Fine-tuning of both physical and bridge laws

A correspondent pointed me to a cool paper by Neil Sinhababu arguing that the theist can’t consistently run a fine-tuning argument on which it is claimed that it is unlikely that the constants in the laws of physics permit intelligent life, because if God exists, then for any constants in the physical laws God can make psychophysical bridge laws that make sure that there is intelligent life. By choosing the right bridge laws, God can make a single electron be conscious, after all. Thus any set of constants in laws of physics is compatible with intelligent life.

A quick response is that in the context of the fine-tuning argument, by “intelligent life” we should probably mean “intelligent biological life”. For instance, angels and conscious electrons don’t count, as they aren’t biological. And in fact, I think, in practice the fine-tuning argument is more about biological life than intelligent life as such. This suggests, however, that proponents of the fine-tuning argument should be clearer here. In particular, we (I am one of the proponents) should emphasize that there is a great value in the existence of biological life, and especially intelligent biological life, and this value is not found in intelligent non-biological life. This value is why a perfect being is not unlikely (or at least not extremely unlikely) to fine-tune the universe to for such life.

Second, I think Sinhababu’s argument points to a more subtle way to formulate the fine-tuning thesis. What’s fine-tuned is not the laws of physics alone, but the combination of the laws of physics and the bridge laws, and they are fine-tuned together in such a way as to ensure that there is neither too little nor too much intelligent life. For instance, a set of psychophysical laws where any computation isomorphic to the kinds of computations our brains results in mental functioning like ours would result not just in panpsychism but omnisapientism—everything around us is sapient. For with some cleverness we can find an isomorphism between the states of a single particle and the states of the brain that preserves causation. But omnisapientism isn’t very good: it damages the significance of morality if everything we do creates and destroys vast numbers of sapient beings.