Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Anthony Edgar]

If the universe began as complete chaos, where does order come from? For example, how did chaos produce the order evident in the intricate pattern evident in a snowflake? If the pattern is a result of "mathematics", how did chaos produce mathematics?

I think of chaos as something like what an inflated balloon does when you let it go - it whizzes around uncontrollably and bumps into things. The idea of chaos producing mathematics is a little beyond my meager intellegence to comprehend.

[Mark1955]

If the universe began as complete chaos, where does order come from? For example, how did chaos produce the order evident in the intricate pattern evident in a snowflake? If the pattern is a result of "mathematics", how did chaos produce mathematics?

I think of chaos as something like what an inflated balloon does when you let it go - it whizzes around uncontrollably and bumps into things. The idea of chaos producing mathematics is a little beyond my meager intellegence to comprehend.

Well done that man!! The first step to enlightenment, realising there are things you can’t understand. Now think about the claims made about ‘god’. If even 10% of them are true then god is not a bearded old bloke it is something so complex you can’t understand what it is or how it works. Some religious books even say things like “The peace of god that passeth all understanding”. Now if you don’t understand you can’t say this thing is or isn’t, you may choose to believe but you can’t prove it, or disprove it. If you can’t then neither really can anyone else, so welcome to the world of militant agnosticism – the only TRUE faith; and it is a faith because I can’t prove it because I know I don‘t know.

[Fooloso4]

Anthony Edgar:

If the pattern is a result of "mathematics", how did chaos produce mathematics?

You assume that chaos produced mathematics, but the ontological status of mathematics remains an open question. The motion of the balloon is chaotic in so far as we are not able to predict its motion, but its motion is entirely consistent with physical laws. The question is not how did we get from no order to order, but rather from a low level of order to higher levels of order.

Another assumption that must be examined is whether the universe did have a beginning. This too is an open question.

Mark1955:

The first step to enlightenment, realising there are things you can’t understand.

This might mean either that these are things we can’t at present understand or that these are things that we can never understand no matter how advanced our science becomes. All cosmologists would agree with the former but not with the latter. There may be limits to our ability to understand but I do not think we are in a position to say what they are. I remain agnostic with regard to this question.

… so welcome to the world of militant agnosticism.

I don’t see it that way. Belief and knowledge are two different things. And so, if someone were to ask me if I know that there is or is not a God I would be agnostic. But if someone were to ask me what I believe I would be atheistic. I do not think that not knowing is sufficient reason to not have a belief one way or the other, although one could reasonably hold that position. In the absence of knowledge there are other factors that come into play that shape what one believes.

-- Updated October 9th, 2016, 2:57 pm to add the following --

Mercury:

But if so, I don't know - and I know I don't know. Can't rule it in - can't rule it out. And furthermore, why would I want to? Hence, agnostic!

A reasonable post. Personally, I chose the label atheist because since I do not rule God in I am without theistic belief. Hence, atheist! But, since I cannot rule it out, this form of atheism differs from that of others who base their atheism on the fact that they have not ruled it out. Hence, some will insist that I am not an atheist but an agnostic. To me, however, this is simply a problem of labels.

And I think that's the only rational position to take.

I don’t see it that way. The fact that we do not know is not sufficient reason to not hold a belief one way or the other, although there is nothing that requires that one must hold a belief. Despite not knowing I do hold a belief and others do as well. And so,
although with regard to episteme (knowledge) I am agnostic, I am apisteme (without belief) I am atheist. I find nothing persuasive to lead me to believe there is a God.

[Mark1955]

Belief and knowledge are two different things.

I'm not convinced; I don't think we 'know' anything, we just convince ourselves we do so we can get on with life. The only thing I believe I really truly know is that i don't know anything. At one time we knew the sun went round the earth, it was obvious, we could observe it happening, then we learned to look at it another way and now we 'know' that the earth goes round the sun; but what about when we learn to look at space-time another way and learn to travel in time, maybe the wholoe thing is static and some sort of time function is the only thing in motion [Note: this is just a daft idea as an example, however if, in the future, it turns out to be true please remember you read it here first].

[Fooloso4]

Mark1955:

I'm not convinced; I don't think we 'know' anything

We use the term “know” in a variety of different ways. Confusion arises when we restrict the use the term to mean infallible, indubitable, apodictic, certainty.

… we just convince ourselves we do so we can get on with life.

I think this get the problem backwards. It stems from Descartes brilliant rhetorical strategy to undermine the absolute authority of the Church. Since he could not do so directly he steps back and calls everything into question. Of course, in order to do so there is a great deal that cannot be called into question. The ability to call something into question, as he makes clear in his other writings, is not a good reason to do so. It is, further, unreasonable to do so. We do not need to convince ourselves we take it as given unless something compels us to question our knowledge. But again, in order to call any particular claim of knowledge into question there is a whole system of knowledge that is not called into question and stands as the basis for what is called into question.

In any case, unless in additional to the claim that you do not know you claim that therefore you do not believe you make the distinction between belief and knowledge. And so, the distinction between the atheistic claim to know that God does not exist and the atheistic claim to believe that God does not exist stands.

[Sy Borg]

Since he could not do so directly he steps back and calls everything into question. Of course, in order to do so there is a great deal that cannot be called into question.

Yes, it seems that the endless supply of evidence or biological explanations for things is never enough. Meanwhile no explanation is required for mysterious, ineffable deities.

The ability to call something into question, as he makes clear in his other writings, is not a good reason to do so. It is, further, unreasonable to do so. We do not need to convince ourselves we take it as given unless something compels us to question our knowledge.

Needless to say, this was before mass media, although I expect that equivalent (ape-derived) duping has always been present in human societies. Due to the human ability and propensity propensity to use misinformation as a means of manipulation, perhaps Descartes was too trusting?

A rational approach to knowledge is to treat it all as a "placeholder" idea until replaced by something that is more true. So out beliefs simply come in various degrees of tentativeness. I believe many things, all tentatively, each belief under constant threat from new knowledge as if under the Sword of Damocles. Let the sword fall - and keep on falling, I say :)

The journey of scientific learning via methodical testing tells us that there are degrees of truth - that many different things can be true, but some are more true - or pertinent - than others. For example, it was believed that sickness was caused by evil spirits or character shortfalls. Poetically, unfriendly bacterial or viral colonies can be thought of as evil spirits - invisible, untouchable malign entities within. Obviously that "truth" is less useful or accurate than the modern view and I suspect that future systems approaches to medicine will render our current medical ideas obsolete. Bacteria will still be present, still behaving like wicked sprites, but "new truths" will continue to come from deeper understanding of bacterial, chemical and fluid dynamics in human systems.

[Anthony Edgar]

The motion of the balloon is chaotic in so far as we are not able to predict its motion, but its motion is entirely consistent with physical laws.

It turns out that my balloon isn't totally chaotic.  Thanks for pointing that out to me.  Thinking of an example of total chaos is actually quite difficult since every particle of matter in the universe is governed by physical laws.  
(Maybe my mind is the closest thing to total chaos in the universe.)

I'm no expert, but I would think it scientifically impossible for chaos to produce the physical laws that are needed to produce even the lowest level of order.  Can a pile of bricks arrange themselves to form a house?  ( ... this is my strawman for the day).  So I can't see how the universe could have begun as chaos. The fact that physical laws exist at all represents strong evidence of Intelligent Design, in my opinion.

-- Updated October 10th, 2016, 7:13 pm to add the following --

Some religious books even say things like “The peace of god that passeth all understanding”. Now if you don’t understand you can’t say this thing is or isn’t, you may choose to believe but you can’t prove it, or disprove it.

I'm a Catholic but I would never claim that I KNOW God exists, since I can't prove it.  I don't even know how I could prove it.  So I'll have to settle for "I believe" instead (which, come to think of it, are the first two words of the Apostle's and the Nicene Creeds).

The only thing I know for sure is that Tottenham Hotspur will win the EPL this season.

[Fooloso4]

Anthony Edgar:

Can a pile of bricks arrange themselves to form a house?

No. The mistake is in thinking of matter as analogous to an inert pile of bricks.

So I can't see how the universe could have begun as chaos.

You need to clarify just what it is you mean by chaos. The term is used to mean lack of order but also chaotic order, that is, order that is, for us, non predictive due to its sensitivity to initial conditions and our inability to compute all of the variables. Even where order is low there is still some degree of order that can allow a system to become more orderly over time.

The fact that physical laws exist at all represents strong evidence of Intelligent Design, in my opinion.

The origin of physical laws is an open question. It may be that the laws are simply descriptive, they describe to us how things behave. It may be that they do govern but were created by the conditions of the early universe. Or it may be that there is a designer. That, however, is a possibility that is not entailed by the evidence. At this point the evidence points to a question mark.

[Sy Borg]

I'm no expert, but I would think it scientifically impossible for chaos to produce the physical laws that are needed to produce even the lowest level of order.  Can a pile of bricks arrange themselves to form a house?  ( ... this is my strawman for the day).  So I can't see how the universe could have begun as chaos. The fact that physical laws exist at all represents strong evidence of Intelligent Design, in my opinion.

Chaos not only creates order, the probabilities suggest that chaos must produce order. Throw a pair of dice for a billion years and you will get shocking, seemingly impossible sequences of repeated numbers and patterns.

The chances of bricks turning into houses by themselves is astronomically low, like the existence of a giant superman who made and controls the universe. They are just probabilities, so low that the universe could never last long enough for them to happen. However, the probability of matter forming an accurate brick-like form, although very low (because there are so many other shapes that matter can aggregate into), is much less and has no doubt occurred a number of times in the universe.

However, more than chaos has emerged from the primordial universe, slowly over impossible-to-comprehend tracts of time. How can humans get their heads around just how long a billion years is, just how much can happen in that time? Answer: we can't, aside from dim abstract and comparative understandings. We live at the scale of decades and centuries so commonsense cannot apply to emergence because we are dealing with uncommon (in our experience) periods of time.

Now that cosmic systems and life have emerged and evolved, the game has changed. Life can increasingly achieve the unlikely and seemingly impossible.

[Mark1955]

Mark1955

… we just convince ourselves we do so we can get on with life.

I think this gets the problem backwards. It stems from Descartes brilliant rhetorical strategy to undermine the absolute authority of the Church. Since he could not do so directly he steps back and calls everything into question. Of course, in order to do so there is a great deal that cannot be called into question. The ability to call something into question, as he makes clear in his other writings, is not a good reason to do so. It is, further, unreasonable to do so.

I call everything into question, as I believe did David Hume, on the following basis. I can only 'know' what I can perceive, my perceptions can be deceived therefore anything I think I 'know' based on my perceptions may be wrong.

[Fooloso4]

Mark

I call everything into question, as I believe did David Hume, on the following basis.

His skepticism did not call into question his ability to act, or perceive, or think, or write. The problem is not with knowledge but with the idea that knowledge entails infallibility, indubitability, apodictic necessity, and certainty. As a practical matter we simply cannot call everything into question.

Perhaps Hume did not call anything into question. Any response to this suggestion requires appeal to things known, such as the fact that he wrote certain books and said certain things in those books that serve as the basis for your claim that he called everything into question.

[Anthony Edgar]

Chaos not only creates order, the probabilities suggest that chaos must produce order. Throw a pair of dice for a billion years and you will get shocking, seemingly impossible sequences of repeated numbers and patterns.



However, more than chaos has emerged from the primordial universe, slowly over impossible-to-comprehend tracts of time. How can humans get their heads around just how long a billion years is, just how much can happen in that time? Answer: we can't, aside from dim abstract and comparative understandings. We live at the scale of decades and centuries so commonsense cannot apply to emergence because we are dealing with uncommon (in our experience) periods of time.

Now that cosmic systems and life have emerged and evolved, the game has changed. Life can increasingly achieve the unlikely and seemingly impossible.

I'm a theist, but my online conversations with atheists have enlightened me as to what the Dumb Universe can achieve, especially when the magic wand of billions of years is waved over it.  The Dumb Universe is effectively Chaos - since it is blind, meaningless, aimless; and has no consciousness, intelligence or purpose - yet some amazing things that I originally attributed to Intelligent Design may actually be the result of chance ... the first primordial cell, for example.  And what about the laws of physics, without which not even a single atom could have formed?

Thinking like an atheist, I considered what other wonders could be the result of chance.  I came up with some possibilities:
1.  Wind and sand combined to produce the Sphinx in Egypt (and maybe even the pyramids!).
2.  Wind and erosion produced the four faces on Mt. Rushmore.
3.  A log cabin could be accidentally built by the surrounding forest.

And consider this, The Dumb Universe eventually produced the minds of geniuses like Mozoart and Einstein and is ultimately responsible for the Hubble Telescope and the Hadron Large Collider.

The Dumb Universe is truly incredible!

[Mark1955]

I'm a theist, but my online conversations with atheists have enlightened me as to what the Dumb Universe can achieve, especially when the magic wand of billions of years is waved over it.  The Dumb Universe is effectively Chaos - since it is blind, meaningless, aimless; and has no consciousness, intelligence or purpose - yet some amazing things that I originally attributed to Intelligent Design may actually be the result of chance ... the first primordial cell, for example.  And what about the laws of physics, without which not even a single atom could have formed?

Thinking like an atheist, I considered what other wonders could be the result of chance.  I came up with some possibilities:
1.  Wind and sand combined to produce the Sphinx in Egypt (and maybe even the pyramids!).
2.  Wind and erosion produced the four faces on Mt. Rushmore.
3.  A log cabin could be accidentally built by the surrounding forest.

And consider this, The Dumb Universe eventually produced the minds of geniuses like Mozoart and Einstein and is ultimately responsible for the Hubble Telescope and the Hadron Large Collider.

The Dumb Universe is truly incredible!

Thinking like a theist even thinking about atheism makes you a heretic, burn him lads!

[Anthony Edgar]

Thinking like a theist even thinking about atheism makes you a heretic, burn him lads!

I can't think like an atheist for very long - it's too depressing.

[Felix]

Anthony Edgar: I'm no expert, but I would think it scientifically impossible for chaos to produce the physical laws that are needed to produce even the lowest level of order.

Chaos did not produce order, if the Universe did not have an orderly physical structure, nothing (literally) could come of it.

Greta: Chaos not only creates order, the probabilities suggest that chaos must produce order. Throw a pair of dice for a billion years and you will get shocking, seemingly impossible sequences of repeated numbers and patterns.

That is not order proceeding from chaos, that is random variation coalescing into orderly sequence. If the universe was chaotic, there would be no dice to throw and no one to throw it.