Richard M. Naber

The fine-tuning argument for theism (FTAT) is commonly based on the observation that several physical constants fall within a narrow life-permitting range. I argue that this formulation neglects part of the total evidence. Fine-tuning has two aspects: A, the fact that the actual values are life-permitting, and R, the fact that life depends on narrowly constrained values at all. The standard argument derives its force from A conditional on R: given that life requires fine-tuned values, life-oriented theism may make life-permitting values more probable than naturalism does. But the Requirement of Total Evidence requires the full evidential significance of R∧A to be represented. The standard FTAT does not show that the likelihood ratio for R is high enough to preserve the advantage with respect to A. If R is placed in the background, the argument does not establish its standard conclusion unless either R is independently justified as probabilistically neutral between the hypotheses, or its effect on the background-conditioned prior odds is explicitly accounted for and shown not to offset the advantage with respect to A. If R is included in the evidence, the argument must address the Fine-Tuning Requirement Problem: why does life depend on narrowly constrained constants at all? Answering this requires independent reason to expect God to create life through a fine-tuning-dependent, law-governed physical order. Fine-tuning may then contribute to a cumulative case, but the standard FTAT does not establish that it confirms theism.

The cosmological fine-tuning debate is often taken to support multiverse hypotheses via observer-selection effects. The most persistent objection is the This Universe Objection (TUO), often illustrated by the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy: fine-tuning, it is argued, concerns _this_ universe, and once indexical evidence is taken into account, fine-tuning provides no confirmation of a multiverse over a single-universe hypothesis. This paper argues that once the evidential situation is reconstructed in third-person modal terms, TUO loses its force. At the intuitive level, I diagnose two sources of error: inferring evidential neutrality from causal independence, and treating the demonstrative "this" as contributing a privileged, likelihood-relevant fact rather than merely serving to pick out the observed domain. At the formal level, I develop a Bayesian reconstruction compatible with the Requirement of Total Evidence while preserving the role of anthropic reasoning. The key move is to replace label-dependent evidence with a third-person, non-privileging modal correlate of the indexical explanandum: that there exists a fine-tuned domain containing an epistemic system capable of fine-tuning inquiry. Under transparent toy assumptions, this formulation yields a Bayes-factor advantage for a multiverse hypothesis over a single-universe hypothesis. TUO therefore establishes no evidential neutrality result on its own: in its thin demonstrative form, it collapses into ordinary modal evidence, which on the account supports a multiverse hypothesis over a single-universe hypothesis; in its haecceitistic form, it relies on auxiliary commitments about ``thisness,'' centered information, or predestination that fail to preserve neutral cross-hypothesis comparison and without which the appeal to "thisness" is evidentially idle. Note: this preprint predates the accepted manuscript forthcoming in Erkenntnis.

I introduce and defend the Consciousness as Rich Information Theory (CRIT), a novel framework grounded in both philosophical reasoning and empirical observation. CRIT builds on ideas from structuralism, Predictive Processing, and the Multiple Drafts Model to develop a unified physicalist account of consciousness. It partly resolves the Hard Problem of Consciousness by positing that phenomenal experience consists of Rich Information (RI)—subjective information that holds meaning for the cognitive process it influences—and partly dissolves it by arguing that the mystery of qualia stems from epistemic limitations and cognitive architecture. Predictive Processing is incorporated to explain valence—the subjective positivity or negativity of experience. CRIT also addresses several longstanding challenges, including the unity and continuity of experience, Libet’s experiments, blindsight, and split-brain phenomena. It contends that the continuity of consciousness is an illusion generated by memory threads that temporally organize discrete conscious events. The model accounts for unified experience by positing parallel, independent memory threads, with introspective access and reporting restricted to a primary thread—an architecture that aligns with established neurocognitive principles of memory organization and processing. While the precise neurobiological mechanisms remain to be established, they are amenable to empirical investigation. Finally, CRIT is critically compared with Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Higher-Order Thought Theories (HOT), and Global Workspace Theory (GWT). It is argued that CRIT accounts for a broader range of empirical and conceptual challenges, and potential experimental tests are outlined to distinguish CRIT from competing theories.