Alvin Plantinga is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading Christian philosophers. Watch the video below and ask yourself, WTF?
So as not to spoil your fun, I’ll refrain from offering my take on the argument until readers have had a chance to comment.
There are many, many things to find deeply objectionable in Plantinga. One of them — and one that matters to me personally a great deal — is that Plantinga’s way of doing philosophy is represents, to people outside of philosophy, what philosophers do. I’m fairly sure that it’s because of people like Plantinga that philosophers get little respect from scientists and others. (I keep a list of “Philosophers Who Give Philosophy a Bad Name”. Plantinga is on it. It’s a long list.)
Somewhat more germane to this thread, Plantinga represents a certain way of doing what we call “analytic metaphysics”, and if it looks and smells to you like neo-scholasticism, you’re not alone. Yesterday I started reading Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. Briefly, Ladyman and Ross argue that contemporary analytic metaphysics is becoming increasingly irrelevant the more it drifts away from science and relies on “intuitions” or “common-sense”.
Massimo Pigliucci, a decent philosopher in his own right (and, let it be noted, critic of “scientism” and also a defender of the importance of the concept of “pseudo-science”), says this of ETMG (here I’m cutting and pasting from what I found on the Amazon page for ETMG):
So I think it’s deeply unfortunate that philosophy is represented to non-philosophers by people like Plantinga (and others), because there is really interesting philosophy of science (esp. philosophy of physics and of neuroscience) going on, there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening in feminist epistemology, environmental ethics is fascinating and important, so on and so on.
Thanks for taking the time to read and critique in detail what I posted, Keith. One of the reasons it is rewarding to post here is that smart people take the time to do that.
Right, but they are the best theories we have, so I think teasing out their consequences is justified.
Good point, Hubble volumes are different because in principle we could come in contact with ones that are currently outside our own. I understand this does depend on whether the rate of expansion we currently experience gets sufficiently small enough to allow light to outpace the expansion of space. I think whether it will do so is still an open question.
Tegmark makes this point clear and explains that he has decided to use the concept of a universe within the level I multiverse to mean currently separate Hubble volumes.
Any popularization is going to have inaccuracies. I suppose Tegmark decided that this usage was the best balance between accuracy and clarity for a lay audience. He’s the cosmologist and the author, so I am happy to live with his call. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Keith: It occurred to me later that maybe you were alluding to calling (eg C) functions by value (eg with a structure) rather than by by reference (eg with a pointer to a structure). But still not clear how that would relate to the philosophy.
Of course, there is also stack-based storage versus heap-based storage which are sort of related to declaring a structure versus making a pointer to a new object. But that does not help me either.
This was new in 1928, but shouldn’t be new to us.
There are lots of scientists that give science a bad name too; I am thinking of, for example, Linus Pauling and vitamin C.
If you ever wanted to post about Structural Realism after reading the Ladyman book, I would find it fascinating. Superficially, it resembles Tegmark’s Level IV Multiverse: I understand L&S support the view that science is telling us that reality is best captured by the structure of our best physics. Tegmark says reality is consistent, computable mathematical structures; further, there are many universes, each being an implementation of a consistent, computable math (sort of a super-Platonism, I guess).
OTOH, Sean Carroll, a physicist who is very respectful of philosophy, is not convinced by structure realism, I believe. He prefers to say reality is wave function.
On the Massimo Pigliucci reductionism/strong emergence topic, Sean has a pointed disagreement with him in the comments section here that is worth a quick read.
I don’t know what Carroll thinks about Tegmark’s Level IV Multiverse, but I would guess “not much”, like most reviewers of that very speculative part of the Tegmark’s ideas.
Apparently its new to some philosophers.
No problem, Bruce. trying to explain this stuff is indeed helpful for me. I’m teaching an undergrad class this fall for the first time in a loooooooong time (I’ve been a bureaucrat for years), so I’m pretty rusty.
Also, I guarantee that both my science and computing chops are considerably worse than anybody else’s philosophy chops here. So it’s safe to assume that I’m understanding less than most everybody else is once the discussion branches out into those fields.
Determinism depends on your point of view, at least under some interpretations of QM.
The wave function of all of reality is deterministic, and if you believe in the multiple universes interpretation of QM, then all of reality would encompass all of those universes and so is determined.
We’re stuck in our own universe’s history, of course, and can never take that point of view. So sure, for us, QM says our future is not determined.
KN, as indicated, I’ve actually learned some things from Plantinga. I agree that there’s probably a sense in which he gives philosophy a bad name, but his being popular at all among non-philosophers (in the way that Dennett is) is probably an overall boost. I do think that if you read some of his papers on warrant or some of his early stuff on necessity you’ll get a sense of what a subtle thinker he is–even though he’s always wrong.
Is he a scholastic? Absolutely. But I like reading those guys too. Again, my take is that it’s a shame that potential like theirs was destroyed by brainwashing and/or fear.
And that is correct, the been “president of the US” it is not the same to the been “Barack Obama” . Barack Obama is now fullfilling the role of president of the US, is not “The president of the US”. You are not thinking in netaphysical categories, that is what the Leibniz`s principal is about.
If yoy try to aplly the Leibniz`principle to the physical world all the identities are probabilitics ( a body weighs x +/- the error of the scale) and provitional, always I can find a new property in which two objects can differ or a more precise measurement method that shows a difference.
I do not know why then you become angry with me when a show you
“Why Metaphysics is (Almost) Bullshit”
Blas,
We want to know whether “Barack Obama” and “the current president of the US” refer to the same person. Plantinga’s logic “tells” us they don’t, so his logic is obviously broken.
To make that absolutely clear, let’s look at the abstract form of the argument:
‘A’ refers to a specific thing. ‘B’ refers to a specific thing. We want to know if ‘A’ and ‘B’ refer to the same thing. According to Plantinga, if we can say that “it’s possible that A has property P”, but we can’t say that “it’s possible that B has property P”, then by Leibniz’s principle, A and B are not the same thing.
Substituting for A, B, and P, we have:
‘Alvin’ is a specific entity. ‘Alvin’s body’ is a specific entity. We want to know if ‘Alvin’ and ‘Alvin’s body’ refer to the same entity. We can say “it’s possible that Alvin could continue to exist if Alvin’s body were destroyed”, but we can’t say “it’s possible that Alvin’s body would continue to exist if Alvin’s body were destroyed”. Therefore, by Leibniz’s principle, ‘Alvin’ does not refer to the same thing as ‘Alvin’s body’.
And:
‘The current president of the US’ is a specific person. ‘Barack Obama’ is a specific person. Luca wants to know if ‘the current president of the US’ and ‘Barack Obama’ refer to the same person. He can say “it’s possible that the current president of the US is white”, but he can’t say “it’s possible that Barack Obama is white”. Therefore, by Leibniz’s principle, Barack Obama is not the current president of the United States.
It’s the same bad logic in all three cases.
I’ve already seen KN’s list of philosopher-heroes. Going by that, his other list, as short or long as it may be, is probably quite mediocre and muddled too.
A few months he spoke here of Plantinga’s EAAN as “a really cool little argument.”
Plantinga is well-regarded, awarded and elected, by some – even by the American Philosophical Association. And yes, he’s world-renowned, i.e. outside of the USA (where KN rarely goes except perhaps for vacations). If that’s ‘objectionable’ to KN, it reflects more on KN than on Plantinga. For KN, transcendence has collapsed, while for Plantinga and many others it hasn’t.
Compared to Plantinga, KN is not even a blip on the map of credibility (and this is from coming from KN’s own mouth only a few months ago about his own career). Plantinga is an openly religious philosopher, which is problematic in itself for some people. As KN has told us, he is a secular _____.
What I have seen here is this: as the lone (professional) ‘philosopher’ at TSZ, KN has defended philosophy quite poorly and inadequately. No inspiration, little meaning beyond Sellersian ‘naturalism’. Indeed, “Why Metaphysics is (Almost) Bullshit” shows something about KN’s quasi-nihilistic worldview. He seems to be a very good fit, sadly and depressingly in the end, for naturalist ‘skeptics’ at TSZ!
Where I disagree with Plantinga in the interview above is his claim that “I know it’s all the rage nowadays to be a materialist.” Well, that’s not the case in many places where I’ve been, again outside of the USA. KN rejects materialism too, but with some strange empiricist, quasi-Buddhist, maybe Gaia/deep ecology, esoteric, monotheist religion-substitute lodged in its place. Plantinga deserves and has much, much more of my respect than KN’s eclectic mess of philosophistry. Elevation comes on the other side KN braves not to explore or understand.
Given that you don’t know who I am, I marvel at your self-assurance that I’ve never presented my work at a conference outside of the US.
Bruce,
Re the structure/pointer analogy, I’m really just saying that de re is analogous to accessing a structure by name, and de dicto is analogous to accessing it via a pointer.
Borrowing from my earlier example, I might declare a structure named Barack_Obama. Every time my program accesses Barack_Obama, it accesses the same structure.
I might also declare Current_President as a pointer to that data type. Current_President might point to Barack_Obama right now, but at some point I might point it to Hillary_Clinton instead. Dereferencing Current_President doesn’t always yield the same structure.
Gregory,
What do you think of Plantinga’s argument?
“We want to know whether “Barack Obama” and “the current president of the US” refer to the same person. Plantinga’s logic “tells” us they don’t…”
That part of your post isn’t right, Keith. Plantinga would insist that Obama and the current president of the U.S. are identical and that each has all and only the properties of the other. And, de re, the following are both true:
Obama is not necessarily the current president of the U.S.
The current president of the U.S. is not necessarily the current president of the U.S.
The second one looks false because you’re taking it de dicto.
Plantinga is very careful about this stuff and understands it very well. Fortunately, you don’t need to accuse him of THAT error to find fault with his argument.
I became upset with you because you seemed not to engage with the arguments I presented there, and because you seemed not to understand that I was not insisting on a conclusion, but rather exploring a line of thought.
Gregory,
Gregory, I agree with you that Plantinga is highly regarded, and, as I’ve indicated, I kind of think he should be. I also agree that some of the criticisms of his argument (which is really just another formulation of Descartes’ version) on this thread are a little confused and that Plantinga’s views are considerably more sophisticated than a lot of casual pundits here realize. They really should read him before calling him names.
OTOH, I think his work suffers terribly from his tendency toward xtian apologetics. You can pretty much always tell where he’s trying to get by considering what views will be most consistent with the Dutch Calvinism of his upbringing. And I believe the view that he is, for all his considerable talent, deeply wrong about nearly everything he’s written about, is shared by the vast majority of practicing philosophers. So KN is ultimately right about the guy.
No keiths. Proposition 2 is wrong it is not possible that “the current president of the US” is white as it is impossible that Barack Obama is white
You can say:
2) “I can conceive(or immagine) that the current president of the US is white”,
and that would be as wrong or right as
3) “I can conceive(or immagine) that Barack Obama is white”,
That is Leibniz`s principle.
Blas,
I’m not exactly sure of all that you are saying above, Blas, but I agree with you that Keith has kind of mucked that up. I really don’t think that anybody here (or too many other places) is likely to find a simple fallacy in Plantinga’s modal logic. He’s very good in that field, and most people here not only have never studied it, but aren’t even quite sure what it is. Anyhow, be that as it may, Plantinga doesn’t make the mistake of which Keith accuses him in that post.
On de dicto and de re attributions, Brandom puts the point in terms of the difference between the object of our discourse — what we’re referring to or talking about — what we take ourselves to be talking about.
Here’s how I understand it — it’s difference is between:
(1) KN believes that his cat is hungry
(2) The cat, which KN believes is his cat, is hungry.
(1) is de dicto, because it ascribes a belief to me; it is true or false by virtue of my psychology, not the cat. (2) is de re, because it ascribes a property to the cat; it true or false by virtue of whether the cat has the property of being hungry.
If (2) is false, then (1) could still be true — it is true that I have that belief — except that my belief is false, because (2) is false.
So this distinction between de re and de dicto ascriptions is actually quite central to our ability to truthfully say, of others or even of ourselves, that any of our beliefs are false.
Thanks Keith. I had thought of that, but was reading too much into your use of “structure”, rather than just saying variable and pointer to variable.
Still, as I understand the philosophy concept, it seems to me you’d have to somehow add the computer concept of scoping of variables to correspond to the philosophical concept of scope of the opacity verb.
Standard example from SEP for believes, which I find easier to grasp than modal examples:
Ralph believes someone is a spy.
Could be
1. Ralph believes there are spies.
(syntax: Ralphs believes (there exists x such that x is a spy)
Or
2. There is someone specific whom Ralph believes is a spy.
(syntax: There exists x such that Ralph believes x is a spy).
The scoping relates to where the x appears in the syntax version; being within the scope of the “believes” makes the difference to the two interpretations
I’m not really sure how to work that into a computer analog; maybe considering a call to a believes function with a dereferenced pointer versus the pointer itself. But fine tuning such an example won’t really help me much with understanding the modal usage of de re/de dicto, I suspect.
I see Walt has posted more so I need to add that to my priority queue.
The problem is at TSZ everybody thinks metaphysics is almost bullshit.
Bruce,
You’re welcome, and thank you, too. I find our exchanges enjoyable and valuable.
Oh, I agree. And just to be clear, I’m not resisting the idea that each of us might have duplicates in our universe or elsewhere in the multiverse. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m simply pointing out that
Bruce:
It’s not just that we could potentially come into contact with outside Hubble volumes. Each of us is in daily contact with zillions of distinct Hubble volumes. There is one centered on Max Tegmark’s left pinky fingernail, another on his rightmost eyelash, and another on Miley Cyrus’s tongue. There is one centered on a nondescript helium atom in the corona of Betelgeuse. We are in contact with all of these Hubble volumes.
Even if we anthropocentrically and arbitrarily take an earth-centered Hubble volume as our starting point, we can’t fill all of space with non-overlapping Hubble volumes. Packed spheres leave gaps.
The only way you can cover all of space is to use overlapping Hubble volumes, and it seems weird to me to regard overlapping volumes as separate universes.
Thanks KN.
Earlier I said the formalities of Phil of Language were harder for me to understand than the formalities of math (at the same level of study) .
One reason might be that philosophers seem to disagree with each other about how to use their terms. That’s not intended pejoratively, and not meant to say you and Walt are disagreeing, only to say that is how the technical jargon of philosophy sometimes come across to me. Probability comes with the territory of analytical philosophy.
walto,
De re and de dicto can be confusing, and Plantinga is not immune to mistakes, particularly when he is trying to prove something that is near and dear to him.
I have to run right now, but I will be back to answer you and Blas.
Nagel, in “The Psychophysical Nexus”, remarks about Kripke (and I take it that Plantinga’s view is basically the same as Kripke’s, but that could be a mistake on my part):
—————————————————————-
Kripke’s view of functionalism and causal behaviorism is the same as mine: that the inadequacy of these analyses of the mental is self-evident. He does not absolutely rule out a form of materialism that is not based on such reductionist analyses, but he says that it has to defend the very strong claim that mental phenomena are strictly necessary consequences of the operation of the brain — and that the defense of this claim lies under the heavy burden of overcoming the prima facie modal argument that consciousness and brain states are only contingently related, since it seems perfectly conceivable about any brain state that it should exist exactly as it is, physically, without any accompanying consciousness. The intuitive credibility of this argument, which descends from Descartes’ argument for dualism, is considerable. It appears at first blush that we have a clear and distinct enough grasp on both phenomenological consciousness and physical brain processes to see that there can be no necessary connection between them.
That is the position that I hope to challenge. It seems to me that post-Kripke, the most promising line of attack on the mind-body problem is to see whether any sense can be made of the idea that mental processes might be physical processes necessarily but not analytically.
———————————————————————————
This is the key point: consciousness and brain states are only contingently related, since it seems perfectly conceivable about any brain state that it should exist exactly as it is, physically, without any accompanying consciousness.
To re-cap:
(1) identity is a necessary relation;
(2) therefore, if two things are identical, they are identical in all possible worlds;
(3) but the relation between consciousness and brain-states is contingent, not necessary, because;
(4) for any brain-state, it is conceivable that the brain-state has no accompanying consciousness;
(5) therefore, states of consciousness cannot be identical with any brain state.
What Nagel says here, about “necessarily but not analytically,” is key to what I take to be a successful resolution of the problem. Conceivability is a guide to possibility only with regard to analytic truths. If there are necessary non-analytic truths (“synthetic a priori”) — and I think there are! — then the relation between consciousness and brain-states could be necessary without being revealed by logic alone.
What, then, is non-analytic necessity? For those of us weaned on Kant, the notion is “intuitive,” but Evan Thompson and Robert Hanna have done what I had previously thought impossible: they conceptualize non-analytic necessity in terms of possible-world semantics, as follows:
On the Thompson/Hanna view — worked out in their respective Mind in Life and Embodied Minds in Action — minds are necessarily embodied, though not analytically necessary, and so their view is not vulnerable to Kripke/Plantinga-style arguments from conceivability.
No problems with any of what you say.
I don’t think Tegmark was as much concerned about filling space as about have a way of talking about an infinite number of remote-from-each-other Hubble bubbles.
Anyway, I think I need to devote more time to De re/de dicto rather than Tegmark for now (and also to doing my chores).
I think that some metaphysics is bullshit, and some isn’t. Less pejoratively and more precisely, I think that a priori metaphysics is too weakly constrained, because there are too many different and incompatible metaphysical systems that are internally consistent.
The reason why I prefer scientific metaphysics over non-scientific metaphysics is because I share Peirce’s view that the methods of science allows reality to get a vote in what we say about it, and the other methods of inquiry do not. So a metaphysical system that takes science seriously has an additional constraint that non-scientific metaphysics does not have, and that gives us a smaller search space, so to speak.
But I certainly don’t think that metaphysics is dispensable, worthless, etc. I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time looking in detail at the anti-metaphysical philosophy in Carnap and Rorty (I’ve published on both), and I’ve concluded that it doesn’t work (though obviously for different reasons). Metaphysics can be done well or poorly, but it must be done. I happen to think that metaphysics done well involves taking science seriously, and not just thinking carefully.
Blas, that is not really fair, I think, since at least two people here make their living from philosophy. And other posters take philosophical arguments very seriously.
I know KN wrote a post with that phrase, but I saw his use of “bullshit” in the post name as basically just as an attention grabbing headline for a post with a substantive point.
Reading is whole post or even just the last paragraph explains his real point.
That doesn’t make any sense.
A brain state is not a static configuration, but a flowing river.
Thanks, BruceS.
A series of brain-states or neurophysiological process, yes, that’s a ‘flowing river’. But a brain-state — a description of what is going on in the brain or a part of it — at a particular moment is perfectly cogent, just as it would be perfectly cogent to describe what is happening in a river at a particular moment.
However, that’s a mere quibble, compared to what I took to be your correct point, which is that thinking about processes instead of states is going to be more informative.
This will merit some popcorn, I suspect. (humor intended)*
——————
*Surely it must be funny on some possible world.
Insofar as it is possible, it is necessarily possible!
Sorry if I am unable to express what I’m thinking in the correct professional vocabulary.
My argument — cribbed from Pinker — is that the mind is what the brain does. To which, I would have to add, the brain is what the body does.
If you treat mind as an activity rather than as a billiard ball, dualism simply isn’t a meaningful construct.
I’m sorry if I came across as pedantic. I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk.
Is that line from Pinker? I didn’t know that! I’ve heard that line for a while now and I agree with it. And if one adds in the environment as well, then the mind is what the brain-body-environment does.
Yes indeed! Or, to quote Yeats, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
Another Pinker quote:
I would quibble about this. Everything about the body is part of mind. Certainly metabolism is part of thinking, and certain kinds of metabolism are measurable constituents of mental activity.
When you speak of the mind as an activity, you cannot parse it into body and soul. When you try, you cease saying anything useful.
MDs explain the universe, Chopra is enthralled, philosphers and physicists point fingers at each other and say: “makes no sense to me, must be one of your theories”
A theory that explains a bunch of stuff that is not real — what more could you want?
Maybe a modal argument? Did not see it, I’m afraid.
Thanks for posting, I had a nice chuckle.
How about ordinary dreams. Is quantum woo required to explain dreams?
All mammals dream, by the way.
KN:
Searle uses very similar language. For him the “body/mind” problem has the same status as the “stomach/digestion” problem.
Bruce,
Don’t get me started on that gasbag Chopra.
Regarding my Obama example, Blas writes:
Remember, Luca doesn’t know that Barack Obama is the president. For Luca, it really is possible that the president of the US is white. He can say that and actually mean it, just as Plantinga means it when he says “It’s possible that I could exist when my body doesn’t”. They both believe what they say.
The situations are analogous: Luca thinks it’s possible that the president (whoever that happens to be) is white, and Plantinga thinks it’s possible that he (whatever kind of entity he happens to be) could continue to exist after his body has been destroyed.
Keep that in mind as you reread my summaries of the two arguments:
Re: ” For Luca, it really is possible that the president of the US is white.”
That’s what’s known as “epistemic possibility.” Another way of putting that is by saying “For all Luca knows, the president of the U.S. is white” which is neither an expression of possibility de dicto OR de re. It’s not really a statement about metaphysical possibility at all, but a remark about an actuality that somebody might be wrong about. There doesn’t need to be a possible world in which Obama is white for Luca to have such a belief. Kripke doesn’t suggest that nobody could disagree with him when he says that (de re) the morning star is necessarily the evening star. It’s just that, in his view there is no possible world in which such an interlocutor would be right–whether the planet is visible in the morning, the evening, or at all.
walto:
walto,
I claim that Plantinga’s argument is equivalent to the Obama argument, but you disagree. If you’re right, then there must be a disanalogy between the two.
Can you quote a specific statement (or statements) from each of my two summaries and explain why you think the logic differs between them?
walto,
Sure, but you could characterize Plantinga’s belief the same way:
The arguments still look equivalent to me.
That’s easy. I am a clever and creative pop songwriter and pianist with a magnificent tenor, trapped in the body of a talentless and tuneless hack.
walto,
I read the first several pages of De Re et De Dicto tonight and discovered, to my amazement and amusement, that the Plantinga of 1969 warns against the very trap that the Plantinga of today falls into.
Here’s the Plantinga of 1969:
So there you have it. The Plantinga of 1969 is warning that Leibniz’s principle applies only to statements of modality de re and not to statements of modality de dicto, and the Plantinga of today has forgotten his own warning and is trying to apply Leibniz’s principle to the latter!
modality de dicto — it’s possible that Alvin will continue to exist after Alvin’s body is destroyed
modality de re — it’s not possible that Alvin’s body will continue to exist after Alvin’s body is destroyed
modality de dicto — it’s possible that the current president of the US is white
modality de re — it’s not possible that Barack Obama is white
The mistake in both cases is in regarding the de dicto statement as a property of its referent.
I really have no idea why you think Plantinga makes the mistake you accuse him of, Keith. He’s understood the difference between those two types of necessity for a long time, has explained it cogently, written on its relevance to mind/body and received far more acute criticisms of his views than he has received either from his internet interlocutor or from anybody here. In fact, even his little interview above can be construed in such a way that he doesn’t make that very elementary error (and in fact it’s kind of hard to construe it WITH him making it). It’s not the kind of mistake modal logicians make: it’s the kind made by people who first heard about de re and de dicto a couple of days ago and are still trying to get it straight.
His argument for dualism is, IMHO, no good anyways, and I don’t know why it’s so important to you that he have made this very stupid mistake in addition to others that I believe can more justly be laid at his feet. OTOH, I know your thread title makes his argument not only lame but astonishingly so (even though versions of this very argument have been kicking around for hundreds of years and the literature on it, both pro and con, is mountainous (with some of the supporters being guys like Descartes and Kripke), so have a ball. I’ll even join in!
Plantinga is stooopid! We’re smart!!
Don’t think it helps with dreaming, it’s more about separating the mind/soul from the body. From memory of last night’s read:
The theory starts with the Penrose and Hameroff (MD 1) theory that your mind/soul is quantum information encoded in the microtubules which are part of your brain.
The new bit from Hameroff and Lanza (MD 2) (he of biocentrism) is that that quantum information can dissipate to the universe upon your death and that would be your soul. Astral travel is controlled dissipation/reintegration, near-death is dissipation which reverses for some reason, reincarnation is re-integration in another body.
You know, now that I write it out, it’s not that different from a transporter!
Even if (big if) your mind is quantum information encoded in a structure in your brain, they seem to have left out the bit about how the qubits of dissipated information get re-integrated to the state they need to be in to re-start you.
By the way, the quantum information is dissipated into the physical universe, so no help for Plantinga on non-physical minds here that I can see.