Blogging the APA Central: Day 3

I was late getting into Chicago due to a crazy snowstorm, so I only managed to catch the last bit of a morning session on experimental philosophy and naturalism, mostly filled with a talk that was at great pains to establish the following two uncontroversial claims: (i) occasionally, philosophical naturalists speak loosely, which might lead one to believe that they thought that ID and its ilk ('God Hypotheses') were actually scientific, and (ii) if one actually does think that such God Hypotheses are scientific, then one is being self-contradictory in espousing philosophical naturalism. In point of fact, I agree with both. Of course, there hasn't yet been presented a God Hypothesis that actually is scientific, so as of yet the argument is moot.


Over lunch there was a meeting of the North American Nietzsche Society, which featured arguments for (Richard Schacht) and against (Maudemarie Clark) the claim that Nietzsche was a Lamarckian. [Note: for any historians or philosophers of biology, they don't really mean Lamarckian -- they only mean belief in the inheritance of acquired characters. Nietzsche would have been nothing less than an actual Lamarckian, as the inherent notion of progress built into Lamarck's notion of evolution would have driven Nietzsche batty.] A good exchange, one that I regard as rather inconclusive. Perhaps yet another point where Nietzsche couldn't quite make up his own mind.

The highlight of the day was the debate between Plantinga and Dennett on the relationship between science and religion. Plantinga's argument is, of course, bad, but it was presented particularly poorly (and rebutted fairly poorly as a consequence) on this occasion.

Plantinga's main points, with my editorial commentary:

1. The claims that the earth is ancient and that descent with modification are the mechanisms of the evolution of life are compatible with theistic belief. [I agree.]
2. The claim that the mutations which underly evolution are completely unplanned and unguided is incompatible with, at least, Christian theistic belief. [I'm not sure if I agree or not. I probably don't. But I don't have a horse in that race, so I'm not very concerned with this claim. At least in part, Plantinga's argument here seems to rely on the claim that a mutation-directing God is not part of an organism's environment, which seems absolutely preposterous.]
3. Further, evolutionary theory doesn't require such completely random mutations. [Indeed, in some sense. See Dennett's reply below.]
   
4. The claim that evolution undermines the argument from design, and thus the only really tenable reason for believing in God, is false, due to the work of people like Michael Behe. [Oh jeez. Yeah, he really did refer to Michael Behe. Dennett will tear this to shreds in a little while.]
5. The claim that evolution is a particularly bad case of the problem of evil isn't valid, because it's no worse an example of the problem of evil than anything else. [This is probably true.]
6. The claim that positing a theistic designer is unnecessary, in the Ockhamist sense, is false. [Plantinga's defense of this seems to hinge on the claim that there's no "further Ockamistic cost" for someone who already believes in God to posit a designer. That's true, but that's also completely evasive of the point.]
7. Even if evolution were contrary to theistic belief, theistic belief wouldn't automatically become irrational or unwarranted. [If by this he means it wouldn't become any more irrational or unwarranted than it already is, then I agree with that. Its warrant seems to have little to do with empirical fact.]
8. Conclusion of this first part of the talk: the supposed conflict between theistic religion and evolution is, in fact, a chimera.

So much for Part I. Now for Part II.

1. The probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable (i.e., that the content of most of our well-formed beliefs is true), given that naturalism and evolution are both true, is quite low. [This seems to me to be a really problematic claim, for lots of reasons. First of all, Plantinga said nothing in his talk about what the content of a belief is, how that content can be true or false, and so forth. I'll come back to this claim with the help of Dennett, below.]
2. If you accept that the probability is low, you have a defeater for every belief. [I don't see how this is true whatsoever. I accept that the probability of my own existence is low. I was born premature, and required quite a bit of medical intervention to reach adulthood. In this sense, the probability that I have reliable cognitive faculties is pretty small. I don't thereby have a defeater for my beliefs. Plantinga seems to think this follows straightforwardly.]
3. This defeater can't be defeated. [Because, I take it, any such defeat would be an argument, which would rely on other premises, which would be defeasible by the defeater already proposed. In other words, if you accept the position I'm trying to attack, you automatically become ineligible to do any philosophy in your own defense. Honestly...]
4. If you have a defeater for R, you have a defeater for every belief you have, including naturalism and evolution. [Fine, probably true.]
5. Therefore, the conjunction of naturalism and evolution is self-defeating and can't be accepted.
6. Plantinga backs up the first claim with some really hasty philosophy of mind, all reliant on the premise that adaptiveness -- in the sense in which our cognitive faculties would have had to be adaptive in order for them to evolve in our ancestors -- doesn't entail truth. [As far as I'm concerned, this claim is transparently false. If it isn't, Plantinga's going to have to give me a very careful account of beliefs, belief content, truth ascription, natural selection, and adaptiveness that makes the point. For my money, here's a good counterargument: (1) on most accounts, the content of our beliefs is fixed by repeatable, causal, physically law-based processes; (2) these processes create correlations between our mental states and the contents of the environment; (3) insofar as these correlations are established by these processes, they reflect the contents of the environment accurately. Now if Plantinga means something else by truth than accurate correlation with environmental stimuli, he'd better tell me what it is.]

Now, Dennett moves in. Three of Plantinga's premises, he says, are accurate, but not in the way Plantinga needs them to be for his argument.

1. Evolution is compatible with theistic belief. This is true, Dennett argues. Theism is one of a class of reasonably silly beliefs that are nevertheless compatible with evolution. Thus, as supporters of evolution, we have no contradiction upon which to base a rejection of theism. (After all, Dennett argues, finding actual evidence of intelligent design is really, really hard -- compare the "design" of a greyhound with the "design" of a cheetah -- and it's equally really hard to conceptualize natural selection.) On the other hand, with respect to evolution, we can see that theistic design hypotheses are entirely gratuitous. Thus, we have no real reason to accept them.
2. Evolutionary theory doesn't imply that mutations are random, in the sense of being uncaused. This point of Plantinga's is just flatly correct, despite what some very good evolutionary biologists (like Monod) thought.
3. Evolutionary theory, by itself, doesn't deny divine design.
   
   • This is true, but only in a very qualified way. Consider two different explanations of a scenario, where one describes a very plausible naturalistic hypothesis, and one ascribes a very simple divine hypothesis. There's just no reason to accept the design explanation.
4. Naturalism and Plantinga:
   
   • First, if we deny naturalism, Plantinga's doing an injustice (!) to Behe, by placing him among theologians or philosophers, and not scientists.
   • Further, Behe's work is a crock. Here's a selection of quotes from Dennett:
     
     • Behe's work is "neither serious nor quantitative"
     • It is a "transparent concoction of bad science and bad rhetoric"
     • It is "hugely disingenuous propaganda"
   • And Dennett already refuted Behe once, with the help of Haig (from Harvard) at a Notre Dame conference. He's not going to do it again.
   • No matter how hard the Discovery Institute looks for intelligent design, they aren't going to find any skyhooks.
5. Naturalism and evolution
   
   • The claim that the probability of reliable cognition given naturalism and evolution is low is simply false.
     
     • First of all, we can measure the reliability of sense organs and correct when they become unreliable. (Wear glasses much?)
     • Our brains are syntactic, not semantic engines. We clearly track truth syntactically, and such truth-tracking is adaptive. What more do you want? [Parallels my objection above.]
     • After a question by Michael Tooley, challenging Plantinga on this premise: all of the most plausible accounts of brain states have them causally correlated to the environment. Where's the problem here if there's laws of nature doing causal work for us?
6. Finally, after Murray Gell-Mann told Dennett that the Christian fish was an acronym, he pressed Dennett to come up with an acronym for his Darwin-fish pin. Dennett came up with: "Delere Auctorem Rerum Ut Universum Infinitum Noscas": Destroy the author of things in order to understand the infinite universe.

Plantinga replied and a short Q&A session followed, in which nothing really substantive took place. Among the humor was Plantinga's claim that Behe hasn't been refuted (?!!?).

And thus ended the APA. A good time was had by all.