Tetsugaku
Well-known member
CS Lewis' formulation of the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN):
The problem with this crude formulation of the argument is that it completely fails to acknowledge the non-random role of selection in evolution. Of course a purely random event is highly unlikely to produce a reliable mind or an accurate map of London. But suppose there were a naturally-occurring iterative procedure whereby whatever small part of the spilled milk that did look a bit like London were kept, and the rest cleaned up and spilled again. Then, if repeated over millions of trials, one could easily eventually end up with a map of London.
The same applies to the reliability of our minds. They were not produced by a one-off random milk spillage, but by a natural and iterative process, where true beliefs and general intelligence were adaptive and favoured by selection. A deeper worry is that there is circularity here, in that one must first believe in the reliability of their own mental processes before analysing the evidence and arguments supporting this evolutionary story. But that is to mistake the role of evidence here. There is no assumption-free Cartesian starting point from which to build up a worldview. The situation is rather that to avoid the paralysis of extreme skepticism we must all assume generally reliable cognition, and the question is rather whether what one discovers after this point, in abductively constructing a coherent explanation for all we experience, remains consistent with our initial assumption.
It would certainly be a problem if our assumed reliable reasoning and perception led us to see that our minds could only have formed either through the capricious choices of an unknowable deity, or through a one-off random natural occurrence. It would also be an issue if we found we had evolved in a niche favouring adaptive behaviours and beliefs regardless of their truth. But that is not what we find. We instead find a natural iterative algorithm that can produce the appearance of complex design all by itself, and that we seem to have evolved in a niche for general-purpose intelligence.
For more on this argument, and its history and formulations, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism
“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
The problem with this crude formulation of the argument is that it completely fails to acknowledge the non-random role of selection in evolution. Of course a purely random event is highly unlikely to produce a reliable mind or an accurate map of London. But suppose there were a naturally-occurring iterative procedure whereby whatever small part of the spilled milk that did look a bit like London were kept, and the rest cleaned up and spilled again. Then, if repeated over millions of trials, one could easily eventually end up with a map of London.
The same applies to the reliability of our minds. They were not produced by a one-off random milk spillage, but by a natural and iterative process, where true beliefs and general intelligence were adaptive and favoured by selection. A deeper worry is that there is circularity here, in that one must first believe in the reliability of their own mental processes before analysing the evidence and arguments supporting this evolutionary story. But that is to mistake the role of evidence here. There is no assumption-free Cartesian starting point from which to build up a worldview. The situation is rather that to avoid the paralysis of extreme skepticism we must all assume generally reliable cognition, and the question is rather whether what one discovers after this point, in abductively constructing a coherent explanation for all we experience, remains consistent with our initial assumption.
It would certainly be a problem if our assumed reliable reasoning and perception led us to see that our minds could only have formed either through the capricious choices of an unknowable deity, or through a one-off random natural occurrence. It would also be an issue if we found we had evolved in a niche favouring adaptive behaviours and beliefs regardless of their truth. But that is not what we find. We instead find a natural iterative algorithm that can produce the appearance of complex design all by itself, and that we seem to have evolved in a niche for general-purpose intelligence.
For more on this argument, and its history and formulations, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism