Dr YS, contribtes thoughts again that are well worth pondering:
>>I’d like to present a summary of the arguments against the design hypothesis that I have come across either as a reader or as an author of a pro-design blog over the past 8 years since I became interested in intelligent design.
The Design Hypothesis
Before we do it, let us first recap on what the design hypothesis really is. It states that some configurations of matter in specific conditions are best explained as caused by purposeful activity of one or more intelligent agents.
- The ‘specific conditions’ means that we could not directly observe how these configurations of matter came into being and can only analyse them post-factum.
- ‘Intelligence’ in this context means the capabilities of foresight, goal-setting, strategy planning and strategy realization. Put simply, it is the capability of using adequate means for a purpose.
- The ‘purpose’ corresponds to selecting a goal state from among physically or chemically equivalent states (states with minimal total potential energy). Selection is done on a non-physical basis (pragmatic utility).
- E.g. muckers is a game in which players take turns throwing rings from a distance at a vertically positioned pole on a horizontal playing ground. A player who throws a ring so that it lands at the pole, receives one point. The player getting a maximum score wins. The scoring aside, no matter how you throw a ring or where it lands on the playing field, it ends up in a position where its potential energy is at a minimum value. The ‘meaning’ to each toss that distinguishes a trajectory from among a set of possible trajectories, is assigned by imposing additional (symbolic) constraints specifying the ‘target’ area for a trajectory. The additional constraints are local to the particular physical system (the ring + gravity + the pole).
- ‘Best’ means the ‘most appropriate’, ‘most parsimonious’ or even ‘characterized by the highest probability’, depending on the context.
- ‘Design’ means either the process of purposeful activity or an outcome of it.
- E.g. a personal computer is a design whereas pebbles on the beach are most likely not. It is possible that pebbles themselves or their particular arrangements can be a design. However, methodologically, it is best to assume they are not unless we have more observations that can help further refine our design-inferential probabilistic model.
Importantly, not every cause in nature is intelligent. For example, gravity is not an intelligent type of causation whereas creating a deck of Microsoft PowerPoint slides, most probably, is. If we have observations that can throw a reasonable doubt on non-intelligence of gravity, for example, we will further refine our understanding of material reality. In the absence of such observations these doubts are not scientifically justified.
The effects of intelligent and non-intelligent causes are sometimes different also. Analyzing this difference is what Intelligent Design is all about. Based on an analysis of some special class of artifacts we can reliably tell if we are dealing with designs. In other cases, it is not possible to distinguish designs from non-designs post-factum, without additional information.
It is important to distinguish between intelligent and non-intelligent causation because this distinction helps us categorize our knowledge of the material world better and, consequently, propose better scientific explanations. The distinction is well supported empirically and, without it, it is not possible to adequately explain a whole class of observations. For example, treating this text as a random collection of differently colored pixels on the screen is a valid scientific model but I doubt it has any practical use as it adds virtually nothing new to our knowledge of the world.
The design hypothesis can be useful in a lot of contexts, such as archaeology and forensics. It adds a lot of insight when applied to biological systems. It is not generally disputed that the ID methodology is sound. At least, I have never encountered anyone who would seriously question the design detection methodology in relation to forensics, archaeology, medicine or cyber-intrusion detection, for instance. The only area of application where ID faces strong opposition is biology. Science has nothing to do with it.
The scientific agenda of Intelligent Design is non-trivial as the main design hypothesis leads to interesting research questions. Intuitively, when we assume that a particular configuration of matter is intelligently created we can reverse-engineer it and then reuse our findings elsewhere. This is done in bionics, for example. ID can lead to non-trivial testable secondary hypotheses in biology per se, as this article shows.
The design detection methodology is summarized by the following abductive inference:
1. We observe phenomenon Р.
2. Р could be explained if hypothesis Н was true.
3. Consequently, we have grounds to believe that H is true.
Examples of P:
– the semiotic triple {sign-interpretant-referent}, notably persistent self-reproducing semiotic triple as in biological systems;
– statistically significant levels of functional complexity.
The basis of abduction in relation to P in the biosphere:
– In all observations other than in biological systems, whose origins are in question, P is a correlate of intelligence. No observations exist where P would arise ab initio without intelligent agency.
I specifically stress that the presented reasoning is nowhere near circular.
Having said this, I will now present arguments against ID that I have encountered. I am not intending to ridicule the reasoning of ID opponents. Simply, in my experience, this is the best they can really offer. In the list below, I will put my comments next to each bullet point.
Popular arguments against Intelligent Design
| # | Argument against ID | Comment |
| 1 | ID is based entirely on Fisherian hypothesis testing. Instead of ruling out any hypothesis entirely, it would have been better to keep all relevant hypotheses on the table because, as we collect observations, different hypotheses can really change their relative importance. | Statistical hypothesis testing is an established practical method of assessing scientific hypotheses. ID-opponents are welcome to come up with a better model, if they wish so. |
| 2 | Who designed the Designer? (=Who painted the painter?) | The point of this argument is to demonstrate that ID reasoning is either circular or suffers from infinite regress. Neither is true. |
| 3 | What are the properties of the Designer of life? | The Designer of life is intelligent: capable of forethought and planning, decision making and strategy implementation. The scale and grandeur of the design of life suggests that the capabilities of the Designer are matching the task. The Designer of life must have had the linguistic capacity since life is inherently linguistic. The only real problem I can see here is complexity because, by the same argument as presented in this OP, the Designer of life should be very complex (perhaps, infinitely complex). My personal take on this, is that the complexity argument does not apply the way the ID opponents want to use it: our consciousness is simple and yet we create complex artifacts. In any case, we just have no other data than human artifacts and life. Perhaps, the AI singularity, if it happens at all, when it does happen, will provide more data to refine our understanding of the complexity issue. |
| 4 | We have insufficient data to classify life with respect to design. | It is the purpose of science to extrapolate our knowledge onto something that has not been observed yet and to make predictions. The workflow is as usual: from observations through analysis to prediction. As more observations become available, predictions are corrected appropriately. |
| 5 | How the Designer of life created it? | By instantiating a persistent self-reproducing semiotic core into physicality. |
| 6 | I could have done it better. Therefore it is not a design. | An example of flawed reasoning. A poor design is still a design. On the other hand, examples of alleged ‘bad designs’ are simply misunderstandings. People are not taking into consideration the fact that organisms are a result of multicriteria optimization. What appears to be a poor choice is really a compromise between different conflicting objectives. |
| 7 | Believing in the design of life is the same as believing that the Earth is flat. | A rhetorical device aimed at discrediting the opponents by association. It has no real scientific value. |
| 8 | Information is in your head. | This extreme view denies the objectivity of information processing. It does not take into account the fact that the genetic information translation apparatus installed in all organisms predates humans and is part of objective reality. Questioning the objectivity of information translation phenomenon is equivalent to questioning science itself. |
| 9 | A river flowing around stones sends information to and receives information from them. | This view is the opposite extreme. It does not take into account the fact that it is meaningful to speak about information only where there is information translation. Natural phenomena (apart from organisms and human artifacts) do not involve information translation. |
| 10 | The cycle of star formation follows an algorithm. | Spotting natural regularity can be formalized as an algorithm. However, regularity itself is NOT an algorithm. An algorithm is a set of coherent instructions that must explicitly be present in memory, read from it and be processed in order for the system to achieve a goal state. In most cases, to achieve a pragmatic purpose an algorithm should be a set of instructions such that the processor eventually stops and produces a result. |
| 11 | Everything can be coded with 1 bit. | That one is a best-seller. The answer is, obviously, yes, if you have previously established all the information context for it. It is the establishment of the context that involves all the remaining complexity… |
| 12 | The design hypothesis is circular. | Simply wrong. In the above, there is no circularity at all. |
| 13 | DNA is not code. The notion of code is ephemeral and subjective. | DNA/RNA carry instructions that are interpreted by the cell in the context of protein synthesis. The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material (DNA or mRNA sequences) into proteins. Translation is accomplished by the ribosome, which links amino acids in an order specified by messenger RNA (mRNA), using transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to carry amino acids and to read the mRNA three nucleotides at a time. |
| 14 | Replication of crystals and replication of organisms are essentially the same. | A categorical error. They are not the same. Matrix copying (similar to crystal copying) is part of replication of organisms, but it is only part of it. Replication of living things requires a symbolic memory to store genetic instructions, a mechanism of retrieval and interpretation of those instructions together with a mechanism of interpretation of instructions to replicate the interpreter. Nowhere near replication of crystals. |
| 15 | Crystallisation is an example of self-organisation. | A categorical error. Organization relates to function, not order. Order is routinely observed in nature as a result of the tendency of system dynamics towards states with minimum total potential energy. This is fundamentally different from organization. Organization involves a non-uniform (irregular) functional whole where function is understood in terms of pragmatic utility. Regular structures like crystals can be used as part of functional systems but, by themselves, neither crystals nor any other naturally occurring regular structures can produce a non-trivial functional whole. Organization imposes specific (e.g. symbolic) constraints on the dynamics of matter in the system. ‘No specific constraints’ means ‘no function’ means ‘no organization’. |
| 16 | Everything in nature is self-organized just like sand gets sorted by centrifugal forces on river banks. | The same categorical error as above equating the motion of matter towards states of minimum total potential energy to functional organization that produces pragmatic utility. |
| 17 | Semiotics is demagoguery. | Another bestseller argument. |
| 18 | Semiotic effects are reducible to the laws of nature. | Including this OP? Are there laws of nature that can predict someone writing this OP?! |
| 19 | Abduction is fiction, Charles Peirce’s idiosyncrasy. | Again, a wonderful counter-argument indeed. It misses a whole history of discoveries and scientific advances based on the seminal ideas of Charles Peirce. |
| 20 | Lots of vastly different things appeared in ‘every which way’ in the past. Life is just what happened to prevail. | An ‘interesting’ thought. And a very specific one, too. |
| 21 | Science knows a single type of intelligence, that is, one correlated with a protein-based body/brain. Consequently, a hypothetical statement about intelligence outside of a protein body/brain is nonsense. | There is a killer counter-example for it, i.e. silicon-based artificial intelligence. The counter-example demonstrates that intelligence can function and multiply outside of protein bodies. |
| 22 | — Gravity is all that is necessary for our world to appear. — And where did gravity come from? — M-theory. | A categorical error conflating reality with our mental models of it. It lacks coherence and misses the point of organization completely. This argument is due to Stephen Hawking [paraphrased]. See J. Lennox, “God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?” |
>>
Again, food for rich thought. END