Does God Exist? | Michael Huemer vs. Joshua Rasmussen

¶1Gentlemen, welcome to the Uncertainty Podcast. >> All right. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. >> Thank you.

¶2>> So, we're here to debate the question, does God exist? It's going to be pretty straightforward. The format is the usual one that I do, which is 15minute opening statements from either speaker followed by an hour of moderated discussion and then five minute closing statements depending on how we're feeling at that time. So we will begin with Joshua Rasmmanson who I imagine will be presenting the affirmative case here. The answering yes to the question does God exist?

¶3Uh so Joshua pass over to you. >> Thank you. Well that was a good imagination and your imagination will correspond to reality here. So okay well thank you for this opportunity. I'm very excited to share this brief 15-minute case for theism.

¶4And I want to start by just giving you my big idea which is that in my view theism provides a deep and unifying explanation of many things. And so the short idea here is that theism best explains the most. By this I mean that theism raises the probability of many parts of reality. Not just small parts like what you ate for breakfast this morning, but large scale areas of reality such as the existence of consciousness, the existence of a universe in which some life forms could exist somewhere at some time. Uh the sense of right and wrong, and many other areas of reality that are individually and collectively surprising.

¶5And I want to make a case that theism makes those areas of of reality more probable than they would otherwise be. So my general method is the method of a philosopher. I want to seek to understand reality. And my goal in this conversation with Mike is to see if we can get some greater clarity together about the nature of reality. I want to use universal tools of reason and experience and any kind of data that people can investigate for themselves.

¶6This is the kind of method that I think appeals to a more universal audience. It's the kind of method that Anthony Flu, a former atheist philosopher, utilized as he was persuaded that um a non-theistic universe is not the best explanation. And so I want to see if I can bring forward the same kind of strategy in my presentation here. Okay. So this is the fun part for me as a philosopher.

¶7There are these puzzles about reality. And these puzzles, they do keep me up late at night sometimes thinking about them. Not just because I might be afraid of the puzzle and they're scary puzzles, but because they draw me into a state of extreme curiosity. These are puzzles for every truth seeker. So everybody watching this, whatever you get out of this exchange, I hope that you can get a feeling of curiosity about these puzzles because these puzzles invite us to understand what kind of a reality are we really in.

¶8So first there's this general classical puzzle which is the question why does anything at all exist? We could conceive of an empty reality just completely blank. That would be a simpler way for reality to be just empty. And yet there is something rather than just nothing. And this invites the question, well why is that?

¶9And there's a puzzle here because you might think that anything that exists should have some deeper explanation in terms of something that produces it or causes it. But when it comes to existence itself, you can't appeal to some prior existence to explain why there's some existence rather than none because that would be circular. You'd have existence making itself exist. And so it's puzzling to see how we could answer this question. Another puzzle of reality has to do with specific things that exist.

¶10So okay, things exist, but then why are there the particular kinds of things that exist? Why, for example, are there minds who can think and reflect? Why is there kind of material organization? I mentioned this in terms of a universe that's suitable for life forms. Um, not only is there consciousness and and a universe suitable for life forms, but there's a specific kind of consciousness that includes a kind of moral awareness or a sense of good or a sense of value, a sense of bad, which is different than just a sense of cold or a sense of hot.

¶11So, it's a very specific kind of moral awareness uh of of consciousness. There are principles of reason that suggest to us how we should think. Uh inferences from one truth to another. Why do those exist in reality? There's also the power of minds.

¶12It's not just minds exist like foam arising out of the ocean. Minds have a power to actually change the waves of reality. If you intend to do something like you can intend to move your hand, then your hand moves. How does that work? Why does that work?

¶13There's also what I call the modal abundance of consciousness. This is a more technical idea that grows out of my work on the nature of counting thoughts. So I have a mathematical argument that there are more possible types of conscious states than there are possible types of non-concious physical states. And if that's true, that suggests that there's something about consciousness uh that spans the possible landscape. And there's a question, why is that?

¶14Why does consciousness span the possible landscape, the landscape of what's possible? And then we can organize a lot of different elements of reality into a large scale meaning in terms of a narrative structure. So there's a sense that when you do something, what you're doing isn't just going through a sequence of consciousnesses that are unrelated, but you can describe plots, tension, some kind of conflict, some kind of development through that conflict. There are episodes and questions and puzzles that create meaning and questions about whether there is meaning, which itself creates a kind of meaning on a meta level. So there's a question about why this exists in reality at all.

¶15So to help us to think about this puzzle, we can consider different theories. One kind of theory, we could call this a mindless explosion theory. The idea here is that reality consists fundamentally of some mindless particles. Now, let me be clear. This isn't the only theory of reality that would be non-theistic.

¶16There are many. And part of the challenge here is to consider a range of theories and see which theory best explains all the different aspects of reality in the best way in the most unifying way. But for focus, let me focus on this salient theory according to which there's just a mindless foundation and from that foundation emerges particles. What is this? What does this predict?

¶17What can we learn from this? Well, this theory does not itself predict that there be any conscious beings in any meaningful narratives ever. Some philosophers such as the philosopher of science Alexander Rosenberg have argued that it's just not even possible for conscious beings to think and and form actual thoughts in a reality that's fundamentally mindless. And he's argued that therefore thoughts don't exist because in his view reality is fundamentally mindless. But if thoughts do exist, then that leads to the question, how do they exist?

¶18And why do they exist? And even if they could possibly exist from mindless foundations, there's a question of prediction and probability. It seems to me that a mindless first theory does not itself predict that there's any positive likelihood of there being conscious beings anywhere. Um, now let's consider a supreme foundation theory. So this would be an alternative theory, a version of theism.

¶19So on this theory, reality includes a fundamental reality having a supreme nature. And by supreme nature, this can be unpacked in different ways. I want to kind of leave open uh how we think of this but I'll offer one maximality condition for sake of focus which is that a supreme nature will entail a maximal consistent combination of classical greatmaking qualities such as power mental resources kind of general state of goodness and so on. So you could think of it as a maximally great kind of being. So the supreme foundation theory provides a deep and unifying explanation of many areas of reality.

¶20If there's a supreme foundation, if there's a foundational reality that has some kind of maximal mind, then that makes it more likely that there would be mind in reality because the foundational reality already has within it the resources of mentality. It also raises the probability, I think, of there being a kind of material organization. When I witness my kids make drawings, I notice that as they get older and their minds develop, the drawings that they make display more sophisticated organizations. But if I see a drawing that of a face on a piece of paper, I don't expect that face to exist without any kind of mental background or any kind of intelligence behind that. Now, to be clear, my kids can use materials to produce their material organization.

¶21They can use pens and pencils and create even machines that can facilitate their intentions. And this use of materials is itself a kind of organization. And so it seems to me that the supreme foundation theory would make it highly much more likely that there be some kind of material organization. This is the kind of thing that is interesting to mind. Also, if it's a supreme foundation, that's not just a maximal intelligence.

¶22Al also has that kind of general goodness built into its nature. So, it's purely great through and through, not just along one dimension, but purely and uniformly across its whole nature. And this would suggest that there is a more likely explanation of the existence of moral awareness or awareness of value as well as mental norms. I mentioned principles of reason, uh, mental power, mathematical order, meaning, and the story structure of reality, and so on. I'm I'm pointing to a few examples to just illustrate the general argument here.

¶23So, here's an open challenge for all the truth seekers. The challenge is give a more unified theory, more unified than the Supreme Foundation theory, that successfully predicts or makes as likely all those many different areas of reality. All right. So this is kind of the first stage of my uh my case which is an argument from raising the probability and making it more likely that there would be all of these things through a deep and unifying explanation. Here I want to focus on a argument that is based on analyzing the nature of fundamental reality and explaining dependent portions of reality.

¶24So here I present my signature argument from arbitrary limits. This is going to be a brief outline just to point to the main steps and we can discuss this further. So this argument has two parts. The first part seeks to explain dependent things. So if you have a dependent sequence of turtles and there's a question about how those turtles exist and why they exist, then the idea is that you're not going to appeal to those very dependent things to explain their existence because that would be circular.

¶25So without a foundational reality, there would be no explanation or basis for the existence of dependent things in total. This premise does not depend on the the number of things. No matter how many things there are, whether one or many, the idea is that they would all collectively depend on something prior. It's like if you had a floor with brown tiles, and the floor is, you could say, brown, it doesn't matter how many brown tiles there are. Even if there were infinitely many, the floor in total would still be brown.

¶26Same with dominoes that are knocking each other down on a table. If you have infinitely many dominoes, they only knock each other down on that table if there's a table to support them. Now for any dependent things there is a basis for their existence. I'm going to point to three types of reasons for this. I think from reason just reflecting on the nature of dependence.

¶27Adding up more dependent things does not yield an independent total. I think this is also supported by experience. Um we've got lots of examples of dependent things. You add them together and they don't form something independent. And then from the expectation of a deeper explanation.

¶28I think there's a track record in science to seek a deeper explanation of things. And so we could put this modestly. Uh other things being equal expect a further explanation. And from this it follows that we can expect an explanation of the total of dependent things. And this gives us a reason to think there's a foundational reality.

¶29Now we can move on to the second part to ask what's the nature of this foundational reality. And again, just to give you the outline, my argument is that if foundational reality lacks that supreme nature, it's not it's not a supreme foundation. Then it's going to have some kind of arbitrary parameters or limits. It'll have power to some limited arbitrary degree or it'll have the capacity for for awareness to some limited degree. But I would argue that that same principle of seeking an explanation as far as you can.

¶30Other things be equal, expect a further explanation gives at least some reason to expect a deeper explanation for any particular limits that there are. There's a limited Thank you. If there's a limited set of turtles, then you might wonder why is there that particular limit? So, for example, um can you see me through the the video or is it just showing the PowerPoint? You can see me.

¶31Okay, great. I love that. So I'm showing here a little piece of reality here. And even though you haven't seen where it came from, you have good reason to expect that there is some deeper explanation of its particular size and parameters. And if I change this piece of reality to a different one with a different shape, different color.

¶32The idea here, this is very key, is that the difference in limit and shape and size is irrelevant. I think both reason and experience testify to the irrelevance of the difference in shape and size. I mean this is where honestly it it clicks to the level of like I see no al alternative. It just seems like oh yes for any particular limit one li if one limit has an explanation in terms of something deeper all the others will too uniformly. So this is the uniformity principle that all limits alike have a deeper explanation and if that's right then foundational reality lacks those arbitrary limits and so has a supreme nature.

¶33Okay. Now I think I have 45 seconds left and I want to talk about the greatest challenge to my view which is that the world is not supreme. There's evil, there's suffering. If the foundation is supreme, how can that be? Well, here's the sketch of an answer.

¶34Uh this is obviously a deep and vexing question and we could discuss this for a long time. But my thought is actually there's a way in which evil and suffering adds additional evidence for a supreme foundation because all the kinds of evil we find in the world seem to take place within the context of developing conscious beings of different kinds. There many kinds of conscious beings. There are many ways of developing them. But these make sense in the context of a narrative structure where beings gain self-standing, gain expansion.

¶35there's a development process and there's something beautiful and valuable about this and suffering and its various kinds then would be expected in the context of a great story. So the idea here is that from a supreme foundation it's unsurprising that great stories would emerge but the contrast theories don't make that prediction at all uh either possible or likely. So here are my final summary points in the last 10 seconds. Theism I think has great explanatory power. The Supreme Foundation explains many areas of reality.

¶36Also, logical analysis seems to suggest that dependent realities can't just exist on their own. In total, they've got to depend on something non-dependent foundational that's relevantly different from dependent things. So, they don't have those arbitrary limits and boundaries that call for deeper explanation. And the deepest most unified account of a foundation that makes that foundation relevantly different in my view would be a supreme foundation, one with a supreme nature. So, in other words, in short, God best explains the most.

¶37Thank you. >> All righty. Thank you, Josh. Uh, I will pass over to Michael Huer. I'll go ahead and give you 16 minutes on that.

¶38So, feel free to have that extra breathing room >> to present your case. >> I mean, thank thank you for passing that along and giving me that extra minute. >> Okay. So, I'm going to present a little slideshow. Now, um Josh and I prepared our statements without seeing each other.

¶39So, this well not exactly respond, but it might partly respond to what he said because I read a blog post of his about this subject. All right, so uh is there a god? All right, let's think about that. Uh this is my this is my view, I guess. Basically, um I I see three explanations for the existence of fine-tuning and consciousness and uh the universe as we know it.

¶40There's the hypothesis that there's a a creator of the universe, but it's a finite limited being or an imperfect being. There's a hypothesis of an infinite or perfect creator. And then there's the multiverse theory, which is that there are many different universes and only some of them allow for life and consciousness and interesting things happening in them and those are the only ones that anybody ever observes. Okay. Um, I guess my basic view is the finite creator and the multiverse are reasonable theories and they're both more likely than the infinite creator theory.

¶41Uh, also by the way, as a side point, I think it's even more likely that there's something else that we haven't thought of. We probably just don't know. Probably nobody has thought of what the correct explanation of the universe is. Um, but since I also am one of these people who hasn't thought of it, I can't say anything more about that. Okay.

¶42So I'm going to discuss objections to uh the idea of an infinite being. I'm going to mention the problem of evil and then maybe I'll talk about how to explain reality or you know existence in general. Okay. Could God be infinite? The traditional God in the kind of like western theological tradition is supposed to be infinite in certain respects.

¶43So uh sometimes people just say God is an infinite being. But other times they say things that imply that he's infinite. So they will say that God is all knowing which I think implies that God has infinite knowledge. There's an there's an infinite amount of stuff to know. So God is infinitely knowledgeable.

¶44Uh they'll say God is all powerful which I think implies an infinite amount of power. Um also although this is rarely mentioned, it it would appear that God's intelligence must be infinite. Like if he got an IQ test, I suppose his IQ would be infinity. All right. Um, and all of these are supposed to be uh you're supposed to think that these are quantifiable attributes.

¶45And if they're quantifiable, the quantity that god has can't be just some limited amount. It's got to be infinite or something like that, you know, in the western theological tradition. Okay? Uh, it would be fine with me to talk about a god that had had a limited amount of these attributes, but I don't think that the traditional theist would be happy with that. Okay?

¶46There might be other attributes of god that are also infinite. Uh, you can think about that. um oh you know God's infinite intelligence you know what what would this mean like oh uh there's no limit to how many problems he could solve in any time period or he could solve he could solve intellectual problems as quickly as he likes you know uh and his infinite power well you know it makes sense to talk about one being being more powerful than another and it makes sense for to talk about a being perhaps twice as powerful as another you can think about power in different respects maybe there's not a single dimen dimension of power. Maybe there are multiple kinds of power. Uh all of this is fine as long as there is some there are some quantifiable dimensions.

¶47Uh so you know uh one person could be twice as strong as another which would mean perhaps they could lift a weight twice as heavy as the other person could lift. Okay. But God could lift any weight and you know God could create any number of particles etc. So he has an infinite amount of power. Okay.

¶48Now, uh there are some kinds of infinities that are metaphysically impossible, right? So, to give an example, there's Thompson's famous lamp. This is um a hypothetical lamp that it gets it starts out off and then it gets switched on after half a minute and then back off after a quarter minute, back on after another eighth of a minute, and so on. So, that in the course of a minute, it gets switched infinitely many times. And then you have the question at the end of the minute, is it on or off?

¶49And you're supposed to see that there's no good answer to this question. And then that's supposed to make you think, well, that lamp is impossible. Like that seems to be the answer to the puzzle. There cannot be such a lamp. Or consider the conundrum, what happens when an irresistible force encounters an immovable object?

¶50And the only answer to this could be well there can't be such a scenario. And uh an irresistible force could be thought of as an infinite force and the immovable object could be thought of as an object with infinite inertia. Best explanation of what's wrong with this scenario is that you can't have either of those things. Uh or suppose that there was an object traveling with infinite velocity and suppose it traveled at that velocity for 1 minute. Where would it be?

¶51And there's no answer to that. And the best best account of what went wrong here is that infinite velocity is impossible. Or suppose that there are two objects at infinite distance from one another. Okay, one object is here. Where's the other object?

¶52There's nowhere for it to be. Okay, uh there is no location at infinite distance. Uh and you know why are all of these things impossible? I think basically because there are no infinite numbers. Uh it's a it is a misunderstanding.

¶53It's a conceptual confusion to think that there's a number called infinity. The structure of the number line is as shown in this um in this first graphic, right? The it's a line that goes that way forever. There is not in addition to that another point after the infinite line. There's just the infinite number line.

¶54So there's not like another number after all that comes after all the natural numbers that's bigger than all the natural numbers. Nor is there one that comes after all the real numbers. the natural numbers just go on up forever and the real numbers go on up forever and that's it. Okay, there are no infinite numbers. Uh that's why there can't be these infinite quantities, right?

¶55Like the infinite velocity and the infinite inertia and so on. Okay. Um why why might it be impossible for being to have an infinite amount of power? So the first thing you might think is this is analogous to how there can't be infinite force or infinite velocity or infinite distance or those other things I gave examples of. Uh it just seems similar to that to say that there's a being with infinite power.

¶56Um the other thing to think is you know if there were if there were a being with unlimited power that being could realize uh paradoxes of the infinite like Thompson's lamp. So if there were a god and he satisfied the attributes of traditional theism, he could create the Thompson lamp. He could create a lamp and then he could switch it infinitely many times within one minute. And then you're supposed to think, well, but uh there's there's something wrong with that scenario. So there can't be a being with infinite power.

¶57The reason why we can't create the Thompson lamp is that we would run out of energy. as you try to switch the lamp, there's be some point at which you would no longer have enough energy to flip the switch another time. And there would be a specific point at which that's true because you would have a specific amount of energy available at any given time. Also, by the way, uh if if that didn't happen first, um the switch might break because you exerted too much force on it. And there's a specific point in this switching in the series of switchings at which the switch would break because the force increases each time you you flip it because you have to flip it faster.

¶58Okay? But if there's a God, God wouldn't face those limitations. God wouldn't be stopped at any particular point. So there's no clear reason why he wouldn't be able to complete the scenario. The little bud Ross paradox is another paradox of the infinite that it appears that God would be able to realize but I think I will not describe it because it might take a few minutes.

¶59All right, but if you know what it is, that's another thing that I would say, you know, God could realize if if he had infinite power. Um, however, you might then think, oh, but there are some kinds of infinities that are possible. So, Zeno's paradox gives an example of this. There's an object that wants to move from point A to point B. Just a very simple thing that ordinarily happens every day.

¶60Uh in order for it to get to its destination, it has to first go half the distance and then half the remaining distance and then half the remaining distance and so on. So that's an infinite series. Uh so it appears that to move from one point to another just a finite distance you have to complete an infinite series. And because objects do in fact move, it appears that that shows that sometimes infinite series are completed. Okay.

¶61Also it appears that time is infinite. Uh some people dispute whether the past is infinite but almost everyone agrees that the future is infinite. Uh also space appears to be infinite infinitely extended. It also appears to have um it appears to be infinitely divisible. So within a given finite volume of space you can have infinitely many sub volumes.

¶62Okay. So what kinds of infinity are possible and what kinds are impossible? And my basic view is well you can have infinite cardality. In other words, there can be something that there are infinitely many of. So like there are infinitely many natural numbers.

¶63Also you can have an infinite extensive magnitude. Extensive magnitudes are magnitudes that add up across the parts of a thing. So distance is an extensive magnitude. If you have um a given distance, the length of the first half plus the length of the second half equals the length of the whole. It's additive in that way.

¶64Right? So distance is an extensive magnitude. Okay? Okay, so the infinite extents of time and space those are infinite extensive magnitudes. Um but you can't have an infinite non-extensive magnitude.

¶65This is my theory which I explained in my book um approaching infinity which everybody should now buy. Um okay and by the way uh there's a theory behind this. There's a whole book about this. It would be difficult for me to explain this in a few minutes. Okay.

¶66But the basic explanation is um to have an infinite non-extentive magnitude requires there to be infinite numbers. Requires you to say that there is a quantity that is larger than all of the finite quantities or larger than all the real numbers. Something like that. And I claim to say there are infinitely many of things does not require you to say that. To have a set of infinite cardality just means that the set contains arbitrarily large subsets.

¶67So for any natural number n, it contains a subset with at least n members. All right? And to have uh an infinite extensive magnitude just requires having parts that have arbitrarily large extent. So the infinitude of space consists in the fact that there are for any real number r there exists a region of space with at least rers of volume or something like that. And I claim you cannot give this kind of explanation for non-extensive magnitudes.

¶68Uh and so non-extensive magnitudes are impossible. In order to explain an infinite non-extensive magnitude, you have to posit the number that's larger than all the other numbers. Okay. What do I say about the problem of evil? So, um, as you know, there's this problem.

¶69It seems like a perfect being would create a maximally good world. Uh, this doesn't seem to be a maximally good world. Okay. So, what's what's going on? Uh, you might also think, you know, even an extremely good being, you might think extremely good and powerful.

¶70Maybe if it it was all powerful and extremely good, doesn't even have to be perfect. You would think that the world would be better than this. Okay. Uh it's difficult for enthusiasts of the fine-tuning argument or arguments from design to resist the first premise because they are um their argument requires thinking that they can predict something about what kind of world God would create, right? Like, oh, there's life.

¶71it's reasonable that um that the designer would want there to be life because life is good or something like that. And it seems like that's very parallel to the reasoning that the creator wouldn't want there to be an enormous amount of suffering because suffering is bad. Like if you think that you can predict that the creator would value life, you should also be able to predict things like the creator would disvalue suffering and you know a lot of the bad stuff that we see in the world. One solution to this initial puzzle is well maybe there's a finite creator. Maybe the creator is not all powerful um as I claim and is unable to create a maximally good world.

¶72Maybe it's really hard to create a universe like you know there are 10^ the 22 stars which is an incomprehensibly large number. It's like 10,000 million million millions of stars which you can't comprehend. Uh if you were presiding over such a world, you might not in fact be doing anything about even the most enormous harms that are occurring on just one planet around one star in the 10,000 million million millions of stars, right? Okay. Um if you're infinitely powerful, then you could like fix everything at once.

¶73But if you could have an enormous incomprehensibly large but still finite amount of power and not be able to fix all of these problems in the 10 the 22 stars. Okay. Uh the other possible solution is the multiverse. The multiverse explains potentially why there is life and consciousness and stuff like that but it wouldn't lead to there not being an enormous amount of suffering. Um the you know basic theory is well there are large number of universes and some of them have life.

¶74Most of them don't. Most of them have nothing interesting going on. Um maybe they're just like clouds of hydrogen gas or just radiation in otherwise empty space. But nobody ever observes those worlds by the nature of the case because there's no life in them. So we observe a world that allows for life because that's the only world in which we which we ever occupy.

¶75Okay. Um that's a viable explanation. Okay. And then I don't know how much time do I have. Wow.

¶76Okay. So, I got this example from Josh's blog post on the subject. Like say you found a blue ball in the in the forest. Uh you would think it needs an explanation. Like why is that thing there?

¶77And then you know and then you can generalize from there. Well, like say you see a universe, right? Maybe the universe needs explanation. You wonder why that exists? And maybe it could be explained by there being a necessary being like God.

¶78A being who has to exist like God. Um I think that this is an important disalogy. So the blue ball I think is um the existence of the blue ball that's an arrangement of some underlying stuff and that stuff could have been arranged in different ways. Uh any particular arrangement of the underlying material is temporary and destructible and uh we just know that from ob observation of objects and so um it's reasonable to wonder how that arrangement came about. By the way, it's a very specific and improbable arrangement.

¶79Most arrangements don't look like some regular shape that we have a name for. But it's not clear that the existence of the underlying stuff needs explanation. When you ask about the explanation of the universe, just the universe as a whole is not a particular arrangement of the underlying stuff. When you say why is why is there something why is there anything at all? You're not asking why is this stuff arranged in this particular way, right?

¶80you're asking like why the stuff exists at all. And actually, I don't think that we have any any cases of somebody explaining the existence of the underlying stuff unless you accept God as an explanation, right? But that's controversial. Um, so you know, maybe just the underlying stuff just exists always. Okay.

¶81Uh, also I'm not sure that positing a necessary being is actually a possible satisfactory explanation. Imagine that somebody said, "Yeah, my explanation of the blue ball is maybe the blue ball exists necessarily." Or suppose somebody asks, "Why is the sky blue?" And you say, "My explanation is the sky is necessarily blue." And that's not an explanation. You're like, "Well, why is it necessarily blue?" Again, also it doesn't seem like it could be that could be necessary. Okay. Uh that's all I have.

¶82Maybe there's a multiverse. Maybe there's a creator. But it probably isn't an infinite perfect creator. Excellent. Okay.

¶83Uh Okay, cool. We're back. Great. Super super interesting presentations. Um I will mostly be hands off, but I I think I'd like to begin first by looking at Josh's case specifically.

¶84And so my my opening question, and then Mike, you can take it from there as he responds, is it seemed to me that there were kind of two halves, two relatively independent halves to the case you sketch, Josh. On the one hand, you have this kind of cumulative case. God best explains or predicts a wide range of phenomena that's mostly like abductive and inference to the best explanation. But then on the other hand, you presented what looked like an independent consideration from that this like deductive argument from arbitrary limits. So am I right in thinking of that?

¶85And then how do these two things relate? And then Mike, you can go off of that. >> Yeah, thank you. As far as framing the arguments, you could think of the first as probabilistic and the second as deductive. However, you could also think of the argument from arbitrary limits as just an additional leg to explain dependent things.

¶86So, what's the deepest fundamental explanation of of dependent things? And then if we arrive at some foundational stuff, then the the next question is well, what's what's the nature of that foundational stuff? And then I I use the analysis of um explaining and removing arbitrary limits as far as I can. So, so you, so again you could think of them as two different arguments or you could put them under this large umbrella argument of explain the most with the least or the you know the best theory where one of the things to be explained is dependent reality. >> Yeah.

¶87[snorts] Um, I guess I wanted to comment on the arbitrary limits. Matthew Adeline said this to me too once in a conversation and I thought I don't see how you're avoiding arbitrariness like so suppose that the you know the structure of the numbers was like that picture with the there's the infinite line then there's a point at the end. So okay and you say well I don't want to be on the line because then the point that I'm at on the line is arbitrary. So, I'm gonna say, you know, the thing is at the point at the end, but why isn't that equally arbitrary? Like, right, because there are all these points that it could be at.

¶88It could be if if we're talking about a point on a line. Um, but if instead we're getting off the line entirely. So, maybe every point on the line, even infinite points, I mean, one thing I wrote down in my notes is I think we have a lot of overlap in our agreement, Mike. Like so one of them is I do agree that there aren't these infinite uh quantities. Um so um I think that first there's a problem if thinking that we're at the infinite point on the line for reasons that you give.

¶89Um and then second I also agree that that would still invite a kind of arbitrariness question. You know why that point? So to avoid the arbitrariness in a deep way what I want is to get off the line entirely. And a more modest way of putting this is let's explain things as far as we can. And I mean this is where I get that sense of clarity where it's like if somebody says that this bit of reality has no explanation, right?

¶90But then they say this bit of reality here does have an explanation. Well, I want some motivation for that. I want some reason to make an exception here. And so unless I have some independent reason to make that exception, it seems reasonable to sort of explain the limits as far as you can. And that's where it seems to me that a supreme foundation would provide that.

¶91It would be a relevantly different kind of thing. It's not a quantitative infinite. Um it's not it's not an intensity of infinity that goes out to infin, you know, at at that degree of quantity. So that's where I think I would agree with your analysis of infinity there. It's a different kind of infinity.

¶92Um yeah. So I'm I'm actually curious what you think, Mike, about about this way of framing the explanations in terms of we have all these things that exist in reality and then we have um maybe a multiverse which I think pushes the question back. It doesn't actually compete with theism because you can have a multiverse theism. You have the unknown area which is always great to keep exploring. And then under theism we have finite versus infinite theisms.

¶93So in a way I'm weakening my position by going in for the infinite theism. But I mean I could say my minimal view is that there's some kind of theism whether finite or infinite. And then you I wonder if if that would remove some of your own skepticism if if we just open up theism to include the finite and the infinite. You have independent reason to doubt certain versions of the infinite. But we can explore that.

¶94>> Yeah. I mean um um so it's a semantic question whether God could be a limited being and uh you know like mo most traditions that believed in some kind of god or gods because like you know most most religious traditions were polytheistic um they did not have infinite or unlimited gods. So you know Zeus is not an infinite perfect being but he's still counted as a god. So, it's okay with me if you want to say that it still counts as God even if it's limited. >> Um, I I don't know.

¶95I don't I don't really want to argue about the use of that word, but I would just say like most theists in the Western tradition would not be happy with that. So, >> honestly, the reason why I'm not happy with it is just because of the uh primarily because of that arbitrariness. It just seems like if fundamental reality has the powers of Zeus um yeah you know it can make certain numbers of things but not other numbers of things that just to my mind just cries for deeper explanation. So um my yeah my more modest proposal is if there's a reason to add limits and boundaries to the fundamental reality then let reason you know lead us there but my default initial view is the maximality view. >> Yeah.

¶96Yeah. So, um yeah, I don't see like like again I don't see how we're avoiding arbitrariness because you know like there there's a series of possibilities and then you say oh well maybe it's the maximum possibility. Okay, there's a debate about whether that's a possibility uh at all, but if it is a possibility, like why why don't I say, well, that's equally arbitrary as any of the finite possibilities, right? I think the issue for me is is it a relevantly different way of being? So, like it seems to me that the difference in one size and one color is like clearly not a relevantly different way of being, but a difference with respect to being maximal seems like that would be a relevantly different way of being to me.

¶97I mean the classical view would be you know the greatest conceivable being would be so great that it would have its greatness across all possible worlds and it wouldn't owe its greatness to anything else. In other words, it wouldn't depend on anything else precisely because of its magnitude of of greatness. Like that is a differencem quality. It it's a it sets it apart among among the things. And I think what I would be really curious to explore with you, Mike, is these concepts of infinity because I was happy by your presentation of of infinity.

¶98I I I loved your arguments against the certain kind of infinity. And then I found myself loving your arguments in defense of the uh the extensional magnitude. And I was thinking, yeah, that that's what I want. That's that's what I think the fundamental stuff of existence is. Um and I use that lang that term fundamental stuff because I I appreciate your point about the arrangements.

¶99Actually in my view I leave open the relationship between the foundational reality and then the portions that it's a foundation of whether um the foundational reality creates those portions from nothing or whether it sort of constitutes those portions. I' I've been in my work um developing the hypothesis that there's a way in which it actually does constitute the portions of reality. But I think we can sort of leave that open and then consider okay well could Mike's own could your own view of infinity be applied to my own concept of a of a supreme foundation and that's where I'm not clear that it couldn't it um you can help me think this through because um in my email to you I suggested that if there's already a kind of infinity like an infinite ability of the universe to last right the universe will last forever and ever and ever it has that infinite ability ility to last. That's a that's an ability that's exceeds every finite ability to last, but it's not an infinite intensity. It's not a quantity.

¶100You can analyze this perhaps in terms of an inexhaustible potential to keep going, right? Um, and then I want to say, okay, that's great. I mean, that that is what I mean when I say that foundational reality has inexhaustible uh power and ability. But so I mean the um you might say you're referring to the infinite duration of the universe or has has an infinite future duration and that's an extensive magnitude. >> Mhm.

¶101[clears throat] >> And so we can explain this without positing the number larger than all the other numbers by just saying well yeah you know like for any for every for every number r um there will be a time r years in the future which there will be the universe. uh there's never going to be a time at which it has lasted well it has now lasted an infinite amount if the past is infinite but starting from here we will never get to infinity so in some sense we will never actualize the infinite >> right but even now it has that ability right right now it's true of reality now >> that it has the ability to last forever and whatever that ability is it's real and it's not >> yeah you might say oh no I'm not talking about the actual uh infinite duration I'm talking about the potential the the ability to last. Oh yeah. So that's a merely potential infinity which is okay with you know with ariselians with the aristoilian view of the infinite. Um you just can't have an infinite actualized infinity according to Aristotle.

¶102So um and then you know you might think oh okay so then we can explain God's omnipotence in a similar way. It's it's a purely potential infinity. It's just an ability to do an unlimited range of things. Uh-huh. >> And then my claim which you might find less persuasive is that well um causal powers require a categorical basis.

¶103So there has to be some non-dispositional non-causal property >> that is the basis for somebody's abilities or powers to do things. >> I agree with that. >> And then you know my claim is like well then that is going to have to be an infinite property in order for the ability to be infinite. So you have examples like um oh I have the ability to flip the switch on the lamp. like there's there's the lamp that I want to flip infinitely many times and to to be able to flip it I need to have a certain amount of energy um which will be reflected in you know what whatever like the configuration of the chemicals in my muscles or something like that >> and okay so there will be some like quantifiable nondispositional physical properties that are the ground for my ability >> and it's just going to turn out that in order for that ability to be infinite then I have to have an infinite amount of one of these categorical properties so like I'll have an an infinite amount of whatever it is ATP in my muscles, right?

¶104>> Yeah. >> In order to be able to Yeah. >> Okay. And the thought So, now I don't know what the categorical properties of God are that ground his powers, but um I think that there would have to be something else that was infinite in order for him to have infinite power. >> That makes sense to me.

¶105I I'm on board with that. I think I have this excited feeling because I think we're about to clarify something and I'm so curious what you think. So think about the ability to last forever and let's say that that ability is grounded in something else. Maybe it's nature. Well, here's one idea which you'll be skeptical of this.

¶106Um fundamental reality has a necessary existence. Um so it has a nature that implies that it spans all possible worlds. Well then that could ground its ability to last forever. But maybe you don't need that. Maybe you just need that it has the property of being eternal or something.

¶107I'm not sure exactly how you want to do this, but there's some sense in which on your view as I understand it, the universe does have this ability to last forever and you can analyze it um in terms of you know this as you say some something else that grounds that ability that makes sense of it >> and I think that that's what I want to say about reality. I mean I agree with that. It has this ability to last forever, has ability to produce particles, has ability to produce people. Um, it has ability, you know, to keep going. And, uh, I think we we agree on that.

¶108And if you say, well, that's grounded in some nature. Well, great. I mean, what is that nature, Mike? I mean, on your on your view, what how how would you describe >> um the nature that grounds the ability to last forever? >> Well, yeah, the ability to last is a weird ability.

¶109So it's not an ability to do anything in particular. It's just the fact that it won't disappear for no reason. >> Mhm. >> So my thought is maybe you don't need any anything to ground that, right? Like uh it's sort of like if you think the default state is that things disappear, that things stop existing, then you need to explain why this won't what's going to keep it in existence.

¶110But maybe the default state is that you know stuff continues um unless there's something to destroy it. >> Yeah. >> So it's just the absence of anything that would destroy the stuff. That seems right. I mean then why is that the the default state?

¶111I mean this is my view of fundamental reality. Fundamental reality is the default state. Um and I mean my thought is that if it has a supreme nature that nature predicts and grounds all of these qualities. And I guess what maybe is unclear, maybe you can help me think this through, is why would the qualities that are predicted from this sort of nature of a of a supreme quality um have to have an infinity that is quantitative or an infinite intensity rather than that extensional kind. Like for example, I was thinking that you could divide God's awareness of all into parts and then they add up to the whole or God's >> um portions of of power into parts and they add up to the whole just like you could divide space and time into parts add up to the whole.

¶112I I'm I'm genuinely curious about that. I mean, I'm not trying to >> say there's a problem with your view here. I just really curious what you think about that because it seems like it might Yeah. Just just curious what you say. Well, um I mean I' I've heard from theists that God is supposed to not have parts, that God is a simple being, in which case it would be hard to understand how how his attributes could be extensive magnitudes.

¶113Um >> yeah, that >> Oh, okay. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

¶114No, this So, of course, there's different views of of the nature of of God, right? um my own view and I'm sort of starting with just sort of be honest and kind of putting my cards on the table. I'm starting with a real question about what could fundamental reality be like really like whether you call it God or not like what is it? If it happens that on my analysis it turns out that it has a lot of the classical theistic attributes um and that that's interesting but my goal isn't to like start with some concept of God from tradition and then defend it. really is the method of seeing okay what could this be and so um one idea that I have here is that you can distinguish between the state of the being and the being itself um so like for example right now I have a state of awareness and then there's me that has that state of awareness now my state of awareness seems to have like parts it includes pixels and hands and sounds um and my thought is that well what if fundamental reality has a kind of state of awareness of all things and you can divide that state of awareness into parts in the same way without dividing the being into parts and yeah what do you think about that model?

¶115Oh >> okay good. Yeah. Um well yeah I was thinking so you might think about um God's omniscience um so if the being knows everything then you might think oh um but yeah is is that a first of all is that a quantity are there quantities of knowledge? Well, on my view it's not >> okay. >> It's more of a category.

¶116It's a mode of being. Yeah. >> Oh. Um, so you know like there's well there's this information theory like they quantify information like the information that's stored on your computer is is literally quantifying like you could have 50 megaby 50 megabytes or something like that. Um and okay so there is a way of measuring it and what is the quantity of information in God's mind?

¶117Oh, it's infinity because the universe is infinitely complex. By the way, it's not um it's not by counting the number of propositions, right? Because if you have a set of propositions like and you take the logical closure of the you know all the entailments of it, you can list an infinite number of entailments. Okay, it's not the number of propositions, but uh it has to do with the number of um the range of alternatives that are um that were possible and then when you get the information, how many alternatives are left? Okay.

¶118Anyway, so but nevertheless, I think um it would be uncontroversial that God would have an infinite amount of information. And you might think, oh, okay, but maybe it's maybe that's just an extent of magnitude and information in in the way that it's measured uh is additive. Like you have two a 2 megabyte file here and a 2 megabyte file here and you store both of them, you used four megabytes. Okay, additive. Uh but my thought is um all of this information um the theist would probably want to say that all that information is available to God's use simultaneously and so I think that prevents you from saying that it's just um you're just adding up separate pieces of information.

¶119Okay. So like God would be able to um presumably would be able to answer some questions that require drawing on the entire infinite amount of information. Mhm. Mhm. >> So you have something like uh God knows the the complete decimal expansion of pi.

¶120>> Mhm. >> Um and then like I suppose you can formulate questions that require knowing the complete decimal expansion in order to in order to answer them. >> Yeah. >> Is there ever a series of 1,00 sixes in a row in the decimal expansion? >> Um um is there okay well there's probably a better example than that but um okay.

¶121Okay. So then I think that requires you know that means there's something like infinite information density and not just like a total amount of information but it's like integrated um in a single point in a certain sense but it's not a spatial point it's like a single mental point. You see what I mean? >> Yeah. Absolutely.

¶122Yeah. So this is very interesting to me. So um I I'm sort of tempted to defend not just my own view but to kind of keep options open. Um but for sake of focus here let me just make a distinction between the infinity in the reality to be known versus the infinity in the being that's knowing it. So um you know one option is that there is no infinity in the reality to be known at least not this quantitative infinity and this is an option that you and I are in the same boat on.

¶123Um, this is the dialectical space I wanted to point to because I mean others might not be convinced by these arguments. They have different ways of responding to the paradoxes. So for them, they're not going to be worried about the awareness of infinite realities because they don't have a problem with infinite realities of this kind. Well, now you and I do have a problem with infinite realities of this kind. Like so we don't think there are these infinite uhly tall trees or infinitely you know the the number that the decimal numbers aren't actually expanded out to all that infinite level even in Plato's heaven it's not there um so you and I agree with that right so then the question is well is there a mind that sort of is aware of all that is and u well there's no objection to the existence of a mind that's aware of all that is um if we agree that u all that is is not infinite in in that way.

¶124>> Um, uh, okay. So, we might not agree. So, actually, there could be an infinitely tall tree because height is an extensive magnitude. So, >> well, like you mean like there's a top of a tree >> and it's No, it wouldn't have a top. >> Doesn't have a top.

¶125Just go on forever. >> Yeah. Okay. I wasn't thinking of that as a tree. Okay.

¶126No, that's just terminology. Right. Right. Right. >> But, um, there is an infinite decimal expansion of pi, right?

¶127like it's an irrational number, right? It it never terminates. So I believe that and uh you know pi is a real number like you know like the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of the circle. Yeah. >> Yeah.

¶128This might not be appropriate as a moderator and I'll I'll put Josh in a gotcha moment too but it occurred to me that like if you're a platonist which I believe you are Mike irrational numbers exist as abstract objects. So pi like exists despite its infinite extension. So I wonder if like the abstract object pi can exist as an abstraction all you know right there despite the fact that it is infinitely extended in this way. Um then why can't God know the the infinite extension of pi in a way that's not invalidated by your argument? I mean, if the very existence of the abstract object pi can can withstand your argument, why can't like a intuitive grasp of pi also do it?

¶129>> There you go. Okay, I'll step back. >> Well, this was my question as well. So, thank you. >> Oh, I should have just been quiet.

¶130>> Yeah. Yeah. So, well, like first, you know, oh, okay, why can pi exist? You know, in some sense, it's it has some aspect of infinity to it, but um in what way is it infinite? So it's not an infinitely large number, right?

¶131It's between three and four. So it's not infinite in that way. What way is it infinite? Well, there's an infinite um infinitely long decimal expansion, but that isn't really like an attribute of the number itself. That's an attribute of the way that we would represent it in our in our system of representation.

¶132Um and and that by the way that could be described in terms of an infinite cardality like the set of digits of pi, right? There's like an infinite number of digits. So infinite cardalities are allowed in my view. Um and then okay, but then why would this be a problem for somebody to know it? Well, the person who knows it would have an infinite amount of information if if the person knows the decimal expansion.

¶133Um, conceivably you might say, well, maybe God knows the value of pi in a way that does not involve the method of representation that we have. So, it doesn't involve knowing the decimal expansion. It just like directly grasps this quantity. The quantity like the decimal expansion isn't inherent in the quantity. That's just inherent in our way of representing it.

¶134So, God represents it directly without having a a system of numerals. Uh, so that's possible. But, but also I think the theist would want to say yes, but he can produce the decimal expansion. and he can't answer questions about the decimal expansion, right? So, I think that requires him having the infinite amount of information in his mind.

¶135Well, yeah, I think it's helpful to make a distinction here between the ability to access it and the actual access. Um, so some the theists do have an analysis of knowledge in terms of the ability to access. Uh, so I I think we can sort of leave that open in terms of my model. As I said, I'm understanding a supreme nature as a maximal consistent set of of greatm qualities. So, in a way, there's sort of a kind of like a dialectal game where okay, well, let's just follow your view and see what it implies about the nature of fundamental reality.

¶136Does it imply that fundamental reality doesn't have a supreme nature? Well, I'm not saying that it implies that. I'm seeing that it would imply some constraints on how you analyze that nature. Um, on the other hand, I I want to just kind of put my neck out here and say I myself have been convinced by some of these puzzles of infinity that um that these infinite scenarios can't be produced by any possible power. So in a way I I agree with you here Mike that if there were a kind of power that could create uh an infinite set of points then it could rearrange them into um I' I've written about the grim reaper paradox of rearranging things to produce these impossible states and it does seem to me that there is a deep puzzle there.

¶137So in my view there is no possible power um that can do that. And this leads me to think that um whatever it is that's in fundamental reality. It has whatever power allows it to be aware of whatever there is. This is why I'm saying like if you think that there are certain kinds of infinity that exist in the abstract realm then my thought is that well those infinities exist. Now you're saying there's an extra problem for an awareness of that infinity.

¶138I think that's the part that's the least clear to me. Um like why couldn't there be just an awareness of let's say the conceptual foundations that encode that infinite. Um now if you say well it's not just that it's that God would be able to actually just create that you know God could create that infinite uh number with all the digits and write them in the sand. Well, I mean, I already got persuaded that that's impossible. So, so I don't think there is that kind of power.

¶139>> I don't think that kind of power is required by a supreme nature. But for those who, by those who think that there is that kind of power, well, then they're not going to have they are already going to have independent reasons >> to respond to those puzzles of infinity. It's like it seems like it's the puzzles of infinity that are doing the work. Like either there can be that kind of infinity or there can't be. It's not the kind of knowledge of them that seems to be an additional problem.

¶140>> Oh, okay. So, this is in the neighborhood of um you know like the a traditional puzzle for omnipotence like can God create a stone so heavy he can't lift it and then uh a traditional and reasonable response is to define omnipotence as the ability to do anything that's logically possible and then you say well it's not logically possible for there to be a stone that God can't lift. So >> God is not able to make such a stone and it's not a limitation on his power to be unable to do the logically impossible thing. Okay. And then you say so you know like um God only has to have the maximum metaphysically possible amount of power not a metaphysically impossible amount of power.

¶141Then humor says oh these paradoxes of the infinite are impossible scenarios. Uh and then and then humor is saying oh well then God can't exist because God would be able to create them. But no, God wouldn't be able to create them because they're metaphysically impossible. Okay, but what I want to say is yeah, the problem is um God can't have the maximum possible amount of power because there is no maximum possible amount, right? This is analogous to like the spaceship that travels with the maximum velocity.

¶142There's no maximum velocity, right? If there were infinite velocity, that would be the maximum. But there's no there's no infinite number. So there is no maximum. There's just like possibilities that go on up forever.

¶143And okay, so like God creates this lamp and then he tries to flip it an infinite number of times and um at some point he's unable to flip it again. Okay. Well, then there's a metaphysical possibility of another god who would have been a little bit more powerful and would have been able to flip it one more time. Right. And then so um right there there just no there's no limit, right?

¶144You see what I mean? >> Yeah. Well, and I agree that there's no limit in the range of quantities of power. That's why my view is that God's power is not a quantity, it's a it's a kind or category. Um I I mean this is sort of how I think about dividing up space.

¶145It's like yeah, God could always create one more division. Um but he can't create the paradoxes of infinity because that would require a a power that is not even possible. Um so then what kind of power does that god have? Well, in a sense, I want to say it's like whatever power the fundamental stuff of existence would have to have in order to continue to be able to last forever, in order to be able to lack arbitrary limits and boundaries that call for deeper explanation. And I mean, I almost wonder if Mike, we can make progress here by even just kind of leaving open what sort of limits are embedded in fundamental reality.

¶146I mean like I like to explain limits as far as I can but I mean if you have independent reason to think that there are certain limits built in okay well let's go from here I mean is fundamental reality more likely to have some kind of mind or consciousness um in order to explain some of those things we talked about including a life suitable universe than to be fundamentally mindless because I mean if at the end of the day and your own view there is there are some limits oh this is not a maximal being in every respect, but you still think that it would more likely have some kind of intelligence. Um, I'm still happy to call that a kind of broad or minimal form of theism and it seems useful to sort of explore that. I'm curious what you think about >> Yeah, I mean like you know like clearly the atheists would think that intelligent design is in the same with a with a limited grader is in the same neighborhood as theism. They they would clearly not be happy with that. Right?

¶147So whether you want to count the limited greater as as an example of theism, I I don't know. Yeah, that would be fine. >> But limited, I mean there's a difference between limited as in like Zeus, you know, versus limited as in there's this foundational reality. Um it has the power to, you know, last forever. It's eternal.

¶148Um you know, it produc it is in some sense conscious um in a fundamental way. And maybe it has certain constraints derived by logic itself. um you know some of these constraints uh with respect to paradoxes of infinity and we could explore what those constraints are and we might disagree about what those constraints are and what they imply but uh you know let's say we leave that open then we just ask well does it have awareness does it have the power >> thinking yeah yeah uh I I suppose there is a there is a fundamental reality right it's not like an infinite series of stuff going down forever um and uh and I think it's eternal I guess I guess it's eternal, right? And by the way, I think the past goes back forever. So it always existed and will always exist.

¶149>> But um is the fundamental reality conscious? I don't know. But I'm also a mindbody dualist. So like, you know, I think I think your soul exists and always existed. >> Yeah.

¶150>> So before you were born, you were a disembodied soul >> and will always exist. >> Okay. But then but that doesn't mean that there's a single consciousness. That's the fundamental reality. Also, is it necessary?

¶151No. Like I think um you know there's contingency. There's there's this possible world and there were other possible worlds. And why are we in this possible world? Well, there couldn't be any answer to that.

¶152There's just like multiple different possibilities that could have been instantiated. And you can't you can't explain like the total possible world as opposed to another total possible world, right? Because and if you were to try to do that then you would be implicitly saying that it's not contingent that there's really only one possible world right you know right there like there's this argument that if you think that every contingent fact has an explanation you must think that actually nothing's contingent right because the contingent facts would have to be explained by necessary truths but if they're explained by a necessary truth then that makes them necessary so everything's necessary but I don't think everything is necessary some stuff just happens to be the way that it is Yeah. >> Right. It's like well this may not be obvious like in ordinary life you explain contingent things but you explain them by other contingent things right but the the move made by the you know proponents of the cosmological argument like Samuel Clark is oh but what if you take the entire series of contingent things okay well maybe that doesn't have an explanation right each particular thing in the series has an explanation but the whole series doesn't have an explanation >> right so for I mean my my view is that the best explanation of contingent things will be in terms of something non-contingent but my my case was kind of a minimal case so I focus on dependent things to arrive at a foundational reality and of course as you know theists disagree about the modal status of that foundational reality there are different concepts of necessity I go in for the strongest concept seems like that actually fits well with its having a supreme nature so I mean one thing that I like about your your view Mike is that you already identify in fundamental reality several attributes that I think are independently predicted by supreme nature.

¶153So it's got eternal existence. Um you know it will last forever. It has at least some power. Um you know and then I see you know I mean you say you don't know if it's conscious. Well >> it seems like if it has it supreme nature that will predict that it's conscious which will raise the probability of a fine-tuned uh universe for life.

¶154And since I think you like the fine-tuning as as at least some kind of evidence of some kind of mind behind the universe, I wonder if this way of thinking of the supreme foundation could amplify your own your own view in a way because it independently predicts that fundamental reality would have a kind of arrow of intention to like and prefer a universe with life in it. So add a little bit of weight to your own to your own view by filling out the nature of found the foundation. >> So I think this is a good place for me to ask a question as it relates to your case, Josh, just to make sure we cover it because I think it's interesting. Um, if we step back from the problem of arbitrary limits and the problem of infinities, we're we're naturally tending in this direction. But Mike, I I wanted to get a comment from you um on what you thought the merits of this kind of broader inference to the best explanation to theism might be.

¶155So, here is where Josh compares two hypotheses. this like naturalistic I think he said mindless [clears throat] explosion hypothesis compared to what a supreme reality hypothesis might predict about what we would likely observe and his claim is that you know under this general theistic explanation that leads us to expect a universe with order with fine-tuning with mathematical structure with consciousness and morality that is a case >> moral sense >> right our our sense of morality and that's a case you could give independently of these other things we've been talking about so I just wonder if you'd grant that premise that theism is more explanatory than this kind of specific version of atheism and what your thoughts were there. >> Yeah. Um you know like there was a um a traditional version of the big bang theory where the big bang was the beginning of time. This is like what Stephen Hawkings said in a brief history of time which I think this used to be the orthodox view that uh the view was the first thing that ever happened was that there was a huge amount of uh mass energy concentrated in a tiny region moving outwards for no reason.

¶156It was just like that and there's no there could be no explanation because that's the first thing that ever happened and that was the beginning of time. So nothing happened before. Okay. Um I think that that's um extremely implausible, right? And uh and my way of um my way of illustrating this is you know imagine an alternative theory which is a better theory.

¶157Maybe the universe began in the year 1950 and it just was in the state that it was in in 1950. It was just like that for no reason and there was and there was no time before that so there was no explanation. That is a more likely theory than the traditional big bang. And the way I know that it's more likely is um the entropy in 1950 was higher than the entropy of the universe at in 14 billion BC at the time the big bang is supposed to have happened. And the fact that the entropy is higher means that it's an intrinsically more probable state.

¶158Right? Okay. So if if you were going to start out in some state for no reason, it's more likely that you would start out in the 1950s state. So okay. Anyway, so I I don't think that it it was just like that for no reason.

¶159By the way, it's not that I think um it's not that I think everything has to have an explanation. It's just that the state the universe was in at the big bang is an extremely improbable state. Like according to Roger Penrose, the probability of that being the state, if you picked a state randomly, is 1 / 10^ the 10^ the 124 power. Okay. So like that's why I think that that's implausible, right?

¶160As it was just like that for no reason. Okay. So um look there there are three maybe there are three big mysteries about the universe as we observe it. The first is the fact that we're not in thermal equilibrium or in other words the fact that there's a lot of order in the universe. the fact that we have low entropy because the the overwhelming majority of possible configurations of the universe have um higher entropy, right?

¶161Basically our thermal equilibrium. Okay. Second mystery is that there's life and the third mystery is that there's consciousness. Okay. And um the hypothesis of an intelligent designer increases the probability of all of those things.

¶162And I'm not saying I'm not saying that it renders it probability one. I'm not saying it deductively entails that. But I'm just saying it makes it more likely. So c >> can I can I just add add something that amplifies what you're saying? >> There's also the very specific forms of consciousness of of moral experience as well.

¶163I mean that there's >> there's many other types of mysteries within these mysteries. Um and so what you're pointing out is that there's a way of raising the probability with some kind of intelligence hypothesis. I just wanted to add that not objective. >> Yeah. Yeah.

¶164>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Now, um then the question is, well, does it raise the probability enough to outright believe it? And um I think not, or at least I don't outright believe it at this point.

¶165Um why? Well, like there is the alternative possibility of the multiverse and there's also always the alternative possibility of something that I haven't thought of yet. Now, okay, now you might think like that last um alternative is kind of unfair because how do you ever eliminate that? And so, how does any theory ever get established if you could always say maybe it's something we haven't thought of yet? Um but usually in the history of science the evidence that you have is um it's more closely tailored to the theory.

¶166Okay. So like the example I like to give is when Newton argued for the theory of gravity and and the issue was okay there's something that makes objects fall towards the ground. It's not that people didn't know that objects fall when you drop them but also the moon is going around the earth and the earth is going around the sun. Okay. And the theory was that it's the same force that's keeping these things in their orbits that and is also making things fall to the ground.

¶167And the argument for that is well using Newton's laws of motion you could calculate the force that's required to keep the moon in its orbit around the earth and you you get a number right because they knew the distance and they knew the speed of the orbit. So you could get a number for the force that's required on the on the moon. Okay? And then you could you can measure the force of gravity when you drop things towards um you know near the surface of the earth. And then you could say well if this force decreases with a square of the distance um how much force would it have at the distance that the moon is at?

¶168And that number is the same as the number that's required to keep the moon in its orbit. So that's a very compelling argument that it is the same force that's keeping the moon in its orbit. Okay. So like arguments in the history of science are kind of like that. that you have some really specific quantitative prediction of the theory and then it gets verified.

¶169Okay. Okay. And so like I'm I'm unsatisfied with these sort of vague hypotheses that we have like intelligent design or even multiverse because they don't have such sharp um precise predictions and that makes it plausible that there could be multiple other theories we haven't thought of that would also like about equally vaguely imply the same predictions. >> Yeah. I want to think more with you about that multiverse.

¶170I mean, let's say that I have some drawings that I discover on a piece of paper and then I have this hypothesis that my kids were here. They look like the kind of drawings that my kids might produce. Now, I don't have the kind of specificity. I mean, I have multiple kids and they have varying abilities and I can hardly even track what their abilities are. Let's say I've never seen drawings before from them or nothing like these, right?

¶171So I don't have that specificity, but what I do have is sort of an extreme pro improbability of the alternative. Um that there was just sort of random motions that produced those things. And what what I'm thinking, Mike, that you're thinking is that the multiverse together with the idea that there's something else you haven't thought of, which I appreciate. um the the multiverse doesn't strike you as as as um generating an extreme improbability of their emerging conscious life forms that can have these kind of uh conversations and I guess that's where I would want to sort of press on that and I mean even seeing some of your own writings on this um it it it seems like you know a multiverse by itself does not compete with a theistic hypothesis right because um a classical view is that God produces many universes. But what we have here is a mindless first multiverse.

¶172So there's no intelligence to guide or direct the multiverse. And then the question is, well, why would any universe have any chance of having life in it? Wait, right. We need a specific type of multiverse in order to get um the interesting complexity. If I see something strange and perplexing, let's say that there's some face on the moon or something and we get our cameras in and it's not, you know, it really is a face like looks like a face and then somebody says, well, you know, there's either design, chance, or multiverse.

¶173It's like, well, doesn't seem like the multiverse is going to raise the probability that we find um that kind of complexity there. And uh >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. I wonder wonder what you wanted to hear about that.

¶174Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean this um well this reminds me of one of the objections to the multiverse theory known as the this universe objection. Yeah. >> Right.

¶175Which is um okay. So >> which I'm not relying on that but I did kind of throw that one in there too. Yeah. >> Okay. Yeah.

¶176You know for the audience if they don't know what I'm talking about um you know let's say I'm flipping a coin. I flip the coin. It comes up heads five times in a row. And I go oh that was improbable. Maybe there's some explanation of this.

¶177And then I say, "Oh, maybe there are just a lot of coins being flipped and so it's likely that one of them would come up heads five times in a row." Okay. And so, do I now have evidence for thinking that there are more coins being flipped? The answer is no. Like not if that was true, then no matter what result I got, I would have evidence that there are other coins, right? Because the probability of that result occurring increases, you know, the more coins are.

¶178Okay? Okay. And the reason why I don't have evidence for the other coins is well what I observed was that this coin came up heads five times in a row and the existence of other coins doesn't increase the probability that this coin comes up. Okay. And then the this universe objection to the multiverse theory is well the existence of other universes doesn't increase the probability that this universe has life in it.

¶179Uh and your evidence is that this universe has life in it not that just some universe or other has life in it. Okay. But then um so I used to think when I first thought of this I thought that that was a compelling objection to the multiverse totally fails. Um but then later I thought no actually um my evidence isn't that this universe has life in it. My evidence is something about myself about my own experience.

¶180So my evidence is that I'm having such and such experiences. By the way, if you are a direct realist in the theory of perception, you can phrase that. You can still phrase it in um subject specific terms like my evidence is that I'm seeing a table or something. Okay? But it wouldn't be I'm seeing this table.

¶181It's there would be a qualitative description of you know what I'm what I'm observing. Okay? Uh and the probability of that increases if there's a multiverse. Uh that is assuming that I I could have been in another universe. If there are multiple universes that this universe hadn't allowed for life, it would have been possible for me to have been been in another universe um and have had experience there.

¶182So, it does increase the probability. Okay. Um now, I don't know if I answered your question. Oh, okay. I said that because of your example of the moon having >> Yeah.

¶183Moon, the moon slips into a version of the this universe objection, which you have a response to. And kind of in my recent thinking, the best defense of the this universe objection ends up translating into um just that you need the sort of the right type of multiverse um for you to get the uh life in any any of the universes or even in the in the sort of enough percentages of the universes um to make it more likely. Enough percentages. What I mean is what what the theory wants to do that's going to help you is it's going to make it more likely that for any particular universe there's life in that universe. That's the the way that I like to put it.

¶184And so if you have a mindless explosion, that's not going to make it as likely that for any particular universe there's life in that universe as a kind of mind first theory. And that doesn't require the this universe objection. >> Oh. Um yeah, I don't I don't think you have to argue that um the theory makes it more likely for any given universe that it would have life in it because um because this thing that your evidence is specific to you, your evidence is like this consciousness is experiencing such and such. And so I I think it would be more likely that this this mind would be having these experiences if there were many universes.

¶185All right. So, so and it's not super improbable primmaasia or just like op priori. It's not opriori very improbable that there would be these different universes that have different values for the physical parameters and if there's a large number of them then it would be likely that some of them would have life in them and then some of them would have conscious life and then you would be one of those conscious beings. See that that's where my understanding is that both from reading physicists on this as well as just thinking about the logical space of possibilities that there are many uh infinitely uh infinite multiverse scenarios like for example um where all the universes um have dots that scatter out and none of them um have life in them. Like for example, you could have a universe where dots scatter out at a certain speed and another one where they scatter out at like twice the speed and another one where they scatter out at three times the speed all the way out to infinity.

¶186>> And so it seems like what you would really need is some kind of simple theory that like all possible universes exist, but then I think that leads to contradictions because there's a possible universe in which um it occupies all of reality. I mean conceptually possible universes and then there's a conceptually possible universe where there's other universes um and then those >> well so the case >> yeah I mean so so just like you know just so the audience knows like there actually are physicists who who believe in the multiverse this is not just a thing that philosophers may have right >> and uh there are real theories uh and all of the universes in the multiverse will have some common structure so they will have quantum mechanics and general relativity I in the theories that people actually have. So it will not be all logical possibilities. Okay. But then um usually people posit that there will be different values for some of the physical parameters like maybe the gravitational constant will differ, right?

¶187They'll still have quantum mechanics and general relativity but different gravitational constants. Okay. And why is that helpful? Well, because like in the fine-tuning argument, it said that for example, if the gravitational constant were a little bit different from what it actually is, then life wouldn't have been possible. And like the universe would have recolapsed after the big bang, long before life ever formed, long before there were even heavy elements.

¶188Uh or it would have expanded too fast for stars to form, in which case there would never be heavy elements. There would only be hydrogen. Okay. Um uh okay. So anyway, that like um yeah, where were we?

¶189>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, so what the thought that I wanted to add here was that having a multiverse u might increase the probability of there getting certain kinds of material complexities. Um merely having an infinite number of universes is not enough. You need the right kind of range.

¶190And so I it seems like there is a still a version of the fine-tuning that gets kicked back step at the level of specifying the multiverse in order to get universes um any universe with with life in it. But more fundamentally, I just wanted to add here that um this is this is why I I think of that supreme foundation theory as a kind of unifying theory that explains many different things or raises the probability of many different things because even if you get complex life forms that does not thereby guarantee that any of those life forms would have conscious awareness and that if you get conscious awareness that doesn't thereby guarantee that the conscious awareness can include mental states that can make a difference to the physical world. kind of mental causation. It also doesn't guarantee a kind of moral awareness. And none of those things are are guaranteed at all.

¶191Um and and merely adding up all those physical universes, I don't think solves those range of of questions about the kinds of consciousness that exist. Um and so this this is where if a choice is between, you know, a multiverse or um some form of theism, even allowing for some kind of limits to be uh I guess added per reason, you know, if if you have reasons to add those limits, some form of of sort of intelligence or or foundational consciousness or, you know, the other option where we don't know what it is yet. Um, I would I would just say that the multiverse seems to me to be more like that explosion that is just really big, maybe infinitely big. Um, it just strikes me as crazy that there would be a conversation like this. Even the the puzzlement of like why we're here seems like that's the kind of thing that shows up in a character developing drama.

¶192uh consciousness expanding uh experience that's very interesting. It just it strikes me as like ridiculously crazy that making the explosion bigger so it includes infinitely many things is going to uh raise the probability across all those different categories and I wonder if you feel some of that yourself. >> Yeah. Good. Yeah.

¶193Yeah. Good point. Um you know I've thought about could there be an empirical test of the multiverse versus intelligent design and I thought okay maybe this is an empirical test. So if um if there's intelligent design we should expect ourselves either way we should expect ourselves to be in roughly speaking the average universe or we should expect ourselves to be an average observer. All right so if there's intelligent design you think well what yeah what kind of life would the intelligent designer want there to be and then we would look around and see if this is the kind of life that there is.

¶194But then also if there's a multiverse, you'd think, okay, so there's going to be there's a large number of universes and there's a large number of living beings, non-concious beings won't observe anything. So there's a large number of conscious beings. What would the average conscious observer be like? And then what am I like? And then you think in some respect it seems like actually I'm a very exceptional conscious observer.

¶195You know, like you were saying, oh well, we have we have awareness of morality and most conscious observers don't. I take it, right? Because they're non-human animals. They're non-intelligent animals. Um, but then on the other hand, you might think, but if there weren't intelligent designer, we'd expect life to be a lot better than it is.

¶196And so, like, if you look at sort of the amount of suffering, it's like the amount of suffering that you would expect in the mindless multiverse world, right? You'd expect just like, you know, random. >> I wouldn't expect any suffering. I wouldn't expect any any states of consciousness, let alone the specific kinds that contribute to plot devices in >> I mean if there's >> I mean if the multiverse is big enough for there to be conscious observers at all because it has to have that then you know what would what would you expect most the conscious observers to see? You'd expect them to see like the suffering basically randomly distributed like good people and bad people get it just you know like >> why why would there be suffering?

¶197I guess why why would there I mean so so there's material complexity and then there's consciousness and then there's um specifically suffering I guess >> I can imagine evolution by natural selection um operating on even conscious beings that are moved by pressures of hot and cold and motions this way and that way uh without agony or suffering. It seems like that's a very specific kind of thing that like in is included in the best movies we ever watch [laughter] >> because I I wouldn't I'm just telling my my own intuition. I wouldn't expect suffering to ever exist just from uh uh from a multi >> I mean I I was thinking that that is used by evolution to motivate us to do the things that are required to maximize reproduction and stuff like that to to avoid the things that are going to destroy your body or destroy your reproductive. Well, there is that sort of harmony between in fact the way it actually works that you know pains provide motivation and then that pain can actually translate into motivation to move your hand. There's a kind of harmony between consciousness and the physical emotions.

¶198But this is one more thing that seems to call for an explanation. And if I just start with the multiverse mindlessly exploding, I don't have any expectation that there would ever be consciousness. But if even if there were, I don't have expectation that it would include um pleasures and pains as motivating forces. I mean, why couldn't the emotions be directed uh mechanically through other processes? Um, I I actually created an evolution simulation years ago to simulate the power of natural selection in a randomized system and it didn't result in anything sort of interesting unless I had some kind of design specification or an arrow of directing kind of the goal or the target.

¶199And so this is where it I really do find myself very skeptical that even if there were complex beings and even if they were conscious, uh there's nothing in that that would lead me to think that there would be suffering, let alone the types of suffering that seems to be part of the the epic narratives that cause people to come to the edges of themselves and expand in various >> Yeah. >> ways. Well, let me interject here before we because we're we're nearing the very end. First, I'll ask uh this would be when we do closing statements or we can have eight or nine more minutes of the open conversation between the two of those. Which would you two prefer?

¶200>> I think I need to go to a closing statement. I would love to hear Mike's thoughts about what I just said and then any any further closing statement would be great. or it was more between like do we do closing statement at all or just have like eight more minutes of discussion. Between those two options, which would you prefer? >> I prefer some kind of two-minute closing statement for me.

¶201>> Okay. >> Yeah. Um well, okay. So um I mean you know like thinking about the problem of evil is sometimes said and so this is not completely address addressing what you wanted but um oh you know the suffering that we have helps us sort of develop our character and also creates interesting stories but also it's not clear to me that that's the main thing that happens like sometimes the suffering just makes people morally worse like corrupts our character and also sometimes it makes shitty stories and and like a lot stuff that goes on is boring. And so like when you try to describe what the purpose might be of the suffering or the bad just generally bad things that happen in the world.

¶202Um it doesn't seem like it's tailored to produce any any goal that you would think of that would be good, right? Because like you could think of many examples where oh that goal is not being achieved at all, right? Like oh it's creating interesting stories. Oh, but what about all the really boring stuff that's going on? And then oh it's helping us develop our character, but what about all the times that it corrupts your character?

¶203makes people much worse and that might be more common. So, um >> yeah, I I see that as part of even like a larger story. You g you get even more experience and then all the experience serves some something greater in the end. Although I will add that it's not my claim here that all the suffering is sort of designed for the sake of a great story. Uh I think rather it's that it's more expected on a kind of mind first theory that there would be stories and narratives.

¶204Um, and then there's all sorts of different reasons why there might be suffering. And it would be a much longer conversation to explore those many reasons, including a reason to have arenas where there's risk and um, uh, opportunities for exploration where particular sufferings don't happen for particular reasons like this on a meta on a meta reason level. Um, so yeah, I mean that that that is a much much longer conversation to explore, but I I wanted to say, Mike, I I absolutely 100% agree that um a kind of moral um skepticism where you can't sort of say anything about what you would expect a a foundational loving being to do, this kind of extreme version of skeptical theism would, I think, undercut certain forms of the design argument. So, I want to just affirm that and just to kind of acknowledge that um I think that's a good point and and so my view is to actually kind of take the challenge seriously and and think about okay what what kind of reasons could there be um and and actually consider my understanding of what I would expect from a foundational mind while also recognizing my levels of of not knowing the limits of my knowledge as well. So, it's not an extreme skepticism for me that you can't know anything.

¶205It's more of a a moderated skepticism. >> So, I will just add here Josh, did you want to have any uh formal two-minute closing? >> Sure. Yeah. Um, just thank you for this opportunity is kind of the main thing I wanted to express.

¶206Uh, Mike, I mentioned that you're one of my favorite philosophers and one of the reasons for that is what I see you doing is seeking an understanding of things. um according to like this, if I can just say it this way, sort of pure intuition um without being bullied by crowds of opinions that tell you sort of what you should think. Um I've always appreciated that about you and you have a style of presenting that feels uh common sensical and persuasive. And so I feel very grateful for this opportunity. And I guess just in summary, I think that this inquiry into the nature of fundamental reality does require a kind of cooperation from many people from many perspectives.

¶207And it is my core belief that as different people from different perspectives come together, we can actually get a clearer understanding of foundational reality by making some distinctions. Right? So, you know, maybe a lesson that could emerge from this exchange is that there's a sense in which the foundational reality is not arbitrary in certain respects, is not limited in certain respects, but that leaves open whether there could be reasons to posit other types of limits. And I think that's an important um point of inquiry to explore. So, thank you.

¶208>> Okay. Well, I didn't um exactly prepare a closing statement, but I want I want to thank you also for having this debate. Um, you know, this is obviously a great conversation. Um, there are some things that we agree on which are, you know, substantial and more than you would agree on with a typical atheist that you'd be debating. Uh, so I'm a mindbody dualist and, you know, I think that we have an immortal soul.

¶209Uh, you know, it always existed and will always exist. Um, and you know, I agree that the sort of uh, I guess some traditional versions of the naturalistic story are totally implausible, right? like the the idea that the big bang happened for no reason. Uh it's just totally implausible. Uh although I don't know what the reason was.

¶210I assume that there is some there's some process that um decreases entropy. I don't I don't know how or is is currently unknown to science. Um why yeah and I'm and okay and I agree that there is there is evidence for intelligent design. I just don't find it um strong enough to compel out outright belief. Um and you know, partly because I just think like the [snorts] the predictions that you get, if you want to call them predictions from the intelligent design theory, are sort of too vague and uncertain.

¶211Like there's too much room for people disagreeing about what we should expect to see if there were an intelligent designer. And so like you can give sort of arguments that oh we'd expect to see this and this but like people can give other arguments that you would that are sort of like comparable plausibility that you would expect to see something very different from what we're currently seeing. Um and uh so like in you know when you look at the history of science um there are times when a theory got established and it had to have much more clear predictions I guess where there would be more agreement on exactly what you expect from this theory. um about I don't know last comment about the problem of evil like imagine okay I have this story where you know you you learned that there was this serial killer um who was you know up in the mountains and was near you and he was murdering people and you just didn't do anything about it and then when the FBI eventually catches a serial murderer they ask you why you didn't do anything about it and then imagine you saying things that are said by um by theists who are giving theodysies like imagine you said I didn't want to interfere with his free will because free will is really good like that that would be that is totally unacceptable, right? Um but now, okay, imagine that you said, well, like there was this uh there were these good stories that were being created that were really dramatic because of the serial killer and so I didn't I had to let those stories develop.

¶212Like that seems like totally unacceptable. That is not okay. So So then it seems like the supreme being wouldn't be doing it. But again, I don't know. I don't really know.

¶213I don't really know what the supreme being like. You might think, well, maybe the story of the universe as a whole is better if the supreme being doesn't intervene or something. But again, that's sort of like that's not a clear enough or precise enough prediction, you know, for me for me to say that this is a good theory. So, okay. So, you know, I'm uh uh agnostic about that, right?

¶214Agnostic about whether it's intelligent design or it's the multiverse or it's something that we haven't thought of. And it's usually something that we haven't thought of. Like in the history of science, when you're in a state where people are having the kinds of arguments that we're currently having, usually what turned out was that the true theory was something that nobody had thought of at that point. So, >> okay, that's all. >> There might be a version of theism that nobody has quite articulated.

¶215>> Yeah, >> as an example. >> That's right. All right, fair enough. Uh, thank you, gentlemen. This was an excellent debate.

¶216Hope I know that people are going to like this tremendously. So, thank you for taking the time. Thanks. Thanks for thanks for moderating. >> I appreciate this.

¶217I I just want to say Mike, I I remember um you gave a lecture when I was at UC Boulder on defending the finetuning and then the next week you gave a lecture defending the problem of evil and you gave a version of this uh analogy of this of the serial killer at the end. And so I've had opportunity to think about that for years now. >> So >> So I have lots of thoughts about that. But >> Oh, you should you should write a blog post about that. >> Yeah.

¶218Okay. Yeah, I might just do that >> blog post or a future debate on the problem of evil right here on this podcast. >> There's many good treasures to explore. So, yeah, thank you for this time. Appreciate it.

¶219>> Cool. >> Okay. Thanks, >> [music]