Path: ultra.sonic.net!miwok!news1.best.com!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!aristos.demon.co.uk!aristos.demon.co.uk!sam From: Sam Dodsworth Newsgroups: alt.books.cs-lewis Subject: Re: Lewis and science Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 13:18:50 +0100 Organization: Annexia Free Press Distribution: world Message-ID: References: <5gg4ac$5o8@news.acns.nwu.edu> <1daec.smail.smayo@ziplink.net> <+GSJtCA926QzEwTZ@aristos.demon.co.uk> <5icgr0$m26@netnews.upenn.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: aristos.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: aristos.demon.co.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Newsreader: Turnpike Version 3.01 <7c0azr3XvpMr4dZzpifF$I+pPf> Lines: 120 Xref: ultra.sonic.net alt.books.cs-lewis:7145 In article <5icgr0$m26@netnews.upenn.edu>, DAPS writes >Sam Dodsworth (sam@aristos.demon.co.uk) wrote: > >: This is (yet another) spurious application of the "blind chance" >: argument, and it has the added disadvantage of being less sophisticated >: than Lewis' own thoughts about the evolution of mind. As I read the >: argument in "Miracles", Lewis recognizes that evolution is a process of >: gradual directed change but can't imagine how rational thought could >: evolve by stages from instinct, since there seems (to him) to be no >: middle ground between rationality and non-rationality. I don't agree >: with him, but he deserves credit for a better understanding of evolution >: than you seem willing to grant him. > >You missed one of his points: he says not only that there is no middle >ground between rationality and non-rationality, but also that he can't >see any particular adaptive advantage in rationality. There is certainly >a great deal of adaptive advantage in a refined system of automatic >responses, but what advantage is there to conscious recognition of >perceived truths? > I don't have my copy of "Miracles" to hand, but I certainly don't remember Lewis saying anything about adaptive value - if he had, I think I would have mentioned it in my "Difficulties with Miracles" post. Your question, however, still stands...although I think you're choosing an over-narrow definition of "rational thought". In a later chapter Lewis explicitly equates rational thought with logical thought, and this reading is supported by his concern with chains of grounds and consequences in the central argument of Chapter Three. "Conscious recognition of percieved truths" springs from logical thought, but it's only one of the things that does. This is important because some of the other things have considerable adaptive value - particularly the ability to plan, rather than simply to react. Rational thought also works with other faculties like language and imagination (in the broadest sense, as the ability to construct an internal representation of the world) to give us culture - an adaption that lets us transmit acquired experience to future generations without having to rely on the slow evolutionary process. The interesting point here is that we're arriving back at "weak Naturalism": rational thought is a process that we apply to data about the world, but as long as the world behaves consistently it doesn't matter weather our observations (or our thoughts, for that matter) are "true" in the absolute sense. I may not know if fire really burns, but I can still find it useful to construct a ground-consequent relation between "hot" and "pain". >If there is no adaptive advantage in rationality, there is no reason why >even a process of "directed" change would make it any more likely to >happen. I do have some understanding of evolutionary theory, I >understand that it is not entirely "blind," but in the case of developing >conscious minds I don't see why anything but blind chance would operate >in bringing it about. > Sorry, "directed" was a bad word to choose: I just wanted to make it clear that I was talking about selection taking place with every accumulating small change. This is the flaw in the "blind chance" argument against the evolution of complex organs. Of course, as you point out, every intermediate step has to have adaptive value - but that's another argument. [snip] > >If we are designed as truth-perceiving beings, we might be set up so that >the "inference" we make in trusting our senses ("Since I am subject to a >series of sensations that I cannot control, something seems to be going >on outside myself, and it seems to be the most reasonable hypothesis to >assume that this world really exists") is valid. If not, there is no >reason to think that this inference is valid at all. > This is exactly my point. Lewis' supernaturalism on its own isn't enough to deal with solipsism; if we want our knowledge to be true in a strict philosophical sense we need some form of "supernatural perception" to tell us that what we percieve is actually there. And then, of course, we need to explain why it doesn't always work, since our perceptions sometimes turn out to be mistaken. >Lewis doesn't really argue that "we can't derive truth from mere material >cause-and-effect" in the sense that we can't believe things that happen >causally. He's just saying that if our beliefs THEMSELVES are wholly >products of cause-and-effect then we have no reason to think them true. > We're in agreement on this. The problem is that Lewis also argues that our knowledge comes from the evidence of our senses - which operate on cause-and-effect. Without making more assumptions, this doesn't leave us in a significantly better position than Haldane's materialist. >: >But how can he justify calling himself an atheist if he truly swallows >: >the humbling notion that he has no idea whether any of his thoughts are >: >really true? How can you stick to a belief about metaphysics and the >: >nature of the universe, while simultaneously admitting that you are >: >merely "assuming" that your power to think means anything. >: > >: The answer, of course, is the "weak Naturalism" that Lewis >: dismisses. We don't need absolute truth in order to function: just >: theories that tell us how the world usually works. > >I wouldn't really call this "atheism" or "naturalism" at all. If you >don't claim that anything in particular is true, then you can't claim >that there is no God or no spiritual world. You can decide that, for all >practical purposes, you are going to behave as though there is no God >until you come into contact with contrary evidence -- but I would call >that agnosticism rather than atheism. Unless I am very much mistaken, >atheism does involve the absolute claim that God does not exist. > Looking again, I can see that I haven't really answered your questions, except perhaps implicitly. Yes, a strict "weak Naturalist" should be an agnostic - but "weak Naturalism" is not, as Lewis seems to assume, an untenable position. That's the answer to the genral question you're raising about absolute truth. If we're specifically dealing with atheism, on the other hand, then I'd say that atheism involves an investment of faith in the same manner as theism and is thus no more subject to proof or falsification in logical terms than, say, Christianity. Sam Dodsworth (sam@aristos.demon.co.uk) "He thought he saw an argument that proved he was the Pope He looked again and saw it was a bar of mottled soap 'A fact so dread', he faintly said, 'extinguishes all hope.' - Lewis Carrol