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I have to admit that I still don't understand the basic argument, Effectronica. If I understand you correctly, your basic point is that natural selection by itself is not enough to ensure that the majority of our beliefs come out as true. (I assume you're mostly concerned with basic beliefs that correlate closely with actions, such as "snakes are dangerous", rather than more complex ones such as "the Goldbach conjecture will likely be proved true one day".) From the fact that natural selection alone doesn't explain our mostly true beliefs, you conclude that the supernatural (whatever that is) does guarantee this. Is that the basic argument? What do you mean by "the supernatural"? And how does the supernatural do this job? Why is there no other mechanism outside of (a) natural selection and (b) the supernatural that would explain the general veracity of our beliefs?
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Aug 16, 2015 15:26
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Effectronica posted:Because we have no naturalistic mechanism to explain this prevalence, as of yet. I suspect that one will be discovered, as opposed to anything conventionally supernatural, but until then, like plate tectonics stood for 50 years, it lies outside the boundaries of naturalism. I absolutely do not get this. The mechanism is learning, both through trial and error as well as through information taught by others. All of that is perfectly obvious and acceptable to a naturalist thinker. What am I missing?
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Aug 16, 2015 16:54
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Effectronica posted:Consider the subset of beliefs where learning is rare because the events about the beliefs are rare, so direct testing and transmitted knowledge of testing is, in turn, rare. These are still very likely to be truthful, much more likely than by chance. Effectronica posted:But, large predators rarely attack humans, so the basic problem remains. Not only do we have the adaptive behavior, but we have a true belief about why this is a wise behavior, and it relies either on a constant string of attacks by predators or a continuous chain of knowledge from one of the few people who witness such attacks, both of which are not especially plausible. None of this is true. If you're a child in a western country without access to zoos you might well learn that tigers are dangerous by watching Disney's adaptation of the Jungle Book. There is no continuous chain to a tiger attack survivor that I'm aware of, but watching the movie instill the idea that tigers are dangerous nonetheless. Presumably a high percentage of our beliefs are acquired that way. There is no mystery in this.
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Aug 16, 2015 19:26
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