So, thanks to Ross Douthat I listened to the audio of the Plantinga-Dennett debate. Comments:
First, the discussion of Plantinga’s claim that evolution is a problem for naturalism was a mess. Dennett’s objections weren’t clear, but then neither was Plantinga’s original argument. The two key claims were:
(1) If human beings came about purely through evolution, the chances that our minds would be very good at all at knowing what the world is like would be low or “inscrutable.” As far as I know, “inscrutable” doesn’t have a special philosophical meaning, just the dictionary meaning of “not readily investigated, interpreted, or understood.”
(2) No view which suggests that the chances of our minds being good at getting the truth are low or inscrutable can be rational.
On the “low” half of the argument, Plantinga has some ideas about how maybe false beliefs could work out to be adaptive, somehow, but none of it amounts to a real argument that the odds actually are against us. On the “inscrutable” side, well, I was born in a hospital with five letters in its name, and the question “what are the odds I can trust my own mind, given that” seems pretty inscrutable, but obviously that’s not a problem for me.
Plantinga’s other main claim is that theism is compatible with science. Dennett’s response: so what? So’s belief in Superman. I can understand being a bit confused by the exchange, but it all makes sense if you assume Dennett understood Plantinga to be suggesting that anything which is compatible with science, and similar well-established claims, can be rationally believed, and Dennett was giving Supermanism as a counter-example to this claim. But the guy who wrote up the talk is convinced that Dennett just used the example because he is a nasty, insulty person.
Now, I would kinda understand this coming from a non-philosopher. But anyone involved enough with philosophy to go to an academic conference should understand that giving examples is what philosophers do. And the idea is to give the clearest example for your position you possibly can, even if at times it means getting a bit silly. What Dennett did in this debate is perfectly normal.
In fact, in Plantinga’s book Warranted Christian Belief, he discusses a very similar objection to the Supermanism objection, the “Great Pumpkin Objection.” This suggests Plantinga understands the place of such objections in philosophy. Against Dennett, Plantinga’s comments on the Great Pumpkin Objection make me think Dennett misunderstood Plantinga’s point, but a misunderstanding still isn’t a mean ‘n’ nasty insult.
In Dennett’s place, this is what I would have said: there’s a distinction between a theory being consistent with scientific observation, and being consistent with scientific observation when you add a few reasonable assumptions. Kick out the few reasonable assumptions, and anything goes. The only way we know mutation is random, in the sense Plantinga describes it, is because we make the reasonable assumption that if it were otherwise, we would have seen the pattern by now. It’s just as reasonable to assume we would have detected any supernatural monkeying around with mutations by now.
Furthermore, I would have pointed out that when Plantinga addresses the Great Pumpkin Objection, he asks what kind of standards we should hold our beliefs to, and suggests we should get our standards by piling up examples and making generalizations. Then I would have given a long list of examples of beliefs a whole lot like belief in God, which don’t seem like things we could rationally believe without evidence, just because science hasn’t disproven them.
Lesser issues: First, Behe. Yeah, Plantinga’s reference to Behe was relatively unimportant in the grand scheme, but philosophers need to police eachother’s use of supposed scientific authorities to make sure the science is gotten right. Plantinga and some of his followers tend to treat this in a pretty lax way.
The rationality of Christianity: I had technical difficulties when I tried to listen to this part, but apparently Dennett said that the fact that people actually believe Christianity but not Supermanism isn’t important, because people take religion on faith, not reason. The anonymous writer who described the encounter complained how insulting this was. But again, evaluating beliefs and offering counter-points are what philosophers do.
I’m beginning to think it was a good idea that the anony kept anony, because frankly I would avoid doing anything to help out this guy’s career. Not because he’s a Christian or likes Plantinga, but because he whines about philosophers doing their jobs, suggesting he really doesn’t know how to be a philosopher. Caveat: I’ve been to a couple of philosophy conferences, and they tend to be very polite affairs. Philosophers suddenly lose the ability to say things about each other that they would have no problem saying in print. Seeing philosophers giving frank criticism of each other, to each other’s faces, could have been a bit jarring if you’re used to seeing serious criticism reserved for print.
That said, as John Schwenkler of The American Scene points out, the whole “Christians are persecuted in academia” thing is pretty overblown. Makes you wonder more about the author.
If human beings came about purely through evolution, the chances that our minds would be very good at all at knowing what the world is like would be low or “inscrutable.” As far as I know, “inscrutable” doesn’t have a special philosophical meaning, just the dictionary meaning of “not readily investigated, interpreted, or understood.”
In this context inscrutable means unknowable.
The problem with Plantinga’s argument is that the reliability of our cognitive faculties, however they formed, is, in a great many matters, quite testable. We can and do use our cognitive faculties to make all manner of predictions and then we can make observations to see how well our predictions worked out.
Sure, the reliability of our cognitive faculties is harder, perhaps impossible, to know on matters like metaphysics and religion where no empirically observable difference is forthcoming in support of a belief—but that’s hardly a problem for naturalists since most of us naturalists put little stock in the reliability of religious and metaphysical claims anyway.
What it comes down to is that we ought to place less confidence in matters where we are forming beliefs that aren’t empirically testable—but, again, that’s what we skeptics are prone to do anyway.
“The problem with Plantinga’s argument is that the reliability of our cognitive faculties, however they formed, is, in a great many matters, quite testable.”
This response to Plantinga both misunderstands his argument and begs the question. Plantinga isn’t arguing that our cognitive faculties are unreliable, but that, given naturalism and evolution, the conditional probability that they’re reliable is low (or inscrutable), and that we therefore cannot accept the conjunction of naturalism and evolution. And you couldn’t argue that we can test our cognitive faculties ‘however they are formed’ (though Plantinga’s argument concerns much more than how they’re formed), since any such test presupposes their reliability (e.g. in devising, carrying out, and analyzing the data from the tests, etc.)
Eric’s actually right about this. I stand by my own criticisms, though.
If Plantinga’s arguing that we cannot trust our brains on naturalism and evolution (“This is your brain. This is your brain on naturalism. Any questions?”), does he also argue that we can trust our brains on theism? What do people make of Barefoot Bum’s assertion that Plantinga’s theistic account doesn’t explain mistakes in our reasoning? (I may have posted that link before, forgive me if so).
Plantinga’s first key claim seems pretty suspect to me. I’ve not read his books, so perhaps his argument is better than online presentations of it, but his examples seem contrived, in that they are selected to produce fit behaviour in one situation but ignore the way that a true belief would benefit a person in other situations. Certainly if Paul wants to be eaten but is choosy about what eats him, he’ll run away from the tiger, but presumably if the tiger catches him anyway, he will willingly surrender rather than, say, hitting it on the head with a rock. A person who does not want to be eaten does better in that situation. I suppose we could add further wrong beliefs to Paul to explain why he attacks the tiger with a rock even though he wants to be eaten, but is it still meaningful to say that he wants to be eaten if he avoids it in every circumstance?
Paul: in Warranted Christian Belief Plantinga actually acknowledges something like your first criticisms, and doesn’t try to claim that our cognitive faculties would be reliable given theism, but rather that they would be complete given a more developed theology that a lot of Christians hold. The obvious reply, which Plantinga doesn’t discuss, is why can’t naturalists do something similar?
Also, I agree that an important oversight in Plantinga’s argument is that he doesn’t think in terms of degrees of reliability, though this doesn’t effect the argument in a precise way, because the relevant step isn’t so clear to begin with–in part for reasons you discuss in your second paragraph.
Came here through the Philosophers’ Carnival; I have my own write-up of the Plantinga-Dennet exchange, which I attended, here:
http://iopha.livejournal.com/230926.html#cutid1
On the “reliability” issue, I found Dennet’s central claim to be that many cognitive processes are “syntactic” and that it is difficult to cash out a claim that such basic processes (as e.g. identifying one’s body are opposed to the external environment) are no more reliable than *chance*, which is what Plantinga explicitly claims in his hand-out.
I expand on this in my review to present a dilemma to Plantinga: if simple “syntactic” beliefs are guides to action, then the truth-value of these beliefs must be irrelevant to their adaptive success. This seems incredible: inability to generate reliable ‘syntactic’ beliefs would surely lead to an organism’s quick demise. The alternative is to deny that these beliefs have anything to do with our actions, which makes it utterly mysterious how any organism accomplishes to most basic tasks.
(Or, alternatively, to deny there are such things as Dennet’s ‘syntactic’ beliefs, which also makes it utterly mysterious how every organism on the planet is competent at avoiding solid objects.)
“Furthermore, I would have pointed out that when Plantinga addresses the Great Pumpkin Objection, he asks what kind of standards we should hold our beliefs to, and suggests we should get our standards by piling up examples and making generalizations. Then I would have given a long list of examples of beliefs a whole lot like belief in God, which don’t seem like things we could rationally believe without evidence, just because science hasn’t disproven them.”
without knowing the specifics of plantingas claims here and without having listened to the debate, i would like to respond to your comment about it.
it sounds as if plantinga is describing chisholms problem of the criterion. namely, that we cannot simply start with standards/criteria to evaluate beliefs because such criteria would be arbitrary (or rely on an infinite regress of criteria), and thus subject to a boot-strapping problem (for an interesting example of this, see george bealers “the incoherence of empiricism”). therefore, it makes more sense to start with beliefs we already have–basic beliefs–and then construct standards/criteria.
you seem to be claiming that such basic beliefs can be mistaken (and are therefore unreliable). chisholm (and i suspect plantinga as well) would agree that such beliefs are indeed defeasible. but this isnt a problem unless you agree with the skeptic that absolute certainty is a requirement for knowledge (and hence knowledge is impossible). unless ALL our basic beliefs were faulty, there would be no reason why we couldnt generalize from them and weed out faulty or inconsistent ones in the process. if chisholm is right, then it seems there can be no other place to start formulating standards than with basic, particular beliefs.
from there, i believe plantinga is arguing that belief in god is properly basic.