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The evolution of common sense on Scientific American

No, I do not mean that SciAm has finally evolved common sense, which would be an insult for the magazine that I grew up with. Instead quite the opposite: they have published a piece of mine on their Guest Blog on this topic. This indicates a growing lack of common sense, although I thank Bora Zivkovic for the privilege. Here’s the first two paragraphs:

Arthur Stanley Eddington was an interesting fellow. The English astrophysicist who photographed the solar eclipse that validated Einstein’s theory of general relativity was also a Quaker, a pacifist, and a clever popular writer. In his 1928 book The Nature of the Physical World [1] he began by noting that he had before him two tables: one of common sense, which was substantial and could change its essential nature if burned, and the table of science, which was insubstantial, mostly empty space, and which if burned changed only its state, not its essence.

Science, Eddington held, undercut common sense. By contrast, a half century earlier, Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s defender and general polymath, wrote that science was “nothing but trained and organized common sense” [2]. What should we think about this? At least one Christian philosopher, Alvin Plantinga [3], has argued that this means that if evolution is true we should not think evolution is true, because our evolved cognitive capacities did not evolve to deliver us truth, but only fitness.

Read the rest.

20 Comments

  1. Nice essay.

    One bit of shameless self promotion on my part: I think my paper “When is it selectively advantageous to have true beliefs?” (from Philosophical Studies 2001) is relevant to the argument you and Paul G develop in your papers discussing the debunking arguments. I argue that the Stich/Godfrey-Smith “better safe than sorry” arguments have limited scope, and develop decision theoretic tools to illustrate the kinds of problems for which we should expect greater reliability.

    • Have you got a link to that? I wish I’d seen it before we submitted.

  2. Ian H Spedding FCD Ian H Spedding FCD

    Who’s the dude in the shades at the bottom of the piece? Common sense – and the brief bio – says it’s you but you look way cooler than Dawkins, Myers or Moran there.

  3. Porlock Junior Porlock Junior

    Very nicely covers it for this non-philosopher.

    Not so nicely, the impression one walks away with is, “Wow, what a lotta heavy thinkers SciAm has for commenters.” I guess people who regularly talk philosophy get used to this stuff. Imagine the blog comments they’d have got, if such things had existed, back when people like Quine wrote articles for SciAm.

    IPOF one of the few things I like about the Republic is the scene in the tavern where Plato shows us the great^n grandfather of all the Internet bozos and trolls swaggering over to tell off the Socrates crew.

    Anywway, it’s nice (not) to see Plantinga still pushing what I like to call C. S. Lewis’s Worst Argument.

  4. Ian H Spedding FCD:
    Who’s the dude in the shades at the bottom of the piece?Common sense – and the brief bio – says it’s you but you look way cooler than Dawkins, Myers or Moran there.

    Now that he’s no longer a biker he has to look like one so that people will think that he’s still one!

  5. Jeb Jeb

    “If you believe that rustling in the undergrowth is a leopard, and take evasive action, you are fitter than the poor thinker who takes a Plantingan line ”

    Reminds me of this old Joke.

    Mick and Paddy are walking through the jungle and stray across a lion. Mick picks up a brick and throws it at the lion and shouts “quick Paddy run.” Paddy says “sure I’m not running it was you that threw the brick.”

    This 20th century joke is based on an older tradition in which gods creation and creatures must have meaning and significance for us.

    “The lion is never afraid but rather, with a bold spirit in fiery combat with a multitude of hunters always seeks to injure the first one who injures it” (Leonardo daVinci on the qualities and virtues of the lion).

  6. jeff jeff

    Insightful article, and I hope your career goes well. My only criticism is that you seem to arguing from the perspective that evolution is the greatest truth above any other potential truths. The only thing to be trusted. But it is a science magazine, and we all have our biases.

    • While I do think evolution is as likely to be true as any other claim we might make, and more so than all the competitors, that is not the point. It is whether or not evolution is, as Plantinga thinks, self-refuting.

  7. Ian H Spedding FCD Ian H Spedding FCD

    Excellent piece. It reminded me of a half-forgotten snatch of poetry which I finally dug up:

    Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
    An’ meikle Greek an’ Latin mangled,
    Till wi’ their logic-jargon tir’d,
    And in the depth of science mir’d,
    To common sense they now appeal,
    What wives and wabsters see and feel.

    — Robert Burns, Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner

  8. At least one Christian philosopher, Alvin Plantinga [3], has argued that this means that if evolution is true we should not think evolution is true, because our evolved cognitive capacities did not evolve to deliver us truth, but only fitness.
    Hmm, but if cognitive capacities that deliver truth make a population more fit, then those cognitive capacities at least in part might have evolved to deliver truth.

    • Yes, but only if the fitness is due to tracking truth. In the case of environmental beliefs, that must be true (if evolution by natural selection is true), but in the case of metaphysical beliefs, it cannot be. So the cognitive capacities are not reliable on anything other than environmental truth.

      • bob koepp bob koepp

        Our cognitive capacities for relatively simple arithmetical and logical reasoning seem pretty reliable, but it’s a stretch to assimilate these to environmental beliefs.

        • I also would have thought the opposite. I suggest that our mathematical abilities arose out of intuitions required to do quasi-mathematical reasoning about our environment, eg. counting (at least small numbers), comparing sizes and quantities, realizing that the same object cannot be in two places at the same time (an example of non-contradiction), basic Boolean operations, etc.
          Everything else is built on that base, and the reason we run into paradoxes when considering things like infinity and self-containing sets is that we’re trying to extrapolate these intuitions into a realm far beyond the physical environment.

        • bob koepp bob koepp

          There’s a long standing debate about whether our knowledge of formal systems (simple arithmetic, simple logic) could be constructed soley on the basis of perceptual knowledge. Maybe approaching the question in terms of evolution by natural selection can resolve that debate, but I haven’t seen the careful, step-by-step arguments that would be required.

      • Unless cognitive capacities are cognitive capacities regardless of what they are contemplating, even if it all developed to become a better hunter and gatherer.

  9. John Harshman John Harshman

    The argument that an evolved brain can give us no firm grounds for believing in evolved brains resembles a great many other religious arguments in at least one important way: it fails to examine the proposed alternatives. Do we, in fact, have any greater reason to trust a created brain? How would we tell, since that created or evolved brain is the tool used to judge its own usefulness?

    Another popular claim of that sort is the one to the effect that nothing other than God can provide an objective basis for morality, which fails to ask whether God can provide an objective basis either.

    • Well Berkeley argued that we only know the world because God permits us to, but then he said the world did not exist except in our perceptions (and God’s), so that is an argument that a created brain is misleading.

  10. Jeb Jeb

    “Maybe approaching the question in terms of evolution by natural selection can resolve that debate, but I haven’t seen the careful, step-by-step arguments that would be required.”

    Its a lot of work. Somewhat interesting work though, trying to determine a theory of knowledge.

    Working out the mechanisims responsible for sustaining a belief then the mechanisims that make a belief count as knowledge/ or deter false belief. Enviromental beliefs are helpfull in resolving problems with overlap and similarity between diffrent forms of belief (i.e the mechanisims by which they sustain themselves and reproduce) and in determining with a degree of accuracy the mechanisims that constrain false beliefs .

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