The philosopher Thomas Nagel, in his most recent book, writes the following:
Mechanisms of belief formation that have selective advantage in the everyday struggle for existence do not warrant our confidence in the construction of theoretical accounts of the world as a whole.
Put more directly, Nagel (following the Reformed Calvinist philosopher Alvin Plantinga) asserts that if you’re an atheist who believes in evolution, you have no good reason to think your brain, having evolved from ape-like ancestors, could ever really reach such a lofty and accurate theoretical conclusion as evolution itself (at least not with any confidence). Natural selection has shaped your brain to purposes of survival, not correct beliefs. If these two things sometimes intersect, it has as much to do with luck as with design.
Is this “don’t trust the conclusions of your natural selection produced ape brain” argument a good one against belief in evolution and science?
Philosopher Eric Schliesser thinks not, and provides a pretty good common sense argument against it:
A large [p]art of this [the scientific enterprise's] achievement is the actual unlearning – or generating the capacity for temporary disabling — lots of our avarage [sic] Darwinian programming.
In other words, college and science laboriously train people in habits of critical thinking and scientific method, practices that go against the grain of our “Darwinian programming.” Therefore, the scientific consensus around an issue like evolution can reasonably be trusted. One needn’t be driven to radical epistemic skepticism because you’re an atheist.
I side with Schliesser here. I like Nagel in general, but his siding with Plantinga on this is pretty lame. Back in 2009, biologist PZ Myers skewered the argument Plantinga (and now Nagel) makes this way:
Brains are not reliable; they’ve been shaped by forces which, as has been clearly said, do not value Truth with a capital T. Scientists are all skeptics who do not trust their perceptions at all; we design experiments to challenge our assumptions, we measure everything multiple times in multiple ways, we get input from many people, we put our ideas out in public for criticism, we repeat experiments and observations over and over. We demand repeated and repeatable confirmation before we accept a conclusion, because our minds are not reliable. We cannot just sit in our office at Notre Dame with a bible and conjure truth out of divine effluent. We need to supplement brains with evidence, which is the piece Plantinga is missing.
As PZ explains: It’s not the thinking but the testing that reveals truth in the natural world. Unfortunately for PZ, atheism as also been heavily tested (by real-world evolution) to be non-viable.
Scientists don’t mess with their financers. Even a big shot like Jerome Kagan admitted that he chose not to publish findings suggesting a high heritability of personality back in the 1970s for political reasons. Or Stephen Jay Gould denied the heritability of intelligence right up until the 1980s when it became completely impossible, at which point he concluded that the issue was irrelevant. They are only good at doing their stuff when the results are completely without social and probably also existential significance.
“Unfortunately for PZ, atheism as also been heavily tested (by real-world evolution) to be non-viable.”
Citation needed.
You can start here: http://www.blume-religionswissenschaft.de/english/wrrr.html
Additionally, we can make this a test for the readers: Find a human community, any where in the world in the last 30,000 years that is without religion.
You might start by googling ‘Upper Paleolithic Revolution’.
Points to look for: A) ‘Modern Humans’ can be identified, in part, because they ‘have religion’. B) All archaic humans (non-modern, ie: those without religion) went extinct at this time.
Decoder ring: Extinct is not ‘viable’.
Also try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOsOb0QRaQs
Or:
http://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/is-religion-adaptive-is-it-worthy-of-a-contemporary-societys-energy-and-resources/
Hopefully, you can be entertained, but he only makes one point that I wish to highlight: Complex societies (state societies that can build/maintain a city or state) have only ever formed in conjunction with priests and organized religion. There have never been cities without priests. Well, none found at least, and non survived into history.
Yuk. Gato – sorry about the tone of my post. I’ll claim fatigue when I wrote it, and this site does not support editing or I would try and fix it.
Thank you for a well thought piece.
I think I am with Nagel and Plantinga. Eric Schliesser’s “common sense argument” namely ” A large [p]art of this [the scientific enterprise's] achievement is the actual unlearning – or generating the capacity for temporary disabling — lots of our avarage [sic] Darwinian programming.” misses what Plantinga is getting at.
Nagel and Plantinga could simply reply that Schliesser assumes that we can trust our minds to do science and to unlearn lots of our avarage Darwinain programming. It is that assumption that Nagel and Plantinga finds no justification on purely materialistic worldview.
Let me know your thoughts.
Your blog follower and reader,
Prayson
Prayson,
You make a fair point. The substance of Plantinga and Nagel’s point is an epistemic one: you can’t bootstrap yourself to confidence in your intellectual moves because the foundation is in ape ancestry, not a divine mind.
But the reason I side with Myers on this is that, in this instance, common sense should win (in my view): there is enough evidence that science works to give us confidence that its discoveries are sound.
Also, a divine mind in the universe doesn’t guarantee your powers of reason (in the image of God) because the divine mind could be deliberately blinding or tricking you (or allowing the devil to do so).
The best we can do to get at the truths of the universe, therefore, is to keep applying science, critical thinking, and evidence to the questions we bring to it. Nothing else seems to reliably get us anywhere.
Also, I’d appeal to convergent evolution. Whether God exists or not, evolution seems to converge on intelligence across species boundaries. Just because we came from apes doesn’t mean that there aren’t real intelligence peaks in evolutionary hyperspace that get us at the truth of matters that other species can’t also climb (such as dolphins).
–Santi
Thank you Santi. I treasure you response shows a beautiful mind at work.
Remember Nagel, as an atheist, does not accept divine mind. We should not let Plantinga secondary step be second and not primary. Nagel shares with Plantinga on the primary.
I find Myers’ appeal to common sense, if you presented correctly, also missing the force of Plantinga’s case, sense we are to assume that we can trust our mind to know common sense. It does not matter that there is enough evidence that science works to give us confidence that its discoveries are sound, because we assume that our mind can be trusted to know how science works.
Example Plantinga quoted the great Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid: “If a man’s honesty were called into question, it would be ridiculous to refer to the man’s own word, whether he be honest or not. The same absurdity there is in attempting to prove, by any kind of reasoning, probable or demonstrative, that our reason is not fallacious, since the very point in question is, whether reasoning may be trusted.”
If we call our mind into question, then appealing to common science on how science works is as Reid put it ridiculous because it assume that we can trust our mind, taking us to the point which Nagel and Plantinga are contending for.
Let me know your thoughts.
Your blog reader,
Prayson