Hey, @kurtbeil :)
Sorry taking so long to answer you, I've been busy and haven't got used to @Steemit yet :B I realized just now that the first two links are not the right ones, I've copied them from my personal website and Blogger added a bit of its URL to it -- and I can't edit the post anymore, so there is no way to fix that. Maybe you haven't been able to check out Plantinga's brief explanation of the argument, so I'm posting below the most important part of it.
Next, note many thinkers going back at least to Nietzsche (Nietzsche 2003) and possibly William Whewell (Curtis 1986) have pointed to a potentially worrisome implication of evolutionary theory. The worry can be put as follows. According to orthodox Darwinism, the process of evolution is driven mainly by two mechanisms: random genetic mutation and natural selection. The former is the chief source of genetic variability; by virtue of the latter, a mutation resulting in a heritable, fitness-enhancing trait is likely to spread through that population and be preserved as part of the genome. It is fitness-enhancing behavior and traits that get rewarded by natural selection; what get penalized are maladaptive traits and behaviors. In crafting our cognitive faculties, natural selection will favor cognitive faculties and processes that result in adaptive behavior; it cares not a whit about true belief (as such) or about cognitive faculties that reliably give rise to true belief. As evolutionary psychologist Donald Sloan Wilson puts it, “the well-adapted mind is ultimately an organ of survival and reproduction” (Wilson 2002, 228). What our minds are for (if anything) is not the production of true beliefs, but the production of adaptive behavior: that our species has survived and evolved at most guarantees that our behavior is adaptive; it does not guarantee or even make it likely that our belief-producing processes are for the most part reliable, or that our beliefs are for the most part true. That is because our behavior could perfectly well be adaptive, but our beliefs false as often as true. Darwin himself apparently worried about this question: “With me,” says Darwin,
the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? (Darwin 1887)
We can briefly state Darwin's doubt as follows. Let R be the proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable, N the proposition that naturalism is true and E the proposition that we and our cognitive faculties have come to be by way of the processes to which contemporary evolutionary theory points us: what is the conditional probability of R on N&E? I.e., what is P(R | N&E)? Darwin fears it may be rather low.
Of course it is only unguided natural selection that prompts the worry. If natural selection were guided and orchestrated by the God of theism, for example, the worry would disappear; God would presumably use the whole process to create creatures of the sort he wanted, creatures in his own image, creatures with reliable cognitive faculties. So it is unguided evolution, and metaphysical beliefs that entail unguided evolution, that prompt this worry about the reliability of our cognitive faculties. Now naturalism entails that evolution, if it occurs, is indeed unguided. But then, so the suggestion goes, it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given the conjunction of naturalism with the proposition that we and our cognitive faculties have come to be by way of natural selection winnowing random genetic variation. If so, one who believes that conjunction will have a defeater for the proposition that our faculties are reliable—but if that's true, she will also have a defeater for any belief produced by her cognitive faculties—including, of course, the conjunction of naturalism with evolution. That conjunction is thus seen to be self-refuting. If so, however, this conjunction cannot rationally be accepted, in which case there is conflict between naturalism and evolution, and hence between naturalism and science.
We can state the argument schematically as follows:
- (1) P(R | N&E) is low.
- (2) Anyone who accepts N&E and sees that (1) is true has a defeater for R.
- (3) Anyone who has a defeater for R has a defeater for any other belief she holds, including N&E itself.
Therefore
- (4) Anyone who accepts N&E and sees that (1) is true has a defeater for N&E; hence N&E can't be rationally accepted.
Of course this is brief and merely a schematic version of the argument; there is no space here for the requisite qualifications.
What do you think, it seems like a strong argument, doesn't it? I'm an atheist and in some sense a naturalist as well, so that argument is something that really puzzles me. Plantinga's great character and his capacity to not only defend Christianity but also to turn the burden of proof back to its detractors are the main reasons why he is one of my philosophical heroes.
Interesting .. but I think what has been described as Darwin's "doubt" might actually be Darwin's joke. Plantinga is taking something said tongue-in-cheek, and applying formal logic to it .. it's fun, but not that worthwhile.
The fact that our physical brains are the product of natural selection, and are in a constant
state of evolutionary change, does not make them unreliable - the mind .. that difficult to quantify product of the electro-chemical processes of the physical brain, and what we do with it, is quite separate from what was occurring within the distant relative that was our original monkey brain. :)
Philosophy, including logic, as well as mathematics and the scientific method, is what gives our 'minds' reliability. Observation, how we "see" the world around us, might be a physical process, but the way we determine reliability is that others see the same things we do, and then we apply evidence-based reasoning in order to come to the conclusion that what we are seeing, and what it means, is "probably" correct.
In the end, this is all that we have, so we must consider our conclusions to be correct - Darwin was living in an age of great science-based wonders, discoveries and creations, and that is why I believe that his "doubt" was a joke .. the reliability of our monkey-brain was being proven on a daily basis .. medicine, engineering .. a long list - around the time of his authoring "The Origin of Species", electrical light was beginning to roll out to the public and all things electrical was all the rage .. proof of advancement! :)
I leave room for the existence of a creative force in the universe, and even the possibility of a designer responsible for us, but if there was / is such a being, I believe it dictates and directs nothing, but rather introduced an evolutionary algorithm that has led to the diversity we see, and has resulted in us, and what we in a constant state of becoming. If that is not the case, then it is all just dumb luck and responses to environments that were randomly generated by natural forces. :-)
All very interesting .. and I am no expert in any of these areas, but I really appreciate the reply .. it's great that such conversations can carry on, on STEEMIT!
Cheers!