joedad

Ojuice5001,

Shoot an arrow at a plain white target. Now go up to the target and color a black dot around the tip of the arrow. Now put concentric circles around the dot.

You've obviously hit the bullseye.

That's fine tuning.

Tercel

I'm sorry, but I think you've misunderstood exactly what I was arguing. I am indeed arguing that B is in fact a non-explanation or -more correctly- an argument that no explanation is actually needed. This doesn't make B a bad hypothesis - and I certainly don't think it is a "fallback" or a "silly conceit" of any kind!!! My complaint was not that "B is stupid because it doesn't explain anything" but rather "B is not actually an explanation as the writer states - but rather an argument as to why no explanation is necessary". Indeed I think B is a reasonable argument and the purpose of the post was not to argue against B but rather against the way the writer had presented it.

On the contrary, I think it does.

I think it does because we are the ones doing the reasoning here. Any rational (or sentient) being is always going to be interested in the existence of sentient beings in general. This means that anyone who can use reason is going to have a subjective opinion of the importance of sentient beings.

However, I'm not sure that this actually matters. I think that placing any prior exphasis on sentient beings is unecessary for the argument.
The best FT argument IMO is the probabilistic one: Which hypothesis is made most likely given the presence of FT?
Thus given FT -that FT for the existence of rational beings is an extremely unlikely event given random chance and one universe- the intelligence hypothesis is strongly favoured to the extent of proof (as the chance hypothesis becomes so small as to be negligible in comparison to the intelligence hypothesis which remains reasonably probable).

Not at all. Rather, we see X has happened and ask ourselves what the most likely cause of X was. We find X is rather improbable by chance - unless there is the equivalent of a million monkey with typewriters out there somewhere. The fact that we would not be here if X hadn't happened is not really an issue - (to use the firing squad analogy which Drange {purposely?} misunderstands) if you found that a firing squad all missed you, then you'd want to know the cause and you would never consider "I wouldn't be asking this question if it hadn't happened" a reasonable answer to prevent you asking for the most likely cause.

Tercel

[ December 31, 2001: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

GunnerJ

I assume you meant that I misunderstood. Sorry, then.

Naturally, but that's beside the point. You've simply restated one of my premises: that we think we're important.

But you see, that's exactly what I was refuting. It may be rare. But so are many things. Lets bring in cards. Say I have a card set that contains fifteen different cards (that's all). Unless I've completely lost all my knowledge of probability (which may well have happened), there are !15 possible combinations of each shuffling and dealing; i.e., if I shuffled this special deck and dealt out all fifteen cards face up on a table, there would be !15 possible ways for those cards to come up. That's 1307674368000 possibilities. I could easily say that any of these combinations an extremely rare occurence. One in 1307674368000, for chrissake! But unless one of these combos is somehow signifigant, i.e., I win a million bucks for one of them, there's not much of a reason to explain its occurence. And even then, chance would be fine, unless I somehow wanted to think that the gods rigged the game in my favor. In which case, of course, I wouldn't be thanking them unless I won. Thus, unless sentient life is somehow an objectively signifigant thing, there's no need for an explaination. The fact that your argument rests on out subjective feelings of importance stresses this. And even if it were signifigant, and the objection that we wouldn't need an explaination if we weren't here still stands.

Finding an explaination for why X happened is fine. Saying that X is unlikely to happen "by chance" is a straw man. And, once again, no matter how unlikely X is, unless X is somehow signifigant, there is still no reason to "account for" X. It's extremely unlikely to pull the crank on a slot machine and hit the jackpot the first time... but unless jackpot wins you more than any other combination of symbols, it's irrelevant.

In addition, even if X was important, why is this such a problem? Even if the Jackpot combo did have some signifigance (i.e., winning more money), we have no reason to assume that the God of Luck is on our side if we win. Again, if we lost, we'd not be saying our prayes of thanks to Lady Luck.

But you've hear catagorically misunderstood Drange's objection: firing squads are used to kill people, and so if all the members of it missed, you would want to know why. But you have once again completely missed my whole argument: this analogy assumes that the purpose of the universe is to produce sentient life, like a firing squad is designed to kill someone. Why should we assume this? Why must we put ourselves at center stage again? The firing squad analogy only helps to illustrate the failure of the FT argument I pointed out. It assumes that the universe has the goal of producing intellegent life, which is therefore signifigant. It then uses this assumption to prove that someone designed the universe for sentient life. It's a huge tautology based on an emotional appeal to our own egos.

One more objection might be raised: if sentient life is so signifigant, and it's also rare, wouldn't this really argue against a fine-tuner tryign to make sentient life? Whouldn't he/she/it be better off making sentient life more abundant? To use the slot machine, wouldn't a player want to makr the spinners to the Jackpot is more likely?

SingleDad

Tercel

I agree that B is indeed not an explanation of why the universe is the way it is: A "real" explanation is certainly desired; however such an explanation might not be possible. Indeed, we do not have any actual evidence that could distinguish a causal hypothesis from the chance hypothesis.

The math just doesn't work out. No matter how you slice and dice Bayes Theorem, you cannot infer a value of P(~N|F) &gt; P(N|F) unless you construct your assumptions such that P(~N) &gt; P(F), which is a fallacy of assumption of the consequent.

It is known that you cannot infer causality, much less intelligence, from a single instance, however improbable. Since the "Fine Tuner" is defined in terms of a single improbable event, you are merely relabelling the brute fact of this event without adding any explanatory power.

[ December 31, 2001: Message edited by: SingleDad ]</p>

Tercel

Opps. LOL!

I agree up to here.

Clearly unless one combination is clearly distingushible from the others then the fact that they are all extremly improbable doesn't matter. Obviously one of these "extremely improbable" combinations must happen with probability 1.
Viewing your analogy differently, consider the situation of you walking into a room and seeing a stack of cards on the floor. They are in ascending numerical order from 1 to 15.
Which is more likely: That they acheived that order by random shuffling or that someone deliberately put them in that order?
Now add the condition that the door has a special lock which does not allow you to observe the cards unless they were in that order.
Which is now more likely: That they acheived that order by random shuffling or that someone deliberately put them in that order?

All very well, but you are here arguing that this is a false analogy because the FT is not really objectively special at all. And I still think you are missing the point: It doesn't need to be special - all it needs is to be in some way distinguishable.

With our cards we had a distinguishable combination (in ascending order). We also had differing probabilities for the possible causes across the different combinations.
Possible causes for the cards being in some order were Intelligent rigging of the deck and random shuffling.
Intelligent rigging was quite significantly likely to put the cards in ascending order while it is moderately unlikely to have found any random looking orders interesting.
Chance was extremly unlikely to put the cards in ascending order, white it was extremly likely to put them in some random looking order.
If we drew a good old Venn Diagram we would see that given that the pack of cards was in ascending order, Intelligence rigging is the far more likely cause.

The gods rigging the game in your favour seems to me a rather unlikely event. Don't atheists normally get lightening thrown at them rather than money?

I don't think there's a "need" for an explanation either. It's still interesting and meaninful to ask for the most likely cause of finetuning. For any event that occurs we may ponder its possible causes, FT being no different. What I think is that intelligence is the most likely cause of finetuning. (Drange's version of the finetuning argument isn't quite the same as mine.)

Why? When I say "unlikely" I mean "unlikely compared to other possibilities".

Tercel

GunnerJ

Fair enough.

Is this an actual reply, or just a joke?

But wait, are you offering FT as an explaination for FT? If there's an intellegent being that's fine tuning things, then that's not an "explaination" for FT, but the unproven conclusion of it. My statement, to which you were supposed to reply, means that unless sentient life is objectively signifigant, there's not need to presume that some fine-tuning going on to make it likely.

Ah, but here's the probelm: I never said the cards were numbered, much less that the numbers were integers from one to fifteen! (Another minor problem is that all of the combinations od fifteen differnet cards are distinguishable from one another.) All I said was that there were fifteen different cards. They could be marked with numbers, maybe in a specific set, maybe random (1, 17.5, .333333..., pi, sqrt(53)), or maybe the fifteen different cards are lettered, or maybe they have words that rhyme with "mule," or maybe they're marked with geometric shapes, or perhaps they have pictures of characters from the Peanuts cartoon strip. I don't specify, you simply assume a mathematical order. This is very telling, as it assumes a similar meaningful order in the universe. No doubt some things in the universe act in predictable ways, but some other things are completely unpredictable. And not all of the constants of the universe are important to life, much less sentient life; these are simply the ones you choose to focus on. The analogy of these constants to integers from one to fifteen is flawed because it assume what you are attempting to prove: the signifigance of the constants of this Universe.

Besides the probelms listed above, another is that "I" may not be able to open the door and view them unless they are in that exact order, but "I" have no way of knowing whether "someone else" can open the door if they're set up a different way. You have assumed that "I" am the only person capable of opening the door at all, no matter what the combination. "I" have no way of knowing this.

The larger problem is, once again, you have presumed that "my" opening of the door is somehow signifigant. (And thus, the combination of numbers from one to fifteen.) The probelm is in your analogy of locked doors with cards on the other side to the development of sentient life in the Universe. We know what locked doors are meant to do, and thus it would seem unlikely that, if "I" could not open such a door unless the cards were in a certain order on the other side, that order is unlikely to occur unless "Someone" put the cards down that way. But we don't know what the function/purpose of the Universe is, much less that it's function is like a door with a card-sequenced lock, and to assume otherwise is to engage in circular reasoning.

You, sir, are missing my point: that FT is unproven. I am arguing that sentient life is not objectively signifigant, and that therefore its occurence in this Universe requires no FT explaination. You are taugtologically assuming that sentient life is fine tuned in order to prove that it is.

What the hell are you talking about? Every one of the 1307674368000 combinations of cards is distinguishable from every other, whether they have numbers, letters, shapes, or cartoon characters on them. Unless you can compare the results of each one of them to another, and then objectively determine which of these is the most important, there's no reason to assume that that combination needs a special explaination (i.e., that they are deliberately sequenced). You have conveiniently set the cards up so that at least one of the combinations seems signifigant. Since we have no idea what Universes are possible, much less whether the things that go on in them are signifigant, we need no FT explaination. You are the one missing the point entirely. In the above analogy, you would have to be God (or at least privy to God's knowledge) and know all the different kinds of Universes that are possible, and which one (ones?) are capable of producing the type of life you like in order to reach such a conclusion. This is, again, a circular argument for FT by God from FT by God.

No, sir. YOUR cards have a signifigant ascending order, assuming an analogous signifigant order in the Universe, thus assuming what you are attempting to prove. MY cards were simply all different from each other, with all of their possible combinations being distinguishable from each other, but with no one of them known to be signifigant.

No, "we" only had random chance as the cause for each of them, since "we" had no way of knowing is any of the combinations are important.

And, as long as you get to twist my analogies into false ones that do not correstpond with reality, but correspond very well with the argument you are trying to prove, you can indefinatly stack the deck (no pun intended) in your favor. Unfortunately for you, such circular reasoning is unconvincing.

Wrong AGAIN. Since you purposely assumed that the cards had some meaningful symbols on them that could have a meaningful result, you got to set up a taugtological analogy that served to prove your argument while ignoring the reality that the Universe you attempt to compare this deck of cards to has no such a meaning that we can verify. Thus, there are no "random" orders to compare it to. In other words: whereas I left the markings on the cards unknown, and the signifigance of their possible combinations also unknown (which is all we can say about the Universe and any other possible "siblings" of it); you assumed that the cards had meaningful pictures on them that could be put in meaningful cominations. You thus set the conditions of your argument in your favor, by assuming what you are trying to prove: that the conditions of the Universe are as signifigant as an ascending order of integers from one to fifteen. I'd like to thank you for pointing out the logical fallicies of your own argument: it requires what is attempts to prove.

[ January 05, 2002: Message edited by: Rimstalker ]</p>

Tercel

You are confusing me slightly with what you mean by "explanation" (Oh and why do you keep spelling it with an extra 'i'?). I will explain what I am meaning and leave it up to you to tell me if we're meaning the same thing.
I have used the word explanation here as meaning a complete and comprehensive explanation resulting in a full understanding of the causes and methods used - since it appears that this is what Drange meant by it. To quote him:
Drange argues that the theistic explanation fails to give us a complete understanding of the situation and thus is an inadequate "explanation".
Now this is a fair enough (if a little stretched) meaning of the word explanation, so I let Drange's definition stand since we are discussing his article.
I agree with Drange - given his understanding of "explanation" the theistic argument is woefully inadequate.
I also think we may well never find an explanation of the beginning of the universe to the level that Drange requires.
However, I do think there is a FT argument which suceeds and avoids Dranges objections. This argument does not propose to give any explanations in the sense used by Drange, but rather looks at the most likely cause or reason for FT.
When I say "cause" here, I am using it rather loosely (perhaps "reason" would be a better word, but I've used "cause" up to here). eg I would, for example allow "chance" as a cause here.
My favourite version of the FT argument, which I believe is successful, can be formulated (sorry, it's a little rough) thus:
1) FT exists. (ie there is an extremely small range of values that are required if the universe is to support life.)
What is the most likely reason for this?
2a) FT could result from Necessity. ie it is logically impossible for the universe not to be the way it is. -It could never have been otherwise.
2b) A possible reason for FT could be that it's the result of the interference of an intelligence of some sort who desired FT.
2c) Or FT could simply have happened in our universe by some random probabilitistic "chance" process.
3) Either FT is a result of necessity or it is not. If not, then there was more than one possible combination of the universe's physical constants.
Either the selection of a FTed universe from among these possibilities was the result of intelligence or it is not. We call the selection of one possibility among many by non-intelligence: Chance.
Hence Necessity, Intelligence and Chance are the only possibilities.
4) Not Necessity. Some example reasons:
4a) Cosmologists frequently work with other hypothesised values for our finetuned physical constants. There seems to be no obvious logical contradiction involved in their work.
4b) To the absolute best of our knowledge, the initial state of matter and the formulations of the physical constants was entirely unpredictable. (Thus arguing against necessity since it entails only one possibility and thus predictability)
4c) Even if a GUT and GTE etc are one day discovered, (and if not then "Necessity" looks even more dodgy) it would still seem legitimate to ask "Why that particular formula?". After all, there are an infinite number of theories that could conceivably be actualised into a world. "Necessity" implies that our particular one must have been actualised which seems rather arbitrary and not necessary at all.
5) Thus we can rule out "Necessity" completely and consider it no more. Thus leaving Intelligence vs Chance as possible reasons.
Now it is quite conceivable that if an Intelligence with the appropriate world-creating abilities did exist (which we don't know) then it would probably be quite moderately interested in creating a world with intelligent life (certainly compared to its likely interest in creating a world WITHOUT intelligent life).
Chance on the other hand, given one world is hugely more likely to create a world without FT. (see 1)
Now (using some basic statistics) what we are saying here is:
Given one universe:
P(I) = not negligible, perhaps moderately reasonable (the probability of such an intelligence existing)
P(FT|I) = reasonable (the probability of an intelligence creating a world with FT)
P(FT|C) = very very very very small so as to be all but negligible (the probability of chance selecting the FT values is super small)
6) Now, given one world and given fine tuning with I and C as the only possible causes, yields:
P(I|FT) = All but 100% certain. (ie we are talking on the order of 99.999999999999999999999999999% certain or perhaps a bit more)
P(C|FT) = Negligible
7) Conclusion: Given one universe, we can conclude with an astonishing degree of certainty that it was created by an intelligence.
8) But perhaps there is more than one universe? (and we are thus in a FTed universe by the anthropic principle)
Well it would take about 10^200 universes to raise chance to a believable level of probability when compared to the intelligence hypothesis. But perhaps there are that many universes, or perhaps there are even an infinite number of universes? Call this the Many-Many-Worlds (MMW) hypothesis. (Which should be distinguished from the quantum physics many-worlds hypothesis which suggests there might be 10 or so other quantumly connected universes)
So we have MMW vs Intelligence as possible reasons for FT.
9) Now I think there are several problems posed by MMW, which I can go into if anyone wants and which I think establish Intelligence as the more probable of the two. (I did have a draft of its problems on my hard-drive, but my computer's on the blink and I may have lost it)
But for the meantime, I will content myself with saying that we have now established about a 50/50% chance of a creator-god existing which would seem to consitute "reasonable" belief for the theist.

But far more amusing to my mind, is the position which the atheist is now put. The atheists so often criticise the theists for their belief in the invisible and undetectable God. But the atheist now finds themselves forced to defend the assertion that there exist thousands upon millions of these invisible, undetectable objects (The MMW hypothesis). And so in an amusing turn of events we theists find ourselves accusing the atheists of belief in tbe undetectable.
The argument is worth its weight in gold for that alone: But as I say, there are a few problems with MMW which make the intelligence hypothesis preferrable. (But which I won't state in this post due to my computer problems and that this post is big enough already)

But anyway, the above is the version of the FT argument which I favour, so I hope you can see where I am coming from here.

I noticed that, so I said it. Why did I think it necessary?
Because the combination in the analogy needs to be special to the intelligence. In the argument the Intelligence finds a Finetuned universe to be disproportunately worth creating - it finds such a universe particularly special. Humans find numbers in ascending order special (I used the word "distingushible" before. I meant distinguishible in some statistical sense, not merely that different combinations were trivially different). So such a comparison is required in my analogy if it is to be sound.

Compare the analogy to the argument:
A human would have found numbers in ascending order more interesting than a random combination. Therefore if a human had ordered the cards the ascending order possibility is quite likely.
With chance, the ascending order possibility is extremely unlikely and some other order is far more likely.
Thus, upon finding the cards in order you (rightly) would conclude that a human ordered them.
An intelligent creator would have found other intelligent life (and thus a FTed universe) more interesting than a lifeless universe. Therefore if the intelligent creator had created the universe the FTing possibility is quite likely.
With chance, the FTing possibility is extremely unlikely and some other order is far more likely.
Thus, upon finding FTing you (rightly) would conclude that a intelligent creator put it that way.

Here we see that the analogy fits my argument all but perfectly up to point 7.

Anyway, I hope this clears up what I am arguing. -Since you seem to have got sidetracked on to some pretty harsh acusations of circular logic and assuming meaning which completely bemuse me because they seem to have no relevance whatsoever to what I am arguing.

One further point: You misunderstood what I meant by the locked door. It wasn't that you knew the cards were in the room - you didn't. (thus ruling out any tests to see how often the door was locked etc) It simply prevented you seeing the cards - you wouldn't even know the cards existed unless they were in ascending order. It was, I think a very substandard part of my analogy. However the point I was making still stands: Whether or not you would observe something if it didn't happen has no effect on discussing the most probable reason for it happening. You should see this if you try and use the anthropic principle objection against my argument as I outlined it above: It is simply irrelevant.

But I hope this clears things up a bit on what I am arguing and what I am not. Apologies for the length of the post, but complete clarification appeared to be necessary before we could get any futher.

Tercel

jdawg2

To all those that consider some form of "intelligent" creator as a more likely explanation for the "fine tuning" of the universe...

What is the intelligent creator of the intelligent creator? I would assume that the creator of the creator would have to be pretty damn "intelligent" itself, since something so obviously complex as an intelligent creator couldn't just exist on it's own

Bah, of course you can go on forever with this, that's why I agree with SingleDad...might as well stop with the universe since you don't seem to see too many folks arguing over the existance of the universe

HRGruemm

Tercel, I can rewrite the standard model in such a way that it yields exactly the same results, but there is an extremely large range of values for which the universe supports life.

Reason: constants can be 1-to-1 transformed into other constants, and there is no "natural" probability measure on a continous probability space. A measure which assigns probability 1-epsilon to the subset of life-friendly universes is not less natural than another one which assigns epsilon (epsilon, as usual, is very small).

We should never forget that the famous "constants" are not constants of the universe, but of a particular approximate description/model of a region of the universe - which happens to be our current description/model.

Regards,
HRG.

GunnerJ

Tercel, I must admit that I'm at a loss here, as my knowledge of probability is limited. But I can tell you this: you typed a lot of stuff for nothing. Your whole post missed my point entirely. You started off as your first premise, "Fine tuning exists." I do not agree AT ALL to this, and all my previous arguments reflected this. Let's look just at your first premise:

First, i take issue with your use of the word "life." What kind of life? The only type of life we know about is our type of life; biology is provincial right now. Since the only type of life we can speculate about is our own, the type that exists in our Universe, your statement lacks the same impact. It is reduced to, "Life of a type that can exist in this Universe exists in this Universe." IMO, not very convincing evidence of fine-tuning.

Your argument ONCE AGAIN rests on the unspoken assumption that our kind of life is special or signifigant. Since we have no idea what other kinds of life are possible in other kinds of Universes with different constants, this kind of blows your very first premise to hell. The fact that our kind of life is well-suited to the Universe it exists in is no more evidence for fine-tuning than saying that because a puddle three feet wide and one inch deep exists in a pothole three feet wide and one inch deep, the pothole was specially made. It would serve you well in the future to adress my actual arguments against your unstated assumptions about the signifigance of the life that exists in the Universe.

I find it very difficult to continue debating with you civily when you continue to ignore and evade my counter-arguments. Notice:

Notice! To the intelligence! You have betrayed your continued insistance ont he assumption I continually attack as illogical, and which you continually ignore: that the "order" we see in the universe is only special to us, it is a subjective signifigance. Why do you think I left the markings on the card left undefined? Because I wanted to imply that we don't know if the constants in the universe is objectively signifigant, or their results. By injecting into the analogy an objectively signifigant order which we do not know exists in the Universe which the cards represent, you assume that which you should be trying to prove. That is why I object to the usage of integers from one to fifteen as markings on the cards.

You are, to put it shortly, admitting what I claimed: that you have to argue circularly to get anywhere with this.

Yes, humans do find numbers in ascending order signifigant... and that's all we can say about their signifigance. Unless you can show that somehow the constants of our Universe are objectively signifigant, and not just special to the beings that benefit from them, you have no case. The fact that you call the difference between the !15 combinations "trivial" compared to the ascending order again betrays your illogical assumptions that some combinations are more signifigant than others. They only are to us, as subjective observers. The fact that such a circular comparison is nessisary for your argument to have any merit only, once again, belies its logical bankruptcy.

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> COME ON, Tercel! Can you at least try? You call the non-ascending combinations "random," implying that the ascending combination is somehow special. More circular reasoning. Again, humans do find ascending-order combinations interesting; this means nothing.

NO, they are NOT! Each combination, including ascending order from one to fifteen, is as likely as the others: one in 1307674368000. Unless you can assume that the ascending-order combo is signifigant, not subjectively to the observer, it is no-more likely than any other. As I repeat CONSTANTLY, your use of a combination signifigant to humans in the cards that represent the constants of the Universe employs circular reasoning.

See above. This is getting annoying, Tercel. Since the rest of your "argument" is more of the same, I will not waste my time replying to it. Tercel, you seem to find my accusations of circular reasoning harsh. I hope you take the opportunity to carefully re-look the analogy you use. It seems pretty obvious that by comparing the Universe to a set of cards with an order that is signifigant to us, you assume that which you try to prove: that the Universe's constants are objectively signifigant. By continuing to rehash illogical arguments in order to evade my criticisms, you only make your position look worse.