““Matthewian” refers to all those that subscribe to Matthew Adelstein’s views on the issue at hand. We’ll workshop a better designation in the future.”
" I’m questioning that assumption. On theism, God exists as an unembodied mind. Thus, given theism, the range of possible psychophysical laws is wider than the range given naturalism (i.e., ‘a mind does not require any physical substratum to obtain’ is a possible psycho-physical law if theism is true, but not if naturalism is true). Thus, we cannot take psychophysical laws as background information in our efforts to show that fine-tuning has a higher likelihood given theism than naturalism."
"You claim that neither hypothesis has a probabilistic edge when it comes to the laws of nature, but this is false, Naturalism entails that “If there are conscious beings, then they are physically embodied” and therefore given the existence of conscious agents on Naturalism it is logically entailed that these conscious agents are physically embodied, and therefore Naturalism entails law structures that allow for the existence of physically embodied conscious agents, the God Hypothesis makes no such prediction since the existence of conscious agents on the God Hypothesis can take immaterial forms, reality could be idealist, or conscious agents could be connected to physical entities in many ways that don't require physical embodiment, since god can endow souls with any power to interact with physical entities without requiring physical embodiment, therefore you cannot just build in the law structures into the background."
So indeed the set of psychophysical laws given naturalism is tightly constrained, and many naturalists wouldn't even admit of psychophysical laws to begin with, as identity theorists or functionalists would not say there are psychophysical laws of any sort, but the naturalist can justly complain that if theism is true, then any set of psychophysical laws is possible, and i do think this has very important ramifications for the fine tuning argument, as it does as you point out, undermine the high likelihood of a physically fine tuned universe given theism.
You can even imagine a naturalist doing a parody fine tuning argument, given that naturalism strongly predicts that if conscious beings exist then they are physically embodied, that entails the universe has to be fine tuned given our law structures, of course this argument is only as strong as how likely the existence of conscious beings given naturalism is.
But anyways for me the biggest objection by far are all the reasons to reject objective bayesianism, and the alternative interpretations of probability that have no place at all for the usage of probability in the FTA (I am most sympathetic to a BSA like interpretation), Matthew always argues falsely, that alternative interpretations of probability are liable to make us lose justified usage of probability in our sciences, but this is simply false, he just assumed the alternative is just some sort of naive frequentism, the BSA approach is not liable to any such criticism, for example the approach outline in the Mentaculus provides the basis for objective probability usage in fundamental physics and all the objective probability in our non-physical sciences, which strictly supervene on the objective probabilities in fundamental physics, and it provides a coherent objective way to asses the probability of singular events, unlike what Matthew tends to claim (Matthew really isn't all that familiar with the literature on this topic).
Once you accept the explanatory power of empirical approaches to probability, the usage of probability in all these metaphysical arguments genuinely becomes very mystifying, i am genuinely mystified by statements like the probability of live given naturalism is such and such, obviously the Mentaculus does offer you an answer for the objective probability of life in this universe, but getting an objective probability of something as thin as the notion of naturalism, or even god ? i don't get it.
Anyways for very important guests in this topic, you should definitely check out John Norton (the most important critic of objective bayesianism IMO, not only because he provides good reasons to reject it, but also because he offers the best alternative of the basis of inductive logic ), you can probably get him to be a guest in the podcast, also i do hope you can get David Albert on as Barry Loewer recommended, specifically to discuss probability and the Mentaculus vision, Daniel Linford is also familiar with this work
““Matthewian” refers to all those that subscribe to Matthew Adelstein’s views on the issue at hand. We’ll workshop a better designation in the future.”
Adelsteinian?
Okay, I like Adelsteinian more.
" I’m questioning that assumption. On theism, God exists as an unembodied mind. Thus, given theism, the range of possible psychophysical laws is wider than the range given naturalism (i.e., ‘a mind does not require any physical substratum to obtain’ is a possible psycho-physical law if theism is true, but not if naturalism is true). Thus, we cannot take psychophysical laws as background information in our efforts to show that fine-tuning has a higher likelihood given theism than naturalism."
I am glad you appreciate this point, this is something i have tried to push you on as well, in this video i commented https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMUaexggjkE
To quote myself on the relevant portion:
"You claim that neither hypothesis has a probabilistic edge when it comes to the laws of nature, but this is false, Naturalism entails that “If there are conscious beings, then they are physically embodied” and therefore given the existence of conscious agents on Naturalism it is logically entailed that these conscious agents are physically embodied, and therefore Naturalism entails law structures that allow for the existence of physically embodied conscious agents, the God Hypothesis makes no such prediction since the existence of conscious agents on the God Hypothesis can take immaterial forms, reality could be idealist, or conscious agents could be connected to physical entities in many ways that don't require physical embodiment, since god can endow souls with any power to interact with physical entities without requiring physical embodiment, therefore you cannot just build in the law structures into the background."
So indeed the set of psychophysical laws given naturalism is tightly constrained, and many naturalists wouldn't even admit of psychophysical laws to begin with, as identity theorists or functionalists would not say there are psychophysical laws of any sort, but the naturalist can justly complain that if theism is true, then any set of psychophysical laws is possible, and i do think this has very important ramifications for the fine tuning argument, as it does as you point out, undermine the high likelihood of a physically fine tuned universe given theism.
You can even imagine a naturalist doing a parody fine tuning argument, given that naturalism strongly predicts that if conscious beings exist then they are physically embodied, that entails the universe has to be fine tuned given our law structures, of course this argument is only as strong as how likely the existence of conscious beings given naturalism is.
But anyways for me the biggest objection by far are all the reasons to reject objective bayesianism, and the alternative interpretations of probability that have no place at all for the usage of probability in the FTA (I am most sympathetic to a BSA like interpretation), Matthew always argues falsely, that alternative interpretations of probability are liable to make us lose justified usage of probability in our sciences, but this is simply false, he just assumed the alternative is just some sort of naive frequentism, the BSA approach is not liable to any such criticism, for example the approach outline in the Mentaculus provides the basis for objective probability usage in fundamental physics and all the objective probability in our non-physical sciences, which strictly supervene on the objective probabilities in fundamental physics, and it provides a coherent objective way to asses the probability of singular events, unlike what Matthew tends to claim (Matthew really isn't all that familiar with the literature on this topic).
Once you accept the explanatory power of empirical approaches to probability, the usage of probability in all these metaphysical arguments genuinely becomes very mystifying, i am genuinely mystified by statements like the probability of live given naturalism is such and such, obviously the Mentaculus does offer you an answer for the objective probability of life in this universe, but getting an objective probability of something as thin as the notion of naturalism, or even god ? i don't get it.
Anyways for very important guests in this topic, you should definitely check out John Norton (the most important critic of objective bayesianism IMO, not only because he provides good reasons to reject it, but also because he offers the best alternative of the basis of inductive logic ), you can probably get him to be a guest in the podcast, also i do hope you can get David Albert on as Barry Loewer recommended, specifically to discuss probability and the Mentaculus vision, Daniel Linford is also familiar with this work
I think “Bentham’s Bulldog’s Bulldogs” would be a funnier term