Nomological Argument: Psychophysical Harmony's Little Brother (SCCC pt 8)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2024
- In this video, I explore a version of the Nomological Argument / Argument from Temporal Order / Argument from Induction / Argument from the Applicability of Mathematics / Okay that's the end of this list.
Here's a paper on this kind of argument: philpapers.org...
You explain these arguments brilliantly. Thank you.
From this perspective, the regular Fine Tuning argument feels like stumbling across a textbook full of equations in a jungle, and saying intelligence must have been involved because the equations are correct.
I like that analogy!
At least the equations are prediction, this is just Ad-Hoc.
How?
@@blankspace2891 The Fine Tuning argument focuses only on the delicate balance between different constants.
But takes the underlying system - for example, the fundamental forces, fundamental particles, quantum mechanics and relativity - and the physical laws controlling those things - as a given.
But on naturalism these things seem too complex or too arbitrary to have arisen unintentionally - there's no reason to think they would have been this way.
I think I’m getting closer with this argument . Now time to look at ✝️☦️
How's it going?
I like this argument a lot. It might be technically less powerful than PHA, but it's a lot simpler to defend.
You did a great job of answering all the objections that occurred to me while I watched.
You have to accept a form of dualism to even get PHA off ground. In this view no reasonable atheist is going to deny the law of gravity. I see an advantage here.
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf PHA isn't dependent on dualism, it states so in the paper and it's not hard to see why it's not. It's not even dependent on psychophysical harmony. This is literally the same argument, "X exist, we can imagine infinite possibility, there is one actuality, therefore unlikely.....therefore god" It's horrendous argument of course.
I understand WHY you think PHA needs dualism tho, something like 40-60% of the paper is dedicated solely to talking about it.
@@ShouVertica Brian cutter said himself if you believe consciousness is an illusion as
In anti realist views the argument doesn’t work.
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf He also said it works on physicalism. What's your point?
@@ShouVertica I am not sure what your point is as the argument fails on anti-realist views. That makes it weaker in my book. Nothing you said in your comments was worthwhile to even respond to me. Especially since most atheists hold anti-realist views on consciousness and morality to begin with.
I actually think this argument is better than the psycho-physical argument, because it seems to me as though the psycho-physical argument requires some form of dualism to hold. However, this argument conceptually applies to physicalism, dualism, and idealism equally.
In fact, I think this may be the best argument for the purposes of discourse between skeptics like myself and theists, because I think it speaks to the heart of most other arguments in a more direct manor. With many cosmological or ontological arguments, we often get caught up in (fun to contemplate) details like causal finitism or modality, but as entertaining as it is to address these aspects, the arguments would still be unconvincing to someone like myself if my objections to these were fully addressed.
This argument sidesteps the additional philosophical fluff and goes straight to the point of most of these arguments :
1. Without God, the universe would probably not exist/be coherent
2. The universe exists/is coherent
Therefore, God exists.
I think a lot of people on my side of this discourse do not want to take this kind of reasoning seriously, but I feel it is necessary that we at least be able to articulate clearly why we do not take it seriously. Further, I do not consider objections which undermine the likelihood of an existent/coherent universe under God to be satisfactory, as even if successful, this only shows theists to be in the same boat as us, and does not address the underlying issue.
My objection to this kind of reasoning lies in my objection to Square's use of Bayesian reasoning. This method relies on intuition based on finite sets of epistemic possibilities. However, without some additional structure, this logic cannot be scaled to uncountably infinite sets, even in principle.
Suppose that you know that a point will lie somewhere between 0 and 1 on a number-line, according to the coordinate system you are using. The probability that you assign to the point landing in a particular region would be completely different than the probability that I would assign to the same phenomena if my coordinate system was the log scale of yours. You may say that your coordinate system is the "true" one, but I could respond by saying that mine is the "true" one, and yours merely is the exponential scale of mine. The only way to say that one coordinate system is more valid than another is for the introduction of some additional structure (e.g. the structure of a euclidean space). Of course, we then have the problem of identifying probabilities over what structure we should be using, which will inevitably be even more challenging to compute.
This is a contrived example, but square brings up a practical example which is even more ambiguous. How does one attain the prior for the path of a trajectory? I am not a mathematician, but I know that the number of functions (0,1)->R^3 describing such trajectories is beyond uncountably infinite, so I challenge anyone to find a non-arbitrary prior to even the more modest case where we assume that the path is continuous. I am not aware of such a prior. It may exist, but I doubt it.
From this, I conclude that there is no probability distribution over the set of all conceivable models of reality. Instead, there are merely methods which outline how to best formulate models, and metrics which show which models are best supported by data. (I don't claim to have full understanding of these methods or metrics, and it would take to long to discuss what I think I know here)
Of course, it could be argued that the inability for this Bayesian reasoning to be precisely formulated is irrelevant because this is ultimately an intuitional argument. I think this is the heart of the difference in viewpoint here, as I do not see intuition as epistemically valuable beyond it's power to spark creativity (someone with good intuition on a matter is more likely to make discoveries on that matter). If an intuition does not conform to what more reasoned methods conclude, than that intuition must be subdued so that it can bring its creativity towards a more productive end.
Well the argument isn't evidence based, that's why nobody is going to take it seriously. Simply "existence" itself is not a great argument for "existence was due to XYZ."
It's SO far removed from being a sound argument Squared has almost given an argument of pure ignorance, almost.
Squared doesn't really use Bayesian reasoning. He's not plugging in anything to the equation, he's just substituting "bayesian" for "presuppositions." Which.....yeah, Squared is a presupp.
In thinking about this argument, I would say that the primary counterargument that would be given would be based on your original comment on naturalists having no reason to think that something like gravity would change or stay the same, and thus on naturalism, one must simply accept that the universe will stay the same as a necessary truth (or perhaps just won't ever be able to accept something like this principle due to the nature of what it is predicting, but which one it is doesn't really matter). While this is certainly the case, it seems that a parallel objection can be run against theism. What evidence do we have to suggest that God will not change? If we posit some sort of necessary attribute or fact about God that he is unchangeable, this would certainly work. However, it doesn't seem to have any likelihood over the naturalistic explanation of just asserting that the fundamental laws of nature will not change. Thus, the theist is justified in asserting that the nature of God will not change using the exact same principles that the naturalist can be justified in asserting that the laws of nature will not change.
However, I personally find the arguments for a perfect (i.e. limitless and all-good) being to be very compelling. Do you think that there is some sort of asymmetry that can be drawn in saying that a perfect being will not change into another being while still positing that the laws of nature could be changed?
I'm not sure about this argument. Still, very interesting video. I'll think about it.
Dude nooo 😅😅😅😅😂
It’s the “coolio” that convinced me.
Could you make a video about divine hideness
Planning on it!
14:29 _"It seems that knowledge is a good thing, and being deceived is a bad thing"_
Literally the same argument Descartes gives in the meditations, deemed by his contemporaries to be a circular argument, and widely called nowadays "the cartesian circle".
You can sidestep this criticism entirely by just noticing that the universe has a proclivity toward a particular set of things which atheism cannot predict. Atheism has no predictive power about the way the universe is, whatsoever. The "good" and "bad" placeholders just make the argument more intuitive.
@@ruaraidh74*"You can sidestep this criticism entirely by just noticing that the universe has a proclivity toward a particular set of things which atheism cannot predict. Atheism has no predictive power about the way the universe is, whatsoever. The "good" and "bad" placeholders just make the argument more intuitive."*
First, saying that atheism have *"no predictive power"* about something, doesn't allow any sort of conclusion. In particular, if it can be shown that no theory at all has any predictive power about that thing, then no conclusion other than "we can't predict that thing" can be derived from that.
Second, what makes you think that *"Atheism has no predictive power about the way the universe is, whatsoever."*
@@MrGustavier If one theory properly predicts an outcome and the alternative simply offers no prediction one way or the other, then the plausibility point goes to the theory which properly predicted the outcome.
I'm not saying atheism has no predictive power about anything. I'm talking specifically about the premises outlined in the video we both watched (which you might have forgotten since you commented a year ago).
Atheism lends no predictive power to ANY point on the "chaos-simplicity" spectrum, aside from maybe one of the extremes. So saying that the "good" he talks about is arbitrary doesn't matter. It's just a placeholder he's using to approximate our location on the line.
@@ruaraidh74 *-"If one theory properly predicts an outcome and the alternative simply offers no prediction one way or the other, then the plausibility point goes to the theory which properly predicted the outcome."*
Correct.
*-"I'm not saying atheism has no predictive power about anything. I'm talking specifically about the premises outlined in the video we both watched (which you might have forgotten since you commented a year ago)."*
Well, yeah I don't remember the video exactly, but it's the psychophysical harmony argument no ? I've read the paper from Brian Cutter & Dustin Crummett.
And your seem to be missing my point. No conclusion can be derived from affirming that theory X has no predictive power on data set Y, other than the fact that X has no predictive power on data set Y, and possibly that we can't predict data set Y.
In the previous paragraph you say : *"If one theory properly predicts an outcome..."*
Which you have not provided so far. So far you have only said that theory X does NOT predict the *"outcome",* so what is your theory that *"properly predicts the outcome"* ?
*-"Atheism lends no predictive power to ANY point on the "chaos-simplicity" spectrum, aside from maybe one of the extremes. So saying that the "good" he talks about is arbitrary doesn't matter. It's just a placeholder he's using to approximate our location on the line."*
Ok yeah I don't remember what is said in the video about *"chaos-simplicity spectrum",* maybe you can remind me ?
And your comment seems a bit weird, because my OP mentions Descartes and "being deceived", so I don't think I was talking about *"placeholders"* or *"arbitrariness",* I think I was referring to the circularity of Descartes' justification for the reliability of his sense perception.
@@ruaraidh74 Nevermind it's the nomological argument. Yeah it suffers from exactly the same problems as all teleological arguments. Namely the _"problem of old evidence"_
Hey Squared, great video as usual.
I think on a more modest approach, this and the PH argument can at least serve to point out the very suggestive phenomenon that, epistemically it appears reality has manifest itself with a bias toward a fruitful amount of regularity and harmony, both in the physical and mental world. This is no small thing to my mind.
You can have this without a god though, so it's not even a deistic argument.
@@ShouVerticaPerhaps..
Though i'd say they are at very minimum some interesting and suggestive considerations to be taken into account.
@Oscar Not really, if the argument is"possibility large, actuality one" then it's not saying anything to care about. This is pure epistemic possibility too, not evidentiary or known possibility. So for anything it's "infinite possibility", you see a rock, "infinite possibility, it could have been a dragon, but because it's a rock and we expect that on theism...therefore god."
It's not even worth humoring tbh.
@@ShouVertica I think the reason rocks aren't being pointed to in these types of arguments is the point .
@Oscar Actually the argument is pointing to the existence of rocks, trees, water, really *anything* that exist. After all 1 actuality and infinite "epistemic possibility".....therefore god.
After watching this, series so far, I think that my disagreement falls into two parts:
1. Your arguments are not as strong as you think they are
2. (this is the bigger one) This is one of those cases where priors are actually super relevant. You keep appealing to a maximally good being, and I keep thinking “wow, you want your definition of ‘good’ to include *that* too?”. Your definition of “good” might be intuitively simple but it is *so* complex my more mathematical definitions of simplicity that even if all of these arguments were as strong as you portray, that would not be able to overcome the huge complexity penalty of specifying a maximally good being.
One issue I see with fine tuning is that God could have a million different ways to create so factor in problem of evil in bayesian formula it could be a greater cost to theism too
I think you're forgetting that "God" is a hypothesis to explain facts about the world. The world is complicated and so should our explanation about those complicated facts be. If I saw a world that was nothing but a blue 2D plane, I would think "gee whoever made this really likes blue". But if I saw a world that was full of time, space, energy, intelligence, meaning, order, hatred, war, love, beauty, etc... I would think "Uh oh this is probably going to be a complicated one to solve..." If your theory about "what caused X" doesn't at least approximately map to most of the properties of X then it fails to account for certain facts about X and probably isn't a good theory, as it lacks explanatory power.
@@ruaraidh74 Occam’s Razor has always been a useful heuristic in science; you can get complicated results from simple physics.
@@danielrhouck Wait what? If that's what you mean by "simple" then the laws of physics aren't simple either.
Do you interact with the comments of older videos?
Sometimes
a couple of questions:
1) shouldn't God be in the conclusions of the argument rather than in the premises?
2) Is it correct to consider theism as a theory that predicts things, as if it were a scientific theory?
How do you conclude that you *aren't* just a brain blipping into existence in a chaotic universe? Sure, it would be *nice* if you weren't one, but it is fundamentally unknowable.
It's an assumption that all of us have to make to exist, but assumptions can't be used as evidence.
It's not even clear to me how God is supposed to explain the order in our universe. Does God literally force things to fall down when we drop them? If so, how, and why haven't we detected this influence? Like, it doesn't seem like theism meets any of the criteria that explanations are supposed to have here. You can't predict, from theism, that gravity would exist, or that it would follow an inverse square law, so it's questionable to say that theism explains why we got the laws we got. Theism doesn't tell you how exactly God is maintaining this order, or what implications this will have beyond the order being maintained. Furthermore, in order to explain a really understandable thing (regularities), theism posits a much more mysterious thing (God, who, I am told, is a timeless, spaceless, disembodied mind), utterly different from everything else we know, and doesn't even tell us how the latter is causing the former, or how we're meant to test whether this is correct. Explanations are supposed to do the exact opposite to all of this.
Also, I think you're overstating the importance of the score you give to the arguments. Consider the following line of reasoning:
1) We make observation E
2) Instead of E, we could have observed E', E'', E''', or a myriad (say, a googol) of other things
3) There's an intelligent being, B, who really likes E and has the power to bring about E
4) Boom! We now have an argument with a score of a googol for the existence of B!
But surely, this argument is not *that* important, is it? You can do this with virtually any observation! But we don't go around postulating that there's a being who likes cancer as an explanation for it. And remember that you left open whether the "good" in theism is objective or subjective. If we take it to be subjective (which I assume is your view, since you'll want to say that God isn't good by some objective standard that is independent of God, but rather goodness is just whatever conforms to God's nature, God being a subject), then this argument for B I just presented is exactly identical to the argument in the video! You may say "but why does B like E instead of E'? That lowers the prior!", but the same will apply to God if goodness is subjective. Why does he like psychophysical harmony instead of disharmony? This gives us a defeater to any argument for God following the structure above.
How isn't it clear? it's plain and simple.
// It's not even clear to me how God is supposed to explain the order in our universe. Does God literally force things to fall down when we drop them? //
I guess that's one possibility, but we can also use theistic versions of the examples I gave in the video. Like, the physical properties of matter explain the regularities but God set up those properties. Or there's an abstract object doing the heavy lifting, but this abstract object is in God's mind. Etc.
// If so, how, and why haven't we detected this influence? //
I mean, if God is forcing things to fall, we *have* detected it! It's called gravity!
// You can't predict, from theism, that gravity would exist, or that it would follow an inverse square law, so it's questionable to say that theism explains why we got the laws we got. //
That doesn't matter, as far as I can tell. It still predicts these things way better than Naturalism, so its probability gets a big boost.
// Furthermore, in order to explain a really understandable thing (regularities), theism posits a much more mysterious thing (God, who, I am told, is a timeless, spaceless, disembodied mind), utterly different from everything else we know, and doesn't even tell us how the latter is causing the former, or how we're meant to test whether this is correct. //
This never resonated with me. I know that I'm a mind, and I can easily imagine myself as disembodied. Whether or not you think there could be a disembodied mind with a lot more power and knowledge, it never struck me as mysterious.
I'll also mention in passing that there are ways of formulating theism that are designed to fit well with our background knowledge, like formulations where God is an omnipotence trope.
// But surely, this argument is not that important, is it? You can do this with virtually any observation! //
I take two issues with that argument. Firstly, (2) alone doesn't give me enough to assess the prior of E. You actually need to factor in how things like simplicity and intuition affect E's prior. You need to analyze that. Secondly, I'm not positing that "there's a Being who likes regularities" after the fact nor am I positing this Being will nilly. I previously argued theism predicts things that aligns with our axiological intuitions, and that theism has a modestly high prior. Now I'm pointing out this theory has made an insanely good prediction. You can't do that with the cancer-loving-being.
// You may say "but why does B like E instead of E'? That lowers the prior!", but the same will apply to God if goodness is subjective. //
I disagree. I have my axiological intuitions, and theism gets its predictions from them. So, that's why I can say "B likes E instead of E'." You can't say the same for the cancer-loving-being.
(I think my conclusion about theism's predictions should be fairly uncontroversial, actually, because atheists who run the Problem of Evil seem to think that theism fails to predict evil! I can make perfect sense of why this is! Theism predicts good things.)
Anyways, thank you for interacting with my video. I really appreciate it. Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared But how does God *do* those things? What does a statement like "God set up those properties" mean? I really can't begin to imagine what that looks like or how it works. It's like an empty explanation, it doesn't tell us anything about how the process actually works. We can't use that explanation to make future predictions or developments. An explanation should have at least *some* advantage over just saying "it's a brute fact".
Can you imagine yourself, with your mind, being timeless? How would you think? How would you follow a trail of thought if there's no time? In which sense could you be said to be conscious at all? However, even if you can conceive of that, God is still of a different nature to anything else we know of. He's still, in this sense, more mysterious than the thing you're trying to explain by appealing to him. This wouldn't be a problem if the explanation came with some advantages... but it doesn't.
"I have my axiological intuitions, and theism gets its predictions from them". Why would your axiological intuitions match God's preferences? Unless you're just defining God as a being who is good by *your* subjective standard (which would be quite odd). But even in that case, I could just define the cancer-loving being as a being who is evil by my own subjective standard, and have as much of an explanation as you do as to why this being likes cancer instead of liking health (based on simplicity, this being would have about the same prior as God).
"I think my conclusion about theism's predictions should be fairly uncontroversial". What I'm criticizing here is not so much the claim that you can expect harmonious patterns given theism, but rather, the idea that theism is an explanation for those patterns. It doesn't seem to meet any of the criteria that we usually ask of explanations.
@@Nickesponja I think the problem with both of you is trying to explain an action that we don't know how it works. Like what is there to explain? God created a universe that obeys the laws of physics, logic etc. To explain HOW he does it is circular, because we are stuck in this framework how are we supposed to explain how? We don't. We observe that we live in a universe which has universal laws and since God is all powerful etc you can't have a physical explaniation that is confined to our universe to explain. - Simply if he created this framework for which is independent of him, or if he always makes sure gravity does what it is supposed to do. We don't know but it doesn't matter.
@@Nickesponja I think the argument still works if we assign even an immeasurably low epistemic probability to the idea of God having the properties that theists tend to think He does (or that perhaps many atheists might think He would).
E.g. if we give it an epistemic probability of 10^-10, then an argument with a score of 10^100 still dominates it.
(I think to go below, say, 1-5% probability for something, we need to at least be able to appeal to some kind of intuitive, relevant order of magnitude, or a vastly more probable alternative or set of alternatives.)
yes naturalists make more sense to me though, all possible universes that could exist do exist. chaotic or not everything. but why is our universe so orderly? thats because the probability of a universe being orderly based that I exist is infinitly higher than the opposing.
ofc i assumed that:
every universe exists(by universe i mean mathematical structure, our universe is considered a math structure that can describe "me")
that "I" exist
What other universes do you know that exist? Lol
@@CMVMic for example thr universe where it contains nothin mau exist, its an empty universe therefore its impossible for observers to exist specificly me. a crossection of our universe along time, it might exist it but if it did it wouldnt have time therefore we(I) are not anle to observe it. Pay attention tho i am not specifying which universes could theoreticly(consistently) exist but rather that our universe is the most probable one that contains me(the observer)
@@pittyconor2489 contains nothing may exist? Says who? Can you prove that? Lol
The Universe is the way it is because it couldn't be any other way. Logical possibility does not entail metaphysical possibility.
As with all fine tuning arguments, you failed to consider the prior probably of the existence of a god suitable for making the argument work. When this is done, the _god did it_ hypothesis falls flat on its face.
This argument is much better than psychophysical harmony! Are you going to soon do any moral or beauty arguments?
Yep! They’re coming soon. :)
@@ApologeticsSquared I actually wish you had Twitter again so I can bounce ideas off you. How do you feel about the entropy argument from fine-tuning? I think it is stronger than these 2 arguments. Spitzer brings it up in his book and Pruss laid out an argument before too.
P(the universe has low entropy | naturalism) is extremely tiny.
P(the universe has low entropy | theism) is not very small.
The universe has low entropy.
Therefore, the low entropy of the universe strongly confirms theism over naturalism.
I do like that argument, actually. I'm considering including it in this series. :)
@@ApologeticsSquared def should
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf I like how Sean Carroll seems to think that the Low entropy argument confirms atheism because apparently we’d expect God to actually have humans made in 6 days after starting to create
Wouldn't God creating a universe a certain way rather than another way call in many brute contingencies? This would be a theoretical cost to the view.
Firstly, it seems there’s only one brute contingency: God’s choice of which world to make.
Secondly, you need a brute necessity or brute contingency at some point!
@@ApologeticsSquared I meant that each individual thing he made like if he wanted make gravity slightly different or a different constant for the universe would that count separately. I just know it’s one objection graham oppy brings up with Craig in the mathematical argument for Gods existence.
Gods creation has no impact on the argument. It's just assigning an actuality (existence) to theism.
You could just say "God did it" and it's effectively the same method.
@@ApologeticsSquared another question I had are you familiar with argument necessary truth requires a necessary mind? I find that one interesting
There is no God buddy. The Universe exists as a brute fact.
Intuitively I find this argument stronger than psycho-physical harmony, because it seems to me that there would be a correlation between the universe and out experience of it, so agents in an orderly universe would likely have orderly experiences.
I do wonder if time needs to be spend on something that I would call the "pagan objection": in a chaotic universe it is possible for beings to form with the power to impose order on that universe/create an orderly universe. Or in a more naturalistic-sounding way: It is possible for an orderly sub-universe (our universe) to emerge out of a chaotic universe.
Chaos and order have nothing to do with theism/atheism tho. At least if you understand what those terms mean in cosmology / physics.
Interesting thought! I think it falls prey to a similar problem though: What are the sub-universe generation laws (SGLs)? There are more SGLs that produce chaotic sub-universes than SGLs that produce orderly universes. If we bias simpler SGLs, than we wouldn't predict such a complex universe like ours to be created.
@Apologetics Squared this whole "chaos/order" thing is just a red herring. You throw it out but you don't define chaos in the video, and order sounds completely arbitrary. This whole "oh if order is more then god exist" is not a good argument anyway, if it were the opposite (which I think most scientists would side on chaos being more prevalent in our universe) then you'd just come up with some "God wants chaos because of free will" nonsense.
Unfalsifiable and frankly, the fact that the evidence for Christianity is so poor that theist like yourself are pushed back all the way to base existence and arguments from ignorance says a lot.
This video throws the word "Predicts" a lot, but nothing is ever predicted. Squarehead is just making present day observations of reality and then retroactively declaring them as predictions from religion...which goes against every definition of the word "Prediction."
it's exactly as if I told you the winning lottery numbers a day after they were drawn, claimed that I "Predicted" the numbers beforehand, and then declared this as proof that I have super powers to predict the future even though I'm as broke now as I was last week.
It's as if you told me the winning lottery numbers a day after they were drawn, but then I offered a theory that predicted the winning numbers would probably be different.
Same with the word "probability." Because Squared uses the phrase "epistemic" in front of it all he's doing is the charade of saying "infinite possibilities, one actuallity, therefore god." It's sad.
Technically, this is retrodiction, not prediction. However, retrodiction is complicated and prediction is easily understood, so Squared uses the familiar term. Retrodiction is pretty common in science and how we actually go about forming most theories
@whatsinaname691 Retrodiction uses laws, that's not what's happening here. Squared is simply positing God as an explanation without proper justification.
Hmm, I watched the nomological one and ☠️😅. Am I the only one who constantly had in my head the idea that a brute fact is a brute fact, or that one can negate the entire argument by saying the universe is the way it is because it's a metaphysical necessity and that's that?
I mean, he sort of ridicules this idea and calls it Humean. But in his theism, he has these brute facts/metaphysical necessities as well.
If I ask what makes God the best thing possible, he will have to appeal to a brute fact or a metaphysical necessity. Worse yet, if we get to the arguments later as all apologetics do where the omni properties are described, then we get even more brute facts and even more metaphysical necessities.
Which brings me to another point. He doesn't seem to understand what naturalists mean when we say simplicity. It's not having to do with stuff like how many things are in a universe or multiverse or stuff like that, as that is the very data we are trying to explain. The laws of the universe as well are part of this data. When we say simplicity, we mean it in the sense of as few assumptions as possible. Or as few philosophical "dead ends" as possible which are the brute facts or metaphysical necessities in this case. The naturalists positing the universe and its laws is the way it is because of a brute fact or metaphysical necessity is one assumption and depending on how generous one wants to be, we can say for each law there is a brute fact for each one so 4 assumptions if you want.
With God, one can say OK the omni properties might be argued for as one assumption or three depending on the generosity that is given.
This on its face gives theism an advantage... but not really because yes simplicity is key but so is actually explaining the data and having it be compatible with previous explanations of data.
And the discrepancy here is that he treats the laws of physics as prescriptive instead of descriptive. That has no justification. It's not entailed in any scientific finding. So this is then perhaps another assumption. It gets worse when one considers that theists in general take God to have existed before time as well. Which is also metaphysically suspect as it posits a timeless being effecting a change. There are other weird metaphysical stuff all of which because it cannot actually be shown to be true is assumptions.
When all this is compared to naturalism which holds a few assumptions indeed that the theist would have in his own worldview just applied to different things,
Then the naturalist does a better job of explaining and if not, it makes it at least equal.Also, this seemingly presupposes a tense theory of time and a presentist theory.
The laws of physics can only really be a thing in presentism as we normally undertand it. I will admit that there is an idea in physics that the laws of nature were emergent as so they can't be brute facts if true or metaphysically necessary. Fair enought quantum laws can be those as we have no idea if they emerged and we have certain models that work on a universe that began because of quantum phenomena. One can postulate these rules are brute facts or metapyically nessasery.
Anyway back to presentism...
If the universe is a 4D space-time block, there really is only one brute fact naturalists have to postulate.
Hey Squared! I have an objection to this argument:
Isn’t saying that God is the reason for the orderliness of the universe just kicking the can down the road too? It seems like I can run the same epistemic argument on theists too: Theists have no reason to believe that the world will continue to be orderly tomorrow, as God could actually be a God that finds pulling pranks on people hilarious.
The only way to resolve this seems to be to resort to brute facts, but then the atheist can do the same with a non-God entity, and all you are left with is an argument from simplicity.
I'm trying to come up with a good name for this, "reality +" or "Just add-on god"? It's a weird trend in theistic circles to take an explanation and tack on god to the explanation.
@ShouVertica
Its not just “tacking on God”. These arguments are attempting to show that God is the best explanation for *insert property of reality*.
However, I agree that there is some competition between God and naturalism+ (As I would call it).
Arguably, God is simpler than naturalism+, but simplicity is not the end; explanatory power must also be taken into account, which is what these arguments are for.
Theists can derive the predictions of theism from their axiological intuitions. The version of theism you’re offering seems less good, so it’s not predicted.
@@WAIT_TG It is though. If you get to the core of the argument, Squared is arguing fundamental forces + god as the explanation. There really is no explanatory power which is what is the consistent criticism here and why it's just a tacking-on of God to anything that is seen as fundamental or without explanation.
(also known as an argument from ignorance once it's made).
You aslo can't argue god is simpler than naturalism if by definition God has omni properties, just by definition that means god is more complex than the entire universe.
Now you can SAY god is "infinitely simple" or w/e, but this gets into the whole problem of just completely incoherent definitions of god and the problem of the omni properties. Really, so much of theistic philosophy is just saying "god is magic, he can do whatever" and hand waving any problems with coherency.
And this is because there is no focus on evidentiary evidence and models of explanation and explanatory power.
@@ApologeticsSquared The way you've defined "good" is completely subjective and if you're going by the God of the Bible then you could say a god who likes collective moralism (genocide/Racism) is to be promoting such behaviors.
But then again, that's Christianity and we don't talk about that on this channel.
Once again I think the strongest argument against this is to outright reject epistemic probability as a viable method to figure out the truth.
Again I ask what is the epistemic probability that your epistemic probability is correct? By statistical standards 0%
And what is the probability both epistemic and actual that we don’t actually know? By statistical standards 100%
I think that epistemic probability is unavoidable in tons of circumstances. For example, is the trillionth digit of pi an even number? I don't know! But the probability that it's even is 50%. This can't be an "objective" probability -- the digits of pi are dictated by mathematics! So, our reasoning must employ epistemic probability in some cases. And, as I argue, we should assign a high epistemic probability to the proposition that God exists.
@@ApologeticsSquared yet I would argue that case is different since the actual probability of the digits of pi have a very well defined boundary on the number of possible options to work with, its either even or its odd.
In the epistemic probability as you’re using it there is no well defined limit to how many possibilities there are, you’re speculating on data which we don’t have enough to make a solid prediction.
For example just because chaos seems more common than order how do you know that’s actually the case? It could very well just be a limit of how we think about things. And without a well defined upper limit the possibilities tend towards infinity which would make ordered and chaotic universes equally prominent.
Now you also argued about not using infinity for that very reason, because your argument of epistemic probability only works for finite terms but instead you substitute some large but arbitrary finite number as a substitute when we have no reason to believe that number is actually applicable and since finite numbers of any sort behave vastly different from infinity and we don’t even know if the boundaries are finite or not we can’t establish an accurate probability.
@@someoneonyoutube8622 // In the epistemic probability as you’re using it there is no well defined limit to how many possibilities there are, you’re speculating on data which we don’t have enough to make a solid prediction. //
While it's true that I can't provide precise probabilities, that's true in most cases of most arguments for everything. For example, if I find a decrepit shack in the forest, and I think it's abandoned, but then I find that there's a steaming cup of tea on a table in the shack, I can't assign precise probabilities to the probability of the tea or the probability of the shack's being uninhabited, but I can still know that whatever the probabilities are, the outcome is that there is a very very high probability the shack is not uninhabited. Same with arguments for theism. The lack of precise probabilities doesn't hinder our ability to make arguments.
// For example just because chaos seems more common than order how do you know that’s actually the case? //
I'm confused. I don't think chaos is more common, because I'm a theist. I think God makes orderly things. I gave arguments that on an indifferent hypothesis, like naturalism, then chaos is what we *would* expect.
// And without a well defined upper limit the possibilities tend towards infinity which would make ordered and chaotic universes equally prominent. //
I don't understand. If there are infinite epistemically possible chaotic universes, and infinite epistemically possible orderly universes, that doesn't mean that they're equally probable. For a loose analogy, there are infinite numbers divisible by ten, and infinite numbers indivisible by ten, but the numbers indivisible by are more "prominent."
// Now you also argued about not using infinity for that very reason, because your argument of epistemic probability only works for finite terms but instead you substitute some large but arbitrary finite number as a substitute when we have no reason to believe that number is actually applicable and since finite numbers of any sort behave vastly different from infinity and we don’t even know if the boundaries are finite or not we can’t establish an accurate probability. //
I'm not sure what this means.
@@ApologeticsSquared in regards to the tea in the shack we could base the probability on a set of past data and experiences on what should be expected. For example we can observe in our daily life that things cool down over time and that tea is made by people to drink. We then limit the possibilities to things that would be reasonable to expect in reality as we know it based on past data, this acts as a boundary as to how many possibilities we can have. And since we automatically exclude possibilities that don’t line up with the data gathered from our past experience we don’t need to consider the possibility of every idea in the calculation.
By this method we could form a probability by looking at how often we’ve seen that something does or does not occur contrasted with how often something else does or does not occur. The more frequently occurring data is the more likely explanation.
So if the tea is still hot its reasonable to conclude from past data that there was a person there recently.
Same with the digits of Pi we have past experience that even and odd digits and decimals as defined can only work in a certain way. We know if we’re looking for a digit it must be either even or odd, (the only exception possibly being 0 depending on which mathematician you ask.) but we can still form a reliable probability by knowing evens and odds occur at just about the same rate and both types of number are more frequent then 0. Yet we exclude the possibilities of a digit of pi being negative if the rest are positive just like we would also exclude the possibility that a digit of pi would be the complex number “i”, or any letter of the alphabet, or a rectangle, or a giraffe or literally anything else. If we disregard all past experience and rules about how digits and numbers work these would all be valid possibilities however we base our probability on what the trillionth digit of pi is likely to be based on our past experience and rules and definitions already established as data points to draw upon.
In terms of our own universe on the other hand there’s only one sample to pull from. We have no idea what other universes are even possible so there could be a possibility that an orderly universe is the only type of universe which can form naturally. We have no way of reasonably collecting data to form a probability on this.
Ok, let's go through it. Another argument on the "For Christianity" series without any mention of Christianity or Jesus.
Note: Apologetics Squared asked for feedback on his last argument on where it failed, got a ton of it. Interesting he didn't take *any* of it to heart and is now breaking down in cognitive dissonance so hard his best argument is now "reality exist."
0:15 "The existence of the laws of nature." The laws of nature are just that nature (reality) is this way. So you're going to examine that reality exist?
0:35 "There are laws of physics in the first place" So......that reality exist.
1:35 "Why does our universe have these laws?" So....why does reality exist (as it does)?
2:20 "Naturalist have a problem" No, they don't.
2:25 "Squared: There is no reason objects fall downwards." Yes there is, gravity.
-This is kind of a bad example, mostly because Squared CAN'T make a good example. All he's doing here is arguing from ignorance, "well yeah you gave me an explanation but what's the explanation for the explanation? Yeah well you gave me that, but I want another one!" The irony that Squared is not satisfied with hundreds of levels of explanations but still believes in a god, which fails at the first level (evidence).
3:15 "These two scenarios tie" No they don't, empirical evidence dictates that one is more likely. If you're going to hold the "future is entirely blank" position Squared then there is effectively no point in any argument you can ever make because you're denying evidence and predictions.
3:30 "Everything is possible." (Epistemic possibility) Ok, this sort of "infinite possibilities only one actuality" is just kind of silly as an argument.
Does anyone else realize how utterly desperate this sounds? Just because the color spectrum is millions long doesn't mean that an apple being red is some "extremely unlikely scenario therefore god!" To me, I see that Squared has broken down in such high levels of cognitive dissonance that instead of let's say: Evidence for Jesus, Yaweh, the Bible, or angels/demons(I.e. CHRISTIANITY) or even some sort of deistic argument, that squared is resorting to "existence itself"(all of it) as his argument.
5:18 "Theism predicts an orderly universe" Oh, this is the point of a Squared video where theism is "predicts the winners of the superbowl", where we use ad-hoc views and say "well thing is X way, theism predicts that" without any real explanation. (Remember when Squared was unsatisfied with 100 levels of explanations but now he's satisfied with "theism predicts"? Lol.).
6:00 "Naturalism predicts a chaotic universe." Well a universe *with* chaos, not a universe of chaos. Not that Squared understands at all what "chaos" is anyway.
7:15 "instead of X, we can say X imposes the opposite force/energy/physical system."
So Squared has officially gone cuckoo . Where an explanation is offered, the explanation isn't even "Naturalistic" and he starts to spazz out that because it doesn't involve his deity it's not a good explanation or legitimate.
The rest of the video (and really so, so much of Squared's arguments) boils down to this weird fallacious reasoning of "epistemic probability small, but theism says big because theism points to rock and says "rock should be rock."" Now you may think I'm mocking Squared by making it sound like a Neanderthal, but what I'm actually doing making it sound even smarter than it is, because it really is way worse than that given how much time and effort Squared put into this depressing charade.
I mean, it's an argument for theism no? he is making the case for theism and then go on to explain why he thinks christianity is true. also, iirc, he already has some other videos arguing for christianity in particular.
you seem to have actually watched the whole thing and I presume you are also decently well read on the matter discussed so i think it's fair to say you are not a troll or a dishonest/edgy antitheist/new atheist, but you still appears to be taking a little too combative/hostile stance here. remember, this is not a fight, you and him are both genuinely interested in the search for truth, or at least it seems so. there is no reason for you guys to not have a educated and well behaved debate.
@Jonatha Cirilo Theism dictates God takes an action within the universe. This is deism, where God creates and does nothing else.
This series is about Christianity and theism, to which Squared has made no theistic arguments and no mention (at ALL) of Christianity.
I would agree that I'm interested in the truth, but the way Squared goes about that I would say he is not.
@@ShouVertica I don't think that's what he is arguing for here, but then again i am not really sure about what his positions and beliefs are.
didn't him tho? maybe not for christianity but i am pretty sure he has made arguments for theism on this series and in other places. as for christianity, again, i think that will either come later or that he will just point to his other videos on that.
I like to think that you both are, seems like the right thing to do, tho to be honest i am not sure of either. personal bias and "fighting spirit" are one hell of a issue that we all(or most of us) seems to suffer.
@Jonatha Cirilo Well he seems to be arguing pure deism. He wants it to be theistic, because he is a theist, however everything he's describing is deism.
Nope. Every argument so far has been deistic. All "God is the origin" arguments. Saying "he'll get around to it" after 8+ videos.....idk, you might have a lot more faith than I do in him lol.
@@ShouVertica doesn't seems like that to me but maybe i am not seeing something you are or whatever.
same as above. meh, idk, it doesn't take much really as he has already made some videos on that on the past, and considering this whole thing purpouse seems to be about making the case for theism and christianity it just seems likely/obvious that once he's done with the theism part he will go on to argue why he thinks christianity is correct. if he actually will or not only time will tell.
The supposition/expectation of consistency comes from parsimony. So, no, your hypothetical naturalist has no problem with why things in the future should continue to fall. Nice try, but nope
I factor in parsimony considerations at 8:13.
@@ApologeticsSquared No, you really don't.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're trying to be fair, but you are arguing with s strawman (at least for the first 10 minutes, which is all I'm going to watch.)
A more realistic naturalist POV:
We don't know what parameters of the universe are free vs being the results underlying processes based on fewer parameters. We have no observations of other universes, and with the state of current knowledge can make no predictions about them which aren't just speculation. These might end up as things which will be forever beyond our ability to know... Bummer, but it is what it is.
For now and unless we get a better (fitting observations) model of reality, we take the parameters of the current best model(s) as just being what they appesr to be.
BTW: Scientific knowledge, and arguably all knowledge that is not just about artificial symbolic systems, is grounded in induction. Totally different framework than most philosophy (and theology).
@Travis Collier To be clear: Squared is not trying to be fair. He's intentionally making a strawman. People have repeatedly corrected him on this stuff, even in this video, and he just puts up another strawman. Think the comment chain with Nicke says a lot about he views atheist/naturalist stuff.
I would argue that all universes are orderly. Why? Because there is no such thing as a chaotic universe. Unless yu can demonstrate a chaotic universe without hypotheticals. Chaos is a state that is not orderly. The moment that an orderly state is thrown into chaos it now becomes orderly in it's new state. Therefore chaos was never a thing. Chaos is a subjective term. Chaotic to the past state of the universe but not to it's present state. For example. If I shatter a glass window with a hammer the moment the glass shatters it becomes orderly in it's new state. No maths can even describe chaos. That is absurd and I think your argument is very weak when put into perspective. Show me what chaos is and I can show you that it is actually orderly. Once you do use maths to describe chaos it is no longer chaotic but orderly and follows the underlying currents of the new laws. This applies to everything. Cheers!
The Universe is the way it is because it couldn't be any other way. You are just using possible world semantics but logical possibility does not entail metaphysical possibility.
This video utilizes *epistemic* probability and possibility.
@@ApologeticsSquared something can be epistemically possible but metaphysically impossible
Tapdancing. So much easier than asking sky wizard to actually show up.
The fine-tuning argument is debunked by the anthropic principle. Simple as.
What do you think of the part of the video (14:51) where I addressed the Anthropic Principle in reference to this kind of argument?
The (original) fine-tuning argument isn't completely debunked by the anthropic principle, it just reduces the probability of naturalism for people who don't have a full prior commitment to a multiverse that guarantees life.
E.g. Without FTA, someone might say: Naturalistic single universe - 50%, Naturalistic multiverse - 25%, Theism - 25%
When accounting for the FTA, it would be: Naturalistic single universe - ~0%, Naturalistic multiverse - ~50%, Theism - ~50%
(But yeah, focus on Squared's response.)
@@ApologeticsSquared You mean the part where you completely misunderstood the anthropic principle?
Just started video and want to make a prediction.
No Jesus.
(I'll add an edit if I'm wrong.)
Why would that be relevant? Establishing God’s existence first seems a good (or even necessary) dialectical foundation for a case for Christianity.
I think if naturalism can be shown to be highly implausible, then it makes sense to do that first, because many common objections to the Lord Jesus's miracles and resurrection are grounded in naturalism.
@@MatthewFearnley What aspects of naturalism do you find to be implausible? All of the observations square made about the universe in this video are fundamentally naturalistic.
@@rabbitsrevenge1101 I think you've made a subtle but critical error here, by equivocating "naturalism" with "the existence of natural laws".
You could say that all of the observations Squared made about the universe in this video are fundamentally natural, not naturalistic.
But according to the video, the natural laws we would expect on naturalism would be too simple or too chaotic to produce coherent life.
Dang, how do you do it?! An argument for Christianity that doesn't mention Jesus 8 times in a row? No way!
According to naturalism it's extremely probable that Squared wouldn't talk about Jesus, and under theism it's (infinitely) unlikely. Therefore naturlaism is true.
Squared is a joke lol.
at 8:50 why did you swap the simplicity of X with the simplicity of the Universe? That was the PERFECT set up to introduce the viewer to the knowlege of absolute divine simplicity: God is absolutely simple, in fact it's the simplest thing that can explain physical laws!