rational naturalism is impossible!

[Rational AKD]

If naturalism is correct, then rationality and reason, arose as a by product of our pursuit of dinner, shelter and anything else which supported our survival. That isn't controversial. But over and above this account of its origins you want to claim that reason and rationality are faulty and unreliable. That doesn't logically follow. Even if our cognitive faculties arose for utilitarian purposes it doesn't follow that those faculties would not be generalizable for more abstract purposes. That could be the case, but there is no in principle reason to think it so.

I thought I made it quite clear in the OP. the fact that our cognitive faculties are attuned for survival means they aren't necessarily indicators of truth. one may think reasoning truth would be beneficial to survival, but that's not necessarily so. studies have shown that mild paranoia is actually more beneficial than an accurate assessment of your environment. so that means many of our cognitive faculties would very well be a paranoid delusion designed to make us behave more adaptively to improve our survival.

Your entire argument is self refuting.


For arguments sake,. I'll accept all your premises and conclusions.

If C1, C3 and C3 are true, you have no way of knowing if this very argument is valid and sound, since you are using those same cognitive functions that came about to aid in survivability, which you say may be unreliable to obtain the truth.

You have no way of knowing if your reasoning has lead you to truth in this very argument. Your own argument must lead you to the conclusion that your own argument may be correct or may be incorrect, and you'd have no way of knowing.

In affect, you have no way of knowing is your premises lead to your conclusion because your cognitive functions are suspect.

I guess you could assert that your cognitive functions didn't evolve. But that would be an assertion that would require demonstrable evidence and reasoned argument to support.

you kind of miss the point of what I was arguing. I give you props for thinking outside the box and all, but there are some things you aren't considering. the entire point of the argument I was presenting was to show that belief in naturalism entails the doubting our senses as indicators of truth. furthermore, in doing this we must admit we can't know which senses are true indicators and which ones aren't, which means reason goes out the window and solipsism is all that's left. you claim if the conclusion is true then the logic is not necessarily valid since the logic is in question, but i'm not working backwards from the conclusion. i'm showing that with our current logic belief in naturalism leads to solipsism, the uncertainty of everything including naturalism itself. if you accept the conclusion, my logic may not be valid, but that's the only way to deny the validity of the argument, by denying reason itself. if you do that to deny the logic of the argument, it doesn't matter because you've already accepted the conclusion.

It would exclude the "supernatural", yes, by definition. Would it exclude the spiritual?

well the definition I presented did exclude spirit. though if it were consistent with naturalism it is not the naturalism i'm addressing. this argument is more tailored toward materialistic naturalists. I suppose if you did believe in a 'spirit' as a form of nature, you may bypass the argument *if* it has an explanation why natural selection doesn't affect our beliefs/thoughts as to make them survival instincts rather than indicators of actual truth.

Natural selection is only part of the process of evolution, as the very definition above, handily bolded, alludes to.

it's the only part of evolution that can act as a driving force to give us beneficial traits.

Your argument rests on the assertion that "determining the truth", whatever you mean by that, isn't necessarily essential to our survival.

it isn't. studies have shown that mild paranoia is more beneficial to survival than an accurate assessment of our environment. all our observations, beliefs, reason could all very well be a paranoid delusion meant to make us act effectively to survive.

Being able to think about complex philosophical questions may not be essential to survival if you're a primitive human living in the wild. That doesn't preclude the function being present. Unless something is specifically maladaptive to survival, natural selection may not necessarily weed it out.

that's not the purpose of that conclusion. as you said, certain traits aren't bred out just because they aren't beneficial to survival, but they could be adjusted to help us better survive. if our cognitive abilities were adjusted to make us more paranoid about the environment we're in, then those wouldn't be indicators of truth. atheists like Richard Dawkins have argued that God was developed by man as a process of evolution because it helped them survive difficult times. if any thoughts are distorted through the evolutionary process, we can't possibly determine which ones are. as I said, you can't reason without using your reason.

Solipsism is technically true and stupid to spend much time thinking about unless you're a science-fiction author working on an idea for a story.

actually, solipsism is an epistemological belief, not science fiction. though it can't be proven false, it also can't be proven true. this fact has in a way saved people from solipsism because since you can't be sure either way and you can't do anything to change the reality you're in, it should make no difference to live like it's real. however, this particular argument changes things. it shows that solipsism logically and inescapably follows naturalism, which means anyone who accepts the reason in this argument and accepts naturalism then accepts solipsism which in turn denies naturalism. it's an inescapable conundrum that leads to the conclusion rational naturalism is impossible.