Sanoy
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- Apr 27, 2017
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If possible I would like our discussion to be a dialogue rather than a line by line response, those can get pretty hairy.An adequate reason for trusting my intellectual faculties is that for the majority of the time they help me to judge reality very well. I am able to predict what would happen if I did X, and a lot of the time that prediction is correct. I don't need to know how it happened that I acquired the ability to think logically, to be able to use logic.
Our intellectual faculties, such as logic, aid survival and therefore we trust them. There is no need to involve the concept of purpose, with regard to our brains capacity to think logically.
You do need to know the truth in order to survive. For example, you need to know that certain foods won't kill you. And Logic is an example of a mental faculty, which aids this.
I don't quite follow what you are saying here. Are you saying that only one belief causes an action?
I don't quite follow this either. Are you saying we might not know what caused us to do a certain thing, and that there could be any number of reasons for us to carry out a particular action.
I think that purpose could be possible, but natural selection presents us with an alternative. So, I think this argument lacks a definitive conclusion.
Natural selection regards behavior, not beliefs. Specifically behaviors that lead to survival, and behaviors that lead one to pass on their genes. I don't need to know the truth to survive, or pass on my genes, I just need to have the behavior. So lets say there is a tiger in the woods. I don't need to believe that there is a tiger that wants to eat me to have the behavior of running away. I can believe that it's a ufo that wants to abduct me and that belief will result in the same behavior. Because there is only one true belief, and a multitude of false beliefs that will result in the same behavior it is more probable that I hold a false belief than a true belief. So natural selection alone isn't an alternative, but a serious problem. If we place natural selection as the foundation of our intellectual faculties all we will get is a dialectical loop, because if natural selection is the cause of our intellectual faculties we should doubt our beliefs, including that belief, and that belief etc.
I would be a Theist whether I was a Christian or not because metaphysical naturalism doesn't satisfy the breadth of experience - it explains a bit, and simply demands the rest doesn't exist. So I would always be seeking a teleological explanation to my faculties, both for that reason, the reasons I have listed, and that a non teleological explanation leads to a dialectical loop as mentioned above. I cannot live in a dialectical loop, nor can I deny the question, so I would naturally be a Theist.
Let me explain what I mean when I say that experience means something. I eat food, and drink water because I am compelled to do so by my body which makes me feel hungry and thirsty. When it comes to beliefs that we hold we have intuitions that compel us to believe things. For example we have an intuition that if x happens 10,000 times it will happen 10,001 times. Our intellectual faculties are composed of a large group of such intuitions that makes us feel satisfied about a proposition when certain criteria are met. A given intuition is just a slice of our intellectual faculties.
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