An omnipotent benevolent god would shout at us from the clouds like the Monty Python movies, saying "stop that factory farming shit right now, assholes!". We don't observe this, therefore he doesn't exist.
It could have been lot easier. God could have created (or "guided the evolution" or whatever) humans to be strict herbivores.
For instance, quoting from above:
<<All they [theists] need to hold is that God sets up the evolutionary process so that our beliefs about math, logic, morality, and the likelihood of different states of affairs is accurate. >>
God "set up the evolutionary process" so that our beliefs about certain things were correct. But alack, She didn't set it up such that we were strict herbivores.
If there is a god, she is either evil or amoral. This much is almost certain.
But an amoral god won’t do any of the work BB wants Her to do, things like ensure humans aren’t deceived about causality, there is a grounding for morality etc.
Small note: the improved version of the argument from motion (which is due to people like Geach, Martin, and Lamont) doesn't require the impossibility of infinite causal chains; what is requires is the claim that if every member of a plurality has a cause, then the whole plurality has a joint cause. This plurality could be infinite, and the principle still applies.
1/ I can't explain/account for/justify X (where X can be motion, physical reality [!!!], morality, causation, psychophysical harmony, consciousness etc)
2/ Therefore, perfect God.
Even if I grant you premise 1/, the conclusion doesn't follow.
Such arguments haven't done well historically - with the best example being evolution explaining humans as opposed to creation.
Reading these sorts of things in the 21st century from the Greatest Undergraduate Student In Philosophy in the World, I'm having even more respect for Spinoza. You can disagree with him but at least, he honestly tried to come up with an objective conception of a god and wasn't just a slave of his time's prejudices.
For example, this is from a D- tier argument:
<<By regress, the first thing can’t be made of parts, because it would need something else to bind it together. Thus, there must be something without parts, which is argued to be God>>.
We can't explain how parts bind together -> therefore God.
"Similarly, it’s a big coincidence that our laws apply to the things that exist on the governing account. The overwhelming majority of conceivable laws would not be this way. The overwhelming majority of imaginable laws wouldn’t apply to the things that exist; it’s thus a major coincidence that the actual laws are applicable."
Suppose there are laws that do not apply to the things that exist, or to things that are in any way accessible to our senses. In fact, suppose there are a tremendous number of such laws, dwarfing those that apply to the things that exist and interact with us. What would we perceive differently? And if the answer is nothing, couldn't this argument equally well be an argument that, insofar as it makes any sense for there to be such laws, we ought to suppose there are?
Regarding the anthropic argument, 5 is also extremely controversial. It's far from clear that it's good to create and even if it was, you would also need to show that God doesn't have a morally sufficient reason to abstain from creating (even given that it was good), which seems also very hard to do
I'm having trouble seeing the difference between the Nomological Argument and the Argument from Laws. I'm surprised the latter gets a C+ while the former gets an F.
Hey just a quick question, because maybe I'm missing something here. 2 things specifically about the anthropic arguement:
First of all, isn't a quite common naturalistic view that of infinite time/at least infinite future, specifically most of the time to say something along the lines that every possible particle state will happen eventually? It seems to me that that stance predicts the existence of enough people (an infinite number). Or am I being silly and missing why that violates induction or is untenable some other way?
Second of all, why specifically does "the goodness of God’s creation" (and therefore theism) naturally predict this? If anything I know that a number of theistic stances, say, Christendom, predicts rather the opposite. Revelation 21-22 describes the creation of a New Heaven and Earth wherein people "neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Matthew 22:30), suggesting an end to human reproduction.
Though I have some other bones about some things (I don't love Chalmers' natrualistic dualism due to disagreeing with 2-d semantics and as such the psychophysical, and I feel as if you've unfairly strawmanned the, albiet highly unintuitve, natrualistic positions of the late Dan Dennet, etc.), I must say I really enjoyed this, thanks for putting this together!
Also just another quick followup; I'm rather sorry I can't locate this within your current blog posts, but can you give me a quick pointer in the direction of the posts you've made that explain why you think (I'm assuming):
1) Utilitarianism (and for that matter any sort of objective morality, or even reality full stop) exists/is true?
2) Why/how that brand of utilitarianism operates (this is likely a necessary following from the above's formulation, but I'm just curious about i.e. factory farming)
On Modal Rationalism: I’m not sure how much this favors theism. Suppose MR is true, and suppose we think atheism is true and that there’s at least one necessary concrete entity. The idea is supposed to be that this makes things tricky for the atheist because at least, on theism, some ontological argument might be sound (even if not persuasive). However, Plantinga’s Modal Ontological argument famously suffers from a symmetrical ontological argument for atheism (namely, that it is possible that God doesn’t exist implies that God doesn’t exist at any world). I don’t see why the atheist can’t say that *this* sort of ontological argument, or something like it, could be the a priori deduction MR requires. Theism being necessarily false is just as plausibly deducible from the armchair as theism being necessarily true.
You might respond that the problem is that any *specific* atheistic proposal for the necessary being isn’t going to be deducible. But, in fact, the atheist doesn’t have to accept that there’s some specific physical structure which is necessary (and thus deducible). It might be that some more general thing (say, a simple wave that could take on infinitely many complex variations) is necessary, and that it is clearly deducible by: (1) showing non-theism is necessarily true, (2) showing that this general structure encompasses all the metaphysical possibilities.
I actually think there is a correct version of the modal ontological argument, which is:
1. It is possible that a maximally excellent being doesn't exist.
2. If a maximally great being exists, then it is necessary that a maximally excellent being exists.
3. Therefore, a maximally great being doesn't exist.
Here, a "maximally excellent being" is defined the same way as an MGB, except that it's not required to be necessary. Basically it's an MGB minus the modal parts. The first premise doesn't suffer from any circularity issues like the original MOA does, nor is there any problem with a symmetrical argument for theism because an MEB can be possible without being necessary. Thus, we can accept the symmetric premise that it's possible for an MEB to exist without rejecting Premise 1 (the symmetric argument would only undermine an atheist who thinks that, necessarily, and MEB doesn't exist, rather than one who thinks that necessarily an MGB doesn't exist or that a contingent MEB doesn't exist). The first premise also seems to follow from modal rationalism as well as basically every other plausible hypothesis about how we can determine that something is possible.
The second premise is just the definition of an MGB: An MGB is a necessary MEB.
The conclusion, of course, doesn't undermine theists who believe in a contingent God. It's only meant to undermine necessitarian theists and the original MOA.
Nice! This argument bolsters the point about MR above. However, for what it’s worth, I think theists who believe in a necessary God have really good reason to reject (1)—namely, all the reasons they have for rejecting the premise that a MGB possibly doesn’t exist. The two are on a par (especially because each of the premises are true if and only if the other one is). It’s not as though the *necessary existence* of a MGB plays any role (evidentially) in thinking that there isn’t a possible world where the MGB fails to exist. Now, notice that this isn’t a [persuasive] reason to think (1) is *false*—it’s just pointing out that (1) should cause no less worries for the theist than the possibility premise in the usual reverse MOA.
Yeah, the main point of this is just to show that if you have a presumption in favor of possibility, which the MOA assumes, then the correct argument to make would imply that both necessitarian theism and necessitarian atheism are false, leaving us with the possibility of a contingent MEB only. If someone already thinks there are strong reasons to believe that a necessary God exists, this argument won't work against them, just as the possibility premises in favor of theism wouldn't work against someone who already thinks God is impossible.
Re: the anthropic argument, Can't I pascal's mug you into believing any X by claiming that X implies aleph_3↑↑↑3 ems? And then I can pascal's mug you into believing not X by claiming that not X implies aleph_3↑↑↑↑3 ems? These anthropics can basically be dutch booked if you attach any non-zero credence to the various claims about infinite numbers of people existing.
Meanwhile, you can replace "people" in the argument with anything that you like.
Suppose you're in the Louvre standing in front of the Mona Lisa
1. this Mona Lisa exists
2. this Mona Lisa is more likely to exist if there are more total Mona Lisas that exist
3. If 10 Mona Lisas existing makes this one's existence ten times likelier and 100 Mona Lisas existing makes this one's existence 100 times likelier, infinity Mona Lisas existing makes this one's existence infinitely likelier.
4. thus, you should think there are infinite Mona Lisas. This doesn’t stop at the smallest infinity—you should think the number of Mona Lisas that exist is the most that there could be.
5. That’s a really huge number. Theism can nicely explain why that number of Mona Lisas exists, but atheism has no comparable explanation. In fact, because it’s good to create Mona Lisas, theism actively predicts that number of Mona Lisas existing, while atheism does not.
So the argument boils down to:
1. some thing X exists
2. that evidence is infinitely more likely to be observed if the biggest infinity of X exist, therefore after observing one X we are infinitely certain that the biggest infinity of X exist.
3. only god could create the biggest infinity of X, therefore god exists.
It doesn't seem any better than Descartes. It has grossly inadequate contact between the map and the territory.
For this reason, I don’t even find the presumptuous philosopher result particularly counterintuitive. It’s true that on anthropic grounds, according to SIA, worlds with more people are more likely to contain me, which implies I should have a higher credence in physical theories with more people. But this seems like straightforward updating on the evidence of my existence—worlds with more people are likelier to have me, just as, upon discovering a blueberry, one has some reason to think the world has more blueberries.
This might seem to be mistaken reasoning. Upon seeing a blueberry one gains evidence that the universe has blueberries in a large percentage of places, not that there are many blueberries overall (one gains no evidence, for instance, that the universe is big enough to have many blueberries from seeing a blueberry). But crucially this is because one only looks in a limited area, so the odds of seeing a blueberry are higher if the world is more densely populated with blueberries. In contrast, however, if I thought of a random possible blueberry, before having some method of determining if that blueberry is actual, and discovered that that particular blueberry was actual, I’d get evidence that there are many blueberries. This is because in this case, wherever the blueberry is, I’d be in a position to observe it. But this is analogous to the case of my existence: wherever I exist, I’ll be the first to know.
Perhaps one worries that this is the wrong way to think about one’s existence. Your existence is, on such a view, not the kind of thing you should think of as a random event made more likely to occur in a universe with more people. Instead perhaps, as proponents of SSA argue, you should think of your existence as a random event selected from the pool of existences in your reference class. But this is simply to deny SIA. Of course if one thinks about the presumptuous philosopher result from the perspective of some view other than SIA, they won’t find it appealing. But my claim is that there is a perfectly reasonable and consistent way to think about it, in accordance with SIA, where the result becomes not merely some unfortunate result to explain away, but one that actively makes sense. If the objection relies entirely on thinking about things in a way that a proponent of SIA would reject, then it is ineffective in the dialectical context.
"If you want a good heuristic for an ideal tier list, just take the opposite of Redeemed Zoomer’s"
Before I read this, I saw the tier list below and thought, "What the fuck, why does put the absolute worst arguments on the top and the good ones on the bottom?"
I looked into Joseph of Cupertino after reading your previous comments, and I really don't buy it. I find this one to be a more plausible case of a potential miracle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_the_B%C3%A1b/. Though I agree with your general comments on arguments from miracles.
From the Wikipedia page: "Other sources, which include Persian and European reports, give a variety of accounts, some in agreement with the miracle-like Baháʼí story, and some indicating a less miraculous event."
Of course. But even the less-miraculous versions are still really interesting and odd. There isn't a dispute that he and his follower were suspended by ropes and shot at by a firing squad (weird dispute over the size of it), and then he was gone and found alive when the smoke cleared while his follower remained but was alive. And this is fairly recent and well-attested. And in combination with the significance attached to him (that is, it wasn't just some random execution of a criminal), it's even more remarkable. I'm not saying it's a certain miracle as much as that it's a really interesting and strange occurrence that kind of tickles me. And if you're someone who is inclined to believe that God exists and demonstrates that to people through miracles, that's a pretty good candidate (moreso, IMO, than Joseph of Cupertino stories).
I don't know enough to be comfortable answering that. My priors against them are probably too high for me to accept anything as truly miraculous, but I do enjoy reading about that stuff.
Weird coincidence: I was just trying to explain your anthopic argument to some family this afternoon, and I think they actually got it and found it compelling. My sister denies SIA, though.
By the way, do you agree psychophysical harmony fails given strong illusionism about phenomenal consciousness?
Wow, sounds like you should permanently terminate your relationship with your sister.
I don't quite know how strong and weak illusionism differ. PHA fails if there's nothing about consciousness that's surprising a priori--not even an illusion that's unexpected.
Weak illusionism: “phenomenal consciousness exists but some of our intuitions about it are illusions”
Strong illusionism: “[phenomenal] consciousness itself is an illusion and does not exist” (per Chalmers)
In fairness, I don't think it's well-established terminology, and I don't think the difference is very clear. But strong illusionism would deny there's anything to be especially surprised about.
Some mathematical facts strike me as (at least a bit) a priori surprising. So too other empirical facts, like how complex life emerged from sludge. But these facts are explainable in terms of things I'm not surprised by, so (like learning a magic trick) no unexplained or a priori surprising laws or regularities remain. I take it such explainable facts are not evidence of God? And mental states are different because all conceivable avenues of explaining the mental state <> physical world regularities involve yet more surprising coincidences (including physicalist explanations)?
[I can also just wait for your post on PHA and save you time]
If you think that consciousness arising from matter is like surprising mathematical facts or facts about evolution, the argument still goes through--see this video the type-B physicalism section https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2gu_23jIU.
In short, if there are two theories, one of which predicts some feature X, the other holds that X is a surprising fact that could be deduced a priori, X favors the first theory.
The claim that the Modal Ontological argument begs the question is kinda wild. Not only because it just does not, by definition, but also because it would mean philosophers like Plantinga just failed to think about that. I suppose that is possible, but unlikely. But on it just not being true, even in Robert Maydole’s analysis of MOA’s in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, he argues that they can be parodied, but that they “do not beg the question” (BCNT, 573). The premise “it’s possible a maximally great being exists” is weaker claim than the conclusion “a maximally great being (God) exists”.
argument from factory farming:
An omnipotent benevolent god would shout at us from the clouds like the Monty Python movies, saying "stop that factory farming shit right now, assholes!". We don't observe this, therefore he doesn't exist.
It could have been lot easier. God could have created (or "guided the evolution" or whatever) humans to be strict herbivores.
For instance, quoting from above:
<<All they [theists] need to hold is that God sets up the evolutionary process so that our beliefs about math, logic, morality, and the likelihood of different states of affairs is accurate. >>
God "set up the evolutionary process" so that our beliefs about certain things were correct. But alack, She didn't set it up such that we were strict herbivores.
Then the ancient Jews were on the right track since God makes humans vegans in Genesis 1, and they only eat meat as a consequence of sin.
Simple: there is a God, and He is Evil. The Gnostics were correct.
If there is a god, she is either evil or amoral. This much is almost certain.
But an amoral god won’t do any of the work BB wants Her to do, things like ensure humans aren’t deceived about causality, there is a grounding for morality etc.
Small note: the improved version of the argument from motion (which is due to people like Geach, Martin, and Lamont) doesn't require the impossibility of infinite causal chains; what is requires is the claim that if every member of a plurality has a cause, then the whole plurality has a joint cause. This plurality could be infinite, and the principle still applies.
Also, this is a good list.
Most of these arguments are of the form.
1/ I can't explain/account for/justify X (where X can be motion, physical reality [!!!], morality, causation, psychophysical harmony, consciousness etc)
2/ Therefore, perfect God.
Even if I grant you premise 1/, the conclusion doesn't follow.
Such arguments haven't done well historically - with the best example being evolution explaining humans as opposed to creation.
Reading these sorts of things in the 21st century from the Greatest Undergraduate Student In Philosophy in the World, I'm having even more respect for Spinoza. You can disagree with him but at least, he honestly tried to come up with an objective conception of a god and wasn't just a slave of his time's prejudices.
For example, this is from a D- tier argument:
<<By regress, the first thing can’t be made of parts, because it would need something else to bind it together. Thus, there must be something without parts, which is argued to be God>>.
We can't explain how parts bind together -> therefore God.
Also, I am surprised the existence other minds as X wasn’t featured as a sh*t tier argument for god. That is to say,
1/ The atheist cannot explain/account for justify the existence of other minds.
2/Therefore, moral God.
That’s not really what the arguments are, they simply say these things are more expected on theism than naturalism. And that’s true.
"Similarly, it’s a big coincidence that our laws apply to the things that exist on the governing account. The overwhelming majority of conceivable laws would not be this way. The overwhelming majority of imaginable laws wouldn’t apply to the things that exist; it’s thus a major coincidence that the actual laws are applicable."
Suppose there are laws that do not apply to the things that exist, or to things that are in any way accessible to our senses. In fact, suppose there are a tremendous number of such laws, dwarfing those that apply to the things that exist and interact with us. What would we perceive differently? And if the answer is nothing, couldn't this argument equally well be an argument that, insofar as it makes any sense for there to be such laws, we ought to suppose there are?
Regarding the anthropic argument, 5 is also extremely controversial. It's far from clear that it's good to create and even if it was, you would also need to show that God doesn't have a morally sufficient reason to abstain from creating (even given that it was good), which seems also very hard to do
I'm having trouble seeing the difference between the Nomological Argument and the Argument from Laws. I'm surprised the latter gets a C+ while the former gets an F.
It would be interesting to go through the arguments and pull out the implied properties of God from each philosophical argument.
Hey just a quick question, because maybe I'm missing something here. 2 things specifically about the anthropic arguement:
First of all, isn't a quite common naturalistic view that of infinite time/at least infinite future, specifically most of the time to say something along the lines that every possible particle state will happen eventually? It seems to me that that stance predicts the existence of enough people (an infinite number). Or am I being silly and missing why that violates induction or is untenable some other way?
Second of all, why specifically does "the goodness of God’s creation" (and therefore theism) naturally predict this? If anything I know that a number of theistic stances, say, Christendom, predicts rather the opposite. Revelation 21-22 describes the creation of a New Heaven and Earth wherein people "neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Matthew 22:30), suggesting an end to human reproduction.
Though I have some other bones about some things (I don't love Chalmers' natrualistic dualism due to disagreeing with 2-d semantics and as such the psychophysical, and I feel as if you've unfairly strawmanned the, albiet highly unintuitve, natrualistic positions of the late Dan Dennet, etc.), I must say I really enjoyed this, thanks for putting this together!
Also just another quick followup; I'm rather sorry I can't locate this within your current blog posts, but can you give me a quick pointer in the direction of the posts you've made that explain why you think (I'm assuming):
1) Utilitarianism (and for that matter any sort of objective morality, or even reality full stop) exists/is true?
2) Why/how that brand of utilitarianism operates (this is likely a necessary following from the above's formulation, but I'm just curious about i.e. factory farming)
On Modal Rationalism: I’m not sure how much this favors theism. Suppose MR is true, and suppose we think atheism is true and that there’s at least one necessary concrete entity. The idea is supposed to be that this makes things tricky for the atheist because at least, on theism, some ontological argument might be sound (even if not persuasive). However, Plantinga’s Modal Ontological argument famously suffers from a symmetrical ontological argument for atheism (namely, that it is possible that God doesn’t exist implies that God doesn’t exist at any world). I don’t see why the atheist can’t say that *this* sort of ontological argument, or something like it, could be the a priori deduction MR requires. Theism being necessarily false is just as plausibly deducible from the armchair as theism being necessarily true.
You might respond that the problem is that any *specific* atheistic proposal for the necessary being isn’t going to be deducible. But, in fact, the atheist doesn’t have to accept that there’s some specific physical structure which is necessary (and thus deducible). It might be that some more general thing (say, a simple wave that could take on infinitely many complex variations) is necessary, and that it is clearly deducible by: (1) showing non-theism is necessarily true, (2) showing that this general structure encompasses all the metaphysical possibilities.
I actually think there is a correct version of the modal ontological argument, which is:
1. It is possible that a maximally excellent being doesn't exist.
2. If a maximally great being exists, then it is necessary that a maximally excellent being exists.
3. Therefore, a maximally great being doesn't exist.
Here, a "maximally excellent being" is defined the same way as an MGB, except that it's not required to be necessary. Basically it's an MGB minus the modal parts. The first premise doesn't suffer from any circularity issues like the original MOA does, nor is there any problem with a symmetrical argument for theism because an MEB can be possible without being necessary. Thus, we can accept the symmetric premise that it's possible for an MEB to exist without rejecting Premise 1 (the symmetric argument would only undermine an atheist who thinks that, necessarily, and MEB doesn't exist, rather than one who thinks that necessarily an MGB doesn't exist or that a contingent MEB doesn't exist). The first premise also seems to follow from modal rationalism as well as basically every other plausible hypothesis about how we can determine that something is possible.
The second premise is just the definition of an MGB: An MGB is a necessary MEB.
The conclusion, of course, doesn't undermine theists who believe in a contingent God. It's only meant to undermine necessitarian theists and the original MOA.
Nice! This argument bolsters the point about MR above. However, for what it’s worth, I think theists who believe in a necessary God have really good reason to reject (1)—namely, all the reasons they have for rejecting the premise that a MGB possibly doesn’t exist. The two are on a par (especially because each of the premises are true if and only if the other one is). It’s not as though the *necessary existence* of a MGB plays any role (evidentially) in thinking that there isn’t a possible world where the MGB fails to exist. Now, notice that this isn’t a [persuasive] reason to think (1) is *false*—it’s just pointing out that (1) should cause no less worries for the theist than the possibility premise in the usual reverse MOA.
Yeah, the main point of this is just to show that if you have a presumption in favor of possibility, which the MOA assumes, then the correct argument to make would imply that both necessitarian theism and necessitarian atheism are false, leaving us with the possibility of a contingent MEB only. If someone already thinks there are strong reasons to believe that a necessary God exists, this argument won't work against them, just as the possibility premises in favor of theism wouldn't work against someone who already thinks God is impossible.
100%
Re: the anthropic argument, Can't I pascal's mug you into believing any X by claiming that X implies aleph_3↑↑↑3 ems? And then I can pascal's mug you into believing not X by claiming that not X implies aleph_3↑↑↑↑3 ems? These anthropics can basically be dutch booked if you attach any non-zero credence to the various claims about infinite numbers of people existing.
Meanwhile, you can replace "people" in the argument with anything that you like.
Suppose you're in the Louvre standing in front of the Mona Lisa
1. this Mona Lisa exists
2. this Mona Lisa is more likely to exist if there are more total Mona Lisas that exist
3. If 10 Mona Lisas existing makes this one's existence ten times likelier and 100 Mona Lisas existing makes this one's existence 100 times likelier, infinity Mona Lisas existing makes this one's existence infinitely likelier.
4. thus, you should think there are infinite Mona Lisas. This doesn’t stop at the smallest infinity—you should think the number of Mona Lisas that exist is the most that there could be.
5. That’s a really huge number. Theism can nicely explain why that number of Mona Lisas exists, but atheism has no comparable explanation. In fact, because it’s good to create Mona Lisas, theism actively predicts that number of Mona Lisas existing, while atheism does not.
So the argument boils down to:
1. some thing X exists
2. that evidence is infinitely more likely to be observed if the biggest infinity of X exist, therefore after observing one X we are infinitely certain that the biggest infinity of X exist.
3. only god could create the biggest infinity of X, therefore god exists.
It doesn't seem any better than Descartes. It has grossly inadequate contact between the map and the territory.
I address the worry that this would generalize to objects other than oneself in my paper https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-024-04686-w. Specifically, I say:
For this reason, I don’t even find the presumptuous philosopher result particularly counterintuitive. It’s true that on anthropic grounds, according to SIA, worlds with more people are more likely to contain me, which implies I should have a higher credence in physical theories with more people. But this seems like straightforward updating on the evidence of my existence—worlds with more people are likelier to have me, just as, upon discovering a blueberry, one has some reason to think the world has more blueberries.
This might seem to be mistaken reasoning. Upon seeing a blueberry one gains evidence that the universe has blueberries in a large percentage of places, not that there are many blueberries overall (one gains no evidence, for instance, that the universe is big enough to have many blueberries from seeing a blueberry). But crucially this is because one only looks in a limited area, so the odds of seeing a blueberry are higher if the world is more densely populated with blueberries. In contrast, however, if I thought of a random possible blueberry, before having some method of determining if that blueberry is actual, and discovered that that particular blueberry was actual, I’d get evidence that there are many blueberries. This is because in this case, wherever the blueberry is, I’d be in a position to observe it. But this is analogous to the case of my existence: wherever I exist, I’ll be the first to know.
Perhaps one worries that this is the wrong way to think about one’s existence. Your existence is, on such a view, not the kind of thing you should think of as a random event made more likely to occur in a universe with more people. Instead perhaps, as proponents of SSA argue, you should think of your existence as a random event selected from the pool of existences in your reference class. But this is simply to deny SIA. Of course if one thinks about the presumptuous philosopher result from the perspective of some view other than SIA, they won’t find it appealing. But my claim is that there is a perfectly reasonable and consistent way to think about it, in accordance with SIA, where the result becomes not merely some unfortunate result to explain away, but one that actively makes sense. If the objection relies entirely on thinking about things in a way that a proponent of SIA would reject, then it is ineffective in the dialectical context.
"If you want a good heuristic for an ideal tier list, just take the opposite of Redeemed Zoomer’s"
Before I read this, I saw the tier list below and thought, "What the fuck, why does put the absolute worst arguments on the top and the good ones on the bottom?"
I looked into Joseph of Cupertino after reading your previous comments, and I really don't buy it. I find this one to be a more plausible case of a potential miracle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_the_B%C3%A1b/. Though I agree with your general comments on arguments from miracles.
Haven't looked much into the Bab case, but it looks compelling.
From the Wikipedia page: "Other sources, which include Persian and European reports, give a variety of accounts, some in agreement with the miracle-like Baháʼí story, and some indicating a less miraculous event."
My money is on "a less miraculous event".
Of course. But even the less-miraculous versions are still really interesting and odd. There isn't a dispute that he and his follower were suspended by ropes and shot at by a firing squad (weird dispute over the size of it), and then he was gone and found alive when the smoke cleared while his follower remained but was alive. And this is fairly recent and well-attested. And in combination with the significance attached to him (that is, it wasn't just some random execution of a criminal), it's even more remarkable. I'm not saying it's a certain miracle as much as that it's a really interesting and strange occurrence that kind of tickles me. And if you're someone who is inclined to believe that God exists and demonstrates that to people through miracles, that's a pretty good candidate (moreso, IMO, than Joseph of Cupertino stories).
In your opinion, what is the single best supported instance of a true miracle?
I don't know enough to be comfortable answering that. My priors against them are probably too high for me to accept anything as truly miraculous, but I do enjoy reading about that stuff.
Weird coincidence: I was just trying to explain your anthopic argument to some family this afternoon, and I think they actually got it and found it compelling. My sister denies SIA, though.
By the way, do you agree psychophysical harmony fails given strong illusionism about phenomenal consciousness?
Wow, sounds like you should permanently terminate your relationship with your sister.
I don't quite know how strong and weak illusionism differ. PHA fails if there's nothing about consciousness that's surprising a priori--not even an illusion that's unexpected.
Weak illusionism: “phenomenal consciousness exists but some of our intuitions about it are illusions”
Strong illusionism: “[phenomenal] consciousness itself is an illusion and does not exist” (per Chalmers)
In fairness, I don't think it's well-established terminology, and I don't think the difference is very clear. But strong illusionism would deny there's anything to be especially surprised about.
Some mathematical facts strike me as (at least a bit) a priori surprising. So too other empirical facts, like how complex life emerged from sludge. But these facts are explainable in terms of things I'm not surprised by, so (like learning a magic trick) no unexplained or a priori surprising laws or regularities remain. I take it such explainable facts are not evidence of God? And mental states are different because all conceivable avenues of explaining the mental state <> physical world regularities involve yet more surprising coincidences (including physicalist explanations)?
[I can also just wait for your post on PHA and save you time]
If you think that consciousness arising from matter is like surprising mathematical facts or facts about evolution, the argument still goes through--see this video the type-B physicalism section https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2gu_23jIU.
In short, if there are two theories, one of which predicts some feature X, the other holds that X is a surprising fact that could be deduced a priori, X favors the first theory.
It is not a criticism to say…I quickly discovered i have moved beyond caring about arguments for God
The claim that the Modal Ontological argument begs the question is kinda wild. Not only because it just does not, by definition, but also because it would mean philosophers like Plantinga just failed to think about that. I suppose that is possible, but unlikely. But on it just not being true, even in Robert Maydole’s analysis of MOA’s in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, he argues that they can be parodied, but that they “do not beg the question” (BCNT, 573). The premise “it’s possible a maximally great being exists” is weaker claim than the conclusion “a maximally great being (God) exists”.
Why is S higher than A?