Philip Goff: Cosmopsychism and Fine-Tuning

Craig quotes Paul Davies on this:

"Secondly, there are good reasons to reject this explanation. First of all, there are these arbitrary quantities in addition to the physical constants that don’t seem to be controlled by any sort of physical law. Remember we saw that the fine-tuning concerns two types of quantity in the universe. One would be the physical constants like the gravitational constants that are in the mathematical equations expressed in the laws of nature. But in addition to those physical constants, remember we said there are certain arbitrary quantities that are just put in as boundary conditions on which the laws of nature operate. So even if there were some kind of laws of nature that controlled the constants, there is nothing to suggest that there is anything that controls these arbitrary quantities that are just put in as initial conditions. P. C. W. Davies is a very prominent British physicist. This is what he has to say. I will quote from him:

Even if the laws of physics were unique, it doesn’t follow that the physical universe itself is unique. . . . the laws of physics must be augmented by cosmic initial conditions. . . . There is nothing in present ideas about ‘laws of initial conditions’ remotely to suggest that their consistency with the laws of physics would imply uniqueness. Far from it. . . .

. . . it seems, then, that the physical universe does not have to be the way it is: it could have been otherwise.[1]

So Davies is saying that even if the laws of physics were unique and the constants were somehow fixed, there is nothing in science about laws of initial conditions governing these.[2] These are just arbitrary quantities that are just put in as boundary conditions. The alternative seems, I think, highly implausible on that ground."

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-1/s1-teleological-argument/teleological-argument-part-2

This is an inevitable development. If someone is unwilling to consider an omnipotent, all powerful consciousness outside creation, they would be forced to attribute the same qualities to creation itself. In this case the universe…

This “cosmopsychism” is not a new idea. Its just a form of Panthiesm… A very old idea.

The problem with this idea is that it negates the idea of causality. For the universe to have consciousness and a “holistic” existence. On of two things must have happened -
a) Consciousess arose by itself before the universe did and became the template that the universe was built upon.
b) The universe developed the way it did in anticipation of a future conciousness tat it wuld develop.

To me, the idea of an eternally conscious being who created all things makes much more sense.

2 Likes

@T.j_Runyon,

I did my best to try to respond to your concerns about the ft argument above. I’m curious what you think.

1 Like

Oh I’m sorry, man. I’m just now seeing this. Let me give it a read and some thought

1 Like

This is written by an acquaintance of mine. It’ll get my point across better:
https://infidels.org/library/modern/aron_lucas/flies.html

1 Like

This one as well:
https://infidels.org/library/modern/aron_lucas/hidden-fta.html

1 Like