Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Tell That To The Mouse

Barry Arrington
October 20, 2014
Intelligent Design
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StephenB takes down a materialist in five words:

Feser:

Take a few bits of metal, work them into various shapes, and attach them to a piece of wood. Voila! A mousetrap.

Attach? Voila? There are millions of ways to attach pieces of metal to wood. Only one of those combinations will trap a mouse. The trick is to arrange those pieces so that they will function as a mousetrap.

Or so we call it. But objectively, apart from human interests, the object is “nothing but” a collection of wood and metal parts.

Tell that to the mouse . . .

Oh my sides . . . gasp . . .

Comments
Let's put aside the mousetrap, and look at the extremely complex elaborate choreographic cell fate specification, determination, differentiation and migration mechanisms that operate during the human development, where just in the intrinsic asymmetric mitosis, we see all the centrosomes, centrioles, spindle assembly checkpoints, kinetochores/microtubules connection tensions, signaling pathways, the whole nine yards, with gazillion overlapping chicken-egg cases and then we are told with arrogance that all that has nothing to do with design, except the appearance. At least in the case of the mousetrap we can figure out how those mechanisms function. However, we still don't understand well how those complex biological mechanisms function, but hear they can't be the product of design, even though no one can describe how else we got them. The more we know about them, the more they look like designed mechanisms. Give me a break! Are we humans really that naïve?Dionisio
October 20, 2014
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KF, I stand corrected. Whatever Feser's metaphysical commitments are, SB's take down is still High-larious.Barry Arrington
October 20, 2014
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BA, actually, AFAIK, Feser is not a materialist but some sort of neo-thomist. KFkairosfocus
October 20, 2014
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I still can't believe I heard this (Barry? Are you sure?): "Take a few bits of metal, work them into various shapes, and attach them to a piece of wood. Voila! A mousetrap." One of the truly serious problems with most people living and working with machines instead of animals, is that they can be guilty of such utterly foolish opinions, despite being intelligent. First, no mouse wants to be caught/killed. And he is pretty good at his regular job of pilfering stuff without getting caught/killed. That is pretty much what he does all day and night. The notion that just any old trap arrangement would work would be instantly rejected by anyone who has spent much time living and working with animals. It must be an arrangement that the animal cannot "see" as a danger. He can't work out what is going to happen if he takes the bait. This must be thought out carefully and tested. Otherwise, he'll find a way to spring the trap and vanish with the prize. Like here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqjlBb0to4cNews
October 20, 2014
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Not only the mouse but I wonder how many human fingers and toes have been "caught"? And what about other animals? Also I am not sure about the "Only one of those combinations will trap a mouse." I am sure some human could use metal and wood to make a non-standard (ie non-Behe) mousetrap. There must be numerous ways to configure wood and metal to make a mousetrap.Joe
October 20, 2014
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