I find that in general as apologists get cornered, they generate ever longer word-walls attempting to rescue their position. The cascading length-increases of your comments are showing that.

It’s clear now that a straightforward, non-convoluted discussion with you is impossible. This forces me to atomize the conversation and walk you by hand one point at a time. So, I am setting aside every rabbit hole you have dug for yourself and choosing only one to continue with for now:

You keep contradicting yourself by admitting I’m right about what an “only if” conditional says, then claiming my description of it as an only if conditional is wrong. I fail to see any coherent answer here. You simply aren’t making any sense at this point.

Instead…

“That statement is false. No scientific success has ever met that condition.” As I said above, we disagree about that.

No, we don’t. You have never presented any examples of this kind of success in science. So even you have tacitly admitted no such success standard exists in science nor has ever been applied to it.

What you are “disagreeing” with is yourself:

As I keep explaining (a point you keep dodging), you wrote “can be” instead of “could have been as” in Premise 2 in your paper.

Now you want to rewrite your paper to say something else, something (it sounds) more like the latter. As I suspected even in my critique.

By not admitting you messed up the wording of the premise, and thus created an equivocation fallacy when you tried introducing evidence for Premise 2 being true, you are simply spinning wheels here.

You need to admit the actual evidence of science’s success does not evince Premise 2, not as actually worded, nor as you (it seems) want to reword it now.

To say that science, for example, “could only have been as successful as it has been if X” cannot be proved by citing the actual success of science. Because that evidence (the actual evidence) is equally expected on the truth or falsity of that Premise.

That evidence therefore does not establish Premise 2, either in your paper’s presented sense, or this new sense you want to defend (which you still have not articulated clearly but are avoiding articulating clearly, requiring me to repeatedly interpret your new intended meaning, but we’re getting you closer to admitting it…).

I agree that if Naturalism is true, then no scientific explanation has ever met the necessary condition laid out in my second premise.

So you do want to redefine “success” contrary to how science defines it, just as my critique said. Excellent. Now you are starting to admit my critique is correct.

This has exactly the consequences my critique points out…

Now, with this new definition of science, Tomas, will you admit you cannot cite the actual success of science as evidence for this version of Premise 2?

Because that would be a circular argument in defense of the Premise, not a valid empirical argument. You need to establish the Premise is true, not just declare it true. So you need evidence that it is true.

And if you want to reword that premise in some other way than “Science could only have been as successful as it has been if X” then try that. But I promise you, you’ll never get a premise that both (a) is confirmed true by any evidence and (b) gets to the conclusion you want.

Just try and see.

Tomas:

Yes, I don’t think you’re going to be convincing. Because you talk about science and then cite only a scant few examples… and then when you provide examples, we point out how they don’t work.

Your newest post to Richard I think makes it much worse.

Because of this.

Anyway, about premise 2, you say: “That statement is false. No scientific success has ever met that condition.” As I said above, we disagree about that. I agree that if Naturalism is true, then no scientific explanation has ever met the necessary condition laid out in my second premise. And, so, if Naturalism is true, no scientific explanation has ever been successful. Yes. That’s basically the point of the paper. But I don’t think that follows if Naturalism is false. And, as you’ve probably gathered, I think Naturalism is false.

Tomas. Whether naturalism is true or false, scientific explanations at present do not match your criteria. Because they’re all incomplete. Just like all supernaturalist explanations, because all supernaturalist explanations are at this point naturalist explanations with inherently unexplainable cruft tacked on.

You cannot cite hypothetical explanations WE don’t have. I emphasize “we” there because you have no explanations either. “God did it”, by your own criteria of actual explanatory value, is not an explanation either. Under any supernaturalism, we as humans are exceedingly unlikely to understand anything like causal mechanisms. Anything like an actual explanation of why we say “God bless you” when we sneeze. “It’s magic” is barely any better than “That’s the custom” as far as non-answers that effectively repeat the question.

All scientific success that has occurred thus far (and you rather conspicuously refuse to clarify if you actually think science has been successful on its own terms) has been without an explanation with no important elements left unexplained. You yourself provided the example of evolution. When Darwin suggested natural selection, it was already promising. When everyone began confirming the power of his model, it was already successful. Not only was this before even the most cursory abiogenesis theories, this was even before the incorporation of genetics, DNA and RNA, understanding of the mechanisms of mutation, genetic drift, epigenetics, symbiosis, the behavior of retroviruses, pleiotropy, and all the countless things we have synthesized into the present neo-Darwinian (or really neo-neo-Darwinian) model. Anyone in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had massive unanswered questions as to why life had evolved in the specific ways it had. And yet evolution was still successful as a theory. By science’s own standards. Which you have provided utterly no reason to reject, or describe as unreasonable.

Scientists have not tried to meet your criterion in your second premise. Because your criteria are nonsense. And you steadfastly refuse to respond to either me or Richard pointing out how supernaturalism by your own Feserian standards also leaves critical elements unexplained. (Unless you can explain God. Fully and totally. Since the totality would be necessary to have a complete theory that would make perfect predictions).

Of course, you’re also just repeating an unevidenced gainsaying of the fact that, again, as we’ve been discussing here, there in fact can be quite robust explanations under naturalism that can only arguably leave metaphysical questions of the type “But why is it like that?” (which may in fact just not be meaningful questions because “why” may cease to be meaningful at the level of fundamental ontology), and indeed thereby behave much better than supernaturalism. Because only naturalism can have a universe that breaks down to irreducibly simple components, whereas supernaturalism must mandate irreducibly mental components which requires tuned complex components to any supernaturalist theory. And so your argument is just calling the trial before the jury has even started the first hour of deliberation, and is woefully (and fatally) premature.

But all of that is minor compared to this staggering new manifestation of the fact that your argument is an argument from ignorance. Whether a rooted argument from God is possible, you don’t have it, and no one ever needed it for success from science.

Which is what Richard has repeatedly said is clearly what you are actually trying to argue, which this exposes quite transparently, and yet you want to keep your original argument intact for some reason.

SMH, sir. SMH.

Dr. Carrier,

You said, “For the benefit of my readers, on the various use of quotation marks and that it’s obvious how I am using them, you’ve already been called out on that.” I have been called out for mentioning your misuse of quotation marks? I feel like I’m in bizarro land haha. Look, I’m happy to drop the misquotation topic, especially since I notice you’re being much more careful about your use of quotation marks now. I’m grateful for that.
…………………………………………
You quoted my second premise, and you added some emphasis:
-2- Any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one.

You say a few things about this:
“Your words, my emphasis.” That’s right! Thank you for your careful use of quotation marks.

“That is an ‘only if’ conditional.” Right again. Nice work.

“That means the condition can only be met on that consequent.” Erm, this is a little awkwardly phrased. But I think I understand what you’re trying to say. By “the condition” you mean the antecedent, the sufficient condition. Yes. That condition can be met only if the consequent is true. Yep. That’s precisely what the conditional says.

“This is therefore saying there is no other kind of success than here described.” No, that doesn’t sound quite right. There may be other kinds of success (Marital success? Professional success?). But given the sort of explanatory success I’m interested in—production of understanding—yes, I’m claiming that premise 2 states a necessary condition for that kind of success.

You then quote me saying that we tend to use the “A only if B” construction to emphasize the necessity of the necessary condition, B. And then you say, “This is exactly what I am saying.” Well, I’m willing to grant that this is what you were trying to say. Sure.

But you continue, “How you are confusing me as saying anything else baffles me.” Oh, it’s because you had said, of premise 2, “the consequent is ‘only then is an explanation successful’.” And that’s false. That simply is not the consequent of premise 2. And I wouldn’t say I’m confusing what you said. It was very clear what you said, and it was very clearly false. It’s not that big of a deal, and if this conversation weren’t happening in public I imagine that you’d be willing to correct that minor error.

Anyway, about premise 2, you say: “That statement is false. No scientific success has ever met that condition.” As I said above, we disagree about that. I agree that if Naturalism is true, then no scientific explanation has ever met the necessary condition laid out in my second premise. And, so, if Naturalism is true, no scientific explanation has ever been successful. Yes. That’s basically the point of the paper. But I don’t think that follows if Naturalism is false. And, as you’ve probably gathered, I think Naturalism is false.

You continued: “You said there can be no success that doesn’t satisfy that consequent. Then you said science shows a lot of success. But science has never shown any success meeting that consequent. The consequent is therefore false.”

As I’ve said a few times now, I think scientific explanations can meet that necessary condition for success, if Naturalism is false. And, no, you’re incorrect to say that the consequent would be false, even if you were right that no scientific explanation had ever met that alleged necessary condition on success. Again, you’re misunderstanding how conditionals work. What you’re probably trying to say is that, if the antecedent were true while the consequent were false, then the conditional itself would be false. Yes, that would be correct. Not the consequent, as you say, but the conditional itself. The second premise. But, as I’ve said, I don’t think you’re right that there’s any case in which antecedent is true while the consequent is false. As far as I can tell, only Molkien has come within a bull’s roar of providing a case like that. But I don’t think the case works, and I responded to it above.

You then say, “You have neither described any actual success, nor have you produced any evidence of any such success in science. This is an equivocation fallacy. Exactly as I explain.”

Look, to show that I have committed an equivocation fallacy, you’d have to show that the truth of one of my premises requires one reading of a word or phrase, but the truth of another premise requires a different reading of that word or phrase, and yet if we read one premise in one way and the other premise the other way the argument would not be valid, and therefore the argument cannot be sound. You’d want to show that my argument features either one false premise or an invalid inference. That’s how you’d pin an equivocation fallacy on me. You can’t simply insist that I’m using a word or phrase in two different ways, especially when I insist that I’m not. I wrote the argument, and I’m telling you what I had in mind: a univocal use of “success” meaning production of understanding. I say this pretty clearly in the paper, to forestall this very misunderstanding. If you think that makes one of my premises false, then you should simply focus on that criticism.

You know what might help? I’ll just rewrite the argument for you, swapping in what I mean by “be successful” for every instance of that phrase:
-1- Any scientific explanation can [produce understanding of the phenomenon it’s meant to explain] only if it crucially involves a natural regularity.
-2- Any explanation can [produce understanding of the phenomenon it’s meant to explain] only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one.
-3- So, a scientific explanation can [produce understanding of the phenomenon it’s meant to explain] only if it crucially involves a natural regularity, and this regularity does not call out for explanation while lacking one.
-4- If Naturalism is true, then every natural regularity calls out for explanation but lacks one.
-5- So, if Naturalism is true, then no scientific explanation can [produce understanding of the phenomenon it’s meant to explain].

Now, I hope, you’ll agree that there’s no fallacy of equivocation going on here with the word “successful.” I do go on to say that, insofar as one thinks any scientific explanation has [produced understanding of the phenomenon it’s meant to explain], then one has a reason to reject Naturalism. And I do think at least some scientific explanations have done that. So, I think this argument gives me reason to reject Naturalism.

Maybe you disagree. Maybe you think no scientific explanation has ever [produced understanding of the phenomenon it’s meant to explain]. OK. You can own that, if you’d like. But it’s surprising to hear a Naturalist so pessimistic about science, and I myself consider that a reductio of your view.
……………………………………….
You then say, “Once again, you appear to be (as I stated my suspicion before, both here in comments and in my article) wanting to have said something else in your paper: That science can only have been as successful as it has if it assumes some ultimate (as yet unconfirmed) grounding of all explanation.”

Hey, thanks for resisting the urge to put that proposed revision in quotation marks and attributing it to me haha. Nice. But no thank you to the proposed revision. That’s definitely not what I want to say. I’d like to keep my main argument exactly as I wrote it.

You say, “If you want to move the goal posts thus, and completely rewrite your entire paper…”

Haha, no thank you again to both suggestions. I’m happy with the argument as I wrote it, and I encourage you to think of objections to that argument, the one that I wrote.

I think we’re probably at an impasse. We’ve both shared our thoughts, multiple times. We’re repeating ourselves. I didn’t really expect to change anyone’s mind down here in the comments. I’ve had my say and I’m content to leave things there. If you still think you’ve uncovered a serious objection, I sincerely encourage you to write it up and send it to a journal. Thanks again for thinking about my paper, and for letting me reply to your comments. Take care.

P.S. I should also add, since you seem to miss things like this a lot:

In the new formulation of Premise 2 (“That science can only have been as successful as it has if it assumes some ultimate (as yet unconfirmed) grounding of all explanation” or any equivalent statement), you have no evidence for that Premise (science has never assumed this, yet is successful; and science doesn’t have to assume this, to have been successful).

Moreover, your analysis is exhaustive of all possible grounding scenarios (infinitism, circularism, brute-factism, and necessary-factism), and thus renders Premise 2 moot. Science can be successful without assuming anything about this—as in fact it has been. It is, instead, just logically necessarily the case that naturalist explanations (as all explanations) must be grounded in one of those four ways (even if we haven’t scientifically discovered that ground yet), but so must nonnaturalism, so this being the case is no argument for or against either. It’s a problem equally faced by both.

You needed to demonstrate by some nonfallacious logic or survey of evidence that none of those grounding scenarios can work for naturalism but at least one can work for supernaturalism. But your paper contains no sound syllogistic or evidence-based demonstrations of either.

Exactly as my article takes pains to explain. Hence you might want to actually read it, and not rage-skim it.

For the benefit of my readers, on the various use of quotation marks and that it’s obvious how I am using them, you’ve already been called out on that. See comment and comment. I suggest you drop that. It is unproductive wingeing at this point.

-2- Any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one.

Your words, my emphasis. That is an “only if” conditional. That means the condition can only be met on that consequent. This is therefore saying there is no other kind of success than here described.

As you seem to admit:

We tend to use the “A only if B” construction to emphasize the necessity of the necessary condition, B.

This is exactly what I am saying.

How you are confusing me as saying anything else baffles me.

You said, exactly as I said, that an explanation is successful only if it meets that condition. That statement is false. No scientific success has ever met that condition.

-:-

I think you meant to ask me to give you an example of a successful scientific explanation that does not crucially feature any element that calls out for explanation but lacks one. Well, if Naturalism is true, I think there are no such explanations! That’s the point of my paper. That’s the problem with Naturalism that I mean to point out.

You’re starting to look dense here. You said there can be no success that doesn’t satisfy that consequent. Then you said science shows a lot of success. But science has never shown any success meeting that consequent. The consequent is therefore false. You have neither described any actual success, nor have you produced any evidence of any such success in science. This is an equivocation fallacy. Exactly as I explain.

Once again, you appear to be (as I stated my suspicion before, both here in comments and in my article) wanting to have said something else in your paper: That science can only have been as successful as it has if it assumes some ultimate (as yet unconfirmed) grounding of all explanation. That isn’t in your paper. But you seem now to be acting like that is what you meant to argue all along, and I point out in my article I did indeed suspect that is what you were trying to argue but failed to correctly formulate it and instead built a convoluted and fallacious apparatus in its place.

If you want to move the goal posts thus, and completely rewrite your entire paper, such that your argument is instead that science’s actual success has required assuming there is some ontological ground (even if we do not yet know what that is), and then argue that only nonnatural grounds “work,” then your paper as-is contains no defense of that.

Instead, all you do is analyze possible grounds as infinite regress, final circular fact, brute-fact, and necessary fact, and complain about them all. But nonnaturalism suffers the same defect: it can only be one of those same four things. You present no evidence it can’t be a natural fact, or that any nonnatural fact you presented escapes being one of these four things.

So yes, rewrite your paper to have a completely different argument than you actually presented.

You still don’t get to your conclusion. Other than by fallacies (such as Aristotle’s Argument from Ignorance, which you spend a bizarre amount of time futilely defending).

And this is already explained in my article. I already anticipated this goal-post move then and already addressed it.

I suggest you re-read my article and actually think about what it says this time.

Tomas:

The point is that he wasn’t quoting you, any more than someone saying that Trump is a “leader” is necessarily quoting a specific Trump speech. He’s acting as if you said something. “It’s as if he had said, ‘…'” It’s really not at all confusing.

To just quote from the Wikipedia…

Writers use scare quotes for a variety of reasons. They can imply doubt or ambiguity in words or ideas within the marks,[16] or even outright contempt.[17] They can indicate that a writer is purposely misusing a word or phrase[18] or that the writer is unpersuaded by the text in quotes,[19] and they can help the writer deny responsibility for the quote.[17] The Atlantic writes: “to put terms like ‘identity politics’ or ‘rape culture’ or, yes, ‘alt-right’ in scare quotes is … to make, in that placement, a political declaration.”[20] In general, the punctuation expresses distance between the writer and the quote.[21][5]

For example:
Some “groupies” were following the band.
The scare quotes could indicate that the word is not one the writer would normally use, or that the writer thinks there is something dubious about the word groupies or its application to these people.[22] The exact meaning of the scare quotes is not clear without further context.

That example of “groupies”? Or the Atlantic’s use of “identity politics” or “rape culture”? Those aren’t quotes from specific people. The only difference is that Richard is rhetorically attributing his phrasing of your idea to you in specific, in the same piece that he is also quoting you. Not literally. Rhetorically. It’s just not that uncommon a thing to do.

Can that be used to strawman or shadowbox? Sure. But so can the exact same misattribution without rhetorical quotation. “Tomas is basically arguing that, because Aristotle said something (specifically something stupid), science can’t work” would be exactly as critical of your position and yet wouldn’t use a quote. You’d object to that too, I imagine. So just say that Richard is using a strawman and have that discussion. Complaining about the specific rhetorical use of quotes really seems beneath you, and, yeah, makes you seem like you’re in the ivory tower.

Richard isn’t my friend. I don’t personally know him. We haven’t chatted. And I disagree with him on many issues. If you actually check out my comments here, you’ll see me taking different tacks from him all the time. You’ll also see me attempt to steelman others as best as I can. You’re free to not believe me, dude, but seriously, this isn’t a weird or uncommon thing Richard is doing . He’s just talking like a human being. It’s like him putting on a falsetto voice and saying “Dur dur dur, I’m Tomas, I think Aristotle is the tits”. It’s not misquotation because no one would actually think it’s what you said. He isn’t trying to emulate your writing style, he’s making it very reductive, <i.>on purpose. Like, you’re free to not like it, you’re free to tone police it, but it’s not misquotation.

But hey, prove me wrong. Find someone who actually reads the article and thinks that these are things you said. And I would bet you dollars to donuts that, if you did, Richard would find a way of clarifying.

“Fred B.C.,” I’m familiar with scare quotes (as you can see), and I found that Google result as well. I class that among the results of questionable relevance, since it sure doesn’t seem like that’s what Dr. Carrier was up to. I appreciate your loyalty to your friend, but you really needn’t defend what is pretty clearly simply misquotation. Friends are dear, but truth is dearer.

Really, though, the abuse of quotation marks is pretty low on my list of concerns. I’ve said more than I care to about it, to be honest.

Tomas:

You suggest that I “learn the use of rhetorical quotation marks.” I encourage your readers to google that, and notice the dearth of results, none of which seem particularly relevant to your (mis)use of quotation marks.

I did! And I found… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

On the first page of results.

More importantly, Richard was, you know, talking to you. I have to imagine you got the point. You’re free to dislike the practice, but you seem to be acting as if it’s not what it transparently is.

Dr. Carrier,

You suggest that I “learn the use of rhetorical quotation marks.” I encourage your readers to google that, and notice the dearth of results, none of which seem particularly relevant to your (mis)use of quotation marks.

I would also recommend that your readers check out this advice on quotation marks from Purdue: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/punctuation/quotation_marks/index.html

Specifically this part: “The primary function of quotation marks is to set off and represent exact language (either spoken or written) that has come from somebody else. The quotation mark is also used to designate speech acts in fiction and sometimes poetry.”

I don’t think we’re engaged in fiction or poetry here, so I’d recommend that we put quotation marks around only exact language from someone else.

……………………………….
We had a little disagreement over what counts as the consequent of premise 2. Here’s that premise again:

-2- Any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one.

You said, “the consequent is ‘only then is an explanation successful’.”

There’s no easy way to say this, but, no, that’s not the consequent. You are misunderstanding conditionals. Philosophers treat these two constructions as logically equivalent:
If A, then B.
A only if B.

For example:
If Buckley is a dog, then Buckley is a mammal.
Buckley is a dog only if Buckley is a mammal.

Hopefully you can hear the equivalence there. This is why “if and only if” expresses a biconditional. “A if and only if B” means: A, if B. And A only if B. In other words: If B, then A. And A only if B. That is: if B, then A, and if A, then B.

Anyway, we tend to use the “If A, then B” construction to emphasize the sufficiency of the sufficient condition, A. We tend to use the “A only if B” construction to emphasize the necessity of the necessary condition, B.

In these conditionals, proposition A is called the antecedent, and proposition B is called the consequent. See Definition 1.2.1 here: https://www.siue.edu/~jloreau/courses/math-223/notes/sec-conditionals-and-biconditionals.html

So, as you can now see, the consequent of my premise 2 is as I said: “it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one.” Where “it” refers to the explanation mentioned in the antecedent.

So, not a big deal, but yes, you were mistaken about this fundmental feature of conditionals.

………………………………..
You also say, “And please give me an example of an actual successful scientific explanation that does not lack any explanation it calls out for. I am most curious to see such a marvel.”

I think you meant to ask me to give you an example of a successful scientific explanation that does not crucially feature any element that calls out for explanation but lacks one. Well, if Naturalism is true, I think there are no such explanations! That’s the point of my paper. That’s the problem with Naturalism that I mean to point out.

If, on the other hand, we’re willing to countenance theistic explanations of natural regularities, then I think there will be many such examples of successful scientific explanations. All the ones you’d normally think of, I’d say. This is what my paper is about, it’s a pretty interesting result, and your readers can find the paper here: https://philpapers.org/archive/BOGINI.pdf

Tomas:

“Fred B.C.”: I just wanted to quickly write to let you know that I’m not ignoring your replies. I have read them. Unfortunately, the prospect of sifting through your replies to help you untangle your subtle misunderstandings just doesn’t sound super appealing to me at the present time. Especially since I’d be largely repeating what I’ve already said to you. I hope you’ll understand.

If you really think you’re onto something here, it should be no trouble to write it up and publish it in a journal. I encourage you to try. Whether you do or not, I wish you all the best in your continued study of Philosophy.

Well, I am glad that you think the misunderstandings are subtle. However, I suspect that the precise fact that any miscommunication may be on subtle points actually does not bode well for the argument. I similarly suspect you may be misunderstanding, and while I actually do think I can try a different angle for discussion depending on the objections, it may indeed end up being a repeat. Because I really do think that, until you use anything like the way that scientists talk (“explanation” is just too broad, vague and undefined a term), your argument is going to be endlessly vulnerable to equivocation.

I also suspect that you will find that any response from Richard is going to center on a similar constellation of concerns and perspectives. Certainly Molkien and I essentially made the same point.

I do thank you for being polite and patient. Richard attracts really top-notch people who are ready to defend their ideas to his comments section, and you have largely handled yourself with a lot of class against a tenor of critique that I can understand one viewing as a bit harsh. While I didn’t get too much out of your paper because I can’t see far past what I think is a fundamental difference in worldview and methodology, I did appreciate that your paper took naturalistic worldviews seriously and really tried to think about naturalistic metaphysics in a way that was not dismissive. That puts you into a league of your own.

I just think that much of this kind of discussion is going to be fairly fruitless until someone does a really detailed deductive analysis of all the outcomes of an array of possible metaphysics, and I don’t think I’m suited for anything besides just noting that problem exists!