Epistemology of Design (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Monday, December 14, 2009, 14:18 (5456 days ago) @ Matt

Matt: Whether by God or by accident, whatever created the universe set in motion a chain reaction that would end up in ourselves. 
The problem here is that you would have to have a quantum computer as big as the universe [...] This actually...gives a bit more weight to the idea of a universal consciousness, though what would be going through the universe's "mind" would always be in a state of flux. Since every particle contains information about the universe all things are tied together more closely than one could ever imagine.-David: I just can't follow your math decisions at the beginning. I don't know why you start as you do. Don't try to explain. We're doing fine this way.-I'm very much with David on this, but first of all my apologies if you thought my little satire was meant to ridicule you. That really wasn't the object. It was just a light-hearted attempt to find a different image from the one I used in a similar discussion, when I had a bit of fun telling you about my pet chimpanzee and its typewriter. The serious point underlying the joke is that there have to be limits to one's credulity. I'm in fact saying that your principle of permutations and combinations does not convince me that a mechanism as mind-bogglingly complex as life, reproduction and evolution can assemble itself. I'm also sorry that I can't discuss all this on your mathematical wavelength, and realize how frustrating it must be for you. -Your first statement seems to me self-evident: our presence here proves that there was a chain reaction. In your post of 9 December at 19.32, you wrote: "In all of the universe, only THIS planet is known to have this fine tuning. The universe at large is downright hostile to life; therefore it is not the case that the universe is fine-tuned for life." I replied: "I don't know if this is true. Just how dependent is life on factors outside our planet? [...] Maybe our solar system itself depends on factors elsewhere." What I was getting at in my response was precisely what you have said about all things being tied together, which suggests to me that the universe IS fine-tuned for life ... deliberately or not.-However, the crucial question for me is precisely that: whether the universe does or does not have a consciousness directing the process that has led to life. Obviously, no-one disputes the fact that life happened, and so we are left with a choice: did it happen (i) because it was deliberately set up, (ii) because eventually it was bound to happen, or (iii) by sheer chance? If I've understood you correctly, you're trying to eliminate the third of these by proving that mathematically life was inevitable. With my monkeys on typewriters and my COOL machine I've tried in my amateurish way to demonstrate that there must be limits to what is credible (or mathematically feasible). -I'm not sure, though, that the choice between (ii) and (iii) is all that significant to our decision whether life is a deliberate creation or the product of a mindless universe. If it's mindless, (ii) = what I as a layman would call the law of averages ... sooner or later, the bits and pieces were bound to come up with the right combination ... while (iii) = the combination wasn't bound to happen, but it did. The greater the complexity, the less likely the combination, but either you believe (ii) / (iii) is feasible, or you don't (hence my monkeys and my COOL machine). Can you apply laws of probability when you don't have all the facts? The alternative is consciousness, and the additional feature that you've brought in is the idea that if there really is a universal mind, its thoughts would be in a state of flux. This makes very good sense to me, since it would be bored stiff if it was stuck in a single groove. The concept also ties in, I think, with those proposed by Frank and by BBella. But none of this requires your formulae, and like David I see no advantage in binding ourselves to equations which can only be highly speculative anyway. However, I must confess it was a triumph for me as a teenager to pass O-Level maths, and so perhaps my resistance to the mathematical approach is not entirely philosophical!