Fine tuning?

Purposeful universe

Phillip Goff

Fundamentally, we face a choice. Either:

• it’s a coincidence that, of all the possible values that the finely tuned constants of physics may have had, they just happen to have the right values for life;
  

or:

• the constants have those values because they are right for life.
  

The former option is wildly improbable; on a conservative estimate, the odds of getting finely tuned constants by chance is less than 1 in 10^136. The latter option amounts to a belief that something at the fundamental level of reality is directed towards the emergence of life. I call this kind of fundamental goal-directedness ‘cosmic purpose’.

The most common response online to fine-tuning worries is known as ‘the anthropic response’: if the universe hadn’t had the right numbers for life, we wouldn’t be around to worry about it, and so we shouldn’t be surprised to find fine-tuning. The philosopher John Leslie devised a vivid thought experiment (here presented in a slightly modified version) to show where the anthropic response goes wrong. Suppose you’re about to be executed by five expert marksmen at close range. They load up, take aim, fire… but they all miss. Again, they load up, take aim, fire… again, they all miss. This happens time and time again for more than an hour. Now, you could think: ‘Well, if they had hit me, I wouldn’t be around to worry about it, and so I shouldn’t be surprised that they all missed.’ But nobody would think this. It clearly needs explanation why these expert shooters repeatedly missed at close range. Maybe the guns have been tampered with, or maybe it’s a mock execution. Likewise, while it’s of course trivially true that, if the universe wasn’t compatible with life, we wouldn’t be around to reflect on the matter, it still needs explaining why, of all the numbers in physics that might have come up, a universe ended up with one in the narrow range compatible with life.

Could fine-tuning have been just a fluke? Sometimes, things come together in surprising and unexpected ways, without our feeling compelled to postulate an underlying purpose to reality. But there are limits to this. Suppose thieves break into a high-security bank and get the 10-digit combination right first time. Would it be an option to say: ‘Well, maybe they just randomly tried a number and it just happened to be the right one’? This would clearly be an irrational thing to think, as it’s just too improbable that they would get the combination right by fluke. But the fine-tuning being a fluke is massively more improbable than the thieves getting the combination right by chance...

For a long time, I thought the multiverse hypothesis was the most plausible explanation of fine-tuning. But I eventually became persuaded through long discussions with probability theorists that the inference from fine-tuning to a multiverse involves flawed reasoning...One of my motivations for writing the book Why? was to convey this argument, which changed my life, to a broader audience.

Purposeful universe

Phillip Goff

I think that this author has come up with an interesting variation of the usual intelligent design hypothesis used by proponents to explain the fact of cosmic fine tuning of the laws of nature. He carefully reasons it through and comes to a conclusion somewhat similar to a cosmic version of panpsychism.

The argument from evil and suffering targets a very specific kind of God, namely the Omni-God: all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good creator of the universe. Meanwhile, the fine-tuning argument supports something much more generic, some kind of cosmic purpose or goal-directedness towards life that might not be attached to a supernatural designer.
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For some, the idea of purpose without a mind directing it makes no sense. An alternative possibility is a non-standard designer, one that lacks the ‘omni’ qualities – all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good – of the traditional God. What about an evil God? As Stephen Law has explored in detail, the evil-god hypothesis faces a ‘problem of good’ mirroring the problem of evil facing the traditional good God: if God is evil, why did God create so much good? I think a better option is a limited designer who has made the best universe they are able to make. Perhaps the designer of our universe would have loved to create intelligent life in an instant, avoiding all the misery of natural selection, but their only option was to create a universe from a singularity, with the right physics, so that it will eventually evolve intelligent life. Maybe our limited designer feels awful about how messy such a process inevitably is, but it was that or nothing.
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A supernatural designer comes with a parsimony cost. As scientists and philosophers, we aspire to find not just any old theory that can account for the data but the simplest such theory. All things being equal, it’d be better not to have to believe in both a physical universe and a non-physical supernatural designer.

For these reasons, I think overall the best theory of cosmic purpose is cosmopsychism, the view that the universe is itself a conscious mind with its own goals. In fact, this is a view I first entertained in Aeon,..... before deciding that the multiverse was a better option. (But) having been finally persuaded that the multiverse is a no-go, I was prompted to explore a more developed cosmopsychist explanation of fine-tuning in my book and this now seems to me the most likely source of cosmic purpose.

Comment: He rightly rejects the multiverse hypothesis, which has multiple crippling difficulties. The problem with his new concept is that he doesn't explore its clear implications. Despite his claim that his cosmopsychism hypothesis is the simplest proposed hypothesis and therefore most likely per the well-known principle of parsimony or Occam's Razor, it really isn't. This is because it leaves open the obvious question of how this conscious alive Universe with its own goals came about - what are its origins? Surely such an incomprehensibly vast intelligence and power didn't magically come from absolutely nothing. Therefore either it must be eternal over all time (which still invokes an irrational claim that the overwhelmingly intricate and complexly organized information comprising the intelligent Universe itself never had a Designer), or it was designed and created by a yet even more extremely greatly complex organized Being, leading to an infinite regression. This implication makes the cosmopsychism concept more complex by far than the other hypotheses, and accordingly fails the Occam's Razor test.

I think that he has unreasonably rejected the "limited designer(s) who have made the best universe they are able to make" option. An extension of this concept would be that this Designer or multiple Designers are superintelligent and powerful but ultimately still limited entities created by and subordinate to the one God. This limitedness is apparent in the nature of the outside Designer interventions in the evolution of life on Earth explored by the Intelligent Design movement. 

This of course still leaves the conundrum of having to explain suffering, but it seems to me there have been some at least partially satisfactory theodices or rationalizations developed for this.

I think that this author has come up with an interesting variation of the usual intelligent design hypothesis used by proponents to explain the fact of cosmic fine tuning of the laws of nature. He carefully reasons it through and comes to a conclusion somewhat similar to a cosmic version of panpsychism.


Comment: He rightly rejects the multiverse hypothesis, which has multiple crippling difficulties. The problem with his new concept is that he doesn't explore its clear implications. Despite his claim that his cosmopsychism hypothesis is the simplest proposed hypothesis and therefore most likely per the well-known principle of parsimony or Occam's Razor, it really isn't. This is because it leaves open the obvious question of how this conscious alive Universe with its own goals came about - what are its origins? Surely such an incomprehensibly vast intelligence and power didn't magically come from absolutely nothing. Therefore either it must be eternal over all time (which still invokes an irrational claim that the overwhelmingly intricate and complexly organized information comprising the intelligent Universe itself never had a Designer), or it was designed and created by a yet even more extremely greatly complex organized Being, leading to an infinite regression. This implication makes the cosmopsychism concept more complex by far than the other hypotheses, and accordingly fails the Occam's Razor test.

I think that he has unreasonably rejected the "limited designer(s) who have made the best universe they are able to make" option. An extension of this concept would be that this Designer or multiple Designers are superintelligent and powerful but ultimately still limited entities created by and subordinate to the one God. This limitedness is apparent in the nature of the outside Designer interventions in the evolution of life on Earth explored by the Intelligent Design movement. 

This of course still leaves the conundrum of having to explain suffering, but it seems to me there have been some at least partially satisfactory theodices or rationalizations developed for this.

Actually found out last night that Goff has converted to a - in his words "heretical" - form of Christianity.

Will prolly make a thread about it, as it is an interesting philosophical development over time.

Actually found out last night that Goff has converted to a - in his words "heretical" - form of Christianity.

Will prolly make a thread about it, as it is an interesting philosophical development over time.

I'd rather not get into the morass of discussion and argumentation involved in the subject of Goff's "heretical" version of Christianity (or of any version of Christianity for that matter), but I am curious that it seems to me that part of his present metaphysical/philosophical position may be dependent on his cosmopsychism model, which I think I have made an argument against. Do you agree about this apparent dependency, and what do you think of my argument?

I'd rather not get into the morass of discussion and argumentation involved in the subject of Goff's "heretical" version of Christianity (or of any version of Christianity for that matter), but I am curious that it seems to me that part of his present metaphysical/philosophical position may be dependent on his cosmopsychism model, which I think I have made an argument against. Do you agree about this apparent dependency, and what do you think of my argument?

I mentioned it because Goff's idea is that God is not just the universe but rather more than the universe. (Panentheism)

As such he does believe in a Designer, albeit One who designs within Its own Being rather than making a whole universe distinct [from] Itself.

So I don't believe the criticism still applies to his view?

[Laird]

Purposeful universe

From the article:

Many argue that this is where the anthropic principle kicks in.

Yep. I don't buy his counter-argument.

Nor do I buy the multi-verse explanation of fine-tuning, but for a different reason: it seems to be predicated on physicalism, which I think is false. I don't see any logical argument against the possibility of a multi-verse created by a Mind as an explanation of fine-tuning, but it seems rather redundant given that the Mind could have just created our fine-tuned universe directly.

From the article:


Yep. I don't buy his counter-argument.

Nor do I buy the multi-verse explanation of fine-tuning, but for a different reason: it seems to be predicated on physicalism, which I think is false. I don't see any logical argument against the possibility of a multi-verse created by a Mind as an explanation of fine-tuning, but it seems rather redundant given that the Mind could have just created our fine-tuned universe directly.

Could you elaborate on why you disagree with his counter-argument? Or link to your argument if you’ve already posted it?

[Laird]

Could you elaborate on why you disagree with his counter-argument?

Yes. He offers two responses:

1. That "no theoretical justification has ever been given as to why this would make it OK to ignore the total evidence requirement".
   
2. A counter-argument by analogy: a sniper will kill us if there's not somebody in the casino's first room having an extraordinary run of luck.
   

The first fails because there is no need to consider this universe specifically (as part of the total evidence) given that - per the anthropic principle - any universe which happened to support life would be observable by that life. We are not comparable to Sammy Smart, the first person we see in the casino; the proper analogy is that we only see the person or people who are winning big in the casino.

The second fails for the same reason: the proper analogy is that we see only the people who are winning big (the rest are rendered invisible to us). It just happened to be Sammy Smart in the first room, but it could have been any of them in any room (the stipulation that it has to be somebody in the first room makes for a false analogy; I see no justification for it). Whoever it was would have stood out to us because we literally couldn't see any of the rest. Sure, the sniper wouldn't have shot us, but that adds nothing useful to the analogy: again, the proper addition to the analogy is not a sniper but the invisibility of the non-winners.

Yes. He offers two responses:

1. That "no theoretical justification has ever been given as to why this would make it OK to ignore the total evidence requirement".
   
2. A counter-argument by analogy: a sniper will kill us if there's not somebody in the casino's first room having an extraordinary run of luck.
   

The first fails because there is no need to consider this universe specifically (as part of the total evidence) given that - per the anthropic principle - any universe which happened to support life would be observable by that life. We are not comparable to Sammy Smart, the first person we see in the casino; the proper analogy is that we only see the person or people who are winning big in the casino.

The second fails for the same reason: the proper analogy is that we see only the people who are winning big (the rest are rendered invisible to us). It just happened to be Sammy Smart in the first room, but it could have been any of them in any room (the stipulation that it has to be somebody in the first room makes for a false analogy; I see no justification for it). Whoever it was would have stood out to us because we literally couldn't see any of the rest. Sure, the sniper wouldn't have shot us, but that adds nothing useful to the analogy: again, the proper addition to the analogy is not a sniper but the invisibility of the non-winners.

I'm still mulling this over....

Even if we only see winners, we could still grasp the casino - which I assume stands for the theoretical search space - has a very low probability of winning against the House. As such, if we only see winners, we'd still think something unusual is happening...right?

I also think Goff's point here is that we cannot infer a multiverse just because we see that this universe is fine tuned for life. If there was strong reason to believe in a multiverse anyway, then perhaps a multiverse could be used as the best argument for why this universe is fine tuned. AFAIK no such evidence exists that would convince us there has to be a multiverse where every possible combination of constants is manifested?

Nor do I buy the multi-verse explanation of fine-tuning, but for a different reason: it seems to be predicated on physicalism, which I think is false. I don't see any logical argument against the possibility of a multi-verse created by a Mind as an explanation of fine-tuning, but it seems rather redundant given that the Mind could have just created our fine-tuned universe directly.

The idea of a "multiverse" is weird, anyways, because it assumes that all of physical reality is the "universe", and that other such "universes" just exist for no reason in some unobserved void of nothing, outside or overlapping this one, for no particular reason.

No... all of reality, including however many physical subsets, compose the Universe proper. No need for a weird redundancy.

I have experienced multiple other physical subsets of reality, each of them having apparent purpose and meaning. So, what exactly is the point of some random physical reality just existing, dead and empty, also physically undetectable, for no reason, just because Physicalists want to desperately avoid finetuning...?

There is not much limit to what a vast and powerful mind can accomplish. Multiple, distinct physical subsets of reality? No problem.