Talk:Evolutionary argument against naturalism/Archive 1

Redundancy
"[...]leaving no good reasons to suppose that natural selection is generally successful in producing cognitive faculties with the ability to construct accurate cosmologies. Thus, Plantinga argues, the probability that our minds are reliable under a conjunction of philosophical naturalism and evolution is low or inscrutable. This result Plantinga classifies as an epistemic defeater, which results in the belief of naturalism and evolution together to be irrational."

"[...]he simply argues that they provide no reason for believing that we actually have reliable cognitive faculties.[4] Thus, asserting that naturalistic evolution is true is also asserting that one has a low probability of being right in any of his assertions. This, Plantinga argues, epistemically defeats the belief that naturalistic evolution is true - ascribing truth to naturalism and evolution becomes self-referentially incoherent."

Is it just me or do these sections look almost identical to anyone else? Starghost (talk | contribs) 21:18, 7 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I think I've largely resolved the redundancy. Gabrielthursday 08:00, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Direction of the Criticism Section
I'm pleased that the criticism section now represents the arguments of academics, but I wonder if they are representative of the dominant criticisms. I suggest that what the section should eventually aim for is a summary of the criticism presented in the book "Naturalism Defeated". Gabrielthursday 08:00, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I have expanded the Fitelson and Sober section of the criticism and given it a subheader. I don't have Naturalism Defeated?, but I think that Fitelson and Sober present a very cogent case against Plantinga. In particular, I am pursuaded by the criticisms that I have seen fit to add to the article. Also, I recognize that the criticism section is getting long - however, I see no part of it that could be removed without reducing the quality of the article. You may want to make the presentation of the argument bigger, but I don't think it falls to opponents of the argument to expand it (not that you have asked me specifically to do so). You will recall that at Critique of atheism the accusation was made that many of the arguments were just straw men made up by proponents of atheism in order to present great rebuttals. I am of the opinion that opponents of an argument have no duty to carry water for fans of the argument. If there is a lot of criticism, it is only because the argument is more full of holes than swiss cheese. Lamont A Cranston 13:29, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, we differ on our views of the merits of the argument, but that's neither here nor there. I wasn't saying delete what's there, only suggesting what might be a better solution that we might implement in the future.  I largely agree with you about not having to "carry water" for the other side, though of course both sides need to be wary of POV by disproportionate weight or structure.  One of the advantages of using Naturalism Defeated, aside from the fact that it's bound to be fairly representative, is that it also includes discussion by Plantinga of the various criticisms.
 * Now, some caveats- I do wonder if the criticism of the Bayesian methodology is appropriate at this point. The argument right now is not presented in a Bayesian manner, so I question whether the criticism of Bayesian methodology is appropriate now.  If eventually the argument is expanded to include P's Bayesian mechanics, it would fit the rest of the article, but I don't think it does now.  I'm also unsure of the merit of F & S's argument that theism has similar problems- the merit of the EAAN isn't that it suggests N&E has no answer to global skepticism, but that it is internally inconsistent with respect to reliable cognition (which is how it is described in the argument section: "self-referentially incoherent").  I do think the other criticisms are appropriate for inclusion, at least for the time being.
 * One final question- much of the criticism that the EAAN has attracted has been responded to. Perhaps we ought to eventually transform the criticism section into something more resembling a controversy section.  Gabrielthursday 19:24, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think I was in a bad mood when I made my last comment, and I'm sorry if it came off as rude. I don't have the understanding of probability necessary to really go into the Bayesian side of the argument (either presenting Plantinga's view or the criticisms of it), and that is partly why the mention of a Bayesian framework is just made in passing. I do think that if the argument depends on Bayes' theorem (and if Bayes' theorem is the subject of extensive criticism) then the presentation of the argument and the criticism section should reflect that. I just don't have the technical knowledge necessary to do so, as my training was in literature and law, and my philosophy study is limited to one class on logic eight years ago. I agree that Plantinga's responses to his critics have a place in the article, although there are obviously limits at which the back-and-forth must stop. As an aside, I think the article has really progressed, and I think we (all of the contributors to it) have done some good work and shown that the article is worth keeping.Lamont A Cranston 18:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

There is more space given to one paper than to the argument itself and the whole book about it. We need to re-balance this. NBeale 07:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, by expanding the article, not slashing the explanation of what's wrong with it. Guettarda 13:06, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That was a major change to institute with no discussion. The F&S section laid out a resounding rebuttal to Plantinga's argument. If you think Plantinga's argument needs to be discussed in more detail, feel free to do so. If anything in the F&S section is wrong, or is mere surplussage, please discuss before gutting the whole section. An example of why we need this section - Plantinga's epistemological alternatives are laid out in nauseating detail. The gaping hole in his reasoning is not. F&S very clearly explain the problem with Plantinga's too-clever-by-half tiger hypothetical, and it is clearly appropriate to include their rebuttal. I think there's no question that it makes the article more informative. Lamont A Cranston 23:29, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The F&S stuff is still given undue weight, and it's v confused. I've had a start at NPoVing it but really it needs condensing and fitting into the wider picture. 217.41.10.161 21:54, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

C. S. Lewis
The section on C. S. Lewis mentions Plantinga before he has been introduced in the article. I think that it should be renamed "Lewis" instead of "Early form" and that the Plantinga presentation should be called "Plantinga" instead of "The argument." If we really are just talking about an argument that two prominent intellectuals have made, I think it is fair to label each presentation according to who actually made it. Currently, the article sort of infers implies that there are others out there somewhere making this argument in academic settings, and I don't think that's actually the case. I also think the Lewis section could stand a bit of expansion. Lamont A Cranston 18:56, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * That's fine. &mdash; goethean &#2384; 19:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I have made the changes, as no contrary opinion seems forthcoming. Lamont A Cranston 21:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thanks. Anyone else confused about just what OR (per the summary of the AfD) is actually in the article?  Gabrielthursday 21:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
 * None really stands out to me. There are long sections with no citations, but they are clearly just presenting ideas that are in the papers being discussed (which are cited at the beginning of the discussion of each paper).Lamont A Cranston 22:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Wait a second...
The whole premise is that it if an unlikely event occured, it must have been caused by divine intervention?

Probability only comes into play if you have something to compare the results to. I doubt he observed the same evolutionary process in 100 or 1000 parallel worlds. If he did and the same event with a, say, 0.1% chance occured in more than, say, 10 of those worlds, I'd say he has a point, though.

That something occured doesn't mean it was probabilistically necessary. It only means it was necessary given ALL circumstances (which isn't what probabilities are about) &mdash; Ashmodai (talk &middot; contribs) 19:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

F & Sober
Some of this is almost gibberish:
 * 1) "The mere fact that an improbable event occurred does not mean that the event was foreordained. For example, in poker, the probability of being dealt a straight is very low; however, being dealt a straight is not evidence that the game was fixed if there are adequate assurances that it was not fixed. Even if one accepts the argument that certain features of human cognitive faculties are unlikely to have evolved, there is still a great deal of evidence that the features did, in fact, evolve."  Plantinga never suggests that human cognitive faculties did not evolve - this has nothing to do with the EEAN!
 * 2) Plantinga never suggests that true and false beliefs are equally likely to evolve, so the whole rigmarole about tigers is irrelevant.
 * 3) In other words, until he can show that E&N defeats the proposition that "50% plus 1 of our beliefs are true," Plantinga has not provided a reason for proponents of E&N to doubt their beliefs. (This is obvious nonsense. If you knew that a computer was programmed so that whenever it did a calculation, at the end it would make a significant random error 49% of the time, that would clearly be a reason to doubt all the output of the computer. I can't believe that even very minor philosophers would have made such a blunder, so I can only assume it was a mistake in the summary. NBeale 22:10, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems a very strange definition of evolution
The argument uses a very strange definition of evolution. As far as I know, no mainstream biologist has ever argued that beliefs are selected for/against in biological evolution. Behavior is clearly important in selection but behavior results from instinct (i.e. no beliefs involved) or through learning mechanisms including primitive ones such as imprinting (which can go wrong easily in artificial settings but given most natural environments, turns out to work) and, for humans, much more complicated ones. Since his arguments involves selection of beliefs which is NOT a feature of biological evolution, it seems that this argument is actually not dealing with evolution but a strawman version of it. A much more convincing argument would be one which deals with the selection of general learning mechanisms. Maybe I am missing something big as I have not read the original sources but that would mean that the page presents the argument in a very misleading way. Are there any biologists who have taken part in the discussion?

Srikantmarakani 11:18, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I know the argument refers to the development of reliable cognitive mechanisms, or as you say, "the selection of general learning mechanisms", and does not refer to the evolution of specific beliefs. However, theoretically evolution could favor specific beliefs via the Baldwin Effect. Romanpoet 22:21, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This is contradicted by point 4 in the argument presented on the page as it says "natural selection would have no reason for selecting true but non-adaptive beliefs over false but adaptive beliefs" which clearly states that beliefs are selected for/against in natural selection. I found a long discussion of this at http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/b217c0404cce3931/f8a6629e453a3a2d?lnk=gst&q=plantinga&rnum=2#f8a6629e453a3a2d but nobody seems to be particularly clear about what he means - I tried reading the original article and it too has this problem of specifying beliefs as the selected entities which would make it an argument about cultural evolution, not natural selection. Further, it is well known that human cognition is far from perfect - that is why we have invented procedures such as the scientific method and, atleast in science, nothing is stated to be emphatically true. Functional naturalism is presupposed in science, so it is possible that this is what Plantinga's argument is about, but if one doesn't use functional naturalism, you end up with solipsism or something similar AFAICS. Unfortunately, Plantinga seems to engage in pretty sloppy language in his articles which doesn't help and is surprising considering he is a tenured professor of philosophy.

Srikantmarakani 22:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Further, it is well known that human cognition is far from perfect - that is why we have invented procedures such as the scientific method and, atleast in science, nothing is stated to be emphatically true. Functional naturalism is presupposed in science, so it is possible that this is what Plantinga's argument is about, but if one doesn't use functional naturalism, you end up with solipsism or something similar AFAICS. These are all legitimate criticisms, and they are already in the criticisms section.  As far as your first point, "natural selection would have no reason for selecting true but non-adaptive beliefs over false but adaptive beliefs", that is clearly a case of Plantinga not being as careful in his language as he [c/sh]ould be.  But from the rest of the paper it is clear that he is referring to the validity of general-purpose "cognitive/reasoning mechanisms", not of the validity of individual beliefs. Romanpoet 03:19, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing out that the criticisms already have these points. Unfortunately, the short stubs were not always clear enough to me (once I get some free time, I will try and expand them after reading the cited sources) and I didn't look up the secondary sources which I should have but didn't have quite the time to as my main beef was with the claims on selected entities which would seem odd to anyone acquainted with evolutionary theory. I suggest that I add a note indicating that the language there is not careful and does not quite mean what it says since it is likely to confuse many people - if it is agreeable to everyone. Further, the probabilities indicated in Plantinga's arguments don't seem to be based on strong statistical or observational evidence (or atleast, he neglects to cite such evidence) - again I suggest I add a note about this if it is agreeable to everyone.

Srikantmarakani 05:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I suggest that I add a note indicating that the language there is not careful and does not quite mean what it says since it is likely to confuse many people - if it is agreeable to everyone. Sure, go ahead. There's no need for permission for things like that.


 * Further, the probabilities indicated in Plantinga's arguments don't seem to be based on strong statistical or observational evidence (or atleast, he neglects to cite such evidence) This would be alright to mention, but as Plantinga is careful to NOT say that the probability is low, but that the probability is either "low or *inscrutable*" (emphasis on the inscrutable), the mentioning should not be phrased as a slam to Plantinga.  Determining non-pulled-out-of-your-ass probabilities for evolutionary systems in the real world is just about impossible for evolutionary biologists, physicists, or Plantinga -- Plantinga should not be singled out for this defect.  The only environments even remotely controlled enough to get probabilities like these are simulations like Avida, and Avida has no obvious relevance to the evolution of reliable cognition. Romanpoet 18:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, natural selection acts upon actions; but if the actions are caused by beliefs, then it also makes sense to say that natural selection selects for the beliefs. As it happens, neither the beliefs nor the actions are inheritable traits- only the correlated reliable cognitive faculties are.  But we say that giraffes are selected for long necks, even though it is the genes for long necks which are actually transmitted.  So I don't think Plantinga's use of language is incorrect.  Gabrielthursday 22:37, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Gabriel, you've made no points that I disagree with, as such I don't see why we're disagreeing. Without the slightest contest or ambiguity, the Baldwin Effect allows evolution to select for particular, individual beliefs.  However, this isn't what Plantinga means.  Looking at the entire essay, he contests evolution's ability to produce belief-generating "reliable cognitive mechanisms", not the ability of evolution to select for individual beliefs.  It's been a while since I've read his essay, but I recall several times Plantinga did use the word "beliefs" when he meant "reliable cognitive mechanisms" (or something of that sort).  It's reasonable to think readers could be confused by this -- putting a short note in this article about what Plantinga means is completely within the spirit of the 'pedia.  A clarification is all that is needed, this does not entail a generic slam of "sloppy word usage".  Romanpoet 19:01, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Natural selection then does NOT select directly on beliefs but for learning mechanisms causing those beliefs or correlated cognitive faculties - i.e. what is selected for is one step removed from the beliefs or their representation, that is why I think his use of language is incorrect, an opinion which his own articles gives much weight to as it is very clear from his articles that it is the beliefs (or correlated cognitive faculties) that is being selected for, not the learning mechanism generating those beliefs (since we are not born with beliefs). I have yet to see a reasonable learning mechanism which will give rise consistently to false beliefs which generate useful actions. The learning mechanism can, of course, generate beliefs arbitrarly for actions which are unimportant selectively. In other words, belief generation comes under developmental, not evolutionary biology. Srikantmarakani 16:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This is just a silly semantic argument. I'd note that your preferred terminology is just as erroneous by your own lights.  On your standard, "learning mechanisms" aren't selected for either, just the genetic elements that create such mechanisms.  Gabrielthursday 21:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Further Discussion section
I see that somebody has deleted this section. Admittedly, I was never particularly comfortable with it in the first place, as it didn't seem to fit too well into the overall article, but discussion first would have been preferable. Are people happy with its deletion? Hrafn42 06:07, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

...and the Kitchen Sink
I've just removed sections on Robbins and Tremblay's responses. There is a substantial amount of debate within the academy such that I see little role for mention of unpublished and/or amateur critiques. Exceptions could be made if such unpublished or amateur writings have been the subject of engagement in the broader debate, but such does not appear to be even close to the case. I do note, however, that Robbins published a paper in 1994 that has since been cited in a number of articles discussing EAAN- that article might have a place here. Gabrielthursday (talk) 20:07, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I've re-added Robbins, whose paper is published as you rightly stated, and reinforced his views with Fales', which are also published and, in sections, quite similar to Robbins'.Claudio D'Amato 22:35, 23 June 2008 (CET)


 * I've edited down Robbins, removing references to his unpublished essay- I think his published paper is appropriate and sufficient.
 * A broader issue of general approach to the article seems to be lying beneath the surface here, though. EAAN has been subject to significant debate within the academy- we would have to multiply the critique and response sections many times to provide a balanced account that provides the same attention given to Fitelson & Sober to all significant academic contributions to the subject.  I'm doubtful that's the purpose of Wikipedia; in any event, it's currently beyond our capacity for this page.  Is it better to have summaries of some but not all (and quite possibly not the most central or debated) academic responses or have a fairly generic overview of the status of the academic conversation/debate?  I'm inclined towards the latter- we can't do justice to the debate as a whole and I doubt it's the place of Wikipedia to do so anyway.  But I'd like to see what others' thoughts are on this before overhauling the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gabrielthursday (talk • contribs) 23:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The appropriate way forward would be to give the most prominent and/or representative examples of the criticism & give ELs to a 'second tier' of significant ones. On the Rollins info, I thought that the opinion that Plantinga's argument assumes a worldview (Cartesianism) that his opponents do not hold was significant -- as it severely limits the intersubjective value of his argument. HrafnTalkStalk 03:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll hold off on further thoughts on the treatment of the various critiques, but regarding the Rollins edit, I think we should hold the line to published critiques, given how much published stuff there is anyway (with the possible exception of Plantinga himself, since he formulated the thing in the first place- but even there, I don't think it's been necessary). On a second level, I'm unaware that Plantinga has called out those particular opponents- or indeed anyone- so there appears to be a bit of a red herring going on there.  As an aside, I note that the subject line for this section no longer reflects its content at all. Gabrielthursday (talk) 07:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Causality versus correlation
It seems that Plantinga is arguing concerning the causal relationship between (adaptive) behaviours and (true) beliefs. This is, I strongly suspect, an irrelevance. What matters is not causal relationship (whether beliefs cause behaviour, behaviour causes belief or neither causes the other), but the correlation between the two. As long as true beliefs and adaptive behaviours are strongly correlated, selection for adaptive behaviours will also lead to selection for true beliefs as a bypoduct, irrespective of the causal relationship between them (and thus irrespective of Plantinga's categories 1-4). This leads to a high value of P(R|N&E). That the two are strongly correlated can be seen from the far higher probability of true belief-adaptive behaviour combinations than false belief-adaptive behaviour combinations.

Of course this argument is OR, but I would be surprised if somebody somewhere hasn't seen this flaw in Plantinga's logic, to provide a reliable source for this counter-argument. Hrafn42 17:18, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The correlation you mention here is what Plantinga coveres with semantic epiphenomenalism. If mental states have physical correlates but don't cause qua mental physical states, then mental states cannot directly be selected for. They would be, as you stated, mere byproducts. But then no reason can be found in contemporary theory of evolution why mental states should contain beliefs that are true. An animal which has a highly sophisticated brain whose mental correlate is the lasting representation of a strawberry is just as fit and adapted to it's environment as it's physical duplicate in a twin-world, where the correlates of it's brain are representations of it's environment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.124.140.39 (talk) 11:49, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

"But then no reason can be found in contemporary theory of evolution why mental states should contain beliefs that are true." Baloney. P(beneficial survival strategy|accurate mental representation of reality) > P(beneficial survival strategy|inaccurate mental representation of reality). For example the probability that a mentally healthy human has a beneficial survival strategy is higher than somebody suffering a psychosis having one. P(beneficial survival strategy|lasting representation of a strawberry) ≈ 0 (unless you believe that there's any rational argument that there is any significant chance that a creature whose mental state was 'strawberry, strawberry, strawberry' rather than 'there is a tiger here with big teeth' will be correlated with the physical strategy 'run away from tiger'). HrafnTalkStalk(P) 20:11, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I would further point out that mental states uncorrelated with physical activity are unobservable, as they would be uncorrelated with the physical actions of stating "I had a thought" or writing down the contents of those thoughts. We would therefore have no basis for claiming that uncorrelated mental states exist (as even the articulation of the claim would necessarily be uncorrelated with their existence), and the whole argument collapses upon itself. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 20:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You pointed out the core of Plantingas argument yourself: "(unless you believe that there's any rational argument that there is any significant chance that a creature whose mental state was 'strawberry, strawberry, strawberry' rather than 'there is a tiger here with big teeth' will be correlated with the physical strategy 'run away from tiger')". Plantinga says just this: The chance that a creature whose mental state was 'strawberry, strawberry, strawberry' rather than 'there is a tiger here with big teeth' will be correlated with the physical strategy 'run away from tiger' is inscrutable. And so are all the other correlations. To counter this conclusion you need something like a causal theory of content (Tooley adopts this strategy), but it's not easy to get such an account without begging the question and just assuming that it is so that seeing a tiger causes the belief "I'm seeing a tiger". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.217.226.137 (talk) 20:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Utter and complete baloney. "The chance that a creature whose mental state was 'strawberry, strawberry, strawberry' rather than 'there is a tiger here with big teeth' will be correlated with the physical strategy 'run away from tiger'" is NOT "inscrutable", it is negligible (i.e. ≈0). Plantinga's apparent definition of 'mental states', i.e. one that has them having no presumptive causal or correlative relationship with physical events, is one that renders mental states both philosophically and in-practice irrelevant. Such a definition would render them indistinguishable from 'pixie dust' or some other made up concept. Strictly speaking, I should have said "positively correlated" not simply "correlated" in my above parenthetical. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 21:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * By way of example, interview everybody you can find who has successfully run away from a tiger. I absolutely guarantee that none of them was thinking nothing but 'strawberries, strawberries, strawberries' at the time. I would further guarantee that the vast majority of them had thoughts connected with tigers at the time. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 21:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * " Plantinga's apparent definition of 'mental states', i.e. one that has them having no presumptive causal or correlative relationship with physical events, is one that renders mental states both philosophically and in-practice irrelevant." Plantingas physical conception of mental states includes of course mental-physical correlations. And as shown below physicalism is (see the exclusion argument) threatened by epiphenomenalism (the idea that content of belief can't enter the causal chain) or semantic epiphenomenalism (the idea that content of belief can only enter the causal chain in virtue of its neuro-physiological properties). So it's not just Plantingas definition of mental states causing this problem, it's something that bothers many physicalists nowadays. Some time ago people let go cartesian dualism because of the interaction problem (among other things) and turned to physicalism. Now it seems (that's what Kims quote is about) that physicalism has similar problems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.124.140.39 (talk) 06:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 11:14, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) "Plantingas physical conception of mental states includes of course mental-physical correlations" = selection of reliable cognitive faculties as a byproduct, regardless of causality = EAAN collapses.
 * 2) I "see [no] exclusion argument", either articulated, or clearly referenced.
 * 3) I likewise see no clear articulation of a problem, let alone one referenced to the physicalists themselves.
 * 4) What I do see is an abundance of jargon-laden assertions, of apparently fluid meaning.
 * 5) You have not rebutted my claim that "the probability that a mentally healthy human has a beneficial survival strategy is higher than somebody suffering a psychosis having one", from which we can tentatively adduce that "P(beneficial survival strategy|accurate mental representation of reality) > P(beneficial survival strategy|inaccurate mental representation of reality)", and therefore that selectable survival strategies are correlated with "reliable cognitive faculties", resulting in the latter being a selectable by-product of the former, with the result that the claim that "the probability that humans have reliable cognitive faculties is low or inscrutable" is false.


 * "selection of reliable cognitive faculties as a byproduct, regardless of causality = EAAN collapses" If this would be true, you'd be right. But Plantinga argues, that this is wrong. And because of the exclusion argument (before considering to write any addition to this discussion, you should read one of the versions below), many physicalists doubt this too.
 * Here are some articulations: Malcolm, The Concievability of Mechanism, 1968; Jaegwon Kim, Mechanism, Purpose, and Explanatory Exclusion, 1989; Jaegwon Kim, Mental Causation: What? Me Worry?; Trenton Merricks, Objects and Persons, 2003. Afaik all of those (maybe Merricks is an exception) are physicalists.
 * The argument is complex and professional philosophers argue about it's soundness. It's multifaceted and includes philosophy of mind and epistemology. Some of the jargon of philosophers is needed to understand the argument. I can't avoid this jargon without giving a full introduction into different concepts about the nature of the mind. But this is not the place for such an introduction. Actually Plantinga himself does a good job at this, see his defence in the essay collection Plantinga, Bergmann, Fales, Foder, Merricks and others, Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, 2002.
 * Here is a rebuttal: a zombie (see chalmers for a short introduction of the term http://consc.net/zombies.html) has the same behavior as his normal human twin and has all the same advantages as his human twin. Yet he has no true beliefs at all. If this claim is true, then your claim is wrong. You can defend your claim by arguing against the possiblity of zombies. One way of doing so is to employ a causal theory of content (like Michael Tooley in "knowledge of god").
 * You haven't mentioned your claims for the ID-relation anymore and not shown any evidence for it. Does this mean, you agree to delete it? I don't want to just change the page on my own.--194.124.140.39 (talk) 13:16, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 20:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) "'selection of reliable cognitive faculties as a byproduct, regardless of causality = EAAN collapses' If this would be true, you'd be right. But Plantinga argues, that this is wrong." Argues where? And argues that it is wrong, how? I have yet to see Plantinga admit the fact that features that are merely correlated can be (indirectly) selected for, let alone that EAAN still holds when this fact is included. It certainly does not appear to be considered in his "four jointly exhaustive categories".
 * 2) I'll try to find one of these articulations online.
 * 3) Your comments have frequently been little but long strings of jargon. You have frequently provided no "argument" to "understand". Case in point, your comment dated 06:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC) articulates no argument, it just gallops through a whole series of bare, jargon-ridden, mentions of a variety of viewpoints, without ever describing the contents of these viewpoints.
 * 4) Your rebuttal is unavailing. (i) Zombies don't exist. This means that you have only demonstrated that zombie-behaviour is conceivable, not possible. Given that P(Zombie)=0, P(Zombie behaviour|Zombie) cannot alter the the correlation between thought and action, let alone render it "inscrutable". (ii) I have never seen even a semi-serious representation of zombies in which they have "the same behavior as his normal human twin" -- this appears to be a purely philosophical conceit, lacking even a 'reality' in Voudon or Hollywood. (iii) Zombies do not appear to reproduce in a manner amenable to natural selection, so are irrelevant to the EAAN.
 * 5) As stated below, philosopher of science Robert Pennock considered Fitelson & Sober's rebuttal to EAAN worthy on inclusion in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics. The Fales article published in this volume also addresses EAAN. Likewise in this book Michael Ruse appears to discuss Plantinga's arguments in the context of ID (however, I've only got the abstract to go on on this, so can't be certain). This point is in any case off-topic in this thread.
 * the category semantic epiphenomenalism covers this point. Plantinga writes: "another [possility] is that belief does enter into the causal chain leading to behavior, but only by way of its 'syntactic' (physiochemical, neurophysiological) properties-not by way of its semantic properties such as truth or falsehood, intentionality, and, in particular, content" (Naturalism defeated? p.212). In this view the belief is causally efficacious and thus selected for. But it is only selected for indirectly, via it's syntactic properties. But he denies, that this would select for reliable cognitive faculties. For why should we assume that the syntactic properties a belief is selected for correlate with semantic properties that feature the appropriate and true content? For his full account see Plantinga, Bergmann, Fales, Foder, Merricks and others, Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, 2002 p.212-215.
 * Jaegwon Kims Mental Causation: What? Me Worry? is great. It's well written and easy to understand.
 * Point taken. But it would be a lot of work to even summarize the arguments mentioned.
 * (i) This shows how much depth there is to the argument. You're in the middle of controversial issues in the philosophy of mind. I won't discuss the zombie idea here, but it's a topic even physicalists divide. Given certain assumptions you can dodge the zombie-counter-example, but it's not clear whether you can coherently make those assumptions and it's not clear if it's enough to block all the other similar examples like the guy who has nothing but a lasting representation of a strawberry. (ii) The argument has been highly influential in the philosophy of mind. David chalmers is one of the latest to discuss it. So while it is (propably, since we can't know if we're living in a zombieworld) nothing but philosophical "conceit", it is important for topics like physicalism and the mind-body relation. (iii) Those zombies reproduce by definition like humans and are thus also subject to all the mechanisms of evolution.
 * Those people propably found EAAN interesting because it can be used by creationists to try to show that the conjunction of evolution and naturalism is self-defeating (which would be a surprise, usually evolution is considered naturalism's most important ally). But the argument does not support ID in any way. If this argument has anything to do with ID, then any theistic argument has, because those can also be employed by creatonists and theistic evolutionists alike to show that something is wrong with naturalism. But this cleary isn't the case. And if Plantinga and the editor of the volume on his argument deny that it's an argument for ID, then their voice should clearly be more important. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.226.11.116 (talk) 21:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Epiphenomenalism, correlation and selectability
From this we can conclude that P(R|N&E) is neither low nor inscrutable. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 21:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Let us assume, for the sake of argument, the most extreme position -- epiphenomenalism -- that mental states have no causal effect on the physical.
 * 2) Let us now consider the question of correlation. Let us take as a specific example, that of the physical action of running away from a tiger.
 * 3) For the physical action of running away from a tiger not to be (positively) correlated with the mental state of thinking about something related to tigers and running away, the probability of these two event co-occuring would have to be low.
 * 4) For this to happen, the probability of the physical action of running away from a tiger co-occurring with either wholly-unrelated thoughts ('strawberry, strawberry, strawberry') or no thoughts (philosophic zombie) would have to be substantial.
 * 5) As we have no indication that either of those co-occurrences is even possible (merely that they are conceivable), we can reasonably conclude that the probability of them happening is negligible at best.
 * 6) We can therefore conclude that the physical action of running away from a tiger is correlated with the mental state of thinking about something related to tigers and running away. This logic would also appear to apply in the general case -- that accurate mental pictures are correlated with physical actions that have a positive impact on survival.
 * 7) It is, I think, uncontroverted that physical actions are selectable.
 * 8) It is a scientific fact that neutral (or in some cases even detrimental) attributes may experience positive selective pressure if they are correlated with a positive (more strongly positive) feature.
 * 9) Per 3.1 + 2.3, mental states will experience selective pressures, even assuming epiphenomenalism.

The problem is this premiss: "As we have no indication that either of those co-occurrences is even possible (merely that they are conceivable), we can reasonably conclude that the probability of them happening is negligible at best." How would you know this to be true? If you have the inner representation of a tiger, you just assume that it fits with the environment. But the strawberry-man would propably do the same. You have no possibility to see whether this is true without just assuming it is and thus begging the question. It seems this premiss needs some sort of cosmological psycho-physical correlation law that just happens to be so, that mental states are correlated with physical in a way that makes natural selection select physical organisams which also have content that is mainly true. This idea is clearly absurd. The only way out then is something like Robbins' "pragmatist[s]" view of the mind or some causal theory of content. But there are many problems with such accounts. Actually just assuming this premiss is pretty much assuming that EAAN is wrong. It's no surprise that you then conclude that EAAN is wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.124.140.39 (talk) 06:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 07:36, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) "How would you know this to be true?" I have no evidence for the existence of even a single strawberry-man or philosophical zombie (outside of obtuse philosophical arguments), therefore it is reasonable to conclude that they're uncommon. This is similar to the conclusion that unicorns and pixies are uncommon. I cannot prove their non-existence to a logical certainty (any more than I can disprove the existence of Russell's teapot), but that they are at least uncommon seems to be a fairly conservative working hypothesis -- and far more reasonable that assuming their prevalence (as Plantinga must for his EAAN to survive).
 * 2) *Have you observed in yourself strawberry-man-like or philosophical zombie-like lack of correlation between thought and action? I have not. And if I am reduced to only the thoughts and actions I can directly observe, my own, I still have good reason to hold to this hypothesis.
 * 3) Until you provide me with evidence of the existence of at least one strawberry-man, I am profoundly uninterested as to what he might assume. Existence, in quantity, is necessary to have an affect on any statistical relationship, such as correlation. Philosophical constructs have no probability density function.
 * 4) I am no more "begging the question" than Plantinga is by assuming, through made-up pseudo-counter-examples, that there is no correlation.
 * 5) *Further, to the extent that we arguably cannot establish this correlation, we likewise cannot establish the truth/falsehood/strawberriness of thoughts. Therefore any argument that is based upon (i) the general reliability of our thoughts, but (ii) not being able to establish a correlation between our thoughts and our actions, would appear to be incoherent or inconsistent.


 * You couldn't have any evidence. Zombies and strawberry-men behave by definition exactly like ourselves. (The propositional evidence for any other minds is non-existent or slim.) But this is not really to the point, the question is whether you can know that you aren't some sort of strawberry-man without or with few true beliefs. I think this is propably what's being discussed under the name "the conditionalization-problem". What evidence could there be that you have many true beliefs and reliable cognitive systems? Can one "experience" his reliable rationality and therefore know, that he has reliable cognitive faculties and thus be immune against probabilistic arguments like R(N&E)=low or inscrutable? (Similar to the theist who presumably can have independent knowledge of god and thus doesn't acquire a defeater for his belief in god when he hears an evidential probabilistic argument from evil.) Propably not, because once he sees that the probability of R(N&E) is low or inscrutable, he can't trust his faculties to show him otherwise because it's exactly those faculties reliability that is in question. As a matter of fact, he propably can't even trust R(N&E)=low or inscrutable anymore. He fell into humean scepticism and lost all knowledge. Now is R(N&E)=low or inscrutable? If the conceivable strawberry-man and zombie have the same evolutionary advantage as their normal human twin, evolution in itsself isn't a guarantee that the brains selected for have a mental correlation that "makes sense" in any way. Are there any other reasons to belief that the brains selected by evolution have mental correlates, that "make sense"? I don't see any and I haven't read of anybody who does. You can of course presume that there are (what I think you have been doing all the time) and by doing so dismiss EAAN. But atm I don't see any reason for doing so.
 * I don't think plantinga denies anywhere mental-physical-correlation pe se.
 * "Further, to the extent that we arguably cannot establish this correlation, we likewise cannot establish the truth/falsehood/strawberriness of thoughts. Therefore any argument that is based upon (i) the general reliability of our thoughts, but (ii) not being able to establish a correlation between our thoughts and our actions, would appear to be incoherent or inconsistent." I hope I understood you correctly but I think that's exactly right. But it doesn't follow that the argument is incoherent. As soon as you understand the argument, you fall into scepticism about your own rationality. This means you're also sceptical about the argument itself. It's a bit like the Wittgensteinian idea: once you used the ladder to get up, you throw it away. You can later refuse scepticism again, but this "reactivates" the argument and brings you back to scepticism. This doesn't seem incoherent to me. It just shows that the naturalist is in a hell of an epistemological mess.
 * --194.124.140.39 (talk) 07:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 08:14, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) "You couldn't have any evidence." Wrong! I have the evidence of the observation of myself. One observation of correlation combined with no evidence whatsoever that SMs/PZs might exist.
 * 2) "the question is whether you can know that you aren't some sort of strawberry-man without or with few true beliefs" Arguing for supposed beliefs that the purported believer isn't even aware whether he has them or not is just completely vacuous and silly. Such "beliefs" have about as much relevance to anything at all under discussion as 'yellow goo in the third dimension on the right' or 'pixie dust'. If I cannot even know my own thoughts, then I know nothing. I therefore have no firm premises to base any argument upon. I would therefore doubt every premise of EAAN, as well as the premises of every other argument.
 * 3) In any case, if the observer who the argument is targeted against cannot know about the thoughts of others, then P(R) itself is inscrutable, and the EAAN collapses under its own solipsism.
 * 4) Plantinga must assume that the "mental-physical-correlation" does not exist, because if it does exist, reliable faculties are selectable and EAAN collapses.
 * 5) Inconsistency: if we cannot know if thoughts are correlated to actions, we have no basis on which to judge the reliability of these thoughts. EAAN collapses.
 * 6) "As soon as you understand the argument, you fall into scepticism about your own rationality." No. As soon as I understand the argument, I fall into a profound skepticism directed towards the intellectual masturbations of philosophers. It is no more likely to make me to either "fall into scepticism about your own rationality", or accept supernatural involvement in the 'creation' of my faculties, than witnessing a stage illusionist would make me believe in magic.
 * 7) Can you point to anybody not already predisposed to accept EAAN's conclusion, who finds it to be a compelling argument?
 * You clearly understand what kind of scepticism the argument is about but not how to relate it to other topics of philosophy. If you want to understand the argument and it's premises completely, you now have a lot of stuff you can read about: the problem of other minds (Plantingas God and other minds is great), warrant, the philosophy of mind, mental causation and more. I don't think discussing this here is a good idea.
 * "Can you point to anybody not already predisposed to accept EAAN's conclusion, who finds it to be a compelling argument?" First the argument has been widely appreciated among professional philosophers, although many recject it. The reasons for rejecting it are manifold, there doesn't seem to be the false premiss or inference. Some contemporary philosophers actually embrace some form of the conclusion of the argument, although most of them don't argue for this conclusion as thoroughly as Plantinga: Rorty, the Churchlands and, to name one of the olds, Nietzsche.
 * I enjoyed the discussion here. I noticed that you seem to be very anxious about the collapsing of EAAN, although the reasons you saw for the collapse changed in the course of the discussion. If a philosophical argument is appreciated among philosophers, give it a chance. Even if you don't agree with the conclusion, usually things are not that simple if many professionals disagree about the exact reason why an argument is unsound. And don't be too quick in labeling something philosophical masturbation. Evidentialism once seemed to be a common sense position and "philosophical masturbation" showed that there are many forms of knowledge we don't have evidence for. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.124.140.39 (talk) 08:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:04, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Or alternately I could remember what I learned in introductory logic: that with inconsistent axioms (ability to determine that mental faculties are reliable, inability to determine if thoughts and actions are correlated), you can prove anything, and leave it at that.
 * 2) You danced around my question. If "many recject it" they cannot find it compelling. Who does find it compelling, and are any of them non-theists/physicalists? Or is Plantinga merely preaching to the choir.
 * 3) I would describe myself as "anxious" -- I was merely pointing out that the argument collapses when looked at from a number of different directions. My focus has always been on the mental-physical correlation. When you attempted to undercut that correlation, I pointed out that your line of argument would undercut the ability to form pretty much any premise connected with mental processes, and thus render the whole field of philosophy of mind largely moot.


 * "When you attempted to undercut that correlation". I never did and Plantinga never did, this was never even in question. Plantinga just asks why we should assume a certain correlation of mental states with physical instead of another.
 * All of the mentioned people are naturalists.
 * "Or alternately I could remember what I learned in introductory logic: that with inconsistent axioms (ability to determine that mental faculties are reliable, inability to determine if thoughts and actions are correlated), you can prove anything, and leave it at that." It's always good to remember that, but it's not that easy to show that the axioms given in the argument are inconsistent.--194.124.140.39 (talk) 10:01, 8 May 2009 (UTC)


 * (i) This claim is contradicted by your comment dated 06:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC) above. (ii) You have provided no evidence that any of them found the argument to be "compelling". (iii) Unless you can find some reasonable way of determining the reliability of thoughts without assuming some sort of correlation between thoughts and actions (or even between thoughts and what people think their thoughts are, it would seem), then the axioms are, prima facie inconsistent. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 00:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * (I) No it doesn't. Several physical states can be correlated with a strawberry representation. That's the basic idea of functionalism. (II) One of the sad facts about philosophy is that there are few arguments that opponents of the conclusion find compelling. The paradigm case of a good argument is Jacksons colorblind marry. But I know of nobody who changed his view because of this argument. As a matter of fact, Jackson himself became quasi-physicalist. (III) I don't understand your statement. Why are you mentioning actions? Why correlation? Of course everybody is assuming some sort of correlation. And please, if you think you have a new great idea concerning EAAN, publish a paper. According to the wikipedia rules we shouldn't be discussing your ideas here. --85.0.47.219 (talk) 13:02, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Why is this linked to creationism or ID?
I don't see why this argument should be linked to creationism or ID. Plantinga is a theist but he does not attack the theory of evolution, only tries to construct an argument against the combo of N&E. If one refuses to accept N&E, it does not necessarily promote creationism or ID. No doubt the proponents of ID or creationism could use / try to use this argument to discredit evolution but the argument in itself does not contain or promote these views. I suggest a) that the Wikipedia Intelligent Design-project does not link this to ID b) removal from "Creationist objections to evolution" category.86.50.9.167 (talk) 17:56, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Plantinga is a long-standing supporter of the ID movement -- which opposes both evolution and methodological naturalism. The theory of evolution, like all science, rests upon MN -- so this argument is an attempt to demonstrate that evolution is inconsistent with the scientific method, in an attempt to get people to jettison one/the other/both. HrafnTalkStalk 18:51, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * this argument is an attempt to demonstrate that evolution is inconsistent with the scientific method, in an attempt to get people to jettison one/the other/both
 * I think you just made 86.50.9.167's argument for him. &mdash; goethean &#2384; 19:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * No. He stated that "the proponents of ID or creationism could use / try to use this argument to discredit evolution" -- but failed to note that Plantinga himself is a 'proponent of ID or creationism' who 'tries to use this argument to discredit evolution'. Why else would the question of whether N & E are inconsistent be of interest? HrafnTalkStalk 19:18, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Plantinga is an opponent of methodological naturalism, but that is not what EAAN addresses. It addresses naturalism simpliciter.  I would say it is most closely linked to theistic evolution, rather than ID or creationism commonly understood, so there may be merit to 86.50.9.167's suggestions.
 * The statement that "all science rests upon methodological naturalism" is nonsense. Remove methodological naturalism, and everyone would still accept Newtonian physics, Mendelian genetics, radioactive decay, cellular respiration, etc., etc.  There is actually very little science that is reliant on methodological naturalism.
 * Finally I note Hrafn's statement: "Why else would the question of whether N & E are inconsistent be of interest?" Well, Theistic evolution. Orthogenesis.  Perhaps saltationism and Vitalism.  New agers might well see EAAN as supporting a universal life force. Gabrielthursday (talk) 19:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I am confused. Courts have ruled that science is associated with methodological naturalism. The National Academy of Sciences has stated the same thing. Without methodological naturalism, the scientific enterprise would grind to a hault because there would be no reason to do research. Newton himself adhered to methodological naturalism. So I am just not quite sure of this.--Filll (talk | wpc ) 20:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey Filll, I don't dispute your first two points. It is definitely the case that currently science is tied to methodological naturalism.  Where we part ways is whether it is necessary to the scientific enterprise.  Absent MN, scientists would not presume that there is a naturalistic explanation for a given phenomenon.  But that does not mean that research would thereby become worthless.  A scientist would investigate, with three possible outcomes- an identification of the natural cause or causes; an exclusion of hypothesized (though theoretically not all) natural causes; and a failure to identify or exclude any natural process.  This is largely what scientists do now.  The abscence of MN would only provide difficulty in a few areas of modern science (and I do not think would necessarily prove fatal)- some elements of evolutionary theory and cosmology.  The vast bulk would remain as clear and accepted as it is today.
 * To put it another way, one does not need MN to identify causality. Our superstitious fore bearers believed that the axe cut the wood, the plow turned the soil; not some miracle. People who believe in miracles necessarily believe in the natural order, because miracles are definitionally outside material causality.
 * As for Newton, one wonders. On the one side, he was a Deist which more or less requires MN at least outside of creation.  On the other, he was a big enthusiast of alchemy and other esoteric modes of knowledge.  Gabrielthursday (talk) 21:47, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

On the one side in this argument we have EAAN, Plantinga, & ID, on the other we have TE & science. I would think that this places EAAN fairly clearly in the ID camp. HrafnTalkStalk 04:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) The viewpoint espoused in the EAAN is not compatible with theistic evolution, as TE accepts both evolution and methodological naturalism (as does modern science generally).
 * 2) EAAN, Plantinga, & ID all reject E+N, so I do not see where the differentiation is.


 * Hrafn, you are conflating methodological naturalism with metaphysical or ontological naturalism. Gabrielthursday (talk) 22:33, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * No, I am not. Modern science is based upon, and TE accepts, methodological naturalism. ID, Plantinga & EAAN reject the combination of evolution and any form of naturalism (which, of necessity, includes MN). None of this discussion has been on the topic of "metaphysical or ontological naturalism" separate from naturalism generally. HrafnTalkStalk 06:13, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "EAAN reject[s] the combination of evolution and any form of naturalism..." This is simply not the case.  That Plantinga elsewhere (and for different reasons) disapproves of methodological naturalism is neither here nor there.  The article and Plantinga's papers explicitly refer to metaphysical naturalism.  Moreover, this is a philosophical argument.  Since when does methodological naturalism constrain philosophical inquiry?  Plantinga actually discusses in one of his papers how he believes Theistic evolution resolves the dilemma presented by the EAAN.
 * It is perfectly consistent to believe metaphysical naturalism to be untrue, but to adopt methodological naturalism as the best manner of scientific reasoning and investigation. The implication of your statements would appear to be that theists are incapable of practicing science under the rubric of methodological naturalism. Gabrielthursday (talk) 07:35, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

What Plantinga actually says is:

Plantinga defines 'philosophical naturalism' but he does not tie that definition into his later adjective-less references to "naturalism" in the argument itself, nor does he attempt to distinguish 'philosophical naturalism' from other forms of naturalism. This leaves the (perfectly valid) impression that the argument is talking about naturalism generally (strengthened by the fact that the name of this argument is not the "Evolutionary argument against philosphical naturalism"). Whether the distinction between PN & MN affects the argument in any way I'll leave for an expert philosopher to argue, my suspicion is that it does not.

If you can point out where "Plantinga actually discusses in one of his papers how he believes Theistic evolution resolves the dilemma presented by the EAAN" I will take a look at that. This would appear however to further muddle the point of the argument:
 * As Robbins has already pointed out, acceptance of the EAAN requires a Cartesian worldview which philosophical naturalists reject, so they won't be convinced.
 * The EAAN, by your argument, would not reject TE (in spite of the fact that Plantinga himself rejects MN & TE) -- so has no affect on them.
 * So who is he trying to convince?

Doesn't this reduce the EAAN to a muddle of 'if you accept some things that you accept but I reject (Evolution) but completely unaccountably were to accept something that I accept but you reject (a Cartesian worldview), you should reject what you previously accepted (PN) and accept instead something that I reject (TE)'? How is this coherent? <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk 08:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Not at all. Robbins points out that a naturalists conception of the mental where content enters the causal chain can avoid Plantingas argument. But in contemporary philosophy of mind this is one of the heavily disputed issues (see for example the essay "What, me worry?" by Jaegwon Kim). In Addition to those general doubts about Robbins account of the mental, Plantinga lays out very strong arguments for the truth of semantice epiphenomenalism given physicalism. As Michael Tooley has in my opinion shown in the book "knowledge of god", Robbins account may escape Plantingas argument, but it's in no way clear such an account is coherent, let alone true.
 * Plantinga has also mentioned on several occasions (I think the last times in the book "knowledge of god" and during the Plantinga-Dennett debate at the APA if I remember correctly. I don't have the book here right now.) that theistic evolution is not affected by his argument. Thus his argument is by no means an argument for intelligent design in a narrow sense. It can just as well be understood as an argument for theistic evolution (design through evolution). This argument is no more related to the intelligent design movement than theism in general. Therefore links to pages concerning the theory of ID or the ID-movement should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.124.140.39 (talk) 10:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * (i) I would question whether this issue is still "heavily disputed" -- last I had heard, Cartesian dualism had long since been abandoned by the majority of the philosophical community. (ii) It's general abandonment is in any case not an issue, rather its rejection by philosophical naturalists -- the only group with the potential to have their positions changed by the argument. We still appear to be lacking a group that (a) would accept EAAN's premises & (b) would have their minds changed by the conclusion, if they accepted it. (iii) "content enter[ing] the causal chain" is in any case not even necessary for it to be selectable, as I pointed out above in above. (iv) The connection to ID is clearly established by the fact that Fitelson and Sober (1998) was later republished in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics (along with voluminous other connections that have been made between EAAN & ID). (v) You still haven't pointed out where "Plantinga actually discusses in one of his papers how he believes Theistic evolution resolves the dilemma presented by the EAAN". <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:55, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Here is one passage (Jaegwon Kim, Mental Causation: What? Me Worry?, in: Philosophical Issues, Vol. 6, 1995, p. 1) to prove the point: "Although the problem was coeval with the mind-body problem (Descartes, ar- guably, invented both) and was thought to be a special difficulty of Cartesian substance dualism, it has recently re-emerged, with a vengeance, within the largely materialist/physicalist framework which most of us accept today." Many different formulation of the exlusion-argument can be found in contemporary philosophy (f.e. Malcolm, The Concievability of Mechanism, 1968; Jaegwon Kim, Mechanism, Purpose, and Explanatory Exclusion, 1989; Trenton Merricks, Objects and Persons, 2003)and they all challenge mental causation qua mental in the frameworks of physicalism. Of course only few actually embrace full blown epiphenomenalism (maybe Chalmers), but so far I don't think Merricks Micro Exclusion Argument has been adequately answered and it's at least doubtful how one can adopt the conjunction of physicalism & its main motivator, the closure of the physical, without adopting at least semantic epiphenomenalism. And that's all Plantinga needs. So the argument may have some force for many contemporary physicalists.
 * Here is a passage by Plantinga in one of his later formulation of the argument (Plantinga, Bergmann, Fales, Foder, Merricks and others, Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, 2002, p. 2-3): "And the above evolutionary account of our origins is compatible with the theistic view that God has created us in his image [6]. So evolutionary theory taken by itself (without the patina of philosophical naturalism that often accompanies exposition of it) is not as such in tenseion with the idea that God has creates ud and our cognitive faculties in such a way that the latter are reliable, that (as the medievals liked to say) there is an adequation of intellect to reality." I'm certain there are many other passages where he states his view. It's clear to anyone who understood the argument, that it's not an argument for ID in any way. Anyone can reasonably and coherently embrace EAAN and the theory of evolution. I think this should be enough to show that the relation between ID and this argument is not more than between ID and theism in general. I would very much like to see what Fitelson and Sober wrote about ID and EAAN. The argument is often misunderstood and I suspect it could be such a case. I have read some Plantinga and have never ever seen him support ID in any of his publications. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
 * Concerncing (iii) see my above answer. The mentioned exlusion-argument is about the problem of genuine mental causation and mere correlation.
 * I just stumbled upon James Beilby's foreword to Plantingas Argument (Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism - Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, 2002, p. vii) which should clear any misunderstanding: "Plantinga's argument should not be mistaken for an argument against evolutionary theory in general or, more specifically, against the claim that humans might have evolved from more primitive life forms. Rather, the purpose of his argument is to show that the denial of the existence of a creative deity is problematic. It is the conjunction of naturalism and evolution that suffers from the crippling deficiency of self-defeat, a deficiency not shared by the conjunction of theism and current evolutionary doctrine." Do you agree that it's reasonable to delete any ID-links on this page given those references? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.217.226.137 (talk) 18:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Your Jaegwon Kim quote is so lacking in context as to be absolutely useless. In any case, throwing jargon around liberally does not help understanding. I have not made a study of this area in over 15 years. This is not helped by a number of idiosyncratic mispelled/made-up words. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 21:11, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * (I) I appreciate corrections of the misspellings, english is not my native language. None of the used words are made up though, they are all common in the discourse the evolutionary argument against naturalism is part of.
 * (II) Plantingas argument is a sophisticated philosophical argument and the discussion section can't be the place to give an introduction into the philosophy of mind and epistemology. It has (like other philosophical arguments on Wikipedia) to presuppose knowlege about philosophy. There is a short passage on the exclusion argument here:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism#cite_note-5
 * (III) Every quote is to some degree out of context, but the passage I quoted deals exactly with the problem of mental causation in physicalists frameworks. This is what Plantinga is talking about. And, unlike others, I posted the name of the essay so you can look it up. Is there any quote by Plantinga that links EAAN to ID or would you agree to delete any ID-reference on this page? My aim is to improve this article and the ID-tag seems to be misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.124.140.39 (talk) 06:14, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

<span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 22:52, 5 May 2009 (UTC)^
 * 1) "adequation" is not a word, not even misspelled. The closest noun would be adequacy.
 * 2) When you introduce terms not contained in the article either (i) wikilink them or (ii) explain them. This is simply common courtesy. It is not reasonable to expect editors to have day-to-day exposure to philosophy of mind and thus have all these terms immediately to hand (metaphorically speaking). As an example, having now read it up, I have come across the 'exclusion argument' before -- but so long ago that I'd long-since forgotten its name, and would not recall its contents without some prompting.
 * 3) "Although the problem was coeval..." is unintelligible without the preceding context as to what "the problem" is. Single-sentence quotes are generally useless to anybody who doesn't already understand what the sentence means -- a paragraph at least should be given. This is especially the case with such turgid text as this (I doubt if one English speaker in 10,000 would know what "coeval" means).
 * 4) Getting back to the crux of the issue, I see no indication that exclusion argument would lead Robbins' "pragmatist[s]" to accept the premises of the EAAN. For myself, I find the EA to be an annoying piece of philosophical handwaving as, if mental states cannot exist without an underlying physical state, it seems nonsensical to expect the former to have a causal effect independent or separable from the latter. But then my, arguably-Emperor's New Clothes, views on such philosophical 'subtleties' often got me into trouble when I was studying philosophy.


 * Hrafn reedited the discussion page twice and added ID-tags. Here is a short summary why I think his conclusion is not appropriate and why in my opinion we should delete the ID-tags.
 * The author of the argument and the writer of the foreword to the essay-collection naturalism defeated? pointed out that it's wrong to interpret EAAN as an argument against evolution (see quotes above). The assessment of the author is clearly more important than other claims.
 * Any theist who thinks the theory of evolution is correct can coherently adopt EAAN. As a matter of fact, he can use the argument (if he thinks it is sound) to argue for his theistic belief. Someone who embraces ID can't use this argument to argue against naturalism. The prior step of the argument is that P(R/E&N) is low or inscrutable. But the person embracing ID wants to argue in favor of ID and (most likely, see the wikipedia ID-article) theism. Ironically if he argues against evolution, he thereby undercuts the anti-naturalism conclusion of the argument. Maybe ID entails theism, but then, given ID, EAAN is clearly not needed anymore.
 * EAAN is an argument against the coherence of belief in evolution and naturalism. It is used by the author to argue indirectly for theism (see f.e. "knowledge of god" by Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley). It could maybe be classified as an argument of natural theology, although this is not entirely clear. Natural theology is not in itself related to ID, although ID can be understood as an argument of natural theology. Therefore the relation of EAAN to natural theology does not imply a relation to ID. (Or else an argument along these lines could be made: "do not kill" is a moral obligation. "do not lie" is also a moral obligation. Therefore killing is related to lying. While this may be true in some sense, it's clearly not the sort of relation that matters for wikipedia).
 * The argument was mentioned in the book "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics". The reasons for this could be manifold. They authors could just have tried to defend the coherence of their view (E&N). Or they tried to show, that there are theistic arguments available that do not deny evolution. Or they found the idea surprising (like Fodor) that someone argues against naturalism on the basis of evolution, because evolution prima facie seems to be an ally of naturalism. As long as no explanation is given for the occurence of the argument in that volume, it's cleary not an argument for a relation in the sense required by the wikipedia-rules.
 * The user Hrafn advocated the ID-relation with different arguments over time. One of them was a rather obscure conjunction thesis (metaphysical naturalism can only be rejected in conjunction with methodological naturalism): "Modern science is based upon, and TE accepts, methodological naturalism. ID, Plantinga & EAAN reject the combination of evolution and any form of naturalism (which, of necessity, includes MN)." On another occasion he said "The viewpoint espoused in the EAAN is not compatible with theistic evolution". This is so obviously wrong and the author himself said so. I think it's clear from this that Hrafn tries to establish a EAAN-ID relation by himself because he simply wants it to be related to ID, even if he has to appeal to original research which according to the wikipedia rules can't be part of an article (his research being the mentioned conjunction claim and his (false) claim that EAAN is not compatible with theistic evolution). We should not follow him until he makes substantial claims including sources. Wikipedia is not the place to communicate personal sentiments.
 * "Plantinga is a long-standing supporter of the ID movement " I find this a very odd statement. I'm by no means a Plantinga expert, but I have read some of his stuff and I have never ever seen him so much as mention ID. Please post some quotes where Plantinga supports ID and the source of the quote. --194.124.140.39 (talk) 10:24, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

<span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 00:42, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) The ID movement is not only opposed to the theory of evolution, but to naturalism more generally. Therefore an "argument against naturalism" is entirely relevant to the movement's goals.
 * 2) Can you point to any prominent theist evolutionary biologist (or any other prominent theistic evolutionist for that matter) who thinks this way? As far as I can see, Plantinga's fanbase among the evo/creo dispute comes entirely from the anti-evo side.
 * 3) Not "mentioned", but extensively discussed. As far as I can tell, the majority (entirety?) of the chapter on Plantinga, apart from Plantinga's own piece, was on the EAAN.
 * 4) More than one argument exists for the same conclusion? Hardly a reason for impeachment, unless you can provide evidence that they are in some way contradictory. I would rather doubt that a theistic evolutionist would accept the EAAN, as that would require admitting that humanity's "reliably faculties" are the result of supernatural intercession, rather than natural selection -- a point that I'd doubt that they'd agree to.
 * 5) "Plantinga is a long-standing supporter of the ID movement":
 * 6) Plantinga was part of the 'Ad Hoc Origins Committee' of supporters of Phillip E. Johnson over Stephen Jay Gould's damning review of Darwin on Trial (arguably the book that started the Intelligent design movement). Members of this 'committee' later formed the core of the Center for Science and Culture.
 * 7) Plantinga is a member of the ISCID
 * 8) Plantinga was a participant of the controversial 'Nature of Nature' conference sponsored by the Michael Polanyi Center & the Discovery Institute.
 * 9) He presented the EAAN at the 1997 'The Search for Truth' ID conference.
 * 10) He presented at the ID conference in May 2001 at Calvin College.
 * 11) In The Creationists (p398, Extended Ed.) Numbers cites (ft55, p556) Plantinga's "Methodological Naturalism?", Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 49 (September 1997) 143-54, as evidence of his involvement in ID.

It seems pretty clear that EAAN and Plantinga are associated with intelligent design. Guettarda (talk) 03:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The inclusion of WikiProject intelligent design reflects that this article is of interest to the ID WikiProject. If you believe that the goals of the WikiProject are too broad, you need to build consensus there, not here.
 * The link between Plantinga, EAAN and ID is addressed in the article, with references. Plantinga contributed four chapters to Pennock's Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics.  Pennock's anthology actually includes a 4-chapter section dedicated to "Plantinga’s Critique of Naturalism & Evolution".
 * Plantinga is a fellow of the Discovery Institute's International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design


 * Thanks for clearing that up for me. So the relation of Plantinga to ID is established. What is needed in addition is a relation of EAAN and ID, a relation between the argument itself and ID. What is not enough as far as I understand the goals of the WikiProject ID is the following:
 * ID supporters share some of the conclusions of EAAN. For a whole bunch of people agree to the denial of naturalism and they are not in the ID-Network. Among them, obviously, people embracing theistic evolution. The Wiki article on theistic evolution is not in the ID-network.
 * EAAN has been published, mentioned or referenced within ID context. So has evolution itself and for example interacionistic dualism. But neither are, obviously, within the ID-network.
 * No ad hominem connection is enough. So Plantinga is interested in or supports ID. This doesn't show in any of his professional work. As he says himself, EAAN is not an argument against evolution.
 * As far as I can see only connections of this sort have been established. Please establish some relevant connection, show why EAAN is an argument for Intelligent Design (and not theism in general). If you don't, it seems clearly that the article is improved by deleting the ID-tag. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.62.189.182 (talk) 09:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

As I said, there's a four-chapter section on this in Pennock's anthology. That's probably the best place for you to start. Guettarda (talk) 12:42, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but that was already mentioned before you entered the discussion. And it's also clear that this doesn't relate ID to EAAN without showing the reason for the discussion of EAAN in this book. There is also a chapter on theistic evolution in the Pennock's anthology, but theistic evolution has no ID-tag (for good reasons). But I don't want to repeat myself, read the above discussion. What is needed is why the argument itself is related to ID, even though the author and others clearly say that it shouldn't be understood as an argument against evolution. And clearly no such argument has been given so far. I suspect that there is some confusion of the terms theism and ID. The argument can be understood as an indirect argument for theism, but not for ID (the idea that some intelligent designer directly intervened in the creation process instead of using evolution). --85.0.47.219 (talk) 13:12, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Well OK then. If your question has already been answered, then you can stop raising it.  And please don't remove the WikiProject tag.  As I explained previously, if you believe that the scope of the WikiProject should be changed, this is not the place to make that argument.
 * If you want to discuss specific changes to the article, please feel free to do so. This page isn't for long rambling discussions about the topic.  I'm sure you can find an appropriate venue somewhere else.  Guettarda (talk) 13:57, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * If you don't understand the argument, you don't understand the topic of the argument. Please read Plantingas argument in "naturalism defeated?" and then decide what it's "topic" is. I hope that you won't change the tag again because of what you feel the argument is about.--89.217.71.137 (talk) 16:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

DO NOT continue to remove the template. I've already explained to you why this behaviour is unacceptable. Your continued removal has ventured into the real of vandalism. And please be aware of the three-revert rule. Guettarda (talk) 23:48, 9 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Please, don't sabotage the improvement of the article without participating in the debate. Also, if you don't know what the article is about, let more knowledgable people work on the article.--89.217.143.125 (talk) 08:42, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

"New" argument?
Please remind me why this is not just a ridiculously primitive variety of the "it's too unlikely that the universe might have created life by itself" argument of Intelligent Design that the article on Metaphysical naturalism brushes off in three sentences? --87.154.18.30 (talk) 17:52, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The standard for getting its own article is notability, not whether it is a good argument. Additionally, it is a different argument from the "it's too unlikely that the universe might have created life by itself" in that it claims that evolution and naturalism are incompatible, not that either are, individually, improbable. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk 18:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * And the odds suddenly, magically become so much better with a creator deity involved? --87.154.23.142 (talk) 19:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * O'course -- that's what he's there for after all -- the explanation for the inaxplicable. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk 08:33, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This argument has been influential and is a very sophisticated philosophical argument involving several different topics like philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of language. Even opponents like William Ramsey called it an "ingenious argument". Philosophical heavy-weights like Michael Tooley, Jerry Fodor, Evan Fales, Trenton Merricks, and many more have responded to the argument. It's hard to see how this could have happened if it would be a "ridiculously primitive variety of the "it's too unlikely that the universe might have created life by itself" argument". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.217.226.137 (talk) 19:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Methodological versus Philosophical/Metaphysical Naturalism
Gabrielthursday reverted recent edits of mine with the statement that: "Plantinga's argument is against Metaphysical N, not Methodological N. He doesn't use a modifier, because Methodological N is not commonly thought of as a philosophical position." I would point out the following: I would further point out that: Efforts to claim that Plantinga's "Evolutionary argument against naturalism" (not "Evolutionary argument against Metaphysical naturalism) written in 'Naturalism Defeated' (not  'Metaphysical Naturalism Defeated') is only arguing against Metaphysical Naturalism, and not Naturalism generally (inclusive of Methodological Naturalism) are thus unavailing. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalk<subStalk  04:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Evolution is science.
 * 2) Any "philosophical" argument relating to Evolution must therefore be cognizant of the philosophy of science.
 * 3) The form of naturalism that the philosophy of science deals with is Methodological Naturalism, not Philosophical/Metaphysical.
 * 4) Therefore any philosophical discussion involving 'Evolution' and 'Naturalism' of necessity involves Methodological Naturalism.
 * 1) Within the confines of the science lab, Methodological Naturalism & Metaphysical Naturalism are functionally identical. The only difference between the two is that Methodological Naturalism allows the option, after you leave the lab, to argue for Theism (e.g. in the form of Theistic evolution), as opposed to Metaphysical Naturalism.
 * 2) Therefore if Metaphysical Naturalism is inconsistent with Evolution, Methodological Naturalism must also be.
 * 3) If Plantinga's argument is valid, the only way to resolve this inconsistency is to overthrow Methodological Naturalism by allowing Theism into the lab (a position known as Theistic realism, advocated by a long-time confederate of Plantinga's, Phillip E. Johnson‎).


 * According to the wikipedia rules your argument doesn't matter because it is original research and has not been published anywhere, so it should not influence any article on wikipedia. EAAN is an argument against reasonable belief in the conjunction of metaphysical naturalism & evolution. Whether EAAN is sound or not doesn't matter for the entry in wikipedia. 194.124.140.39 (talk) 07:42, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * See Methodological Naturalism? by Alvin Plantinga. Guettarda (talk) 03:29, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

EAAN & Theistic Evolution
Our anon IP colleague added the following claims into the article lead: <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 11:18, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) "...the argument is sometimes misunderstood as an argument against the theory of evolution and part of the intelligent design movement." They however present no evidence substantiating this, merely a repetition of the same old non sequitor that it's only an argument against against naturalism, not against evolution. Ignoring the fact that ID is against both.
 * 2) "The conclusion of the argument, the idea that philosophical naturalism is false, is shared by parts of the intelligent design movement and many others, e.g. adherents of theistic evolution." I have seen no evidence that any prominent "adherents of theistic evolution" explicitly accept the conclusion of the EAAN.
 * 3) *The fact that the argument appears to conclude that a naturalistic evolutionary explanation of reliable faculties is internally inconsistent would appear to conflict with TE's general views. TEs (i) view evolution as the best explanation of life on Earth, including humanity, (ii) generally subscribe to methodological naturalism, which restricts itself to finding natural explanations for natural phenomena, and (iii) most TEs would consider human faculties to be a natural phenomena (studiable via MN through the science of psychology). TEs would therefore reject a conclusion that (reliable) human faculties were not explainable by naturalistic evolutionary mechanisms.
 * 4) *For this reason, I would view with considerable skepticism any claim that EAAN is compatible with TE or MN.
 * "Ignoring the fact that ID is against both." ID doesn't entail the denial of naturalism. The big majority of the ID-movement accepts some form of theism and the denial of naturalism, but not all of them. That's the idea behind ID, it's a new version of the teleological argument without the supernatural fuzz in order to bring it into science and schools. ID does entail the denial of the theory of evolution though. Theistic evolution entails the theory of evolution and the denial of naturalism. "theistic" means guided by god and Plantinga defines naturalism like this: "Take philosophical naturalism to be the belief that there aren't any supernatural beings--no such person as God, for example, but also no other supernatural entities" (see ref above). So Theistic evolution entails the theory of evolution and the denial of naturalism. A good example for a proponent of TE is Francis Collins. Now, what is more intimately related to EAAN, TE or ID? TE: denial of naturalism, acceptance of evolution. ID: quasi-denial of supernaturalism, denial of evolution. EAAN: evolution as its premise, denial of naturalism as its conclusion. I think it's clear, that EAAN fits perfectly into the TE framework and is somewhat in tension with ID because it has a premis denied by the ID-movement.
 * "I have seen no evidence that any prominent "adherents of theistic evolution" explicitly accept the conclusion of the EAAN". I think we should not try to establish a sociological relation between ID and EAAN, so this is not important. But as shown above, all TE adherents accept the denial of naturalism, so they all share the general conclusion of EAAN. This was what the sentence in the article was refering to. Do they also share the whole story up to the conclusion and the more special conclusion that naturalism given evolution is self-defeating? There might be some. Francis Collins for example often refers to Lewis' argument from reason. But it's not all that clear.
 * I think your ideas about methodological naturalism are original research but nonetheless interesting. Methodological naturalism is not so much a metaphysical conviction than a practical guideline. It's that idea that you don't invoke god in scientific explanations. There are many christian adherents of methodological naturalism, for example John Polkonghorne, C.S.Lewis and Francis Collins. Interesting enough, all of them accepted the theory of evolution. So there is no tension between accepting methodological naturalism and denying metaphysical naturalism. Accordingly I know of no professional answer to EAAN that claims it's not compatible with theistic evolution and Plantinga himself claims it's compatible with TE.
 * I would suggest that -if there is any relation- EAAN is related to natural theology. The job of natural theology is to establish theism and deny naturalism (without some specific conclusion about evolution). EAAN can properly be understood as an argument of natural theology, Michael Tooley does this in his response to Alvin Plantinga in the book "knowledge of god". Unfortunately I can't give you a quote of that because I don't have the book with me right now. But I can give one later.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 06:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

<span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 08:16, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) This is a bunch of OR handwaving, that fails on a number of points:
 * 2) "That's the idea behind ID, it's a new version of the teleological argument without the supernatural fuzz"/"quasi-denial of supernaturalism" -- ID is in fact crypto-supernaturalism and denial of methodological naturalism.
 * 3) Both Plantinga's and your own conflation of 'naturalism' vs 'metaphysical naturalism' versus 'methodological naturalism' (see below for further on this). I do not think it credible that TE's would see an argument that requires a supernatural explanation for the evolution of reliable faculties as being consistent with methodological naturalism, so I do not see them as accepting the EAAN's conclusion.
 * 4) One way of looking at IDers/creationists-generally vs TEs is that the former believe in a 'strong' (provable) supernaturalism, whereas the latter believe in a 'weak' (unprovable and thus consistent with methodological naturalism) supernaturalism. EAAN is an argument that supernaturalism is (given certain premises) provable -- and thus falls in the former category.
 * 5) 'The proof of the pudding is in the eating.' -- and the proof that EAAN is acceptable to TEs is that some TEs accept EAAN.
 * 6) Methodological naturalism is the ballgame. As long as it exists as a viable viewpoint, TEs will ally with Atheistic Evolutionists against Creationists (including IDers). IDers (including Johnson, I think) make the argument that methodological naturalism inevitably leads to a slide into metaphysical naturalism. Arguing about metaphysical naturalism is at best a non sequitor, and at worst a bait-and-switch. Metaphysical naturalists are unlikely to accept the hidden premises of EAAN, and are unlikely to see there being a legitimate conflict necessitating rejection of metaphysical naturalism. TEs already accept (albeit weak) supernaturalism, and are unlikely to be completely comfortable with the conclusion in any case. The only ones likely to swallow it whole are the IDers -- who would see it bolstering their view of being on the side-of-right.
 * 7) Natural theology is very closely tied with ID (with ID being widely seen as a reinvention of William Paley's ideas). It would also probably fit into my definition of 'strong supernaturalism' above. I don't know of it having any following among TEs, and would suspect that it would need to be heavily watered down in order to be acceptable to them.


 * "This is a bunch of OR handwaving, that fails on a number of points." What's OR? Thanks for the explanation.
 * "That's the idea behind ID, it's a new version of the teleological argument without the supernatural fuzz"/"quasi-denial of supernaturalism" -- ID is in fact crypto-supernaturalism and denial of methodological naturalism." As I said: it is not by definition (there are some obscure alien theories among the ID community) but the majority of ID adherents deny naturalism.
 * "Both Plantinga's and your own conflation of 'naturalism' vs 'metaphysical naturalism' versus 'methodological naturalism' (see below for further on this). I do not think it credible that TE's would see an argument that requires a supernatural explanation for the evolution of reliable faculties as being consistent with methodological naturalism, so I do not see them as accepting the EAAN's conclusion." First: I don't conflate those naturalisms. Nobody with a half decent education does. Please be a bit realistic about this. Plantinga is considered to be one of the foremost metaphysicians and philosophers of religion nowadays. It's highly unlikely he makes such a simple mistake. And nobody of the philosophical heavy-weights argues in the essay collection Naturalism Defeated? that Plantinga made such a simple mistake. You may not see why TE adherents need a supernatural explanation for reliable cognitive faculties. But that's hardly an argument. I'm an adherent of theistic evolution and I see it as a crucial point. This is equally no argument. So let's not discuss this here.
 * "One way of looking at IDers/creationists-generally vs TEs is that the former believe in a 'strong' (provable) supernaturalism, whereas the latter believe in a 'weak' (unprovable and thus consistent with methodological naturalism) supernaturalism. EAAN is an argument that supernaturalism is (given certain premises) provable -- and thus falls in the former category." The denial of naturalism is a doctrine shared by many different ideas. I have shown this with a couple of example. "and thus falls in the former category" is obviously a fallacy given the idea that supernaturalism is shared by many different categories.
 * "and the proof that EAAN is acceptable to TEs is that some TEs accept EAAN". That's clearly not a proof but it may be evidence (among other evidence). I accept EAAN and TE. Francis Collins accepts TE and Lewis Argument from reason. The Author of the argument claims that EAAN and TE work together. I know of no professional philosopher who disbutes this. I think this is self-evident. It seems to be original research of you.
 * "Metaphysical naturalists are unlikely to accept the hidden premises of EAAN, and are unlikely to see there being a legitimate conflict necessitating rejection of metaphysical naturalism." I agree with you there, there are very few arguments who convince an opponent of the conclusion. This is an interesting observation but not relevant to the topic.
 * "Natural theology is very closely tied with ID (with ID being widely seen as a reinvention of William Paley's ideas)." That is like saying that fruits are closely tied to apples. Apples are fruits and ID is an argument of natural theology. EAAN is (propably) also an argument of natural theology.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 08:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

<span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) WP:OR
 * 2) "Although proponents of the IDM occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members of the IDM, including Defendants’ expert witnesses." -- KvD
 * 3) Given that I have Michael Ruse who agrees with me, I think I'll stick to my guns here.
 * 4) "a supernatural explanation for reliable cognitive faculties" violates methodological naturalism. While I suppose it is possible to be a TE while rejecting methodological naturalism, this would appear to be a highly idiosyncratic view, and hardly evidence of a wider consilience.
 * 5) "The denial of naturalism is a doctrine shared by many different ideas." Irrelevant and non-responsive, as it fails address the issue of provable/non-provable supernaturalism.
 * 6) See 3.1
 * 7) "there are very few arguments who convince an opponent of the conclusion" -- but an argument that does not attempt to convince anybody into acceptance of its conclusions is simply 'preaching to the choir'. The target audience of an argument is relevant.
 * And, historically, TE is a rejection of previous Natural Theology arguments in favour of the natural explanation of Darwinian evolution for life, including humans (and thus their faculties). It thus is more distantly related to natural theological viewpoints than these natural theological viewpoints are to each other.
 * Thanks, that's a good passage for illustrating what I said. I think we agree with each other on this issue: ID doesn't entail the denial naturalism but most (or almost all) adherents of ID reject naturalism.
 * "Given that I have Michael Ruse who agrees with me, I think I'll stick to my guns here." Did he ever publish an article (in a journal or an essay collection) where he accuses Plantinga of conflating methodological and metaphysical naturalism? Plantinga wrote on methodological naturalism and he defines metaphysical naturalism. I think it's highly unlikely that he can't tell them appart. It might be that he has a different oppinion on their relation than Ruse, but then clearly his opinion as the author of the argument is more important in determing what his aim is with the argument.
 * "a supernatural explanation for reliable cognitive faculties" violates methodological naturalism." Not necessarily. If the explanation of cognitive faculties lies in the relation of physical states and mental states and if those are themselfes brute facts, not explicable by any further theory, then it doesn't. So further argument is needed.
 * "Irrelevant and non-responsive, as it fails address the issue of provable/non-provable supernaturalism." EAAN does not have a certain type of metaphysical naturalism as its conclusion. So it doesn't matter whether the ideas mentioned entail a provable or non-provable naturalism. If you think EAAN only supports provable or non-provable naturalism, further argument is needed. And it seems to be original research.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 10:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

<span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 10:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) My point was that the "space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist" is just a naturalistic fig-leaf, only brought up at all, as a bare mention, when opponents point out ID's essential supernaturalism. The claim is purely spurious. IDers no more take it sriously as a contender for the identity of the Intelligent Designer than they would the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
 * 2) I've already given the reference -- hence "see below"
 * 3) Strange, I don't remember there being a mind/body exception in methodological naturalism. Or is the demonic posession theory of mental illness back in fashion.
 * 4) You have misread my original comment. I was not dealing with "provable or non-provable naturalism" but "provable or non-provable supernaturalism".


 * My point was that the "space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist" is just a naturalistic fig-leaf, only brought up at all, as a bare mention, when opponents point out ID's essential supernaturalism. The claim is purely spurious. IDers no more take it sriously as a contender for the identity of the Intelligent Designer than they would the Flying Spaghetti Monster." That may be so, but it is the right of the one who comes up with an idea to define it. And that is their definition. Besides that I agree mostly with you.
 * Feel free to add this to the criticism section of the article. I ordered the book and will have a look at it.
 * "I don't remember there being a mind/body exception in methodological naturalism." I don't understand this statement. Methodological naturalism is a way of doing science. It is very well possible that some sorts of facts cannot be dealt with science. The greeks first proposed that there may be ultimate brute facts not explicable by science. If methodological naturalism is a way of doing science, then it does not affect the answer to this sorts of questions. And there are notable professional philosophers who are naturalists claiming that we'll never scientifically understand the mind-body relation with the means of science (they call it cognitive closure). And even if Ruse would conclusively show that methodological naturalism and metaphysial naturalism co-dependent in a certain way, this would not fit into the article expect the criticism section. You obviously can't use certain controversial theories by other philosophers in order to determine whether EAAN is related to ID.
 * I was not dealing with "provable or non-provable naturalism" but "provable or non-provable supernaturalism". Since Supernaturalism is the denial of naturalism and EAAN doesn't support a certain type of metaphysical naturalism, it doesn't support a certain type of supernaturalism either. The argument still works mutatis mutandis. Thanks for the correction.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 10:34, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Student of philosophy: I don't find your latest piece of philosophical legerdemain any more convincing than any of the preceding pieces (which is to say, not convincing at all). I think we've gotten to the stage where it is clear that neither of us is going to convince the other, so I would suggest we wait and see whose points other editors find more convincing. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 10:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, an editor knowledgable of the argument should decide. I think the problem is that you don't find philosophy convincing in general. But this is a philosophical argument. Lamont A Cranston wrote in the deletion-discussion: "I am concerned that a philosophical argument is being dismissed because science-oriented Wikipedians fault philosophy's methodology. I find fault with philosophy's methodology, too, but I think that philosophical arguments should be evaluated using the tools of philosophy."
 * Let's not add the "mistaken ID-relation" or "ID-relation" section again until then. So far it's only the two of us discussing this, Guettarda never made an argument. Out of personal interest: have you ever read Plantingas statement of the argument? You seem to quote only secondary sources and only arguments relating Plantinga himself to ID, not the argument. I would be surprised if anybody who read the argument would come up with a relation between ID and EAAN. --Student of philosophy (talk) 11:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Ruse on Plantinga, EAAN & Creationism
In the chapter that philosopher of science Michael Ruse wrote for The cultures of creationism (Chapter 9: The New Creationism): <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:24, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * he brackets Plantinga with Phillip E. Johnson and Michael Behe as proponents of creationism.(p176) It should be noted that both Johnson & Behe are leading ID creationists, and that "New Creationism"/Neo-Creationism is largely synonymous with ID.
 * he states that the EAAN conflates methodological & metaphysical naturalism.(p187)
 * he states that Plantinga "fudges" between "the world as we can in some sense discover" and "metaphysical reality", and that "[o]nce this distinction is made, Plantinga's refutation of naturalism no longer seems so threatening."(p188)
 * he undercuts Plantinga's 'R' by pointing out that "[i]t is certainly the case that organisms are sometimes deceived about the world of appearances and that this includes humans. Sometimes we are systematically deceived, as instructors in elementary psychology classes delight in demonstrating. Moreoever, evolution can often give good reasons as to why we are deceived."(p188)
 * he concludes "To be honest even if Plantinga's argument worked, I would still want to know where theism ends (and what form theism must take) and where science can take over. Is it the case that evolution necessarily cannot function, or it is merely false and in another God-created world it might have held in some way — and if so, in what way? Plantinga has certainly not shown that theist must be a creationist, even though his own form of theism is creationism."(p190)


 * It perhaps true that Plantinga supports the ID movement insofar, as he takes a critical stance towards methodological naturalism. But I don't see how this brings him into a similar position as Johnson and Behe who both actively attack the theory of evolution. And from my experience with Plantinga, his stance towards evolution doesn't show in his work at all. It is notable that one the most important critiques of the teleological argument in the last decades was written by Plantinga in his first "book god and other minds". The teleological argument is something like the ancestor of ID. His conclusion was that the teleological argument has not the power to convince the sceptic. I don't have the book with me, but I can deliver the pages later.
 * I think an ad hominem relation is barely enough. Readers of the article are not interested in what Plantingas complete set of convictions is. Or if they are, they should look them up in the approproiate place and not in an argument that is itsself not related to ID. At any rate an ad hominem relation should imho not be enough to show that the argument is part of the ID-movement. To show this, clearly, the argument itself must be related to ID. And it must be more intimately related to ID than to theistic evolution, natural theology or deism. But it is not, as shown above.
 * Also I think we should have some declaration of Plantinga himself in order to establish a clear ad hominem relation. Perhaps Plantinga denies methodological naturalism, supports IDs idea to invoke god as an explanation but denies the way they do it? To establish a Plantinga-ID relation that is worthy to be mentioned in an article about a certain argument, we need hard facts, words out of Plantingas mouth. Everything else is speculation. Ruse may speculate in his work, but this clearly is not enough to be mentioned in an article on one of Plantingas argument.
 * It is notable that critics of ID don't seem to relate EAAN to ID. Critics of ID usualy claim that there are no peer-reviewed published ID-papers. But Plantinga published an answer to Keith Lehrers critique of EAAN in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology (see naturalism defeated? p.ix).
 * I think the best way to proceed is to cut any ID /anti-ID talk for the moment until the matter is settled or we have conclusive sources. And if we should ever have established significant ad hominem connection, we can decide whether it is enough to be mentioned in articles about specific arguments. And if we can ever establish a EAAN-ID relation based on the topic of the argument which is more intimately than the EAAN-natural theology relation or EAAN-theistic evolution relation, then the case is clear. We'll have to add ID-tags. Can we agree on this?
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 06:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

<span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 08:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) "ad hominem relation" is not standard English (and results in only a single Google hit), rendering your arguments incomprehensible.
 * 2) While the evidence I've presented may not convince you of Plantinga's involvement in ID (and I'm beginning to suspect that nothing will), I suspect that it is enough to convince the consensus of editors here to retain mention of ID (see also WP:DUCK). I will however continue to look for further evidence.
 * 3) The issue with peer review is the lack of peer reviewed scientific papers, EAAN is irrelevant to this.
 * 4) "And from my experience with Plantinga, his stance towards evolution doesn't show in his work at all." According to Reconstructing Democracy, Recontextualizing Dewey (p120), Plantinga rejects evolution as the "Grand Evolutionary Myth" (along with Methodological Naturalism) in Methodological Naturalism (1998).


 * "ad hominem relation" means that Plantinga himself is related to ID. This clearly doesn't relate his work without further argument to ID.
 * "While the evidence I've presented may not convince you of Plantinga's involvement in ID (and I'm beginning to suspect that nothing will)". You have convinced me that Plantinga supports ID or at least ID's critical stance towards methodological naturalism. But I'm not at all convinced that EAAN has the slightest relation to ID. You can change that too by quoting Plantinga where he says that EAAN is closely related to ID. And thanks for looking for evidence.
 * "The issue with peer review is the lack of peer reviewed scientific papers". Unless you call philosophy not scientific I think published EAAN papers should be counted as peer-reviewed scientific papers.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 08:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, Reason and Scepticism, Michael A. Slote, p189 contradicts your claim as to Plantinga's assessment of the teleological argument, stating that Plantinga is "unwilling to claim that they 'have no force at all'." <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 10:03, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a difference betweeen "not convincing the sceptic" and "having no force at all". Plantinga limits the force of the argument even further than Hume did but he doesn't conclude they have no force at all. He concludes that they will not convince the sceptic.
 * "While the evidence I've presented may not convince you of Plantinga's involvement in ID (and I'm beginning to suspect that nothing will), I suspect that it is enough to convince the consensus of editors here to retain mention of ID (see also WP:DUCK)." I asked qualified admins to join this debate. I think most people with a neutral POV will reject the ID-relation or even add that EAAN is sometimes misunderstood as an argument supporting the central claim of ID, namely the denial of evolution. Please let us keep a neutral state at the moment. --Student of philosophy (talk) 10:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I have not yet read ruse, the book is shipped and will arrive soon. But this quote seems odd: "Is it the case that evolution necessarily cannot function, or it is merely false and in another God-created world it might have held in some way — and if so, in what way?" Is Ruse one of the people who misunderstood Plantinga for saying evolution is wrong? It certainly seems so from this quote. Then the quotes of Plantinga and Beilby may be directed at people like him.--Student of philosophy (talk) 12:29, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Lead
I reverted the following to its original format:


 * "Argument is sometimes misunderstood" - unreferenced and appears to be an original argument being made by the anon. This fails WP:NOR.
 * "Plantinga clarifies this mistake" - appears to be an original argument being presented by the anon
 * "Of course I am not attacking the theory of evolution, or the claim that human beings have evolved from simian ancestors, or anything in that neighborhood" - irrelevant to the issue of whether this fits into ID or not, since this matches language used by Michael Behe, and is consistent with the ID "big tent".
 * "The conclusion of the argument, the idea that philosophical naturalism is false, is shared by parts of the intelligent design movement and many others, e.g. adherents of theistic evolution" - this is unreferenced and appears to be a novel conclusion on the part of the anon. Guettarda (talk) 15:44, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * "Argument is sometimes misunderstood." Beilby writes in the foreword to the essay collection about EAAN: "Plantinga's argument should not be mistaken for an argument against evoltionary theory in general or, more specifically, against the claim that humans might have evolved from more primitive life forms." . The very core of ID is the idea that humans did not evolve from lower life-forms. Some parts of the ID-movement make additional claims, f.e. the denial of naturalism. But those are not the core of ID, ID was actually invented to get rid of the supernatural fuzz in order to bring ID into schools and science. My claim is thus directly based on the central publication on EAAN.
 * "Plantinga clarifies this mistake". Why would Plantinga mention that an argument with evolution as premise is not directed against evolution? Anyone with philosophical education will know that the argument is not directed against evolution. I think it's quite clear that we need to read this passage in context with Beilby's: the argument is often misunderstood as an argument against evolution and thus as an argument supporting the claim of ID.
 * "irrelevant to the issue of whether this fits into ID or not, since this matches language used by Michael Behe, and is consistent with the ID "big tent"". Michael Behe argues directly against evolution. He denies the premise of EAAN. How is the claim that evolution is true compatible with ID (the claim that evolution is false)? If this is not original research, please provide sources.
 * "The conclusion of the argument, the idea that philosophical naturalism is false, is shared by parts of the intelligent design movement and many others, e.g. adherents of theistic evolution". I'm sorry I didn't explain the statement more thoroughly. This claim is entailed by the definitons of the words:
 * ID entails the claim that life has been designed by active intervention. Altough ID-proponents don't usualy make claims about the identity, many of them think it's god. Naturalism is the doctrine that there is no such person as god. So many (but not all) ID-adherents think naturalism is wrong.
 * Theistic evolution is the idea that god created life through evolution. It entails the theory of evolution and a concept of god. God is not compatible with naturalism. Thus theistic evolution entails the denial of naturalism.
 * Deism is the idea that god created the universe but since then stopped intervening. God is not compatible with naturalism. Deism thus entails the denial of naturalism.
 * Theism and natural theology also deny naturalism.
 * Thus the conclusion of EAAN (the general conclusion, denial of naturalism) is completely shared by theistic evolution, deism, theism, natural theology and partly by intelligent design. I don't think it's original research because it's all contained in the definition of the words.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 07:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The very core of ID is the idea that humans did not evolve from lower life-forms. Fascinating.  You really need to let Michael Behe know that he doesn't understand "the very core of ID".
 * Some parts of the ID-movement make additional claims, f.e. the denial of naturalism. But those are not the core of ID. Interesting.  So you're saying that not only does Behe not understand ID, neither does "the father of the intelligent design movement".
 * ID was actually invented to get rid of the supernatural fuzz in order to bring ID into schools and science. I see.  So now you're saying that William Dembski doesn't understand ID either.  Why would the IDists have campaigned to have the Kansas board of education re-define science to include supernatural explanations if it was "invented to get rid of supernatural fuzz"?
 * [T]he argument is often misunderstood as an argument against evolution and thus as an argument supporting the claim of ID. ID is marketed by its main proponents as an evolutionary "theory".  Hence the IDEA clubs, hence the branding of ID as "intelligent design evolution" (in response to "intelligent design creationism").  While the ID "big tent" includes YECs, most of the prominent proponents don't deny evolution, rather they say that naturalistic evolution is impossible, that complexity cannot have evolved without the intervention of an "intelligent agency".  While much of the appeal to ID is to those who deny evolution, in general it's presented as an argument against naturalism.
 * Claiming that EAAN is "often misunderstood" as "part of the intelligent design movement" is your own assertion, and is unsupported by any sources. The issue isn't that you're attacking a straw man (although you are), it's that this appears to be your own conclusion, unsupported by sources.  And Wikipedia does not allow the publication of original research.
 * Saying that "Plantinga clarifies this mistake" is a misrepresentation of the source, since Plantinga does not address the issue of ID. So this is simply a misrepresentation of the source.
 * "Michael Behe argues directly against evolution" - Behe admits that evolution happens, he simply claims that there are certain jumps that could not have been made without outside assistance.
 * ID entails the claim that life has been designed by active intervention. No, ID claims that there are features in life which are too complex to have natural origins, hence there is a designer.
 * Altough ID-proponents don't usualy make claims about the identity, many of them think it's god. True, but irrelevant.
 * ' Naturalism is the doctrine that there is no such person as god. So many (but not all) ID-adherents think naturalism is wrong. At the heart of the deception that is used by ID (and many other creationists) is the conflation of methodological and philosophical naturalism but, of course, they aren't one and the same.  ID uses an attack on the latter to justify its attack on the former.
 * Theism and natural theology also deny naturalism - well, no. They don't deny methodological naturalism.  That's a ridiculous assertion.
 * I don't think it's original research because it's all contained in the definition of the words. Well, to begin with, you get a lot of the concepts wrong.  But more importantly, if you think this connection is salient, if you think that this connection is important enough to belong in the article's lead, you need to find supporting sources.  Guettarda (talk) 16:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You're tone is insulting and arrogant. For my answer I'll ignore your tone and try to focus on the arguments.
 * So you claim that ID doesn't deny evolution. This is interesting news. This is a quote from the Phillip E. Johnson page on wikipedia: "He is considered the father of the intelligent design movement, which rejects the theory of evolution, and promotes intelligent design, as an alternative." Maybe you adopted some other vocabulary though, then please make the argument. Or ID really adopted evolution (the idea that higher life forms evolved from lower life forms without special intervention from god). Then please give us a source.
 * "I see. So now you're saying that William Dembski doesn't understand ID either. Why would the IDists have campaigned to have the Kansas board of education re-define science to include supernatural explanations if it was "invented to get rid of supernatural fuzz"?" Dembski suggested that the intelligent designer may also be space aliens or some other unknown creative force. I agree that this is not believable and a mere deception, but it's what he claims anyway. Also ID is not a closed movement, many openly express the idea that only god is up to the task.
 * "ID is marketed by its main proponents as an evolutionary "theory"". Please give sources for this. Also it seems that it's only a change of language. The theory of evolution excludes special divine invention. Any theory involving special intervention by god is usually called creationism or a form of ID.
 * "Claiming that EAAN is "often misunderstood" as "part of the intelligent design movement" is your own assertion, and is unsupported by any sources." As shown above Ruse may be an example. You're clearly another example. But since this is not in the article anymore, we can avoid this discussion.
 * "Saying that "Plantinga clarifies this mistake" is a misrepresentation of the source, since Plantinga does not address the issue of ID. So this is simply a misrepresentation of the source." He adresses the concern that EAAN is directed against evolution. The denial of evolution (traditional meaning of the term) is the main concern of ID. Hence the conclusion.
 * ""Michael Behe argues directly against evolution" - Behe admits that evolution happens, he simply claims that there are certain jumps that could not have been made without outside assistance." Evolution according to ordinary language includes macro-evolution, the idea that any organ can evolve. Behe denies this. Thus he denies evolution according to ordinary language. If you don't agree, please argue.
 * "ID entails the claim that life has been designed by active intervention. No, ID claims that there are features in life which are too complex to have natural origins, hence there is a designer." Designer quite often design through active intervention. This is getting a bit comical to be honest :-)
 * "At the heart of the deception that is used by ID (and many other creationists) is the conflation of methodological and philosophical naturalism but, of course, they aren't one and the same. ID uses an attack on the latter to justify its attack on the former." True but irrelevant.
 * "Theism and natural theology also deny naturalism - well, no. They don't deny methodological naturalism. That's a ridiculous assertion." Naturalism in EAAN designates metaphysical or philosophical naturalism. That's the sort of naturalism Theism and natural theology oppose. So this fits perfectly. Why did you think I mean methodological naturalism?
 * "I don't think it's original research because it's all contained in the definition of the words. Well, to begin with, you get a lot of the concepts wrong. But more importantly, if you think this connection is salient, if you think that this connection is important enough to belong in the article's lead, you need to find supporting sources." You're certainly right about me getting many concepts wrong. You have yet to show an example though. I would rather not have any ID-talk in the article, it seems you are rather anxious about establishing a connection.
 * I hope I answered in a civilized manner. Please, do the same. After all the discussion going on here, I think it's appropriate to delete the ID-tag on the discussion page too. It seems only you and Hrafn see any connection between EAAN (the argument, not Plantinga) and ID. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Student of philosophy (talk • contribs) 17:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

<ri> You obviously don't understand what you're talking about, and yet you insist on making all these absolute statements. If you don't understand the topic, the onus is on you to educate yourself about it. It isn't the job of other volunteers to fill in the gaps in your knowledge base. It's also your job to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. Although I provided links to our policy on "original research", your statement here make it pretty clear that you didn't read the policy. Read it. What's more important though is that you understand that the job of Wikipedia is simply to report, not to find The Truth. It's possible that, as you claim, you know more about EAAN than anyone else here. You may know more about it than anyone else alive. But that's irrelevant. We need to give a balanced report on what reliable sources say. You may KNOW that EAAN has nothing to do with ID. But reliable sources connect the two. So we need to report that. Similarly, as I have explained to you several times, the WikiProject banner reflects an interest in this topic on the part of the project. It is not a judgement on the topic. You can't argue it from this end. If you believe that the focus of the project needs to change, then you need to build consensus other there. As for your claim that "only [me] and Hrafn" - that's simply false. You're the only one who seems to be arguing to remove the tag. The tag has been there over two years.

As for ID - it's obvious that you have a terrible misunderstanding of what it is. Really...learn something about it. Don't figure that you can pick up a thorough understanding from what you hear or read casually online. Guettarda (talk) 20:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You're confident about your knowledge. It should be easy for you to answer the above arguments, they contain only claims of a rather general sort. I think this could clarify your position a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Student of philosophy (talk • contribs) 21:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * In determining whether this argument is related to ID, you need to know what the argument is about.
 * Another way to connect the two may be through other sources. You wrote: "But reliable sources connect the two." The argument was presented at an ID-conference. And it was mentioned in a book about Id and its critics. I think this speaks for itsself. Clearly this is no reliable connection without further argument. (Remember, there was an argument about theistic evolution in the same book.) And it's especially not enough to call this argument part of ID's attack on naturalism as you called it.
 * I read the wikipedia articles about ID and still couldn't falsify my statements. Please provide sources for your surprising claim that ID now advocates evolution.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 20:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Based on your comment on your talk page, it's very clear that you can't be bothered to read links provided, even when they go to important policy documents. I'm willing to go to great lengths to help people fill gaps in their knowledge, but that requires a willingness on their part to learn.  You're uninterested in learning about the topic, and yet, you expect other people to dig through sources and provide you with information.  Doesn't work so.  There are solid, reliable sources that demonstrate the EAAN falls within the ID movement.  If you can find a counterargument, if you can find someone that says that EAAN is not related to ID, then we can add the counter-argument.  We cannot disregard notable opinions without a very good reason to do so.  Your say-so just doesn't cut it.  More importantly, we have not seen a source which argues against a link between EAAN and ID.  So not only are there no grounds for deleting the link between EAAN and ID (I'll point you to our foundational policy, WP:NPOV, and hope that you'll actually read it this policy), we have no source that says that there isn't such a link.  Sources are what matter.  Since you claim to be an expert on the subject of EAAN, it should be no problem for your to find the sources that distance EAAN from ID, if such sources exist.  If they exist, however, they don't negate the existence of other sources.
 * The rest of this is irrelevant to the discussion. If you want to understand ID, read Pennock, read Behe, read Ruse, read Dembski, read Forrest, read Sober.  But don't expect other editors to write summaries for you, or to highlight the good bits.  And please don't make the mistake of treating Wikipedia as a reliable source, or of using Wikipedia as an alternative to reading authoritative sources.  Guettarda (talk) 03:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You're playing the same old game again: ignore the discussion and arguments, present yourself as the authority on those topics, ignore the votes on this page, invert edits and repeating what you said before. It's quite clear now how you got your reputation as a rogue editor. I'll make a really short post (in the hope that you read and understand it) concerning your "reliable sources".
 * Plantinga presented the argument at an ID-conference. Your conclusion: he presents the argument as part of the ID-movements attack on naturalism. Now that's an inference. I guess David Chalmers is also part of the ID-movement because he once participated in a ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy chat. That's groundbreaking news, you should mention it on his page!
 * EAAN has been discussed in a book about ID and its critics. This is true, but so has theistic evolution. Does theistic evolution have an ID-tag? No? So further argument is needed. You not surprisingly don't provide one.
 * It's obvious that even if you're sources would somehow relate ID to EAAN, you're whopping inference to "part of the ID.attack on naturalism" would still be a non sequitur. Also you seem to have a problem telling the users apart. Goethean and me (if you insist on ignoring all the other users in the no so old thread) are opposed to you and hrafn. There is clearly no consensus for your interesting project of calling EAAN a part of the Intelligend Design movement. If so to there is a conclusion against you and Hrafn. And the simple arguments above hopefuly make sure this is gonna stay like this. As this passage shows, I'm entiteled to remove the groundless assertion in the article based on OR on your side and a lack of consensus.
 * I look forward to see you explain someday how the intelligent design movement can be told apart from theistic evolution now they accept evolution. Maybe we could merge the articles now?
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 06:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * As Plantinga himself says, these arguments are “dialectically posterior”. As an ISCID fellow, Plantinga has associated himself with the ID movement. His arguments against naturalism have been identified by reliable sources as promoting ID (and before that, creation science) in its attempts to change science teaching in schools. The lead statement has been modified to avoid going beyond the sourced statements, and you've added a claim that he's not attacking evolution. There's clearly a notable link, more clarification is appropriate, deleting sourced statements and deleting the ID project tag on this talk page are unacceptable edit warring, not the way to go. . . dave souza, talk 07:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * "As Plantinga himself says, these arguments are “dialectically posterior”." Could you explain this statement?
 * "As an ISCID fellow, Plantinga has associated himself with the ID movement. His arguments against naturalism have been identified by reliable sources as promoting ID (and before that, creation science) in its attempts to change science teaching in schools." Nobody has delivered a quote where they identify him as promoting ID. I ordered the book to check it. I'd be glad if someone could post an excerpt of the book where it is claimed he "promoted in its attempts to change science teaching in schools". Also this alone is of course not enough, he has to do so by virtue of the argument. Unless this is shown, any relation between EAAN and ID is inappropriate.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 07:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * There are sources supporting this association. Whether you believe this association or not is entirely beside the point.  Please see Verifiability.  Guettarda (talk) 15:22, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

User:Hrafn's attempt to link to EAAN to ID in the lede are aggressive and inappropriate. The lede should describe this philosophical argument on its own terms rather than Procrusteanly mis-characterizing it through a tenuous, highly contentious link to a controversial political movement. Please show a nominal amount of respect for the Wikipedia project and for the subject matter of the article. &mdash; goethean &#2384; 13:19, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Gothean, you have been here long enough to know that this assertion is false. There is no requirement that a lead should only present an argument "on its own terms".  In fact, that assertion contradicts the fundamental idea of WP:NPOV.  Guettarda (talk) 16:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Where this argument has been presented

 * It has been mentioned that this argument has been presented at ID conferences. The argument has also been presented at several philosophy conferences. The last time at the APA meeting where Dennett responded to the argument: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=711 . Hrafn added a "not in citation given" tag. I didn't give a citation because I wasn't certain the blog would be a valid source. The problem is that usualy there is not much material online on conferences, especially afterwards. Or did Hrafn take my comment on the edits as a citation and wanted to say that the APA meeting was no conference?
 * Also it's quite unusual to give a list of places where a certain argument was presented in an article. The motivation here is that this supposedly links EAAN to ID. Is it stated in the mentioned book that he presented the argument at an ID conference and this links the argument to ID or is it just mentioned that he presented the argument there? If it's not explitly stated that this links EAAN to ID, then the conclusion that it does is original research (and should be removed). If this is so I'm not certain why we should have a list of places where the argument was presented. It seems no other article on a philosophical argument contains such a list.--Student of philosophy (talk) 09:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

It certainly gives some context as to why an academic, with no background in the philosophy of science, let alone the philosophy of biology, is taking such an interest in the purported philosophical ramifications of evolution. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * EAAN's main concerns are the philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion and epistemology. Evolution is only a sidetrack and he's accepting mainstream views about evolution in the argument. In the core EAAN is a sceptical argument, pretty much in the tradition of descartes (I think Ernest Sosa argues along these lines too in assessing the argument). Your comment gives us a lot of information on your POV tough. --Student of philosophy (talk) 16:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Returning to methodological naturalism, if indeed natural science is essentially restricted in this way, if such a restriction is a part of the very essence of science, then what we need here, of course, is not natural science, but a broader inquiry that can include all that we know, including the truths that God has created life on earth and could have done it in many different ways. "Unnatural Science," "Creation Science," "Theistic Science"-call it what you will: what we need when we want to know how to think about the origin and development of contemporary life is what is most plausible from a Christian point of view. What we need is a scientific account of life that isn't restricted by that methodological naturalism. By the way, he's got William Topaz McGonagall's middle initial wrong, and the poetry looks apocryphal. Appositely. . dave souza, talk 17:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Misreading Creationism's Trojan Horse
In this edit summary, Student of philosophy makes the claim: "According to "Creationism's Trojan horse" Plantinga presented the argument at a VF event. How is VF related to the wedge strategy and ID?"


 * Relationship to the wedge strategy & ID:
 * 1) The book is subtitled "The Wedge of Intelligent Design" -- which should provide a clue that issues raised in it are "related to the wedge strategy and ID".
 * 2) More specifically, the section cited is about how "the Wedge is actively assisted by the Veritas Forum"
 * 3) Even more specifically, the event in question was organised by one DI Fellow (Robert Koons), another (Walter Bradley) presented a paper on "Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer", Johnson presented on "Why Darwinism is Doomed", and Plantinga is described as presenting as a "Wedge supporter".

I presume however, as Plantinga did not sign a statement declaring 'this is an ID event, I presented as an ID supporter, EAAN as an ID argument', in front of a hundred witnesses, that (WP:DUCK notwithstanding) Student of philosophy will claim that this is insufficient evidence of a connection to ID.

<span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * "According to "Creationism's Trojan horse" Plantinga presented the argument at a VF event"
 * Creationism's Trojan Horse says no such thing! The event is described merely as "an example of the association between VF and the Wedge" -- with VF's involvement in the event otherwise not described.


 * Would you mind posting the excerpt of the book concerned with Plantinga? Unfortunately google books ceased to show the relevant pages, earlier today it worked. I have in mind that there is a footnote on Plantinga but I couldn't look it up.
 * I think it's pretty uncontroversial that presenting an argument in a certain society doesn't make one a supporter of the society or certain views of it. --Student of philosophy (talk) 16:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh and you can take your pretence that Plantinga's presentation at an ID-dominated conference was just a coincidence & stick it where the sun don't shine -- I ain't buying. We have an RS that he was presenting as a "Wedge supporter", and that's certainly reason enough to make this, in any case quite obvious, connection. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:36, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I read that he was labeled "wedge supporter" and there was a footnote for it. Would you mind posting what the footnote is about?
 * I'm sceptical about the "he was there so he must support it" argument because I've been at conferences where the presentations were not related in the way you suggest it. And in this particular case it seems clear that there is a more obvious explanation: ID folks and Plantinga both reject metaphysical naturalism and are interested in arguments supporting this idea. This explanation for his presentation at the conference doesn't relate ID anymore to EAAN than to theistic evolution, theism, natural theology or deism. --Student of philosophy (talk) 17:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The footnote cites the VF website & a CLM webpage. To claim that a "Wedge supporter" went to a Wedge-organised & Wedge-dominated conference to present an argument unrelated to the Wedge beggars belief. You can peddle your your unreasonable & reflexive 'skepticism' to somebody else -- I ain't buying. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 18:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You're anxious to finally relate ID to EAAN and tell readers of the article about it. Given your POV it's not surprising that you jump to conclusions like "he was there so he must support it". But what about a neutral reader who wants to inform himself about a philosophical argument directed against naturalism? Should he share your hidden premiss? I don't think so. Even if your conclusion were true you'd need sources that make this clear. Else, it's your own conclusion and original research, no matter how reasonable your conclusion may be.
 * I'll have a look at the websites to find out whether there is any information supporting your conclusion there.
 * I think generalizing your claim would lead to dangerous results. People would have to be very careful about where to present their arguments because else they might be accused of supporting certain ideas accepted by the audience.--Student of philosophy (talk) 18:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * And keep in mind that relating EAAN to ID is such a hard task for you because there isn't any connection of EAAN to ID in the argument itself (none that is more intimately thatn EAAN and TE, deism, natural theology). Now you have to rely on people who found themselves some other relation between EAAN and ID. But other relations are not relevant, not even if they would be as obvious as Plantinga wearing a t-shirt with the inscription "I support 6 day creationism and EAAN is my secret weapon to promote it". So there are propably only view people who somehow connect EAAN to ID and it's propably mainly sociological research like "Creationism's Trojan horse".--Student of philosophy (talk) 18:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Pardon my relatively uneducated intrusion, but I'm unclear on something: Plantinga was an ISCID fellow; doesn't this clearly indicate him as a proponent of ID and an opponent of naturalism and evolution? And as for EAAN connecting to ID, I think the fact that the primary proponent of the argument is well-connected to the ID movement is interesting and relevant information that ought to be made available to the reader. Even if EAAN isn't meant to directly buttress ID, it is certainly allied in its intent to knock down naturalism. Graft | talk 18:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Pretty much. Plantinga is an ISCID fellow, which means that (a) he has chosen to associate himself with the core of the ID movement, and (b) that they consider him to be an integral-enough part of their movement that they're willing to pay his fellowship.  So obviously there's some aspect of Plantinga's work that coincides with the central aims of the ID movement.  What aspect of Plantinga's work coincides with the ID movement's attack on naturalism in general and "unguided evolution" (as they like to term it) if not EAAN?  Guettarda (talk) 19:38, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Not at all uneducated Graft, that's pretty much to the point. It's only direct connection is (as you said) that it wants to knock down the rationality of naturalism. But this intention is not exclusively shared by ID but by a whole bunch of theories and views: Theism in general, Deism, natural Theology, theistic evolution, divine command moral theory and much more. So they are all somehow related with each other. But all those other topics are not within the reach of the ID Wikiproject. So we need additional reasons why EAAN should be. And it's hard to come up with such reasons, because EAAN is insofar more intimately related to theistic evolution, as it has evolution in its premiss. So an ID adherent can only use EAAN if he engages in some sort of doublethink: "Well I don't believe in unguided evolution and I want to convince you that there are irreducibly complex systems that were designed, but let's assume unguided evolution anyway so I can convince you with EAAN that naturalism is false". This makes EAAN less intimately related to ID than to other topics and not even those topics are within the ID wikiproject.
 * "What aspect of Plantinga's work coincides with the ID movement's attack on naturalism in general and "unguided evolution" (as they like to term it) if not EAAN?" The attack on naturalism is not exclusive to ID. As you know several of their proponents even made rather obscure claims about the non-supernatural identity of the designer and thus denies the entailment of the denial of naturalism by ID. Of course they'll be interested in any argument against naturalism, but that doesn't relate any argument against naturalism to ID in the sense required by the ID wikiproject. So is there anything that is more specifically useful to the ID movement? I think propably his essay on methodoligical naturalism and maybe his stance on bible exegesis. I haven't read the essay on methodological naturalism, but that's my guess (see dave souza quote above). --Student of philosophy (talk) 06:45, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This isn't "any argument against naturalism", this is an argument against naturalism by a leading ID proponent. What we have here is a leading proponent of ID making an argument that buttresses the core idea of ID, that has been featured in a leading anthology about ID...and yet, you believe that we should assume that there's no connection.  Huh?  Guettarda (talk) 15:06, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, really, I don't understand why we have to be able to connect them intimately from first principles... the major (single?) proponent of the argument is strongly associated with ID. Isn't that relevant enough? Also, the best way to settle this to your satisfaction (which seems difficult to achieve) might be merely to see what work he did and promoted while he was a ISCID fellow. Graft | talk 15:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it's obvious that EAAN is a philosophical argument against naturalism and just that. The argument is useful for anybody interested in undermining naturalism. It's insofar special as it has unguided evolution as its premiss. Thus it suits those better who accept evolution. So it is clearly less intimately related to ID than theism, theistic evolution or natural theology are related to ID. And none of them is related to the ID wikiproject or ID. Frankly I think you need to be deep in the trenches of the ID-evolution battle to see a relation here. As for being mentioned in the book: the book seems to be about science&religion in general as Plantinga has an article about methodological naturalism and there is even a whole chapter on theistic evolution. Of the many peer reviewed articles about EAAN only very few seemed to notice any such connection. And those, not surprisingly, were in the middle of the ID-evolution battle. As for Plantinga being himself a supporter of ID: I don't know. Maybe. But even if you are an enthusiastic democrat, this doesn't make your love letters or your research about the social structure of ant colonies democratic.--Student of philosophy (talk) 16:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Plantinga is a leading ID advocate. This argument is one of his main contributions to the ID movement.  How, then, is this not related?  Guettarda (talk) 17:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The argument was first published in Warrant & proper function for pete's sake. It's his central book on epistemology and has been called by his critics (Ernest Sosa) "an important contribution which will be widely stimulating and influential for years to come." Richard Foley even said "this two-volume work is one of the major accomplsihments of twentieth-century epistemology". There is a whole volume dedicated to Plantinga ("Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga") with contributions by some of the most important epistemologists. EAAN is by no means a contribution to the ID movement. It's simply one of the most original and widely discussied arguments against naturalism of the last decade and part of his work on epistemology and natural theology. If you want to know why EAAN is not related to ID, then please read my above post. It seems to me you don't know what Plantinga is famous for. Epistemology, natural theology / atheology, philosophy of religion and metaphysics of modality are the topics he's best known for. No ID among those topics.--Student of philosophy (talk) 17:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The argument is essentially "it's too hard for the human mind to have evolved naturally" wrapped in some Bayesian symbology to make it look sophisticated. It seems quite closely related to Behe's irreducible complexity argument. Though Plantinga claims he's not arguing against "evolution", he's certainly arguing against evolution as you've couched it above - that is, evolution via strictly natural phenomena like selection. His alternative - theistic evolution - is certainly not "evolution" as it's commonly understood. You don't see this as closely related to ID? It's seeking to do EXACTLY what ID does - substitute the hand of God in for selection as the mechanism guiding human development. Graft | talk 18:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * "it's too hard for the human mind to have evolved naturally" wrapped in some Bayesian symbology to make it look sophisticated" That's nothing but a totally flawed misconception and you won't find any source agreeing with you. Actually he's assuming that the human mind has evolved naturally and quoting f.e. Patricia Churchland (a hard core naturalist and evolutionist). I really recommend you reading the argument and responses, you'll profit a lot and gain understanding of current problems of naturalistic epistemology. It's a great book, even if you don't share Plantingas conclusion. As for theistic evolution not being what is commonly understood as evolution. Of course not, it's evolution + something. But it shares all the scientific knowledge about evolution and completely agrees with it. See Francis Collins for a good example. --Student of philosophy (talk) 18:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

<ri>Umm...so you're saying that the fact the Plantinga put forward the argument shortly after he publicly signed on with the ID movement is an argument against an association between EAAN and ID?

If you want to know why EAAN is not related to ID, then please read my above post. Er, I did. It's incoherent.
 * 1) EAAN is a philosophical argument against naturalism and just that
 * OK, so EAAN overlaps with key elements of Johnson's and Dembski's arguments for ID
 * 1) The argument is useful for anybody interested in undermining naturalism
 * 2) It's insofar special as it has unguided evolution as its premiss [sic].
 * Well, actually it's an argument that "unguided evolution" is implausible...which is, of course, the heart of ID
 * 1) Thus it suits those better who accept evolution
 * Or, like other forms of ID, it's designed to get around McLean and Edwards. (And note the Plantinga has been a proponent of teaching creationism in the classroom).
 * 1) So it is clearly less intimately related to ID than theism, theistic evolution or natural theology are related to ID
 * Clearly not. ID publicly (though not privately) disassociates itself with theism.  As Dembski has said, it leads him to theism, but there's nothing in the "theory" that requires it.
 * 1) And none of them is related to the ID wikiproject or ID
 * Again, your determination to argue about things you don't understand has led you down the wrong path.
 * 1) I think you need to be deep in the trenches of the ID-evolution battle to see a relation here
 * Yeah, obviously when a leading ID proponent puts forward an argument that seamlessly integrates with ID, and and when he advances that argument at ID meetings, and when he contributes papers to an anthology on ID creationism...only someone "deep in the trenches" would see any association. Obviously.
 * 1) As for being mentioned in the book: the book seems to be about science&religion in general as Plantinga has an article about methodological naturalism and there is even a whole chapter on theistic evolution
 * The section your talking about deals with the clash between ID and theistic evolution...TE is presented as a criticism of ID. As for the scope of the book...it's funny how you first set yourself up as The authority on what the scope of the ID WikiProject is "supposed" to be, now you decide that Pennock doesn't know what he's talking about.  It's terribly amusing.
 * 1) Of the many peer reviewed articles about EAAN only very few seemed to notice any such connection. And those, not surprisingly, were in the middle of the ID-evolution battle
 * So that means what...that only people who are interested in the ID movement bother to pay attention to the distinction between creationism and neocreationism? Or are you claiming that only "very few" see Plantinga's argument as anti-evolution/anti-naturalism/anti-science?
 * 1) As for Plantinga being himself a supporter of ID: I don't know
 * So...your response to the question is "I don't know". If that's your response to the main question, why are you going on and on about peripheral trivia?
 * 1) But even if you are an enthusiastic democrat, this doesn't make your love letters or your research about the social structure of ant colonies democratic.
 * Huh? ID is an attack on naturalism.  Plantinga is a key proponent of ID.  Plantinga's work (in relation to EAAN) is an attack on naturalsm.  So they are unrelated?  WFT?  Guettarda (talk) 19:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * "OK, so EAAN overlaps with key elements of Johnson's and Dembski's arguments for ID" ID obviously occupies a lot of your mind. Naturalism is attacked by many many different sides with different ideas. It's like saying "Democrats are against Bush's politics, the Taliban are against Bush's politics, so clearly the Taliban are related to the Democrats."
 * "Well, actually it's an argument that "unguided evolution" is implausible...which is, of course, the heart of ID". Not at all, it claims given unguided evolution and naturalism we have a defeater for the reliability of our cognitive faculties (where unguided evolution means evolution without any divine intervention). Please read at least the argument before making such claims.
 * "Or, like other forms of ID, it's designed to get around McLean and Edwards." That's clever, Plantinga reinvents philosophical arguments going back to Kant to avoid McLean and Edwards. You should write an article about political motivations behind philosophical arguments. I think this is a really disturbing kind of paranoia. Anyway, since there is obviously no source for such conspiracy theories we don't have to bother discussing this OR.
 * "Again, your determination to argue about things you don't understand has led you down the wrong path." You don't understand the argument, you have never heard of its systematic place in philosophy, you obviously only know Plantinga from your interest in ID-evolution and you even misunderstood the wikipedia Verifiability criterion. I don't think you're in the position to make any accusations of this sort. This is almost as bold as Hrafn claiming that I made up the word "adequation" because he doesn't know it.
 * "Yeah, obviously when a leading ID proponent puts forward an argument that seamlessly integrates with ID, and and when he advances that argument at ID meetings, and when he contributes papers to an anthology on ID creationism...only someone "deep in the trenches" would see any association. Obviously." Repeating while ignoring will not help you establish your OR.
 * "The section your talking about deals with the clash between ID and theistic evolution...TE is presented as a criticism of ID. As for the scope of the book...it's funny how you first set yourself up as The authority on what the scope of the ID WikiProject is "supposed" to be, now you decide that Pennock doesn't know what he's talking about. It's terribly amusing." Show me a passage in the book relating ID to EAAN. According to the Verifiability criterion a text passage is needed. I have already answered your often repeated opinions.
 * "So...your response to the question is "I don't know". If that's your response to the main question, why are you going on and on about peripheral trivia?" It seems you're confusing the article we're working on. This is an article about a philosophical argument against naturalism, not about Plantingas biography. So all your passionate claims about Plantingas personal convictions are really the peripheral trivia.
 * "Huh? ID is an attack on naturalism. Plantinga is a key proponent of ID. Plantinga's work (in relation to EAAN) is an attack on naturalsm. So they are unrelated? WFT?" I'll give it one last try, but I think your head is so full of ideology that any explanation will just bounce of your head. Plantinga provides an argument against naturalism given evolution. He's working on the big project of rejecting naturalism. Many many ideas and theories are interested in rejecting naturalism. Among them theistic evolution, ID, natural theology, Deism, and many more. So the argument itself is related to all of those theories and ideas, to some more intimately and to some less. It's less intimately related to ID because ID denies one premiss of ID, while theistic evolution embraces this premiss. But even though theistic evolution is more intimately related to EAAN, it is not within the reach of the ID Wikiproject. A fortiori EAAN should not be within the reach of the ID Wikiproject. As for Plantingas personal relation to ID: they belong to his personal page if anywhere. --Student of philosophy (talk) 20:26, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Misrepresentation of sources
In this edit SoP adds "by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross" to the statement that "EAAN is considered to be part of the intelligent design movement's attack on naturalism", which is cited to Section 5 of Pennock's book. While this section includes essays by Plantinga, Ruse, Failes, Fitelson and Sober, it does not include anything by Forrest and Gross.

In the same edit, he attributes a statement to Beilby in a chapter by Plantinga himself. Beilby is the book editor; attributing statements in a chapter by Plantinga to the editor of the book is misrepresenation. Guettarda (talk) 17:13, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the corrections, I added more specific information. I also corrected your statement concerning the ID-EAAN relation, "is considered" without any further information is clearly too general and misleading. --Student of philosophy (talk) 17:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

C.S. Lewis
Why is there a section on C.S. Lewis in this article? The section is only sources to Lewis' work, and no sources connect it with Plantinga's EAAN. The entire discussion appears to be original research. Any reason why it should be in the article? Guettarda (talk) 05:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The section is not on C.S. Lewis but on his argument from reason. The argument from reason, Repperts argument against naturalism and EAAN are considered to be related arguments. Beilby writes in his foreword to the essay collection on EAAN:
 * "First of all, Plantinga's evolutionary argument bears affinites to the arguments of C.S.Lewis in Miracles (especially chapters 3 and 13) and Richard Taylor in Metaphysics (chapter 10), although neither develops their argument nearly as fully as Plantinga has." (Interesting enough C.S.Lewis accepted the theory of evolution) I think I'll add two more passages on Taylor's and Reppert's argument sometime soon. --Student of philosophy (talk) 06:39, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, so there's a source for some of this. But is it in any way salient?  The section says that it is "only vaguely similar".  OK.  But we don't include "vaguely similar" things in articles.
 * The article currently dedicates 1300 characters to Lewis' argument, or about the same as is given to Robbins and Fales, and as a level 2 subheading...in other words, putting it on the same level as "Plantinga's argument" or "Responses by critics". Given the tenuousness of the connection, I don't see how this belongs here in this fashion.  Guettarda (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * My aim is to inform people about the content and history of this argument (and I'd rather leave all the sociological fuzz about EAAN out of the article). It then makes a lot of sense to mention Lewis and sketch the argument. I see your point about proportions, but there is a minimal length of text required to sketch an argument and to show the relevant sources. I think it's not distracting the way it is at the moment. But since you point this out I'd think about cutting or deleting the passage on Ruse. I reckon there have been around 40 peer reviewed articles on EAAN and about 12 have been answered by Plantinga. Many of them were written by famous philosophers like Fodor, Alston, Merricks and O'Connor. And among them were also philosophers of science and biology like Ramsey to whom Plantinga responded. Ruse contribution doesn't stand out in those ranks and hasn't been answered by Plantinga (or anyone else afaik). I think we could replace him with Tooley 2008 to get a more recent and better known article. Also Tooleys answer is a lot more penetrating and more to the point which could be interesting for the readers. What's your opinion on this?--Student of philosophy (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * My opinion of this is that we sort out the issue at hand. So far we have a passing mention by Beilby who mentions affinities.  What we really need is a source that says that Lewis' work played a major role in the development of Plantinga's idea.  And even then, to justify a stand-alone top-level section like this, we'd need strong support for an integral role for Lewis.  Guettarda (talk) 17:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's another paragraph by Victor Reppert: "The argument I will be presenting in this book [the argument from reason, my addition] will attempt to answer that question in the affirmative. This argument is often advanced against materialism or determinism. For example, the argument is employed against materialism in the writings of Kant.[2] However, it was developed as an argument for accepting theism as opposed to naturalism in the last century by British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour,[3] and in the 1940s by Lewis.[4][reference to the 12-24 in Lewis' Miracles: A Prelimiary Study] It was this argument that Elizabeth Anscombe criticized in her famous encounter with Lewis at the Oxford Socratic Club,[5] and as a result Lewis revised his argument in the second edition of his book Miracles. Contemporary philosophers who have employed this argument against physical determinism include James Jordan and William Hasker.[6] Those who have developed it into an argument explicitly for theism include Richard Purtill and J.P.Moreland.[7] More recently, Alvin Plantinga has defended a version of this argument.[8][footnote:Warrant and Proper Function.]" (quote from C.S. Lewis's dangerous Idea - In Defense of the Argument from Reason).
 * Plantinga himself writes in the final footnote of Warrant & Proper function: "Victor Reppert reminds me that the argument of this chapter bears a good bit of similarity to arguments to be found in chapters III and XIII of C.S.Lewis' Miracles, the argument also resembles Richard Taylor's argument in Chapter X of his Metaphysics." Based on those sources I'll remove your tag in the Lewis' section. --Student of philosophy (talk) 18:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * "They are similar" does not mean "Lewis played a major role in the development of this idea". Guettarda (talk) 19:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone claimed that. And that's as far as I can see not the reason why there is a passage on the argument from reason. Maybe we could make a passage called "earlier statements of the argument" or something like that, but I'm not quite certain if they should be called different versions of one argument. The current passage seems to be a really good description: "The general claim that naturalism undercuts its own justification was argued by C. S. Lewis in the third chapter of his book Miracles" --89.217.227.107 (talk) 19:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Removal of the tag
The tag says:

"Please help to discuss and resolve the dispute before removing this message." You've made no attempt to resolve the dispute, so please restore the tag. Guettarda (talk) 19:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

EAAN is considered to be part of the intelligent design movement's attack on naturalism by...
I think that list's lengthy enough not to require a listing of who considers it. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Robert T. Pennock, Branden Fitelson, Elliott Sober, Michael Ruse (also in The Cultures of Creationism) & Evan Fales. (Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics)
 * Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross (Creationism's Trojan Horse)


 * I had a quick look at the source and couldn't find any statement concerning the nature of EAAN or its relation to ID in this book. Since Wikipedia requires valid sources we need the pages where this is noted. A mere interpretation would not be enough clearly. Since I don't see any connection of EAAN and ID, this seems to be your job. Please add the necessary information.
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 17:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Inclusion of material on EAAN in a book on "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics" is clear indication that the authors of the material and the editor of the book considered EAAN to be part of ID. The claim is cited to the chapter containing this material. What you "don't see" appears to be the result of wilful blindness, so I don't really see any point in me discussing this any further with you. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Theistic evolution is also included in the book, yet it is not related to ID in the sense required by the Wikiproject. Until you provide a quote that clarifies why EAAN was included or how it is related to the topic of the book, your conclusion seems to be original research.--Student of philosophy (talk) 17:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * "Theistic evolution is also included in the book, yet it is not related to ID in the sense required by the Wikiproject." I have already addressed this tendentious point. Your claim of original research is likewise tendentious. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 18:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You said that theistic evolution was included as critics of ID. Adherents of ID share their view of how evolution happened and their critique of ID will be identical to the one of naturalists (see Francis Collins arguments for example). So their arguments will simply be redundant if they are included for their critique of ID. My guess is that they are included because they fit into the topic of theism, naturalism and how organisms came into being. And my guess is that the same goes for EAAN. EAAN with evolution as its premise fits perfectly (as said earlier) into the framework of theistic evolution and less well into the ID framework. It fits perfectly into the topics of theism, naturalism and how organisms came into being. Given all the other arguments supporting the claim that EAAN is not as an argument related to EAAN this seems to be a very plausible interpretation.
 * "EAAN with evolution as its premise fits perfectly (as said earlier) into the framework of theistic evolution and less well into the ID framework." Then why do ID advocates such as Francis J. Beckwith (in Darwin's Nemesis) and J. P. Moreland (in Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue) cite the EAAN in defence of their positions, but prominent TEs never seem to? Incidentally, your statement that "EAAN is not as an argument related to EAAN" is incoherent (as would a claim that "EAAN is not as an argument related to Evolution"). <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:48, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Also as far as I can see EAAN was not presented by Plantinga in the book. Isn't the only entry by him on methodological naturalism (please correct me if I'm wrong, didn't read the article yet)? It then seems only natural to cover his attack on metaphysical naturalism too.--Student of philosophy (talk) 18:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I just educated myself on the Verifiability criterion. This is a quote: "The source cited must clearly support the information as it is presented in the article.[nb 2] The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question." So clearly a text is needed and not just a table of contents or the fact that something is mentioned in a book (alongside theistic evolution in this particular case). Also exceptional claims require exceptional sources. Exceptional claims are: "surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources". As far as I can see none (maybe with the exception of Ruse, but that's not entirely clear) of the numerous responses published in philosophy journals made the claim that EAAN is related to ID. This means in this case we need very good sources, not just an average source. A reference to a book (not a text in the book!) without any reason for the inclusion of the article while other topics outside the reach of the ID Wikiproject were also covered in the book seems to be a below average source. If you fail to provide a better source we'll have to delete any ID reference according to the Verifiability criterion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability
 * --Student of philosophy (talk) 07:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Your argument suffers from a very basic logical flaw -- absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The fact that none of the "numerous responses published in philosophy journals" mention ID does not necessarily mean that EAAN is unrelated to ID, it may just mean that any relationship that might exist is irrelevant to their discussion of the argument, or that they weren't aware of the relationship. Plantinga is a Creationist closely associated with the IDM, he has presented EAAN at an ID-organised & ID-dominated event, prominent ID proponents cite the EAAN positively (and prominent TEs do not). It is therefore not an exceptional claim that EAAN is considered to be part of ID. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:48, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Once again you engange in irrelevant ad hominem arguments. EAAN has been presented at an ID-organised event, Stapp presented his dualism at an ID-conference and David Chalmers talked about his philosophy of mind in an ID-chat. Yet all of those arguments and topics are not related to ID. As for "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", unfortunately things are not that simple. Absence of evidence is in many cases evidence of absence as any book on criminalistics will teach you. (This also shows that it's not a question of logic, logical truths are necessary truths and would thus always be true.) You can yet come up with a source relating EAAN to ID. If you won't the ID references will be deleted because of OR and WP:V--Student of philosophy (talk) 17:22, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * "Once again you engange in irelevant ad hominem arguments." False. EAAN is used by ID-advocates to support ID positions. It is not used by Theistic Evolutionists to support Theistic Evolution positions. Therefore your claim that it "fits perfectly (as said earlier) into the framework of theistic evolution and less well into the ID framework" is supported by nothing other than your own spurious logic.
 * "Absence of evidence is in many cases evidence of absence..." No, it never is. This is a subset of the fallacy of argument from ignorance. "... as any book on criminalistics will teach you." Then cite one that makes exactly this point. Inability to find the murder weapon (or the body for that matter) is not evidence that nobody committed the murder, for example -- it just makes it harder to prove how (or that) the murder took place.
 * <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 18:46, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * "It is not used by Theistic Evolutionists to support Theistic Evolution positions" Of course it is, I'm using it. C.S.Lewis was using it and he adopted theistic evolution. Victor Reppert is using it. As shown several times theistic evolutionists even have an advantage in using the argument since evolution is assumed in the argument.
 * I noticed a tendency of nowadays atheists to have a list of "fallacies" ready to charge any argument and see whether it contains a "logical fallacy". Unfortunately often things are not so simple and you'll rarely find any philosopher list "fallacies" that the other commited. In the case of criminalistics (for a short period of time I worked in the criminalistics/criminology research) if the absence of a criminal act (rape for example) explains the absence of evidence better than any rival theory, then one makes an inference to the absence of a criminal act. And this works really well. So absence of evidence quite often (depending on the nature of the crime) is evidence of absence.--Student of philosophy (talk) 19:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * CS Lewis? That's a bit of an anachronism.  Guettarda (talk) 19:22, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, and what about Aristotle? This guy must be completely irrelevant by now.--81.62.33.6 (talk) 19:59, 15 May 2009 (UTC

The thing with the ID tag
Since Hrafn has convinced other editors that there is edit warring going on in this article, further argument is needed to warrant the removal of the ID tag. So far I've mostly given negative arguments. I've shown why Hrafns arguments were not valid or involved OR and why his sources failed WP:V (for a summary see the last post in Is EAAN compatible with TE and with ID?). Guettarda never argued for any of his edits, so I'll not mention him in this argument. Dave souza was in the same boat as Hrafn, he was only able to relate another essay by Plantinga to ID, not EAAN. One other positive argument I've given was the following: EAAN is directed against naturalism. Natural theology is also directed against naturalism. Natural theology has no ID-tag, therefore EAAN should not have an ID tag either. This argument has been ignored by all participants for unknown reasons. Now I want to give a sociological argument against the relation between EAAN and ID based on one source by Hrafn. Since the beginning of this discussion I have read most of the sources Hrafn and Dave Souza have provided and a few days ago I bought "Intelligent Deisng Creationism and its Critics" and I read the suggested passages (it should be noted that it seems Hrafn and Guettarda have not even read EAAN itself since they first argued on the basis of misunderstandings). The book contains a hint that suggests EAAN is not related to ID. I can't call it a real source, because as with Hrafns and Daves arguments, there is no text involved linking ID to EAAN (so it fails WP:V). The chapter that contains the relevant passages is called "Plantinga's Critique of Naturalism and Evolution". The title suggests that the chapter is about his critique of the conjunction of naturalism and evolution, not ID. Evan Fales and Fitelson/Sober's essays printed in this chapter (Plantinga himself doesn't present EAAN in the book) have been published elsewhere before, both without any ID context. This alone could be considered positive evidence that EAAN is not related to ID but to naturalism (which is obvious from the content of the argument). But then there is another chapter and its title is "Intelligent Design Theorists Turn the Tables". Obviously the arguments by ID adherents related to ID are to be found in this chapter. EAAN is not in this chapter. Thus the editor if this book positively thought that EAAN is not related to ID but to naturalism. Based on this conclusion I'll remove the ID tag. If you don't agree with this, it's up to you to provide arguments to the contrary.--89.236.165.232 (talk) 13:27, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a prominent argument supporting one of the main aims of ID, and the argument was presented at an ID conference by Plantinga, who as an ISCID fellow is a registered ID supporter. So, the issue's of interest to the ID Wikiproject. Efforts to improve the article will be welcome, IP or sock editwarring to remove the tag is disruptive editing and may lead to a block if continued. One point about the arguments you present above: AAN is directed against methodological naturalism, as is much of ID, natural theology is not necessarily directed against methodological naturalism, and many of its proponents worked within that discipline. . . dave souza, talk 16:47, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * EAAN is not directed against methodological naturalism. Have you read the argument even once? It's explicitly directed against philosophical or metaphysical naturalism on combination with evolution. If you don't even know what EAAN is, you should maybe edit other articles. Accordingly, it's on the same level as natural theology concerning the ID Wikiproject interest. --89.236.165.232 (talk) 16:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It blatantly conflates the two, as does ID. . dave souza, talk 16:58, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * See, e.g., this article by Alvin Plantinga on the Discovery Institute website. See also this article by William Dembski and note the relationship of Plantinga to intelligent design. Also see this ISCID page, where Plantinga is listed as a fellow in the ISCID, which receives most of its funding through the the Discovery Institute and is, along with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, one of the three main prongs of the Discovery Institute's advocacy of intelligent design. Plantinga, for these reasons among others, is of significant interest to WP:WikiProject intelligent design. ... Kenosis (talk) 17:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * As for you bold claim Dave, it seems obvious why nobody holds this view among philosophers (with the exception of maybe Ruse who is outside of his field when it comes to EAAN). And it once more discredits you as a neutral contributor.
 * Kenosis, you're certainly right and I agree that the tag is justified in the case of Plantinga. But this is not his personal page so it is not justified here.--89.236.165.232 (talk) 17:39, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Plantinga himself discussed ID and ID arguments in relation to EAAN. Why shouldn't we discuss that relationship? . . dave souza, talk 17:46, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting, would you provide a link to the text you're talking about (the one where Plantinga discusses EAAN and its relation to ID)?--89.236.165.232 (talk) 17:50, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The only relevant issue at the moment is whether Plantinga is of interest to WP:WikiProject intelligent design. He is, there's a rational justification for it, and there's a strong consensus for it. So that's the end of the relevant discussion, at least lacking a change in the consensus of participants in the intelligent design WikiProject. ... Kenosis (talk) 18:04, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think Kenosis' last comment should be rephrased "Plantinga and his arguments pertaining to evolution and naturalism [are] of interest to WP:WikiProject intelligent design" but, otherwise, I agree with his sentiment. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:00, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think his formulation is the correct one and yours is based on misunderstandings of the argument and its systematic place in philosophy. I had a look at the Wikiproject ID and couldn't find anything about EAAN. Can you show me where the consensus concerning the inclusion of ID was built? Until then the tag will be removed for ungrounded claims about the Wikiproject ID.--194.124.140.39 (talk) 06:24, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * There's a discussion on this talk page with a clear consensus of editors involved in Wikiproject ID. You are of course welcome to get an account and join the Wikiproject, but your uninvolved minority view does not override the views of editors who have contributed a lot to the project. . dave souza, talk 07:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't see how you can decide that theres a majority of people for an inclusion if most of the participants of the projects haven't mentioned their opinion. And to me it seems that the people who actually contributed to this article are all against an inclusion. But they are not part of the ID project so your not interested in their opinion. And please stop calling this a battle or edit war. Its an attempt to improve this article despite the constant efforts of a whole bunch of people involved in the unspeakable ID-Evo war to claim this as their battleground. Hrafns talk about "winning a battle" is a good demonstration of this mentality.--194.124.140.39 (talk) 07:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Everybody who's encountered Hrafn on the wiki to any extent knows he can be somewhat contentious, "quick to the gun" so to speak, when he feels strongly about a point. While I don't necessarily always agree with the extent and style of Hrafn's assertiveness, in my estimation he is correct in discerning the consensus of WP:WikiProject intelligent design participants about whether this article is properly within the chosen scope of that WikiProject. Dave Souza's perspective has won the respect of virtually all those who've encountered him in intelligent design related topics and elsewhere. So his perspective counts for a great deal (though anybody should of course feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about any of this). And Aunt Entropy and myself have thus far agreed with Hrafn and Dave Souza on this issue. Experience on the wiki has taught that if the issue continues to be contentious, in due course other WP users including other already declared participants in the wikiproject will likely weigh in. ... Kenosis (talk) 12:54, 26 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I take it then that a majority is convinced that this is of interest for the Wikiproject ID and readded the tag. I still hope that a second look at the content of the argument will convince some (or all) of you that EAAN is just an argument of natural theology, much like the ontological or teleological argument. That it has been presented or mentioned in ID context (like other arguments of natural theology I suspect) seems to be of little interest for a Wikiproject that wants to improve articles about Intelligent Design on Wikipedia. And while Dave Souza and Hrafn may have a big influence on the general opinion of the Wikiproject ID for a good reason, it seems that questions of epistemology and philosophy of mind are outside of their field of competence. They have misinterpreted and misjudged EAAN based on secondary literature and then concluded that EAAN and ID are related. For this reason I hope that other members of the Wikiproject ID make up their mind on their own without influence by those two.--194.124.140.39 (talk) 13:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Positioning of the ID project template
Do we really care whether the ID project template comes before or after the Philosophy one? I for one don't. If our friend really really cares, I'd suggest that (having won the battle over the template's inclusion) we concede the largely irrelevant point over precedence. <span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:27, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I mistakenly reverted the change of positioning by the "anon IP". When I reverted, it had looked to me on my mouseover popup window like the philosophy wikiproject template had been removed rather than merely changed in order of presentation. Had I realized I wouldn't have bothered, as it's totally irrelevant in what order they're placed on this page. Again, my mistake. ... Kenosis (talk) 05:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeh, I almost did the same thing. But given that Aunt Entropy has now also reverted this positioning (either intentionally, or through the same mistake as ours, I don't know), so I thought it better to raise the issue rather than letting a fairly pointless edit-war continue.<span style="font-family:Antiqua, serif;">HrafnTalkStalk(P) 06:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)