[Note: This is the second-to-last recycled post of the Christmas holiday. Regular blogging resumes Tuesday, Dec. 28th]
“With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has always been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? -- Charles Darwin
Darwin would have made a good philosopher. Unlike those who followed after him, he appears to have intuitively sensed that the theory of evolutionary naturalism undercut his ability to trust that we can form true beliefs and convictions. In order for us to have true beliefs we have to have properly functioning noetic equipment (brain, spinal cord, senses, etc. that operate in accordance with reality).
But can the evolutionary process produce reliable equipment? Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga thinks the answer is no. While his explanation is far too complex to be presented in a single post, I’ll try to outline the basics of his case in order to provide the gist of his argument.
Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our cognitive faculties developed as they did because they had some survival value or reproductive advantage. But there are at least five ways that our faculties could have developed and none of them require our equipment to produce true belief.
Since we’ll be talking about beliefs and their effect on behavior, it would be useful to use an example of someone who produces them. We’ll use Zed, a prehistoric caveman, for our model. Zed is the first to cross the line over to homo sapien (his parents are so proud) and is the first to develop functioning noetic equipment that's the same as our own.
There are several types of beliefs that Zed's equipment could produce:
Ex. #1 -- Zed’s brain could produce no belief at all. Since matter is all that exists and beliefs are not physical, it could be argued that beliefs don’t exist. (Of course in order to argue this position we would have to believe our argument so this is self-defeating.) If it's true, though, it would be obvious that if beliefs don’t exist then neither do true beliefs.
Ex. #2 -- Zed’s brain produces beliefs that are effects but not causes. These beliefs are sort of the garnish on the plate of behavior. They are there but they have no purpose. Zed’s beliefs are simply waking dreams and therefore can play no role in survival.
Ex. #3 -- Zed’s brain produces beliefs that are caused by and cause behaviors but their content is not important to the behavior itself. Zed has discovered both language and singing. He notices that when he sings “UGGA BOO UGGAGA BOO" at the top of his lungs that it scares off birds and small animals. Zed believes that the words “UGGA BOO" have a magical effect on the animals that causes them to run away in fear. The content of the words of course, have no affect on the animals. It’s Zed’s horrendous voice that is scaring them away.
Ex. #4 -- Zed’s brain produces beliefs that are caused by and cause behaviors because of their content. Unfortunately for Zed, this could be a disadvantage. For Zed to be able to produce rational beliefs he has to have a large central nervous system which includes a big brain and a spinal cord.
You don’t just slap that type of thing together overnight. It requires a long, vulnerable gestation period and an extended postnatal period. In other words, Zed’s noetic equipment takes time to develop. During this time he has a good chance of being eaten by something. (Big brains are a delicacy for saber tooth tigers.) This is, evolutionarily speaking, a maladaptive behavior. It could be passed on by the parents but have no advantage for survival.
Ex. #5 -- Zed’s brain produces beliefs that are caused by and cause behaviors because of their content and it could have an evolutionary advantage. But there is yet another problem for old Zed. What are the chances that his noetic equipment produces true beliefs. According to Plantinga, we have no reaso to believe that it is necessaryy for a belief to be true in order to be advantageous.
In order to survive, Zed needs to act in certain ways in order to survive. For example, he needs to avoid the saber tooth tiger taking a bite out of his big brain. We’ll call this behavior B for “tiger avoidance behavior." Now B could be produced by Zed’s desire not to get eaten plus the true belief that B will increase his chances of not having his brain eaten.
The problem is that B could be produced by false beliefs as well. Perhaps Zed likes the idea of being eaten and wants to run toward the tiger. But Zed always confuses running toward with running away from tigers. His false belief actually aids his survival. Therefore it is possible that beliefs could have a survival advantage and yet be false.
The point of all this is that Zed’s having noetic equipment that produce true beliefs is not necessary for his survival. Since this holds true for even the most basic survival behavior, it is especially true when it comes to abstract ideas (i.e., the theory of naturalistic evolution). While it is possible that the belief is true it is not, from an evolutionary perspective, necessary that it is true. If it wasn't necessary for our noetic equipment to develop in any particular way it's possible that faculties could produce beliefs in any of the five ways listed above.
Since all of the scenarios are possible, what is the likelihood that evolutionary naturalism has produced in us cognitive equipment that is able to form true beliefs? Extremely low. It would be just a lucky coincidence. So in accepting the evolutionary explanation for the development of our noetic equipment we have to be agnostic about its reliability. Evolutionary naturalism, it turns out, is a self-defeating argument. If we believe the theory then we find that we have no reason to believe it’s true.
[Resources: All ideas presented that are coherent and intelligible should be credited to the writings of Alvin Plantinga, J.P. Moreland, and William Lane Craig. Anything that is muddled, lacking in coherence, or just plain goofy (i.e., Zed the caveman) can be attributed to me.]
1
Ahh, but belief just might be useful for Zed's survival in a most sophistacted manner. At least it could provide adapative value. Let's say you're a caveman, and you're dependant on how well you can anticipate and read nature for your living. Some things are obvious to casual observation, some are more subtle, some are very well hidden to human senses by nature and have to be teased out or inferred, and they can be complex.
To develop working hypothesis about those items which are not readily apparent, you must first imagine a possible solution. A tendancy for a sort of 'belief' helps you here. It gives you the raw ability to suspect unseen, hidden, complex cause and effect. Those beliefs can then be whitteled down and/or refined by pure selection and by intentional experiment of what works vs what does not. Belief, even irrational belief with little to no evidence, acts like variability on a culture as surely as genetic replication errors and diversity provides the raw material for evolution.
It's highly speculative, but it may be that the difference between Hsaps, and our neander cousins, was that the former did have a propensity to believe, or suspect, unseen cause and effect, one that may have been lacking or not as well oiled in our hominid peers (An idea sometimes referred to as 'adaptive insanity'). You cannot investigate naything without first having an inkling it might be 'that way'. And 'belief' in the abstract gives you that precursor, even if at times some beliefs are catastropically wrong. For there will always be some belief which pan out and being wrong might be worth the advantage gained for when yo're right. The cultures whose beliefs are less accurate don't compete as effectively with their rivals whose beliefs are more accurate.
2
Yeah, but DS, consider the epistemic consequences of your position: if belief is a side-effect of a certain brain configuration, and its adaptive value lies in that some such brain states trigger responses which have greater survival value--whether individually or, as a result of the interlocking effects of such brain-states in a social network, socially--if all that, then . . .
. . . the value of a belief has nothing to do with what it is a belief "about," i.e., "truth" is itself such a side-effect of a brain state that either does or does not result in superior adaptation to one's environment . . .
That is, of course, a *plausible* position on the face of things, but--are you willing to live with that?
And how, then, should we evaluate behaviors as more or less well-adapted? Should we care? That is, is our belief that survival is "good" really meaningful? Why not stop caring and let the roaches have it, for all the good it will do us?
Cheers,
PGE
3
PG if we can't test it, it's not something science can really shed much light on. We know the brain is the seat of thought, plenty of evidince for that, it's not a guess. Put a bullet through it, alter it with drugs, and you will turn it off and on like a light switch. I'm not sure how you're using 'truth' in the context of adaptive value. A belief which confers a differential advantage will be selected for over the converse, all things being equal, regardless if that belief is 'true'. If you are convinced that a certian berry is cursed by Zeus, and that berry happens to contain parasites which slowly sap your strength over years of consumption, that belief is adaptive, even though it's inaccurate. If a medicine man believes that by ceremonially treatng the berry in some godawful concoction which has anti-bio properties will remove the Curse of Zeus, again, that belief will confer adaptive value. The beliefs don't have to be 'the truth' to work and get selected for culturally. But having the ability to believe is vital to getting the advantage conferred from differentially favorable beliefs. So the ability to 'believe' or suspect unseen cause and effect, even way out mythological primitive beliefs that are inaccurate, is probably worth something. It gives us cultural variability which cultural selection can act on. And yes, that ability to believe could be something that is made possible by a preexisting neurological wiring which, like most things in evolution, was likely co-opted, 'adaptive irrationality'. It's not a matter of 'living with it' it's just the way it could work.
posted on 12.28.2004 3:22 AM4
The problem is that B could be produced by false beliefs as well. Perhaps Zed likes the idea of being eaten and wants to run toward the tiger. But Zed always confuses running toward with running away from tigers. His false belief actually aids his survival. Therefore it is possible that beliefs could have a survival advantage and yet be false.
You're confusing terms here. You start by talking about beliefs that are convinctions, as Darwin defined them. Separate from what a monkey would be capable of. But then use things such as running towards tigers as examples of those beliefs. That's not a 'convinction' as Darwin described. It's an instinct, and it's something that all animals have.
To understand whether or not the 'equipment' that allow us to have 'convictions' could have been developed through evolution, you would need to look at what convictions exist and study them over time. This is extremely difficult to do scientifically, but many people point to religion conviction as a survival mechanism for homo sapiens. In a sense, that the formation of religion was a form of evolution.
posted on 12.28.2004 11:40 AM5
The reason modern science knows so little about the brain is because there is so little to know!
We have conscience, inventive thought not because we have a brain and a spinal cord (though these are necessary elements). Monkeys have these too. We can think and create because we are made in the image of God. We have a spirit/soul (which I will call the spirit).
Having worked on computers for 30 years I find them a good analogy. A basic computer is made up of a CPU, RAM Memory, a big disk and proms. The proms get the thing started by loading memory and the CPU executes that memory. Later a program from the big disk is loaded into memory and is executed by the CPU to control peripheral functions.
Currently humanist scientists believe the CPU, RAM Memory and the Big Disk reside in the brain. They are wrong. The brain is merely an anolog mapped, random access memory (RAM)with the occasional Prom. Our big disk and CPU reside in our spirit. Our spirit loads and executes commands into the brain which then controlls our peripheral devices (arms, legs, eyes et al).
PET scans show different geographic brain activity for different bodily functions. But what science cannot figure out is how all that intuitive descision making process actually happens. They cannot see it because it happens in the spirit, not in the physical brain.
If you monitored a computers RAM while it was working, you will see the same sort of activity you see in the brain during a PET scan. Some areas would be active during function A, while others would be active during function B. You cannot see the big plans formulating and changing because all that happens in the spirit. But, since the spirit doesn't exist for humanists they try to cram the CPU and big disk into the brain. They don't understand it because all they observe is an anolog memory being loaded and executed by the spirit.
This all came to me while I was studying the rise of King David. King Saul consulted the witch who produce the dead prophet for Saul. The dead prophet, who was spirit at this time, talked of things that happened during his life. If our big disk was located in the brain, and his brain was dust by now, he would not have remembered anything. Therefore the big disk is located in the spirit.
It is the spirit that seperates us from the animals and makes us the crowning creation of God.
6
We can think and create because we are made in the image of God. We have a spirit/soul (which I will call the spirit).
What scientific evidence do you have of this?
But what science cannot figure out is how all that intuitive descision making process actually happens. They cannot see it because it happens in the spirit, not in the physical brain.
How is this any different from a person 500 years ago saying, "What science cannot figure out is how lightning is formed, so it must be the work of a higher being"? The fact that science hasn't provided an answer for something is not evidence that it was produced by some magical thing that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.
King Saul consulted the witch who produce the dead prophet for Saul. The dead prophet, who was spirit at this time, talked of things that happened during his life. If our big disk was located in the brain, and his brain was dust by now, he would not have remembered anything. Therefore the big disk is located in the spirit.
So you believe in witches too? Do you personally know any?
posted on 12.28.2004 12:28 PM7
The evidence we have are PET scans that show a memory mapping function just as you would see in a similar view of a RAM. Yes I believe in witches. I met one at a party who said Christians murdered 6 million witches in the Salem witch trials. When I pointed out that there were not 6 million people living on the east coast, see got flustered, said "there were to" and walked off in a huff.
If you think there are no witches, go to your library and look up the occult.
If evolution is correct then we are just higher order animals. Yet we see no animals with any of the superior gifts we humans posses. If evolution were correct we would see creators such as the "Ape" on George of the Jungle. They would be able to speak, read, do math and write music. Yet there is a vast distinction between humans and animals. To miss it you must purpousefully ignor it.