Question I really don't understand what the big deal is with the apparent 'fine tuning' of the constants of the universe, or even if 'fine tuning' is even apparent! The conditions have to be just right for life to emerge, sure, but so what? Conditions have to be just right for many things in the universe to occur, but we don't always suspect an outside agent as responsible for setting them up that way just so they'll happen. Is this the final refuge of the 'god of the gaps' habit the humans tend to fall in to? I also don't get the need for a multiverse theory either. To me it's a bit like saying, because I rolled a six on a die there must be five others each rolling the other possible numbers in order to explain it. Okay, much bigger die....

Accepted:
August 11, 2010

Comments

Right on the money! It is extremely improbable that with say four dice I shall roll four sixes (1/1296 against, if my arithmetic is right, and there are no biases.). But I have done it, with dice that otherwise showed no evidence of being biased. What does this show? Nothing at all! In particular, it does not show the existence of a dice controller who favours me - assuming more sixes are better than fewer. Suppose human life is extremely improbable. What does that show? Alas, again the answer is, absolutely nothing at all. The improbable sometimes happens, although, of course, not very often! We should thank heaven that it did!

It's quite right that more or less any detailed fact is improbable in its detail, but not automatically in need of explanation on that account. But we need to be careful lest we turn that point into a rejection of the need to explain anything. I don't have a set of criteria to offer, but we do take some cases of apparently improbable structure to call out for explanation. We don't always say: well things had to be arranged in some way; might as well be this way as any other. We also tend to see the fact that some hypothesis makes sense of apparently diverse facts in a unified, elegant way as a scientific virtue (though hardly the only one.)

Whether we should say anything of this sort about the "fine-tuning" hypothesis is another matter; it may well be that we shouldn't. But let's consider a comparison: we could say that morphological similarities among species are a brute fact, needing no explanation. But we take the fact that evolution makes sense of these similarities to count in favor of evolution.

I stress that I am not making a case for the fine-tuning argument. I'm merely pointing out that if we dismiss it too quickly, we may end up dismissing legitimate explanatory projects that are part of the bread and butter of science. We routinely take some kinds of improbabilities to call for explanation. If this isn't one of them, well and good. But we need to say a bit more to be entitled to that conclusion.

let me add a bit more in favor of the argument here ... we do tend to believe that certain very improbable things do not occur by chance -- poker/slot machine analogies common -- if your friend gets five royal flushes in a row you'd almost certainly be pulling your piece on him -- the fine tuning argument suggests that the very same sort of very ordinary, accepted reasoning applies to the universe -- that the specific tuning of the various constants is so improbable, when all others are possible (no combination of which would lead to any foreseeable valuable universe, key point), that just as you respond to your poker friend you should respond to the universe: not likely to have occurred by chance (tho always, of coure, remotely possible) -- but still the fact it is remotely possible that your friend randomly drew 5 straight royal flushes would stop no one from reaching for their piece ....

i have a bit more about the argument in my book 'the god question' --

hope that helps!
Andrew