Tuesday, August 25, 2015

More New Atheist Follies: P. Z. Myers tries to take on C. S. Lewis and the result is not pretty



Once again, the New Atheists have approached the black monolith of a philosophical argument, scratched their heads in mystification, and started jumping around in irritation. But unlike the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, they have come away from the experience completely unenlightened, the only benefit being that they got a little exercise.

This happens repeatedly: Some atheist scientist who's been fussing around with his Bunsen burner and test tube walks out of the laboratory and tries his hand at philosophy, thinking that the skills he acquired taking his biology degree somehow transfer over into the kind of conceptual analysis required in philosophy. Lawrence Krauss and Jerry Coyne are constantly embarrassing themselves by doing this.

This time it is P. Z. Myers, trying to make sense of C. S. Lewis' "Argument from Self-Destruction" (as it is termed by the Encylopedia of Philosophy). The argument is designed to show that the materialist position is self-defeating: If materialism is held to be true metaphysically, then it is false in reality.

Here is Lewis' statement, taken out of the context, of course, of the chapter in his book Miracles in which it appears, nevertheless sufficient:
Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.
Myers' response? "Then how could he write down such illogical inanity as this?" So we expect to hear some logically coherent response to it from the cocky Myers. Addressing the first three sentences, he says:
See, there’s his problem. Brains didn’t just happen. They aren’t merely some peculiar arrangement of atoms. They have a long contingent history in which they were shaped by selection to have particular properties that allowed bearers of slightly more functional nervous systems to outlive, outbreed bearers of cruder brains. An absence of a designer does not imply that the only other alternative is random chaos.
Myers apparently considers this a cogent response. Now first of all, how does it refute what Lewis says―that the brain is a mere arrangement of atoms―to say that the arrangement of atoms has a history? Of course arrangements of atoms have a history. Lewis doesn't deny it, in fact his whole point in this section of his book is that the materialist position is that any brain state is simply the effect of prior physical causes. Exactly why Myers thinks this is somehow in conflict with what Lewis is saying is a mystery. And why does he think the statement that brains are merely peculiar arrangements of atoms is inconsistent with those atoms having a history?

This is typical of New Atheist arguments: They just repeat some Just So story about how something came about and think that constitutes an explanation. In this case, it wouldn't matter if it did: It still doesn't address Lewis' point.

So, after jumping around in irritation at the first part and beating his hands on the ground, he tries to take on the second part:
First, you can’t trust your thinking to be true. You have to test and verify all the time. You can believe in thought without believing in gods: we all build empirical models of how the world works and test them constantly. From an early age, we noticed that when we dropped things they fell to the ground; when we learned to walk we stumbled and learned that we can fall to the ground, and it hurts; we learned that when we fell off the table it hurt a lot more than when we fell while standing on the ground. And now, when I look out my second floor window, I know jumping out of it would probably do me significant damage, despite never having actually tried it. 
Most of what we believe isn’t derived from the pure and perfect reasoning power of our flawless brains—it’s learned by trial and error by brains that are often afflicted with stubbornly bad ideas.
I'm sorry, but this response is so utterly bone-headed it's hard not to just dismiss it and go on the next bone-headed New Atheist pronouncement and the next one, ad infinitum. He literally doesn't understand what Lewis is saying.

Myers apparently thinks Lewis is trying to prove the existence of God with this argument, which, of course, he clearly is not. He's trying to show that the whole concept of truth―whether it's the truth of the position that God exists or the truth of the position that "you can't trust your thinking to be true"―is impossible on the materialist account of reality.

If your brain is merely an arrangement of atoms, then what can "truth" possibly mean? On what basis do we call one arrangement of atoms "true" and another "false"? The only basis on which we could privilege one over the other is if there is something above and beyond arrangements of atoms. But materialists don't believe in anything beyond arrangements of atoms―at least not if they're consistent materialists (there is another question).

The only atheists consistent on this point are the Platonist ones, like Bertrand Russell, who basically have to posit metaphysical entities. If there is such a thing as "truth," then it is metaphysical. But materialism denies the metaphysical. Therefore nothing, not even materialism can be "true."

That's why it's been called the "Argument from Self-Destruction": It's a description of how materialism defeats itself. It has nothing to do with proving God. You have to actually understand what somebody is saying in order to even argue against them. And Myer's doesn't even get that far.

I suggest he stick with arguing against thinkers more on his philosophical level, like Ken Ham. With Lewis, he's completely out of his water.

8 comments:

David Bolin said...

I don't think this interpretation of Lewis's argument is correct. Consider what he says:

"It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else."

He is not saying that if the mind was not designed, thought does not exist. He is saying that I would have no reason to think that those thoughts are true.

Myers is mostly responding by saying that yes, you have to be skeptical about your thoughts, but you also shouldn't assume they are false. Especially if your mind evolved, being right is more likely to be helpful than being wrong, so your thoughts will be more likely to be right than wrong.

Anonymous said...

The basic argument provided by Lewis and Cothran seems to be:
If there is no intelligence (aka God) behind the universe, we cannot trust our thinking and there is no such thing as truth. Therefore materialism is self-defeating.

It seems to me there is another conclusion which follows:
Unless we know for certain there is an intelligence behind the universe, we cannot believe in God. This is because we cannot know whether it is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call belief in God.

PS A Google search for "Argument from Self-Destruction" and "Encylopedia of Philosophy" gave the startling result that it is an invalid argument.
http://library.atgti.az/categories/philosophy/Donald%20M.Borchert%20-%20Encyclopedia%20of%20Philosophy,%20Volume%206%20(Masaryk%E2%80%93Nussbaum).pdf


The argument from self-destruction. A popular argument
for disposing of materialism is this:
...

This argument has a long history, being found in
Epicurus and developed and defended by J. B. S. Haldane
(1932) and Karl Popper (1977). Nevertheless, it is invalid.
That the course of a given process of inferring was determined
by the structure of a brain does not entail that it
was an unreasonable inference. Nor does it entail that
there could be no ground for thinking it reasonable. We
can see that this is so, by comparing reasoning in people
with calculating in adding machines. The result reached is
a causal consequence of the structure of the machine; it is
nonetheless a correct one, and one we are entitled to rely
on. Haldane later retracted his argument (1954).

Martin Cothran said...

David,

I did not say that Lewis was saying that if the mind was not designed, thought does not exist. Maybe you could point to what I said that made you think this.

"Design" has to do with it only to the extent that it is an alternative account that doesn't suffer from what the materialist account suffers from. The argument has nothing to do with whether there is design per se or even whether there is a God, other than that those accounts don't make the same logical mistake. It is simply a refutation of materialism as an account of reality that would allow for the truth of statements and the validity of arguments, and the refutation in no way depends on the existence of God or a designer.

I don't think you or Myers are even seeing the force of the argument. This may be partly the result of the fact that you can't see the context of the argument, but I still think the quote itself doesn't justify your interpretation of it, and it certainly has nothing to do with what Myers thinks it has to do with.

It is a little clearer in the quote which Lewis uses elsewhere in the chapter from by the scientist J. B. S. Haldane:

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true .... And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

In a lecture he gave that is included in The Weight of Glory he restates this argument (I don't have the book in front of me, so I'm quoting from the Wikipedia article on the "Argument from Reason," another term for this argument):

One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the naturalistic worldview].... The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears.... [U]nless Reason is an absolute--all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.

There is also a nice summary of the argument on the Wikipedia page on Lewis' book (Miracles):

The argument holds that if, as thoroughgoing naturalism entails, all of our thoughts are the effect of a physical cause, then there is no reason for assuming that they are also the consequent of a reasonable ground. Knowledge, however, is apprehended by reasoning from ground to consequent. Therefore, if naturalism were true, there would be no way of knowing it, or anything else not the direct result of a physical cause.

Lewis asserts that by this logic, the statement "I have reason to believe naturalism is valid" is self-referentially incoherent in the same manner as the sentence "One of the words of this sentence does not have the meaning that it appears to have", or the statement "I never tell the truth". In each case, to assume the veracity of the conclusion would eliminate the possibility of valid grounds from which to reach it.


... to be continued

Martin Cothran said...

.. This is getting a little further on in his argument to the part where he is talking about validity as opposed to truth, but the same argument applies.

In other words, the materialist believes that the only relationship in the world is the cause/effect relation in the sense of pure efficient causation. In the materialist account there could be no ground/consequent relation (that relation at the heart of saying that anything rationally follows from anything else) because that would be an entirely metaphysical relation.

The same would apply to the concept of truth. Any rational account of truth would have to be metaphysical, not material. And since it is precisely the metaphysical which materialism denies, it cuts itself off from any coherent account of truth or validity.

Being skeptical about your thoughts is an epistemological question that has little to do with the ontological argument Lewis is making.

And a belief in evolution (at least one that purely materialistic) only makes this problem worse, not better.

Martin Cothran said...

Anonymous,

You also mis-stated my argument (and Lewis'). See my response to David. And, yes, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy article does maintain that the argument is invalid. I think they're wrong, and so do many philosophers.

Maybe you could explain why you think their refutation is convincing. I would be glad to address that.

But you should read the whole article. If you had done that, you wouldn't have mis-stated my argument and misunderstood Lewis'.

David Bolin said...

I can understand with the argument you are making, but I just do not see it in the quotations you give from Lewis, nor in the original context, which I have also seen.

If he was making that argument, why does he say, "For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true," rather than, "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain then there is no such thing as truth or falsity"?

As far as I can see, he is saying that if physical causes determine my thoughts, my thoughts should be random relative to truth or falsity, not that there would not be a meaningful concept of truth.

Martin Cothran said...

David,

It's pretty clear if you read the chapter that quote is from that the reason he believes that "if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true" because "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain then there is no such thing as truth or falsity."

He would also say, I think, that his thoughts would be random relative to truth or falsity precisely because there would be no meaningful concept of truth, and there would be no meaningful concept of truth since there could be no concepts at all in a materialistic universe since concepts are metaphysical and materialism denies the existence of anything metaphysical.

Anonymous said...

First of all, I know little about philosophy. And I am not sure what metaphysical means.
But it is surprising to me that an Encylopedia would have material which people disagree with. I am used to technical encyclopedias having little to no controversial material.

And I wasn't trying to argue with Lewis' or your argument about materialism.

Perhaps my point is more epistemological rather than ontological (if i understand any of what they mean).

So the original post says the materialists can never know if naturalism is valid.

My question then is, who can know whether something metaphysical is valid, and how?

I read Kreeft's article on clashing symbols where he writes:
"The first assumption, epistemological realism, says that the object of human reason, when reason is working naturally and rightly, is objective reality; that human reason can know things as they really are, and can sometimes know them with certainty;"

Let's just stipulate that human reason can know things as they really are with certainty. But he states this is "when reason is working naturally and rightly". How do anyone know if reason is working properly or not?

As far as that article goes, i am neither a realist nor a nominalist, but I wonder, for example, what i am missing in
"G. K. Chesterton refuted nominalism with his usual economy and wit when he argued, "If, as the nominalist says, 'all chairs are different,' how can he call them all 'chairs'?"

Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=25-06-035-f#ixzz3kBkO9C5C"
It seems to make no sense whatsoever.


j a higginbotham