"Is Atheism Irrational?" -- NYT Interview of Alvin Plantinga

[Meatros]

It isn't just evolution itself which is relevant. Philosophy of mind is important too--the argument is most effective against semantic/doxastic epiphenomenalism, or a view of the mind where beliefs are not causally effective.

Which argument are you referring to? The argument against naturalism, a la Plantinga, certainly requires evolution to be relevant. We are moving off track with the rest of this.

Another topic not explored by plantiga is the notion that a naturally derived mind must be computational. there are good reasons to think our minds are not reducible to computation.

What do you mean by this?

[Myriad88]

Evolution is relevant, but you also need to look at philosophy of mind. Are beliefs the sorts of thing which actually cause anything?


On mind as computer--a naturalist would essentially have to believe his mind is running some form of computation. But there are good reasons to think mind is more than algorithms/computations.

E.g We can know the truth of Godelian statements (statements we know are true, but not provable ala Godels incompleteness). Could something merely running algorithms know the truth of something not derivable from algorithms?

[GreatOldOne]

Saying self-organisation or intelligibility is "just what nature does" is question begging.

So is saying, it is just what God does.

Evolution is relevant, but you also need to look at philosophy of mind. Are beliefs the sorts of thing which actually cause anything?


On mind as computer--a naturalist would essentially have to believe his mind is running some form of computation. But there are good reasons to think mind is more than algorithms/computations.

E.g We can know the truth of Godelian statements (statements we know are true, but not provable ala Godels incompleteness). Could something merely running algorithms know the truth of something not derivable from algorithms?

Not quite. Not brain runs and mind is produced. The functioning human brain, IS the mind (human mind).

[BobisMighty]

My point is that evolution does not create epistemic tension for a theist. The theist has explanatory invocations at their disposal that a naturalist does not.

And like AP said, our beliefs aren't necessarily true and can't always be trusted, so regardless of your invocations it's more of your mind choosing the best way to close a paradox. doesn't necessarily mean it's true, it's merely a position. i don't see how this changes things for an atheist.

[Meatros]

Evolution is relevant, but you also need to look at philosophy of mind. Are beliefs the sorts of thing which actually cause anything?

I guess what I'm getting at is that, technically speaking, everything is relevant to a worldview, but this thread was specifically about Plantinga's argument against naturalism. So this is going off on a tangent.

As to beliefs actually causing anything - it depends what you mean. I would say, on first glance, 'no' the belief doesn't cause anything, the person with the belief is doing the action. I don't think you mean quite this though.

On mind as computer--a naturalist would essentially have to believe his mind is running some form of computation. But there are good reasons to think mind is more than algorithms/computations.

E.g We can know the truth of Godelian statements (statements we know are true, not not provable ala Godels incompleteness). Could something merely running algorithms know the truth of something not derivable from algorithms?

So why couldn't a naturalist believe that his mind was running some form of algorithms/computations instead of just computations? Edit: I misread you here. Why must a naturalist stick to just these things? Why couldn't evolution produce pathways for these other systems?

As to the second part - I'm not sure I quite follow you here - I'll have to say 'I dunno'. On first glance, I would say 'why not?'. Algorithms X leads to answer Y, this is 'true' in the sense that we can be confident that it will yield this result whenever we run it.

[Myriad88]

But Godelian arguments are logically impossible to prove--its impossible to know the truth of them by running algorithms,proofs etc. They are not provable.

How could a computer "know" of a Godelian sentence if it was restricted to running algorithms, syntax etc?

[GreatOldOne]

But Godelian arguments are logically impossible to prove--its impossible to know the truth of them by running algorithms,proofs etc. They are not provable.

How could a computer "know" of a Godelian sentence if it was restricted to running algorithms, syntax etc?

Same way your meat computer functions to deal with it.

We wouldn't even have to know what it's doing, just copy the apparent function and we could have computers as confused about the universe as we are IMO.

[Meatros]

But Godelian arguments are logically impossible to prove--its impossible to know the truth of them by running algorithms,proofs etc. They are not provable.

How could a computer "know" of a Godelian sentence if it was restricted to running algorithms, syntax etc?

If you are speaking of being absolutely certain - as in no chance at being wrong - I'd say there is precious little that we can actually 'know' in this manner. That's why I said: "Algorithms X leads to answer Y, this is 'true' in the sense that we can be confident that it will yield this result whenever we run it. "

I guess I don't get what you are driving at here.

[tuk22]

I want to bring it back to the OP... Atheism is irrational because there are no good arguments supporting the belief we live in a world absent of God/Gods. It's a separate argument to what is being discussed... The issues with philosophical naturalism and naturalistic evolution... And it's quite a simple solution... Do not believe we live in a world where only the natural exists. It's a totally unwarranted position anyway... Just do science 'as if nothing but natural forces exist' and you get practical knowledge...

[Myriad88]

If you are speaking of being absolutely certain - as in no chance at being wrong - I'd say there is precious little that we can actually 'know' in this manner. That's why I said: "Algorithms X leads to answer Y, this is 'true' in the sense that we can be confident that it will yield this result whenever we run it. "

I guess I don't get what you are driving at here.

I'm not saying the computational theory of mind fails to know everything with logical certainty. that wouldnt be a very big concession.

Do you know about godels incompleteness theorems?

I'm saying if our minds were purely running computation (formal logical manipulation) we wouldn't be able to know some of the things we know.

Argument:

P1: All formal logical systems cannot prove themselves to be both consistent and complete.

P2:The mind is a formal logical system.

C: The mind cannot prove itself to be both consistent and complete.

Hence if i was running computations, I could only know truths if i was able to derive them through proof or formal logic. But we can see the truth of Godel arguments (liar paradox for example) which are literally unprovable.

[GreatOldOne]

Do you know about godels incompleteness theorems?

How you can and not be a skeptic is beyond me.

Edit:
C: The mind cannot prove itself to be both consistent and complete.

Hold on...Divine Illumination from meditation with Divine Logos coming in:
If you people weren't so stupid, I couldn't exist and I like being here. -Thanks, God

[Myriad88]

How you can and not be a skeptic is beyond me.

Edit:
C: The mind cannot prove itself to be both consistent and complete.

But we can see the truth of godelian arguments despite their unprovability, hence this would cast serious doubt on the notion the mind is just running computations.

A computer would not be able to know of anything it could not derive through formal logic.

[Meatros]

I'm not saying the computational theory of mind fails to know everything with logical certainty. that wouldnt be a very big concession.

Do you know about godels incompleteness theorems?

Superficially, yes.

I'm saying if our minds were purely running computation (formal logical manipulation) we wouldn't be able to know some of the things we know.

Argument:

P1: All formal logical systems cannot prove themselves to be both consistent and complete.

P2:The mind is a formal logical system.

C: The mind cannot prove itself to be both consistent and complete.

Hence if i was running computations, I could only know truths if i was able to derive them through proof or formal logic. But we can see the truth of Godel arguments (liar paradox for example) which are literally unprovable.

I don't think your 'hence' is accurate. Not all logical systems 'prove' themselves in the manner you seem to assume - inductive/abductive logic does not. The mind uses both of these quite extensively.

Further, it doesn't appear that the mind can know many truths at all. I am thinking, therefore I am.

But we can see the truth of godelian arguments despite their unprovability,

Again, I'm not an expert on this, so take it with a grain of salt. The Godelian argument seems to be true, but if it's unprovable, how can you actually say it definitely is?

hence this would cast serious doubt on the notion the mind is just running computations.

A computer would not be able to know of anything it could not derive through formal logic.

So how do we know the Godelian argument *IS* true?

[GreatOldOne]

But we can see the truth of godelian arguments despite their unprovability, hence this would cast serious doubt on the notion the mind is just running computations.

A computer would not be able to know of anything it could not derive through formal logic.

What it sheds doubt on, is that we can ever see truth with consistency and completeness. Once you aware of that...bye, bye knowledge as simply justified, true, belief.

I'm aware of it being used to suggest you can't have a 'person-like' computer, but I disagree. We could act like humonculars in the creation of a system just like the one we appear to realize (i.e. brain functions)...passing 'meaning' such as it were over to the machine without ourselves understanding what happened. The system as a whole (existence) determines the ultimate function and we realize a small, fractal like, aspect of it which we can try to understand through natural means and exploration. No, 'God' required.

However, if you just want to say God is simply 'All that was, is, and will be'...then fine. Nobody has a problem with that which I am aware of. But theists typically don't do that. They DO put their 'nice' beards and 'Gods plan' beards on 'All that was, is, and will be' which is what IMO naturalist/atheists...whatever, reject as those 'beards' appear contradicted by observation.

....except, the 'evil beard' actually sticks with the evidence we have jk, sort of...lol.

[SonnyBIlly]

OP cut out the actual argument in his ellipsis:

GG: So your claim is that if materialism is true, evolution doesn’t lead to most of our beliefs being true.

AP: Right. In fact, given materialism and evolution, it follows that our belief-producing faculties are not reliable.

Here’s why. If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a total of 100 independent beliefs (of course, we have many more). Remember that the probability that all of a group of beliefs are true is the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we set a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67 percent) of our beliefs are true — our overall reliability, given materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like .0004. So if you accept both materialism and evolution, you have good reason to believe that your belief-producing faculties are not reliable.

But to believe that is to fall into a total skepticism, which leaves you with no reason to accept any of your beliefs (including your beliefs in materialism and evolution!). The only sensible course is to give up the claim leading to this conclusion: that both materialism and evolution are true. Maybe you can hold one or the other, but not both.

So if you’re an atheist simply because you accept materialism, maintaining your atheism means you have to give up your belief that evolution is true. Another way to put it: The belief that both materialism and evolution are true is self-refuting. It shoots itself in the foot. Therefore it can’t rationally be held.

It seems a terrible argument that greatly over reaches: that if evolution were true, we as products of this flawed process that cares nothing for actual truth content and reasoning, must be too stupid to formulate or hold any reliable beliefs, and too stupid to distinguish fantasy from reality in our sensory perceptions.

There is a core argument in there, that there are many things that are inexplicable or absurd in both human beings and other life forms, if natural selection were the only means of their genesis, and our very high level of intelligence could be argued to be one of them (more complex argument that can be discussed here, but as an example, a creature that is so intelligent that it can invent and practice contraception and abortion, and hence we now have declining fertility rates in the first world, here our intelligence could be argued to be too great for evolutionary benefit, or that much of our very high intelligence is neutral as to evolutionary benefit).

But this argument goes way beyond that and fails at many levels:
- It treats rational arguments as mere "beliefs", as if they were held by people not because they were rationally convinced, but merely because they are "believed" in themselves.
- It falsely equates an instant reactionary belief, with a considered opinion, as if jumping at a shadow at night because it might be an animal that could eat you, is of the same nature as a carefully considered argument that a person has had time to formulate, criticize, discuss with others etc.
- It wrongly denies the capacity of people to falsify their previous held beliefs.
- It over assumes that evolutionary reactions to misunderstood stimuli are unaware they don't fully understand the stimulus. We are aware that we can make mistakes and that our immediate sensory perceptions may not be fully accurate. Nor do you need certain knowledge of the world in order to react to it. We budget for errors, we make educated guesses etc. We re-conduct experiments, we take a second look, we ask for other peoples opinions and views etc.
- All of this awareness of our limitations and failings, and the things we do to overcome them, could be of evolutionary benefit, and could be naturally selected for: The caveman who can't figure out how to get a woman pregnant because he has false beliefs about conception, either learns to correct his mistakes and overcome his previously held false beliefs, or he doesn't pass on his genes.

It seems a really really bad argument.

[Myriad88]

Superficially, yes.




I don't think your 'hence' is accurate. Not all logical systems 'prove' themselves in the manner you seem to assume - inductive/abductive logic does not. The mind uses both of these quite extensively.

Further, it doesn't appear that the mind can know many truths at all. I am thinking, therefore I am.



Again, I'm not an expert on this, so take it with a grain of salt. The Godelian argument seems to be true, but if it's unprovable, how can you actually say it definitely is?



So how do we know the Godelian argument *IS* true?

Simple example:

Take formal system S, and the following statement:

"This statement is not provable within system S"


Now, we know that is true as it leads to contradictions. But could a computer know that? It would have to be manipulating formal logic and proofs. You can't develop proofs to know what we know in this situation.

[GreatOldOne]

Simple example:

Take formal system S, and the following statement:

"This statement is not provable within system S"


Now, we know that is true as it leads to contradictions. But could a computer know that? It would have to be manipulating formal logic and proofs. You can't develop proofs to know what we know in this situation.

That's a bit of a strawman...that it would have to be...Apparently it can be done via a sophisticated meat computer so no reason to suspect it can't be done by a sufficiently complex 'other material' computer. The question is could we actually figure out how to make one with what we can learn about the brain, which is safe to guess 'No' for a very long time at least.

[Myriad88]

That's a bit of a strawman...that it would have to be...Apparently it can be done via a sophisticated meat computer so no reason to suspect it can't be done by a sufficiently complex 'other material' computer. The question is could we actually figure out how to make one with what we can learn about the brain, which is safe to guess 'No' for a very long time at least.

question begging

[Meatros]

Simple example:

Take formal system S, and the following statement:

"This statement is not provable within system S"


Now, we know that is true as it leads to contradictions. But could a computer know that? It would have to be manipulating formal logic and proofs. You can't develop proofs to know what we know in this situation.

I'm still not following, I'm sorry to say. Why wouldn't a computer know that it led to contradictions? The computer would know what a contradiction was and it would apply it to that statement, just like we do.

[flairon]

Yes, athiesm is irrational

its much more rational to believe in the invisible cloud man

[GreatOldOne]

question begging

strawman (forcing the type of machine). and also question begging with the question (assumptions inherent leading to the question).

the computer we might build could be just as confused as we are...don't assume you 'know' anything.

[lasher]

Yes, athiesm is irrational

its much more rational to believe in the invisible cloud man

You forgot bearded. Always included bearded for full euphoric fedora effect.

[flairon]

You forgot bearded. Always included bearded for full euphoric fedora effect.

my bad.

[MaximosJ]

bearded invisible cloud man checking in

[NeoKantian]

So how do we know the Godelian argument *IS* true?

Because there's a proof demonstrating why. Godel's incompleteness theorems apply to formal systems capable of expressing basic arithmetic, e.g. Peano Arithmetic.

As for Godel's theorems and the philosophy of mind, that's debatable.

[Meatros]

bearded invisible cloud man checking in

Pics of beard.

Because there's a proof demonstrating why. Godel's incompleteness theorems apply to formal systems capable of expressing basic arithmetic, e.g. Peano Arithmetic.

As for Godel's theorems and the philosophy of mind, that's debatable.

Fair enough.

I'm not seeing the issue then, to be honest. Why wouldn't a computer system be able to use this proof?

[tuk22]

Did anyone else notice AP was actually arguing for agnosticism?

[MaximosJ]

Did anyone else notice AP was actually arguing for agnosticism?

I think a few people in this thread only read the part I quoted in the OP, so they may have missed the beginning of the article.

He's not exactly arguing for agnosticism as much as he is arguing against (the rationality of) atheism. He thinks atheism is not supported by the facts/arguments on which many atheists base their views. Instead, agnosticism is supported by those facts/arguments, to some degree. However, his evolutionary argument, if it works, would show that agnostics cannot accept both materialism and evolution, just like atheists cannot. Insofar as the argument supports non-materialism, it may lend some support to theism.

In any case, AP's overall position is still that theism is a rational position to take. In his view, theism is true, and agnostics should, if they want to believe truly, endorse it. I'm not exactly sure whether he thinks agnosticism can be rational in some cases, but I suspect he thinks so.

[Stizzel]

Some of you might be interested in this (sorry if repost). http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...sm-irrational/

The interview is by another philosopher, Gary Gutting. Here's a quote from what I take to be one of the most interesting (and probably controversial) parts:

I have non empirical evidence that this is absolutely false.

[danielMSF]

I followed the link and read the whole thing. This guy just makes conclusions with no basis and then the interviewer doesn't even pull him up.

In fact the universe seems to be fine-tuned, not just for life, but for intelligent life. This fine-tuning is vastly more likely given theism than given atheism.

What? Why?

Some atheists seem to think that a sufficient reason for atheism is the fact (as they say) that we no longer need God to explain natural phenomena � lightning and thunder for example. We now have science.

As a justification of atheism, this is pretty lame. We no longer need the moon to explain or account for lunacy; it hardly follows that belief in the nonexistence of the moon (a-moonism?) is justified.

Don't even know what to say about this little bit of nonsense.

Having said that^^ and my previous posts, I do however, think that active disbelief in a god to be irrational.