I never said there aren’t differing degrees of certainty. Of course that’s the case. My point is simply that an abductive inference is not in the same certainty range as an objective and verifiable observation. There can be a wide range in the certainty level of an abductive inference from very low to very high.
However, there’s one aspect that does create a problem that doesn’t have to be dealt with in the case of facts, and that is that it’s a subjective judgment as to how low or high the certainty level is. So there can be quite a difference in how it’s rated depending on who is making the judgment.
That I do not know what it means to say that something exists independent of and beyond physical reality. I suppose this is a digression from what you really want to talk about so we can leave this aside. I’m just never quite sure how to understand that idea.
Ahh so you just mean inductive generalization. Okay, you could just have said that to begin with.
What on Earth does that have to do with your apparent lack of a good reason for submitting that one of the defining attributes of the supernatural is that it is outside of ordinary experience? That simply doesn’t make sense.
There are many things that are outside of ordinary experience, yet which are not supernatural. And if we stipulate that there are supernatural entities, like maybe angels and gods, and that these live together in some supernatural reality, are they not constantly experiencing each other’s company and presence? But then by your definition they wouldn’t be supernatural because they’re part of their ordinary experiences.
By contrast, you appear to be suggesting that a defining attribute of the physical and natural is that we constantly experience it. Yet that would imply that if we all died, the physical and natural would become supernatural, because then it would not be ordinarily experienced by anyone.
Suffice it to say that the ontology of some entity should not be defined by how frequently it is experienced. I think you should just do away with this part of your definition.
You seem to be confusing the term “abductive inference” with inductive generalization.
You make inductive generalizations from evidence:
The sun has risen every day for all of recorded history(the evidence), we infer by induction that it will continue to do so.
You explain the evidence with abductive reasoning:
The reason the sun rises every day, and will continue to do so, is because of mechanism X, where X is that the Earth rotates.
So to clarify here, you are trying to make an inductive generalization from observation. We have observed that many physical events require physical causes, though there are some physical events for which we do not know whether there is a cause(physical or not).
But you want to generalize the observation to a rule that applies even to the unknown. You want to conclude that even if we do not know of a cause, we should think there is one.
And then you want to move on from that, and use abductive reasoning to explain the evidence (in this case certain physical “events”) with there being a supernatural cause of those events occurring.
There are many problems with your attempts to do this, as I will show below.
No.
First of all, there are events for which no cause is known. People have suggested causes, but they can’t actually demonstrate that those causes are the case. They are merely interpretations of what the observed (the observed being that the photon was detected at the left slit instead of the right one) means.
Second. For all physical events for which the cause is known, the cause is known to be physical too. So by all the same evidence you would invoke to suggest that even events for which we do not know what the cause is, we should think there is one, we can infer that cause to be physical too. The evidence for X(we should think all physical events have causes) is no better than for Y(we should think
all physical events have physical causes).
You then try to get around this by some ill-conceived arguments about causality.
I know. Which is why nobody actually knows thatall events are caused, because nobody can demonstrate what(if anything) is causing the photon to go through the left instead of the right slit, when it does so, in a double slit experiment with detectors at both slits.
And even supposing they could, it’d likely just be a physical cause. Hence it would support the inductive generalization that physical events require physical causes just as well as the inductive generalization that physical events require causes whether physical or not.
As we shall see, you don’t really appear to give any arguments that support this. You basically just assert it.
There’s no reason think that. There is no evidence that “physical existence”(I suppose by that you mean the physical universe, as in all of spacetime, matter, and energy?) was ever not in existence. Zero.
If the universe was not ever non-existant, then there is no transition from nothing to something that requires a causal explanation. Rather, there was simply a first moment of time, at which the universe already existed. That can be the case even for a universe with a finite age. You go back to the first moment of time, and the universe exists already at the first moment of time. It is just very hot and dense. But you can not go any further back, because you can’t go back before time itself. Hence there was not ever a time at which there was nothing, and so no transition from nothingness to the universe.
That’s actually not correct. Supposing for the sake of argument that we have good reason to think the universe was at some point not in existence(and just to make it clear, we do not), and it then “came into existence out of nothingness”, there is nothing in principle wrong with saying that the universe could have the property of being able to bring itself into existence.
From the standpoint of logic alone we can allow for causes to be absolutely simultaneous with their effects. That would then make it possible for the universe to cause itself to begin to exist simultaneously with it beginning to exist. This way, there is no requirement for the cause to exist chronologically prior to, or independent of the universe itself.
Ironically, Christian apologist William Lane Craig used to believe in the possibility of absolute simultaneity between causes and their effects(he used to argue that God caused the universe to exist absolutely simultaneously with it coming into existence). To explain the principle of absolute simultaneity, he would use an old philosophical idea of a ball having rested on a cushion for an endless eternity into the past, being the cause of an indentation in the cushion. The cause for the indentation, being the ball resting on the cushion, is thus simultaneous with it’s effect.
Well no, that doesn’t have to be the first physical event. There is currently no evidence known that should cause us to think that the universe was at some point non-existent.
Rather, all the evidence we have says that at the earliest possible time, the universe existed, and that the first physical “event” in history was some infinitesimally short period of it’s expansion from a hot and dense state. However small you want to make the shortest periods of time (maybe planck times?), there has not been any such period at which the universe did not exist. The only thing that changes as we go back in time is how large the universe is at whatever period you think of. The further back we go, the smaller, hotter, and denser it gets. There is no evidence we have that at some period it did not even exist.
But that isn’t actually known to be the case. That’s just some extrapolation you are making, for which zero evidence actually exists.
It’s pretty simple actually. Current estimations are that the universe’s age can be extrapolated back to a first moment approximately 13.72 billion years ago(or however much the latest estimation is).
But it doesn’t make sense to talk about a period of time (say)15 billion years ago then. Because there was no time before the universe.
You cannot coherently talk about chronological relations if time does not exist. Hence there can’t have been a time before time itself. As such, there can not have been a time at which the universe did not exist. So there can’t have been some period at which there was not anything in existence, because the concept of a period of time only makes sense if time exists.
But that means the universe must have always existed. “Always” meaning for all of time. For all of those 13.72 billion years. And then we can’t go further back than that. That means there can’t have been a time at which the states of affairs was nothingness. So there was not ever(at any time) such a thing as nothingness. If there was not ever such a thing as nothingness, then there was not ever(at any time) a transition from a state of nothingness into a state with the universe existing. Since there was not ever (at any time) such a transition, no cause will ever be required to facilitate it.
That means the first thing that ever happened, was a change of the universe itself(it expanded) while it already existed at the first moment of time.
That makes no sense. First of all because you start by insisting you meant logically prior as opposed to chronologically prior. But then go on to imply a chronological relation, and claim it follows logically. But from what does that follow? You don’t say. I’m sorry to have to say but your thinking here seems extremely muddled.
Then your appear to have problems with logic.
Do you understand what is meant by logical entailment? When you start a sentence with the word “so”, it is implied that what you go on to state in the sentence following the word “so”, is entailed by whatever you said in the previous sentence. But in fact, nothing you said following the word “so” actually followed logically from the preceding sentences you wrote. That is what I meant by the sentence “nothing it contains [the sentence following the word “so”] is logically entailed by what you said before it.”
I’m going to be charitable here and assume you actually do understand what that means and don’t require it explained to you.
First of all, no it does not entail that as the example I go on to detail shows. Second, why would self-causation be impossible? Explain why it is logically or “metaphysically” impossible? You just assert that with no argument or explanation.
That doesn’t explain to me what you mean by “a first physical event”. I know what is meant by an event generally, but I’m not so much interested in dictionary definitions of words as I am interested in knowing what it is you refer to by the “first physical event”. Are you talking about the common misconception that the universe began to exist out of nothing?
Since I have no idea what you mean by “the first physical event”, I have no idea what caused it, if anything even did.
You can start by saying what you think the first physical event was. Let me guess, you think the first physical event is that the universe came into existence out of nothingness? And you think that because you think this has been shown in cosmology?
So you’re saying that you are not certain that there is fusion going on inside the sun? You’re not certain that electrons exist? Every thing you think is an observation is an inference from sensory inputs. Basic failure of epistemology.
I didn’t enter this conversation to score a point but to make one - that we don’t have a single verified example of a supernatural event in all of history.
I got some responses indicating disagreement, but after some discussion we are still left without a single verified example of a supernatural event. You give various reasons why we don’t have such a thing (we have to first determine what supernatural events are, what they would look like, and what standards of evidence are appropriate to apply to them). From this I conclude that we actually agree on my initial point, which is cool.
As far as you know, does all scientific evidence to date shows that physical events require a physical cause?
I suspect the answer is yes. If so, the first physical cause is an exception in that it doesn’t require a physical cause. Why shouldn’t it also be an exception to your claim too?
P.S. non-physical isn’t automatically supernatural, even by your definitions. If there is such a thing as a non-physical natural event, then evidence for a non-physical cause for the first physical event is not evidence for a supernatural cause for the first physical event. In which case it is correct to say that there is no evidence for the supernatural.
I guess I’m just not clear on what you are getting at in regards to the comment I made that you were responding to here.
So what exactly is your point here?
I find in the rest of what you’ve posted a lot of comments which are hard for me to put together in a coherent way to understand exactly what your objections are to my argument. So I will make an attempt to summarize my argument and ask that you summarize your main objections to it. Sorry, but I don’t see that going through all your comments point by point will be productive in getting us closer to understanding each others position any better.
So basically I’m saying that it can be inductively inferred from all relevant scientific evidence that there was a first physical event from which all other physical events originated. And likewise it can be inductively inferred from all relevant scientific evidence that physical events require a cause.
So if we look at that evidence, what can we abductively infer from it to explain what the evidence is arguably pointing to, i.e., a first physical event that entails a cause? One plausible explanation is a supernatural cause for the first physical event.
Now it seems you have some objections to my definition of supernatural. However, I don’t find your objections very compelling. So maybe you could say what your main objection is and we can go from there.
You also seem to object to how I’m using induction and abduction. However, I don’t find these objections compelling either. Maybe you could start with what you think is your most compelling objection in this regard also.
So again, maybe the best thing would be for you to start with a few of what you feel are your most compelling objections and we can go from there.
I think I sufficiently addressed your concerns about this in my last response to you. If the evidence supports a high level of certainty then that’s what would be warranted.
I wonder who else agrees that the statement “we don’t have a single verified supernatural event in all of history” is so ill-defined or unclear that it becomes impossible to present a counterexample.
Josh said he believes that the resurrection is such a counterexample. Is what he said ill-defined or unclear?
What you think is wrong, as a general rule and in this specific case. What I showed is that you can attain certainty (as far as is possible in science) without what you think is direct observation, which contradicts much of what you have said. I don’t think you manage a coherent, consistent viewpoint.
I believe I explained that in detail: It does not make sense to categorize something that has some particular essence or quality, by how frequently it is experienced for the reasons I already explained. So why you bring up other stuff that might be difficult to explain seems to be completely besides the point.
That’s what I’m getting at.
Actually I don’t believe you when you say this. What I wrote is not at all difficult to understand.
That looks like nothing more than a poor excuse for not wanting to do the work of responding substantively to my points. I’m actually trying to clean up this discussion and make progress, but the only way to do that is to make sure we’re communicating correctly. That means we need to use words like inference, inductive, abductive, evidence, and so on correctly.
No, that’s not what you have been saying up till this point. What you were inductively inferring was that all events must have causes.
At no point have you advanced an inductive argument that there must be a first physical event from which all other physical events originated. This is the very fist time you claim this, but it is nothing but a claim, no inference is made to support it.
And I have substantively responded to that, by explaining that we can use the same evidence to infer that the cause must be physical. And I have responded to your bad counter-argument this this too. And now you’re just making up an excuse for not wanting to respond back, but just “summarize” stuff.
If we are going to make an inductive generalization from observation, we must include all relevant evidence. In this case the evidence is that in so far as physical events have known causes, the causes are known to be physical causes. By an inductive generalization that just gets us to a physical cause for the first physical event.
But you have given no reason to think it is plausible, much less required to explain the first physical event. You also have yet to really explain what you are referring to by “the first physical event”. I explicitly asked you whether you are referring to the supposed coming into existence of the physical universe from nothing? I get the feeling you didn’t even read my post, just saw that it was a long response, and gave up reading it.
How compelling you find my objections is not a relevant factor in this discussion. What matters is that I have pointed out that your definition is incoherent, and I have explained why.
There is no one main objection. I have multiple objections, questions, and counter-arguments to various statements you have made, which all need to be answered.
I object to your definition of the supernatural as requiring a particular frequency of experience, as being nonsensical and leading to absurd conclusions. I explained why, you have not responded to those explanations you have just waved your hands.
I have explained that you seem to get the terms inductive generalization and abductive inference mixed up, and that it is important to distinguish between them.
I have explained how the inductive generalization you invoke to argue that the “first physical event” requires a cause, can be used just as effectively to argue that it requires a physical cause.
In response you asserted that the cause logically cannot be physical for the first physical event, but I have explained both that you are making a bare assertion without arguing for it, and why the assertion is false. I gave a simple example that shows your assertion does not apply.
I explained at length why, even if we suppose there was such a thing as a first physical event, that this does not imply a coming into existence, and hence no such coming into existence needs to be caused (we do not need to invoke causes for events that didn’t actually occur).
I have requested you explain what you even mean by a first physical event, and asked you to confirm whether you are referring to the supposed coming into existence of the physical universe from nothing? You have yet to respond.
Is “I don’t find these compelling” your go-to response for when you can’t be bothered to actually write a substantive response? It sure looks like it at this stage.
No, I believe the best thing to do would be for you to actually read my entire previous post in full, think about what I am saying, determine if you agree or disagree with any of it after serious consideration, and then respond substantively both to the arguments I make and the questions I ask. That would be the best thing to do if we are to make any progress here.
Several years ago, when I was still writing for Uncommon Descent, I wrote an article quoting physicist Sean Carroll and evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne as arguing that there could indeed be (provisional) scientific evidence for the supernatural, and even for the existence of God. For his part, P. Z. Myers regards the concept of God as unacceptably vague, but nevertheless acknowledges that scientists could still discover and investigate causes that fall outside the natural order.
Re self-causation: a cause is commonly said to be something which (a) is distinct from its effect and (b) wholly or partially explains its effect. Hence to say that X causes X would entail that (a) X is distinct from X and (b) X explains X. While the latter supposition is possible, the former is a contradiction. That’s why I’m having a hard time understanding your proposal that the universe brought itself into existence. If you just want to say that the universe is self-explanatory, that’s fine, but you then have to confront the awkward fact that it doesn’t appear to be. Leaving aside the kalam cosmological argument for the moment, there remains the problem that the universe’s laws and initial conditions don’t have to be the way they are. And if we posit a multiverse to explain them, a similar problem arises: its laws, too, are likewise contingent.
Re the inductive evidence that physical events have physical causes: I don’t find that so impressive. What we should say is that all physical events with identifiable causes turn out to have physical causes. But we may end up with some physical events or states of affairs or entities for which we can assign no physical cause, because they are either boundary events (as in the kalam cosmological argument) or because they are bedrock physical events (as in the modal cosmological argument). We then face the metaphysical choice of either saying that they have no cause at all or saying that they have a non-physical cause that transcends the laws of nature.
It’s simple, we just don’t assume that all causes have to be distinct from their effects. It may be that most things lack the ability to cause themselves, but that there are some rare or unusual things that do. Universes might be such a thing.
Of course I don’t know that, I am merely arguing this to show that Jim’s assertion that the idea of self-causation necessarily leads to contradiction or absurdity, is false. To avoid the logical problems you envision, we simply have to drop or modify the assumptions that entail them. In this case, the assumption that all causes have to be distinct from their effects. Here we just modify the key word “all” to “most”, and it then follows that there are some things that can cause themselves. No absurdities, no contradictions.
Sure, and I agree. The simple fact is we don’t know why the universe exists rather than not. The same problem would apply to any putative cause we can imagine to explain it. Why that instead of not?
With respect to the putative origin of the universe, as in it supposedly coming into existence from some state of absolute non-being, there is no physical evidence that it had such an origin. There is no evidence we have, anywhere, that there was ever some period of time at which the universe was not in existence. Hence there is no transition from nothing to the universe that needs to be explained, because there is no evidence that there was ever any time at which such a transition occurred.
Remarkably, many people often assume that if the universe has a finite past, it must have at some point not even been in existence. But that simply doesn’t follow.
Any explanation you come up with suffers that problem. You’re going to need to fine-tune your explanation to ensure it picks our initial conditions, and hence you’re still left having to explain your just-as-unlikely explanation. In the space of all imaginable Gods, you pick the one God that wanted our specific initial conditions and physical constants. Yet I can imagine Gods that wanted other things. The set of imaginable Gods extends well beyond Gods that want our universe to exist. It is probably infinitely big. I could imagine Gods that wanted our exact universe, and one more lepton. And then a God that wanted two more leptons. And then a God that wanted three more, etc.
I do believe in the Resurrection, but do not find the evidence solid. Don’t we run the risk of the intelligent design trap, trying to verify this?
Thanks. Blessings.
Thanks. I mean that if we rest our case for faith on a provable event, we run the risk of mixing the truth of the event with its provability. So, if we found there was a mistake in our logic, or the gospels were mistaken, then we would have trouble. One example is the appeal to witnesses. In Africa as I was growing up, the syncretistic Islam/animists widely claimed that a slaughtered ram came to life and pointed out a murderer who was being sought. This occurred in the midst of a large crowd of policemen and citizens. Many claimed to have seen it, or known those who had seen it. It’s not the same situation, but I do believe in the resurrection; I believe God can do that, but I don’t think we have to rely on confirmation from a text or witnesses. I have read Josh McDowell’s book, but not Wright’s. I don’t mean to say that people who believe in proof are credulous. On the contrary, they’re frequently way smarter than I am.
Thanks for your dialogue.