I'm working on a paper right now where I'm attempting to defend Alvin Plantinga's argument against evolutionary naturalism. Evolutionary naturalism is the idea that there is no supernatural being (no God) combined with evolutionary processes. Plantinga claims that if both of these are true, then it's very likely that we're not designed to know truth - evolution has created us to survive, not to learn truth. So, the consequences of his argument are, even if one is an atheist, one can't know if atheism is true, because according to an atheist, her reasoning abilities aren't designed to acheive true beliefs. Therefore, one who is an atheist holds this position based upon faith, and not reason.
I'm going to argue that there are two different types of evolutionary naturlism to defeat, one type is the cognitive eliminitivists, and the second type are the people who believe in mental content (mental content includes beliefs, desires, experiences, and etc.). Plantinga has soundly defeated the cognitive elimintivists; the cognitive eliminitivists agree to this (a cognitive eliminitivist believes that people don't have beliefs, desires, and etc. - I know, it sounds self-refuting) that if cognitive elminitivism is true, then the brain isn't designed for true beliefs, only to get the body where it needs to be.
Those who believe in mental content will be much more difficult to defeat, but I'm hoping that I'll figure out a way to refute the objections that they give towards Plantinga's argument against evolutionary naturalism. (I also need to remember Jerry Fodor's claim that evolution cannot be teleological and adaptative at the same time.)
(I wrote this so I could look back on some of my thesis statements and remember them later on. So, instead of starting my paper with some of my ideas, I posted my ideas on my blog. If anyone has any constructive suggestions please let me know.)
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