James argues that the FTA is an obvious argument from ignorance because we don't know what kinds of life could arise in other sets of constants. He then follows that with questions like, "what if there are other processes?" and other questions like this. Its not well known, but these kinds of questions are also categorized as arguments from ignorance. "We don't know x, so x"
One thing worth noting: Fodor's claim about alternative life gets the physics wrong. If the cosmological constant were different probably no two atoms could interact!
The cosmological constant controls the speed of the expansion of the universe. Seems to operate exclusively on a much larger scale than the atomic level.
@@Benspiano To quote physicist Aron Wall "* If the C.C. were the expected size & negative, the universe would collapse in about 10^-43 seconds * If the C.C. were the expected size & positive, “objects” separated by more than 10^-35 meters would be unable to communicate no complex objects of any sort would be possible, let alone life!"
Wall is probably assuming, unfairly, that the constants other than C.C. have the same values they do in our actual universe. If any of those varied along with C.C., there might be a better chance of atoms’ interacting.
I much prefer Aquinas' Fifth Way to the Fine-Tuning argument. It basically states that for physics to have a constant system by which all things act, it requires an intellegent designer of the physics system. It really doesn't matter what kind of physics. What's important is that things aren't random on the whole.
I expect Fodor to make a response video because I think I'm seeing issues here and I'm only on argument 2 or your first objection. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I think you and your analogy are both missing the point. You say that considering other contexts or other forms of life is irrelevant because we know which ones we have, and in the analogy you say the probability of entering the building through a specific door with a random 4-digit code is 1/10,000. This seems to miss Fodor's point that a life permitting universe is not known to be necessarily bound to a specific context or a specific form of life. Saying that the specific context or lifeform we ended up with matters is like being amazed at rolling an 89 for the win on a 10,000 sided die because it had a probability 1/10,000, without knowing the size of the subset of winning numbers. To map this to your analogy, entering the building does not represent obtaining our universe's specific context or our forms of life, it represents obtaining a life permitting universe without necessarily constraining the context or form of life. Why assume each keypad only accepts a singular 4-digit code? Other passing codes would represent other forms of life that still imply a life permitting universe. I guess the keypads represent the contexts because there is potentially multiple passing codes per keypad
I'm not sure about everything in your third response, but I think your first two responses are better than most commenters think they are. Would you be wiling to have a live discussion with James Fodor? He seems to be interested in engaging with people directly.
36:42 _"Fodor has to show that there are so many alternatives to fine-tuning that the probability of a fine-tuned universe given theism would be just as low as given naturalism"_ But this is exactly what he does, he explains that there are so many possibility in the theistic hypothesis that we can't even conceive of all of them... At least in naturalism there seems to be a limit : what is consistent with naturalism... But ANYTHING seems to be consistent with theism... God just has to wish it so...
38:40 _"The objection that maybe your theory doesn't actually predict the data because of some reasoning you haven't thought of that applies to literally all theories in all Fields throughout all time"_ Well no... Some theories make things impossible in the sense that it would be contradictory to the theory... But what creation (what universe) is contradictory to the theistic hypothesis ? Whatever god wants to create, it can create it right ? So we should not expect any creation over any other creation. Theism completely fails at giving any "contrastive explanation" regarding the creation. Unless it makes claims about god's psychology... But any such claim brings the prior probability of the theistic hypothesis right down the drain, because why would we have ANY sort of access to a probability measure concerning the psychology of something that is completely independent of us, of our own psychology, of the evolutionary pressures that gave rise to our cognitions etc ? The following is an excerpt from Sober 2003 : _"Our judgements about what counts as a sign of intelligent design must be based on empirical information about what designers often do and what they rarely do. As of now, these judgements are based on our knowledge of human intelligence. The more our hypotheses of intelligent designers depart from the human case, the more in the dark we are as to what the ground rules are for inferring intelligent design"._
45:00 _"The naturalism side of the probability space is going to be plagued by a similar problem naturalism predicts physical laws much simpler than our own which further reduces the probability of fine-tuning given naturalism"_ Well arguably no, since in naturalism, one could say that the possibility space is limited by the naturalistic ontology. Which means that a universe full of leprechauns is not possible on the naturalistic side, because for naturalists, leprechauns don't exist. However, NOTHING prevents god from creating a universe full of leprechauns.... This means that the possibility space is infinitely larger on the theistic side. Which means that observing a world like the one we observe is much much less probable under the theistic hypothesis. 46:50 _"However the theism side of the probability space isn't affected by this consideration"_ That's where you're wrong... You haven't demonstrated ANY limitation to what god would want to create. God doesn't HAVE to create life... Therefore god can just as well create a _"boring"_ universe... Any limitation that you impose on god's psychology is pure speculation on your part. Which has an infinitely small prior probability.
you're absolutely cooking with these replies - so many of the points made in this video either misunderstand what Fodor is doing or are analogies with stark relevant differences
"at least in naturalism there seems to be a limit : what is consistent with naturalism.." Anything is consistent with naturalism: Everything is either a brute fact or a coincidence that no one has seen: -If the universe is finely tuned it is a brute fact. If not, it is just what is expected from a mindless reality. -If the universe has a beginning is a brute fact and if not, just what the naturalist expects... an eternal universe. -If life began, a coincidence that no one has seen did it and the naturalist would believe it without any evidence. ANYTHING seems to be consistent with "naturalism": blind faith is the only thing you need.
Yo squared I have a question about your response to these objections. In the end, how would we determine how much of the theism square go cross out? Because we can't really know God's motives it seems any amount we try to cross out is arbitrary. Or is it just a weakness of the argument that the final probability of the fine tuning given theism is really unknowable?
I think the lock anology doesnt work and it is trying to do an intuition pump using our ordinary common sense. For example in lock anology if the person has x ray vison and can see inside the lock than it is possible he didn't know but deduced it. Of course you can say that someone having x ray vison has low prior probability but this is why the anology breaks down since changing constants of nature is already on the level of someone having Xray vison.
If you are attempting to understand divine psychology, especially from a theist perspective where the creator is involved in the world, then religion shouldn't be dismissed as an interface between us and our creator.
what i love is the cake and eat it philosophy religists have, on the one hand you can tell me exactly what god wants and how he expects me to behave and then you say god is beyond human comprehension, it makes me think you talk gibberish ALL the time.
@@HarryNicNicholasIt is meant to be an argument against theism or the reason for God fine-tuning the universe from a theism perspective. From a more Biblical ‘theism’ perspective God probably doesn't need to fine-tune the universe, but might be providing some evidence for His existence even if it is evidence that is still possible to dismiss.
There's some issues with your first objection as it misunderstands key elements of what is being raised. To use your analogy. Alive and Bob do not, in fact, know that the probability is 1/10,000 given that they do not know whether the combination entered is the only one that opens that door. Think of the extreme of a door that only opens if the 4 digits are entered. This would mean that whatever 4 digit combination was entered would open the door. This is the type of implicit premise being made by the fine tuning argument. Regarding alternate forms of equations. He is indicating that the constants arise and can't reasonably be separated from the equations. To change the equations without changing the constants would be similar to varying the conclusion in a sound argument. The conclusion follows from the premises and can't be reasonably changed without changing the premises as well.
I think that's a helpful extension to the analogy. But I would say that with at least some of the constants, it's reasonable to assume that they can only permit life like ours in a small set of possible combinations. Because there are a number of ways that our universe seems finely tuned, we could think of each constant as another in a series of doors that must be entered through. Some of them might, against our expectations, turn out to allow many combinations, not just one. For some the sequence might be shorter than we think, and hence give fewer possibilities than we'd expect. So I guess it depends on how many of the combinations you'd be willing to write off as actually very guessable, and how many you wouldn't.
@MatthewFearnley Depends on what you mean by life like ours. If you mean for you, Matthew Fearnley, to exist on TH-cam, then we would need to have the constants as they are. I'd agree, but I find that irrelevant. If you mean some form of self reproducing entities, then I think you're assuming as much, if not more, as Alice regarding the door code. The issue with you depicting them as subsequent doors to pass through, is that these aren't independent. What I mean by that is if you vary a constant one way and another in a different way, then you'd potentially enter a different range of life permitting universes. Which isn't how entering a building through successive door codes works. Notably, all this is ignoring the other issue of how varying the constants without allowing for the varying of equations is more than problematic. This isn't to be confused with there being more combinations to a door or a larger range. But more like saying 1 + 1 = 2 and you can't vary the 2 to just any number as the conclusion of 2 follows from how everything else is structured and defined.
@@Boundless_Border I think we could model different ranges of life-permitting universes as a combination lock (if you type in a correct value) that opens one of two or more doors depending on which value you type - with each door possibly having more doors behind. I think different laws/equations could be modelled in the same way. Although I guess maybe we could model it as just choosing a door rather than keying in a combination and hoping one opens. If we found out later that we could have just entered a single combination that would opened a door straight into the building, or simply chosen that door, that wouldn't avoid our surprise at having entered through a succession of doors, guessing a successful combination each time.
@MatthewFearnley You can conceptualize it this way, sure. Yet within the description, you already fall short of describing it accurately. This isn't to discredit you but to demonstrate exactly how difficult it is to properly understand the moving parts. A simple correction is that every number is a "correct" value that opens some number of doors. Different laws and equations can't be modeled in the same way. This would be like modeling all real and potential books as a combination lock of established and potential languages. A "Y" in one language is a letter, a syllable, a word, or a sentence of another. And the books being of any length. You're no longer in the realm of being able to depict these meaningfully. Your final paragraph demonstrates the issue with these probability assessments well. You do have to factor in all the probabilities. This includes likely and unlikely options. You are weighing it against naturalism itself, not this version of natural reality. If it was only against this version, you wouldn't be able to vary either the constants or the equations. So even if we ended up entering on one of the unlikely door sides, overall naturalism could be comparatively likely overall to permit life. To illustrate, pulling a King of Hearts from the top of a deck is unlikely. But pulling a non Joker is incredibly likely. Even though pulling up any of the Spades is much more likely than pulling up specifically the King of Hearts. Both were live options in the set of things that make it unlikely to pull a Joker. Even though pulling out a specific card ends up being less likely than pulling out a Joker. The overall analysis is between Joker and non Joker. Not between the card you ended up pulling and a Joker. This is part of the issue regarding retroactively considering probabilities.
14:47 I know this is irrelevant to the analogy but I have been playing a multiplayer game where you can create a private online game that requires a password to get in. However there is a bug and any password works. I would suspect a similar bug in the keypad.
First analogy problem: You do not have a reason to know how many digits even that one door the code is. In fact you don't even know that the code only uses digits. This analogy seeming is not understanding what Fodor is saying about the relationship between constants and equations/mechanisms, combined with the probable significance of dark stuff. It's highly probable you don't even know a high percentage of the possible input values. The parallel of life as having got through a door: maybe doors take a completely different form where codes take different forms, where "getting through" has different meanings, if the code can be different to what you are imagining. This analogy is steeped in (probably) unintentional anthropomorphic elements the over-simplicity and lack of imagination and understanding of which ironically are what Fodor in part argues is the problem with the fine tuning argument.
This is interesting but i believe this is a misconception that the values of the constant are fixed by the equations, that is one of the points of the fine-tuning argument. The constants could change while the equations stays the same and it is his analogy of the constant being like the curve of a slope which is incorrect, as far as i know those constants are not fixed by necessity of the form of the equation. So right off the bat, i was and still am confused of that first argument, i think it is known that the constant can change while the equations stays the same. Also is it really relevant to know exactly the numbers of possible inputs ? The fine-tuning argument states that only a very precise range of values allows for life, those open the door within our known framework and as i said, it is known that the constant are not fixed by necessity of the equation and they could have been different while the equations stays the same. The fine-tuning doesn't pretend examining what life would or would not be under different equations as that would be a whole different universe and no one has any means to even assess that. Plus other forms of life that we do not know is also kinda irrelevant to the actual point of the fine-tuning argument. It is grounded in empirical evidences while there is no empirical evidences or theoretical models that describe how another form of life could arise. Like picture an object with a specific shape ( life as we know it) and a hole that seems to fit the object ( our known universe) does the fact other objects could pass through another hole shaped differently and even the same hole truly negate the observation that the object with a specific shape requires a specific hole and the hole indeed seems cut specifically for that object ? Note please that again the constant are not a necessity of the equations, that is the hole did not have to to be shaped like that, yet it is.
27:13 _"We can point to a lot of good things that a fine-tuned universe brings about which would therefore motivate an all good being"_ And who decides what is _"good"_ ? If it is the _"all good being"_ then whichever the tuning, it would be fine... And the explanation is therefore on par with the multiverse.
33:24 _"Is the idea here that God could just create a universe that contained some or all of these things but lacked agents like us well that would just be a less valuable"_ Less valuable according to whom ? It might be less valuable according to you, but more valuable according to god, in which case we would expect a lack of _"agents like us"_ on that theistic hypothesis. If, whatever the thing, a world is more valuable if that thing is in it, then theism predicts everything...
1:00:53 _"Luckily we have intuitions about what qualifies as good you can call these your axiological intuitions these axiological intuitions fill out theism and tell us what God is like and what sort of world he would create I think this is quite an elegant account of theisms predictive power"_ Ok... So you actively make your god like you, and you see no problem in so doing... You are a homo sapiens are you not ? And as such, you are a member of a social species, who needs to cooperate to survive. Now is that really surprising that a homo sapiens would value life, and other homo sapiens ? Imagine a dart that is thrown on a wall at random, what you are doing here is drawing the target around the dart, and then be surprised that the dart be in the center of the target ! There is nothing _"elegant"_ about this, this is a completely bankrupt epistemology ! Furthermore, if you want to project your own values onto your god, then it would seem that the fine tuning of the universe favors a Matrix-like simulation hypothesis much more than the theistic one. We have much better reasons to postulate that a physical being, with a body on which to instantiate its mind and cognitive processes, in space and time, much like us, created a simulation of which we are but characters, than a non physical, timeless, spaceless being, which has no body, onto which we have no reason to project our values, created the universe...
I think the building analogy (15:00) gives a false impression cuz most buildings have just a handful of entrances. But Fodor would probably reply life may have billions of entrances not to mention potentially infinite time/multiverses to crack the code for one of them. Another analogy helps me visualize this: if u shuffle a deck of cards well you will end up with a sequence of 52 cards so unlikely it will probably never be reproduced again randomly. However I wouldn't argue it was fine tuned if tons of other combinations would have worked equally well.
Could you further explain your response to the point about alternative forms of life (beginning around 18:15)? I don’t follow. How does it affect the probability calculations? Are you suggesting we should treat this case just like the case of alternative laws? In the latter case, we simply restrict the probability space to those portions in which *our laws* obtain. Are you suggesting we should likewise restrict the probability space to those portions in which we exist as humans (rather than dark matter entities, etc.)? But if we do that, then 100% of naturalism’s probability space is fine-tuned, since that’s a necessary condition on our existing as humans!
// Are you suggesting we should likewise restrict the probability space to those portions in which we exist as humans (rather than dark matter entities, etc.)? But if we do that, then 100% of naturalism’s probability space is fine-tuned, since that’s a necessary condition on our existing as humans! // What I think is actually going on here is that we should restrict the probability space to portions in which we are humans, but not necessarily to portions in which we *exist* as humans. To illustrate, consider the following three propositions: P1) Sherlock Holmes is a cat that exists. P2) Sherlock Holmes is a human that exists. P3) Sherlock Holmes is a human that does not exist. The propositions (P1) and (P2) are obviously coherent statements. What about (P3)? Well, that's just saying that there is some possible person, Sherlock Holmes, such that if he did exist, he would be human, but history did not unfold in such a way to bring about his existence. So I can coherently update on the fact that "Sherlock Holmes is a human" (i.e. either (P2) or (P3) is true) while leaving open the question of whether or not he actually existed. Indeed, we can tell a story where this unfolds: Someone hears a story about Sherlock Holmes and hears that Sherlock Holmes has various properties such as being a detective and being a human, but doesn't know whether or not this story is fictional or veridical until later. Likewise, I think that I can conditionalize on the fact that "I am a human" without necessarily conditionalizing on the fact that I exist. When we do this, most of the naturalism side of the probability space will include the proposition "I am a human that doesn't exist" (because the constants prohibited my life) whereas theism has a much much larger portion which includes the proposition "I am a human that does exist" (because God fine-tuned the constants). So, my existence still confirms theism. I didn't go into this in the video because it gets into the complicated field of anthropics, and I think it's clear that my point about alternative forms of life is true, even if the explanation I give in this comment turns out to be false. That being said, I am quite confident that the explanation I give here is correct! :)
It doesn’t seem as though Fodor factors whether there are differences in probability between the ‘fine-tuning’ being the result of unguided inanimate processes acting entirely without agency, awareness, intelligence or intent and a conscious mind acting with agency, awareness, consciousness, design and purpose. The potential specific purpose for God 'fine-tuning' the universe is secondary to this and may involve theodicies or theology that is based in religion not just philosophy or science. Fodor seems to spend a lot of time arguing entirely against the physicist Barnes with regard to divine psychology, which is outside of the physics and cosmology of the basic fine-tuning argument.
The constants mentioned are not eternal. For example, the coupling constants change according to renormalization group equations, which take into account the effects of virtual particles on the constants at different energy levels. During the earliest high energy stage(s) of the universe, the coupling constants for the different forces appear to converge, suggesting the standard model forces were once unified as a single force. This is the basis for grand unified theories (GUTs). It is not known if any particles at all existed in the earliest stage of the universe (Planck epoch), and for that moment we cannot calculate the value of any constant. The next stage (grand unified epoch) still saw no leptons (e.g., electrons) and the energy was so high that quarks acted like free, unbounded particles. It is only after the breaking of electroweak symmetry (the conditions for which were ripened in the GU epoch) that any particle could have a mass constant. Proving the existence of God from the flower stage just doesnt make sense to me. The flower blossoms only when the conditions are ripe for it to in the bud, and so on down to the seed. It would make more sense to argue from the foundational seed, except the seed of our universe is for now indeterminate.
Thanks for the video!! Here are some thoughts :) (Part 1/3) At 29:50, you consider two beings that are exactly alike except that one refrains from creating anything while the other creates good stuff. You say it’s obvious that the latter being is better. I think this is problematic for a few reasons. First, it seems to entail that God necessarily creates. For God is an essentially perfect being, and perfection cannot be improved upon. So for any world w in which God exists, it’s not possible for God to be better than he is in w. But per your reasoning, if there were an ‘alone world’ in which God refrains from creating, then it *would* be possible for God to be better than he is in this alone world. So, per your reasoning, there is no world in which God refrains from creating. In other words, God necessarily creates. This alone conflicts with traditional theism (and contradicts Catholic dogma, for your Catholic listeners) and also seems to rob God of a certain valuable kind of creative freedom. Second, consider two beings G1 and G2 that are exactly alike except that G1 makes even *better* stuff than G2. By a very natural extension of your reasoning, it seems that G1 is a better being than G2. But then we get serious conundrums for theism. After all, it seems plainly obvious that the actual world is not the best possible world; it seems like there is some world better than the actual world. But given theism, for any world, God is responsible for that world’s actualization. So, given all this, it seems that God could have been better than he is. Not only does this seem to imply that he isn’t perfect (perfection can’t be improved upon!), but it also seems to imply that God is limited in value - he is valuable to such-and-such a degree, but he could have had a higher (or lower) value. This seems like an unwelcome conclusion in its own right. (It also seems to introduce potentially arbitrary limits on God.) Third, your point seems to contradict traditional theism’s doctrine of divine aseity, since it seems to require that things apart from God are required for God to have his level of goodness. God’s goodness is a function, at least in part, of things other than God. At 30:18, you consider the point that God making additional valuable things wouldn’t actually improve reality. But I think you might be a bit too quick here. I think the idea behind the point is best captured by Mark Johnston in his paper “Why did the One not remain within itself?”. Therein he considers a traditional understanding of God’s goodness as *absolutely unsurpassable* , writing that God’s “degree of goodness taken as a whole is unsurpassable, and not just unsurpassable by him; no other thing or plurality of things could have a degree of goodness that surpassed it.” After all, a being with this sort of goodness seems more perfect than one without it! This point is even more poignant if we accept mereological universalism. For if we think God’s creation improves reality, then it seems like we’re committed to thinking that the mereoogical sum of God and creation is an entity that is *better* than God! But surely there cannot be an entity better than God. (It also raises questions about arbitrary limits again - why is God limited to his particular degree of value, given that some entities can have higher degrees of value? We no longer have the simple ‘maximal/unsurpassable value’ that Rasmussen, Swinburne, et al champion as a theoretical virtue of theism.) At 30:36, you consider a point about the purity of reality. But again, I think you might be a bit too quick here. While additional happy people may add *moral* values to the world, it detracts from *other* values of the world - values that the alone world exemplifies and which could be argued to be incommensurable with the aforementioned moral values. As Pruss writes in his “Divine Creative Freedom”, the alone world (labeled ‘wNC’) “exhibits the aesthetic value of simplicity to the maximal degree possible: it is a world where only God exists. This point is more compelling if God is simple, but it also applies if he is not, as long as there is no world where God is less complex than in wNC. Simply by containing one or more contingent beings, w is less simple and elegant than wNC. Granted, w may exhibit many other aesthetic and non-aesthetic values to a greater degree than wNC. But the maximal simplicity of wNC does make wNC better in respect of a distinct value, and if w is better in other respects, then this should yield weak incommensurability.” At 33:23, you consider Fodor’s point that perhaps God wants a universe containing life without moral agents. You say that this would be a less valuable world than one containing moral agents like us. But full honesty here: I have no clue how you know that such a world would be less valuable! From whence cometh your knowledge of the total value of these worlds? Have you done the calculations? Weighed up the utils of pleasure against the dolors of pain? And multiplied that by the aretaic factor? A bit more seriously, I cannot see how one would justify this overwhelmingly complex value judgment. Sure, it’s absolutely clear that moral agency brings with it additional values - profound love, moral virtue, moral growth, and so on. But it’s also absolutely clear that moral agency brings with it additional disvalues - profound hatred, moral vice, moral decay, genocides, and so on. Why think these additional values outweigh these additional disvalues? (As pre-emption: it strikes me as silly to respond, at this juncture, ‘well it seems intuitive to me that the former values outweigh the latter disvalues!’ I don’t have that intuition; I strongly suspect its presence is heavily influenced by one’s life circumstances; and we have good reason to think our intuitions aren’t appropriately sensitive to such extremely complicated facts that aggregate over billions of years and billions of lives and quadrillions of actions.) This also might be a more general problem for the fine-tuning argument if the solution to the divine psychology problem appeals to a perfect being wanting to make valuable things - a (potential) problem that Hud Hudson and other skeptical theists have pushed. In particular, it’s just not clear why we should think that the values associated with embodied conscious life outweigh the disvalues associated therewith. (I say this ‘might’ be a more general problem because there might be ways to solve it; I’d need to reflect further. For instance, maybe one could try to say that, even if the comparative weights of value/disvalue is unclear, it’s not *ludicrously unlikely* that the value outweighs the disvalue; and if it does, then it’s not terribly unlikely that God would create embodied conscious life. So while the argument may take a probabilistic hit, it wouldn’t be so devastating as to remove much of its force. I’d want to see this point more rigorously probabilistically worked-out before endorsing it, though.)
(Part 2/3) At 37:35, you consider the electrons in love objection. Before commenting on your response to it, I think Fodor didn’t really flesh out the objection in as much detail as I would have liked. It may be helpful, then, for me to flesh it out a bit further. I take it that the idea is roughly the following. The probability that the constants would fall within the narrow life-permitting range conditional on theism is roughly just as low as the probability that the constants would fall within the narrow life-permitting range conditional on naturalism, since God could have created conscious moral agents within pretty much any cosmos he could create. After all, God could have just altered the psychophysical laws so that, e.g., particles are conscious moral agents with rich inner lives who can mentally communicate and relate with one another even if they're, e.g., billions of light years away. (And their spatial, temporal, and other physical relations could have all sorts of interpersonal relationship effects, too.) Psychophysical laws, as you know, are truths about the connections between mental states and physical states. In the actual world, these psychophysical laws connect mental states with embodied, highly complex, biological life forms. But God could have made valuable conscious moral agents in just about *any* cosmos, including cosmoi devoid of embodied highly complex biological life forms - i.e., cosmoi whose constants fall outside the narrow life-permitting range. And there doesn't seem to be any extremely strong reason why God would choose specifically embodied complex biological life forms to serve as conscious moral agents as opposed to other sorts of physical entities to serve as conscious moral agents. Both families of worlds would realize the profound value of conscious moral agency, and there doesn't seem to be any extremely strong reason to expect God to side with the former sort of world over the latter sort of world. And so it seems like we should also be indifferent (or near indifferent) under theism across the range of values that the constants could take. So, Pr(life-permitting constants | theism) ≈ Pr(life-permitting constants | naturalism). Now for your response. First, you note that this objection will make it “plainly impossible” to block the psychophysical harmony argument. A few things can said in response. First, this response seems to render the FTA parasitic on the psychophysical harmony argument, in such a way that the FTA no longer gives us independent support for God’s existence in addition to that provided by the psychophysical harmony argument. In effect, this seems to be a ‘dialectical win’ for the naturalist; she now only needs to address the psychophysical harmony argument, rather than both arguments. Second, it’s not *impossible* to block the psychophysical harmony argument if one accepts the electrons in love objection. We can easily imagine a Type A Physicalist running the electrons in love objection as an *internal critique* of theism. They might say that the *theist* is committed to the epistemic possibility of these various sorts of psychophysical laws given that they already posit a non-physical mind with mental states not a priori derivable from physical/functional states, in which case the objection can still drastically lower the probability of life-permitting constants *given theism* . But this person can consistently make *that* case while being a Type A Physicalist and thinking that these alternative psychophysical laws are *not* epistemically possible after all, thereby blocking the psychophysical harmony argument. Even if this isn’t a particularly attractive or plausible view, it does seem to refute your claim that the argument is “plainly impossible” to block if one mounts the electrons in love objection. Moreover, there are many other responses one might raise to the psychophysical harmony argument that grant the epistemic possibility of these alternative psychophysical laws. You seem to be assuming that granting their epistemic possibility somehow makes it ‘plainly impossible’ to respond to the argument, but this is to neglect the many responses to the argument that *don’t* deny their epistemic possibility. (E.g., one such response is to pinpoint independently motivated constraints on intrinsic probability that bias harmonious psychophysical laws; another such response is to argue that theism’s intrinsic probability is correspondingly lowered by positing a psychophysically harmonious being; etc.) Even if you think these responses don’t work, their ability to block the argument is not ‘plainly impossible’, and they are entirely compatible with running the electrons in love objection. Your second response to the electrons in love objection, beginning at 38:18, is to appeal to the aesthetic value of biological life as conferring more value than electrons in love. As you say, “biology is cool… it has some sort of beauty”. This response does not strike me as convincing. First, it seems to rest on aesthetic realism, which is both controversial and non-obvious, and I’m guessing most naturalists will reject it. (One solution to this is to build into your hypothesis the conjunction of aesthetic realism and the claim that, at least given aesthetic realism, our aesthetic judgments are mostly reliable. It’s worth noting, though, that many naturalists will find aesthetic realism obviously false or silly, so this will make theism have an extremely low prior by their lights, thus significantly damaging the theist’s argument.) Second, to the extent that I have these aesthetic intuitions, it seems to me that an electrons-in-love world is also very beautiful and extremely cool, and it’s not at all clear why it’s less beautiful or cool than a biological world. Third, there’s also *lots* of ugliness/aesthetic disvalue in the biological world, and it’s not clear that the aesthetic value outweighs the aesthetic disvalue. Fourth, even if there’s some aesthetic value in a biological-conscious-life world that’s absent in the electrons-in-love world, the electrons-in-love world is more valuable in *other* respects that the biological-conscious-life world - e.g., the latter contains the bads of death, predation, disease, decay, etc., whereas the former doesn’t. Fifth, even if there is some added beauty with complex biological organisms, I don’t see how this added value *significantly increases* the probability of a biological-conscious-life world under theism. Sure, it might make that sort of world more probable under theism than an arbitrarily chosen electrons-in-love world chosen at random. But this by itself isn’t enough to defang the electrons in love objection. To illustrate this, imagine that we have a constant that could take on 10^54 different values, only one of which produces biological life. Then Pr(this constant is biological-life-permitting | indifference naturalism) = 1/10^54. Now, if the electrons-in-love objection works, then we should also be indifferent across the values of this constant under theism, since God could get valuable conscious moral agents regardless of whether they’re embodied biological life forms. So Pr(this constant is biological-life-permitting | theism) should also be 1/10^54. Now, if the added aesthetic value of biological life only makes the biological-life-world (say) 10 times more probable given theism than any arbitrarily chosen electrons-in-love world, then this only raises Pr(this constant is biological-life-permitting | theism) from 1/10^54 to 1/10^53. And when we turn this into a likelihood ratio (comparing theism to indifference naturalism), we have only the slightest of evidence for theism (a Bayes Factor of 10, which is far from the slam dunk FTA proponents promised). What this shows is that it’s not enough to highlight the added aesthetic value of biological-conscious-life worlds compared to electrons-in-love worlds. It must be shown, in addition, that this aesthetic value is *so valuable* that it *very significantly* (rather than mildly) increases the probability of biological-life-permitting constants under theism. Yet you have shown no such thing.
(Part 3/3) At 42:40, you consider the objection from different sets of laws. Here you point to two considerations purportedly favoring one set of laws over two: aesthetic value/elegance, and greater scientific discoverability. One thing to note about this is that you already *appear* committed (though correct me if I’m wrong!) to God creating at least two sets of laws governing (or describing) creation: physical laws and psychophysical laws. Do you think this duality of sets of laws hampers or worsens or prevents or diminishes scientific discoverability compared to if only one were operative? Prima facie, it doesn’t seem to me to do so. Do you also think it makes reality less aesthetically valuable than if just one set were operative? But these are minor points. The major points replicate a number of the points made in Part 2 above. For instance: (i) the aesthetic point seems to assume aesthetic realism; (ii) interactions among different sets of laws *also* seems aesthetically valuable to me; perhaps the aesthetic value of elegance is lost, but other aesthetic values like contrast are gained; and (iii) even if there is some slight added aesthetic value and scientific discoverability with one set of laws, I don’t see how these added values *significantly increase* the probability of one-law-set universes over two-law-set universes under theism, which is seemingly needed to avoid the objection at hand. (I take it that the objection at hand is structurally similar to the electrons in love point. The objection is basically that, even if the *physical* laws and *physical* constants of the universe were not life-permitting, God could still create conscious embodied life forms in the universe by either continuous miracles or by having them obey a different set of laws; and since there doesn’t appear to be a very strong reason for God to prefer as opposed to , we get (as before) that Pr(life-permitting constants | theism) ≈ Pr(life-permitting constants | naturalism).) At 45:00, you argue that the naturalism side of the probability space also has the ‘crowding out problem’. Perhaps I’m not understanding your argument, but all those super simple physical law structures are *also* alternative law structures that God could have actualized while nevertheless securing the good of conscious moral agents - he need only alter the psychophysical laws accordingly. So these alternative law structures don’t *uniquely* diminish the probability of biological-life-permitting laws/constants on naturalism; they *also* diminish the probability of biological-life-permitting laws/constants on theism. At 1:01:22, you say “it does seem that life is good, so theism does predict that God would be pre-disposed to create life.” I think *conscious moral and non-moral agents* are good. But I don’t see why specifically *biological* conscious moral and non-moral agents would be better than non-biological conscious moral and non-moral agents. But *this* , it seems to me, is needed to avoid the most forceful articulations of the divine psychology point (which are basically just the electrons in love objection and the continuous miracles/two sets of laws objection). If there’s nothing particularly special about *biology specifically* , then those objections kick in: we should then be (roughly) indifferent across the range of values of the constants of the laws of nature *even under theism* . Of course, you might appeal to the aesthetic value of biological life here, but that is addressed in Part 2!
@@MajestyofReason Hey Joe, you didn't address his point on _"banktheism"_ around 58:00. I proposed a mathematical demonstration that banktheism is actually an entailment of Bayes' Theorem in one of my comments under this video (unfortunately I can't give you the link without being blocked by TH-cam's bot, I wrote that comment 2 days ago). This was largely motivated by your video on bayesianism and the part about "likelihood rigging". I would love for you to have a look at my proof, and tell me if you think I made a mistake. (I can also just print the proof in this thread if you'd be interested)
I am curious, by traditional theism do you just mean classical theism or are you also including things like Christian theism abroad as well. If the latter why does Christian theism in general commit one to the view of god having leeway freedom?
The door analogy, the immediate answer is that the 1/10k figure is an upper bound. In reality it can be lowered due to intuition. For example it is more likely that people start their code with 1 because it is a birth year, rather than 8. I would argue intuition retains ignorance of the code.
14:00 - Wait wait wait... your first response to Fodor is to say that even if the probabilities are low in other contexts, that doesn't matter, because we do know the context we actually do have? I mean, sure, granted, we know our context... but we also know our constants. I don't think you'd let me off the hook for saying "even if the odds of life are low given other constants, it doesn't matter, because we do know the constants we do have," though, so why should I allow you to say what you said here? This one is off to a shaky start imo, seems dangerously close to being special pleading.
He’s using a probabilistic fallacy. If I hit a dartboard on the bullseye, it definitely happened, despite a near-zero probability of hitting that specific spot. If God was guiding my dart and wanted me to hit a bullseye, He would make me hit exactly the spot I did, with 100% probability. Therefore, it’s much more likely that God was guiding my dart. You have to be aware of when you are evaluating the probability: before or after the update. He uses before for naturalism and after for Theism, which artificially inflates the actual odds. The argument is flawed from the outset.
30:00 - I think you're looking at this slightly wrong. You have to frame it in terms of which universe is more perfect. In the universe with only a perfect God, that universe is quite literally perfect, since God is perfect, and there exists nothing else to blemish it's perfection. In the universe with a God and good things, sure there may be a negligible amount of increased goodness in a sense, but the universe is less perfect, because not 100% of everything is perfect in that universe. To create a turtle might be good, but that turtle won't be perfect. The perfection of that universe would decrease from 100% to 50% (you can do the math however you want, but point is, it's not 100%). The question becomes, would God have a reason to make an imperfect universe despite being perfect himself? I can't think of a reason why a perfect God would be inclined to do that, but I'm all ears if someone has an idea for why that might be the case.
@justanotherguy4382 I agree, it's one of the problems with trying to appeal to a "perfect" or "ultimate" thing. It doesn't mean anything unless someone is there to evaluate the perfection according to their own standards.
@@thesuitablecommand "The question becomes, would God have a reason to make an imperfect universe despite being perfect himself? I can't think of a reason why a perfect God would be inclined to do that.." Oh? What do you prefer to watch: Lord of the Rings or Teletubbies?
@@thesuitablecommand "lotr. I'm not perfect though. Were I perfect, I wouldn't really want to watch either." Well, there you have the reason that you couldn't imagine... the rest would be assumptions of an imperfect being biased towards atheism. For everyone else it's pretty obvious.
With Objection 3, I'm not really sure how much we can deduce from our own human intuitions, about what God would be like and what sort of universe (if any) he would create. However, I think to some extent, I don't think we have to. Rational people have often adhered to religious worldviews without being perturbed by the objection of "why should we think a deity would have been like that?". I think the objection of how improbable it would be for God to be a particular way shouldn't bother us. Fundamentally, I think the objection makes a big presupposition, that we cannot know anything about God, we just have to speculate about what seems most likely to us. But this involves presupposing that God hasn't revealed himself to us, which pretty much entails deism. That's not a good starting point in terms of fairly representing "mere theism". On a side note, I don't see this argument of Fodor's as particularly relevant to Fine Tuning. It stands or falls on its own merit, irrespective of the size of the life-permitting range of constants. One might as well counter the Problem of Evil with an argument about the reliability of the Gospels and Acts.
The fine tuning argument is not very good, because the constants which are its subject don’t really exist. God creates the actual world, and constants or laws we use to describe it are abstractions which we have no reason to think are deliberately created. Fixing the constants and laws so that the universe develops into its being is not how God tells us he created the universe, rather he created the particular things and the laws and constants are byproducts of the real world. I highly recommend Wolfgang Smith’s work on the subject.
Your argument breaks down as the fine-tuning argument can be stated to say life as we know it. To make your Anthropic principle work would require a universe much bigger then we believe.
38:05 _"I think if you're a naturalist the psychophysical harmony argument is already difficult to block"_ The psychophysical harmony argument is extremely easy to block. It is easily defeated by : -Physicalism without epistemic gap, as admitted by the authors of the argument. -Simple anti-realism about semantics for semantic harmony, -Simple anti-realism about normativity for normative harmony.
Or you can hypothesise that there were lots of other organisms that didn't have harmony between physical and mental states and natural selection just filtered them out. I think that this is a genuine possibility.
"-Physicalism without epistemic gap, as admitted by the authors of the argument. -Simple anti-realism about semantics for semantic harmony, -Simple anti-realism about normativity for normative harmony." Then explain your naturalistic hypothesis to explain psychophysical harmony.
@@nemrodx2185 *-"Then explain your naturalistic hypothesis to explain psychophysical harmony."* That's easy : every single psychophysical law is "harmonious", because there isn't anything apart from our mental states that can juge whether a psychophysical law is "harmonious" or not (simple anti-realism about harmony). This means that whatever the psychophysical law, the mind that experiences that law would juge it harmonious.
@@MrGustavier "That's easy: every single psychophysical law is "harmonious", because there isn't anything apart from our mental states that can judge whether a psychophysical law is "harmonious" or not (simple anti-realism about harmony). This means that whatever the psychophysical law, the mind that experiences that law would play it harmonious." This is extremely far-fetched and difficult to defend, especially because we can easily recognize states of psychophysical disharmony, whether real (depression, diabetic neuropathy) or conceptual. Furthermore, you would also be judging from mental states and it becomes self-refuting.
26:42 _"a general psychological explanation essentially functions as a big umbrella covering lots of possible specific psychological explanations Alice's original answer would include boiling water for tea coffee making in inant noodles and countless other possibilities this big umbrella is going to necessarily be more probable than any specific explanation so she should just stick with the umbrella"_ Aren't you doing a double standard with regards to _"psychological explanations"_ there ? If that standard applies to _"psychological explanations",_ then it applies to "non psychological explanations". Otherwise you have a double standard.
"If that standard applies to "psychological explanations", then it applies to "non psychological explanations". Otherwise you have a double standard." Category error.
Apologetics Squared, I thought you think that the Fine-Turning Argument doesn’t work. Didn’t you give a 1 in your series on the cumulative case for theism?
Almost. I thought that the strength of the fine tuning argument overlapped with the strength of the psychophysical harmony argument. In other words, I thought that the fine tuning data was just a different way of expressing the psychophysical harmony data. However, my views have shifted since I made that video.
@@ApologeticsSquared Oh, nice. Thank you for answering the question, also have you ever thought of making a video addressing the Electrons in Love objection to the Fine-Tuning Argument? Anyway good video.
15:10 _"Well hang on a minute we haven't explored any of the other entrances to this building maybe there are other doors that we aren't aware of maybe there are doors that require only a one-digit code"_ That looks like a false analogy. To keep your thought experiment, the 2nd problem Fodor raises would be akin to challenge your claim that _"it requires a specific four-digit code to open"_ (14:33). Maybe the door through which you entered didn't require a specific four digit code... Maybe any sequence of 4 digit would have opened the door, maybe the door was already open, and your friend just punched random numbers just to trick you. Remember, the theistic hypothesis in no way predicts the specific type of life that we encounter... It (supposedly) only predicts that life be encountered... So the door through which you entered is indeed the only door that we are interested in, but Fodor challenges the 1/10000 figure.
I think you might be conflating two objections. On one objection, there might exist equation/constant combinations that are not fragile and support different life-forms. This is what is rebutted by the different-doors analogy. On another objection, the probability an omnipotent God creates physical life-forms in a universe governed by laws is very low. But this is like the hypothesis that if you come upon a boiling pot in an empty cabin. On the cabin being inhabited, the probability that the owner would at that moment leave a boiling pot unattended is very low. But the inhabited-cabin hypothesis swamps the alternatives, like a wild bear accidentally making herself tea or the atoms spontaneously boiling!
@@MrPMO918 *-"I think you might be conflating two objections. On one objection, there might exist equation/constant combinations that are not fragile and support different life-forms. This is what is rebutted by the different-doors analogy."* No that can't be the case. Since the fine tuning argument isn't formulated with regards to our specific kind of life, but with life in general. So any kind of life is through the same door we used to enter. Let me print here a sentence of my OP : "Remember, the theistic hypothesis in no way predicts the specific type of life that we encounter... It (supposedly) only predicts that life be encountered..." Nothing in the theistic hypothesis gives any sort of hint on what type of life we are supposed to encounter... Indeed, I'm sure theists would take any form of extraterrestrial life to be evidence for their hypothesis... *-"On another objection, the probability an omnipotent God creates physical life-forms in a universe governed by laws is very low."* Indeed it is but this is not the point here. The point is that the theistic hypothesis doesn't tell us what type of life we should expect. *-"But this is like the hypothesis that if you come upon a boiling pot in an empty cabin. On the cabin being inhabited, the probability that the owner would at that moment leave a boiling pot unattended is very low. But the inhabited-cabin hypothesis swamps the alternatives, like a wild bear accidentally making herself tea or the atoms spontaneously boiling!"* I'm not sure I understand... What does your use of the word "swamp" mean here ?
@@MrGustavier Sorry for misrepresenting you. *"...Indeed, I'm sure theists would take any form of extraterrestrial life to be evidence for their hypothesis..."* I'm still not 100% sure what you mean, but I'll list two objections in this vicinity and why I think they don't work. As background, I take it that the theistic hypothesis predicts with reasonably high prior probability that there would exist conscious agents with coherent experiences (since it's good for them to exist). *Objection 1: The universe appears finely tuned for life forms **_known to humans_** , but different configurations of the constants could produce different "life" forms that are totally unimaginable.* This objection misunderstands the basic fine-tuning premise. The premise is that given the complexity of particle interaction required for consciousness, different configurations of the constants preclude all potential life forms capable of attaining consciousness (because either the universe would implode or spread too fast apart or whatever). *Objection 2: Electrons in Love. The universe appears finely tuned for consciousness given our psychophysical laws, which require lots of complex particle interaction. But there's no reason to suspect epistemically a priori that the psychophysical laws must be like that. Maybe there are big areas in modal space where the psychophsyical laws are such that **_any_** configuration of the physical constants supports consciousness.* First, this objection just makes more salient the big problem of psychophysical harmony on naturalism. Second, this runs into the alarm-code analogy again. If electrons in love were true, then probabilistically we should be conscious electrons. Given _our_ psychophysical laws, it's exceedingly improbable that the phsyical universe would support consciousness. PS: Sorry, by "swamped" I meant overwhelmed in terms of probability, like, the probability space is saturated by one hypothesis relative to alternatives.
@@MrPMO918 *-"I'm still not 100% sure what you mean, but I'll list two objections in this vicinity and why I think they don't work. As background, I take it that the theistic hypothesis predicts with reasonably high prior probability that there would exist conscious agents with coherent experiences (since it's good for them to exist)."* Conscious agents... ? And why do you think theism predicts conscious agents ? *-"This objection misunderstands the basic fine-tuning premise. The premise is that given the complexity of particle interaction required for consciousness, different configurations of the constants preclude all potential life forms capable of attaining consciousness (because either the universe would implode or spread too fast apart or whatever)."* I don't know why you talk about consciousness... Are you trying to formulate a version of the FTA that concentrates on consciousness... ? *-"First, this objection just makes more salient the big problem of psychophysical harmony on naturalism."* There is no problem whatsoever for psychophysical harmony on naturalism. See my other comment under this video. *-"Second, this runs into the alarm-code analogy again. If electrons in love were true, then probabilistically we should be conscious electrons."* I don't see how this follows... Let's say electrons could be in love. In order for you to make any sort of claim regarding the likelihood of observing that we be indeed electrons in love, you need to have a proper metric on the probability space which allows you to calculate the proportion that the electrons in love hypothesis takes (if possible on the theistic side and the naturalistic side). You have, so far, provided no such metric, nor any criterion that could indicate that we may even be ABLE to obtain a metric... *-"Given our psychophysical laws, it's exceedingly improbable that the phsyical universe would support consciousness."* How so ? And how could it be any better with theistic hypothesis ? The theistic hypothesis doesn't predict ANY psychophysical laws... The theistic hypothesis doesn't even predict any physicality at all... *-"PS: Sorry, by "swamped" I meant overwhelmed in terms of probability, like, the probability space is saturated by one hypothesis relative to alternatives."* Ok, let's go back to what you were saying then : *-"On another objection, the probability an omnipotent God creates physical life-forms in a universe governed by laws is very low. But this is like the hypothesis that if you come upon a boiling pot in an empty cabin. On the cabin being inhabited, the probability that the owner would at that moment leave a boiling pot unattended is very low. But the inhabited-cabin hypothesis swamps the alternatives, like a wild bear accidentally making herself tea or the atoms spontaneously boiling!"* Ok I'm sorry you'll have to explain this one a bit more.
According to christians, life/consciousness can exist without matter. Yet the finetuning of matter indicates a god. On top of that, the argument makes god a skilled craftsman if he didn't realize the laws of nature. On top of the top, there are multiple cases of finetuning that were explained naturally, like the cosmological constant in cosmology. On top of that top, if you draw the password of your Wi-Fi from a back of notes, you can't say anything about the probability without knowing what's else in the bag. That saves you one hour of video watching. Happy to help.
According to which Christians? Mind and spirit can exist without matter, but we believe in a bodily resurrection. So I disagree. Not to argue with any of your other points though.
I've often wondered about something: let's imagine assessing the prior probability of a number of candidate agent theories. Under each, the respective agents desire to bring about a universe with some set of constants. Is there a way of limiting the possibility space that can't also be applied symmetrically to a naturalistic proposal? My thought is that the response will appeal to moral facts and God's nature, however the question in this case is exactly why would we weight one predisposition for God (benevolence/ omnibenevolence) higher than another in assessing the various priors? Surely these considerations would only be applicable if we posit some meta-god tuning God's disposition to be value oriented no? I don't think it will be sufficient to appeal to the necessity of God's nature, as the necessity claim isn't allowed in the case of the naturalist. So then perhaps we simply appeal to moral facts directly as a way of constraining the possible ways God's disposition could be, but then can't the naturalist make the same appeal? Alternative desires would be disvaluable thus unlikely v alternative constants would be disvaluable thus unlikely? It seems that the appeal to value is what's doing the work here as opposed to the agentic explanation.
Hey Squared a suggestion for an interesting video. Your work is focused on proving the proposition "The being with maximal goodness exists", which surely points to theism. But the majority of theists defend the proposition "The being of which nothing greater can be thought of exists" or "The maximally great being exists". I find it unhelpful for you to use the word God or Theism if you're using a substantially definition, it gives the impression that such a thing is commonplace. So how about you make a short video where you point to how both God, if He existed, would be the most good thing and how that the most good thing, if it existed, would be God (defined as the maximally great being). That would in my opinion be really useful because the atheists that seem to not really grasp the strength of the arguments so often have trouble sticking to the definition of God, instead picturing him as a caricature of a gradeschool-level kind of understanding. Thank you, loved this video!
29:50 _"Imagine we had two beings that are equal in all respects except that one creates good stuff and the other does nothing except bask and its own awesomeness. Which being is better ? It seems obvious that the Creator is better"_ Except this is contradictory to the theistic hypothesis, because here you have creation as a discerning property, and creation is what makes the entity _"better"..._ But this means that the entity alone is not "the best"... The entity NEEDS creation in order to become _"better"._ The entity is DEPENDENT on creation in order to become _"better"._ This is more in line with panentheism or pantheism, not classical theism. 30:27 _"Two happy people existing is better than one happy person even if the property of happy person is instantiated in both cases"_ Two gods is _"better"_ than one god...
". The entity NEEDS creation in order to become "better". The entity is DEPENDENT on creation in order to become "better". That's a complete non-sequitor. It's like imagining the "best painter in the world" who doesn't paint. While it is still the best paint or not. But painting extends his talent to other beings.
You are still drawing the initial priori P(Theism) and P(Naturalism) the same size at the beginning? Why?!? The initial ratio of P(Naturalism) to P(Theism) should be way more bigger than 1. It should be also bigger than P(Fine-Tuning|Theism)/P(Fine-Tuning|Naturalism), such that *P(Naturalism)/P(Theism) ≫ P(Fine-Tuning|Theism)/P(Fine-Tuning|Naturalism).* Just sayin! ; )
45:30 _"What if instead of positing that the gravitational constant was 6.67 * 10 11th in SI units I gave a different Theory the gravitational constant is 6.67 * 10 11th prior to next Tuesday but changes to zero after next Tuesday now this latter theory is super improbable I take it as obvious that the force of gravity won't spontaneously disappear after next Tuesday however every empirical observation made so far is equally consistent with both theories since they are on a par in terms of physical evidence we need to say that it's the Simplicity of the former law that sets it apart the prior probability of a set of physical laws is going to be much much higher for simpler laws even when the difference is in terms of just a single Clause."_ Ok... Well the _"simplest"_ law (and therefore the most priorly probable) is that if I go to another universe, it will have the same laws as the one I come from... In other words, there is only one law for all possible universes... In other words, the law exist in all possible worlds... In other words, the law is necessary.... That is the _"simplest"_ law.
@@nemrodx2185 *-"It would be simpler if there is only one universe... and the fine-tuning argument still applies..."* What do you mean by *"only one universe"* ? Do you mean in terms of modality ? If that is what you mean, then this is what I am saying : if there is only one way the universe can be, this means that way the universe is would be necessary. And the fine tuning argument fails.
@@MrGustavier "if there is only one way the universe can be, this means that way the universe is would be necessary. And the fine tuning argument fails." Yes, but arguing the "necessity" of a group of universal laws is very difficult or impossible. Why couldn't there be a single universe with simple laws that do not even allow the development of chemistry? Conveniently the "necessary" universe is coincidentally the one that is finely tuned. The fine-tuning argument runs again.
@@nemrodx2185 *-"Yes, but arguing the "necessity" of a group of universal laws is very difficult or impossible."* How so ? *-"Why couldn't there be a single universe with simple laws that do not even allow the development of chemistry?"* If you remove any modality for the way the universe can be, this means that all universes have exactly the laws that we have. *-"Conveniently the "necessary" universe is coincidentally the one that is finely tuned. The fine-tuning argument runs again."* How so... ? 'Fine tuned" requires it to be able to be different doesn't it ?
@@MrGustavier "How so?" I would expect you to explain that to me if you defend that... how do you make certain laws necessary and not others? "If you remove any modality for the way the universe can be, this means that all universes have exactly the laws that we have" That's a "non sequitur" "How so... ? 'Fine tuned' requires it to be able to be different doesn't it?" Not necessarily, the necessary world could be just 2 atoms moving away from each other in the entire universe. So appealing to necessity doesn't solve the problem because now saying that this universe is "necessary" versus any is simply arbitrary.
Isnt the biggest issue with fine tuning all the pre supposition you have to do to reach it. First assume there is a god Second assume he is capable of creation Third that he finely tuned the universe and didn't just leave it to chaos Fourth that he fine tuned it for us and not some other being Im sure smater people can make a better list.
@@vampireraef I don’t know enough about physics or cosmology to know whether the various constants or numbers are likely to just be concidence that they provide and allow for the stability of our existence. Something which Fodor didn’t seem to be addressing.
@MarkPatmos well we assigned the numbers to explain what we observe. Until we discover another universe, there's no way to know for sure if what we see is required for life. At least, that is how I understand it.
We have a universe and reality, lets explore it We can't have a universe without God Whatever we investigate, needs to be based in reality, not supernatural Thats not fair to exclude God You can't use God to explain anything at all (although God himself could explain everything if he chose to ...*insert crickets) Its good that science doesn't wait around for God to explain things, otherwise we would be still sacrificing goats for answers
there is no god so clearly you're wrong. all these philosophical gibberish exchanges are pointless until you can demonstrate your god and the gibberish is only do able because you can't demonstrate god.
@@HarryNicNicholas I'm glad we agree, not sure why you called me wrong though, weird way to agree with me lol. Maybe I didn't clearly state the first four statements are quotes, one from science, one from theist, one from science, one from theist. The last two statements pretty much say I don't believe in a God, so why should I demonstrate one?
24:00 "i dont think its problematic for a theory when it cant provide a probabilty measure." Well thats it, squared doesn't think it's a problem so it's therefore not. 27:50 "we are not avoiding giving and explanation, we are being general" Sounds like rewording being avoidant. 29:50 "creating things is obviously better" no justification given, which is just typical Squared. The whole "god did this, no the evidence is god did this because he wants to" just feels unconvincing. Fine tuning is almost entirely a semantic game of "God is defined as wanting X, so if X exist therfore god wanted it." It's such a bad argument and I wish theist would stop making it just to sound smart because anyone who does any research into it realizes its just bunk
squared did provide a justification for not being able to provide a probability measure in the form of an example. one wonders if you actually watched past the moments youre quoting before commenting.
@@unhingedconnoisseur164 No, he didn't. That's the whole point, Squared wants to talk about probability but when someone brings out a measure Squared all of the sudden falls back on "oh I don't really need to measure probability." How many videos has Squared made about "probability" where he just flat out makes up numbers and infinites? A _lot_
@@unhingedconnoisseur164My thought on the example was that the general intuition worked because we understand in principle how temperature works and why it would be unlikely to find a randomly warm kettle. This doesn’t seem to be the case with the conditions of the universe, because we have no idea by what mechanism they would arise (if at all, given our precise universe could be the only possible one).
@@ShouVerticaso what's the probability of our universe in naturalistic paradigma? You can't use multiverse, since it's just a phantasy and unscientific
@@Capt.Fail.what would make our universe the only possible one? If such parameters exist they must be extremely fine tuned in order to produce exactly this universe
God designed the universe to allow for human science and technology, where it is correct that God didn't have to design our reality that way. The fine-tuning argument may be part of God designing our reality so that it is possible both to find convincing evidence to believe in Him as well as remaining possible to not believe in Him.
Hold on, you can’t just decide that you’re going to be convinced or not. I’m an atheist not by choice but because I was dragged there by evidence and arguments. If God is so loving He’s left no way out of Hell for those like me and those who never had a chance to believe.
And our universe would be pretty great with snozegiblers, but I don’t see any of those around. Huh, I guess the universe wasn’t as fine-tuned as it could be. This illustrates that because we’re missing information, we can’t reason about what would be “good” or “bad” to have in the universe. The fine-tuning argument relies on subjective concepts that would make no sense to the gneesepeople of sneerbok.
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf I wouldn't say James is more calm, they both have been extremely rude before and have made really rude statements. I don't know why but most internet atheists just have to act like assholes
1. Observer bias. Needs no introduction. 2. Necessity. Needs no introduction. 3. The constants haven't been shown to be independent. One being different might mean others are necessarily different too. Re: the potential theory of everything. 4. Prescriptive versus descriptive distinction. Descriptive constants simply fall out of our equations when we try and describe regularities. Prescriptive constants dictate how the universe ought to operate. 5. Survivor bias. Universes that fail produce neither observers nor continue to dictate anything, as the case may be. 6. Do omnipotent beings really need to fine-tune anything? 7. It is more accurate to say the universe is fine-tuned for black holes, beetles, or death than for intelligent life. We observe the universe after 13 billion years of transformation and after the Earth itself has been terraformed by prokaryotes. Mammals will be extinct when the supercontinent reforms in 250 million years, the Earth will be swallowed by the radius of the Sun in a few billion years, and in the distant future, our region of the universe will die of cold long before either the heat death or it tears itself apart or it goes into a contraction phase due to gravity, whichever occurs.
"Do omnipotent beings really need to fine-tune anything?" That's like asking if an artist needs to fine-tune his paintings. The artist may make 2 red stripes however a finely tuned painting speaks of the artist's talent. Anyone could make 2 red stripes... even chance... but the Sistine Chapel is something else...
@@nemrodx2185 That raises the question whether the universe is analogous to two red lines or to the Sistine Chapel. With only available for study, you cannot claim it is more likely the Sistine Chapel. The point of the original question was that it does not matter what the constants are if God is omnipotent. Whatever the result, you could make the exact same claim. It's wholly unfalsifiable and lacks any specificity or predictive power.
@@RustyWalker "With only (universe I suppose) available for study, you cannot claim it is more likely the Sistine Chapel." We only have one evolutionary history, a single Big Bang, etc. and it does not prevent us from drawing conclusions. Additionally, you need a sense of probability for your personal hypothesis, which is... what is yours? How are you going to argue it if you only have one universe of study (using your criteria back to you)?
You have a point that (ignoring the possibility of alternative laws of physics) it'd be far more likely, on naturalism, that there'd be a type of life that is not fine-tuned than that there'd be a particular type of life that is fine-tuned. But consider the set containing every possible type of life that can only exist if the constants fall within some narrow range or other. We have no idea how big that set is, so we have no idea how surprised naturalists should be that some fine-tuned form of life exists. And the fact that this fine-tuned form of life exists rather than any other fine-tuned form is no evidence for theism over naturalism, in part because we have no reason to think God would prefer this fine-tuned form to the other possible ones.
I'm not very well versed on the current dialectic on the FTA, but why make that move (appealing to the set of all possible lifeforms that could exist with any given set of constants)? I think you're right that we can't even begin to quantify all the different possible permutations of life given that setup, but how is that essential to the FTA construed as a likelihood argument? It's the existence of carbon-based lifeform, the only life we have experience of, that is better expected given theism than naturalism. In that case, we don't need much of a positive reason for thinking that God would want to create any particular life form, we just need to say that it's not particulary improbable that he would have a reason. Unless you think divine intentions and motivations are totally inscrutable, that seems like a sound move for the FTA proponent to make.
Every time we introduce a possible universe with fine-tuned life, we definitionally are positing that there are a ton of universes that are life-prohibiting that “neighbor” the fine-tuned universes. So positing more fine-tuned forms of life doesn’t render life more probable. To illustrate, let’s say that our life has a chance of one in a gazillion of being fine-tuned. If we said there were actually 100 possible life forms that require fine-tuning, then the chance of life would go from 1 / 1 gazillion to 100 / 100 gazillion, which is unchanged. Furthermore, the fact that we don’t know a priori which life God would create isn’t an issue since naturalism doesn’t make any such predictions either.
@@ApologeticsSquared We don't definitionally posit that a ton of life-prohibiting universes neighbor each fine-tuned universe, only that a ton of universes that prohibit the fine-tuned type of life under consideration neighbor each one. But those universes could contain other types of life, and even be fine-tuned for those types, just in a different way (i.e., have different life-permitting ranges relative to the types in question).
@@Benspiano This is getting into another problem by saying something _is_ fine tuned when that phrase, "fine tuned", doesn't really mean anything other than "exist in our current universe as it does." It's kind of a semantic word game theist use that has deceptive language placed before any productive model.
@ShouVertica As someone who's seen more than any few of your comments on different videos about arguments for God's existence, I honestly have to ask, why is your attitude so consistently terrible? Like, I understand voicing your disagreement with the premises or conclusion or logic of an argument, but I don't get the insults and demeaning tone. It's not like ApologeticsSquared or the other theistic philosophers he borrows from are hacks like Frank Turek or Richard Dawkins. Whatever you can say about their arguments, you can't say they're not serious interlocutors with nuanced and thoughtful arguments for their positions. Calling them deceptive is just so out of pocket and doesn't make much sense.
I am a theist so I obviously believe that fine tuning is explained by god but I still think Fodor raised some good points and I actually think he missed out on a good objection. If we believe that hod is infinite in his thought and creativity, then surely no matter what parameters you give for how exactly he would create something he still has infinite other options. The naturalist’s odds of getting our universe are still extraordinarily low, but at least we could still quantify it in a number rather than dealing with an actual infinity.
the universe is fine tuned for toilet rolls and politicians too. which did god want. humans could just be an unwanted by product of an attempt to create moral beetles. when religists say that life is so unlikely that it needs to be tinkered with, they are saying god's method was more likely to fail, god's odds of life should 1:1 not bzillions to one against. as far as nature is concerned all the numbers are "1" it's only humans put significance to their values, it is quite likely that these values couldn't be anything else, we certainly can't change them (for the most part). if god wants life he would coarse tune, it could be argued that the numbers can be changed significantly and we'd still get humans, so how fine does the fineness have to be? and i wonder if god had to tinker to get life, whose laws of physics is he tinkering with? you're saying he created a universe where life wasn't going to happen and he had to change the values to be just so. and what does god need DNA for? or the higgs field? he makes everything look totally natural to preserve my free will, then he has to make these tiny robots that are a dead giveaway to his existence (according to tour &co) and then he goes back to particle physics and everything looking like "god did not do it" again. god is imaginary, before you make any other claims you have to demonstrate god. and you can't.
@@tafazziReadChannelDescription 1. You can't presuppose anything is fine-tuned without showing any fine-tuner in the first place. 2. Fine-tuning argument presupposes that god's purpose is to create life without confirming it. 3. If God is defined as omnipotent, he would be able to create life within any set of parameter he want, no need to fine-tuned. So fine-tuning is an argument against an omnipotent god.
@@The_Alchemist_007 all three of those points are false, amazing! let's start with 1. The other day I went to a firework show. I don't know who designed it, who set up the firework cannons and who loaded them. I only saw fireworks in the sky. And the coreography was symmetric, purpuseful, there was a pleasant choice of complementary colors for fireworks that exploded side by side, and so on. All these data made me clearly understand that the show couldn't have come about by like an accidental fire in a fireworks container, it was deliberate and fine tuned. By observing the show and deducing it was fine tuned, I logically inferred that there is a fine tuner in the first place. This inference is correct! The principle that you need to show a fine tuner first is thus disproven.
@@tafazziReadChannelDescription @tafazziReadChannelDescription I have seen or heard a thousand times humans designing firework shows. So I can inductively conclude that firework show is designed at some degree of certainty. But I have never seen someone creating a universe, someone creating spacetime (also creating time is logically incoherent), and someone tuning the parameters of nature therefore I can't conclude even inductively that the universe is designed. It's amusing that theists usually forget inductive reasoning while arguing from design. Therefore, my point was not disproven.
@@The_Alchemist_007 Well I haven't. I never saw anyone set up a firework show, I never had a direct experience of that happening, ever, in my entire life because we're not big on fireworks here in Italy. I nonetheless reached the correct conclusion of "someone fine tuned this" from the fireshow I watched. You're moving the goalpost now, first you said that you need to show a fine tuner exists *before* determining if something is fine tuned, but now you're just saying you use inductive reasoning to say that it's possible some guy may design a firework show, and therefore if you see a beautiful firework show (-> fine tuned firework show) you can conclude that there is a fine tuner. Is that the point you wanted to make?
35:00 indeed what does god need me for anyway, he can just run the VHS of the universe in his head, if god knows all he doesn't need an actual universe.
God creates beings with a soul because he wants a relationship for the rest of eternity with the beings He creates. The universe may be designed so that beings with free will can either turn away from Him or move closer to Him and His will. The physical universe may not actually be the priority for God, even if from a scientific perspective it is the focus of scientific research. (At least from a more Biblical ‘theism’ view of ‘divine psychology’)
@@MarkPatmosLet’s allow this free will concept to steelman your argument. Now we have a branching universe with several timelines. But since God is timeless, He knows how all of those branches will play out. This is problematic for two reasons: 1. You would not watch a show if you knew how it would end (or, in this case, how every iteration of every show would end. This makes the point stronger.) 2. God knowingly created all evil, even if it is avoided in some branches. Since He is all-powerful, He could choose to create a world without evil instead. Since He did not, He cannot be simultaneously omnibenevolent.
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I appreciate both your and Fodor’s serious and thought-provoking videos on this topic!
Thank you! :)
Nice one. I think that clears up many of the misconceptions with Fodor's video.
Thanks!
James argues that the FTA is an obvious argument from ignorance because we don't know what kinds of life could arise in other sets of constants. He then follows that with questions like, "what if there are other processes?" and other questions like this. Its not well known, but these kinds of questions are also categorized as arguments from ignorance. "We don't know x, so x"
One thing worth noting: Fodor's claim about alternative life gets the physics wrong. If the cosmological constant were different probably no two atoms could interact!
Sauce?
The cosmological constant controls the speed of the expansion of the universe. Seems to operate exclusively on a much larger scale than the atomic level.
@@Benspiano To quote physicist Aron Wall "* If the C.C. were the expected size & negative, the universe would collapse
in about 10^-43 seconds
* If the C.C. were the expected size & positive, “objects” separated by more than 10^-35 meters would be unable to communicate
no complex objects of any sort would be possible, let alone life!"
@@deliberationunderidealcond5105 What if C.C. were not the "expected size"? What's that term even supposed to mean?
Wall is probably assuming, unfairly, that the constants other than C.C. have the same values they do in our actual universe. If any of those varied along with C.C., there might be a better chance of atoms’ interacting.
So based!
He's alive!!!!!!
not really.
I personally don’t like the fine tuning argument but thanks for this.
I much prefer Aquinas' Fifth Way to the Fine-Tuning argument. It basically states that for physics to have a constant system by which all things act, it requires an intellegent designer of the physics system. It really doesn't matter what kind of physics. What's important is that things aren't random on the whole.
I dont think that how aquinas' argument works
Aquinas was a clever 13th century boy. Thank God it has been proved that dark matter is actually just the weight of philosophy!
He's baaaack!!!!! 🎉🎉
ill watch this when i have free time 😵💫
I expect Fodor to make a response video because I think I'm seeing issues here and I'm only on argument 2 or your first objection. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I think you and your analogy are both missing the point. You say that considering other contexts or other forms of life is irrelevant because we know which ones we have, and in the analogy you say the probability of entering the building through a specific door with a random 4-digit code is 1/10,000. This seems to miss Fodor's point that a life permitting universe is not known to be necessarily bound to a specific context or a specific form of life. Saying that the specific context or lifeform we ended up with matters is like being amazed at rolling an 89 for the win on a 10,000 sided die because it had a probability 1/10,000, without knowing the size of the subset of winning numbers. To map this to your analogy, entering the building does not represent obtaining our universe's specific context or our forms of life, it represents obtaining a life permitting universe without necessarily constraining the context or form of life. Why assume each keypad only accepts a singular 4-digit code? Other passing codes would represent other forms of life that still imply a life permitting universe. I guess the keypads represent the contexts because there is potentially multiple passing codes per keypad
I'm not sure about everything in your third response, but I think your first two responses are better than most commenters think they are.
Would you be wiling to have a live discussion with James Fodor? He seems to be interested in engaging with people directly.
36:42 _"Fodor has to show that there are so many alternatives to fine-tuning that the probability of a fine-tuned universe given theism would be just as low as given naturalism"_
But this is exactly what he does, he explains that there are so many possibility in the theistic hypothesis that we can't even conceive of all of them... At least in naturalism there seems to be a limit : what is consistent with naturalism... But ANYTHING seems to be consistent with theism... God just has to wish it so...
38:40 _"The objection that maybe your theory doesn't actually predict the data because of some reasoning you haven't thought of that applies to literally all theories in all Fields throughout all time"_
Well no... Some theories make things impossible in the sense that it would be contradictory to the theory... But what creation (what universe) is contradictory to the theistic hypothesis ? Whatever god wants to create, it can create it right ? So we should not expect any creation over any other creation. Theism completely fails at giving any "contrastive explanation" regarding the creation.
Unless it makes claims about god's psychology... But any such claim brings the prior probability of the theistic hypothesis right down the drain, because why would we have ANY sort of access to a probability measure concerning the psychology of something that is completely independent of us, of our own psychology, of the evolutionary pressures that gave rise to our cognitions etc ?
The following is an excerpt from Sober 2003 :
_"Our judgements about what counts as a sign of intelligent design must be based on empirical information about what designers often do and what they rarely do. As of now, these judgements are based on our knowledge of human intelligence. The more our hypotheses of intelligent designers depart from the human case, the more in the dark we are as to what the ground rules are for inferring intelligent design"._
45:00 _"The naturalism side of the probability space is going to be plagued by a similar problem naturalism predicts physical laws much simpler than our own which further reduces the probability of fine-tuning given naturalism"_
Well arguably no, since in naturalism, one could say that the possibility space is limited by the naturalistic ontology. Which means that a universe full of leprechauns is not possible on the naturalistic side, because for naturalists, leprechauns don't exist. However, NOTHING prevents god from creating a universe full of leprechauns.... This means that the possibility space is infinitely larger on the theistic side. Which means that observing a world like the one we observe is much much less probable under the theistic hypothesis.
46:50 _"However the theism side of the probability space isn't affected by this consideration"_
That's where you're wrong... You haven't demonstrated ANY limitation to what god would want to create. God doesn't HAVE to create life... Therefore god can just as well create a _"boring"_ universe...
Any limitation that you impose on god's psychology is pure speculation on your part. Which has an infinitely small prior probability.
you're absolutely cooking with these replies - so many of the points made in this video either misunderstand what Fodor is doing or are analogies with stark relevant differences
@@isaacccol6754 I added a few more responses since you commented (I finally found the time to finish watching the video).
"at least in naturalism there seems to be a limit : what is consistent with naturalism.."
Anything is consistent with naturalism:
Everything is either a brute fact or a coincidence that no one has seen:
-If the universe is finely tuned it is a brute fact. If not, it is just what is expected from a mindless reality.
-If the universe has a beginning is a brute fact and if not, just what the naturalist expects... an eternal universe.
-If life began, a coincidence that no one has seen did it and the naturalist would believe it without any evidence.
ANYTHING seems to be consistent with "naturalism": blind faith is the only thing you need.
A well thought out response. I’m glad I’ve watched it all
Yo squared I have a question about your response to these objections. In the end, how would we determine how much of the theism square go cross out? Because we can't really know God's motives it seems any amount we try to cross out is arbitrary. Or is it just a weakness of the argument that the final probability of the fine tuning given theism is really unknowable?
Great analogies in your responses, love it!
I think the lock anology doesnt work and it is trying to do an intuition pump using our ordinary common sense. For example in lock anology if the person has x ray vison and can see inside the lock than it is possible he didn't know but deduced it. Of course you can say that someone having x ray vison has low prior probability but this is why the anology breaks down since changing constants of nature is already on the level of someone having Xray vison.
If you are attempting to understand divine psychology, especially from a theist perspective where the creator is involved in the world, then religion shouldn't be dismissed as an interface between us and our creator.
what i love is the cake and eat it philosophy religists have, on the one hand you can tell me exactly what god wants and how he expects me to behave and then you say god is beyond human comprehension, it makes me think you talk gibberish ALL the time.
@@HarryNicNicholasIt is meant to be an argument against theism or the reason for God fine-tuning the universe from a theism perspective. From a more Biblical ‘theism’ perspective God probably doesn't need to fine-tune the universe, but might be providing some evidence for His existence even if it is evidence that is still possible to dismiss.
Based squared, I was hoping someone would do a review of his video
There's some issues with your first objection as it misunderstands key elements of what is being raised.
To use your analogy. Alive and Bob do not, in fact, know that the probability is 1/10,000 given that they do not know whether the combination entered is the only one that opens that door. Think of the extreme of a door that only opens if the 4 digits are entered. This would mean that whatever 4 digit combination was entered would open the door. This is the type of implicit premise being made by the fine tuning argument.
Regarding alternate forms of equations. He is indicating that the constants arise and can't reasonably be separated from the equations. To change the equations without changing the constants would be similar to varying the conclusion in a sound argument. The conclusion follows from the premises and can't be reasonably changed without changing the premises as well.
Came here to say this, haha - definitely an error in understanding Fodor's point here.
I think that's a helpful extension to the analogy. But I would say that with at least some of the constants, it's reasonable to assume that they can only permit life like ours in a small set of possible combinations.
Because there are a number of ways that our universe seems finely tuned, we could think of each constant as another in a series of doors that must be entered through.
Some of them might, against our expectations, turn out to allow many combinations, not just one.
For some the sequence might be shorter than we think, and hence give fewer possibilities than we'd expect.
So I guess it depends on how many of the combinations you'd be willing to write off as actually very guessable, and how many you wouldn't.
@MatthewFearnley
Depends on what you mean by life like ours. If you mean for you, Matthew Fearnley, to exist on TH-cam, then we would need to have the constants as they are. I'd agree, but I find that irrelevant. If you mean some form of self reproducing entities, then I think you're assuming as much, if not more, as Alice regarding the door code.
The issue with you depicting them as subsequent doors to pass through, is that these aren't independent. What I mean by that is if you vary a constant one way and another in a different way, then you'd potentially enter a different range of life permitting universes. Which isn't how entering a building through successive door codes works.
Notably, all this is ignoring the other issue of how varying the constants without allowing for the varying of equations is more than problematic. This isn't to be confused with there being more combinations to a door or a larger range. But more like saying 1 + 1 = 2 and you can't vary the 2 to just any number as the conclusion of 2 follows from how everything else is structured and defined.
@@Boundless_Border I think we could model different ranges of life-permitting universes as a combination lock (if you type in a correct value) that opens one of two or more doors depending on which value you type - with each door possibly having more doors behind.
I think different laws/equations could be modelled in the same way. Although I guess maybe we could model it as just choosing a door rather than keying in a combination and hoping one opens.
If we found out later that we could have just entered a single combination that would opened a door straight into the building, or simply chosen that door, that wouldn't avoid our surprise at having entered through a succession of doors, guessing a successful combination each time.
@MatthewFearnley
You can conceptualize it this way, sure. Yet within the description, you already fall short of describing it accurately. This isn't to discredit you but to demonstrate exactly how difficult it is to properly understand the moving parts. A simple correction is that every number is a "correct" value that opens some number of doors.
Different laws and equations can't be modeled in the same way. This would be like modeling all real and potential books as a combination lock of established and potential languages. A "Y" in one language is a letter, a syllable, a word, or a sentence of another. And the books being of any length. You're no longer in the realm of being able to depict these meaningfully.
Your final paragraph demonstrates the issue with these probability assessments well. You do have to factor in all the probabilities. This includes likely and unlikely options. You are weighing it against naturalism itself, not this version of natural reality. If it was only against this version, you wouldn't be able to vary either the constants or the equations. So even if we ended up entering on one of the unlikely door sides, overall naturalism could be comparatively likely overall to permit life.
To illustrate, pulling a King of Hearts from the top of a deck is unlikely. But pulling a non Joker is incredibly likely. Even though pulling up any of the Spades is much more likely than pulling up specifically the King of Hearts. Both were live options in the set of things that make it unlikely to pull a Joker. Even though pulling out a specific card ends up being less likely than pulling out a Joker. The overall analysis is between Joker and non Joker. Not between the card you ended up pulling and a Joker. This is part of the issue regarding retroactively considering probabilities.
No wayyyyyy!!!!!!!! Let’s goooooo
Is fodor the new paulogia, where all apologist for unknown reasons cannot pronounce their last name
14:47 I know this is irrelevant to the analogy but I have been playing a multiplayer game where you can create a private online game that requires a password to get in. However there is a bug and any password works. I would suspect a similar bug in the keypad.
First analogy problem: You do not have a reason to know how many digits even that one door the code is. In fact you don't even know that the code only uses digits. This analogy seeming is not understanding what Fodor is saying about the relationship between constants and equations/mechanisms, combined with the probable significance of dark stuff. It's highly probable you don't even know a high percentage of the possible input values. The parallel of life as having got through a door: maybe doors take a completely different form where codes take different forms, where "getting through" has different meanings, if the code can be different to what you are imagining. This analogy is steeped in (probably) unintentional anthropomorphic elements the over-simplicity and lack of imagination and understanding of which ironically are what Fodor in part argues is the problem with the fine tuning argument.
This is interesting but i believe this is a misconception that the values of the constant are fixed by the equations, that is one of the points of the fine-tuning argument. The constants could change while the equations stays the same and it is his analogy of the constant being like the curve of a slope which is incorrect, as far as i know those constants are not fixed by necessity of the form of the equation. So right off the bat, i was and still am confused of that first argument, i think it is known that the constant can change while the equations stays the same.
Also is it really relevant to know exactly the numbers of possible inputs ? The fine-tuning argument states that only a very precise range of values allows for life, those open the door within our known framework and as i said, it is known that the constant are not fixed by necessity of the equation and they could have been different while the equations stays the same. The fine-tuning doesn't pretend examining what life would or would not be under different equations as that would be a whole different universe and no one has any means to even assess that.
Plus other forms of life that we do not know is also kinda irrelevant to the actual point of the fine-tuning argument. It is grounded in empirical evidences while there is no empirical evidences or theoretical models that describe how another form of life could arise. Like picture an object with a specific shape ( life as we know it) and a hole that seems to fit the object ( our known universe) does the fact other objects could pass through another hole shaped differently and even the same hole truly negate the observation that the object with a specific shape requires a specific hole and the hole indeed seems cut specifically for that object ? Note please that again the constant are not a necessity of the equations, that is the hole did not have to to be shaped like that, yet it is.
27:13 _"We can point to a lot of good things that a fine-tuned universe brings about which would therefore motivate an all good being"_
And who decides what is _"good"_ ?
If it is the _"all good being"_ then whichever the tuning, it would be fine... And the explanation is therefore on par with the multiverse.
33:24 _"Is the idea here that God could just create a universe that contained some or all of these things but lacked agents like us well that would just be a less valuable"_
Less valuable according to whom ?
It might be less valuable according to you, but more valuable according to god, in which case we would expect a lack of _"agents like us"_ on that theistic hypothesis.
If, whatever the thing, a world is more valuable if that thing is in it, then theism predicts everything...
38:27 _"I mean biology is cool right it has some sort of beauty so why not make biology"_
_"Biology is cool"_ according to whom ?
1:00:53 _"Luckily we have intuitions about what qualifies as good you can call these your axiological intuitions these axiological intuitions fill out theism and tell us what God is like and what sort of world he would create I think this is quite an elegant account of theisms predictive power"_
Ok... So you actively make your god like you, and you see no problem in so doing...
You are a homo sapiens are you not ? And as such, you are a member of a social species, who needs to cooperate to survive. Now is that really surprising that a homo sapiens would value life, and other homo sapiens ?
Imagine a dart that is thrown on a wall at random, what you are doing here is drawing the target around the dart, and then be surprised that the dart be in the center of the target !
There is nothing _"elegant"_ about this, this is a completely bankrupt epistemology !
Furthermore, if you want to project your own values onto your god, then it would seem that the fine tuning of the universe favors a Matrix-like simulation hypothesis much more than the theistic one. We have much better reasons to postulate that a physical being, with a body on which to instantiate its mind and cognitive processes, in space and time, much like us, created a simulation of which we are but characters, than a non physical, timeless, spaceless being, which has no body, onto which we have no reason to project our values, created the universe...
I think the building analogy (15:00) gives a false impression cuz most buildings have just a handful of entrances. But Fodor would probably reply life may have billions of entrances not to mention potentially infinite time/multiverses to crack the code for one of them.
Another analogy helps me visualize this: if u shuffle a deck of cards well you will end up with a sequence of 52 cards so unlikely it will probably never be reproduced again randomly. However I wouldn't argue it was fine tuned if tons of other combinations would have worked equally well.
Could you further explain your response to the point about alternative forms of life (beginning around 18:15)? I don’t follow. How does it affect the probability calculations? Are you suggesting we should treat this case just like the case of alternative laws? In the latter case, we simply restrict the probability space to those portions in which *our laws* obtain. Are you suggesting we should likewise restrict the probability space to those portions in which we exist as humans (rather than dark matter entities, etc.)? But if we do that, then 100% of naturalism’s probability space is fine-tuned, since that’s a necessary condition on our existing as humans!
// Are you suggesting we should likewise restrict the probability space to those portions in which we exist as humans (rather than dark matter entities, etc.)? But if we do that, then 100% of naturalism’s probability space is fine-tuned, since that’s a necessary condition on our existing as humans! //
What I think is actually going on here is that we should restrict the probability space to portions in which we are humans, but not necessarily to portions in which we *exist* as humans.
To illustrate, consider the following three propositions:
P1) Sherlock Holmes is a cat that exists.
P2) Sherlock Holmes is a human that exists.
P3) Sherlock Holmes is a human that does not exist.
The propositions (P1) and (P2) are obviously coherent statements. What about (P3)? Well, that's just saying that there is some possible person, Sherlock Holmes, such that if he did exist, he would be human, but history did not unfold in such a way to bring about his existence.
So I can coherently update on the fact that "Sherlock Holmes is a human" (i.e. either (P2) or (P3) is true) while leaving open the question of whether or not he actually existed. Indeed, we can tell a story where this unfolds: Someone hears a story about Sherlock Holmes and hears that Sherlock Holmes has various properties such as being a detective and being a human, but doesn't know whether or not this story is fictional or veridical until later.
Likewise, I think that I can conditionalize on the fact that "I am a human" without necessarily conditionalizing on the fact that I exist. When we do this, most of the naturalism side of the probability space will include the proposition "I am a human that doesn't exist" (because the constants prohibited my life) whereas theism has a much much larger portion which includes the proposition "I am a human that does exist" (because God fine-tuned the constants). So, my existence still confirms theism.
I didn't go into this in the video because it gets into the complicated field of anthropics, and I think it's clear that my point about alternative forms of life is true, even if the explanation I give in this comment turns out to be false. That being said, I am quite confident that the explanation I give here is correct! :)
It doesn’t seem as though Fodor factors whether there are differences in probability between the ‘fine-tuning’ being the result of unguided inanimate processes acting entirely without agency, awareness, intelligence or intent and a conscious mind acting with agency, awareness, consciousness, design and purpose. The potential specific purpose for God 'fine-tuning' the universe is secondary to this and may involve theodicies or theology that is based in religion not just philosophy or science. Fodor seems to spend a lot of time arguing entirely against the physicist Barnes with regard to divine psychology, which is outside of the physics and cosmology of the basic fine-tuning argument.
The constants mentioned are not eternal. For example, the coupling constants change according to renormalization group equations, which take into account the effects of virtual particles on the constants at different energy levels. During the earliest high energy stage(s) of the universe, the coupling constants for the different forces appear to converge, suggesting the standard model forces were once unified as a single force. This is the basis for grand unified theories (GUTs).
It is not known if any particles at all existed in the earliest stage of the universe (Planck epoch), and for that moment we cannot calculate the value of any constant. The next stage (grand unified epoch) still saw no leptons (e.g., electrons) and the energy was so high that quarks acted like free, unbounded particles. It is only after the breaking of electroweak symmetry (the conditions for which were ripened in the GU epoch) that any particle could have a mass constant.
Proving the existence of God from the flower stage just doesnt make sense to me. The flower blossoms only when the conditions are ripe for it to in the bud, and so on down to the seed. It would make more sense to argue from the foundational seed, except the seed of our universe is for now indeterminate.
Thanks for the video!! Here are some thoughts :)
(Part 1/3)
At 29:50, you consider two beings that are exactly alike except that one refrains from creating anything while the other creates good stuff. You say it’s obvious that the latter being is better.
I think this is problematic for a few reasons. First, it seems to entail that God necessarily creates. For God is an essentially perfect being, and perfection cannot be improved upon. So for any world w in which God exists, it’s not possible for God to be better than he is in w. But per your reasoning, if there were an ‘alone world’ in which God refrains from creating, then it *would* be possible for God to be better than he is in this alone world. So, per your reasoning, there is no world in which God refrains from creating. In other words, God necessarily creates. This alone conflicts with traditional theism (and contradicts Catholic dogma, for your Catholic listeners) and also seems to rob God of a certain valuable kind of creative freedom.
Second, consider two beings G1 and G2 that are exactly alike except that G1 makes even *better* stuff than G2. By a very natural extension of your reasoning, it seems that G1 is a better being than G2. But then we get serious conundrums for theism. After all, it seems plainly obvious that the actual world is not the best possible world; it seems like there is some world better than the actual world. But given theism, for any world, God is responsible for that world’s actualization. So, given all this, it seems that God could have been better than he is. Not only does this seem to imply that he isn’t perfect (perfection can’t be improved upon!), but it also seems to imply that God is limited in value - he is valuable to such-and-such a degree, but he could have had a higher (or lower) value. This seems like an unwelcome conclusion in its own right. (It also seems to introduce potentially arbitrary limits on God.)
Third, your point seems to contradict traditional theism’s doctrine of divine aseity, since it seems to require that things apart from God are required for God to have his level of goodness. God’s goodness is a function, at least in part, of things other than God.
At 30:18, you consider the point that God making additional valuable things wouldn’t actually improve reality. But I think you might be a bit too quick here. I think the idea behind the point is best captured by Mark Johnston in his paper “Why did the One not remain within itself?”. Therein he considers a traditional understanding of God’s goodness as *absolutely unsurpassable* , writing that God’s “degree of goodness taken as a whole is unsurpassable, and not just unsurpassable by him; no other thing or plurality of things could have a degree of goodness that surpassed it.” After all, a being with this sort of goodness seems more perfect than one without it! This point is even more poignant if we accept mereological universalism. For if we think God’s creation improves reality, then it seems like we’re committed to thinking that the mereoogical sum of God and creation is an entity that is *better* than God! But surely there cannot be an entity better than God. (It also raises questions about arbitrary limits again - why is God limited to his particular degree of value, given that some entities can have higher degrees of value? We no longer have the simple ‘maximal/unsurpassable value’ that Rasmussen, Swinburne, et al champion as a theoretical virtue of theism.)
At 30:36, you consider a point about the purity of reality. But again, I think you might be a bit too quick here. While additional happy people may add *moral* values to the world, it detracts from *other* values of the world - values that the alone world exemplifies and which could be argued to be incommensurable with the aforementioned moral values. As Pruss writes in his “Divine Creative Freedom”, the alone world (labeled ‘wNC’) “exhibits the aesthetic value of simplicity to the maximal degree possible: it is a world where only God exists. This point is more compelling if God is simple, but it also applies if he is not, as long as there is no world where God is less complex than in wNC. Simply by containing one or more contingent beings, w is less simple and elegant than wNC. Granted, w may exhibit many other aesthetic and non-aesthetic values to a greater degree than wNC. But the maximal simplicity of wNC does make wNC better in respect of a distinct value, and if w is better in other respects, then this should yield weak incommensurability.”
At 33:23, you consider Fodor’s point that perhaps God wants a universe containing life without moral agents. You say that this would be a less valuable world than one containing moral agents like us. But full honesty here: I have no clue how you know that such a world would be less valuable! From whence cometh your knowledge of the total value of these worlds? Have you done the calculations? Weighed up the utils of pleasure against the dolors of pain? And multiplied that by the aretaic factor? A bit more seriously, I cannot see how one would justify this overwhelmingly complex value judgment. Sure, it’s absolutely clear that moral agency brings with it additional values - profound love, moral virtue, moral growth, and so on. But it’s also absolutely clear that moral agency brings with it additional disvalues - profound hatred, moral vice, moral decay, genocides, and so on. Why think these additional values outweigh these additional disvalues? (As pre-emption: it strikes me as silly to respond, at this juncture, ‘well it seems intuitive to me that the former values outweigh the latter disvalues!’ I don’t have that intuition; I strongly suspect its presence is heavily influenced by one’s life circumstances; and we have good reason to think our intuitions aren’t appropriately sensitive to such extremely complicated facts that aggregate over billions of years and billions of lives and quadrillions of actions.)
This also might be a more general problem for the fine-tuning argument if the solution to the divine psychology problem appeals to a perfect being wanting to make valuable things - a (potential) problem that Hud Hudson and other skeptical theists have pushed. In particular, it’s just not clear why we should think that the values associated with embodied conscious life outweigh the disvalues associated therewith. (I say this ‘might’ be a more general problem because there might be ways to solve it; I’d need to reflect further. For instance, maybe one could try to say that, even if the comparative weights of value/disvalue is unclear, it’s not *ludicrously unlikely* that the value outweighs the disvalue; and if it does, then it’s not terribly unlikely that God would create embodied conscious life. So while the argument may take a probabilistic hit, it wouldn’t be so devastating as to remove much of its force. I’d want to see this point more rigorously probabilistically worked-out before endorsing it, though.)
(Part 2/3)
At 37:35, you consider the electrons in love objection. Before commenting on your response to it, I think Fodor didn’t really flesh out the objection in as much detail as I would have liked. It may be helpful, then, for me to flesh it out a bit further. I take it that the idea is roughly the following. The probability that the constants would fall within the narrow life-permitting range conditional on theism is roughly just as low as the probability that the constants would fall within the narrow life-permitting range conditional on naturalism, since God could have created conscious moral agents within pretty much any cosmos he could create. After all, God could have just altered the psychophysical laws so that, e.g., particles are conscious moral agents with rich inner lives who can mentally communicate and relate with one another even if they're, e.g., billions of light years away. (And their spatial, temporal, and other physical relations could have all sorts of interpersonal relationship effects, too.)
Psychophysical laws, as you know, are truths about the connections between mental states and physical states. In the actual world, these psychophysical laws connect mental states with embodied, highly complex, biological life forms. But God could have made valuable conscious moral agents in just about *any* cosmos, including cosmoi devoid of embodied highly complex biological life forms - i.e., cosmoi whose constants fall outside the narrow life-permitting range.
And there doesn't seem to be any extremely strong reason why God would choose specifically embodied complex biological life forms to serve as conscious moral agents as opposed to other sorts of physical entities to serve as conscious moral agents. Both families of worlds would realize the profound value of conscious moral agency, and there doesn't seem to be any extremely strong reason to expect God to side with the former sort of world over the latter sort of world. And so it seems like we should also be indifferent (or near indifferent) under theism across the range of values that the constants could take. So, Pr(life-permitting constants | theism) ≈ Pr(life-permitting constants | naturalism).
Now for your response. First, you note that this objection will make it “plainly impossible” to block the psychophysical harmony argument. A few things can said in response.
First, this response seems to render the FTA parasitic on the psychophysical harmony argument, in such a way that the FTA no longer gives us independent support for God’s existence in addition to that provided by the psychophysical harmony argument. In effect, this seems to be a ‘dialectical win’ for the naturalist; she now only needs to address the psychophysical harmony argument, rather than both arguments.
Second, it’s not *impossible* to block the psychophysical harmony argument if one accepts the electrons in love objection. We can easily imagine a Type A Physicalist running the electrons in love objection as an *internal critique* of theism. They might say that the *theist* is committed to the epistemic possibility of these various sorts of psychophysical laws given that they already posit a non-physical mind with mental states not a priori derivable from physical/functional states, in which case the objection can still drastically lower the probability of life-permitting constants *given theism* . But this person can consistently make *that* case while being a Type A Physicalist and thinking that these alternative psychophysical laws are *not* epistemically possible after all, thereby blocking the psychophysical harmony argument. Even if this isn’t a particularly attractive or plausible view, it does seem to refute your claim that the argument is “plainly impossible” to block if one mounts the electrons in love objection. Moreover, there are many other responses one might raise to the psychophysical harmony argument that grant the epistemic possibility of these alternative psychophysical laws. You seem to be assuming that granting their epistemic possibility somehow makes it ‘plainly impossible’ to respond to the argument, but this is to neglect the many responses to the argument that *don’t* deny their epistemic possibility. (E.g., one such response is to pinpoint independently motivated constraints on intrinsic probability that bias harmonious psychophysical laws; another such response is to argue that theism’s intrinsic probability is correspondingly lowered by positing a psychophysically harmonious being; etc.) Even if you think these responses don’t work, their ability to block the argument is not ‘plainly impossible’, and they are entirely compatible with running the electrons in love objection.
Your second response to the electrons in love objection, beginning at 38:18, is to appeal to the aesthetic value of biological life as conferring more value than electrons in love. As you say, “biology is cool… it has some sort of beauty”. This response does not strike me as convincing.
First, it seems to rest on aesthetic realism, which is both controversial and non-obvious, and I’m guessing most naturalists will reject it. (One solution to this is to build into your hypothesis the conjunction of aesthetic realism and the claim that, at least given aesthetic realism, our aesthetic judgments are mostly reliable. It’s worth noting, though, that many naturalists will find aesthetic realism obviously false or silly, so this will make theism have an extremely low prior by their lights, thus significantly damaging the theist’s argument.)
Second, to the extent that I have these aesthetic intuitions, it seems to me that an electrons-in-love world is also very beautiful and extremely cool, and it’s not at all clear why it’s less beautiful or cool than a biological world.
Third, there’s also *lots* of ugliness/aesthetic disvalue in the biological world, and it’s not clear that the aesthetic value outweighs the aesthetic disvalue.
Fourth, even if there’s some aesthetic value in a biological-conscious-life world that’s absent in the electrons-in-love world, the electrons-in-love world is more valuable in *other* respects that the biological-conscious-life world - e.g., the latter contains the bads of death, predation, disease, decay, etc., whereas the former doesn’t.
Fifth, even if there is some added beauty with complex biological organisms, I don’t see how this added value *significantly increases* the probability of a biological-conscious-life world under theism. Sure, it might make that sort of world more probable under theism than an arbitrarily chosen electrons-in-love world chosen at random. But this by itself isn’t enough to defang the electrons in love objection. To illustrate this, imagine that we have a constant that could take on 10^54 different values, only one of which produces biological life. Then Pr(this constant is biological-life-permitting | indifference naturalism) = 1/10^54. Now, if the electrons-in-love objection works, then we should also be indifferent across the values of this constant under theism, since God could get valuable conscious moral agents regardless of whether they’re embodied biological life forms. So Pr(this constant is biological-life-permitting | theism) should also be 1/10^54. Now, if the added aesthetic value of biological life only makes the biological-life-world (say) 10 times more probable given theism than any arbitrarily chosen electrons-in-love world, then this only raises Pr(this constant is biological-life-permitting | theism) from 1/10^54 to 1/10^53. And when we turn this into a likelihood ratio (comparing theism to indifference naturalism), we have only the slightest of evidence for theism (a Bayes Factor of 10, which is far from the slam dunk FTA proponents promised). What this shows is that it’s not enough to highlight the added aesthetic value of biological-conscious-life worlds compared to electrons-in-love worlds. It must be shown, in addition, that this aesthetic value is *so valuable* that it *very significantly* (rather than mildly) increases the probability of biological-life-permitting constants under theism. Yet you have shown no such thing.
(Part 3/3)
At 42:40, you consider the objection from different sets of laws. Here you point to two considerations purportedly favoring one set of laws over two: aesthetic value/elegance, and greater scientific discoverability.
One thing to note about this is that you already *appear* committed (though correct me if I’m wrong!) to God creating at least two sets of laws governing (or describing) creation: physical laws and psychophysical laws. Do you think this duality of sets of laws hampers or worsens or prevents or diminishes scientific discoverability compared to if only one were operative? Prima facie, it doesn’t seem to me to do so. Do you also think it makes reality less aesthetically valuable than if just one set were operative? But these are minor points. The major points replicate a number of the points made in Part 2 above. For instance: (i) the aesthetic point seems to assume aesthetic realism; (ii) interactions among different sets of laws *also* seems aesthetically valuable to me; perhaps the aesthetic value of elegance is lost, but other aesthetic values like contrast are gained; and (iii) even if there is some slight added aesthetic value and scientific discoverability with one set of laws, I don’t see how these added values *significantly increase* the probability of one-law-set universes over two-law-set universes under theism, which is seemingly needed to avoid the objection at hand. (I take it that the objection at hand is structurally similar to the electrons in love point. The objection is basically that, even if the *physical* laws and *physical* constants of the universe were not life-permitting, God could still create conscious embodied life forms in the universe by either continuous miracles or by having them obey a different set of laws; and since there doesn’t appear to be a very strong reason for God to prefer as opposed to , we get (as before) that Pr(life-permitting constants | theism) ≈ Pr(life-permitting constants | naturalism).)
At 45:00, you argue that the naturalism side of the probability space also has the ‘crowding out problem’. Perhaps I’m not understanding your argument, but all those super simple physical law structures are *also* alternative law structures that God could have actualized while nevertheless securing the good of conscious moral agents - he need only alter the psychophysical laws accordingly. So these alternative law structures don’t *uniquely* diminish the probability of biological-life-permitting laws/constants on naturalism; they *also* diminish the probability of biological-life-permitting laws/constants on theism.
At 1:01:22, you say “it does seem that life is good, so theism does predict that God would be pre-disposed to create life.”
I think *conscious moral and non-moral agents* are good. But I don’t see why specifically *biological* conscious moral and non-moral agents would be better than non-biological conscious moral and non-moral agents. But *this* , it seems to me, is needed to avoid the most forceful articulations of the divine psychology point (which are basically just the electrons in love objection and the continuous miracles/two sets of laws objection). If there’s nothing particularly special about *biology specifically* , then those objections kick in: we should then be (roughly) indifferent across the range of values of the constants of the laws of nature *even under theism* . Of course, you might appeal to the aesthetic value of biological life here, but that is addressed in Part 2!
@@MajestyofReason Hey Joe, you didn't address his point on _"banktheism"_ around 58:00.
I proposed a mathematical demonstration that banktheism is actually an entailment of Bayes' Theorem in one of my comments under this video (unfortunately I can't give you the link without being blocked by TH-cam's bot, I wrote that comment 2 days ago).
This was largely motivated by your video on bayesianism and the part about "likelihood rigging". I would love for you to have a look at my proof, and tell me if you think I made a mistake.
(I can also just print the proof in this thread if you'd be interested)
I am curious, by traditional theism do you just mean classical theism or are you also including things like Christian theism abroad as well. If the latter why does Christian theism in general commit one to the view of god having leeway freedom?
The door analogy, the immediate answer is that the 1/10k figure is an upper bound. In reality it can be lowered due to intuition. For example it is more likely that people start their code with 1 because it is a birth year, rather than 8. I would argue intuition retains ignorance of the code.
And this relates to the video because intuition is equivalent to “unknown avenues to life”.
14:00 - Wait wait wait... your first response to Fodor is to say that even if the probabilities are low in other contexts, that doesn't matter, because we do know the context we actually do have?
I mean, sure, granted, we know our context... but we also know our constants. I don't think you'd let me off the hook for saying "even if the odds of life are low given other constants, it doesn't matter, because we do know the constants we do have," though, so why should I allow you to say what you said here? This one is off to a shaky start imo, seems dangerously close to being special pleading.
He’s using a probabilistic fallacy. If I hit a dartboard on the bullseye, it definitely happened, despite a near-zero probability of hitting that specific spot. If God was guiding my dart and wanted me to hit a bullseye, He would make me hit exactly the spot I did, with 100% probability. Therefore, it’s much more likely that God was guiding my dart.
You have to be aware of when you are evaluating the probability: before or after the update. He uses before for naturalism and after for Theism, which artificially inflates the actual odds. The argument is flawed from the outset.
30:00 - I think you're looking at this slightly wrong. You have to frame it in terms of which universe is more perfect.
In the universe with only a perfect God, that universe is quite literally perfect, since God is perfect, and there exists nothing else to blemish it's perfection.
In the universe with a God and good things, sure there may be a negligible amount of increased goodness in a sense, but the universe is less perfect, because not 100% of everything is perfect in that universe. To create a turtle might be good, but that turtle won't be perfect. The perfection of that universe would decrease from 100% to 50% (you can do the math however you want, but point is, it's not 100%).
The question becomes, would God have a reason to make an imperfect universe despite being perfect himself? I can't think of a reason why a perfect God would be inclined to do that, but I'm all ears if someone has an idea for why that might be the case.
@justanotherguy4382 at that point, perfection becomes a subjective concept, which would undercut a lot of the original argument.
@justanotherguy4382 I agree, it's one of the problems with trying to appeal to a "perfect" or "ultimate" thing. It doesn't mean anything unless someone is there to evaluate the perfection according to their own standards.
@@thesuitablecommand "The question becomes, would God have a reason to make an imperfect universe despite being perfect himself? I can't think of a reason why a perfect God would be inclined to do that.."
Oh? What do you prefer to watch: Lord of the Rings or Teletubbies?
@nemrodx2185 lotr. I'm not perfect though. Were I perfect, I wouldn't really want to watch either.
@@thesuitablecommand "lotr. I'm not perfect though. Were I perfect, I wouldn't really want to watch either."
Well, there you have the reason that you couldn't imagine... the rest would be assumptions of an imperfect being biased towards atheism. For everyone else it's pretty obvious.
With Objection 3, I'm not really sure how much we can deduce from our own human intuitions, about what God would be like and what sort of universe (if any) he would create.
However, I think to some extent, I don't think we have to. Rational people have often adhered to religious worldviews without being perturbed by the objection of "why should we think a deity would have been like that?".
I think the objection of how improbable it would be for God to be a particular way shouldn't bother us.
Fundamentally, I think the objection makes a big presupposition, that we cannot know anything about God, we just have to speculate about what seems most likely to us.
But this involves presupposing that God hasn't revealed himself to us, which pretty much entails deism.
That's not a good starting point in terms of fairly representing "mere theism".
On a side note, I don't see this argument of Fodor's as particularly relevant to Fine Tuning. It stands or falls on its own merit, irrespective of the size of the life-permitting range of constants.
One might as well counter the Problem of Evil with an argument about the reliability of the Gospels and Acts.
The fine tuning argument is not very good, because the constants which are its subject don’t really exist. God creates the actual world, and constants or laws we use to describe it are abstractions which we have no reason to think are deliberately created. Fixing the constants and laws so that the universe develops into its being is not how God tells us he created the universe, rather he created the particular things and the laws and constants are byproducts of the real world. I highly recommend Wolfgang Smith’s work on the subject.
Your argument breaks down as the fine-tuning argument can be stated to say life as we know it. To make your Anthropic principle work would require a universe much bigger then we believe.
38:05 _"I think if you're a naturalist the psychophysical harmony argument is already difficult to block"_
The psychophysical harmony argument is extremely easy to block. It is easily defeated by :
-Physicalism without epistemic gap, as admitted by the authors of the argument.
-Simple anti-realism about semantics for semantic harmony,
-Simple anti-realism about normativity for normative harmony.
Physicalism without admitting of an epistemic gap is one of the most absurd positions to ever be defended.
Or you can hypothesise that there were lots of other organisms that didn't have harmony between physical and mental states and natural selection just filtered them out. I think that this is a genuine possibility.
"-Physicalism without epistemic gap, as admitted by the authors of the argument.
-Simple anti-realism about semantics for semantic harmony,
-Simple anti-realism about normativity for normative harmony."
Then explain your naturalistic hypothesis to explain psychophysical harmony.
@@nemrodx2185 *-"Then explain your naturalistic hypothesis to explain psychophysical harmony."*
That's easy : every single psychophysical law is "harmonious", because there isn't anything apart from our mental states that can juge whether a psychophysical law is "harmonious" or not (simple anti-realism about harmony).
This means that whatever the psychophysical law, the mind that experiences that law would juge it harmonious.
@@MrGustavier "That's easy: every single psychophysical law is "harmonious", because there isn't anything apart from our mental states that can judge whether a psychophysical law is "harmonious" or not (simple anti-realism about harmony).
This means that whatever the psychophysical law, the mind that experiences that law would play it harmonious."
This is extremely far-fetched and difficult to defend, especially because we can easily recognize states of psychophysical disharmony, whether real (depression, diabetic neuropathy) or conceptual. Furthermore, you would also be judging from mental states and it becomes self-refuting.
26:42 _"a general psychological explanation essentially functions as a big umbrella covering lots of possible specific psychological explanations Alice's original answer would include boiling water for tea coffee making in inant noodles and countless other possibilities this big umbrella is going to necessarily be more probable than any specific explanation so she should just stick with the umbrella"_
Aren't you doing a double standard with regards to _"psychological explanations"_ there ?
If that standard applies to _"psychological explanations",_ then it applies to "non psychological explanations". Otherwise you have a double standard.
"If that standard applies to "psychological explanations", then it applies to "non psychological explanations". Otherwise you have a double standard."
Category error.
Apologetics Squared, I thought you think that the Fine-Turning Argument doesn’t work. Didn’t you give a 1 in your series on the cumulative case for theism?
Almost. I thought that the strength of the fine tuning argument overlapped with the strength of the psychophysical harmony argument. In other words, I thought that the fine tuning data was just a different way of expressing the psychophysical harmony data.
However, my views have shifted since I made that video.
@@ApologeticsSquared Oh, nice. Thank you for answering the question, also have you ever thought of making a video addressing the Electrons in Love objection to the Fine-Tuning Argument?
Anyway good video.
15:10 _"Well hang on a minute we haven't explored any of the other entrances to this building maybe there are other doors that we aren't aware of maybe there are doors that require only a one-digit code"_
That looks like a false analogy. To keep your thought experiment, the 2nd problem Fodor raises would be akin to challenge your claim that _"it requires a specific four-digit code to open"_ (14:33). Maybe the door through which you entered didn't require a specific four digit code... Maybe any sequence of 4 digit would have opened the door, maybe the door was already open, and your friend just punched random numbers just to trick you.
Remember, the theistic hypothesis in no way predicts the specific type of life that we encounter... It (supposedly) only predicts that life be encountered... So the door through which you entered is indeed the only door that we are interested in, but Fodor challenges the 1/10000 figure.
I think you might be conflating two objections. On one objection, there might exist equation/constant combinations that are not fragile and support different life-forms. This is what is rebutted by the different-doors analogy. On another objection, the probability an omnipotent God creates physical life-forms in a universe governed by laws is very low. But this is like the hypothesis that if you come upon a boiling pot in an empty cabin. On the cabin being inhabited, the probability that the owner would at that moment leave a boiling pot unattended is very low. But the inhabited-cabin hypothesis swamps the alternatives, like a wild bear accidentally making herself tea or the atoms spontaneously boiling!
@@MrPMO918 *-"I think you might be conflating two objections. On one objection, there might exist equation/constant combinations that are not fragile and support different life-forms. This is what is rebutted by the different-doors analogy."*
No that can't be the case. Since the fine tuning argument isn't formulated with regards to our specific kind of life, but with life in general. So any kind of life is through the same door we used to enter. Let me print here a sentence of my OP :
"Remember, the theistic hypothesis in no way predicts the specific type of life that we encounter... It (supposedly) only predicts that life be encountered..."
Nothing in the theistic hypothesis gives any sort of hint on what type of life we are supposed to encounter... Indeed, I'm sure theists would take any form of extraterrestrial life to be evidence for their hypothesis...
*-"On another objection, the probability an omnipotent God creates physical life-forms in a universe governed by laws is very low."*
Indeed it is but this is not the point here. The point is that the theistic hypothesis doesn't tell us what type of life we should expect.
*-"But this is like the hypothesis that if you come upon a boiling pot in an empty cabin. On the cabin being inhabited, the probability that the owner would at that moment leave a boiling pot unattended is very low. But the inhabited-cabin hypothesis swamps the alternatives, like a wild bear accidentally making herself tea or the atoms spontaneously boiling!"*
I'm not sure I understand... What does your use of the word "swamp" mean here ?
@@MrGustavier Sorry for misrepresenting you.
*"...Indeed, I'm sure theists would take any form of extraterrestrial life to be evidence for their hypothesis..."*
I'm still not 100% sure what you mean, but I'll list two objections in this vicinity and why I think they don't work. As background, I take it that the theistic hypothesis predicts with reasonably high prior probability that there would exist conscious agents with coherent experiences (since it's good for them to exist).
*Objection 1: The universe appears finely tuned for life forms **_known to humans_** , but different configurations of the constants could produce different "life" forms that are totally unimaginable.*
This objection misunderstands the basic fine-tuning premise. The premise is that given the complexity of particle interaction required for consciousness, different configurations of the constants preclude all potential life forms capable of attaining consciousness (because either the universe would implode or spread too fast apart or whatever).
*Objection 2: Electrons in Love. The universe appears finely tuned for consciousness given our psychophysical laws, which require lots of complex particle interaction. But there's no reason to suspect epistemically a priori that the psychophysical laws must be like that. Maybe there are big areas in modal space where the psychophsyical laws are such that **_any_** configuration of the physical constants supports consciousness.*
First, this objection just makes more salient the big problem of psychophysical harmony on naturalism.
Second, this runs into the alarm-code analogy again. If electrons in love were true, then probabilistically we should be conscious electrons. Given _our_ psychophysical laws, it's exceedingly improbable that the phsyical universe would support consciousness.
PS: Sorry, by "swamped" I meant overwhelmed in terms of probability, like, the probability space is saturated by one hypothesis relative to alternatives.
@@MrPMO918 *-"I'm still not 100% sure what you mean, but I'll list two objections in this vicinity and why I think they don't work. As background, I take it that the theistic hypothesis predicts with reasonably high prior probability that there would exist conscious agents with coherent experiences (since it's good for them to exist)."*
Conscious agents... ? And why do you think theism predicts conscious agents ?
*-"This objection misunderstands the basic fine-tuning premise. The premise is that given the complexity of particle interaction required for consciousness, different configurations of the constants preclude all potential life forms capable of attaining consciousness (because either the universe would implode or spread too fast apart or whatever)."*
I don't know why you talk about consciousness...
Are you trying to formulate a version of the FTA that concentrates on consciousness... ?
*-"First, this objection just makes more salient the big problem of psychophysical harmony on naturalism."*
There is no problem whatsoever for psychophysical harmony on naturalism. See my other comment under this video.
*-"Second, this runs into the alarm-code analogy again. If electrons in love were true, then probabilistically we should be conscious electrons."*
I don't see how this follows... Let's say electrons could be in love. In order for you to make any sort of claim regarding the likelihood of observing that we be indeed electrons in love, you need to have a proper metric on the probability space which allows you to calculate the proportion that the electrons in love hypothesis takes (if possible on the theistic side and the naturalistic side).
You have, so far, provided no such metric, nor any criterion that could indicate that we may even be ABLE to obtain a metric...
*-"Given our psychophysical laws, it's exceedingly improbable that the phsyical universe would support consciousness."*
How so ? And how could it be any better with theistic hypothesis ? The theistic hypothesis doesn't predict ANY psychophysical laws... The theistic hypothesis doesn't even predict any physicality at all...
*-"PS: Sorry, by "swamped" I meant overwhelmed in terms of probability, like, the probability space is saturated by one hypothesis relative to alternatives."*
Ok, let's go back to what you were saying then :
*-"On another objection, the probability an omnipotent God creates physical life-forms in a universe governed by laws is very low. But this is like the hypothesis that if you come upon a boiling pot in an empty cabin. On the cabin being inhabited, the probability that the owner would at that moment leave a boiling pot unattended is very low. But the inhabited-cabin hypothesis swamps the alternatives, like a wild bear accidentally making herself tea or the atoms spontaneously boiling!"*
Ok I'm sorry you'll have to explain this one a bit more.
According to christians, life/consciousness can exist without matter. Yet the finetuning of matter indicates a god. On top of that, the argument makes god a skilled craftsman if he didn't realize the laws of nature. On top of the top, there are multiple cases of finetuning that were explained naturally, like the cosmological constant in cosmology. On top of that top, if you draw the password of your Wi-Fi from a back of notes, you can't say anything about the probability without knowing what's else in the bag.
That saves you one hour of video watching. Happy to help.
According to which Christians? Mind and spirit can exist without matter, but we believe in a bodily resurrection. So I disagree. Not to argue with any of your other points though.
@@innocentsmith6091 All christians who believe in an afterlife or heaven outside their own bodies.
@@innocentsmith6091 all god requires is souls, making humans was wasted effort.
Hey Squared, Would you like to talk about recent objections to molinism ? Seems like an interesting topic.
What objections do you have in mind?
@@ApologeticsSquared Well there is a recent paper, called “ If molinism is true, what can you do? “ by Andrew Law, if you want to check it out.
I've often wondered about something: let's imagine assessing the prior probability of a number of candidate agent theories. Under each, the respective agents desire to bring about a universe with some set of constants. Is there a way of limiting the possibility space that can't also be applied symmetrically to a naturalistic proposal?
My thought is that the response will appeal to moral facts and God's nature, however the question in this case is exactly why would we weight one predisposition for God (benevolence/ omnibenevolence) higher than another in assessing the various priors? Surely these considerations would only be applicable if we posit some meta-god tuning God's disposition to be value oriented no? I don't think it will be sufficient to appeal to the necessity of God's nature, as the necessity claim isn't allowed in the case of the naturalist. So then perhaps we simply appeal to moral facts directly as a way of constraining the possible ways God's disposition could be, but then can't the naturalist make the same appeal? Alternative desires would be disvaluable thus unlikely v alternative constants would be disvaluable thus unlikely? It seems that the appeal to value is what's doing the work here as opposed to the agentic explanation.
Hey Squared a suggestion for an interesting video. Your work is focused on proving the proposition "The being with maximal goodness exists", which surely points to theism. But the majority of theists defend the proposition "The being of which nothing greater can be thought of exists" or "The maximally great being exists". I find it unhelpful for you to use the word God or Theism if you're using a substantially definition, it gives the impression that such a thing is commonplace. So how about you make a short video where you point to how both God, if He existed, would be the most good thing and how that the most good thing, if it existed, would be God (defined as the maximally great being).
That would in my opinion be really useful because the atheists that seem to not really grasp the strength of the arguments so often have trouble sticking to the definition of God, instead picturing him as a caricature of a gradeschool-level kind of understanding.
Thank you, loved this video!
29:50 _"Imagine we had two beings that are equal in all respects except that one creates good stuff and the other does nothing except bask and its own awesomeness. Which being is better ? It seems obvious that the Creator is better"_
Except this is contradictory to the theistic hypothesis, because here you have creation as a discerning property, and creation is what makes the entity _"better"..._ But this means that the entity alone is not "the best"... The entity NEEDS creation in order to become _"better"._ The entity is DEPENDENT on creation in order to become _"better"._
This is more in line with panentheism or pantheism, not classical theism.
30:27 _"Two happy people existing is better than one happy person even if the property of happy person is instantiated in both cases"_
Two gods is _"better"_ than one god...
". The entity NEEDS creation in order to become "better". The entity is DEPENDENT on creation in order to become "better".
That's a complete non-sequitor. It's like imagining the "best painter in the world" who doesn't paint. While it is still the best paint or not. But painting extends his talent to other beings.
@@nemrodx2185So God without creation is not perfect
@@jangohemmes352 "So God without creation is not perfect"
On the contrary, creation does not make it less perfect.
You are still drawing the initial priori P(Theism) and P(Naturalism) the same size at the beginning? Why?!?
The initial ratio of P(Naturalism) to P(Theism) should be way more bigger than 1. It should be also bigger than P(Fine-Tuning|Theism)/P(Fine-Tuning|Naturalism), such that
*P(Naturalism)/P(Theism) ≫ P(Fine-Tuning|Theism)/P(Fine-Tuning|Naturalism).*
Just sayin! ; )
45:30 _"What if instead of positing that the gravitational constant was 6.67 * 10 11th in SI units I gave a different Theory the gravitational constant is 6.67 * 10 11th prior to next Tuesday but changes to zero after next Tuesday now this latter theory is super improbable I take it as obvious that the force of gravity won't spontaneously disappear after next Tuesday however every empirical observation made so far is equally consistent with both theories since they are on a par in terms of physical evidence we need to say that it's the Simplicity of the former law that sets it apart the prior probability of a set of physical laws is going to be much much higher for simpler laws even when the difference is in terms of just a single Clause."_
Ok... Well the _"simplest"_ law (and therefore the most priorly probable) is that if I go to another universe, it will have the same laws as the one I come from... In other words, there is only one law for all possible universes... In other words, the law exist in all possible worlds... In other words, the law is necessary.... That is the _"simplest"_ law.
It would be simpler if there is only one universe... and the fine-tuning argument still applies...
@@nemrodx2185 *-"It would be simpler if there is only one universe... and the fine-tuning argument still applies..."*
What do you mean by *"only one universe"* ? Do you mean in terms of modality ? If that is what you mean, then this is what I am saying : if there is only one way the universe can be, this means that way the universe is would be necessary. And the fine tuning argument fails.
@@MrGustavier "if there is only one way the universe can be, this means that way the universe is would be necessary. And the fine tuning argument fails."
Yes, but arguing the "necessity" of a group of universal laws is very difficult or impossible.
Why couldn't there be a single universe with simple laws that do not even allow the development of chemistry?
Conveniently the "necessary" universe is coincidentally the one that is finely tuned. The fine-tuning argument runs again.
@@nemrodx2185 *-"Yes, but arguing the "necessity" of a group of universal laws is very difficult or impossible."*
How so ?
*-"Why couldn't there be a single universe with simple laws that do not even allow the development of chemistry?"*
If you remove any modality for the way the universe can be, this means that all universes have exactly the laws that we have.
*-"Conveniently the "necessary" universe is coincidentally the one that is finely tuned. The fine-tuning argument runs again."*
How so... ? 'Fine tuned" requires it to be able to be different doesn't it ?
@@MrGustavier "How so?"
I would expect you to explain that to me if you defend that... how do you make certain laws necessary and not others?
"If you remove any modality for the way the universe can be, this means that all universes have exactly the laws that we have"
That's a "non sequitur"
"How so... ? 'Fine tuned' requires it to be able to be different doesn't it?"
Not necessarily, the necessary world could be just 2 atoms moving away from each other in the entire universe. So appealing to necessity doesn't solve the problem because now saying that this universe is "necessary" versus any is simply arbitrary.
Isnt the biggest issue with fine tuning all the pre supposition you have to do to reach it.
First assume there is a god
Second assume he is capable of creation
Third that he finely tuned the universe and didn't just leave it to chaos
Fourth that he fine tuned it for us and not some other being
Im sure smater people can make a better list.
The alternative is the universe is ‘fine-tuned’ due to unguided inanimate processes ‘turtles all the way down’
@@MarkPatmos unless it's just not fine tuned at all
@@vampireraef I don’t know enough about physics or cosmology to know whether the various constants or numbers are likely to just be concidence that they provide and allow for the stability of our existence. Something which Fodor didn’t seem to be addressing.
@MarkPatmos well we assigned the numbers to explain what we observe. Until we discover another universe, there's no way to know for sure if what we see is required for life. At least, that is how I understand it.
@@vampireraefYeah, probability is irrelevant without more data, of which there is none.
14:18 The council has deemed you worthy.
Oh good, I thought you were a victim of squaricide!
We have a universe and reality, lets explore it
We can't have a universe without God
Whatever we investigate, needs to be based in reality, not supernatural
Thats not fair to exclude God
You can't use God to explain anything at all (although God himself could explain everything if he chose to ...*insert crickets)
Its good that science doesn't wait around for God to explain things, otherwise we would be still sacrificing goats for answers
there is no god so clearly you're wrong. all these philosophical gibberish exchanges are pointless until you can demonstrate your god and the gibberish is only do able because you can't demonstrate god.
@@HarryNicNicholas I'm glad we agree, not sure why you called me wrong though, weird way to agree with me lol. Maybe I didn't clearly state the first four statements are quotes, one from science, one from theist, one from science, one from theist. The last two statements pretty much say I don't believe in a God, so why should I demonstrate one?
24:00 "i dont think its problematic for a theory when it cant provide a probabilty measure." Well thats it, squared doesn't think it's a problem so it's therefore not.
27:50 "we are not avoiding giving and explanation, we are being general" Sounds like rewording being avoidant.
29:50 "creating things is obviously better" no justification given, which is just typical Squared.
The whole "god did this, no the evidence is god did this because he wants to" just feels unconvincing.
Fine tuning is almost entirely a semantic game of "God is defined as wanting X, so if X exist therfore god wanted it."
It's such a bad argument and I wish theist would stop making it just to sound smart because anyone who does any research into it realizes its just bunk
squared did provide a justification for not being able to provide a probability measure in the form of an example. one wonders if you actually watched past the moments youre quoting before commenting.
@@unhingedconnoisseur164 No, he didn't. That's the whole point, Squared wants to talk about probability but when someone brings out a measure Squared all of the sudden falls back on "oh I don't really need to measure probability." How many videos has Squared made about "probability" where he just flat out makes up numbers and infinites? A _lot_
@@unhingedconnoisseur164My thought on the example was that the general intuition worked because we understand in principle how temperature works and why it would be unlikely to find a randomly warm kettle. This doesn’t seem to be the case with the conditions of the universe, because we have no idea by what mechanism they would arise (if at all, given our precise universe could be the only possible one).
@@ShouVerticaso what's the probability of our universe in naturalistic paradigma? You can't use multiverse, since it's just a phantasy and unscientific
@@Capt.Fail.what would make our universe the only possible one? If such parameters exist they must be extremely fine tuned in order to produce exactly this universe
God designed the universe to allow for human science and technology, where it is correct that God didn't have to design our reality that way. The fine-tuning argument may be part of God designing our reality so that it is possible both to find convincing evidence to believe in Him as well as remaining possible to not believe in Him.
and then again god might be imaginary and you can make up whatever tripe you want, cos the bible is basically a comic without the artwork.
@@HarryNicNicholasMaybe the universe and our entire reality is God's artwork
Hold on, you can’t just decide that you’re going to be convinced or not. I’m an atheist not by choice but because I was dragged there by evidence and arguments. If God is so loving He’s left no way out of Hell for those like me and those who never had a chance to believe.
And our universe would be pretty great with snozegiblers, but I don’t see any of those around. Huh, I guess the universe wasn’t as fine-tuned as it could be.
This illustrates that because we’re missing information, we can’t reason about what would be “good” or “bad” to have in the universe. The fine-tuning argument relies on subjective concepts that would make no sense to the gneesepeople of sneerbok.
@@seanpierce9386 Those sound like words out of a Roald Dahl book or dr seuss
First comment, sorry I just had to do it.
Here we go again. ( who the hell is james fodor?)
He’s been around for awhile digital gnosis channel wrote a book to counter Craig’s book
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf i see. Thxks. Hm i heard digital gnosis can be ass (or maybe it someone he knows), i hope the square guy wont have to deal with that
@@tennicksalvarez9079 yeah he acts off the wall at times. James is more calm than him.
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf I wouldn't say James is more calm, they both have been extremely rude before and have made really rude statements. I don't know why but most internet atheists just have to act like assholes
@@vantascuriosity4540 I never really James go off on anyone other than on Cameron with his demonic possession stuff
1. Observer bias. Needs no introduction.
2. Necessity. Needs no introduction.
3. The constants haven't been shown to be independent. One being different might mean others are necessarily different too. Re: the potential theory of everything.
4. Prescriptive versus descriptive distinction. Descriptive constants simply fall out of our equations when we try and describe regularities. Prescriptive constants dictate how the universe ought to operate.
5. Survivor bias. Universes that fail produce neither observers nor continue to dictate anything, as the case may be.
6. Do omnipotent beings really need to fine-tune anything?
7. It is more accurate to say the universe is fine-tuned for black holes, beetles, or death than for intelligent life. We observe the universe after 13 billion years of transformation and after the Earth itself has been terraformed by prokaryotes. Mammals will be extinct when the supercontinent reforms in 250 million years, the Earth will be swallowed by the radius of the Sun in a few billion years, and in the distant future, our region of the universe will die of cold long before either the heat death or it tears itself apart or it goes into a contraction phase due to gravity, whichever occurs.
Talking about other universes is not scientific.
@@innocentsmith6091 /ignore
"Do omnipotent beings really need to fine-tune anything?"
That's like asking if an artist needs to fine-tune his paintings. The artist may make 2 red stripes however a finely tuned painting speaks of the artist's talent. Anyone could make 2 red stripes... even chance... but the Sistine Chapel is something else...
@@nemrodx2185 That raises the question whether the universe is analogous to two red lines or to the Sistine Chapel.
With only available for study, you cannot claim it is more likely the Sistine Chapel.
The point of the original question was that it does not matter what the constants are if God is omnipotent.
Whatever the result, you could make the exact same claim. It's wholly unfalsifiable and lacks any specificity or predictive power.
@@RustyWalker "With only (universe I suppose) available for study, you cannot claim it is more likely the Sistine Chapel."
We only have one evolutionary history, a single Big Bang, etc. and it does not prevent us from drawing conclusions. Additionally, you need a sense of probability for your personal hypothesis, which is... what is yours? How are you going to argue it if you only have one universe of study (using your criteria back to you)?
explain new mathematical proof of god
explain the grammar of that sentence.
@@HarryNicNicholas learn English in details with explanation 🤣
You have a point that (ignoring the possibility of alternative laws of physics) it'd be far more likely, on naturalism, that there'd be a type of life that is not fine-tuned than that there'd be a particular type of life that is fine-tuned. But consider the set containing every possible type of life that can only exist if the constants fall within some narrow range or other. We have no idea how big that set is, so we have no idea how surprised naturalists should be that some fine-tuned form of life exists. And the fact that this fine-tuned form of life exists rather than any other fine-tuned form is no evidence for theism over naturalism, in part because we have no reason to think God would prefer this fine-tuned form to the other possible ones.
I'm not very well versed on the current dialectic on the FTA, but why make that move (appealing to the set of all possible lifeforms that could exist with any given set of constants)?
I think you're right that we can't even begin to quantify all the different possible permutations of life given that setup, but how is that essential to the FTA construed as a likelihood argument? It's the existence of carbon-based lifeform, the only life we have experience of, that is better expected given theism than naturalism. In that case, we don't need much of a positive reason for thinking that God would want to create any particular life form, we just need to say that it's not particulary improbable that he would have a reason. Unless you think divine intentions and motivations are totally inscrutable, that seems like a sound move for the FTA proponent to make.
Every time we introduce a possible universe with fine-tuned life, we definitionally are positing that there are a ton of universes that are life-prohibiting that “neighbor” the fine-tuned universes. So positing more fine-tuned forms of life doesn’t render life more probable. To illustrate, let’s say that our life has a chance of one in a gazillion of being fine-tuned. If we said there were actually 100 possible life forms that require fine-tuning, then the chance of life would go from 1 / 1 gazillion to 100 / 100 gazillion, which is unchanged.
Furthermore, the fact that we don’t know a priori which life God would create isn’t an issue since naturalism doesn’t make any such predictions either.
@@ApologeticsSquared We don't definitionally posit that a ton of life-prohibiting universes neighbor each fine-tuned universe, only that a ton of universes that prohibit the fine-tuned type of life under consideration neighbor each one. But those universes could contain other types of life, and even be fine-tuned for those types, just in a different way (i.e., have different life-permitting ranges relative to the types in question).
@@Benspiano This is getting into another problem by saying something _is_ fine tuned when that phrase, "fine tuned", doesn't really mean anything other than "exist in our current universe as it does."
It's kind of a semantic word game theist use that has deceptive language placed before any productive model.
@ShouVertica As someone who's seen more than any few of your comments on different videos about arguments for God's existence, I honestly have to ask, why is your attitude so consistently terrible?
Like, I understand voicing your disagreement with the premises or conclusion or logic of an argument, but I don't get the insults and demeaning tone. It's not like ApologeticsSquared or the other theistic philosophers he borrows from are hacks like Frank Turek or Richard Dawkins. Whatever you can say about their arguments, you can't say they're not serious interlocutors with nuanced and thoughtful arguments for their positions. Calling them deceptive is just so out of pocket and doesn't make much sense.
I am a theist so I obviously believe that fine tuning is explained by god but I still think Fodor raised some good points and I actually think he missed out on a good objection. If we believe that hod is infinite in his thought and creativity, then surely no matter what parameters you give for how exactly he would create something he still has infinite other options. The naturalist’s odds of getting our universe are still extraordinarily low, but at least we could still quantify it in a number rather than dealing with an actual infinity.
the universe is fine tuned for toilet rolls and politicians too. which did god want. humans could just be an unwanted by product of an attempt to create moral beetles.
when religists say that life is so unlikely that it needs to be tinkered with, they are saying god's method was more likely to fail, god's odds of life should 1:1 not bzillions to one against.
as far as nature is concerned all the numbers are "1" it's only humans put significance to their values, it is quite likely that these values couldn't be anything else, we certainly can't change them (for the most part).
if god wants life he would coarse tune, it could be argued that the numbers can be changed significantly and we'd still get humans, so how fine does the fineness have to be? and i wonder if god had to tinker to get life, whose laws of physics is he tinkering with? you're saying he created a universe where life wasn't going to happen and he had to change the values to be just so.
and what does god need DNA for? or the higgs field? he makes everything look totally natural to preserve my free will, then he has to make these tiny robots that are a dead giveaway to his existence (according to tour &co) and then he goes back to particle physics and everything looking like "god did not do it" again.
god is imaginary, before you make any other claims you have to demonstrate god. and you can't.
The fine tuning argument is shitty
The fine tuning argument is just another “God of the Gaps” play.
This time, the thing we don’t understand is the other universes that could possibly exist.
You don't need particle physics to debunk fine-tuning stuff. It can be easily debunked by basic reasoning.
Ok, how would you do it?
@@tafazziReadChannelDescription
1. You can't presuppose anything is fine-tuned without showing any fine-tuner in the first place.
2. Fine-tuning argument presupposes that god's purpose is to create life without confirming it.
3. If God is defined as omnipotent, he would be able to create life within any set of parameter he want, no need to fine-tuned. So fine-tuning is an argument against an omnipotent god.
@@The_Alchemist_007 all three of those points are false, amazing!
let's start with 1. The other day I went to a firework show. I don't know who designed it, who set up the firework cannons and who loaded them. I only saw fireworks in the sky. And the coreography was symmetric, purpuseful, there was a pleasant choice of complementary colors for fireworks that exploded side by side, and so on. All these data made me clearly understand that the show couldn't have come about by like an accidental fire in a fireworks container, it was deliberate and fine tuned. By observing the show and deducing it was fine tuned, I logically inferred that there is a fine tuner in the first place. This inference is correct!
The principle that you need to show a fine tuner first is thus disproven.
@@tafazziReadChannelDescription
@tafazziReadChannelDescription
I have seen or heard a thousand times humans designing firework shows. So I can inductively conclude that firework show is designed at some degree of certainty. But I have never seen someone creating a universe, someone creating spacetime (also creating time is logically incoherent), and someone tuning the parameters of nature therefore I can't conclude even inductively that the universe is designed. It's amusing that theists usually forget inductive reasoning while arguing from design. Therefore, my point was not disproven.
@@The_Alchemist_007 Well I haven't. I never saw anyone set up a firework show, I never had a direct experience of that happening, ever, in my entire life because we're not big on fireworks here in Italy. I nonetheless reached the correct conclusion of "someone fine tuned this" from the fireshow I watched.
You're moving the goalpost now, first you said that you need to show a fine tuner exists *before* determining if something is fine tuned, but now you're just saying you use inductive reasoning to say that it's possible some guy may design a firework show, and therefore if you see a beautiful firework show (-> fine tuned firework show) you can conclude that there is a fine tuner.
Is that the point you wanted to make?
35:00 indeed what does god need me for anyway, he can just run the VHS of the universe in his head, if god knows all he doesn't need an actual universe.
God creates beings with a soul because he wants a relationship for the rest of eternity with the beings He creates. The universe may be designed so that beings with free will can either turn away from Him or move closer to Him and His will. The physical universe may not actually be the priority for God, even if from a scientific perspective it is the focus of scientific research. (At least from a more Biblical ‘theism’ view of ‘divine psychology’)
@@MarkPatmosmakes god seem like the maximally pathetic being
@@MarkPatmosLet’s allow this free will concept to steelman your argument. Now we have a branching universe with several timelines. But since God is timeless, He knows how all of those branches will play out.
This is problematic for two reasons:
1. You would not watch a show if you knew how it would end (or, in this case, how every iteration of every show would end. This makes the point stronger.)
2. God knowingly created all evil, even if it is avoided in some branches. Since He is all-powerful, He could choose to create a world without evil instead. Since He did not, He cannot be simultaneously omnibenevolent.