The Existence of God | Joseph Schmid

In this interview, I talk to Princeton PhD student Joseph Schmid. Joe has done rigorous work in the public and scholarly-level atmosphere of philosophy. He has his own KZbin channel 'Majesty of Reason', there he does lecture videos, hosts discussions, and interviews philosophers as well.
He is a well-known agnostic concerning the existence of God. However, he finds a collection of arguments favoring theism and atheism to be compelling. Consequently, I invited him on to talk about some of these arguments and get his thoughts!
Joe's KZbin channel:
/ @majestyofreason
For more information about Joe, check out his website:
josephschmid.com

[@CjqNslXUcM]

just found your channel and I'm very much enjoying it, thank you.

[@BraylenSamuel]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@TheMahayanist]

A few suggestions: Dr. Richard Carrier on naturalism, Eastern philosophy, theistic arguments, Bayesian epistemology Dr. Jay Garfield, Eastern philosophy. Dr. Felipe Leon, theistic arguments, apologetics. Dr. Graham Priest: non-classical logics, dialetheism, Eastern philosophy Dr. Bernardo Kastrup: Idealism

[@devos3212]

Yes I’d also like a conversation between you and Richard Carrier. Perhaps a drilling down on his foundations of morality. I believe he draws a lot from Philippa Foot and the hypothetical imperative.

[@AlexADalton]

Looool @ Carrier 😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@wiadomosci1]

LOVE Braylan as host, interviewer. Asks great questions and allows guest to answer without interruption . Am a fan of Joe's but he seemed very antsy today.

[@perplexedon9834]

I think the idea that, unlike a single god, posited naturalistic necessary entities contain bounds or specified finite values for some properties is interesting, but in the end doesn't pan out. The fact is, if you are positing that the present state of the universe is contingent on a necessary entity in the past, then you must content with the fact that universe is very non uniform. A naturalistic necessary entity would need to have properties such that it would bring about a universe with finite and bounded constants, a particular specified initial state, etc... ...but if you think about it for a moment, the same is true of any candidate God. You can argue that god has infinite quantities of goodness or knowledge or whatever, but its also true that we know that if theism is true, god has the property "has the disposition to bring about a universe in which fewer that exactly 103,972,176,375 humans would exist before one of them walks on the moon. God could have had a disposition such that the universe it created instead saw the births of 103,972,176,37**6** humans, but it didn't, and since that value is a contingent downstream feature of it's necessary properties, it has properties that seem arbitrary. Does the theist seriously think there is a way to derive that number from the quantities of infinite good and infinite knowledge alone? That's nonsensical. Even without allowing randomness, it's very simple to imagine a non-theistic, impersonal and amoral necessary object with a single infinite property such that it contingently follows that infinite universes with every possible mathematical structure and constants will come about. The idea that non-theists disproportionately posit necessary entities with specified values and bounds is absurd.

[@peter73704]

Great video. This was such an interesting interview. Joe brings such enthusiasm to everything and Braylan had great questions

[@BraylenSamuel]

Thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed it.

[@bracero7628]

I am totally baffled by Joe's argument against the strong PSR at 30:30. The first argument seems to boil down to "I strongly feel like there are contingent things, therefore there are contingent things." This isn't an argument, this is just a vibe! If you're interested in common sense, then call yourself a common sensicalist, not a philosopher. What other branch of knowledge produces only common sense knowledge? Is evolution common sensical? Are Laplace Transforms? Quantum mechanics? In what other field would we feel we gain credibility by basing our claims on intuition or common sense, apart perhaps from religion? The second claim, that the argument is based on contingency and then undermines it, is also confused. It's not based on contingency, it's based on the appearance of contingency. If we find that underlying all apparently contingent causes is a necessary cause, then all apparently contingent causes become necessary, and our concept of contingency was wrong to begin with. This shouldn't be surprising-we lacked knowledge about necessity, and once we've obtained it, the world looks different. This is what we ought to expect to have happen when we have gained knowledge.

[@CjqNslXUcM]

If your epistemology rejects intuition as a justification, you're not going to get very far. There's no independent reason to accept that fundamental truths of logic hold, or that your senses are reliable. You'd be an absolute pyrrhonist, without even reason to continue breathing for example.

[@bracero7628]

@@CjqNslXUcM There are at least two ways the word "intuition" gets thrown around. One is as something that forms the groundwork for propositions, which is the type of intuition you're appealing to. For example, I need the pure intuitions of space and time to form concepts, as Kant argued. That means that any argument that attempts to refute the existence of space and time is self-undermining. Logic of some form-at least in the primitive form of labelling some things true and others false, and maybe leaving others unevaluated-is one of these types of intuitions. To describe something that doesn't implement any form of logical inference whatsoever is just to describe something that has no subjectivity whatsoever. The other kind of intuition that Joe is relying on is, in my opinion, not really an intuition at all, but just a vibe. It's like the feeling you had as a kid that when you were hungry, you ought to start crying, or later on, the intuition you still probably have that your steering wheel isn't moving when you're driving a car, even though it obviously is, just not relative to you. These are all propositions which rely on, but are not themselves _really_ intuitions. They're actually just unconsidered opinions. Again, can you think of anything more hostile to this form of intuition than quantum mechanics, or Darwinian evolution, or even Newtonian mechanics? Maybe they don't feel unintuitive to you, and that's the point-you were talked into them at an early age, so you believe them. I see absolutely no reason to place epistemic weight on this sort of intuition, and recognizing the difference is crucial.

[@CjqNslXUcM]

​@@bracero7628 Space and time being intuitions of a mind in some completely unexplained aether for no particular reason, rather than being features of the world, seems a lot less plausible than metaphysical contingency. Few contemporary philosophers take transcendental idealism seriously. I think what you're saying is that the only intuitions that exist are those that are necessary basis of a foundationalist epistemology. That is untrue. For example, people have ethical intuitions. One can create completely consistent non-classical logics, meaning any refutation on their terms would be "self-undermining". This is not strictly a counter-argument, those could still be intuitions, but I wonder if you had considered this. One could also be a coherentist, in which case one would have no intuitions? Something that does not make logical inferences can still have subjectivity, babies and most animals for example. Many people consider some true scientific theories contrary to their intuition, however, once they learn them they realize that denying them goes against much stronger intuitions. I don't want to regurgitate the common defenses of intuition here, but epistemologically it's much is the same boat as observation and memory, i.e. mostly reliable. Huemer's Knowledge Reality and Value is a good intro to philosophy book that contains a section about ethical intuitionism.

[@bracero7628]

​@@CjqNslXUcM I'm not a transcendental idealist, but that doesn't erase the distinction I'm drawing from Kant. There are "intuitions" which ground propositions, and intuitions which are propositions themselves. Those are two very different things, even though we use the same word for them. People who defend intuition as an epistemic tool tend to equivocate the two, in the way you're using the necessity of sensation to justify Joe's reliance on the propositional intuition that things are contingent because it just feels like they must be. I certainly did not say that only non-propositional intuitions exist. Again, I'm simply sharpening the distinction. You can't validate an ethical intuition by an appeal to something like the intuition of space, because propositions presuppose spatial intuition. They do not presuppose ethical intuitions, which are always propositional. I didn't say we have an intuition of classical logic, I said we have intuition of logic per se-we necessarily assign truth values, which in and of itself is perfectly compatible with non-classical logics. I'm saying that when my cat eats her dinner, she's making a very rudimentary logical inference that the thing she smells corresponds to the thing she sees, which corresponds to the thing she then puts in her mouth. Even if she were to smell her food and start trying to eat the rug, she would still be making a logical inference, it would just be false. If she smelled her food and didn't react at all, I guess she'd be a dialetheist. Regardless, inferences are being made which assign truth values, even if she can't do any metacognition about her inferences and form logical axioms from them. I would argue those stronger intuitions you're talking about are the non-propositional and immutable intuitions I'm talking about, and that's why treating them like different species of the same thing is kind of problematic.

[@hijackbyejack1729]

Seems like if it is an online video about philosophy of religion, Joe Schmid's mug is guaranteed to appear

[@jackfuterman9938]

I was murdered last century. God returned my soul into a foetus 50 years later. DNA is so complex that only a creative God could have designed it.

[@ahallaby]

Yea. And just imagine how creative the being must be that created such a creative god. Wow. Must be crazy

[@Mysterious_Person_AR_9]

@@ahallabyThan it creates infinite regress?

[@jovialbivouacker99]

Very intelligent young man. He knows his philosophy very well, but he needs to work on his delivery and not speak as rapidly. His swaying and constant movement makes him seem like he’s on the spectrum, or that he’s a fast-talking politician (namely a current Republican).

[@MaB95Bo]

Great video!

[@BraylenSamuel]

Much appreciated!❤️

[@legendary3952]

Just finished. Awesome video 😎

[@BraylenSamuel]

Much appreciated!❤️

[@vex1669]

He's so smart and educated. And then he goes and brings up the contingency argument.

[@MiladTabasy]

This means that we should not take the contingency argument very casually.

[@vex1669]

@@MiladTabasy You're absolutely right. I was too derisive here, because I've spent my time with the argument and after a few years I'm less than impressed. But I kinda forgot that I spent years with it...

[@iwack]

​@@vex1669Hey, I've been reading up a little on the contingency argument recently and I like the sound of it. Could you help me understand your qualms with it?

[@vex1669]

@@iwack In the world we can actually observe, it seems to be the case that either everything is contingent or everything is necessary, depending on your view. On the view that it could not have been any other way, the argument doesn't do anything. On the view that everything is contingent and therefore there has to be a necessary thing at the start, that's trying to argue about a point in time where even our current understanding of physics breaks down. I hate to be that guy, but sometimes "We don't (or even can't) know yet" is better than pretending to know what no one knows.

[@Josh-et4ki]

@@vex1669The problem with what you’re saying in my opinion is that you’re only accounting for a posteiori synthetic knowledge and discounting a priori analytic and a priori synthetic knowledge. We can know via reason alone that everything that exists has a reason for its existence (the PSR), we don’t need observation or empirical science for that and if one believes we do, they would fall into the Humean rabbit hole. The contingency argument is strong because the very endeavor of science itself is based on it, thus science itself is presupposed upon it. Its truthfulness thus supersedes any a posteriori knowledge, and reason itself is the necessary tool to see its legitimacy, not observation

[@downenout8705]

Gave up after 22 mins. When you start talking about a "necessary being", without first explanaing why the insanely complex math that underpins the fluctuation in the quantum vacuum field hypnosis, is wrong and cannot be a plausible candidate for the non contingent thing that "caused" our observable universe, everything else becomes nothing more than an argument from ignorance/incredulity fallacy.

[@FuzionOptics]

I think you might just fancy yourself too smart for philosophy buddy calm down, it's a conversation about metaphysics your comment is nonsense

[@downenout8705]

@@FuzionOptics You make an ad hominem, that is an obvious strawman (I never said that I understand the insanely complex math did I). You give an opinion, without providing an explanation as to why you hold that opinion. When you do these things I think that justifies calling your reply "nonsense".

[@anthonydesimone502]

If you'd stuck around, he explored plenty of naturalistic options for the necessary "thing". So that's a weird criticism given that you didn't even bother finishing the video. And I don't think many philosophers would want to claim that math is the necessary thing on which reality depends - particularly given that most theories about mathemtically entities have them being causally inert.

[@downenout8705]

@@anthonydesimone502 I never said many philosophers would claim math is the necessary thing, did I. Math is the language that explains the possible necessary thing. When you don't understand the language you are not in a position to make any meaningful comment on the plausibly or otherwise of any naturalistic explanation for our observable universe.

[@anthonydesimone502]

@downenout8705 I didn't say you said philosophers would claim that. You didn't even claim that. You complained that the idea was explored here. And given that there's almost no conception of mathematics, even under various types of mathematical realism, that asserts mathematical entities have causal powers, I don't know why tou would've expected it to have been coveres.covered. Additionally, we can't just assume mathematics is foundational to reality. So you don't know that the necessary thing is described by math and can't just assume such.