Fine-Tuning in Cosmology

The piece contrasts the functioning realities of the British Asian diaspora - music, violence, sex, food, life - with the institutionalized production of knowledge about that diaspora, in particular as regards its expressive cultures. It focuses on the emergence of the so-called `Asian Underground' within a contemporary Benjaminian context of `mechanical reproduction' and explores the opportunistic relationship between middle-class elites and their efforts to appropriate a certain radical chic. It goes on to suggest that this is a deliberate process, which (...) not only absolves a voyeuristic whiteness of its hegemonic associations, but also allows the Asian middle class to conjure out of sight class differentials, even as it struggles with its own dependency on the cultural lifeblood of the urban poor or the semiotically disadvantaged. (shrink)

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 (...) achieve broad international credibility. Philosophy and Cosmology publishes original papers, review papers, conceptual frameworks, analytical and simulation models, case studies, empirical research, and book reviews. At present scientific-philosophical Journal Philosophy and Cosmology is an annual printing issue which focuses on publishing of researches at the sphere of philosophy of Space also with creation of integrated informational area for Space observation and outer space exploration. (shrink)

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» (Editor-in-Chief - Oleg Khoma) and covered scientific and philosophical researches of the space problematic. Since 2008, Journal «Philosophy and Cosmology» is an independent printed issue. Since 2009, together with coming (...) of G.Alyaev, Journal «Philosophy and Cosmology» has an International status printing advanced researches at the spheres of: -/- cosmic education, social philosophy, philosophy of Space, philosophic anthropology, philosophy of cognition, philosophy of science and technology, philosophy of religion, futurology, cosmology, philosophy of cosmology. (shrink)

In issue 12 of Think, Rodney Holder developed a version of the fine -tuning argument for the existence of God, claiming that certain features of our universe make the probability that God exists high. Here, Dene Bebbington responds.

While research has long been recognized as a high impact practice in undergraduate education, much of the scholarship on undergraduate research has focused on students in the final years of their degree. This article describes a study of the ability of first year students to undertake historical research in an introductory level course at a small liberal arts college. It discusses the challenges that first year student’s face in interpreting primary sources, working with multiple sources and crafting arguments based narratives (...) about their findings. It also documents how a research paper assignment advances students’ historical thinking skills and contribute to the development of what the American Historical Association has termed the “core competencies” in the discipline. (shrink)

This new book by cosmologists Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes is another entry in the long list of cosmology-centered physics books intended for a large audience. While many such books aim at advancing a novel scientific theory, this one has no such scientific pretense. Its goals are to assert that the universe is fine-tuned for life, to defend that this fact can reasonably motivate further scientific inquiry as to why it is so, and to show that the multiverse (...) and intelligent design hypotheses are reasonable proposals to explain this fine-tuning. This book's potential contribution, therefore, lies in how convincingly and efficiently it can make that case. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a fertile period of theorizing within mainstream epistemology which has had a dramatic impact on how epistemology is done. Investigations into contextualist and pragmatic dimensions of knowledge suggest radically new ways of meeting skeptical challenges and of understanding the relation between the epistemological and practical environment. New insights from social epistemology and formal epistemology about defeat, testimony, a priority, probability, and the nature of evidence all have a potentially revolutionary effect on how we understand our epistemological (...) place in the world. Religion is the place where such rethinking can potentially have its deepest impact and importance. Yet there has been surprisingly little infiltration of these new ideas into philosophy of religion and the epistemology of religious belief. -/- Knowledge, Belief, and God incorporates these myriad new developments in mainstream epistemology, and extends these developments to questions and arguments in religious epistemology. The investigations proposed in this volume offer substantial new life, breadth, and sophistication to issues in the philosophy of religion and analytic theology. They pose original questions and shed new light on long-standing issues in religious epistemology; and these developments will in turn generate contributions to epistemology itself, since religious belief provides a vital testing ground for recent epistemological ideas. (shrink)

The catchy term "anthropic cosmological principle" embraces a medley of arguments ranging from a mere observation selection effect (the universe must not be such to rule out our existence) to design arguments and an explicit cosmic teleology. This narrow focus neglects that anthropic reasoning reaches back even to late 19th century pre-relativistic physics--at about the same time when there was renewed interest in the principle of least action--and that it emerged in the context of speculations about the cosmological consequences of (...) the second law of thermodynamics. Stefano Bettini’s contribution offers a historical tour through the various applications of the design argument until Carter enunciated the anthropic principle in the context of a very specific physical problem. Subsuming anthropic reasoning under formal teleology, accordingly, does not require invoking any kind of cosmic purpose. Rather, fine-tuning represents a variation argument that distinguishes the actual universe am. (shrink)

The Tuning educational project for history has its supporters and its detractors. This overview of the articles contained in this special issue of the journal reflects on some of the complexities of implementing such an ambitious global project and the local and national priorities that have made the process both stimulating and challenging for those involved. And it argues that while lists of competences constitute valuable reference points for discussion of the arts and humanities curriculum in an international context, they (...) should be seen as the starting point for a more detailed and broad-ranging set of global conversations about how we teach our subjects and why this matters for students in today’s world. (shrink)

Jonathan Weisberg (2010 ) argues that, given that life exists, the fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life does not confirm the design hypothesis. And if the fact that life exists confirms the design hypothesis, fine-tuning is irrelevant. So either way, fine-tuning has nothing to do with it. I will defend a design argument that survives Weisberg’s critique — the fact that life exists supports the design hypothesis, but it only does so given fine-tuning.

The fine-tuning argument can be used to support the Many Universe hypothesis. The Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy objection seeks to undercut the support for the Many Universe hypothesis. The objection is that although the evidence that there is life somewhere confirms Many Universes, the specific evidence that there is life in this universe does not. I will argue that the Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy is not committed by the fine-tuning argument. The key issue is the procedure by which the universe with life (...) is selected for observation. Once we take account of the procedure, we find that the support for the Many Universe hypothesis remains. (shrink)

How should we update our beliefs when we learn new evidence? Bayesian confirmation theory provides a widely accepted and well understood answer – we should conditionalize. But this theory has a problem with self-locating beliefs, beliefs that tell you where you are in the world, as opposed to what the world is like. To see the problem, consider your current belief that it is January. You might be absolutely, 100%, sure that it is January. But you will soon believe it (...) is February. This type of belief change cannot be modelled by conditionalization. We need some new principles of belief change for this kind of case, which I call belief mutation. In part 1, I defend the Relevance-Limiting Thesis, which says that a change in a purely self-locating belief of the kind that results in belief mutation should not shift your degree of belief in a non-self-locating belief, which can only change by conditionalization. My method is to give detailed analyses of the puzzles which threaten this thesis: Duplication, Sleeping Beauty, and The Prisoner. This also requires giving my own theory of observation selection effects. In part 2, I argue that when self-locating evidence is learnt from a position of uncertainty, it should be conditionalized on in the normal way. I defend this position by applying it to various cases where such evidence is found. I defend the Halfer position in Sleeping Beauty, and I defend the Doomsday Argument and the Fine-Tuning Argument. (shrink)

This paper considers the Bayesian form of the fine-tuning argument as advanced by Richard Swinburne. An expository section aims to identify the precise character of the argument, and three lines of objection are then advanced. The first of these holds that there is an inconsistency in Swinburne's procedure, the second that his argument has an unacceptable dependence on an objectivist theory of value, the third that his method is powerless to single out traditional theism from a vast number of competitors. (...) In the final section of the paper the fine-tuning argument is considered, not now as self-standing, but as one of a number of theistic arguments taken together and applied in the manner of the final chapter of Swinburne's The Existence of God. It is argued that points already made also block the way for this line of thought. (shrink)

A frequent objection to the fine-tuning argument has been that although certain necessary conditions for life were admittedly exceedingly improbable, still, the many possible alternative sets of conditions were all equally improbable, so that no special significance is to be attached to the realization of the conditions of life. Some authors, however, have rejected this objection as fallacious. The object of this paper is to state the objection to the fine-tuning argument in a more telling form than has been done (...) hitherto, and to meet the charge of fallacy. (shrink)

It has been suggested by many philosophers that the cosmos cries out for explanation. They base this claim on the fact that many of the fundamental characteristics of the cosmos seem to have to be incredibly ’fine-tuned’ to permit the existence of intelligent life. They further claim from this ’fine-tuning’ that the cosmos is highly improbable, and thus requires an explanation. In recent times, these views have been criticized by writers, such as Quentin Smith, who suggest that no explanation for (...) the universe is really required at all, that the universe just is. I wish in this paper to criticize this view, for I believe that we have reached a point in our history where the only defensible way to maintain that the universe requires no explanation at all, is to suggest that intelligent life is in no way special. (edited). (shrink)

This is a condensed version of an in-process book on the fine-tuning argument for God’s existence. In this 48,000 word essay, I first develop a probabilistic framework for articulating the argument, and then use this framework to answer in detail many of the objections commonly raised against it. Along the way, I present some of the fine-tuning evidence itself and consider major objections against the evidence; further, there are two major sections dealing with the multiverse objection, particularly that based on (...) inflationary cosmology. (shrink)

This is a contribution to the first online book debating theism and naturalism. In this contribution, I present the case for theism from the fine-tuning of the universe, and the elegance and intelligibility/discoverability of the law of nature. Also included is Paul Draper’s response to my arguments, along with my replies. (The online book can be found at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/great-debate.html).

The most common objection to fine tuning arguments for theism is that there are, or might be, multiple universes among which the fundamental physicalconstants and parameters vary. This essays describes the two main variants of this objection and argues that they both fail.

The argument from fine tuning is supposed to establish the existence of God from the fact that the evolution of carbon-based life requires the laws of physics and the boundary conditions of the universe to be more or less as they are. We demonstrate that this argument fails. In particular, we focus on problems associated with the role probabilities play in the argument. We show that, even granting the fine tuning of the universe, it does not follow that the universe (...) is improbable, thus no explanation of the fine tuning, theistic or otherwise, is required. (shrink)

While declaring philosophy to be dead, Hawking and Mlodinow are deeply engaged in philosophical speculation. Their treatment of the origin and fine tuning of the universe, though unsympathetic to theism, turns out upon examination to be quite supportive of natural theology.

Alexander Vilenkin’s recent book is a wonderful popular introduction to contemporary cosmology. It contains provocative discussions of both the beginning of the universe and the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. Vilenkin is a prominent exponent of the multiverse hypothesis, which features in the book’s title. His defense of this hypothesis depends in a crucial and interesting way on conflating time and space. His claim that his theory of the quantum creation of the universe explains the origin of the (...) universe from nothing trades on a misunderstanding of "nothing.". (shrink)

Studies in astrophysical cosmology have served to reveal the incomprehensible fine-tuning of the fundamental constants and cosmological quantities which must obtain if a universe like ours is to be life-permitting. Traditionally, such fine-tuning of the universe for life would have been taken as evidence of divine design. William Dembski’s ’generic chance elimination argument’ provides a framework for evaluating the hypothesis of design with respect to the fine-tuning of the universe. On Dembski’s model the key to a design inference is the (...) elimination of the competing alternatives of physical necessity and chance. In debates over fine-tuning, the former is represented by a ’theory of everything’, which would eliminate or significantly reduce the improbabilities of fine-tuning. The latter takes the shape of the ’many worlds hypothesis’, according to which a ’world ensemble’ of universes exist, thus providing purchase for the ’anthropic principle’. This paper assesses the relative merit. (shrink)

Barrow and Tipler’s contention that the Anthropic Principle is obviously true and removes the need for an explanation of fine-tuning fails because the Principle is trivially true, and only within the context of a World Ensemble, whose existence is not obvious, does a selection effect become significant. Their objections to divine design as an explanation of fine-tuning are seen to be misconceived.

: The oft-repeated claim that life is ‘ written into ’ the laws of nature is examined and criticised. Arguments are given in favour of life spreading between near-neighbour planets in rocky impact ejecta (transpermia), but against panspermia, leading to the conclusion that if life is indeed found to be widespread in the universe, some form of life principle or biological determinism must be at work in the process of biogenesis. Criteria for what would constitute a credible life principle are (...) elucidated. I argue that the key property of life is its information content, and speculate that the emergence of the requisite information-processing machinery might require quantum information theory for a satisfactory explanation. Some clues about how decoherence might be evaded are discussed. The implications of some of these ideas for ‘ fine-tuning ’ are discussed. (shrink)

We argue that there is a tension between two types of design arguments-the fine-tuning argument (FTA) and the biological design argument (BDA). The tension arises because the strength of each argument is inversely proportional to the value of a certain currently unknown probability. Since the value of that probability is currently unknown, we investigate the properties of the FTA and BDA on different hypothetical values of this probability. If our central claim is correct this suggests three results: 1. It is (...) not very plausible that a cumulative case for theism include both the FTA and the BDA (with one possible qualification); 2. Self-organization scenarios do not threaten theism but in fact provide the materials for a good FTA. 3. A plausible design argument of one sort or another (either FTA or BDA) will be available for a wide variety of values of the key probability. (shrink)

Let us consider that version of the Argument from Design which appeals to the so called "fine tuning" of the physical constants of the universe. Call it "the Fine tuning Argument." It has many advocates, both on the Internet and in print. For some of the Internet articles, see the following web site: http://www.reasons.org/resources/papers/>. One of the argument's "print" advocates is George Schlesinger, who says the following: In the last few decades a tantalizingly great number of exceedingly rare coincidences, vital (...) for the existence of a minimally stable universe and without which no form of life could exist anywhere, have been discovered. . . . [G]iven any one of infinitely many universes, some conjunction or other of physical magnitudes will have to obtain. However, the prevailing conjunction is not merely one of indefinitely many; it is also an instance of a virtually infinitesimally rare kind of universe: the kind capable of sustaining life. The hypothesis that it was produced by a Being interested in sentient organic systems adequately explains this otherwise inexplicably astonishing fact. NEW PERSPECTIVES ON OLD TIME RELIGION, Oxford U.P., 1988, pp. 130,133] A more precise formulation of the argument is the following, with premises indicated by "P" and conclusions indicated by "C": (P1) The combination of physical constants that we observe in our universe is the only one capable of sustaining life as we know it. (P2) Other combinations of physical constants are conceivable. (shrink)

This is response to Stephen Parrish’s article "Theodore Drange on the Fine-Tuning Argument: A Critique," ’Philosophia Christi’, Series 2, 1 (No. 2, 1999), which attacked a section of my book ’Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for God’s Nonexistence’ (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998). The Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) maintains that the physical constants of our universe exhibit evidence of "fine-tuning" by an intelligent designer. In opposition, I suggest alternate explanations which are at least as good. Here I defend my objections to (...) FTA against Parrish’s critique, aiming to show that his defense of the argument is a failure. (shrink)

A version of the Fine-tuning Argument (FTA) considered in a previous essay is replaced by an improved version, which is then refuted.Advocates of FTA must proclaim that there is no world ensemble, that a great many alternatives to the physical constants of our universe are physically possible and roughly equal in probability to them, and that alternate hypothetical worlds are all, or almost all, uninteresting in comparison to our universe. But no reason has been produced to believe any of these (...) claims, and so FTA, even in its improved version, can still be dismissed as unsupported, doubtful, and weak. (shrink)

This book consists of four nonpartisan debates about the existence of God. Each debate examines distinct related areas of evidence for and against naturalism and theism. The topics of the first debate are the mind and the will, and the debaters are a naturalist, Andrew Melnyk, and two theists, Steward Goetz and Charles Taliaferro. Next, Paul Draper defends an evolutionary argument from evil against theism, while Alvin Plantinga argues that evolutionary naturalism is self-defeating. In the final two debates, Quentin Smith (...) and Robin Collins examine evidence from the physical sciences, while John Schellenberg and Jeffrey Jordan debate divine hiddenness and pragmatic justifications of theistic belief. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss three probabilistic arguments for the existence of multiple universes. First, we provide an analysis of total evidence and use that analysis to defend Roger White's "this universe" objection to a standard fine-tuning argument for multiple universes. Second, we explain why Rodney Holder's recent cosmological argument for multiple universes is unconvincing. Third, we develop a "Cartesian argument" for multiple universes. While this argument is not open to the objections previously noted, we show that, given certain highly (...) plausible assumptions about evidence and epistemic probability, the proposition which it treats as evidence cannot coherently be regarded as evidence for anything. This raises the question of whether to reject the assumptions or accept that such a proposition cannot be evidence. (shrink)

According to the Fine-Tuning Argument, the existence of life in our universe confirms the Multiverse Hypothesis. A standard objection to FTA is that it violates the Requirement of Total Evidence. I argue that RTE should be rejected in favor of the Predesignation Requirement, according to which, in assessing the outcome of a probabilistic process, we should only use evidence characterizable in a manner available before observing the outcome. This produces the right verdicts in some simple cases in which RTE leads (...) us astray, and, when applied to FTA, it shows that our evidence does confirm HM. (shrink)

Naturalism has been characterized both as a claim about what exists and as a commitment to a certain methodology. The fine - tuning argument for God’s existence presents a significant challenge to each way of characterizing naturalism. The claim naturalist faces the fact that the best response to the fine - tuning argument requires the existence of many universes that are not clearly naturalistic themselves. Method naturalism faces the challenge that it does not have the resources to ground the preference (...) of the many-world hypothesis to the designer hypothesis. (shrink)

Design arguments make a case for the existence of God based on examples of apparent design or purposiveness in the natural world. Current versions of the argument proceed, not in terms of analogies between the universe and human artifacts, but as inductive arguments to the best explanation of the data. Theism is offered as the simplest hypothesis that can explain facts such as the mathematical elegance and intelligibility of the laws of the nature. The design argument has recently received new (...) life from discoveries regarding the fine-tuning required for any universe capable of sustaining life. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is analyzing to which extent the multiverse hypothesis provides a real explanation of the peculiarities of the laws and constants in our universe. First we argue in favor of the thesis that all multiverses except Tegmark’s “mathematical multiverse” are too small to explain the fine tuning, so that they merely shift the problem up one level. But the “mathematical multiverse" is surely too large. To prove this assessment, we have performed a number of experiments with (...) cellular automata of complex behavior, which can be considered as universes in the mathematical multiverse. The analogy between what happens in some automata (in particular Conway’s “Game of Life") and the real world is very strong. But if the results of our experiments can be extrapolated to our universe, we should expect to inhabit—in the context of the multiverse—a world in which at least some of the laws and constants of nature should show a certain time dependence. Actually, the probability of our existence in a world such as ours would be mathematically equal to zero. In consequence, the results presented in this paper can be considered as an inkling that the hypothesis of the multiverse, whatever its type, does not offer an adequate explanation for the peculiarities of the physical laws in our world. (shrink)

This paper characterizes various responses to the question, 'Why does our universe exist?' Some responses- that the question is senseless, that the existence of our universe is logically necessary- are implausible. Adjudication between more plausible responses requires us to evaluate the argument from the 'fine-tuning' of the universe, a refurbished version of the argument from design that appeals to cosmology rather than biology. The evidence of fine-tuning should lead us to adopt, albeit provisionally, cosmological fecundity, the hypothesis that there exist (...) many universes of varying characters. The existence of our universe is thereby rendered less surprising. This is to be preferred both to the theistic hypothesis and to the view that the existence of our universe requires no explanation. (shrink)

The Myopic Anthropic Principle: an attempt to show that the popular anthropic reasoning of our time — often taken to show that laws of nature are fine-tuned by a god for us — should be seen merely as an indication of fine-tuning by us. This preference for short-sightedness in this case is shown (shown?) to support the best-system account of scientific law.

We investigate Swinburne’s teleological argument for the existence of God, based on the fine-tuning phenomenon in cosmology. We argue that, for three reasons, the most important alternative naturalistic explanation, the so-called multiverse-hypothesis, is much more plausible than Swinburne wants us to believe: a) a multiverse generating mechanism, producing universes of various kinds, randomly differing in their basic features, is a priori quite probable according to Swinburne’s own criteria; b) unlike the designer hypothesis, the multiverse hypothesis does not hinge on the (...) scientifically controversial claim that, given the natural constants of our universe, the emergence of life is almost inevitable; c) the fact that life is a very rare phenomenon in our universe and has entered its stage rather lately, is poorly explained by the hypothesis of a designer primarily interested in the creation of other free agents. Swinburne’s claim that God took a detour for aesthetic reasons is shown. (shrink)