Let's Carry on Carriering Part II

In Part I of this series we were left with Richard Carrier's entirely plausible assertions; here is a summary of them...

That which is logically impossible can never exist or happen......It’s really hard to fathom what one could even mean by saying logical contradictions can obtain in the real world,  (that is, contradictions are unintelligible notions - I agree!)

The most nothingly state of nothing that can ever obtain, is a state of affairs of zero size lacking all properties and contents, except that which is logically necessary.

Nevertheless, the very notion that logically necessary things necessarily exist, necessarily entails logically impossible things never exist. Because one of the things that necessarily exists, is the absence of logically impossible things.

Nothing wrong with any of that as far as I can see. He then goes on to conclude that if the demand for absolute nothingness necessarily leaves a hard kernel of logical necessities, the absence of these necessities would entail a logical contradiction. Again, I agree. But Richard then draws this conclusion:

Therefore we no longer need gods to explain why there is something. That there would be something is logically necessary....... it is logically necessarily the case that there will be something, even without gods

But as I pointed out in Part I in stating the above Richard appears to have missed the obvious: 

1. Theists, whatever they may think they are telling us are not actually saying that the universe came from nothing since their starting point is, of course, a god of some sort.

2. Richard doesn't tell us much about this irreducible kernel of logical necessity and in particular why it might not be inclusive of that dreaded backdrop of divinity which many theists claim has the property of aseity even if, I concede, the ontological arguments that have been advanced so far are flawed. 

Of course, Richard isn't going to buy this divinity line, but I just want to point out that his conclusion (based on the necessity of logical truths) that "Therefore we no longer need gods to explain why there is something" doesn't yet stand on a firm logical foundation. I have the distinct feeling that Richard is motivated by a strong a priori desire to conclusively eliminate divinity from the inquiry come what may. 

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Now let's continue where I left off in Part I.  Below is Richard's proposition 3. This proposition makes use of what Richard defines as "Nothing", that is "nothing" spelt with a cap N. When all mere logical possibilities have been removed, "Nothing" is the hard core of logical necessities that are left - removal of Nothing would be a logical contradiction whereas the non-reification of mere logical possibilities (or contingencies) is not a logical contradiction. But apart from this we know very little about the details of "Nothing"; Richard doesn't supply any of these details. All he tells us is that "Nothing" has no content and governed by no rules or laws except the laws of logical necessity. That's a very big "except" there! He doesn't yet tell us what these laws of logical necessity are but he's going to "ask what predicted observations this hypothesis entails and how well it accords with what we see". I'm looking forward to his conclusions! 

Without further ado here is Richard's proposition 3 (My emphases are in bold):

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· Richard:  Proposition 3: If there was ever Nothing, then nothing governs or dictates what will become of that Nothing, other than what is logically necessary.

This is true by definition, once you accept Proposition 2. So there is no logically consistent way to deny this Proposition without also denying Proposition 2. In fact Proposition 3 is just a restatement of Proposition 2 with respect to the specific absence of “rules” and “properties.” It is logically entailed by that absence, that when there is Nothing, there are also no rules or properties that dictate what will happen to that Nothing or what that Nothing will do.

Which also means the total absence of physical laws. So all cosmology papers arguing for a universe from nothing are invalid for the condition of Nothing, as those papers depend on the existence or operation of certain physical laws or properties. See, for example, this point as made in 1987 by W.B Drees in “Interpretation of The Wave Function of the Universe,” International Journal of Theoretical Physics 26. Only if some such paper proved the physical laws or properties they depend on are logically necessary would they become applicable to Nothing. They could, for instance, someday show how denying that that physical law applies to any state of affairs (even a Nothing-state) entails a logical contradiction. But I am not aware of that having been done.

My Comment: ....yes, and neither am I. Again, I largely agree. In fact, this point has already been made by Richard in Part I, and I agreed: Current physics, even at its most minimalist, assumes the existence of transcendent laws which are not nothing. They are in fact descriptive contingencies about the reified patterns of behavior we observe in the cosmos. 

However, I would like to raise a query here: If the laws of physics are, as far as we know, descriptive contingencies (i.e. they are not logical truisms as far as we know) about cosmic patterns of form and behavior, do they meaningfully exist if they had no reified instantiations to describe? I contend that these descriptive laws have no meaningful existence if they had no instantiations which they usefully describe. Take for example Newton's laws: As we know these laws don't work for atoms and high velocities; that is, they are not fundamental truths of nature. And yet in their domain of applicability these laws are still a very useful descriptive device. They have no fundamental or transcendent existence and so their existence is conditioned on their ability to describe the reified cosmic reality we observe around us, and within limits these laws still work very well. Ergo, Newton's laws are only meaningful because of their descriptive success, and they have no fundamental transcendence. Likewise, I propose that all laws of physics have no transcendent existence; they are only meaningful if they successfully describe a reified reality; they are very human centred computational devices.  

In his comment above Richard says that someday it might be shown "how denying that physical law applies to any state of affairs (even a Nothing-state) entails a logical contradiction. But I am not aware of that having been done." Neither am I aware of this having been done. But the crucial point here is this: Richard is hinting that a proof of the logical necessity of our cosmos may yet be found: I'll be coming back to this admission shortly. 

But one thing I can be clear about is this: If physical laws are merely algebraic algorithms which in a compressed form successfully describe our reified patterns of observation, then we won't ever find logical necessity in our current physics which describes those patterns in terms of equations: Descriptive equations cannot be compressed to nothing; they necessarily start with a kernel of contingent digital information. Any attempt to prove their logical necessity with further equations may lead to incrementally more succinct descriptions but it will also lead to an "equations all the way down" regress.  We will not get logical necessity out of our current method of description which uses descriptive equations.

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· Richard: Proposition 4: If nothing governs or dictates what will become of Nothing (other than what is logically necessary), then nothing (other than what is logically necessary) prevents anything from happening to that Nothing.

This is again true by definition. It’s what follows with logical necessity from saying nothing governs what happens to Nothing; because Nothing contains nothing, not even rules or properties that would limit what Nothing can do. So you cannot deny Proposition 4 without denying Propositions 1, 2, or 3.

My comment: But Nothing doesn't contain nothing; it contains what is logically necessary and just what is logically necessary hasn't been clarified by Richard.  In fact, as we have seen above Richard himself has even admitted that the following may be the case.....

Only if some such paper proved the physical laws or properties, they depend on are logically necessary would they become applicable to Nothing. They (i.e. physicists) could, for instance, someday show how denying that that physical law applies to any state of affairs (even a Nothing-state) entails a logical contradiction. But I am not aware of that having been done.

That is, Richard is telling us that although he doesn't know if anyone has done the work, as far as he is aware our physical regime may be a logical necessity - in short, Nothing could conceivably be very content laden. (As I've said above if this was true however, this could not be proved via descriptive equations because this always leads to an incompressible kernel of digital information of an "equations all the way down" regress).  Therefore, as far as Richard is concerned it is conceivable that Nothing is far from being empty; for if our physics is a logical necessity as Richard at least allows it means that Nothing is not devoid of rules or properties that would limit what Nothing can do. So, by Richard's own logic it is at least conceivable that Nothing is very much Something.  That Something could be very significant indeed as it not only explains why absolutely nothing is a logical impossibility, but conceivably also explains an immense and highly organized cosmos.

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Richard: This entails that the assertion ex nihilo nihil, “from nothing, comes [only] nothing,” is false. Because that is a rule, and Nothing contains no rules. No such rule can therefore exist when there is Nothing, so as to govern that Nothing. Therefore it cannot be the case that only nothing comes from Nothing. In fact we cannot even establish that it is likely that only nothing will come from Nothing.

My Comment: Nothing contains no rules? But as we've just seen Richard has admitted that Nothing could contain rules that are an outcome of logical necessity. 

On the basis that theists are starting from a sentient entity (which they presumably believe has the logical property of aseity, even if that can't be explicitly proved) their starting point is not nothing in the absolute sense. I think Richard and I would actually agree that "absolutely nothing" is likely to be a logical contradiction and therefore it would follow that ex-nihilo creation is not just false but an unintelligible notion; that may also apply to ex nihilo nihil. Of course, I can't expect Richard to believe an a priori sentient being with the property of aseity to be the starting point, but it seems to me that he is building up to an idea that the source of creation (= Nothing) is far from being a trivial entity. 

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Richard: The only way to challenge this is to disprove Proposition 4. And the only way to disprove Proposition 4 is to prove that it is logically necessary that only nothing come from Nothing. I know of no such proof. None has ever been produced. Not even after over two thousand years of philosophy. There is not only no proof that it is necessarily the case that ex nihilo nihil, there is no proof that that’s even an expected outcome.

My Comment: Once again, I have no objections here. But bit by bit it is becoming clearer that Richard's notion of Nothing is potentially a very sophisticated object indeed and could well be the seat of the origins many of us are seeking. As for ex nihilo nihil, if as seems likely to be the case absolute nothingness is an incoherent notion, then in terms of absolute nothingness the phrase ex nihilo nihil will also be incoherent. But this phrase does make some sense if we are talking about the patterns of behavior of our own world. In our world antecedent conditions constrain the possibilities open to future conditions.  Therefore, although I don't accept that there is any such thing as a logically true law of "cause & effect", the dynamic of our world is such that "cause & effect" is valid as a synthetic heuristic.  Hence, in our world something always comes from an antecedent something where that antecedent something is a blend of initial conditions and dynamical rules that at least constrain the possibilities which arise from these antecedents. So, if we have neither initial conditions nor the dynamical rules nothing can be inferred as an outcome; that is, from nothing comes nothing in this relative sense. It is conceivable that this synthetic rule is not always true, but it is a good heuristic.

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Richard: It won’t do to say “but we don’t see that rule being violated anywhere now,” because we do not observe Nothing anywhere—everywhere there is something (an expanded spacetime, with contents and properties, governed by now-existent physical laws)—so none of our observations apply to Nothing. In fact, as Nothing entails the total absence of “contents and properties and physical laws,” the very reason we do not observe a violation of ex nihilo nihil is that those extant properties and laws now prevent “just anything” from happening. The only nihil we observe is actually a thing: propertied spacetime. And that thing, being existent, now limits what can happen.

 My Comment: I think the foregoing is Richard's way of saying something very similar to my last comment. True, we don't observe this enigmatic object he calls "Nothing" and which I think in the final analysis is very much Something, in fact Something very significant indeed. 

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Richard: Even insofar as we do observe the violation of ex nihilo nihil, indeed all the time now, in the spontaneous creation and destruction of virtual particles resulting from quantum indeterminacy, this is a highly constrained and ordered violation. It’s governed by limits, laws, and rules. You don’t just get rabbits and deathstars popping in and out, much less then sticking around. Yes, there actually is a calculable quantum probability on present physics of a rabbit or a deathstar popping into existence spontaneously; but it’s an absurdly small probability, because what can and can’t happen now is constrained by the possibilities allowed and disallowed by the specific spacetime we inhabit and its qualities. 

 My Comment: No problems with that either. In particular we can agree with Richard's comments about our own highly (statistically) constrained universe, so constrained, in fact, that it means we can rule out many patterns on the basis of their extremely low probability. The information that allows us to do this is implicit in the laws of physics which we think we know. 

But from here things start to go badly wrong for Richard (my emphases in the following)...

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Richard: But when there is Nothing, there is no spacetime (much less the specific kind we inhabit) other than a dimensionless point of it, and no governing qualities. So, indeed, there can be not just Boltzmann brains but a Boltzmann anything on present physics (as I’ve discussed before). But when even the constraints that make such things unlikely don’t exist anymore, all Boltzmann things necessarily become far more probable—not less. An actual Nothing is therefore even more likely to randomly create rabbits and deathstars. This is a logically necessary fact, that follows necessarily from the fact that when there is Nothing, that which keeps the probability of such outcomes low no longer exists, and therefore nothing remains to keep that probability so low. It doesn’t follow that it’s therefore then a likely outcome. It may indeed still be an absurdly low probability (and I dare say surely is). But it will be so only if, and only because, it is logically necessarily so. And not because of any other rules, laws, or physics.

The principle point is that Proposition 4 entails the probability of Nothing spontaneously becoming anything is not zero. It logically cannot be zero. As it only could be if something existed to stop that happening. And by definition nothing exists when there is Nothing to stop that Nothing from becoming something else. And note that whatever then happens will also be totally uncaused, except insofar as it is caused by Nothing itself. Because whatever happens will be uncaused by anything whatever except the logically necessary fact that Nothing cannot limit what comes to exist. As being Nothing, it lacks any forces or constrains to limit what happens.

 My Comment: Lots of problems with that. This is where Richard's thinking comes off the rails spectacularly. This train crash is aptly summed up in this logically pathological statement: 

The principle point is that Proposition 4 entails the probability of Nothing spontaneously becoming anything is not zero. It logically cannot be zero

Why? My interpretation of what he is trying to tell us here is that Nothing has no rules and therefore the probability of something arising from Nothing is finite, albeit very small. At this point Richard's flawed concepts of probability and randomness kicks in and he uses it to do an enormous amount of heavy lifting. He takes it for granted that if you've got a probability then you've got a randomness generator/creator. No, you haven't!

OK we've admitted the logically necessary existence of Nothing, but we know very little about Nothing; it may have logically necessary rules about which we know nothing; essentially it is an Unknown. In fact, as we have already seen Richard himself has admitted that the cosmos itself in all its rule laden regularity and order just may be an outcome of some unknown logical necessity. Moreover, it may be ... and I'm gingerly looking left and right at this point.... that Nothing is inclusive of a very significant sentient object; no prizes for guessing what I mean by that. In fact that would be no surprise to a philosophical idealist like myself - to me the constructions of physics make no sense without the a priori existence of an up and running sophisticated conscious cognition that conceives, perceives and creates (not necessarily in that order) a rational world on its mental matrix.

But, and this is Richard's whopper of a train crash....just what does he think he's doing with statements like this? (again, my emphases).....

An actual Nothing is therefore even more likely to randomly create rabbits and deathstars. This is a logically necessary fact, that follows necessarily from the fact that when there is Nothing, that which keeps the probability of such outcomes low no longer exists, and therefore nothing remains to keep that probability so low.

Probability and randomness - which are not identical concepts - are both highly sophisticated notions; they are not logical necessities that we can use to underwrite some half-cock notion of creation from Nothing. 

Firstly probability. Probability is function of an observer's information level, the well-known ratio of possibilities, possibilities that as far as the observer's knowledge/information is concerned are in the running as possible outcomes, or possible states of affairs. Therefore, probability only makes sense in the context of a cognating object, an object with sufficient cognitive sophistication to apprehend the options that are in the running for reification.  What probability certainly is not is a dynamic capable of generating anything. If somebody presents me with two inverted cups on a table and tells me that if I select the right cup a tasty rum-fudge is waiting for me then in the absence of further information as far as I am concerned the probability of the rum fudge being under each cup is 1/2. That probability is not a dynamic which generates anything; in this instance the dynamic has already happened - namely, the player who set up the puzzle has already done the deed and my subjective probability of a 1/2 doesn't generate anything new until I select a cup and my personal information changes.

Secondly randomness: Randomness is a class of pattern and a very sophisticated pattern at that: It is a pattern which foils any attempt to generate it using small space, short execution time parallel algorithms with a better statistic than evens. I've done my own independent work on this subject to make sure I thoroughly understood it. (Professional mathematicians have also solved this problem no doubt more professionally than myself, but the conclusion is the same). True, a random source is a generating dynamic but it is a very sophisticated dynamic. 

Richard appears to have conflated randomness and probability. The existence of probability doesn't necessarily imply randomness and vice versa the existence of randomness doesn't necessarily imply a probability. Probability is not a dynamic, it is a measure of the information available to a sufficiently cognating agent about circumstances that could well be very static and very finite. Randomness is a pattern generating dynamic but if the results of the dynamic are stored and memorized in a book of random numbers that output is no longer probabilistic to the holder of the book; but the configuration of numbers is still random.

But the main point is this: Randomness is no simple logically true axiomatic object that we can take for granted as a creation dynamic; it is by definition a highly complex phenomenon with certain mathematical properties and unless we are party to the right (large) algorithms the best we can do is use probability calculus, a calculus which betrays our minimal information about the highly complex object in hand.  Again, randomness is not identical to probability, but the algorithmic epistemic intractability of randomness makes it difficult to know and hence we may well have to fall back on probability calculus when dealing with randomness. 

Richard seems totally unaware of his huge fallacious leap of logic here. For him it seems from the admission of a probability (that is a lack subjective information) he wrongly concludes that it logically follows he then has a randomness generator on his hands. That is a false deduction. Fair enough, if Richard wants to postulate synthetic randomness as The Creator, the godlike dynamic that has given rise to the cosmos, that's up to him: But such a postulate is not known to be a logical truism. In his case it seems to be bound up with a personal quest to contradict theism and this motivates him to try getting past us the misconceived notion that from the admission of a probability it follows that we have a randomness generator/creator. 

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Richard: Of course, what could then come to exist includes time, space, contents, and properties. And indeed this is true even of rabbits and deathstars. By the very definition of those terms, you can’t spontaneously create those things without also creating a spacetime manifold in which they can exist, complete with laws and properties. For instance, an inalienable property of a rabbit is that it has a nonzero width. And for it to be alive requires change (an active metabolism), which requires a nonzero expanse of time. As well as all the laws of physics needed to realize the rabbit and hold it together, from atomic bonds to inverse square laws, even the basic forces and particles of the Standard Model. Otherwise, it would entail a logical contradiction to say anything else that Nothing spontaneously generated could aptly be called “a rabbit.”

My Comment:  I largely agree with all that, but I raise an objection to the very first sentence which reads:

Of course, what could then come to exist includes time, space, contents, and properties.

...I have a feeling this statement has built into Richard's implicit fallacy that the potentialities of probability and randomness can be used like logical truisms.  This fallacy turns the "I-don't-know" information measure of probability into a dynamic on the assumption that "I-don't-know" entails randomness which it doesn't. 

Again, probability is not a dynamic which creates anything; it is just a measure of a cognating observer's information about a pattern. Randomness is a particular class of chaotic pattern we define mathematically in terms of algorithmics. True, some kind of dynamic is required to create/generate a random pattern, but because this dynamic is of maximum complexity in terms of its size and/or the number of algorithmic execution steps needed to create the pattern, very finite cognating agents like human beings find it epistemically difficult to cope with randomness with anything better than the statistics of probability calculus.  But again: One thing is clear: We have no reason to believe that randomness is a logical necessity. As far as we are concerned it is as contingent as the laws of physics. 

Richard has unconsciously assumed that probability logically entails randomness and that this union constitutes a logical truism that can come to his rescue as an axiomatic agent bringing forth the origin of the universe via logical necessity. No, it's the other way round. Probability and randomness are definable only within the contingent context of a given sophisticated up and running cosmos. 

Nevertheless, I can still go along with Richard's concept of Nothing. But whatever Nothing is he hasn't succeeded in locating its creative powers in probability and randomness. What we do know is that Nothing = Uknown.

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Richard: Which means, every possible thing that can arise from Nothing—there being no logical fact nor any other thing to prevent it arising—will in effect be a “universe” in the broadest sense. Even just a rabbit, will actually be a rabbit within some “universe” necessary to materialize a rabbit. No matter what other thing you try to describe as a logically possible outcome of a totally random process, it will in effect either be a universe, or logically entail a universe to contain it. Which will of course include really bizarre universes, including static universes with no (or almost no) time, universes with only one dimension, and so on. But it is logically necessarily the case that no thing can exist without the existence of at least one dimension to contain it; otherwise it “never exists” and “exists nowhere,” which by definition means it does not exist (and thus cannot ever have been “produced” to exist). See my discussion of the Argument from Nonlocality for this point.

So everything that can logically possibly come to exist is, or entails (and thus comes with), a universe of some sort.

Which gets us to the next steps in reasoning…

·         Proposition 5: Every separate thing that can logically possibly happen when there is Nothing (other than Nothing remaining nothing) entails the appearance of a universe.

As just demonstrated.

My Comment: As just demonstrated? Bunk! If Nothing is capable of generating random patterns, which if of sufficient dimension will contain a subset of highly organised universes then Nothing is a pretty sophisticated object, in effect Richard's own creation myth/story. I can't begrudge him his faith in this story: It is the myth with which he's trying to make sense of the world, something many of us are also trying to do. But Richard's story is not the logical truism that he's cracked it up to be; especially so if he's resorting to a cack-handed use of probability and randomness. 

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Richard: And:

·         Proposition 6: If there is Nothing, then there is nothing to limit the number of universes that can logically possibly appear.

Unless you can come up with some logical proof showing it is logically necessarily the case that when there is Nothing, only some number n of universes can spontaneously arise. I know of no such proof. Good luck finding one.

My Comment: We simply don't know enough about Nothing (and Richard certainly hasn't enlightened us!) to be dogmatic about just what it prohibits, allows and creates. I don't disagree with Richard's general concept of "Nothing", which clearly equals "Something" and something significant at that, but it is not clear just what kind of stuff this very significant Something will create or not create. In fact "Nothing = Unknown" 

I think Richard needs to come up with a logical proof showing why it is logically necessarily the case that when there is Nothing (=Something) it necessarily spontaneously randomly creates universes out of nothing. He may be right and it does, but I know of no such proof; certainly not a proof involving probability and randomness. Good luck finding one Richard old son! 

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 As I've already implied, I think Richard is right in identifying this unknown logical truism he understates by calling it Nothing. Nothing is a world of logical truisms. But may I venture to suggest another world, the platonic world of logical possibility rather than logical necessity. This world is the world of art and it seems that Nothing indulges itself in this contingent world of potential creativity. 

Richard says this:

.....every possible thing that can arise from Nothing—there being no logical fact nor any other thing to prevent it arising—will in effect be a “universe” in the broadest sense. 

Since we know next to nothing about Nothing (=Unknown) we simply don't know what kind of universes Nothing prevents or allows to arise. Least of all can we logically derive this class of cosmic potentiality from probability and randomness. 

Richard's logical error of assuming that given a probability we can then jump to conclusions about the necessary existence of random pattern generators perpetuates itself throughout the rest of his article. One doesn't have to be theist to understand that this is an abuse of probability theory and randomness. I suspect he's anxious to promote a preconceived interest-based ideology and this motivates his error. 

(Read Acts 17:22-28 on the Unknown God)

...to be continued