Intelligent Design, Edward Feser's views

[Bradskii]

The size of the search space is huge.

Change these constants even a tiny bit and we are not here. How many constants will convince you?

You are right. Change even the tiniest, most inconsequential detail of the past few gazillion years and neither of us are here. Neither are the species we see today. Neither are the continents we recognise. A small change over long periods has incredible impacts.

If you want to think that the universe has been specifically designed so that you, the exact person you are now, can be sitting where you are now, reading this, then you must be the most special event in the history of the universe. And I must be as well. And everyone else must be.

So if you think (as you must) that we have been individually created specifically for a purpose, then fine tuning isn’t a problem. Someone fixed the cards before they were dealt.

In which case it is a waste of time arguing that the chance of us being here are nonsensically small. As far as you are concerned, it was a certainty.

 

[Aloysium]

you can’t simply argue that consciousness per se requires a designer.

“Designer” may not be the best way to describe the Cause or Source of consciousness.

Consciousness has a structure that underlies experience.
That structure requires an ontological and temporal cause.
Temporally, a designer plans in the moment to bring something forth in the future.
The moment is spontaneous and creative, so “Artist” or “Creator” would be better names, given that everything arises in its moment.

Human consciousness is finite and doesn’t encompass all being.
What requires a “Creator” is the existence of what is other.
There must be a Source of our individual being.
As much as I am a causal agent with the free will to determine who I will be through my actions, I remain an object of a Cause that transcends my individual existence.

As a reflection of that Cause, I don’t exist in isolation, but in relation to what is other to me.
I exist as an image of the Triune Godhead, arising from an act of creation, in time and here and now.

 

[HarryStotle]

I literally have just a few minutes to reply, so I’ll make this quick. Per se and per accidens causation is irrelevant to my point. No matter how one arrives at God as an example of a consciousness without a designer, the fact remains, consciousness isn’t…in and of itself…evidence for a designer. Because somewhere, somehow, there must be a consciousness that didn’t have a designer. Be it God, or be it you and me. Unless of course you choose to argue in favor of an infinite series of designers. But somehow I don’t think that you’re prepared to do that.

You may, if you so choose, argue that human consciousness requires a designer, but you can’t simply argue that consciousness per se requires a designer.

I would suggest that you are using designer in a limited watchmaker sense where, for you, "designer’ strictly means the designer/builder designs and assembles the watch and lets it function as it has been designed to. The designed entity, then, doesn’t require the designer to keep it in existence. That is per accidens causation. It uses the existing materials, combines them in unique ways to perform a function,. The designed entity is autonomous vis a vis this kind of designer.

However, from the way the parts and function of the thing are artfully arranged, there can be an inductive argument that reasons to a designer of this sort. This is the design argument that Feser doesn’t accept regarding the existence of God, precisely because God isn’t that kind of designer.

The existence of the watch, however, is not completely explained because the designer in this sense has merely fashioned the thing from existing substances. The designer doesn’t sufficiently explain the existence of the substances and potentialities of the materials that were utilized. Those substances are not created nor kept in existence in any real sense by the designer.

There is a different kind of ‘design,’ however, that can only have one cause, the Uncaused Cause. That would be the Designer and Creator of substantial reality itself, along with all of the potentialities of the stuff that exists. In this case, nothing would exist in the here and now without the present action of the Uncaused Caused keeping all that exists actualized in the reality of the moment. That is per se causality. It, too, requires a Designer but at a far more fundamental and immediate level.

There cannot be an infinite regress of this kind of Design/Creation. Both Aquinas and Feser go to great pains to demonstrate that per se causation does not lead to an infinite series, but must end in one final Uncaused Cause.

So the ad infinitum rebuttal that you suggested for the designer of consciousness only applies to the per accidens kind of designer, not to the per se Designer Creator, which cannot go on to infinity but must end in a sufficient explanatory Uncaused Cause.

Continued…

 

[HarryStotle]

I would argue that consciousness is a here and now, per se phenonomon, that is kept actualized in the moment, not as a watchmaker designing / building a watch, but more akin to a musician performing a piece of music.

You may claim it is brain chemistry that sustains consciousness, but there has been no causal connection made between neuro-chemical brain processes and consciousness, although specific functional activities of the brain permit those types of perceptual experiences to enter consciousness, consciousness itself has not been tied to any brain process.

 

[buffalo]

How many times does a poker player see 4 aces dealt to the same player over and over before he cries foul?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

How many times does a poker player see 4 aces dealt to the same player over and over before he cries foul?

The analogy is going a bit astray here. The odds of getting dealt 4 aces in a 5 card hand is 1 out of 54145 (48 possible combinations out of 2598960 possible five card hands). If a person were to keep getting dealt 4 aces then, yes, that would be significant. But that’s multiple deals. The creaion of the universe as we know it is one single deal with a great many possibilites.

And as Bradski was sayng, we put significance on certan events happening and then marvel that they occurred, while at the same time ignoring the possibilities of other events that could just have likely occurred. If we were to put significance on poker hands that had a 2 of diamonds, a 5 of clubs, an 8 of spaces, and a jack of hearts we’d marvel the rarity of it occurring when we get it – even though it has the exact same odds as four aces.

 

[buffalo]

The creaion of the universe as we know it is one single deal with a great many possibilites.

The search space is astronomical. So is multiple deals of four aces.

 

[Bradskii]

How many times does a poker player see 4 aces dealt to the same player over and over before he cries foul?

You don’t appear to understand the analogy. This existence and everything in it including you and I are the result of one hand being dealt. It’s equivalent to what might be described as the initial conditions. There aren’t umpteen versions of initial conditions. There obviously was one. So the equivalent in a poker analogy is one hand dealt. That’s it. Five cards only.

Now if you want to decide what can be classed as a good hand, then you decide in advance. Five speciific cards of a specific suit in a specific order.

What you don’t do is get a random hand of mixed cards and THEN decide that they can’t be beaten. Which is what you want to do with initial conditions.

You are just a random piece of the universe that has become self aware. That’s all you are. You might like to think that everything has been set up to run exactly as required for the last few billion years just so that you can sit there reading this. And if that gives you comfort on a cold, dark night, then stick with it.

But personally I think it shows a lack of imagination. Which is a good thing when it comes to contemplating how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. Hence religion. It protects us from that existential vertigo.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

You’re focusing solely on the size of the numbers and not on what Bradskii is saying.

Imagine you go to the United States Library of Congress. According to Answers.com it houses 32 million books (not counting 142 million other items housed there). You decide to pull out 3 books completely at random and get:

A 1st edition copy of The Journal of John Winthrop
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Monster at the End of This Book (Starring Lovable, Furry, Old Grover)

Assuming you picked them randomly and somehow each book had an equal chance to be chosen then the odds of you picking those books is 1 in about 5.5 sextillion (32 million cubed divided by 6).

This is just like the poker example only with much bigger numbers. One deal = One trip to the Library of Congress = One creation of the universe

Just because the odds of you picking those books is so small doesn’t mean there is any special meaning to it. Just because the universe came together in the specific way that it has doesn’t mean there is any special meaning to it. If the universe were created differently and life could only be found on stars while planets were dead, lifeless rocks the hydrogen beings living in a white dwarf might think (incorrectly) that the universe was consciously designed for them.

 

[HarryStotle]

You don’t appear to understand the analogy. This existence and everything in it including you and I are the result of one hand being dealt. It’s equivalent to what might be described as the initial conditions. There aren’t umpteen versions of initial conditions. There obviously was one. So the equivalent in a poker analogy is one hand dealt. That’s it. Five cards only.

Well, no actually. The cosmological constants that were set at the initial Big Bang were each finely tuned at a specific point along a virtually infinite continuum. Therefore the setting of each constant – and there are at least 30 of them – would be like winning a lottery with virtually infinite odds.

So the paradigm would be winning 30 lotteries simultaneously, with infinitely impossible odds of winning even one of them, with the added proviso that we didn’t even buy a ticket to win on any of them.

Your poker hand analogy is just hopelessly inadequate, because we would be speaking of game involving a 30 card hand, with an infinite number of cards in each suit. And to win would require each card be tuned to the number of every other card in your hand to an infinitesimally small range.

Chance isn’t up to the task, explanatorily speaking. That leaves some form of determinism or by the design, loosely speaking, of some unspecified reality.

 

[HarryStotle]

You’re focusing solely on the size of the numbers and not on what Bradskii is saying.

Imagine you go to the United States Library of Congress. According to Answers.com it houses 32 million books (not counting 142 million other items housed there). You decide to pull out 3 books completely at random and get:

A 1st edition copy of The Journal of John Winthrop
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Monster at the End of This Book (Starring Lovable, Furry, Old Grover)

Assuming you picked them randomly and somehow each book had an equal chance to be chosen then the odds of you picking those books is 1 in about 5.5 sextillion (32 million cubed divided by 6).

This is just like the poker example only with much bigger numbers. One deal = One trip to the Library of Congress = One creation of the universe

Just because the odds of you picking those books is so small doesn’t mean there is any special meaning to it. Just because the universe came together in the specific way that it has doesn’t mean there is any special meaning to it. If the universe were created differently and life could only be found on stars while planets were dead, lifeless rocks the hydrogen beings living in a white dwarf might think (incorrectly) that the universe was consciously designed for them.

Actually, the “special meaning” within the universe is the fact that it is life permitting and that only because the laws of physics have been finely tuned to allow life, in particular, the carbon atom and its iterations.

A more apt analogy for the fine tuning argument, using your libraries model would be to imagine 30 or so libraries of congress, each with an infinite number of books in them. In order to attain the “special meaning” or conditions for life you need to visit each of the libraries and pick a book such that the book you select from each library will be matched with or correspond to the book you select from each of the other libraries in a way that your 30 collected books together will provide you with the instructions (special meaning) that permits life.

One way to characterize this would be using the model of languages. Suppose each of the 30 libraries of congress contained books written in an infinite number of languages but with only a few books in each language. So as you randomly select one book (the final setting for each cosmological constant) from each library, in the end you would need to have selected books from all thirty libraries written in the same language to have attained the special meaning (fine tuning.)

In other words, Bradskii is just wrong in claiming there isn’t a special meaning to the selection process. The special meaning is the fine tuning for a life permitting universe. The only reason Bradski dismisses that as insignificant is because he assumes it as the final state as if that is just the way it is. Or, as he puts it, the chance of life having occurred is =1 because that is what has occurred. He doesn’t properly look at the actual probability prior to the occurrence, he merely dismisses it in the retelling. Fallacy of retrospective determinism.

 

[Bradskii]

You are STILL missing the point, Harry.

It’s an analogy. Not a comparison. We are using the example of a deck of cards because we are all familiar with them. It’s being used to explain a principle.

If you like, you can increase the number of cards being dealt to match the number of permutations inherrant in the initial conditions. Nothing changes. We are just then dealing with very large numbers instead of 52.

What you are doing is saying that if you have really, really big numbers then it change the principle. Which is not true.

 

[HarryStotle]

You are STILL missing the point, Harry.

It’s an analogy. Not a comparison. We are using the example of a deck of cards because we are all familiar with them. It’s being used to explain a principle.

If you like, you can increase the number of cards being dealt to match the number of permutations inherrant in the initial conditions. Nothing changes. We are just then dealing with very large numbers instead of 52.

What you are doing is saying that if you have really, really big numbers then it change the principle. Which is not true.

Then, I suppose, we need to spell out the apparent “principle” that you are advocating.

It seems to be that you are claiming that events that have an impossibly high chance of occurring actually occur with high frequency because we see them occurring all the time in real life. That “principle” appears to undermine completely the concept of probability itself, however.

My suspicion is that you are burying a philosophical absurdity behind your “principle.”

Take your example of a hand of cards. It is true that any particular hand is highly unlikely, but it is also true that each time a hand is dealt one very, very unlikely hand definitely does get dealt. However, merely because some very unlikely hand obtains as a definite result, it does not mean any hand that is specified as particular and desirable will just readily show up all the time. Your “principle” does not account for the fact that being dealt a particular and specified hand, say a royal flush, is not an everyday occurrence, but a highly improbable one.

Dealing card hands occurs many multiple times in human society, so the chance for a royal flush to show up sometime in the next year, say, itself becomes a probable occurrence given the number of times poker hands are dealt in the world.

However, the Big Bang only occurred one time, as far as we know, so the chance that the thirty or so cosmological constants being set as they were and tuned to each other given a single opportunity in the cosmological timeline remains impossibly high given the single opportunity. To dismiss that based upon your “principle” just misrepresents the entire picture.

What your “principle” gets completely wrong is that while any poker hand with a high improbability of having been dealt does get dealt each time, we are not concerned with the defined and definite event of some poker hand getting dealt, we are concerned with a specified – and not just any – poker hand being dealt. One chance of getting a specified hand and that is it – multiplied exponentially.

There is sleight of hand occurring behind your “principle.” Let’s, at least, be willing to admit there is more to it than you are willing to concede.

 

[Bradskii]

You seem not to understand that any hand has exactly the same chance of being dealt as any other hand. It isn’t the case that a full house has a smaller chance of being dealt than any other 5 cards. It’s only that we consider a full house to be worth more than very many other hands. But we make that consideration in advance. We start the deal with an agreement that if a full house is dealt it will beat most other hands.

What we don’t do is deal the cards and then decide which is the winning combination. You can’t do it after the deal has been made. You do it in adavance.

That principle holds for any situation when you are looking at the odds of something happening. You need to decide IN ADVANCE what you need to happen. And that is obviously something that is impossible in the case of creation.

If you want to claim that this world, in fact this entire existence is EXACTLY what was decided in advance was needed to happen, then you need a conscious mind to bring it about and He would set the initial conditions accordingly. So those conditions are no big deal.

But you CANNOT use the initial conditions post creation to say ‘Isn’t it amazing they were set just this way’. You needed to do it pre creation. Just like you need to decide before the deal what cards are going to be classed as a winning hand. It’s no sense to say that a 2 of clubs, a 3 of diamonds, a 6 of hearts and an 8 and 10 of spades is a winner after you have made the deal.

That’s what you are claiming.

 

[Wesrock]

However, the Big Bang only occurred one time, as far as we know, so the chance that the thirty or so cosmological constants being set as they were and tuned to each other given a single opportunity in the cosmological timeline remains impossibly high given the single opportunity. To dismiss that based upon your “principle” just misrepresents the entire picture.

As a theist, I must question your use of the word “impossibly.” I don’t think it means what you think it means.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

You seem not to understand that any hand has exactly the same chance of being dealt as any other hand. It isn’t the case that a full house has a smaller chance of being dealt than any other 5 cards.

And if someone introduces five aces into a game of poker, they are going to get shot. The card analogy is wrong, for a start, the cards have already been produced, and it requires something to put them in order, and to recognise the advantage of that order. Many random mutations like five aces would just die, why would you be given the chance to shuffle again?

Lets go back to single cell life, when there were no bones, muscles, tendons or ligaments. How did nature blindly produce 500 muscles; 200 bones; 500 ligaments; and a1000 tendons. They all have recognisable and different shapes; and when they are put together; they make the most complex machine on earth?

Nature did not know what a hip bone should look like, and it is a complex shape, nature did not know what the hip bone had to connect too to make it useful.

Stop talking about cards and tell us how the hip, knee and jaw came to be without any outside help. Detail would be helpful.

 

[Bradskii]

That’s what we describe as an argument from ignorance: ‘I personally don’t understand the process therefore…’

 

[Bradskii]

The pond example has been used before but in a slightly different way.

People astounded by the fact that conditions are exactly right for us is like a pond considering its own position and being amazed that the hole in which it is situated is exactly the right shape and size to accomodate it.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

That’s what we describe as an argument from ignorance: ‘I personally don’t understand the process therefore…’

If you don’t understand the process, then just say so.

 

[Wesrock]

Honestly, you don’t seem to have a grasp of how natural selection works or actual evolutionary science, so I have to side with Bradskii here.