Anthropic Principle

[otseng]

This topic is an offshoot from Does God exist or not? Since this topic is a huge area of debate, I'm making this have it's own thread.

So, the question of debate is...
Does the Anthropic Principle point to the existence of God?

First, let's give some definitions of the Anthropic Principle (AP).

Wikipedia:
"Any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with our existence as carbon-based human beings at this particular time and place in the universe."

Philosophy Pages:
"Belief that the existence of human life entails certain features of the physical world. In a minimal form, this view merely points out that we would not be here to observe natural phenomena were they not compatible with our existence. Stronger versions of the anthropic principle, however, seem to rely upon the idealistic notion that the universe could not exist without intelligent observers."

Augustine Fellowship:
"The observation that the universe has all the necessary and narrowly-defined characteristics to make man and his sustained existence possible. The view that the universe is conspicuously 'fine-tuned' for human existence. "

[Curious]

The correct version of the tree in the forest is:

If a man speaks in the forest, where no woman can hear, is he still wrong?

Welcome, Robin!

Nice.
The answer is that he may be correct until a woman arrives in the forest to "prove" otherwise.

[Jose]

I dunno...the rule my wife and I have is that if anything, ever, goes wrong in our house, it's my fault. It's a handy rule, actually, since it solves the otherwise-aggravating problem of assigning blame.

On the other hand, it doesn't help us much with the anthropic principle. Y'know, I wonder why it's called that. Why not the leechic principle? The universe is ideally constituted for the evolution of leeches. Therefore, god's purpose has always been to prepare the universe for leeches, and has even provided them with goofy self-important bipeds for food.

It's important to remember, after all, that if humans disappeared tomorrow, the world would not suffer a bit. If plants disappeared, the animals--including us--would starve to death. In the great scheme of things, people are irrelevant (except, perhaps, as a destructive force). If I'd been god, I would have set it up so that people wouldn't ever appear. Or, at least, I'd give 'em sense enough not to screw everything else up.

[Curious]

On the other hand, it doesn't help us much with the anthropic principle. Y'know, I wonder why it's called that. Why not the leechic principle? The universe is ideally constituted for the evolution of leeches. Therefore, god's purpose has always been to prepare the universe for leeches, and has even provided them with goofy self-important bipeds for food.

Maybe among the intelligentsia of leechdom, it is known as the leechic principle. The main benefit of the principle though is its explanation that the data we receive is incomplete and is dependent upon our senses or point of view. That does not necessarily mean we are in a unique position to observe the universe, only that our position carries with it it's own limitations of perception, and that we see the universe as a human, from the point of view of a human, and in human terms.

[Jose]

So, if the leeches have The Leechic Principle, and the duckweeds have The Duckweedic Principle, does this put The Anthropic Principle into the same category of Self-Importance? If God A designed leeches in his image, and if God B designed duckweeds in his image, are there necessarily bazillions of gods?

I don't think we can discount The Leechic Principle just because we're not leeches. That's like saying "my religion is the only one that's right, and everyone else is a dodobrain." There is just as much evidence for The Leechic Principle as for all of the others.

[nikolayevich]

So, if the leeches have The Leechic Principle, and the duckweeds have The Duckweedic Principle, does this put The Anthropic Principle into the same category of Self-Importance? If God A designed leeches in his image, and if God B designed duckweeds in his image, are there necessarily bazillions of gods?

I don't think we can discount The Leechic Principle just because we're not leeches. That's like saying "my religion is the only one that's right, and everyone else is a dodobrain." There is just as much evidence for The Leechic Principle as for all of the others.

I think you are right that we can't discount the possibilty of the Leechic Principle. I think however that there are obvious differences whether looking at it from a leech's or a human's perspective.

It reminds me of how Einstein never really said, "All things are relative". He at one point actually considered the possibility of calling is theory "Invariance" rather than "Relativity" because he rightly believed people would misunderstand what he meant by relativity. He of course showed how the reality of one thing could be predicted from the perspective of another but at no point said that the actuality was different depending on perspective. A similar principle is at play here with the leech/human perspective. The appearance of centrality from both perspectives should not lead us to think that both are actually the same in importance or position in the universe. Statements about them cannot be equal and both remain true. I have not made a case here for who is central, however I think it is an important distinction (appearance v. actuality).

[Jose]

Gosh, nikolayevich...I hope you're on my team if I ever have to engage in a real debate. As you say, calling it a leechic principle has no effect whatsoever on reality. [Or am I misremembering something about In The Beginning, There Was The Word...many origin stories and sci-fi books involving magic imbue words, and especially names, with Power. Could it really matter what we call it? Could it change if we call it something different?]

So, we're back to the beginning. The universe is the way it is. Anything that develops in it will have to be composed of its parts and follow its rules, whether it develops by wholly natural means, or whether a giant leech-god created the universe specifically for leeches. We can never distinguish the two, except by having the god tell us.

[Openmind]

So, we're back to the beginning. The universe is the way it is. Anything that develops in it will have to be composed of its parts and follow its rules, whether it develops by wholly natural means, or whether a giant leech-god created the universe specifically for leeches. We can never distinguish the two, except by having the god tell us.

Correct.

Whether or not a supernatural intelligence created the universe, it is always going to look fine-tuned. If no God exists - it is fine-tuned because those particular conditions allowed life to develop (who knows - there may be an infinite number of universes that didn't allow life to develop). If no God exists, it is fine-tuned because he predicted what life would eventually evolve. But then again...that is indistinguishable from the first example.

[Cathar1950]

So, we're back to the beginning. The universe is the way it is. Anything that develops in it will have to be composed of its parts and follow its rules, whether it develops by wholly natural means, or whether a giant leech-god created the universe specifically for leeches. We can never distinguish the two, except by having the god tell us.

Correct.

Whether or not a supernatural intelligence created the universe, it is always going to look fine-tuned. If no God exists - it is fine-tuned because those particular conditions allowed life to develop (who knows - there may be an infinite number of universes that didn't allow life to develop). If no God exists, it is fine-tuned because he predicted what life would eventually evolve. But then again...that is indistinguishable from the first example.

I think you guys are doing a good job of explaining the problems from our(Human) point of view.
It doesn't seem like the universe is fine tumed to us but that we are tuned to the universe as best we can given the limited parameters.
We are the way we are because this is the universe where we developed .

[QED]

It's about time we resurrected this topic I think by now it should be rather obvious that there's a massive ambiguity presented by the physical universe. We can either interpret everything in the light of deliberate providence or in terms of a self-selection effect. One possible way of resolving this ambiguity has recently been presented by Paul Davies in his book Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life (in the UK the book is titled The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?).

He points out that some of the "constants of nature", while being highly sensitive, can still deviate by a finite amount before the physics we rely on is fatally disrupted. So for each dimensionless constant (the ratio of one physical force to another for example), we can place its numerical value on a number line and draw limits to either side. If we suspect that we happen to have self-selected our universe from a landscape of different possibilities then it would be most probable that we should find our points lying closer to one limit than the other. This is because of all the places between the limits, many more lay away from the exact centre. On the other hand, if an all-intelligent designer had selected the values, we might expect them to be positioned exactly in the "sweet spot". Davies does not investigate this much further but I think that, at least, it presents something hopeful that can be put to the test in order to resolve the ambiguity.

[Furrowed Brow]

He points out that some of the "constants of nature", while being highly sensitive, can still deviate by a finite amount before the physics we rely on is fatally disrupted.

Lets imagine a fatal disruption. A totally different universe. One without life. The question is: is there anything in this universe dependent on the new set of ratios? Lets imagine there is. We shall call this property x. Why should a universe that contains life - a L-universe - be any more important than an x-universe? And how can we answer that question in favour of L without offering L-centric reasons?

Now lets imagine some great number of alternative universe each with their own unique variable e.g. x, y, z…. What satisfies the variable is decided by the ratios of the constants. Without being prejudiced to life, L is just one more variable amongst an unknown number of alternatives. Moreover any thorough assessment of what might count as x, y, z etc has not been carried through. Thus the argument is bounded by unknowns.

The puddle argument then kicks in with full force. We are part of the puddle that fits its surroundings because if our surroundings were different then the puddle would be different. And we could not observe the puddle as it is, because we would not be here as observers.

But again, to say that this universe has observers, is to say this is an L-universe. Impressive. Not really. Maybe universe x is more impressive because all its ratios hit the sweet spot for x dead centre.

Ok I know Otseng will say that we can only observe this universe. True. So we should discount unobserved universe like x. True again. But that leaves fine tuning arguments mathematically meaningless. And certainly no argument for God.