进化自然主义的认识论困境
“我是一名数学家。所有的数学家和科学家都是有信仰的人——这种信仰未必是指向上帝,而是指他们都相信宇宙的理性可理解性(rational intelligibility),以及人类心智感知这种理性的能力。
没错,正是如此。那么,这种信念的根基是什么呢?
如果你将其建立在一个无意识、无引导的进化过程之上,你其实是在摧毁理性。C.S. 路易斯(C. S. Lewis)早在20世纪40年代就洞察到了这一点。他曾说,任何瓦解理性的理论都不可能是真实的,因为你正是通过行使自己的理性才得出了那个理论。
阿尔文·普兰丁格(Alvin Plantinga)对此有过深入研究,但目前将这一观点推向前台的最有趣的人物,是纽约的哲学家托马斯·内格尔(Thomas Nagel)。他指出,这里面存在逻辑偏差。因为如果你追随进化自然主义,它会削弱理性本身——而这种理性是你相信进化自然主义、乃至相信任何理论的前提。
所以,对我而言,这一切的核心问题并不在于数学本身,数学只是一个有趣的佐证。真正的问题在于:我正从事着数学这一门要求严密理性的学科,但如果进化自然主义的解释是正确的,那么这一切理性基础都将土崩瓦解。换句话说,我常对人说:朝自己的脚开枪是痛苦的,但朝自己的大脑开枪则是致命的。”
I’m a mathematician. All mathematician and scrientist are people of faith not necessary in God ,but they believe in the rational intelliibility of the universe and the ability of the mind to perceive. yes exactly and therefore, what do they base that on?
If you base that on a mindless, unguided evolutionary process, you’re destroying rationality. C. S. Lewis saw that in the 1940s. He said any theory that undermines rationality cannot be true because you’re using your rationality to get to it. Alvin Plantinga’s worked on it, but the most interesting person who brings it now to the foreis, Thomas Nagel, the philosopher in New York, and he says there’s something wrong here.
Because if you follow evolutionary naturalism, it undermines the very rationality. You need to believe not only in evolution naturalism, but in any theory at all. So my major problem in all of this is not the mathematics.
That’s just an interesting bit of evidence. It’s that here I am engaged in a rational discipline of mathematics that all dissolves if the evolutionary naturalistic account us true. In other words, I often say to people shooting yourself and the foot is painful, but shooting yourself in the brain is fatal.
