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Bunny tracks look like bunny feet… so finding bunny tracks instantly tells us something about bunnies (at least what their feet look like).
What does biological complexity tell us about the Designer? Nobody thinks the Designer looks like a flagellum, of course… but does it tell us that thought was required in order to bring it into existence?
If we could agree on what things think and what things do not think, we might have a chance at investigating this question. But I've seen that not even ID proponents can agree amongst themselves about these things.
If you think I'm wrong, take this test: Which of the following things think, and which do not:
There is no consensus even among IDers (much less the scientific community at large) about which of these are intelligent, or purposeful, or willful, or conscious, or thinking entities - and which are not. If ID can't even come up with a principled way to agree on these observable entities, when we can actually study them right in our laboratories, how can it hope to reach a conclusion regarding a completely unobservable, hypothetical entity?
What does biological complexity tell us about the Designer? Nobody thinks the Designer looks like a flagellum, of course"¦ but does it tell us that thought was required in order to bring it into existence?
If you read the essay, it is not about biological complexity requiring thought to bring it into existence. It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner.
Another point comes to mind. A couple years back, some critics were arguing that life's dependence on both proteins and nucleic acids was evidence of multiple designers. My essay shows otherwise.
As for trying to reach consensus/agreement, we need to remember what Monod noted:
Hence it is through reference to our own activity, conscious and projective, intentional and purposive-it is as makers of artifacts-that we judge of a given object's "naturalness" or "artificialness."
Because a design inference may necessarily rely on this subjective element, consensus may be a fantasy (and there are plenty of social and historical data to support that suspicion). What would thus matter is what I outline in The Design Matrix: a) people lay their cards on the table by using an open-ended method with agreed upon criteria and b) success is not measured by consensus/agreement of inference, but by the ability to illuminate biotic reality.
Apologies - I'm a newbie on your site - which essay are we talking about here?
As for trying to reach consensus/agreement, we need to remember what Monod noted:
Hence it is through reference to our own activity, conscious and projective, intentional and purposive-it is as makers of artifacts-that we judge of a given object's "naturalness" or "artificialness."
But Monod was not attempting to explore how to characterize cognition - just the opposite. Also he wrote this more than thirty years ago, and there has been an explosion of knowledge in the cognitive sciences since then.
Because a design inference may necessarily rely on this subjective element, consensus may be a fantasy (and there are plenty of social and historical data to support that suspicion). What would thus matter is what I outline in The Design Matrix: a) people lay their cards on the table by using an open-ended method with agreed upon criteria and b) success is not measured by consensus/agreement of inference, but by the ability to illuminate biotic reality.
I'm saying something a bit different than this. It is not just that two people looking at the same evidence might reach different conclusions about whether something is thinking (or intelligent) or not. Rather, I am saying that people do not know the meaning of the question they are attempting to answer. Some believe that consciousness must be involved; others don't. Some believe that physical cause must be transcended; others don't. Some believe that learning is essential; others think differently. And so on.
Until ID manages to put some concrete meaning to these terms, people will forever talk past each other, arguing about definitions rather than the facts of the matter without even realizing it. With definitions in place, we can finally see how much actual subjectivity there is in all this, without the confusion over what we're supposed to be detecting in the first place.
But the essay confirms the point I'm trying to make here. The essay talks about designs, designing and designers, like this from the Design Matrix:
Seen from this vantage point, the very structure of DNA is evidence that indicates life was designed to reproduce.
But as you well know, you and I and FMM and kornbelt and nullasalus all have very different ideas about what it means to be designed. Null thinks this means a conscious entity planned it out. You think something which could transcend physical cause was involved. Other ID advocates here say that evolutionary processes can be considered intelligent and can design.
So we aren't just disagreeing about our subjective views on what the evidence says. Rather, we are all trying to answer different questions.
I think you're on the wrong track, at least as far as my own views are concerned. It's not about understanding the cognitive processes of any putative designer. It's simply about making a correlation about the output of "black boxes".
My children don't understand anything about the cognitive processes of humans or dogs. But they can tell the difference between they way dogs and people act.
If I made two black boxes that output two sets of repeating series of numbers, and then presented a third black box that produced the same set of numbers as box A, it would be reasonable to infer that box A and C were the "same kind of thing." You might say they have the "same cognitive processes", I might say, "they have the same number generating algorithm". My kids might say, "it's the same kind of box, dad." Nobody need know anything about the innards of the box. All we're looking at is the output.
So, in my case, I look at the "output" in the form of intra-cellular machinery and processes and make a correspondence to human designed machinery and processes, and I make a tentative forensic suspicion that the "same kind of thing" is at work in the design of both. It's not proof, and nobody around here (as far as I know), claims that it is. It's a suspicion based on correspondence, and not merely [edit: metaphor].
Please get a copy of Mike's book so you will be equipped to discuss more of the particulars.
You might say they have the "same cognitive processes", I might say, "they have the same number generating algorithm". My kids might say, "it's the same kind of box, dad." Nobody need know anything about the innards of the box. All we're looking at is the output.
Good clarification - so it's not actually about the detection of "cognition" per se (or "intelligence" or "design" or "thought").
But if this truly was the approach here, why would the entire project be saddled with these difficult concepts like "intelligent" and "design" and "teleology" It just befuddles the analysis with extraneous philosophical connotations (not to mention dragging the whole culture war nonsense into it).
So, in my case, I look at the "output" in the form of intra-cellular machinery and processes and make a correspondence to human designed machinery and processes, and I make a tentative forensic suspicion that the "same kind of thing" is at work in the design of both. It's not proof, and nobody around here (as far as I know), claims that it is. It's a suspicion based on correspondence, and not merely analogy.
As we've discussed, similar effects sometimes have similar cause and sometimes don't. Your kids notice "it's the same sort of box, Dad" - but I notice that the "box" on top of our shoulders (our brains) is quite obviously and radically different from whatever "box" might have designed my brain in the first place. So without talking about the boxes per se, finding the "output" to be similar can't really tell us if the boxes are similar or not. One box could have a blind, unguided natural process inside, while the other had a little tiny human being, and they could both output the same stuff.
So in order to say anything at all about what makes these sequences (or proteins or…) we need to be able to talk about different kinds of boxes with some clarity. Otherwise we'll forever be remarking that this or that looks like what a human engineer would come up with, but we'll have no ability to draw any conclusions (subjective or not) about the significance of these observations… because we haven't decided what attributes of human engineering are even relevant (consciousness? volition? learning? having a brain? etc).
Please get a copy of Mike's book so you will be equipped to discuss more of the particulars.
Apologies - I'm a newbie on your site - which essay are we talking about here?
Just click on the bunny prints. If you read the essay, it is not about biological complexity requiring thought to bring it into existence. It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner.
Thanks, I read the essay. Here is a good example from the essay of what I'm talking about here:
Since natural selection can act as a designer-mimic, it too would share this feature and be subject to similar limitations.
I submit that nobody here can actually say what this sentence means, since nobody can say what the difference between a "designer" and a "designer-mimic" is. (Or, more accurately, everyone will have a very different idea about what the difference is).
Likewise, you've repeated this:
It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner.
Until I know what you mean by "thought" (e.g. do you mean conscious thought?) I can't decide if there is evidence for "thought" connecting these molecules or not.
I submit that nobody here can actually say what this sentence means, since nobody can say what the difference between a "designer" and a "designer-mimic" is. (Or, more accurately, everyone will have a very different idea about what the difference is).
You can get by it with assumptions. 'I assume that X is not designed, but note that X is very similar to Y, which is designed'. Granted, the science problem there is obvious, but it's a way to communicate the idea.
You can get by it with assumptions. 'I assume that X is not designed, but note that X is very similar to Y, which is designed'. Granted, the science problem there is obvious, but it's a way to communicate the idea.
When you say "Y is designed", you mean "Y was reflected upon by a conscious mind". When KB says "Y is designed" he means something very different - so different that I honestly can't say how the two meanings intersect. So the problem isn't the science, it's the basic communication.
I submit that nobody here can actually say what this sentence means, since nobody can say what the difference between a "designer" and a "designer-mimic" is. (Or, more accurately, everyone will have a very different idea about what the difference is).
So what? What's the problem? Anytime we try to make some sense of a complex reality by attaching man-made concepts to our outside reality, we run into problems. For example, I recently highlighted examples where leading biologists still have much trouble defining life, species, and even self-replication. People have very different ideas about these words, yet biology survives and thrives. We could add other words which mean different things to different people "“ science, evolution, creationism, evidence, etc. There is no reason why I have to conform to standards that are atypically excessive.
If someone cannot follow my meaning by considering the context, then it merely means another person wasn't able to follow my meaning. I will only become concerned if I come to think that no one can follow my meaning and my points become completely incomprehensible to everyone.
As it stands, "it is not about biological complexity requiring thought to bring it into existence. It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner. It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner."
If you don't see it, you don't see it.
If you see it, there is more to see.
I'm not out to convince you or force you to "decide," aiguy. For why would I hold my perspective hostage to yours, when it is Nature herself who ultimately judges?
When you say "Y is designed", you mean "Y was reflected upon by a conscious mind". When KB says "Y is designed" he means something very different - so different that I honestly can't say how the two meanings intersect. So the problem isn't the science, it's the basic communication.
Well, hold on. I can mean 'reflected upon by a conscious mind', or I can mean something else. It's a question of specifying, sure, but it's possible within that (philosophical) context. I'm not committed to a single viewpoint - I'll typically just argue one for the purposes of discussion.
aiguy: Good clarification - so it's not actually about the detection of "cognition" per se (or "intelligence" or "design" or "thought").
It's partly about looking at an effect and making a categorical inference about the cause. "Design" certainly implies something, but it need not imply any thing more than that is a "like" another cause in the sense that it can effect the same output. Humans design things. One need not get bogged down into how they do it to discuss what the characteristics of their effects are.
In the case of cellular machinery, an impressive analogy is seen between what humans can produce and what has been produced in cells. No matter what you call it, what is important is that the thing that produced cells is able to mimic the artifacts of human engineering.
If it can be demonstrated that the processes within cells require something like "foresight" (sorry, no way to get away from that concept - Dawkins couldn't either) - the ability to "see past" the "next/proximate state" - then something other than "blind" nature as that is normally understood must be at work.
But if this truly was the approach here, why would the entire project be saddled with these difficult concepts like "intelligent" and "design" and "teleology" It just befuddles the analysis with extraneous philosophical connotations (not to mention dragging the whole culture war nonsense into it).
Partly because of statements like this:
Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning. The purpose of this book is to resolve this paradox to the satisfaction of the reader, and the purpose of this chapter is further to impress the reader with the power of the illusion of design. We shall look at a particular example and shall conclude that, when it comes to complexity and beauty of design, Paley hardly even began to state the case. (Blind Watchmaker, R. Dawkins, chapter 2)
Are Dawkin's words here meaningful to you? If not, then I don't think there's much hope for you.
It's impossible to get away from words like "foresight", "look ahead", "blind", "see beyond", "goals", because we're humans and we have and use that ability, and it leads to particular kinds of effects. Effects that seem to "see beyond" the next/proximate effect. In the case of cellular machinery (among other things), we are looking at something and thinking about whether the same kind of "foresight" is required to produce the effect. This is what Dawkins is doing when he writes words like that, and that's we we're doing when we refer to a possible telic cause of a given effect.
The question then is, could the cellular machinery and processes have arising without something that can "see beyond" the next/proximate effect? That remains to be answered, obviously. What makes some us wonder is the stunning likeness of intra-cellular machinery and processes to human designed machinery and processes. It's only a clue. It's not proof of anything. But it is meaningful.
So without talking about the boxes per se, finding the "output" to be similar can't really tell us if the boxes are similar or not.
That's right, and it doesn't matter. Two things that produce the same output can be considered to be the same kind of thing or that one thing can mimic another.
So in order to say anything at all about what makes these sequences (or proteins or"¦) we need to be able to talk about different kinds of boxes with some clarity.
One possible way science can help is to try to figure out ways "blind" nature could have come up with the cellular system. If it can, the telic hypothesis is falsified. If we discover cellular processes that are truly irreducibly complex, then the "blind" naturalistic hypothesis is falsified.
The telic forensic suspicion is useful if it spurs research towards answering these questions.
Are Dawkin's words here meaningful to you? If not, then I don't think there's much hope for you.
I'm sure he'll reply himself, but aiguy's said before that he thinks Dawkins is making the same mistake he believes ID proponents and others are making. So I'd vouch for his consistency on that straightaway. And his generally pleasant demeanor, since I'm throwing out compliments here.
On the other hand, since Mike doesn't think ID is science (though it may become such later), I'm not sure the issue applies in MG's case.
So what? What's the problem? Anytime we try to make some sense of a complex reality by attaching man-made concepts to our outside reality, we run into problems. For example, I recently highlighted examples where leading biologists still have much trouble defining life, species, and even self-replication. People have very different ideas about these words, yet biology survives and thrives. We could add other words which mean different things to different people "“ science, evolution, creationism, evidence, etc. There is no reason why I have to conform to standards that are atypically excessive.
This is the point I was trying to make the other day with my crude remarks about eating and pooping, etc. Given the ambiguities, how are you able to comprehend anything? That leads me to suspect you're mentally challenged in a way atypical of the participants here, or you just here to "stir the pot", so to speak.
nullasalus: On the other hand, since Mike doesn't think ID is science (though it may become such later), I'm not sure the issue applies in MG's case.
I don't think ID is science (yet) either. That's not the point. aiguy is demanding some kind of precision of the terms employed that apparently nobody is capable of providing. Of course, he's free to demand all he wants to. And as long as it's fun, I'll reply.
I don't think ID is science (yet) either. That's not the point. aiguy is demanding some kind of precision of the terms employed that apparently nobody is capable of providing. Of course, he's free to demand all he wants to. And as long as it's fun, I'll reply.
I think the difficulty here lies in the fact that Mike is not trying to make an argument, while a lot of us reading think that he is trying to make one. When one speaks of 'evidence' for certain things, then this sounds to me like making an argument. But if one says 'If you don't see it, you don't see it. If you see it, there is more to see.' then this does not sound to me like making an argument.
If you want to make an argument based on an observation, then the important factors in that argument have to be well defined. They don't need a universally true definition, just an operational definition to see if the point holds. That's what biologists do with terms like species. In general, when one argues a point involving the term 'species', it is well understood what the term species means in this context. Species might mean something different elsewhere, and that's just fine.
In Mike's case, it seems to me that IF this was an argument supported by evidence, then the term 'thought' should indeed be defined. Not universally, mind you, but at least get an operational definition for this particular context. However, since all Mike is doing is essentially writing prose which may change the POV of some, and leave other untouched, it is certainly not necessary for him to do so.
I've never thought Mike was making an argument, but I think he's doing more than merely writing prose. If you've read his book I think it should be clear that he is on a forensic investigation to see what comes up with regards to telic-like inspired machinery and processes, particularly of the intra-cellular kind, and spur others on to do the same thing.
I've never thought Mike was making an argument, but I think he's doing more than merely writing prose. If you've read his book I think it should be clear that he is on a forensic investigation to see what comes up with regards to telic-like inspired machinery and processes, particularly of the intra-cellular kind, and spur others on to do the same thing.
Well, to me 'a forensic investigation' generally ends with somebody making an argument for something. You know, making an argument about the plausibility, possibility or likelihood that something did or did not occur. So if you describe it as a forensic investigation, I would immediately think that Mike is making an argument. And if he is making an argument in this case, namely that thought connects two molecules, is it not reasonable to ask what he means by thought in this specific case?
If someone cannot follow my meaning by considering the context, then it merely means another person wasn't able to follow my meaning. I will only become concerned if I come to think that no one can follow my meaning and my points become completely incomprehensible to everyone.
What I see is that everyone is reading their own meaning into what is being talked about, without being explicit about it. I have my own reasons for thinking this is a bad thing, but maybe you think that's just fine. Maybe ID is supposed to be like poetry, where everybody finds different meaning in the same words.
If you don't see it, you don't see it. If you see it, there is more to see.
I know - my religious friends say very similar things about their various faiths. That's fine.
I just think it wouldn't be all that hard to try and pin down just a bit what is meant by 'design'. For example, the issue of a conscious vs. an unconscious process is quite fundamental, no? Do you not think it matters if people are imagining the evidence for design is evidence for conscious thought or not? If these distinctions are truly unimportant, then I'm really not sure what ID is trying do.
Nullasalus -
Well, hold on. I can mean 'reflected upon by a conscious mind', or I can mean something else. It's a question of specifying, sure, but it's possible within that (philosophical) context. I'm not committed to a single viewpoint - I'll typically just argue one for the purposes of discussion.
So it can mean "produced by an unguided, natural process" instead?
KB -
Humans design things. One need not get bogged down into how they do it to discuss what the characteristics of their effects are.
Ok, so you mean that the cause is "like" a human, but everybody can mean something different in terms of the ways in which they are alike.
In the case of cellular machinery, an impressive analogy is seen between what humans can produce and what has been produced in cells. No matter what you call it, what is important is that the thing that produced cells is able to mimic the artifacts of human engineering.
And I don't find that important in the same sense because humans and non-human processes do things so differently. The fact that humans and clouds produce high-voltage arcs does not convince me that clouds think about making lightning the way humans do.
If it can be demonstrated that the processes within cells require something like "foresight" (sorry, no way to get away from that concept - Dawkins couldn't either) - the ability to "see past" the "next/proximate state" - then something other than "blind" nature as that is normally understood must be at work.
Most people who study cognition believe human thought goes from proxmimate state to proximate state, with only the end result being accessible to our consciousness. So while it appears that we somehow "see past" the next state, we actually considered and discarded that state subconsciously.
Are Dawkin's words here meaningful to you? If not, then I don't think there's much hope for you.
You believe that Dawkins is clear and correct about everything he writes? I wouldn't have thought that was the case. In my opinion, Dawkins is confused on any number of issues. For example, I disagree with him that "God" is an hypothesis that can be scientifically evaluated and dismissed as false. And yes, I think he is utterly confused about philosophy of mind as well.
It's impossible to get away from words like "foresight", "look ahead", "blind", "see beyond", "goals", because we're humans and we have and use that ability, and it leads to particular kinds of effects. Effects that seem to "see beyond" the next/proximate effect.
See above. The reason we have to use metaphorical words like "sight" (even though we really aren't talking about optical vision here) is because we are describing what it feels like to come across a solution. We don't know how we do it, which is why scientists have to do experiments to figure it out. It might be just "blind, unguided" processes inside our heads after all, which would really confuse the entire ID project (ID could no longer say that "sighted" processes were involved rather than "blind" processes).
That's right, and it doesn't matter. Two things that produce the same output can be considered to be the same kind of thing or that one thing can mimic another.
Hmmm, I'm not sure I can agree here. If the Sun produced light and heat by chemical combustion, we would be faced with the odd paradox that it is still burning after billions of years. It produces light and heat all right, but the same output can come from very different causes, and nuclear reactions are very different.
One possible way science can help is to try to figure out ways "blind" nature could have come up with the cellular system. If it can, the telic hypothesis is falsified.
The "telic hypothesis" says that "not-blind" (or "sighted") nature is responsible. Now you ask me to figure out how "blind" nature could have been responsible, in order to falsify the claim that "not blind" nature was responsible. And neither of us can say for sure if the processes underlying even human design abilities are "blind" or "not blind". So this enterprise seems to be a little far fetched to me.
aiguy:Most people who study cognition believe human thought goes from proxmimate state to proximate state, with only the end result being accessible to our consciousness. So while it appears that we somehow "see past" the next state, we actually considered and discarded that state subconsciously.[emphasis added]
Hi Bilbo -
Please don't think I'm suggesting we actually have a model of how human thought works, or even that we can say it is "entirely the result of brain activity". I am saying we really do not know how we think. But we do know that most of what goes on when we make plans, solve problems, and design things is not accessible to our conscious awareness, and our experiments do bear that much out.
For example, if you ask someone if two pictures are of the same object in different orientations, the time it will take them to figure out the answer is proportional to the number of degrees of rotation that the two figures differ by - as though our brains actually were rotating the figure in memory to see if it would match up. We aren't aware of this rotation, but there is some evidence that we're doing it. There are journals filled with such evidence.
Edit: To us, it seems as though we see through right to the answer, without having to consider intermediate positions at all.
So it can mean "produced by an unguided, natural process" instead?
As in the word 'designed' can mean that? I don't think so, personally. Not in an ID context. Though I also think casting what goes on in the human mind as 'blind, unguided processes' - or even entertaining the potential for that (at least as a whole) is hopeless. You once talked about certain basic assumptions that, while they can't be proven, must be taken for granted for conversation to proceed (existence of other minds, etc.) I think 'human thoughts and considerations can be and are purposeful' is one of those assumptions.
As in the word 'designed' can mean that? I don't think so, personally. Not in an ID context. Though I also think casting what goes on in the human mind as 'blind, unguided processes' - or even entertaining the potential for that (at least as a whole) is hopeless. You once talked about certain basic assumptions that, while they can't be proven, must be taken for granted for conversation to proceed (existence of other minds, etc.) I think 'human thoughts and considerations can be and are purposeful' is one of those assumptions.
Of course I agree - we couldn't make sense of human behavior without intentional language (and we certainly wouldn't want to!). You have made clear what it is you are talking about here (conscious, sentient mind), and how far you think that logical inferences against the physical evidence can take us, and how you choose to go the rest of the distance. You know I have no issue with that stance at all, and that it isn't so far from what I think too.
And I don't find that important in the same sense because humans and non-human processes do things so differently. The fact that humans and clouds produce high-voltage arcs does not convince me that clouds think about making lightning the way humans do.
What if humans were able to produce clouds that produce high-voltage arcs?
You have made clear what it is you are talking about here (conscious, sentient mind), and how far you think that logical inferences against the physical evidence can take us, and how you choose to go the rest of the distance.
Something about that depiction seems 'off' to me, but I suppose it's close enough for me to put it aside.
aiguy:Most people who study cognition believe human thought goes from proxmimate state to proximate state, with only the end result being accessible to our consciousness. So while it appears that we somehow "see past" the next state, we actually considered and discarded that state subconsciously. [emphasis added]
I'll ask again, aiguy: What do you mean by "considered"
What if humans were able to produce clouds that produce high-voltage arcs?
Sorry, don't see what you're getting at.
Bilbo,
I'll ask again, aiguy: What do you mean by "considered"
I meant that the process by which our brains solve problems and design things might progress from proximate state to proximate state, and to "consider" a series of states means our brains physically transition through a series of different states of neural activity. I do not mean consciously "consider" - in this case I mean unconsciously "consider".
aiguy:I meant that the process by which our brains solve problems and design things might progress from proximate state to proximate state, and to "consider" a series of states means our brains physically transition through a series of different states of neural activity.
It seems you're arguing that just because humans and clouds both produce high-voltage arcs, you see no reason to suppose that the electric arcs clouds produce are designed (while someone could/would obviously insist that the electric arcs humans make are designed). But a human making a cloud that produced an electric arc would at least establish that clouds (and their resulting effects) could be designed, rather than 'being brought about by natural, unguided processes'. And so on with every natural example.
I actually don't think there is any confusion at all between us regarding what the word "solve" means in this context. In the example I provided, to 'solve' the problem meant to answer the question posed of whether or not the two figures were of the same object.
I've noticed that when I ask people to look more closely at their assumptions and intuitions about mind, one thing that some people do is react with a hyper-skeptical defense: If AIGuy makes me say exactly what I mean by "intelligence", then I will simply challenge his use of every word he types!
I am not the only one who believes that discussions about minds require careful use of technical vocabulary, Bilbo. Everyone who does scientific or philosophical investigations of cognition feels the same way.
It seems you're arguing that just because humans and clouds both produce high-voltage arcs, you see no reason to suppose that the electric arcs clouds produce are designed (while someone could/would obviously insist that the electric arcs humans make are designed). But a human making a cloud that produced an electric arc would at least establish that clouds (and their resulting effects) could be designed, rather than 'being brought about by natural, unguided processes'. And so on with every natural example.
I was hoping this was not what you were getting at, actually. With this argument, you see the universe as a whole as designed, so why look at anything in particular and try to decide if it has the tell-tale signs of "design" or not?
Anyway, no, if a human could build a lightning-generating cloud, that would not tell us if a human-like mind was responsible for these clouds in nature or not, any more than the fact we can generate lightning tells us that clouds have minds.
aiguy:In the example I provided, to 'solve' the problem meant to answer the question posed of whether or not the two figures were of the same object.
So would you have a problem with saying that the goal, in this case, is to answer the question of whether or not the two figures were of the same object?
So would you have a problem with saying that the goal, in this case, is to answer the question of whether or not the two figures were of the same object?
Sure - that was the subject's goal. (And the goal of a falling apple is to return to the Earth, just as Aristotle thought, right?)
Bilbo,
I am not being sarcastic. Yes, of course that was the subject's goal.
We might have a more productive discussion if you tried to actually articulate some thought or to make an argument rather than interrogate me looking for some opportunity to trip me up.
I was hoping this was not what you were getting at, actually. With this argument, you see the universe as a whole as designed, so why look at anything in particular and try to decide if it has the tell-tale signs of "design" or not?
Bingo. Which is exactly why I regard the ID/no-ID issue as entirely philosophical. On the other hand, human advances in engineering, science, etc do lend some support to this position - so I think the general theme MikeGene, Kornbelt888 and others are dealing with have some philosophical weight. If it's similar to stuff 'we' design, there may be a reason for that.
Anyway, no, if a human could build a lightning-generating cloud, that would not tell us if a human-like mind was responsible for these clouds in nature or not, any more than the fact we can generate lightning tells us that clouds have minds.
It doesn't answer the question, but it provides something interesting to talk about that (philosophically) design proponents can pick up and run with. As for clouds having minds - I find it a doubtful assertion, but that isn't stopping the panpsychists and those similar.
KB: Humans design things. One need not get bogged down into how they do it to discuss what the characteristics of their effects are.
aiguy: Ok, so you mean that the cause is "like" a human, but everybody can mean something different in terms of the ways in which they are alike.
Perhaps. Which is why we should focus on the effects contra the effects of "blind" nature (a process without goals or foresight beyond the next next/proximate effect.)
KB: In the case of cellular machinery, an impressive analogy is seen between what humans can produce and what has been produced in cells. No matter what you call it, what is important is that the thing that produced cells is able to mimic the artifacts of human engineering.
aiguy: And I don't find that important in the same sense because humans and non-human processes do things so differently. The fact that humans and clouds produce high-voltage arcs does not convince me that clouds think about making lightning the way humans do.
You seemed to have ignored my use of the term "mimic." Humans and clouds can mimic "one another" with respect to voltage arcs. Very well then. But can clouds produce something akin to automobiles? If I were a man living 5000 years ago, knew nothing of automobiles, and I only had access to cloud effects and something like an automobile, I doubt I would suspect they came from the same kind of cause.
aiguy: Most people who study cognition believe human thought goes from proxmimate state to proximate state, with only the end result being accessible to our consciousness. So while it appears that we somehow "see past" the next state, we actually considered and discarded that state subconsciously.
Understanding the internal workings of human cognitive processes is unnecessary in a forensic investigation. The police do it all the time by merely considering the effects that humans produce.
KB: Are Dawkin's words here meaningful to you? If not, then I don't think there's much hope for you.
aiguy: You believe that Dawkins is clear and correct about everything he writes? I wouldn't have thought that was the case.
Fair enough. But you asked me why telic language is used by ID. I just showed you one example why. Have you e-mailed him and demanded he reprint his book in order to clarify what he meant? Perhaps you should do a pubmed search for telic terms within peer reviewed biology papers and see what you come up with. I think the common understanding of those terms if sufficient to make a good start at a forensic telic investigation.
KB: It's impossible to get away from words like "foresight", "look ahead", "blind", "see beyond", "goals", because we're humans and we have and use that ability, and it leads to particular kinds of effects. Effects that seem to "see beyond" the next/proximate effect.
aiguy: See above. The reason we have to use metaphorical words like "sight" (even though we really aren't talking about optical vision here) is because we are describing what it feels like to come across a solution. We don't know how we do it, which is why scientists have to do experiments to figure it out.
The reason we have to use metaphorical words at all is because humans have the capacity for abstract thought that cannot be expressed in concrete language except via metaphor. You can make the language less colorful, but you can't make it less abstract.
At any rate, how we produce the effects we do is irrelevant to the fact that do, in fact, produce them, we know we do it, and we manifest certain kinds of effects that we apply the term "goal" and "foresight" to. And we recognize that we do. Human effects are very much the part of the ID investigation. Without human reason there would be no investigation.
aiguy: It might be just "blind, unguided" processes inside our heads after all, which would really confuse the entire ID project (ID could no longer say that "sighted" processes were involved rather than "blind" processes).
Whatever kind of processes they are, they are special, because they produce special kinds of effects that we, ourselves, recognize to be special. Human reason could be an illusion, but that were true, everything else, including all of science, would be subject to that same damning judgment.
One issue to keep in mind here is that you cannot take yourself, and other humans, out of the picture. You're inside of it, not outside. Either our mental processes, the ones that make hypotheses, and inferences, and recognize our own mental processes as special, are special, or they are not, and science in general is a lark. You can't saw off the intellectual branch you're sitting on, and expect to remain connected to the tree.
Do you consider human reason to be valid?
KB: Two things that produce the same output can be considered to be the same kind of thing or that one thing can mimic another.
aiguy: Hmmm, I'm not sure I can agree here. If the Sun produced light and heat by chemical combustion, we would be faced with the odd paradox that it is still burning after billions of years. It produces light and heat all right, but the same output can come from very different causes, and nuclear reactions are very different.
If there was absolutely no difference in the effects, there would no reason to suspect a difference in the cause. Stellar radiation due to nuclear fusion, for example, has many well understood "signatures", depending on the particular elements involved, and they differ with chemical combustion. (Red-shifted atomic signatures is how we determine the distance of a star.)
KB: One possible way science can help is to try to figure out ways "blind" nature could have come up with the cellular system. If it can, the telic hypothesis is falsified.
aiguy: The "telic hypothesis" says that "not-blind" (or "sighted") nature is responsible. Now you ask me to figure out how "blind" nature could have been responsible, in order to falsify the claim that "not blind" nature was responsible.
I'm not asking you, personally, to do anything. That's the job of molecular biologists, and some of them are trying to figure it out. And rightly so.
aiguy: And neither of us can say for sure if the processes underlying even human design abilities are "blind" or "not blind". So this enterprise seems to be a little far fetched to me.
Heh. Let's turn the tables here: what did you just mean by "blind" and "not blind" Surely, there's some kind of meaning attached to those terms in your mind, other than merely parroting my words, and other than the obvious metaphorical association.
aiguy:I am not being sarcastic. Yes, of course that was the subject's goal.
So in the case of the question of whether or not two figures were of the same object, we could say that the brain may have unconsciously transitioned through a number of neurological states that were representations of the object, until it either found a match or not. And we could say that this whole process occurred in order to answer the question. In other words, that the goal was to answer the question.
Bingo. Which is exactly why I regard the ID/no-ID issue as entirely philosophical. On the other hand, human advances in engineering, science, etc do lend some support to this position - so I think the general theme MikeGene, Kornbelt888 and others are dealing with have some philosophical weight. If it's similar to stuff 'we' design, there may be a reason for that.
Again I appreciate your view about the epistemology (which is all I meant about you "choosing to go the rest of the distance"). I don't understand how you believe seeing what humans can manage to build impacts the philosophical arguments, though. It never changes the issue regarding different paths to the same result.
Running out of time at this library. Aiguy, you've admitted there are such thing as goals. We could, if we wanted to, say that gravity is a goal of nature — to attract objects to each other.
So far, there doesn't seem to be any identifiable goal in nature that would lead to proteins, RNA, or DNA. If they arose in nature, it seems they did so randomly. One can hold that view, but the odds seem to be rather implausible.
And as Mike Gene's current essay seems to suggest, proteins, RNA, and DNA exhibit signs that they were the result of goal directed behavior.
Meanwhile, there is Darwinian evolution, which takes over once we have living organisms. Darwinian evolution does have a goal: to produce organisms that will survive and reproduce. It's a shortsighted goal. It's not trying to answer the question of what will survive one billion years from now. Just, what will survive now?
If we find features in organisms that suggest far-sighted goals (like what will survive one billion years from now? or what will make it easier for
this organism to travel?), it suggests that something more than Darwinian evolution is involved. And perhaps that will help you understand the difference between ID and non-ID.
Again I appreciate your view about the epistemology (which is all I meant about you "choosing to go the rest of the distance"). I don't understand how you believe seeing what humans can manage to build impacts the philosophical arguments, though. It never changes the issue regarding different paths to the same result.
Largely because the issue is whether what we see in the universe (including the universe itself) could conceivably be designed by a human-like mind, as opposed to being in origin and development mostly 'unguided natural processes'. (Only "mostly" because humans certainly do exist, and certainly do design, so the totality can't be unguided.) So as humans design more and more things - gardens, artificial lakes, new breeds of animal, perhaps create life from non-life in the lab, and so on - we're directing, guiding, and to a degree creating more and more of nature intentionally. If we can create a simulation of the (or even 'a') universe a la Nick Bostrom and others, we'll have arguably designed the totality, at least in one form.
But the closer we come to that situation, the less we need to lean on 'unguided, natural processes' as an explanation for what we see. Design in principle explains everything, and it's the one thing we're certain of by virtue of being designers. The truly unguided, however, is merely postulated to exist. It will always remain -possible-. But every time the guided achieves what the assumed unguided can do, it makes the "no guidance" assumption less parsimonious. Along the lines of, say, arguing Mount Rushmore was formed by 'unguided, natural processes'. Well, no, because we have evidence that such formations are human artifacts. So, what happens when forests, planets, and universes (even simulated ones) are also human artifacts?
But can clouds produce something akin to automobiles? If I were a man living 5000 years ago, knew nothing of automobiles, and I only had access to cloud effects and something like an automobile, I doubt I would suspect they came from the same kind of cause.
You argued that like effects come from like causes, and I'm pointing out that independent evidence is always required for the simple reason that like effects also come from unlike causes. This is especially true when the hypothesized cause is completely unknown (an unspecified thing operating according to unspecified process).
Understanding the internal workings of human cognitive processes is unnecessary in a forensic investigation. The police do it all the time by merely considering the effects that humans produce.
From the previous thread:
ID requires that we can detect "intelligent agency" by observing artifacts, but commits the fallacy of over-generalization by mistaking the methods of human archeology or human forensics for instances of "intelligent agency" detection in the abstract. It is never "intelligent agency" that is actually detected, but rather it is some particular type of organism that we happen to call intelligent. The detected cause of the phenomenon in question is always a human, or some other animal, or even some extra-terrestrial life form, but never some unspecified type of "intelligent agent", and never "intelligence" per se.
Fair enough. But you asked me why telic language is used by ID. I just showed you one example why. Have you e-mailed him and demanded he reprint his book in order to clarify what he meant?
I have had one e-mail exchange with Dawkins. I didn't tell him to reprint his book. I took him to task on a couple of issues and he responded with citations to his books, which turned out to be completely non-responsive to my points.
At any rate, how we produce the effects we do is irrelevant to the fact that do, in fact, produce them, we know we do it, and we manifest certain kinds of effects that we apply the term "goal" and "foresight" to. And we recognize that we do. Human effects are very much the part of the ID investigation. Without human reason there would be no investigation.
How we produce the effects we do is central to the question ID is asking! ID assumes that however humans build machines, the machines of biology are built in a somehow similar manner. But if the processes by which humans build machines proceeds according to blind, unguided processes, this makes ID's conclusions very difficult to interpret meaningfully.
One issue to keep in mind here is that you cannot take yourself, and other humans, out of the picture. You're inside of it, not outside. Either our mental processes, the ones that make hypotheses, and inferences, and recognize our own mental processes as special, are special, or they are not, and science in general is a lark. You can't saw off the intellectual branch you're sitting on, and expect to remain connected to the tree.
Do you consider human reason to be valid?
We've had this argument, and you referred me to C.S. Lewis. I think his arguments are lame because of this: 1) Either human reason is valid or not.
2) If it isn't, nothing we say matters.
3) If it is, we don't have to worry about it
If there was absolutely no difference in the effects, there would no reason to suspect a difference in the cause. Stellar radiation due to nuclear fusion, for example, has many well understood "signatures", depending on the particular elements involved, and they differ with chemical combustion. (Red-shifted atomic signatures is how we determine the distance of a star.)
Exactly right! Now, what is difference between what "intelligence" does and what "not intelligence" does? In order to decide, we need to be able to test two things independently: First, we need a procedure for identifying intelligent things, and second we need a procedure for identifying their signatures. I grant the latter - what is the former?
aiguy: The "telic hypothesis" says that "not-blind" (or "sighted") nature is responsible. Now you ask me to figure out how "blind" nature could have been responsible, in order to falsify the claim that "not blind" nature was responsible.
KB: I'm not asking you, personally, to do anything. That's the job of molecular biologists, and some of them are trying to figure it out. And rightly so.
The "telic hypothesis" says that "not-blind" (or "sighted") nature is responsible. Now you ask molecular biologists to figure out how "blind" nature could have been responsible, in order to falsify the claim that "not blind" nature was responsible. And neither you nor they can say for sure if the processes underlying even human design abilities are "blind" or "not blind". So this enterprise seems to be a little far fetched to me.
Heh. Let's turn the tables here: what did you just mean by "blind" and "not blind" Surely, there's some kind of meaning attached to those terms in your mind, other than merely parroting my words, and other than the obvious metaphorical association.
To me (and Nullasalus) "not blind" means "conscious". Will you agree to this meaning?
In the interest of efficiency, I'll wait until you've formulated some point before I respond. It seems you believe that "goals" are uniquely mental, but again, we could just as reasonably say the goal of a river is to deliver water to the sea. (Cybernetics has operationalized the notions of goals and purpose, but these definitions don't seem popular here).
EDIT: Bilbo, just saw your last post - I'll respond to that one.
Aiguy, you've admitted there are such thing as goals. We could, if we wanted to, say that gravity is a goal of nature "” to attract objects to each other.
Or we could say that falling to Earth is the goal of the apple.
So far, there doesn't seem to be any identifiable goal in nature that would lead to proteins, RNA, or DNA.
Yes, the goal (in the same non-mentalistic sense) apparently was to produce biological systems.
If they arose in nature, it seems they did so randomly. One can hold that view, but the odds seem to be rather implausible.
I find "randomness" to be a perfectly meaningless explanation for anything at all.
And as Mike Gene's current essay seems to suggest, proteins, RNA, and DNA exhibit signs that they were the result of goal directed behavior.
In cybernetics, "goal directed" means "incorporating negative feedback". Evolutionary processes incorporate negative feedback, so they are purposeful in this cybernetic sense. If you mean something else - like conscious goals or mental goals - then I have no idea how to begin to investigate those in the context of ID.
Meanwhile, there is Darwinian evolution, which takes over once we have living organisms. Darwinian evolution does have a goal: to produce organisms that will survive and reproduce. It's a shortsighted goal. It's not trying to answer the question of what will survive one billion years from now. Just, what will survive now? If we find features in organisms that suggest far-sighted goals (like what will survive one billion years from now? or what will make it easier for this organism to travel?), it suggests that something more than Darwinian evolution is involved. And perhaps that will help you understand the difference between ID and non-ID.
If I haven't mentioned it to you, I don't believe Darwinian evolution can account for what we observe in biology. So the question becomes what can account for it? Saying that the cause has "far-sighted goals" doesn't imply anything like human mentality. It implies "front-loading", but it doesn't imply the "sightedness" or awareness of that front-loader. It could just as well be a blind, natural, unguided front-loading of biological forms that will unfold over time.
To me (and Nullasalus) "not blind" means "conscious". Will you agree to this meaning?
I want to make one thing clear here: In a discussion you and I had, I defined (for the purposes of the discussion) an intelligent Designer as 'conscious'. I've also said others may have other definitions of it which may well be valid. I could entirely accept other formulations of a Designer which are intelligent but not 'human-like conscious', or Designers that don't exhibit human-like foresight but instead foresight of another (still very real) variety. The Designer may well be an immutable, eternal, unchanging principle - those discussions are long and involved, and a variety of views are and should be in play.
Largely because the issue is whether what we see in the universe (including the universe itself) could conceivably be designed by a human-like mind, as opposed to being in origin and development mostly 'unguided natural processes'. (Only "mostly" because humans certainly do exist, and certainly do design, so the totality can't be unguided.) So as humans design more and more things - gardens, artificial lakes, new breeds of animal, perhaps create life from non-life in the lab, and so on - we're directing, guiding, and to a degree creating more and more of nature intentionally. If we can create a simulation of the (or even 'a') universe a la Nick Bostrom and others, we'll have arguably designed the totality, at least in one form.
Ah, thanks - that's interesting. On one hand, if we someday use our human minds to create an entire universe, it is an existence proof that human-like minds can create universes. On the other hand, if we someday create a truly human-like mind (using an algorithmic machine), Dembski's "entire theology will crumble" (as he famously declared) because we will have shown that human-like intelligence operates by nothing but pure, blind physical causation. Ouch, my head! This is why philosophers have to be so smart. They should make more money.
Design in principle explains everything, and it's the one thing we're certain of by virtue of being designers. The truly unguided, however, is merely postulated to exist. It will always remain -possible-. But every time the guided achieves what the assumed unguided can do, it makes the "no guidance" assumption less parsimonious. Along the lines of, say, arguing Mount Rushmore was formed by 'unguided, natural processes'. Well, no, because we have evidence that such formations are human artifacts. So, what happens when forests, planets, and universes (even simulated ones) are also human artifacts?
Ok, I now understand where you were going with this - thanks. This actually gives me something to think about.
I want to make one thing clear here: In a discussion you and I had, I defined (for the purposes of the discussion) an intelligent Designer as 'conscious'. I've also said others may have other definitions of it which may well be valid. I could entirely accept other formulations of a Designer which are intelligent but not 'human-like conscious', or Designers that don't exhibit human-like foresight but instead foresight of another (still very real) variety. The Designer may well be an immutable, eternal, unchanging principle - those discussions are long and involved, and a variety of views are and should be in play.
My complaint there is that conscious awareness is the single factor in our inter-subjective human experience that can differentiate mental from physical cause. Once you claim agnosticism about consciousness, then we no longer have a way to understand what you mean when you speak of guided as opposed to blind processes, or a sighted front-loader as opposed to a blind front loader.
Seriously - this is an interesting notion regarding Bostrom's simworld that I didn't appreciate. The universe can be shown to have likely arisen from mind, and (since the simulation includes agents) mind can be shown to be nothing but natural law (since the sim runs algorithmically). If you start with the simulation, you see it as law-directed, and if you start with programmer, you see it as mind-directed. Could this be the basis of a Bohr-like complementarianism?
New idea? Old hat for Bostrom fans? I just went to Bostrom's home page for the first time - looks like I'm going to spend some time there.
aiguy: If you start with the simulation, you see it as law-directed, and if you start with programmer, you see it as mind-directed. Could this be the basis of a Bohr-like complementarianism?
See, I'm really not the nasty old Darwinist materialist determinist atheist relativist eugenicist white-coated scientism fundamentalist you took me for.
I've been thinking about cosmic minds all my life (and I'm pretty darn old too). That's why I've learned there is no principle by which we can distinguish intelligent from non-intelligent cause in general, unless we explicitly are talking about conscious awareness. And once we talk about conscious awareness of unobservable beings, we leave the realm of the empirical completely.
aiguy: You argued that like effects come from like causes,
That's not exactly what I said. I said that like effects can come from like causes or causes that can mimic other causes.
and I'm pointing out that independent evidence is always required for the simple reason that like effects also come from unlike causes. This is especially true when the hypothesized cause is completely unknown (an unspecified thing operating according to unspecified process).
Only if I'm trying to prove something, which apparently you seem to think I'm arguing.
Cellular machinery is strikingly analogous to human engineering. Cellular machinery is not strikingly analogous to any other effect from any other cause. This leads to a forensic suspicion that is leading to a forensic investigation. That's all I've been saying, and nothing more.
I got into the fray originally because you were complaining that the terms like "design" are meaningless. I think you're wrong with regards to the cell, simply because "design" is used as a tag for what humans do. Since human effects are the criterion that the evidence is being compared with, it's a perfectly meaningful term.
aiguy: ID requires that we can detect "intelligent agency" by observing artifacts, but commits the fallacy of over-generalization by mistaking the methods of human archeology or human forensics for instances of "intelligent agency" detection in the abstract. It is never "intelligent agency" that is actually detected, but rather it is some particular type of organism that we happen to call intelligent. The detected cause of the phenomenon in question is always a human, or some other animal, or even some extra-terrestrial life form, but never some unspecified type of "intelligent agent", and never "intelligence" per se.
If you stay focused on the evidence and keeping asking yourself, "how much does this look like human engineering", and "is a human engineer or human engineer mimic required for this", you'll stay out of the swamp.
aiguy: How we produce the effects we do is central to the question ID is asking!
Not in the least. Not me, anyway.
I have no idea how I produce anything in terms of the machinery of my brain. But I still keep designing stuff.
aiguy: ID assumes that however humans build machines, the machines of biology are built in a somehow similar manner. But if the processes by which humans build machines proceeds according to blind, unguided processes, this makes ID's conclusions very difficult to interpret meaningfully.
Remember, it's we humans are who are doing the considering of the issue of telic causation. We are telic by definition. By definition, human design is not blind. If you put yourself out, there's no way to get back in again. But if you accept that you are a telic cause, we can examine effects and compare them to what we know we can do, and see if there's reason for forensic suspicion.
I've never seen Bostrom himself advocate what I'm saying, mind you - I refer to him because he's advanced the general idea of a simulated reality being a strong possibility. He does have other interesting ideas, though, and he's been fun to read here and there. But this is something I worked out for myself (naturally influenced by other philosophical thoughts, of course.)
It's what I was alluding to in another thread, when I mentioned believing that the philosophical ramifications of computers/simulation haven't been fully appreciated yet. And this aspect (design v unguided) is just the tip of the iceberg.
And thanks, kornbelt888, for the compliment. I'm glad it's stirring some thought here.
aiguy: We've had this argument, and you referred me to C.S. Lewis. I think his arguments are lame because of this: 1) Either human reason is valid or not. 2) If it isn't, nothing we say matters. 3) If it is, we don't have to worry about it
Yes, we had this argument, but you didn't win it. If you didn't assume your reason is valid, what are you doing here? Just having a play with words? Naw, I suspect you think your own reason is a valid enough. Otherwise what pragmatic good could come of any of this?
KB: If there was absolutely no difference in the effects, there would no reason to suspect a difference in the cause. Stellar radiation due to nuclear fusion, for example, has many well understood "signatures", depending on the particular elements involved, and they differ with chemical combustion. (Red-shifted atomic signatures is how we determine the distance of a star.)
aiguy: Exactly right! Now, what is difference between what "intelligence" does and what "not intelligence" does?
I don't know. I could throw out some attributes, but the question is largely uninteresting to me. I can tell you the difference between what human engineers do and what other causes do.
As I've said, I'm not interested in explaining the inner workings of the cause of cellular machinery or deciding if it's a human or a god or whatever else. Because of the analogy between cells and human engineering, I'm interested in further research into whether or not non-human forces can plausibly produce such a thing (yes, you read that right), how we might apply the machinery of cells to better use, and how we might engineer nano-technology ourselves. (Of course, I'm also interested in any clear designer signatures within genomes, or pointers to more information about a designer, but that's an entirely other matter.)
I got into the fray originally because you were complaining that the terms like "design" are meaningless. I think you're wrong with regards to the cell, simply because "design" is used as a tag for what humans do. Since human effects are the criterion that the evidence is being compared with, it's a perfectly meaningful term.
Each time I complain, I try to make clear that these terms are meaningless in this context unless they were qualified somehow. I obviously don't mean that they somehow can't be assigned specific meaning. Moreover, when they are assigned meaning, I complained that the specific meanings did not logically follow from any consideration of empirical evidence that independent researchers could agree on. But here on TT the zeitgeist seems to be that you're not crafting an empirical argument, but rather brainstorming on interesting ideas.
I'm all for brainstorming, but I won't stop complaining about cognitive intuitionism being a dead-end street: If you don't say what you mean, then all of your ideas about mind will simply sink under equivocations that you're not even aware of. I really want to know if consciousness is causal, but I won't just implicitly assume it and start talking about "intelligence" when I really mean a conscious volition that transcends physical cause.
Only if I'm trying to prove something, which apparently you seem to think I'm arguing.
OK, not you. Pez really did state - over and over again - that "purpose" and "intent" can be detected by observation. And I suspect lots of others here (Bradford comes to mind) who are still laboring under the illusion that conscious, sentient mind is the best explanation for specified complexity (or some such thing), and simply leave out the "conscious, sentient" part because that makes it sound too unscientific.
Cellular machinery is strikingly analogous to human engineering. Cellular machinery is not strikingly analogous to any other effect from any other cause. This leads to a forensic suspicion that is leading to a forensic investigation. That's all I've been saying, and nothing more.
If you changed "forensic" (which really has to do with human legal affairs and is misleading for the reasons I've given above) to "philosophical" I wouldn't take issue with anything you've said. (I have the same suspicion, but for me it really is all about consciousness (because otherwise I don't know how to distinguish the mental from the physical).
aiguy: To me (and Nullasalus) "not blind" means "conscious". Will you agree to this meaning?
Unknown. And I don't think it matters. I'm not trying to explain the internals of the cause. Only whether or not natural forces can produce cells not. That the cellular machinery is strikingly similar to human engineering is a forensic clue that blind natural causes alone may not be. Further research is required.
aiguy: See, I'm really not the nasty old Darwinist materialist determinist atheist relativist eugenicist white-coated scientism fundamentalist you took me for.
Whuh? That hasn't been my impression of you.
I've been thinking about cosmic minds all my life (and I'm pretty darn old too). That's why I've learned there is no principle by which we can distinguish intelligent from non-intelligent cause in general, unless we explicitly are talking about conscious awareness. And once we talk about conscious awareness of unobservable beings, we leave the realm of the empirical completely.
To use Mike's idea, I and others are on a forensic rabbit hunt. We suspect design from similarity between cellular machinery and human engineering. We want to see how far the rabbit hole goes.
I'm running out of steam here, but I want to put this one to bed:
Yes, we had this argument, but you didn't win it. If you didn't assume your reason is valid, what are you doing here? Just having a play with words? Naw, I suspect you think your own reason is a valid enough. Otherwise what pragmatic good could come of any of this?
I mounted a counter-argument which you have now twice ignored. For the third time:
1) Either human reason is valid or not.
2) If it isn't, nothing we say matters, because our arguments will all be unreliable (including this one).
3) Else (if our reason is reliable), then we don't have to worry about our reason being reliable.
Do you disagree with any of these statements?
It's clear that we can't possibly know if our reason is valid, because valid reason is required for all knowledge. Since we can not know, we can only assume one answer or the other, and so we assume it is.
One last time: Our reason is either valid or it is not, and nothing we assume to be true about evolution, naturalism, minds, volition, God, or any other thing can possibly have any affect on the situation. And neither can any of our beliefs about any of these things be justified by our assumption or desire that our reasoning capability is reliable.
aiguy: But here on TT the zeitgeist seems to be that you're not crafting an empirical argument, but rather brainstorming on interesting ideas.
Well, nobody's crafting a scientific theory if that's what you mean, but otherwise, yes, I think you've got it.
I'm all for brainstorming, but I won't stop complaining about cognitive intuitionism being a dead-end street: If you don't say what you mean, then all of your ideas about mind will simply sink under equivocations that you're not even aware of. I really want to know if consciousness is causal, but I won't just implicitly assume it and start talking about "intelligence" when I really mean a conscious volition that transcends physical cause.
Nothing wrong with greater precision in terminology. You're input is welcome.
What I see is that everyone is reading their own meaning into what is being talked about, without being explicit about it.
Although you did not define "see," I think you are making a claim about what you see with your own mind's eye. But while you may see this, I don't see it as being that hopeless or reckless. To one extent or another, all human beings read their own meaning into what is being said, as perception is not a passive process. Nevertheless, I'm not as pessimistic as you, as I see that others are interpreting my words in the way I have in mind. I see nodes of agreement.
I have my own reasons for thinking this is a bad thing, but maybe you think that's just fine. Maybe ID is supposed to be like poetry, where everybody finds different meaning in the same words.
I'm not saying how ID is supposed to be, but I do know there is plenty of middle room between poetry and the idealized notion of science (and remember that even science has trouble defining many basic concepts).
You began by asking two questions: "What does biological complexity tell us about the Designer? Nobody thinks the Designer looks like a flagellum, of course"¦ but does it tell us that thought was required in order to bring it into existence?"
I did not need you to rigorously define "complexity," "thought,." or "required." I was able to understand your question and spot the two places where the questions did not apply. The essay was not about "biological complexity," it was about two different biological molecules "“ proteins and DNA. And the essay was not about thought being required to bring them into existence; it was about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner.
Rather than take DNA and proteins for granted, and treat them as brute givens that play background roles in a story that stars the Blind Watchmaker, I explore these molecules and find a set of similarities that not only show the two unrelated molecules to be variations on the same theme, but they actually complement each other in remarkable ways. Is it really a coincidence that the alpha helix so nicely matches the major groove?
I know - my religious friends say very similar things about their various faiths. That's fine.
Of course it's fine. Because that is what it boils down to in the end.
I just think it wouldn't be all that hard to try and pin down just a bit what is meant by 'design'.
Then do it.
In the meantime, I'm able to follow the lead of Dawkins ("biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose"), Crick ("Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.") and Monod ("I have cited it only to emphasize how arbitrary and pointless it would be to deny that the natural organ "“ the eye "“ represents that materialization of a "purpose" - that of picking up images "“ while this is indisputably also the origin of the camera.") I can communicate with people like this and I don't think most would have a hard time with my point about limitations on the designer-mimic.
For example, the issue of a conscious vs. an unconscious process is quite fundamental, no?
Sure. Is the cause like us? Do we see something that leads us to suspect that another mind was behind its origin? As Monod noted, "it is through reference to our own activity, conscious and projective, intentional and purposive-it is as makers of artifacts-that we judge of a given object's "naturalness" or "artificialness."" This observation resonates loudly with my own personal, subjective experience in detecting any design, thus it is useful. If someone comes up with a rigorous objective method built on rigorous objective definitions, I will be sure to incorporate that and use it to confirm or disconfirm the hypotheses that have been built in the meantime.
Do you not think it matters if people are imagining the evidence for design is evidence for conscious thought or not?
What matters is whether a teleological perspective generates further insight and understanding of the biological world.
If these distinctions are truly unimportant, then I'm really not sure what ID is trying do.
I'm in no position to explain what "ID is trying to do." I myself suspect the original life forms were designed by some agency with human-like intelligence and thus explore the biotic world from this perspective.
aiguy: If you changed "forensic" (which really has to do with human legal affairs and is misleading for the reasons I've given above) to "philosophical" I wouldn't take issue with anything you've said.
(I have the same suspicion, but for me it really is all about consciousness (because otherwise I don't know how to distinguish the mental from the physical).
It's an interesting subject in it's own right. But what do you do with sleep walkers that have a "goal" to go to the bathroom, or walk to the kitchen in order to get food? Is it a violation of the terms "goal" and "foresight" to apply it to the unconscious sleepwalker? It seems brains came execute goals with foresight without consciousness.
I suspect consciousness is involved with the design of life and the universe for various other reasons, but just looking at cellular machinery, I am not compelled to require consciousness.
To use Mike's idea, I and others are on a forensic rabbit hunt. We suspect design from similarity between cellular machinery and human engineering. We want to see how far the rabbit hole goes.
Well it looks like communication is possible.
In the context of these discussions, let me raise a point. The desire for succinct, precise, objective definitions can be thought of as definitional reductionism. The Design Matrix, in contrast, offers what amounts to a holistic definition. We gain more confidence in our design inference when a suspicion is supported by the convergence of four criteria that have long been used in the teleology/non-teleology debates.
June 4th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Hi All -
Bunny tracks look like bunny feet… so finding bunny tracks instantly tells us something about bunnies (at least what their feet look like).
What does biological complexity tell us about the Designer? Nobody thinks the Designer looks like a flagellum, of course… but does it tell us that thought was required in order to bring it into existence?
If we could agree on what things think and what things do not think, we might have a chance at investigating this question. But I've seen that not even ID proponents can agree amongst themselves about these things.
If you think I'm wrong, take this test: Which of the following things think, and which do not:
1) humans
2) slime mold
3) spiders
4) computers
5) evolutionary processes
There is no consensus even among IDers (much less the scientific community at large) about which of these are intelligent, or purposeful, or willful, or conscious, or thinking entities - and which are not. If ID can't even come up with a principled way to agree on these observable entities, when we can actually study them right in our laboratories, how can it hope to reach a conclusion regarding a completely unobservable, hypothetical entity?
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 11:19 am
June 4th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Hi aiguy,
If you read the essay, it is not about biological complexity requiring thought to bring it into existence. It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner.
Another point comes to mind. A couple years back, some critics were arguing that life's dependence on both proteins and nucleic acids was evidence of multiple designers. My essay shows otherwise.
As for trying to reach consensus/agreement, we need to remember what Monod noted:
Because a design inference may necessarily rely on this subjective element, consensus may be a fantasy (and there are plenty of social and historical data to support that suspicion). What would thus matter is what I outline in The Design Matrix: a) people lay their cards on the table by using an open-ended method with agreed upon criteria and b) success is not measured by consensus/agreement of inference, but by the ability to illuminate biotic reality.
Comment by MikeGene — June 4, 2008 @ 11:44 am
June 4th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Hi Mike,
Apologies - I'm a newbie on your site - which essay are we talking about here?
But Monod was not attempting to explore how to characterize cognition - just the opposite. Also he wrote this more than thirty years ago, and there has been an explosion of knowledge in the cognitive sciences since then.
I'm saying something a bit different than this. It is not just that two people looking at the same evidence might reach different conclusions about whether something is thinking (or intelligent) or not. Rather, I am saying that people do not know the meaning of the question they are attempting to answer. Some believe that consciousness must be involved; others don't. Some believe that physical cause must be transcended; others don't. Some believe that learning is essential; others think differently. And so on.
Until ID manages to put some concrete meaning to these terms, people will forever talk past each other, arguing about definitions rather than the facts of the matter without even realizing it. With definitions in place, we can finally see how much actual subjectivity there is in all this, without the confusion over what we're supposed to be detecting in the first place.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Hi Aiguy,
http://www.idthink.net/biot/ra...
I was fooled too. I was going to argue about what the tracks in the snow really looked like to me.
Comment by Pez — June 4, 2008 @ 12:33 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Thanks for the link, Pez.
But the essay confirms the point I'm trying to make here. The essay talks about designs, designing and designers, like this from the Design Matrix:
But as you well know, you and I and FMM and kornbelt and nullasalus all have very different ideas about what it means to be designed. Null thinks this means a conscious entity planned it out. You think something which could transcend physical cause was involved. Other ID advocates here say that evolutionary processes can be considered intelligent and can design.
So we aren't just disagreeing about our subjective views on what the evidence says. Rather, we are all trying to answer different questions.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
aiguy,
I think you're on the wrong track, at least as far as my own views are concerned. It's not about understanding the cognitive processes of any putative designer. It's simply about making a correlation about the output of "black boxes".
My children don't understand anything about the cognitive processes of humans or dogs. But they can tell the difference between they way dogs and people act.
If I made two black boxes that output two sets of repeating series of numbers, and then presented a third black box that produced the same set of numbers as box A, it would be reasonable to infer that box A and C were the "same kind of thing." You might say they have the "same cognitive processes", I might say, "they have the same number generating algorithm". My kids might say, "it's the same kind of box, dad." Nobody need know anything about the innards of the box. All we're looking at is the output.
So, in my case, I look at the "output" in the form of intra-cellular machinery and processes and make a correspondence to human designed machinery and processes, and I make a tentative forensic suspicion that the "same kind of thing" is at work in the design of both. It's not proof, and nobody around here (as far as I know), claims that it is. It's a suspicion based on correspondence, and not merely [edit: metaphor].
Please get a copy of Mike's book so you will be equipped to discuss more of the particulars.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 1:02 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Hi KB -
Good clarification - so it's not actually about the detection of "cognition" per se (or "intelligence" or "design" or "thought").
But if this truly was the approach here, why would the entire project be saddled with these difficult concepts like "intelligent" and "design" and "teleology" It just befuddles the analysis with extraneous philosophical connotations (not to mention dragging the whole culture war nonsense into it).
As we've discussed, similar effects sometimes have similar cause and sometimes don't. Your kids notice "it's the same sort of box, Dad" - but I notice that the "box" on top of our shoulders (our brains) is quite obviously and radically different from whatever "box" might have designed my brain in the first place. So without talking about the boxes per se, finding the "output" to be similar can't really tell us if the boxes are similar or not. One box could have a blind, unguided natural process inside, while the other had a little tiny human being, and they could both output the same stuff.
So in order to say anything at all about what makes these sequences (or proteins or…) we need to be able to talk about different kinds of boxes with some clarity. Otherwise we'll forever be remarking that this or that looks like what a human engineer would come up with, but we'll have no ability to draw any conclusions (subjective or not) about the significance of these observations… because we haven't decided what attributes of human engineering are even relevant (consciousness? volition? learning? having a brain? etc).
Will do!
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Hi aiguy,
Just click on the bunny prints. If you read the essay, it is not about biological complexity requiring thought to bring it into existence. It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner.
Comment by MikeGene — June 4, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Mike -
Thanks, I read the essay. Here is a good example from the essay of what I'm talking about here:
I submit that nobody here can actually say what this sentence means, since nobody can say what the difference between a "designer" and a "designer-mimic" is. (Or, more accurately, everyone will have a very different idea about what the difference is).
Likewise, you've repeated this:
Until I know what you mean by "thought" (e.g. do you mean conscious thought?) I can't decide if there is evidence for "thought" connecting these molecules or not.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
aiguy,
You can get by it with assumptions. 'I assume that X is not designed, but note that X is very similar to Y, which is designed'. Granted, the science problem there is obvious, but it's a way to communicate the idea.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Hi nullasalus,
When you say "Y is designed", you mean "Y was reflected upon by a conscious mind". When KB says "Y is designed" he means something very different - so different that I honestly can't say how the two meanings intersect. So the problem isn't the science, it's the basic communication.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Hi aiguy:
So what? What's the problem? Anytime we try to make some sense of a complex reality by attaching man-made concepts to our outside reality, we run into problems. For example, I recently highlighted examples where leading biologists still have much trouble defining life, species, and even self-replication. People have very different ideas about these words, yet biology survives and thrives. We could add other words which mean different things to different people "“ science, evolution, creationism, evidence, etc. There is no reason why I have to conform to standards that are atypically excessive.
If someone cannot follow my meaning by considering the context, then it merely means another person wasn't able to follow my meaning. I will only become concerned if I come to think that no one can follow my meaning and my points become completely incomprehensible to everyone.
As it stands, "it is not about biological complexity requiring thought to bring it into existence. It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner. It is about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner."
If you don't see it, you don't see it.
If you see it, there is more to see.
I'm not out to convince you or force you to "decide," aiguy. For why would I hold my perspective hostage to yours, when it is Nature herself who ultimately judges?
Gotta run…..
Comment by MikeGene — June 4, 2008 @ 2:19 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
aiguy,
Well, hold on. I can mean 'reflected upon by a conscious mind', or I can mean something else. It's a question of specifying, sure, but it's possible within that (philosophical) context. I'm not committed to a single viewpoint - I'll typically just argue one for the purposes of discussion.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
It's partly about looking at an effect and making a categorical inference about the cause. "Design" certainly implies something, but it need not imply any thing more than that is a "like" another cause in the sense that it can effect the same output. Humans design things. One need not get bogged down into how they do it to discuss what the characteristics of their effects are.
In the case of cellular machinery, an impressive analogy is seen between what humans can produce and what has been produced in cells. No matter what you call it, what is important is that the thing that produced cells is able to mimic the artifacts of human engineering.
If it can be demonstrated that the processes within cells require something like "foresight" (sorry, no way to get away from that concept - Dawkins couldn't either) - the ability to "see past" the "next/proximate state" - then something other than "blind" nature as that is normally understood must be at work.
Partly because of statements like this:
Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning. The purpose of this book is to resolve this paradox to the satisfaction of the reader, and the purpose of this chapter is further to impress the reader with the power of the illusion of design. We shall look at a particular example and shall conclude that, when it comes to complexity and beauty of design, Paley hardly even began to state the case. (Blind Watchmaker, R. Dawkins, chapter 2)
Are Dawkin's words here meaningful to you? If not, then I don't think there's much hope for you.
It's impossible to get away from words like "foresight", "look ahead", "blind", "see beyond", "goals", because we're humans and we have and use that ability, and it leads to particular kinds of effects. Effects that seem to "see beyond" the next/proximate effect. In the case of cellular machinery (among other things), we are looking at something and thinking about whether the same kind of "foresight" is required to produce the effect. This is what Dawkins is doing when he writes words like that, and that's we we're doing when we refer to a possible telic cause of a given effect.
The question then is, could the cellular machinery and processes have arising without something that can "see beyond" the next/proximate effect? That remains to be answered, obviously. What makes some us wonder is the stunning likeness of intra-cellular machinery and processes to human designed machinery and processes. It's only a clue. It's not proof of anything. But it is meaningful.
That's right, and it doesn't matter. Two things that produce the same output can be considered to be the same kind of thing or that one thing can mimic another.
One possible way science can help is to try to figure out ways "blind" nature could have come up with the cellular system. If it can, the telic hypothesis is falsified. If we discover cellular processes that are truly irreducibly complex, then the "blind" naturalistic hypothesis is falsified.
The telic forensic suspicion is useful if it spurs research towards answering these questions.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
kornbelt888,
I'm sure he'll reply himself, but aiguy's said before that he thinks Dawkins is making the same mistake he believes ID proponents and others are making. So I'd vouch for his consistency on that straightaway. And his generally pleasant demeanor, since I'm throwing out compliments here.
On the other hand, since Mike doesn't think ID is science (though it may become such later), I'm not sure the issue applies in MG's case.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 3:17 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
aiguy,
MikeGene said:
This is the point I was trying to make the other day with my crude remarks about eating and pooping, etc. Given the ambiguities, how are you able to comprehend anything? That leads me to suspect you're mentally challenged in a way atypical of the participants here, or you just here to "stir the pot", so to speak.
Seriously.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I don't think ID is science (yet) either. That's not the point. aiguy is demanding some kind of precision of the terms employed that apparently nobody is capable of providing. Of course, he's free to demand all he wants to. And as long as it's fun, I'll reply.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 3:57 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I think the difficulty here lies in the fact that Mike is not trying to make an argument, while a lot of us reading think that he is trying to make one. When one speaks of 'evidence' for certain things, then this sounds to me like making an argument. But if one says 'If you don't see it, you don't see it. If you see it, there is more to see.' then this does not sound to me like making an argument.
If you want to make an argument based on an observation, then the important factors in that argument have to be well defined. They don't need a universally true definition, just an operational definition to see if the point holds. That's what biologists do with terms like species. In general, when one argues a point involving the term 'species', it is well understood what the term species means in this context. Species might mean something different elsewhere, and that's just fine.
In Mike's case, it seems to me that IF this was an argument supported by evidence, then the term 'thought' should indeed be defined. Not universally, mind you, but at least get an operational definition for this particular context. However, since all Mike is doing is essentially writing prose which may change the POV of some, and leave other untouched, it is certainly not necessary for him to do so.
Comment by hrun — June 4, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
hrun,
I agree with you mostly.
I've never thought Mike was making an argument, but I think he's doing more than merely writing prose. If you've read his book I think it should be clear that he is on a forensic investigation to see what comes up with regards to telic-like inspired machinery and processes, particularly of the intra-cellular kind, and spur others on to do the same thing.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Well, to me 'a forensic investigation' generally ends with somebody making an argument for something. You know, making an argument about the plausibility, possibility or likelihood that something did or did not occur. So if you describe it as a forensic investigation, I would immediately think that Mike is making an argument. And if he is making an argument in this case, namely that thought connects two molecules, is it not reasonable to ask what he means by thought in this specific case?
Comment by hrun — June 4, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Mike -
What I see is that everyone is reading their own meaning into what is being talked about, without being explicit about it. I have my own reasons for thinking this is a bad thing, but maybe you think that's just fine. Maybe ID is supposed to be like poetry, where everybody finds different meaning in the same words.
I know - my religious friends say very similar things about their various faiths. That's fine.
I just think it wouldn't be all that hard to try and pin down just a bit what is meant by 'design'. For example, the issue of a conscious vs. an unconscious process is quite fundamental, no? Do you not think it matters if people are imagining the evidence for design is evidence for conscious thought or not? If these distinctions are truly unimportant, then I'm really not sure what ID is trying do.
Nullasalus -
So it can mean "produced by an unguided, natural process" instead?
KB -
Ok, so you mean that the cause is "like" a human, but everybody can mean something different in terms of the ways in which they are alike.
And I don't find that important in the same sense because humans and non-human processes do things so differently. The fact that humans and clouds produce high-voltage arcs does not convince me that clouds think about making lightning the way humans do.
Most people who study cognition believe human thought goes from proxmimate state to proximate state, with only the end result being accessible to our consciousness. So while it appears that we somehow "see past" the next state, we actually considered and discarded that state subconsciously.
You believe that Dawkins is clear and correct about everything he writes? I wouldn't have thought that was the case. In my opinion, Dawkins is confused on any number of issues. For example, I disagree with him that "God" is an hypothesis that can be scientifically evaluated and dismissed as false. And yes, I think he is utterly confused about philosophy of mind as well.
See above. The reason we have to use metaphorical words like "sight" (even though we really aren't talking about optical vision here) is because we are describing what it feels like to come across a solution. We don't know how we do it, which is why scientists have to do experiments to figure it out. It might be just "blind, unguided" processes inside our heads after all, which would really confuse the entire ID project (ID could no longer say that "sighted" processes were involved rather than "blind" processes).
Hmmm, I'm not sure I can agree here. If the Sun produced light and heat by chemical combustion, we would be faced with the odd paradox that it is still burning after billions of years. It produces light and heat all right, but the same output can come from very different causes, and nuclear reactions are very different.
The "telic hypothesis" says that "not-blind" (or "sighted") nature is responsible. Now you ask me to figure out how "blind" nature could have been responsible, in order to falsify the claim that "not blind" nature was responsible. And neither of us can say for sure if the processes underlying even human design abilities are "blind" or "not blind". So this enterprise seems to be a little far fetched to me.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
What do you mean by "considered", aiguy?
Comment by Bilbo — June 4, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Hi Bilbo -
Please don't think I'm suggesting we actually have a model of how human thought works, or even that we can say it is "entirely the result of brain activity". I am saying we really do not know how we think. But we do know that most of what goes on when we make plans, solve problems, and design things is not accessible to our conscious awareness, and our experiments do bear that much out.
For example, if you ask someone if two pictures are of the same object in different orientations, the time it will take them to figure out the answer is proportional to the number of degrees of rotation that the two figures differ by - as though our brains actually were rotating the figure in memory to see if it would match up. We aren't aware of this rotation, but there is some evidence that we're doing it. There are journals filled with such evidence.
Edit: To us, it seems as though we see through right to the answer, without having to consider intermediate positions at all.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 4:49 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
aiguy,
As in the word 'designed' can mean that? I don't think so, personally. Not in an ID context. Though I also think casting what goes on in the human mind as 'blind, unguided processes' - or even entertaining the potential for that (at least as a whole) is hopeless. You once talked about certain basic assumptions that, while they can't be proven, must be taken for granted for conversation to proceed (existence of other minds, etc.) I think 'human thoughts and considerations can be and are purposeful' is one of those assumptions.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 4:52 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Nullasalus,
Of course I agree - we couldn't make sense of human behavior without intentional language (and we certainly wouldn't want to!). You have made clear what it is you are talking about here (conscious, sentient mind), and how far you think that logical inferences against the physical evidence can take us, and how you choose to go the rest of the distance. You know I have no issue with that stance at all, and that it isn't so far from what I think too.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
aiguy,
What if humans were able to produce clouds that produce high-voltage arcs?
Something about that depiction seems 'off' to me, but I suppose it's close enough for me to put it aside.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I'll ask again, aiguy: What do you mean by "considered"
Comment by Bilbo — June 4, 2008 @ 5:13 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Nullasalus,
Sorry, don't see what you're getting at.
Bilbo,
I meant that the process by which our brains solve problems and design things might progress from proximate state to proximate state, and to "consider" a series of states means our brains physically transition through a series of different states of neural activity. I do not mean consciously "consider" - in this case I mean unconsciously "consider".
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
OK, aiguy, what do you mean by "solve"
Comment by Bilbo — June 4, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
aiguy,
It seems you're arguing that just because humans and clouds both produce high-voltage arcs, you see no reason to suppose that the electric arcs clouds produce are designed (while someone could/would obviously insist that the electric arcs humans make are designed). But a human making a cloud that produced an electric arc would at least establish that clouds (and their resulting effects) could be designed, rather than 'being brought about by natural, unguided processes'. And so on with every natural example.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Hi Bilbo -
I actually don't think there is any confusion at all between us regarding what the word "solve" means in this context. In the example I provided, to 'solve' the problem meant to answer the question posed of whether or not the two figures were of the same object.
I've noticed that when I ask people to look more closely at their assumptions and intuitions about mind, one thing that some people do is react with a hyper-skeptical defense: If AIGuy makes me say exactly what I mean by "intelligence", then I will simply challenge his use of every word he types!
I am not the only one who believes that discussions about minds require careful use of technical vocabulary, Bilbo. Everyone who does scientific or philosophical investigations of cognition feels the same way.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Nullasalus,
I was hoping this was not what you were getting at, actually. With this argument, you see the universe as a whole as designed, so why look at anything in particular and try to decide if it has the tell-tale signs of "design" or not?
Anyway, no, if a human could build a lightning-generating cloud, that would not tell us if a human-like mind was responsible for these clouds in nature or not, any more than the fact we can generate lightning tells us that clouds have minds.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
So would you have a problem with saying that the goal, in this case, is to answer the question of whether or not the two figures were of the same object?
Comment by Bilbo — June 4, 2008 @ 5:39 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Bilbo,
Sure - that was the subject's goal. (And the goal of a falling apple is to return to the Earth, just as Aristotle thought, right?)
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 5:44 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Are you being sarcastic? Do you think that was the subject's goal, or don't you?
Comment by Bilbo — June 4, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Bilbo,
I am not being sarcastic. Yes, of course that was the subject's goal.
We might have a more productive discussion if you tried to actually articulate some thought or to make an argument rather than interrogate me looking for some opportunity to trip me up.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
aiguy,
Bingo. Which is exactly why I regard the ID/no-ID issue as entirely philosophical. On the other hand, human advances in engineering, science, etc do lend some support to this position - so I think the general theme MikeGene, Kornbelt888 and others are dealing with have some philosophical weight. If it's similar to stuff 'we' design, there may be a reason for that.
It doesn't answer the question, but it provides something interesting to talk about that (philosophically) design proponents can pick up and run with. As for clouds having minds - I find it a doubtful assertion, but that isn't stopping the panpsychists and those similar.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Perhaps. Which is why we should focus on the effects contra the effects of "blind" nature (a process without goals or foresight beyond the next next/proximate effect.)
You seemed to have ignored my use of the term "mimic." Humans and clouds can mimic "one another" with respect to voltage arcs. Very well then. But can clouds produce something akin to automobiles? If I were a man living 5000 years ago, knew nothing of automobiles, and I only had access to cloud effects and something like an automobile, I doubt I would suspect they came from the same kind of cause.
Understanding the internal workings of human cognitive processes is unnecessary in a forensic investigation. The police do it all the time by merely considering the effects that humans produce.
Fair enough. But you asked me why telic language is used by ID. I just showed you one example why. Have you e-mailed him and demanded he reprint his book in order to clarify what he meant?
Perhaps you should do a pubmed search for telic terms within peer reviewed biology papers and see what you come up with. I think the common understanding of those terms if sufficient to make a good start at a forensic telic investigation.
The reason we have to use metaphorical words at all is because humans have the capacity for abstract thought that cannot be expressed in concrete language except via metaphor. You can make the language less colorful, but you can't make it less abstract.
At any rate, how we produce the effects we do is irrelevant to the fact that do, in fact, produce them, we know we do it, and we manifest certain kinds of effects that we apply the term "goal" and "foresight" to. And we recognize that we do. Human effects are very much the part of the ID investigation. Without human reason there would be no investigation.
Whatever kind of processes they are, they are special, because they produce special kinds of effects that we, ourselves, recognize to be special. Human reason could be an illusion, but that were true, everything else, including all of science, would be subject to that same damning judgment.
One issue to keep in mind here is that you cannot take yourself, and other humans, out of the picture. You're inside of it, not outside. Either our mental processes, the ones that make hypotheses, and inferences, and recognize our own mental processes as special, are special, or they are not, and science in general is a lark. You can't saw off the intellectual branch you're sitting on, and expect to remain connected to the tree.
Do you consider human reason to be valid?
If there was absolutely no difference in the effects, there would no reason to suspect a difference in the cause. Stellar radiation due to nuclear fusion, for example, has many well understood "signatures", depending on the particular elements involved, and they differ with chemical combustion. (Red-shifted atomic signatures is how we determine the distance of a star.)
I'm not asking you, personally, to do anything. That's the job of molecular biologists, and some of them are trying to figure it out. And rightly so.
Heh. Let's turn the tables here: what did you just mean by "blind" and "not blind" Surely, there's some kind of meaning attached to those terms in your mind, other than merely parroting my words, and other than the obvious metaphorical association.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 5:59 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
So in the case of the question of whether or not two figures were of the same object, we could say that the brain may have unconsciously transitioned through a number of neurological states that were representations of the object, until it either found a match or not. And we could say that this whole process occurred in order to answer the question. In other words, that the goal was to answer the question.
Comment by Bilbo — June 4, 2008 @ 5:59 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Nullasalus,
Again I appreciate your view about the epistemology (which is all I meant about you "choosing to go the rest of the distance"). I don't understand how you believe seeing what humans can manage to build impacts the philosophical arguments, though. It never changes the issue regarding different paths to the same result.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Running out of time at this library. Aiguy, you've admitted there are such thing as goals. We could, if we wanted to, say that gravity is a goal of nature — to attract objects to each other.
So far, there doesn't seem to be any identifiable goal in nature that would lead to proteins, RNA, or DNA. If they arose in nature, it seems they did so randomly. One can hold that view, but the odds seem to be rather implausible.
And as Mike Gene's current essay seems to suggest, proteins, RNA, and DNA exhibit signs that they were the result of goal directed behavior.
Meanwhile, there is Darwinian evolution, which takes over once we have living organisms. Darwinian evolution does have a goal: to produce organisms that will survive and reproduce. It's a shortsighted goal. It's not trying to answer the question of what will survive one billion years from now. Just, what will survive now?
If we find features in organisms that suggest far-sighted goals (like what will survive one billion years from now? or what will make it easier for
this organism to travel?), it suggests that something more than Darwinian evolution is involved. And perhaps that will help you understand the difference between ID and non-ID.
Comment by Bilbo — June 4, 2008 @ 6:24 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
aiguy,
Largely because the issue is whether what we see in the universe (including the universe itself) could conceivably be designed by a human-like mind, as opposed to being in origin and development mostly 'unguided natural processes'. (Only "mostly" because humans certainly do exist, and certainly do design, so the totality can't be unguided.) So as humans design more and more things - gardens, artificial lakes, new breeds of animal, perhaps create life from non-life in the lab, and so on - we're directing, guiding, and to a degree creating more and more of nature intentionally. If we can create a simulation of the (or even 'a') universe a la Nick Bostrom and others, we'll have arguably designed the totality, at least in one form.
But the closer we come to that situation, the less we need to lean on 'unguided, natural processes' as an explanation for what we see. Design in principle explains everything, and it's the one thing we're certain of by virtue of being designers. The truly unguided, however, is merely postulated to exist. It will always remain -possible-. But every time the guided achieves what the assumed unguided can do, it makes the "no guidance" assumption less parsimonious. Along the lines of, say, arguing Mount Rushmore was formed by 'unguided, natural processes'. Well, no, because we have evidence that such formations are human artifacts. So, what happens when forests, planets, and universes (even simulated ones) are also human artifacts?
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 6:28 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
KB,
You argued that like effects come from like causes, and I'm pointing out that independent evidence is always required for the simple reason that like effects also come from unlike causes. This is especially true when the hypothesized cause is completely unknown (an unspecified thing operating according to unspecified process).
From the previous thread:
ID requires that we can detect "intelligent agency" by observing artifacts, but commits the fallacy of over-generalization by mistaking the methods of human archeology or human forensics for instances of "intelligent agency" detection in the abstract. It is never "intelligent agency" that is actually detected, but rather it is some particular type of organism that we happen to call intelligent. The detected cause of the phenomenon in question is always a human, or some other animal, or even some extra-terrestrial life form, but never some unspecified type of "intelligent agent", and never "intelligence" per se.
I have had one e-mail exchange with Dawkins. I didn't tell him to reprint his book. I took him to task on a couple of issues and he responded with citations to his books, which turned out to be completely non-responsive to my points.
How we produce the effects we do is central to the question ID is asking! ID assumes that however humans build machines, the machines of biology are built in a somehow similar manner. But if the processes by which humans build machines proceeds according to blind, unguided processes, this makes ID's conclusions very difficult to interpret meaningfully.
We've had this argument, and you referred me to C.S. Lewis. I think his arguments are lame because of this: 1) Either human reason is valid or not.
2) If it isn't, nothing we say matters.
3) If it is, we don't have to worry about it
Exactly right! Now, what is difference between what "intelligence" does and what "not intelligence" does? In order to decide, we need to be able to test two things independently: First, we need a procedure for identifying intelligent things, and second we need a procedure for identifying their signatures. I grant the latter - what is the former?
The "telic hypothesis" says that "not-blind" (or "sighted") nature is responsible. Now you ask molecular biologists to figure out how "blind" nature could have been responsible, in order to falsify the claim that "not blind" nature was responsible. And neither you nor they can say for sure if the processes underlying even human design abilities are "blind" or "not blind". So this enterprise seems to be a little far fetched to me.
To me (and Nullasalus) "not blind" means "conscious". Will you agree to this meaning?
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Bilbo,
In the interest of efficiency, I'll wait until you've formulated some point before I respond. It seems you believe that "goals" are uniquely mental, but again, we could just as reasonably say the goal of a river is to deliver water to the sea. (Cybernetics has operationalized the notions of goals and purpose, but these definitions don't seem popular here).
EDIT: Bilbo, just saw your last post - I'll respond to that one.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Bilbo,
Or we could say that falling to Earth is the goal of the apple.
Yes, the goal (in the same non-mentalistic sense) apparently was to produce biological systems.
I find "randomness" to be a perfectly meaningless explanation for anything at all.
In cybernetics, "goal directed" means "incorporating negative feedback". Evolutionary processes incorporate negative feedback, so they are purposeful in this cybernetic sense. If you mean something else - like conscious goals or mental goals - then I have no idea how to begin to investigate those in the context of ID.
If I haven't mentioned it to you, I don't believe Darwinian evolution can account for what we observe in biology. So the question becomes what can account for it? Saying that the cause has "far-sighted goals" doesn't imply anything like human mentality. It implies "front-loading", but it doesn't imply the "sightedness" or awareness of that front-loader. It could just as well be a blind, natural, unguided front-loading of biological forms that will unfold over time.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
aiguy,
I want to make one thing clear here: In a discussion you and I had, I defined (for the purposes of the discussion) an intelligent Designer as 'conscious'. I've also said others may have other definitions of it which may well be valid. I could entirely accept other formulations of a Designer which are intelligent but not 'human-like conscious', or Designers that don't exhibit human-like foresight but instead foresight of another (still very real) variety. The Designer may well be an immutable, eternal, unchanging principle - those discussions are long and involved, and a variety of views are and should be in play.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 6:52 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Nullasalus,
Ah, thanks - that's interesting. On one hand, if we someday use our human minds to create an entire universe, it is an existence proof that human-like minds can create universes. On the other hand, if we someday create a truly human-like mind (using an algorithmic machine), Dembski's "entire theology will crumble" (as he famously declared) because we will have shown that human-like intelligence operates by nothing but pure, blind physical causation. Ouch, my head! This is why philosophers have to be so smart. They should make more money.
Ok, I now understand where you were going with this - thanks. This actually gives me something to think about.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Nullasalus,
My complaint there is that conscious awareness is the single factor in our inter-subjective human experience that can differentiate mental from physical cause. Once you claim agnosticism about consciousness, then we no longer have a way to understand what you mean when you speak of guided as opposed to blind processes, or a sighted front-loader as opposed to a blind front loader.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Nullasalus,
Seriously - this is an interesting notion regarding Bostrom's simworld that I didn't appreciate. The universe can be shown to have likely arisen from mind, and (since the simulation includes agents) mind can be shown to be nothing but natural law (since the sim runs algorithmically). If you start with the simulation, you see it as law-directed, and if you start with programmer, you see it as mind-directed. Could this be the basis of a Bohr-like complementarianism?
New idea? Old hat for Bostrom fans? I just went to Bostrom's home page for the first time - looks like I'm going to spend some time there.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 7:33 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Getting closer to the duck and the rabbit.
Heh heh, I think we're getting somewhere.
Hats off to Nullasalus for that one!
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
KB -
See, I'm really not the nasty old Darwinist materialist determinist atheist relativist eugenicist white-coated scientism fundamentalist you took me for.
I've been thinking about cosmic minds all my life (and I'm pretty darn old too). That's why I've learned there is no principle by which we can distinguish intelligent from non-intelligent cause in general, unless we explicitly are talking about conscious awareness. And once we talk about conscious awareness of unobservable beings, we leave the realm of the empirical completely.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 8:32 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
That's not exactly what I said. I said that like effects can come from like causes or causes that can mimic other causes.
Only if I'm trying to prove something, which apparently you seem to think I'm arguing.
Cellular machinery is strikingly analogous to human engineering. Cellular machinery is not strikingly analogous to any other effect from any other cause. This leads to a forensic suspicion that is leading to a forensic investigation. That's all I've been saying, and nothing more.
I got into the fray originally because you were complaining that the terms like "design" are meaningless. I think you're wrong with regards to the cell, simply because "design" is used as a tag for what humans do. Since human effects are the criterion that the evidence is being compared with, it's a perfectly meaningful term.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 8:34 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
If you stay focused on the evidence and keeping asking yourself, "how much does this look like human engineering", and "is a human engineer or human engineer mimic required for this", you'll stay out of the swamp.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Not in the least. Not me, anyway.
I have no idea how I produce anything in terms of the machinery of my brain. But I still keep designing stuff.
Remember, it's we humans are who are doing the considering of the issue of telic causation. We are telic by definition. By definition, human design is not blind. If you put yourself out, there's no way to get back in again. But if you accept that you are a telic cause, we can examine effects and compare them to what we know we can do, and see if there's reason for forensic suspicion.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
aiguy,
I've never seen Bostrom himself advocate what I'm saying, mind you - I refer to him because he's advanced the general idea of a simulated reality being a strong possibility. He does have other interesting ideas, though, and he's been fun to read here and there. But this is something I worked out for myself (naturally influenced by other philosophical thoughts, of course.)
It's what I was alluding to in another thread, when I mentioned believing that the philosophical ramifications of computers/simulation haven't been fully appreciated yet. And this aspect (design v unguided) is just the tip of the iceberg.
And thanks, kornbelt888, for the compliment. I'm glad it's stirring some thought here.
Comment by nullasalus — June 4, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Yes, we had this argument, but you didn't win it. If you didn't assume your reason is valid, what are you doing here? Just having a play with words? Naw, I suspect you think your own reason is a valid enough. Otherwise what pragmatic good could come of any of this?
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 8:47 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I don't know. I could throw out some attributes, but the question is largely uninteresting to me. I can tell you the difference between what human engineers do and what other causes do.
As I've said, I'm not interested in explaining the inner workings of the cause of cellular machinery or deciding if it's a human or a god or whatever else. Because of the analogy between cells and human engineering, I'm interested in further research into whether or not non-human forces can plausibly produce such a thing (yes, you read that right), how we might apply the machinery of cells to better use, and how we might engineer nano-technology ourselves. (Of course, I'm also interested in any clear designer signatures within genomes, or pointers to more information about a designer, but that's an entirely other matter.)
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
KB,
Each time I complain, I try to make clear that these terms are meaningless in this context unless they were qualified somehow. I obviously don't mean that they somehow can't be assigned specific meaning. Moreover, when they are assigned meaning, I complained that the specific meanings did not logically follow from any consideration of empirical evidence that independent researchers could agree on. But here on TT the zeitgeist seems to be that you're not crafting an empirical argument, but rather brainstorming on interesting ideas.
I'm all for brainstorming, but I won't stop complaining about cognitive intuitionism being a dead-end street: If you don't say what you mean, then all of your ideas about mind will simply sink under equivocations that you're not even aware of. I really want to know if consciousness is causal, but I won't just implicitly assume it and start talking about "intelligence" when I really mean a conscious volition that transcends physical cause.
OK, not you. Pez really did state - over and over again - that "purpose" and "intent" can be detected by observation. And I suspect lots of others here (Bradford comes to mind) who are still laboring under the illusion that conscious, sentient mind is the best explanation for specified complexity (or some such thing), and simply leave out the "conscious, sentient" part because that makes it sound too unscientific.
If you changed "forensic" (which really has to do with human legal affairs and is misleading for the reasons I've given above) to "philosophical" I wouldn't take issue with anything you've said. (I have the same suspicion, but for me it really is all about consciousness (because otherwise I don't know how to distinguish the mental from the physical).
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Unknown. And I don't think it matters. I'm not trying to explain the internals of the cause. Only whether or not natural forces can produce cells not. That the cellular machinery is strikingly similar to human engineering is a forensic clue that blind natural causes alone may not be. Further research is required.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Whuh? That hasn't been my impression of you.
To use Mike's idea, I and others are on a forensic rabbit hunt. We suspect design from similarity between cellular machinery and human engineering. We want to see how far the rabbit hole goes.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 9:11 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
KB,
I'm running out of steam here, but I want to put this one to bed:
I mounted a counter-argument which you have now twice ignored. For the third time:
1) Either human reason is valid or not.
2) If it isn't, nothing we say matters, because our arguments will all be unreliable (including this one).
3) Else (if our reason is reliable), then we don't have to worry about our reason being reliable.
Do you disagree with any of these statements?
It's clear that we can't possibly know if our reason is valid, because valid reason is required for all knowledge. Since we can not know, we can only assume one answer or the other, and so we assume it is.
One last time: Our reason is either valid or it is not, and nothing we assume to be true about evolution, naturalism, minds, volition, God, or any other thing can possibly have any affect on the situation. And neither can any of our beliefs about any of these things be justified by our assumption or desire that our reasoning capability is reliable.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Well, nobody's crafting a scientific theory if that's what you mean, but otherwise, yes, I think you've got it.
Nothing wrong with greater precision in terminology. You're input is welcome.
Please read Mike's book and join the rabbit hunt.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 9:15 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Hi aiguy,
Although you did not define "see," I think you are making a claim about what you see with your own mind's eye. But while you may see this, I don't see it as being that hopeless or reckless. To one extent or another, all human beings read their own meaning into what is being said, as perception is not a passive process. Nevertheless, I'm not as pessimistic as you, as I see that others are interpreting my words in the way I have in mind. I see nodes of agreement.
I'm not saying how ID is supposed to be, but I do know there is plenty of middle room between poetry and the idealized notion of science (and remember that even science has trouble defining many basic concepts).
You began by asking two questions: "What does biological complexity tell us about the Designer? Nobody thinks the Designer looks like a flagellum, of course"¦ but does it tell us that thought was required in order to bring it into existence?"
I did not need you to rigorously define "complexity," "thought,." or "required." I was able to understand your question and spot the two places where the questions did not apply. The essay was not about "biological complexity," it was about two different biological molecules "“ proteins and DNA. And the essay was not about thought being required to bring them into existence; it was about the evidence that thought seems to connect two unrelated, crucial molecules "“ DNA and proteins "“ in a remarkably sophisticated manner.
Rather than take DNA and proteins for granted, and treat them as brute givens that play background roles in a story that stars the Blind Watchmaker, I explore these molecules and find a set of similarities that not only show the two unrelated molecules to be variations on the same theme, but they actually complement each other in remarkable ways. Is it really a coincidence that the alpha helix so nicely matches the major groove?
Of course it's fine. Because that is what it boils down to in the end.
Then do it.
In the meantime, I'm able to follow the lead of Dawkins ("biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose"), Crick ("Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.") and Monod ("I have cited it only to emphasize how arbitrary and pointless it would be to deny that the natural organ "“ the eye "“ represents that materialization of a "purpose" - that of picking up images "“ while this is indisputably also the origin of the camera.") I can communicate with people like this and I don't think most would have a hard time with my point about limitations on the designer-mimic.
Sure. Is the cause like us? Do we see something that leads us to suspect that another mind was behind its origin? As Monod noted, "it is through reference to our own activity, conscious and projective, intentional and purposive-it is as makers of artifacts-that we judge of a given object's "naturalness" or "artificialness."" This observation resonates loudly with my own personal, subjective experience in detecting any design, thus it is useful. If someone comes up with a rigorous objective method built on rigorous objective definitions, I will be sure to incorporate that and use it to confirm or disconfirm the hypotheses that have been built in the meantime.
What matters is whether a teleological perspective generates further insight and understanding of the biological world.
I'm in no position to explain what "ID is trying to do." I myself suspect the original life forms were designed by some agency with human-like intelligence and thus explore the biotic world from this perspective.
Comment by MikeGene — June 4, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
KB - I'll read it, I promise. Cheers for now.
Comment by aiguy — June 4, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Well, one definition is: Relating to the use of science or technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law. Except for an actual "court of law", I think that sounds closer to what is going on with Mike and his fellow-travelers. I don't normally think of detectives when I think of "philosophers", and I think of this as more detective work than anything else. Plus I just like the sound of the word "forsensic."
It's an interesting subject in it's own right. But what do you do with sleep walkers that have a "goal" to go to the bathroom, or walk to the kitchen in order to get food? Is it a violation of the terms "goal" and "foresight" to apply it to the unconscious sleepwalker? It seems brains came execute goals with foresight without consciousness.
I suspect consciousness is involved with the design of life and the universe for various other reasons, but just looking at cellular machinery, I am not compelled to require consciousness.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 4, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
June 4th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Hi kornbelt,
Well it looks like communication is possible.
In the context of these discussions, let me raise a point. The desire for succinct, precise, objective definitions can be thought of as definitional reductionism. The Design Matrix, in contrast, offers what amounts to a holistic definition. We gain more confidence in our design inference when a suspicion is supported by the convergence of four criteria that have long been used in the teleology/non-teleology debates.
Comment by MikeGene — June 4, 2008 @ 9:55 pm