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The idea that "naturalism" undercuts its own justification was put forward by Arthur Balfour. C. S. Lewis popularised it in the first edition of his book Miracles in 1947. Similar arguments were advanced by Richard Taylor in Metaphysics, as well as by Stephen Clark, Richard Purtill and J. P. Moreland. In 2003 Victor Reppert developed a similar argument in detail in his book C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea, In Defense of the Argument from Reason. Contemporary philosophers who have employed a similar argument against physical determinism are James Jordan and William Hasker.
Plantinga proposed his "evolutionary argument against naturalism" in 1993. In the twelfth chapter of his book Warrant and Proper Function, Plantinga developed Lewis' idea, and constructed two formal arguments against evolutionary naturalism. He further developed the idea in an unpublished manuscript entitled "Naturalism Defeated" and in his 2000 book Warranted Christian Belief, and expanded the idea in Naturalism Defeated?, a 2002 anthology edited by James Beilby. He also responded to several objections to the argument in his essay "Reply to Beilby's Cohorts" in Beilby's anthology.
In the 2008 publication Knowledge of God Plantinga presented a formulation of the argument that solely focused on semantic epiphenomenalism instead of the former four jointly exhaustive categories.
Plantinga repeats the argument in his 2011 book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.
Plantinga's 1993 formulation of the argument
Plantinga
argues that combining naturalism and evolution is self-defeating,
because, under these assumptions, the probability that humans have
reliable cognitive faculties is low or inscrutable. He claimed that several thinkers, including C. S. Lewis,
had seen that evolutionary naturalism seemed to lead to a deep and
pervasive skepticism and to the conclusion that our unreliable cognitive
or belief-producing faculties cannot be trusted to produce more true
beliefs than false beliefs. He claimed that "Darwin himself had worries along these lines" and quoted from an 1881 letter:
But then with me 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?
— Charles Darwin, to William Graham 3 July 1881
In the letter, Darwin had expressed agreement with William Graham's
claim that natural laws implied purpose and the belief that the universe
was "not the result of chance", but again showed his doubts about such
beliefs and left the matter as insoluble.
Darwin only had this doubt about questions beyond the scope of science,
and thought science was well within the scope of an evolved mind. Michael Ruse
said that by presenting it as "Darwin's doubt" that evolutionary
naturalism is self-defeating, Plantinga failed to note that Darwin at
once excused himself from philosophical matters he did not feel
competent to consider. Others, such as Evan Fales, agreed that this citation allowed Plantinga to call the source of the problem EAAN addresses Darwin's Doubt.
Also, contrary to Ruse's claim, Plantinga gave the name "Darwin's
Doubt" not to the idea that the conjunction of naturalism and evolution
is self-defeating, but rather to the view that given naturalism and
evolution our cognitive faculties are unlikely to be reliable.
Plantinga asserts that "this doubt arises for naturalists or atheists,
but not for those who believe in God. That is because if God has created
us in his image, then even if he fashioned us by some evolutionary
means, he would presumably want us to resemble him in being able to
know; but then most of what we believe might be true even if our minds
have developed from those of the lower animals."
Plantinga defined:
- N as naturalism, which he defined as "the idea that there
is no such person as God or anything like God; we might think of it as
high-octane atheism or perhaps atheism-plus."
- E as the belief that human beings have evolved in conformity with current evolutionary theory
- R as the proposition that our faculties are "reliable",
where, roughly, a cognitive faculty is "reliable" if the great bulk of
its deliverances are true. He specifically cited the example of a
thermometer stuck at 72 °F (22 °C) placed in an environment which
happened to be at 72 °F as an example of something that is not
"reliable" in this sense
and suggested that the conditional probability of R given N and E, or P(R|N&E), is low or inscrutable.
Plantinga's argument began with the observation that our beliefs
can only have evolutionary consequences if they affect behaviour. To put
this another way, natural selection does not directly select for true
beliefs, but rather for advantageous behaviours. Plantinga distinguished
the various theories of mind-body interaction into four jointly
exhaustive categories:
- Epiphenomenalism, where behaviour is not caused by beliefs. "if this way of thinking is right, beliefs would be invisible to evolution" so P(R|N&E) would be low or inscrutable.
- Semantic epiphenomenalism, where beliefs have a causative link to behaviour but not by virtue of their semantic content. Under this theory, a belief would be some form of long-term neuronal event.
However, on this view P(R|N&E) would be low because the semantic
content of beliefs would be invisible to natural selection, and it is
semantic content that determines truth-value.
- Beliefs are causally efficacious with respect to behaviour, but maladaptive, in which case P(R|N&E) would be low, as R would be selected against.
- Beliefs are causally efficacious with respect to behaviour and also
adaptive, but they may still be false. Since behaviour is caused by both
belief and desire, and desire can lead to false belief, natural
selection would have no reason for selecting true but non-adaptive
beliefs over false but adaptive beliefs. Thus P(R|N&E) in this case
would also be low.
Plantinga pointed out that innumerable belief-desire pairs could
account for a given behaviour; for example, that of a prehistoric
hominid fleeing a tiger:
Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being
eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better
prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him.
This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is
concerned, without involving much by way of true belief. ... Or perhaps
he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to
pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away
from it. ... Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems
that equally fit a given bit of behaviour.
Thus, Plantinga argued, the probability that our minds are reliable under a conjunction of philosophical naturalism and naturalistic evolution
is low or inscrutable. Therefore, to assert that naturalistic evolution
is true also asserts that one has a low or unknown probability of being
right. This, Plantinga argued, epistemically defeats
the belief that naturalistic evolution is true and that ascribing truth
to naturalism and evolution is internally dubious or inconsistent.
Responses
Fitelson and Sober's response
In a 1998 paper Branden Fitelson of the University of California, Berkeley and Elliott Sober of the University of Wisconsin–Madison
set out to show that the arguments presented by Plantinga contain
serious errors. Plantinga construed evolutionary naturalism as the
conjunction of the idea that human cognitive faculties arose through
evolutionary mechanisms, and naturalism which he equated to atheism.
Plantinga tried to throw doubt on this conjunction with a preliminary
argument that the conjunction is probably false, and a main argument
that it is self-defeating; if you believe it you should stop believing
it.
First, they criticised Plantinga's use of a Bayesian framework in which he arbitrarily assigned initial probabilities without empirical evidence,
predetermining the outcome in favor of traditional theism, and
described this as a recipe for replacing any non-deterministic theory in
the natural sciences, so that for example a probable outcome predicted
by quantum mechanics
would be seen as the outcome of God's will. Plantinga's use of R to
mean that "the great bulk" of our beliefs are true fails to deal with
the cumulative effect of adding beliefs which have variable reliability
about different subjects. Plantinga asserted that the traditional theist
believes being made in God's image includes a reflection of divine
powers as a knower, but cognitive science
finds human reasoning subject to biases and systematic error.
Traditional theology is not shown to predict this varying reliability as
well as science, and there is the theological problem
of the omnipotent Creator producing such imperfection. They described
how Plantinga set out various scenarios of belief affecting evolutionary
success, but undercut the low probability he previously required when
he suggested an "inscrutable" probability, and by ignoring availability
of variants he fails to show that false beliefs will be equally adaptive
as his claim of low probability assumes. Even if his claims of
improbability were correct, that need not affect belief in evolution,
and they considered it would be more sensible to accept that
evolutionary processes sometimes have improbable outcomes.
They assessed Plantinga's main argument—which asserts that since
the reliability of evolutionary naturalism is low or of inscrutable
value, those believing it should withhold assent from its reliability,
and thus withhold assent from anything else they believe including
evolutionary naturalism, which is therefore self-defeating—and found it
unconvincing, having already disputed his argument that the reliability
is low. Even if E&N defeated the claim that 'at least 90% of
our beliefs are true,' they considered that Plantinga must show that it
also defeats the more modest claim that 'at least a non-negligible
minority of our beliefs are true'. They considered his sentiment that
high probability is required for rational belief to be repudiated by
philosophical lessons such as the lottery paradox,
and that each step in his argument requires principles different from
those he had described. They concluded that Plantinga has drawn
attention to unreliability of cognitive processes that is already taken
into account by evolutionary scientists who accept that science is a
fallible exercise, and appreciate the need to be as scrupulous as
possible with the fallible cognitive processes available. His hyperbolic doubt
as a defeater for evolutionary naturalism is equally a defeater for
theists who rely on their belief that their mind was designed by a
non-deceiving God, and neither "can construct a non-question-begging
argument that refutes global skepticism."
In 2020 a philosophy paper was published called Does the
Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism Defeat God's Beliefs Which
argued that if the EAAN provides the naturalist with a defeater for all
of her beliefs, then an extension of it appears to provide God with a
defeater for all of his beliefs.
Robbins' response
Indiana University South Bend Professor of Philosophy J. Wesley Robbins contended that Plantinga's argument applied only to Cartesian philosophies of mind
but not to pragmatist philosophies of mind. Robbins' argument, stated
roughly, was that while in a Cartesian mind beliefs can be identified
with no reference to the environmental factors that caused them, in a
pragmatic mind they are identifiable only with reference to those
factors. That is to say, in a pragmatic mind beliefs would not even
exist if their holder had not come in contact with external
belief-producing phenomena in the first place.
Naturalism Defeated?
A collection of essays entitled Naturalism Defeated? (2002) contains responses by 11 philosophers to EAAN.
According to James K. Beilby, editor of the volume, Plantinga's
proposition "raises issues of interest to epistemologists, philosophers
of mind, evolutionary biologists, and philosophers of religion". The responsive essays include the following:
- William Ramsey argued that Plantinga "overlooks the most
sensible way . . . to get clear on how truth can be a property of
beliefs that bestows an advantage on cognitive systems". He also argued
that some of our cognitive faculties are slightly unreliable, and E&N seems better suited than theism to explain this imperfection.
- Jerry Fodor
argued that there is a plausible historical scenario according to which
our minds were selected because their cognitive mechanisms produced, by
and large, adaptive true beliefs.
- Evan Fales
argued that Plantinga had not demonstrated that the reliability of our
cognitive faculties is improbable, given Neo-Darwinism, and emphasizes
that "if Plantinga's argument fails here, then he will not have shown
that [N&E] is probabilistically incoherent." Also, given how
expensive (in biological terms) our brain is, and considering we are
rather unremarkable creatures apart from our brains, it would be quite
improbable that our rational faculties be selected if unreliable. "Most
of our eggs are in that basket," said Fales. Fales argued along the same
as Robbins: take a mental representation,
of heat, for example. Only so long as it is really caused by heat can
we call it a mental representation of heat; otherwise, it is not at all a
mental representation, of heat or of anything else: "so long as
representations [semantics] are causally linked to the world via the
syntactic structures in the brain to which they correspond [syntax],
this will guarantee that syntax maps onto semantics in a generally
truth-preserving way."
This is a direct response to one of Plantinga's scenarios where,
according to Plantinga, false-belief generating mechanisms may have been
naturally selected.
- Michael Bergmann suggested that Thomas Reid offered the resources for a commonsense (Reidian) defense of naturalism against EAAN.
- Ernest Sosa drew on features of Descartes'
epistemology to argue that while "[i]ssues of circularity do arise as
to how we can rationally and knowledgeably adopt [an epistemically
propitious] view about our own epistemic powers," nonetheless, "these
problems are not exclusive to naturalism."
- James Van Cleve suggested that even if the probability thesis is
true, it need not deliver an undefeated defeater to R, and that even if
one has a defeater for R, it doesn't follow that one has a defeater for
everything.
- Richard Otte thought that the argument "ignore[d] other information we have that would make R likely."
- William Talbott suggested that "Plantinga has misunderstood the role of undercutting defeaters in reasoning."
- Trenton Merricks said that "in general, inferences from low or inscrutable conditional probability to defeat are unjustified."
- William Alston
argued that the claim that P(R/N&E) is low is poorly supported; if,
instead, it is inscrutable, this has no clear relevance to the claim
that (1) is a defeater for N&E.
Naturalism Defeated? also included Plantinga's replies to both
the critical responses contained in the book and to some objections
raised by others, including Fitelson & Sober:
- Plantinga expounded the notion of Rationality Defeaters
in terms of his theory of warrant and proper function and distinguishes
between Humean Defeaters and Purely Alethic Defeaters, suggesting that
although a naturalist will continue to assume R "but (if he reflects on
the matter) he will also think, sadly enough, that what he can't help
believing is unlikely to be true."
- Plantinga argued that semantic epiphenomenalism is very likely on N&E because, if materialism is true, beliefs would have to be neurophysiological events whose propositional content cannot plausibly enter the causal chain. He also suggests that the reliability
of a cognitive process requires the truth of a substantial proportion
of the beliefs it produces, and that a process which delivered beliefs
whose probability of truth was in the neighbourhood of 0.5 would have a
vanishingly unlikely chance of producing (say) 1000 beliefs 75% of which
were true.
- In The conditionalisation problem, Plantinga discussed the possibility that N+
i.e. "Naturalism plus R," could be a basic belief thus staving off
defeat of R, suggesting that this procedure cannot be right in general
otherwise every defeater could automatically be defeated, introducing
the term "defeater-deflector " and initially exploring the conditions under which a defeater-deflector can be valid.
- Plantinga concluded that the objections pose a challenge to EAAN,
but that there are successful arguments against the objections.
Ruse's response
In a chapter titled 'The New Creationism: Its Philosophical Dimension', in The Cultures of Creationism, philosopher of science Michael Ruse discussed EAAN. He argued:
- That the EAAN conflates methodological and metaphysical naturalism.
- That "we need to make a distinction that Plantinga fudges" between
"the world as we can in some sense discover" and "the world in some
absolute sense, metaphysical reality if you like." Then, "Once this
distinction is made, Plantinga's refutation of naturalism no longer
seems so threatening."
- That "It is certainly the case that organisms are sometimes deceived
about the world of appearances and that this includes humans. Sometimes
we are systematically deceived, as instructors in elementary psychology
classes delight in demonstrating. Moreover, evolution can often give
good reasons as to why we are deceived." We know there are
misconceptions arising from selection as we can measure them against
reliable touchstones, but in Plantinga's hypothesised deceptions we are
deceived all the time which is "not how evolution's deceptions work".
He comments that in Plantinga's thinking we have confusion between the
world as we know it, and the world as it might be knowable in some
ultimate way, but "If we are all in an illusion then it makes no sense
to talk of illusion, for we have no touchstone of reality to make
absolute judgements."
Ruse concluded his discussion of the EAAN by stating:
To be honest, even if Plantinga's argument [the EAAN]
worked, I would still want to know where theism ends (and what form this
theism must take) and where science can take over. Is it the case that
evolution necessarily cannot function, or it is merely false and in
another God-created world it might have held in some way — and if so, in
what way? Plantinga has certainly not shown that the theist must be a
creationist, even though his own form of theism is creationism.
C. S. Lewis framing
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.
Plantinga's 2008 formulation of the argument
In the 2008 publication Knowledge of God Plantinga presented a formulation of the argument that solely focused on semantic epiphenomenalism instead of the former four jointly exhaustive categories.
Plantinga stated that from a materialist's point of view a belief
will be a neuronal event. In this conception a belief will have two
different sorts of properties:
- electro-chemical or neurophysiological properties (NP properties for short)
- and the property of having content (It will have to be the belief that p, for some proposition p).
Plantinga thought that we have something of an idea as to the history
of NP properties: structures with these properties have come to exist
by small increments, each increment such that it has proved to be useful
in the struggle for survival. But he then asked how the content property of a belief came about: "How does it [the content] get to be associated in that way with a given proposition?"
He said that materialists offer two theories for this question: According to the first, content supervenes upon NP properties; according to the second, content is reducible to
NP properties. (He noted that if content properties are reducible to NP
properties, then they also supervene upon them.) He explained the two
theories as follows:
- Reducibility: A belief is a disjunction of conjunctions of NP properties.
- Strong Supervenience (S+): For any possible worlds W and W* and any structures S and S*, if S has the same NP properties in W as S* has in W*, then S has the same content in W as S* has in W*. Supervenience can either be broadly logical supervenience or nomic supervenience.
Plantinga argued that neural structures that constitute beliefs have content,
in the following way: "At a certain level of complexity, these neural
structures start to display content. Perhaps this starts gradually and
early on (possibly C. elegans [a small worm with a nervous system
composed of only a few neurons] displays just the merest glimmer of
consciousness and the merest glimmer of content), or perhaps later and
more abruptly; that doesn't matter. What does matter is that at a
certain level of complexity of neural structures, content appears. This
is true whether content properties are reducible to NP properties or
supervene on them."
So given materialism some neural structures at a given level of
complexity acquire content and become beliefs. The question then is
according to Plantinga: "what is the likelihood, given materialism, that the content that thus arises is in fact true?"
This way of proceeding replaced the first step of Plantinga's earlier versions of the argument.
Criticism by eliminative materialists
The
EAAN claims that according to naturalism, evolution must operate on
beliefs, desires, and other contentful mental states for a biological
organism to have a reliable cognitive faculty such as the brain. Eliminative materialism
maintains that propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires,
among other intentional mental states that have content, cannot be
explained on naturalism and therefore concludes that such entities do
not exist. It is not clear whether the EAAN would be successful against a
conception of naturalism which accepts eliminative materialism to be the correct scientific account of human cognition.
EAAN, intelligent design and theistic evolution
In his discussion of EAAN, Michael Ruse described Plantinga as believing in the truth of the attack on evolution presented by intelligent design advocate Phillip E. Johnson, and as having endorsed Johnson's book Darwin on Trial. Ruse said that Plantinga took the conflict between science and religion
further than Johnson, seeing it as not just a clash between the
philosophies of naturalism and theism, but as an attack on the true
philosophy of theism by what he considers the incoherent and
inconsistent philosophy of naturalism.
Plantinga has stated that EAAN is not directed against "the
theory of evolution, or the claim that human beings have evolved from
simian ancestors, or anything in that neighborhood". He also claimed that the problems raised by EAAN do not apply to the conjunction of theism and contemporary evolutionary science. In his essay Evolution and Design Plantinga outlines different ways in which theism and evolutionary theory can be combined.
In the foreword to the anthology Naturalism Defeated? James Beilby wrote: "Plantinga's argument should not
be mistaken for an argument against evolutionary theory in general or,
more specifically, against the claim that humans might have evolved from
more primitive life forms. Rather, the purpose of his argument is to
show that the denial of the existence of a creative deity is
problematic."
