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Summary The anthropic principle is a contentious principle of reasoning and confirmation that aims at accounting for selection effects from our place as observers when we evaluate or use theories. It is often invoked in the context of testing cosmological theories. The anthropic principle states that the parameters of the universe must be such that life (or conscious life or observership) is possible. A strong version of the anthropic principle claims that the most likely theories should be those that are the most favorable to the advent of life. This strong version is contentious, as it implies that the universe is somehow designed for life. A weaker version of the anthropic principle claims that theories that are incompatible with the advent of life should be discounted for being empirically inadequate. This weak version is not contentious, but its critiques argue that it is nothing more than a truism of confirmation.
Key works Earman 1987 provides a survey and a sharp critique of different versions of the anthropic principle. See Hacking 1987 for a discussion of the anthropic principle as an inverted gambler's fallacy, and Leslie 1988 and McGrath 1988 for rebuttals. More recently, Bostrom 2002 has sparked renewed interest in anthropic reasoning, advocating the need to revise our principles of confirmation and probabilistic reasoning altogether. See Sober 2004 for a discussion of anthropic reasoning and the argument from design.
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  1. The Grabby Alien Observer Paradox: An Anthropic Dilemma regarding the Grabby Alien Hypothesis.Walter Barta - manuscript
    In his article “If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens are also Rare”, Robin Hanson proposes the Grabby Alien Hypothesis, which proposes that extraterrestrial civilizations (ETIs) exist outside of our observable universe and are gradually expanding to fill the universe. The existence of such grabby aliens in our future expanding to fill all available niches puts a cosmic deadline on independently originating sources of life. This cosmic cutoff offers an explanation for why human observers seem to be relatively early (...)
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  2. The World's Haecceity is the Dual of My Thrownness.Jude Arnout Durieux - manuscript
    We live in a contingent world, a world that could have been different. A common way to deal with this contingency is by positing the existence of all possibilities. This, however, doesn’t get rid of the contingency – it merely moves it from the third-person view to the first-person view.
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  3. Consciousness, psychophysical harmony, and anthropic reasoning.Mario Gomez-Torrente - manuscript
    The thesis, typical among dualists, that there are no necessitation relations between events of consciousness and physical events implies that it is prima facie lucky that in our world the apparently existing psychophysical laws usually match events of consciousness and physical events in a “harmonious” way. The lucky psychophysical laws argument concludes that typical dualism amounts to a psychophysical parallelism that is prima facie too improbable to be true. I argue that an anthropic reasoning in the space of possible worlds (...)
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  4. Programming relativity and gravity via a discrete pixel space in Planck level Simulation Hypothesis models.Malcolm J. Macleod - manuscript
    Outlined here is a simulation hypothesis approach that uses an expanding (the simulation clock-rate measured in units of Planck time) 4-axis hyper-sphere and mathematical particles that oscillate between an electric wave-state and a mass (unit of Planck mass per unit of Planck time) point-state. Particles are assigned a spin axis which determines the direction in which they are pulled by this (hyper-sphere pilot wave) expansion, thus all particles travel at, and only at, the velocity of expansion (the origin of $c$), (...)
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  5. First-Person Plural Quantum Mechanics.Ulrich J. Mohrhoff - manuscript
    Doing justice to quantum mechanics calls for a deeper examination of the relations between our experience, its objects, and its subjects than either third-person interpretations or the first-person singular interpretation of the QBist permit. The metaphysical space opened by Bohr's employment of the "Kantian wedge" between the objective world, about which we can communicate, and the world "in itself" allows quantum mechanics to unfold its metaphysical potential. This in turn makes it possible to go a long way towards bridging the (...)
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  6. A Pin and a Balloon: Anthropic Fragility Increases Chances of Runaway Global Warming.Alexey Turchin - manuscript
    Humanity may underestimate the rate of natural global catastrophes because of the survival bias (“anthropic shadow”). But the resulting reduction of the Earth’s future habitability duration is not very large in most plausible cases (1-2 orders of magnitude) and thus it looks like we still have at least millions of years. However, anthropic shadow implies anthropic fragility: we are more likely to live in a world where a sterilizing catastrophe is long overdue and could be triggered by unexpectedly small human (...)
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  7. Presumptuous Philosopher Proves Panspermia.Alexey Turchin - manuscript
    Abstract. The presumptuous philosopher (PP) thought experiment lends more credence to the hypothesis which postulates the existence of a larger number of observers than other hypothesis. The PP was suggested as a purely speculative endeavor. However, there is a class of real world observer-selection effects where it could be applied, and one of them is the possibility of interstellar panspermia (IP). There are two types of anthropic reasoning: SIA and SSA. SIA implies that my existence is an argument that larger (...)
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  8. The multiverse doesn't affect the Anthropic argument.Jude Arnout Durieux -
    Often, the possibility of a multiverse is given as a defeater for the anthropic argument: if there are many, possibly even an infinite number of worlds, then the probability of having a life-permitting world is no longer low. This article shows that the possibility of a multiverse doesn’t defeat the anthropic argument.
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  9. Modal Realism and Anthropic Reasoning.Mario Gómez-Torrente - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Some arguments against David Lewis’s modal realism seek to exploit apparent inconsistencies between it and anthropic reasoning. A recent argument, in particular, seeks to exploit an inconsistency between modal realism and typicality anthropic premises, premises common in the literature on physical multiverses, to the effect that observers who are like human observers in certain respects must be typical in the relevant multiverse. Here I argue that typicality premises are not applicable to the description of Lewis’s metaphysical multiverse, where the proportions (...)
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  10. Towards a Phenomenological Ontology: Synthetic A Priori Reasoning and the Cosmological Anthropic Principle.James Schofield - 2022 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 43 (1):1-24.
    The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical commitments of autopoietic enactivism in relation to Errol E Harris’s dialectical holism in the interest of establishing a common metaphysical ground. This will be undertaken in three stages. First, it is argued that Harris’s reasoning provides a means of developing enactivist ontology beyond discussions limited to cognitive science and into domains of metaphysics that have traditionally been avoided by phenomenologists. Here, I maintain enactivist commitments are consistent with Harris’s reasoning from (...)
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  11. The Anthropic Principle for the Evolutionary Biology of Consciousness: Beyond Anthropocentrism and Anthropomorphism.Daichi G. Suzuki - 2022 - Biosemiotics 15 (1):171-186.
    The evolutionary origin of consciousness has been a growing area of study in recent years. Nevertheless, there is intense debate on whether the existence of phenomenal consciousness without the cerebral cortex is possible. The corticocentrists have an empirical advantage because we are quasi-confident that we humans are conscious and have the well-developed cortex as the site of our consciousness. However, their prejudice can be an anthropic bias similar to the anthropocentric prejudice in pre-Darwinian natural history. In this paper, I propose (...)
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  12. O Ponto Ómega de Teilhard de Chardin. Do Contraponto com o Átomo Primitivo de Georges Lemaître à Projeção em Teorias Cosmológicas (Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point. From the Counterpoint with the Primitive Atom by Georges Lemaître to Projection in Cosmological Theories).João Barbosa - 2020 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 76 (4):1743-1760.
    This article focuses on the Omega Point, an essential concept in Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary metaphysics. In certain passages about the Omega Point, Teilhard mentions the primeval atom hypothesis, a theory about the beginning of the universe proposed by Georges Lemaître, another contemporary Jesuit priest who was also a scientist. Although Teilhard and Lemaître are essentially evolutionists, besides being Jesuit priests, their evolutionary metaphysics and their philosophies of science are radically divergent, and two important differences are presented here – about (...)
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  13. Freedom Giving Birth to Order: Philosophical Reflections on Peirce's Evolutionary Cosmology and its Contemporary Resurrections.Zeyad El Nabolsy - 2020 - Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 16 (1):1-23.
    This paper seeks to show that Charles Sanders Peirce's interest in an evolutionary account of the laws of nature is motivated both by his desire to extend the scope of the application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and by his attempt to explain the success of our deployment of the PSR, which presupposes the existence of determinate causal structures. One can situate Peirce's concern with the explanation of the laws of nature in relation to the influences of Naturphilosophie (...)
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  14. Beyond Falsifiability: Normal Science in a Multiverse.Sean M. Carroll - 2019 - In Dawid Richard, Dardashti Radin & Thebault Karim (eds.), Epistemology of Fundamental Physics: Why Trust a Theory? Cambridge University Press.
    Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a crucial role in legitimate scientific theories. I argue that the way we evaluate multiverse models is precisely the same as the way we evaluate any other models, on the basis of abduction, Bayesian inference, and empirical success. There is no scientifically respectable way to do (...)
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  15. Scientific rationality, human consciousness, and pro-religious ideas.Alfred Gierer - 2019 - In Wissenschaftliches Denken, das Rätsel Bewusstsein und pro-religiöse Ideen. Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen&Neumann. pp. 83-93.
    The essay is an English version of the German article "Wissenschaftliche Rationalität, menschliches Bewusstsein und pro-religiöse Ideen". It discusses immanent versus transcendent concepts in the context of the art of living, as well as the understanding of human consciousness in the context of religion. Science provides us with a far reaching understanding of natural processes, including biological evolution, but also with deep insights into its own intrinsic limitations. This is consistent with more than one interpretation on the “metatheoretical“, that is (...)
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  16. Wissenschaftliches Denken, das Rätsel Bewusstsein und pro-religiöse Ideen.Alfred Gierer - 2019 - Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen&Neumann.
    Diese Schrift enthält eine Reihe von sieben Artikeln, in der es um die Beziehung der Wissenschaften zu aufgeklärten, liberalen Formen religiöser Vorstellungen geht. Im Gegensatz zu verbreiteten Ansichten zumal des vorigen Jahrhunderts führt die moderne Naturwissenschaft zu einer zwar weitgehenden, aber prinzipiell nicht vollständigen Erklärung der Wirklichkeit. Sie kann die Rätselhaftigkeit der Welt für uns Menschen nicht aufheben; die Grundfähigkeiten des menschlichen Denkens sind schließlich nicht nur Gegenstand der Wissenschaft, sondern auch Voraussetzungen jeder wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeit. Auf der „meta-theoretischen“, nämlich der (...)
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  17. (1 other version)Astrobiology and astrophilosophy: subsuming or bifurcating diciplines?Ian von Hegner - 2019 - Philosophy and Cosmology 23:62-79.
    Initially, astrobiology subsumed into philosophy. However, philosophy has increasingly subsumed into astrobiology concurrent with it steadily becoming an observational and experimental activity that mainly focuses on the link between life and the cosmos, rather than on extra-terrestrial life per se. However, the steadily increasing probability of locating such extra-terrestrial life and the questions this will lead to might require a refinement of astrobiology, with a bifurcation into astrobiology and astrophilosophy. There are many reasons for the emergence and necessity of astrobiology. (...)
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  18. (1 other version)Programming Planck units from a virtual electron; a Simulation Hypothesis (summary).Malcolm Macleod - 2018 - Eur. Phys. J. Plus 133:278.
    The Simulation Hypothesis proposes that all of reality, including the earth and the universe, is in fact an artificial simulation, analogous to a computer simulation, and as such our reality is an illusion. In this essay I describe a method for programming mass, length, time and charge (MLTA) as geometrical objects derived from the formula for a virtual electron; $f_e = 4\pi^2r^3$ ($r = 2^6 3 \pi^2 \alpha \Omega^5$) where the fine structure constant $\alpha$ = 137.03599... and $\Omega$ = 2.00713494... (...)
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  19. Review of Hyperspace by Michio Kaku (1994).Starks Michael - 2016 - In Michael Starks (ed.), Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization-- Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 2nd Edition Feb 2018. Las Vegas, USA: Reality Press. pp. 620-626.
    "There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact" Mark Twain-Life on the Mississippi -/- This is a lovely book full of fascinating info on the evolution of physics and cosmology. Its main theme is how the idea of higher dimensional geometry created by Riemann, recently extended to 24 dimensions by string theory, has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. Everyone knows that Riemann created multidimensional geometry in 1854 (...)
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  20. Blurring Out Cosmic Puzzles.Yann Benétreau-Dupin - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (5):879–891.
    The Doomsday argument and anthropic reasoning are two puzzling examples of probabilistic confirmation. In both cases, a lack of knowledge apparently yields surprising conclusions. Since they are formulated within a Bayesian framework, they constitute a challenge to Bayesianism. Several attempts, some successful, have been made to avoid these conclusions, but some versions of these arguments cannot be dissolved within the framework of orthodox Bayesianism. I show that adopting an imprecise framework of probabilistic reasoning allows for a more adequate representation of (...)
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  21. Probabilistic Reasoning in Cosmology.Yann Benétreau-Dupin - 2015 - Dissertation, The University of Western Ontario
    Cosmology raises novel philosophical questions regarding the use of probabilities in inference. This work aims at identifying and assessing lines of arguments and problematic principles in probabilistic reasoning in cosmology. -/- The first, second, and third papers deal with the intersection of two distinct problems: accounting for selection effects, and representing ignorance or indifference in probabilistic inferences. These two problems meet in the cosmology literature when anthropic considerations are used to predict cosmological parameters by conditionalizing the distribution of, e.g., the (...)
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  22. The Role of the Protocol in Anthropic Reasoning.Joseph Y. Halpern - 2015 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 2:195-206.
    I show how thinking in terms of the protocol used can help clarify problems related to anthropic reasoning and self-location, such as the Doomsday Argument and the Sleeping Beauty Problem.
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  23. The anthropic principle and multiverse cosmology.John Peacock & Alasdair Richmond - 2014 - In Michela Massimi (ed.), Philosophy and the Sciences for Everyone. New York, NY: Routledge.
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  24. From Ought to Is: Physics and the Naturalistic Fallacy.Matthew Stanley - 2014 - Isis 105 (3):588-595.
    In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were many attempts to justify political and social systems on the basis of physics and astronomy. By the early twentieth century such moves increasingly also integrated the life and social sciences. The physical sciences gradually became less appealing as a sole source for sociopolitical thought. The details of this transition help explain the contemporary reluctance to capitalize on an ostensibly rich opportunity for naturalistic social reasoning: the anthropic principle in cosmology, which deals with (...)
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  25. (4 other versions)Philosophy and Cosmology 2011 (The Journal of International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology (ISPC) ).Oleg Bazaluk (ed.) - 2011 - ISPC.
    Philosophy and Cosmology is an open access, peer-reviewed and refereed journal that focuses on theoretical and conceptual problems and issues in philosophical and cosmological research. Philosophy and Cosmology is published by International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology. The objective of Philosophy and Cosmology is to promote exchange and collaboration among philosophers, social, technical and natural science researchers throughout the world. In pursuit of this objective the journal not only publishes high quality research papers but also ensures that the published papers (...)
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  26. Balloons on a String: A Critique of Multiverse Cosmology.Bruce Gordon - 2011 - In Bruce Gordon & William A. Dembski (eds.), The nature of nature: examining the role of naturalism in science. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books. pp. 558-601.
    Our examination of universal origins and fine-tuning will begin with a discussion of infl ationary scenarios grafted onto Big Bang cosmology and the proof that all infl ationary spacetimes are past-incomplete. After diverting into a lengthy critical examination of the “different physics” offered by quantum cosmologists at the past-boundary of the universe, we will proceed to dissect the inadequacies of infl ationary explanations and string-theoretic constructs in the context of three cosmological models that have received much attention: the Steinhardt-Turok cyclic (...)
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  27. (4 other versions)Philosophy and Cosmology 2010 (The Journal of International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology (ISPC) ).Oleg Bazaluk (ed.) - 2010 - ISPC.
    The Journal «Philosophy and Cosmology» (ISSN 2307-3705) was established by Oleg Bazaluk as a press organ of International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology at 2004. This Society was established in the setting of Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskiy State Pedagogical University. Initially the Journal was printed as a special edition of Ukrainian philosophical journal «Sententiae» (one’s Chief Editor is Oleg Khoma) and covered academic scientific, philosophical and amateur researches of the space problematic. Since 2008, Journal «Philosopy and Cosmology» is an independent printed issue at (...)
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  28. Possible Implications of the Quantum Theory of Gravity: An Introduction to the Meduso-Anthropic Principle. [REVIEW]Louis Crane - 2010 - Foundations of Science 15 (4):369-373.
    If we assume that the constants of nature fluctuate near the singularity when a black hole forms (assuming, also, that physical black holes really do form singularities) then a process of evolution of universes becomes possible. We explore the implications of such a process for the origin of life, interstellar travel, and the human future.
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  29. Observer Localization in Multiverse Theories.Marcus Hutter - 2010 - In Harald Fritzsch & K. K. Phua (eds.), Proceedings of the Conference in Honour of Murray Gell-Mann's 80th Birthday. World Scientific.
    The progression of theories suggested for our world, from ego- to geo- to helio-centric models to universe and multiverse theories and beyond, shows one tendency: The size of the described worlds increases, with humans being expelled from their center to ever more remote and random locations. If pushed too far, a potential theory of everything (TOE) is actually more a theories of nothing (TON). Indeed such theories have already been developed. I show that including observer localization into such theories is (...)
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  30. World existence and “evolved matter” as its modern model.Oleg Bazaluk - 2009 - Philosophy and Cosmology 1 (1):3-37.
    Along the strike of this article we’ll try to perform two tasks. The first one is to review the world existence but not in form of concept but in form of modern scientific-philosophic system of views on the Universe structure and on the processes of formation and development of non-organic world, worlds of life and intelligence. The second one is to answer the question “what is the essence of human life?” through the scientific-philosophic understanding of the world existence.
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  31. (4 other versions)Philosophy and Cosmology 2009 (The Journal of International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology (ISPC) ).Oleg Bazaluk (ed.) - 2009 - ISPC.
    Philosophy and Cosmology is an open access, peer-reviewed and refereed journal that focuses on theoretical and conceptual problems and issues in philosophical and cosmological research. Philosophy and Cosmology is published by International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology. The objective of Philosophy and Cosmology is to promote exchange and collaboration among philosophers, social, technical and natural science researchers throughout the world. In pursuit of this objective the journal not only publishes high quality research papers but also ensures that the published papers (...)
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  32. Science, Religion and Basic Biological Issues That Are Open to Interpretation.Alfred Gierer - 2009 - English Translation Of: Preprint 388, Mpi for History of Science.
    This is an English translation of my essay: Alfred Gierer Wissenschaft, Religion und die deutungsoffenen Grundfragen der Biologie. Mpi for the History of Science, preprint 388, 1-21, also in philpapers. Range and limits of science are given by the universal validity of physical laws, and by intrinsic limitations, especially in self-referential contexts. In particular, neurobiology should not be expected to provide a full understanding of consciousness and the mind. Science cannot provide, by itself, an unambiguous interpretation of the natural order (...)
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  33. (4 other versions)Philosophy and Cosmology 2008 (The Journal of International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology (ISPC) ).Oleg Bazaluk (ed.) - 2008 - ISPC.
    Philosophy and Cosmology is an open access, peer-reviewed and refereed journal that focuses on theoretical and conceptual problems and issues in philosophical and cosmological research. Philosophy and Cosmology is published by International Society of Philosophy and Cosmology. The objective of Philosophy and Cosmology is to promote exchange and collaboration among philosophers, social, technical and natural science researchers throughout the world. In pursuit of this objective the journal not only publishes high quality research papers but also ensures that the published papers (...)
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  34. Cartesian Knowledge and Confirmation.Joel Pust - 2007 - Journal of Philosophy 104 (6):269-289.
    Bayesian conceptions of evidence have been invoked in recent arguments regarding the existence of God, the hypothesis of multiple physical universes, and the Doomsday Argument. Philosophers writing on these topics often claim that, given a Bayesian account of evidence, our existence or something entailed by our existence (perhaps in conjunction with some background knowledge or assumption) may serve as evidence for each of us. In this paper, I argue that this widespread view is mistaken. The mere fact of one's existence (...)
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  35. Privileged, Typical, or not even that? – Our Place in the World According to the Copernican and the Cosmological Principles.Claus Beisbart & Tobias Jung - 2006 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 37 (2):225-256.
    If we are to constrain our place in the world, two principles are often appealed to in science. According to the Copernican Principle, we do not occupy a privileged position within the Universe. The Cosmological Principle, on the other hand, says that our observations would roughly be the same, if we were located at any other place in the Universe. In our paper we analyze these principles from a logical and philosophical point of view. We show how they are related, (...)
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  36. Anthropic reasoning does not conflict with observation.Dien Ho & Bradley Monton - 2005 - Analysis 65 (1):42–45.
    We grant that anthropic reasoning yields the result that we should not expect to be in a small civilization. However, regardless of what civilization one finds oneself in, one can use anthropic reasoning to get the result that one should not expect to be in that sort of civilization. Hence, contra Ken Olum, anthropic reasoning does not conflict with observation.
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  37. The Origin of Mankind A New Cosmological Conception.Oleg Bazaluk - 2003 - Porogi.
    I present my own vision of the material world's formation. I think this new cosmological model deepens and extends the modern points of view on the universe. It allows to follow the evolution of matter up to forming of human society. I had to rethink a lot and even to change and to surrender in some degree my points of view stated in my previous publications. But these changes had a partial character and naturally resulted from the evolution of my (...)
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  38. T I M E in the Light of a New Cosmological Conception.Oleg Bazaluk - 2003 - Porogi.
    This small book continues the theoretical study on the structure of the universe. It examines the category of “time” in the light of a new cosmological model proposed by the author in his book “The Origin of Mankind”. It is generally accepted that after researches of A. Einstein, А. Minkovsky and others space and time are considered in their interrelation, as the continuum. Nevertheless, the category of “time” is still a bone of contention and a cause of a great deal (...)
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  39. Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy.Nick Bostrom - 2002 - New York: Routledge.
    _Anthropic Bias_ explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"--that is, evidence that has been filtered by the precondition that there be some suitably positioned observer to "have" the evidence. This conundrum--sometimes alluded to as "the anthropic principle," "self-locating belief," or "indexical information"--turns out to be a surprisingly perplexing and intellectually stimulating challenge, one abounding with important implications for many areas in science and philosophy. There are the philosophical thought experiments and paradoxes: (...)
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  40. Anthropic fluctuations vs. weak anthropic principle.Milan M. Ćirković - 2002 - Foundations of Science 7 (4):453-463.
    A modern assessment of the classical Boltzmann-Schuetz argument for large-scale entropy fluctuations as the origin of our observable cosmological domain is given.The emphasis is put on the central implication of this picture which flatly contradicts the weak anthropic principle as an epistemological statement about the universe. Therefore, to associate this picture with the anthropic principle as it is usually done is unwarranted. In particular, Feynman's criticism of theanthropic principle based on the entropy-fluctuation picture is a product of this semantic confusion.
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  41. Why the Laws of Physics Are Just So.Ulrich Mohrhoff - 2002 - Foundations of Physics 32 (8):1313-1324.
    Does a world that contains chemistry entail the validity of both the standard model of elementary particle physics and general relativity, at least as effective theories? This article shows that the answer may very well be affirmative. It further suggests that the very existence of stable, spatially extended material objects, if not the very existence of the physical world, may require the validity of these theories.
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  42. The Anthropic Principle: Life in the Universe.Kevin Sharpe & Jonathan Walgate - 2002 - Zygon 37 (4):925-939.
    The anthropic principle, that the universe exists in some sense for life, has persisted in recent religious and scientific thought because it derives from cosmological fact. It has been unsuccessful in furthering our understanding of the world because its advocates tend to impose final metaphysical solutions onto what is a physical problem. We begin by outlining the weak and strong versions of the anthropic principle and reviewing the discoveries that have led to their formulation. We present the reasons some have (...)
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  43. A fatal logical flaw in anthropic principle design arguments.Gilbert Fulmer - 2001 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 49 (2):101-110.
  44. The "Ethical Anthropic Principle" and the Religious Ethics of Levinas.A. T. Nuyen - 2001 - Journal of Religious Ethics 29 (3):427 - 442.
    Why did Levinas choose Isaiah 45:7 ("I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all that") as a superscription of his essay on evil? This article explores the role of evil in Levinas's religious ethics. The author discusses the structure of evil as revealed phenomenologically and juxtaposes it to the structure of subjectivity found in the writings of Levinas. The idea of the "ethical anthropic principle," modeled upon the cosmic anthropic principle, is then used to link evil to (...)
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  45. Observer-relative chances in anthropic reasoning?Nick Bostrom - 2000 - Erkenntnis 52 (1):93-108.
    John Leslie presents a thought experiment to show that chances are sometimes observer-relative in a paradoxical way. The pivotal assumption in his argument – a version of the weak anthropic principle – is the same as the one used to get the disturbing Doomsday argument off the ground. I show that Leslie's thought experiment trades on the sense/reference ambiguity and is fallacious. I then describe a related case where chances are observer-relative in an interesting way. But not in a paradoxical (...)
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  46. Epicurean Evolution and the Anthropic Principle.Alasdair Richmond - 2000 - American Philosophical Quarterly 37 (2):149 - 161.
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  47. Natural Explanations for the Anthropic Coincidences.Victor J. Stenger - 2000 - Philo 3 (2):50-67.
    The anthropic coincidences are widely claimed to provide evidence for intelligent creation in the universe. However, neither data northeory support this conclusion. No basis exists for assuming that a random universe would not have some kind of life. Calculations of the properties of universes having different physical constants than ours indicate that long-lived stars are not unusual, and thus most universes should have time for complex systems of some type to evolve. A multi-universe scenario is not ruled out, since no (...)
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  48. The weak anthropic principle and the design argument.Joseph M. Zycinski - 1996 - Zygon 31 (1):115-130.
    The design argument for God’s existence was critically assessed when in the growth of modern science the cognitive value of teleological categories was called into question. In recent discussions dealing with anthropic principles there has appeared a new version of the design argument, in which cosmic design is described without the use of teleological terms. The weak anthropic principle (WAP), a most critical version of all these principles, describes the fine-tuning of physical parameters necessary to the genesis of carbon-based life. (...)
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  49. Anthropic explanations in cosmology.Quentin Smith - 1994 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72 (3):371 – 382.
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  50. Carter on anthropic principle predictions.Patrick A. Wilson - 1994 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (1):241-253.
    A significant criticism of the anthropic principle as a scientific claim is that testable predictions cannot be derived from it. Brandon Carter has argued, however, that the principle can be used to predict on the one hand that the period of time biological evolution is intrinsically likely to require is very large, and on the other that the number of ‘critical steps’ that have occurred in the evolution of life on earth is related to the length of time life can (...)
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