Q&A: The Proof from Epistemology
The Proof from Epistemology
Question
Hello, there’s something that’s a bit unclear to me, and I’d appreciate some clarification regarding the proof from epistemology for the existence of God:
You argued that if I say my belief in evolution is what grounds my belief in the senses, then that is circular, since from the outset I assess that the cognitive faculties that led me to believe in evolution are reliable. However, it seems that this challenge also arises for the option that God created our cognitive faculties: I am presupposing that I believe in my cognitive faculties when I say that I believe in God, since without trusting my cognitive faculties I would not say that I believe in God (because those cognitive faculties are what led me to that conclusion).
Are these two sides on equal footing here? And if so, why is the conclusion that I believe in God, who created in me reliable cognitive faculties, preferable to the conclusion that I believe evolution created in me reliable cognitive faculties? It’s clear to me that there are other arguments against evolution, but I’m speaking only on the level of the circularity of the argument.
Answer
Belief in God does not necessarily stem from the cognitive faculties. It comes from thinking, not cognition. But even aside from that, it also does not depend on the details of cognition, and it is enough for me that there is a complex reality. As for evolution, it is a result of detailed scientific observations. Put differently: I have an intuition that my cognition is reliable. Now I ask how this could be, if it arose spontaneously (a spontaneous system cannot be reliable). And the answer is that apparently there is someone who made sure the system would be reliable. But to go backward and posit evolution is absurd. It is far too complex and detailed to infer that at the level of the basic intuition I have. Besides, evolution also does not really support the reliability of cognition, as I explained there.
Discussion on Answer
Moshe, as an outside observer it really does seem completely symmetrical to me whether it’s evolution or something else, the main thing being to posit some kind of factor.
But the factor itself is transparent as far as the conclusion of the proof is concerned—what it is.
The idea is that you need a factor outside the human-world system in order to trust cognition between them.
Rabbi Michi didn’t write in this answer what I wrote, but I think that’s what he believes
Compared to all the things he wrote, those are only strengthening arguments. And some of them are connected to his belief in cognitive thinking, whereas belief in God makes a substantial part of his proofs for that unnecessary.
And also, another question that came to me—you said in the lecture series that in this proof you are not proving that God exists, but rather that the person standing before you believes that God exists. But is that really a substantive difference? After all, in ordinary arguments too, and not only in revealing arguments, the premises of the argument are things the person believes. For example, I believe that there is a cause for everything, and I believe that something exists, and therefore I believe that there is a God (the cosmological argument). My question is: why is it important in revealing arguments to say that we proved that the person believes in God, and not simply that we proved that God exists? I don’t see a difference between this kind of revealing argument and a regular argument.
There could also be a person who thinks completely differently from me. I think he is mistaken, but that is what he thinks.
The difference is very substantive, and I explained it there. If a person tells me that in his view it is reasonable that a complex world arose spontaneously, that would refute the “philosophical” formulation but not the “theological” one.
Yes, that is clear to me. My question is aimed at the emphasis that in the epistemological proof you did not prove the existence of God, but only that the person believes in the existence of God. But I don’t really understand this distinction—after all, every argument proves to a person that he believes in the existence of God, and does not prove God’s existence itself. That is, if the person believes the premises, then he must believe the conclusion. That is so in the proof from epistemology, and so too in the cosmological and physico-theological arguments, no? In other words, if I proved to someone that he believes in the existence of something, then I proved the existence of that thing in accordance with the specific premises assumed by the argument.
Indeed. That is my claim: a valid argument always assumes what it seeks to prove. And still, there are two types of arguments. After all, there is no way to prove anything about the world itself. Every proof only shows you that you believe the thing. So too in geometry.
I think I understood. The difference is that the position that there is a creator for my complex system is an intuition that comes from thought, whereas the position that evolution created my complex system does not come only from thought but from observation and cognition.
But theoretically there could be a person who tells you that he looks at his reliable cognition, and the thought immediately occurs to him that “apparently there was an evolutionary process that gave me cognitive faculties suited to reality so that I would survive” (this is a hypothetical person, because as you said, apparently no one would think this way intuitively). In such a case, it seems the objection against this cannot be that it is circular. Because like belief in God, this is a simple intuition derived from the belief in the reliability of our cognitive faculties. Do you agree?