Fine- and Coarse-Tuning, Normalizability, and Probabilistic Reasoning

Philosophia Christi 7 (2):405 - 423 (2005)
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Abstract

McGrew, McGrew and Vestrup (MMV) have argued that the fine-tuning anthropic principle argument for the existence of God fails because no probabilities can be assigned to the likelihood that physical constants fall in some finite interval. In particular, the fine-tuning argument that, say, some constant must lie in the range (1.000,1.001) in order for intelligent life to be possible is no better than a seemingly absurd coarse-tuning argument based on the need for that constant to lie in the range (0.001, 10000000). The author of this piece defends the coarse tuning argument as a rational piece of reasoning, and, further, argues that the countable additivity assumption in the MMV paper can be dropped in favor of finite additivity

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Alexander R. Pruss
Baylor University

Citations of this work

Laws of nature.John W. Carroll - 1994 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
The fine-tuning argument.Neil A. Manson - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (1):271-286.

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