Is belief in abiogenesis justified under evidentialism and process reliabilism?

Question

Asking whether a belief X is justified can lead to very opinion-based answers (e.g., Does life have a natural or supernatural origin?), but I don't think this necessarily has to be the case if we constrain the scope of the question to be answered from very specific epistemological theories of justification, namely, evidentialism and process reliabilism.

First, some definitions:

Evidentialism

Evidentialism in epistemology is defined by the following thesis about epistemic justification:

(EVI) Person S is justified in believing proposition p at time t if and only if S’s evidence for p at t supports believing p.

As evidentialism is a thesis about epistemic justification, it is a thesis about what it takes for one to believe justifiably, or reasonably, in the sense thought to be necessary for knowledge. Particular versions of evidentialism can diverge in virtue of their providing different claims about what sorts of things count as evidence, what it is for one to have evidence, and what it is for one’s evidence to support believing a proposition. Thus, while (EVI) is often referred to as the theory of epistemic justification known as evidentialism, it is more accurately conceived as a kind of epistemic theory. In this light, (EVI) can be seen as the central, guiding thesis of evidentialism. All evidentialist theories conform to (EVI), but various divergent theories of evidentialism can be formulated.

Source: https://iep.utm.edu/evidentialism/

Process reliabilism

Reliabilism encompasses a broad range of epistemological theories that try to explain knowledge or justification in terms of the truth-conduciveness of the process by which an agent forms a true belief. Process reliabilism is the most common type of reliabilism. The simplest form of process reliabilism regarding knowledge of some proposition p implies that agent S knows that p if and only if S believes that p, p is true, and S’s belief that p is formed by a reliable process. A truth-conducive or reliable process is sometimes described as a belief-forming process that produces either mostly true beliefs or a high ratio of true to false beliefs. Process reliabilism regarding justification, rather than knowledge, says that S’s belief that p is justified if and only if S’s belief that p is formed by a reliable process. This article discusses process reliabilism, including its background, motivations, and well-known problems. Although the article primarily emphasizes justification, it also discusses knowledge, followed by brief descriptions of other versions of reliabilism such as proper function theory, agent and virtue reliabilism, and tracking theories.

Source: https://iep.utm.edu/reliabilism/

Abiogenesis

Abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. The transition from non-life to life has never been observed experimentally, but many proposals have been made for different stages of the process.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Is belief in abiogenesis justified under evidentialism and process reliabilism? Is the belief justified according to one epistemological framework of justification but unjustified according to the other? Is abiogenesis simultaneously justified according to both frameworks?

Answer 1

The wikipedia article cited in the question clearly states:

The prevailing scientific hypothesis is ...

Meaning currently, science makes only weak claims about this being the current hypothesis, as opposed to something considered a fact. The main current open issue is also explained:

The precursors to the development of a living cell like the LUCA are clear enough, [...]. The process after the LUCA, too, is readily understood: [...] The derivation of living things such as the LUCA from simple components, however, is far from understood.

So a strong belief that abiogenesis must have happened cannot be fully justified by reliabilism, since the source supporting abiogenesis itself does not make such a strong claim.

Therefore a belief in abiogenesis as a fact is not justified only based on immediate evidentialism and process reliabilism, but also on something like naturalism (roughly the idea that "everything that exists" can be explained using the vocabulary and/or methods of the natural sciences).

Though naturalism itself might be justifiable in reliabilism, as over the last 2000 years, betting on naturalism rather than gods as cause would have been a winning bet many many times.

Answer 2

Abiogenesis literally just means "life arising from non-life." The term does not inherently place any restrictions on how this process played out, how quickly it happened, or at what time it happened. Strictly speaking, even divine intervention or some other supernatural explanation would constitute an instance of abiogenesis. Scientists routinely ignore such supernatural concepts under the broader principle of methodological naturalism, but that is not what you asked about. (And, as I have explained previously, methodological naturalism is not a factual claim in the first place, so you can't meaningfully ask whether it is "true" anyway.)

Under any epistemology, it seems very hard to argue that life does not currently exist. Similarly, if we take as given certain basic facts about the universe's cosmology and history (particularly the existence of the big bang), it seems very difficult to argue that life could have existed in the environment of the very early universe (everything was a soup of very hot subatomic particles, and there was no organized matter as we would recognize it today). From those two facts alone, it logically follows that abiogenesis of some kind must have happened at some time. Your question therefore boils down to whether evidentialism and process reliabilism are compatible with our current understanding of the early universe.

The big bang is principally supported by various astronomical observations, especially the cosmic microwave background, as well as mathematical tools like the Lambda-CDM model of the universe. The close correspondence between the CMB observations on the one hand, and the mathematical theory on the other, provides strong evidence that the big bang theory is a correct explanation of the early universe, and so most versions of evidentialism would hold this to be enough for a person to believe the big bang happened, and therefore for abiogenesis to have happened.

Answer 3

It's not belief in abiogenesis.. because there is no detailed candidate explanation to "believe"...(YET).

Abiogenesis is the name we use to describe the event that we cannot yet describe in detail.

Should it be accepted as "it did occur"?

It makes sense to do so... without an exact explanation... because there are...

... absolutely zero credible alternatives that make more sense.

So... the placeholder exists... and we seek to explain it exactly.

That's the whole story on abiogenesis to date... a placeholder and a "continue to try to figure it out exactly" situation.

Answer 4

The way you are asking is hard to answer because you are asking about "belief in abiogenesis". Abiogenesis is not a proposition, it is just a term.

Let's construct some propositions:

Thesis 1: Life on earth started by abiogenesis (i.e. not through influence of mystical spiritual entities, aliens etc.)

Evidentialism cannot answer this question. If life started by abiogenesis, our best theories predict that that was billions of years ago. It is nearly inconceivable that we will ever find actual evidence about anything (that is not of geological time scales itself, i.e. things like the formation of the earth's crust, large scale changes like the advent of oxygen at large scale and so on) that happened that long ago.

Also, the way life works, it is in the habit of consuming/recycling itself - so whatever were the precursors of life as we know it today has very likely been consumed by slightly more evolved life; which is a further reason that it is incredibly unlikely to find actual visible evidence.

Process reliabilism, if I understand it correctly, stands a bit of a better chance; it would solve this question by scientifically answering ever more questions about the diverse possibilities in which life or close-to-life molecular structures could spontaneously come to existence; together with a good dose of Occam's Razor. The thing that speaks "pro" the thesis is the immense, unfathomable scale of time and space we are talking about here. Even incredibly small probabilities become significant if you multiply them by the time scales (literally billions of years) and available space (the whole volume near the top of our oceans). So Process Reliabilism would argue that it is all very plausible and any alternative would be kicked out by Occam's Razor.

Thesis 2: Abiogenesis is possible at all

Evidentialism can easily get closer to answering this with each experiment done in a lab which creates predecessor molecules. The Wikipedia page you linked shows several approaches. If science continues like this, eventually some lucky lab might just make a random breakthrough.

Process Reliabilism's answer is basically the same as for any other scientific endeavour that's still in the stage of being worked on - it would look at whether all the work on it is happening to true scientific standards, and if we were convinced that there are no shady shenanigans going on, nothing much would stand in the way.

In both cases, the probability argument of the previous thesis speaks kind of against us - since the probability is obviously very low (or we would have found it already), and since the time/space volume on Earth was so very high, we cannot really judge thesis 1 from the results of thesis 2, unfortunately. I.e. even if we never find proof for thesis 2, this does not rule out thesis 1.

Answer 5

My two cents opinion:

The matter of "abiogenesis" depends heavily on what we consider "life" or "living" to be (*). This is the main point.

In other words, genesis or transformation of this to that, has been observed has been proposed (**), but is it interpretable as a-bio-genesis, or rather as bio-transformation from one form of living to another (similarly to how energy is not created nor lost but only transformed)?

One can be equally well justified, from the same observations, to take the stance of bio-transformation instead of a-bio-genesis, simply extending the definition of "bio".

The definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers. This is partially because life is a process, not a substance. This is complicated by a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of living entities, if any, that may have developed outside Earth. Philosophical definitions of life have also been put forward, with similar difficulties on how to distinguish living things from the non-living.

Life, Wikipedia (*)

The transition from non-life to life has never been observed experimentally, but many proposals have been made for different stages of the process.

Abiogenesis, Wikipedia (**)