PWJ: S4E75 – Bonus – “The Argument From Reason” with Trent Horn

June 24, 2021 pilgrim Leave a comment

David was invited onto The Counsel of Trent podcast to talk about “The Argument From Reason”, which is an argument against Naturalism which Lewis presents in Chapter 3 of his book, Miracles.

S4E75: “The Argument From Reason” with Trent Horn (Download)

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Timestamps

00:08 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:13 – Welcome
00:50 – The Counsel of Trent
39:42 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts

YouTube Version (Audio)

YouTube Version (Video)

From Trent’s channel:

From the Pints With Jack channel:

After Show Skype Session

No Skype Session today!

Show Notes

What is the main thesis of Lewis’s book Miracles?
- The full title of the book is Miracles: A Preliminary Study and it was published first in 1947 and then revised in 1960.
- Jack begins by explaining that, before we can study miracle claims, we’ve first got to decide whether or not miracles can actually happen in principle! Whether or not you think miracles are possible will change how you respond to miracles claims!
  - For example, if you start with the presupposition that miracles are impossible, when you read accounts of miracles in the Bible (or even the newspaper), you will necessarily assume that there is an alternative explanation.
- As a result, Lewis spends a good deal of time in Miracles evaluating the competing claims of naturalists and supernaturalists.
  - The former believe that nature is a closed, interlocking system and that nature is all there is.
  - Supernaturalists, on the other hand, believe that there can be outside interference by a supernatural entity and, as a Christian, Lewis argues that miracles are interventions by a supernatural entity (God) which goes beyond natural laws.
- He then considers the major miracles of the New Testament, particularly the Incarnation.
- And at the back of the book, there’s also an interesting appendix, where he looks at free will and the value of prayer.

Some of our favourite quotations from the book:

“Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known.”
C.S. Lewis, Miracles

“In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.”
C.S. Lewis, Miracles

“If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.”
C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Trent alluded to his recent debate with Matt Dillahunty:

What is Lewis’s argument from reason and where is it found in the book?
- There are lots of arguments in favour of the existence of God, but the Argument From Reason is really an argument against Atheism. More specifically, it’s an argument against metaphysical naturalism which then subsequently points to the existence of a supernatural being who is the source of human reason. So, Naturalism is the belief that nature is all there is. There’s no God, no angels, no demons etc, just matter, energy and natural forces in a causally-closed system. The Argument From Reason claims that this worldview is incoherent and that the world is better explained by supernaturalism

What’s the origin of the Argument?
- Although Lewis is well-known for this argument, it didn’t begin with him. Even in Miracles, as Jack is making his argument, he quotes others, such as JBS Haldane (1927) and his book Possible Worlds. As with most other things, Lewis borrowed heavily from folks such G.K. Chesterton, who argues along similar lines both in Orthodoxy (in the chapter entitled “The Suicide of Thought”) and in his book on St. Thomas Aquinas.

How would you summarize the argument?
- There are a number of variants of The Argument From Reason, different aspects of it and I’ve heard it explained a number of different ways.
- Everyone has beliefs that we reason to. Under Naturalism, these must be reducible to natural processes in your brain…which, under naturalism, is just a machine which is itself the product of blind natural forces. The question then arises…if worldview is true, why would we trust our brains to arrive at beliefs which are true? In fact, it would seem to undermine the idea of meaning, morality, free will, as well as my cognitive faculties and my ability to rationally deliberate.
- I actually think the kernel of the argument is best summed up by someone whom Lewis quotes in Miracles, a chap called JBS Haldane (who was, incidentally, an atheist):

“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true … and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
JBS Haldane (quoted in Miracles)

Lewis doesn’t just address this question in Miracles, he also neatly articulates this quandary in his essay “Is theology poetry?”

One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the naturalistic worldview]…. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears…. unless Reason is an absolute – all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.
C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?”, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

This raises lots of questions…
- The validity of Modus Ponens (“if p then q ”) and the laws of logic in general.
- The relationship between my mind and the outside world
  - How can our thoughts be about anything? Atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg says that they’re not – it’s just an illusion. Our thoughts can’t be about anything anymore than a table can be about something else.

In the Handbook of Catholic Apologetics, Dr. Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ronald Tacelli formulate the argument like this:

P1. We experience the universe as intelligible. This intelligibility means that the universe is graspable by intelligence.

P2. Either this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the products of intelligence, or both intelligibility and intelligence are the products of blind chance.

P3. Not blind chance.

C. Therefore this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the products of intelligence.

What are some modern developments to the argument?
- Contemporary defenders of the argument from reason include…
  - Victor Reppert who wrote a book called C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea
  - Alvin Plantinga who has his own form of the argument called
    “The Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism”:

P1. If both naturalism and evolution are true, then human cognitive faculties are the result of blind mechanisms such as natural selection

P2. Natural selection selects for survival-related behaviors, not necessarily true believes (except to the extent belief is “appropriately related to behavior”)

P3. If evolutionary naturalism is true then the primary function of human cognitive abilities is to promote survival-related behaviors, not necessarily the production of true beliefs.

P4. Given that it is not natural selection’s primary function, the probability of evolutionary naturalism producing cognitive faculties that lead to true beliefs is low to inscrutable.

P5. One of the allegedly true beliefs held by the naturalist is a belief in metaphysical naturalism itself.

Conclusion… Therefore “the devotee of [evolutionary naturalism] has a defeater for any belief he holds, and a stronger defeater for [evolutionary naturalism] itself.

Interestingly, Charles Darwin also saw something related to The Argument From Reason in his own theory of Natural Selection. In a letter to William Graham, he writes:

…with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
– Letter from Charles Dawin to William Graham (3 July 1881)

Put another way, if we’re just meat robots, programmed by evolution, why should we assume that we’ve been programmed for truth? (Chinese Room experiment)
- I can’t step outside of my cognitive faculties in order to judge them.

In the arguments for the existence of God, there’s something known as the Argument from Common Consent which basically points to the fact that even today, and for the vast majority of human history people have believed in the supernatural….
- I’ve met atheists who argue that that belief in the supernatural is just a result of evolution, saying we developed a belief in the supernatural, not because it was true, but because (for various reasons) it contributed to our survival.
- Richard Dawkins is fond of saying that humans are just machines for propagating DNA.
- However, this is really problematic because it means that evolution will allow us to be deluded if it’ll help us survive. So, why should we trust our brains?

As an aside, it also raises some other interesting questions when we look at humanity…
- You and I have been talking for half an hour about metaphysics.
- What survival value does that have?
- Is an understanding of metaphysics crucial to survival? If so, why does the government subsidize farmers and not philosophers?

Criticisms of the argument?

“Broad” naturalists don’t think that Lewis’ argument applies to them.
- They see consciousness as an “emergent” non-physical property of brains
- …and therefore agree with Jack that different kinds of causation exist in nature and that rational inferences cannot be fully explainable by nonrational causes.
Some critics think this argument fails because the causal origin of beliefs is irrelevant to whether those beliefs are justified.
- Strikes me as a bit like they’re arguing it’s a Genetic Fallacy.
- But the question here is whether reasoning connects us with objective truth, not whether any inferred beliefs can be rational or justified in a materialistic world.
Computationalists, argue by pointing to computers which are undeniably physical systems (your computer doesn’t have a soul), but they are also rational.
- They argue that therefore the incompatibility between mechanism and reason must just be an illusion since they can come to justified conclusions.
- It is argued that our brains are just computers.

Is there a myth that has grown up around Lewis’ argument?

Much like Tolkien’s supposed hatred for The Chronicles of Narnia, the story grows in the retelling…
It’s often portrayed that…
- Lewis, this Christian… this man… gets destroyed by (gasp) a woman!
- It’s often painted as a battle of the sexes, a battle between Christianity and Secularism
- We’re told that Lewis is so humiliated that he gives up apologetics and theology and retreats to writing children’s fairy tales…

What really happened between C.S. Lewis and Elizabeth Anscombe?

In 1948, philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe read a paper to the Oxford Socratic Club (an organization Lewis helped found).
In her paper, she criticized the argument in the 3rd chapter of the first edition of Miracles.

She had three main criticisms of Lewis’ argument, mostly focusing on his terminology:

She criticised Lewis’ use of the “irrational”, distinguishing between “irrational” causes belief and “nonrational” causes. An “irrational” cause might be wishful thinking, but a “nonrational” cause would be the firing of neurons. The former leads to faulty reasoning but the latter doesn’t necessarily. Lewis amended the argument accordingly.
She also picked up Lewis’ contrast between “valid” and “invalid” reasoning, saying this contrast is only possible for some reasoning to be valid.

Lewis conceded that his word choice wasn’t good. He was trying to explain that reasoning is a reliable means of pursuing truth only if it can’t be explained from end-to-end by nonrational causes.
Lastly, she also picked him on of his lack of distinction between a number of terms (“why”, “because”, and “explanation”). She also said that what should be considered a “full” explanation changes in context. Once again, Lewis accepted the criticism and made distinctions in the meaning of “because”, one the one hand referring to the physical causality and on the other referring to evidential support

There are some important points to note about this story…

Lewis did not give up apologetics
- He revised Miracles and a second edition came out in 1960, taking into account Anscombe’s criticisms
- Mere Christianity, possibly Lewis’ greatest apologetics work came out after this incident, as well as and several other theological works

Lewis did not hide in fairy tales…
- He had been writing fiction for some time before the incident
- HIs fiction is replete with theological and apologetic value

Elizabeth Anscombe
- Anscombe was a prominent figure of analytical Thomism. She was a Catholic convert and a mother of seven. So not exactly the secular feminist she’s often imagined to be.

Not only that, her own description of the incident doesn’t conform the the sensationalist view:

The fact that Lewis rewrote that chapter, and rewrote it so that it now has those qualities [to address the objections], shows his honesty and seriousness. The meeting of the Socratic Club at which I read my paper has been described by several of his friends as a horrible and shocking experience which upset him very much. Neither Dr Havard (who had Lewis and me to dinner a few weeks later) nor Professor Jack Bennet remembered any such feelings on Lewis’s part … My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis’ rethinking and rewriting showed he thought was accurate. I am inclined to construe the odd accounts of the matter by some of his friends – who seem not to have been interested in the actual arguments or the subject-matter – as an interesting example of the phenomenon called “projection“.

— Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind: The Collected Philosophical Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe, Volume 2 (1981) p.x.

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