You might be interested in the following:

Kenneth Einar Himma, "Prior Probabilities and Confirmation Theory: A Problem with the Fine-Tuning Argument" International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 51, no. 4 (June 2002), 175-194.

The PDF version of the article is available without cost at the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Website:

http://ipsapp007.lwwonline.com/conte...4/fulltext.pdf

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Unregistered :

Thanks for the link. Ken's a professor at my university, and it's always nice to see UW being represented. I've never taken a class from him, but I've met him on a couple of occasions, and he's a good lecturer from what I've seen. I'll take a look at the article.

Broken_Ladder

Toby Wardman's piece on the "fine tuning" argument reminds me of a brief exchange between myself and Michael Behe some months back (see http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=47942 )

It's unfortunate that such an accomplished academic as Mr. Ward cannot see through the glaring emptiness of the argument which he's defending. Going through a list of refutations of the "fine tuning" argument, Ward brings up one loosely phrased as follows:

"It's like rolling a die ten times and getting 3526525514 and saying 'wow, the odds on that were 60 million to one, what a coincidence!'"

This is without a doubt the single most concise and obvious refutation of the "fine tuning" argument one could find. However, Ward mistakenly concludes that he can counter this objection, namely by analogy to a game of cards. In this analogy, you play a game of cards in which an opponent stumbles upon a extraordinary stroke of luck, hitting ten 6's in a row, and rapidly diminishing your "investments".

Now he asks whether we would logically "smell a rat" or conclude that the game was indeed fair. His final assessment is that we would conclude that we had been cheated, because ten 6's in a row is not only improbable but "significant". Here's where his argument goes astray. In fact, this is essentially the same way Behe put it, essentially saying that it's not just improbability that makes us conclude intelligent design in the eye, but "specificity". That is just another way of saying that the eye seems "special", or "significant".

To expose the logical fallacy here, we have to get to the root of what is meant by "special" and why things that are "special" lead us to naturually conclude intelligence. In fact, a useful definition of "intelligence" (and I'm not talking about a standard dictionary version of intelligence) would be helpful here as well.

Simply put, "significant" as it is used here, means "consistent with a known causal phenomenon". In the game of cards, getting 10 6's in a row is an event whose probability with fair dice is 60466176 to 1. But those are the same odds as rolling any other sequence of numbers. So what's so "special" about ten 6's? It's special because we are familiar with humans. We know they exist, and we know a lot about their patterns of behavior. We know that they have a "greater than random" propensity for trying to get dice in a game to land all 6's (at least in the game Ward uses as an example). We know that humans have been known to cheat many times in the past. We know that humans can often be greedy, and thus have a motive to employ technology to beat the odds of games of chance.

We can't say precisely the odds that a person will cheat in a card game, or use loaded dice. But we certainly would be within reason to calculate these odds to be dramatically greater than the odds of those 6's coming up "at random" on fair dice. So "special" here, just means consistent with the actions of a known phenomena--humans. And as we know humans to be intelligent, we can further conclude that the dice were "intelligently" tampered with.

The case for the "fine tuning" argument is not so good. People say that the universe looks like it was intelligently designed to have the particular properties it has; but if we compare that conclusion to the card game analogy, there's a drastic difference.

In the card game, there are people present. Not only do we know the people exist, but we know that they are more likely to use weighted dice to get 10 6's in a row than to get a combination that would not help them. However we absolutely do not know of any process/entity which both exists, and has a greater-than-random propensity to set the constants of physics in favor of the emergence of life. And that's the hole in Ward's argument.

So Mr. Ward, if you suggest that the "fine tuning" argument has any validity whatsoever, the onus is on you to verify the existence of an entity/phenomenon/process which has a high propensity for setting the constants of nature to support the emergence of life, _and_ is "intelligent".

I'll skip a long drawn-out explanation of what "intelligence" really means, but simply put intelligence is only relative to certain "goals". I was playing music in a bar last night, and if I told my friend to go downstairs and touch the front door, he would have been able to accomplish it dispite a number of contingencies. He could have made it even if someone stood in his way, by walking around. He could have freed himself from a booby trap along the way. He could have pushed against a strong wind that might have come through the window and pushed him back.

But say I had thrown a paper airplane with the goal of getting it to the door. In only a very small percentage of all possible events would the plane have made it. Intelligence, relative to any particular act or goal is simply the percentage of potential outcomes dispite which the entity would achieve that goal. But that's another issue. For now the only important thing is that the emptiness of the "fine tuning" argument is exposed.
Clay Vincent Schentrup
http://brokenladder.org/

fishbulb

That bothered me as well. It is not at all obvious that a universe that contains intelligent life is any more remarkable than one which contains nothing but clouds of hydrogen gas, except to the intelligent lifeforms themselves.

Even if we assume that the universe does have a creator, why should we assume that the handfull of intelligent beings scattered about the universe are anything more than unforseen and unimportant byproducts of the main goal: the creation of magnificent clusters of stars? Or, perhaps the purpose of the universe is to showcase black holes, or dark matter, or something else altogether. It seems to be the height of hubris to assume that the universe was created so that we could have a place to live. Tehcnically speaking, we are nothing more than the waste product of dead stars. Suggesting that the universe was created for us could be likened to suggesting that civilization was created to support landfills.

Wardman also seems to play fast and loose with concepts of probability. He says that there are many possible--as in logically possible--universes, but if the parameters of the universe were changed even slightly, it could not support life, among other things. That sounds like nonsense to me. For every logically possible universe he can describe that is incapable of supporting life, I could describe one that is. If he can posit a universe in which some laws of physics are different, preventing life, I can think of one in which other laws of physics are different and happen to compensate for the original differences, allowing life to flourish. If you assume that probability is based on logically possible outcomes, that would seem to mean that there is a 50/50 chance that a random universe could support life. But probability is not based on logically possible outcomes; it is based on actually possible outcomes. We know what outcomes are actually possible if we roll ten dice, so we can correctly compute the probability of rolling ten sixes. We could compare that to a roughly computed probability of someone cheating. Likewise, in the example with the firing squad, we would be suspicious if all of the guns jammed on a single trial, but only because we know that rifles are reliable enough that this is unlikely to happen. If, on the other hand, rifles were alien technology, handed to us and never examined or used until that moment, we would have no idea whether or not all twelve guns jamming was a likely outcome or not.

We have no clue what the actually possible states of the universe could have been, and so have no basis on which to even guess what the probability is that a universe would turn out the way ours did.

Broken_Ladder

Well, I would agree that a very narrow band of all possible physical constants would be conducive to life "as we know it". You say for every universe he can name you can name one too, but that's like saying "For every number you can name between zero and five, I can name one between zero and one, so there are just as many numbers in both ranges." It's about orders of infinity in this case.

Either way, the probability is irrelevant, and I think that's the point we both agree on. No matter how improbable this universe is, it's just one arbitrary way out of a potential infinity that the universe could be. There's nothing "significant" about it. I'm actually shocked that Wardman's piece was published being as how poor his argument is. But I guess it teaches us all a lesson..somehow.

Clay

njhartsh

I agree with this statement in this particular response-to-"fine tuning" context, and I've made the same point.

I wonder, though, if there's a way of saying the above that isn't so prone to the obvious (illogical but emotionally effective) counterattack--"Oh, so you think humans are just so much cosmic trash, huh? Well, we Christians know that humans are special: we're created in the image of God. I guess atheism doesn't work unless you think humans are scum." I haven't found a good way to avoid this. (It's not an non sequitur--or at least not self-evidently so--because this kind of grandstanding theist will proudly declare that he thinks humans are objectively special.)

I'm wondering if there's some way of terminologically dividing the way we subjectively think humans are valuable or important from the way (as fishbulb's argument points out) we are not "special" insofar as the cold perspective of the cosmos and blind probability are concerned.

- Nathan

Thomas Metcalf

The crude finetuning argument (CFTA) goes like this:

(1) A life-permitting universe was improbable.
(2) If something very improbable happens, we have good reason to explain it with "not chance."
(3) Therefore, a life-permitting universe is explainable with "not chance."

The obvious and correct reply is that (2) is just false. It's an instance of the Lottery Fallacy. Now, here's the sophisticated finetuning argument (SFTA):

(4) A life-permitting universe is not surprising on the hypothesis of theism.
(5) A life-permitting universe is very suprising on the hypothesis of atheism.
(6) Therefore, the evidence favors theism.

SFTA is weaker in form than CFTA, but it would still provide evidence for theism, if it were strong. But here are three problems.

I. The Many-Universes Hypothesis

This response is dismissed hastily by both theists and atheists. This is a denial of (4). The crude version of the many-universes hypothesis response is that there may be (or are) many universes, so it should not be surprising that we live in a life-permitting one. But this is incorrect. If there are many universes, it should not be surprising that one of them is finetuned, but it still should be surprising that this one is finetuned.

The sophisticated version of this response is that if there are multiple universes, the chance that God would finetune this particular one is very small, in fact one divided by the number of universes. So if God exists, it is very surprising that this universe is finetuned.

As it happens, cosmology supports a many-universes model pretty strongly. But even if it didn't, it would not be a violation of Ockham's Razor to posit these multiple universes, because they explain why something improbable ("at least one universe is life-permitting") happened.

II. This Universe Doesn't Look Finetuned for Life

This can be thought of as an alternative argument, or as will become apparent later, a denial of (4). Let U be the universe with the current distribution of life-permitting objects and regions, and the current width of the spread of life.

(7) U is not surprising on the hypothesis of atheism.
(8) U is very surprising on the hypothesis of theism.
(9) Therefore, the evidence favors atheism.

The support for (7) is that atheism makes no predictions about life being anything like widespread. But the support for (4) is that life is a good thing to allow, so a morally perfect God will allow it. But notice that the vast, vast majority of the universe is completely inhospitable to life. If it is morally good to encourage life, then God would have been morally better if it weren't the case that only one tiny spot in the universe would support life. So as it turns out, U is very suprising indeed on the hypothesis of theism. It seems we have a potent argument for atheism.

III. God is Equally Improbable, or the Universe is Not

Here's another instance of a crude response and a sophisticated response. The crude response is, "Who designed God, then?" The theist's answer is that God is not in need of explanation, because (say) he is metaphysically necessary. But then the atheist is in a position to claim that the universe was finetuned by a mindless programmed mechanism that's also metaphysically necessary. The theist may either say that its "programming" needs an explanation, in which case the atheist may ask why something as improbable as a God who prefers life exists, or the theist may say that its programming doesn't need an explanation, in which case the "mindless programmed mechanism" is a viable alternative hypothesis.

fishbulb

Quite right. My goal was to demonstrate that, by using Wardman's reasoning, I could counter his argument simply by counter-asserting that there were a lot more possible life-bearing universes than he did. He essentially attempts to argue by assertion: the ratio of logically possible life-supporting universes to life-hostile universes is extremely high, because he can think of many hypothetical universes that can't support life, but only a few that can. If that were a valid argument, I could counter by simply thinking of enough hypothetical life-supporting universes to balance out his life-hostile ones.

The crux of the problem is the equivocation between logially possible (which is just another way of saying "logically consistent") and actually possible. Probability is about actually possible outcomes, not logically consistent scenarios.

fishbulb

The oxygen in the air is the waste product of plants and bacteria. To the creatures that created it, it is an unfortunate, undesirable, and poisonous consequence of respiration, but I value it as much as I value life itself.

Just because something wasn't created for a purpose doesn't mean it can't be valued by someone. I think this objection is very easy to counter. You can simply say, "Human life has value to me, regardless of whether or not there is a god or a creator. Can a theist make the same claim, or does his belief in the sanctity of life depend on God continuing to decree that life is sacred? If so, then if God ever changes his mind, the only people who will still value human life are the atheists."

Steven Carr

I corresponded with Dr. Himma, who was very courteous and friendly.

In the last exchange we had the following

CARR
Surely this unexplained brute fact - the guarantee of success to God's project - is exactly the same fine-tuning problem that the theistic hypothesis had been set up to solve.

HIMMA
It is true that this analysis make the possibility of a world with life a brute fact, but this means there is no explanation for that fact. To say that X is a brute fact is to say that there isn't any explanation of X; X just is. And if X is a brute fact, then there is nothing for the theist to explain.

----------------------------------
CARR now

So if the solution 'God did it' just leaves the fact that it is possible to make a world containing life, a brute, unexplainable fact, what use is it as an explanation?