View source for SGU Episode 936

== Interview with David Kyle Johnson <small>(1:04:14)</small> ==
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* {{w|Argument from reason|"The Argument from reason"}}; [https://departments.kings.edu/Faculty/phil/djohnson.html Dr. Johnson's biography]
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'''S:''' Joining us now is {{w|David Kyle Johnson|Dr. David Kyle Johnson}}. David, welcome back to the Skeptics' Guide.

'''KJ:''' Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really excited to be here and talk about this incredibly interesting topic.

'''S:''' You are a professor of philosophy at King's College in Pennsylvania. And do you like to go by David or Kyle?

'''KJ:''' Call me Kyle.

'''S:''' Kyle, yeah. And you wanted to come on to talk about one of the quotes that Evan used in a recent segment of name that quote. Evan you have the quote handy?

'''E:''' Dang, I'm telling you it was David Attenborough, not Richard Attenborough. Oh that hole thing.

'''S:''' Not that one.

'''E:''' Oh, not that one. That one became infamous. No, here's the quote. "If evolution is true, you could not know that it's true because your brain is nothing but chemicals. Think about that."

'''S:''' Right.

'''E:''' And that was that was Kent Hoven.

'''KJ:''' Everybody thought it was Kurt Cameron, including me. I was mowing my lawn while I was listening to the cast. And I was like, oh, that's definitely Kurt Cameron.

'''E:''' I think part of us wanted it to be Kurt Cameron.

'''S:''' It's definitely his level.

'''B:''' True.

'''S:''' I mean, they're all they were all plausible, but that don't want to just smelled the Kurt Cameron. But anyway, so you're and then you emailed us, let us know that there's a lot more depth to the history of of what he's kind of tangentially referring to in that quote.

'''KJ:''' Yeah, right. So again, I was mowing my lawn. I heard you guys rightfully laugh at kind of how ridiculous it was. But the way that you guys treated it, it made me realize that you didn't know that there was like, he's borrowing from some serious philosophers and thinkers and kind of Christian and theism, academic circles, which maybe makes it make more sense that it's Kent and not Kirk. Because maybe he's done a little bit more studying and is aware that he's borrowing from from some philosophers. And so I was like, oh, they clearly don't know that. I could just send him an email and say there's actually a little bit more to this. I've published on this argument that he's actually referencing here. It's called the argument from reason. And thought you might be interested to know that there's a little bit more to the story. It's still a bad argument, but I think it's it's kind of interesting. It also has an interesting story that kind of ties in with sci-fi fantasy stuff, mainly fantasy stuff. I'd like to tell you that story.

'''E:''' You really struck a vein with this quote, didn't you?

'''B:''' Yeah man.

'''S:''' Let's start with what is the argument from reason? What is that?

'''KJ:''' Okay. So the argument from reason is it originates with C.S. Lewis, at least he's the one that really popularizes it in the modern day. The basic idea is it's an argument against naturalism. Now, when Lewis puts it forward, he kind of lumps naturalism in with what you would think would just be the denial of the supernatural, but he also includes in this, the theory of evolution. He just kind of thinks they go hand in hand. And then Lewis also kind of includes in that definition, a kind of deterministic view of the universe where everything is just physical particles, cause and effect relationships. Everything is a result of that cause and effect process. And he just kind of lumps all of that under naturalism. But the idea, like the basic idea of it is, is that if naturalism is true, then knowledge, like knowing anything is not possible. Knowledge is impossible if naturalism is true. Why? Well, it depends on what version of the argument you're looking at. The quote kind of references the two main versions of it. One kind of version of it is, well, if naturalism is true, then your brain is just chemicals. And if your brain is just chemicals, like it's just cause and effect interactions, right? It's just neurons firing. If that's the case, then you can't know anything. And if you can't know anything, well, then you can't know that naturalism is true. And so the theory is self-defeating. That's the idea. The other version of it is if naturalism is true, like if evolution is true, then knowledge is impossible. And if knowledge is impossible, then you can't know that evolution is true. And therefore it's self-defeating. And I can break down the kind of two version. That's kind of what I'm prepared to do is articulate the two different versions. But that's the basic idea.

'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that the huge leap there is that if naturalism is true, if the brain is just chemicals or evolution is true, you can't have knowledge. That's where are they getting that from? I mean, it sounds like they're just, that sounds like circular reasoning almost. Like they're assuming that that naturalism can't be true. Therefore they can't work. You know what I mean?

'''KJ:''' Yeah. So there is, I mean, it's not a leap in the argument. There is, like everybody who gives this argument tries to fill in that gap. They try to explain why if naturalism is true, then knowledge is impossible. And then from there, that the rest of the argument just kind of follows out. And so that's the interesting part of it, I think, is to see how that argument works.

'''S:''' Why can't the brain being chemicals have knowledge? That those two, how do they get to that point?

'''KJ:''' Okay. So there's kind of two versions of it, right? I'm going to do the, I've kind of broken this down into, there's the chemical version of the argument and then there's the evolution version of the argument. Okay. So when C.S. Lewis originally gives the argument, basically he, again, he's lumping all of these theories together naturalism, evolution and determinism, all kind of together. But basically what he's arguing is that in order for knowledge to be possible, in order for a conclusion that you draw to be rationally justified and be able to get you knowledge, it has to be the result of what he calls grounds consequent reasoning, right? It's a mental process by which someone recognizes premises, understands them, understands the logical relationships between them, how they entail other premises, and then draws the conclusion based on like the recognition of that logical relationship, right? So he calls it ground consequent reasoning. That's when a conclusion, that's when it, that's when it would be justified. All right. Lewis says, but if naturalism is true, then the reason that you draw your conclusions is not because of that. The reason that anything happens on naturalism, says Lewis, is all physical cause and effect relationships. Like, so he thinks like there's two different explanations for why you believe that there could be two different explanations for why you believe what you believe. One is that this grounds consequent recognition, right? The other is, well, there's causes, effect, there's physical things that happen in your brains, your neurons fire in a certain corner way, and then the belief is produced by that, right? He says, if that's what's going on, if that's the explanation for why you believe what you believe, then it doesn't really count as knowledge. That's not grounds consequent reasoning. And on naturalism, that is what's happening. And so the initial version, the 1947 version of the argument, which is part of the story that I want to tell, but that basically says it's either one or the other, right? It's either it's ground consequent or it's this cause effect process on naturalism it's the cause effect process that can't, that if it's just a cause effect process the belief isn't justified. Therefore on naturalism, knowledge is impossible. On supernaturalism, where reasoning is something is a completely mental operation and think in terms of like substance dualism and soul talk and that kind of stuff, right? Well, that's what can get you grounds consequent reason. So knowledge can be produced there, but it can't be produced on naturalism. And so therefore knowledge is impossible. That's the very first version, the kind of 1947─

'''S:''' Which the assumption there is that they both can't simultaneously be true that you can't have cause and effect and do reasoning, but that's a false premise. You can.

'''KJ:''' Here's the story I want to tell and how it like links into sci-fi fantasy, okay? So I don't know if you guys know this or not. Hopefully you don't because this will be interesting. You may or may not know that C.S. Lewis was originally an atheist.

'''S:''' Oh, yeah, I didn't know that. I mean, he wrote the line, {{w|The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe|The Witch and the Wardrobe}}, which is a well, famous Christian allegory, right?

'''KJ:''' Yes. Well, he was originally an atheist and line in The Witch and the Wardrobe that the Chronicles of Narnia come much, much, much later. In 1931, he has a conversation with his colleague at Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien.

'''B:''' Aah, I hear a hint.

'''KJ:''' And Tolkien convinces him, converts. Yeah, I figured you did, right? And he, and Tolkien convinces him essentially to become a Christian/Catholic. He has this kind of bad argument about mythology, but there's like kind of a sort of record of the conversation that they have and Lewis converts to Christianity. And then after that, he starts writing apologetics. And so he's doing a lot of kind of arguments in favor of Christianity and that kind of stuff, right? And that's his main focus. He does a little bit of fiction and that kind of stuff. But even when he does that, it's like screwtape letters, right? It's stuff that's, that's kind of geared towards trying to convert people and make all apologetic arguments. So in 47, he publishes this book on miracles called {{w|Miracles (book)|Miracles}}. And in chapter three, he gives this argument for reason, the version I just, I just gave to you. And then in 48, he is the president of the Oxford's like Socratic society, like their Socratic club, their philosophy club, even though he's not a philosopher, he's president. And they decide to have a debate as one of their events, right? And so in this debate, they want Lewis, the president to present his argument from reason from chapter three of Miracles, this book he had just published. And to take the con, as it were, they get this, what is who essentially is like a little budding grad students, right? Who really should be completely intimidated by CS Lewis, right? Because he's the big professor. And she's just kind of an up and budding philosopher, but it turns out that it's {{w|G. E. M. Anscombe}}, who they get to do the other side. And if you don't know, Anscombe turns out to be one of the biggest figures in analytic philosophy of the 20th century. She single-handedly revived virtue ethics with a single paper. She studied under Wittgenstein and translated his works and was authority on hand. She just, she's just huge, huge. But at this time, she's like this a grad student. And for lack of better terms, hopefully I can use the language here. She hands him his ass. Like, she just completely demolishes him. And one of the main things that she points out, one of the things is like, he doesn't even understand what valid means and logic, like the argument equivocates on valid, doesn't use it appropriately. But she also points out exactly what Steve just points out is that, look, it's not, you've got a false dichotomy here, right? Like it can be both, right? In the same way that when I look at a picture of Darth Vader, it reminds me of my childhood for two different reasons. One, because it looks like Darth Vader, but also because it causes a certain kind of causal effect process to go on to my neurons and it brings up childhood memories or whatever. Both of those explanations can be true. And Lewis has just neglected the fact that that is the case. And Lewis is, he's eviscerated. He's humiliated. He is, a lot of C.S. Lewis fans will deny this that he was, but in his letters later, he reveals that he was just completely like his confidence as an apologist was lost. And so he shifts from doing mainly apologetics and a little bit of fiction to mainly doing fiction and a little apologetics. And the last thing he like, he does mere Christianity after that, and then he's done with the apologetics. And what he turns to instead writing is the Chronicles of Narnia. And so a lot of C.S. Lewis fans kind of are thankful for this run in with Anscombe because had he not been turned his attention because of it, we may never have got a Chronicles of Narnia. And of course, they love the Chronicles of Narnia. But that's the kind of interesting part of it. Like it's the failure of this argument is partly responsible for the Chronicles of Narnia. Now, he does go on to revise the argument. He admits that it doesn't work and it's the form I just gave you. And so he tries to revise it. And so the way that he revises it in 1960, basically what he says is, OK, I admit that they can coexist. Both kind of explanations can coexist at the same time. But in order for knowledge to be justified, the like, the real explanation, the fundamental explanation for why you draw your conclusions has to be the grounds consequent relation has the grounds consequent reasoning. It can't be the physical stuff, right? It can't be the cause-effect explanation. And on naturalism─

'''S:''' Why?

'''KJ:''' Well, the reason he thinks is because he has this elaborate thing like the argument he gives in the revised version is basically because it's got to have that the only way that it's reliable is if it's you're recognizing premises and that kind of stuff. If it's just the cause-effect stuff, it's not reliable. And the ground consequent stuff is has to be part of it. And if it's if it's not, it's not justified. And on naturalism, the grounds consequent reasoning doesn't matter. He calls it a trifle. And why is it a trifle he says? Because you could subtract it and you wouldn't lose anything. So like on naturalism, he thinks that all that really matters is the cause-effect explanation. And if you subtracted the grounds consequent part of that explanation out of it, it just wasn't there at all. Well, how could that make a difference? It wouldn't make any difference. The same thing would happen. The cause-effect explanation is still there. And so the same beliefs would be produced and therefore it's a trifle. And so it doesn't matter. And so it's it's got to be the ground consequent part.

'''S:''' Sounds like he's making a category mistake.

'''KJ:''' Yeah. So it it might be the way that I objected to it whenever, when I wrote on this was that, I mean, there's, there's a couple of different problems here. Part of the reason he thinks that the cause-and-effect stuff isn't good enough to produce the knowledge has a little bit to do with evolution. I want to save that for a little bit later because there's another philosopher named {{w|Alvin Plantinga}} who tries to make that version of the argument. So I'll kind of set the evolution part of that aside for now. But the main mistake I think that he makes is not understand this. I think Jay is going to be interested in this because you like philosophical zombies. Am I correct?

'''S:''' P zombies. Yeah. He's talked about them before.

'''KJ:''' Right. So the mistake that he makes is not recognizing that for most philosophers, the relationship between the mind and brain is what we call supervenient. What that means is that you can't have a change. If X supervenes on Y, you can't have a change in X without some kind of change in Y. The way I was explained this in class is I'll use another Darth Vader example. In my dorm room, in my undergrad, I had a mosaic in my dorm room that was Darth Vader and what it was composed of was individual frames of the Star Wars original trilogy, right? And Vader emerges like from this arrangement of the 4frames, right? Vader supervenes on the frames. And what that means is, is that if you wanted Vader to look different, if you wanted him to change color, if you wanted him to turn his head, look a different direction, if you wanted the picture of him to look different, you would have to change the individual frames. You'd have to select different frames and put them in there, right? It's not possible to change Vader without changing the frames and it is also the case that if the frames are there and arranged as they are, Vader will necessarily emerge like Vader will be, you might imagine a world where people don't know what Darth Vader looks like so they wouldn't know what to call it, but the image would still be there. It makes no sense to ask, is there a logically possible world in which the frames are arranged just as they are? And yet Vader does not appear out of that, out of that arrangement. No, it necessarily Vader emerges from that. So for a lot of philosophers, when they talk about philosophy of mind, they think the mind's relationship to the brain is this way, that the mind is this property that comes out of the brain that is completely and totally dependent upon it so much so that the relationship is supervenient. Any change in the mental requires some kind of change in the physical brain. And so when C.S. Lewis says, well the ground's consequent must be a trifle because you could subtract it and nothing would change. The answer is no, you couldn't. If you subtracted the mental, you could only do that by fundamentally changing what's going on on the physical level. And if you change that, well, then the same conclusion is not going to be drawn. And so we just misunderstands what most philosophers think in regards to this. If the mind, if as most philosophers think the mind and brain do have a supervenient relationship, then P zombies are actually impossible. It makes no sense to think, well, is there a possible world where our brains are doing exactly what they do, but there's no mind that arises from it? It's like, no, that's not possible anymore than you could have the mosaic arranged as it is and not have a Vader emerge from it. Lewis kind of fundamentally misunderstands that aspect of it. Now, an even further revised version of the argument kind of sidesteps out a little bit and just says that, look, in order for the belief that it's produced to be justified, what has to be the case is that the real, the basic, like the reasoning has to be causally efficacious on the basic level. It has to be the most basic fundamental explanation for why the conclusion is drawn and that just can't be the case on naturalism. And the problem with that, and this is something I've, after listening to you guys for over 10, 15 years now, I've always wanted to talk to you about this.

'''S:''' Okay.

'''KJ:''' The problem with that is he doesn't understand the different kinds of theories, naturalist theories of minds that are out there and a lot of them completely naturalist theories of mind do think that the mental is causally efficacious on the most fundamental basic level. 

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''KJ:''' Two different versions of this. And I'm kind of, because speaking generally, but there's a theory of mind called property dualism. It's not substance dualism. It's property dualism. It's a naturalist theory because it only thinks that matter exists. It doesn't have any other substance. The only substance that exists is matter.

'''S:''' That's {{w|David Chalmers|Chalmers}}, right?

'''KJ:''' Yes. Chalmers is very much like a property dualist where basically the idea is that matter has two different kinds of properties, physical, like location, and then mental, like aboutness and quality and et cetera. And for property dualists, they think that the mental has causal powers that are not explicable in terms of the individual parts. You can't explain what the mind can do by just explaining how the individual, physical particles are interacting. It has its own unique causal powers. This is a completely natural theory of mind. And yet it has causal powers on the basic level. Another version. And I think after, again, after listening to you guys for so long, another version, I think is Steve's theory. I've given what you, whatever way I've heard you talk about these kind of things. I think Steve is an identity theorist. Identity theorists say that the mind and brain are one in the same thing. They are numerically identical as the way I explained it to my students in the same way that Clark Kent is Superman. The mind is the brain. They are one in the same thing. So that when you say that, well, the reason that I drew such a conclusion, such and such conclusion is because I reasoned through it and drew that conclusion. That explanation is exactly the same thing as the causal effect. My neurons fired in a certain kind of way explanation. They're one in the same. And so the mental is causally operative on the basic level because it is identical to the physical.

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''KJ:''' Right? And again, like {{w|Victor Reppert}} is another person that I've debated in prints on this. This is something that he doesn't seem to like fully grasp or admit or understand that there are naturalist theories of mind that do have the mental on the causal level. And so again, so like if we relate it back to the quote, this is the chemicals part of the argument, right? Lewis and Reppert are basically saying, oh, it can't be justified. The conclusion can't be justified because your brain is just chemicals. And the answer is like, even if that's the case, the chemicals could have mental properties that are causally operative or the chemicals could be identical to this mental operation that you think is necessary in order for the conclusion to be justified.

'''S:''' Right.

'''KJ:''' So that's that's the basics of it.

'''S:''' Yeah. I mean, and I think whatever, 60 years after Lewis, we could argue that computers completely blow away his his premise, right? I mean, because computers are physical, deterministic, all those things and they can process information. They can have data stored in them, right? They're not operating in the way our human brain does, but they're doing all the basic kind of stuff that our that our brain does. There's just sort of not the same emergent properties out of it because it's just not organized the way our brains are. But you can't say it doesn't have information. They can't how when you hit buttons on a calculator and a number pops out, that's just chemicals or whatever. It's just electrons. It's the same thing.

'''KJ:''' Yes, exactly. So this is actually something else that I was going to mention. So there's a couple of other theories of mine that do say that the mental is not causally operative. One is a limitivism that just says the mind doesn't exist at all. Another is called epiphenomenalism, which suggests that the mind is an emergent property, but it doesn't have any causal powers. It's just there presenting itself to us, but it doesn't actually do anything. And so to this the argument from a reasoned person might say, like, oh, well, they can't have knowledge because they admit that all that's going on at the causal level all the cause and effect is just going on the physical level and physical processes can't generate reliably generate true beliefs. That's part of the argument. Physical processes can't reliably generate true beliefs. And the answer to that is yes, they can. We have two really good examples of that. One you've already mentioned, AI, AI can reliably produce true beliefs, right? It doesn't believe anything per se, but it can, it can generate true conclusions and it can even produce beliefs in me if I believe it, right? And then there's also, and Steve, you could probably talk more about this, right? But we also know that a lot of reasoning happens unconsciously in the brain. A lot of things that we decide to do and that we reason out and all that kind of stuff happens without any kind of conscious operations at all, and yet it reliably produces true beliefs. And so we know that physical processes can produce true beliefs in the brain. We know the physical process in the brain can produce true beliefs.

'''S:''' Yeah, absolutely. And that's not even getting into the idea that consciousness, I think, I think people get tripped up a lot on our own experience of our own consciousness because it does seem magical, but that's where the whole, well, yeah, but it's kind of just an illusion, like your brain evolved to generate the illusion of consciousness because it is sort of part and necessary of the experience that drives all of our behavior. Like we need to do things like pay attention to ourselves and our own thoughts and whatever. I just think you could make lots of arguments as to why that we have to be in the loop of our own consciousness and from an evolutionary point of view, from a mechanistic point of view, it kind of makes sense, but it's hard. We're stuck in our own illusion. So it's kind of hard to really think about it, you know?

'''KJ:''' Yes, that's what a limitivist would say, essentially, is that the existence of the mind is just an illusion that is created by the brain.

'''S:''' I wouldn't say just an illusion. I think that's right. I think that there is, just as a neurologist, I mean, we all know this is a lot of our function, which is completely illusory, right? I mean, everything we see, everything we perceive basically is a constructed illusion. It just has a functional relationship to reality. An evolved, adaptive functional relationship, but it isn't reality. It's a constructed illusion. That's true pretty much all the way down.

'''KJ:''' And this actually kind of segues into the evolution end of the argument. Like there's another kind of version of the argument that has to deal with evolution. Before I say it, I'll just say that one of my favorite arguments, one of my favorite points in all this philosophy of mind debate is in favor of epiphenomenalism. And so the epiphenomenalists deny that the mind does anything, right? That it has any kind of causal powers. They say it exists, but it doesn't have any causal powers. And of course, the objection is like, of course it does. Look, I decided to move my arm and my arm moved and the epiphenomenals will say, yeah, but that's just an illusion created by the correlational fallacy, right? Like you assume that your decision moved your arm because you decided to move your arm and then your arm moved. And that's always constantly conjoined. But as we know, correlation does not necessarily entail causation. And so, right, there's a third factor. What happens is your brain decides to move your arm and your arm move. Your brain also produces the mental experience of a decision. You think one causes the other because they always go together, but they know.

'''S:''' And that's partly true. That's just from a neurological point of view. That is that the brain functions on some level in that exact way. And we know from certain experiments that it we could make people's brains do weird things and they invent a decision making processfor why it happened. So there is the illusion of decision making that we use. But I think again, just putting on my neuroscientist cap, not my philosopher cap. And I think that that derives from the need for the brain to have internal consistency. It said, well, I did that. I must have decided to do it because I did it. And there are literally circuits in your brain that actively construct that experience. And when those circuits break down, weird stuff happens. Like you feel like you have an alien hand that you're not in control of.

'''KJ:''' Yes.

'''S:''' So there is absolutely some level where neurologically that's true. But that doesn't mean we don't make decisions. That's the thing. There's all these things are true at the same time.

'''KJ:''' Yes. Right. It definitely raises questions about our free will. But that is different than saying that we don't make decisions. The decisions might not be free. The decisions might not be free, but we're still making decisions. And free will is something else that I work on. And we could I could talk for a while.

'''S:''' Yeah, yeah, I know. We'll have that conversation. So the evolution argument.

=== The Evolution argument <small>(1:29:16)</small> ===

'''KJ:''' OK, so the other version of it comes from planning. And again, Lewis kind of hints at this. And then this argument is developed later in the 90s by Alvin Plantinga, who is a at the time was a bigwig philosopher at Notre Dame. I think he was at Notre Dame in the 90s. He eventually ends up at Notre Dame. He just retired about a decade ago from Notre Dame. But he's a real bigwig in Christian in Christian philosophy. And he developed it even further in like a 2011 book called Where the Conflict Really Lies, Nature [''Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.'']. I've tried to think naturalism, science and evolution, something along that line. Sorry to have the exact title there. But the basic idea is that like the basic idea behind the book is everybody says that science and religion are incompatible. Well, what's really incompatible is science and naturalism. That's the kind of argument that gives. The way he gives that argument, the idea is this, if he grants like he's not concerned about theories of mind or anything like that, he'll grant supervenience. He'll grant all of that. What he'll say, and he even grants that evolution happened. But what he says is if evolution is the full explanation for everything and for how we evolve, we've got a problem with reason. So what he basically says is this, if evolution is true, then the mechanisms, the neural mechanisms by which you draw conclusions were selected for in the past. That's why you have them, he says. And if they were selected for in the past, well, they weren't selected because they were truth preserving. They weren't selected because they preserve the truth. They generated true beliefs. They were selected because they were fit. They made you more likely to survive. Well, that's all well and good. But being more likely to survive is not the same thing as truth. And so on evolution, the neural mechanisms that lead you to reason and thus conclude that evolution is true are these mechanisms that are just make you fit. They don't guarantee truth. And so you can't really, you can't really trust them. They're not really trustworthy, so they can't provide justification, so they can't provide knowledge that evolution is true, right? And therefore, naturalism, evolution is self-defeating. That's that's the basic idea, right? So in my estimation, there are basically three big kind of problems with this argument, all right? So first of all, if he's right, that evolution is selecting individual neural mechanisms that work in our brains to draw conclusions. If he's right about that, that's a big question. I'll talk about that in a second. But even if he's right about that, he seems to have overlooked the possibility that what made them fit is their truth preserving property, right? The reason they were fit is because they produced true beliefs, right? He thinks that like he makes a big deal about induction, like our ability to just kind of generally do induction, which generally is thought about as the ability to like to reason under the assumption that the future will resemble the past, right? Well, since the future does resemble the past, being able if like I have a neural circuitry in my brain that makes me assume that and reason in that way. Well, the reason it was selected is because it leads to true beliefs, right? The other people got too close to the cliff, they fell over. So I know not to do that, right? And so I'm more likely to survive. So he just seems to neglect the fact that it could be fit because it produces truth.

'''S:''' Yep.

'''KJ:''' The second thing that he that he seems to not understand is that, well, simply put the possibility of spandrels, that the reasoning processes that he's talking about that generate these beliefs may not have been selected for by evolution, they may be spandrels. In other words, like I assume that you guys know what spandrels are. The general idea is that they are like our ability to do these particular instances of reasoning that he's concerned with, that reason that we can do something like science and reason scientifically isn't because there's some neural mechanism that was selected for because a random mutation of DNA made us able to do that. And then it was fit and it worked a fixation. It's just something that our big brains can do. We got our big brains for other reasons. We got our big brains because they allowed us to be social and survive in social groups, allow us to hunt better, throw better spears or whatever. And then it turns out that big brains can also do other things that aren't necessarily fit like create music, create calculus and do mathematics and do science, but they weren't selected for, right? And in fact, we can know that our ability to reason scientifically is not something that was selected for because we know the history of how scientific reasoning was developed and it was only developed in the last few hundred years, right? And we know it wasn't something that just emerged in someone because they had a random mutation of DNA. It's something that we developed as a species, not something that evolved in a particular individual. So it wasn't selected for at all because it was fit. And then here's what I think is most ironic. And I don't think anyone's ever made this observation in print, but this is kind of like my final like a thing that I'll say. And then we can talk more about it.

'''S:''' Yeah.

'''KJ:''' Planning may have been like Cara always is in science or fiction that planning might have been right for the wrong reason or wrong for the right reason. I'm not sure exactly which one it is. So here's here's the deal. Planning is right that evolution, if to the degree that it selects for individual mechanisms that generate beliefs, it would do so because they're fit, not because they're truth preserving that like that definitely could happen. And in fact, we know that that has happened, I think, because there are a number of like reasoning heuristics that we have like our agency detection where we see agents behind everything when they're not there. Correlational fallacies, right? The representative heuristic where we think like events must have like causes, there are all these little shortcuts in our reasoning that were likely made us more likely to survive in the past, but generate false beliefs, right? Science was developed, not by evolution, was developed by humankind, specifically for the purpose of guarding against the way that those instinctive reasoning mechanisms lead us astray so that we're not led astray by them. And we can come to a true conclusion about the way the world is, right? And so I kind of think planning his argument actually raises a problem for theism, it doesn't, it's not a bolster for it actually raises a problem for theism. He thinks God stepped into the evolutionary process and literally put mutations in us to put these neural mechanisms in our brains for us so that we would reason, we would reason like reason like God does, but the problem is, is the ones that were put in us, like in our natural state, we are very bad at reasoning, right? We have all of like, you have to be properly educated and learn the ways that your brain leads you astray so you can guard against them in order to actually discover the way the world is. And our natural state, we're not good reasoners. We're not good at getting to the truth of the way the world is, right?

'''S:''' Exactly.

'''KJ:''' Like our perception definitely leads us astray far from what we realize. Our memory definitely leads astray far more than we, than we kind of average, that we usually realize, right? And so this is actually you have to ask, in the same way that the intelligent design person has to answer the question, well, if we're so intelligently designed, why do I breathe and eat out of the same hole in my head? It keeps making me choke, right? In the same way, the person who thinks that God naturally did, if that God designed our reasoning process, you have to ask─

'''S:''' He did a terrible job.

'''KJ:''' Yes! Right? Why did he put all these terrible, like heuristics that lead me to false beliefs? We had to develop a way to get around that to get to the truth, right? And so anyway, that's what I think was wrong with the evolution version of. And now I stop blabbering about.

'''S:''' Yeah, my immediate reaction was sort of two-fold. And I think it overlaps with what you were saying. So the first one was like, he's being a hyper-adaptationalist, right? The idea that every feature that any biological organism has, according to evolution, must have specifically evolved for a specific purpose. And we know that that's not true. As you said, you could develop generic abilities that could be used for lots of things. We obviously didn't evolve to play the piano, but whatever, our neurological ability allows for that as an epiphenomenon, or just as there are generic things like we didn't evolve hands to do any one thing. It's just a useful tool that we could do lots of stuff with. So the brain is the same way. But the other thing, and this is partly, this is not my neuroscientific argument, which is again, under this hyper-adaptationalist idea, is that he's assuming that our brain evolved one strategy, one adaptive strategy. When in fact, neuroscientists will tell you, this is the thinking fast, thinking slow thing, we have two basic strategies that we evolved that work in complementary fashion. We have the intuitive heuristic approach to thinking. And then we have the analytical approach, which says, is that really true? And that's the part that we leverage to create this cultural structure of science.

'''KJ:''' Yep.

'''S:''' Right? So he's just wrong on multiple, multiple levels. He doesn't understand evolution. He doesn't understand neuroscience. And he doesn't understand philosophy. And he gets it wrong on every level.

'''KJ:''' Yep. And for anybody who's interested, there's entire books dedicated to explaining what's wrong with like multiple scholars way in or whatever, explaining what's wrong with Plantinga's argument, that kind of stuff. And then I've got a lot of work on the other version on the first version we talked about. I've got a bunch of articles on that if anybody's interested. I did a whole debate back and forth in a book on C.S. Lewis with Victor Rappert. He ended up publishing even outside of that. I have another reply to that and it just goes on and on and on.

'''S:''' It always goes way deeper than you can imagine. And, and do you, how much of that do you think Kent Hoven understands? ''(laughter)''

'''KJ:''' Oh, so I don't think he understands. I mean, he certainly doesn't understand what's wrong with planning his argument. My guess is that Kent probably has read something about Plantinga's argument or maybe Rappert or Lewis's argument right. And he's just trying to give a one sentence articulation of the basic idea behind it. I doubt that he's actually read Plantinga's book or an article on it or anything like that, but I could be wrong.

'''S:''' I, I would be shocked if he read anything article length or longer about that whole thing. I think he just said, yeah, he has some third hand blurb about chemicals and whatever.

'''E:''' Sounds good. I'll use that.

'''S:''' All right. Well, I think that was a very, like I say, a whirlwind tour of a very, book length, multiple book length, philosophical debate that happened over the last, what, 100 years?

'''KJ:''' Yeah, something like that.

'''S:''' But it sounds like we hit the highlights. Where could people find your work? And you have a lot of stuff that you've done for the general population. Tell us about that.

'''KJ:''' Yeah. So, almost any of my papers that I've published, especially my academic papers are available on academia.edu. They should be free there. If they're not, send me an email. I'll send you a copy. I do a lot of pop culture and philosophy work. And so most of my chapters I've done there, on that topic or on academia as well. I, like I edited the book on Black Mirror. I have a book on the Orville and, I also have courses with the great courses. I have a kind of introduction to philosophy class called the big questions of philosophy. I have one that's specifically on science fiction called sci phi science fiction as philosophy. The fi is PHI, a wonderful little pun.

'''S:''' Sounds cool. All right. Well, Kyle, it's always great to talk with you.

'''J:''' Thanks, Kyle.

'''S:''' Thanks for coming on.

'''E:''' Thank you Kyle.

'''KJ:''' Thanks for having me on.

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