The hawk that can catch a rabbit is, in one sense, solving a complex mathematical problem even though it can't solve it in the way(s) that we can; it can also distinguish quite reliably between what it can, with benefit, eat without any (articulate) knowledge of chemistry. — Ludwig V

:chin:

Why are immaterial things we deal with all the time that are organized not relevant? Logic and mathematics, for example. — Patterner

My thoughts also. Platonism in a general philosophical sense (as distinct from specific discussion of Plato’s dialogues) upholds the reality of abstractions including numbers and universals. This was mainstream in Western philosophy until the medieval period, when it was eclipsed by nominalism and later by empiricism.

The Greek philosophers believed that such ‘intelligible objects’ belonged to a higher plane of reality than the material, which humans alone could grasp through the exercise of reason. These are real in a different sense to the objects of sense-perception, being graspable only by the intellect (nous).

Eric Perl’s book has the background to that.

The paradox is that the ‘thing-in-itself’, which Kant most definitely claims must exist as a transcendental truth, cannot be known if our conscious experience is representational; but to know that one’s conscious experience is representational requires us to trust that very conscious experience to know some aspects of the things-in-themselves (such as that we exist with a nature such that we represent objects which impact our sensibility). — Bob Ross

The way in which we know our own being, and the way we know the existence of other objects, is
different. It's the distinction between the first- and third-person perspective. I think that Kant agrees with Descartes that knowledge of our own being is apodictic i.e. it cannot plausibly be denied, as it is a condition of us knowing anything whatever (cogito ergo sum). However, knowing that we are is not the same as knowing what we are. And you may remember other elements of the famous essay in which Descartes made that claim, where he considers the possibility that all of what we perceive might be the consequence of an illusion cast by an 'evil daemon'. So the fact that we can have certain knowledge that we ourselves exist, yet be unsure that all our cognitions are reliable, is not in itself paradoxical, but instead one of the insights that Kant is responding to in his work.

just try to strip away the a priori means of understanding the ball, and you will certainly have nothing conceptually left but an object with no definite properties — Bob Ross

An object with no definite properties is not an object at all. To be an object is to have properties.

when you realize that you had to trust your experience to tell you that you exist in a transcendent world, you have representative faculties, and that those faculties are representing external objects—all of which are claims about reality as it is in-itself. — Bob Ross

Again, the key difference about knowledge of objects, and knowledge of your own faculties, is that the latter have an immediacy and first-person nature which affords a direct insight into their operations. I think Kant is intuitively exploring the nature of knowledge and reason through interogating the operations of his own mind. That is quite a different process to analysing e.g. the motions of bodies, which is done through precise measurement and specification of the conditions under which measurements are taken. Again its the distinction between first- and third-person understanding.

It has been claimed that Kant is a precursor to cognitive science ref. But rather than go into the detail of that, suffice to consider your 'paradox' in light of that framework. What Kant is famous for is the insight that our knowledge of the world is a constructive activity of the mind (his famous Copernican Revolution of Philosophy). We're not, as Locke and Hume say, tabula rasa, blank slates upon which ideas are inscribed by experience. The mind is actively constructing 'the world' (in the sense of the world of lived experience) moment by moment, which is where the categories come in. That is what makes Kant a source both of modern cognitive science and phenomenology, although they develop his insights in many different ways.

The perceived paradox hinges on a misunderstanding of the different types of knowledge that Kant is discussing. While Kant acknowledges that we have an apodictic awareness of our own existence as thinking beings (first-person knowledge), this does not imply that we have direct knowledge of our cognitive faculties as things-in-themselves. The recognition that our experience is representational is a product of transcendental reflection, not direct knowledge of the faculties themselves. Thus, the claim that our knowledge of the world is representational does not require us to have knowledge of things-in-themselves, but rather to understand the conditions under which experience is possible—conditions that Kant elaborates through his analysis of the categories and the forms of intuition.

One lurking factor that I've been thinking over is the change in the conception of the nature of reason over history. As David Bentley Hart puts it:

In the pre-modern vision of things, the Cosmos had been seen as an inherently purposive structure of diverse but integrally inseparable rational relations — for instance, the Aristotelian aitia, which are conventionally translated as “causes,” but which are nothing like the uniform material “causes” of the mechanistic philosophy. And so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries.

This has been subject of much commentary, although not much is said of it on this site, nor in analytic philosophy generally. Alexander Koyré has explored this in his books, with which I have only passing familiarity. Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason, another, and more generally the New Left's critique of the Enlightenment and the 'instrumentalisation of reason'.

I won't go further with it here, other than to note that this is the background to much of this debate, in which 'reason' is now mainly understood in terms of evolutionary adaptation, rather than as an instrument which is able to discern truth.

Then again, is there any excluded middle in absence of any talk to apply it to? (Identity, instead, is presupposed by meaning; maybe identity is where ontology and logic meet.) — jorndoe

That observation can be made of any number of logical principles and even natural numbers themselves. My belief is that these are discovered not invented, and that this something about the nature of the rational intellect: that it is able to grasp such principles, but that they are not of its own making.

Thanks, by far the most considered response to that essay by any of those I've mentioned it to.

There's no explanation of where this "proposal" came from, nor any account of why anyone would think that such an explanation would justify relying on reason. I wish he had recognized what evolutionary theory does and doesn't justify. — Ludwig V

He's discussing Robert Nozick's The Nature of Rationality. (I now notice that the posted version has lost some of the formatting to distinguish passages from his book, for which I apologise.) He says that this book sets out to provide a 'naturalised epistemology', that is, to ground knowledge in the facts of natural science, and in particular, evolutionary theory. He's saying that Nozick's argument is that the facts of evolutionary biology are sufficient to 'ground reason':

It (i.e. Nozick's book) seems to be a proposal of a possible naturalistic explanation of the existence of reason that would, if it were true, make our reliance on reason “objectively” reasonable--that is, a reliable way of getting at the truth.

So throughout this passage, he's presenting Nozick's proposal as an example of a naturalised epistemology based on evolutionary biology.

(Naturalized epistemology seeks to understand knowledge, belief, and justification using methods and insights from the natural sciences, particularly psychology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive science, rather than relying solely on a priori philosophical analysis. It treats epistemology as a branch of empirical science, where the processes of acquiring knowledge are studied as natural phenomena. It was notably advanced by W.V.O. Quine in his influential essay "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969). In it, he argued that traditional epistemology's quest for a foundation of knowledge is misguided and that instead, epistemology should be concerned with how humans, as natural beings, actually acquire and justify beliefs. Quine suggested replacing traditional epistemology with a psychological study of how we come to believe what we do. Nozick is writing in this vein, and Nagel is using this book as a foil for a general criticism of naturalised epistemology.)

So he's questioning Nozick's account, asking:

But is the (evolutionary) hypothesis really compatible with continued confidence in reason as a source of knowledge about the non-apparent character of the world? In itself, I believe an evolutionary story tells against such confidence. Without something more, the idea that our rational capacity was the product of natural selection would render reasoning far less trustworthy than Nozick suggests, beyond its original “coping” functions. There would be no reason to trust its results in mathematics and science, for example. — Nagel, p5

The 'something more' is a reason that carries its own authority, which need not and should not be grounded in something else. Note the resemblance to this earlier quote:

Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival — Plantinga, Naturalism Defeated

Plenty of animals get along just fine without mathematics and science. So appealing to evolutionary principles in support of reason actually has rather the contrary effect of undermining it, rather than strengthening it.

The justification of reason as a practice in its own right is a quite different project, and if that is his point, he (Nagel) is right. — Ludwig V

Well, that I take to be his point. Basically I read the argument as saying, to rely on scientific or evolutionary justifications for reason, is to undermine the sovereignty of reason. And why? Because it points to factors outside reason itself to ground reason:

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. — p6

The fact that we have a rational capacity demands an evolutionary account. — Ludwig V

I don't know that it does. I agree that we certainly did evolve along the lines shown by the paleontological evidence, but I question how useful it is to rationalise the capacity to reason and speak in those terms.

Other than those points, mostly in agreement with the rest of the analysis, particularly the conclusion.

Sure, totally get that. It’s a very meaty essay.

How about the law of the excluded middle. Is that temporal?

Well, his 'hard problem' paper was the watershed moment. And don't loose sight of the fact that he was a bronze medallist at the Mathematics Olympiad before he got into philosophy. He's really rather a clever cookie. See the interview here, he grew up in my neighbourhood.

I'm expecting radical conceptual developments. A new Kuhnian paradigm. — Ludwig V

I think the outlines are beginning to emerge. Don't forget, the publication of Chalmer's book Towards a Theory of Consciousness, and the paper on the facing up to the problem of consciousness, virtually initiated the whole new sub-discipline of 'consciousness studies', which is at the intersection of phenomenology, psychology, cognitive science and philosophy. The bi-annual Arizona conference on the science of consciousness has been held ever since, co-chaired by Chalmers.

That's not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking of the way that so many economists think that everything is economics. Ai Wei Wei, apparently, once observed "Everything is Art, Everything is Politics." Other people think that everything is religion. — Ludwig V

It sounds very close to what I had in mind. Anyway - I'm sure you would agree that a large part of philosophy is learning to look at your spectacles instead of just through them.

Weinberg was a much more accomplished physicist — Pierre-Normand

But Michel Bitbol the more perceptive philosopher. As far as philosophy goes, Weinberg was a walking talking illustration of the 'Cartesian Divide'.

Michel Bitbol is definitely worth knowing about. One of the best discoveries I've made via this forum. He has many talks on YouTube.

Here’s the Wikipedia article on them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingjiao_Documents

I read excerpts from Martin Palmer’s book on the subject whilst doing Buddhist Studies. They’re very beautiful decorated silk scrolls written in Classical Chinese with many Buddhist and Taoist symbols and allegories.

By acknowledging the indispensability of the observer. Bitbol (whom you introduced me to, by the way) is a very different kind of thinker to Weinberg.

I don't believe the question is answerable because it comes from trying to combine two incommensurable accounts. So the "hard problem" is based on an incoherent question. — Janus

No, it asks a very good question which draws attention to the incoherence of physicalism and the inability of it to explain the process which you say is ‘fairly well understood.’

Weinberg argued that sequences of "why?" questions always lead down to particle physics (and general relativity) and, prospectively, to some grand Theory of Everything. — Pierre-Normand

Hence his well-known quotation 'the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.' Physics is constructed to as to exclude meaning, context, etc - as you point out.

The problem with the question as posed in the thread title, is that ‘pre-existing’ is a temporal description, referring to something that existed before everything else existed in time. Whereas classical theism, as a model, has the ‘ground of being’ as omnipresent and eternal, meaning, outside of time altogether. It’s ‘before’ the existing world not in the sense of temporal order, but in terms of ontological priority as first principle or ground of being.

What is the science which supports the premise of immaterial Forms which are prior to, and the cause of material existence? Is there some -ology? — Patterner

That is the basic premise of metaphysics in the classical tradition. Of course it is a truism that nowadays metaphysics has fallen into disrepute, viewed as dusty tomes of scholastic philosophy. But there’s been a recent revival, and there’s a great book, which a kindly soul has made available online, Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, of which there’s an unauthorised .pdf copy online (which is just as well, as it’s both out of print, and extremely expensive in hardcopy.) The first several chapters lays out the origin of Plato’s ‘forms’ with pristine clarity.

Human senses and brain activity are certainly dependent on physical processes. — Janus

By some process yet to be understood…..

I appreciate your response and quotations, but I don't think it addressed the OP whatsoever. — Bob Ross

All due respect, I think they’re directly relevant, and if you’re not seeing why they’re relevant, it is because of the way you’re framing the problem. As has been noted above, there is no paradox in the work you’re citing. I think you’re sensing it as a paradox because you have an innate conviction that the world is innately real - and yet Kant seems to call this into question. So it’s more a kind of cognitive dissonance. Isn’t that the source of the paradox you’re claiming to describe, in simple terms?

Again, I feel this particular passage is relevant:

We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices. — Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Bryan Magee, Pp105-106)

I think the OP is underwritten by just such ‘realistic assumptions’.

There should be a name for the fallacy of thinking that, because one has a hammer, everything's a nail, or that a good place to look for your lost keys is under the lamp-post. — Ludwig V

There is. It’s called ‘scientism’.

Some early schools of Buddhists were said to be atomist, but on closer reading, their version of atoms were 'dhammas' which are actually momentary experiences, arising and passing away in such quick succession that they create an illusion of duration. The abhidhamma texts give an actual precise duration of these dhammas, which is infinitesmally small.

As the Buddhists declare, material facts are neither universal nor eternal because of the disequilibrium that causes their emergence. — ucarr

Or in more traditional Buddhist parlance, 'all compound things are subject to decay' (reputedly the last words of the Buddha.)

We can't, and idealists know this, but "solve" the problem by rejecting the external. However, Kant's transcendental idealism maintains the external object by distinguishing between its empirical sense and transcendental sense. — jkop

After the First Edition of the CPR was published, many critics said that Kant was no different to Berkeley, which greatly annoyed him. Accordingly in the second edition he included the 'refutation of idealism', a summary of which can be found here. The salient point was that he wanted to differentiate himself from Berkeley by showing we must be aware of an external reality, in order to maintain (or index) or own sense of the temporal succession of experiences.

I think, again, a problematical perspective is introduced here:

if the object that we see is only our own phenomenal object, then how can we explain its relation to the external object? — jkop

The question is posed as if it is possible to compare the appearance and the object, implying that they are separable. I think that relies on an implicit 'world-picture' of the self and world - but that itself is a product of the brain/mind! We can't 'get outside' phenomena in that way. (There's something distinctly Zen about all this, in my view.)

Furthermore, it's in no way 'our own phenomenal object' (suggesting solipsism) because our minds all rely on the same a priori categories. We all share the same categories, kinds of objects, species, etc.

:up: Glad it resonates for you. Hence my frequent mention of Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter, which backs this up with solid empirical data.

On the issue about naturalism, I got turned off when I realized that natural was being interpreted as scientific. Thumbnail sketch - That idea entirely ignores the history and practice of science. Science looks to me to be something almost entirely artificial. — Ludwig V

I agree with you again! My objections are to that vein of popular philosophy which esteems science as the arbiter of reality. Of course many educated folk see through that but it is still a pervasive current of thought.

Kant begins with the presupposition that our experience is representational and proceeds to correctly conclude that knowledge of the things-in-themselves is thusly impossible. However, anyone who questions the legitimacy of this presupposition readily realizes that its justification rests purely a posteriori—on the empirical evidence of our representative faculties as presented to us in our conscious experience (or of another); and, as such, presupposes, from the onset, that one can trust their experience enough to know that (1) they exist (2) with representative faculties (3) in a transcendent reality which (4) has other things in it and of which (5) one’s representative faculties are representing. — Bob Ross

I'm no expert, but I think I have enough understanding to pinpoint a problem with this analysis. I think you're misinterpreting the significance of the 'ding an sich' - you're representing it as something real yet innaccesible, and then expressing a kind of frustration that we're left with only 'the representation' as a kind of inferior copy of The Real Thing. You want to 'peek behind the curtain', so to speak. But to make this comparison, you have to put yourself outside both the appearance and the thing in itself, as if they could be compared.

Consider this account of the matter:

Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. — Emrys Westacott

any given phenomena stripped of the a priori means of intuiting and cognizing it is left perfectly unintelligible (viz., remove all spatial, temporal, mathematical, logical, etc. properties from the phenomena and you have nothing left to conceptually work with other than a giant '?'); so whatever the thing-in-itself is will be exactly what is unintelligible: it is the 'thing' stripped of the a priori means of cognizing it. — Bob Ross

You could just as well say, were we unconscious, then we'd know nothing. The 'apriori means of intuiting' just are the activities of the conscious mind/brain by which it assimilates and interprets information about the world. All well and good - but then you try to work out what there could be in the absence of that - which we can't know, as a matter of principle. And sometimes knowing you don't know something is what needs to be understood.

Anyone who supposes that if all the perceiving subjects were removed from the world then the objects, as we have any conception of them, could continue in existence all by themselves has radically failed to understand what objects are. Kant did see this, but only intermittently ‚ in the gaps, as it were, between assuming the existence of the noumenon 'out there' as the invisible sustainer of the object. He expressed it once in a passage which, because so blindingly clear and yet so isolated, sticks out disconcertingly from his work:

'If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of this subject's representations.'

(An) objection would run: 'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to what Kant has just been quoted as saying, that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room. The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.

Schopenhauer's second refutation of the objection under consideration is as follows. Since all imaginable characteristics of objects depend on the modes in which they are apprehended by perceiving subjects, then without at least tacitly assumed presuppositions relating to the latter no sense can be given to terms purporting to denote the former‚ in short, it is impossible to talk about material objects at all, and therefore even so much as to assert their existence, without the use of words the conditions of whose intelligibility derive from the experience of perceiving subjects. Again, then... transcendental realism cannot be stated. It is 'the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself. But 'just as there can be no object without a subject, so there can be no subject without an object, in other words, no knower without something different from this that is known . . . A consciousness that was through and through pure intelligence would be impossible . . . For consciousness consists in knowing, but knowing requires a knower and a known. Therefore self-consciousness could not exist if there were not in it a known opposed to the knower and different therefrom.'... Consciousness is intrinsically intensional ‚ it is always consciousness q/"something: it always has an object. — Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Bryan Magee, Pp105-106)

What makes the physical events within the machine into a calculation cannot be recognized as mathematical calculations unless we have arranged that representation. It is not the result of any physical properties or events within the machine independently of the context in which we interpret them. — Ludwig V

I agree with your analysis, but I don’t see how that affects the argument. In fact what you're saying here could easily be interpreted as a defence of Aristotelian form-matter dualism.

You seem confused — wonderer1

Not in the least.

Plantinga is not making an argument against physicalism. — wonderer1

Of course he is, insofar as naturalism is materialist or physicalist in orientation. What I've spelled out is why Plantinga argues that naturalism is an insufficient basis for belief. From his 1994 Naturalism Defeated .pdf:

"With me," Darwin said, "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?"

The same thought is put more explicitly by Patricia Churchland. She insists that the most important thing about the human brain is that it has evolved; this means, she says, that its principal function is to enable the organism to move appropriately: Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival — Plantinga, Naturalism Defeated

He's talking about beliefs and convictions - not about the ability to act in such a way as to enhance survival. Against what criteria do we judge beliefs or convictions to be true, as distinct from pragmatically useful? You will notice that evolutionary materialists, such as Dawkins/Dennett, will say outright that all of what us 'lumbering robots' think and do is in service of the 'selfish gene'. That is the kind of mentality he has in his sights. (I believe Dennett responded extensively to Plantinga, but I'm not going to pursue it further. )

That there exists in the human mind and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity

I certainly have some form of that, though not exclusively Christian in orientation.

I will add, I don't pursue this line of argument as a 'proof of God' as I don't believe that it possible, my interest in it only extends to showing the inherent self-contradictions of reductive materialism, as by it's own reckoning, its activites are the consequences of 'a nervous system that enables the organism to succeed in the four F's', social organisms though we might be.

I recall something Krishnamurti said. Krishnamurti, in case you don’t know, was an Indian spiritual teacher who lived from the late 19th c until 1983 or so, giving talks to audiences all over the world. When asked if the will was free, he would usually answer ‘of course not, as will is the instrument of desire’.

Food for thought.

A Turing machine could also use ZF to prove an otherwise unprovable theorem in PA. Therefore, it is not something that only human minds can do. — Tarskian

However, isn’t ‘the Turing machine’ something that only exists in the minds of humans? An actual Turing machine would require infinite memory, so it is not something that could ever exist.

That is where I fundamentally disagree with Penrose. — Tarskian

Well, that's cool. I don't understand either you or him.

If there's never been an account of how the first-person nature of lived experience arises from the objective source, then wouldn't that tell you that maybe it's because it can be sufficiently explained through physicalism alone? — L'éléphant

No, because the fact of one's own being is neither a physical fact, nor can it be denied (cogito ergo sum).

I think we make a mistake when we take physicalism as an epistemic theory, rather than an ontological theory. If it could demonstrate (and I think it does pretty well) that all things supervenes on the physical structure, then it has done its job. — L'éléphant

And here, 'supervenes' is able to be defined in just such a way as to paper over any current or even newly-discovered inadequacies in physicalism.

What I think is difficult for us to reconcile with accepting the truth of physicalism is that we, by default, feel defeated by the notion of the "mechanical". But if you follow Aristotle's 4 causes, it theorizes that we're not just machines in motion, but could be affected by changes in our environment, the efficient cause. — L'éléphant

Well, speaking of Aristotle, he distinguishes artifacts (i.e. machines) from organisms on the basis that the latter are self-organising and their parts all work together to maintain the whole. Whereas machines are manufactured, their principle is external to them, and each part performs only the role designated by manufacturer.

No, I'm opposed to physicalism because I think it's an illusion, something like a very influential popular myth. Because we're bedazzled by science and technology (and hey I'm no different in that respect) we see the world in those terms, but matter has no ultimate, mind-independent reality. Tangential to the original post, but there it is.

Not so. Mine is a perfectly reasonable paraphrasing of Plantinga’s argument. You’ve presented nothing so far that shows you understand it. The reason he doesn’t discuss communication is that it is tangential to his argument.

However, in order to make that case Plantinga would need to establish that truth conveying communication occurring amongst members of the social species would do nothing to increase the reliability of the cognitive faculties of members of that species, as compared to being a feral member of the species without social interaction. — wonderer1

Again, it doesn't address the evolutionary argument against naturalism. He doesn't say that we're incapable of communicating, or that we can't convey information by speaking to one another. For that matter, many creatures other than humans communicate. Bee dances communicate where flowers are. Many birds and of mammals convey warnings or indications of food sources. But then, none of those involve truth claims, as such. They display behaviours which can be understood in terms of stimulus and response. Note that such behaviours are 'reliable' in that bee dances and meerkat alarm calls really do indicate where flowers are or that danger is approaching. The evolutionary argument is rather about judgements of truth.

The argument is that naturalism maintains that mental events such as beliefs are the result of natural (e.g. neurological) causes that can be explained by the principles of natural science (such as neurology) - in other words, instances of efficient causation, where one event (cause) brings about another event (effect) in accordance with physical or natural laws. In this view, mental states, including beliefs, are determined by physical processes in the brain, which are themselves the result of evolutionary pressures and biological mechanisms. Whereas, reasoned inference works by different principles, relying on the relationship between propositions where the truth of one proposition logically necessitates the truth of another. So it's of a different order to physical causation - it transcends it.

That is the thrust of the argument, and so far, I fail to see how your 'social species' response actually addresses it.

The overwhelmingly vast majority of true statements about the natural numbers cannot be expressed in language — Tarskian

Doesn’t two plus two equals four qualify? It’s a true statement about natural numbers isn’t it?

If you are going to claim that I said something, then please have the intellectual integrity to quote what I actually said — wonderer1

Sure:

Nagel has fallen in with the cranks at the Discovery Institute, the crank Alvin Plantinga, etc. — wonderer1

Sure it is relevant, if Plantinga hopes to do more than beat on a staw man account of naturalistic evolution. — wonderer1

Your objection doesn’t address the argument.

I might add, whatever occurs within a social species, is a completely separate matter to what evolves according to natural selection. That only operates over much larger time-periods, and refers to the process of speciation. Certainly culture and human capabilities develop, but h.sapiens have not evolved significantly since their early forbears first appeared.

So who’s is the straw man argument?

You asked a loaded question, insinuating that what is in bold is my thinking. — wonderer1

But you did say that Thomas Nagel, atheist though he might profess to be, should be categorised along with 'that crank' Alvin Plantinga, and The Discovery Institute, which is an Intelligent Design organisation. The implication is that you think Nagel and Plantinga's arguments against evolutionary theory are based on religious ideology and science denial, that you lump them all together as being a form of creationism or intelligent design. In actual fact, all three are very different. Thomas Nagel never appeals to intelligent design or belief in God - he says he lacks any 'sense of the divine'.

Can you cite evidence from any version of the EAAN that considers evolution occurring within a social species? Can you recognize that failure to think through the implications of evolution occurring within a social species results in the failure of the EAAN to make the case it claims to?

Suppose evolution alone only resulted in something like a feral human child that you might barely call rational, but if the individual members of that species were raised in a culture with other members of the same species the result was members of that species going to the moon.

Where does Plantinga show any evidence of having considered the role of cuture? — wonderer1

None of that is relevant, though. His argument is epistemological, about the nature of knowledge. It is of the kind described as 'transcendental arguments'. Transcendental arguments seek to demonstrate the necessary preconditions for the possibility of some experience, knowledge, or exercise of reason. They typically follow this form: if a belief is plausible, then certain conditions must be met for it to be coherent and intelligible.

Plantinga argues that if both naturalism and evolution are true, then the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is low. If our cognitive faculties are unreliable, then we have a defeater for any belief produced by those faculties, including the belief in naturalism and evolution. This creates a self-defeating situation for the naturalist.

The basis on which he says that, is that naturalism typically holds that all events, including mental events like beliefs, are the result of natural (e.g. neurological) causes that can be studied and explained by the principles of natural science (such as neurology). This form of causation is often referred to as efficient causation, where one event (the cause) brings about another event (the effect) in accordance with physical or natural laws. In this view, mental states, including beliefs, are fully determined by physical processes in the brain, which are themselves the result of evolutionary pressures and biological mechanisms. Those who hold that the mind is identical with or a product of the brain or neural processes are obliged to hold this view. It is made explicit in the arguments of those such as Daniel Dennett.

In contrast, logical causation refers to the relationship between propositions where the truth of one proposition logically necessitates the truth of another. For example, if "All humans are mortal" and "Socrates is a human" are true, it logically follows that "Socrates is mortal" must also be true. This form of causation pertains to the realm of reason and logic rather than to observable physical processes. It governs how conclusions follow from premises in a rational argument, and is independent of physical causation.

What I've been arguing in this thread, is that the human faculty of reason differentiates humans from other species, because it enables humans to 'see reason' in that second sense (i.e. grasp logical inference.) That general lineage of argument has a very long pedigree, going right back to Plato and his predecessors.

I will add, there have been many developments in naturalism such that it no longer is susceptible to this argument i.e. Deacon's 'absentials', Vervaeke's 'extended naturalism' among others. But the case can certainly be made against the kind of neo-darwinian materialism that Dennett and Dawkins advocate.

Something which is a cause for concern. I keep telling myself I'm spending far too much time chatting here, but

also mine :-)

I didn't say anything about Plantinga being a Christian, and I'd like to hope you might want to refrain from putting words in my mouth like that. Do you think that you can? — wonderer1

No, you said he was a crank. That is not a word I put in your mouth. I am pointing out that he's an academically-qualified academic and professor of philosophy with reference to his Wikipedia entry. I've discussed variations of his 'evolutionary argument against naturalism' in the past. You ought to recognise that it was the subject of a number of textbooks with a great deal of commentary by academics on both sides of the argument, including critics such as Daniel Dennett (for example). So, he's not a crank, and it's not a crank's argument.

From the jacket cover of that title:

This intriguing line of argument raises issues of importance to epistemologists and to philosophers of mind, of religion, and of science. In this, the first book to address the ongoing debate, Plantinga presents his influential thesis and responds to critiques by distinguished philosophers from a variety of subfields. Plantinga's argument is aimed at metaphysical naturalism or roughly the view that no supernatural beings exist. Naturalism is typically conjoined with evolution as an explanation of the existence and diversity of life. Plantinga's claim is that one who holds to the truth of both naturalism and evolution is irrational in doing so. More specifically, because the probability that unguided evolution would have produced reliable cognitive faculties is either low or inscrutable, one who holds both naturalism and evolution acquires a "defeater" for every belief he/she holds, including the beliefs associated with naturalism and evolution. Following Plantinga's brief summary of his thesis are eleven original pieces by his critics. The book concludes with a new essay by Plantinga in which he defends and extends his view that metaphysical naturalism is self-defeating.

the crank Alvin Plantinga, — wonderer1

Speaks volumes, don't it.

Alvin Carl Plantinga[a] (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving epistemic justification), and logic.

From 1963 to 1982, Plantinga taught at Calvin University before accepting an appointment as the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.[2] He later returned to Calvin University to become the inaugural holder of the Jellema Chair in Philosophy.[3]

A prominent Christian philosopher, Plantinga served as president of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 1983 to 1986. He has delivered the Gifford Lectures twice and was described by Time magazine as "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God".[4] In 2014, Plantinga was the 30th most-cited contemporary author in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[5] — Wikipedia

So, an academically-qualified professor of philosophy, but Christian, therefore a crank, right?