Alister McGrath's embarrassing answer to a question

During Q & A in his talk "Biology, the Anthropic Principle and Natuarl Theology," given at the Faraday Institute on Science and Religion, a couple of questioners asked questions that AM did not meet head-on. They were (paraphrased):

1. Isn't saying that the universe is fine tuned so that humans can exist like saying that my nose is fine tuned so that glasses can be placed on them?

2. If we can reasonably say that the universe is fine-tuned so that we might exist, then wouldn't it be even more reasonable to say that it is fine tuned so that The Wheel of Fortune might play on television?

Alister's answer was very non-confrontational (and I misquote): "I just think that the possible fine-tuning of the universe is something that we should think about."

A better response to the first question would have been to point out how inapt the comparison was: the nose/glasses comparison relates one item in nature to something else that in no way arose as a result of it, whereas the fine tuning argument relates an earlier state of nature as a whole to a later state of the same whole . To make the comparison more apt, we might ask, "What if noses grew pairs of glasses without human invention, then wouldn't we suspect that the earlier state of the human body was already predisposed to bring it about that glasses arose?

In short, fine-tuning is about the possible inner teleology of the universe as a whole, not about how one thing can serve as an instrument.

But the nose/glasses comparison falls short, even with the proposed (somewhat silly) modification. For a hidden assumption int he fine tuning argument is that biological life is in some sense the crowning achievement of the physical universe. So if you thought that the supreme human achievement was to see the world through glasses, then the analogy would not fall short. But if you think that the exercise of rational faculties is a better candidate, then a perhaps apter comparison would be between the human body as a whole and the exercise of rational faculties. This comparison too falls short, because humans "obviously" come from other humans, so we would have to modify it further by saying, "Suppose a robot came into existence 'out of the blue' and eventually developed the ability to exercise rational faculties. Assuming that this achievement is the greatest thing that this robot can have, wouldn't we suspect that the human was made so that it could exercise these faculties?"

A better answer to #2 would have been to say that the fact that there is life, and rational life at that, is not something trivial but rather seems more like the crowning achievement. If you think Vanna White spinning the Wheel of Fortune is the crowning achievement of humankind, then, yes, for you, the universe would seem to you to be fine tuned so that she could spin that wheel, and -- even more importantly -- so that you can watch her.

In other words, the argument from fine-tuning doesn't prove teleology--it assumes it. Like other scientific explanations, it proceeds by affirming the consequent, which is formally invalid. A critic might bring up the "Vanna White" fine-tuning thesis in order to show the same logical form allows for a rather silly claim. But what is really silly is to think that belief in teleology is naive. For those who take the life world as the starting point for rational thought, the burden of proof lies on the shoulders of those who would deny teleology. For those who take science as an ateleological method of reasoning that overthrows the teleological rationality of the life world through a Copernican revolution, the burden of proof lies on the shoulders of the naive, prescientific. Given their understanding of genuine rationality as requiring the scientific method, they are rightly confident that this burden will never be met. But that is because, by absolutizing one method of reasoning, they have put their blinders on and are unable to see other aspects of reality. Theirs is a blind faith.

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...

interesting article by Jimmy Akin on death before the Fall

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/ Akin below: Aquinas.... writes: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals [ Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2 ]. Aquinas thus holds that it was not all death that entered the world through man's sin, but human death.

The Human Question

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