ID Foundations, 21: MF — “as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation” . . . a root worldview assumption based cause for rejecting the design inference emerges into plain view
In the OK thread, in comment 50, ID objector Mark Frank has finally laid out the root of ever so many of the objections to the design inference filter. Unsurprisingly, it is a worldview based controlling a priori of materialism:
[re EA] #38
[MF, in 50:] I see “chance” as usually meaning to “unpredictable” or “no known explanation”. The unknown explanations may be deterministic elements or genuinely random uncaused events which we just don’t know about.
It can also includes things that happen as the result of intelligence – but as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation.
But, just what what is the explanatory filter that is being objected to so strenuously?
Let me present it first, in the per aspect flowchart form that I have often used here at UD, that shows it to be a more specific and detailed understanding of a lot of empirically grounded scientific methods of investigation.
Galileo’s leaning tower exercise, showing mechanical necessity: F = m*g, of course less air resistance. NB: He did a thought expt of imagining the light and heavy ball tied together, so on the “heavier must fall faster” concept, the objects now should fall even faster. But, shouldn’t the lighter one instead have retarded the heavier? As in, oopsie. The expt may have been done and the heavier may have hit just ahead, as air resistance is as cross section but weight is as volume. (HT: Lannyland & Wiki.)
One that explicitly invokes mechanical necessity as first default, then on high contingency rejects it — if a lawlike necessity is at work, it will produce reliably similar outcomes on similar initial circumstances, just as a dropped heavy object near earth’s surface has initial acceleration 9.8 N/kg due to the gravity field of the earth.
However, this does not cover all phenomena, e.g. if the dropped object is a fair common die that then falls to a table, it will tumble and settle to read a value from the set {1, 2, . . . 6} in a way that is close to the mathematical behaviour of an ideal flat random variable.
But also, chance and necessity cannot cover all outcomes. Not only do we routinely experience being intelligent designers — e.g. by my composing this post — but we often see a class of phenomena which is highly contingent but not plausibly accounted for on chance. For, if we see 500 – 1,000 bits or more of functionally specific complex organisation and/or information [FSCO/I], the needle in haystack challenge faced by the atomic resources of our solar system or cosmos will be overwhelmed by the space of possible configurations and the challenge of finding cases E from narrow and isolated target or hot zones T in such spaces, W.
Citing Dembski’s definition of CSI in No Free Lunch:
p. 148: “The great myth of contemporary evolutionary biology is that the information needed to explain complex biological structures can be purchased without intelligence. My aim throughout this book is to dispel that myth . . . . Eigen and his colleagues must have something else in mind besides information simpliciter when they describe the origin of information as the central problem of biology.
I submit that what they have in mind is specified complexity [[cf. here below], or what equivalently we have been calling in this Chapter Complex Specified information or CSI . . . .
Biological specification always refers to function . . . In virtue of their function [[a living organism’s subsystems] embody patterns that are objectively given and can be identified independently of the systems that embody them. Hence these systems are specified in the sense required by the complexity-specificity criterion . . . the specification can be cashed out in any number of ways [[through observing the requisites of functional organisation within the cell, or in organs and tissues or at the level of the organism as a whole] . . .”
p. 144: [[Specified complexity can be defined:] “. . . since a universal probability bound of 1 [[chance] in 10^150 corresponds to a universal complexity bound of 500 bits of information, [[the cluster] (T, E) constitutes CSI because T [[ effectively the target hot zone in the field of possibilities] subsumes E [[ effectively the observed event from that field], T is detachable from E, and and T measures at least 500 bits of information . . . ”
So, design thinkers reject the default explanation for high contingency– chance — if we see FSCO/I or the like. That is, we infer on FSCO/I and related patterns best explained on (and as known reliable signs of) design, to just that, intelligent design:
Accordingly, I replied to MF at 59 in the OK thread, as follows:
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>>> the pivot of the issue is now plain from MF at 50 above:
[re EA] #38
[MF:] I see “chance” as usually meaning to “unpredictable” or “no known explanation”. The unknown explanations may be deterministic elements or genuinely random uncaused events which we just don’t know about.
It can also includes things that happen as the result of intelligence – but as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation.
Here we have the root problem, that for MF, design reduces to chance and necessity.
Also, I would not go along fully with MF’s definition of chance {“uncaused events” is a very troublesome concept for instance but my focus here is,} having identified that chance processes come about by two major known physical processes:
Chance:
Tumbling dice — a chaotic phenomenon thanks to eight corners and twelve edges interacting with uncontrollable surface roughness etc. (HT:Rosendahl, Flicker)
TYPE I:the clash of uncorrelated trains of events such as is seen when a dropped fair die hits a table etc and tumbles, settling to readings in the set {1, 2, . . . 6} in a pattern that is effectively flat random. In this sort of event, we often see manifestations of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, aka chaos, intersecting with uncontrolled or uncontrollable small variations yielding a result predictable in most cases only up to a statistical distribution which needs not be flat random.
TYPE II:processes — especially quantum ones — that are evidently random, such as quantum tunnelling as is the explanation for phenomena of alpha decay. This is used in for instance zener noise sources that drive special counter circuits to give a random number source. Such are sometimes used in lotteries or the like, or presumably in making one time message pads used in decoding.
In reply to MF’s attempt to reduce design by intelligence to the other two sources of cause, I suggest that this approach radically undermines the credibility of mind as a thinking and knowing function of being intelligent humans, in a reductio ad absurdum. (Cf my remarks here yesterday in reply to Dan Barker’s FFRF and my longstanding observations — in the end they go back to the mid 1980′s in answer to Marxist materialism as well as evolutionary materialism — here on.)
Haldane sums up one of the major problems aptly, in a turn of the 1930′s remark that has often been cited here at UD:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [[“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
Let me clip my more extended discussion:
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>> 15 –> In short, it is at least arguable that self-referential absurdity is the dagger pointing to the heart of evolutionary materialistic models of mind and its origin . . . . [It can be presented at a much more sophisticated way, cf. Hasker p. 64 on here as an example, also Reppert, Plantinga and others] but without losing its general force, it can also be drawn out a bit in a fairly simple way:
a: Evolutionary materialism argues that the cosmos is the product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature; from hydrogen to humans by undirected chance and necessity.
b: Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of purposeless laws of chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of happenstance initial circumstances.
(This is physicalism. This view covers both the forms where (a) the mind and the brain are seen as one and the same thing, and those where (b) somehow mind emerges from and/or “supervenes” on brain, perhaps as a result of sophisticated and complex software looping. The key point, though is as already noted: physical causal closure — the phenomena that play out across time, without residue, are in principle deducible or at least explainable up to various random statistical distributions and/or mechanical laws, from prior physical states. Such physical causal closure, clearly, implicitly discounts or even dismisses the causal effect of concept formation and reasoning then responsibly deciding, in favour of specifically physical interactions in the brain-body control loop; indeed, some mock the idea of — in their view — an “obviously” imaginary “ghost” in the meat-machine. [[There is also some evidence from simulation exercises, that accuracy of even sensory perceptions may lose out to utilitarian but inaccurate ones in an evolutionary competition. “It works” does not warrant the inference to “it is true.”] )
c: But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this meat-machine picture. So, we rapidly arrive at Crick’s claim in his The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994): what we subjectively experience as “thoughts,” “reasoning” and “conclusions” can only be understood materialistically as the unintended by-products of the blind natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains that (as the Smith Model illustrates) serve as cybernetic controllers for our bodies.
d: These underlying driving forces are viewed as being ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance shaped by forces of selection [[“nature”] and psycho-social conditioning [[“nurture”], within the framework of human culture [[i.e. socio-cultural conditioning and resulting/associated relativism]. And, remember, the focal issue to such minds — notice, this is a conceptual analysis made and believed by the materialists! — is the physical causal chains in a control loop, not the internalised “mouth-noises” that may somehow sit on them and come along for the ride.
(Save, insofar as such “mouth noises” somehow associate with or become embedded as physically instantiated signals or maybe codes in such a loop. [[How signals, languages and codes originate and function in systems in our observation of such origin — i.e by design — tends to be pushed to the back-burner and conveniently forgotten. So does the point that a signal or code takes its significance precisely from being an intelligently focused on, observed or chosen and significant alternative from a range of possibilities that then can guide decisive action.])
e: For instance, Marxists commonly derided opponents for their “bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians frequently dismissed qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? Should we not ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is little more than yet another operantly conditioned rat trapped in the cosmic maze? And — as we saw above — would the writings of a Crick be any more than the firing of neurons in networks in his own brain?
f: For further instance, we may take the favourite whipping-boy of materialists: religion. Notoriously, they often hold that belief in God is not merely cognitive, conceptual error, but delusion. Borderline lunacy, in short. But, if such a patent “delusion” is so utterly widespread, even among the highly educated, then it “must” — by the principles of evolution — somehow be adaptive to survival, whether in nature or in society. And so, this would be a major illustration of the unreliability of our conceptual reasoning ability, on the assumption of evolutionary materialism.
g: Turning the materialist dismissal of theism around, evolutionary materialism itself would be in the same leaky boat. For, the sauce for the goose is notoriously just as good a sauce for the gander, too.
h: That is, on its own premises [[and following Dawkins in A Devil’s Chaplain, 2004, p. 46], the cause of the belief system of evolutionary materialism, “must” also be reducible to forces of blind chance and mechanical necessity that are sufficiently adaptive to spread this “meme” in populations of jumped- up apes from the savannahs of East Africa scrambling for survival in a Malthusian world of struggle for existence. Reppert brings the underlying point sharply home, in commenting on the “internalised mouth-noise signals riding on the physical cause-effect chain in a cybernetic loop” view:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions. [[Emphases added . . . ]
i: The famous geneticist and evolutionary biologist (as well as Socialist) J. B. S. Haldane made much the same point in a famous 1932 remark:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [[“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
j: Therefore, though materialists will often try to pointedly ignore or angrily brush aside the issue, we may freely argue: if such evolutionary materialism is true, then (i) our consciousness, (ii) the “thoughts” we have, (iii) the conceptualised beliefs we hold, (iv) the reasonings we attempt based on such and (v) the “conclusions” and “choices” (a.k.a. “decisions”) we reach — without residue — must be produced and controlled by blind forces of chance happenstance and mechanical necessity that are irrelevant to “mere” ill-defined abstractions such as: purpose or truth, or even logical validity.
(NB: The conclusions of such “arguments” may still happen to be true, by astonishingly lucky coincidence — but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we have “proved” or “warranted” them. It seems that rationality itself has thus been undermined fatally on evolutionary materialistic premises. Including that of Crick et al. Through, self-reference leading to incoherence and utter inability to provide a cogent explanation of our commonplace, first-person experience of reasoning and rational warrant for beliefs, conclusions and chosen paths of action. Reduction to absurdity and explanatory failure in short.)
k: And, if materialists then object: “But, we can always apply scientific tests, through observation, experiment and measurement,” then we must immediately note that — as the fate of Newtonian Dynamics between 1880 and 1930 shows — empirical support is not equivalent to establishing the truth of a scientific theory. For, at any time, one newly discovered countering fact can in principle overturn the hitherto most reliable of theories. (And as well, we must not lose sight of this: in science, one is relying on the legitimacy of the reasoning process to make the case that scientific evidence provides reasonable albeit provisional warrant for one’s beliefs etc. Scientific reasoning is not independent of reasoning.) >>
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In short, there is a major issue that materialism is inherently and inescapably self referentially incoherent, undermining its whole scheme of reasoning.
That is a big topic itself.
But, when it comes to the issue of debates over the meaning of chance and inferences to design which implicate intelligence, it is an underlying assumption that plainly leads to endless debates.
In this context, however, the case of 500 coins in a row on a table reading all H or alternating H and T or the first 72 characters of this post in ASCII code, strongly shows the difference in capacity of chance and design as sources of configurations that come from independently and simply describable clusters that are deeply isolated in a space of configs that are such that the atomic resources of our solar system cannot credibly search a big enough fraction to make it reasonable to believe one will stumble upon such configs blindly.
In short, there is a major and directly experienced phenomenon to be accounted for, self aware conscious intellect and related capacities we subsume under the term mind. And this phenomenon is manifest in capacity to design, which is as familiar as composing posts in this thread.
Such designs are well beyond the capacity of blind chance and mechanical necessity, so we have good reason to see that intelligence capable of design is as fundamental in understanding our empirical world as chance and as necessity.
Whatever the worldview consequences — and I think they are huge.>>>
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In short, it seems that one key root of objections to the design inference is the notion that intelligence needed for design in the end reduces to cumulative effects of blind chance and mechanical necessity.
Only, that runs into significant self referential incoherence challenges.
A safer approach would be to recognise that intelligence indisputably exists and indisputably exerts capacities not credibly observed to emerge from blind chance and mechanical necessity. Indeed, on inductive and analytic — needle in haystack — grounds, it is arguable and compelling that certain phenomena such as FSCO/I are reliable signs of design as cause.
Then, we run into the challenge that from its very roots, cell based life is chock full of such signs of design, starting with the genetic code and the size of genomes, from 100 – 1,000 kbits on up.
Then, the observed cosmos itself shows strong and multiple signs of being fine tuned in ways that enable the existence of cell based life on terrestrial planets such as our own — where fine tuning is another empirically grounded sign of being designed.
So, there are good reasons to extend the force of the design inference to the origin of cell based life and of major body plans for such life, and to the origins of the observed cosmos that hosts such life. END
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F/N: I must update by posting this all too aptly accurate debate summary by no less than UD’s inimitable WJM, done here on Christmas day as a gift to the blog and world. WJM, I CANNOT let this one just wash away in the stream of comments! (You ought to separately headline it under your monicker.) Here goes:
Typical debate with an anti-ID advocate:
ID advocate: There are certain things that exist that are best explained by intelligent designed.
Anti-ID advocate: Whoa! Hold up there, fella. “Explained”, in science, means “caused by”. Intelligent design doesn’t by itself “cause” anything.
ID advocate: What I meant is that teleology is required to generate certain things, like a functioning battleship. It can’t come about by chance.
Anti-ID advocate: What do you mean “by chance”? “By” means to cause. Are you claiming that chance causes things to happen?
ID advocate: Of course not. Chance, design and necessity are the three fundamental categories of causation used to characterize the outcomes of various processes and mechanisms. You’re taking objection with colloquialisms that are commonly used in mainstream science and debate. Here are some examples of peer-reviewed, published papers that use these same colloquialisms.
Anti-ID advocate: Those aren’t real scientists!
ID advocate: Those are scientists you yourself have quoted in the past – they are mainstream Darwinists.
ID advocate: I’m using the quotes the same way the authors used them.
Anti-ID advocate: Can you prove it?
ID Advocate: It’s not my job to prove my own innocence, but whatever. Look, it has been accepted for thousands of years that there are only three categories of causation – necessity, or law, chance and artifice, or design. Each category is distinct.
Anti ID advocate: I have no reason to accept that design is a distinct category.
ID advocate: So, you’re saying that battleship or a computer can be generated by a combination of necessity (physical laws) and chance?
Anti-ID advocate: Can you prove otherwise? Are you saying it’s impossible?
ID advocate: No, I’m saying that chance and necessity are not plausible explanations.
Anti-ID advocate: “Explanation” means to “cause” a thing. Chance and necessity don’t “cause” anything.
ID advocate: We’ve already been over this. Those are shorthand ways of talking about processes and mechanisms that produce effects categorized as lawful or chance.
Anti-ID advocate: Shorthand isn’t good enough – we must have specific uses of terms using explicitly laid-out definitions or else debate cannot go forward.
ID advocate: (insert several pages lay out specifics and definitions with citations and historical references).
ID advocate: In summary, this demonstrates that mainstream scientists have long accepted that there are qualitative difference between CSI, or organized, complimentary complexity/functionality, and what can in principle be generated via the causal categories of chance and necessity. Only intelligent or intentional agency is known to be in principle capable of generating such phenomena.
Anti-ID advocate: OMG, you can’t really expect me to read and understand all of that! I don’t understand the way you word things. Is English your first language? It makes my head hurt.
Comments
RDF
I honestly have no idea how to make sense out of what you just said. A dog is exactly the same thing as a cat? A cloud is exactly the same thing as a peanut? There are no ontological differences among these things, but to say that they are all exactly the same thing is simply weird. Even for you.
We are discussing your argument--not mine. Indeed, a dog is not a cat because there IS an ontological distinction between them. If there is NO ontological distinction between them, which is the basis for your argument, then a dog is a cat.
Similarly, If there is NO ontological distinction between the painter and his painting, then the painter is his painting, which would mean that he could not be the cause of his own painting.
Again, tt is your argument not mine.
If the human artist is not ontologically distinct from the artifact, then the human artist is responsible for bringing the artifact into being.
Obviously, your argument is irrational. It is only because the painter IS ontologically distinct from the painting that he can bring the painting into being.
Similarly, you argue on the basis that an avalanche is also the cabin that it buries:
Take another example: An avalanche comes down a mountain and crushes my log cabin. What is responsible for crushing the cabin? The avalanche of course, although there is no ontological difference (I assume) between the avalanche and the log cabin.
This is the kind of trouble you get into when you try to deny obvious truths. Eventually, the irrational nature of your arguments are revealed.
Once again, I am very happy to let the fair reader decide which of us is completely incoherent.
I am not the one who argued on the basis that there need not be an ontological distinction between the cause and its effect. You are.
By all means, let the fair reader decide.
Let the fair reader also decide why you evaded my question about how you inferred the painter from his artifact. Let the fair reader also decide if you invented your own self-serving, novel, and unproven methods for evaluating ID or if you based them on the proven methods of historical science, about which you are unfamiliar and uninterested.StephenB
January 9, 2014
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RDF:
simply provide examples (or even one single example) of something we might find in the fossil record, or in living biological systems, or anywhere else, that would 1) indicate that some conscious being existed before life on Earth
UB: 1) A translation apparatus producing unambiguous function, with the following physical system:
• A set of arrangements of matter to evoke specific physical effects within a system, where the arrangements of the matter are physicochemically arbitrary to the effects they evoke
• A preserved discontinuity between the arrangements of the information-bearing medium and the effects they evoke within the system
• A second set of arrangements of matter to establish the otherwise non-existent (i.e. local) relationships between the arrangements of the information-bearing medium and their effects.
2) A translation apparatus that also includes:
• An information-bearing medium using a finite set of objects as an iterative dimensional representation, requiring systematic constraints in addition to the mapping of effects (i.e. establishment of the object set, symbol syntax, a start function, a stop function, etc).
• An information-bearing medium whose individuating characteristics are thermodynamically inert.
- - - - - - - - - -
Set #1 is only found within the living kingdom (i.e. a universal inference to pre-existing organization), and set #2 is only found in the translation of language and mathematics (i.e. a universal inference to higher intelligence).
RDF:
None of what you pointed out regarding symbol systems has anything to do with evidence of an “intelligent agent”
Predicted.Upright BiPed
January 9, 2014
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RDFish:
None of what you pointed out regarding symbol systems has anything to do with evidence of an “intelligent agent”, ...
Yes it does unless you can show nature putting together functional semiotic codes.
Again when there is only one known source for something, that is the knowledge we have to go with.Joe
January 9, 2014
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Hi StephenB,
If there is no ontological distinction between the painter and his materials, then the painter is exactly the same thing as his materials.
I honestly have no idea how to make sense out of what you just said. A dog is exactly the same thing as a cat? A cloud is exactly the same thing as a peanut? There are no ontological differences among these things, but to say that they are all exactly the same thing is simply weird. Even for you.
RDF: Now we observe the painter dipping his paintbrushes and applying the paint to the canvas and a painting forms.
SB: You just described four things. If the painter is exactly the same as his materials, then there is just one thing to observe, nor four.
What are you talking about it?
If the painter is exactly the same thing as his materials and his painting, then he can’t precede the painting in order to bring it into existence. That would be the same thing as preceding himself.
Maybe you are making a joke? Haha, a lion is the exact same thing as a snowflake, and a grain of sand is exactly the same thing as turtle.... Do you perhaps live in Colorado, where they recently legalized recreational marijuana? Just asking... :-)
RDF: Take another example: An avalanche comes down a mountain and crushes my log cabin. What is responsible for crushing the cabin? The avalanche of course, although there is no ontological difference (I assume) between the avalanche and the log cabin.
SB: That doesn’t work for two reasons. First, the avalanche is an event, not a thing.
Huh? An avalanche is a bunch of moving snow; a painter is a moving person. What is with you today?
Second, if their is no ontological distinction between the avalanche and the log cabin, then the avalanche is the log cabin and cannot, therefore, bury itself.
Uh, OK Stephen. If we can't agree that there is a difference between an avalanche and a log cabin, no wonder we cannot agree on anything else. Once again, I am very happy to let the fair reader decide which of us is completely incoherent.
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
January 9, 2014
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Hi UB,
As for what is left, your clean-up position is that the existence of an agent is unlikely because we have no evidence to suggest that one exists (obviously ignoring the evidence which you agree with).
None of what you pointed out regarding symbol systems has anything to do with evidence of an "intelligent agent", obviously, unless you believe that a codon is an intelligent agent? You are terribly confused.
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
January 9, 2014
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Re RDF:
Let’s assume there is no ontological distinction between the painter and the paintbrush and the canvas and so on
Already a big worldview level question-begging definition, that traipses into metaphysics while wearing the lab coat.
You cannot assume that, if you wish to reason soundly.
KFkairosfocus
January 9, 2014
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RDF,
There’s nothing you said about pheromones, codons, or energy states that I disagree with … I agree about the observations
And so… given that our “inability to identify an agent at the origin of life” does not alter these observations, the empirical inference to an organized intelligent entity (referencing my short post at #173) is made complete. Consequently, your on-going claim that ID has no empirical basis is quite obviously false, and will need to be rescued through several rounds of definition derby over terms such as “intelligence” and “agent”. You are welcome to accomplish that task without my involvement.
As for what is left, your clean-up position is that the existence of an agent is unlikely because we have no evidence to suggest that one exists (obviously ignoring the evidence which you agree with). To this I say “so what”. That’s the position you’ve chosen, even though your justification is incoherent.Upright BiPed
One last charge must be met: Orr maintains that the theory of intelligent design is not falsifiable. He’s wrong. To falsify design theory a scientist need only experimentally demonstrate that a bacterial flagellum, or any other comparably complex system, could arise by natural selection. If that happened I would conclude that neither flagella nor any system of similar or lesser complexity had to have been designed. In short, biochemical design would be neatly disproved.- Dr Behe in 1997
Joe
January 9, 2014
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RDF
Let’s assume there is no ontological distinction between the painter and the paintbrush and the canvas and so on (in other words, we assume some sort of monism).
If there is no ontological distinction between the painter and his materials, then the painter is exactly the same thing as his materials.
Now we observe the painter dipping his paintbrushes and applying the paint to the canvas and a painting forms.
You just described four things. If the painter is exactly the same as his materials, then there is just one thing to observe, nor four.
What would you say is responsible for the painting coming into existence? I would say it was the painter! What’s the problem?
If the painter is exactly the same thing as his materials and his painting, then he can't precede the painting in order to bring it into existence. That would be the same thing as preceding himself.
Take another example: An avalanche comes down a mountain and crushes my log cabin. What is responsible for crushing the cabin? The avalanche of course, although there is no ontological difference (I assume) between the avalanche and the log cabin.
That doesn't work for two reasons. First, the avalanche is an event, not a thing. Second, if their is no ontological distinction between the avalanche and the log cabin, then the avalanche is the log cabin and cannot, therefore, bury itself.
If I saw a painting I would be very certain that a human being was responsible. I know of no other living things that can create paintings (youtube videos of cats and elephants painting notwithstanding), and neither can non-living things create paintings (we’ll leave computer-generated paintings out of this for simplicity’s sake).
That doesn't really answer the question. Even if you know that only humans can create paintings, how do you know that the painting in question is one of them? How do you make the inference from that particular effect to that particular cause?
SB: You will never find a reference to any such criterion in the annals of historical science. It’s just something that you made up without even a modicum of support from any other source.
How do you know that? Have you read every reference “in the annals of historical science."
I don't know it with logical certainty, but I know it beyond a reasonable doubt--the same way that I know beyond a reasonable doubt that you are not familiar with the standards of historical science--the same way I know beyond a reasonable doubt that you just made up your own method uninformed by the standards of historical science.StephenB
January 9, 2014
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Hi StephenB,
I can understand why the painter who is ontologically distinct from his painting could be (and would be) responsible for bringing it into being. What I don’t understand is how can the human artist that is not ontologically distinct from his artifact could be responsible for bringing it into being?
I honestly can't imagine why this is hard for you to understand.
Let's assume there is no ontological distinction between the painter and the paintbrush and the canvas and so on (in other words, we assume some sort of monism). Now we observe the painter dipping his paintbrushes and applying the paint to the canvas and a painting forms. What would you say is responsible for the painting coming into existence? I would say it was the painter! What's the problem?
Take another example: An avalanche comes down a mountain and crushes my log cabin. What is responsible for crushing the cabin? The avalanche of course, although there is no ontological difference (I assume) between the avalanche and the log cabin.
RDF: Again, whether or not the painter and painting are ontologically distinct, yes of course the person with the paint brush putting the paint on the canvas is causing the painting to appear.
SB: OK, good. Thank you. Do you think that you could infer the existence of the painter as an intelligent agent from that painting?
Do you seriously not know my response to this? If I saw a painting I would be very certain that a human being was responsible. I know of no other living things that can create paintings (youtube videos of cats and elephants painting notwithstanding), and neither can non-living things create paintings (we'll leave computer-generated paintings out of this for simplicity's sake).
You will never find a reference to any such criterion in the annals of historical science. It’s just something that you made up without even a modicum of support from any other source.
How do you know that? Have you read every reference "in the annals of historical science", including every tome that discusses the requirements and preferred methods for conducting science of this sort, and so you can say authoritatively that nobody mentions that a hypotheses that can explain anything at all, no matter what observation is made, cannot be considered to be empirically testable? No, you haven't read every textbook I'm sure, and it should be obvious to you in any case that a hypothesis that can explain anything explains nothing.
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
January 8, 2014
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Hi Upright BiPed,
There's nothing you said about pheremones, codons, or energy states that I disagree with. I don't take your point, though. Are you definining "intelligence" in terms of this observation? Something like "Intelligence is that which enables a system to respond in a systematic way to stimuli which are not related to the lowest total potential energy state of the medium"?
In any case, you made a claim but failed to substantiate it. There is no religious and/or philosophical component to these observations.
I agree about the observations; it is the inference made from these sorts of observations that ID makes that (depending on the version of ID being discussed) requires metaphysical commitments to dualism/libertarianism.
The observations I have presented are only about the physical conditions of translating information from a material medium into a physical effect, and have nothing to do with the content of the information.
Ok, so again, what is your point regarding this class of thing (symbol systems). Perhaps you're just saying that in order for the latter type of signalling system to arise it would require "intelligence". In that case, please tell me what you mean by "intelligence" execpt for "the ability to produce these sorts of symbol systems".
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
January 8, 2014
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Hi Optimus,
The processes of design detection and making inferences about the nature/attributes of the designer(s) are distinct from each other and by necessity take place in an unvarying sequence.
You say there is a process of "design detection" that is separate from the process of "making inferences about the nature/attributes of the designer". So the first problem is that the word "design" in "design detection" is only meaningful to the extent that it refers to particular attributes of whatever you are detecting. Do you mean that you detecting the action of a conscious agent when you detect design? If so, you have just made an inference about the nature/attributes of the designer, simply by saying that you have detected design; namely, you have asserted that the cause of the feature under investigation experienced conscious awareness.
No reasonable person looks at an object, be it a puddle of water, a building, a cloud formation, or an overlong internet comment (such as this), and then wonders ‘What sort of person did this?’ before deciding if said object is the likely product of design in the first place.
When I say the Designer of ID is undefined, I'm not complaining that we don't know His name, or what sort of Person He is. Rather, I'm saying we have no reason to think it's a "person" at all - the nature and attributes of this hypothetical cause is undefined.
NO ONE SIMPLY OBSERVES AN OBJECT AND ASSUMES IT TO BE WITHIN THE CAPABILITY OF THE DESIGNER. THE NATURE/ATTRIBUTES OF THE DESIGNER ARE LOGICALLY SUBORDINATE TO THE FIRST ORDER QUESTION OF DESIGN [steps off of soap box].
That may be true in practice, but as far as ID theory goes, since ID refuses to describe the cause of these features, no feature could possibly be concluded to be outside the abilities of design.
Logically the only corollary from a conclusion of design is that the designed object must fall within the abilities of the designing agent to produce it.
You don't understand the problem. You look at a car and say "it is designed". What do you mean by that? You mean that it was planned and built by living human beings. In other words, by saying the car is designed, you have already made a huge number of inferences regarding the nature/attributes of the designer. If we then turn our attention to the universe and decide that it too was designed (because of the particular values of the physical constants), we obviously no longer mean that it was planned and built by human beings. So the question becomes, what is it that we do mean? ID never answers this question.
RDF: So far so good, except you are assuming this nonhuman activity was conscious, which is a hypothesis that would have to be supported as well. Perhaps there is such a thing as a non-human entity that produces CSI without consciousness (human beings produce a great deal of CSI without conscious awareness, after all, and nobody understands how conscious awareness is actually involved in thought processes, whether it is causal or perceptual).
OPT: Perhaps there are unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters too. Maybe in the vastness of the cosmos there is someone who actually looks good in a mullet. Who knows? But both they and your proposal of non-human, non-conscious CSI producers are just idle speculations.
Yes, I couldn't have said it better (or funnier) myself! I agree (except for the fact that humans do produce CSI without conscious awareness, as I've pointed out several times). Anyway, along with your other idle speculations is the idle speculation that some entity could be conscious without the physiological correlates of consciousness that neuroscience has identified. That means when you hypothesize some conscious agency existed prior to the first living thing, this is merely idle speculation of the very same sort. Nothing in our experience can design anything, or experience consciousness, unless they have a complex working brain, which is the most complex information processing mechanism known.
You often object that it isn’t presently known whether consciousness is genuinely causal or merely perceptual. You also object to classifying consciousness as being somehow distinct from chance and necessity.
Actually no, I object to classifying intelligence (or rather producing CSI) as being something that necessarily transcends chance and necessity. I consider consciousness very mysterious, and nobody has any idea what a theory that reduces consciousness to chance and necessity would even look like.
Where consciousness is concerned, I give epistemological priority my first-person experience.
Even then, our first-person experience does not actually support your view. Solutions to problems often "come to" people when we are not consciously thinking about the problem. I find this especially true when designing complex algorithms or working on difficult math problems. Moreover, when each of us designs grammatical sentences, we are not consciously aware of how we accomplish those designs.
The onus is on the doubter to cogently articulate why consciousness is merely perceptual.
Aside from the evidence that we all make complex designs without conscious awareness, there is evidence from cognitive psychology that suggests (but of course does not prove) that at least some (but perhaps all) of our decisions are the result of unconcious processes (see Benjamin Libet, Daniel Wegner, others), and we only become conscious of our decisions after they are made.
Absent such articulation, in my mind there is no substantive objection to considering consciousness to be causal (provisionally, of course).
And then, after the first-person observations, and after the laboratory experiments, there is yet another reason why it is idle speculation to imagine a conscious designer preceding first life (or preceding matter/energy itself): As far as we know, consciousness does not exist absent a working brain. Perhaps a brain is required for consciousness (as John Searle believes). Or perhaps any complex physical information processing mechanism could give rise to consciousness (as Pat Churchland believes). Or perhaps only certain types of machines that operate at the level of quantum gravity can give rise to consciousness (as Roger Penrose believes). Or... and on and on.
In any case, just because people build complex machines and are conscious gives no reason to assume that any other process, system, attribute, force, entity, whatever is also going to be conscious. You can speculate that this would be the case, but you have no science to support your speculation.
It should also be noted that in our experience of design, consciousness is unvaryingly present. You once objected that we could just as easily attribute design to some organ, a spleen perhaps. But no one has ever observed a dead body (non-conscious) with an intact spleen design anything. Ever. Further, it is widely known that the removal of said organ from a living person does little to inhibit ability to design. So there’s no compelling reason to consider spleens as likely candidates for causing design. To juxtapose spleens with consciousness in this context is infantile.
You completely misunderstood the point about the spleen, but no matter. What you do need to note is that human beings design things not with their spleen, but with their brain (with some additional processing taking place in the enteric nervous system and other areas of the CNS). Any notion that something could have human-like mental experiences and abilities without a human-like brain is idle speculation.
The point of my comment was simply that, given our uniform and repeated experience of designers creating functional information,
What do you mean by "designers"? All of this rests squarely on your unsupported assumption that conscious awareness is causal of design, and yet another unsupported assumption that something lacking the physical correlates of consciousness that neuroscience has identified could still be conscious. Since there is no evidence that your assumptions are true, you are basing a theory on idle speculation.
You are insistent that consciousness cannot be divorced from embodied humans. How do you know? Your metaphysical priors are preventing you acknowledging the bare possibility that it could be a distinct property/phenomenon not limited to humans. You’re committing the fallacy of omniscience.
No, of course that's not what I'm doing at all. I acknowledge the bare possibility of all sorts of idle speculation, including disembodied spirits! I simply reject that such speculation amounts to a scientific theory.
Yes it’s true that we don’t understand everything about consciousness, but to pretend as if we can’t even draw the elementary connection between consciousness and design (problem-solving, etc.)is silly.
This is the worst mistake you've made so far. Honestly I get the impression that you have no familiarity at all with cogntive psychology - is that the case? Again, read just a bit about the work of Daniel Wegner at Harvard to see that while nobody has experimentally confirmed any particular solution to the mind/body problem, it is most certainly not silly in the least to question the nature of the connection between conscious thought and design abilities.
Many learned activities are performed more-or-less subconsciously, so there are undoubtedly aspects of this task that I don’t give deliberate attention to (for instance, as a touch typist I don’t deliberately seek out each key. I hit them reflexively).
What we do in our unconscious is not simply learned routines that we invoke by reflex. You don't consciously know the rules of grammar that enable you to produce the sentences you type, and you aren't aware of the plans you are creating to operate your muscles in sequence so you can type. All of these very complex planning operations are performed without any conscious thought. People can hold entire coherent conversations without conscious awareness of them. I personally had a lecturer who suffered a stroke, and temporarily lost the ability to consciously understand what he himself was saying, although he could continue to speak coherently!
But, nevertheless, I remain confident that this comment is the product of my conscious activity.
Your confidence is misplaced. At least peruse some papers by Daniel Wegner at Harvard, and of course the experiments by Benjamin Libet if you're not aware of them. Your opinion that it is a certain fact that our conscious will determines our goals, plans, and actions is only one of a number of issues that undermine the contention that ID is an empirically-supported theory.
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
January 8, 2014
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StephenB:
Do you think that you could infer the existence of the painter as an intelligent agent from that painting?
RDFishlite:
Not if blind and undirected processes can produce painters/ artists.Joe
January 8, 2014
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RDF
…I’m pointing out that it is impossible to apply the scientific method to ID in this way, because ID does not state what its hypothetical cause is incapable of producing. That is just another reason ID can’t be considered to be scientific.
You will never find a reference to any such criterion in the annals of historical science. It's just something that you made up without even a modicum of support from any other source.StephenB
January 8, 2014
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RDF
...I’m pointing out that it is impossible to apply the scientific method to ID in this way, because ID does not state what its hypothetical cause is incapable of producing. That is just another reason ID can’t be considered to be scientific.
You will never find a reference to any such criterion in the annals of historical science. It's just something that you made up without even a mStephenB
January 8, 2014
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SB:How can a painter paint a painting if the two are not ontologically distinct?
RDF
Well, the painter picks up the paintbrush, puts some paint on it, and begins applying the paint to the canvas of course. Perhaps you should take an art class!
Well, I am sure that I would be much edified by the experience, but that doesn't really answer my question.
Seriously, I have no idea what you think the issue is here.
I am just trying to understand your first claim in this comment:
If the human artist is not ontologically distinct from the artifact, then the human artist is responsible for bringing the artifact into being. (That is also true if the human artists is ontologically distinct from the artifact of course).
I can understand why the painter who is ontologically distinct from his painting could be (and would be) responsible for bringing it into being. What I don't understand is how can the human artist that is not ontologically distinct from his artifact could be responsible for bringing it into being?
SB: Also, insofar as the painter and the painter are ontologically distinct, is the painter the cause of the painting?
Again, whether or not the painter and painting are ontologically distinct, yes of course the person with the paint brush putting the paint on the canvas is causing the painting to appear.
OK, good. Thank you. Do you think that you could infer the existence of the painter as an intelligent agent from that painting?StephenB
January 8, 2014
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It’s not clear what you mean by “derivable” here, but it sounds like you are saying that the laws of thermodynamics have somehow been violated…
…The “individuating characteristics” of most things (except for extremely simply physical systems) are not determined by the minimum total potential energy of the matter they are made of.
The pheromone of an ant is an arrangement of matter (a physical representation) that is recognized in the ant’s system by assuming its lowest potential energy state – a specific number of atoms of a specific type, that when formed as a compound assumes a specific physical structure that the ant’s sensory system individually recognizes and responds to. On the other hand, the word “apple” written on a piece of paper is an arrangement of matter (a physical representation) that also assumes it lowest potential energy state. In broad terms, the atoms of the ink interact with the atoms of the paper and together they assume their combined lowest potential energy state (a piece of paper stained with ink). But what is recognized in the system is only the arrangement of the ink on paper (the shape and sequence of the letters) – which has nothing whatsoever to do with the lowest total potential energy state of the ink and paper.
The genetic codon exhibits the same material conditions as the word “apple” on a piece of paper. The ordering of the nucleotides has nothing to do with the lowest total potential energy state of the nucleic medium. Such representations place critical (and singularly unique) requirements on the systems that must recognize and respond to them, which I discussed earlier.
In any case, you made a claim but failed to substantiate it. There is no religious and/or philosophical component to these observations.
Let’s agree that this class of things exists and can be identified, and let’s call it “CSI”.
No, let’s not. The observations I have presented are only about the physical conditions of translating information from a material medium into a physical effect, and have nothing to do with the content of the information.Upright BiPed
January 8, 2014
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Hi, RDFish
@ 169 you wrote:
Ok, you have made your mistake crystal clear, thanks.
What you just said is that you look at the phenomena we wish to explain (say certain features of biological systems) and then simply assume that whatever you observe, this hypothetical “agent” that you postulate is capable of creating! You decide in advance that whatever you see will be within the “minimum capability of the designer”, so no matter what you ever see, you will always adjust your hypothesis so that it encompasses your observation!
Unfortunately it appears that you continue in a practice of reading hastily for the sake of rebuttal. I respectfully suggest that you slow down a little for the sake of comprehension. I'll enlarge on the basic point so that hopefully it will be clearer. The processes of design detection and making inferences about the nature/attributes of the designer(s) are distinct from each other and by necessity take place in an unvarying sequence. Design detection takes place first, and then (if something is in fact discerned to be designed) inferences about the designer can be made. No reasonable person looks at an object, be it a puddle of water, a building, a cloud formation, or an overlong internet comment (such as this), and then wonders 'What sort of person did this?' before deciding if said object is the likely product of design in the first place.
In your critique of my remarks you seem to betray a confused understanding of how ID works. NO ONE SIMPLY OBSERVES AN OBJECT AND ASSUMES IT TO BE WITHIN THE CAPABILITY OF THE DESIGNER. THE NATURE/ATTRIBUTES OF THE DESIGNER ARE LOGICALLY SUBORDINATE TO THE FIRST ORDER QUESTION OF DESIGN [steps off of soap box]. An illustration should make this point clear. Let's begin with something that we can agree was designed - a car is simple enough. Now here's the question, if we limit our examination to the car itself (without bringing in any additional information), is it possible to determine the limits of the designer's ability? Is the car the apogee of the designer's powers, its magnum opus? Or does the designer also create jet engines (ala Rolls Royce)? Can you tell simply from analyzing the car? I say no and defy anyone to state with clarity how that possibly could be so! Logically the only corollary from a conclusion of design is that the designed object must fall within the abilities of the designing agent to produce it. Further, if we revise the premise of the thought experiment so that we are no longer sure if the car was in fact designed, are any of the preceding questions even coherent?
It is just amazing that you (and others here) don’t understand why this is a perfectly ridiculous way to approach science! Can’t you see that you can never tell if this “designer” that you are dreaming up actually exists, since no matter what the evidence is, you simply say “That must be within the minimum capability of the designer!”
You have quite the predilection for ignoring simple arguments. See above.
So far so good, except you are assuming this nonhuman activity was conscious, which is a hypothesis that would have to be supported as well. Perhaps there is such a thing as a non-human entity that produces CSI without consciousness (human beings produce a great deal of CSI without conscious awareness, after all, and nobody understands how conscious awareness is actually involved in thought processes, whether it is causal or perceptual).
Perhaps there are unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters too. Maybe in the vastness of the cosmos there is someone who actually looks good in a mullet. Who knows? But both they and your proposal of non-human, non-conscious CSI producers are just idle speculations. We can always hold out hope of some as-yet undiscovered phenomenon that would account for our observations. But that doesn't give us license to ignore potential cause that many (present company excepted) would consider legitimate - consciousness. The issue of consciousness is one that I haven't commented on extensively yet (at least not in my exchanges with you), so it deserves some attention.
You often object that it isn't presently known whether consciousness is genuinely causal or merely perceptual. You also object to classifying consciousness as being somehow distinct from chance and necessity. I grant that consciousness is a phenomenon that we don't fully (or even mostly) understand. Having said that, it is not unreasonable to make some provisional judgments about the relationship between consciousness and design. In my own meditations about consciousness, I give priority to my first-person experience as a conscious agent. Hopefully we can agree, whatever the ultimate nature of consciousness may be, that we are conscious agents, and that we daily experience an awareness of making decisions, of planning with regard to future contingencies, of mentally designing and then implementing the design in physical space. Some would argue that such awareness is merely illusory, a reflection of a wholly non-conscious process; I disagree. Where consciousness is concerned, I give epistemological priority my first-person experience. The onus is on the doubter to cogently articulate why consciousness is merely perceptual. Absent such articulation, in my mind there is no substantive objection to considering consciousness to be causal (provisionally, of course). It should also be noted that in our experience of design, consciousness is unvaryingly present. You once objected that we could just as easily attribute design to some organ, a spleen perhaps. But no one has ever observed a dead body (non-conscious) with an intact spleen design anything. Ever. Further, it is widely known that the removal of said organ from a living person does little to inhibit ability to design. So there's no compelling reason to consider spleens as likely candidates for causing design. To juxtapose spleens with consciousness in this context is infantile.
On the distinction drawn between consciousness and chance/necessity, I appeal to our empirical knowledge of their respective effects (yes I am clearly proceeding from the premise that consciousness is causal). Consciousness, whatever its ultimate nature, certainly seems to have causal abilities that differ markedly from chance and necessity. Consciousness can mimic chance and necessity, but it also outstrips them. It produces information, complex mechanical systems, abstractions. Broadly speaking, consciousness deserves to be considered as its own casual class, because we have plentiful experience that it is capable of manipulating matter and energy in ways that chance and necessity do not.
Some unknown “nonhuman consciousness” is not any sort of explanation of anything. I could just as well hypothesize some unknown physical process that produces CSI and call that an explanation. You scoff at the idea of course, but it is no less speculative or unjustified than your hypothesis of an unknown consciousness.
If one accepts that consciousness is causal, then it is certainly an explanation. As already noted, given our consistent, first-person experience as conscious agents, we do have valid reason for thinking that conscious activity is a legitimate explanation of CSI (or whatever other design criterion). The onus is on you to show an equivalency between conscious activity and 'some unknown physical process.'
And this is precisely what people mean by “god of the gaps” reasoning. The lack of an explanation is not support for the hypothesis of an undefined entity that is hypothesized to have minimum capabilities that will explain anything we ever want to explain that we don’t understand already.
This is not 'God-of-the-gaps.' Do you know what that term means? It indicates plugging in a (theistic) explanation to fill a gap in our understanding without any positive evidence. The point of my comment was simply that, given our uniform and repeated experience of designers creating functional information, it is unreasonable to insist that inferring design is unwarranted without independent confirmation. Coupled with our emphatic lack of experience of any other type of cause generating functional information, we should be able to at least provisionally affirm the likelihood of a designer. One can always appeal to unknowns to overturn our present knowledge, but that's unreasonable. Sure its possible that gravity might go away tomorrow, but don't hold your breath... In fact, the possibility that the necessary connection between functional information and design could be weakened or overturned altogether simply proves that ID is falsifiable, contra your earlier comments.
But you’ve already tried and discarded that hypothesis: Humans can’t logically have been responsible. You then decide that immaterial consciousness is a type of ‘A’, but you can’t provide any evidence that is the case, and so your solution remains a philosophical or religious belief instead of a scientific result. (And if you do NOT say that it is an immaterial consciousness, but rather an embodied life form, then you have other obvious problems).
I didn't say "immaterial consciousness". You're putting words in my mouth (though I don't attribute this to any deviousness on your part). As said before, if we recognize consciousness as appropriately occupying its own causal category, then the reasoning still holds. Whatever its ultimate nature, we can still observe its effects. You are insistent that consciousness cannot be divorced from embodied humans. How do you know? Your metaphysical priors are preventing you acknowledging the bare possibility that it could be a distinct property/phenomenon not limited to humans. You're committing the fallacy of omniscience.
We know that complex physical mechanism is required to process information (which itself is a huge problem for ID). But as far as designing complex mechanisms, you couldn’t be more wrong: We know next to nothing about how human beings manage to design things. We know a lot about brains, but we do not actually understand how we think... Very wrong: If you familiarize yourself with cognitive psychology you will realize that we have no idea what role, if any, conscious awareness plays in our problem solving and other mental abilities. Much of our planning, problem solving, and even goal setting occurs without conscious awareness!
I think you're playing dumb, at least a little. Yes it's true that we don't understand everything about consciousness, but to pretend as if we can't even draw the elementary connection between consciousness and design (problem-solving, etc.)is silly. Right now I, a conscious agent, am aware of many processes that go into writing this comment - reading your rebuttals, analyzing them, forming sentences articulate my thoughts, and striking a keyboard to implement them. Would I claim to be aware of every last mental process that the task requires? Of course not! Many learned activities are performed more-or-less subconsciously, so there are undoubtedly aspects of this task that I don't give deliberate attention to (for instance, as a touch typist I don't deliberately seek out each key. I hit them reflexively). But, nevertheless, I remain confident that this comment is the product of my conscious activity. If cognitive psychology begs to differ, it has my blessing but not my confidence. You're welcome to the last word on the matter. Do try to make it novel.Optimus
One last charge must be met: Orr maintains that the theory of intelligent design is not falsifiable. He’s wrong. To falsify design theory a scientist need only experimentally demonstrate that a bacterial flagellum, or any other comparably complex system, could arise by natural selection. If that happened I would conclude that neither flagella nor any system of similar or lesser complexity had to have been designed. In short, biochemical design would be neatly disproved.- Dr Behe in 1997
Let the flailing continue...Joe
January 8, 2014
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Yes, Intelligent Design is both testable and falsifiable. Intelligent Design relies on Newton's First Rule, meaning agencies are only added when REQUIRED. Therefor to refute ID and any given design inference all one has to do is step up and demonstrate that blind and undirected processes can account for it. IOW all anyone has to do to stop ID cold is to actually step up and A) produce a tyestable hypothesis for their position and B) produce positive, supporting evidence.
How is ID tested? As in positive evidence?
1- See above as the way to the design inference is THROUGH the blind watchmaker
2- The criteria for inferring design in biology is, as Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin ' s Black Box: "Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.”
So if nature, operating freely cannot account for it AND it meets that criteria, some agency is required and we infer design (or at least agency involvement).Joe
January 8, 2014
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Earth to RDFish-
If Darwinian processes were capable of producing what we observe wrt biology then the design inference would never get an opportunity. And thgat means ID would be falsified as one of ID's claims is tha darwinian processes are incapable of producing what we observe wrt biology.
So go ahead and continue to ignore what I post. Any lurkers can see why you would and they must see you as a desperate poseur.Joe
January 8, 2014
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Hi StephenB,
Now please address my question: How can a painter paint a painting if the two are not ontologically distinct?
Well, the painter picks up the paintbrush, puts some paint on it, and begins applying the paint to the canvas of course. Perhaps you should take an art class!
Seriously, I have no idea what you think the issue is here.
Also, insofar as the painter and the painter are ontologically distinct, is the painter the cause of the painting?
Again, whether or not the painter and painting are ontologically distinct, yes of course the person with the paint brush putting the paint on the canvas is causing the painting to appear.
Seems pretty straightforward to me; you must have a point in mind, but I sure don't see it.
Where was this exchange supposed to have taken place?
I asked what test you could apply to distinguish an intelligent thing from an unintelligent thing, and you replied that you could test for "design patterns". I pointed out that if that is your operational definition of "intelligence", then ID is vacuous, since ID's claim would be simply that "The design patterns we observe are caused by something that can produce design patterns", which is empty of informational content.
RDF: That means that we have no way of telling if ID is true by looking at empirical evidence, since no matter what we find, it will always be consistent with a theory that can explain anything with the very same word, “intelligence”. This is another reason why ID is not an empirically-based theory.
SB: No, it doesn’t mean that at all. It means that you remain willfully uninformed about the methods by which the empirical evidence is interpreted.
You interpret the empirical evidence, and the definitions and claims of Darwinism, and you proceed to argue that Darwinism is false because the stated cause (RM&NS) is not capable of producing what we observe in biological systems. That is the scientific method, as applied to historical science by ID proponents. I'm pointing out that it is impossible to apply the scientific method to ID in this way, because ID does not state what its hypothetical cause is incapable of producing. That is just another reason ID can't be considered to be scientific.
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
January 8, 2014
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Hi Jerry,
If Darwinian evolution simply presented itself as a philosophical or religious treatise, I’d have no problem with it at all. It’s the specious claim to scientific status that is the problem.
I would second this in a heart beat and I assume RDFish would too.
Yes I would, except I would substitute "Darwinism" instead of "Darwinian evolution", where "Darwinism" is the position that Darwinian evolution can account for biological complexity.
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
January 8, 2014
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Hi Upright BiPed,
Physicists have known for a number of years that there are certain arrangments of matter in nature (a very narrow and specific class of physical representation) that are recognizable within their systems by having physical characteristics which are not derivable from thermodynamic law.
It's not clear what you mean by "derivable" here, but it sounds like you are saying that the laws of thermodynamics have somehow been violated, and that there is general agreement among physicists that this is the case. Is that what you mean to say?
Unlike all other examples of physical representations in nature, their individuating characteristics are not determined by the minimum total potential energy of the matter they are made of. In the physical world, there are exactly three examples of this known to man: language, mathematics, and the genetic code.
Sorry, but this sounds pretty loony. The "individuating characteristics" of most things (except for extremely simply physical systems) are not determined by the minimum total potential energy of the matter they are made of. Rather, to the extent that they are determined at all, they are determined by a very long chain of causal interactions that resulted in some particular configuration.
I think what you may be trying to get at is another way of describing a class of things that are qualitatively distinct and are never seen to arise unless a human being (or perhaps some other type of animal) produces it. Let's agree that this class of things exists and can be identified, and let's call it "CSI".
My question to you: How does not being able to identify an intelligent agent at the origin of life alter this observation?
What observation? That CSI exists? As I said, let's agree that CSI is objectively identifiable and distinct, and that in our observations, only certain living things can produce it. That doesn't alter the fact that ID does not provide an operational defininition of "intelligence", obviously.
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
January 8, 2014
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SB: ID cannot be falsified in that way [capacity of the designer].
Right. That means that we have no way of telling if ID is true by looking at empirical evidence, since no matter what we find, it will always be consistent with a theory that can explain anything with the very same word, “intelligence”. This is another reason why ID is not an empirically-based theory.
No, it doesn't mean that at all. It means that you remain willfully uninformed about the methods by which the empirical evidence is interpreted.StephenB
January 8, 2014
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RDF
I hope that’s clear now!
Your lecture was clear, redundant, and totally unnecessary.
Now please address my question: How can a painter paint a painting if the two are not ontologically distinct?
Also, insofar as the painter and the painter are ontologically distinct, is the painter the cause of the painting?
RDF:
I absolutely LOVE this one!
RDF: What does ID say is responsible for the complex form and function in biology?
SB: Intelligence!
RDF: What is the operational definition ID uses for “intelligence”?
SB: That which is capable of producing complex form and function!
Brilliant! :-)
Where was this exchange supposed to have taken place?StephenB
January 8, 2014
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If Darwinian evolution simply presented itself as a philosophical or religious treatise, I’d have no problem with it at all. It’s the specious claim to scientific status that is the problem.
I would second this in a heart beat and I assume RDFish would too.jerry
January 8, 2014
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If ID simply presented itself as a philosophical or religious treatise, I’d have no problem with it at all. It’s the specious claim to scientific status that is the problem.
Physicists have known for a number of years that there are certain arrangments of matter in nature (a very narrow and specific class of physical representation) that are recognizable within their systems by having physical characteristics which are not derivable from thermodynamic law. Unlike all other examples of physical representations in nature, their individuating characteristics are not determined by the minimum total potential energy of the matter they are made of. In the physical world, there are exactly three examples of this known to man: language, mathematics, and the genetic code.
This is an observation of thermodynamic law; there is neither a religious nor philosphical component to the result.
My question to you: How does not being able to identify an intelligent agent at the origin of life alter this observation?Upright BiPed
January 8, 2014
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RDFish:
That means that we have no way of telling if ID is true by looking at empirical evidence,
Yes, we do. Please try applying your inane question to forensic science and arxhaeology- heck there are lost civilizations all over because agencies can do anything!
Look RDFish, you have no idea what you are talking about
The physical evidence is that complex physical form and function is produced only by the most complex physical organism, the human being.
And if humans weren't around then we infer some other agency did it because mother nature doesn't magically get some capability just because humans weren't there.
Again you are out of your depth wrt scientific investigation. You will never convinve anyone but yourself and the choir. OTOH I can refute your nonsense with an appeal to reality.
I can live with that.Joe
January 8, 2014
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Hi StephenB,
So I asked, “You mean that the painter can bring the painting into being if the painter is the same identical thing as the painting and also if the painter is not the same identical thing as the painting?”
That question persists. (Do you really mean that both statements are correct?)
Ok, we seem to be stuck on this question, so let me try to put it to rest with a complete explanation.
"Ontology" is the study of that which fundamentally exists in reality, or the nature of being. Some people think that there are two different sorts of things in the universe, the physical (matter/energy) and the mental. These people are called dualists, and they believe that when human beings think and make decisions, the mental cause (either a mental substance, or a special non-physical property of some sort) is what causes the physical result. Other people, called physicalists, disagree, and hold that when human beings think and make decisions, those mental processes are physical just like everything else.
You ask how a painter can paint a painting if they are not ontologically distinct, and you also confused this with being identically the same. Here is the explanation: The painter, the painting, the paint, the paintbrush, the easel, the light, and so on - all of these are things that we all recognize as being different things. The dualist will also claim, however, that among all of these different things, there is one thing which is ontologically distinct from all of the other things, and this thing is the mind of the human being who is painting the picture. The physicalist will disagree, and claim that the mind of the painter is just how we refer to the physical processes that occur (mainly in the brain) in the painter's body, and is not ontologically different from any of the other different things I listed.
I hope that's clear now!
When you say that the painter is ontologically distinct from the painting, do you mean that the painter transcends or stands apart from the painting?
Again, there are different things that people can mean by "stands apart". Two different stones can "stand apart" from each other, and we will all recognize these two different stones as being not identically the same - they are different stones. Furthermore, both dualists and physicalists will agree that both of these stones are ontologically the same, meaning that neither of them contain anything that is not physical. In the case of the human painter however, the dualist will say that the painter's mind is ontologically distinct from the light, the paint, the paintbrush, and even the painter's body - while the physicalist will deny that distinction.
There is no empirically-based method to see whether dualism or physicalism or any other metaphysical ontology is correct. There are many different flavors of dualistic and monistic philosophies, but none of them can be demonstrated to be true by appeal to our shared experience. However, ID theory assumes that thought is something that is not constrained by the physical laws that govern every other sort of process in the universe. This a priori commitment to a non-physicalist metaphysics means that ID relies on an assumption that is not scientific, which means that ID itself cannot be considered to be a scientific theory.
The counter-argument I see most often to this is that the rest of ID theory works so well at explaining things, this justifies ID's metaphysical assumptions. In other words, ID claims to provide empirical justification for one particular solution to the ancient mind/body problem. But they've got it all backwards: The only way they "solve" this problem is merely to assume that their solution is true. The fact that ID can "explain" any unexplained phenomenon whatsoever by simply claiming that "intelligence" is the explanation does nothing to support one metaphysical position over another.
ID cannot be falsified in that way.
Right. That means that we have no way of telling if ID is true by looking at empirical evidence, since no matter what we find, it will always be consistent with a theory that can explain anything with the very same word, "intelligence". This is another reason why ID is not an empirically-based theory.
Cheers,
RDFish/AIGuyRDFish
