What Are the Chances That This Post Makes Any Sense? A Teleological Argument from Reason

Count Timothy von Icarus

Intro: (or skip to the questions below)

What are the chances that our world should be a rational one? To put the question more concretely in the terms of physics: is it likely for a universe evolve from state to state, such that past states dictate future ones? Or, is the apparent rationality of our world evidence for a designer?

Attempting to answer the last question has not been a common avenue for developing teleological arguments for the existence of God. In some respects, the reason is obvious. This is a difficult question to analyze; it involves probing at the borders of a conceptual space where our tools of analysis begin to lose their purchase. How can one analyze the irrational? Such endeavors seem likely to just fall into the well-worn tracks of arguments about Decartes' evil demon, brains in vats, etc., i.e., the territory of radical skepticism which philosophy has learned to comfortably live with, if not resolve.

Yet, it is also strange that this line of reasoning has not been more thoroughly investigated. After all, the identification of the Logos— universal animating reason— with both the creative force that generates the world, and God, is as old as philosophy. It appears in Heraclitus, is taken up by the Stoics, and becomes a pillar of theology for Christians, for whom Christ is the Logos.

If we invoke the Principle of Indifference, we should expect a universe where any given state is as likely as any other. This has become a common guiding light when tackling the domain of the unknown in the sciences and is the reason that there is consternation over the "Fine-Tuning Problem," the problem that, in several respects, the universe is ‘fine-tuned' for life". For example, if we should expect that the initial conditions of the universe should be subject to the Principle of Indifference, with each possible outcome equally likely, then the extremely low entropy of the early universe is an absolutely astonishing fact. The same is true of the fact that free parameters in physics have exactly the values that are conducive to life, bucking an expected tendency towards "naturalness."

Questions

Phenomenological Questions

We can imagine many ways in which our life could progress forward in a less rational manner (and without logical contradiction). So why does it move forward so rationally?

To be sure, the world is full of surprises, but we also expect a great deal of regularity. We do not throw our pasta into a boiling pot and expect it will turn into broccoli. We do not drop our kids off at daycare in the morning and expect to pick up teenagers. The world is such that the writer(s) of Ecclesiastes could state that there was "nothing new under the sun," at the dawn of civilization.

If we start from the Principle of Indifference, shouldn't we expect a whirlwind of possible experiences, not a seemingly law governed progression such that empirical efforts succeed in defining future experiences based on mathematical laws (e.g., the successes of the sciences)?

Physical Questions
Why should we expect that the universe moves from state to state such that states are entailed by those immediately prior to them (either fully, determinism, or probabilistically, i.e., a past state entails a range of possible future states)? If the universe if a four-dimensional object, why shouldn't it be such that it randomly reassigns its mass energy from moment to moment? A 2D shape can start out looking just like an orderly square, but there is no reason its dimensions cannot begin to wildly vary at any point along its boundaries. Isn't a lawlike progression less likely given the Principle of Indifference because there are more ways to have states follow from one another randomly?

Per work already done on Boltmann Brains, the existence of a brain with a rational set of memories is astoundingly less likely than one that recalls an incoherent hodgepodge of experiences, simply because there are more ways to create incoherence than order. This same principle applies to any "universe production mechanism," of the sort advanced by multiverse theories to avoid Fine Tuning.

If we say the universe is the way it is because of intrinsic qualities, how can these qualities possibly be defined as necessary qualities (a requirement to avoid the Fine-Tuning Argument)?

There are obviously more ways for a universe to progress in a law-like manner for a period, even billions of years, and then begin progressing randomly, then there are ways for it to stick to a single set of law like behaviors vis-a-vis state progression for its entire existence. Additionally, there are more ways that a universe can be irrational and then snap into the picture of a rational universe, all constituent parts being rearranged such that they appear to have developed according to laws, then there are ways for it to actually have evolved in a law-like manner. Thus, any set of facts about the necessary traits of the universe will always be empirically undetermined. Further, there is no reason to think that any one such object should be necessary while others are not. Given this, we are back to the Fine-Tuning Argument even if me make the plunge into multiverses and a strictly mathematical "multiverse production object."

Appeals to the parsimony of a law like universe fail here because a completely random process (running over something like Floridi's maximally portable ontology) produces all universes and is simpler than any lawful universe. That is, it is easier and takes less information to describe an infinite (or just very vast), random bit (or qbit) generator that will eventually spawn a description of our universe than it is to describe any universe with laws.

But wait! Isn't it very unlikely for us to see the world we do if the universe isn't rational? And so, can't we dispense with the principle of indifference? I'd argue not, for the same exact reasons that the Boltzmann Brain problem remains a serious problem in cosmology, one that has been renewed by multiverse theories and eternal inflation, since these theories tend to make Boltzmann Brains more likely than observers of the sort we think we are (ergo the Measure Problem in cosmology). The only way to diffuse the Boltzmann Brain problem, or the related question of "why the universe should be rational," is to find out why the universes' incredibly unlikely traits should be necessary (and such that they avoid Boltzmann Brains), otherwise probability suggests they should be the result of Fine Tuning. However, any such explanation will always remain underdetermined (see above).

When taken together with Plantinga's argument that naturalism is self-defeating (or Hoffman's more fleshed out, but similar argument against mind-independent reality) I find this line of reasoning compelling. However, it is hardly clear that this problem implies the "God of classical theism," a God that only seems to exist in philosophy journals anyhow, but it does seem to suggest principles of natural theology/teleology, or other conceptions of God.

Edit: Also note that if computational theory of mind is true, and computation at some level of complexity somehow causes consciousness, than there turns out not to be any reason to think of Logos as necessarily unconscious.

wonderer1

This has become a common guiding light when tackling the domain of the unknown in the sciences and is the reason that there is consternation over the "Fine-Tuning Problem," the problem that, in several respects, the universe is ‘fine-tuned' for life". — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've only read this far and need to step out, so will look at the rest later. I just want to point out that we might equally say that the universe seems tuned to cause the death of any life that evolves. 99.99% of the places we might imagine being teleported to in this universe would result in a quick death. It looks to me as if life in the universe is a fluke, despite the fact that we happen to be in a location where we notice life all around us.

javra

However, it is hardly clear that this problem implies the "God of classical theism," a God that only seems to exist in philosophy journals anyhow, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Haven't read the entire OP yet, but as to this, the reality of teleology directly contradicts the occurrence of the "God of classical theism".

This omnipotent God (psyche) either a) unintentionally creates everything or b) intentionally creates everything.

If (a), reasoning (emotive as well as cognitive) goes down the drain, and anything might be - which at the very least rules out the existential requirement for such a God.

If (b) then God Himself is teleologically driven, and hence determined, by His intentions - all intentions being teleological, i.e. intent/goal/end driven. Therefore, God here can rationally only remain subject to teloi (goals) which God does not (intentionally) create but, instead, intends to fulfill (irrespective of what they might be). Hence, here, God cannot be the omnipotent "creator of everything" - for he cannot, when rationally addressed, create (intentionally) his own intents by which he's driven when so creating.

There's always blind faith ... but when it comes to reasoning, the reality of teleology is logically incompatible with an omnipotent God that creates everything.

RogueAI

I found this interesting:

"Is there a God or a multiverse? Does modern cosmology force us to choose? Is it the case that the apparent fine-tuning of constants and forces to make the universe just right for life means there is either a need for a "tuner" or else a cosmos in which every possible variation of these constants and forces exists somewhere?

This choice has provoked anxious comment in the pages of this week's New Scientist. It follows an article in Discover magazine, in which science writer Tim Folger quoted cosmologist Bernard Carr: "If you don't want God, you'd better have a multiverse."

Even strongly atheistic physicists seem to believe the choice is unavoidable. Steven Weinberg, the closest physics comes to a Richard Dawkins, told the eminent biologist: "If you discovered a really impressive fine-tuning ... I think you'd really be left with only two explanations: a benevolent designer or a multiverse."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2008/dec/08/religion-philosophy-cosmology-multiverse#:~:text=It%20follows%20an%20article%20in,d%20better%20have%20a%20multiverse.%22

Taking off my idealist hat, I agree: either there's a sufficiently large multiverse (of the right kind), or there's god(s). Or there's been an endless Big Bang->Big Crunch. The odds that this single universe would be a life-supporting one are just too fantastical to take seriously the idea that we got lucky.

A counter to that line of thinking is that we wouldn't be here to wonder about it all if we hadn't been lucky, and we're here, so we got lucky, so what's the big deal? But that doesn't hold up. Leslie's Firing Squad analogy counters that objection.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/Leslie.html

unenlightened

I have read the entire op, and even some of the responses. Do I get a prize? There is a echo here of other threads - you seem to presuppose time. If the next moment everything is different, there is nothing to say that it is 'next', rather than any other configuration where everything is different. Time has no meaning unless there is continuity and change, that produces 'succession'.

Fortunately, the glass of wine that I turned away from to write the above paragraph was still there at the end of it. God is good! At least, that is what my memory is telling me - that I sipped and wrote, and sipped again and now am writing again. *sip* Primitivo, a full-bodied plumy wine - a current favourite.

The argument, such as it is, is an argument from ignorance; we don't know why anything should make sense, so maybe making sense came first, (God), because otherwise not making sense would make more sense, unless making sense is somehow necessary to existence.

It is an argument aimed at science as if science held sway over reality. but science does not hold sway, but is on the contrary the humble servant thereof and seeks only to describe. But neither reason nor experience can prescribe nor proscribe God - is that much not already obvious? Well, clearly not, unfortunately.

I suppose I should applaud the attempt to make room for teleological accounts of the universe, but it seems unambitious to the degree, that I have to wonder, supposing you are right – so what? The Great Programmer designed the universe to ... ?

RogueAI

It looks to me as if life in the universe is a fluke, despite the fact that we happen to be in a location where we notice life all around us. — wonderer1

The odds of the universe supporting any life at all are fantastically improbable. This is a good article:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/#ExamPhys

RogueAI

Also: we can only go by our memories to determine whether things make sense. It's possible the universe makes no sense, but we are given false memories of a past where everything seems to make sense. That begs the question that the thing giving us false memories has to make some kind of sense itself.

ETA: But what if our false memories are the result of a fantastically improbable sequence of events?

javra

The Great Programmer designed the universe to ... ? — unenlightened

Even in denying the validity of the argument I've presented against exactly such a "The Great Programmer", you do realize this question can only be answered via a teleological reason, don't you? In other words, by providing an end for the sake of which the means (in this case, the universe) was set in motion.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪javra

I really don't see how that follows. If the universe develops teleologically why does that entail that God is guided by the same goals? I don't even see how this necessarily applies to God's immanent activities and properties.

B. Seems to imply that having goals necessarily implies a lack of agency. I don't think I follow. Surely one isn't free if one's behavior is arbitrary. The ability to rationally develop one's own goals and the ability to have second and nth order goals about one's own desires are both generally taken as prerequisites for freedom. How does this not rule out all free will? If it does, why does doing what I want to do entail a lack of freedom?

javra

I really don't see how that follows. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fare. It was tersely given argument.

If the universe develops teleologically why does that entail that God is guided by the same goals? I don't even see how this necessarily applies to God's immanent activities and properties. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"It doesn't" to both questions.

It only requires that God has goals in what God does. If God does not have any goals, then irrationality or, at best, arational reasoning (if that can even make sense). If God does have goals, then these ends with God pursues cannot rationally all be God's creation. This is because the very act of creating (and of designing, programming, willfully generating, etc.) is intentional. Hence, it is driven by at least one end which is a priori to the act of creation for the sake of which the creation is enacted.

This is likely still too terse. Followed through, though, it at least currently seems to me that no god can be omnipotent (if at all occurrent) - for any god will abide by at least one telos/end that this god did not create. An end which the god seeks to actualize, but has not yet had the ability to.

B. Seems to imply that having goals necessarily implies a lack of agency. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I find quite the contrary to be the case: Agency cannot occur in the absence of teloi, i.e. of ends for the sake of which agency is enacted. This is what makes our free will intentional (here, for those of us who at least entertain the possibility of free will). We as agents are neither "fully determined" nor "perfectly undetermined by anything" in what we do. And each choice we make will be intentional (an unintended choice is nonsensical). This then, to me at least, entails that our freely willed choices are always partly determined by the ends we actively hold for the sake of which we so generate a made choice. While at the same time not being fully, or absolutely, determined as per traditional interpretations of causal determinism.

Surely one isn't free if one's behavior is arbitrary. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hence free will needing to be intent-driven or intent-semi-determined - and, thereby, intentional.

The ability to rationally develop one's own goals and the ability to have second and nth order goals about one's own desires are both generally taken as prerequisites for freedom. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I grant this. And it, to my mind, can get complex. But then in so developing one's goals via one's free will, one's free will, to be intentional, will need to be telos-driven (i.e., semi-determined by teloi which are a priori to this developing of end to follow in the future). In sort: otherwise one's develping of goals would be unintentional and, hence, arbitrary.

How does this not rule out all free will? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. It is, I find, a requisite for free will's occurrence. This with free will loosely defined at the metaphysical freedom to choose otherwise in the same situation - something which causal determinism disallows. (But then, neither does this in and of itself validate the reality of our being endowed with free will.)

frank

The only way to diffuse the Boltzmann Brain problem, or the related question of "why the universe should be rational," is to find out why the universes' incredibly unlikely traits should be necessary — Count Timothy von Icarus

You seem to be drawing probability (with the word 'unlikely") and possibility ("necessary") into it.

There are some good arguments for determinism, more along the lines of actualism than causality. Would that solve the problem?

"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible". --Einstein

javra

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

Was in a rush with my last post. But regarding God’s intentionality, here’s a maybe better expressed argument:

Either a) God intentionally generated an initial given (e.g., the occurrence of light as per Genesis 1) or b) God has been intentionally generating givens for eternity such that there never was any initial given that God intentionally generated.

If (a), the generation of this initial given (call it X) was then necessarily to some extent limited or bounded (hence, determined) by an end – for the sake of which it was generated – which, as end aspired toward, could not have been generated by God prior to God’s very first, intentional generation (i.e., his generation of X). Here, then, God was himself to some degree limited or bounded (determined) by his actively held intent (telos or goal or aim), an intent held by him which he did not create and which he did not instantaneously realize. Therefore, God was not - and thereby is not - omnipotent.

If (b), then the conclusion of (a) also applies – for, here, there never could have been an initial, intentionally created end (for the sake of which future creations would be enacted). To intentionally create such an end (call it Z), an end for the sake of which this created end Z is brought about is required. One could here draw this out ad infinitum and, always, there will be one end for the sake of which a creation is made which was not itself God’s creation yet was requisite for God’s intentionally creating anything. Hence, God is not omnipotent.

Lastly, were God able to fulfill all ends that God aims to fulfilling – as would be required of omnipotence – then God would at such juncture no longer be intentionally (i.e., teleologically) creating anything whatsoever. For all God’s intents would have here become fully actualized as God intended. Therefore, the omnipotence of a psyche logically mandates that the psyche does not intentionally generate anything - for there here is nothing that this omnipotent psyche has not been yet able to actualize.

Due to the aforementioned, no individuated psyche (no individuated anything, actually) that is teleologically driven - of which intentionality is a form - can possibly be omnipotent.

Hence, an omnipotent creator deity is logically impossible. Same is valid for the impossibility of an omnipotent designer, programmer, etc.

---

Hopefully that makes better sense. Would welcome to hear any flaws in this reasoning.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪frank

You seem to be drawing probability (with the word 'unlikely") and possibility ("necessary") into it.

Yes, because there is a connection. Take the normal argument for Fine Tuning. If the constants of our universe and its initial entropy are such that the odds of their occuring are significantly less than 1 in 10×10^123, then it doesn't make sense to assume such things have occured by chance. You don't bet against a coin that has come up heads for 5 hours of flips because it is obvious that the coin isn't fair given the result. Hence, the Fine Tuning Argument has been taken seriously to date.

The counter to the Fine Tuning Argument is this: "sure, our world looks unfathomably unlikely. This seemed even more true back when we though the universe was eternal and that we lived in a Boltzmann Universe (i.e., a universe where, due to incredibly unlikely random thermodynamic fluctuations, everything moved just so, so as to create the visible universe out of heat death). However, we keep learning more about the world. For example, we developed the Big Bang Theory, which gets around the Boltzmann Universe's problem. Perhaps we can fully explain exactly why physical constants have the values they do and why entropy was so low in the early universe. Problem solved, Fine Tuning will get explained."

My point is that the argument above still fails even if you appear to have such explanations, and even if it seems like you can define our universe with mathematical certainty. Why? Because there are combinatorially unfathomably more ways that a mathematically describable universe could come to briefly appear to be the object you think you've discovered when creating such a "complete physics," and yet actually be some sort of different universe with different laws, or much more likely, no laws at all. Unless you can prove the necessity of the laws, under determination makes it more likely that you're actually in a universe that lacks such laws, and that this will be revealed at any moment as order breaks down.

Given that this doesn't happen, that the coin always comes up tails, and given that we reject that we just sprang into existence, we seem justified in assuming some sort of selection process or rational principle that is ontologically primitive at work in reality. Various conceptions of God fit this role.

Science assumes the world is rational because it must. We don't have a bedrock theory falsified by some observation and just declare "ugh, guess it was another Humean miracle." We assume that we either had something wrong originally, the we got the observation wrong, or that such an event is explained by a deeper law. However, this assumption isn't based on any necessity, since even if any N dimensional universe can be described mathematically, that in no way entails that information about any partial slice of said universe should let you know anything about what other parts look like. However, a law-like universe is exactly the type of object where data about a slice of it tells you everything about the whole (or at least brackets what the whole can look like probabilistically).

The multiverse does not solve this problem at all. Indeed, I'd argue that it makes it significantly worse by making structural realism more compelling. You're trading the very low likelihood of physical constants having the values they do for the even lower likelihood that the combinatorial possibilities for universes that exist in said multiverse just happen to be those that are governed by this sort of law.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪unenlightened

There is a echo here of other threads - you seem to presuppose time. If the next moment everything is different, there is nothing to say that it is 'next', rather than any other configuration where everything is different. Time has no meaning unless there is continuity and change, that produces 'succession'.

You don't need to presuppose time, or strictly four dimensions. I mentioned Floridi's maximally portable ontology thinking of just this objection, but avoided going into detail because I figured it'd make the post too long.

Of course a universe doesn't need "time," but it needs difference. Imagine even the simplist toy universe consisting of just a single dimensional line. Obviously points on the line have to vary from one another in some respect (their coordinates) or else you have no line. Such universes also vary in length unless there is some reason they are necessarily infinite; you can have discrete or continuous models as well. But for all of them, contain any information, for them to describe anything, you need variance between somethings, elsewise everything is indistinguishable from everything else, making such a universe contentless. Even a point can't exist as a point if it isn't a point that is relative to some other point or a coordinate system.

Time is the dimension over which change occurs in our observable three dimensional universe. But we can posit n dimensions and the problem doesn't change. It doesn't collapse if we extrapolate from the Holographic Principle and suppose our world is two dimensional, nor does it go away if we posit all the dimensions of M Theory. I simply use time because it's more familiar and the way we commonly define physical laws due to how we experience the world, and because the world that we exist in obviously does have time.

Plus, any observer looking at n dimensions might really be in a reality where more or fewer observable dimensions exist depending on where you are in that reality, even us: https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.21.2167

Anyhow, it seems to me like the idea that time exists shouldn't be controversial when discussing empirical arguments about the world.

frank

Yes, because there is a connection. Take the normal argument for Fine Tuning. If the constants of our universe and its initial entropy are such that the odds of their occuring are significantly less than 1 in 10×10^123, then it doesn't make sense to assume such things have occured by chance. You don't bet against a coin that has come up heads for 5 hours of flips because it is obvious that the coin isn't fair given the result. Hence, the Fine Tuning Argument has been taken seriously to date. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think probability can be taken one of two ways: it's either an assessment of some number of iterations (so we toss the coin 100 times, it comes up heads once, so we say it has a 1% chance of coming up. This assessment has to be considered in the light of the data from which it came.

The other way to assess probability is to examine the logical possibilities. Look at the coin and determine how it's weighted. If it's evenly weighted, there's logically a 50% chance it will come up heads.

If we've done an assessment of logical possibility and determined that of all the ways the universe could appear, the chances of it appearing as it is are 1 in 10^10^123, that doesn't really tell us anything about how this one possibility manifested, whether there was divine intervention or not. It just means we can imagine a huge number of other ways the universe could have been. Logical possibility is about our imaginations and logical dictates.

Unless you can prove the necessity of the laws, under determination makes it more likely that you're actually in a universe that lacks such laws, and that this will be revealed at any moment as order breaks down. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see what you're saying, but I don't think it works that way. The universe either has a pending breakdown in order, or it doesn't. An assessment of logical possibility won't help us determine which universe we're in. We can't use the iterative form of probability either, because by definition, the universe is a one-off. However it is, it had a 100% chance of happening that way because the assessement is 1/1.

The multiverse does not solve this problem at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. What's true of our universe is true of a multiverse. Each individual universe had a 100% chance of being the way it is.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪frank

I think probability can be taken one of two ways: it's either an assessment of some number of iterations (so we toss the coin 100 times, it comes up heads once, so we say it has a 1% chance of coming up. This assessment has to be considered in the light of the data from which it came.

The other way to assess probability is to examine the logical possibilities. Look at the coin and determine how it's weighted. If it's evenly weighted, there's logically a 50% chance it will come up heads.

Exactly, the first being frequentism and the latter being propensity. There is also subjective/Bayesian probability.

Frequentism has problems with all one-off events. What was the probability of Donald Trump winning the election in June 2016? If probability is frequency then it was already 100%. But then what is the chance that Joe Biden wins in 2024? Does it not exist? Do probabilities only exist for one-off events after the event? Or are we forced to posit eternalism, that all events exist eternally, so that there is some frequency for one-off events we can reference?

And what does this say about descriptions of quantum mechanics that are inherently probabilistic? At the start of the universe, T0, no quantum events have occured. So there existed no frequency through which to define quantum system probabilities. And yet, presumably, we think the universe had physical laws from the beginning.

More importantly, we generally don't think that past frequency, of itself, possesses causal physical powers. We don't say a coin flip is 50/50 because past flips have been so. A coin flip isn't "50/50 because the frequency of coin flips is 50/50," that's a vicious circle.

We say a coin flip has these probabilities because of the attributes of coins. But in that case, frequency is just a useful way to observe propensities and discover them, in which case it is absolutely fine to apply probability to one off events. And indeed cosmology would be impossible otherwise as nothing could be said about the likelihood of different hypotheses.

We can't use the iterative form of probability either, because by definition, the universe is a one-off. However it is, it had a 100% chance of happening that way because the assessement is 1/1.

How does this not apply to all natural phenomena? Every event we observe only occurs at one time, in one place, in one way. I don't see how it doesn't generalize. Sure, you can claim that some phenomena belong together in some sort of relevant equivalence class, but at the same time there is always the counter argument that you're looking at the wrong type of equivalence. If you say all coin flips belong in the same class then it seems to me like you have to beg the question and assume that the universe behaves the same way vis-á-vis flipped coins at all times, in all places, otherwise the class wouldn't be valid.

Generally, we go in the reverse order. We see that coins have attributes such that, wherever we flip them, they come up 50/50, and assume their properties cause this distribution. Invariance across space and time for multiple classes then justifies the idea of "physical laws."

When we saw that the curvature of space and the conditions in places in the universe that were very far away from ours seemed very unlikely given an eternal universe, we developed the Big Bang Theory. Over time, a great deal of evidence was gathered that supports the Big Bang Theory. But by your logic, I don't get why we shouldn't have seen the facts that caused us to posit the Big Bang in the first place, shrugged, and said "probability can't be applied to cosmology, whatever universe exists, exists with p=1, so there is actually nothing to explain here in terms of likelihood." And I don't see how this stops at just cosmology.

How is the analogy to the Boltzmann Brain problem not apt? You could use the same counter for that problem and say: "thermodynamics isn't really about probabilities because there is actually just one universe that has one series of microstates, not many possible microstates. We are either merely a Boltmann Brain or we are in a legit Boltzmann Universe, it is one or the other with p=1, because there is just one universe. Thus, the mere Boltzmann Brain isn't actually more likely than the Boltzmann Universe."

But if you buy that, I don't see how it doesn't generalize to all arguments from statistical ensembles, making the entire scientific enterprise invalid. Every paper using statistics, every significance tests would be bunk. Frequency can't tell you that two samples are different unless you believe that differences in frequency can be defined in terms of something other than just the frequencies you happen to observe.

I will grant though that the argument is more compelling if you accept that the universe can be explained mathematically, and more so if you believe the universe and its component parts essentially are the mathematical object that describes it.

frank

Frequentism has problems with all one-off events. What was the probability of Donald Trump winning the election in June 2016? If probability is frequency then it was already 100%. But then what is the chance that Joe Biden wins in 2024? Does it not exist? Do probabilities only exist for one-off events after the event? Or are we forced to posit eternalism, that all events exist eternally, so that there is some frequency for one-off events we can reference? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. Frequentism is what underlies actualism, a form of determinism.

Imagine that you're rolling a die at a craps table. You'll say that the 5 has a 1/6 chance of appearing face up. This is an assessment of logical possibility. We have to be careful about what we say after the die has landed. If it was a 5, we know it's possible that the 5 could appear face-up because it did! But could the 2 also appear face up? Logically, you can't have more than one side of the die face up. If the 5 appeared, it isn't possible for any other number to be face-up. So what happened to the other possibilities? Where did they go? What exactly are those other possibilities?

One way to look at it is to say those other possibilities are information we possess about how the universe works. We use that information to make predictions. But we can back off of imagining that those other possibilities have some ontological implications. They don't. They're just the result of our analysis.

But in that case, frequency is just a useful way to observe propensities and discover them, in which case it is absolutely fine to apply probability to one off events. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Woe. I don't think so. This is the fatal mistake people commonly make about statistics. Statistics allows you to make predictions about populations, not individuals. For instance, people who smoke have a higher incidence of COPD. So I can say if a person smokes, they're more likely to get COPD. However, among smokers, only about 10% will actually get it. As a pulmonologists told me once, most people who smoke "get away with it." So all you can tell an individual smoker is that they're in a category that has a higher incidence of COPD. I can't tell an individual anything about their medical future.

How does this not apply to all natural phenomena? Every event we observe only occurs at one time, in one place, in one way. I don't see how it doesn't generalize. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It does generalize.

But if you buy that, I don't see how it doesn't generalize to all arguments from statistical ensembles, making the entire scientific enterprise invalid. Every paper using statistics, every significance test, is bunk, because there aren't actually possibilities of different outcomes, but actually just the one outcome that exists. After all, the only set of observations are just those we do make. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's the misinterpretation that's bunk. You have to remember that probability is about knowledge, not ontology.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪frank

Knowledge is about something, no? So it's necessarily tied to ontologically.

"Correlation does not imply causation," does not imply that causation doesn't exist. Medicine does not say, "smoking doesn't cause cancer, bullets to the head don't cause brain damage, etc., all we can know is that previous samples of groups of people who have been shot in the head have a higher incidence of brain damage."

The entire reason you go out and compare the mean incidence of lung disease for smokers against the mean in some control population is because you think there is something about smokers that gives them a greater propensity for developing lung disease. Even eliminiativists re: "cause," allow that a complete description of a phenomenon will show how past events evolved into future ones, i.e., why the group of smokers tended to end up with lung disease more often.

There are all sorts of ways to explore cause, do-calculus and the like, which are employed heavily in medicine.

If you don't believe in propensities, then you have absolutely no grounds for defining the classes whose frequencies you compare in many cases. Take your example, if I notice smokers have higher rates of lung disease, why shouldn't I just assume that the frequency with which "all people" get lung cancer is actually higher than I thought. Why posit smokers as a class?

In the sciences, classes are often defined by frequencies of some observed variable themselves. If I flip a coin and it comes up heads 100 times in a row, and I don't believe in propensities, then I should just say that the probability of a coin coming up heads has changed, rather than positing that the coin is rigged. Indeed, what grounds would I have for saying the class of rigged coins and the class of coins are two different classes?

frank

Knowledge is about something, no? So it's necessarily tied to ontologically. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If it's knowledge about a unique event, it's knowledge of logical possiblity. This is just an assessment of which statements about the outcome are self-contradictory and which ones aren't. This is apriori knowledge. There is no empirical aspect to it. So yes, it's about something: it's about how we're bound to think.

Medicine does not say, "smoking doesn't cause cancer, bullets to the head don't cause brain damage, etc., all we can know is that previous samples of groups of people who have been shot in the head have a higher incidence of brain damage — Count Timothy von Icarus

When we say that bullet to the head has the potential to cause brain damage, this reflects experience with brains and gun shot wounds. It's fully possible for a person to receive a GSW to the head and suffer no brain damage. It happens all the time, especially in suicide attempts where they just end up blowing their faces off. Again, you have to take it case by case.

There are all sorts of ways to explore cause, do-calculus and the like, which are employed heavily in medicine. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Medicine is heavily and pervasively empirical. Most medical decisions are not research based. We do what works. We take ideas about causation with a grains of salt because the real world has so many variables.

If you don't believe in propensities, then you have absolutely no grounds for making classes whose frequencies you compare. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could you explain what you mean by "propensities" here? It seems like you're trying to smudge the different kinds of probability together with folk expectations of the kind that drive gamblers?

I do believe in propensities. I just don't believe it tells me anything about unique cases. It tells me something about populations. So if you've been drinking a milkshake everyday at 2pm for the last 27 years, that tells me nothing about what you're going to do today. I won't be surprised if you drink a milkshake at 2pm, but I don't know ahead of time whether you will or not.

. If I flip a coin and it comes up heads 100 times in a row, and I don't believe in propensities, then I should just say that the probability of a coin coming up heads has changed, rather than positing that the coin is rigged. Indeed, what grounds would I have for saying the class of rigged coins and the class of coins are — Count Timothy von Icarus

Say you have a balanced coin. You have to face the fact that it's possible to flip it an octillion times and see it come up heads every time. That doesn't mean it's not balanced, and it tells you nothing about what it's going to do on the next flip.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪frank

By propensity I mean the propensity interpretation of probability: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/#ProInt

Although the logical interpretation may be more apt for the original example.

Exactly. Frequentism is what underlies actualism, a form of determinism.

Imagine that you're rolling a die at a craps table. You'll say that the 5 has a 1/6 chance of appearing face up. This is an assessment of logical possibility. We have to be careful about what we say after the die has landed. If it was a 5, we know it's possible that the 5 could appear face-up because it did! But could the 2 also appear face up? Logically, you can't have more than one side of the die face up. If the 5 appeared, it isn't possible for any other number to be face-up. So what happened to the other possibilities? Where did they go? What exactly are those other possibilities?

One way to look at it is to say those other possibilities are information we possess about how the universe works. We use that information to make predictions. But we can back off of imagining that those other possibilities have some ontological implications. They don't. They're just the result of our analysis.

This is just the axiom that things have already happened have necessarily happened in temporal logic. This is no way entails that future events are necessary. And it doesn't entail that probability is frequency. Anyhow, if probability IS frequency then probability is NOT subjective in any case, it's not about "our information," but a fact about the world.

But for probability to be fully synonymous with frequency it seems like you also need eternalism, the claim that all events already exist at all times, so that the probability of an event's occuring can be based on its frequency throughout all times. Why? Because before an event has occured at least one time such a view, sans eternalism, would be stuck saying the probability of that event was 0, since it has never shown up in a population before. But then the probability somehow changes to 100% upon the outcomes first occurrence. However, we generally say that if a thing occurs with probability = 0 then it is contradictory to say it also occurs. IDK, there could be a work around here but I imagine it'd be convoluted.

Frequentism does not entail eternalism though. There are plenty of ways to embrace frequentism and not rope yourself into determinism and eternalism. Generally, frequentism is explained in terms of possible worlds for this reason, or it is represented as merely an epistemological methods for discovering propensities.

So sure, probability is frequency and future events are necessary if you take those claims to be as axiomatic, but I don't think there are good reasons to accept such a proposition because I have never observed anything to make me think that future events exist before they occur.

When we say that bullet to the head has the potential to cause brain damage, this reflects experience with brains and gun shot wounds. It's fully possible for a person to receive a GSW to the head and suffer no brain damage. It happens all the time, especially in suicide attempts where they just end up blowing their faces off. Again, you have to take it case by case.

This is dancing around the point though. Are you aware of any cases where a .50 BMG round passed through the brain of an individual and they don't have brain damage? Is there a single case where a relatively large solid object goes through the brain and there is no biologically significant result? It's prima facie unreasonable to claim that, if such an event occured and was well documented, the medical and scientific community would simply shrug and say, "well there are outliers out there, all we can know if probabilities." Same thing if someone one day walks through a solid wall or begins floating through the air. Cause is there even if there is an attempt to banish it to the background.

Anyhow, in your view is it possible to meaningfully talk about the probability that Biden wins the 2024 election? Does it make sense to say that aggressive anti-Chinese rhetoric by US politicians increases the probability of war? Or, as one time events, is it impossible to say anything about them because they are one time events?

frank

This is just the axiom that things have already happened have necessarily happened in temporal logic. It doesn't entail that probability only exists subjectively. For that you also need eternalism, the claim that all events already exist at all times. Frequentism does not entail these though. There are plenty of ways to embrace frequentism and not rope yourself into determinism and eternalism. Otherwise, frequentism would have been much less popular in the face of observations that the universe behaves in a fundamentally stochastic manner.

So sure, probability is frequency is you take that definition as axiomatic, but I don't think there are good reasons to accept such a proposition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I guess actualism is just an interest of mine. We can put it to the side. The point is that talk of probability can reflect frequency. When it does, this does not represent information about the outcomes of unique events. In fact, all it really gives us is historical information.

It's true, we do have confidence in contiguity past to future, but Hume pointed out that this confidence can't be based on either empirical or logical evidence. This is the problem of induction. This inspired Kant to present the view that what we experience is conditioned by a priori knowledge. The idea is that we see and experience what we're wired to see and experience. This would explain why we're so sure about contiguity: it's coming from us in the first place.

Cause is there even if there is an attempt to banish it to the background. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As an essential element of the way we think, yes.

By the same token, if we looked up one night and saw "there is no God but Allah," written in Arabic in stars across the sky we wouldn't say "I guess some protostars brighten much more quickly than others and the existence of such stars is tied to the initial conditions of the universe, so there is nothing exceptional here." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Accepting that our powers of prediction and understanding are limited should leave us open-minded. Your touchstone is what you directly experience. If you saw a message written in English in the sky, you saw it. No question about that. Explanations should remain in flux. Was it a dream? Were you tripping? Is someone playing a joke? Is Allah talking to us? You go with what works best for you until some new information comes in and reorganizes your entire brain from top to bottom.

Anyhow, in your view is it possible to meaningfully talk about the probability that Biden wins the 2024 election? Does it make sense to say that aggressive anti-Chinese rhetoric by US politicians increases the probability of war? Or, as one time events, is it impossible to say anything about them because they are one time events? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd have to dissect what the speaker means in talking about the probability of unique events. I would look for signs that they're starting with a logical analysis, and weighting possibilities based on various factors.

For unique events, you can use probability based on logical analysis. You can't use frequency. You just can't. It makes no sense. You can't play out a unique event more than once.

One of the problems here is that populations can change. If the US passed a constitutional amendment that dictated that the winner of the national popular vote should become the next president, that would seem to make it more likely that the Democratic candidate would win in 2024 because, in the relevant population of recent election results, they have won the popular vote 7 of the last 8 times. But giving them just a 1/8 chance of losing the popular vote in the current climate, and given polling data, probably greatly overestimates their probability of winning the popular vote if Donald Trump is their nominee, as he lost the popular vote by large margins both times. So what then is the relevant population for frequency? — Count Timothy von Icarus

You can't use frequency for a unique event. Ever. It makes no sense.

wonderer1

Science assumes the world is rational because it must. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not really. Scientists observe regularities and develop strong intuitions as to the reliability of the observed regularities. It is not a matter of having made a choice to assume the 'rationality' of the world. For scientists it is a matter of having an undeniable intuitive understanding of the 'rationality' of the world.

It would be more accurate to say, "Scientists have a working hypothesis that the world is 'rational' because doing so has reliably allowed for much better than chance accuracy of predictions."

You go with what works best for you until some new information comes in and reorganizes your entire brain from top to bottom. — frank

:up:

wonderer1

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm caught up on the thread now. I don't really want to get into a discussion of the fine tuning argument, because I've spent the past 15 years arguing with (mostly) Christian apologists and I'm pretty bored with discussing it at this point. My thinking is that the appearance of fine tuning to the universe gets us (at best) to recognition that there are things we aren't in an epistemic position to be able to explain.

We can speculate, and there are lots of speculative attempts at explanation, and not much strong reason to choose among speculations or even decide that anyone yet has speculated in a way that is somewhat accurate. I lean towards there being a multiverse (in line with Guth's thinking on eternal inflation) as being relatively parsimonious, but I don't lean that way nearly strongly enough to think it is worth spending any time arguing for it.

One point I would raise in the context of speculating about goddish minds as an explanation is, "What reason do we have to think that it is metaphysically possible for a mind to exist without supervening on some sort of information processing substrate?"

I did want to comment more on the following though:

When taken together with Plantinga's argument that naturalism is self-defeating (or Hoffman's more fleshed out, but similar argument against mind-independent reality) I find this line of reasoning compelling. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Plantinga has a brilliant mind, but his brilliance is very limited by his nescience with respect to 'the' scientific picture and naturalistic perspectives. Unfortunately Plantinga is only able to present straw men to attack with the EAAN. Admittedly the EAAN can be highly effective as an apologetic that maintains others in a state of nescience similar to that of Plantinga.

I'm not interested in picking up the burden of presenting a standalone counterargument to the EAAN, because I'm not cognitively well suited to doing things that way. However if you, or anyone else wants to start a new thread discussing the EAAN specifically I'd be happy to jump in and point out flaws in the EAAN. Furthermore, I do see consideration of the EAAN to be valuable, in that engaging in consideration of it can lead to a well warranted humility with regards to the reliability of our cognitive faculties.

I'm much less familiar with Hoffman's argument, having only briefly looked into it today, but my initial impression is that it looks self defeating to me. Something along the lines of, "Our knowledge of how things work in reality proves that we know nothing about how things work in reality." Again, it seems like there is thinking there that is well worth considering in the interest of developing a nuanced understanding of the reliability and lack thereof of our cognitive faculties. However, I think it is important to avoid black and white thinking about the issue(s) and develop a nuanced understanding of our cognitive faculties.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪javra

If (a), the generation of this initial given (call it X) was then necessarily to some extent limited or bounded (hence, determined) by an end – for the sake of which it was generated – which, as end aspired toward, could not have been generated by God prior to God’s very first, intentional generation (i.e., his generation of X). Here, then, God was himself to some degree limited or bounded (determined) by his actively held intent (telos or goal or aim), an intent held by him which he did not create and which he did not instantaneously realize. Therefore, God was not - and thereby is not - omnipotent.

I do agree that analytic definitions of the God of classical theism are contradictory, but I wasn't able to follow this reasoning.

It seems to me that:
1. If God is omnipotent then God can do anything God wants to do.
2. God only does the things God does want to do.

Is totally consistent with omnipotence as classically defined.

If I follow you're saying:
1. What God does do is determined by God's desires.
2. God's desires are properties of God, and such properties are necessary.
3. God didn't create God's properties, so God is constrained by God's uncreated desires, which cause God to only do what God wants to do.

Another way to phrase this is to say that God's omnibenevolence contradicts God's omnipotence by acting as a constraint on God's actions, since God can only perform good acts. Since God's property of omnibenevolence is necessary, this precludes God from some actions.

This has generally not been taken as a true contradiction because an agent's only doing what that agent wants to do doesn't seem to constrain what an agent is metaphysically capable of doing.

But we can reject that counter argument. However, this example only seems to outline problems with the coherence of the definition of omnipotence in play, and we don't need to reject the solution to devise the same problem in other terms.

Consider:

"If God is omniscient then God cannot forget anything and cannot create a truth that God does not know. Thus, God is constrained and not omnipotent."

Or:

"God can/cannot create a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it."

Plantinga argued that these turn out not to be real contradictions. The first is logically equivalent with "if there is a truth, God knows it." The second is logically equivalent with "God can lift all rocks." God only doing good things based on God's desires is equivalent with "all of God's actions are good and God only does what God wants to do," which is the same as "God is omnibenevolent and God can do or not do anything God desires."

I don't see how God having necessary/uncreated desires contradicts "God can do or not do anything God wants to do," which is the definition of omnipotence.

However, I think there is indeed a real problem, and it's one of self reference. Any proposition stating a truth about what God does or doesn't do entails some constraint on the what God does or doesn't do, but the trait of omnipotence is supposed to mean that God faces no such constraints. Omnipotence itself refers to control over the truth value all propositions, but the excluded middle implies that no such control can be absolute. I don't see how that's relevant to the OP though. The God of philosophical theism is a weird entity dreamed up by the constraints of analysis, not the only possible conception of the divine.

javra

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

I might come back to this latter on if beneficial. Let me know.

Your focus here is on God's desires (which are a part of God - this thought God is supposed to be divinely simple and thus partless) whereas mine was on God's teloi, or ends, that God seeks to actualize via his desires (which are other in respect to God). The latter, to my mind, necessarily entailing the reality of teleology. The end addressed is, again, apart from what God is. (Much like the universe is not, traditionally in the West, of itself an aspect of God but instead is God's creation.) In the latter case of teleological motives for creation - thereby of intent-ional creation - there will always then be an end which was not God's creation but which God seeks to actualize. With both the latter entailing lack of being "all-powerful".

The solution is generally to define omnipotence more carefully, to reject the law of the excluded middle in some sense, maybe just for God, of to reject the God of classical theism as incoherent. I would go with the latter. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You've brought up good examples. Plenty more; such as Genesis 2 onward portraying God as an omnipotent being that had no control over what the serpent did.

But yes, I go with the latter as well.

plaque flag

Something along the lines of, "Our knowledge of how things work in reality proves that we know nothing about how things work in reality." — wonderer1

:up:

I gave the work a look once, and to me it was pretty bad in just this way.

More generally, this mistake is surprisingly common.

plaque flag

If we start from the Principle of Indifference, shouldn't we expect a whirlwind of possible experiences, not a seemingly law governed progression such that empirical efforts succeed in defining future experiences based on mathematical laws (e.g., the successes of the sciences)? — Count Timothy von Icarus

For me it's hard to imagine intelligent life that hasn't imposed order on its perceptions. Life itself seems to be a kind of order that exploits its environment. It may be that you are trying to see around the very cognition that makes the attempt intelligible.

plaque flag

If we've done an assessment of logical possibility and determined that of all the ways the universe could appear, the chances of it appearing as it is are 1 in 10^10^123, that doesn't really tell us anything about how this one possibility manifested, whether there was divine intervention or not. It just means we can imagine a huge number of other ways the universe could have been. — frank

:up:

Tom Storm

Consider:

"If God is omniscient then God cannot forget anything and cannot create a truth that God does not know. Thus, God is constrained and not omnipotent."

Or:

"God can/cannot create a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it."

Plantinga argued that these turn out not to be real contradictions. The first is logically equivalent with "if there is a truth, God knows it." The second is logically equivalent with "God can lift all rocks." God only doing good things based on God's desires is equivalent with "all of God's actions are good and God only does what God wants to do," which is the same as "God is omnibenevolent and God can do or not do anything God desires." — Count Timothy von Icarus

If God is real, why would human reason or our conceptual frameworks even begin to describe or understand what god can or cannot do? Or what god is. These sorts of questions are likely irrelevant and a bit like trying to teach card tricks to a dog. The notion of god is itself almost incoherent to human comprehension, completely outside our understanding of cause and effect, physics and behavior. Just what we are doing trying to project the known world on an unknowable deity is beyond me.

I guess what we are attempting to do here is imagine god as a kind of personality who is part of our world, but has super powers or magic which can be described and contextualized, based on what we already think we know. We are attempting to constrain or limit the idea and mold it to our presuppositions, our limited understanding of things. But I don't think the concept of god is a crossword puzzle to be solved over the weekend, with cups of tea and some hard thinking. If reason, time and space emanate from god's nature (and who is to know if this is the case?) then god presumably transcends such strictures and as such is likely unintelligible.

What are the chances that our world should be a rational one? To put the question more concretely in the terms of physics: is it likely for a universe evolve from state to state, such that past states dictate future ones? Or, is the apparent rationality of our world evidence for a designer? — Count Timothy von Icarus

As presuppositions go, I don't see overwhelming evidence that the world we think we know is rational or ordered. Humans impose reason and order because we are pattern seeking machines. One could just as well argue that the universe specialises in black holes and chaos and kills most of the life it spawns, often with horrendous suffering. Life on earth is one of predation - for many creatures to eat, suffering and death are required. Why would a universe be designed to produce such chaos and suffering and a natural world which wipes out incalculable numbers of lifeforms with earthquakes, fires and floods? Why would a universe of balance have within it so many meaningless accidental deaths in nature, along with endless horrendous diseases and concomitant wretchedness?

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪wonderer1

I've caught up on the thread now. I don't really want to get into a discussion of the fine tuning argument, because I've spent the past 15 years arguing with (mostly) Christian apologists and I'm pretty bored with discussing it at this point. My thinking is that the appearance of fine tuning to the universe gets us (at best) to recognition that there are things we aren't in an epistemic position to be able to explain.

We can speculate, and there are lots of speculative attempts at explanation, and not much strong reason to choose among speculations or even decide that anyone yet has speculated in a way that is somewhat accurate. I lean towards there being a multiverse (in line with Guth's thinking on eternal inflation) as being relatively parsimonious, but I don't lean that way nearly strongly enough to think it is worth spending any time arguing for it.

That's a fair conclusion. I'm not super gungho about this argument outside of being interesting. I actually dislike most philosophy of religion, because I find that it's an area where one's ontology, epistemology, logic, ethics, mereology, etc. all tend to be relevant. This forces authors into question begging to make their papers manageable and tends to shift rebuttals towards attacks not really related to the original thesis. It's almost like you have to start most papers in the field with a list that begins "given we assume 1, 2... 117, then it follows..."

Plus, I don't recognize the God of classical philosophical theism in any real religious traditions I can think of.

That said, I think arguments like Plantinga's, if successful, do more than just show us our epistemic limits. If your theory of the world is self-defeating, if there is a contradiction in your justification for having true beliefs, it's worth looking at how you can avoid this problem.

For example, with Hempel's Dillema, I think the key take away is not so much that physicalism doesn't work, but rather that we shouldn't dismiss any theories because they don't "seem" to be physical, as what counts as physical is itself continually redefined and refined as we build knowledge.

One point I would raise in the context of speculating about goddish minds as an explanation is, "What reason do we have to think that it is metaphysically possible for a mind to exist without supervening on some sort of information processing substrate?"

That's a good point. How can a mind understand something like, say the current state of the Earth, without somehow containing all the gradations of difference required to specify such a thing? If God is a unity, without distinction, and yet God knows the world, it would seem like God knows the world in a way that is indescribable using the language of mathematics, or at the very least our existing concepts of information.

A sort of diagonal inverse of that point is that, if we buy into computational theory of mind or integrated information theory, it doesn't seem like the idea of a sort of cosmic intelligence is at all precluded.

Anyhow, I think the original argument, perhaps fixed up a bit, is most relevant to people who embrace the idea of a multiverse precisely because they think it somehow "fixes" the Fine Tuning Problem.

It seems like, by moving to the multiverse concept, you've made things much worse, exacerbating the very problem we want to solve. We've moved from the problem of our single, observable universe being extremely combinatorially unlikely, but still only finitely unlikely, to the problem of why one sort of multiverse production object exists that only produces certain types of universes out of an infinite number of possibilities.

This alone might not be enough to take the bloom off the rose of the multiverse, but combined with the problems of explaining the Born Rule in a coherent fashion in a multiverse context and the problem of observers having any coherent identity through which to actually frame the theory it might. I've personally become increasingly less enamored of it over time.

Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis seems particularly vulnerable to this attack because it posits that all mathematical objects exist. Although I don't know how much this matters because people have already pointed out that it also makes Boltzmann Brains the overwhelming majority of observers.

plaque flag

If reason, time and space emanate from god's nature (and who is to know if this is the case?) then god presumably transcends such strictures and as such is likely unintelligible. — Tom Storm

Might add that it's hard if not impossible to think of the emergence of space and time, as if we were outside of space or before time. Someone can come along and swear that they dream of round squares, but I can't believe them (or be sure that I understand them.)

What Are the Chances That This Post Makes Any Sense? A Teleological Argument from Reason

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