Beware of the Ad Hoc Fallacy of "Evolutionary Explanations."

Uber Genius

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Oh my.

Well I have to go to one rehearsal and set up for another. So I cant express how completely bonkers that argument is right now....
Hmm sorry you are not comprehending it.

Naturalists and especially professional philosophers who are atheists then and now take it to be a very serious challenge. It is describing the self-refuting nature of naturalism given evolution. Since no one has ever suggested that evolution is driven by rationality or accurate perception of the world around the individual. Survival of the fittest is the only condition. Long before we can evolve to become a rational animal, we are eaten by faster, more ferocious animals that are dumb as rocks.
 
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Uber Genius

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Lets not forget that biology isnt the only force influencing behavior. There's also human culture which has a degree of independence from biology, and evolves according to fitness criteria (among other things).

Morals are coded in the culture as well as in the genome.
This is how the ad hoc storyline goes. But it is the moral choices of saving babies left out to die, helping the sick with hospitals, helping the elderly, that stood out as counter to culture that needs explaining.

Since on evolution we are surrounded by rape for procreation and murder as a means of survival it is difficult to see how culture would reverse their innate evolutionary history. One that worked flawlessly for 3.2Billion years.

So it is the things that are opposite of survival, risking one's life to save a person of little value to society that is absurd on this evolutionary inference.

Even if we were to start to allow for fallacious ad hoc sans evidential support inferences this one doesn't have any explanatory power for a sudden change given a 3.2B year history to the contrary.

Mercy, helping the infirm with risk to ourselves makes no sense, loving one's enemy is absurd and likely to get one killed.
So there appears to be no ad hoc explanation of these behaviors based on appeals to cooperation, or utility, or evolution.

Good luck with rehearsal.
 
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gaara4158

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Here is what you wrote in your opening argument from The Moral Argument (Revamped)



P1 - Moral facts are "myth" - ALSO KNOWN AS FALSE BELIEFS
p2 - we have adopted as a society in order to justify cooperation
p3 - There are obvious practical benefits to cooperation
P4 - but the myth of moral facts comes in handy when the individual benefits aren’t so obvious

FOUR CLAIMS:
But what other false beliefs are a result of the adaptations ad hoc explanation that follow in p2- p4? What evidence do you have of such things actually being studied and verified, studied in a way that could be falsified?

Further help the rest of us out here understand how you were able to become immune to these forces so as to shed your false beliefs and see the light.

No evidence that is from a possibly falsifiable methodological study in points P1-P4 they are just asserted.

No evidence of immunity from underlying false beliefs equally caused by evolution.

So we see that I was exactly engaging your point. And not creating a strawman as you misrepresented. Which is why I have put you on "ignore" in the past. I hoped to have an honest discussion. I am still open to it but you will have to amend the quote above that started this discussion. If your position has changed in the last week please inform us of how rather than suggesting that is not your position.
The quote you provided represents my opinion well. I can support it with facts reasonably well, but if you really want to tie me down to what I can objectively demonstrate I’ll have to admit I’m an epistemic, moral, and existential nihilist on account that I’m not confident I can objectively demonstrate *anything* to the point of perfect satisfaction, especially something like the origin of moral intuitions. I can give you a series of observations that, in conjunction, can account for most of what you would call “moral facts” fairly easily, but if you’re going to insist on hurling Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism at me I’ll just hurl it right back at you against traditional theism. Neither of us can defeat global skepticism without making a circular argument, so if it’s true that we shouldn’t believe in evolution if evolution is true, we also shouldn’t believe in God if he exists.
 
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gaara4158

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How are you defining global skepticism and why is it a strong position?
Global skepticism, as in the doubt that anything your mind leads you to believe is reliable, isn’t a position per se. It’s a problem any good epistemology needs to find a way around, and it’s especially stumping for cartesian theories of mind.
 
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zippy2006

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Global skepticism, as in the doubt that anything your mind leads you to believe is reliable, isn’t a position per se. It’s a problem any good epistemology needs to find a way around, and it’s especially stumping for cartesian theories of mind.

"I doubt that anything my mind leads me to believe is reliable."

For me that's a foundational premise with no warrant and lots of counter-evidence. If you doubt everything can you know the meaning of any of the words in that proposition? Can you know what the proposition means? Can you know what doubt is? etc.

We know things. That fact strikes me as incontrovertible and in tension with global skepticism. If global skepticism were true, could we know anything at all? The most mundane things?
 
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gaara4158

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"I doubt that anything my mind leads me to believe is reliable."

For me that's a foundational premise with no warrant and lots of counter-evidence. If you doubt everything can you know the meaning of any of the words in that proposition? Can you know what the proposition means? Can you know what doubt is? etc.

We know things. That fact strikes me as incontrovertible and in tension with global skepticism. If global skepticism were true, could we know anything at all? The most mundane things?
I agree with you that global skepticism is not persuasive, but the tricky part is defeating it. We can't really formally demonstrate that we're not in a matrix, a simulation, or a vat somewhere experiencing delusions of this life. That doesn’t bother me too much as a pragmatist and the reasons you provided to reject it are valid, but proponents of the EAAN really like to latch on to it.
 
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durangodawood

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I agree with you that global skepticism is not persuasive, but the tricky part is defeating it. We can't really formally demonstrate that we're not in a matrix, a simulation, or a vat somewhere experiencing delusions of this life. That doesn’t bother me too much as a pragmatist and the reasons you provided to reject it are valid, but proponents of the EAAN really like to latch on to it.
I defeat global skepticism by not liking it.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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I agree with you that global skepticism is not persuasive, but the tricky part is defeating it. We can't really formally demonstrate that we're not in a matrix, a simulation, or a vat somewhere experiencing delusions of this life. That doesn’t bother me too much as a pragmatist and the reasons you provided to reject it are valid, but proponents of the EAAN really like to latch on to it.

Actually, you might want to check out what Descartes,' Pascal's, Kierkegaard's, and Hillary Putnam's views about "evil demon/existential/matrix" type thinking have been. They may be helpful to you in making further evaluations about the extent to which you think any of us should carry assumptions about the nature of either "human certainty" or "human skepticism."

... it's just something to think on, gaara. :cool:
 
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2PhiloVoid

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Ugh.

The unhitching of understanding from behavior in the empirical domain is.... ridiculous.

Ironically, the main domain where this does happen is in matters of faith.

...I'd say it happens most in matters of ethics, especially these days.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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For example?

That despite some seeming moral commonalities on a few points among various people groups, like "don't kill your mother," they are still all over the place on exactly what a fuller, more comprehensive social and ethical matrix should be by which we should all be governed and to which we should all fully give assent.

Egregious but Illustrated Example: And I quote, "Ok, I won't kill my mother. That would be wrong............but dog gone her (or dog gone some culture X's) notion that I should only sleep with one woman. Ok. Maybe I will sleep with just one woman; but I'll never get married to her, ever. Or maybe I'll commit for a limited time. And, I'll probably suggest to my woman, despite what my brother (or some other culture Y) tells me, that we should have an open relationship. But, I'll admit, I should only sleep with women, not men, despite what my sister (or some other culture Z) says I should do and just really, really let things loose. ....am I then Liberal? Am I comparatively conservative? Heck, I don't know. But mom, I will always agree that I shouldn't kill you.........as everyone else is telling me I shouldn't do.

There. How's that?
 
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durangodawood

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That despite come seeming moral commonalities on a few points among various people groups, like "don't kill your mother," they are still all over the place on exactly what a fuller, more comprehensive social and ethical matrix should be by which we should all be governed and to which we should all fully give assent.

Egregious but Illustrated Example: And I quote, "Ok, I won't kill my mother. That would be wrong............but dog gone her (or dog gone some culture X's) notion that I should only sleep with one woman. Ok. Maybe I will sleep with just one woman; but I'll never get married to her, ever. And, I'll probably suggest to my wife, despite what my brother (or some other culture Y) tells me, that we should have an open marriage. But, I'll admit, I should only sleep with women, not men, despite what my sister (or some other culture Z) says I should do and just really, really let things loose. ....am I then Liberal? Am I comparatively conservative? Heck, I don't know. But mom, I will always agree that I shouldn't kill you.........as everyone else is telling me I shouldn't do.

There. How's that?
That^^^ reflects a problem with wisdom, which is essentially the capacity to make connections between behaviors and long term outcomes. Developing wisdom requires long term experience, which is why we typically think of wisdom as belonging to the elders or to cultural repositories like religious scripture.

So your example isnt a disconnect between understanding and behavior. Its just the difficulty of forming any understanding in the first place, when events and outcomes are spread so far apart.

Totally different than the teasing a bear example given in the video.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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That^^^ reflects a problem with wisdom, which is essentially the capacity to make connections between behaviors and long term outcomes. Developing wisdom requires long term experience, which is why we typically think of wisdom as belonging to the elders or to cultural repositories like religious scripture.

So your example isnt a disconnect between understanding and behavior. Its just the difficulty of forming any understanding in the first place, when events and outcomes are spread so far apart.

Totally different than the teasing a bear example given in the video.

Perhaps. But couldn't each of the 4 positions I've presented in my fictional example still think they're being equally rational, and couldn't their respective understandings of ontology then inform their ongoing ethical deliberations, with deposits of wisdom being ignored, displaced, or more commonly, I think.........simply found, in their existing plurality, to be incompatible?

So, I'm thinking that it isn't 'faith' per see, all by itself, that is the problem. No, it's just one aspect of the overall problem humanity faces in attempting to interact in multiple social and ethical, even rational, environs.
 
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Uber Genius

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Ugh.

The unhitching of understanding from behavior in the empirical domain is.... ridiculous.

Ironically, the main domain where this does happen is in matters of faith.
Wow. So you dodge the argument.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with the utter failure of sociobiology back in the 1980s for similar reasons.

"Evolution confirs advantage through survivability, not on rationality!" Please find one evolutionist that disagrees with that premise!

Further we have great scholarly reason to be suspect of evolutionary psychology as ad hoc.

Further the argument that "there is one particular portion of your beliefs that is false, namely your intuition that things like "Killing babies for fun," is true. The reason is that you have evolved to produce these false beliefs.""

How again do I get evolution to only poison my moral intuitions?

Since the arguer is supporting my first premise, but offers no evidence that our other faculties are undamaged by similar evolutionary poisoning?

This is known as sawing off the branch one is standing on.

We need reliable rational faculties to argue that are faculties ARE NOT RELIABLE.

So far from being absurd. On evolution we have an argument against our ability to trust ALL OF OUR RATIONAL FACULTIES. Known as self-refuting.

Instead of engaging the premises and their conclusion that it is irrational to argue evolution since it doesn't lead us to rationality, you just make some flippant comment about "faith", which used in the Biblical context was the result of evidence, investigations, examining premises, and arguments. This error is known as equivocation.
 
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durangodawood

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Perhaps. But couldn't each of the 4 positions I've presented in my fictional example still think they're being equally rational, and couldn't their respective understandings of ontology then inform their ongoing ethical deliberations, with deposits of wisdom being ignored, displaced, or more commonly, I think.........simply found, in their existing plurality, to be incompatible?

So, I'm thinking that it isn't 'faith' per see, all by itself, that is the problem. No, it's just one aspect of the overall problem humanity faces in attempting to interact in multiple social and ethical, even rational, environs.
Actually I do think that youve got a decent example with ethics and behavior, because even people who "know better" still behave misbehave.

But I think thats due to self-interest making people compartmentalize and lock away their knowledge.

All this is far removed from the EAAN example of "for all we know poking a bear may just as well result in alien abduction rather than an angry bear" if we live in a strictly naturalist world.
 
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durangodawood

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...."Evolution confirs advantage through survivability, not on rationality!" Please find one evolutionist that disagrees with that premise!....
Do you really think that survivability is so untethered from rationality (or even just something like correct understanding) that one could go through life imagining things like "poking bears might lead to alien abduction", rather than understanding something closer to what really happens?
 
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Uber Genius

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I agree with you that global skepticism is not persuasive, but the tricky part is defeating it. We can't really formally demonstrate that we're not in a matrix, a simulation, or a vat somewhere experiencing delusions of this life. That doesn’t bother me too much as a pragmatist and the reasons you provided to reject it are valid, but proponents of the EAAN really like to latch on to it.
It is quite easily defeated. This was the modernist project, namely to answer Descartes cogito. Cartesian skepticism only gives us a defeater for certainty. This seems to be a throwback to his Scholastic forefathers. But this seems to an absurd standard.

For example, just because I can draw false conclusions about my world due to the fact that when I put a stick into water, it appears to my sense of sight that the stick is bending, I can, when combined with experiment, that is introspection, experience, memory, rationality (all faculties of knowing that sit along side of my senses), determine that my senses alone can give me false information about my world. But there is no evidence that my sense of sight is always faulty or even mostly faulty, and when combined with other faculties, such as memory, introspection, rationality, other senses, testimony from others, my understanding of the world seems to be very reliable indeed.

The cartesian barriers erected due to the defeasibility of my faculties turn out to be due to a false standard of "Perfect reliability."

Firstly, we have no good reasons to believe Descartes is correct and we are living in a dream or being tricked by evil demons, or that our brain is in a vat of chemicals where our thoughts are being manipulated by mad scientists or aliens.

Secondly, we have reason to trust that our faculties above are reasonably reliable, from a vast amount of data operating in our world every day. That our understanding of a real external world is the function of the existence of a real external world, is (according to Bertrand Russell), a much simpler and reasonable explanation of the facts.

Further Russell believes our intuition that we live in an external world is immediate knowledge, that is self-evident to all, or intuitive. This external world inference yields consistent scientific data and experimentation that would be unlikely in a dream world, further this science can describe the nature and limits of dreams, where the matrix, dream inference can't explain anything.

He also held similar beliefs in his early writings regarding the origin of moral values and duties as highlighted in the following:

"After 1903, he became an enthusiastic but critical convert to the doctrines of Principia Ethica (though there is some evidence that the conversion process may have begun as early as 1897). Moore is famous for the claim, which he professes to prove by means of what has come to be known as the Open Question Argument, that there is a “non-natural” property of goodness, not identical with or reducible to any other property or assemblage of properties, and that what we ought to do is to maximize the good and minimize the bad. Russell subscribed to this thesis."

(To be fair, Russell initially grounded these moral goods as self-evidently intuitive as an external world or other minds, or the reality of the past, but abandoned this view for moral relativism after 1913.)

for more see: Russell’s Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

GE Moore suggests that all we need to do is look at our own hands or feet or things we interact with to know that there is an external world. Moore relies on the fact we can know things without being able to prove them such as external worlds, a priori truths, logic and math axioms, etc.

Instead of assuming that we need perfect warrant for all of our beliefs and since we don't have direct access by our brain to the external world but instead have our data of same mediated by fallible faculties known as the senses, therefore we can't trust any of our faculties, why not just ask for evidence that we are in such a matrix?

What good evidence is there that the external world isn't real?
What good evidence is there that other minds (people) don't exist?
What good evidence is there that there is no past, so all ideas about the past are false?

Crickets...

This is the real reason Cartesian skepticism has not fared well both with the public given their intuition, that is self-evident belief that such things as mentioned above DO exist or epistemologists (philosophers of knowledge) who have largely relegated skepticism to the flames.
 
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