Q&A: An Evolutionary Explanation for Cognition
An Evolutionary Explanation for Cognition
Question
Rabbi, hello,
A question about Column 496 — the assumption is that "if there is no God, reliable cognition is impossible."
Why can’t one say that our cognition developed in a reliable way, because otherwise we would not have survived (from an evolutionary standpoint)? After all, you can also see that people whose cognition does not match reality could not have survived without help (schizophrenia, for example).
As I understand it, this shifts the discussion about the existence of God to the issue of evolution.
I looked in the book The First Existent, in the fourth conversation, part 3.
The discussion there is about morality, and seemingly the issue here is different.
There you rejected the evolutionary explanation for the following reasons —
A. A scientific mistake — evolution does not concern itself with feelings and judgments.
B. Evolution may be an explanation for the emergence of a moral instinct, but we could not call it morality.
C. Evolution deals with the factual plane, whereas morality belongs to the normative plane.
And in sum, evolution can explain good behavior, but not a sense of obligation or judgment regarding moral behavior.
As I understand it, none of those rejections is relevant to cognition, since cognition is a necessary condition for our survival in the world, as I wrote above.
Answer
I answered this in my book The First Existent. I now see that I mistakenly referred you to part 3, which deals with the proof from morality, but I meant part 2, which deals with the proof from epistemology. My apologies. I’ll briefly summarize it here:
- Trust in the senses preceded our knowledge of the theory of evolution, and it exists also in every child and in anyone who has never heard of evolution. So it is clear that this trust is not based on evolution.
- Evolution itself is a product of scientific observations. But if there is no trust in the senses, there is no trust in evolution.
- In the background of the previous two answers: note that the argument is "theological" and not "philosophical." The question is how you know that the senses are reliable, not how it is possible that they turned out to be reliable (like the train to Scotland).
- It is not true that the reliability of the senses is the condition for survival. Sometimes it is דווקא beneficial for survival if we do not know certain things. But our trust in the senses is always there.
- This trust is absolute, and therefore evolution is not a sufficient basis to justify it. Evolution has bugs, and there is no guarantee that the result is indeed reliable. It also depends on what stage of evolution we are in. After all, systems keep getting refined more and more all the time.
Discussion on Answer
They probably have an implicit belief in God, or they absorbed it from someone who believes.
1. But atheist children still believe in the senses even though they haven’t heard about God.
Or a Christian child has heard about the Trinity, etc.