Why Evolution Implies the Supernatural

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Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Effectronica posted:

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Beliefs have no influence on behavior.

Beliefs cause behavior but not by reason of their semantic content (or in plainer language, their meaning).

Beliefs cause behavior but are maladaptive, evolution-wise.

Beliefs cause behavior and are evolutionarily adaptive, but not inherently true or false.

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But I am saying "low probability" without really doing any math. So let's make up a simple model, where we have a model human who has 100 beliefs, any of which may be true or false, and which are randomly formed as true or false, independently of one another. What is the probability that she forms her first 50 beliefs as true ones? Remember, these are independent events! So the formula for the probability is (0.5)^50, which amounts to 8.88e-16, or 8.88e-14% chance. Remember, this is for half the beliefs, not all of them. Even forming 10 true beliefs in a row has a 0.098% chance of occurring for her. While on average half of her beliefs will be true, they will be randomly scattered throughout this set of beliefs, generally in small groups.

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That being said, this is hardly unassailable. I think that many of the ways in which it can be attacked lead to greater problems, though. For example, pragmatic models of consciousness suggest that beliefs are formed from sense-experiences solely, and leaving aside the question of how they interact with behaviors without going into creationism/believing that natural selection suspended itself at some point in our history as a species, that still creates a problem with people who have religious sense-experiences, and we still have the problem of dealing with false beliefs versus true ones from sense-experiences.

Or we can accept that there is a barrier between noumenal and phenomenological reality (between what is really real, and what we can perceive), but this still accepts that the supernatural exists, it just denies that we can ever know anything about it.

But please, chew on this, and think about it, and test it for weaknesses!

Okay...a couple of things to consider.

1) Truth value might be binary, but that does not mean that the base probability of a belief's being true or false is 50%. Your model is off.
2) Beliefs are not formed independently of one another except for maybe the first few beliefs a being has once it becomes capable of forming beliefs. Your model is off even farther.

I think another option is that beliefs themselves can be cast as a type of behavior, in which case it doesn't matter what else you say about beliefs, the belief-forming machinery that tends to promote the survival of the species will propagate. It just happens that beliefs which are an accurate representation of the world and which affect our chances of survival tend to be selected for the strongest. It is entirely possible that beliefs which give inaccurate representations of the world can also ensure survival, but now you need an extra mechanism to explain how false beliefs get good results, which, as you yourself said, parsimony demands we exclude that happening.

This also probably going to go down the rabbit hole of figuring out exactly what all the beliefs that make up an individual statement are really fast, so that will be fun. No it won't, it will be tedious as hell.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 04:26

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 02:43

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Effectronica posted:

I'm going to respond as a single post, because many people have offered what are essentially identical arguments and rather than copy-and-paste many times I'll just respond all at once.

First of all, Complaining about Models: The whole point of a model is to be a simplified version of reality. Saying that it's simplified is not really a criticism at all.

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I just wanted to touch on this, since nobody else has yet. Nobody is criticizing your model based on its simplicity alone. Consider two models of the earth-sun system. One is geocentric, one is heliocentric. They are both equally simple (or complex, if you prefer that term) but the geocentric model will give bad results because it simply cannot explain certain observations that the heliocentric model can. In this case it's the change in the angle of the path of sun throughout the year. It's not too simple, it's simply wrong. Your model is also wrong. Beliefs do not operate in a vacuum and the odds of any particular belief being true or false are not 50%.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 15:58

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Effectronica posted:

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Actually, geocentric models are useful in astronomy, because locating stars under the assumption that the Earth is the center of the universe is more practical than using the Sun, or the center of the Milky Way. Similarly, this model is useful, especially since no one has actually shown that the probability of discerning truthful beliefs is inherently high (never mind that you still only have a 0.5% chance of forming 50 correct independent beliefs with a 90% chance of forming truthful ones) or that despite appearances, induction is essentially foolproof as far as discovering the truth goes.

Sure. But the point is that a geocentric model can't explain seasons or the change in the sun's path through the sky through out the year. It's not good at that, because it has a fundamental error of putting the earth at the center of the earth-sun system, instead of the other way around. Any attempts to use that model to explain it are going to collapse really quickly. Similarly, your assumption that beliefs operate in a vacuum is off base enough that it's going to throw off any math you do, and any further conclusions you draw from that.

And then all of this is kind of silly because you're open to the idea that natural mechanisms we don't know about yet count as the supernatural. Which is not what most people think of when they come across a term like "super natural".

Buried alive fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Aug 16, 2015

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 16:12

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Effectronica posted:

I am stating that the phenomenological reality we inhabit is one that can be made to correspond very closely to noumenal reality, in the Kantian definitions of those terms. I believe this because I reject Cartesian demonology and other systems as pointless, and because, like Johnson, I have kicked a rock and experienced pain from doing so.

You're kind of on the hook to explain stuff like this then:

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Also this..

And you have to do it without subscribing to the idea that science/scientific realism or whatever you want to call it is a worthy pursuit. Because if you do, then we don't need anything beyond the realm of a phenominal process in order to figure things out. Unless you're sticking with 'natural process we don't know about' still counts as supernatural, in which case we need to discuss what the hell the supernatural is even supposed to be if ignorance of a natural concept/rule/whatever is all that it takes to make something supernatural.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 22:40

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Effectronica posted:

This has nothing to do with the concepts of phenomenological and noumenal reality, dude, unless you're willing to assert that the difference is because of optical illusions, inattentional blindness and so on.

That is exactly the point that I'm making. Humans can make errors in beliefs all the time. We don't experience the squares as the same shade, or the gorilla marching across the court, but there they are. Our phenomenological reality does not line up with the nooumenal reality behind it. You keep saying that beliefs are more true than we would expect them to be, but you haven't demonstrated how this is so. The faulty model discussion and things like optical illusions poke holes in that statement. In the case of the faulty model, it's the idea that your model is giving you bad results. In the case of errors, it's that human beliefs may not be as true as you think they are in the first place.

And still this whole conversation is a little silly, because you're asserted that 'things that exist naturally but are not known are supernatural'. That's not the way anyone else uses those terms, so if you're willing to accept a material explanation, regardless of whether it's God, or Buddha-nature or whatever, for the amount of apparent true beliefs we have, then the argument isn't over whether or not the supernatural exists to explain it, it's over the definition of supernatural in the first place.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 00:26

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Effectronica posted:

Except that we can phenomenologically experience the noumenal reality by rewatching the video, or by placing our thumb over the splashes of color. The gap is easily bridgeable, whereas Kant's conception doesn't have such an easy bridge.

Well, no. I am saying, in full, that things which fall outside the bounds of naturalism are supernatural. A material explanation for this is supernatural because there is no naturalistic base for it to exist. A new species of cricket is not supernatural, but if it were an extremophile that lived in active volcanic calderas it would be supernatural under this definition, even though it probably wouldn't actually be magical.
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And those types of corrections are easily made without reference to the immaterial, so I'm not sure why you're invoking the possibility of the immaterial for other types of corrections that we are able to make. Whether something is supernatural or not (going by the rest of philosophy anyway) is an ontological question, not an epistemic one. If it's material and exists, it is natural. If it is immaterial and exists, it is supernatural. Even if this new species of cricket was magical, as long as those magical properties are grounded in materialistic ones it's still natural.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 00:55

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Effectronica posted:

Well, I don't actually think that everyone would agree that magic is not supernatural, even within the field of philosophy.
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Well, sure. If all philosophers agreed on everything, there wouldn't be so much of it.

Buried alive posted:

And those types of corrections are easily made without reference to the immaterial, so I'm not sure why you're invoking the possibility of the immaterial for other types of corrections that we are able to make. Whether something is supernatural or not (going by the rest of philosophy anyway) is an ontological question, not an epistemic one. If it's material and exists, it is natural. If it is immaterial and exists, it is supernatural. Even if this new species of cricket was magical, as long as those magical properties are grounded in materialistic ones it's still natural.

You never answered the bolded part. Also..

Effectronica posted:

Except that people are able to learn how to distinguish these colors from one another. Kant's noumenal world is not knowable by physical experience.

Are you going to draw a distinction between a belief which is true and one which counts as knowledge? Because if not I do believe you just talked yourself into a contradiction.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 01:40

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Effectronica posted:

Well, for one thing, I am not using the definition you are using.

Sure, for our purposes here, not for all time. A true belief is one that is consistent with observable reality, while a known belief is one that the believer is consciously aware of. For example, I may believe that spiders are dangerous without being consciously aware of this, only experiencing unease around them. Within this context, beliefs about noumenal reality cannot be considered to be true or false, since they cannot be verified. My belief that the phenomenal world is very similar to the noumenal world is an axiomatic statement.

Uh..a belief's truth value being pegged to observed reality has a lot of problems with it. You either wind up with a contradiction or have to go full tilt and say that truth is subjective.

Yes, we are using different definitions. Why do you insist that unknown material explanations count as supernatural? Why bother with raising the possibility of the immaterial? Keep in mind that previous explanations at this, that unknown material explanations are somehow outside of naturalistic thinking, is also your own particular definition of naturalism. That just seems like semantics to me. A way to go "the supernatural exists" without having to also go "the immaterial exists". Material vs. immaterial is why there's so much contention, if you remove that then who cares?

Also I'm really not sure how you leapt from "cannot be verified" to "cannot be true or false."

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 03:49

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 02:43

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

waitwhatno posted:

All of this poo poo goes completely over my head, I guess I'm too sober for philosophy.

All I see is that you have a system (the universe) in a certain state(containing intelligent life). Now, without knowing the probability density of that state, you just say that there must be a god because intelligent life is not the only possible state of the universe. This is complete gibberish.

Finding a radioactive uranium atom in a decayed state after only 5 min is extremely unlikely, but it does not imply anything supernatural. A more sensible argument would be to say that finding life after only a couple of billion years in such a small universe is completely implausible and suggests something funky going on. But obviously we don't know that yet for sure.

Misunderstanding probability and either misunderstanding or simply being totally unaware of alternatives is the basis for a lot God exists arguments.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2015 00:48

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