- We really can not say enough how honored we are to be
able to host Alvin Plantinga. Alvin Plantiga has been working, as I mentioned on issues
of philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology
over a very, very long career. He really has had an extraordinary impact, as I say going back at
least to the 1960's. He's had professorships
at Wayne State University, Calvin College, the
University of Notre Dame. He's been visiting professor many, many, many universities. He's been a lecturer, given
distinguished lectures at Fordham, at Oxford. He was a Guggenheim Fellow. He's written many, many important books including Faith and Philosophy;
The Ontological Argument; God and Other Minds;
The Nature of Necessity; God, Freedom, and Evil;
Does God Have a Nature; Faith and Rationality; The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship; and then a trilogy, a
three volume set of books on epistemic warrant,
Warrant and Proper function, Warrant the Current Debate, and
Warrant of Christian Belief. Most recently he's written,
Where the Conflict Really Lies about the relationship between religion, science, and naturalism which was reviewed by Thomas Nagel a few months back in New York Review of
Books very sympathetically. Just one indicator of
Alvin Plantinga's success and influence as a
philosopher is that he went on to be invited to deliver some of the most prestigious lectures
in philosophy in the world, the Gifford Lectures in Scotland, and those of you who are here know the list of Gifford lecturers
reads like a who's who of modern intellectual
giants including philosophers and scientists like William
James, Albert Schweitzer, John Dewey, Arnold Toynbee,
Neils Bohr, and Carl Sagan. Except I noted that all
those intellectual giants gave the Gifford Lectures only once. Alvin Plantinga was invited to give the Gifford Lectures twice. - Well if you don't get
it right the first time, they let you try again. (group laughing) - You were recalled. Once in 1987 and 1988, and
then once again in 2005. So we are really honored to
have you have at the planning. - Thanks, thanks Tim. I think that introduction
is a bit over the top. It reminds me of something
I once heard the theologian Carl Henry say when he was introducing, and we thought was a bit over the top, he said, "Well I have to ask
God to forgive the introducer "for stretching the truth, "and forgive me for enjoying it so much." (group laughing) So it's a pleasure to be here. I'm a little surprised that
the Religious Freedom Project would schedule a meeting
for the very same day as this cataclysmic, world shaking event that's occurring this evening, It causes a certain amount
of personal problems for me in that my wife thinks
that any world shaking, cataclysmic event of that sort,
we should be together, so. (group laughing) But that's the way life goes. I think there's a schedule
here that suggests that my presentation
now will take something like an hour was it? It says 10 o'clock to 11. It won't take an hour. I gather many of you will
have already read my paper so I'll just, I will just read bits of it and recount briefly the rest. And I think also there is a
handout that everybody has in their folder, that I'll be, that you can use to follow along, okay. So, I was asked to write about
or think about two questions, First question, everybody find this, find the handout. - [Tim] Did you all have the handout? - [Man] The handout inside. - [Tim] If you don't have
the handout just say so. - [Man] On the right side of the folder. - I was asked to think
about two questions, one question went like this, "First to what extent is
belief in God properly basic", it says, "To human rationality." I'll leave of the "To
human rationality" part. So, "To what extent is belief
in God properly basic?" And second, "To what
extent is belief in God "foundational to rationality." When I think about our
beliefs being properly basic, I mean for our beliefs being basic, I think of it as a belief that's not held on the evidential basis of other beliefs. Beliefs like many perceptual
beliefs for example. So with respect to that
first question then, there is this notion of rational, these notions rational,
rationality, rationally. The term rational could
be applied to various. It could be applied to
persons for example. A person could be rational,
could be rational at one time and irrational at some other
time and the like of that. It can also be applied to beliefs, and here you can think
of a belief as either the thing believed, the
proposition on the one hand, or the believing of that proposition. You might think of that as a
kind of act on the other hand. I'm gonna be thinking about
rationality with respect to the second sort of thing, not with respect to the rationality of a proposition as such. I'm not sure just what that would be. But rather with respect to
the rationality of accepting a certain kind of belief, believing it. Rationality is ordinarily
thought of as a good thing. If it's a good thing to
hold rational beliefs, it's a bad thing to
hold irrational beliefs. Among the beliefs I hold for example, is that seven plus five equals 12, which I take it as rational. Among the beliefs that aren't rational would be the belief that it's
turtles all the way down, or that the next president of the US will be a five year old girl. And we might ask what
the difference is then between rational beliefs,
beliefs that are rationally held, and those that aren't. Here we can think about
the deliverances of reason so that a belief could
be said to be rational if it's among the deliverances of reason, irrational otherwise. But when we think about
the deliverances of reason, we have to think about
reason taken in two ways, taken narrowly, or taken more broadly. Taken narrowly, the deliverances of reason have to do with what sometimes, what Kant called, sometimes
you could call the a priori, the sorts of beliefs, the sorts of propositions
one can just see to be true, perhaps on very brief reflection, just by understanding them. So for example, seven plus five equals 12 would be a belief like that, as would be the belief that
there aren't any things that don't exist, at least I
say that belief is like that. Among these beliefs would be
some that are self-evident. Some would be self-evident, they would be, well I should have said, the
ones that are self-evident are the ones that one can see to be true just on brief reflection. And we might think of of
the deliverances of reason in the narrow sense as all
the self-evident truths together with what follows from them, by self-evidently valid forms of argument. We could think of this certainly, deliverances of reason in the narrow sense as the self-evident truths together with what you could deduce from them by using self-evidently
valid forms of argument. It's worth noting that
self-evident comes in degrees or if you like you could instead take self-evidence to be the maximal degree of something else that comes in degrees, namely something we could
call intuitive support. So that beliefs like
seven plus five equals 12 have intuitive support, as do beliefs like there are no things that don't exist. But the first has more by
way of intuitive support than the second, and the
second also has less by way of intuitive support
than there are no things that don't exist and there are some things that don't exist, alright. Self-evident therefore comes in degrees and if we ask now, could we say that the
deliverances of reason in the narrow sense are any beliefs that have some degree
of intuitive support? The answer would be I think no. That couldn't be right. If for no other reason than
because of the Russell Paradox. There are some, very familiar paradox, there are some properties
that exemplify themselves, for example the property
of being a property. There are other properties that
don't exemplify themselves, for example the property of being a horse. So there are the two properties, self-exemplification and
non-self-exemplification, but unhappily non-self-exemplification
exemplifies itself, if and only if it
doesn't exemplify itself. Which means that it both does
and doesn't exemplify itself. Each of the premises
of the Russell Paradox seems to have at least some
degree of intuitive support. Each of the argument forms by which the unhappy conclusion is reached seems self-evidently valid. Which makes it really
hard to give a definition of the deliverance of
reason in the narrow sense. And I'll just leave that as a project for homework as people say. You can work on that when you get a chance and figure out how to explain this notion of deliverance of reason
taken in the narrow sense. In a broader sense of rationality or in a broader sense of
reason, deliverances of reason, we would add perception, memory,
and maybe other faculties. Thomas Reid's sympathy
for example, or induction, maybe still others, testimony. Here we might think that we could speak of the deliverances of reason as follows, the deliverances of reason with respect to a particular profile
of experience of belief, so the deliverance of
reason in this polar sense will differ from one person to another depending on what other
beliefs and experiences these people have. These are the beliefs that would be formed by a properly functioning person, a person whose cognitive
faculties are not subject to malfunction or disfunction, who enjoys that particular profile. This won't quite do the job though because as Freud and
many others have noted very often a particular
faculty or source of belief is impeded or skewed by such things as wish fulfillment for example, or egotism, something like that. And in these cases it
won't be that the faculty or process inflection
isn't function properly, maybe it's functioning perfectly properly, wish fulfillment has it's place and has it's uses you might say, but still the belief in question is, the process forming the
belief in question in impeded by the thing in question, wish fulfillment or
whatever else it may be. So we have to add then that
the deliverances of reason with respect to a particular
profile of experience and belief are the beliefs that we form by a properly functioning person, whose cognitive faculties aren't impeded in that way, on that occasion. Okay now that, I want to turn to the first question then, to what extent is belief in God
foundational to rationality, and I'll read a few
pages of the paper here. So given these preliminaries we can turn to the question in hand,
is religious belief, belief in God say, to make the question
more concrete, rational. I'm on page nine. First is the belief that
there is such person as God contrary to reason in the narrow sense. There are some arguments designed to prove that the notion of an
omnipotent, wholly good person isn't consistent or incoherent. For example there is a
claim that the notion of omnipotence is incoherence, the so-called paradox of the stone. There is also the vaguely
Wittgensteinian argument that it's not possible that there be a person without a body. These arguments however,
are neither impressive, nor widely accepted, and I'll
assume that belief in God isn't concrete to the
deliverances of reason in the narrow sense. There are further questions
here but let's press on. Is belief in God concrete to
the deliverances of reason, a reason taken in the broad sense? Recall that the deliverances
of reason taken this way differ widely from person to person. It's contrary to reason for me to believe that H2O never takes a solid form, not so for a Brazilian tribesman. So whose deliverances of
reason are we talking about? Let's just arbitrarily
suppose we're talking about educated contemporaries, people
who have gone to college, maybe graduated from college,
maybe even have PhDs. Many people suppose that belief in God is irrational for such people, and that if they do believe in God, it will be by virtue of some kind of lack of cognitive proper function. According to Freud, "The
believer wants theism to be true, "and this desire blinds her to the fact "that there is no such person as God. "She can't face reality as it is." "Nature", says Freud,
"Rises up against us, "cold, pitiless, implacable,
blind to our needs and desires. "She delivers hurt, fear,
pain, and in the end "she demands our death. "Paralyzed and appalled we
invent, unconsciously perhaps, "a Father in heaven, who
exceeds our earthly father, "as much in power and knowledge, "as in goodness and benevolence. "The alternative would be
to sink into depression, "stupor, paralysis, and finally death." On this account, belief
in God is irrational. The proper function of cognitive
faculties in the believer is quote, "Impeded or overlaid "by this powerful unconscious desire." Many believers in God think
the shoe is on the other foot. That atheism or unbelief
is at least sometimes, a result of cognitive
faculties being impeded. According to Romans Two, "What may be known about
God is plain to them, "because God has made it plain to them. "For since the creation of the world, "God's invisible qualities, "his eternal power and divine nature, "have been clearly seen, "being understood from
what has been made." Here the suggestion is that in some way God's presence is clear to us. This passage is one source
of Calvin's Doctrine of the Sensus Divinitatis. So why is it that some don't believe? The passage goes on to say, "They suppress the truth
in unrighteousness." Theism severely limits human autonomy. According to theism, we
human beings are at best, very junior partners in the
republic of mind and agency. We are not autonomous,
not a law unto ourselves. Furthermore we are
completely dependent upon God for our being and for
our very next breath. Still further some find in theism a sort of intolerable invasion of privacy. God knows my every thought and indeed knows what I will
think before I think it. There is even a hint of
this attitude in Psalm 139, which goes something, I mean
it's something like this, "If I flee to the mountains you are there. "If I ascend to heaven there you are. "If I descend to the very
depths you are present. "If I cover myself with darkness, "darkness is as light to you." There's just no way to get away. These thoughts so rankle some people that as a result they go
against theistic promptings and reject belief in God. Atheists or agnostics
therefore are likely to think belief in God is irrational. It results from cognitive
impedance by fear or inability to face this cruel world, or perhaps something else. And this seems a sensible
attitude for an atheist to take. From that perspective
theists are dead wrong about the most important
question facing us human beings. So how to account for the fact that many otherwise apparently intelligent people fall into this colossal error, Freudian wish fulfillment or
some other kind of impedance seems to be the most
plausible explanation. Similarly, theists
sensibly attribute atheism to cognitive malfunction
of one kind or another, some kind of blindness. The old hymn, "I was blind
but now I see", perhaps. Or they may attribute atheism to an inordinate desire for autonomy. Richard Rorty said somewhere,
"That Martin Heidegger "felt deeply guilty for
existing in a universe "he had not himself
created", which does display an exceedingly tender
conscious one might think. I mean if that's the worst thing I've done is exist in a universe I haven't created, I'll feel pretty good about myself. So you can attribute atheism, they may attribute atheism
to an inordinate desire for autonomy or perhaps
an unwillingness to play 10th fiddle for a very high end. Whose right, each thinks
the other irrational, is there a way to decide between them? Note first that the
question of the rationality or lack thereof of a
belief is often independent of the truth of the belief. It's irrational for me,
given my circumstances, to have a firm belief that
the number of stars is even, and this is so whether or not
the number of stars is even. Given my circumstances it's
irrational for me to believe that you are really an
alien for outer space, and this is true even if remarkably you are an alien from outer space. But the question of the
rationality of belief in God is not like these two. Here I believe the right answer
is that in a typical case belief in God is rational,
if and only if it's true. We could see this as follows, suppose theism is true, there
is indeed an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly loving God, who has created us and our world, and has created us in his own image. Suppose furthermore that
the human cognitive economy is such that the fast
majority of human beings believe in God or something like God. Our cognitive faculties are such that there is this powerful tendency towards belief in God
or something like God. Given these things it's
very likely that God has endowed us with faculties
or cognitive processes that enable us to be aware
of him and his presence. As I mentioned above, Calvin speaks of his Sensus Divinitatis,
a natural faculty or cognitive process that enables us to know of God's presence and
something of his character. Aquinas speaks of
something similar, he says, "To know that God exists in
a general and confused way "is implanted in us by nature "as much as God is man's beatitude." This cognitive process, no doubt has been skewed
and damaged by sin. Augustan speaks here of the,
"Smoke of our wrongdoing "which blinds us to God and
obscures his presence from us." Still the most likely scenario, given theism together with
the vastly widespread belief in God or something like God, is that he has created us in such a way that we have cognitive or epistemic access to existence and his presence to us. It is natural still further to think that if God has given us such
cognitive access to him, that probably the way
in which we human beings come to believe in God
is roughly at any rate, how he intends us to know
of him and his presence. But that means that the
way in which we come to believe in God is ordinarily at least, the way in which he intends
our faculties to work, hence when they work in that way they are functioning properly, hence the beliefs they
produce are in fact rational. Of course this doesn't mean that all belief in God is rational. It is compatible with this scenario that belief in God is ordinarily rational but in some special cases is not. Perhaps the Sensus Divinitatis
fails to work in someone, that that person so deeply so dislikes his fervently atheist parents that he comes to accept a
belief they hold in contempt, and does so just because
they hold it in contempt. Unbalanced however if he is a mistruth and theistically disordinarily rational. On the other hand if theism is false, if there is no such person as God then probably theistically is irrational. If theism is false, then
publicly belief in God is produced by cognitive
faculties that are malfunctioning or impeded by one thing or an other. Again there may be exceptions, perhaps someone believes in
God on the basis of an argument that's actually misleading, but
on the face of it plausible. Perhaps someone rationally believes that it is at any rate possible that there be a greatest possible being, and sees furthermore
that if that is possible, then it follows that indeed there is a greatest possible being, which being would be the God of theism. For the most part however,
it's likelihood theism is false then most theistic belief is irrational. There's one complication here, according to classical theism, Aquinas for example, "God
is a necessary being. "There is no possible world
in which God does not exist." But then the proposition
if theism is false, then very likely most
theistic belief is irrational is a subjunctive or
counter-factual conditional with a necessarily false antecedent. According to most influential accounts of subjunctives, or counter-factuals, or counter-factuals with a
necessarily false antecedent, it is necessarily true no
matter what the consequent. So while if theism is false, then very likely most theistic belief is irrational is certainly true. The same can be said
for if theism is false then very likely most
theistic belief is rational. I don't have the space here to deal thoughtfully
with this complication, and furthermore don't really
know how deal with it properly. We should note however, that it's far from obvious
that any counterfactual with a necessarily false
antecedent is true. It's true that if I were to
prove Godel's theorem false, logicians everywhere would be astonished. It's not true that if I were
prove Godel's theorem false logicians everywhere
would yawn in boredom. Suppose God is necessarily omniscient. It doesn't follow that if
God were not omniscient then he would know that he doesn't exist. Much more needs to be said here, but I don't have the space to say it. In response to the first part
of my assignment therefore, I can prove that probably
belief in God is rational, if and only if theism is true. Now I want to turn to the second part, and I'll go back to this handout here. So, the question is, "To
what extent is belief in God "foundational to rationality?" I'm at roman numeral two on
the second page of the handout. While we could take this question as could someone rationally believe that our cognitive faculties are reliable, only if we also believe in God. And I think the answer
to that question is no. That's not true, one could, even somebody who doesn't believe in God, could certainly rationally believe that our faculties are reliable. But I do think that a
reflective naturalist gets a defeater for the proposition, I'll call it R, that our
cognitive faculties are reliable. I'll be using naturalism
as a name for the view that there's no such person
as God, or anything like God, so that naturalism is
stronger than atheism. You could be an atheist without
rising to the full heights or descending to the full
depths of naturalism. But if you're a naturalist,
you're bound to be an atheist. That's just the way I'm gonna use the term in this argument. And there is both a narrower
and a broader version of an argument for the conclusion that a reflective
naturalist gets a defeater for the proposition that
our faculties are reliable. According to the narrower version it might be that natural
selection will weed out faculties that produce false beliefs, or a proportion of false
beliefs about matters that are important to survival such as the presence of
predators, the presence of food, presence or absence of mates,
and that sort of thing. That natural selection
probably wouldn't weed out cognitive faculties, that produce false, what we like to call metaphysical beliefs, and not just metaphysical
beliefs in the usual sense, but say, I don't know if advanced beliefs, in advanced parts of physics, but also beliefs like theism,
or atheism, or naturalism. And if natural selection
would rule out such beliefs, tend to weed out the processes that produce false metaphysical beliefs, then there is good reason
to doubt the reliability of the faculties that do
produce metaphysical beliefs, which would give one
a defeater for beliefs when it takes to be produced by such processes including
naturalism itself. A broader version of the
argument goes like this, take N to be naturalism,
take E to be the proposition that we've come to be by way of evolution, then the argument has it's first premise, the probability of our
faculties being reliable, the probability of our
given inner-need is low. And a second premise,
anyone who accepts entity, and sees that one is true as
undefeated defeater for R, the proposition that our
faculties are reliable. And third premise, anyone who
has undefeated defeater for R has an undefeated defeater
for any belief he holds, therefore for, anyone who accepts entity and sees that one is true, such a person would be
a reflective naturalist, has an undefeated defeater
for N, itself naturalism and hence can't rationally believe it. It's, the first premise seems
to me that unlike Ernie, Ernie seems to me to concede
the truth of the first premise, but I thought the first premise is the one that needs the most defense, than what came next and I defended it. First I wanted to take naturalism
as including materialism, where materialism is the idea that human, I should say that materialism
with respect to human beings, where materialism is the
idea that a human being is a material object through and through, just a material object, not as Descartes and Augustine had it, an immaterial substance that
stands in a close relationship to a particular material object,
namely this persons body, but a material object all the way through. Maybe a person is identical
with his or her body, or with some part of it like the brain, or one hemisphere of the brain, or some part of a hemisphere of the brain. Maybe a person isn't exactly
identical with any part of his or her body, but with
some other physical object composed of the same stuff as
her body, something like that. And if you ask what a belief will be then, given materialism, presumably a belief, you suppose there really
are such things as a belief, a belief will be something
like a longstanding event, or structure in the
brain, or nervous system. Such an event that is a belief then, will have two kinds of properties, it'll have neurophysiological properties, properties specifying how
many neurons are involved in that particular structure, how they're related to each other, and how the rate of fire in
one part of the structure is related to the related
fire in other parts. Properties involving how the rate of fire in various parts of the
structure responds to input from other structures and the like. On the other hand if this thing is really, this structure is really a
belief, it's got a content. It has to be the belief that P for some particular proposition P, perhaps the proposition I said in a paper that Proust is more
subtle than Louis L'Amour. I don't know if how many of you know who Louis L'Amour is, but
he wrote some 200 westerns, none of which is particularly subtle. So it's not surprising that
Proust would be more subtle than Louis L'Amour. So the belief would
have to have a content, that proposition or
some other as a content, and then if you asked yourself, well how do actions or bodily motions get cause then, given materialism. Well what causes a given bodily movement would be a signal sent from the brain, perhaps if it's a belief
that's doing the causing or part causing a signal
sent from this belief down the appropriate nervous channels to the appropriate muscles, causing muscular contraction and hence the movement in question, raising ones arm or something like that. So from the point of view of materialism it's by virtue of the
neurophysiological properties of a belief causes what it does cause. You can call this
content epiphenomenalism, not by virtue of it's content. If this belief had the same
neurophysiological properties, this structure, if it had the same neurophysiological properties but a different content it would
make the same contribution, same causal contribution to behavior. But if content doesn't
in this way get involved in the causal chain leading to behavior then content will be invisible
to natural selection, in which case natural
selection won't modify belief producing processes,
can't be counted on to modify belief producing processes in the direction of greater reliability. In which case the right
thing to think then is that the probability of our faculty is being reliable is low. The second premise then
is one who accepts entity and sees that one is true, has an undefeated defeater for our, the belief for our substance that our faculties are reliable. I think this is the premise of my argument that Ernie needs to crawl with, and we'll find out later on. But here you might think,
well one way to defeat the looming defeater here would be to go to the MIT Cognitive Reliability
Laboratory and be tested, they give you a clean bill of health, a clean bill of cognitive health anyway. But of course that really won't work because you would then be
relying on the reliability of your faculties for the
proposition that it was indeed, to the MIT Cognitive
Laboratory that you went, and relying on them for the
proposition that they did say that your faculties are okay and the like. As Thomas Reid says, "If a man's honesty "were called into question
it would be ridiculous "to refer to the man's own word, "whether he be honest or not." So it looks as if any
proposed fear to fear here will have involve an
argument of some sort, but any argument will have premises, and I will have the very same defeater for each of those premises
that I had to start with for R, and will have furthermore
the same defeater for each of the propositions
to follow to the effect that if these premises are
true then so is the conclusion. So I say, given the
truth of these premises the conclusion follows,
one who accepts entity and sees that one is true, has
an undefeated defeater for N, and as to can't rationally believe it. Thank you. - Well at this point, what
I'd like to do is have us raise any questions of interpretation. If you want to raise a question
about the characterization, the proper characterization
of what Professor Plantinga has argued, that would be appropriate. I don't want to at this point
have a full fledged discussion of the merits of the argument, but if there are questions,
retail questions as it were about what Professor Plantinga has argued it would make sense to address those now, and then we'll turn things
over to Professor Sosa. Linda did you, and then Mark, and Mike. - Well thank Al very much for the talk. I have a question about the
argument, the one before. - [Alvin] The second
argument, I mean the, A-A-N. - The argument that has the
first premise of the probability of R, and hypothesis of
N and being this low. So my question is to what
extent is this an argument about naturalism as
opposed to materialism? It seems that naturalism,
you say includes atheism, it also includes materialism, but atheism seems to play no
role at all your argument. It's materialism that seems
to be the object of tack. Because materialism, meaning materialism about the nature of the human being, and in particular the materialist view of the nature of beliefs, and the connection
between beliefs and acts. So I guess my question is, would this argument be
recast with N replaced by M, the materialist thesis, and
if so would you be willing to accept that it's
actually not an argument against atheists who are not materialists, but it is an argument against materialists whether or not they're theists, atheists? - I thought of materialism
as playing the following, I'm sorry atheism or naturalism as playing the following role here, if you're a theist you'll
think that God has created us in his image and part of that
involves being able to know what the world is like, and then something about him and the like. So that even though it's not the case that it would be by virtue of content that a given action is cause, still it might be that
God has so arranged things that there is a corelation
between the beliefs we come to, however we do come to them
on the basis of materialism, and the truth. Of course if you're a naturalist, you won't have that
view, so it seems to me you do need the naturalism as
well as just the materialism. In other words, you could be a materialist who is also a Christian,
who thinks that God has so arranged things that
one comes to know these things about God as well as about
the rest of the world. That's what I was thinking. - [Linda] Okay. - Mark. - This really is just clarification about what you mean by theism, and how thick a conception
of theism it is, right. So I guess what I want
to know is when you ask about what we should take to
be the case of theism is true, do you mean like anselmian, just anselmianism about
the most perfect being? Do you mean any of the features that are distinctive of
the Christian conception? Do you want to include in the contingent features of God in theism or features that are
contingent even given the fact that God created beings
like us in our situation. And that, and you know is the atheist someone who denies theism in that sense, or is the atheist
someone who denies theism in a much more thorough going way? - I was thinking of theism has to do that there is an all powerful, maybe you could say omnipotent, maybe not, all knowing, perfectly good,
and perfectly loving person who has created the world and created human beings in his image. That's how I was thinking of it. So, another way to say it, - [Tim] Pretty thick
conception arguing point. - Yeah, right. So if you think about
the theistic religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, it would be the conception of God one finds in those religions. Though I'm not certain about image part with respect to Islam. - [Tim] And Michael? - At one point you used the
expression something like God, how close would it have to be to qualify? Meaning, would Zeus for
example be something like God, or not close enough? - Yeah, I think so. Right, so if you believed in Zeus you wouldn't be a
naturalist, so I'm thinking. I admit that the term, I mean that naturalism as I understand it, as I explained it is vague. I'm hoping that for present purposes that vagueness won't matter. So you might wonder for example, what about say, Cartesian
or Augustinian dualism, is that too much like, is such a self or soul too much like God for a naturalist to be
a dualist, ala Decartes? Well I don't really know. But I don't think for present
purposes that's gonna matter. - More interesting question
following up on Michael's is how 'bout Spinoza? Is Spinoza a naturalist? - I'm inclined to think Spinoza is, because I'm inclined to
think that for Spinoza, it's a term God that gets applied. Where as what you really
has naturalistic factor. - [Man] I would very
much disagree with that. - What's that? - [Man] I would very
much disagree with that. - Well maybe I'm wrong you know, I'm not a Spinozist or a Spinosist. - [Man] Neither am I
but that doesn't mean. - But I mean maybe the right answer to say well I don't really know but again I hope it won't matter for present purposes. - Can I just follow up? I actually mean, Zeus had a wife, who I believe was his sister and so on, and so I sort of assume
those guys and gals had bodies et cetera. I mean I'm not an expert on
Greek mythology et cetera. So I mean if you're counting
that as something like God, that seems like a pretty generous, sort of low degree resemblance. - Well I'm not too sure either about how exactly how are
supposed to stand with Zeus. I don't know, (group laughing) whether Zeus had a body all the time, or to assume one when he felt like it, you know exactly how this worked. That's not totally clear. - [Tim] Louise? - Yeah, I just wanted
to say for the record that none of the atheists
who are my friends, and I have theist friends
and atheist friends, none of the atheist friends that I have think that belief in religion
is irrational per se. We go on a case by case basis, and in fact in every case I
would not hazard any overall, well I mean I guess I mean
there might be a few cases, of someone who I feel
confident believes something that they believe irrationally. But there's no necessity
in the atheistic picture, or any atheistic picture that I'm sympathetic too, for saying that religious
belief per se is irrational, or that particular
individual religious people are irrational, or anything like that. I think it's just totally rhethodinal to the issue whether it's true. But the other thing I
wanted to ask you about was whether or not you think
that a certain position, which was position that was taught to me as a Catholic girl, to
be the correct position, is incoherent, or is not, is self-undermining, or what
your view is of this position. So the position that I was
taught when I was a girl and I went to Sister having
just heard about evolution, being very upset about it. I was told, and this was later confirmed by a number of nuns and priests, that it was perfectly possible
to be a good Catholic, and believe that God's mechanism for creating the natural
world involved the processes that are described by
contemporary biological science. And it's not that, I mean I suppose you
could say that a theist would need to believe
that there was direction at the beginning, but I don't see, that seems to me to be
a gratuitous add-on. It's seems a perfectly
consistent position to believe that God setup a certain kind
of nomological framework, created some initial
conditions, and let it play out, let it see what happened. And one of the things
that happened in the way it happened to play out with those laws and those initial
conditions was the emergence of perceivers and then later cognizers. Is that not a possible position? Is that equally undermined by belief in the evidence for evolution? - No, because I take it, well I mean first of all I
agree with the suggestion that one can both be a Catholic Christian and also accept evolution. My thought though is that
the evolution in Christian has to be guided evolution,
not unguided evolution, and I'm thinking of setting
up initial conditions in such a way as to reach
a forgone conclusion on the part of God as a way of guiding it. So I don't think you can sensibly think, I mean I think my argument would work with respect to the suggestion
that the process of evolution is completely unguided,
God didn't intend it to turn out a certain way at all. Completely unguided, and with
respect to that suggestion I think my argument would work. The probability of our
faculties being rational or reliable under that condition, reliable under that
condition would be low but, - I'm not, so what do you mean by guided? So God might have, maybe what God wanted to do was create a whole bunch of universes, and I don't know anything
really about physics, but there are people around saying that there are many universes. Maybe he wanted to create
a whole bunch with, you know there's a whole group that have the same natural laws, but are arranged with initial conditions, and maybe there are some that
have different natural laws and so forth, and just see what happens. - Just see what happens? - Yeah, just that. - I thought, you see I'm
talking about our world I guess, I don't know what the other worlds. But in our world I was
taking it that theism includes the idea that God
has created us in his image. That seems to me incompatible with just starting something off and seeing how it happens. - Okay. - It seems rather, it
requires that you intend that it turn out a certain way, and arrange things in
such a way that it will. - Okay, but could God have done that, made that arrangement by, on creating a world with
just the natural laws that contemporary science
tells us are the natural laws, and just the initial conditions that contemporary or future physics say are the initial conditions? - Well I don't know that what
contemporary physics says are the initial conditions. I mean, - Well let's suppose
contemporary physics is right. - I'm sorry? - What I'm tryin' to figure out is, there certainly is a possible path from a given set of initial conditions, say the ones that, let's say the correct
naturalistic physics tells us are the initial conditions. I doubt that you're denying
that there is some path, that you think you have the argument. So that there's some path
given those conditions and those laws to a world in which there are cognizers with reliable
conginitive and conceptual. - Yes.
- Okay, so could God have chosen
that kind of world? - He could provided he
knew it was gonna turn out the way he wanted it to. - Well he always knows
how it's gonna turn out. - Yeah.
- Okay but then what the, - Provided he knew it was
gonna turn out that way. - Okay, but then if God could choose, well sorry this is getting into objections not interpretations, - Yeah, that's interesting. - Yeah but right, so I
mean so there could be, so it's I'm not saying
that the probability of R on entity is zero,
I just think it's low. - But if you, sorry. - David you wanted to
get in, and then Richard, and then Michael again, and then yeah, we'll
turn it over to Ernest. And then Trenton. - Yeah I wanted to question the whole use of the term theism. If I understand what you're
doing, and along these lines, is there's something called theism, and then in conversation you indicated that this seems to be common to the three theistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam,
and it has certain properties. Now it seems to me that a term like theism functions a bit more like a Wittgensteinian family resemblance, and therefore it's difficult
to list a certain set of properties that this ism has, and therefore common
to its three branches. For example, I could argue from out of the Jewish tradition of which I'm part, and I suspect that there are parallels in Christian and Islamic thought, I could challenge the three main qualities that you described to the theistic God, omnipotence, omniscience,
and all lovingness. Omnipotent, well I mean a
God who chooses to create, and a God who chooses
to endow his creation with a certain degree of independence has thereby limited his omnipotence. Omniscience, there's a
very interesting strand of, in late, well actually
early modern Jewish theology that indicates that if human beings are really to have free choice, it's not just to be an illusion, God basically has to eliminate
any knowledge of the future, because that would destroy freedom. - That's what Richard
Swinburne thinks too right? - Yeah, and as for all lovingness, I mean a God who elects
a particular people, let alone Christianity, elects
a particular human being to be incarnate, seems
to be confining his love to very particular objects, and it's not necessarily
universally the case. I'm raising all of these
questions indicating that it might be simply best I think, that in zeroing in on all of these things we actually zero in on how
these are characterizations of how a particular tradition deals with these philosophical questions. - Yeah, well we expect some of these, I guess I'm just not quite
sure I agree with you, I mean I don't think God
gives us omnipotence, or being all-powerful by virtue
of creating free creatures. It's true that he can't
create free creatures, such that he can also determine
that they do what they do. So they might do
something he doesn't like. But that's not to compromise omnipotence. Omnipotence would not
involve being able to do what's impossible, what's
logically impossible. And it would be logically
impossible to create creatures who were both free
and furthermore determined to act in a certain way. If you're thinking freedom
in that particular version, particular way of thinking about freedom. I mean thinking not in the
compatible sense of freedom, but in the libertarian sense of freedom. And with respect to omniscience, well maybe some people would
think, as Swinburne does, that God has to give up omniscience if he wants to create free persons. But, I mean that's something
to be argued about. - Well it's seems to also be argued by an 18th century
thinker, Heime Benauchtar, so I'll take it from him. - Right, yeah. So I mean, well I mean the
term theism is just a word, instead I could invent some other term. I say I'm gonna think about
it being as omniscient, omnipotent, wholly good,
or better, all powerful, all knowing, and perfectly
loving, wholly good. Don't call it theism, call
it something else, Geism, or whatever you like. That's what I want to talk about. Or alternatively I could
just use the term theism in the way that I suggest, admitting that there might be
other ways to use it as well, and admitting that there might
be disagreements or arguments about whether a particular
way of being does in fact constitute omniscience, or
omnipotence, and the like. - Richard and then Trenton. - [Richard] Yeah, I just
have a quick question about the interpretation of premise one, and specifically the probability
you were talking about. - Right, - This isn't probability
in some frequency, relative frequency sense of probability, it's what people might call
evidential probability? Or epistemic probability? - [Alvin] I'm thinking of it
as epistemic probability, yeah. Or evidential probability, that would be another term I guess. - And is it to be interpreted as a claim about the epistemic probability of our given general thesis of naturalism and a general thesis about evolution, or are we adding all sorts of
background beliefs as well? - Not at, I mean that's a hard question. I don't know whether there be
some background beliefs added, but not any, you might
say, particular ones. That there is a world I guess would be, but maybe that's entailed by naturalism? I'm not sure whether it is or not, but that there is a world,
that there are people, - [Richard] That there are beliefs? - That there are beliefs, that
people have cognitive powers and all that. - [Richard] Not that there
are lots of true believers, you wouldn't include that obviously. - Well you could put that, be okay, you could include there
are lots of true believers. - Mostly true believe, I mean you can't include
anything that would by itself imply that belief forming
processes are generally reliable. - [Alvin] Right you couldn't include R itself for example. - Or anything that strongly implied it. - Yeah right, nor could
you include not R, so. So one question about this argument is you might say the
admissibility question, what you can sensibly add to entity. I mean presumably one knows more, of the naturalist who
accepts evolution knows more than just N and E. What more can such a person sensibly add? Not R itself presumably, you know that seems like
that wouldn't work out, because in any kind of
a probabilistic defeater could be easily defeated. But exactly what? And that seems to me to be about the same question you're asking. - [Richard] It is, and I, for example, could I add
that I know that I exist, could I add also that I know that I exist? Can I add any knowledge
claims at all in there? - Yeah, I mean I'd be inclined to think you could add that you know such things, as that are being appeared to readily, or are having a pain in your left leg, things like that. Because it might be a, I mean there are some beliefs
that are such as plausible to think that you can't have
them without them being true. And right so, presumably
that you know such things, I suppose you could add yeah. - So at one point I was
reading this as an argument that the naturalist would
be committed to the view that it would be irrational to think that there are any sources of beliefs that are generally reliable,
but you don't really intend it. - No I don't intend to say that, and probably in the
statement of the argument I should have made that clearer. - Trenton? - I hope this is interpretive. (group laughing) I'm not sure. But it's meant to be friendly,
so I think it's interpretive. I don't know if it is. - [Alvin] Interpretive or
unfriendly, either one. - Yeah, okay. I was, so the unfriendly part, (group laughing) As you know I don't think
the second premise is true, so I wouldn't, but it felt
to me like you had a way to run the argument against naturalism without invoking the second premise. So supposed the defense of
premise one based on the idea that the materialist has to say that the only causely
relevant aspect of beliefs are the physical, the neural ones. Suppose that defense of
one is perfectly good. Then you get the result that naturalism implies,
materialism implies that content is irrelevant
to what the beliefs cause. It feels to me like right there that's an argument against naturalism, 'cause it's perfectly obvious
that content is relevant to what beliefs cause. You know in fact at one
point you consider it, you say won't the naturalist respond? Well of course, it's the reason
I walked to the refrigerator is 'cause I wanted a beer, and you said no the
naturalist can't say that. I think you should say, yes
of course the naturalist thought to say that, 'cause it's the reductio you're running. If naturalism is true
then contents irrelevant, but of course if naturalism is true then, since content is obviously relevant, content's relevant, and now
we've got a contradiction. Now you don't have to worry about the suspect second premise. So I just, I guess my
question was I felt like you brought in this really big argument to defend premise one, that if it works then it looks to me like now you've just got a new
argument against naturalism, and if this new argument doesn't work then defense of premise one doesn't work. So it sort of felt to me like the argument could
have been simplified. - [Alvin] The argument what? - [Trenton] Could have been simplified so, - Let's see if I understand you. So, you say well suppose
premise one is correct. - You know more particularly
suppose the defense you give of premise one on the basis
of materialism is correct? - Right so I suppose materialism, but I'm not quite sure, maybe you want to say what you said again. I don't quite sure, I don't
quite see how this goes. - So if your defense of
premise one is right, it looks to me like naturalism
implies materialism. - Yeah, okay let's supposing it does. I was just taking it, I mean in a way I'm really arguing against the conjunction of
naturalism with materialism. - [Trenton] Okay that fine yeah, so whatever the target is, naturalism as opposed to materialism. If you're right that target implies that the content of your
belief is irrelevant to whatever actions seem to stem from it. It feels to me like if that's right, then that's the argument against
naturalism and materialism. Because here should be the second premise, content is not irrelevant. I think everyone should agree with that. That the reason you go to
get a beer from the fridge is because you believe
there's beer in the fridge and you want a beer, and
so naturalism is false, because it implies this scary claim. - Okay, that sounds like a good argument. It not quite the same argument but, - No it's not but I think the most, but my thought was, it's at least as good as
the official argument here because it's most controversial move is the controversy of
the official argument, but it's actually better
than the official argument, because it doesn't have any
of the bit about anything, like say in premise two. - Well it's a different kind
of argument all together. It's an argument for the
falsehood of naturalism, rather than, - [Trenton] Yeah it's even better then, you should like it even more. - I like it fine. - [Trenton] Okay. (group laughing) - I mean I don't see why I
have to give up this argument. I like this one too. - [Trenton] Yeah, this
was more of an aesthetic, not objection of course,
'cause we're not there yet. But if you are gonna bring
out this kind of big cannon to defend premise one, since it gets you the bigger conclusion, why meander down other routes
to get mere rationality, when you've already got all the resources. - Well I mean you can have that argument and I'll have mine all that. I guess one thing that strikes me here is that it's not in this sense, it's not in this way utterly obvious to me that content does get involved in causal change leading behavior. It could be that that's
not the way it goes, that I mean for example, occasionalism seems to me to
be a fairly sensible view, it's God that causes things. - [Trenton] Oh I see, okay. - And not me that's a, and in that case what I
believe would not get involved in the causal change leading behavior because nothing about me really does, but it's not obvious that that's false. Similarly it's not obvious
to me that a materialist who says that content doesn't get involved but for some other reason thinks there is a kind of correlation here, it's again not obvious
to me that that's false. - Let's have Michael. Michael you wanted to say something. - I just wanted to comment really quickly on Anthony's point actually, here I'm inclined to agree with Al, of course that's not unusual. I mean it seems to me that, you know it's, the most
plausible views of nature is that they're indeterministic. I mean there are deterministic
models and so on, but I think an
indeterministic interpretation is most likely, and then
I arrive this as fact, I didn't want to have
to look at the details, that if you look at the
details of evolution, it might very well turn out
it was really quite unlikely to be intelligent beings roaming around at this point in time, life
could rise quickly and so on. But you it could easily be
the case that you had nothing so to speak above other
primates at this point right, required to something specific. But you had a modification
to essentially get beings like human beings and so on. So I mean of course God could create just zillions of worlds and so on, and then the probability
would be very good that you'd get intelligent, but it wouldn't ensured and so on. And so I think that would
be sort a surprising way of proceeding so. I'm inclined to think that
the story you were told as a young Catholic girl is not probably very
plausible sort of, but anyhow. - [Louise] Way to take it personal. (group laughing) - Before we turn to Earnest, let's have a short break
as we have in the agenda. A very short, you have
15 minutes on the agenda, that's too generous if I may say so let's - [Man] It's already five after so. - It's already five after that's right, so we'll let's try to have, we'll come back in 10 minutes, no more than that for Ernest Sosa.
