An Incredulous Stare Isn't an Argument

A Response to Julian Baggini

I’m very grateful to Julian Baggini for reviewing my book ‘Why? The Purpose of the Universe’ for the Financial Times (he’s possibly the only person to have reviewed two of my books). I don’t know whether it’s good etiquette to respond to reviews, or whether it comes across as bitter. But it’s the norm in academic philosophy to have reply pieces, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on the review in the spirit of friendly debate.

A lot of the review is just Baggini expressing his personal view that my views are propostererous. Fair enough, but – as David Lewis famously said – an incredulous stare isn’t an argument!

The actual response to my argument, when it eventually comes, is as follows:

“Goff’s main method of argument is to reduce the solution to a problem to two or three options and argue that his preferred one is more likely. Not only are his calculations of the odds dubious, the choices themselves are questionable.”

On the first criticism, the calculations of the odds of fine-tuning being the result of chance I include are not mine but those of cosmologists. It would have been good to hear where Baggini thinks the calculations containing in the papers by cosmologists I referenced go wrong.

More importantly, the examples of me supposedly offering too narrow a menu of options are taken from peripheral discussions that are totally irrelevant to my two arguments for cosmic purpose. Baggini accuses me of limiting the discussion to the following binaries:

“Many would argue that there are options other than accepting that life is objectively meaningful or not meaningful at all; that there are objective fundamental facts about what has value or we have to embrace nihilism; that a system is either conscious or not, with no borderline cases, and so on.”

I think readers will get the impression that Baggini is responding to my arguments for cosmic purpose. If so, this is very misleading, as none of the above has anything to do with either of my arguments for cosmic purpose.

My first argument for cosmic purpose is a Bayesian probabilistic argument based on the fine-tuning of physics for life, which involves a detailed objection to the main alternative explanation of fine-tuning (i.e. the multiverse), and consideration of a wide variety of objections. Nothing in my argument depends on the binaries Baggini points to above. Indeed, the entire review has no response at all to this central argument for cosmic purpose.

Baggini goes on to say:

‘…nor is the only viable form of materialism the “micro-reductionism” which holds that everything human beings do is fully determined by the basic laws of physics operating at the smallest level of reality.’

I agree. In fact, I make this clear in the book by referring to various materialists who also reject micro-reductionism, e.g. the neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell and the chemist Lee Cronin. No part of my argument assumed these were the only options. Rather, my second argument for cosmic purpose employed the Likelihood Principle (which can be derived from Bayes theorem) to argue that the phenomenon of psycho-physical harmony supports pan-agentialism over ‘arational’ views on which considerations of value have no influence on the fundamental dynamics of the universe (this is the most challenging part of the book, and comes with a warning to indicate this). Again, Baggini says absolutely nothing in response to this argument.

In the absence of any response to my two arguments for cosmic purpose, Baggini is basically just mocking unusual views because they are unusual. This is essentially what the anti-Copernicans did in 16th Century.

The binaries Baggini refers to above concerning middle-ground options on value and meaning are from the first chapter of the book, which involves an introductory discussion of meaning and value, and is independent of the actual arguments for cosmic purpose. This discussion is largely autobiographical. I offer what I hope are some interesting objections to the middle ways on meaning and value, but I am also very explicit that I have not made a conclusive case against these middle ground options, and indeed I point the reader to resources to encourage them to explore these views for themselves:

“I spent the next year or so in intense study of the various forms of ‘value naturalism’, the name for the broad family of theories which all hold that although value doesn’t exist at the fundamental level of reality, value somehow emerges, perhaps from our desires, or from certain other observable facts about the natural world. It would require at least a book in itself to do justice to the many and varied theories that come under this banner, and I would encourage readers to explore this rich literature for themselves. For my own part, I wound up dissatisfied with value naturalism, despite how much I wanted to believe it.” (P. 10 of my book)

So, again, I think it’s very misleading to imply that I was presenting this as a conclusive argument and neglecting the middle-ground options.

(On the other binary Baggini refers to, as to whether there could be borderline cases of consciousness, this is something I use to illustrate how philosophical intuitions about consciousness could aid the science of consciousness, and I refer to a peer-reviewed academic paper where I have defended this intuition in depth).

To end on a positive note, I did like Baggini’s argument at the end that cosmic purpose makes our lives less significant. That’s a great point to press (although, again, it’s got nothing to do with the central arguments for cosmic purpose).

I hope I haven’t sounded too negative. I do appreciate Baggini taking the time to review my book, and it’s great to have a review in the FT. I guess I’m just disappointed because I was genuinely curious to hear where Baggini thinks the fine-tuning argument for cosmic purpose goes wrong, and I’m a bit baffled that he chose not to tell us this in the review. If you have time, Julian, do let me know!