Originally Posted by afunugsamongus


Why should a naturalist believe (2)?

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus


SPE is true but harmless: it is about the number, but not the likelihood, of various ways content could be associated with behavior. Why should a naturalist believe that Pr(R|N&E&SPE) is low?

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus


We know a posteriori that cognitive reliability is adaptive. What exactly is the 'belief-behavior disconnect problem'?

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus


1. If SE then no semantic property affects behavior.
2. If a property has an energy cost then it affects behavior.
3. Reliability is a semantic property.

4. (1&3) If SE then reliability doesn't affect behavior.
5. (2) If a property doesn't affect behavior then it has no energy cost.
6. (4&5) If SE then reliability has no energy cost.

If you accept (1)-(3) then you can't consistently believe in the possible world you describe.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus


Then it should be easy for you to find a relevant disanalogy!

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus
Naturalistic evolution doesn't threaten R at all. Even if the probability thesis is true, N&E needn't reduce our odds of reliability: we may (and we do) have low/inscrutable P(R|N&E) = P(R) where P(R) is our odds of reliability prior to learning N&E.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus



....At any rate all you have here is an appeal to ignorance: you're talking about your own imaginative limits, not about the implications of N&E.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus


What is so implausible about belief content being identical with some NPP (in the same sense that water is H2O)? How about memory, do you consider it plausible that memory is identical with some NPP?

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus

Why should a naturalist believe that SPE is functionally equivalent to SE?

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus
On the face of it SE is a much stronger claim. SPE says that the belief-behavior disconnect is possible while SE says that it is actual.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus
SPE may be rhetorically useful but philosophically it seems benign.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus
You're saying reliability might happen to be tied to costly NPP without itself having a cost. What, then, stops us from saying that reliability is tied to adaptive NPP without itself being adaptive?

Originally Posted by Tisthammerw

In response one could put forth the following rebuttal.  Even though naturalism unavoidably entails an SE-type problem—whether via semantic epiphenomenalism or semantic pseudo-epiphenomenalism—the fitness-enhancing neurophysiological properties that are most likely to be selected by natural selection (say that a certain neurophysiology is selectable just in case it’s likely to be selected by natural selection) happen to be those that are truth-conducive.  The ANPD scenario is contrived and produces certain belief-behavior pairs that are unlikely to obtain in real human physiology.  The most selectable and efficient way for neurophysiology to produce advantageous behavior also produces true beliefs.  Thus, even though the SE-type situation exists for semantics and behavior, luckily for us the physiological relation between semantics and behavior is such that true beliefs usually obtain, and we have good a posteriori reason for thinking this holds true for us.

All that may be true, but as an objection against the Probability Thesis it falls short.  A major problem is that even if a favorable physiological relation between beliefs and behavior obtains for our species, such a favorable relation does not appear to be knowable from N&E alone.  To illustrate, consider a planet with aliens whose neurophysiology radically different from ours (though we don’t know much more about it).  Given this, the ANPD scenario, and the SE-like situation for beliefs and behavior, for all we know the most selectable and efficient fitness-enhancing alien neurophysiology available to natural selection has a physiological relation between beliefs and behavior that is wildly different from what human naturalists believes about themselves.  So there are possible worlds where the most selectable alien neurophysiology is such that the fitness-enhancing neurophysiology produces mostly false beliefs as in the ANPD scenario.  Of course, there are also possible worlds where the most selectable alien neurophysiology produces mostly true beliefs.  But there’s no way to establish on N&E alone that the truth-conducive neurophysiology is more selectable, in part because the alien neurophysiology is too mysterious and too radically different from our own.

Moreover, if we temporarily forget our own beneficial belief-behavior relationship to calculate the likelihood of RA on just N&E and thus without any (further?) background knowledge about what sorts of physiological relations between beliefs and behavior obtain in actual N&E worlds, we would have no reason to suppose Pr(RA|N&E) is high regardless of whether we assume semantic epiphenomenalism or semantic pseudo-epiphenomenalism.  Indeed, in light of the ANPD scenario the semantic beliefs of the aliens could (at least in the epistemic sense) be just about anything, and thus Pr(RA|N&E) is low or at best inscrutable.

Originally Posted by Tisthammerw
Scenarios S1A to S6A feature drug XX, a drug that renders one’s cognitive faculties unreliable for a high percentage of those who take it, though those so afflicted are incapable of detecting their own cognitive unreliability.  A small percentage of people have a gene called “the blocking gene” that produces a protein that blocks the reliability-destroying effects of drug XX, but nobody else is immune to the drug.  A few scenarios make reference to the XX-mutation, a mutation that causes one’s body to naturally produce and release drug XX into the body soon after one is born.  To simplify it I'll only deal with the last few scenarios.

Scenario (S4A): Naturalistic evolution gave me the XX-mutation and I come to believe in the following.  I am a renowned scientist who has built a machine that I know is capable of reliably detecting whether and when drug XX entered a person’s bloodstream.  For most of my life I have believed that I am the product of a sort of evolution that makes my cognitive reliability very likely.  After some years though I administer the test to myself and the machine reports that drug XX came into my bloodstream at around the time I was born.  Later I come to believe that I have taken an extensive battery of tests that establish my cognitive reliability, but since this belief came long after drug XX entered my bloodstream, I conclude that I have a defeater for my belief that my cognitive faculties are reliable.

Scenario (S5A): I live on planet XX with a hundred humanoid species.  Naturalistic evolution brought about the XX-mutation for some (though not all) races.  For the races afflicted with the XX-mutation, due to an SE-like phenomenon these species have fitness-enhancing behavior and are even able to create technology.  For example, one race is highly skilled in producing hydropower plants yet they believe that water consists of submicroscopic strawberries.  Only a small percentage of races that have the XX-mutation also have the blocking gene.  I come to believe in the following.  The races of my planet have just begun to discover drug XX, the XX-mutation, and the blocking gene.  I initially believe that my species has evolved reliable cognitive faculties and that there is overwhelming evidence for this.  I am one of the leading scientists of my species and I discover that drug XX was released into my body as soon as I was born.  Not only that, but the same problem holds true for the rest of my race and thirty-nine other races on my planet due to the XX-mutation.  A plague erupts on the planet eradicating all species except for the forty races that I believe have the XX-mutation.  I conclude that the probability of my humanoid cognitive faculties being reliable given that I am a product of naturalistic evolution on this planet is low.  Later I come to believe that I and other members of my race have taken an extensive battery of tests that establish our cognitive reliability, but since this belief came long after drug XX entered my bloodstream, I conclude that I have a defeater for my belief that my cognitive faculties are reliable.

Scenario (S6A): The only humanoid species on my planet is homo sapiens, and all of us have the XX-mutation.  I come to believe in the following.  Via a nifty combination of scientific and philosophical argumentation, it is proven beyond all reasonable doubt that naturalistic evolution entails that the XX-mutation is inevitably a part of any humanoid’s genetics.  Though there is the small chance of a humanoid species also having the blocking gene as part of its normal genetics, no other humanoid species would evolve the blocking gene.  I conclude that the probability of my humanoid cognitive faculties being reliable given that I am a product of naturalistic evolution is low.  Later I come to believe that there is overwhelming evidence for my cognitive reliability (e.g. I believe credible scientists have told me that we all have the blocking gene) but since this belief came after drug XX came into my bloodstream, I conclude that my belief in the blocking gene etc. was likely produced by unreliable cognitive faculties, and that I have a defeater for my belief that my cognitive faculties are reliable.

Scenario (S7A): The Probability Thesis is true and Pr(R|N&E) is low, but I do not initially believe this and instead think I am the product of a sort of evolution that makes my cognitive reliability very likely.  Later however I study philosophy and see for myself that the probability of my humanoid cognitive faculties being reliable given that I am a product of naturalistic evolution is low.  Afterwards I come to believe I have taken an extensive battery of tests that establish my cognitive reliability, but since this belief came long after N&E has already affected my cognitive faculties, I conclude that I have a defeater for my belief that my cognitive faculties are reliable.

We can construct an argument for the Defeater Thesis in the following manner.

1. If R is defeated in scenario (S4A), then R is defeated in scenario (S5A).


2. If R is defeated in scenario (S5A), then R is defeated in scenario (S6A).


3. If R is defeated in scenario (S6A), then R is defeated in scenario (S7A).


4. If R is defeated in scenario (S7A), then the Defeater Thesis is true.


5. R is defeated in scenario (S4A).


6. Therefore, the Defeater Thesis is true.

As you may already have guessed, premises 1-4 use material conditionals.  I suspect the most controversial premise is premise 3, but it seems very hard to find a relevant difference between (S6A) and (S7A).  One might say in (S7A) we know of overwhelming evidence in addition to N&E that makes R likely, but why exactly do we know of this in (S7A) but not in (S6A)?  To make the problem more explicit, imagine that the two worlds of (S6A) and (S7A) are essentially identical apart from the differences entailed in (S6A), such that I believe that the specific type of naturalistic evolution my species is a product of has given me genes that (together with proper nutrition etc.) makes it likely that my cognitive faculties are reliable, that cognitive science and evolutionary biology has given us strong evidence for human cognitive reliability, that truth-conducive faculties are adaptive in Earth primates, and so forth.  I also believe that we have the blocking gene to nullify the effects of the XX-mutation.  On top of that, let us say that the people in scenarios (S1A) to (S6A) lucked out to the point where everyone has the blocking gene. Yet still belief in cognitive reliability seems defeated when the people believe that all of the alleged evidence for cognitive reliability is obtained long after drug XX enters the bloodstream.  So how exactly is it that the alleged evidence for R is defeated in scenario (S6A) but not in scenario (S7A)?  If there is a relevant difference between the two scenarios, what is it?

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus

No, nonthreatening is actually nothing like defeating.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus

The defeater thesis relies on dubious analogies, whereas my analogy is ironclad.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus
Just as a broad theory of the building blocks of matter (including our faculties) needn't warrant R, a broad theory of the formation of biological structures (including our faculties) needn't warrant R. And though we do expect a full and specific account of the formation of our faculties to warrant R, we likewise expect a full and specific account of the building blocks of our faculties to warrant R....Even if we didn't have a sufficient naturalistic account of the formation of our faculties to warrant R (we do), the failure of our framework theory to explain specific details would still be neither damaging nor surprising.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus

Quote:

It's interesting to note the gap between what I said and how you portrayed my position.  Here's another way to look at it, where I replace the questioned assertion with p as a variable.  I basically said, "It seems very implausible that p; even if I were a naturalist, it would seem clear to me that not-p."  Your portrayal of what I said is apparently something like, "P is not been proven, therefore not-p [since that is what an appeal to ignorance is]" or "I can't imagine p, therefore not-p," neither of which I said or implied.  One of the things I've learned when doing philosophy is that sometimes disagreements boil down to "It seems to me that p" versus, "Well, it doesn't seem to me that p" with no formal or informal fallacy taking place.  Both this and the principle of charity are good things to keep in mind when doing philosophy.  We don't want to accuse people of fallacies they are not actually making, else we run the risk of engaging in meta-sophistry.

Your argument depends on blocking the view that "semantics is the same thing as syntax, just as water is the same thing as H2O". It does no good to declare your feelings against a contested view without giving reasons. Either you were appealing to ignorance/incredulity ("I find X implausible, therefore ~X"), or you didn't contest the point at all, which is equally bad for the EAAN.

Originally Posted by Tisthammerw
About the only way to avoid this [belief of N&E entailing SE] it seems is to say that semantics is the same thing as syntax, just as water is the same thing as H2O.  I find such a view very implausible; even if I were a naturalist, it would seem clear to me that a belief's semantic properties and NP-properties were as distinct as an electron's mass and its electric charge. Still, that N&E entails SE is not essential to my argument, since there is still SPE.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus

Quote:

I think memories stored in the brain are kind of like a notebook and require a nonphysical mind to interact with.

Do you think memories stored on a computer require a nonphysical operating system to interact with? How is a mind different from an operating system?

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus

Quote:

By my lights, it doesn't appear to be self-contradictory for those moving particles to have the same electrochemical properties but produce a different mental state; [...]  If there are possible worlds where the electrochemical properties are held constant but the electrochemical process generates a different mental state, then syntax isn't the same thing as semantics even if they are nomically correlated.

Non-contradiction in a world proves epistemic, not physical, possibility.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus

Quote:

I kind of addressed this back in post #646.

No, you didn't.

Originally Posted by afunugsamongus
You're saying reliability might happen to be tied to costly NPP without itself having a cost. What, then, stops us from saying that reliability is tied to adaptive NPP without itself being adaptive?

Originally Posted by Tisthammerw
In response one could put forth the following rebuttal.  Even though naturalism unavoidably entails an SE-type problem—whether via semantic epiphenomenalism or semantic pseudo-epiphenomenalism—the fitness-enhancing neurophysiological properties that are most likely to be selected by natural selection (say that a certain neurophysiology is selectable just in case it’s likely to be selected by natural selection) happen to be those that are truth-conducive.  The ANPD scenario is contrived and produces certain belief-behavior pairs that are unlikely to obtain in real human physiology.  The most selectable and efficient way for neurophysiology to produce advantageous behavior also produces true beliefs.  Thus, even though the SE-type situation exists for semantics and behavior, luckily for us the physiological relation between semantics and behavior is such that true beliefs usually obtain, and we have good a posteriori reason for thinking this holds true for us.

All that may be true, but as an objection against the Probability Thesis it falls short.  A major problem is that even if a favorable physiological relation between beliefs and behavior obtains for our species, such a favorable relation does not appear to be knowable from N&E alone.  To illustrate, consider a planet with aliens whose neurophysiology radically different from ours (though we don’t know much more about it).  Given this, the ANPD scenario, and the SE-like situation for beliefs and behavior, for all we know the most selectable and efficient fitness-enhancing alien neurophysiology available to natural selection has a physiological relation between beliefs and behavior that is wildly different from what human naturalists believes about themselves.  So there are possible worlds where the most selectable alien neurophysiology is such that the fitness-enhancing neurophysiology produces mostly false beliefs as in the ANPD scenario.  Of course, there are also possible worlds where the most selectable alien neurophysiology produces mostly true beliefs.  But there’s no way to establish on N&E alone that the truth-conducive neurophysiology is more selectable, in part because the alien neurophysiology is too mysterious and too radically different from our own.

Moreover, if we temporarily forget our own beneficial belief-behavior relationship to calculate the likelihood of RA on just N&E and thus without any (further?) background knowledge about what sorts of physiological relations between beliefs and behavior obtain in actual N&E worlds, we would have no reason to suppose Pr(RA|N&E) is high regardless of whether we assume semantic epiphenomenalism or semantic pseudo-epiphenomenalism.  Indeed, in light of the ANPD scenario the semantic beliefs of the aliens could (at least in the epistemic sense) be just about anything, and thus Pr(RA|N&E) is low or at best inscrutable.