Kimon’s Stone: Materialism and the Reliability of Beliefs

[5stringJeff]

An excellent post from the Evangelical Outpost...

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In his book Metaphysics, philosopher Richard Taylor asks the reader to imagine a stone that’s just been dug out of the ground, and covered by peculiar markings. On first appearances the markings appear to be accidental, simply the result of millions of years of erosion. As your examine the marking, though, your friend, a professor of ancient languages, arrives upon the scene and promptly renders a translation of the marks:

HERE KIMON FELL LEADING A BAND OF ATHENIANS AGAINST THE FORCES OF XERXES. Now one can, to be sure, still maintain that the marks are accidental, that they are only scratches left by volcanic activity, and that it is only a singular coincidence that they resemble ... some intelligible message. Nature sometimes produces effects hardly less interesting and arresting as this. The point ... however, is this: if anyone having a knowledge of this stone concludes, solely on the basis of it, that there was someone named Kimon who died in battle near where this stone was found, then he cannot, rationally, suppose that the marks on the stone are the result of the chance or purposeless operations of the forces of nature. He must, on the contrary, assume that they were inscribed there by someone whose purpose was to record an historical fact.

Taylor’s point is that because it is entirely possible for the rock to have accumulated “various and peculiar markings” during vast periods of time, there is no reason to assume that these markings were not created by pure accident. However, it would be a grave mistake, says Taylor, to also believe that these markings "reveal some truth with respect to something other than themselves" about the world. In other words, the markings cannot be both the result of chance forces and indicative of any truth beyond the mere fact that there happen to be peculiar markings upon a certain stone.

Taylor uses this example in order to examine the question, “How is human consciousness any different from the accumulation of accidental markings upon a stone?” Even if we assume that it is possible for nature to create something as inexplicably complex as human consciousness, we cannot assume that consciousness would be reliable. We cannot consistently claim, says Taylor, that human consciousness is both the chance outcome of blind, accidental causes and a reliable belief-forming apparatus by which we discern truths about the world.

http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001612.html