Why anything? Why this? (1998)
For context, Parfit died a few days ago, he was a brilliant man and I read some of his papers as a philosophy undergraduate. As far as the essay itself goes, it&#x27;s pretty much typical run-of-the-mill anti-theist cosmology with the same arguments that have become status quo for the past 20 years or so.<p>Even as a Christian, I find both cosmological arguments (theist and anti-theist) wholly unconvincing. For example, if I was a non-believer, I would find it equally hard to believe in a multi-verse or a God. Not only that, but to make these kinds of arguments, we need to make all kinds of pretty serious assumptions: that we know how causality works in a multiverse, that laws of physics are invariant even at the beginning of universes (whatever that might mean), and so on.<p>But here&#x27;s where I completely disagree with the position so many philosophers have (a field which I love):<p>&gt; As these remarks suggest, there is no clear boundary here between philosophy and science. If there is such a highest law governing reality, this law is of the same kind as those that physicists are trying to discover.<p>As much as I respect Parfit (and many other philosophers of science), I think they&#x27;re just dead wrong. What philosophers do is very different than what physicists do. This view absolutely permeates academic philosophy: that philosophy of science is, you know, <i>basically science</i>. It&#x27;s not. I always recommend Barry Dainton&#x27;s Time and Space[1] for budding philosophers of science, but don&#x27;t kid yourself: it&#x27;s merely a very high-level introduction to the physics of space and time. Until you really get down and dirty with the intricacies of (at first) Galilean spacetime and (eventually) Minkowski spacetime, you really won&#x27;t &quot;get it&quot; -- but alas, many philosophy undergraduates and grad students think they do. And I&#x27;m sure that hubris follows them in their postgraduate careers.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Time-Space-Barry-Francis-Dainton&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0773537473" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Time-Space-Barry-Francis-Dainton&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0...</a>