Q&A: The Physico-Theological Proof, Column 144 and the Notebook: Understanding the Topic and Questions
The Physico-Theological Proof, Column 144 and the Notebook: Understanding the Topic and Questions
Question
With God's help,
I know the Rabbi has already exhausted this topic. And I also know he is fed up with these questions. But I think I understood the whole course of your argument, and I wanted to raise a few difficulties that, as far as I remember, were never properly discussed. So on the one hand, I should be careful about length, but I very much hope this discussion won't fall on deaf ears.
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After being reminded of one of the questions here about the physico-theological proof, I said to myself: maybe after Passover redemption will come in understanding the matter.
Since there are many who do not understand the proof at all, as can be seen at length in Column 144 and also there with Y, I will write how I understand that the Rabbi understands it, with a bit more wording. And I will raise a number of difficulties about the form of the Rabbi's proof.
As I understand it, the Rabbi assumes two unclear premises for the proof:
- First, the Rabbi holds that complexity is an objective property.
- Second, the Rabbi holds that every complex thing requires a sufficient reason for why it is this way rather than otherwise.
I assume that premise 2 cannot be established without premise 1. Because even if we accept the “simple” principle of sufficient reason, that every thing requires a sufficient reason, we will still get stuck later and be forced to make assumptions about the nature of the intelligent cause, since we are dealing with a property that is not objective.
In any case, by means of premise 2, you make the discussion possible and try to drag us into an infinite regress of questions about any entity that would certainly bring about a world: why is it this way rather than otherwise? After all, that entity itself has special properties that enable it to create a special world.
And by this, you are trying to arrive at the conclusion that there are *only* two hypotheses (at least that we are capable of thinking of): either this is an intelligent entity with free will that chose to create a world, or it is a random universe-generator. (To emphasize: if we assume a third possibility, that it is an entity that was “forced” to create a world, like some primordial big bang, then we will return and ask of it too: why is it this way rather than otherwise?)
But on this I have two questions:
A. Seemingly one can ask how we even have the hypothesis of a random universe-generator. If it operates according to some probabilistic calculation that favors such-and-such a world, we will immediately ask about it: why are the probabilities this way rather than otherwise? And if it is a completely random generator, we will still ask why it has the properties needed to bring about the creation of a world.
Seemingly the same question can be asked about the initial intelligent cause: why does it have free will at all? Or why is it strong with X units of power rather than otherwise? I agree that we need a regress-breaker, but why do דווקא those two things not require a sufficient reason?! Just because they are different from what we know? But we could also say that the big bang we know was caused by a “primordial big bang” of type 2, which is compelled to produce a world. And then we have a necessary entity that we simply are not familiar with!
Moreover, once you defined one possibility in that column as something that would create a world with probability 1, and another possibility with probability epsilon, you intentionally did not assume what the nature of the first entity is, and if so it is not necessarily volitional. In practice we have proved almost nothing, only arrived at the conclusion that if we have the ability to interpret the world as not having been created merely at random, then it had a cause. Great.
By the way, at this point it is important to stress that Christians have some very nice developments regarding this part of the expanded principle of sufficient reason, connected to the definition of simplicity and Occam's razor, which is found either in an entity with 0 units of power or one with infinite units of power. But the Rabbi did not use them here.
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B. I wanted to focus on premise 2. I think that even if we accept that complexity is an objective property that can describe specialness, there is still no reason that it should generate the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). For there is nothing in a special event that “forces” a cause. Only if we really do have a cosmological principle of PSR that precedes our understanding of the concept of entropy can we begin to ask questions, and then indeed the question intensifies in light of a unique world.
That is, only insofar as we would find a stone inside a glass sphere in a forest would we assume that it has a sufficient reason. In such a case, if we found planet Earth inside a glass sphere, then indeed that would require much more explanation. But if we would not demand an explanation in the case of the stone, there is no reason that we should demand one in the case of Earth, as above.
C. What follows from what I have said until here is that if we do not have PSR, but only simple material causality, then there is no reason to accept the proof! And one can remain with primordial big bang 1 or 2.
D. What does the Rabbi think is more basic to human understanding: PSR or the regular principle of causality (of the Kalam)? Atheists tend to argue like B, but believers like A.
- -Maybe this can be connected to someone who believes in free will. Even if he does not accept determinism (even though there is no connection between objects and events), he will be forced to accept PSR to some degree in order to remain “sane.”
- -And maybe this can be connected to quantum mechanics, where the world allows probabilities, and if so then seemingly the Kalam-style causal principle is much more “rigid,” and therefore does not fit completely.
- -And also, insofar as physics allows the spontaneous emergence(?) of particles, there is still a conservation law of charge behind it that keeps watch over it. And here too PSR seems more fitting.
- Likewise, one can argue that each side follows its own approach. Insofar as the world is a brute fact, there is no reason to accept PSR, which by its very nature opposes brute fact. As opposed to the believer, who accepts it, and is therefore willing to be much more open and flexible in his thinking.
What does the Rabbi think? On the one hand, the principle of sufficient reason is very intuitive; on the other hand, almost everything I know can also be explained with the principle of causality. So why do we need it? And conversely, precisely because PSR is so broad and “big-picture,” it feels like it is not really correct and will sometimes miss the mark.
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I now wanted to ask about premise 1, that complexity is an objective property, so that, for example, one can measure it by entropy, and complexity would be a sub-domain of entropy.
As I understand it, the main reason you argue that complexity is an objective property is that one can describe the physical world by means of entropy, for example as a physical magnitude. So even though I do not understand this well, it still does not feel right to me.
E. Since this is a property that is probabilistic in essence, there is no necessity to think that it is a property of part of the objective world itself (a real physical magnitude). Rather, it is more a way in which we look at the world. After all, it is obvious that because there are enough possibilities inside our “container,” the probability of every state is tiny—everything is rare. And so, even if the specialness is *only* from our point of view, we can still explain these things very well. So even if making such a claim with respect to ordinary laws of nature would be a skeptical claim, here it fits very well. After all, why think that complexity is an objective property if not for that? And as evidence for what I am saying, many people really do not understand this point.
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I wanted to ask one small unrelated question to conclude the topic.
F. If we accept that we have free choice, as subjects, then the most natural thing for us is the “I.” So clearly there will be a tendency to personify unknown things. And especially whoever created the world and us is supposed to have the ability to bring about the property of free will. Just as in the past people believed that the sun had consciousness, it is obvious why they thought that! I am not sure they were mistaken in their reasoning; they simply lived in a state of uncertainty and came up with an explanation.
The same thing here. I do not think it is problematic here to “beg the question” and prefer the hypothesis that whoever created the world is an intelligent entity, because that is the clearest and most intuitive analogy in the world—literally from myself.
Sorry for the length!
Answer
This length is impossible for me, and in my opinion also unnecessary. Especially since these questions have already been discussed to exhaustion (both with you and in general). So please, in the future, try to shorten and clarify. With all this length, I did not understand what the questions are.
A. My main assumption is that a regress-breaker must be found. Such a breaker must be its own cause and reason. From this it follows that it is probably something unlike anything in our experience. I did not understand what your difficulty with this is. Regarding the random universe-generator, I wrote exactly the argument you are making.
B and onward. I did not understand what you are asking. I will only say that an act of free will does indeed assume orientation toward the future, that is, a sufficient reason. Causality alone is not enough, because a volitional agent does not act causally but teleologically. In this it differs from a deterministic mechanism.
Please do not continue with this kind of length. If something is still difficult for you, take one point, briefly and clearly, and formulate only that. It is impossible to discuss things this way.
Discussion on Answer
What I did not spell out is either because I did not think about it, or because in my opinion it is not important. In many cases, various distinctions made by philosophers or theologians are, in my view, irrelevant—for example, the ones you brought here.
As for your questions here:
I myself wrote that these are two applications of the principle of sufficient reason. I did not understand your remark about that.
You are making various distinctions between different formulations of the principle of sufficient reason, but all of them can be argued about in the same way. I do not see why that is relevant at all. If you do not see the logic in this principle, then you do not. Every argument assumes some premises, and someone who does not accept them will of course not accept the conclusion either.
I did not expect such an answer. What about the whole value of properly defining concepts? Especially when there are many formulations that really are not correct and require refinements, sometimes only subtle ones. We are talking here about issues that depend on many other issues.
It is always possible to adopt various ad hoc axioms that will help. But the question is whether they are reasonable.
If the Rabbi can spend hours discussing the definition of a concept like the relation between war and innocents, then surely it is appropriate to refine these concepts, which are supposed to be valid for all science and thought.
I agree that there are various intuitions in the ideas you express, but they need development.
If I may put on the psychologist's hat, maybe theological arguments this “basic” feel too anachronistic to you to justify spending too much time on them. Instead, it is enough just to gather the main points into a few notebooks.
I will try to write more later. In any case, I completely agree that this proof has been discussed to exhaustion here—in the sense of actual exhaustion.
I also assume that you have some clear proof “in your head,” but my feeling as an outside reader is that usually almost all the discussions on this issue just repeated themselves, and neither side really managed to express its view properly or to understand what the other side actually wanted. (As shown by the endless ad hominem quotes from various researchers in Column 144, where each side took them in its own direction, and likewise throughout the many responsa.)
As I understand it, the reason for this is that the Rabbi did not define the concepts well. For example, when you use the principle of sufficient reason, it is not enough to mention its name. It has many formulations—which one exactly do you mean? Each such formulation leads to different proofs and different conclusions, different understandings of the whole issue, why it is valid, and so on. Usually all these things were discussed in a very unsystematic way for each sub-proof. Many times they were simply references to ideas discussed in another proof. For example, you refer the regress-stopper in the proof from complexity to the regress-stopper of the Kalam. But there are many sub-issues that are unrelated between the two.
For example, from what I managed to gather in searches yesterday, you distinguish between a sufficient reason in the cosmological proof of why there is something rather than nothing, and a sufficient reason for complex things. Whereas the first sufficient reason, according to your words, is weak, the sufficient reason for a complex thing is much stronger, because the event before us is unique and rare. In my opinion, insofar as one does not accept sufficient reason, there is no reason at all to accept it for a complex thing. The fact that something is rare has no essential connection to whether it has an explanation. One can of course say it is an axiom, but that sounds rather ad hoc for the sake of the argument.
For example, one can solve this by claiming that the principle of sufficient reason you use is not connected to whether a thing is complex or not complex, but rather to the question of how much there is before us a state of affairs that is thus and not otherwise. By “otherwise” we mean a well-defined state of affairs—for example, a world with a slightly different electromagnetic force constant, and so on. (But not why there is something rather than nothing.) Only from there, in order not to assume something about the nature of the cause, do we use a complex thing (according to the objective definition, which also must be discussed). But it is not part of the cosmological engine of the discussion.
Now we can continue discussing whether this cosmological principle fits with all our understandings of the world, and the answer is no. After all, if we accept the possibility that events in the world can come into being probabilistically, as in quantum theory, then we do not have a sufficient reason why a certain thing exists this way rather than otherwise. So this principle probably needs to be sharpened a bit more, maybe something like: the existence of anything about which one can think why it is thus and not otherwise requires an explanation. But all these things feel to me very much lacking.