Deterministic causation

Defining deterministic causation is tough. Standard definitions of "causal determinism" do not do justice to the causal aspect of the determinism. The natural suggestion that A deterministically causes B provided that the occurrence of A conjoined with the laws of nature entails B doesn't work if the laws are ceteris paribus (I'm grateful to Jon Kvanvig for this point) and is in any case subject to counterexample.

I don't have a definition here. But I do have a way to point to the notion, by way of analogy. Start with the notion of probabilistic causation of strength s, where s is a number between 0 and 1. If C probabilistically causes E with strength s, then C has a disposition of strength s to produce E. Moreover, normally—but this can be finked—the probability of E given C and the laws will be s, and tis probability will be explained by the probabilistic tendency of strength s of C to produce E.

Deterministic causation then is a kind of limiting case of probabilistic causation. C's deterministically causing E is a relation that stands to the condition that, if everything is normal, the occurrence of C and the laws entail E in the way in which C's probabilistically causing C with strength s stands to the condition that, if everything is normal, the occurrence of C and laws give probability s to E.

This gives us an account of deterministic causation by analogy.

The tempting suggestion that deterministic causation is just the s=1 special case of probabilistic causation is insufficient, since events of zero probability can happen. However, it is correct to say that deterministic causation is a special case of probabilistic causation of strength 1.

Divine freedom

Consider this sketchy argument against libertarianism: It is impossible for God to choose wrongly. But freedom requires the ability to choose otherwise if libertarianism is correct, and significant moral responsibility requires the freedom to choose wrongly. Hence, if libertarianism is correct, God lacks significant moral responsibility. But God has significant moral responsibility. Thus, libertarianism is incorrect.

There are various somewhat shaky details here. There is, for instance, the question whether the ability to choose otherwise that libertarians insist on has to imply an ability to choose wrongly in the relevant case. And there is the issue that some libertarians are only source-incompatibilists, and source-incompatibilism does not imply an ability to choose otherwise in the special case where the agent is God.

But I want to make a different point, namely that there is an argument in the vicinity that applies just as much on compatibilism as on incompatibilism. Consider this moral intuition:

1. Someone who in ordinary circumstances chooses not to commit moral horrors lacks perfect virtue.

But no circumstances are going to press God extraordinarily, and God does not merely avoid moral horrors. Pushing on this intuition leads to the following suggestion:

2. God does not choose to act non-wrongly.

Of course, there are various non-wrong things that God chooses to do, but he does not choose them over acting wrongly. That the things that God does are non-wrong is not something that counts in their favor in his choice, because all of the options he is choosing between are non-wrong. But, now, plausibly:

3. Significant moral responsibility requires that one choose to act wrongly or that one choose to act non-wrongly.
4. God has significant moral responsibility.

In (3), by "choose to act Fly", I mean something contrastive: choose to act Fly over acting non-Fly. But now (2)-(4) are contradictory.

Observe two things about this puzzle. First, the argument nowhere makes any use of incompatibilism. The intuitions behind (1) and (2) are either neutral between compatibilism and incompatibilism, or slightly favor compatibilism (because the compatibilist lays greater stress on the connection between action and character).

Second, someone who rejects one of the premises (2)-(4) will be untroubled by the original sketchy anti-libertarian argument.

If one rejects (2), then one will think that God chooses between non-wrong and wrong. But a rational being does not choose between options he knows to be possible and impossible options, and so the only way an omniscient and perfectly rational being could choose between non-wrong and wrong would be if it were possible for him to choose the wrong. Thus, someone who rejects (2) will reject the claim that God cannot choose the wrong.

If one rejects (3), then one will surely also reject the claim that significant moral responsibility requires the freedom to choose wrongly.

And (4) is just as much a premise of the original argument as of this one.

But everyone should reject one of (2)-(4) since these premises are logically incompatible. Therefore, everyone should reject one of the premises of the original anti-libertarian argument.

What should the theist do? I think the theist should reject the conjunction of (3) and (4): The sort of significant moral responsibility that logically requires choosing to act non-wrongly is not worth having, and so God doesn't have it.

Choice and incommensurability

Right now, I am making all sorts of choices. For instance, I just chose to write the preceding sentence. When I made that choice, it was a choice between writing that sentence and writing some other sentence. But it was not a choice between writing that sentence and jumping up an down three times. Let A be the writing of the sentence that I wrote; let B be the writing of some alternate sentence; let C be jumping up and down three times. Then, I chose between A and B, but not between A and C. What makes that be the case?

Here is one suggestion. I was capable of A and of B, but I was not capable of C. If this is the right suggestion, compatibilism is false. For on standard compatibilist analyses of "is capable of", I am just as capable of C as of A and B. I was fully physically capable of doing C. Had I wanted to do C, I would have done C. So if the capability of action suggestion is the only plausible one, we have a neat argument against compatibilism. However, there is a decisive objection to the suggestion: I can choose options I am incapable of executing. (I may choose to lift the sofa, without realizing it's too heavy.)

To get around the last objection, maybe we should talk of capability of choosing A and capability of choosing B. Again, it does not seem that the compatibilist can go for this option. For if determinism holds, then in one sense neither choosing B nor choosing C are available to me—either choice would require a violation of the laws of nature or a different past. And it seems plausible that in that compatibilist sense in which choosing B is available to me—maybe the lack of brainwashing or other psychological compulsion away from B—choosing C is also available to me. Again, if this capability-of-choosing suggestion turns out to be the right one, compatibilism is in trouble.

Here is another suggestion, one friendly to compatibilism. When I wrote the first sentence in this post, I didn't even think of jumping up and down three times. But I did, let us suppose, think of some alternate formulations. So the difference between B and C is that I thought about B but did not think about C. However, this suggestion is unsatisfactory. Not all thinking about action has anything to do with choosing. I can think about each of A, B and C without making a choice. And we are capable of some limited parallel processing—and more is certainly imaginable—and so I could be choosing between D and E while still thinking, "purely theoretically" as we say, about A, B and C. There is a difference between "choosing between" and "theorizing about", but both involving "thinking about".

It seems that the crucial thing to do is to distinguish between the ways that the action-types one is choosing between and those action-types that one is merely theorizing about enter into one's thoughts. A tempting suggestion is that in the choice case, the actions enter one's mind under the description "doable". But that's mistaken, because I can idly theorize about a doable without at all thinking about whether to do it. (Kierkegaard is really good at describing these sorts of cases.) The difference is not in the description under which the action-types enter into the mind, as that would still be a difference within theoretical thought.

I think the beginning of the right thing to say is that those action-types one is choosing between are in one's mind with reasons-for-choosing behind them. And these reasons-for-choosing are reasons that one is impressed by—that actively inform one's deliberation. They are internalist reasons.

But now consider this case. Suppose I could save someone's life by having a kidney removed from me, or I could keep my kidneys and let the person die. While thinking about what to do, it occurs to me that I could also save the other person's life by having both kidneys removed. (Suppose that the other person's life wouldn't be any better for getting both kidneys. Maybe only one of my kidneys is capable of being implanted in her.) So, now, consider three options: have no kidneys removed (K0), have one kidney removed (K1), and have two kidneys removed (K2). If I am sane, I only deliberate between K0 and K1. But there is, in a sense, a reason for K2, namely that K2 will also save the other's life, and it is the kind of reason that I do take seriously, given that it is the kind of reason that I have for K1. But, nonetheless, in normal cases I do not choose between K0, K1 and K2. The reasons for K2 do not count to make K2 be among the options. Why? They do not count because I have no reason to commit suicide (if I had a [subjective] reason to commit suicide, K2 would presumably be among the options if I thought of K2), and hence the reasons for K2 are completely dominated by the reasons for K1.

If this is right, then a consequence of the reasons-for-choice view of what one chooses between is that one never has domination between the reasons for the alternatives. This supports (but does not prove, since there is also the equal-reason option to rule out) the view that choice is always between incommensurables.

A corollary of the lack-of-domination consequence is that each of the options one is choosing between is subjectively minimally rational, and hence that it would be minimally rational to choose any one of them. I think this is in tension with the compatibilist idea that we act on the strongest (subjective) reasons. For then if we choose between A and B, and opt for A because the reasons for A were the strongest, it does not appear that B would have been even minimally rational.

Maybe, though, the compatibilist can insist on two orderings of reasons. One ordering is domination. And there the compatibilist can grant that the dominated option is not among the alternatives chosen between. But there is another ordering, which is denoted in the literature with phrases like "on balance better" or "on balance more (subjectively) reasonable". And something that is on balance worse can still be among the alternatives chosen between, as long as it isn't dominated by some other alternative.

But what is it for an option to be on balance better? One obvious sense the phrase can have is that an action is on balance better if and only if it is subjectively morally better. But the view then contradicts the fact that I routinely make choices of what is by my own lights morally worse (may God have mercy on my soul). Another sense is that an action is on balance better if and only if it is prudentially better. But just as there can be moral akrasia, there can be prudential akrasia.

Here is another possibility. Maybe the compatibilist can say that reasons have two kinds of strength. One kind of strength is on the side of their content. Thus, the strength of reason that I have to save someone's life is greater than the strength of reason that I have to protect my own property. Call this "content strength". The other kind of strength is, basically, how impressed I am with the reason, how much I am moved by it. If I am greedy, I am more impressed with the reasons for the protection of my property than with the reasons for saving others' lives. Call this "motivational strength". We can rank reasons in terms of the content strength, and then we run into the domination and incommensurability stuff. But we can also rank reasons in terms of motivational strength. And the compatibilist now says that I always choose on the basis of the motivationally strongest reasons.

This is problematic. First, it suggests a picture that just does not seem to be that of freedom—we are at the mercy of the non-rational strengths of reasons. For it is the content strength rather than the the motivational strength of a reason that is a rational strength. Thus, the choices we make are only accidentally rational. The causes of the choices are reasons, but what determines which of the reasons we act on is something that is not rational. Rationality only determines which of the options we choose between, and then the choice itself is made on the non-rational strengths. This is in fact recognizable as a version of the randomness objection to libertarian views of free will. I actually think it is worse than the randomness objection. (1) Agent-causation is a more appealing solution for incompatibilists than for compatibilists, though Markosian has recently been trying to change that. (2) The compatibilist story really looks like a story on which we are in bondage to the motivational strengths of reasons. (3) The content strength and content of the outweighed reasons ends up being explanatorily irrelevant to the choice. And (4) the specific content of the reasons that carried the day is also explanatorily irrelevant—all that matters is (a) what action-type they are reasons for and (b) what their motivational strength is.

In light of the above, I think the compatibilist should consider giving up on the language of choice, or at least on taking choice, as a selection between alternatives, seriously. Instead, she should think that there is only the figuring out of what is to be done, and hold with Socrates that there is no akrasia in cases where we genuinely act—whenever we genuinely act (as opposed to being subject to, say, a tic) we do what we on balance think should be done. I think this view would give us an epistemic-kind of responsibility for our actions, but not a moral kind. Punishment would not be seen in retributivist terms, then.

Choice: compatibilist and incompatibilist views

I often wonder whether the compatibilist doesn't see choice as a matter of figuring something out—figuring what is to be done in the light of one reasons and/or desires. If one does see choice in this way, then it is quite unsurprising that we can assign responsibility without alternate possibilities. For the process is epistemic or relevantly like an epistemic process, and it is pretty plausible that epistemic responsibility does not require alternate possibilities.

The incompatibilist, on the other hand, is apt not to think of choice as a matter of figuring out anything. This is, I think, clearest on Thomistic accounts of choice on which choice is always between incommensurables. On these accounts, when one chooses, reason has already done all it can do—it has elucidated the reasons for all the available rationally-available options. And now, given the reasons, a choice must be made which reasons to follow. This choice isn't a matter of figuring out anything, since the figuring-out has all already been done. Reason has already informed us that option A is pleasant but cowardly and leading to ill-repute, option B is unpleasant, brave and leading to ill-repute, and option C is unpleasant, cowardly, and leading to good repute. Reason has also informed us that our duty is to avoid cowardice. And now a choice has to be made between pleasure, virtue and good reputation.

Deep Thoughts XXIX

No one has proved the unprovable.

Deep Thoughts XXVIII

Only the impossible is not possible.

The reliability of intuitions

Often, analytic philosophers give some case to elicit intuitions. Intuitions elicited by certain kinds of cases count for less. Here is one dimension of this: Intuitions elicited by worlds different from ours are, other things being equal, reliable in inverse proportion to how different the worlds are from ours. Here is the extreme case: intuitions elicited by cases of impossible worlds.

For an example of such an intuition, consider the argument against divine command theory that even if God commanded torture of the innocent, torture of the innocent would be wrong. Now, the obvious response is that it's impossible for God, in light of his goodness, to command torture of the innocent. But, the opponent of divine command theory continues, if God were per impossibile to command it, it would still be wrong, but according to divine command theory, it would be right. (E.g., Wes Morriston has given an argument like that.)

I've criticized this particular argument elsewhere (not that I think divine command theory is right).[note 1] But here is a point that is worth making. This argument elicits our intuition by a case taking place in an impossible world. But impossible worlds are very different from ours. So we have good reason to put only little weight on intuitions elicited by per impossibile cases.

This does not mean that we should put no weight on them.

Responsibility and God

I've been playing with the idea that while responsibility in our case is always contrastive, and tied to choices that must be understood contrastively, God's responsibility is non-contrastive. Thus, I am for writing this post rather than doing some grading. But God is responsible simpliciter for the existence of kangaroos.

Wittgensteinian views of religious language

Wittgensteinians lay stress on the idea that

1. One cannot understand central worldview concepts without living as part of a community that operates with these concepts.

The non-Christian cannot understand the Christian concept of the Trinity; the Christian and the atheist cannot understand the Jewish concept of God's absolute unity as understood by Maimonedes; the theist cannot understand the concept of a completely natural world; and the non-Fascist cannot understand the concept of the Volk. It is only by being a part of a community in which these concepts are alive that one gains an understanding of them.

Often, a corollary is drawn from this, that while internal critique or justification of a worldview tradition such as Christianity, naturalism or Nazism is possible, no external critique or justification is possible. In fact, there is an argument for this corollary.

2. (Premise) One's evidence set cannot involve any propositions that involve concepts one does not understand.
3. (Premise) Necessarily, if a proposition p uses a concept C, and a body of propositions P is evidence for or against p for an agent x, then some member of P involves C.
4. If x is not a member of the community operating with a central worldview concept C, then x does not have any evidence for or against any proposition involving C. (1-3)
5. (Premise) External critique or justification of a worldview of a community is possible only if someone who is not a member of the community can have evidence for or against a proposition involving a central worldview concept of that community.
6. Therefore, external critique or justification of a worldview of a community is not possible. (4 and 5)

This is a particularly unfortunate result in the case of something like Nazism, and may suggest an unacceptable relativism.

The argument is valid but unsound, and I think unsalvageable. I think that (5) is false, and on some plausible interpretations of (1), (2) and (3) are false as well.

First of all, people successfully reason with scientific concepts that they do not understand, like the concept of a virus or of gravity. They inherit the concept from a scientic community that they are not a member of, and while they do not understands the concept, they get enough about the inferential connections involving the concept that the concept should become useful. Thus, even if I do not really understand the concept of a virus, my evidence set can include facts about viruses that I know by virtue of testimony[note 1], and inferential connections with other facts, such as that if x has the common cold, then many viruses are present in x's body. Thus, (2) is false.

As for (3), I don't know for sure if it's false, but seems quite possible that while C does not occur in one's evidence set, it might occur in one's rules of inference. And there does not seem to be anything wrong with having a concept in one's evidence set that one does not understand.

But perhaps you are not convinced by the critique of (2) and (3). I suspect this is because you take (1) to be more radical than I do. The "cannot understand" in (1) is understood as entailing "cannot operate with"—even the weak sort of grasp that the layperson has of scientific concepts is denied to non-members of a community in the case of central worldview concepts. On this interpretation of (1), (2) and (3) are false. I am inclined to think that this interpretation of (1) is the incorrect one because it renders (1) false. The central worldview concepts of a community do not seem to be significantly different from the central concepts of a scientific community. Still, I see the force of such a beefed-up (1), at least in the case of the concepts of the Christian faith (not so much because of the need for community membership as such, but because of the need for grace to enlighten one's understanding).

In any case, (5) is false on either understanding of (1). The reason is simple. To support or criticize a position, one does not need evidence for or against a position. One only needs evidence for or against the second order claim that the position is true. Often, this a distinction without much of a difference. I have evidence that

7. there is life on Mars

if and only I have evidence that

8. the proposition that there is life on Mars is true.

However, this is so only because in (8) I refer to the proposition under the description "that there is life on Mars." But take a different case. I go to a mathematics lecture. Unfortunately, as I shortly discover, it's in German. I sit through it uncomprehendingly. At the end of it, I turn to a friend who knows German and ask her what she thought. She is an expert in the field and says: "It was brilliant, and I checked that his central lemma is right." I still don't know what the speaker's central lemma is, but I know that it is true. I do not have evidence for the lemma, and it could even be (say, if the talk is in a field of mathematics I don't know anything about) that I don't have the requisite concepts for grasping the lemma, but I have evidence that the lemma is true.

Likewise, it is possible to have evidence for and against the claim that the community's central worldview propositions are true, without grasping these propositions and having evidence for or against them. For instance, while I may not be able to understand what the members of the community are saying in their internal critiques, but I may understand enough of the logical form of these critiques and of the responses to them to be able to make a judgment that the critiques are probably successful. Moreover, even if I do not understand some concept, I may grasp some metalinguistic facts such as that if x is a Gypsy, then x is not a part of anything in the extension of the term "the Volk", or that if the only things that exists at w are the particles of current physics, and at w their only properties and relations are those of current physics, then w is in the extension of the term "completely natural". Given such facts, I can gain arguments for or against the thesis that the central worldview claims of the community are true. Thus, (5) is false.

There is a hitch in my argument against (5). External evaluation of the community seems to require that while I have no grasp of particular central terms, I have some grasp of the larger grammar of sentences used by members of the community and I understand some of the non-central terms in their language. But what if I don't? This could, of course, happen. The community could speak an entirely foreign language that I am incapable of parsing.

I can make two responses. The first is that (5) is a general claim about communities whose central worldview concepts I do not understand, and that general claim has been shown to be false. There could be some radical cases where the outsider's lack of understanding is so complete that external critique or justification is impossible. But such cases do not in fact occur for us. Humans share basic structures of generative grammar and a large number of basic concepts due to a common environment.

The second response is that the behavior of members of the community can provide evidence for and against the correctness of their central ideas. If their airplanes keep on crashing, there is good reason to think their scientific concepts are bad. If they lead a form of life that does not promote the central human goods, there is good reason to think that their ethics is mistaken, while if they lead a form of life that does promote the central human goods, there is good reason to their ethics is sound. Now, of course, I could be wrong. Maybe for religious reasons they want their airplanes to crash and design them for that. Maybe they abstain from some central human goods for the sake of some God-revealed higher good. Maybe they are a bunch of hypocrites, and they aren't really achieving the central human goods. However, such possibilities only show that I cannot be certain in my external evaluation. But the claim that external justification and critique is possible is not the claim that one can achieve certainty in external justification and critique. What I've said shows we can achieve high probability even in cases where the community's language is radically not understandable.

Things might be different if we're dealing with an alien species of intelligent beings. But I suspect we could still come to probabilistic judgments, just somewhat less confident ones.

I think the above considerations not only show that the argument (1)-(6) fails, but that we're unlikely to get any successful argument along those lines.

Consequence arguments and responsibility

Consequence arguments like Peter van Inwagen's basically conclude that if determinism is true, then if p is any truth, Np is also a truth. Here, roughly (different formulations will differ here), Np says that p is true and that there is nothing anyone could do to make p false.

Supposedly this conclusion is a problem for the compatibilist. But why? Why can't the compatibilist just say: "I freely and responsibly did A, even though N(I did A)"?

I suspect that the consequence argument has a further step that is routinely left out, and this involves an application of the inference rule:

1. gamma: If Np, then no one is responsible for p.

But gamma might be invalid. Take a Frankfurt scenario. The neurosurgeon watches me. If within two minutes, I don't make the choice to vote for candidate A, or I make a choice to vote for any other candidate, she forces me to vote (or pseudo-vote, since a forced vote may not legally be a vote) for A. Thirty seconds into the two-minute period, I freely choose to vote for A, and do so. I am responsible for my voting for A. Now suppose that the neurosurgeon is not free, and in fact is an automaton that no one could ever have done anything about, and that my choice how to vote is the first free choice ever done. I am still responsible for voting for A, and hence responsible for its being the case that I vote for A. However, there is nothing anyone could do to make it be false that I vote for A.

The argument above does use a somewhat problematic step: going from "I am responsible for voting for A" to "I am responsible for its being the case that I vote for A". But the point is sufficient to show that gamma is problematic.

My suspicion is that gamma is correct in the case of finite agents and direct agent-responsibility of the sort involved in criminal law, but not in the case of the kind of outcome-responsibility that is involved in tort law. For the kind of outcome-responsibility that is involved in tort law is tied to but-for conditionals: but for my doing something, the harm wouldn't have happened. It is correct to say in the Frankfurt case that I don't have that sort of responsibility. Had I not chosen to vote for A, I would still have voted (or at least pseudovoted) for A. But I do have agent-responsibility for voting for A. If the elections were the American ones, I should be liable in criminal law for voting for A (I am Canadian, so for me to vote in U.S. elections would be an instance of fraud), but not in civil law (even if my vote causes some harm to someone), in the Frankfurt case.

Beta 2: a theorem

Finch and Warfield's version of the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism uses:

1. beta 2: If Np and p entails q, then Nq

Here, "Np" is: p and nobody (no human?) can ever do anything about p. The argument for incompatibilism is easy. Let P be the distant past and L the laws. Suppose p is a proposition that is determined by the distant past and the laws. Then:

2. P&L entails p. (Premise)
3. N(P&L). (Premise)
4. Therefore, Np. (1-3)

In other words, if something is determined by the distant past and the laws, nobody can ever do anything about it. In particular, if all actions are determined by the distant past and the laws, no one can do anything about any actions. And this is supposed to imply that there is no freedom.

Here's a cool thing I arrived at in class when teaching about the argument. Suppose we try to come up with a definition of the N operator. Here's a plausible version:

• Np if and only if p and there does not exist an action A, agent x and time t such that (a) x can do A at t; and (b) (x does A at t)→~p.

Here, "→" is the subjunctive conditional. So, Np holds if and only if p and nobody could do anything such that if she did it, we would have not-p.

Anyway, here's an interesting thing. Beta 2 is a theorem if we grant these axioms:

5. If q entails r, and p→q, and p is logically possible, then p→r.
6. If x can do A at t then it is logically possible that x does A at t.

Axiom (6) is really plausible. Axiom (5) is a consequence of David Lewis's account of counterfactuals. Analogues of it are going to hold on accounts that tie counterfactuals to conditional probabilities.

The proof of beta 2 from (5) and (6) is easy. Suppose that Np is true and p entails q. For a reductio, suppose that ~Nq. If ~Nq, then either ~q or there are A, x and t such that (a) x can do A at t; and (b) (x does A at t)→~q. Since Np is true, p is true, and hence q is true as p entails q. So the ~q option is out. So there are A, x and t such that x can do A at t, and were x to do A at t, it would be the case that ~q. But ~q entails ~p, since p entails q, so by (5) and (6) it follows that were x to do A at t, it would eb the case that ~p. And so ~Np, which contradicts the assumption that Np and completes the proof.

So it looks like the consequence argument is victorious. The one controversial premise, beta 2, is a theorem given very plausible axioms.

Unfortunately, there is a problem. With the proposed definition of N, premise (2) says that there is no action anybody can do such that were they to do it, it would be the case that ~(P&L). While this is extremely plausible, David Lewis famously denies this on his essay whether one can break the laws. I think he's wrong to deny it, but the argument in this formulation directly begs the question against him.

Note that in the definition of the N operator, we might also replace the → with a might-conditional: were x to do A at t, it might be the case that ~p. (This gives the M operator in the Finch and Warfield terminology; see also Huemer's argument.) The analogue of (5) for might-conditionals is about as plausible. So once again we get as a theorem an appropriate beta-type principle.

A simple design argument

1. P(the universe has low entropy | naturalism) is extremely tiny.
2. P(the universe has low entropy | theism) is not very small.
3. The universe has low entropy.
4. Therefore, the low entropy of the universe strongly confirms theism over naturalism.

Low-entropy states have low probability. So, (1) is true. The universe, at the Big Bang, had a very surprisingly low entropy. It still has a low entropy, though the entropy has gone up. So, (3) is true. What about (2)? This follows from the fact that there is significant value in a world that has low entropy and given theism God is not unlikely to produce what is significantly valuable. At least locally low entropy is needed for the existence of life, and we need uniformity between our local area and the rest of the universe if we are to have scientific knowledge of the universe, and such knowledge is valuable. So (2) is true. The rest is Bayes.

When I gave him the argument, Dan Johnson made the point to me that this appears to be a species of fine-tuning argument and that a good way to explore the argument is to see how standard objections to standard fine-tuning arguments fare against this one. So let's do that.

I. "There is a multiverse, and because it's so big, it's likely that in one of its universes there is life. That kind of a universe is going to be fine-tuned, and we only observe universes like that, since only universes like that have an observer." This doesn't apply to the entropy argument, however, because globally low entropy isn't needed for the existence of an observer like me. All that's needed is locally low entropy. What we'd expect to see, on the multiverse hypothesis, is a locally low entropy universe with a big mess outside a very small area--like the size of my brain. (This is the Boltzmann brain problem>)

II. "You can't use as evidence anything that is entailed by the existence of observers." While this sort of a principle has been argued for, surely it's false. If we're choosing between two evolutionary theories, both of them fitting the data, both equally simple, but one of them making it likely that observers would evolve and the other making it unlikely, we should choose the one that makes it likely. But I can grant the principle, because my evidence--the low entropy of the universe--is not entailed by the existence of observers. All that the existence of observers implies (and even that isn't perhaps an entailment) is locally low entropy. Notice that my responses to Objections I and II show a way in which the argument differs from typical fine-tuning arguments, because while we expect constants in the laws of nature to stay, well, constant throughout a universe, not so for entropy.

III. "It's a law of nature that the value of the constants--or in this case of the universe's entropy--is exactly as it is." The law of nature suggestion is more plausible in the case of some fundamental constant like the mass of the electron than it is in the case of a continually changing non-fundamental quantity like total entropy which is a function of more fundamental microphysical properties. Nonetheless, the suggestion that the initial low entropy of the universe is a law of nature has been made in the philosophy of sceince literature. Suppose the suggestion is true. Now consider this point. There is a large number--indeed, an infinite number--of possible laws about the initial values of non-fundamental quantities, many of which are incompatible with the low initial entropy. The law that the initial entropy is low is only one among many competing incompatible laws. The probability given naturalism of initially low entropy being the law is going to be low, too. (Note that this response can also be given in the case of standard fine-tuning arguments.)

IV. "The values of the constant--or the initially low entropy--does not require an explanation." That suggestion has also been made in the philosophy of science literature in the entropy case. But the suggestion is irrelevant to the argument, since none of the premises in the argument say anything about explanation. The point is purely Bayesian.

Darwinian evolution and determinism

Once I was looking at an old issue of a journal, probably the Review of Metaphysics from the 1950s or 60s, and I came across an intriguing paper arguing that evolution does not help explain the complex structures we find in organisms. The paper tacitly presupposed determinism and in effect noted that there was an exact correspondence between the possible states of the universe now, call it t₁, and the possible states of the universe before the advent of living things, call that time t₀. There is then an exact correspondence between the possible states at t₁ that exhibit the sort of complexity C we are trying to explain and the possible states at t₀ that would, over the course of t₁−t₀ units of time, give rise to C. Therefore, if the direct probability of C arising at t₁ at random is incredibly low, the probability of getting a state at t₀ that would give rise to C at t₁ is exactly the same, and hence also incredibly low, and evolution has made no progress. Consequently, evolution does nothing to undercut design arguments for the existence of God.
Now, the argument as it stands has two obvious holes. First, it assumes not only determinism, but two-way determinism. Determinism says that from any earlier state and the laws, the later states logically follow. Two-way determinism adds that from any later state and the laws, the earlier states logically follow. Fortunately for the argument, actual deterministic theories have been two-way deterministic. Second, the argument assumes that the exact correspondence between states at t₀ and at t₁ preserves probabilities. This need not be true. If we consider the set [0,1] (all numbers between 0 and 1, both inclusive), and the function f(x)=x², then f provides an exact correspondence between [0,1] and [0,1], but if X is uniformly distributed on [0,1], then the probability that X is in [0,1/4] is 1/4, while the probability that f(X) is in [0,1/4] is 1/2 (since for f(X) to be in [0,1/4], X need only be in [0,1/2]). But, again, in the kind of classical physics setting that underlies classical thermodynamic results like the Poincaré recurrence theorem, the transformations between states preserve phase-space volume, and it is very plausible that if you preserve phase-space volume, you preserve probabilities.
Once we add two-way determinism and phase-space volume preservation, which are reasonable assumptions in a classical setting, the argument is in much better shape. (Actually, if you can still have something relevantly like phase-space volume preservation, you could drop the determinism. I don't know enough physics to know how helpful this is.) The argument is now this. Let S be the set of all possible physical states of the universe. For any real number t, the two-way deterministic physics defines a one-to-one and onto function f_t from S to S, such that by law the universe is in state s at time t₀ if and only if it is in state f_t(s) at time t₀+t. Let C₁ be the subset of S containing all states the exhibit the complexity feature C. Let C₀ be the subset of S containing all states that would result in a state in C₁ after the passage of t₁−t₀ units of time. In other words, C₀={s:f_t(s) is in C₁}, where t=t₁−t₀. Then the probability of C₀ is the same as the probability of C₁. Hence, if our world's present state's being in C₁ was too unlikely for chance to be a reasonable expectation, then the Darwinian explanation in terms of the world having been in a state from C₀ at t₀ is no better. In particular, if a theistic design hypothesis would do better than randomness if it were a matter of generating a state in C₁ from scratch, Darwinism hasn't done anything to weaken the inference to that theistic hypothesis since C₀ is just as unlikely as C₁. Even if the evolutionary theory is correct, we still need an explanation of why the universe's state was in C₀ at t₀.
This argument is on its face pretty neat. One weakness is the physics it relies on. But bracket that. The kind of measure-preservation that classical dynamics had is likely to be at least a decent approximation to our actual dynamics. But there is a more serious hole in the argument.
The hole is this. If what evolution was supposed to explain is why it is that the universe is now in a state exhibiting C, the argument would work. But that isn't what evolution is supposed to explain. Suppose C is the existence of minded beings like us. Then it seems that we are puzzled why C is exhibited at some time or other, not why

1. C is exhibited now.

Sure, evolution can't do a very good job explaining why C is exhibited now, as opposed to, say, 10 million years ago.
So perhaps the explanandum is not that C is exhibited at t₁ but that

2. C is exhibited at some time or other.

But we can predict (1) with unit probability without any posit of evolution simply by assuming that the dynamical system is ergodic: an ergodic system will exhibit C infinitely often from almost every starting point, given reasonable assumptions on C. Thus, if (2) is the explanandum, and we have the classical setting, we don't need evolution. We just need enough time. And, by the same token, (2) is no basis for a design argument.
Maybe the puzzle is not about (1) or (2), but about:

3. C is exhibited within 14 billion of the beginning of our universe.

Ergodicity makes (2) all but inevitable, but it is puzzling that C should be exhibited so soon. After all, 14 billion years is not that much. It's only about three times the age of the sun. This account of what it is that evolution accomplishes in respect of C seems to turn on its head Darwin's emphasis on the "countless ages" that evolution required—in fact, evolution accomplished its task very quickly, and that speed is what the theory explains. Ergodicity without the selective mechanisms would very likely take much longer.
One problem with this as the account of what evolution does to explain C is that currently we do not have very good mathematical estimates of how long we can expect evolutionary processes to take to produce something like C, where C has any significant amount of complexity. So perhaps we do not really know if evolution explains (3).
Another move that one can make is to say that evolution does explain (1), and it does so by giving a plausible genealogical story about C, but the evolutionary explanation does not confer a non-tiny probability on (1). If so, then the evolutionary explanation may be a fine candidate for a statistical explanation of (1), but it will not be much of a competitor to the design hypothesis if the design hypothesis confers a moderate probability to (1).
In fact, we can use the above observations to run a nice little design argument. Suppose that C is the existence of intelligent contingent beings. Then for an arbitrary time t, the hypothesis of theistic design gives at least a moderate probability of the existence of intelligent contingent beings at t, since God is at least moderately likely to fill most of time with intelligent creatures. (And Christian tradition suggests that he in fact did, creating angels first and then later human beings.) Therefore, evolutionary theory assigns incredibly tiny probability to (1)—equal to the probability of getting C from scratch at random—but the design hypothesis assigns a much higher probability to (1). We thus have very strong confirmation of theism.[note 1]
But that assumes an outdated dynamics. Whether the argument can be made to work in a more realistic physics is an open question.

Explanation of action and naturalism

Here are some premises:

1. If x did A because s, and either (a) it is false that s or (b) the fact that s is not a part of any explanation of x's doing A, then x's doing A because s is defective.
2. If naturalism is true, then a human's doing something is a natural state of affairs.
3. If naturalism is true, then moral facts do not explain any natural state of affairs.
4. That something is morally required is a moral fact.
5. Some human being non-defectively did something because it was morally required.

And here is the conclusion:

6. Naturalism is not true.

Premises 2 and 4 are hard to dispute. Premise 5 seems plausible: it would be very odd indeed if every case of acting from duty were defective, assuming of course morality is an objective fact. Premise 3 is a bit tougher. If moral facts reduce to natural facts, then there is no reason to assert 3. For instance, one might reduce "A is required" to "A maximizes utility" and then reduce utility to natural facts about desire or pleasure. Neither step in the reduction seems plausible to me, though both have been defended. Now, naturalism doesn't want there to be non-natural explanations of natural facts. Natural facts either have no explanation or have only a natural explanation, according to the naturalist. So, unless there is a reduction of moral facts to natural ones, 3 is pretty plausible.

That leaves premise 1. I may have a counterexample to premise 1. Suppose I know that it will rain tomorrow, so today I buy an umbrella. It seems that I bought the umbrella because it will rain tomorrow, but the fact that it will rain tomorrow is not a part of any explanation of my buying the umbrella. If this case is non-defective, then 1 is false. However, perhaps, there is something rationally defective in this case. For, perhaps, my reason for buying the umbrella shouldn't be tomorrow's rain, but that the forecast predicts rain.

Currently, I am inclined against 1.

Naturalist theories of mind and corporate personhood

All theories of mind need to do justice to the multiple realizability intuition:

1. Conscious beings in general, and persons in specific, could have a physical constitution very different from ours (e.g., silicon, plasma cloud, etc.), with the computational algorithms being significantly different as well.

On a naturalist theory of mind, all there is to a person or a conscious being is the physical constitution together with external connections. Therefore, on naturalism, what (1) says is that there could be persons radically different from us in their overall constitution. This means that the naturalist theory of mind must have a very flexible account of what it is to be a person or a conscious being. Presumably, this account is going to be something like this: Conscious beings are ones that represent the external world in certain ways—the best stories about this are causal in nature—and respond in other ways (or at least are of a kind to do this). The specification of the ways in which representation and response are done is not going to be too specific—it must be at a high enough level of generality to do justice to (1). And then persons are going to be the subset of conscious beings tha have (or at least are of a kind to have) a particularly sophisticated form of representation and response—perhaps the right kind of representation of the internal patterns of response together with a self-directed response to those patterns.

Here, now, is my hypothesis. Any naturalist story that does justice to (1) will be apt to count many human social groups as both conscious and as persons. Social groups do represent the environment and themselves, and respond to such representations in various sophisticated ways, including self-reflection analogous to that which persons engage in. Social groups have corporate representations that are not the same as individual representations and corporate desires that are not the same as individual desires. To a very rough first approximation, a social group believes p provided that a majority of the members believes p in a way that is appropriately explanatorily connected with their group membership (e.g., their belief is in the right way explained by or explains their group membership), and desires p provided that it has the right kind of tendency to pursue p. Anything that can design an airplane is likely conscious and a person. But an airplane can be designed by both an individual human, and a social group such as two brothers.

2. If naturalism holds, then many human social groups are conscious and a number of these are persons.

Notice that the computational sophistication in human social groups can be very high. For human social groups contain a number of human brains. Think of a computating cluster: a cluster while having some ponderousness can compute anything its parts can.

But:

3. Human social groups, other than perhaps the Church, are not persons.

(The naturalist is unlikely to worry about the exception.) If this won't do as a direct intuition, then we can argue for it on ethical grounds in the case of many social groups. For instance, an academic Department will often be such as to force the naturalist who does justice to (1) to count it as a person. But a respect is due to a person which is not due to an academic Department. A University administration should not dissolve a Department willy-nilly, but the gravity of dissolving a Department is not nearly comparable to the gravity of killing a person.

The dualist does justice to (1) without falling into an assertion that social groups are persons in a very simple way: a necessary condition for being conscious is having a soul or something like that, and a plasma cloud could have that, and social groups, at least other than the Church, in fact don't have that. (I am not saying that social groups couldn't have that, though I think they couldn't. I am inclined not to consider the Church literally a person, either.)

Objection 1: The naturalist can make it a condition of personhood that one not have persons as proper parts.

Response: If naturalism is true, the nerves in my shoulder could so grow that they would engage in the kind of computation characteristic of persons, and then a person would be a proper part of a person.

Objection 2: Social groups don't exist.

Response: It would be tough for a naturalist to hold that social groups don't exist and human beings do—both are appropriately posited by developed special sciences.