Even Hume said we reason inductively because that is what is natural to our psychology. So we only "help ourselves to induction" in the sense that we find ourselves already the products of an evolutionary process. We were born to be pragmatically successful at predicting our worlds. — apokrisis

The conclusion that inductive reasoning is a product of our evolutionary development comes at the far end of a long process of inductive inference. So that cannot be the sense in which we help ourselves to induction: we did that long before we had any inkling of such far-reaching conclusions.

Not really. We have to make assumptions to get started. As I have shown if you make the assumptions explicit inductive reasoning can be framed in deductive forms. — Janus

You cannot replace induction with deduction salva veritate, since induction is plausible reasoning and deduction is certain reasoning. If you assume "invariances of nature" of a certain sort, then you can make a case for the viability of inductive inference in general, but you cannot thereby turn any specific inductive inference into a deduction.

As for starting assumptions, I think that induction itself makes for the most natural starting assumption (since we are already strongly predisposed to it) - more so than the rather complicated cocktail of assumptions that you are proposing.

Science bases itself on the assumption that there are "laws of nature" that determine the invariances that are observed everywhere. — Janus

The basic inductive intuition is more local, more restricted than that. Yes, induction implies that we can perceive persistent patterns in nature, but that's it. And that's all the "assumption" that science requires to get going. It does not require us to assume from the start that all of nature is completely subject to laws, much less that these laws form a reductive hierarchy with a fundamental theory of everything at the bottom. Such ideas are viable, but they are not basic, nor are they necessary. Science happily proceeds with local laws and "special" theories.

What's wrong with a circular argument if it takes the form of the scientific method? — apokrisis

Its utter pointlessness? I mean, if you've already helped yourself to induction, what's the point of circling back to "justify" it via one of its purported consequences?

So you are saying that the problem of induction doesn’t hinge on the metaphysical assumption that causality may not be invariant? — apokrisis

No, I am pretty sure that's not what I was saying. I am not even sure what that means.

And so I simply say go with that same assumption. Permit nature to vary. And then understand it’s apparent invariance in terms of the self organisation of limits.

After all, that is the world as science has found it to be, if you’ve been keeping up. — apokrisis

Right, circular reasoning again. Induction -> Science -> Fanciful metaphysics -> Induction.

You're going to have to specify - a lot - as to what kind of "whole" you mean, and as well "expressed." For example: do you mean that any text can always be expressed in terms of the letters that constitute it? Music in notes? Sense from mere sounds? Without further qualification and explication, I'm afraid the notions in the OP are too vague to respond to. — tim wood

It's not so much vague as artificially restricted. If there is only one system, one language, one ontology, then there is nothing to be emergent. And you are right, there is no "whole" here either - in order to have a "whole" one would have to introduce something over and above a system of particles. Without that something extra, the system of particles is, trivially, all you have.

An example of a whole emerging from particles could be continuous medium, such as a fluid, emerging from molecular interactions. But here we have two different ontologies, two different languages, two different sets of properties - one pertaining to the particulate system and the other - to the continuous one. For example, there is no such thing as "pressure" in the particulate system (but one can link pressure to molecular dynamics via a bridge law).

And yes, read the article that @Akanthinos linked. "Emergence" is a complicated topic (in part because there is no common view of what it is).

I would not put it that way; I would say that we follow inductive reasoning for the practical reason that there is no alternative — Janus

If by "no alternative" you mean a sort of psychological compulsion then that is just what I was saying.

and I would also say that it is reasonable to have faith in it, because, leaving aside (what I would consider unreasonable) radical skepticism, all our experience and understanding confirms that nature is indeed replete with invariance. There seems, on the contrary to be no good reason, beyond a certain kind of carping logic, to question that. — Janus

Aaand... we are back to circular reasoning. There is no good reason, other than an epistemology that is already shot through with induction, to conclude that "nature is replete with invariance." You could take that not as a conclusion but as an assumption and try to ground your epistemology in that assumption*, but that seems like a strange move. An epistemology is something you already have and would find very difficult to let go. Why chuck it out in favor of a less intuitive, less psychologically secure assumption? Pragmatically, this would seem like the less favorable option.

*Or you could do something even more convoluted and put your faith into some religious or metaphysical narrative (a la @apokrisis) from which the regularity of nature would then fall out.

Oh sure, inferences of past events are as vulnerable to skepticism as inferences of future events, and at some point, when you come to question your cognitive abilities, you immediately undercut your own line of reasoning.

Hume was an empiricist, not a skeptic. He believed that perceptions were the ultimate source of truth. He also apparently believed that at least some understanding of the world could be firmly grounded in perceptions and thus be validated. Of course, a thoroughgoing skeptic could destroy this worldview without breaking a sweat.

So what can we do? Well, if you seek the ultimate grounding of your beliefs in rules - be they the rules of deduction or some other epistemic rules, such as the wisdom of the crowds - then you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I think that induction is normative, not unlike ethics, which similarly resists grounding in something external to itself. You believe in it not for any reason, but because you can't help it.

This is one of those papers where the results are probably more interesting and surprising to the researchers in the field than to laymen - which is probably why Newsweek had to go to Sam Parnia to spice up the story. That in a multicellular organism with many differentiated tissues and organs "death" does not instantaneously halt all biological processes does not sound at all surprising. How could postmortem organ transplantation could be possible if all organs began decaying at the instance of death? And the fact that some gene expression continues for a while after death should not be surprising either: after all, we've always known that hair and nails continue to grow after death, and that requires gene expression (as we later realized). I am surprised that the authors don't acknowledge this, and instead write in the introduction:

While much is known about gene expression circuits in life, there is a paucity of information about what happens to these circuits after organismal death. For example, it is not well known whether gene expression diminishes gradually or abruptly stops in death—nor whether specific gene transcripts increase in abundance in death. — Pozhitkov et al.

I suppose that the most interesting result here is that some gene transcription does indeed rev up for a short time after death.

The research in question has nothing to do with consciousness. "Life after death" is a journalistic flourish. This is the article in Open Biology:

Tracing the dynamics of gene transcripts after organismal death

The Newsweek article, as quoted in the OP, fairly summarizes the research. What the researchers found is that "a step-wise shutdown occurs in organismal death that is manifested by the apparent increase of certain transcripts with various abundance maxima and durations." Here is their own take on their findings:

What do the increases in postmortem transcript abundances mean in the context of life?

Since increases in postmortem transcript abundances occurred in both the zebrafish and the mouse in our study, it is reasonable to suggest that other multicellular eukaryotes will display a similar phenomenon. What does this phenomenon mean in the context of organismal life? We conjecture that the highly ordered structure of an organism—evolved and refined through natural selection and self-organizing processes [215]—undergoes a thermodynamically driven process of spontaneous disintegration through complex pathways, which apparently involve the increased abundance of specific gene transcripts and putative feedback loops. While evolution played a role in pre-patterning of these pathways, it probably does not play any role in its disintegration fate. However, one could argue that some of these pathways have evolved to favour healing or ‘resuscitation’ after severe injury, which would be a possible adaptive advantage. The increased abundance of inflammation response transcripts, for example, putatively indicates that a signal of infection or injury is sensed by the still alive cells after death of the body. Alternatively, these increases could be due to fast decay of some repressors of genes or whole pathways leading to the transcription of genes. Hence, it will be of interest to study this in more detail, since this could, for example, provide insights into how to better preserve organs retrieved for transplantation. — Pozhitkov et al.

Sam Parnia was not involved in the research. He is known for running the AWARE near-death experiences study and for advocating highly speculative ideas about consciousness.

Evolution is based on the assumption that the invariances of nature have been consistently the same during the past as we find them today. I am pointing out that this assumption is as just as warranted or unwarranted as the assumption that the invariances of nature will be the same in the future as today. So, my point was that inductive inferences are essential to the theory (Evolution) that you were purporting to use to undermine the justifiability of inductive reasoning. I'm surprised you cannot see the problem with this. — Janus

I understand what you are saying. I am granting, for the sake of an argument, one half of your "invariances of nature," so to speak: those that lie in the past. This is not so unreasonable: all the evidence that we have of such invariances is in the past.

Will these invariances persist into the future? You gave a kind of transcendental argument (correct me if I am wrong): our shared inductive intuitions provide us with a reason to believe the affirmative. But, as I have argued, the fact that we have those intuitions is not independent from the (already assumed) fact that nature exhibited invariances in the past. So what I am saying is that shared intuitions do not provide you with a reason to believe that invariances will persist into the future, over and above the assumption of invariance in the past.

Here's an inductive argument:

1. Some Ps are Qs
2. Therefore, all Ps are Qs

The conclusion necessarily follows from the premise. — Magnus Anderson

I don't know of any logic where this would be the case. Induction is, generally speaking, plausible reasoning. So normally you would conclude that any P is probably Q, with the strength of this inference depending on how many Ps have been observed and perhaps other considerations.

By deductive reasoning we usually understand the application of something like Aristotelian or Classical logic. The rules of inference are fixed; even when we reason informally, if the reasoning is deductive, it can be straightforwardly translated into a formal logic without the loss of accuracy.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as the inductive logic. There is informal plausible reasoning, which can only be loosely approximated by some of the formal statistics, such as Bayesian inference.

I'm not familiar with Goodman's grue scenario. In any case I was referring to the past, not the future. I don't see why, if it is based on an understanding of evolution, it would not rely on the assumption that the invariances of nature were in the past as they are today. And that assumption is as much irrationally inductive as the assumption that the invariances of nature will be in the future as they appear to be today. — Janus

The theory of evolution, like any theory, is based on what we already know. Induction is a way of inferring what we don't know, whether it occurs in the past or in the future. Having evolved in a regular environment (regular enough for practical purposes), we are conditioned to trust in induction, because those who in the past could best exploit those regularities had a fitness advantage. But all that was in the (known) past. Our shared inductive instincts owe everything to the past and nothing to the future, which is why it is not right to appeal to those instincts for validating inferences of future observations.

By the way, to return to the topic of the thread, one can read Hume as mounting a similar argument, only he believed that our causal and inductive beliefs are shaped by observing "constant conjunctions" of similar events. Hume's psychological explanations may be too simplistic for our age, but the idea here is basically the same: induction's seeming self-evidence is not enough to justify it when you consider why it seems to be self-evident.

I think I will take your advice and look at the literature since I am rather new to all this. However, if you can elaborate some of the conceptual issues with regard to determinism that might be helpful. — Perplexed

I am myself in a (leisurely) process of reading up on such issues, although at the moment I am more focused on causation.

SEP provides an overview of the topic in Causal Determinism.

An accessible introduction to determinism (or lack thereof) in physics can be found in the works of John Earman (he has written a number of articles, as well as a book). Here is his article in a book Freedom and Determinism (Topics in Contemporary Philosophy):

One might have hoped that this survey would provide an answer to the question: If we believe modern physics, is the world deterministic or not? But there is no simple and clean answer. The theories of modern physics paint many different and seemingly incommensurable pictures of the world; not only is there no unified theory of physics, there is not even agreement on the best route to getting one. And even within a particular theory— say, QM or GTR—there is no clear verdict. This is a reflection of the fact that determinism is bound up with some of the most important unresolved foundations problems for these theories. While this linkage makes for frustration if one is in search of a quick and neat answer to the above question, it also makes determinism an exciting topic for the philosophy of science. — Determinism: What We Have Learned and What We Still Don’t Know

Determinism is bound up with other topics. Philosophers find issues with the concept of the laws of nature. Reductionism is also a very controversial issue. The failure of either of these concepts threatens the very cogency of the question "Is the universe deterministic?"

Note that this explanation that you are taking to undermine induction is itself inductively derived. It relies on that which it purports to undermine. — Janus

But it is not self-undermining. It is entirely compatible with the situation where the world ceases to be orderly some time in the future (Goodman's grue scenario).

One could imagine any number of self contained systems that can articulate itself without the need for external verification but sooner or later its relationship to other fields of endeavour must come into question. — Perplexed

You are talking about metaphysical systems, surely? Because scientific systems (with the possible exception of some highly theoretical fields) are the opposite of self-contained: they are directly engaged with our senses. They may not pass Hume's very strict and literal understanding of empiricism, but they are a helluva lot better in that regard than metaphysics.

Can you give any further details of such a conceptual analysis? Perhaps this would extend beyond the boundaries of science. — Perplexed

Well, my question was open-ended: I do not insist that all metaphysical questions are pseudo-questions. But take a look at the literature on just about any contentious metaphysical question, such as determinism, and you will find conceptual challenges.

Of course one could just get on with the business of science without any need for contemplating its foundations and why it works but this always strikes me as avoiding the most interesting questions. — Perplexed

Well, the very fact that science gets along quite well with little or no metaphysics - and in particular, without ever needing to resolve the question of metaphysical determinism - is suggestive. Are such questions really meaningful, or are they spurious pseudo-questions that a conceptual analysis can dissolve?

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that induction is justified by its universal acceptance and seeming indispensability - apparently, on the general epistemic principle that universal acceptance and indispensability provide an ipso facto justification. But here is how this justification can be undermined.

A plausible account of our inductive instincts is our evolutionary history as creatures that emerged in a relatively orderly, stable environment. Our instincts were thus shaped by our past, since evolution is not forward-looking. As with other adaptations, they will serve us well, as long as things continue as they have throughout our evolutionary history. But, of course, making that assumption begs the very question: will things continue as they have in the past? (This counter-argument echoes the standard charge of circularity leveled on those who seek to justify induction by past successes.)

I suppose 18th century science could be said to "assert determinism". The question is, does our modern science allow for non-deterministic events to take place? — Perplexed

Of course. There are both deterministic and indeterministic models in science. As for metaphysical determinism, science as such does not take any position on it. If, for instance, you are a population geneticist, you work with probabilities, and it does not matter to you as a scientist whether those probabilities originate from some fundamentally chancy process or whether they are merely epistemic (or whether there actually is a distinction). It takes a lot of philosophical posturing to get from science to metaphysics. For example, you will probably have to take a stance on reductionism. And once you do, you may also have to bet on future physics. None of this is part of science.

That's exactly the point I'm making. I'm not saying that our beliefs can either be justified or not (that's an entire epistemological position) I'm disputing that there is any good grounds for specify that science cannot justify the passions, as if there were some other group of things that it could justify. If there's nothing that science can justify (in that way) then the comment is entirely specious, claiming to provide some in formation about 'the passions', when in fact it is merely reporting the limits of science in general. — Pseudonym

I don't understand your point. Science does what it does - it provides explanations of a certain sort. What it does not do is provide warrant for every belief - indeed, for most beliefs. I do not require a scientific explanation of vision in order to believe that there is a table in front of me - all I need is to look and see.

This rather presumes a position on conciousness which is far from agreed upon. — Pseudonym

No, I do not take any metaphysical positions about consciousness. I am making straightforward observations about beliefs and justifications.

'Hungry' would be typically held as being that disposition which (in the absence of competing forces) would cause a person to eat. It is perfectly possible that your brain could be in that state, but the part of your brain responsible for generating the epiphenomenon of concious awareness erroneously reports that you are not. In that sense you would be incorrect about your assertion 'I'm hungry'. — Pseudonym

A belief, even a justified belief, does not have to be inerrant.

Does this mean that you believe free will to be incompatible with determinism? Would you then say that our sense of free will is an illusion? — Perplexed

Not that this is particularly relevant to either free will or the actual topic of this thread, but charleton is talking out of his ass: science does not "assert determinism."

Reductive explanation is a reason to believe. It is the standard reason we believe in everything else, that we have a reductive explanation for its being the case.

The comment I was disputing was "he is simply saying that the reasoning of science cannot justify them, [the passions]".

My argument was, in what way can the reasoning of science "justify" anything other than by explaining the causal chain of its existence back a few steps? — Pseudonym

You are asking the wrong question. Almost none of our beliefs are justified (in our mind) by science. So if you only accept reductive explanations as justification for beliefs, then you would have to conclude that almost all of our beliefs lack any justification whatsoever - and that cannot be true, because it is part of our usual understanding of the notion of "justified belief" that a large proportion of our beliefs is fairly justified.

I have a passion 'hunger', science can explain exactly what that passion is in physical terms (brain states), why it is there causally (DNA - protein synthesis - neurons development - interaction with the environment), and also why it is there teleologically (evolutionary function of hunger). What additional thing can science provide with regards to the proposition "the sky is blue" that is missing from what science can tell us about passions such as to warrant the distinction made? — Pseudonym

Whether or not I know of some scientific explanation for my feeling of hunger or my perception of the color of the sky is completely irrelevant to my warrant for holding the respective beliefs.

You are equating justification with a reductive explanation. Sometimes that is the case, but not always, and clearly not in the case of "passions." I am sorry, but it is patently silly to say that hunger is "justified" by some reductive neurophysiological account. Justification - as you yourself said - is reason to believe. I don't require to know any facts other than my feeling of hunger in order to justifiably believe that I am hungry. If someone pointed out some other facts that suggest a different conclusion - e.g. that I had a meal less than an hour ago - those other facts wouldn't trump my justification. And if someone did a CAT scan or whatever and concluded that my "brain can be shown to be in a state common to all other humans who desire food," that would be entirely superfluous to the justification that I already have. If I feel hungry then I am hungry. Passions are self-justifying.

If one could show that the properties as enumerated in premise one are not the properties of intelligent design, then those who argue against the argument to intelligent design may have a point. However, the analogy is perfect. In fact it's hard to imagine a better analogy. — Sam26

This must be the Donald Trump school of philosophy.

I want to step back a little and ask this question: How could we generalize the notion of design when all we know is human design? We could, of course, identify things that are common to all or most human designs, but, as @Pseudonym has pointed out, that would trivially include such properties as being produced by people. In order to select broader design criteria, we must already have some idea of what else, other than human design, our definition is going to encompass. But then, of course, to do what @Sam26 wanted to do, i.e. turn that definition around and use it to infer a matter of fact would be invalid. We already bundled that matter of fact into the definition.

Still...

I'd set forth that what a designed entity does is fulfill some purpose that, in this case, an intelligent being wants to be fulfilled (hence why I'm bringing up desire before, but here I'm introducing purpose as well). — Moliere

It seems to me that we need some notion of, first, a being who wants, and second, a purpose which fulfills that want. — Moliere

Yes. The lesson from the failure of various attempts to come up with a set of narrow criteria that define design - criteria that apply just to the product of design (complexity and such) - is that design properties must be broad: they must encompass not just the thing that is designed but, essentially, the designer as well.

The point is that when we look at human productions that exhibit the features named in premise one, they are the result of intelligent design. In fact, even if you had never seen a watch before (Paley's argument), and stumbled upon one, you surely wouldn't conclude it happened by chance. Why? Because we are very familiar with the evidence of intelligent design. — Sam26

No, the reason we recognize a watch as a designed thing is not because we can recognize some general hallmarks of design just by looking at it. It is hard to get into the mind of a person from a primitive culture, where there are no watches. But plausibly, she would realize that the watch is unlike any familiar objects of nature. At the same time, she might reason that people (or other anthropomorphic agents - gods?) manufacture things that are not otherwise encountered in nature, and on these grounds suppose that the watch is one such artefact. This inference already relies on broad observations - observations that are external to the thing in question.

(I'm always using too many comma's...) — Moliere

You should worry more about too many apostrophes ;)

My reference to some other ID-ers and creationists was just such an attempt to identify a more favorable sampling, where the number of instances is not too many (not every living organism or every species ever) and not too few (not life or the universe itself, which in any case doesn't fit Sam's criterion). If the Designer only occasionally magics a new design, then the numbers can be at least comparable.

I then went on to point out that the design criterion used by those other creationists is actually not the one Sam used. And no, of course I don't think that such Design of the Gaps is a good argument.

There are, I think, just two distinctive families of objects under consideration: human artefacts and biological organisms. Because clearly there are many more within-group commonalities than there are between-group commonalities. And also because it's silly to deny evolution and common descent in this day and age. So, just on statistical grounds, any inference that sorts instances into groups judging by their appearances is going to be extremely weak: there are only two instances here.


But is there something to the idea that

Objects of nature have a structure where the parts are so arranged that the whole can achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone — Sam26

Well, on one level this just seems to beg the question by referring to "parts" that are "arranged" in order to "achieve" or "be used" for something.

On another level, charitably interpreting the mereological and teleological language as merely descriptive, this could be seen as describing a generic complex system, where parts (with the proviso that mereology is at least partly subjective) interact with each other. In any such system "the whole is more than the sum of its parts." But this reading is much too broad. Not only does it fit everything in this universe, but it even fits countless other possible systems, most of which have nothing to do with design.

So back to teleology then?

I'd contend that objects of nature, like a tree or a cat, do not have a structure where the parts are so arranged that the whole can achieve or be used to achieve a higher order than the parts alone. Or, really to put it better and keep our positions linguistically distinct, I think I'd add more to this definition of intelligent design than what you've laid out here. — Moliere

Actually, there may be something - not in all objects of nature, but specifically in biological organisms - that exhibits such a teleological structure. It is hard not to notice how naturally we think in terms of functions when we think about organisms, both from the perspective of their present-day structure and behavior and from the perspective of their evolutionary development. Indeed, this has been noted both by theoretical biologists and by philosophers (Ruth Millikan being particularly notable among the latter). I refer you to this short SEP article: Teleological Notions in Biology.

But, first, there are plausible reasons for biological organisms having this structure that have nothing to do with being the product of intelligent design (see above). Second, as @StreetlightX noted, the more we learn about them, the more we see how very different those biological "designs" are from all the incontestable examples of design that we know. And, as I said, no reasonable inference can be made from one family of objects to another, very dissimilar family of objects, on the grounds of one tenuous commonality.

The amount of instances that form the basis is extremely weak, so much so as to be completely damning to the analogy. Human artefacts represent a tiny proportion of all things in set A. There is an estimated 300 trillion tonnes of human artefacts in the world. There are an estimated five million trillion trillion bacteria. Even if we average human artefacts at just 1g, bacteria alone outnumber human artefacts by five trillion trillion times. All the failed organisms from the process of evolution outnumber human artefacts. by several trillion times more than this. It is ludicrous to suggest that anything about human artefacts tells us something about natural objects by strength of analogy. It would be like claiming you knew something with great certainty about all architecture because you studied one brick. — Pseudonym

I hesitate to say that this is unfair to @Sam26's argument, because it doesn't look like he has thought through any of it. Still, this is probably not a charitable count. It assumes that every single organism that ever lived is a separate instance of design, which, to my knowledge, no one has claimed in recent times.

A more recognizable position would be to assume that each species (however tenuous this concept gets for bacteria and archea) is a separate instance of design. That number, of course, would still dwarf the number of human designs. But this would still be a rather extreme creationist position, and @Sam26 has admitted that he accepts evolution. Is Life a single instance of design then? Or perhaps even the nomological structure of the universe? But the formula "parts that together perform a higher order function" (problematic as it is) can hardly apply to life in general or the laws of nature - it is clearly inspired by particular instances of organismal "designs".

So maybe @Sam26 would be sympathetic to such ID advocates as Michael Behe, who accept some role for natural evolution, but stop well short of the universal common descent? The picture that they paint of evolution is that of a creaking, forever stalling mechanism that requires God to engage in unceasing busywork, pushing here and tinkering there to keep things going. The results of this tinkering include such wonders as the emergence of the malarial organism's resistance to the only effective antimalarial drug (Behe's favorite example) - apparently so that more poor African children can suffer and die.

But Behe and other prominent ID advocates' design criteria are substantially different from the vague one that @Sam26 offered. They can be basically summarized as "Whatever nature cannot do" - Design of the Gaps, in other words. Behe capitalizes on "irreducible complexity" - the idea that a mechanism in which the removal of any single part would compromise its function cannot evolve by natural means and therefore has to be magicked every time. Bill Dembski does something similar with his "universal probability bound" numerology and a number of other abortive attempts at demarcating design as a complement to nature. These ID proponents do not posit that every complex system that presents the appearance of a functional mechanism must be an instance of design (although that may be the conclusion for which some of them aim); rather, they are a priori agnostic on what nature alone can accomplish, but they claim that there is a limit to nature's autonomous capabilities, that what our universe exemplifies goes beyond that limit, and that anything that is left over is ipso facto an instance of "intelligent design."

First, if I was to put forth the argument it would take the following inductive form: — Sam26

As @Pseudonym says, this is not an inductive argument - this is no argument at all.

By higher order, I mean that when parts are put together they achieve a higher order than any part alone. — Sam26

You really don't see how unhelpful this circular explanation is?


The theory of Intelligent Design comes down to this:



OK, so this was a bit of silly fun, and yet this is essentially correct. The Intelligent Design "explanation" is that an agent with unknown motives and unconstrained abilities conceived and brought about by unknown means... whatever it is that cries out for an explanation, just the way it actually happens to be.

In other words: Magic man dunnit.

The problem with this "theory" has already been unwittingly identified by one of its proponents in this thread:

On the other hand, if those who don't believe in intelligent design aren't committing the fallacy of the self-sealing argument, answer the following: What would count as evidence of intelligent design? — Sam26

The answer is, of course - nothing. And that's not a "fallacy of the self-sealing argument" - that is a fatal defect of a theory, which is in-principle untestable. It can account for anything and its opposite. Hell, it could even counterfactually account for nothing! If there were no physical universe, that would just mean that the Designer did not get around to design it. If the universe was not life-supporting - well, apparently that's just what the Designer wanted. If it was completely chaotic - that must have been the plan all along. Good design counts; bad design counts as well! Anything goes - and therefore nothing can serve as evidence.

Evidence is contrastive: for there to be evidence for, there must be potential evidence against. Bayesian model of inductive inference shows this quantitatively, but in truth every more-or-less sensible empirical epistemology says the same thing.

Meanwhile, a senior official in Trump administration effectively sabotaged the release of the much-anticipated list of corrupt Russian oligarchs and officials who benefited from their ties to the Kremlin. The impending event caused much anxiety in Russian power circles; reportedly, meetings were conducted at different levels of government just to discuss possible courses of action following the release of the list.

When the "Kremlin list" finally came out, in Russia it was met with incredulity, mirth and relief. It included the complete list of richest businessmen cribbed directly from the latest Russian Forbes report, plus the list of all heads of government departments, including even such innocent figures as the head of the presidential human rights council. Naturally, such a formal and all-inclusive catalogue is worthless. And one wonders why it took months to come up with a list that could have been compiled within a few hours at most.

According to Anders Åslund, who was involved in the Congress-mandated effort, that's pretty much what happened. At the last moment some unknown administration official ditched the work of Russia experts and replaced it with this nonsense, which made the whole effort look ridiculous.

In other words, I am suggesting that to follow a rule of induction is no different to following any other rule; it is a normative principle pertaining to language-games, but not in any way that is significant to metaphysics or epistemology. — sime

Of course induction is normative - I don't understand why you keep saying this as if this is something controversial. And your last remark makes me wonder what you think metaphysics and epistemology are about.

No one denies that we do think - and behave - inductively (except maybe Popperians). — SophistiCat

Umm, no. Popperians wouldn't claim so either: — Ying

I am not sure why you posted this lengthy excerpt in response to my off-hand remark. In it Popper criticizes Hume's psychological account of induction, ending up endorsing the view that "We obtain our knowledge by a non-inductive procedure."

First of all, I wasn't referring to Hume specifically. By "inductive thinking" I meant our tendency to identify patterns of occurrences and extrapolate them beyond the available concrete facts, both as a way of explaining what we know and of predicting what we don't know.

You might instead argue that Popper rather overstates his opposition to induction, and that his own view is distinguished only in some particulars from the common-sense take that I outlined above. But this is not all too obvious from your quote.

Anyway, this is all very dated stuff, of interest mainly to historians.

Sorry, i meant warrant being epistemologically vacuous. — sime

I still have no idea what you mean by this. Warrant is what makes epistemology normative. To say that such and such belief is warranted is to say that you can and should believe such and such. What is vacuous about this?

The action taken was telling McGahn to have Mueller fired. What exactly would it take for you to accept it as an action/order? Must Trump personally hand deliver a notice of termination? — Michael

"Attempted murder", now honestly, what is that!? Do they give a Nobel prize for "attempted" chemistry?

Doesn't the difference entirely rest upon the normative and hence subjective context by which we judge behaviour to be future-anticipating? — sime

Of course warrant is normative. How can you say that it is both normative and vacuous? That seems contradictory.

If a man's beliefs are identified with his non-verbal behaviour — sime

That is a very contentious proposition, and in any case, I don't see how it bears on warrant. No one denies that we do think - and behave - inductively (except maybe Popperians).

(1) God exists as a matter of necessity,
or
(2) It is at least logically coherent to think of God as a necessary being.

You say that (1) obviously entails the desired conclusion, but as you point out, it is worthless because (1) just is the conclusion. So we have to understand the premise as (2). I am not sure what would be wrong with (2). You have said it is too weak, but I'm not sure why. — PossibleAaran

That the second premise seems weak is a point in its favor (whether it really is weaker than the first premise and whether it even makes sense is debatable) - it is what helps to sell it as a premise to someone who does not already believe the conclusion.

(2*) The concept of a being that necessarily exists is logically coherent.
(4) Therefore, it is logically possible that there is a being that necessarily exists.
(5) Therefore, there is a being that necessarily exists.

The inference from (4) to (5) is just collapsing the modal operators in accord with S5. The inference from (2*) to (4) assumes that if a concept is logically coherent, it is logically possible that it is instantiated. — PossibleAaran

Yes, and my point is that this interpretation of possibility makes it unfaithful to the underlying logic, because it suggests that there is some difference between (2) or (2*) and (1), whereas there should be none.

Actually, it is not all that clear what it means to say "The concept of a being that necessarily exists is logically coherent." I hold the same opinion as you regarding necessary existents: with no constraints on possible worlds other than the rules of logical inference, there should not be any. (I am bracketing off "things" like ideas, abstractions, logical and mathematical entities and the like - presumably, when we talk about the existence of God, we are interested in something more than a mere idea of God.) But then it follows that the concept of a being that necessarily exists is inconsistent with this proposition that I already hold to be true, given the rules. So how is it coherent? Of course, as I mentioned earlier, we could play by different rules, stipulating, for example, that the relevant possible worlds are only those in which God exists (in much the same way as in my earlier example, where all relevant possible worlds contained the same immovable walls in the same places). That idea would be coherent - but unfortunately, stipulating such rules begs the question.

But again, the reason I resent Plantiga's argument is that he seems to want to sidestep such close examination of the premise, encouraging the reader instead to accept the premise because it sounds so unassuming and innocent. And so seemingly different from the proposition "God exists in all possible worlds" contained inside it. It is as if we were just picking up that outrageous proposition and looking at it at arm's length. But that feeling is betrayed, once the meaning of possibility is switched in mid-argument.

Let me make some general remarks first, just to make sure that we are on the same page (and to help those who are less conversant with the topic).

1. Modality is a way of thinking, talking, reasoning about the world. Modality can be a property of a proposition, but It makes no sense to talk about modal properties of a thing. Modality is a way of talking about things. So a "necessary being" is just a shorthand for saying that it is necessarily the case that such and such exists.

2. Modality can be understood and deployed in different ways. Those ways differ in their ground rules: what we hold to be fixed about the world, and what we allow to vary. Thus, an epistemic modality is where we reason from available evidence (presumably, also taking certain other things as given, such as known laws of nature). Nomic modality is where we hold just (some) laws of nature as fixed. Metaphysical modality is where we hold certain metaphysical constraints as fixed. And so on. Any set of constraints generates its own modal framework. As a limiting case, a priori (or logical) modality is where only the rules of inference are fixed.

For example, if I need to make my way from my office on the second floor to another office on the fifth floor, there are different ways in which it is possible for me to accomplish this. I can take different corridors, take different turns, use the stairs or the elevator, etc. But whatever I do, I have to contend with certain necessary facts: the fact that there are walls that I can neither move nor destroy (they are necessary beings in this context - they always exist in the same way, whatever course of action I take). I also cannot fly or teleport, there is a limit to the speed of my movement, etc.

3. There are different mathematical theories of modality, or modal logics. A theory is agnostic about the world on which it operates; it is agnostic even about the meaning of modal terms. All it does is it establishes certain rules for manipulating modal propositions. Defining the world and giving meaning to the modal operators gives a particular interpretation to the theory. As long as the rules of the theory are obeyed throughout, you are entitled to make use of its theorems to make meaningful inferences.

Now, returning to Plantiga's argument:

The starting premise is that it is logically possible that a maximally great being exists. If someone believes that a maximally great being does exist, then they surely also believe that it is logically possible. Now consider someone who doesn't already believe the conclusion. Such a person might believe that the concept of a maximally great being is coherent. I think many people who deny the existence of God do believe that the concept is at least coherent. But then, it could be pointed out to them that this premise, which they believe, entails that a maximally great being exists. Why wouldn't that be an effective argument? — PossibleAaran

You want to make use of the so-called S5 modal logic. In this theory, stringing several modal operators together has the same effect as taking just the last of those operators. So, something that is possibly necessary is just necessary. Any model (i.e. true interpretation) of this theory has to respect that rule. So when you propose that "it is ... possible that a ... being [necessarily] exists," that has to be understood as just proposing that "a ... being [necessarily] exists." Whatever interpretation you give to this proposition - however you interpret possibility and whatever properties your proposed being possesses - what I wrote above has to be the case, or else this is not a model of S5.

Yet, the way you want to reason, there seems to be a difference between the following two propositions:

(1) God exists as a matter of necessity,
(2) It is at least logically coherent to think of God as a necessary being.

One is a very strong proposition that obviously entails the conclusion of the argument, and thus it is no good as a premise. The other sounds like a much weaker proposition, one that we could accept without committing to the first proposition. Whether that is actually a reasonable reading of these sentences is not even the point - the fact is that you are trying to equivocate on the meaning of your modal terms. You are insinuating a meaning that is not consistent with the theory whose theorem you then want to use in order to reach the conclusion of the argument. You are not arguing in good faith.

All of this is quite uncharitable to Plantinga. — PossibleAaran

He does define his 'super-duper being' very carefully. He defines a maximally great being as one which is maximally excellent in every possible world, and maximal excellence is defined as entailing omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection. To wit, the first two premises of his argument from the Nature of Necessity, page 214 — PossibleAaran

Fair enough, I didn't read that book - my recollection is of his own gloss of the argument in a short paper that I no longer have at hand. So let's assume the more careful formulation as you present it.

In that case, he seems to be fairly laying his cards on the table (assuming the reader is paying attention!), thus severely handicapping the argument right from the start. His ontological argument is much weaker than Anselm's; he does not just beg the question: the premise that he asks us to accept is much stronger than the conclusion of the argument. Thus, even those who already believe the conclusion independently may not accept his starting premise. (You seem to be of that opinion, judging by what you said concerning the issue of necessary existence.)

I think there's a fundamental problem with saying that a logical necessity is logically possible. I can't quite put my finger on what that problem is, though, but as I said before, my instinct is that it's related in kind to Tarski's hierarchy of language. — Michael

It is not problematic in the formal system to which Plantinga appeals. But that formal system (modal logic known as S5) basically ratifies your intuition: it posits as an axiom (or is it a theorem?) that adding the qualification of possibility to something that is already necessary changes nothing - it is an empty move devoid of any consequence, like multiplying by one or adding zero. (By the way, the same happens when you qualify possibility with necessity: necessity in that case does no work either.) So when that move is made and expounded on in a natural language formulation that seems to appeal to our informal intuitions concerning possibility, and yet in the end we are assured that "possibility" and "necessity" were used in their strict formal sense all along, you are right to be suspicious.

But then, suppose I don't have this bias. Suppose that I am not such that, when I see that a premise entails that God exists, I will not accept that premise. — PossibleAaran

I hope I explained why this is not the reason that neither I nor anyone who understands the argument that Plantinga is making - not in retrospect, but right as it is unfolding - would be likely to accept it.

You also say that it is illegitimate to predicate necessary existence. Why? You say that Michael's argument shows why. But which argument of Michael's do you mean? — PossibleAaran

It is what @StreetlightX and @Michael (and, no doubt, others who have criticized Anselm's argument) have said about predicating existence (necessary existence, as has been discussed, has even more severe problems). Having properties implies existence. So when we predicate a property of something, the qualification "provided that the thing exists" is already implied. When we define a unicorn as "a horse with a single horn," the same definition could be equivalently restated as "a being, such that if it exists, it exists as a horse with a single horn." The actual predicate here is still "being a horse with a single horn," nothing more. So when we "predicate" existence of a being, that is equivalent to saying "a being, such that if it exists, it exists" - which is just a tautology that applies to any hypothetical being.

Do you mean the argument that we can tack 'necessary existence' onto any concept and then create an argument for its existence, regardless of what the concept is? — PossibleAaran

That, too. Plantinga's argument is, if anything, even easier to parody than the original. Those attributes of Super-Dupeness Maximal Greatness do no work in the argument - they ride free and thus can be replaced with anything whatsoever.

Perhaps we could argue that the world is the necessary thing, as it seems tautological to say that the world exists in every possible world. — Michael

Possible worlds for the World are just all the ways in which the World could possibly be (where the sense of "possibility" is left open).

There are many versions of it, some intensely complicated. The OPs version is Anselmian, and those arguments typically run:

(1) If God exists then God necessarily exists. (G -> nG) [Partial Definition of God]
(2) If its logically possible that God exists then God exists (pG -> G) [From (1)]
(3) It is logically possible that God exists. (pG) [Premise]
(C) God exists (G) [From 1-3]. — PossibleAaran

This doesn't really have much to do with Anselm's argument, other than being a species of an a priori "ontological" argument, one that, in a way of magical thinking, attempts to reify logical constructs.

Imagine a being, such that it cannot fail to exist.
Therefore, it exists. — SophistiCat

You see I don't think so. None of the premises of the argument say 'imagine a being such that it cannot fail to exist'. — PossibleAaran

I glossed possibility as conceivability - perhaps not quite what Plantinga was trying for. In his version he actually breaks the premise into two in order to obfuscate his meaning. It goes something like this:

First he asks us to accept that a Super-Duper Being is at least within the realm of the possible (not his exact words, of course, but that doesn't matter, since he doesn't explain what the words mean in this premise). Hopefully, a charitable and careless reader will not ask what a Super-Duper Being is and will grant this premise for the sake of an argument.

Then he spring the trap: a Super-Duper Being is one that, among other things, exists necessarily (cannot fail to exist). And he further stipulates that the words "possible" and "necessary" were being used in a technical sense of the S5 modal logic, where stacked modal operators collapse into one.

In the possible world semantics, a Super-Duper being is such that, if it exists in one possible world, it exists in all possible worlds. So the premise then is simply that it does exist in at least one possible world. Of course, stated this way, no one who does not independently believe the conclusion would go along with such an argument (and those who do ought not go along with it either).

But necessary existence is a property, and is immune to the criticism which Kant makes. — PossibleAaran

It is illegitimate to predicate existence in all possible worlds, just as it is illegitimate to predicate existence in some possible worlds. And @Michael's argument neatly shows why it makes no sense to predicate existence.

The 'argument' may as well read:

There exists a being, such that, it exists.
Therefore, it exists. — StreetlightX

Or,

Imagine a being, such that it cannot fail to exist.
Therefore, it exists.

(That's Plantinga's version, only he obfuscates it a bit.)