Subject: Re: JH: The Design Argument Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:41:01 -0700 From: "Brian Holtz" To: "Brian Holtz" "Paul Filseth" wrote: > > 1) Intelligent fine-tuning makes the physical constants more > > likely than they appear. > > 2) Intelligent fine-tuning or some unknown other explanation makes > > the physical constants more likely than they appear. > > > > Your argument appears to be: (2) is more likely than (1), and so > > one should not believe (1). This argument is not very convincing. :-) > > Why not? Because it's general form is fallacious. Given two possibilities (A) and (A or B), the facile observation that the second is more probable than the first is not an interesting argument for the truth of (not A). > Why do you find the less probable more believable than > the more probable? I don't dispute that (A or B) is more likely than (A). I just dispute that this has any bearing on how probable (A) is. (A) could be wildly improbable, or it could be virtually certain. > maybe some of the apparently fine-tuned constants > are related to one another and we're seeing two views of the same > underlying object. Yes, it is for reasons like this that I predict that even the small amount of remaining apparent design in the universe will dwindle to (very close to) nothing. Note that while I predict this, I don't claim to be able to demonstrate it, and it certainly isn't demonstrated by your analogy that Europeans win more gold medals than Germans. :-) > (2) "Intelligent fine-tuning, or the not-yet-discovered unity of > what we currently think of as different laws, or some unknown other > explanation, makes the constants more likely than they appear." Does > (1) still look like a more sensible inference? I never said it was more sensible. I said "it's not (yet) completely foolish" [to infer deism from physics]. You then proceeded to talk about Venn diagrams with overlapping circles. :-) > > It's like seeing a clock displaying noon. You could infer (it is > > now noon) or you could infer (either it is now noon or the clock > > is wrong). [..] > > [..] only because you have extensive _experience_ with clocks. Actually, no. The fact that P(A) <= P(A or B) is not a good argument to believe (not A), even if I have no other information. > Have you seen anything that points to a god being a lot more likely > than unification of laws? Definitely not. But neither have I seen a demonstration that no apparent cosmological design in the universe will ever be attributable to a conscious agency. > "Why is there something instead of nothing?" cannot be explained > correctly, because any answer you might offer qualifies as "something" > and is therefore part of what you were supposed to explain. Only if you assume that the explanatory relation can never be reflexive (A explains A) or symmetric (A explains B and B explains A). In his _Philosophical Investigations_ Nozick explores the alternative idea of "explanatory self-subsumption" and gives a hypothetical example: --------------------------------------------------------- P says: any lawlike statement have characteristic C is true. Let us imagine this is our deepest law[...] Next we face the question of why P holds true, and we notice that P itself has characteristics C. [..] Our question is not whether such self-subsumption as an instance of itself can constitute a proof, but whether it can constitute an explanation. [..] Either there is an infinite chain of different laws and theories, each explaining the next, or there is a finite chain. If a finite chain, either the endmost laws are unexplainable facts or necessary truths or [..] are self-subsuming. Does [self-subsumption] reduce the arbitrariness and brute-fact quality of the endpoint at all? If so, does it remove that quality completely? If a brute fact is something that cannot be explained by anything, then a self-subsumable principle isn't a brute fact; but if a brute fact is something that cannot be explained by anything *else*, such a principle counts as a brute fact. We normall have no need to distinguish these two senses of 'brute fact' and perhaps usually presume the second. However, we should not be too impressed by the literature's unanimity that explanation is irreflexive. Those writers were not considering explanatory self-subsumption, via quantification theory, of the most fundamental laws and principles. --------------------------------------------------------- > > > I find the concept of "necessarily existing" absurd. > > > > I too find it unintuitive, but I wouldn't call it absurd. > > Aren't you the guy who called the Ontological Argument a loser Yes, I think it has effectively no persuasive force. But I'm not so ready to completely dismiss the whole concept of necessary existence. In particular, I wonder if logical possibility itself exists necessarily? If nothing existed instead something, would it therefore be true that nothing can even possibly exist? If the answer is no, then there may be an answer to the Big Why ("why is there something rather than nothing?"). The answer might be: Nothing exists except logical possibility, which necessarily exists, and our perception of material existence is an epiphenomenon of our being logical subcomponents of a logically possible universe. -- Brian.Holtz@sun.com Knowledge is dangerous. Take a risk: http://humanknowledge.net