Science, Philosophy, Evidence, Explanation and Fine-Tuning with Tim Maudlin
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Science, Philosophy, Evidence, Explanation and Fine-Tuning with Tim Maudlin from the series "Multiple Universes: Parallel Worlds in Quantum Physics, Cosmology and Imagination"
Various sorts of “multiverse” scenario force us to reflect both on the aims of physics and on the sorts of considerations that can make a theory credible. This topic has been somewhat suppressed in the physics community by the prevalence of operationist and instrumentalist rhetoric (“Shut Up And Calculate”). I will survey the situation with respect to how multiverse theories could address fine-tuning problems, and the challenges that remain in making the principles used for assessing credibility clear and explicit.
Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU and Founder and Director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. His research interests lie primarily in the foundations of physics, metaphysics, and logic. His books include Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity (Blackwell), Truth and Paradox (Oxford), The Metaphysics Within Physics (Oxford), Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time (Princeton University Press) and New Foundations for Physical Geometry: The Theory of Linear Structures (Oxford). Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory comes out on March 12, 2019. He is a member of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an ACLS fellow.
Recorded on October 17, 2021.
What a great demonstration of the high degree of relevance of philosophical methods to issues in foundational physics! As an undergraduate student in physics, math, and philosophy, I am frustrated at the lack of synthesis of those domains of inquiry in the classes I take, and so am grateful for resources like this which get past the plug-and-chug, take-this-equation-on-blind-faith approach so common to physics classes by a careful employment of philosophical tools.
All he really did, though, was to prove that neither of you two understands physics. ;-)
I agree with almost everything said. However, the thing about chance and tims existence i do not agree with, in that from. Although i do agree with what is meant.
There is ofc nothing chancy about existence necessarily. I prefer to say that what is is and could not have been otherwise. And so everything including in particular tim as we know and love him, had to exist just as he is. But in that case, he is unique, depending on the detail, possibly completely unique, even if he shares features with infinite variations on the theme. Particulars in physical existence then has the lowest possible frequency in existence, only one example per exact pattern, while approximate patterns might be more or less likely in the sense of existing in a multitude of instantiated examples. This is the most accurate way to see particulars in the world. Nothing is tryely provable, but this is how it goes in a deterministic world anyway, with uniqueness of subpatterns. What it means to say something is maximally chancy it contingent is not to say it could easily have been otherwise, but that the pattern in question only exists exactly like that once in an infinite context. While a rounded off example of something similar might have infinite examples but be subtly different case by case and have any density compared to other patterns. The reason to write all this, is to try to penetrate the confusion around conspiracy of physical forces. To say that something is determined to be so, does not make it likely, even if its probability of existing just so, is always 1. What tim means when he says, that there is no cosmic conspiracy to make him just as he is, is that there is no special rule just to make him happen, even though the true evolution did, most likely deterministically. All this means is that if you search an infinite space filled with similar evolution, examples of nearly exactly the same tim, is way less frequent to find, than examples of dice throws that land on 3 out of 6 options. Everything in existence can be necessary in its exact form, whioe also having a nature that is contingent on details of subpatterns that could be substituted in all sorts of ways without changing the appearance of the laws of the evolution. A conspiracy would be something like a tim with the same personality on every planet there is, but no other person having that luxury. All of this is to say that i Don't really disagree with what was said, i just disagree with the framing of random, or contingent. I think the most random crap possible can be necessary from the perspective of the workings of nature, but laws and regularities are about approximate sub patterns that repeat, not the full exact pattern of everything. And that technicallity makes using language correctly when talking about fine tuning extremely difficult.
so to summarize, everything that actually exists, is necessary logically, by the logic that existence is what is necessary. If a shoehorn exists inside a sauna on the moon then that always had to be so. That doesn't mean it is likely given the approximate subpatterns characterising the whole. You can view the whole of existence as a sort of distribution of different types of subpatterns in obscured resolution all mushed together. And from there, what it means to say tim maudlin is a coincidence, is not to say he wasn't a necessary part of existence, if he exists, that is true by toutology alone, but that the exact tim maudlin is nit repeated, and only slight variations can be repeated, and with a certain density, say a very low one, such that it is comparable to all other possible humans for example. So i think the point you are making has more to do with frequency than necessity really, if you think carefully about what it means in different contexts.
Physicists use to be referred to as natural philosophers
Yes, and that was always a misnomer. ;-)
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