Oddly, you seem happy with what this "uneducated metaphysical speculation" - ie: physics - has to says about perpetual motion machines, but not what it then has to say about dissipative structures. — apokrisis

You were talking about disorder being prior to order, in an absolutely way, as Peirce's Firstness. This is contrary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. I know that you place this type of "disorder" as outside of time, but this 2nd law defines order in relation to time, so your use of disorder, or undirected, is meaningless nonsense.

Try to keep up with the educated view. — apokrisis

I have nothing against the general concept of "dissipative structures", it is you're application of the concept which is unprincipled, and therefore uneducated. You go beyond the boundaries intended by the concept, pretending that this is acceptable. And your pretense, that it is the "educated view", when it is clearly unprincipled and undisciplined is pure deception.

But pay attention. He was talking about the boundless. He was characterising a naked potentiality that is logically all that would remain after all constraint was removed. So now creation becomes constraints-based, not construction-based. It starts with formal and final cause, not material and efficient cause. — apokrisis

This is precisely where your speculation is illogical. A constraint is an actuality. You remove all constraint to have no actuality in the first place. If you have no actuality, you have nothing to cause the existence of any constraints, and the emergence of constraints from pure potential is logically impossible.

It is a fundamentally different way of thinking about creation. We don't start with some uncreated stuff - the material required to construct. We start with the structural limitation of the unformed and the undirected. We begin with the process of reining in possibility itself so as to start to have a material world that expresses the intelligibility of form and finality in its existence. — apokrisis

"Fundamentally different" is useless when it is also illogical. When you start with an illogical premise, your conclusions lead you deeper and deeper into the illogical. Next, you will need to defy the laws of non-contradiction, and excluded middle, in a completely unprincipled way, in order to support the conclusions which follow from your illogical first principle.

Sure, construction quickly follows. Indeed, some form of constructive material activity is going to have to be there pretty much from the start. History has to begin by freedoms being physically disposed of in a fashion that makes the past materially concrete. — apokrisis

This is what contradicts the 2nd law of thermodynamics. You have unconstrained potential, absolute freedom, pure lack of information, then all of a sudden the "construction" of information occurs spontaneously. You have simply adopted the disproven concept of spontaneous generation, to account for the emergence of the universe, from your illogical Firstness.

I’m not relying on the principle, just explaining why multiverse thinking gets associated with it.

Multiverses are the product of locally deterministic thinking without anything concrete to constrain the infinity of possible worlds that then have to result. So the only constraint left is the non-constraint of the anthropic principle - the quite reasonable conclusion that if every alternative exists, then we live in one of those where we could arise as observers. Survivor bias.

But my metaphysical position is very different. I am arguing constraint is primary and so that already limits existence to the single Cosmos that is mathematically intelligible or coherent.

The fact that we exist to appreciate that is a huge surprise perhaps. It is certainly generally allowed - as intelligence does a good job of increasing entropy production. But constraint by its very nature isn’t directed towards a goal like creating a world fit for humans. We aren’t being reserved for some other more grand purpose as @Wayfarer wants to suggest.

And so you burble on and on....

I’m not relying on the principle, just explaining why multiverse thinking gets associated with it. — apokrisis

Yes, I understood that to be the case, I only tagged you in for the tangential link.

So the only constraint left is the non-constraint of the anthropic principle - the quite reasonable conclusion that if every alternative exists, then we live in one of those where we could arise as observers. — apokrisis

Yes, I was really referring to the Strong Anthropic Principle of John Barrow, which seems to be more the type Wayfarer is trying to use. So, to my mind, the argument by which the SAP is arrived at (rather than the conclusions drawn from adhering to it) seem to me to rely implicitly on an understanding of the probability space that we not only do not have, but which would, applied to everything else, render probability itself meaningless.

That "unbridled everythingness" would seem to be, for you, the genesis state prior to the existence of anything. Can we say that state exists, or subsists, eternally (since it is atemporal and aspatial)? Insofar as it is prior to any temporal or spatial existence it is utterly indeterminate and indeterminable; and it follows that we cannot say anything about it at all.

My view also. Although the argument I'm pursuing is not about losing religion per se, but losing a vital metaphysical insight that had become associated with it. But then I know that many people will reject it because it is associated with religion; hence, 'reactive atheism'. — Wayfarer

The question remains, though, as to just what is that "insight". If it is a rational insight then you should be able to say what it is and argue for it. If it is a poetic insight, a so-called "mystical' insight, then it is based in feeling, not rational thought, and therefore cannot be pinned down by argument or propositional discourse; which is just what I have been saying to you all along.

That "unbridled everythingness" would seem to be, for you, the genesis state prior to the existence of anything. — Janus

So I can keep saying that I am attempting to describe a limit and you will keep ignoring that?

I am trying to do justice to an internalist metaphysics. You keep replying to that from an externalist perspective. You are demanding the kind of crisp initial conditions that could be the definite start of things - even if that then propels you straight into your infinite regress of "first moments" and "first actions". I am describing how things are when beginnings dissolve into a vagueness that is less than nothing, as nothing already supposes the actualised possibility of an absence.

Can we say that state exists, or subsists, eternally (since it is atemporal and aspatial)? Insofar as it is prior to any temporal or spatial existence it is utterly indeterminate and indeterminable; and it follows that we cannot say anything about it at all. — Janus

This is just a formula of words to justify a claim of arriving at an externalist perspective. So no. That would be a false victory in my view. Pragmatism is the embracing of internalism. It doesn't have to beat it by the end.

And - treating vagueness as a limit - we can say plenty about it in crisply apophatic fashion.

We know that we came out of it. We know that this somethingness develops via a dichotomous or dialectical logic. We know that the Cosmos is the result of a quite mathematically specific cascade of symmetry breakings.

So we can reverse the physics to wind everything back to a crisp model of a vague limit. We can imagine a definite start in a state of "perfect symmetry". We can form an image of the vague that does some pragmatic work.

And then, in Kantian fashion, we can accept it is then only the image of the thing-in-itself - the metaphysical umwelt we have created to turn the unspeakable into a speakable theory. So it becomes the story secured against the measurable somethingness of the world as we find it to be. Which is of course better than a metaphysics secured against nothing much at all except some shallow reductionist and mechanical conception of cause and time.

If we don't believe in classical physics, why would we believe in classical metaphysics? Why would you keep promoting classical cause and effect thinking as the framework that anything I say must assimilate itself to? That is exactly what I mean to challenge at the fundamental level.

Crisp classicality certainly exists. But as another emergent limit on Being. It describes the world after it has developed into a large cold void occupied by small hot objects. It describes the counter ideal of a world that is simply a completely constrained and deterministic mechanism.

what I don't get is what's wrong with "it just happened". — Pseudonym

Because science is purportedly in the business of finding reasons. The positing of chance as cause doesn't seem to me to amount to either an hypothesis or a metaphysical principle. It seems to me motivated more by the desire to avoid the alternative. Here's an example from a 2012 edition of New Scientist - Why Physics Can't Avoid a Creation Event - which sees Stephen Hawking arguing against models which suggest that the Universe truly has a 'beginning', 'because then we should have to appeal to the Hand of God'. So the very fact that a theoretical model seems to suggest such an idea, is grounds for the World's Most Influential Scientist not to consider it. And yet it's 'theists' that are accused of being tendentious in this respect.

So how are we assessing it as unlikely that it should have happened that exact way it did? — Pseudonym

The argument in the book I mentioned is there are a very small number - 6 - of natural relationships and ratios inherent in the nature of the Cosmos that have a very specific value, which, were they different in some minute degree, would entail that matter would not form at all. But if you view the Universe as a grand simulation, something which can be mathematically modelled, then these parameters seem very specifically set for such an outcome. That is why when Fred Hoyle - convinced atheist that he was - discovered the principle of carbon resonance, he exclaimed 'something's been monkeying with the physics'. ( As I said, Martin Rees, who wrote the book 'Just Six Numbers' - a dull read, by the way - does not, on that basis, engage in any metaphysical conjecture as to why this is so. But the book certainly suggests the possibility of what has become known as the 'fine-tuning' or 'anthropic' arguments.)

We aren’t being reserved for some other more grand purpose as Wayfarer wants to suggest. — apokrisis

Perhaps living things, generally, and rational living beings, namely humans, are in some fundamental sense the Universe coming to know itself, and thereby opening up horizons of possibility that would not be available in a non-living universe. It might be 'grand', although a lot depends on what you make of it, but understanding it that way at least opens up the prospect of a purpose other than the shortest possible line to non-being, which seems to be what is on offer from your model.

I am not defending 'intelligent design', as I don't believe that it's feasible or meaningful to 'prove' the 'existence of God' - which is kind of the point.

If it is a rational insight then you should be able to say what it is and argue for it. — Janus

What you mean by 'rational' is actually closer to being 'scientifically or empirically demonstrable', isn't it?

If it is a poetic insight, a so-called "mystical' insight, then it is based in feeling, not rational thought, — Janus

My argument in this thread, and elsewhere, is that number (etc) is real but not physical. It is real in that it is intrinsic to the operations of the intellect, and without it, we couldn't actually do science at all. (This point is elaborated in this post.) In any case, the argument from the reality of intellectual objects is a rational argument with a long pedigree. The fact that you don't accept it doesn't amount to a refutation.

I am trying to do justice to an internalist metaphysics. You keep replying to that from an externalist perspective. — apokrisis

No, I actually think both internalism and externalism are wrongheaded.

What you mean by 'rational' is actually closer to being 'scientifically or empirically demonstrable', isn't it? — Wayfarer

No. I've covered this before. What is rational is what can be measured (ratio), which means compared, tested for consistency and coherency against empirical evidence or logic. The rational is determinable thought. Poetic language is obviously something else; poetic truth is not rational truth; and I would subsume religious or mystical truth by poetic truth.

In any case, the argument from the reality of intellectual objects is a rational argument with a long pedigree. The fact that you don't accept it doesn't amount to a refutation. — Wayfarer

This is a red herring. I don't deny the reality of "intellectual objects"; I just deny that they are real in any substantive sense beyond the intellect, beyond consciousness. You could say they are incipient in things, and thus not totally arbitrary, but they only emerge, and become fully real, when intellects complex enough to conceive them evolve.

No, I actually think both internalism and externalism are wrongheaded. — Janus

And yet it is externalist language you keep using against my account.

Just calling any explanation "wrong" is a sound tactic I guess. But you could instead put forward some clear story on what you might in fact believe here.

If it is neither internalism nor externalism, what is it?

Well, what interests me is the rationalist argument against materialism. It's not simply 'mystical' or 'religious' but it is continually treated as such, because it is often associated with Christian apologetics. But at the time that the Platonist arguments were framed, they weren't actually Christian at all, but were then incorporated into theology by an ascendant Christianity. So because of this association, it then becomes pidgeon-holed or dealt with as 'poetic' or 'mystical' or 'subjective', which is a way of cordoning it off.

And yet it is externalist language you keep using against my account. — apokrisis

I haven't been arguing against your account at all, but asking questions about it so that I can gain an understanding of exactly what it is proposing.

The problem is that rationalist arguments against materialism presuppose an impoverished notion of the physical that should have been dispensed with long ago. With a process notion of the physical, one that incorporates experience at all levels, there is no need for transcendental or platonic realms over and above the cosmos. I think you would benefit from reading some Whitehead.

If it is neither internalism nor externalism, what is it? — apokrisis

I would go for a kind of "flat' ontology, where there is no absolute distinction between inner and outer, higher and lower. That's why I often argue with you that we are not exhaustively socially constructed, because to say that is to valorize a kind of anthropocentric internalism that denies that our experience is in the world, of the world and mediated by the world.

Of course that is not to say that things cannot be internal or external to other things in a relative sense.

I think you would benefit form reading some Whitehead. — Janus

Thank you for the recommendation. As it happens I am awaiting Amazon delivery of The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition James Matthew Wilson.

Ours is an age full of desires but impoverished in its understanding of where those desires lead―an age that claims mastery over the world but also claims to find the world as a whole absurd or unintelligible. ...

The ancient conception of human life as a pilgrimage to beauty itself is one that we can fully embrace only if we see the essential correlation between reason and story, and the essential convertibility of truth, goodness and beauty.

to valorize a kind of anthropocentric internalism — Janus

Hey you're sounding like SLX :-)

Hey you're sounding like SLX :-) — Wayfarer

I didn't think we had that much in common. I rarely receive any response at all when I comment in his threads! You know I have long been interested in Whitehead; well I am currently reading Without Criteria Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze and Aesthetics by Steven Shapiro, which, like another book I have been slowly digesting over the last year or so: Thinking With Whitehead by Isabelle Stengers finds many commonalities between Deleuze and Whitehead. I am much more familiar with Whitehead than Deleuze, but I know Deleuze is a favourite of StreetlightX's, so perhaps there is some shared ground after all.

As it happens I am awaiting Amazon delivery of The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition James Matthew Wilson. — Wayfarer

Well, I hope it is a work rich in poetic insights for you! :cool: :wink:

I would go for a kind of "flat' ontology, where there is no absolute distinction between inner and outer, higher and lower. That's why I often argue with you that we are not exhaustively socially constructed, because to say that is to valorize a kind of anthropocentric internalism that denies that our experience is in the world, or the world and mediated by the world. — Janus

So it seems you want the benefits of my structured system without having to commit to the notion of that structure. It is to be left "flat". That is vague and beyond contradictions. :)

Look, my internalism is explicitly the triadic internalism of Peirce and not the dualistic internalism of Kantian representationalism. Peirce was trying to fix the issues with Kantianism (and Hegelism), while being quite scornful of Cartesianism.

So yes, it is not "flat" but comes with clear triadic structure. And remember that Peircean semiotics cashes out in ontological pansemiosis.

The internalism might start as the psychological or epistemic reality. But the speculative metaphysical claim (increasingly in accordance with what the physics says) is that the Cosmos itself bootstraps into being via ontic semiosis.

The anthropomorphic story of the human semiotic condition is that we are "modelling the world with us in it". So we are now beyond simple realism and even indirect representationalism in seeing our own selves, as observers, arising along with the umwelt that is our field of observables, the set of signs by which we relate to the actual world as the thing-in-itself.

The dualism is replaced by a trichotomy where the "self" is found in the same place as the "world" is found - both being the complementary aspects of the mediating system of signs that emerges with habitual definiteness in the middle.

The usual assumption is that nature would want some kind of direct veridical connection between consciousness and reality. Our view of the world should be faithful to its reality. But the psychological evidence already tells us that we want to be able to ignore the actual world so as to be able to live in a world of our own creative invention - the world where we are freely choosing beings able to impose our own desires and forms on its inert materiality. And so that is the kind of umwelt we have to develop. A world that is fit for that kind of self. A system of habitual signs is how we construct this mediating tale.

And then - pansemiotically and ontically - the world would also be understood as "a model with itself in it". It becomes a self, an enduring and autonomous state of affairs, by developing a structure of habits that represent it. It develops laws that encode what it means to be "the Universe". It becomes a system of constraints expressing the purpose of being "that thing" until it safely reaches the very end of time.

So I am certainly not denying the world. Pansemiosis is an attempt to explain the world in the exact same terms we would explain ourselves.

And so you burble on and on.... — apokrisis

As Uber said, just like a broken record. At least I am consistent, unlike your incoherent babbling.

So I am certainly not denying the world. Pansemiosis is an attempt to explain the world in the exact same terms we would explain ourselves. — apokrisis

But that is just what I would understand by "flat ontology" or actually an even flatter ontology than what I would recommend, because I do not think we can be exhaustively understood in the same way as the rest of the world, (and I wonder whether the world be properly understood in terms of the way we understand ourselves, that is in terms of intentionality). I mean animals cannot be exhaustively understood in terms of chemistry, yet perhaps the difference is of degree not of kind. So we might impute a kind of proto-intentionality or proto-experientaility to the physical, but nonetheless that might not help us in physics, for example.

Also, as i see it, to explain ourselves in the same terms we explain the world is not internalism, but if anything would be more of an externalism, if not an ultimate denial of the whole distinction, since the sign relation is not understood to begin with humans as far as I understand.

...actually an even flatter ontology than what I would recommend, because I do not think we can be exhaustively understood in the same way as the rest of the world. — Janus

But I am arguing for pragmatism. So not only am I arguing against an exhaustive account, I have argued that the very logic is instead to find the account which ignores the most that it can. What we are interested in arriving at are our limits of indifference that thus give crisp definition to the "other" that is ourself.

We exist as organisms to the degree we can take the world for granted in pursuing the desires that best define us. That is the autonomous condition towards which we strive to develop.

Also, as i see it, to explain ourselves in the same terms we explain the world is not internalism, but if anything would be more of an externalism, if not an ultimate denial of the whole distinction, since the sign relation is not understood to begin with humans as far as I understand. — Janus

You are still setting this up dualistically. It is the inside vs the outside. The observer vs the observables.

Internalism, in the sense I am using it, is to understand Being in terms of the triadic sign relation that produces both distinctions themselves. It is the difference between immanence/development and transcendence/creation. The observer and the observables are the splitting apart that allow the wholeness of a sign relation mediating that divide in a long-run, habitual, way.

Inside and outside are again our names for the absolute limits within which reality itself would arise.

So internalism certainly starts with the epistemological argument - we are trapped inside our own heads making models of a world.

But then internalism becomes an ontology by saying all reality arises via that kind of "mindlike" relation. This opposes it to externalism which says our minds are in fact completely explainable by objective material physics ... or a transcendent creator.

Externalism lets you pick your poison on that score. Either matter or mind is understood as the world that is larger, and so stands outside, its "other".

As I say, internalism goes the other direction. It brings the objective and the subjective into the one world as two opposing limits in a historically mediated interaction.

You are still setting this up dualistically. It is the inside vs the outside. The observer vs the observables. — apokrisis

So internalism certainly starts with the epistemological argument - we are trapped inside our own heads making models of a world. — apokrisis

I think this is much more of a dualistic setup than what I was proposing. Sure, you can say my way of speaking about explaining the world is dualistic, but of course we do make distinctions between ourselves and the world and we simply can't escape dualistic language. That doesn't mean we have to buy into such arch-dualistic ideas as that "we are trapped inside our own heads making models of the world"; that takes dualistic thinking to a whole other level!

I think this is much more of a dualistic setup than what I was proposing. — Janus

Well again, do you have a proposal that doesn't retreat back into vague indeterminism every time I give it a prod?

You are happy to be sort of flat, but not radically flat. You are happy to be sort of dualistic, but not arch-dualistic.

So do you see a pattern? You want the benefits of making structural assertions, yet shy away from the costs. You mount challenges based on definite distinctions that you back away from as soon as that hard line is questioned.

A whole epistemology could of course be constructed on "treading lightly" in this fashion. It could be made to sound a good thing. Wittgenstein gets wheeled out all the time to tell us whereof one cannot speak.

But I can only reply in terms of my own objective here - which is to push until even the vague is crisply modelled and we can arrive at some kind of happy metaphysical terminus in terms of the question, "Why anything?".

You are happy to be sort of dualistic, but not arch-dualistic. — apokrisis

I don't think it's a matter of me being happy about it; our language is ineluctably dualistic, and of course I'm not happy to be arch-dualistic: are you?. I haven't been mounting challenges so much as asking questions. For example can the "unbridled everythingness" exist or subsist prior to the crisp somethingness of spatio-temporal existence? Does the latter emerge from the former or are they co-dependent, co-emergent? I'm just trying to get a better grip on what are your metaphysical commitments. I actually haven't stated any metaphysical commitments of my own, or even that I have any metaphysical commitments.

For example can the "unbridled everythingness" exist or subsist prior to the crisp somethingness of spatio-temporal existence? Does the latter emerge from the former or are they co-dependent, co-emergent? — Janus

It's something of both.

As soon as there is any definite development towards something, it counts also as a definite move away from something. So it is co-emergent in that sense. As soon as there is enough of a history, enough of a developing story, that points in the direction of the crisp, then there is also the direction pointing away from the vague.

Yet when this co-emergence is first the case, it is as vaguely the case as possible. It is only by the end of time that it could arrive at fully actualised crispness. So in some sense, the vague actually exists for a while before it gets supplanted. When the Big Bang first happened, it would have been so hot, so dense, that its physical state counts for something so generally vague and structureless that we might as well call it a state of actual vagueness. It was 99.99999...% vague. We can treat that as a concrete state of being which then gets dissipated by the cooling and expanding that leaves the Universe crisply flat and empty - its state at the end of time when it has hit its Heat Death.

So this is a feature of the language being triadic. The metaphysics requires a pair of dichotomies - the developmental or diachronic one that speaks to the vague~crisp, and the developed or synchronic one that speaks to the hierarchically structure state of being organised in a definite local~global fashion.

So two axes map the story. One tracks the emergence of crisply divided order. The other is like the cross-section view that measures just how well divided everything has become.

At the beginning, when vagueness rules, there is no cross-section to speak of. It is like a debating the width of a point as the local and the global - that is, the local actions and the global directions - are pretty much indistinguishably the same thing. They are so unseparated that they just look like a chaotic froth of quantum fluctuations.

But exponentially the actions and the directions move apart. You get the expansion and cooling that constructs a clear local~global separation. The froth settles and condenses into massive particles blundering around in a yawning void.

It is this duality of the axes of description - the longitudinal view vs the cross-sectional view - which make talking about the character of the beginning so tricky. The beginning is like a now featureless point. It has the least length possible - the shortest distance separating the vague from the crisp. And also the least width possible - the shortest distance separating the local from the global.

So it is simply the nature of triadic metaphysics that you have to be imagining a duality of dichotomous separations.

Dyadic metaphysics is dead simple. Just apply LEM to choose option A or B.

Or upgrade to dialectics and be mildly puzzled by a little ninja move like sublation. Thesis generates antithesis, but is resolved in synthesis, all ready to launch another spin around the same basic spiral.

But Peirce is another level beyond. You've got the longitudinal and the cross-sectional stories of a development that says both the determinate and the indeterminate are being crisply actualised out of the same unresolved initial vague blur.

I agree it can be very confusing. The beginning is when chance rules. You have unbriddled everythingness. But chance in any strongly constrained or determinate sense - chance as actual possibility - only emerges and achieves its fullest expression at the end of time. At the beginning, chance lacks the generality or regularity it gains later in the story. Even calling the beginning "chaotic" is an understatement as chaos is already the product of a definite set of boundary conditions.

I actually haven't stated any metaphysical commitments of my own, or even that I have any metaphysical commitments. — Janus

Not even to Geist? Is my memory that bad?

Because science is purportedly in the business of finding reasons. — Wayfarer

I don't think it is. I think most scientists consider themselves in the business of making testable theories. It's in the business of predicting, not explaining. I'm no expert, but my limited understanding of the methods in quantum physics (where currently one has to include an element of chance, so I'm lead to believe), is to simply include that chance mathematically. Scientists are trying to eliminate that chance element, I suppose, in order to make the theory more accurately predictive, but until that point, the 'scientific' theory simply includes probability and everyone's quite happy that they are still doing 'science'. Prediction is far more useful than reasons.

If anything, the very deterministic nature of science leads even the most causal thinker to conclude that if we keep asking "why?", we must obviously arrive at either an infinite task or the answer "just because". So any scientists who did think that they were one day going to arrive at the ultimate reason why would be deluded indeed.

The positing of chance as cause doesn't seem to me to amount to either an hypothesis or a metaphysical principle. — Wayfarer

Firstly, a minor correction, it's not chance as cause, chance can't cause something, it's an expression of the lack of determinism. The Physicalist position as I understand it is simply that our most useful theory for the creation of the universe at the moment is that it just is. It's most useful because it leaves open all routes of investigation as to the next most proximate cause, whilst accepting that there are limits to what we can find out empirically about conditions before the universe began (I'm using 'before' in a causal sense here, as I think it's possible that even time did not exist before the universe began, but my physics definitely gets hazy here, as well it should. To paraphrase Feynman, anyone who thinks they understand that level of physics certainly doesn't). So what is it about suggesting that a thing simply exists without (for now) a determinable cause, that you think precludes it from the set of 'hypotheses' or 'metaphysical principles'. why are you placing constraints on what is allowed as a metaphysical proposition?

The argument in the book I mentioned is there are a very small number - 6 - of natural relationships and ratios inherent in the nature of the Cosmos that have a very specific value, which, were they different in some minute degree, would entail that matter would not form at all. But if you view the Universe as a grand simulation, something which can be mathematically modelled, then these parameters seem very specifically set for such an outcome. — Wayfarer

So this is the exact point I'm making. That is not an argument, it's a statement of facts. It's simply the statement that the 6 parameters are set exactly the way they need to be set in order to develop life. The bit that's implied in your argument (and yet missing any evidence), is..."and that's really unlikely to have happened without some reason". But the point I'm making is that we have no justification at all for thinking it's unlikely. We have no other universes to compare ours to and say "look at all these other universes, ours is so unique", ours just is, that's all we know about it. People arguing for the Strong Anthropic Principle are taking the unwarranted step of saying that because it is possible to conceive of a universe where the numbers are different, ours is an unlikely outcome. What I'm saying is that it is possible to conceive of a situation where the fair die that I'm throwing will suddenly morph into an icosahedron. That does not now make the probability of my throwing a 1 1:20. I can conceive of a million possible things that could happen when I throw the die, my probability of getting a 1 is not now 1:1,000,000. Probability, as we normally use it, is about comparing the event to known alternatives (landing on one of the other five faces). As we currently have no other known alternatives, the chances of our universe being the way it is are currently 100%, so the theory that it just is this way is a perfectly rational one.

I don't think it is. I think most scientists consider themselves in the business of making testable theories. It's in the business of predicting, not explaining. I'm no expert, but my limited understanding of the methods in quantum physics (where currently one has to include an element of chance, so I'm lead to believe), is to simply include that chance mathematically. Scientists are trying to eliminate that chance element, I suppose, in order to make the theory more accurately predictive, but until that point, the 'scientific' theory simply includes probability and everyone's quite happy that they are still doing 'science'. Prediction is far more useful than reasons. — Pseudonym

This recent paper on quantum mechanics should clarify the matter for you. Science is about explanation.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.02048

If anything, the very deterministic nature of science leads even the most causal thinker to conclude that if we keep asking "why?", we must obviously arrive at either an infinite task or the answer "just because". So any scientists who did think that they were one day going to arrive at the ultimate reason why would be deluded indeed. — Pseudonym

The laws of nature are deterministic, and yes, knowledge seeking is an infinite task, and we are always at the beginning of it. Here's a book about that very subject.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-beginning-of-infinity-explanations-that-transform-the-world-by-david-deutsch-2258470.html

Firstly, a minor correction, it's not chance as cause, chance can't cause something, it's an expression of the lack of determinism. — Pseudonym

You are right, there are no stochastic processes in nature. Here's a video about it.

This recent paper on quantum mechanics should clarify the matter for you. Science is about explanation. — tom

I appreciate the links. You seem, as in a lot of your posts, to be confusing "David Deutch says..." with "it is the case that...". All I read in the paper you've provided is Deutch (with far more humility than you're citing him with) saying things like "I present an account of...", and "in this view...". Absolutely no where does he say "This is the way things are and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong". So no, I don't accept your contention that science is about explanation on the basis of a single paper in which the author himself admits that he is only presenting "an" account not "the" account.

I appreciate the links. You seem, as in a lot of your posts, to be confusing "David Deutch says..." with "it is the case that...". All I read in the paper you've provided is Deutch (with far more humility than you're citing him with) saying things like "I present an account of...", and "in this view...". Absolutely no where does he say "This is the way things are and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong". So no, I don't accept your contention that science is about explanation on the basis of a single paper in which the author himself admits that he is only presenting "an" account not "the" account. — Pseudonym

I see. I show you in the most striking way that science is exclusively about explanation, a fact that you deny, and you chide me because I lack humility? I'll take straight talking over willful misconception any day.

Since the inception of the Scientific Method, explanation has been central to science. Popper even tried to develop a mathematical theory of explanatory depth in his "Logic of Scientific Discovery".

Deutsch a particularly interesting case. He is a practicing Popperian, a world-ranking physicist who has made perhaps the only advance in the philosophy of science since Popper. I make no apologies for citing his discoveries.

Any computer program can be correctly and accurately described as a collection of bytes, but it doesn't matter. — Pattern-chaser

It can't... — tom

I am disappointed to discover that 32 years of designing and building programs did not leave me with a proper understanding of what they are. But, as I said, it doesn't matter. Focussing on my analogy, which is clearly not to your taste, ignores the simple point I am making:

the conceptual difference between the mind and the brain is just too big for humans to usefully span.

Let's try another analogy, to illustrate the point. I could accurately refer to your car as a collection of quarks. But if we wish to understand your car in the context of it being a means of transport, thinking of it as a quark collection is not in any way useful or helpful, even though it is perfectly accurate and correct.