When he published his paper on the evolutionary argument against naturalism, a number of scholars responded critically to it, but, so far as I know, not along the lines that it was a straw man argument. — Wayfarer

And?

The ability to 'disseminate information amongst social species' - for example species that make sounds on the approach of predators, like meerkats, or that of bee dances - is obviously advantageous to survival, but what does that have to do with the issue at hand? — Wayfarer

Plantinga completely neglects consideration of evolution in a social species, so isn't presenting a seriously considered account of evolution. Ergo he is working with a strawman account.

Plantinga completely neglects consideration of evolution in a social species... — wonderer1

Probably probably because it's irrelevant.

probably because it's irrelevant. — Wayfarer

A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

If natural causation didn't come up with our reasoning abilities then who ever did did a pretty bad job considering all the people who's reasoning erroneously led them to naturalism.

:wink:

If natural causation didn't come up with our reasoning abilities then who ever did did a pretty bad job considering all the people who's reasoning erroneously led them to naturalism. — Apustimelogist

What do you think 'natural causation' comprises, and how might it be related to reason? It's actually quite a deep question, explored in part in this earlier thread. The gist is that causation of the kind that characterises physical and chemical reactions, is of a different order to logical necessity, which is the relationship between ideas.

I know what a straw man argument is, but I think your characterisation of Plantinga's argument in those terms is incorrect, your reference to 'co-operative naturalism' notwithstanding.

Furthermore, if you think it through, Plantinga's argument is quite consistent with the naturalistic axiom that one ought not to hold to certain beliefs, but only entertain fallible hypotheses which are subject to disconfirmation by further discovery. Naturalism in that sense is not a world view as such, but working assumptions in the service of scientific method. It is not co-incidental in this regard that Bishop Berkeley was classified as an empiricist.

Also I recall an earlier thread from a year ago on the same topic. It might not be too late to merge this thread into that one, as many of the same arguments were canvassed back then.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14166/ontology-donald-hoffmans-denial-of-materialism/p1

I don't think Plantinga's argument is air tight, but neither is it merely a strawman. It's been taken seriously because, even if it is a simple argument, there is something to it. Hoffman is making a very similar sort of argument and I think he lays out a pretty good case for how some understandings of naturalism and a naturalized epistemology end up being self-refuting. That is, if we assume they are true, they suggest that they are false.

It's a complex issue.

I honestly think both Plantinga and Hoffman bury the lead here in not focusing on the problem of psycho-physical harmony. Physicalism is normally defined in terms of casual closure. Reductionist materialism also assumes causal closure. But if causal closure is true the mental never—on pain of violating the principle—has any effect on behavior. It is just "along for the ride." Everything is determined by particles and how they interact, so no one ever goes and gets a drink "because they feel thirsty" (at least not in the causally efficacious sense of "cause.")

But then, were this true, natural selection can never directly select on how the world is experienced by us. Since the mental doesn't affect behavior, it has no relevance for survival or reproduction. So what is needed is some sort of "just so" story where evolution makes our experiences close enough to reality that they tell us things about how the world really is, even though we don't think our experiences dictate our behavior (because what we do can be entirely explained in terms of particles interacting, and particles lack experiences). Where is the just so story? Well, it doesn't exist. You'd need an answer to the Hard Problem to provide one.

Yet it seems rather implausible that such a story can be found given how well evolutionary psychology predicts how the world is experienced. It certainly seems like "we have sex because it feels good," or that "being cold feels unpleasant so that we will try to find shelter," etc.

I think Plantinga's argument is ultimately just one simplified form of an entire web of arguments that can be made vis-á-vis psychophysical harmony, causal closure, and epistemology. Hoffman is able to flesh this out with some models and empirical results. Is it air tight? No. But then again what they are arguing against is also a position that is not airtight. Yet this position, like reductionism, is one that seems to demand that it be "assumed true until decisively proven otherwise," and I'd venture that there is not good grounds to accept this

I suppose there is also something to be said against the push to "naturalize" epistemology when the "naturalized" attitude is presumed to be one that makes the targets of practical and aesthetic reason (the good and the beautiful) somehow illusory, "less real," or "merely subjective," while elevating theoretical reason as the sole appropriate instrument for knowing the world. This is quite the presupposition start with.

Is it required by "naturalism" tout court? No, but it's an assumption often bundled into "naturalism" as the term is commonly employed.

What do you think 'natural causation' comprises, and how might it be related to reason? It's actually quite a deep question, explored in part in this earlier thread. The gist is that causation of the kind that characterises physical and chemical reactions, is of a different order to logical necessity, which is the relationship between ideas. — Wayfarer

I don't really know what you mean by different order but seems to me from neuroscience and machine learning that any kind of intelligence can be scaled up from very simple prediction algorithms. For instance, it is proven I believe that recurrent artificial neural networks (and no doubt biological neurons) are Turing complete. They can compute anything. Sure, there may not be great pressure for many organisms like bacteria or whelk to be great reasoners but once you have the first step of neurons which can learn then you have the fundamental basic ingredient that allows for reasoning. In any case, I am not entirely sure what we mean when we say that our reasoning is reliable. Is it actually reliable? Problem of induction might say no. Sure, deduction doesn't rely on that but maybe the assumptions used in deduction do. How reliable would a person's reasoning be if they had never had access to learning things as a basis for reasoning? I don't know if there is anything inherently reliable about reasoning. Not because brains aren't good at what they do but because problems like induction transcend that. Maybe it depends on semantics of reliable - pretty vague word.

Maybe it depends on semantics of reliable - pretty vague word. — Apustimelogist

:up:

This is where Plantinga's argument is relevant. He says that in naturalized epistemology reason and cognitive processes are seen to be grounded in evolutionary psychology and neurobiology. This means that our ability to reason is understood as a product of evolutionary processes that favor adaptive behavior.

Plantinga's argument contends that if our cognitive faculties are the result of evolutionary processes driven purely by survival, then there is no reason to accept that that they produce true beliefs, only that they produce beliefs that are advantageous for survival. — Wayfarer

The idea there is an underlying "objective reality" is also the product of our cognitive faculties. So is the idea of "truth." So are beliefs, ideas, knowledge, thoughts, emotions, perceptions, the ability to reason... To oversimplify in a provocative manner - we made all this stuff up using evolutionary mechanisms along with other factors, e.g. social interactions with our fellow humans. What does that do to Plantinga's ideas? I don't think it means they're wrong, it means they're meaningless. They're not even metaphysics.

It's not. — T Clark

We agree!

Who says they can't? — T Clark

Physicalists, specifically functionalists

I'm not sure I know what that means, but I'll try this - can a robust theory of chemistry reliably predict which chemical systems are alive? Again, no. — T Clark

A robust theory of chemistry will predict which systems are chemical systems. A robust theory of life will predict which systems are alive. (Although there may be an issue about the difference between definition and theory here.) For example, @apokrisis theory is that a system is conscious if and only if it models its environment and makes predictions based on that model (I've probably oversimplified that, apologies apo). So this theory could in principle perhaps be used to create an artificial consciousness, and the theory would predict that the resultant creature would be conscious. It would be hard to test that prediction though, as notoriously no one has yet invented a consciousness-o-meter.

I don't see how that differs significantly from the previous question. — T Clark

The hard problem is how we get from no consciousness to some consciousness. This problem only exists for emergentists.

The other problem is the problem of explaining how one functional system is reliably correlated with one experience rather than another. This problem exists for every theory of mind.

.

I don't think Plantinga's argument is air tight, but neither is it merely a strawman. It's been taken seriously because, even if it is a simple argument, there is something to it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I said earlier:

...I do think it brings up matters well worth thinking about. — wonderer1

And I'll admit it isn't merely a straw man, but a highly complex straw man brought up by a brilliant though (in this context) poorly informed mind.

There has been scholarly criticism of the argument, on the basis that Plantinga's P(R|N&E) is highly questionable in light of the possibility that what should be under consideration is P(R|N&E*) where:

E is Plantinga's simplistic conceptualization of evolution.
E* is a more thoroughly scientifically informed conceptualization of evolution.

I don't recall the name of the author(s) of that paper, and I lack motivation to track it down, but that paper is out there, and it does amount to strongly suggesting (using more sophisticated language) that the EAAN amounts to a straw man. It also meshes nicely with my objection that Plantinga neglects consideration of evolution occurring in a social species. (I.e. Plantinga's attack on E&N doesn't touch my E*&N.)

But if causal closure is true the mental never—on pain of violating the principle—has any effect on behavior. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In addition to what I addressed earlier, I wanted to point out that there seems to be an implicit dualism behind this comment. It seems to assume that what we refer to as "mental" is something other than physical occurences. Admittedly such a dualism is at least deeply culturally engrained, if not to some degree a matter of biological biasing to our thinking. However, such dualistic thinking needs to be set aside if one wishes to critique physicalism successfully.

"How is it exactly that experience is caused by/realised by/is identical with the functions of complex systems? Why can't all these things happen without experience?" — bert1

Who says they can't?
— T Clark

Physicalists, specifically functionalists — bert1

I don't think physicalists deny the existence of experience nor do they say that experience must accompany cognitive functions. Or have I misunderstood you?

The hard problem is how we get from no consciousness to some consciousness. — bert1

According to Chalmers, at least as I understand him, the hard problem is how to get from a physical, biological, neurological explanation of cognitive functions to experience.

A robust theory of chemistry will predict which systems are chemical systems. A robust theory of life will predict which systems are alive. (Although there may be an issue about the difference between definition and theory here.) — bert1

I think you're right - the issue you raise is about definitions, not theory.

Physicalism is normally defined in terms of casual closure. Reductionist materialism also assumes causal closure. But if causal closure is true the mental never—on pain of violating the principle—has any effect on behavior. It is just "along for the ride." Everything is determined by particles and how they interact, so no one ever goes and gets a drink "because they feel thirsty" (at least not in the causally efficacious sense of "cause.") — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's only according to the epiphenomenalist view, which Plantinga ended up weaponizing for his argument against naturalism. (His so-called EAAN went through a number of iterations and eventually fizzled out, since epiphenomenalism is its own can of worms, and Plantinga didn't have much to contribute to it.). I don't know whether Hoffman relies on it as well. But epiphenomenalism is not synonymous materialism/naturalism.

:clap: Well said! Better than I could have said it myself.

The idea there is an underlying "objective reality" is also the product of our cognitive faculties. So is the idea of "truth." — T Clark

It could be said that this simply characterises the outlook of post-modern nihilism. Strawberry Fields, nothing is real, nothing to get hung about. Maybe it’s just a consequence of our highly fragmented and confusing cultural moment that calls that into question. But the counter to that is that philosophers have always been concerned with capital T Truth. It’s a very difficult question to bring into focus, but through comparison of the historical schools of philosophical spirituality, it can be discerned.

For that matter, Donald Hoffman is now associated with The Essentia Foundation. They make the case that the confusion in our culture is in is due to the overwhelming influence of philosophical materialism, the belief that matter is ultimately real and the basis of mind and life. You can read about them here.

I don't really know what you mean by different order… — Apustimelogist

What I’m referring to is the distinction between physical causation and logical necessity, so there’s not much point addressing that issue if you don’t understand it.

I don't know if there is anything inherently reliable about reasoning. — Apustimelogist

…using reason to try to ascertain a reasonable position.

What Hoffman is calling into question is the mind-independence of the objects of cognition. That objects are real independently of his or your or my mind is a largely unspoken assumption about the nature of things. It is at the basis of the search for objective fact. But the reality is, there can be no truly mind-independent objects per se because of the way that knowledge of them is attained, through the senses, and their characteristics then adjudicated according to various cultural and scientific norms.

In pre-modern philosophy, it wasn’t objects that were understood as being real independently of any mind, but their Ideas (forms or principles). That was the conviction behind scholastic realism, inherited from Greek metaphysics. Logical realism, which is related, says, for example, that logical laws and principles are real, insofar as they’re the same for all who can perceive them. So they’re mind-independent, on the one hand, as they’re not the product of your mind or mine, but they’re also only perceptible through reason, to be grasped by the intellect (as ‘intelligible objects’). But that implies a very different epistemology to objective or cognitive realism which put sensory experience at the centre of judgement about the nature of reality.

The decline of logical realism and the ascendancy of medieval nominalism and empirical realism is the deep historical cause behind the perplexities this question brings up. The pre-modern mind did not live with the sense of separateness that characterises modernity, it dwelled in a very different life-world, quite likely impossible for us to even imagine. We’re discussing the tip of a very large iceberg.

@Count Timothy von Icarus - any convergence here with Robert M Wallace on Platonic idealism?

For example, apokrisis theory is that a system is conscious if and only if it models its environment and makes predictions based on that model — bert1

It's not my theory. I just say it is the best available theory. And you missed a vital part of it. That the modelling has a purpose. The purpose – in the broadest sense – is to build a body. Construct an organismic state. Become a dissipative structure that exists in a modelling relation with its world, an informational relation that has this particular kind of material outcome.

So this is the easy way to tell the difference between an organism and just a machine. The model and the environment are tied into this entropic feedback loop. The better the predictions, the more able the organism is able to repair and reproduce.

So this theory could in principle perhaps be used to create an artificial consciousness, and the theory would predict that the resultant creature would be conscious. — bert1

This theory accounts for why AI and Alife are such overhyped projects. It puts a finger on what is missing. The software doesn't have to earn its own keep. The "AI" is not building and maintaining its own embodied and enactive organismic state.

Some factory in Taiwan made the chips. Some dude in California plugged the server into the wall. Some utility company supplied the electric juice for as long as the bill got paid. The AI did nothing at all to produce or maintain the fabric of its being. There was no actual modelling relation in the biosemiotic sense.

If we get scifi, we can imagine AI being created that then takes over control of the human world and entrains it to its own entropic purpose. It sets the world to work building more chip fabs, datafarms and power stations. Humans would just mindlessly clone AI systems in exponential fashion at the expense of their own social and ecological fabric. Big tech would attract all available human capital to invest in this new global project.

Oh wait ... [Checks stock market. Gulps.]

What I’m referring to is the distinction between physical causation and logical necessity, so there’s not much point addressing that issue if you don’t understand it. — Wayfarer

Are you implying that a brain cannot invent or learn to use logic?

…using reason to try to ascertain a reasonable position. — Wayfarer

Surely a position doesn't have to be true to considered a reasonable inference given available information?

Plantinga's argument contends that if our cognitive faculties are the result of evolutionary processes driven purely by survival, then there is no reason to accept that that they produce true beliefs, only that they produce beliefs that are advantageous for survival — Wayfarer

I think perhaps one point is that an organism that survives is an organism that is navigating an actual structure to the world, it must act sensitively to that structure and anticipate that structure in order to make sure it's paths keep within the kinds of bounds for it to survive. Surely, fitness payoffs will have objective places within that objective structure, with objective paths between any part of the world and some payoff or reward. Seems to me that even if there may be no kind of access to a single perspective-independent view of the world, an organism benefiting from fitness payoffs will need perceptual faculties that are synchronized to and can differentiate the actual structure of the world.

There maybe gulfs in terms of sophistication and access to structural information when you compare a whelk to a human to something with access to information about even more detailed, perhaps even microscopic, information; but this doesn't seem so radical to most people. Maybe there is a kind of compromise here; fitness payoffs probably are related to the actual structure of the world, but I question whether it even makes sense to say there is only one "veridical" way for an organism to be perceptually coupled to the environment. The questions is then whether there is a fact of the matter about the veridicality of different kinds of perceptuo-motor couplings that are equally effective? At the same time, even though our perceptual systems may be strongly limited, clearly science and technology has allowed us to probe much hidden structure we are not usually privy to.

Everything is determined by particles and how they interact, so no one ever goes and gets a drink "because they feel thirsty" (at least not in the causally efficacious sense of "cause.") — Count Timothy von Icarus

Feeling thirsty can be considered to be a purely physical process. It's not that mental processes are "along for the ride" if you think of the mental and physical accounts as two ways of looking at the one thing, as Spinoza did. On that account the idea of the mental causing the physical or the physical causing the mental is merely a category error.

Exactly...the reductionists seek to analyze the physical in terms of the mental (idealism) or the mental in terms of the physical (eliminative physicalism). Tendentious thinking prevails on both sides.

I think Plantinga's argument is ultimately just one simplified form of an entire web of arguments that can be made vis-á-vis psychophysical harmony, causal closure, and epistemology. Hoffman is able to flesh this out with some models and empirical results. Is it air tight? No. But then again what they are arguing against is also a position that is not airtight. Yet this position, like reductionism, is one that seems to demand that it be "assumed true until decisively proven otherwise," and I'd venture that there is not good grounds to accept this — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am still not sure what position this is supposed to be. Plantinga's attack is aimed squarely at the "evolutionary naturalist," and Hoffman would be its first victim if it had any merit. What is it that Hoffman is arguing against?

It could be said that this simply characterises the outlook of post-modern nihilism. Strawberry Fields, nothing is real, nothing to get hung about. Maybe it’s just a consequence of our highly fragmented and confusing cultural moment that calls that into question. But the counter to that is that philosophers have always been concerned with capital T Truth. It’s a very difficult question to bring into focus, but through comparison of the historical schools of philosophical spirituality, it can be discerned. — Wayfarer

This is not a valid argument. Not really even an argument at all. All you've done is call my idea names (post-modern) and complain how it is causing the end of civilization. And the comment that "philosophers have always been concerned with capital T Truth" is irrelevant. There's nothing substantive for me to respond to.

What Hoffman is calling into question is the mind-independence of the objects of cognition. — Wayfarer

As I see it, it is reasonable to believe our cognitive functions result from the development of biological/neurological structures resulting from biological evolution. I also believe it is reasonable to call into question the mind-independence of the objects of cognition. I don't see any conflict between these beliefs.

In pre-modern philosophy, it wasn’t objects that were understood as being real independently of any mind, but their Ideas (forms or principles). That was the conviction behind scholastic realism, inherited from Greek metaphysics. Logical realism, which is related, says, for example, that logical laws and principles are real, insofar as they’re the same for all who can perceive them. So they’re mind-independent, on the one hand, as they’re not the product of your mind or mine, but they’re also only perceptible through reason, to be grasped by the intellect (as ‘intelligible objects’). But that implies a very different epistemology to objective or cognitive realism which put sensory experience at the centre of judgement about the nature of reality. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the history lesson. That's a serious comment.

If we get scifi, we can imagine AI being created that then takes over control of the human world and entrains it to its own entropic purpose. It sets the world to work building more chip fabs, datafarms and power stations. Humans would just mindlessly clone AI systems in exponential fashion at the expense of their own social and ecological fabric. Big tech would attract all available human capital to invest in this new global project.

Oh wait ... [Checks stock market. Gulps.] — apokrisis

An interesting thought. I'd never thought of it that way.

I think perhaps one point is that an organism that survives is an organism that is navigating an actual structure to the world, it must act sensitively to that structure and anticipate that structure in order to make sure it's paths keep within the kinds of bounds for it to survive. Surely, fitness payoffs will have objective places within that objective structure, with objective paths between any part of the world and some payoff or reward. Seems to me that even if there may be no kind of access to a single perspective-independent view of the world, an organism benefiting from fitness payoffs will need perceptual faculties that are synchronized to and can differentiate the actual structure of the world. — Apustimelogist

This makes sense to me.

Seems to me that even if there may be no kind of access to a single perspective-independent view of the world, an organism benefiting from fitness payoffs will need perceptual faculties that are synchronized to and can differentiate the actual structure of the world. — Apustimelogist

Well said.

but I question whether it even makes sense to say there is only one "veridical" way for an organism to be perceptually coupled to the environment. — Apustimelogist

A biosemiotician would agree that every organism would have its own umwelt. There is as much evolutionary variety right there as we would expect. Some of us are dichromats, and some trichromats. Evolution can decide the better fit over time. And indeed, as troops of stoneage foragers, there is the argument that evolution favoured an active mix as dichromats can detect food sources from a greater distance, while trichomats do a better job at nimbly processing them up close.

But then as to a general rule of coupling, we can argue for the Bayesian Brain and its optimisation principle. The best way to be coupled to an environment is one that minimises information uncertainty about environmental constraints on negentropic action. Or in other words, to be able to see through to the behaviours that ensure the repair and replication of the embodied organism.

Yes you can; it's called refutation by contradiction. — Michael

What prompted me to start this thread was actually this video:

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=physics+sabrine+did+science+prove+reality+doesn%27t+exist&mid=1E32ADFE1C5F389044B81E32ADFE1C5F389044B8&FORM=VIRE

It got me thinking about the general subject and I remembered what I had read and discussed about Hoffman in the past. He seems to require noumena in order to have something to interface with.. I hate these computer analogies. They are so divorced from nature and reality. That's my first objection. As to your argument, Hoffman doesn't says "let's ASSUME reality is real" and allow it to lead to a contradiction. He starts where we all start, and where the scientists in the above video also start, with the reality we've known about ever since our minds have been able to cognize. He is really saying, with language, that reality is real and then tries to show "oh but not really". It's clearly a "strange loop" (do you know the book?) that leads to an explosion of logic after which he merely assumes that reality should be treated the same way it was before it was considered non-real. At least that's how I understand his thesis. I apologive if I misunderstand him.

George Berkeley claimed that his book on vision had proven that matter doesn't exist. But you have to start with the eye, looking at an eye with your very eyes. So he is clearly wrong. You would have to try to prove the world doesn't exist from purely speculative methods, and not by starting with empirical data

Interestingly, Hoffman has a video with Deepak on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbYgh1nal5o&list=PLdrUeeBIMbrLHXpDx7Oq-8lSKq5-0qOnS

Are you implying that a brain cannot invent or learn to use logic? — Apustimelogist

‘Learning to use’ is not quite the same as ‘inventing’. Was the law of the excluded middle invented by us, or was it discerned? Would it be something that is ‘true in all possible worlds’?

There’s also the mereological fallacy, the attribution to parts that which is an attribute of the whole. Brains don’t do anything, rather agents make judgements.

Seems to me that even if there may be no kind of access to a single perspective-independent view of the world, an organism benefiting from fitness payoffs will need perceptual faculties that are synchronized to and can differentiate the actual structure of the world. — Apustimelogist

Of course organisms must respond appropriately to their environments but most organisms are able to do that without the exercise of reason. Walruses and whelks have gotten along for millions of years without it. So there’s nothing there that is in conflict with what Hoffman is saying. The claim is that our cognition is conditioned by adaptation to see in terms of what is useful from the perspective of evolution, not what is true. So - what is true? What does the word even refer to? Well, that’s a question that neither walruses nor whelks can ask. Whereas we can ask it, and the answer matters to us.