What’s Wrong with the World

The quote seems to ring out a tone I've heard before, can you affirm the consequent and really know anything at all? The most consistent logicians are theists.

The quote I pull out when folks assert that science (specifically, evolutionary science) proves naturalism comes from G.K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man:
“Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else… An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one… The ultimate question is why they go at all; and anybody who really understands that question will know that it always has been and always will be a religious question; or at any rate a philosophical or metaphysical question, and most certainly he will not think the question answered by some substitution of gradual for abrupt change.”
—G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Good Chesterton quote. A similar point would be that telling us how a chemical reaction occurs doesn't tell us how the universe came into being in the first place.

This is true enough, Lyda/Keith, but I think the problem runs deeper than simply the claim that evolution as such--which simply means slow and systematic change--disproves God. The issue is that macroevolution provides an account of the origin of life, especially human life, which rests on a truly random, i.e., unguided, mechanism. Random mutation is not really random--in fact, randomness can have no meaning whatsoever--if it is "guided" or otherwise teleological. I have seen people try to squirm and twist their way out of this obvious point to no really serious avail, at least to my eyes. (I'm not a metaphysicist, though, so perhaps I've scored the debate wrongly.)

The Darwinistic account of the origin of species would preclude the possibility of a divine progenitor of life, because it claims to show that life has occurred quite by accident, and also that it has provided a process according to which this grand accident could have sprung into being with all its elegance and complexity. If the evolutionists are right, then matter acting in random fashion could easily produce human life given the proper amount of time and local conditions.

Now the Cosmological Question remains, which is what Lydia is driving at, and I have never seen her point satisfactorily addressed (when empiricists attempt to address it at all). But I think Chesterton's implication that evolution could be conceived of as a slow-motion act of miraculous creation ignores the central claim of Darwinistic evolution, which is that the universe itself (taken as a given) provides for the possibility of life-from-dust.

Actually, when I put the quote up I didn't have Darwinism per se in mind but rather a general statement that one hears all the time. It goes something like this: "Science has made so much progress in explaining things--things that did not used to be understood or for which we didn't used to have explanations--that we shouldn't believe that anything is a miracle, including the resurrection or anything, because we can count on the March of Scientific Progress to give a naturalistic explanation of that, too, in time." You see the slide between science and naturalism: Naturalism gets credit for everything from the germ theory to the invention of the light bulb. Which is absolute baloney.

I am thinking of writing a whole post on this but don't know if I have my thoughts together on it yet well enough.

Yes, clearly your point was not directed at Darwinism. I was responding more to Chesterton than to you. Sorry for any confusion.

Now the interpretation of evolution that I am most familiar with is that of Prof. Dawkins (I realize there are other interpretations, and many of his particular claims are controversial even among his colleagues). And he seems to want to have things both ways. On the one hand, he appeals to random mutation and natural selection. Life is a grand accident, and it could have not happened and there could have been nothing. On the other hand, he wants to say, when pressed with the statistical unliklihood of such a claim (Boyle's 747 in a junkyard), that given such an interminably long period of time and with so many little particles bandying about, the appearance of the almighty Replicator and the subsequent evolution of highly sophisticated and complicated beings such as animals and humans was virtually bound to occur. He's appealing, therefore, both to chance and necessity at the same time. Something strikes me as fundamentally unfair about such an argument. Those more versed in contemporary interpretations of evolution could tell me whether or not I'm giving Dawkins a fair shake here. I could go hunt up some citations if pressed, but that's what I recall from what I've read of him.

My impression has always been that he leans much harder on the "it was bound to happen in all this time" claim than on the "it could all not have happened" claim. Mechanistically speaking, of course Darwinian evolution involves a chance element--to produce the needed mutations--and then, ostensibly, a necessity element--that if the mutations are beneficial, they will be selected for and thus locked in. I suppose if pressed, Dawkins could make a _consistent_ set of claims to the effect that randomness is part of the mechanism but that that partly random mechanism was "bound" to produce what we have given so many opportunities, so much time, etc. If you keep dealing cards over and over again, even if you are not cheating, you will eventually deal a royal flush (or whatever it's called) if you keep trying long enough. Something to that effect.

Sage,

I think you may have unintentionally traded on an ambiguity here:

The issue is that macroevolution provides an account of the origin of life, especially human life, which rests on a truly random, i.e., unguided, mechanism.

Whatever the merits of neo-Darwinism as an account of the development of man from lower forms of life, it has no merit as an account of the origin of life itself, for the reason that Dobzhansky pointed out nearly half a century ago: prebiological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.

I suppose if you put enough monkeys in front of enough typewriters for enough time, etc. I don't mean to be flippant with these very serious theories, and with the very serious thoughts of these very serious and very accomplished thinkers. And whenever something seems to easy to knock down, I always feel as if I've misunderstood something. But I have to say that behind a lot of the technical talk about mutation and emergent properties and game theory and billions and billions, etc., I feel like there's something of a sham hoax being perpetrated. When I read The Selfish Gene I certainly learn a lot. But I feel like the guy, with his sundry possible explanations, is just throwing spaghetti at the wall. Whatever sticks is ready to eat, but who can say what will stick? I'm quite prepared to accept a rather bold theory of evolution, as a matter of fact. What really hangs me up is the problem of human consciousness. As Plantinga says, once you show that human consciousness, properly so-called, is immaterial, you've got a defeater for naturalism. Naturalism put aside, I'm prepared to accept a moderately bold interpretation of evolution, if someone can make sense of it for me beyond the micro-environmental level. But once you get past that level, the theorists start using really fuzzy, metaphorical language and looking up at the ceiling. It doesn't inspire confidence in the layman.

Nowadays, if the little boy said, "The Emperor has no clothes," he'd be sent to a reeducation camp.

Pactio Olisipiensis Censenda Est

"Partly random." Isn't that an oxymoron? And, if it isn't - if it means, "a stochastic procedure constrained by order," or something like that, then how is that different from "guided"?

And, how could there be such a thing as a procedure that was random? Would we dignify a merely chaotic bunch of events with the term, "procedure"? The world seems to be constituted of teleotropic entities from the ground up - viz. the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Even probabilistic phenomena are ipso facto orderly - if they weren't, there would be no such thing as statistics, no way of treating them mathematically. How then can it really make sense to talk of randomness, in respect to evolution? Or anything else?

It seems to me that this is why naturalists inveterately, and as glibly as possible, use teleological language - "only as a figure of speech, mind you!" - when explaining things. The very nature of explanation forces us to use teleological language in order to effect it. For how could you "explain" something by way of randomness? Is not randomness the zero of intelligibility?

Teleological language is all the naturalists have at their disposal. Unless they want to start speaking in the artificial tongue of eliminativism, ala the Churchlands. But then no one would listen to them, and they could hardly stand to listen to themselves. So they use the crude and unscientific telos-loaded conventions bequeathed to them, and then make sure--when they are doing their best to be honest--that we understand these as metaphors. The organism wants to do such and such--but it really doesn't want to do it. Ok, I understand that a microorganism doesn't have a will, or make choices, or have desires or order itself in conscious fashion. But so did Aristotle. We do our best to take the naturalist's meaning but in the end one feels as though one is being bribed. You sneak in under my plain man's teleocentric view of the universe and, using my own language and common sense inclination, undermine me. They get to have it both ways, and I'm left rather confused as to what they even think they mean.

Interesting quote from Owen Barfield on this point:

Now the concept of chance is precisely what a hypothesis is devised to save us from. Chance, in fact, = no hypothesis.

Saving the Appearances, pg 64

The Darwinistic account of the origin of species would preclude the possibility of a divine progenitor of life, because it claims to show that life has occurred quite by accident, and also that it has provided a process according to which this grand accident could have sprung into being with all its elegance and complexity.

Isn't there a metaphysical failure in this reasoning (as well as a simple failure of scope in the second part)? Even if it were the case that there really were a random aspect to the changes of life forms over time, this would still say nothing against there being a God who designed the system. God is God partly in that he is capable of designing and operating through contingent causes. There is, then nothing contradictory between saying, on the one hand, that God causes Y by causing X which in a contingent manner causes Y, and saying on the other hand that Y came about under a set of causes operating in part with an aspect of randomness. The apparent Darwinian difficulty with God obtains under a totally mechanistic view of reality, with each cause and effect being necessary. Take away that limited notion of causality, and the whole argument falls apart.

The second error is more obvious, so much so that it still puzzles me that mechanistic Darwinians can make it: whatever randomness applies to the development of later life forms from earlier, and even (though more difficult to establish) the development of life itself, these ideas all require that there be something to develop. The origin of stuff is not, and cannot be, subject to a Darwinian process. Such processes presume pre-existing stuff to be acting randomly. There can be nothing a Darwinian (as such) can say about this issue, so a conclusion about later parts of the process cannot possibly address whether the very existence of the stuff that undergoes natural selection implies (or does not imply) a God. Evolution simply cannot speak to the question.

Another question I have puzzled over. Under the natural selection concept, more complex organisms develop from less complex ones due to pressure of survival against competition. This seems to be a feature of reality that might contradict the second law of thermodynamics, which says that entropy (i.e. disorganization) overall must increase. While it may decrease within a confined system, this can only occur by increasing it outside that system. Yet I don't believe that there is anything about the evolutionary development of species that suggests or allows us to propose a mechanism by which the decrease in entropy in our local system is associated with an increase in entropy outside our local system.

Am I reading too much into the notion of randomness causing development of species, or is this a real problem?

Yet I don't believe that there is anything about the evolutionary development of species that suggests or allows us to propose a mechanism by which the decrease in entropy in our local system is associated with an increase in entropy outside our local system.

Mind you, I think you are right on in seeing the fingerprints of modernity's broken conception of causality on Dawkinsian evolution-metaphysics. And a lot of other great stuff has been said in this thread by various commenters.

The biggest (though hardly the only) problem for someone like Dawkins is that what he believes in, foundationally, is a complete explanation: his metaphysical house of cards rests on a complete formalization being not only possible in principle, but also on there being reason to believe that such a formalization is near to hand, with just a few gaps left to close, just details to fill in. That is why every invocation of God looks to a "Bright" like a "God of the gaps" argument. The perception of a nearly-complete system with just a few gaps to close is as inevitable as it is question-begging. Modern man has a faith in the possibility of a theory of everything, in the possibility of his own in principle omniscience, a faith stronger than any faith the ancients had in God, and this despite the fact that such pursuits were many decades ago demonstrated to be illusory by the very tools of mathematical formalism themselves.

A complete mechanistic formalization of a Theory of Everything is not possible, even in principle, let alone are we in a state where there are just details to work out in order to get to one. It is this misperception of the intellectual landscape - resting ironically on a dogmatic 'blind faith' of just the sort Dawkinsians mispercieve as analogical to the Christian trust in God which we call 'faith' - which is at the foundations of the New Atheist worldview. I don't think the average God Delusion reader has the capacity to understand The Last Superstition. He has too many provincial prejudices he has to get over before he will even be capable of comprehending it; and first among these is his positivism.

Zippy's comment anticipates my post on "optimistic naturalism," wh. will be up later this afternoon. Coming soon to a web site near you...

"Darwin's account of the origin of species would preclude the possibility of a divine progenitor of life" was a problem which seemingly divided Princeton theologians. Charles Hodge believed that Darwin's notion of natural selection removed God entirely from the creation and developement of the natural world. Darwinism, as Hodge understood it, removed God altogether by making nature the only causal factor in scientific explanation of life. Without God, the chain of events in nature became an impersonal or brute force and creation lacked purpose.
Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield made a distinction between God's creative and providential acts. Providentially God orders things through secondary means. Warfield believed God's original creation was supernatural, but he also believed it was possible for the variety of species to have evolved by God's providence, from originally created matter.
Hodge thought Darwin's evolution was atheism. Warfield saw God's providential hand in the secondary process of evolution.
Hodge rejected the evolution because he thought it denied that God was firmly in charge of creation. Warfield affirmed a type of evolution in which God was firmly in charge.

Well, at that point it becomes a matter of empirical evidence, I should say. The trouble is that the naturalist is not willing for it to be so.

Well, at that point it becomes a matter of empirical evidence

I am not sure how you mean, Lydia. My own personal opinion is that every time a truly new species arises, God is directly and immediately (not derivatively) the cause of the new form that is the form of that species. But, like Aristotle and St. Thomas on creation, I don't necessarily think that the world provides clear evidence that God so acts (that could prove it scientifically). Aristotle thought that a universe infinitely long into the past was consistent with God being the first Mover of all things, so that he could not find a basis for a creation act as of a specific moment in the past (well, the first moment of time) in nature. St. Thomas thought that there was no way to prove from the natural world that God created the universe as of a specific moment - that the creative moment was given by faith but not by reason alone.

Are you saying that we should be able to distinguish, from the natural record, which of Hodges or Warfield is right? What if both are right in a sense: that God does in fact work to produce the matter for new species using secondary contingent causes that have an aspect of randomness, AND He does directly create each new species by creating a new form to go with that prepared matter? Would we ever be able to prove (in a scientific sense) that God does this?

Both B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge agreed that God is firmly in control of the process of creation.
I would suggest that God creates a new essence for each new species. Wheather the cause of this creation is contingent or direct is not the issue.
Thus John Gresham Machen was correct in declining to testify for Jennings at the Scopes trial.
The secularist extrapolates beyond the empirical data and denies the possibility of an uncaused cause who is outside of space and time.

Lydia,

You suggest that the success of science (invoking nothing supernatural or even nothing non-physical) has obviously no positive (confirmatory) epistemic effect for naturalism. I wonder.

Let’s define naturalism simply as the view that there is nothing supernatural (God, angels, miracles, souls without bodies, and the like). (Cf. SEP on naturalism or Plantinga’s definition of naturalism.) Let’s also define physicalism simply as the view that there are only elementary physical particles (or fields, or strings) and their configuration (and in some versions also mental properties or states supervening on the former). Physicalism seems to be a stronger thesis than naturalism.

Now imagine that:
(i) at t1 we have some (established) evidence E which for a long time, and in spite of great efforts (of many experts and resources), has no known viable (= with decent prior probability and likelihood wrt E) scientific hypotheses (invoking nothing supernatural/non-physical) but has a viable anti-naturalistic/anti-physicalistic explanatory hypothesis (invoking something supernatural/non-physical), and
(ii) at t2 the situation changes: at t2 we know (discover) some viable scientific explanatory hypotheses (invoking nothing supernatural/non-physical) for E.

Did not, in this scenario, the case for naturalism/physicalism got better at t2, and, consequently, the case for anti-naturalism/anti-physicalism worse? We have less reasons to take naturalism/physicalism as false.

Anyway, there should be something (some half-truth) to the idea that the success of science confirms naturalism/physicalism – otherwise it would be quite mysterious that the idea is so popular. (For instance, the anti-hero of W. Allen's rather boring movie Match Point, which I recently watched, rehashes the idea, in connection with his betokened rejection of design arguments, at a dinner, revealing his motive for acting with blind recklessness in this blind universe.)

Heck, at least two typos. There should be: Does not, in this scenario, the case for naturalism/physicalism get better, and, consequently, the case for anti-naturalism/anti-physicalism worse?

***

Tim,

You endorse that pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.

Isn't it possible to mechanize, generalize or extrapolate the core of the concept of biological natural selection even for non-biological phenomena? E.g., L. Smolin and Q. Smith have a speculative theory of multiverses embodying a sort of such a generalization: a "natural selection" between universes. It suggests a law according to which certain universes have greater probability to spawn many other universes of the same kind.

Isn't it possible to mechanize, generalize or extrapolate the core of the concept of biological natural selection even for non-biological phenomena? E.g., L. Smolin and Q. Smith have a speculative theory of multiverses embodying a sort of such a generalization: a "natural selection" between universes. It suggests a law according to which certain universes have greater probability to spawn many other universes of the same kind.

Yeah, you can do this. Given a population of anything, you can subject it to variation and natural selection. But the population has to exist in the first place, in order for those procedures to have anything to work on. Variation and natural selection of a population can't explain the origin of the population itself.

It isn't possible to generalize the "core" of natural selection unless you have a mechanism for the entities involved to survive and reproduce such that they are more likely to do so if they meet the description in question (e.g., being "closer to" the first cell). Which we have every reason to believe is not the case in a pre-biological context.

The universes thing sounds like balderdash. One can make up speculative theories about anything. I have a speculative theory about automobiles according to which configurations of atoms "more like" automobiles are more likely to survive and reproduce than those that are "less like" automobiles. (Please don't ask me how configurations of atoms of this sort reproduce.) And that's how your car got here. End of story.

Vlastimil,

Kristor is quite right. Any selection algorithm requires, as a prerequisite, stuff that is being selected between, stuff that has properties that impinge on the selection criteria. No, natural selection can never ultimately explain the existence of such "stuff" with its properties. As I expressed it above, the selection does not have to be biological at all. And the stuff that is intrinsic to the idea need not be ordinary matter at all - it could be, in some weird universe, super-string precursor whatsiz. The point is, in order for the selection algorithm to act on them, they have to pre-exist the selection algorithm's action. So the selection action cannot explain their sheer existence.

Just think about it: I demand that you make a selection. You ask me: select among WHAT?

Whence the stuff?

As I remember, acccording to QS and Smolin the physical stuff of any universe is caused by another, causally prior, universe. Cf. http://qsmithwmu.com/a_natural_explanation_of_the_existence_and_laws_of_our_universe_(1990).htm and http://qsmithwmu.com/the_black_hole_origin_theory_of_the_universe_frontiers_of_speculative,_current_physical_cosmology.htm

Yes, that's all speculative but at the same time intelligible if he takes theism as almost certainly false and still tries to give the explanation. Even J. H. Sobel's opus Logic and Theism (CUP, 2004), which appears agnostic, takes such hypotheses quite seriously, as live options.

That's not to say I take them as probable or better than theism -- I do not.

By the way, QS likes to change his published views and make puzzling reversals, inter alia with respect to general explanatory principles and preferred theories about the beginning of the universe.

Vlastimil, you're not serious, are you?

"We explain life here by prior life on other planets dispersing seeds in the galaxy."

"We explain the presence of intelligence here on earth by intelligent aliens in the past preparing and tilling the biological effluvia so as to produce intelligence."

"We explain the current state of affairs of the present universe mechanistically by the state of affairs that obtained an hour, a year, an eon ago."

All of these are the same sort of explanation as in the articles you cited. They have ALL been castigated by naturalists as unworthy the name "explanation" or "account". The fact is that the thing you are trying to explain is only "explained" by assuming the prior existence of an instance of the very same sort thing you want to explain. Can't say where this universe came from: easy - it came from another universe!!

And of course, if we use the term universe in the more appropriate philosophical sense (not the limited physico-spatial sense of the cosmologists), the antecedent "universe", call it U1, and the subsequent "universe" U2 both exist as part of a philosophically inclusive "that which is", and therefore BOTH need to be explained. Saying U2 is explained by positing a U1 does nothing beneficial philosophically.

Tony,

I am serious.

You said: "the thing you are trying to explain is only "explained" by assuming the prior existence of an instance of the very same sort thing you want to explain."

Why exactly should that be a problem?

Yes, for instance Alex Pruss holds that it is absurd to say that the bunch comprising only contingent beings (satisfactorily, completely, ultimately) explains existence of the beings in the regress.

But in the case when the bunch is infinite and, as a whole, never beginning to exist, I can't see the absurdity.

Yes, I do think it is implausible that there is no external cause of the series which, as a whole, begins to exist in time (there is some first interval of its existence). (Even if the series has infinitely many members.)

Still, I haven't been able to grasp exactly reasons for the claim that NO (even infinite and, as a whole, never coming to be) bunch (regress) comprising only contingent beings (satisfactorily or completely or ultimately) explains existence of the beings in the bunch (regress).

Once one philosopher replied to me: extending the sequence in does not make the sequence any more explanatory, since it does not change the structure of the proposed explanation (A1 is explained by A2, A2 is explained by A3, etc.) The two
sequences are order isomorphic, and it is unclear why one would count as an explanation while the other wouldn't.

I replied: Yes, the order is isomorphic (or: the inner structure is somewhat identical in both cases). However, the relevant difference is that one sequence, as a whole, begins to exist, while the other doesn't. Why should the non/isomorphy be the only thing that counts?

He replied: I am unclear on why the difference is at all significant vis-a-vis explaining the sequence. Suppose I tell you about all the items in a sequence and their causal
relations, but do not tell you whether they stretch back to minus infinity or to some finite path. I do not see how what is an insufficient explanation of the sequence as a whole becomes sufficient once one adds the fact that the sequence stretches back to minus infinity.

I reply here: why not? Adding a minus infinity is a difference which could be relevant.

Note: Q. Smith does not think it is implausible that there is no external cause of the series which, as a whole, begins to exist in time (there is some first interval of its existence) when the series has infinitely many members. Cf. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5277

Vlastimil,

The "explanations" submitted in the links you provided make a series of out-of-the-blue assumptions: "suppose that this universe is a particular sort of black hole in a prior universe." Then, "suppose that that universe is likewise the effect of a black hole in another universe." And "suppose that there is an infinite sequence of these universes..." Etc. Whoooboy, talk about asking for a lot.

I find it difficult to call this anything other than a logic game based on a set of postulates, not a scientific theory about the actual universe we are trying to account for. If it were even so much as a hypothesis about the universe, it would be a very poor one: a hypothesis that calls for a LOT of assumptions not clearly called for by the known data, and a LOT of entities for which there is no evidence, thus potentially violating parsimony). Worse still, the hypothesis would be not even remotely provable - it is not falsifiable because we cannot test for those other universes - which means that (according to the tenets of the modern scientific methods), it is not really a useful hypothesis, (or, on another epistemic track, possibly that the hypothesis only appears to mean something, but in reality it is meaningless) ).

But to take up the particular line of reasoning: The so-called "infinite sequence" is a chimera. You cannot have a sequence without an order, and you cannot properly specify an ordering for an infinite set starting somewhere "in the middle" (or, in our case, at the 'other' end, the end that is not infinite), without invoking some OTHER ordering principle that establishes the sequence as such. For instance, you cannot call the following
{5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, ... } a sequence without invoking the order that already is known to exist on those members from their being numbers. Ala Dedekind & Cantor, that number order presumes an origin member that is NOT infinitely distant from any member you name.

Furthermore, a conclusion about a logical relation does not necessarily create an accounting that comprehends a real relation. The essential idea about that infinite sequence is just such a logical relation. Such a mode of argument does
not prove anything about what actually exists. St. Thomas showed this in criticizing St. Anselm's argument for the existence of God.

By the way, I don't know if you realized this, though I suppose you probably did: the infinite sequences of universes must all co-exist in order for this one to exist (I almost said that they exist at the same time, but of course that would put "time" in an awfully funny position vis-a-vis the universes). That means that they just exactly constitute an infinite sequence of moved movers. Both Aristotle and St. Thomas saw fundamental philosophical problems with that notion. The "suppositions" for your accounting appear to defy a stance already held to be true by the opponents you are arguing against. You should either (a) show that there is no real contradiction, or (b) show that your opponents' claim is in error.

Q. Smith does not think it is implausible...

Vlastimil: That is a wretched argument. I'm sorry to have to put it so bluntly, but "Q. Smith does not think x is implausible...," well, that doesn't even rise to the level of, "John Q. Public does not think x is implausible." Indeed, as weak arguments from authority go, the latter has a heck of a lot more going for it.

The so-called "infinite sequence" is a chimera. You cannot have a sequence without an order, and you cannot properly specify an ordering for an infinite set starting somewhere "in the middle" (or, in our case, at the 'other' end, the end that is not infinite), without invoking some OTHER ordering principle that establishes the sequence as such. For instance, you cannot call the following {5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, ... } a sequence without invoking the order that already is known to exist on those members from their being numbers.

This is another instance of the Lucasian argument from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem against naturalism. Map all the phenomena of all the possible universes to a formal system; the formalization need not specify everything that happens in all the possible universes, it can be just a set of rules that defines allowable operations (what John Holland would call a constrained generating procedure) for the generation of worlds. Now, not only can you express truths in the terms of that formal system which cannot be demonstrated thereby, but you can’t even recognize that your formal system is a formal system except by invoking formal systems that transcend it.

This is just to say that the system of nature cannot explain itself, no matter how big or small we make it.

Lydia,

I have NOT meant my line about what QS as an argument (from authority). Just an info and a link to his clever and innovative metaphysical scenario which is relevant to the problem of causal regresses.

Kristor,

I've conceded that the hypotheses of QS and Smolin are speculative. (The same would they say about our theistic and Christian hypotheses - which I do not share - adding that their own speculations are better, being formulated, in some spots, in the language of math, generating no problems of evil, etc.)

But can we refute their hypotheses of infinite caucal regresses philosophically, metaphysically, from our armchairs? Dr Feser and Dr Pruss think so. I'm still unclear on that. Hence my questions.

"you cannot call the following
{5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, ... } a sequence without invoking the order that already is known to exist on those members from their being numbers. Ala Dedekind & Cantor, that number order presumes an origin member that is NOT infinitely distant from any member you name."

I don't understand. Do you say that the series
{5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, ... }
must be finite in the right direction? And that this is a standard view of mathematicians?

The argument from Goedel, which I'm getting neither, is more discussed in the thread on science and the optimistic naturalist.

"Both Aristotle and St. Thomas saw fundamental philosophical problems with that notion."

I'm still unclear bout the alleged fundamental problems.

"You should either (a) show that there is no real contradiction, or (b) show that your opponents' claim is in error."

I am defending here no substantive position. I am asking for explication: what is the metaphysical problem with infinite causal regresses (like those of QS and Smolin)?

Tony,

Of course, my comment to Kristor is to you, too.

Vlastimil:

what is the metaphysical problem with infinite causal regresses (like those of QS and Smolin)?

The Kalam argument is that an infinite causal chain leading up to the present moment could never have finished its progress to the present moment.

Do you say that the series {5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, ... } must be finite in the right direction? And that this is a standard view of mathematicians?

Whether or not a series is infinite, indeed no matter what sort of series it is, its seriality derives from some ordering principle or other, that is extraneous to the series, and of which the series is an instantiation. E.g., {-2.1, -1.1, -0.1, 0.9, 1.9} instantiates the same ordering principle as {-2, -1, 0, 1, 2}. Infinitely many analogous series could instantiate that same ordering principle, just as the form of the right triangle can be instantiated in infinitely many ways. That there are infinitely many possible instantiations of the forms suffices to show that forms are not uniquely dependent upon any one of their instantiations. The forms don't arise from their evidence, but vice versa.

Same goes for any non-chaotic assemblage, such as our universe.

Kristor,

1. I've studied Kalaam arguments for few years. So far, I haven't been convinced by them. Though I'd like to improve some of them: http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2007/04/infinite-sequen.html#comment-49723

2.

seriality derives from some ordering principle or other, that is extraneous to the series

Like the form of triangularity is (supposed to be) extraneous (that is, necessarily existing, in contrast to) to all triangles? That resembles Edward Feser's argumment in his TLS, 2008, pp. 40-44 and 90-91, for the necessary existence of propositions, numbers and universals. So far, I'm not convinced by this argument, cf. http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1188958056.shtml#11483

3. IF forms are extraneous, in the given sense, to their physical instances, there does seem to be a problem for physicalism, but not obviously for naturalism (which merely says that there are no supernatural entities or events). In other words, how does the alleged fact that there are some non-physicalistic entities support that there is something supernatural?

Note: Let’s define naturalism simply as the view that there is nothing supernatural (God, angels, miracles, souls without bodies, and the like). (Cf. SEP on naturalism or Plantinga’s definition of naturalism.) Let’s define physicalism as the view that there are only (i) elementary (basic) physical particles (or fields, or strings) and (ii) their configurations (and in some versions of physicalism also (iii) supervening mental properties and/or (iv) inner ontological principles -- like essences -- of or parts of (i), (ii) or (iii)).

Vlastimil:

Well, I followed the links you provided, and scanned the arguments. Obviously you have indeed been thinking about kalam arguments for a long time. Whew! They look truly fascinating, but quite dense, and I'm afraid that pressing continuing ed requirements through the end of April will prevent me giving them the attention they will require. But I will make a note to get back to them. Until I do, I won't have any way of understanding your objections to the kalam argument or to the necessity of universals.

But, as to your #3, yes, if we define physicalism and naturalism as you have, then I would say that forms extraneous to their physical instantiations are not a direct threat to naturalism. It's just that if they are extraneous to any and every particular physical instantiation, but not extraneous to nature, well, where and how are they? It is in answering that question that naturalism runs into trouble. For if their mode of being is completely different than that of ordinary beings, the problem endemic to dualism raises its head: how can two entirely different orders of being interact with each other - and if they can, in what sense are they wholly different, at bottom? I.e., if you specify a mode of interaction between the Platonic and the actual realms, does not that mode of being subsume those realms and provide their commonality? If on the other hand the Forms exist as properties of some being or beings whose mode being is commensurable with our own, so that when you say of God or Vlastimil, "He exists," you can be meaning the same thing of both subjects, why then you have arrived in one step at the Neoplatonic suggestion that the Realm of the Forms is the mind of God.

Kristor,

Those twisted and patchy modifications of Kalaam arguments are still quite rough.

Another similar link: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6281 It's a question me and my wife raised, and W. L. Craig answered it, though, IMHO, not satisfactorily. Our reply here: http://vohanka2.sweb.cz/reply.htm . Of course, we remain open-minded. In fact, we're Catholics.

if they are extraneous to any and every particular physical instantiation, but not extraneous to nature, well, where and how are they?

I suppose some naturalists would reply they are abstract, Platonic objects.

if their mode of being is completely different than that of ordinary beings, the problem endemic to dualism raises its head: how can two entirely different orders of being interact with each other - and if they can, in what sense are they wholly different, at bottom?

Can't a similar worry arise for theistic theory of forms?: the mind of God is wholly different, but in what sense, and how does He interact?

Vlastimil:

If the forms are abstract Platonic objects, from what are they abstracted? You can’t have an abstraction floating there on its own, independent of any actuality. Abstractions are abstracted from actualities.

If God is wholly, utterly different, then yes, the God/World relation would be plagued with the problem of dualism. But such a God could have nothing at all to do with the world. We could not know anything about Him, and He could not affect us.

So theists have usually held that God is being itself, or maximal being, or some such thing; and that creaturely existence is a pale imitation or image of Divine being, or a partial participation therein. This way, God is not utterly different than His creatures with respect to the nature of His actuality, but rather with respect to the degree and extent of His actuality.

Kristor,

There are at least two differens senses of "abstract": epistemological (yours, say "abstract1!) and ontological (say "abstract2," cf. SEP on abstract objects). Why all abstract2 objects are abstract1?

How would you explicate the notion of "participation"?