Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Darwinism and Design

  • A Design Argument from the Cognitive Reliability of Our Senses: A Proof of Classical Theism?

    Substack latest. I present an argument that many will take as supporting classical theism. But I point out that, so taken, the argument is not rationally inescapable or philosophically dispositive since it may also be construed along Nagelian lines to support an inherent immanent teleology in nature.   Topics include rationality, intentionality, both intrinsic and…

  • A Design Argument From the Cognitive Reliability of Our Senses: A Proof of Classical Theism?

    You are out hiking and the trail becomes faint and hard to follow. You peer into the distance and see what appear to be three stacked rocks. Looking a bit farther, you see another such stack. Now you are confident which way the trail goes. Your confidence is based on your taking the rock piles…

  • Norms in Nature? Some Doubts

    Substack latest. It opens like this: Our friend Malcolm Pollack, riffing on some complaints of mine about Michael Anton's talk of natural rights, wrote the following: Rights are normative in their essence, while Nature simply is. Therefore, I see only two possibilities: 1) “Natural” rights flow from an intrinsic source of normative authority. Since brute and indifferent Nature…

  • David Berlinski on Evolution

    Under three minutes.  Nice production job. Related: David Gelernter, Giving Up Darwin.  Wasn't Gelernter one of the recipients of a Unabomber package? Part of being an American conservative in my sense of the phrase is a commitment to the respectful but critical evaluation of whatever passes for orthodoxy in science, in religion, in philosophy, in…

  • Giving Up Darwin

    David Gelernter is always worth reading.

  • The Concept of Design

    What is design and what does it imply? Our starting point must be ordinary language. As David Stove points out, "it is a fact about the meaning of a common English word, that you cannot say that something was designed, without implying that it was intended; any more than you can say that a person…

  • A Look at Some Unintelligent Design Reasoning in Dawkins

    Here is an old Powerblogs post from some years ago.  Still seems right to me.  A student in the area wants to discuss Dawkins and his New Atheist gang with me.  So I'm digging up and reviewing all my old Dawkins materials. The New Atheism is already  old hat.  A movement for cyberpunks and know-nothings. …

  • The Dawkins Hustle

    Karl White sends us to this Spectator article and provides this summary: For $85 a month, you get discounts on his merchandise, and the chance to meet ‘Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science personalities’. Obviously that’s not enough to meet the man himself. For that you pay $210 a month — or $5,000 a…

  • Jerry Coyne’s Latest Outburst re: Pope Francis, Big Bang and Evolution

    It doesn't merit a lot of attention, but I will mention two stupid moves that Jerry  Coyne makes.  Or if not stupid, then intellectually dishonest.  First, Coyne states that "We know now that the universe could have originated from 'nothing' through purely physical processes, if you see 'nothing' as the 'quantum vacuum' of empty space." …

  • A Design Argument From Cognitive Reliability

     A theist friend requests a design argument.  Here is one. You are out hiking and the trail becomes faint and hard to follow. You peer into the distance and see three stacked rocks. Looking a bit farther, you see another such stack. Now you are confident which way the trail goes. Your confidence is based…

  • Plantinga Reviews Nagel

    I am beginning to feel a little sorry for Thomas Nagel.  It looks as if the only favorable mainstream reviews he will receive for his efforts in Mind and Cosmos  will be from theists.  What excites the theists' approbation, of course, are not Nagel's positive panpsychist and natural-teleological suggestions, which remain within the ambit of naturalism, but his assault…

  • An Evolved Animal With a Higher Origin? Some Theological Speculation

    I just remembered this old post from the Powerblogs site, a post relevant to present concerns.  Written February 2008. ……………. I raised the question whether divine revelation is miraculous. I answered tentatively that it is not. Though revelation  may be accompanied by miraculous events such as the burning bush of  Exodus 3:2, I floated the suggestion that…

  • Elliot Sober on Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos

    This is the fourth in a series of posts on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012).  The posts are conveniently collected under the rubric Nagel, Thomas. Before proceeding with my account of Chapter 4, I will pause in this entry to consider Elliot Sober's serious, substantial, and sober Boston Review review.  Sober's sobriety lapses…

  • Wittgenstein on Darwin

    One thing I definitely applaud in Wittgenstein is his opposition to scientism.   M. O'C. Drury in Conversations with Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees (Oxford, 1984), pp. 160-161:      One day, walking in the Zoological Gardens, we admired the immense     variety of flowers, shrubs, trees, and the similar multiplicity of     birds, reptiles, animals.      WITTGENSTEIN: I have…

  • Plantinga Versus Dawkins: Organized Complexity

    This is the third in a series on Plantinga's new book.  Here is the first, and here is the second.  These posts are collected under the rubric Science and Religion besides being classified under other heads.  This third post will examine just one argument of Dawkins' and Plantinga's response to it, pp. 26-28. Here is Plantinga…