ID 101
by MikeGeneWhat is Intelligent Design? If you ask a critic, he will probably tell you that ID is a disguised version of Creationism and nothing more than a Trojan Horse to get God taught in the public schools. If you ask a typical proponent of ID, he will probably tell you that ID is the best explanation for various biotic phenomena. If you ask me, I'll give you a different answer.
For me, ID begins exactly as William Dembski said it begins "“ with a question:
Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?
The first thing to note about the question is that you don't have to be a religious fundamentalist to ask it. You don't have to be a religious fundamentalist to consider it. In fact, you don't even have to be a religious fundamentalist to answer it.
The question is a good one, as it stems from the fact that certain things do exist in our reality only because they were brought into existence by an intelligent cause. If human beings did not exist, for example, Mount Rushmore would not exist. Thus, Mount Rushmore's existence is dependent on intelligent causation. So one begins to wonder if there are other aspects of our reality that are likewise dependent on intelligent causation. If so, can we detect them? If so, just how reliable is our detection?
This, in my opinion, is the very foundation of ID. It's not a position or socio-political movement or a system of belief. It is a question and expression of curiosity.
When we consider Dembski's question, many answer "˜no.' That is, they insist that we need to have information about the designers and their methods to detect design. This is the designer-centric approach that has been called into question on our blog (see here, here, and here).
The main problem with the designer-centric approach is that the truth of a design inference does not entail that we would also have independent evidence of the designers and their methods. For example, if some form of ETI seeded this planet with life 3.5 billion years ago, this would not entail that we would have the ability to study the ETI today.
Now, while I can respect the designer-centric approach, such that I do not demand its proponents abandon it, I think it illegitimate to expect everyone to answer Dembski's question with a "˜no.' In my mind, that is akin to throwing in the towel and giving up on an interesting question only because our current tools are inadequate to the investigative task. Yes, it is true that science relies on the designer-centric approach when it comes to things such as forensics and archaeology, but is this simply a matter of convenience or necessity?
If it is a matter of necessity, then it simply underscores the manner in which science is fundamentally limited in its ability to reconstruct the past. If intelligent design is indeed part of our biotic past, then science cannot ever hope to uncover it unless we are lucky enough to stumble upon the designers and/or their lab protocols and blueprints. Thus, science would be forced to look elsewhere and come up with an alternative story that does not involve intelligent design. While the non-teleological story may appear coherent and supported by pieces of circumstantial evidence, and while it can always be maintained with a bucket full of promissory notes, it would never converge on the reality of our past (again, assuming this reality includes ID).
The designer-centric approach not only gives up on the question of detecting design, but also gives up on trying to accurately reconstruct our past. There can be no evidence for design and there can be no evidence against design. Design would be forever hidden away firmly in our collective intellectual blind spot. The designer-centric position is thus fundamentally agnostic about ID.
On the other hand, things change if someone answers Dembski's question with a "˜yes.' At this point, we turn to these proposed methods for detecting design without the luxury of independent information about the designers. Do the methods work? If so, how reliable are they? And here you find all sorts of positions. The two most widely known methods are Michael Behe's concept of Irreducible Complexity and William Dembski's concepts of Specified Complexity and the Explanatory Filter. You will find people who think these methods have succeeded in detecting design and thus the payoff is in. On the other hand, you will find people who think these methods fail (this can either mean that there is no design or the methods are not up to the task of reliably detecting design). And then there are people somewhere in the middle (like yours truly), who is not convinced that the proposed methods have truly delivered a design inference, yet also think they are on the right track.
Thus, for me, ID becomes a challenging and exciting investigative search. If design, as a consequence of intelligent causation, exists amidst biotic reality, it might only be the most difficult question any investigator can address. The obstacles are many. And one of the most annoying obstacles is not from Nature herself. It comes from the manner in which many are willing to paint the investigator as deceptive apologist for sectarian views simply because the investigator finds the Question to be so intriguing.
May 30th, 2005 at 8:05 am
Hmmm. Mt. Rushmore was there long before the rise of humans. If humans did not exist, Rushmore would still be there, but less trammeled. Don't confuse existence of the rock with the sculptor's work on the rock.
Also, consider this: Designs on Mt. Rushmore are only crude, unworking replications of organic beings who actually did exist. Yes, the carving of Mt. Rushmore was done by designers — we know because we have films of the designers doing the carving, among other things. But they were merely making stone replicas of the visages of four people. Those people were designed, so far as Dembski can say, by wholly natural actions, in their mothers' wombs.
Dembski fails to consider one of the key things we know about design: Human, or intelligent, design that tries to replicate living things is no match for natural processes. Sure, living things are quite complex; but contrary to Dembski's claim, complexity is an indication of a natural process sans designer — the hallmark of design is simplicity, not complexity.
Dembski's work ignores what we really know about intelligent design, and begs the question by calling natural things designed for which there is not an iota of evidence for outside intervention in continuing natural processes.
Comment by edarrell — May 30, 2005 @ 8:05 am
May 30th, 2005 at 10:23 am
Ed,
Your reply completely sidesteps the whole point of my essay. First, the point of relevance concerning the sculpted faces on Mt. Rushmore is that their existence is dependent on intelligent causation. No intelligent causation "“ no sculpted faces. And this is just one example of a thing that exists only because of intelligent causation.
Secondly, my essay focuses on the question asked by Dembski, not the approach of Dembski.
Your knee-jerk responses have nicely illustrated how a critic of ID can read an essay and not understand the basic points being made in the essay. This raises the interesting question of just how common this practice is?
Comment by MikeGene — May 30, 2005 @ 10:23 am
May 30th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
In reply to Dembski's question :
"Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?", it is interesting to read this extract by Aristotle in which he demonstrates that :
"It is plain then that nature is a cause, a cause that operates for a purpose".
Aristotle : Physics Book II ch. 8
We must explain then (1) that Nature belongs to the class of causes which act for the sake of something; (2) about the necessary and its place in physical problems, for all writers ascribe things to this cause, arguing that since the hot and the cold, &c., are of such and such a kind, therefore certain things necessarily are and come to be-and if they mention any other cause (one his 'friendship and strife', another his 'mind'), it is only to touch on it, and then good-bye to it.
A difficulty presents itself: why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity? What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled must become water and descend, the result of this being that the corn grows. Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this-in order that the crop might be spoiled-but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that our teeth should come up of necessity-the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food-since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his 'man-faced ox-progeny' did.
Such are the arguments (and others of the kind) which may cause difficulty on this point. Yet it is impossible that this should be the true view. For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true. We do not ascribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor heat in the dog-days, but only if we have it in winter. If then, it is agreed that things are either the result of coincidence or for an end, and these cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows that they must be for an end; and that such things are all due to nature even the champions of the theory which is before us would agree. Therefore action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.
Further, where a series has a completion, all the preceding steps are for the sake of that. Now surely as in intelligent action, so in nature; and as in nature, so it is in each action, if nothing interferes. Now intelligent action is for the sake of an end; therefore the nature of things also is so. Thus if a house, e.g. had been a thing made by nature, it would have been made in the same way as it is now by art; and if things made by nature were made also by art, they would come to be in the same way as by nature. Each step then in the series is for the sake of the next; and generally art partly completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and partly imitates her. If, therefore, artificial products are for the sake of an end, so clearly also are natural products. The relation of the later to the earlier terms of the series is the same in both. This is most obvious in the animals other than man: they make things neither by art nor after inquiry or deliberation. Wherefore people discuss whether it is by intelligence or by some other faculty that these creatures work,spiders, ants, and the like. By gradual advance in this direction we come to see clearly that in plants too that is produced which is conducive to the end-leaves, e.g. grow to provide shade for the fruit. If then it is both by nature and for an end that the swallow makes its nest and the spider its web, and plants grow leaves for the sake of the fruit and send their roots down (not up) for the sake of nourishment, it is plain that this kind of cause is operative in things which come to be and are by nature. And since 'nature' means two things, the matter and the form, of which the latter is the end, and since all the rest is for the sake of the end, the form must be the cause in the sense of 'that for the sake of which'.
Now mistakes come to pass even in the operations of art: the grammarian makes a mistake in writing and the doctor pours out the wrong dose. Hence clearly mistakes are possible in the operations of nature also. If then in art there are cases in which what is rightly produced serves a purpose, and if where mistakes occur there was a purpose in what was attempted, only it was not attained, so must it be also in natural products, and monstrosities will be failures in the purposive effort. Thus in the original combinations the 'ox-progeny' if they failed to reach a determinate end must have arisen through the corruption of some principle corresponding to what is now the seed.
Further, seed must have come into being first, and not straightway the animals: the words 'whole-natured first…' must have meant seed.
Again, in plants too we find the relation of means to end, though the degree of organization is less. Were there then in plants also 'olive-headed vine-progeny', like the 'man-headed ox-progeny', or not? An absurd suggestion; yet there must have been, if there were such things among animals.
Moreover, among the seeds anything must have come to be at random. But the person who asserts this entirely does away with 'nature' and what exists 'by nature'. For those things are natural which, by a continuous movement originated from an internal principle, arrive at some completion: the same completion is not reached from every principle; nor any chance completion, but always the tendency in each is towards the same end, if there is no impediment.
The end and the means towards it may come about by chance. We say, for instance, that a stranger has come by chance, paid the ransom, and gone away, when he does so as if he had come for that purpose, though it was not for that that he came. This is incidental, for chance is an incidental cause, as I remarked before. But when an event takes place always or for the most part, it is not incidental or by chance. In natural products the sequence is invariable, if there is no impediment.
It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating. Art does not deliberate. If the ship-building art were in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature. If, therefore, purpose is present in art, it is present also in nature. The best illustration is a doctor doctoring himself: nature is like that.
It is plain then that nature is a cause, a cause that operates for a purpose.
End of Aristotle quote.
Are you familiar with Jacques Monod's book "Chance & Necessity" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1971) which deals entirely with this issue ? Here are some interesting extracts :
Jacques Monod, the French biologist who, with André Lwoff and François Jacob, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1965, for elucidating the replication mechanism of genetic material and the manner in which cells synthesize protein. I should add that he was also the director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and professor at the College of France, which is the most prestigious educational institution in France.
Monod is a strong believer in the theory of evolution, but he isn't too happy with its basic tenets about Natural Selection and Chance.
On the subject of the "Eye", he writes the following in his book "Chance & Necessity" published in 1970 in Paris :
"And if [...] we were to ask the machine to compare the structure and performance of the eye of a vertebrate with that of a camera, the program would have to acknowledge their profound similarities : lenses, diaphragm, shutter, light-sensitive pigments : surely, the same components could not have been introduced into both objects except with a view to getting similar performances from them.
[...]
"…I have cited [this example] only to emphasize how arbitrary and pointless it would be to deny that the natural organ, the eye, represents the materialization of a "purpose" - that of picking up images - while this is indisputably also the origin of the camera.
"It would be the more absurd to deny it since, in the last analysis, the purpose which "explains" the camera can only be the same as the one to which the eye owes its structure."
Monod then presents the underlying theme of his book :
"Every artifact is a product made by a living being which through it expresses, in a particularly conspicuous manner, one of the fundamental characteristics common to all living beings without exception : that of being objects endowed with a purpose or project , (author's italics) which at the same time they exhibit in their structure and carry out through their performances (such as, for instance, the making of artifacts)." (Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity, Afred A. Knopf, 1971, pp.8-9)
Simply put, Monod could not believe in the role of Natural Selection and Chance operating over millions of years to create complex artifacts such as "living beings". On the contrary, he thought they existed with a purpose.
"Whe shall maintain that [living beings] are distinct from all other structures or systems present in the universe through this characteristic property, which we shall call teleonomy ." (author's italics)
He was a Communist sympathizer, and could not invoke God as an explanation. Teleonomy is what you get when you remove God from the "teleological argument".
Maybe that's what the author of the article on "Teleology" of the Columbia Encyclopedia's 6th Edition has in mind when he points out that : "A more recent evolutionary view finds purpose in the higher levels of organic life but holds that it is not necessarily based in any transcendent being."
Comment by Aster — May 30, 2005 @ 1:54 pm
June 2nd, 2005 at 11:27 am
Dembski says : "Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?"
If a man has to decide whether an object he is looking at is the product of Nature, or is man-made, he usually can easily tell. Man knows from experience developed by mankind over millenia that objects such as a watch, an airplane, or a handkerchief, are man-made products. They exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause, which is Man in this example.
These features include :
- a complex, organized structure (a large number of specialized elements, made of a variety of material input, with all kinds of forms and shapes, which are not found in this way in Nature, but have been processed, tranformed) ;
- the structure has been designed to perform a function : (each element is a necessay input in a sequence designed to produce a specific output. Each element, if it were by itself, wouldn't be of any interest. It makes sense only as an input in a whole structure, which will carry out its function only when allthe pieces are in place : think of a car engine).
- We can thus identify "systems" at work within this ensemble, all integrated with each other, so that the final result of the operation of the system is way beyond what each system is doing specifically (e.g. the biology of the cell, the numerous physiological systems at work in the Human Machine…)
- at each level of the structure, the elements which are put together are not to be found thus in Nature, but are artificially linked by all kinds of devices, etc.
- such elements can't have been put together by Chance
- they have been put together by Artificial Selection, with a purpose in the mind of the manufacturer.
The watch, or the Human Machine, are familiar illustrations of how we recognize a man-made product from a natural one.
So, in summary, the features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause can be detected as follows :
1) try to analyze its visible structure, shape,
2) try to identify any function with which it could be associated.
3) try to disassemble the object into all its component parts, to identify all the elements it comprises,
4) see how they are shaped, how they are put together, what they are made of,
5) see what they do, how they work together as a complex ensemble,
6) see if you can identify a function they perform
7) see if this function is evidently of use to "something" which is located at a higher level of the ensemble,
9) see if it can be established that this object was actually manufactured with that purpose in mind (i.e. that's the reason why the manufacturer went into the effort of manufacturing it)
10) If you have almost established at step (9) above that it's a man-made object, manufactured for a purpose, then
11) see if you can prove that it's not the product of Nature nor of chance, based on mankind's knowledge in this field.
The issue becomes more complex when you study not the usual man-made objects, but the following ones :
- atoms : you can apply to atoms (as well as all other subdivisions : mesons, quarks, etc.) almost everything that has been said above about how to recognize "artifacts". Are therefore atoms the products of a design ? are they produced by an intelligent cause ?
- living organisms of the animal and plant kingdom : you can again apply to them everything that has been said about "artifacts". Are they therefore "produced" by an intelligent cause ?
Jacques Monod demonstrated stated, in this book "Chance and Necessity", that if exactly the same things exist in nature and in man-made products (artifacts), it is absurd to consider that what is true for man-made products DOES NOT apply to living organisms. For the time being, that's what Reason would dictate to any reasonable man.
Anyone interested in further deepening his understanding of the situation has only to think of the various systems at work in any living organism, from the tiniest cell to the Human Machine for example.
Comment by Aster — June 2, 2005 @ 11:27 am
June 3rd, 2005 at 5:23 am
Mike, we probably are talking past one another.
I don't think Dembski, nor Behe, spend enough time on the question of just what design is. Dembski's work tends to look for some analogy, and if one is found, rather than asking important foundation questions such as "is the analogy appropriate in this case," he rushes off headlong under a linguistic prestidigitation to the unwarranted conclusion that living things are designed. For example, ID advocates raise the issue of Mt. Rushmore. I find the analogy clever but inappropriate. Sure, the faces were carved. But Rushmore existed for a billion years before it was carved. For practical reasons, any rational sculptor would have put the mountain closer to people, were it designed from the ground up. The carvings are a thin facade on a naturally-occurring chunk of rock. Dembski's use of "complex specified information" is an interesting, but wholly inappropriate, analogy from electrical communication, and when misapplied to Rushmore with uncritical logical leaps, it arrives at a faulty conclusion that Mt. Rushmore was intelligently caused. Only the carved faces were the result of intelligent causation. From what we know about Rushmore, can we conclude that the Old Man in the Mountain in New Hampshire was not intelligently caused? What are the differences?
This is a difficult question in the end, and one that you rush over completely. We have need of determining where intelligent design clashes with natural design, and we have difficulty telling the differences. ID ignores completely all the work that has gone on previously.
For example, if I give you 2,000 kids in southern Utah who have thyroid cancer, can you tell me which of them got it as the result of government decisions to run atomic tests when the wind blew their way? Can you even tell me whether any of them got it as a result of intelligent causation? This is a real life problem, with real life statistical data, and, unlike anything in ID literature, real life effects. Moreover, we are sure of the intelligent causation — the question is, can we detect the effects against the "noise" of nature?
When real scientists go looking for design in the real world, they often throw up their hands in despair at ever finding it, even while they work frantically to determine whether it occurred.
You need to ask another question: Do ID advocates have their conclusion so firmly in hand that they cannot distinguish between the conclusion and the question?
I think they do.
Let's go to Rushmore again. What of it was designed, and what part of it was not designed? How can you tell? What does ID bring to the table to improve the odds of telling, absent the blueprints and films of the carvers at work? The question is causation. ID rather assumes that design means intelligent causation exists. ID then pulls out a wholly inappropriate analogy, comparing living things to carved rocks. For any number of reasons the analogy fails.
I am suspicious when math whizzes claim to have a method that firmly reveals design. In the real world, when we have to determine whether the government is liable for the cancers the kids got, we discover there is not a bright line between intelligent causation and natural causation (and this is wholly apart from randomness).
There are people who study what design is, and what intelligent design is. I find it interesting that ID literature almost never bothers to visit that literature. There are real world questions about where intelligent causation smashes into unintelligent causation, and how we can parse one from the other. I find it distressing that ID literature fails to ask that question most of the time.
Science looks for causes constantly, but generally proximate causes. ID makes an unwarranted leap in logic, concluding that we can determine purpose to proximate causes without knowing the proxmate causes in the first place. It's a question of discipline. In the real world, discipline provides better answers than ID does.
It's just my opinion, of course — but unlike you, I have had to deal with real consequences of "intelligent design" and how to tease out from what we know about real, living things, whether causes are assignable to intelligent decisions. It's not easy. I don't think ID is even asking the right questions.
Comment by edarrell — June 3, 2005 @ 5:23 am
June 3rd, 2005 at 7:18 am
Ed:
I suggest you read my essay. How does it begin? I introduce how critics typically think of ID and how proponents typically think of ID. Then what do I say?
Then, as for Dembski and Behe's answer to the question, what do I say? I introduce their methods and note some people think they are successful and others do not. Then what do I say?
If my essay appeared on the SAT, and you were tested on your ability to simply understand what was written, you would have scored poorly on this section.
You are not paying attention. What did I say about Mt. Rushmore?
There is no analogy here, Ed. I used Mt. Rushmore to make a simple and undeniable point "“ there are things that exist in our reality because of ID. There are things whose existence is ID-dependent. So why point out this fact? What did I say?
Thus, your whole argument about Mt. Rushmore is irrelevant to my point.
I rush over it completely? You don't know what you are talking about. Did I claim to have an answer for the question? No. Did I acknowledge this is a difficult question? Yes. In fact, I went further than you. What did I say?
It's not just a difficult question "“ it may be the most difficult question we can ask.
Do you think you are bringing up an angle I have not thought of before? I told you it may be the most difficult question we could ask.
Indeed. Now factor this in the context of my discussion of the designer-centric approach.
If you could comprehend my writings, you would understand that I do not have my conclusion so firmly in hand that I cannot distinguish between the conclusion and the question.
I think the question is better put to you. Since you think about ID through the prism of politics and stereotypes (to the point where ID is killing people) can you distinguish between your need to debunk ID and a valid criticism? Can you even approach ID in an open-minded fashion? There is no evidence that you can. But there is evidence that you can't.
And I'm suspicious of internet critics who dishonestly put words in my mouth, who flirt with crazed conspiracy theories, and who won't answer the various questions I raise. It's a two-way street out there, Ed. Or haven't you figured this out yet?
Comment by MikeGene — June 3, 2005 @ 7:18 am