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7/21/2025, 5:14:52 AM
>>510938430
>That's a false dichotomy between survival and truth.
is it?
i'm not saying survival and truth are always opposed, but that evolution selects for behavior (again, the biological imperatives that govern darwininan fitness are our ability to fight feed flee and fuck), not belief accuracy. a false belief can still yield adaptive behavior. for instance, someone who mistakenly believes all snakes are venomous may survive longer by avoiding them all.
there was an interesting relevant exchange between alex o'connor and william lane craig that spoke on this a few weeks ago where craig made the case that oftentimes truth is less conducive to survival than lies, wracking my brain to think of the examples that were given but i guess i'm too tired.
pic is tangentially related.
as for cognitive reliability, sure, evolution might produce faculties that are generally reliable in limited domains (avoiding predators, recognizing kin) but once we start forming abstract beliefs about metaphysics, math, or science, areas not directly tied to survival, there's no clear reason to trust that those faculties continue to be reliably aimed at truth.
regarding "proper function," it's not begging the question to say that a designer can ground that concept. under theism, cognitive faculties were designed with truth-seeking in mind, which gives us warrant for trusting them in a broad range of contexts, but under naturalism, there's no intentional grounding for why our minds should be truth-conducive beyond surival heuristics. so while naturalism might allow some reliability, it doesn't give a solid foundation for trusting our minds about deep truths, like naturalism itself.
>That's a false dichotomy between survival and truth.
is it?
i'm not saying survival and truth are always opposed, but that evolution selects for behavior (again, the biological imperatives that govern darwininan fitness are our ability to fight feed flee and fuck), not belief accuracy. a false belief can still yield adaptive behavior. for instance, someone who mistakenly believes all snakes are venomous may survive longer by avoiding them all.
there was an interesting relevant exchange between alex o'connor and william lane craig that spoke on this a few weeks ago where craig made the case that oftentimes truth is less conducive to survival than lies, wracking my brain to think of the examples that were given but i guess i'm too tired.
pic is tangentially related.
as for cognitive reliability, sure, evolution might produce faculties that are generally reliable in limited domains (avoiding predators, recognizing kin) but once we start forming abstract beliefs about metaphysics, math, or science, areas not directly tied to survival, there's no clear reason to trust that those faculties continue to be reliably aimed at truth.
regarding "proper function," it's not begging the question to say that a designer can ground that concept. under theism, cognitive faculties were designed with truth-seeking in mind, which gives us warrant for trusting them in a broad range of contexts, but under naturalism, there's no intentional grounding for why our minds should be truth-conducive beyond surival heuristics. so while naturalism might allow some reliability, it doesn't give a solid foundation for trusting our minds about deep truths, like naturalism itself.
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