I think Plantinga has this covered.
He argues that beliefs have two properties. On the one hand electro-chemical or neuro-physiological properties, which are set in the brain. On the other hand, they have a content. For instance, the belief that Proust is a more subtle writer than Louis L’Amour, has as content the proposition 'Proust is more subtle than Louis L’Amour (example on p. 322 of the book. It would be good to read that section, as it goes more into depth on the nature of beliefs than I can do here).
Plantinga says that any belief that increases survivability still can have a content that is false. When a belief triggers the right neurons in the brain (the neuro-physiological process) a man will survive a threat, but the belief doesn’t necessarily have to correspond to truth. There is probably much overlap, but survival increasing beliefs are not necessarily also true. In one of his other works, he gives this example:
I don’t see how this addresses my point at all, honestly. The naturalist isn’t primarily interested in beliefs such as the subtlety of a writer’s work, but in the ability of the brain to make empirical observations and weigh facts, and it is precisely this kind of thought that the naturalist would say, with very good reason, is selected for most readily in survival situations. The naturalist doesn’t put much weight on the kind of beliefs your example, and Plantinga’s, is talking about; the naturalist never claims that evolution makes people a better judge of art, but rather that it makes them a better judge of empirical reality because that is precisely the kind of thing survival is based on.
Before we can even begin to form beliefs about the motivations of tigers we need to be able to make correct observations about tigers, like the size of their teeth and claws, and possibly seeing what they use them for. That is the only kind of “belief” that the naturalist is interested in, and notions like evolution aren’t about qualitative judgement, like the judging of art, but about observable phenomena.
So while Plantinga’s point may stand when it comes to judging the subtlety of Proust, a naturalist isn’t interested in the value of that kind of judgement, and wouldn’t put much stock in it as anything more than personal whim and opinion. Such beliefs, while having a low probability for being selected for in evolution, are also absolutely irrelevant to evolution. On the other hand our cognitive faculties regarding empirical data are quite relevant to survival, which means they’d be highly selected for by evolution, and they also happen to be the only kind of “beliefs” the naturalist is interested in; my opinion about tigers and their motivation is irrelevant, but my ability to recognize that*** it is*** a tiger and that it eats meat, which I happen to be made of, is extremely important one way or the other.
In Plantinga’s example of the tiger, the one thing that is certainly not faulty is the man’s judgement that he’s indeed looking at a tiger. You might say “but he might think he’s looking at a hot-air balloon, and he avoids it because he’s looking for a tiger to eat him and not a balloon to ride”, and while this could be true in this one case, such a faulty faculty for determining empirical reality would certainly hinder him in finding food, water, shelter, ect. The only thing that would reliably and consistently, across a wide population, provide for survival on all these factors would be a well-developed cognitive ability to observe and correctly identify empirical facts in all cases, and what else is the naturalist-evolutionist interested in, when it comes to cognitive faculties, but the mind’s ability to observe and correctly identify empirical facts?
Since the more personal beliefs are irrelevant to survival, and not based on the empirical reality the naturalist is focused on, the naturalist wouldn’t care whether or not evolution provides for a reliable cognitive faculty in that regard, and the inability for evolution to provide for a reliable cognitive faculty in this regard would not be a defeater for a belief in following the empirical data about evolution. On the contrary, it would be a defeater for following anything
other than the empirical data, and therefore supports the position of the naturalist-evolutionist, which criticizes everything except empirical observations.
Plantinga’s mistake, it appears to me, is treating a belief in empirical reality as if it were the same as any other belief. Plantinga seems to think that naturalism is like a lofty religious dogma or philosophical premise, when in fact it’s a kind of intellectual minimalism and modesty (not in the virtuous sense, but rather in the sense that it makes very modest claims about the mind’s ability to make value judgements, and puts little stock in such things at any rate). The real puzzle for the naturalist is why we as a species tend to devote so much time and energy to “idle speculation” like philosophy and opinions about Proust’s writing style.
Peace and God bless!
