Should capitalists espouse intelligent design? Versa vice?

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 10, 2012

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, News}

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Where’s that coffee mug got to? In “Does Capitalism Need Intelligent Design?” (Applied Intelligent Design, July 9, 2012), Eric Holloway asks,

What is the nature of wealth, bounded or unbounded? Within the modern paradigm of materialism, the answer must be bounded. Matter abides by strict conservation laws, and while resources may get shuffled around, there is no such concept of “creation.” As such, within a materialistic worldview, the most just economy is a centralized economy. Therefore, capitalism is unjustified within a materialistic worldview.

On the other hand, if we adopt a worldview that includes intelligent design, then creation becomes a live option. We gain the metaphysical possibility of wealth generation. How so? According to ID, intelligent agents are defined by their ability to originate
information, not merely pass it from one location to another. Consequently, it is only within an ID friendly worldview that capitalism gains the necessary metaphysical properties to make sense
of an decentralized economic model based on wealth creation.

Hmmm.

A it happens, Uncommon Descent is a bleedin’ charity (just a few people who gather and disseminate news n’ views on the design controversies). We missed out on the supposed wealth of the Discovery Institute.

No really, there is an atheist philosopher in Toronto who honestly believes and disseminates that about the Discovery Institute. Gawrsh.

See also: When the Darwin lobby were kids, they ere so poor, they had to …

Oh, here it is. Cold now:

Comments

"ID implies the supernatural," according to an attempted "first order predicate logic proof" by ID proponent Eric Holloway here. Well then, he must have been reading Steve Fuller and now be intent on building a non-IDM-ID theory of scientific-supernatural intelligent design, right? ;)Gregory_{July 11, 2012
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Beware the theory of everything. If it's wrong to make evolution the cause of everything everywhere, I doubt that substituting ID as the buzz-word will lead either to great insights or human happiness.Jon Garvey_{July 11, 2012
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Capitalism, (unless of the post-WWII Labour Party/Socialist variety in the UK) is simply systematized greed, masquerading as a sane, the only sane, economic 'philosophy'. Keynes and Galbraith saw it for what it is: Keynes: "Capitalism is 'the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.'" Galbraith, on its purveyors/enforcers: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - yet, ironically, in principle, no-one saw through it more searingly than Adam Smith, for whom the "intelligent designers", aka merchants, were plain criminals, to be watched by the authorities like hawks. "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." As for tax, Smith made even what was to become the post-war Labour Government seem like Tories - and the highest band for income tax that they set, was 95%: "The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state." If you want a fuller picture of the real Adam Smith's 'take' on economics and government, here it is in a nutshell: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/23/4046 IDers capitalist apologists? Pass.Axel_{July 10, 2012
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Eh, this is absurd. A central problem is what 'wealth' is supposed to be. But 'wealth' in economics is largely the notion of what you could, maybe, get in numerated currency if you did, perhaps, sell it in some conceptual market. Or, for opportunity costs, a diving rod into what your preferences are worth in numerated currency units. At least, if you could and did theoretically transact in commerce for personal tastes at instants in time. But stating that one can then create 'wealth' by cranking up the speed of the printing press to 11 does not necessitate that intelligence had any part to play in the decision to do so. But if you take the more restrictive notion that 'wealth' is the personal ownership of matter rearranged by humans then creating 'wealth' is simply a question of 'what humans spend their time doing'. But this only means that wealth is created by producing more humans. And I dare say I don't know a soul that claims that copulation requires intelligence. Indeed, most people lament the facets and venues of copulation that are assisted by a studied, and often temporary, lack of intelligence. But centralized and decentralized economic systems are traffic models. They are models of the distribution of notional units of whatever, numerated in some fashion, between autonomous agents. Which is no more nor less than to state that it is an engineering problem precisely synonymous with production lines; be they Kanban or otherwise. But the only manner in which to introduce metaphysics to this, at any point, is to make appeals to deontological notions -- morality. But morality of a process or an outcome is orthogonal to the notion that the process exists or that there are different processes with different efficiencies. But if we're to make utterly misplaced appeals then it should be that Central Planning and ID are brothers in arms. For they both require a intelligent agent at the center spider web. It's still ridiculous to make the claim, but at least it's not as off in the weeds about what 'ought' we 'ought' have.Maus_{July 10, 2012
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Interesting to see yet another post from News giving voice to the speculative, unspecific transfer of ID to fields outside of its traditional stomping grounds. Like Broader Implications of ID? with new questions. I agree that the current narrow disciplinary focus of IDM-ID could potentially be expanded to address such fields as political-economy. But to do so would mean to become something other than IDM-ID. Would that be welcome? Would it compromise the 'don't talk about designer(s)' strategy as it has persisted so far? Maybe that's what Eric Holloway, someone obviously not trained in economics or (other) social sciences, can help with at UD. But he has displayed something of an unnecessary fetish with 'materialism,' which doesn't portend that a successful transfer of ID from 'mainly biology' to 'political-economy' will be forthcoming.Gregory_{July 10, 2012
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