Silly Philosopher Admired by Even Sillier Philosopher

How nice! Philosopher Bradley Monton, who doesn't really understand the problems with intelligent design, is pleased that Alvin Plantinga (author of one of the dumbest arguments against naturalism ever constructed) likes his book.

Well, of course, Brad! The useful idiot: an atheist who thinks there's something to intelligent design! What's not to love?

(Don't bother trying to leave comments at Monton's blog. He certainly doesn't allow that!)

Sometimes Raymond Tallis Sounds Just Like a Creationist

Here.

Here are three points of concordance:

- use of dismissive and propagandistic terms, such as "Darwinitis", "neuromania", and "neuromaniac"
- insisting that the position he is arguing against constitutes "orthodoxy", as if it were a religious doctrine
- dismissing "materialism" and ignoring the lack of evidence for immaterial objects

Of course, I don't think he's actually a creationist. But I do wonder why he adopts their tactics.

Maybe he should have chosen another dismissive term in place of "Darwinitis", because it already has a definition:

a complaint that afflicts those of a literary bent and strong attachments to pre-scientific culture, who find in the theory of evolution a disturbing and mysterious challenge to their values (Anthony West)

Come to think of it, that sounds like a reasonably good description of Tallis (replace "evolution" with "evolutionary & neural explanation of consciousness")

Matthew Taylor probably wasn't the best choice for an opponent to Tallis. I imagine that Daniel Dennett (whose last name was comically mispronounced by Tallis) would have him for breakfast.

Both speakers agree that human beings are the only ones who "think about thinking". I wonder how they know this with such certainty? For example, how do they know that dolphins do not think about thinking?

Yet Another Boring Attack on Materialism

Here.

Kastrup's observation is trite and unoriginal.

Darwin himself remarked, "The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

And, of course, we know from extensive research that our perceptions are often wrong, and wrong in predictable ways.

But none of this provides the "profound contradiction" Kastrup thinks he has discovered. Yes, there are problems in perception and cognition, but the map between the real world and our mental model can't be wildly wrong. If it were, organisms with a better model would have outcompeted us. And the scientific method itself provides self-checking through replicability and peer review.

The bottom line: our own perceptions, and those of the instruments we devise, are all we have. So we use them, and in doing so, we try to be on our guard for mistakes in reason and perception caused by our own biology.

Yet Another Reason to Doubt the Relevance of Philosophy

Read this Globe and Mail article about the philosophy of mind.

If philosophers think the view that "The brain is not an organ of consciousness. … The brain has no cognitive powers at all" deserves anything more than a good horselaugh, this simply shows how irrelevant philosophy has become.

Our future understanding of cognition will come from neuroscience, not from Wittgenstein.

It's fun to read the comments, which are almost entirely negative.

Letter to Doug Groothuis

I occasionally visit the blog of Doug Groothuis, a Christian philosopher and intelligent design apologist. I find it a puzzle, because while many of his posts seem to be about the intellectual failings of others, he rarely bothers to provide a coherent argument himself. Instead, his blog seems to be a forum where he can enumerate his prejudices in one or two lines.

This is a typical example: Groothuis describes a presidential proclamation that "Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step-father, a grandfather, or caring guardian" as "against all reason". But he refuses to explain why, and he also refused to publish my comment pointing this out.

Like many Christian bloggers, Groothuis routinely censors comments. About half of the things I've submitted have been rejected, with no explanations.

So I was particularly amused to see this post, which expressed Groothuis' "despair" over the "dearth of discourse". Well, if you routinely censor comments, then of course there's going to be a dearth of discourse.

So I wrote to Groothuis, as follows:

Dear Prof. Groothuis:

I'm sending you this comment via e-mail because - ironically - you do not permit comments to your posting of July 11 about comments.

In that posting you express your despair over the "dearth of discourse". I think you're wrong, and here's why:

1. Blogs typically aren't viewed in the same way as academic articles or formal debates. They're typically more like a conversation in your home. In a conversation in your home, people don't expect every utterance to be a formal presentation, and they'd probably leave rather quickly if you insisted on it. If you want a more formal setting, there are lots of opportunities, such as academic journals.

2. I'm not sure you meant "dearth", because later you say "death". But assuming "dearth" is what you meant, I see no "dearth of discourse" in blogs. On the contrary, more people are discussing more ideas than ever before, because the opportunities for discussion are greater. Just look at a newspaper site like the the NYT: in print, the NYT publishes perhaps at most 15 letters from readers a day. But on their website a single article can, and often does, result in hundreds of reader comments.

3. Your implication that discourse is worse off now than in the past is - ironically - not supported by any evidence you have presented. I'd suggest reading /American Aurora/ to see that public discourse 200 years ago suffered from many of the same problems you have pointed out.

4. Your claim that "People do not study the art of argument or the forms of fallacies" is - ironically - unsupported by any actual data. Why not present some?

5. How is a posting where you say "This is a severe attack on freedom of religion and freedom of speech", but without giving any rationale for why you think so, contributing to "discourse"? Another example is "Against all Reason - Obama endorses homosexual parenting on Father's Day." You offer no explanation why you think this is "against all reason". What kind of "discourse" is that? If you don't have time to do so, that's understandable, but then you can scarcely rail against the dearth (or death) of discourse.

The other point I'd like to make is that it's a bit rich to decry the "dearth of discourse" on the one hand and randomly shut off comments on your posts and censor commenters. If you want people to read and react to your blog, then let them. I have, on several occasions, spent half an hour or more composing what I thought was a carefully-reasoned response to your blog, only to have it not appear because it apparently violated some internal rule of yours. This is not conducive to "discourse".


No response from him.