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I couldn't find an html link, so I'm gonna have to upload the PDF. This is by Alvin Plantinga who is a philosophy professor at Notre Dame. I figured some of our lay philosophers might enjoy it. I confess, I haven't read it yet. I figured I'd give y'all a head start...
Time is your friend. Impulse is your enemy. -John Bogle
"the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing" - nice
Jordan Mills on choosing Tech:
“It’s a great experience seeing them play. It was a good atmosphere. The fans stood up the whole game and never sat down. They have a great fan base.”
I say just assume your senses are wrong see how far that takes you. Now THAT would be evolution at work.
Jordan Mills on choosing Tech:
“It’s a great experience seeing them play. It was a good atmosphere. The fans stood up the whole game and never sat down. They have a great fan base.”
I didn't realize those were just notes. Here is a link to site that has the audio of his lecture. I can't find a transcript right now. Scroll down to Plantinga. It's the only audio they have on him...if you'd like to participate in this lively off-season discussion that is!
http://www.hisdefense.org/OnlineLect...6/Default.aspx
Time is your friend. Impulse is your enemy. -John Bogle
Nevermind...it's in one of his books...Warrant and Proper Function
Time is your friend. Impulse is your enemy. -John Bogle
I loved the unbridled hypothesizing of potential beliefs that could underlie "Paul's" apparent fleeing from the tiger. Reminds me of the futility of trying to read someone's body language. But that's another issue.
Interesting argument, though. A similar conclusion that I have drawn based on my own dabblings with naturalism as well as my studies of human perception and cognitive processes is this: I believe there is absolute truth, and I believe that we can know it. However, we are incapable of knowing for certain that we know it. Essentially ANY belief (even something as "trivial" as believing that a chair both exists in reality and will maintain its physical properties while I sit in it) has a large measure of faith in unseen and ultimately unknowable propositions. Which is why I believe it is absurd for anyone to suggest that Darwinian evolution has been "proven true."
Setting aside for a moment the fact that our faculties for sense and perception are absurdly unreliable, none of us has true direct and absolute knowledge of any significant proposition. At the end of the day, then, we are relying in large part on someone else's account of a proposition in forming each of our beliefs.
I thought "naturalism" is when people go around naked.
That's the good kind. This other kind has little to commend it. :icon_wink:Originally Posted by dawg80
I thought "naturalism" is when people go around naked.
Here's an excerpt from Plantinga:
(4) Finally, it could be that the beliefs of our hypothetical creatures are indeed both causally connected with their behavior and also adaptive. (I suppose this is the common sense view of the connection between behavior and belief in our own case.)
What is the probability (on this assumption together with N&E) that their cognitive faculties are reliable; and what is the probability that a belief produced by those faculties will be true? I argued that this probability isn't nearly as high as one is initially inclined to think. The reason is that if behavior is caused by belief, it is also caused by desire (and other factors--suspicion, doubt, approval and disapproval, fear--that we can here ignore). For any given adaptive action, there will be many belief-desire combinations that could produce that action; and very many of those belief-desire combinations will be such that the belief involved is false.
So suppose Paul is a prehistoric hominid; a hungry tiger approaches. Fleeing is perhaps the most appropriate behavior: I pointed out that this behavior could be produced by a large number of different belief-desire pairs. To quote myself:
Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely that the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief. . . . .
Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it. . . . or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a regularly recurring illusion, and, hoping to keep his weight down, has formed the resolution to run a mile at top speed whenever presented with such an illusion; or perhaps he thinks he is about to take part in a 1600 meter race, wants to win, and believes the appearance of the tiger is the starting signal; or perhaps . . . . Clearly there are any number of belief-***-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behavior (WPF pp. 225-226).
Accordingly, there are many belief-desire combinations that will lead to the adaptive action; in many of these combinations, the beliefs are false. Without further knowledge of these creatures, therefore, we could hardly estimate the probability of R on N&E and this final possibility as high.
A problem with the argument as thus presented is this. It is easy to see, for justone of Paul's actions, that there are many different belief-desire combinations that yield it; it is less easy to see how it could be that most of all of his beliefs could be false but nonetheless adaptive or fitness enhancing. Could Paul's beliefs really be mainly false, but still lead to adaptive action? Yes indeed; perhaps the simplest way to see how is by thinking of systematic ways in which his beliefs could be false but still adaptive. Perhaps Paul is a sort of early Leibnizian and thinks everything is conscious (and suppose that is false); furthermore, his ways of referring to things all involve definite descriptions that entail consciousness, so that all of his beliefs are of the form That so-and-so conscious being is such-and-such. Perhaps he is an animist and thinks everything is alive. Perhaps he thinks all the plants and animals in his vicinity are witches, and his ways of referring to them all involve definite descriptions entailing witchhood. But this would be entirely compatible with his belief's being adaptive; so it is clear, I think, that there would be many ways in which Paul's beliefs could be for the most part false, but adaptive
nonetheless.
...
Now of course defeaters can be themselves defeated. For example, I know that you are a lifeguard and believe on that ground that you are an excellent swimmer. But then I learn that 45% of Frisian lifeguards are poor swimmers, and
I know that you are Frisian: this gives me a defeater for the belief that you are a fine swimmer. But then I learn still further that you graduated from the Department of Lifeguardingat the University of Leeuwarden and that one of the
requirements for graduation is being an excellent swimmer: that gives me a defeater for the defeater of my original belief: a defeater-defeater as we might put it.[18] But (to return to our argument) can the defeater the naturalist has for R be in turn defeated?
I argued that it can't (WPF 233-234). It could be defeated only by something--an argument, for example, that involves some other belief (perhaps as premise). But any such belief will be subject to the very same defeater as R is. So this defeater can't be defeated.[19]
But if I have an undefeated defeater for R, then by the same token I have an undefeated defeater for any other belief B my cognitive faculties produce, a reason to be doubtful of that belief, a reason to withhold it. For any such
belief will be produced by cognitive faculties that I cannot rationally believe to be reliable. But then clearly the same will be true for any proposition they produce: the fact that I can't rationally believe that the faculties that produce
that belief are reliable, gives me a reason for rejecting the belief. So the devotee of N&E has a defeater for just any belief he holds--a defeater, as I put it, that is ultimately undefeated But this means, then, that he has an ultimately undefeated defeater for N&E itself. And that means that the conjunction of naturalism with evolution is self-defeating, such that one can't rationally accept it.
http://philofreligion.homestead.com/...per.htm#_ftn18
Time is your friend. Impulse is your enemy. -John Bogle
Time is your friend. Impulse is your enemy. -John Bogle
"Kind of" what I was saying about not being able to know that what we know is objectively true.
Thought I would post this one for discussion as I think this came up somewhere on this forum.
SHIRE GENIUS Flores Man ‘hobbits’ found in Indonesia were NOT direct relatives of modern humans, scientists confirm
Researchers discover that strange hobbits were not shrunken versions of humanity's ancient ancestor, Homo erectus
By Margi Murphy
21st April 2017, 1:19 pm
Updated: 21st April 2017, 4:34 pm
ANCIENT “hobbits” recently discovered in Indonesia were not an early form of modern human but an entirely different species, scientists have found.
The ancient hobbits, who would have stood at 3.5 foot tall, were found at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in 2003.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/338161...tists-confirm/
"Alvin Plantinga argued that to say that there must be a scientific cause for any apparently miraculous phenomenon is like insisting that your lost keys must be under the streetlight because that’s the only place you can see."
When is a phenomenon "apparently miraculous"?
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