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Utility versus Futility

Among the many interlocking principles that I find useful in discussing metaphysics is the one I call, “Utility versus Futility.”

It’s really quite simple. If two metaphysical proposals (or theories) are equally supportable by evidence and logic, then the one to prefer should be the one with more practicality, more usefulness.

For example, let us consider whether the universe follows coherent natural laws, or instead, whether everything happens purely at random, in which case, the universe could at any moment revert to incomprehensible chaos. (This second has actually been seriously proposed, and goes under such names as “Last Thursdayism,” which says that the entire universe came into being, fully formed including with our memories, only last Thursday—or a moment ago—and can vanish at any instant.)

Both proposals can be argued with logic and evidence, but only the first proposal has any practical merit, for example, as in planning for NEXT Thursday.

This principle is useful in such topics of discussion as, do we have NO free will? Are we incapable of knowing anything at all? Are we illusions, or figments of a computer’s imagination, or dreams by extraterrestrial aliens?

One cannot entirely disprove such notions, but if one accepts them, will his life be improved? Can falsehood lead only, in the end, to catastrophe and suffering? If so, then is it not incumbent to seek truth?

Less directly connected, are cases in which the principle of utility applies in varying degrees. For example: are we transient physical (or even mental) phenomena, or are we eternal sovereign beings? Are we pawns of the gods, or are we the creatures of a loving deity? Are we happenstance coincidences, or deliberately formed?

Each of us must decide for himself which path, from among the innumerable many, to choose, and none of us has such vast and infallible wisdom as to reliably make the best choice.

I therefore find it more useful to rely on revealed wisdom, such as in the Bible, rather than to think myself capable of working out the answers on my own.

In the end, we must each reap as we sow.

Does the Anthropic Principle Explain Anything?

The universe seems specially designed to support life, intelligent life, and technological civilization.  Were the universe even slightly different in its exquisitely detailed construction, even down to the structure of the atom, then the universe would be at most either a fiery inferno or a frigid expanse, unable to support life at all.  This fact is recognized by nearly all physicists, including atheists.

Two opposing possibilities are put forth to explain this astounding fact.  One of them is intentional creation by a divine being.  The other is that there are so many universes that, by chance alone, one of them is exactly like ours, with no divine creation needed.

The essence of the anthropic argument is that, we exist in this universe, because in no lifeless universe could there be anyone attempting to explain how life arose.  That seems to make perfect sense, at first, but upon closer examination, the anthropic principle contains fatal flaws.  It reminds one of the scurrilous accusation that, the police would not be arresting you if you were innocent.

Granted, that analogy is not perfect, but it demonstrates that our way of thinking can be circular.  The anthropic argument is a trap resulting from circular thinking.  In a way, it says that, whenever anyone proposes intentional creation of the universe, his argument is invalidated by the very fact that he could not argue his case in a lifeless universe.  Therefore, the more detailed, and more nuanced arguments for intentional creation are all too often immediately dismissed without further thought on the matter by skeptics.

One of the counter-arguments against “happenstance” design of the universe, that is to say, a universe of entirely probabilistic coincidences, is one that I have not yet seen invoked by anyone except myself (although it may have been), so here is my claim to fifteen seconds of fame:  chance cannot operate except within intentionally designed parameters.  I do not have a clever or catchy name for that principle, so for now, I will call it, The Principle of Rigged Probability.  Please offer a better term, but for now, let’s just explain what it means.

The simplest example (and perhaps most familiar) is that of a coin flip.  If one flips a coin, it will land either heads or tails.  Those are (for the sake of this discussion) the only two possibilities.  Either one could occur, and unless we have “rigged” the game, the outcome is determined entirely by chance.  Without convincing evidence of intent, there is no need to ascribe the outcome to anything other than the laws of probability.  Case closed.  Or, is it?

The coin has two sides, but only because it is designed that way.  If that is not a satisfactory proof of the Principle of Rigged Probability, then let’s up the ante to another common example, the roll of dice.

Using only one die of the pair of dice, let us ask, what is the likelihood of a die roll landing a six?  One might immediately say, the odds are one in six, but that is wrong, because it assumes that the die has six sides.  If the die does have six sides, then it was designed that way, but it might have as few as four sides, or any number greater than four.  In other words, before calculating the probability of something happening, one must first specify the parameters in which chance operates in each case.  (If the parameters were infinite, then the chance of anything would be X in infinity, effectively zero.)

Every instance of chance works this way.  It is absurd to say something like, the chance is three.  We can say, one in three, or three in some other number, but regardless, we must specify the parameters.

This is the fatal flaw in the anthropic principle.  It is an argument from stubbornness, a rejection of reasoned analysis.

The argument for intentional creation, on the other hand, is based in solid evidence, empiric observation, and disciplined reason.  It argues that, the parameters are intentionally designed.   If it were not a valid argument, your chances of being here to refute it would be zero.

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Why the Universe Cannot Have Arisen by Chance

The universe either had a beginning, or it did not.

If it did not have a beginning, then it has always existed.

If it did have a beginning, then it arose from nothing.

 

Neither of these possibilities is comprehensible, yet one of them must be true.

Therefore, the question of how the universe began is unanswerable.  It is futile to ask.

In any case, there is “something” instead of “nothing.”

 

Given that the universe does exist, then the next question is, why does it have the properties that we observe it to have?  Why not some other way?

 

Here, the binary alternatives are, that its properties are determined by chance, or if not by chance, then by intentional design.  Which is it?

 

The argument for chance must rely on a huge number of universes, so many that we may consider that number to be virtually infinite, as far as our comprehension is concerned.

 

Even here, however, the argument for chance falls apart, because of this:  in order for chance to operate, it must do so only within designed parameters.  Let us demonstrate this fact.

 

Trick question:  if one rolls a single die (singular of dice), what is the chance that the die will land a six?  If you answer, “one chance in six,” then you are assuming the die to be designed to have six sides, but in fact, it could have any number of sides, four or more.  Therefore, the operation of chance governing the die roll depends on the designed parameters.

 

There is no other form of chance.  One cannot meaningfully say, the chance is three, or five, or X.   It has to be three out of ten, or five out of X, etc.  Before chance can operate, its parameters must be specified, and those parameters cannot themselves be pure chance, unless constrained by other parameters.  In the end, all parameters are designed.

 

The parameters of the universe include its constants, such as gravitation, light speed, nuclear forces and so on.  Even if we say that those are determined by chance, we must specify the parameters in which that chance operates.  There is no getting away from it.  Chance requires design.

 

The universe has twenty-seven constants (more or less depending on the physicist, but in any case, a set number), and so the question is, why twenty-seven?  Why not five?  Why not a billion?  The number of the constants is not random, it is designed.  Even among billions of universes, or however many there may be, each universe has a number of parameters, and even if that is by chance, one must still operate within design—one chance in how many?

 

No matter how hard we may try to avoid design, we cannot.  We cannot substitute chance for design.  Design just will not go away.  The universe is (or the universes are) designed.

 

Designed for what?  Since our universe seems to be precisely designed to support life, technology and civilization, it is most likely that that is what it is designed to do.

 

 

 

Inherent Unpredictability

 --by Robert Arvay

It seems logical to many educated people that, if one knows everything about the state of a closed system, then one can, at least in principle, predict (or accurately calculate) all future states of that system. Yet, this seeming logic is provably false, as indicated by the famous three-body problem—according to which, even in principle, certain future states (or events) of finite, closed systems are incalculable. It is important to state this correctly. The unpredictability arises not because of any inadequacies of our skill in mathematics, but rather, what may be an inherent property of math and/or physics.

Quoting from Space-dot-Com (Charlie Wood), “Famed mathematician Henri Poincaré showed in 1889 that no equation could accurately predict the positions of all three bodies at all future moments, winning a competition sponsored by King Oscar II of Sweden. In this three-body case, Poincaré had discovered the first instance of chaos, a phenomenon whose outcome can effectively disconnect from how it began.”

Those last words in that quote are profound. They imply, perhaps more than merely imply, that the final state of a system might be independent of its beginning state.

If taken literally, that seems impossible from a deterministic standpoint. Even if we cannot mathematically compute an outcome, the universe, so to speak, does in fact “know” what the outcome will be, since by the chain of cause-and-effect, each step in the sequence is predetermined and inalterable. This means that the outcome is not detached from the beginning. It is inextricably connected through causation.

Computer simulations try to mimic this natural sequence of cause and effect, but achieve only limited success, because at each step, there is a slight, unavoidable inaccuracy, an approximation error. At first, such an error is so tiny as to be negligible, but after many iterations, the errors add up, until the calculations become wildly inaccurate. Supercomputers, interlocked with large numbers of processors, can keep the errors within limits, but at best, they achieve only approximations, not precise solutions.

What we are left with, is a fog of unpredictability that extends not only forward in time, but also, backward. We can use statistical methods to determine ranges of possibilities, but those ranges contain what are called, “outliers,” the improbable but still possible, extreme edges of the bell curve graph.

Note also that these imprecisions are not the same as those found in quantum mechanics, in which some theories disavow any “hidden variables,” which (if they exist at all) in principle could remove the effects of chance from physical phenomena, such as for example, nuclear decay. The inherent unpredictability of the three-body-problem is of a different sort than random chance, or randomness dissociated with physical states. What the three-body problem says is that, in effect, the universe “knows,” but will not allow us to know, the future state of certain closed systems, no matter how much we know about that present system.

What does all this mean, in metaphysics?

It reminds us of the debate between determinism and volition. If the physical universe is purely deterministic, it does not allow for free will, even if it does allow for unpredictability. This is because free will contains the principle of conscious intent. Free will is not random; it is goal-oriented.

If the universe is not deterministic, if instead there is free will, then there is an external reality, a super-nature, that governs the natural. Free will can override the chain of cause-and-effect. There is a Creator.

Life, consciousness and free will are the interlocked aspects of triunity in the physical world.

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Happiness does not come from what you have. It comes from what you are.

Happiness is a choice.  If you choose to be happy, then choose to be compassionate.  Choose to be humble.  Choose to be productive, that is, industrious, hard working. 

Happy people are self-disciplined. They are masters of themselves, and servants to others.  They are never selfish, but always grateful for what they have.  They take pride in doing a good job, but are never boastful.  They rejoice in the success of others, never resentful.

Happy people seek not possessions, but wisdom.  They seek not praise, but respect, and that begins with respect for others.  They never feel entitled to respect, but seek to earn it. 

Happy people understand that material possessions are not toys for self-indulgence, but are tools for doing good.

Happy people seek to help other people be happy.

(These thoughts do not come from me; they are inspired by various passages from the Bible.)

Is Science Leading us Backward?

I recently watched a video interview of scientists who challenge Darwinian Evolution Theory. One of them made a remark that I found very profound. He said that evolution, at its core, seeks to explain the complexity of life. But here is its problem. The cell, which is considered to be the basic unit of living organisms, is enormously complicated. What's more, the problem is that the more we learn about the cell, the more complicated we find it to be. Therefore, instead of getting closer to explaining the complexity of life, we are getting farther away from it.

The video is at

Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution - YouTube

By extension, the same problem seems to exist with physicalism in general.    It is why there is a trend among scientists to question why it is that no new territory in science has been successfully resolved in over 100 years.  That may be somewhat of an overstatement, especially in terms of technology, but essentially, relativity and quantum mechanics are the most recent paradigm shifts. 

My personal prediction is that science will reach (and may already be reaching) a sort of brick wall, in which it is recognized that there are fundamental principles of nature that govern its workings, but for which there is no physical explanation.

To quote me (LOL), "Nature cannot have arisen by natural means, because until nature existed, there were no natural means."  If someone else said that first, my apologies.