Panpsychism (Pt. II)

As we discussed in yesterday's post philosopher Philip Goff argues that the exquisite fine-tuning of cosmic parameters, constants and forces demands an explanation.

He states that there are three live options, theism, the multiverse, and panpsychism. Goff dismisses the first two because, he claims, they make false predictions.

He writes:

Both of these theories are able to explain the fine-tuning. The problem is that, on the face of it, they also make false predictions. For the theist, the false prediction arises from the problem of evil. If one were told that a given universe was created by an all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful being, one would not expect that universe to contain enormous amounts of gratuitous suffering.

One might not be surprised to find it contained intelligent life, but one would be surprised to learn that life had come about through the gruesome process of natural selection. Why would a loving God who could do absolutely anything choose to create life that way? Prima facie theism predicts a universe that is much better than our own and, because of this, the flaws of our Universe count strongly against the existence of God.

Goff's reason for rejecting the theistic explanation for cosmic fine-tuning is that were God the creator of the universe we would expect Him to have created a different universe than what we find. But there are several things wrong with this. Here are three:

First, no philosopher that I've read maintains that God, assuming He exists, can do "absolutely anything." He can't, for example, violate His own nature. He can't cause it to happen that He never existed, and so on. But I'm willing to grant for the sake of discussion that it'd be within God's power to create a world with less suffering than this one possesses (although some philosophers dispute this). Second, Goff's argument can be stated in the following syllogism:

1. If a perfectly loving God created the universe there'd be no suffering.
2. There is suffering.
3. Therefore, a perfectly loving God didn't create the universe.

This may seem sound, but it's not because there's no reason to accept the first premise. Goff's syllogism might better be modified to read:

1'. If a perfectly loving God created the universe there'd be no suffering unless God had a good reason for allowing it.
2'. God had no good reason for allowing suffering.
3'. Suffering exists.
4'. Therefore, a perfectly loving God did not create the universe.

The problem with this, of course, is premise 2'. Why should anyone believe it to be true? We're hardly in a position to know all the reasons a God might have for doing whatever He does, thus this argument fails to establish its conclusion.

Goff acknowledges that his brief against the theistic explanation is not a "knockdown" argument, he concedes that the theist could always come up with reasons why God might permit evil, but he avers that this need to come up with reasons is not predicted by theism and makes the theist argument a bit ad hoc. This is all true, but it's somewhat beside the point. The problem with his original argument against the theistic hypothesis is that it contains an unwarranted premise which causes his argument to unravel.

The third problem with Goff's argument is that the claim that God created the universe entails that the universe was created by an extremely powerful, extremely intelligent, purposeful (i.e. personal), and transcendent being. Any being which creates a universe must have at least those properties.

Since Goff's argument from suffering fails to offer compelling reasons to reject this claim, it remains reasonable to maintain that, in lieu of a better explanation, the universe is the product of such a being while holding in abeyance the matter of whether and to what extent the Creator is good since, unlike the aforementioned attributes, goodness is not a trait of the Creator that's deducible from the facts of nature.

In other words, the fine-tuning of the universe may not permit us to draw conclusions about the Creator's goodness, but it still points to an intelligent engineer whose attributes certainly describe a being very much like the God of theism.

The most we can infer from the suffering we find in the world is that the Creator may have reasons of which we are ignorant and/or that His goodness is not something we can deduce from the creation but must be derived from other resources (e.g. scripture, theology or philosophy).

There's no compelling ground, however, for the conclusion that the universe was not created by a very powerful, very intelligent, transcendent, and personal being, and given Goff's two alternatives, it seems - in my opinion at least - that theism is much the best of the options.

I'll explain why I think the others fall short on Monday. Tomorrow I want to post on what I think is the best way to diminish the number and slaughter of school shootings.