So what's going on here? What is happening? Why can't we stop? — csalisbury

It seems to me that there must be some need or desire -- and perhaps it's the sort of desire which is not fulfilled. It can be like thirst, in that the need is reoccurring, or it can be like anxiety, in which the desire is productive of itself -- where desire forms a kind of self-reinforcing feedback loop, so the very act of declaring the Truth makes us desire to do so again, but more.

I imagine that the desire at play probably varies. With Plato you have a profound disappointment with the world as it is, especially the political world, and an attempt to make it better. With Aristotle, so it seems to me at least, he has an incurable curiosity. This psychologizes what is properly philosophical, and is of course very speculative on that count, but I only offer these as possibilities for answering your question (possibilities that are my best guesses, but I recognize how weak these sorts of claims are too).

I'm not sure if this is satisfactory, but it's my best first attempt at answering the question in the spirit you pose it.

Yes, but then it seems contrary to what we're talking about. Or, while I could have read him in that way, that seems to be the very distinction over which disagreement is following -- what Harry said follows if we make no distinction between the three phenomena.

But even the radical feminists, at least, acknowledge a distinction between sex and gender. Gender-identity is the term of disagreement there.


There's a book I read a few years ago (Kate Millett's Sexual Politics) that gives a structure to patriarchy -- in a patriarchal system biology is believed to imply mentality is believed to imply social role. And by 'biology', of course, all that is meant is sex. The mentality could be read as a social expectation, though. Women are expected to be nurturing, and so they are given the role of mothers, teachers, nurses, cooks, and so forth. The trick of seeing this as patriarchy was to inverse the relationship, and see the role as being prescribed, and having the rest follow as post hoc rationalization of said role.

Of course the mental lives of people are not expectations of said mental lives -- hence why women would object to such nonsense. And truth be told, isn't the determination of someone else's mental life the real question here?

If that be the case then distinguishing the three on the basis of biology, sociology, and psychology seems to make sense of the difference between the three. So we have at least a theoretical basis for the distinction. Also, I prefer to say the abolition of patriarchy to the abolition of gender, though the two look the same in a patriarchal culture since gender is built/grown with patriarchal values in mind.

A subtle distinction. :D

I let this sit for a bit because my immediate thoughts were repetitions of things I had already said. Nothing new has come over the past few days so I think we might have just reached that point where this is where we disagree, but I'm not certain what else could be said to elucidate our persuade one way or the other.

They claim that they are a woman or a man, which are claims about sex. — Harry Hindu

That there is the primary point of disagreement.

Shouldn't the question be: "What is it about SEX that keeps us from scrutinizing those that feel as if they are the opposite sex, when we scrutinize all other feelings that are not consistent with reality?"

People can come to the wrong conclusions about the meaning of their feelings. We have no problem telling religious people that their dead loved ones don't exist and that there is no afterlife and we often get the same reaction that we get from the trans-people.

I have to point out here that this is something you have no problem with, but if we includes me then part of we does.

Any aspect of identity that contradicts reality - like claiming that you are actually an alien, Jesus, President Obama's secret mistress, feeling like you are morbidly fat and need to starve yourself to loose weight, or that you are the opposite sex. When someone's feelings are not a true representation of reality - that is when we have a responsibility to question the claims of people. — Harry Hindu

Identity is a part of reality, and feelings are not claims.

It's not sex that's being claimed. Sex is distinguished from gender is distinguished from gender-identity. Sex is biological. Gender is social. Gender-identity is psychological. Biology has to do with what you're talking about in getting pregnant and giving birth, but it's more complicated than that even. If a man cannot impregnate someone, because he is impotent, does his sex change? If he has erectile dysfunction, does his sex change?

Not at all. So the sex category a single person belongs to isn't exactly based on what a single person can do. It is based on their physiological characteristics or genome or what-have-you -- and there are people who don't fall neatly into the two categories there too, it's worth noting.

In the case of gender-identity there isn't much of a standard outside of the statements a person makes of themself and the actions they take.

When someone claims to be Jesus then there are facts to the matter which are ascertainable outside of the psychological profile of someone. I would believe the person feels like Jesus if they claimed they are Jesus. But there's more to the matter than the statements the person makes and the actions they take -- that he is the son of God, that he was resurrected after being crucified, that he has a second coming to judge the living and the dead. There is something else to look at.

In the case of gender-identity there is not. And the feelings someone has are as much a part of reality as the chair I'm sitting upon. And since the feelings aren't making claims about physiology (sex) there is no contradiction.

No one has been able to define "gender" in a meaningful way that implies any of what you have said. Gender is not some feeling of being the opposite sex. It is the behaviors unique to a certain sex that cannot be duplicated by another - like getting pregnant and giving birth.

Dressing a certain way, or wearing make-up, or shaving your legs are things both sexes can do and therefore aren't related to gender or sex. If it were then you are telling every woman that has ever existed, and that presently exists in other cultures, that they aren't actually women if they don't wear long hair, make-up and shave their legs.

I'm just going to note here I don't believe that gender has a fixed essence -- so any behavior can potentially be associated with the gender "man" or "woman", be it shaving, wearing makeup, making decisions, dieting, exercise, or what-have-you. In actuality there are certain behaviors temporarily affixed to genders, but they change over time and with place.

Fear is what keeps people from asking the right questions - fear of being labeled a bigot and being disowned by your friends or social group. Fear and feelings should be the furthest thing from one's mind when trying to determine the truth.

I suggest we just agree to stick to the topic. This is pretty out there, given that right here, at least, we are asking questions.

It helps to write out a summary of what you read. I've found it very helpful to just sit down and write down what I have read in my own words. You'd already have to do something like this in a formal setting, and forcing myself to articulate what I think in a structured form helps me, at least, to identify what I really feel I have a good understanding of and what I am uncertain about and needs further reading.

Having laid that out, if you don't mind putting up with my framework for a moment, it seems like you're saying that some science is actually quite far along the 'difficult to get agreement on' part of scale 1, and plenty of the sort of metaphysics I might dismiss as pointless is actually quite far along the 'really important to get agreement on' end of scale 2. Is that a fair translation of your view into my framework? — Pseudonym

Yeah, I think that's fair. And I'm glad you set out the framework because it helps me to disentangle the argument better -- I can see clearly where our disagreements over the point of arguing metaphysics seem to lie. Or, at least, where we have been having a back and forth and now why I've been a bit confused at times in our conversation.

To me it just follows naturally from how I should take the statements people make about themselves. Feelings may change over time, but the person (usually) in the best position to say they are what they are or that they have changed or that they were different is the person feeling them.

What other aspect of identity comes under scrutiny like transgender identity does? It seems to me that we have no problem with people who identify as Christian, men (when their sex is in alignment with their gender identity), Democrat, liberal, stern, black, a foodie, an artist, and so forth. There is a certain ambiguity involved in all such identities, and can even be contradictory when we consider the multitude of people who identify as such.

There is something Cartesian in my approach to interiority. But there is a sort of truth that this approach captures that others do not. There is a very real sense in which, because I am not you I do not feel what you do. We can both see cats on mats, but we cannot both feel what the other feels in the same way. Feelings are contagious, but they aren't objects. They are internal. They are a part of what makes us unique. And I can feel what you feel only insofar that I feel it -- sometimes I won't, even if you happen to. With cats on mats, on the other hand, this is not the case -- someone may be blind, of course, but they can still pick up the cat. The cat is something like an object, just like our body is something like an object. There is just also an interior which is exterior to our own interior -- another's interiority appears as an exteriority, and not in the sense of an external world. Rather it is external to anything we experience -- it is outside of our field of vision. And it is only through relating to another that we come to encounter the fact of the exterior, while also never actually making it our own interior. Hence my emphasis on the act of listening.

I don't think that there is an unbridgeable gulf a priori -- sometimes it can come to seem like it is so through discussion, but I think that you have to try in order to determine if there is just too much divergence between persons. Then our interior experiences become something like a beetle in a box -- except to the extent that there are still some individuals who can relate, even if not everyone can.

I hope this will explain, though I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. — Pseudonym

Eh, not entirely unusual there. I always wish I was more clear, and upon rereading what I write some time later wish I had said it better. I guess I'm just expressing what appears to me to be a conflict in your thinking -- one which, on one side, makes sense of all you say, but on the other side, seems like you'd be more liable to agree with me in saying that metaphysical disagreement is meaningful in the way that it is productive. In particular I have in mind science, which to me isn't all that different from metaphysics though a distinction can be drawn (and is, though I think that it's more an accident of our particular moment in history).

I suppose I don't see a very reasonable distinction between the two. There are degrees of uncertainty even in very well rooted empirical matters. Uncertainty, from my perspective, doesn't come to define metaphysics. And if metaphysics is the study of what is the case then science is a part of all that -- and, depending on how we might feel about certain forms of argument, it can be a large or a small part (or the entirety or completely separate from, at the extremes of commitment).

From my experience with science agreement is not easy, nor is it even common. So disagreement in science is something that seems very normal to me. Science is uncertain and rife with disagreement. It's almost the engine of science. The products of science are just accidents of history, things we have garnered thus far and are always up for reinterpretation or experiment. To me it does not seem so easy to find agreement and feel certain about it from the scientific perspective. And that becomes more apparent in the details, rather than in the textbooks. Even in cases of engineering, which rely upon the highly specific circumstances and empirical testing.

To me, at least, there is no certainty in science any more than there is certainty in the ambiguity of what I ought to do. So therapy seems equally applicable in both cases.

Maybe I just feel more affinity for Quine's thoughts on the lack of a distinction. Or, better to say, on the lack of a distinction with rigor -- I can get a feel for what people mean, but I can't see the difference really. So we either reject science as an arbiter of truth, if we are thorough-going and oddly consistent therapeuticians, or we somehow reconcile the notion that philosophy is therapeutic and we still care about truth in spite of what therapeutic value it might bring.

I really like this youtube channel as well -- it's just a guy who records him playing classical music on his piano. And I particularly like his rendition of Philip Glass's Metamorphosis.





My favorite composer is still just plain old Beethoven though. lol.

I usually disengage for a few reasons - 1) I can't think of anything more to say, and I'm uncertain about what I could write that would be worth writing. 2) I feel like we're repeating ourselves a bit too much, and can't seem to get over that hump. 3) I had other things to do besides philosophy, came back and saw that someone already said what I would have said and so I let them have at it rather than repeat what has been said.

I try not to disengage just because I think the other poster is lower quality at the time. Sometimes I've been surprised, and sometimes I'm just misreading, and it seems like a habit that would be too easy to get into. But it's not the sort of thing I view as rude from others. I understand that I may not be the most important thing on someone else's list of things to get to -- I'm just a random guy on the internet after all :D

I voted "all but lounge topics" -- mostly because I've been on forums where when categories were presented there still ended up being a main discussion hub. So the highly specific categories would often go unchecked.

But it would be nice to have the broad separation between more philosophy-specific and more community-specific topics that you could hop between depending on mood.

I'm sorry for the long delay replying. Interestingly (to me anyway), the reason I took such a long break is exactly the topic we're discussing here. — Pseudonym

It's all good. I take breaks too. :D

I think that your response gets to the heart of the matter better anyways. Where you state:

I think that there is really no other sensible question than "what should I do next?" — Pseudonym

I was able to reread your previous post and see a different emphasis.

Where I got "shared world of experience" from was when you were talking about the effects of electricity in a computer, and your example of two engineers where one believed in gravity and the other did not yet both wanted to build a bridge. My strategy was two-fold: to demonstrate that we can accomplish goals, such as bridge building, with competing and contradictory beliefs about the world. So bridge building has been around a very long time, well before the theory of gravity and Newton and all that. And then also to point out that we have better bridges now specifically because of what I would term metaphysical speculation which was two-way and aggressive. Newton is a great example of this because in his time metaphysics and science weren't separate fields of study as they are now, and he was extremely aggressive on such points -- yet that sort of passion and vigor is what allows us to build more complicated bridges now, since it laid the conceptual groundwork that would be necessary to build more impressive bridges.

Also, I'm perplexed by the two-fold categorization of approach when it comes to myself. I feel passionate about philosophy, I can be aggressive, but I don't think I'd endorse all forms of aggressiveness. Further, I don't think I'd say my interest is dispassionate, one way, passive, or something along those lines.



But now I would say that it seems to me that your approach to philosophy as therapy is consistent, except for the exception you give science. You say science is unique...

because it deals in things described by their effects. So, from a therapeutic point of view, I only see it as harmful to persist in the notion that some metaphysical positions can be demonstrated to be incontrovertibly 'right' in the face of the overwhelming evidence that it cannot. — Pseudonym

Ancient skepticism is a hallmark case of therapeutic philosophy. They even go so far as to say that arguments are literal medicine, so we need not feel attached to any argument but rather should view them as a way of persuading people of the virtues of skepticism. Those who deviate from the skeptical path are ill, and those who take their medicine are cured.

But for you you're talking about your interests, from an ethical point of view. So an aggressive argument is justified only if there are souls to be saved (in the Christian case) or your personal ethical ends are being served (close to but not the same as hedonism) - so not the same as skepticism in that the end goals differ (or the set of possible end goals are wider than what the ancient skeptic would say).

But if therapy be the guide then the end-goal is what justifies the approach, up to an including non-rational means. At least that's what I get from you saying:

That might be rational argument, but that rarely works and it's more likely to be rhetoric, or even outright deception if necessary. — Pseudonym

But how does that square away with the unique place of science? What gives it a pass, from a therapeutic perspective? And if the goal is what justifies any means, be they rational or not, why would science get a pass on this?

Science is interested in making claims on what is the case. At least, on its face. I suspect, given the unique position you've given science, that we agree on this much. To me that means that we would care about things like truth, evidence, inference, and knowledge. But truth, evidence, inference, and knowledge are not grounded in ethical goals, in what we ought to do next. From the perspective of the question "What should I do next?" they are only worthwhile if what we should do is generate knowledge in a specific way, a scientific way. And the history of science shows how this knowledge is ethically neutral -- it can be used for great harm or great benefit. It can threaten the world with nuclear holocaust, and it can cure polio. Knowledge of the world brings about power. It doesn't bring about the wisdom required to wield such power.

I'd say it does this specifically because it's merely concerned with truth about what is the case. But this is not moored to any ethical consideration about what we should do next.

If that be the case it seems to me that you believe in more than philosophy as therapy -- you must also believe that science tells us what is the case in order to give it a unique place among fields of knowledge. You'd have to give favor to things like current evidence, and causal frameworks -- a bare minimum epistemology and metaphysic, but they still count as more than "what should I do next?" none-the-less. Unless you can somehow link this approach to your therapy, it seems to me that this is just a case of special pleading.

I bring up the ancient skeptic for that reason -- to highlight how this is special pleading in light of a therapeutic philosophy. For the skeptic any claims on knowledge, be they evidential and based on cause or otherwise, were secondary to the goal. Arguments were medicine to bring someone to the perspective that they withhold judgment. (of course this is a general treatment. Specific skeptics differ, and it's a richer tradition than a few sentences gives credit)

Or, at least, why it seems to me that this is special pleading. How do you reconcile these commitments, to the only sensible question you introduce, evidentialism, and a belief in cause?

I am not you. I have my experiences, and you have yours. But rather than saying I am alone I think I'd prefer to say that I am unique. To fee alone is to feel the need for others. But an other is always other -- I need another to be with me to satisfy my need, rather than to be me. If we had the same experiences, thought the same things, had the same body in the same space and time then I would still need another, someone who is other than myself to satisfy my need for others.

In saying I am unique I am acknowledging my individuality, as well as the individuality of others. I am not so unique that others do not know what I am going through, or what it might feel like to be in certain circumstances. Sometimes others are able to confirm they've been there, done that, and know what it's like. We retain our uniqueness, in the sense that it was I or them at a certain time doing something, but we are not alone.

And I'd say we share our uniqueness through relating to one another -- an other who is always exterior to our interior, but is encountered through the face-to-face relation.

A common, and sensible enough, response to concerns you cannot do anything about is to accept them for what they are and move onto concerns you can do something about.

From a day-to-day perspective the issue of nuclear warheads is a big picture problem. Big picture problems are the sorts of problems that don't have anything immediately actionable -- Global Warming, Racism, War, Pollution, Poverty, Sexism, Nuclear Armageddon. They are real, but they are larger than life. They are too big for most of us to feel like they fall into the category of things we have control over.

It takes a lot of motivation to look at such problems as something you can do something about. But then you have to direct your energy in a way that breaks such things down into day-to-day actions. A pretty common example is to vote. With respect to the problem you're talking about there have been other concrete actions taken, but they aren't the sort of thing you're going to get many people to do. (edit: There's also a plethora of other things that fall in-between the extremes of the mundane and the heroic)

If all you do is talk about how this is a big problem, then all you do is make the problem appear bigger, and thereby making it even more sensible to just shrug your shoulders. Without concrete action big picture problems appear to be the sort of thing you might agree is a problem, but you give up on because there is nothing to be done. Making a problem concrete doesn't take the course of making an analogy -- like a gun in my mouth -- but rather it takes the course of outlining a plan of action that is something we can actually do.

One test for depression is the following series of questions, rated on a scale from 0-3:

Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems?

Little interest or pleasure in doing things?

Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?

Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much?

Feeling tired or having little energy?

Poor appetite or overeating?

Feeling bad about yourself — or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down?

Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television?

Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed? Or so fidgety or restless that you have been moving a lot more than usual?

Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or thoughts of hurting yourself in some way?

One thing this has in common with gender is that the statements of the person of interest are taken at face value for what they are. That does not mean they are unintepretted, or that there couldn't be other facts or inferences that play a role in making a determination or that they are not truth-apt. Just like the ruler -- it reads 10", but if you measure any one thing several times over you'll see that it's actually very precise, but you don't get the same measurement every single time. It also doesn't mean that everything said by a patient is just treated as true all the time -- that saying so makes it so. Another commonality is the imprecision such a test has -- it may be accurate, but it is imprecise. Notice how even in the very same question behaviors or feelings which are even opposite one from another are used to determine depression.

Now I use this mostly because it is a diagnostic, in the sense that is demonstrates how one might determine how another feels -- it is simultaneously imprecise and ambiguous, but not meaningless and not futile. And the best judgements are had over time -- that is, they require some kind of a relationship with another person, they require some amount of trust (rather than control), and they require sharing and listening.


Now there is an aspect to this that really is a social construct. Depression didn't always exist, and the medical treatment of the soul is quite novel. The identity of depression is certainly novel and invented. There are particular activities associated with the word. One need not have any of these trappings. And one could even de-construct it, reinvent. One could believe that the world would be better off without such identifiers.

But the feelings would remain. The interior experience would still be something which is only partially shared, partially not shared, and only determinable by asking questions within a relationship and listening to the answers.

Awww. lol. Yup. That's a common one for me. Spelling has always been a weak point for me.

Why?

I've drawn from more examples than gender to elucidate interiority. And I've noted a few times how people both bond over identities (so they are shared, though not by everyone) and can know what others feel based upon sharing experiences through words.

Gender is just another faucet of the interior which, treated in a consistent manner, is included.

I've also directly answered the question "How do we know?" to demonstrate the logic of interiority two times now. The answer to "How?" doesn't change whether we are talking about gender identity or some other aspect of identity.

I'd say we just happen to disagree. Which is different from missing the point, I think.

That is an odd turn of phrase. I don't sit back and observe myself being male. Yet the notion that I experience being male implies something like that.

I don't experience being a man.

Being a man is not something that happens to me, in the way I experience a film or a pain.

I know when I am feeling pain and when I am not; when I am attending a film and when I am not. But I can have no idea of what it would feel like to not be a man. similarly, I cannot have any idea of what it might feel like to be a woman.

That's a superficial argument, but it goes much deeper than that. Suppose a woman imagines herself with a penis, testicles, extra testosterone and whatever. She claims that she feels like a man... But how could we tell she was right? How could we tell that what she felt was really what it feels like to be a man?

It simply can't be done. There is nothing it feels like to be a man.

One does not experience one's gender. Perhaps one lives it. — Banno

I don't think that living it differs much from feeling it. I don't think learning about yourself is like sitting back, taking inventory, and reporting on what you find. But I do have certain feelings, all the same, and they aren't shared by everyone -- but they are shared by some.

I believe you when you say you don't experience being a man. I also believe my coworkers who say they are such and such -- be it man or woman or something else. You and they are trustworthy people who I've had conversations with before, and I have no reason to think you are lying. This is how we can tell whether or not someone else is speaking the truth. This is the only method that I know of. In a sense you could look at the statements that people say of themselves as the data. To question them is like questioning "How do we know the ruler is really telling me this paper is 10 inches in length?" -- because the ruler says so.

In particular, for myself, while gender doesn't play a central role to my interior experience, depression does. And those are far from shared experiences at all. Not everyone has depression. But those who do "get it" -- and those who don't can only imagine, just like I can only imagine what it feels like to be transgender.

Well, it kind of goes hand-in-hand with my whole joy-in-hopelessness thing, but I suppose that in spite of the feeling part of what I mean by "getting used to it" is that you just carry on the best you can. And you really and truly just get over it, and celebrate when things go well, mourn losses, but you stop agonizing over it. The agony wasn't helping out with the whole alienation thing in the first place.

So politics matter, and I still vote because that's where people are at -- it's where people's heads are at when doing politics. And in politics, however bad it gets, it can always get worse -- things are always relatively bad or good, depending on the circumstances.

I surely don't mean to promote hopelessness and alienation to make people do less. Rather, though things feel alienating and hopeless, you can just accept it and keep on going -- I don't like to bullshit people. Doing nothing always brings you nothing, so giving up isn't the right answer if you really care about political outcomes.

There's a long part of the discussion that looks for a coherent definition of gender; specifically on that does not include the term "gender" in the definition. Unsuccessfully. — Banno

Unsuccessfully only on the terms of universality. In that part of the discussion she posits that it's possible that some people have such and such and some people do not. She goes on to say that this is denied.

I am inclined to say that gender identity is a part of one's interior experience of their own identity. So it's only natural that I wouldn't be able to sense someone else's. I would say someone is in error for claiming to know Rebecca's interior experience -- that she must have a gender identity. And it seems to me an error to demand universal, necessary, and sufficient conditions for making the claim on one's own identity too.

As for how we know if someone else has one, then listening, trust, and sharing within a relationship is all that it takes. And as you say that is all public. So there isn't even a conflict between this notion of what is public and someone knowing their self through what is private, or interior.

I am inclined to say that the interior is not wholly private, in the usual sense of public/private when talking about the beetle in the box. This is why I mentioned things like people bonding over identities, or knowing what someone else feels through words alone -- knowing that someone has experienced what you have. But it is private in the sense that there are not any conditions of evidence outside of taking someone's word on it if you do not have that experience.

Sometimes we just don't have the same experience of the world or our self. That's simple enough, I think.

The issue is with folk who say their gender is determined by private introspection. As if we each had a gender in a box, and only we could see what was in the box... er, so to speak.

In the end I think the argument leads us to deny that genitals have a wider role in determining one's social position. Claiming that one has an inherent female or inherent male gender is in that sense anti-feminist. One's genitalia have made a difference to one's role in society. They ought not. Nor should a private sensation of gender preference. — Banno

I don't think that claiming one has this experience leads to the the implication that they ought to be in a certain role within society. I'd say that this highlights nicely the difference between gender, and identity -- whereas gender is this set of social expectations, and in a classical patriarchal society it goes from biology to mentality to role.

But accepting that others feel a certain way does not mean we need to be committed to the notion that one's sex, gender, or identity should predicate role. In fact, given the divergence between sex, gender, identity, and social ability it seems to me that accepting these things would lead to an easy inference that social role should not be determined by any of these things.

Who pretended he had no talent? That's an extreme that hasn't been stated.

And I have no idea if I do, in fact, despise his politics or ideology. He's said a few things that I disagree with, and that's about the extent of it. News articles only provide so much information, and not knowing the guy or having seen or talked to him it's fair to say that it's hard to form an opinion.

From what is presented here, though, I don't know why I'd bother with him.

Ummm... nothing really. It's hard to give a good evaluation of someone without knowing much about them. And two articles later I'm not sure it's worth the effort. :D

I bet I'd disagree with him. but... meh?

If so, why? What thoughts and feelings arise from that? — 0 thru 9

Mostly by design. The mixture of the party system and first past the post elections and the amount of political clout money has and the socio-economic class that people in power belong to. Probably some other stuff too.

You get used to it. It's like a natural disaster. You can prepare for the worst, lean on the people you know and trust, and wait and see what happens.

My point is, if the gravitational constant could only be what it is, and the weak force could only be what it is, and the strong force could only be what its, and on and on for a bunch of other constraints could only be what they are. And if any of those was even marginally different. Life could not exist. That sure sounds like they were designed for that purpose to me. — Rank Amateur

To me it just looks like a fact, because I see no reason to believe they could have been otherwise -- in a physical sense.

I see no difference is saying things are as the are because they were designed as such , or there was no other alternatives. You are just moving the question up one level - why are there no other alternatives.

Well, strictly speaking I'm only posting another possibility. Strictly speaking I don't think you can rule out a designer. In a looser sense I have my beliefs and find them reasonable enough, but I can acknowledge others -- on those same looser standards -- as being reasonable enough with different conclusions.

For this particular possibility the reason the constants don't vary is because they are constant. It's just a simple fact, in the same manner that Washington DC is the capital of the United States in 2018 doesn't vary, or that when you mix yellow with red paint you get green orange (EDIT: lol. Temporarily forgot the actual fact. Sorry) paint. There may be more to explain than that -- Washington DC became the capital because of such and such history, or red and yellow paint make green orange paint because they absord such and such frequencies in the visible light spectrum -- but that explanation doesn't change the very basic fact that the gravitational constant, that the capital of the United States, and that the color combination of paints are what they are.

I suppose I should say that I don't think every fact has an explanation, either. I don't think the entirity of everything that exists has some kind of cohesive explanation. It could, but it doesn't need to. Sometimes a fact is just a fact.


To reiterate, I'm saying this is a possibility. It's one that I find more congenial than positing extra-planar beings choosing what the physical constants are, but I merely find it congenial and know that even an extra-planar being is possible, and can recognize why others might find it so even if I do not.

It could also be possible -- to give the other two examples I said -- that there is a multiverse engine creating universes, and that there is some other physical theory we do not yet know (just as we did not yet know how color worked at one point, though we still knew what color combinations would bring about which colors).

The thought experiment using the deck of cards, is firstly about the order of the deck of cards. When one observes something that seems ordered, and given options as to how such order came to happen between design and randomness most would view design more likely. FTA proposes the that the universe is ordered for embodied, sentient beings like us to exist. — Rank Amateur

Right. But it does so on the basis of your next sentence:

Even vary minor differences in many different criteria ( all of these are easily looked up) would make it impossible for beings like us to exist.

But what if a difference, however minor, isn't possible at all? How do we infer that these minor differences could have been the case?

Conceptually, sure. I can conceive of them being different.

But physically?

When facing such an ordered system FTA proposed design and the most probable hypothesis as to why.

I am not sure what the difference is between your point that there may have been no other options for all these varied criteria than there is than, it was designed. Sounds like a round about way of saying the same thing.

To me it's just like stating a fact. So it is physically possible that Washington, DC is not the capital of the United States. But it is not possible in reality (earmarked to a certain time) -- it is a simple fact.

A bit more abstractly, it is metaphysically possible that the gravitational constant could differ, where all other laws and constants of the universe remain the same. But it may not be physically possible, earmarked to the universe we happen to inhabit. It could just be a simple fact that has no major significance, since it could not have been otherwise.

If it could not have been otherwise, then there's no need to posit that someone made it that way. It's just the way things are.

Not at all. Nor should we just accept any thought experiment just because someone thinks it sounds good.

Let's take the gravitational constant. 6.67408 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2 -- I'm not certain at all what the units would be analogous to in a deck of cards, but the specific number would be analogous to an individual card. So we happened to draw, in the creation of the universe (assuming the deck metaphor) 6.67408 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2 when we drew our gravity constant card.

But what are the other cards? What is the possible domain over which we're figuring this probability?

If the possible domain for the gravity constant is only one card, then it is a 100 percent probability that we'd draw that card -- it'd just be a constant, as I've been saying, and evaluating its probability wouldn't mean anything at all.

But if it could be otherwise, then what else could it be? If it can't be otherwise, then there is nothing improbable about the gravity constant being what it is.

If they are not identical, then might they have some relevant features that differ when evaluating their probability?

Do you think that a deck of cards is identical to the constants of physical theory?

I'd pick 1.

:D

I'd say that neither is any more a waste of time than arguing itself.

Plus science is all about arguing over facts. It's not like it's all just settled. There are arguments, not doctrines.

2. in order for beings like us to exist those values, along with other criteria have to be
near exactly what they are - if any were changed appreciably - we would not exist.
3. the probability of all possible combinations of events needed for all of this criteria to
exist is incredibly unlikely - on the order of 52! or more — Rank Amateur

What is factual about them?

In order for us to know 2 we'd have to run an experiment. So we'd start a universe with different values and see what came up (if that were possible to do). 2 follows if we accept all of current scientific statements as true, and then decide to treat some constants as variables to see what might happen in a universe that is remarkably similar to ours, but with a few changes.

But it's just a prediction, not a fact. We'd have to actually see that happening to say "This is fact"


And 3 depends upon treating those same constants as variables, too. But if they don't vary then there isn't a range of possible values for the constants to be. It's kind of hokey, from my viewpoint. I mean, shoot, the number line is infinite, so we might as well say that the probability of a constant is 0 (giving the event an infinitely great improbability, sans someone putting it there), given that it's just a single point on an infinite line.

My understanding of the argument goes:
1. sentient, moral agent beings like us exist.
2. in order for beings like us to exist those values, along with other criteria have to be
near exactly what they are - if any were changed appreciably - we would not exist.
3. the probability of all possible combinations of events needed for all of this criteria to
exist is incredibly unlikely - on the order of 52! or more. — Rank Amateur

Heh. Well, we had a different understanding then.

I'd say that your 2 is at least uncertain, and is what I was speaking to before. If the values were just constants then they wouldn't change. There isn't a physical possibility that they differ.

And I'd say that your paper tries to address 3 by talking about epistemic probability. But I'd just say that such probability caches out as plausibility. We can evaluate whether something is likely or not, but the likelihood we'll come up with depends on our priors.

Which hypothesis for these facts is most probable.

1. This system was designed as such to support 1. therefor there is in some way a designer
2. As improbable as it is these were all just random events that allowed 1.
3. There are an infinite number of universes or conditions that are in existence, making the odds that one like ours exist highly probable.

I don't think there's a reasonable way to evaluate them. Not really, anyways. One can sound good to someone and so they'll adopt it. We can make some argument -- about the probability space, for instance -- that makes it seem like we are really, really, really certain of a probability.

But all three are congruent with the facts, at present. So it's not on an evidential basis that we could decide such a probability. We may make arguments, but these would in turn just appeal to our intuitions. Those intuitions would already play a part in what way we believe in the first place, hence my thinking that it just depends upon what we believe.

There's no reason to close inquiry to any of the three, as far as I'm concerned.

yet again - you are trying to change the "what is" That is not an argument against FTA. You are in effects saying "ok lets just say the facts were different" Changing, the facts is not an argument. — Rank Amateur

Hrm? I'm granting the facts. What you're quoting is a rephrasing of the argument. So we have the facts from the SEP article:

The strength of gravity
The strength of the strong nuclear force
The difference between the masses of the two lightest quarks
The strength of the weak force
The cosmological constant
The global cosmic energy density is close to ro sub c.
The relative amplitude Q of density fluctuations
The initial entropy of the universe


I'm not changing these.

The argument goes -- at least if I'm reading any of this right -- that these are really specific values that could have been different, but weren't. The values that they are support life -- and there are very few such values that would support life. So the best explanation for these specific values is that there is a designer who chose them.

I'm giving alternate explanations. One is that there simply isn't one -- that constants are facts, and there isn't anything special about them. Adding a designer is just messy. You might as well add a designer to explain why the spring constant of a spring is just so. Or you could just accept that the spring constant is exactly as it is, and there's nothing special about it (even though only a very specific spring constant would support this particular mechanism)

Another is the multiverse theory. And another would be something more fundamental, that things ended up just and so because of some physical reason that is hitherto unknown.

Let's take this:

It has been mathematically calculated that, back at one second, the universe's expansion energy and the opposing gravitational energy must have differed by less than one part in 10 to the power 15 (one part in a million billion). If it was different at all (in either direction) then there would be no galaxies, no stars, and so no planets. — Antony Latham

So it could have differed in one direction or another direction, hypothetically speaking. But it didn't. Why didn't it?


One explanation is that there was a designer who intervened in the formation of the universe to ensure that life could arise within it.

Another is that it didn't differ, and there's nothing terribly controversial about accepting a fact as a fact -- it just happened that way.

Another is that there's a multiplicity of universes being spit out by some universe-engine, and so given infinite time we would eventually pop out of it.

Another might be that there's some reason for the specific ratio that we haven't discovered. Perhaps gravity acts in a particular way because of [x].


**
The fact is the ratio between expansion and gravitational energy. The prediction is that with a difference then there would be no galaxies, no stars, and no planets. But the latter is not a fact -- we simply do not know what would have happened had it been otherwise. We'd have to run an experiment.

It's something that follows ceteris peribus. -- given such and such set of propositions, this is what would happen. It's reasonable enough to speculate, but we'd only know the fact of the prediction if we generated a universe with a different ratio.

We don't know what would happen if things were different than they were. There is no fact to the matter. We can make guesses and evaluate said guesses in terms of what seems right, sure. And I'd contend that's exactly what we're doing in positing the above 4 possible explanations of the fact.

I disagree - as per the deck of cards experiment. There is little doubt that design is the most probable answer for the FTA. — Rank Amateur

There is little doubt for you.

It's worth noting that there's a difference between the arrangement of a deck of cards, and existence. The constants in physics are artifacts of our knowledge. Vary them while keeping everything else constant and what you'd predict would differ from what you'd predict while maintaining the exact same theoretical setup.

That's saying basically the same thing, without the numbers to make it look as if these particular constants are a wonder. The constants are constant, so there's no need to think of them as if they landed precisely where they needed to in order for life to flourish. They didn't land at all. They're just the number they happen to be.

Could they be different? Possibly. But it is also possible that they could not be different. They could after all take after their name, and be. . . constant. The evidence doesn't decide one way or the other -- evidentially both are possible.

A better analogy for the deck of cards and the FTA, on this interpretation, would be: Why are there exactly 52 cards? Couldn't there be 60 cards? Well, the answer to that is because that is what makes a standard deck of cards. You could add in more cards, but this is just the way things are.

It's a type of teleological argument, or argument from design. Among other examples probably the best-known are those having to do with biological design (e.g. Paley's watch analogy). And like with other teleological arguments, it seems to have a lot of intuitive appeal with some people, and yet when the argument is viewed skeptically, it turns out surprisingly hard to even give it a rigorous formulation, and few even try. — SophistiCat

And even given a rigorous formulation it seems to me that all one would have to do is change or challenge one proposition to obtain the desired conclusion.

The argument bottoms out in what feels right to the person hearing or giving the argument. I would say I agree with you in saying that the constants don't need explanation, per se -- why would they? Does the Ideal Gas Law need to explain its use of a constant?

Adding a constant is a common tactic in making an equation "work" -- even if its not viewed as some kind of fundamental equation, just something that helps to predict a dataset right now.

Maybe because its cosmology there is a feeling that there needs to be some kind of fundamental explanation for why things are just so, and not otherwise. It seems more fundamental than, say, Hook's law.

There is no doubt that designer is the most logical answer to the FTA. The primary reason that there is any debate at all on that point is driven by a predisposition on many that the probability of God/supernatural designer is near zero. — Rank Amateur

This is half of what I believe. I'd just add that the primary reason there is any debate is that the predisposition for different persons is either for or against the proposition -- and the plausibility of these arguments has mostly to do with this belief rather than whatever rational merits the arguments claim to have.

It's the conclusion that matters, not the process of reasoning.

Is it, though? Another version of the teleological argument argued that while evolution is true, there had to be an initial designer to put together the RNA just-so to make evolution happen. There is a "gap" of sorts where the majority of what we observe is explainable by purely physical and mechanical descriptions, except for one moment where something requires divine intervention.

This just seems to push the "gap" back in time. And if we come up with some kind of theory of the constants which explains them in purely physical terms I imagine the "gap" will get pushed further back.

There's always some first-cause which a theist will find satisfactory, and an atheist will not. The plausibility of these arguments comes down to what we already believe.

Here I am more interested in what an FTA proponent can actually do with the physical premise, which we can take as given for the purpose of the discussion. Is "fine-tuning for life" in need of explanation? (The answer is not as uncontroversial as it might seem.) And are theistic explanations best suited for the job? — SophistiCat

I guess I don't see much difference between FTA and other forms of the teleological argument -- is that an unfair characterization, in your view?