Materialist Poofery

_{Barry Arrington

April 25, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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From time to time we see materialists raising the “poof objection” against ID. The poof objection goes something like this: An ID theorist claims that a given organic system (the bacterial flagellum perhaps) is irreducibly complex or that it displays functional complex specified information. In a sneering and condescending tone the materialist dismisses the claim, saying something like “Your claim amounts to nothing more than ‘Poof! the designer did it.’”

I have always thought the poof objection coming from a materialist is particularly ironic, because materialists have “poofery” built into their science at a very basic level. Of course, they don’t use the term “poof.” They use a functional synonym of poof – the word “emergent.”

What do I mean? Consider the hard problem of consciousness. We all believe we are conscious, and consciousness must be accounted for. For the ID theorists, this is easy. The mind is a real phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the properties of the brain. Obviously, this is not so easy for the materialist who, by definition, must come up with a theory that reduces the mind to an epiphenomenon of the electro-chemical processes of the brain. What do they do? They say the mind is an “emergent property” of the brain. Huh? Wazzat? That means that the brain system has properties that cannot be reduced to its individual components. The system is said to “supervene” (I’m not making this up) on its components causing the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts.

And what evidence do we have that “emergence” is a real phenomenon? Absolutely none. Emergence is materialist poofery. Take the mind-brain problem again. The materialist knows that his claim that the mind does not exist is patently absurd. Yet, given his premises it simply cannot exist. So what is a materialist to do? Easy. Poof – the mind is an emergent property of the brain system that otherwise cannot be accounted for on materialist grounds.

Comments

From StephenB's and Barry's comments I get the sense that there's no step particular to ID after the design inference: that is, once design is concluded, the ID researcher does everything the same (with a different attitude, perhaps, and while excluding evolution). Again, if Step 1 is "find design," what's Step 2?David Kellogg_{April 26, 2009
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As someone with a background in philosophy, I'd like to make a few brief comments on the issues raised. Regarding reduction, emergence and supervenience: these philosophical terms have multiple definitions in the literature. One place where I might suggest that people begin is Dr. Richard Cameron's brilliant dissertation, Teleology In Aristotle And Contemporary Biology: An Account of The Nature Of Life - especially pages 254 to 279. I think Richard Cameron's work will be congenial to contributors of all points of view, as he has something that will please nearly everyone here: he is both an avowed Aristotelian (and hence a believer in final causes) and a thoroughgoing Darwinist. One point which Cameron makes is that belief in emergence is perfectly compatible with very strong varieties of reduction:
Again, however, emergentists need not fear and may positively endorse the search for this type of a reductive account of emergent novelties. They may affirm the existence of causal correlations between basal conditions and emergent properties strong enough to support the formulation of laws and theories that microcausally explain the emergence of emergent novelities. Nevertheless, there remains clear sense to the emergentist’s claim that having a well confirmed explanatory theory of how Xs give rise to Ys does not entail that Ys are 'nothing over and above' Xs. Ys may still constitute a genuine - and in a sense still to be defined an irreducible - addition to the ontology of the world conceived only in terms of the Xs (p. 269).
The only kind of reduction which is fatal to emergentism is reduction by property identity, as when one property is actually equated with another - for instance, the temperature of an ideal gas can be defined as the mean kinetic energy of its molecules. Thus "[a] candidate emergent property qualifies as a genuine emergent novelty if and only if it is not identical in kind to a kind of property which can be had by the component parts of the system from which it emerges in isolation from structures that type" (p. 270). Cameron regards Aristotelian final causality as a genuinely emergent property, which is causally efficacious in the world - in other words, he believes in and argues for the reality of top-down causation. Thus Aristotelian final causation (or the possession of intrinsic ends), which Cameron regards as the defining property of life, is a strongly ontologically emergent property for Cameron. The property of final causation, although causally dependent for its existence on the interactions between the physical parts of an organism, cannot be identified with any of these interactions, either singly or in combination; also, this property possesses causal powers which are not found in the parts and their interactions. Cameron is not a vitalist; as he makes plain throughout his work (see p. 40), he believes that the property of being alive depends for its existence on the interactions between the physical parts of an organism. Thus:
It is a fundamental claim of emergentists, recall, that emergent properties and their powers are causally dependent upon the interactions of base properties and entities... (p. 278).
A good discussion of the property of supervenience can be found in the article, Supervenience in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A short extract:
The core idea of supervenience is captured by the slogan, "there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference." ... A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if a difference in A-properties requires a difference in B-properties — or, equivalently, if and only if exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantees exact similarity with respect to A-properties.
Now, in this sense, the property of being alive clearly supervenes upon the properties of an organism's parts: it is not possible to have two entities with the same physico-chemical properties, where one is alive and the other dead. As regards consciousness, I personally would be happy to say that it supervenes upon the properties of an animal's brain and central nervous system (some scientists would add the interactional properties between the animal and its environment to this list of underlying properties, but that has little bearing on the point here). To say otherwise would imply that there could be two animals with the same physical properties, where one animal possesses consciousness and the other lacks it. I do think, though, that there is a kind of reflective consciousness which is unique to human beings - no other animal, as far as I know, says to itself: "Isn't consciousness a wonderful thing!" I don't regard this kind of consciousness as a supervenient property. The boundary between humans and other animals is notoriously difficult to specify in scientific terms. I would recommend Moti Nissani's Web page at http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/ for an overview of the recent literature, presented in a highly attractive form. Nissani's lecture, Can Animals (Especially Elephants) Think? is especially illuminating. Nissani tentatively concludes that elephants do not understand simple causal relationships (e.g. I need to lift the lid of the bucket to get the food) and that both chimps and elephants do not realize that people can see. In other words, they lack what psychologists call a "theory of mind." If Nissani's conclusions hold up, there are some pretty profound differences between humans and chimps - and presumably, other animals as well. Much has been made of the feats of Betty the crow, who can fashion a hook to get a piece of meat. At first blush, this seems to indicate rationality; but can Betty justify her actions if we ask her, "Why did you do it that way?" Does she evince any capacity for critical thinking? Critical thinking is not something yu can put in a box. It cannot be identified with a single process or set of processes; rather, it requires one to take a step back from one's accustomed ways of thinking and re-evaluate them. It is my contention that critical thinking must be treated as an essentially open-ended process, and that to treat it otherwise would be fatal to the scientific enterprise. Engaging in critical thinking involves more than just looking up a Web site on logical fallacies and "running through the list" to see that one's own reasoning is immune from any fallacy. For the enterprise of critical thinking is a never-ending quest: new ways of thinking are continually being discovered and evaluated, and new flaws in people's thinking are continually being identified. What has all this got to do with (i) science and (ii) materialism? Suppose that the enterprise of critical thinking turned out to be an emergent property of the human organism, which additionally supervenes upon the brain's neural network properties, so that (theoretically) two individuals with the same neural architecture, placed in the same environment, would necessarily have the same thoughts. Since the brain itself is finite, the enterprise of critical thinking, if generated by the brain, would then be limited in terms of the number of "creative moves" we could make, and also the number of flaws of thinking we could spot, at any given point in time. In other words, even critical thinking would be algorithmic. For my purposes, it does not matter what kinds of algorithms we engage in during critical thinking - heuristics, Turing procedures or what have you. The point I am making is that on a materialist account, even our critical thinking would have systematic blind spots, at any given time. What would that mean, in scientific terms? It would mean that there are probably scientific hypotheses out there which our brains are unable to dream up, because they're wired the wrong way. It also means that there are flaws in our hypotheses that we're unable to spot, because of our neural limitations. Finally, it means that there are scientific hypotheses that we're attached to, for the wrong reasons - could Darwinism be one of them? Haha - that hold an unreasonable sway over our thinking, but our brains are too set in their ways for us to consider the possibility that some other hypothesis might be right instead. In other words, on a materialist account, science itself is a make-shift enterprise, and we have no particular reason to believe that we'll move any closer to the truth with the passage of time. We could easily get side-tracked in our task and stuck up a scientific blind alley. There could be all sorts of reasons why we fail to discover the truth, and the much-vaunted success of the scientific enterprise over the past 400 years could be just a lucky accident which ends tomorrow. Mauka claims that "[i]ndividuals with better brains tend to survive and reproduce better than those with addled brains," but even a "better" brain may not be able to come up with the right hypothesis, and practical survival skills are not the same as the skills you need to dream up the Theory of Relativity. Also, materialism entails that at any given time, we all probably accept a large number of scientific hypotheses on irrational grounds. Materialism also implies that like it or not, we're probably doomed as a species within the next 200 years. Sooner or later, the complexity of our problems will outstrip the capacity of our finite brains to meet them. Global warming is already giving us enough of a headache; after that it'll be something else (ocean acidification?), and we'll probably be laid low in the end by something out of the blue that our stupid brains didn't see coming. Now, most scientific materialists believe all this stuff anyway; they just don't let on, for fear of alarming the populace. If challenged, most of them will retort: "So what? Science may be riddled with blind spots, but it's the best procedure we've got. What's your alternative? Blind faith? The Inquisition?" No, my alternative is a scientific enterprise which works better than modern science, because it is slightly more modest: it enquires about everything except one question: how is it that we are able to reason critically? If we forego asking this question, and just assume that critical thought is unbounded, we can avoid the skepticism that materialism led us into. For it is my contention that it was precisely the brash attempt to put critical thought in a box as part of a scientific quest to explain everything within a materialist paradigm that got us into trouble in the first place. If we do that, and try to make critical thought supervene upon brain processes, then we have to identify critical thought a finite algorithm or set of algorithms, which may fail to properly grasp the cosmos we live in. But if you are prepared to just assume at the outset that critical thought is an open, unbounded process which is not limited to a set of algorithms, then if you are a scientist, you will feel confident that your mind can handle any task the world throws at it. You will expect that as you make further discoveries, you come closer to the truth. You will realize that there are flaws in your thinking, but you will also realize that you (or your colleagues) are fully capable of spotting them, with time, patience and argumentation. You will expect the spirited exchange of opposing ideas to bear fruit, and help people to sharpen their thinking. Of course, you will encounter many limitations in your thinking - such as your inability to think in 18 dimensions. But then you will step back, ask yourself why - "My poor brain sees the world in three dimensions" - and design devices (computers) that enable to to get around the limitations of your brain. In other words, using your unbounded mind, you will be able to step back from your brain and overcome its deficiencies. So there's the choice. Accept as an "article of faith" that critical thought is a universal tool that is applicable to any problem in the material world, and you can do good science, but you won't be able to explain everything, because you'll never know how you think. That's your one "blind spot" as it were: you can understand the world, but you can never hope to understand yourself. But if you insist on explaining everything, you'll explain yourself away too, and cut yourself - and your science - down to size. Gone is the magical quest for Truth; all our kludge of a brain can hope to do is make a set of lucky guesses that might get us through the next 200 years - or might lead us up the garden path. Some science! Now, a scientist could accept as an "article of faith" that critical thought is a universal tool, without asking why (methodological agnosticism). That's reasonable. But if he/she asks, "What kind of entity would guarantee that I can think straight?" then he/she is asking a metaphysical question, not a scientific one. In that case, the only satisfactory answer is: a Being whose nature it is to know everything that can be known. ("But how does it do that?" - Don't ask me! And why should we expect to understand the answer the answer to that question, anyway?) A Being like that, if it designed the cosmos, is likely to have made the world's problems tractable to our minds, so we don't have to waste our time wallowing about some unforeseeable environmental Armageddon. We just need to stay sharp and proactive. I'll conclude with a quote from the late Canadian neuroscientist Wilder Penfield, whose research led him to reject supervenience on empirical grounds:
The electrode can present to the patient various crude sensations. It can cause him to turn head and eyes, or to move limbs, or to vocalize and swallow. It may recall vivid re-experiences of the past, or present to him an illusion that present experience is familiar, or that the things he sees are growing large and coming near. But he remains aloof. He passes judgment on it all. He says, “Things seem familiar,” not “I have been through this before.” He says, “Things are growing larger,” but he does not move for fear of being run over. If the electrode moves his right hand, he does not say, “I wanted to move it.” He may, however, reach over with the left hand and oppose the action. There is no place in the cerebral cortex where electrical stimulation will cause a patient to believe or to decide (Wilder Penfield, 1975, "The Mystery of the Mind," p. 77, emphasis mine).
Well, materialists, the ball's in your court. The empirical evidence is actually against you, and if you were right, science wouldn't be much of an enterprise anyway. Not sharing your narrow mindset, I am confident that science will indeed discover the Truth about the world - even if who we are will always be a mystery to us.vjtorley_{April 26, 2009
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----Mr. Nakashima: "But to ask where the laws of Nature came from is to revisit the Shermer thread. Do you want to go there?" Just as life doesn't arrive via "poof," the universe or the laws of nature do not arrive via "poof." The universe was designed and "fine tuned" for life, and the planet earth was the designated place for its arrival. The "Privileged Planet" hypothesis has more going for it than just about any other scientific theory. The evidence is overwhelming. That is why Anthony Flew, the world's most famous atheist, finally confessed that "There is a God."StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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---B L Harville: "When you look at a species and say god-did-it you are most definitely not separating your religion from your science." This is getting ridiculous. Please go to the FAQ and study questions 1,4,5, and 39. It is the best way to prepare for dialogue on these matters.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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David Kellogg: “BarryA [153], I’m not asking what a Christian who is a scientist might do: I’m well aware that a person can be a scientist and a Christian. I’m asking what ID does as ID after it arrives at the design conclusion.” And my point at [153] is that after he reaches a design conclusion an ID theorist does exactly what Kepler did. Kepler reached a design conclusion and then he set about researching the details of the design. That’s what he meant by “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” Kepler’s reverence and awe of God was not a scientific show stopper. Properly understood it spurs advances in science by men and women motivated to suss out the details of the design.Barry Arrington_{April 26, 2009
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B L Harville at [159]: “Kepler was not invoking an Intelligent Designer in his work. He seperated his religious beliefs from science. You are the one who is “misconstruing.” This may be the single most absurd statement I have seen in all my years of posting here at UD. BL, because the plain facts are inconvenient for your argument you can’t just say they do not exist and expect to get away with it. For the onlookers, this is from Wikki (surely no friend of ID):
As he indicated in the title, Kepler thought he had revealed God’s geometrical plan for the universe. Much of Kepler’s enthusiasm for the Copernican system stemmed from his theological convictions about the connection between the physical and the spiritual; the universe itself was an image of God, with the Sun corresponding to the Father, the stellar sphere to the Son, and the intervening space between to the Holy Spirit. His first manuscript of Mysterium contained an extensive chapter reconciling heliocentrism with biblical passages that seemed to support geocentrism.
The whole article is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler BL, when you say something so outrageously and obviously false, I am compelled to believe one of two things: (1) you are intentionally distorting the historical record to score cheap rhetorical points in this debate; or (2) you are deeply stupid and don’t know better. Charity compels me to conclude the latter, but either way, I will not allow commenters to post such outrageous falsehoods on this site with impugnity. You are in the moderation sandbox.Barry Arrington_{April 26, 2009
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Mr StephenB, No, I agree. But the conditions for all that have been designed. Nature’s laws do not come from out of nowhere. So I think we all agree that 'emergent' properties are simply aggregate properties. Hurricanes are aggregates. Subtract enough of one of their ingredients and they fall apart. You can't make a hurricane by spinning two atoms around each other. There is no more telic 'poof' involved in a hurricane than in a dust cloud collapsing into a rotating disk around a star. Both are simply ensembles seeking a lower energy state. The obvious organization of these parts of the ensemble is more than compensated for by the heat energy radiating away from them. I think you are better off to argue as you are for the reduction of emergent properties to the laws of nature, and not drag in the state of the ensemble. "Matter in motion" is, as Gil Dodgen spoke of, a cartoon. But to ask where the laws of Nature came from is to revisit the Shermer thread. Do you want to go there? :) I think that for this thread it suffices to say that no one holds 'emergence' to be a scientific explanation of anything.Nakashima_{April 26, 2009
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StephenB:
Similary, there is nothing in a an ID scientists world view that prevents him from separating his beliefs from his science.
When you look at a species and say god-did-it you are most definitely not separating your religion from your science.B L Harville_{April 26, 2009
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----David Kellogg: "BarryA [153], I’m not asking what a Christian who is a scientist might do: I’m well aware that a person can be a scientist and a Christian. I’m asking what ID does as ID after it arrives at the design conclusion." He starts reverse engineering, or course.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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----B L Harville: "Kepler was not invoking an Intelligent Designer in his work. He seperated his religious beliefs from science. You are the one who is “misconstruing*”" I am amazed that even facts do not move you. Kepler's quote was Kepler's quote, and it clarified his world view and the extent to which it informed his science. Obviously, there was nothing in that world view that prevented him from separating his religious beliefs from his science. Similary, there is nothing in a an ID scientists world view that prevents him from separating his beliefs from his science.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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BarryA [153], I'm not asking what a Christian who is a scientist might do: I'm well aware that a person can be a scientist and a Christian. I'm asking what ID does as ID after it arrives at the design conclusion.David Kellogg_{April 26, 2009
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Barry Arrington, Kepler was not invoking an Intelligent Designer in his work. He seperated his religious beliefs from science. You are the one who is "misconstruing*".
*[Charity compels me to use the word “misconstrue” and not “distort,” but I must admit I have my doubts]
B L Harville_{April 26, 2009
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Barry Arrington:
“Novelty” of a certain stripe can come about by purely naturalistic means – drug resistance in bacteria for example. But the type of novelty that can reasonably be attributed to the interplay of chance and necessity is restricted within narrow bounds, perhaps 1-3 base points. Simultaneous coordinated changes in hundreds of base points resulting in a new species (another name for which is the addition of new FCSI) is byond the ken of chance and necessity, and only blinkered chance worshipers believe otherwise.
By novelty I was referring to the evolution of new forms and functions a bit more dramatic than resistance in bacteria - the sort of evolution that cdesign proponentists refuse to believe can happen. For example, the development of wrist bones and fingers in Tiktaalik.B L Harville_{April 26, 2009
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----David, "Flagellum: came into being at once: poof!" Is there an argument hidden in there somewhere crying to get out. ----"Different species: came into being at once: poof!" I am begninning to think that you have not read a single word of ID literature.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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David Kellogg: “Most evolutionist would say that design amounts to ‘poof.’” Indeed they do. I said as much in the OP. The purpose of this thread is to point out that materialists have a special kind of “poof” to “describe” [Hazel’s and Allen’s word BTW] the existence of that which cannot exist on their premises.Barry Arrington_{April 26, 2009
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B L Harville writes: “‘StephenB: But ID does not accept design as a final explanation either.’ It doesn’t? You mean IDists are interested in the identity of the Intelligent Designer and the methods of said designer?” You misconstrue* StephenB’s argument. See my [153] for what StephenB is driving at. *[Charity compels me to use the word “misconstrue” and not “distort,” but I must admit I have my doubts]Barry Arrington_{April 26, 2009
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----David: "What do ID proponents think of non-human animal minds? StephenB has appealed to the “soul” as designed/created. This would seem to put animals on a different footing altogether. So: would a material explanation of mental activity in non-human animals be problematic for ID?" As far as I know, ID doesn't deal with any of that. Not speaking for the ID community, I would hold that both humans and animals have souls, but animals do not have rational souls. I think if I go beyond that, I will distract from the thread.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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David Kellogg “StephenB, ‘But ID does not accept design as a final explanation either.’ I’m a bit surprised at that. What does ID do scientifically once it has concluded that something is designed?” David, let’s consider your question through the prism of a real world example. Kepler was a devoted Christian. Far from stopping his science, his theism spurred it. He wrote once of his work: “I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.” A Christian biologist might paragraphs Kepler: ““I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him. Since we biologists are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of living things, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.” I am gaveling the “minds of animals” bunny trail you suggest we go down. It is too far a field from what I want to discuss in this thread.Barry Arrington_{April 26, 2009
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"It is not the ID community that is proposing poof as an explanation." Most evolutionist would say that design amounts to "poof." Flagellum: came into being at once: poof! Different species: came into being at once: poof!David Kellogg_{April 26, 2009
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---David: "It sounds like you’re saying the hurricane is front-loaded into the winds and temperatures. But that’s not how it works: emergence in science isn’t a developmental or teleological term. The hurricane does not unfold from the chrysalis of the local winds and temperatures. It really is a new, complex, and naturally produced system with an high level of organization and complexity. Unless you’re going to attribute the cause of every hurricane to God or Aeolus." No, I agree. But the conditions for all that have been designed. Nature's laws do not come from out of nowhere.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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---B L Harville: "The IDists here do oppose emergence for exactly this reason. From what I’ve read on this site they believe that novelty can only come about by magic and never by a natural process" It is not the ID community that is proposing poof as an explanation, or , excuse me, description, or whatever account your latest attempt at damage control will inspire.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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"If novelty changes [sic] occur, there are only three possible explanations. Someone or something is changing it in real time, [unlikely] or it EMERGES or it UNFOLDS. I want both of you to consider the meaning of both of those words, because I don’t think you are thinking these things through." It sounds like you're saying the hurricane is front-loaded into the winds and temperatures. But that's not how it works: emergence in science isn't a developmental or teleological term. The hurricane does not unfold from the chrysalis of the local winds and temperatures. It really is a new, complex, and naturally produced system with an high level of organization and complexity. Unless you're going to attribute the cause of every hurricane to God or Aeolus.David Kellogg_{April 26, 2009
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B L Harville writes: “From what I’ve read on this site they believe that novelty can only come about by magic and never by a natural process. Novelty, they say, must be the result of a mind . . .” Then you have not been paying attention, for you are utterly wrong. Every ID proponent of whom I am aware agrees with Behe in Edge of Evolution. “Novelty” of a certain stripe can come about by purely naturalistic means – drug resistance in bacteria for example. But the type of novelty that can reasonably be attributed to the interplay of chance and necessity is restricted within narrow bounds, perhaps 1-3 base points. Simultaneous coordinated changes in hundreds of base points resulting in a new species (another name for which is the addition of new FCSI) is byond the ken of chance and necessity, and only blinkered chance worshipers believe otherwise.Barry Arrington_{April 26, 2009
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I asked a question above that I'll repeat just out of curiosity. What do ID proponents think of non-human animal minds? StephenB has appealed to the "soul" as designed/created. This would seem to put animals on a different footing altogether. So: would a material explanation of mental activity in non-human animals be problematic for ID?David Kellogg_{April 26, 2009
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StephenB, "But ID does not accept design as a final explanation either." I'm a bit surprised at that. What does ID do scientifically once it has concluded that something is designed?David Kellogg_{April 26, 2009
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StephenB:
But ID does not accept design as a final explanation either.
It doesn't? You mean IDists are interested in the identity of the Intelligent Designer and the methods of said designer?B L Harville_{April 26, 2009
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-----Hazel: And we still haven’t cleared up what Stephen understands “emergent to mean.” Well, let's think about this shall we. If emergence is going to be used as an alternative explanation to design, then we can't say that we are merely descibing something. On the other hand, if we are merely describing something, then what we are describing may well be a manifestation of something that was designed. So, all I can say to Darwinists at this point is, please make up your mind. ----"First, emergent doesn’t mean uncaused or out of nowhere, as Stephen first stated. And, as Allen pointed out, emergence isn’t a cause in and of itself, but rather a description of the result of a process by which the complex interplay of a lot of causes produces properties that were not there in the individual constituent parts." If that is what you mean by emergence, then why can't this interplay have been designed. -----Hurricanes are an emergent phenomena, but that is not a stopper - in fact, it’s a challenge to learn even more about its properties arise. It is only a science stopper if you accept emergence as the final explanation. But ID does not accept design as a final explanation either. If you are not using "emergence" as an explanation, then why use the term except to create the illusion of an explanation while labeling it as a description. If a hurricane is merely "described" as emergent, then why could that description not be applied to the design model? ----"What I find ironic here, and what perhaps explains some of the resistance to this term, is that emergence is about complex systems and their ability to produce novelty, such as the eye of hurricane, and this subject of novelty in complex systems is one of the ostensible topics of ID." Wait a minute. A moment ago, you said that emergence is not a cause, but now you say that it "produces novelty." Here is something for both you and Allen to consider. If novelty changes occur, there are only three possible explanations. Someone or something is changing it in real time, [unlikely] or it EMERGES or it UNFOLDS. I want both of you to consider the meaning of both of those words, because I don't think you are thinking these things through.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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hazel:
What I find ironic here, and what perhaps explains some of the resistance to this term, is that emergence is about complex systems and their ability to produce novelty, such as the eye of hurricane, and this subject of novelty in complex systems is one of the ostensible topics of ID.
You're exactly right. The IDists here do oppose emergence for exactly this reason. From what I've read on this site they believe that novelty can only come about by magic and never by a natural process. Novelty, they say, must be the result of a mind, which they also believe can not be natural. Any minds except for the Intelligent Designer's must have been produced by the Intelligent Designer. And all the while they repeat the mantra that ID has absolutely nothing to do with religion, which coincidentally they talk about constantly on this site.B L Harville_{April 26, 2009
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Hazel: "First, emergent doesn’t mean uncaused or out of nowhere . . . as Allen pointed out, emergence isn’t a cause in and of itself, but rather a description of the result of a process by which the complex interplay of a lot of causes produces properties that were not there in the individual constituent parts." You and Allen are absolutely correct. And a shorter, pithier way of describing that which “isn’t a cause in and of itself, but rather a description of the result of a process by which the complex interplay of a lot of causes produces properties that were not there in the individual constituent parts” that you cannot begin to explain given materialist premises, is “Poof!” ;-) It is amusing, but I’m not kidding. That is exactly what you are saying. You are certainly not guilty of “god of the gaps” or “designer of the gaps” reasoning; you are engaging in “emergence of the gaps” or (a more honest and descriptive phrase) “poof of the gaps” reasoning. You confirm, without intending to, the thesis of the OP. Thank you. Barry Arrington_{April 26, 2009
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As an addition to @109, I probably ought to amend my original statement since my adversaries are quick to obsess over a misplaced word or phrase and use it to avoid the main pont. I did say that “Darwinists have been playing this same type of game with Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. [With reference to "emergence]. Obviously, I should have said that they have been playing this game "since" and not "with" the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, since, as we all know, Allen and many others have abandoned that model. I would have thought that the words "have been" are clear enough to indicate that I was talking about the present, but let's go ahead and substitute "since the MET" for "with the MED," so that we are all clear that Darwinists have made the transition from inplausable enigma [MET} to another [whatever they call their latest attempt at damage control]. How's that.StephenB_{April 26, 2009
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