Question Richard Dawkins wrote in his “The Selfish Gene,” that people are essentially biological robots. If he is right then all of our thoughts are simply the result of cerebral and neurological processes. Electrochemical signals produced by entirely physical processes. So, assuming he’s correct, then what reason do we have to trust our thoughts and logic? Perhaps what we think is universally true is not, we’re simply programmed to –think- it is? Actually, that’d be a profoundly effective evolutionary tool for preservation of the species. Our emotional values and logic may have developed as a way to augment survival instincts beyond the level of less cognitive organisms, right? So, why trust our thoughts? How do we know our logic is truly logical and not simply an illusion of logic?

Accepted:
April 1, 2009

Comments

There is a number of issues raised here. Let me make just two points.

First, on the specific idea that "perhaps what we think is universally true is not, we’resimply programmed to think it is? ... that’d be a profoundlyeffective evolutionary tool for preservation of the species." But of course, if we were programmed to believe falsehoods, that would not in general promote survival. To get food, for example, we basically need true beliefs about where it is to be found.

Of course, this isn't to say that we need always get things right: it might be that evolution has provided us with quick-and-dirty information processing capacities that deliver true beliefs often enough to promote survival. But the point remains that what promotes survival is a sufficient number of true beliefs. So the thought that our beliefs are generated by mechanisms provided by our evolutionary history cannot by itself be a reason for across-the-board distrust.

Secondly and more generally, why should we suppose that our thoughts being the result of "physical processes" somehow makes them unreliable? I want my beliefs about what's around me to be generated e.g. via physical processes triggered by light hitting my retinas, etc., rather than to float causally free from my physical environment. Don't you?