Because ex nihilo nihil fit and nobody has seen things pop into existence. I believe it violates the law of conservation of matter - matter can neither be created or destroyed
1 Like
That can only be a hypothesis and not a fact. What other verifiable/falsifiable predictions does it make? None! 
If you say so. I’ll wait for you to address the substance of any of my previous posts, @Scorpion , before I reply to you again on this thread.
You talked about parsimony. I asked, if not God then what? You then mentioned quantum fluctuation. I reminded you that that’s an unscientific hypothesis since it makes no testable predictions. We’re making progress IMHO.
In effect what has happened is you’ve rejected a reasonable explanation without providing an alternative. I suppose we don’t know is a good answer.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur …
i.e. “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” Hitchens’ Razor
1 Like
I agree, but what have I asserted without evidence? 
Well firstly, that makes choosing an ice cream trivially free in a deterministic universe too, since that description is absolutely nothing like how the brain and decision-making works.
Secondly (and this is the bit no-one ever responds to), if the point is about where the desire for ice cream comes from, where does it come from if we have free will? Just pouffs into a brain from nothing? How is that free?
But you do accept that if desires have something to do with particles outside ourselves then we have no free will, right?
Everyone believes our desires have “something to do with” particles outside; you wouldn’t even know that there is such a thing as ice cream otherwise.
But on my position specifically: I think the concept of free will is incoherent, and determinism is a red herring to that.
As I said in my previous post, while people are happy to rhetorically ask where our desires come from in a deterministic universe, they are unable/unwilling to say where they come from in a non-deterministic universe anyway. So this framing doesn’t get us anywhere.
I’m yet to hear why free will is incoherent. If our choices are ours then we have free will, and if not we don’t.
The universe is deterministic, agreed. So, no free will then?
No and no.
Our best understanding of physics today implies that there are genuinely random events (or “non-local hidden variables”…but this is the less parsimonious model).
No-one can say how non-deterministic quantum events give us free will though. And my position is that that is because the problem is with the concept of free will, not a property of our universe.
If my decisions are not purely a function of my memories, preferences, understanding and randomness, then what else? And how does that “else” have intention?
The soul? Well we can ask if souls are blank slates. Are they nature or nurture? Positing a soul turns out to not help at all.
How about this?
You claim that: Absence of evidence entailed by specific predicates is, in fact, evidence of the absence of whatever has those specific predicates.
In fact, this is precisely an example of the ‘closure of science’ fallacy of which scientism is guilty. Who decides that these predicates entail precisely the observable consequences stipulated? And that those consequences exhaust the possible manifestation of the purported entity in question? The atom is a perfect example. Its existence was intuited millennia ago, but its scientific formulation has undergone massive iterative transformations in the intervening centuries. And it would be absurd to claim that it is now ‘complete’.
Re. the flat-earth example: when seeking to identify an entity whose boundaries may extend significantly beyond the boundaries of current human understanding, you cannot simply assume that the predicates we currently assign exhaust its possible manifestations. The problem is not merely that “we don’t know” whether the entity exists; it is that our present conceptual and empirical capabilities may not be sufficient to determine what evidence its existence would entail in the first place.
You can’t stipulate the absence of an unknown something simply because you choose to define it in a way that makes that possible. If we were two-dimensional creatures we would have no way of knowing whether the earth were flat or spherical. But we could still speculate.
So it isn’t true that we don’t have free will but free will is incoherent.
Randomness isn’t free will. You already said that.
Your question is important because hinge status might look like it’s a shield for a claim that’s false. However, it doesn’t, and geocentrism shows why rather than showing the reverse. For example, if someone really holds such a belief as a hinge, maybe a small sect whose cosmology, biblical interpretations and community identity all run through it. Doubting the belief isn’t a move inside their practice, it’s leaving the practice. So, what follows from this? Only that evidence against their position won’t move them, and this is not only true of religious people it happens all the time and everywhere. It’s an observation about persuasion, not a license. It says nothing about whether the Earth goes around the sun. A beliefs status as a hinge is a fact about a belief’s role, and a role doesn’t confer correctness, which is why it’s also not relativistic.
So, what should we conclude? Two things, first, arguing by showing parallax measurements won’t work, and the reason it won’t work is structural. What does work, when anything does, is the pressure from inside, the pressure is between the cosmology and everything else the system is committed to. Second, and this is important, just because they can’t be argued out of their position isn’t a reason to not say they’re wrong.
As for “how high,” my framing is a bit different, it’s not about the ceiling because any claim can function as a hinge for someone. What changes as you go up isn’t whether the word “hinge” applies, but what it buys you, and near the top it buys almost nothing - no protection from criticism, only a diagnosis of why the evidential argument misfires. So, the special pleading charge might bite if I were using the hinge status to shield the claim from assessment. I’m not, because the test is whether I’ll say the same about geocentrism. I will. It’s a hinge for them, and it’s obviously false.
What we conclude about someone’s framework is more about how the argument should be conducted.
1 Like
Right (I think…it’s a confusing sentence).
My position is that “we have free will” and “we do not have free will” are both meaningless sentences. Because “free will” is popularly imagined as some kind of causeless, non-random intention, and that makes no sense at all. No-one has ever described how a reasoned decision would be made by such a “not-this and also not-that” intention.
1 Like
Obviously global skepticism is untenable. I haven’t made any argument in favor of it.
1 Like
Very good. I think this is the right response to the doubt I raised, because it fits with my earlier question (I think on this thread? it’s been confusing) about the difference between persuading others and being convinced oneself. The whole idea of an “argument for God’s existence” occurs in a context of persuading others. The reasons why I myself might believe in God are quite unlikely to be the same reasons I’d expect to be persuasive for others – though I know there are theistic philosophers who disagree with this.
It is indeed important. But here again, we have to ask: Would we allow the same thing about ourselves, who “can’t be argued out of” the position that non-contradiction is incoherent? What would be a reason to say (or not say) we are wrong? Do we have to imagine a non-local culture that would make that judgment about us?
Good. Personally I’d drop the “hinge” concept entirely at the point when it buys so little, but that’s just terminology.
OK, and now let’s bring it back to belief in God as a hinge. I’m somewhat sympathetic to the idea that belief in God can so inform and illuminate a worldview as to make sensible life impossible without it. This is particularly compelling in moral matters, often, or better to say, in matters of values generally. The question, though, is whether such a believer means to be reporting on their framework, their practice (and/or perhaps their culture’s), or whether theism is being put forth as “bottom-level indispensable” in the same way that your two deepest levels, non-contradiction and the external world, are.
I can imagine a believer who’s content to say, “I have no grounds for claiming that God exists that would be rationally compelling, though in fact I believe he does.” Indeed, that seems a relatively common position. But can there be a believer who adds to this, “and my belief must be a necessary one in the same way that your faith in the external world is necessary – that is, for all of us”? Suppose the believer’s interlocutor winds up agreeing – has this person now been persuaded that God exists, or only that they can’t do without the concept?
3 Likes
Those who make (believe) the claims e.g. “God created the world …”
Poor example. John Dalton misappropriated from Democritus’ fundamentally “uncuttable” atomos a hypothetical construct and then mislabelled it an “atom” which subsequently was discovered to be cuttable and thereby not fundamental. Atomism is metaphysics, sir, not chemistry or physics; at most, an analogical placeholder for 19th century physical conjectures.
What is “absent” is not some “unknown” referent but that the claim as predicated refers at all. In other words, the question is not whether or not “God exists” but whether what is claimed about “God” is corroborated by public evidence (true) or indistinguishable from a fiction (not true). E.g. “God created the world …” true (re: evidence that the world was “created”) or not true (re: either evidence the world was not “created” or allegory/myth)?
Fascinating. You are continuing to cherry-pick the properties which suit your argument, which is exactly the point that I disputed and explained. And yet you yourself only just stated “Repetition isn’t an argument and doesn’t counter mine.”