Re: Original Sin
- From: Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaughan@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:58:24 +0000
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
The following two propositions are very different:
1. "Terms like 'justice' and 'knowledge' and 'duty' and 'elegance'
are descriptions for physical phenomena."
2. "It is feasible to give definitions of such terms entirely
at the level of fundamental physics."
If #1 is true I would expect #2 to be true also.
That seems very strange to me, and so far as I am aware
people who actually believe #1 don't generally believe #2
as well.
I agree, I think, that if #1 is true then a variant of #2
that has "possible in principle" instead of "feasible" is
probably true. But there's a big gap between "possible in
principle" and "feasible". Human brains are immensely complex;
human interactions even more so; patterns of possible human
interactions even more so; I see no reason to think that
physicalism implies or even suggests that notions like
"justice" that implicitly involve quantification over
possible human interactions have descriptions at the level
of fundamental physics that aren't immensely too big to fit
in the observable universe, let alone in a human brain.
....Consider a computer executing a program -- as prototypically
deterministic a system as one might hope for. I don't think
you could give an account at the physical level of what (say)
it means for the program to be doing a recursive computation,
or to be factorizing numbers, or to be generating anti-aliased
images.
For example I could certainly
describe that concepts of "recursion" or of "factorization" using only
data from the physical level description, and hence could define that
concept using only concepts that describe the physical going-ons. For
example I could say something like "factorization takes place when
such and such physical events take place".
I would be very interested to see you try to do that for real.
I frankly don't believe you could, even for a single machine.
Not because it's absolutely impossible in principle, but because
a description at that level would be far too complicated.
Human brains are much more complicated than any computers we
have built yet; justice is a much higher-level concept than
recursion. So I would *expect* that if physicalism is right
then we would be unable to come up with a physics-level account
of what justice is that doesn't consist mostly of handwaving.
So I don't consider the fact that no one has done that to be
evidence against physicalism.
Science is an enterprise that's been fantastically successful,
and whose success appears to be (at least in part) due to its
adoption of naturalism as a working assumption.
The claim that science adopts naturalism as a working assumption is
too vague for me to qualify as either true or false. Under the #1 and
#2 definitions of scientific naturalism I gave as well as under the #2
definition you gave it's clearly false. This leaves us with the #1
definition you gave,
(which was the one I stated, perfectly clearly, to be the
relevant one here, so I'm not sure what the point is of all
the rigmarole about other definitions making it false)
i.e. that naturalism means science's procedural
technique (which is best known as the "scientific method"), in which
case the above claim reduces to a truism for, obviously, science's
success is contingent on science's methods.
The thing about truisms is that they're true. But, actually,
no, it's not a truism. Science-exactly-as-it-is-now couldn't
have had different methods, but there could have been something
somewhat like science-as-it-is-now but with different methods.
Let's say that "schmience" is what you get by taking the
existing "scientific method" but throwing out the strong
bias in favour of "natural" explanations; I'm saying that
it seems to me that schmience would not have been as successful
as science has been. (I don't have any objective evidence
for this, which is why I said "appears to be" rather than
"is".)
The fact that something is very effective
when used as a working assumption is itself evidence in its favour.
I may be misunderstanding you. What "working assumption" exactly?
I'm not sure the working assumption *is* exact :-). But: scientists
attempt to give descriptions of the universe in terms of things
whose behaviour they can describe as precisely as possible, and
without recourse to (for instance) "mind" or "will" as a fundamental
notion.
Thus: the scientific enterprise is pretty much all about
understanding the world from a naturalistic viewpoint.
Of course individual scientists need not be naturalists,
but what they do as scientists is naturalistic: it makes
no appeal to non-naturalistic notions.
A further mistake that the typical atheist commits is to think thus:
"We know that physical reality exists and the only remaining question
is whether it is useful or necessary to add God to it." But the two
alternatives are not: 1) "reality=physical universe" and 2)
"reality=physical universe + God" - but rather: 1) "reality is at
bottom physical following mechanical laws" and 2) "reality is at
bottom spiritual following God's will".
You appear to be saying that it's a *mistake* for anyone to
frame a question differently from the way you prefer.
Yes: it is a mistake as long as we are discussing the existence of
what I mean by "God".
I think what-you-mean-by-God is too ill-defined for its existence
to be an interesting question. (You may perhaps have a clearer
definition; I'm just going on what you've said in uk.r.c.) I thought
what we were actually discussing was the relationship between
science and naturalism, and whether atheists systematically get
that wrong. None of that appears to have any implicit dependence
on framing all questions in the way you prefer.
I judge that the
strongest version of theism is idealistic theism, and, as I have
argued in the richarddawkins.net site, under each one of these
criteria idealistic theism works far better than scientific
naturalism.
You keep saying that it does. I haven't followed your career on
richarddawkins.net, but over here you've responded to my repeated
requests for specifics with a barrage of fog and handwaving.
I am sorry you feel that way. So why don't you state the strongest
description of objective reality you know of, and we compare it one to
one with idealistic theism under the same set of criteria.
I think we're getting back onto the territory of our earlier
discussion. In fact, I think you made almost exactly the same
statements back then and I responded to them. Therefore,
let's leave this until we get back to that.
In short: Once one realizes 1) that the successes of science in no way
imply the truth of scientific naturalism and 2) that the failures of
organized religion in no way imply the falsity of theism -
The question isn't one of implication but of evidence.
I'd like to note that "evidence" is a vague concept,
OK, noted. None the less, evidence is what's relevant here;
no one is claiming that the failures of organized religion
*imply* that theism is wrong, or that the successes of
science *imply* that naturalism is right.
So I suggest we use "evidence" as synonymous to
"reasonable argument".
No, I don't think that's a sensible idea, but I do agree that
reasoned argument is the more fundamental notion (at least as
far as debate goes) and that the presentation of evidence is
just one (important) part of reasoned argument.
(When considering an individual's search for truth rather
than a debate, I'd suggest that the most fundamental notion
is something like "reasoning" and that weighing evidence is
an important part of that but not the whole.)
I do my best trying to understand what people mean, and above I was
making an innocuous claim I thought you agreed with: that when we look
around us to see where we are we only see phenomenal reality.
I think "phenomenal reality" is a silly term; I don't think
it makes any sense to say that we exist "in" phenomenal
reality, especially not if you take that to say that we
don't exist anywhere else. So no, I would never say that
"phenomenal reality ... is where we exist".
Well, this much is clear: Any description of objective reality capable
of producing the kind of phenomena that scientists study (i.e.
physical phenomena to the extent and degree of detail that science
does study them) represents a possible objective reality as far as
science is concerned, and hence science itself cannot help us decide
which of the alternative worlds is more probable (by which I mean
"more reasonable to believe in").
Wrong. There could be two descriptions that both *could*
produce observations consistent with what we see, where
A is much more likely to do so than B. In that case, our
observations would be evidence for A over B. Or there
could be two descriptions both of which would be about
equally likely to produce observations consistent with
what we see, but where A is much more probable a priori
than B. (For instance, perhaps B consists of A plus a
whole lot of other assumptions.) In that case, our
observations wouldn't help to decide between A and B,
but we'd still have reason to think A much more likely
than B.
But you touch on an interesting issue: As you know according to
quantum mechanics phenomenal reality is ultimately "uncertain" in the
sense that one cannot possibly determine the physical state of even
the simplest physical system to an unlimited degree of precision. So
there is no need for a "perfect" simulation at that level to start
with.
Non sequitur, I think. By "perfect" I mean a simulation that
produces results indistinguishable from the "right" ones,
which of course might mean probabilistic ones that have
the right distribution to within the expected statistical
margins of error. The fact that any observations at all
are *possible* doesn't make simulation cheap, because
(once again) observations with the wrong statistics are
strong negative evidence even though they aren't disproof.
What I am saying is this: The claim that we may live in a
computer simulation cannot be falsified on arguments from precision,
because scientific precision will always be limited and one can always
hypothesize that the computer's precision is greater.
The greater the precision you have to hypothesize, the lower
the prior probability of your hypothesis.
But,
interestingly enough, what we already know and some of the scientific
hypotheses we are currently making appear to be consistent with the
practical requirements of a computer simulation. Interesting, no?
Yes.
All you're saying is that the particular scenario you've
imagined wouldn't in fact provide "enough evidence".
No, I am saying that *any* scenario of objective observations would
not by itself be considered sufficient for a convinced methodological
scientific naturalist to change their mind (an alien civilization
playing games with us, a programmer of the computer in which
phenomenal reality is simulating running some experiment, etc).
There are no intrinsic limits in skepticism.
Someone who would not abandon naturalism whatever evidence
came their way would be an inflexibly closed-minded bigot.
What evidence do you have to support your suggestion that
the great majority of scientists (actually, you just said
"scientists", but I take it you admit at least that there
might be exceptions) are inflexibly closed-minded bigots?
What you say is only true about the contribution to p that
comes from theories that are empirically indistinguishable
from naturalism. I don't in fact know of any such theories
(with the possible exception of yours, which appears to
consist of naturalism plus being rude about naturalism).
:-) I am sorry about the "rude" part; it's really not my intention.
I don't think it's always wrong to be rude, and I'm not
offended by the negative things you say about naturalism.
Anyway, to get back on track, I do disagree with what you write above,
because there are many ontological theories that are empirically
indistinguishable from naturalism, including such harebrained ideas as
"young Earth creationism".
The only versions of YECism that are empirically indistinguishable
from naturalism are ones that make crazy assumptions to the effect
that God created the universe in exactly the state it would have
been in if it had existed for billions of years and operated
naturally. It's not entirely clear to me that this sort of theory
is coherent -- i.e., I wonder whether making a universe with a
*perfect* "fake" history is really different from making a universe
with a "real" history. (Have you read Chalmers's essay about why
he doesn't think the "Matrix" hypothesis should be considered a
skeptical hypothesis?)
In any case, I think such a theory should be assigned a very low
prior probability relative to naturalism, because it basically
consists of something equivalent to naturalism plus a whole lot
of extra assumptions. (Some of which are scarcely compatible with
one another -- e.g., God is supposed to be perfectly good but also
to have created a universe apparently designed to deceive.) So,
even though I agree that this sort of theory doesn't get its
contribution to p changed by empirical evidence, that contribution
is extremely small to begin with.
Since there is a nonzero contribution to p from theories
that aren't empirically indistinguishable from naturalism,
and since every practical success of naturalism slightly
reduces the posterior probability of those theories, I
stand by what I said.
What practical successes of ontological naturalism? I know of not a
single one.
Practical successes of methodological naturalism, which (for
reasons I've already given) constitute evidence in favour of
ontological naturalism.
Well, in my experience one of the most common arguments that atheists
use is to point at the great successes of science as strong evidence
for the truth of atheism.
Perhaps they do, but you've offered no evidence that they do it
because they conflate science#3 with naturalism#2.
You haven't really defined science#3.
I know, and I've said so, and I've explained why (it's because
I'm referring to people whose notion of science is itself very
vague).
Anyway by "conflating" I mean
"believing to be intrinsically connected"
That isn't what "conflating" means.
....It seems to me that without
scientific naturalism atheism suddenly becomes extremely vague,
....And, duh, atheism *is* vague because all it is is denial
that there's a god (or, in some people's usage, absence
of positive belief in any god, which is of course even
vaguer),
Well to argue against vague positions does not interest me.
It appears to me that your own position is pretty vague.
Be that as it may, you appear to me to have been arguing
against "atheistic thought" even though it's perfectly
obvious that that is a very vague thing (which is not
to say that individual atheists' thought is vague;
"clear thinkers' thought" is a very vague thing too).
I think it's extraordinarily weak evidence because the
alternative explanation of a physical reality that's at
or past the limits of our understanding seems at least
as plausible.
I am not sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying that perhaps
the failure of naturalism is really a failure of our intelligence? I
think that's what the "new mysterians" claim at least in the context
of the mind-body problem. But, once again, this does not look good.
The phrase "the failure of naturalism" is tendentious and I
decline to endorse it by answering any question that has it
as a presupposition. But I do think that much of what you
describe with those words is a "failure of our intelligence",
or more informatively a matter of things that no being should
be expected to do whose cognitive powers are limited by the
size of the actual universe. (That is, a hypothetical
superintelligence 10^100 times smarter than us would have
the same problem, so "failure of our intelligence" seems
like a poor way to describe the situation.)
I've read a book I think you first
recommended, namely David Mermin's "Boojums All the Way Through". It
seems to me that the experimental confirmation of Bell's theorem plus
the effects of special relativity render incoherent *any* description
of objective reality according to scientific naturalism - in the sense
that two scientific naturalists after observing the same experiment
and using the same reasoning can disagree about which physical events
have in fact taken place.
I'm obviously missing some steps in your reasoning, because
I think the above is entirely false.
Well the idea in short is this: Any naturalistic description of what
objectively happens when one of two entangled particles is measured
entails that a particular physical event takes place, namely that the
first one to be measured instantly affects the state of the other
(perhaps by sending a superluminal signal, or perhaps by fixing the
value of some shared quantum parameter).
No, I think that's a wrong description of things. The entanglement
just means that measurements of the particles are correlated in a
particular way, and it doesn't matter which measurement happens
"first".
(If Michael D. is reading this, then he can probably give a
clearer and more accurate description of this stuff than I can.)
The problem is that because
of relativistic effects two observers will disagree about the temporal
order of the two measurements, and therefore will infer mutually
contradictory accounts about which events have taken place.
I don't understand. They're "disagreeing" only in a superficial
and verbal sense -- in the same way that you and I are "disagreeing"
if, looking at the same scene from different angles, I say that
X is to the left of Y and you say that X is to the right of Y.
....Right, but science only deals with the physical phenomena we
experience, and we want to understand the whole of our experience.
Now scientific naturalists believe (on faith) that the whole of our
experience too can and will in the future be understood by science,
but 1) it's a subjective assumption, 2) there are no results so far,
and 3) there are good reasons to think that this idea can't work.
[about "no results"]
I did not mean that there are some gaps; I meant there are absolutely
no results of naturalism, at least none I am aware of.
That seems an extraordinary thing to have meant, in context.
If the question is whether all our experience can be understood
by science, surely what would count as a "result" would be
a successful understanding (complete or partial, but the more
complete the better) of some aspect of our experience in
scientific terms.
Which is something entirely different from a "result of
naturalism", but let's see. Naturalism is a negative hypothesis;
the only ways for such a thing to have "results" are (a) for
someone to look for counterexamples and not find them, and
(b) for adopting that hypothesis (as a way of choosing what
to bother investigating) to turn out to be fruitful.
Have there been such results? Yes. We get (a) every time
skeptics investigate some claim of the paranormal and find
a sufficient natural explanation. We get (b), at least to
some extent, from science's succesful adoption of methodological
naturalism.
Of course there are varieties of non-naturalism that are
empirically indistinguishable from naturalism, but we've
already discussed the fact that "X is evidence for P" differs
from "X is evidence against every possible alternative to P".
(3) You have presented no such good reasons.
Well, one such reason is that nobody knows how to even describe the
non-physical aspects of our experience using scientific vocabulary,
and it's unreasonable to believe that a problem can be solved within
a context in which nobody has even found a way to express the problem.
There is no evidence that there are any non-physical aspects
of our experience. Begging the question doesn't constitute
good reasons for anything.
....It seems to me that scientific naturalism is simply the result of
peoples' infatuation with science's success, and maybe some
unconscious fear to be laughed out of the room if they stray from
scientific facts and methodology.
OK, but just for the record above I wasn't thinking of you but about
academic philosophers who miss no opportunity to flaunt their
adherence to scientific naturalism, even in such contexts where it's
not clear what the relevance of that adherence is.
I don't see how scientific naturalism can be "simply the result"
of that phenomenon (assuming it to be real), since that phenomenon
seems to be dependent on the prior existence of scientific naturalism.
questions such as: "What is the right thing to do?" "What's the point
in doing the right thing?" "Is there life after death?" We all ask and
somehow answer such questions in our personal life, and how we answer
them greatly affects how we act and how we experience life. Now we
can't answer these questions using science;
The idea that naturalism, or materialism, or atheism, or any other
such ism, implies that every question has to be answered by science
is of course insane, and no one believes it.
I think you'd be surprised; I have read of people who believe that all
truths are scientific truths. Now your definition of epistemological
naturalism is: "the procedural technique of assuming 'natural' causes,
never stopping looking for explanations, etc." Can you give an example
of a question you believe that science cannot answer even though one
always assumes natural causes?
I don't think science can answer the questions "Was Bach or Mozart
the better composer?" or "Is it in general justifiable to kill one
person if doing so saves two lives?". It's possible that the reason
is that those questions don't actually have answers.
I don't think science can answer the question "In 10^5 years time,
will descendants of today's humans still be alive?". This one
probably has an answer that *could* be provided in principle by
a scientific calculation, but it's a *monstrously* infeasible one.
(That answer might take the form of a probability, or a statement
about multiple Everett branches, or something. I wouldn't want
to disqualify such answers.)
I don't think science can answer the question "Exactly 10^5 years
ago, was the number of living things on earth that are ancestors
of mine even or odd?". Leaving aside difficulties about organisms
on the point of birth or death -- which we could circumvent in
various ways -- I think it's clear that this one has an answer,
but the information we'd need to answer it probably just isn't
there any more.
So any meaningful belief about objective reality can
(in fact must) make some difference in phenomenal reality.
If so, then you have just exploded your earlier claim that
no conceivable observation could make any difference to
what probability we should assign to naturalism.
"Phenomenal reality" is not exhausted by "physical phenomena".
Sure. (Well, I disagree, but I understand that that's your
opinion.) Perhaps I misunderstood the argument you were making
before: I thought you were saying that various non-naturalistic
hypotheses have observable consequences absolutely indistinguishable
from those of naturalism.
But, of course, I was forgetting that you claim (e.g.) that
the mere fact that you have experiences is an *observation*
that physicalism is false, or something like that. I think
this is absolutely bonkers, as you'll have noticed by now :-),
and perhaps that's why it slipped my mind.
I wonder what your definition of "naive" is. Note, by the way,
that I didn't say anything about compatibility with *science*
specifically there.
I assumed you meant science, because otherwise I don't know what you
mean by "accuracy".
If I said "grass is pink" then I would be making an inaccurate
statement, one so inaccurate that there would be no need for the
special techniques of science to see its inaccuracy.
Would you care to summarize how it explains the fact that if
you have two very accurate clocks and take one of them up a
mountain for a bit it will be found to be slightly ahead of
the other?
That God produces for us all the order present in physical phenomena;
for example the observation of the two clocks reading slightly
different times. God, according to theism, is the designer and direct
cause of the mathematical order of all physical phenomena we are
experiencing. (The main difference between traditional - dualistic -
theism and the monistic idealistic theism I believe in, is that the
former claims the objective existence of the physical universe and the
latter doesn't; idealistic theism is more parsimonious in that
sense.)
That isn't an explanation at all. Going from "P" to "P because
God makes it so" confers no extra understanding or knowledge.
See, if you're going to claim about the complexity of
naturalistic accounts of reality then (at least if you
care about honesty) you'd better bear in mind that most
of that complexity comes from those accounts' aim to
give detailed, quantitative explanations of all the
funny things we've found out about the world while
looking in the dark corners of earlier accounts.
Well, first of all these naturalistic accounts don't give any
"quantitative explanation" beyond the quantitative content of the
scientific models of physical phenomena;
Right. (And those models are the things that have the
complexity of which you complain.)
But the point is that their complexity
does not lie in their mathematics but in the objective reality they
describe.
The "phenomenal reality" their descriptions seek to explain
is just as complex. (We can tell that from the fact that
our best explanations of the "phenomenal reality" are that
complex.)
Now one may ask: "So what's so bad with complexity? Maybe
objective reality is mind-bogglingly complex." Well, there is the
general principle (which I concede is not a very strong one) that the
more complex something is the less likely (or less reasonable) it is.
I think that's a good general principle, and that principle
is one reason why I find your theory strictly inferior to
naturalism: it appears to me that your theory incorporates
all the complexity of naturalistic theories, and then adds in
a bunch of (ill-specified) stuff about God and minds and so on.
But, much more importantly, such complexity has implications that each
one of us can judge to be unreasonable by itself.
Just as you're free to judge that it's absurd to suppose
that the earth is round and yet people on the bottom don't
fall off, or that time and space aren't really separate,
or that you're descended from single-celled organisms.
The complexity doesn't come from the naturalism. It
comes from the attempt to, you know, actually *describe*
and *explain* rather than just waving one's hands.
Right, but if you imply that these "descriptions" and "explanations"
should have the form that a naturalist would like then you are begging
the question.
I assess descriptions and explanations on the basis of
how effectively they concentrate posterior probability
on the outcomes we actually see. (Roughly.) You will notice
that there is no assumption of naturalism there.
(But, for sure, I'm begging *some* questions; for instance,
I'm rejecting out-and-out irrationalism of various sorts.)
But I think we can all agree on some basic principles:
1) That explanations should be forthcoming, 2) That they should be
intellectually satisfying, 3) that they should imply testable
predictions. And in my judgment idealistic theism succeeds in all
three far better than scientific naturalism. In fact I have not been
able to find a single verifiable prediction of ontological scientific
naturalism, i.e. I cannot imagine the experience of anything,
objective or subjective, that could be construed as evidence for
ontological scientific naturalism.
In other words, the negation of "ontological scientific naturalism",
as you understand it, is an absolutely untestable proposition. And yet
you say that you believe it.
This seems at odds with your #3.
....As for
*how* that reality is supposed *to work* one must be careful not to
beg the question and assume that reality must work on mechanical
principles, just because that's how reality according to scientific
naturalism is supposed to work. According to idealistic theism the
causal factor - what explains all change - is not mechanical laws but
personal will.
I suppose you mean that any descriptions or explanations of objective
reality that are not mechanical would be unacceptable to you. If so
that's begging the question. Suppose that objective reality is in fact
non-mechanical; what then?
I don't know what you mean by "mechanical".
An alleged description or explanation that doesn't actually
embody a testable claim about what happens (note: a claim can
be testable without being quantifiable, but quantifiable claims
can generally be tested better) isn't the sort of thing that
can be supported by evidence. The statement that "all change
is explained by personal will" appears to me to be almost
perfectly untestable.
[Peter van Inwagen, bricks, etc.:]
Ah, but he believes that the constituent parts of bricks do
objectively exist, he only argues that the concept of "brick" does not
strictly speaking refer to an object, under a strong sense of the
internal organization that an object must have - according to him.
Right.
Naturalism moves some peoples' thought into strange directions, so
what's new.
Peter van Inwagen is not a naturalist.
My argument above is that the concept of neutrino is part
of an abstract model of physical phenomena, and this is
incontrovertible. The only open question is whether that concept also
refers to some specific part the objective reality that produces these
phenomena. And it's far from obvious that this should be the case.
The concept of "brick" is part of an abstract model of physical
phenomena, and it's no more obvious that it refers to some
specific part of the objective reality that produces those
phenomena than it is that "neutrino" does.
You are welcome to say that in your view of the world it's
premature to reify bricks. Or neutrinos.
You complain of the multiple different interpretations of
quantum mechanics. You complain of the complexity of physicists'
accounts of the universe. And now you consider it an improvement
to adopt a theory that simply *incorporates by reference* all
the same physics, and presumably some particular model of that
physics. (Which one? Why?)
My argument is this: Let's assume that it is logically possible (i.e.
conceivable without logical contradiction) that the objective reality
that produces the phenomenal reality we perceive is indeed physical/
mechanical. Further it's certainly logically possible that objective
reality is spiritual/intentional ("intentional" in the sense of "moved
by personal will"). Science is compatible with both ontologies, so I
don't quite understand why you claim that the latter only incorporates
physics "as reference", for the latter simply gives a different
account of the origin of the order we observe in physical phenomena.
The former says that the origin of that order are physical laws which
can be expressed mathematically, and the latter says that the origin
of that order is part of God's will which can also be expressed
mathematically.
Please excuse my dimness, but I don't know what point you're
making. (Perhaps "incorporates by reference" was a poor choice
of wording and we're at cross purposes.) Your notion of how
the world is includes, as I understand it, the exact same
physics as a naturalist's. (Even though you might prefer to
describe it in different terms.) So it's just as complex as
the naturalist's. (Or very nearly so; let's leave aside the
question of whether "it all happens in the mind of God" is
more or less complex than "it all happens in an enormous
Hilbert space".)
So I don't see how you can complain about the complexity
of naturalistic understandings of the world; your own
understanding has almost exactly that same complexity
built into it.
Your model of the world therefore cannot possibly be simpler
than the "scientific naturalist"'s, unless you make it so by
lowering your standards and not trying to explain as much.
Well, for fun, I have estimated the Kolmogorov complexity of objective
reality according to idealistic theism and of (the simplest possible
version of) scientific naturalism, and found the former to be many
orders of magnitude less than the latter :-) But I don't think that
this line of argument is particularly relevant one way or the other.
I would be very interested to see your calculations.
there is only a
contradiction between scientific naturalism and idealistic theism. On
the contrary, it seems to me that idealistic theism works better for
science than scientific naturalism, for example all the so-called
paradoxes of quantum mechanics are contingent on one's assumption of
scientific naturalism. Quantum mechanics presents no conceptual
problems whatsoever for idealistic theism.
Oh. So what interpretation of quantum mechanics are you building
into your system?
None whatsoever. Idealistic theism does not require any description of
a physical/mechanical objective reality that produces the quantum
phenomena we observe. It's God's will that produces them, that's the
whole point.
That's an interpretation of quantum mechanics.
And, as I expected, it's one that "solves" the problem by
just declaring that you aren't bothered about solving it.
A naturalist could "solve" the problem in the same way,
with the same illusory complexity reduction, by saying
"It's the nature of the universe that produces them,
that's the point" and declining to say anything more
about what the nature of the universe *is* and how or
why it produces the quantum phenomena we observe.
You mentioned Kolmogorov complexity earlier. Unless you have
an algorithmic specification of the Will Of God, your model
of the universe is going to need a separate specification
of each occurrence that you ascribe to the will of God. That's
going to push the Kolmogorov complexity up a bit.
(Something similar would be true for a probabilistic
account of QM, though it's not clear to me whether the
role you're giving the will of God here goes beyond
deciding quantum events. But it isn't true for "many
worlds", which -- whatever its lack of parsimony in
some other senses -- doesn't require all those extra
bits to specify which way the wavefunction went.)
Correct. I was not using the above as an argument for the truth of
idealistic theism. I was just pointing out that thinking from within
the premise of idealistic theism offers some important epistemological
advantages and therefore makes it much easier to think about objective
reality. Hmm, come to think of it, there may be some argument in favor
of idealistic theism to be made here. You have heard of the so-called
argument from non-belief (or from God's hiddenness), the general idea
of which is that if a benevolent God existed then reality would be
such that knowledge about God would not be rather easy to come by.
Well then, if reality is as idealistic theism describes then indeed
knowledge about God is rather easy to come by: just look into how you
yourself are built. To the degree then that the atheistic argument
from non-belief makes sense there is an argument to be made for
idealistic theism based on its epistemological advantages.
I'd turn that around: given that introspection *doesn't* in fact
give clear knowledge about God, we have some evidence against
idealistic theism.
It seems to me like this claim might be testable, though I expect
you'll take pains to make sure it isn't. For instance, if you're
right then we ought to be able to find out all sorts of things
about the universe by looking within ourselves. Can you think
of any questions about the universe that (1) we don't already
know the answers to, and (2) we might some day know the answers
to, for which looking into ourselves might (on your theory)
enable us to tell "in advance" what the answers are?
That's a very good question (by "universe" I take it you mean
"reality"). One thing we can find out about reality is whether justice
shall be done. If you see inside you'll notice that the idea of
ultimate injustice is alien to us, so the answer to that question is
"yes: reality is such that justice will be done: it always pays to do
the right thing and to not do the right thing is ultimately always
stupid." Our experience in the afterlife will be such that we shall
all at least then recognize the truth of this answer (and I am not
talking about heaven and hell; these are naive visualizations about
how justice works). - Now at this juncture a naturalist is apt to
agree that we have a deep intuition about justice but that this fact
can be explained on naturalist grounds. That's probably true, but also
irrelevant to the question of whether our intuition about justice is
true or not (see the "naturalistic fallacy" in this context).
No, it's not irrelevant. Discovering a possible explanation
for a belief that isn't (so to speak) strongly correlated with
truth should weaken your confidence in that belief. (Suppose
you have a very strong feeling that something is the case,
and then you discover that a month ago you were hypnotized
and the hypnotist gave you a post-hypnotic suggestion that
you would believe whatever-it-is; and suppose you have seen
that same hypnotist apparently make people believe all kinds
of things that you have good reason to disbelieve. Shouldn't
that make you less confident about that strong feeling of
yours?)
Now, perhaps the above will not satisfy you, for perhaps you wish for
some knowledge one can confirm in this life. If so, one question about
reality we can answer by looking into ourselves is: "Is objective
reality beautiful?" Looking into ourselves suggests that the answer is
"yes" and this we can pretty much validate even in this life. How? By
believing what looking into ourselves leads us to believe, and by
living according to how it leads us to live: if one does this one will
find oneself experiencing much more clearly the beauty of reality, You
see, to look deep into ourselves is to contemplate the image of God in
which we are created, and in that image we discern the structure of
all of objective reality.
Well, maybe that works for you, but it doesn't for me; introspection
gives me no answer to the question whether objective reality is
beautiful, and I'm not convinced that the question even has an
answer. (It's like asking whether France is blue.)
--
Gareth McCaughan
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