Plantinga reviews Dawkins
by BilboAlvin Plantinga wrote a review of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, some time ago. But it was pulled off the internet for a while. I'm guessing that Christianity Today was promised it first. So here's the link:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html
It's fairly long, and I don't necessarily agree with all that Plantinga wrote. However, I think the following is pretty good, and most relevant to ID:
One more example of Dawkinsian thought. In The Blind Watchmaker, he considers the claim that since the self-replicating machinery of life is required for natural selection to work, God must have jumpstarted the whole evolutionary process by specially creating life in the first place"”by specially creating the original replicating machinery of DNA and protein that makes natural selection possible. Dawkins retorts as follows:
This is a transparently feeble argument, indeed it is obviously self-defeating. Organized complexity is the thing that we are having difficulty in explaining. Once we are allowed simply to postulate organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating machine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity"¦ . But of course any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself"¦ . To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.
In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett approvingly quotes this passage from Dawkins and declares it an "unrebuttable refutation, as devastating today as when Philo used it to trounce Cleanthes in Hume's Dialogues two centuries earlier." Now here in The God Delusion Dawkins approvingly quotes Dennett approvingly quoting Dawkins, and adds that Dennett (i.e., Dawkins) is entirely correct.
Here there is much to say, but I'll say only a bit of it. First, suppose we land on an alien planet orbiting a distant star and discover machine-like objects that look and work just like tractors; our leader says "there must be intelligent beings on this planet who built those tractors." A first-year philosophy student on our expedition objects: "Hey, hold on a minute! You have explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life that designed those tractors would have to be at least as complex as they are." No doubt we'd tell him that a little learning is a dangerous thing and advise him to take the next rocket ship home and enroll in another philosophy course or two. For of course it is perfectly sensible, in that context, to explain the existence of those tractors in terms of intelligent life, even though (as we can concede for the moment) that intelligent life would have to be at least as complex as the tractors. The point is we aren't trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity, and we aren't trying to explain organized complexity in general; we are only trying to explain one particular manifestation of it (those tractors). And (unless you are trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity) it is perfectly proper to explain one manifestation of organized complexity in terms of another. Similarly, in invoking God as the original creator of life, we aren't trying to explain organized complexity in general, but only a particular kind of it, i.e., terrestrial life. So even if (contrary to fact, as I see it) God himself displays organized complexity, we would be perfectly sensible in explaining the existence of terrestrial life in terms of divine activity.
A second point: Dawkins (and again Dennett echoes him) argues that "the main thing we want to explain" is "organized complexity." He goes on to say that "The one thing that makes evolution such a neat theory is that it explains how organized complexity can arise out of primeval simplicity," and he faults theism for being unable to explain organized complexity. Now mind would be an outstanding example of organized complexity, according to Dawkins, and of course (unlike with organized complexity) it is uncontroversial that God is a being who thinks and knows; so suppose we take Dawkins to be complaining that theism doesn't offer an explanation of mind. It is obvious that theists won't be able to give an ultimate explanation of mind, because, naturally enough, there isn't any explanation of the existence of God. Still, how is that a point against theism? Explanations come to an end; for theism they come to an end in God. Of course the same goes for any other view; on any view explanations come to an end. The materialist or physicalist, for example, doesn't have an explanation for the existence of elementary particles: they just are. So to claim that what we want or what we need is an ultimate explanation of mind is, once more, just to beg the question against theism; the theist neither wants nor needs an ultimate explanation of personhood, or thinking, or mind.
April 19th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Hmmm…must be a way to widen the margins on this quotation. Too bad I don't know what it is.
Comment by Bilbo — April 19, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
April 19th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
In one section of Plantiga's review he provides the following paragraph.
***This is a transparently feeble argument, indeed it is obviously self-defeating. Organized complexity is the thing that we are having difficulty in explaining. Once we are allowed simply to postulate organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating machine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity"¦ . But of course any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself"¦ . To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.
******
It appears this is from BWM and not the God Delusion as Dennett is quoting it in Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
I just found it interesting that if its BWM Dawkins cites "intelligently designing" in 1986. There could be many reasons for this: 1. he is reacting to a notion floating around for a while i.e "intelligently desiging". 2. The ID group and RD tapped into some sort of universal consciousness independently. 3. The ID crowd picked up on the term "intelligently designing" from RD 4. RD and ID crowd conspired 21 years ago to form battle lines using similar vocabularly so they could write best selling books.
Comment by late_model — April 19, 2007 @ 6:39 pm
April 19th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I thought the best quote from the whole thing was at the start.
"You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores"
Comment by thesciphishow — April 19, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
April 19th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
You know, sometimes there are good points to be made on both sides. It's a good exercise in humility to realize that your own case is not air tight, and to listen to your critics. Dawkins surely has some good things to say in some of his books.
This particular line of argument is not one of those. It is laughably ridiculous, and it is rather embarrassing to see him use it again and again.
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — April 19, 2007 @ 9:09 pm
April 19th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Hmmm. As Inigo Montoya famously said in the Princess Bride: "you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"
I disagree that "God is a being who thinks and knows". I do not view God as a separate entity with his/her own thoughts and understandings. Hence that view is hardly incontrovertible.
I would say that God is a label pointing at the One ground of being within which all apparent separate phenomena arise. And I would characterize reality / God as ultimately simple, not complex. The complexity is only at the level of appearance and manifests out of an essential simple, single reality.
Comment by mcromer — April 19, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
April 19th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
It seems that Plantinga does not touch on this, but Dawkins seems to insist that complexity of a God would have to arise by chance. But Dawkins seems not to see that we are talking about Design vs Chance. ID does not say that the complexity of the human being does not seem reducible to mere chance and therefore must not exist (by unlikeliness). Instead it says the unlikeliness itself is a barrier to understanding and we need more necessity. Dawkins' appeal that it all can be explained by cascade suffers from the same cognate of Ignorantium as Plantinga first proposes.
Now I already know that no materialist is going to find that a valid objection. But they probably don't also understand that if you make the inferred cascade complex enough and you might as well forget about humans understanding it any better than chimps, because both of us lack a brain as a bonified instrument for understanding origins. (And rarely if never has our survival depended on it, so we can't see any direct selection pressure for this feature in the brain.) As a result they refer to the unseen cascade as a way to get higher than random return. But they lack any proof that the humans will ever fully understand the cascade and offer the cascade itself as an article of faith.
Comment by Axeman — April 19, 2007 @ 11:07 pm
April 19th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
From Dawkins' own forum
Comment by MikeGene — April 19, 2007 @ 11:34 pm
April 19th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Here and here and here I've made essentially the same argument as Plantinga does.
Comment by stunney — April 19, 2007 @ 11:39 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Let me give this another go.
Do we tell biologists to give up biology in favor of physics because biological explanations are more complex than physics explanations? Or do we tell economists to give up economics because physics provides simpler 'explanations' of the price of oil?
Dawkins is assuming that science itself is completely reductionistic, but that itself is far from being established. It's certainly not clear that from a complete knowledge of physics, one could predict the emergence of higher level properties such as life or consciousness or culture. For one thing, there are serious doubts about whether determinism is true. For another, it's possible that higher level properties supervene on physical properties in virtue of laws that are not themselves laws of physics. And that's just for starters.
Harking on with this complaint that theism posits something of a higher order of complexity is like complaining that mathematicians posit sets to explain numbers. Most people find numbers much easier to understand than set theory!
Nor do we need to accept that God is more complex than the material world. In classical theism, God is an ontologically simple, not a composite being. God is immaterial substance, i.e. is not composed of spatial or temporal or metaphysical parts. Matter, by contrast, always seems to possess a complex essence, with a variety of measurable properties such as position, velocity, momentum, angular momentum, etc.
Simplicity is really a vague, not a well-defined, notion, and I suspect that when used to characterize explanations, it's inherently subjective. But when we use it to characterize, not explanations, but beings, then I think that rational consciousness is less obviously complex (in the sense of being composite or divisible into discrete parts or properties) than is material reality. It's certainly not obvious that mind is more ontologically complex than matter. I can show the parts of a dungheap. I can't show you the parts of your mind.
But even if mind or God is more ontologically complex than material reality, one would still have to show why a correct explanans of any given thing has to be less complex than the explanandum.
It seems to me that in science, we often explain something by positing something more complex than the thing being explained. For example, we see an apple fall from a tree. When along comes Einstein with his General Theory of Relativity, do we say: "YOU'RE WRONG, ALBERT. YOUR THEORY IS A LOT MORE COMPLEX AND HARDER TO UNDERSTAND THAN A FALLING APPLE, dammit!"???
No we don't, is the short answer to that, even though curved space is more complex than apples dropping to the ground.
Same with explaining WELCOME TO SCOTLAND signs by reference to conscious rational minds acting purposively rather than by reference to purposeless movements of material particles. What is the simplest explanation of such a sign: that it arose by chance; that it arose by necessity determined by some impersonal cosmic or natural law; or, that it arose by the purposeful rational agency of conscious mind(s).
In the realm of ultimate explanations we are faced with essentially those same three options. But why should (material) chance, or impersonal laws, be deemed any more simple than mind as an explanation in the ultimate case than in the WELCOME TO SCOTLAND case?
I suspect Dawkins shares Richard Carrier's idea that the mental is necessarily more complex than the non-mental, and that for any explanation to be valid it must ultimately accord with a principle something like this: "The basic building blocks of reality are non-mental".
But what if God is infinite, and is composed of non-mental parts, but an infinite number of such parts? It might then be the case that the reason we don't see God via science is not that God isn't made of Carrier's non-mental building blocks, but simply that God is too big.
Science posits fields of various kinds. Brian Greene's fine book, Fabric of the Cosmos talks about the 'inflaton field' (that's 'inflaton' with no 'i'), a fluctuation of which led to the Big Bang, etc. Others talk about the zero-point field. Others talk about infinite branes (hypothesized in, for example, the well-known Randall-Sundrum models).
Many versions of these natural fields and branes are a) infinite in some sense; and b) invisible. We might only know of them by inferences we make to account for the observable world.
That sounds pretty God-like to me.
So maybe a naturalist can posit God as an infinite natural entity along something like those lines. But the anti-theist argument from God's being (allegedly) more complex than the material world still fails.
Comment by stunney — April 20, 2007 @ 12:25 am
April 20th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Ouch !
Why is it that otherwise seemingly intelligent atheists seem to drop at least 40+ IQ points when they discuss religion ?
It seems to be almost universally the case.
Comment by thesciphishow — April 20, 2007 @ 12:58 am
April 20th, 2007 at 2:18 am
"Why is it that otherwise seemingly intelligent atheists seem to drop at least 40+ IQ points when they discuss religion ?"
Because they don't simply understand that if they are right religion is no more than a natural human activity–even characteristic activity, and if they are wrong—then they are astoundingly wrong. (Sound like Pascal's Wager? It's an isomorph, IMO.) Which is funny, because they've achieved this rigor mortis over the drive to be as factually right as possible.
They claim that undirected evolution has managed to bring us where we are today. It has navigated the labyrinth (admittedly biased wording) to provide us with amazing complexity. But unless they take over (conscious?) direction of our development the natural impulse to religion will accomplish something which their mechanistic worldview lacks the criticize in more than an equally hybrid way.
As I see it, being able to piece together your origin is not a necessity for survival. 99.9…% of the critters that have ever lived have done so without it. There is no reason that we would not have less shaping in this area –> i.e. variation until the brain becomes shaped for this.
You see saying that we have a capacity for "abstract thought" might be like saying mammals have a capacity for locomotion. Locomotion is simply the abstract characterization of all the pathways that a critter has been able to move itself. There is little reason not to suspect that "abstract thought" is really a group of ways that turn out right often enough.
The Watchmaker can say "I want these critters to move around. How do I provide 'locomotion'?" But an evolutionary critter just starts leveraging one part of its form against the other and receives an increase in survivability through motion. Those that can move better, survive better, up until we reach a place of mixed returns.
Dawkins' own (laughable) idea of "meme" actually suggests this picture better than I could. Thought critters (hereafter called "chimarae") replicate if the material for the thought contains this information or alters itself in the presence of the neural matrix of the "host". Chimarae that have not been formed are just not formed, we don't know how to make them if they are not there. Thus if instead we have the just think you understand your origin meme, then that's what we have. If the meme is successful enough in making us think we understand our origin (which another meme would inform us is extremely unlikely given the probability of the rest of the continuum of life) then we can't really tell it from the "really understand your origin" kind.
We never look at humans and say that we are more "true" than the dodos or diplodocus . Survival is adaptation not correspondence. The diplodocus is a perfect representation of that phenotype. (tautologous, yeah) But the theory of adaptation tells us that it did not survive because it failed to become something other than that perfect representation–or an imperfect representation, or a situational definition.
Now again, if they are right–that they are is shadowed in doubt as to how right a human brain can be. How much correspondence of a model in a reasonably bright mammal can have to its surroundings. If they are wrong, they have the whole matter about what is right, and have failed dramatically.
If I am wrong, I still can argue circles around a lot of them and can get some simple animal pride from that, standing in religious company, etc. If I'm right, then it is entirely consistent with this that I have a power of thought which surpasses those who fail to remain faithful to that belief, and can only find pathetic, crippled dodges in "memes".
How this relates to ID is that directionless, thoughtless, godless evolution is potentially a "science stopper" depending on the capacity of the directionless, purposeless lumps of protoplasm or "head filling". But naturalists here turn to "advantage" arguments. (Because they don't realize that they are doing it.) They argue that if we don't believe we can find the answer, we won't pursue it. And if we don't pursue it, we will never know for sure whether we can. Okay, but in a paraphrase of Sam Harris, "it maybe 'good', but what does that matter, if it's not true?" (Thus truth has a capacity of "mattering", i.e. contributing to survival. So essentially any mind pattern which is advantageous by contributing to survival "matters". Truth may have a capacity to "matter", but logic suggests that it does not necessarily have a monopoly. Thus, whether it is explicable to the human to succeeds by it (that might not "matter" as much) is not as important. Thus "truth" may be the only thing we consciously examine as "mattering", but absence of proof is not proof of absence, is it?)
Comment by Axeman — April 20, 2007 @ 2:18 am
April 20th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Stunny,
It's somewhat tautologous to say that com + plex (woven together) things are systems of parts (what else would be "together"). Dawkins is locking into the idea that only part-ness can provide what it tends to provide in our case. Literally, God is simple if he is more like a unit, and he is complex if he is parts.
But of course, that "partness" solely provides it is very much part of the reductionistic assumption. So all Dawkins can do, for all his might, is keep insisting on reductionistic and naturalistic precepts. I am fully agnostic on how the software of awareness relates to the hardware of everything I see around me.
Comment by Axeman — April 20, 2007 @ 2:40 am
April 20th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Historically, there has been a trend for religions to become simpler in the sense that they postulate fewer and fewer gods. Early on, nearly every natural phenomenon was assigned its own god. One by one these gods were sacked, until monotheism was born. Humans apparently prefer simple explanations over complex ones. Who can blame them for taking the final step and retire the one remaining God?
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 6:05 am
April 20th, 2007 at 8:24 am
There's a lot to comment on in Plantinga's review. I hope to have time later today or over the weekend to say more.
In the meantime, his bizarre take on fine-tuning and the anthropic principle jumped out at me:
It's as if Plantinga doesn't understand that the odds of someone winning the lottery can be one, even when the odds of any particular person winning are tiny.
Strange. I expected more from him.
Comment by keiths — April 20, 2007 @ 8:24 am
April 20th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Of course you did. Because if he would have provided what you would have expected then you would have been in agreement with him.
Comment by Doug — April 20, 2007 @ 8:28 am
April 20th, 2007 at 8:32 am
You can't retire God.
As Joy frequently says, citing , Nancy Cartwright, talking about the laws of God and talking about the laws of Nature amount to exactly the same thing.
In both cases you are referring to a transcendent, omnipotent, omnipresent organizing foundation of reality, which virtually everyone agrees exists.
So there are essentially no true athiests: the only argument is to the nature of the transcendent, omnipotent ground of existence: is it fundamentally blind, unconscious non-experiential, and meaningless as nominal atheists assert, or is it fundamentally purposive, experiential and conscious as non-atheists claim.
In this case I think the non-atheists have quite the better of the argument, because they claim that subjectivity is foundational to reality, while nominal atheists are forced to postulate that subjectivity is some kind of bizarre epiphenomenon that appears almost by magic in suitably complex physical systems. And they have never been able to propose any plausible mechanism for that, or even a plausible reason why a conscious being would be preferred by evolution over a robotic meat zombie.
The other reason that the non-atheists kick the stuffing out of the atheists in this debate is that the atheist account of existence (that the building blocks of reality are fundamentally non-experiential) is contradicted by the findings of quantum mechanics (where experiential examination of a quantum system brings it into an actualized reality through observation), and the obvious fact that all of our descriptions of reality refer to an observation of what is the case. We literally define the real by what we observe, and observation is subjectivity. So postulating a "real" universe with no experiential reality is simply a mental "optical illusion" — what would be the difference between a "real" universe with no consciousness associated and an imaginary universe? Remember all our definitions of "real" reference observation!
Basically the modern materialist / reductionist / atheist world-view is essentially a reaction to the dogmatism and hegemony of the Church over hundreds of years. And now it has created its own institutional dogmatism and hegemony in defense of a world-view that doesn't even correlate with the observations of psi research and quantum mechanics, nor can account for the most important aspect of reality, which is consciousness!
Comment by mcromer — April 20, 2007 @ 8:32 am
April 20th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I wrote:
Doug replied:
Doug,
I didn't expect Plantinga to agree with me, and I don't think you will either. What I did expect was for him to have a better grasp of the issues surrounding the fine-tuning argument. The passage I quoted shows that he is quite confused.
Comment by keiths — April 20, 2007 @ 9:00 am
April 20th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Are you saying that scientific materialism is a simpler explanation?
Where do you turn when scientific materialism fails to explain?
Comment by WedgeHead — April 20, 2007 @ 9:52 am
April 20th, 2007 at 10:06 am
kieths, i see less that Plantinga believes the whole deal about one of those universes etc…and uses it more to say that the logical is faulty, even if it sounds commonsensical.
Comment by dantedanti — April 20, 2007 @ 10:06 am
April 20th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Well, if you put it that way. However, I don't think it's reasonable to say that the "laws of nature" are omnipotent.
One can also put it this way (don't remember who came up with this first): everybody is an atheist, but some are more atheist than others. Monotheists deny the existence of all gods except one, so they closely approximate perfect atheists.
I don't see subjectivity as "some kind of bizarre epiphenomenon that appears almost by magic". There clearly is a more or less continuous progression of subjectivity (or mind or consciousness) along the evolutionary tree. Maybe in your opinion there is no plausible mechanism but others would disagree with you. And in what way is a conscious being different from a meat zombie?
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
My favorite bits of this review are this:
and this:
and this:
Saying that the world has no cause doesn't entail that it has no explanation. One could try to explain the existence of the world by saying that its existence is necessary. It exists, because it has to. That is actually an explanation. That's one route.
But notice that going this route undercuts the usual atheistic objection, "But who made God?" Because if your preferred alternative is that something ontologically ultimate needn't, indeed, can't (because it's ex hypothesi ontologically ultimate) have a cause or further explanation beyond itself, then you've conceded that this is not an appropriate question to ask about whatever is proposed as being ontologically ultimate, whether that be God or just the physical universe itself. They're both on the same footing in that regard—it makes no sense to ask what caused the ontologically ultimate reality.
But it doesn't follow that one type of thing cannot be more intrinsically intelligible than another type of thing, and I suggest that mind or rational consciousness is intrinsically more intelligible than mindless physical stuff. If reality is ultimately intelligible, then God is a better candidate for being the ontological ultimate than mindless physical stuff.
One reason for thinking this is that physicists, in trying to understand mindless physical stuff, notice that it obeys astonishingly elegant mathematical rules. It's not just random chaotic stuff. It is intelligibly ordered.
In fact, intelligible order appears to be irreducible even within physics. But intelligibility is logically inseparable from the concept of rational mind, because being intelligible just means being understandable by a rational mind. Rock bottom in the physical universe, we find this property of being understandable by a rational mind attaching to everything we find.
Personally, I think the most rational inference to make from this fact is much more suggestive of theism as the best explanatory hypothesis, than materialism. It might be different if materialism could explain the existence of rational minds. Some people have a blind faith that it can. I think they're making a fundamental logical mistake. It's not just a question of not having enough data, or needing to do more experiments, etc. They're making a category error. It's like trying to discover the color of ideas.
I still think the key argument is Kripke's. To wit, a sensation of heat is not essential to what heat is. But a sensation of pain is essential to what pain is. Take away a sensation of heat and there will still be heat. Take away the sensation of pain and you will have taken away pain.
The basic metaphysical point is this: one can in many contexts make a distinction between what something is–the real nature of a thing–and how it appears to us. But in the case of pain-states, or other states whose nature essentially involves consciousness, there just is no distinction to be drawn between the real nature of such states and how such states appear to us (or to other sentient creatures). In these cases, reality and appearance are one and the same thing.
To return to Kripke's example, if one leaves out of a list of pain's essential, constitutive properties (the properties that go to make something actually BE pain) the phenomenal property of how pain FEELS, then one would be leaving out the crucial, most essential property pain has. If some state S doesn't feel painful, S just isn't a state of pain.
Another example is color and color-sensations. Blue light = electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength. But a state S is not a blue-sensation state if it lacks the phenomenal property of appearing-blue, because the reality of a blue-sensation state and how a blue-sensation appears to phenomenal consciousness are one and the same thing. Take away the blue-appearing, and you've taken away the blue-sensation itself. Yet light of the relevant wavelength could easily remain, filling a given space around a person's brain. (But the person is blind, or sleeping, or wearing goggles that prevent blue-sensations being triggered by the ambient blue light.)
But whether you're a materialist or a theist, your rational inquiry into the nature of reality will come to the bottom of the ontological pile. And what do you come up against? Well, materialism says you come up against a physical something or other whose nature consists in necessitating the instantiation of the actual physics that obtains in the universe. But such a nature, if it is truly ontologically ultimate, is inherently unintelligible because such a thing (be it impersonal cosmic law, cosmic computer code, fundamental stock of mass-energy, whatever), is devoid of purpose, of value; and, because it's mindless, it's also devoid in itself of sense, meaning, consciousness and reason. It needs minds at least as sophisticated as ours to detect things like sense, meaning, and reason—and I simply don't remotely understand the concept of something possessing sense/meaning/reason if there is no mind to grasp that fact about it–which, on the materialist hypothesis, there wouldn't have been at the Big Bang or whenever. I just find that idea completely unintelligible.
Mind, by contrast, is intrinsically intelligible, and that's because mind is the locus inhabited by purpose, value, sense, meaning, consciousness and reason. Now we might not know exactly how the mind arises from the brain, etc. But even if we don't know that, we do understand our own minds in the sense that we understand our own mental contents. We understand thoughts and emotions, reasons and meanings, numbers and logic, moral principles and values, we understand what it's like to understand something, because we are directly acquainted with it every time we understand something.
Mind can also understand matter. But matter can't understand mind. Nor do abstract entities understand anything, but rather are themselves objects of the mind's understanding. Mind can design things, from a shovel to a spaceship to a software program.
It seems to me, then, that if you're looking for the nature of the ultimate ontological and explanatory reality, mind has a lot more going for it than the materialist alternative. And that's why most people believe in some kind of God, I suspect.
The only thing that logically accomodates intelligibility is understanding. And understanding is an inherent property of mind, not of material objects or of abstract entities. Atheism fails as an understanding of the world precisely because what it does is, in effect, to deny that there is anything ultimately understandable about it. It is saying, in effect, that there is no ultimate understanding to be had, no ultimate meaning or purpose or value inherent in the world's existence; and thus, that at bottom, reality is unintelligible.
Now reason itself rejects this. Reason by its very nature demands that the objects of reason, including reason itself, be intelligible, and rejects the ultimately unintelligible as being not truly real. In other words, it makes intelligibility, not merely sense-perceptibility, as a basic criterion of reality.
Nihilistic celebration of unintelligibility goes against the grain of our own rational nature, or against reason itself. One can still choose to go that route. But the only rationally intelligible route to choose, is the road that leads to mind as being ontologically basic and as being implicated even in the most basic structures of the material universe , because that, I contend, is the sole way to secure the ultimate and complete intelligibility of reality.
Let me quickly pre-empt one objection. It will be objected that human minds cannot understand God. But that does not threaten the intelligibility of reality, because on the theistic hypothesis, God understands God—and hence everything is understandable, even if it's not understandable by everyone.
Comment by stunney — April 20, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
He understands this perfectly well. What he is pointing out is that there might not have been a lottery. The winner was purposely fashioned.
Comment by Bradford — April 20, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Bradford wrote:
I think Plantinga is merely saying that invoking the anthropic principle—"we wouldn't be here if our universe wasn't consistent with us being here"—isn't an explanation of the fine-tuned appearance of our universe. To think otherwise would be like thinking that the fact that I live in California is explained by the fact that if I didn't live in California, then one wouldn't be asking for an explanation of why I live in California.
Plantinga uses a different example to make the same point:
Comment by stunney — April 20, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
stunney:
You're right. OTOH, if one witnesses a player being dealt four aces in consecutive hands one can conclude that he has witnessed an unlikely lottery. The other choice lies in some very intelligently planned and purposeful cheating. One need not know the mechanism by which the cheating was accomplished to infer that it was. Critics of the anthropic principle are never willing to give up the lottery paradigm in favor of the alternative and I believe Plantinga is very much aware of this.
Comment by Bradford — April 20, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Raevmo:
I don't blame them. I've lived long enough to know people will believe what they choose to believe, regardless of evidence or any problems with evidence.
What I don't understand is why you – as one who has taken what you see to be the "final step" despite the ~10,000 year history of monotheist tendencies – will not allow the same liberty to others.
If you know your scientific god-clone cannot be sufficient for others, why would you insist they embrace it? Why, exactly, is it so important to you that no one be allowed to believe differently than you scientifically or metaphysically?
I really am curious, since you are obviously being allowed to believe as you choose. Even if you don't have all the answers.
Comment by Joy — April 20, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
They are believed to apply everywhere and everywhen, in some sense they transcend space and time itself.
That assumes that "God" refers to an entity. If the question is whether I believe in a super-powerful entity who created the universe because he felt like it, I'm with you in the "atheist" camp.
But when I use the word "God" I do not refer to an entity. In fact, deep introspection will show you that you are not an entity either! There is no "self", other than as an idea. There are thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, but how does this add up to a real "self"
God is not a person, God is a word pointing at the underlying reality behind all apparent phenomena.
The important question is what is the nature of that phenomena. Is it aperceptual, or is it essentially consciousness, awareness, and aliveness.
If you believe the ground of being is dead, unaware, accidental and random, you probably label yourself as atheist.
If you believe the ground of being is awareness, aliveness, purposiveness you might call yourself a theist, or many other labels. But that is the essential divide — those who see reality as essentially aliveness, and those who see reality as accidental deadness that randomly just happens to appear alive for a brief moment.
OK, let's hear it then. Dennett "solves" the problem by denying that subjectivity exists. I haven't heard any other actual proposals, but I'm all ears.
A meat zombie isn't aware. It's simply a programmed set of responses and behaviors with no actual subjective states.
Comment by mcromer — April 20, 2007 @ 3:52 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Raevmo:
.
This is not accurate. Monotheistic Judaism preceeded Greek and Roman religions as well as the polytheistic religions of many other cultures.
And this does what- postulate the existence of matter for which either no cause is given or an infinite regress series of causes is supplied? How is the first rational and the second simple? The argument based on who created God is dumb. One can easily turn it around and ask who created matter/energy? You then are left with an unexplained first cause or an unidentifiable infinite regress series. Hardly simple options.
Comment by Bradford — April 20, 2007 @ 3:59 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Keiths:
Yes, this is one of the places in Plantinga's review that I disagreed with. I think Keiths analysis is correct.
Comment by Bilbo — April 20, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I came accross the following argument from probability theory, and I'm curious if anyone here can refute it.
Plantinga (a very common name in my neck of the woods btw) commits a logical fallacy by concluding that if a life-friendly universe (LF) is very improbable under the hypothesis of a completely naturalistic universe (NG for No God), then the hypothesis NG itself must be very improbable. In the language of probability theory:
if p(LF|NG) MS 1 then p(NG|LF) MS 1.
p(y|x) means the probability that y is true given that x is true, and MS means "much smaller than" (curiously, I can't post this using the usual pair of smaller-than symbols. A sign from God?)
To see that p(y|x) MS 1 does not imply p(x|y) MS 1, consider the following example:
y = I have a royal flush in my hands
x = I win this hand of poker
Clearly, p(y|x) MS 1 since poker hands are seldom won by a royal flush. On the other hand, p(x|y) is nearly 1, so p(x|y) MS 1 is clearly false.
In other words, just because life-friendly fundamental constants are very unlikely given that God had no hand in tuning them, it does not follow logically that it is very improbable that there is No God.
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 4:20 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
You really know how to make it sound awful to be an atheist. I'm with Dennett on this one. There is no true "subjectivity", it's an illusion. There is mind, but it's an emergent property of brain activity. I don't know how that works of course, but that's where my money is.
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 4:28 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Joy:
What makes you think I will not allow that? My religious girlfriend and me accept each other's unfounded beliefs quite peacefully. I know it's very unlikely that I will make anyone here change their mind about their deepest held beliefs. To me, it's just good fun to argue about it with intelligent people.
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 4:38 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I'm trying to get to the core of what atheist materialism is claiming.
I think my description is pretty lightweight compared to many atheists of the past century. Here's Jacques Monod, biologist and precursor to Richard Dawkins in many respects:
And here's some cheery Bertrand Russell:
Now if you have some kind of "happy shiny people" version of atheism you care to share, I'm all ears.
I disagree — actually there is nothing but subjectivity. Even the ideas about objectivity are subjectively experienced. And quantum mechanics shows us that nothing exists until it is observed — and observation does not require interaction, such as in the quantum zeno effect. Science itself requires observation — subjectivity — for us to even discover and test our models.
But if you have an explanation on how it's really all objectivity, I'd love to read it.
Comment by mcromer — April 20, 2007 @ 6:36 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Is that really what it shows us? Then the center of the earth does not exist. What a surprise.
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 6:53 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
To resolve the paradox, an Ulitmate Observer's observation at the end of time is the cause of the Earth's existence.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 20, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Sounds Tipler-esque. I love his book. Here's from his "Appendix for scientists": To comprehend it all… would require PhD's in… (1) global general relativity. (2) Theoretical particle physics. (3) Computer complexity theory. Know anyone like that?
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Raevmo:
Your beliefs are "unfounded?" That's a pretty deep statement. How do you now her beliefs are "unfounded?" Did she tell you that or did you just assume so?
I'm all for good fun. And I'm glad you know you aren't likely to change anybody's mind. Me, I keep hoping. It might well be futile, but you never know. Some people engage because they just don't know any better, because it's "cool" to pick on ID supporters. I sometimes hope I can help persuade them that we're human too.
Comment by Joy — April 20, 2007 @ 7:33 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
raevmo wrote:
No.
Comment by stunney — April 20, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Why don't you read more carefully? I said "each other's unfounded beliefs", implying that I included my own.
I'm not doing it to be "cool". I'm posting under a pseudonym which is unknown to others. I have no doubt you're human, but I wonder why you support ID. You strike me as the new-age type, not really belonging to a church of any kind. So who's the designer according to you?
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
That's a really bizarre statement. Goedel's theorem has nothing to say about specific mathematical models.
Comment by Raevmo — April 20, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Raevmo:
Nothing I laugh at and ridicule more than the "Hipper Than Thou" crowd. Who's your guru? Are your crystals pure? Total garbage, and despite the fact that I live in the "New Age Capitol of America" (until they come up with another one), I live on the Christian side of the mountain. On purpose.
Could be because I'm a hard-core fundy. Though if I were, I doubt there would be a standard rule in our homestead to look out for the danged Baptists at Ridgecrest, they never watch where they're going (God's their co-pilot). Or I'd join operations at The Cove, or sub Franklin's sideline (used to be his sole endeavor with a C-5A and a crazy pilot) up in Boone. Or attend Black Mountain Presbyterian every week, where theologians are a dime a dozen and you'd better watch what you say. Presbyterians don't "amen" anything without parsing it thoroughly first…
But mostly I live on my mountain because it's my mountain. Loves me as much as I love it, we deal with what comes and try to survive. I don't play the hipper or holier games. Never joined a church. Never got dunked or sprinkled. God doesn't mind (if He's there to care).
I support ID because it's entirely evident to me. I figure the scientific world will come around eventually, or die off. Doesn't much matter to what's real. I've no assigned face for a designer, because I don't think it has one – it has a great many. Including mine.
Comment by Joy — April 20, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Raevmo:
Joy:
Supporting ID because it is entirely evident to her. An answer consistent with a rational, evidence based approach to nature.
Comment by Bradford — April 20, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
April 20th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
You are assuming that the only consciousness that exists is human consciousness.
Anyway, we observe the earth's core using seismic waves and compasses, for that matter.
Comment by mcromer — April 20, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 12:09 am
raevmo wrote:
That's a really bizarre statement.
Comment by stunney — April 21, 2007 @ 12:09 am
April 21st, 2007 at 12:25 am
raevmo wrote:
mcromer replied:
Michael Dummett, Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, emeritus, wrote:
Thought and Reality, (Oxford University Press, 2006), p.102 [emphasis in original]
Comment by stunney — April 21, 2007 @ 12:25 am
April 21st, 2007 at 3:05 am
Not so. As far as evidence in anthropology and archaeology goes, in both Sumerian and Semitic religions, which are considered to be the oldest historical civilisations, monotheism preceded polytheism.
Comment by inunison — April 21, 2007 @ 3:05 am
April 21st, 2007 at 3:16 am
I see that nobody here has refuted the argument from probability theory against the fine-tuning argument. It's safe to assume then that the fine-tuning argument has been refuted once and for all.
Comment by Raevmo — April 21, 2007 @ 3:16 am
April 21st, 2007 at 7:53 am
That was a tautology, not a probability argument.
Comment by Bradford — April 21, 2007 @ 7:53 am
April 21st, 2007 at 9:18 am
Besides his misunderstandings of the fine-tuning argument and the anthropic principle, I found this in the first part of Plantinga's review:
That passage is rife with misunderstandings, so let's break it down:
1. Plantinga is attempting to defend the idea that God had a role in evolution by pointing out that it cannot be disproven. But science doesn't deal in proofs, and so certainty was never an issue. Dawkins was careful to title his chapter Why There Almost Certainly Is No God. The question is not about proof, but probability.
2. Plantinga doesn't even dispute the biological evidence Dawkins presents. He simply argues that the existence of biological explanations for evolution doesn't mean things happened that way; God still could have intervened, even if it wasn't necessary. What he doesn't explain is why we should invoke divinity if naturalistic explanations suffice.
3. He fails to mention the problems with falsifiability that arise when divine intervention is proposed (as in #2).
4. To Plantinga, claiming that evolution is unguided is akin to claiming that the dean has given him a $50,000 raise. They are epistemologically equivalent, because we don't have irrefutable objections to either of them.
He apparently misses the fact that precisely the same objection applies to the assertion that evolution is guided.
Neither claim becomes true simply because of a lack of irrefutable objections, but that doesn't mean they're false, either — it means that other information must be considered and probabilities must be weighed.
Comment by keiths — April 21, 2007 @ 9:18 am
April 21st, 2007 at 10:22 am
If you want to call a theorem a tautology, then fine. Probability theory is a branch of (applied) mathematics as you know, and mathematics is (mostly) about proving theorems.
Comment by Raevmo — April 21, 2007 @ 10:22 am
April 21st, 2007 at 10:59 am
I wasn't referring to probability theorems but rather to your silly conclusion.
Comment by Bradford — April 21, 2007 @ 10:59 am
April 21st, 2007 at 11:02 am
Then show me what's so silly about it.
Comment by Raevmo — April 21, 2007 @ 11:02 am
April 21st, 2007 at 11:09 am
There are no odds involved if the deck is stacked. Neither did the outcome result from a chance occurence.
Comment by Bradford — April 21, 2007 @ 11:09 am
April 21st, 2007 at 11:47 am
I think you're missing the point. Plantinga et al. argue: let's assume the deck is *not* stacked (NG). Then a life-friendly (LF) universe is very unlikely (p(LF|NG) MS 1), since most random fundamental parameters do not produce a universe compatible with life. But since we *do* live in a life-friendly universe, NG is probably false (p(NG|LF) MS 1) and therefore the deck probably *is* stacked. The poker example shows that this line of reasoning is fallacious.
Comment by Raevmo — April 21, 2007 @ 11:47 am
April 21st, 2007 at 2:26 pm
raevmo wrote:
No, it's not safe to assume that.
First, from nobody at TT having refuted a purported refutation of A, it does not follow that A has been refuted once and for all.
Second, the purported refutation you refer to as 'the argument from probability theory' doesn't exist, unless probability theory has shown that there actually are lots and lots of other universes. I do not believe that has been shown by probability theory, or anything else for that matter.
Comment by stunney — April 21, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 2:31 pm
All the poker example shows is that you can insert a theoretical random causal factor into a causal chain of events, specify the outcome you want and attribute it to chance. You can do that with a specified mutation also. What are the chances that this codon, out of the many tens of thousands possible, would yield a mutation? That's why it's a tautology. It proves nothing. The greater point that is missed is that probability is a means by which we distinguish between natural effects and those that are purposefully effected.
Comment by Bradford — April 21, 2007 @ 2:31 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 3:06 pm
stunney, do you or do you not agree that the following argument is unsound: given hypothesis H, outcome O is very improbable. We do in fact observe outcome O. Therefore, H is very implausible.
Comment by Raevmo — April 21, 2007 @ 3:06 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Bradford:
Sounds very deep, but I'm not sure I follow. Could you please elaborate a bit?
Comment by Raevmo — April 21, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 3:36 pm
The greater point that is missed is that probability is a means by which we distinguish between natural effects and those that are purposefully effected.
Sure Raevmo. I've seen a player dealt a straight flush. Does not happen often but it does occur. I've never witnessed a player dealt straight flushes on multiple consecutive deals. If I did I would not attribute it to chance and neither would anyone else.
I live near the ocean. At times I see wind or waves carve out swirls in sand that look similar to well known symbols e.g. 7 or r or c or – etc. If I see 7-r= 3 then something other than wind or water can be implicated.
Comment by Bradford — April 21, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 3:56 pm
raevmo wrote:
The word 'outcome' in your question is ambiguous. In its first occurrence, 'outcome' seems to mean 'outcome of H'. But in its second occurrence it seems to mean 'outcome of something other than H'.
Consider three cases of reasoning:
If I buy a fair lottery ticket, it's very unlikely I will win. I do observe that I won, therefore it's very unlikely that I in fact won by a fair lottery.
If I buy a lottery ticket, it's very unlikely I will win. I do observe that I won, therefore it was in fact not unlikely that I would win after all.
If I wake up and find a winning lottery ticket under my pillow, it's very unlikely that it will have got there by chance. I do wake up and find a winning lottery ticket under my pillow. Therefore it got there by chance after all.
Comment by stunney — April 21, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Keiths, you brought up the other passage from Plantinga's review that I had problems with. In The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins is attempting to show that there is a more parsimonious explanation for the organized complexity with see in living organisms than Paley's Designer. If he can show that, then using Ockam's (sp?) razor, we can accept the new explanation, which Dawkins argued is Darwinian evolution. It could still be that God is guiding evolution, but a scientist need not believe that. So Plantinga's objection misses Dawkins' point.
Overall, I'd say that Plantinga achieves mixed success. I think he clearly demolishes Dawkins' argument that God does not exist, because God is too improbable. And I think he demolishes Dawkins' argument that invoking a designer to explain organized complexity in living organisms is illegitimate, since we haven't explained the organized complexity of the designer.
But I think Dawkins' wins the Anthropic Principle argument and the parsimony of Darwinian evolution argument.
And then there is the final argument: That our cognitive faculties are unreliable, if unguided evolution is true. I haven't read The God Delusion. Plantinga implies that Dawkins sees this himself in the book. If so, then it undermines a Naturalist metaphysics, which Dawkins may not have seen.
Comment by Bilbo — April 21, 2007 @ 6:24 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Raevmo wants to know why the following isn't illogical:
if p(LF|NG) MS 1 then p(NG|LF) MS 1.
But this should really be a bi-conditional:
p(LF|NG) MS 1 if and only if p(NG|LF) MS 1.
Why accept the truth of the bi-conditional? Because if there is one and only one universe, and if LF requires extreme fine-tuning, the best explanation is that it was fine-tuned by God.
Comment by Bilbo — April 21, 2007 @ 6:53 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 10:54 pm
bilbo wrote:
How so?
The anthropic principle doesn't explain anything unless one also assumes the reality of billions of other universes.
And positing that all species arose by a single creative act of a transcendent mind is more parsimonious than the innumerable contingencies over billions of years posited by Darwinian evolution. Does that make it true?
Comment by stunney — April 21, 2007 @ 10:54 pm
April 21st, 2007 at 11:59 pm
stunney,
The problem is that Plantinga doesn't get it, even when he assumes for the sake of argument that there are many other universes:
Plantinga is obviously overlooking the fact that we label a particular universe alpha because it is ours, because we are in it. The fine-tuning lottery has already been won before the label 'alpha' is affixed.
Plantinga's argument amounts to this:
1. Run the lottery.
2. Take the winner and apply the label 'alpha' to him.
3. Notice the astronomically low odds of any particular person winning the lottery.
4. Ask, "How do you explain the fact that alpha won the lottery, when it is so improbable?"
A pretty embarrassing failure of logic for any professional philosopher, and even worse for one who presumes to label Dawkins' reasoning as 'jejune' and 'sophomoric'.
Bilbo is right. Dawkins clearly wins this skirmish.
Comment by keiths — April 21, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:50 am
I agree that Plantinga's framing of the problem allows his opponents unnecessary wiggle room. A better response would entail a challenge to the many universes concept; the ad hoc utility of which is plain to see.
Comment by Bradford — April 22, 2007 @ 12:50 am
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:35 am
Bradford,
It's not that Plantinga "allows his opponents unnecessary wiggle room"; it's that he himself, through logical error, fails to appreciate how the 'many universes" concept, if true, would affect the fine-tuning argument.
Regarding the "ad-hoc utility" of the many-universes idea: Lots of ID supporters seem to think that the many-universes idea was cooked up by ideologically motivated scientists who were trying to avoid the theistic implications of the fine-tuning argument. They think that these scientists are now casting about for scientific justification of an idea that they adopted for purely ideological reasons.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The many-universes idea falls out of the mathematics of 1) eternal inflation and 2) string theory, neither of which was adopted for anti-theistic reasons. In fact, most string theorists have resisted the many-universes implications of string theory, accepting them only because the math forces them to.
It is true that the many-universes idea solves the fine-tuning problem, but ridiculous to assert that it was invented for that reason.
Comment by keiths — April 22, 2007 @ 2:35 am
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:56 am
Bilbo writes:
Sadly, Plantinga gets this one wrong as well. He writes:
But why? How does the mere existence of a God guarantee the reliability of human cognitive faculties? An omnipotent God could presumably choose to make our reasoning reliable, if He wanted to, but He could also choose not to.
Yet Plantinga offers no evidence whatsoever that humans are created in God's image. Theism per se gives us no reason to believe this. And if we are created in God's image, why isn't our reasoning perfect, like God's?
Atheists certainly believe that human reason is not perfect, of course, but so do theists. If Plantinga concedes that "the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive", perhaps he can explain to us how it would continue to be adaptive if the beliefs it generated were consistently false.
Is Plantinga seriously suggesting that living "in a sort of dream world" is just as adaptive as having a mental life based on external reality?
Comment by keiths — April 22, 2007 @ 2:56 am
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:26 am
Keiths:
I realize this but will reiterate a point that was indicated to me by a PhD in mathematics and about which I posted a comment about three weeks ago. The fact that one can model a concept mathematically in no way indicates that the physical entities represented by the mathematical constructs do in fact exist. The multi-universe concept is more a philosophical response to the fine tuning issue than an empirical one.
Comment by Bradford — April 22, 2007 @ 8:26 am
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Plantinga is not making a logical error at all, in my opinion, as regards the fine-tuning argument and the anthropic principle. Here's why.
Plantinga is saying: Well, assume a lot of universes. Assume that some of them are fine-tuned. What caused ours to be fine-tuned?
One doesn't explain what caused ours to be fine-tuned by saying it's ours.
bilbo and others may be confused by the fact that the word 'alpha' is italicized in the text at a key sentence in the Christianity Today link. But it's actually italicized in each of its occurrences. When one grasps that the italics are not being used for emphasis, one can see that all Plantinga is saying is this:
Let's call our universe ALPHA. Given that we're living in it ALPHA has to be one of the fine-tuned universes, of course. But our living in ALPHA is not what caused the fine-tuning of ALPHA, since it was fine-tuned long before we got here. Something must have made it fine-tuned. And that something can't be us. Additionally, its merely being a member of a very large set of universes isn't the cause of it being among the fine-tuned subset. What is the causal explanation of it being fine-tuned?
It is true that if I live in America, there's a chance the state I live in is California. So it's not overly surprising if I live in California. But this fact does not explain why I live in California. One can still wonder what cause or causes led me to live in California. Citing the fact that if I lived in America, I would have to be living in one of the United States of America does not explain why I live in California. Nor is it explained by the fact that if I didn't live in California but instead in, say, New Mexico, then one couldn't sensibly ask, 'Why do you live in California?'
Plantinga again:
Comment by stunney — April 22, 2007 @ 1:11 pm
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:32 pm
It's an error to imagine that standard theism posits a God who could be either capricious or could intend humans to be deceived by their minds. (I say more about theism as an explanatory hypothesis in this respect in parts of this post.) Human minds, functioning properly (i.e. as they were designed to function) lead to truth, not to falsehood nor to belief-sets which have arbitrary ratios of true beliefs to untrue beliefs.
Plantinga himself has written extensively on this theme:
Warrant: The Current Debate;
Warrant and Proper Function;
and
Warranted Christian Belief.
As I have commented elsewhere, the theistic hypothesis predicts and explains in a principled way why we can expect science to be progressively successful.
What of naturalism on this score? Adaptiveness is a feature of many, indeed to some degree, all species of life. But a systematic capacity to form true scientific beliefs is not. So one cannot equate adaptiveness with such a capacity. Also, any number of belief-desire combinations are consistent with adaptive behavior: "There's a space alien. I want to know what space aliens taste like" is consistent with a great deal of the adaptive behavior observed in the animal kingdom.
Moreover, humans do not weigh whether to adopt a scientific belief on the basis of whether its adoption will enhance our chances of survival, but on whether it is likely to be true.
Now, assume naturalism, and think of how many species of life there may be in the universe. How likely is it that our cognitive equipment will turn out to be any more conducive to forming true beliefs about the world compared to the cognitive equipment of species in other planets and galaxies, than we take the cognitive equipment of, say, dogs to be, compared to ours? And, again assuming naturalism, how likely is it that merely the last four hundred years or so of human history (not even a blink of a cosmic eye) has seen us attain to a level of true understanding of the world that compares reasonably well with the average level attained by other civilized species in our galaxy or universe?
Comment by stunney — April 22, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Bradford wrote:
True, it's not a guarantee. If it were, nobody would bother doing experiments — we'd simply rely on theory. We certainly wouldn't be spending billions of dollars to build new high-energy particle accelerators.
But consider how seriously scientists take these mathematical models. Based on nothing more than the theoretical prediction of the existence of a new particle, scientists will run a multi-million dollar experiment to find that particular particle. And they often succeed.
Then consider the following:
1. Other quantum theories break down when they try to incorporate gravity.
2. String theory not only doesn't break down, it requires gravity. You cannot formulate a consistent string theory without it.
3. String theory requires the many-universes concept.
So there's only one quantum theory that not only incorporates, but demands, gravity; and that same theory breaks down if the many-universes concept is ruled out. No wonder scientists take the idea of many universes seriously — it's anything but ad hoc.
Comment by keiths — April 22, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Keiths:
So there's only one quantum theory that not only incorporates, but demands, gravity; and that same theory breaks down if the many-universes concept is ruled out. No wonder scientists take the idea of many universes seriously "” it's anything but ad hoc.
String theory itself is not ad hoc nor is the final verdict in on it. Far from it. What is ad hoc is the assumption of it to support what is essentially a philosophical point at this juncture. You are, of course, entitled to assume multiple universes (although direct detection seems an empirical non-starter) but your motives seem as religiously oriented as are the motives of those with whom you debate.
Comment by Bradford — April 22, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:16 am
As regards string theory necessitating a real multiverse, that's a highly contentious issue:
String theory landscape [emphases added]
Comment by stunney — April 23, 2007 @ 1:16 am
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:41 am
Bradford wrote:
If you have a quantum theory that includes (and indeed requires) gravity, and there are no other theories available that do the same, then of course you take the theory very seriously, and you try to develop it and probe for flaws in it. And if that one successful theory predicts a multiverse, you don't assume that the prediction is wrong; you take it seriously until you can come up with a completely new theory that can explain our one universe without invoking a multiverse.
What would be ad hoc would be to assume, as you do, that the multiverse prediction is invalid or unlikely, or not "real", simply because you are uncomfortable with its religious implications.
Comment by keiths — April 23, 2007 @ 2:41 am
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:42 am
stunney, quoting Wikipedia:
stunney,
This just proves my point, which is that scientists didn't invent the multiverse idea specifically to defeat the fine-tuning argument. Rather, string theory, which was adopted for its ability to explain gravity, demands the metastable vacua, which in turn point to the multiverse idea. The fact that the multiverse idea solves the fine-tuning problem is just a happy accident.
In the past, you've invoked Ockham's Razor against the multiverse idea, claiming that to introduce a single God to explain fine-tuning is more parsimonious than invoking a multiverse. That statement is questionable on its face, because it is not clear that one God is less complex than a multiverse. Set that aside, however, and recall that one paraphrase of Ockham's Razor is that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." Well, in string theory the metastable vacua are necessary, so they don't count against the multiverse idea in Ockham's ledger.
It's interesting that Gross's opposition to the anthropic landscape is not primarily scientific, but rather psychological. His fear is that physicists will too easily settle on an anthropic explanation for the constants of nature, and fail to discover a deeper explanation which actually fixes the constants.
Comment by keiths — April 23, 2007 @ 2:42 am
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:10 am
stunney quotes Plantinga:
If Plantinga is not confused over the fact that our universe gets named alpha only because it is already fine-tuned, then the only interpretation of his question that makes sense is this: Why did this particular universe end up fine-tuned instead of another? His preferred answer to the question is obvious: Because God chose to fine-tune this one and not the other.
But look at another scenario. Suppose I roll a pair of dice twice, getting a six on the first roll and an eight on the second. If I ask the question Why did I get a six on the first roll but not on the second?, is Plantinga going to respond Because God chose to give you a six on the first roll but not the second?
Does he expect us to believe that if God weren't there to futz with the dice, that we'd either always get the same answer, or no answer at all?
Comment by keiths — April 23, 2007 @ 3:10 am
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:33 am
stunney wrote:
How about backing that statement up instead of just referring us to Plantinga's books? For a start, how about explaining why these two things are mutually contradictory:
a) the existence of God; and
b) faulty human reasoning.
By the way, have you noticed that human reasoning is faulty, and that humans are "deceived by their minds", as you put it?
We're not equating adaptiveness with reason; we're simply saying that reason is adaptive for many species.
That's generally true. It's also generally true that humans don't decide to have sex because they're trying to produce children. Does that mean that lust is not an adaptation? Of course not. The vast majority of adaptations work, whether or not we are consciously aware of their underlying evolutionary rationale. Human curiosity and the search for truth fall into this category.
Comment by keiths — April 23, 2007 @ 3:33 am
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:43 am
What is ad hoc is the assumption of [string theory] to support what is essentially a philosophical point at this juncture.
Keiths:
Keiths, we are able to measure physical laws and the conditions within which life is possible. Score those argumentative points for what I have consistently argued about fine tuning and abiogenesis. We are unable to empirically document any universes but our own. Since Christ said nothing either way about numbers of universes the whole issue is unproblematic for me. However, you are the one who must believe in a materialist version of abiogenesis. Your views on religion afford you no other logical alternative.
Comment by Bradford — April 23, 2007 @ 6:43 am
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Sometimes it is claimed that scientists did not invent the multiverse to deal with the fine-tuning problem. But as I have already shown, that is not true:
In other words, it was precisely to deal with the fine-tuning for life of the cosmological constant that Weinberg proposed a multiverse 20 years ago.
Here are a few other bits and pieces it may be worth repeating, in case anyone missed them:
and:
And moving on…, in regard to this post, a person might ask: suppose I roll the dice twice, getting a six on the first roll and eight on the second; why did I get a six on the first roll but not on the second? The answer, of course, is that the physical conditions were different on each throw, and this difference is what caused the two outcomes to differ.
Now if there are two universes, one of which has life-friendly physical parameters and one of which doesn't, it is not an explanation of the life-friendliness of the first that it is one of a set of two universes. Let's say the life-friendly one is ours. One doesn't explain what caused our universe to be fine-tuned by saying it's ours. Now let's say our universe is not one of two universes, but one of two hundred billion universes. And let's call our universe ALPHA. Given that we're living in it, ALPHA has to be fine-tuned for life. But our living in ALPHA is not what caused the fine-tuning of ALPHA, since it was fine-tuned long before we got here. Something must have made it fine-tuned. And that something can't be us. Additionally, its merely being a member of a very large set of universes isn't the cause of it being among the fine-tuned subset. What is the CAUSAL explanation of it being fine-tuned?
That is a perfectly sensible question, which is not adequately answered by saying it's our universe, or by saying it's one of many universes.
Comment by stunney — April 23, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:23 pm
stunney wrote:
I'm afraid not, stunney. Linde, not Weinberg, came up with the multiverse idea in 1982, and he didn't apply it to the cosmological constant until 1984. Weinberg's paper wasn't until 1987, and he simply mentioned the multiverse as a possible explanation for the value of the cosmological constant. Only in 2005 did he feel comfortable enough with the multiverse idea to write:
Comment by keiths — April 23, 2007 @ 11:23 pm
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:38 pm
stunney wrote:
And in exactly the same way, differences in physical conditions (specifically the values of the inflaton field) account for the different tunings of the universes spawned through inflation.
Plantinga simply got this one wrong, stunney, even by your interpretation of what he was trying to say.
Comment by keiths — April 23, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
April 24th, 2007 at 12:50 am
Sometimes people talk about the inflaton field as accounting for the fine-tuned nature of this universe as if it had been established that there is such a thing as an inflaton field. No such thing has been established.
Sometimes people talk about Weinberg's use of the multiverse idea as if I ever asserted that Weinberg's use of it was original.
In other words, as I already mentioned, it was precisely to deal with the fine-tuning for life of the cosmological constant that Weinberg proposed a multiverse 20 years ago.
Sometimes people make a complete fool of themselves desperately trying with miserable ineptitude to convict Plantinga of logical error, and imagine that they can hide this fact by bluster and bravado. The vaunted superiority of materialism is shown to be utterly hollow when it has to fall back on: "Physical conditions were such as to cause a fine-tuned universe" as an explanation of the fine-tuned nature of our universe.
Comment by stunney — April 24, 2007 @ 12:50 am
April 24th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Brian Greene, Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (Knopf, New York, 2004), p. 286.
Comment by stunney — April 24, 2007 @ 1:19 am
April 24th, 2007 at 5:17 am
stunney, quoting Brian Greene:
…and in the case of theism, why there is a God rather than no God.
Comment by keiths — April 24, 2007 @ 5:17 am
April 24th, 2007 at 5:19 am
A poem by stunney:
stunney,
I laughed at first at your quirk of referring to me as obliquely as possible ("Sometimes it is claimed…", "Some people say…"), when it's obvious that you are responding directly, even point-by-point, to comments I have made. After a while I even started to give you credit for it, because it seemed to be a useful anger-management tool for you. Your famous outbursts declined notably after you adopted the practice. However, I think you might be slipping off the wagon with "complete fool", "miserable ineptitude", and "bluster and bravado."
What you forget is that Plantinga was granting the truth of the multiverse idea in order to make his argument. You support Plantinga's theism by denying the multiverse, a premise that Plantinga himself was willing to concede for the sake of argument. In so doing you show that you, like he, cannot defend his argument as it stands, with premises intact.
Comment by keiths — April 24, 2007 @ 5:19 am
April 24th, 2007 at 5:39 am
There are a couple of cheap shots in Plantinga's review which I haven't yet addressed:
Of course Dawkins hasn't chosen the Old Testament God as his "sworn enemy" any more than he's chosen Simon Legree, Hannibal Lecter, or any other fictional character (unlike Plantinga, who believes that natural disasters are caused by demons).
First, whether they are courageous is irrelevant to the truth of what they write. Second, they don't dwell at all on any personal danger to which their criticism of religion exposes them (nor does Sam Harris, for that matter). Third, Plantinga can't even find a quotation from Dawkins to support his cheap shot, so he gets one from Dennett, instead — when all along, Dennett points to his persistence in questioning religion as a sign not of his bravery, but of the importance he attaches to the questions themselves.
As for whether criticizing religion is "about as dangerous as endorsing the party's candidate at a Republican rally": that might be true if Dawkins and Dennett were cloistered in academia, as Plantinga is. But they (and Sam Harris) have written bestselling books which confront religion in a very public way. If Plantinga thinks that it's not dangerous to take on religion in the West, let's hear his explanation for what happened to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh.
Comment by keiths — April 24, 2007 @ 5:39 am
April 24th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Keiths:
I see there is a double standard here: when Plantinga uses sarcasm and ridicule it's a cheap shot but it's okay when Dawkins employs ridicule and vitriol. Ridicule cannot ever be answered by ridicule? Personally, I thought that that Plantinga was quite humorous and witty in the way he employed his sarcasm. Of course, I side with Plantinga, I thought his critique of Dawkins logic (if we should indeed call it that) was devastating.I'm wondering how he along with Dennet, Harris and others are helping the atheist cause. It seems to me to be an atheist you have to be least (1) intolerant (2) contemptuous and (3)arrogant. But maybe I'm misunderstanding something. Maybe you could explain to me, Keiths, what your side is really trying to accomplish? How do you plan to make the world a better place and how would that make my life better?
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — April 24, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
April 24th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
keiths:
??? keith, the 'multiverse' is still ad hoc, a violation of occam, and an entirely self-serving extrapolation from evidence. String theories (yes, there are more than a few) fell out of desperate fudging of the math to account for what is observed, arising from Supersymmetry and its several sub-theories.
Gravity cannot be renormalized away no matter how hard they try. This tends to falsify symmetric theories that claim gravity as "First Among Forces," which broke symmetry to become all that we see around us. They had to add some extra dimensions to account for the fact that gravity is still with us. The math that allows us to input "hidden variables" of extra dimensions can be extrapolated to an infinite number of possible variables that we could arbitrarily input. Voila! They must all exist, and represent real-but-unapproachable universes.
Lazy thinking, an a priori commitment to entirely naturalistic [materialist] causes, with the added effect of being able to postulate everything mathematically possible must be physically real. Faith in action.
All we really think we know about gravity is that it doesn't originate here in our space-time, yet causes organizational effects here in our space-time. Not only have astrophysicists not yet quantified the time factor in their RQFT scheme, they also have no empirical grasp on mass – that which organizes gravity's effects. They tell some interesting stories, but none of it's objectively 'real'. Thus it becomes easy for them to paint their fanciful extrapolations as being every bit as 'real' as the subatomic point-particles they've never seen either. And the public laps it up like they believe every word of it.
Dimensions are not universes. This surely seems simple enough to understand, given that we are pretty familiar with subtracted dimensions from our earliest learning. Added dimensions are no more 'real' than that stick figure you drew on a piece of paper in 2 dimensions when you were a child. Even with the added visual perspective of Leonardo, the painting is still just 2 dimensions (with added thickness of paint).
All the dimensions of the totality of reality could exist all around us and in us all the time, right here and now. They may not be 'other' universes, but merely 'broader' percepts we've not evolved enough yet physically to need access to.
That there is 'More' to reality than what we see and study and attempt to quantify seems entirely evident to us now that we've developed technologies to extend our senses. That doesn't mean the 'More' exists apart from us, here and now. It just means we don't perceive it directly.
Comment by Joy — April 24, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
April 25th, 2007 at 2:38 am
Joy wrote:
So you say. How about providing an argument for that strident position?
Joy, theories are supposed to account for what is observed. Altering theory to match observation is exactly what Newton, Einstein, the pioneers of quantum mechanics and thousands of other scientists have done. It is perfectly legitimate, as long as it isn't done in an ad hoc way (as Einstein did when he fudged the cosmological constant to match his presupposition of a static universe). Besides, if string theory were an ad hoc fudged mess, it certainly wouldn't have taken forty years to develop it to its current state.
Who's trying to "renormalize gravity away" The strength of string theory is that it predicts gravity, unlike quantum mechanics, which cannot accommodate it.
Who said they were?
Well, the stick figure itself was obviously real. Do you mean to say that it didn't represent anything real, or what?
Nobody is arguing that a painting has significant three-dimensional extent simply because its subject matter is three-dimensional. But by the same token, the fact that a third dimension can be projected onto a 2D plane doesn't make the third dimension unreal.
Comment by keiths — April 25, 2007 @ 2:38 am
April 25th, 2007 at 2:43 am
JOHN_A_DESIGNER wrote:
John,
I have no problem with sarcasm and ridicule when they're relevant — only when they distract from the issue at hand. For example, Dawkins' comments about the Old Testament God are an appropriate part of his criticisms of religion. His exasperated comment a few months ago about Nadia Eweida's "stupid face" is not. Nadia Eweida's appearance is irrelevant to the issue of whether she should be allowed to wear a cross outside her uniform, and Dawkins' comment was just a cheap shot. The courage of Dawkins and Dennett is irrelevant to the truth of their assertions about religion, so for Plantinga to try to make an issue of it is also a cheap shot.
Indeed, you are missing something. Intolerance, arrogance and contempt are not necessary. To be an atheist, you simply have to lack a belief in God.
"My side" is not a monolithic entity. All we share in common is our lack of theism. However, I can present some quotations that I think explain what Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris are individually trying to accomplish:
Dawkins, from the preface to The God Delusion:
Dennett, from Breaking the Spell, p. 28:
Sam Harris, from Letter to a Christian Nation, p. 87:
Comment by keiths — April 25, 2007 @ 2:43 am
April 25th, 2007 at 3:01 am
stunney,
We're still awaiting your explanation of how God's mere existence guarantees the reliability of human reason.
Comment by keiths — April 25, 2007 @ 3:01 am
April 25th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Regarding Plantinga's soft-pedaling of the dangers of criticizing religion in the West, check out this story:
Comment by keiths — April 25, 2007 @ 3:14 am
April 25th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Keiths wrote:
I honestly found what Dawkins said to be very vitriolic. Plantinga was justified here.
My point was that the rhetoric of Dawkins et al. takes away from any kind of persuasive argument that any of them try to make.
I realise that there are more moderate voices out there. Michael Ruse is one example.
From the Harris quote:
This is the kind of reasoning that I object to. It's nothing but religious intolerance. I particularly object to comparing religion to slavery. Most Christians I Know believe from their hearts what they believe is true. IOW they made an uncoerced volitional choice to accept God's love and forgiveness and to follow the teachings of Jesus. Indeed, any kind of coercion destroys genuine belief. That is hardly analogous to 18th & 19th century slavery. Again this is uncessarily vitriolic.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — April 25, 2007 @ 12:24 pm