The Teleological Argument (p4)

[Joshua260]

I'd like to discuss and explore the Teleological Argument, so I offer the following version:

1. The universe is fine-tuned for life.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
4. Therefore, it is due to design.

 

[jacknife]

I'd like to discuss and explore the Teleological Argument, so I offer the following version:

1. The universe is fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or design.
4. Therefore, it is due to design.

If premise 3 is that it's not due to design how can premise 4 be design? Also I disagree with premise 1

 

[Moral Orel]

I'd like to discuss and explore the Teleological Argument, so I offer the following version:

1. The universe is fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
4. Therefore, it is due to design.

I corrected your premise 3 and bolded it in your quote since I'm sure that is what you meant, go ahead and edit your post when you get a chance to change just that.

So first, premise 1 isn't necessarily true because all of those universal constants that are used to prove it is fine tuned aren't necessarily constant. You can change some of them to other values as long as you change multiple constants, therefore making the probability impossible to calculate because we don't know what the constants were at all times during the life of the universe.

Second, premise 3 is false in that it rules out chance even though the probability has been calculated based on what the constants are right now. So just because it is extremely unlikely, it is not impossible. You need to rephrase the argument to say, "it probably isn't due to chance" and "it is probably due to design" which makes it cease to be a logical proof.

But there is also the chance that you aren't giving enough choices. Just because we don't know something doesn't mean it isn't true. Hundreds of years ago we didn't know that the Earth was a floating ball in space, but that didn't make it less true. The whole thing is an argument from ignorance because you're claiming first that we know everything about the universe and the cosmos and how they work that there is to know.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

All of your premises are loaded with obfuscated and unsupported assumptions, but I'd like to zero in on one aspect in particular - how did you determine that 'divine design' is even a meaningful category of explanation in the first place? It has no ontological or epistemological basis whatsoever.

 

[bhsmte]

All of your premises are loaded with obfuscated and unsupported assumptions, but I'd like to zero in on one aspect in particular - how did you determine that 'divine design' is even a meaningful category of explanation in the first place? It has no ontological or epistemological basis whatsoever.

What else is new?

 

[bhsmte]

I'd like to discuss and explore the Teleological Argument, so I offer the following version:

1. The universe is fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or design.
4. Therefore, it is due to design.

Define "fine tuned" and please give a reliable way, fine tuned can be identified.

 

[The Cadet]

Like the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the premises are fundamentally unsupportable, the only relevant discipline for demonstrating the premises obviously does not agree with the argument to any meaningful degree, the discipline responsible for checking the logic of the argument also obviously does not agree with the argument, and it has at least one obvious issue (how did you establish that design, chance, and necessity is a true trichotomy?). So that's a good start.

And just like the Kalam Cosmological Argument, I fail to see why anyone should care about whether or not this argument is true.

Seriously, does it matter at all if this argument is true or false? The absolute most you can get to at all is some form of deism that you cannot link to any relevance to reality. Congrats, you've proven that there was some thing that is responsible for the fine-tuning of our universe. You've chosen to attribute the word "god" to this thing, despite the fact that this obviously drags along an irresponsible amount of baggage about what "god" means to people, and I cannot for the life of me think of a reason for doing this that doesn't boil down to dishonesty of one form or another. And at the end of the day, whether or not this argument is true, it is completely meaningless and amounts to just so much philosophical hand-waving with no relevant impact whatsoever.

 

[Davian]

I'd like to discuss and explore the Teleological Argument, so I offer the following version:

1. The universe is fine-tuned.<snip>

Knowing where you are coming from, what would an allegedly all-knowing, all-powerful deity need with "tuning"? Is it not powerful enough to make it work however it likes? We could be living on the surface of the Sun. Now, that would be evidence for all-knowing, all-powerful deity.

 

[bhsmte]

Knowing where you are coming from, what would an allegedly all-knowing, all-powerful deity need with "tuning"? Is it not powerful enough to make it work however it likes? We could be living on the surface of the Sun. Now, that would be evidence for all-knowing, all-powerful deity.

Good argument for; life adapted to the environment, as opposed to, the environment was fine tuned for life.

 

[nonbeliever314]

I'd like to discuss and explore the Teleological Argument, so I offer the following version:

1. The universe is fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or design.
4. Therefore, it is due to design.

You're part of the universe. Are you fine-tuned as well?

 

[quatona]

I'd like to discuss and explore the Teleological Argument, so I offer the following version:

1. The universe is fine-tuned.

What do universes look like that are not fine-tuned?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Maybe if there is a block universe, with past present and future all wound up together, there is a selection process happening in eternal dimension. Which selects the "fittest" (longest lasting, the most efficient preserver of order...) of the outcomes when the singularity starts to spead its wings. Like a precognition of heavenly bliss and a timeline to boot. So non-fine tuned scenarios would be rapid entropy, and therefore either short lived or extinct.

Say for instance the universe is nearly flat in its geometry, raising up the flatness problem. Now, if flatness is selected, meaning that a near everlasting universe is more likely AfAIK, then maybe this actually counteracts the "improbability argument" of the fine tuning principle. Flat universes are more probable, because they last longer.

Theres a direct correlation between probability and fine tuning. Fine tuning is the odds on favourite, because fine tuned universe know how to run for longer. So their statistical volume is high fibre and healthy.

I think this looks a bit like an inverted pyramid in my mind, with the upper higher volume end representing the the chances of the "seemingly unlikely" so to speak.

The point at the bottom is the unlikely singularity, which is so unlucky it negates itself into a long stetch, long lasting, slow entropy, fine tuned opposite - the voluminous thing we see today.

 

[Eudaimonist]

1. The universe is fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or design.
4. Therefore, it is due to chance.

The argument above looks just as good, and perhaps even better. Or maybe:

1. The universe is fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to chance or design.
4. Therefore, it is due to physical necessity.

It seems that the order in which one evaluates "physical necessity, chance, or design" can make a big difference to the outcome. If A and B can't be supported, then C. However, if B and C can't be supported, then A. And if A and C can't be supported, then B. It ultimately comes down to an argument from ignorance of the sort involved in "if you can't prove evolution, therefore divine creation".


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Archaeopteryx]

1. The universe is fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or design.
4. Therefore, it is due to chance.

The argument above looks just as good, and perhaps even better. Or maybe:

1. The universe is fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to chance or design.
4. Therefore, it is due to physical necessity.

It seems that the order in which one evaluates "physical necessity, chance, or design" can make a big difference to the outcome. If A and B can't be supported, then C. However, if B and C can't be supported, then A. And if A and C can't be supported, then B. It ultimately comes down to an argument from ignorance of the sort involved in "if you can't prove evolution, therefore divine creation".


eudaimonia,

Mark

The usual justification for the third premise (that it's not due to physical necessity or chance) is that there is a paucity of evidence for those two options. However, the same can be said of the apologist's preferred option (design). If paucity of evidence is a problem for the other two, it is just as much a problem (or even more so) for design. Design does not triumph by default, especially if the list of possibilities is greater than the three listed there.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Which is more probably, a mindless babble or "the quick brown fox jumperd over a lazy dog". Actually the latter, against all apparent odds.

If time is change from antique, primordial high order to heat death of low order, then a slow run down to heat death is more probable than a fast one. A slow run has a greater block volume a priori, even if it manages to preserve antique order against the odds.


Therefore, the antiquity of high order is probably going to be preserved, making the a posteriori improbablity of fine tuning more probable from an a priori comparison of block universe sizes.

Look: from an a posteriori mathematisation heat death is more probable. A mess is more likely than a work of art, given a randomised shake up of coloured sand. But a priori time doesnt exist there, at heat death. So therfore if there is time, the inverse rule applies - there is actually near infinite order. If there is time there is at least some order, and the more time there is, the more likely order is.

More time is more likely than none, by definition. Thats because probability entails existence of sorts, I think. Probablity theory belongs inside of time or relates to time and chances. Therefore so is the illusion of fine tuning likely, bacause the more order is preserved the longer time lasts, and vice versa - the longer time lasts the more there is the likelihood of stunning and unusual order.

The millenium run is a universe simulation made by scientists ona compuiter. One with "high volume" lasts longer, even if it preserves entropy against the odds. A split second minute movie may be easier to make, but less easy to actually find.....

The diamond is bigger than the haystack, because the haystack is a split second sudden death scenario.

A sudden death scenario may seem more likely, like the disapprearance of a sand painting with a shake up. But the video (ie simulation, and therefore actual reality) would be over in a split second. The light cone of a "probable scenario" would be tiny. Therefore the improbable cannot be blamed if it spreads ourt towards evermore....

 

[paulm50]

1. The universe is fine-tuned. It isn't by any means fine-tuned.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or design.
4. Therefore, it is due to design.

Prove point 1. then we can discuss the rest.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Premise one is also in need of justification. What is the universe fine-tuned for and how do we determine this? The most common strategy seems to be to claim that the universe is fine-tuned for life because even a small deviation in one of the constants would render the universe "life-prohibiting" (to use Craig's words). Ignoring for a moment the fact that this isn't technically correct (it may merely render it prohibiting to our kind of life, but not all life), it's not clear why we should presume that life is the end goal when even a small deviation would also mess up various other aspects of the universe as well. Life wouldn't be the only thing affected, so why presume that the constants are set that way to enable life specifically?

 

[quatona]

Premise one is also in need of justification. What is the universe fine-tuned for and how do we determine this? The most common strategy seems to be to claim that the universe is fine-tuned for life because even a small deviation in one of the constants would render the universe "life-prohibiting" (to use Craig's words). Ignoring for a moment the fact that this isn't technically correct (it may merely render it prohibiting to our kind of life, but not all life), it's not clear why we should presume that life is the end goal when even a small deviation would also mess up various other aspects of the universe as well. Life wouldn't be the only thing affected, so why presume that the constants are set that way to enable life specifically?

Actually, to assume any goal at all is already question begging. And without presupposing a goal, I wouldn´t even know what "fine-tuned" is meant to communicate.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Instead of "The universe is fine-tuned" perhaps it would be better to have "Our universe has the physical constants necessary for life to exist".

That is less loaded than the term "fine-tuned", because this inevitably will be used as a rhetorical device to suggest the existence of a "tuner".


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

One could say that to suggest that changing the apparent constants of our universe would make the universe we know impossible is an obvious tautology - if the constants were different it wouldn't be the universe we know. The weak anthropic principle may seem unsatisfying, but - unlike the fine tuning argument - it doesn't implicitly restrict complexity to the familiar. If, as seems to be the case, there is an action in low entropic states toward the maximisation of the rate of increase of entropy, then, statistically, the emergence of complexity (local complex systems) will be favoured, because such complex systems maintain their local entropy minima by increasing the rate of energy dissipation, so increasing overall entropy in the system as a whole. Increasingly complex self-sustaining systems (like life in this universe) would appear to be inevitable wherever they are possible. Whether such systems would become complex enough qualify as 'observers' is entirely speculative - they did here, but who can say what kind of complex systems might emerge in an entirely different universe?

In a pothole analogy, if you fill a pothole with a carefully shaped piece of wood and the pothole changes shape, the wood will no longer fit. This doesn't mean the pothole was finely tuned to the wood, it means the wood was tailored to that exact pothole; you could carve a new piece of wood to fit the new shape, and do the same for any shape of pot hole. However, that would be a design argument, and Occam might object. A liquid (e.g. water) is a more fitting analogy, it will match the contours of any pothole exactly without the need for careful crafting.