Skip to main content

Plantinga on evolution and naturalism

I just came across pharyngula's criticism of Plantinga's short, sweet version of his argument against naturalism. It is here if you are interested.

Plantinga still runs the following type of argument that false beliefs are just as adapative as true beliefs, and so evolution won't particularly favour true-belief-producing mechanisms:

Consider a frog sitting on a lily pad. A fly passes by; the frog flicks out its tongue to capture it. Perhaps the neurophysiology that causes it to do so, also causes beliefs. As far as survival and reproduction is concerned, it won't matter at all what these beliefs are: if that adaptive neurophysiology causes true belief (e.g., those little black things are good to eat), fine. But if it causes false belief (e.g., if I catch the right one, I'll turn into a prince), that's fine too.

Comments

Steven Carr said…
I've never understood Plantinga's arguments.

How did evolution produce the true belief that Chelsea won the Premier League last season?

It didn't.

Therefore, there is a God.

Can somebody point out the flaw in this argument?
August 14, 2010 at 7:46 AM
David B. Ellis said…
Plantinga's argument, in every version of it I've read, never gets off the ground in the first place. He points out the bare logical possibility that false beliefs can be survival-promoting (as in his absurd tiger story) and blithely skips the rather important step of giving us good reason for concluding that globally unreliable cognitive faculties are not merely logically possible but even remotely plausible.

He doesn't do this and it MUST be done for naturalism to have a problem. PZ Meyers is right. Plantinga is a joke....and he's widely regarded by Christians as being one of the best living Christian philosophers.

The pathetic thing is that they're probably right.
August 16, 2010 at 2:05 AM
NAL said…
If we possess unreliable cognitive mechanisms, then Plantinga's argument is unreliable and we should not accept it.

If we possess reliable cognitive mechanisms, then those who argue for naturalism are reliable and we should accept their argument.

If our cognitive mechanisms are sometimes reliable and sometimes unreliable, then what does that say about God?
August 16, 2010 at 12:21 PM
David B. Ellis said…

If we possess unreliable cognitive mechanisms, then Plantinga's argument is unreliable and we should not accept it.

If we possess reliable cognitive mechanisms, then those who argue for naturalism are reliable and we should accept their argument.


There are plenty of good reasons to think Plantinga's argument terribly bad but what you describe is not one of them. Regarding the second half of your quoted statements, having reliable cognitive faculties (RCF, for short, should this conversation continue) does not mean one is not capable of error.

Also, Plantinga thinks, in fact, that we DO have reliable cognitive faculties (since, he think, there is a God who wanted us to have them). So the first half of your comment is not applicable to the argument either.
August 16, 2010 at 3:55 PM
Patrick said…
David Ellis- I understand what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure Plantinga's argument is so dumb that NAL's criticism really works. Plantinga treats "reliable cognitive faculties" as a sort of magical belief generating apparatus that kicks out beliefs as wholly formed units of data with no precursors in observation or experience, which are then acted upon by evolution as unitary concepts to be selected for or against.

If we possess reliable cognitive faculties as Plantinga describes it, it really is adequate to state that my reliable cognitive faculties have generated naturalism, ergo naturalism. That's exactly how beliefs work in this argument. Reliable cognitive faculties make stuff up out of whole cloth, and then maybe you get eaten by a tiger.

I mean, that's stupid and generates a contradiction given that Plantinga's reliable cognitive faculties have generated a belief that contradicts mine, but I'm pretty sure the contradiction is his fault.
August 17, 2010 at 11:35 PM
Matt said…
"Plantinga's argument, in every version of it I've read, never gets off the ground in the first place. He points out the bare logical possibility that false beliefs can be survival-promoting (as in his absurd tiger story) and blithely skips the rather important step of giving us good reason for concluding that globally unreliable cognitive faculties are not merely logically possible but even remotely plausible."

Then you have not read many versions of Plantinga's argument. Because he gives quite a detailed argument as to why he thinks this is probable on naturalism.
September 20, 2010 at 11:40 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS

(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151) EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS Stephen Law Abstract The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of indepen...
159 comments
Read more

Aquinas on homosexuality

Thought I would try a bit of a draft out on the blog, for feedback. All comments gratefully received. No doubt I've got at least some details wrong re the Catholic Church's position... AQUINAS AND SEXUAL ETHICS Aquinas’s thinking remains hugely influential within the Catholic Church. In particular, his ideas concerning sexual ethics still heavily shape Church teaching. It is on these ideas that we focus here. In particular, I will look at Aquinas’s justification for morally condemning homosexual acts. When homosexuality is judged to be morally wrong, the justification offered is often that homosexuality is, in some sense, “unnatural”. Aquinas develops a sophisticated version of this sort of argument. The roots of the argument lie in thinking of Aristotle, whom Aquinas believes to be scientifically authoritative. Indeed, one of Aquinas’s over-arching aims was to show how Aristotle’s philosophical system is broadly compatible with Christian thought. I begin with a sketch of Arist...
49 comments
Read more

The Evil God Challenge and the "classical" theist's response

On another blog, FideCogitActio, some theists of a "classical" stripe (that's to say, like Brian Davies, Edward Feser) are criticisng the Evil God Challenge (or I suppose, trying to show how it can be met, or sidestepped). The main post includes this: In book I, chapter 39 , Aquinas argues that “there cannot be evil in God” (in Deo non potest esse malum). Atheists like Law must face the fact that, if the words are to retain any sense, “God” simply cannot be “evil”. As my comments in the thread at Feser’s blog aimed to show, despite how much he mocks “the privation theory of evil,” Law himself cannot escape its logic: his entire argument requires that the world ought to appear less evil if it is to be taken as evidence of a good God. Even though he spurns the idea that evil is a privation of good, his account of an evil world is parasitic on a good ideal; this is no surprise, though, since all evil is parasitic on good ( SCG I, 11 ). Based on the conclusions of se...
446 comments
Read more