising. Any thoughts?

Prosblogion Updates

2008-06-14T17:52:13Z

Though it went uncommented on at the time, last week Prosblogion passed the four year marker. Thanks to all the contributors and commenters who continue to make this site a success. Thanks especially to Jeremy Pierce for originally suggested the idea for the site. Readers can look forward to new developments on the site, including fresh voices as we add new contributors in the coming months. As always, advanced graduate students and professional philosophers interested in contributing to Prosblogion should contact me directly.

One new development is the advent of the Prosblogion reading group. A number of contributors have gotten together to read Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley's new book Knowledge of God, part of Blackwell's Great Debates in Philosophy series. You can expect the first post, on the first half of chapter one, beginning June 30th. Our plan is to put up fresh posts on the book every Monday thereafter. For those of you that would like to read along, you can help out funding this place by purchasing the book from Amazon.

Here's to another year of thoughtful and engaging posts and discussions!