Several years ago Trent and I were biking in the hills of Missouri thinking about design arguments when one of us (we don’t recall who) said “isn’t it odd that the ID folks stress how hostile the universe is to life while the fine-tuning folks stress how universe is fit for life.” It took us a while to work out this intuition but the result is coming out in Religious Studies. Thanks to all who gave us excellent feedback on earlier drafts of this paper!
Congrats. I'm intrigued. Can you spell out the argument you're making in some more detail--perhaps post the abstract? Thanks.
Thanks, Kevin. Here's the abstract. I've attempted to post the paper as well on the side.
Abstract: We argue that there is a tension between two types of design arguments-the fine-tuning argument (FTA) and the biological design argument (BDA). The tension arises because the strength of each argument is inversely proportional to the value of a certain currently unknown probability. Since the value of that probability is currently unknown, we investigate the properties of the FTA and BDA on different hypothetical values of this probability. If our central claim is correct this suggests three results: 1. It is not very plausible that a cumulative case for theism include both the FTA and the BDA (with one possible qualification); 2. Self-organization scenarios do not threaten theism but in fact provide the materials for a good FTA. 3. A plausible design argument of one sort or another (either FTA or BDA) will be available for a wide variety of values of the key probability.
Thanks. Sounds really interesting.
It strikes me that there is no necessary dichotomy here. The fine-tuning argument focuses on the interesting fact (if you are convinced by the argument) that the necessary conditions for life are written in the fabric of the universe. The ID argument addresses sufficient conditions.
Let me post here what I posted as a comment to the paper:
I think the BDA is based on the claim that P(B|b and T)>>P(B|b and ~T) rather than on P(B|T)>>P(B|~T), where T is theism, B is the claim that there is biologically complex life, and b is the claim that there is biological life.
In other words, the BDA is based on the alleged lowness of the probability of complex life arising out of initial lifeforms. Here is a sociological argument that this is what the BDA is. The proponents of the BDA spend almost all of their energy arguing against the likelihood of naturalistic evolutionary explanations. But what naturalistic evolutionary explanations do is raise P(B|b and ~T). They do little or nothing to raise P(b|~T). (Little if one thinks that evolutionary theory can be extended to pre-life things.)
I am not sure this affects anything of essence.
Jonathan,
We don't argue for a "necessary dichotomy." We argue that the strength of each argument is inversely proportional to a common probability. See our section on the P(B/C&~P) being modest where we explicitly address the issue of a range for that probability in which both arguments may contribute something to theism.
Alexander,
That's an interesting suggestion about how the BDA is actually run. Here are a few questions/issues. (1) Does this form involve a commitment to the P(b/T)>>P(b/~T)? (2) What's the explanation for why P(B/b&T)>>P(B/b&~T)? There’s a need to avert to some item of value that God wants to bring about here. Once that is specified then there’s a worry that God may achieve that more efficiently by building it all in from the start. (3) How low is the prior of b? How does that affect the argument? (4) Just how improbable is it that some complex biological life would develop in the universe given that biological life exists? As I understand even getting basic biological life involve quite complex protein sequences. Of course, it’s been a very long time since I’ve looked at that literature.
Dear Ted,
(1) No, this form does not require a commitment to P(b|T) >> P(b|~T). Generally ID folks believe P(b|T) >> P(b|~T), but ID is meant primarily to be a competitor to neo-Darwinism, and neo-Darwinism is irrelevant to P(b|...) and P(b|...) is irrelevant to neo-Darwinism.
(2) Well, Dembski famously thinks we don't need P(B|b&T)>>P(B|b&~T). All we need is that the latter be very small, and we do not need any estimates on the former. This is, I think, clearly wrongheaded.
The ID folks I've interacted with are very cagy about giving explanations that advert to the designer's desire to produce valuable states of affairs. They would prefer, following Dembski, not to have to have any commitments about the designer's plans. This is wrongheaded because it makes ID less than a full theory.
What I think ID folks should say is what you say under point (2): that B is valuable. I think the claim that God could have front-loaded all the complexity in when producing the first biological life-forms, and thus simultaneously b and B came true, is compatible with all of this, and in fact Behe (and maybe St Augustine, too) thinks this is exactly how it in fact happened.
Maybe a more refined thing to say is that P(B|b&T)>>P(B|b&~T) is explained by the fact that there is so much more value in B than just in b, and most reasons that God might have for making b happen are even better served by making B happen, whereas evolutionary theory (allegedly) does not work and so the right hand side is astronomically low.
(3) I think the prior of b is irrelevant. Most ID folks, I expect, think the prior of b is very low. But that is irrelevent to the version of the BDA that I sketched. Theoretically, an ID proponent could allow that the prior of b is very high.
(4) This is the shaky part, of course, since it depends on the alleged failure of neo-Darwinian theory. But if neo-Darwinian theory fails and there is no God, then it seems like that: (a) the first life-forms, should there be any, would be relatively simple, and (b) it would be unlikely given the existence of the first life-forms that complex life-forms would arise (because the only story we have that gives a significant probability to the emergence of complex life-forms from simple ones is the Darwinian one).
I could be wrong to focus on the IDer's opposition to evolution as central to the BDA.
Alexander,
You write: "What I think ID folks should say is what you say under point (2): that B is valuable. I think the claim that God could have front-loaded all the complexity in when producing the first biological life-forms, and thus simultaneously b and B came true, is compatible with all of this, and in fact Behe (and maybe St Augustine, too) thinks this is exactly how it in fact happened."
This gets at an important point, I think. It's not clear to me that Behe can opt for the "front-loading" strategy. First, the argument against naturalistic evolution seems to assume that life is very improbable given the initial conditions and laws of the universe. Second, the "front-loading" strategy would seem to focus attention on the initial conditions and laws, which we’ve taken as characteristic of the FTA. One thing we did in the paper was construe the BDA as adverting to intervention to explain B.
Alex, are you defining neo-Darwinism in terms of there being no designer? Several things you're saying seem to me to be false unless you're doing that, but that seems a funny thing to do.
Ted, the ID argument isn't that life is objectively improbable given the initial conditions and laws. It's that it's epistemically improbable given the initial conditions and laws. This is an inference to the best explanation. Ultimately, you get back to the initial conditions and the cosmological ID argument, which says that we shouldn't expect the kind of conditions that make life as likely as what we've got but that those conditions do make life as likely as it is.
I've made this point in more detail here.
Jeremy, I take it that you mean to show how my statement that "the argument against naturalistic evolution seems to assume that life is very improbable given the initial conditions and laws of the universe" is false. But note that I didn’t talk about objective probability. Moreover, it’s odd to ply the strategy you seem to be hinting at. The epistemic probability of B given the initial conditions and laws is extremely low but the objective probability is high. That violates the Principal principle, for one. Do you think your longer post undermines the main point of our paper? If so, I’d be interested in seeing the argument.
Dear Jeremy:
No, I'm not defining neo-Darwinianism as incompatible with the existence of God. Where exactly do you think I presuppose such an incompatibility?
Dear Ted:
I think Behe's front-loading is one where God intervenes at the begining of the existence of the first biological organisms, precisely in order to create such organisms and endow them with all the complexity that will be needed over their subsequent evolutionary history (my feeling--and I could be wrong so don't quote me on any of this stuff--is that Mike Behe thinks that the evolution that we actually have in our universe is mainly a matter of bringing the latent complexity to actuality, e.g., by turning on genes that were there in the first place).
I am not clear on why the argument against naturalistic evolution needs to assume that the existence of life is improbable given the laws and initial conditions of the universe. It seems to me that the question whether naturalistic evolution is true and the question whether the first organisms were specially created by God or arose through naturalistic processes are largely independent questions. Naturalistic evolution is a story of how, given the first organisms, the subsequent ones came about. Naturalistic evolution as such says nothing about where the first organisms came from. That is the job of other scientific theories.
Now, as a sociological matter of fact, it may be true that most people who accept naturalistic evolution with no intervention also accept that the first organisms came into existence through naturalistic processes and vice versa. Nonetheless one could reasonably think that the complexity of the initial life-forms would have to come about all at once, not being capable of benefiting from the improved search methods of natural selection, while neo-Darwinianism is sufficient to account for consequent development of complexity. I once held a view roughly like this. And one could, incorrectly, think that the initial life-forms could be extremely simple, and hence could have come about by chance, but the transitions from them to (eventually) intelligent life-forms would require divine intervention.
Dear Alexander,
That’s interesting. Might it be accurate to describe Behe’s view as two-stage creation, first creation of the initial state of the universe with such and such conditions and laws, then creation of the initial life-forms? Then there’s no disagreement with evolutionary theories per se, though there would be disagreement with naturalistic theories about the origins of life. A BDA argument in this context would run along the lines that naturalistic theories of origins don’t adequately explain the initial life forms. So, to put it in terms of probabilities, the probability of initial life forms given the conditions and laws would be quite low. Right? This, of course, would imply that the probability of B would be quite low as well. I do wonder whether folks attracted to this sort of argument think that two-stage creation is required because there’s enough physical indeterminacy to rule out single-stage creation.
Ted:
Yes, it would be two-stage creation, if I am accurate in representing it. But I think it does disagree with evolutionary theories insofar as it is a part of evolutionary theory that the initial organisms were relatively simple. I don't think it would count as neo-Darwinian evolution if the initial organisms had all of the complexity of humans, but with the additional functions simply genetically switched off.
I think your comment may involve something like a de re / de dicto mistake. The initial life forms are (supposedly) complex, and it is unlikely that complex initial life forms come into existence (i.e., B is unlikely). But it does not follow that it is unlikely that initial life forms should come into existence (i.e., it does not follow that b is unlikely, though I suspect Behe thinks it is, too), provided that we do not specify them as "complex".
Another reason to accept a two-stage creation would be--and this Behe definitely does not say--if one thought there was something about living things that made them unable to arise from non-living ones. For instance, one might think that there are teleological facts about living things, while there are no teleological facts about non-living things.
Alex, I was just thinking that ID isn't a competitor to neo-Darwinism unless neo-Darwinism precludes a designer. Yet it doesn't if it's what I think it is, particularly with front-loading.
Ted, how does it violate the Principal Principle? I'm not saying any of us could know the objective probability of life occurring or even that it's very high. All we'd be doing is recognizing that the low probability of life given what we do know should make us think something is true that would explain why it did happen that life occurred. Once you have such an explanation, it puts you in the situation where you've proposed a better explanation, and now the probability of life seems much higher given the explanation. But isn't this what happens in regular scientific and non-scientific explanation all the time? I'm just not seeing the problem.
Jeremy, what's the proposition you're not getting? Is it the proposition that if epistemic probabilities and reasonable objective probabilities diverge then one violates the Principal Principle? Or is it the proposition about inverse strength that Trent and I develop in our paper?