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Mark Walker [92]Mark Thomas Walker [13]Mark A. Walker [2]Mark Alan Walker [1]
  1. Attitude in Philosophy.Sanford C. Goldberg & Mark Walker (eds.) - forthcoming - Oxford University Press.
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  2. Chapter 5 Skeptical-Dogmatism and the Self-Undermining Objection.Mark Walker - 2023 - In Outlines of Skeptical-Dogmatism. Lanham: Lexington.
    This chapter puts to rest for all of eternity the self-undermining charge against conciliationism.
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  3.  69
    Outlines of Skeptical-Dogmatism.Mark Walker - 2023 - Lanham: Lexington.
    The ancient Pyrrhonians skeptics suspended judgment about all philosophical views. Their main opponents were the Dogmatists—those who believed their preferred philosophical views. In Outlines of Skeptical-Dogmatism: On Disbelieving Our Philosophical Views, Mark Walker argues, contra Pyrrhonians and Dogmatists, for a "darker" skepticism: we should disbelieve our philosophical views. On the question of political morality, for example, we should disbelieve libertarianism, conservativism, socialism, liberalism, and any alternative ideologies. Since most humans have beliefs about philosophical subject matter, such as beliefs about religious (...)
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  4.  36
    Epistemic Permissiveness and the Problem of Philosophical Disagreement.Mark Walker - 2022 - Dialogue 61 (2):285-309.
    RésuméÉtant donné un ensemble de données D, les tenants de l'unicité épistémique soutiennent qu'une seule réponse doxastique est rationnelle, tandis que les tenants du permissivisme épistémique soutiennent que plusieurs réponses doxastiques peuvent être rationnelles. Comme certains auteurs l'ont signalé, l'un des attraits de la position permissiviste est qu'elle nous permet de comprendre le désaccord philosophique comme un désaccord dans lequel aucune des parties ne commet de faute rationnelle, et donc de respecter le statut épistémique de chacune d'elles. Je soutiens au (...)
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  5.  87
    The voluntariness of judgment.Mark Thomas Walker - 1996 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 39 (1):97 – 119.
    While various items closely associated with belief, such as speech?acts of assertion, or what have recently been termed acts of ?acceptance?, can clearly be voluntary, it is commonly supposed that belief itself, being intrinsically truth?directed, is essentially passive. I argue that while this may be true of belief proper, understood as a kind of disposition, it is not true of acts of assent or ?judgment?. Judgments, I contend, must be deemed voluntary precisely because of their truth?aimedness, for in their case (...)
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  6.  59
    Na-na, na-na, Boo-Boo, the accuracy of your philosophical beliefs is doo-doo.Mark Walker - 2022 - Manuscrito 45 (2):1-49.
    The paper argues that adopting a form of skepticism, Skeptical-Dogmatism, that recommends disbelieving each philosophical position in many multi-proposition disputes- disputes where there are three or more contrary philosophical views-leads to a higher ratio of true to false beliefs than the ratio of the “average philosopher”. Hence, Skeptical-Dogmatists have more accurate beliefs than the average philosopher. As a corollary, most philosophers would improve the accuracy of their beliefs if they adopted Skeptical-Dogmatism.
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  7.  37
    A Paradox About Our Epistemic Self-Conception: Are You an Über Epistemic Superior?Mark Walker - 2022 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 12 (4):285-316.
    I hope to show that each of 1, 2, and 3 are plausible, yet we can derive 4: 1. It is epistemically permissible to believe that our preferred views in multi-proposition disputes are true, or at least more likely true than not. 2. If it is epistemically permissible to believe that our preferred views in multi-proposition disputes are true, or at least more likely true than not, then it is epistemically permissible for us to believe that we are über epistemic (...)
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  8.  86
    Hinge Propositions, Skeptical Dogmatism, and External World Disjunctivism.Mark Walker - 2019 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9 (2):134-167.
    Following Wittgenstein’s lead, Crispin Wright and others have argued that hinge propositions are immune from skeptical doubt. In particular, the entitlement strategy, as we shall refer to it, says that hinge propositions have a special type of justification because of their role in our cognitive lives. Two major criticisms are raised here against the entitlement strategy when used in attempts to justify belief in the external world. First, the hinge strategy is not sufficient to thwart underdetermination skepticism, since underdetermination considerations (...)
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  9. Underdetermination Skepticism and Skeptical Dogmatism.Mark Walker - 2015 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 5 (3):218-251.
    The Mundane World Hypothesis (mwh) says that we have material bodies, we have brains located inside our bodies, we have sense organs which process visual information, the direct cause of our perceptual judgments is typically macroscopic material objects, and we live in a material world. Skeptics using underdetermination arguments arguemwhhas no more epistemic merit than some skeptical competitor, e.g., that we are in the Matrix. Since such competitor hypotheses are equipollent, we are not justified in believingmwh. This paper takes the (...)
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  10.  42
    The ‘national’ in international and transnational science.Mark Walker - 2012 - British Journal for the History of Science 45 (3):359-376.
    This essay analyses discussions of national versus international or transnational science, with an emphasis on the journal Osiris from 1986 to 2009, including the concepts of national science, national styles and characters in science, scientific internationalism, transfer of science and scientists from one nation to another, and comparison of different national examples. The author argues that perceiving science as a ‘national’ activity has not only been persistent, it is also perhaps inevitable. This special issue on transnational histories of science raises (...)
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  11.  74
    Branching Is Not a Bug; It’s a Feature: Personal Identity and Legal (and Moral) Responsibility.Mark Walker - 2020 - Philosophy and Technology 33 (2):173-190.
    Prospective developments in computer and nanotechnology suggest that there is some possibility—perhaps as early as this century—that we will have the technological means to attempt to duplicate people. For example, it has been speculated that the psychology of individuals might be emulated on a computer platform to create a personality duplicate—an “upload.” Physical duplicates might be created by advanced nanobots tasked with creating molecule-for-molecule copies of individuals. Such possibilities are discussed in the philosophical literature as (putative) cases of “fission”: one (...)
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  12.  66
    Moore’s proof, theory-ladenness of perception, and many proofs.Mark Walker - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (8):2163-2183.
    I argue that if we allow that Moore’s Method, which involves taking an ordinary knowledge claim to support a substantive metaphysical conclusion, can be used to support Moore’s proof an external world, then we should accept that Moore’s Method can be used to support a variety of incompatible metaphysical conclusions. I shall refer to this as “the problem of many proofs”. The problem of many proofs, I claim, stems from the theory-ladenness of perception. I shall argue further that this plethora (...)
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  13.  58
    Physics, History, and the German Atomic Bomb.Mark Walker - 2017 - Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 40 (3):271-288.
    Physics, History, and the German Atomic Bomb. This paper examines the German concept of a nuclear weapon during National Socialism and the Second World War. Zusammenfassung: Physik, Geschichte und die deutsche Atombombe. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die deutsche Vorstellung einer nuklearen Waffe während des Nationalsozialismus und des Zweiten Weltkrieges.
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  14.  29
    Metaphysical ecumenicalism and Moore’s proof.Chris Ranalli & Mark Walker - forthcoming - Episteme.
    You have hands, but does it follow that there’s an external material world? Moore thought so. However, we argue that this is a mistake. We defend the Ecumenical View, on which ordinary object terms like “hands” are metaphysically ecumenical, akin to the way that terms like “table” are physically ecumenical: just as there are wooden, metal, or plastic tables, so too there can be material, virtual, or immaterial hands. Moore’s position, however, is metaphysically sectarian: the semantics of “hands” requires a (...)
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  15. Personal Identity and Uploading.Mark Walker - 2011 - Journal of Evolution and Technology 22 (1):37-52.
    Objections to uploading may be parsed into substrate issues, dealing with the computer platform of upload and personal identity. This paper argues that the personal identity issues of uploading are no more or less challenging than those of bodily transfer often discussed in the philosophical literature. It is argued that what is important in personal identity involves both token and type identity. While uploading does not preserve token identity, it does save type identity; and even qua token, one may have (...)
     
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  16. The Philosophical Beliefs of Humanity: Dogmatism, Relativism, and Skeptical-Dogmatism.Mark Walker - forthcoming - In Mark Walker & Sanford Goldberg, Philosophy with Attitude. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  17.  4
    Collaborative relations and irresponsible purity: Herbert Mehrtens’ transformation of the historiography of science, medicine, technology and National Socialism.Mark Walker - 2022 - Science in Context 35 (4):326-335.
    ArgumentBy breaking decisively with the predominantly apologetic and hagiographic literature on science during National Socialism and employing compelling terms such as “irresponsible purity” and “collaborative relations,” Herbert Mehrtens profoundly influenced both his contemporaries and the subsequent generation of historians working in this field.
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  18.  42
    Uploading and Personal Identity.Mark Walker - 2014 - In Russell Blackford & Damien Broderick, Intelligence Unbound. Wiley. pp. 161–177.
    The author argues that uploading does preserve personal identity, at least identity of a certain sort. The fact that we are assuming that computers are capable of embodying all the same type of properties necessary for personal identity means that we can make use of the equivalency thesis. There are two reasons for invoking the equivalency thesis. The first is so that we are not misled by a new form of racism: substratism. The second is that it makes directly relevant (...)
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  19. German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939-1949.Mark Walker & W. D. Hackmann - 1994 - Annals of Science 51 (4):448-448.
     
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  20.  28
    Williams, Truth‐Aimedness and the Voluntariness of Judgement.Mark Thomas Walker - 2002 - Ratio 14 (1):68-83.
    I contend that while at least one of the arguments advanced by Bernard Williams in his paper ‘Deciding To Believe’ does establish that beliefs, or more precisely, judgements cannot be decided upon ‘at will’, the notion of truth‐aimedness presupposed by that argument also, ironically, provides the key to understanding why judgements are necessarily voluntary.
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  21.  96
    Williams, truth-aimedness and the voluntariness of judgement.Mark Thomas Walker - 2001 - Ratio 14 (1):68–83.
    I contend that while at least one of the arguments advanced by Bernard Williams in his paper ‘Deciding To Believe’ does establish that beliefs, or more precisely, judgements cannot be decided upon ‘at will’, the notion of truth‐aimedness presupposed by that argument also, ironically, provides the key to understanding why judgements are necessarily voluntary.
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  22. BIG and Technological Unemployment: Chicken Litter Versus the Economists.Mark Walker - 2014 - Journal of Evolution and Technology 24 (1):5-25.
    The paper rehearses arguments for and against the prediction of massive technological unemployment. The main argument in favor is that robots are entering a large number of industries; making more expensive human labor redundant. The main argument against the prediction is that for two hundred years we have seen a massive increase in productivity with no long term structural unemployment caused by automation. The paper attempts to move past this argumentative impasse by asking what humans contribute to the supply side (...)
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  23.  92
    The Real Reason Why the Prisoner’s Dilemma is Not a Newcomb Problem.Mark Thomas Walker - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (3):841-859.
    It is commonly thought, in line with the position defended in an influential paper by David Lewis, that the decision problems faced in the prisoner’s dilemma and the Newcomb situation are essentially the same problem. José Luis Bermúdez has recently attacked the case Lewis makes for this claim. While I think the claim is false, I contend that Bermúdez’s reason for rejecting Lewis’s argument is inadequate, and then outline what I take to be a better reason for doing so.
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  24.  41
    The Voluntariness of Judgment: Reply to Stein.Mark Walker - 1998 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 41 (3):333-339.
    I have maintained that judgments must be voluntary since, as truth-aimed, they may be represented as responses to practical reasons. Christian Stein has objected that this argument cannot apply to judgments which are not the outcomes of theoretical reasoning. Furthermore, he contends that I have not succeeded in overcoming an argument of H. H. Price's to the effect that judgments which are such outcomes cannot be voluntary. I argue below that neither of these objections can be sustained.
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  25.  99
    Externalism, Skepticism, and Skeptical Dogmatism.Mark Walker - 2016 - Journal of Philosophy 113 (1):27-57.
    A claimed benefit of epistemic externalism is that it alone can avoid skepticism. Most epistemic externalists, however, allow a residual amount of internalism in terms of a defeasibility condition. The paper argues that this internal condition is sufficient for skeptics to cast doubt on many claims to justified belief about perceptual matters about the world. Furthermore, the internal defeasibility condition also opens the door to a darker form of skepticism; skeptical dogmatism, which maintains that many of our perceptually based beliefs (...)
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  26. religion and Transhumanism: introducing a Conversation.Heidi Campbell & Mark Walker - 2005 - Journal of Evolution and Technology 14 (2).
     
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  27.  19
    Happy-People-Pills for All.Mark Walker - 2013 - Wiley-Blackwell.
    Happy-People-Pills for All explores current theories of happiness while demonstrating the need to develop advanced pharmacological agents for the enhancement of our capacity for happiness and wellbeing. Presents the first detailed exploration of the enhancement of happiness A controversial yet rigorous argument that demonstrates the moral imperative for the development and mass distribution of ‘happy-pills’, to promote the wellbeing of the individual and society Brings together the philosophy, psychology and biology of happiness Maps the development of the next generation of (...)
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  28. The Socratic Note Taking Technique.Mark Walker, David Trafimow & Jamie Bronstein - 2017 - Teaching Philosophy.
    The notion of Socratic Note Taking is introduced to enhance students’ learning from assigned readings. SNT features students asking questions and answering their own questions while doing the readings. To test the effectiveness of SNT, half the students from two sections of a philosophy course were assigned SNT on alternating weeks. Quizzes each week alternated between the two classes as either high or low stakes in a counterbalanced format. The design was a 2 x 2 x 2 within-participants factorial. On (...)
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  29.  41
    Cognitive enhancement and the identity objection.Mark Walker - 2008 - Journal of Evolution and Technology 18 (1):108-115.
    I argue that the technology to attempt to create posthumans is much closer than many realize and that the right to become posthuman is much more complicated than it might first appear.
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  30. Death, Faster Than Light Travel, and Einstein.Mark Walker - 2015 - In Charles Tandy, Death And Anti-Death, Volume 13: Sixty Years After Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Ria University Press. pp. 1-24.
    This paper describes a thought experiment that shows that people can travel faster than the speed of light: we are not bound by Einstein’s speed limit. Of course, any two-bit sci-fi story can describe faster-than-light travel. The difference is that the thought experiment proposed here is consistent with Einstein’s theory. The way to extricate ourselves from this seeming contradiction is to acknowledge that persons are not entirely physical. In other words, the explanation for why faster-than-light travel is possible for persons, (...)
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  31.  28
    Remarks on Ángel Pinillos’ Treatment of Global Skepticism in Why We Doubt.Mark Walker - 2024 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 14 (4):302-316.
    Ángel Pinillos’ Why We Doubt offers an error theory for at least some versions of global skepticism: skeptical doubts are based on a faulty heuristic. Once this heuristic is replaced by a more apt principle inspired by Bayesian approaches to epistemology, the skeptical doubts are shown not to be motivated. I argue contra Pinillos that skeptical doubts may remain even if we grant the main line of Pinillos’ argument. Skeptical doubts might be generated by disagreement even when we accept Pinillos’ (...)
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  32.  19
    What is Living and What is Dead in Brave New World.Mark Walker - 2013 - In Happy-People-Pills for All. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 19–40.
    This chapter starts with a brief summary of Huxley's fictional dystopia Brave New World. Huxley's work is relevant in terms of its philosophical treatment of the issues and irrelevant in terms of a technological prophecy. Soma is the happy pill of Brave New World. The main theme of bioconservatives who cite Brave New World as an objection to happy‐people‐pills is that turning our world into Brave New World would involve a catastrophic loss of the higher aspects of our humanity. If (...)
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  33. The anthropic argument against the existence of God.Mark Walker - 2009 - Sophia 48 (4):351 - 378.
    If God is morally perfect then He must perform the morally best actions, but creating humans is not the morally best action. If this line of reasoning can be maintained then the mere fact that humans exist contradicts the claim that God exists. This is the ‘anthropic argument’. The anthropic argument, is related to, but distinct from, the traditional argument from evil. The anthropic argument forces us to consider the ‘creation question’: why did God not create other gods rather than (...)
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  34.  63
    Eugenic Selection Benefits Embryos.Mark Walker - 2012 - Bioethics 28 (5):214-224.
    The primary question to be addressed here is whether pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), used for both negative and positive trait selection, benefits potential supernumerary embryos. The phrase ‘potential supernumerary embryos’ is used to indicate that PGD is typically performed on a set of embryos, only some of which will be implanted. Prior to any testing, each embryo in the set is potentially supernumerary in the sense that it may not be selected for implantation. Those embryos that are not selected, and (...)
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  35. Occam’s Razor, Dogmatism, Skepticism, and Skeptical Dogmatism.Mark Walker - 2016 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (1):1-29.
    _ Source: _Page Count 29 Underdetermination arguments for skepticism maintain that our common sense view of the external world is no better, evidentially speaking, than some skeptical competitors. An important and well-known response by dogmatists, those who believe our commonsense view is justified, appeals to abduction or inference to the best explanation. The predominant version of this strategy, going back at least to Locke, invokes Occam’s razor: dogmatists claim the common sense view is simpler than any of its skeptical alternatives (...)
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  36.  22
    Between Gods and Apes.Mark Walker - 2017 - In Russell Blackford & Damien Broderick, Philosophy's Future. Hoboken: Wiley. pp. 145–158.
    There are reasons to be skeptical of the claim that philosophy and science are making progress toward the complete truth of the universe and our place in it. I discuss two different kinds of skeptical worries about justifying contemporary philosophical and scientific beliefs. Widespread philosophical disagreement leads to a suspicion that most philosophers are probably wrong. In science there is more agreement, but science has not justified some of its basic assumptions including the use of Occam's Razor for theory selection. (...)
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  37.  78
    Did Werner Heisenberg Understand How Atomic Bombs Worked?Mark Walker - 2022 - Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 45 (1-2):219-244.
    Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 219-244, June 2022.
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  38.  56
    Superlongevity and utilitarianism.Mark Walker - 2007 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (4):581 – 595.
    Peter Singer has argued that there are good utilitarian reasons for rejecting the prospect of superlongevity: developing technology to double (or more) the average human lifespan. I argue against Singer's view on two fronts. First, empirical research on happiness indicates that the later years of life are (on average) the happiest, and there is no reason to suppose that this trend would not continue if superlongevity were realized. Second, it is argued that there are good reasons to suppose that there (...)
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  39.  64
    Happy-people-pills and Prosocial Behaviour.Mark Walker - 2007 - Philosophica 79 (1):93-11.
    There is evidence from the empirical sciences that >happiness= B understood in the social scientists= sense of >positive affect=B leads to prosocial behaviour: the happiest amongst us are more likely to help others. There is also scientific evidence of a genetic component to positive affect: genetic differences can account for some of the observed variances in positive affect. Let us think of >happy-people-pills= as pharmacological agents, modeled on those with a genetic predisposition for high levels of positive affect, which will (...)
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  40. Astrophysical fine tuning, naturalism, and the contemporary design argument.Mark A. Walker & M. Milan - 2006 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 20 (3):285 – 307.
    Evidence for instances of astrophysical 'fine tuning' (or 'coincidences') is thought by some to lend support to the design argument (i.e. the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). We assess some of the relevant empirical and conceptual issues. We argue that astrophysical fine tuning calls for some explanation, but this explanation need not appeal to the design argument. A clear and strict separation of the issue of anthropic fine tuning on one hand and any form of (...)
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  41.  79
    The Skills-First vs. Content-First Philosophy Class.Mark Walker - 2021 - Teaching Philosophy 44 (1):59-87.
    This paper offers a contrast between “content-first” course design, and “skills-first” course design. The traditional lecture format is a paradigmatic example of the former, by the later I mean courses that emphasize the sustained practice of skills integral to the discipline. Two arguments are offered for adopting, other things being equal, the skills-first design. One is the “content-plus” argument that the skills-first course design does a better job of promoting content acquisition than a content-first class. The second argument, the “skills-plus” (...)
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  42.  55
    Induction Ain’t What It Used to Be: Skepticism About the Future of Induction.Mark Walker & Milan Ćirković - 2021 - Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies 30 (1):11-28.
    We argue that, in all probability, the universe will become less predictable. This assertion means that induction, which some scientists conceive of as a tool for predicting the future, will become less useful. Our argument claims that the universe will increasingly come under intentional control, and objects that are under intentional control are typically less predictable than those that are not. We contrast this form of skepticism about induction, "Skeptical-Dogmatism," with David Hume's Pyrrhonian skepticism about induction.
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  43.  37
    Against one form of judgment-determinism.Mark Thomas Walker - 2001 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 9 (2):199 – 227.
    Taking 'rationalized judgments' to be those formed by inference from other judgments, I argue against 'Extreme Determinism': the thesis that theoretical rationalization just is a kind of predetermination of 'conclusion-judgments' by 'premise-judgments'. The argument rests upon two key lemmas: firstly, that a deliberator - in this case, his/her assent to some proposition - to be predetermined (I call this the 'Openness Requirement'): secondly, that a subject's logical insight into his/her premise-judgments must enter into the explanation of any judgment s/he forms (...)
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  44.  28
    The Elements of the Good Life: It is a Very Big List.Mark Walker - 2013 - In Happy-People-Pills for All. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 72–99.
    In seeking an account of the good life we are looking for what philosophers sometimes term a theory of wellbeing, welfare or prudential good. Philosophical theories of prudential value are often parsed according to a tripartite distinction: hedonism, desire satisfactionism, and objective list theories. This chapter defends the objective list theory. The author argues that repeated application of the method of difference results in a very big objective list of prudential values. The resulting theory termed the “big objective list” theory (...)
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  45.  22
    What Do We Mean by ‘Happiness’?Mark Walker - 2013 - In Happy-People-Pills for All. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 41–71.
    The chapter aims to provide at least a partial analysis of the word ‘happiness’ as it is used in everyday language. The author tries to make clear exactly what we are looking for in a theory of happiness and then goes on to argue for a particular theory. The theory that the author endorses is a composite of affective and cognitive elements. The chapter looks at four monistic theories of happiness before showing why each is insufficient. It considers two affective (...)
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  46.  18
    Operation Epsilon.Mark Walker - 2023 - Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 46 (4):373-377.
    Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.
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  47. Anthropic reasoning and the contemporary design argument in astrophysics: A reply to Robert Klee.Mark Walker & Milan M. Cirkovic - unknown
    In a recent study of astrophysical “fine-tunings” (or “coincidences”), Robert Klee critically assesses the support that such astrophysical evidence might be thought to lend to the design argument (i.e., the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). Klee argues that a proper assessment indicates that the universe is not as “fine-tuned” as advertised by proponents of the design arguments. We argue (i) that Klee’s assessment of the data is, to a certain extent, problematic; and (ii) even if (...)
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  48.  18
    Happiness Promotes Perfection.Mark Walker - 2013 - In Happy-People-Pills for All. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 120–154.
    This chapter examines some of the social science data concerning the relationship between happiness and achievement. The chapter explores further the idea that there are causal links between happiness and achievement, focusing on what common sense has to say about these matters. Reflective common sense supports a bidirectional model of causation: good moods often cause achievement and achievement often causes good moods. Before looking at the studies in support of the claim that happiness promotes achievement, the chapter considers the notion (...)
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  49.  43
    Punishment - a tale of two islands.Mark Thomas Walker - 1993 - Ratio 6 (1):63-71.
    An imaginary desert island scenario provides the setting for a story which is designed to expose the shortcomings of deterrence, reform and restitution theories of punishment, and to emphasize the intuitive appeal of Kant's strong retributivist insistence that there is a positive obligation to punish offenders just qua offenders, and not merely an automatic right to do so (weak retributivism). Nevertheless, it is urged that though the fact that an offence has been committed can in itself suffice to establish that (...)
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    Astrophysical Fine Tuning, Naturalism, and the Contemporary Design Argument.Mark A. Walker & Milan M. Ćirković - 2006 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 20 (3):285-307.
    Evidence for instances of astrophysical ‘fine tuning’ (or ‘coincidences’) is thought by some to lend support to the design argument (i.e. the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). We assess some of the relevant empirical and conceptual issues. We argue that astrophysical fine tuning calls for some explanation, but this explanation need not appeal to the design argument. A clear and strict separation of the issue of anthropic fine tuning on one hand and any form of (...)
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