Is the design answer to fine-tuning sufficiently complete?

Question

If the problem of "fine tuning for life" (SEP) is that the precise value of some constants (and laws) in physics seems necessary to the emergence of life in our universe but at the same time very improbable, and if it is deemed a response is required, a possible explanation that has been proposed is that there was some "design" to this, usually that there must exist some designer who set up life friendly conditions in our universe.

However, I am wondering if that explanation is not just moving the problem to the designer himself. Is it possible to argue that: either the designer had no choice in the values of the constants if he wanted to bring about life, so that those constants are more primitive than the designer who just "pushed the right buttons", or the designer picked random constants and then got lucky and obtained a universe with life in it? Are there other possibilities? For example, that the designer being omnipotent, the constants may be random, but then he decided that there would be life with those constants? But even in that case, the actual values of the constants don't seem to matter, the designer could have chosen any random values for the constants and instill life in that universe, so that we lose necessity between the values of the constants and the emergence of life. It's not so much the value of the constants that leads to life, as the intervention of a designer. Pick any universe, with any constants, and there can be life in it, as long as a designer intervenes to make it so.

In the end, maybe it doesn't seem that the designer explanation fully explains why the constants have the values they have, and why those values are precisely the ones that were needed for life. Either the designer had no choice, and the necessity of those constants for life is more primordial than the designer (and still unexplained), or some randomness is still at play (and no explanation has been obtained either). In either case, it's not clear that the improbability of the values involved in fine tuning has really been explained away by introducing of a "design" or the intervention of an agent. There seems to remain an element of surprise as to why these are the constants that were needed for life.

Has this line of reasoning been explored before? Are there references that could be used here? Or maybe this line of reasoning is not coherent for some reason?

Answer 1

Yes, this question makes sense, but has several divergent assumptions built in, which I will try to tease apart.

1. Many theists define a deity in logical necessity terms. IF one postulates a deity that is logically necessary, then yes, that deity cannot do anything contingent. The "rare contingent observation" from which the possibility of intentionality embedded in our universe is inferred, is NOT compatible with a necessary deity. The Fine Tuning argument is instead for a contingent deity, whose contingent motivations and character can be inferred from the evidence left behind by design events. I don't think that you were making this point, but it may have affected your thinking.

2. IF one applies a deterministic concept of causation to even a contingent deity, then yes, one could say that there is a cause or the choices that such a deity makes, and those contingent causes could potentially be identified, and then the deity's contingent actions in creating our universe could be derived from the prior causes, hence even our apparently unlikely universe's constants could have been predicted, and perhaps were necessary based on the prior conditions of a creator deity's mind.

• However the deterministic concept of causation, which was adopted by some of the Rennaissance thinkers, was seen as incoherent by Hume. Hume argued that we NEVER know the actual interaction between things, and all we can actually know is correlation. Hume treated causation as just correlation. And correlation does not get one to the determinism you are presuming. Popper grounded empiricism better than Hume did, in useful predictive theories rather than mere correlation. But even that further step does not get one to the deterministic causation you assume. Causation is currently an ill defined concept for us, so relying upon a deterministic version of it to assert determinism in all agency is a unsupported leap.
• The problem of accounting for agency causation, however, IS widely understood as a PROBLEM, and applies to all agents, not just to a deity. One of the recent interesting efforts in philosophy is to spell out a concept of agent causation. This could answer what I see as the main thrust of your question. Here is one agent causation thinker: https://academic.oup.com/book/6201/chapter/149807379

3. Even if we accept a non-necessary designer, who is a causal agent, the problems for the intention explanation for Fine Tuning do not stop there. That is because a deity who could construct the Cosmos, could presumably designed differently. That after all is the whole point of the Fine Tuning argument. So -- why the Standard Model of QM, the Big Bang, Inflation, etc.? Physics and the Cosmos seem like they could have been made much simpler, and life more instrinsic to the universe, rather than a very rare and late-appearing anomaly in it. IF one set out to design a universe FOR life, while ours is adequate, it is FAR from ideal, or optimized.

• So the Fine Tuning Argument may support an intentional design of our universe for life, but a POOR design to do this. This implies a) a designer that may be unwise (say our inverse was a design class project for a deity in elementary school, that earned a C-minus), or b) a designer of many minds (picture a dysfunctional committee, each of whose members have one particular axe they are grinding on this project, and the resulting design accomplishes "life" but is skewed by each competing agenda to be far off optimum), or c) it was a failed design to achieve something else, and Life was an adaptive retrofit (abiogenesis research has basically been stalled ever since the Urey-Miller experiment, abiogenesis seemingly was implausible even in early earth conditions), getting life started may have taken a further intervention to salvage the design, well after the initial failed design effort.

At any rate, yes there are three problems for design hypotheses: necessary deities are incompatible with Fine Tuning, Agency causation is needed for the idea to work, and the imperfections of the design are incompatible with inferring back to a designer with the classic Omni-God theist properties.

Answer 2

This is an interesting question that I feel was not addressed adequately in the comments and has been on my mind as well.

In summary, I don’t think the design explanation gets rid of the issue at all. Either the fine tuning is contingent or necessary. If it is contingent, being designed by god makes no difference. God is supposedly omniscient and if He freely chose those constants, then His choice is no more improbable than fine tuning under naturalism. One could argue that God had fewer choices to choose from compared to naturalism but this would just be an arbitrary stipulation. There is no reason to suggest naturalism supposes fewer possible choices compared to god. If one simply asserts that god has fewer choices, one can do the same with naturalism.

Now if the constants are necessary, then again being designed by god makes no difference. If god just had to design the constants the way they are, say because of some reason that necessarily compelled Him such as creating life, then the constants become necessary. But the naturalist can just assert the same: that the constants just had to be that way and are necessary.

So god brings in no additional explanatory power while adding more complexity.

Answer 3

Any attempt to explain cosmic life by intelligent design faces the following problem:

It first attempts to “explain” a certain cosmological fact by a deus ex machina, but then lacks any cause for the existence of this god.

While we are at speculating about constellations, which science currently cannot explain, then I prefer the anthropic principle:

The hypothesis that the range of possible observations that could be made about the universe is limited by the fact that observations could happen only in a universe capable of developing intelligent life.

Otherwise, what is the benefit to burden the intelligent design speculation about the fine-tuning by further speculations whether the cosmic designer was restricted or free how to choose the cosmic constants?

Answer 4

The main body of this question is a restatement of the omnipotence paradox in terms of pre-existing principles instead of powers. (See in particular Aquinas' formulation - this question has been being explored since at least the 13th century.) God has pre-existing constraints only if God has constraints, so pre-existing may be omitted if we have an answer to the question "Does God have constraints?"

Proposed answers to the omnipotence paradox are therefore proposed answers to your question.

See also: SEP: Scope of Omnipotence.

Answer 5

The fine-tuning argument is not only incomplete, it's fundamentally flawed by way of fallaciously reifing a theoretical, possible-world semantics disguised as a series of claims about a 'real' universe that neglects recognition that at best, the representations of the mind are ontologically ambiguous and epistemological methods are inevitably subject to normative logical criteria.

Fine-tuning then presupposes that possible world semantics is applicable to other universes which are at best scientific metaphysical speculations and at worst are pseudoscientific postulates in the league of astrology and chiropracty.

Of course the fine-tuning argument pushes the problem to the designer, because the very act of 'fine-tunning' is inherently teleological; besides the innocent lack of recognition that using teleological terminology is presupposed by agency, one can only reach the conclusion that such an introduction of agent-centric conception is a subterfuge to defend the impulse that some divine being is at the heart of it all. Such a strategy is epistemically indulgent.

Answer 6

No, it is not sufficiently complete, but that is because there is no such thing as a complete explanation. For every explanation, you can always ask how that very same explanation came about, resulting in a regress.

Sooner or later, this has to stop. In the case of fine tuning then, the question is whether fine tuning is a matter of brute luck, or whether a designer created those constants. But note that in either case, there is an element of brute luck. You need the “right kind” of designer, as opposed to any other kind of designer, or really any alternate version of reality, in order to create these constants.

Answer 7

The constants you are referring to, are trade-offs for matching between how reality appears to us (facts) and our theories regarding this appearance (models).

Whether there exists a design, or our theories are yet incomplete to explain reality as a self-regulating process is not yet defined.

Answer 8

Yes, I believe that the fine-tuning argument is sufficiently complete for its purpose, which is to highlight one piece of evidence for God's existence. Here are my thoughts to some of your questions (paraphrased):

• "What if the designer simply 'chanced' on the right constants?" This would be about as unlikely as the universe "chancing" on the right constants itself, and so I do not think it is a viable alternative. For example, suppose we find a beautiful sculpture, and someone hypothesizes that an intelligent person must have made it rather than the wind and rain. Someone replies, "But what if the sculptor had no clue what he was doing? What if he made it completely by mistake?" That wouldn't make the hypothesis of intelligent design any less complete, because the proposed alternative is about as unlikely as wind and rain doing it all.
• "What if the designer could force any set of constants to suit life?" Well, such a designer would have to be very powerful and very intelligent! Since that's the conclusion of the fine-tuning argument in the first place, I don't think it's a damaging reply against it; perhaps just an argument about where and how, precisely, this intelligence is applied.
• "But why those exact constants?" The fine-tuning argument doesn't deal with that question, but only with the fact that livable configurations are so staggeringly rare compared with unlivable ones. I.e., if I said that Mt. Rushmore implied intelligent design, what if someone responded, "But you haven't shown the reasons why an intelligent designer would make that exact sculpture." But my argument doesn't have to do with the exact sculpture, only with the fingerprints of design and the sheer impossibility of it coming about by wind and rain.
• "But what explains the designer?" If we're talking about a transcendent designer (i.e., God), then I think this question has a fallacy. Since God transcends nature, it is impossible to explain God within nature. It would be approaching the issue backwards (Acts 17:29). We can look at evidence within nature which points to God, which is what the fine-tuning argument does. I.e., God can be the explanation for nature; but nature cannot be the explanation for God, only evidence of Him.