1 is simply an empirical question, and physicists debate this. It's quite possible time isn't even infinite in the positive direction - it may end with a big crunch.
But I think more crucial is that 2 goes wrong in many ways. We're dealing with infinities and continuous values, so we use PDF here, not simple division. It doesn't make sense to ask what the probability that you exist at specific point is - you should be integrating over a range of values. You could say this range is like 80 years, but since it's an infinite set, we can't have uniform distribution - it will diverge if it's uniform, and you also have to be able to normalize the distribution. Presumably then, the PDF would make the probability you exist 5 billion years ago or 17 billion years from now near 0. I suppose a range you could integrate over is the time period that humans have existed. This at least will give you a non-zero value, but I'm still not sure what this probability measures. Human existence, and your existence, are not random events. They're determined. It's the result of some initial conditions in conjunction with nomological laws. Since it's not a random event, as far as I can tell the only meaningful probability to talk about is posterior probability, which in this case is 1.
Notice that if Huem's logic was coherent, the probability of any event at all would be 0 - every event occurs in time, then we could ask 'what's the probability this coin was flipped NOW' - it would always be 0 if Huem was correct.
But I think it's important to note here that even if the probability was 0, that wouldn't mean it's impossible. The probability of picking a specific number from a continuous interval - like .7452 from the real numbers between 0 and 1, is 0. But it doesn't mean it's impossible to get a specific number or that those numbers don't exist. The probability you get a specific number here is 1.
I'll try to be really brief on this next part: when it comes to surviving death, this seems to just violate everything we understand about physics and biology and chemistry. Our mental states are generated in the brain - if there is no brain, there is nothing to survive.
Well, I disagree about that last part, because I'm not a physicalist. I'm interested though, do you think the chances that everything that's ever happened has been 1? As in, the chance of me typing this comment was 1, and the chance of Reagan being president was 1.
Yeah, that's fair, my main point was that I think Huemer is just reasoning about probability incorrectly. I think this happens a lot when you're dealing with continuous values and infinities. I didn't want to go on a long tangent defending physicalism.
If we ignore QM, then yes, I would say 1. I'm kind of agnostic on which interpretation of QM is correct though. I don't believe in soft determinism or divergence miracles or anything like that.
Interesting, I've not met someone who thinks of probability that way before. Maybe I'll write about why I'm a dualist at some point and we can both go on a long tangent then ;)
Maybe I misinterpreted what you were asking, but if we're talking about prior probabilities, it seems like just a question about believing in determinism or not? I would think that's a rather popular position, as long as we're ignoring QM.
I mean, it does seem like if you believe in Determinism, and ignore QM, you're committed to thinking everything that's happened had a probability of 1. I think I've just not heard it described that exact way before
I think the probability argument fails. Imagine I pick random real numbers between 0 and 1 a countably infintie number of times:
{pick 1, pick 2, pick 3, ...}
Suppose that on the third, fourth, and fifth pick the number happens to be 0.55. The chance of this happening was 0 (as was the chance of picking any three real numbers), but this doesn't imply that every other number which was picked will also be 5. The prior probability that the third, fourth, and fifth pick would be 0.55 was 0, but once I know that they were 0.55, the condtional probability that they were 0.55 given that they were 0.55 is tautologically 1.
So step 4, "Therefore the chances you’re alive now must be higher than zero" is trivially true: the conditional probability that you are alive now given that you are alive now is 1, which is greater than zero.
In other words, the fallacy occurs with steps 2 and 4. It is an attempt at modus tollens, to deny the consequent, but it is a fallacy of equivocation: the "probability" or "chance of being alive" referenced in each statement use the same phrasing, but refer to different things: one a prior probability, and the other the conditional probability.
To drive the point home, let's recast it:
1. There are 7 differently colored balls in a basket.
2. One of them is red. If you pick 1 ball, your chances of picking the red ball was 1/7
3. You happened to pick a red ball, so your chances of picking the red ball is 1.
4. Therefore, by modus tollens, you didn't actually only pick 1 ball.
By the way, I think the empirical cases are actually quite compelling and worth looking into. The Buddhist conception of reincarnation is different as well and interesting. You might be interested in the book by Dr. Ian Stevenson about children who remember past lives. The book has a long discussion about all the sorts of issues you would naturally bring to the table. Many of these cases were pre-internet too, and occured in cultures that would surprise you.
I think this alpine of thinking is probably the best way to attack it. I could use some revision of probability, so yours and cinc's comment does cast doubt on it for me.
There's an analogy in the paper that I wish I had added to that section now, about demons kidnapping you (bottom of page 9), do you think that is disanalagous, or doesn't work in some way?
I’m not sure if it is analogous, I would have to see the discussion first. My approach if I were arguing this would be to first discuss the hard problem of consciousness. Maybe you could throw in a probabilistic argument as well too?
Then, and I think this is sort of similar to the argument you proposed, I would make some type of fine tuning argument. I wouldn’t conclude that God exists necessarily, but I would conclude that it is more likely the universe became conscious/has life for some “non-physical” reason than that consciousness appeared randomly.
Finally, I would discuss the empirical cases of kids remembering past lives, NDEs, and other documented “supernatural events.” I think Bentham’ Bulldog discussed one of these recently, and the book by Dr Ian Stevenson has a couple as well as references for much more.
Funny enough, I've recently found myself leaning towards Substance Dualism, and I think reincarnation is much more likely under it. I'd probably talk about the Mind-Body problem too if I rewrote this now. Maybe an article for another day!
"I have a lot of beliefs that some people consider “spooky”. Tentatively, I think we have souls, that a God of some form exists, and that there are at least some objectively true things to say about morality - basically heresy in the 21st Century."
These beliefs are basically heresy only among secular, highly-educated American liberals in the 21st century. Most people in the US still believe in God and some sort of afterlife, and they overwhelmingly believe morality is objective. Worldwide, the % of belief in these things is even higher. Don't get fooled by the bubble.
Can I guess that as that tree in Amsterdam got more mundane, that the sense you would only be able to remember a hollow echo of what you knew at that time, strengthened ?
For a few years I only dreamt as someone that felt foreign to me. If each morning someone else awoke with the same memories as I have, how would this person tell how many others had woken this way in this flesh before ?
I feel suspicious of these a priori arguments which essentially go "your existence is INFINITELY unlikily, so ANY explanation of this hs infinite evidence".
The independent evidence you gave is quite interesting, however. I wonder if kids with no indpenent exposure to the concept would srtill occassionally bring it up?
Yes, one thing I think would be particularly interesting would be if we have records of kids doing it from before the printing press or common literacy. I feel like it would cast doubt on the "They've just seen or read about it somewhere" explanation
1 is simply an empirical question, and physicists debate this. It's quite possible time isn't even infinite in the positive direction - it may end with a big crunch.
But I think more crucial is that 2 goes wrong in many ways. We're dealing with infinities and continuous values, so we use PDF here, not simple division. It doesn't make sense to ask what the probability that you exist at specific point is - you should be integrating over a range of values. You could say this range is like 80 years, but since it's an infinite set, we can't have uniform distribution - it will diverge if it's uniform, and you also have to be able to normalize the distribution. Presumably then, the PDF would make the probability you exist 5 billion years ago or 17 billion years from now near 0. I suppose a range you could integrate over is the time period that humans have existed. This at least will give you a non-zero value, but I'm still not sure what this probability measures. Human existence, and your existence, are not random events. They're determined. It's the result of some initial conditions in conjunction with nomological laws. Since it's not a random event, as far as I can tell the only meaningful probability to talk about is posterior probability, which in this case is 1.
Notice that if Huem's logic was coherent, the probability of any event at all would be 0 - every event occurs in time, then we could ask 'what's the probability this coin was flipped NOW' - it would always be 0 if Huem was correct.
But I think it's important to note here that even if the probability was 0, that wouldn't mean it's impossible. The probability of picking a specific number from a continuous interval - like .7452 from the real numbers between 0 and 1, is 0. But it doesn't mean it's impossible to get a specific number or that those numbers don't exist. The probability you get a specific number here is 1.
I'll try to be really brief on this next part: when it comes to surviving death, this seems to just violate everything we understand about physics and biology and chemistry. Our mental states are generated in the brain - if there is no brain, there is nothing to survive.
Well, I disagree about that last part, because I'm not a physicalist. I'm interested though, do you think the chances that everything that's ever happened has been 1? As in, the chance of me typing this comment was 1, and the chance of Reagan being president was 1.
Yeah, that's fair, my main point was that I think Huemer is just reasoning about probability incorrectly. I think this happens a lot when you're dealing with continuous values and infinities. I didn't want to go on a long tangent defending physicalism.
If we ignore QM, then yes, I would say 1. I'm kind of agnostic on which interpretation of QM is correct though. I don't believe in soft determinism or divergence miracles or anything like that.
Interesting, I've not met someone who thinks of probability that way before. Maybe I'll write about why I'm a dualist at some point and we can both go on a long tangent then ;)
Maybe I misinterpreted what you were asking, but if we're talking about prior probabilities, it seems like just a question about believing in determinism or not? I would think that's a rather popular position, as long as we're ignoring QM.
But yeah, dualism post would be interesting.
I mean, it does seem like if you believe in Determinism, and ignore QM, you're committed to thinking everything that's happened had a probability of 1. I think I've just not heard it described that exact way before
I think the probability argument fails. Imagine I pick random real numbers between 0 and 1 a countably infintie number of times:
{pick 1, pick 2, pick 3, ...}
Suppose that on the third, fourth, and fifth pick the number happens to be 0.55. The chance of this happening was 0 (as was the chance of picking any three real numbers), but this doesn't imply that every other number which was picked will also be 5. The prior probability that the third, fourth, and fifth pick would be 0.55 was 0, but once I know that they were 0.55, the condtional probability that they were 0.55 given that they were 0.55 is tautologically 1.
So step 4, "Therefore the chances you’re alive now must be higher than zero" is trivially true: the conditional probability that you are alive now given that you are alive now is 1, which is greater than zero.
In other words, the fallacy occurs with steps 2 and 4. It is an attempt at modus tollens, to deny the consequent, but it is a fallacy of equivocation: the "probability" or "chance of being alive" referenced in each statement use the same phrasing, but refer to different things: one a prior probability, and the other the conditional probability.
To drive the point home, let's recast it:
1. There are 7 differently colored balls in a basket.
2. One of them is red. If you pick 1 ball, your chances of picking the red ball was 1/7
3. You happened to pick a red ball, so your chances of picking the red ball is 1.
4. Therefore, by modus tollens, you didn't actually only pick 1 ball.
By the way, I think the empirical cases are actually quite compelling and worth looking into. The Buddhist conception of reincarnation is different as well and interesting. You might be interested in the book by Dr. Ian Stevenson about children who remember past lives. The book has a long discussion about all the sorts of issues you would naturally bring to the table. Many of these cases were pre-internet too, and occured in cultures that would surprise you.
I think this alpine of thinking is probably the best way to attack it. I could use some revision of probability, so yours and cinc's comment does cast doubt on it for me.
There's an analogy in the paper that I wish I had added to that section now, about demons kidnapping you (bottom of page 9), do you think that is disanalagous, or doesn't work in some way?
Also, thanks for the book recc!
I’m not sure if it is analogous, I would have to see the discussion first. My approach if I were arguing this would be to first discuss the hard problem of consciousness. Maybe you could throw in a probabilistic argument as well too?
Then, and I think this is sort of similar to the argument you proposed, I would make some type of fine tuning argument. I wouldn’t conclude that God exists necessarily, but I would conclude that it is more likely the universe became conscious/has life for some “non-physical” reason than that consciousness appeared randomly.
Finally, I would discuss the empirical cases of kids remembering past lives, NDEs, and other documented “supernatural events.” I think Bentham’ Bulldog discussed one of these recently, and the book by Dr Ian Stevenson has a couple as well as references for much more.
Funny enough, I've recently found myself leaning towards Substance Dualism, and I think reincarnation is much more likely under it. I'd probably talk about the Mind-Body problem too if I rewrote this now. Maybe an article for another day!
Line of thinking*
"I have a lot of beliefs that some people consider “spooky”. Tentatively, I think we have souls, that a God of some form exists, and that there are at least some objectively true things to say about morality - basically heresy in the 21st Century."
These beliefs are basically heresy only among secular, highly-educated American liberals in the 21st century. Most people in the US still believe in God and some sort of afterlife, and they overwhelmingly believe morality is objective. Worldwide, the % of belief in these things is even higher. Don't get fooled by the bubble.
Can I guess that as that tree in Amsterdam got more mundane, that the sense you would only be able to remember a hollow echo of what you knew at that time, strengthened ?
For a few years I only dreamt as someone that felt foreign to me. If each morning someone else awoke with the same memories as I have, how would this person tell how many others had woken this way in this flesh before ?
I feel suspicious of these a priori arguments which essentially go "your existence is INFINITELY unlikily, so ANY explanation of this hs infinite evidence".
The independent evidence you gave is quite interesting, however. I wonder if kids with no indpenent exposure to the concept would srtill occassionally bring it up?
Yes, one thing I think would be particularly interesting would be if we have records of kids doing it from before the printing press or common literacy. I feel like it would cast doubt on the "They've just seen or read about it somewhere" explanation