Doug Hayworth wrote:
> Before we get too far off from my original query, let me restate it. I am
> familiar with the differences of perspective between Howard Van Till and
> Bob DeHaan, and my question was not really intended to revisit their
> discussions (as interesting and fruitful as they generally are). My
> question was aimed more at understanding the origin and use of the
> "fine-tuning" term in strictly philosophical circles versus layperson and
> perhaps evidentialist discussions of the Anthropic Principle (AP). I
> suspect that its original use in philosophy did NOT include a concept of
> post-creation "correction" or "tweaking", while its common understanding
> and use by lay-philosophers does include such "tweaking". Am I correct in
> this perception of the way the population of thinkers understand the AP
> when using the term "fine-tuning"?
In order to get an answer to your closing question you'd have to get
responses from a respectable sample of thinkers. I don't know who first used
the term "fine tuning" to refer to the
fact that values of cosmological parameters are such as to allow the
development of intelligent life but I suspect that it was scientists rather
than philosophers. (Barrow & Tipler have no index entries for "tuning" or
"fine tuning", which doesn't mean they don't use it but, I'm not going to go
through the whole book again to check.)
As far as my own usage goes, I use "fine tuning", when I do use it,
only in theological contexts. I would mean by it, not that God first created
a universe & then adjusted parameters to make life possible, but that God
chose to create, out of possible universes, one in which the parameters were
right for divine incarnation, which means also the evolution of intelligent
life. Thus "fine tuning" is a manifestation of divine freedom & the
contingent rationality of creation.
I don't know of anybody who does use "fine tuning" to mean that God
created a universe with arbitrary parameter values & then adjusted them. That
doesn't mean there aren't any..
In a strictly scientific discussion I would avoid the phrase "fine
tuning" and refer to anthropic "coincidences", the quotes indicating that they
may be only apparently coincidental.
Shalom,
George
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 23 2000 - 17:03:38 EDT