[geye1234]

> Ah sorry I didn't mean to imply an association

I should have read your point more charitably, my bad :)

> This is perhaps true for metaphysical existence, but the ontological existence of a lion and the non-existence of an unicorn can absolutely be determined by the physical laws and the initial conditions of our universe

This may ve true, but irrelevant to my point. The 'laws of physics' are themselves one thing, and not another. It is logically possible to imagine a universe with anti-gravity instead of gravity (that is, where mass repels mass), or where natural processes were such that a lion's DNA ended up giving rise to a unicorn. It is equally logically possible to imagine a universe where unicorns pop in and out of existence, independently of any biological process. And infinite other possibilities. But this is not so. Your appeal to physical laws doesn't affect my point, which is not that we can know firstly about God's Willing, and secondly (and thereby) know about the existence of one and the non-existence of the other. Rather, it's that reality is certain particular things, and is not certain other particular things that it might logically have been. And this implies that certain concepts (lions, gravity) are willed into existence, and continue to be so willed here and now; and certain other concepts (anti-gravity, unicorns) are not.

The multiverse concept does not affect my point. If such a thing existed, there would be a Will that willed unicorns (and the supporting laws of physics/biology/etc) exist in the other universe, but not our one. This is unaffected by infinite multiverses. So the point stands.

>> You could describe the concept of anything in infinite detail without knowing whether that thing exists or existed. > Yeah I read this, but not sure if I agree. That infinite detail would contain its history and details of its components, no?

I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

>> you wouldn't know from what I had told you which is real, which is historical and which is imaginary. > This is obviously true. It is slightly amusing that this is then used to imply that God choose what things actually uexist, while I as a naturalist take it to mean we have to empirically look at the world to determine what exists.

These are not mutually contradictory. In any case, is it 'obviously true' or are you 'not sure if [you] agree' as you stated in your first reply? :-)

On a larger level, I don't think we can continue without discussing ontological reductionism. I can see that the PPC would make no sense if you think everything can be explained entirely in terms of its constituent atoms, which I think is your view. My own view is that the objects of our senses -- like pieces of wood, or apples, or dogs, or human beings -- cannot be reduced to the particles* that constitute them. To put it another way, what these things are is not the same as the particles they're made of. Nor is it the same as a particular arrangement of particles. "What a thing is" is a unity, and is distinct (though not separate) from the particles that compose it. This unity determines the particles' behavior -- or more generally, the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa. This also is true for an individual thing's properties, like color, ability to move, and (crucially) will.

If you think this is a useful line of enquiry, start kicking my view!

* Choose whatever level of particles you like: molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, quarks, etc. It doesn't affect the argument.

[sdht0]

> the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa

Good. I think we can agree to disagree at this point. I try to reach the core premise of viewpoints I don't agree with and I think we have reached it here. I'll try to explain my viewpoints a bit more, but I imagine you'll remain unconvinced. Well, my own overall takeaway is still that I don't need the (personal) God hypothesis to explain the universe (yet) (~Laplace).

I'll say this though. You promised much better arguments than what I had encountered before. I'll admit I found my readings of natural theology pretty interesting. My exposure to arguments beyond using the Bible was only the Kalam Cosmological argument. Many of the ideas in Feser's book and blog articles were a refreshing take, and I had to think a bit about them before I could pinpoint the core ideas and where I disagree. So thank you for that.

> This unity determines the particles' behavior

To me, an empirical study of the universe we sense seems to indicate that the properties of the parts completely determines the properties of the whole. After we have explained the properties of H and O, the properties of H2O are completely fixed and determined. The game of life starts with a simple set of rules and an initial state, and the wonderful patterns that emerge [0] are completely determined after that. Same for the Mandelbrot set. Same for everywhere we look.

My question is, what will help convince you that the behavior of a whole can be determined by its parts? Is being able to accurately predict its behavior by predicting the behavior of just the parts not sufficient? What is left after accounting for the behavior of all the parts of a lion? What is in this essence of lionness that cannot be explained just from the combined behavior of cells?

> The 'laws of physics' are themselves one thing, and not another.

See here we agree. Our universe has a particular set of laws and initial conditions that could have been otherwise. Science takes this as a premise and studies what happened after that. But now take a Laplace's Demon [1] and ask, given the premise, does the universe contain [2] a lion? Answer: yes. Does the universe contain a unicorn? no. Does the universe contain a forum called hacker news where sdht0 and geye1234 are discussing natural theology? yes. I don't see why we need a God who is choosing things to exist or not. We may need God to fix the premise, but everything after that can be God-free. I'll try to explain my viewpoint another way:

> And this implies that certain concepts (lions, gravity) are willed into existence, and continue to be so willed here and now; and certain other concepts (anti-gravity, unicorns) are not.

This is a statement I can agree with, but our takeaways are so different. Imagine a canvas with a lion but no unicorn. If I'm correctly interpreting your concept of "willed", you're saying that there is a God who has two cutout images, that of a lion and a unicorn, and He decided to put the lion on the canvas but not the unicorn. I'm saying, there is a "God" who has a computer program, consisting of just 0s and 1s, which when run on a computer controlling a brush drew a picture of a lion on the canvas.

So I'm just repeating myself now, but regardless of the essences of the objects that inhabit our universe, their existence and behavior is completely determined once the laws and initial conditions have been set as a premise. The question of course remains, where does the premise come from? Here I'm open to possibilities. First Cause. God. Eternal physical laws. Etc. When I read the 5 proofs, that's what I thought, that the books are showing the existence of God at this level. At the edge/beginning of the chain. But you seem to have something else in mind (also as per your other comment) which I don't understand/agree with.

I think you'll agree that given the axioms of mathematics, 2+2=4 is true and not even God can change that. In the same way, as a naturalist, I'm saying that given the laws of our universe (whatever they are) and the initial conditions, lions exist and unicorns don't and even God cannot change that. I'll freely agree that the former is from logic and hence necessarily true. But the later is just from empirical observations. As I said before, if tomorrow God does choose ;) to reveal Himself in a convincing manner, I'll have to change my views completely. Similarly if unicorns start popping in and out of existence.

> I was careful to refer to the concept of lion/unicorn , which exists independently of how particular examples of said concept came to exist.

I'm not sure how to separate those. Doesn't the concept of a lion contain the fact that a lion hunts for food? Which needs biology, chemistry, physics, etc to explain. Or by concept do you mean just the shape? Then is a statue of a lion an actual lion? Like I'm trying to imagine how to explain to an alien from another galaxy the concept of a lion. How can we do that without explaining the entire history of life of Earth, etc?

[0] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-w...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon

[2] I'm assuming a deterministic universe for simplicity, but it can be sufficiently adapted for the quantum nondeterministic universe by taking about a tree of possibilities and whether any or how many of the branches have some property.

[geye1234]

Will be a couple more days before I have time to reply, thanks for your patience.

[sdht0]

Some further thoughts:

* There is a crucial assumption in the 5 proofs that I think is worth thinking about. Given that something exists (I, the world, causes, parts, etc), it follows that there must be a First Cause/God. Also given ex nihilo nihil fit, it follows that the First Cause has to be eternal. The debate then is about the rest of the qualities, which I'm distinguishing as impersonal vs personal. However, note that this reasoning relies on the apriori fact that the world exists, from which we (and the proofs) intuit the presence of a First Cause. This still does not answer the big question: why is there anything at all? [0] There could have been no world and even no First Cause. We can imagine that there would exist only logical possibilities but no ontological "existence". There would be just be Nothing. Yes, the First Cause is eternal. But why? How did the First Cause arise in the first place? I think it's a valid question but it's unclear what the answer could be. One possibility is that logical existence is all there is. [1] But in any case, the eternalism of the First Cause, as in the proofs, is contingent on cogito, ergo sum and is not a necessity beyond that. I find it an interesting realization.

* I am curious what you exactly mean by "the whole determines the parts, not vice-versa". One reading of it clashes wildly with all of our scientific investigations. From being a civilization which attribute everything to Gods and angels--making the sun go around the sky and natural calamities and good luck and bad luck---we've managed to figure out that we don't need such an attribution. Simple rules can generate a lot of complexity. Thus emergence and not God is what makes the world go. But the above statement seems to bring those ancients ideas back somehow. What am I missing?

Also, I think even granting PPC and that the whole determines the parts still does not prove will. God can still be bound by some underlying rules. I don't know if logic alone can lead us to God's free will, until we have some empirical proof such as God actually willing unicorns into existence instead of lions. Even for humans, just saying I have will ("I can will myself to fly but don't want to") doesn't really count until I show it.

* I'd like to hear your thoughts on my earlier question. If Christianity were to be shown as "false" as the other religions, and thus no human religion can demonstrate divine providence, how much will your belief in a personal God remain? Just from the proofs, do you think you will still strongly take a loving caring God who actively created and sustains this universe to be true?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts when you have the time.

[0] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/08/13/epis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...

[geye1234]

I agree that 2+2=4 and God cannot change that. It cannot possibly be otherwise, given what 2 is, what 4 is and what addition is. But the physical laws of the universe are not like that. They might have been otherwise. Not only that, but theoretically, they could logically change to being otherwise at any point. The fact that they have behaved predictably in the past in no way implies, in and of itself, that they will continue to behave predictably in the future. There is nothing, theoretically, from causing mass to start repelling mass once we hit the year 2025. We can both conceive of that concept. (Appealing to probability won't help you here since probability assumes that the future will be like the past.) Similarly, it is logically possible for things to happen that violate the laws of physics, such as a unicorn popping into existence from nowhere. There are an infinite number of things that could logically happen but do not. But only certain concepts have ontological being. These are: lions and not unicorns, laws of biology rather than sudden appearances of animals, etc.

It is not logical to appeal to the laws of physics in order to undermine what I'm saying, since (to repeat myself) these are as contingent as anything else. We can conceive that the laws of physics might have been otherwise, that they might change at some point in the future, or that they might not govern every event in reality. These concepts are logically possible. So are multiverses where the laws of physics are different. Therefore, the laws of physics are contingent, not necessary like mathematics.

It therefore follows that, if the Proofs successfully establish the existence of the First Cause, then said Cause must be causing some concepts to exist, and not others. There is nothing in the concepts themselves that make one exist, and the other not-exist. Choice is the ability to bring about effect A xor effect B, where A and B contradict. Therefore there is something on the part of the Cause that is causing one to exist, and the other not. And this obviously implies will on the part of the Cause. (Again, Feser and I are talking about the First Cause causing existence from instant to instant; not about looking back in time to what brought the universe into existence in the first place.)

Obviously the natural sciences (physics, zoology, etc) give us true information about the lion. For example, part of the concept of being a lion is that it needs food to continue its existence; that it is made up of cells that behave in a certain way; etc etc. And the details of all this could fill libraries. This is uncontroversial. But the natural sciences cannot provide a complete explanation of the lion's existence and the unicorn's non-existence, because (among other reasons) the the natural sciencse themselves are one concept rather than another, and because the need for things to 'obey' the laws of natural sciences is itself a concept that exists, etc. So your reference to biology, zoology, etc, while true, does not undermine my point. It is an explanation -- thus far we agree -- but it is a partial explanation of existence, which can't explain why some concepts exist and not others.

As for reductionism, hopefully you're happy with my definition (that everything's behavior can be explained in terms of my constituent particles). In effect, this would mean that natural objects are like artifcats. Consider an artifact like a computer. It's possible to explain how a computer works by explaining the behavior of its component parts, and then referring to their arrangement. For example, copper behaves a certain way, the plastic in the PCB behaves a certain way, the silicon in the ICs behaves a certain way, the electrons passing through the copper, silicon, etc behave in a certain way, etc. And then these things are arranged in a particular structure, and the combined behavior of all the parts gives us a computer. Obviously the same is true for a car, or a house, or whatever artifact you care to list.

Reductionism basically says that natural objects are like this as well. But this is false. Consider water, made up of H and O. Now hydrogen is a gas at room temperature, it burns with an invisible flame, it combines with nitrogen to form ammonia, with carbon to form methane or any number of things, it has one electron 'orbiting' one proton, and so on. All these things are properties of hydrogen. It is by the existence of these properties that we know hydrogen is present. Now, obviously, none of these things are true for water: literally everything I've listed is false. Certainly, hydrogen is present as a part of water -- don't get me wrong! But everything indicating the presence of hydrogen ceases to exist once it becomes part of water: an entirely new set of contradictory properties take their place. The behavior of the hydrogen has changed completely. And the same is true for the oxygen. The behavior of water cannot be explained by considering the properties of hydrogen and of oxygen, and 'combining' them in the way we would to explain the behavior of an artifact. In an artifact, the parts are unchanged, they just happen to be arranged in a certain order. In a natural thing like H20, the parts are completely changed to adapt to the whole of which they are part. So an artifact is the sum of its parts, but a natural thing is not.

You can consider a similar thing with a lion. A lion's liver, or eye, or paw, only acts like a liver/eye/paw while it is part of the lion. If you tear it out, its behavior fundamentally changes (it stops being a liver and becomes a lump of rotting flesh). So similarly, a lion cannot be said to be the sum of its parts. Rather, its parts can only be understood in terms of the whole of which they are part.

Therefore, empirically, it is false to think of every natural thing as the sum of its parts. Rather, the parts are derivative of the complete object, which is fundamentally one object. This is true for molecules, rocks, plants, animals, and human beings, along with any number of other things.

That's one reason reductionism is false. A second is that reductionism says that objects like lions are nothing more than particles arranged in a certain way. But the only way it can define this 'certain way' is by referring to a real lion. Sure, it can describe the 'certain way' in great mathematical detail, but ultimately it will be describing a lion. Reductionism is therefore circular. The only way out is to say that the lion doesn't really exist, and that it's a concept that we 'impose' on the particles. But there's no good reason for thinking this, and obviously, claiming that lions don't really exist can lead you into some pretty weird and anti-rational territory :-)

Thirdly, there is no actual good reason for thinking that things are nothing more than the sum of their parts. The fact that one can explain a thing's behavior according to its parts in no way implies that it is 'nothing more' than those parts as they would exist separately from that thing. Methodological reductionism does not imply ontological reductionism.

> Just from the proofs, do you think you will still strongly take a loving caring God who actively created and sustains this universe to be true?

To answer very, very quickly: I'd believe in the qualities that Feser outlines. But not 'loving caring' in a personal way. Not in the sense that one would hope a good parent to be. Only in the sense that God wills that which is good for everything. We'd know of His existence, but He would be very distant and unknowable. The Trinity and the Incarnation are complete game-changers in this regard, which is why they are the absolute foundational teachings of Christianity :-)

[sdht0]

> But the physical laws of the universe are not like that.

I already agreed to this when I said that "the later is just from empirical observations. As I said before, if tomorrow God does choose ;) to reveal Himself in a convincing manner, I'll have to change my views completely. Similarly if unicorns start popping in and out of existence.", which covers your first 2 paragraphs that you didn't need to spend time defending.

> then said Cause must be causing some concepts to exist, and not others. > something on the part of the Cause that is causing one to exist, and the other not.

Let me put it this way. Do you have any way of showing that the First Cause has any choice as to what it is causing? Yes, out of all logical possibilities, lions exists but unicorns don't. Do you have a way to showing (logically, not the Bible) that the First Cause can cause unicorns to exist? My overall point is that the First Cause itself may only have the power to only cause lions and no power to cause unicorns. Because that is all what we see right? How can we attribute choice until we actually see that alternative choices are being made? It could have been otherwise but did it?

Anything that exists depends on God. Fine. Everything that could exist but doesn't, if they existed, would also depend on God. Fine. But how can we then turn around and say that God has the power to create everything that could exist? That doesn't follow. We can only attribute enough power to God to only be able to cause the things we do see exist. Can God create lions? Yes. If unicorns popped into existence tomorrow, can we say God can create them? Sure. Given that unicorns don't exist today, does God have the capacity/power/will to bring them into existence? Unknown. Do you see the difference? This is what I mean by impersonal vs personal.

Which is why I've been saying that it is only empirical observations (resurrection, etc) that can show will. Otherwise omnipotence is just an empty claim. It is logically possible that I could fly, but I'm bound by gravity, and hence cannot. Similarly the First Cause could be bound by rules to be able to cause only the universe we see and nothing else. Other logical possibilities exist but may not within its power.

> But the natural sciences cannot provide a complete explanation of the lion's existence and the unicorn's non-existence, because (among other reasons) the the natural sciencse themselves are one concept rather than another

Again, it's all empirical. Yes, tomorrow unicorns could start popping into existence and then we'd have to revise what we think of the universe. But until then (this is crucial, my claims are contingent on observations), apriori natural laws seem to be able to explain everything we see. No personal God needed. If you want to continue believing in a personal God, of course all power to you, but it'd be incorrect to continue to claim that God is the only logically possible explanation, as per the book. There are other possible explanations that fit our observations, as of today.

> The behavior of water cannot be explained by considering the properties of hydrogen and of oxygen

This is the home ground of science, and if someone could show this to be true, there are Nobel prizes waiting for them, just for starters. But it is not true. To use words from the book, hydrogen has many potential properties, including burning (which makes it combine with O :)) and being wet (when combined with O). These properties are actualized based on the key ideas of emergence and locality. Potential properties of natural objects (and I consider artifacts such as computers to also be natural) are actualized based on where they are in spacetime. Electrons "know" nothing about wetness. They continue to behave like electrons, including repelling other electrons and attracting protons. And yet when many such interactions occur in the vicinity of other electrons and protons, atoms and water and wetness emerges in that group. There is nothing mysterious or contradictory about these higher level properties. So this line of thinking definitely doesn't work. Again, this is all from empirical observations. If tomorrow water changes its properties or the sun rises in the west, we can come back to it.

> If you tear it out, its behavior fundamentally changes

Similarly, emergence and locality.

> But the only way it can define this 'certain way' is by referring to a real lion. > Reductionism is therefore circular.

Not at all. Think of the game of life (GoL). Simple rules + initial conditions = glider (say equivalent to the lion). Glider exists, contingent on the GoL rules. No circular reasoning needed. Similarly, (some) physical laws + initial conditions = lion. Where is the circular reasoning? Somehow you seem to be starting with the concept of lion apriori and saying that is the "real" lion and physical laws are some mathematical details. But why? Real lions only exist in the context of these physical laws, both logically and ontologically. Triangles only exist in the context of straight lines. Etc.

> The fact that one can explain a thing's behavior according to its parts in no way implies that it is 'nothing more' than those parts as they would exist separately from that thing. Methodological reductionism does not imply ontological reductionism.

It's a claim but can you give some examples where it holds true? I think the only place I've heard this "strong emergence" claim is consciousness. But that's an open question and if that's the only example then we can agree to disagree. Everywhere else we look, weak emergence holds.

> Only in the sense that God wills that which is good for everything. We'd know of His existence, but He would be very distant and unknowable.

Yup, which I'd say is compatible with an impersonal First Cause and hence compatible with being an atheist or naturalist.

> The Trinity and the Incarnation are complete game-changers in this regard, which is why they are the absolute foundational teachings of Christianity :-)

For sure. Empirical observation :)

[geye1234]

Ok. The three paragraphs beginning "Let me put it this way" are very clear, thank you. And I see that my previous comment was basically me repeating my assertions without further explanation, for which I apologise.

So to summarize where we are at this point, I think we agree on the following (either in reality, or for the sake of argument): - that the First Cause exists, - that it sustains everything else that exists moment-by-moment, and didn't just create everything else and then go away, - that the existence of the lion and gravity are caused by the first cause, and that the existence of the unicorn and anti-gravity are not, - that the laws of physics, along with everything else we observe, are contingent, unlike mathematics and logic; there is no a priori reason that everything we observe is not going to reverse tomororow.

I think the key difference is whether the concept of a unicorn or anti-gravity has existence independent of our minds. My position is that such concepts have existence as concepts, and only as concepts, but that concepts nonetheless are real in a sense. A concept is not an invention of the human mind, but rather is a pre-existing reality that is grasped by the human mind. Given the real existence of concepts, some explanation is needed as to why the concept of a unicorn lacks existence as a concrete object but the concept of a lion has existence as a concrete object. And the same with the concept of gravity vs anti-gravity, and the concept of things behaving according to scientific laws vs popping into existence in violation of physics. Etc.

Whereas your position is that concepts are meaningless, or somehow like 'images' perhaps, or cardboard cut-outs, and perhaps only exist in human minds? And that therefore my position makes no sense. I don't want to mis-represent you, hopefully this is fair. Again, all this links directly to reductionism, since really by 'concept' I mean something like Aristotelian forms, which I think have existence independent of the objects that instantiate them. So I think it really comes down to reductionism.

So onto that topic:

>> The behavior of water cannot be explained by considering the properties of hydrogen and of oxygen > This... is not true.

Agh, you're quoting my sentence without the second half, which makes me sound silly and gives a false impression of what I think. The second half was "and 'combining' them in the way we would to explain the behavior of an artifact." This is the key point: that we can't mentally combine the properties of the parts to explain the properties of the whole, because the properties of the parts no longer exist.

You can perform such an exercise with an artifact. Copper in a computer behaves exactly the same as copper outside a computer. It has been arranged with other things in a certain way, and therefore the behaviour of the computer is 'weakly emergent'. You can explain the computer entirely in terms of the behaviour of its constituent parts. This is not so with hydrogen and water. Hydrogen has lost all its properties when it becomes part of water. (Of course, it has done so because it is bonded in such a way as to make water and therefore can't do what it does in the absence of said bond, but this doesn't undermine the point.) When all a thing's properties cease to exist, we can infer that it hase ceased to exist as a 'thing' in its own right, although it continues to exist in a derivative sense as a part of something else. Similarly, water's properties don't exist partially in each of its constituent elements. It's not as if H makes you partially-wet, and O completes the job. The power of making wet exists only within water as a whole. So similarly, when all of water's properties come into existence when H and O combine, we can infer that a new substance has come into existence.

Obviously we can't say that in no sense can water's properties be explained by its parts. I'm not saying that. Water's wetness can be explained by pointing at its structure. But you will be pointing at water first and foremost, and hydrogen and oxygen only in a derivative sense (because, to repeat, the properties have ceased to exist and therefore we can infer that the substances have ceased to exist as independent things).

> To use words from the book, hydrogen has many potential properties, including burning (which makes it combine with O :)) and being wet (when combined with O). These properties are actualized based on the key ideas of emergence and locality.

Hydrogen has an actual (not potential) property of being burnable. It is potentially burning and thereby ceasing to exist :-). But insofar as it's hydrogen, it can't be wet. It isn't actually wet (like water) or potentially wet. You can't do anything to hydrogen to make it wet. If something is wet, it is not hydrogen. Nor can we say that hydrogen supplies 'part of' the wetness of water and oxygen another 'part'. It is water as a whole that is wet.

Do you agree that hydrogen and oxygen lose all their properties when they become part of water, due to the bond they form? Am I being fair when I say this implies that the substances themselves cease to exist as complete entities, and continue to exist only as part of something else that is now itself the complete entity?

> Where is the circular reasoning?

Would you say a lion is particles arranged in a certain way? I'm not talking about how the lion came into existence (which I think is what you're saying with "physical laws + initial conditions = lion"). If I point at a particular lion and say "what makes it a lion?", what do you say? Many reductionists say that it's a collection of particles arranged in such a way that they're a lion. Would you agree with this? If so I would say this is circular, for the reason given in my previous comment.