Resumo Qual o papel da religião numa sociedade secularizada? Qual o papel da Igreja? O artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre essas questões a partir de um "diálogo virtual" entre o teólogo alemão Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) e o filósofo italiano contemporâneo Gianni Vattimo. Esses dois autores, separados pelo tempo e pela geografia, aproximam-se, no entanto, na forma de pensar o fenômeno da secularização - ambos a entendem como algo intrínseco ao Ocidente cristão. A dissolução do sacro e o movimento em direção (...) à autonomia humana foram percebidos por esses dois pensadores não como ameaças à religião cristã, mas como possibilidades de sua plena realização, concretizada por meio do engajamento social. Diante do fim das certezas e das verdades absolutas - quadro pós-moderno que já se delineava na década de 1940 e ganha contornos mais precisos no princípio do século XXI, tanto Bonhoeffer quanto Vattimo pensaram uma teologia capaz de abrir mão dos pressupostos metafísicos. Palavras-chave: Filosofia; Teologia; Pós-modernidade; Secularização; Eclesiologia.What is the role of religion in a secularized society? What is the role of the Church? This article suggests a reflection on these questions based on a "virtual dialogue" between German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) and contemporary Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. Though separated by time and geography, those authors are close to each other in the way they view the secularization phenomenon - both understand it as intrinsic to the Christian West. The dissolution of the sacred and the movement towards human autonomy were perceived by the two thinkers not as threats to the Christian religion, but as possibilities of its full accomplishment, made real by social commitment. Facing the end of certainties and absolute truths - a postmodern framework that starts to take shape in the 1940s and acquires more definite contours in the beginning of the 21st century - Bonhoeffer and Vattimo were able to think a theology capable of giving up its metaphysical presuppositions. Key words: Philosophy; Theology; Postmodernity; Secularization; Ecclesiology. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dialogical and creative character of pedagogic work by analyzing the affinities between Martin Buber's I-Thou relation and Lev Semenovich Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Backed up by empirical studies on the teacher-student relation, we understand that education can only result in students' development if meaningful processes are undertaken. The paper asserts that education shall primarily aim at promoting relational possibilities.

Now commonly accepted as the point of reference for musicians in the Western world, A 440 hertz only became the standard pitch during an international conference held in 1939. The adoption of this norm was the result of decades of negotiations between countries involving performers, composers, diplomats, physicists, and sound engineers. Although musicians and musicologists are aware of the variability of musical pitches over time, as attested by the use of lower frequencies to perform early music repertoires, no study has (...) fully explained the invention of our current concert pitch. In this book, Fanny Gribenski draws on a rich variety of previously unexplored archival sources and a unique combination of musicological perspectives, transnational history, and science studies. Tuning the World demonstrates the aesthetic, scientific, industrial, and political contingencies underlying the construction of one of the most "natural" objects of contemporary musical performance, itself the result of a cacophony of competing views and interests. (shrink)

Whether visual perceptual consciousness is gradable or dichotomous has been the subject of fierce debate in recent years. If perceptual consciousness is gradable, perceivers may have less than full access to—and thus be less than fully phenomenally aware of—perceptual information that is represented in working memory. This raises the question: In virtue of what can a subject be less than fully perceptually conscious? In this chapter, we provide an answer to this question, according to which inexact categorizations of visual input (...) may result in a representation of the visual information in working memory that is less than fully available to the perceiver, and of which the perceiver is therefore less than fully phenomenally aware. The latter proposal is a natural extension of a theory of perception we have proposed in previous works, namely, the template tuning theory (TTT). We argue that although TTT is compatible with both gradable and dichotomous conceptions of perceptual consciousness, the available empirical evidence favours a gradable conception of perceptual consciousness. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that discovering that our universe is fine-tuned should make us more confident that other universes exist. My defense exploits a distinction between ideal and non-ideal evidential support. I use that distinction in concert with a simple model to disarm the most influential objection—the this-universe objection—to the view that fine-tuning supports the existence of other universes. However, the simple model fails to capture some important features of our epistemic situation with respect to fine-tuning. To (...) capture these features, I introduce a more sophisticated model. I then use the more sophisticated model to show that, even once those complicating factors are taken into account, fine-tuning should boost our confidence in the existence of other universes. (shrink)

I argue that the standard way of formalizing the fine-tuning argument for design is flawed, and I present an alternative formalization. On the alternative formalization, the existence of life is not treated as the evidence that confirms design; instead it is treated as part of the background knowledge, while the fact that fine tuning is required for life serves as the evidence. I argue that the alternative better captures the informal line of thought that gives the fine-tuning (...) argument its intuitive plausibility, and I show that the alternative formalization avoids all of the most prominent objections to the fine-tuning argument, including the objection from observation selection effects, the problem of old evidence, the problem of non-normalizable probability measures and a further objection due to Monton. I conclude that the alternative formalization is the one that attention should be focused on. (shrink)

The idea that perceptual and cognitive systems must incorporate knowledge about the structure of the environment has become a central dogma of cognitive theory. In a Bayesian context, this idea is often realized in terms of “tuning the prior”—widely assumed to mean adjusting prior probabilities so that they match the frequencies of events in the world. This kind of “ecological” tuning has often been held up as an ideal of inference, in fact defining an “ideal observer.” But widespread (...) as this viewpoint is, it directly contradicts Bayesian philosophy of probability, which views probabilities as degrees of belief rather than relative frequencies, and explicitly denies that they are objective characteristics of the world. Moreover, tuning the prior to observed environmental frequencies is subject to overfitting, meaning in this context overtuning to the environment, which leads (ironically) to poor performance in future encounters with the same environment. Whenever there is uncertainty about the environment—which there almost always is—an agent's prior should be biased away from ecological relative frequencies and toward simpler and more entropic priors. (shrink)

Fine-tuning in physics and cosmology is often used as evidence that a theory is incomplete. For example, the parameters of the standard model of particle physics are “unnaturally” small, which has driven much of the search for physics beyond the standard model. Of particular interest is the fine-tuning of the universe for life, which suggests that our universe’s ability to create physical life forms is improbable and in need of explanation, perhaps by a multiverse. This claim has been (...) challenged on the grounds that the relevant probability measure cannot be justified because it cannot be normalized, and so small probabilities cannot be inferred. We show how fine-tuning can be formulated within the context of Bayesian theory testing in the physical sciences. The normalizability problem is seen to be a general problem for testing any theory with free parameters, and not a unique problem for fine-tuning. Physical theories in fact avoid such problems in one of two ways. Dimensional parameters are bounded by the Planck scale, avoiding troublesome infinities, and we are not compelled to assume that dimensionless parameters are distributed uniformly, which avoids non-normalizability. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explicate and analyze an alternative response to fine-tuning arguments from those that are typically given—namely, design or brute contingency. The response I explore is based on necessity, the necessitarian response. After showing how necessity blocks the argument, I explicate the reply I claim necessitarians can give and suggest how its three requirements can be met: firstly, that laws are metaphysically necessary; secondly, that constants are metaphysically necessary; and thirdly, that the fundamental properties that determine the (...) laws and constants are necessary. After discussing each in turn, I end the paper by assessing how the response fares when running the fine-tuning argument in two ways, as an inference to best explanation and as a Bayesian argument. (shrink)

The tuning-fork model of human social cognition, based on the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) in the ventral premotor cortex of monkeys, involves the four following assumptions: (1) mirroring processes are processes of resonance or simulation. (2) They can be motor or non-motor. (3) Processes of motor mirroring (or action-mirroring), exemplified by the activity of MNs, constitute instances of third-person mindreading, whereby an observer represents the agent's intention. (4) Non-motor mirroring processes enable humans to represent others' emotions. After questioning (...) all four assumptions, I point out that MNs in an observer's brain could not synchronically resonate with MNs in an agent's brain unless they discharged in a single brain in two distinct tasks at different times. Finally, I sketch a conceptualist alternative to the resonance model according to which a brain mechanism active in both the execution and the perception of e.g., the act of grasping is the neural basis of the concept of e.g., grasping. (shrink)

Jan Greben criticized fine-tuning by taking seriously the idea that “nature is quantum mechanical”. I argue that this quantum view is limited, and that fine-tuning is real, in the sense that our current physical models require fine-tuning. Second, I examine and clarify many difficult and fundamental issues raised by Rüdiger Vaas’ comments on Cosmological Artificial Selection.

The objective of this paper is analyzing to which extent the multiverse hypothesis provides a real explanation of the peculiarities of the laws and constants in our universe. First we argue in favor of the thesis that all multiverses except Tegmark’s “mathematical multiverse” are too small to explain the fine tuning, so that they merely shift the problem up one level. But the “mathematical multiverse" is surely too large. To prove this assessment, we have performed a number of experiments (...) with cellular automata of complex behavior, which can be considered as universes in the mathematical multiverse. The analogy between what happens in some automata (in particular Conway’s “Game of Life") and the real world is very strong. But if the results of our experiments can be extrapolated to our universe, we should expect to inhabit—in the context of the multiverse—a world in which at least some of the laws and constants of nature should show a certain time dependence. Actually, the probability of our existence in a world such as ours would be mathematically equal to zero. In consequence, the results presented in this paper can be considered as an inkling that the hypothesis of the multiverse, whatever its type, does not offer an adequate explanation for the peculiarities of the physical laws in our world. (shrink)

The universe appears fine-tuned for life. Bayesian confirmation theory is utilized to examine two competing explanations for this fine-tuning, namely design (theism) and the existence of many universes, in comparison with the ’null’ hypothesis that just one universe exists as a brute fact. Some authors have invoked the so-called ’inverse gambler’s fallacy’ to argue that the many-universes hypothesis does not explain the fine-tuning of ’this’ universe, but flaws in this argument are exposed. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of design, being (...) simpler, is arguably of higher prior probability and, therefore, to be preferred. The hypothesis of the single brute-fact universe is disconfirmed. (shrink)

Perry Hendricks’ original impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on the impairment principle (TIP): if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and giving a fetus FAS is immoral, it follows that abortion is immoral. Critics have argued that the ceteris paribus is not met for FAS and abortion, and so (...) we proposed the Modified Impairment Principle (MIP) to avoid these difficulties. Dustin Crummett has responded, arguing that MIP is open to various counterexamples which show it to be false. He also shows that MIP can generate moral dilemmas. Here, we propose a modification to MIP that resolves the issues Crummett raises. Additionally, Alex Gillham has criticized our appropriation of Don Marquis’ ‘future like ours’ reasoning about the wrongness of impairment. We show that his objections have minimal implications for our argument. (shrink)

When it is suggested that the fine‐tuning of the universe for life provides evidence for a cosmic designer, the multiple‐universe hypothesis is often presented as an alternative. Some philosophers object that the multiple‐universe hypothesis fails to explain why this universe is fine‐tuned for life. We suggest the “This Universe” objection is no better than the “This Planet” objection. We also fault proponents of the “This Universe” objection for presupposing that we could not have existed in any other universe and (...) that the values of the free parameters of the Universe could have been different. Lastly, we reflect on why fine‐tuning for life needs explaining. (shrink)

I present and defend an “indexical” version of the Fine-Tuning Argument. I begin by outlining the dialectic between the Fine-Tuning Argument, the Multiverse Objection, and the This-Universe Reply. Next, I sketch an indexical fine-tuning argument and defend it from two new objections. Then, I show that such an argument is immune to the Multiverse Objection. I explain how a further augmentation to the argument allows it to avoid an objection I call the “Indifference Objection.” I conclude that (...) my indexical version of the Fine-Tuning Argument is no less cogent than the standard version, and yet it is immune to the Multiverse Objection. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that an undesirable feature of a theoretical or phenomenological model is that salient observables are sensitive to values of parameters in the model. But in what sense is it undesirable to have such ‘fine-tuning’ of observables? In this paper, we argue that the fine-tuning can be interpreted as a shortcoming of the explanatory capacity of the model: in particular it signals a lack of a particular type of explanatory depth. The aspect of depth that (...) we probe relates most closely to a lack of sensitivity to changes in parameters associated with such models. In support of this argument, we develop a schema—for models that arise broadly in physical settings—that quantitatively relates fine-tuning of observables to a lack of depth of explanations based on these models. We apply our schema in two different settings in which, within each setting, we compare the depth of two competing explanations. The first setting involves explanations for the Euclidean nature of spatial slices of the universe today: in particular, we compare an explanation provided by the big-bang model of the early 1970s with an explanation provided by a general model of cosmic inflation. The second setting has a more phenomenological character, where the goal is to infer from a limited sequence of data points, using maximum entropy techniques, the underlying probability distribution from which these data are drawn. In both of these settings we find that our analysis favors the model that intuitively provides the deeper explanation of the observable of interest. We thus provide an account that relates two ‘theoretical virtues’ of models used broadly in physical settings—namely, a lack of fine-tuning and explanatory depth—and argue that finely tuned models sacrifice explanatory depth. (shrink)

Emotionally arousing events reach awareness more easily and evoke greater visual cortex activation than more mundane events. Recent studies have shown that they are also perceived more vividly and that emotionally enhanced perceptual vividness predicts memory vividness. We propose that affect-biased attention (ABA) – selective attention to emotionally salient events – is an endogenous attentional system tuned by an individual's history of reward and punishment. We present the Biased Attention via Norepinephrine (BANE) model, which unifies genetic, neuromodulatory, neural and behavioural (...) evidence to account for ABA. We review evidence supporting BANE's proposal that a key mechanism of ABA is locus coeruleus–norepinephrine (LC–NE) activity, which interacts with activity in hubs of affective salience networks to modulate visual cortex activation and heighten the subjective vividness of emotionally salient stimuli. We further review literature on biased competition and look at initial evidence for its potential as a neural mechanism behind ABA. We also review evidence supporting the role of the LC–NE system as a driving force of ABA. Finally, we review individual differences in ABA and memory including differences in sensitivity to stimulus category and valence. We focus on differences arising from a variant of the ADRA2b gene, which codes for the alpha2b adrenoreceptor as a way of investigating influences of NE availability on ABA in humans. (shrink)

When it is suggested that the fine‐tuning of the universe for life provides evidence for a cosmic designer, the multiple‐universe hypothesis is often presented as an alternative. Some philosophers object that the multiple‐universe hypothesis fails to explain why this universe is fine‐tuned for life. We suggest the “This Universe” objection is no better than the “This Planet” objection. We also fault proponents of the “This Universe” objection for presupposing that we could not have existed in any other universe and (...) that the values of the free parameters of the Universe could have been different. Lastly, we reflect on why fine‐tuning for life needs explaining. (shrink)

This paper defends a novel sceptical response to the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God (FTA). According to this response, even if FTA can establish, what I call, the confirmation proposition: ‘fine-tuning confirms the God hypothesis’, there is no reason to think that a strengthening of FTA can establish the evidence-favouring proposition: ‘fine-tuning favours the God hypothesis over its competitors’. My argument is that, any criteria for the explanation of fine-tuning that permit us to take (...) the God hypothesis seriously ought to make us sceptical that fine-tuning favours the God hypothesis over its competitors. As taking the God hypothesis seriously requires us to give a fair hearing to all sorts of non-theistic explanations, including the so-called weird sorts of atheism. (shrink)

This chapter considers two types of fine‐tuning, those dealing with the initial conditions of the universe and those based on fixed parameters. Three approaches have been taken to argue that fine‐tuning does not need any special explanation. The first is an appeal to coincidence. The second is that the data are biased by our own observations. The third has to do with the nature of probability itself. The chapter assesses each of these objections in detail. Many naturalistic explanations (...) have been offered for fine‐tuning. The chapter considers the three most important ones. The first is that future discoveries might show that fine‐tuning was not improbable after all. The second is that other life‐permitting ranges for the fine‐tuned constants (FTCs) might exist, allowing for exotic forms of life unlike ours. The third is that we might live in a multiverse of many different universes all with different values of FTCs. (shrink)

ports the thesis that there exist very many universes. The view has found favor with a number of philosophers such as Derek Parfit ~1998!, J. J. C. Smart ~1989! and Peter van Inwagen ~1993!.1 My purpose is to argue that this is a mistake. First let me set out the issue in more detail.

The idea that there might be multiple universes with different parameters of nature is often considered an attractive response to the finding that various parameters appear to be delicately fine-tuned for life. The present paper investigates whether the appeal to fine-tuning can legitimately be combined with an appeal to independent empirical evidence for other universes or whether, as suggested by Cory Juhl, combining such appeals inevitably results in illegitimate double counting of the finding that the parameters are right for (...) life. In doing so, the paper takes into account the fact that the parameters' life-friendliness is old evidence for us, which makes Bayesianism's problem of old evidence relevant to Bayesian analysis of its evidential impact. Ultimately, the verdict reached is that the warning of double counting is helpful, but that double counting can in principle be avoided. The paper highlights remaining independent challenges against the fine-tuning argument for the multiverse. (shrink)

According to the Fine-Tuning Argument, the existence of life in our universe confirms the Multiverse Hypothesis. A standard objection to FTA is that it violates the Requirement of Total Evidence. I argue that RTE should be rejected in favor of the Predesignation Requirement, according to which, in assessing the outcome of a probabilistic process, we should only use evidence characterizable in a manner available before observing the outcome. This produces the right verdicts in some simple cases in which RTE (...) leads us astray, and, when applied to FTA, it shows that our evidence does confirm HM. (shrink)

Plastids and mitochondria arose through endosymbiotic acquisition of formerly free-living bacteria. During more than a billion years of subsequent concerted evolution, the three genomes of plant cells have undergone dramatic structural changes to optimize the expression of the compartmentalized genetic material and to fine-tune the communication between the nucleus and the organelles. The chimeric composition of many multiprotein complexes in plastids and mitochondria (one part of the subunits being nuclear encoded and another one being encoded in the organellar genome) provides (...) a paradigm for co-evolution at the cellular level. In this paper, we discuss the co-evolution of nuclear and organellar genomes in the context of environmental adaptation in species and populations. We highlight emerging genetic model systems and new experimental approaches that are particularly suitable to elucidate the molecular basis of co-adaptation processes and describe how nuclear-cytoplasmic co-evolution can cause genetic incompatibilities that contribute to the establishment of hybridization barriers, ultimately leading to the formation of new species. (shrink)

Through an enactive perspective, the concept of productive imagination can be rethought as acquired sensorimotor skills. I propose that the genesis and tuning of productive imagination through ….

Tuning might be the figure best suited to joining this pair of apparently incongruous texts, tuning in the sense defined by David Antin as “a negotiated concord or agreement based on vernacular physical actions with visible outcomes like walking together,” as opposed to understanding, which is predicated, Antin contends, “on a geometrical notion of congruence.”.

I present and defend an “indexical” version of the Fine-Tuning Argument. I begin by outlining the dialectic between the Fine-Tuning Argument, the Multiverse Objection, and the This-Universe Reply. Next, I sketch an indexical fine-tuning argument and defend it from two new objections. Then, I show that such an argument is immune to the Multiverse Objection. I explain how a further augmentation to the argument allows it to avoid an objection I call the “Indifference Objection.” I conclude that (...) my indexical version of the Fine-Tuning Argument is no less cogent than the standard version, and yet it is immune to the Multiverse Objection. (shrink)

The theory that practical reasoning is wholly instrumental says that the only practical function of reason is to tell agents the means to their ends, while their ends are fixed by something other than reason itself. In this essay I argue that Hume has an instrumentalist theory of practical reasoning. This thesis may sound as unexciting as the contention that Kant is a rationalist about morality. For who would have thought otherwise? After all, isn't the ‘instrumentalist’ line in contemporary discussions (...) of this topic descended directly from Hume himself? Contrast the following recent comment from Robert Audi's book on practical reasoning, holding the standard line, with the comment from Christine Korsgaard following it:Hume's conception of practical reasoning, so far as we can formulate it, can be located within … the foundationalist account of motivation in which reason plays the instrumentalist role … by virtue of arousing and directing our desires. (shrink)

Fine-tuning arguments are a frequent find in the literature on quantum field theory. They are based on naturalness—an aesthetic criterion that was given a precise definition in the debates on the Higgs mechanism. We follow the history of such definitions and of their application at the scale of electroweak symmetry breaking. They give rise to a special interpretation of probability, which we call Gedankenfrequency. Finally, we show that the argument from naturalness has been extended to comparing different models of (...) the physics beyond the Standard Model and that naturalness in this case can at best be understood a socio-historic heuristic. (shrink)

Can a set of musical metaphors in a treatise on ethics reveal something about the nature and source of moral autonomy? This article argues that it can. It shows how metaphorical usage of words like tone, pitch, and concord in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments can be understood as elements of an analogical model for morality. What this model tells us about morality depends on how we conceptualise music. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smith's metaphors that have seen (...) music as an aesthetic object, this article sees music as a practice. Understood in this way, the analogy allows us to see morality too as a practice––as moral tuning. This in turn reveals a novel answer to the intractable problem of conventionalism: moral autonomy consists in the freedom inherent in the constant need to interpret and reinterpret the strictly formal ideal of perfect propriety. (shrink)

In engineering, as in other scientific fields, researchers seek to confirm their models with real-world data. It is common practice to assess models in terms of the distance between the model outputs and the corresponding experimental observations. An important question that arises is whether the model should then be ‘tuned’, in the sense of estimating the values of free parameters to get a better fit with the data, and furthermore whether the tuned model can be confirmed with the same data (...) used to tune it. This dual use of data is often disparagingly referred to as ‘double-counting’. Here, we analyse these issues, with reference to selected research articles in engineering. Our example studies illustrate more and less controversial practices of model tuning and double-counting, both of which, we argue, can be shown to be legitimate within a Bayesian framework. The question nonetheless remains as to whether the implied scientific assumptions in each case are apt from the engineering point of view. (shrink)

Does the fine-tuning of the universe for life continue in the afterlife? Aquinas would answer yes. In his view, the cosmic conditions post-apocalypse are set to support the resurrected body and the sensible knowledge of God’s majesty as reflected in the renewed material creature. The renewed universe is, thus, fine-tuned for immortal human life. In the first part, I present Aquinas’ version of fine-tuning, referring to earthly life and the afterlife. I distinguish between two modes of fine-tuning: (...) organic and cognitive. In the second part, I analyze the characteristics of the universe post-apocalypse in connection with the resurrected body in general and the qualities of the blessed body in particular. (shrink)

Can a set of musical metaphors in a treatise on ethics reveal something about the nature and source of moral autonomy? This article argues that it can. It shows how metaphorical usage of words like tone, pitch, and concord in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments can be understood as elements of an analogical model for morality. What this model tells us about morality depends on how we conceptualise music. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smith's metaphors that have seen (...) music as an aesthetic object, this article sees music as a practice. Understood in this way, the analogy allows us to see morality too as a practice––as moral tuning. This in turn reveals a novel answer to the intractable problem of conventionalism: moral autonomy consists in the freedom inherent in the constant need to interpret and reinterpret the strictly formal ideal of perfect propriety. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that, in addition to the multiverse hypothesis, which is commonly taken to be an alternative explanation for fine-tuning, other than the design hypothesis, the simulation hypothesis is another explanation for fine-tuning. I then argue that the simulation hypothesis undercuts the alleged evidential connection between ‘designer’ and ‘supernatural designer of immense power and knowledge’ in much the same way that the multiverse hypothesis undercuts the alleged evidential connection between ‘fine-tuning’ and ‘fine-tuner’ (or ‘designer’). (...) If this is correct, then the fine-tuning argument is a weak argument for the existence of God. (shrink)

Proponents of the Fine-Tuning Argument frequently assume that the narrowness of the life-friendly range of fundamental physical constants implies a low probability for the origin of the universe ‘by chance’. We cast this argument in a more rigorous form than is customary and conclude that the narrow intervals do not yield a probability at all because the resulting measure function is non-normalizable. We then consider various attempts to circumvent this problem and argue that they fail.

It is claimed that the universe appears to be fine-tuned so as to admit the development of life. In this article Rodney Holder examines the evidence for fine-tuning and the chief rival explanation to design, namely the existence of a.

This paper is a response to Stephen Leeds’s "Juhl on Many Worlds". Contrary to what Leeds claims, we can legitimately argue for nontrivial conclusions by appeal to our existence. The ’problem of old evidence’, applied to the ’old evidence’ that we exist, seems to be a red herring in the context of determining whether there is a rationally convincing argument for the existence of many universes. A genuinely salient worry is whether multiversers can avoid illicit reuse of empirical evidence in (...) their arguments. (shrink)

Roger White (God and design, Routledge, London, 2003) claims that while the fine-tuning of our universe, $\alpha $ , may count as evidence for a designer, it cannot count as evidence for a multiverse. First, I will argue that his considerations are only correct, if at all, for a limited set of multiverses that have particular features. As a result, I will argue that his claim cannot be generalised as a statement about all multiverses. This failure to generalise, I (...) will argue, is also a feature of design hypotheses. That is, design hypotheses can likewise be made insensitive or sensitive to the evidence of fine-tuning as we please. Second, I will argue that White is mistaken about the role that this evidence plays in fine-tuning discussions. That is, even if the evidence of fine-tuning appears to support one particular hypothesis more strongly than another, this does not always help us in deciding which hypothesis to prefer. (shrink)

In “Making Music Together: A Study in Social Relationship,” Alfred Schutz offers a phenomenological description of a structure he contends is at the root not only of shared musical meaning, but of human communication and social relations as such: the “tuning-in relationship.” The aim of what follows is to establish that this same structure is at the root of ethical relationships, which may shed some light on the conditions under which it is possible to respond appropriately to ethically fraught (...) situations. Schutz’ analysis of the play of internal and external time establishes what the tuning-in relationship must be, but not yet how it is possible. His account also points to two important preconditions of tuning in: embodiment as the middle term between internal and external time, and practices as more widely shared meaning contexts which may persist across generations. For several reasons, Schutz does not give embodiment its due in his account, though his earlier work on course-of-action types sheds some light on the nature of practices. In all, though, these amount to promising leads for further investigation. (shrink)

It has been suggested by many philosophers that the cosmos cries out for explanation. They base this claim on the fact that many of the fundamental characteristics of the cosmos seem to have to be incredibly ’fine-tuned’ to permit the existence of intelligent life. They further claim from this ’fine-tuning’ that the cosmos is highly improbable, and thus requires an explanation. In recent times, these views have been criticized by writers, such as Quentin Smith, who suggest that no explanation (...) for the universe is really required at all, that the universe just is. I wish in this paper to criticize this view, for I believe that we have reached a point in our history where the only defensible way to maintain that the universe requires no explanation at all, is to suggest that intelligent life is in no way special. (edited). (shrink)