Thank you! And I did search previously, and checked the site, and had no idea what to search for. They have like 15000 letters! But here is the quote of interest: “But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
There are some who would say that evolutionary processes cannot produce complex systems such as smell, sight, and so on. Michael Behe would say that with the bacterial flagellum. But no one is saying that because evolutionary processes cannot smell, they can’t result in the evolution of organisms that smell. No one, not even ID people, are making that connection. So you are setting up a straw man.
The argument is that reason cannot come from nonreason, that we always make that conclusion, when we see that a person’s statement is due, say, to delirium, or insanity. So I would say that reason is fundamentally different than smell, sight, and so on. If by some enormous improbability an eye could come about by natural processes, I wouldn’t fall off my chair. All right then, so it happened. But that won’t do, if you tell me my thoughts are ultimately and completely due to physics in my brain. Note that here the process of development of the brain is not in view. Though I would make the same argument about development.
I think this is the relevant portion:
Darwin: Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
This reads to me more like Darwin doubting the value of mankind’s philosophical speculations on specifically the subject of the ultimate origins of the universe/the nature of existence (the topic is far beyond us, or something to that effect), than it reads like Darwin doubting any reasoning in general.
Regardless of where one falls on what Darwin is saying here, it just isn’t relevant at all. I can disagree with Darwin on matters, he is not the “naturalist pope” or something. Presumably Lee disagrees when Darwin says there doesn’t appear to be any purpose in natural law.
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Then what was your purpose in bringing it up, if not to support a claim you made?
In fact you presented a single analogy, and when various people pointed out that your analogy was flawed, and why, you just repeated the analogy.
No, he’s explaining, by analogy, why your analogy is flawed. The silly thing that IDers don’t do is isomorphic to the silly thing they do do. And you respond purely by repeating your flawed analogy and nothing more.
Lucky for your pelvis.
Nilsson D., Pelger S. A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 1994; 256:53-58.
That’s a separate question. Again you confuse the process that results in thought with the process that results in the ability to think. Try to deal with one at a time. And in the current case it’s the latter.
I must have missed it. Last I checked you never responded to that specific post at all.
OK, now you have waved goodby to serious discussion. Situational awareness that you should not walk over a cliff is not correlated with survival? That hiding in the presence of a predator is not correlated with survival? That if you are freezing, seek shelter?
And self-existence is a classic attribute of God, so that is the claim. That reason must have reason as a source may sound deep and profound delivered to a nodding congregation in the sanctuary, but it is indeed a baseless assertion, which is why you have provided no basis other than confusing insane with unguided.
Unless something new comes up, I will leave it at that for now.
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I’ve yet to even see an argument to that effect. What argument supports that assertion? That reason cannot come from nonreason?
For that matter, what does the argument mean? That would seem to be a necessary step before the the argument can be supported.
The problem being Lee that you made no mention of any of this. You simply name-dropped Lennox and Lewis as supporting your claim. You latter name-dropped Darwin as having a “concern” – without ever articulating what that concern was, or linking it to Lennox. In doing this, you made a complete, incoherent muddle of this.
I would note that Darwin, like yourself, Lewis, Lennox and Plantinga, was not an expert in evolutionary cognitive neuroscience – so his opinions on this were thoroughly non-expert.
Yes. @John_Harshman tracked it down above. It was a letter to William Graham dated 3 July 1881. I have quoted the relevant passages above. It is a nothing-burger.
Then what the hades ARE you trying (but failing) to say?
Balderdash Lee. The problem is that your meaning was very unclear. I cannot be reasonably accused of “straw-manning” you when I have no idea what you were trying to say! My above comment was based upon my best guess at cutting through your inarticulate incoherence.
Probably Lee, because nobody here can decipher correctly what you are trying (but failing) to say much of the time. @John_Harshman has explicitly called you out for this.
Based on this, I am striking the following:
I consider it ‘unsaid’. Please rewrite for clarity!
Then why did you name-drop him (without even stating the contents of his opinion) in the first place?
Your attempts at arguments have been so incoherent and ill-constructed as to barely merit the label.
Lots of incoherent babble and wild jumps.
Your ‘argument’ amounts to nothing more than a blind adherence to a form of Essentialism – a belief that like can only be the product of like. That this bigoted belief is shared by a number of non-entities with no real understanding of evolution (paging Michael Behe), does not make it any more compelling.
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That isn’t an “argument” Lee – it is simply the bald assertion of Essentialism.
But “we” don’t make that conclusion Lee. Only ignorant apologists do. We differentiate between the results of disordered cognition (“insanity”) and non-cognitive mechanical processes.
We would not consider a (naturally occuring) avalanche to be “irrational” or “insane”.
We would not consider the tree-rings of a tree to be unreliable, simply because it came from a non-cognitive mechanical process, and thus from “unreason”.
This would appear to be simply a bald assertion.
This would appear to be nothing more than an Argument from Incredulity and, as such, fallacious.
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I can answer that one. His only argument, if you want to call it that, is that you don’t believe things an insane person says.
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Even then an insane person is still reasoning, albeit not very well by societal standards.
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Early metazoans, such as worms, that have eyes and olfaction can clearly use those to find food, to escape predators, and to locate acceptable environments. And there is no reason to think that modifications of those and of their neural ganglia cannot occur by natural selection. The resulting reasoning will not be perfectly reliable, but then, my reasoning isn’t perfect or totally reliable. If Lee Merrill’s happens to be perfectly reliable, my congratulations, but also I am skeptical. Merrill’s argument resembles Alvin Plantinga’s “evolutionary argument against naturalism” and like it, assumes that human reasoning is perfect and thus cannot result from an imperfect process.
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But we do believe what tree-rings ‘say’. So “unreason” is not sufficient for unbelief.
This is what happens when some-one doesn’t bother to read the text or look at the evidence, but instead blindly swallows and repeats lies told by charlatans.
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Because that is the only interpretation consistent with your assertion that Gould and Eldrige’s work confirmed the “concerns” of the EES.
And, in support of that assertion, you cited something Gould and Eldridge wrote over 40 years before the Royal Society meeting!
Of course, what else should we expect from someone so addle-brained they think a 2011 article is a response to something written in 2018?
Did you try reading the abstract?
Evolutionary theory has been extended almost continually since the evolutionary synthesis (ES), but except for the much greater importance afforded genetic drift, the principal tenets of the ES have been strongly supported. Adaptations are attributable to the sorting of genetic variation by natural selection, which remains the only known cause of increase in fitness. Mutations are not adaptively directed, but as principal authors of the ES recognized, the material (structural) bases of biochemistry and development affect the variety of phenotypic variations that arise by mutation and recombination. Against this historical background, I analyse major propositions in the movement for an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’. ‘Niche construction’ is a new label for a wide variety of well-known phenomena, many of which have been extensively studied, but (as with every topic in evolutionary biology) some aspects may have been understudied. There is no reason to consider it a neglected ‘process’ of evolution. The proposition that phenotypic plasticity may engender new adaptive phenotypes that are later genetically assimilated or accommodated is theoretically plausible; it may be most likely when the new phenotype is not truly novel, but is instead a slight extension of a reaction norm already shaped by natural selection in similar environments. However, evolution in new environments often compensates for maladaptive plastic phenotypic responses. The union of population genetic theory with mechanistic understanding of developmental processes enables more complete understanding by joining ultimate and proximate causation; but the latter does not replace or invalidate the former. Newly discovered molecular phenomena have been easily accommodated in the past by elaborating orthodox evolutionary theory, and it appears that the same holds today for phenomena such as epigenetic inheritance. In several of these areas, empirical evidence is needed to evaluate enthusiastic speculation. Evolutionary theory will continue to be extended, but there is no sign that it requires emendation.
Honest question: Have you been diagnosed with dyslexia or some similar condition? I would hate to keep dunking on you if your continued incomprehension was due to a neurological condition over which you have little control.
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The argument that is made against naturalism deals more with beliefs than with actions. An example Plantinga gives is of a hypothetical primate who has evolved the beliefs that tigers are cuddly creatures who make loving pets, and that the best way to get them to allow you to cuddle them is to run away from them and hide. Those beliefs are diametrically opposed to reality, but they would still be favoured by natural selection since they achieve the goal of increasing the odds of avoiding being eaten by a tiger.
That’s the argument. I’m not saying it’s a good one.
I will again try steel man Lee’s argument: The claim is not that reason cannot come from non-reason. Rather, it is that a reasoning being does not have warrant to trust his own reasoning if it arose thru evolution and naturalism. If evolution was guided in some way by God, however, one would then have such warrant.
The argument attempts to sidestep such concerns by attacking our ability to trust in reason itself. According to Plantinga, since neuroscience requires that we trust our reasoning, we cannot justify our belief that neuroscience reveals the truth unless God exists.
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As long as you’re being, er, deity’s advocate, could you explain why we should trust human reason if we’re created by God?
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Surely you can see that he is doubting any reasoning we do? How can you not see this? He is doubting the value or trustworthiness of the convictions, the conclusions we make, because they have their origins in the mind of lower animals, the deduction then being, all the way back to single-cells. That is the argument under discussion.
I only presented this as one evidence that the argument is a valid concern, given that people who are respected here, like Darwin, like Haldane, have had it.
No, I agree with him, and I expect you would agree as well…
That argument would appear to be defective in that it creates a False Dichotomy – either reason is perfect, or it is perfectly unreliable. Evolution does not stipulate that reason is perfect, merely sufficient for survival. It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that such imperfect reason, provided with such guardrails as Formal Logic, and the Scientific Method, would be sufficiently reliable to provide a reasonably reliable understanding of the universe.
I think the problem is that Plantinga, like many ID-sympathisers, has little understanding of how evolution actually works.
I have always found his ‘Tiger’ example to be just plain silly – and an insult to my intelligence. Yes, it is conceivable. No, it is not remotely plausible – and to suggest that such things happen with sufficient frequency as to be a valid explanation is idiotic.
But regardless, I don’t think Lee is arguing that evolved cognition has insufficient warrant, he appears to be arguing that it is outright impossible.
On the subject of Plantinga:
Do you think the argument is “taken seriously” due to the argument’s own merits, or out of deference to Plantinga’s reputation? I’ve always found it to be a very poor argument.
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