An Introduction
by machtAs recently announced, I'm the newest contributer to Telic Thoughts. I've been blogging at prosthesis for over 2 years now, often writing about things that are relevant to intelligent design ideas. I've been pretty reluctant about calling myself an "ID advocate," though, for reasons which I hope will be clear by the end of this post.
One of my major interests is that of reductionism in science and I've written before about how reductionism may fit into the whole ID debate. I think a number of the posts written here about the Philosophy of Mind may also be related to problems with reductionism.
My problems with reductionism have led me to believe that the concept of design shouldn't be taken too literally, even though I think it can be a useful metaphor at times. It might also just be the engineer in me that doesn't like associating biological entities with machines. I like the term "telic" a lot better, but I'm not necessarily convinced that's the best word, either.
I'm also pretty interested in the philosophical aspects of biological function and the similarities and dissimilarities between biological function and technological function. I haven't really written much about this, though, but maybe now is a good time to start.
I've been pretty heavily influenced by philosopher of science Del Ratzsch, especially his Nature, Design, and Science. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.
I'm also very sloppy when it comes to double-checking over blog posts for grammar mistakes, spelling errors, etc., so please don't hold that against me.
January 29th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Macht,
I agree with your proposition that the resolution to the ID / blind random evolution debate is found in changing our mechanistic conception of nature and biology.
I've been in pretty frequent dialogue online with Rupert Sheldrake who is a biologist who shook off the dominant reductionism of his field and formulated an evolutionary, holistic model of nature.
Ted Dace has a good introduction and its relevance to ID vs. RMNS evolution in his essay: The False Dilemma between Neo-Darwinism and Intelligent Design
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 29, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Hi Macht
Just a question how can science be cured of reductionism when its scope is to discover mechanisms for explaining the physical world? It seems to me our only hope is developing and seeing Dembski's explanatory filter accepted as a scientific way of detecting design which would then open the field to teleolgy and or theism. Without acceptance of something like the EF methinks ID will always be considered a philosophical argument.
The only other possible way forward (in breaking the hold of reductionism) is that science is cured of crossing the line into philosophy and making reductionistic ontological comments and conclusions and simply sticks to emperical observations but I can't see that happening! Your thoughts?
Comment by willo — January 29, 2006 @ 9:42 pm
January 30th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Hey, macht, being interested in the philosophy of mind myself, I agree with you on the problems of reductionism (particularly the materialist kind), and I'm pretty convinced by the argument from reason that it is totally unworkable when applied to the mind in particular. So, I'd agree that the machine analogy fails.
At the same time though, just because organisms might not be machines in their entirety (at least not all organisms), doesn't mean they aren't partly machines. For instance, the flagellum is unquestionably a machine.
Also, the basic ID arguments can be applied to things other than machines, even abstract things (for instance, sequences of numbers). One notable example of this is Angus Menuge's book Agents Under Fire (it's in the book list on the right of this page) where he applies the argument from Irreducible Complexity to human reasoning, using reasons and beliefs as "parts".
Comment by Deuce — January 30, 2006 @ 12:06 pm
January 30th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Well, I like to make a distinction between reductionism and abstraction. Science is "in the business," so to speak, of making abstractions. Scientists focus in on one particular aspect of reality and abstract it from the whole. So, for example, we can study projectile motion by focusing in on the motion of some object or group of objects, while ignoring things like color, the material of the object, the price of the object, and maybe even the shape of the object. Scientists do the same thing with all the things they study. Reductionism often is a part of science, but what it is, is a metaphysical principle about how these different abstractions should relate to each other. It isn't a necessary part of science and, I believe, it is often a wrong principle to guide scientific research.
Comment by macht — January 30, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
January 30th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
I'm not sure that it is. I'm quite certain it has particular functions that are analogous to functions in machines, but I don't think that makes the flagellum a machine. Machines, it seems to me, are physical things that are governed by physical laws, while things like the flagellum are also governed by biological laws. If, as many people believe, biological laws can be reduced to physical laws, then the flagellum probably is a machine. If, on the other hand, they can't be reduced then I think it would be incorrect to say a flagellum just is a machine.
But I agree with you that the basic ID arguments apply to non-machines as well.
Comment by macht — January 30, 2006 @ 1:15 pm
January 30th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Macht,
Maybe the real question is whether machines are driven by consciousness. The flagellum may be a machine, run by fuel but driven by consciousness, with which it is very intimately connected. And a car is a machine, also running on fuel, and also driven by consciousness - only in this case there is an extra step between the driving consciousness and the machine itself.
Comment by onething — January 30, 2006 @ 1:43 pm