Looking back at your starting post, the problem seems to be the claim
that a being could mistakenly believe that a tree was a witch because of
natural selection. I assume that your protagonist believes that our world
(or at least the human beings in it) was not produced through natural
selection. Therefore, the sentient creatures in this world should not
believe false things like that all plants and animals have spirits which
must be placated to avoid retaliatory damage to the one cutting or
killing the creature. They should also not believe that there are many
deities which are supreme, or at least active, only in specified areas of
the earth. I haven't bothered to look at the address you listed, but it
sounds to me that it promotes the production of nonsense.
Dave (ASA)
On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:44:52 -0500 "David Opderbeck"
<dopderbeck@gmail.com> writes:
I think I'm saying something similar -- the proof seems to me like a
language game that depends on a particular usage of "tree" that seems to
bear no relation to the properties of a "tree" (whether the "tree" is
also a "witch" or not) in the real world.
On Feb 10, 2008 6:55 PM, D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com> wrote:
Of course every word can be defined. In the empirical scheme one now
eventually gets to ostension. But there is a proof that one cannot do
science merely with observation terms, which was a claim of logical
positivism. However, it has been noted that science depends on
descriptions rather than definitions. There was an ancient dictum that
definition had to be by genus and differentia, with the differentia
required to be a term and its negation. Eventually one gets from the
summum genus to the infima species, which may be further subdivided by
accidents. Thus "man" as infima species was defined as the "rational
mortal animal," two differentia because there is no single term for
"rational animal" or "mortal animal". But human beings can be
differentiated by nationality, appearance, occupation, etc.
Dave (ASA)
On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:46:23 -0500 "David Opderbeck"
<dopderbeck@gmail.com> writes:
Right -- but doesn't "appletree" imply certain properties, including
things like fixity and hardness?
On Feb 9, 2008 10:35 PM, D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com> wrote:
You've put in a lot of extra things. Plantinga's statement can be
presented as:
(Ex)[appletree(x) & witch(x) & blooming(x)]
which indicates that there exists at least one entity, x, with the three
characteristics. "And" has the logical requirement to be true only when
all the propositions joined are true. So all it takes in the claim that
it is a witch to make the whole false, even though the other conjuncts
are true.
I don't wonder that you have a problem with some of Plantinga's
arguments. I've run across his views repeatedly, and now usually don't
bother with them. The fact is that all philosophers have to assume some
things to get started, but Plantinga seems to swallow whales. My
impression is that he is a good friend to ID, which I hold to be grossly
in error.
Dave (ASA)
On Sat, 9 Feb 2008 20:07:39 -0500 "David Opderbeck"
<dopderbeck@gmail.com> writes:
On the philosophy of religion blog Prosblogion
(http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2008/02/naturalism-evol.html),
I've been going back and forth with someone about Plantinga's argument
against natural selection producing reliable beliefs. I happen to like
Plantinga and reformed epistemology generally, but I don't understand the
force of this particular argument.
Right now the discussion turns on a hypothetical creature, in a
hypothetical world in which naturalism is true, that believes trees are
witches. The creature has the belief "appletree witch is blooming."
That the creature could hold this belief supposedly demonstrates that
natural selection can result in unreliable beliefs, which supposedly
leads to the conclusion that there is no reason to accept an epistemology
rooted in natural selection / naturalism.
I understand that by the rules of formal logic, a proposition can't be
partly true. However, it seems silly to me to claim that "appletree
witch is blooming" is really a single proposition that must be either
true or false. Below is what seems to make sense to me. Logicians, am I
just getting the rules of logic wrong here?
If "appletree witch is blooming" has to be analyzed only as single
proposition, this just seems like an unrealistic language game to me.
People / organisms simply don't form beliefs like this all at once.
"Appletree witch is blooming" includes at least the following beliefs
that realistically would develop separately because they each have
survival value in diffent contexts. They can be stated as separate
propositions:
p1 there is an appletree
p1(a) appletrees have the proprty of hardness
p1(b) appletrees have the property of fixity
p1(c) if I crash into the appletree it will hurt me
p2 appletree is a witch
p2(a) witches have the property of protecting or cursing the clan
p2(b) witches ought to be venerated so that the clan is protected
p2(c) the clan needs a shaman to communicate with the witches
p3 appletree is blooming
p3(a) blooms have the property of emitting fragrance
p3(b) blooms lead to buds and fruit
p3(c) blooms have magical properties that the shaman can use to appease
witches
So fine, "appletree witch is blooming," standing alone as a single
proposition, technically is false. But who cares aside from the guy who
wrote the logic textbook? p1 that I stated above confers survival value
based on properties of the external universe and is reliable.
I'd suggest that Plantinga's argument here works only if all of the
beliefs subsidiary to the challenged proposition are also unreliable.
Otherwise, the best you can say is that natural selection will produce
some reliable beliefs because all organisms encounter the same physical
universe, even while natural selection might also result in some
unreliable beliefs.
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun Feb 10 21:48:05 2008
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sun Feb 10 2008 - 21:48:05 EST