Subject: Re: JH: The Design Argument Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:43:26 -0700 From: "Brian Holtz" To: "Brian Holtz" "Paul Filseth" wrote: > > Surely after some period (10 years? 10,000 years?) of failed natural > > explanations, it becomes more parsimonious to call it supernatural > > than to insist it is mysterious but natural. > > Why? Have attempted "supernatural" explanations (by hypothesis) > _succeeded_ during that period? Yes. > Have they explained the event in a > way that helps us understand it, lets us predict its details, or > unifies the phenomenon with others? Not necessarily, but these criteria aren't mandatory for an explanation to be considered successful. For example, notwithstanding some physicists' hopes for "hidden variables", quantum decay events are not completely understood in the sense of being fully predictable. And unification is of course famously lacking between e.g. relativity and quantum theory. Now, for these reasons, would you say that quantum theory has not "succeeded" as an explanation? > Or is "goddidit" just as much an > untestable label for the unknown at the end of the 10,000 years It's quite tested in the sense that it is 100% right in predicting when these miracles occur (i.e. whenever priests will them), while no natural theory can predict them at all. > > Are you saying that there is no conceivable case in which a deity > > exists and has observable consequences and is the best explanation > > for those consequences? > > Heck no [but] The above [is] perfectly consistent with > there being one or more gods. Only if your notion of "being" is one that can apply to a thing even if there is no conceivable way for its consequences to support the belief that it exists. To me, that's sort of like saying that you being popular is perfectly consistent with nobody liking you. Being liked is what constitutes popularity, and being the best explanation for observable consequences is what I would say fundamentally constitutes existing. Otherwise, you could just as easily say that Santa Claus exists and causes Christmas presents, even though he is so good at hypnotizing parents and otherwise covering his tracks that in no conceivable case would anybody conclude that he is indeed the best explanation for Christmas presents. Such a notion of being makes it hopelessly indeterminable. > > I would say that if a thing has no effects that have any possibly > > observable consequences, that thing does not "exist". > > That's highly non-standard usage. Can you tell me what *is* standard usage? I've put a little research into this, and the definitions I find are usually pretty circular. Merriam-Webster: exist -> real, be; be -> exist, real; real -> exist. philsophypages.com: existence -> reality, being; reality -> is. American Heritage: exist -> real, be; real -> actual -> exist; be -> actual, real. dictionary.com: exist -> be, real; be -> exist, real; real -> actual, verifiable existence; actual -> exist Cambridge: exist -> to be; have the ability to be known, recognized or understood allwords.com: exist -> present in the real world or universe The extensive articles in _The Encyclopedia of Philosophy_ and the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy only casually try to define exist (as real, or concrete, or physical), and are more concerned with issues of logic: whether existence is a (1st or 2nd-level) predicate or not, has the same meaning for properties as for individuals, can be replaced by "instantiates", etc. The only elements of non-circularity we find above are: verifiability, knowability, recognizability, understandability, presence in the universe, and concreteness/physicality. To me, this all can be summed up as having consequences (i.e. causal relations) for which the proposed existent is the best explanation. > if reality contains two causally disconnected segments > (as anyone not doing armchair physics should admit it might Segments that are merely currently disconnected might connect later, and this is indeed what we believe is happening with our cosmological horizon as the post-inflationary universe expands. But segments (like in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory) that can never have any further causal relation to ours are highly controversial, and seem to have explanatory utility only in slippery anthropic theories. > then the inhabitants of each segment would have to call the > other "non-existent" Right. How could they otherwise? Who guarantees that if something exists, any other existing observer should be compelled to consider that thing to indeed exist? The only ways I see to get such a guarantee is to a) cheapen the notion of existence so that anything can be considered to exist, or b) require a causal relation among proposed existents. > "No non-interacting parallel universes exist" is an unfalsifiable > synthetic statement, and making it analytic by redefining "exist" > doesn't settle it A statement like that whose truth or falsity seemingly has no possible consequences is hard to consider as having any content whatsoever. Defining "exist" to make it analytic seems like a useful way to get such useless statements off the table. > all that does is make people who want to express > the proposition think up a way to rephrase it without using "exist". Your proposition is probably impossible to express without a question-begging appeal to the only-intuitively-defined notion of "exists". I doubt there's a way to rephrase it that doesn't give parallel universes the same status as fictional universes. > no fair drawing a conclusion about what _Rick_ was saying > based on _your_ idiosyncratic dialect. Either Rick is claiming gods are impossible, or he has no defense against people who say (unparsimoniously) that Santa Claus exists and causes Christmas presents and also arranges it so that his existence is never the best explanation for Christmas presents. So my conclusion that Rick is claiming gods are impossible is based not on my dialect, but on my presumption that he wouldn't want to embrace a silly ontology. -- Brian.Holtz@sun.com Knowledge is dangerous. Take a risk: http://humanknowledge.net