Asking them if they think science can explain the world is a good question to ask, but not a good question to start with. There is an optimal time for asking questions like that and right at the start of the conversation is not it. Going in with all guns blazing is never a good idea and only ends up doing more harm than good. Just let the conversation flow naturally, get to know them first, and start asking questions such as this when it fits naturally into the discussion.
This may surprise you, but only a minority of scientists work in areas that concern big existential questions about the origin of the universe. Most scientists are working on subjects of more immediate concern. They may be researching conservation, or cancer, or superconductors, or artificial intelligence, or robotics, or energy sources, or Internet security. The latest theories about cosmology or what happened before the Big Bang or the nature of infinity will be interesting things that they might read about from time to time in this week’s New Scientist on the train on the way in to work, but once they get into the lab they’ll have other things to think about.
Thing is, some of these other subjects might be every bit as interesting to talk about, and even better conversation starters than deep philosophical ones. One good question to ask them at the moment is what we should make of artificial intelligence—ChatGPT and all that. It’s getting a lot of press at the moment with some people asking if we’re on the cusp of artificial general intelligence others asking if the robots are coming for their jobs, and others asking if they could end up being put to use in situations where they could cause a lot of damage (e.g. the military). Then there’s the question of whether any of these AIs could be considered conscious, and that leads on to questions about what is consciousness anyway. There are a lot of interesting discussions you could end up having if you headed off down that rabbit hole.
For what it’s worth, it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of scientists find discussions about the big existential questions rather boring. When you’re busy working on Getting Things Done, and your view of science is primarily as a set of tools to enable you to Get Things Done, spending time discussing big highfalutin questions doesn’t exactly line up with that objective.
In the software development world, we have a word for people who get into highfalutin discussions that don’t contribute to the bottom line. We call them “Architecture Astronauts.”
When great thinkers think about problems, they start to see patterns. They look at the problem of people sending each other word-processor files, and then they look at the problem of people sending each other spreadsheets, and they realize that there’s a general pattern: sending files. That’s one level of abstraction already. Then they go up one more level: people send files, but web browsers also “send” requests for web pages. And when you think about it, calling a method on an object is like sending a message to an object! It’s the same thing again! Those are all sending operations, so our clever thinker invents a new, higher, broader abstraction called messaging, but now it’s getting really vague and nobody really knows what they’re talking about any more. Blah.
When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all.
These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts. It’s very hard to get them to write code or design programs, because they won’t stop thinking about Architecture. They’re astronauts because they are above the oxygen level, I don’t know how they’re breathing. They tend to work for really big companies that can afford to have lots of unproductive people with really advanced degrees that don’t contribute to the bottom line.
It really depends on the look in your eyes and the tone in your voice.
What about the problem of how the immediate effect of an uncaused cause will appear to come from nothing?
I mean, sure after you’ve become their best friend, how significant do you think that is for a scientist thinking he or she will confirm a final theory?
If you think a multi-verse is a scientific possibility, or that this universe formed as a result of some process in another universe, should it be possible for there to be an infinite number of universes?
I can’t think of any look or tone that would make that anything other than an odd question from someone I’d just met. There might be some contexts in which it would be natural.
I’d regard it as a syntacticly correct but semantically empty question. As an opening question from someone I hadn’t met, it would cause me to make polite noises while looking for an excuse to talk to someone else.
As a kind of introduction to the forum, me asking about it made for a decent thread. But it quickly turned into a question about whether an infinite number of objects are philosophically possible.
Yeah, I’m working the “real life” angle as much as I can without coming across as a weirdo. Had a meeting with Paul Copan 7 years ago and he got me turned on to EPS. I presented one of my reworked papers from university at a regional meetup. I also got an email response from Alvin Plantinga when I wrote him about my story with Paul Draper.
Since I was studying at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, my interlocutor naturally asked: “And so, are you from the Dutch Reformed tradition?”
“Oh, no,” I replied. “I’m a Pentecostal.”
It’s amazing how much human emotion and communication can be crammed into a nanosecond. By the time the word had come to the end of my tongue, I knew I had said something wrong.
…the conversation quickly devolved into awkward pleasantries and a final “Would you excuse me?”
Granted, I suppose that, in some fashion, I can’t help but implicitly write to my surprised interlocutor in the McGill Faculty Club. He’s been with me my whole career: that astonished look of puzzlement, that submerged sneer, that masked incredulity at the very notion of a Pentecostal scholar.
Wouldn’t an analogy to a ball rolling up the hill be appropriate? The ball rolling up the hill is explainable, why the ball can’t make it over the hill is explainable, but why parts of the ball are on the other side of the hill is not explainable.
When asked a question like this, my initial reaction generally is, “Does it matter?” I don’t think there is anything that I can see or do in my life in this universe that would be different if there is a multiverse, or if there were an infinite number of universes. So I don’t know if there is a multiverse, or if this universe was formed as a result of some process in another universe, and if there are an infinite number of universes, it only matters for anyone or anything that can travel between them. And we live in a universe where we have a rather significant limitation on how far we can get, what fraction of the universe we live in that we can influence in any significant way. So my thought on your question is that possibilities are there, certainly have not been demonstrated to be real, and we humans may never be able to determine whether there are other universes, much less an infinite number. That is, the answer is definitely unknown at this time, and may be unknowable.
I get the the sense of asking what difference it makes. But if it really didn’t matter, why would anyone question the impossibility of forming an infinite number of universes through successive addition?
Or if it really didn’t make a difference, why would someone say that an uncaused event is explainable?
I think it makes a difference, otherwise no one would have a reason to disagree.
This exchange does point out a couple of factors relevant to this thread. First, I am quite sure that we have a significant difference of interpretation on what we mean when we say the same words, “Does it make a difference?” What I mean is whether there is any actual, physical, observable difference in my physical environment in the universe in which I live. I get a strong impression that you are coming from a philosophical perspective, and are trying to build logical evidence for a particular belief.
This leads directly to another observation: Many of us approach problem solving in very different ways. Much of this is related to the nature of our work environment. Physicists have very different problems to solve than accountants do, and our approach to solving other problems is strongly influenced by the methods we learned to apply in our work.
And if anyone tries to talk with any scientist by posing hypothetical problems that have no direct relationship to how that particular scientist views the world (I think I have seen the effect in talking with another scientist from a different field, with different types of problems), then the question risks getting the response Steve Schaffner mentions:
Back to the question of whether “it makes a difference”: What do you mean when you say it makes a difference? Any physical difference, observable in our universe?
Sure, in our social imagery, I’m interested in what happens when theoretical physicists consider how an uncaused event, and the immediate effect of an uncaused cause will appear the same.
I’d also like to see what type of science fiction is written when atheism is found to be as impossible as an infinite number of universes.
Also curious about the type of political philosophy we are capable of when fairness and desert are seen to be coequal.
To expand on my previous response… This was a hypothetical question about something we have no fundamental understanding of: causality. Causality is a foundational concept that is implicit in how we explain how stuff behaves, but if we try to examine (or debate) it directly, as a feature of the world rather than a component of our models of the world, we find we don’t know what we’re talking about. Which is why I’m not much inclined to talk about it.
Interesting correspondence to consciousness and neuroscientists trying to pinpoint the origin of a caused behavior.
And yet it is something we can talk about… oh to have Wittgenstein present now… or as my professor would say about a particular philosopher, “that is him knocking at the door.”
A better analogy is someone defining the Moon as a big chunk of green cheese and then ignoring anyone who says that the Moon is made of something other than green cheese because it goes against their definition.
Reality is not forced to conform to how you define it.
It is interesting that we often hear the refrain “you can’t reason someone out of a belief which they didn’t reason their way into” used against religious beliefs. Yet the point is just as valid for those who assume/believe materialism exclusively tracks with the truth or that science is the only approach required to sound the depths of human truth without offering any positive case in support. Whatever disposition accounts for our most basic beliefs is beyond the reach of premise neutral argumentation.
