[ExI] A Simulation Argument

[Kevin Freels]

You had way too much fun writing this.

Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 08:12 AM 1/17/2008 -0800, Ian wrote:
>
>   
>>  Let's look at a real tower-of-turtles problem. If I
>> posit (the 'God' theory) that 'Something created
>> everything that exists, and x created the universe',
>> I've paradoxically placed x (at the level above) in
>> the set of things necessarily created calling for
>> something at a still higher level to have created x.
>> 'So then who created God?' Now that's a genuine
>> tower-of-turtles problem
>>     
>
> No it's not. In the usual metaphysical analysis, the question and 
> answer go like this: We can see that everything in the world is 
> transient, contingent, causally dependant on prior states that were 
> or are themselves transient, contingent, causally dependant on prior 
> states. This can't be tracked back to infinity, because things are 
> running down. Some other class of explanation for a universe of 
> contingent existents is needed--and that suggests a realm of Being 
> that is categorically *unlike* the world we see and subsist in. That 
> Being must be necessary of itself.
>
> The subsequent steps that attribute purpose, timelessness, ubiquity, 
> information processing, personhood, love, etc, to this disjunct state 
> of being can easily be questioned (especially if those attributions 
> appear to derive from states of being that are temporally sequential, 
> spatially partitioned, etc). But it's simply missing the point to 
> ask: Well, then, nyah nyah, *what created the uncreated*?
>
> The way to get rid of an ontically necessary deity is to show how the 
> universe, surprisingly, *does at its root embody these 
> characteristics* and can be at once self-subsistent, entropic and 
> evolving. The temptation in trying to meet this challenge is exactly 
> to posit one kind of contingent turtle tower or another.
>
> Damien Broderick
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080122/fd2259d7/attachment.html>