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0 pointssdht02y ago0 comments

> you wouldn't know from what I had told you which is real, which is historical and which is imaginary.

This is obviously true. It is slightly amusing that this is then used to imply that God choose what things actually exist, while I as a naturalist take it to mean we have to empirically look at the world to determine what exists.

> Do you think the attempt succeeds?

Alright. So I suppose I don't think the attempt succeeds, no.

Take a table. It has a quality: it's solid. As compared to air, which is gas. However, in what sense is it meaningful to say that an individual atom is solid or gas? Isn't it true that concept of solid or gas only comes in when there are a group of atoms, none of which individually have a "state"? Yes of course, the property is inherent (eminently or virtually as you say) in an atom, but it only materializes in relation to other atoms, not individually. And so on down the abstraction levels.

The book defends PPC with arguments that are quite weak and only work they are talking about the same emergent level. Yes, giving $20 works only when I have $20. But do atoms which constitute me also have $20 dollars? It's absurd no? The concept of owning $20 does not "exist" at the level of atoms. Same for the argument about evolution. Within genetics, the same DNA is evolving into different forms. But again, what about the atoms constituting the DNA?

So no, I don't think it makes sense to talk about qualities that emerge in higher levels to hold at the lower levels. First Cause doesn't have the quality of tables, states of matter, or human will directly, only in an indirect weak sense. The book says it too: "explanations in terms of potentialities may often be only minimally informative", but this "minimalness" makes all the difference! How can this minimally informative quality expanded to be maximally relevant when talking about the First Cause? Yes, the First Cause in a causal chain leads to human will. Minimally weak sense. Wondering how you think instead that First Cause has will "in the same sense as human beings or in some greater sense".

> part of the effect (the human intellect) is not material > given some things in reality (human beings) have a will

I will note that these are agree-to-disagree statements, given the basis of consciousness is an open question for now. From my naturalistic perspective, humans only have emergent "free" will, not libertarian free will, which is what theists usually mean by the term. But I'm happy to accept these statements for this discussion and am more interested in understanding why First Cause needs to have any will, given human will.

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geye12342y ago

> Ah sorry I didn't mean to imply an association

I should have read your point more charitably, my bad :)

> This is perhaps true for metaphysical existence, but the ontological existence of a lion and the non-existence of an unicorn can absolutely be determined by the physical laws and the initial conditions of our universe

This may ve true, but irrelevant to my point. The 'laws of physics' are themselves one thing, and not another. It is logically possible to imagine a universe with anti-gravity instead of gravity (that is, where mass repels mass), or where natural processes were such that a lion's DNA ended up giving rise to a unicorn. It is equally logically possible to imagine a universe where unicorns pop in and out of existence, independently of any biological process. And infinite other possibilities. But this is not so. Your appeal to physical laws doesn't affect my point, which is not that we can know firstly about God's Willing, and secondly (and thereby) know about the existence of one and the non-existence of the other. Rather, it's that reality is certain particular things, and is not certain other particular things that it might logically have been. And this implies that certain concepts (lions, gravity) are willed into existence, and continue to be so willed here and now; and certain other concepts (anti-gravity, unicorns) are not.

The multiverse concept does not affect my point. If such a thing existed, there would be a Will that willed unicorns (and the supporting laws of physics/biology/etc) exist in the other universe, but not our one. This is unaffected by infinite multiverses. So the point stands.

>> You could describe the concept of anything in infinite detail without knowing whether that thing exists or existed. > Yeah I read this, but not sure if I agree. That infinite detail would contain its history and details of its components, no?

I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

>> you wouldn't know from what I had told you which is real, which is historical and which is imaginary. > This is obviously true. It is slightly amusing that this is then used to imply that God choose what things actually uexist, while I as a naturalist take it to mean we have to empirically look at the world to determine what exists.

These are not mutually contradictory. In any case, is it 'obviously true' or are you 'not sure if [you] agree' as you stated in your first reply? :-)

On a larger level, I don't think we can continue without discussing ontological reductionism. I can see that the PPC would make no sense if you think everything can be explained entirely in terms of its constituent atoms, which I think is your view. My own view is that the objects of our senses -- like pieces of wood, or apples, or dogs, or human beings -- cannot be reduced to the particles* that constitute them. To put it another way, what these things are is not the same as the particles they're made of. Nor is it the same as a particular arrangement of particles. "What a thing is" is a unity, and is distinct (though not separate) from the particles that compose it. This unity determines the particles' behavior -- or more generally, the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa. This also is true for an individual thing's properties, like color, ability to move, and (crucially) will.

If you think this is a useful line of enquiry, start kicking my view!

* Choose whatever level of particles you like: molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, quarks, etc. It doesn't affect the argument.

sdht0OP2y ago

> the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa

Good. I think we can agree to disagree at this point. I try to reach the core premise of viewpoints I don't agree with and I think we have reached it here. I'll try to explain my viewpoints a bit more, but I imagine you'll remain unconvinced. Well, my own overall takeaway is still that I don't need the (personal) God hypothesis to explain the universe (yet) (~Laplace).

I'll say this though. You promised much better arguments than what I had encountered before. I'll admit I found my readings of natural theology pretty interesting. My exposure to arguments beyond using the Bible was only the Kalam Cosmological argument. Many of the ideas in Feser's book and blog articles were a refreshing take, and I had to think a bit about them before I could pinpoint the core ideas and where I disagree. So thank you for that.

> This unity determines the particles' behavior

To me, an empirical study of the universe we sense seems to indicate that the properties of the parts completely determines the properties of the whole. After we have explained the properties of H and O, the properties of H2O are completely fixed and determined. The game of life starts with a simple set of rules and an initial state, and the wonderful patterns that emerge [0] are completely determined after that. Same for the Mandelbrot set. Same for everywhere we look.

My question is, what will help convince you that the behavior of a whole can be determined by its parts? Is being able to accurately predict its behavior by predicting the behavior of just the parts not sufficient? What is left after accounting for the behavior of all the parts of a lion? What is in this essence of lionness that cannot be explained just from the combined behavior of cells?

> The 'laws of physics' are themselves one thing, and not another.

See here we agree. Our universe has a particular set of laws and initial conditions that could have been otherwise. Science takes this as a premise and studies what happened after that. But now take a Laplace's Demon [1] and ask, given the premise, does the universe contain [2] a lion? Answer: yes. Does the universe contain a unicorn? no. Does the universe contain a forum called hacker news where sdht0 and geye1234 are discussing natural theology? yes. I don't see why we need a God who is choosing things to exist or not. We may need God to fix the premise, but everything after that can be God-free. I'll try to explain my viewpoint another way:

> And this implies that certain concepts (lions, gravity) are willed into existence, and continue to be so willed here and now; and certain other concepts (anti-gravity, unicorns) are not.

This is a statement I can agree with, but our takeaways are so different. Imagine a canvas with a lion but no unicorn. If I'm correctly interpreting your concept of "willed", you're saying that there is a God who has two cutout images, that of a lion and a unicorn, and He decided to put the lion on the canvas but not the unicorn. I'm saying, there is a "God" who has a computer program, consisting of just 0s and 1s, which when run on a computer controlling a brush drew a picture of a lion on the canvas.

So I'm just repeating myself now, but regardless of the essences of the objects that inhabit our universe, their existence and behavior is completely determined once the laws and initial conditions have been set as a premise. The question of course remains, where does the premise come from? Here I'm open to possibilities. First Cause. God. Eternal physical laws. Etc. When I read the 5 proofs, that's what I thought, that the books are showing the existence of God at this level. At the edge/beginning of the chain. But you seem to have something else in mind (also as per your other comment) which I don't understand/agree with.

I think you'll agree that given the axioms of mathematics, 2+2=4 is true and not even God can change that. In the same way, as a naturalist, I'm saying that given the laws of our universe (whatever they are) and the initial conditions, lions exist and unicorns don't and even God cannot change that. I'll freely agree that the former is from logic and hence necessarily true. But the later is just from empirical observations. As I said before, if tomorrow God does choose ;) to reveal Himself in a convincing manner, I'll have to change my views completely. Similarly if unicorns start popping in and out of existence.

> I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

I'm not sure how to separate those. Doesn't the concept of a lion contain the fact that a lion hunts for food? Which needs biology, chemistry, physics, etc to explain. Or by concept do you mean just the shape? Then is a statue of a lion an actual lion? Like I'm trying to imagine how to explain to an alien from another galaxy the concept of a lion. How can we do that without explaining the entire history of life of Earth, etc?

[0] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon

[2] I'm assuming a deterministic universe for simplicity, but it can be sufficiently adapted for the quantum nondeterministic universe by taking about a tree of possibilities and whether any or how many of the branches have some property.

geye12342y ago

Will be a couple more days before I have time to reply, thanks for your patience.

sdht0OP2y ago

Some further thoughts:

* There is a crucial assumption in the 5 proofs that I think is worth thinking about. Given that something exists (I, the world, causes, parts, etc), it follows that there must be a First Cause/God. Also given ex nihilo nihil fit, it follows that the First Cause has to be eternal. The debate then is about the rest of the qualities, which I'm distinguishing as impersonal vs personal. However, note that this reasoning relies on the apriori fact that the world exists, from which we (and the proofs) intuit the presence of a First Cause. This still does not answer the big question: why is there anything at all? [0] There could have been no world and even no First Cause. We can imagine that there would exist only logical possibilities but no ontological "existence". There would be just be Nothing. Yes, the First Cause is eternal. But why? How did the First Cause arise in the first place? I think it's a valid question but it's unclear what the answer could be. One possibility is that logical existence is all there is. [1] But in any case, the eternalism of the First Cause, as in the proofs, is contingent on cogito, ergo sum and is not a necessity beyond that. I find it an interesting realization.

* I am curious what you exactly mean by "the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa". One reading of it clashes wildly with all of our scientific investigations. From being a civilization which attribute everything to Gods and angels--making the sun go around the sky and natural calamities and good luck and bad luck---we've managed to figure out that we don't need such an attribution. Simple rules can generate a lot of complexity. Thus emergence and not God is what makes the world go. But the above statement seems to bring those ancients ideas back somehow. What am I missing?

Also, I think even granting PPC and that the whole determines the parts still does not prove will. God can still be bound by some underlying rules. I don't know if logic alone can lead us to God's free will, until we have some empirical proof such as God actually willing unicorns into existence instead of lions. Even for humans, just saying I have will ("I can will myself to fly but don't want to") doesn't really count until I show it.

* I'd like to hear your thoughts on my earlier question. If Christianity were to be shown as "false" as the other religions, and thus no human religion can demonstrate divine providence, how much will your belief in a personal God remain? Just from the proofs, do you think you will still strongly take a loving caring God who actively created and sustains this universe to be true?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts when you have the time.

[0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/08/13/epis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...

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geye12342y ago

> Ah sorry I didn't mean to imply an association

I should have read your point more charitably, my bad :)

I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

These are not mutually contradictory. In any case, is it 'obviously true' or are you 'not sure if [you] agree' as you stated in your first reply? :-)

If you think this is a useful line of enquiry, start kicking my view!

* Choose whatever level of particles you like: molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, quarks, etc. It doesn't affect the argument.

sdht0OP2y ago

> the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa

> This unity determines the particles' behavior

> The 'laws of physics' are themselves one thing, and not another.

> And this implies that certain concepts (lions, gravity) are willed into existence, and continue to be so willed here and now; and certain other concepts (anti-gravity, unicorns) are not.

> I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

[0] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon

geye12342y ago

Will be a couple more days before I have time to reply, thanks for your patience.

sdht0OP2y ago

Some further thoughts:

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts when you have the time.

[0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/08/13/epis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...

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