A SUBSTANTIVE Response to @JamesFodor on the Fine-Tuning Argument for God

In this video, I respond to some of James Fodor's objections to the fine-tuning argument.
00:00 - Introduction
00:13 - Overview of FTA
5:00 - Alternate Laws/Life
14:00 - Understated Evidence
19:03 - Probability Measures
24:04 - General Explanations
28:07 - Alone World
31:02 - Non-life Goods
33:40 - Simulated Universe
35:22 - Disembodied Agents
37:01 - Electrons in Love
38:32 - Mystery?
38:50 - Multi-Law worlds
44:35 - Nomological Fine-Tuning
47:35 - Divine Psychology
1:02:13 - Summary

[logicalliberty]

I appreciate both your and Fodor’s serious and thought-provoking videos on this topic!

[Greenlight_]

Nice one. I think that clears up many of the misconceptions with Fodor's video.

[blusheep]

James argues that the FTA is an obvious argument from ignorance because we don't know what kinds of life could arise in other sets of constants. He then follows that with questions like, "what if there are other processes?" and other questions like this. Its not well known, but these kinds of questions are also categorized as arguments from ignorance. "We don't know x, so x"

[deliberationunderidealcond]

One thing worth noting: Fodor's claim about alternative life gets the physics wrong. If the cosmological constant were different probably no two atoms could interact!

[TheScholarlyBaptist]

I personally don’t like the fine tuning argument but thanks for this.

[Joker]

I much prefer Aquinas' Fifth Way to the Fine-Tuning argument. It basically states that for physics to have a constant system by which all things act, it requires an intellegent designer of the physics system. It really doesn't matter what kind of physics. What's important is that things aren't random on the whole.

[PyrBen]

ill watch this when i have free time 😵‍💫

[MatthewFearnley]

I'm not sure about everything in your third response, but I think your first two responses are better than most commenters think they are.

Would you be wiling to have a live discussion with James Fodor? He seems to be interested in engaging with people directly.

[carterwoodrow]

Yo squared I have a question about your response to these objections. In the end, how would we determine how much of the theism square go cross out? Because we can't really know God's motives it seems any amount we try to cross out is arbitrary. Or is it just a weakness of the argument that the final probability of the fine tuning given theism is really unknowable?

[bruhfella]

A well thought out response. I’m glad I’ve watched it all

[jgone]

I expect Fodor to make a response video because I think I'm seeing issues here and I'm only on argument 2 or your first objection. Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I think you and your analogy are both missing the point. You say that considering other contexts or other forms of life is irrelevant because we know which ones we have, and in the analogy you say the probability of entering the building through a specific door with a random 4-digit code is 1/10, 000. This seems to miss Fodor's point that a life permitting universe is not known to be necessarily bound to a specific context or a specific form of life. Saying that the specific context or lifeform we ended up with matters is like being amazed at rolling an 89 for the win on a 10, 000 sided die because it had a probability 1/10, 000, without knowing the size of the subset of winning numbers. To map this to your analogy, entering the building does not represent obtaining our universe's specific context or our forms of life, it represents obtaining a life permitting universe without necessarily constraining the context or form of life. Why assume each keypad only accepts a singular 4-digit code? Other passing codes would represent other forms of life that still imply a life permitting universe. I guess the keypads represent the contexts because there is potentially multiple passing codes per keypad

[UncriticalRaceTheory]

Great analogies in your responses, love it!

[MrGustavier]

36:42 _"Fodor has to show that there are so many alternatives to fine-tuning that the probability of a fine-tuned universe given theism would be just as low as given naturalism"_

But this is exactly what he does, he explains that there are so many possibility in the theistic hypothesis that we can't even conceive of all of them... At least in naturalism there seems to be a limit : what is consistent with naturalism... But ANYTHING seems to be consistent with theism... God just has to wish it so...

[JohnSmith-bqnf]

Based squared, I was hoping someone would do a review of his video

[ReflectiveJourney]

I think the lock anology doesnt work and it is trying to do an intuition pump using our ordinary common sense. For example in lock anology if the person has x ray vison and can see inside the lock than it is possible he didn't know but deduced it. Of course you can say that someone having x ray vison has low prior probability but this is why the anology breaks down since changing constants of nature is already on the level of someone having Xray vison.

[MarkPatmos]

If you are attempting to understand divine psychology, especially from a theist perspective where the creator is involved in the world, then religion shouldn't be dismissed as an interface between us and our creator.

[logicalliberty]

Could you further explain your response to the point about alternative forms of life (beginning around 18:15)? I don’t follow. How does it affect the probability calculations? Are you suggesting we should treat this case just like the case of alternative laws? In the latter case, we simply restrict the probability space to those portions in which *our laws* obtain. Are you suggesting we should likewise restrict the probability space to those portions in which we exist as humans (rather than dark matter entities, etc.)? But if we do that, then 100% of naturalism’s probability space is fine-tuned, since that’s a necessary condition on our existing as humans!

[MrGustavier]

27:13 _"We can point to a lot of good things that a fine-tuned universe brings about which would therefore motivate an all good being"_

And who decides what is _"good"_ ?
If it is the _"all good being"_ then whichever the tuning, it would be fine... And the explanation is therefore on par with the multiverse.

[Oskar]

Is fodor the new paulogia, where all apologist for unknown reasons cannot pronounce their last name

[danielrhouck]

14:47 I know this is irrelevant to the analogy but I have been playing a multiplayer game where you can create a private online game that requires a password to get in. However there is a bug and any password works. I would suspect a similar bug in the keypad.