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

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December 24, 2013

Atheism, Design inference, ID Foundations, Philosophy, specified complexity, worldview

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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.) — 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:

Explanatory Filter

Accordingly, I replied to MF at 59 in the OK thread, as follows:

____________

>>> 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:

___________

>> 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.) >>
___________

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.>>>

____________

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

__________

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.

Anti-ID advocate: Oh. Quote mining! You’re quote mining!

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

F/N: I have added a diagram and short note to illustrate mechanical necessity. Lannyland discusses here [HT for image], and Wiki here. In the latter, there is an excerpt from Galileo's Daughter:
The larger ball, being less susceptible to ... air resistance, fell faster, to the great relief of the Pisan philosophy department. The fact that it fell only fractionally faster gave Galileo scant advantage. "Aristotle says that a hundred pound ball falling from a height of a hundred braccia [arm lengths] hits the ground before a one pound ball has fallen one braccio. I say that they arrive at the same time," Galileo resummarised the dispute in its aftermath. "You find, on making the test, that the larger ball beats the smaller one by two inches. Now, behind those two inches you want to hide Aristotle's ninety-nine braccia and, speaking only of my tiny error, remain silent about his enormous mistake."
That's the strain out a gnat, swallow an elephant manifestation of confirmation bias. Could this be relevant to what we are seeing, which looks a lot like: strain out a mind, swallow any absurdity as materialism is not negotiable? As in, say, Reppert:
. . . 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.
In short, GIGO-limited computation/ processing is not the same as intelligent, rational thought and reasoned inference. And the GIGO limit raises a raft of serious self referentiality and incoherence questions on credibility of brain operations on evo mat premises. If that is not so, kindly explain. KFkairosfocus_{January 2, 2014
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Box:
Like many of the experiences discussed in this chapter, such cases would suggest that in some conditions, consciousness may be enhanced, not destroyed, when constraints normally supplied by the brain are sufficiently loosened.
This is a very important point. NDEs would be very much a confirmation of that idea. And, naturally, mystical experiences, for those who accept them as true experiences of a deeper reality.gpuccio_{January 2, 2014
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Box, jstanley01: Thank you for your contributions (and for the kind words).gpuccio_{January 2, 2014
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RDFish: Now I would like to discuss another important point: 2) ID explanations and preditcions, and why ID is like the Big Bang. A lot of anti ID objections rely on the statement that it does not "make predictions", or something like that. You seem to echo that position in some measure. I will try to clarify what I think about that. First of all, I have to state again that the validity of a scientific theory is in its explanatory power. That's why we build scientific theory: to explain facts. By the way, do you accept that facts are observable events? I hope so, because that will help in the following discussion. Now, theories are rational generalizations that allow us to describe facts according to regularities. They are structures based on logic and mathematics (two non empirical disciplines), and strangely try to explain and describe empirical reality. My definition of "explanatory power" of a theory includes both its ability to explain what we have already observed, and the ability to make good predictions. Indeed, predictions are nothing else than the ability to explain facts that we will observe in the future. Here we can, perhaps, make a subtler distinction. In many empirical contexts, the prediction includes also the suggestion of an experimental context where we can observe new facts that will be crucial to support (not verify) the theory or falsify it. But in other cases, when the theory is about events that cannot be reproduced experimentally, we cannot really "experiment" with the theory itself, but only observe new facts which are consequences of those old events and that may be more or less in accord with it. While the new experiments can certainly look for not yet known consequences of the event assumed by the theory, they cannot study the event directly in the lab. That is the case with both the Big Bang and the design of biological information by some non physical agent in the remote past. For different reasons, both events cannot, at least at present, be duplicated directly in the lab or in any other known context. What we can do, in both cases, is to see how our theory (Big Bang, ID) explains the facts we know, and look, purposefully and with method, to new facts that we still don't know to see if they fit our theory, or if other explanations will be better as soon as the new facts are acquired. That's the only possible meaning of the word "predictions" in that kind of context. IOWs, I cannot make a prediction of the kind: "If I generate a Big Bang in my lab, this and that will happen", any more than I cam make a prediction of the kind: "If I convince the designer of biological information to design a new protein in my lab, this and that will happen". Those kinds of predictions are limited to other empirical problems. But we can, certainly, say: if I can look better at this or that, in new experimental conditions, I can see better if the new results support my theory or falsify it. IOWs, we can always acquire new facts about the consequences of the Big Bang that is supposed to have happened 15 billion years ago, or of the biological design that is supposed to have happened in natural history at definite times, and see how they fit our theory. Those are prediction just the same, and there is no difference, in that sense, between the Big Bang theory and the ID theory. We could, perhaps more correctly, call those "predictions", future verifications of the implications of our theory. Now, I have many times stated that ID theory has a lot of implications. I will start with the most important of all, that is the consequence of the central point of the theory itself. The central point, as we know, is that objects exhibiting dFSCI are always the output of a design process, implicating the intervention of a conscious intelligent agent. The direct implication of that is that the functional information appears in the object because outputted by the agent, and cannot be explained otherwise. IOWs, the process of design violates not the physical laws, but the statistical laws: functional configurations appear without any reason, even if their probability in the system is neglectible. It is important to note that design is the only process known to violate those laws. In no other context functional information emerges violating the probabilistic laws. We should also remember that a probabilistic law is a law just the same: while it is not strictly deterministic, it does not allow extreme violations of the model, and therefore if we observe an extreme violation of probabilities, one of two things must be true: either our model is wrong, or we are witnessing design. Another way to say that is that design is like a Maxwell's demon operation against probabilistic laws to give a functional result. Now, suppose you can observe a system where a Maxwell's demon is acting to generate an order that cannot be explained otherwise. Although you cannot observe the demon itself, your theory is that a demon is acting. So, all you can do is observe as well as you can the consequences, the generated order, and be sure that the only possible explanation is a demon, and device new experiments to verify that all the types of order that you observe are compatible with the action of a demon, and that all other explanations fail. Those are the correct scientific approaches you can take. You can also, obviously, try to understand what that demon is, how it operates, and how it could be observe. But maybe some of those answers are not yet in the range of your science. Now, that's what we do with the Big Bang and with ID: we observe better the consequences. For ID, for example, we try to answer as well as possible the following questions: a) Is it true that functional information appears in the proteome rather suddenly, and cannot be explained by other theories, like neo darwinism? That answer is yes, for me, but certainly many aspects of the problem are not yet definitely solved. For example: is it true that functional proteins are separated islands, maybe not small, but certainly extremely small if compared to their search space, and that therefore finding those islands by a random walk is practically impossible? For me, the answer is definitely yes, but still we can certainly understand protein space better by further research. For example, a strongly connected functional protein space would help to falsify the ID theory, or at least its application to the proteome, and make more credible the neo darwinian model. Moreover, we can certainly learn much about how and when new protein domains appear in the course of natural history. We have already an idea, but we still lack many details. Moreover, we have practically no idea of how the transcriptome emerges from the genome, and of how its expression is regulated, and of how that information is stored, in the DNA or elsewhere. ID implies that that information is huge, that it is stored somewhere somehow, and that once we understand where and what it is, it will be found to be completely out of the range of the neo darwinian model, and of any other model based on chance and necessity. IOWs, tons of dFSCI must still be discovered, and will be discovered, in biological objects. Obviously, neo darwinism, or any other non design theory, hopes for simpler explanations of the regulation procedures. I am sure that they will be shown wrong. Another line of research regards the fundamental question: can dFSCI emerge in a non conscious system, even out of the biological world? That too would falsify ID theory. At present, all known facts support ID. But it is always possible to find empirical models that prove the opposite. Or just build cognitive theories that may explain how that could happen. Darwinists, and even non darwinists like you, are always eager to believe that some new law, concept, theory, or whatever else, will be one day able to explain dFSCI without recurring to the intervention of a conscious agent. Instead of just hoping, they should try hard to find such a theory, or concept. I wish them good luck. And believe me, the intervention of a conscious agent does explain design. First of all logically, because as I have tried to show the experience of meaning and purpose is definitely a great help in finding functional information. And, most important of all, empirically, because we do know that conscious agents can generate dFSCI. We may not know how they do that, but they certainly do that. I will deal with the problem of general paradigms in science in next post.gpuccio_{January 2, 2014
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gpuccio @94
IOWs, science is very important, but it is not all. And, definitely, it is not what it seems.
As Johnson and Berlinski and other have pointed out in similar terms, by formally demonstrating design inferences in ways that are hard to argue with, ID theorists have committed an unforgivable sin against the congregation of science and its Darwinian high priests. Namely, by showing that there are real -- not to mention important -- limits to their methodology.jstanley01_{January 2, 2014
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Gpuccio, first I want to convey my admiration for your writings and patience. When arguing for a non-physical consciousness you offer philosophical arguments, introspection, religious and mystical experiences and NDEs. There is additional (anecdotal) evidence for your position. From the book “Irriducible Mind”:
Even more interesting than these physical revivals, however, are revivals in mental functioning. Myers (1892b) had referred to the “sudden revivals of memory or faculty in dying persons” (p. 316), and there are scattered reports of people apparently recovering from dementia shortly before death. The eminent physician Benjamin Rush, author of the first American treatise on mental illness (1812), observed that “most of mad people discover a greater or less degree of reason in the last days or hours of their lives” (p. 257). Similarly, in his classic study of hallucinations, Brierre de Boismont (1859) noted that “at the approach of death we observe that… the intellect, which may have been obscured or extinguished during many years, is again restored in all its integrity” (p. 236). Flournoy (1903, p. 48) mentioned that French psychiatrists had recently published cases of mentally ill persons who showed sudden improvement in their condition shortly before death. In more recent years, Osis (1961) reported two cases, “one of severe schizophrenia and one of senility, [in which] the patients regained normal mentality shortly before death” (p. 24). Osis and Haraldsson (1977/1997) reported a case of a meningitis patient who had been “severely disoriented almost to the end,” but who “cleared up, answered questions, smiled, was slightly elated and just a few minutes before death, came to herself” (p. 133). Turetskaia and Romanenko (1975) reported three cases involving remission of symptoms in dying schizophrenic patients. Grosso (2004, pp. 42–43) described three dementia cases that had been reported to him, one by a colleague and two by a nurse. In all three cases, the patient had not recognized family members for several years, but shortly before death they all were said to have become more coherent or alert and to have recognized family members. Such cases are few in number and not adequately documented, but the persistence of such reports suggests that they may represent a real phenomenon that could potentially be substantiated by further investigations. If so, they would seriously undermine the assumption that in such diseases as Alzheimer’s the mind itself is destroyed in lockstep with the brain (e.g., Edwards, 1997, pp. 295–296). Like many of the experiences discussed in this chapter, such cases would suggest that in some conditions, consciousness may be enhanced, not destroyed, when constraints normally supplied by the brain are sufficiently loosened.
Box_{January 2, 2014
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KF: Thanks, and the best greetings from my wife and my son...gpuccio_{January 2, 2014
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PS: Not from the middle ages but this shows the point.kairosfocus_{January 2, 2014
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Re RDF:
Most ID proponents insist that ID remains agnostic regarding any properties and attributes of the hypothetical Designer
I presume, you mean, above and beyond, intelligence, holding goal-directed purpose, ability to form concepts and configuration then express them in ART-ifacts. And in cases where symbolic code is intimately involved, linguistic ability. To this, I say, the design inference as such is to design as causal process manifest in credible artifacts that are on needle in haystack grounds not credibly produced by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. So that dFSCI in the world of life from cells on up to body plans, implicates language-using design. As codes are involved, well beyond 500 - 1,000 bits. But that by no means directly implies an inference to a designer within or beyond the cosmos. On evidence of Venter et al, it is plausible that an advanced molecular nanotech lab would be able to do what we see on earth. It is at cosmological level that something capable of design and being beyond the observed cosmos comes up. And that level raises serious challenges to a materialist view. To the point where public advocates have been heard trying to pull a cosmos out of nothing, then sliding into nothing being perceived as something. Ooopsie. Back on target point, there are ever so many crucial attributes of a designer that are evident from his work. Hence the concept: good/bad workmanship. Take up a well crafted piece of calligraphy, expressing an even better crafted bit of poetry, and illuminated with beautiful Medieval drawings, on a bit of vellum. Are you sure you cannot properly infer from observation, signs that point to design? Or, onwards to some key attributes that candidate designers would have to have? KFkairosfocus_{January 2, 2014
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GP: Give the longsuffering Mrs GP our heartfelt thanks! KFkairosfocus_{January 2, 2014
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Hey. I messed the formatting again! The last quote should be closed before my phrase: "This is an important point, and a very deep one. I will try to clarify better what I think." Did I fix it correctly? KFgpuccio_{January 2, 2014
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RDFish: Yes, the discussion is interesting indeed. Let's try to make if even more interesting. First of all, a clarification. My phrase about the certainty of consensus endorsed results was essentially a joke, as I hoped the "smile" would suggest. However, since you have taken it seriously, I want to state very clearly that I do believe in the importance of science. If and when it is well made. Indeed, I love science, and I come here only to discuss scientific approaches. But... I would like to say a couple of things about that: a) There is a special context where being out of the scientific consensus does "increase" the probability of being right. It's when the scientific consensus endorses irrational dogma. That's what has happened with neo-darwinism. IOWs, when a cultural bias becomes a widely imposed and abusively defended dogma, then only being out of the official consensus gives some hope of independent, realistic reasoning. b) However, I would not agree completely with your statement that: "Science is clearly the most effective process we have for justifying our beliefs and thus generating knowledge." Science is certainly an important part of our knowledge. But cognition is much wider than science. Moreover, important non scientific parts of cognition, like philosophy of science and epistemology, are extremely important for the existence of science itself. Moreover, I don't think that we really know or can define what science is. Important philosophers of science, like Feyerabend and Polanyi, have casted significant doubts about that. I agree with them on many things. IOWs, science is very important, but it is not all. And, definitely, it is not what it seems. A second minor point, before going on to the main issues. You say:
On one hand you argue that it isn’t necessary for you to demonstrate anything but a correlation between consciousness and design ability, then on the other hand you go on to claim that you can show that consciousness is “connected to” the design process, which is an implicit concession that it actually is important to show more than mere co-occurrence. If consciousness is epiphenomenal, then that means it is not required for the design process to proceed, which means there is no reason to think that some other sort of thing that outputs dFSCI but is very different from a human being would also have human-like consciousness.
There is a technical equivocation here. What I am saying is that there is, however, a constant statistical connection between dFSCI and the output of a conscious agent (in the sense of 100% specificity with low sensitivity). A causal relationship is the simplest explanation for that. But even if there is no direct causal relationship, a causal explanation must exist. IOWs, maybe it is not consciousness that causes dFSCI, but consciousness must then be causally connected to what causes dFSCI. IOWs, a simple random "co-occurrence" does not explain what we observe. That said, I would like to deepen a little bit the discussion on the most important points, to avoid repeating always what we have already said. 1) The information in consciousness and the nature of consciousness. When I say that the information (dfSCI) is present in consciousness before it is outputted into the object, I mean a very simple thing: the information is represented before it is outputted. IOWs, a designer represents his design before implementing it. Now, let's be clear. I am well aware that design can be implemented gradually, or as the result of a trial and error process. I am not saying that the whole result of the design process is represented before the design process begins. But, in each single step, what the designer output to the object is done to obtain a represented form, or function. The designer understands the meaning and the purpose of what he is designing. He may not know the deep origin of that information, but in his representation the information is already present. Now, you say:
Here is what I think you mean: Even if we are not conscious of our conscious representations, they are “conscious” nevertheless because they can be inferred to exist by examining our behavior. In other words, even if I don’t understand English grammar, the fact that I can create grammatical sentences in English implies that I have conscious representations of grammar all the same. Is that what you mean?
Not exactly. I am saying two different things: a) Conscious representations are conscious because we represent them subjectively. They are observed in our consciousness, they are not "inferred to exist by examining our behavior". Behavior has nothing to do with that. When I think a grammatically correct sentence, I am representing it, and in my representation the whole dFSCI of the sentence is there. That has nothing to do with how it was generated. This is the very simple "connection" which I refer to. If I do not represent the sentence, with all its information, I cannot certainly output it to a sheet of paper. Therefore, conscious representation of the information always precedes the design act. b) My second statement is that the subconscious activities that contribute to generate the sentence are represented too, although at a different level of consciousness, which is not that of "waking consciousness", but corresponds rather to what we usually call "subconscious mind". Of many of those representations we are more or less aware, although with varying degrees of awareness. Now, it is perfectly possible that many absolutely non conscious algorithmic processes in the brain contribute to the final generation of dFSCI. Indeed, it is certainly so. But my point is that mere algorithmic processes cannot generate new dFSCI, if some conscious representations of meaning and purpose do not contribute to the process. That brings us to the important point of the relationship between, let's say, "dFSCI and dFSCI". You say:
As for the first issue: Most ID proponents insist that ID remains agnostic regarding any properties and attributes of the hypothetical Designer.
I am not among them.
If, however, it appears that CSI-rich structures are required in order to store, transform, and retrieve mental representations, then in order to be consistent with our understanding of the world, any sort of designer that ID might posit would necessarily itself contain high levels of CSI. Rather than pursue the consequences of this, let me first get your response to this line of reasoning thus far: Do you agree that given our empirically-based understanding of information processing, we would be forced to conclude that all designers would most likely contain high levels of CSI themselves?
This is an important point, and a very deep one. I will try to clarify better what I think. I agree with you that, in humans, an information rich brain, full of dFSCI, contributes essentially to the form of human representations, and therefore to the generation of dFSCI. But the crucial word is "contributes". The brain, considered merely as an algorithmic machine, could never do anything like that. But the brain "serves" human consciousness by allowing many important algorithmic computations that are certainly used by consciousness to generate new dFSCI. But consciousness still makes the main work, that is to give meaning and purpose to those computations. IOWs, consciousness (the I) is like a person using a computer. The computing abilities of the machine are very useful, and the person can do, using them, many things that would be impossible otherwise. But the machine would be completely powerless to generate the result without a person using it. So, no algorithmic system can generate new dFSCI. But human consciousness certainly uses algorithmic computations in the brain and in the body, gives meaning and purpose to them, and generates new dFSCI. Now, the argument now has two aspects. 1) What is the role of a conscious subject? For me, that is clear enough. Without a conscious subject, no new dFSCI can be generated. That is both logically consistent and empirically supported. It is logically consistent because only the subjective concepts of meaning and purpose can "help" chance and law to go beyond their obvious limits. It is empirically supported, because no dFSCI has ever been observed as the result of a non conscious system. 2) What is the role of the objective machine computations? Are they always necessary to generate dFSCI? That is more difficult to say. In the case of humans, I would say yes. I would probably say yes in general, because I believe (although I cannot be certain of that) that some computation process is always present where dFSCI emerges. But it must always be guided by a consciousness, Does that mean that a physical machinery involving pre-existing dFSCI must always be present to generate new dFSCI? I don't think so. First of all, there is no need that the computing system be physical. Indeed, we have no certainty that, even in humans, the computing system is completely physical. Complexity could exist also at levels which do not imply physical matter. Obviously, it should have a cause, but again the laws governing non physical realities are probably still unknown to us, and anyway consciousness could still be the origin of non physical complexity. Second, I have been very clear that I think that non physical designer(s) are the best explanations for biological dFSCI. They may possess some non physical complexity or not. That remains an open question. Finally, in the ultimate sense, I believe that consciousness is essentially simple. The transcendental I is not made of parts, be them physical or not. But a simple consciousness can use the things it represents as a computing instrument, using its intuitions of meaning and purpose to do that. A very simple example. A non physical consciousness, directly interacting with a biological context, like a living cell, can use its representations of what happens in the cell, plus its intuitions of meaning and purpose, to generate new dFSCI? How? A simple example. By guided variation, or by random variation and intelligent selection. Let's say that the observing consciousness can influence what "random" mutations will happen, and that it can perceive the result of the mutations, and favor new mutations which help the final desired result, using its direct perceptions of what happens in the physical realm as information. In that sense, the system formed by the perceiving consciousness plus the physical system it perceives could be able to generate new dFSCI. But the mere physical system could never do that. Exactly like the system formed by our individual consciousness plus our body can generate dFSCI, but our mere body can't. Finally, in most religious (and some non religious) philosophies, a simple cause is considered to be the origin of all complex things. So, it is not at all so obvious that complexity must always come from complexity. The only obvious thing, for me, is that physical functional complexity must always come from conscious agents. I must stop here for the moment. I would like to specify that I am perfectly aware that most of my final arguments are mainly philosophical, and not scientific. But it's because I have tried to answer, as I can, your philosophical objections. The fact remains that design is the best empirical explanation for biological information. You can make philosophical objections to that inference. I can answer them according to my worldview. But the inference remains valid. There is no reason in the world why a correct scientific inference should not arise philosophical problems. Indeed, the opposite is often true. The Big Bag theory, again, is a very good example of that. Quantum theory another, even better, one. I have many other things to say about your last post. Please, stay tuned.gpuccio_{January 2, 2014
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Hi gpuccio, I hope you had very nice holidays. Let's start the new year with a continuation of our interesting discussion.
That simply means that we can expect anything from “scientific consensus”.” Do you agree?
Certainly the scientific consensus is shown to be wrong with significant frequency. In fact, the only thing less certain than a result endorsed by the consensus of the scientific community is a result that isn’t.
Are you really sure it's less certain?
Yes, of course. If scientific results did not have any elevated status, ID folks would not be so adamant that their theory is scientific, nor working so hard to get a paper that has some (any) apparent relation to ID published in a reputable peer-review journal. Science is clearly the most effective process we have for justifying our beliefs and thus generating knowledge. The fact that scientists often get things wrong doesn't change that. Cognitive bias, errors, and dishonesty plague all knowledge-seeking endeavors, but at least science has methods and safeguards to help address these problems over the long term. Without such methods it's just playing tennis without a net, with whatever sorts of ideas that appeal to whomever for whatever reason winning out, even over the long term. People tend to think that since science isn't perfect then it is without value; the truth is, scientifically vetted knowledge has proven to be trustworthy in countless ways. People here often enjoy poking fun at speculative ideas in physics, such as the many-worlds interpretation of QM or various multiverse hypotheses, and to the extent that the theorizers claim that these theories have empirical support this skeptical response is quite appropriate. But ID is at least as speculative as these ideas, and nothing at all like the scientific results that actually have been empirically confirmed, (where "confirmed" is not supposed to mean "with absolute 100% certainty forever", ok?), such as the Big Bang.
I don’t need to demonstrate the causality, although I believe that there are many reasons to infer it as the best explanation. I just need to demonstrate the connection. IOWs, consciousness could even be an epiphenomenon, but at present it is an epiphenomenon that is always present in agents who can generate dFSCI. And it is connected to the design process, because the information outputted into the object is always present, before, in the conscious representations of the agent.
On one hand you argue that it isn't necessary for you to demonstrate anything but a correlation between consciousness and design ability, then on the other hand you go on to claim that you can show that consciousness is "connected to" the design process, which is an implicit concession that it actually is important to show more than mere co-occurrence. If consciousness is epiphenomenal, then that means it is not required for the design process to proceed, which means there is no reason to think that some other sort of thing that outputs dFSCI but is very different from a human being would also have human-like consciousness.
As I have explained, it is perfectly reasonable to infer that consciousness plays at least some role in generating dFSCI, because the information is present in the conscious representation before being outputted to the object.
Again, either consciousness plays a role in causing dFSCI or it does not. If it doesn't (i.e. if consciousness is strictly perceptual, or epiphenomenal), then your argument fails (there is no justification for assuming the cause of biological CSI was conscious just because human beings are). Now, let me try to understand what you are talking about regarding "information being present in the conscious representation". I think here we run into issues regarding the difference between your meaning for the word "conscious" and the way most people would use the word. You don't actually mean that we are conscious of these conscious representations; rather you mean something else. Here is what I think you mean: Even if we are not conscious of our conscious representations, they are "conscious" nevertheless because they can be inferred to exist by examining our behavior. In other words, even if I don't understand English grammar, the fact that I can create grammatical sentences in English implies that I have conscious representations of grammar all the same. Is that what you mean? If that is correct, then you are talking about what philosophers of mind call mental representations, and you are probably aware that representationalism is an aspect of only some theories of mind and not others, and that if you ask ten scientists and/or philosophers their solution to intentionality, you will get twelve different answers. So we're already on shaky ground using the notion of mental representations to support some supposedly scientific theory. But let's here for the sake of argument agree that mental representations are real - they are information-bearing structures that exist in our minds and that are stored, transformed, and retrieved in our mental processes, and that they represent entities and relationships in the external world. Your commitment to representationalism, it seems to me, presents two sorts of issues for ID. First, it is an extremely probable hypothesis, given our understanding of information processing, that mental representations require complex physical mechanisms of one sort or another in order to be stored, transformed, and retrieved. And second, since your concept of conscious representations doesn't actually entail phenomenal consciousness at all, there doesn't seem to be any reason to posit anything but ordinary (lawlike) physical processes in order to support them. Let me explain why I think these issues present problems for ID. As for the first issue: Most ID proponents insist that ID remains agnostic regarding any properties and attributes of the hypothetical Designer. If, however, it appears that CSI-rich structures are required in order to store, transform, and retrieve mental representations, then in order to be consistent with our understanding of the world, any sort of designer that ID might posit would necessarily itself contain high levels of CSI. Rather than pursue the consequences of this, let me first get your response to this line of reasoning thus far: Do you agree that given our empirically-based understanding of information processing, we would be forced to conclude that all designers would most likely contain high levels of CSI themselves? As for the second issue: ID rests on the claim that no combination of chance and fixed law can produce CSI. It then presents "intelligent cause" as a third type of cause which somehow transcends chance and fixed law and produces CSI. But aside from the mystery of conscious phenomenology, there seems to be no reason to posit anything transcendent about our ability to store, transform, and retrieve information. Certainly we don't understand how we do it (if we did, we would be able to replicate human-like intelligence with computers, or at least provide a principled explanation of why we cannot), but that doesn't justify hypothesizing some sort of extended ontology to explain it (or explain it away).
Moreover, understanding of meaning and purposeful intention are exactly the faculties that drive the design process, as should be obvious to whoever has designed complex things.
I've designed exceedingly complex things, and I've studied cognition too, and it is far from obvious to someone with my expertise in both areas what "drives" the design process. As I've said, many people (including myself) are struck by the fact that it subjectively seems as though design decisions and solutions come to me rather me generating them in some way. They appear in my (waking) consciousness, often when I am not even thinking about them. All of our experience is perfectly compatible with the idea that our brains generate CSI by processing information in some way and then at some point we may (or may not) become conscious of our choices.
Your attempts not only at at doubting that (which is your right), but at stating that everybody should doubt that, and that it is not reasonable to assume that connection to explain things that cannot be explained otherwise is, again, pure cognitive bias. No offence intended.
You are wrong about this in several ways. (1) I am not "attempting to doubt" your philosophy of mind; I simply point out that it lacks empirical support. (2) I am not saying everyone should doubt it; again, I am simply saying that your particular ideas about consciousness and design have no more scientific status than various other conflicting views in philosophy of mind. (3) I am not saying that it is not reasonable to make your assumptions; I am saying that you cannot justify your assumptions by appeal to our shared observations. As much as you'd like to think otherwise, my position does not suffer from cognitive bias, either pure or adulterated :-). You start with views about philosophy of mind that you cannot support empirically, and then you say if your ideas were true then they would account for biological CSI, and then you make the great leap to insist that your unsupported assumptions therefore support the best scientific explanation for biological CSI. Over and over I have shown why this sort of reasoning just doesn't work, and why scientists (such as those who justified our belief in Big Bang Theory) don't just make up unsupported assumptions that would, if they were true, explain whatever they want to explain. Instead, they have to actually find ways to determine if their assumptions are true or not. But I am fully available at considering your alternative explanations. So, please, what “other attributes of human beings”, outside of consciousness, would you pick to explain the ability to generate dFSCI? Again, nobody knows how people design things. I've been very interested to understand human mental abilities, and have studied them my whole adult life, and I'm certain that neither me nor anyone else can explain how we manage to come up solutions to design problems.
Having a human brain? That’s fine. So, your hypothesis is that having a human brain is the causal explanation of dFSCI.
I've said many times now I do not have an hypothesis for how we manage to think. As I explained above, however, it appears that any sort of explanation for mental abilities would entail the storage, transformation, and retrieval of information, which in turn would require complex physical state machinery of some sort in order to operate.
And therefore, biological dFSCI can be explained by the intervention of systems having a human brain, I suppose. Is that your position?
I've made my position perfectly clear many times now: Nobody knows how biological CSI came to exist. Clearly, based on our knowledge of intelligent agents, some sort of complex life form with organs for processing information would be the most likely candidate for a Designer of Life, but there are obvious problems with hypothesizing such an organism as the explanation for biological complexity. That's why I say nobody has a good theory yet.
I must have missed something in your logic.
Apparently!
most of what we observe in the biological world can be explained, and is predicted, by ID theory, and would not be expected to occur for any other reason. Where is the difference? What am I missing?
I don't understand what you mean by ID predicting our observations. Obviously ID (like evolutionary theory) can't predict anything regarding the particular instantiations of complex form and function we observe; for example, nothing in ID predicts the existence of flagella per se. Nor does ID predict how vast is the variety of form and function we observe, nor the characteristics of their distribution over the Earth, nor the existence of symbiotic or parasitic forms, and so on and so on. Certainly ID does not predict the timescale that we find in evidence; in fact, if ID was truly extrapolating from what we know of intelligent agency, it would predict a radically faster design cycle that is evident in the fossil record. And as for explaining our predictions, for each and every one of our observations, ID provides the exact same explanation: because of intelligent design. ID proponents (and I) poke fun at evolutionary explanations that either invoke nothing but "because of random variation and natural selection", or else make up just-so stories that can't be verified. Yet ID is even worse than that: ID doesn't even say what particular process is supposedly involved; it merely labels it with the ill-defined word "intelligent". So what you are missing is this: It isn't possible to tell if ID is true or not, because it makes no predictions that we can check against our observations, and because its sole explanatory concept, "intelligent causation", is actually in effect entirely synonymous with "some unknown sort of thing that can do anything".
The scenario is exactly the same [as for the Big Bang] for the origin by design of biological information. There is no difference.
I disagree 100%: There is a list of very specific, quantitative, observationally accessible predictions that confirmed BB, and there is nothing of the sort for ID. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 1, 2014
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RDFish: OK, I will not comment further on the "paranormal". Obviously, I don't like the Wiki definition. However, I just wanted to emphasize that both religious and mystical experiences and NDEs are common enough, and should be treated like any other normal empirical events. If all that science cannot explain were paranormal, the fall of an apple would have been paranormal before Newton's times. OK, let's go on:
Huh? What I mean by “fact” is a true statement about the world, and certainly a statement about a connection between two things can be true or not. “Cigarettes cause cancer” is a fact – it is a true statement about a connection between two things.
Wow! Big epistemological problem here. For me, facts are observable events. (Probably) true statements about the world are not facts, but good theories. Even if they are very good. If you cannot agree with that we really have a problem. “Cigarettes cause cancer” is a very good theory. I have no problem to consider it pragmatically as "true". But it is not a fact. A causal relationship is never a fact. The connection between dFSCI and design is a fact (we observe dFSCI in designed objects, and we don't oberve it in non designed objects). (OK dFSCI is not exactly observed, but it is a property computed from observed things). The idea that dFSCI can be caused by design is a theory. A good theory. It will always remain a theory. Like all good theories, it will never become a fact. The idea that dFSCI can be an indicator of design (not necessarily caused by it) is a very good theory. Again, it will never become a fact. Theories are never facts. The two categories are completely different. Again, if you cannot agree with that, we have a problem.
In this context, the existence of our consciousness is a fact, and our ability to design things is a fact, but it is not a fact that consciousness is a necessary cause of design ability.
The same problem. To be really precise: a) The existence of our personal consciousness is a fact for ourselves (we observe it in ourselves). b) The existence of a similar consciousness in other humans is indeed an inference by analogy (therefore a theory). I admit that it is probably the best theory in the history of thought, but there have been people (solipsists) who have not accepted it. c) Our ability to design things is a fact (it is observed) d) That consciousness is a necessary cause of design ability is a theory. A good theory, IMO.
You argue that you needn’t show a casual connection, but rather only a correlation, and that the correlation is perfect (for the CSI where we know the source). Then I reply that the perfect correlation is in fact between design ability and human beings, not consciousness. Then you say it doesn’t matter, you can still base an inference on the correlation. Then I reply: No, you can’t, because by the very same reasoning, you could infer that the cause of biological CSI had a spleen.
And again, although you have certainly understood better my reasoning, you choose to ignore my argument that the information that constitutes dFSCI in the object derives from the same information represented, previously, in the agent. The agent purposefully outputs that information, understands its meaning and considers it desirable. Otherwise, no design process can happen. Therefore, a connection, be it causal or of some other kind, between consciousness in the agent and the design process and dFSCI in the object is simply a very obvious hypothesis. And a good theory. Can you say the same thing for the role of the spleen? And, if you convince me, I have no problem in hypothesizing spleen designers as the origin of biological information. The problem remains the same. Whatever it is that is connected, in humans, to the ability to design and output dFSCI, is the best candidate to explain biological information. I hypothesize it is consciousness. You may choose spleen. But we must try to answer in some way, not just renounce. Well. I think I will go on next year. I have my festivities too, and my wife is going to kill me if I go on posting :) I just want to say that I appreciate your contributions a lot. You are that rare treasure that everyone should desire: a very good opponent.gpuccio_{December 31, 2013
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RDFish: In order, for the last time (this year) :). Please, take all the time you need to answer. We are not in a hurry.
Here is what you said: "The fact remains that such agent or agents could exist, and that the existence of biological information and of dFSCI in it is a very strong support to that hypothesis." So, in your view, ID theory assumes consciousness was responsible for biological CSI, then claims the existence of biological CSI as evidence that ID is correct. That would be analogous to assuming the universe started in a Big Bang, then citing the existence of the universe as evidence that this theory is correct. I pointed out if that was what Big Bang cosmologists had done, nobody would have listened to them. But instead, they produced multiple lines of experimental confirmation of very specific predictions. Only then was Big Bang theory generally accepted. In stark contrast, the claim that consciousness is required for CSI to arise cannot be empirically confirmed (even to the extent that it is conceptually clear).
You are again equivocating, and changing the logical order of the reasoning. ID theory does (among others) the following things: a) Observes a constant connection between dFSCI and certainly designed things (that is, whings that originated in a design process, a process where there is an intervention of a conscious agent, and where the form outputted into the object is previously represented in the consciousness of the agent), with 100% specificify (no assumptions here). b) Assumes that dFSCI can be used, at least provisdionally, as an indicator of design. c) Acknowledges that biological objects are the only other class of objects that exhibits dFSCI, and that theor origin is not known. d) Acknowledges that all present explanations for biological information are completely unsatisfying, indeed definitely and obviously unsupported by known facts. e) Infers a design origin (the intervention of some conscious agent) as a good explanation for biological information. f) Verifies that known facts are well explained by some theory which assumes a conscious input of functional information at definite times, and that new facts are in accord with that paradigm. g) Verifies that no new facts falsify the design inference (for example, any experimental setting able to show, for the first time, that dFSCI can emerge without any intervention of a conscious agent) h) Answers objections, like yours, that the existence of conscious agents who could have designed biological information is empirically unjustified, patiently explaining that it is a reasonable assumption which is falsified by nothing, which is in accord with what humans have always thought and believed, that there are other kinds of empirical evidence (like religious experiences and NDEs) which justify it, and that however in the ID context it needs no empirical justification, because it it an assumption that is part of the theory, and it is the theory that must be evaluated, for its ability to explain old and new facts, and for its ability of not being falsified, while being perfectly falsifiable. So, ID theory remains the best scientific explanation available, and you remain with your convictions. Which is perfectly fine. To be even more clear, ID theory does not "claim the existence of biological CSI as evidence that ID is correct". Again, ID theory claims that dFSCI is a good indicator of a design origin, and that claim is based upon innumerable empirical observations of a constant connection between dfSCI and the intervention of a conscious agent in the process of origination of the object that exhibits it (part 1). Then it observes and demonstrates that biological information exhibits dFSCI in tons (part 2). Then it infers a design origin for biological information (part 3). Then it answers the unwarranted objections of its critics about the lack of empirical support of the theory or of its assumption, by reminding them of how a correct epistemology works (part 4). You say: "I pointed out if that was what Big Bang cosmologists had done, nobody would have listened to them." And I add that if that was what ID theorists do, nobody should listen to them. You say: "But instead, they produced multiple lines of experimental confirmation of very specific predictions." And that's exactly what ID theory does. There are multiple lines of experimental confirmation for ID, that support the model where functional information appears rather suddenly, without any explanation, in a biological system, confirming the theory that it has been inputted exactly as it happens in any design process. You say: "That would be analogous to assuming the universe started in a Big Bang, then citing the existence of the universe as evidence that this theory is correct." So, you are saying that ID assumes that biological information started in a design process, and cites the existence of biological information as evidence that this theory is correct! That is worse than a caricature, it is complete folly. ID never assumes that biological information started in a design process. That is your invention. Unwarranted and unfair. As I have said millions of times, but you seem not to listen, ID observes the presence of a formal property, dFSCI, in designed things, and assumes (very reasonably) that it can be used as an indicator for design, and observes that such property is present in biological information. Therefore, ID infers that a design origin is a very good explanation for the origin of biological information. As no other credible explanations are available, ID claims (with modesty :) ) that its theory is the best available theory. Does that sound the same as your caricature?
OK, here are my thoughts: 1) I do not believe neo-darwinism successfully accounts for biological form and function (but evolutionary theory per se is certainly not the least supported theory of our times). 3) The “evolution is fact not a theory” meme rests on an equiviocation on the word “evolution”. 4) The reasons that biologists are dogmatic about evolutionary theory are more complicated than cognitive and cultural bias, but those play a part. 5) There is no empirical support for the claim that evolutionary fully accounts for the existence of biological CSI, and good reasons to think it doesn’t.
OK, I am rather satisfied with that. Good to know that you think that way :). If you feel lonely, being out of the darwinist tent and out of the ID tent, we can always offer you some refuge :) But I can appreciate your loneliness. I am a lonely person, too.
I’d say the scientific consensus is shown to be with significant frequency. In fact, the only thing less certain that a result endorsed by the a consensus of the scientific community is a result that isn’t.
Are you really sure it's less certain? :) More in next post.gpuccio_{December 31, 2013
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RD:
ID says: all explanations of the dFSCI we observe in biology will necessarily invoke a conscious entity. That sounds to me as though ID claims a conscious entity was responsible for the original dFSCI, which means ID posits the existence of a conscious being (whether physical or not) that does not itself have a body with dFSCI.
In this universe- IOW the designer could very well have dFSCI- the designer(s) is(are) responsible for the origin of dFSCI in this universe.Joe_{December 31, 2013
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Hi gpuccio,
We have no independent evidence of the Big Bang. Big Bang is an event which is conjectured, and whose real nature is not understood. We have evidences that a theory which includes that conjecture explain things, and predicts things, better than any other theory at present available. Which is exactly my point about ID.
Here is what you said:
The fact remains that such agent or agents could exist, and that the existence of biological information and of dFSCI in it is a very strong support to that hypothesis.
So, in your view, ID theory assumes consciousness was responsible for biological CSI, then claims the existence of biological CSI as evidence that ID is correct. That would be analogous to assuming the universe started in a Big Bang, then citing the existence of the universe as evidence that this theory is correct. I pointed out if that was what Big Bang cosmologists had done, nobody would have listened to them. But instead, they produced multiple lines of experimental confirmation of very specific predictions. Only then was Big Bang theory generally accepted. In stark contrast, the claim that consciousness is required for CSI to arise cannot be empirically confirmed (even to the extent that it is conceptually clear).
“Moreover, I must remind you that consensus is scarcely a guarantee of how well a theory explains things.
Of course! We have been in violent agreement over this point for some time now. :-)
I would appreciate you thoughts on my statement: As philosophers of science well know, and certainly you with them, cultural bias and cognitive bias are always at the door. That’s why the least consistent and least empirically supported theory of our times, neo-darwinism, is still proclaimed as a “fact, and not a theory”, and endorsed as something “more certain than the theory of gravitation” by present academy.
OK, here are my thoughts: 1) I do not believe neo-darwinism successfully accounts for biological form and function (but evolutionary theory per se is certainly not the least supported theory of our times). 3) The "evolution is fact not a theory" meme rests on an equiviocation on the word "evolution". 4) The reasons that biologists are dogmatic about evolutionary theory are more complicated than cognitive and cultural bias, but those play a part. 5) There is no empirical support for the claim that evolutionary fully accounts for the existence of biological CSI, and good reasons to think it doesn't.
That simply means that we can expect anything from “scientific consensus”.” Do you agree?
I'd say the scientific consensus is shown to be with significant frequency. In fact, the only thing less certain that a result endorsed by the a consensus of the scientific community is a result that isn't.
That said, the crucial point is in these words of yours: “Let’s say we have some unexplained phenomenon, and then we come up with two perfectly stupid and ridiculous hypotheses that, if either were true, would explain the phenomenon” (emphasis mine). So, what you are saying that a possible explanation should not be considered, even is others are not available, if its assumtions are “perfectly stupid and ridiculous”. That is completely different from saying that an assumption is not supported by independent facts.
I'm afraid you've misinterpreted my remarks - I should have been more clear. I was not at all implying that either ID or evolutionary theory is stupid or ridiculous. Rather, I was arguing this: we don’t adopt the best explanation of something unless that explanation actually has sufficient warrant – not just because it is not as baseless as other explanations. I tried to make this point clear using an illustration, because I run into this issue frequently here, and it's an important point to understand. I chose very ridiculous hypotheses as my examples NOT because I was saying ID is ridiculous (it is not), but rather because if I chose very ridiculous examples, there would be no confusion about them lacking sufficient empirical evidence! AGAIN: I have never, here or anywhere else, implied that ID is stupid or ridiculous, because I believe no such thing. I have always argued, however, that ID should not be considered to be an empirically supported scientific theory.
I don’t understand why you go on introducing the term “paranormal phenomena”. To what do you refer?
From WIKI: Paranormal is a general term (coined c. 1915–1920[1][2]) that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation"[3] or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure.
Do you think either religious experiences or NDEs are “paranormal”? If so, I would appreciate that you explained why (if you do not consider it as an attempt at derailing the conversation).
I consider NDEs to be paranormal by this definition, because they are outside of the range of normal experience. I didn't call religious experiences "paranormal".
I am afraid that here your bad epistemology surfaces again. Connection between events are never facts. They are mental concepts, therefore theories. So, you are just accusing me of not being able to show that what cannot be a fact is not a fact- Well, I will take that accusation as a compliment.
Huh? What I mean by "fact" is a true statement about the world, and certainly a statement about a connection between two things can be true or not. "Cigarettes cause cancer" is a fact - it is a true statement about a connection between two things. In this context, the existence of our consciousness is a fact, and our ability to design things is a fact, but it is not a fact that consciousness is a necessary cause of design ability. You argue that you needn't show a casual connection, but rather only a correlation, and that the correlation is perfect (for the CSI where we know the source). Then I reply that the perfect correlation is in fact between design ability and human beings, not consciousness. Then you say it doesn't matter, you can still base an inference on the correlation. Then I reply: No, you can't, because by the very same reasoning, you could infer that the cause of biological CSI had a spleen.
Now, the central claim of ID theory is not, as you seem to think, the existence of non physical conscious beings. That is a possible consequence of ID theory, not its central claim. The central claim of ID is the presence in biological information of a definite property, dFSCI, which is observed, out of biological information, only in designed things. And that no theory which does not include the intervention of a conscious designer can, even vaguely, begin to explain that simple observed fact.
I don't understand. ID says: all explanations of the dFSCI we observe in biology will necessarily invoke a conscious entity. That sounds to me as though ID claims a conscious entity was responsible for the original dFSCI, which means ID posits the existence of a conscious being (whether physical or not) that does not itself have a body with dFSCI.
Now, you can just say that any theory that includes as an assumption the existence of conscious designers which would probably be non physical is perfectly stupid and ridiculous, but that is only your cognitive bias speaking.
See above. Your misunderstanding of my remarks was probably caused by your cognitive bias :-)
IOWs, fact show that many times, in the course of natural history, there has been a rather sudden generation of complex functional information, without any apparent “natural” explanation. ... So, how do you think you can try to explain dFSCI in biological information, and its documented appearance in natural history?
Incidently, I see you look at these "sudden" infusions of CSI and find it consistent with what we know about intelligent designers. But intelligent agents typically develop designs rapidly - on the order of years or decades, not hundreds of millions of years! Why isn't it a prediction of ID that species change on a timescale that intelligent agents typically operate on? In any event, there's no evidence to warrant believe in any theory at all regarding the emergence of biological CSI at this point.
No. As I have said, I must not justify my assumptions, provided they are not stupid and ridiculous.
Well, I think you're sneaking in your justification right here. It's not simply that your assumptions are stupid or they are not stupid - it's a matter of what evidence you can provide to suggest they are true. I've already said there's nothing "stupid" or "ridiculous" about ID. Still, we must have some way to determine if there actually was some conscious being who caused the biological CSI we observe, and ID fails to provide any such method.
RDF: “We do not know that humans can design things because they are conscious; it could be, for all we know, that consciousness is not an attribute that would be shared by everything capable of producing complex designs.” GP: OK, and so? That only means that whoever can empirically show that non conscious system can generate dFSCI will have falsified the theory. That just means that the theory is perfectly scientific, in a Popperian sense. That is its merit, not its fault.
Falsification is certainly a merit, yes, but it does not itself justify a theory that has no other evidence. If my theory was that kangaroos built Stonehenge, you could falsify that theory in any number of ways, but that wouldn't constitute positive support that my theory was true. gpuccio, let me pause here. Frankly I think your arguments are better than most (or any) others I've encountered here, and I think they deserve thoughtful replies to make my objections clear. Presently I am beset by holiday duties (even we theological con-cognitivists celebrate New Year) and cannot devote more time to this now. I apologize for suggesting you were derailing the conversation - you are clearly arguing in good faith, and I do appreciate that a great deal indeed. Until a bit later, Happy New Year to you! Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{December 31, 2013
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F/N: I have decided -- given the sudden objection that what chance is is ever so vague -- to put up a notice post, giving a summary rough definition of chance based on remarks here and in the first ID foundations post, here. KF PS: Later, I intend to address the notion of causeless events that appears in MF's remarks. That one goes to the heart of rationality and the significant of the principle of sufficient reason that tells us that if A comes to be we can ask why A and seek a reasonable answer, in this case whatever begins to exist has a cause.kairosfocus_{December 31, 2013
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Optimus, that Philip Johnson reply to Lewontin's infamous Jan 1997 NYRB article -- cf. here for that one in all its faded glory -- is indeed a classic. These two articles laid out the battle lines that have continued to be the flashpoint ever since. Every serious debater on ID should carefully read both, and if you are unfamiliar with ID you should read the NWE intro here (and my first UD blog ID founds article on the design inference, here, don't forget the UD resources tab at top of EVERY UD page esp. the weak argument correctives, too) . . . the Wiki article is worthless save as an illustration of a hatchet job by ideologues lurking in their basements and probably being paid a stipend to serve as secularist cannon fodder. KF PS: Peter Williams' review on the validity of the design inference as justified by outsiders to the ID movement, here, will also bear study . . . yet another sleeper.kairosfocus_{December 30, 2013
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http://www.arn.org/ftissues/ft9711/articles/johnson.htmlOptimus_{December 30, 2013
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Gpuccio, great job highlighting the cognitive bias at play in the discussion. As far as nonhuman consciousness is concerned, ID proponents are far from being the only people willing to acknowledge that possibility. SETI certainly granted the possibility of nonhuman consciousness. Additionally, a number of mainstream thinkers happily embrace the idea that Darwinian evolution must have generated other conscious beings somewhere in the cosmos (it is so big after all). Thus, conceiving consciousness as not strictly limited to human beings is hardly controversial. Unless, of course, the implications make people uncomfortable... KF, thanks for highlighting the Johnson quote. If anyone wants to read the full article, here's the link:Optimus_{December 30, 2013
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Relevant to gpuccio´s precise bulldozing of RDFish´s position:
Edward F. Kelly:(...) we emphasize that science consists at bottom of certain attitudes and procedures, rather than any fixed set of beliefs. The most basic attitude is that facts have primacy over theories and that beliefs should therefore always remain modifiable in response to new empirical data. In the forceful words of Francis Bacon (1620/1960), from the beginning of the scientific era: “The world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding… but the understanding to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world as it is in fact” ~ `Irreducible Mind`
Box_{December 30, 2013
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Box:
Only the metaphysical concept “unity” is a truly general encompassing concept for consciousness.
That is really a good point. I believe that the transcendental I is really a single, constant subject. One of the conceptual reasons why an arrangement of natter cannot generate consciousness is that consciousness is simple, while its contents can be extremely complex. Only a transcendental subject can explain that unity.gpuccio_{December 30, 2013
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KF, WJM, UB, Box: Thank you for adding to the interesting discussion. KF: Thank you for fixing my post :)gpuccio_{December 30, 2013
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BA77 shows us an interesting case in point of food for thought on how cases that do not sit well with the evo mat frame can be investigated and reported, here.kairosfocus_{December 30, 2013
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WJM, UB and Box: All highly cogent comments. Note that I did just above to analyse RDF's views as so blatantly put in November. As to what is going on, I think we have the impacts of an a priori ideology here on display. That is one reason why I am now dealing with this analysis. KFkairosfocus_{December 30, 2013
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KF #74: But, if, a priori, you are committed to reducing intelligence, design, and other aspects of mind to blind chance and mechanical necessity, you will simply refuse to look where you should if you are to have a serious hope of finding a sensible answer.
The inwardness (self-sustaining, self-organization) of consciousness (and life) all points to unity and irreducibility - “I am that I am”. Only the metaphysical concept “unity” is a truly general encompassing concept for consciousness. Materialism states that there are no undividable things above the level of atoms. However it is confronted with the hard problem of consciousness and life. Consciousness and life is telling us in thousand different ways: “here I am”, “I am a unity”, “I am a self”, “I am free”, “I’m not just my parts”, “I am that I am”. What is it with materialists? Can they not hear?Box_{December 30, 2013
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F/N: Let's do a bit of analysis of RDF's words as clipped by UB in 69, especially as it brings out the cognitive biases, argument tactics and frankly fallacies of Darwinists and evolutionary materialists and those unduly influenced by that ideology quite clearly: >>RDF Nov2013: No, you are of course the one who is confused … none of you ID folks are able to follow any sort of subtle or conditional argumentation … you apparently require a great deal of repitition before you can actually comprehend these things>> 1 --> Projection and stereotyping rooted in bias and hostility feeding contempt. You are ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked, we are the brights. (It has evidently not dawned on RDF that he is dealing with many people who hold graduate or undergraduate degrees and have experience with abstract analysis, worldviews and more, as well as math, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science and more.) 2 --> And just for theologians, who are often viewed with even more contempt, RDF, can you see and explain why the triune concept of God that is a key mark of Orthodox Christian faith, is not incoherent, the equivalent of saying 1 + 1 + 1 = 1? After that, kindly do not despise theologians and those who hold informed, Nicene Creed, Orthodox Christian faith. >> … If you were able to read and understand language a little better>> 3 --> more of same. >> … your bizarre notion … is simply nonsensical …>> 4 --> Notice the contemptuous dismissal, and failure to see that perhaps it is RDF who has here failed to grasp a concept that may well cut across his cognitive biases and expectations. >> What you fail to understand (among other things) … we need to work through that step-by-step, so you don’t get confused …>> 5 --> Contempt mounts up. >> You have put your fingers in your ears, and you are screaming for me to stop telling you what the truth is, because you don’t want to hear it. “END!” you cry.>> 6 --> Really? Or is it that we are pointing out the gaps, fallacies and errors in your reasoning, which in your assumption that you have cornered the market on the truth, you dismiss out of hand? >>“Stop, please, don’t say any more about the designer because I can’t stand to hear it! My precious beliefs in transcendent mind are too fragile to discuss, and so I forbid any discussion that might make me evaluate my beliefs against the evidence!”>> 7 --> Projection of improper motives without good warrant (i.e. based on prejudice and contempt), an ad hominem abusive. >> … That is simply pathetic. You are pretending to base your religious beliefs on scientific evidence,>> 8 --> Now the underlying prejudice against design thought and misrepresentation of it come out: the imagination is that there is but one contrast to Natural (= blind chance and/or necessity), i.e. the (suspect . . . ) supernatural , and the only motivation for such is held to be religious indoctrination and/or prejudice. 9 --> But in fact, as has been repeatedly pointed out (it is in the Jan 2009 UD weak argument correctives, for crying out loud . . . ) ever since Plato in The Laws, Bk X, it has been well understood that another opposite to natural is the ART-ificial. Where, the artificial is patently highly amenable to empirical investigation, through signs of contrivance, or design. 10 --> So, to infer to design -- cf here at UD since Jan 2011 (& as updated) -- is not equivalent to to infer to the supernatural, but to point to an empirical investigation on signs that can be tested and found reliable. The form of FSCO/I GP emphasises is a classic example: digitally coded, functionally specific, complex information, such as we find in English language text strings in posts here at UD in this thread, or in computer software, or in D/RNA. The ONLY observed pattern of cause that leads to its origin is that in which conscious design is at work involving a purposeful, self aware intelligent agent. That is there is a consistent mutuality here that shows that the first is a reliable sign of the other. 11 --> I go beyond what GP is prepared to argue here, and point out that the needle in haystack search analysis of say 500 coins in a row, tell us that there are 3.27*10^150 possible configs, forming a config space. The 10^57 atoms of our solar system (our practical cosmos for chemical or mechanical level interactions), acting as so many observers of states of such strings and seeing a new state every 10^-14 s [as fast as fast ionic reactions], for 10^17 s [a reasonable age limit], will only be able to sample as one straw to a cubical haystack 1,000 light years across. thus, they will with maximal likelihood, be unable to find isolated zones of special configs in the space. 12 --> That is why the overwhelming expectation of tossing 500 fair coins in a row is near 50-50 H-T in no particular order. The predominant cluster; in a thermodynamics context the equilibrium state. So, with all but absolute certainty, if we were to see 500 coins all H, or alternating H and T, or spelling out say the first 72 characters for this post in ASCII, we would conclude that the coins were set that way by either a mechanism or design, and the mechanism that takes over a highly contingent system to produce such an outcome would require design. 13 --> Notice, an inference to design by way of an analysis, on high contingency as opposed to low, and on seeing functional specificity that puts us in such tiny clusters in the space of possibilities that we are entitled to infer that chance -- otherwise the default for highly contingent outcomes -- is not a credible explanation. 14 --> the same basic logic extends to the wider case of functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, as a description of such a complex highly contingent entity can be expressed as a string of coded bits. In short, if you see a jumbo jet or just one of the instruments on its flight deck, we naturally and properly infer to design on FSCO/I. 15 --> And so forth, and if we were to see Paley's second example, a time keeping watch that in the course of its motion were to assemble another watch like unto itself, we would do the same, seeing in the self replication facility a further reason to infer contrivance. (This of course speaks directly tot he origin of self replicating life, which is far more complex than a watch and used code based self replication.) 16 --> But in fact as has been repeatedly highlighted and just as repeatedly studiously ignored by RDF and others of his ilk of objectors, the inference to design of life on earth is NOT an inference in itself to God or another supernatural entity as designer. That tweredun is not equal to whodunit. (And just Google those phrases if Google is back to listing UD pages to see how often it has been pointed out.) 17 --> For, a molecular nanotech lab some generations beyond Venter et al, would sufficiently account for that. 18 --> But as can be seen in the exchange with GP above, RDF's underlying strawman caricature leads him to miss the point GP is making, and in a context where there is often a deep, deliberately stirred up hostility to the idea of God and the idea of duties under God and accountability before him, cognitive and emotive biases can lead to not seeing what is there in front of one who is under such influences. 19 --> Now there is another level of design inference that is much closer to an inference to the supernatural, not just to the designed. Observing a cosmos with a beginning that is set from basic physics up to a fine tuned operating point that enables C Chemistry, cell based aqueous medium life. That points to a designer of great power who purposed to create a cosmos in which there is life, where a beginning implies a beginner and a contingent cosmos implies that matter is contingent and onwards, that it must be rooted in a necessary being, on logic of cause and effect in light of the weak form principle of sufficient reason. 20 --> Multiply by our being under moral government and we have a world in which OUGHT is real and rests necessarily on an IDS that grounds it. The only serious candidate is the inherently good creator God. And while that is over the border into philosophy, so is a multiverse speculation, and once you are in phil, all of phil comes to bear. 21 --> In any case the cosmological design inference points to mind before matter and as the source of matter, >> but when it doesn’t go your way, all you do is shout out “END! YOU CAN’T TALK ABOUT THAT!”>> 22 --> Strawman stereotype multiplied by question begging and trumpeting a rhetorical "victory" that pivots on the question-begging. For, the only ideology based censorship or closed mindedness at work is this sort, as was inadvertently disclosed by Lewontin:
the problem is to get them [hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth [[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]. . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [[--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [[--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [From: “Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997. if you imagine this can be dismissed as quote mining, kindly see the fuller cite and notes here.]
23 --> This richly deserved ID thinker Philip Johnson's withering retort in November that year:
For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]
24 --> And this surfaces the root problem. Science, its methods, its analysis and permissible conclusions have been subjected to a priori evolutionary materialistic censorship. As one aspect, it is assumed that intelligence ans design MUST directly or indirectly reduce to matter and energy moving under blind chance and necessity across time and space. So, we have a major ideological warping problem. 25 --> By contrast, I have suggested that AI/neurophysiological researcher Derek Smith's two tier controller cybernetic loop model gets us out of the question-begging ideological lockdown. Int he loop, we have an I/O controller that carries out necessary functions. But this is interfaced with a higher order controller responsible for supervising it. 26 --> No specific commitment as to the nature of such is required, just we see a way that we can profitably discuss how by such a two-tier approach we have goal-directed purposeful action in the loop without robbing the loop of its computational architecture and the implications that what he loop does is framed on responses to circumstances in light of hardware and software. (For instance with the brain, one possibility is quantum level influences.) 27 --> Such is inherently consistent with empirical findings on the brain-body loop and with the findings we have known since forever that we are self aware, self moved agents who are intelligent and capable of design. 28 --> Where also it is easily shown that as a rock has no dreams, it cannot be deceived that it is conscious. Likewise, if we are aware of our consciousness, we cannot be deceived that we are conscious and are in some way profoundly different from a rock or rock fragments. 29 --> Multiply this by the implications of the design inference and we are already seeing that a worldview that accepts that reality owes its existence to an intelligent immaterial, powerful purposeful designer who is a necessary -- thus eternal -- being, is not empty indoctrination and blind superstition [as those influenced over much by radical secularism are wont to imagine], but a serious worldview option; one compatible with free science not held ideological captive to Lewontinian ideological a priori materialism. 30 --> And from that it is but a step to seriously investigate this matter. KFkairosfocus_{December 30, 2013
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KF, The comments I posted from RDF came from a single post in November; his last post to me, effectively ending our exchange. They represent his last resort where I was concerned, resulting from me not relenting on a very simple proposition. That proposition was that the valid material evidence of design (which RDF agreed with) is unaffected by the fact that we cannot identify a designer at the origin of life (which RDF, in turn, then uses to discount the design inference). Then, just as now, RDF wants to wrap himself in the flag of reason by commiting to the modesty of saying "We don't know", but he wants to strategically place that commitment before the design inference, instead of after it. If he places his modesty after the valid inference to design, then virtually the whole of ID would agree with him - and they would have every right to do so because it would be congruent with the material evidence. But he demands that we place our "We don't know" before the valid inference to design, not for the sake of modesty, but as a science stopper, a conversation stopper - a very effective denial of the valid evidence (which just so happens to contradict his personal preferences). It's effective because, frankly, what can be more self-effacing than modesty in face of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos? Unfortunately, like a politician kissing the babies, it's all a front. Also as before (in November), when faced with a design proponent who calls him on his faults in reasoning, he eventually turns to metaphysics, politics, and religion to blast his opponent when his arguments fail. I never said one word about religion, divine intervention, or anything of the sort. I remained situated on the material evidence itself, yet, you can see his reaction above. I believe the people who study human interactions have a word for that kind of thing. We have nothing to fear from RDF, let him spew. He has more than enough to contend with in GP anyway.Upright BiPed_{December 30, 2013
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Nothing portrays the gulf between the minds of the two camps in this debate more explicitly than what has been displayed in this debate. We know of the existence of interdependent, exceptionally complex, combinatorial 3D key-lock functions generated, guided and repaired by a multi-layered, self-correcting, self-regulating software code. The only commodity known to produce anything like this is deliberate intelligence. One side says that the best, current explanation of what we have found is some form of deliberate intelligence. The other side of the argument claims that chance interactions of matter under physical law is the best, current explanation, and that the idea that intelligence is responsible is "stupid and ridiculous". Put more simply, if we found the equivalent of a computerized, functioning battleship buried in strata 100 million years old, Darwinists like RDF would hold the theory that some kind of intelligent agency was responsible as "stupid and ridiculous", while holding that it is reasonable to conclude that the battleship-X was the product of unguided, natural forces and materials. Yes, someone in this thread is certainly holding on to a stupid and ridiculous hypothesis. Readers can decide for themselves.William J Murray_{December 30, 2013
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