Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Bait And Switch (Intuition, Part Deux)

Categories
Intelligent Design
Share
Facebook
Twitter/X
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Once upon a time people thought that the sun revolved around the earth because this was intuitive. They were wrong. Once upon a time people thought that the moon revolved around the earth because it was intuitive. They were right. Therefore, intuition can’t be trusted.

Good enough. Evidence eventually confirmed the truth in both cases.

Then along came neo-Darwinism in the 20th century. Intuition and the simple mathematics of combinatorics suggest that random errors and throwing out stuff that doesn’t work can’t account for highly complex information-processing machinery and the information it processes in biological systems. There is no evidence, hard science, or mathematical analysis that can give any credibility to the proposed power of the Darwinian mechanism in this regard.

Intuition suggests that step-by-tiny-step Darwinian gradualism could not have happened, because the intermediates would not be viable. A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner. We find no such creatures in the fossil record, for obvious reasons. We find long periods of stasis, and the emergence of fully developed creatures with entirely new and innovative capabilities.

So, the Darwinian argument essentially goes as follows: Because human intuition is sometimes wrong, we can ignore intuition, basic reasoning, historical evidence, and the lack of empirical evidence — but only in the case of the claims of the creative power of the Darwinian mechanism.

This is classic bait-and-switch con-artistry: Intuition can be wrong, therefore evidence, the lack thereof, and logic can be ignored or assumed to be wrong as well.

Comments
Fancy footwork in the sequence space shuffle - 2006 "Estimates for the density of functional proteins in sequence space range anywhere from 1 in 10^12 to 1 in 10^77. No matter how you slice it, proteins are rare. Useful ones are even more rare." http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v24/n3/full/nbt0306-328.htmlbornagain77
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
01:07 PM
1
01
07
PM
PDT
Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSumbornagain77
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
01:05 PM
1
01
05
PM
PDT
BA^77, i meant formerKhan
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
01:03 PM
1
01
03
PM
PDT
---Lennoxus: "one contention from much of the ID community is that there is something supernatural about anything being artificial — that mind is more than a natural phenomenon." You are conflating non-natural with supernatural. ID says that intelligence is not a natural cause. Not natural does not equal supernatural, nor, for that matter, does supernatural equal Divine. On the other hand, it is evident that intelligence is MORE than a natural phenomenon, since it has the power to interrupt or even redirect the laws of nature, something nature cannot do on its own. If "natural" is defined as law and chance, and, if "agency" is something other than that, then obviously an intelligent agent is not a natural phenomenon. One cannot reason FROM nature TO intelligence if they are one and the same thing. That should be clear. It should be equally clear that the Darwinist insistence on calling intelligence "natural" constitutes a redefining of ID terms for the sole purpose of rendering a design inference impossible, since one cannot reason FROM nature TO intelligence if both are defined as being the same thing. Intelligence is neither natural nor supernatural; it is simply non-natural, which is why we should not be using the term "supernatural" at all. ID doesn't define supernatural, so there is no reason to inject it into the discussion since no one knows what it means in this context. In other contexts, it might be possible, but not in terms of a design inference.StephenB
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
01:01 PM
1
01
01
PM
PDT
BA^77 I've read that paper.. when you have real data generated from real amino acids (the papers I cited) vs computer modeling (your paper) i always prefer the latter. thanks, though.Khan
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
12:55 PM
12
12
55
PM
PDT
Khan, If you can explain that (which you won't be able to), then I want you to explain why "information" is not centralized in the cell, and please explain how a process which can't even explain the origination of information in a single sequence of DNA, will now explain information that is spread out throughout the cell to accomplish a singular task...namely LIFE! DNA codes and information: formal structures and relational causes. "In this framework, these attractors are higher-order informational structures that obviate any "DNA-centric" reductionism. In addition to the implications that are discussed, this approach validates the array of coding systems now recognized in molecular biology." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18465197bornagain77
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
12:52 PM
12
12
52
PM
PDT
Lenoxus: ID shouldn't require a debate over philosophical naturalism or materialism. After all, every thing inspected for indications of design is entirely material. As far as I can tell, that debate occurs because, if life had an intelligent cause and design, that would indicate an intelligence other than the ones we're directly aware of. And to some, that very suggestion violates the laws of science. And again, some of the debate goes to areas such as dualism, which are also opposed by such materialism, but have nothing to do with ID. I can understand why someone could get the impression that the two are related. If both are supported by evidence, it's not the same evidence.ScottAndrews
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
12:50 PM
12
12
50
PM
PDT
In response to khan's assertion that functional proteins are "easy to get" A System for Evolutionary Experimentation Based on a Protein/Proteome Model with Non-Arbitrary Functional Constraints" Excerpt: "What it fails to fit well, at first glance anyway, is the pattern of structural similarities evident in natural proteins. If there is a substantial probabilistic barrier to structural innovation in the protein world, then we might expect the evolutionary process to make do without it. By this view, the protein world ought to consist of one structural archetype put to many different uses, each involving modest alteration of peripheral structure but no major reorganization of the fold. Subsets of the natural proteins show precisely this, but the whole picture is strikingly different. Here we find a surprising preponderance of “orphan” folds—folds that each occupy their own patch of structure space, well removed from everything else [7]." http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002246bornagain77
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
12:43 PM
12
12
43
PM
PDT
Mr ScottAndrews, Information is caused by a relative lack of entropy? I didn't say cause, or relative. But as all the discussion around FCSI shows, information and entropy are related concepts. Certainly my brain has less entropy than the atmosphere, the ocean, the Earth's core, nearby space, or the surface of the Sun (except on Monday mornings :) ). That nuclear fusion in a nearby star allows fuels my thoughts is no great surprise, is it? My brain is remarkably well ordered (as is yours, of course) and so many hydrogen atoms have sacrificed their small identities to make that possible. Quite humbling, really...Nakashima
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
12:34 PM
12
12
34
PM
PDT
ScottAndrews:
But if dualism vanished today, ID would be untouched tomorrow. ID simply asks, did this require intelligence. Regardless of the implications of the answers, ID itself it not about the supernatural.
If the answers imply dualism, and if dualism vanishes today, then that would mean that the answers are wrong. So it would seem incorrect to say that ID is unrelated to dualism "regardless of the implications of the answers".R0b
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
12:32 PM
12
12
32
PM
PDT
ID itself it not about the supernatural.
Why are so many UD entries about naturalism/immaterialism/etc? For a long time now, I've been taking this site to be the main front of the scientific side of the ID movement, so I've come to see the philosophical questions of naturalism-etc as entirely relevant to the nature of ID.Lenoxus
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
12:23 PM
12
12
23
PM
PDT
Lenoxus: ID specifies that the causes of some phenomena are intelligent. Artificial or "not natural" may be corollaries, but are not the definition Supernatural/artificial/yellow/polka-dotted do not enter the picture. ID is narrowly focused on intelligence.
one contention from much of the ID community is that there is something supernatural about anything being artificial — that mind is more than a natural phenomenon.
IMHO that does give a bad impression. Mind/brain dualism is not related to ID at all, but at times one might think it was. But if dualism vanished today, ID would be untouched tomorrow. ID simply asks, did this require intelligence. Regardless of the implications of the answers, ID itself it not about the supernatural.ScottAndrews
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
12:04 PM
12
12
04
PM
PDT
Hmm, it's starting to seem to me that this whole thing of "natural / artificial / supernatural" is at the core of so many debates here. ID might be summarized as asserting that the origins of certain cosmological and biological phenomena are "not natural." But does that mean merely artificial, or supernatural as well? Judging by the number of entries and posts here which argue against materialism, I would say it's pretty clear that supernaturalism is a part of what we're talking about, and further, that one contention from much of the ID community is that there is something supernatural about anything being artificial — that mind is more than a natural phenomenon. (Sometimes I have been criticizedc for my use of the word "supernatural"; if anyone can provide as good a single word for what sort of phenomenon the Designer is, let me know :).)Lenoxus
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
11:51 AM
11
11
51
AM
PDT
The Law of Conservation of Information was clearly violated. That cannot happen without agency involvement.
Thanks, Herb, You're the only one who gave a clear answer to my question. Now, if only the Law of Conservation of Information was as well-established as Newton's laws of motion.Adel DiBagno
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
11:46 AM
11
11
46
AM
PDT
II should read "the whole is always greater than any ONE OF ITS PARTS."StephenB
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
11:35 AM
11
11
35
AM
PDT
This is indeed remarkable. Man [A] releases a ball, and natural forces cause it to fall to the ground. Man [B] throught an act of the will, interrputs the descent in progress and snatches the ball out of the air. Now the Darwinists are telling me that both events are "natural." Incredible. ID defines the causes of physical events as Plato referred to them in the "Laws," (2300 years ago) expressed in similar terms as Law/Chance/ and gency. These are the only three causes for physical events that have ever been known. Yet, Diffaxial insists that the third category has been artificially injected and that we are injecting a conclusion into a hypothesis. Incredible. ----Diffaxial: "What I was hoping you would provide is an examplar of an argument within evolutionary biology that is defective specifically due to a failure (you claim a motivated failure) to observe the “rules of right reason”, as you submit above." Darwinists have terrible difficulty reasoning in the abstract. Let’s take the four examples I often use concerning the principles of right reason, namely [I] A thing cannot be and not be, [II] The whole is always greater than the sum of all the parts, [III] Physical causes cannot occur without effects, [IV] Something cannot come from nothing. Now the purpose for these rules is to rule out certain things so that we can draw conclusions from premises. Deductive reasoning = If A is true, then B must be true Inductive reasoning = If A is observed, then B is most likely true Abductive reasoning = If A is observed , then B seems to be the best explanation. Let’s take deductive reasoning as an example. One of the things that the rules of right reason allow us to do is eliminate possibilities, so that we can get from A to B. Thus, with [I through IV above (and others rules non listed)] We can say If A, then B, because C through Z are impossible. If we didn’t agree that C through Z were impossible, then we couldn’t reason our way from A to B. Example: Streets don’t just “get wet.” Using principle III, we understand that something had to cause the streets to get wet. Thus, we say that if the streets are wet, then it must be raining, or else someone turned on a fire hydrant, or for some other reason. But a Darwinist will simply say, “Why can’t the streets just get wet. Provide me with evidence that moisture, like life, cannot just come from nowhere.” For them physical events don’t necessarily need causes, meaning that something could come from nothing. That is why they keep alluding to quantum mechanics, hoping against hope that quantum particles can appear without a cause, which of course, they cannot. I again remind you of principle II, [whole always greater than any one of the parts] which I dramatized a few days ago with the example that an automobile cannot be a part of a crankshaft. As I predicted, several of your colleagues questioned that proposition. You seemed OK with it as well. For them, an automobile can be a part of a crankshaft, because for Darwinists, anything is possible (except the obvious). Incredibly, one of them even challenged the meaning of the word “more.” For them, the rules of right reason are not in force. Thus, it is impossible for them to reason from A to B, because they can’t rule out C through Z. They can never say, If A is true, then B MUST be true. Now it is the same thing with evolutionary biologists who embrace atheism. For them, life can appear without a cause; it just happens. Or, they will posit a process as a cause, insisting that the process itself needs no cause. To put it bluntly, they cannot reason in the abstract. For them, life can “just happens,” and the streets could “just get wet.” They respond to evidence in the same way. As all reasonable people know, facts and evidence do not just interpret themselves; they must be interpreted according to the principles of right reason. That is why I do not discuss science with Darwinists. They cannot follow where the evidence leads, because they cannot or will not interpret the evidence according to the principles of right reason. How can they interpret evidence reasonably when they are hell bent on rejecting reason itself. So, I choose to place my emphasis on the intellectual deficit that is responsible for all the confusion.StephenB
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
11:33 AM
11
11
33
AM
PDT
ps - How does that lack of entropy determine which of two synonyms you choose?ScottAndrews
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
10:48 AM
10
10
48
AM
PDT
Nakashima: You're saying that you're able to type a comment because there is less entropy within your brain that in most of the nearby universe? Information is caused by a relative lack of entropy?ScottAndrews
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
10:47 AM
10
10
47
AM
PDT
Mr ScottAndrews, Nakashima: You are not defying any natural laws. But can you explain how the comment came to be typed using only natural laws? They cannot account for it. Not in detail, of course, but I'm pretty sure that the atoms in my brain are normal, even if some of them are radioactive. The same forces are at work inside my braincase as elsewhere in the universe. And if there is a certain lack of entropy in that little slice of spacetime, it is more than offset by the enormous increase in entropy in most of the nearby universe. Do you doubt this?Nakashima
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
10:36 AM
10
10
36
AM
PDT
Nakashima: You are not defying any natural laws. But can you explain how the comment came to be typed using only natural laws? They cannot account for it.ScottAndrews
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
10:25 AM
10
10
25
AM
PDT
I am “willfully” typing this comment. What “natural laws” am I defying? The infield fly rule? :)Nakashima
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
09:57 AM
9
09
57
AM
PDT
"In that sense I agree. The Empire State Building is in some sense a highly derived natural object."
Derived from what? The willful act of an agent, perhaps? But, I thought "will" was simply "natural". If that is case, then the existence of the Empire State building must be “highly” natural.
"It is a useful distinction that reliably denotes the fact that natural objects (in the conventional sense) have a very different sort of history than do human artifacts.”
What would the distinction in their history be? The appearance of the “will”? If not, then what?
"But there is a larger/other sense in which both sorts of history are “natural” histories, as human activities, human culture, etc., on this view, are ultimately components of the natural world.”
So the distinction may be obvious to all, but it must be forgotten in order that materialists can assume their conclusions on the matter.Upright BiPed
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
09:28 AM
9
09
28
AM
PDT
ScottAndrews @ 270:
Similarly, the Empire State Building is a natural occurrence. It is the result of homo sapiens doing what they do.
In that sense I agree. The Empire State Building is in some sense a highly derived natural object. However, don't fall over yourselves, as the distinctions I made above also still stand. It does not follow from the above that the ordinary distinction between "natural" and "artificial" objects has been lost. It is a useful distinction that reliably denotes the fact that natural objects (in the conventional sense) have a very different sort of history than do human artifacts. But there is a larger/other sense in which both sorts of history are "natural" histories, as human activities, human culture, etc., on this view, are ultimately components of the natural world.Diffaxial
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
09:07 AM
9
09
07
AM
PDT
Scott, Your logic is spot on, but what I think Diffaxial is trying to get you to not trip over is the fact that “acts of will” (i.e. those that are artificial = contrived by art = non-natural) are only allowed in chess or you’ll be arrested. I hope this helps clarify the situation.Upright BiPed
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
08:32 AM
8
08
32
AM
PDT
Diffaxial: The question (within this scope) is not whether human intelligence is natural or artificial. The question is whether, if we assume that human intelligence is natural, are the artifacts it produces also natural? When coral polyps build huge reefs, we call that natural. They are doing what coral do. Similarly, the Empire State Building is a natural occurrence. It is the result of homo sapiens doing what they do. If we do not accept that human artifacts are natural occurrences, then it follows that, as Upright Biped pointed out, they are anomalies for which nature cannot account.ScottAndrews
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
08:12 AM
8
08
12
AM
PDT
Adel,
I am “willfully” typing this comment. What “natural laws” am I defying?
The Law of Conservation of Information was clearly violated. That cannot happen without agency involvement.herb
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
08:07 AM
8
08
07
AM
PDT
ScottAndrews @ 264:
The willful acts of intelligent humans are all natural?
You are tripping over semantics and levels of description. Analogous error: You may insist that a that a particular move in chess, in the context of a particular game, is either legal or illegal. It can't be both. But upon making a move that exposes my king to check the police don't arrive and arrest me. Making illegal moves in chess is perfectly legal. And the forgoing sentence is both intelligible and correct once one affixes the (implicit) scope of applicability of the word "legal" in each instance. The ability to do so is a matter of linguistic practice. Similarly, we conventionally refer to artifacts of human contrivance as "artificial" rather than "natural," a useful distinction. That doesn't compel us to attribute the origins of human intelligence, including the ability to contrive artificial objects, to "artificial" (agentic) causes. Conversely, to say that human intelligence is a natural (and cultural) phenomenon no more renders meaningless the conventional "natural - artificial" distinction than does the absence of the rules of chess from the Ohio Revised Code vitiate the rules of chess.Diffaxial
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
07:50 AM
7
07
50
AM
PDT
Scot: re:
The willful acts of intelligent humans are all natural? . . . . There are no artificial ingredients in food, because they are all natural? And if we classify all intelligent acts as natural, what is the objection to ID, or do we draw some arbitrary line around that?
"Bizarre" is the correct word, a synonym for what is happening before our eyes: reductio ad absurdum. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
06:27 AM
6
06
27
AM
PDT
Adel, The point is taht nature, operating freely couldn't do it- that is type any words. That is the debate- agency vs nature, operating freely. And seeing that nature, operating freely cannot give rise to nature, what is left?Joseph
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
06:22 AM
6
06
22
AM
PDT
Adel: let's see: 1] mechanical necessity produces outcomes driven by initial conditions and so leads to low contingency of outcomes. [A dropped heavy object reliably falls.] 2] Chance leads to high contingency but showing stochastic outcomes [a fair die falls out with outcomes from a set with each ~ 1/6 of the time in the long run] 3] An intelligence produces contingencies but not stochastic ones, purposefully directed ones. [Such as posts in this blog. And where the set of possible outcomes is large enough, functional specification of complex outcomes is a strong indicator of purpose at work. Such as that you above in two successive posts produced a text string of ASCII characters of length, 188 characters of contextually responsive English. Ther number of possible configurations of that many characters is so far beyond the search capacities of the observed universe acting as a search engine, that we can safely infer from the observed FSCI to its source in intelligence. ] And, in that context, we often contrast natural and artificial or intelligent causes: natural exhibiting 1 and 2, artificial exhibiting 3. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
August 5, 2009
August
08
Aug
5
05
2009
06:20 AM
6
06
20
AM
PDT
1 2 3 4 5 6 13

Leave a Reply