The Argument Clinic

[lee_merrill]

@Tim

The rationale given for distrusting a naturalistically-explained mind was not that it wasn’t produced by a reasoning being, but rather that it involved, in your words, “mindless atoms control my thoughts”. You appear to be moving the goalposts here.

No, this is another step to the argument, first we don’t trust conclusions produced by mindless causes, such as the delirium’s insistence that there are spiders on the walls. So if non-reasoning processes did not produce my reason, we are left with intentionality, and reason producing reason.

@Tim

That our thought processes are a sufficient approximation to trustworthy can be more parsimoniously explained by Natural Selection, with reasonably trustworthy cognition being a survival trait – particularly in that where our cognition varies from trustworthy (e.g. Cognitive Biases) they are frequently (pervasively?) easily explained by humanity’s millions of year long history as hunter-gatherers, and before that as an omnivorous ape, in an environment where we were under threat from apex predators.

But the objective of evolution is fitness, not perception of reality! If belief in aliens produces hope that keeps people from destructive behavior, then believing in aliens will be selected for.

@Tim

It is in fact the degree of untrustworthiness due these cognitive biases, that led to the creation of the Scientific Method as a corrective mechanism.

But not all truth is amenable to analysis by the scientific method, archeology for example, cannot produce repeated experiments to see if Napoleon fought at the battle of Waterloo.