The psychophysical nomological harmony argumentJoe Schmid is a very powerful philosopher.He’s an agnostic slightly leaning theist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW0lj_YU3sg Ph.D student with a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/MajestyofReason and blog. https://majestyofreason.wordpress.com/ He has also written exactly one billion philosophy papers, https://philpeople.org/profiles/joseph-schmid and all of them are published in top five journals. He might also be the hardest worker I know—constantly doing philosophy, always super well. People are impressed by the amount I write; but I just produce random blog posts. Joe somehow manages to produce polished, high-quality philosophy articles at an almost superhuman rate—he recently was largely responsible for producing a hundred page document in just a few days. If you are a Bernardete paradox being used to argue for causal finitism, you DO NOT want to run into him in a dark alley.
>>41217537(Readers, take a moment to appreciate the grim reaper paradox, getting reaped! That is high-quality memery, of a sort that you won’t find elsewhere on the internet).Anyways, Joe spends a lot of time rebutting some arguments for theism that he doesn’t think are very good. He might be the world leading critic of the Kalam. For this reason, I suspect that most of Joe’s viewers are atheists—and he’s a go-to resource for anti-theists looking for serious philosophical objections to theistic arguments.But there are some arguments for theism that he does think are good, and one of those is the nomological-psychophysical harmony argument for theism (original to him). I agree that this argument is pretty good, so I decided to explain why you too should be convinced by this argument. He’s going to write it up into a paper at some point, so don’t steal it, or the God who is proved to exist by the argument will send you to hell. He was also generous enough to send me a draft of his paper, and I am heavily indebted to his comments in that article.Those who have followed the new niche arguments for theism know that there’s an argument called the psychophysical harmony argument https://philarchive.org/archive/CUTPHA#:~:text=Roughly%2C%20psychophysical%20harmony%20consists%20in,another%20in%20strikingly%20fortunate%20ways. and another argument called the nomological harmony argument. https://philpapers.org/archive/CUTTPO-9.pdf These arguments are a hit sensation that’s sweeping the nation among the like nine people who like Bayesian arguments for theism. Those two arguments had a baby, and it is this argument.
>>41217543The core idea of the argument: why is it that the right substance for producing consciousness happens to exist?Think about all the things that might produce consciousness. It could’ve been that silicon brains were needed for consciousness. It could have been that you needed a special kind of fundamental particle to produce consciousness—a kind that doesn’t exist. It’s pretty lucky that the stuff that produces consciousness happens to exist in our universe.A brief note: the argument isn’t really about psychophysical laws in the dualist sense. It’s just about the pairings between the physical and the mental and the surprisingness of the stuff that produces consciousness happening to exist.Imagine being a floating, disembodied ghost in space. You hadn’t yet seen the creation of the universe, but you knew that the universe was going to be created. How likely would you think it was that whichever structures were capable of sustaining consciousness would exist? Pretty unlikely! Only a small portion of the infinite conceivable structures produce consciousness—it’s unlikely they’d exist.Specifically, here are 5 things that the angel might expect (these proposals come from Schmid’s unpublished draft):1. Consciousness could have been extremely ubiquitous and widespread (for instance, arising whenever there’s any physical stuff or any information). All fundamental laws—gravity, and so on—are widespread, so why would consciousness be different? Now, such a world would still have widespread nomological harmony, so I’m not counting this failing to obtain as much evidence for theism. I’m just noting it, because it makes the other stuff more surprising.
>>412175512. It could have been that consciousness was produced by certain alien physical properties that don’t exist. Like, maybe to get consciousness, you’d need some unknown, alien structure unlike anything we have in the physical world. Considering the infinite possible worlds, we should expect most of the physical structures one could imagine producing consciousness to be alien, so it’s surprising that the actual one isn’t.3. Consciousness could have been produced by some fundamental particles that could exist but don’t.4. Consciousness could have been substrate dependent, but only worked with non-existent substrates. Consciousness being substrate dependent is the idea that for a physical item to produce consciousness depends on what the item is not just what it does. People who think consciousness is substrate dependent generally think that even if you had a thing made out of silicon that processes information in the same way as a brain, it wouldn’t produce consciousness. A priori, if consciousness is substrate dependent, it’s weird that the substrate it depends on exists!5. For whichever criteria are needed for consciousness in our world, it could have been that the amount of them that was needed was vastly greater than the amount that existed. For instance, maybe to get consciousness, one needs a degree of neuronal integration that requires a brain the size of a state—and because there are no such brains, there would be no consciousness.These are the things the angel would have expected. They would thus have been pretty shocked to find that—wonder of wonders, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ9sh7Gk2BY miracle of miracles—the stuff that produces consciousness exists. This is very surprising. What could possibly explain it?
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>>41217537>He has also written exactly one billion philosophy papers,No he hasn’t, unless “he” is an AI program, or using it. One billion seconds is almost 32 years. One billion minutes is about 1,900 years. This already makes me wary and want to disregard the rest of your thread as AI slop, sorry mate.
>>41217804Kek, ok, I acknowledge that actually, in spite of myself I started reading the thread because I’m interested enough in it, about five posts in, I’m interested in the philosophical/theological side of things, so sorry for starting out on such a snarky tone. Will read and chew on this further
>>41217537Buy an ad, faggot.
>>41217814Glad to hear that enjoy it
>>41217537An infinite multiverse with no restrictions would create the most “improbable” universes imaginable. And that ends the whole debate. This Joe guy needs to work on something that’s actually useful
>>41217819I wish it were this simple
>>41218222>>41217818https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXqktYXrBk
>>41218227It doesn’t matter if there are infinite universes and only ONE universe has intelligent, conscious life. Of course there are actually many more than one, but either way the probability of life existing given a multiverse is 100%. Whereas with only one universe, the probability is lower. Therefore there is a higher probability that this universe exists due to a multiverse (excluding the possibility of a God, of course, which wouldn’t really have an improved odds of creating life over the multiverse, since the multiverse is already at 100%). All else being equal, God and the multiverse are equally likely explanations, and more probable than a single universe without God. But there are many reasons to doubt God’s existence, or at least the types of Gods described by human religions, and virtually no reasons to doubt the existence of the multiverse, since it would have no effect on the well-being of humans. But you would expect an all-loving God to create a different world than ours. For example, by making us much smarter and much less impulsive compared to animals. I mean, why are we not already a million years ahead in evolution? It seems a shitty test when we’re barely above monkeys and don’t even know what’s true and what isn’t and we already know that most religions are bullshit but convince people anyway.
>>41218350God allows more possible people Some infinities are bigger than others https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-best-argument-for-god?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
>>41218495No, no, no. It doesn’t matter how many people are in the room. Either way someone is guaranteed to be in the room, observing the coin. Maybe you have to be an open individualist to understand this point. It would be different if the problem were like this:>Suppose that you are in a group of a million people. A coin will be flipped. If heads, someone will be chosen randomly and placed inside the room. If tails, everyone will be placed inside the room, without being able to see each other. You wake up in the room. Which coin flip is more likely? And in this case the answer is actually tails because there is a 1 in 1 million chance of your being chosen randomly, but a 100% chance of being in the room if everyone is moved there. It’s like when people talk about how improbable it is for “you” to be born, instead of all the other genetic variations that could have been. But you would have existed either way, just with different genetics. Unless you actually want to say, “Wow, what is the probability that I would have this EXACT DNA sequence?” which is a really silly thing to marvel at. What’s typically marveled at is the fact that you exist at all, which actually is a 100% probability. Again, you need to be an open individualist to understand this.
>>41220340Absolutely, it’s wrong.
>>41217537Why are you posting AI slop without immediately identifying it?
>>41217537"He might also be the hardest worker I know"This isn't just a case of being careless. You're trying to pass AI slop off as a real person.
>>41218350>For example, by making us much smarter and much less impulsive compared to animals. I mean, why are we not already a million years ahead in evolution?You're retarded. There is no "ahead" in evolution. You're just parroting human supremacist garbage wholly ignorant of biology and evolution.Your entire worldview is just a mechanism to make yourself feel like a supreme being.
>>41220380> There is no "ahead" in evolutionYes there is. Human technology allows for large civilizations with large populations and abundance of food and many temptations. If humans had the chance to evolve in these conditions for more than just the last ~10,000 years or so, then we would be much better suited to this type of environment. Obviously time itself is not what determines if a species is “better” since technically all species are the same age. But with humans the important point is that our environment is relatively new and so we haven’t adapted to it as well as, say, sharks have adapted to living in the ocean. In many ways we are still wired to thrive as hunter-gatherers.
>>41220396You're using human criterion for your evaluation. Prokaryotes rule the Earth in terms of numbers. There are endlessly diverse ways of surviving, many of them so alien from each other that any criteria of "superiority" is senseless.However what is true is that the doctrine of human supremacy has objectively led to worsening conditions for humans and nonhumans alike by justifying treating nature as "resources" and "capital."
>>41220428I preemptively refuted your whole argument. Humans sin and struggle with meaning because we did not evolve for a large, complex, technological civilization. Go to a primitive tribe and you’ll see that they are not dealing with depression, addiction, gluttony, etc. It’s very basic that if a species evolves for a specific environment and then that environment undergoes changes, the species will find new difficulties as they are not adapted to that environment.
>>41220441You didn't address my argument at all, and tried to further distract from it by introducing multiple complex issues with claims about them that AT THE VERY LEAST require qualifications and explanations. Which gets us away from the original topic: human supremacism and it's failings.It has failed in both theory to justify human supremacy, and in practice by resulting in disastrous ecocide through its application.
>>41220461My argument has absolutely nothing to do with comparing humans to other species. My argument applies to any species that has suddenly undergone a drastic change in its environment. God expects us to not sin even though we evolved for an environment in which it was far more difficult to sin. Consider how modern technology makes it far more easier to be addicted to porn or to be lustful in general. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors did not evolve in such conditions, so there was not such a strict selection pressure. It’s no coincidence that birth rates are getting low, as people aren’t wired to handle new changes in technology and culture so easily. Even the invention of agriculture, which made it possible to settle and have large populations, more food, more possessions, more war, etc. suddenly introduced many temptations and difficulties. Very primitive humans may have killed each other, but that’s a survival strategy just as in many other species. But it’s not an optimal survival strategy to eat until you’re 500 pounds, or to watch porn all day, or be an alcoholic, or procrastinate, etc. God could have easily designed us to recognize all of these behaviors as idiotic. One person struggles with alcohol, another with laziness, another with simply being too dumb. The fact that there exist people who are much more intelligent and don’t even have to use willpower to, for example, not waste all their money, proves that God could have taken the best qualities of the best humans and made ALL humans like that. Why is it that Jesus has free will and is perfect, but all other humans have free will and sin every single day?
>>41220515Again you're distracting about the topic to rant about sin and how the west has fallen.Why?Because you know that I have an extremely strong point about human supremacy, and you don't know how to argue against it.And so you are trying to shift into territory you are more familiar with. You're hoping I'll take your ragebait.
>>41220548You’re literally the one making shit up and distracting from my original point. I never claimed humans were “superior” to other species. I even said that sharks are better adapted to their environment than humans. You have absolutely no idea how to respond to the basic fact that humans did not evolve over millions, or even hundreds of thousands, of years, for a modern environment such as ours. You have no good reason for why God didn’t design us to thrive regardless of what technology exists. And he could have done that by making us more intelligent, more adaptable, less impulsive, more considerate and selfless as well.
>>41220575You're right, my entire argument is based on having incorrectly read your reply I originally replied to and thought it was promoting claims it was speaking against. I apologize for the error.
>>41220685No problem, I didn’t write so clearly anyway. But if you weren’t a silly goose you still would have understood
