Three days ago, I opened a new tab and started to write a response to the OP(I would have been the first reply). Before I commented much time to that response I realized that whatever I wrote would be overshadowed by the responses Crashing00 and Blinking Spirit would inevitably write (and might steal some of the thunder those responses would bring to bear). I see I was correct in at least the first half of that realization; my post would have paled in the face of what was written.
Elvish Crack Piper continually accuses me of not being militant in pointing out flaws in the reasoning of theists while I am militant in pointing out the flaws of atheists. He is correct, of course, but one of the reasons I think I don't respond to stuff like this is because I know I don't need to. Within a few hours someone inevitably did respond and did a fine job of pointing out the flaws. It's not that theistic flaws don't rankle me (they do), it's that I know they'll be taken care of on this forum; often by people more competent than myself.
Anyway, I would like to just add this comic to this discussion; as I think the comic artist did a better job of illustrating a issue with most teleological argument than I can in words:
I know I'm jumping the gun here, but the last one really perplexes me:
Most philosophers would agree that if God’s existence is even possible, then he must exist.
What the crap is this I don't even?
He's equivocating between "God" and "maximally great being". Given the way he's defined "maximally great being", (2) through (6) do follow from (1). Most philosophers would agree with that. Most philosophers would not agree that the standard tri-omni "God" whom they acknowledge is possible is a "maximally great being" under his definition.
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I don't think 2 through 6 follow from 1. It requires an incredible generous, and I believe flawed, acceptance of what "possible world" can mean.
1) It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
2) If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3) If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4) If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5) If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
6) Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
From 2 and 3, the term "possible world" changes from "hypothetical version of reality we're thinking about" to, "alternate reality that actually exists". That's the only way a being in one hypothetical can affect another hypothetical. Not sure I'm wording this well, but I'm guessing you get my point.
In 4, the change in terms is even more obvious. Craig is tying "hypothetical versions of what might be" to, "what is" and hoping nobody notices by choosing the term "possible world" to fit both concepts - since "possible" can mean two different things in this context. A simple word swap in the argument reveals the flaw easily.
1) It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
2) If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some hypothetical world.
3) If a maximally great being exists in some hypothetical world, then it exists in every hypothetical world.
4) If a maximally great being exists in every hypothetical world, then it exists in the actual world.
5) If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
6) Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
I'm certain you understand this Blinking Spirit, not attempting to correct you on the flaws in the argument. I'm just pointing out that I don't think 2-6 are consistent either, since the meaning of the terms subtle change.
EDIT - Just realized we were using different terms too. I'm using "hypothetical world" here because that's how Craig has described the term while speaking. If we're going with the "some possible reality, due to infinite multiverse theory" then 2-6 do follow and 1 remains unproven. Ambiguous language strikes again.
It depends entirely on how you define "maximally powerful being". You're simply not giving it enough "power".
Suppose a "maximally powerful being" is capable of anything and everything. Then 2-6 most certainly follow from 1.
The issue is also what's meant by "possible world". I was picking up the "hypothetical world" equivalent that Craig has referenced before. In that case, 2-6 don't follow because the being was never established as existing. The idea of a being is not a being itself, any more than the idea of a "maximally powerful unicorn" existing means that the unicorn itself exists. However, if "possible world" is being used as in "a possible reality, and therefore an actual reality assuming there are truly infinite parallel realities" - then 2-6 do follow.
"Capable of anything and everything" can mean "literally capable of willing itself into existence"/"always existing and can never cease to exist"/"vice versa".
Except an idea is not a reality. Just because we can describe a concept does not give that concept any powers. Just because we can imagine something, like a sentient-explosion capable and eager to will itself into existence and powerful enough to blow up all of space time, does not mean it exists or can suddenly will itself into being.
It is indeed part of the definition, assuming existing in every world is maximally great (and we can assume it is for the purpose of the argument). However, the jump from the realm of ideas to reality is something that the argument has to make. Depending on how "possible world" is defined, the jump happens at different places.
I've heard versions of the ontological argument that try to term "hypothetical world" (a world we're imagining) as "possible world". Then they try to claim that because the being can be said to exist in a world we're imagining he exists in, he can be said to exist in all imagined worlds. Then because he exists in all possible worlds, and our reality is a possible world, he must exist in our reality too. By using the term "possible world" for these terms, they try to hide the jump from the hypothetical to the actual. In this case, there are flaws in (2) through (6) - but the argument is often more palatable because the arguer gets the audience to go along further in the thought chain and makes each step feel more natural instead of saying something obviously ridiculous straight off.
Other arguments deal with the whole "infinite number of possible universes" thing - in which case they're bypassing hypothetical altogether and go straight for the throat. They claim the being is possible, and since there's an infinite number of parallel universes according to some version of multiverse theory, the being would have to exist in 1 of them and therefore would exist in all of them. In this case, (1) isn't sound while (2) through (6) are.
His definition of "possible world" is quite clearly stated, and (unlike "maximally great") it's the bog-standard one for philosophers. It is a complete conjunction of consistent propositions. When he claims that God exists in all possible worlds, he means that every complete and self-consistent conjunction of propositions contains the proposition "God exists" - i.e., any conjunction that contains the proposition "God does not exist" is inconsistent somewhere.
You are attacking other versions of the ontological argument, not his.
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That's fine, and I realized in my EDIT where we were missing one another (or rather, where I was missing you). I was going off of memory of seeing Craig make this argument live and assuming the stated argument would be the same as the one he made there.
However, his definition of "possible world" in the link itself is rather fuzzy as well. Unless I'm missing the technical language, it seems he is specifically stating that a possible world is basically a description of a series of statements that make up a reality that could-be - not an alternate universe truly existing as part of a multiverse. And a description of things that could-be is, unless I miss something, the definition of a hypothetical. And, if so, I'd argue that describing a being that has the power to turn itself from a description into a reality doesn't suddenly allow such a being to come into existence [which is a leap made later in the argument, not in (1)].
If you have a description that says "this being exists in all possible worlds", and in fact the being does not exist in all possible worlds, then the description is wrong. Which is a rejection of (1).
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Naturally I agree with that statement. I'm not saying you can't reject 1. I was bringing up an issue with how, in its later stages, the argument takes a hypothetical description and pretends that the described being must exist in the real world simply because the description of the hypothetical reality is termed a "possible world". It looks like a word game to me, like the argument goes "Can you imagine a being that would exist everywhere at once? Well if you can imagine it, we can say it exists in your imagination right? And if it exists anywhere, that means it would have to exist everywhere... So the being exists."
For those who claim virtual particles and the like beat causality can I mark your attention to the following thread in another forum. It is rather long but explains the virtual particle in regards to causality. It has actual noble prize winners in it so you can take some sort of authority on most of the posts.
For those who claim virtual particles and the like beat causality can I mark your attention to the following thread in another forum. It is rather long but explains the virtual particle in regards to causality. It has actual noble prize winners in it so you can take some sort of authority on most of the posts.
One does not need virtual particles to defeat Humean causation. As I've tried to explain, causation is already defeated by the standard quantum theory of ordinary, real, non-virtual particles. You don't need quantum field theory at all. Go back and read my light bulb example. All the particles that participate in that example are real, not virtual.
That being said, I read the whole thread you linked -- which is actually about the question of whether virtual particles are really "real" -- and (unsurprisingly, since it's a forum thread on the Internet) it didn't actually solve the controversy. First of all, the voices of the "virtual particles are real" side were only there by proxy. There was a prominent "not real" physicist actually posting, but the "yes real" physicist was only being represented by somebody quoting him.
Second, it wasn't until the end of the thread that the posters started seriously engaging with the phenomenon of Unruh radiation. (and, interestingly, the most blustery "not real" guy clammed up before that point) The summary of the ensuing discussion is that the Unruh effect appears after a coordinate transformation, and the particles that appear in the transformed frame as a result of the Unruh effect must be real (because they can be measured!) -- but a coordinate transformation can't create particles (or anything else) because it's a purely mathematical operation. This is a pretty good argument for "yes real" if you ask me.
Anyhow, the takeaways are two: One, that thread does not actually say anything definitive about anything -- it's just people hashing out a controversy with no conclusion either way. Two, it wouldn't matter if the thread had solved the controversy in favor of "not real" because causation is killed off by basic quantum theory without even the need to appeal to virtual particles.
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"Can you imagine a being that would exist everywhere at once? Well if you can imagine it, we can say it exists in your imagination right? And if it exists anywhere, that means it would have to exist everywhere... So the being exists."
It's not "Can you imagine a being that would exist everywhere at once?" It's "Do you accept as a true statement that there exists a being that exists everywhere at once?" (Roughly. The "everywhere" language is really taking the "worlds" metaphor too literally - possible worlds aren't places.) Everything else follows from that, because you've already conceded that the being exists. Imagination doesn't come into it.
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For those who claim virtual particles and the like beat causality can I mark your attention to the following thread in another forum. It is rather long but explains the virtual particle in regards to causality. It has actual noble prize winners in it so you can take some sort of authority on most of the posts. https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/virtual-particles.460685/
Reading that, I think the bottom line is no one knows if causality can be violated and anyone that says otherwise is lying.
I mean, people throw around things like 'Spontaneous Emission' and 'Radioactive Decay' as being "uncaused." But, -to me- that's equivalent to saying "God did it." A better way to look at it is we don't know what caused it yet. This isn't to say they're not uncaused. Since we don't know what caused them, they might be[1], or they might not be[2]. This is why -I think- physicists have started to shy away from trying to definitely interpret these equations. You get things like the Copenhagen interpretation in textbooks to try and get grad-students to visualize what might be happening, but when it comes to papers more and more scientists are just sticking to the math. I remember professors becoming pretty unconformable in quantum mechanics class when I asked things like "but, what does that mean?" They would say things like "Well, if you accept that the Schrödinger equation perfectly explains the system, then this is a mathematical consequence."
Anyway, -proven or not- I think most physicists would agree they're probably caused by something. They certainly follow rules.
We might not be able to tell what causes Spontaneous Emission, but the light does turn on when we run current through it. And, we literally set our clocks to Radioactive Decay.[3]
If that is true Chrash then it defeats the whole scientific process that investigates it. To be frank I do not know whya scientist would spend in a time investigating an effect without a cause. That sounds to me like one great big exercise in futility.
"Can you imagine a being that would exist everywhere at once? Well if you can imagine it, we can say it exists in your imagination right? And if it exists anywhere, that means it would have to exist everywhere... So the being exists."
It's not "Can you imagine a being that would exist everywhere at once?" It's "Do you accept as a true statement that there exists a being that exists everywhere at once?" (Roughly. The "everywhere" language is really taking the "worlds" metaphor too literally - possible worlds aren't places.) Everything else follows from that, because you've already conceded that the being exists. Imagination doesn't come into it.
I concede that if the premise itself begs the question, then the entire thing is ridiculous. However, I didn't read that as what was going on. I agree it's unsupported as a premise, but that's not how I read the argument. Assuming your interpretation is correct, I agree with you. That simply wasn't my own interpretation of the argument presented.
(1) The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
(2) It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
(3) Therefore, it is due to design.
Craig begins by dismissing the traditional teleological arguments that appeal to the appearance of design in biology, calling cosmic fine-tuning the "cutting edge" of the argument. From other writings of his, I know that Craig accepts Darwinian evolution, so I expect he acknowledges that the biological version of the argument fails. He does not seem to realize that the fine-tuning version of the argument fails in basically the same way.
The main problem is in premise (1). As I hope I've got you trained to do by now, when we see a list of alternatives, we should ask, "Why only those alternatives? Why not more?" In this particular case, though, we might also ask, "Why not less?" You see, Craig is plowing straight into a big metaphysical controversy about free will. It seems an awful lot like "necessity" and "chance" are complementary: if something is necessary, it has a probability P = 1 (or P = 0 if necessarily false), and if it occurs by chance, it has a probability 0 < P < 1. Now say an agent allegedly possessing free will is making a decision. Is the probability that they decide a certain way 1, or is it less than 1? If it's 1, isn't their "free will" just necessity? If it's less than 1, isn't it just chance? There's no room for any other alternatives. And God's design of the universe would certainly be a decision that runs into this problem. Design, then, is not a third alternative that stands proudly separate from these two undesirable ones; rather, it collapses into one or the other.
Now, as written, premise (2) presents a problem for this collapsed dichotomy: it seems to say that the fine-tuning of the universe is impossible! But when we look at Craig's justifications for (2), we see that, when Craig framed it as a categorical rejection of necessity and chance, he was being misleading. Craig's real argument is not to say that any explanation based on necessity or chance is impossible, but rather to argue against particular proposed explanations based on necessity or chance. This strategy would let him concede that his own proposal of divine design is a form of necessity or chance without ruling it out, because he was never actually ruling out necessity and chance. He could restate his argument more accurately, without changing its substance, as:
(1') The fine-tuning of the universe is due either to design or to one of Richard Dawkins' proposed non-design forms of necessity or chance.
(2') It is not due to any of Richard Dawkins' proposed non-design forms of necessity or chance.
(3') Therefore, it is due to design.
Now we ask of (1'), "Why only those alternatives? Why not more?" The very fact that premise (2') does not rule out Craig's proposal also means it does not rule out any other proposals that Craig has not individually shot down. He's playing philosophical whack-a-mole: whenever a proposal pops up, he looks for a way to defeat it. But another proposal can always pop up, and if he can't defeat all of them, he loses. This is a game that intelligent design proponents have already lost in biology: the theory of evolution provides an explanation for the appearance of design that requires no designer. And because of this, we now know definitively that designerless explanations of design are possible. Craig's premise (2') doesn't categorically rule out all designerless explanations because it can't. He has to leave open the possibility that some cosmological equivalent to the theory of evolution could come along and provide a designerless explanation for fine-tuning.
Craig encounters this problem when discussing Dawkins' argument: "Dawkins holds out hope that 'Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology.' But he admits that we don’t have it yet, nor does he deal with the formidable problems facing such an explanation of cosmic fine-tuning. Therefore, the hope expressed in step (6) represents nothing more than the faith of a naturalist." Let's set aside the oddity of a theist scorning "faith"; what he's scorning isn't faith, but fact. If in principle another theory could explain fine-tuning, then Craig does not have a proof of God. That's how logic works. A proof does not allow alternative possibilities. The only faith going on here is Craig's faith that no such theory is possible, despite there being no proof of that. Craig has to believe that he can whack every single mole. A skeptic just has to point out that maybe he can't.
That's fundamentally how Craig's argument goes wrong. I'm not going to go into depth on his treatments of particular theories, because they don't matter in this big picture - he doesn't prove God no matter how many moles he whacks. (Just as I am not disproving God by whacking these five moles of his. The difference between us is that I acknowledged that at the very outset.) I'll only note in passing that Roger Penrose's calculations and conclusions therefrom are contentious to the point of notoriety, not settled fact as Craig would have us believe; that Craig is again abusing Ockham's Razor to do deductive work when it's only a heuristic tool; and that he engages in some shameful psychological ad hominem argumentation.
I mean, people throw around things like 'Spontaneous Emission' and 'Radioactive Decay' as being "uncaused." But, -to me- that's equivalent to saying "God did it."
Oh come on. Just between us, do you deliberately say ridiculous things to, like, liven up the debate or something?
Someone who says a class of events is uncaused is making the relatively modest claim that those events are not strongly correlated with identifiable temporally-prior events. Someone who says of a class of events that "God did it" is making the much more substantial claim that all of those events are strongly correlated with, and temporally posterior to, the will of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator.
The former statement is denying the existence of a correlation. The latter statement is asserting the existence of a specific correlation, further asserting the existence of a specific entity, and further asserting properties about that entity's mind.
So those two statemets are (of course) not logically equivalent. If they seem equivalent -to you-, then that can only mean there's a problem with your logic.
A better way to look at it is we don't know what caused it yet. This isn't to say they're not uncaused. Since we don't know what caused them, they might be[1], or they might not be[2].
This is definitely not a better way to look at it. To say that spontaneous emission has a cause but we don't know what it is is saying the following: "There may be a sequence of events that occurs prior to each sequence of spontaneous emission events and is strongly correlated with that sequence, but we just don't know it yet."
But that statement is literally doing nothing but postulating unobserved entities into existence to contradict stuff that actually has been observed. We might as well say "There may be devious aliens on the moon preventing us from seeing that it actually is made of green cheese, but we just don't know it yet." If we allow such things, then we essentially give up on all epistemology past Descartes. Uncertainty about scientific theories should be proportional to evidence or lack thereof, not to mere unsupported guesses that a given theory might be wrong.
Anyway, -proven or not- I think most physicists would agree they're probably caused by something. They certainly follow rules.
You're creating equivocation on "cause." Remember that we're addressing the Kalam cosmological argument here, specifically Craig's presentation of it. It's pretty easy to see that the phrase "has a cause," as used in Craig's presentation of the argument, emphatically does not mean "follows rules." If it did, then we would have:
1. Everything that has a beginning follows rules.
2. The universe has a beginning.
Therefore, 3. The universe follows rules.
Now I'm not sure that argument is any better than the KCA, but importantly, it's not in any sense an argument for God, or even a weak first-cause-only entity. We need only concern ourselves with refuting the kind of causation assumed by Craig's KCA, not some other brand.
What is that brand which is assumed by the KCA? Well, Craig doesn't go into great detail, which is not surprising since the moment he provided a checkable and falsifiable definition of causation, someone would check it and falsify it. In the absence of a specific definition on offer, I propose the classical philosophical notion of causation.
Hume laid out some logical criteria for classical causation, which are about a quarter of the way down that page. They are checkable and so we can determine whether or not causation applies in a given circumstance.
We might not be able to tell what causes Spontaneous Emission, but the light does turn on when we run current through it.
Because there are a few times Avogadro's number worth of atoms in it, and the balance of probabilities across all those atoms makes it lighting up a virtual certainty. A light bulb whose filament consisted of a single (or small handful of) tungsten atom would not reliably turn on in the presence of a current. In fact, a single-tungsten-atom light bulb could behave in all of the following ways:
1) apply a current, the atom emits light (nonzero probability of spontaneous emission)
2) apply a current, the atom does not emit light on any reasonable time scale (nonzero probability that spontaneous emission does not occur)
3) don't apply a current, the atom does not emit light on any reasonable time scale (nonzero probability that no spontaneous excitation occurs)
4) don't apply a current, the atom emits light anyway (nonzero probability that spontaneous excitation occurs, followed by nonzero probability of spontaneous emission)
And these aren't just theoretical phenomena that you'd have to wait until the end of the universe to see; all of these four possibilities have been actually experimentally observed in the lab.
Now, given that these phenomena observably occur in nature, we can ask what they say about causality. Certainly we can immediately see that "the current causes the light bulb to emit light" is false, because Hume's third criterion is violated.
You might want to reject Hume's third criterion; in that case we can use different quantum phenomena to break other criteria. You mentioned radioactive decay. Suppose I have one U238 nucleus in my left hand and one in my right. The one in my left hand decays at time t0 as measured by a wall clock and the other one decays at a different time t1>t0. (This is a real thing that can really happen, as you should know.)
Suppose I postulate that this decay is classically causal. Why, then, did the decays occur at different wall times? By Hume's sixth criterion, "the difference in effects of two resembling objects must proceed from that particular, in which they differ." But quantum theory holds the nuclei to be identical bosons, intrinsically indistinguishable from each other. There is no particular in which they differ. This is a reductio ad absurdum of the notion that radioactive decay is classically causal.
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If that is true Chrash then it defeats the whole scientific process that investigates it. To be frank I do not know whya scientist would spend in a time investigating an effect without a cause. That sounds to me like one great big exercise in futility.
Then I guess it is a good thing that the way things sound to you is not important to anyone else.
It's also worth noting that many summaries of the teleological argument are roughly equivalent to, "Look at this puddle! If the earth around it, that forms the hole the water fills, was even an *atom* different - this exact puddle couldn't exist. The pothole must be intelligently designed."
The liquid takes the shape of the pothole, the pothole isn't designed to fit the liquid.
Someone who says a class of events is uncaused is making the relatively modest claim that those events are not strongly correlated with identifiable temporally-prior events.
Taboo the word "uncaused" as this and go back through your argument. Ex:
What we've learned from modern physics is that the more you "zoom in" on the world, the less the traditional concept of causation applies. In a very deep sense, the universe (according to the current most accepted picture) is best thought of as the conjunction of enormously many uncaused phenomena which, taken together and scaled up to the level of ordinary human perception, appear causal because of statistical averaging.
Does this modest definition of "uncaused" to lead us to the conclusion that causality mustn't apply to these events? Or would a stronger definition be needed?
But that statement is literally doing nothing but postulating unobserved entities into existence
It is necessary to assume you've not seen all there is to see to have motivation to for additional observations.
The reason I equated the two statements "these events are known to be uncauses" and "God did it" is because they're both informational dead ends, which is anathema to science. If a scientist is to have motivation for experiments he needs to assume there is something to observe that's not yet been observed. Otherwise we'd not leave our offices and be mathematicians.
We might as well say "There may be devious aliens on the moon preventing us from seeing that it actually is made of green cheese, but we just don't know it yet." If we allow such things, then we essentially give up on all epistemology past Descartes. Uncertainty about scientific theories should be proportional to evidence or lack thereof, not to mere unsupported guesses that a given theory might be wrong.
If we allow for such things, then we have reason to check them.
If we assume we already have within us all the basic information about the universe and just need to crunch some numbers in our armchairs, THEN we've stopped at Descartes.
Elvish Crack Piper continually accuses me of not being militant in pointing out flaws in the reasoning of theists while I am militant in pointing out the flaws of atheists. He is correct, of course, but one of the reasons I think I don't respond to stuff like this is because I know I don't need to. Within a few hours someone inevitably did respond and did a fine job of pointing out the flaws. It's not that theistic flaws don't rankle me (they do), it's that I know they'll be taken care of on this forum; often by people more competent than myself.
Anyway, I would like to just add this comic to this discussion; as I think the comic artist did a better job of illustrating a issue with most teleological argument than I can in words:
What the crap is this I don't even?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
2) If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3) If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4) If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5) If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
6) Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
From 2 and 3, the term "possible world" changes from "hypothetical version of reality we're thinking about" to, "alternate reality that actually exists". That's the only way a being in one hypothetical can affect another hypothetical. Not sure I'm wording this well, but I'm guessing you get my point.
In 4, the change in terms is even more obvious. Craig is tying "hypothetical versions of what might be" to, "what is" and hoping nobody notices by choosing the term "possible world" to fit both concepts - since "possible" can mean two different things in this context. A simple word swap in the argument reveals the flaw easily.
2) If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some hypothetical world.
3) If a maximally great being exists in some hypothetical world, then it exists in every hypothetical world.
4) If a maximally great being exists in every hypothetical world, then it exists in the actual world.
5) If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
6) Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
I'm certain you understand this Blinking Spirit, not attempting to correct you on the flaws in the argument. I'm just pointing out that I don't think 2-6 are consistent either, since the meaning of the terms subtle change.
EDIT - Just realized we were using different terms too. I'm using "hypothetical world" here because that's how Craig has described the term while speaking. If we're going with the "some possible reality, due to infinite multiverse theory" then 2-6 do follow and 1 remains unproven. Ambiguous language strikes again.
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Suppose a "maximally powerful being" is capable of anything and everything. Then 2-6 most certainly follow from 1.
The issue is also what's meant by "possible world". I was picking up the "hypothetical world" equivalent that Craig has referenced before. In that case, 2-6 don't follow because the being was never established as existing. The idea of a being is not a being itself, any more than the idea of a "maximally powerful unicorn" existing means that the unicorn itself exists. However, if "possible world" is being used as in "a possible reality, and therefore an actual reality assuming there are truly infinite parallel realities" - then 2-6 do follow.
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
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Sig-Heroes of the Plane
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
Sig-Heroes of the Plane
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I've heard versions of the ontological argument that try to term "hypothetical world" (a world we're imagining) as "possible world". Then they try to claim that because the being can be said to exist in a world we're imagining he exists in, he can be said to exist in all imagined worlds. Then because he exists in all possible worlds, and our reality is a possible world, he must exist in our reality too. By using the term "possible world" for these terms, they try to hide the jump from the hypothetical to the actual. In this case, there are flaws in (2) through (6) - but the argument is often more palatable because the arguer gets the audience to go along further in the thought chain and makes each step feel more natural instead of saying something obviously ridiculous straight off.
Other arguments deal with the whole "infinite number of possible universes" thing - in which case they're bypassing hypothetical altogether and go straight for the throat. They claim the being is possible, and since there's an infinite number of parallel universes according to some version of multiverse theory, the being would have to exist in 1 of them and therefore would exist in all of them. In this case, (1) isn't sound while (2) through (6) are.
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Sig-Heroes of the Plane
You are attacking other versions of the ontological argument, not his.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
However, his definition of "possible world" in the link itself is rather fuzzy as well. Unless I'm missing the technical language, it seems he is specifically stating that a possible world is basically a description of a series of statements that make up a reality that could-be - not an alternate universe truly existing as part of a multiverse. And a description of things that could-be is, unless I miss something, the definition of a hypothetical. And, if so, I'd argue that describing a being that has the power to turn itself from a description into a reality doesn't suddenly allow such a being to come into existence [which is a leap made later in the argument, not in (1)].
What am I missing?
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candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
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[url=https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/virtual-particles.460685/[/url]
One does not need virtual particles to defeat Humean causation. As I've tried to explain, causation is already defeated by the standard quantum theory of ordinary, real, non-virtual particles. You don't need quantum field theory at all. Go back and read my light bulb example. All the particles that participate in that example are real, not virtual.
That being said, I read the whole thread you linked -- which is actually about the question of whether virtual particles are really "real" -- and (unsurprisingly, since it's a forum thread on the Internet) it didn't actually solve the controversy. First of all, the voices of the "virtual particles are real" side were only there by proxy. There was a prominent "not real" physicist actually posting, but the "yes real" physicist was only being represented by somebody quoting him.
Second, it wasn't until the end of the thread that the posters started seriously engaging with the phenomenon of Unruh radiation. (and, interestingly, the most blustery "not real" guy clammed up before that point) The summary of the ensuing discussion is that the Unruh effect appears after a coordinate transformation, and the particles that appear in the transformed frame as a result of the Unruh effect must be real (because they can be measured!) -- but a coordinate transformation can't create particles (or anything else) because it's a purely mathematical operation. This is a pretty good argument for "yes real" if you ask me.
Anyhow, the takeaways are two: One, that thread does not actually say anything definitive about anything -- it's just people hashing out a controversy with no conclusion either way. Two, it wouldn't matter if the thread had solved the controversy in favor of "not real" because causation is killed off by basic quantum theory without even the need to appeal to virtual particles.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I mean, people throw around things like 'Spontaneous Emission' and 'Radioactive Decay' as being "uncaused." But, -to me- that's equivalent to saying "God did it." A better way to look at it is we don't know what caused it yet. This isn't to say they're not uncaused. Since we don't know what caused them, they might be[1], or they might not be[2]. This is why -I think- physicists have started to shy away from trying to definitely interpret these equations. You get things like the Copenhagen interpretation in textbooks to try and get grad-students to visualize what might be happening, but when it comes to papers more and more scientists are just sticking to the math. I remember professors becoming pretty unconformable in quantum mechanics class when I asked things like "but, what does that mean?" They would say things like "Well, if you accept that the Schrödinger equation perfectly explains the system, then this is a mathematical consequence."
Anyway, -proven or not- I think most physicists would agree they're probably caused by something. They certainly follow rules.
We might not be able to tell what causes Spontaneous Emission, but the light does turn on when we run current through it. And, we literally set our clocks to Radioactive Decay.[3]
I concede that if the premise itself begs the question, then the entire thing is ridiculous. However, I didn't read that as what was going on. I agree it's unsupported as a premise, but that's not how I read the argument. Assuming your interpretation is correct, I agree with you. That simply wasn't my own interpretation of the argument presented.
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Craig begins by dismissing the traditional teleological arguments that appeal to the appearance of design in biology, calling cosmic fine-tuning the "cutting edge" of the argument. From other writings of his, I know that Craig accepts Darwinian evolution, so I expect he acknowledges that the biological version of the argument fails. He does not seem to realize that the fine-tuning version of the argument fails in basically the same way.
The main problem is in premise (1). As I hope I've got you trained to do by now, when we see a list of alternatives, we should ask, "Why only those alternatives? Why not more?" In this particular case, though, we might also ask, "Why not less?" You see, Craig is plowing straight into a big metaphysical controversy about free will. It seems an awful lot like "necessity" and "chance" are complementary: if something is necessary, it has a probability P = 1 (or P = 0 if necessarily false), and if it occurs by chance, it has a probability 0 < P < 1. Now say an agent allegedly possessing free will is making a decision. Is the probability that they decide a certain way 1, or is it less than 1? If it's 1, isn't their "free will" just necessity? If it's less than 1, isn't it just chance? There's no room for any other alternatives. And God's design of the universe would certainly be a decision that runs into this problem. Design, then, is not a third alternative that stands proudly separate from these two undesirable ones; rather, it collapses into one or the other.
Now, as written, premise (2) presents a problem for this collapsed dichotomy: it seems to say that the fine-tuning of the universe is impossible! But when we look at Craig's justifications for (2), we see that, when Craig framed it as a categorical rejection of necessity and chance, he was being misleading. Craig's real argument is not to say that any explanation based on necessity or chance is impossible, but rather to argue against particular proposed explanations based on necessity or chance. This strategy would let him concede that his own proposal of divine design is a form of necessity or chance without ruling it out, because he was never actually ruling out necessity and chance. He could restate his argument more accurately, without changing its substance, as: Now we ask of (1'), "Why only those alternatives? Why not more?" The very fact that premise (2') does not rule out Craig's proposal also means it does not rule out any other proposals that Craig has not individually shot down. He's playing philosophical whack-a-mole: whenever a proposal pops up, he looks for a way to defeat it. But another proposal can always pop up, and if he can't defeat all of them, he loses. This is a game that intelligent design proponents have already lost in biology: the theory of evolution provides an explanation for the appearance of design that requires no designer. And because of this, we now know definitively that designerless explanations of design are possible. Craig's premise (2') doesn't categorically rule out all designerless explanations because it can't. He has to leave open the possibility that some cosmological equivalent to the theory of evolution could come along and provide a designerless explanation for fine-tuning.
Craig encounters this problem when discussing Dawkins' argument: "Dawkins holds out hope that 'Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology.' But he admits that we don’t have it yet, nor does he deal with the formidable problems facing such an explanation of cosmic fine-tuning. Therefore, the hope expressed in step (6) represents nothing more than the faith of a naturalist." Let's set aside the oddity of a theist scorning "faith"; what he's scorning isn't faith, but fact. If in principle another theory could explain fine-tuning, then Craig does not have a proof of God. That's how logic works. A proof does not allow alternative possibilities. The only faith going on here is Craig's faith that no such theory is possible, despite there being no proof of that. Craig has to believe that he can whack every single mole. A skeptic just has to point out that maybe he can't.
That's fundamentally how Craig's argument goes wrong. I'm not going to go into depth on his treatments of particular theories, because they don't matter in this big picture - he doesn't prove God no matter how many moles he whacks. (Just as I am not disproving God by whacking these five moles of his. The difference between us is that I acknowledged that at the very outset.) I'll only note in passing that Roger Penrose's calculations and conclusions therefrom are contentious to the point of notoriety, not settled fact as Craig would have us believe; that Craig is again abusing Ockham's Razor to do deductive work when it's only a heuristic tool; and that he engages in some shameful psychological ad hominem argumentation.
Finally, on to the Ontological Argument.
EDIT: Jump to my other rebuttals.
1. The Cosmological Argument from Contingency
2. The Kalām Cosmological Argument
3. The Moral Argument
4. The Teleological Argument
5. The Ontological Argument
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Oh come on. Just between us, do you deliberately say ridiculous things to, like, liven up the debate or something?
Someone who says a class of events is uncaused is making the relatively modest claim that those events are not strongly correlated with identifiable temporally-prior events. Someone who says of a class of events that "God did it" is making the much more substantial claim that all of those events are strongly correlated with, and temporally posterior to, the will of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator.
The former statement is denying the existence of a correlation. The latter statement is asserting the existence of a specific correlation, further asserting the existence of a specific entity, and further asserting properties about that entity's mind.
So those two statemets are (of course) not logically equivalent. If they seem equivalent -to you-, then that can only mean there's a problem with your logic.
This is definitely not a better way to look at it. To say that spontaneous emission has a cause but we don't know what it is is saying the following: "There may be a sequence of events that occurs prior to each sequence of spontaneous emission events and is strongly correlated with that sequence, but we just don't know it yet."
But that statement is literally doing nothing but postulating unobserved entities into existence to contradict stuff that actually has been observed. We might as well say "There may be devious aliens on the moon preventing us from seeing that it actually is made of green cheese, but we just don't know it yet." If we allow such things, then we essentially give up on all epistemology past Descartes. Uncertainty about scientific theories should be proportional to evidence or lack thereof, not to mere unsupported guesses that a given theory might be wrong.
You're creating equivocation on "cause." Remember that we're addressing the Kalam cosmological argument here, specifically Craig's presentation of it. It's pretty easy to see that the phrase "has a cause," as used in Craig's presentation of the argument, emphatically does not mean "follows rules." If it did, then we would have:
1. Everything that has a beginning follows rules.
2. The universe has a beginning.
Therefore, 3. The universe follows rules.
Now I'm not sure that argument is any better than the KCA, but importantly, it's not in any sense an argument for God, or even a weak first-cause-only entity. We need only concern ourselves with refuting the kind of causation assumed by Craig's KCA, not some other brand.
What is that brand which is assumed by the KCA? Well, Craig doesn't go into great detail, which is not surprising since the moment he provided a checkable and falsifiable definition of causation, someone would check it and falsify it. In the absence of a specific definition on offer, I propose the classical philosophical notion of causation.
Hume laid out some logical criteria for classical causation, which are about a quarter of the way down that page. They are checkable and so we can determine whether or not causation applies in a given circumstance.
Because there are a few times Avogadro's number worth of atoms in it, and the balance of probabilities across all those atoms makes it lighting up a virtual certainty. A light bulb whose filament consisted of a single (or small handful of) tungsten atom would not reliably turn on in the presence of a current. In fact, a single-tungsten-atom light bulb could behave in all of the following ways:
1) apply a current, the atom emits light (nonzero probability of spontaneous emission)
2) apply a current, the atom does not emit light on any reasonable time scale (nonzero probability that spontaneous emission does not occur)
3) don't apply a current, the atom does not emit light on any reasonable time scale (nonzero probability that no spontaneous excitation occurs)
4) don't apply a current, the atom emits light anyway (nonzero probability that spontaneous excitation occurs, followed by nonzero probability of spontaneous emission)
And these aren't just theoretical phenomena that you'd have to wait until the end of the universe to see; all of these four possibilities have been actually experimentally observed in the lab.
Now, given that these phenomena observably occur in nature, we can ask what they say about causality. Certainly we can immediately see that "the current causes the light bulb to emit light" is false, because Hume's third criterion is violated.
You might want to reject Hume's third criterion; in that case we can use different quantum phenomena to break other criteria. You mentioned radioactive decay. Suppose I have one U238 nucleus in my left hand and one in my right. The one in my left hand decays at time t0 as measured by a wall clock and the other one decays at a different time t1>t0. (This is a real thing that can really happen, as you should know.)
Suppose I postulate that this decay is classically causal. Why, then, did the decays occur at different wall times? By Hume's sixth criterion, "the difference in effects of two resembling objects must proceed from that particular, in which they differ." But quantum theory holds the nuclei to be identical bosons, intrinsically indistinguishable from each other. There is no particular in which they differ. This is a reductio ad absurdum of the notion that radioactive decay is classically causal.
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Then I guess it is a good thing that the way things sound to you is not important to anyone else.
In spite of the fact that philosophers have said "It is a necessary requirement for science that setting up identical experiments must produce identical results" ... we are not to tell Nature what she's got to be. That's what we've found out.
-- R. P. Feynman
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
The liquid takes the shape of the pothole, the pothole isn't designed to fit the liquid.
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Sig-Heroes of the Plane
Taboo the word "uncaused" as this and go back through your argument. Ex: Does this modest definition of "uncaused" to lead us to the conclusion that causality mustn't apply to these events? Or would a stronger definition be needed?
It is necessary to assume you've not seen all there is to see to have motivation to for additional observations.
The reason I equated the two statements "these events are known to be uncauses" and "God did it" is because they're both informational dead ends, which is anathema to science. If a scientist is to have motivation for experiments he needs to assume there is something to observe that's not yet been observed. Otherwise we'd not leave our offices and be mathematicians.
Observing a cause for spontaneous emission wouldn't "contradict stuff that actually has been observed." Don't be ridiculous.
If we allow for such things, then we have reason to check them.
If we assume we already have within us all the basic information about the universe and just need to crunch some numbers in our armchairs, THEN we've stopped at Descartes.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.