Epicurean cosmologocal argument

[The Pixie]

look man there is clearly an unalterable regularity to the physical happens of nature, you can't account for that. if go plugging in the anthropic principle it's more acute, you ca't account for the consistency of it without looking at some notion of a higher ordering principle and the mores complex the more mind it must become, Because only mind can acount for setting thing up in way that makes complexity work with precision.

The problem with mind is that all the minds we know of are contingent on matter, which is in turn continent on those laws. If you are invoking a mind where that is not so, then you are off in the far hypothetical realm. That does not mean it is not true, but it is a big jump to claim that it is true. The only reasonable conclusion to draw here is that we do not know.

What exactly do you mean by precision? Is this about the exact values of the fundamental constants.

We know this is so PX because I have statements by many scientists and scientifically minded philsophers stating that they rule out prescriptive laws specifically because they iply a law maker.

Cool. Can you post them?

[Jim B.]

And you are okay with that? Your position is determined by an accident of language, rather than reason?

No, it's not an accident of language, any more than the fact that something can't be "black" and "white" under the same conditions is an accident of language. The accident is that the sounds corresponding to the markings "black" and "white" are accidents, but the point has to do with what those sounds refer to. What you're claiming is like saying John is married and a bachelor: that's contradictory. The contradictory nature of that statement has nothing to do with the arbitrariness of language.

I am not certain, I will happily admit. But I am not sure how that relates to what we were discussing. I thought we had all agreed that they are probably prescriptive.

I think they probably are given all the evidence, and so threfore I think there's probably some kind of purpose behind the laws. But you don't think there's probably some kind of purpose there, so you should be less certain of it (?)

[sgttomas]

Is it coherent to conceive of the material interactions following "habits" that can randomly change, possibly in localities of spacetime? I've heard it said. I think I can keep it coherent when I think about it, but I dunno. I don't trust my mind, if it's a product of random events, to be necessarily corresponding to reality in any way. This is what an atheist ought to believe

I think this idea goes along with the notion of a multiverse. Over an infinity of potential universes, all "background field variables" or whatever, can be expressed. We just happen to be aware of this one.

It can eliminate purposefulness from the "laws".

I thought a lot about this a while ago and I don't see a problem with it, per se.

Thoughts?

Peace,
-sgttomas

[The Pixie]

And you are okay with that? Your position is determined by an accident of language, rather than reason?

No, it's not an accident of language, any more than the fact that something can't be "black" and "white" under the same conditions is an accident of language. The accident is that the sounds corresponding to the markings "black" and "white" are accidents, but the point has to do with what those sounds refer to. What you're claiming is like saying John is married and a bachelor: that's contradictory. The contradictory nature of that statement has nothing to do with the arbitrariness of language.

I am not certain, I will happily admit. But I am not sure how that relates to what we were discussing. I thought we had all agreed that they are probably prescriptive.

I think they probably are given all the evidence, and so threfore I think there's probably some kind of purpose behind the laws. But you don't think there's probably some kind of purpose there, so you should be less certain of it (?)

Then I was mistaken. I see no reason to suppose the laws are prescriptive, where prescriptive necessarily implies purpose.

I do still believe nature follows fundamental laws, however.

[Jim B.]

Is it coherent to conceive of the material interactions following "habits" that can randomly change, possibly in localities of spacetime? I've heard it said. I think I can keep it coherent when I think about it, but I dunno. I don't trust my mind, if it's a product of random events, to be necessarily corresponding to reality in any way. This is what an atheist ought to believe

I think this idea goes along with the notion of a multiverse. Over an infinity of potential universes, all "background field variables" or whatever, can be expressed. We just happen to be aware of this one.

It can eliminate purposefulness from the "laws".

I thought a lot about this a while ago and I don't see a problem with it, per se.

Thoughts?

Peace,
-sgttomas

Yes, a lot of atheists believe something like this. The multiverse is wielded mainly to try to dampen the improbability factor. Does that mean non-puposefulness is only roughly as probably as a multiverse? Sounds like a tenet of faith.

[sgttomas]

The multiverse is wielded mainly to try to dampen the improbability factor. Does that mean non-puposefulness is only roughly as probably as a multiverse? Sounds like a tenet of faith.

Sure, but if we are going to be proponents of faith, then even if our adversaries won't admit to their own, or just want to call it by another word, I think that setting this as the baseline is crucial to having knowledge of reality:

Either reality is purposeless and infinitely variable, or else it is contingent upon God.

Probability doesn't really enter into the equation, except in a rhetorical, figurative way....something more like "plausibility". What we have to consider are the basic ontological categories of possible and impossible. It has long been contested on the grounds that one can prove or disprove that being is contingent in a necessary way upon a non-contingent, who is God. None of those proofs are consistent unless they are just fancy tautologies. The reason is that logic doesn't work the same in a universally self-contingent or a contingent/non-contingent Being world. It's analogous to saying that anterior angles of a triangle add up to 180...or MORE than 180, depending on your tensor field.

I am fully open to the possibility of the multiverse. I'm not completely convinced that it is a consistent description of reality, but I don't find it at all corrosive to the discussion of God, or belief.

If both are consistent, there is literally on way to evaluate the preference of one or the other. It's an arbitrary decision. What guides this decision? God does

BTW, this form of argument kicks the shit out of atheists. So I'm quite fond of it.

Peace,
-sgttomas