The Dial Fallacy: Why Cosmic Fine-Tuning Arguments Don’t Work
The Dial Fallacy is a version of begging the question that is committed by any appeal to cosmic fine-tuning that considers different possible values of one or more mathematical and physical parameters of the universe while leaving other mathematical or physical parameters unchanged. By leaving the other characteristics unchanged, the fine-tuning argument assumes the real possibility of a universe where the variable parameters and the unchanged parameters could both obtain at the same time. However, if all the parameters of the universe contingently evolved in relation to each other, then changing the value of one or more parameter without assuming the other parameters would themselves change begs the question against the possibility of an evolving universe. If the other parameters would not remain the same, then no fine-tuning is ever demonstrated because no really possible hypothetical outcome could ever be inferred. No state of affairs could ever be described because the changed conditions are unknown. Fine-tuning arguments are only possible in universes that do not evolve. They are only possible in universes where the mathematical and physical realities are somehow assumed to be isolated from each other and somehow fixed exogenously to the universe as a whole rather than emerging endogenously from the process of cosmic evolution. In order to avoid committing the Dial Fallacy, a fine-tuning argument would be required to indicate why the endogenous evolution of mathematical parameters is not possible, or at least not likely. I know of no fine-tuning argument that does this.
The Dial Fallacy gets its name from devices with multiple dials, each of which can be adjusted independently of the other dials. An obvious, although somewhat dated example is a stereo receiver where one can adjust values for settings such as volume, base, and treble. The Dial Fallacy as I am presenting it is not a matter of considering only “one dial at a time” (see Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, p. 255). Even if multiple parameters are considered in relation to each other, the fallacy is still committed in two ways. First, if any other parameters are allowed to remain unchanged in the process of drawing inferences about resulting outcomes, then the fallacy begs the question against an evolving universe where all parameters emerge in relation to each other. Second, if there is no consideration of the different prior conditions that would be required for the changed parameters to occur and no consideration of the impact that these changed antecedent conditions would have on all other parameters, then the fallacy is again committed.
Let me explain with some analogies. Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes explain fine-tuning arguments with the analogy of changing the ingredients in a cake recipe (A Fortunate Universe, p. 2-3). They point out that changing the amount of one ingredient would change the kind of cake that is produced or how increasing all the ingredients in proportion to each other would eventually render making a cake impossible. However, the analogy is inapt because a cake is not a naturally evolved outcome of any kind of ecosystem. It is an artificial combination of ingredients that produce a tasty outcome. Changing the amount of any one or more ingredients still creates an artificial reality that cannot be compared in any analogous way to an evolving system.
Second, while I might be able to do so for rhetorical reasons, there is no real way for me to consider what my life would be like if I were born Black. In order for me to be Black (present condition), one or more of my parents (antecedent conditions) would have to be Black. If that were the case, the result would be a very different son. He would in no meaningful way be me. Likewise, if, for example, one tried to ask what a universe would be like where the strong or weak nuclear forces had different values, one would first have to consider what kind of prior conditions would be necessary for such different values in the force to occur. Given the changed antecedent conditions, it would be impossible to know what kind of universe would actually emerge when the forces had different values.
This same point can be made by noting the distinction between understanding math as a map of physical relations in the universe as they have evolved rather than as a blueprint that defines those relations from the outset. As many have noted, map is not territory. If one were to look at a map and ask what a geographic region might have been like if a major river either did not exist or went in a different direction, one could only do so by first envisioning how the geographic conditions of the region prior to the formation of the river would also have to be different. Perhaps it is not surprising that the Dial Fallacy is so easily committed when those searching for unified theories of physics do so from a an external, or “God’s eye,” perspective on the universe rather than from an internal, or what Hawking and Hertog call a “worm’s eye” perspective (see On the Origin of Time, p. 201). If the actual history of the universe is assumed to be irrelevant to the mathematical relationships that obtain in that universe, then it becomes much easier to imagine worlds where one or more of those mathematical parameters is adjusted and new outcomes are inferred. Map makers are beholden to the realities they seek to map, whereas those who make blueprints assume they can redesign possibilities at will.
Defense of the Dial Fallacy does not require demonstrating that the parameters of the universe did in fact evolve. It is only necessary to note that one begs the question when making an argument for cosmic fine-tuning by assuming that the universe did not evolve. If cosmic fine-tuning arguments simply cannot work in an evolving universe, anyone advancing a fine-tuning argument needs to explain why cosmic evolution is not likely to have occurred.
While it is not necessary to defend the idea of cosmic evolution, a few brief indications of its plausibility would strengthen the conclusion that its possibility cannot simply be dismissed. Any understanding of reality as fundamentally indeterminate is consistent with cosmic evolution. Alfred North Whitehead, with his metaphysics of process, explicitly affirms that the laws of any given cosmic epoch are the contingent outcome of a reality characterized by events. For Whitehead, every single kind of relationship in our universe, natural, geometric, dimensional, or otherwise, is the product of societies within societies within societies of events that have evolved and which will eventually decay (see Process and Reality, p. 89-92.) The physicist Carlo Rovelli affirms a similar understanding of fundamental indeterminacy when he evocatively describes the universe as made up of kisses rather than stones. He writes:
“The difference between things and events is that things persist in time; events have a limited duration. A stone is a prototypical “thing”: we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an “event.” It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones” (The Order of Time, p. 98).
As already referenced, the “worm’s eye” perspective of natural laws affirmed by Stephen Hawking is the product of the quantum cosmology he developed near the end of his life. Thomas Hertog, Hawking’s final PhD student, writes:
“With a plethora of possible pathways in its basket, quantum cosmology in some sense unpacks the classical big bang singularity. What pops up is a breathtaking deeper level of evolution, taking us into the big bang. At this level we discern some sort of meta-evolution, a stage in which the familiar laws of evolution themselves evolve” (On the Origin of Time, p.199).
Hertog notes that interactions from the early universe produce “frozen accidents” (p. 200) that determine which paths are available for the universe to take. These frozen accidents are precisely what I have been calling antecedent conditions. In an evolving universe, which frozen accidents obtain is contingent upon interactions that take place within the universe, not on a design that was in place prior to existence of the universe. Frozen accidents create opportunities for and place constraints on future possibilities. The more influential these accidents are, the more “locked in” they become because the future possibilities defined in part by them sustain their influence. It then becomes increasingly more difficult for a world to emerge that did not maintain the influence of those accidents. Finally, the physicist Lee Smolin has proposed a theory of cosmic evolution with black holes as both the mechanism of for the creation of universes and as the selection principle for producing universes friendly to life (see Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, p. 200 and Time Reborn, p. 124 -129). No doubt many other philosophers and physicists have proposed theories of cosmic evolution. These are simply a representative sample.
It is not necessary to defend any one of the above understandings of cosmic evolution, but rather only to indicate that cosmic evolution is a plausible explanation of how the mathematical and physical parameters of our universe came to be what they are and thus to explain why any argument for cosmic fine-tuning that simply assumes that cosmic evolution did not happen is fallacious. I know of no fine-tuning argument that refutes cosmic evolution. Thus, so far as I know, the Dial Fallacy explains why cosmic fine-tuning arguments in general don’t work.
Works Referenced
Hertog, Thomas. On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory, New York: Bantam, 2023.
Lewis, Geraint F. and Luke A. Barnes. A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Rovelli, Carlo. The Order of Time, New York: Riverhead, 2019.
Smolin, Lee. Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Smolin, Lee. Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: Corrected Edition, edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978.