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

_{kairosfocus

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:

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.) >>
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In short, there is a major issue that materialism is inherently and inescapably self referentially incoherent, undermining its whole scheme of reasoning.

That is a big topic itself.

But, when it comes to the issue of debates over the meaning of chance and inferences to design which implicate intelligence, it is an underlying assumption that plainly leads to endless debates.

In this context, however, the case of 500 coins in a row on a table reading all H or alternating H and T or the first 72 characters of this post in ASCII code, strongly shows the difference in capacity of chance and design as sources of configurations that come from independently and simply describable clusters that are deeply isolated in a space of configs that are such that the atomic resources of our solar system cannot credibly search a big enough fraction to make it reasonable to believe one will stumble upon such configs blindly.

In short, there is a major and directly experienced phenomenon to be accounted for, self aware conscious intellect and related capacities we subsume under the term mind. And this phenomenon is manifest in capacity to design, which is as familiar as composing posts in this thread.

Such designs are well beyond the capacity of blind chance and mechanical necessity, so we have good reason to see that intelligence capable of design is as fundamental in understanding our empirical world as chance and as necessity.

Whatever the worldview consequences — and I think they are huge.>>>

____________

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

RDFish: Just to be clear: KF, StephenB and I agree on a lot of things, and we have worked together and have the utmost reciprocal respect. And, sometimes, we disagree on some points, and that's very good. Again, ID is not a party line. Maybe darwinism is. Maybe skepticism is. Maybe RDFishism is. But not iD. That's why I am on that side.gpuccio_{January 27, 2014
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RDFish proclaims:
The claim that human intelligence is irreducible to material process can neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed scientifically,...
BWAAAAAAAAAAHAAAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA As if RDF is the one who gets to say. RDFish- a legend in his own irreducble mind....Joe_{January 27, 2014
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RDFish: Very simple. Because science is relative. Like any other human cognition. Relative things are beautiful. They are good and meaningful. Absolutes are good only if they are real absolutes. And do you know how many absolutes exist? :) Science is not absolute. The idea that it is, is simply scientism: at best, bad philosophy, at worst, irritating dogma. The beautiful thing of science is that it is empirical, and humble. And that it has the courage to humbly try to understand what apparently cannot be understood. The ugly thing of scientism is that it is philosophical and dogmatic, and only looks for absolutes and authority in the name of "science". That it believes that it knows what is science and what is not, and that all others should agree. That it criticizes those who think for themselves because they don't think like "science" commands. That it believes that everything must be explained exactly in the way it expects will be explained. That it fears true original thought, and evades new paradigms. I love relative science. Where the last decision is in each person's consciousness. I hate dogmatic scientism and all its pseudo truths, including, and especially, the false pseudo truth of agnosticism and skepticism.gpuccio_{January 27, 2014
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KF:
GP: I think that for those of pantheistic worldview persuasion, intelligence and personhood are not to be equated — I recall talk about “a field of pure creative intelligence” back in the 70?s. We may beg to differ but they are indeed design thinkers. KF
I would never even think of suggesting that Dembski is not a "design thinker". He is one of the best, and I am very grateful to him for his work. So, it's even more important for me to clarify when and why I don't agree with some of his idea. It is, for me, a form of utmost respect. The problem, for me, is not of being personal or impersonal. Probably, I don't understand well what Dembski means, but after all I could only read the following excerpt:
Intelligent design is the study of patterns (hence “design”) in nature that give empirical evidence of resulting from real teleology (hence “intelligent”). In this definition, real teleology is not reducible to purely material processes. At the same time, in this definition, real teleology is not simply presupposed as a consequence of prior metaphysical commitments. Intelligent design asks teleology to prove itself scientifically. In the context of biology, intelligent design looks for patterns in biological systems that confirm real teleology. The definition of intelligent design given here is in fact how its proponents understand the term. This definition avoids two common linguistic pitfalls associated with it: intelligent design’s critics tend to assume that the reference to “design” in “intelligent design” commits it to an external-design view of teleology; moreover, they tend to assume that the reference to “intelligent” in “intelligent design” makes any such external design the product of a conscious personal intelligent agent. Both assumptions are false.
Frankly, I find that very vague. Maybe I will understand better when I can read the book. Or maybe not. In the meantime, my impression is simply that Dembski here is using the words "real teleology" to evade the real problem. Personal and impersonal are, equally, vague concepts, unless they are precisely defined in some way. For me, the key idea is "conscious". And conscious just means "a subjective I, having representations". So, I stick to my very simple idea: design just means, in everyday language as much as in philosophy, that a conscious, subjective agent represents something and then outputs the form of that subjective representation into a material object. I know no other meaning for the word. Now, I have no problems with real teleologies, intelligent fields, and similar, provided that they mean "a real purpose in a subjective being", or "a conscious field that has conscious representations referred to a singular subjective I". Whatever those things may are, I am not interested: if they have a conscious I, capable of subjective representations of meaning and purpose, they can design. Otherwise, they can't. It's simple, after all, Design is what a child does with a pencil and a sheet of paper. It's nothing more than that, nothing less. It can be an impersonal child. It can be a baby field with the desire to paint in space. Whatever. But, if it is a designer, it is a subject, it is an I, it has representations, it has understanding of meaning, it has feeling and desires. Design is made of that stuff.gpuccio_{January 27, 2014
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RdFish:
Really? So you think that your ID hypothesis above is equally consistent with the statement “the designer was conscious” and “the designer was not conscious”? In other words, can you have foresight that is completely physically determined and without conscious awareness? How is that different from an “unguided material process”?
There is no question that a purely mechanical system can have foresight. Anticipation is the key to intelligence. It is indispensable to goal-oriented behavior and thus to design. That being said, anticipation is not sufficient for design. Motivation comes first. The intelligent system must be motivated to design something. It must choose a goal. Where does this motivation come from? The problem with goal-oriented behavior is that the number of possible goals in the sensory space of the intelligent system is astronomical and growing all the time. Why should the system choose one goal over the other. Animals don't have that problem because their predilection for certain goals is prewired in their brains. It usually has to do with survival, avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. We can use this knowledge to train animals to do all kinds of stupid pet tricks. Humans are different. Sure we can be conditioned to behave in a certain way because we, too, try to avoid pain and seek pleasure. However, we seem to have a will that pushes us to like certain things more than others independent of their contribution to survival. Our infatuation with music, the arts and beauty in general is a case in point. This is not something that is conditioned into our behavior nor is it something that is preprogrammed into our brains. My point is that, to be a good designer, one must be motivated. To be motivated, one needs something other than the physical brain, something that tells us the difference between beautiful and ugly. Beauty is not a property of matter. It is a spiritual property. This is the reason that we need a conscious intelligent entity for creative design. But does ID require a conscious intelligence for design? The answer is no. And this is irrelevant to the fact that, ultimately, there has to be some consciousness involved along the line. But ID is not concerned with that. ID is concerned with direct design.Mapou_{January 27, 2014
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Hi gpuccio,
ID is the best scientific explanation. For me. You don’t agree. That’s not my problem.
Your problem is you use the word "scientific" but you make no distinction between a scientifcally vetted result and any other opinion. If you believe that scientific truth is entirely relative (which it appears you do when you say something can be "the best scientific explanation... for me"), why do you even use the word "science"? Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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Hi Stephen,
I do not disagree with GPuccio. Will RDF ever stop misrepresenting what I say?
Not only do you constantly misrepresent me, but you even misrepresent yourself! SB @275: "There is no conflict between Dembski’s definition of intelligence and Meyer’s definition." GP @521: "Just to be clear, I definitely disagree with Dembski here. And I agree with you that the two positions are not compatible." Yum yum, how are those words tasting now that you have to eat them again? Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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Hi CentralScrutinizer,
I am not trying to explain the origin of intelligence.
I'm not talking about the origin of intelligence either. I'm talking about the operation of intelligence. I'm not talking about how intelligent organisms came to exist, I'm talking about how they manage to learn, remember, solve problems, and so on.
Only define what it is contra chance and necessity as we understand it. Do you see the difference?
You have just contradicted your stated position by making a specific claim about what it means to be "intelligent". You say it is "contra chance and necessity as we understand it". But you can't even demonstrate that human intelligence meets this criteria - how could you support the conclusion that the Designer of Life meets this criteria?
Material that is unguided does not exhibit the features of intelligence by definition, that is, by the definition that I provided.
So you say, but you have no way of supporting your opinion with any evidence. You may be right, of course, but you certainly may be wrong, and there is no science to help us decide the matter. For all we know, things that reason, learn, solve problems, use language, and design complex machinery (i.e. human beings) operate strictly according to deterministic "unguided" physical law.
Something with goals, foresight, comprehension of physical reality is by definition, not merely chance and necessity.
You can't prove an hypothesis by defining yourself to be correct. You're claiming that nothing that operates according to necessity could possibly exhibit these attributes, but you provide no reason to believe you are correct. If materialism is true, then you are wrong, no matter how much you play with your definitions.
Again, I am not trying to explain the origin of intelligence.
Again, you misunderstood: My point has nothing to do with the origin of intelligence. It has to do with what "intelligence" is.
Actually I don’t. In fact, one can make the barest of hypothesis and say: something other than chance and necessity put the DNA replicator together. It’s falsifiable. And therefore scientific.
Nonsense - there is no method to determine if ANYTHING is "other than" chance and necessity. It is impossible to demonstrate that human thought is "other than" chance and necessity - and again I'm not talking about the origin of intelligence, but rather intelligence per se.
RDF: 1) I conjecture that Robby the Robot created life. 2) This conjecture can be falsified by showing that something which was NOT Robby the Robot created life. Therefore it is a scientific hypothesis which can be falsified, but never has been falsified. CS: Well, I’ve got news for you, what you’ve just written is a scientific hypothesis. Although it is a practically worthless one unless you define what “Robby the Robot” means.
Undefined hypotheses are not scientific. Moreover, it is ridiculous to imagine that "falisification of 'X explains Y'" merely refers to "proving that 'not-X explains Y'".
I defined what I mean by intelligence.
You left one of your critical assumptions out of your definition, which is that intelligence is "other than chance and necessity". There is no evidence that anything by that definition exists at all. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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RDF to GPuccio:
So Dembski disagrees with Meyer, you disagree with Dembski, and StephenB disagrees with you. And this is not just some little detail – this is actually the central claim of ID, because unless you say what it means to be a “designer”, then when you conclude “design” you aren’t actually saying anything meaningful at all.
I do not disagree with GPuccio. Will RDF ever stop misrepresenting what I say?StephenB_{January 27, 2014
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RDFish: 1) I don't think I have you backwords. I don't believe, contrary to what you seem to, that science has any imprimatur of to tell other people that their particular opinion ought to be taken more seriously than anyone else’s. I believe that everyone can say what he thinks, that everyone can offer the best scientific explanation about scientific problems, and that only the validity of ideas can decide what is the best explanation in the consciousness of everyone. So, you see, I am not searching any imprimatur for ID. The strength of ID is the strength of its ideas, not any imprimatur from the bishops of pseudo-science. So, we seem to have two very different conceptions of science, of cognition, and the search for truth. No problem there. Just keep yours. ID is the best scientific explanation. For me. You don't agree. That's not my problem. You say: "If you agree with me that these allusions to “telic processes”, “self-organizing principles”, “natural theology” and so forth are vague to the point of meaninglessness, then I don’t see how you can believe that ID still unambiguously can detect “design” – when “design” may in fact mean “caused by impersonal telic forces”.". Perhaps I have not been clear. Or my english is not good. Or you just don't want to understand. For me, "design" cannot mean “caused by impersonal telic forces”. I have said very clearly that such a concept, for me, is wrong. How can I say that more clearly? I am responsible only for my ideas, not for the ideas of others. That does not mean that I don't respect the ideas of others, or that I think they are not useful, even if I don't agree with them. Wrong ideas may be very useful to show how wrong a position is. You go on saying silly things, like that ID should be "unambiguous". Why? Again, ID is not a party line. It is a rich field of thought, where ideas, both right and wrong, are represented in a new paradigm that no more is afraid to meet important problems like functional information, consciousness, purpose, and so on. We face those problems. With different positions. That is very good. Darwinists just think they have solved the problems they elude. You just elude them. We try to solve them. With our best resources.gpuccio_{January 27, 2014
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RDFish: Really? So you think that your ID hypothesis above is equally consistent with the statement “the designer was conscious” and “the designer was not conscious”? In other words, can you have foresight that is completely physically determined and without conscious awareness?
I don't know. But it's tangential and irrelevant to my hypothesis. I am not trying to explain the origin of intelligence. Only define what it is contra chance and necessity as we understand it. Do you see the difference?
How is that different from an “unguided material process”?
Material that is unguided does not exhibit the features of intelligence by definition, that is, by the definition that I provided. Something with goals, foresight, comprehension of physical reality is by definition, not merely chance and necessity. It is special. That's the whole point of the hypothesis. Again, I am not trying to explain the origin of intelligence. Only define it against what we understand about chance and necessity.
Ok, that is your conjecture. In order to investigate your conjecture scientifically you’ll need to marshall some evidence that such a thing exists (or existed) and designed the DNA replication system
Actually I don't. In fact, one can make the barest of hypothesis and say: something other than chance and necessity put the DNA replicator together. It's falsifiable. And therefore scientific. With my ID hypothesis above I'm making extra claims: that whatever this "other" is, it requires comprehension of physical reality, foresight, goals and power to move matter according to its goals and foresight. This, likewise is falsifiable, because it may be that we discover something that is not merely an outcome of chance and necessity and yet lacking any or all of those intelligent traits, and the yet be the origin of the DNA replicator. However, what this could possibly be is inconceivable to me, personally. I know of no contending conception. Point is, my ID hypothesis is specific, falsifiable, and therefore scientific.
This is silly. Watch: 1) I conjecture that Robby the Robot created life. 2) This conjecture can be falsified by showing that something which was NOT Robby the Robot created life. Therefore it is a scientific hypothesis which can be falsified, but never has been falsified.
Well, I've got news for you, what you've just written is a scientific hypothesis. Although it is a practically worthless one unless you define what "Robby the Robot" means. I defined what I mean by intelligence. What does "Robby the Robot" mean?CentralScrutinizer_{January 27, 2014
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Hi CentralScrutinizer,
Whose version of Darwinism? Whose version of ID? Unless you get down to specifics, this is a vacuous statement.
Right. Darwinism: RM&NS accounts for biological complexity ID: A conscious entity designed and built the first living things
Here is an example of a falsifiable ID hypothesis: “Intelligent agent” is defined as something that possesses an understanding of physical reality such as human physicists currently possesses, has foresight such that it can extensively run scenarios and probe for certain desired outcomes, has goals, and has the power and facility to put matter/energy together in such a way that physical reality otherwise have not been shown to accomplish.
Ok.
(Rabbit trails about whether consciousness is required of such an agent is tangential and irrelevant.)
Really? So you think that your ID hypothesis above is equally consistent with the statement "the designer was conscious" and "the designer was not conscious"? In other words, can you have foresight that is completely physically determined and without conscious awareness? How is that different from an "unguided material process"?
Now, I conjecture “the DNA replication system required an intelligent agent” as defined above. In other words it required an agent that has human-like grasp of physical reality, has goals, can run scenarios probing for desired outcomes, and the power to combine matter and energy to accomplish the goal.
Ok, that is your conjecture. In order to investigate your conjecture scientifically you'll need to marshall some evidence that such a thing exists (or existed) and designed the DNA replication sytem.
This can be falisified by showing that necessity and chance without the aforementioned traits of intelligence as defined about can account for the DNA replicator.
This is silly. Watch: 1) I conjecture that Robby the Robot created life. 2) This conjecture can be falsified by showing that something which was NOT Robby the Robot created life. Therefore it is a scientific hypothesis which can be falsified, but never has been falsified. See? Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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Hi gpuccio,
That may some strange to someone like you, who seems to think that everyone should agree with someone else’s views (possibly yours), but it is no problem for me.
You have me exactly backwards. In my view, for these questions that remain inaccessible to empirical science, each person should think whatever they choose to think, and that is no problem at all. The problem arises when they attempt to co-opt the imprimatur of science to tell other people that their particular opinion ought to be taken more seriously than anyone else's. If ID would just leave the claim to scientific authority out of it, I would have no problem with ID. ID is a faith-based proposition, not the "best scientific explanation" based on empirical evidence. (And before you ask, of course I believe the same of Darwinists' claims that evolutionary theory accounts for biological complexity, OOL, etc).
RDF: “This is what William Dembski, leading light of the ID movement and founder of this very blog, suggests as one of the possibile causes for biological complexity that is consistent with the evidence. In my view, this is indistinguishable from James Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering” principles, or Stuart Kauffmann’s self-organizational principles, or Thomas Nagel’s “natural teleology”. These are all just vague allusions to something that might account for what we observe in biology, but these are clearly not specific, well-defined hypotheses.” Well, on that I agree with you and disagree with Dembski. You see, everything is possible in this world :)
If you agree with me that these allusions to "telic processes", "self-organizing principles", "natural theology" and so forth are vague to the point of meaninglessness, then I don't see how you can believe that ID still unambiguously can detect "design" - when "design" may in fact mean "caused by impersonal telic forces". Cheers, RDFishRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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RDFish: However, ID folks spend all their time falsifying Darwinism, which they can do only because Darwinism is a scientific theory that can in fact be falsified. Darwinism can be shown to be false, but ID can’t even be evaluated against the evidence.
Whose version of Darwinism? Whose version of ID? Unless you get down to specifics, this is a vacuous statement. Here is an example of a falsifiable ID hypothesis: "Intelligent agent" is defined as something that possesses an understanding of physical reality such as human physicists currently possesses, has foresight such that it can extensively run scenarios and probe for certain desired outcomes, has goals, and has the power and facility to put matter/energy together in such a way that physical reality otherwise have not been shown to accomplish. (Rabbit trails about whether consciousness is required of such an agent is tangential and irrelevant.) Now, I conjecture "the DNA replication system required an intelligent agent" as defined above. In other words it required an agent that has human-like grasp of physical reality, has goals, can run scenarios probing for desired outcomes, and the power to combine matter and energy to accomplish the goal. This can be falisified by showing that necessity and chance without the aforementioned traits of intelligence as defined about can account for the DNA replicator. Therefore it is a scientific hypothesis.CentralScrutinizer_{January 27, 2014
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Am I reading you right?
Not exactly. For those of us like RD Fish, myself, Mapou who have worked with machine and artificial intelligence, we are used to seeing non-conscious purely material mechanisms that can create designed artifacts. So for Meyer to appeal to "conscious" agencies isn't a universal experience. One can of course invoke regress that machines are built by human agents, but then what if human agents are machines, or as some have suggested God is a super-computer. Though I reject that idea personally (that God is a super-computer), I won't even attempt a proof to the contrary. In fact one of Dembski strongest supporters, Frank Tipler, argued God was exactly a super computing intelligence. It is hard to say then whether Tipler believed in non-material entities, since it seems the distinction would be somewhat pointless...I do recall Tipler finally coming around and saying he believes God is outside the material universe. Tipler's endorsement of Bill Dembski's NFL was something apparently very important to Bill. Most of Meyer's arguments are about the abundance of information in the cell. His mention of "conscious intelligence" being the source is almost a passing point, and it would be a conclusion an ID-sympathizer would make anyway without Meyer making that conclusion for the readers. Berlinski and Denton don't argue for a conscious intelligence, but ID proponents will drop everything to hear what they have to say. I'm merely saying, discussions of non-material intelligence don't necessarily further the ID case. You can simply say, "I accept it, others don't, but I find the alternative hard to believe." And end the discussion there and focus on more substantive things such as the actual physical data that resemble machines and information processing systems. I've said the better way to defend ID is not to insist on ID being true, but to demonstrate the Resemblance of Design in biology because people will have already made up their mind about whether they will be open to the possibility of a Designer or not. We don't have to make conclusions for them...scordova_{January 27, 2014
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RDFish @536:
. . . if human intelligence can be reduced to material processes, ID would fail. The claim that human intelligence is irreducible to material process can neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed scientifically, and so ID rests on an ancient metaphysical speculation that cannot currently be resolved scientifically.
ID is not a theory about how intelligence comes about. It is not a theory about consciousness and how it comes about. It is not a theory about how free will, or mind, or anything else along those lines comes about. I haven't followed every back and forth between you and StephenB to know if you are representing his position accurately, but if so, then I will have to respectfully disagree with his position. ID is about whether certain artifacts are best explained by the activity of an intelligent agent. That's it. Nothing about who the intelligent agent is, where the intelligent agent came from, how the intelligent agent got to be intelligent, etc. I've already shown clearly @402 that even if we assume that something like consciousness arises through material processes, it does not invalidate the design inference as to the kinds of things we are studying (OOL, information, cellular systems, etc.). We know for a fact, and you have acknowledged, that there is a big difference between an intelligent agent like a human and the kinds of forces we see playing out in nature on a regular basis. So we can then ask a perfectly legitimate question like: "Is it more likely that an intelligent agent is responsible for the information-rich content in DNA, or that natural forces are?" We can ask this question with respect to a particular artifact as it exists, objectively, observationally. We can ask this question based on the kinds of causes we see available today. And that is an entirely separate question from the question about the origin of those causes in the first place -- whether we are talking about the origin of intelligent agents or whether we are talking about the origin of the laws of physics and chemistry. So, no, ID does not stand or fall on the currently non-existent explanation for the origin of intelligence or consciousness or mind. ID does not start with any assumption about whether a certain organizational structure of matter can result in intelligence. It does not start with any requirement about the nature of consciousness. It does not constitute philosophy just because some people are understandably interested in the second-order questions about such things. ID posits a very simple, objective, non-philosophical, scientific question about the likely origin of certain artifacts we see in the world around us. All attempts to sidestep that question and delve into other areas -- interesting though they may be -- cannot, even in principle, invalidate the design inference, because the design inference doesn't depend on them in the first place.Eric Anderson_{January 27, 2014
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RDFish: ID is not a party line. Different views are a blessing, not a problem. I have said very clearly what the definition of design and designer must be, IMO. I am not an authority, anyone can disagree with me.But I stick to my ideas, until I find better ones. I have said very clearly that Dembski is IMO wrong in trying to leave the definition of designer so vague. That is not a problem for ID, however. Dembski is an important thinker in ID, but he is not ID. If he is wrong on one point, he is wrong on that point. IMO. Again, different points of view can only help the discussion. When I say that Dembski and other IDists agree on the fact that design is detectable, even if they define design differently, I mean exactly that. They agree that design, as each of them defines it, is detectable. That may some strange to someone like you, who seems to think that everyone should agree with someone else's views (possibly yours), but it is no problem for me. Finally, you say: "This is what William Dembski, leading light of the ID movement and founder of this very blog, suggests as one of the possibile causes for biological complexity that is consistent with the evidence. In my view, this is indistinguishable from James Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering” principles, or Stuart Kauffmann’s self-organizational principles, or Thomas Nagel’s “natural teleology”. These are all just vague allusions to something that might account for what we observe in biology, but these are clearly not specific, well-defined hypotheses." Well, on that I agree with you and disagree with Dembski. You see, everything is possible in this world :)gpuccio_{January 27, 2014
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Scordova
This is an argument the ID community would have better stated as faith supposition than to suggest that they have some rigorous proof of. I believe the Creator of life is immaterial, but I don’t think it is formally provable although quite believable. I believe human consciousness and intelligence are tied together and that consciousness is immaterial, but I don’t see how anyone can make an airtight case, only circumstantial arguments.
For me, the bottom line is that ID, as defined, can make room for any argument consistent with the claim that certain features in nature can be better explained by an intelligent cause than by undirected, naturalistic forces. Dembski's methodology of EF and specifications, which ignores the phenomenon of consciousness, is different from Meyer's historical methods, which draw from it, and Behe's methods, which are far removed from it. Yes, by all means, we should make the requisite distinctions, but we should not, in my judgment, dismiss Meyer's arguments in the process, which are equally valid. Dembski begins with the pattern itself; Meyer begins with an observation about history of conscious agents designing that pattern. Accordingly, Dembski ends up with an indeterminate designer, and Meyer ends up with a conscious designer. Either way, both posit an intelligent cause. I support both approaches because each reveals an aspect of ID that the other cannot express. It would not be accurate, to suggest (if that is what you are doing) that Meyer's argument can be or should be likened to a faith supposition or that it enters into the field of metaphysics. He would come out of his skin at the prospect of such an assessment. Meyer's argument is based on the methods of historical science. Accordingly, it appears that, in spite your insistence that we should not be dogmatic, you are taking a pretty hard line yourself--as it appears that you support Dembski's methodology and reject Meyer's methodology. Am I reading you right?StephenB_{January 27, 2014
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Sal, with respect, I think you’re missing part of what is taking place on this thread.
Yes, you're probably right.
Yet, he demands that ID prove the exact opposite — a negative — before ID can be taken seriously.
RD Fish seems to be terribly frightened that ID could be false and thus take civilization down a path of doom if ID turns out to be false. He argues for caution and to stop believing in ID because we can't ultimately prove it. I've argued, what's the harm. I'd even say we invite more harm by being neutral because of Pascal's wager on personal and also technological grounds. If ID is correct, then we will understand biology in a totally different way and possibly advance technology. If ID is wrong, it can't hurt biological or technological understanding because we already treat biological systems as if they are designed like machines. So I disagree vigorously over his reservations that we are going down some path of inevitable harm because we are plunging into something we have no absolute proof of. I've tried to say, "hey, if we're wrong we have absolutely nothing to lose, but if we're right, there is plenty to gain. Great bet." On scientific grounds I asked the materialists what they gain if ID is false. Notice there list of "benefits": https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/if-darwinism-were-true-what-is-there-to-gain/ It does concern me however when ID proponents start to overplay their hand and go down the path of insisting for non-material agencies. They can simply say as I have, "I find it believable, others may not, but I find it harder to believe otherwise" and leave it at that. PS Now, regarding Mark's concerns about not having all the facts, I've given a real world example of the difficulty of getting the right distributions and the possible inference of design. In the following case, I've actually sided (somewhat obliquely) with the anti-ID, pro-Copernican scientist by the name of YP Varshni: https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/is-earth-the-center-of-the-universe-or-are-quasar-redshift-clusters-the-product-of-chance/ Vashni point out either our prevailing inferences about redshifts are correct or the Earth is in a privileged place (which hints of ID, and which he finds "unaesthetic"!). But suppose I made an ID claim about the quasars being intelligently designed? If I'm wrong, or if the scientific community is wrong, what's the loss? I've tried to get RD Fish to see, his worries about the harm of being wrong are over inflated. I pointed out Varshni's papers because it has so many nuances: 1. we're possibly in a privileged place in the universe 2. the big bang is false That's a win-win for me, even if it is actually a slightly anti-ID paper. Ironic indeed that I liked his paper given that I'm favorable to the privileged planet hypothesis.scordova_{January 27, 2014
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Hi Eric Anderson,
Neither RDFIsh, nor anyone else, has solid evidence that purely material processes do give rise to intelligence.
That's quite right. Neither has anyone any evidence that intelligence requires anything outside of material processes. Nobody knows, even though philosophers have been arguing the point for millenia.
Yet, he demands that ID prove the exact opposite — a negative — before ID can be taken seriously.
As StephenB just pointed out, if human intelligence can be reduced to material processes, ID would fail. The claim that human intelligence is irreducible to material process can neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed scientifically, and so ID rests on an ancient metaphysical speculation that cannot currently be resolved scientifically. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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Hi Sal, Thanks for joining in.
This is an argument the ID community would have better stated as faith supposition than to suggest that they have some rigorous proof of.
Agreed.
I believe human consciousness and intelligence are tied together and that consciousness is immaterial, but I don’t see how anyone can make an airtight case, only circumstantial arguments.
Agreed.
Tying design to conscious immaterial entities takes design into the metaphysical and non empirical realm.
Agreed.
I believe in ID, I accept ID, but I don’t pretend it’s proven to the level of math theorems or certain laws of physics.
I believe that there is something very fundamental about reality that we have no understanding of. I believe that saying "I believe in ID" doesn't actually have a specific meaning; it is as vague as saying "I believe in natural teleology" or "I believe in self-organizing principles". So it's not a question of whether or not ID is true, but rather what "ID" is supposed to mean in the first place. Dembski holds that an "impersonal telic force" would satisify the defintion of "ID" - but what in the world (or out of the world :-)) is an "impersonal telic force"?
Why do I take RD Fish’s side on this to some extent? I hate ID proponents making somewhat irrelevant claims they can’t defend. It’s bad for ID. It’s a red herring.
You have a good deal of intellectual integrity, Sal - I've always liked that about you.
RDF: 3) Nobody can scientifically prove intelligence is irreducible to material processes SAL: It’s a reasonable claim, imho, but one I accept on faith grounds since I think it cannot be formally proven. Why? Machines can make objects that pass the EF. Of course an IDist might say machines need creators, and thus a regress to non-material intelligence. But that’s an inference, that’s not necessarily a laboratory proof of non-material intelligence. So why should IDists even go there, except to say they accept it as true. To claim they’ve proven it scientifically seems a stretch, even if they are right about the final conclusion, I don’t think IDists can claim they’ve made a formal experimental demonstration.
I couldn't have said it better.
Meyer vs. Demski on Consciousness Yes, indeed, a slight conflict of views.
I think it's much more serious than this. I think that "consciousness" is actually what lends meaning to the term "intelligent designer", and once you take that away, nobody knows what a "designer" really is. How can something be a designer without conscious beliefs, desires, intentions, or foresight?
So I sympathize with RD Fish on the formalities, even though I disagree with insistence being a mysterian ignostic.
And I sympathize with your beliefs, though I disagree we have warrant to think we know anything specific about the Designer - including whether It experiences conscious beliefs, desires, or intentions. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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Hi StephenB,
It should be obvious that a definition of the kinds of causes that being discussed must precede any attempt to rule out one of those kinds.
I agree completely.
To establish a category of design is not, as you had claimed, to presuppose libertarian dualism. I was correcting that view by showing that the mere practice of establishing the category of design does not constitute a presupposition of libertarian dualism or design. Both must be argued for in scientific terms; neither may be presupposed.
Yes I agree with this too, and always have, quite explicitly. The presupposition is that which Dembski makes when he decided that it is possible to determine that no possible cause that is lawlike could be responsible for some observation. This presupposition is mistaken, because there is no way to ascertain this.
The ID scientist must define law, chance, and design, so that everyone knows what he is talking about, not because he presumes to know everything there is to know about any one of them.
The presumption about knowing everything occurs when some observation is claimed to be irreducible to material processes. There is no way to make this determination - it is merely assumed that since we have no explanation on hand, there could be none in principle.
RDF: What if there is a set of “lawlike cause” that underlies human intelligence? SB: Notice how you had to use a defined term in order to ask your question. If “law” hadn’t been defined in categorical terms, you question would be unintelligible.
I have no trouble with the idea of lawlike cause - that is just the sort of cause that science describes. The problem is that the EF assumes that if we cannot explicitly point to a specific lawlike cause, that somehow means that there could never be a lawlike cause found. But of course no such determination can be valid, because we have no way of knowing what might be discovered in the future.
ID is falsifiable precisely because its terms are well defined.
That's hysterical. The two major proponents of ID can't even agree on the central claim of the theory because they disagree about what a "designer" is!
If human intelligence was shown to be reducible to law-like regularities, ID would be falsified.
Excellent point!!!! I do thank you for this! I would say that ID would not be falsified as much as it would be rendered incoherent, since ID's very definition of intelligence and "real teleology" assume that intelligence cannot be reduced to material processes. But let's not quibble: We agree that if human intelligence can be shown to be reducible to material processes, ID fails. We also agree that we have no evidence that human intelligence can be shown to be reducible to material processes. What you fail to understand is that neither do we have evidence that human intelligence cannot be so reduced. This means that all of ID rests on an ancient metaphysical speculation that can neither be verified or falsified by appeal to science. QED. Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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Sal, with respect, I think you're missing part of what is taking place on this thread. It is RDFish who demands that ID prove a negative. And that notwithstanding the fact that ID neither stands nor falls on the question. Note in particular my comments @369 and @402. I happen to agree with you that no-one should take an absolute position that intelligence is not reducible to material processes, and I've made the same point in this forum recently. However, that issue is a sideshow in this particular thread and a red herring that RDFish continues to harp on. Neither RDFIsh, nor anyone else, has solid evidence that purely material processes do give rise to intelligence. Yet, he demands that ID prove the exact opposite -- a negative -- before ID can be taken seriously. If you read my 402 comment, however, you will see why this is a red herring as far as the design inference is concerned. Is the question of the source of intelligence/consciousness interesting in its own right? Sure. But the design inference doesn't depend on identifying the ultimate source of, say, intelligence. It is adequate to recognize that such a thing exists, as RDFish has already acknowledged with respect to humans.Eric Anderson_{January 27, 2014
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Hi gpuccio,
Just to be clear, I definitely disagree with Dembski here. And I agree with you that the two positions are not compatible.
So Dembski disagrees with Meyer, you disagree with Dembski, and StephenB disagrees with you. And this is not just some little detail - this is actually the central claim of ID, because unless you say what it means to be a "designer", then when you conclude "design" you aren't actually saying anything meaningful at all.
I believe that the central claim of ID is that design can be detectable. About that, Dembski, Meyer, and probably all IDists, including me, agree.
This is as confused a statement about this subject as I can possibly imagine. Immediately after saying that Meyer and Dembski disagree about what it means to be a "designer", you claim that they agree what it means to be "designed". When Meyer says he has "detected design", he means that he has detected something produced by a conscious agent. But when Dembski means he has "detected design", he means something quite different - and you have already acknowledged that!
I believe that the only way to define design is as the product of a conscious agent.
Yes, but this definition is not the same as Dembski's. Still, you blithely claim that Dembski, Meyer, and "probably all IDists" agree that "design" is detectable! This really is illustrative of just how muddled this whole ID project is. You all agree that you can "detect design", yet you mean different things by the word "design". This would be like two scientists agreeing that they have both detected the Higgs Boson, but one scientist thinks a Higgs Boson is a ham sandwich.
Frankly, I don’t even understand what “an impersonal telic process” can mean.
This is what William Dembski, leading light of the ID movement and founder of this very blog, suggests as one of the possibile causes for biological complexity that is consistent with the evidence. In my view, this is indistinguishable from James Shapiro's "natural genetic engineering" principles, or Stuart Kauffmann's self-organizational principles, or Thomas Nagel's "natural teleology". These are all just vague allusions to something that might account for what we observe in biology, but these are clearly not specific, well-defined hypotheses.
a) I absolutely agree that, to infer design, it is not necessary to know any special detail about the designer.
If you know nothing whatsoever about the word "designer" means, what, pray tell, does it mean to be "designed"?
b) I absolutely believe, however, that design and the designer can only be defined in connection to a conscious agent.
As always, I am interested only in ID's claim to scientific status. I have no interest in debating with folks who wish to believe that there is a conscious Designer but cannot provide empirical evidence to support their beliefs.
The words themselves have no other possible meaning that makes sense.
I tend to agree that there is little meaning in terms such as "telic process" or "natural teleology". Cheers, RDFish/AIGuyRDFish_{January 27, 2014
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RDF
This is what you said
SB: "If we don’t know what we are ruling out, then we can’t rule it out." Here is the complete quote minus your selective editing: "The kind of cause that is being ruled out must be defined in order to distinguish it from other kinds of causes that have not yet been ruled out, which must also be defined. It is the category that tells us what we are ruling out with respect to this specific organism or artifact. If we don’t know what we are ruling out, then we can’t rule it out." It should be obvious that a definition of the kinds of causes that being discussed must precede any attempt to rule out one of those kinds.
I point out that in order to use the EF to establish design, you must rule out all lawlike causes. But we do not know all of the lawlike causes."
You have forgotten (willfully?) the context in which my comment was made. To establish a category of design is not, as you had claimed, to presuppose libertarian dualism. I was correcting that view by showing that the mere practice of establishing the category of design does not constitute a presupposition of libertarian dualism or design. Both must be argued for in scientific terms; neither may be presupposed.
You complain that what you meant to say was that we can’t rule out what we can’t define in categorical terms. But obviously you can’t define “lawlike causes” in categorical terms, because you do not understand the extent of “lawlike causes”.
The ID scientist must define law, chance, and design, so that everyone knows what he is talking about, not because he presumes to know everything there is to know about any one of them. Your thesis is silly.
What if there is a set of “lawlike cause” that underlies human intelligence?
Notice how you had to use a defined term in order to ask your question. If "law" hadn't been defined in categorical terms, you question would be unintelligible. ID is falsifiable precisely because its terms are well defined. If human intelligence was shown to be reducible to law-like regularities, ID would be falsified. If the term law-like regularity is not defined in categorical terms, no one can argue for or falsify anything.StephenB_{January 27, 2014
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Sal, RDFish seems to be demanding that ID cannot separate itself from the designer and that if ID cannot answer questions about the designer then it can't do anything. He also seems to think that it is ID's problem that materialists cannot demonstrate that consciousness is reducible to materialistic processes. And to top it off he doesn't understand that the design inference is tentative and is subject to falsification, revision or confirmation with future discoveries.Joe_{January 27, 2014
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ID’s inability to show that intelligence is not reducible to material processes
This is an argument the ID community would have better stated as faith supposition than to suggest that they have some rigorous proof of. I believe the Creator of life is immaterial, but I don't think it is formally provable although quite believable. I believe human consciousness and intelligence are tied together and that consciousness is immaterial, but I don't see how anyone can make an airtight case, only circumstantial arguments. I've tried to remind the ID community: "It is useful to separate design from theories of intelligence and intelligent agency" Bill Dembski Tying design to conscious immaterial entities takes design into the metaphysical and non empirical realm.
a scientist may view design and its appeal to a designer as simply a fruitful device for understanding the world, not attaching any significance to questions such as whether a theory of design is in some ultimate sense true or whether the designer actually exists. Bill Dembski
I've said that a defensible case for ID is to state: Resemblance of Design and to recognize Permissible errors in asserting design using the explanatory filters. Arguing that IDists have absolutely proven their case is overplaying the hand dealt. To me, having the case absolutely proven is seeing the Designer in action with our own eyes. Other than that, we state an inference, and we invite falsifiability of the assumed distributions. I believe in ID, I accept ID, but I don't pretend it's proven to the level of math theorems or certain laws of physics. Like many truths in math, sometimes the most fundamental truths cannot be proven, and if Intelligence is the root of reality, this may be a fundamental truth not subject to formal proof but acceptance on reasonable circumstantial grounds like we accept the unprovable axioms of mathematics. Why do I take RD Fish's side on this to some extent? I hate ID proponents making somewhat irrelevant claims they can't defend. It's bad for ID. It's a red herring. It is useful to separate design from theories of intelligence and intelligent agency" Bill Dembski If we separate design from theories of intelligent agency then that means we don't even go into discussions of conscious immaterial agency as we are doing here with respect to design.
3) Nobody can scientifically prove intelligence is irreducible to material processes
It's a reasonable claim, imho, but one I accept on faith grounds since I think it cannot be formally proven. Why? Machines can make objects that pass the EF. Of course an IDist might say machines need creators, and thus a regress to non-material intelligence. But that's an inference, that's not necessarily a laboratory proof of non-material intelligence. So why should IDists even go there, except to say they accept it as true. To claim they've proven it scientifically seems a stretch, even if they are right about the final conclusion, I don't think IDists can claim they've made a formal experimental demonstration.
Meyer vs. Demski on Consciousness
Yes, indeed, a slight conflict of views. I'm sure Bill accepts intelligence is non-material, but he's says, It is useful to separate design from theories of intelligence and intelligent agency" Bill Dembski and
a scientist may view design and its appeal to a designer as simply a fruitful device for understanding the world, not attaching any significance to questions such as whether a theory of design is in some ultimate sense true or whether the designer actually exists. Bill Dembski
And finally IDists can't be claiming simultaneously they've absolutely proven something (and thus show it unfalsifiable) while at the same time claiming their ideas are falsifiable (and hence scientific). That would violate non-contradiction. So I sympathize with RD Fish on the formalities, even though I disagree with insistence being a mysterian ignostic.scordova_{January 27, 2014
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Mark Frank:
You may disagree but the proposal that the design inference is only based on the inadequacy of other theories is based on a detailed understanding of CSI, FSCI and dFSCI and the maths that underlie them
Mark may disagree but his "understanding" is a complete misunderstanding. Even the EF says there is more to the design inference than merely eliminating other materialistic concepts.Joe_{January 27, 2014
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#526 Eric
But let’s cut the bloviating nonsense about the design inference only being based on the inadequacy of other theories. That is simply false and demonstrates your lack of understanding of the design argument in the first place.
You may disagree but the proposal that the design inference is only based on the inadequacy of other theories is based on a detailed understanding of CSI, FSCI and dFSCI and the maths that underlie them - far more detailed than most ID proponents, who it appears have not even read the relevant papers by Dembski(or, if they have, they failed to understand the maths). It deserves more than a brush off.Mark Frank_{January 27, 2014
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RDFish: So now your river is "choosing"? LOL! Man, you are a veritable cornucopia of definitional games.
That’s a ridiculous accusation. ID pretends to be a scientific theory, but complains when people ask for technical definitions. What a joke!
Well, I have certainly never complained about having clear definitions. What I do object to are endless games that avoid the substantive issues. I have given you very clear definitions. Furthermore, I have shown why your red herring complaints about this or that definition do not impact the design inference. You are the one who then keeps coming back with absurd twists of wording, like you just did with the river "choosing" where it is going to flow.
No, there is none at all. There is only evidence that other theories are inadequate.
That is simply false. And it has been explained to you many times, including on this thread, so I can unfortunately only conclude that you are purposely misleading. The design inference (as any comparative explanation must, including Darwinian evolution) of course looks at other possible theories for comparison. However, it also (i) requires additional criteria of specification and complexity to be present, and (ii) is based on our repeated, uniform experience of how we see systems similar to those found in life come about. Now you can argue that you don't think the inference is strong enough. You can hold out, as you are doing, for some as-yet-undiscovered, unknown, unspecified law-like process that would do things no other law-like process has ever been observed to do. Delusional, perhaps, but it is your right to hold out for that kind of future discovery, and we respect that right. But let's cut the bloviating nonsense about the design inference only being based on the inadequacy of other theories. That is simply false and demonstrates your lack of understanding of the design argument in the first place.Eric Anderson_{January 27, 2014
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