About the comment on the word skepticism. A principle that I keep in mind is called Lee's Elucidation. A finite number of words must be made to represent an infinite number of things and possibilities. Language Habits in Human Affairs, Irving J. Lee, 1942.
You are interpreting 'fine-tuned' as 'very favorable'. It could also be interpreted as 'Well, that was the whole point of the universe', or '...and tuning requires a tuner', or
If the fine tuning argument is posed in any universe, then that universe is capable of supporting life. The reason is that if the universe were not capable of supporting life, there would be no intelligent life to pose the fine tuning argument. And if a given universe is capable of supporting an entirely different type of intelligent life, then that life would be posing the fine tuning argument with differently fine-tuned parameters. And therefore, the probability of the universe being capable of supporting life is 100%
Well, all fine until your last sentence, which does not logically follow from the others. What we can say is that, given our evident ability to consider the question, we can be sure that we are in a universe whose conditions allow the question to be considered. But this tells us nothing about the number and variety of other universes, nor what proportion of them allow the question to be considered. In other words, as far as we know based on evidence, the probability of all universes being finely tuned for intelligent life is 1.0.
@starfishsystems Here's the thing - if I shuffle a deck of cards, there are 52! possible orderings of cards before I shuffle, and the odds of any given order is 1/(52!) (prior probability). But after I shuffle, the odds of one specific ordering is 1.0, and the odds of any other ordering is 0. (Probability after the event). The Fine Tuning Argument attempts to posit a Prior Probability, but we only have Probability after the Event. The Probability of the universe supporting intelligent life is 100%, because we already know the universe supports intelligent life. This is the same as: if you pick up a 5 card Poker hand and see the 10,J,Q,K,A of spades, the odds of having been dealt a Royal Flush are 100% because you were just dealt a Royal Flush. Unless you make a very specific prediction BEFORE the event and only applying to that deal, you cannot really use Prior Probability after the event.
If a universe is capable of supporting life does that mean it is ('was' ?) fine-tuned go support life? Could a universe actually support life but not be fine tuned to do so? Does a fine -tuned universe imply multiple possible universes some of which are fine tuned for this or that and some not? In my own mind I believe this last is the reason de tat for bring up this question (-statement ). It is meant to sneak God into rhetorical atmosphere.
@arthurwieczorek4894 no, that a universe is capable of supporting life does not have anything to do with whether the universe is fine tuned. Life fine tunes itself to the area it occupies. If life occurs, it will tune itself for the environment. Just like if there is a pothole and it rains, the water adjusts itself to the hole. You don't start with a shape of water and dig a hole to fit the water. You don't start with a specification for life and build a universe for that specification.
@@aaronbredon2948 Your comment brings up still another equivocation in the use of 'fine-tuning'. Does it refer to evolved life or does it refer to abiogenesis?
What is knowledge? Let's appreciate that question in the light of what it's opposite would be. Falsehood and ignorance. Ignorance as in 'I don't know what it is' , 'I don't know what to do'. Falsehood as in 'that statement is not correct'. Knowledge presupposes a world, a being with cognitive capability, and life tasks to be dealt with in that world by that being.
In epistemology justification can only be achieved for principles that are framed in such a way as to be falsifiable. Baring that, another route is to accept a principle as a premise. A scientific approach to premise principles would be have as few as possible, keep in mind that they are premises, and be on the lookout to possibly ground them. Further, the premises should be as simple as possible, premises that can be the foundation for research are preferable to ones with no such avenue, and a scientist should have at least a nodding aquatince with competing premises.
There is one observable universe, in which everything takes place that can affect us in any way. If you want to say there are conceptual universes, imagined universes, that's a very different order of existence. These only exist as states of mind in some being able to embody such a state of mind. But these universes have no existence otherwise. We might conjecture that beyond what we can ever observe exists another expression of reality, for example one which presumably existed in order to give rise to the observed Big Bang inflation. We can't SAY that it DOES exist, but it seems possible or even sufficient as an explanation of what we can observe.
'The universe is fine-tuned for life.' 'The universe is fine-tuned for black holes.' 'The universe is fine-tuned for mammals.' 'The universe is fine-tuned such that I got that parking spot.' So is a universe fine-tuned for anything that happens to be in it? Is the response 'The universe is fine-tuned for life' supposed to be an answer to the question How does life come about from a universal of matter? 'The universe is fine-tuned for life'---is that supposed to be an atheistic stance, implying 'Life naturally arose from physical laws and no devine creation required' ?
ID/ creationism / fine tuning arguments are all based on the absurd assumption that our life bearing world is the only one that could ever happen in all of eternity and infinity. Also, that is only taking into consideration that "life" can only happen the way it did here. There are probably many trillions of ways to get to sentient beings. Even if life required a pre-existing mechanism to make it happen, there is no reason to think that the process may just be automatic and universal. Adding a personality (gods), would just be adding an exponentially greater, and unnecessary, improbability. Chaos may be the norm in our universe, but may be rare in the infinite cosmos.
I would say it's more likely the other way around, that life is tuned to the universe. Let's take a puddle of water for example. The hole doesn't shape it's self to fit the water, the water takes the shape of the hole to fill it. The universe is the hole and life is the water.
@insanetubegain I agree that life is primary and the physical universe is secondary. I also agree that life has been conditioned by the physical environment/universe. The sweet spot for life to flourish still stands true for the strictly physical universe even though life exists without the physical universe.
@@jamesbishop9156 The universe is primary because it could exist without life, but I don't think physical life could exist without a universe ,so logically it would be secondary to the primary universe.
@@jamesbishop9156 As far as life outside the physical, I've seen no evidence at all, only claims, so it would have to be demonstrated to be true before I could believe it. A claim, or someone having faith aren't evidence to me.
@insanetubegain The "physical" universe IS primary for "physical " life to exist. You are correct. The metaphysical life exists as primary in both the physical and metaphysical universes. Metaphysical existence is even more real and aww inspiring than this physical universe of death, destruction, and reincarnation.
I have great respect for people with Scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people. This is completely over my head.
Stronger and stronger justification of thesis. I call that ampliative truth.
The cosmos is mostly empty, eternal, space that is unsupporting of life as we know it.
Thanks to Dan for clarifying the word use at the beginning - "hypothesis" vs "theory" (the latter of which has a lot of evidence already established).
great! thanks to all! keep going!
About the comment on the word skepticism. A principle that I keep in mind is called Lee's Elucidation. A finite number of words must be made to represent an infinite number of things and possibilities. Language Habits in Human Affairs, Irving J. Lee, 1942.
The universe must be fine tuned for gods. We have thousands of them.
Thousands of them, many called by the same name.
Life is always fine tuning itself for the universe. It’s called natural selection.
I wouldn't say that universe is fine tuned at all with hurricanes, tsunamis, genetic abnormalities, cancers etc
You are interpreting 'fine-tuned' as 'very favorable'. It could also be interpreted as 'Well, that was the whole point of the universe', or '...and tuning requires a tuner', or
@arthurwieczorek4894 you make no sense at all
If the fine tuning argument is posed in any universe, then that universe is capable of supporting life.
The reason is that if the universe were not capable of supporting life, there would be no intelligent life to pose the fine tuning argument.
And if a given universe is capable of supporting an entirely different type of intelligent life, then that life would be posing the fine tuning argument with differently fine-tuned parameters.
And therefore, the probability of the universe being capable of supporting life is 100%
Well, all fine until your last sentence, which does not logically follow from the others.
What we can say is that, given our evident ability to consider the question, we can be sure that we are in a universe whose conditions allow the question to be considered.
But this tells us nothing about the number and variety of other universes, nor what proportion of them allow the question to be considered.
In other words, as far as we know based on evidence, the probability of all universes being finely tuned for intelligent life is 1.0.
@starfishsystems
Here's the thing - if I shuffle a deck of cards, there are 52! possible orderings of cards before I shuffle, and the odds of any given order is 1/(52!) (prior probability).
But after I shuffle, the odds of one specific ordering is 1.0, and the odds of any other ordering is 0. (Probability after the event).
The Fine Tuning Argument attempts to posit a Prior Probability, but we only have Probability after the Event.
The Probability of the universe supporting intelligent life is 100%, because we already know the universe supports intelligent life.
This is the same as: if you pick up a 5 card Poker hand and see the 10,J,Q,K,A of spades, the odds of having been dealt a Royal Flush are 100% because you were just dealt a Royal Flush.
Unless you make a very specific prediction BEFORE the event and only applying to that deal, you cannot really use Prior Probability after the event.
If a universe is capable of supporting life does that mean it is ('was' ?) fine-tuned go support life? Could a universe actually support life but not be fine tuned to do so? Does a fine -tuned universe imply multiple possible universes some of which are fine tuned for this or that and some not? In my own mind I believe this last is the reason de tat for bring up this question (-statement ). It is meant to sneak God into rhetorical atmosphere.
@arthurwieczorek4894 no, that a universe is capable of supporting life does not have anything to do with whether the universe is fine tuned.
Life fine tunes itself to the area it occupies.
If life occurs, it will tune itself for the environment.
Just like if there is a pothole and it rains, the water adjusts itself to the hole.
You don't start with a shape of water and dig a hole to fit the water.
You don't start with a specification for life and build a universe for that specification.
@@aaronbredon2948 Your comment brings up still another equivocation in the use of 'fine-tuning'. Does it refer to evolved life or does it refer to abiogenesis?
"Existential curiosity."
To know or not to know how the big bang came to be is irrelevant. We are here now...
What is knowledge? Let's appreciate that question in the light of what it's opposite would be. Falsehood and ignorance. Ignorance as in 'I don't know what it is' , 'I don't know what to do'. Falsehood as in 'that statement is not correct'. Knowledge presupposes a world, a being with cognitive capability, and life tasks to be dealt with in that world by that being.
In epistemology justification can only be achieved for principles that are framed in such a way as to be falsifiable. Baring that, another route is to accept a principle as a premise. A scientific approach to premise principles would be have as few as possible, keep in mind that they are premises, and be on the lookout to possibly ground them. Further, the premises should be as simple as possible, premises that can be the foundation for research are preferable to ones with no such avenue, and a scientist should have at least a nodding aquatince with competing premises.
There is only one physical universe and many metaphysical universes. She is correct about multi- universes.
There is one observable universe, in which everything takes place that can affect us in any way.
If you want to say there are conceptual universes, imagined universes, that's a very different order of existence. These only exist as states of mind in some being able to embody such a state of mind. But these universes have no existence otherwise.
We might conjecture that beyond what we can ever observe exists another expression of reality, for example one which presumably existed in order to give rise to the observed Big Bang inflation. We can't SAY that it DOES exist, but it seems possible or even sufficient as an explanation of what we can observe.
There is only one physical universe and many metaphysical universes.
'The universe is fine-tuned for life.' 'The universe is fine-tuned for black holes.' 'The universe is fine-tuned for mammals.' 'The universe is fine-tuned such that I got that parking spot.'
So is a universe fine-tuned for anything that happens to be in it? Is the response 'The universe is fine-tuned for life' supposed to be an answer to the question How does life come about from a universal of matter? 'The universe is fine-tuned for life'---is that supposed to be an atheistic stance, implying 'Life naturally arose from physical laws and no devine creation required' ?
In a word, no.
ID/ creationism / fine tuning arguments are all based on the absurd assumption that our life bearing world is the only one that could ever happen in all of eternity and infinity.
Also, that is only taking into consideration that "life" can only happen the way it did here. There are probably many trillions of ways to get to sentient beings.
Even if life required a pre-existing mechanism to make it happen, there is no reason to think that the process may just be automatic and universal. Adding a personality (gods), would just be adding an exponentially greater, and unnecessary, improbability. Chaos may be the norm in our universe, but may be rare in the infinite cosmos.
More like designed for death
Just another attempt to put "God" into a science equation.
Yes, This physical universe IS fine tuned for life. It has a sweet spot for life to flourish that comes and goes.
Would you like to know how?...
I would say it's more likely the other way around, that life is tuned to the universe. Let's take a puddle of water for example. The hole doesn't shape it's self to fit the water, the water takes the shape of the hole to fill it. The universe is the hole and life is the water.
@insanetubegain I agree that life is primary and the physical universe is secondary. I also agree that life has been conditioned by the physical environment/universe. The sweet spot for life to flourish still stands true for the strictly physical universe even though life exists without the physical universe.
@@jamesbishop9156 The universe is primary because it could exist without life, but I don't think physical life could exist without a universe ,so logically it would be secondary to the primary universe.
@@jamesbishop9156 As far as life outside the physical, I've seen no evidence at all, only claims, so it would have to be demonstrated to be true before I could believe it. A claim, or someone having faith aren't evidence to me.
@insanetubegain The "physical" universe IS primary for "physical " life to exist. You are correct. The metaphysical life exists as primary in both the physical and metaphysical universes. Metaphysical existence is even more real and aww inspiring than this physical universe of death, destruction, and reincarnation.