There is a famous passage in Molière’s play The Imaginary Invalid in which he satirizes the tactic of tautology given as explanation. A group of medieval doctors are giving an oral exam to a doctoral candidate, and they ask him why opium causes people to get sleepy. The candidate responds:
Mihi à docto Doctore
Domandatur causam & rationem, quare
Opium facit dormire ?
A quoy respondeo,
Quia est in eo
Virtus dormitiua,
Cuius est natura
Sensus assoupire.
Which is translated:
I am asked by the learned doctor the cause and reason why opium causes sleep. To which I reply, because it has a dormitive property, whose nature is to lull the senses to sleep.
Of course, “dormitive” is derived from the Latin “dormire,” which means to sleep. Thus, the candidate’s explanation boils down to “opium causes people to get sleepy because it has a property that causes people to get sleepy.” It is a tautology disguised as an explanation.
Funny, no? A real scientist would never stoop to such linguistic tricks, right? Wrong.
Consider the materialist explanation for consciousness. We are told that the mind is an “emergent property” of the brain. Yes, and sleep is induced by the dormitive property of opium.
UPDATE
Unsurprisingly, our materialist interlocutors point to the fact that “emergence” as a general concept is commonplace and therefore “emergence” as an explanation for consciousness is perfectly adequate. We will see how their argument is circular in this update.
Viola Lee
If emergent is not a good term, what is? Use the salt example: “Just as Na and Cl are widely different from each other, the compound NACL or salt is widely different from either.” If salt has properties that are quite unlike those of its constituent parts, how does one describe where the properties of salt come from? What concept or word would be accurate here?
Bob O’H
Barry – is the only possible explanation for something that it emerges from something else?
Viola’s and Bob’s argument is circular. It assumes the very thing to be decided.
Here is the materialist argument: Sodium and chloride combine to form salt, which is surprisingly different from either sodium or chloride. Oxygen and hydrogen combine to form water, which is surprisingly different from either oxygen or hydrogen. And no one objects when we say salt “emerged” from the combination of sodium and chloride or that water “emerged” from the combination of oxygen and hydrogen. This is merely another way of stating a reductionist account of how a physical thing (salt or water) can be reduced to the combination of its physical constituents. It is utterly mysterious how salt comes from mixing sodium and chloride, and it is utterly mysterious how water comes from mixing oxygen and hydrogen. Calling what happened “emergence” is as good term as any. The mysterious emergence of one physical thing from other physical things in ways that we cannot explain is common. Therefore, that consciousness “emerged” from the physical properties of the brain in a mysterious way that we cannot explain is unsurprising. Nothing to see here; move along.
Viola’s and Bob’s religious commitments have led them into a glaring logical error.1 It should be obvious that the very thing to be decided is whether, in principle, the mental can be reduced to the physical. Viola and Bob argue that physical things emerge from other physical things all the time; therefore that the mind emerges from the physical properties of the brain is unsurprising.
Wait a second. Viola’s and Bob’s argument works only if one assumes that the mental can be accounted for in physicalist reductionist terms. They have assumed their conclusion and argued in a tight little circle.
Viola’s and Bob’s logic has gone off the rails, because the issue to be decided is not whether one physical thing can emerge in surprising ways from a combination of other physical things. No one disputes that we see examples of this, such as salt and water, all around us. The issue to be decided is whether mental properties – subjective self-awareness, intentionality, qualia, free will, thoughts, etc. – can emerge from physical constituents. The question to be answered is whether the mental can be reduced to the physical. Answering that question by pointing out that we see the physical reduced to the physical is no answer at all.
There is an obvious vast, unbridgeable ontological chasm between mental phenomena and physical phenomena. Therefore, the burden is on materialists to account for how, in principle, a particular combination of chemicals can, for example, have subjective self-awareness. Many materialists (Sam Harris comes to mind) understand this is an impossible burden and therefore deny that we have subjective self-awareness at all, and our perception that we do is an illusion (who is deceived Sam?). Here again, we see materialists forced by their religious commitments to say crazy, obviously false, things. That we are subjectively self-aware has for good reason been called the primordial datum. Everyone knows beyond the slightest doubt that he is subjectively self-aware, and the very act of attempting to refute it is self-referentially incoherent. Chemicals cannot know, and asserting chemicals know they cannot know is (i.e. that chemicals have intentionality) is absurd.
In conclusion, Viola and Bob say, essentially, things emerge from other things all the time; therefore the mind emerged from the brain. This is an obvious non sequitur and their augment fails.
_____________________
1Materialism is, at bottom, a religious proposition.
Computer reference manuals are full of this sort of tautologous definition.
“The frabulator function enables User to frabulate.”
I don’t see this as a tautology.
To say that consciousness is emergent is just to say that we do not have a reductionist account and perhaps we may never have a reductionist account of consciousness.
When you read “emergent property” you can translate it into “it just does” and then we can all go out for margaritas.
Andrew
Asauber, you wouldn’t joke about a thing as serious as margaritas, right. But I have been sipping medicinal Port (a drink with the highest alcohol content sold as “Wine”) for several hours now. And so I must pass on the Margaritas today.
I spent perhaps 40 years dealing with the Federal Bureaucracy, and the LAST thing any Bureaucrat wants to do is provide ANYTHING approaching Clarity in a response. It must FIRST lead to “additional tasking” and it can NEVER interfere with ANY existing make-work crap. See the COMPLETE failure by the ENTIRE US GOVERNMENT AND VOTERS to cause ANY changes to the Veterans Administration “health service”.
Mahuna,
Funny you should mention margaritas… Glad you are enjoying your medicine of choice. 😉
I actually had my very first margarita a coupla weeks ago. Small. Peach. It was tasty.
Anyway, I’m an Irish Whiskey guy. But I don’t drink much now like I did in the old days. Pitchers of beer and all that with the guys. Now I’m really just one beer a week after I cut the grass, and a glass of whiskey(neat) on special occasions.
I hear you. Cheers,
Andrew
Neil:
Consciousness emerges from the brain, because the mind is an emergent property of the brain system.
We will just have to disagree.
Emergence came into vogue in Evolutionary Biology when Natural Selection obviously failed to produce anything of importance in new capabilities. It was said as things got varied, unknown and unforeseen properties emerged out of this new accumulation/combination of entities.
Just as Na and Cl are widely different from each other, the compound NACL or salt is widely different from either. The properties of salt emerged from this new combination.
Kf essentially nailed in back in 2007 when he said
The term emergent is an handwaving exercise when a materialist cannot explain something. They will say it emerged and is actually a hotter concept than evolution because emergent is more powerful. It explains how complex properties can happen quickly as all one has to say is such and such emerged while to say it evolved implies lots of time with lots of steps along the way.
“Emerge” is a more powerful concept than selection that a materialist can wave just as a wizard waves his wand and the world moves at his command. “Emerge” is a potent addition to the wishful speculation of the materialist.
If emergent is not a good term, what is? Use the salt example: “Just as Na and Cl are widely different from each other, the compound NACL or salt is widely different from either.” If salt has properties that are quite unlike those of its constituent parts, how does one describe where the properties of salt come from? What concept or word would be accurate here?
Would you argue that 3 is an emergent property of 1 and 2?
Barry – is the only possible explanation for something that it emerges from something else?
Emergence is an appropriate term for molecular compounds. However, emerge is a BS term for evolution. As Kf said it’s a term used when there is no explanation.
It’s common in evolutionary biology to just say something evolved. It’s not an explanation. It’s a begging the question. In other words it’s a useless explanation. Using the word “emergence” is equally useless but just sounds better.
Emergence is when many independent decisions produce a pattern.
In evolution theory the random mutations substitute for independent decisions.
To say that consciousness is emergent is to say that, thanks to evolutionary biology, science doesn’t have a clue how consciousness arose. And most likely never will until we rid ourselves of the useless paradigm that is blind watchmaker evolution.
It’s definitely possible that certain molecular compounds when combined produce unforeseen results. So to say the properties of these unforeseen results emerged is appropriate but not an explanation. If one wants to point to an explanation for the emergence it is better to point to the properties of matter and their interactions. This again is a begging the question. The real question then becomes how did these properties of matter arise?
Also what’s not possible to say is that the code for the construction of these molecules in biology emerged because the codes producing these molecules is so complicated and precise, only an intelligence could have organized it.
A good example of molecular interactions is water. The hydrogen and oxygen atoms form polar opposite electromagnetic attractions. This enables water to dissolve many things such as salt. This is well understood. But I’m not sure if the physical properties of water, response to temperature, size and hardness, is equally understood.
And of course that emergent property is essential for life. Look up at the sky and one sees an incredible deign of a water transport system that moves water around the globe. Was this system designed or did it emerge? The answer is it was designed to emerge.
Viola and Bob,
I answer your comments in an update to the OP.
Barry writes, “Unsurprisingly, our materialist interlocutors point to the fact that “emergence” as a general concept is commonplace and therefore “emergence” as an explanation for consciousness is perfectly adequate. ”
1. I am not a materialist, and consider consciousness as an experiential fact separate from the material brain.
2. I don’t think either Bob or I said anything close to ” “emergence” as an explanation for consciousness is perfectly adequate. ” Our questions and comments were much more general, and not at all specifically about consciousness. We did not make the claims that Barry seems to assume we were making.
I’d like to be accurately represented, please.
Barry @ 15 – I’m afraid I can’t see where you answered my question. I’m trying to unpick your comment @ 6.
Jerry: It’s common in evolutionary biology to just say something evolved. It’s not an explanation. It’s a begging the question. In other words it’s a useless explanation. Using the word “emergence” is equally useless but just sounds better.
Okay, here’s a question . . . if you say something is designed without offering any further explanation (such as where or how or why or who) could that not also be classified as a useless explanation? Without having presumptions about the who or why?
ET: To say that consciousness is emergent is to say that, thanks to evolutionary biology, science doesn’t have a clue how consciousness arose. And most likely never will until we rid ourselves of the useless paradigm that is blind watchmaker evolution.
But, does the design hypothesis offer anything better, i.e. more explanatory? Just saying it was designed to happen doesn’t really explain anything . . . unless we know something about the when at least, how would be good too, who would really help, all that might lead towards answering why. Then you’d have a real explanation.
JVL:
No, for the reasons that have been explained to you scores of times, about which information you are, apparently, invincibly ignorant.
JVL
“But, does the design hypothesis offer anything better, i.e. more explanatory? ”
Yes, design.
Design has the benefit of actually being an explanation as opposed to a semantic dodge.
Hi Barry. I’m wondering if you’ve read my post at 16, and have any reply? I would like it if your OP didn’t stand, as it does, misrepresenting me or my one brief comment on this thread.
And if I understand you correctly, “emerged” is an adequate descriptor, although perhaps not an “explanation”, for things that happen in chemistry: the question of what counts as an explanation is a bigger, interesting topic in this thread.
Also, you write, “It is utterly mysterious how salt comes from mixing sodium and chloride, and it is utterly mysterious how water comes from mixing oxygen and hydrogen.”
I don’t believe that is entirely utterly mysterious. What we know about the electron structure of those elements and the idea of ionic bonding explains some of why sodium and chlorine form a crystal solid, and the same is true of the way hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water.
However, all explanations call out for deeper explanations, so at any time, I think, there are practical considerations as what level of explanation we are looking for and would be satisfied with.
Evolutionists often use the term “emergence” to bypass an important rule of right reason: Every effect requires a proportionate cause. This principle confirms that a cause cannot give what it does not have to give. Through experience, we have learned that naturalistic forces, acting alone, have some power, but they cannot give to an evolutionary process something they don’t have to give, namely, the capacity to change one life form into another life form.
The scholastics one explained the point in seven words: “The cause is nobler than the effect.” What they meant was that there is always more substance in the former than in the latter. There is more to the cabinet maker than his cabinet, more to the painter than his painting. Emergent theorists get it backwards. For them, the effect is nobler than the cause; evolution contains more substance than the process that is alleged to have brought it about.
In short, emergent theorists think that you can get more from less. It is an irrational attack on the law of cause and effect. In a culture as illiterate as ours, they can get away with it. It will be harder for them to get away with it on this thread.
Hello Stephen. I’m not talking about evolution at all (probably never have on this forum), but I am interested in this subject of how we explain how things in the world combine to produce new things.
So, if we stay with the example of sodium and chlorine combining to make table salt, how would that be consistent with your statement, “Every effect requires a proportionate cause. This principle confirms that a cause cannot give what it does not have to give.” In what way do sodium and chlorine have the power to “cause” salt? Other than the fact that they obviously do have the power, because they do make salt, what is “in” sodium and chlorine that makes that a possibility?
And, back to an earlier comment, is the word “emergent” at all applicable here, as in saying, table salt, as a substance with the properties it has, emerges from simpler elements? Or is the word “emergent” basically a useless word? If so, is there a better word to describe the situation where certain constituent parts combine to produce something substantially different?
VL: —“Other than the fact that they obviously do have the power, because they do make salt, what is “in” sodium and chlorine that makes that a possibility?”
I suspect that it is related to the power inherent in the process of chemical bonding and the transfer of electrons. However, your question misses the point: We don’t use scientific experiments to test the reliability of reason’s rules: we use reason’s rules to test the reliability of scientific experiments.
VL: —“Or is the word “emergent” basically a useless word? If so, is there a better word to describe the situation where certain constituent parts combine to produce something substantially different?”
In the context of “mind emerging from brain” it is totally useless and inexcusably misleading. In the context of chemical reactions, I suppose it could serve some purpose.
I don’t think Darwinian Atheists should ever be pointing to chemical elements to support any conjecture that they may make within their materialistic worldview.
Thanks, Stephen. I have two replies. First, I asked three questions in my last paragraph about the use of the word “emergent”. Do you have thoughts on them?
Also, you write, “However, your question misses the point: We don’t use scientific experiments to test the reliability of reason’s rules: we use reason’s rules to test the reliability of scientific experiments.”
I’m not sure which of my questions this refers to, but I’m not questioning the validity of the rule of reason you mention. What I am wondering about is how we apply it: that is, how do we know that a cause has within it the power to give something other than by seeing that it in fact does give it? Is there a way to examine something and ascertain ahead of time what it does and does not have the power to give?
In this example, we know that somehow sodium and chlorine have the power to make salt because they do in fact make salt: the power to do so must reside in the sodium and chlorine. But is there any way (and I’m interested in the general situation illustrated by this example) to look at a situation and ascertain ahead of time what it is and isn’t capable of causing?
VL –“But is there any way (and I’m interested in the general situation illustrated by this example) to look at a situation and ascertain ahead of time what it is and isn’t capable of causing?”
In large part, science is a search for causes. If you want to find causes, do science. If you want to rule out causes, do science. I have nothing else to say on the matter since the main theme of this thread, the tautological nature of materialistic reductionism, has been ignored and I don’t want to contribute to that neglect by addressing other issues.
To be honest, I don’t know if consciousness is an “emergent” property of the brain. But I am not willing to ignore the possibility.
Chemical reactions are not emergent. They are repeatable and predictable. The [false] darwinist claim is that life emerged (meaning only once, not predictable and not repeatable) and that monkeys turned into humans (fish into tetrapods, etc). Only once!
So the issue is “one time” vs “all the time”
It’s true that “emergence” or “emergent properties” is a placeholder for an explanatory causal chain that we do not have yet but it does imply that there is reason to think one may be there.
We never observe consciousness to exist apart from a physical brain. We do observe that, if the brain associated with a consciousness ceases to function, that consciousness disappears – irretrievably as far as we can tell. And if the brain is not the source of consciousness, what other reason could there be for the body to make such a major metabolic investment in maintaining such a hugely complex organ?
None of the above explains how consciousness could emerge from the electro-chemical activity in the physical brain but it makes the possibility a reasonable inference.
seversky:
That is a lie or it is pure willful ignorance. But that is how materialists operate, via lies and willful ignorance.
Barry Arrington: Design has the benefit of actually being an explanation as opposed to a semantic dodge.
Hmmm . . . I don’t think that’s true.
The unguided evolutionary paradigm says new species (and therefore forms) arise through universal common descent via inheritable modifications. There are various kinds of ‘selection’ which ‘guide’ the process and some other factors like genetic drift. Sometimes it’s possible to narrow down when various forms arose. So, there’s a mechanism, a time line, no ‘who’ of course, no ‘why’ of course (except that many new forms were better adapted to their environment then their predecessors and thus (sometimes) out competed them). NOT a complete explanation but there’s something there to work with.
Now, I may be wrong but I haven’t heard a general consensus what the science of ID has to say about when design was implemented, how design was implemented, why design was implemented and what implemented design. I know some individuals have ideas on those questions but there seems to be no central dogma yet. Not saying it won’t happen just that it hasn’t yet. And I still don’t see how design (a mental activity) is a mechanism. Without implementation design is just a mental construct. Design can lead to implementation which, via physical methods and mechanisms, leads to new forms. Obviously. But just inferring design doesn’t really explain much. It’s like saying the sky is blue or a rock is heavy. Design is more a quality or characteristic without explaining how it came to be designed.
Just my opinion obviously.
JVL
“Now, I may be wrong . . .”
Yes, you are wrong.
You have been told countless times that ID does not address these issues. You don’t seem to be capable of understanding that.
JVL:
Heritable modifications to what, exactly? The point being is that no one knows of any naturalistic mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes, let alone the diversity of life.
Buy a dictionary and learn how to use it. Then you will see that design is a mechanism by definition. Only the illiterate think that design is only a mental activity.
Inferring design actually explains quite a bit. For one it means that nature didn’t do it. For another it points to intent and purpose. And still again it points to the fact we may be able to reproduce it.
That said, archaeologists always determine that design exists BEGFORE attempting to figure out when, who and why. We still don’t know who designed and built Stonehenge. We still don’t know why or how. Everything we know came from centuries of research. And Stonehenge is something we can duplicate. So only a fool would think that we should have to know how life was designed when we obviously don’t have the knowledge to duplicate the feat.
The science of ID is in the detection and study of design in nature. That people like JVL refuse to grasp that fact just proves they are trolls on an agenda.
Seversky claims that,
I guess that in order to maintain an Atheistic worldview it is absolutely necessary to blatantly ignore any and all scientific evidence that directly contradicts your materialistic worldview.
Besides Seversky blatantly ignoring the fact that he has no clue how unguided material processes can generate even a single neuron of our ‘beyond belief’ brain in the first place.
And besides Seversky blatantly ignoring millions of testimonies from Near Death Experiences that testify to experiencing their consciousness apart from their physical brain,
Besides Sevesrky blatantly ignoring those ‘inconvenient’ facts, there is another rather glaring defect in Seversky’s claim that,
Even if Seversky’s claim that “we never observe consciousness to exist apart from a physical brain” were true (and we did not have all these millions of Near Death testimonies testifying to the contrary), Seversky still runs into this rather embarrassing difficulty for his materialistic worldview.
As has been repeatedly demonstrated by experiments in quantum mechanics, physical reality simply does not exist apart from our conscious observation of it.
As the following article states, “reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”
And as the following extension of Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, (that was done with atoms instead of being done with photons), stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
My question to Seversky is this, “How in blue blazes is it possible for consciousness to ’emerge’ from the physical brain when the physical realm itself simply does not even exist until we consciously observe it?”
As should be needless to say, this presents an irresolvable dilemma for Atheistic materialists.
Namely, Darwinian materialists are claiming that consciousness came from, (i.e. ’emerged’ from), something physical that is itself ultimately dependent on the prior existence of consciousness, and/or the prior existence of conscious observation, for its own existence.
As Scott Aaronson of MIT put the dilemma for Atheistic Materialists, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
And in fact, due to such experiments as these from Quantum Mechanics that have repeatedly shown us that physical reality does not exist apart from our conscious observation of it, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this,
Moreover, as Anton Zeilinger stated in the following interview, it is not only we ourselves that don’t know where the material particle is prior to our conscious observation of it. “The particle itself does not know where it is.”
So if the particle itself does not know where it is prior to our conscious observation of it, exactly where does the particle exist prior to our conscious observation of it?
Well, prior to our conscious observation of it, the particle is mathematically defined as existing in a infinite dimensional/infinite information state,
Now, as a Christian Theist, telling me that something exists in an infinite dimensional state, that takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly,,,, well, (telling me that as a Christian Theist), that certainly sounds a lot like the particle must be existing in the infinite, (i.e. omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent), Mind of God prior to our conscious observation of it.
Thus in conclusion, I guess as long as you blatantly ignore all the scientific evidence that directly contradicts your worldview, you can, like Seversky has repeatedly done, maintain an atheistic worldview.
But if instead you follow the scientific evidence where it leads, then, time and again, you are inevitably led to a Theistic, even to a Christian, worldview.
And might I further suggest that the Christian worldview is not nearly as bad as Seversky, and other atheists, have falsely envisioned it to be in their imaginations? (i.e. God IS NOT a tyrant who is out to get us for every little misdeed and/or mistake we make, but He is instead very much ‘in our corner’.
There is NOTHING unguided on a cell or organism .Everything is guided with a great precision otherway bad things happen with life.
Barry Arrington: You have been told countless times that ID does not address these issues. You don’t seem to be capable of understanding that.
And that’s why I don’t think that ID is a ‘better’ explanation. It answers fewer questions and addresses fewer issues.
ET: Buy a dictionary and learn how to use it. Then you will see that design is a mechanism by definition.
Sure, that’s what the dictionary says. But does ‘design’ all on its own accomplish anything? Does it do anything by itself? It needs to be implemented. Otherwise it just sits there.
Inferring design actually explains quite a bit. For one it means that nature didn’t do it. For another it points to intent and purpose. And still again it points to the fact we may be able to reproduce it.
Sure but I haven’t seen any ID proponents even attempt to deal with intent and purpose let alone trying to reproduce the designed items.
That said, archaeologists always determine that design exists BEGFORE attempting to figure out when, who and why. We still don’t know who designed and built Stonehenge. We still don’t know why or how. Everything we know came from centuries of research. And Stonehenge is something we can duplicate. So only a fool would think that we should have to know how life was designed when we obviously don’t have the knowledge to duplicate the feat.
As usual your take on the archaeological process and practice is clearly not that of someone actually working in that field. We do ‘know’, with a high degree of certainty, that the human beings around at the time designed and built Stonehenge. We’ve found their tools, their living quarters. We know they existed. We have found some cosmological reasons why it might have been constructed. And we have been testing out various construction methods that might have been used. It’s not some big black hole mystery as you tend to portray it.
My point about ID is that no one in the ID community is even attempting to move beyond the design inference. It’s just not happening. It’s like no one cares to even attempt it.
The science of ID is in the detection and study of design in nature. That people like JVL refuse to grasp that fact just proves they are trolls on an agenda.
Yes, fine. You can wander around the world pointing at different life forms and saying: this was clearly designed. And this was clearly designed. Oh and that thing over there. But without going past that basic inference you haven’t given a ‘better’ explanation because you haven’t addressed all the follow on questions. And I don’t think anyone is even trying. I’d be happy to be wrong on that issue.
Something can be designed or undesigned, those are qualities of the object. The important question is: how did it come about. And ID never, ever even tries to accept that that is an important question. Evolutionary theory is all about trying to figure out how life forms arose, that is the whole point. And they’ve figured some things out. And they’re working on the parts they don’t know. That makes it a better explanation.
JVL states, “Something can be designed or undesigned, those are qualities of the object. The important question is: how did it come about. And ID never, ever even tries to accept that that is an important question.”
What in the world are you going on about?
Intelligent Design, as the very name implies, posits that only Intelligence can explain the Design we see.
In fact, your very own post is proof positive evidence that only intelligence can generate information.
I’m interested in this question of what constitutes an explanation.
At 34, JVL listed a number of reasons why invoking evolution, is “NOT a complete explanation but there’s something there to work with.”
JVL also makes what is to me an important point:
I agree that to effect the world, one’s designs must be built. Not only does implementation force one to address all the specific details that are often left out of a general design (think blueprint of a house, which does not address every nail, wire, etc.), it also forces one to think about the tools one will use, the order in which things will be built, the nature of the materials one will use, etc.
In reply to JVL, Barry writes, “You have been told countless times that ID does not address these issues. You don’t seem to be capable of understanding that.”
This I do not understand. Perhaps JVL doesn’t understand this, despite how many times he’s been told, because it doesn’t make sense. What good is ID if it doesn’t address the issues JVL mentions? For that matter, if ID goes no further than positing an intelligence in the world (which is a premise I accept, although I think of it differently than most people here), then why not accept that the processes that science has discovered are in fact the means by which design is implemented?
What I have learned here on this site, I think, is that ID is primarily a philosophical position that rejects both materialism and non-theistic perspectives about the creative power of the universe such as mine (as well as, I gather, certain theistic views such as some segments of Christianity.)
So perhaps ID does not address the questions JVL asks because the two perspectives (JVL’s and Barry’s, in this case) are interested in fundamentally different things. JVL is asking about actual explanations of what has gone on in the world, in reference to other things and events in the world. ID appears to be interested in defending a particular metaphysical interpretation of what has happened in the world, to the exclusion of other interpretations. I don’t consider such metaphysical interpretations (mine or anyone else’s) explanations. They are stories about the world that tie into our larger conceptual framework about values, meaning, purpose, etc., but they don’t explain anything in any practical way about the world itself.
Sandy: There is NOTHING unguided on a cell or organism .Everything is guided with a great precision otherway bad things happen with life.
So, do you think HIV arose via unguided processes? How about malaria? The common cold? Polio? Rickets? How about cancer? Melanoma? Anthrax? Ulcers? Acid reflux? Herpes? STDs?
JVL at 44, the point is that there is found to be far less randomness in life than Darwinists have presupposed.
The following article on human vision stated that, “Research,, has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light”.,,, “it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment,”,, and the researched added, “The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our awareness despite the ubiquitous background noise. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”,,, “What we want to know next is how does a biological system achieve such sensitivity? How does it achieve this in the presence of noise?”
Darwinian biologists simply have no clue how such is possible. As Jim Al-Khalili stated “living organisms have a certain order. A structure to them that’s very different from the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules in inanimate matter of the same complexity. In fact, living matter seems to behave in its order and its structure just like inanimate cooled down to near absolute zero. Where quantum effects play a very important role.”
In fact, finding quantum principles to be ubiquitous within biology empirically falsifies the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists:
Viola Lee: So perhaps ID does not address the questions JVL asks because the two perspectives (JVL’s and Barry’s, in this case) are interested in fundamentally different things. JVL is asking about actual explanations of what has gone on in the world, in reference to other things and events in the world. ID appears to be interested in defending a particular metaphysical interpretation of what has happened in the world, to the exclusion of other interpretations. I don’t consider such metaphysical interpretations (mine or anyone else’s) explanations. They are stories about the world that tie into our larger conceptual framework about values, meaning, purpose, etc., but they don’t explain anything in any practical way about the world itself.
And that’s fine!! I’m happy that ID is about meaning and purpose. I don’t have a problem with faith. Sometimes I wish I had some myself. But that’s not ‘explaining’ how life forms came about. That’s an attempt to explain WHY they came about. Which is great!
Bornagain77: Intelligent Design, as the very name implies, posits that only Intelligence can explain the Design we see.
Sigh. We don’t all see ‘design’. We don’t all agree that only intelligent agents can account for the life forms we observe.
To continue the ideas already expressed: ID infers that certain aspects or forms or structures of observed life on Earth are better explained via the machinations of an intelligent designer vs unguided natural processes. But when anyone starts to ask how the design was implemented or even when (not to mention the unmentionable why or who) the ID community puts down the shutters except for tiny little gun holes.
This is why I find it hard to accept ID as a ‘better’ explanation’ of the development of life on Earth. It answers fewer questions than evolutionary theory, it doesn’t even attempt to answer most questions, it refuses to accept that some questions are even acceptable.
ID answers ONE question: was life on Earth designed or undesigned? That’s it. And then it stalls. It stops. Nothing happens after that. Things could happen, work could be done. I can think of work that could be done. But no work actually happens. Why is that?
IF life on Earth was designed then when is the ID community going to address some of the basic mechanistic questions: when and how. I’ll leave why and who for the time being.
JVL at 46, The completely evidence free blind faith that Darwinists have in unguided material processes to produce unfathomable levels of complexity, that our best engineers can only look at and drool, wishing they could imitate it, makes the faith that Christians have look rather timid in comparison.
JVL at 47, once again, we see Intelligent agents producing information all the time. The impetus is on you to prove otherwise. 10 million dollars awaits you in your falsification of ID. – see Perry Marshall’s 10 million dollar OOL prize
Bornagain77: JVL at 46, The completely evidence free blind faith that Darwinists have in unguided material processes to produces unfathomable levels of complexity, that our best engineers can only look at and drool, wishing they could imitate it, makes the faith that Christians have look rather timid in comparison.
Not really addressing the points brought up.
JVL at 47, once again, we see Intelligent agents producing information all the time. The impetus is on you to prove otherwise. 10 million dollars awaits you in your falsification of ID. – see Perry Marshall’s 10 million dollar OOL prize
Again, not really addressing the points brought up about whether or not ID is a ‘better’ explanation of how life originated and developed on Earth.
Can ID move past the: we infer design stage and actually get around to answering some perfectly legitimate follow-on questions?
JVL, buy a dictionary. Design includes the implementation. What is wrong with you?
Your willful ignorance is not an argument. “the Privileged Planet” says the purpose was a universe intelligently designed for scientific discovery.
That is your uneducated opinion, anyway.
Again, humans are a what, not a who.
Look, JVL, no one from your side is trying to figure out how blind and mindless processes did it. You are a sad hypocrite. Your position is all about the how and yet you and yours have NOTHING.
JVL:
Yes, it will as soon as it is the accepted paradigm and people are [properly trained. Your position doesn’t have any answers at all. You have nothing beyond denying ID.
JVL:
Your side doesn’t have any answers. You have nothing. You don’t even have any reason to infer unguided processes did it. You can’t even test it. Yours isn’t even an explanation.
JVL, contrary to what you believe, denial of what is right in front of your eyes is not scientific evidence that unguided material processes can produce what only Intelligence has ever been observed creating. Namely information.
Again, the impetus is on you. And 10 million dollars of motivation is also in the mix for you.
Earth to Viola Lee: Do we have to know who designed something in order to infer it was designed and then study it? No
Do we have to know how something was designed in order to determine it was designed and then to study it? No
As a matter of fact REALITY dictates that in the absence of direct observation or designer input the ONLY possible way to make any scientific determination about the who or how is by studying the design and all relevant evidence. And there are plenty of artifacts that we don’t know the who or how. And yet they are still artifacts that can be studied.
As JVL likes to ignore, everything we “know” about Stonehenge came from centuries of research. And that is something we can duplicate. We cannot duplicate the art and science of creating life from scratch. The same goes for designing universes and planetary systems. So we study the design so we can figure it out. We figure it out so we can repair and maintain it. And hopefully someday we may be able to duplicate it.
And also, again, evolutionism is the mechanistic position and yet it has nothing but questions.
ET: Design includes the implementation. What is wrong with you?
Nothing. But you never talk about implementation. Why is that? Especially if design includes implementation. So that means we can ask about how and when?
Your willful ignorance is not an argument. “the Privileged Planet” says the purpose was a universe intelligently designed for scientific discovery.
Sure, how do you test that with an experiment?
Again, humans are a what, not a who.
That’s just you trying to find some way to not back down from your claims.
Look, JVL, no one from your side is trying to figure out how blind and mindless processes did it. You are a sad hypocrite. Your position is all about the how and yet you and yours have NOTHING.
Clearly they ARE trying to figure that out.
But anyway, you’re dodging the major point: ID is not and never has tried to move past the design inference. Because ID never even attempts to address the obvious and natural follow on questions it’s NOT a ‘better’ explanation. It addresses less and it intentionally limits what it will and won’t answer.
Yes, it will as soon as it is the accepted paradigm and people are [properly trained. Your position doesn’t have any answers at all. You have nothing beyond denying ID.
ID will gain traction when it offers up some explanations beyond: these things were designed.
Your side doesn’t have any answers. You have nothing. You don’t even have any reason to infer unguided processes did it. You can’t even test it. Yours isn’t even an explanation.
Again, not addressing the main point: ID is NOT a better explanation because it doesn’t even try to answer pertinent, obvious questions. In fact, it refuses to do so.
Bornagain77: JVL, contrary to what you believe, denial of what is right in front of your eyes is not scientific evidence that unguided material processes can produce what only Intelligence has ever been observed creating. Namely information.
Again, dodging the issue: can ID be considered a ‘better’ explanation when it doesn’t even try to go beyond the design inference?
ET: As a matter of fact REALITY dictates that in the absence of direct observation or designer input the ONLY possible way to make any scientific determination about the who or how is by studying the design and all relevant evidence. And there are plenty of artifacts that we don’t know the who or how. And yet they are still artifacts that can be studied.
And, guess what, no one in the ID community is even attempting to move past the design inference.
Besides, ID is defined to NOT move past the design inference. We’re told: the how and why and so forth is NOT part of ID. So, based on what ID proponents say ID CANNOT be a better explanation because it chooses to limit what it can and can’t answer. Not all questions are valid, not all questions will be considered. Is that a ‘better’ explanation?
And also, again, evolutionism is the mechanistic position and yet it has nothing but questions.
And ID says: don’t ask those questions, we don’t deal with those questions. We only consider: is something designed or not? That’s it. No moving past that point, no follow on, no nothing. And stop asking us because we told you we wouldn’t answer those questions. We’re a science that only looks at one, narrow issue. That’s it. And we’ve already decided the answer to the question. So . . .
What to do next? Hmmm . . . .
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How? A set of material symbol vehicles were set up, along with a set of material constraints, so that something could be specified among alternatives, enabling a dissipative process to be organized to persist over time. When? At the origin of life.
Mrs Johnson, we’re sure sorry about those two holes in your husband’s back, but the Sherif done said ain’t nobody saw nothin’, so we figure he died of natural causes. You need to accept thangs as they is, and go on about your business.
Regarding the OP, it would seem that emergence is a question and not an answer. As such, it’s appropriate to speak of emergent explanations only if they explain how a property emerges without reference to the principle of emergence itself.
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JVL, while you are passing out instructions on logic, can you clear up why you insist on a double standard in your reasoning about ID?
– – – – – – – – –
re 60: well-stated. Emergence is a descriptor, not a cause nor an explanation. It describes situations where various constituent parts come together to produce something significantly different than any of those parts. Then figuring out how that happens becomes the subject of investigation, with the goal being an explanation.
upright Biped: How? A set of material symbol vehicles were set up, along with a set of material constraints, so that something could be specified among alternatives, enabling a dissipative process to be organized to persist over time. When? At the origin of life.
So, what’s your explanation of how that happened?
IF ID is to be a ‘better’ explanation then lets hear the explaining.
Mrs Johnson, we’re sure sorry about those two holes in your husband’s back, but the Sherif done said ain’t nobody saw nothin’, so we figure he died of natural causes. You need to accept thangs as they is, and go on about your business.
IF ID wants to be considered a ‘better’ explanation then it’d better do some explaining. Can you do that?
JVL, while you are passing out instructions on logic, can you clear up why you insist on a double standard in your reasoning about ID?
I don’t have a double standard. You choose to selectively repeat some pieces of a long and involved issue.
AND: can ID be considered a ‘better’ explanation when it not only explains less but says it can’t and won’t go past a certain point?
Why don’t you stop rehashing old arguments and start trying to do some explaining?
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JVL,
In your own words, you say that you accept encoded symbolic content from space as a valid inference to design. So would everyone else on the planet. Name the designer.
Hypocrisy alert.
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Can’t name the designer? Nope
Can’t tell us where the designer is? Nope
Can’t say when the designer did its designing? Nope
Can’t say why? Nope
Can’t say any of that can you? Nope
Upright Biped: In your own words, you say that you accept encoded symbolic content from space as a valid inference to design. So would everyone else on the planet. Name the designer.
Me? Name the designer? That’s your belief system my friend, not mine.
Can’t name the designer? Nope
Can’t tell us where the designer is? Nope
Can’t say when the designer did its designing? Nope
Can’t say why? Nope
Can’t say any of that can you? Nope
Nicely put. Thanks for pointing out the questions you can’t/won’t/refuse to address.
At the risk of being boring . . . here’s the question: can ID be considered a ‘better’ explanation when it can’t, indeed refuses by definition, to answer more than one question?
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Good god man, can you not see that everyone with a lick of sense clearly sees what you are doing? Do you really think you invented this line of defense and no one has seen such a thing before, and no one catches what’s going on?
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Why the double standard JVL?
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Upright Biped: Good god man, can you not see that everyone with a lick of sense clearly sees what you are doing? Do you really think you invented this line of defense and no one has seen such a thing before, and no one catches what’s going on?
I’d just like you to address my question: can ID be considered a ‘better’ explanation when it, by definition, can only answer one particular question.
Why the double standard JVL?
Why can’t you, why won’t you answer my question? Afraid of something?
You can keep trying to deflect the issue but you are clearly not even trying to answer my issue. Why is that?
I am sorry to see this discussion turn into a replay of an old feud.
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JVL, I answered your questions “How” and “When”.
You didn’t lift a finger to explore those answers because to do so would force you to have to (once again) deal directly with the physical evidence of design. You already know that all the established science and history is against your on that front, and to add insult to injury, it is all clearly documented and entirely coherent as well. That is also why you will not explore those answers even after being embarrassingly prompted by this reply.
Perhaps its time for a new sock?
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Viola, referring to a deception being repeated (over and over again) as an “old feud” is cheap help.
Are you signaling you’d like to step in?
Upright Biped: JVL, I answered your questions “How” and “When”.
Regarding your answers at #59 . . . I don’t think those responses were very helpful. Why not get more specific? When, exactly, was the origin of life on Earth? How were all those symbols set up and implemented into the natural order? How did ‘the designer’ get the chemistry to follow their plan?
You didn’t lift a finger to explore those answers because to do so would force you to have to (once again) deal directly with the physical evidence of design. You already know that all the established science and history is against your on that front, and to add insult to injury, it is all clearly documented and entirely coherent as well. That is also why you will not explore those answers even after being embarrassingly prompted by this reply.
I have discussed those issues with you. And now I’m asking a question: can ID be considered a ‘better’ explanation when it, by definition, cannot answer obvious follow-on questions? As opposed to unguided evolutionary theory.
Perhaps its time for a new sock?
Perhaps it’s time for you and the ID community to step up to the plate and deliver the goods. If you can.
Let’s just focus on the question I have asked: can ID be considered a ‘better’ explanation’ when it, by definition, cannot address many questions about the origin or life on Earth?
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They were delivered. You could not refute them, indeed you had to agree with them. This forced you to apply a double-standard to your position in order to stay on the field.
Proof of double-standard: In your own words, you say that you accept encoded symbolic content from space as a valid inference to design. So would everyone else on the planet. Name the designer.
Upright Biped: They were delivered. You could not refute them, indeed you had to agree with them. This forced you to apply a double-standard to your position in order to stay on the field.
Perhaps you’d like to answer my question: can ID be considered a ‘better’ explanation when, by definition, it cannot answer certain questions which unguided evolutionary theory addresses?
Proof of double-standard: In your own words, you say that you accept encoded symbolic content from space as a valid inference to design. So would everyone else on the planet. Name the designer.
There is no designer. In my opinion.
Perhaps you’d like to at least acknowledge my question: can ID be considered a ‘better’ explanation when it, by definition, cannot answer certain questions which are addressed by unguided evolutionary theory?
re 73: Absolutely not! 🙂
I had some things to say upstream, but that was before you showed up this morning. Your interaction with JVL goes back a number of threads, and reappears in approximately the same format when it does, it seems.
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I’ve already answered it. It has been answered by others as well.
That sure seems incoherent. Let us put it in play and see if that is the case:
– – – – – – – – – –
JVL: I would not be surprised at all if we find electromagnetic evidence of intelligent beings in other solar systems
UB: How would we know if we found “electromagnetic evidence of intelligent beings”? What would that be?
JVL: Something like in the movie Contact. A signal that’s very clearly NOT produced by unguided processes. A signal which, after inspection, was shown to have compressed data.
UB: So you accept encoded symbolic content as a universal inference to the presence of an unknown intelligence in one domain, while immediately denying that same physical evidence in another domain.
Why the double standard?
JVL: Because there is no plausible designer available.
UB: Well, who is the designer of the symbolic content in your SETI scenario?
JVL: There is no designer. In my opinion.
– – – – – – – – – –
Nope. That’s incoherent.
Upright Biped: I’ve already answered it. It has been answered by others as well.
Not very clearly or obviously in this thread. Why not make your stance crystal clear, here, now.
Nope. That’s incoherent.
Yes, I know, thinking there is no design (and therefore not designer) is an incoherent stance. That is your opinion. But that doesn’t mean you are correct.
IF ID wants to address the ‘when’ then let’s be specific, unlike you. WHEN do you think design was implemented?
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JVL: I would not be surprised at all if we find electromagnetic evidence of intelligent beings in other solar systems
UB: How would we know if we found “electromagnetic evidence of intelligent beings”? What would that be?
JVL: Something like in the movie Contact. A signal that’s very clearly NOT produced by unguided processes. A signal which, after inspection, was shown to have compressed data.
UB: So you accept encoded symbolic content as a universal inference to the presence of an unknown intelligence in one domain, while immediately denying that same physical evidence in another domain.
Why the double standard?
JVL: Because there is no plausible designer available.
UB: Well, who is the designer of the symbolic content in your SETI scenario?
JVL: There is no designer. In my opinion.
UB: That is incoherent.
JVL: Yes, I know, thinking there is no design (and therefore not designer) is an incoherent stance. That is your opinion. But that doesn’t mean you are correct.
UB: So why then do you think finding a signal containing symbolic content would be “electromagnetic evidence of intelligent beings in other solar systems”? In your effort to evade the fact that you apply a gratuitous double-standard in your reasoning, you didn’t appropriately remove the double-standard as would be the reasoned response, instead you reduced your entire position to complete incoherence.
VL
But, don’t underestimate the entertainment value of a childish cat-fight. 🙂
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JVL: Finding this would tell us that.
UB: If it tells us that over there, then it must tell us that over here too.
JVL: No it doesn’t
UB: Why not?
JVL: Because it doesn’t even tell us that!
Folks,
I see I am both early [c 2007] and rather late here. I note from SB at 25:
SB is correct. Chlorine, a halogen [one short of a closed p-orbital], is highly electronegative and readily closes a relevant orbital by snatching up an electron, whilst Sodium, an alkali metal is much less tight in its hold on the last s-electron. This is the basis for the old 8-electron shell rule used in basic chem courses. They therefore form electrostatically coupled ions in a close packed crystalline structure. Melt it and we have ions, dissolve it and the same save with water molecules clustering around.
NaCl is one of the commonest examples of salts as ionic solids.
That sort of effect has zip to do with trying to say a reasoning, free mind governed by its awareness of moral duties, somehow emerges from a computational substrate, more or less neural networks in the brain. By contrast, we can readily show that computational substrates are dynamic stochastic machines, driven by cause-effect, not ground-consequent bonds.
A much sounder view is suggested by Eng Derek Smith. the body forms a cybernetic loop, with an in the loop neural network controller. That controller can be explained further as interacting with a supervisory controller. So, the brain is the mind’s computer, not the mind’s source.
Quantum influence effects have been suggested.
KF
Please note that Upright Biped‘s attempt to hijack the thread and direct it to some other topic has not been decried by the moderators. A clear double standard.
Also, please note, that Upright Biped has consistently and intentionally avoided answering the question I have presented: can ID claim to be a ‘better’ explanation when it chooses, by definition, to avoid certain obvious and natural questions about the biological start of life on Earth.
🙂 I said everything is guided . I missed where you proved me wrong.
Sandy: ? I said everything is guided . I missed where you proved me wrong.
So, you think HIV and Malaria were designed? Is that correct? What about sickle cell anaemia?
JVL, h’mm, did you notice that genetic engineering is now a technology? As in, design in the world of life is a demonstrated technology based on well known design methods and principles. Your objection is dead. KF
You don’t have a scientific mind. If 2 living systems fight that means one of them must not be guided? How in the world you came up with this idea?
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You asked a question at 56. I answered it at 59.
I’ve already told you that if you are going to stay here and attack ID, then I reserve the right to question your statements. You always squeal to position this as a terror in your life. Who knows why you think your reasoning should be exempt from critique, particularly given how utterly incoherent it is.
Your question has been answered. It shouldn’t even need an answer. Nowhere in the intellectual world do we say “Unless you can answer everything, you must not answer anything”. It’s ridiculous on its face. One proposal on the OoL has entailments that were predicted, experimentally confirmed, and is the only cause knows to be adequate to the observation. The other has never been known to be such a cause, and no one can even figure out how it could be possible. Let’s go with #2, cause #1 doesn’t answer everything! Right.
Kairosfocus: JVL, h’mm, did you notice that genetic engineering is now a technology? As in, design in the world of life is a demonstrated technology based on well known design methods and principles. Your objection is dead.
What objection are you referring to exactly? What did I say that was incorrect?
By the way, maybe you’d like to answer my question which everyone else has dodged: Can ID claim to be a ‘better’ explanation when it avoids answering, by definition, questions regarding how and when life was initiated on Earth.
Sandy: You don’t have a scientific mind. If 2 living systems fight that means one of them must not be guided? How in the world you came up with this idea?
Who knows? Why can’t you answer basic and simple questions? Do you think HIV was designed? If not then where did it come from?
Upright Biped: I’ve already told you that if you are going to stay here and attack ID, then I reserve the right to question your statements. You always squeal to position this as a terror in your life (sic). Who knows why you think your reasoning should be exempt from critique, particularly given how utterly incoherent it is.
I never said my reasoning was exempt from critique. But I would like a simple and direct answer to my question.
Your question has been answered. It shouldn’t even need an answer. Nowhere in the intellectual world do we say “Unless you can answer everything, you must not answer anything”. It’s ridiculous on its face. One proposal on the OoL has entailments that were predicted, experimentally confirmed, and is the only cause knows (sic) to be adequate to the observation. The other has never been known to be such a cause, and no one can even figure out how it could be possible. Let’s go with #2, cause #1 doesn’t answer everything! Right.
Sigh. Not only do some of those sentences not make much sense but you still have not answered my question.
Can ID be said to be a better ‘explanation’ when it cannot, by definition, answer certain questions about the origin of life or about the implementation of design?
I’m not the one who has said over and over and over again that ID does not address the how and when and why and who of when design was implemented. That’s down to you guys. You continue to say that ID is a ‘better’ explanation of the development of life when you also says it cannot address those topics. I don’t see how it can be a ‘better’ explanation when it cannot address those topics. ID seems to be able to only answer one, specific question and to go no further than that. That doesn’t sound like a ‘better’ explanation to me.
My friend, which part of EVERYTHING you missed? Nothing work without being designed.
JVL
JVL, you are a hypocritical coward. UB points that out. Why would we decry that? It is generally considered a good thing when hypocrisy and cowardice are called out. I have no idea why you would think otherwise (admittedly, being the one called out probably influences your view in this particular instance).
JVL, you had your answer staring you in the face and could not acknowledge it. Intelligent design in the world of life — though it’s early stages for us — is an established technology. Design techniques exist and are widely practiced. That’s enough for any reasonable person. As for reconstructing the unobserved past on ideologically loaded assumptions, we can leave it to others. There are enough traces to show clear design: code, so language, algorithms so goals, associated molecular nanotech, it’s clear we are dealing with confession by projection to the despised other, here. Your cognitive dissonance is drowning out your talk-points and rhetorical demands. It’s over, your objection is dead. KF
JVL:— “Can ID be said to be a better ‘explanation’ when it cannot, by definition, answer certain questions about the origin of life or about the implementation of design?”
Yes. The very fact that it cannot — and doesn’t try — to explain those things shows that it doesn’t want to bite off more than it can chew. The whole point of ID is to limit the scope of the study so as to achieve rigor and to use a methodology that is specifically formulated to test the (design) hypothesis based on the expertise of the scientist who formulated it.
Even the narrow hypothesis “It was designed” can be further narrowed into categories such as, it was designed because it “explains the existence of information in the cell,* (Meyer) or because *its features are “irreducibly complex* (Behe), or because ” *an explanatory filter can rule out chance or necessity” (Dembski), and so on. These are all evidence-based propositions based on empirical observation and analysis.
If the competing paradigm of unguided evolution were too limit its scope and argue that it can explain certain changes in a given species, it would not be biting off more than it can chew. But, of course, it doesn’t submit to that kind of discipline at all. On the contrary, the so-called theory of evolution holds that naturalistic forces, acting alone, possess the causal power to drive the entire macro- evolutionary process from beginning to end and through every taxonomic level. Where is the evidence? Where is the rigor? Where is the methodological discipline? It doesn’t exist. Why would you think that the ideology of unguided evolution is superior to the science of intelligent design?
JVL:
And guess what? Your ignorance is not an argument. “the Privileged Planet” obviously moves past the design inference.
Just as evolution and abiogenesis are held separate. There isn’t anything in ID that prevents people from asking and seeking answers to the other questions. That is what proves ID is NOT a dead end.
ID is a better explanation because it is testable and potentially falsifiable. Saying Stonehenge is an artifact is a better explanation than geological processes for the same formation.
What an infant you are, eh? ID is OK with those questions. Those questions prove that ID is not a scientific dead end. What is needed is training of generations of investigators to look into these questions. I have told you this many times and yet you continue to dodge the facts.
JVL:
We don’t know it. And it is obviously above our capabilities. And there are more important questions to answer.
It’s all covered in the book
No, it’s a fact. You are conflating a what for a who. As I said if that is good enough than saying a non-human designed us is OK.
Name the labs and the experiments.
Why? Saying these things were designed is still by far more than you and yours have.
Your side can’t answer anything. It is all just a long, untestable narrative based on nothing more than imagination. All you can do is try to poke holes in ID but all you have is your scientific illiteracy.
So it is very telling that when to refute ID all you and yours have to do is support the claims of your very own position, you choose to flail away at ID for not doing something that it was never intended to do. It’s as if evolution is false because abiogenesis hasn’t panned out.
Of related note to ‘identifying the Designer’,
Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe – March 30, 2021
https://www.amazon.com/Return-God-Hypothesis-Compelling-Scientific/dp/0062071505
Description Excerpt: ,,, Meyer demonstrates how discoveries in cosmology and physics coupled with those in biology help to establish the identity of the designing intelligence behind life and the universe.
Meyer argues that theism — with its affirmation of a transcendent, intelligent and active creator — best explains the evidence we have concerning biological and cosmological origins.
Previously Meyer refrained from attempting to answer questions about “who” might have designed life. Now he provides an evidence-based answer to perhaps the ultimate mystery of the universe. In so doing, he reveals a stunning conclusion: the data support not just the existence of an intelligent designer of some kind—but the existence of a personal God.
For the record, and to jump backwards three or four sub-threads, I’d like to note that Barry never corrected his misrepresentation of what I said at 8, or my views, in his addendum to the OP. I’m not objecting to the argument Barry made: I’m just objecting to his thinking that I was making the claims he ascribed to me.
OP: Sam Harris … understand[s] this is an impossible burden and therefore den[ies] that we have subjective self-awareness at all, and our perception that we do is an illusion.
The humorous thing is that he never identifies what the illusion is of. “Illusion of consciousness” and “illusion of free-will” are nonsense terms. It’s like saying it’s an “illusion that I exist at all”. Nonsensical.
“Consciousness” is simply the label we use for the primary “experiencer” that is the core of our existence, regardless of what it’s experiencing. It is what it is. Calling it an “illusion” doesn’t change the nature of what it actually is: the experiencer. An experiencer that is experiencing an “illusion” would still be an experiencer! It’s just word games with people like him.
It’s possible that people like Harris are zombies with no consciousness, and so doesn’t experience or understand what non-zombies experience. That would explain a lot.
JVL @ 34 –
I think that would depend on what comes next, after stating “it’s designed” or “it emerges”. If there is more detail about how something was designed, or how an emergent property came about, then I’d say that it is an explanation.
Without that it is at best (I think) a potential explanation. I guess the extent to which one sees it as a potential explanation rather than a semantic dodge depends on the extent to which you see a commitment to filling out the explanation.
BO’H: a good point of reference is to note that design in the world of life is now (albeit in infancy) an established fact with associated technologies. Similarly, molecular scale nanotech. Similarly, computing tech. We know that FSCO/I can be produced even at molecular scale as we have done so, though it is early days yet. We further know that technologies often improve as the state of the art advances. So, we can point to the like causes like principle. By contrast, there is no good, actual observational demonstration that blind chance and/or mechanical necessity can and does create FSCO/I beyond 500 – 1,000 bits of complexity; where just the genome for a first cell based life form is 100 – 1,000+ kbits. This is backed by the search challenge to find islands of function [and yes, tight configuration constraints lead to tight functional zones] in large configuration spaces. Similarly, alphanumeric string data structure codes expressing algorithms such as for protein synthesis are cases of language and goal-directed stepwise process. Those too are signatures of design. Where, lastly, playing games with methodological rules and preferences to shore up an otherwise unsupported inference then using that to block alternatives cannot be sound reasoning. No, methodological naturalism is ideological straightjacket not sound science. And all of this has long been on the table, we have pretty much known what DNA is about in key parts for 50 – 70 years now. KF
It occurred to me this morning that perhaps Barry did not read my post at 16, objecting to his comments about me in the OP, so I apologize for saying Barry “never corrected” them at 100. But the OP is wrong about me, and I’ll let it go at that.
Karen McMannus,
@101. Well put.
I agree about post #101. Karen has made a number of interesting comments here and on the Hitchhiker thread. Our consciousness is an immediate fact. Understanding how it relates to our physical body and our actions is mysterious and hard to sort out in many ways, but that doesn’t negate the primacy of our conscious experience.
Bob O’H said:
These, I think, are two separate arguments. The argument about consciousness is not between whether it is designed or emergent; it’s about whether consciousness is emergent or it exists independently of the brain – IOW, whether or not it is caused by the physical conditions of the brain.
This question can answered logically or scientifically. Categorizing it as a potential “emergent quality like other emergent physical qualities” is a categorical error, as Mr. Arrington has pointed out. Scientifically, it has been demonstrated that consciousness is not an emergent phenomena of the physical brain via well-researched and studied NDEs where, in certain instances, the patient is deliberately put in a brain-dead state and later they can not only describe what was going on around them at the time they were in that brain-dead state, they have detailed what was going on at that time in other locations – rooms down the hall, etc.
KM said:
I call those people potential NPCs, or “game” characters generated by what you would call “the Root” to “fill in” certain aspects of our experience. As you say, this would explain a lot of people and the inane things they say.
I took Karen’s remark about zombies as a joke.
VL said:
So did I. However, I’ve found that perspective very effective in increasing my enjoyment of life when interacting with certain people.
🙂
Sandy: My friend, which part of EVERYTHING you missed? Nothing work without being designed.
So . . . if HIV was designed then what do you think it’s purpose is?
Barry Arrington: JVL, you are a hypocritical coward. UB points that out. Why would we decry that? It is generally considered a good thing when hypocrisy and cowardice are called out. I have no idea why you would think otherwise (admittedly, being the one called out probably influences your view in this particular instance).
Well, you’re the boss here . . . I think. You do own the rights to the site now don’t you?
Kairosfocus: JVL, you had your answer staring you in the face and could not acknowledge it. Intelligent design in the world of life — though it’s early stages for us — is an established technology. Design techniques exist and are widely practiced. That’s enough for any reasonable person. As for reconstructing the unobserved past on ideologically loaded assumptions, we can leave it to others. There are enough traces to show clear design: code, so language, algorithms so goals, associated molecular nanotech, it’s clear we are dealing with confession by projection to the despised other, here. Your cognitive dissonance is drowning out your talk-points and rhetorical demands. It’s over, your objection is dead.
I was just asking a question. I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
StephenB: Yes. The very fact that it cannot — and doesn’t try — to explain those things shows that it doesn’t want to bite off more than it can chew. The whole point of ID is to limit the scope of the study so as to achieve rigor and to use a methodology that is specifically formulated to test the (design) hypothesis based on the expertise of the scientist who formulated it.
Okay. But does that make it ‘better’?
Perhaps it would be good to explore what ID proponents mean by it being a ‘better’ explanation of the data?
If the competing paradigm of unguided evolution were too limit its scope and argue that it can explain certain changes in a given species, it would not be biting off more than it can chew. But, of course, it doesn’t submit to that kind of discipline at all. On the contrary, the so-called theory of evolution holds that naturalistic forces, acting alone, possess the causal power to drive the entire macro- evolutionary process from beginning to end and through every taxonomic level. Where is the evidence? Where is the rigor? Where is the methodological discipline? It doesn’t exist. Why would you think that the ideology of unguided evolution is superior to the science of intelligent design?
If you’re asking me personally I’m happy to answer (and deal with the barbs and catcalls) which are inevitably to follow. Basically it comes down to multiple threads or types of evidence all pointing in the same direction. So: not just fossils, not just the genomic record, not just the bio-geographic distribution, not just the morphological evidence. Taken all together I find the unguided explanation stronger and more closely matching all the available data. I’m happy to elaborate if you wish.
ET: “the Privileged Planet” obviously moves past the design inference.
Well, it pushes it out into the cosmos anyway.
Just as evolution and abiogenesis are held separate. There isn’t anything in ID that prevents people from asking and seeking answers to the other questions. That is what proves ID is NOT a dead end.
Sure, of course. When comparing two contradictory explanations the one that explains more surely should be the better one though.
ID is a better explanation because it is testable and potentially falsifiable. Saying Stonehenge is an artifact is a better explanation than geological processes for the same formation.
I think the unguided evolutionary theory is testable and potentially falsifiable.
What an infant you are, eh? ID is OK with those questions. Those questions prove that ID is not a scientific dead end. What is needed is training of generations of investigators to look into these questions. I have told you this many times and yet you continue to dodge the facts.
So, let me get this straight . . . many ID proponents say that unguided evolutionary proponents have had 150 years of time to try and justify their ideas and so now it’s time to call it quits. But you’re saying ID needs generations, i.e. many, many decades of time just to come up to speed? Is that not a double standard?
We don’t know it. And it is obviously above our capabilities. And there are more important questions to answer.
But you did say that implementation was part of design! So inferring design means inferring implementation yes? Why is that not an important question to answer? What could be more important, from a scientific perspective, than that?
No, it’s a fact. You are conflating a what for a who. As I said if that is good enough than saying a non-human designed us is OK.
Where are they? Do they even exist?
So it is very telling that when to refute ID all you and yours have to do is support the claims of your very own position, you choose to flail away at ID for not doing something that it was never intended to do. It’s as if evolution is false because abiogenesis hasn’t panned out.
It’s not the same because of what you are inferring: a being (of some kind) did something at some time (both unspecified) that affected the origination AND the development of life on Earth. Your hypothesis encompasses both things. Evolutionary theory does not.
It’s perfectly okay to point out the shortfalls in the knowledge of the origin of life on Earth. Go for it. It’s okay to try and poke holes in unguided evolutionary theory. Go for it. They do depend on each other to some extent but Darwin’s original notion did not explicitly address how the first self-replicators came about. And I think that most working biologists would agree that the problems and issues of the origin of life are somewhat separate from what happened after that.
But ID supposes that both the origin of life and the development of life are due to some unspecified and undetermined intelligent designer. You choose to lump those things together.
KM: I took Karen’s remark about zombies as a joke.
Even though the tone is meant to be jocular, the idea is no joke. Not to me. I have a strong suspicion that it is true. But there is no way to conclusively prove it.
WJM: So did I. However, I’ve found that perspective very effective in increasing my enjoyment of life when interacting with certain people.
Me too. But my view is a bit stronger. I have more or less adopted it as a working hypothesis given the informal tests that I have conducted on many people. My sample size is anecdotal level, but roughly 1/2 of the people easily understand the concepts and points I make when it comes to consciousness and freewill, and 1/2 don’t. The 1/2 that don’t understand, never get it. This is revealed by the language they use. Again, not proof. But cause for serious suspicion.
One would expect that a zombie would be ultimately unable to deal with certain concepts that revolve around consciousness and freewill. (When I learned of the Turing Test many decades ago, I though that probing a putative conscious entity about consciousness and freewill would be a good, maybe the best, way to “attack” it.) That coupled with the fact that I can’t prove that anyone besides myself is conscious, makes it downright plausible to me. Solipsis is a particular philosophical view, but the fact exists that I cannot prove the existence of consciousness in another, and a lot of people seems to be unable to understand fundamental ideas about it when I talk to them.
As for a Creator’s role in all this. NPCs are conceivably an efficient way to handle certain logistical concerns within the spacetime “game”, as it were.
If creative power that flows from some “Oneness” that is other than the physical world but is pervasively present in the physical world, as is my preferred metaphysical speculation, then the distinction between “unguided” and “guided” is moot: a false and empirically non-productive dichotomy.
As I wrote in 43 above,
KM @117:
As you say, it’s impossible to ascertain for sure, but personally I would be surprised if this is not the case.
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VL at 118
“… the distinction between “unguided” and “guided” is moot: a false and empirically non-productive dichotomy” if you assume your conclusions without evidence, correct? Just to be sure.
And if we document evidence of guidance, we should ignore those observations in order to maintain the assumption?
EDIT: Perhaps “ignore” is the wrong word. Maybe we should just say “creative forces are pervasive in the natural world, so we should not be concerned with these observations”.
re 118: I started the sentence you quote with “If creative power that flows from some “Oneness” that is other than the physical world but is pervasively present in the physical world, as is my preferred metaphysical speculation …”, so, yes, I am aware that this is taking an assumption as the premise. But is is a metaphysical speculation, and like many (most? all?) other metaphysical speculations, it can accommodate anything and everything. It’s similar to the theistic belief that everything that happens is as God wills, or ET and Sandy’s belief that everything is designed. As I also said in 117, these are not really explanations. If creative power pervades the universe, down to every quantum event, or if everything is as God wills, then the guided/unguided dichotomy doesn’t offer a useful distinction that I can see.
A moral purpose . This world was built for moral war.
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So it is an assumption without evidence then. Okay.
JVL: — Okay. But does that make it ‘better’? {The design hypothesis over the NeoDarwinian claim.]Perhaps it would be good to explore what ID proponents mean by it being a ‘better’ explanation of the data?
Well, I can certainly share my own meaning. The design hypothesis is a better explanation not only because it is more rigorous and likely to be correct, but also because it provides us with sound direction. If it was designed, then we can take it to the next level by using common sense reasoning about what really happened. In this case, it would indicate that it was nature’s God and not just nature that was responsible for biodiversity. It is a straightforward analysis. Effects require causes, and a design requires a designer. The best candidate would be God. Let’s not forget that the whole aim of the Darwinian enterprise was to provide an alternative creation story. In other words, they sent us in the wrong direction by saying that God’s creative design was not needed and that nature could do that job all by itself.
—“Basically it comes down to multiple threads or types of evidence all pointing in the same direction. So: not just fossils, not just the genomic record, not just the bio-geographic distribution, not just the morphological evidence. Taken all together I find the unguided explanation stronger and more closely matching all the available data. I’m happy to elaborate if you wish.”
I can’t tell you how many times I have asked the proponents of that view to provide the evidence and no one has ever done it. What they did was to show the power of nature to create small changes and then claim that it was also responsible for the large changes (from one type of living organism into another). If you can do it, you will be the first. Meanwhile, I don’t hesitate to make this claim and issue this challenge: There is not a shred of evidence to indicate that unguided evolution has the causal power to drive the entire macro-evolutionary process from beginning to end and through every taxonomic level.
Wrong. Your own answer is EVIDENCE. Isn’t that perfect?
at 123, UB says, “So it is an assumption without evidence then.”
Hmmmm. I didn’t say that. All of us try to integrate our experience of the world into our metaphysical systems. For instance, I consider the existence of our universe, with the entire quantum/fundamental particle/atomic structure out of which all physical things are built, as evidence for a creative power that underlies that existence and structure and is other than physical. Therefore, I am not a materialist (there are other reasons also). My assumptions are not evidence-free.
However, other people use that same evidence to believe in a God that is omnipresent and who’s will underlies everything that happens, and others believe in other metaphysical interpretations of the evidence. There are some who believe in what might be called an interventionist God who might believe that some things are guided and some are not, and try to distinguish between the two, so for them the guided/unguided distinction might make sense.
All of our metaphysical systems draw on empirical evidence that is available to everyone, but they all also include superstructures of interpretation that are not amenable to any consensus means of verification. Thus we have different world views. These worldviews do not exist in an evidence-free vacuuum, but they also include aspects which are beyond evidence, and which we choose to believe based on everything we can bear on the subject, both internal and external.
Sandy: A moral purpose . This world was built for moral war.
HIV was designed for a moral purpose. Is there a way to discern what that purpose is?
StephenB: The design hypothesis is a better explanation not only because it is more rigorous and likely to be correct, but also because it provides us with sound direction.
You might say the same for choosing a military career over one in advertising; the military career is more rigorous and has a defined direction and purpose.
I can’t tell you how many times I have asked the proponents of that view to provide the evidence and no one has ever done it. What they did was to show the power of nature to create small changes and then claim that it was also responsible for the large changes (from one type of living organism into another). If you can do it, you will be the first. Meanwhile, I don’t hesitate to make this claim and issue this challenge: There is not a shred of evidence to indicate that unguided evolution has the causal power to drive the entire macro-evolutionary process from beginning to end and through every taxonomic level.
Hmmmm . . . If you go on a 10 mile hike you have to take a lot of steps. Each step doesn’t get you very far but no one would suggest that there’s a limit or barrier to the sum of a bunch of small steps added together. You can travel 10 miles, 20 miles, 30 miles or more all by adding together a lot of single small steps.
Your view seems to be that a bunch of small taxonomic steps can only add up to a small total journey. Why is that? Why should there be a barrier to the total distance a collection of small steps can make?
Or how about this: at one point you were a single cell. When your dad’s sperm mated with your mother’s egg the sum total of you was a single very small object. Which then became two cells. Then four. Then eight. Each division was a very, very small step, seemingly adding nothing to the total. But, at some point, that process arrived at what you are right now.
Mathematically Calculus (invented/discovered by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz) says that something that is smooth and continuous can be thought of as being an infinite sum of a bunch of extremely small, incremental steps. Zeno’s paradox is an early recognition of that concept.
When you look at unguided evolution and assume that a bunch of small steps cannot possibly add up to something big on what basis do you make that assumption? Why should there be a boundary or a barrier?
“Every time human DNA is passed from one generation to the next it accumulates 100–200 new mutations, according to a DNA-sequencing analysis of the Y chromosome.”
https://www.nature.com/news/2009/090827/full/news.2009.864.html
That’s a lot of small steps right there.
StephenB: The design hypothesis is a better explanation not only because it is more rigorous and likely to be correct, but also because it provides us with sound direction.
JVL: —“You might say the same for choosing a military career over one in advertising; the military career is more rigorous and has a defined direction and purpose.”
You bypassed my main point in an attempt to neutralize it. I said it was superior because it provided *sound* direction.” In other words, it puts us on a road that leads to truth and counters unguided evolution, which imposes unsound direction and leads us into error. An explanation that is likely true is better than explanation that is likely false.
SB: I can’t tell you how many times I have asked the proponents of unguided evolution to provide the evidence and no one has ever done it. What they did was to show the power of nature to create small changes and then claim that it was also responsible for the large changes (from one type of living organism into another). If you can do it, you will be the first. Meanwhile, I don’t hesitate to make this claim and issue this challenge: There is not a shred of evidence to indicate that unguided evolution has the causal power to drive the entire macro-evolutionary process from beginning to end and through every taxonomic level.
[JVL wrote four irrelevant paragraphs and ignored the challenge.]
StephenB: You bypassed my main point in an attempt to neutralize it. I said it was superior because it provided *sound* direction.” In other words, it puts us on a road that leads to truth and counters unguided evolution, which imposes unsound direction and leads us into error. An explanation that is likely true is better than explanation that is likely false.
Perhaps you’d like to define ‘sound’ direction then. Or, in other words, what is truth? How can you tell what it is before you get there?
[JVL wrote four irrelevant paragraphs and ignored the challenge.]
I’d like to know why you think there is a barrier to an accumulation of small incremental steps. Where does the boundary take place?
Putting it another way: what is the boundary between small changes and large changes in living creatures? Can you define it scientifically?
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VL at 126
I apologize for not being more clear. You characterized the distinction between guided and unguided as being “false” and “empirically non-productive”, to which I appended “if you assume your conclusions without evidence”. To this you concurred that you were indeed “aware that you were taking an assumption as the premise”. To my mind, the claim of “false and non-productive” are positive statements that would have a direct impact on the ID project. These then would be supported by evidence, but as you say, they are in your premises instead. You have now expanded to say that your premises are supported by experiential evidence that would apparently support your positive claims; but this was evidence which you did not offer. It appears to me that the claims of “false and non-productive” is only in play if they are assumed as a premise, otherwise, the critical observations made by design proponents are still what they are. What is it you say to design thinkers when they present the universal evidence of an encoded symbol system and language structure as the proximate cause of biological organization? These observations were predicted in logic and subsequently confirmed by experiment. Are we to take these facts and say that they are merely an example of the creative force that pervades nature, or, are we within reason to observe that these same physical conditions are otherwise found exclusively as a result of intelligent action, and without contradiction to other causes demonstrated to be adequate to the observation, they form a valid inference to intelligent input?
JVL
Going back to the subject of the OP (consciousness), the design explanation is obviously better because it might possibly be a true explanation (whether it is or not is another question) of how consciousness came into being. Emergence, on the other hand, is obviously inferior because it is not an explanation at all. It is a confession of ignorance disguised as an explanation.
Yes, my point about guided/unguided being a non-productive dichotomy applies to certain metaphysical views, including mine and other philosophical and religious views. I also mentioned in 126 that there are some metaphysical views for which the guided/unguided dichotomy is meaningful, and ID appears to be one of them. As I said in 43 and quoted in 118, ” I think ID is primarily a philosophical position that rejects both materialism and non-theistic perspectives about the creative power of the universe such as mine (as well as, I gather, certain theistic views such as some segments of Christianity.) … ID appears to be interested in defending a particular metaphysical interpretation of what has happened in the world,”
You write, “You have now expanded to say that your premises are supported by experiential evidence that would apparently support your positive claims; but this was evidence which you did not offer.”
But I wrote, “For instance, I consider the existence of our universe, with the entire quantum/fundamental particle/atomic structure out of which all physical things are built, as evidence for a creative power that underlies that existence and structure and is other than physical.” That’s quite a bit of evidence, it seems to me. (FWIW, consciousness is another piece of evidence, to me, that a nonmaterial, creative power is present in our universe.)
You write, “What is it you say to design thinkers when they present the universal evidence of an encoded symbol system and language structure as the proximate cause of biological organization? These observations were predicted in logic and subsequently confirmed by experiment. Are we to take these facts and say that they are merely an example of the creative force that pervades nature, or, are we within reason to observe that these same physical conditions are otherwise found exclusively as a result of intelligent action, and without contradiction to other causes demonstrated to be adequate to the observation, they form a valid inference to intelligent input?”
I don’t see the creative force that pervades the universe as “merely”. The metaphysical difference we are exploring here is how does the creativity (or intelligence, in your view) manifest in the world. As I’ve said, ID seems to see intelligent action as being an occasional event that takes place in a world mostly full of unintelligent action: hence the guided/unguided dichotomy. I see the creative force at play always (possibly a telling metaphor), capable of effecting the world in ways different from the cause-and-effect relationships that we can experience and study in the physical world.
Over on the Hitchhiker thread, I wrote this, as a speculation about how the creative power might manifest in our universe:
So the One from which creativity arises can do so without specifically intended action. If you will, the “intelligence” of the One is of a different sort than ours, and precedes ours. Furthermore, I don’t think the words “act” and “intent” even apply to the One: those are anthropomorphisms. The universe started long before us, and we are a creature of the universe (and let me remind here that I mean not just the physical universe but also whatever non-material aspects underlie it), so the conscious sense of intelligent action that we experience is a local event (local to ourselves as a living organism), but shouldn’t be taken as the model for how the universe of whole is.
I wrote much more than I intended, most of which is speculative metaphysics, but not any more so, I think, than more traditional Western metaphysics. ‘Nuf for now.
JVL, you have been here long enough to know the threshold set by search challenge on sol system scale [10^57 atoms] or observed — the only actually observed — cosmos scale with 10^80 atoms and about 10^17s, where chemical reactions might go up to 10^-12 or 10^-14 s, we are dealing with organic reactions. On that gamut, 500 to 1,000 bits of configuration space [3.27*106150 to 1.07*10^301 possibilities] becomes too large to search more than a negligibly small fraction, where the tight mutual adaptation of parts to create configuration-based function leads to a pattern of deeply isolated islands of function in large configuration spaces. For example, protein fold domains exist by the thousand and are deeply isolated in AA sequence space; islands of function are real. This is search challenge. Where, bits is WLOG as things like autocad show that complex designs can be reduced to binary based description languages [think, animal, vegetable or mineral writ large]. Try to imagine 10^57 atoms, each with a string of 500 coins flipped every 10^-14 s, and observed in a context of functional test; 10^17s would not get to 72+ ascii characters of meaningful, functional text. Just DNA requires 100k to 1,000 k bits of functional text, much of that algorithmic. Search challenge means for OOL, a challenge to find first life in a Darwin pond or the like, and there are similar challenges to find onward body plans. The implicit notion of a vast continent of incrementally connected functional possibilities leading to a grand interconnected, stepwise progressive tree of life is deeply questionable, starting at the root, OOL. KF
PS: There is a hugely meaningful distinction between intelligently directed configuration — aka design — and blind chance and/or mechanical necessity playing out in dynamic-stochastic processes. This has been understood very well from the days when Plato contrasted natural and ART-ificial causes in The Laws bk X c 2360 BC. It is reflected in Monod’s Chance and Necessity.
JVL, here is a discussion I just updated with illustrative maps on search challenge with islands of function. KF
BA
Actually, with regard to consciousness, I don’t think either is a better explanation. They both suffer from the same weakness. Emergence as an explanation is based on a claim that consciousness is based on process that we do not yet understand. Design as an explanation is also based on a process that we do not yet understand.
PS: As it seems images were messed up in older OPs when WP went over to the block style approach — a source of many problems — I further updated the key L&FP25 to include an excerpt on the design inference from Paley’s Ch 2, on the self-replicating watch. This is given tight relevance i/l/o the odd fact that my long since favourite simple case of FSCO/I, the famous 6500 fishing reel, is a product of a shift in focus by taxicab meter company, ABU of Sweden. That is, the 6500 fishing reel is a simplification and extension of watch making (which may help explain its breakthrough nature in the fishing tackle industry).
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VL at 134,
Yes I noted that, but didn’t respond to it. Why would you take that position given that, quite clearly, none of the core players in ID takes that position. Is it that you searched the ID literature and couldn’t find an answer as to what ID is, or, is it that you simply didn’t or couldn’t trust what ID proponents themselves say of their own project? If this is nothing more than your own opinion of ID — effectively stripping it of its empirical arguments — then which is it?
What part of your statement supports the positive claim that the documented inferences to design provided by ID are actually examples of the “creative power flowing from Oneness”, to the exclusion of being valid inferences to intelligent input, empirically observed and documented?
Okay. Frankly, this appears to be dodging the question. Remove the word “merely” and replace it with whatever word you wish, or nothing at all. So, what is it you say to design thinkers when they present the universal evidence of an encoded symbol system and language structure as the proximate cause of biological organization? These observations were predicted in logic and subsequently confirmed by experiment. Are we to take these facts and say that they are [an explicit] example of the creative force that pervades nature, or, are we within reason to observe that these same physical conditions are otherwise found exclusively as a result of intelligent action, and without contradiction to other causes demonstrated to be adequate to the observation, they form a valid inference to intelligent input?
What is your answer?
This line of argument appears to be the assumption of yet another conclusion. Am I wrong about that, or do you have more experiential evidence to support the claim?
If it’s not too late, UB, you might fix the block quotes in 139. I look forward to responding in the morning.
JVL: — “When you look at unguided evolution and assume that a bunch of small steps cannot possibly add up to something big on what basis do you make that assumption?”
In terms of science, there is no evidence to support the hypothesis of unguided evolution. We both know that. So I don’t know why you persist.
However, you are asking a theoretical question, so I will try to answer on your terms:
Randomness can’t get you there. It doesn’t have the causal power to make the journey through all the taxonomic levels. Small steps that are not guided do not know where they are going and will never find a target that they aren’t even aiming at.
Paige, you yourself experience conscious self-aware intelligence. To create an objecting comment you intelligently directed some sort of computer to issue a string of characters expressing a message in a language with a meaning. You added to the trillion member base of observed cases of functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information beyond 500 – 1,000 bits[FSCO/I] coming about by intelligently directed configuration. That is, design. You cannot — I confidently say, cannot — provide a single example of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity producing such FSCO/I. I dare you to give an actually observed counter-example ______. In short, as Paley pointed out in Ch 2 of his Nat Theol, discussing his real watch maker argument (on self-replicating watches) contrivance has a known source and is a strong sign. We know from experience and observation, the only actually observed cause of FSCO/I, especially coded, alphanumeric information in messages or algorithms. We know on a highly reliable observational basis, and can confidently infer as act of inference to the best explanation from sign to its reliably signified cause, design. That’s logic and it is the actual name of this sort of abduction, inference to the best EXPLANATION. That is, we have puzzling facts f1, f2, fn = [F]. Candidate explanation E0 is, blind chance and/or mechanical necessity (a fail). E1 is intelligently directed configuration, backed by trillions of cases and search challenge analysis. We can explain, on sign: E1 => F. In case you want to put up another unmet intellectual IOU, there is no E2, some other unknown cause, we work with what is on the table as a serious candidate. KF
In reading over the comments that deal with the OP, I’ve noticed that there’s a high degree of accord on the idea that emergence is tautologous if it’s used as an explanation. The disagreement seems to be over whether it is claimed to be so.
Paige: Emergence as an explanation is based on a claim that consciousness is based on process that we do not yet understand. Design as an explanation is also based on a process that we do not yet understand.
I don’t think they are on equal footing. We know what sodium and chloride (physical elements) and salt (emergent molecule of those physical elements) are in physical terms. They are clearly in the same domain- the physical domain. We know what neurons, synapses and dendrites are in physical terms. But we don’t even know (rationally/scientifically) even what consciousness is in physical terms, if indeed it is physical. Is has not been demonstrated to be in the physical domain.
As for the design of life, while we may not know how a creator may have designed life, we do know something about design- what the minimum requirements are for a designer. For example, understanding of the available physical elements and how they interact, intent, foresight, an ability to run trials, etc. We understand these properties of intelligence because we do these things ourselves to some extent. It is logically conceivable that someone with those intellectual properties could have assembled life. It has not actually been demonstrated that chance and necessity within the physical domain as we know it could have given rise to the DNA/Ribosome replication system, even in principle, RNA Worlds and Metabolism First ideas (read: pipe dreams) notwithstanding. Of course, our understanding may change about this in the future. But there is no reason at present to be confident that it will.
KM, I generally agree with your note just now. KF
F/N: I think we need to hear Paley in his own voice from Ch 2 of his Nat Theol, failure to reckon with the following substantially and fairly is a big part of what has gone wrong over the past 150 years:
Like unto that, Newton from 300 years ago:
KF
Forget about mutations, they are automated preseted responses to internal/external specific stimuli . They are not new things, just try to mantain it in a survival state.
ID is an explanation using reason and evidence. When we see something that has purpose/function humans try to find out how such a thing happened. There are lots of examples of such phenomena
The universe itself exists and it’s exist with incredibly precise properties to enable life as we know it. Why such precise properties? Why so vast? So humans use logic and reason to conclude something with immense power designed it that way and not some other way. There had to be intent. So what is this “something?’ We can call it anything we want but It’s power and ability to design has to be immense.and have purpose.
We can then speculate on the nature of this “something” to better understand it using reason and evidence. For that ID uses science. Others will use additional sources to try and understand this “something.”
There are other instances of incredibly unlikely events that have invited speculation. One is life. ID again uses physical evidence and logic or what is called science to examine it and make conclusions. Life actually uses a coded system very similar to elaborate instruction systems that have only originated with humans. So the conclusion of ID is that life too probably had an origin in something similar to the process that humans use to create complex instruction systems.
There are other phenomena that are also extremely unlikely that show similar patterns.
These conclusions are not a philosophical system that is any different from how humans have tried to understand the world since the beginning of time. It’s just now it’s based on evidence of the material world not known till recently.
ID is actually better science than is practiced by nearly all scientists. ID will come to the same conclusions that most scientists will on 99.99999% of the phenomena that science will. ID just has the flexibility to consider more causes than so called “science” does.
It will not hand wave and use useless terminology such as “it evolved” or “it emerged” which are admissions that we do not know.
JVL:
No one has been able to say how to test it, though. For example, how can we test the claim that unguided/ blind and mindless processes produced the genetic code or any bacterial flagellum? No one knows.
160 years is 16 decades. ID will have more answers than evolutionism has in 160 years. You have NOTHING but to deny ID.
So you are an infant. Tell me how important it is to know the Wright brothers and how they designed their airplane in order to understand airplanes?
How it works it more important than how it came to be. How to properly repair and maintain it is more important than how it came to be. And AGAIN, how it came to be is way above our capabilities. Only an ass on an agenda continues to ignore that fact. And here you are.
The EVIDENCE says at least one existed.
Clueless. Archaeology and forensic science start off with a being or some kind did something at some point in time. Evolutionism says that some unknown processes did something at some unknown point in time.
Evolutionism doesn’t have any answers to any questions, except for death, genetic diseases and deformities. Evolutionary biologists can’t even tell us what makes an organism what it is! That is the most basic question in biology!!!
The only people who say “that ID is primarily a philosophical position” are the people who do not understand science.
In response to 143 and 144. I think you have this wrong. The starting point for this discussion are two agreed facts, the brain exists and humans have consciousness. One side claims that consciousness emerges from the brain through some unknown process. The other side claims that consciousness is designed through some unknown process. Both require the acceptance of an unknown process.
I have no problem accepting that the brain is designed. The question then to be asked is whether the brain was designed to produce consciousness without any other outside “input”, or whether the brain and the outside input (eg, the soul, the mind, whatever) were designed separately with the necessity of the two meeting up to form consciousness. To me, the most parsimonious approach would be to design the brain so that consciousness could arise directly from it.
Back at 139 UB wrote, in response to my statement that “I think ID is primarily a philosophical position.”
I’ve read the definition of ID here, and other places, so I’m not unfamiliar with what ID claims. However, you didn’t quote the rest of what I wrote: I think ID is primarily a philosophical position that rejects both materialism and non-theistic perspectives about the creative power of the universe such as mine (as well as, I gather, certain theistic views such as some segments of Christianity.”
That is, the idea that some things require “intelligent input” (your words) implies, as I’ve said above, an occasional intervention, and excludes other metaphysical ways of understanding that posit a continual creative presence. Given that what we have are some results, such as the genetic code and numerous unspecified “creations” of some kind of various kinds of organisms, but no evidence as to how that result was obtained, choosing to see it as a specific intelligent input rather than the result of the type of continuous creative process I have mentioned (which is held by both various non-theistic perspectives and some Christian perspectives) is a philosophical choice.
That is, there is evidence that that some things are unlikely to have come about via “undirected processes”, but there is not evidence available to us, I don’t think, that we can use to distinguish which of several metaphysical world views might account for those things.
Also, when I said, “But I wrote, “For instance, I consider the existence of our universe, with the entire quantum/fundamental particle/atomic structure out of which all physical things are built, as evidence for a creative power that underlies that existence and structure and is other than physical.”,
You replied
Same issue. We do not have empirically observed and documented intelligent input: we have no evidence of how design was implemented. We have results, and various ways of possibly understanding the metaphysical basis for the creative power that might have caused, but we do not have any evidence of a mechanism by which those results were caused. What exactly happened when aspects of the genetic code came to exist in the physical world, or when a specific type of organism (fish, whales, human beings, whatever) came to exist. There are no statement, backed by evidence, that I know of, about what that “input” looks like when it happens.
Last, I wrote, “I don’t think the words “act” and “intent” even apply to the One: those are anthropomorphisms. and you replied, “This line of argument appears to be the assumption of yet another conclusion. Am I wrong about that, or do you have more experiential evidence to support the claim?”
This is a metaphysical speculation, beyond experiential evidence, that fits my way of looking at things. In that sense, it is no different than the idea that there is some willful intelligent designer who occasional intervenes in the physical world to do things that the physical world, which presumably it also created, can’t do without some additional tweaking. They are both philosophical positions that go beyond the direct empirical evidence of what exists in the physical world, and how those parts interact with each other.
And, to be clear, materialism is also a philosophical position, and one that I find wanting for various reasons that I have discussed.
Viola Lee:
We don’t need that in order to determine intelligent design exists. We don’t even inquire as to the who and how until AFTER intelligent design is determined to exist.
And do tell how we are supposed to figure out the how seeing it is way above our current capabilities?
Nonsense. We use our knowledge of cause and effect relationships- we know what nature can do and we know what telic processes can do.
That is what science is for-> to help us make that determination. It is beyond stupid to think that ID has to have all of the answers when the current paradigm has nothing but lies, bluffs and equivocations.
ID is about origins only and obviously not every important origin but some. There are perfectly good explanations for the origins of galaxies, stars, element formation, solar systems and planets. However, science has failed to provide any causes for several other important origins.
Universe itself
Properties of chemical elements and sub particles.
Life
Multi cellular complex life forms
Cell types and timing and placement of cells during gestation.
Human consciousness
Fine tuning of the Earth
ID is open to any naturalistic origin for anything but the above present incredibly difficult challenges for natural processes to achieve.
The issue is not whether design exists. We know it does. We do it ourselves.
The issue is whether the ID movement is an agnostic research program intended to find evidence of non-human design or whether it is a religious movement whose purpose is to promote an evangelical Christian version of divine Creation by cloaking it in a veneer of scientific respectability.
Founders of the ID movement such as Phillip E Johnson were quite open about the religious purpose of their work and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, their honesty does them more credit than those who pretend otherwise.
Seversky: The issue is whether the ID movement is an agnostic research program intended to find evidence of non-human design or whether it is a religious movement whose purpose is to promote an evangelical Christian version of divine Creation by cloaking it in a veneer of scientific respectability.
The issue is whether the Blind Watchmaker movement is an agnostic research program intended to follow the evidence wherever it leads or whether it is a anti-creator, anti-design movement whose purpose is to promote atheism, Marxism and perversion, by cloaking it in a veneer of scientific respectability.
I mean, really now, anyone can just make up bullsh*t paragraphs like that. I’m no mind reader, but from this statement and similar you’ve made, it seems like you have some kind of personal axe to grind. Did some pastor or priest molest you as a child, or something?
At any rate, I’m not an evangelical Christian. I am not a YEC. I follow the creation narrative of no religion whatsoever. Yet I think many of the ID arguments and positions are superior to the alternative. What about people like me? Moreover, some very qualified non-theistic scientists have come out as quite favorable to ID. Have you read Michael Denton’s books?
Founders of the ID movement such as Phillip E Johnson were quite open about the religious purpose of their work and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, their honesty does them more credit than those who pretend otherwise.
I don’t give a rat’s ass about Phil Johnson’s motives. He’s dead. The movement is bigger than him. A fair number of important players in the Blind Watchmakerism movement have made explicit statements about their anti-creator bias. Do their personal motives invalidate Blind Watchmakerism?
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VL, I see you have responded.
It appears then that you were in contact with a proper definition of ID, but chose not to accept it — it is merely a “claim” as you say — i.e. “ID isn’t a science of design detection, it’s primarily a philosophical position that x, y and z”.
I wonder about the apparent need to say this again and again. ID is not primarily a philosophical position. This is an old slur intended to dismiss and separate ID from its empirical foundation. This slur is not repeated over and over again because ID is primarily a philosophy, but because the empirical observations of ID are sound and it is easier to flank than to risk acknowledgement. Adding that it is your own personal philosophy at risk doesn’t change the boat you’re in.
But we needn’t belabor your positioning statement against ID any further, you have already indicated in the text that you effectively eliminate distinctions between guided and unguided within your assumptions, so positioning ID as “primarily a philosophy” instead of addressing its empirical observations, is sort of par for the course.
In the other hand, you’ve made the positive claim that the distinction between guided and unguided are both “false and empirically non-productive”. These claims are supposedly supported by some form of experiential evidence you have. You’ve been prompted to provide this support, but frankly it is difficult to see what it is in your comments you are expecting provide that support.
You’ve reiterated
If this is supposed to provide compelling support for the claim that the distinction between guided and unguided is “false and non-productive” then I am at a loss to see how. It appears to be little more than a narrative restatement of the conclusion itself. You needn’t worry, I grasp the fact that you believe the structure of the cosmos is evidence of a creative power. The question is how does what you believe result in the distinction between guided and unguided being “false and unproductive”, if not by merely assuming your conclusion — which is where we began.
– – – – – – – – – –
This leads me to my question, putting your beliefs in play:
“What is it you say to design thinkers when they present the universal evidence of an encoded symbol system and language structure as the proximate cause of biological organization? These observations were predicted in logic and subsequently confirmed by experiment.
I then asked:
“Are we within reason to observe that these same physical conditions are otherwise found exclusively as a result of intelligent action, and without contradiction to other causes demonstrated to be adequate to the observation, they form a valid inference to intelligent input?”
And from my last attempt to get a clear response to this question:
“What part of your statement supports the positive claim that the documented inferences to design provided by ID are actually examples of the “creative power flowing from Oneness”, to the exclusion of being valid inferences to intelligent input, empirically observed and documented?”
To this, you first replied:
… referring us back to your previous comment where you say you believe that the structure of the cosmos is evidence of a creative force. This is, again, merely a restatement of your conclusions, and certainly doesn’t provide any reasoning to show that the documented inferences to design provided by ID are actually examples of a creative force in the cosmos to the exclusion of being valid inferences to intelligent input.
You then say:
Of course not. I never suggested we did. You can locate for yourself the phrase “valid inference” in my comments. It is a valid inference based on reasoning that is well-established and well-accepted in scientific practice, supported by logic, prediction, confirmation via experiment, and universal experience.
You go on to say:
No evidence? This is simply not true. We know that the proximate cause of biological organization is specification. In other words, biological objects exist as they do because they are specified among alternatives (i.e. the gene system). Yet anyone who has ever seen a Periodic Table knows that there is no “stands for” relation measured in the physical properties of atomic matter, and forming compounds from those atoms does not suddenly endow matter with this foreign capacity. These are non-controversial observations, and they prompt the fair question “how then can anything be specified?” Persons such as Charles Sanders Peirce resolved that question in the mid-1800’s when he wrote about a process (which he termed “Signification”). He promoted the logic of a necessary “triadic relationship” between a) a sign, b) a referent, and c) a separate interpretation to establish the relationship between a sign and its referent (a relationship that otherwise would not exist, i.e. the Periodic Table). His observations have no counter-examples recorded in science.
The long and short of it is this — to freely specify something in our material universe requires two physical objects; one object to serve as a symbol vehicle (sign, signifier) and another object to serve as a constraint to establish what is being specified. This Peircean logic was exemplified (70+ years later, at the dawn of the Information Age) in the work of Alan Turing, who envisioned a programmable symbol-processing machine. Turing’s Machine was based on a tape that could contain a sequence of symbols, a read/write head, and a table of actions the machine would undertake depending on the individual symbol being read. The connection to Peirce’s triadic relationship becomes obvious, i.e. Turing told his machine how to interpret the symbols on the tape. In other words, Turing’s table of actions (transformations) was a critical part of the system because whatever material the symbols might be made of (in any physical instatiation of the machine), they wouldn’t by themselves represent or specify anything at all. In truth, the logical manipulation of symbols and their interpretations was the whole point of the machine.
John Von Neumann then used this formal system to predict the fundamental requirements of a description-based self-replicator capable of open-ended evolution. That prediction was then wholly confirmed via experiment (Crick, Watson, Brenner, Hoagland, Zamecnik, Nirenberg, Khorana, etc.) and was later described in the physics literature, fully detailing the necessary material conditions of such a system, along with the kicker that the only other place that such a physical system has been described by science is exclusively in the use of human language and mathematics (two universal correlates of intelligence).
So, in fact, we have a great deal of solid science as to how design was implemented. A set rate-independent symbols and a set of non-integrable constraints were organized in order to specify a material system in a dissipative process that would persist over time.
Now, if you are asking if the designer held the symbols in his left hand and the constraints in his right, then that is not a reasonable demand; it is a defensive maneuver. I’d like to think that such a demand is not your next move, but it must be said that this is one of the more popular defenses against the design inference provided. ID critics regularly demand a level of evidence from ID that their own explanations cannot even come close to providing. If indeed that genre of question is next, then I would say you have failed to support your claim that the distinction between guided and unguided is “false and non-productive”, and you are seeking to insulate your position from the evidence.
seversky:
As opposed to the forced teaching of the religious pap of materialism. At least ID makes testable claims, in accordance with science.
Seversky, there is no such issue save in the minds of those who are determined to smear what they cannot fairly and cogently address on the merits. The matter is simple, are there observable signs in entities that are reliable markers of design as key cause? Sound ans, yes. Next, are such signs present in cell based life? Sound ans, yes: complex string data structures with alphanumeric algorithmic code and associated molecular nanotech execution machinery for starters. So, cells, antecedent to us and ranging back to origin of life are the product of language-using intelligence. Then, what about the cosmos? Ans, again, fine tuning that sets up a cosmos fitted to such life. So, there is onward reason to infer that the observed cosmos is also designed. Empirical inference on evidence all the way, the jig’s up for the anti-religious smear job. KF