Plantinga, "Where the Conflict Really Lies"

[snoopy]

I just finished a book that I figured would spark (maybe) interesting debate - so I thought I'd post a little summary of the book and see what ensured...

The book: "Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism" by Alvin Plantinga. ISBN 978-0199812097

First, Plantinga discusses the claims of conflict between science and evolution popularized by Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris. Plantinga's argument against these claims has two parts: 1. Assigning random chance to the genetic mutations that natural selection winnows to yield evolution of the species is a metaphysical add on to the scientific principles of natural selection, survival of the fittest, etc. 2. Guided genetic mutation (which is compatible with Theistic theology) is an equally viable mechanism by which evolution could have proceeded. Based on those arguments, Plantinga states that claims that evolutionary science has somehow dis proven Theism (and particularly the doctrine of creation) are false. Next, Plantinga discusses alleged conflict between science and special divine action (miracles). The "old view" of the universe was deterministic - based on Newton's laws the argument was that given complete knowledge of the universe at any particular time an all-knowing scientist (see: Laplace's Demon) could then know the state of the universe at another time. If this is the case, the argument is that God doing miracles would violate the natural laws. The problem with this argument (besides being based on out-dated physics) is that the natural laws apply to closed systems, and if God were inserting Himself to act, the universe would no longer be a closed system. The "new view" of the universe is probabilistic - which is even easier to explain - since any sequence of events is possible, just maybe not so probable without God's help. Plantinga also addresses some sources of superficial conflict: Evolutionary psychology is one - Freud argued that religious belief wasn't so much aimed at yielding truth, and at motivating adaptive behaviour. Plantinga argues that there is genuine conflict between this theory and Christians believing that their beliefs are true. Another, similar, case is in historical Biblical criticism (HBC). HBC attempts to study the Bible from a purely scientific standpoint, and accept from the Bible only what can be scientifically verified. These studies usually yield very little: basically that Jesus was a guy, he cured various illnesses, and that he was crucified by Pontius Pilate. Plantinga argues that these conflicts are superficial because Christians and Non-Christians come from different evidence bases. Basically, Christians start by believing what the Bible says, and don't find things that cause them to lose that belief - not because they are in denial, but because they accept the Bible as part of the evidential body. Non-Christians start without accepting the Bible, and don't find things to cause them to start believing it - again, not because they are necessarily in denial, but because there are answers outside of the Bible which are satisfactory. Plantinga also addresses the way that science practices "methodological naturalism" (MN) - meaning that it doesn't invoke God as a cause (because God isn't testable, repeatable, etc.) This means that the application of science defaults to the assumption that God isn't involved. I wasn't overly satisfied with the way that he touched on the subject - but he points out that MN will tend to yield results which exclude God, but has yet to produce anything that disproves God. (From me: Also, re: MN - consider the rich history of Christian scientists who have contributed to where we are now.)

In the next section he argues for deep concord between science and theism. He touches on the ID arguments of fine tuning and design discourse - and concludes that (despite their high levels of vocal ridicule) they at least make one have to stop and think - at least if one is genuinely willing to genuinely consider them. I found his next argument much more interesting: Namely, he states that we humans have a deep compatibility with the world around us and with scientific thought. The doctrine of having God's image would seem to impart the mastership and compatibility with the world that we do indeed observe. He also states that the regularity and reliability of the world are deeply compatible with the doctrine of God's regularity and reliability. Finally, Plantinga points to our ability to reason, argue, learn by induction, and think in the abstract all as evidence of order and compatibility between us and our world. His argument is that Theism assumes these deep levels of compatibility while for naturalism all of this would have to be another unlikely coincidence.

Finally, Plantinga argues that naturalism and science are logically incompatible. His argument goes as such: 1. Given naturalism and evolution, it's unlikely that our cognitive facilities are reliable. In other words - if we evolved via random change - evolution would reward adaptive behaviour regardless of the correctness of the beliefs which the cognitive processes yielded. It wouldn't matter what our evolutionary ancestors believed - it would matter that they acted in the most adaptive way. Thus, odds for any given belief being correct would fall around 50% - which isn't nearly enough to consider cognitive facilities reliable. (Note: key here is recognizing the de-coupling between correctness of beliefs and correctness of behaviour.) 2. If you accept naturalism and evolution, and see that it's unlikely that our cognitive facilities are reliable, the logical conclusion is that your cognitive facilities aren't reliable. 3. If your cognitive facilities aren't reliable, you have no reason to trust any of your beliefs, including naturalism and evolution. 4. Given all of this, naturalism and evolution are self-defeating, so it isn't rational to hold them both together as beliefs. Thus, Plantinga concludes that there is deep discord between religion and science: but contrary to popular belief it's between naturalism and science, not between theism and science.

[callmeslick]

wow, a few questions and points jump to mind:
1. Define 'naturalism' as the author intends it to be understood.
2. The author, or at least your summary, shows a bizarre view of Darwinian evolution, seemingly focused on the random nature of the mutation,
with little regard to the primacy of the force of environment upon selection. Why?
3. The author thus jumps to an illusory premise that Darwinian evolution dictates an unreliable development of cognition, when reality is the complete
opposite. Those environmental forces laser-focus the ongoing evolution of cognition, knowledge, learning processes and most everything else about
an organism, given enough time.

To the good, I feel that with the proper view of Theism, one CAN see it as compatable with Darwinian evolution, and, if any conflict truly occurs it would be between Theism(as SOME define it) and Naturalism. And that conflict isn't absolute. I find it perfectly plausible, yet untestable, that a Deity could have put a complex and marvelous natural process into order, with no need for selecting specifics of mutations. As I say, some take a far more rigid definition of God, and that doesn't jive with the acceptance of what I'd define as Naturalism at work.


Interesting thought to ponder right before bedtime. Thanks.

[Vander]

If I created "Vander's big book of scientific observations," it wouldn't be very valuable. It would obviously be biased towards my own unreliable cognitive facilities and ignorance. Believing my own work as "truth" wouldn't be rational. Luckily, Scientific Knowledge isn't the product of an individual. I publish my book, and other people crap all over it with their own unreliable cognitive facilities. Iterations later, working through peers, the product will be much more reliable than my own individual work.

Therefore, I see no reason to think naturalism and science are incompatible as suggested.

[snoopy]

Slick:

1. Naturalism - the author's definition would be naturalism as materialism - so the belief that all that exists is material in nature, and nothing exists that is immaterial in nature. This generally leads to viewing cognition and beliefs as neural structures.

2. His focus on the randomness of the change is because that's what he disagrees with - namely because he argues that particular detail isn't actually science... but is a metaphysical add on to all of the rest of Darwin's science, the rest of which he is readily willing to accept as science.

3. You miss the distinction between adaptive behaviour and correctness of belief. For the evolving organism, action that optimizes survival and procreation takes primacy over the mental details of belief or cognition. If a neural structure yields a belief that we would call false but action that is adaptive, evolution will reward that neural structure. The author's argument is that there isn't a correlation between the two - so while the adaptive behaviour will be reinforced, and correctness of beliefs will be ignored by evolutionary processes.

You describe Deism when you describe the God that "winds up the universe" and lets it go. Note that Theism specifically includes God's continual sustainment of the universe. Based on that, I would contend that Theism and Naturalism are, by definition, in conflict. An interesting sidebar/thought experiment with Deism: If God "winds up" a probabilistic universe and evolution ensues, what gets the credit? God for lining up all the dominoes, or random chance for rolling the dice correctly?

Vander: The argument isn't that our cognitive facilities are only so-so, it's that they are wholly unreliable. If the odds of anyone being right about any belief or cognitive evaluation are 50%, you would never be able to converge on a correct answer - you would perpetually be stuck in a dead heat. Furthermore, any useful iterative process would have to build upon acceptance of some parts as true - but if those parts were only 50% true, the entire process would be perpetually futile. We intuitively (must) assume that our cognitive facilities are reliable - and to get anywhere they do indeed have to be so the large majority of the time. To put it another way: you just made an argument. It sounds plausible because each component of the argument seems to be correct, and if you put them together, you arrive at a conclusion. If you knew that each component of your argument had a 50% shot at being correct, would you trust it? I'd estimate that you have ~10-15 components - that would give the argument as a whole a 0.1% to 0.003% chance of being correct of each component only has a 50% chance of being correct. (Let's not get stuck in math - the point is that any argument with even a small number of steps/components relies on each component being very likely to be correct in order to stand.)

[snoopy]

For what it's worth:

I think the biggest weakness in his argument is in his claim that there isn't a correlation between true belief and adaptive behaviour. If you could demonstrate that the two do correlate, then evolutionary processes would have selected for true beliefs as a piggyback to the selection for adaptive behaviour. That might open another can of worms (okay, so the religious belief that has been prevalent for years is what - true? adaptive?....) but at least in my view it's the weakest point of the argument. It's also interesting to me that it's somewhat of an extrapolation of Freud's argument against Theism... extrapolated to apply on a broader manner than Freud had in mind.

[Sergeant Thorne]

My opinion is that you can wade into things like this if it amuses you, and you may or may not get in over your head ("you" editorially speaking), but the truths of existence are much less confusing when approached from a more basic stand-point, with the complex rules of the universe discovered in part along the way or left to God. Basically all this is, IMO, is a great deep pool for people to stare into, and into which they may discard the opinions of others as they choose simply to reject or embrace revealed truth as it relates to their own motivations, behavior/actions and life. I think some people complicate life to the point where they would have to be a genius to arrive at the truth, when some men happen upon it in a very simple manner. I'm not saying that men shouldn't concern themselves with great/complex things, but I do believe it's a great deception to believe that God is at the other end of these considerations in any special capacity--rather a person is less likely to find God upon granting their own prejudices such a vast armament. I also don't believe this is the route to convince others of truth. If simple truths are passed over, with complex truths be embraced?

[Vander]

So you're saying natural selection doesn't favor correct problem solving or the ability to learn previously solved problems? It's all a coin flip without divine intervention?

[snoopy]

So you're saying natural selection doesn't favor correct problem solving or the ability to learn previously solved problems? It's all a coin flip without divine intervention?

The argument is that natural selection only favours adaptive behaviour, and that the belief (or reasoning) aspect of the neural structures are essentially ignored. While you might characterize other species as being able to problem solve and/or learn from experience and typically reserve "reasoning" to humans, imagine that the neural structures of any/all species also give rise to aspects of the reasoning ability that we have - since those aspects of reasoning ability don't give rise to behaviour, they aren't selected for (or particularly against) by natural selection.

[callmeslick]

So you're saying natural selection doesn't favor correct problem solving or the ability to learn previously solved problems? It's all a coin flip without divine intervention?

The argument is that natural selection only favours adaptive behaviour, and that the belief (or [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason]reasoning[\url]) aspect of the neural structures are essentially ignored. While you might characterize other species as being able to problem solve and/or learn from experience and typically reserve "reasoning" to humans, imagine that the neural structures of any/all species also give rise to aspects of the reasoning ability that we have - since those aspects of reasoning ability don't give rise to behaviour, they aren't selected for (or particularly against) by natural selection.

adaptive behavior very much includes reasoning, abilty to reason definitely affects other aspects of behavior. Now, I have lost any semblance of what you are trying to posit, as these arguments are based on things that just aren't true.

[snoopy]

adaptive behavior very much includes reasoning, abilty to reason definitely affects other aspects of behavior. Now, I have lost any semblance of what you are trying to posit, as these arguments are based on things that just aren't true.

Mostly I'm explaining Plantinga's argument. I see your assertion, but I don't see an argument... In the context of the enlightenment era, you can (maybe) claim that reasoning leads to adaptive behavior. My understanding of Plantinga's argument is that it's more focused on how we got here... so for the early Neanderthal, it would seem that higher reasoning skills would take a back seat to physical ability and skill. Take it even further back, to even more primitive species, and it becomes even more difficult to see how truth-seeking reasoning would be selected for.

[EDIT] I will go down the (maybe) rabbit hole: Since the enlightenment era we've managed to pollute our planet, make weapons that can utter destroy the planet, and generally plunder our planet's resources unsustainably. Furthermore we sterilize ourselves and neglect our offspring... from an evolutionary standpoint, I think there's a case to be made for our behavior as a species being extremely mal-adaptive - and possibly that it's our ability to reason itself that largely contributes to this destructive behavior.

[Jeff250]

I don't think there's any reason to scientifically presuppose naturalism. It's just that supernatural claims that people have made thus far are either found to be false or of the variety that are not easily scientifically reproducible, i.e., God works in mysterious ways. God could work in nonmysterious ways, so it's not even a weakness of science in itself that supernatural claims aren't scientifically reproducible. Rather, it's a weakness in the surviving supernatural claims, and it may explain why they've survived when other more falsifiable claims have not.

Regarding naturalism being self-defeating, I think to function at all you need to assume some axioms. And what's simpler to assume, that we are rational because an indefinitely complex supernatural being who has always existed would want us to be that way, or that we are rational because it just overwhelmingly seems like we are? I guess it seems like the cure is worse than the disease.

[vision]

I will go down the (maybe) rabbit hole: Since the enlightenment era we've managed to land robots on another planet, make vaccines that can utter destroy horrible diseases, and discover unbelievable yet true things about the natural world. Furthermore we massively decreased the global infant mortality rate... from an evolutionary standpoint, I think there's a case to be made for our behavior as a species being extremely adaptive - and possibly that it's our ability to reason itself that largely contributes to this constructive behavior.

[Sergeant Thorne]

"We" didn't do those things...

[callmeslick]

"We" didn't do those things...

I think he meant 'we' as in mankind as a whole, and yes we did. Supposition that some external force made such progress has ZERO proof and moreover no ability to be proven.

[Jeff250]

Can God know that he's rational? If you believe that your mind has always existed, then it seems like you can't even make the evolution argument.

[callmeslick]

huh, Jeff? Could you flesh that out?

[Jeff250]

There's this idea that one reason why we can trust our brains is due to natural selection, so trustworthy brains would make it, and the untrustworthy brains would get pruned out. The argument in the OP of course tries to poke some holes in this. But imagine instead that you are an eternal being and that your mind, instead of being the product of variation and natural selection, had simply always existed. It seems like you would be in an even more difficult position to try to convince yourself that your brain is trustworthy since you cannot even make the natural selection argument.

(Just intended it as an aside to ponder about.)

[callmeslick]

thanks Jeff. Deep thinking. Way too much so for me on a sunny Friday afternoon.

[Sergeant Thorne]

"We" didn't do those things...

I think he meant 'we' as in mankind as a whole, and yes we did. Supposition that some external force made such progress has ZERO proof and moreover no ability to be proven.

I think trying to understand mankind as some kind of whole in this way is obviously erroneous. The way I see it some few press through and the rest are statistics--there is no "we" in a very positive sense. I see proof of this on a daily basis. "We" are a bunch of lazy, foolish sons of bitches who are steered by what gets us the results we desire, or conversely what causes us the most pain, more than anything else. Some rise above this--even a few may rise above--but being optimistic about "we", or ascribing great accomplishment to "we" is just fantasy or politics.

[vision]

I see proof of this on a daily basis.

Then you need to open your eyes to reality. Our civilization would have never made it past the Stone Age if it were not for the caring and generosity of parents, teachers, craftsmen, artists, scholars, civil employees, and military who willingly give their lives for their countrymen (that covers most people I would say). Today there are over 7-billion humans and an increasingly small percentage are dying from violence and crime. This is in direct contradiction to your worldview, a perspective that is the saddest and most depressing thing I read on this forum. I have pity on you for it, but not much, because there really isn't anything special about you. Sgt Thorne is just like everyone else: he does his best to be a good person the only way he knows how based on his experiences.

[Spidey]

I’m pretty sure we could have made it out of the Stone Age without artists, civil employees and the military…but I’m only saying this because I know how much you love to split hairs.

[vision]

I’m pretty sure we could have made it out of the Stone Age without artists, civil employees and the military…but I’m only saying this because I know how much you love to split hairs.

Maybe. The Stone Age was when we learned how to kill things rather efficiently. It was probably the beginning of organized warfare and military classes too. If we were as evil as Thorne like to believe I doubt humans would even made it to the Stone Age, let alone the past it.

[snoopy]

I don't think there's any reason to scientifically presuppose naturalism. It's just that supernatural claims that people have made thus far are either found to be false or of the variety that are not easily scientifically reproducible, i.e., God works in mysterious ways. God could work in nonmysterious ways, so it's not even a weakness of science in itself that supernatural claims aren't scientifically reproducible. Rather, it's a weakness in the surviving supernatural claims, and it may explain why they've survived when other more falsifiable claims have not.

I think we should agree about the need to perform our science using methodological naturalism, for the reasons that you state. I do agree with you that science doesn't need to philosophically presuppose naturalism - I'd cite our long history of scientists who believe in a deity as proof. I think where we disagree is in that I think philosophy (and art, incidentally) still have a valid and useful role in society, alongside science. I don't think science will successfully prove or disprove philosophies because I think that ultimately they deal in different realms of human existence.

Regarding naturalism being self-defeating, I think to function at all you need to assume some axioms. And what's simpler to assume, that we are rational because an indefinitely complex supernatural being who has always existed would want us to be that way, or that we are rational because it just overwhelmingly seems like we are? I guess it seems like the cure is worse than the disease.

Yes, we're in agreement that we do believe that we're rational, and that in fact we must assume so to function. To recast that rest of your statement: What's simpler to assume: that we're rational because we reflect a rational, orderly creator; or that we're rational because we're rational. The first seems like quite a simple answer to me. (After all, don't most human works of creativity reflect something of their author in an analogous way?) The second isn't an answer at all - it's simply restating the question. But... I do think this is a fine example of Plantinga's discussion (in the book, but that I didn't particularly highlight) concerning people's body of acceptable evidence. A Christian will approach the question with Reason, Experience, Science, plus the Bible as acceptable tools with which to answer the question - and will wind up with conclusions which confirm the Bible. A naturalist will approach the question with Reason, Experience, Science, and the exclusion of the supernatural as acceptable tools with which to answer the question - and will wind up with conclusions which confirm their naturalism. In many ways, I think it goes back to my comment about philosophy and science living in different realms of human experience. Reason helps us bring some unity to the realms, but different starting points will yield different logically sound conclusions. (Of course, there are plenty of conclusions that aren't logically sound, too.)

Can God know that he's rational? If you believe that your mind has always existed, then it seems like you can't even make the evolution argument.

The original question isn't really an existential one... It's more of a logical one seeking to understand how a naturalistic theory of origins can justify the assumption that our reasoning is sound. If you want to get into an existential question, I suppose there isn't particularly a "how" to where you start all of the universe. Christians start with "In the beginning was the Word".. and that Word (God) is rational, etc. Naturalists start with "In the beginning was a singularity" (or I guess some these days say "In the beginning was infinite existence") - either way you have to start with a "Godwin" of simply assuming that you have a starting point with which to work. So, to your immediate question: God can't particularly logically figure out that He's rational (for the same reasons that we can't for ourselves) - but He also isn't challenged to explain how He came into being, because He is the starting point.

I think he meant 'we' as in mankind as a whole, and yes we did. Supposition that some external force made such progress has ZERO proof and moreover no ability to be proven.

Back to the thought experiment that I posed earlier: Suppose God (The Deistic one, not the Theistic one) "winds up" the universe, gets it all lined up perfectly so all this comes into being, and lets it go - who gets the credit? In a human analogy: Who gets the credit for a learning program like IBM's "Watson" - the program for it's learning, or the programmers who gave it the algorithms? [Hint: who collects a check?]

[callmeslick]

I found your posit about 'wind-up' version of God's design interesting, but as I said, so completely unproveable as to not be in conflict with science(the orignal topic) so much as completely tangental to science.

[Jeff250]

First, just to pick more on naturalism being self-defeating...

If you knew that each component of your argument had a 50% shot at being correct, would you trust it? I'd estimate that you have ~10-15 components - that would give the argument as a whole a 0.1% to 0.003%

Assuming independence. But these events would be highly dependent. If our brains are trustworthy, then someone sampling our beliefs would know pretty quickly from the first few beliefs being true whether the rest of our beliefs are generally trustworthy since a trustworthy brain would produce mostly true beliefs, and vice versa.

The real probability that we should be concerned about is whether or not our brains would be trustworthy if they had evolved. Multiplying that probability over every belief just doesn't make sense because the trustworthiness of each belief is highly dependent.

I don't see any reason to think that the probability that our brains are trustworthy is 50% either. If you really believe that there is no correlation between trustworthiness of one's brain and one's survival, as the argument in the OP seems to suggest, then I would expect you to argue that the probability is near 0% (whereas of course if you take the opposite view and believe that there is high correlation between the trustworthiness of one's brain and one's survival, then you would believe that it is near 100%).

I suspect that there is high correlation though, because a brain that only produced false beliefs would be a like an eye that only produced false visions or an ear that only heard sounds that weren't there. Our survivability is intricately bound to the trustworthiness of their input, and it's hard to imagine how an eye that only saw what wasn't there would be better for our survival than an eye that saw what was. For similar reasons, I think we can trust our brains, even if (if not especially because) they evolved.

I think we should agree about the need to perform our science using methodological naturalism, for the reasons that you state. I do agree with you that science doesn't need to philosophically presuppose naturalism - I'd cite our long history of scientists who believe in a deity as proof. I think where we disagree is in that I think philosophy (and art, incidentally) still have a valid and useful role in society, alongside science. I don't think science will successfully prove or disprove philosophies because I think that ultimately they deal in different realms of human existence.

I don't know why you think we disagree on that--I would agree completely!

Yes, we're in agreement that we do believe that we're rational, and that in fact we must assume so to function. To recast that rest of your statement: What's simpler to assume: that we're rational because we reflect a rational, orderly creator; or that we're rational because we're rational.

No, I'm appealing to intuition here. If you're actually considering the possibility that your brain could be untrustworthy, then the last thing you can do is trust its thoughts on the subject, including your brain's thoughts on God's existence, his nature, and so on. You're going to need some kind of leap of faith. Here, I suggest that the simplest reason to think that we're rational to at least be able to have any thoughts on the subject at all is to appeal to our intuition that our thoughts are trustworthy.

But... I do think this is a fine example of Plantinga's discussion (in the book, but that I didn't particularly highlight) concerning people's body of acceptable evidence. A Christian will approach the question with Reason, Experience, Science, plus the Bible as acceptable tools with which to answer the question - and will wind up with conclusions which confirm the Bible. A naturalist will approach the question with Reason, Experience, Science, and the exclusion of the supernatural as acceptable tools with which to answer the question - and will wind up with conclusions which confirm their naturalism.

Maybe--I think that that is a false dichotomy that most scientists don't fit into though. Most are closest to the naturalist, except without the a priori rejection of the supernatural. If they don't use supernatural explanations for things, it's because there aren't any good ones.