Not trustworthy. Untrustworthy means we have some reason to believe they are incorrect. Trustworthy means we have some reason to believe they are correct. Randomness has neither property. (But is the gene random?)
If I tell you the sun is 1.6 * 10^43 kg, but I also tell you I generated the number using a random number generator (not calibrated to the sun), that is an untrustworthy estimate. The RNG wouldn’t be expected to get the right answer by accident.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, but only that often, so it’s untrustworthy.
The conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises.
Huh? If Beth’s brain can’t reason about the world then she can’t know that humans are stimulus-response engines. (I’m not concerned with where in her brain the reasoning happens, just that it happens in her brain somewhere)
“The conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises.”
Huh? If Beth’s brain can’t reason about the world then she can’t know that humans are stimulus-response engines. (I’m not concerned with where in her brain the reasoning happens, just that it happens in her brain somewhere)
I was going to object a bit to this example, too, but since you’re already engaged with it here I’ll jump in.
I think reasoning about these theories as saying humans are “just” stimulus-response engines strawmans some of these theories. I feel similarly about the mental nonrealism example. In both cases there are better versions of these theories that aren’t so easily shown as non-self-ratifying, although I realize you wanted versions here for illustrative purposes. Just a complication to the context of mentioning classes of theories where only the “worst” version of serves as an example, thus is likely to raise objections that fail to notice the isolation to only the worst version.
If I tell you the sun is 1.6 * 10^43 kg, but I also tell you I generated the number using a random number generator (not calibrated to the sun), that is an untrustworthy estimate. The RNG wouldn’t be expected to get the right answer by accident.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, but only that often, so it’s untrustworthy.
Huh? If Beth’s brain can’t reason about the world then she can’t know that humans are stimulus-response engines. (I’m not concerned with where in her brain the reasoning happens, just that it happens in her brain somewhere)
I was going to object a bit to this example, too, but since you’re already engaged with it here I’ll jump in.
I think reasoning about these theories as saying humans are “just” stimulus-response engines strawmans some of these theories. I feel similarly about the mental nonrealism example. In both cases there are better versions of these theories that aren’t so easily shown as non-self-ratifying, although I realize you wanted versions here for illustrative purposes. Just a complication to the context of mentioning classes of theories where only the “worst” version of serves as an example, thus is likely to raise objections that fail to notice the isolation to only the worst version.