Re: The Anthropic principle
Chris OConnor:
My opinion has always been that the Anthropic Principle is nothing more than a variation of the "god of the gaps" argument.The basic version that I've read doesn't really incline itself in that direction, although, maybe that's a popular way to employ the principle. You seem to be more familiar with AP than I am, so could you point me in the direction of some uses of AP to "fill the gap," so to speak?
Think about an analogy. If you won the lottery this Saturday would you feel as if it was a miracle or magical? Did God have a hand in it?I see what you're getting at, and this analogy may be sufficient to illustrate that point with this group, but I don't think it would have much effect on someone who already posits AP as an argument for the existence of an intelligent designer. Look at it this way: a person arguing for the existence of a purposeful creation is not so interested in the incident of the creation so much as the purpose behind it. If they won the lottery, they wouldn't see meaning in the fact that
someone won the lottery, but rather the fact that
they won the lottery. Why them instead of someone else? Of course, you can say that it was random, but that doesn't actually make an argument to someone who is seeking an explanation that highlights the forces behind the outcome. Such a person, for whatever reason, believes these to be motive forces. Arguing randomness isn't going to do it. The person needs an argument that substantiates the occurence of one possibility over another, and randomness doesn't really substantiate anything -- it puts substantiation out of reach.
Besides, it seems to me that a good naturalist wouldn't argue randomness or probability as though those were answers unto itself. Rather, they'd argue deterministic causation, as opposed to conscious causation. That is, Alan won the lottery rather than Bill because of the full chain of events beginning with the Big Bang, perhaps earlier; and further, that it is theoretically, if not literally, plausible that you could trace that chain of events, ennumerating in reverse order, each causal event, until you arrived at the initial event, but that tracing it such would fail to lead us to any deeper meaning in the sense of purpose. Does that seem about right? Isn't that more or less the reason that the existence of life has failed to impress you?
My problem is that theists are assuming that the combo of constants that brought forth life in our cosmos is the ONLY possible combo that could bring forth ANY sort of life.Proponents of intelligent design, you mean? I don't see any reason why that would be a belief to which all theists would adhere, or to which any particular theists ought to adhere.
misterpessimistic:
The anthropic principle, as stated by Mad, is acceptable to me, but empty of any real attempt to look around us; it acknowledges that we exist because the ingredients necessary for our existence were there.Yeah, I don't think it's meant to prove or demonstrate anything on its own. It's more like a mathematic formula that is useful in larger arguments, and of common enough use to warrant its own name. How it's used is the issue, and I'd be interested to see a legitimate use, as opposed to the illegitimate uses we've already supposed.
I don't think it's tautological, though. It doesn't really argue itself, and the reason it seems tautological, more than likely, is that it calls upon the existence of humans as part of the equation. To demonstrate that it's not tautological, imagine it restated as the Dragopic principle:
The existence of dragons demonstrates the existence of all the circumstances necessary to the existence of dragons. If we had clear evidence of the existence of dragons, that would suffice to prove the existence of etc etc. On the other hand, the fact that there are no dragons
does not prove that the circumstances which
could produce dragons don't exist. The argument is uni-directional, not circular.
Humans wonder over the fact that we exist because we CAN wonder over the fact that we exist.I hate boiling it down to human nature, if for no other reason than that we can't really prove that abstract activities like wondering are human nature. We'd have to be a great deal more precise about what we mean by "wonder" and "human nature," and I don't think we can do that without limiting the terms so much that they no longer mean what we intended to say.
I'd say that people wonder over the fact that we exist because we think knowing the origin will help us in some way, though we're not always sure of how, in particular because we aren't terribly sure of what kind of answers we'll get.
Tweet This Topic
