I want to run something by you to get your opinion. The KCA and fine-tuning arguments are presented as philosophical/logical arguments with some scientific premises. Some skeptics that don’t like philosophy will dismiss it and appeal to scientism.
But if we look at something like the detection and declaration of black holes, aren’t they doing the same things? They aren’t looking at direct observation but instead looking at effects and making inferences to the best explanation for the cause. If that is accepted as science then the KCA and the fine-tuning arguments should be as well.
I’m not interested in declaring the KCA and fine-tuning to be science but I’m thinking that an analogy such as this might be useful when a skeptic cries god-of-the-gap.
Bill, USAread more »
Inductive logic, generally speaking, takes elements of a set and applies this subset of elements to a broader set. More specifically, the principle of mathematical induction states that if zero has a property, P, and if whenever a number has the property its successor also has the property, then all numbers have the property:
Induction works by enumeration: as support for the conclusion that all p’s are q’s, one could list many examples of p’s that are q’s. It also includes ampliative argument in which the premises, while not entailing the truth of the conclusion, nevertheless purports good reason for accepting it.
Inductive probability in the sciences has been generally successful in the past. It has been used by Galileo, Kepler, and has even resulted in the discovery of Neptune. The English astronomer John Michell exemplified this discuss in a discussion of ‘probable parallax and magnitude of the fixed stars’ published by the Royal Society in 1767. Michell found that the incidence of apparently close pairings of stars was too great for them all to be effects of line of sight, and that next to a certainty such observed pairs of stars must actually be very close together, perhaps moving under mutual gravitation. Michell’s conclusion was not corroborated for forty years until William Herschel’s confirmatory observations.
In a correct deductive argument if the premises are true the conclusion is true regardless of whether or not further evidence is considered. There must be a reasonable connection or relationship between the conditions in a deductive argument (in the instance of implication). Consider the argument, as modus ponens, that if the moon’s core is made of cheese then my desk is made out of mahogany. What relationship do these two conditions have? The truth-value is valid (F-T-T). However, I recognize that this is merely a preference, which is, at times, convenient. When making a novel explanans and prediction the relationship between the conditions may not be epistemically evident.
There are generally three options, which are often considered as an explanation for the fine-tuning data: chance, necessity, a combination of chance and necessity, or a fine-tuner. One immediate problem in implementing explanatory options in a deductive manner is that the first premise may be false wherein it may be lacking in options and the argument still is valid. When these options are used in a [strict] deductive argument it may appear as: