Pragmatic Argument for God's existense

[Sanoy]

Ugh. Let's go through this again:

It was demonstrated in my opening statement which you have yet to refute or even try. Naturalism assume a premise whose conclusion, if true, undermines the ability to affirm the premise. A foundational argument should be strongly circular. Naturalism as an assumption destroys it's own circularity. I have said this multiple times, if you don't understand the Philisophical Jargon I am using ask me what they mean rather than assert I'm just repeating myself. Naturalism is the world view that only the natural world exists. I don't need to define reason for the argument because it is an ontologocial argument of our cognitive faculties. You are just making up conditions to stall the conclusion. I will wait for your counter argument which will hopefully not be another stall, or meaningless redefinition.

You have failed to give me any meaningful foundation for the things you are saying. You can correct that by assuming a meaningful foundation related to reality for the things you are saying. For example not having a 50% chance to be lying to me. Or having a definition of truth that makes your statement about truth referential to reality rather than utility. Your perpetual self demolition doesn't leave you with much recourse for meaningful truth pointing conversation.

Semantics work that way, they tell you what someone meant by something. Don't need to be a mind reader for that, just takes one paying close attention to your propositions. But in any case you tell me I am correct by your ability to provisionally accept the premise. The point being that the statement is perfectly meaningful which you reveal by changing it to "which" as that adds and confirms properties.

If we have cognitive faculties that can reliably determine truths about the world then God, an MGB, is the best explanation for that as the designer of our faculties for this purpose, however a non-designed faculty so ordered by survival would not give us such cognitive faculties (or even a consciousness for that matter).

 

[Uber Genius]

Have only read the first page of responses but most epistemologists would reply that we have properly basic beliefs such as the existence of other minds, an external world, the reality of the past, that are much more obviously true than false and that these beliefs are foundational.

Not saying foundationalism doesn't have any defeaters but it is the first response you would get to your trilemma by most philosophy professors.

 

[gaara4158]

It was demonstrated in my opening statement which you have yet to refute or even try. Naturalism assume a premise whose conclusion, if true, undermines the ability to affirm the premise. A foundational argument should be strongly circular. Naturalism as an assumption destroys it's own circularity. I have said this multiple times, if you don't understand the Philisophical Jargon I am using ask me what they mean rather than assert I'm just repeating myself. Naturalism is the world view that only the natural world exists. I don't need to define reason for the argument because it is an ontologocial argument of our cognitive faculties. You are just making up conditions to stall the conclusion. I will wait for your counter argument which will hopefully not be another stall, or meaningless redefinition.

I’m actually familiar with the type of argument you’re trying to run here. I’m asking you to define your terms in advance because if I assume you mean what I think you mean and dismantle your argument accordingly, I risk being accused of making a straw man argument. But, if you insist on moving this along without establishing clear definitions of terms, I’ll just go ahead and run my counter argument.

So, you define naturalism as the a priori assumption that only the natural world exists. I am not a naturalist by this definition, but we can explore its implications nonetheless. You state that reason cannot be expected to lead people to true beliefs under naturalism. I don’t see how this follows unless reason is something inherently supernatural, but that’s the argument you’re trying to support in the first place. Your premise assumes its conclusion. “Reason cannot be grounded in the natural world because reason is grounded in something outside the natural world because it cannot be grounded in the natural world.” I hope you can see how this type of closed circle is fallacious, not foundational. The mistake you’re making is using a synthetic proposition (God
exists) as an axiom. There’s no synthetic proposition, including the exact opposite to your claim, that you can’t take axiomatically and have it be just as valid. It’s tantamount to defining yourself as correct so anyone who contradicts you is wrong by definition. That’s asinine. You can’t merely define naturalism out of the realm of possibility and act like you’ve proven something about external reality.

I have offered pragmatism as a means for human cognitive faculties to arrive at a reasonable approximation of reality in a naturalistic world. Silmarien has helped me understand other nontheistic solutions as well. But none of that is necessary to show that your placing of God at the foundation of reason is no better than no foundation at all.

If we have cognitive faculties that can reliably determine truths about the world then God, an MGB, is the best explanation for that as the designer of our faculties for this purpose, however an non-designed faculty so ordered by survival would not give us such cognitive faculties

Oh, wonderful. You’re including Maximal Greatness in here. This is the part where I ask you what determines the “greatness” of an attribute and you accuse me of stalling. Are we really going to do this?

Again, you’re assuming outright that reliable cognitive faculties cannot arise without supernatural guidance, and you say this on no grounds other than your own say-so. I contend that if, in a naturalistic world, true beliefs lead to actions with intended consequences more effectively than false beliefs, then having cognitive faculties with the ability to find true beliefs aids reproductive fitness. If the ability to find true beliefs aids reproductive fitness, then it is not unreasonable to expect that a species with the cognitive faculties to come to the true belief that naturalism is true could eventually come to exist through evolution.

 

[Sanoy]

I’m actually familiar with the type of argument you’re trying to run here.

You won't dismantle anything through semantic statements with no adherence to reality. For someone who judges your statement in regards to their relevance to reality it means nothing to make semantic statents regarding utility. We are speaking a different language...I toward reality, and you toward utility. So before you begin dismantling anything regarding it's relevance to reality, you need need to start speaking toward reality.

Ok, I read your rebutal. I have no idea what the heck you are even referring to. You don't quote me correctly, and you don't even refer to the argument I gave. The argument I gave, for your reference, is here...

MGB refers to His ontological nature, your question refers to our epistemological understanding of that nature. That is not required here to any large degree for comprehension.

I did not say that reliable cognitive faculties cannot come about naturally. This is the second time you have misstated me on this very point, and the second time I am correcting it. My argument is one of probability, and so allows the possibility. You need to go back through our conversation, if you don't understand a part, ask, don't misquote me based on what you imagine I said.

Some true contents of belief will invariably fit survival more than false content of beliefs, but the reverse is also true. As I said before it is behavior that leads to survival not understanding. False contents of belief can induce greater behavioral responses than true contents of beliefs, and many false beliefs are equivalent to true beliefs in regards to survival.

 

[gaara4158]

I did not say that reliable cognitive faculties cannot come about naturally. This is the second time you have misstated me on this very point. My argument is one of probability, and so allows the possibility. You need to go back through our conversation, if you don't understand a part, ask, don't misquote me based on what you imagine I said.

Some true contents of belief will invariably fit survival more than false beliefs, but the reverse is also true. As I said before it is behavior that leads to survival not understanding. False contents of belief can induce greater behavioral responses than true contents of beliefs.

If your argument is one of probability, you need to provide the mathematical process by which you calculated the probability of each proposed source of reliable cognitive faculties. Otherwise it's not an argument of probability, it's all just your opinion. And I don't know how to refute an incredulous stare.

 

[Sanoy]

If your argument is one of probability, you need to provide the mathematical process by which you calculated the probability of each proposed source of reliable cognitive faculties. Otherwise it's not an argument of probability, it's all just your opinion. And I don't know how to refute an incredulous stare.

I have...TWICE already. GO BACK and understand the thing you are trying to disagree with. For the third time... If one false content and one true content could lead to the same behavior then the probability that one will have the true content is 50%. Simple math. Add 1 more possible false content and it is more probably to contain a false content than a true content.

 

[gaara4158]

I have...TWICE already. GO BACK and understand the thing you are trying to disagree with. For the third time... If one false content and one true content could lead to the same behavior then the probability that one will have the true content is 50%. Simple math. Add 1 more possible false content and it is more probably to contain a false content than a true content.

(Emphasis mine.) That's a mighty big "if" in your math. Under your conditions, all you're showing is that if true beliefs don't guide behavior better than false beliefs, then the probability of any given belief being true is minimal, but WHO CARES because the premise of your math begins at truth not making a difference! Seriously, think it through before you say I'm misquoting you. If one true belief and one false belief each make the exact same correct prediction, leading to the exact same behavior conducive to one's intentions, then the truth value of either belief doesn't matter. Adding more false beliefs that produce the same results only shrinks the importance of truth further. You can say naturalism is likely false, but who cares? You just showed that under your hypothetical naturalistic circumstances, truth doesn't matter.

It's true you're not necessarily arguing reliable cognitive faculties are impossible under naturalism, but you used the words "likely false." This would require more than a lack of correlation between true beliefs and the ability to make helpful decisions. This would require a negative correlation between true beliefs and the ability to make helpful decisions, including decisions surrounding survival and reproduction. In what world is this the case? In what insane, bizarro world is the ability to make accurate predictions and shape the future negatively correlated with reproductive fitness? And in that world, why should anyone care about the "truth?"

This line of reasoning that you're advancing is a mess. Did you come up with it yourself?

 

[Silmarien]

I have offered pragmatism as a means for human cognitive faculties to arrive at a reasonable approximation of reality in a naturalistic world. Silmarien has helped me understand other nontheistic solutions as well. But none of that is necessary to show that your placing of God at the foundation of reason is no better than no foundation at all.

In the interest of full disclosure, the type of reasoning I've been walking you through is very often used by theists, particularly of the Catholic persuasion, as part of a two step Aristotelian-Thomistic argument. But I honestly think that theism from our perspective is a bit of an in-house Aristotelian debate--it really just muddies the metaphysical waters, so you need to take naturalism as far as you possibly can before addressing the question of whether it stands on its own.

I'm not going to jump into the actual debate here, because I think @Sanoy is running with Plantinga style reasoning, and while I ultimately agree with the argument, I approach it from the opposite direction and would only confuse things further. You guys may want to start over from square one, though, and unpack Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism a bit more--I'm very familiar with it so I can fill in the blanks easily enough, but @Sanoy, I think you've been taking shortcuts with the reasoning that are going to confuse anyone who doesn't already see the problem as self-evident.

 

[gaara4158]

I have...TWICE already.

And another thing! You completely neglected to show the mathematical process by which you determined God to have a higher probability of existing than not. That's what I was referring to when I asked you to provide the "mathematical process by which you calculated the probability of each proposed source of reliable cognitive faculties." You showed a mathematical process by which, in a hypothetical situation wherein true beliefs didn't guide decisions better than false ones, we might come to doubt the truth of our beliefs quite severely. That didn't answer my question at all. Show me your math determining the likelihood of naturalism being true AND the the likelihood of God existing, since these are the two proposed explanations for the reliability of cognitive faculties we're comparing.

 

[Sanoy]

(Emphasis mine.) That's a mighty big "if" in your math. Under your conditions, all you're showing is that if true beliefs don't guide behavior better than false beliefs, then the probability of any given belief being true is minimal, but WHO CARES because the premise of your math begins at truth not making a difference! Seriously, think it through before you say I'm misquoting you. If one true belief and one false belief each make the exact same correct prediction, leading to the exact same behavior conducive to one's intentions, then the truth value of either belief doesn't matter. Adding more false beliefs that produce the same results only shrinks the importance of truth further. You can say naturalism is likely false, but who cares? You just showed that under your hypothetical naturalistic circumstances, truth doesn't matter.

It's true you're not necessarily arguing reliable cognitive faculties are impossible under naturalism, but you used the words "likely false." This would require more than a lack of correlation between true beliefs and the ability to make helpful decisions. This would require a negative correlation between true beliefs and the ability to make helpful decisions, including decisions surrounding survival and reproduction. In what world is this the case? In what insane, bizarro world is the ability to make accurate predictions and shape the future negatively correlated with reproductive fitness? And in that world, why should anyone care about the "truth?"

This line of reasoning that you're advancing is a mess. Did you come up with it yourself?

I will say one thing to this point. Then I am asking you again to go back and understand what I have said, because you are engaging in a disagreement for it's conclusion before understanding it. When you complete that task, correct your statements, and notify me.

Truth matters to the assumption by undercutting it.... Third time I have had to say that because you are not retaining it.

 

[bhsmte]

And another thing! You completely neglected to show the mathematical process by which you determined God to have a higher probability of existing than not. That's what I was referring to when I asked you to provide the "mathematical process by which you calculated the probability of each proposed source of reliable cognitive faculties." You showed a mathematical process by which, in a hypothetical situation wherein true beliefs didn't guide decisions better than false ones, we might come to doubt the truth of our beliefs quite severely. That didn't answer my question at all. Show me your math determining the likelihood of naturalism being true AND the the likelihood of God existing, since these are the two proposed explanations for the reliability of cognitive faculties we're comparing.

Good luck with that.

 

[gaara4158]

I will say one thing to this point. Then I am asking you again to go back and understand what I have said, because you are engaging in a disagreement for it's conclusion before understanding it. When you complete that task, correct your statements, and notify me.

Truth matters to the assumption by undercutting it.... Third time I have had to say that because you are not retaining it.

Well, I don't see any philosophical jargon there, but you've sure lost me. I have no idea what you mean by "Truth matters to the assumption by undercutting it." And judging by the responses you've been giving, I don't think you do either. If you don't intend to answer my questions or address the problems I've pointed out with your logic, then we're done here.

 

[Sanoy]

Well, I don't see any philosophical jargon there, but you've sure lost me. I have no idea what you mean by "Truth matters to the assumption by undercutting it." And judging by the responses you've been giving, I don't think you do either.

I can explain it here, but you still need to go back and I am putting my trust in you to do so sincerely.

A world view involving a foundational assumption should be circular because the first premise must be assumed. The conclusion, or in this case the discovery, should try to acquire the assumption. It is a problem when that discovery defeats the strength of the assumption, and the process that arrived at the conclusion. To a lesser degree it's like the kind of statement which says "evidence shows that there are no sentences with words longer than 8 letters."

 

[Sanoy]

@Sanoy, I think you've been taking shortcuts with the reasoning that are going to confuse anyone who doesn't already see the problem as self-evident.

You are probably right. The reason could be because of the way I do things. I don't like to repeat the exact same argument as someone else. I learn from others and try to incorporate that learning to produce my own thoughts. I do it primarily as a self commitment to add something. But it also forces an interlocutor to rely on their own thoughts rather than using google to parrot responses back which turns both participants into middlemen. I enjoy you and Devolved so much for the personal thoughts that you bring to the discussion.

 

[gaara4158]

I can explain it here, but you still need to go back and I am putting my trust in you to do so.

A foundational argument should be circular because the first premise must be assumed. The conclusion, or in this case the discovery, should try to acquire the assumption. It is a problem when that discovery defeats the strength of the assumption, and the process that arrived at the conclusion.

It is indeed a problem when a conclusion undercuts the axiom on which it’s anchored. I have been trying very hard to show you how your attempt to categorize naturalism as such an axiom fails. You just keep repeating and rephrasing it as though you’re adding something. You’re not. You seem to think I’m just googling things and parroting them here for you. While I admit that some of the research that influences my responses to you occurs on Google, I’m not running back and forth like a middleman. I’m trying to figure out what you mean, weighing it logically in my mind, and responding to you. Sometimes I squeeze in memorable zingers from my research. Sue me. But first, respond to my objections.

 

[Sanoy]

It is indeed a problem when a conclusion undercuts the axiom on which it’s anchored. I have been trying very hard to show you how your attempt to categorize naturalism as such an axiom fails. You just keep repeating and rephrasing it as though you’re adding something. You’re not. You seem to think I’m just googling things and parroting them here for you. While I admit that some of the research that influences my responses to you occurs on Google, I’m not running back and forth like a middleman. I’m trying to figure out what you mean, weighing it logically in my mind, and responding to you. Sometimes I squeeze in memorable zingers from my research. Sue me. But first, respond to my objections.

I am trying to explain it, not add to it as you are not retaining the things that have been said.

Use google for learning, not for finding defenses of ones world view. Don't look up "how to counter x" look up "what is x" and you will be straight. Enter a discussion to learn the truth, not to maintain belief.

I actually wasn't thinking of you when I said that. Though on these forums it's not unreasonable to draw such a conclusion.

 

[bhsmte]

I am trying to explain it, not add to it as you are not retaining the things that have been said.

Use google for learning, not for finding defenses of ones world view. Don't look up "how to counter x" look up "what is x" and you will be straight. Enter a discussion to learn the truth, not to maintain belief.

Truth can be demonstrated, with something other than personal opinion. I have yet to see you demonstrate any as of yet, just give opinion.

 

[Sanoy]

Truth can be demonstrated, with something other than personal opinion. I have yet to see you demonstrate any as of yet, just give opinion.

Your opinion is noted.

 

[klutedavid]

Well, if all you’re asking is why the universe and reality work the way they do, there’s no reason to expect we’ll ever have an answer to that. What I’m pointing out is we don’t need that answer to function in life and a lack of a naturalistic answer isn’t an indication of a supernatural answer.

I was wondering about the definitions of some of the words in your post.

How would we define the word, 'universe'?

What does the word, 'reality', mean?

What does the word, 'naturalistic' mean?

 

[Silmarien]

You are probably right. The reason could be because of the way I do things. I don't like to repeat the exact same argument as someone else. I learn from others and try to incorporate that learning to produce my own thoughts. I do it primarily as a self commitment to add something. But it also forces an interlocutor to rely on their own thoughts rather than using google to parrot responses back which turns both participants into middlemen. I enjoy you and Devolved so much for the personal thoughts that you bring to the discussion.

Fair enough, but in that case, you're going to need to unpack your own evolutionary argument against naturalism a bit more, since where things stand right now, familiarity with Plantinga (or Nagel) is necessary to make sense of what you're saying.

1) Why, under naturalism, do you think that it would be surprising if our cognitive abilities matched up to reality? Does evolutionary theory truly involve cutting off the branch we're sitting on, as Darwin so famously worried?

2) Why would the existence of God solve this particular problem, and what, in this context, is meant by the word "God" at all? (I am actually curious about how you conceptualize things.)

Now, I obviously think there are approaches to naturalism that do get around this problem, though they might fall prey to very specific cosmo-teleological arguments in the process.