Q&A: Plantinga’s Argument Against Naturalism
Plantinga’s Argument Against Naturalism
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Please excuse the English. I read your book The Science of Freedom; it was very good. Despite having learned about free will/determinism for a few years, there was still a lot of new material in there that I hadn’t come across.
This question is specifically about one of Plantinga’s arguments against naturalism, namely, the idea that evolution only requires correct action or survivability, but not correct belief. The belief could have been different, so long as the actions/reactions were the same. This, in effect, cuts off the branch one is sitting on, since it calls all of our rational intuitions into question.
At first, this seems like a good argument, but practically speaking I don’t quite understand how it would play out. Sure, perhaps it could apply to a simple action/reaction like seeing a tiger, but when there are many different complex factors, it becomes much harder to say that our perception doesn’t need to match reality.
Even with tigers, it benefits us to know that there really is a tiger in front of us (or, more generally, that reality matches our perception). Otherwise, our minds would constantly have to play tricks on us; the kinds of false perceptions that emerge in this picture would only be useful in that one specific case.
For example, if when someone saw a tiger, he thought it was cute and wanted to pet it, but the only way to do that was to run away from it, then he would still survive a tiger attack. But this only works when there’s one tiger in front of you. What about when there are two tigers on opposite sides of you? What about when there are other animals, or an avalanche? It would seem that the most efficient way for evolution to teach us to run away from what’s in front of us is simply to have our perception match what is actually in front of us.
I look forward to hearing your response.
Thank you,
Answer
Hello.
You assume that we need perceptions that guide our conduct, and therefore you argue that the best thing would be a true perception. Otherwise it would lead to errors in other cases. But Plantinga denies that very assumption. Why do we need any perceptions at all? We could act like automatons: when there is a tiger, run away. Without thinking anything or perceiving anything. Like Descartes’ view regarding animals.
Discussion on Answer
Even if you solve only the question of why we should trust our cognition, the question still remains how our mental component came into being. That’s enough for Plantinga’s argument.
Plantinga also brings evidence from the variety of religions in the world, all of which are false and yet still useful for survival. So there you have strong evidence that even a system of false beliefs can be survival-enhancing.
Thank you for your quick reply.
I agree that the question of why consciousness/perception arose at all is still valid and remains (and perhaps will remain) unanswered.
My question is more about the next step. Once we grant the mystery of consciousness (which remains unanswered), it’s not clear to me how our perceptions could be so incorrect, for the reasons I listed before. It seems that the most efficient way for evolution to work would be to align perception and reality, at least partially.