{"id":257,"date":"2011-05-21T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T12:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2011\/05\/21\/alvin-plantinga-talk\/"},"modified":"2011-05-21T12:28:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T12:28:00","slug":"alvin-plantinga-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2011\/05\/21\/alvin-plantinga-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Alvin Plantinga talk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a very nice talk by Plantinga explaining the latest version of his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. I attack a part of an earlier incarnation of the argument in the latest issue of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Religious Studies<\/span>. I have an attempt at refuting this version currently under review at another journal (Stop press 4.45 pm &#8211; just accepted in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Analysis<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the key thing re the latter paper &#8211; I think I can show that, even if semantic properties of neural structures are epiphenomenal, as Plantinga supposes they very likely are given naturalism, it turns out surprisingly enough that natural selection will <span style=\"font-style:italic\">still<\/span> favour some belief contents over and others, and will in fact favour beliefs that are true. That sounds impossible, doesn&#8217;t it? Surely natural selection can only favour those properties of neural structures that causally effect behaviour, right? And semantic epiphenomenalism entails that such properties as <span style=\"font-style:italic\">being a true belief<\/span> cannot causally affect behaviour. But actually, given one very obvious possibility that a naturalist might well sign up to, it&#8217;s not impossible for natural selection to favour true belief. In fact it&#8217;s probable.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/23597847\">God &amp; Evolution: Where the Conflict Really Lies<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/user7054434\">BLPR Philosophy &amp; Religion<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> Scroll forward to where Plantinga starts talking.<\/p>\n<p>That said, the EAAN is certainly ingenious. I have a lot of time for Plantinga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a very nice talk by Plantinga explaining the latest version of his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. I attack a part of an earlier incarnation of the argument in the latest issue of Religious Studies. I have an attempt at refuting this version currently under review at another journal (Stop press 4.45 pm &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plantinga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}