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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.
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.
500 - 1000BC they knew the Earth was round? You're kidding right? And there's no such thing as "ether" which I believe you actually mean "aether" which is what you're describing.Actually, "hundreds of years ago" we did know the earth was a floating ball in space. Go back around 2500 to 3000 years.
Well, there were different ideas of what "space" contained--and we know it isn't truly "empty" today--there is a highly rare combination of matter and energy in space that could be called "ether" as well as we call the combination of gases around us "air."
An interesting piece that touches on the teleological intuition that might make arguments like this attractive:
The earliest documented knowledge of Earth being round is around the 6th century BC, it's quite possible that it was known a few hundred years before that.500 - 1000BC they knew the Earth was round? You're kidding right? And there's no such thing as "ether" which I believe you actually mean "aether" which is what you're describing.
Yes; I would seriously recommend all intuitive thinkers to read Daniel Kahneman's extraordinary book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", which allows you to get a fascinating personal insight into the flaws and biases of intuitive thinking.An interesting piece that touches on the teleological intuition that might make arguments like this attractive:
The earliest documented knowledge of Earth being round is around the 6th century BC, it's quite possible that it was known a few hundred years before that.
Einstein himself gave a lecture (to aetherists) where he gently introduced spacetime by suggesting they might view it as the new aether - of course, he explained its properties and how it was different from the aether they were used to...
Read the original Creation script.Actually, "hundreds of years ago" we did know the earth was a floating ball in space. Go back around 2500 to 3000 years.
Well, there were different ideas of what "space" contained--and we know it isn't truly "empty" today--there is a highly rare combination of matter and energy in space that could be called "ether" as well as we call the combination of gases around us "air."
Lol. That's what I get for posting late at nite! I fixed it now.If premise 3 is that it's not due to design how can premise 4 be design? Also I disagree with premise 1
500 - 1000BC they knew the Earth was round? You're kidding right?
And there's no such thing as "ether" which I believe you actually mean "aether" which is what you're describing.
Outer space, or simply just space, is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles, predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, neutrinos, dust and cosmic rays. The baseline temperature, as set by the background radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7 kelvin (K).
Plasma with a number density of less than one hydrogen atom per cubic metre and a temperature of millions of kelvin in the space between galaxies accounts for most of the baryonic (ordinary) matter in outer space; local concentrations have condensed into stars and galaxies. In most galaxies, observations provide evidence that 90% of the mass is in an unknown form, called dark matter, which interacts with other matter through gravitational but not electromagnetic forces.
What exactly is " fine tuned " ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's all English, but I apologise, I pitched it wrong; I thought people discussing the Teleological Argument in a philosophy forum would follow it.Tautology, anthropic principle, entropic states, complex systems, and Occam. Geez man, speak English. It's to much work to wade through all that BS.
All scientific knowledge is theories, all provisional, none strictly proven [although the basic ones are taken to be beyond reasonable doubt]. Did you mean it was just a hypothesis, not yet tested?See now you use the word "knowledge" when it was just a theory. It turned out to be correct, but it wasn't widely accepted, and it wasn't proven.
Yes, this is exactly what Einstein was saying - that if the aetherists are wedded to the idea of an aether, spacetime is the closest they're going to get.And spacetime isn't the "matter and energy" aether that the person I quoted suggested. Spacetime is the stuff that everything sits in, but it is nothing like what we believed "aether" to be beyond that.
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