From O’Leary for News at Evolution News & Views:
Philosopher of consciousness John Searle identified this underlying theme of post-modernism in Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (2008): “[I]t satisfies a basic urge to power. It just seems too disgusting, somehow, that we should have to be at the mercy of the ‘real world.’” If consciousness is an illusion, the comfort is that there is no “real world” anyway, just the one we insist on.
Science may not survive this. For one thing, science opinion leaders are themselves putting failing claims beyond the reach of disconfirmation by evidence. If design proponents did nothing but confront that fact, in the face of tenured nihilists and Wikipedian trolls, it would be a job worth doing. But they are doing some other things as well.
ID is first and foremost an insistence that evidence matters, underwritten by a conviction that reason-based thinking is not an illusion. That means, of course, accepting fine-tuning as a fact like any other, not to be explained away by equating vivid speculations and splendid casuistries with facts. Second, ID theorists insist that the information content of our universe and life forms is the missing factor in our attempt to understand our world. Information may be the basis of everything or space and time may spring from information (“It from Qubit”). Or it might be the only thing that exists.
It’s hard to know because information has so far mainly been the Cinderella of philosophy. Luciano Floridi offers, “We have always relied on Cinderella working hard in the house of philosophy. It is time to acknowledge her great services.”
Not so fast. If we recall the tale, Cinderella was not supposed to be a servant… More.