Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism has attracted a great deal of serious critical discussion (e.g. Naturalism Defeated?) and has had a substantial impact on ‘popular’ appraisals of naturalism. (For example, William Lane Craig frequently uses it, and it also appears in the dismissal of naturalism in The Experience of God.) Many philosophers have pointed out various problems with the EAAN, and in my judgment the EAAN is not only flawed but fatally flawed. Nevertheless, it’s a really interesting argument and it could be worth exploring a bit. I’ll present the argument here and then we can get into it in comments if you’d like — though I won’t be offended if you’d rather spend your time doing other things!
The EAAN has gone through various iterations, but here’s the latest version, from Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (2011). Intuitively, we regard our cognitive capacities — sense-perception, introspection, memory, reasoning — as reliable, where “reliable” means “capable of giving us true beliefs most of the time” (subject to the usual caveats). Call this claim R (for ‘reliable’). But how probable is R?
Suppose that one accepts evolution (E) but also affirms naturalism, defined here as the belief that there is no God or anything like God (N). What is the probability of R, given N & E? One might think it’s quite high. But Plantinga thinks that, however high the probability of R, nevertheless the probability of R given N&E is low or inscrutable. Why’s that?
Now, here’s the key move (and in my estimation, the fatal flaw): beliefs are invisible to selection. Why? Because selection only works on behavior. If an unreliable cognitive capacity is causally linked to adaptive behavior, then the unreliable capacity will be selected for (i.e. not selected against). Even a radically unreliable capacity — that one never or almost never yields true beliefs — can be selected for. Selection only “cares” about adaptive behaviors, not about true beliefs. (More precisely, we have no reason to believe that the semantic content is not epiphenomenal.)
So, Plantinga thinks, given N&E, the probability of R is very low. But, if the probability of R is low, given N&E, then that should ‘infect’ the likelihood of all of the beliefs produced by those capacities — including N&E themselves. So, given N&E, we should it think it extremely unlikely that N&E is true. And so the initial assumption of N&E defeats itself. (Here I’m being much too quick with the argument, but we can get into the details in the comments if you’d like.)
Anyway, it’s a really cool little argument, and it’s not immediately clear what’s wrong with it — and I thought it might be worth discussing, given how influential it is.
How is this different from predestination, or different from doing what god has foreseen?
BruceS,
Thank you for that article on Millikan! I’ll get to it soon! You might also be interested in the reference to Millikan in this review of Naturalism Defeated?.
On the quote from the SEP article: I take it that what Plantinga is saying that is that one avoids the skeptical conclusions of the EAAN if one assumes that God sets up the psycho-physical laws such that true propositions are paired with adaptive behavior, and false propositions are paired with maladaptive behavior. But one would need to make that move only if one assumed that there’s no way of treating semantic content naturalistically.
It seems to me that if (i) there’s no alternative to treating semantic content than as propositional content, and (2) there’s no way of treating propositional content as part of animal biology, then we might well have no choice but to stipulate that true propositions are correlated with adaptive behavior, and false propositions with maladaptive behavior. And then the question, “but what accounts for the correlations?” will seem like a really good question to ask, and a theistic answer doesn’t look all that bad.
I like the partitioning into R1 and R2. I suspect that R1-type contents can be treated teleosemantically and that R2-type contents can be treated with an inferentialist theory of discourse, a la Brandom. But I’d have to look at the Fitelson and Sober paper to be sure.
That something is self-evidently true has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not others agree that it is true. People can deny anything, even the proposition “I exist”.
Why bring in some hypothetical person? It’s you and I having this debate. Do you consider that moral statement self-evidently true? “Self evident” means “evident without proof or reasoning ” – from Merriam Webster. Do you need proof or reasoning to know that torturing children for personal pleasure is immoral? Would you stop a stranger from torturing children for their own personal pleasure? If society condoned the act, let’s say because the law stated that children were a man’s chattel to do with as he pleased – would you turn a blind eye to any man that tortured his children for personal pleasure?
Or would you still know, without proof or evidence, that such an act was morally wrong and further, that it was your moral responsibility to intervene?
Also — and here we get into the hairy details in all their mind-numbing glory — Alex Rosenberg has a criticism of Fodor in “How Jerry Fodor slid down the slippery slope to Anti-Darwinism, and how we can avoid the same fate“, in European Journal for Philosophy of Science 3(1): 1-17 (2013). The gist of Rosenberg’s argument is that Fodor’s criticism of the explanatory power of natural selection arise from his rejection of teleosemantics.
It’s not different. Fortunately, I don’t believe in predestination, nor do I believe I am doing anything god has foreseen.
Not quite about the OP, but there’s a nice liittle Dialogue by Douglas Hofstadter on the role of physics in the creation of the sense of ‘I’, the generation of an agent that is (to it) much more than ‘just’ physick, and the feedback interaction between thought and further response. Thinking that, just because it’s physics, the agent can exert no control is silly, a cousin of fatalism. (You aren’t fated to get run over if you lie there; you can always get up, dumbass!) The assumption that being essentially made of bits of God means we can definitively operate an override unavailable under materialism, presumably because Spirit obeys no Laws, is also dumbfounded. I mean unfounded.
Some of you will have seen it before.
Who Shoves Whom around inside the Careenium?”
eta Ah, but what it really needs is a Page 3! Sorry!
There are lots of things I consider equivalent to this that others don’t see. For example, I consider it child abuse to teach kids stuff that is demonstrably untrue. And since there are hundreds of religions that disagree with each other, it is self-evident that most are untrue.
If you disagree with me on this, perhaps the concept of self-evident needs work.
I myself, and I hope every decently raised person, would know that he or she had a moral obligation to intervene. But the inference here
is “self-evident” in the sense of being non-inferential, not the sense of being presuppositionless — a distinction I presented above. Everything depends on which sense of “self-evident” is at work here.
Kantian Naturalist,
Thanks. That is one I was familiar with; it was from there that I took the “God of the Gaps” characterization of Plantinga’s denial that a naturalized theory of content was possible (in my first post). I will try to access the Millikan vs Plantinga articles you mentioned earlier.
Here is why I find this strange:
1. It seems to be saying that it is possible for God to create physical laws so the semantic content of propositions links with appropriate behavior.
2. Hence under these laws evolution works without further intervention by God.
3. Now such laws surely must be consistent with all of biochemistry and hence physics.
4. These laws could not have suddenly changed at the point when humans first evolved. They must have been in place from the creation of our universe.
Under this interpretation, EAAN is a Fine Tuning argument saying that God originally created the laws so that evolution would produce humans with reliable beliefs. That only requires a deistic God. That is not what Plantinga believes in, I think. But it does seem to follow as a possibility form what he says is defensible.
Note the problematic terminology, as if “the agent” is something that “exerts control” independent of the preceding sequences of physical interactions. Under N & E, “the agent” is nothing but physics – phenomena caused by preceding and contextual phenomena that in turn causes the following effects. There is no “agent” exerting “control”. That would be like saying that the 9 ball, after being hit by the cue ball, “exerts control” over the path it takes after that point. No, it just does whatever physics cumulatively commands.
Isolating islands of “physics systems” via terminology like “an agent” or “a person”, then characterizing the behavior of that particular system with terms like “agency” or “control” or “will”, fallaciously confers conceptual properties to those physical systems they have no right to under N & E. Those terms carry concepts from dualistic/theistic worldviews that do not translate to the N & E worldview.
William J. Murray,
Try reading the piece first, rather than leaping on your tired old nag. It’s a fantasy, but gets a lot closer to describing the complexities of interaction than your clunky two-piece reductio ad absurdum. Also very readable, unlike some I could mention.
petrushka,
It doesn’t matter if you and I agree on what statements are self-evidently true, what matters is if you and I agree that self-evidently true moral statements exist. If one agrees that they exist, then in order to maintain a logically consistent worldview, their worldview must accommodate the existence of self-evidently true moral statements. IOW, how is it that a self-evidently true moral statement exists? What in your worldview gives you the right and the responsibility to enforce your moral knowledge on others? Are those principles logically coherent?
The argument is about what absolute standards are, or if they exist. My case was that the standard for all truth systems – the fundamental starting point – is self-evidently true statements (moral, logical, existential). Those are the standards upon which all further arguments about what is true, and what is not, rest upon. Any argument about “what is moral” and “what is immoral” must begin with a self-evidently true moral statement, or else there is nothing but quicksand upon which to build a moral case about anything. Any argument about anything must begin (even if unspoken or unrealized) with self-evidently true axioms and statements.
Ah, yes, I see your point there. I suspect that Plantinga would agree — a deistic conception of the deity would be sufficient to defeat the EAAN.
To get to the Abrahamic conception of the deity that Plantinga prefers, one would need more than just a god who inaugurates the right psycho-physical laws (more precisely, semantico-biological laws) such that, whenever complex living things arise anywhere in the universe, they will have reliable cognitive capacities.
And indeed, this is where Plantinga needs to — and does! — defend the rationality of the belief in miracles, which is the decisive bone of contention between deism and theism, as traditionally conceived.
In any case, just how does your spirit agent exert ‘control’? It would have to be unaffected by the material – otherwise it would be ‘determined’ by cause and effect, just like a good old brain. It then shoves some particles around, including those in its own brain, determining through cause-and-effect their action. But somehow, to you, this isn’t a causal chain. Things happen uncaused because your soul ‘willed’ it. But why did it will it? In particular, why did it take an action that involved shoving a body round a material world, often in response to something else that happened in that realm? Why does matter matter to souls?
You think you’re in control, and you kind of are, but you are mistaking that sensation for something outside the chain of cause and effect – which is all that is meant by ‘determined’: not inevitable, but caused.
Ah, the so-called “borrowed concepts” fallacy. I’d still like to hear your response to my criticism of this “fallacy”. You should know it; I repeated it often enough. Never did get a response, though.
Do immaterial souls have motives? In what sense is having a motive different in the spiritual existence different for having a motive in the physical world? More importantly, in what sense is having a motive different from being caused?
What blows me away is why we needed official papers to point this kind of totally obvious stuff out. EAAN should have been killed off by a reviewer or editor the very first time it was proposed on this basis, and this should be basically the only response that is needed now. I guess for some reason something that is obvious to biologists (and biologically-informed philosophers like Sober) just doesn’t occur to many philosophers.
KN,
That’s why I wrote:
My point is that Plantinga’s skepticism undermines his own position to the same extent that it does the evolutionist’s. Neither the evolutionist nor the theist can absolutely validate his or her cognition from the inside, because any attempt to do so already relies on the validity of cognition, which cannot be assumed.
Even if we grant Plantinga an unfair advantage by allowing him to assume the truth of theism, he’s still screwed. Nothing about theism guarantees the reliability of human cognition.
“The one point I’m trying to add to the discussion is that philosophy (among other activities) is a social process.” – Joe Felsenstein
Thank GOODNESS we have a biologist around to enlighten us about that! ; )
William,
Person A believes that X is self-evidently true. Person B believes that X is not self-evidently true. One of them is wrong. This isn’t surprising, since humans are fallible.
Could a rational person determine conclusively that A is correct, or B? How? He could consult his own sense of what is self-evident. However, he’s human, and he could be mistaken.
He has nowhere else to go. In other words, he does not have reliable access to objective truth.
Your moral system assumes that he does. That means that your moral system is irrational at its very root.
Like the ontological argument for God’s existence, the EAAN seems obviously wrong.
The intellectual puzzle is trying to be precise about why it is wrong.
You could justify the work on the puzzle by recalling that many things that are “obviously wrong” turn out not to be wrong.
Or you could just take it as a way of clarifying and solidifying the naturalist position by addressing the arguments, which is what I think many of its critics are doing.
The large number of responses and counter-responses in the philosophical literature seems to indicate something in the argument is worthy of serious attention (again like the ontological argument).
Still, I quite understand that many people don’t see the point in this type of intellectual pursuit. I myself feel that way about people who spend intellectual energy reading and arguing with posts at UD!
Keith,
I do not assume that every person has access to objective truth, so your argument fails.
I wish it weren’t so, but it is. I’m biologically-informed enough to intuit that something is badly wrong with the EAAN, but I don’t have the formal training in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology to articulate it.
I worry about this “from the inside” language, because it could (in the wrong hands!) open the door to a Cartesian conception of mindedness.
For it is both possible and actual for each individual cognitive agent to subject his or her assertions to the evaluation of other cognitive agents, where that consists of questioning of entitlements for claims, asking for warrant, holding others accountable for the inferential consequences of their claims, and so on — all the stuff that we do here!
And the back-and-forth between cognitive agents about their claims transpires within a shared physical environment, with physical properties and relations cognitively accessible to all (though to different degrees and in different ways) and usually against the shared background of culturally-embedded-and-transmitted assumptions.
So everything depends on whether “from the inside” means “with respect to the interlocking objective, intersubjective, and subjective stances, as informed by various human perspectives, that both constrain and constitute our epistemic powers” — as distinct from the Absolute, the View From Nowhere — or if “from the inside” means “with respect to the first-person narrative of the isolated cognitive subject” of Descartes’ meditative myth-making
Keiths is apparently continuing to try to make the case that there is no qualitative difference between:
1) Objective truth exists, but humans are fallible in their ability to understand it, and
2) Objective truth doesn’t exist.
Even if humans are fallible in their ability to capacity to understand objective truth, there is a world of difference between the assumption that it exists, and the assumption that it does not. They lead to entirely different epistemologies. Nobody can live, act or argue as if they believe objective truth doesn’t exist; in fact, the very nature of arguments depend upon that assumption, even if we postulate that our capacity to understand objective truth is flawed and in need of constant overview and inspection.
We all fight and argue for what we believe to be true; if we did not believe those things to be objectively true, why bother? All we are fighting for, in that case, is for what we personally, subjectively want, not for what is “true”.
Whether or not we say we believe in objective morality, we all live and act and argue and react as if there are objectively true moral statements – unless, of course, one is a sociopath.
William J. Murray,
William I’m still curious.
How do you know what you know?
ETA typos
You mean that sarcastically, I gather. But whether it needed a biologist or not, it happens that all the philosophically-more-informed people had kept the discussion centered on the fallibility of one individual. So someone needed to say that. So why wasn’t that someone you?
I’ll read up a bit on Millikan’s teleosemantics, since it seems that that’s where the action really lies.
As I do so, I’ll be thinking about the relation between the success-conditions of properly functioning low-grade cognitive representations and the success-conditions of discursive inferences, against the background of Brandom’s work in inferential semantics and also Huw Price’s recent work on different notions of representation (see also his new book Expressivism, Pragmatism, and Representationalism, which has follow-up essays and Price’s rejoinder).
KN:
Do you need to either accept or reject one person’s expressed views in entirety? I’m struggling but enjoying the effort of trying to get to grips with “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature”. I’m wondering whether to self-declare as a neopragmatist.
Alan Fox,
No, I think it’s a serious mistake to accept or reject someone’s expressed views entirely! I still have immense respect for Rorty and take him very seriously. I’d meant only that I have a more critical attitude towards him now that I’ve read more widely in pragmatism and neo-pragmatism.
Except you don’t! What you are doing is not fighting and arguing for what you believe. You are pissing around on a backwater blog. If you were really doing what you think you are doing you’d be doing it in substantially different ways. And if you come up with an actual argument one day and convince everyone here, congratulations! You’ve converted two dozen people!
Whatever I might think about Meyer, Dembski etc at least they have the guts to create and make their argument, a single argument. They refine it as best they can, commit it to paper and publish.
I’ll give them that.
But you? You take a few licks and run off to UD until you think everyone has forgotten what you avoided the last cycle. When is the next exit planned? Then you can run back to UD and plot your holy war a little more.
Keep it up. ID needs more people like you. Just like prayer keeps religious people from interacting with the world by keeping them busy (and therefore the world is a better place) your navel gazing acts like Brownian motion for ID. As it’s such a big tent everybody’s mutually contradictory ideas make sure that “ID” never goes anywhere. On average, ID never moves in any one direction any substantial amount.
William J. Murray,
I agree that we all take some of our judgments or assertions to be objectively valid — including our moral judgments. Of course, just taking a judgment to be objectively valid is not the same as being entitled to take it as objectively valid, which is one of the reasons why intersubjectively valid norms of correctness are necessary. Here the ‘possibility of error’ is indeed the key point, as Royce corrected pointed out. (It’s a very nice argument that survives in a line of thought that runs from Royce through Lewis to Davidson. I first encountered this argument in Davidson, but credit should go where credit is due.)
The key point is that to regard an assertion as objectively valid is to recognize the possibility of error about that assertion. My judgment that I’m looking at a glass of wine right now is not objectively valid, because I cannot be in error about the content of phenomenal consciousness — as C. I. Lewis would say, I cannot be mistaken about my own qualia (so long as I am sufficiently attentive). But my judgment that I have another bottle in the wine-rack is objectively valid, because I could be mistaken about it. And though this is a simple point about basic perceptual judgments, the point easily ramifies to include other kinds of judgments, such as scientific judgments (which involve positing unobservables and testing for them), logical judgments, mathematical judgments, and moral judgments. (I’m still on the fence about aesthetic judgments — can one be mistaken in finding something to be beautiful? I’m inclined to say so, but that’s a hard row to hoe.)
Regardless, there is all the difference in the world between a judgment being objectively valid and its being absolutely true, in the view-from-nowhere sense.
As I see it, some of the participants here who deny that there are objectively valid assertions (such as objectively valid assertions about moral rightness or goodness) are tempted down this road because of (1) a well-considered rejection of the thought that the absolute point of view is (a) epistemically available to finite and fallible human cognitive agents and/or (b) semantically meaningful to finite and fallible human cognitive agents and (2) an ill-considered rejection of the distinction between absolute truth and objective truth.
The difference between rationalism and pragmatism is that rationalism affirms the epistemic availability and semantic meaningfulness of the absolute, whereas pragmatism denies either or both. But the difference between pragmatism and nihilism (including its ‘postmodern’ guise) is that the former distinguishes between the absolute and the objective, thereby salvaging objectivity from the critique of the absolute, whereas nihilism rejects both. So the distinction between objectivity and absoluteness is the key move that the pragmatist makes in order to carve out a third way between rationalism and nihilism, both of which she thinks of as wrong-headed and excessive.
I suspect most people deny that any moral assertions are objective (in the actual merriam-webster definition sense of the word “objective”, not in your “intersubjective agreement” compatibalist version of the term) because they fear some cadre of religious zealots will enforce their view of “absolute morality” on others. Their fear and loathing of moral authority drives them into atheism, rational incoherency and – ultimately – nihilism.
Seeing that you are a moral authority, William (one of the few) it behooves you to publish a list of objectively true moral facts, so that the rest of us fearful, atheistic, rationally incoherent and imminently nihilistic souls might profit from your wisdom.
Woodbine:
And if he fails to do so, it obviously follows that ….
Grow up.
If he fails to do so then his claims that a) objective moral facts exist and b) he happens to be one of the few people capable of apprehending such facts are dubious. Maybe you are impressed by William’s self-assured mysticism, I’m not.
Condescended to by Mung….postmodernism at its finest.
WJM
Nah. It’s the not-believing-in-God thing that ‘drives’ me into atheism. Whether I’m rationally incoherent as a consequence is not entirely clear to me, but then it wouldn’t be, would it?
Simply list them, then you’ll have the foundation for the first true religion. Which you can then be the head of, I’m sure you’ll enjoy that.
Simply make a list of these “objectivity valid assertions” about morality why don’t ya?
This isn’t a debate about morality; it’s a debate out whether or not, under evolutionary naturalism, one has reason to believe that they can confidently and deliberately develop true statements about the world (which happens to include statements about morality). Under naturalism, there is no grounds for such a belief. While one might have a true belief by chance under naturalism, it is only under theism and deliberate arrangement of necessary, corresponding internal and external features that transcend happenstance interactions that such meaningful truth-seeking and understanding is possible.
As far as what I’m “behooved” to do here, it’s not my job to tell others what is moral and what is not.
I’d suggest it’s not really a debate at all. It’s a war, a holy war. At least to you.
Likewise this can be reversed to say if under theism one can do the same. And the evidence is in, over the last 2-3000 years. Theism cannot.
What a terrible shame! That we might all die without developing (according to WJM) true statements about morality.
Sure, we might generate statements about morality that allow us to progress as individuals and as a species. But according to WJM they don’t count.
Shrug.
Says you. Whereas the evidence seems to suggest that theism and it’s morals are just as malleable as morality that is developed in other ways.
The church supported slavery at one point.
Goal-post moving noted. I never said it was your job. What I said is that if you endlessly talk about objective morality but can never quite bring yourself to explain what you mean by that then it’s just another variant of CSI/FSCOI. You are convinced that it exists but can’t actually articulate it. It’s a shield, not a weapon. And you hide behind it.
Very convincing argument.
Yes, you did. Look up what “behooves” means.
And should WJM succeed in convincing everybody that “real” morality is only possible under theism, then what?
What I think that WJM fails to understand is that if it was, somehow, to be shown that hey yes there is an objective morality and it goes like this:
Homosexuals are to be burnt at the stake.
Women are 3rd class citizens.
Enslaving your defeated enemy is moral.
Then I think I’ll stick with my “fake” ungrounded morality over WJM’s “real” morality.
But given that no such list of objective morality will be forthcoming any time soon we’ll just have to make do with the best example developed so far (the bibble) and the above 3 items seem to be true according to that. And again, all that is rejected out of hand. Yet WJM seems reluctant to populate that list, rather just wants to argue over if the list exists at all. That torturing babies might also be covered along with persecuting queers does not make it any better.
And, frankly, from the things that WJM has said at UD regarding his “holy way” I can’t see that morality being worth a damm.
So, sure, continue to argue if it exists at all rather then it’s contents. It’s clear why you are doing that – if such a morality does exist then it seems that you don’t actually have access to it judging from your behaviour. You might know it exists but it seems to torture you that you don’t actually know what’s inside.
I’m sure that defining the argument so that people who dissent from your position are automatically disbarred from being able to make an argument is moral. Or, perhaps not. Depends on if the “morality giver” is insane or not.
Try reading for comprehension next time Dearest William. I did not say that, someone else did.
But no matter, it’s just mere wordplay you are using to avoid the real issue. Let me clarify:
I don’t want you to tell me what is moral or not
Is that clear?
I want you to tell me what WJM thinks is moral or not
Get it now?
The fact is that I don’t believe you can tell me what is moral or not, as you have as much idea as to what that is as the next random person does. Rather, you are making an argument that objective morality exists and I want to detail what that actually means in practice. And to do that you have to actually explain what morality is for you.
But sure, please feel free to continue to claim that your argument is solely about it’s existence rather then it’s content. It’s so much simpler that way, right? And you get to stay disconnected from all the nasty real world implications of your claims, except to say that torturing babies is not ok, m’kay.
Intellectually I can grok what you’re getting at. I think my difficulty goes a little beyond semantics however. My issue is that Plantinga’s basis of argument implies that naturalism is false. Couple that with the fact that I’ve never read anything from Plantinga even remotely implying that in a general sense naturalism is plausible, I am at a loss as to where you guys come to the conclusion. However, as KN has pointed out (and you as well), it’s likely reasonable to give Plantinga the benefit of the doubt in such a philosophical discussion since without an explicit rejection of naturalism in all cases, it makes no sense to assume such. I can go along with that.
No, I understand your point completely. It’s just wrong.
Aaaaagggh! William, the motion of billiard balls can be precisely determined! That’s the whole point of the game billiards/pool and why some people can clear a table in under five seconds. Why do you make declarations that you clearly know nothing about?
And here’s where you and Plantinga are just making claims out of ignorance. Billiard balls do, in fact, follow physics laws – and only physics laws – because there’s a limit to the forces acting on that particular configuration of matter. Hence the reason we can predict with absolute precision the motion of the balls on any given table. But under N & E, people cannot think just what physics commands because thinking cannot be reduced to just physics. There’s the error in your claim. And you don’t get it because you refuse to understand actual science.
I’m going to respond here to three different comments — two by WJM and one by KN. And perhaps this is all because I find philosophy-speak to be puzzling.
It seems quite obvious that objective truth does not exist.
That remark is specific to “truth” as a noun. I am not questioning that there are objectively true statements. I have no objection to “true” as an adjective which we might take to be an attribute of a particular statement.
We can, of course, treat the noun form “truth” as a kind of metaphor to refer to our use of that attribute. But I don’t see how “objectively” applies to that metaphor. Truth as an attribute is fine, but the qualification “objective” would seem to apply only to particular uses of that attribute. The expression “objective truth”, as it is often used, seems to conjure up the idea of it being an immaterial substance that permeates the universe.
I guess I’m just looking for clarification here.
Perhaps KN is saying that, to a pragmatist, it is nonsense to assert that a statement is absolutely true. However, it still makes sense to say that it is objectively true.
I guess I’d agree with that. My meaning of “objective” is far more limited than what I take “absolute” to mean. I take “objective” to mean what people can (more or less) agree on, so a kind of shared subjectivity.
That’s just weird. I take it to be obvious nonsense.
I am wondering what WJM takes “true statements” to be, such that he sees them denied to naturalists. Or perhaps he could explain what he takes “naturalism” to be.
Robin,
That is entirely irrelevant to my argument. Billiard balls are also colored and numbered – you might as well argue that thought isn’t colored and numbered.
Is there something other than physics generating or helping to generate thought? If so, what?
How ironic, consider this statement is itself an objective truth claim. Your post is full of statements offered as objectively true. As I already said, one cannot live or argue as if there are no objectively true statements. They use them in order to make the case against them, sawing off the very branch they are sitting on.
First, let me say that I consider the tone here inappropriate; you don’t know enough about me to know what I would or wouldn’t enjoy. By all means attack my positions if you wish, but avoid the ad hominem.
Second, at no point did I say anything about “religion”, let alone “true religion”. Quite frankly, I’m surprised to see this here, because I’ve been participating at TSZ for quite a while and I thought it was a matter of public record that I am a non-theist. Certainly I do not think that any religious doctrines have anything interesting to say about the content of moral judgments, or their foundation, justification, criteria for revision, and so on. I don’t even think that religious faith has all that much to say about moral psychology.
Third, consider the following:
In other words, don’t treat persons as things, and don’t treat yourself as a thing (or allow yourself to be treated as a thing). (Whether ‘humanity’ should be expanded to ‘animality’ as such is an interesting question; I think there are compelling reasons on both sides, for and against expanding Kantian ethics to include at least some animals.)
I take it that this is true — that is expresses a deep insight about the nature of morality, or at least one its most salient aspects. (Though for expressive beauty, it pales in contrast to Martin Buber’s contrast between the I-Thou relation and the I-It relation.) And it’s because I am a Kantian that I am, among other things, a feminist and a socialist.
But I don’t see any daylight between “true” and “objectively true”. I think that the concept of objectivity and the concept of truth are interdependent notions, and that the thought, “true for me but not for you” (which I hear constantly from my students), while it expresses a perhaps laudatory attitude of tolerance and acceptance, is, strictly speaking, nonsense.
I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree.
I agree insofar as the criteria for classification of a statement as objective are intersubjectively-held norms of correctness and incorrectness — though the same is true of “subjective truth” (i.e. truths about my own phenomenal consciousness). (And the norms must be intersubjective to count as norms — there are no “subjective norms”.) There is no revelation, intuition, or sheer givenness.
But it’s one thing to say that the norms by which we classify statements as objective, intersubjective, or subjective are themselves intersubjective — so there’s an epistemological priority of the intersubjective — and as such, are revisable and so on — and quite another to say that the content of objective truths collapses into the content of intersubjective truths. That move would put cosmology on the epistemological level as constitutionalism, and that seems like a terrible mistake.
The problem there, surely, is the use of “content”. Our statements to not contain what they refer to. At most, they contain descriptions of what they refer to. And I don’t see a problem in saying that descriptions are intersubjective.