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       #Post#: 54--------------------------------------------------
       The Argument from Fine-Tuning and Thomism
       By: ClassicalLiberal.Theist Date: December 6, 2019, 10:53 pm
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       As I understand it, the thomist doesn't believe that laws of
       nature exist in the sense of its contemporary understanding;
       rather, the thomist would say that how a thing behaves is built
       into the thing itself. For example, water freezes at 32 degrees
       not because the "laws of nature" dictate such, but because it is
       inherent in water to do so. My question is then, how exactly
       would a fine-tuning argument be presented on this analysis of
       laws, if at all?
       #Post#: 55--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The Argument from Fine-Tuning and Thomism
       By: Atno Date: December 7, 2019, 12:40 am
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       Just read essences into laws whenever "laws" shows up. The laws
       are grounded in the essences of things, so the argument instead
       becomes "why do we get these things, whose powers are
       life-permitting, instead of these other things, whose powers and
       activities would not be life-permitting?". Literally nothing
       changes. We just have a grounding for the laws now, but what the
       FT argument is concerned with is with the probability of these
       laws being the case - if we accept a thomistic view, then
       probability issue is simply moved to the existence of the
       particular lawmakers/essences which ground the laws. So, nothing
       changes, basically.
       Except if a weird objection can be made. I think someone could
       perhaps object that there could be no two essences that were
       exactly alike in every aspect except for A having a difference X
       and B having a difference Y. The differences would have to
       follow from the rest of the essence, so as a result there could
       perhaps be no different values for constants and so on.
       But I think this would actually be a very bad objection, since
       1) the difference could also come from an external cause, and
       not from the essence itself. Human beings for example, I
       believe, are only rational because God decided to give us
       rationality; the power of a rational intellect does not follow
       from the rest of our bodily powers, obviously. Only in a First
       Cause that is necessary by itself would it be the case that
       every essential property would have to be intimately connected
       and not have any external cause; 2) it seems, in any case, that
       there is no necessary connection between the laws and the
       constants having the specific values that they do; 3) it also
       seems that it should be possible for there to be different laws
       like that, or at least other substances that are very alike but
       which have some differences, such as a water-like substance that
       boils at 101 C, etc.
       So I think thomism makes no difference whatsoever to the fine
       tuning argument.
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