George Ellis - Philosophy of Fine-Tuning

George fine tuning has had a history of being at the center or at least one of the centers of the science religion discussion over the years uh because fine-tuning at least superficially if it if it really is fine-tuning that design is certainly an option that people have to consider then of course the people bring in Multiverse which which could be opposed to that or could be consistent with that is a different different subject so what I'm interested in is assume that there really is fine-tuning to to a significant degree and I think we all sort of believe that to some to some degree how do you with the definite philosophical orientations towards theism but but how do you as a scientist look at fine tuning in terms of that uh in terms of your overall philosophy well this firstly um it's a philosophical issue it's not a scientific issue and I think one must be terrible the the science tells you there is fine tuning it doesn't tell you how to handle it right okay now the the philosophical options is just happenstance it just happened to be that way or um inevitability it had to be that way or chance it is high probability it'll be that way or design or intention it was meant to be that way okay the Multiverse let's go through each of them actually they're all interesting yeah well the first one is just happened to be that that's the sort of brood fact there's a brute Factor nothing more to say the end of the story and nobody likes that the theologian's a scientists nobody likes that one but that is that is a philosophically um fundamentally acceptable position okay the inevitability one has fallen apart because string theory has said there isn't this uh a unique way that physics can happen I mean the Hope was that there would only be one possible thing right Einstein had that whole lot of other people did that's turned out to be wrong well it's still possible there's some people say that they're still looking and you shouldn't give up and you know but supposing it was to turn out to be true you would then have to say well why did that particular unique physics get implemented not some other physics is the problem background what you might even made it worse because you have an absolute one way it has to be in that one way it allows life and and everything that we're talking about it's a worse fine-tuning problem yeah it's a worse yeah that's so the third one the high probability which is the Multiverse one um this is again it's just a uh it doesn't solve it it just ships it backward because you then ask the same stuff about the Multiverse why does the Multiverse allow life to exist why does it have constants richer fine-tuned because the Multiverse will also be governed by Multiverse rules which have got fundamental consonant so all you do is you shift it up one level and you have to ask why does the Multiverse allow life to exist so it's not a yeah but with a fundamental solution well wouldn't it be fair to say though that the Multiverse solution would be easier to deal with than the single Universe the Multiverse solution is a philosophically um appealing solution and I'm very happy to say that it's philosophy perfectly opinion but it's not a fundamental solution right you still have a thought right yeah you have the theistic or design when the things were somehow meant to be that way um without any commitment to any specific theology or concept of a Creator whatever but the fine-tuning is then this is the Occam's razor way of doing it there was an intention that's why it's fine-tuned and that it's it's it's it's not just a brute fact there was an intention there and that explains explains it now what I think is important here is the following question if you're going to approach this issue we're dealing with philosophy if you say I'm only going to deal with it on the basis of Science and physics astronomy you are restricting yourself to a particular set of data I'm only going to take into account data from microscopes telescopes and particle colliders and so on you are excluding from what you're taking into account a vast amount of other data about the World War and Peace Trump and brexit Dostoyevsky and Bach and and and so on Swan Lake and all the rest of it if you want to do philosophy on what grounds are you excluding all of that other data when you are looking at your philosophy of cosmology and I don't think you have any right to do that I think if you want a full philosophy of cosmology you must look at all that other data as well and I think that has the possibility of swinging the balance of the conclusion fairly conclusively into a conclusion that meaning does exist in the universe and that meaning exists in the universe because it's reflecting something fundamental about the nature of existence Occam's razor don't multiply entities more than you need if you have a Multiverse seems like zillions of entities but in fact it's only one entity it's a Multiverse generating mechanism maybe it's inflation maybe it's something else whereas what you want to do do you want to bring something else of a totally different character whether it's a God or a cosmic conscious or some other kind of thing that seems more of a violation violation of what a Occam's razor ah it's a it's it's a different kind of mechanism it where we're we're thinking of different mechanisms which would lead to a Multiverse yes so that is that is a step back in terms of rock and razor from just assuming the existence of these huge number of entities um you then have to start trying to think what what kinds of generating mechanisms are more plausible what kinds of data supports them and that brings me back to my point that if you want to enter this area I don't think if you really want to enter it in a philosophically deep way that you can restrict yourself only to physics

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 7,128

Keywords: closer to truth, robert lawrence kuhn, george ellis, fine tuning, philosophy, cosmos, our special universe

Id: dTa7z2we9QE

Length: 6min 6sec (366 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 13 2023