Q&A: The Physico-Theological Argument
The Physico-Theological Argument
Question
In the physico-theological argument, as you presented it in the “Faith” series, you argued that the probability of getting laws of nature that would lead to complexity is very low (since the more complex or rare the phenomena, the rarer the laws of nature that allow those phenomena). My question is: how are you defining probability here? After all, there could be infinitely many systems of laws—infinitely many not as a figure of speech, but literally infinitely many, since the constants can take infinitely many values. If so, how do you calculate probability in such a situation, where there are infinitely many systems of laws? Maybe it would be better to use plausibility here, since there is no defined sample space?
Answer
So talk about plausibility. It doesn’t really matter.
Discussion on Answer
There is no difference at all. When dealing with a continuum, one moves to probability density. That’s all.
But even without that, when there are infinitely many possible values and the one before us is a very special one, that indicates a guiding hand. It is no less strong than a defined probabilistic argument.
What do you mean by probability density? Is that a way of calculating probability with an infinite sample space?
And yes, I agree. The question is: how do you know that our values are special? Correct me (or add to what I’m saying) if I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that a decisive argument for this is that we know from simulations in science that a range of different values would dismantle the complex system in our world, and if so, that is a strong indication that there are not many values that would create this complexity.
I don’t understand where this discussion is going. I explained the point, even though it is completely simple.
Yes, you can talk about plausibility, but my question here was whether it is possible to talk about probability in such a case (regardless of this specific argument). In other words, can one talk about probability when the sample space is infinite, as in our case?
And also, yes, in the context of the specific argument, if we talk about plausibility rather than probability, do you think the force of the argument is weakened? After all, the other person can say that he has no clear intuition one way or the other; that is, he has no intuition that it is more plausible that this is a rare system, and he has no intuition that this system is not rare (and therefore for him it is 50-50).