The Discovery that We Are Unreliable

Una nueva versión de la paradoja del mentiroso.

En Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Naturalism, and Religion, sostiene Alvin Plantinga "that the naturalistic conception of the world, and of ourselves as products of unguided Darwinian evolution, makes it unreasonable for us to believe that our cognitive faculties are reliable, and therefore unreasonable to believe any theories they may lead us to form, including the theory of evolution. In other words, belief in naturalism combined with belief in evolution is self-defeating. However, Plantinga thinks we can reasonably believe that we are the products of evolution provided that we also believe, contrary to naturalism, that the process was in some way guided by God."
—De la reseña de Thomas Nagel en la New York Review of Books.

Claro que la verdad no funciona así, excepto para los que creen en verdades absolutas. Para los demás es inherentemente falible y provisional, y siempre dudosa. Eso no está reñido con la ciencia, y menos aún con la filosofía. Y la consciencia de la falibilidad de nuestro propio criterio está atemperada por la evidencia, obvia y en luces de neón, de la falibilidad mucho mayor del criterio de tantos otros (Plantinga, etc.). Eso contribuye a darnos algo parecido a una cierta tierra firme.

Qué es la verdad