ID Foundations, 21: MF — “as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation” . . . a root worldview assumption based cause for rejecting the design inference emerges into plain view
In the OK thread, in comment 50, ID objector Mark Frank has finally laid out the root of ever so many of the objections to the design inference filter. Unsurprisingly, it is a worldview based controlling a priori of materialism:
[re EA] #38
[MF, in 50:] I see “chance” as usually meaning to “unpredictable” or “no known explanation”. The unknown explanations may be deterministic elements or genuinely random uncaused events which we just don’t know about.
It can also includes things that happen as the result of intelligence – but as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation.
But, just what what is the explanatory filter that is being objected to so strenuously?
Let me present it first, in the per aspect flowchart form that I have often used here at UD, that shows it to be a more specific and detailed understanding of a lot of empirically grounded scientific methods of investigation.
Galileo’s leaning tower exercise, showing mechanical necessity: F = m*g, of course less air resistance. NB: He did a thought expt of imagining the light and heavy ball tied together, so on the “heavier must fall faster” concept, the objects now should fall even faster. But, shouldn’t the lighter one instead have retarded the heavier? As in, oopsie. The expt may have been done and the heavier may have hit just ahead, as air resistance is as cross section but weight is as volume. (HT: Lannyland & Wiki.)
One that explicitly invokes mechanical necessity as first default, then on high contingency rejects it — if a lawlike necessity is at work, it will produce reliably similar outcomes on similar initial circumstances, just as a dropped heavy object near earth’s surface has initial acceleration 9.8 N/kg due to the gravity field of the earth.
However, this does not cover all phenomena, e.g. if the dropped object is a fair common die that then falls to a table, it will tumble and settle to read a value from the set {1, 2, . . . 6} in a way that is close to the mathematical behaviour of an ideal flat random variable.
But also, chance and necessity cannot cover all outcomes. Not only do we routinely experience being intelligent designers — e.g. by my composing this post — but we often see a class of phenomena which is highly contingent but not plausibly accounted for on chance. For, if we see 500 – 1,000 bits or more of functionally specific complex organisation and/or information [FSCO/I], the needle in haystack challenge faced by the atomic resources of our solar system or cosmos will be overwhelmed by the space of possible configurations and the challenge of finding cases E from narrow and isolated target or hot zones T in such spaces, W.
Citing Dembski’s definition of CSI in No Free Lunch:
p. 148: “The great myth of contemporary evolutionary biology is that the information needed to explain complex biological structures can be purchased without intelligence. My aim throughout this book is to dispel that myth . . . . Eigen and his colleagues must have something else in mind besides information simpliciter when they describe the origin of information as the central problem of biology.
I submit that what they have in mind is specified complexity [[cf. here below], or what equivalently we have been calling in this Chapter Complex Specified information or CSI . . . .
Biological specification always refers to function . . . In virtue of their function [[a living organism’s subsystems] embody patterns that are objectively given and can be identified independently of the systems that embody them. Hence these systems are specified in the sense required by the complexity-specificity criterion . . . the specification can be cashed out in any number of ways [[through observing the requisites of functional organisation within the cell, or in organs and tissues or at the level of the organism as a whole] . . .”
p. 144: [[Specified complexity can be defined:] “. . . since a universal probability bound of 1 [[chance] in 10^150 corresponds to a universal complexity bound of 500 bits of information, [[the cluster] (T, E) constitutes CSI because T [[ effectively the target hot zone in the field of possibilities] subsumes E [[ effectively the observed event from that field], T is detachable from E, and and T measures at least 500 bits of information . . . ”
So, design thinkers reject the default explanation for high contingency– chance — if we see FSCO/I or the like. That is, we infer on FSCO/I and related patterns best explained on (and as known reliable signs of) design, to just that, intelligent design:
Accordingly, I replied to MF at 59 in the OK thread, as follows:
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>>> the pivot of the issue is now plain from MF at 50 above:
[re EA] #38
[MF:] I see “chance” as usually meaning to “unpredictable” or “no known explanation”. The unknown explanations may be deterministic elements or genuinely random uncaused events which we just don’t know about.
It can also includes things that happen as the result of intelligence – but as a materialist I believe intelligence to be a blend of the determined and random so for me that is not a third type of explanation.
Here we have the root problem, that for MF, design reduces to chance and necessity.
Also, I would not go along fully with MF’s definition of chance {“uncaused events” is a very troublesome concept for instance but my focus here is,} having identified that chance processes come about by two major known physical processes:
Chance:
Tumbling dice — a chaotic phenomenon thanks to eight corners and twelve edges interacting with uncontrollable surface roughness etc. (HT:Rosendahl, Flicker)
TYPE I:the clash of uncorrelated trains of events such as is seen when a dropped fair die hits a table etc and tumbles, settling to readings in the set {1, 2, . . . 6} in a pattern that is effectively flat random. In this sort of event, we often see manifestations of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, aka chaos, intersecting with uncontrolled or uncontrollable small variations yielding a result predictable in most cases only up to a statistical distribution which needs not be flat random.
TYPE II:processes — especially quantum ones — that are evidently random, such as quantum tunnelling as is the explanation for phenomena of alpha decay. This is used in for instance zener noise sources that drive special counter circuits to give a random number source. Such are sometimes used in lotteries or the like, or presumably in making one time message pads used in decoding.
In reply to MF’s attempt to reduce design by intelligence to the other two sources of cause, I suggest that this approach radically undermines the credibility of mind as a thinking and knowing function of being intelligent humans, in a reductio ad absurdum. (Cf my remarks here yesterday in reply to Dan Barker’s FFRF and my longstanding observations — in the end they go back to the mid 1980′s in answer to Marxist materialism as well as evolutionary materialism — here on.)
Haldane sums up one of the major problems aptly, in a turn of the 1930′s remark that has often been cited here at UD:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [[“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
Let me clip my more extended discussion:
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>> 15 –> In short, it is at least arguable that self-referential absurdity is the dagger pointing to the heart of evolutionary materialistic models of mind and its origin . . . . [It can be presented at a much more sophisticated way, cf. Hasker p. 64 on here as an example, also Reppert, Plantinga and others] but without losing its general force, it can also be drawn out a bit in a fairly simple way:
a: Evolutionary materialism argues that the cosmos is the product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature; from hydrogen to humans by undirected chance and necessity.
b: Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of purposeless laws of chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of happenstance initial circumstances.
(This is physicalism. This view covers both the forms where (a) the mind and the brain are seen as one and the same thing, and those where (b) somehow mind emerges from and/or “supervenes” on brain, perhaps as a result of sophisticated and complex software looping. The key point, though is as already noted: physical causal closure — the phenomena that play out across time, without residue, are in principle deducible or at least explainable up to various random statistical distributions and/or mechanical laws, from prior physical states. Such physical causal closure, clearly, implicitly discounts or even dismisses the causal effect of concept formation and reasoning then responsibly deciding, in favour of specifically physical interactions in the brain-body control loop; indeed, some mock the idea of — in their view — an “obviously” imaginary “ghost” in the meat-machine. [[There is also some evidence from simulation exercises, that accuracy of even sensory perceptions may lose out to utilitarian but inaccurate ones in an evolutionary competition. “It works” does not warrant the inference to “it is true.”] )
c: But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this meat-machine picture. So, we rapidly arrive at Crick’s claim in his The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994): what we subjectively experience as “thoughts,” “reasoning” and “conclusions” can only be understood materialistically as the unintended by-products of the blind natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains that (as the Smith Model illustrates) serve as cybernetic controllers for our bodies.
d: These underlying driving forces are viewed as being ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance shaped by forces of selection [[“nature”] and psycho-social conditioning [[“nurture”], within the framework of human culture [[i.e. socio-cultural conditioning and resulting/associated relativism]. And, remember, the focal issue to such minds — notice, this is a conceptual analysis made and believed by the materialists! — is the physical causal chains in a control loop, not the internalised “mouth-noises” that may somehow sit on them and come along for the ride.
(Save, insofar as such “mouth noises” somehow associate with or become embedded as physically instantiated signals or maybe codes in such a loop. [[How signals, languages and codes originate and function in systems in our observation of such origin — i.e by design — tends to be pushed to the back-burner and conveniently forgotten. So does the point that a signal or code takes its significance precisely from being an intelligently focused on, observed or chosen and significant alternative from a range of possibilities that then can guide decisive action.])
e: For instance, Marxists commonly derided opponents for their “bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians frequently dismissed qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? Should we not ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is little more than yet another operantly conditioned rat trapped in the cosmic maze? And — as we saw above — would the writings of a Crick be any more than the firing of neurons in networks in his own brain?
f: For further instance, we may take the favourite whipping-boy of materialists: religion. Notoriously, they often hold that belief in God is not merely cognitive, conceptual error, but delusion. Borderline lunacy, in short. But, if such a patent “delusion” is so utterly widespread, even among the highly educated, then it “must” — by the principles of evolution — somehow be adaptive to survival, whether in nature or in society. And so, this would be a major illustration of the unreliability of our conceptual reasoning ability, on the assumption of evolutionary materialism.
g: Turning the materialist dismissal of theism around, evolutionary materialism itself would be in the same leaky boat. For, the sauce for the goose is notoriously just as good a sauce for the gander, too.
h: That is, on its own premises [[and following Dawkins in A Devil’s Chaplain, 2004, p. 46], the cause of the belief system of evolutionary materialism, “must” also be reducible to forces of blind chance and mechanical necessity that are sufficiently adaptive to spread this “meme” in populations of jumped- up apes from the savannahs of East Africa scrambling for survival in a Malthusian world of struggle for existence. Reppert brings the underlying point sharply home, in commenting on the “internalised mouth-noise signals riding on the physical cause-effect chain in a cybernetic loop” view:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions. [[Emphases added . . . ]
i: The famous geneticist and evolutionary biologist (as well as Socialist) J. B. S. Haldane made much the same point in a famous 1932 remark:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [[“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
j: Therefore, though materialists will often try to pointedly ignore or angrily brush aside the issue, we may freely argue: if such evolutionary materialism is true, then (i) our consciousness, (ii) the “thoughts” we have, (iii) the conceptualised beliefs we hold, (iv) the reasonings we attempt based on such and (v) the “conclusions” and “choices” (a.k.a. “decisions”) we reach — without residue — must be produced and controlled by blind forces of chance happenstance and mechanical necessity that are irrelevant to “mere” ill-defined abstractions such as: purpose or truth, or even logical validity.
(NB: The conclusions of such “arguments” may still happen to be true, by astonishingly lucky coincidence — but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we have “proved” or “warranted” them. It seems that rationality itself has thus been undermined fatally on evolutionary materialistic premises. Including that of Crick et al. Through, self-reference leading to incoherence and utter inability to provide a cogent explanation of our commonplace, first-person experience of reasoning and rational warrant for beliefs, conclusions and chosen paths of action. Reduction to absurdity and explanatory failure in short.)
k: And, if materialists then object: “But, we can always apply scientific tests, through observation, experiment and measurement,” then we must immediately note that — as the fate of Newtonian Dynamics between 1880 and 1930 shows — empirical support is not equivalent to establishing the truth of a scientific theory. For, at any time, one newly discovered countering fact can in principle overturn the hitherto most reliable of theories. (And as well, we must not lose sight of this: in science, one is relying on the legitimacy of the reasoning process to make the case that scientific evidence provides reasonable albeit provisional warrant for one’s beliefs etc. Scientific reasoning is not independent of reasoning.) >>
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In short, there is a major issue that materialism is inherently and inescapably self referentially incoherent, undermining its whole scheme of reasoning.
That is a big topic itself.
But, when it comes to the issue of debates over the meaning of chance and inferences to design which implicate intelligence, it is an underlying assumption that plainly leads to endless debates.
In this context, however, the case of 500 coins in a row on a table reading all H or alternating H and T or the first 72 characters of this post in ASCII code, strongly shows the difference in capacity of chance and design as sources of configurations that come from independently and simply describable clusters that are deeply isolated in a space of configs that are such that the atomic resources of our solar system cannot credibly search a big enough fraction to make it reasonable to believe one will stumble upon such configs blindly.
In short, there is a major and directly experienced phenomenon to be accounted for, self aware conscious intellect and related capacities we subsume under the term mind. And this phenomenon is manifest in capacity to design, which is as familiar as composing posts in this thread.
Such designs are well beyond the capacity of blind chance and mechanical necessity, so we have good reason to see that intelligence capable of design is as fundamental in understanding our empirical world as chance and as necessity.
Whatever the worldview consequences — and I think they are huge.>>>
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In short, it seems that one key root of objections to the design inference is the notion that intelligence needed for design in the end reduces to cumulative effects of blind chance and mechanical necessity.
Only, that runs into significant self referential incoherence challenges.
A safer approach would be to recognise that intelligence indisputably exists and indisputably exerts capacities not credibly observed to emerge from blind chance and mechanical necessity. Indeed, on inductive and analytic — needle in haystack — grounds, it is arguable and compelling that certain phenomena such as FSCO/I are reliable signs of design as cause.
Then, we run into the challenge that from its very roots, cell based life is chock full of such signs of design, starting with the genetic code and the size of genomes, from 100 – 1,000 kbits on up.
Then, the observed cosmos itself shows strong and multiple signs of being fine tuned in ways that enable the existence of cell based life on terrestrial planets such as our own — where fine tuning is another empirically grounded sign of being designed.
So, there are good reasons to extend the force of the design inference to the origin of cell based life and of major body plans for such life, and to the origins of the observed cosmos that hosts such life. END
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F/N: I must update by posting this all too aptly accurate debate summary by no less than UD’s inimitable WJM, done here on Christmas day as a gift to the blog and world. WJM, I CANNOT let this one just wash away in the stream of comments! (You ought to separately headline it under your monicker.) Here goes:
Typical debate with an anti-ID advocate:
ID advocate: There are certain things that exist that are best explained by intelligent designed.
Anti-ID advocate: Whoa! Hold up there, fella. “Explained”, in science, means “caused by”. Intelligent design doesn’t by itself “cause” anything.
ID advocate: What I meant is that teleology is required to generate certain things, like a functioning battleship. It can’t come about by chance.
Anti-ID advocate: What do you mean “by chance”? “By” means to cause. Are you claiming that chance causes things to happen?
ID advocate: Of course not. Chance, design and necessity are the three fundamental categories of causation used to characterize the outcomes of various processes and mechanisms. You’re taking objection with colloquialisms that are commonly used in mainstream science and debate. Here are some examples of peer-reviewed, published papers that use these same colloquialisms.
Anti-ID advocate: Those aren’t real scientists!
ID advocate: Those are scientists you yourself have quoted in the past – they are mainstream Darwinists.
ID advocate: I’m using the quotes the same way the authors used them.
Anti-ID advocate: Can you prove it?
ID Advocate: It’s not my job to prove my own innocence, but whatever. Look, it has been accepted for thousands of years that there are only three categories of causation – necessity, or law, chance and artifice, or design. Each category is distinct.
Anti ID advocate: I have no reason to accept that design is a distinct category.
ID advocate: So, you’re saying that battleship or a computer can be generated by a combination of necessity (physical laws) and chance?
Anti-ID advocate: Can you prove otherwise? Are you saying it’s impossible?
ID advocate: No, I’m saying that chance and necessity are not plausible explanations.
Anti-ID advocate: “Explanation” means to “cause” a thing. Chance and necessity don’t “cause” anything.
ID advocate: We’ve already been over this. Those are shorthand ways of talking about processes and mechanisms that produce effects categorized as lawful or chance.
Anti-ID advocate: Shorthand isn’t good enough – we must have specific uses of terms using explicitly laid-out definitions or else debate cannot go forward.
ID advocate: (insert several pages lay out specifics and definitions with citations and historical references).
ID advocate: In summary, this demonstrates that mainstream scientists have long accepted that there are qualitative difference between CSI, or organized, complimentary complexity/functionality, and what can in principle be generated via the causal categories of chance and necessity. Only intelligent or intentional agency is known to be in principle capable of generating such phenomena.
Anti-ID advocate: OMG, you can’t really expect me to read and understand all of that! I don’t understand the way you word things. Is English your first language? It makes my head hurt.
Comments
Hi SB
Vivid, I am not clear on what you mean when you say that knowledge is generated
It is RDF's term and like you I was not clear what he meant by that so I italicized it . What I took it to mean in the context of the full quote is that it is the highest form of knowledge we have when coupled with consensus. Not the only type of knowledge but the best type. That is what separates science from philosophy.
So when you get into inferences, although they may be well thought through and be based on empirical knowledge, inferences cannot be demonstrated empirically thus they fall outside the bounds of science. Based on hundreds of posts that's my read on at least some of where RDF is coming from.If not I apologize in advance.
So it is not that he does not comprehend the inferential process rather the inferences themselves cannot be empirically tested to show they are not reducible to material processes. Hey there maybe green cheese in the moon :)
Vividvividbleau
January 24, 2014
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Hi vividbleau
You wrote,
I don’t think it is that he does not comprehend the inferential process rather the two of you disagree as to what is the best way to “generate” knowledge. For RDF it is empirical knowledge reached through consensus that is at the top of the knowledge food chain.
Vivid, I am not clear on what you mean when you say that knowledge is generated. I would argue that knowledge is something that is acquired, but that is a subject that can be debated separately.
In any case, RDF has said flat out that ID's empirical process is not empirical at all since, according to his claim, it depends on a metaphysical presupposition of libertarian dualism.
This is simply not the case and I tried to explain why @462. The issue is not about epistemological preferences or how RDF things ought to be done; the issue is about methodological ordering and how ID does, in fact, do things
Kairosfocus' well-illustrated flow chart explaining the step-by-step process of design detection is available for anyone who cares to study it. Like all processes, it has a beginning and an end. Each step along the way is labeled and explained.StephenB
January 24, 2014
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Hi SB
The problem is that RDF does not comprehend the inferential process in general or the ID process in particular. He simply doesn’t understand what it means to draw an inference to the best explanation.
I don't think it is that he does not comprhend the inferential process rather the two of you disagree as to what is the best way to "generate" knowledge. For RDF it is empirical knowledge reached through consensus that is at the top of the knowledge food chain.
I hope you got my point. Epistemology is very difficult, but that doesn’t stop us from doing science. There is a gigantic scientific literature full of facts that have been scientifically vetted by researchers around the world; despite cultural, religious, and ideological differences, these researchers do in fact reach consensus on inummerable aspects of scientific inquiry. Science is obviously far from perfect, but it is the best way we have to generate knowledge.
I would be rather surprised if you agree with that, I know I certainly would not. The scientific community could arrive at a consensus that based on QM that something can come from nothing, indeed some have. However for me no amount of empirical evidence or consensus would convince me that this is an accurate view of reality.
As it relates to knowledge the top of the food chain for me and I suspect for you as well is what you call the rules of right reason and they cannot be empiricaly demonstrated.
That is not to say that RDF rejects these rules but for him the top of the food chain is
Science is obviously far from perfect, but it is the best way we have to generate knowledge
I disagree thus Mars and Venus.
Vividvividbleau
January 24, 2014
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RDF to Upright Biped,
You know, it is lucky for me, I suppose, that you are this dimwitted, since it really helps me to work at coming up with ever-simpler and clearer ways of explaining why everything you say is completely wrongheaded. I present the argument that should make clear one of the fundamental problems with ID
I will explain the dim-wittedness and it is certainly not coming from UB. The problem is that RDF does not comprehend the inferential process in general or the ID process in particular. He simply doesn't understand what it means to draw an inference to the best explanation. Let's use a parallel example to illustrate the point.
When the Lourdes International Medical Bureau investigates the possibility that a medical miracle occurred, it puts that prospect to the test by juxtaposing two categories: [a] Was the phenomenon medically explicable? [b] Was it medically inexplicable? The bureau, having established several demanding criteria for making that judgment, conducts a comprehensive series of tests to answer the question and then reports its findings one way or the other. Almost always, the judgment is that the event in question was medically explicable. To suggest that the commission “presupposed” that the event was medically inexplicable simply because it established a category by that same name would be idiotic.
Nevertheless, this is the same nonsensical argument that RDF is trying to sell with respect to the ID process. He thinks that when ID establishes a category called "design," it does, by that very act alone, presuppose design or some mind/body connection that might be assigned to it. This is truly ridiculous. Like the aforementioned medical bureau, Intelligent Design researchers establish, in effect, two categories: [a] Was it Law/Chance? or [b] Was it Design?. To establish a category of design does not, in any way, presuppose the existence of design in the artifact or organism that is being tested for design. To establish a category of design does not, in any way, compromise the empirical nature of the investigation.
Still, even after hundreds of correctives, RDF continues to claim that ID, by merely establishing a category called ”design,” has, by that act, presupposed libertarian dualism and lost the right to say that its methods are empirically based. This egregious error dominates his non-thinking process and informs every comment he makes. It is, to use his phrase, “dimwitted.”StephenB
January 24, 2014
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MF:
I think the whole dFSCI thing is an elaborate smokescreen
Therein lieth another illustration of ideological imposition and blindness. The very text you used to express your rejection of digitally coded functionally specific complex information (dFSCI) is an example of dFSCI, being ASCII coded text in English. The software that operates the computer you used is another, with algorithmically specific functionality. And, whether or no you like to accept it the coded instructions to assemble enzymes and other proteins in D/RNA are another case in point.
And, just by the illustration of assigning 500 coins and a table to every one of the 10^57 atoms of the solar system, and allowing the strings to be flipped and observed every 10^-14 s -- the speed of ionic chem rxns -- we will see that for our effective cosmos for chem rxns, the solar system for its effective lifespan would only be able to sample as 1 straw to a cubical haystack 1,000 light years across. Since FSCO/I will naturally confine the clusters of effective configs to rare islands in a sea of non functional ones the needle in haystack search challenge shows why there is not any credible chance that blind chance and mechanical necessity can create FSCO/I on that gamut. Up the bit length to 1,000 and that takes in the observed cosmos to a far deeper degree.
Your attempt to dismiss thus shows yet another example of self referential absurdity.
And your I have said it 20 times over simply makes you that much more insistent on absurdity.
The first rule of holes being, to get out, stop digging in deeper.
KFkairosfocus
January 24, 2014
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Mark:
As I have said, you can falsify ID by showing that its main idea, that complex functional information is only observed as the result of conscious agency, is false. A single example of complex functional information generated by a system where no conscious agent intervenes would suffice.
That is different from "showing that a non-ID explanation" is true. At most, it means showing that there are ways to generate dFSCI without implying conscious design.
About gremlins. They are not certainly the best explanation,. The plumbing system and animals look certainly more appealing.
But, let's say that you have excluded those two. You still have to explain the noises. Then you look for some other explanation.
And here is where the fallacy in RDFish's argument, and in yours too, becomes obvious. Because you don't think of gremlins, evidently. Your next step is to think of any possible explanation which has the causal power to make noises. And you go on by investigating the hypotheses that seem more appropriate for your scenario.
Here is where you and your fellows are intellectually flawed about ID. You don't want to understand that the reason why we in ID hypothesize a conscious intelligent agent as the source of complex functional information in biological beings is not that we want to force an irrational hypothesis about some fantasy being who can do anything. The simple reason is that conscious agency is the only observable thing which is constantly linked to the generation of CSI, and which can reasonably have an explanatory role in that generation. After all, in design, as I have repeatedly (and uselessly) explained to RDFish, the complex functional form is always represented in the designer's consciousness before being outputted to the designed object.
Therefore, we don't hypothesize a conscious designer to explain noises in the attic. There are simpler possible explanations for that. We son't hypothesize a conscious designer to explain lightening on church steeples, because there are simpler explanations for that, or for other regularities that can well be explained by laws, even by laws that are not yet well explicit or known.
But we do hypothesize a conscious designer to explain CSI, or dFSCI. Why? Because nothing else in the universe has been ever observed that can give the special intelligent, functional form to objects generating symbolic sequences with definite complex information for functional objects like proteins. Only intelligent design is known to generate that kind of output.
So, excuse me, but the church steeples argument, and alas even your gremlins argument, are irremediably stupid, and only show that you have understood nothing, or want to understand nothing, or the real meaning of ID theory.
So, what will be the next brilliant argument? Unicorns? Fairies?gpuccio
January 24, 2014
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It all seems too straightforward.
This entire issue (where you entered the conversation) is very straightforward, Mark. Relying on an appeal to unknown material processes as a means to avoid what we already know to be true, is an appeal to potential ignorance in place of established knowledge. If it’s done despite repeated attempts to point out the problem, then perhaps it’s the result of simple stupidity. But if it’s commited with great vigor by someone clearly educated to know the difference, it’s most likely the game of a con-artist.Upright BiPed
January 24, 2014
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Both arachaeologists and SETI are looking for that which only intelligent agents can produce, which also includes what mother nature cannot produce. Yes there are things that both can produce, but there are things that mother nature can produce that we cannot and there are things that intelligent agencies can produce that mother nature cannot.
Two distinct categories and a grey area. Things in that grey area require more evidence in order to make any determination.
That said if someone says they have something that belongs in one of the two distinct categories and someone else can demonstrate otherwise, that first person has some explaining to do.Joe
Mark Frank-
THAT is how science operates. The way to faslify the premise that an archaeologist is holding an artifact is to demonstrate mother nature can produce the same thing. The way to falsfy SETI's claim- if they made one- that they received a signal from ET, is to demonstrate that mother nature can produce that signal.
It's called using Newton's four rules of scientific investigation- also known as Occam's razor/ parsimony.Joe
January 24, 2014
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#453 Joe
Then you investigate- ever watch “Ghost Hunters”? They eliminate ghosts by finding natural explanations tat explain the noises and observations.
As I wrote in the comment immediately preceding comment:
It is grossly unsatisfactory because “gremlins” is such a broad explanation that the only way to falsify it would be to establish one of the other explanations.
Mark Frank
January 24, 2014
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Mark Frank:
I ask you do describe any way of falsifying ID other than showing that a non-ID explanation is true.
So you want gpuccio to abandon science to suit you?
I hear mysterious noises in my attic like balls rolling around. There are various possible explanations including: my plumbing system is somehow making noises in a way I don’t understand; some animal has managed to get into the attic and is making unusual noises; invisible gremlins are having bowling matches with invisible balls.
Then you investigate- ever watch "Ghost Hunters"? They eliminate ghosts by finding natural explanations tat explain the noises and observations.Joe
January 24, 2014
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#449 Gpuccio
As you know I think the whole dFSCI thing is an elaborate smokescreen. But I won't go over that again with you for the 20th time.
I ask you do describe any way of falsifying ID other than showing that a non-ID explanation is true. (I think I have done this before)
I certainly challenge this:
he real test of a scientific (falsifiable) theory is:
a) That it has not yet been falsified
b) That it explains known facts (and future new facts, as they become available) better than any other explanatory theory.
ID fully satisfies both conditions.
Remember the example of the gremlins in the attic. I hear mysterious noises in my attic like balls rolling around. There are various possible explanations including: my plumbing system is somehow making noises in a way I don't understand; some animal has managed to get into the attic and is making unusual noises; invisible gremlins are having bowling matches with invisible balls.
The last explanation fits all your criteria. It has not yet been falsified. It provides a perfect explanation for all current and future noises.
It is grossly unsatisfactory because "gremlins" is such a broad explanation that the only way to falsify it would be to establish one of the other explanations. Which is exactly the status of ID.Mark Frank
January 24, 2014
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#450 Mark Frank-
What is a "proven scientific explanation"? Your position doesn't have any scientific explanations- proven or not. In fact your position's explanations are not scientific.
So it really doesn't matter what you wanted to say. The fact remains yours is a position devoid of science.Joe
January 24, 2014
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#448 Joe
To say "there are no scientific explanations" can mean:
* The explanation is not in fact scientific
* We have not yet found a proven scientific explanation
In #442 I meant the latter. I must admit I would have thought that was fairly obvious but clearly not obvious enough.Mark Frank
January 24, 2014
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Mark (#437):
You say: "You have nailed one of the fundamental problems with ID. It makes a proposition that cannot be tested."
But the point is that ID propositions can be easily falsified, That I have shown many times.
The simple central proposition of ID, that dFSCI cannot come into existence in a system where there is no intervention of a conscious agent, is easily falsifiable.
You see, scientific explanations, according to Popper, need to be falsifiable to be scientific. And ID is falsifiable.
"Testing" is all another matter, and is not the same as falsification. The real test of a scientific (falsifiable) theory is:
a) That it has not yet been falsified
b) That it explains known facts (and future new facts, as they become available) better than any other explanatory theory.
ID fully satisfies both conditions.gpuccio
January 24, 2014
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Mark Frank:
What are you talking about? Where did I admit there are no scientific explanations?
In your comment 442- the OoL does not have a scientific explanation wrt materialism. But I wouldn't stop there- there isn't a scientific explanation for our solar system. There isn't a scientific explanation for vision, nor the nervous system, nor the muscular-skeletal system.
Heck what does your position have a scientific explanation for? That would be a much smaller list to go over- if there is a list...Joe
January 24, 2014
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Mark (#443):
Incompetent is not the same as dimwitted. And the point is exactly that: if a person is really dimwitted, it's not his fault, and therefore accusing him of being that is certainly gross and unkind, especially if true.
As to dishonest, I suppose the whole point is: is it true? In that case, if the accusation is true, it is neither gross nor unkind. It can simply be a correct and due remark.gpuccio
January 24, 2014
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#444 Joe
Mark Frank- You just admitted that there aren’t any scientific explanations and yet you said earlier that ID says the scientific explanations are wrong.
What are you talking about? Where did I admit there are no scientific explanations?Mark Frank
January 24, 2014
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Mark Frank:
Personally I would prefer to be accused of being incompetent (which is not my fault) than dishonest (which is).
Both fit, so what is the problem? :razz:Joe
January 24, 2014
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Mark Frank- You just admitted that there aren't any scientific explanations and yet you said earlier that ID says the scientific explanations are wrong.
Obvioulsy you are confused.Joe
January 24, 2014
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GP
PS: Calling someone a con man does not deny his intellectual faculties, only his motivations. Doubting someone’s motivations in a debate can be sometimes admissible, but I believe that doubting the minimal intellectual abilities of an interlocutor is simply gross and unkind.
Well I guess that is subjective. Personally I would prefer to be accused of being incompetent (which is not my fault) than dishonest (which is).Mark Frank
January 24, 2014
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UB
In any case, it is duly noted that when aked how you would falsify materialism’s proposition for the origin of life, which appeals to an unknown unguided process, your answer was to attack ID.
I had no idea that was what you were asking. All you wrote was:
Tell us Mark, how do you falsify a proposition that cannot be tested?
You failed to say what proposition and I guessed wrong.
Now I know - I will try to answer. Proposals for the OOL are indeed hard to test as it happened a very long ago and presumably was an event involving extremely small phenomena. However, it is not impossible. The most promising method is to try to repeat components of the various competing explanations in conditions as close as possible to those thought to exist at the time. Indeed, as I understand it, such experiments have effectively falsified some proposals or at least made them look very implausible.
Have I missed the point somewhere? It all seems too straightforward.Mark Frank
January 24, 2014
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Mark, you'll have to do better than mirepresent ID. ID claims there are things in nature which are best explained as the result of an act of intelligent agency. This is the modest claim made in Behe's books, Dembski's books, and Meyer's books. On the other hand, materialism (in biology) claims that life began as the result of purely unguided events in chemical history, with Darwinian evolution being the source of the appearance of design. This position is jealously defended (among materialist academics, and in the courts) as the only theory of origins deemed to be scientific. Can Darwinian evolution explain the unique matertial conditions required to translate information into a material effect - if it requires that process in order to exists itself? Can a thing that does not yet exist on a prebiotic earth cause something to happen?
In any case, it is duly noted that when aked how you would falsify materialism's proposition for the origin of life, which appeals to an unknown unguided process, your answer was to attack ID.Upright BiPed
January 24, 2014
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JWT, 411:
If we do not have sufficiently free choice to be responsible, we cannot be rational (we would be unable to actually reason), knowing (we could not warrant) or moral/morally accountable (we could not responsibly choose).
Any species of determinism reduces to self referential incoherence, and especially that which reduces mind to blind chance and/or mechanical necessity through evolutionary mechanisms, cf OP.
This philosophical reductio ad absurdum is enough to dismiss any species of determinism or reduction of mind to mindless computation on a computing substrate, given what we directly know about ourselves.
KFkairosfocus
January 24, 2014
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Mark FRank:
You have nailed one of the fundamental problems with ID.
That its opponents are ignorant of science? THat ios a problem- for them.
It makes a proposition that cannot be tested.
ID's claims can be tested. OTOH your position cannot.Joe
January 24, 2014
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Mark Frank:
My compliments to RDFish for demonstrating the underlying logic of ID so clearly. When all the hot air and jargon is removed, it comes down to:
The accepted scientific explanation is wrong, therefore a mind did it.
Except there aren't any scientific explanations wso we cannot say they are wrong. Add Mark to the list of people who don't understand what science is.
Also RDFish has been exposed as a poseur on an agenda. Not exactly the kind of person one should be supporting. But MF is an anti-IDist so he will support anything he thinks goes against ID regardless of its validity.Joe
January 24, 2014
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UB
Tell us Mark, how do you falsify a proposition that cannot be tested?
You have nailed one of the fundamental problems with ID. It makes a proposition that cannot be tested. Just like the proposition that no law-like cause could explain how the lightning bolts came from the clouds aimed right at these steeples. The only way to prove this is to actually make a testable proposition about how it happened.Mark Frank
January 24, 2014
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RDFish:
Yes of course – a “conscious agent” is something that is, without further definition, assumed to be able to anything at all. So there is nothing that is not explainable by appeal to such a thing! But of course something that explains everything in the end explains nothing at all.
Your arguments all seem to reduce to the belief that "unknown natural laws" can explain all known phenomena (for example lightning strikes). Your above form of argument is equally effective at refuting your own position, let me rewrite your quote to illustrate:
"Yes of course - an "unknown natural law" is something that is, without further definition, assumed to be able to[do] anything at all. So there is nothing that is not explainable by appeal to such a thing! But of course something that explains everything in the end explains nothing at all."
So you can't use this same argument to refute ID. Your faith in methodological naturalism is a metaphysical assumption, not a fact. You dress it up in convoluted statements that try to hide that it's an a priori philosophical belief, but it's not fooling anyone.
And even if you grant that some unknown set of natural laws made the appearance of life inevitable, you've just created a regress, because you have to ask where the intelligent design present in those laws (which clearly would have to be extravagantly fine tuned and deeply complex) came from.NetResearchMan
