0

If the problem of "fine tuning for life" (SEP) is that the precise value of some constants (and laws) in physics seems necessary to the emergence of life in our universe but at the same time very improbable, and if it is deemed a response is required, a possible explanation that has been proposed is that there was some "design" to this, usually that there must exist some designer who set up life friendly conditions in our universe.

However, I am wondering if that explanation is not just moving the problem to the designer himself. Is it possible to argue that: either the designer had no choice in the values of the constants if he wanted to bring about life, so that those constants are more primitive than the designer who just "pushed the right buttons", or the designer picked random constants and then got lucky and obtained a universe with life in it? Are there other possibilities? For example, that the designer being omnipotent, the constants may be random, but then he decided that there would be life with those constants? But even in that case, the actual values of the constants don't seem to matter, the designer could have chosen any random values for the constants and instill life in that universe, so that we lose necessity between the values of the constants and the emergence of life. It's not so much the value of the constants that leads to life, as the intervention of a designer. Pick any universe, with any constants, and there can be life in it, as long as a designer intervenes to make it so.

In the end, maybe it doesn't seem that the designer explanation fully explains why the constants have the values they have, and why those values are precisely the ones that were needed for life. Either the designer had no choice, and the necessity of those constants for life is more primordial than the designer (and still unexplained), or some randomness is still at play (and no explanation has been obtained either). In either case, it's not clear that the improbability of the values involved in fine tuning has really been explained away by introducing of a "design" or the intervention of an agent. There seems to remain an element of surprise as to why these are the constants that were needed for life.

Has this line of reasoning been explored before? Are there references that could be used here? Or maybe this line of reasoning is not coherent for some reason?

Frank
  • 2,347
  • 1
  • 14
  • 17
  • 1
    The problem is not really "Why are the constants of the universe exactly this?"; the problem is "Why is the universe such that life is possible?" I doubt any theists would quibble over whether other possible constants could have led to life, but they would still argue that life is such that, in the space of all the possibilities, only a tiny number of the possibilities can give rise to any kind of life. – David Gudeman Jan 20 '23 at 20:54
  • OK, but can't we still ask: were the constants randomly picked by the designer and then he decided to add life, or did he precisely choose those constants because there are laws that he knew would result in life (but he didn't have any choice in those laws)? In the first case, the constants don't really matter, it's the intervention of the designer that matters, and in the second case, the designer pushed the right buttons, but he doesn't control the laws that lead from the constants to life. – Frank Jan 20 '23 at 21:02
  • @DavidGudeman In the first case, it seems the constants that started the question are now irrelevant to the problem, and in the second case, the improbability has not been improved upon by the introduction of a designer - it seems. – Frank Jan 20 '23 at 21:10
  • We seem to be talking past each other, because I think I already addressed what you said. In the first case, the specific constants are indeed irrelevant, but then the laws were constructed in such a way that life could arise with those constants, and the problem is why physical laws are such (to whatever extent constants and physical laws are genuinely distinct). In the second case, I don't see why you think the improbability has not changed. Instead of the specific constants being inexplicably improbable, they are easily explained by the intentions of the designer. – David Gudeman Jan 20 '23 at 22:04
  • In the second case, the intention of the designer was instrumental, but the link between specific values of the constants and life is not controlled by the designer, so the values are still improbable. Why are those values rather than any other ones needed in order to get life - and this time, the designer is "out of the picture" to explain that since his role is contained to just "pushing the buttons". – Frank Jan 20 '23 at 22:08
  • The explanation may be unsatisfactory for other reasons, but no, it does not move the problem. The idea is that the "designer" was, indeed, constrained by the form of physical laws and could only vary the constants. Fine-tuning only makes sense under such a set-up anyway. So he did "push the right buttons" and that is why the values are as they are. The ask was not to explain the "necessity of those constants", only why they came to be the ones implemented. Further questions remain, like where the form of laws ("necessity") came from, but it does resolve this one. – Conifold Jan 20 '23 at 23:32
  • @Conifold So, if I understand correctly, there were some pre-existing laws, and the designer used their omniscience to input the right constants in order to create life? Assuming that those were the _only_ values which, fed into the laws, would result in life? It seems we have to assume that there were laws which were such that there was a single set of values which, when input, would result in life? The whole setup still feels a bit improbable. – Frank Jan 21 '23 at 00:09
  • The "designer" did not have to be omniscient, even human physicists figured out that life as we know it can only exist in the Goldilocks range, nor did the values have to be the only ones, he just picked some that worked, maybe optimized for something he cared about. Think of the "designer" not as God but as some advanced race running an analog simulation. – Conifold Jan 21 '23 at 00:16
  • OK, but I feel that doesn't explain why those constants were the right ones for life. That's still happenstance, and the intervention of the designer/simulators... is peripheral. I feel the improbability factor has not been removed. – Frank Jan 21 '23 at 00:31
  • Could God have intentionally designed the world with these constants to restrict life? We have the ability to reason, though this ability has been "limited", just like animals' have... We don't know why, but perhaps the laws of the universe could've also been constrained to a set of random constants, for reasons we are unable to know? – Aimarekin Jan 21 '23 at 01:15
  • The need for explaining the origin of the laws has not been removed, and *that* is tangential, but the *improbability* of constants has been. The talk of probability does not even make sense until the laws are fixed, it is for the parameters *in them* that the life permitting range is narrow. No explanation is ever supposed to explain everything, any answer to a why is followed by another why, it is a piecemeal process unless "because God" at the end satisfies you. – Conifold Jan 21 '23 at 01:42
  • @Conifold I feel these objections remove a lot of strength from the designer explanation for fine tuning. – Frank Jan 21 '23 at 01:46
  • I don't think so. If we were to establish that we live in a Petri dish it would be a major advance regardless of all further questions about our puppet masters and the rest. Consider the analogy. A kid asks, why is the sky blue? Because the atmosphere scatters blue light the most, he is told. Yeah, says the kid, but that doesn't explain why the atmosphere is there. The "strength" of explanation is in how well it explains the why asked, not on how many other whys may follow. They never end anyway, so one why at a time. – Conifold Jan 21 '23 at 08:36
  • It is all extremely improbable, the probability is just a measly little one. Because, it is the case. It is so vastly unlikely that I exist such that I can write this comment, if I wasn't, I would say, impossible. – Scott Rowe Feb 19 '23 at 22:51
  • If a designer fined tuned the universe for life he/she did a pretty sloppy job of it considering the % of it where there actually is life.. The fine tuning argument does not need rebuttal, it's a non starter. – armand Feb 20 '23 at 02:36
  • @armand well what if the designer is simply sloppy then? The real reason why the argument doesn’t work is because there is no reason to presume that a god who wants life to exist is any more likely than any other type of god to exist given our zero experience with gods – thinkingman May 18 '23 at 09:25
  • @thinkingman if the designer is sloppy he is not perfect, and therefore is not God. – armand May 18 '23 at 11:17
  • @armand Fair enough if you define Him as that. Was moreso saying that it wouldn’t disprove a designer period even if it did show a perfect one didn’t exist. Plus that’s subjective. One could argue a perfect designer just felt like fine tuning it that way or a whole host of other reasons. – thinkingman May 18 '23 at 15:55
  • @thinkingman the point is I know of no one who use this argument just to demonstrate there was a designer. The goal is to demonstrate the existence of God, and usually, the specific one they believe in, and ultimately the validity of their moral rules. "If he exists your designer sucks" is an important milestone for such conversations. – armand May 18 '23 at 22:25

2 Answers2

1

Yes, this question makes sense, but has several divergent assumptions built in, which I will try to tease apart.

  1. Many theists define a deity in logical necessity terms. IF one postulates a deity that is logically necessary, then yes, that deity cannot do anything contingent. The "rare contingent observation" from which the possibility of intentionality embedded in our universe is inferred, is NOT compatible with a necessary deity. The Fine Tuning argument is instead for a contingent deity, whose contingent motivations and character can be inferred from the evidence left behind by design events. I don't think that you were making this point, but it may have affected your thinking.

  2. IF one applies a deterministic concept of causation to even a contingent deity, then yes, one could say that there is a cause or the choices that such a deity makes, and those contingent causes could potentially be identified, and then the deity's contingent actions in creating our universe could be derived from the prior causes, hence even our apparently unlikely universe's constants could have been predicted, and perhaps were necessary based on the prior conditions of a creator deity's mind.

  • However the deterministic concept of causation, which was adopted by some of the Rennaissance thinkers, was seen as incoherent by Hume. Hume argued that we NEVER know the actual interaction between things, and all we can actually know is correlation. Hume treated causation as just correlation. And correlation does not get one to the determinism you are presuming. Popper grounded empiricism better than Hume did, in useful predictive theories rather than mere correlation. But even that further step does not get one to the deterministic causation you assume. Causation is currently an ill defined concept for us, so relying upon a deterministic version of it to assert determinism in all agency is a unsupported leap.
  • The problem of accounting for agency causation, however, IS widely understood as a PROBLEM, and applies to all agents, not just to a deity. One of the recent interesting efforts in philosophy is to spell out a concept of agent causation. This could answer what I see as the main thrust of your question. Here is one agent causation thinker: https://academic.oup.com/book/6201/chapter/149807379
  1. Even if we accept a non-necessary designer, who is a causal agent, the problems for the intention explanation for Fine Tuning do not stop there. That is because a deity who could construct the Cosmos, could presumably designed differently. That after all is the whole point of the Fine Tuning argument. So -- why the Standard Model of QM, the Big Bang, Inflation, etc.? Physics and the Cosmos seem like they could have been made much simpler, and life more instrinsic to the universe, rather than a very rare and late-appearing anomaly in it. IF one set out to design a universe FOR life, while ours is adequate, it is FAR from ideal, or optimized.
  • So the Fine Tuning Argument may support an intentional design of our universe for life, but a POOR design to do this. This implies a) a designer that may be unwise (say our inverse was a design class project for a deity in elementary school, that earned a C-minus), or b) a designer of many minds (picture a dysfunctional committee, each of whose members have one particular axe they are grinding on this project, and the resulting design accomplishes "life" but is skewed by each competing agenda to be far off optimum), or c) it was a failed design to achieve something else, and Life was an adaptive retrofit (abiogenesis research has basically been stalled ever since the Urey-Miller experiment, abiogenesis seemingly was implausible even in early earth conditions), getting life started may have taken a further intervention to salvage the design, well after the initial failed design effort.

At any rate, yes there are three problems for design hypotheses: necessary deities are incompatible with Fine Tuning, Agency causation is needed for the idea to work, and the imperfections of the design are incompatible with inferring back to a designer with the classic Omni-God theist properties.

Dcleve
  • 9,612
  • 1
  • 11
  • 44
  • Maybe there is one more problem: if we grant that there exists a designer with all the right powers and attributes, why would that designer be interested in creating a universe with conditions that allow life, or humans? The designer could have created a universe that allowed life, but not specifically humans, or even a universe that didn't allow life. The intention of the designer seems to not be addressed, esp. when it comes to humans. – Frank Jan 20 '23 at 22:06
  • Maybe "agent causation" is what I'm smelling as the problem here. It seems to me to be vaguely parallel to the Euthyphro dilemma, where "good" and "wrong" may not be satisfactorily addressed by introducing an agent along the way. I'm feeling that in my question and in the Euthyphro, introducing an agent doesn't really help. – Frank Jan 20 '23 at 22:10
  • @Frank -- I thought the Agent Causation vs Deterministic Causation was your biggest concern. I am reading a good Agent Causation book now, https://www.academia.edu/17050670/A_Metaphysics_for_Freedom#:~:text=A%20Metaphysics%20for%20Freedom%20outlines%20the%20case%20for,distinctively%20human%20variety%20of%20it%E2%80%94is%20incompatible%20with%20determinism. I hope this answer and further link are useful. – Dcleve Jan 20 '23 at 22:15
  • @Frank -- as a fallibilistic empiricist, and a theist, the third concern is the biggest one for me. I look at near fine tuning, and the late and marginal emergence of life, and infer the most likely of Design hypotheses is a dysfunctional committee, which thru sabotage led to a failed design, with life as an after the fact adaption. I am a di-theist, and I speculate that God needs life to recover health/essence from the harm of that sabotage by Its collaborators-now-enemies during the creation event. – Dcleve Jan 20 '23 at 22:20
  • I thought I saw somewhere that Schopenhauer had quipped that given the dysfunction he saw in the universe, if it had been adjusted ever so slightly differently, it would have been truly impossible? :-) Something like that, I can't remember the actual quote. – Frank Jan 20 '23 at 22:27
  • @Frank -- while Fine Tuning is a problem for atheists, NEAR Fine Tuning is a problem for theists. Our world is -- not intuitive or easily explained. – Dcleve Jan 20 '23 at 22:32
  • Is there an argument along the lines that it is improbable that a designer would bother creating a universe precisely for humans, as opposed to creating any other universe "for" anybody/anything else? We could say that humans are improbable in and of themselves, without even looking at constants/laws. – Frank Jan 20 '23 at 23:11
  • The Fine Tuning Argument does not rely upon tuning for humans. Humans on earth are an accident of a process that could have created lots of other sorts of entities. And the universe is clearly not designed to create lots of places like earth. Fine tuning arguments don't hold together beyond tuning for Life in general. And that is only NEAR fine tuning. – Dcleve Jan 20 '23 at 23:40
  • I was moving away from the fine tuning argument, making another argument, whereby it is very improbable that humans would appear in the universe, even more improbable than life in general, so just the fact that there are humans at all would be proof that there has to exist some designer who wanted humans to be there. Why invoke fine tuning? The improbability of humans in and of themselves should be enough to assume some sort of design? – Frank Jan 21 '23 at 00:12
  • 1
    @Frank -- there are no apparent design features of our universe that drove it to produce humans. Humans vs Ferengi vs mollusk vs. gas-state creatures -- all appears to just be chance. You are leaning toward fallacious misuse of statistics. – Dcleve Jan 21 '23 at 19:52
  • Why do we talk about something being improbable if it is the case? It's here. The probability is unity. Probability applies to future chances, like weather, or a roulette wheel. Yesterday's downpour is dead certain. – Scott Rowe Feb 19 '23 at 23:00
  • @ScottRowe -- all our models are based on past events. If our models are probabilistic, then past events had a probability based on them. If our models say a different history was far more probable than our actual history, that is generally treated as a refutation of the model. Use of probability analysis of past events is a key feature of science testing. – Dcleve Feb 21 '23 at 16:26
  • @Dcleve To me it just sounds like sour grapes or complaining to say that a past event was improbable. Everything is utterly impossible until it happens. Isn't that like the Dirac function or something? It is the difference between inalterable past and unknown future. – Scott Rowe Feb 21 '23 at 20:42
  • @ScottRowe -- the point is that if your model of reality says something else should have happened than what did, then your model is likely wrong. This is why Fine Tuning is such a big deal between naturalists and theists. Our best naturalist models say our universe should not support life. Theist models say our universe should. Since our universe supports life, if one is committed to naturalism, then one needs to seriously patch our best physics or cosmology. The most common patch is a multiverse, which sabotages any claim to be either simpler or more testable than theist worldviews. – Dcleve Feb 22 '23 at 01:54
  • So 'improbable' means: "my theory is probably wrong, but I would rather blame reality." – Scott Rowe Feb 22 '23 at 02:15
0

There is a very simple reason as to why a designer does not answer fine tuning. The reason is that the fine tuning argument assumes, apriori, that a God who cares about life is more likely to exist than a God who say wants another particular set of fundamental constants that aren’t conducive to life to come about. Without this assumption, the argument doesn’t even get out of the water. And there is nothing in our knowledge given that we have no experience with god or gods that can justify this assumption.

Every single event has a remarkably long history of causes, the probability of which is infinitesimal, so infinitesimal that it is likely lower than the probability of the constants that are supposed to be fine tuned. This applies to even a simple event like you waking up tomorrow at 8:00 AM. Why is it then that you don’t believe there exists a God from this event? The probability of a series of events that led up to you waking up at that time is infinitesimally low, contrary to what our intuitions might tell us. The real reason you do not believe in a God when that happens is because you think that there is no reason to assume that a God who would want that to happen exists in the first place.

But if there is no reason to assume that a God who would want you to wake up at 8:00 AM tomorrow doesn’t exist, why assume that there is in the case of fine tuning? We have no prior experience of any of these kinds of gods

thinkingman
  • 6,354
  • 19
  • 53