I recall the DI putting out some interesting stuff out on fire as well. Something we needed to evolve. What’s the water book? Didn’t DI put a book out on water? Is that what you’re referring to?
1 Like
The fire stuff comes from Denton. The DI fairly recently put out a book on water, also from Denton’s stuff (they have broken his things up into short videos and books)
This is the water one I was thinking of. https://www.amazon.com/Water-Life-Unique-Properties-H2O/dp/1439803560
So Nature’s Destiny is worth the read?
I think those who believe will welcome this approach and those who do not wish to believe will say that of course the way that worked wound up ‘winning’ over the other ways. Unfortunately the human heart is very sketchy. It is just that I have seen people go to utterly unproven and not provable speculation about an infinite number of universes to get around the “problem of God” vis-a-vi fine tuning in this one. IE you can be right and it will only matter to the already convinced, not that this is an unworthy goal.
1 Like
I’m sympathetic to fine-tuning arguments but think three classes of objections must be adequately addressed for it to be considered a logically coherent argument.
-
First look at Tim McGrew’s argument that the probability calculations are off, which seems spot on to me: Probabilities and the Fine-Tuning Argument: A Sceptical View on JSTOR
-
Second, take a look at Hans Halvorson, who turns the argument on its head, arguing fine tuning is equally strong as an argument against God: http://cosmos.nautil.us/short/119/fine-tuning-does-not-imply-a-fine-tuner
-
Third, the multiverse hypothesis as a way around fine tuning The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life - PMC.
I have yet to see a sufficiently strong response to any of them. Maybe there is a good response, but all three objections seem under-appreciated by fine-tuning advocates.
This does not mean fine-tuning is false. Nor is an argument against divine teleology. I am open to revisions of the argument that avoid these objections too. Ultimately, I think our intuition is correct that God designed us all. However, there seems to be important objections that are currently unanswered. Of note, two of the three objections here arise from Christians. These objections must be taken very seriously, and not dismissed. As for the mathematical objection by McGrew, it seems to be exactly correct to this computational biologist.
Nature’s Destiny is definitely worth a read - if you like the stuff on fire and water, this is where it’s coming from - a lot of it ultimately from Lawrence Henderson 100 years ago, but Denton brought recent attention to it. I suspect particularly Simon Conway Morris has helped to mainstream Denton’s work in this area (they both have similar Platonist inclinations), which is great - one of the few stories of positive interaction between TE and ID (strangely, given that Denton is not even a Christian), which I think deserves much more attention.
1 Like
I’ll pick it up. I’m sympathetic to denton’s arguments. That’s the kind of design that really appeals to me. I now realize how much more I have to learn.
1 Like
Is Denton’s work what has you leaning to structuralism (which I still don’t fully understand)?
1 Like
Tell me more. What has Morris done?
I disagree, as you probably know. I highly highly recommend reading Barnes and Lewis “A Fortunate Universe”, CUP, which addresses these objections. The go-to advocates on this argument are not the usual Christian apologists and usually not scientists, but rather Luke Barnes and Robin Collins - both very well aware of the objections, and both sufficiently trained in physics/maths as well as philosophy (Luke is not a philosopher, but is sufficiently philosophically aware). Incidentally, Collins also has great (old) essays at Biologos on theistically-guided evolution, and would be a great interlocutor on either topic.
On objection (1)
There are two different probability objections, as I understand. I reflected further after a previous discussion on this. Both objections are responded to by Barnes - perhaps I will get around to finding the relevant pages eventually.
(i) The problem you raised previously was the assumption of ‘max-ent’ priors; that all possible worlds are equally weighted in the FT argument, and that this is somehow illegitimate. The answer, I think, is that the alternative, needed to escape FT, requires a highly biased weighting, which would need to be justified.
(ii) This is different to the problem raised by McGrew, the one now more commonly found in the literature (and also raised by Halvorson if I recall correctly), that the parameter space for many of the fine-tuning parameters is infinite and so probabilities cannot be calculated. This is a more difficult objection, but proponents of FT do give principled arguments for the parameter space that they choose, and argue that similar spaces are commonly used in cosmology. Further, not all parameter spaces are infinite - at least, the argument which comes from Roger Penrose about the initial entropy state of the universe does not have an infinite range. Similarly if I’m right about the G-P map, that wouldn’t have an actually infinite number of possible arrangements as I understand (rather a large finite number), so wouldn’t fall prey to this objection.
I don’t yet have concise comments on Halvorson as I disagree with his entire approach to these questions (strongly influenced by ‘reformed epistemology’ rather than evidentialism, as I understand), but I heard he was working on a book on related issues and I will be very keen to read it.
On (3), proponents of FT have definitely responded to the multiverse objection. It is the focus of a large part of the Barnes & Lewis book, of Robin Collins’ recent work, and most of the philosophical literature on the topic. Broadly, the ‘Boltzmann Brain’ class of responses seem persuasive to me - the properties of the universe don’t fit what would be expected in a multiverse, without additionally fine-tuning the multiverse (probably ad hoc) to make it fit observations. Collins has another fascinating response with a bunch of associated details, that the FT is not just for life but for discoverability.
1 Like
Conway Morris was involved in both of the books mentioned above, which are trying to develop Denton’s line of thought on biochemical FT.
I am pretty sure that Denton (Nature’s Destiny) gets a positive reference in “Life’s Solution” too [so does Axe’s work, incidentally], and Denton’s structuralist approach to evolution in “Still a Theory in Crisis” is similar to Conway Morris’s general take on it. I don’t claim any direct interaction between them on that point though. Possibly Denton’s published papers on structuralism (e.g. he has a letter or something in Nature) are referred to by Conway Morris, not sure …
He is a Lutheran, not Reformed. The two are not bedfellows. Are you sure you read him correctly?
I did not say it is illegitimate. I’m arguing it is arbitrary. Any mechanism will immediately make it false. Assuming Max-Ent is equivalent to assuming there is no mechanism, in addition to raising this problem:
It is not a different objection but exactly the same one. The salient point is that we cannot compute the probability of an unknown process.
This is precisely my area too, so I’m speaking from my expertise.
That might be the best rebuttal. I had the privilege of hearing WLC explain it to me in person. Honestly, I cannot quite get my head around it yet. It may be a durable rebuttal.
I have not seen a similar response to the other points.
Halvorson was trained at Calvin College, which is the centre for reformed epistemology (Plantinga). I am pretty sure his approach fits within reformed epistemology over against evidentialism.
Maybe I just don’t understand it, but I’m pretty sure that the max-ent prior (principle of indifference) and non-normalizability are subtly different objections and can be raised independently - I am fairly happy that there is a good response to the first (i.e. that proposing an alternative fine-tuned distribution as opposed to the default max-ent one is required to get around FT, and this is not justified given naturalism, without further reasoning), and less sure on the second. I am also pretty sure that they are discussed as distinct questions in the literature. This is the kind of thing that maybe philosophers will draw a distinction on and scientists won’t. The point of both is that the probabilities can’t be calculated, I see - but, I don’t think FT requires a precise probability, so I don’t think the max-ent issue matters so much.
There is a large discussion of the ‘measure’ issue, with experts such as Robin Collins, Alexander Pruss, etc. contributing - if you had read or discussed with these people and rebutted them then I’d take the objection seriously, but at the moment based on previous comments I think you don’t take the philosophers seriously enough (the ones I mentioned also having adequate training in mathematics - Pruss with a maths PhD).
WLC doesn’t do original research in the area of FT and is not a physicist. He went to Robin Collins for his debate with Sean Carroll and now also goes to Luke Barnes as the expert, as I understand.
I have read quite a lot of the literature on the FT topic, so I’m quite confident in what I have said. There is a lot more that I haven’t read though.
2 Likes
I think you are missing it, in my opinion. Both your rebuttals just collapse the argument down to being indistinguishable to “we don’t know how these were tuned,” which everyone should already agree to from the get go. The bigger question is if there is a mechanism that “tunes” the numbers that is either currently or ultimately out of view. The answer to that question is shaped primarily by presuppositions.
I think there are quite a few background issues here in our understanding of the FT argument which mean we are talking past each other, so I’ll just point you towards Barnes/Collins and hope you get to engage with them personally on these specific questions.
On Halvorson, see e.g. here where he advocates a stricter form of reformed epistemology than Plantinga. https://philarchive.org/archive/HALPOP-3
There’s a large recent and informed philosophical literature relevant to many of these questions, and I strongly advocate scientists engaging more with it. Time is limited though of course.
1 Like
Perhaps you can invite them here? I am not opposed to fine tuning arguments, but I am very opposed to bad fine-tuning arguments. Perhaps they have produced some good rebuttals that I have not heard.
1 Like
Collins is supposedly coming out with a giant tome on the FT argument. This will probably be the “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses” or “The Resurrection of the Son of God” for the FT of the universe.
2 Likes
If we could converse with bacteria, and if bacteria lived wherever there are available carbohydrates, how could we convince a thriving colony living on a spot of jam that the whole Universe is not specially made for the benefit of the bacteria living on their lonely spot of jam!?
1 Like