¶1Hello everyone and uh firstly thank you for your prayers which have helped us to get this stream going. We're having some technical difficulties there. Um some of you noticed what was going on and uh you've been pray warriors for us in the chat which has helped us to uh get things sorted. So yeah, hello. >> Good to be back everyone.
¶2Hopefully you've missed us. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um so today's show Oh, hang on. started playing in the other I had the YouTube video open on the other tab.
¶3Um yeah, today we're going to be looking at the phenomena of Joe Schmid, Majesty of Reasons, uh conversion to Catholicism. I think we'll start off by giving a little bit of contextual background and stuff like that. And then what we're going to focus on though in this video are the natural theology reasons that Joe gives for his conversion. So obviously like there's a lot of stuff going on around his conversion. Um, it's been this kind of like hot topic in the YouTube apologetic space as well because obviously Joe has been someone who's like really into philosophy and has been very critical um at an academic level of theism and apologetics.
¶4So his conversion I guess for people who are pro- aapologetics is quite a big win for um their their side, their ideology, however you want to put it. Um, and so we'll talk a little bit about some of that stuff first, but then just to say that this video is gonna just specifically be on Joe's got three. Well, he's got four video. Well, no, three, it's three videos, right? One of them is just his conversion video.
¶5Oh, no. One of them include that. >> Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Um, one is that one, one is the natural theology arguments one, which we're going to be reviewing today.
¶6Uh, one is miracles. And we'll we'll do some stuff on miracles. I don't think we're fully decided on whether we're going to do one video just on that or break down some of the miracle claims into independent individual bad apologetics looking at those independent claims, but we'll do something of that nature. >> We'll have to figure that out what works cuz the miracle video is very long and we have to dissect the claim. So, we may need to break that up further, but we'll see.
¶7>> And we may kind of do a bit of both as well. like maybe we'll do like a highle one just kind of at the level of that video and then go further into any specific things that are kind of interesting or whatever. >> And then finally, Joe's got this video which is like a defense of Catholicism specifically. Um I've actually that's one I've not actually watched yet myself. Um but if it is of interest to people, we'll do that.
¶8and you know maybe we'll get some other people involved if they want to from different religions is something it might be interesting to do to see um what's kind of going on there as well. Um does that kind of sum up your view of things as well James? Anything you want to add to that? >> Yeah, sounds good. >> Cool.
¶9Um okay, so I guess the first thing do we want to kind of talk about the um narratival framing? So something we often do in uh bad apologetics is comment on not just the arguments but the real Freudian psychoanalysis reasons why people do the things that they do. And so when it comes to Joe's conversion here, um there's kind of like this media industry, right, around Catholicism and apologetics in particular. And um the Catholic side of that has become increasingly powerful with Cameron Batus's um conversion over to Catholicism. Then you've got like Pints with Aquinus, which has now been signed by Daily Wire.
¶10um the Ben Shapiro media outlet which I think has I mean I think their revenues have been going down but still a multi-million pound kind of thing backing them you know versus two random guys on the internet with different commitments other than doing that behind them um and then you've got a bunch of other kind of like Catholic so I think Trent Horn does this stuff full-time he's another big voice in the Catholic apologetic space and then there's kind of other other Catholic stuff where um like I think I saw Joe appear maybe on some like Spanish channel as well. Um, obviously in Latin America, Catholicism is like a big religion, so there's a lot of like media and stuff around there. Um, so a lot of this has quite clearly been orchestrated and planned in the sense that Joe put out his conversion video. Um, and it looks like there was a video from Capturing Catholicism, Cameron Baduzi's channel, a couple of weeks before the release, meaning he kind of like had early access to that. And then there's kind of like, you know, he appears on Trent Horn show, appears on points with Aquinus.
¶11So there's this kind of buffeting of stuff which created all this kind of hype around it. Um, and I think it's probably worth saying that there's one kind of version of this story that's being put forward. And that version of this story is that this should be this is striking evidence in favor of the truth of Catholicism because Joe is someone who's sort of ideally situated in a position to um rationally evaluate the case for Catholicism. And um so his view he like he is like a relevant authority on the truth of Catholicism and he's someone who's kind of like unaffected by biases and doesn't have any kind of perverse incentives or anything and is kind of simply looking at the state of the evidence in academic philosophy of religion and um coming to the conclusion that Catholicism is true. So that's that's like one story here.
¶12Um, and I think we kind of want to push back on that, which is the first thing to do. So, I mean, I think there's a number of things to comment on here. One of which is that, you know, Joe grew up Catholic and went to a Catholic private school, I believe. Um, which is obviously a big factor in anyone's religion. That doesn't mean it's it doesn't necessarily mean that the religion is false.
¶13But in terms of explaining the kind of conceptual landscape, right, that someone has for um approaching philosophy of religion in particular, you know, like if you're raised a particular way, you are going to have a strong bias in that direction. I believe even at Joe's school, you know, he was taught about like Thomas Aquinus's philosophy and things like that which are not really I mean you might get some coverage in an RE class or something, but you wouldn't necessarily be taught kind of um metaphysics from a sympathetic approach. And Joe's often talked about how that stuff has kind of come to shape his view of philosophy going forward. And I think even implicit in his name like majesty of reason is this kind of Catholic and timistic view of the intellect and rationality and like of a particular mode of engaging with um scientia knowledge in Latin. You know that's kind of all part of this Catholic intellectual tradition.
¶14Um another part of this I think is you know Joe never told his parents actually that he stopped believing in Catholicism. I believe he was >> which is wild for 10 years. I don't know how he managed to get away with that, but that's crazy to me. >> But I I I think the other side of that is from this point of understanding this psychologically. Um I mean clearly there is a strong sense of like guilt and shame around one way of intellectually believing or being right and that is an incentive to go back to Catholicism.
¶15You know, if basically I'm not saying it's I don't mean to comment on something so personal as should Joe not like love his parents or care what they think. Like of course he kind of should, but just to point out that those factors are pretty big for why people believe what they believe, right? It's not um the the narrative that Joe has simply, you know, just considered the best reasons, I think, is is very dubious in the circumstances. And then I think the just the final part on this to to add in is obviously him studying um philosophy of religion in particular um being in his 20ies being at university at Princeton. There are there's a massive bias towards um classical theism and Christian theism within philosophy of religion as it's practiced.
¶16There are massive I would say methodological issues in particularly metaphysics which is primarily the way that um in metaphysics as it's practiced in Anglo-American philosophy generally and that is primarily the way that people engage with philosophy of religion um in America in American universities as well. So I think I think that that all features and feeds into, you know, this kind of what I might call like a kind of intellectual bubble that he might be kind of thinking about these things in. And then as we've seen with some of these other phenomena like um this other guy from Princeton who's converted, there's clearly a local sociological thing going on that may or may not be related to contemporary US politics and other things that are happening in the world. um and and and like local factors in Princeton in that department and individuals who are there that's leading to some people um you know maybe taking certain things more seriously than they should have maybe in particular miracles again we'll come on to that when we talk about miracles in another bad apologetics and and I think that all of this kind of leads to there being some very obvious and ordinary explanations for all of this apart from just um you know these reasons are overwhelming And I'm not saying that because I think oh all the atheists need to be reassured. I mean I don't even consider myself an atheist.
¶17I just think that that's a far more reasonable way of understanding someone's sort of belief change than that they really became intellectually convinced of Padra Pio or something like that. But um to to contextualize all that stuff um anything you want to say on that stuff James? So I I have something to add to that uh which is that people often get upset or um defensive of of Joe or or other people when one invokes sort of psychological or social explanations for a conversion or a change of belief of some form. Um and you know there's a reason to be a little bit hesitant about those sorts of things. Um although you know if if one is going to in one's apologetic invoke explanations of what God would likely do, I I don't see how that it can be off limits for us to invoke psychological explanations of why a human being might have done some of the things that they did.
¶18Uh putting that aspect aside, I also think that one doesn't need to dig very deeply um into well I don't think one needs to dig very deeply or um invoke sort of implausible um or uh very speculative um facets in order to get some insight into Joe's conversion because he talks about it in his first video, the one where he announced his conversion, not the one we're looking at today. And I already did a response to that. But I think one of the what I what was really evident to me uh in in that video is how much he talks about the social influence of particular theists whom he engaged with. like he talks about his dialogue with Ras Muen for example and his um >> five hour dinner with Ethan Muse and >> well yeah and then later on it's uh he discussed like he talked a lot about his interactions with capturing Christianity Cameron from Capturing Christianity and uh and Ethan Muse and how that was specifically uh very influential for his Catholicism. Um, obviously Joe has dialogued on his channel uh over many years with uh with atheists and skeptics as well to a limited extent wi with me and and Nathan, but also with many others.
¶19But the point is he didn't talk about that at all in his video. It doesn't seem to be it doesn't seem to have been formative for him becoming an agnostic. It doesn't seem to have been formative for him at all because he just didn't mention it. Well, al also I say in addition I mean and not that it has to be us in particular or whatever, but I mean in the one thing I want to point out that's related to the point you're just making is I don't think there is evidence of Joe having these kinds of conversations with people who are skeptical um to the same extent that he has with other people who are kind of Catholic apologists essentially. >> Yes, that's what I mean.
¶20He had some online dialogues but it doesn't seem to have been >> well not even really. I mean the dialogue he had with you was about whether atheism is adequately conceptualized as which which isn't really like challenging the >> No, that one wasn't. I'm just mention yeah but like he has engaged but not on Yeah. Go ahead. >> Yeah.
¶21I mean he's had other people on although he like for well actually an interesting example would be quite recently less than a year ago I I had a debate with Jimmy Akens about uh the resurrection. Um, so that was hosted on um on Joe's channel, but Joe didn't really engage in that discussion, right? It was it was something that he hosted. I mean, that's not a dig or anything. That's just >> the extent of it, right?
¶22Which it's sort of interesting because >> um and and the reason I mention this is um not because Joe has to dialogue with me or Nathan or anyone in particular, but it's because it highlights a particular social context in which this occurred. in his conversion video, Joe talks a lot about the social influence of uh certain theists and particularly Catholics. Um he doesn't mention anything about any such similar skeptical dialogue to the same depth. And yeah, I'm acknowledging he's had people on his channel, but like if you take the view the debate for example with Jimmy Aken, it's odd in my opinion that if one was a a truth seeker who was looking to radically change their life and specifically to uh convert to Catholicism, adopt the view that Jesus's resurrection, you know, really happened in history, which presumably wasn't something he previously thought, that you might not then seek to um engage with people who were, you know, publicly skeptical of that. um and he just he just didn't do that and he it clearly wasn't important to his intellectual process.
¶23So I think that this really highlights the danger of intellectually siloing oneself or of sort of um getting into a social bubble that thinks about things in a very particular way. And um I think that this this just clearly been the case with Joe. Again, I I don't think I have to speculate that's he outlines it in his video. Um, and so I think that this is an interesting case study about the importance of really being um, open to critique and and looking at trying to seek out differing opinions, which is one of the reasons why I think Nath and I both have pretty strong policies about welcoming people on to our channels to disagree with us as long as they're, you know, going to say something substantive. Um, because I just >> sometimes even if they're not because sometimes >> well sometimes, >> yeah, >> as long as the people are willing to have some sort of discussion.
¶24But the point is that um >> yeah I this has just been kind of a wakeup call in that sense to me because the you know Joe becoming some sort of deist or even theist wouldn't have been that surprising to me but jumping straight into fairly conservative version of Catholicism on the basis of these miracle claims that was just a huge shock and not something I would have ever expected and I think that it's really very well explained by the social influences and um that's one of the things that I really took away from this that it's really important to make a real effort if you're concerned about, you know, having more accurate beliefs to to not find yourself into one of these bubbles. And there's Catholicism is not the only one. Of course, you can get into skeptic and atheist and and other sorts of bubbles, too. So, it's it's something that everyone should be concerned about. >> Yeah.
¶25And I think there are additional incentives here in uh both academic philosophy of religion. Um, and you know, if if you're someone who finds this stuff very interesting, particularly these kind of like metaphysical puzzles that play a role in these natural theology arguments and if um the people who don't find these arguments convincing, um, don't think that these things are very important or worth spending a lot of your time on, you you know, there's going to be a kind of desire to not hang around with those people or not spend a lot. So I guess I I guess the point being that that creates this incentive. I think Joe Joe choosing uh these kinds of metaphysical questions/p problems and puzzles as his field of interest sort of selects people like me and James out of his circle because then I guess we don't want am I here? Is my hair?
¶26Yeah. even when he did his video of like why I'm agnostic a few years ago was these are like some of the most important questions that there are right and I don't I think me and you James probably just don't actually think that at all I mean we might think these questions are important because religion has a big impact on the way that people live and that can make big impacts on people's moral choices or political choices and then that you know those are consequential things and as a result of history um you things like Christianity can have a big sway and there's all apologetics and stuff can play a role in that. But I don't think we think, you know, the reasons that Joe gave in that video, this is before he was coming out as Catholic, was like, you know, because you'll go to hell if you're wrong, basically, you know, like there's a lot on the line. And I think that that there's almost something in that that's like, well, we don't, you know, that that's kind of question begging in a way. I I don't think we think that that's really on the line at all.
¶27And you can argue that we're question begging there as well. And we sort of are in a way. Um, but I think the point just being that um, where you're coming at these things from impacts how what voices you listen to, what you think is important. And for Joe, the academic side of that seems to all be theists. And then the other side is having a YouTube channel, which means you have this big public profile.
¶28And having a big public profile um, is something that gives you like social status. you're figuring out what to do in your 20ies. Um, you know, like life is kind of difficult. It's difficult to figure out revenue streams. And if you can, if your niche is this philosophy of religion stuff and your brand is built around that and the only people who go this is very important and we need to spend lots of time on that are the people who are like pro- religion.
¶29That's another incentive to go in that direction, right? Because if the other people kind of go, you know, I'll spend a bit of time on that, but realistically, I'd rather be spending my time talking about, you know, these other things that are maybe like a bit tangential to that. You've got this strong incentive in terms of where your social status comes from, where revenue comes from, um, and and positive and negative signals that you get online from people in terms of engagement in comments and views and things that relates to, um, the composition of your audience. and you you get kind of captured by that as well. So I I think all of that is going on too in in Joe's case.
¶30>> Yes. And I think that you can kind of see that as we walk through some of the arguments that this style of thinking about these things is well yeah you'll see what I mean. Um before we get to that I think that we should address a question that often comes up uh I think strangely that it does but people ask why do you care about this and why does it matter if Joe converts and why not just leave him alone. I presume you've I've got a bunch of comments like that on my video. I've also seen them on other people's responses.
¶31So, we should probably address that question. >> Yeah. Um, for me, why I care. One of which would be like I've got this sort of adjacent parasocial friendship with Joe. Not not just by the way through watching his videos, but you know, we've messaged before in the past.
¶32We've been a little bit invested in each other's journeys. So, there's this kind of like quasi friendship thing there. Still, you know, there from my point of view. I'm I'm not like I'm not going to wouldn't talk to Joe or anything because of this and still take value from many things in his videos. Um but like so so that's one reason why I care.
¶33The other reason why I care I think is um in this kind of religion space. I, you know, I became like an evangelical Christian and that was very related also to sort of like contemporary MAGA right-wing views that I adopted in my early 20ies and that all kind of came along as a cluster of beliefs. I decon converted and deconstructed from that. And I guess a lot of my journey in philosophy has been um engaging with questions that were raised either in that ideological space or on my way out of that ideological space in the apologetics industry that tries to kind of like smooth over people's um dissatisfaction with the intellectual side of that stuff. So, you know, for me personally, I've been interested in making sense of these ideologies.
¶34Um, making sense of the reasons that are given. And, um, I guess I want to create content that helps people who are on the fence about this stuff think about it more clearly so they can make their own mind up about what they think about this stuff. Um, I guess there's some overlap for you as well, James. >> Yes, absolutely overlap. I I addressed this in previous videos, but it seems necessary to address it again.
¶35So my overarching aim in almost everything that I do in terms of um public content. So my podcast, my science podcast, science of everything, my YouTube channel, my my book, other writings. Uh the under overarching goal of that is to promote um understanding of what we know about the world and how to think clearly and uh like skeptically and to be able to have a better understanding of of the world and think uh think well about it. So to help which is helpful for all sorts of areas in life and politics and society and everyday life and uh so that's my overarching goal and uh someone like Joe particularly his channel name and his focus on you know dialogue and philosophy um has had well I don't know if he still does at least had overlapping aims and I think that it's >> obviously going to be of interest to me when someone like that then goes in a direction which I think is profoundly unseptical as I've argued before and continue to argue and exhibiting many um aspects of bad reasoning um which I think is going to lead people astray to think about things in ways that aren't uh aren't evidence-based, aren't skeptical, aren't critical, aren't helpful. Um and that's not just because he's become a Catholic.
¶36That's a secondary issue. It's the style of thinking and Catholicism that are highly problematic. >> Well, depends on the type of Catholicism because this is what I mean the second aspect that's that's of issue. So, one is essentially process. And the second is outcome.
¶37And I'm concerned about the outcome. There's a pretty wide spectrum of Catholics, but um and I don't think Catholicism overall is a particularly bad form of Christianity if one is to rank them. But I do have concerns about certain very conservative viewpoints that Joe seems to have adopted. And this largely relates to um sort of sexual and reproductive ethics where I think that the Catholic Church h has and does promote quite harmful views. And um so that is a concern when those views of which has seem to have become more pre more influ politically influential lately if anything and so that's something that I also want to speak out against.
¶38>> Yeah. And then just just one last thing to comment on a comment that I think we've probably both got a bunch of times is um oh you know when Joe was saying the same was agreeing with you. you were all super super supportive of him, but now you've like changed your mind to um hate on him and this is like really on principled of you and it shows that you're coping and stuff. Um I think there's evidence against this either way. So like for me personally under loads of Joe's old videos, so here's one from like a year ago.
¶39This is before his, you know, you can see there's lots of comments from me on this video. um uh like basically moaning about things, the moaning about um like arguments that are given in the video a methodology. There's loads of this under loads of Joe's videos. And I think that even many of the criticisms that I will come up with um today will be um uh it's not this one, it's a different one. Many of the criticisms that I come up with today will be criticisms I've actually left under Joe's videos in the past and then he I feel he hasn't kind of answered adequately.
¶40Not that he has to answer all questions in his comment section adequately, but I I I don't think he's kind of taken these criticisms into account in his reasoning about these problems. Um similarly for James um you know when James discussed whether or not how atheism should be characterized um with Joe I I think that there was you know there's always been from both of us I think a sort of a respect for Joe's work and there is like good things that he does that it can be informative for people but also I think we've both been somewhat disappointed with some particular aspects of his methodology Um, and maybe I can't think of the appropriate word. It's not you've you've framed it as um not being like skeptical enough. The reason I don't like that is just because it's not that I disagree. It's like, you know, the identity of like being a skeptic like people like Michael.
¶41>> Yeah. Well, I I identify with the skeptical movement even if disagree with a bunch of particulars and it's, you know, not everyone does. So, that's fine. But that's one of the reasons I choose to use that word. >> And I think I think it's fine in one >> people like Hume as well who you know have strong heritage.
¶42I I draw links to that. >> No. And and I'm not saying that's particularly problematic. I just don't want to conote the wrong thing by saying it. >> I'm just saying why I choose to use the word.
¶43If you choose to use different ones, it's totally fine. >> I I'm trying to think like what I'm what I'm trying to say though is um and but gullibility sounds too mean. It's like a kind of that there's always >> I don't think it's too mean to describe some of the things that Joe's voice like the demonic stuff. I think that that's just >> that's gullibility. Like if that's not what I don't know what it is.
¶44Again, you don't have to use that word, but I I will say that and I've been broadly I haven't said that much about Joe. have had the disagreement about the definitions of of atheism and things, but I it it is the case that I have generally felt his content to be um sort of overly uh >> charitable maybe theoretical and philosophical and yeah ins insufficiently critical and skeptical of um some very questionable philosophical approaches basically. Um >> yeah, I think that's different to what I do. I think what I was trying to say is that there's like this kind of line, right, between criticality, like raising objections and kind of like being mean. Um, and it can sometimes feel if you raise like a a relevant objection to something that is kind of silly that you're sort of being mean to someone or you're dismissing something they care about or whatever.
¶45Um, and I guess what I feel like is that for some things Joe has had that feeling and kind of not that's that's led to him Yeah. like going into stuff being like too theoretical and like jumping the gun and thinking about a lot of crazy like stuff I consider to be crazy stuff without raising the objections like a hundred steps back that should stop you kind of getting into that realm in the first place or should make you realize that if you're in that realm you're kind of like doing something a bit more like speculative fiction or whatever than like figuring out what the world is like or what's true. Um, and yeah, I think that that's meant for me. Joe's got a bit too carried away. And I think I've always been a bit critical of that approach in philosophy.
¶46And I think, you know, the same is true for for yourself as well. So I I don't think either of us have really like radically changed our views at all. Um, >> no. I mean, I think people are just sort of making associations. I I've never been particularly critical of of Joe publicly, but I've never been particular I've never particularly endorsed a lot of what he said either.
¶47I've just appreciated that he has had some good discussions on his channel and I think he's sort of undoing some of that past good work with what he's been doing lately. So, I'm so I'm going to criticize that. I think that the objection doesn't really make any sense. It's like, well, in the past you've agreed with people and been and said nice things about them, but now that they're doing and saying different things, you're criticizing them. >> Yeah.
¶48>> Yeah. Because they're doing and saying different things. I mean, you know, there's a continuity as we've been discussing. I've I've always had some issues with his approach, but there's still a pretty radical discontinuity. He's never promoted miracles before.
¶49Um, and you know, he's turning his channel from what he said strictly into or almost strictly uh into a Catholic apologetics channel, which is very different to what it was. So, yeah, I'm going to criticize that. I mean, why wouldn't I criticize that? I don't understand why that somehow off limits. >> And a big a big problematic part of that, I think, has been the self-censoring as well, the removing removing some >> videos and content.
¶50Even even like stuff like um that's been from Christian philosophers. Like I think there was a video with Dustin Crummit that who's a Christian philosopher that he removed because you know he he says something like it might cause people to like sin if they um you know come to believe the non-atholic conclusion. And I just think like that stuff is it's frightening self-censorship, right? Like even >> Yeah. I mean it's also interesting because he's got a debate with me saying that arguing against the resurrection of Jesus, right?
¶51And and bunch of other stuff. Maybe he thinks that I did very badly. Jimmy Aken destroyed you. So yeah, >> perhaps >> perhaps. >> But but yeah, I think that it's really important for people who are in these spaces to kind of like be quite transparent about different intellectual phases they go through because, you know, it's it's a constant journey of working things out and people are always at different people coming across content are at different points in that journey.
¶52And if if you kind of like self-censor, that's an indication and and we all do this to some extent, but that maybe you're on the wrong side of cultivating um a kind of post hawk narrative about events and your intellectual formation and your who you are and what you believe that fits maybe like a propagandistic purpose rather than the true kind of complexity of everything about who you are and >> Yeah, obviously it's up to Joe what he wants to keep on his channel, but I do disagree with this self-censorship. I think there are ways to deal with that. And a clear one is to change the title and thumbnail of a video if you want to highlight that it's an old thinking that you no longer agree with, but still leave it up there for posterity to illustrate that journey. >> So, you know, I I yeah, I I think that there are criticisms to be levied there as well. But, I mean, the overarching the overarching point is just that uh obviously Nathan and I care about this sort of stuff because it's what we do online.
¶53And obviously, if Joe is taking a very different direction to what he previously did, then we're going to comment on that. So I I just don't really understand why people think that that's somehow surprising or worthy of criticism. Of course, you could disagree with our specific criticisms, but the fact that we're talking about it. I don't think is somehow illustrating of atheist cope or something. I mean, what why wouldn't we talk?
¶54I think we also do understand because so many of these comments are coming from people who just discovered Joe's channel 3 weeks ago through the Catholic like media campaign and then are coming across like our content or whatever and like just sh trying to like shout us away because >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean pretty pretty clearly there's there's outsiders coming in who don't know the context, you know, which is fine, but maybe they should just temper some of their criticism. I'd much rather people criticize the substance of what I'm talking about, not just the mere fact that I am talking about it. That's just really boring.
¶55>> Just shut up, James. Why don't you just shut up with your atheism? >> Yeah, pretty much. >> Um, >> anyway, we should we should speak of the substance, let's move on to that. >> Yes.
¶56Yeah. When when do we ever get to it? That's the question. So, the first topic following our plan is the intrinsic plausibility of theism. So, let me just actually get Joe's video open.
¶57Confusingly, he does not start his video with this, but I think it makes sense to start with this. So, >> yeah, I should So, maybe just a comment on the video itself. >> Um, >> yeah, >> there's all this stuff in it, but we're not going to go through it in the order that it's in in the video. A part of that is because some of this stuff um is more important in Joe's change of mind than others. Some of this stuff is kind of like a rehashing of almost like philosophy of religion 101, what's contingency argument, all that stuff.
¶58I mean, we'll probably we'll go into this stuff a little bit, but I think we want to order it by like priority and importance for in Joe's reasoning in particular. So, like a big part is the methodological framing that's used, which is why I think we're going to talk about some of this stuff first. Um, and then we're going to talk about um some of the arguments and stuff after that. Um >> yeah, we won't play every minute of the video. In addition to what Nathan has said, uh there are a lot of particularly the sorry the fine-tuning and psychophysical harmony arguments.
¶59Most of that is responding to objections. And some of the objections that Joe responds to I don't think are good objections. So I don't think there's worth spending time on. So we we'll skip some of that um just just to save time. There's also a part at the end of the video which we probably won't cover which is responding to um non uh considering how does he phrase it like non other non-theistic options aside from naturalism.
¶60Uh yeah non-naturalist alternative which is interesting but I um because that's not the worldview that I hold. Um and just to because of the length of the video we'll probably just leave that one. >> Um and I'm not sure how you describe your your worldview uh Nathan but uh I don't know if those would be relevant to you. Yeah, I don't think they would as well like >> so we'll just leave that anyway. So yeah, the point is we won't cover every single minute of the video, but I think we'll cover the important things from our point.
¶61>> Okay, so let's start with uh this bit then around 3650. >> Yeah, this is where he frames his general approach, which is very important. Look at the first premise in more detail. According to this premise, theism is not very improbable prior to taking into account any empirical evidence. In other words, theism's intrinsic probability or prior is not very 125.
¶62>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say I've had one complaint from someone about um Oh, what am I doing about um changing the speed? What have they changed the UI?
¶63No, about about changing the speed. I'm sorry for you listener, but um yeah, it is what it is. The intrinsic probability of hypothesis or its prior is its probability independently of any empirical evidence or before taking any empirical evidence into account. But why do we even need to attend to theism's intrinsic probability to begin with, right? Like why can't we just look at the evidence?
¶64Well, consider >> Okay, so maybe just pause on this bit to begin with, right? um you and I may have slight differences on this and I think that that is good because we'll kind of cover different aspects right of of some of this stuff. >> Um for me first off I theism is not very improbable prior to taking into account any empirical evidence. I literally think that that is unintelligible, right? Like in the sense that I don't think anyone can make sense of a claim like is the a question like is theism probable without having a language and years of socialization in a culture that gives them all these concepts and makes sense of the world for them which is all empirical evidence.
¶65Right? Um, so I I I just I I literally think that this is kind of this is a part of one of these methodological critiques I have of what philosophers think that they're doing where they kind of imagine themselves in some kind of mental realm of like propositions or something and those propositions are just like disconnected from anything that actually factors in learning about the world or like human connection to understand like like the real ways that we understand things and learn about things and then and then construct stories about like pure mathematical operations like basian updating in that realm of disconnected propositions and then repeat them over and over again until they're kind of persuaded that they've like done something very similar to what pure mathematicians are doing. Um so I find this genuinely like for example theism is not very improbable prior to taking into account any empirical evidence for who right is because something being improbable is relative to a person and every person is going to have different evidence you know like what what empirical evidence prior to any empirical evidence what does it even mean like the babies think yeah so feel free to >> yeah this is actually quite important because this isn't I've always intuited that Joe has a more a priority sort of rationalistic way of approaching philosophy than I do. My approaching philosophy is very a posterior empiric empiricism based. Think think Hume, right?
¶66Um and um so I wanted to and Joe's approach is based on in this whole video is based on a kind of a basian approach where you have this prior probability and then you update it on the basis of new evidence which broadly is okay but then there's how you actually apply that and uh Nathan's talked at length about his sort of concerns with this approach and some of those will come across here. Here we're focusing on the prior. Now the way that Joe frames this I think is just sort of wrong and let me explain what I mean here. He says here that the prior probability or an intrinsic probability um he says is uh what is the pri that is the probability prior to taking into account any empirical evidence. So one issue with that is the basian approach is predicated upon a subjective interpretation of probability which is that probabilities represent subjective degrees of belief.
¶67>> Yeah let's just >> the issue here is that that is that that is observer dependent or thinker dependent as you were saying. Well, ju just to pause on that because I there's a really important point to distinguish between the basian approach in formal epistemology and you know bae theorem as a theorem of probability and statistics that can be used in context right because that the approach in formal epistemology is a claim about well it involves normative claims but there's also I guess some descriptive claims about how language mind and human persons work, right? Um, so I talked about this in in this other video and of course there's there are more reasonable ways I think than the way that Joe is thinking about it to think about some of this stuff. I think that one way that some people could think about this stuff is as as kind of providing a an approximate explanatory framework that allows to that facilitates rational disagreement but acknowledges like a lot of the limitations that I think are implicit in it. But I don't think Joe is doing any of that.
¶68I don't think he says like, you know, I'm kind of I'm just using this to provide a a linguistic huristic for reasoning, but it's not going to be perfect. There's all these limitations and it's like super approximate and it's all indexed to my subjective sort of like again it's not clear whether he's saying my feelings towards these claims or my disposition to bet if I was in a hypothetical betting scenario, but something like that, right? But he doesn't in none of that um sort of factors into it. And that's of course very relevant because you can tell a story about someone who is in completely different circumstances, right? With completely different evidence and reasons and different feelings towards the statements or different dispositions to bet.
¶69>> Well, that's what I was saying that the the the typical basian epistemology approach does refer to subjective credences like degrees of belief. uh the extent to which you would are willing to ascent to a proposition or tendency to bet something, a willingness to bet on something. But I don't think that is um what Joe is doing here because he talks about intrinsic probability which really only makes sense from an objective point of view. That's not a subjective statement. And so I I think that Joe adheres to something called objective basianism which I don't fully understand because I think that that's a contradiction.
¶70Uh and again we're not talking yeah as you emphasize Nathan we're not talking here just about like B theorem which is just an equation which everyone agrees on. It's the approach to epistemology which Joe seems to adopt here. So the whole notion of intrinsic probability I think is problematic here because I I don't know that there's a fact of the matter about that. I I think that we can agree in broad sense that one can give reasons for and against or one can point to considerations that might favor something or other but to talk about that as intrinsic probability I think is problematic. Um, but there's something but so there's that issue which I think Joe really needed to introduce a bit more here.
¶71He does say some other things about basian probability but doesn't really get to get to trying to ground this as to like how you can have a subjective degree of belief from nowhere which like a view from nowhere kind of thing which is not specific to an actual observer which or agent which just doesn't really make sense to me. But actually what I wanted to highlight in addition to that >> is this notion that the prior probability is um refers to the probability prior to any empirical evidence. And I think that that is just not what a prior probability is. Now I've always been critical about this notion of a prior because people almost never specify prior to what and that actually is important. So I actually looked this up and made sure I wasn't just thinking about it the wrong way.
¶72I want to read a quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia article on a priori uh knowledge. It says quote independent of experience should not be taken to mean independent of all experience but as a first approximation to mean independent of all experience beyond what is needed to grasp the relevant concepts involved in the proposition. It is sometimes said that a priority justification can depend on experience in so far as it enables the person to acquire the concepts needed to grasp the meaning of the proposition. But experience cannot play an evidential role in that justification. Later, we will see later in the article that the notion of enabling experience might be better expanded to include experience needed to acquire certain intellectual skills such as those needed to construct certain proofs or create counter examples.
¶73End quote. So, I think that that contextualizes it rather well because of although a lot of people aren't careful, people have thought about this recognized that a priority taken absolutely literally would just mean independent of absolutely all experience. But people who are independent of all experience can't even speak. So, that just doesn't make any sense. you don't even have the concepts needed or the skills needed to like work through a logical derivation or something like that.
¶74Right? So the point is that it's acknowledged that experience will be needed to at the very least acquire those skills and concepts. The idea of a priority is supposed to be something like that um you have the tools necessary to think about it but you're not appealing to specific evidences or experiences to justify a claim. Now whether you can really disentangle those or the extent to which you can disentangle those I think is going to be a further question. I think there are cases where you can, but then there are going to be more dubious cases where it's harder to tease those apart.
¶75So, what I want to emphasize here is that, you know, Nathan and I might differ somewhat exactly on the A priori distinction, but I don't think we need to to be critical of what Joe is doing here. We don't need to say there's no such thing as a priori knowledge. I'm happy with some sort of vague distinction being made. But what we can say is that if we're to what Joe is doing is he's trying to imagine the sorts of things he would think um are true at a point where he has the relevant concepts say about theism about causation about contingency about laws of nature and all the other things we'll talk about. He has those concepts and can reason about them but doesn't have specific empirical evidence about you know particular facts of the matter about them.
¶76And what I want to emphasize is that's a really hard thing to do. You're basically trying to imagine you had some knowledge but not others. And then to say that we can identify particularly what we would set what plausibility judgments would be made is extremely difficult and quite vague as to exactly what you're allowed to condition on. >> Yes, it becomes that so first off to um acknowledge I think the distinction that you made from the SCP there is really useful. think there is a there's a tract to and I think you see this more in scientific work as well where people might talk about app priori before some specific thing that's being considered but then there's this sometimes invoked philosophical sense of appriori is like you know this pure realm of reason or whatever that kind of gets talked about in canonism or whatever but um yeah so so if we're talking about that in this case it raises the question of well who are we talking about here Right.
¶77So are we talk for example when Joe came across the psychophysical harmony argument in the second year of his bachelor's degree many years after um you know studying these things at Catholic school talking to a bunch of philosophers in email threads. Is is he the person that's being talked about who is in this position of having just the relevant concepts to evaluate the question but not having not considered the evidence? Is is he that person? No. Exactly.
¶78Um, and if he's not that person, what Yeah. Yeah. I know what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah.
¶79And and if he's not that person, then um of what is he doing when he tries to imagine himself in that position? Is that even possible? And regardless of that question, what he's doing when he imagines himself to be that that person, um, is it even intelligible or meaningful to think about possessing those concepts and not in some sense of having reasoned about these things beforehand to so to be in a position of having enough of the concepts to make sense of what they mean without having made any, you know, what a basian might call like an update or any any like rational inference on the basis of how that connects the world and I think particularly in the case of um theism considered as a theory or naturalism considered as a theory or physicalism I'm not actually sure if that is possible because these grasping these concepts relates them to everything else such that you're kind of I probably for some people it's possible to be agnostic but I I I think in most cases it's going to be impossible to grasp grasp these concepts without eliciting some judgment as to whether or not that is like seems true to you or >> well not when you've been raised in a Catholic school and have been spending years talking about these things on YouTube like that's precisely the issue that your mental framework is so far removed from someone who has just the ability to grasp the concept but not really consider the specific arguments or evidence beyond that. So what you're having to do is a very elaborate and complex mental simulation of extracting a whole bunch of deeply held beliefs about how stuff fits together uh and imagining what you would think in the absence of that which is why the notion that this is something you can do objectively to describe any intrinsic probability. I just think I just think it can't be done.
¶80I don't see any reason for thinking that this is anything more than a very loose huristic to start to think about something. But but it's Joe predicates his whole argument on this approach. >> Yeah. And but I think even if you take it away from Joe and if I pick at random from like people I grew up with or whatever in the UK relatively secular country. >> Yeah.
¶81In any Christian country. >> Yeah. I I think it's it's going to be I think it's going to be hard for me to even think of one person I know who would actually be in an appropriate position to just have enough of the concepts to meaningfully sort of think about these questions but not have actually like considered how that fits with everything. You know like there other judgments about the world. Interestingly, I think I have spoken to people who are plausibly in a similar situation when I was when I was doing missionary work for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because we were specifically uh assigned to teach Chinese-speaking people and many of these people.
¶82So, China does not have a strong history of belief in a all powerful creator. Uh there are some people who do believe in that, but it's quite varied and it's just not as important in their philosophical tradition. It's not important in Buddhism. It's not that important in Confucianism either. And so many people, there's also the communist government which doesn't emphasize religion generally.
¶83And so a lot of people that you speak to, um, I wouldn't call them like naturalists or even necessarily atheist. I'm not sure what that is. >> Oh, it's Daniel Everett with because he he went as an as a missionary to the Parah uh to convert them and that. So that's another good example in this book of what you think. >> Where that where is where are those people from?
¶84>> Uh, in the in the Amazon. So they were uncontated tribe. So he went he went to convert them and then he ended up decon converting from Christianity and >> yeah definitely yeah anthropology of religion is something that I've dabbled with but definitely want to learn more about and something that um yeah well there Joe doesn't say anything about even though I think he should but we'll come to that in many hours time anyway the point is the relevance here is I think I have a little bit of experience with that and talking to some of these people with Chinese backgrounds who you know they've heard of God and they could tell you a few things about him sort of propositionally but it just isn't really part of their worldview. I haven't really thought about it very much and so they're in a very different epistemic situation obviously compared to Joe or me and Nathan but it's interesting so I think that there maybe are people who are more who are closer to this but you know different people are going to just think about things in intrinsic probability just wildly differently depending on what other things that they think about things and so the notion that Joe can kind of abstract from that I think it's just it's just I just don't believe it >> well I'll tell you there's a really funny good example I'll tell you a really funny good example in this book of um Everett trying cuz he kept obviously he kept trying to talk to them about Jesus and one day they were like um and obviously I can only say this in English because I don't speak parah so it's kind of like what does it even mean to sort of translate >> but um one day the the tribes people basically said to him uh uh we met your Jesus yesterday and um yeah we don't we don't like him we don't want you to talk about him anymore and he and he was like what like what what are you even talking about right and they said yeah Jesus he came here last Right. Um, and basically what had so they've got this thing they have like they don't have the same continuous concepts of like personhood and identity that we do.
¶85So people literally will like adopt different names at different times in their lives. >> Interesting. And they change and everyone in the village will like refer to that as a different person to the person now. Um, so like there's all the this is why it's an interesting case linguistically because you know there's all these like weird aspects of the vocabulary that are not present in our language where we >> Yeah. And and so one of the things that they do though occasionally is like the men will go outside of the village and become like this like entity that's like a um like a spirit walker or something like that and then they like like come into the village and like harass the women, try to sleep with them and stuff.
¶86And so >> that's a very interesting cultural practice. >> So So one of them had done this and gone out of the village and came in saying he was Jesus, right? >> And and they were saying, "Yeah, and he they were saying Jesus, he has a really big penis and he kept trying to sleep with all the women and we don't like him." And I tell you what's so interesting about that anthropologically is obviously these people kind of clocked on to the you know like if you think about the imperialist nature of like evangelizing >> there's this guy turns up and he's trying to give you this culture that is like here's this Jesus guy you've got to and they and they expressed that in their symbolic life as one of these guys going out and coming in and like harassing the women and then they were like yeah we met him we don't like him he's not like you say and and to them that's like a perfectly fine thing to do. Um and it's but again it's it's just so interesting how again people from very different backgrounds would you know evaluate the claim of Jesus different from the claim of theism but when you think about these things from the perspectives of different actually existing cultures that are devoid of the kind of heritage and backdrop and stuff. it it's just way more interesting and different from, you know, this kind of thing that's basically going to be said as a story about why people rationally believe what they do.
¶87Um, to to go on, you know, the ultimate divergent tangent that's nothing to do with intrinsic probability. >> Well, it is it is relevant because the the fundamental criticism that I have is how on earth can this be assessed in any reliable way? And and my opinion is that it can't. And so arguments that depend on this type of reasoning should just be well I don't think we should use them or we should treat them with a lot of skepticism. Um and so that that's one of the criticisms that I want to level but also the way he's phrased it is just wrong.
¶88Like you the notion that it's prior to any empirical evidence is just not uh not tenable. It's it's prior to um certain empirical evidence and and specifying sort of exactly where to draw that line is very difficult. >> Yeah. And and I think um so I I think so Joe in his undergrad was at Purdue um where he was heavily influenced by Paul Draper and I think that Paul Draper I believe could someone can correct me on this if they if they're right but to my understanding he's the first so people have been trying to introduce like these methods and principles from formal epistemology of like basianism into philosophy of religion for a while he's not the first person to do that but I do think he's the first person to introduce the terminology ology intrinsic probability. So I think that >> I think that this kind of framework uh for being applied to evaluating natural theology and philosophy of religion comes from Paul Draper.
¶89I think it's in a book of his um about the problem of evil actually where he first does this. And and I think that Joe's adopted that from the kind of influence of of Draper on him. And then the problem is that I think that people get this um this this paradigm where they think they're doing something like evaluating things in an impersonal way and that they have this method of kind of producing sentences about likelihood comparisons and then they're actually like doing something right that's connected to the structure of the world in some reasonable way. And I don't think I I think for the considerations we've mentioned and some that we'll talk about later about other parts of that inference schema um they're not doing anything like that that instead I think what's going on is they're sort of I I think what this is is a post hawk narrativizing device that has the aesthetics of science that can be applied to anything to justify any position and and it and it's particularly powerful I think with theories that don't have any content to them or are like particularly weird and hard to reason about. And I think that that's why we'll see the um form of the problems that they lend themselves to be like, "Oh, isn't it weird how like this thing, this concept goes with this concept.
¶90Now, here's a way of thinking about that where there's >> you start preassociating and thinking that this is some sort of rigorous philosophical process." We'll we'll see Joe in my opinion do this in a number of cases. And this is again this is where I use the language of skepticism because my point of view is that this process is um radically under constrained um and does not sufficiently factor in how easy it is for us to fool ourselves um that we have good reasons and evidence for things that we don't really and then we're just playing into our biases. And so that's why um I take very seriously some of the criticisms that empiricists and skeptics have levied about this style of reasoning. And I don't think Joe takes those nearly as seriously as he should. is not the only one of course but um you know that's who we're focusing on here.
¶91>> Yeah. Right. Well uh just on your report. >> Yeah. So let's keep going.
¶92I think that was important to highlight the overarching differences but then let we'll dig into increasingly the details of how he goes about this intrinsic probability to begin with right like why can't we just look at the evidence? Well consider the following two hypotheses. Hypothesis one is spatial uniformity. The basic physical laws that govern the behavior of matter like massive bodies attract like charged particles repel etc. These these basic physical laws that govern the behavior of matter hold all throughout the universe.
¶93Compare that with the second hypothesis. We can call that anomalous patch. Those basic physical laws hold everywhere except for one tiny anomalous patch where for no reason at all the usual laws are suspended and matter obeys a completely different set of rules. >> It's going to be really hard to get through this video without pausing constantly. But I I I guess I'm immediately and and I was like this when I watched the video in the first instance.
¶94There's just so much stuff that gets introduced that is so contentious as a way of framing or thinking about anything to even begin with at all because like what basically looking at this what I immediately think is like hang on like what is going on? Why even think about this at all? And what am I supposed to be imagining? because this kind of assumes me having so much knowledge about like physics, the history of science, philosophy of science, and taking very specific views on those things to to for for my opinion to be worth anything on evaluating either of these questions. But then I actually think the it kind of works the opposite way because it's like, well, if you're maximally ignorant of all those things, you can actually read these questions and you're sort of like deluded.
¶95um brought into an illusion of you know maybe you imagine you read like spatial uniformity and maybe you think of like um a 2D image of a rectangle or something I don't know or maybe when it says laws you think of um like I I don't know what you think of maybe you think of like Newton and an apple I have no idea what people >> well he gives some examples later imagining well I know you can give example but but what I mean is if if you think for the for the average person who doesn't even have a bachelor's in physics not that that would even be necessary necessarily relevant expertise for your opinion to be important to answering, you know, relevant to answering these questions like and then you think of like anomalous patch. What do you think of like a hole in the universe? What what do you even think of? Like what are you imagining and why is what you're imagining relevant to anything at all? Right?
¶96Because for example, I remember when I started like A-level physics and we did a bunch of stuff um like you know experimentally about um the SUV equations and laws of motion and things like that to to introduce them and use them and pe like people's intuitions or their immediate approaches and understandings of how things work were just completely wrong for like most things like people didn't understand how defraction worked, how photovoltaic effects worked, how how how even motion worked. Like people just had sort of like one one example that stood out to me was you know like when people record a parachute jump and you see that video a lot where like one person opens the parachute and they go up. So there was a belief that someone had that when the parachutes opened you like go up for a time and then keep coming down which is obviously like a relative the the point being that until people have like really thought about a whole bunch of stuff and seen a load of things like what they believe when when you ask them about like physical laws h without reading so much of the history of physics and science how can you even you know even for working physicists today let's They're going to be focused on some very specific and important relevant problem, but they're not going to be like looking at the the history of the concept of law and how it's changed and why it's changed and whether that is the appropriate concept to use today or not, which would be like this is just such a ridiculous and in my opinion useless way of thinking about anything that I don't don't think anyone is in a you know, and it just really sets the stage for like anything that follows from this is just going to be nonsense. Excuse me. So, um Joe's purpose in introducing this example is to highlight the importance of simplicity in reasoning about uh well prior probabilities essentially.
¶97So, I'm want to let that play out and then discuss this example. I I agree with what you said. What what one other thing that I'll mention is that I think that you can't really deploy this example without you shouldn't deploy an example like this without saying something about what physical laws even are supposed to be. And he does discuss this later. um here he's just using it as an illustration of the importance of simplicity.
¶98So we we'll get to we can discuss more about laws when when he brings that up. Um but yeah, I think that throughout the video the way that he often does this is he just throws an argument at the audience without defining and and building up key terms and assumptions that it makes and then he hi but then he will discuss some of those issues but he does so when responding to criticisms and I don't really like that approach. makes it sort of disjointed um and and sort of hides the assumptions that you're making as under like responses to rebuttals rather than bringing them for foremost at the front to highlight this is how I'm building the argument. So that's this is just sort of an example of that style. I I think the point is though like so you know we we presumably maybe there's an odd exception we all believe in spatial uniformity like that's a belief we have and nothing that we're doing in this video is asking the question why do we believe that and can we even intellectually empathize with a position where someone genuinely doesn't believe that and what that means right >> so we're not doing either of those things so obviously anomalous patch is is a narrative narratival enemy, right?
¶99And so we're already we're going to believe spatial uniformity and not believe anomalous patch, right? Coming into it. And then he's going to cast our beliefs about that or whatever we say in some probabilistic language without justifying the use of that probability to say this is a case where you clearly used the notion of intrinsic probability in basian apparatus. No, you didn't. You already believed that.
¶100And now what he's trying to do is sort of like convince you that that's what you were doing all along. And I this is what annoys me because it's the same thing that happens, you know, like when you criticize fine-tuning or psychophysical harmony and the modes of inference that are used and then people, we'll talk about this later, but people go to the um like awesome theistic evidence arguments made by God written in the sky, whatever. I'll get to that. >> But my point being like there might be something that you independently think about two different statements. you might believe one over the other but that doesn't mean that you believe that on the basis of this kind of basian methodology that's being um offered here right so I the reason that I want to catch this here is cuz as people go through this I believe they will have a sympathy for spatial uniformity over anomalous patch but is that because you know they're applying that can we infer from that that there is one methodology to rule them all and now that methodology is appropriate for evaluating how samples called mental states vary with samples called physical states and whether you know and and we can like pick them like balls from an from from an urn of balls and imagine like this one pairing with this one or you know have we established any of that the methodology been good for reasoning about a case like that from the fact that we believe in spatial uniformity over anomalous patch I don't think that we have or will I think instead we're just taking something people already believe and then we'll go see you're already doing basianism and that's intrinsic probability for you.
¶101It's just drawing the circle around exactly you know the where the arrow >> and that's that's one of the things I like to do with my responses is to highlight um just different ways of thinking about this. So to take the example of special uniformity versus anomalous patch I think there are different ways of understanding why we believe that that don't involve exactly the same way of uh framing like intrinsic probability and simplicity the way that Joe does. There's some overlaps, but I I would I describe things fairly differently and I'll give an example of that later. So, that is a good thing to highlight that um Joe often Joe often chooses examples that he uses to highlight his point. And I reacted in some past videos to this where I get frustrated at the choice of examples which just seem sort of often contrived or irrelevant.
¶102And and regardless, being able to choose an example that highlights being able to choose an example and deploy your tool to show how it works in that example doesn't actually show that the tool is a good tool. It just shows that you can use it in that case. But often Joe doesn't really make this distinction and this is an example here. Maybe we should play out what he actually does with his level saying. >> Yeah.
¶103>> So those are two hypotheses that we should consider. >> Now most would agree that it's more reasonable to accept the first theory than the second. >> But our scientific evidence is about equally good for both. Right. If there's just one tiny patch >> I that's just not true.
¶104It >> Yeah. Well, so that's that's where I disagree that but let's hear how he describes it then we can react. >> Minuscule patch governed by different equations then it's astronomically unlikely that we would have found it. So the two theories predict our observations about equally well. If we really are justified in thinking spatial uniformity is much more probable than anomalous patch, then there must be something about the former hypothesis that makes it more probable in itself.
¶105No, no, no. That that also isn't true. That this is like um you know like when you look again at like the history of physics and you go why did Newton do the things that he did? Um what for for anything? Oh, are you there James?
¶106Have you James James has popped off the Are you there? >> I don't know if it's Hello. >> One of our internets. Okay, cool. You're back.
¶107You're back. One of our internets went away. the the point being right the the kind of thing that Joe's talking about here and he's going to basically be arguing that paramin he's going to be arguing for paramin as um as being cashed out better in terms of his basian approach and this conceptualization of intrinsic probability which isn't something anyone actually uses people don't talk about intrinsic probability if they are using basian methods but um The actual examples in the history of science here are like typically wrong. So for like what one example that always occurs to me is like John Dalton initially hypothesized that the struct the chemical structure of water was hydrogen monoxide and his reasoning was because that would be simpler and God prefers simplicity, right? And and you know John Dalton in that case was completely mistaken and and you could argue he I would I would say John Dalton was not thinking in these basian intrinsic probability terms but you you know if you wanted to do this thing that Joe's doing you could say oh he you know he would have said the intrinsic probability of hydrogen monoxide is higher right so often when you actually look at the history of science cases where people have applied this kind of reasoning just turn out to actually be on the wrong side of of where science landed.
¶108But but the other thing is that typically this just isn't what scientists are doing when they're asking questions like they're not going you know they might be they're doing a lot of things and there might be some overall like research question that's trying to be approached and people might be thinking like how do I create an experiment that makes sense of this problem domain or they might be like reading papers to kind of like get more of an understanding of what's going on in that area or whatever and they might be like going to conferences and talking about these is, but they're not just like abstractly thinking of like noun terms and assigning probabilities to them like the probability of naturalism or like anomalous patch. What's the probability of anomalous patch even in the case in in the case of um because sometimes people will refer to like um the discovery of the Higs Bosen or something like that, right? scientists didn't sit back and go what do what what am what's my subjective credence towards um the higs bosen existing and then sort of like assigned some probabilities based off that instead what they had is physical models based off of how this things behaves and and those models defined what measurements a sensor would make under certain conditions and then that sensor produces um a probability distribution such that you can create that experiment which then tells you if you take if you create that experimental setup and take those actual measurements whether that distribution is in line with that model or a different model if you if your model is wrong and that's exactly where the probabilities come from that's what the discovery of the higosa means that people had theoretically thought about this and they had uh you know they defined how the sensor should interact with the thing if it's there and then they would observe a different um pattern if if it wasn't there Right. Um and and so they they're not just thinking like what is the probability of this versus that in general. They're literally understanding the world and modeling it and and the the um the definitions and assignments of probabilities are coming off of the empirical models and not just kind of like some vibes based like oh just think of spatial uniformity and anomalous patch or think of a world where the Higs bosen exists and think of a world where it doesn't and like how do you feel about that?
¶109That's that's just not what anyone is doing. >> Yes. And this this is I think that's linked to what I would say about this point which is that I mean there's a sense in which you can say the spatial uniformity hypothesis is simpler. Um but I I don't actually agree. So what I don't agree with Joe is when he says that our the physical evidence is equivalent for both because um for both hypothesis the way that I would describe this is that our fundamental uh descriptions of the laws of nature so general relativity and um uh the standard model of of particle physics and quantum field theory that underpins that.
¶110Um all of those theories um or let me rephrase that. In none of those theories do we have a way of describing an anomalous patch. Um so our theories are predicated on spatial and also temporal uniformity of things like um Lorent invariance the idea that the um like the speed of light is the same in all reference frames. The laws of physics are the same in all reference frames. So the and that there's extreme there's very strong empirical evidence that that that holds.
¶111Obviously it's not we can't be certain that it holds. There could always be an anomalous data that comes in but the evidence is very strong. Um and there's also a lot of symmetry arguments that underpin um that underpin the way that we write um the equations like the lrunchions and the um in the the standard model and those symmetry arguments have been vindicated through from many sorts of empirical um uh empirical studies in the past. So the point is that we have very very strong reasons for thinking that special uniformity holds. Um not not as I said overriding like there's always it's always fallible.
¶112There could always be new evidence that overcomes them. But there's just no rival model. There's no rival physical model uh that would describe an anomalous patch in this way. If a scientist could come up with something that would predict be predictive of data, then we would consider that model and evaluate it against alternatives. But there just I just there just isn't one.
¶113And there's very strong reasons for thinking the spatial and temporal uniformity holds. So I just don't agree with the way that Joe's framed this intrinsic probability. >> This is the problem with his framing though because he operationalized anomalous patch in a way where it made no empirical difference cuz he said you know all our observations would be the same. Well then what is the theory then? How how does your theory differ from no theory?
¶114It doesn't it you haven't actually if you have a theory you must be making a claim about different observations that would be expect. So, so for example, if he actually said if you look at this region of space, you will observe this, right? Or something like that, then he actually has a theory about an anomalous patch and then you can look at that part of space and you can say, "Oh, no, spatial uniformity is the true theory rather than that one." But he doesn't do that. He he instead creates an an unfals a nothing. he a nothing theory but calls it anomalous patch and then says you've now shown how good this method is for um differentiating between incorrect and correct theories but he hasn't done any of that he's just done nothing >> yeah I I think so Joe said Joe's view would be that well an attempt to steal man what Joe would say is that the anomalous patch theory is basically just taking our current theories and then sort of imagining somewhere in an undetectable region of space or time there's there's somewhere that the laws don't apply or they apply differently, right?
¶115And his point would be that our empirical evidence by definition can't rule that out because it's undetectable. So why is it that we don't believe that relative to like probably we don't think that that actually is the case. Why do we think that relative to the special uniformity case? His answer is because the spatial uniformity case has a higher prior probability because of its simplicity. That's Joe's answer.
¶116My answer is that we don't really have a rival theory that would describe the anomalous patch result. And by contrast, we do have a very predictive theory that's been invalidated many times that assumes social uniformity. And I think that's a reason to favor that theory. I don't think you have to frame that in terms of the prior probability. I think you can you can describe it in terms of comparative predictive success of competing theories.
¶117And in the anomalous patch case, there isn't even a competing theory. Yeah, that mean that there's just not a lot to say about that. that that's what I'm I'm trying to say there because whether or not anomalous patch is a direct observation you know maybe it's not directly observable or whatever but it must be in a theory that makes some difference in some way right that's my point there is no rival theory that that describes that even if we haven't been able to detect the evidence yet there's just no rival theory for such a thing I mean there are some examples you can give of of physics which have uh which postulate particles that haven't been predict sorry that haven't been yet detected or different models of dark matter and things like this. But those are rival theories that do make different predictions. It's just we haven't validated them yet.
¶118>> But if if the point that's trying to be made is that anomalous patch is empirically equivalent to spatial uniformity, then I don't think either theory that then I think whatever you're doing, you're just using a different word for the same thing. Do do you see what I'm saying? So if if spatial uniformity means that we observe what we observe and like the regularities we observe and all the scientific observations that we make but anomalous patch which isn't any particular observable thing but is embedded somehow in a theory that is exactly the same. It can't be different from spatial uniformity. I don't know what you've done but you are just using the word to mean spatial uniformity.
¶119you know, like you're not you're not doing anything with it. You're not it's it doesn't >> say our fundamental equations just do not admit of solutions that have anomalous patches in them, right? So you you have to postulate some rival theory, but then what does that look like? So if and if it's just the same, if you say anomalous patch is literally the then you've just done nothing. You've not actually introduced an anomalous patch, you know?
¶120>> Yeah. Yeah. So I I don't know maybe Joe would say something like he imagines taking our I think the way he's thinking about it is taking our equations and like general relativity and the standard model and saying they apply everywhere except for this one place that's really far away and we can't observe. But in my view that is just incoherent because our current theories just don't allow that to happen. You you can't just special out single out a special because you have to like deal with the boundary conditions and the symmetries that apply to that and it's just inconsistent with the way those equations work.
¶121So what you're actually saying you have to postulate a rival theory that would and he doesn't have a rival theory >> that does differentiate from spatial uniformity in some way and then you have a basis to compare and then you can actually compare right and so otherwise you're just saying nothing. >> Yeah. So I I I it's a different way of conceptualizing what science is doing and um that that sort of highlights I I so I don't agree with this with the way that Joe's framed it. Um, and I don't think it makes sense to say that our basic physical laws hold everywhere except for this one spot. I think that that's just to say that those laws are wrong, but then well, what's the rival that's better evidence?
¶122Well, there isn't one. So, I just I don't think we need to. I guess the way one way to frame is do we need to talk about >> to resolve this issue and my opinion is we don't it's not really that sorry, I seem to be having internet problems. I don't I can't see anything on my end. Maybe.
¶123>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Anyway, the point is I don't think we need to postulate intrinsic probability, at least in this case, to really assess assess this issue. Um, yeah. Yeah.
¶124Well, there's going to be so much more coping today, like >> hours more coping. But anyway, so >> that yeah, that's why I think that this this example just sort of doesn't really establish what he wants it to establish is what I would say in terms of the importance of intrinsic probability. >> But then and just to, you know, labor the point even more, this is the good case. This is, you know, someone left a comment on one of your videos saying when even uh when even hyp hypothetical imaginary evidence isn't good enough to establish the point that you're trying to make. And it's like it's like that with all these cases where they introduce these like crappy thought experiments and imaginary evidences and even those are actually not good enough to work when they've been invented and imagined just for motivating, you know, the framework that they want to motivate.
¶125And that's the only reason that this thought experiment exists. And it's still, you know, just nonsense. Anyway, all right, let's continue. In other words, spatial uniformity's advantage is primarily due to a higher prior probability before taking into account any empirical evidence. The same can be seen through the examples of these two hypotheses.
¶126Temporal uniformity says that the fundamental laws of nature hold at all times. And then the second hypothesis here is induction failure. that says that the fundamental laws of nature hold all the way up until 2050 and then for no reason stop holding at some point in 2050. Again, both of these hypotheses predict our data equally well. And yet, we all recognize that temporal uniformity is far more likely than induction failure.
¶127So, there must be something about temporal uniformity that makes it more likely independently of the empirical evidence. Yeah, but this is this is the same point. So I think that this highlights a failure of this approach because we can talk about spatial uniformity but our fundamental scientific theories do not distinguish between spatial and temporal uniformity. They treat um space time as four dimensional. So they can't be meaningfully separated in the theories.
¶128You you could you could postulate rival theories which did that but again then then you need to show what your rival theory is and how it predicts the same data. It's the same with induction failure. If temporal uniformity holds then I think it's but that's how I would sorry >> a good joke a really good joke here is well we may this may also be a similar problem when it comes to um psychophysical harmony in the concept as well just you know the concept just taking they're different words so >> yeah exactly I I think that this yeah you words are different so we pull concepts apart in that way and you know that can be useful for >> thinking but well imagining Right. But to base conclusion strongly on that, I think thinking you can do this a priority in particular is where it falls flat. Because again from my point of view of thinking about the laws of nature, our laws, the the fundamental laws of nature as we understand them just do not admit solutions that are consistent with lack of temporal uniformity of the basic laws or of induction failures just arbitrary induction failures because um space and time are bound together in four-dimensional spaceime.
¶129They're not separated out. It depends on your reference frame. We have principles like the rented variance which allow us to very confidently predict that these things won't happen. The principles that underpin uh those laws have been demonstrated to be um accurate many in many they've made many risky predictions and so I think that there's very good reason to hold them. Now again that doesn't the point of all of that is not I'm not saying that Joe would disagree with that.
¶130What I'm highlighting here is that he us Joe's using these examples to try to show that we need to think about intrinsic prior probability and particularly simplicity of theories. I'm highlighting a different way of thinking about why we hold these beliefs about temporal uniformity uniformity so forth that does not need to appeal to this notion in the way that Joe does. >> Yeah. And I think even the um induction failure case, the the I think he's drawing from the grew grammar rules case. >> There's a whole big debate about that.
¶131>> But but but I I think even this way of thinking about things, it highlights like another mistake that I think is latent in this way of thinking, which is this raification of laws. Because it's not it's weird if you think like, oh, there are these things called laws and they're like guard rails on the universe or something. But if if you think of laws as like descriptions of how um you know like things work basically right regular. >> Yeah. We'll get to that though because he has a whole section on nomological harmony where he gets into this.
¶132>> But but just the point being like maybe there is some way that stuff is such that at the date that happens to be 2050, you know, there's some process that's happening that changes and that happens to be the date why and things happen differently and so maybe like there would be an induction failure but then we would have a different model that where we tried to make sense of why that change happened or whatever. So the the point being that it it's like if you know nothing about anything and imagine like oh imagine if stuff was just different in 2050 you're going to have like a weird feeling. You're going to be like oh that would be weird. I guess I need intrinsic probability now right but but maybe but if you like have a scientific mindset you think oh if I made a new observation what would I do? Oh I try and explain it.
¶133Is that weird? No. Like yeah it's possible I make a new observation sure but I currently believe what I believe. There's not like an issue here that I need intrinsic probability to solve. >> Yeah.
¶134And and that's that's the whole point. Not Yeah. Not to say that yeah, we disagree exactly with these examples, but it's more that the Joe was highlighting them as cases where you need intrinsic probability to resolve them. And you know, for something like induction failure, I'm more as an empiricist, the way I think about things, I'm more likely to say, well, our fundamental theories are predicated upon certain symmetries which just rule this out. And we have very very good reason to accept those theories.
¶135in in um in um quantum field theory uh or like the standard model field theories that underpin that um we assume um we assume a um invariance with respect to uh spatial translations and that gives rise to conservation of momentum. We also assume an invariance of temporal translations and that gives rise to conservation of energy and those predictions have those underlying assumptions have then generated predictions which have been validated like enormously right with with so many examples that one of our some of our most um well uh like precisely verified theories that we have. So I if I was to count in some sort of radical failure of those laws in 2050, I would I would have to then rethink the theories that have been extremely well validated which have as underlying postulates that these things can't happen. And so for me as an empiricist that's the the validation of those theories is is a reason why I don't think that we I'm not worried about induction failure and I just don't feel the need to talk about intrinsic probabilities. Now, one can use that language if they like, but I just don't it's I don't think it's essential.
¶136And I don't think that these examples really highlight that we have to appeal to this in a way that's then going to warrant use of intrinsic probabilities in other cases like God. >> And and that's kind so the point is like so then now imagine you make a new observation in 2050. What do you do? Well, still don't appeal to intrinsic probability, you know, then I just it depends on the kind of observation >> our theories if we're disconfirmed >> and that's what we do all the time and would want to do like in those circumstances. It's not >> I think simplicity is relevant in theory comparison, but that's a nuance topic.
¶137I've talked about this like Matt AD before, but the way that Joe is framing it as like it's the crucial criterion uh that is the only sort of way we can resolve these these fundamental problems. Um I just I don't agree with that >> actually. Paul Paul Fire Robbin uh makes a good point in against method where he talks about how at the time uh the Catholic church's uh geocentric model was the simpler model at the time and how the Catholic Church actually um were more were operating more in accordance with uh reason and that there were actually all these you know part of the reasoning in Galileo's um taking his research program forward were like these weird app priori arguments about how like microscopes worked and things how our telescopes worked and things like that that like other people didn't believe and the point being that if you look at the actual history of science there isn't this like uniform story where people apply like this reasoning framework either of parimony or intrinsic probability and then that is always the right one. there's just like a bunch of weird stuff that has happened and maybe that doesn't mean that there aren't like norms today that we might try to hold to in certain situations. We might go how do I want to think about this and what might the relevant norms be but also I think we have to take into account that we might come across all kinds of weird situations where our norms fail and we need to think of new modes of inference and so this idea of like one norm to rule them all especially when it's a norm that like nobody has ever even used anyway is just like really bad.
¶138>> Yeah. And I don't think Joe is exactly postulating this as a norm for scientific inference. He's more just using it as a justificatory framework for why we should accept these things. >> Yeah. Well, I guess he's kind of he's kind of like I think what he would say is these are metaphysical questions and this is like a use of metaphysics.
¶139But I I actually just I don't buy that. I actually just think they're physics. And I think that then physics provides like both methodological and first order reasons about like why you know I think what Joe is doing here is like basically asking people to reason about problems of physics but just without any of the tools of physics that are required to do that and then he's saying and see like here's a methodology that you can use if you want to do that with me >> something gives temporal uniformity a greater intrinsic probability or prior and notice that even if there's lots of evidence And notice that even though there's lots of evidence for induction failure, you know, because it like predicts our predicts the data that we currently have pretty well, it still doesn't warrant our belief since it's just too prohibitively improbable from the get- go. And this shows that we need to attend >> like for for who? For the guy who believes in induction failure for, you know, >> it doesn't really tell us why it's so improbable even using this framework.
¶140>> For for the guy for the Catholic who believes Jesus will return and presumably suspend the laws of nature. Well, by the way, yeah, this is a especially odd example for for people who believe in miracles where the laws of nature are are suspended in some ways or radically changed, which is interesting because then if it's so prohibitively improbable, you would think that you would just always you you would take the human route of saying, well, look, our uniform testimony of the laws of nature is such is always going to overwhelm any abnormalities. So that is an odd thing for >> someone click it and we'll play it every time we talk about the pigmat of Padre Peio. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶141Yeah. To theism's intrinsic probability. if we want to mount an evidential case for theism since even if we have a lot of evidence for something that won't matter if it's prohibitively improbable from the get-go. So we got to look at the miracles cases but that's really sorry let's keep it >> of a hypothesis. One factor is modesty.
¶142A hypothesis is modest to the extent that it's unspecific or true in a wide range of possible scenarios. for example, >> and I I I'm going to comment on this as well, and I'm sorry for just commenting on everything and like waste everyone's time, but I I guess like there was a point in my thinking where I kind of got into and I guess through opy these kind of like lists of um virtues for comparison and stuff like that. But I I think my current view is just much more contextualist because I've been try I've tried to make myself I've thought like when do I care about reasoning about things and it's usually when there's like a question that I've evaluated as like meaningful and tractable and important to something I care about. Okay. And and I guess I found most metaphysical questions to not be of that kind.
¶143But what I have found is that then in any of those particular cases, you're usually in a field or adjacent to a field which will kind of like provide you with some methodological standards that you can apply and some of them may like kind of resemble some of the like you know virtue lists that Joe's going to give or like you know some IB type thing or maybe there'll be some kind of like basianish type approach or whatever or you know some uh null hypothesis null hypothesis significance testing will be the right thing for that or whatever. The point being that there's lots of different tools in the box of how to think about things. Um, and I I I guess I I think that these lists of virtues, they can kind of be good for some things, but they they are like limited. And I think what I'm particularly skeptical of is how good they are for these cases that I think are like actually cases of like physics um and and reasoning about about those cases in particular that you can you can find some examples sure where it seems to be kind of right but I'm not the problem is that they're so and maybe they're also all right for like evaluating like miracle claims or something like that as well. I might I might be more okay with them in in that domain.
¶144But but overall, I just don't I don't think that these are like particularly good criteria for um rationally evaluating claims of metaphysics. And I I I guess I would say I don't know that I think that there are any particularly good criteria that you know like should be adopted because there's so many different things people are trying to do in metaphysics. You you probably disagree slightly with that James. I don't know or maybe there's bits of it but >> yeah I mean this is a very deep issue. What I would say is we definitely need to move more quickly if we're to finish this video.
¶145So, why don't we why don't we get through this? Okay. >> The claim that someone died is more modest than the claim that Ethan Muse died, which is more modest than the claim that Ethan Muse was murdered, which is more modest still than the claim that Ethan Muse was murdered after 8 a.m. mass by a fathom skeptic. >> Like modest, you know, like another factor is simplicity.
¶146Prior should encode a preference for >> and like how are these just not actually the same thing thought about in different ways? >> Theories. Most philosophers agree that simplicity has something to do with how many fundamental that is unexplained kinds of entities the theory posits and also something to do with the elegant >> and also like when it comes to adding numbers how do any of these things have to do with why a number is justified you know um so how someone feels so so that you know the belief is or the model is that how someone feels about these words when thinking about something makes them produce a number that is related to the structure of reality even though reality isn't comprised of different epistemic possibilities. Like all of it is bizarre to me. >> This first point, how many fundamental kinds of entities are there is absolutely crucial for Joe's thinking.
¶147So I want to underline that. But I want to talk about that more when he makes it clear why that's important. >> Also, what like what makes something a principle versus a fundamental principle? Like what just fundamental kinds? I'm sort of dubious of the two >> or brevity of the theory's basic laws or principles.
¶148The preference for simpler theories is a standard diagnosis of what's wrong with conspiracy theories, right? Like to fit all the data, the conspiracy theory needs to get extremely complicated and this complexity makes it less probable. Curve fitting is another example. >> Exactly. Like why think that um people who are Catholics and believe in miracles would see some kind of um event in the sky when we know the sun and the atmosphere do things and people are prone to producing reports when like it could just simply be like Mary appeared as spinning lights.
¶149Um you know that's like just some kind of like conspiracy theory of like cloud conspiracies and things. Suppose the observed data approximately fit the hypothesis that Y is a simple linear function of X. Scientists will typically prefer the linear model to a more complicated model that zigs and zags to hit every data point. >> I mean typically this is again and I'm sorry everyone but this is not it's sort of true in some context. Is it always true?
¶150I mean think about what every where's everyone getting funding for today right machine like nonparametric models machine learning models of XY Z. What are they doing? Well, they're doing this, right? That's the problem. The overfitting problem.
¶151The point being like, you know, linear regression has its place in history for certain things. Um, there's this time where people are kind of experimenting with fitting things more directly to data and seeing where that goes. You can have philosophical objections, but the point is that people are just trying out different things and kind of seeing what works and what the state things is. And is it true that generally people will do one thing over another? Maybe.
¶152Is that explained by pedagogy and sociological effects more than success? Maybe is it explain like you could even explain suppose that the norm be becomes just fit some deep learning model to your data in every other case. How would you explain that? Well, probably in virtue of like the economics of capitalism and how much money has gone to these companies and that there's like only funding for that in universities and stuff over these traditional approaches which people got bored with rather than that they're like super good and scientific or whatever. So this is like a complicated philosophy of science question that is just being introduced.
¶153It isn't and and even if you believed it which you can it's not because of intrinsic probability that people are doing that. >> Yeah. Um linear line it is common to make assumptions about linearity. Um often I I don't think those are often justified by intrinsic probability or or should um but it really does depend on the system. Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes not.
¶154It depends on the relationship that you're postulating and the type of noise that you're trying to model and other things like that. But uh so yeah uh this is a specific example to illustrate a point. I don't know how broadly this applies but again I will say that we we will not be able to take issue with every example that he mentions because we'll never get anywhere. Sorry. >> Yeah.
¶155But but I'm just like I'm just saying like what what would people do this? Is it because they have is it because everyone like has this intrinsic probability thing that they're doing that they've never heard of before so they have to be taught in this video? Or is it because a part of everyone's course involves a textbook on on >> I think that in many cases it's simply that it's a trackable starting point and nonlinearity becomes very difficult to deal with in many systems where we don't have enough data and so um we we start with linear assumptions. Um but generally people recognize that that's not going to be the case in most cases but yeah there's a long discussion to be had about that which is it's glossing over here. The latter theory might achieve an even better fit with the data, but it has extra parameters that make it more complex and this complexity makes it less probable.
¶156Return also to our examples of spatial uniformity and anom >> but not again sorry but not necessarily to our subjective basian who could believe anything about >> that highlights the point. Yeah. What constraints patch? We saw that spatial uniformity, the hypothesis that the same physical equations hold throughout the universe, has a higher intrinsic probability than the theory that those equations hold everywhere except for one small anomalous patch. Possibly that's because the uniform hypothesis is simpler in some sense.
¶157The relevant kind of simplicity has to do with how succinctly one can completely describe the fundamental elements of the theory. And again, I I dis I don't know if you have thoughts on this, but I really dislike this because you can invent new language for anything, right? in terms of describability. Well, yes, we'll get to that. >> The number of bits in a sentence is one way I I think that this is like this idea of information that has taken what was useful in communications theory when you are trying to understand how a telegraph wire works or whatever, right?
¶158Because then you care about, you know, the bits in transmission or whatever. and then kind of like raified this idea of information as like having something to do with like propositions or meanings. And so it's like well if it's expressible in fewer bits then it's like simpler or there's like less to the proposition but that's just not true like you know you could you can just invent new language or use different language and h >> I I think it's appropriate in >> when there's a sufficient context that specifies basically that has where it's clear that a certain description is appropriate um and then you can compare different messages or hypothesis or whatever in a in a shared description when we're going to be talking about naturalism versus theism that neutral language simply doesn't exist and so I think that that this framework is not going to work how concisely you can describe something but I think there are ways to highlight the problems that theism does face under that which is what I wanted to get to later >> but yeah I mean what Joe was going to say essentially is you can describe the god hypothesis very concisely and so it's simple that's the underlying point that he's going to make but uh >> you can describe anything we'll get to that let's >> what's sufficient is sufficient yeah >> by the way like the fundamental elements of a theory are those taken as given by the theory rather than explained by other elements of sufficient for an incurious with selective skepticism. Sorry, like you know, and I don't mean I don't think you're a Joe, if you ever listen to this, but like that is what has to be right for this method to work. Describing physics on the uniform theory requires just one set of physical equations.
¶159But describing physics on the anomalous patch theory requires describing the set of laws posited by the uniform theory plus another set of laws describing the patterns in the special patch plus a specification of which laws govern which parts of space. This kind of simplicity might be called compressibility. Now the anomalous patch world is harder to compactly describe without information loss >> in Chinese where there's different characters in you know there's so many problem as you said we'll get there. Yeah, this is actually this is this is why there's discussion about this in grew because the the idea of grew is that like it's green up until some point in the future and then it's and then it's blue and people say well that's more complicated because you need to specify two different words but people pointed out well you can reverse the way that language works and and define if your basics are grew then you can say it's uh it's grew up to a certain oh I forget exactly the word but you can like instead of defining green and blue as basics it's grew and antigrew or something and then and then and then the homogeneity hypothesis um becomes more complicated to describe. And so I think it is it's more there's more to simplicity than just describability because that is dependent on the language you're using.
¶160Again, that doesn't mean this notion of compressibility is irrelevant. I think it's quite important, but it needs to be constrained and applied well in the particular context. And I I don't think Joe is really showcasing how important that aspect is. I I I think if you're in a domain with um what should I say like like an uncontested ontology where the primitives in the language will have some the primitive in the theoretical uh languages will have some parity to the bit length of the words used to describe then there's something to the compressibility of the the statements that are being made about different scenarios because then that will have a homorphism to like the complexity of the scenario. IO right and and you can meaningfully like reason about that.
¶161>> Yeah. So that's why we can use these approaches to compress files. Um and some files can be compressed more than others because the um amount of information there as represented in number of bits is is different uh depending on like how much noise there is in the file and how much homogeneity there is. Like an all red image compresses much more than one that has very complex noise patterns because you can describe it in a much simpler language in terms of the underlying bits. When it comes to comparing God with naturalism, it's just not as clear what the what the what the shared language is supposed to be.
¶162And that's and also we we're not describing things at the same level of precision, which is another issue. In order to regenerate a file, you have to be able to describe it at the at the level of in the case of an image reproducing the exact bit sequence, which is a very precise level of description. But Joe doesn't actually have that level of description when it comes to God and his actions. And I actually think that that's where I can levy this criticism against him because I think God is much more complex. uh even though you can use simple language but that language I think >> hides a lot of the complexity but I think we'll see that coming forward when we see what he's going to do with this structure that he's building >> or you you you could go full graham priest and have the nothing you know it's just null pointer explains everything there's just no it doesn't how are you going to compress null >> notice also that the spatial uniformity hypothesis is far less modest than the anomalous patch hypothesis since there many many many more ways that the latter could be true than that the former could be true.
¶163Right? Like there's only one way that the spatial uniformity hypothesis can be true. Namely, the relevant set of equations hold everywhere. Whereas there's an >> uh well this is partly a fe this is more a feature of Joe not specifying anomalous patch as an actual >> anomalous patch is a class of theories which is the issue that it's not predictive because it so there's certainly things to say about why it's not a good hypothesis but again is how to best characterize those and is intrinsic probability >> and you could because you could have a class of theories that are spatial uniformity theories which would make sense of the observations and have changes about future predictions. or past, you know, like which would then change what you would say about the universe at a point in time in the future, right?
¶164Or something like that. And it would be spatial uniformity but different from the one that we have which >> Yeah. So actually one one way to critic to say this differently is that the spatial uniformity is better because anomalous patch is underspecified. It doesn't specify which patch is anomalous. If you did, then the difference in simplicity would be well, there would still arguably be some, but it would be significantly lessened.
¶165The way that Joe described it is that you could put the anomalous patch anywhere at any point in spaceime. And so there's a huge range of of theories there, which is true, but you could spec you could you could describe that in terms of underspecification rather than simplicity. And this will be relevant when we talk about God. >> Yeah. >> Infinite number of ways the anomalous patch hypothesis could be true.
¶166One for every candidate location of the anomalous region. And this shows that an advantage with respect >> at least he doesn't just say Beth too for no reason. So >> back to simplicity can overcome a disadvantage with respect to modesty. And the same is true of temporal uniformity and induction failure. Right?
¶167There's only one way for the laws of physics to hold at all times but infinitely many ways for the laws of physics to randomly stop at some time in 2050 like they could conceivably stop. >> Are there right? Because it depends on why there are laws. So this is again the problem of it it's the problem of not having a rich enough understanding of how anything works which means you can maybe imagine things that might be wrong like you know I think there's a lot of things I kind of think I can imagine but actually I shouldn't constrain I should constrain my reasoning more >> well we'll talk about that when we get to psychophysical harmony because I think that's the clearest case of this about whether we can imagine something >> 1 second past New Year's or 1.1 seconds past New Year's or 1.11 seconds past New Year's and so on. Add infinitum.
¶168Yet the temporal uniformity hypothesis is overwhelmingly more probable than the induction failure hypothesis. Hypothesis which posit fundamental uniformities just m >> is it actually though you know define define it exactly like give me a PDF. What are you doing? You know like why have you now used the word probability? Because if if any of this is right, if any of this is right, you should be able to actually just like show me the graphs, right?
¶169Just show me the graphs and and then the reason >> Well, he frames probability as conceptual, not numerical, which >> I think is also problematic. >> Yeah, >> but then yeah, and then and they could say one pushing on Nathan hypothesities. Another related factor that may account for spatial uniformity's higher intrinsic probability is that it does a better job of minimizing unexplained arbitrariness. >> If there were a small patch where the usual physical equations break down, we would naturally expect some kind where Mary appears as lights to people in Portugal. >> Yeah.
¶170>> Explanation for the anomaly. If instead they just arbitrarily failed to hold under a hypothesis, that detracts from the intrinsic plausibility of the hypothesis. And this point is illustrated in science with inverse square laws. Right? Like for hundreds of years, scientists justifiably held that the gravitational attraction between two bodies was inversely proportional to the square of their distance rather than their distance to the power of say 2.00000000129.
¶171Even though both of those hypotheses, you know, with enough zeros, both of those hypotheses fit the observational data equally well. Both two exactly and 2.00 that's actually a strange example because I thought that that was there's a geometric argument for that that it relates to the rate at which the the surface area of the sphere increases. So there's a reason why you think it's exact and not approximate. >> Maybe there are other examples that would be better there. I'm not sure.
¶172But a lot of cases where there's exact numbers like that, there are geometric reasons for why we think that is. And other parameters like the speed of light are not like they just they have arbitrary numbers of decimals that just need to be measured empirically. So I don't know that that's a very good example. >> But but then you if in terms of the history of physics or the history of natural philosophy, you can understand again why people would think that because they were learning maths through Uklid. So they would learn how to do proofs in uklidian geometry and then they'd go on to study physics and that and you can you know literally like look in people's diaries and so the point is if you want to understand why this stuff all of the actual facts about why are out there and it's not because people were like you know actually I think um for a very long time people were primarily thinking um geometrically with respect to trying to do things like physics as opposed to like numerically in terms of values which I think is actually a very recent phenomena which then is a product of the pedagogy of mathematics and physics changing such that people get more used to algebraic expressions which is actually something dayart introduces right the use of like algebraic expressions for representing um like a cartisian graph rather than simply just looking so so there there's there's loads of stuff here where there are answers in the history and And if you don't have any of that history, you will wrongly reason that people were doing this intrinsic probability thing when they weren't.
¶173You it's it's just a post hawk story that nobody was doing. We should also be cautious hearkening back to what we were saying before about the idea that we we acquire a bunch of tools to think about these sorts of things which are necessary to even engage in a priority uh reasoning. But the assumption that seems to be made by this approach is that the tools that we acquire, the the language and the way for thinking about it does not bias our conclusions in one way versus the other. That seems very unlikely that that would be true. It seems like the the language and framework you have for thinking about things is going to make certain things seem more likely even though if you had a different way of thinking about it then it maybe it wouldn't.
¶174And so that's another aspect as well like geometric versus say algebraic ways of think. >> Why did why did was special relativity discovered after the reman hypothesis? Right? Because the mathematical tools changed. >> Yeah.
¶175people stopped. People went, "Oh, you don't have to think on a uklidian plane." And then they applied the new tools that we have to making sense of stuff. It's 0129 are equally precise and equally modest. And yet an inverse square law is plausibly much more intrinsically probable because much less arbitrary than an inverse 2.0000129 law. Similar points apply to the speed of light.
¶176Before we had any empirical evidence about its speed, scientists assumed that it was infinite, which is distinctly non-arbitrary in a way that finite cutoffs aren't leading to a bias in the priors for the infinite value. >> Okay, this is a really weird statement for him to make because I think that this exposes him to internal incoherence because remember he said before and he will say about how very like very specific um arbitrary cut offs or arbitrary values are just extraordinarily improbable like the speed of light could theoretically be anything. As far as we know, it's it's a physical constant >> and um and we so we just have to measure it. But the precise value that it does have is overwhelmingly implausible given not impossible overwhelmingly a priori unlikely given the range of values that it could have and is very arbitrary. >> And so um I mean Joe himself will point this out when he talks about the finetuning argument.
¶177But the thing is that then shouldn't it require overwhelming empirical evidence to believe that it has that value instead of being infinite? Now maybe he would say but we do have that overwhelming amount >> even though there's no measure over infinite but yeah. >> Yeah. Well, that's where it becomes problematic. But I guess I guess the issue is here that if if as Joe says that the prior probability that the speed of light has the specific finite value that it does have is uh extremely arbitrary and and therefore the pri probability is extremely low.
¶178How much evidence is required to overcome that? And how does that then interface with some of the other things that he says are implausibly likely on their prior? And how much evidence would require? It's not maybe I shouldn't say it's not incoherent necessarily, but there's a story to tell there about how is it that we're able to gain sufficient evidence about this and how does that play into then other things that are extremely implausible? that that's where all the juicy detail is because I've noticed in conversations that Joe has um I've seen this a few times in his conversation with like Brian Curt for example is that there are locations that they will produce like and as long as you don't have prior uh sufficient as long as you don't have prior so low such that this update doesn't overcome them but that the whole it's like well yeah you're just describing literally like how the formula works which isn't informative as to the problem you're supposed to be implying it to the question is why is it that number and is that the right number and why is the likelihood that what like why are any of those values what they are and are those the right values and why should they be >> I think I didn't explain what I was trying to get at very well if you think the speed of light could be infinite or possibly any finite value any finite positive value the pro the probability that it has at least you know if if if you give a uniform distribution over the possible values which Joe does elsewhere the probability that it will have any specific finite value is zero.
¶179>> Yeah. >> And so no amount of >> undefined, right? One over infinite. >> Either zero or undefined. Yeah, that's fair.
¶180Um depending on how you treat, but either way, you can't there's no amount of evidence that can get you to update from that zero or undefined probability. >> Yes, if you were doing that. >> So that so then there's ways around this. There's ways around this. You can they can say that we should just draw a circle around where you want to land non-uniform prior and things like this.
¶181But again, it highlights the problem how problematic it is to say that specific empirical values that seem arbitrary have arbitrarily low prior because well then how do we get to believe in any of them and and whatever account maybe Joe can give an account there. I'm not saying he can't say anything but those accounts then may be relevant to how the naturalist will deal with cases where he says that we have these um these um overwhelmingly low prior probabilities. And so I I think that that there's a tension here. He that there are overwhelmingly low pride probabilities that Joe thinks have been overcome, but he doesn't say how he thinks that they've been overcome. And then when he presents other examples where we're supposed to have overwhelmingly low prior probabilities and he says they can't be overcome without God, the question will be well maybe we can deploy the same methods that have rendered uh you know rendered irrelevant the low prize that you know we had in these other cases according to his approach.
¶182>> Yeah. And someone says that's just frequent definition. It isn't actually um it is >> I'm not sure what was frequentist but I don't think anything we said was >> no hypothesis is coherence which is which is roughly how well the various parts or entailments of hypothesis fit together. A hypothesis is more coherent to the extent that the propositions that follow from it support each other and a hypothesis is less coherent to the extent that the propositions that follow from it disisconfirm or count against each other. Yeah, I I mean I disagree with this of course, but I think there's an evaluation of the statement the proposition to support each other that can be made sense of in terms of like what terms and theories mean and how those are cashed out in like things that scientists do and stuff like that.
¶183But I think that this kind of there's like a sort of myth of the idea of like propositions as like platonic things that sort of like glow more if they're like closer to each other or something. I don't obviously he's not saying this but but I have no idea this idea of um support where support isn't like um practi cashed out in terms of theoretical terms being involved in practices that people do um that can become experiments that they do you know where there's any connection from like theory through to practice >> well I think his connection is just like thinking about things essentially >> yeah but that's what I mean about like when I made the well like do they glow more as platonic forms or something like I just why why is that a guy? What does that mean? >> I think there's ways of caching that out, but it almost always requires some prior theory to to bring to bear that allows you to assess whether something fits together or not. Like you you know the classic example like of an of a married bachelor.
¶184It's like that just doesn't really make sense. That's not what a bachelor is. You know, they can't really >> like what does what does fittingness mean, right? And if and if you're dealing with these like pure propositions as Joe seems to be, how can a proposition not fit with another proposition because it doesn't have like spatial features or you know it's not um a contingent practice that someone socialized into saying or associating with other words. It's it's just a it's like a floating meaning.
¶185Do you know what I mean? Like how can it fit or not fit? >> Yeah. I mean there's ways to operationalize it, but I think you do you do need to operationalize it to to get it to make sense because without further context Yeah. It just just doesn't you can well to put it another way an arbitrary basian can just have any um arbitrary set of beliefs and even if they I mean even if they appear to flat out logically contradict each other you can just add ad hoc beliefs but that's okay you know kind of thing so it's you need more >> structure there's a quantum duplexer that makes the thing go into the thing and then they fit >> or like well you know God is three but also one which seems obviously contradictory well there's a whole lot that they have to say about how that's not contradictory so I think I I mean I'm a coherentist about justification.
¶186So I think that it's very important criteria, but I have a lot more to say about how that's assessed >> and um I wouldn't describe it this way. So but anyway, I I think that we could get off track if we spend too long talking about that. He also he also doesn't appeal to coherence that much. He really focuses a lot on the simplicity and arbitrariness. And so those are the two that I think are going to be most important.
¶187>> I'll say I really need the toilet. So if I >> Oh, good. Then we'll get through without >> I was going to say then you'll get through more of the video than you've got through so far. You'll just have to make angry expressions at the screen if he says things that you don't like. >> That's fine.
¶188>> All else being equal, more coherent hypotheses are more probable than less coherent hypotheses. Note that coherence comes in degrees. A maximally incoherent hypothesis is one that's you know like logically inconsistent or contradicts other things we can know a priori from the armchair independently of sense experience. But other hypotheses suffer from a degree of incoherence even though they're not maximally incoherent. For example, a theory which says that Jones is generally very honest and reputable and stole $1,000 worth of veggie burgers from the local eery suffers from some incoherence and is therefore quite intrinsically improbable.
¶189Jones is very honest and reputable makes it very unlikely such a heinous unforgivable crime. >> And you know it's not just a crime and you know it's not just and you know the unforgivable crime here is is not just stealing $1,000 worth of veggie burgers but it's also you know like the wrong of like visiating my beloved vegan community. But again, like the hypothesis that Jones is generally very honest and reputable and also stole $1,000 worth of veggie burgers, like that's going to suffer from some incoherence and so it's going to be quite intrinsically improbable as a result, you know, like because the fact that Jones is very honest and reputable makes it very unlikely that he would commit that crime. But even still, right, like the two components of this theory are compatible since occasionally, you know, honest and reputable people do heinous things. And when we apply these various criteria affecting the intrinsic probability of hypothesis to theism, we see that premise one in my master argument is spoton.
¶190Theism does not have a super low intrinsic probability. >> And this is why all this matters. >> Formulate theism roughly as the claim that there exists a fundamental mind that is unlimited in power, knowledge, and goodness. In other words, a fundamental mind characterized by the three traditional omni attributes. >> I guess if the attributes are traditional, that makes perfect sense because people wouldn't have been saying some meaningless gibberish for thousands of years.
¶191>> Someone in chat was confused about what what the topic of the stream is and how this is relevant to Catholicism. Well, hopefully this should be clear, right? We're we're talking about the theoretical methods by which we assess the plausibility or intrinsic probability of a hypothesis. Joe is claiming that the intrinsic probability of theism is not very low. And so obviously we're going to discuss that.
¶192So that shouldn't that shouldn't be too confusing. So anyway, I want to hear how he outlines this and then we can respond. Omnipotent or being all powerful, omniscience or being all knowing and non-benevolence or being all good. Granted, this claim is immodest because it rules out many possibilities. But recall the spatial uniformity versus anomalous patch example.
¶193The simplicity and non-arbitiness of spatial uniformity is more than enough to far outweigh its relative immodesty. Crucially, theism is simple and non-arbit in a similar way, right? Like it posits a single being with a few basic attributes, power, knowledge, and goodness, had to an unlimited and therefore distinctly non-arbitent. We can imagine instead a foundational mind with like arbitrary gaps in its knowledge or power. For example, a being that knows every truth except the number of blades of grass on some particular lawn or arbitrary finite limits in other respects.
¶194But these theories would be far less intrinsically probable in much the same way as the anomalous patch scenario is far less intrinsically probable than the spatial uniformity scenario. And this point bears emphasis like I want to bang my gongs very very loud here so that you get it right. Part of what makes spatial uniformity and a temporal uniformity so attractive is that their fundamental posit is a simple elegant compactly describable universal generalization. Right? Like the basic laws of physics hold everywhere or at all times.
¶195Likewise, part of what makes theism attractive is that it characterizes fundamental reality with a small number of simple, elegant, and compactly describable universal generalizations. Right? Like to say that God is omnicient is to say roughly that God knows everything. To say that God is omnipotent is to say roughly that he can bring about any possible state of affairs and whatever he wills comes to pass. To say that God is only benevolent is to say roughly that God is wholly good and always acts for the sake of the good, including the good of any creatures he creates.
¶196Theism is also coherent in much the same way that spatial uniformity is. Right? Like in the case of spatial uniformity, the very fact that the basic laws hold everywhere apart from a spatial patch gives us reason to expect that they hold everywhere. Positing a limit or break in the universal applicability of the laws would introduce some incoherence into one's hypothesis. The same holds true for theism.
¶197positive. I want to say on this even even with the example that he's given like I would think like nonspatial patch for example with theism you could go well you know God would actually do that because he'd think it's like pretty interesting for people to discover and he wants to give us like fun things to do in the year 3500 when we've like solved all the difficult problems that don't exist like climate change and like how most of us don't die of malaria and starvation and stuff. Um but the the other thing I was thinking when Joe said um a fundamental mind that is unlimited in power, knowledge, and goodness was actually everything that I've said is probably wrong because I think it just follows pretty straightforwardly from that that you would create like bipedal primates based on carbon chemistry on planets with exactly the gravity that ours has with anterior cruciate ligaments that um snap if about more than 300 100 newtons of forces placed through them at an angle that knees commonly um are in when we move around using our legs on the planet like that that is what I think when I think like un like because I don't want to be arbitrary so no un no limits on power no limits on knowledge no limits on goodness so I just think 300 newtons of tensile strength um in a thing called a knee that is physical and used to >> so so that is a snarky way of getting at one of the issues that I have with this claim is that theism as as so defined there's a sense in which it is simple right he said that there is a fundamental mind that's unlimited in power knowledge and goodness so that can be to that extent articulated concisely so that's why it seems Joe thinks that and the fact that there's no what he calls arbitrary limits to its its capabilities or its properties is why Joe thinks that it's simple so let's unpack this a little bit so um the first thing that I the first issue that I have with this description of theism is although On its terms, it is simple. It doesn't actually explain anything because okay, well, what what features of our experience does this allow us to account for? Does it allow us to account for the uniformity of nature, the existence of the universe at all?
¶198Uh the balance of good and evil or particular miracle claims, uh the laws of physics being what they are, or like any specific phenomena at all? The answer is no. And this this point I've made many times and particularly recently not without further statements about what this mind wants or values or is interested in doing. Uh by itself this this theism as a hypothesis is explanatory inert. It doesn't it doesn't say anything other than that the thing exists.
¶199And so that's why I think that it's just not very helpful to think about intrinsic probability or uh isolated from any other considerations because you have to first assess that the this is how I think about things as an empiricist. start with some data that you're trying to account for. You then devise or or find competing theories that attempt to account for or explain that data and then you assess those theories against each other. The problem is that theism has been introduced not as a theory that attempts to explain some data but just as a sort of a prior postulate about about a thing that exists. And so I don't think it makes sense to just ask well how simple is it?
¶200um because you haven't actually specified it as a theory that explains anything yet. And the this is very important. This isn't a technicality because when it comes to actually turning theism into an explanatory hypothesis, you need to make from my point of view wildly ad hoc assumptions which destroy any uh semblance of simplicity. Um for example, you need to assume that God wants to do very specific things or has very specific intentions. We'll get to those later when we see, you know, examples of fine tuning and psychophysical harmony.
¶201But this is where I think that there's a disconnect. Just talking about theism in the abstract has a sense of simplicity to it. But that's irrelevant because it's not actually a theory that is explaining anything. Simplicity is only relevant when we're contrasting theories against each other with respect to how well they can explain certain data. At the way the way that Joe's introduced theism, it doesn't explain anything.
¶202It's not doing anything. And so there's nothing really to assess. when it actually comes down to explaining something, then the plausibility changes radically because it needs to actually be rendered into a theory that is um empirically uh evidentially um equipped to account for the data. Like empirically adequate, that's the term I was looking for. When theism basically I'm saying bare theism is not empirically adequate for any purpose at all to explain anything.
¶203And when theism is rendered empirically adequate, it becomes wildly implausible or has much lower um uh intrinsic probability as as Joe would claim that because of the assumptions you have to make, the very strong assumptions that God wants to do very specific things. So I think that that's an under uh a very fundamental uh limitation of Joe's approach that he treats theism as an abstract hypothesis that doesn't actually explain anything. He uses terminology that's developed for the purpose of theory comparison to try to justify the bare hypothesis and then he sort of helps himself to that hypothesis and the fact that it's not too implausible when he's deploying it for actual explanatory purposes like fine-tuning a psychopysical harmony but the hypothesis is not is not equivalent in those cases because he has to um he has to augment the hypothesis with additional assumptions very specific assumptions in order to render it empirically adequate like why would God create a universe like this why would he find tune in this way why would he create these psychophysis laws so I think think that that is a crucial gap in his reasoning and probably the most fundamental thing that I disagree with him about that you can't just define a hypothesis in this very abstract way and then help declare it has low prior sorry high prior plausibility because of its simple statements but the only reason that it has that plausibility is because you haven't rendered it empirically adequate for anything. It doesn't explain anything and then still declare that it retains that high probability when you actually try to use it for anything when it doesn't. you need to make it empirically adequate by making additional hypothesis and that changes this prior probability.
¶204Joe I don't think really he sort of gestures at this a few times but he doesn't really discuss this in sufficient detail to I think really establish how it is that the strong assumptions he needs to make to render theism empirically adequate um don't just destroy its uh initially high pri probability. I I think one way of thinking of the problem with what he's doing, right, is like suppose you're faced with the question, well, how do you like explain everything and you just go, well, here's my theory that's more simple, right? >> Well, some people do this to be fair. >> Well, yeah, to be fair, some people do do this, but it's like, well, what what do you mean? Right?
¶205And you're like, well, it just does. And then for like any particular example, you just go into the details then and say well that's science and that's science and that's and it's like >> well like are you really providing a general explanation or just like saying a word um what like what >> yeah the word is not is not actually describing the theory which is how we so that's where the simplicity is relevant when the description >> fully and adequate empirically adequately outlines all of the assumptions and mechanisms of the theory. The problem is God with as an as an unembodied mind with the omnipropies does not do that. It doesn't say anything that allows us to make any predictions. >> For example, like gravity, right?
¶206Of course, there is one problem with gravity would be there is um like a way people use it that isn't doing physics or whatever. But you can introduce gravity say in teaching physics to someone as like bodies of mass exerting um an attractive force on one another that has a particular mathematical relationship may you know you can talk about the inverse square law again to to to introduce it initially and obviously you know there's more complex versions of that but you what you've done is you've now provided people with a concept where they can think about what it means and what differences it makes in terms of observation It's like okay mass more gravity of course doesn't matter but more mass gravity and then you might talk about like distance for example is another factor um and and people can now work with what you've said to understand like what you're saying and and and like make predictions with it and things like that. The problem is that that for theism being conceptualized as this like pure okay it's just omni properties like all knowledge all loving all powerful first off or omni even instead of all first off like I don't even know if that is meaningful like I literally don't know what that means I I have I I do not know and I think that Catholics also should agree by way of the via negativa thank you St. promise um that they also can't make sense of this. >> It is all straw.
¶207Um the second thing about that is yeah like as you've said whenever it comes to any particular example that's supposed to be predicted it's not at all clear um it's not it's not at all clear why any of these things follow from all that like suppose if I say so just think of like all powerful all loving all good so obviously mother Mary who is the mother of god incarnate who was born in Palestine in you know 2,500 years ago go would then be assumed into heaven, which is this other place that exists, by the way, is an entailment of all that, and would appear 1,800 years later in this place called Portugal, where there are Catholics, because some kid said that she would as light in order to uh confirm their faith in the Catholic Church, which had been like why >> vindicated that by creating an object that looked like the sun, but wasn't actually the sun and was at a slightly different elevation and wiggled around for a few minutes and dried everyone's clothes. that it's just >> like what why would you think any of that? And also, by the way, this is the same thing that decided um that it should be nailed to a crucifix using the Roman method of crucifixion for execution because you know I I wouldn't even from all that I wouldn't even get that God why would why would there be canosis? Why would there even be a physical universe? There's a disembodied mind he baked into why why is is disembodied mind even conceptually coherent?
¶208I don't think so. I don't know what that means because all my concepts That's something that I wanted to talk about as well because so there's there's the issue of um of whether theism can simultaneously be simple as a hypothesis and empirically adequate and I don't think it can be. Um it's only simple if it doesn't say or predict anything from from my point of perspective but even there I think that there's issues and that's that's another reason that I wanted to discuss. So the notion is that we're supposed to have this notion of a mind right and think imagine a mind that is not um physically instantiated. This is an immaterial mind.
¶209So um as we discussed before the notion of this a priori reasoning is that we have the con we have enough experience to reason about the to have the concepts and think about them but sort of no more than that and that's kind of fuzzy but so I'm not going to appeal to in that spirit I'm not going to appeal to particular scientific evidence that we have that minds have to be embodied but what I think we can say even sort of a priori in this in this um fictional land we're imagining is that the not the concept of a mind that we have seems to me at least build into limitations. Let's think about what minds do. Minds remember. Well, you can't remember if like there's no such thing as memory if you haven't had any experiences and you've always existed and have all knowledge. There's nothing to recall or recollect.
¶210It just doesn't really make sense. Well, we we think, we reason, we work through considerations. Well, God doesn't need to do that because he has allegedly all knowledge, omnicious. So, there's no there's no reason. >> You're a temporal.
¶211You're >> Yeah. See, just outside of time. Well, it seems that minds are temporal. So, that doesn't really make sense either. Um, well, another thing that we do is we perceive things like touch and sight and sound.
¶212But God, I mean, that doesn't really work without a body, right? And also, he doesn't need to perceive anything because he already knows everything. So, that's not >> part of it. I I think I'll I'll probably expand on this. I I I think we probably broadly agree, but there might be some slight differences when we talk about the um psychophysical harmony stuff, but I think that pretty much most of our criteria for mental predicates are like social and applied to other people.
¶213Like we learn how to use the words by way of looking at other people's behavior and then we apply them to like we don't introspect on like some there's not a thing called raw fields that we introspect on. >> Well, all language is learned socially. So if that's what you mean, I agree. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶214I I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I think that there is a a part of our mental language, right, that is connected to embodiment in like a really fundamental and important way. Like what it means to be in pain or to see something or, you know, to feel something. It to to to find something funny. It relates primarily to like our judgment of other people. And then like to ourselves we can we can reflect or people can say oh you were just being quite angry right now.
¶215You know you were being really jealous and you're like oh yeah I was and you like other people can know the way that mental language works. Other people can know our mental states better than we know our own which is wholly inconsistent with this model of like divine revelation of you know like the inner is like beaming knowledge to us in some non-physical world or something. And so the point the point being that when it comes to our concepts of of mind and mentality, I I think they only make sense for embodied creatures like even when we you know we might talk about like animals believing things, knowing things or whatever. And we do that by appealing to their behavior and what they do, not by not because and we don't do that with other people. I don't even think we do it with ourselves.
¶216Um you know there there's no particular sort of like sensation I have and I go oh I know stuff now. Like I say, I know stuff because those are the words that have helped me get by with like doing skills that I can perform and communicating what I'm trying to communicate to other people. Point being, I don't even think it's intelligible to speak of a disembodied mind. I literally like have no idea. I I don't any of those properties, the omni properties, they're all unintelligible to me.
¶217And the disembodied mind part, that is unintelligible to me. And um and and and then the other thing I want to say about the no arbitrary limits thing and that being some kind of principle to appeal to for like boosting the probability or whatever is I think there's some weird category error going on there because you know like the examples that were appeal to like the speed of light you don't go well what value is light right it could be any value um it's omniite it's omnis what does that mean right what is omnis that's It has full speeds. >> Yeah. Like what? >> I don't know.
¶218>> Yeah. Do you see what I mean? Like So, so if you're going like, well, does God know like one thing or two things? Well, it be arbitrary to say he knows like three of the true things. Um, well, he is there a discrete number of truths?
¶219So, God knows that number, whatever that number happens to be. Um, is there No, he's he he knows all he he's omniscient. He he knows he he knows all things. He's What is that like? >> Yeah.
¶220So I if I can because I think these are two issues here. One is the conceivability and a priori simplicity of an disembodied mind or unembodied mind and the other is the uh the limits issue. They're both important. I want to finish what I was saying about the notion of a disembodied mind. I don't know that I fully agree with exactly how Nathan thinks about mental predicates but um what I don't think we need to get too far into that here.
¶221But the underlying there's an underlying commonality which is a concern that this notion is even coherent. So um the point that I was making is that this is the way I typically talk about things. As a cognitive scientist I think about cognitive capacities maybe I don't know if Nathan doesn't like that talk but there's different things that we can do with our minds or brains if you prefer and I was just highlighting some examples. perception is one different perceptions memory problem solving and thinking um we relate to other people like we have social interactions and um uh there's like motivations as well like drives for hunger or for sex or for temperature like hot or cold things like this and um essentially none of these are relevant to a disembodied u mind and especially one that has well some not for disembodied and others definitely not for one with the omni properties like that has all knowledge and and and so forth like you don't need to reason if you have all knowledge So, um, the most that I've been able to even approximately say that an omni mind, a disembodied omnimide could do is, um, will things like decide to take actions. But even there, it's not well specified.
¶222>> What does that even mean without time? >> Well, without time, without a body, yeah, it's kind of hard. But the the point, so what I'm saying is in my there's there's there's discussion to be had there. Maybe there's ways of trying to make sense of it. And um but what I would say at the very least is that a priority I think we have very strong reasons to be very very skeptical of this notion of a unlimited disembodied mind.
¶223Um there are like even without appealing to specific empirical evidence conceptually I don't think it's very coherent to appeal to one of Joe's criteria before. I think that is highly problematic as to how these mental uh properties that make up what I mind is. It's just a bunch of stuff that like we sort of do um and that that are sort of mental in nature. we sort of combine them together under one word. Do these things make sense?
¶224Do they cohhere? Do they fit together with the notion of an an omni an omni like a try omni and um disembodied mind? My answer is I don't think that they do. They don't actually make conceptual sense to me. And so I'm going to accord that if I'm a basian reasoner, right, in this hypothetical example of, you know, a priority reasoning, I'm according there's an extremely low prior probability.
¶225Now Joe's obviously not reasoning in the same way. But then my sort of question is, well, how do we resolve this Joe? like I it doesn't seem that Joe has thinks about it in this way, but why not? Why is there this difference? So that that highlights I think the limitation of this method because people can come to widely different viewpoints about the prior probability of something.
¶226And I I think Joe's not thinking through in sufficient detail what exactly a mind is and what it would mean for a mind to have all of these properties. And I think that that is how it allows him to have a sense of it being simple because there's a few simple words we can use. And this is where I'm maybe a bit closer to Nathan because we have this word mind and we use it readily or similar like mentalizing language and that gives us the illusion that it's simple because it's one word and we can readily deploy it and we think we're familiar with minds and uh we we certainly very readily use intentional reasoning right but that doesn't mean that it's simple just because there's a word there's a single word for it right uh you actually have to think about what you're actually specifying what are the underlying properties and this is where the notion of fundamentality comes in Joe does talk a bit more about that later so I want to take the fund put put a a footnote on the fundamental notion but just the idea of I think that a mind that has these that's disembodied and has these omnipropies is not at all very uh like simple or plausible um even a priori and so that's something that I share with Nathan I'm concerned that even makes sense to talk about so that's that issue then if you had any short thoughts there otherwise I'll talk about the >> yeah no further thoughts on that yeah so so that's the issue of the mind um now let's talk about the limits issue So Joe also justifies the uh prior the high prior probability or at least not very low prior probability of theism because this omniod does not have arbitrary limits and Nathan's already talked about how that's a sort of problem way of thinking about it. I have never understood the limits argument. I think that this is something Rasmusen or a way of framing that he has.
¶227>> Yeah, it was and it it makes literally no sense to me at all. So the way that I think about >> to be fair it's in Swimburn as well. Maybe Rosemary was maybe know when we did um I for I forgot what the book's called but it's like the knowledge of God or something like that that there's a theism book by Swimburn that we reviewed. >> Yeah. Well, we reviewed that.
¶228I remember he said that three is like the simplest number or something like that. >> No, that was said that in his >> Oh, was it? Oh, jeez. I can't keep track of that. >> The Swimburn one, the Swimburn one.
¶229He literally gave the example of like scholastic natural philosophers assuming the speed of light was like instantaneous because it was simple. And I remember because we commented, we were like, "Well, that's a terrible example to give because it was literally wrong. So why are you justifying your method and you know and we also pointed out that it was just one example and like you know are people always doing this?" Um and then Rasmusen has maybe he drew from that maybe he didn't I don't know but um yeah has the no arbitrary limits argument. So >> fair enough. So it it it has older anticedants.
¶230I don't exactly remember always who says what. But the point is it's never made any sense to me because the way that I think about things is trying to explain what does exist not what doesn't exist or in other words the way I describe this Nathan may have slightly different language but if we look at what there is in the world we can look at phenomena and sort of the properties that things have like the causal powers or um things that are measurable like the mass of things or spin of a particle or or more you know more complex things that aren't fundamental physics but you talk about those as properties just like you know uh stuff that way things are in the world essentially And what I think is that we the science and broadly metaphysics should be and is in the business of trying to explain why things have the properties that they have. Um but the argument from limits seems to think that we need to not explain why things have the properties that they have. It needs we need to explain why they have the properties that they don't have or in other words this notion of negative properties. It's it's things that it's properties that something doesn't have.
¶231Um, and I just think that this is a really strange I don't think negative properties require an explanation. Like why why uh if I take an apple, like why does why can an apple not fly to the moon? >> I mean, that's implied by >> it's just a stupid question. It's kind of like it's like, you know, you say, well, why did you not observe the apple fly? Why did you observe the apple being in your hand and not flying to the moon?
¶232Well, like the answer is going to be because gravity operates in the way that it does. And well, this is exactly what I was saying. Our explanations have our explanations rightly appeal to properties that things have rules out things that they don't have. >> But that but that tells you also tells you why they don't have the >> That's right. That's why you don't need to appeal to negative what I'm calling negative properties is because they don't feature into any uh any explanation.
¶233They're not necessary to to appeal to. We sometimes may talk about them in a contrastive way, but they're not actually I don't think necessary to to talk about them at all. particularly the way that the arbitrary limit seems to think about things is that what's most important to explain is all of the properties that something doesn't have. So instead of saying um instead of saying like why does God know these certain things they want to or any being for that matter they think about it as why don't they know all of the things that they don't know which will be sort of an infinite number of things right I don't see that that needs any explanation I just deny that we ever need to explain negative facts in this way all we need to negative properties in this way all we need to explain is what actually does exist not what doesn't exist um and I call this a strange like ontology of absence that like somehow something not existing needs an explanation So it's a finite specific properties. Now I'm going to postulate something that does that behaves in a certain way and those are the properties that it has and the properties I'll specify like say a new particle or something like that or um it could even be a species having a certain gene or occupying a certain niche in an environment like whatever the example is you'll postulate some properties that explain the phenomenon.
¶234Um and the question in terms of whether you believe that the entity has those properties will be whether those are sufficient to account for the phenomenon. >> But the way that the people like Res seem to think about this is not is not in terms of postulating what is necessary to explain the phenomenon. They want to explain why it doesn't have all of the properties that it doesn't have. >> Yeah. But they kind of bizar I I don't need that doesn't need an explanation.
¶235But then but then what they do is they deploy their peculiar metaphysical notions of modality in order to rule in and rule out different ways of different concepts being to kind of gerrymander the numbers in favor of their explanations. Right? Because for God they will just appeal to God's necessity um as an explanation of why God is that way as opposed to any other way. for all these physical explanations they'll they'll say oh no it can be other ways cuz you know I can't appeal to the or if they do do that then they'll talk about um then they'll appeal to features of a mind such as intention goodness or you think people are good aren't they to try and imply that that creates some like probabilistic asymmetry when that it isn't even really clear at all to me that there is some probabilistic asymmetry between all of the ways that God could create like people who are good that are not this way rather than some other way. So >> yes, we'll get to that.
¶236>> Yeah. But so just what I'm trying to express is that this notion of arbitrary limits I think is a really problematic. First of all, raifying limits which to me is just a way of describing the boundary like the the boundaries of the uh capabilities or properties that something has. It can do a certain amount more than that. >> This is what I mean it's a it's a there is like a category error here though.
¶237I'm kind of failing to articulate it so maybe you can kind of help me. But like the examples that were given right were of like values. Um in the case of infinity obviously it's not a value but it's also not all. Okay. Um and so it's like yeah sure like if you might think if you've got no other knowledge you know this sense of appriori that we talked about in SCP and it's like oh what value is this new thing you've come across going to be?
¶238Maybe you'd be like I don't know it could be any number or something right? Um, but then there's a there's a difference between saying that and saying like omni which seems to kind of give you a procedure. And that procedure is well for any any one of them I know what I'll say. I have a procedure to know what I'll say about it. So like in the case of power it'll be like okay so for any power I'll say God has that power.
¶239It's not saying here are the powers that go. It's saying like it's like a procedure for what you do or like knowledge. It will be like okay so that's how you I think the way they conceive of it is to imagine a set of all possible powers or properties you have >> and then specify that um anything less than the uh that that total set is is sort of arbitrary >> and that's the sense in which it's an analogous to infinite because obviously the set of all possible powers is itself infinite and so they're going to say that >> is I I don't I literally don't know is is one thing I would say >> let's grant that for the sake of argument I'm just trying to say that's the analogy to the speed of light being infinite. It seems there's a quantity that specifies like the measure of how much of this set. >> But then this is what I'm this is where um >> this is where there's like a problem I think because you're doing this at this conceptual level.
¶240And so if you sort of imagine that you're doing this thing with sets and sort of like adjectives or whatever adjectives and nouns that you're constructing sets out of them and then saying like oh if I were to pick one from this set that would be like arbitrary over any of the others. You're not like reasoning over a space that provides you with relevant asymmetries to justify one thing over another. Like think in the case of light where you have all these kinds of measurements or whatever the the models that you're thinking about are going to constrain why one of those values is like reasonable rather than like some abstract symbolic representation of like the natural numbers in set notation and then like picking one of them would be arbitrary. Do you see do you see what I'm trying to >> I think that this is similar to what I'm saying that explanations need to be developed to account for a particular data and the data that they need to account for will tell us something about what values are going to be important like what what powers or properties they need to have the same you just get the same result every time right if if this is kind of similar to what you were saying before I think actually where it's like if this were the true method right it's true for any property that you could that you can enumerate an infinite number of that you can constru construct an infinite set out of it and that item in that set is going to be under zero or undefined. So you can't actually get anywhere but but just pretending that you're doing maths like we're doing the whole time anyway and saying you know they're all like really super super unlikely then all of them would be simpler than any particular one.
¶241I mean that's weird to me as well because that's like just a different question is like it's just it's weird like something has gone on. It's a different question like which one of these is the right one to like oh just give it the whole set then like why would you do that? What justifies that move? >> Well, it it's it's the limits mentality. This is why I say it's the wrong way to think about things because it raifies the notion of a limit.
¶242What I was saying before is a limit I think just describes a boundary. It's not like it's a thing in and of itself. M I mean that that that gets a bit more metaphysical than I want it to be. But like a limit is not a thing that exists. It's just a description of the well the limits of what does exist.
¶243You don't need to explain the limit itself. Like well why can't it do this or why can't it do that? Well all of those things are just explained in virtue of the fact that it only has the powers that it does have. >> You don't need further explanations of all of the limits. The way they talk about it they think that it does.
¶244I I think the kind of like analoges that are being given are just like bad analoges because they're cases that force you to give like a single value or something. But then this move to kind of like mental or or even like things like power like what what do you mean like do you mean what? Like God has all the what? Like that's unpecified as well. Yes.
¶245>> Like like it's just you can't the the cases that you reason from are too different to the things. >> Yes. I I agree that that I mean that's an underlying problem throughout a lot of the examples that he gives. But let me give a different example that maybe helps to illustrate what I'm trying to say about the problem with arguing for limits which is why it doesn't make sense to me. So we'll see this with a contingency argument which we'll come to shortly.
¶246But um the idea is that there has to be some necessary being that exists outside of spaceime. Now I don't think that that's true but let's just grant that for the sake of argument to get the point across that I'm trying to make. Suppose there is something that exists necessarily. Um it can't fail to exist. It exists in all possible worlds whatever.
¶247And suppose that we somehow establish it exists outside of space and time. So it's not physical in a meaningful sense. Okay. So and and the reason we think that just to be clear is because of some argument that spacetime needs a cause in in some way or needs an explanation perhaps more broadly. So I'm I'm granting a lot here for the sake of trying to get at a specific point which is that theist will then want to say well God is a very simple explanation that is a very simple postulate for this necessary and um non-physical like non-material entity that that causes the universe or that explains the existence of the universe.
¶248So this is this highlights a difference in way of thinking because the way that I've said this I talk about this in my book unreasonable faith. I say that look if we think that we need to explain the existence of the physical universe by postulating something that exists outside of space and time >> the simplest thing to postulate is something that has the specific power of like bringing into existence universes. Maybe it's creating a certain quantum state that then uh you know decays and and gives rise to the big bang something like that. that that is what we do kind of everywhere else you possibly necessary to account for the phenomenon. This is like a one man's modus ponins is another man's modus tolins type thing right where it's like so if that seems more reasonable to you that should count against this method of like arbitrary limits and intrinsic probability because that wouldn't give you that that would give you some like >> but that that's the point so that's the method I think we follow essentially everywhere we postulate just what's necessary to account for the thing we're trying to explain in this case a cause of the universe or an explanation >> no I think my cup is empty because all the fluids and possible fluids in the world were consumed out of it by an all consuming >> like there's just no analogous cases of reasoning like that as far as I can tell certainly not about causal reality.
¶249I don't know about mathematics but but the point is that so so my method which is okay let's postulate some non-material necessary thing that has a specific causal power bringing into existence certain unstable quantum states perhaps right but that's not how the theist approaches it they say no what we should postulate is that this necessary being has all possible powers not just the power specifically needed to do the one thing that you identified that is in need of an explanation again we're just accepting that for the purpose of the illustration no we're going to postulate that it has every single power to like actualize as anything that you could possibly imagine that's logically coherent. And I just think that's a ridiculous methodology. There's no justification for that at all. We don't do that in any style of reasoning that I'm familiar with. And I think that this highlights, as you were saying, why that this arbitrary limits method is not a sound reasoning method.
¶250It leads you to ridiculous conclusions which we don't follow anywhere else. And it's unjustified. It requires massive extrapolation beyond anything you're actually trying to explain. And I I I also think that once you've removed the kinds of constraints that exist in particular domains on how to use concepts and you talk about things like um logical consistency or whatever is like your criteria, I don't see any reason for like doing that. Do you know like what I mean is you know the the typical rebuttals you'll get to like can God create a square circle or a rock so heavy you can't lift it.
¶251It's like oh well you're asking God to do a logically inconsistent thing. It's like, yeah, but why can't God do a logically inconsistent thing? Like, and why is that not a limit? And >> Graham Priest says that he can. >> Yeah.
¶252Well, but this this is kind of what I mean. Like, why why like you you're applying a framework of logic when there are other frameworks? Why that framework? And and there is a sentence of the form. Okay, maybe they they're all entailments of a sentence of the form.
¶253God can't do things that are inconsistent in classical logic. But why? Why not? Why can God not do those things? All right.
¶254And then you're just going to say, "Oh, because it would violate like what do you appeal to?" Like cuz it's not obvious to me why that would be the case. Um especially when we're talking about the not without further assumption. And and what I mean is like because everything is already so weird when we're supposed to be imagining this like theism as a theory and like omni powers omni knowledge only goodness like that is another thing that just seems super ad hoc to me to be like oh yeah but no logical contradictions like why like what what what even is the process or what what what do I even appeal to to try and understand why you're saying that you know like other than thousands of years of it just being the case that some theologians said it, so you're copying them. >> Yeah. I mean, and you might say, well, it just it doesn't make sense that God could create a rock so heavy that he couldn't lift it.
¶255And my response to that would be, well, yeah, I mean, that doesn't really make sense. But then neither does mind with omnipose those don't make sense either. >> Neither do any statements of the form causes, right? Like, okay, God causes this miracle to happen. God causes the resurrection of Jesus to happen.
¶256God causes a universe to be created. >> What what like what am I supposed to imagine? You know, I was supposed to imagine some animation of like a black thing and a light. Like, is that appropriately imagining a universe creation? Like, what the hell is any of this supposed to be?
¶257And it's and it's just exactly it's just the boundaries are just where they're supposed to be where everything gets like wacky and confusing enough that it's just right. But, you know, don't think too wacky and crazy about this thing called God. Um, and I think that this is where my, you know, people who take the religious approach of like mystics and stuff do better. And this is also partly why I sometimes accuse what people are doing in this like rational theism space of being like pseudocience because I I think it has all the features of pseudocience where they're trying to turn God into like a a a quasi scientific theory but they're using all of these kind of like um bad inferences and ways of muddying the waters and not being clear about what they're saying because of this like need to make it rationally amanable or whatever. Whereas like at least mystics are kind of like cool about it and they're just like, "Oh yeah, you know, like I don't eat for a week and like I have weird experiences and you know, then I want to like love people more." Then I'm like, "Cool." I'm like, "Cool." Like, "Yeah, just do that.
¶258Don't you know, you don't have to like come up with all this nonsense and like it's hard enough trying to do science and make sense of the world. We don't need like another version of like some crappy theory." Well, that comes to what something we were saying at the outset to why we're doing this because judgment didn't just announce that he believes in God or that he's even Catholic, but he's >> he's providing an apologetic for that, which is working in a particular domain of reasoning and evidence. And so when you work in that domain, you open yourself up to certain types of criticisms. And so I've always said that I'm not really that interested in simply whether someone believes in God or an afterlife or something like that. But it's the process they use to get there and how they then present that in the in the discourse, which I think is important to normalize certain practices.
¶259And the other one is what social and political implications that that has like for how people live. And so those are the relevant aspects there. And these claims that Joe's making absolutely have implications of both of those. >> I I think this comment raises another good point by the way about this like idea of like bare theism. And it's a point you've made in your book and before in the past streams too, >> which is um you know, if I know Joe's not said it exactly in this argument, maybe I I don't know to be honest if he does or doesn't believe this, but if you also bake in some conception, if by mind you bake in a conception of libertarian free will, you also have these just completely unexplained brute contingent things that are just >> every decision of an agent.
¶260Yeah. >> Yeah. everything that is a decision and it's not even clear what it means to make an amporal decision or ju just as it's not clear what it means for God to know something to have a power to be good to see the color red or anything which is all all the things that just as it's not clear for God to do any of the things a mind does it's not clear what it is for God to make a decision but um you know if he does make decisions which he apparently does then um yeah you got this problem >> yes well I the last part there that you account for the decisions of the libertarian nation in terms of reasons, which is then why they're not arbitrary. Then raises a question as to what reasons God has and why we think he has that reason. And again, I actually think that this is essential to understand.
¶261So I'll probably say this multiple times. >> Joe is imagining and he will continue to do so in other arguments. Us existing in this a priori land where we don't have much knowledge about uh you know experiential based knowledge just enough to form the concepts and reason about them. So when we're then thinking about God, which obviously is something very different and very far outside of us, we don't we're not going to have a priority knowledge about at least the vast majority if anything of what God is going to do. So the point there is that the way we should reason about this within Joe's framework because that's how exactly how he reasons about everything in this framework like possible laws of nature and things is to imagine the set of possible things that God could have reasons for or like sufficient reasons for and then um essentially construct a probability distribution over those range of things.
¶262So God could have reason to create this or that or or so forth and and then think about what are all of the things that God could have reasons for. We don't know what God have reasons for because we that's outside of our limitations, our epistemic limitations. >> So we we create a a set of all the things he could have reasons for, create a probability distribution over that and then ask what is the prior probability that God had reasons to do the specific things that we think that he did end up doing. And the answer is exceptionally improbable because there's a huge range of things that God could have reason to do as far as we know and a very limited range of things that actually exist. So all of the same problems that Joe thinks come for for for naturalism like why we have the laws of nature we do and so forth come roaring back with a vengeance under theism because God is even less constrained than naturalism.
¶263So I that's why I don't think that the libertarian agency gets you anywhere because you just are stuck at the same position with respect to the space of reasons. We don't know what God have reasons to do. And it seems like he could have any sorts of reasons because he's so unspecified. >> And and I think that X hypothesy, this mind being so different from what we know as mind to the point where we're both saying it's maybe >> probably not even conceivable, >> but just just granting that it is conceivable, coherent, meaningful, intelligible. Um I think that most of my probability assignment in that case would go towards not creating anything temporal or different you know like maybe you you like if I was going to >> more actually when we get to the arguments >> it would be like I I would just be an amporal disembodied mind constantly praising God and Yeah.
¶264Yeah. Like I wouldn't be >> surviving. >> I wouldn't be like something in a physical world that's embodied and has like a life and could get it wrong and then there's this like place, the new heaven and the new earth where I might be resurrected or maybe I'll go and be tormented forever. Um, but even that conception of heaven doesn't actually make that any sense to me as to why that would be the end goal of such a creature rather than like again an atmporal state of like pure disembodied union or it it just doesn't make sense to me um at all. What just doesn't make sense to me.
¶265It's not something that from this bare theism I would predict at all. like it's it's so skewed away from any >> I'll make a stronger claim than that. I think that it's conceptually incoherent to say that God can have a reason to create anything if he is supposed to be. Yes. Yeah.
¶266>> Be be clear what I'm saying here. I'm not saying that it's conceptually incoherent that God creates something. >> What I'm saying is >> No, I don't think it is to be self-sufficient because that's not so you >> Hang on. I didn't finish. >> Okay.
¶267Go ahead. >> I think he can I think he can still create things. If if God is a maximally great being, then there cannot be a valuebased reason to create anything because that would imply that that reality was somehow improved or had a more goodness after creation than before, which is obviously possible because God is the maximum good, >> but maybe he'd have to constantly be self-creating. >> Well, that's an interesting concept, but I maybe creation could be a good act, but then that exposes a potential conceptual incoherency because the result can't be better than what happened before. So how can it be good to do an action?
¶268What does it mean through things? >> Yeah. What does it mean to be a temporally constantly creating yourself in a way where there's no outcome or before >> change in the process? Yeah. I don't think that really makes a lot of sense.
¶269Now maybe nothing makes sense at this point. But what I was going to say is I don't think that you can say that reality is in any way improved or is better um subsequent to a creation or even if we take the temporal notion like with creation as opposed to God's creation. Um, now you could say, this is what I was saying before. You could say that God simply creates because he feels like it. But at that point, he can't have reason to create and and then, so either way, it's a problem.
¶270If you say he has a reason to create, you have to say why he has that reason. And then ask the question, how can he even have such a reason because there can't be any like moral reason. It can't make things better. Or he could create for no reason just just because. But at that point, then you just have to arbitrarily specify that he does things for no reason.
¶271Either way, the hypothesis is is highly flawed. And so I think that that there's a whole bunch of conceptual confusions built into this notion at the at the outset. >> And this this was very much >> and this was one of David Bentley Hart's criticisms of uh on Substack of of Joe's video here. Oh, interesting. >> Well, he he said uh for all of these like reasons and things that actually like the demi urge is like makes way more sense because you can actually then like you know operationalize the actions in terms of like limitations and certain desires that it has.
¶272>> And this gets us to the overwhelming theistic evidence hypothesis and why that's not a good counter. Anyway, we've spent a long time on this because I think this is really important because the not overwhelmingly low prior probability of theism plays a critical role in Joe's arguments because that that it turns out that that's actually one of his most common rebuttals is that if you say that God is not a very good explanation or God wouldn't do this, he basically appeal there's a few things he appeals to but one of them is just that well it's not it's not so unlikely right that God would exist and then have these desires and what we're arguing that actually it it is very unlikely using this framework and there are many many problems inherent to it. We've talked about the notion of limits being problematic in the reasoning this way. We've talked about the notion of a disembodied unlimited mind being highly problematic. And we've also talked about the um issue that bare theism defined this way doesn't actually explain anything.
¶273You need to augment it with much uh stronger assumptions to get it to account for anything. So there's quite a number of issues that we have here that are going to be well we'll come back to these issues repeatedly um o over the course of the rest of the video. So that's why I think it's worth spending a bit of time on this. But we should probably move on to get to other things. >> Yeah.
¶274Yeah. So I know in the document um actually I think would you mind if we do psychophysical harmony next actually and the reason that I say that is because I think that is the main one that people probably >> there's one thing that I want to do before that and tackle 101 which is theism is not stated in fundamental terms because I think that this is important when it comes to assessing naturalism. >> It's just a short section and then we can go to psychophysical >> sorry do you want a time give me a time stamp >> one zero one hour and 1 minute. I thought you meant 101 as in like a numbering system in >> it is a numbering system. >> Well, >> it's a temporal numbering system.
¶275>> I thought you meant me like a Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. >> Yeah, I understand similar. Unlike naturalism, as we'll see, theism offers a unifying explanation of a large constellation of otherwise remarkably fortunate data in compact fundamental terms.
¶276Unlike theism, naturalism posits hordes of striking coincidences that they have to write in by hand that that aren't predicted by more fundamental, simple, non-arbitrary, coherent theoretical posits. Finally, one might object that you know although theism may be compactly stable, it's not compactly stable in fundamental terms since you know for example knowledge is seems like a highly derivative property in all the cases that we're familiar with. And you know what determines the simplicity of theory is the simplicity of it most compact statement in fundamental terms. So this is I mean to be fair to go to to uh point back to a criticism that I made earlier about um sort of like having a shared domain where there is a particular like level of theoretical primitives that you're appealing to to do this kind of like information bit compression thing. You know he's kind of like imported that concept here into into this point.
¶277Um I I still think that there's going to be um a problem and the problem comes down to this use of the word fundamental. Um like so fundamental terms for like an established domain with like a shared ontology or whatever or like you know like an established ontology that's disputed or something. I just don't think that there is that in metaphysics and and I think to the degree that we have that it comes from physics and it doesn't include God as a >> Yeah. And Joe's response is almost agrees with that. Let's see what he says and then we can discuss.
¶278>> But this objection fails. In order for theism to have a not super low intrinsic probability, it need not be likely that the omnipropies are relatively fundamental. As long as it's not super unlikely that they're relatively fundamental, the intrinsic probability of theism won't be super low. That's all that matters. And in fact, you know, there are lots of reasonable views on which knowledge, power, and goodness are fundamental.
¶279You know, there are knowledge firsters in epistemology. There are dispositionalists and neo-tistilians who posit fundamental causal powers. There are non-naturalist realists who posit fundamental moral properties and so on. Right? Besides, like the theist does not need to claim that all of these are fundamental since again they're plausible candidates for a single unifying principle or attribute from which God's other attributes flow.
¶280And for many of those candidate principles or attributes, it's like totally reasonable that the attributes or the notions employed therein are fundamental or at least relatively natural. For example, you know, the notion of limits or minds or perfection or value or awareness or you know, whatever. So, stepping back. >> All right, that's that's where we can pause there. Um, can you just sorry jump back a little bit just so that's not Yeah.
¶281Yeah. It's confusing. Um so so I think that's a very interesting response here. Joe basically says well first of all the thing that he always says which is it doesn't have to be likely that uh these terms are fundamental as long as it's not super unlikely. have to do a minimal amount of work possible, >> which is a huge copout because how can you establish it's not super unlikely?
¶282Like you're making a distinction between very small probability bases me off about this uh imitation of rigor with the mathematical terminology and things though is that the whole point of quantifying things is so you can make precise comparisons, right? And then if you say well just ignore the numbers and appeal to like how you feel about an adjective like super being introduced and that's your distinction is like what do you think you know is it unlikely is it merely unlikely or is it super unlikely? >> It's really very silly because a lot of these objections are come to the well your your calculations work out to having very low probabilities and his response is well as long as the probabilities aren't too low then my probabilities won't come out too low. I was like, "Well, well, yeah, but like why wouldn't they like how do you know?" >> This is why we have like speed limits defined in numbers and you know, like the officer pulls you over. You can't just go, "Oh, I wasn't going super fast." I mean, I may have been going fast, but >> I do say that actually.
¶283Ironically, it's quite >> Yeah, but like it's 70. The number is 70 like because then we can there's like a basis for comparison and it means something and everyone's evaluation of super fast is different. >> Yeah. Yeah. So I think that the best way to respond in that sense would be to say well we don't really know how to make these comparisons and so maybe the whole framework it's not very useful but so putting so there's that sort of methodological issue which we'll see repeatedly but the specific response then is to say well look there are various theories um he mentions like um knowledge first epistemology and um sort of ethical non-naturalism which postulate sort of um like fundamental goodness or something like this um as examples where of theories that are at least not like you know they're debated in philosophy people defend them and so it's not that implausible that we could take these some of these sort of mentalistic or at least non-physical uh concepts as primitive.
¶284Now I'll articulate my response to that which is that um this this really just highlights the the fact that this notion of comparing simplicity in terms of uh h how it can be articulated in how how simply the description can be written in some sort of set of fundamental terms is just not helpful for this sort of fever comparison because there is no theory neutral way of describing it. So, you know, knowledge first epistemology, which just well, if you I'm not exactly sure how that works with theism, by the way, but whatever. If you just sort of take that and and agree that you can sort of help yourself to the notion of knowledge without having to worry about uh some sort of fundamental framework for describing beliefs in a physical in physical terms, say um then maybe you do get a situation where describing mental states is much simpler because you're using simpler terms. But the problem is the naturalist is not going to agree with that. They don't think that beliefs or knowledge is fundamental.
¶285And by the way, I'm not sure that knowledge first epistemology really does either in the sense that Joe means it here. But I mean, may maybe they do. I'm not sure. But I I I don't know that you have to be think that it ontologically is simple. I think it's more of a but whatever that's >> conceptual priority and not necessarily >> I don't think it's an onlogical claim, but whatever.
¶286The point is that certainly the naturalist of my sort, a reductive naturalist, is not going to agree with that. And so what we have is a situation where two competing theories have different uh ways of describing their fundamental building blocks. One maybe uses mentalistic terms which is what theism does. Naturalism uses physical laws um and descriptions. And so I don't think there is a theory neutral way of deciding which of those is simpler um because they just use different language.
¶287Now I think there are ways of comparing the theories but that involves in my view it involves equalizing their predictive powers like trying to explain the same thing and then seeing how what they have to postulate and how well that the each of the theories exemplifies explanatory virtues on its own terms. So I mean there's a lot to explain about how that works but the point is I think that just arguing like how many words it takes in a certain set of descriptions is a silly way to compare theories because the theories don't agree on the fundamental words and therefore they won't agree with which theory is simpler. The naturalist doesn't think that it's admissible to have mental states as fundamental units. That's sort of one of the whole points of naturalism. And so that as a naturalist, I'm not going to accept that as simpler.
¶288But the theist will just say, but but I think that I can help myself to these uh to these fundamental units. And so uh there's just no real ability to make this sort of comparison. So Joe's simply pointing to possible examples. I'm not really sure that they're good examples, but possible examples of where people appeal to different fundamental postulates. I don't think addresses the question because the the question is precisely um is this of are those valid um fundamental postulates and do the resulting theories have uh good explanatory uh like properties are they explanatory adequate and and possib so so forth so merely saying that like people do it in different theories just doesn't assess sorry doesn't address those questions so I I just don't think it really um it really gets to the point there's one other thing that I would like to say which is that I think that I sort of said this before.
¶289There's bare theism which is just like God exists and has these omni properties and is a disembodied mind which doesn't explain anything. Joe wants to say that that's simple because it can be articulated in in a small number of words as long as you're allowed to use like mental terms and treat those as fundamental. Um but the problem with that even if you even if you appeal to fundamental mentalistic terminology you still can't make the theory empirically adequate without making lots of postulates and this is sort of what I was saying you have to assume that God has specific desires or intentions or reasons right he he makes specific creative acts and so even on its own terminology to make the theory empir empirically adequate you have to build in a lot of assumptions about the specific mental states that god has and that then can be compared against a rival though of what what are the fundamental so okay there there's this issue that I've got right about um there's many issues I have with fundamentality as a notion but one distinction that I think is being conflated between here that's an issue is uh theoretical fundamentality and like ontological fundamentality as well because I think >> I think being conflated here >> yes yeah and and the reason I think that that's an issue though is because there is a part of the notation that Joe's going to include in his uh compressibility argument which is this omni statement. So if this omni statement is taken as a shorthand for anything in a set, right? So for example, anything that's in the set of true state.
¶290So you don't have to in your description um include every statement that's in that set because you can kind of like refer to it with this omni thing of like of like you know powers or whatever. >> But then why can't you just do the same thing for reality? You can just say well reality is just like all true fact. It's just omnif fact. Okay.
¶291And do because you've got this because your fundamental because in fundamental theoretical terms you have this word omni which is permitted as part of the compression. So you can have a state you can produce naturalistic statements that include omni like um well reality is just omnifacts. Okay, it's just omnifysical facts and then you've you've now you've used all the terms and played by the rules of omni is permitted as a fundamental term, physical is permitted and fact is permitted. Right? So yeah, what Joe would say is that at least most naturalists do not think that omnifact or the totality of physical facts are the fundamental are the fundamental onlogical units um out of which exist.
¶292They they typically think as like particles or field states. >> Okay. But but then go okay. Yeah. Yeah.
¶293So go like omni physical field fact. Okay. Is that still going to be more compressible than omnipotent, omnib benevolent, you know, >> right? Well, this is this I think this is getting at the same point which is that I think that there is no there's no theory neutral way of making that the assessment because it depends on what what theory you're dealing with and what language you're you're allowed to use, how much compression you're able to apply and what is admitted as fundamental. I think actually physicalism has a fairly robust and like not a priori physicalism necessarily, but apostri physicalism with the scientific understanding that we have has quite a um quite robust and strict rules for how we're able to go about constructing explanations for things.
¶294There's a lot of things we're not able to appeal to because they'll be outside of what's we think of as admissible in terms of physical explanations. Vism it seems does not have really any such uh criteria which is the sense in which I think that it's a more ad hoc and less parimonious explanation. But so what I'm trying to what I'm trying to explain here is that I think that some of the terminology that uh Joe uses in terms of assessing theories I think like I'll talk about parimonian explanatory adequacy and things like that or coherence but I apply it in a different way than he does and I don't think the notion of like how compressible are the fundamental terms or like how few words we can use to describe things is the right way to do it at all because there's not a theory neutral way of doing it. What I think you do is look at the explanatory qualities uh taking taking each theory on its own merits and then seeing how well it does and then you can compare those to each other. Like how many if you take God as as theistic hypothesis as using as built on an ontology that's fundamentally mentalistic.
¶295>> So what I ask is okay what postulates do we have to make about divine intentions or actions in order to account for a phenomenon? Then what physical postulates do I have to make to account for phenomenon? And then I think you can assess those against each other as like the number of postulates and the coherence of those. But it's not in terms of finding a shared language. That is where I think that the approach is wrong.
¶296And I don't think that the examples that Joe gives really show that that can be done. It just shows that there are diff disagreements about what maybe is fundamental or some of those examples maybe not even >> I think I think this is I I mean I don't I don't know the right way of um ex exactly what's gone wrong in or or if Joe has done this and hasn't provided it here as something but it's like not paying enough attention to that word terms and like the cases where this is applicable it's because you appeal there's like something that kind gives you the theoretical terms as the backdrop, right? And it's terms of the theory. And I think because he's like equivocating now between like I I think this might be wrong between like fundamental ontology and fundamental terms of like theories with disagreement. >> I I I think that he kind of like sometimes reasons in the space of like okay fundamental ontologies.
¶297So like any terms that people would use in the domain of ontology is like where you get your theories from. But then he's not applying it right within the constraint domain of like a theory where there are terms that you can pick from and maybe compare in this way with some caveats. >> Yes. And this comes back to the whole basing applicability because the reason why we can use prior probabilities and and compare explanations or compare simplicity in certain cases is as we were saying before when you have a language which has a precise way of uh well I would say mapping to you might use a different terminology but mapping to particular underlying states. So like um a bit string is a description of a physical state in a computer and we can describe in detail exactly how that mapping looks like.
¶298And now there's a And so now there's a clear way of comparing the ontology with the description. >> Yes. >> Whereas often that's not true. You can arbitrarily compress descriptions if there's not a clear uh like rigid length that you have to have. You can say in reality some principle god >> you you need some principle for comparing the um the length of the words as a bit string.
¶299>> Yeah. um to the complexity of the phenomena that those terms are supposed to refer to. And I I think that here we are dealing with such heterogeneous phenomena that are so unconstrained that there's just no way of actually doing that and and then of applying the method. And um I think that another this this is sort of like then related to another issue that there is here. And what that issue is is that Joe is referring here to a method that is used in some technical fields, right?
¶300And used appropriately in those technical spaces, but he never does it. So he never provides us with workings that we can actually appeal to to see how the method is app. And and this is the same issue with the basian stuff, by the way. And this is why I sort of like mock this stuff sometimes as like the imitation of rigor or as like the aesthetics of science and rationality because this like compactly stable phrasing is literally just used here to be like something impressive, right? An academic that must be going on and you must accept this because that's pretty impressive, right?
¶301They do they do it in physics. It's like physics envy or something. But then it never like he never does this. When does he actually do this? when does he actually state out theories in their fundamental terms and actually compress them and actually compare the values?
¶302It it doesn't happen. And that's why I think like there's just nothing there's nothing going on here. And if he did do that, then we it'd probably illuminate and highlight the issues with this methodology. But because he doesn't do that, you can kind of like think, oh, I guess, you know, tr I'll just trust that this is all right. He sounds this guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
¶303I mean, that's pretty impressive. So >> he talks about a methodology but he doesn't actually deploy it. And this is a good transition because I think that we can highlight this in a number of cases. Uh and the first of which he wanted to do psychophysical harmony. And this is an example where from my point of view Joe applies different criteria to assessing naturalism versus theism in terms of their explanatory adequacy.
¶304Um he applies this principle of indifference and basian reasoning about the fundamental um ontology of naturalism and how that can then account for psychophysical luck. And but he doesn't do the same thing with theism. He he gives these handwaving explanations. It's not too unlike the other theism. So I'll explain what I mean there.
¶305But the point as we go through the point that I wanted to make is that what we've been talking about in terms of Joe's methodology and the intrinsic probability of theism uh and and the the problems that it has is um replicated like it's it's instantiated repeatedly throughout throughout the video in the way that he assesses specific arguments. So maybe um then let's make get a start on um psychophysical harmony and you can play out him explaining that and I will get a bit of water and food >> and I'll be back in a minute. So I'll probably >> Oh, do you want me who do you want to go first? We shouldn't. >> No, no, you uh I can take my laptop.
¶306>> How much are you drinking, man? You went to the toilet like an hour ago. >> No, I drank this at the start of the video. This 2 L bottle of water. >> You go to the bathroom and play it out and then not >> I I can I can uh cuz my I can disconnect my laptop and I can click it.
¶307Everyone will be accompanying me to the toilet. I'll turn my microphone and uh >> Okay. Well, if you want to do it that way, that's fine. >> Yeah. >> Suppose we now include in our background knowledge the two-fold miracle.
¶308Not only do the fundamental laws of nature possess life permitting ranges for their constant values, but the constants actually fall within those precise ranges. Even then, it's very surprising under naturalism that the life forms which develop would be conscious. And even if conscious life does develop, it's still profoundly unlikely under naturalism that the conscious experiences of those life forms would be incredibly orderly, coherent, intelligible, and rational in light of their physical states and behavior. By contrast, neither of these facts is nearly as surprising under theism. In fact, there's actually a collection of facts here that together comprise astoundingly powerful evidence for God's existence.
¶309These facts are all kinds of psychophysical luck, which is the general fact that consciousness is integrated with physical reality in striking and suspiciously fortunate ways, ways that would be incredibly unlikely in the absence of design. In what follows, I'll proceed through each fact in turn, drawing heavily and directly at various points from one of Brian Cutter's chapters in our book. So, fact number one, there are psychophysical laws. So, this is the only fact on the list whose evidential force presupposes the truth of dualism. I mean, technically, non-reductive forms of pansychism also make this fact evidential, but I'm going to set those aside.
¶310I mean everything I say in this section could easily be reformulated to accommodate that. Now dualism is the view that consciousness and matter are fundamentally distinct kinds of realities. Here consciousness refers to subjective experience. Something is conscious if it has experiences or as philosophers like okay so I'm just going to chime in on this point. Um, basically for any lurking tomists who are watching because uh, what I want to say is toism and ariselianism completely exclude this view.
¶311just just for anyone who is uh hasn't thought about this stuff as much as me and is like super on the Joe bandwagon and is maybe considering um all of the uh kind of arguments that Joe's giving is giving them these like awful apologetic weapons whatever what I am saying is uh yeah if if you're a pyomorphist then this is completely ruled out and that is because um the the hym morphic point of view is a metaphysical view which combines um behavior, embodiment and action with mental predication. And so I actually interestingly enough J and my views though there are some differences for us are going to be basically consistent with hyomorphism which I think says a lot for the direction you know people should kind of go in. But yeah, so so if you're a termist, all this stuff is going to be inconsistent. It isn't going to work for you basically unless you reject um the hyomorphic view that Thomas Aquinus himself revived from from Aristotle to say something is conscious if there's something it's like to be that thing. There's some way it feels from the inside or from the subject's perspective.
¶312On the dualist picture, consciousness and matter are not reducible to each other and neither is reducible to some secret third thing. Consciousness or mentality is a metaphysically basic category that's not explainable in more fundamental terms. Minds are not built up out of or constructed from more basic ingredients like mindless particles. >> Okay, so I will comment here again. Um so one thing that I again find kind of like weird is like what is a metaphysically basic property, right?
¶313And why even think that there are any such things? Of course, those that stuff can be argued for, but this is why I particularly take issue with um the kind of method, you know, in what's supposed to be like this rigorous case that Joe's providing where he goes through like everything from first principles like that there's no thought or engagement with rebuttals to um a kind of metaphysics that is concerned with these questions of fundamentality. I personally don't believe there is any such thing. James would disagree because he would categorize fundamentality in terms of like microphysics or whatever. But here's here's what I would say.
¶314My issue with fundamentality in metaphysics is primarily going to be based off of the metaphorical ways that people will talk about what's fundamental to what. But the ways that people will talk about that kind of fundamentality is going to be um basically by as a base case appealing to sort of how gravitational physics on earth works and like you know the fact that stuff is on the ground and other stuff is built on top of that which is clearly a product of I'm going to say the word cognitive I don't like it but I'm just saying it because we're all getting on here today. um are you know our cognitive capacities being appropriate for the kind of creatures we are in the environmental niche that we've developed in right um and so and so we have this word fundamental which applies to building things in our gravity on our planet the the thing now though is that people are going to take this notion of fundamentality and not apply it to um things that stand in a gravitational spatial relation And then you know the first metaphorical um change I suppose would be in terms of spatial scale. And I I think that this again can be justified because we move from sort of macroscopic things to the study of like molecules um to you know atomist atomistic physics and chemistry into like particle physics and so on. And so there's this kind of like there's um smaller and smaller stuff and this kind of like myological relationship up and I think that there is a defensible reductive notion of fundamentality and that is the one that James would defend in his book that he will never finish writing um which is basically um things get physics can tell us about smaller and smaller smaller things that stand in this like relation of compositionality and there's a kind of um if you know all of the microfysical facts you get the macro macrofysical facts the macroscopic facts as well.
¶315That notion of fundamentality I think is coherent, intelligible and defensible. this um grammatical metaphor of fundamentality though that is then going to get applied to um in in terms of m maybe like relationships of like supervenience and and metaphysical notions of modality maybe in terms of like grounding explanations and things like that is is going to permit all sorts of what I consider to be weird relationships and introductions of terms like substances which I don't know are going to be helpful for anything and and just a bunch of like what I consider to be like weird reasoning that isn't necessary. So if we're in this domain of metaphysics talking about fundamentality, I've got like this big issue with that except in the sense of scale and fundamentality and like maybe uh maybe the ability of knowledge at a certain scale allowing you to produce entailments at another scale or something like that. Um, so yeah, that that is that. So, so the point being when Joe talks about like the mental being metaphysically fundamental, I mean, sure, like you can make it's like you can say like my left foot be you can make a sentence with words in it.
¶316Okay. Um and and there's kind of like a placeholder in the sentence like um blank is metaphysically fundamental and you can like place some term in that blank spot. Okay, you can say like um maybe numbers metaphysically fundamental, maybe television is metaphysically fundamental. And it it sounds like a meaningful uh statement of metaphysics in virtue of the fact that it has the correct grammatical form, namely a blank term is metaphysically fundamental. But you can't make any sense of what it means.
¶317It's just meaningless. And so I think this when people say like the the mental is metaphysically fundamental, we'll talk I'll leave a bit of this for when James is back. We'll talk about this, but what we were saying before and what we will go on to say is we we both conceptualize the mental in a way that is um cannot be taken apart in a non-dualistic way in a way that uh cannot come apart from some kinds of like embodiment in some cases behavior um nervous activity things like that or function, you know, you know, systems behavior. And so this idea of there being a thing like raw fields that uh disclose mentality or which is it's just I don't even know what it means. It's just meaningless to me.
¶318The same is true of matter. It's a basic category not built up out of or constructed from minds or consciousness. Consciousness is fun. Consciousness is fundamental. Particles are aware.
¶319Sorry. Again, it's not it's not it's not a Majesty reason video without like an impression of Philip Goth. Okay. Dualism contrasts with physicalism or materialism, which is the view that ultimately at bottom everything is physical or material. Consciousness is then nothing over and above matter moving or combining or functioning in a certain way.
¶320That's just what consciousness is. Now, one motivation for dualism is that consciousness just seems like radically different from material configurations and processing. Like it's utterly mysterious, you see. So, just the first thing I'm going to comment on here is like what does at bottom even mean here? Because again, bottom, right, is a spatial spatial relation.
¶321Um, you know, my bottom is below my head. Um, the bottom of the wardrobe is below the top of the wardrobe. But what the hell is like the bottom of reality? Again, I think that there is a defensible case to be made for like smaller things that like smaller and smaller things that things are composed of. But what what does it mean to say um that like desire is in a composition relationship to like physical state?
¶322Um like like you're composed of desire or something like that. And and this is where I think that all a lot of these problems of mind I think are cartesian in nature. They arise from a conceptual distinction that I think can be traced back to to Plato, can be traced through some Islamic philosophers and and through Daycart, but which provides us with a kind of grammar of uh two separate domains. And so that that finishes us with like the appearance of an onlogical distinction that is really a grammatical distinction. And I would um elucidate that by maybe talking about other examples that we've kind of used before like say say the economy right um or the weather or something like that that there are statements that you can produce about the economy or the weather that it's really hard to make sense of in terms of like physicalism.
¶323give me a description of atoms that um tells you what the GDP of the USA will be next year or something like that, right? And I it's really unclear what that would even be mostly as a result of the fact that when we talk about the economy, we usually don't talk about atoms. And so, you know, we don't have these kind of like linguistic connections between atom concepts and um atom concepts and like economy concepts because we're just not in the business of explaining the economy in terms of atoms, right? But it it doesn't mean that you could that there's like a true ontological gap between uh you know the atoms and all the atoms in the universe and the economy of the USA. There's simply an epistemic gap.
¶324Now so you know you can you can then kind of construct a philosophical problem let's say by harping on and on and on about the fact you know basically by just repeatedly asking like why questions for every answer that someone gives you and you know you can do this with anything. You can even do this with uh mathematical identities like you know someone can say 1 + 1 equals 2 and you can say like well why like you know why is it that 1 and one is two and a why question if you're sympathetic enough will elicit you know like a feeling of curiosity or something so you don't feel satisfied with an explanation so I'm going to just say well you know it's like by definition or maybe they'll give you some answer in terms of like metaphysics or or logic or set theory or something Right. But then you can just say like, well, why? Like why is that identity there? And I think I think the real answer to some of those questions is just going to be like basically those are our linguistic practices and that's what you were taught to do at some at some point, right?
¶325Like at some point you're just a kid learning language and this is what people do and you're taught and you could even like go on to do new things. Whether or not you can encourage everyone in the world to go on doing them with you is like another matter. Um but you know just the fact that you can keep asking these why questions doesn't mean that there's like a well motivated ontological like fundamental gap between two things. Um and so so I think I think that this is the problem with um the gap here that that Joe is is going to talk about between the physical and the mental. Um now there there are going to be questions.
¶326So so one way of challenging um the dualism that Joe is talking about is going to be by challenging his conceptualization of the mental um as being disconnected from like behavior, biology, physics, embodiment and all these sorts of things. Another angle though, and this is one that James will disagree with, but I saw that Nam Chosky uh comes at this from is Chsky actually rejects that we there is an adequate conceptualization of the physical to motivate dualism. Um, and I think that this is actually kind of interesting because it leads into a view that's probably going to be close to to James'. And so so um what Chomsky says if I produce the quote let me just scroll to it uh is let me let me actually go back and and share this. So this this is from a book Chsky and his his critics and this is a quote from Chsky that that was unpublished.
¶327says uh you know Newton exercised uh the machine not the ghosts. Surprisingly uh the principles of contact mechanics are false which is the the um physical sort of like antecedent concept to uh to Newton and it is necessary to invoke what Newton called an occult quality to account for the simplest phenomena of nature. A fact that he and other scientists found disturbing and paradoxical. These moves also deprive us of any determinate notion of body or matter. The world is what it is.
¶328Period. The domain of the physical is nothing other than what we come more or less to understand and hope to assimilate to the core natural sciences in some way, perhaps by modifying them radically as has often been necessary. With the collapse of the traditional theory of matter or body, metaphysical dualism becomes uh unstatable. Similarly, such notions as physicalism or eliminative materialism lose any clear sense uh unless some new notion of physical is offered to replace the abandoned cartesian concept. So what what I'll say about that is I think it's it's an interesting approach to dissolving the problem.
¶329And I actually don't think it's one that threatens say um James's uh approach to reductive physicalism because James isn't operating with the cartesian notion of the physical, right? And so I I think you know J James may have in his theory one such modification of the physical from how it's understood in cartesianism to one that can you know make sense of mental terms and mind terms and bio biological substrates and uh the behavior of like humans and animals and systems and things like that. Um so the point being that the problem with this kind of dualism is I think a a grammatical one and you can look at it both ways that the concept of mind that it offers and works with is like weird and problematic and wrong and also the concept of physical that it operates is weird and problematic and wrong. And once you get clear about both of that, there just is no problem and there's no reason to be this kind of jewelist. And you know, it it's particularly weird to me for like your first fact in your problem to be something so contentious and odd that isn't a fact at all.
¶330It's more like um conclusion, you know, conclusion downstream of like a thousand weird things. There are psychophysical laws. It's not at all like a fact that that people um generally should accept. I think um I certainly don't. James doesn't I don't think a bunch of other people do.
¶331I think you're back James if you want to. >> Yeah, that's fine. Um so uh what was I saying? Joe does have like there's this first version which sort of appeals to this dualist distinction. He then argues that the argument of psychophysical harmony goes through even excuse me even not accepting dualism.
¶332Um so um I'm happy to move through this first part. Um I think that your comments were adequate for the moment. So let's keep going. atoms bumping into one another in certain ways would be associated with subjective experience. Like it seems like all this processing could have gone on in the dark with like no one home inside to experience any of it.
¶333I'm going to have to comment on that though just because here we have the famous method of intuition um being completely useless for anything. Um you know Joe says it seems like um you know we could have all this processing going on with no one at home. Um seems to who? Well, seems to Joe who is wrong about the topic. The pro the problem with um this like seems location is that it isn't the product of any um psychological faculty that people have or you know it's just a word that people produce for uh any number of reasons and justifications that they might have.
¶334Right? Why does something seem a certain way to you? Why do you not feel any inhibition as you produce a statement that you think is true? Right? Well, for any number of reasons.
¶335Because you've never had negative feedback from your social group. Because you are not very well informed on a topic. Because you have an inadequate conceptualization of the domain you're thinking about. You know, like what you have to explain is why someone does or doesn't have a kind of like feeling of certain has a feeling of certainty, doesn't have a kind of inh inhibition, and doesn't like kind of clearly imagine things in alternative ways to answer why something seems a certain way to them. And that's why you should always question the justification for a seems statement.
¶336And I think that the reason that Joe produces the word the statement that it seems that way to him is because he's been studying philosophy of mind way too much in the contemporary tradition where everyone talks about what it's likeness and qualia and all this stuff and not studying the history of psychology, neuroscience um and even you know some other older conceptualizations where like suk is not considered to be this like cart you know pre-carteesian philosophy um and and he will actually come for things to seem a different way to him, you know. So, so this like it seems that way is just really really bad as a way of getting to anywhere in this case and in lots of the other cases where he deploys it. >> Yes. Just to just to add to that, remember we talked about a priority does not mean prior to all experience. It means that you only have the minimal amount of experience necessary to possess the concepts and and reason about them.
¶337But the whole one of the things that Nathan might criticize is the idea that our acquisition of those concepts and how to think about them. In this case, things like qualia and consciousness and thought experiments um is highly social uh highly conditioned by our social context and exactly what we've studied and how we've thought about it and whom we've spoken to. The idea that that won't in some way bias what seems to be plausible or what seems to be possible to us is I think ridiculous. And so this again is an example of how the notion of a priori a prior a priori here uh is sort of problematic because it's actually already building in a bunch of assumptions and vocabulary and and set of concepts and predisposing us to certain things. And of course different people will you know be predisposed in different directions by that.
¶338But it's uh it's wrong to think about this as if these are sort of a real view from nowhere that's just objective because they're not. They're they're the concepts that we've acquired in order to even think about it are condition us to think in certain ways. We have to be very mindful of that. And I think Joe is not >> because like so you might approach this by appealing to um the the um sort of like more theory neutral terms of mind like you know pain, happiness, believing whatever right like thinking or you know all these sorts of things. But I I guess the problem there is that I think that people only ever come to understand these words in an embodied way.
¶339You know, I don't think that people e have no experiences of their own embodiment or of other people's embodiment and learn to apply those terms in some like purely mental realm or something. I think people only learn to talk in terms of mental predicates by like observing others behavior and like applying these words to them and stuff. um and and then explaining action and things like that. So then you you go okay well what about the other words what about like qualia consciousness and so on. Well then the way that people are introduced to those words is going to be through saying that they are fundamentally unexplainable in terms of physicality which is just a question begging you know a question begging introduction.
¶340It's not it's not going to tell you anything about what they are. It's just going to be to say, you know, they're whatever we want them to be, but not physical and inexplicable in physical terms, which is of course going, you know, it's just baked into the concept that um that that they work in that way. And I don't think that there is anything of that kind because I think that the normal terms that are supposed to be the ones that they attach onto are connected to physicality and embodiment in very important ways. So um yeah that that you know that that this is like a really big problem for however you want to conceptualize the um you know the supposed explaner that go into these psychophysical law facts that then go into psychophysical law rearrangement arguments somehow the store of electrical and chemical activity in your brain is associated with a rich stream of consciousness right like vivid experiences sot feedback. Yeah.
¶341Yeah. >> And thoughts. These subjective, privately accessible experiences have a conscious character or feel that just seems completely different from the objective, publicly accessible physical aspects of brains like their shape or their size or, you know, their velocity. Even if we know every seems to who, right? and and because it doesn't seem that way to me like my understanding of for example um I should say this actually because N's just doing an an exam now um you know like some of the things that she's been practicing for that exam are literally like um you know like evaluation criteria that you would give to someone to diagnose things that might be wrong with their brain.
¶342So, for example, you give people like you ask someone to um copy um like a pattern that you do with your hands and then you're like evaluating their ability to like observe to uh memorize, recall and um to coordinate their movements and things or you ask people like who's the current uh prime minister of the United Kingdom or the president of America, things like this, right? as as part of the evaluative criteria. And all of these are uh diagnostic of like where someone might have like you know damage on their brain or like lesions or whatever. And the point being that so so my conceptualization of what it means to have these skills is connected to like human brain physiology, right? And just because I can s in the same way that I can uh sort of like imagine one without the other like someone not being able to remember and not having a brain, you know, I also can sort of imagine a square circle, but like what's the point of like me saying I can sort of like imagine this thing because I'm not I'm just talking about like what am I talking about there?
¶343Like um creative writing or something. It's not got anything to do with anything. Um, so you know, I'm certainly not talking about like my best knowledge of how anything actually works. Physical fact about the brain's composition and functioning, including all the positions of its atoms, the rate at which its neurons fire, the amount of acetylcholine traversing each synaptic gap, there would remain the question of why these physical processes are associated with any subjective experience at all. and >> if you already believed in the counterconclusion to alternative points of view.
¶344>> Well, the way he phrase that he says there there remains the question. So that that to me is just an epistemic gap which is you know plausible depending on the limits of one's knowledge but I don't think any strong onlogical claim follows from that. I I mean neither of us think that like knowledge of acetil choline um tells you about like mental predicates whereas for example you know suppose you you phrased it this way okay you've got um what's the e experiment uh I get confused between the physics one and the unethical psychology one is it the Mgrim or Milican experiment one of these is >> obedience experiment >> yeah yeah so it's like um you know in that experiment right pain is operationalized as but you go like oh these people like an important part of interpreting that experiment right is that when administered with electric shocks people like recoiled winced and with and that's an important part of understanding um how people felt how people reasoned about inflicting pain on others right pain in that experiment is understood as literally the reactions of people the experiment wasn't um you give people the ability to administer electric shocks with a clipboard and they don't react. The experiment was they react and so you know like that's a that's a case where what pain means is being operationalized and understood in terms of people's reactions to um and it's not just I want to clarify that this doesn't mean reactions without feelings or something the point is that there is no conceptual come apart for you know like someone can like between like tissue damage of certain kinds and um you know depending on the part of the body where there is tissue damage or um kinetic impact or or temperature variation or whatever and chemical you know chemical burns all sorts of things depending on the part of the body there's going to be like different nerves in that part. So there might be like you know central nervous system reactions or tissue reactions that happen or you know like blood reactions and all of that is like a part of evaluating the organism's response to this kind of stimuli which is how we understand and conceptualize pain.
¶345Some of it is going to be like voluntary. So maybe you can like you know maybe you can like will that you don't react but you won't be able to control that you begin to sweat or you know like certain things the but the but the point is that there's no such thing as pain without a phys physical physiological difference that is just there is no such thing as that and and and you can't produce any >> well Joe says a priority you can imagine that there could be and that's the whole basis of his argument >> I don't know what that means well he says he and what do we do? >> Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah.
¶346Yeah. Um >> I I'm not strongly disagreeing. I just think that it's um this is what this highlights why it's a problematic methodology because people think they can imagine different things. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶347>> But there's there's other critiques that can be made as well. So maybe we should push on. >> Yeah. Okay. Sure.
¶348>> Why they're associated with one kind of experience rather than another. We can imagine a robot performing the same behaviors and processing information in the same ways without experiencing anything. Indeed, it seems that we can coherently imagine someone physically like you. >> I'm sorry, but this is I've got to pause just because you can't help. >> But just what what are you imagining?
¶349Like the thing is you're not you're not imagining it appropriately then, right? Because you can't imagine it being exactly the same and different. You you can't you know that the scenario it is exactly the same and different is not a a real scenario that can happen. It can't happen. You can't have a scenario that's exactly the same and different.
¶350>> I mean, the the usual like the the P zombie thought experiment, right, where it's a a physical duplicate, but there's no phenomenal experience or no consciousness or whatever word you want to use. It doesn't feel like anything. >> Well, I I don't think that that is possible. Uh the claim is that it's conceivable, right? No, but I'm saying it's you can't you can convince yourself you've conceived of something through ignorance and through like not having the sufficient detail, you know, like like I can convince myself that I'm imagining a square circle.
¶351I like I can I I I can just like sort of like I can wand like really and be like I think I've got it, you know? Am I What am I actually doing there? I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm like producing emotions in myself. I'm sort of like visually hallucinating or something, you know, like I but I can I can like I'm not kidding like I'm not doing this as a bit.
¶352I can convince myself that I've imagined a square circle. What have I done in that scenario? I don't know what I've done and I don't know how to think about what import that has for um conceptualizing anything. >> Well, I I I think that the best that can be said at this point is that Joe is going to tell us what import these intuitions have. uh and so uh let us see what he says about it because obviously there are a lot of people who share Joe's intuition about the conceivability of these sort of thought experiments.
¶353I mean I'm sympathetic to you that I'm not really sure that these people have conceived of much of anything meaningful. >> But a lot of people share the intuition. So I think it's worth uh worth taking it seriously and commenting on what implications follow from these if any. >> But what does it mean for them to say they have the intuition in that case right? Because does it mean that they can like really strain themselves and do something that they describe as imagining?
¶354Like what is that? What like what what how is that a procedure that's a guide to anything? And how is there >> I don't think it is. Right. But we need what I would say is we need what Joe is claiming as to what it's a guide to because he hasn't actually said anything about that yet >> in order to respond specifically to you know the argument.
¶355this molecular detail with no interior subjective experience whatsoever. We can also coherently imagine a physical duplicate of you with different experiences. So for example, you know, someone with inverted color sensations experiencing green where you would experience red and you know vice versa. So like when this physical duplicate of you sees a stop sign, the experience that they have subjectively, the way it feels is the way that you feel subjectively, the way things seem to you when you see for instance like a green light. That's totally imaginable.
¶356You know, kids wonder about this all the time like, "Oh yeah, I wonder if my red is like the same as your red." you know, to put the motivation in here for dualism differently. >> I'm I'm going to comment on this because again, I actually don't I I think that um because language is publicly a valuable behavior. Um kids do have the same red, they literally use it in the same way, publicly, accessibly. We verify that. And what it would mean for them to have a different red um would mean to use different language or use language differently.
¶357But with respect to this point about imagination and like movies depicting incoherent scenarios, there's a great example of this in Christopher Nolan's tenant where, you know, like a big part of the film is that like time runs backwards and they've got to like make stuff happen backwards in time. And there's one scene in that where there's a car chase that takes place when time is flowing backwards, which what does it mean for time to flow backwards? Not really sure. Um, but the point being that from the perspective of the film, time is going backwards. And the in the car scene, the car go it's going uh slower to faster.
¶358It's moving backwards, right? But the guy is shifting up the gears to make it go faster. And so this is like a production error in how they reasoned about how to film this scene where like an engine can't work like that. It a car can't go from its fastest state in the in the being in the lowest gear to slowing well unless you stall the engine of course forwards in it wouldn't make sense. They should have started in gear six and gone down in gears, but the you know this the chase starts with like there's the crash and um that should have been at the highest speed and then it should have been going down in gears to the start of like when you know when they set off which would be in the lowest gear but instead the way that they had it cuz they wanted to like ramp the intensity up and it makes sense to people in car chase that you go from the low gears to to up the gears they were shifting up and I remember feeling this like this concordance in watching it because I was like like an engine cannot work that way.
¶359But like you know it it has to be that way for it to make sense to the audience for them to go along with it for the narrative of like this is a car chase where the intensity is ramping up to make sense. They have to be shifting up the gears and and this is exactly this kind of thing like it's literally so so like what happened there because the film is depicting it but it's incoherent. It doesn't make any sense. Well, what what happened is you were viewing a film traveling forwards in time where there was a kind of like metaphorical representation of what it would be for things to go backwards in time and you know they shifted up the gears as they did it and and and there's there's no mystery there unless you kind of like get twisted up in um explaining what your observations but anyway even if we had a complete understanding of the physical objective aspects of a bat's brain and behavior we still wouldn't know what it's like from the bat's inner perspective to echolocate. That's just a different kind of fact from all the physical facts that we can investigate with the tools of science.
¶360Similarly, even if a neuroscientist blind from birth has never seen color and comprehensively knows down to every microphysical detail all the brain processes implicated in visual experience, she still wouldn't know what it's like to see red. And you know, if you presented to her something which was red and something which was green, she wouldn't she wouldn't know like, oh man, which one of these is the red one. I've kind of got a comment on this too, which is to say, first off, like is there anything of what it's like, right, at all? I'm not sure if what it's like is an additional thing that you know, so like there's like seeing red, right, and there's um there's like smelling coffee and all those sorts of things. And like obviously someone without a nose can't smell coffee and someone without eyes can't see things but maybe they could like hallucinate things whatever.
¶361But the point is that there if if you remove the what it's likeness you've not got this like weird bit of language that it's not clear what it's doing but you but you can make sense of like someone seeing or smelling or whatever. Um similarly in the case of like a bat you know like okay I I don't have sonar uh physiology so I can't echolocate um what is the what it's like doing and like why is that a mystery and then furthermore you you know like the so the reason I can't echolocate is because I'm not a bat and don't have sonal capabilities. There's not like a deep metaphysical problem there. There's just a a biological problem, right? Um, and then the the second part of that um is Oh, I've completely blank.
¶362The second part of it is um uh I can't remember. It doesn't matter. Oh well. >> Yeah. Well, I I think what's interesting about this section is that although Joe is sort of gesturing at some arguments for dualism, he doesn't really defend dualism in this video.
¶363And so I don't really feel the need to go through all of the details of that. We have discussed that in previous videos like we talked about Mary and so forth the colorblind neuroscientist example. Um I think he's sort of highlighting here of this uh supposed gap between the mental and the physical. Um which is what sort of motivates discussion of psychophysical law. So I think it's useful to understand how he frames it.
¶364But in terms of where he's going with the argument, it's it's not exactly that he's going to argue for dualism. What what he's going to argue is that well psychophysical laws are unexpectedly harmonious. I think we we just need to let him sort of build up to that before we can critique it in terms of what he's doing with it because he hasn't actually said anything in terms of what we could infer from this other than that, you know, to some people it seems like these scenarios are conceivable kind of thing. Uh, in one sense that's fair enough because he's going to argue different things. In another sense though, I think it's important because it's like if you're going to spend your time thinking about the mind and stuff, it's worth pointing out that like, you know, this is just a pointless waste of time almost like do you know what I mean?
¶365like it if the fact that this is the backdrop for explorations of mind should be like the reddest of red flags as to um the relevance of someone's exploration of those topics because like this is just nonsense that nobody should be wasting any more time on you know like like sure Joe might have slightly different things that he thinks avoid some of the but but the fact that this is his framing and the fact that he's not um thinking about more fruitful ways of conceptualizing these things that may avoid it and and literally just you know handwaving like oh we're just seems this it just seems that those would be wrong without spending any mental effort or time on it is just like really disappointing I think oh I agree I mean he doesn't really take seriously a lot of the well okay to be fair he does have longer videos about this that I haven't watched although I mean you would have thought that some of these issues would be relevant here. But anyway, I I I do want to say sort of focus on the psychophysical harmony part because the whole philosophy of mind issue could be a whole video by itself. Obviously, it is relevant, but is a bit different. And yeah, like if she gains her sight and sees an apple for the first time, she'll learn something that goes beyond all the physical information that she already had access to. In particular, she'll learn something about conscious experience, which is different from brain processing and behavior.
¶366Now, I've been gesturing towards some reasons to accept dualism, but I'm not interested here in giving anything approaching a comprehensive case for dualism. That would be its own like 12-hour video, and I've already done content covering arguments formed against dualism. Moreover, only this first fact about consciousness, only this first like facet of the problem of psychophysical luck presupposes dualism to have evidential force. So, dualism doesn't like significantly affect the strength of my case here. And for that reason, I'm just going to sort of take it for granted in the remaining discussion of the first fact that the fact that there are psychophysical laws.
¶367If you're interested in the many quite powerful arguments for dualism, you can see the subsection of the resource document linked in the description and pin comment on dualism for a small sampling. But even if consciousness is distinct from matter, conscious experiences clearly depend in some way on what happens in your brain, right? Like there are robust correlations between brain activity and conscious experiences. And you know, we can alter your conscious experiences by altering your brain activity. Like we've known for quite a long time that you bunk someone on the head, their conscious experiences are going to change.
¶368So under dualism then there are going to be principles or laws by which consciousness is linked to physical states of material systems like brains. So the final theory of the universe will include not only fundamental physical laws >> but also fundamental. >> Yeah. I just because I unmuted because I just don't think that there are laws of such kind. This is you know especially if the if if the an epistemic one you know it's like um it's like saying there's a masked man um you know the state of the world is that Terry is wearing a mask right?
¶369you know, Terry, and then a guy's come up to you with a mass man, and it's like you say, well, isn't it crazy that um isn't there like a mass man Terry problem? Isn't it like crazy that like this guy in the mass could be like anyone in the world, but of all the people it is Terry, right? and and and then you kind of construct some like weird problem because there's like different ways of describing things based on the limitations of your knowledge with respect to what you're presented with. Um and and then maybe you could even just like randomly insert the word law there because like when he takes off the mask and it's Terry, you're like, "Oh, there must be like a massman Terry law." And isn't it isn't it really like fortunate that we have like the Terry masked man Terry Law? Well, maybe it would be helpful to let him articulate what the argument is first.
¶370>> Okay? >> Because the audience may not be familiar with, you know, what what he's actually claiming here. >> Psychophysical laws which just specify how consciousness is linked to physical states of matter. These fundamental psychophysical laws would provide answers to questions like you know what kinds of physical systems are associated with consciousness. I mean like we know that some physical systems are associated with consciousness like human brains and presumably some aren't you know like rocks.
¶371The ultimate psychophysical laws would tell us which physical things belong in each camp. And among physical systems that are conscious, the psychophysical laws will specify which specific physical states are associated with which states of consciousness. You know, like in the human case, we know that some brain states are associated with red experiences, others with coffee taste experiences, others with you know experiences of laughing at my jokes which are you know profoundly funny you know etc. The psychophysical laws would provide a general mapping from physical states onto states of consciousness. that is an assignment of conscious states to physical states which takes physical states as input and delivers as output the conscious states associated or correlated with them.
¶372In other words, the psychophysical laws describe the pairings or the correlations between physical states and conscious states. But wait a second, isn't it a bit like suspicious that there are these additional fundamental laws that make provision for consciousness? Like in addition to the fundamental physical laws governing the movements of matter, our universe's catalog of fundamental laws includes laws for the generation of consciousness. But that's kind of whack if you think about it, right? Like consciousness is required for most if not all forms of value in the universe.
¶373It's needed for there to be love and meaningful relationships and enjoyment and virtuous rational agency and valuable knowledge and pretty much anything else of significant value. Instead of a universe like ours, there could have been a far simpler universe with only physical laws. It would be very surprising for a fundamentally purposeless universe to have extra fundamental laws concerning the key ingredient required for significant value. Under naturalism, there's no reason to expect things to be set up this way and actually good reason to expect them not to be since the universe without these extra fundamental laws would be far simpler and therefore much more intrinsically probable. By contrast, it's not at all surprising that our universe would include psychophysical laws if God exists.
¶374Like it's not unreasonable to expect that a perfect being, you know, a being who aims at the good would create laws securing the key ingredient consciousness required for significant value in the universe. So since it's much more likely that the universe would contain psychophysical laws under theism and under naturalism, the fact that there are psychophysical laws significant evidence for theism over naturalism. >> The second fact involved in psychophysical luck is >> Let's just pause it. So I I think that that first fact is supposed to be dependent on dualism was my understanding. >> I was going to say I thought you said that it wasn't dependent on jewelers.
¶375>> No, the rest of them aren't is what I understand. Facts two to three or how many >> because I was I was about to ask you. I was going to say no that that all seems completely depend but okay maybe. >> Yes. Because obviously, you know, a physicist about the mind does not think that psychophysical laws in so far as we acknowledge that there's an association.
¶376Psychophysical laws just describe how certain physical states arise from other physical states or you know how more complex states are instantiated in more uh like simple states like for example how weather patterns are instantiated in patterns of um pressure and temperature and energy in the atmosphere. So they don't think that they're like something extra above and beyond what needs to be specified you know at the fundamental physical level. So, as far as I can tell, um, what everything that Joe was saying, in fact, one is dependent on dualism. And I mean, I don't think that dualism is true. So, I'm not too worried about responding to that specific formulation of it.
¶377Although, what he's what he's about to say here doesn't >> it it's not really that different. So, I don't actually understand why there are two, but it's framing. >> Yeah. Well, this is what I'll I mean, I'll probably bring this up, but maybe did he just misspeak on fact one where he was referring to the fact that he personally thinks that maybe these other things are going to be stronger and doesn't think you necessarily need to be a jewelist, but he was still continuing to exposite the dualist point. >> Look, I'm not 100% sure.
¶378My interpretation is that he's saying that fact one assumes substance dualism. Facts two and three don't. >> Okay. Um, >> but I think we've got more than enough to talk about with the other two that maybe we can just focus on those. We've already >> Yeah.
¶379Fact one. >> In order to get a universe that includes consciousness, it's not enough for it to have fundamental laws specifying that consciousness arises under certain conditions. Those laws also need to be harmonized with the physics of the universe. Specifically, they need to link consciousness to physical states that actually occur in the universe. Even if there are laws specifying that a physical system generates consciousness when its parts are arranged in a certain way, we won't get consciousness if this material arrangement never occurs.
¶380So even if there are psychophysical laws, it's a separate question whether they actually match the physical contents of the universe in the sense that they assign consciousness to physical states that actually exist. Explaining this fortuitous >> see I can't see I I guess that this is like a separate point in one sense. It's basically just the fine tuning argument. But >> yeah, I mean that's what I think. This is just a fine tuning argument.
¶381>> But but it's also not um it's not I can't see how it's independent of dualism because if you don't buy the jewelist framing then there is no question of physical states that give rise to jewelism pairings because there's no jewelism pairings, right? No, but I I think it does make sense to say that there are certain physical states that are that are consistent with or allow for the existence of mental states and there are some that don't. I mean that's not that shouldn't be controversial. And so you can ask are physical states that uh are consistent with or generate or allow for mental states possible in our universe and why if so why like or what is the probability that that turns into a fine tuning argument rights consistent with that >> the fine tuning argument though right >> I don't know how it's a separate argument I that's what I thought as well this just sounds like another way of saying the fine tuning argument >> uh but or maybe maybe he hasn't thought about how the way that life is conceptualized in the finetuning argument kind of I mean it flitters between this kind of like conception of mind I guess and uh other other things but but yeah it's basically this match is the problem of psychonomic harmony which is developed in a forthcoming article of mine that you can see on screen which you can read in the resource document but before explaining psychonomic harmony in more detail allow me to introduce and use the term psychophysical principles rather than psychophysical laws here I will treat psychophysical principles as descriptions of which physical states are paired or associated or correlated with which conscious states leaving it open whether these principles correspond to identity relations grounding relations or causal relations. I opt for the term psychophysical principles because I want to be neutral going forward on whether dualism is true.
¶382So I'm not going to presuppose that there are extra fundamental psychophysical laws in what follows. As I'll explain, all the remaining facts are significant evidence for theism. Even if we reject dualism, everyone should grant that there are conscious states associated or connected in some way with physical states. Even if you think they're identical or one is reducible to the other. And the psychophysical principles are just, you know, descriptions of which conscious states are paired or associated with which physical states.
¶383And that's neutral as to whether they're paired with them or associated with them because they're identical or because they're reducible or whatever. So psychonomic harmony consists in the fact that these psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical states that actually exist. And as it turns out, this is pretty striking. The psychophysical principles might have said that a physical system only gets to be conscious when its parts exhibit a certain five-dimensional spatial pattern that can't occur within our four-dimensional spaceime or when its parts exhibit an arrangement so complex or so specific that it never occurs in the history of the universe. >> Uh I'll just let it play.
¶384>> Yeah, that's fine. >> For example, a galaxy sized brain or when it has a certain degree of integrated information that is larger than any degree that ever comes to exist. Alternatively, the psychophysical principles might have said that a physical system only gets to be conscious when its parts have a brain-like functional organization realized in a different material substrate like iron or helium that would never evolve naturally in a world with our physics. Or the psychophysical principles might have specified that only certain kinds of non-existent matter support consciousness. For instance, the principles might have paired consciousness only with schmassive bodies where again, you know, schmass if you recall from nomological harmony refers to a possible physical property similar to mass but which doesn't actually exist.
¶385Or the psychophysical principles might have varied consciousness only with unrealized functional states that say emit x-rays in the direction of and proportional to the strength of incoming gravitational influences. Doesn't okay tell me if maybe he's going to talk about this like I don't think he does. You know the um one one of the objections right to um fine-tuning arguments is that if within your fine-tuning argument you are conceptualizing life or or at least like morally valuable life as being minded and you have some commitment to um some kind of physical states being uh necessary for some of those valuable mental states. Then are you not excluding disembodied minds having those valuable mental states because you have said that certain physical states are necessary for them? I.e.
¶386Does this psychonomic harmony argument not rule out God as an explanation wholly in terms of if certain physical states must exist in some relation to uh me that for there to be certain mental states that are valuable then um God can't have those which is going to be an issue or God can't be a mind of that kind. Yeah, this has never really made sense to me. I mean this is essentially the response that psychophysical principles are not expected at all under theism because theism postulates a disembodied mind. So why would we expect that there's any physical at all? God already instantiates a non-embodied mind.
¶387So it would be expected to create more of that if it's seems to be possible. >> And if if those conscious states that are dependent on psychophysical principles are valuable as would maybe be required for there to be an argument of God to create them. um then God can't have them, right? So then how can God not have valuable mental states? Why are there val you know all good or whatever?
¶388>> I mean this is a subset of what I was saying before. If there are valuable states that are not instantiated with God, not like co-eternal with God, then it seems like God is not a maximally a perfect being and so therefore that is contradictory. So yeah, I think that this is an underlying problem. um in terms of I don't think theism is really even consistent with this this framework or it certainly is not clear that it is. >> Another issue here is just that I think that um Joe is stating this in a strange way like the psychophysical principles could be could pair consciousness with unrealized functions or like non-existent physical states.
¶389Obviously, if that was the case, that's just a way to say that it could it could according to, you know, this way of a prior way of thinking, it could have been the case that our universe could not instantiate embodied life, uh, embodied consciousness or embodied mental states, I should say. >> Well, conceivably as well is important. >> Yeah, it could. Yeah, that's what he's saying. It could conceivably have been the case according to this argument that our universe was such that it could not instantiate embodied minds.
¶390And um, that really just seems to me what the fine tuning argument is. uh the function argument is just a way of express that in terms of physical constants whereas this is just a pure conceivability argument. I really just don't see how this is a different argument. Yeah, I guess like so what does Colin say? Embodied moral agents or something like that.
¶391But the >> the moral part of that, so the embodied part of that would be the the um physical part of the psychophysical principles and the moral part of that would be the relevant um conscious states in the or psycho states in the psychophysical principles. Right? So yeah, I it does just seem like the same thing. >> So there's an interesting structure to this argument here because he says at the bottom many of these psychophysical principles are simpler than the actual psychophysical principles and and therefore in need of explanation. Um the issue here though is that psy by his own definition by Joe's definition psychopris psychophysical principles include identity statements and identity which is a form of physicalism that I hold is a sort of a token identity version which is to say that particular mental states are token identical to particular physical states.
¶392This a fairly common view um but the point is that token identity statements are not usually thought to be in need of explanation. Um, so >> yeah, that's kind of >> it's not clear that that that there's anything for the physicist to do here. I mean, I think that maybe this will come out a little bit further as he develops the argument, but it's just not really obvious what the problem is supposed to be. The initial form of the psychophysical harmony argument is sort of predicated on the notion that the mental is something different from the physical and then so it is a bit mysterious as to how they align. But if you dispense with that notion, if you use particularly a form of identity or or realization, then those are generally thought to be held necessarily and and therefore it's just not clear that the there's any more there's any problem here.
¶393>> And if if we go back to Joe's compressible bitstring things, I'm pretty sure that like identity statements, there's a way that you're meant to state them if you're doing that kind of analysis where they come out like winning in the bitstring scenario, right? Well, the I mean identity statements are compressible because anything that's, you know, identical, you can you can just refer to it once and then have a a mapping to that. So, yeah. So, he doesn't really discuss that here. Maybe we'll let it play out a bit further, but I I think that this argument is a bit confused.
¶394>> Well, like my point being that he's using the word simpler in that final >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. >> Yeah.
¶395But if you map it back to his framework for simplicity in terms of compressibility, wouldn't you actually bias the physical identity? >> Oh, yeah. Sorry. That's an excellent point. And that's sort of exactly why this the point that I made about identity the whole point about these notion these um relations being identity or or once of instantiation is that you don't postulate anything else.
¶396That's one of the reasons why like the mind is nothing above and beyond the physical processes in the brain. It's just sort of an extra language for talking about certain types of states that is thought to be onlogically parimonious because you don't need to postulate anything else and these relations hold necessarily. So >> yeah, >> Joe seems to be problematizing that without really telling us what the problem is. He does he does sort of go a little bit more detail, but I don't think he really he really addresses this. In fact, many of these psychophysical principles are overwhelmingly simpler than the actual psychophysical principles.
¶397For instance, the psychophysical principles might have uniformly mapped every massive particle onto the sensation of redness. That principle is far more uniform, elegant, and >> so I tell you what's weird about that to me is that that is jewelist, right? Like like the idea that there is a redness, but why would that be simpler than anything? Like why is it simpler? Why is it simpler for everything to map to redness and that be you know and you need to kind of specify an ontology for there to be a separate thing called redness that is mapped to and whatever it means for there to be a map.
¶398>> It doesn't make sense to me because he said that these psychop psychophysical principles can be identity. So let's think about that. Imagine what he's saying is that a diverse range of physical brain states all map to redness. Well that would be saying that the brain states are all the same if they all map to the same state. But they're not the same.
¶399So what are you talking about, Joe? That just doesn't make sense. >> But but okay. So >> the thing is though, because he's saying that, wouldn't that be a scenario? Let me formulate what where I'm trying to think.
¶400It's like one of the things he said when he came on to psychonomic harmony, right? Okay. Psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical states. So there is >> yes >> a jewelist model on which every physical state state is paired to redness but redness must be conceptualized there as in some way independent of the physical state or what or what I what is the right way to even conceptualize that mapping basically is what I'm asking. So, is it one of physical reduction or is it one of substance dualism?
¶401Because my evaluation of whether or not that is simpler or not depends on the ontology and I need an ontology to make sense of what I'm even supposed >> Well, he's trying to the argument is supposed to be ontology neutral. He specifically said that he's saying that even if they're identity or realization, >> but I kind of can't. Yeah, I I sort of can't do that because it is relevant to me evaluating the simplicity, right? So this is what I do you see do you see what I'm saying? Because he said here's a scenario that would be far simpler.
¶402Every physical state maps to red. But but for me to evaluate whether or not that's simpler. I must consider it as an ontology and see how that makes sense in terms of >> Yes. Because otherwise you don't know what he means by map 2. Like if map 2 is identity, then >> there's no there's nothing extra that's being postulated.
¶403And in fact, the notion that distinct physical states are all identical to the same >> mental state is just incoherent. So I don't understand how he can run I don't think he can run that argument. He has to be assuming that there's some disconnection between >> Yeah. Because to make sense of it, you must assume some form of je dualism where the red can come apart from the physical state. >> Well, at least property jewelism, I think.
¶404Sorry. Yes. >> But but how but what does it mean? But then what is it? Okay.
¶405So then you've got metaphysics with some kind of like thing called properties which can come apart, right? But how is that? Um there are going to be models in this space that you're supposed to be reasoning and quantifying over that do not have properties in the same sort of way. Do you see? So so that like I just don't know how to evaluate anything he's saying here now.
¶406Um I I I don't know. >> Yeah. I think that that the simpler only makes sense if you are assuming that some theories are postulating extra mental states or extra something >> on top of the underlying physical. But >> all of the forms of the the realization and identity relations that he's postulating specifically don't do that. >> So I don't think I don't think the onlogical simplicity really applies there.
¶407It it only makes sense if you assume one metaphysical model of like mind or physical and mind but then you're supposed to be reasoning over a space that isn't doing that. So yeah, >> I think it is a bit modeled packly expressible than the actual psychophysical principles that pair highly complex patterns of a rich array of conscious qualities to highly specific extremely complicated brain structures. Now there are infinitely many conific the the everything maps to red psychophysical principle is simpler in the sense that it's more compact more compactly expressible but that actually doesn't mean that it's ontologically simpler because you're not necessarily postulating anything additional if it's just an identity relation. Well, that's the problem is because there are no principles given for what constitutes a part of the fundamental theory we're supposed to be compressing. We can't appeal to those criteria because if mapping to can be and anything like completely different metaphysics, >> then you can just say anything with the word mapping to and it can incorporate anything, right?
¶408Like if if that's in your basis for comparison, you can't compare anything with this methodology because mapping to just incorporates anything. Everything's as simple as everything. So >> yeah. >> Yeah. >> Well, I just think that it's an inconsistent way to assess ontological simplicity using his framework because the mapping relation encompasses such a wide range of um of of metaphysical relationships.
¶409Like some of them involve postulating new stuff >> and others do not. And so those are different levels of simplicity and you just can't package them all together. At most you can say that some theories are uh can be expressed in fewer words or something >> as long as the mapping relation. >> Well, yeah. As long as you sort of Yeah, Ignore the assumptions that have built that.
¶410Yeah. >> But but the mapping relation is where all of the interesting or relevant details to philosophy of mind live, right? That is what the disputes are about. >> Yes. >> Yeah.
¶411>> And functions and the vast majority of them never come to exist, you know, including non-existent ones that figure in extremely simple and elegant psychophysical principles. And so even holding fixed that there are psychophysical principles and a lifeing universe, it's still extremely surprising under naturalism that the psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical configurations, substrates or functions that actually exist. But but this is nowhere near as surprising under theism. Psychonomic harmony is required for a universe to include consciousness and has the most significant forms of value. Okay, that's obviously false under theism.
¶412>> Yeah, >> that's just straightforwardly and obviously false. >> Is God conscious? Yes or no? That's the fundamental postulate of the theory that God is an immaterial mind. So then how do we how do we get to there being necessary to have uh value in the universe that I just don't understand how he can say that given that he just talked about what God is and and what properties he's supposed to have which directly contradicts that.
¶413>> I don't it's divine consciousness. Sorry. So we got to have divine counting again and divine simplicity and no >> then how do we then how do we assess the simplicity of divine consciousness if it's not even anything like human consciousness? It seems like we just can't say anything about it at that point. Well, I mean, I would advocate for that personally.
¶414Uh, this is, you know, this comes back to my theological objection, which is stop turning religion into pseudocience. But, um, yeah. >> Yeah. Well, so at that point, you know, I would say that I mean, this is a broader issue, which is that I can't disprove that such a god exists because at that point, we can't really say much of anything about it. But the arguments from natural theology are just not going to go through at that point.
¶415So, we're left with something that is outside the bounds of reason or or evidence. >> Exactly. And and I'd say like that's fine, >> which plenty of people have argued. Yes. Yes.
¶416>> If someone's going to engage in religion in that way or whatever, I'm well, I'm maybe fine, maybe not. I can't say if I'm fine or not. It just I just got to ask the question, well, what are you doing with your religion, you know? >> Yeah. Well, that's the that's the next question you go to.
¶417Yes. Yes. >> And I think that that's what it should all be about. But instead, you know, some people are doing this thing where it is I can only describe it as pseudocience. And I'm like, you know what?
¶418What? Like, and it's just nonsense. Given that God creates a life- permitting universe with psychophysical principles in the first place, it's therefore utterly unsurprising that those psychophysical principles would match the contents of the universe so as to result in conscious subjects. Importantly, adopting physicalism won't help the naturalist with the problem of psychonomic harmony. Suppose you think that the psychophysical principles are metaphysically necessary, either because they're ultimately psychophysical identities, in other words, identities between conscious states and physical states, or because they're ultimately grounding laws.
¶419That doesn't affect the argument because alternative psychophysical identities or grounding laws are still perfectly conceivable. Even if we had a complete physical description of the world, we can't logically or conceptually deduce from the armchair which conscious states would be paired with which physical states. You know, otherwise we >> I mean just to point out that first off, some people do think they can, right? Um there are there are people who believe that and I think that I'm maybe actually a little bit on board with this where um of course I think that one word is different from another word right but I actually do think that if you were to specify you know you you may know about these thing well it raised the question a priority to what right which is it comes back to the point that you you raised initially but I think that >> if if you literally adequately understand the physics and you adequately understand um you know certain mental predicates as behaviors of organisms in certain way or you know like with certain physiology and so on and so forth. Well then you can't conceptualize the two apart anymore because those are the concepts that you have.
¶420They're married to one another. They're not they don't they don't come apart just because you can say one word one time and another like there is a conceptual connection between the two such that you specify one you know to to fully understand both you specify one scenario you know it's the other scenario as well um >> yeah the way the way that I think about mental activity is entirely and deeply imshed with uh physical substrates and physical relations but I wouldn't the thing is that I wouldn't necessarily say that's all a priori because I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to be allowed to put into that category. You see what I'm saying? Which is why I reject this framework. But what what I so I mean I'm not I think that often we do face an epistemic gap between um what we can deduce just from a limited understanding of things and what actually exists in the world.
¶421What I want to have him clarify here is what he wants to do with that epistemic gap like what he thinks the significance of that is. Why can't because this is a very common strategy. The physicalist appeals to an epistemic gap. Yes, certain things seem conceivable but that doesn't mean they're possible. So, what what exactly does Joe say about that?
¶422>> I'm sorry. I was just making yogurt. Um, be able to know what it's like to be a bat just from getting an exhaustive description of his brain, which isn't plausible. And we also wouldn't be able to coherently imagine beings just like us physically, but who the I just I want to comment on when it like the thing he introduced there when he said you wouldn't know what it's like to be a bat. I like the I want to kind of just try and articulate why I find um that location or way of thinking about these things so problematic when it comes to these problems, right?
¶423Because I and just to to type back to the thing I said before, it's like um if you say you wouldn't be able to echolocate, right? Which is kind of like has an analog to saying, you know, if I plucked your eyes out, you wouldn't be able to see red, right? and and it's like yeah, you lose that ability because you've lost the physiology. Um but then maybe you could like imagine red still or something like that, right? Which is like a different kind of thing that you can do.
¶424Um but the point is that if you introduce this additional thing, what it's like to see red, like I I actually don't know that there is any such thing as that, right? Like I think there's seeing red. I think there's imagining red. But then to sort of like create some kind of uh psychological model in which between the seeing red and imagining red, there is like a thing that is in common to the two, what it's like to see red, I don't know that there is any such thing that exists. And if like me, you're skeptical of there being any such thing that exists.
¶425this kind of like third domain of mental language that is being introduced as kind of like sitting behind all these mental powers or whatever. It just doesn't exist though. These like problems relating to like knowing what it's like to be a bat or whatever, there aren't any. And if you restate them in a way that's intelligible, then it they they reduce to like the fact that you don't have like echolocation sensors and things like that, right? like you know you don't have you don't emit sonar noises and have like pointy ears and things don't enjoy conscious experiences or where their you know visual experiences are swapped like red and green or whatever yet we can make sense of that we can form it into coherent sentences and understand the sentences and we can reason about such worlds so there's still an epistemic gap between the >> sorry again got a what's his criteria there that he provided for this being like quote unquote like Well, he didn't say real, but I'm going to just paraphrase it as as a real thing, right?
¶426His criteria were that we can form these sentences, we can understand them, and we can reason about them. Well, what does what is it to understand something, right? Well, I think it's just a feeling. What? It's just a feeling.
¶427Like, what does it mean that I understood I understood what it meant when you said, um, you don't know what it's like to be a bat or something like that? which just means that I I had a particular kind of feeling where I could participate in the conversation or something you know like the the you've not it's not the same like I could give you a question of calculus or something like that right and you could say oh yeah I understood this but then if you can't give me the answer I'm going to be like no you didn't or you know I could give you like a problem of chemistry like you know titrate titrate this um B I forget whether it goes base first or acid first, whatever. But, you know, I could say titrate this thing and you're either going to do it and produce the neutral pink solution or whatever or you're not. And I'd be like, okay, you did understand that, but when it comes to this, like what is it to understand? Like, have I understood how magic works in Harry Potter because I don't have any feelings of mystery.
¶428Like what is it? You know, there's there's this kind of notion of understanding here in Joe's philosophy that is literally just you could be in a community of lunatics who don't understand anything about anything and you think you understand stuff because nobody calls you out on it. >> I I I think that the way he operation Oh, hang on. Am I getting feedback? I I think the way he uses understanding, Joe uses the term understanding, is basically making the mystery feel like it goes away.
¶429I I would not personally say that understanding is a feeling, but I don't want to get into a long discussion about how I think of understanding. That's not the primary point here. The primary point is that Joe doesn't really tell us what he means or how he's established that people do understand these sorts of locationions because I think precisely the sort of thing the physicist is going to say is that whilst people make these sorts of claims about um these thought experiments, uh they don't really understand properly what they're talking about. they have at best a very vague understanding. Um, and they end up in a bundle of confusions because of this.
¶430So, I don't think you could say that that's question begging, but the point is it's precisely controversial whether people do understand these sorts of things and whether they can reason about them successfully. Joe is just telling us that he can, but people like me are going to be pretty skeptical about that claim. Um, but I would also emphasize even if it's true that there's an epistemic gap, I still want Joe to tell us what the significance of that epistemic gap is. Sorry if you had more to say. No, just just to um uh formalize or whatever what you know the point that you made.
¶431It's either that he he doesn't he is mistaken when he says that he's understanding or the notion of understanding that he's working with is useless as a guide problem physical world and consciousness for all we could know a priori or from the armchair by rational reflection consciousness might have turned out to be identical to or grounded in any of a number of different material configurations including configurations that don't physically occur in our universe such as a five-dimensional spatial pattern or a type of information processing that it would require a galaxy sized brain or whatever. Thus, it's still extremely epistemically improbable that the psychophysical identities or grounding laws would be psychonomically harmonious, even if we assume physicalism. Indeed, just about any conceivable disharmonious cause a law corresponds to a conceivable disharmonious grounding law or psychophysical identity. So, embracing physicalism won't make any headway in solving the problem of psychonomic harmony for the naturalist. On any plausible view in the philosophy of mind, psychonomic harmony is powerful evidence for theism over naturalism.
¶432Let's turn to fact number three. just goods >> because Joe never told us why. remember his even if we grant everything the methodology that we've been you know criticizing what he got to is that under physicalism it is a priori um unlike oh jeez it is a priori unlikely um sorry can you just jump back to the previous slide just so I can see the language that he uses um third and final collection of facts is inspired let's turn to mind >> yeah under physicalism it is a priority unlikely that we would see psychophysically harmonious or psychonomically harmonious laws that allow for the existence of mental states and so forth. Um and that there's an epistemic gap between what is um between the physical truths and the and mental truths or fundamental truths as he says here that and he said that that's holds a priori because we can imagine you know things being like associations of the laws being different. That's all he established.
¶433He then tells us at the very end this is powerful for evidence for theism over naturalism. But why is that powerful evidence for theism over naturalism? Um he says here he's got these probability establishments. The probability of second is is greater under theism and he's got K in there. So K is some sort of background knowledge.
¶434But what background knowledge? What background knowledge? He never background knowledge you and I have. >> Well yeah it's not clear what that K is supposed to be. And if you can I mean clearly that can't involve like the way the universe actually is because obviously if you condition on that we know that the universe allows for the existence of >> they should use an I instead and ignorance.
¶435No, this is really problematic because he's not telling us what's in that K there, which could radically change those two probabilities. But here's what I would say about the matter is that even if I grant him the epistemic gap and even if I just grant that a priori, it's it's improbable that with with some suitable notion of a priori that it's improbable that we would see the sort of psychophysical harmonies that do exist. Even if I grant that, I can just say, which I think is what most physicists say, that we have really good evidence that that they does exist and that it is physical, right? That essentially it's just appealing to a posterior eye knowledge. Now, this is directly relevant to what we were discussing before.
¶436Remember how Joe said that the speed of light being infinite is way simpler than the speed of light having any def definite finite value? So, presumably the reason he thinks sorry what's the issue? >> Isn't psychonomic harmony given well physicalism and K which would include that we're conscious one >> I don't I don't know what K is supposed to include. This is the problem. >> But but but what I mean is if you know that you have mental states and things or you know and you're in a physic like you just know you're in a psychonomically >> hormonal but that's true also for the finetuning argument.
¶437So I' I've said this before the fine tuning argument has to it's not allowed to condition on the fact that you exist because then you obviously know that the laws must be such that you or the must be such that you exist. So even such a which is the issue because you can presumably the canonical example of something you can know a priority is that you exist. So it's not even just what you can know a priority. We're having to bracket certain a prior away from others. Why this is of any relevance to anyone I have no idea.
¶438This is precisely the problem. You have to tailor that K to get it to just the right position where you don't put things in that will change those probabilities. So like you existing is not something you could probably put in there. Um or yeah at least you can't have both that you exist and that you're physical both in there. I'm not exactly sure, but the physicalism is part of the end in that on that side.
¶439That's the problem. >> Yeah. Naturalism, right? Yeah. So, that's >> it would then be an entailment.
¶440Or that you're natural if not. Yeah. Yeah. But >> so I I don't know. Maybe there's a way for Joe to straighten that out, but he doesn't really attempt to do that.
¶441So, I think that that's a huge issue. But, as I was saying, the the example of the the the speed of light, according to Joe, it is much simpler that it be infinite than it have any definitive definite finite value. But presumably the reason he I presume he thinks that it does have a definite finite value and I presume the reason he thinks that is because of empirical evidence. So I'm just going to say look for exactly the same reason that Joe thinks that the speed of light is not actually infinite despite that being much more likely a priori uh that it's in fact the speed of light is finite. For the same reason why Joe thinks that I also think that uh that the the physical is identical.
¶442You know there's some sort of identity relation between the mental and the physical because we have overwhelming evidence a posterior eye uh that that's the case. So why exactly is this a problem? It's that's not evidence for um for figuralism even bracketing all of the other considerations. It's just that all it's saying is that if we imagine a very contrived epistmic state where we have to tinker precisely with what what we put in our background knowledge and and avoid putting other things in there, we can contrive a scenario where the prior probability um of observing what we do is much lower under naturalism than theism. Again, that's with making favorable assumptions with the theist because it's not clear why you would even assume that.
¶443But but at most that's what you get. But then my question is, but what does that have to do with our actual epistemic situation? Something is not evidence for us that God exists just because it would be evidence for someone who is in a radically different epistemic situation to us. And he just doesn't draw that gap. He says that there's an ep Joe says that there's an a priority epistemic gap which we can grant for the sake of argument.
¶444But then he draws a conclusion from that that that is actually evidence that God exists. And there's just no attempt to connect those. I just don't understand why I should update on the basis of this hypothetical epistemic scenario at all given that I think we have very good evidence for thinking that there are these uh psychonomic laws that exist and that the you know that there are physical identity relations for example and so the the a priority epistmic gap is simply irrelevant just as the fact that the speed of light having an a priority probability of being infinite just is irrelevant when we have enough evidence that it is that it's finite and this is what I was saying earlier you recall I said that if Joe doesn't think that we can have enough evidence um a pest evidence to establish you know these identity relations between mind mental states and brain states if Joe thinks that that's too much then how is it that he thinks that we can have enough ap has a finite definite value instead of it being infinite I don't really see how he can have it both ways that this is possible in some cases but not others when he hasn't really given any reason for that at all and so I I find that this argument is fundamentally unsound because it doesn't even attempt to tell us why the the key premises like the epistemic gap entail the conclusion. Most physists agree that there's an epistmic gap of deny that this has any implications about what we should believe exists. And Joe just hasn't explained to us why we should draw that conclusion.
¶445I think it's also quite a problem for the argument that the first likelihood is possibly zero and the second likelihood is possibly one >> depending on K, right? Which is also >> well not even well well maybe not. Yeah. Yes. depending on K overall but maybe for the first part the zero part maybe not depending on K because the answer might be so >> the whole thing is so under constrained that I just don't see how we can conclude anything from this argument >> yeah yeah good >> all right let's >> evidence >> sure >> for theism over naturalism let's turn to fact number three consciousness involving good >> yeah you can really see why the miracles were required >> this third and final collection of facts is inspired by Brian Cutter and Dustin Cummit's fantastic article on psychophysical harmony.
¶446Suppose we got psychonomic harmony, right? So suppose that the psychophysical principles do miraculously match the physical world. That only means that consciousness exists in the universe. But that leaves us completely in the dark about the precise ways in which consciousness is paired with the physical world. If naturalism is true, it's yet another mostly independent miracle that the psychophysical principles link mind and matter in a way that gives rise to a wide range of significant consciousness involving goods.
¶447things like enjoyment, love, interpersonal relationships, aesthetic experiences, virtuous rational agency, conscious thought, accurate conscious perceptions, true conscious beliefs about the world, and so on and so on. Again, this doesn't come for free given psychonomic harmony. Just as there could conceivably have been a universe physically like ours without any conscious experiences, there could conceivably have been >> I mean does he it'd be I'd be interested to know if he thinks he's like decomposing the fine-tuning argument into like more specific parts of it because again it just seems like this is the another part of the finetuning argument. Well, well, I mean, it's literally the part of the fine-tuning argument that is used to argue that there's a likelihood in equality, right? >> Yeah.
¶448And there's really very little distinction here. The distinction that I understand between facts two and three is that fact two is essentially saying that there exists it's surprising under naturalism that there exist any mental states. And fact three is that it's surprising under naturalism that there exist certain types of mental states which are um which are harmonious in certain good ways which he'll he'll explain. >> Well, yeah, >> I don't know that that distinction is really very important. >> So fact two, >> but he draws it.
¶449Fact two is that there are um that the actual world contains physical states when it could have been the case when it conceivably could have been the case that there weren't physical states of the kind that also marry to certain conscious states. >> It's not clear to me anything about the nature of those conscious states and that's what he does in fact three. He says that there's specific types of regularities in conscious states. The problem in a certain way >> and I think the problem though that I would point out um someone shouting outside the window. Um the the problem I would point out when it comes to fact three is that someone's kid as well.
¶450um is that the so the subset of conscious states that are a part relevant to fact two that create the likelihood inequality are going to be the moral ones right consciousness involving goods >> because if you yes he'll explain that >> okay he's okay universe physically like ours in which conscious experiences are linked to physical states in very different ways in fact the overwhelming majority of these alternative psychophysical principles including the simplest ones would not have enabled those consciousness involving goods. And this makes it astronomically surprising under naturalism that the psychophysical principles are sufficiently orderly and complicated to enable those goods. By contrast, this is nowhere near as surprising under theism given that God might plausibly be interested in securing those goods. Hence, we have extremely powerful evidence for theism over naturalism on our hands to see the force of this >> plausible to who and like why >> he's going to need to catch that out, which he doesn't really do. >> What I want to say Oh, go ahead.
¶451No, you go ahead. You go. All right. What I want to say is that fact two and fact three are not really distinct. If you are a physicist and you think that there's some sort of identity or instantiation realization relationship between mental and physical states once you've established that then fact three just comes for free, right?
¶452Like there's nothing extra to it. We have these particular it's not like we could have different ones because they're identity or it's realization. So this is why distinguishing them only makes sense under dualism where you could say okay we could have some mental states but they could be different ones. It's like well well no not under naturalism. Once you've got the physical, sorry, once you've got the mental states and the physical states, you're you're only going to get these ones.
¶453You can't get some other mental state cuz because there's a direct onlogical mapping there between the one and the other or identity or realization. It's not something extra that needs to be explained. I I guess I'm going to have to I don't know if he'll do this. I I need this uh notion of consciousness involving goods to be like fleshed out a bit more, right? >> Oh, he does.
¶454Well, we can play a bit more. He talks about this. Because because I'm kind of thinking like what is it about a scenario that is making the appraisal of goods independent of mind to the degree. >> Let's play it out. Let's play it out.
¶455I'm sure you'll be very satisfied with his explanation. >> Okay, let's run through the manifold different psychophysical principles that might have held as well as the resulting ways in which the world could have been devoid of significant forms of value. First, the psychophysical principles might have been contemptably simple and boring. We can imagine a universe physically like ours with a single simple psychophysical principle assigning boring gray sensations to every physical state. Or they could have assigned any one of continuum many conceivable color sensations to every physical state.
¶456Or they could have assigned simple color sensations only to electrons or only to protons or only to quarks or only to nutrinos or only to butane or only to neon atoms or only to copper. Or the psychophysical principles could have paired every physical object with a conscious experience of a ringing sound with a constant pitch or a ringing sound with a pitch proportional to the object's mass proportion. Okay, just one thing I want I do want to say here though is that um there is a really important part of the psycho element here that's missing which is actually a very difficult problem in psychology a theory of value right because obviously and I I I know Joe's got something to say about this but I think it's very unsatisfactory but the point the point being that all of these thought experiments are going to trade on some assumption about what our values are as appraisers in this world. But if you're varying the aspects of psychology relevant to value judgments, assuming there are some, as I do, then you know there's also going to be appraisals from within worlds wherein people will also value those sorts of things. I know that they will fix them by using the words um that like um it's like essentially rational.
¶457What's the what's the language that they use? Um innate they use words like innate and essential um and rational reason giving >> pain is essentially reason giving to dislike. But I I just think that's basically uh gerrymandering right because it isn't essential. I can imagine, you know, if we're operating on this model of like dualistic counterparts, I can imagine people liking and even in the actual world, people like pain all the time, you know, like it's just >> Well, again, maybe we should let him play it out how he describes this and we can respond as >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶458Yeah. >> As proportional to it. >> No, no, keep playing this out. I'll respond in a bit. >> Constant pitch or ringing sound with a pitch proportional to the object's mass proportional to its Shannon entropy or proportional to its density.
¶459Or the principles could have assigned to every physical object a sensation of tepid bath water or the taste of chocolate or the smell of lilacs or warmth or pain or desire to move or the sound of C major or any of infinitely many simple visual tactile auditory gusts factory cognitive affective or hedonic states. Or there could have been a principle that assigns to each physical object a slightly different TV static-like experience that mirrors the object's chaotic. I'm sorry I've got to respond to that because his again this assignment of which state the fact that he considers them to be states and describes them as simple or complex is a dualist model. You can't have that outside of that. You know, like for example, imagine you were conducting an experiment, right?
¶460Um, an experiment wherein you might be evaluating people's auditory experiences of music or something like that and varying certain stimuli. So, you know, something something of that nature. Why or would you describe someone um evaluating an auditory stimuli as a C note from a clarinet as a simple process or a complicated one, right? And I don't think you would just appeal I I don't think you in that situation would have operationalized your terms in a way where you would have some like notion of like raw feels and just be like oh yeah like the C note of a clarinet is just like a tone that my jewelist soul raely raw phenomenologically experiences and so that is a simple one compared to you know a complicated >> I guess one way to describe this is how do you assess the relative simplicity or complexity of phenomenal states particularly. >> Yeah.
¶461Yeah. >> I actually I think you can do that in a way but basically that appeals to underlying neuroscientific principles information representation which is evidence that these are physical states. I would push the argument that that is telling us these these are physical states. The way that we can describe their I would say representational properties. um you know there's a lot going on there but the yes I I think that the way that the way that Joe is framing this with his hodgepodge of different sort of conceivability associations between physical states and associated mental states is just sort of nonsense to someone who is a physicalist because remember we typically physicists think of either an identity relation or some sort of realization or or similar sort of relationship.
¶462So it just doesn't make any sense to say that you can change one and not change the other thing that they're they're identical or some relationship that's very similar to identity. So they they can't be just varied like that. It just doesn't make sense. It's it's not conceptually coherent once you condition on the theory. So um in addition to that, I would also say that we have very these sort of things may seem plausible to someone who doesn't know much about cognitive science or neuroscience, but to me they just sound like nonsense.
¶463Like I know something at least a bit about how vision works and how audiary cortex processes information and things like that. And the idea that we could just take like he was something he said something earlier about like that amount of mass that a particle has and that that would somehow like relate to the visual perception. I forget the precise example but but that's just total nonsense to me. Like in order to get a visual perception there's a whole bunch of physical processes that have to happen and I don't know in precise detail what all of those are but I know enough to say to be able to say that it's just ridiculous many of the examples that he's postulating. They're so far outside of anything that I could conceive of or make sense to what I know.
¶464Now maybe he would respond by saying, "Yeah, but that knowledge that you're appealing to is aposteriori." In which case I respond again with saying, "Well, I don't know what I'm allowed to appeal to, but irrespect. >> Why does it matter?" You're like, "So it just shows us that we can't reason effectively a priority." And so I just get very confused about these examples because they seem like nonsense to what I think about and I don't know what I'm supposed to be allowed to condition on in order to have the right set of intuitions. >> And I think there's something interesting here here as well about the criteria. Um under uh number one, why is simple being um associated with boring, right? It's like metaphysics by word association because you know we talked about simple as compressible strings or whatever which was all very scientific.
¶465What like boring like what how is that a criteria? Which is interesting because if you imagine like uh intense pleasure, so an an orgasm or maybe a really delicious taste or something like that, are those complex states? Like I I don't really know how to assess that, but it's not clear that they're like more complicated. >> This is kind of what I was trying to say. Yeah, this is this is what I was trying to say though about like this criteria of simplicity.
¶466Like what even are the criteria? Like so when he says a C note on a clarinet, but I suspect that what he means there is that it's easy like a C note on a clarinet is like monotonal. So there's not like polifany to it to pick it out. But is that is it more complex to hear that than it is to hear a a polifany from an orchestra? I don't actually think it is.
¶467I think that you do the same things and it's the same amount of complexity in either case. >> We might be able to say that there's less variation over time. That could be one aspect but >> that would be in the stimuli. Uh but but then I'm importing concepts now, you know, I'm immediately having to appeal to make sense of any of these claims of um complexity. I'm having to appeal to the physical nature of the phenomena and the physical nature of the organism perceiving it.
¶468I can't just, you know, like >> Yeah, I know. This is this is the exact point. I I I don't know what you're allowed to appeal to and it just >> Yeah, there there's there's nothing in there's no there is no raw fields complexity assignment thing that can be done to differentiate. >> I would weaken it slightly and just say that it's not at all clear to me what that would look like and Joe hasn't told us how to make the assessment. The only way that I know to make the assessment appeals to a whole bunch of knowledge that I have that's definitely not a priori.
¶469>> I mean, so here's some things that that even he seems to be contradicting his own. >> Static isn't simple. Yeah, because that that is maximally complex. >> Maximally complex, but that's not a good example for what he wants to say there. Yes.
¶470So complex definitely doesn't mean interesting. Simple may or may not mean boring. I mean, it seems that certain conscious states that might be simple, like meditation states, for example, or perhaps orgasm. I I don't know if people think of that as simple or not, but it doesn't seem to have a complexity. >> I mean, my my girlfriend certainly says they're boring.
¶471>> Well, I guess yeah, the point is that yeah, I don't know that we should associate simple and boring. definitely shouldn't associate complex with interesting. This TV static example shows that that's clear which then highlights the question as to um what what even is the significance of the sort of harmonies um which is what you're getting at. But we probably should play that out a bit more because he does have to say is not just the simplicity point like micro structure or the microsructure of one of its parts. Or there could have been a principle that assigns simple brightness sensations to material bodies where the sensation's intensity is proportioned to the object's temperature.
¶472Or there could have been a principle that only assigns experiences to elementary particles. say a simple hot or cold sensation depending on whether the particle has positive or negative charge leaving macroscopic physical systems like human bodies bereft of consciousness. A universe with these principles would be devoid of basically all the significant consciousness involving goods we find in our world. Right? Like just as a universe with intricate configurations of matter but no consciousness would be devoid of significant value.
¶473The same goes for a universe with intricate configurations of matter plus a sea of super added ringing sensations or TV static perceptions or tid bath water experiences or sensations of brightness or red or whatever. Right? like in these alternative universes there's no >> is Joe arguing for um eugenics of people with tinitus here >> I don't think so but I think >> that is bad yeah >> I I just don't think that this is very coherent at all um because the way that I think about things I agree that there are conscious states but those conscious states are produced by very complex physical mechanisms and they're also uh how to phrase this it's like language they're sort of defined in an interconnected So like the idea that you could just take a state of red experience and just sort of have that >> experienced by something I just think is nonsense. Like redness is a represent the way I describe this is red phenomenology is essentially a representation of certain um how our brains represent a certain way of processing certain color states. Um and that only makes sense in a very rich context of visual processing and um color representation and uh probably a whole bunch of other stuff that we don't fully understand yet.
¶474The prefrontal cortex that mediates conscious experience is still a bit of a mystery. But the point is that just imagining that that could somehow exist in any remotely similar way without the underlying physical substrate and the experiences and development and all of that that goes into it. I just think it's nonsense. I just I maybe you could have some kind of alien experience which is radically different from anything we experience. That's one thing.
¶475But to just assign it labels that are only relevant to like our types of experience, I just think is is nonsense. Well, this is why I say I don't think you can get away from the cartesianism, right? I know he's saying these are independent of cartesianism, but I don't think they are because I think that >> the idea that there are like raw fields that are where the labels of things come from is uh the cartesian one, you know, and and and even and I said this before when you were away, maybe you didn't hear, but you know, even the angelic doctor St. Thomas wouldn't agree with this because of his hyomorphism, right? He thinks there a union of like a certain physical state with certain simul for something to be the case like that.
¶476And it's daycart who's the one who drives this kind of like grammatical distinction between the two. And so I I would definitely still push back on the first point where he said that this is independent of dualism because I I think if you reject dualism then you can't even you can't conceptualize um this without having like a dualistic backdrop I guess to like reason against. >> Yeah. Well, what I would say is we don't Joe is claiming that facts two and three are still evidence for theism even without assuming dualism. Now, plausibly he's wrong about that.
¶477Um, but the point is in order to argue against that, we don't need to defeat we don't need to respond to dualism. That's why I didn't want to get into all of that. All we need to do is show how the arguments essentially are making dualist, they're sort of smuggling in dualistic language and assumptions. Like the idea that you can make these arbitrary associations even under a physicalist framework where the associations are one of identity and so you can't make arbitrary associations that just makes no sense. It's it's flatout contradictory as far as I can tell.
¶478I I don't understand why Joe thinks that that makes any sense to do. only makes sense to sort of vary these relationships if you don't think that there are these tight metaphysical connections. If if you are some kind of dualist or I don't know something something physicalistic >> I I guess you can epistemically sort of like say okay in the epistmic space there could be different identity relation >> yeah there could be different identity >> which which does change the epistemic space but the fact that you think that but but then you >> the example he's giving doesn't make sense >> he said like fundamental particles could have experiences that doesn't follow that that's possible what what could be is that um like different physical states could exist in our universe which would instantiate I'm not explaining that very well. Sorry. Go ahead.
¶479>> I see what you No, no, I think I get what you're saying. It's like um every time that you change the identity relationships, you've changed the terrain for which are the relevant physical arrangements that bring that realize those states right as well. So it's not even clear. It's not clear that um so so so objecting to the kind of like identity theory by saying okay but you could like epistemically at least the identities could be different. So there's this kind of like broader range but you've also introduced this question of the different and and then you've got then for every different way the laws could be you have different physical states which would be the right ones for those set of laws with the different identity statements.
¶480So there's kind of like you can't get away from it because you can always vary one of the grammatical layers if you like like the you know you've got the physical descriptions you've got the um mental descriptions and maybe the moral evaluative descriptions and okay maybe if we're thinking about the real world where we fix them all it doesn't make sense to talk about things in this way but we're doing it for the sake of argument but then because you can vary all of them >> for every way that you just vary one of them there's a variation in the other two that gets you to the right point anyway. So you're not actually like doing anything. >> Well, that yeah, that's where the harmony notion is. Yeah, I think that that leads directly into the what's supposed to be harmonious. So let let's let's talk about that.
¶481>> No one who experiences beauty or pleasure. There's no one who enjoys rich conscious awareness of their environment. There's no one who experiences any sort of conscious understanding of what their world is like. There's no one who has the sorts of experiences required for conscious agency, such as the experience of weighing different options and making conscious choices in light of reasons. There's no one who has the sorts of conscious states required for friendship or love or meaningful relationships such as you know the experience of concern.
¶482>> Yeah. Sorry to so to to articulate that point that I was trying to get at. Like what that means is so Joe's talked about how for the um isn't it weird how in the actual world we have the one where the physical states are the right ones um for the mental states and the you know the good states that are associated to that to those mental states and and the point that I'm making is if you also have the possibility of the different um psychophysical laws in place. Well, then there are scenarios in which the different physical um universes wouldn't be a problem, right? Because you would realize >> any physical universe would be okay.
¶483>> Yeah, if you allow this sort of hypothetical remapping, then yes, it's it's a very I think the argument only works if you condition on very specific things allowing to stay the same and others changing. And that that's why it's very hard to to make sense of a lot of this >> for another's well-being or even the conscious awareness of the existence of other selves. In the finetuning part of the video, I noted that countless conceivable physical laws, including more or less, you know, all the very simplest ones would yield boring worlds where nothing interesting happens. Notice that the same point holds for these psychophysical principles. Like many plausibly most conceivable sets of psychophysical principles would make for experientially boring worlds devoid of significant value.
¶484to get the significant consciousness involving goods we find in our world. It's not enough to have principles that link consciousness to matter in some way or other, right? Like the principles need to be finely tuned to result in the right forms of consciousness. I'm just going to say like significant to who again and this is why it's just all weird to me what what this imagining of like the dualistic qualia existing sans like a mind is really weird because I think of a mind as baking into it like judgments and evaluations and belie you know like all of these things in addition to perception which is like a separate thing. So it's kind of like asking this question as a result of the dualistic grammar.
¶485Well like think of the world where um all the physical states have the perception of red right no idea what that means but I'm imagining it anyway. Isn't that uninteresting? Well what does that mean? Like I mean if there is a thing there such that it is that it is everything and it's perceiving red does it have powers to judge and evaluate? No.
¶486What are you asking me? I think that's pretty damn interesting because that's really weird and not what this world is like. You know like a world where everything perceives red is so strange to me that that is interesting and not uninteresting. So that you know there's these weird like adjectives that are being used rhetorically to like prejudice the conclusion in certain directions as well about like what's interesting what no like the you know my left foot perceiving red is really bizarre and I would find that interesting actually like >> well maybe the idea is there wouldn't be anyone in that universe to find it interesting if everything was just the perception of red >> not but then it's not even sense to say it's uninteresting because that's the judgment is but then I think he's saying from our perspective from from our appraisal >> from an objective perspective. You certainly don't want to say because obviously it's not relevant if it's just from our perspective in our world.
¶487>> That is a big assumption as to what what that and well actually what's more important is just what is predicted by what is it predicted for God to do because if God >> if we can show that the theism hypothesis predicts a world like ours then that counts in favor of theism you know other things being equal. Avatar. So I guess what you have to argue essentially is that there's there's facts of there's features of our world that are what you would expect a omniod to desire or to create and that's ultimately what he has to account for. So God has to be sort of impressed in some way by things are the way things are in this world and find that to be uh more worthy of creation than than something else. That's what he ultimately has to show.
¶488We we'll get to that. But I don't think he does a very good job. >> Yeah. And I guess I'm saying I don't necessarily see it between a universe where everything perceives red, whatever that means. I don't know what it means.
¶489But to to to the actual world, I I genuinely and I am not this is not a bit that I'm doing to like, you know, get one over. I have no idea why an omni god would prefer this world over that. I just don't I don't see it. I don't know. I think there'sa there's I think there's some reason to give as to why it would be preferred over that because at least wouldn't have all these sorts of horrible suffering presumably.
¶490>> Well yeah >> but uh you know I mean you could you can argue all sorts of things but that's sort of the point. It's >> it would be a temporal perception right just like >> well yeah that's actually interesting as well that it would be in some in some ways more similar. Um there's another point that I wanted to make here which is that um yeah in addition to this notion that a lot of these associations these sort of pairings don't really make sense on physicalism and that if you allow for varying identity relations then any type of physical substrate can realize any type of mental substrate. So it's not clear what the problem is. What an additional thing that Joe is arguing is that essentially the the the type of uh mental states that we observe in this universe that are possible are unlikely under naturalism but likely under theism.
¶491That's his fundamental argument. He he thinks they're likely under theism because they're good in some way. That this is like consciousness involving goods. Um he thinks but so that's one issue as to whether we agree with that. But then the other side is that are they unexpected under naturalism?
¶492And what I would suggest is that that we have no reason for thinking that. Joe says that the reason why the interesting like good conscious states that we see in our universe, he says the reason that that's unexpected under naturalism is because most of the psychophysical laws would give rise to very simple and he says boring um mental states or phenomenal states like you know the idea of the just everything's teder bath water or everything's red things like that. he treats this and let's just say for the argument that those are boring, right? There's two there's two issues there, simple and boring and they could come apart, but let's just grab for the sake of argument that they're not interesting or they're not valuable. They're boring.
¶493But what I want to question is um and we also question just to the extent to which you can say they're simple. But I I want to raise another issue which is just which is that though they may be simple in some sense is that is are those the psychophysical principles that we would expect to see under naturalism if we imagine this sort of distribution of all possible psychophysical laws and we're sort of drawing at random or or giving a you know a uniform distribution. It's true that there are some that are well maybe it's true that there are some that are simpler than others in the way that he's described although you know critique that but the the question I'm wanting to hone on here is that just because some are simpler and maybe given a sort of higher a priori weight that doesn't mean that we expect to see a simple one because there may be many more complex ones than simple ones this is a point that I made in a discussion with Matthew Adelstein that you may have a higher sort of expectation for simpler ones if you weight those a priority higher but doesn't mean that you expect to see something simple. If there are many many more ways that something could be complex than it could be simple, the greater number of them can outweigh the a priority. >> Yeah.
¶494Yeah. Yeah. >> This is what we discuss. This is what I said in the when we talked about >> laws any individual uh if you compared any individual simple one to an individual complex that would be >> then the then that would be more likely. But if you look at the class of complex to the class of simple ones then you're like am I gonna fall in here or here?
¶495>> Yeah. Yeah. So Joe was saying that it's we should think it's overwhelmingly likely that one of these very simple boring mappings would exist and we wouldn't have interesting conscious states. But we do have interesting conscious states and so that's evidence against naturalism. But what I would say even accepting everything about the framework which I don't but even even for the sake of argument is that it's just not clear that that follows because there uh the more parameters you add the more things you can vary.
¶496So the more complex the mapping between physical and and mental states becomes, the more possible such mappings there are. And that it seems quite easily could overwhelm whatever higher weight we give to the simpler ones. It's going to depend on how you weight things. And Joe hasn't given us any reason to think that this falls one way or the other. He's just told us that it must fall one way or the other.
¶497>> Yeah, I think there'd probably be a problem with formalizing all that just because >> Well, of course it's formalizing that, but he hasn't formalized it. So why do I have to formalize it? I sorry James Yeah. Sorry. It's ju it's just that's my um normal uh you know my intellectual standards kicking in and I'm thinking how would I go about doing that?
¶498And I I was thinking you know you'd get into like all these weird infinity problems and things like that if you were doing that I think we shouldn't actually just be trying to do this. It's just not a good framework. I agree. But I'm just saying that from that point of view like you can't just say that because certain things are more likely we would expect those. You have to consider the number of possibilities >> for individuals.
¶499Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. Okay, let's keep going. >> And link these to matter in the right way. This would be extremely surprising under naturalism, as there's literally a vast infinite sea of different kinds of psychophysical principles yielding experientially boring worlds devoid of significant value.
¶500And to make matters even worse for the naturalist, the simplest psychophysical principles seem to be pathetically boring. Not >> pathetic, anything but pathetic, please. don't uh yeah so again even if it's true that the simplest are boring how many complex ones are there that are that are interesting so he he he needs to tell us what we would expect to find if we imagine some sort of draw from a distribution and he he doesn't tell us that he just sort of says the simplest ones are more expected and they're boring so we should expect to see boring I mean that just straight up doesn't follow that's just not how probability works >> right like all the laws listed earlier look vastly simpler than the actual psychophysical principles >> looked looked vastly simpler how like how is it I don't >> but again yeah we critiqued the notion of what simpler even means here that's yeah >> like they all involve a straightforward mapping from simple physical magnitudes to a simple pallet of conscious qualities by contrast >> because if you know just to just to um elicit this point further like let's just assume dualism in every case for some reason you know if whatever a jewelist mapping is from any physical state to a mental property or whatever I mean there's going to have to be a different mapping for every single physical state to the red, right? So even if there is only one kind, you still have the mapping gets more complicated, you know. So the the mapping suppose you then introduce a different uh kind of mental state as well in your dual list whatever it is.
¶501I mean it how how is it simpler or more complicated if everything maps to one versus if everything maps to two? What is the criteria for? >> I guess the mapping is more compressible. You could compress that. >> Okay.
¶502Yeah, that >> which >> that would make more sense. >> There's another issue here, right? But I mean, we sort of talked about this, but let's suppose that we have an we hold to an identity theory of mind and brain. So every distinct mental state is just identical to a distinct uh say brain state or just physical state more generally. Now we might be able to imagine that that identity relation can change such that a different physical state um would map to that could be identical to that particular actually yeah we should probably fix one of the other that makes more sense so let's imagine fixing the mental states let's assume we have a prior access to those so we fix the mental states we could imagine that different physical states could be identical to that mental state I mean that's a certain like we need to do we need to do science to figure out what the underlying substrate is so there's a certain logic to that so we fix the mental states we know what those are because those are a priority accessible in this argument and then we imagine varying the identity relations that hold like which particular state that corresponds to.
¶503Um so that's okay. The thing here is though that one thing we will know if we are conditioning on having these mental states and conditioning on uh this identity theory. Um Joe says that his argument is supposed to hold even if we assume a physical side identity theory. So that's you know that should be okay. One thing we will be able to we may not know what particular physical state instantiates this or is identical to a given mental state.
¶504But what we do know is that they'll be different. That is seeing red will have a different instantiation than seeing green or than feeling tempered bath water. How do we know that? Because we're identity theorists, right? So if the mental is different, then the underlying physical state must be different.
¶505Uh because we assume, you know, if two things are different from each other, then the thing that they're identical to must be also different from each other. That's a pretty straightforward uh sort of sort of principle there. So, so Joe may be able to say that there could be lots of ways that the physical could map to the mental, but if you're assuming identity theory, what he can't say, I sort of said this before, what he can't say is that all of the physical states map to the same mental state. That's just incoherent. We like we know that's not the case if we're identity theorists because there are different mental states and there are so they must all map to different physical.
¶506I think it only makes sense under jewelism. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I agree and that's what we said before. But the thing is that undermines his simplicity case because in order to get the psychophysical principles to be simpler, he needs to be able to compress them.
¶507You can compress them by saying everything maps to red or something like that. >> But I don't think that works. That's ruled out by psychophysical um sorry that's ruled out by an identity theory or similar. What is not ruled out is different mappings like you can imagine permuting everything that's not ruled out. >> But that's not simpler.
¶508But this is and this is why though I think that that question I I think that what Joe's whole argument around this so the point that you said about the compressibility of the mapping relationships is simpler if you only assume dualism. I think the whole argument is just predicated on only jewelism, right? Like it if you imagine thing I initially thought that from the idea of like the qualia concepts being what gives you the words whatever and kind of like to conceptually make sense of it. But then for the mapping simplicity claims to make sense, they only make sense under dualism because changing the ontology which changes what mapping means changes how you would compare simplicity between those different scenarios. >> And we talked about that earlier.
¶509Yeah. But but I think that this point here that that >> the simplest mappings that so he wants to say that the naturalist has to prefer the simplest mappings which are boring and but that's not what we and therefore they're sorry this the naturalist should prefer the simplest mappings there are they're much more likely and therefore that's what we should expect to observe but we don't observe that hence problem for naturalism but I don't think that works if you assume the identity theory if you're not a dualist >> yeah if you're not a dualist because then um you you can't believe in the the the simplest mappings of rules out by identity theory that aren't ruled out. >> Well, but again, you could, as we talked about before, you could talk about imagining that each mental state is associated or sorry, is identical to a different physical state, but then they're all identical to the same physical state. >> So, the compress are the ones that are ruled out under identity theory. >> I see.
¶510Yeah. Sorry. >> Alternative identity statements aren't ruled out, but compressible ones are. And those are precisely the ones that Joe thinks are the problem because they lead to like the >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶511Yeah. So I think it works. >> I mean it works if you assume dualism, right? Because then you don't have this identity relation, but it's it's precisely the principle of an identity or realization theorist that Joe said it doesn't matter. But I think it does because it rules out the simplic the simple states as as being so much more likely.
¶512>> Well, I I guess you could maybe sort of say that you're imagining it and just I don't want to say bite the bullet, but whatever. You know, like you could accept the consequence that that would make everything equivalent to everything else in those universes, but then I think that that that is like a pretty good reductio of like, you know, you're imagining some nonsense. Like, >> are we supposed to say that we don't know that that's false? Like, surely we can a priority know that our experiences aren't all the same as each other, you know? >> Whack it in the excluded knowledge category.
¶513>> Yeah. Well, maybe you can gerrymander that. I don't know. But that feels very Yeah. >> Yeah.
¶514actual psychophysical principles are way more complicated. Right? So, first their physical inputs are super complicated. They don't map simple physical magnitudes like mass or charge onto conscious states. Instead, they actually map complex information processing structures or neural configurations involving billions of brain cells and trillions of particles onto conscious states.
¶515Any description of the physical basis of consciousness in fundamental physical terms would likely be extremely complex. Second of all, the conscious outputs of the actual psychophysical laws are way more complex than these alternative simple boring psychophysical laws. Right? like the actual principles don't just yield a single type of conscious state or a single unified family of conscious states instead they produce >> just building on the you know the point that you said right um >> imagining that we don't make this move of that is done for everything else of of gerrymandering the background knowledge and what's in and out of it what how does that then I am I wonder if we're only including the worlds which do include every single actual world mental state, right? Um, so because of the identity thing, you couldn't have worlds.
¶516I guess you could you could have worlds that exclude you you could have I guess I'm trying to think how does that change how you reason about things because something happens if you map if you have identity worlds and you map the wrong things together they become identical to each other. Do you know what I mean? So, so that changes the entire probability landscape because >> for example, you don't want to make my left foot equal to your hat or something, you know, like if we're if we're not making the move of ruling of of ruling out that I know my left foot isn't your hat and that's not a part of the background knowledge, then we've reshaped what the possible identity combinations are in some way that's significant to the overall landscape That's exactly the right way to put it. Yeah, that's a good way to articulate it. And >> but I don't know.
¶517Yeah. And I But the thing is I'm just trying to think like I don't know exactly how it's changed the overall landscape as well. But it's a pretty significant I can see that it's a significant way, >> but I can't see exactly >> the way that it changes things because because you now need to take into account everything that we don't want to say is equal to something else and not and make sure that you don't you exclude those. I don't want to say exactly how it shifts it either because it's incredibly complicated. All I was really highlighting is that some of the very simplest examples that Joe gave like everything is tided bath water et doesn't make sense because distinct physical states cannot map to the same mental state if you assume identity theory and we know that the the states are different then they must map to something different you could in you could all we could as I said what you can do is you can imagine shuffling around the relationships and he Joe talks about that that sort of idea a bit later but this particular form of the argument which is like well we should expect simple and boring I just don't think is true.
¶518If you assume identity theory, >> you you'd have there's like some kind of rule in the shuffling, I guess, where it would like have to be uh there'd have to be some like mathematical property in the shufflings that you can do to ensure that you get the same boyctive mapping. >> Well, it's essentially like you can sort of imagine assigning the relations one at a time and you have to remove the physical and the mental state >> every time you assign that. You can't map multiple to multiple because >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I know.
¶519I know. But but what I'm trying to say is like um there's quite a lot of complexity in that um because of what things are identical to what things that aren't mental state. So it it just gets like really weird and I don't know how to even assuming all the things that I think are wrong to assume to even think this way in the first place like I now at this point have no idea how to like reason about it at all. Um so yeah. >> Yeah.
¶520Agreed. Conscious states belonging to many distinct families like sensory, emotional, cognitive, etc. Each of which features in turn many distinct families of conscious qualities, right? Like colors and tastes and sounds and echolocative qualities and so on. Under naturalism, we would very strongly expect to get one or more of these extremely elegant, simple and uniform psychophysical principles since her prior plausibly include biases towards simplicity and elegance and uniformity.
¶521But this just makes it all the more striking that we have the kinds of psychophysical principles that we have. The very simplest psychophysical principles would link simple physical magnitudes onto a limited pallet of conscious states yielding experientially boring worlds like those that I described earlier. Fortunately, those aren't the principles we got. Right? It's as if the universe is going out of its way to select complex psychophysical principles that make significant experiential I mean I guess there's a way that he's saying this that is sort of unobjectionable if you um understand evolution, right?
¶522Like it is as if the universe is going out of its way to make. He has a lot Yeah. He has a lot to say about evolution. I Yeah. Yeah.
¶523Let's let's keep going. >> Good possible passing over like an infinite field of far simpler psychophysical principles that would preclude significant conscious value. Like that's so sus. Like how do you not see this is I just explained before it's not sus if the field of complex laws is even bigger such that there's even more in there. I mean in in a sense they're both infinite so it becomes difficult to but the point is he's saying oh it's really unlikely that we would move past all of these simple laws but it's not if there's even way way more complex ones he's just ignoring that aspect >> but then then I think of his objection which would be to say but I'm asking the question why have we got this one complex one right but then it's like but then he's asking the wrong question himself in trying to bias people you know he's trying to bias people's I will say intuition landscape even though I don't think that there are such things because he's trying to make it seem like the simple, you know, like these simple ones are like far outweigh the complex ones.
¶524So that people have this idea that if they're picking at rand if they're picking psychophysical laws out of earns, you know, they're going to probably get just one of these simple ones as opposed to a complex one because that's the wrong answer, you know, for for >> because people have misconceptions about probability. They think random sequences are are they think that actual random sequences are not random because there's more clumping in random sequences. people tend to do what's the word I'm looking for they tend to balance out they tend to alternate or come close to alternating >> when generating random sequences but in fact you know sequences of like heads or tails of three or four are not that unlikely so you will see those the point there is that people have very bad intuitions about what you would expect to see under certain distributional assumptions and I think that Joe is kind of appealing to those here where he's sort of saying well simple is more likely so you'd expect to see simple right and well no not necessarily at all because you have to factor in what else there is and how much of the proper space that takes up and as far We as far as I'm can tell the set of psychophysical principles that we do have could be just exactly what you'd expect if you were to sort of draw from this infinite distribution. Imagine that that's a thing. >> Yeah.
¶525Yeah. And while it's hard to believe that a fundamentally purposeless universe would be set up that way, none of this is especially surprising under theism, right? Like it wouldn't be hugely surprising for God to prefer complex psychophysical principles that make significant value possible over simpler ones that preclude the most valuable forms of consciousness. Okay, so again like going through a lit that is a massive assumption that it's not super unlikely that God would create the universe this way. Where did that come from?
¶526>> Because think of all the ways that God could create the this remember I said before that he that Joe establishes different criteria for reasoning about naturalism versus physicalism sorry versus theism. The the criterion the method that he uses for naturalism is think of all the ways it could possibly have been and then look at the very narrow strip of of how it turned out. That seems really unlikely >> but but so what would the equivalent way of doing this be under theism? It would be think of all the ways that God could have created the universe or all the reasons he could have for creation if you prefer to frame it in terms of reasons. >> Yeah.
¶527>> And then think of the tiny tiny tiny strip of that that that is consistent with what we actually observe. Well, that seems even less likely because theism is even less constrained than naturalism. Naturalism rules out all sorts of things that God could create, immaterial universes and immaterial consciousnesses. >> So, he does not apply Joe does not apply the same methods. I mean, we've critiqued the methods, right?
¶528But but if you're going to apply them, at least apply them consistently to your two competing theories. Don't apply one to the naturalism case and then just handwave, oh, it's not that unlikely that God would want to create a universe that has these psychophysical laws. >> How do you know that it's not that unlikely? You haven't actually done the analysis. Like it's it's just so obviously cooking the books to get to one conclusion when you don't apply the criteria consistently.
¶529Well, m maybe Joe really is the next Thomas Aquinus in the sense that at the end of all his arguments he just goes at hawk omnz intelligent dam god. >> Yeah. There's just a whole bunch of stuff and then at the end you just go yeah and that's god. So uh it's not it's not unexpected and god does feel a bit like that. >> Yeah.
¶530>> It's a bit of a bait and switch way that the psychophysical principles might have been that would not have resulted in like the kinds of significant forms of value that we see uh in the world around us. So like we're just we're going through the manifold different psychophysical principles that you know conceivably could have held and you know the resulting ways in which the world could have been devoid of you know significant value. So that was the first way just like pathetically contemptably simple and boring laws. >> This is like at least the sec I mean we've well boring including boring maybe fourth pathetic contemptable you know like what the basically I don't know what else to say. >> I don't know why he associates simple with like unimportant or boring or contemptable.
¶531I I don't know. feel like there are people from contemplative traditions who really value those sorts of experiential states. >> Yeah, >> maybe Joe would say that's not what he's talking about, but I'm not really sure what he's talking about. >> I I just feel like he's ch channeling some like weird Catholic integralist like hatred of like secular people and he is just calling non-atholic people or their potential preferences contemptable or pathetic. He's like naturalism is pathetic.
¶532destroyed by theism, dismembered. >> Unnecessarily emotive terms for the point being made, I think. But we should we should move on. We got a lot. >> Yeah.
¶533Well, well, the the only reason I'm raising that is I think that past Joe wouldn't have done things like that. And I think that past Joe was potentially maybe a moral improvement on whatever direction he may be traveling in at the moment, you know. And that's not me saying that I'm someone with a leg to stand on in all in that matter, but I I I just think that there's like a direction of travel where I don't just don't think that past Joe would have talked in that way about rival hypotheses. I think he would have been more sort of um neutral. The second way is if you know the psychophysical principles make our perceptual experiences radically discordant with external reality.
¶534Think about our actual perceptual experiences, right? Like generally speaking, they correspond to external reality. So, for example, there's a way. Can >> we please not get into a long conversation about correspondence because we just don't have time for that. I just Okay, I don't believe in I don't believe in internal and external reality.
¶535I just think there's one reality and it's the normal one. But >> changes in the spatial layout of objects in your environment produce corresponding changes in the qualitative character of your perceptual experiences. Your perceptions thereby mirror the external world in a way that allows you to be consciously aware of your environment, which in turn enables you to rationally form many true beliefs about the world. Of course, there are exceptions like hallucinations and dreams and so forth, but this is the general pattern. This pattern is very fortunate if you think about it since there are countless conceivable psychophysical principles that don't correspond to the external world in a way that enables perceptual knowledge.
¶536Of course, you know, evolution can explain why we have physical structures that mirror our environments and produce appropriate behaviors in response to environmental stimuli. But the point is that in order for us to enjoy perceptual knowledge about the environment, not only do we need those physical structures, but we also need psychophysical principles that are sensitive in very specific ways to those highly specific brain structures. While that first fact can be explained by evolution, you know that we have >> if we're jewelist, but if we're not jewelist, no, we don't. >> Internal physical states that mirror our environments and produce appropriate behaviors in response to environmental stimuli. The second fact that I mentioned can't be explained by evolution.
¶537You know that the psychophysical principles are the right way to enable perceptual knowledge. Like evolution only explains the development of physical states and behavior. It doesn't control which conscious states are mapped on to which physical states. I'll talk about ev I'll talk about evolution more later, but let's just continue on with the train of thought here. The fact that psychophysical principles are sensitive to highly specific brain structures in ways that enable perceptual knowledge requires very finely tuned psychophysical laws.
¶538Right? So like first it requires principles that associate our experiences with activity. >> If you're a jewelist >> in the brain rather than other organs, right? Like if our experiences were sensitive to physical states of the liver, we would not be consciously aware of our environments. You know, since the liver doesn't contain physical structures that richly mirror our environments.
¶539Second of all, it requires principles that associate our experiences with certain parts of the brain, right? Namely, the parts whose activity systematically covaries with features of the external world. If our experiences were instead sensitive to like activity in different parts of the brain, you know, such as the cerebellum or the brain stem, we would not be consciously aware of our environments because again like those different parts of the brain don't contain the right sorts of physical structures that, you know, at least approximately mirror the external world. So uh I think even what he said there may be false for the actual world wherein those are you know the very aspects of neurohysiology that do relate to our >> yes I mean that's questionable but I don't want to get too bogged down in specific examples. Let's just let him play it a bit more and then I'll can make a more a broader comment.
¶540>> Yeah, sure. Sure. >> It requires principles that associate our experiences with the right physical properties of the relevant brain regions such as patterns of neural spikes. If our experiences were sensitive to other physical properties, such as the temperature or mass of the relevant brain regions, we would not be consciously aware of our environments since those brain regions don't use temperature or mass to model the world. Fourth, it requires principles that assign conscious states that themselves structurally correspond in the right way to the right physical properties of the right structures of the right organ.
¶541Right? Like if instead the principles assigned like randomized conscious states to those physical properties or assigned a single simple conscious quality like a sensation of brightness to them, again, we wouldn't be significantly consciously aware of our environments. Like it's almost impossible to believe that a fundamentally purposeless universe would be so sensitively fine-tuned to enable knowledge of and rational engagement with the environment in these compounding ways. Here's like maybe a little bit more of like an informal way of seeing the argument that I'm developing here. Like if you think of your visual field like a TV screen, like there are bajillions of different ways of filling in the pixels with color, brightness, and saturation.
¶542The overwhelming majority of pixel arrangements are just like, you know, like a chaotic jumbled mess. So if it were up to chance which pixels fill a TV screen, you know, it would be extremely improbable that the pixels would form a coherent orderly intelligible image that corresponds to some, you know, facet of the environment. If we saw such a pixel arrangement, we would immediately infer design. Right. But the psychophysical principles connecting brain states with perceptual experiences could conceivably have >> I actually I think this point is a clearer way of uh representing the point that you made earlier about the um the fact that any one uh simple or you know not simple but perfectly random.
¶543So actually the point being any one arrangement that's categorized as simple um might be more probable than any one arrangement categorized as uh complex or they could be equivalent or whatever. the entire class um of what's categorized as interesting/complex versus simple or boring could be different because I I I do think that in the case of static there's more arrangements that give rise to like things or or or or things that may be of some aesthetic interest or value than there are arrangements that appear as pure static. Um so >> well um I don't not exactly sure what you mean by pure static. What is definitely true is that there are more natural images than there are um single colors. If you color everything the same color, there's one way to do that for each color.
¶544Whereas there's lots of different natural images. So that would be an anal an analogy to what we just talking about before. >> That would that would be a good um a good way of putting it. But I'm talking about say say suppose every image has uh all three colors to some extent. Um, I think that there are more ways of arranging them where there is some aesthetic interest than ways that I would like that are visually similar to like this appearance of pure static.
¶545>> Yeah, it could be. I'm not sure. I don't know how you quantify that, but I I want to comment on um the argument he's making here. So this is probably the hardest of the among the hardest of his arguments for me to make sense of um because >> I think I can make sense of it because my >> uh my my gripe with representations and I think it's because you use >> representations answers this question. Well, yes, but this is because you've operationalized repres Joe is falling foul of using representations in the way I take issue with, right?
¶546Whereas you would use representations in a way that is different. So it' be I mean obviously be be interesting to hear then um what you think of this. Basically, I think that um you know, Joe is thinking of mental representations not as um not as having any uh physical functional computational nervous operationalization as they think that you think of them as having. >> Um and literally as being um pictures or me mental images, mental I it's not clear what word to use other than representation right but but mental somethings me mental resemblances of the stimuli that produced them. So for visual stimuli there will be a mental uh picturing of the thing that produced it right in in certain circumstances.
¶547Same for audiary stimuli though less clear what that even means. And and I guess the idea here is that there's kind of like an impression left by the stimuli in the mental realm that is a picture or a video or maybe it has senses, but it's it's kind of like a simulation, a mental simulation of reality out there, right? And if you think of things in this way, then it is weird because you could functionally have any physical uh embodied relationship to the world. This is kind of like the Plantingan problem because I think Plantinga does the same thing. >> But the kind of the Carteesian theater could be anyway, right?
¶548like you know that and and this is why I think this view is kind of cartesian and depends on because you have to have like this kind of cartesian theater which is representing the stimuli to you and then that's how you get this thing called knowledge which is based off of those uh mental representations there is there is a lot of problems with that I mean first off I I literally think that the phenomenology of this thing is wrong and this isn't a criticism of your use of represent Right. Which is different. But you know like for example when I see like I see this right in front of me I don't think I see I I see the bottle I don't I don't like have a cartisian theater in which I'm producing like a hologram of the bottle that I see in the mental. Do you see what like >> Yeah. Well the sense data theory which representationalists reject because they don't think that there's this sort of Yeah.
¶549theater that you you yeah you see the object or whatever it is that you're interacting with. Um >> well I think I I I actually think that >> and not some sort of sense datim. >> Yeah. And and whether whether sens sensim I think would be um a good way of um leading towards whatever this thing is trying to get at. There's probably other terms or whatever that Joe might want to use.
¶550But I actually think that that is the way that he's thinking of representation is like some appearance like like an appearance from the phenomenological perspective that resembles the target because you know like when he talks about correspondences. >> Yeah. >> He's he he's talking about like the relationship between I don't I I literally because I don't think that this thing exists, right? I don't know how >> that that doesn't make sense, right? the that at least it doesn't make sense to me and that's not how I think about representation.
¶551I think that the the mistake is to think that there is there is some sort of inherent it's very hard to articulate this. So >> what's it's like if I drew if I drew a picture of you, right, and I said that this is a representation of you, there's there's like a a resemblance between the picture and yourself. And I can cash that out visually in order to say like, yeah, you can see the resemblance, right? I think the idea that trades on the that kind of idea of representation that you might see between a picture and its target in this mental realm is that there's like a a phenomenal occurrence that is pictorial um that is that that bears a resemblance to the target the stimuli that produces the >> that's what I was trying to articulate phenomenology. >> Yeah.
¶552And and this was actually the basis of the view I was arguing against when we talked about representations. And then it turned out that and you were very confused because you were like, "Who talks like this?" >> Well, yes. Yeah, that's >> I mean this is not this is not typically how cognitive scientists talk in my experience, although I agree that they're not always fully consistent. We can have that full that we can have that discussion later though. But that is sort of helpful to think about the way he's talking about this here because um yeah I I think there's one way to interpret this which is just saying a prior a priori it's not clear that any of the physical states that exist in our universe would would be capable of giving rise to uh conscious mental states like maybe there just the relevant physical complexity couldn't exist or something like that.
¶553That's essentially a finetuning argument. Um but I don't think that's that's what he's trying to argue here. He's trying to argue something a bit different. He's essentially Joe what he Joe seems to be arguing here is that most of the most of the ways in which our even if we assume that there is you know uh particular determinate psychophysical laws most of the ways that they could give rise to mental states would give rise to well kind of mental states like on the left that would just be represent non-interpretable. Yeah.
¶554Non-representational. Um the way I I I probably need to think about the best way to articulate this because there's different ways that I can come up that I can try to get to it and I don't know that any of them are like which is the the clearest. One way to say this is that both of these are so for a human the right what I wish he'd chose an example because I don't really know what this is. >> I was gonna say >> it's hard to say what this is. Let's just call it a spaceship, right?
¶555Um because that's what sort of what it looks like to me. >> Halo. >> Clear if he chose Well, it's a bit small for Halo, but anyway, whatever. Um, for a human and probably for most other types of animals that are even roughly uh that are even closely related to us or even probably distantly, the image on the left is a representation of a spaceship. The image on the right is not really a representation of anything.
¶556But that is, let let me finish articulating this. That is a fact that's not inherent to the image. It's a fact that's related to how we process images and and how our brains interrogate and represent and process mental mental uh visual information. I meant to say so in other words there is I think a hypothetical being I mean exactly how it could be instantiated I don't know there's a hypothetical being for whom the >> what we see is the image on the left is actually a representation of the spaceship if I can >> represent it that way they process the information very differently and put it together. Now obviously like I don't know if the image on the left probably isn't a scrambled version of the image on the right.
¶557So like they may not actually have the same information in them in that sense. But the point is that >> I don't think there's any inherent fact of the matter about what a mental representation has to look like as long as it encodes the information that it needs to from the environment and there's many many ways of doing that. So for humans we're familiar with certain ways of doing it. Um but there like bats may have very different ways of representing space because of their echolocation for example and even bats are relatively evolutionary closely related to us. So there probably is actually a fair bit of commonality there.
¶558So the sort of the sort of um disharmonies that Joe is talking about >> I'm just not really sure what the problem is supposed to be. If we imagine radically different physical states as long as they're capable of generating mental states there may be radically different mental states but they can still track their environment appropriately and respond. >> I actually think what's the problem? I I think that this is the issue. I Okay.
¶559I I see what you're saying in your response. And um I think that that is I I think that what you're saying is equivalent to what I'm about to say, but put in slightly different terms. Right. And I think it is to do with dropping out the conception of mental state that Joe is operating with or of representation that Joe's operating with. Because in in Joe's conception, right, you have like the the the light that comes into the eyes or what, you know, the the the waves or whatever that hit >> the um the sensory organs and then things that happen with the physiology behind that.
¶560And what it is for that organism to be in that perceptual state is for it to stand in that relation with its physiology doing that with that stimuli, right? Um and that just is whatever it is. like maybe I have cataracts and stuff looks different to me than it looks to you or whatever, right? Um the now what what in Joe's model what's going on is there's that okay, but then there's like this mental state realm which either truly represents reality or doesn't truly represent reality. And and this is what I arguably is like a a platonic conception of this distinction between appearance and reality where appearance is like an inner mental realm.
¶561not um it's not reduced to simply questions of like do you see red right but it's like asking you in the inner mental realm do you actually really have the phenomenology of red which is like a separate it's a part of the mental you know so like a a question like uh are you seeing red we can both answer without appeals to any metaphysics or whatever because we both you know we're trained to use red language normally and we know what we And there's like criteria and things like that. But in mental realm space- because there's this kind of like distinction of appearances being this like private thing apart from anything else. There's there's like a question of whether you really see red, right? Which is is like a private question on this cartisian model of what like appears in the theater. And then the question of what is appearing in the and then if you've got the theater and appearances in the theater, you have the question of um does does the theater and its appearances do they correspond to reality?
¶562Okay. Um to to the stimuli. It's not even clear that that makes sense because you've kind of like moved between substances. So like what really is a physical thing without being this is where maybe you get like you know the empiricist like idealist type questions and things like what or the primary secondary quality distinction is one way people move around this of like um you know what is a thing beyond how it appears to people sort of sort of issues >> um which I think is actually a relevant question because it's not clear in that correspondence first off that there is a thing the appearance that is like a a thing and like a mental state thing in a cartisian theater. And secondly, that that is in any sense um appropriately resembling the stimuli for there to be like a principled criteria of um saying it actually represents versus it fails to represent.
¶563Do you see do you see what I'm saying? Like it because our criteria would actually be that as long as the organism is adapted to its environment in the case of humans because we speak language, they would produce the right words. Like it doesn't matter if you have like cataracts or your brain's all messed up or whatever. As long as you're like adaptive to the social environments and speaking language, you're doing it right. And and of course, and that's what seeing is because there's no there isn't like a separate part of seeing in humans.
¶564That's the Cartisian theater that can be like radically different if the physiology is kind of fixed. Has that helped move this >> a little bit? I I think that it's it it does seem to be hinging on the notion that there's some sort of primitive notion of um resemblance between what you talk about as the Cartisian theater and the external world, which is certainly not how I think about these sorts of things. And what's confusing is because I think about representation as ultimate excuse me as ultimately about um uh you know brain subsystems or actually other parts of our body trackers represent as well but subsystems of our body that um track information in the environment and that have a function to do that tracking and then you you can build these up into progressively more complicated. you to contract very abstract things as well, not just like simple um you know you know simple physical co-occurrences.
¶565But the point is that that is entirely contingent on the physiology of the of the organism that there's no there's no other fact of the matter about whether there is a resemblance other than the appropriate tracking and functional relations are all in place. They're very complicated. So it's often requires a lot of studies to work out how all they fit together. But >> you know essentially what it seems to me that Joe is saying that all he's imagining all of those things being in place but somehow um the representation still doesn't correspond and I'm like but that's just all that it is for the representation to correspond is the right tracking and functional properties are in >> but this is this is >> well the the cartesian concept of qualia raw fields right because >> for any uh for any mileination arrangement of neurons and firings ings and activations, whatever, right? That doesn't tell you anything about qualia or about raw fields or about um the the conceptualization of mental states that Joe's working with because that's the dualist conception, right?
¶566which which comes apart entirely and there is no entire so of course for him there's always going to be that question and I I I think that what has to happen is this kind of like disambiguation of like interrogating those kinds of concepts of like raw fields and seeing like literally are they even there right so like you know the example that the examples that keep being appealed to of like of like the redness of red or whatever like I mean everyone can trying to do this to some degree now. You like you can look at a red thing and like you just see that it's red, but is there like a raw feel in that? Is there like a the redness of red, right? and something like that that is like self-revealing from this mental realm in the Carteesian theater self-disclosing uh ineffable indescribable somehow we're talking about it but it's indescribable private um is what there has to be in the cartesian theater and that can vary apart from and and this is where I say I think it's like a conceptual distinction because or or it's like a you know the dispute is conceptual Because you kind of have to like resist this conceptual framing to come up with, you know, you know, to to make people realize like they're talking just utter like gibberish and not, you know, they they started off maybe with some stuff that's like reasonable and they've just produced this like cartesian mind gibberish that is isn't even actually it's not even related to seeing red. Like there's no I don't have like like I can see red and that like I'm looking at the YouTube sign it's like a little red rectangle type thing but like this qualia red isn't it doesn't have spatial constraints you know it isn't that red because it's the redness of red it's not so what the hell is this like there's no such thing like that there is only the actual like me the person seeing a visual stimuli using language and a story about like physiology and information like you said.
¶567Um, >> yes, exactly. There's not something in addition to that. And so that's what confuses me about Joe's description because I mean another way to put this is simply that I think all of what Joe is presenting is problematic is just straightforwardly explained if you adopt a um a um a physicalist notion about the mind and some sort of representationalist view of of phenomenal qualia. Um you know Nathan doesn't use the exact same words although I don't know that our underlying views are actually that different but we you know we can have that debate another time. The point is that under that sort of view, you natur you you there's an essential there's a necessary connection between what you might call the phenomenal aspects put those in quotes and and the representational aspects.
¶568So in other words like why it is that the organism is able to use its consciousness its conscious percepts in order to survive that's not accidental that's an inher that's inherent to what it is to have conscious experience the the physiology all builds up to to get that. So um I think that in so far as Joe's ex as Joe's problem here, the psychophysical harmony shows us anything. I would argue it's just a a reason to adopt something like this view about consciousness. Not to see consciousness or the citation theory as some sort of other ethereal thing. Um but just to see it as an um inherently physical aspect of how we represent certain types of stimuli for for certain purposes.
¶569And so um again, Joe might say, well that's all true, but that's asteriori. And you know that's going to relate to the same issue that we had before about well what's the problem with a posterior. >> I I would say I also don't think it is aposteriori in the sense that I think to acquire these concepts people have to learn the behavior of others and learn it behaviorally and not you know I I don't think that people like meditate and introspect and then go oh yeah I know how to use color language now or something. Well, there's an interesting example of that. Maybe we'll get to I think he includes it here.
¶570Um where there is at least one example where I think I'm pretty sure that I know that that's false a priori. But anyway, that was helpful, but we should probably move on. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
¶571It's also interesting because it it loop back to that conversation we've had before. I sort of realize what what you're talking about now. I mean, this this this relates to what we were saying about how you conceive of things differently depending on your background. This is just not how I've thought about representations. So, it's hard for me to get in that.
¶572Like, yeah, that does sound like nonsense. Why would anyone think that? >> Yeah. And I I think I think even the language of like um percepts or phenomenology, there's like you've got to be really careful because people in the more philosophical background will be like, "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about." Like the cartesian stuff. I mean, they they'll say, "No, I'm not a cartisian, of course." But they'll still be kind of like using those Well, I think yeah, Joe's doing that here effectively.
¶573>> Yeah. >> Pixelated our visual field in any which way, right? With any combinations of, you know, colors and brightness and saturation. And so we should similarly infer design given that the pixels form a coherent orderly intelligible image that corresponds to the environment. But anyway, we've just canvased a second class of ways in which the psychophysical principles could have resulted in a world, you know, devoid of significant forms of value or at least, you know, a world devoid of like knowledge and awareness of our environment.
¶574Let's move on to a third way. So third, the psychophysical principles might have resulted in irrational responses to the character of our experiences. All right. All right. So, a third way that the psychophysical principles might have been such that the world would have been devoid of at least a lot of significant forms of value that we do in fact have is normative disharmony.
¶575In other words, the psychophysical principles might have resulted in irrational responses to the character of our experiences. When you feel pain, so consider that when you feel pain, this tends to be followed by avoidance behavior. Conversely, when you feel pleasure, this tends to lead to pursuit behavior. Of course, it's like this is what's so frustrating. It's like that's so close to what I've been saying since the start is pain and how we learn pain.
¶576It's like, you know, it's like, yeah, isn't that isn't that weird? And this it's like, no, it's just that just is like what it is, right? It's like I'm like there's a characterization of pain, which is like kind of avoidance behavior and like bad stuff and stuff you don't want like you know stuff normative. It's like nor it is a normative concept. So we teach people you should avoid it and stuff and it's like that's all literally how the language is taught I would say.
¶577And then it's like, isn't it weird that like all this is part of the concept of pain? And the problem is because you've got this concept of pain as like a sample in the Carteesian theater rather than as what it is and how it's taught, which is like why you get all those things. >> Yeah, you know, there are exceptions, but this is the general pattern. What's notable here is that there's a kind of normative harmony between your experiences and your behavior. Your experiences are correlated with behaviors that are rationally appropriate in light of those very experiences.
¶578Right? Like pain is bad. It's an intrinsically sucky experience. All else being equal, the more of it you have in your life, the worse off you are. So all else being equal, you have reason to avoid and eliminate pain.
¶579Lo and behold, that's what you tend to do, right? You tend to avoid and eliminate pain. It's like pain gives you reason to avoid it. And lo and behold, the sorts of behavior that pain is correlated with is avoidance behavior, right? So what pain rationalizes, the sort of behavior that pain rationalizes, namely avoidance behavior, is precisely the actual behavior that pain leads to.
¶580Right? Right? So there's a kind of harmonious mesh between the normative role of pain, what it gives you reason to do, and the kind of causal role of pain, what it leads you to do. On the flip side, pleasure is good. It's an intrinsically nice experience.
¶581And all else being equal, the more of it you have in your life, the better off you are. So again, all else being equal, you have reason to pursue pleasure. And lo and behold, >> uh, so I'm I'm going to sad contra this, I have a a good a good clip. >> I love the pain >> because the pain is the truth. The hurt is the truth >> and realizing >> my hair is all going to fall out.
¶582My teeth are going to fall out >> and I'm going to be brought low. >> Gaslight myself every morning. >> Well, Joe did say all else being equal and I'm not sure that all else is equal in that case at the very least. So, uh, >> yes. >> Well, that's what you tend to do and this fits a more general pattern.
¶583By and large, there's a rationally coherent connection between your consciousness and your behavior, right? Like your spoken words reflect your conscious thoughts. Your spoken arguments reflect your conscious reasoning. >> See, and his reflect language is again the cartesian reflect. >> But I'm going to inject here because I can't remember exactly where he puts this.
¶584He may have been in a later rebuttal, but I'll just mention it now because we might not have time to find it. So if you think that mental states or particularly like qualia phenomenal states like a feeling of pain for example if you think that those things are causally efficacious they cause things what is the surprise here like like just think about this if you think that if you think that phenomenal states like pain just float and don't sort of do anything if they're epenomenal then this may be surprising like well how is it that we see this sort of association between them but if they cause things you know we have this sense of pain which is caused by you know some tissue damage let's say and brain activity We feel pain which is some other brain pattern but it's like a certain type of brain pattern that's you know associated with what we call pain and then as a result of that that causes us to then have further thoughts or brain patterns whatever you want to call them which then lead us to oh not do that so more or you know avoid that kind of thing or say ouch right what is the surprise here like it's it's all part of a causal loop so of course they fit into a picture the only way this is mysterious is if you think that pain is epiphenomenal but what's weird is that Joe explicitly denies that he needs to assume epiphenomenalism I'm not exactly sure where he does that it might be just coming up but I just don't see I just can't make myself be puzzled by this unless you assume that that pain doesn't cause anything as long as it's going to cause something of course it's going to cause you to do things that avoid it precisely for the reason that Joe has said it's a bad so like that was a bad me no do that why is this surprising I just can't even make myself conceive of a world where that's not the case unless you're assuming epenomenalism >> yeah I feel like there's two sides to the question which are clearer than the one he puts right and one of them is the side that you're talking about like the um behavioral response side. And it's like why you know what the the the sensations that we're talking about where we use these words why are those sensations connected to various behavior like you know withdrawal from the stimuli whatever. >> Yeah. >> And you know like those have like re a bunch of different answers.
¶585Some of them are like going to be like evolutionary adaptive answers with respect to maybe like um you know central nervous system responses things like that you know like blinking before a grand stand hits your eyes you know like we don't voluntarily choose to do those sorts of things. Um, some of them might be involved in like how we're socially trained because it's probably like more complicated ways of feeling like shame and guilt and things like that which are kind of pain and then we like reflect on things and modify our behaviors. But it's similar sort of like mechanism and you can still kind of argue that they're in some way related to um evolutionarily adaptive physiology we've developed because we're social creatures and so we sort of like you know we're a system that cares about um nourishing our social relationships and stuff like that um because it's you know it's a better strategy for us to have. Of course, not everyone even is like that in the actual world and you know, we tend to either ostracize those people or um promote them to great positions of power in powerful nations. >> But um so that's one side of it, but then like maybe the other side of asking the question is like well why do we use the word pain for that rather than other things?
¶586But I still think that has like a very normal answer which is like because that's what we were taught basically. But like I mean it could be any word you know it could be any noise or like different symbol or something but that's just the one that we happen to have been taught and that is the answer to why we use it like we were we were just taught that this is the word and sound to use in those ways. >> I think he's asking about why we use the word. I think he's asking why does our behavior match the phenomenology. I I think he's going to kind of come to that maybe through like semantic harmony.
¶587um which again but but the reason that I'm making this is I I think that those are like the two directions of questions that you can ask right one resolves into um essentially biological physiological questions and the other one resolves into like a sociological historical question about you know like how has language changed over time and how do people get taught language and that's all there's no like mystery in any of that so I think he just I think what introduces all the mystery is um like his metaphysical cartesian model of like mind and pain being like an intrinsic sample and like rationality is this like faculty of the will that must be compelled by the raw you know all all this like weird what I consider to be weird metaphysics that isn't needed creates all the problems. It's like just do away with that stuff now. You get two normal questions and they've got like normal answers. >> Yeah. Well, I just want to try to steal man his argument because I you know what I want to give the strongest response possible.
¶588So so his argument is let's reject epenomenalism. So we're going to say that phenomenal states conscious states have causal effects. So then I just sort of free float or whatever. >> But what he says is that we could imagine that we invert the um relationship. So instead of pain being associated instead of the feeling of pain being associated with withdrawal behavior, the feeling of pain is associated with um approach behavior.
¶589Right? So when we um you know feel a prick, we we do it again instead of avoiding it. Right? Um his point is that that that association of phenomenal states with physical states that mapping that the psychonomic um principles that that's conceivable and so in fact there's many more such uh mappings that are conceivable that would lead to disharmonious pairings instead of the harmonious ones. So that's his argument.
¶590Um >> I just don't know what he's actually asking us to imagine there though because like first off in the actual world people can do that and then you've got to kind of like factor in like what is why >> you can do that but people tend not to but why and the answer seems to be precisely because >> the phen what I would say is just that it's not conceivable to me that that phenomenal experience that we that causes us to reflect on it and say hm I don't like that that then somehow is associated with physical states that lead us to then just keep doing it. I That's just not even believable to me. It doesn't make sense. Why would we be doing it if we don't like it? >> Well, that that's where I'm saying I don't know what he's actually asking us to imagine because it's like you're assuming the case of the actual world where you kind of like have factored in that there's some relationship between like willpower, action, and these feelings and that people overall like don't like it or whatever.
¶591But then like what are you saying you're imagining in these other worlds? Like what are you imagining that everyone just like really wills themselves to do it, but then that's just the actual world. There's not like a metaphysical mystery. But then are you saying there's this thing people don't like, but they do like it? Well, then like that is contradictory and I don't understand if that is even going on.
¶592>> He built in two assumptions. One is that the the phenomenal states can cause physical things which includes us being able to reflect on them and think about how should I respond to that. And the other thing is that he assumes that they're intrinsically bad like or in the case of pain. It's it's >> what does that mean other than reflecting on it and thinking I should >> That's what I mean. So So you combine those things together and it seems to me that well then people who experience pain are generally going to not do things that lead them to pain.
¶593>> So then maybe you're talking to me that you get any other result. >> Okay. So then maybe maybe you're imagining a scenario where people do all that but then they go I don't care what I think about it and they just happen to ram their fingers into needles anyway. But then like that's just weird people and like what's that got to do with like metaphysics of mind, you know, like nothing. >> The closest I can come up with is that he thinks that we could make up our mind, oh pain, bad, don't like that, I don't want to do it again, but then we sort of find ourselves doing it again anyway.
¶594Almost like a weird addiction, like we kind >> do do that in the actual world because I'm sure Joe is finding out as a Catholic. >> It sort of does happen. I guess he would say that that's exception rather than norm. I mean you could argue about that but like >> but then you're just arguing why are the distributions what they >> happen even more. Yeah.
¶595Yeah. >> But but which again has like just you know normal explanations. It's not like a deep metaphysical mystery of concepts. >> Yeah. I I can't really make myself because this for anything else.
¶596This really seems like it's just not conceivable. >> Are you sure he said he's not an epiphonalist? Are you sure >> he argues that? I don't remember. I've got it written down.
¶597I don't remember exactly where he says it. >> Okay. I I can't >> Let's keep playing it out a bit more. We might not go through everything cuz he we do need to get to other topics. But >> spoken descriptions of your feelings match your actual feelings.
¶598Your outward behavior corresponds to what you consciously want and choose to do. All this too is very surprising under >> sorry that one spoken descriptions of your feelings match your actual feelings. That is really >> how is that surprising if you think that feelings >> if you had different feelings >> you would say something different. Like again we're not assuming epomenalism here. So what why is that surprising?
¶599>> Or does he mean does he mean like you intend to say like I'm sad but instead like the sound I'm happy comes out you know like what what's he talking about? I >> these problems to me are kind of like it's like um why is it that like a round shape with my mouth is like the O sound and like my lips together is like P the P sound and it's like oh imagine if you went like that with your lips but it made the O sound or something and it's like isn't that weird and it's like not really because that's how sound works like you know sure I could maybe imagine it being different but who cares and and that's kind of similar this problem of like what isn't it weird that you describe the things you describe with the words that you choose to use to describe them is not a problem there's not like a problem of like >> I think that Joe just needs to explain more clearly why we should think this is a problem because I'm really trying to understand this particular the normative disharmony specifically and I just can't understand what what the problem is >> I I think it's the rational appropriateness I think maybe maybe the question is this it's why do we think it is bad to um to seek pain. Okay. And but I guess I could just give answers to that like because I don't >> says it's the intrinsic character of pain. And as a materialist, I don't have to disagree with that.
¶600I could just say, "Yeah, but >> Oh, you could say that." Yeah. >> I don't think it's the actual answer, but >> Well, I I think I think it's the representational qualities of pain which render it the the fact that it is representing harmful stimuli, which is why it feels the way it does, that it's not >> I sort of agree. I agree to some degree, but then I also do think so. like you know the case of like pushing yourself athletically or or making over it's not but but so it could but then it it's more complicated than that because your your um physiology let's say can be stimulated to those negative experiences in a way that isn't proportionate to actual say like tissue damage that you should so you can make a judgment about whether you should adapt to that or not which is yeah it's more complicated than any simple relationship in pain because there's plenty of pain that's not associated with tissue damage and that's sort of pathological in point ways. But what I would say so that is what it's representing.
¶601It just often goes quite wrong because we're not very well adapted as it turns out. >> But then I think I think it doesn't necessarily come down to like an intrinsic character of an experience or something. But instead like why do you have the moral judgments that you have which is like you know how do you answer that? like because I was raised a certain way, because I've got these eyes, you know, like does is there a question there that even makes sense? Like I just do have the values I have.
¶602There's a whole complicated facet of different things that go into that, you know, but like yeah, I I I think that people, you know, like if you ask me why do I not want people to just like run off cliffs into fire or something, like I can't really answer that, you know? Like I mean if you said it to me I might try and persuade you by saying like come on James like focus on your career instead. I think that would be better. You know I might persuade you but if you ask me why I like really really don't think you should do that. I I actually don't know why right like I I can't really give you like a principled answer.
¶603And but that's not because like there's I I don't know like I imagine you going in the fire. I empathize with that and the intrinsic character of that empathetic feeling rationally compels me to say that. I just don't know. I just think it would be a bad thing and I just don't really have reasons for it. Right.
¶604Like um >> Well, I guess I I differ a bit because I I think that it makes sense to say that the the character of a feeling like pain is such that we reasonably just don't like it. >> I think I think that's what I want to say is like that's an aspect to it, but I think like pain is like more than like you know because I'm kind of rejecting the idea that pain is like one feeling, right? Oh yeah, of course. And so >> we can we can specify a single very specific feeling if we want if that helps for >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶605burning your finger on a stove. That's >> But this Yeah. And this is kind of what I'm saying. It's like all the ways of using pain. Like sometimes they refer to specific sensations.
¶606Those sensations are different from each other. Um sometimes it's kind of like sort of metaphorical emotional pain, social anguish. um lament, you know, like there there's kind of like modes, modalities of pain, do I want to say or something like like pains that are not even even like two sensorally the same pains. If I pinch my two fingers, they're like kind of different from each other, but there's some similarities in terms of the sensations I'm experiencing. >> Well, we can take the word pain and just talk about specific experiences.
¶607That's my point. I think the word is not interesting. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
¶608But I I think it is interesting because well because it's being used as this like primitive of like a ra of like you know a a a homogeneous feeling or sensation that is reason giving. And I actually think it's like a really complicated word that does a whole bunch of different things. Some of them are like social. Some of them are like narrativizing ourselves. Some of them are just like communicating like pure bad feel like James my finger just got blown off.
¶609Like do you have a tourniquet or something? Do you know what I mean? Like um there's a whole bunch of different things we do with pain. >> But but this this idea that there is like an experience and it just gives us reasons. Like sure like sometimes that sometimes I have reasons because of how I feel that I would describe as pain.
¶610Sometimes the pain is like more of a complicated thing that needs more analysis and reflection. You know, it's just it's like but but whatever's going on, it isn't this thing that that Joe is talking about. That's not pain. Well, it's what sort of talks about as if it's it gives us reasons but somehow doesn't >> cause anything to happen in our brains, which just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If you assume naturalism, which which he seems to think it's a problem even if you make that assumption.
¶611I just I just don't see that at all. >> I don't think he's made that case. >> Naturalism because we can imagine all different sorts of alternative psych >> responding to this video is a pain. I would say I don't just mean that as a I mean like there's a use of pain, right? like what what am I pick am I picking out cuz I don't have like an immediate I'm just more like reflecting on the general length of it.
¶612>> Yeah. I mean I just think that's policy and language use and we tend to um we tend to draw analogies between different things which often leads to a lot of imprecision. >> But would you say that that's not a pain like that that's like an inappropriate use of >> Well, it's just polyimus, right? It's a different usage. It's not the same thing as when you touch a hot stove, right?
¶613But but this is why I think that the the call like >> I mean it still gives us a reason not to do it. Like this is tedious and annoying. >> That's a reason not to do the stream. I agree with that. It's just there are other greater reasons that we do it.
¶614>> Yeah. But I I don't know that like what does it mean in that case to say it's intrinsically it has a that there's a phenomenology with a character that's you know like cuz that's more of a reflection on like my overall goals. the fact that it's the weekend and they get so much we you know like it's not I'm not appealing to like a phenomenal character that I'm experiencing but I'm more just like thinking about a bunch of stuff and reasoning you know so to produce a production of reasons isn't like the intrinsic character of an experience or something in that case >> I agree it's more complicated but I think the intrinsic character of experiences plays some role for example when uh certain apologists make just really silly or poor informed poorly informed claims that elicits a feeling in me which is annoyance or disgust frustration That's a feeling which contributes to what I say this is exactly it's not not there as well and that's what I mean like there's just if you want to actually and this is where I say if you want to do the philosophy of pain there's a lot more to do like this is just like not helpful at all to understanding pain if you're a philosopher that wants to elucidate things >> yeah anyway let's keep going we've got plenty yeah >> that don't result in these rationally appropriate psychophysical connections so for instance we can imagine a hedonically inverted world a world physically just like ours but with different psychophysical principles that swap pleasure and pain. So in this hedonically inverted world, pleasure is associated with tissue damage and avoidance behavior. Whereas pain is associated with fitness enhancing stimuli like eating and having sex and pursuit behavior.
¶615In such a world where you know that is this world there are people who have you know what we consider to be um disorders but for them you know they may call them disorders if they have certain second. I think what Joe's going to say though is that we could imagine a case where the norm is for for this >> but that could be but that could be the actual world you know that's not a metaphysical difference that would just be like a population >> seems like gambling addiction maybe highlight that that could be more often the case but I mean this is the point like it doesn't really make sense to me to say that pleasure might be associated with tissue damage >> because well I experience what it's like to touch a hot stove and then I no I haven't experienced I realize that is bad I don't want to do that. Now, you know, there are cases where that doesn't go through like in the addiction cases we talked about. >> But even if we just if we just put that aside and just ask what is puzzling about the fact that I >> decide to not touch hot stoves after I touch a hot stove and feel like the way it feels like unless he talks about the idea you can imagine inverting the case. But I such that I go and keep touching it.
¶616But well, no, I can't imagine that because I >> damage your hand. >> I think about that and I think okay, what does this look like? So I touch the stove and it feels bad. I don't like that bad feeling. That feels good in this case.
¶617Feels good. >> Okay. Well, that's a different Okay. I was going to invert the behavior, but you're inverting the feeling. >> Yeah.
¶618Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Because here he says, "Please might have been associated with tissue damage." >> Um, so yeah. Okay.
¶619If you want to if you want to invert the feeling, then in this case it would be you touch the stove and it feels good. So what would follow? Well, you would you would keep touching the stove, right? >> So, >> well, yeah, but then your hand would be damaged. >> Yeah.
¶620Yeah. And then so this raises the question as to um what the connection is between the feelings and the repres the information that's being processed by the nervous system. And precisely the point that I would make as a representationalist is that it's not coherent for a species to evolve in a way that um damaging behavior is associated with states that um lead to uh lead to that behavior being repeated. It's just not possible for that to have evolved, at least not in general. like there's addiction cases that we talked about, but >> I guess what Joe wants to say is that there would be no possible way like he's sort of talking about imagining that there's an inversion of all possible associations, >> but but then it stimuli and mental state.
¶621>> Like one extreme end of this is just like a linguistic swap, right? Where you imagine a community who just use the word good for bad for what we call bad and bad for what we call good >> and then but then there's no like mystery of how they're adaptive or whatever. they just have a different language to a language where things mean different things where where the words you know mean different things. But then yeah but then the kind of graded differences where you actually try to imagine a community existing um where people have pleasure in those kinds of scenarios that cause tissue damage. It's just not adaptive.
¶622They obviously die out. So or or if they don't, you know, maybe they maybe it's not as extreme as they die out, but if the um pleasure is connected to behaviors that are what we call sufficiently pain. So like, you know, I think we would say for example, stubbing your toe is not as painful as being hit by a train. I mean, that's arguably in in the mo moment before you're dead. Very painful.
¶623>> Sorry. Sorry, Nathan. I just I just read this more carefully. I think you sort of confused me because read what he says here. Pleasure might have been associated with tissue damage and avoidance behavior.
¶624So let's go back to the stove example. The example is I touch the stove >> which is tissue damage behavior. >> It feels good and then I avoid it. >> Pleasure might be associated with tissue damage and avoidance behavior. So the scenario is I touch the stove, I feel pleasure, and then I avoid the stove.
¶625But that doesn't make sense. Why would I avoid the stove if it feels good? I would touch it again. >> Yeah, that doesn't make sense. >> That's what I'm saying.
¶626Yeah, you you confused me when you changed that around cuz I was >> No, sorry. You're right. Yeah, sorry. You're right. >> Does that make sense?
¶627Why Why am I not touching the stove again? >> I'm saying whichever way I I still think it's not it's not irrelevant because it's like whichever way you pass all of this up, there's like answers that So, so either >> Yeah. Yeah. There's answers either way. >> Yeah.
¶628There's not a way of phrasing this where there's like a deep problem that actually creates issues, right? it either is um answered in terms of ad adaptivity and survival where you get like ranges in within communities that make sense for what's adaptive to survival in that environment. Um or you end up with a scenario that literally doesn't make sense because people have people behave against the reasons that they have to behave which >> Joe thinks that pleasure gives them intrinsic reason to do something and can cause them to do things but instead it's conceivable that it causes them just to avoid the pleasure. That just doesn't make any sense to me. Why would anyone avoid that?
¶629>> Well, you'd have to you'd have to specify in the hypothetical scenario that people act against their reasons. But then the answer as to why they do that is because they act against their reasons, right? So you've like you you're basically like concocting a weird concocting a weird scenario, right? That's like a fiction. You go, but why do people do that?
¶630But the answer to that is because you specified it in the fictional scenario that you created by like >> that. Yeah. You know, it's like it's like you say, imagine this. Now, why are you imagining it that way? And it's like because you told me I had to.
¶631That's the scenario you told me to imagine. Um, so again, >> I think the point here is they're there were supposed to be more disharmonious uh psychophysical laws. >> Damn. What if pain was nice? Yeah.
¶632But I mean, that's sort of it, right? Because the idea is supposed to be that there's more disharmonious psychophysical mappings than harmonious ones under naturalism. And so it's surprising that we have a harmonious one. But only if that's the model generate if that's the generation mechanism for the world. I mean in the epistemic space maybe but that's not how the world >> I'm not sure it is in the epistmic space because the honic inversion example at least that one just doesn't make sense to me even in the epist I just can't understand why people are feeling pleasure touching the stove but then they're going to avoid touching the stove.
¶633Why would they not just keep touching the stove and and then at that because >> Joe tells us that pleasure is inherently reason giving but somehow people just don't pursue it. That's no sense at all to me. I'm saying there's an answer that can be given, right? Which is he says, "Well, just imagine they're all why are we not in?" Yeah. >> Yeah.
¶634Imagine that they didn't. But then but then the question is, well, why do they do that under naturalism? That's what the question is. >> Well, yeah. But you say, so the answer to the thing that you said is, well, they just don't do that.
¶635And but then you're like, so the question is, but why do they do the thing that they shouldn't be doing with the phenomenology that says they and it's like, well, because you told me to imagine that case. that is why they're doing it in that case. Do you see Do you see what I'm trying to say? Like >> Yeah. Well, I understand that, but is there a reason to think that that's likely under naturalism?
¶636And I don't think you >> uh uh I guess because if you imagine acting in accordance with your reasons and desires as like balls in an in a jar. and you imagine there's like more balls where people don't act in accordance with their reasons and desires then like that would be less probable. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's the fundamental framework, but I don't think what he's told us is that there's lots of possible mappings under naturalism. And in some of his other examples like perceptual disharmony, there was some like the simplicity one for example, he says that the simpler mappings are more favored and but simpler mappings are likely to lead to uninteresting phenomenology.
¶637So that so we wouldn't expect to have the complex phenomenology that we do see on a naturalism. So that's the argument against it. But why should we think that uh hydonic scenarios in which people just don't act in accordance with their reasons is more expected under naturalism? He hasn't given us a reason for that. And I think that that's just because the thought experiment is not sufficiently welldeveloped.
¶638You can postulate that people ignore their reasons, but I don't know why that would be expected under naturalism. I I I I don't think I don't think there's any um what would you say like fundamental principles in what people not acting in accordance with the reasons that they have that would create a distribution inequality that makes it improbable. Do you see? >> I don't think so. Not not in this example.
¶639It would it would just be I mean if anything the reason the the the scenarios that we have where we talked about it being intrinsically reason giving it seems to well maybe maybe you make it the uh what did it become the uh psychopysical psychonomic psychorational argument where now you introduce an additional layer of like rational uh mental rational variability and you you know, and you and you specify it such that there's like all these different ways of people having reasons and acting on behalf of the reasons that they have. And you say and isn't it um striking and fortunate that for the physical states the the mental states the psychophysical laws the intrinsic reason giving rational qualities of um those things and the possible rationality rules on behalf of which we make decision-m happens that we have the pairings that we have. So you can just construct a new problem I suppose out of out of that and you know there you go Joe have that one for free. Anyway, let's keep going. Yeah, conscious states of pleasure and pain are swapped.
¶640We we still would have pursued sex and food and drink and we still would have avoided fire and predators and illness and disease, right? Because again like tissue damage is associated with pleasure and pleasure leads you to engage in engage in avoidance behavior, right? So when you stub your toe, you're going to avoid doing that in the future even though it causes you pleasure. Similarly, when you know you put your hand in a fire, it causes pleasure, but the pleasure in this world kind of wackily leads you to pull your hand out of the fire. So evolution would have unfolded in exactly the same way in this world as it did in our world.
¶641But on the inside, in that world, we would have been miserable rich witches, right? Like we would have systematically avoided pleasure and pursued pain. We would somehow have the capacity to think, hm, I'm doing the things that cause me suffering. >> Like it doesn't make sense the scenario. Again, this is not supposed to be assuming epiphenomenalism.
¶642So phenomenal states can cause us things. They can presumably cause us to reflect on that and realize this isn't working out for us. I just don't understand how we can just wave that away. But that just doesn't happen. So >> unless you specify that people do like the thing that there's but there's an you know there's >> he said they're not they're unhappy.
¶643He said >> yeah. Yeah. >> Why do they keep doing the behavior that makes them unhappy? You just have not >> because but this is what I'm saying. It's like there's there's a reason from a perspective other than the perspective that they occupy to not like unhappiness, but they do prefer it, right?
¶644So then it's like but then they're satisfying their preferences by making themselves unhappy that which means they like being unhappy is how I describe that >> in a sense but I don't think that's exactly what he's arguing anyway. >> Well I think I think he it must be one of his people behaving in ways that he doesn't think are ultimately good. That would be like someone living the gay lifestyle even though that they think that's good but from his point of view that's a bad thing. That's not >> No, I think he is doing that. I think he is doing that, but he's making his own appraisals of which qualitative states or which raw field states or whatever are like the good and bad ones.
¶645Um he's just making them like >> Yeah, I guess that's one way to interpret it. >> That's not how Yeah, that's one way to interpret it. Then you need a standard for why that's the right way to, you know, evaluate things. >> Yeah. On friends and loved ones while preventing and eliminating pleasant experiences.
¶646There's a radical disharmony in this world between what our experiences give us reason to do and what we actually do and our lives. And that >> Yeah, because like give us reason to do according to who, right? It's got to be according to someone. Someone has got to be appraising that something counts as a reason for something else. >> Yeah.
¶647Well, I assumed he meant according to the person themselves, which makes it very hard to understand why they're just ignoring their own reasons. Maybe you do mean it means according to someone else. I I think that there is a notion of like objective reasons here which which is what I think that's what how intrinsic the word intrinsic is being used to mean like regardless of your point of view >> but then it isn't because you know like apparently the point of view of these creatures is that they prefer the unhappiness. Like that's the only way to make sense of their action unless you make them irrational. But then you you know like but then the reason that they do what they do is because you made them irrational and there's no it's not clear what the actual relative distributions of the irrational to the >> well why is it that more likely under naturalism that's that's the issue.
¶648He hasn't told us why we would expect that >> the preference satisficing creatures preference satisficing harmony argument >> kind of world are just like a pathetic farce and you know hedonic inversion is just an extreme case involving like active disharmony between experience and behavior but almost every imaginable alternative set of psychophysical principles would have resulted in at least a lack of harmony between experience and behavior. The harmonious alignment between mind and matter is therefore cosmically surprising under naturalism but not under >> what what is cosmically surprising? What does that even mean? I've never heard >> that's not a category. Um, >> are theism, right?
¶649Like if God goes through the trouble of making conscious beings, because, you know, again, we're backgrounding the fact of psychonomic harmony. If God goes through the trouble of making conscious beings, it's not especially surprising he would generally make their experiences rationally aligned with their behavior so that their lives aren't pathetic forces. Finally, even if the psychophysical principles endow us with >> I I don't I genuinely I just don't know what that even means. Like I don't know how to make sense of that. I rationally align because even of the range, you know, like just consider like the range of things open to God that so many of them are non-physical.
¶650I I and I can't make sense. >> Yeah. Just can't just can't make sense of this rational alignment only makes sense with a conception of mentality as physical and embodied where you can think of like pain behaviorally and stuff like that like in terms of organism behavior. When we start talking of like these mental predicates in disembodied minds, they don't make sense. And I don't know what like what's rationally appropriate for a disembodied mind to feel in a certain scenario?
¶651No idea because there's no like stimuli. Um >> with rich mental lives that rationally align with our behavior and enable rational agency and knowledge of the world, it's quite striking that the psychophysical principles result in only one conscious subject in my immediate vicinity. So conscious subjects are bearers of conscious properties. They're the things which are conscious. And we can easily imagine psychophysical principles that assign consciousness to hordes of massively overlapping things in the immediate vicinity of my brain and body which share a lot of the matter of my brain and body.
¶652For example, as Patrick McKe points out, if the psychopysical principles assign consciousness to the intrinsic physical properties of a system, that is those physical properties that characterize it as it is in itself independently of its relations or lack thereof to things in its environment, then there will end up being hordes of conscious beings in my vicinity. Since tons of distinct physical entities in my vicinity share those intrinsic properties, right? Right? So for example, if consciousness is paired with the intrinsic functional architecture of certain parts of the cerebrum, well, it turns out that many overlapping distinct physical entities share that functional architecture, right? Like the organism shares that functional architecture as as a part, right?
¶653The brain shares that functional architecture. The cerebrum as a whole shares that architecture. The >> I do you know what he is saying here? Cuz like that like I'm like my neoortex >> I think that this is the problem of material composition >> because Yeah. because in terms of what he's saying and me making sense of it, right?
¶654Like my neoortex is not functionally equivalent to like my hands or do you see why like actually there is nothing around me that is functionally equivalent to my >> but there depending on the principle of material composition that you endorse. which you may say that there are many overlapping phys objects which have um which include different property sorry which include different parts like there's your uh prefrontal cortex there's your whole brain there's your head there's the top part of your body and then there's you know your body plus some atoms on the left and all that sort of thing. >> So if you're the sort of person who believes in that that way of thinking about material composition you would say that there's all of these distinct entities. >> Oh I see. So, so he's saying it's it's like a vagueness problem.
¶655It's a it's a reference. It's actually uh so it's a philosophy of language problem about reference basically. >> Well, that's how I would dissolve the problem. I I wouldn't use it as an argument. I can't even remember how he uses this as an argument for theism.
¶656Can we play this out because I'm not even I can't quite recall how >> parts of the even share that architecture. The brain as a whole minus an electron in its periphery shares that architecture and literally zillions of other such entities share that intrinsic architecture. So then the psychosis belongs will be assigning >> to be fair this is if you think in the cartisian terms again this is like a good problem I guess because you like which parts of the machine does the ghost attach to >> yeah exactly >> but neither of us think there is a ghost to attach to the machine so it doesn't matter think that there that physical objects compose in this way so I the whole problem isn't >> relevant to me >> to like all different sorts of conscious entities in my vicinity and so they're going to all different sorts of subjects in my immediate vicinity. It's also conceivable, of course, that a planitude of psychophysical principles >> I guess the way I'd put it is I I don't think that words work this way. Like I I don't think that when I refer to things like I am picking out specific electrons or atoms yet I think I'm perfectly able to do that and I don't see how if there was a problem of this sort like play it basically if if you think of like reference as I do as a kind of like behavior that organisms like us can can engage in like I can point at things and you know there's this category of like noun words that I can say and that facilitates communication between us.
¶657Um there isn't behind that like any there's not like a an a mental arrow right that is like zapping onto things and draws boundaries around stuff just at the electron boundary you know like cuz that's just not what language is doing. So there isn't a problem of this kind. Um but I I guess I don't really maybe know what he's talking about here. So >> well he hasn't told us what the problem is yet. He just has said that there are potentially many entities that share consciousness.
¶658>> But I don't think I don't think there are though. I don't think there are potentially many entities that share consciousness in one. >> The thing is if under his conception of what entities are and how they are defined, >> there are many of them. Is that a problem? Because maybe the way he like that's the open question that he needs to pose.
¶659Well, I guess I guess his view his >> Well, I just like to play it out because he hasn't really explained to us yet, but I think his view overall will make this problem worse if anything if demon possession exists and things. Right. >> I was going to comment on that, but I like I want to hear how he describes it. pain. With some psychophysical principles assigning consciousness to brains, others assigning consciousness to cerebra, others assigning consciousness to cortices, others assigning consciousness to brains minus an electron, still others assigning consciousness to organisms, and so on down the list of physical things overlap each of us.
¶660If there had been such an ensemble of psychophysical principles, we would each be accompanied by boatloads of conscious subjects that massively overlap our brains and bodies. To avoid overlapping subjects, the psychophysical principles need to be strikingly fine-tuned. For example, maybe they need to incorporate certain highly specific exttrinsic conditions for being conscious in addition to intrinsic conditions. But not only does this complicate the principles and thereby make them far less likely under naturalism, it also requires a remarkable degree of fine-tuning to get the right sorts of extrinsic conditions. Thus, it's quite striking that psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical things in ways that vindicate our common sense beliefs about the number of conscious subjects in our vicinity.
¶661It's also pretty valuable that we don't contain massively overlapping subjects since that would apply highly revision. This is just how does he know that subjects don't overlap in this way? Like he's constructed this problem of overlapping subjects by just essentially talking about the composition conditions and how you know those are kind of vague and so you can define um you can define sort of the boundaries of what you how you compose an entity and as a linguistic exercise I'm like okay we can talk about that but as defined in that way I don't what's the problem with there being overlapping subjects he sort of he sort of just asserts that that's automatically an issue. I think that he's relying on your intuition to be the idea that if there are overlapping subjects, that means there's like actually separate consciousnesses somehow um that each attached to the different physical objects, but that just doesn't follow from what he's saying. It's really just I think a word choice about how you define what a subject is.
¶662>> I don't think that there are overlapping subjects, but I think that if you there's a way to use language such that that that's that's just how it falls out, right? But I >> Yeah, it kind of problem. >> It's something it's like a riddle. um with like a similarity to like Zeno's paradox um you know like where you can kind of like construct the riddle in a way that leads up to the problem where by considering um conflating like continuous and discrete phenomena you can construct a problem such that it might mislead you into thinking that it's impossible to um traverse a finite space right because of its infinite divisibility. Um, and it's something kind of like similar to that it seems to me where because there's like a pract like like basically if I want to like talk about you or whatever like I can just point at you and there's like a bunch of meat or whatever and it's like there's James and obviously there's more complicated stuff than that we can do with language but that's kind of like a base case of how we learn to like point and stuff but then there's this kind of like notion of subject that he's introducing that is related more to like some odd metaphysical conception of mental states or something mor I I don't know what that thing is what the what subject means to him in this context but that confuses that we we can like that people are just discrete masses and we can like point to them we say like they're there right and and like it's like There's no problem there once you can do that.
¶663But the problem is being constructed by thinking of like subjects as like this ethereal floaty thing that you have to have some like principle like some principled uh rules that rule in certain electrons and out other ones in order to be able to like actually say that there is a subject there or not. It's like that's just not how we use referring language for people, you know. We we don't need such principles. We just like talk to people. There's also nothing specific to that to to this problem about consciousness or subjects.
¶664This is an issue for any type of material object. >> And this is one of the problems with with defining um >> composition laws is because you end up with overlapping objects uh that like the the left part of your desk >> overlaps with your desk in in its left part and and you can multiply that for sort of any subsets of the desk. And so like the lump in the statue was another instance like it seems that the lump is different. Sorry. The statue is different from the lump of clay that it is formed of because they have different modal properties, but they seem to entirely overlap in their physical constituencies.
¶665So that's a bit confusing, right? I think that these are really just all verbal confusions. I don't find this very interesting at all. But some philosophers tie themselves up in knots with this sort of thing. And I think that's what Joe is doing here.
¶666He seems to have generated this problem for himself that because of the vagueness of our language as to like exactly what the reference is or however we we we point to or or refer to something that therefore there must be like all of these different over distinct consciousnesses that that somehow associate that's just no there's no reason to accept any of that. Now there are well-known responses to these sorts of issues that Joe just ignores here that that the physicist can easily appeal to. I mean I'm a meological nihilist myself. I think that that's the easiest way to just reject the notion that we need any composition laws at all and just refers to um like the stand example is a chair is just atoms arranged chairwise. So there's no there's no hoorde of different um overlapping objects that we have and like you avoid these sorts of problems.
¶667Now there are other ways to get around this but I'm not saying that's the only way but I I just I think that you only get this problem if you make very specific very particular assumptions that Joe hasn't defended. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And the further question will be why is this not an issue under theism? >> Well, I even why like as a diagnosis of why I think this sort of like problem uh is coming up for him.
¶668I think I think it does relate back to um his kind of conception of mind which is I think cartesian whether or not he accepts it. Um you know this kind of like dualist cartesian conception and this cartesian representationalism that we talked about earlier. And I think that it's because in his conception of semantics in this carteesian theater representation world if he's using a word like a subject right um there is like a semantic representation which is like in that mental realm and reality is um reality produces the representations he has of all of it in in in this his sense of representation and um that means that if he has uh words that he's using that refer to people or say that there are subjects and so on and so forth then there must be these like criteria for him to distinguish his appearances in the representation as coming apart from a reality in which there was like say one subject in one thing and so basically what I'm saying is I think that this weird problem falls out of like yes problems in philosophy of language but I I think it's a problem that's bound up in this like weird concept of like mind and propositions and representational semantics in the sense of representational like cartesianism >> where um you you have to like have some story to tell about this realm of like appearances and why it corresponds to reality. And then you need to produce um principled reasons why you say for example that there's like an appearance of like one subject in the thing in reality as opposed to another because you're thinking about languages working that way. Um, I don't know if if if that was helpful, but I I do think that basically this like cluster of like weird views that create all these problems are like bound together and like you can just adopt better like a big part of a reason why those theories are bad is because they produce these sorts of problems, right?
¶669Just accept views that don't have all these problems of like >> Yeah. I think this has nothing to do with naturalism in terms of what's giving rise to this problem essentially. Yeah, very normative consequences. For example, that larger people or people who live longer in expectation should be given preferential treatment since they contain more overlapping conscious objects for simple combinatorial reasons, right? Like they got way more parts.
¶670Once again, has a neat explanation. >> What a lucky seeming feature. >> Go. >> This is Well, yeah. I mean, this is why I sort of think like philosophy it makes philosophy just look so bad, right?
¶671when like children know how to use these words, but like spending loads of money and doing all these degrees makes you think that you can only say >> how do you get so confused that you think that this is a problem? Like I just don't >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's what I mean is like you know you've educa you educate yourself to the point where you think that the only way of like answering why you think there's one person over there is like some statement of like my realology.
¶672Well, I mean I mean if you I mean if you get to that point, you can see why you might just go, "Yes, it's you know what? I need God. I need God to make sense of it all cuz cuz the world is just like it makes no sense. Nothing makes any sense." And so >> people out there, >> there's too many possible people. But if God makes it one to one, >> that's just Matthew.
¶673I idols >> of the psychophysical principles whereas it's much more surprising under naturalism. So like all in all we hit the psychophysical jackpot my dudes like if dualism is true we first got really lucky that there >> which is remember though the psychophysical jackpot exists in the epistemic problem space of a person who has all the messed up concepts not it's you know it's not a problem that's out there in the world. It's a problem that's in your mind if you let yourself be bewitched by these things are psychophysical laws to begin with. But even setting dualism aside, we got very lucky that the psychophysical principles pair consciousness with physical states that actually exist. And we then got even luckier that the precise way in which consciousness is paired with matter enable significant consciousness involving goods.
¶674Our mental lives aren't simple and boring. Our perceptual experiences tend to match or mirror or correspond to the environment in ways that enable knowledge about the world. We tend to respond. >> You see, I I don't think my perceptual experience mirrors the world. I think I just perceive the world.
¶675And yeah, actually I I think that that's good because that that helps me think about this because I would not agree with the idea that our mental representations mirror the world. I said they represent, but that's a very different notion than the way Joseph be thinking about it. And it does once you understand it, it's entirely described in sort of functional tracking terms which mean that once those are in place, there's a sort of mystery about um about how we operate successfully in the world because that's really all that is to the representation. >> Um but sorry, I I cut out briefly there. Did Did Joe explain why theism gets around the subject problem?
¶676What What was the reason there? >> Uh, I'm trying. >> I can't even think of a joke anymore. Like I Yeah, I I don't know. I don't know.
¶677Yeah, I think that's it. I think it's just >> because it seems that there's Christian theology which and Bible passages that just refute that that that God is fine with there being multiple spirits in one body or things like that. And it's just not really clear why that's an issue from like why wouldn't God want that? It's >> well specifically for He's a trinity, right? Like, isn't that pretty?
¶678Why couldn't there be others involving anyway? I So, this is just a summary. I think that we um we're going to need to keep powering through. So, luckily, most of the things that he goes through in rebuttal of psychophysical harmony are issues are either rebuttals that I don't think are worth discussing or issues we've already talked about. >> Um, so it's just an apologetic squared video.
¶679Yeah, he goes through that. But we've really covered most of that already, so I don't feel the need to go through it. Uh, so I have a a time stamp at 41414, which where Joe discusses a posterior eye physicalism, which is important because that's what I've been defending and we've kind of been discussing. >> So we should look at that. >> B posteriori.
¶680>> Oh yeah, that like the type A type B physicalism, which I I hate. I don't understand why anyone likes. It's the same with Taipei and like >> I think it's because a lot of people don't know that that distinction is why people use it because it's like a mark of like special >> knowledge. Use descriptive names people like just don't don't do that. >> Is this is this 414?
¶681>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Values. >> Okay.
¶682Is that a satisfying answer to the psychophysical or to the the cosmic fine-tuning problem? And we're inclined to think no. >> I think I'll go back a bit because I don't know. >> Yeah. I might not have been exactly on the spect.
¶683Yeah. >> Evidence for theism. So an analogy suppose we're talking about the the cosmic fine-tuning problem and suppose someone comes along and they say okay I I've got the solution for you I'm a spinist I think that the universe is necessary there was just this universe and it's just necessary and it just had to have uh these constants the constants had to have these values okay is that a satisfying answer to the psychophysical or to the the cosmic fine-tuning problem and we're inclined to think no because okay but spinism itself doesn't predict >> we the people who agree one way with the conclusion are inclined to say I I know it's >> means the royal we I would presume. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶684Well, that's what I mean. I like this is a big methodological issue though in philosophy is that um people are Yeah. always kind of like talking about what everyone should think about something as if that is the way of evaluating. >> Why you should just use I statements whenever it's something people might disagree with. I generally I try to do that myself.
¶685So you're not just asserting a fact which is not necessarily a fact. Anyway, let's keep let's keep >> But then if you but but then it's like if your reason is I disagree. It's like well who cares if I dis but I disagree with you. So like who you know like it should move if people it should move the conversation forward because then people should go oh yeah it's not good enough for me to just to say well I disagree. I'll actually try and artic but yeah anyway maybe he'll do that if I press play.
¶686>> I mean it you could have been that anything was the necessary set of values for the constants. Right. Spinism itself doesn't predict fine-tuning. What predicts fine-tuning is in fact one very specific version of spinism. The version that says not only are the constants necessary but this set of constants is necessary.
¶687Uh and of course the op priori probability of that version is correspondingly small. I buy it predictive power by just selecting you know this one little bit of the the epistemic probability space. >> Is he talking about theism there and God's desires? >> That's what I would say that that's exactly the case of theism. But this is a response to I should say he he's giving the example of I don't know why Joe includes his videos instead of just telling us it in his own words.
¶688But this is in response to the idea that we can we don't have to be a priori physicalists about the mind. We could be a posteriori physicalists and say that these relationships hold necessarily even if we can only know them apostori which is which is what I would say this is a very standard physicalist response. So here's the response that Joe is endorsing to that argument. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶689In this case, uh, it looks like theism predicts psychophysical harmony. We can say, okay, well, maybe this was necessary, but that's, you know, a post hawk. Uh, okay, we're we're going to endorse this one very specific version of >> I there is something to say about that, though. like it it would be relevant if you were endorsing spinosism but I actually don't think it's relevant for the physicalism that you're endorsing because the physicalism that you're endorsing does relate in different ways to the um distribute the the concepts that are being employed as the thing to be updated on in the basian framework or whatever right so um you know spinosis spinosism making its necessitarian claims could be necessary any which way and so you it it's right if you're operating with this loose way of speaking that there's kind of like equally unlikely any necessary outcome uh with with with physicalism the problem is that what the physical uh theoretical terms are right is related to the exact terms that are part of the uh explaner such that that creates not a metaphysical probability space where everything is equally likely, but that's heavily skewed in favor of the ones that have some of the concepts that are being deployed here, right? Like um the the notion of the you know, like we've talked about, for example, with the case of what these mental predicates mean, it like there is a massive proportion of the space in within physicalism where these literally only make sense for like certain kinds of embodiment that we can imagine and then like certain physical realizations of them.
¶690Um, and then you have to entirely reject that and think in cartesian terms to have like a different distribution and and that's different from the spinosis case because the spinosis case would just be to say it's necessary for any one of say like the jewelist pairings or whatever. So I do think it's a different thing. >> Um, >> well I mean my response to this so so the the response is essentially well it's just ad hoc to say that it's uh that these relationships are necessary uh and that doesn't really explain anything. Um well, first of all, that seems to be just as much a problem for God because whenever anyone asks why God has certain properties, they just say, "Oh, well, it's necessary." So, I think there's an issue there. Uh Joe has a little bit more to say about that, which we may may get to, but um at least you need a a symmetry break one is to make the argument that necessities aren't a sufficiently good explanation.
¶691But the the broader point that I would make is simply that the physicalist or at least I I don't know why he uses spinosis as an example because that's not a standard physical position. The standard physicalist position is not that we just say ad hoc for no reason just to get around the psychophysical harmony argument that there are these necessary relationships between mind and brain. We actually have very elaborate uh well physical theories and and cognitive science theories also philosophical ways of thinking about reduction and and realization and the relationships between these things. We have stepwise reductions from uh mental to like neurological and psychological and then to uh physiological and chemical and and and physical and so forth. Not that we know everything about that, but the point is it's not ad hoc that we just say that there's this relationship.
¶692We have a lot of knowledge that supports the notion that there is a necessary connection between the the brain states sorry between the mental states and the underlying physical states uh because of the extensive evidence we have about the intimate connections uh between mind and brain and the particularities of how it all works. So I would just point to the overwhelming body of evidence that leads us to think that there is this particular realization relationship between mental states and brain states and that those relationships hold necessarily because of because of how those work. It's like not being it's the idea that again I there's nothing special from my point of view about the relationship between mind and brain as being an instant a realization uh because this applies with all sorts of other things like weather and um patterns of um the pressure and temperature and and energy of of air molecules in the atmosphere. It's exactly the same thing. We don't just ad hoc postulate that that's a nec that that's a necessary relationship.
¶693We understand a lot, not everything, but a lot about that how that system works. And that understanding gives us a very good reason for thinking that those connections are necessary. You can't just arbitrarily have different weather even with the same underlying pattern of atmospheric uh you know energy and um distribution of particles and so forth. And likewise, it's the same for all sorts of other higher order properties that supervene or um are instantiated in the lower order. So I reject the characterization that that's ad hoc and unsupported.
¶694I think we have massive support for that. The physicist is on very good ground for arguing that these are necessary. Whereas by contrast, I don't think the theist has any basis for saying that God would prefer one thing over the other. So it the problem is I think exactly on the other foot. The the theist has no basis for saying that God would be likely to make psychophysical harmonious laws over another because they don't have any principled way of saying why God would do one thing or over the other.
¶695the physicalist has a lot of principled reasons for saying that there's a necessary relationship because of the huge amount of evidence that we do have about these sorts of connections. That's my response. >> Yeah. No, I think I think that that's right. And part of the reason that the uh spinosist example is what is appealed to I think is because that would be a good example of just this like ad hoc thing, right?
¶696where there isn't any reason in spinosism to like why you would think things are any any which way. I was I was trying to think of like what's a good example right that is more analogous to like the physicist objection here and it's kind of like you know if I say imagine um water that didn't include H2O or wasn't like predominantly >> that's a common example water and H2O >> or like gold that wasn't atomic number 79 or something and like genuinely I don't know how to imagine that like I literally like I don't know what I'm supposed to imagine because that you know because I think that that is what those things are um that like >> but the point is it's not ad hoc to say that that's a necessary relationship. We have very good reason to think that that's a necessary relationship. So what's the problem of saying that that's necessary? >> Yeah.
¶697Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But well, is it even the same to say that it's a necessary relationship if it's an identity claim is one thing. >> Yeah.
¶698That's a type of necessary relationship. >> Yeah. Yeah. But what what I'm thinking of is like the way that once those concepts are kind of like married in this identity way. If so, if you're thinking of physicalism and the physicalist space, right, and you've got these kind of like identity relationships that there is like this heavy bias towards certain views because you can't like decouple the two in the way that you can in this different space of like theism where there's like these cartesian models and they come apart or whatever.
¶699It's kind of like um and what I'm trying to say is that's what creates the disanalogy um between spinosism and physicalism as as like par cases because in the case of spinosism you could say like okay there's spinosism where um water isn't predominantly H2O and gold isn't atomic number 79 like because you can make that sentence and because there's no content to spinosism. It doesn't like seem weird, right? Because spinosis doesn't seem to have anything to do with physical physical stuff being the way it is. But if you say, now imagine a physical universe where water isn't predominantly H2O or where gold isn't atomic number 79, that does seem weird to you because invoking the concept of physical is making you think about like reduction relationships and things like that. And so that's where there's like a disanalogy I think between using the spinosis case and the physicalist space because when you're reasoning in that physicalist space um you you know you are appealing to like concepts of physical stuff and how they relate to each other and >> as informed by a lot of empirical evidence and this is the whole point that's why it's a posterior.
¶700We're not restricting ourselves to what we have access to. a priorite it's a but why are they saying it's arbitrary because it's not we have a lot of >> but it would be in the spinosis case I think >> example >> yeah well well because it gives you the conclusion that you want to argue against physicalism if you just say that physicalism is relevantly similar right um >> it's just frustrating because somehow it's always an example that's irrelevant to their >> yeah yeah I mean maybe charitably they feel like if you said physicalism it would be too direct so people wouldn't take the point or something I mean an interpretation but I do think that there's a relevant dissimilarity >> physicalism the one that says that the harmony is what's necessary um but that requires rejecting all of these a priori possible other alternatives I mean this is this is the first yeah I mean let's just go through that again >> okay I don't think we need to go through that again because to other things that's the essence of what I wanted to say I think the only other thing that there's a lot of other responses And I I think that some of the rebuttals that Joe responds to aren't very good rebuttals, so we don't need to discuss them. Others we have already discussed. Um the last thing that I want to look at in terms of a um psychophysical harmony is the what he calls the revenge problem. Not sure why he calls it that.
¶701450 sorry 451. Uh >> and this is about uh this is about because it forces us to recognize like trust recordkeeping. I promise to take your mercy. Like listen like I could go on and on but like both both soul making theodysy and lots of other theosies like the emissions the Odyssey but you get the point the >> hey our video is longer than Joe's at the point that we're reviewing. Yeah, that we need to get to the end of this.
¶702So that's why I've >> already standard fair will handle psychophysical suboptimality at this time. >> It's just after this >> so long as he disably more God's actions are. So let's move on to the revenge problem. >> Uh >> isn't God incredibly psychophysically lucky? Like whenever God wills something, it happens.
¶703Like what a striking coincidence, right? more. >> Do you know what I'm going to say about this just prediction is basically the fact that it makes that disembodiment makes no sense is going to be weaponized here to um say that there isn't actually a problem for this because because I haven't specified how God does anything. there isn't actually a problem because I'm not using the words in the same way as they're used for everything like you know like with with animals and stuff right if you like said an animal has beliefs and things you can have a whole reasonable like conversation about whether or not you should do that basically based on their behavior or whatever you just can't do that with God you just can't like you can say >> God's actions are systematically rational in light of his mental states and his beliefs systematically accurately correlate with the world yet there are countless >> what does it beliefs correlate with the world. >> He's bl >> they correlate with an R of 0.8 R square >> the fundamental mind could be set up such that its mental states don't match the world or its actions in these ways.
¶704This means that theism is a poor explanation of psychophysical luck since the intrinsic probability of such a fortunate being is just about as low as the improbability of psychophysical luck on atheism. Okay, so this is not a good objection. The harmony between God's mind and the world is entailed by a simple, elegant, non- arbitrary, and highly uniform divine attribute, name. >> Oh, God. Well, let him say the exactly God's perfection.
¶705Are some of God's beliefs false? That's an imperfection. Did God will something to happen, but his will was frustrated like a pathetic toddler? That's an imperfection. Does God systematically seek to create situations that cause him pain and avoid creating situations that cause him pleasure?
¶706That's an imperfection. Does he act >> Do people burn in hell forever? That's a perfection. >> Yes. I think it's very implausible that this is that this universe is a manifestation of a perfect God, but we'll come to that when we get to like problems of evil.
¶707>> This is interesting because this is not a um property that he initially defined God as having as such. Um although he talked a little bit more afterwards, I think about how to relate properties to each divide properties to each other. But >> what he says here, a simple, elegant, non- arbitrary, highly uniform, this is just peacock language, right? He's just saying it's really good. Whereas in fact, what the hell does perfection mean?
¶708Like it just in the absence means any specific type of perfection. Like how is that simple? In what language is that simple? Not in terms of like how many words it is, but in terms of like specifying um >> well, whatever simplicity might mean like a relatively few uh fundamental states of affairs or something the way that he initially defined it. And non arbitrary.
¶709Why is perfection perfection seems pretty arbitrary to me? Like it's just going maximal on everything. It's just maxing out all your stats. >> That's the problem. The problem is >> I really see how it's not arbitrary.
¶710>> The problem is perfection isn't a property. It's an adjective. Right. So like that's why it makes sense for me to say the perfect Like you wouldn't say that's a contradiction in terms. >> Yeah.
¶711>> You know, like I could like I could I could express a joke. I could express a funny thing that happened earlier. to say like, "Oh, it was just the perfect fuckup." Where like I'm I'm I'm trying to express like how funny it is in terms of like, you know, the coincidence of the alignment of all of these improbable things that made it even funnier or something. Uh but that's because perfection isn't like a property that entails anything. It's a word used by people to communicate um severity or something like you know it's probably it's more than that but it's like you know or or relative importance or significance or something and so to to this this is kind of like what happens with the onlogical argument as well where people look at the word like exists and then they they just kind of like um you know like do that thing that like kids do where like this is one of those experiences everyone has where they like just repeat a word to themselves over and over again until it like lose is all meaning doesn't make any sense anymore.
¶712>> No. >> And I swear that that's what the onlogical argument is with exists like existence existence existence existence. And I think that this is the same thing happening with perfection where like you talk about oh it was the perfect season for Arsenal because Joe supports Arsenal or um you know I I just had the perfect weekend right but but you don't mean anything. You don't mean like there literally will never be a weekend better and no one has ever had a weekend better. That's not even what the word how the word works.
¶713So when it's being used in this way in the theological context, it isn't even how the word is actually used or what it means. Um but yeah, who cares? >> Yeah. I so I just I just challenge Joe to actually articulate why per what perfection is in the case >> without any >> and why it's simple and non- arbitrary because it seems maximally contrived and arbitrary to me and just very poorly specified. >> Why?
¶714Yeah. Why is it simple? Like for example, would if I say I had the perfect weekend, is that a more simple weekend than a bad weekend? In general, I would say that a perfect weekend probably has to have more stuff going on than there are lots of really boring weekends where you don't do anything that would be simpler than that. So I don't know that I wouldn't say perfection is like maximally complicated, but it's probably not maximally simple either.
¶715I don't >> Yeah, it's just not it's got nothing to do with either way, right? It's pretty much it's just a word like >> Yeah. systematically irrational. Again, an obvious imperfection, but since the harmony between God's mind, >> you can be perfectly irrational, right? Like, why can't you be perfectly irrational?
¶716>> So, this is interesting. Why is it so maybe God would get a kick out of it if he tried to do something and then something else happened? Maybe that would be interesting to him. Like, why is that an imperfection? It just seems you could spin whatever yarn you wanted because there's no constraints here.
¶717Well, this this is what like um people who do like cool theology like you know like Alan Watson someone might talk about where he'd say you know like think of God as like joking with himself like having all these weird dreams like getting bored of doing the same thing. So he's like oh I want to like seek out novelty and then that's like what our lives are like >> because is the ability to experience surprise a perfection because if so God should have it but how can he have it and be omnipotent? This is omnisient rather. Does God know the future? Because open theists think that he doesn't know the future or that there's important things that he doesn't know about the future.
¶718Is that an imperfection or not? And people argue that different ways. So this is why I just have no confidence at all that um there's any real substitute just saying, "Oh, everything follows from this simple attribute that's perfection. It's it's someone specified. It's not clear why it's simple and it's not clear why it's not arbitrary." >> And it's literally inconsistent, I think, with the model of God that Job Boys into who desires that all people be saved but is going to send people to hell forever.
¶719like that is >> we'll come to that when we get to the third video if we >> if we ever get to that. >> Yeah. >> The world is entailed by a simple and elegant attribute. That harmony cannot be less intrinsically probable than a fundamental mind having that simple and elegant attribute. But as I argued in defense of premise one of my master argument, it's not super intrinsically improbable that a fundamental mind would have that simple and elegant attribute.
¶720And consequently, the revenge problem is neutralized. Like like all >> Oh yeah. All the things we said we hadn't thought about intrinsic probability. >> Yeah. That that's just a nothing response.
¶721All the work is being done by is being done here by him just saying the word simple and elegant over and over again because he doesn't argue for any of this. It's just really frustrating. This is why I don't like theology or at least not this side. >> It's just like >> Anyway, we we need to really keep moving if we're just throw time stamps my way. Oh, >> okay.
¶722So, we've we've gone through psychophysical harmony, which is the largest portion of the video. I think we should probably now go to nominological harmony where he talks about laws. And that leads us into finetuning. Those are the two other like big arguments. You give me a what?
¶723What time stamp? >> Oh, sorry. Yes. So, nominological harmony starts at um just before 109. >> Yeah.
¶724Okay. Let's go. >> Let's go to wherever he just Yeah. starts this section. It's around here.
¶725Even so, there's no guarantee that among them would be large. >> Hot take. I don't know. I believe in laws of nature. Continue.
¶726>> Well, he talks about different conceptions of laws a No, I mean like I literally don't know that I even believe in laws, but um >> it would be a bit odd to not believe in any of the conceptions of laws, but I mean you do you. But going there, yeah, there's probably a there's a way of conceptualizing things as conceptualizing laws that would be consistent with what I think. But then I' it become like that thing of where I'd say, well, why think why use the word law and not some other word? But yeah. >> Yeah.
¶727True. of nature that govern or specify the behavior of the universe rather than a universe with lawless initial conditions which don't evolve forward in time. A universe with unevolved initial conditions without the addition of laws seems far simpler than a universe with initial conditions and laws. So it's quite surprising under naturalism that we obtained the latter. By contrast, it doesn't seem as surprising under other theism, since the orderly lawful development of initial conditions is needed for interesting and valuable things to occur in the universe, such as the existence and development of conscious beings capable of love and enjoyment and knowledge and virtue and rational agency and relationships with one another and God and God omni benevolent would recognize those values and be motivated to some extent to realize them.
¶728to further compound probability naturalism. Obviously, the notion that any sorts of laws are required for God to instantiate value is ridiculous because no such laws are required for God to exist. So, I don't know where Joe gets that assumption from, but anyway, we've made that point before. >> Yeah, there's also no guarantee that laws would exist rather than a universe with lawless initial conditions that do evolve forward in time in a totally chaotic lawless fashion. For these reasons, I think laws of nature favor theism over naturalism.
¶729Now admittedly >> it is to I mean totally chaotic lawless. I mean, wouldn't the law >> that just doesn't make any I don't think >> I don't think Joe knows what chaos is. At least not as how it's studied in like math and physics because in that context, chaos is actually deterministic. >> A chaotic system must have laws. That's what makes it chaotic, right?
¶730Maybe what he means here. So, a chaotic system is one that is sensitively dependent on initial conditions and they're deterministic systems that have very unpredictable behaviors. The weather is sort of a canonical example there. Um, but so, but so that's not just a nitpick here. It gets at to what is Joe actually articulating here?
¶731What's he trying to say? He's saying lawless initial conditions might evolve chaotically. Well, what does that mean? I I don't think he means sensitively dependent on initial conditions because well, we already have that. Um maybe by chaotic he means the absence of any regularities, >> but it's sort of hard to even conceive of what that means because even highly complicated and um stochcastic outcomes have regularities.
¶732you can describe some sort of distribution over the outcomes. It's it's all I mean unless you except for perhaps very degenerate states of like total absence of change any kind of um sequence of outcomes will have some sort of way that you can describe it. So I don't really know what Joe is even expressing here. I'm not sure that he's really clear on that either. I think it's another case of like too much knowledge being a curse and you've got to have like just a sufficient engagement with these things to have sort of like medieval problems occur for you.
¶733But so but anyway, Joe says that the absence of laws would be simpler. He doesn't really tell us why that is. And I think that with certain conceptions of what laws are, >> yeah, it don't have this objection, but he goes through that. So maybe we'll just get to that. At the moment, I just don't think he's really told us why this is an issue.
¶734It just sort of says that >> the reasoning here assumes the falsity of humanism about laws of nature which says that laws are just simple and informative summaries of the mosaic or pattern of qualities in spaceime because you know if laws are merely summaries of the pattern of qualities in spaceime then any spaceime is guaranteed to contain laws. So I grant that my argument here is powerless if humanism is true. I'll say more about why we should reject humanism in the next section. Uh and I'll also say more there about other views of laws. The point to note for now is that under most of the plausible non-human views of laws which in my view are the most plausible views of laws by a wide margin.
¶735Lawless initial conditions are totally conceivable and that includes powers theory by the way since you know even if laws are summaries of powers or dispositions the initial conditions might have been populated only with dispositionless categorical qualities. Okay. But let's go on to some bigger guns like nomological harmony. Suppose there are laws of nature and contingency. Even then, it's very surprising under naturalism that those laws of nature match or apply to the contents of the universe so as to make the universe evolve through time.
¶736Of course, here I'm adverting to the problem of so as to make this is what's weird to me. Laws making the univer even if you believe in the powers uh kinds of theories that he that he refers to there. It would be the powers that make things happen, but the laws would be descriptions of the powers. Honestly, we probably just should This is what he often doesn't explain the terms that he's using until he gets to the rebuttal phase. Let's just jump straight to that where he goes through the different conceptions of laws because before that it just doesn't really make any sense.
¶737This is at 115. >> Uh, okay. >> And then we'll maybe jump back because I I just you can't really engage with this without him telling us what he means by this. And I this is where I think the problem the problem lies. So let's instead of you know talking only about B's or C's or D's or any of any other uninstantiated physical conditions forward theism of course makes no harmony interesting or val meaning that nomogical har but under naturalism nomological harmony looks like a cosmic coincidence meaning that nomological harmony is significant evidence for theism.
¶738Now to appreciate the force of this argument we should distinguish among the three main competing conceptions of law. First, there's humanism about laws, which says that laws are just simple and informative summaries or descriptions of regularities in spaceime. A bit more precisely, laws are the axioms or theorems in the best systematization of the mosaic of particular qualities in spaceime, where the best systematization is the one which best balances simplicity, informiveness, and fit with data. But if that's what laws are, and if we're holding fix that there are laws of nature, then isn't it totally unsurprising that the laws match the contents of the universe in a way that results in temporal evolution? And if that's right, then can't the naturalist just adopt humanism to predict nomological harmony just as well, if not better than theism?
¶739No. For starters, there are very strong grounds for thinking that humanism is false. >> It really annoys me just declares his opinions to be fact. Can't the naturalist just adopt humanism? No.
¶740>> I mean, I know that he's expressing his view there, but it just irritates me that he says it that way. I I try to not say things like I say, I don't think humanism is a good theory, or I think there are good arguments against it, not just no, you can't be a human. I just find it >> you might go to hell because Joe told you you were wrong before just kind of like reasonably coaxing you in and persuading you with the >> I would suggest there are better ways to appeal to people rather than just be so flatly declarative that they are wrong when it's a controversial and and debated subject like it's just it's not necessary and it's irritating and it's not that he does it many times. He often writes this out in his notes. If you've seen I I I showed him when he goes through when he has his notes up, he'll just the first response will just be the word no.
¶741>> Why do you put that there? What does that add? Anyway, sorry. I just couldn't help but comment on that. >> No, I mean I it depends on what you're trying to do.
¶742I guess there's like this balancing act where in the past Joe has presented his material like very neutrally and I do think >> neutral but just >> no opinion and not just declare it a fact that >> no I know what you're saying but I think now this is like another example of this like Joe becoming slightly worse in it or like like you know less um pedagogical as a resource and more ideological as a resource let's say you know >> find it plausible that there could be two universes which have the same mosaic of non-dispositional qualities in spaceime, but which differ in which laws of nature hold in those universes. Say because one contains an extra law specifying how a particle which never in fact exists would behave if it came to exist. Or because two kinds of particle never interact in either world, but if they did interact, they'd interact differently in each world. But the best systematization of the mosaic of qualities would be the same in both worlds. And so the laws of nature must be the same if humanism is true.
¶743And that seems to be the wrong verdict. And so humanism cannot capture this intuitive desitter. There's also the vicious circularity problem. So intuitive to who? >> To some people.
¶744I I don't want to spend a lot of time on every object because he has like half a dozen of these. Um but maybe we'll just let him play them out and we can comment. >> Humanism seems to land in a vicious explanatory circularity since it seems like the laws of nature together with the initial conditions explain later occurrences in spaceime. Even though according to humanism, the laws of nature are themselves partially explained by those very later occurrences. So it's like the qualities in spaceime seem partially explained by the laws but the laws seem partially explained by the qualities in the mosaics.
¶745We got kind of vicious circularity. A explained by B, but B explained by A. inductive problem there, but whatever. >> I actually think it's a virtuous circle like >> Yeah. Well, I Yeah, I would sort of I don't see that that's a problem, but let's keep going.
¶746>> Philosophers like David Wheelace and Aaron Seagull have argued that humanism leads to inductive skepticism. I can put some links to their papers in the resource document if you're curious on reading those. There's the subjective laws problem. >> I have to say that is I really just don't think that's acceptable. Okay, so what I don't think is acceptable is just when one is arguing against something, he's declared that you can't just be a humanist.
¶747Uh sorry, a human. getting getting models that you can't just be a human about laws. Uh he's mentioned two objections here. Then his third objection is people have written papers about this. Go and read their papers.
¶748That's not actually making an argument. Joe can't say that he's provided an argument if all he has done is just told us that people have other people have made arguments that that I really don't like. That's maybe it's just because um William Lane Craig tends to do this as well. when he's refuting an opinion he doesn't like, he just um sometimes he just refers to other people who've argued against it. And the mere fact that people have argued against it isn't a reason that we shouldn't hold the belief.
¶749You need to actually engage with the reasons. I find that a very frustrating form of um advocating for anything. >> It's been absolutely destroyed because these other people in their work has been uh plagiarized by Google and summarized in this response. Yeah. So obviously there's a lot more to say, but that's why I don't like this.
¶750Oh, I'm just going to gesture at some people papers. Not not >> but but but that that's kind of why I'm doing this as a joke because it's like if you're going to do that, you might as well just like talk to a brick wall or an LLM and just be like, you know, like just get two LLMs to argue with each other and be like, there are reasons for this, there are reasons for that. like people have said, >> I I just think that's a very bad practice because it's a way to try to overwhelm people with just stuff to make them >> feel like they're uh that that they're going up against a very strong opposition without actually giving the substance or exploring the reasons. And I that I really irritates me when people try to use that as a rhetorical approach. >> Yeah, >> it's related to the gish gallop where you just throw lots of stuff at them.
¶751>> And you can do it for any position because as long as like a position, you know, people Well, maybe not any position, but most any position in the debate. Yeah. Yeah. Someone's argued against it. So you just throw papers at them.
¶752>> Yeah. And others have argued that humanism implausibly implies that which laws exist depend on our practical interests since they depend on our interest relative to theoretical preferences. There's the problem of making consciousness extrinsic. So John Hawthorne argues that humanism implausibly implies that whether you and I are conscious depends on facts about what happens in billions of years since consciousness depends on various causal relations. And humanism implies that which causal relations hold depends on the global pattern of qualities in spaceime.
¶753There's also the the famous cosmic coincidence objection which says that humanism just makes it a cosmic fluke that spacetime itself is highly regular. >> You can't depend on uh observations because depending on observations would mean that um cartesian consciousness is universally applied to everything. But actually the fact that um Carteesian consciousness is universally applied to everything is a basis for reasoning about varying absolutely everything in the universe physically and metaphysically and having absolute certainty about the ways in which varying it results in certain outcomes. You know like pick a poison. You know, if all that fundamentally exists are just loose and separate qualities pixelating the space-time mosaic, then it's extremely surprising that the resulting mosaic is an orderly, coherent, reasonably intricate, intelligible whole rather than just like a jumbled chaotic mess.
¶754>> You know, like if which I would describe the universe closer to the latter than the former, not not completely jumbled jumbled and chaos that's there. Anyway, that's just a >> there's some pockets where gravity stuff together. >> Black holes are kind of weird. Anyway, it's just it's just a lot of the word choice is doing the work rather than the analysis which is the >> tons of like radiation. >> Oh, it's orderly and rationally coherent.
¶755It's like well is it really like you just you're just saying things? >> Yeah. Just just like loads of radiation that would like instantly kill you is absolutely like the orderly kind of like universe. >> No deeper explanation. The screen would almost certainly display a chaotic or jumbled image.
¶756Not an orderly coherent intricate intelligible picture. >> An orderly vacuum everywhere. Just it. So, so this is just like one general reason why I don't think going in for humanism will help the naturalist all that much just because like humanism is just like beset with massive problems. But even if >> the thing is though here is like with philosophy as well, right?
¶757If someone has written like objections to something, it's probably going to be like a weird needly problem. Do you know what I mean? like in that's cuz that's what academic philosophers like doing is coming up with sort of like complicated Rubik's cubes that you have to think about to untangle and that you know that's like almost for a lot of people the mark of a good paper is like it really makes you go huh that's weird or whatever and so I think that there is like a real unfairness as well to sort of like just skirting through a position and cherrypicking you know a list of papers which posit like certain problems and just going how do you solve that right now or you can't you know >> particularly when you're not actually refuting any specific human. He isn't anyone who actually holds these positions. It's just in general humans.
¶758Look at all these problems. Well, there's responses to different problems that people with different I'm not a human myself by the way, but I don't agree with I don't think a lot of those objections are very good and he doesn't really spend much time on them to actually develop them. But it this is what I've critiqued before that Joe's style is to not engage with a substantive interlocutor or a single position or or uh representatives of a position but just to peacemeal uh highlight issues with general positions which you can always do um and not sort of allow any systematic development um or or systematic rival theory to provide a coherent response. It's just oh well there's a bunch of general problems for humanism so we should just dismiss it. It's also not clear to me that for a bunch of these, I'm not going to refer to the supervenience problem because I I may have misunderstood it, but for for quite a lot of this, they just seem like problems that um will beset these like causal powers uh theories as well because, you know, you you're going to reach some explanatory stopping point with causal powers.
¶759um you whether or not that ends up being like an explanatory circle or some fundamental point you can't get past or whatever you're going to reach that so you're going to have these problems. I can't see how the problem of induction is resolved by causal powers because you can still ask the question why the powers continue to do what they do and don't kind of like change and you'll just that in terms of justify that in terms of past behavior. subjective laws. Um, I think that that's probably just going to be like a general epistemic problem because there's going to be fallibility built into like people's observations that make the causal powers the way that they are. The extrinsicality of consciousness one is again going to be an issue because you're going to be depending on some theory of observations, right?
¶760When it comes to um >> any theory of laws is going to be dependent on observations. >> Yeah. So which appeal to things that are well beyond like you know distant in time and space which could have imp I don't I don't understand why that's a problem. It's just like yes potentially discoveries that we could make of things very distant could have implications. >> Yeah.
¶761Yeah. But but that's what I mean with even consciousness. I why is that a problem? >> Not very likely, but I don't see why >> I guess I'm not really certain that I do think of any of these as problems, but to the degree that they are problems, I don't see that they're specifically problems for humanism that is resolved by uh you know, I just think they're general >> details, but yeah, I I tend to agree that a lot of these are going to be more general issues. Yeah, they they just seem like problems that more relate to like um the fact that we are subjects who make observations and that's what like is the basis for all of this reasoning and like that falls out of that or something, you know.
¶762Yeah. Anyway, so but I guess one of the points to emphasize here is that um Joe is definitely not a human about laws and so when he's talking about laws of nature, he doesn't just mean a description of regularities. He means something more than that. >> Yeah. Okay.
¶763Uh do you want me to jump back now? >> Yeah. Let's no let's so I want to go through the other two conceptions of laws just briefly the powers view is the second one which is what I lean towards personally okay have you might think this view like relatively easily explains nomological harmony since if we're holding fix that there are laws well then you know the laws must match the contents of the universe on the powers theory since laws are nothing but descriptions of the powers of the things in the universe but alas things are not so easy for the naturalist because the powers theory just raises an exactly analogous problem of powers harmony right like why the powerful properties and relations featuring in the initial conditions harmoniously align so as to induce temporal >> I feel like that is um a weird way of putting the question you could say why are the powers not other powers but in so far as they're all powers that would just be what they do right so this is essentially my response play this out a little more because he gives an example here and I struggle to understand as usual what the problem is >> evolution like this is an utterly fortuitous occurrence since it's entirely conceivable that the initial conditions feature powerful properties none of whose stimulus conditions are met. >> Yeah, but those would be different powers, right? >> Right.
¶764Like the initial conditions might have only featured X's with the sole ability to interact with Y's or to interact with Y's when X's and Y's stand in some Newtonian spatial relation. >> Yeah, but you're not you don't think that Do you think there are X powers when you believe in the powers theory, James? No, you think there's different powers. >> He gives a better example later. >> Okay.
¶765Okay. >> Well, slightly better. If however the initial conditions feature no wise or only feature relativistic spatial relations well then temporal evolution won't ensue and we can likewise imagine many sets of initial conditions involving properties all of which are either non-dispositional properties or passive powers in which case nothing would do or change anything as Matthew Adene puts the problem of powers >> well this example is better than the x's and y's so let's go through harmony like why do bzons have the power to interact with fmians rather than x's where x's are some type of >> I'm sorry but matthewine doesn't know Bow and sulfur meanians are like there's just no like this has been copy pasted from somewhere it's particle that doesn't exist. It's thoroughly surprising that the fundamental things have the power to interact with other things that happen to exist rather than one of the infinitely many non-existent things. And likewise it's thoroughly surprising that the fundament >> but also original theory what's going on at Princeton isn't Matthew Adstein at Princeton as well.
¶766like you know there's clearly a group of these people who are all mutually influencing each other with terrible ideas and >> okay so the idea here is that most of the most of the powers that could exist power is just like a causal property is the way I understand it um most of the things that most of the powers that could uh pertain are according to Joe um relations with uh because a power is sort of like a relation between something like an interaction between particles for example most of them would involve relations with other things that don't exist and so it's very surprising that we find that the initial conditions of the universe have properties or the matter in it has properties that involve powers that relate to things that exist instead of or as he said stimulus conditions that actually exist instead of ones that don't exist. Uh that's surprising under naturalism according to Joe and requires explanation. So the I find this an an utterly baffling response uh sorry an utterly baffling argument. So one way to take this is simply to ask why why does there exist a universe that in which interesting things happen and this is just a version of the cosmological argument once again because of course you can ask well there could have been a universe where nothing much of anything happens. >> Yeah >> but this seems to be more specific than that.
¶767It's not just asking why is there a universe or why can the universe support life? It's like why do the laws of nature apply to the things in the universe such as to govern temporal evolution. It's more specific than that. And in with respect to that, one issue I have is I think that it makes absolutely no sense to say that um something has a property to interact with something that doesn't exist. >> Yeah.
¶768>> That is just a non-propy. If if you have a property of interacting with something doesn't exist, then you don't have that property. Like it just >> you don't interact with something that doesn't exist. >> Exactly. So you can't have that property.
¶769It's just a nonpropy. And there's actually a way to understand this in terms of the equations we write down to describe reality. >> Yeah. I think I think this might be a confusion of the what is going on in the construction of these models and what they're saying because that you know there's like this meta this is maybe like the other way around of the Lawrence Krauss thing you know whenever like all the philosophy people mock Lawrence Krauss for like the >> virtual particle nothing thing where this is like a metaphysical interacting with things that don't exist but you know like when people construct and build these models and talk about different possible ways of things working out they don't mean like something interacts with a thing that doesn't exist. That would be >> but there's a way to represent that and it's to have a coupling constant or an inter or a constant in your equation.
¶770You set it to zero and that's equivalent to saying that the thing doesn't exist because nothing's inter because it's not interacted with orth it doesn't have that property would be better way to say it. Uh so you could have two fields that propagate but if they don't interact then their coupling will will have a constant of zero. So like there's a way to precify that in terms of our quantum field theories that that describe you know fundamental physics and the point is we don't we don't think of well certainly I don't I don't think we should think of the of like bosons as having properties of interacting with things that don't exist they just don't have any >> it's an artifact of notation where in other contexts you would use those notations to determine magnitudes of interactions and things like that but in this context people are applying the notation but they've kept the convention of keeping the thing in and putting zero to let people know that you don't think this thing isn't a part of this particular kind of interaction. >> Yeah, it's sort of confusing that a a notation that you could write it down as as having an interaction with a zero weight as somehow meaning that there's a property that involves interaction with a non-existent thing. I just think that's nonsense.
¶771And so another way to think about this is we have many different fields that are well that we think exist like the different types of bosons and firmians the Higs field as well. Um and most of these don't interact with each other. There are only specific interactions that are that occur. Also there are many types of particles or fields if you prefer that have been postulated which may or may not exist. Some of them have been ruled out by experiment others not.
¶772um like super symmetry for example postulates a whole range of additional particles and um the point is we we don't know whether these things exist but if if they do it would turn out that they would have we would discover them through the interactions they have with existing particles it's entire you could imagine well what what if there was a whole bunch of other fields and particles that had no interaction with anything that did exist and the answer is >> don't encourage them James >> as far as we know that could be the case there's absolutely no way to detect that so >> we'll have to hug you against it there'll be there'll be some nonsense. >> So let's imagine all of the possible things that could exist, right? And then and then ask the question, what is the probability that some of those would show interactions with each other such that we have interesting results happening? And the answer is, well, I don't know what the probability is, but it's not obvious to me that it's super low. Like sure, um it could be the case that fewer interactions occurred in in the standard model, but it could also be the case that many more interactions occurred.
¶773It's combinatorial how many different interactions you have. If you postulate, um, you know, 10 fields, each can interact with all of the other ones. So there's lots of possible interactions. Um, so what Joe seems to be kind of assuming is that it's just more likely that we would have very few interactions and therefore not have any laws that that govern temporal evolution. But he doesn't tell us why that's unlikely.
¶774>> So the whole idea that most of the case would be taken up by just non-interacting particles is not not substantiated. There's no reason to think that that is the most likely outcome. And the idea that the powers would mostly govern non-interactions is just incoherent as far as I'm concerned. That's just not an interaction. >> It It's kind of like you you know on like um a a forces diagram, right?
¶775Where you might model a scenario by going okay like it's moving forward with this magnitude and like there's also a force acting down on it or something. You could also just draw a bunch of like vector forces of zero magnitude in every direction, right? And then if you did that, you could problematize the picture by saying like, well, if you imagine all the possible um forces, like ways forces could work. There's like way more ways that there can be no forces in all these directions than there are ways for them to be forces in these directions. Therefore, it's really unlikely that there are these forces, you know, like there's some substantive like physical consequence of that or something.
¶776But it's just not true that the most likely outcome is all zeros. The most likely combination of of zeros and positive >> that that that isn't true. But also like it it's just a a particularly weird way of even constructing a problem because there's no reason to construct a problem space where there are all these combinations of zero vector forces >> that you need to like think well what are all the ways the zero vector forces >> what are all the ways the non-existent things could interact with things that exist like that's just not how we think about things >> what are all the what are all the ways that can't exist things. >> Yeah, this is why I talked about before the sort of philosophy of absence, right? These negative properties.
¶777It's it's a silly way to think about things because what we should do is postulate only what is necessary to account for uh the experimental or observational facts that we have and not worry about all of the things that that don't exist. We don't need to account for that. >> What are all the different ways that things can not exist and not interact with each other and why are they that way? >> Yes, I know. And somehow that's a problem.
¶778It's just it's really hard to understand how how this is supposed to be a problem. There's something else that I want to say which is sort of you alluded to before Nathan which is that the question is like why do bosons interact with firmians? Um I would suggest if we restrict say to talking about gauge boson so that's like the photon for example as a gauge boson they are defined as interacting in a certain way with firmians as as described by quantum field theories um you know electromagnetism and um the weak and strong nuclear forces. So if you were to radically change how like to eliminate for example the fact eliminate any interaction between gauge bosons and firmians they wouldn't be gauge bosons anymore. I mean the whole point about a gauge bzon is that it is a way of specifying interaction uh between firmians that sort of preserves the the uh allows for gauge and variance in the equations which I won't try to explain but the point is I think there's a strong case to be made that it's sort of definitional it's part of the the how a gauge boson is defined that it interacts with firmians which is the same problem >> maybe there could be a um maybe there could be a type of boson that didn't interact with firmians but that would just be saying that there were interse.
¶779I don't see that introducing the notion of laws adds anything new here because the powers theory is just basically understands laws as um the uh causal powers that in this case like fields has and so that there's nothing there's nothing really the I don't think you need to talk about as laws which sort of comes into what you were saying like I happy to if if someone wants to say talk about laws of nature >> I think it's okay in certain context to use that but I don't think it adds anything beyond just saying there's stuff that behaves in certain ways because of the properties that it does. And so, >> well, I've been I've been kind of uh enjoying this book. Um, talks a little bit about ways of conceptualizing how like knowledge production happens in the sciences and argues for sort of like dispensing with the conceptualization of like producing laws, but instead of like producing examples and models for specific >> I generally don't like law language. I again I think that there's a way to make sense of it but I >> it often leads people down wrong tracks which is not helpful. So there's something else I wanted to say as well which I I can't I don't know if it's directly important but I can't help mentioning Joe here is focused on temporal evolution.
¶780He seems to have this idea that you could have he seems to think that we could have the same matter or the same fields the same quantum states that existed at the beginning of the universe but then they wouldn't do anything. They would just like sort of hang around. They wouldn't temporarily evolve is the way he describes it. And that's just not possible, right? There are no static solutions to the equations of general relativity or to the um equations of the standard model that there they only have dynamically evolving um solutions.
¶781And this famously is how the big bang was discovered initially because Einstein had his general theory of relativity and wrote down his equations and he couldn't find static solutions. The only way he could generate one was to introduce the cosmological constant to specify that there was something that allowed the universe to have a stable state. And um anyway, there's a whole history about that, but the point is that the the equations don't have stat don't admit static solutions. They're necessarily dynamic. And so, you know, you could say, well, you could imagine that there were different equations that had a dynamic state.
¶782But I I just wanted to highlight the fact that like the whole way that this is being framed makes no sense to me. Like the idea that you're somehow separate the properties of bosons from what a boson is and then you imagine that they have relations with like causal relations with things that don't exist and then you you are surprised that the causal powers that they do have are with things that exist instead of things that don't exist and then it's the same problemal evolution. It's the same problem we've had all along and and and maybe actually genuinely this could be what's going on is there's like a pattern to this way of thinking and um you know people are just kind of like pattern matching or or or detecting that they can do this in different domains or whatever. Um yeah, it's it's basically where you have words for things and you can drive a wedge between word concepts and then kind of like ask people to imagine it differently, right? Without without >> reference in all of his arguments.
¶783>> Yeah. and and and and then you can obviously construct some like space of immense unlikelihood that you get the pairings that we have for putting for using words in uh correspondence with like other words and say yeah it could be otherwise and then just say like well God must like explain why we do it that way. But the the the thing is like the use of our words and why they are used in the way that they are in coordination with other concepts does have like answers relating to the meaning of those other concepts the history of the thing you know as you say in this case it's definitionally in terms of a kind of interaction as we talked about in the case of uh some of these mind concepts it's you know literally in terms of like the behavior of organisms or human beings and so like it doesn't come apart in this cartisian way. And and so it it it's just a kind of grammatical illusion in each case where if you again just don't have enough knowledge about the thing or don't think about um the the functional linguistics of the scenario or the actual history of how the word words came about or pay attention to any of that and just think of like words as these like floating signifiers, you go, "Oh yeah, they are different words and they could like really be thought about as quite different from one another if I have no idea about >> magical illusion." I like the way you're phrasing. I think that that's a lot of what happens here.
¶784Rification is another term that I would use. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Let's have a look at just the governing laws theory because I think that this is illustrative. Um this last one here just >> rather than a which takes laws to be a unique kind of thing which governs or constrains the conditions of the universe.
¶785>> How about governing laws need a governor? >> Well, this is the type of law that I don't believe in because I think that this is silly. But the thing is if you think of laws in this way then I think you do get a nominological harmony problem because these laws are somehow things that just exist outside >> they cause they make stuff happen somehow. >> Yeah. Which is really weird and yeah that I think >> they cause the causes.
¶786>> Yeah. Yeah. So we'll just plug this out for a bit. >> Such laws exist over and above the mosaic of qualities and or powers in spaceime so as to influence or constrain them. This view or more accurately collection of views certainly faces the problem of nomogical harmony and full force.
¶787like generous entities that are kind of like time which kind of like you know exert their force over time. So by itself you know this >> yeah but what if I said law qua law what if it was just a law qua law then would that deal with the suede generous problem >> governing view of laws will definitely not help the naturalist. Yeah, I was actually pretty much all I wanted to just illustrate that I I kind of think that the conception of laws that really uh that the nominological argument assumes is a law governing view even though that's not what Joe Well Joe Yeah, Joe says that it also applies to the causal powers view. I don't think it does. Um I think that his attempt to make it apply just didn't make any sense.
¶788But um so the other thing that I just wanted to highlight was that I don't think he has a good reason for Joe has a good reason for saying that nominological harmony is expected under theism. Did Did I actually write a time stamp for why? I can't remember if we already looked at that or not. Did we already talk about >> Sorry, what was the question? I was I was reading um this comment that I thought was interesting.
¶789Uh I thought this was uncontroversial in science. The law of gravity describes the force of gravity. I've never heard any physicist equating the law with the force. This is kind of interesting to me. I mean may who knows why this person's curiosity would be indicative of anything.
¶790But yeah, I my my suspicion is that in physics actually none of these views matter at all like basically it's just not aware of these distinctions. >> Yeah. Yeah. They don't always talk in coherent ways to be honest. I think some physicists do talk about in a long way.
¶791Others talk about it in different ways. It's just it depends on the context. Uh, >> but this is kind of what like I I don't think that there are probably like I don't think there are many problems I should say in physics that are going to have a lot to do with any of these ways of conceptualizing things and physicists probably talk in ways that would be consistent with each of these interpretations in like different context depending on like who they're talking to and what they're trying to do and stuff like that. Now that doesn't mean that any of these views is wrong, but it does have something to say about the relevance and importance of holding one of these views for actually doing any of the physics or like resolving disputes. >> Yes, I agree.
¶792And you often can't read these sort of philosophical disputes or interpretational disputes off of scientific practice because the scientific practice just underdetermines these views and and partly because the scientists are often not interested and uh in and you know often that's a reason that instrumentalists or pragmatists give for just saying well who cares about any of these things. My response to that is becau in my opinion because there are lots of bad interpretations which if you take them leads you down very very problematic life like we're seeing here. I think if you adopt a variety of views about the philosophy of mind and physics and other things then you can get into these very strange and unhelpful rabbit holes that I think Joe's got himself into. And that's why good interpretations are important because it sort of you just avoid a lot of these issues. Uh yeah yeah that's right.
¶793Uh so physical laws describe the causal properties that um fundamental physical things have like quantum fields and or maybe spacetime itself. >> Cool. And what where do you want me to play from? >> All right. So we've gone through nominological harmony.
¶794I I was just saying that I don't know that Joe's given a good reason as to why nominological harmony is expected under theism particularly if it's a god who wants to do miracles >> nomologically. nomologically. >> Yeah. >> Um but anyway, let's um let's move on from this. Uh because nomological harmony leads into fine tuning.
¶795So let's tackle fine tuning. >> Um done to death. >> Yeah. Well, so some of the things we've talked about will already apply. So we can go through that more quickly.
¶796But a lot of what Joe has to say in terms of the time he spends is actually rebuttals. And we don't need to go through all of those. Let's start with 129. >> Uh yeah. Okay.
¶797the theistic multiverse hypothesis compared to the atheistic multiverse hypothesis. >> Oh, so even if you go multiverse, he's going to go, well, why not theistic multiverse? >> Nomological harmony in our universe favors the former over the latter. >> But anyway, I think nomological harmony provides pretty good evidence for theism. And up next is an even stronger >> Wait, is he saying nomenological?
¶798>> But anyway, I think nomological harmony provides pretty good evidence for theism. >> I'm hallucinating at this point. And up next is an even stronger evidential chip favoring theism. And that evidential chip is finetuning. Sup babe, you're looking mighty fine.
¶799I hope we're in tune about wanting to go on a date. >> Please clap. >> Update the name. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah.
¶800Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true. Okay.
¶801Fine tuning. I hope that joke didn't survive an edit. That was just terrible. >> Or maybe it's a meta joke. I don't know.
¶802>> The police type reminds me of who was that politician who did that. It was uh Bush one one of the Bushes, wasn't it? >> Was what? Sorry. Which one?
¶803Wasn't it Jeb who did that? Or am I sorry? >> Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? Where he he's giving a speech and he just ends sort of awkwardly and everyone's there's just an awkward silence and he's like, "Please clap." >> No, I don't remember. >> Oh, it's so funny.
¶804It's so funny. Anyway, I think >> I'm gonna say I I'll have to come back to Joe saying that to me later on repeat >> about wanting to go on a date. >> Please clap. So, let's let's suppose that there is contingency. There are laws of nature and the laws of nature match the initial conditions of the universe so as to induce temporal evolution.
¶805Even granting all of that in the background, it's still then extremely surprising under naturalism that the matching laws of nature are strikingly fine-tuned to allow for life and really anything interesting or valuable to occur. Yet, this is far less surprising under theism. >> No, there we go. Do it the same way as in >> Yeah, we'll do. No, >> and refer to a bunch of There's a bunch of papers people have written about this.
¶806It's all wrong. >> Now, we're going to engage God creating universe which evolves forward in time according to laws of nature. It wouldn't be hopelessly unlikely that he'd select members of the tiniest sliver of conceivable law structures and concept. >> Wasn't that just the conclusion >> under theism? >> Yes.
¶807>> Holding fix that God creates a contingent universe which evolves forward in time according to laws of nature. It wouldn't be hopelessly unlikely that he'd select members of the tiniest sliver of conceivable law structures and constant values which actually allow for super valuable things. Like >> it wouldn't be inconceivably unlikely that he would do this really weird thing. Yeah, he doesn't explain why it's not super unlikely. And I think if you apply the same approach as you do with naturalism, you get that God has a huge range of creative options as to what sort of things he makes in the universe, >> what constants he creates.
¶808And it's not clear that why he's picking out the ones that allow for embody alive. What reasons does he have for that? And and this is this is kind of though like what I find frustrating because it's just like an infinite number of ways of restating you know the initial presentation of the argument without actually like further justifying anything which I find really frustrating because it's like okay you get the general form of it and it's like it's not super unlikely that is to say there is not a prior sufficiently low such that the evidence can't overcome it. That is to you know like just it's just like ah just say a new thing like >> beauty in various cosmic and biological structures a coherent developing narrative arc to reality's unfolding conscious embodied creatures who can experience joy love one another build relation >> coherent developing narrative arc to you know like being born during like just before World War I and then being like bombed in the trenches and then like living through the >> is a narrative arc. >> Yeah.
¶809I mean >> it's just a shitty one. >> Yeah. you know, just just being drafted into like Ukraine and being like killed by a drone >> shifts with each other and with God. Cultivate >> that's just the problem of evil, Nathan. This is all just the problem of evil.
¶810You're >> virtue, display rational agency, inquire and gain knowledge about the world, manifest their agency in the material world in valuable ways. By contrast, it is hopelessly unlikely under naturalism that the law structures and constant values would fall within >> That's the conclusion. You're just saying it again. exceedingly narrow ranges that enable these valuable results. Consequently, fine-tuning provides exceptionally strong evidence for theism.
¶811>> Exceptionally, I mean, no numbers involved, but >> now there are four different kinds of fine-tuning that I want to focus on. Finely tuned lost structures, finely tuned constants and initial conditions, fine-tuning for discoverability, and popularity fine-tuning. I >> I want to say kind of about this. Um it is it is really weird to me that he has not um sort of like bundled this together with some of the both nomalological harmony stuff now and the uh psychophysical or psychonomic stuff cuz these all just see this literally just seems like the same thing described a million different ways. I agree that it's fundamentally the same observation expressed in slightly different ways which is very tedious >> and perhaps fine-tuning could you know like I I think like our our criticisms of finetuning that relate to um the whether or not life is adequately understood for there to even meaningfully like be a problem here that can be thought about could potentially be better decomposed into some of these other um questions about the specific moral factors or the for those moral or consciousness whatever that should kind of like eliminate the fine tuning problem and just make it into like these better arguments that are more precise rather than just being like oh let's also just keep in the shitty old argument that like is really vague about what exactly it's talking about but >> it's it's frustrating because uh Joe seems to think that he has or not seems to think he says he has many distinct and independent arguments theismas against theism.
¶812He thinks there's basically just evil variations of evil. Whereas, as I've said in previous videos, Joe basically has one argument for theism, which is variations of design arguments. >> And I mean, arguably these are all also just the contingency argument, right? Because if the contingency argument is like the answer to the why question, well then packed into that is also like the >> Yeah, I mean that's a form of it's an appeal to design as well. They're all just appeals to God would want it this way.
¶813um and good things. Yes. And so look, if you're going to lump things together that much, then you should be fair and say that on the theism side, it's basically just all some variant of a design argument. >> Um and then on the atheism side, there's some variant of the problem of evil and not pretend. And you know, I don't actually think that's a good I I think you can divide it up a bit more than that, but I just think it's not treating things equally to lump massively on one side and then split up on the other side to a bunch of very similar ways of getting at the same point.
¶814But he does that explicitly when he when he summarizes at the end. Anyway, so coming to fine tuning because we again have to keep moving through these. Uh the f the first three are somewhat distinct in this at least enough for us to talk about them. For a prior fine tuning is almost exactly the same as one. So I just ignore that.
¶815Let's go through um the most common form of this argument is number two. The fin of constants. So we'll look at law structures briefly. But how is that not just going to be I mean I've said that already but like like literally how is that not going to be this but >> subtly different but very simple constants and initial conditions fine-tuning for discoverability and opriori fine tetuning. >> Let's start with finely tuned law structures >> unless it's going to yeah >> here we need to distinguish between the structure of laws and the constants within those laws.
¶816As an example here's the general structure. This is I think going to be like actually a grammatical illusion thing though again because I think that if you are um actually doing physics and studying physics and so on and you're like learning about these equations and the values that are in those equations and you know describing things with words that with sentences that involve the word law or whatever you're going to be actually relating parameters in models and constants to laws you know and that might leave the question of whether those laws exist as some like independent thing that causes the causes or whether there's powers or whether it's a human mistake or whatever, you know, that that leaves all of that sort of and also notice Joe doesn't talk about any pragmatist uh possibilities. But um you know, like this this um division between the two that he's going to make is probably not something you actually want to do unless you want to have this problem, right? >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶817>> Or form of Newton's gravitational law. the magnitude of the gravitational force between two bodies equals G times the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between their centers. G here is a constant which is basically just a quantity whose value stays fixed within the equation. In this case, G fixes the overall strength of gravity. A different value of G would preserve the same structure of the law while making gravitational forces uniformly stronger.
¶818But like what? >> This is just a definition. I'm happy to grant him this >> point. But is it really I I get what you're saying, but I I just feel I have to say it's not really a different problem though. It's just a different >> I agree because I don't think the equations make sense outside of the context of particular constants giving them empirical content.
¶819So I sort of agree with that. You can conceptually separate them, but whether that's a particularly meaningful or helpful thing to do is questionable. So, so to to say that there's on the one hand the law problem and then on the other hand the constants problem is really just a taxonomy of different laws or of different universe models right you know universe models is a better way to think of which which thinks of them together which I think is a better way to do it but anyway let's just push on I agree but yeah >> we just have to >> now traditional presentations of the finetuning argument simply hold the actual law structures fixed as part of the background information for running the argument as Luke Barnes notes the The reason why we restrict our focus to universes with the same law structures as ours is that assigning precise probabilities and investigating life permitting outcomes over the entire space of possible universes including those with different law structures is too difficult. By contrast, when we hold the law structures fixed, we can get a purchase on the precise probabilities that the concept >> as long as we draw a small circle around the bit that >> that's just such a silly reason to do something. Well, we're going to partition our knowledge in a very arbitrary way just because that allows us to make an argument for the existence of God.
¶820So maybe that's just a reason to not make the argument if you have to arbitrarily partition our knowledge in certain ways that we know the law form but not the constants. It's just so dumb. I don't understand the justification is but I that's the only way I can make my argument for the existence of God. >> Okay. So your argument sucks.
¶821>> But even doing that they still constrain themselves so they get around the measure problem. Right. So >> yeah that's right. So there's there's further constraints that they apply. >> Yeah.
¶822So they they just do it in both cases. and they just constrain everything to give them the appearance of having done having dealt with like a real problem in a principled way but still giving you the conclusion that you need. This would fall within the life proving ranges. But it's worth noting that we don't actually need precise probabilities to run a successful basian argument for a hypothesis. We can apply basian reasoning to lots of messy real life cases as long as we can make rough and ready comparative judgments.
¶823judgments to the effect that you know two assumptions are roughly equally plausible or that one is a bit more plausible than another or that some other >> I mean I would argue that these are not basian >> we've talked about this and I basically agree with you Nathan that I mean you can say that's what you're doing but I think that that's not what you're doing you're just doing something else and calling it basinism I think that it's true that you can make you can make estimates of probabilities uh you can but you need to be able to quant you need to have a process that and be able to quantify error um you can't just pull numbers out of nowhere and in fact Joe doesn't even do that he just doesn't even use numbers like You're not doing basiness anyway. >> Yeah, >> is much more surprising on one assumption than another. The evidence in a court case is almost never quantified using exact precise probabilities or even ballpark estimates. Instead, judges and juries rightly make rough but highly plausible comparative judgments about how expected or how surprising certain pieces of data are. >> Don't ask juries to make a basian update.
¶824Yeah, this is another this this is just like the awesome theistic evidence argument where again it's appealing to a case where the thing that you say it establishes isn't even what happens in that case cuz people don't I had this I talked to Matthew about this stuff and he he he did a similar thing on me where he was like well I think that like juries can make can reason about things therefore like my basian framework is fine I'm like but they're not using your basian framework and then he was like well imagine a scenario where we're given evidence and then I restate the evidence in this basian language and I would be I'd say yeah and I would equally criticize what you're doing there because it might mislead the jury by giving them some scientific yes in fact and that's a that's something that's restricted as to what experts are allowed to say to juries because it can mislead them. There are cases in which probabilistic arguments can be given but there they have to be stated in very careful ways. Um well they should be like there if laws of evidence being followed properly and sometimes these are challenged right but the point is because it can give false precision. Yeah. Yeah.
¶825Particularly when it comes to um what's the word I'm looking for? Forensic evidence. As like certain cases, you may make a basian argument when there are established prior probabilities and methods for uh calculating you know your your likelihoods on the basis of certain things. So that is done but only in very narrow context. No one tries to get juries to do this for the totality of the evidence because it's just impossible to apply that framework when it's so messy and under constraint.
¶826>> Yeah. Especially when you're dealing with like these technical concepts, you know, like that the idea that you people will form the judgment that you have like some superior reasoning power because you've used this vocabulary. Yeah. And that is like really misleading for people because you actually don't if you're just like using that as language to describe as approximate a reasoning process as they themselves. There are a lot of EAS and people in the rationalist community who just love basian updates and not not even just like from a theoretical point of view that it's kind of cool but it's like they just try to do it for all sorts of things and I think that uh coming up with a basian update or or a prior probability and pulling something out of your ass are in practice indistinguishable.
¶827Yeah, that's it's your posterior because that's where it came from. Yeah, exactly. And I just I've always had an issue with this. I just find it because it's just it's really the illusion of rigor when you're just you're just making stuff up. But anyway, let's keep going.
¶828>> Just draw a thousand samples, bro. Figure it out. >> Relative to the innocence hypothesis >> from your posterior. >> Moreover, even if we can't assign precise probabilities here, obviously it would be fantastically strong evidence for theism if the fundamental law structures somehow encoded in binary the entire Bible, right? Like >> according to what?
¶829UTF or ASI? And this is why this makes no sense when you think about it because there are different encodings. No, like I'm so I know it sounds like I'm just being like an right? And I kind of am, but it's like people say this is just another example of like saying some that's like imagine if you came across the Bible encoded in binary. What does that mean?
¶830Because there are different encoding formats. There isn't just binary like there isn't binary doesn't just mean like >> if you use a one-time code then you can kind of read an arbitrary one time code. can read anything off anything because you can just map it in the right way, right? If you if you just construct it at post talk, you know, and but this is what I'm saying and then it's like but so so actually you know coming across a binary a binary string doesn't intrinsically mean anything to anyone. It's only through a process of translation into some, you know, of decoding that and then and then representing it as characters in to people who speak English that it means something.
¶831And this this is a problem with all of these um like weird language puzzles that they come up with to try and construct um like combinatorial problems of like how unlikely is it that arrangements of ones and zeros or characters be a certain way is that it just doesn't actually pay attention to how language works where like the reason that languages mean things is to people who they mean things to but like sand's nothing like a symbol doesn't actually have any meaning to it or like a zero or one in a particular pattern doesn't have any meaning to it whatever but >> should we talk about awesome theistic evidence now or later because he brings it up many times. >> Yeah, >> maybe we should just talk about it now because it comes up so many times we'll just deal with it and then we can just refer back to it. So the all synthe he just mentioned it here but the all syntheistic evidence I guess thought experiment is to say is a way that is often used to respond particularly Joe uses it a lot to respond to >> and he got it from Matthew and Amos I believe >> right yeah it's a way that's used to respond to criticisms about divine psychology or predicting what god would do or asking about what's the prior probability that god would act in this way or that way >> or basian approaches in philosophy of religion >> yes in general yeah that's another it's used in a wide range of context and the basic idea is this that if you were there are certain the idea that there are certain examples certain thought experiments that if you observed uh instances from this case class of cases that that is a clear-cut case where we should think that that's strong evidence for the existence of God. So examples would include um that I've heard are like um Bible passages being written out in arrangements of stars or um uh yeah in Bible passages being encoded in the cosmic microwave background radiation or the initial states of the universe or messages written like on atoms in some way. And many of these scenarios are not very well specified as to how that would actually work.
¶832But you could, you know, you can suff you can massage the scenario if you want. And the point is not the details. The point is just to establish never is >> because I understand it. The point is just to show that there's at least some conceivable scenario uh usually in the form of like messages in nature somewhere which would be very strong evidence for the existence of God. And therefore, even if we can't specify exactly what God would do or what the prior distribution of over his actions looks like or how much we should update, at least in principle, we can identify distinctions between when something in extreme cases we can identify uh when something would count in favor of God's existence.
¶833And that is >> probably I'd probably frame the can't reason about this at all. >> Yeah. I' I'd probably I'd frame it more like argumentatively I guess as like if your skeptical criticisms of my methodology or or some aspect of it are right then that would undermine my ability to use this methodology in making an inference in this case right but I can make an inference in this case therefore there aren't these problems with my methodology >> yes it's and fundamentally I think it's an appeal to what is supposed to be obvious cases where everyone would agree oh yeah you can make that inference in this case. So because we can make the inference in this case, therefore we can make it in this other case and your objection about divine psychology or uncertain price or something doesn't go through. >> So um so that's the basic idea of the ortheistic evidence.
¶834There's different particular versions but fundamentally they all work the same way. So I have I've argued against this before and there's a number of responses. I think the first the first observation to make is that that line of response is just a a clear nonsequita. So let's suppose that there are certain examples of awesome theistic evidence like the Bible written out in the stars or something like that. It doesn't follow from that that fine-tuning or um psychophysical harmony or whatever else or any miracle claim.
¶835It doesn't follow that in those cases it's clear that um it's likely the gold would do those things or that we can assess the probability that God would things or that it's not super unlikely. In other words, just because there's extreme cases doesn't mean that you can apply that methodology in any arbitrary case you like. It may be that it's only applicable in very extreme cases. And so it's just a non-secular to argue that because you can make the judgment in an extreme case that therefore it's valid in any case or in in any arbitrary case that you want to apply to. So I I I think that there's just a gap here in in saying that well we can use it sometimes.
¶836Okay. But does that mean that it's always applicable? It obviously >> when I I guess when I came across this first it it was Matthew and Amos like trying to mug me off in a conversation and um like when I thought about it afterwards cuz I wasn't like quite happy with my response. I was like why was what they did there so rhetorically um good, right? Like why was it like dialectically and in the argument it it did make me look a bit stupid and I was like why did that work so well?
¶837And I think it's because the examples that they appeal to are cases where people would want to say, "Yeah, like in that scenario, I absolutely would like be like, "Sure, God exists or whatever, right?" Um, and so I kind of like took that for granted when I was thinking about it. But then I was like, but what am I actually doing when I imagine that scenario? And I don't think that I do apply the methodology that they claim that those scenarios justify in those examples. So they, for example, when they say, oh, you know, like if you were uh, you know, if you saw made by God written in an atom, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, or, you know, if the stars rearranged to spell out like Jesus is Lord made by God or something, what would you do? And like I'm kind of like, well, yeah, like maybe I would just become some like crazy evangelical or something.
¶838Like I just I just be like, wow, this is incredible and crazy. And you know, I'd just like stop worshiping Jesus and stuff. But the the point is that like even if I imagine myself doing that when I imagine this like far-fetched scenario, what I didn't imagine is myself like doing some basian likelihood comparison between naturalism and theism and then going like well the prior probability of theism isn't sufficiently low. Um and now I need to like update on this evidence and uh this evidence has like a really strong likelihood in equality. the prior isn't sufficiently low that it's not overcut.
¶839Like I didn't do any of that. I just was basically like that's nuts and just changed my mind on something. And so I I think that a lot of these cases are not good for establishing what they're basically I think the criticisms that you and I and other people raise of using this methodology basically consistently hold even in those cases, right? um and that even you know so if you think that in these cases it would do something to change your mind which is perfectly fine you just might not be imagining yourself doing a basian update right there's no reason to think that so so it's perfectly consistent to go like oh yeah sure I changed my mind but like this basian stuff is like nonsense and doesn't have anything to do with any of that >> and that and that that could just be like you know because people change their mind when weird stuff happens to them we're all humans like you know some Sometimes we do a PhD at Princeton and make a bunch of Catholic friends and change our minds. >> Yeah.
¶840So the fact that people would be inclined to change their belief doesn't actually show that it's rational to do so. And that's one of the issues that or evidentially appropriate or whatever term you want to use. And that's another aspect of these issues that of these thought experiments is that all that really can be established is that many people have an intuitive judgment that they would make in response to that scenario. It doesn't actually establish that that's the appropriate response. Um nor that that response generalizes to other cases which was the point that I was making.
¶841So there's already two issues there. Uh it's it's simply a thought experiment, but what we infer from that is going to be then subject to further discussion. But I think the real meat of it is, as we've both argued uh in previous videos, is that I just reject that at least the vast majority of these awesome theistic evidence scenarios are awesome evidence for God at all. We might have an intuition or a disposition to think that they are, but I don't on reflection, I don't think that they should be. So um there's a number of ways of thinking about this.
¶842The way that I like to frame it is in terms of suppose we were to observe um let's say we're looking up at the night sky and the stars rearrange themselves in the heavens to form some biblical passage and it's not just you but many people report this and it's observed through telescopes and recorded over many nights. You know, add in whatever else you like. Right? It appears to be as far as we can tell it's genuinely the light from the stars is actually changed, you know, in the in the configuration. Um, so it's not just, you know, a a delusion that you're having.
¶843At least as Ro could tell. So anyway, if so, if something like that happened, here's how I think we should approach this. We should question, okay, how can we explain this? Clearly, this is something weird, something strange. We want to think about why it could have happened.
¶844Like what what are the potential explanations? That's reasonable to do. So let's think about some >> your intrinsic probabilities. >> Well, you can think about it that way if you like, right? But I think that this is how you should reason through it.
¶845So one is to think about okay suppose there's an all powerful all good God who is using this as a way to communicate his message to mankind. That's one explanation that someone like Joe seems to think is the right one in this case. Uh other possible explanations well it could be a supernatural being which is not all powerful not omniscient. So, not an omni, but some other supernatural being like a a demi- urge or some sort of um demon or some um Zeuslike god who's very powerful but not, you know, all powerful or all good. So, they might be doing it to trick with us or to test us or just because they're bored, right?
¶846So, any number of psychological reasons that you could come up with. Uh, another possible explanation is that it's aliens with extremely advanced technology who've been able to either move the stars themselves or perhaps bend the light in ways by placing massive objects in just the right locations or mirrors or or some other mechanism. They're able to bend the light so that it has this um it looks like this to us. And again, they could do this for all sorts of reasons. There's a test to see how our civilization would respond or just because they're bored and or have psychological um dispositions that are sort of uh hard for us to understand.
¶847A fourth category of explanation that I can think of again there may be more would be that we live in a simulation and it is the designer of the simulator of our um universe who the difference here is that this is supposed to be some sort of physical entity that lives in some sort of universe beyond ours they got you >> what how did they get me the simulation hypothesis >> simulation needs a simulator >> well but the simulation universe could be very different to our universe and so it may not have the properties that we think that ours that requires has designed. But anyway, I I'm just I'm painting a picture here of how I'd go about this. So, we've got we've got >> the lens you you're saying these are the lengths you'd go to before you finally admit that God exists. >> Well, what I'm going to ask is that people will often think that these are unreasonable um ad hoc hypothesis, but I actually think that they're more reasonable explanations than the omni hypothesis. So, we've got omniod, we've got like demigod, we've got aliens, and then we've got the design uh the simulation.
¶848And they're allin Elon Musk messing about with Starink satellite. >> Well, yeah. I mean, you know, that would probably be a more reasonable explanation, but I'm assuming that we've ruled out some something more mundane like that. But anyway, um so the point is then so those are our four candidates just for the sake of argument. Then we need to assess well, you know, how likely is each um how well does it account for the data and how what is the prior plausibility of each of these?
¶849And what I would argue is that the omni hypothesis pretty much invariably comes up comes out worse. Um, I don't want to say that it always would with any possible scenario. It's just that at least with ones that I've heard, they all seem to be very poorly explained by the omni. Why is this? Well, the omni, remember, is supposed to be all good.
¶850And, you know, I guess we're assuming that he wants to communicate with this in some way, although it's not obvious why he would want to do that without further assumptions. But this is the issue. Why would an all good god communicate with us in this very specific way which is not visible to everyone? like if they're living on the other side of the globe or something like that or they don't speak the language that the scripture is written in. I mean they would still hear about it perhaps but it's less direct.
¶851Seems a bit unfair but more more importantly what about all the people who live oh sorry who lived before this in history that he's not communicating to them in this way. This is a very strange way for an all good all powerful god to go about communicating to people where he seems to be very choosy about who gets this message. Not at all what you would reasonably expect. Go ahead. I know.
¶852I was I was just going to find when I was thinking about a part of this uh the other day. I came up with a question that nobody who believes in this stuff actually ever thinks about, but uh oh gosh, can I basically let me pop it up on the screen? Imagine you see like both of these. Imagine you see one scenario in which you see one of those and one scenario in which you see the other one. Is either of them better evidence of theism.
¶853Why or why not? >> Well, the first because I don't read Chinese, the first isn't evidence for anything. I'd first need to get it translated. >> Yeah, that I mean that that is true. And then and then I think like you know people I a good joke there's a a number of facets to this.
¶854Like a good joke would be for the first not to mean God is real in Chinese, right? And then just to make people like make the wrong judgment and trick them. That would be kind of funny. Um but then but like so I did put that in Google Translate and that's apparently what God is real means in uh you know simplified Chinese or whatever. But then like it raises the question >> there's like too many characters for that.
¶855But never mind. Let's keep going. >> I've got no idea because I don't it could be anything. But the point the point is Yeah. Like so you saw that in the sky um and you realize that that's made by God in like Chinese characters or whatever.
¶856>> Yeah. I mean, is that better evidence because it's in Chinese and there's like are there more Chinese speakers than like English speakers? Does that factor into it? Like, and basically the reason I thought that that was interesting is because it it might at least make people start thinking about, you know, because people just kind of go, "Oh, yeah, like sure, God wants to communicate with me because we're all narcissists." But like, you know, if you actually uh think about it and and think about these questions of like, well, you know, is is God an imperialist bastard or not? like what >> what if the and what if the message was written in like um ancient Hebrew >> which essentially no one speaks but >> transcript.
¶857>> Yeah. Yeah. Or what if the message said there is no God? What if there's a typo or like a spelling mistake? You can permute it in so many ways where I think that that helps to build an intuition like you know I don't really know how to think about any of this because it's you could just come up with any scenario you like as to why a god may or may not do that if you're willing to make enough assumptions.
¶858I think this is the point that it's a sort of a lack of imagination. >> Is there something so weird about like arrangements of stars in the sky that it means that you've got to invoke God like >> Yes. >> And so what what I'm trying to say though is that it seems that omni hypothesis is not a good way to account for this because whatever intention you try to invoke of the omni it's hard to reconcile that with the means that are actually used. like if he's trying to communicate with humanity, he's not done so in a very good way um in terms of space and and temporal distribution and clarity of message and all these other things. There's so many better ways that an omniod could could go about doing that.
¶859Now, if we contrast that with the other three explanations which all involve limited beings in some way, then those um uh the the aspects of the communications make a lot more sense. For example, in terms of um postulating motives, you can postulate mischievous motives um which are just not uh plausible candidates in the case of an omnig because they're not supposed to have mischievous motives. You can postulate attempted communication that's not wholly successful because again uh they don't have the omnipotence property that's sort of going to get in the way of that. You can postulate doing tests to learn things to find out new knowledge. That's not feasible in the case of the omni because the omni doesn't lack any knowledge.
¶860So like the simulator might want to see what happens to a simulation if he does something like this. That's not relevant to an omni. So there's many more explanatory options that I can appeal to. Still granted with very under constrained hypothesis, but I'm saying that they're less under constrained and there's more explanatory options to appeal to than you have in the case of the omni because the omni has so many possible things that they could do. Um and yet certain things are ruled out in virtue of their omnipotence and benevolence without making very ad hoc assumptions which you could always do.
¶861But you know that's part of it. Whereas um whereas there's actually fewer like for example you you could say that God could just communicate directly psychically to everyone um or just appear to everyone and speak to them in their own language simultaneously. Like those things maybe are just outside of the capabilities of aliens or the >> demigod a pile of logs that is drenched in water and just set them on fire with heaven from with fire from heaven like in you know it two Kings 18. Yeah. >> Yeah.
¶862Yeah. Exactly. So all of those sorts of things. So, I guess the point of that is, you know, you can just you can quibble with details, but my assessment as far as I as best as I could do it is that if I did see evidence like that, I'd be kind of shocked and pretty skeptical about it. But supposing we could somehow rule out mundane hypotheses of like it's Elon Musk's satellites or something or it's some big hoax.
¶863If we could rule that out, then I would absolutely be more likely to reason that one of these three alternative scenarios was happening. it's aliens. It's a it's a simulator or some sort of demiurge rather than an omni because omni just doesn't explain the evidence very well because of the properties that have been specified. Now, a lot of theists just don't take this seriously, but I've never been told what's wrong with this analysis. It's just, oh, that's not plausible.
¶864You just don't want to agree with God. But I think it it's just not a good explanation. I I'll tell you what's wrong with it is like group think and like people being influenced by the circles that they're in because the people coming up with this stuff are just enshed in like philosophy of religion where it is normal and they have these kind of like things that are taken for granted and basically if you don't it that are literally almost like in-group jokes that are used for othering who's in the in-group and who's in the out groupoup. So, if you're like rejecting some of that stuff, like you're the butt of the joke, and so you're on the outside. And this is where this is like the darker side of the way that this um philosophy stuff works where it isn't often people just trying to figure out what's true.
¶865But instead it's people who kind of have their conclusions and their ways of thinking about things and they're trying to other other people and you've got to like think according to their methodology to fit in with them and have them, you know, to get along with their way of thinking and their kind of economy of um videos and Substack posts and things like that. And um yeah, like I mean this is why they won't engage with that and take it seriously and why they will encourage their audiences to respond to these sorts of things with by saying, "Wow, you'd really like go there before just admitting that God exists." And it's like, "No, like I I actually think that if your only criteria are rational evaluations that that is right." Like I literally just think that's right. Like I can't see good reasons to to not rationally evaluate it in that way. >> Yeah. I mean, your argument for me not to rationally evaluate it in this way, which is like fine.
¶866I like I kind of don't think that people should just live their lives just rationally evaluating everything because I think there's all sorts of different things going on with people. I think religion is one of those things maybe that might sit outside of that as long as it's not making certain kinds of claims, but you know, like like this obsession with having some like weird approach to reasoning that isn't used in that way for anything else. Yeah. And then like these weird examples. It's just like crazy talk.
¶867>> Yeah. I don't think it's very good. It's very good thinking. One other thing is that I it would be interesting. I haven't I would like to discuss this with more theist, but they always talk about Bible passages appearing in the sky.
¶868Uh but they never give the example of like passages from the Quran or the Upanishads or like that if they saw that appear would they think that oh Islam or Hinduism is true or would they perhaps think that maybe it's a demon of some sort or some other sort of uh satanic involvement or I don't know. There's the point is there's always some other hypothesis you can come up with which may be potentially a better explanation. So it's not even clear that the theist is always going to admit that that sort of action is actually evidence of the omniod in in action, right? Like it's going to depend on the theological assumptions that you come to bear with. So I don't think I'm unique in that in in saying that there are other plausible candidates for this sort of evidence that do not involve the omniod.
¶869It it also depends on the case too because I I know you've already raised like what are the implications for people in the past and stuff and I don't necessarily mean that but I mean like the cases of like suppose that the structure of an atom had like John's gospel written on it. First off like as you said >> literally like it doesn't even make sense what the you're supposed to imagine, right? Like what the hell do you mean? But even if this was true, it can't pos like suppose that all atoms are like that that wouldn't actually be, you know, like any any mark is potentially a part of a language to somebody from somewhere, right? Any any marking.
¶870So like technically atoms do have John's gospel inscribed on them for some language that we don't speak or use, right? We could invent one where you know, look at >> that's called Bible code, my friend. Well, the guy who sees Jesus everywhere and like >> but >> people essentially do that. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶871I mean it's true but I I I mean um but but this is the point about where you know like where is Apriori here and why is Apriori like English speakers right now you know like and not like like it wouldn't that the the mere fact that the language even was English would make me think it was some kind of like weird um illusion in some sense or something that appeared like language but wasn't a genuine communicative intent because I would think if God you you know in um uh what's the film? Is it Contact? >> Well, I don't know what you're going to say. >> Oh, there's like there's a film there's a famous film where we make uh it from the ' 90s where we make contact with like, you know, an alien species or whatever. And actually, this is a trope in a lot of films >> where it's like what kind of signal would constitute like an intelligent life form trying to to contact humans.
¶872And I I believe that they use like sequences of prime numbers or something like that because the idea is that you know that would be a kind well what is it it's not even clear because I guess the distribution of the prime numbers is like random right but well the gaps between them but if you're specifically transmitting the prime numbers may the point is it's not even clear for like alien life forms what would constitute a you know cuz like the wow noise right for example or um wasn't that a pulsar where we're like okay there's I don't think it's been established what the wow noise was or the wow signal, >> but but there's definitely an example at least of that I recall I might be messing it up of like a you know some sinosoidal signal that was like there was some regularity and like oh is this alien contact because it's um you know it it's occurring with this regularity but actually it was like a you know some something from like a pulsar or something where it was like spinning round and so there was this electromagnetic waves that are coming that are being received with that periodic frequency. And so you you can kind of like imagine oh maybe there's like intent behind that signal because that's what we would do. We try to create regularity because a lot of stuff in nature isn't like that. But a lot of stuff in nature is like that as well you know with things spinning around. >> That's why it's difficult to uh to infer like intent there without any you know prior theory about who might be sending the signal or why.
¶873I I I don't want to say that's impossible but I do think it's very difficult. >> Yeah. And I'm not saying it's impossible either. But this is kind of my point though is if you were to establish that something was like God communicating in a language. It's like you you'd want it to be something that could more reasonably be a language to like as many people and life forms as possible.
¶874I don't know what that would be, right? But but but something of that nature, like something spooky, mathematical, ratios. >> I think it would just be something that's directly perceptible to everyone. >> Yeah, >> because I don't think it's leaving people out because they can't see the stars or they they don't understand what the astronomers are saying or they don't read that language. That's just ridiculous to me.
¶875>> Unless you're going to make again more strong assumptions about what the omni god is doing. But on the face of it, it would also rule out any other potential explanation pretty readily if it's just something that well as readily as you can. It's it's just it's not even a natural means essentially. It's like it's just direct awareness or something. I don't know.
¶876>> This is kind of what I'm what I'm saying about like communication in language is that if if there's some natural phenomena that's been that that's around for more people than just us now, right? And isn't like just a booming voice in the sky in English now. It it it definitely raises the questions of like because like from God's perspective there isn't like that language isn't a language for most of human history. So he's not actually saying that. So like the point is app priori to what are you considering God trying to communicate in a language.
¶877And I actually I I don't think that I I think that you have the same like divide psychology problems essentially of like why God chooses one language rather than any other language in order to communicate a message because it's only going to apply for like some period of time and some people and you know in some location or whatever and which is going to raise the like all these questions of like why them rather than that. So everything I think is like really really really really improbable um as like an act. >> Yes. And you know, human observers would reasonably ask, is this evidence of some sort of aliens trying to communicate with us um and doing the best they can as opposed to an omnipotent god who presumably would come up with something better than this? Certainly unusual, but also hard to interpret a sort of message, right?
¶878And that's why I think it's just a terrible explanation if you're going to assume the properties of God that theist postulate. especially within this methodological paradigm is what, you know, I'm trying to kind of like get at as well because it's just like >> I I don't think that the methodological paradigm helps because there's nothing like about the Latin alphabet from God's, you know, like when I'm reasoning over all the ways that God can think about things where he's like, "Okay, I'm really going to use the Latin alphabet to communicate with people today." Why would he do that? Like, >> well, to vindicate Catholicism, of course. >> Yeah. Why would he do that when he's already got Padro Peio?
¶879So >> a good question. >> The stigmata. >> Yes. Anyway, so um that was a discussion about all theistic evidence. So I I think that there are it's just not a good counter and and Joe relies on that quite a lot in in responding to different criticisms.
¶880So let let's perhaps go back to fine-tuning and yeah move through the law structures. But at least you know we've discussed that now so that when he uh mentions it as he often does, we can appeal to our response. And that's because this is an overwhelmingly grotesqually unlikely structure to obtain by chance. It's a highly specific, intricate, and coincidental law structure. And intuitively, only the tiniest fraction of conceivable law structures encode meaningful meages.
¶881And while this law structure would also be super improbable under theism, since there are, you know, lots of other law structures God could have made and lots of other messages God could have written, it wouldn't be as grotesqually improbable as it is by chance, right? And so it would represent super powerful evidence for theism even in the absence of >> notice that he doesn't give any reason to think that he just asserts it. It's just his conclusion being asserted. >> This is exactly the point that I'm making is like if I think about like bare theism from God's perspective which is like some relationship to time that I don't have where I exist in a particular culture and time and place. You know I'm not going to talk about all these different models of you know KT temporality or whatever.
¶882But um the the point being that no symbol is any more a part of any language than any other symbol from that perspective that God has right and so this this idea >> so he's picking a language to communicate with certain people at certain times and that seems like the sort of thing God wouldn't do from my point of view an omni God wouldn't do >> maybe >> he could do that of course if he wanted to but why would he is the point >> I I think what I'm actually I'm trying to say is that because the um hypothesis of theism is from that perspective that isn't in is in all times and not in any particular place in time. Um like any symbol may be or may not be a part of a language. And so I actually think it's basically going to be about equivalent to pure chance. You know I like supposing that >> that's true from God's point of view but not to our point of view. And so the question is from from the point of view of the people on the receiving end some we'll interpret as a message and others not.
¶883>> Sure. >> But but I'm suppose the thing is I'm supposed to reason though about what theism predicts from God's point of view. Right. So from from the perspective of God existing or God not existing, what would or wouldn't he do? >> Well, I if you think that God wants to communicate with it with us, which I've been assuming for the sake of arguing, but is no in no way entailed by theism, by the way.
¶884But if you assume that presumably what you would predict is clear and unambiguous and equal communication, why would you assume that he just talks to people thousands of years into history in a very weird and specific way? Well, that's that's kind of kind of kind of what I'm saying is like, you know, maybe for most human most human history maybe will be in the future and maybe there will be a language where like circles the gospel of like a circle is like, >> yeah, maybe these awesome theistic messages exist, but we haven't developed a language that allows them and God is just like, "Oh boy, once the once everyone learns Espiranto version 10.0, they're going to really get excited about this." You know, like that's just so silly. But so what what I'm saying is actually for me these awesome awesome PICIC evidence claims are literally like equivalent to how I can evaluate like pure chance or randomness or nothing like >> anyway let's keep going probability estimates. Now as it happens the actual law structures we got are compatible with life in the sense that the actual law structures contain lifemitting parameter ranges. But if you sit down and think about it this is fantastically fortunate.
¶885A vast space of conceivable law structures generate worlds that are too simple, too homogeneous, too low-dimensional, too short-lived, too static, too periodic, or too chaotic to contain anything like stable complexity or embodied conscious agency. >> Provided, you give some examples of this. >> Yeah. Provided you don't change the laws and you constrain the space that you're using over to a very small one and don't actually think about what you mean by life. And keep you know the psycho physics as well keep all that same.
¶886Intuitively only a tiny fraction of the total space of conceivable law structures is compatible with life. And to make matters worse for the naturalist the simplest law structures seem life precluding. To make this vivid consider how easily we can describe possible law structures that are far simpler than the actual laws but plainly incompatible with life and more generally anything particularly interesting and valuable. The fundamental law might have specified that no concrete objects exist. That's an extremely simple law with only one quantifier, a negation sign, and a single predicate.
¶887Or the law might have said that exactly one space-time point exists. >> I guess I hate this because it's not physics. But >> I don't know what this is. But he gives a bunch of examples. Just let him give example.
¶888>> Like I could just But the thing is like for any of these I could just invent some symbolism that's like has differing complexity for different descriptions. Like what the the point is all in justifying why that uh simp you know if we're talking about this compression simplicity thing like it's really important why the symbolism that we're using has relevance to the terms that we're using to um you know to to to um compress. >> Yes. And an interesting correlary of things that he said before, wouldn't this wouldn't one of the simplest possible uh thing things set of things that could exist would just be the set of everything? So, shouldn't Joe become a modal realist or exactly two?
¶889>> Yeah, keep going. >> I messed up because I'm going through tabs. No, you're you're you're right because then you've not like including the negation is an additional symbol that you >> just the set of everything, right? Everything exists. >> What you know why does something exist rather than nothing?
¶890Well, it's simpler to compress, right? Some sum x is fewer symbols or just x, not even some x, just x as an object because obviously we know >> for all x there exists x. There you go. That that's it. No negation needed.
¶891>> There's no don't negate it. Yeah. And then you've got like questions of equivalences like what because you can express things in logically equivalent forms even though the compressibility would be different. You could be like, "Oh, well, you know, I could just gerrymander." Like, this is why this method is like stupid. But >> yes, I agree.
¶892>> Or exactly three or whatever. The fundamental law might have said that only one particle exists and its position at T is given by the sign of T. This law is far simpler than the actual laws and the resulting world contains only one simple thing moving back and forth forever. Or the fundamental law might have specified that this one particle moves in a straight line forever or moves in a circle or stays at rest or moves along a triangle. But I'm sorry, but all of these examples, I just don't think he's doing what he claims to be doing with the compressibility thing.
¶893I just don't think he's doing it because he's just like random. Like the things he's saying are like really random and not what would feature in a fundamental theory. But yeah, he has more, don't worry. Or square. Or the fundamental law might have specified that a simple fundamental particle exists and periodically enters an excited state for all eternity or periodically emits bursts of very low energy for all eternity or whatever.
¶894Or the law might have said that exactly two particles exist. >> Like what what does any of that mean without like I know I know the point is going to be like oh that is more complicated than just saying no objects exist. But then like even on his own paradigm it doesn't make sense because you've got to explain why no objects exist now rather than some and like why they why >> yeah why the arbitrary limits kind of thing. Yeah. >> And orbit their common center forever.
¶895Or the fundamental law might specify that a single one-dimensional point exists with its trajectory given by a simple linear equation among infinitely many such simple equations. Or a simple quadratic equation and so on for infinitely many other totally uninteresting and barren laws that are far simpler than the actual laws. Or the fundamental law might have specified that a single simple twodimensional shape persists eternally for each of infinitely many compactly specifiable shapes like different sizes of triangles, different sizes of octagons, etc. Or the fundamental law might have specified that the shape >> what? What the Like a law says a shape exists.
¶896What? How is that even a law? What's the shape made of? Like it doesn't make any sense. >> Yeah, it's sort of hard to conceive of these.
¶897We probably don't need to go through every He sort of moves periodically or rotates in place or does any other extremely simple movement or the fundamental law might specify that there is exactly one scalar field such that all spacetime points have the same constant scalar value. The resulting world is extremely uniform and therefore highly coherent and super compactly specifiable in fundamental terms. Yet it's completely undifferiated and totally devoid of interesting or valuable phenomena. Or the law might specify that the scalar values are >> I'm glad that uh triangles are amongst the fundamental terms. Actually >> I I think that the final theory of physics will talk about triangles quite a lot.
¶898uniform across all of space but just oscillate between two scalar values for all eternity back and forth. Or the fundamental law might have specified that the universe is an all zero cellular automaton with every cell in an infinite twodimensional grid taking on a zero value. Or that every cell might have taken on a one value or that the infinite grid might have been a checkerboard or that each cell might simply copy the cell to its left or to its right or whatever. Or that a cell takes on a one value if and only if exactly zero of its neighbors take on a one value and a zero otherwise. Or the fundamental law might have been a pure expansion law specifying that all distances between fundamental things simply increase uniformly forever with no attractive or binding forces in which case no complex objects would ever form.
¶899Or the law might be a pure repulsion law stating that every object repels every other object with no attractive or binding interactions. This law too would never result in stable complexity. Listen dude, I could do this forever. Each of these infinitely many law structures totally precludes basically anything interesting and valuable from occurring yet reality. >> Yeah.
¶900So this we've already made the objection to this which is that the fact that plausibly there are many simple law examples such as those Joe provided. The fact that there are many such examples that preclude life doesn't tell us anything about whether we should what sort of law structures we would expect to see. In order to know that you have to make some statement about the distribution of all possible law structures. And as I said before, although it may be the case that we think that simpler ones are more likely, there's also way more complex law structures because there's more parameters to vary or more um uh relationships to describe if you want to frame it that way. So again, we have a situation of a smaller number of simple laws which may be more likely, but a vastly a vastly expanded range of complex laws uh which collectively probably are more likely.
¶901I mean I say probably because no one can really quantify this space at all. So I think that that just means the argument is useless. Joe can't actually tell us why we should expect these life prohibiting simple laws because he doesn't know how relatively likely they are compared to uh vastly more complex law structures. It seems to me that there's no reason to think that the laws that we do have are any more or less expected than what what you sort of would expect if you just sort of pluck the law system out of whatever the distribution is. Like the laws we have are kind of complicated but not as complicated as they could have been.
¶902I mean >> Joe doesn't tell us why we should expect to see these particularly simple laws. He just says that they're more likely. >> Well, imagine if you will every possible combination of laws. Okay. Now, here are five examples.
¶903We have established from these five examples that amongst every possible combination, not many contain life. >> Yes. Exactly. It's very it's not very convincing. >> I mean, I've given you five examples.
¶904What more do you want? I could go on. >> Well, it was more like 12 examples, but even so. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶905Yeah. suspiciously sailed over this vast sea of extremely simple, elegant, and uniform laws to instead actualize much more complicated ones that allow for life. Moreover, intuitively, most of the complicated law structures would just result in chaos. So, reality also suspiciously avoided them, too. Like, come on, dude.
¶906Like, you know something's up. Like, it's clearly not a matter of chance or brute unexplained fact that we got the law structures we did. >> Okay. Uh, important comment here. So Joe's response to my claim that well most of the law structures going to be more complicated and so we wouldn't necessarily expect to see very simple ones that preclude life.
¶907His response to that is to say well but these more complicated law structures even though that there's a lot of them they would just result in chaos um which he says is life prohibiting. Now again I don't know that Joe is using the word chaos in any very specific way because the universe is chaotic. It exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions at least in in many contexts it does. certainly evolution seems to and many biological systems and and other complex systems. So, um I don't know why he thinks that chaos rules out the existence of life or or other interesting phenomenon.
¶908Um but what Joe seems to be more generally saying is that he thinks that most of the complex law structures would just be too uh too messy perhaps or or have too many things going on that make life impossible. They'd be unstable in some way. I'm not exactly sure what he's trying to get at here and that's just pure speculation. He doesn't have any way to know that. And I don't really have any reason to think that he has he has a reason to like but why that should be convincing to us.
¶909The laws of nature that we do have are exceptionally complex and admit of uh very hard to predicting and often chaotic behaviors. In fact, in most cases, we can't actually make other than the any predictions from the fundamental laws other than the ve in very simple cases like Newton's um sorry not Newton Einstein's um uh equations of general relativity uh cannot be solved um cannot be solved with a a closed form solution other than in the very simplest symmetric cases and even in even using pertabbative methods we can't solve um for very many states using our quantum field theories other than very simple very simple cases using very uh sophisticated mathematical machinery and even then that's not like we can't use pertabbative methods we haven't figured out how to do that for gravity yet and uh those are often also not applicable in for the case of the strong nuclear force um so Joe wants to say that most of the laws are going to be too complex or or too um chaotic is the word he uses to to support life but he doesn't tell us as to why our current laws which are very complex and chaotic uh What? Why is that not a counter example to what he is saying? And are they more or less complex or chaotic than what we would expect from the broad distribution? It's just all appeal to vague intuitions and handwaving.
¶910There's no actual substance here for thinking that the laws that we do have are particularly different to what you would sort of expect from a uniform distribution or a distribution over possible laws. Nor that they're more or less life permitting than uh the typical set of law structures again that you would have from this distribution. Joe is just telling us this because that's his conclusion. He doesn't actually have any reason for thinking that. >> I uh I just don't think that anyone should be thinking about these problems in this way, right?
¶911Well, no, I agree because we don't know. We don't know what the space of law permitting, sorry, of life permitting law structures is >> and and I know this is a point like it's a point you made in your book a long time ago about like the epistemically illuminated space versus you know what we don't know. But I I think I've kind of come to appreciate this in just like a different way, which is sort of like um that this kind of like space that Joe's constructed out of like his methodology and metaphysical commitments. I just don't think that that has any relation to the structure of reality. And I think it comes out in like all of these ways of talking about things where he keeps talking about like um you know like compared to chance or whatever like I don't think there's like a chancy universe generator out there that's just like like what the do you know what I mean?
¶912Like so why am I trying to reason about universes as if there's like a chy mechanism? Well, it's this a priority epistemic possibility space that he's inviting you to research. >> What I'm saying is like I think that >> any um an epistemology that leads you to using this as a method for doing anything. It's just it's just useless. Like who cares?
¶913Like if you can like get yourself all wound up and confused over nothing. Like good for you. Um people who are working on this stuff should probably not be doing that. >> Yeah. So I I don't think this is a very good argument.
¶914Um let us jump to 139 where he very briefly talks about the fine-tuning for constants argument. Um and then maybe I'm going to go grab a bit more food. Uh if you like you can play that through to fine-tuning for discoverability because he talks about that immediately afterwards. Um and then um just to foreshadow what what we're going to do after that. So then there are he gives he goes through lots of objections.
¶915There are a few of the objections that I want to discuss. Some of them we've already gone through or I don't think are that interesting. So we'll we'll go through the argument and then we can look at some of the objections and then um hopefully in uh a couple of hours that we have left we can talk about some of the other arguments. Suppose we did hit the cosmic back by getting the particular law structures we did. It's still then shockingly unlikely under naturalism that the constants within those laws would fall within their exceedingly narrow life permitting ranges and did over various initial conditions of the universe.
¶916To take just one example, the cosmological constant governs the rate of expansion of the universe. If the cosmological constant had been larger by a factor of one part in 10 the^ of 120, then the universe would have flown apart so fast that no stable complex structures could have formed. If the cosmological constant had been smaller by one part in 10 to the 120, then the universe would have collapsed back in on itself immediately after the big bang. And there are other constants and initial conditions with exceedingly narrow life remitting ranges too. Taking these and the cosmological constant into account, physicist Luke Barnes estimates that the likelihood of a lifemitting universe on naturalism is less than 1 in 10 the^ of 136.
¶917Now, because this is a bit abstract, Philip Goff gives a helpful analogy to make the numbers here more vivid. Imagine you rolled a die 70 times in a row and got a six every single time. Nobody who saw a dieice come up six 70 times in a row would happily say, "Ah, well, you know, it's just a fluke or there's no deeper explanation for this you know it's just like a basic >> I I have to comment on this is that I absolutely hate this where um people draw an analogy between say a number that is um derived from some domain which is like pretty complicated and there are specific reasons why that number is there and you have to have all the specialist knowledge to even know like why it would be that. What might be reasonable of the numbers, what the consequence of that would be. And then literally just like to translate that into um like some example of like rolling dice or like um you know like drawing decks of cards or spinning roulette wheels or something because in those cases there literally is like a betting or gambling scenario where you might like bet on whe how the dice rolls whatever and it's really clear where the probabilities come from in those cases.
¶918they come from the physical symmetries of the dye that are being rolled or of um the you know the roulette wheel whether it's an American or European roulette wheel. I think American ones are more heavily biased in favor of the house um or whether um you know if you're talking about decks of cards again it's the physical properties of the cards. They're all um symmetric in terms of their their shape and size and weight, but they have differences in certain frequencies and so in in terms of the you know the the um things that are printed on them. And that enables us to like reason about what it would mean to like roll a dice a dice a certain way or um you know draw a card from that deck or something. But but when it comes to like a value, right, that is a part of a model and then you talk about like getting that value, what the are we talking about?
¶919Because we're not talking, you know, if we're talking about events, like so here's an event. Uh roll a dice, right? Here's an event. Draw a card from a deck. Um is universe generation an event?
¶920No. Right. Universe generation isn't an event or is it an event? I don't know. Maybe.
¶921But like all of this is so technical and different from you know is this it are um for example the theoretical physicists who are who are um reasoning in this domain are they considering it an event? Is it that is it the fact that it's possible for theoretical physicists to um it's possible for theoretical physicists to sort of like do a bit of metaphysics and and um ask questions about like epistemic possibility spaces and formulate a metaphysical question. Is that something that they do or is there like actually an event that we need to account for and then that is part of a process that's repeatable and like there are certain measurements and observations to be made and and you know I just think that there isn't this analogy you know when they say oh that would be equivalent to um drawing you know to to rolling a dice a billion times in a row and getting six every time or something is it? I mean I mean maybe that here's why it might not be because you're not you know you're not like pushing a button and getting a universe a billion times in a row and uh one of those times happens to be one with all of the um right parameters because maybe those parameters are not coming you know those parameters and initial conditions are not coming from any generation mechanism maybe they just are what they are I don't know because it's not my domain Right. But but this is where I think that just engaging in this like speculative nonsense is literally just pointless unless you're a specialist in this field.
¶922Like it literally is. There's no point. Um and maybe there is maybe I'd say there might be a bit of a point if you're like preventing people who do have the physics knowledge of doing like stupid stuff when they venture into metaphysics accidentally, right? Like maybe maybe there's a bit of guidance to be had there, but but there's a lot of stupid stuff here that's just like talking out your ass and just misleading misleading analogies to um more ordinary scenarios or fact. No, we think there's something fishy going on.
¶923You know, perhaps a loaded die, something that explains why the number six comes up each time. Well, how does this compare with fine-tuning? Well, the odds of getting six 70 times in a row with a fair die is 1 in 10 the^ of 55. On a conservative estimate, the odds of getting universe finally tuned for life are 1 in 10 the^ of 136. So if it's rational to put 70 optimal rolls of a die down to chance, then it's certainly irrational to put the finetuning of our universe down to chance as well.
¶924To take another example, there are around a 10 to the^ of 89 particles in the observable universe. So the odds of like the constants falling within their life remitting ranges under naturalism are far worse than picking out a single particle at random from the entire universe. But let's turn to the light side, not the dark side of naturalism, the light side of the god being perfectly good would be aware of and motivated by facts about value. So it doesn't seem nearly as improbable as like 1 in 10 to the^ of 136 under theism that the constants would actually allow for conscious living beings with rich mental lives, stable environments in which they can act and learn in a cosmos that is mathematically elegant and beautiful and at least potentially useful to those beings. Indeed, even if this were hopelessly, ludicrously, pathetically improbable given theism and our background on the order of say 1 and 10 to the^ of 100, that would still confirm theism by a factor of 10 the^ of 36, which is, you know, almost Yeah, I have a question, Joe.
¶925But what if we um picked a different number? Let's say um the equivalent number to the one that you just raised about rolling dice. Oh, so it wouldn't have Well, which is the right number? Oh well, let's just not have a discussion about any of that. It's just it's just the same thing.
¶926Like all the stuff that actually matters and is relevant is ignored of evidence for theism. But suppose we hit the jackpot not once but twice. Not only do our law structures miraculously contain a life permitting range that constant values could fall in, but the constant values actually miraculously fall in those exceedingly narrow life permitting ranges. Even then, a still further kind of finetuning offers yet more support for theism over naturalism, namely fine-tuning for discoverability. This kind of fine tuning was discovered by Robin Collins, and a number of physicists have double checked his calculations.
¶927You know, granted, this is cutting edge work, right? So, so we should definitely have some higher order uncertainty about whether the physics checks out. But if it does, and the preliminary findings suggest as much, then we have yet more powerful evidence for theism on our hands. And here I'll be drawing from two excellent posts linked in the resource document by Matthew Adelstein and Dustin Crmit. It turns out For sake, Bentham's bulldog substack post.
¶928me. That's that's literally all I have to say. >> Certain physical parameters need to fall in a very narrow range for the universe to be discoverable to us to a significant degree. If the parameters fell outside that range, living creatures could still exist, but they couldn't do science or develop technology anywhere near as well. To take just one example, Collins calculates that the baron to photon ratio could have had any of a wide range of values without compromising the ability of the universe to support life, but that within this range, it's finely tuned to maximize the intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the feature of the universe which allowed us to discover the big bang.
¶929Collins estimates that the odds of fine-tuning for discoverability by chance are on the order of one in a trillion trillion. >> And points out, >> why does he keep citing Matthew Adelstein, a guy who by his own admission like hasn't done high school level physics? Why has he got any high school physics or maths, right? Why is his opinion worth anything on this stuff? >> Who cares?
¶930>> While you sometimes think improbable things happen, you should never never never assume a one in a trillion trillion coincidence happened when there's an alternative viable theory believed independently by a number of smart people. That's about the odds that if a present human was selected at random, you'd be selected, then selected again, then that you'd enter a lottery where your odds of winning were one in 100,000 and then win that, too. Matthew Edstein knows one number and it's best to like we easily could have existed in a much less discoverable universe. And if Collins is correct, we should strongly expect to be in such a universe under naturalism. On the other hand, writes Kromit, we can see why a good God would have reason to favor the intellectual goods involved in learning and comprehending the fundamental workings of the world along with the ability to appreciate the beauty God had instilled in the deepest workings of creation so that we have more reason to expect these features if the universe is created by God.
¶931discoverability too therefore provides powerful evidence for theism and this is this is like more have your cake and eat it stuff I think because it's like if uh our minds were like say more powerful and we could like figure stuff out more easily it would be like oh look how great the designer is like you know obviously he made us with like this r these rational faculties but then like when our faculties fail fail or if they're worse, it'd be like, "Wow, look at all the um like discoverability that he built into the universe because we can like graft our way to figuring things out." And so, so I don't I don't think there's like really good principles here that that establish like an actually expected range because whichever way you go in terms of how good we are at figuring things out or how difficult it is to figure anything out, you just have something to say in modifying, you know, like what God's um plan was. Um you you know you can just say oh yeah like he you know he wanted us to work a bit harder and discover more or like oh no he really like just wanted to create this um brilliant mind that we have that that um extols his his glory. >> Yes, exactly. There's no constraints at all on discoverability. So Collins has this one example which he alleges I've not looked at the details but I honestly don't think it matters that much.
¶932He alleges that the cosmic microwave background radiation is much more discoverable than it could otherwise have been without um compromising the ability of the universe to support life. Uh okay, that's fine. Yes, I mean that this this is one of the questions raised in chat as to um the end state that uh Christians and many theists alleged allege God to be working towards is one in which it seems as discoverability would not even exist. So it's sort of very questionable that that is what you would actually expect God to do. But even within the realm of our universe and and the current state of things.
¶933Um so there's one example of where arguably uh it seems that it's much more discoverable than it could have been. But what about all the areas where things are much less discoverable than seemingly they could be. I mean there's so many examples where things are just so difficult to figure out. I like to give the example of the multi-electron atom. So we have closed form solutions for the um orbitals of a single electron about an atom and including with different numbers of uh nucleons and protons and neutrons.
¶934So those are fairly complicated. If you've if you've studied sort of chemistry or uh or physics at high school or undergrad level, you might have um you might have derived those in terms of like spherical harmonic functions. But those only work for a single electron. And of course, you know, most atoms have more than one electron. It turns out that as soon as you try to include a second electron, the interaction effects between the the negative repulsion effects of the electron mean that it's impossible to write a closed form solution.
¶935we only have approximate methods and they're excruciatingly complicated to work through. We can still only simulate quite simple molecules using um abonicio quantum chemistry methods. I did a whole podcast episode, my science of everything podcast on quantum chemistry if people are interested in this because I find it very uh very fascinating. That's just one example of a whole host of examples. Another one would be quantum sorry quantum chromodnamics where we still can't simulate the properties of a simple um like proton because of the difficulty in applying pertabbative methods to the strong nuclear force.
¶936There's innumerable examples that we could give. Well, what about in the case of genetics where things are so complicated in our genetic makeup that it's very hard to apart from a very small number of conditions, it's hard to work out how most um what most genes do in terms of like their regulatory function and how they interact with a complicated range of other genes to produce, you know, most traits of interest. Almost everything that you see in the natural world is horrendously complicated. There's only a small number of things that we have a fairly good grasp on. Um and you know the cultivate microwave background radiation is sort of one of the very few cases where um we were able to discover it like relatively easily.
¶937I mean of course relatively meant like doing centuries of physical theory and then putting up multiple satellites because we didn't find it the first time we put up a satellite and then we had to put up another I think it was Kobe was the first one and then plank which had higher resolution was able to actually see the evidence there. So you know I guess that's discoverable in a in a sense it could be less discoverable but the whole thing is ridiculous right? If if we can discover something, oh, it was fine tuned to be discoverable. If we can't, oh well, you know, God is testing us or God had reasons to do it that way or God wants us to try harder. You know, that there's absolutely no constraints on anything at all.
¶938And these alleged reasons why God would want us things to be discoverable are just purely ad hoc. There's no basis for thinking that God this is important to God. After all, if these are so important like striving after learning and comprehending things through physical theory, how how can these things be perfections or important if God himself cannot manifest these because God can't discover anything? He already knows everything. So are these supposed to be perfections or types of goods that God himself can't instantiate?
¶939Makes no sense. Uh the whole thing of fine-tuning for discoverability is just a bundle of confusion from beginning to end. I I don't know why anyone bothers talking about it. I think it's it's Yeah, it's just so silly in my opinion. >> It it's also like kind of it I think it it probably says more about like our societies and how we think of ourselves than anything else, right?
¶940Because, you know, you might think that there are some societies that would just be like content with existing how they are and not constantly trying to like discover things. Um, I'm not really particularly saying whether that's like a good or a bad thing, but like is it that important from every culture's point of view or even God's point of view? And again, to just, you know, cuz all we've got really is the problem of evil restated in a million different ways. It it it also kind of like just raised the question of what you do with like you know all the Ramuna gens who don't get to go to universities and you know spend their lives down the cobalt mines um getting the lithium ore for you know cobalt and lithium for all of our electronic devices to keep uh western capitalism going you know the god just doesn't value their um you know abilities to discover things I guess or or Maybe God is actually the god of apartheid and created the races different or something. So they just have to suffer.
¶941I don't you know like it's it's just obviously I know they'd explain it away in terms of um well that's all just the problem of evil or whatever but I don't think it is the problem of evil. I don't think the problem of evil sorry I should say should be conceptualized as this like um you know one issue because actually what I think it is is a specific problem relating to um you know um reasons that God has or or or or fine-tuning in God I should say with respect to his preferences and desires and and how a direct consequence of like this desire for discoverability now raises questions about all of the people who never have like the opportunity for discoverability, right? And and why he doesn't realize those desires by creating like more equitable states of affairs in some way or another or you know um and so I I don't think I I mean obviously it sort of like relates to evil in some sense, but I think it's more specific than that. And I think it's, you know, and that's reasonable in response to the finetuning in God that's being done in order to try and reason why this like nothing burger weirdass theory of like omnip omnipotent disembodied mind wants to create like carbon based life on rocky planets that discovers things. >> Yeah.
¶942Let's move on to um some of the objections to fine-tuning because there's some interesting things to discuss. Some of them we've already gone through. 156 is where he tackles the strange life forms objection which is one of my favorite objections. He doesn't uh >> Joe doesn't think too kindly of this one but we'll we'll see what he has to say. Let's see this bit is something going on 17 of them objections to the fine tuning argument but I don't think they work.
¶943I'll rebut 17 of them as you can see on screen here. Hopefully your your pet objection is on the screen here. And rebutting all 17 should provide good high order evidence that objections not on the list are problematic too. And by the way, there are just like lots of more general points about philosophical theorizing that you can learn from going through these objections and seeing the ways in which they're mistaken. And these points also just like apply to lots of other basian arguments or theism.
¶944Uh like >> you can get so good at philosophy that you can like be confused about why stuff fits in. Here's a good point actually that all of these like harmony harmony harmony arguments literally you know like Ray Comfort like behold the atheist nightmare and it's like why does a banana fit in my hand? Yeah, >> it's literally like that like you know like why is stuff the way it is rather than like some other way. Oh, god darn it. >> Yeah, pretty much >> problems uh with the objections arise again and again.
¶945So going through these >> super helpful in some of these that I don't find as interesting other people may disagree but okay third objection other life forms. I know we're starting with some doozies here. Doesn't the fine tuning argument neglect that there might be other very strange life forms like ones that aren't carbon based or maybe are made up of complex glass clouds or something? Uh, no it doesn't. The examples of fine tuning that I canvas have nothing to do with carbon, but instead with the very possibility of any complex or stable structures at all.
¶946As Phil notes, whatever kind of life you're invisaging, it's not going to be able to exist if the universe collapses back in on itself after a split second, which would have been the result of a negative cosmological constant >> because everything exists at the same temporal scale as we do. >> Yes. this um this response is just utter nonsense. So um it presupposes that there is some preferred temporal scale that life requires which obviously is true for our types of life. You couldn't have that um forming in fractions of a second.
¶947But why would you assume this of any type of possible life? Again, particularly when we consider changing many of the constants. Um so this is just pure assumption which is justified by absolutely nothing. So why couldn't there be a type of life form that only requires a split second? Is is there like a preferred temporal range that God just really likes?
¶948billions of years and only in that time frame can life exist. Like that's just not no there's no like privileged time frame that it it just has to take this long. It could it could be any amount of time depending on how rapidly the processes occur. >> I'd also say like >> you know like I I like Philip Goff in many ways but like I would never get advice from him on science. I would say like like you know he's really he's I I I don't think he's done anything in STEM or the sciences and I just I just wouldn't trust his judgment on these things.
¶949>> True. Luke Barnes would say something similar and he is a physicist. >> I Luke Barnes although I mean I think he's just equally wrong about being speculative about that. Physicists can say what when the conditions under which known life forms would not be able to exist. What they can't tell you is under what conditions radically different forms of life would be able to exist because they don't know anything about radically different forms of life.
¶950We don't have any way to study that. As I keep saying, we cannot even deduce that complex uh carbon based life would be possible in our universe purely from the constants and the equations that we have. The only reason we know such things are possible is because we have higher order evidence. Like we know about stars and planets and chemistry and things like that, but we don't have the ability to deduce that just from the lrange equations. We can't do any of those sort of things.
¶951So why would we expect that we'll be able to just look at the constants and deduce that for other types of universes in which we had radically different sets of constants? And I I I talked with Luke Barnes about this and he was pretty dismissive of this, but he I don't think was able to give a coherent answer to this. All it comes down to is being able to rule out known forms of life um by varying consonants. that is a very limited methodology that's essentially guaranteed to give you these sort of fine-tuning uh situations because it it it can only eliminate it can never show you what could exist because there's we don't just don't have that ability to reason about this. Another way to think about this is that there are uh something like 27 hang on I'll get the number right.
¶952I think that there's about 26 constants that Luke Barnes mentions uh he's got because there's a bunch from uh there are slightly different lists. There's a bunch from particle physics and then there's um a bunch from uh cosmology. Oh yeah. Okay. So in this particular list, just consulting my notes here, he has 25 constants from particle physics and six from cosmology.
¶953So 31. You may see slightly different numbers. Of those 31 numbers, um how many does Luke Barnes argue show finetuning for life? >> Uh you asking me, sorry. >> Yeah.
¶954How many do you think? >> Um all 31. I don't know >> of 31 the answer is five. >> Okay, fair enough. That's uh more modest than >> so that is the cosmological constant the uh Higs vacuum expectation value.
¶955>> Oh no no no I do remember this cuz he talks he talks in his book >> about um how he actually has a go at Craig for listing like 147 and like not um knowing what he's talking about. And I think yeah, I remember this because they say that him and Gain Lewis, they say we're going to choose five because like we think that that is sort of like the most modest way of making this argument. And so I think what they're trying to do the part of the reason of doing that is because they're saying like these are the most obvious ones for how um >> defensible ones. >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶956Basically >> my point is so these are the cosmological constant Higs vacuum expectation value and the up and down quark and electron Yukawa couplings which is related to their mass. Um so we have five of 31. Now you know each of the 31 are not exactly equal. or they do different things. But the point is we have all of these constants and we are still very ignorant about what phenomena are possible in our own universe.
¶957Particularly when we're just looking at from the granchian we have no idea what different things might be possible if you start varying um all of these or like large subsets of these of these constants. Um in terms of the types of interactions particularly with the uh strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, nutrinos we know very little about. Um there's multiple generations of matter. almost all of the fine sheeting is with respect to the first generation of matter which is um like quarks and electrons that we're familiar with. Um so the point is that I just do not find the fine-tuning evidence at all convincing because it's it's developed from a methodology which is pretty much designed to only be able to exclude things that we know about.
¶958It cannot possibly say anything about >> the vast expanse of um the probability space of varying all of these other constants in you know um yeah >> in the laws of physics. So um >> that's why I don't find it convincing. >> Tell me all the life forms in our universe from uh you know the equations or like how about this you know like people keep saying like chat GPT is conscious. Why don't you just like derive it from our universe's equations and tell me if like chat GPT is life or not? Because that is something that we can do.
¶959Well, well, the the reason I'm saying that is because I think that that's a good example of like the fact that our predication of like whether something is a person or alive or has legal status or something is like way more complicated than just an appeal to some particular like conception that we have well fleshed out that we're aware of. like we we don't really you know like I'm not making the case that it is or should have personhood but what I'm saying is like human societies are complicated and there's like a lot of marketers and people trying to do things and like you know we very well could end up just as some like stupid um open AI public you know like PR stunt like giving chat GBG like legal status or something like whoa it's like look how advanced the new model is and then maybe that would just And that would be how we like talk about stuff in future going forward. So there's like a lot going on to um what what we're even supposed to be considering when we talk talk about um other life forms. And yeah, I just don't think people know what they're talking about. And I think I think it's a really good point about the fact that we can't even reason in our own universe.
¶960So like what are you even doing when you talk about like just varying constants independently from each other when when that doesn't even make sense in of itself? We we need a greater epistemic humility on that point is is my view. Let us move to um what's the next one? 228. The universe is mostly lifeless object >> even um I want to see what he is saying frequency frequent the frequentism objection is hey listen Joe we've only observed one universe we have no frequency data about lifeing universes and our sample size is literally >> yeah sorry let me just one so we have no grounds to think lifeing constants are extremely improbable under naturalism how do I respond to this well first we know that this objection must wrong since it problematically overgeneralizes.
¶961It faces the awesome theistic evidence parody which will be a recurring theme. Oh, we've responded to that. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, because I was I was kind of thinking that like that you know that this is one of my objections to the like imagined betting scenarios thing, right?
¶962Is that even if you buy in if you buy into like the betting scenarios framework, you have to cash your bet at some point, right? So, so if you if you reason um that you're sort of like doing this thing of imagining yourself betting in certain scenarios, but your um bet never cashes out, you you're not in that paradigm. You're not doing that thing. So, I I do think, you know, like because basically you never like resolve the state that you're in. I I I think that there is like a real problem for the appropriateness of the imagined betting scenarios stuff for the basian methodology on like you know bet on whether um God did it or not.
¶963I guess you could maybe say, well, if God did it, it would like be cashed out when you die, but like is that but but like I guess it's not really cashed out if you die and you don't not like resurrected and God tells you you were right or something like so it's not >> just analogous in important ways to other types of reasoning where can be resolved >> and I so I do think that there's there is a problem here um for the basian method methodology, right, where it's it's not I don't think it's like placing a bet in the same sort of way as all the other behaviors or actions that you might justify in that way. >> Not that I'm necessarily completely on board with whatever, you know, this like frequentist objection, but I I think that there are meth, you know, there's there >> I agree. I just didn't want to focus on it because I think that it focuses on the form of the argument rather than the substance of it. Uh but that's just my opinion. >> Yeah, that's fair enough.
¶964Um I think you have to use a basian framework to make a fine tuning argument. That's >> Yeah, that's true. You don't have to. You don't have to. >> 228.
¶965>> Oh, here you go. He's got your epistemically illuminated range here. He's going to >> Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah.
¶966It's mostly the the same things we've talked about before. >> Like implicitly thinking like the vast majority of ways in which leaves could be arranged would not spell out a message. It's just a very small measure of the possible arrangements of leaves that correspond. They all spell out a message to somebody from somewhere >> to a message. Ah, that looks like elicit uh indifference style reasoning.
¶967You can't reason that way. Okay, so clearly I'm the one who's confused in this case. I mean, it's true that your reasoning is relying on something in the vicinity of indifference reasoning, but it's also just completely entirely legitimate. Like this is the correct way to reason in this case. >> I know guys, I keep playing Brian Cutter, but he's just like serially correct about things.
¶968Like what am I supposed to do? All right, objection 12. Mostly lifeless. So listen, the universe is mostly barren and even hostile to life. Doesn't this show that our universe wasn't designed with life in mind?
¶969At the very least, it seems very surprising on the hypothesis that the designer is interested in life that the designer basically produced a universe 99.99999% of which is lifeless. Well, in response, first, as Miles Danu pointed out prepping for our video on fine-tuning for his channel, the fine-tuning argument only requires the premise that a life permitting universe is non-negligibly likely given theism since actualizing all the goods enabled by life permitting universe is not a ludicrously absurd motive that God might have. >> And we uh we uh know what ludicrously absurd means um and that it isn't ludicrously absurd. >> Yeah. Again, he he's just he's just asserting his conclusion.
¶970his his conclusion entails that the prior can't be so unlikely that the evidence doesn't come. So he just asserts well it wasn't it wasn't that unlikely. How do you know what process did you take to assess to assess that the the appropriate way to do it which is analogous to the way that he does it for naturalism is to assess the range of possible creative choices that God could have made and then assess the fraction of those which are consistent with the type of universe that we have. Uh in this case it's one that's law governed with uh constants that permit the existence of embodied life. or what fraction of that is that relative to all of the universes that God have created it could have created.
¶971It's tiny. It's even smaller than the finetuning under naturalism. I would argue I have in a previous video tried to put some numbers to this. So again, Joe doesn't actually follow his methodology consistently. When it comes to naturalism, he tries to make this these sort of pseudo quantitative arguments about oh all the ways it could have been and you know um it's very unlikely that we would see the outcome that we do by chance.
¶972Uh but then when it comes to theism, he always just waves his hand and says it's not that unlikely that God might have had a reason, even if we're not quite sure what it was, which is not an equivalent methodology. He should do an equivalent approach of trying to quantify the space and then reason about the proportions that that would give us the outcome. He just never does that. He doesn't seem to think it's important to apply the same methodology to uh to the theism versus the naturalist cases, which is I I just think it's really problematic to do that. you're you're baking in the conclusion that you want to get by making these sorts of ad hoc assumptions.
¶973>> But what if we consider that there is this thing called intrinsic probability and that uh simpler theories like um omniscient omnipotent omni benevolent beings have a higher intrinsic probability than other theories. And um because theism is one such theory that has these marks of uh qualitative of um simpler theories of simpler intrinsically probability theories that um therefore it's not ludicrous it's not so ludicrously low that the evidence >> well you have to make the further assumption that God would want to create a life permitting universe but most of which does not contain life or is hostile to life. That has to be not ludicrously unlikely. Well, I think I'm making a different point even that I think like even if you bought all of that, which we've said is like kind of nonsense is like even if you buy all of that, it doesn't actually establish whether or not it's ludicrudicly low, right? It still could be like even if you just miss that it's not.
¶974>> Yeah. Even if Joe's right about the these like criteria of like simplicity. Okay. Like is it just theism versus not theism? Is theism like a candidate amongst like many different options?
¶975And uh like why do things get the probability like what does it actually get and why is that not ludicrously low? Like exactly >> we are just told that that is the conclusion. We are not given reasons >> because it has like some criteria that apparently are like okay like make it better than some other like random chance or something. Maybe it does but maybe it's still ludicrously like maybe that all just ludicrously low. >> Yeah, exactly.
¶976We could still handwave to those reasons. Maybe God does have those. But maybe it's ludicrously unlikely that he has those reasons relative to all of the other reasons he could have. Joe hasn't given us a method for assessing that. He just tells us that the conclusion matches what he wants it to.
¶977But notice that this reasoning doesn't at all commit the fine tuning proponent to thinking that the probability of a lifeabundant universe would be ludicrously high under theism such that our failure to observe life abundance would be huge evidence for naturalism over theism. Nothing in the fine-tuning argument implies or justifies that probability judgment. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Right? If, as fine tetuning proponents often urge, a modest amount of epistemic humility is called for in making judgments about what God would or wouldn't do, that actually motivates the thought that even if the likelihood of a life abundant universe given theism is very high, it wouldn't be astronomically high.
¶978Like on the order of 99.9999% likely, right? That's just an implausibly inflated probability assignment. >> Why, Joe? You're not telling us why. >> I I also do think that this is like kind of wrong.
¶979like >> um so like you know you specified that God has this like desire for there to be like life right? >> Yeah. I I do think that that does then give you something to work with just in the actual universe in terms of thinking about like you know proportions of life and you know he he's saying that that doesn't commit the point proponent to thinking that the probability of a life abundant universe would be ludicrously high maybe maybe not right but I do think it probably has something to say about um like you you'd expect there to be lots of other life in the universe rather than not. >> Yeah, but she's just gonna say that it's maybe you would expect that, but it's not ludicrously unlikely that there would be not so much life. Why would we think that?
¶980Well, some >> well, he mentioned something about we should have certain epistemic humility. So, somehow the fact that we don't know what God would do is a reason for thinking that he would do this specific thing. I don't really understand how that's supposed to work. That should mean we have a broader distribution over the range of possible outcomes, not somehow that it supports this. I I don't get that at all.
¶981>> I mean, yeah, but I mean, this is the point. It's like we've got a little bit of information to work with here, which is God likes life. Like, I think that >> that's what I mean. It's like if that's that's all that's that's so much better than like, okay, God's omnipotent. Does he pack the universe with life or not?
¶982No idea. God's omni benevolent. Does he pack the universe with life or not? No idea. God's omniscient.
¶983Does he pack the universe with life or not? No idea. God likes life. Does he pack the universe with life or not? Lean.
¶984Yes. Like I've got something at least. Right. I've got something. But so so I think that that's probably like given that that has some way made its way into the evaluation that God likes life.
¶985Well, like we've that is the only piece of information we have to to like think life is evidence of God. So if we don't see it in places in our universe, I think it should count as some evidence against. Right. But so that's what I'm saying I think is wrong with what Joe's saying here. I I I I get that he is disputing that.
¶986But like I think he's only disputing that because he has to draw a circle around the evidence that he has. >> It just seems very ad hoc. >> Yeah. But more generally, we just have two different pieces of data on our hands. First, that the constants are life permitting.
¶987And second, that life is rare in the universe. We first update unlike life permitting constants. This datim massively favors theism over naturalism. We then put that DATM in our back. >> This is such crap as well where it's like oh but yeah like even if I grant you your objection like fine tuning is so sick that you know you just like who even cares bro?
¶988Like just the update so massive. >> I saying is correct that we should treat these as separate data because you could just say that the data that we're updating on is how much life exists in the universe. >> Yeah point. But often there's different ways of uh passing out an update depending on what you count the evidence as. >> It's not he said that this is the way to do it.
¶989It's not clear why that's a better way to do it than just update on how much life there is in the universe. >> I'd say update on our universe first before like all the stuff you can't imagine everywhere else. But like >> yeah knowledge. Next, we consider how well the conjunction of theism and life permitting constants predicts the rarity of life compared to the conjunction of naturalism and lifeing constants. Even if the rarity of life favors the latter over the former, it won't be anywhere near as good evidence as life permitting constants in the first place.
¶990>> Second, there are just lots of non-negligibly reasons. >> I guess this is why he says second, but this is really just the argument. There's not really a second to it. Like this is the substance. If you're going to give us some reason why God would do this, as usual, it's just going to be ad hoc though.
¶991have for making life relatively rare in the universe that we've observed. A vast and mostly lifeless universe gives us a sense of precariousness and radical dep. So God values a sense of precariousness in his creatures, does he? What the are you talking about? Like a sense >> feel a sense of precariousness.
¶992Well, why is that? >> The part of the reason I got my camera off is cuz my dog wants to like cuddle up to me right now, right? And I, you know, in owning in having this creature that I'm like responsible for the life of, um, I really value a sense of precariousness. Like that's something I really want to cultivate a sense of precariousness in my dog. Like what what weird like nonsense is this?
¶993Just babble. Dependence and insignificance, which in turn can cultivate profound humility and awe and reverence. And again, this this is also like weird like cook stuff like the No, but it really is like what kind of odd abusive relationship do do you think that you know like God wants you to just be like trembling and like you know just completely like codependent and like you know having a mental breakdown unless you imagine yourself as a saint or something like >> that's what a loving God would do, right? It sounds like psychological abuse. Like >> yes, I agree.
¶994>> But then a lot of >> reasons for a large and mostly lifeless universe. Like I don't know deep space and deep time are super cool. Maybe a large and mostly lifeless universe is required in order for the universe. >> So again then that sorry that second deep time and deep space is super cool. >> Well do you know what?
¶995So, here's the thing, right? You know what? Everyone like astronomers and science geeks and people science fiction nerds. What is the one thing that we're all desperate to find in the universe? >> Yeah.
¶996Aliens, >> other life, that's what everyone wants to find. Granted, you know, quazars and black holes and galaxies and supernovas, that's all really cool, but other life is by is what everyone really wants to find. And so, the god could have saturated the universe with other forms of exotic life. um which you know maybe he does but there's not a lot of evidence that and certainly most of the universe doesn't contain life. It can't.
¶997So like this is just pure nonsense that oh it's just really good that most of the universe is just empty space because clearly that's what would be really interesting for us or it would give a sense of wonder. more life would do that >> because from from time to time I would com I would contemplate deep space and I would just think gee that's cool you know never mind like the all the people who like stare into the night sky and feel absolute terror at the vast emptiness and like you know chaotic meaninglessness of it all you know never mind them deep space is cool bro >> yeah It's not convincing to cooperate with God in producing life, right? Just think like you need a lot of time and space to >> I just I want to say on this one as well. I I like how he literally himself put I don't know deep space like he's literally just reason forged the chemical elements needed for life in the guts of stars and then for those guts to be spewed throughout the universe as a result of supernova. And maybe it's good that God's creation itself cooperates with God in bringing about valuable results.
¶998At the very least, a lot of empty time and space seems to be needed for the universe to cooperate with God in producing life conditional on our law structures. So, so look made them that way in the first place. Look at what he says. Look at how he like markets uh this rebuttal though where it's like there are just lots of non-negligibly likely reasons and then literally they all say maybe and like and literally the second point which you'd expect to be the second strongest he says I don't know deep space like he's literally just reaching from the very start but he sells it as like oh there's these like crazy non-negligible you'd have to be like insane to reject these and it's like I don't know deep space seems cool bro like yeah this is what I mean this is not the methodology he applies to naturalism by the way if you apply this methodology to naturalism you can get the same results I'll I'll give some examples of this later if I'm just allowed to hand wave whatever I like you can do exactly the same thing WITH NATURALISM >> YEAH YEAH I mean I mean that's the thing is like like don't think >> well maybe like maybe like nature just like you know has a proclivity for deep space bro and initial conditions. And those law structures or initial conditions themselves don't seem better predicted by naturalism than theism.
¶999In fact, as we've seen, the opposite is true. Robin Collins notes in an interview with Matthew Adelstein that a truly vast universe is also needed for discoverability. And if that's true, then even if God intended to populate just a few galaxies or even just one, he >> and that's actually true because I think that all of us in all of our endeavors that we've engaged in frequently explore the universe to discover things. Well, it might be easier to do so if it wasn't so vast and take so long to get across places, you know, like we'd be able to discover things a lot better if the Earth was flat, like I talked about in my video, and we could uh we could actually get places instead of taking years to crawl across part of our own solar system. >> Joe, a guy who has figured everything out from the armchair requires a vast universe to engage in discoverability.
¶1000>> I think it's really depressing how large the universe is because it just means the vast majority of it's pretty much inaccessible to us. But I think if you know if God really likes us to discover and interact with with people and and um have form relations and learn, why not make it so that we're actually able to get places? The fact that the speed of light is so slow makes it really difficult. >> Oh, you don't you don't know about um geometric unity, that's the problem. Geometric unity is the physics that aliens use in UFOs to travel around.
¶1001And the FBI >> discover thatinstein. No, Eric Weinstein has discovered it, but the >> Oh, really? Yes. I see. >> The CIA and the FBI have been discrediting him and his brother as conspiracy theorists, which is why he can't get his geometric unity papers published um because they don't want people to know the um UFO physics.
¶1002It would be too powerful. You'd still have good reason to create many more galaxies. A large and mostly lifeless universe gives life forms therein opportunities for colonization and interstellar or even intergalactic travel eventually. In fact, the difficulties introduced by deep space is part of what would make this such an awesome achievement. And but we can never get to the vast majority of these places, Joe.
¶1003Like, well, if if God values this sort of thing, maybe make it possible for us to get like it would take about 40,000 years for us to get to the nearest star with current technology. Now, you can cut that with but you know, why am I even bothering with this? >> Why is Joe making these arguments? Humans just die of climate change in the next five years like nuclear war. Like, you know, Putin decides like he doesn't like the UK selling storm shadow to Ukraine and just like starts a nuclear war tomorrow and that's it.
¶1004Just like it's great, guys. It's so discoverable. >> Introducing colonization as a reason why God made things a certain way is it's a strategy. Let me put it that way. >> Yeah.
¶1005Yeah. The Joe would have really fit in in the age of sale. I'll say that. You know, like Joe and Queen Elizabeth the first. They would have really >> Why did God put all these empty lands here if he didn't want to settle them >> full of univilized peoples?
¶1006>> Teranius. >> We need lots of empty lifeless places to Right. >> Also, maybe a universe more jam-packed with life would lead to a far greater potential for disastrous consequences like far worse catastrophes, subjugation, slavery, war, factory. >> Why would you think that, Joe? Are you just making things up?
¶1007Why? Like why think that that's more than trivially likely? Like I just this is just reaching for anything. There's no attempt here to tell us why we should fix. >> These are non-negligible reasons to think God would do this.
¶1008>> Listen, like I could go on, but together these various reasons significantly dent the evidential force of like >> you you know um do you know that statement from like Shakespeare where it's like there are more things there than there are things that there actually are. This is just like that. Like may maybe it's all like better than you ever imagined, bro. Like maybe maybe like everything's all going to be okay, bro. Like this is just some weird >> I'm not saying these are definitely God's reasons.
¶1009I'm just trying to identify not to implausible reasons. God, >> how are any of these not too implausible? God values deep space and like maybe God wants like people to colonize the universe. Like why would he care about any of that? I I have no idea.
¶1010God God wants uh cosmic what's he called the uh cosmic Columbus. He just wants like you know Catholic Catholic spaceships going to all the planets. >> Yeah. Well, he could have made a lot more planet if he wanted to do it that way. That's what I'm saying.
¶1011Like it's really weird if he wants that to make the nearest planets thousands of years. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Like he could have given us like a a nice little test planet or something that was, you know, like we could be in like a by uh I don't know what the right way of describing it was, but if if we had like a twin planet and we both just span around each other, go around the sun and then we could like go to our twin planet as like a little hopping. >> Well, the planet could just be much larger.
¶1012Like think about this. It takes what, a few months to sail around around Earth, you know, even using um, you know, 16th century, 17th century technology. Well, what if it took 10 years to sail around the earth, a thousand years to sail around the earth using that technology? Like, we could we could live on the world or something like this. You know, it could be vastly bigger.
¶1013We could have so many more types of life and types of civilizations and different peoples for God to relate to. All the good stuff that supposedly he created the universe for. But as soon as you ask, why isn't there more of that stuff in the universe? of almost all of the universe is just empty nothingness. Somehow God loves empty nothingness and he wants to put it almost everywhere.
¶1014It's just so silly. >> He hates sailing. That's the problem. He was like you can have but we know from the Old Testament God doesn't like salt water, right? >> So, uh yeah, it's it's it's pretty weird.
¶1015And and the other thing is that like you know a lot of space travel as we currently engage in it would like be really bad for the ozone layer. Um, that's actually like a a a problem right now with all the satellites that we're putting up, right? So, um, maybe maybe not such a good idea. All that space travel for old Earth. >> Wow.
¶1016Yeah. Anyway, world like this. Oh, sorry. Keep going. Yeah.
¶1017Bit more. So, is to blend into the forest of the datim of life's rarity. Pretty. I mean, it just seems manifestally clear to me that its force just utterly pales in comparison to the force of fine tuning. So, that's my second response.
¶1018Third, is there anything especially valuable about packing the universe tightly at all moments with life as opposed to creating, say, infinitely many conscious creatures throughout an endless future or a spcially infinite cosmos or an infinite multiverse, regardless of how locally rare life is at any given moment in cosmic history. Both the high density of life strategy here and these various low density of life strategies allow the same number of conscious creatures to exist. So, it's unclear why God would prefer the former over the latter. But so long as that's unclear, then it's not going to be too surprising that God might opt for the latter over the former. In which >> why would he even create time?
¶1019This I think actually also sort of like completely destroys Joe's ability to reason about anything. Well, may or maybe he would argue not given his preference for eternal conscious torment these days. But like you know like the whole point of being like oh you know there's some ways of reasoning about this theism space because like omni belove benevolence like rules out some things >> but then it's like actually no like god could just literally run like the forbidden experiment you know like the um raise a child with like no stimuli or people around to see what happens. He he could just do that forever into the infinite future and like wouldn't it just be good because they'd be like conscious creatures at infinite number into the future and that's what's good. Well, no, because like what you're saying is important like you know humans are like social creatures and we need like social relationships to flourish and things like that in a certain proportion.
¶1020And uh you know if this discoverability thing is meant to be important and you want to say well like isn't biology cool? We get to discover like caterpillars and stuff. Wouldn't it be cool if there were like Mars caterpillars? Wouldn't that be like more cool than just there being like lame earth caterpillars that you can discover? So it it just seems inconsistent with like all these other points that he's >> all the other reasons he gives about why life and consciousness and discovery and things like that are good.
¶1021Somehow they're just not good when there's, you know, more than a tiny amount of them in the universe. I want to respond to this point that God could create an infinite amount of uh conscious life by a multiverse or an infinite future. Um well, first of all, I'm not sure that those are consistent with Catholic theology. But putting that aside, the um I think that the appeal to infinity is uh being is being used here for very misleading purposes because whilst it's true that obviously if you have an infinite number of persons uh in the in the future or across the multiverse or within our universe um then that's the same number um or the same cardality of the set might be a better way to say it because infinity is not a number. um the um that doesn't mean that an omnib benevolent god would be indifferent between those two states because the fact that when you're dealing with infinite sets you know any set that is say in can be placed in one to one correspondence with say the natural numbers has the same cardality there's different cardalities of infinity but just talking about like a countable infinity uh to for the sake of argument the fact that two sets have the same cardality doesn't mean that an omnib benevolent being should be indifferent between those um because the different states could still have you could still have a aological or like moral based value based preference between them.
¶1022Um I mean a simple example would be to imagine one universe in which we have an infinite number of people experiencing bliss forever. Another universe in which we have an infinite number of people experiencing bliss forever plus a a billion people being excruciatingly tormented forever. Now both of those cases have an if you to sort of aggregate an infinite amount of value but I would say that it's perfectly reasonable to have a preference over which of those is is better than the other because one of them has the excruciating suffering people and the other one doesn't just site a simple example. So um I mean this is sort of discussed in infinite ethics but I think Joe is just wrong here to sort of appeal to infinities as like a copout for as a way to sort of avoid uh make God having to be able to make a judgment. God still can and should make a judgment as to which universes are preferable and he can absolutely choose two things that have the same cardality of of goodness.
¶1023I think this this could potentially be like more Matthew Adelstein influence because >> uh like Matthew's oldest video on his channel is him doing the and I think he got this from Ellis Yodkowski actually but the you know like the in a million people with like a speck of dust in their eye versus like a child being tortured like what's worse >> and you know he's like well the dust is like obviously worse because I counted it that way. I don't know how he did, but like the I think that this is like similar reasoning to that, which just like kind of doesn't take into account a lot of morally important factors in evaluating the situation. Like just like counting random like samples of what you consider to be good across like spatially disperate things. like you can still make a judgment about whether or not that is better than a different arrangement of things where there's like other goods that can come about because >> even if you can't aggregate even if they aggregate to the same number I mean that at that point it just means that you can't compare them quantitatively because >> well that this is what like the the the addition operation I think is actually not appropriate over >> exactly yeah it's it's not the right you don't just look at the state of affairs and go like oh you know like your life um is like really miserable, but like a really good thing happens versus like you have a life that's like pretty tolerable for like a long time. And they're the same because you add them in the same way.
¶1024Like I don't think they're the same. No. Like if you have a miserable life than like one really good experience or something that I think is like worse than you just having like a a sort of like tolerable life for a long period of time because because I don't think that you should do this kind of like addition of of of things in this way across time for And so it's making extremely strong assumptions about the only ways that God would have to rationally evaluate different types of worlds in assuming that these different sort of uh these different states that have infinite value would be equivalent to each other. And he doesn't try to justify this. >> God just checks what's on the objective list and uh which is which is you know which is um super like rational thing to believe.
¶1025We shouldn't be too surprised to find a low density life in the universe conditional on theism. As a result, the data of life rarity is basically a complete nothing burger. It's not good evidence against theism. Just deal with it. And like all we can just deal with it, James deep deep time is cool.
¶1026Just like stop coping and deal with it, would you reasonably conclude from our empirical evidence is that the local density of life is low. But there's no good reason to think that if theism were true, the local density of life would be high. Like I mean at best one could argue that if these were true the absolute number of people would be high but many if not most of the ways that God could create an absolutely large >> yeah he had to say that because he's been buying like Matthew Adelstein's Beth 2 as well. I bet like uh yeah if theism is true there's like no reason to believe that there would be a lot of people but also there is reason to believe there's like Beth to infinite people like >> well this is the issue right like so he talks Joe talks about the local density of um there's no reason to think that the local density of uh conscious creatures would be high but I mean this is sort of the problem why does God need to put creatures in space at all right he doesn't seem to have that need since he is a disembodied mind so This highlights attention. If we're to say that space is in some way important for embodied creatures existing, then I think it's entirely reasonable to say that um God when God creates a certain amount of space, he has a choice about what to put in it.
¶1027And he could put conscious creatures in it or something else. And so I would suggest that a good way to reason about this is of all the different spaces in the universe, um God has a choice about what to put in there. And you would expect him to put something that's valuable in there instead of something that's not valuable in there. And that's why it thinks that the bigger the universe is and the less valuable stuff that there is in it, the more evidence there is that God didn't create it. Or at least he didn't create it for that purpose.
¶1028M >> maybe God has actually packed reality with people, but he's just divided them into spatially disconnected universes. >> Well, yeah. I mean, that was one of his arguments about the multiverse, right? But it it's still this gets to the point. >> Well, you know, I'm making the modal realism joke again.
¶1029I'm not Yeah. >> Yes. Well, that that's an extreme way to take this. I don't know that that's consistent with Catholic doctrine. So that's going to be one problem.
¶1030But another issue is that again it seems that if space is important to God, like if if people need if conscious beings need space for some reason, it's not clear why they would. If they do, then why is God not putting valuable stuff in that space? >> It it's it just seems to me that the reason he creates the space is to have valuable stuff in it, but then he doesn't put valuable stuff in it. That just doesn't make sense to me. >> But m maybe like God is a big fan of Laban's realm.
¶1031Like maybe >> Well, yeah, maybe that's it actually. But >> yeah, >> the point is supposed to be that he creates space specifically to put valuable things in it. But then he's like, ah, I don't feel the need to put anything valuable in this space. I'll just make more space somewhere else. >> That's for great.
¶1032It's for great races of men to expand the space, you know, like all the all that stuff in Russia where there's like nothing going on. That could be like a part of a greater empire. I mean the fundamental point is if you as as Joe has say that God makes space like physical universes the reason he does that is to put valuable things in them you can't then simultaneously say but God doesn't have any reason to put much valuable stuff in the space that's the whole reason you told me that God made the space why is he now not feeling like he needs to put stuff in it >> well cuz he's he's gone through all the effort of creating like a life that will could permit carbon based life and uh certain psychonomic psychophysical states and psych has psychonomic laws and things and I guess he's just like interested in like what would happen in the other bits of it um as well you know like he he did all this for that but like he can also satisfy his curiosity >> well it's like if if if I was like omnipotent I might be like okay I want ice cream but also like what would happen if I um just like left bowls of food everywhere and saw what happened to them. Like so I can have a bowl of ice cream, but I can also just like have this like morbid curiosity and a bunch of other things satisfied at the same time. You know, why not?
¶1033Maybe. Anyway, that's probably enough for this. Uh there's awesome theistic evidence. We've already talked about that. So maybe we should move on.
¶1034Um so that was the universe is mostly mostly lifeless. Let's do electrons in love. That's 235. 2:35 just after my dentist appointment messages. The designer basically produced a world where 99.99999% of people don't get messages.
¶1035So for these four reasons, I think the mostly lifeless universe objection fails. Onwards we march to the electrons in love objection. Even under theism, it's monstrously improbable that the constants would fall within the narrow life permitting range. Indeed, it's just as improbable as under naturalism. Because no matter where the constants fell, even if they fell outside the narrow biological life permitting range, God could still have created valuable embodied conscious creatures.
¶1036How could God do that if for example the closest particles were light years away? Well, just by creating different psychophysical laws, which are laws that specify which conscious states are paired or correlated or associated with which physical states. In particular, God could just pair consciousness with different physical entities like electrons and protons so that they can engage in heartfelt communication and love and whatnot. And there doesn't seem to be any particular reason to opt for a biological organisms in love world as opposed to an electrons in love world. And so we should be indifferent under theism across the full range of constant values.
¶1037So theism does not better predict the fine-tuning data than naturalism. Okay. Uh this is not a good objection. First, we can simply put the >> I like his new uh style of of just doing this for everything. >> Yeah.
¶1038is very dismissive of everything that anyone else says. Anyway, let's see what he has to say. The actual psychophysical laws in the background when evaluating the fine-tuning argument. To do that, we first treat >> Yeah. Oh, yeah.
¶1039That was our mistake was we didn't consider the definitely existing psychophysical laws and then stick them in the background like we're supposed to do when we >> you just help yourself to whatever you need to stuff into your um >> background >> your background knowledge uh so that the argument can work. This is really bizarre because from a naturalist point of view there the the psychophysical laws are just consequences of the underlying physical laws. There's no like separate laws. Um there's just sort of how the fundamental laws come together. Well, this is kind of like so think about remember when he talked about the uh psychonomic argument and he put it in the probabilistic form whatever and he had you know and K so and the background knowledge um in uh what what we were conditioning on and so if he's saying you put the psychophysical laws in the background and if by the psychophysical laws he just means the correct view of mind well then that's just inconsistent with this disembodied mind theism and you know like just it just does guarantee and then just has a probability of one on the naturalism and K alternative where there are like mine.
¶1040So it it's just like really messes up the points that he wants to make in other things if if if that's what you do the actual psychophysical laws as a datim and evaluate the bearing of his datim on theism and naturalism. As I'll explain in the next section, the actual psychophysical laws will almost certainly just like massively confirm theism given how harmonious and coherent and intelligible they are. And then after taking their evidential effect into account, we then simply put them in our background information when evaluating other pieces of data like fine-tuning. And then we get yet further evidence for fine-tuning. Sorry.
¶1041And then we get yet further evidence for theism from fine-tuning holding the actual psychophysical laws fixed. Now, as it happens, I know I chose a different order to update on things for this video since I think it's the easiest way to present the evidence, but it's mathematically provable that the order in which you update on different pieces of evidence doesn't matter. It doesn't make a difference to the probabilities of hypothesis after taking all the evidence into account. So, my presentational choice here. >> I think that that is I mean it's not that it's wrong what he's saying, right?
¶1042But actually it is important because it it might change the decision that you make at a different point. You know, you you might not consider all the evidence all the evidence should you take a different journey. >> Well, I don't think it's true in practice because the evidence could change could cause us to change our judgments about what the likelihood function is. >> Yeah, that's what that's what I'm saying is >> it's true. If you multiply the same likelihoods, it doesn't make any difference, you know, which order you do that.
¶1043But in practice for difficult complex scenarios that's not necessarily going to be the case. >> And I and I think especially because this scenario isn't analogous to um let's say a a statistical problem where there are yeah the these um established likelihoods where the likelihood um proportions are the result of properties of things that actually exist. Instead, it's this kind of like heruristic for our feelings and dispositions. >> Then that is definitely changing as we go along, you know, like and order will matter because if we go in an order which kind of like disorts things in one way, we're going to come to like all the other bits and think about them slightly differently. So, like for example, if if if you've like done something that like makes you a cartisian at the start, then you're going to have all these like messed up problems and you're not going to be able to think about physicalism properly because you're going to be thinking about cartesianism when you try and think about physicalism and then you'll just like have all these problems.
¶1044So, so like yeah, I think that it is pretty important is totally compatible with my first response and I think that response alone just suffices to put this objection to bed. Second of all, we can grant that the odds that God would make a conscious organism world as opposed to an electrons in love world is low. But it seems manifestly wrong to say that the odds here are on the order of like 1 in 10 the^ of 136. A plausible upper bound on the probability of getting a lifemitting universe. A plausible upper bound on the probability of getting a life permitting universe by chance.
¶1045Sure, there are lots and lots and lots and lots of ways you can have electrons in love by setting the constants to any of the values outside the biological life permitting range. But these are basically just like lots of different ways of doing broadly the same thing. Namely, making an electrons in love world. And it's not like hopelessly unlikely that God might attend to and be relatively indifferent across the broad kinds of embodied conscious creatures he could make rather than being indifferent across the particular instances of all the kinds. So long as that choice procedure on God's part isn't hopelessly unlikely.
¶1046And so long as it isn't hopelessly unlikely conditional on God's adopting that choice procedure that he opts for biologically embodied. >> So long as it isn't hopelessly unlikely the same the same strategy as always. He doesn't tell us why we should think that it's not. He just asserts it. >> But yeah, >> go ahead.
¶1047>> So I I'll be honest, I like I zoned out a little bit when he was talking. Is Is he saying uh that okay, maybe there are electrons in love worlds and like God just cares about them too? Or am I just not >> saying it's not It might be unlikely that God would create them, but it's not hopelessly unlikely. I said that wrong. It's it might be unlikely that God would create our world instead of an electrons in love world, but it's not hopelessly unlikely.
¶1048And therefore, it >> what >> is Yeah. Because the the naturalist has to face the 10 to the 136 probability. >> His probability for God creating >> our universe instead of an electrons in love type universe is less than that. >> Yeah, but you don't know that. >> Well, he says that we do because we just know that, right?
¶1049It's the same strategy that he always uses. He just asserts that it's not hopelessly unlikely. >> Yeah. As long as it's not absurdly low. As long as as long as the numbers are right such that my conclusion is right, then my conclusion is right.
¶1050>> I know. It's just it's such a baffling Yeah. And then he actually he gives a number to this. So, let's look at that because I think this highlights the problem. >> Isn't there isn't there like um a description of this way of talking though where you like talk in these kind of like circular ways?
¶1051I'm sure it's like a term of like salesmanship or marketing where it's like well you know it's like as long as if I'm right then I'm right then I'm right like I wish I could remember what it's called. It's not it's not Barnum statement but it's like something like Barnum statement. >> I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah.
¶1052I think you're right. There is some word but let's play out a strike me as like eminently plausible claims. The probability of biologically embodied conscious agents under theism won't be anywhere near 1 in 10 the^ of 136. To put it in other terms, suppose it's like a one in octillion chance that's like one in 10 to the^ of 127 that God would attend to these broad kinds of embodied conscious creatures in choosing what to create. And suppose also that can >> I just want to highlight one very important word in that uh sentence suppose move on like yeah and now like suppose it's just the other number stated above why not then what then what happens if you suppose it's the other big >> atheists >> additional undone attending to these broad kinds of creatures it's then a >> but the just to like I I I don't even know how to say like just how pointless this is.
¶1053Like suppose I'm right. Then look at all this. I'm right. Wow. But you said suppose I'm right.
¶1054Like you literally just said let's just imagine for a second guys that I'm right. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. It turns out that I'd be right. Like yeah, of course. Cuz that's you like set everything up.
¶1055one in octillian chance that God would opt for this sort of world containing biologically embodied creatures. Well, then theism will assign fine-tuning a one in octillian octilian chance and that will still result in basically decisive confirmation of theism over naturalism. And listen, just taking a step back, here's an analogy that illustrates where the electrons in love objection goes wrong. Suppose I'm a painter. I could make an abstract expressionist piece or a painting of your mother.
¶1056Now, because abstract expressionist artworks have so many more degrees of freedom than a painting of your mother, it turns out that there are like, let's say, 10 the^ of 100 more ways of making an abstract expressionist piece than a painting of your mother. But quite clearly, we shouldn't be 10 the^ of 100 times more confident that I would make the former over the latter. And that's because it's at least not terribly unlikely that as an agent, I might first and foremost attend to the choiceworthy kinds of artwork available to me rather than specific instances of those kinds. But the same is true of God. It's at least not hopelessly improbable that as an agent, God might first and foremost attend to the choiceworthy kinds of embodied conscious creatures available to him rather than specific instances of those kinds.
¶1057I mean, okay, one thing I'm going to say about this is that that is the closest that I think I've ever heard anyone get to actually saying something that might look like a justification for some of this stuff. So, you know, like great, like someone that's actually an effort at doing that. At least >> it's the best response I've heard. I've also discuss this response in the video that I did on fine-tuning. The issue with this is that it's perfectly fine to say that God is attentive to uh God is not necessarily concerned about distinguishing the same sort of physical states that a naturalist is, like the exact values of the constants.
¶1058It's plausible instead that God is attentive to morally distinguishable um states of affairs, aspects of reality that make it uh that differentiate important moral aspects. I talk about this in my video and I play the same I go through the same logic of okay, let's consider a range of moral properties that God may plausibly be sensitive to. Things like the intensity of pleasure and pain, how difficult it is to influence other people, like the effects of our um the degree of moral luck, like how sort of deterministic outcomes are. things that are plausibly important to a theistic designer. And then I asked the question, well, what is the range that these possible values could take um like conceptually possible given now laws of physics because we're supposed to be conditioning on that.
¶1059And then of that possible range, what is the um what is the range that is possible um just under um under theism compared to under naturalism? And the point that I make in my video is that, you know, you can't really quantify this, but at least using some illustrative uh numbers for the sake of example, um you can argue that the um the degree to which our universe is fine-tuned for the specific type of life that we have under theism is even greater than under naturalism. basically because we can think of the different ways that God could if God is attentive to moral considerations of the way that life exists in that universe. He can choose between instantiating a physical universe that creates that type of life or a non-physical universe. And plausibly he's indifferent between that.
¶1060He just cares about the type of the morally salient. I mean, it doesn't have to be perfectly different, but like he may be primarily attentive to morally salient differences. But the point that I make is that given that God is omnipotent and is not constrained by um well you know anything that the a naturalistic explanation is constrained by um the range of of the number of different possible um par combinations of these morally salient properties that he could instantiate non-physically is vastly greater than the number that he could instantiate physically with our set of laws. So if you imagine that God is if you imagine indifference across these different possible moral configurations, the vast majority of them are not physical universes because they cannot be physically instantiated with our laws. So what you would expect to see is that God would create a non-physical universe or at least one that it does not have is not like fine-tuned for physical life.
¶1061Um and therefore our universe is unexpected. So the point being the point of all that you can look at my video if people are interested on the second one I did on fine-tuning. The point of all that is that if you apply the same reasoning style to theistic creation that you do to naturalism about the the concepts of nature, I think you you come to a very similar conclusion that the the type of reality that we see is very unexpected given um you know just given the sort of background information. And it's not clear that I mean I think it's even more fine-tuned under theism. You could argue with specific numbers, but the fact that the fact that God is attentive to different properties like its moral properties, relational properties instead of the exact value of the constants, um that doesn't actually change the structure of the argument because there's still a vast range of possible states that God could create and may have reasons to differentiate between.
¶1062>> So, so I I just want to talk about the um analogy that he tries to draw to the painting case, right? Yeah. >> So, imagine like all you know is some guy is going to paint a painting and you've got a reason about like what he's going to paint. >> Yeah. >> And you go, >> "Okay, here's two things I'll consider.
¶1063He will create he one might be true. He'll create an abstract painting. And here's another one. He will create like a realist portrait of your mother." I think you should think that it's more probable he'll create an abstract painting if all the information you've got is that he's going to create a painting, right? Like because that's a broader class.
¶1064He is more if that's all the information you've got, the rational thing to do is to think that that will be true or that's more likely to be true than the other claim. I I I just think that's true. Unless you introduce some additional piece of information about like a specific preference or goal or whatever he has for like realist. >> But that's precisely the problem with these analogies because we have a lot of prior background knowledge about you know painters and how they choose to paint things and what's relatively more or less likely. that's kind of doing all the work here in my helpful >> that well that that's what I'm kind of saying is like I I literally like I was like am I missing something in what he said or is he is he literally just relying on like but you know me guys like I wouldn't make an abstract I'd be way more likely to draw your mother like but but like why would I think that well I I don't even know like I don't even know if Joe likes to draw or what he'd draw like I I ain't got a clue and I literally think I should go still even in Joe's case with the abstract art thing over the like realist depiction of your mother if I don't have any other information cuz I literally don't have any information about what Joe likes to draw unless I count this as information like given that he uses as an example maybe he would like likes drawing people's mums or something maybe that would change things.
¶1065So my my point is that I I don't think that that example establishes what he wants it to establish and or that it's relevantly similar to the case of like God choosing universes because in the case of God choosing universes there's a consistency in the moral properties as you pointed out and and there is a a um a a different proportion of which in either case in the painting case if the only desire the painter has is to create a painting and he will choose one at random. You should choose the broader class. You just should un unless you now specify some further goal like he doesn't like abstract paintings and doesn't want to make one. >> Yeah. So I think that Joe what Joe would say is that it may be the case that abstract paintings are more likely perhaps even a lot more likely but they're not the way that you should assess the relative probability is not by looking at how many instantiations there are within each class because the painter may have reasons and may plausibly choose uh what to paint not just by sort of selecting randomly from instances of class choosing between the classes.
¶1066I mean I mean that's true but like I because I don't know those reasons I can't include them in my own inferences right so that's the problem because whilst he may have those reasons he may not have those reasons right or he may have reasons that prefer the larger class over the other like so so because >> all of those like hypothetical for all we know reasons that I can invent cons you know they just cut both ways on every possible example and so so they just cancel each other out like >> yes particularly in the case of God where we don't have that sort of background knowledge that we do about actual artists which is one of the weaknesses of these sorts of analogies and as I would as I just sort of argued I think that there are those the sort of principled way of doing this where you reason about all possible um all possible uh like morally relevant distinctions that God might be attentive to you still get a a a case where a non-embodied universe like electrons in love or something similar style universe is overwhelmingly more likely because there's just so many more ways that God could do that than a a physically fine-tuned universe. >> I'm sorry. Like I really have to labor this point. Like it's so specific that an artist would want to draw my mom. That is like so it's really unlikely.
¶1067It's it's far more likely that an artist is is just going to like draw any abstract piece of art than it is that they would specifically draw my mother. Like that is just so specific and weird. I just don't think it works. Like they're not even going to know my mom probably, right? like I don't even know my mom.
¶1068That's a a >> well let's continue because he has other things to say. By the way, this analogy also illustrates that just as the atheist can say, "Oh, like God could have created an electrons and love world which wouldn't have required finetuning, the a painterist can say ah you know like a painter could have painted an abstract expressionist painting which wouldn't have required extremely intricate brush work." But like clearly the fact that the painting you're looking at contains extremely intricate brush work is extremely powerful evidence that it was painted by a painter. Similarly, the fact that so this argument is just >> you're just telling us that this is relevant, but it's clearly not relevant. A lot of >> Yeah, >> it can't be a painting without having been painted. >> Yeah, you're assuming that it's design where we know paintings are designed.
¶1069We know where they come from. We don't know where universes come from. >> It wouldn't be a painting if it wasn't painted. So, you don't have to talk about brush work to make an inference. You're like, "Oh, here's a painting, which means I know it was painted." Wow, look at the brush work.
¶1070Now, I can infer that it was painted. You would say apparent painting if you really wanted to get technical. >> Well, yeah, but then what does that what does that but >> like a painting, but maybe it just came about by non-painted means. >> Yeah, maybe it's not a good analogy. That's the issue.
¶1071Like it's hard to find good analogies because God is so unlike anything else. That's that's the issue here. Well, while the universe is fine tuned for life is extremely powerful evidence that it was designed, the possibility of electrons and love notwithstanding. Here's my third response to the electrons and love objection. Uh it isn't hopelessly improbable under theism that God would make a multiverse containing universes with different sorts of conscious entities.
¶1072Some of which are you know hydrogen soup universes full of conscious electrons and love. Some of which are universes like ours with conscious organisms etc. And plausibly we couldn't have been electrons. So it's not surprising that we find ourselves in one of the conscious organism universes. Given all this it's nowhere near as unlikely under theism compared to naturalism that we'd find constants of our universe to be biologically lifitting.
¶1073>> This is an very interesting response. So, I'm not sure again that this multiverse with electrons in love is consistent with Catholic theology. Um, also it's interesting that he says that he thinks we could not be electrons. Um, so this seems to be if God creates, this is sort of what I was saying before. If we think that most of the universes that God might want to create would not have physical life in them, but maybe a few would, we would expect to find ourselves in one of those universes that does not have physical life in it.
¶1074And we would expect to be disembodied life, but obviously we're not. So that seems to be inconsistent with what we would expect under God. So he wants to try to get around this I think by saying forcibly we can't be >> I think I think it's naming and I think naming and necessity is responsible for this point. I reckon I reckon he's trying to do the old rigid designator thing. >> Yes, that's what I think as well.
¶1075>> Yeah. >> But that's I mean the thing is that that argument can also be given as that's also a strategy for avoiding skeptical scenarios. And later on Joe talks about skeptical scenarios as if well he he doesn't seem to think that that is a sufficient um response to it because he presents them as a problem for like naturalists but like he seems to think that it's conceivable that we're brains in vats whereas the rigid designated would say that that's impossible because like we don't >> the terms don't refer to a brain in about yeah they refer to the actual thing. So I I don't know I don't know if this response is really going to fit with either of Joe's commitments. Personally, I would say that, you know, using the a priori conceivability approach that he has used so far, it's perfectly consistent that we could be electrons in love and just appear to have a physical world which we don't actually have.
¶1076Right? I I don't know how he's able to rule that out in the a priori way that we're supposed to be thinking about. >> Do the thing is though, I guess I guess I don't think that fine-tuning does involve you uh involve the information. you are you do you see what I mean? Like you know >> Yes.
¶1077Yes. That's also a good point. >> So um I I think that this is some weird other point and it's like also I think going to potentially be inconsistent with this like gerrymandering of the background evidence and like not being able to >> update on the fact that you know you know you're an observer and stuff. You don't know you're an observer but you know that you're you have the parents. >> You are you specifically not >> Yeah.
¶1078you know, you know that you're the person who was given that name essentially by your parents and this kind of like >> what um so that is kind of like I mean yeah good good try with sort of like invoking esoteric knowledge but I don't think it's going to really do that. Um and I I just don't I don't think it works for um fine-tuning and this objection to fine-tuning specifically. It might maybe it's like maybe it's just like completely independent grounds to rule out electrons in love, you could say. But then it's going to maybe also rule out fine-tuning because then you um have to take into account observer selection effects. But then he's got, you know, we not looked at his he's got some other objection to observer selection effects, I guess.
¶1079So, >> uh I think that's probably enough for this electrons and love point. So I I don't think most of it just involves asserting that God wouldn't be so unlikely. >> Look at look at four though. There are plausible reasons. >> Oh yeah, it's the same thing.
¶1080It's always the same thing. >> There are reasons that are plausible such that the >> hopelessly implausible, not monstrously implausible. >> And and it isn't hopelessly grotesely ludicrously unlikely. Like it's lit it's literally just like adjective waffle. Like it's like just a bunch of adjectives stuffed in with like nothing there.
¶1081Um, he's just saying the same thing. Hopelessly improbable. Ludicrously plausible. Plausible. Um, one thing I'm, you know, like my theory of the social effects as well.
¶1082Another Amos Wallen substack here. Like it's literally just Matthew and Amos and Ethan Muse like persuading him. Like I made friends with these guys who looked up to me on YouTube and now I believe different things. How did that happen? I think that's enough on that.
¶1083Let's move to uh what was the last one? He talks his response to divine psychology is mostly just the awesome theistic evidence argument. Um so we've already talked about that. Same thing with stalking horse objections. Uh the last one I think I want to respond to is deeper laws which is about two uh sorry about three hours just before 3 hours.
¶1084Okay. Here, here. >> Uh, yes, just around here. Be a massive blow to atheism. Wake up.
¶1085Wake up. Come on. Wake up. >> I need that. I need that spray water back so that I can spray you again.
¶1086>> I literally need that spray water, Joe. I'm flagging. >> Okay, so the 16th objection is the deeper laws objection. Hey, there might be laws or some deeper physical theory that predicts the final of the >> Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry.
¶1087Your echo. People are going to well I mean I don't mind that much but people are going to complain >> back so I can spray you again. >> Okay. So the 16 I need that >> there's just like I'm I'm not making any particular point here but but like there's some interesting breathing after this break. Spray can water back so I can spray you again.
¶1088Okay. I don't know what that was. So the 16th objection is the deeper laws objection. Hey, there might be deeper laws or some deeper physical theory that predicts the finely tuned values of the constants. So that even requires all the constants to take on their particular values thereby removing the need for the constants to fall within an exceedingly narrow range of possible values in order for life to exist.
¶1089First, I think the objection probably faces the awesome theistic evidence problem, right? Like imagine that every subatomic particle contained a tiny inscription of the first 14 verses of the book of John in perfect coinated Greek. This would clearly be strong ev what does it even mean? What does it even mean? It literally is impossible.
¶1090What does that mean? >> Yeah, it's a poor example. You can come up with slightly better ones, but it's it's still the same point that it's just assertion for theism. But like if the deeper laws objection worked against the fine tuning argument, it seems like it would also work against, you know, the design argument based on the coin a Greek inscription, right? Right.
¶1091But there might be oh there might be deeper laws or some deeper physical theory that predicts or even requires this inscription on subatomic particles. >> But I also just want to say like yeah like yeah maybe like why would you want to rule this out? Is it because you hate physics and science you weird metaphysics lover? Why do you hate science and not want humanity to progress? That's what I would say.
¶1092But but like you know jokes aside there is a genuine point there which is like why well why would you not try explaining stuff properly rather than like just you know just like oh yeah if I observe something weird I just like give up and believe in nonsense because like you know who cares who cares at that point if the atoms have coin a Greek in like stop trying to make sense of the world and just start doing like blood magic. >> Yeah. So let's um skip past the awesome tistic evidence and on to number two. >> Thereby removing the need for the particles to possess features within an exceedingly narrow range of possible features in order for the inscription to exist like and only a tiny fraction would lead to the values of the constants falling in the narrow life permitting ranges. Epistemically speaking, there could be deeper laws or physical theories resulting in any of the values that the parameters might conceivably take on.
¶1093Absent reason to think those deeper laws or physical theories are significantly more likely to produce constants within the narrow life peritting ranges, it seems monstrously improbable that they produce finely tuned values rather than the overwhelmingly more numerous non-finely tuned values. And by the way, this is like what's the by the way? >> Uh roughly the same problem afflicting the necessary constant subjection to the finetuning argument. Recall that problem. The generic hypothesis that whatever the laws are, it's metaphysically necessary that they have those values doesn't raise the probability of the data.
¶1094Namely, that the constants fall in the life permitting range. Whereas the specific hypothesis that it's metaphysically necessary that the values take on such and such exact numerical values within the life permitting range that entails the data but you know only at the cost of having a correspondingly low prior. The same dilemma plagues the deeper laws objection. The generic hypothesis that whatever the values are deeper laws result in them doesn't actually raise the probability that the constants fall in the I think I've lost the thread here again. Um, is he talking about when you say like maybe God likes discoverability and stuff that it actually changes the um the the prior of the of the hypothesis and lowers it because it's like a more specific claim.
¶1095Is that what he's saying? >> I'm not exactly sure. I think I think his basic point here maybe we don't have to play it. >> No, I was joking. I was joking.
¶1096I I was saying I was saying that this mirrors >> Well, I am confused because I think that he Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously it does. >> I I'm Yeah, I'm joking because this this these objections like literally apply directly to what he's done, right, in all these previous places. These like random reasons that God has for like liking like random stuff like deep time or whatever.
¶1097>> Yeah. >> Um Yeah. So, what So sorry. What did I say? Oh, yeah.
¶1098So he so his point is that um saying that the concepts might be um there might be deeper reasons for them doesn't get you away from fine-tuning because there's sort of just as much reason for thinking that those deeper reasons would would be fine-tuned or like even more fine-tuned. Um so so this I think is how to best how do best articulate this? So this is in theory this is true but I think in practice it doesn't really get at the under the the underlying um reason for for postulating deeper laws at least in in specific cases. So let me highlight what I said before sorry let me return to what I said before of the 31 constants that um Luke Barnes uh mentions from cosmology and particle physics he said he talks about five of them as being fine-tuned for life. the one and and the the the combined probability that he talks about is one to the power of minus sorry I've lost the number is it one to the 136 >> just make it big let's say 120 >> yeah 136 that's right 1 to the^ of minus 136 so of those orders of magnitude or 136 orders of magnitude um 90 of those come from the cosmological constant so the vast majority of them come from one of those constants Now what is the cosmological constant?
¶1099The cosmological constant uh basically is a um a plug-in parameter. It's an ignorance parameter that we that we put in which accounts for the fact that the univer the expansion of the universe is accelerating rather than slowing down which is what people thought until quite recently. And um >> I think it's steady I think we're in steady state universe actually. And there's lots of space dust that makes the observations what they are. But that's just a hot >> lot people thought for quite a long time but um or creation of new matter but the um what was I saying you direct >> yes sorry you were saying the cosmological constant um >> the cosmological constant accounts for almost all of the finetuning according to Luke Barnes's numbers the cosmological constant describes the fact that the universe is ex the expansion of the universe is accelerating but we don't know the excuse me we don't know the mechanism of that we don't know what's actually producing a cosmological constant it's really just a description of an empirical phenomenon and that's one of the reasons why it's so um its possible range is so broad because there's almost no constraints on it like a priori constraints.
¶1100Um we can we can measure its constant p we can measure the value that it actually has purely on the basis of um the expansion rate of the universe not on the basis of any deeper theory. So the reason this is relevant is because I think that it is there's overwhelmingly good reason to think that once we finally figure out what dark energy is, what it gives rise to the cosmological constant and once we figure out how that relates to the calculations we've done about the um the uh quantum vacuum energy which was thought to be one potential cause for dark energy but turns out to be like a massively wrong calculation. So we're still trying to figure out how to reconcile these. But the point is once we figure that out, I think that it's extremely likely that the range of um uh possible values for the cosmological constant will shrink substantially. That's just based on the fact that the vast majority of other parameters have much greater constraints on the basis of physical theory.
¶1101They may still have a wide range but not compared to the cosmological constant. The cosmological constant is um unusual in that it's so under constraint because we know almost nothing about it. So this is why I think that Joe is wrong here that it's we have just equal reason for thinking that the um the possible range o of the values will uh extend or shrink. The possible range of the cosmological constant is essentially as large as it can possibly be. It's constrained by almost nothing.
¶1102Um whereas and that's because we know almost nothing about it. Once we figure out more about it again, it will still have some range. Um but I think that it's there's very good reason to think that that will shrink substantially a as our um our theory provides more constraints on what is possible and we have some basis for um why it actually exists. It's possible that it will be entirely explained in terms of existing theories or maybe there will be additional parameters that need to be added but I think that there's very good reason to think that there won't be as have as broad a range as the 10 to the 90 uh just because that range arises from the complete lack of understanding we have about its nature. So I think there are good reasons not to eliminate all of the fine juning but just shrink it with repeal to deeper laws because a lot of the a lot of the big numbers simply come from massive ignorance about what could constrain these values and so the more we learn the more likely it is that there'll be additional constraints that um apply that particularly with something like the cosmological constant and I appeal to that a lot because it's such a it's such a clear example of something that is uh almost totally unconstrained because we simply have no idea what causes it.
¶1103So, I think that's a good point, but I'm struggling to um compare it to other things. Could you restate it in terms of like grotesqually unlikely probabilities so I can >> Well, yeah. So, at the moment, the range of possible values for the cosmological constant is um grotesqually monstrously large whereas >> understand why it exists that way. It may just be large maybe not grotesqually and monstrously large. But that would be a problem because if it's not grotesqually large, then it the the um evidence might not be good enough to overcome the reasonable prior of theism.
¶1104>> Yes. Well, of course, then then there's a question about um about the magnitude. So, this is where I want to I this is probably a good a good point to summarize um and um move on from fine-tuning because I think we've discussed most of the major issues, but I just wanted to highlight something. Uh Joe here has given has responded to 17 objections to fine-tuning and he's given reasons why none of them you know according to him succeed in in um successfully refusing finetuning. But here's the problem.
¶1105The naturalist or whoever else but he's mostly responding to naturalism. The naturalist does not need to appeal to one reason to um in a single swoop uh explain away finetuning or or remove the the problem. they can appeal to multiple different things as long as a conjunction of those together is a better explanation for fine-tuning or apparent fine-tuning than uh than theism, right? And so this is where Joe's incremental strategy falls apart or it's sort of misleading because he presents it as if a single rebuttal he he he does this you you'll see he says, "Oh, but this objection doesn't apply to the laws version of fine tuning or it doesn't apply to the discoverability version." As if a single rebuttal has to apply to everything and uh all by itself, which is just ridiculous. So here's how I here's a one way to think about how a naturalist might respond to Fun.
¶1106I don't say that it's just the right way, but it's it's just one way to think about this to illustrate the cumulative case response. So let's say that I first start by appealing to deeper laws to account for some of the finetuning specifically with respect to the cosmological constant. I argue that look, the 10 to the 90 is super huge because we have no idea about the cosmological concept. Once we understand it better, that's going to be reduced. maybe that I think that it will be reduced to a similar level that some of the other fine tuning is.
¶1107Maybe it goes from 10 to the 90 to 10 to the 30 which is similar to like the Higs VV value. So that that takes the number the uh 136 value the 10 to the^ of 136. That takes that from 10^ 136 down to what I say I said 30 sorry that's 60. So that's um 176 right uh sorry just 76. We went from 136 to 76.
¶1108So that's a big reduction and I've just there appealed to one specific example of deeper laws. Now let's suppose that I think in addition to that there are many other types of embodied life that that as far as we know could potentially exist with other different combinations of constants but we just don't know how to assess that. We don't know how to see that form of life just from the equations. So maybe I think that there are 10^ the 30 different types of life existing somewhere out there in probability space. So that now brings our number a fine and we could exist in any of those, right?
¶1109We just find ourselves in one of them. So that brings the probability down from um 10 to the 76 down to 10^ the 46 that we get any of those being instantiated. Obviously I just kind of made up a number there, but I'm just I'm just doing this for sake of illustration to to make the point. Right? So now we're at 10 to the 46.
¶1110Um, another objection that um, one can levy is that the um, some of these constants the dimensionless ones don't have well- constrained limits and that applies particularly to the uh, the up down and electron uh, ukarouplings uh, uguara couplings and uh, Luke Barnes essentially that's the mass parameters and Luke actually Luke Barnes talks about this and he says look if we he thinks that there's a way you can constrain them so that you can have a well- definfined probability But you know, if you're being really strict, maybe you'd remove these because of the problems with dimensionless parameters. Okay, so let's say that we get rid of that and that would take out another 10. So at this point, we're down to about say 10^ the 30. Um, and then at this point, I say, look, I've got a probability of 10 to the 30 that we observe a universe like this. Maybe I then invoke some multiverse hypothesis.
¶1111I don't need to say that that that um every possible universe is instantiated. I don't need to go full moto realism. Maybe I just think that actually some of the parameters can be explained through multiverse hypothesis. That's particularly plausible because some of them are cosmological in nature and some of them are particle physics in nature. So maybe some of them can be explained like there are some parameters that are instantiated across the multiverse but not all of them.
¶1112And this is important because we didn't sort of talk about this, but Joe responds to multiverse by appealing to the Boltzman brain problem, which is that most observers in a multiverse scenario would be expected to be Boltzman brains, which is just like a a brain that appears and for a second and hallucinates a universe in its perceptions and then disappears, right? And he and you know, Joe thinks that that we're not such observers, but multiverse would predict that we were such observers if if it existed. And so that multiverse is a bad explanation. My point is that you can appeal to a constrained multiverse example that is um that doesn't have these properties to not necessarily solve all the fine tuning in one false swoop but to somewhat reduce it. So maybe so maybe appealing to a certain amount of multiverse some parameters being like multiply instantiated gets you from 10 to the 40 to 10 the 20.
¶1113And now instead of this 10 to the 136 we're down at 10 the 20. And then maybe we compare that to theism and ask well what's the probability then that theism would explain the universe the the finetuning or apparent fine tuning. Um and maybe then we consider the electrons in love scenario and the fact that most of the um most of the universe is empty. Uh two things that we've pointed out before. Um and then we think that well given those considerations the probability of God creating this type of universe this embodied uni like universe that supports embodied life is actually even lower than 10 to the than 10^ the 20 um maybe it's 10 to the 30 uh like one over 10 to the 30 when I consider all of those reasons and so at the end of the day I get to a conclusion where neither theory predicts the outcome very well but theism is actually even worse than naturalism.
¶1114Obviously I've just picked numbers mostly out of thin air. The point that I simply wanted to make is that the naturalist is not required to postulate only one explanation of finetuning that does everything all by itself. It's perfectly reasonable to explain some aspects of fine tuning or some examples that through multiverse, some through deeper laws, some uh some as some elements through additional or or different uh types of life and then to appeal to whatever remaining difference there is by saying well it's it's even less likely under theism. So you can what what Joe and others do is that they just take the 10^ the 136 number and then just assume that a single objection has to deal with that entire number all by itself. They don't they don't admit the idea that the physicist can chip away at that number by making different postulates.
¶1115And as long as at the end of the day that they have a better more plausible overall explanation to the theist u then then the argument for fine-tuning doesn't actually go through. Of course you could argue well what's the combined probability of all of those things. I would argue that it's actually not not that implausible that there are other types of life that there's at least some types of multiverses and that there's some deeper laws. I mean there sort of >> arbitrary limits. >> There must at least some be be some deeper laws at least for the case of the cosmological consequence.
¶1116We have no idea what caused it. So I don't actually think that any of those things are very implausible. Whereas I think that the assumptions that the theist makes about the type of universe that God will create are very implausible. And obviously there's going to be difference of opinion there. I just want to illustrate that this big scary um monstrously small number that the theists like to use and that Joe uses um is being used more as a scare tactic than a serious counter because you don't need to reduce that probability all the way in one fell swoop.
¶1117You can reduce it stepwise and get to the point where you then compare with the theist explanation and realize well actually um it's even lower than than what theist has to say. So that that is my broad sort of approach is to is to argue that there are actually many strategies that the naturalist has that combined together can provide a I think a powerful objection. I mean theoretically any one of them could be sufficient but you don't have to rely on that because multiple um multiple strategies are not in any way inconsistent with each other. How how many uh million dice in a row would that be just to you know because obviously >> I have not worked that out. >> A lot.
¶1118>> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> What I was going to say is that is um the next time stamp to go to.
¶1119>> All right. So we've covered psychophysical harmony and fine-tuning and nominological harmony. At this point, uh, we should probably talk briefly about contingency and then, uh, we'll wrap up with the sort of smaller arguments. >> I see you. There's not a lot.
¶1120There's not too much about contingency because he doesn't actually talk at length about this, but I thought we should at least address it. >> Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Uh, let me change the >> timestamp is about 16 minutes.
¶1121>> Yeah. Right. Change that. goers. I started to find their arguments for a foundational or ultimate or fundamental necessarily existing being quite compelling.
¶1122You can learn more about these in my contingency arguments playlist as I continue to be sympathetic with them past high school and of course still now. But here's a basic simplified version of one of their contingency arguments. A contingent thing is something that can fail to exist. It doesn't have to be in reality. There's some possible way that reality could be such that it doesn't exist.
¶1123So for instance, you and me are contingent things, right? Like I kind of commented on this when I watched it the first time. Like I just think that this is like a really crappy category to introduce without having um any better defined domain, you know, like ju just like an abstract for everything and all domains. It's it it's a bad um modal category like you know the the modal categories that we have for language in English at least and and in other languages as well but you know they can be studied and they have like pretty particular contexts where people are often trying to do things with their langu like for example often times people are trying to communicate that like they're uncertain about something. >> Yeah.
¶1124or you like things like that. And that's why a lot of our like modal language works. And it it's not because there's like some deep metaphysical theory to rule them all and that's what we're like communicating when we talk about thing. Yeah. You know, when we talk about things in modal terms.
¶1125So yeah. >> Yeah. Feel free to >> I agree that the language is problematic and the style of reasoning is highly problematic. But uh let let's hear what he has to say. like how our parents never met, we wouldn't have existed.
¶1126My water bottle is a contingent thing. You know, it's not like my water bottle must exist. In fact, there was a time when it didn't exist and it'll eventually be destroyed. Contrast these with something like, you know, 1 plus 1 equals 2. This is a necessary truth.
¶1127It couldn't fail to be true. It must be true. There's no See, I literally don't think that that is right. Like I, you know, I think that maths could be different or like we, you know, we could have different language for maths or again like it's how do you how do you conceptualize that difference but I think there are ways of conceptualizing that difference and that this distinction between necessary and contingent is just actually mistaken but you know let's not justify any of the important things for making these arguments work by thinking about them differently >> world is false in which you know 1 plus 1 equals like 7,812 in other words there's no comprehensive way that reality could be such that that claim is false likewise a necessarily existing thing or a necessary thing is something that cannot fail to exist. It's its non-existence is impossible.
¶1128It must be in reality. You can think of it as something whose nature almost like demands that it exist. Just like the very nature of the number one and addition and equality guarantees or demands that 1 plus 1 equals 2. Well, for any contingent things, it seems plausible that there's an explanation of their existence. You know, suppose you and a friend are hiking in the forest and come across a group of shiny spheres on the ground.
¶1129Naturally, you'd wonder how they came to be there. If your friend said, "Well, hey, like listen, there's no reason or explanation for why they're here." You know, their existence is just an unexplained or brute fact. Like, just stop wondering. Like, they just are. They just exist.
¶1130I mean, if he said that, you'd probably think that, you know, he's lost the plot or, you know, he's pulling a trick or he's gone insane or something, right? Like, it seems like their existence needs explaining. They didn't have to exist, and they certainly didn't have to be in the forest or be shiny or be spherical. >> Not I'm not going to lie. Like, if I was having this conversation, I would literally be like, "You don't know that." I honestly would.
¶1131cuz cuz and I think my that my point would actually more be like shut up and keep walking because it's more but I would I would genuinely just be like you don't know that you know and this is genuinely a conversation I could imagine myself having with someone where I come across something like how did it come to exist and I just literally would be like well it's just necessary and they'd be like no it's not and I'd be like you you don't know it isn't you don't know that you literally don't and like what are you going to do about that you can't do anything about it because you don't know and you can't justify it and you're just saying this stuff and like >> well as usual the example is highly misleading because spheres in forests I agree have explanations but that doesn't mean that >> no these ones don't they're necessary I'm telling you they're necessary you don't know that they're like and this is because there's no criteria for use for applying necessary or contingent to anything right it's just apart from like okay like water bottles are the contingent ones and 1 plus 1 equals 2 is a necessary one but like weird stuff. There aren't that, you know, it it's um introducing the word by examples, right? But we're not it's not been explained to us what the principles are that we appeal to for establishing what these things are. Like, you know, there's talk of possible worlds. There's talk of like different times things, but but like these are different concepts of of modality and contingency, like temporal notions and possible world notions and things like that.
¶1132and and you know like how do you know what possible worlds there are and what exists in them and what takes place in them if that's your you know the one or or how do you know what things do I could just say the spheres have always existed you like how are you going to show me that they didn't we going to do an experiment like or have that exact size seems like these facts need explanation and the spheres would still need explanation if they were larger for example the size of a stadium or even the size of the whole universe. In fact, they'd call out for explanation even more if they were like that. And even if they were produced by earlier shiny >> like that's just bizarre as well. If if the sphere was the size of the whole universe, wouldn't it just be the whole uni? Like Well, >> I think that's the point, right?
¶1133>> But then Well, yeah, but then but then you're just saying that you need to explain the universe, but I don't know that. which which generally naturalists will disagree with. Um at least depending but like usually they'll think that there are at least some some sort of initial state or or um base state that doesn't need an explanation. You know this is like what Opie says for in for example um but yeah like I the point is I don't think that the u the the sphere getting bigger analogy is really is doing any work there. It's just sort of asserting the conclusion.
¶1134If if I were to translate what I think he's saying, right, I think what he's saying is like most of the stuff at our scale on Earth gets there and is explained by something. And I think he's right. And then I think what he's saying is and you should think about the whole universe in the same sort of way. And and that's why I'm like, no, but you know, like he's he's trying to do it by pretending he's done something fancy because he's like, now think about shiny spheres and now imagine the sphere being the size of the whole universe. But it's like, wait, what the hell am I even doing?
¶1135Um, and no, I don't want to think of the universe as like a water bottle, actually. >> Yeah. >> Fears, we would be left none the wiser since we would rightly wonder where those fears came from. Even an infinite regress of shiny spheres replicating for all eternity wouldn't remove the need for explanation. Since th this was the part that I think pissed me off the most when I listened to it initially, cuz I was like, what what are you on about?
¶1136Like what what kind of observation am I supposed to imagine myself making that is an infinite regress of shiny spheres? Like what kind of forest am I in where I can see an infinite regressor? What does it even what does a regress of spheres even mean that they're next to each other? >> Turtles all the way down. >> But but but how is like say if there are two spheres next to each other, that doesn't mean I think that the next sphere explains or causes the next sphere.
¶1137sphere isn't a type of cause, it's a shape. like this was just stupid on so in so many ways where I was like, you know, cuz like like if you if you had an explanation of the creation of the sphere like um oh here's a process that creates the sphere and then you asserted that process add infinatum maybe I'd be like okay well now you do actually have an explanation of each sphere in the row but like sphere doesn't explain sphere you know a sphere that is spatially near the next sphere doesn't cause the sphere. So, this is just weird and I can't observe it. It doesn't make any sense. What am I even supposed to be imagining and what am I even curious about?
¶1138I don't know. Like, it's just a non It's literally a stupid scenario that nobody will or has ever been in and there is no point thinking about. But yeah, I basic I basically agree. I just It's not really analogous to anything that's relevant here. what what the question is from the naturalist point.
¶1139Well, what's relevant is does suppose there's some initial state to the universe. Um does that require an explanation? Joe thinks that it does. Um many naturalists are going to argue that it does not. And appealing to these universes in the forest, I don't really think can uh can can really elucidate one way or the other.
¶1140>> Yeah. like um Joe thinks that you've got to explain the universe and you're like, "Well, I'm not so sure of that." And then he's like, "Well, imagine the universe was a big shiny sphere." And you're like, "Well, why didn't you say that earlier? Of course, I've got to explain it." >> Yeah. >> It's just a different thing. I mean, yeah, >> the whole infinite series of shiny spheres would call out for explanation, right?
¶1141Like why is there that series when there easily could have been a different series of dull spheres or shiny cubes or marshmallows or no infinite series at all? So positing that the shiny spheres are the size of the universe or produce each other one after another for all eternity doesn't seem to remove the need for an explanation of their existence. And there doesn't seem to be a relevant difference between the spheres. >> He's not going to say there's no difference between a sphere in a forest and the entire universe is he >> or or some initial state that generated that like you know the way that I think >> this is what I mean. Yeah, a state is is, you know, some sort of um well, it's hard to say what, but perhaps a an amporal state that has the particular power of of generating a an unstable quantum fluctuation which then gives rise to the big bang like something something like that right so that is not in any way analogous to a sphere in a forest and I don't really see why because spheres and forests have explanations that therefore uh some kind of atmporal state that gives rise to quantum fluctuations must also have explanations.
¶1142Note also that Joe never tells us what an explanation is here. If if an explanation is a is a series of causes, then it's just question begging to say that everything that exists in the universe needs to have a cause because it could be that there are things outside the universe that aren't caused. Particularly if causation you think of as like a process causation, which is a physical phenomenon. If explanations are like an epistemic phenomenon, it's something that it's like stories we tell ourselves, then it's not clear that that has any bearing on ontology. That's just like we just like to have explanations.
¶1143This is one of the real problems I have with contingency arguments is they don't tell us what an explanation is or why we should expect there to always be one. It seems like that they just really want there to be an explanation. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I I do think that they rely on like an epistemic notion, but but then that epistemic notion is like not satisfied because there's like these crappy standards that like can't be met that are kind of hoisted on people.
¶1144So they're just like left in this state, but then they'll like randomly >> if explanations are not anything that if explanations are just um like epistemic human constructs, why would everything have an explanation? That's just entirely arbitrary. >> No. Yeah. Well, the reason everything would have an explanation is because you've convinced yourself of that and it's your psychology that's uh the one.
¶1145>> Yeah. I mean that it seems to me that we just really like to have answers to everything, but why should everything have an answer? I think that the deeper the the the slightly better way to say that is that there um if things could be different ways, there must have been something that made it the case that it was one way instead of another way. But that's just not true. It just it just could be that way for no reason.
¶1146Why >> can be different ways as well is also doing a lot quite a lot. >> Well, yeah, I mean that's that's the other thing, right? Because if we're that we can say that there is well so if we're to say that something is contingent that you know the way that Joseph it is meaning that it can be a different way. That's that's an assumption in sort of the definition. You can of course ask well are all of these things contingent?
¶1147Like you could postulate that there's some sort of a temporal state that is necessary. >> I mean I I I mean more like it's like in my view more up for grabs whether like the whole universe can be a different way at least in particular in its initial state. I think you know than it is the reason the reason that these examples of like mediumsized object human sized objects found in forests um are appealing to us is because we like understand a lot about how stuff in forest works and we know that like >> I mean exactly that's what I was saying. So it's an irrelevant analogy. >> We don't know that about the initial state of the universe.
¶1148>> We we don't know initial states of universes can be like different or that it's intelligible to talk about them being different or anything. say >> and other sorts of contingent things that could account for why the former but not the latter need explanation plausibly then for any contingent things there's an explanation for their existence and this makes intuitive sense you know like both the existence and non-existence of a given contingent thing or plurality of contingent things are real genuine possibilities and yet only one of those genuine possibilities is actual as opposed to the other that seems to demand some account some reason >> I just think as well like all this of like, oh, they're real genuine possibilities. It's it's just again like adjectives that do absolutely nothing. Like you've said that what contingent means is it can or cannot be the case. So why be like no really genuinely can or cannot be the case.
¶1149Like you're just like it's just you know fantastic words for no reason that aren't adding anything to it. It's not it's not making the case strong. Like so so for example with the initial state of the universe you've concluded that that is contingent because you've imagined it like a sphere in a forest for some reason >> and so and you've said well I would I would say that a sphere in a forest >> could not be there so might as well just say now the universe could not be there because I don't care about physics and think about the initial state as a sphere in a forest because I'm not doing physics and so everything. And then and then what you've done is you've gone but like really genuinely maybe it could be different and like but what the are you even talking about that? I think that what you're talking about is like God you're like just using m magnificent words to try and like make people think God did it right or something like that.
¶1150Like really genuinely it might not have existed guys >> because it's just like a like a big a big sphere a silver sphere but like does God create if I tell you what if I saw a silver sphere in a forest I would I might think it couldn't be there but I wouldn't think God put it there. >> Yes, that would be an odd inference to make. >> That's why it does exist when reality easily could have been such that it didn't. This explanatory principle is also just like abundantly confirmed by our universal experience, right? Right?
¶1151Like when we encounter contingent things in our experience, every which way we look, they uniformly have explanations, including quantum particles that indeterministically fluctuate into existence in a law governed way from causally prior conditions. And this offers strong inductive support for the principle, too. And you know, just more generally, the principle just very nicely accounts for our observations. You know, like if this explanatory principle is false, like why on earth do we consistently and repeatedly find that contingent things have explanations and never stumble across violations of the principle? Like if contingent things really could exist without any deeper explanation, why don't we witness widespread chaos?
¶1152like like bunches of photons say popping into existence inexplicably on my front porch or all manner of contingent chaos inexplicably existing from eternity past. The explanatory principle provides a nice account of why inexplicable chaos doesn't pervade reality which otherwise seemed to me to be a mystery. Blusters like >> the universe is full of inexplicable chaos. I don't know what he's talking about. Like there's quantum fluctuations all over the place.
¶1153As we've talked about before, chaos actually doesn't seem to mean what he thinks it means. But putting that aside, I mean, as far as we know, quantum events are indeterministic. Now, there are probability distributions that they behave. But then this gives rise to the question that what is he actually talking about? Like what what does it mean to have an explanation?
¶1154Does he think that whether or not um a a particle is measured to be spin up or spin down when it's put into a super superp position of both? Does he think that that has an explanation? Because as far as we know that it doesn't. I mean it depends on your interpretation of quantum physics. But like he's not telling us what are the constraints of what it needs to be to have for something to have an explanation.
¶1155So poss possible counter examples like quantum events are just not countenance. Another possible example, by the way, could be um the actions of free agents if you believe in such things because it's not clear that they have any explanation. >> So, and it's also hard to how would how would we establish? He says that our universal evidence is that every every condition thing does have an explanation. How would you prove a negative that it doesn't have an explanation?
¶1156At best, you could say that we don't have one currently, but how would you like you have that there just isn't one? Look, >> you've opened yourself right up to Craig there. There are no Tyrannosaurus Rexes in this room, James. You can prove a negative. >> But that's not a universal negative statement.
¶1157>> Okay. Okay. I'm kidding. >> No. Yeah.
¶1158>> Just because I know you hate Craig. I wanted to to point to that. >> I've heard that one actually. >> Oh, really? He That's one of his famous ones cuz it's like some kid.
¶1159It's like some like 12y old not 12. He's like 15 and he has this question and Craig's like, "You there are no Tyrannosaurus Rexes in this room. You can prove it." But, you know, he like goes off on him. But, um, well, I don't know why it sounds like Jordan Peterson now, but but what I was going to say is, yeah, libertarian free will be a good example. I don't I was actually even thinking of like history and stuff like that where um it it's sort of like it's interesting but it's like you know like oh the say the collapse of the Soviet Union or um why something happened in Rome or why some war happens or whatever you know like like how do you is there like like like all of these things are contingent but it's not like clear that there's like for a lot for many of these things that there's like an explanation or something right of these Like some of them are just there's just like a bunch of stuff.
¶1160Do you know what I mean? Like like there's so much stuff where there's just like stuff and it's like yeah just it just kind of happened like I don't know what you what you kind of want. >> Again it depends on what is admitted as a valid explanation or not? There may be certain things one could say but would those be explanations in the sense that he's require he never tells us what an explanation is. And so yeah it's very hard to say whether there are counter examples or not.
¶1161Also the idea that it may be the case that everything that happens within the universe has an explanation. That doesn't mean that the universe as a whole has an explanation and that's not arbitrary to think that the collection of all things um or the very beginning of the universe may be relevantly different to things that happen within the universe. That is to say that that is that you would expect the induction to carry over there would would be making extremely strong assumptions. >> Yeah. But you've got you've got to explain why everything has the explanation it does rather than some other explanation.
¶1162and why it stands in the relationship of not being explained by all the non-explanations that exist. >> Oh, that's a big fat contingent fact, right? Well, I'm more kind of appealing to like, you know, you know, the way that he was reasoning about um uh like how you have to think about causation and stuff and like you have to think how is stuff explained by the stuff it doesn't that it that doesn't exist that it relates to and it's not non-existing causal relationships and stuff or like, you know, why does it not have the powers that it doesn't have? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah.
¶1163Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alex Puce and Rob Coons have also argued that denying the explanatory principle has disastrous skeptical implications that undermine our empirical knowledge. One reason beyond those they give uh is that you know if it really were a live possibility that contingent things exist inexplicably then it would also be a live possibility that inexplicably there exist universes causally disconnected from our own which are filled with brains that duplicate your brain structure and dynamics for a very short period of time before fizzling out of existence.
¶1164But if that's a live possibility, then it's a live possibility. We have no empirical knowledge and no knowledge of the future, which is absurd. Because if it's a live possibility that a large proportion of observers who are indistinguishable from you from a first-p person perspective are radically deceived, then that would just undermine your knowledge of the empirical world. >> Yeah, but like I know that's not true, so no problem. >> I read I actually read this paper.
¶1165It's an awful paper. It's full of leaps of logic, but I um I don't want to go through it all. Now one one thing I will say though I I I just don't I don't understand these um these arguments on that appeal to skeptical scenarios. seems to go like well if we accept this principle then we would be forced into a skeptical hypothesis but I don't like that hypothesis so I'm going to reject >> the assumption later but it just sort of assumes that the skeptical inference is invalid even though it's like maybe one man's motus ponent is another man's motus tolins right maybe I should accept that the hypothesis instead of theism right it's it's not really >> anyway there's a lot of other issues I have with that paper but I don't I don't want to get into that now >> they're all just like these stupid slippery slopes groups though that are never really like you know properly established where it's like oh you know if if you reject that there is a a a concrete ultimate one you know it's just like some gibberish that like Darth Dawkins would come out with something like you reject the intelligible basis for a concrete ultimate one then like you don't know your hand from your ass or something like who like what are you talking about and who cares like why this isn't a problem I've got this is like this is just some nonsense that you've made up about things that aren't true. >> Let's jump to where he defends the necessity premise.
¶1166It's just after 21. Oh, we're basically there anyway. Yeah, just keep playing. >> Lots of other arguments for the principal. You can see the books and papers on screen for more.
¶1167And together, the arguments made it really plausible to me that contingent things both individuals and groups thereof have explanations. But considering all the contingent things that exist, if there's an explanation of their existence, it seemed that some necessary thing must exist. After all >> seem Why? Why does it seem that way? What are you saying when you say it seems that way?
¶1168Why are you Why are you saying that? What? What do you mean it seems like what >> the seemings? >> Nothing contingent could explain why anything contingent exists. It would invoke as part of our explanation the very thing for which we're seeking an explanation to begin with.
¶1169It would be like appealing to a penguin to explain why all the penguins exist. Like no like that fails to explain why all the penguins exist since it simply assumes rather than explains the existence of the penguin cited in the explanation. From these premises it follows that some necessary thing exists which explains contingent things. So that's the first stage of reasoning of a simplified form of one of Rasmuson's arguments. They have lots of other contingency arguments with more modest premise.
¶1170>> Hello. >> Yeah. I I don't know if anyone finds that convincing, the idea that well, we can't invoke a contingent thing to explain contingent things because then that would be like saying that penguins explain penguins. >> That's actually a good point I hadn't thought about before. >> The funny thing is though that penguins do explain penguins.
¶1171Where does a penguin come from? Well, a mommy penguin and a daddy penguin love each other very much. And obviously if you go back far enough then some birds that aren't penguins. But like >> the very example that he uses, it's not obvious that that's actually a counter example because that's exactly how you explain penguins. by other other penguins.
¶1172>> What if you had uh what if you observed an infinite chain of penguins? Then >> well, this is the point, right? So, I don't see that there's any problem with postulating an infinite chain of of contingent explanations. Uh people have an issue with this, but I have I >> I'm actually with I'm fine with just like a a discrete finite chain of contingent explanations. Like, I don't care.
¶1173Just stop somewhere. Like, I literally don't care. Just give me an explanation and you can stop when I'm like happy, you know? Yes. Um but the particular uh claim that I'm responding to here is the notion that if every contingent thing must have an explanation then there must be some nonlain them.
¶1174Well >> that is avoidable if we think that um there there's two ways to avoid that. Either that there is an infinite number of contingent things each of which explains the succeeding one or that explanations can go in some sort of loop or web that they don't have to have a linear structure. And Joe doesn't really tell us what the problem with either of those is. I mean, I know other people have written about this, but Joe's making the argument here. He just doesn't really tell us.
¶1175>> No, I think he kind of did with the spheres because he said like, you know, if you if if if you saw even though spheres don't explain each other, but if you saw an infinite series of them, you uh you know, you wouldn't just be like, "Oh, okay. I'm satisfied now." You'd be like, "What explains all those spheres?" >> Yeah. He talks about he gives an example another example of this later when he talks about dominoes falling over where he says but what you know sort of well the example he gives there is like you could say that the white ones if they alternate white and black >> yeah white ones are causing the black ones to falling the white ones to fall over I've just not been able to understand why that's a problem >> it's because you're like well why are they fallen at all and it's like yeah cuz the white ones are causing the black ones and the black ones are >> causing that's the answer like it's just it's just the it seems that I don't like that explanation. I there doesn't seem to be >> but where's God, bro? Where's God in that?
¶1176You know, you didn't you didn't invoke um an ultimate concrete one that grounds all intelligibility and unintelligibility. >> Yeah. like what another thing I guess I I do want to point out actually here that um I think that if you're going to do this sort of thing you should probably do like way more psychology of like explanation and stuff and like what do people actually accept not just randomly speculate about what you think about some like random example of like infinite dominoes and then just go yeah I guess I've like figured out how all people think and what's right in all historical and scientific contexts based off of like some random domino example example or like magic spheres like you know actually just do like some experiments on how people think to figure it out. >> Yes. Particularly when a lot of then almost the entire argument is appealing to intuitions about when and why explanations are needed and there's just no engagement at all with what explanations are or why we think they're important and how that relates to anything that exists in the world.
¶1177It's really unsatisfying I think that that's just not considered at all. Let's uh look briefly at what he says about why we should think that God is the necessary being as opposed to something something else. Uh just skip ahead about 30 seconds that with God convincing >> still I could see some plausibility to it. So it was getting harder to maintain my confident naturalism. >> I could see why people think the necessary thing would have to be non-physical or immaterial.
¶1178Like physical and material things seem contingent and no physical thing seems relevantly dissimilar to contingent physical things that could account for why one would be necessary while the others are >> one is the first one you know that that's a relevant difference. >> Yeah. I mean I I think I'm really surprised that Joe would say that given like you know like Opy's explanation right of like um how he thinks of modality as grounded in the physical powers of each like subsequent physical state. And so when he describes the initial state as literally not having the temporal constraints such that it makes sense to speak about it as being different because it is that part of the manifold and then when you speak about other states and there's kind of like stoasticity and you can talk about okay like you know the possibility of the physical process going one way or the other and so there it makes sense to to to speak of possibility. Um that that just makes perfect sense to me.
¶1179So there's not like there isn't a qualitative difference you might say, >> but there is a metaphysical difference. Yeah. >> In literally like you know the the physical properties considering like spacetime at different points in what they can do. And so that that just like fully explains it. I I literally don't even get his point here.
¶1180It's like he's like, "Yeah, but where's like the metaphys where does the metaphysical substance change or something?" It's like no, it's like it's the same substance, but the modal properties in this model are grounded in like the spatial temporal characteristics. >> Exactly. >> Um, yeah, >> but he thinks it has to be God. Let's hear why should posit only one necessary entity since that's much simpler and less arbitrary than other numbers and only one seems needed to explain contingency. And while I wasn't fully convinced at the time, I could definitely see where Josh was coming from when he argued that the necessary thing would be unlimited in value.
¶1181According to Josh, it had at least some value given that it has various valuable powers to produce lots of good things. And any finite cutoff in value would seem to be an arbitrary unexplained cutoff. That alone seems somewhat problematic. But it also just seems problematic to posit brute unexplained necessary features of things, especially ones that seem highly arbitrary and could conceivably be different in hordes of ways. The same reasoning would motivate thinking this reality has unlimited power, too.
¶1182I mean, after all, it has some power. You know, it made contingent things after all. And a finite arbitrary cut off in power seemed problematic for the reasons already noted. More generally, it just didn't seem plausible that the necessary foundation could be say, you know, like a turtle or the shape of a Disney princess or a football. Like all these things have arbitrary seeming limits in shape and size and location and duration and power and whatnot.
¶1183But arbitary like that seem to call out for deeper explanation. >> And that is what is a guy with two holes in his hands. It's really sad that Joe seems to think that the fact that we don't think that a Disney princess or a football is perhaps a good explanation for why the universe exists that therefore it must be God really the next best option. >> Yeah. But every time he says this, you have to also keep in mind that he is also saying that God is a first century Palestinian Jew.
¶1184So >> yes, well really less plausible than a Disney princess. >> Disney that sounds pretty similar to like the Disney princess thing guy like you know but then imagine I said no that the Disney princess is like actually part of like God being like four in eight or something you know at least that's a fraction. >> Yeah. >> Also I wanted to I want to comment on this idea. So this this relates to the ontology of absence that I talked about earlier.
¶1185It's utterly baffling to me that Joe thinks that this is a sensible way to reason about things. He thinks that well obviously the first cause has some power because it brought about everything else right it brought about at least the first state right now remember I said before that all that's required even if we buy this point of the argument that there needs to be a necessary being that's outside of you know space time if you buy that all that's required for this first cause to do is create say an unstable quantum state which decays and then you get a universe or something like that right that's all it has to do that's all that's necessary to account for the uh the phenomena in question which is just how you how you end the chain of contingency So but instead of just postulating that instead of postulating all that is needed to account for the phenomenon instead of just postulating the minimal power that's needed Joe thinks that we have to postulate that the first cause has all possible powers like well it has some very specific power which we've established. So we that would be arbitrary to just assert that it has the power that is explanatory necessary. So we'll just posulate it has literally all possible powers. How does that make the slightest bit of sense?
¶1186How did how did we get that? Imagine that we're looking at sphere in the forest and like where did that come from? You're like well it must have been an all powerful being that put it there because clearly they had some power. They put the sphere there and anything else would be arbitrary. >> Yeah.
¶1187If if you said they could possible powers >> they could just like get hold of a sphere and put it there then you're like ruling out um that they can travel at the speed of light for like no good reason. So >> it's just so ridiculous. There's no style of reasoning that I'm familiar with that uses this approach that you just well it'll be arbitrary to postulate limits. So just >> it's arbitrary to rule anything out that you don't know you can't rule out. >> It's not arbitrary to only postulate what is necessary to account for what you're trying to explain.
¶1188>> Yeah. It's not it's not what we always do. No, it's it's not arbitrary because like the evidence literally compels you to produce a cause that can be produced by that that can be the effect of that cause. Right. >> What's arbitrary >> talking about it so it's not arbitrary.
¶1189>> What what's arbitrary is like including a bunch of random that's got nothing to do with that effect. >> Exactly. Ridiculous. Like, oh yeah, like the yeah, the cause could like place the sphere here, but like also it's a helicopter sometimes. Like, why?
¶1190Well, because like why not just give it some extra powers, right? That's like better than just like taking away its helicopter Apacheiness. And the argument that it must be all good because it has some goodness because it can create the initial state is just entirely ad hoc. Like, why even think that it has any goodness? may just have this one kind of weird causal power.
¶1191Attributing some sort of moral status to it seems arbitrary because we haven't established that it has any any such thing. >> Why even why even think the initial state is like good? Like that's just kind of weird to me. Like it's >> he seems to argue that because that there are subsequent states like let's >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶1192>> Say that there is some goodness in the universe. Therefore, the initial state must have had good. That doesn't even I don't think that follows. >> Yeah. But it's it's kind of like saying I don't know.
¶1193It's it's like saying um when that thing hit the moon or whatever that like exploded it like billions of years ago that that was like good because it would like create the elements that would have to go into the earth for there to be >> a different example. So World War II I would say was bad but World War II certainly changed a lot of things happen in history including meaning including leading to events that would otherwise not have happened some of which are probably good. So does that mean we should conclude that World War II was good because were it not for World War II certain uh certain aspects of goodness or certain things that are good wouldn't have happened? I don't think that's a reasonable conclusion. And so just because good things came of this initial state that doesn't mean that the initial state in itself was good.
¶1194Let alone that it has all goodness that's just wild extrapolation beyond anything that is justified by what you're actually trying to account for. Ah, but you you're talking about World War II, but the cause of World War II, the cause of World War II have no arbitrary >> crazy racism and all sorts of other >> Exactly. As I said, God caused World War II. >> All right, I think that's probably enough. Um, and I observe, Nathan, that it's like 1:00 a.m.
¶1195there, so you probably want to finish up soon. >> I want to finish up soon as well. And it's not nearly that late here. What I suggest is that um we've covered most of the video already. Um maybe we could just talk very briefly about the beauty and aesthetic experience argument which I find very funny and then very briefly about the problem of evil.
¶1196Uh we could just spend like you know five or 10 minutes on each and then finish up. We can save religious experiences for another time because that's more related to the miracle arguments. Anyway, >> should we? >> So beauty starting at 5:35 that's five hours of beauty and aesthetic experience. Joe.
¶1197Joe here looks a lot better than I look right now. Just to just so people and and Joe looks tired. The world is utterly saturated with beauty. Almost >> Whoa, look at this. >> Have you noticed this t-shirt that Joe has on?
¶1198>> I actually just sold it. What does it say? Rome has >> Rome has spoken. The case is closed. What kind of lunatic conference are they giving out t-shirts like that?
¶1199>> Yeah. Where did he get that? >> Probably like off camera or someone, I'd guess. >> Yeah. >> Experience.
¶1200The world is utterly saturated with beauty. Almost anywhere you look, there's beauty, right? Beauty of >> uh me every time I look in the mirror. That's why >> proteins. Oh gosh.
¶1201Stop. Stop. sign. Beauty of proteins. There's a stop sign for all.
¶1202>> Okay. >> I like how Joe's just lost his mind by this. He's like, "Haha, stop sign." >> Oh, I didn't mean that. This has a very complex meaning that's like known to me alone. But, um, I'm keeping that in.
¶1203There's the beauty of proteins and cells and organs and organ systems and animals and populations and ecospheres. Animals. Look at these things. I mean, look at this. Is so beautiful.
¶1204>> Aren't Aren't those like Don't those tigers like technically have Down syndrome? >> Uh I'm not sure what you're referring to with that. >> Yeah, there's like uh I think like Bengali tigers or whatever. There's like a a breed of tigers that looks like maybe it's not this one, but it looks like that that has Down syndrome. Um, oh well.
¶1205Or or you know, it's technically that it's like a missing chromosome in tigers, but >> Oh, right. right rights and ecospheres, animals. Look at these things. I mean, look at this. This is so beautiful.
¶1206There's beauty of deep space and galaxies and dust clouds. There's beauty of deep time and the gradual unfolding of the cosmic narrative. There's beauty of nature, right? Like rocks, trees, leaves, flowers, landscapes, mountains, bodies. I too enjoy the fossilized remains of creatures that died in like volcanic eruptions and >> yeah massive asteroid catastrophe kill like almost all life >> the terror of like mamalian brains as they suffocate on fumes of water the sun the moon clouds there's beauty of independently converging lines of evidence that fit together like a puzzle piece.
¶1207There's beauty of laws of nature. There's beauty of character. >> Yeah. >> Is that Padre Peio in the middle as well? >> I think so.
¶1208Yes. >> Oh, for sake. Why does he keep coming up? This guy like >> this guy who literally no one else in the world cares about but like Ethan Muse and he's just like taking over the internet. It's like when when Kim Kardashian like broke the internet by taking a picture for her ass or whatever, but it's like pedopia.
¶1209And also like Mother Theresa is that on the left. >> Yeah. >> I guess I mean the mix one, right? Like the >> Yeah. >> I mean there there's some good stuff I guess you can say.
¶1210But like also um you know like didn't Steve didn't Christopher Hitchens have that book about how she was like pretty abusive and weird? Um, oh, apparently it it's uh it's Maxmillian Co Bay. I I mean that means nothing to me, but fair enough. I I think that Joe has started playing the piano or something while showing these pictures also adds to the aesthetic beauty. >> I I mean, I think that's deliberate, right?
¶1211But may maybe like there would be more beauty in this world if God just played piano in our heads all the time instead of like >> Well, I've kind of thought about that that, you know, for most of human history, people didn't have access to, you know, uh, cassette players or iPods or phones that were used for playing music and and that would make things pretty boring if you're working out in the fields and you can't listen to music or a podcast. So presumably it would have been better if God just had like background music that was just playing all of the time. And at least that would give you something to listen to when you're like killing yourself working in the fields for you know years on end in your drudgery of existence to prevent starvation in architecture, industrial design and realistic art. Beauty of customs and cultures abstract. Do you know what I'd find super funny is if he put do you know like the Pashima mama controversy when so like the Pope uh Francis invited these like Amazonian um Catholics to like come and do some like Native American dance in uh in the the church in Rome, right?
¶1212And all like the trad Catholics were like, "Oh yeah, like this is like Moolok desecr" you know, like cuz obviously the Amazonians are like possessed by like worship demons and you know like um they've been invited to um the seat of Rome because like the demons are like infiltrating. And so there's this whole like controversy about this. It sounds funny. >> Oh yeah. Yeah.
¶1213It's it's basically pretty funny. But like this is one of these cases of like you know one one person's beauty is another man's like demonp possessed savage culture. >> Yeah. >> Visual beauty, cinematic beauty, mathematical beauty like fractal images which as Pruce notes in his excellent lecture on arguments from beauty are beautiful not only in what they visually present but also in what they represent, namely a very simple and elegant algorithm. There's auditory beauty of flowing rivers, chirping birds, roaring lions, harmonious songs.
¶1214There's non-ensory beauty in abstract mathematical objects and structures like the set theoretic hierarchy. There's beauty in proofs in mathematic logic and philosophy. There's poetic and in narrative beauty. Like I could go on. I could go on for ages.
¶1215As if our tenant writes on the telescopic and on the microscopic scale from the starry heaven to the solicious skeleton of the diatom in her inward parts as well as on the surface flowers that blush unseen and gems. >> But these people just need to work down the minds for a bit. That should cure this. So, I guess the issue here is that Joe is not trying to give any reason why we should think that these things are beautiful. He's just sort of saying that he finds them beautiful, but maybe other people don't and maybe >> Yeah.
¶1216>> So, yeah. Well, I think that that's what we'll say at the moment. Continue. >> But there's also questions of, you know, the the distributions of these things and like whether it is only, you know, middle class kids doing PhDs in philosophy at Princeton that, for example, think about these things and everyone else. How many people on earth appreciate the beauty of mathematical equations for example?
¶1217Not all, but most of these things are quite niche and >> yeah, but they're also like very specifically niche to like the aesthetic of being like a philosophy guy who like has all these academic interests which is also sort of like a little bit related to your class background and stuff and not like you know the the the um aboriges in Australia who like are addicted to like gambling and coke and like that like you know the they're like able to really like sit around. >> Yeah, he didn't mention the beauty of like a shot of ecstasy or something like that. >> Gambling away a million dollars at a casino all black. Imagine if this was like an advert for like some guy. It's like the beauty of this, the beauty of a mathematical putting it all on the big game.
¶1218that the unfathomethemed caves of ocean pear. Nature is sublime or beautiful and the exceptions do but prove the rule. However various be the taste for beauty and however diverse the levels of its education with the degrees of its refinement. I'm sorry. The exceptions do but prove the rule.
¶1219And that's just like black holes and like vacuum and like you know minus whatever Kelvin, you know, like just horrible everywhere. Nothing survives. And it's like Yeah, it's just really beautiful, man. Like the Mariana Trench. >> Well, just death everywhere in the natural world.
¶1220Well, he he talks about this though. We'll get to that. He says he has a >> It's just a problem of evil. Yeah, it's just a problem of evil, bro. Why don't you have a little bit of beauty in your life?
¶1221Nature elicits aesthetic sentiment from men severally and collectively. And the more fidious becomes this taste, the more poignantly and the more lavishly does she gratify it. Oh, what a bunch of waffle. Okay, so like what's going on here? Like doesn't doesn't seem really sus that the world is just shot through with beauty?
¶1222Like come on. Like the world obviously didn't have to be this way. In fact, there are untold hordes of ways that the world might have been drab and dull and boring and lousy and ugly and aesthetically contemptable even if it contained psychophysically lucky conscious rational creatures who systematically avoided skeptical scenarios and to enjoy significant moral and operating knowledge. >> I feel like I'm a bit like literally name one Joe because you just like didn't even manage to find a single example on planet Earth which is like replete with misery. >> But he the thing is so Joe gives a bunch of examples of beauty, right?
¶1223And you know, we can say, okay, sure, there's there's a bunch of things that are beautiful. I think it maybe is a bit more subjective, but sure, there are things that we can say are beautiful, although many people find beautiful. But then what Joe is saying here is that it could have been easily it could easily have been the case, so says Joe, that the world was just replete with um drabness and boringness and misery, right? Or I forget exactly what he says, but um drab and boring and so forth. And that is not inconsistent with there being lots of beauty.
¶1224like there can be lots of beauty as well as lots of ugliness and boringness and drabness and I would say both are true. The world does have a lot of beauty in it, but it also has a lot of boringness and ugliness in it too. And so the question is does the distribution of those is that more of those two things is that more expected under theism or under naturalism? >> And that's why he needs to establish not just that there is some beautiful stuff. There's also lots of unful boring things and drab things.
¶1225Yeah, I reckon I reckon if you existed before the invention of like the toilet, a lot of these arguments maybe like lose their um >> or the germ theory of disease. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Refrigeration.
¶1226>> Oh yeah. It used to just be normal for everyone to have like smallpox and going on like you know just like just like lesions all over their faces and things and all like scars from things. Um just Yeah. So even backgrounding all the evidence against naturalism we've canvased so far, beauty comes along and just slaps naturalism in the face with still further counter evidence. But why is it counter evidence against naturalism?
¶1227He hasn't told >> Yeah, I got no idea what I was going to say about that. Like it's just you like certain things. Like what's >> what's unexpected about the fact that intelligent beings would find things aesthetically pleasing? Like is that is that surprising? Because it's not surprising to me.
¶1228Especially given you've already had your like psychophysical what's it gubbins nonsense like >> granting that for this argument right minds and like okay so you are praise some things is beautiful so >> yeah I mean this is the point right so what is beauty well it's something that's sensorally pleasing to us why is that unexpected that beings that have senses that detect and interact with their environment would find certain combinations of stimuli pleasing is that overwhelmingly expected under naturalization >> it could it could be universes that don't have that kind of stuff or could it Like I mean you've already had all the psychophysical harmony stuff, right? >> Some things in the in the world that are better for us than others or like that we seek out and and those things at least some combinations what we find pleasing and obviously for beings that can produce culture of course we can then make things that that are in accordance with some of our sensibilities and you know some people find things beautiful and others don't. Like the sort of music that I listen to is probably not to most people's tastes but I enjoy it. So like there's there's things that are generally shared and then there's things that differ. Like is this really what not what we'd expect under naturalism?
¶1229Sort of a mixed bag of you know >> what I was going to say is like you know people like coldplay and voted for the Nazis like you know there's all sorts of different preferences out there. >> Yes. People listen to Katy Perry like you know to to each his own I suppose. >> Like there are absurdly many conceivable ways natural world could have contained little to no beauty. Indeed, since the intricacy and complexity of the world is part of what makes it so beautiful, many of those alternative beauty deprived worlds will plausibly be much simpler and so more intrinsically probable than beauty filled worlds like ours.
¶1230Yet, we happen to land upon the aesthetic jackpot of a world saturated with beauty. This is much more surprising than there's so much that's not beautiful. >> Anyway, we'll get to that. Yeah. I It's like, is he literally saying that there are like there are worlds where like people can't have preferences such that they would say they like some of the stuff in it?
¶1231>> Well, worlds that support life, right? Because obviously if it then it's sort of redundant, but he seems to be saying that he seems to be that he's envisioning that most worlds that have embodied creatures nevertheless don't have those creatures finding anything aesthetically pleasing. I I mean, is does that makes a lot of sense? It doesn't really make sense to me. >> Why?
¶1232Maybe they do. Maybe they just do like maybe they just like different stuff. >> I think that is expected under naturalism because of the way that our sensory like a plausible crit what I trying to say plausible constraints on what is expected under um broad assumptions about what sens sensation is and what it is to interact with the world is that certain things are going to be found to be better than others by by those agents. I >> I think it's it's maybe like an entailment of the harmony point, right? Because like if you're in I I mean we we sort of talked about how the way Joe conceptualizes harmony as being a bit of like a conceptual mistake and you can have ways of thinking about it that don't have these like strange cartesian parts.
¶1233But upstream of that you avoiding the cartesian parts or accepting the cartesian parts. If you're in a psychophysically psychonomically harmonious world, well then a part of that would be that your cognitive faculties are um fit for the uh aesthetics of of your world, which would probably mean a kind of like distribution of appraisals, right, towards >> Exactly. That's what I'm saying. That's exactly what you expect that your senses are fitted to the world such that you can make relevant distinctions between, you know, positive and negative s sensory uh states. And that's essentially some things you'll find beautiful and some you'll find ugly.
¶1234I think that's exactly what you expect. >> So it's it's a maybe a little bit of double counting here from the psycho psychonomic physical. >> Yes, exactly strongly favors theism over naturalism. For God would have lots of excellent reasons to actualize a world saturated with beauty, right? Like beauty is good and so is its appreciation.
¶1235Beauty points us beyond the mundane, can draw us to God. And a stunningly beautiful world is also just a magnificent display or manifestation of God's intelligence, power, craftsmanship, and awesome majesty. It's also quite striking that we have aesthetic experience. In other words, that we can actually appreciate and enjoy beauty even if there are >> well not not not if we're in a psychonomic physically nomically world because that's just what that is. >> As we discussed, I don't think that's surprising at all.
¶1236Under naturalism, he hasn't really given us a reason to think that. Well, maybe his evolutionaryations of our aesthetic sense, the evolutionary process wasn't at all guaranteed to produce beings with an aesthetic sense, let alone an aesthetic sense directed towards the vast and diverse array of beautiful concrete and abstract structures in the world. Creatures without an aesthetic sense or with a pathetically emaciated aesthetic sense compared to ours easily could have evolved instead. So, it's that you're just saying things. >> How do we know that we don't have a pathetically emaciated aesthetic sense compared to other hypothetical beings?
¶1237It's like how how does he know where we sit on the spectrum? >> I think he's he he's maybe kind of right in the sense that like evolution doesn't say that anything in particular has to evolve other than crap. But um you know like I I think once you're talking about a certain kind of like neural physiology and a certain kind of like sensory apparatus well then once you're within those ranges you're going to get like aesthetic preferences >> something that you find. aesthetic. It might not be the same things that we do, but I mean, are we supposed to say that there's a particular reason why the things that we find beautiful are the things that God would, you know, make us find beautiful?
¶1238Like what's the what's the content of that explanation? Like it just seems like whatever whatever we happens to find beautiful, however we ended up, is what we would call beautiful, you know, like what what is the what are we supposed to be explaining? >> Naturalism. That evolution happened to take a course that conferred upon us aesthetic experience. By contrast, that isn't so surprising under theism.
¶1239Oh, and by the way, this point shows that even if you think beauty is subjective, so that there aren't facts about what's beautiful that hold independently of our perceptions. The argument from the existence and character of aesthetic experience is still good evidence for theism over >> what does it mean for things to be beautiful independent of our perceptions? >> I don't know. Unless it just means that God thinks they're beautiful. >> But then isn't that like related to God's perceptions?
¶1240I suppose >> it's still going to be but it's just like but God could beat you up if you disagree. >> Well, he could flood you, right? Like, you know, >> that's kind of what it's, you know, it's kind of like when people talk about the um like object like God providing like an objective moral theory or whatever, right? Where they don't actually mean that like God isn't a subject with preferences like everyone else, but they just mean like God can beat you up if you disagree. Not like, "Yeah, but if you do what God doesn't like, he'll like, you know, smack you." So, what are you going to do?
¶1241>> Yeah. I don't think he's really established here that, >> yeah, that that there's a particular reason to think that the fact that we do perceive beauty in the world is unexpected under naturalism. >> My argument here with a passage from the brilliant atheist philosopher Paul Draper, whom I mentioned much earlier in the video, who writes that theism is supported by the fact that the universe contains an abundance of beauty. The fact that the parts of the universe constructed by humans are not for the most part beautiful shows that there's nothing about physical objects that makes them inevitably beautiful. Thus, a beautiful universe, especially one containing beings that can appreciate that beauty, is clearly more likely on theism than on naturalism.
¶1242And so is evidence favoring theism over is why does he say here that the most of the things that humans make are not beautiful? it I mean certainly there are lot of things opinion on beauty like it isn't >> I'm not going to say that everything that humans make is beautiful but I it's not clear to me that on balance things in the natural world are more beautiful than things in the artificial world like I I think on balance I would say the opposite because humans often at least try to make things look aesthetically pleasing when we have to look at them not always of course in the natural world often just are horrible and or boring >> would wouldn't that actually be evidence against the inference that like Joe would want to make because if most things that humans produce are not beautiful then that would be evidence that agents that create things tend not to produce beautiful things. Yeah, that's an interesting line of argument is all good so he just only makes beautiful things. Well, except when he doesn't. And maybe then that's we should turn to that.
¶1243>> The or yeah is is Joe saying actually the because most things people produce aren't beautiful then and the fact that most things in the universe aren't beautiful is actually the the argument from anti beauty. Um it's not >> naturalism. But what about ugliness, Joe? Like you know if beauty is evidence for God's existence, isn't ugliness evidence against God's existence? I mean Joe like you exist, right?
¶1244Like isn't that like a decisive counter example to the argument from beauty? Like what's going on here? Here's how Alexander Pruce addresses this objection. >> Augustine had this holistic solution to the problem of evil which was actually based on aesthetic con. I'm just gonna laugh at this because it's like imagine if it was just like an infinite chain of references where like Augustine Augustine said that origin said that Jesus said >> yeah pretty much >> considerations and it works a lot better on the aesthetic side.
¶1245So the his idea is that ugly things are used by artists as part of a much greater work and the light of the whole the isolated part is not important or even beneficial. So for instance, this is I think as far as it goes a really ugly painting of two hands, but you know it's we have a very limited view here. Let's zoom out. Now the hole is lovely, but it's not just lovely despite the hands. The hands are are central to a painting.
¶1246If they were better >> Yeah. Just like what the are you talking about, bro? like that like honestly this is my that it's not lovely in spite of the like what literally like I just no I don't know like the whole is lovely that I mean it's all right isn't it it's all right developed better as hands um they would draw our attention because they you know that we visually sort of look towards the middle and maybe slightly above in the middle. >> Who the is we as well? I was looking at the umbrella, not the hands.
¶1247But maybe like >> freak. >> It's just Do you know this is what kind of annoys me is like when philosophers do like um bad uh speculative fiction or like bad art or whatever. And then they're like, "But we're doing philosophy. We're so deep." But actually, they're just like being really bad at what they're trying to do, but like not actually contributing to it. Like this is just like >> many such cases >> like bad art criticism thing and like I just don't care about like Alexander Pruce dabbles in art and we all have to listen because he's in front of the L.
¶1248>> Well, let's let's hear uber response to to ugliness is >> tension and and keep it there. Whereas the attention isn't supposed to stay there. It's supposed to wander away. It's supposed to wander to the glowing clouds and the the fields of grass and the billowing bits of the dress um and the little boy. And so there's a good reason why the hands are as they are.
¶1249>> The little boy mate >> in the moral case. This kind of a story of the of the meaning of the part in terms of the whole has the problem that it seems to treat people who are suffering horrible things as mere means. >> Indeed. >> But it's not a it's on the ugliness side. It's not as much of a problem.
¶1250We're not treating people as means. We are maybe treating bits of nature. >> It's not that deep, bro. It's just a, you know, he's like, he's like, this highlights the problem of not taking the humanity of humans as seriously. It's like, it's literally just a painting of a woman with an umbrella.
¶1251Like, it's not none of this. This is all going on in your head. Like, seek therapy. Don't like this is not anything to do with this painting. Well, again, it's an analogy which is of questionable relevance, but maybe let's hear him out a little bit more and then I'll share some further thoughts or bits of things made by us like the dump like the dump.
¶1252It seems less of a problem. Also, I think there's an interesting asymmetry. I'm almost at the end now. Um so we observe a very tiny part of the universe both in terms of what what modalities we observe under we have a small number of senses and the physical extent of it and so on. We find some things ugly here.
¶1253I think it is risky to judge an artist not talented on the basis of a small part. >> Thank you. >> Sorry but like what is he actually referring to when he says we find some things ugly here? There's nothing in that picture I find ugly myself. I like >> means generally not this picture.
¶1254>> Well, just in the world. >> Yeah, >> that's such a bad There are some things we generally find ugly in the world. >> Yeah. Well, the point is that is that not evidence against the existence of of God? If God, you know, likes beauty and wants things to be beautiful, what about ugliness?
¶1255Right. He's giving a response to that. >> Well, yeah. Yeah. I I mean I get that but like why has he been talking about this like woman's hands in a picture?
¶1256>> Well, he'll explain it, right? It's an analogy as everything seems to be. >> Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.
¶1257Back to the hands in Monet's Woman with the umbrella. And it is more risky to judge an artist untalented on the basis of a small part than to judge an artist talented on the basis of a small part. So, for instance, here this is a small part. I'll tell you this is a small part of a painting, though it could be a standalone painting. Um, I think it would be a I think we're right to judge that it is a talented artist on the basis of this small part.
¶1258But even so, the the the part even when it shows talent, it it can generate expectations that are then overcome by the whole. We have this very much in literature of surprising plot twists. So if if there's something in the part that we don't like that might well disappear in the hole >> or it might become >> you don't want to disappear in the hole transformed in its meaning in the hole. But I think when there's something good in the part there's a chance that you know that it will not actually be good in the whole. I mean in literature we see these things events that seem to be good but turn out to be bad.
¶1259But the talent of the of the writer or the painter in the part is in it can be judged from just the part if it's talented. But the lack of talent I think not always. Sometimes there may be a specific reason for why it looks stilt is written in a stilted way in a stilted voice. Say um because the whole time you're going to zoom out for this one. >> This is like when your mate is visiting from Russia but he only did one week of Dualingo English.
¶1260Like I literally don't know and I'm like I I'm so serious. Like that was all really messed up to me. Like what? >> Keep keep playing. Keep playing.
¶1261I think >> sometimes there may be a specific reason for why it looks stilt is written in a tilted way in a tilted voice. Say um because the hole can overcome it. So here let me zoom out for this one. I I had fun once in the National Gallery in Washington DC looking at paintings close up and seeing ways that the hole is different. >> Sounds like a blast.
¶1262>> So the hole is beautiful as is the part, but the the tone is utterly different. And there's good reason for the difference. Again, we have the foreground and the background. And it's there's a theological significance here as to why the the back the thing in the background is dimmer and so on. So I think positive judgments I I I should have said can be confidently made based on a small part or with some confidence at least, but negative ones not so much.
¶1263And so I think there's an asymmetry which makes the argument from ugliness not a very strong one. >> Now I'll add the following. Um even though ugliness is >> no no he's just not right. Like even if he was right about this like random like Monet painting of a woman like I'm sure you can find other examples where you absolutely can say that someone's a terrible artist from looking at a small part. Like for example, remember that restoration of um some Spanish was it Jesus?
¶1264Like I mean that was only a small thing, but I think we can all say that that person was pretty >> as usual. We're supposed to draw sweeping conclusions from one ch one or two cherrypicked examples. I I think the basic point is supposed to be that um artists will often include multiple elements in their you know pictures or stories or whatever which individually might not be beautiful but when combined together um are beautiful and so you should sort of judge the whole and not just uh individual pieces of it. >> I think that that is the point. >> Yeah.
¶1265But it's like I think it's a bit for like trying to think about the aesthetic because firstly like Joe himself when he made the argument from beauty appealed to many particular things. He didn't just say like sort of like mong out and vaguely think of everything all at once and what's your like aesthetic impression of all of reality in totality. He was like literally like specifically this, specifically that, specifically this. Um, which I guess is kind of consistent with what Bruce was saying because he did say, "Oh, like you can look at particular beauty." Um, but you but you can't look at particular bads. But like what if you zoom out and it's just like more and more horri cuz I think like when you zoom out like what if you zoom out and it's like death nothing cold.
¶1266>> You got to zoom out further. >> Oh, okay. keeping >> it's just look I I think this is very weak because it seems to be saying that we should the scale at which the scale at which humans interact with life is defined you know by the way the world works. It's not like obviously if you go to an art gallery and you like stare at one tiny corner of the of the painting under a a magnifying glass it might not look very nice at that scale because it's not designed to be enjoyed at that scale. you're kind of just doing it wrong.
¶1267But life just isn't like that. If I walk around and see uh death, misery, blandness, or whatever uh in lots of places, you it doesn't really make sense to just say you're looking at life wrong. But yeah, but that's my life. That's what I see. That's what's around me.
¶1268That's what I encounter in my everyday practice. So it just being in an art gallery and perusing things just doesn't really seem relevant. >> Yeah. It also it I I think even if you do if you do consider things in that way, it sort of like makes everything a little bit up, right? Cuz it's like, okay, yes, um there's like all these children around you dying of Zika virus, but like imagine that there's like some like narcissistic guy who this is like a cool story for, isn't it?
¶1269All right. Now, like you there's actually a guy who thinks this is like like kind of cool. This is like a bit of blue in the corner of a Monet painting that like adds to the picture. These like children with like Zika virus heads. That's just like a bit a little bit of like um a little bit of blue.
¶1270Um so is it all good now? Yeah. And like you know that just that's just like a really inappropriate way of thinking about things I think. But cuz it's not it's not quite the same really. I don't think that um it's not it's not just ugliness.
¶1271It's like um it's like literally like horribleness like I don't I don't know like >> bleakness blandest things that are depressing that you know the joy of life like there's a lot there's a lot to that which I think is not being sufficiently addressed here but let's keep playing and see what I think Joe has another couple of comments >> some evidence against the ism there was and to the thing you said um yeah it's like the thing is with all of those art pieces is that you know you you're aware that there's a way you're sort of like meant to look at them or whatever. >> Yeah. >> But like what are the set pieces for life, you know, in God's tapestry? >> It's just it's not like that. >> Do you think about the whole thing?
¶1272Is it just medieval times? Is it like, you know, is it the future? Which which is the relevant frame for like considering the frame and scale, the stance? What things you consider and not consider to get like the god aesthetic narrative of of it all? Everything.
¶1273What if you don't feel that way? >> Yeah, for the reasons Pruce gives, I don't think it's going to be nearly as strong evidence as beauty is fortheism. For we can see lots of entirely reasonable explanations for the inclusion of ugly parts in God's artwork. I like ugliness creates contrast, induces variety, draws attention to and heightens appreciation of the beautiful parts, contributes to rawness and seriousness and disturbance, all of which conserves salutary aesthetic end. >> Yeah, I think I think 50 Cent put it well when he said uh sunny days wouldn't be special if it wasn't for rain.
¶1274Actually, I kind of get it now. >> Yeah. I I this if God is omnipotent, then why can't he make beauty that is beauty at multiple scales? It's interesting because Joe gave the example of a fractal. A fractal has an interesting property that it has self similarity at different scales.
¶1275So like you zoom out and it looks one way and you zoom in and it it's it looks in a similar way and it's beautiful at multiple scales. Apparently that that level of aesthetic craftsmanship is just beyond God. He can't make a reality that's beautiful through and through on multiple scales. He has to um have all of this ugliness and boringness and blandness that um profuses uh the world that we live in just so that there can be sort of some beautiness around. I think it's all very lame.
¶1276It seems like God is just a really bad artist if he can't do a better job. >> He just he concentrates all the beauty in the Latin mass. That's what >> Yeah, he used it all up. Everything else just has to suck by comparison. It can enable a sense of development or struggle or transformation and so much more besides.
¶1277Moreover, God may have moral reason for the inclusion or permission of ugliness in the cosmic drama. Like, if the cosmic drama was just bursting with the most insanely gorgeous features, that might start to make God's existence much more obvious to many more people to the point of removing the psychological possibility of doubt for them. But that might compromise the various goods associated with the level of obscurity concerning God's existence. You know, that obscurity facilitates sincere seeking after God. It preserves the freedom of the ascent of faith.
¶1278It enables dialogue and love across deep ideological barriers. He's just throwing everything in the kitchen sink out there now. All >> is is becoming Catholic and believing in God good or bad thing then? Sorry. Just >> unless it's too obvious that it's true and then it's bad.
¶1279>> Yeah. Oh, sorry. It's worse than being confused and having a good conversation. So, is is it better to be a Catholic or is it better to be wrong and have a good conversation, a good interfaith dialogue? I'm not quite sure which >> it provides opportunities for us to help each other spiritually and intellectually which can reap eternal benefits and so on.
¶1280Right? So all in all I don't think the problem of ugliness is a particularly forceful response to the argument from beauty and aesthetic experience. It's it's just a good argument the argument from beauty and aesthetic experience. >> All right. So we move on at long last to the final piece of theistic evidence in my philosophical >> Yeah.
¶1281Let's pause here. We we'll deal with the religious experience stuff another time because it's a bit I don't even really know why it's me here. Um yeah, argument from beauty is sort of an interesting one. Let us finish with just some uh brief discussion of the problem of evil. Um so that is uh he doesn't actually say very much about this.
¶1282So he should get through this quickly and finish up 6 hours and 24 minutes. probability that all four co the probability is the million and so the odds are now actually a million to one in favor of the common >> oh bro he's got the he's got the odds cooked right against us by this point it's a million to one against us can we do it >> yeah they keep stacking explanation uh and by now it should be straightforward to see how this applies to the case for theism okay but you know it's fine and dandy to talk about all the positive evidence for theism what about the evidence against theism right like and especially the were forceful among those pieces of evidence like you know I mean I take like the big three to be like the problem of evil divine hiddenness and religious diversity well I didn't have a satisfactory response and oh and by the way like I know that there are others but again I think just like what the theist says in response to these will very plausibly transfer to most of the other of the best of the atheistic considerations of course there are like you know like oh the stone paradox like can God create a stone so heavy he can't lift I'll probably actually briefly touch on that later in the video in case you guys are curious but um you like those more like oh you got incoherent attributes I don't really tend to take those seriously and my sense is that like yeah most contemporary philosophers of religion don't tend to do so either. Okay. But >> yeah because like what contemporary philosophers of religion think would probably >> most of them are theists by the way as the survey results indicate. >> If if there's like a field that everyone stops studying except like ideologically committed Catholics then that would be like a good guide to evaluating whether Catholicism is true.
¶1283I think. Oh no, hang on. My monitor is Yeah. Like what about the, you know, the puditive evidence against theism and especially these most forceful considerations among them. Well, I didn't have a satisfactory response to all these problems until after I was just utterly flooded with overwhelming evidence for miracles.
¶1284Um, I'll turn to that miracle evidence very soon. And after examining it, I'll return to the main pieces of atheistic evidence. For now though, I'll give you a sense of how I addressed some of the best lines of atheistic evidence, and I'll postpone some of the details for later. Okay, so let's start with my responses to the problem of evil. First, I grant that evil is some evidence against theism, but I think the evidence for theism just like massively outweighs it.
¶1285There are so many very powerful lines of independently converging evidence that theism just like takes the cake even after taking facts about evil into account. And even if we grant that evil is very powerful, >> my cake at this point, I don't >> second, there's just lots of non-silly theoties or accounts of why God permits evil. each of which is not like terribly unlikely conditional theism and each of which together with theism renders various facts about evil not very surprising. The entire disjunction of those theies is then going to be decently probable conditional antheism and theism together with this disjunction will render the data of evil not extremely unlikely. And this in turn significant >> yeah I now believe that demons cause hurricanes.
¶1286Thanks Joe. >> I know he's just telling us that well the theodysies aren't that unlikely. Okay, but you need to actually argue for that, Joe, because it's entirely possible that the cumulative force of all of the evils could outweigh even all of the evidence that you presented so far. So, you have to tell us why that's not the case, not just asserted. >> I he doesn't have to um actually defend any of this stuff.
¶1287He merely has to show that it's a logically possible option in order to do that. >> That's sort of what we'll see. Yes. >> Yeah. It's fuckingly >> dense the evidential force of the problem of evil.
¶1288So, like what are some of the theodysies that I have in mind? Well, you know, there are just like lots of goods that might plausibly justify God in permitting lots of evils we observe. So, like the existence of creatures enjoying morally significant freedom, which implies or at least makes decently probable the possibility the creatures will misuse that freedom and do evil. Opportunities to make a significant difference to the welfare of other creatures. You >> can't have good loot in without Hurricane Katrina.
¶1289>> I know like because clearly it's good for people to be able to choose things freely. So, obviously we'll just provide like minimal constraints on that. So you can just like do horrible things to other people because well we wouldn't want to stop people from exercising their freedom, right? Cuz that's an entirely reasonable way of thinking that we just apply widely in like parents and the legal system and and in other contexts. We just let people go rip because we wouldn't want to restrict their freedom.
¶1290>> Well, they they say every cloud has a silver lining and they wouldn't say that if it wasn't true. So >> existence of sometimes serious suffering that it's up to us or other agents to prevent and whose positive relationship effects can aggregate for all eternity. Opportunities to build and improve relationships through costly self-sacrificial love, which requires the possibility of significant detractions from well-being. Opportunities to cultivate and manifest significant virtue, which requires significant suffering and evil. You like after all, courage requires danger, compassion requires a suffering victim.
¶1291Mercy and forgiveness require wrongdoing. Careful, resilience. Does God exemplify those virtues of courage? Because if so, it seems like he would have to face genuine adversity. But how can God face genuine adversity?
¶1292Because, you know, he's have he's all powerful and omnicient. It seems like you're going to say that there are virtues that God cannot exemplify because he can't face the potential downsides. So, I don't know how that's going to work. >> This just reminded me of like the cringiest thing I ever said in physics in high school when I was like, you couldn't have light without dark. That's deep, bro.
¶1293>> I was like 16. I don't know if that's late or early to be saying those sorts of things, but just, you know, like when you have those memories that you just when you're like, "Ah, why did I ever do that?" >> But that's that's how I'm so when I'm hearing Joe saying like, you know, you couldn't have this without that or whatever, I'm just thinking, "This loss or the existence of every creation worthy universe, many of which will include a significant amount of suffering." or you know like goods like the incarnation, redemption and atonement which achieve a deeper union between God and humanity and requires a decisive turning. >> No Latinas without ice. That's what they say. >> God couldn't find any ways of uh achieving these alleged goods without you know massive horrific suffering.
¶1294Like he you know he tried his best but this is the best he could come up with. So, what I did is um I just made a quick list of things that are uh because one of the things that I think Joe doesn't do very well here is highlight just how many different types of evil or suffering or bad things that there are in the world. Each of which, you know, remember I said he applies different standards to God that he does to naturalism. The way that he would present this if it was an argument against naturalism would be that he would highlight all of the different conceptually or epistemically possibly distinct like distinguishable types of evil and then argue that well each of these provides evidence against God but they all provide separate evidence because as far as we could tell we could have one without the other. So I just made up a list of things that seem to be um potentially separable types of evils.
¶1295Like again, as far as we could tell, God could create a world that has one ver one type of evil, but not the other. So, here's the list that I came up with. Uh chronic pain that doesn't serve any useful purpose. It's just like pain for no reason. Cancer in children, infectious disease caused by invisible organisms that throughout most of human history, humans did not know existed and couldn't do anything about.
¶1296Um the fact that it's fairly easy to kill or uh significantly injure another human being just by like pushing them or punching them once. It's just like sort of trivially easy to massively hurt someone. puberty beginning around age 10 in girls. Uh predation in the animal kingdom, of course, a big one. The huge time span of evolution, which leads to like hundreds of millions of years of animal suffering, hurricanes and tornadoes, volcanoes and earthquakes.
¶1297The fact that there's been no that there was no reliable method for humans to exercise birth control in modern times. Oh, and by the way, we could also add to that the huge rate of um uh maternal mortality in premodern times. developmental disabilities, dementia in in old age in particular, mental illness, the fact that fossil fuels, the one of the main methods that humans have been able to overcome the sort of severe drudgery of existence prior to the industrial revolution that they cause global warming. It's like gez dick move God. Like why did you have to make it that way?
¶1298Like this one nice thing turns horrible >> because of the big picture. Like zoom out, zoom out and there's like you know the unity that we're all finding in tackling climate. >> I've got I've got two more. But yeah, of course you could always. So eyewitness testimony and memory and and human cognition generally just being really unreliable.
¶1299The fact that there are just so many false convictions based on eyewitness testimony and all the other problems that this gives rise to. Why did you have to make it that way? Uh and the fact that about a third of all pregnancies end in in miscarriages, which is, you know, a very odd choice for God to make in terms of particularly if he thinks that all of those people are human beings with uh you know, the same uh moral status as uh you know, as uh children have after they're born. So, those are just, you know, uh, 17 or 16 things that I just came up with off the cuff. Um, and all of those things, it seems to me God could have made any one without making the others, given that he's supposed to be omnipotent.
¶1300All of those things seem to me just horrible things that exist in creation that God doesn't have any obvious reason for doing. Now you can say that he might have a reason we don't know about. But the the style of argumentation that Joe typically uses would be to say what is the prior probability of there being unknown reasons why these things are actually secretly good or lead to other goods seems very low because we know a lot about how these things work and they're pretty horrible and we do a lot to try to overcome them. So that doesn't seem to be a very uh plausible prospect of having um secret reasons why they're good. And then you multiply them all together because as far as we can tell, God could have separately decided whether to make each of them versus another and you get these exceptionally low probabilities that we were sort of talking about with fine-tuning.
¶1301That is the approach that that Joe likes to take with naturalism. But he just for some mysterious reason does not apply that same approach to uh the problem of evil. And I think that if you would, you would come to the conclusion that there's a huge range of evils that as far as we can tell, there's no justification for having at all. Um, and that that massively undermines the probability that an omnipotent omnibent god exists. And this sort of handwaving to maybe some of these evils help us to improve relationships or cultivate virtue is just not sufficient.
¶1302You have to address all of the specific evils that evidentiarily stand against against theism. I think like maybe a good question for like this methodology or like this way of thinking would be like >> how could you ever figure out if anything was bad. >> Yeah. Well, God tells you I think it's the only methodology under this. >> But but like how do you know he's not actually like psych cuz he's like >> well like maybe he's like go kill your son and you're like oh no I don't want to.
¶1303And he's like psych. It's actually like Jesus is here is the lamb in the bush. Like you you know you don't know what the hell's going on. It's just up. Everything is up.
¶1304And you got to gaslight yourself all the time and just feel guilty and horrible and nothing makes any sense and it's crazy. It's crazy town. Um like that. What is there even anything that's genuinely bad? Is every single bad is just for the greater good.
¶1305And then like what kind of weird person does that turn you into where like every tragedy that you come across you can't even like do a normal thing because you're just like well have you considered that like maybe there are reasons God has this is a good thing for you and just shut up bro I got cancer like what the just it's just weird baffling way of thinking about >> God tried to create a world that had lots of good in it without cancer but it just didn't come out of committee stage he couldn't quite make it work so you we just had to have cancer. >> Yeah, but unfortunate, but that's how it goes. >> Okay, maybe if I go and commit and you know, if I Elliot, if I go and do an Elliot Rogers, well, maybe that that's actually better than me not doing that because in that adversity, you know, God would prevent it if the adversity wouldn't bring about greater goods. I mean, this is literally how you get Richard Swimburn defending the Holocaust and saying that like there's all sorts of goods that came out of the Holocaust. Well, I mean, there must have been though, right?
¶1306If you're a theist, why else would God allow? >> But he could have prevented it. So, he must have had a reason. >> But he literally says that in the book, but then but then, but that but but then if you feel compelled to do that, there is no reason to stop because God would stop you if there weren't goods that would come about from you doing that. You cannot.
¶1307>> You get some pretty giga gaslighting, I think, if you sort of take this seriously. And I don't know how you function morally. So, I mean, Joe sort of mentions this. Maybe we can just skip forward a little bit. I just want because he does talk a little bit about sort of skeptical theism.
¶1308I think that way on our part the mixed character of the worlding God has adequate reasons of which I'm unaware for >> God is a smart guy with >> infinite intellect yet this is the best he could come up with. He couldn't figure out a world you know he really tried to have a world um where puberty did not begin at age 10 for girls. He tried to push it up to 12 so they had cognitive status but >> 10 was the best he could do. And in fact, perosis puberty has been known at cases as young as six, which is just like horrific. Imagine that you've designed a system for that.
¶1309Like you'd be put in prison, right? Because you're just a monster. But apparently that's okay for God. Best you could do. >> Maybe God's facts don't care about your feelings guy.
¶1310And he says that's technically when they're most fertile. Like he's one of those guys. >> Well, he made it that way though. Like he could have >> Well, this is what >> Just to emphasize, it's not the number that's significant here. It's the it's the contrast between mental maturity which happens at like age 21 and um uh biological fertility which happens at like age 10.
¶1311LIKE >> WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THAT WAY? THAT'S SO part of the design. >> THAT'S SO SCREWED UP, BRO. >> LOOK, OKAY, this is I'm being JD Vance by the way when I do or or not because this you know that sort of thing can be important. But you know something someone of that ideology may say >> hypothetically someone might say >> hypothetically someone of that ideology may say well well look what's happened when we wait until 21 they get cats and jobs and they they start thinking with their brains and they don't make the choices to keep above replacement rates of the white you know like it's literally this is where all this like thinking I'm not saying I don't reckon Joe's going to quite go there but this is where some of these people with this thinking is >> well because this style of thinking is just ridiculous.
¶1312Like it's just it's making all these excuses for things that if any human did them, we would put them in prison because it's just horrific. >> Yeah. Or, you know, promote them to great um >> Yeah. One of the two. It's one of the >> Yeah.
¶1313It just depends on how much money they got really. >> Permitting all the observed evils. Since this epistmic possibility does not have an extremely low probability conditional on theism, evil does not disisconfirm theism to such an extreme degree that theism is neither a live hypothesis nor able to be justified by strong evidence in its favor. The force of the counter evidence afforded by evil is therefore serious. >> Epstein Island was just God's intended wayly tempered.
¶1314And by the way, this is like a very modest form of skeptical theism. It does not destroy natural theology since it does not imply that we're totally in the dark about God's reasons for acting. And nor does it imply that the probability of various data on theism is inscrable. Nor does it imply that if we had observed millions of years of a torturous horrific world, that wouldn't be strong evidence against God's existence. That's not what this modest >> Well, we do observe that.
¶1315This is the irony. That's exactly what evolution is. It's really torturous existence. What are you talking about? >> But furthermore, Joe literally believes in eternal conscious torment.
¶1316So, he has squared that away with this. >> That also truth. Yes. >> Um, you know, like so what is he talking about here? Well, like literally what's he talking about?
¶1317Does he not consider that strong evidence against what he's saying or just No, it's just fine with it. Like what is that? It doesn't have that implication because the modest probability judgment in the actual world that I'm making here is partly based on the world's mixed character together with the epic accessibility of god justifying reasons for at least a number of evils in the world. As Brian Cutter put it to me, imagine watching someone play some complicated 4D chess game. If you observe what look like many stupid moves, but they're like integrated with many moves of like sublime beauty and brilliance, it's more reasonable to give the modest kind of skeptical theistlike account of the seemingly dumb moves.
¶1318But if every move just looks like, you know, like the dumbest conceivable move, he wouldn't take the skeptical theist line particularly seriously. And so there's a relevant difference between my modest form of skeptical theism that I'm proposing here and some other forms of skeptical theism when it comes to the horrific world objection. Ah, but Joe, isn't it equally true that given the cognitive chasm between us and God, it shouldn't be too surprising under theism that God would have decisive reasons of which are unaware to prevent observed evils? Well, like yeah, of course, like yeah, antecedently or at least independently of the various pieces of theistic evidence that I've I've canvased and defended. You know, I yeah, it shouldn't be too surprising under theism that God would have decisive reasons at which unaware to prevent the observed evils.
¶1319I grant that. But the fact that there's a non-trivial chunk of theism's prior probability space on which God has decisive reason >> Oh, it's lucky it's not trivial because I was I was worried for a second it could be trivial and then the probability >> because he said it's not. Yeah, that's what it's lucky they're not trivial because I was worried that they might be trivial and then we wouldn't have exactly the probability that we need for the argument to work in the way that Joe describes a conclusion as being because uh so it's good that he said that it's non-trivial because then that fits with the conclusion. >> That's important. You got to remember to say that >> the observed evils is clearly compatible with there also being a non-trivial chunk of theism's probability space on which God has adequate reasons to permit those evils.
¶1320These don't somehow cancel each other out. They just both take up non-over overlapping non-trivial parts of theism's probability space. And once we grant that, we yet again seriously temper the force of the problem of evil. >> So doesn't come as perceptive. >> This doesn't make any sense to me.
¶1321He he's saying that we have he seems to acknowledge that we have just as much reason for thinking that God would have unknown reasons to prevent something as that antic seemly that is unknown reasons to prevent something as we would have to allow it. But somehow those don't cancel each other out and we should then just be left with our initial judgment that this thing is >> unexpected under God. That seems to me the appropriate response that if you have equal reason to think that there could be reasons to not do and to prevent like to allow and to prevent something that you should then just they should cancel each other out. Like he just says that they don't but I don't really understand the logic. That's why I'm trying I'm trying to read uh unaware to prevent observed evils of course but the fact that there's a non-trivial chunk of theism's prior probability space on which God has decisive reasons to prevent the observed evils is clearly compatible with there also being a non-trivial chunk of theism's pro on which God has adequate reasons to permit those evils.
¶1322Okay, these don't somehow cancel each other out. >> Why? >> Why? because they're pointing in opposite directions for the conclusion as to whether this evidence is is against why they don't cancel out >> these don't >> because this is the same reasoning that he gave with things like fine fine tetuning where he said well >> yeah if we think about uh deeper laws they may fine-tune less but they may fine tune more and if we don't have anticedent reason then they should cancel that I argue that we do think that they >> so I just don't understand this at all I I maybe I'm missing something here but I'm not getting >> why he just basically says Yes, there are equal reasons either way for reasoning about God's unknown reasons. Uh but they don't cancel each other out.
¶1323And so at the end of the day, we're left with a significant tempering of the problem of evil. >> But he doesn't tell us how he gets there. >> They're not okay. Okay, they're non overlapping. Well, maybe they could be over.
¶1324I guess maybe you could say God can't have like contradictory reasons or something. So maybe they're non-over overlapping. That bit is a bit better. Non-trivial. Maybe, maybe not.
¶1325Like why? I I don't know. I don't know. >> I just don't understand how this is supposed to work. I >> He's lost.
¶1326>> But once but once we grant that thing that it doesn't make any sense why you would, we yet again seriously temper the force of the problem of evil. But what why are you granting that other than to temper the force of the problem of evil? >> Yeah. I mean that's Yeah. I don't know.
¶1327It seems to be just motivated reasoning there that we we just want to we just want to say that like I I don't know why we should think that they don't that the unknown reasons cancel each other out such that we're left with the conclusion that the primmaacia conclusion that this is strong evidence against God. >> The whole point about appealing to unknown reasons is that maybe we think that there's good reason for thinking that there's more reason for thinking that God would allow these things than that he would prevent them. And so on balance we reduce our pro our judgment that God would prevent these things. >> But that but that's not not what he said here. He said he said there are these reasons that count in opposite directions.
¶1328Both take up non-trivial- which I'm supposed to take to mean equal portions of the space that we're reasoning in. But they don't cancel each other out. H how how does that make sense? Well, God exists or he doesn't. So it somehow they're both relevant and count in opposite directions, but don't don't cancel out.
¶1329I I I don't understand that. It doesn't make any sense to me. >> It it does like because he's the criteria the quantity he's given is non-trivial, right? Same for both same quantity. They don't overlap.
¶1330They they count in opposite directions. They just do they they do even there's what where's the asymmetry between the two? I I don't get it. >> Well, he says there isn't an asymmetry, but then somehow at the end of the day, he wins. I I don't know why.
¶1331That's what I been had to figure out. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
¶1332the >> it's like you know when you play you play these toys uh when you're young and it's like one of the you're you're fighting with your friend's toy and then you're your guy's like being beaten and you're like oh no no but I have a special blocker that blocks the power that you're using okay yeah >> just make why I don't even I just find this like really bizarre why did he even grant that why did he grant all of this just to make no sense and just stick with the conclusion anyway. >> Yeah, that's what I I I try to steal them, but this one I just don't understand. I don't I don't get how he's thinking about this. >> You you might say maybe God has reasons to intervene and stop the evils that we don't know about. You would be right.
¶1333Those would be equal in magnitude to the ones that he may have that we don't know about for permitting the evils and they would just act against each other. But discounting all that, who cares? It's like what like yeah last thing he says here is that um we shouldn't treat different uh aspects of the problem of evil independently because what he says is that um >> there may be sort of unifying reasons why god allows different types of evil but I don't think this works because again it's a different it's an inconsistent standard that's not how he reasons about say the concepts of nature >> there may be unifying remember there may be unifying deeper laws that um reduce the amount of fine tuning. But he basically said, well, there's no particular reason for thinking that. Um but then here where he says, well, there may be deeper reason for thinking that God has like shared reasons for permitting lots of different evils, but there's the same criteria would apply and to seem there's no reason to think that.
¶1334As far as we can tell, a priori land, uh God could allow earthquakes without allowing hurricanes, and he could allow um you know, uh infectious diseases from invisible organisms without allowing mental illness. Like all of these things seem to be things that an omnipotent being could choose one from the other. So they seem independent a priori. So why shouldn't we treat them as such? That's the approach that he's used for all of the other um arguments that he's levied against naturalism.
¶1335But now when it comes to theism, oh no no no no they're not independent because if they're independent, we can multiply the probabilities out and get these tiny numbers that he likes to uh bash naturalists over the head with. And as I've said, I can do the same thing with respect to theist if I apply the same the same standards. But that's why in both times when it was fine-tuning about theism like the types of worlds that he would create. Likewise here when it's with respect to the um different problems of evil uh the theist resists any attempt to quantify those and multiply them together. They're like oh no no no no you can't do that respect to God because he has higher order reasons or that that then mean that you you have to then take a step back and you you not allowed to multiply things out.
¶1336There's just always excuses as to why a different the same methodology that's been applied to naturalism can never be allowed to apply to theism because when you apply that you can apply that methodology to show that any worldview is unlikely um if you operate with it using this framework. I reckon it also depends on uh the evils that you're appealing to and like why you're appealing to them as relevant to your considerations of theism because you know like for for a lot of these that I've thought of it's specifically been um in trying to make sense of like ad hoc modifications to the theism theory. Yeah. about like preference, specific preferences that God has. So it's not and these preferences haven't been like, well, God dislikes evil, you know, they've been like, oh, God likes discoverability, right?
¶1337So then you like appeal to some or many particular cases that don't seem to kind of like satisfy this like Goldilocks region of discoverability or something. And you're not, even though those pieces of evidence could be classified as like falling under the general class, the problem of evil, you're not raising them as objections to like God's goodness or whatever, but you're raising them specifically as objections to the desires that have been sort of like gerrymandered into the conception of God. So, so like I I think then it's wrong to rebut those. is like, "Oh, well, they're just like part of the problem of evil." Cuz you're not appealing to their characteristics of evil or as instances of evil as like evidence against goodness, but you're instead appealing to them for their characteristics of like nondiscoverability enabling features of the world when theory is supposed to be that God cares. >> And likewise for beauty, like it's a different aspect unless you you just conflate them.
¶1338Like there's aspects for which God, if he likes beauty, may not be expected to create certain things, which is different to the issue of evil. >> Yeah. Cuz you you could point to something that could also be considered evil as like not being pretty like very aesthetically um pleasing, right? And those would still be like different lines of evidence even if it could be classified, you know, you you would raise that with respect to the relevant thing that you're trying to consider. And it if it's relevant to both, it should be a feature in both considerations.
¶1339>> Um, okay. So, >> yeah, we we can probably just finish up. I'll just say briefly because he he looks at hiddenness and he doesn't say very much about this. He basically just says hiddenenness, geographical lopsidedness of belief is some evidence against God, but it's outweighed by other factors. And then he just gives a a his typical list of handwavy reasons as to why it's not horrifically massively unlikely that God might have reasons to allow it.
¶1340So it's it's just the same argument. There's nothing really new there for us to respond to. >> And um that is pretty much the whole video. So we didn't talk about the religious experiences, but we will I think come back to that another time. The other aspect we didn't talk about is non-skeepticism.
¶1341But I think that we've kind of covered that because most of the skeptical scenarios that he presents I think just have fairly straightforward naturalist responses um which are which follow from um some of the other beliefs that we talked about like uh if we believe in that beliefs in the uniformity of laws of nature can be justified a posterior or by abduction and things like that then I think you can that's just one example. There's also pragmatist responses to skeptical scenarios that um I I think that many of the same issues that we've already talked about sort of cover those. That's probably enough for today. And we've almost been going for 12 hours. I think it's probably Also, doesn't YouTube cut it off at like 12 hours or something?
¶1342I can't still do that. >> I think something like that. >> So, we should probably finish up. Um, any final comments, Nathan before you collapse with exhaustion? >> I'm thinking imagine if it goes like Imagine if this was you.
¶1343It goes, "What about ugliness?" And then there just like, you know, you uh Yeah. Okay. So, do I have final thoughts on any of this? Um, I guess like overall somewhat like disappointed for a number of reasons. One, one reason is like a lot of the um arguments that Joe has been putting forward in this video are just like rehashes of like the same stuff that he's talked about before really.
¶1344And I don't feel like there's really anything new in a lot of that. You could argue, sure, he's like trying to summarize stuff given his change in beliefs, but I I really do think he could have like narrowed it down to specifically like the bits that have changed rather than just like rehashing all of everything. >> Yeah. And there's so much repetition across the different arguments. Um, and there's rebuttals as well.
¶1345I feel like it could have been streams down a fair bit. And I think that because he feels he's got to like defend this belief change or whatever, he felt like, oh, I've got to make this like monumentally long thing that I do. As I as I text you yesterday when I was really tired and I said like artifact, some weird thing, but the point being I think he he felt he has to make like this really like big artifact. Um, >> but like is that actually adding value? Well, maybe it is for like him or the audience.
¶1346I'll be like, "Wow, like this is so impressive, crazy stuff or whatever, but like um yeah, I I mean I don't think it's really like adding a ton and it would have been better just focused on some of like the pretty specific things." Um I I also think the dis one disappointing aspect is that with respect to things that he has had as issues in the past with some of these arguments, I I just don't I don't like buy the um responses that he like gave to things. I I just thought a lot of them were quite like weak. They're either like really weird hypothetical examples. um or they're like based off like some random like Substack post that like Matthew Adelstein wrote or something just like what are you doing? I I guess this this does kind of like fit with the picture that maybe it's like the miracles that have changed his mind.
¶1347Well >> well he said that he said that he did not have good responses to the problem of evil u by miracles. So that's just >> and then he's just like revisited this stuff and kind of like tweaked it to be consistent with where he's landed or whatever for for other reason. >> It's in one sense it's like fair enough. But I also would think like I guess I'd hope from the perspective of intellectual virtues or whatever that you'd kind of like be a bit more principled than that and go no I haven't actually changed my mind on this stuff. I've like changed my mind about other stuff and that's what shifted me.
¶1348But I still think that these reason, you know, cuz like if you for example someone who's like I'm religious but like all this natural theology stuff is just like crap. I I think that's like fine, right? Cuz it's probably just like an accurate description of what they're doing. Whereas I think if you go, "Well, now I'm religious. I don't want to think of myself as stupid, so I'm just going to pretend that this makes sense." Like I think that that is like a bad thing to do.
¶1349Um, so you know, to the degree that he's done any of that, I think that's bad. And then just so many issues with this like way that he does metaphysics, I think that just need it just needs to stop. I feel it has stopped. >> Yeah. The a prior intuition based approach.
¶1350I agree. It's highly problem and we we sort of shown that in a number of ways that a lot of it is um he just sort of declares things plausible without giving real reason or assessing how his own biases and socialization and background might may shape those intuitions with very little appeal to any empirical evidence. >> Yeah. And there's there's just no work put into like how does psychology actually work like which I think is really relevant to like these questions about like explanation or what's convincing or whatever. >> Yeah.
¶1351>> Or like uh I think like empirical work in linguistics about like how are these concepts used like whether they're like modal concepts or mental like how do children acquire mental concepts? I think that that is like really important information for making sense of like what are these mental concepts? It's like are they these cartesian things or are they like something else? There's so many very important factors that are just not even a part because it's like oh I can just figure everything out by like taking into account what like five American analytic philosophers of religion think and you know they've just got the answers to it all in this. >> Yeah it's a very a select subset as well.
¶1352Nearly all of his references um are relate to about half a dozen um theistic philosophers which I think is uh >> yeah it's like it's like Rasmosen Puce Kit um Ca and then that's kind of it really like >> if you include a few things from um uh what's his face dog what was his >> oh yeah Matthew yeah yeah and there was an Amos Wallen post in Yeah. Um, as well. I mean, and it's not like he's unaware of like Opie and people like that. Obviously, he's like interviewed them and >> but he doesn't talk about it in the video. Like, it just doesn't mention any of those philosophers or or how they think about things.
¶1353That's what's really disappointing. It's just not there anywhere. >> Yeah, that's true. >> It's not like here's the most robust form of naturalism that I've encountered and here's why I don't agree with it. It's just this peacemeal uh approach where the naturalist can't respond to one argument doesn't refute everything that he said and so therefore it sort of it's not allowed to have its own uh holistic case built for it.
¶1354I I just think that's really unsatisfying particularly because he's interacted with a lot of people. He should have you know he has the knowledge and skills and context to be able to do better with that. Anyway, the other thing that I wanted to comment on which I've said before is that I think that in addition to the a priori intuitionist based philosophy which I think is highly flawed. Um the the methodology that Joe approaches almost all of his arguments with in this video is essentially the same. It's imagine ways that things could be different, whether that's like the constants or psychophysical laws or um or about beauty or other things like that.
¶1355And then find reasons why the way things actually are is not what you would expect under naturalism relative to the huge range of all possible ways they could transgeneration machine. Yeah. And then so get a very low probability of observing what we see under naturalism and contrast that with a very handwavy oh it's not monstrously implausible that God could have done it this way or that way. He could have had a reason to make it the way that he did. Uh and um and then argue that therefore theism wins out because he hand waves as to why the probabilities aren't that low.
¶1356The problem with this methodology is that it is simply inconsistent. It applies one way of thinking of reasoning about the probabilities under naturalism uh a principle of indifference over different possibilities conceptual possibilities I priori but under theism that approach isn't applied he does not try to build a sequence or like a set of conceptually possible scenarios that he then applies the probability distribution distribution over. He just hand waves, oh maybe it could be this way style reasoning um for the fine tuning case and for the beauty case um and for the nomological harmony arguments. Every time he does this he has a different standard for arguing as to why God could be a good explanation compared to why naturalism is a bad explanation. I have argued in these cases that if you apply the same approach to reasoning about God's possible intentions or desires or reasons that you find that it's the outcomes that we observe are even less likely under theism because God is even less constrained than naturalism.
¶1357there's all sorts of things that he could do, laws or types of realities that he could create um that are inconsistent with what we observe because they involve immaterial things or they involve disembodied or they involve miracles and things like this. And so I I think that the the fundamental approach is gerrymandered to get to conclusions that are hostile to naturalism because it's designed specifically to make things under naturalism very unlikely whereas theism is pretty much guaranteed to not be that unlikely because you can just handwave any type of oh it's not that implausible scenario that you like and but the naturalist isn't allowed to do that. So that I think is what the fundamental um uh the fundamental problem with uh what we're calling Schmidian natural theology is that it is a fundamentally broken approach which is then used inconsistently and in a way that systematically favors theism. >> I and I basically like all of these confusions. I think I I I think the basian pseudo basian approach is like largely responsible for a lot of this combined with like the um I forgot what was it like the grammatical illusion the the prying apart of like words basically >> and then using that to construct like one of these like ignorance probability spaces of like imagining the words being used differently in different ways and then that constructing the whole problem because it basically that just drives everything right cuz you're not constraining your word use to like any real domain that's like driving and shaping the way that you're thinking about combining them and modeling them.
¶1358Instead, what you're doing is literally just like anything goes because and and so you just have the same problem generated anytime you find two of these words that you can pry apart because you can just mish mash them in any way. They can always say like, well, God puts them together and he's like biases it in that direction. That's like different from just like picking them at random. Um so yeah. Yeah.
¶1359So, uh, that was exhausting and more so for you because it's it's later. But, uh, so yeah, we'll talk about what the next BA will be. Probably something relating to miracles, but I I don't think we're going to get through the 12 hour stream in one. We almost killed ourselves trying to get through the seven hour and we still had to skip a few parts of it. So, uh, anyway, that'll probably be a while in the making.
¶1360We'll decide how to how to split that up in a way that makes sense. Anyway, um, thanks for listening everyone. Uh, take care of yourself, David, and try to get some sleep. Don't talk to Ethan Muse, guys, because this is what will happen to you. You'll be talking all this nonsense and for 12 hours.
¶1361>> Yeah. >> All right. Take care everyone. Hope this was informative. Yeah.
¶1362See you next time.