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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 4: Philosophy of Cosmology IV

AGPhil 4.1: Hauptvortrag

Dienstag, 19. März 2019, 14:00–14:45, HS 10

Anthropic reasoning and finality — •Richard Dawid — Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

The talk points at a general conceptual shift in scientific reasoning that is required for endorsing anthropic arguments in cosmology. In the 20th century, empirically successful physical theories were taken to have stable explanatory value despite the fact that those theories were expected to be superseded by successor theories later on. This understanding was based on the expectation that the known theory would survive as an effective theory of its more fundamental successor. The effective theory's explanation of a phenomenon remained valid as an effective representation of the corresponding explanation at the level of the fundamental successor theory. The described argument would not be available to anthropic reasoning, however, if the multiverse theory on which it is based were at some stage superseded by a successor theory that lacked the multiverse structure. In that case, the explanatory value of anthropic reasoning would collapse entirely. Therefore, unlike other scientific explanations, anthropic explanations depend on implicit finality assumptions to establish their relevance. The talk will discuss implications of this shift.