PD instead of ID?
by BilboI've been thinking about this since the last time Aiguy was here, and since he's shown up again, I thought I would post this, so we can hear his input.
Instead of using the term "Intelligent Design," would it better to use the term "Purposeful Design?" That way we could bypass debates about what "intelligent" means, and focus on what appears to be the crux of the matter: that the object in question was the product of a goal-directed process. Someone or something was trying to produce it.
I don't know if this would clarify or muddy the issue. Thoughts?
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
My guess is that 'purposeful' is not going to help at all. You might as well simply call it 'design' and leave the attribute out. Seriously, how would you determine the purpose of an unknown entity?
Comment by hrun — May 23, 2009 @ 5:08 pm
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I think Aguy actually makes a good point
I think that ID is in somewhat of a rut. The negative case against MET has been made to anyone who is open minded weve won that one.
The “gaps” in the theory are now common knowledge to anyone paying attention the problem is that as of now it is entirely up to the individual what to fill the gaps with.
The materialist fills them with a promissory notes and the theist fills them with God. Both sides think the other is foolish in the extreme. There is as of yet no way to get over this impasse.
There just is not enough positive information in the concept of ID as it is presently understood.
I believe where to go from here is to develop theodicy of the designer in the sense that Steve Fuller advocates.
We can begin by asking ourselves simple questions like
What kind of being would design X.
and
Is there any detectable goal in this design?
The other side could be of much service in this endeavor and their skepticism might even be an asset because answerers to those questions no matter how ridiculous might contain the seed of a hypothesis.
For example statements like
The designer is stupid and incompetent
And
The designer of life's main goal is obviously to produce a plethora of beetles
Seem to lend themselves to testable predictions, and testable predictions would be a good “scientific” way to move this discussion along.
Just my two cents
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — May 23, 2009 @ 6:14 pm
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
As an alternative to ‘random’, ‘purposeful’ might be a better choice. Aiguy argues that we can’t use ‘intelligent’ because intelligence can’t be defined. (Or it can’t be defined to his satisfaction.) Certainly, one could not claim ‘purpose’ as an aspect of “random mutation and natural selection’, which is the only suggested materialist explanation for the origin of biological change.
Endogenous Adaptive Mutagenesis argues that adaptive change originates, purposefully, in individual living organisms, not in their genes. Individual organisms achieve limited, purposeful adaptations to their environment. The purpose is a specific response some need of the organism. Used organs develop and unused ones atrophy. Such adaptations are inherited epigenetically and are only encoded into the genome if persistent over many generations. Following is an article on epigenetic inheritance
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3413_genes.html
[quote]. . .we are changing the view of what inheritance is. You can’t, in life, in ordinary developmental living, separate out the gene from the environmental effect. They’re so intertwined. . . .our grandparents’ experiences effect our health. But is the effect epigenetic? With no DNA yet analyzed, Pembrey can only speculate. Michael Skinnner seems to have found additional evidence. . .[/quote]
The evidence for the EAM version of ID will come with evidence of inheritance of acquired characteristics. I am sure such studies are under way, but any study of generations takes time.
Bertvan
http://30145.myauthorsite.com/
Comment by Bert — May 23, 2009 @ 7:07 pm
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
As an alternative to ‘random’, ‘purposeful’ might be a better choice. Aiguy argues that we can’t use ‘intelligent’ because intelligence can’t be defined. (Or it can’t be defined to his satisfaction.) Certainly, one could not claim ‘purpose’ as an aspect of “random mutation and natural selection’, which is the only suggested materialist explanation for the origin of biological change.
Endogenous Adaptive Mutagenesis argues that adaptive change originates, purposefully, in individual living organisms, not in their genes. Individual organisms achieve limited, purposeful adaptations to their environment. The purpose is a specific response some need of the organism. Used organs develop and unused ones atrophy. Such adaptations are inherited epigenetically and are only encoded into the genome if persistent over many generations. Following is an article on epigenetic inheritance
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3413_genes.html
The evidence for the EAM version of ID will come with evidence of inheritance of acquired characteristics. I am sure such studies are under way, but any study of generations takes time.
Bertvan
http://30145.myauthorsite.com/
Comment by Bert — May 23, 2009 @ 7:08 pm
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3413_genes.html
Comment by Bert — May 23, 2009 @ 7:10 pm
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3413_genes.html">
Comment by Bert — May 23, 2009 @ 7:13 pm
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
I'm sorry if this is off topic
It looks like Aguy is already taking up the challenge of theodicy in another thread
All I can say is "very interesting".
This kind of thing is IMHO the way foward in the ID discussion.
I would say that if a being creates (not just produces) intricate designs we are compelled (hardwired) to attribute those things to it. In fact I would say this is the very thing (creation) and not the Turing test that we use to make that determination of other beings in everyday life.
To be a creator is to be conscious necessarily. Again just my two cents
peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — May 23, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
May 24th, 2009 at 10:33 am
There is no way to test scientifically whether purpose is involved in a process. Purpose does not necessarily yield a unifom result. Human judgment is the best we can do. Furthermore, there is no way to either confirm or deny participation of some god in any process involving purpose. Should we deny the existence of human judgement because it can be neither defined nor measured?
bertvan
http://30146.myauthorsite.com/
Comment by Bert — May 24, 2009 @ 10:33 am
May 24th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
WOW Bradford,
Thanks for reminding me. I just watched Machida vs. Evans, and as I anticipated before, Machida would knockout Evans in the 2nd or 3rd round. Looked as if it could have ended in the first!
AMAZING!
Comment by computerist — May 24, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
May 24th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I think there is no way out of this. Even for the athiest or person who simply opposes ID has this issue. For example the opposite would be easy to say "its not purposefull", How many times do you hear do you hear Dawkins and others say "EVOLUTION IS NOT RANDOM". They extremely warn against saying that. But now when you say "fine its not random its purposefull, or serves a purpose" then without a long explanation people would say "so then it was purposefull implying a designer"…. no easy way out in my honest opinion.
Comment by gore — May 24, 2009 @ 4:30 pm
May 25th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Hi Bilbo,
I don't think "purpose" is going to work. It seems to me that without some kind of "purposometer" it will remain unmeasureable. This is not true for the measurement of physically expressed, integrated functional complexity.
Comment by William Brookfield — May 25, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
May 26th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Look up "cellular automata" or "fractals" and you'll see that intricate designs can result from simple rules applied iteratively (a given output is used as the next input). I think we will see more references to this kind of thing as the debates evolve (pardon me). It seems to be a way to explain design without a designer.
Stephen Wolfram has made a career out of developing this idea: http://www.wolframscience.com/
Comment by heresiarch — May 26, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
May 26th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
For an example of purpose in nature, shift your attention from phylogeny to ontogeny.
The development of an oak from an acorn is a story of multiform descent from a common ancestor. The various tissues (cell types) of the oak are not thought to differentiate from the cells in the acorn by a process of random mutation and natural selection. Rather, reference is made to a (genetic) "code" or "plan" that manages the differentiation of descendant cells (leaf, root, etc.) from a common ancestor (cells in the acorn).
Does this "code"-directed process, in which the result is tightly constrained (the acorn cells cannot differentiate to produce a tulip or a bumblebee), an example of purpose in nature?
Is there any reason to rule out the prospect of evolution similarly being a code-directed process? Both phylogeny and ontogeny are, in some sense at least, DNA mediated.
ID advocates seem not particularly bothered by new cell types that arise during ontogeny. So, if evolution is actually an ontogenetic process, no one should be particularly bothered by the sudden appearance of new species.
Comment by heresiarch — May 26, 2009 @ 12:36 pm
May 26th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
"Purpose" has a technical definition in cybernetics, making it synonymous with "goal oriented", and defined as "utilizing negative feedback to navigate toward a pre-set target". Using this definition, we see that Darwinian processes are purposeful: The pre-set target is reproduction, and the negative feedback is failure to reproduce in a given environmental niche.
That isn't what most people mean when they talk about purpose, however. They mean being consciously aware of what the pre-set target is.
And so we return to the critical questions that are rarely pondered and never answered in these discussions:
If something is capable of producing intricate, functional designs, does that mean it necessarily had free will? Intent? Purpose? Consciousness? Intelligence? That it transcended physical cause?
Nobody knows the answers to these questions. Most ID authors pretend otherwise (or perhaps just don't know any better), and act as though evidence for any single mental attribute is evidence of every mental attribute. But this is patently wrong: There is no scientific reason to assume that the ability to produce complex form and function is necessarily accompanied by conscious reflection, free will, and so on. Without some principled theory of mind, which we do not have, ID really is little more than negative arguments regarding RM&NS, coupled with the sort of anthropomorphic projection that has served as a default explanation since humans first started trying to explain things. The religious belief that God created humans in His image supports this notion, but I personally don't see how this belief can be supported by empirical investigation.
Comment by aiguy — May 26, 2009 @ 1:28 pm
May 26th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
I'm not cognizant of where one would go to study "cybernetics". As an MSEE, one area of study I was exposed to and have applied on the job is feedback control systems, one of the more difficult disciplines of engineering. I've never seen the term "purpose" used as technical terminology in control theory. One well-known application of control theory is in the target acquisition of radar and associated weaponry. Targets not necessarily preset either. Another is aircraft attitude control, and the concept of setpoint or "target" is not easy to communicate to lay readers in this area of application.
Point is I'm skeptical of proposed analogies between engineering principles relatively few people understand and the origins of living things that nobody understands.
Comment by TG — May 26, 2009 @ 7:17 pm
May 26th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
TG -
My reference was to Norbert Weiner's pioneering work, and in particular to the classic paper written with Bigelow and Rosenbluth (it's surprising you weren't introduced to this in your control theory studies):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/946095/Behavior-Purpose-and-Teleology-Rosenblueth-Wiener-Bigelow
In any event, you missed my point: I was not proposing an analogy between cybernetics and biological origins. Rather, I was pointing out that the common conception of "purpose", with its connotations of conscious awareness and general amibiguity, is unsuitable for defining an explanatory concept in a theory of origins. The RWB paper took some steps toward providing a useful definition of "purpose", but this definition would apply not only to the sort of "telic" theories popular on this site, but also arguably to Darwinian evolutionary processes.
Comment by aiguy — May 26, 2009 @ 10:39 pm
May 26th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
First of all, it is very clear that "purposeful" is not the antonym for "random". For example, consider a falling rock: its movement is most definitely not random. Neither its trajectory nor its acceleration are "random" at all. On the contrary, they are predictable to such a degree that we call the mathematical description by which we can predict the movement of falling objects a "law" – the "law of gravity".
Ergo, the best antonym for "random" is "predictable", in the sense of being able to predict successive states in a dynamically changing system.
Given the foregoing, what is the best antonym for "purposeful"? Forgive me, but I think the only reasonable answer is "non-purposeful". This then forces one to define what one means by "purposeful". To me, the best definition of a "purposeful" (or "teleological", if you prefer the more technical term) object or process is "a dynamical process (or component of a dynamical process) in which the dynamical entity's actions are actively and homeotelically* regulated by a cybernetic process that functions according to a pre-existing program, the outcome of which is a specified end state.
* A homeotelic process is one in which a dynamical entity reacts to external perturbations from its original trajectory in such a way as to regain its original goal orientation. For example, an arrow fired from a bow is not homeotelic, whereas a heat-seeking missile is. By the same logic, a snowflake growing in a supercooled cloud is not homeotelic, whereas a virus replicating in a host cell is.
In my opinion, most of the arguments about "intelligent design" founder, not on the definition of "intelligent" but rather on the definition of "design". If one focuses not on "design" but rather on "purpose" (i.e. teleology), much of the disagreement vanishes softly and silently away.
Indeed, I think the qualifier "intelligent" is unnecessary, and quite possibly redundant. Why argue over something – that is, "intelligence" – that is indefinable without self-reference?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 26, 2009 @ 10:47 pm
May 26th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Damn! AIGuy scooped me – I was about to reference Weiner's classic paper, and there it is in the previous post.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 26, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
May 26th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
That is to say, "purpose" is very clearly and unambiguously defined in cybernetics, as Gregory Bateson and Norbert Weiner pointed out a half a century ago. "Purpose" (aka "teleology") are what this argument is really about, and so it would help immensely if all of the participants on both sides of the debate would define it in such a way as to render its presence or absence empirically verifiable.
The same could also be wished about "intelligence", but I see no real hope for this, given that virtually every definition of "intelligence" given in this thread (and all previous threads) is neither empirically verifiable nor applicable to simple systems such as those found in viruses or very simple cells. How "intelligent" is the lambda bacteriophage? Compared to a human, not much; compared to a crystal of sodium chloride, tremendously so. Indeed, what separates crystallized viruses from crystallized salts is precisely the "quality" that separates life from non-life and "purposeful" from "non-purposeful" things.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 26, 2009 @ 10:55 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Bilbo,
"intelligent design" was a phrase used by Charles Darwin and Fred Hoyle (as you pointed out yourself).
We don't have to know the purpose of something to know that it was intelligently designed. A good example were certain 2000-year-old artifacts that looked like a bunch of complex gears found on an sunken ship. It took a long time before we uncoiled the fact that it was an astronomical computer. We knew it was intelligently designed long before we knew the purpose…..
I speculate DNA comparative sequencing is uncovering intelligent designs long before we will, if ever, comprehend the purpose…….
I think life on Earth is intelligently designed, even the death by aging process seems mechanically ordained. I don't think we will know all the purposes:
Bottom line: we might recognize ID long before we recognize PD
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — May 27, 2009 @ 8:38 am
May 27th, 2009 at 9:45 am
aiguy:
I don't think this is true at all. Most IDists recognize that on a philosophical (as opposed to everyday life situations where people's actions bely their expressed philosophies) demonstrating free will is not going to occur. On the other hand demonstrating an absence of free will is equally unfeasible. There is philosophical gridlock inferring the existence of a permanently open question.
Given this condition, an inference to intellectual capability on a human level, for example, can be legitimately referred to as intelligence with the understanding that free will presumptions are made. When this point of view is ruled out, based on the argument that an open question on the free will issue must be resolved first, one sees the unfolding of a phenomenon alluded to in another thread where one side is attempting to smuggle its value laden system into a question centered around assessments of physical phenomenon. A materialist position would become the default point of view. That will not happen as long as there are IDists willing to resist this form of intellectual tyranny.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 9:45 am
May 27th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Salvador Cordova:
I agree with this.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 10:05 am
May 27th, 2009 at 10:13 am
The example doesn't really support the case. The Antikythera mechanism was recognized as a product of *human design*, in particular, Greeks. It was made of materials common to the time and period, found associated with other human artifacts of the period, and included inscriptions in Greek. Mentions of such mechanisms are found in ancient manuscripts. The Greeks were known to be very interested in astronomical predictions, both for religious and scientific reasons, so when first discovered, the Antikythera mechanism was reasonably thought by scholars as having some astronomical purpose.
Comment by Zachriel — May 27, 2009 @ 10:13 am
May 27th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Hi Sal,
Point being?
Since we know human beings inhabit this planet, and it looked like something human beings make, it was a good guess that human beings made this thing. We also happen to know that human beings are intelligent – that is, we solve novel problems, learn, design new artifacts, and so on. We do not infer from complexity to mind; we infer from artifact to the type of organism we believe made it, and only then can we see if the maker was intelligent (for some definition) or not.
If we find a simple stone arrowhead, we know the maker was intelligent because the maker was a human being. If we find a complex stone pyramid with chambers and tunnels and ventilation shafts, we again know that maker was intelligent (i.e. could design other artifacts, etc) because it was a human being. (So it isn't the complexity of the artifact that matters). However if we find a complex arched tower of dirt-mortar with chambers and tunnels and ventilation shafts, we know the maker was not intelligent in that way because we happen to recognize the maker as a bunch of termites!
You haven't begun to address the topic here: How can we possibly detect either one, given the artifacts we are looking at were made by something completely unspecified.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 10:33 am
May 27th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Bradford,
I agree – we haven't solved the problem of free will. On the other hand, we can't rule out future experiments that might shed some light on the matter (cf. Dan Wegner's work).
Not just free will, but all the other attributes of human brains/minds are projected onto the connotation of the word "intelligence". For example, I think it is quite reasonable to say that there can be intelligence without consciousness, but the normal ID view of an "intelligent agent" includes consciousness. This is done without warrant from evidence; it's just because human beings are conscious, and we tend toward anthropomorphic projection when we don't understand something.
I'm not a "materialist" so I don't know about that.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 10:33 am
May 27th, 2009 at 10:44 am
aiguy:
Including consciousness, when evidence does not preclude it, is legitimate. Inferrential reasoning is at work as it is where OOLers point to a selection process as useful in explaining how chemical reactions led to life. I point out the lack of supporting physical data for the claim but have no difficulty with utilizing a currently undemonstrable concept.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 10:44 am
May 27th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Completely unspecified also is applicable to any physical process linking a cell to its origin. This seems like a scientific boundary argument.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 10:50 am
May 27th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Aiguy:
Not at all surprising, after I read the paper(thanks for the link). This is a type of philosophical speculation that would have no role in an upper division core engineering course. You might see something like this in a graduate interdisciplinary seminar, or in an electrical engineering survey course for sophomores.
Even though Weiner is considered by electrical engineers a giant in the systems engineering field (Weiner filtering, Paley-Weiner criterion) his contributions have impacted communication theory to a much greater extent that control theory where names like Nyquist, Bode, Routh are prominent. In fact, I don't think my 2 control theory texts even mention Weiner. The concept of a filter is not used in controls, instead the related concept is compensation.
Comment by TG — May 27, 2009 @ 11:29 am
May 27th, 2009 at 11:31 am
What a minute. I've always believed the Great Pyramid was built by termites. You're saying it wasn't?!!
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 27, 2009 @ 11:31 am
May 27th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Or, in the case of a similar structure found on another planet, we simply know the maker was intelligent.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 11:52 am
May 27th, 2009 at 11:53 am
To the moderator: I had my last post in the edit window for a few minutes, and when I clicked save, I got the message that I don't have permission to edit this post. then I come view the post and the "click to edit" button is still there, but when clicked I got the same message — nonsensical!
Anyway my edit was going to add that it is curious that Weiner is given credit in the popular media for the founding of feedback control systems, and he did work in the field. But the big names in the field were guys that associated with him and possibly stood on his shoulders, but all of the methods that I learned were attributed to other guys — and my texts may have mentioned his name but I cannot recall this being the case.
Comment by TG — May 27, 2009 @ 11:53 am
May 27th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Bradford,
I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here. If you mean that there is evidence that whatever is responsible for biological complexity had conscious awareness, then I disagree, since there is no evidence for that at all. You believe consciousness is relevant, but have no principled or evidence-based reason for thinking this. So, one could just as well use "inferential reasoning" to infer that the cause of biological complexity had a brain, since we have those too.
Say aliens came to Earth and found the stone pyramids and guessed the makers were intelligent – they'd be right. Then they found the dirt-mortar towers, with their tunnels and specialized compartments with irrigation for agriculture, efficient ventilation shafts, and so on, and concluded the maker of those were also intelligent. They would be wrong, since termites are not intelligent (i.e. they cannot solve novel problems, can't design new structures, exhibit no signs of self-awareness, etc).
So if you found a similar structure on another planet, you might guess the maker was intelligent, but you could well be wrong. You would need to observe the maker in action in order to see if it could learn, adapt, figure out new designs and solutions to problems, exhibited self-awareness, and so on.
It becomes even more problematic when the cause in question is not even a life form, but completely unknown type of thing. We can't possibly guess what sorts of mental abilities something had without ever being able to interact with it, especially when we are dealing with something so completely outside of our experience (i.e. something that produced complex forms without even being a life form).
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
aiguy:
The truth is there is no solid empirical evidence linking life to a cause be it a conscious or a non-conscious source.
I do. I can refer to a model seeking to explain the development of an information system replete with encoding conventions and a physical means for transmission of symbolically represented information. As I've already noted there are not empirically established models that do this but I am able to note that the systems we do observe had conscious sources.
That's an inference that needs to be included within a group of plausible causal options.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
aiguy:
They would be mistaken but if their methodology included a more rigorous method of discernment the problem of false positives could be minimized.
You would of course seek out further evidence for the designer but would not need to actually observe one to reasonably conclude that a structure containing a calculating device was likely produced by intelligent agency. Indeed if a planetary expedition did encounter such a finding on a deserted planet ID would be widely accepted as an explanation. The real reason? No knee jerk reactions to divine inferences or right wing causes. Motivational fears flying beneath the radar.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Bradford,
Agreed.
Yes. (But I'll make a comment on rhetoric here: When you say "the systems we do observe had conscious sources" it sounds like we've made a survey these systems, and then determined their sources, and then analyzed the sources and found they were all conscious. In fact, what you mean is just "as far as we know, only human beings do this".
)
That's fine. But once we hypothesize that biological organisms (with brains and all) were responsible for creating life on Earth, why not just go with the simplest hypothesis and say that we are the descendants of these life forms, rather than the products of their assumed advanced bio-engineering capabilities? (Sure, this leaves unanswered who the ancestors of these ancestors might have been, but of course ID leaves unanswered who designed the designer)…
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Bradford,
Right – they would be mistaken. The exact method you advocated for inferring intelligence from stone pyramids yields a false positive when it comes to termite mounds. And both humans and termites are both biological organisms – how much more likely are we to be wrong about something that we have no empirical understanding of at all!
I think this is a pretty conclusive illustration of the fact that simply by looking at some structure that doesn't arise by known natural means and has complex form and function, we cannot validly infer anything about the mental abilities of whatever created it… and in particular we can't decide if it was conscious or not.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Of course human beings are the source and of course human beings are conscious and of course we do not observe undirected forces of nature doing the same. These are significant observations to one with an open mind looking for further rational explanations.
As you correctly note that approach simply begs an entire question. As to who designed the designer of this universe (no blind watchmaker evident) note that such a designer would exist outside time and the usual causal constructs ordered by time. At some point we either need to acknowledge that boundaries to scientific investigations are real or explain how current de fact ones can be overcome.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I actually advocated a more rigorous methodology. I would note that earthly pyramids contain writings- messages encoded by symbols. That's exactly the type of evidence I would look for on a planetary expedition. Then find the planetary Rosetta stone.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Bradford,
Well, OK. I consider myself to be exactly that – open minded and looking for rational explanations – but to me this type of thinking is an instance of anthropomorphic projection, which has proven to be a reliable tendency of human beings, and also has often in history been shown to be in error when applied to natural phenomena (no need for human-like abilities to aim lightning bolts at church steeples, etc). Anyway, I think we're not going to make any forward progress on this point.
I don't follow. If you decide to posit a non-biological agent who somehow exists uncaused and proceeds to design biological agents, it is certainly no less rational to posit a biological agent who somehow exists uncaused and reproduces the good old-fashioned way. At least the latter entails fewer assumptions.
So yes, I am very much in favor of acknowledging boundaries to scientific investigations! And I think it's clear that this boundary falls far short of including evidence-based reasoning that the cause of life was a conscious entity, or that it had a brain.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Bradford,
Actually, what you said was this:
So now you are saying we need a planetary Rosetta stone… but there is none. There is no Rosetta stone for biological features either – they just do what they do, and we can't translate DNA into any other language that tells us anything about the mental abilities of their cause.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Hi Aiguy,
Our highway systems constitute a complex functional form. In order to produce an equivalent complex functional pattern (drive safely home from the bar) we need to be conscious, not semi-conscious (drunk) nor unconscious(asleep). We have lots of documented evidence (traffic accident reports) showing that the ability to produce complex form and function is necesarily accompanied by consciousness and that failure to produce form is accompanied by unconsciousness.
So without "some principled theory of mind" we cannot convict drunk or unconscious drivers? I would suggest that everyones driving should be intelligently designed and not Darwinian — I.E. not equivalent to Steven. J Goulds "drunken walk away from the wall."
It seems to me that your real concern has to be, not that the correlation between consciousness and functional form is undiscovered, but instead that of some possible "anthopomorphic" projection is involved.
ID is a theory of origin. Darwinism is not a theory of origin. It is a theory of mindless selective filtration. "Filtration" is not synonymous with "origination." Given that ID appears to be our only viable theory of origin at this time, it would be best to develop it scientifically(tentatively) and not religiously (dogmatically).
Is the universe conscious (like us) when we are awake or is it unconscious (like us) when we are asleep? Is it scientifically permissible to gather evidence that the universe is (or was) in some way or other "like us?"
Comment by William Brookfield — May 27, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Bradford,
Regarding coded communication – of course the termite mounds have this too, it's just that the writing is hard to read because it is written in pheromones. Still, the fact that termites encode information in molecular symbols doesn't mean they are intelligent, or that they could encode some different type of information if they wanted to.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
That's exactly the point. The logic you are using also leads to conclusions that we can eliminate out-of-hand. That tells us the logic is invalid no matter what actual conclusion you reach with it.
Comment by don provan — May 27, 2009 @ 2:13 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
William,
We have even more evidence that we need functioning brains in order to perform these tasks. If you believe your own reasoning, this should lead you to conclude that the cause of biological complexity had a functioning brain, and that it wasn't drunk or asleep. Is that your conclusion?
I assume this is a joke? (we have a principled understanding of how human coordination is affected by alcohol and sleep of course!)
Agreed.
ID is not our only theory of origin of course. There are plenty of them. One would be that some biological organism existed uncaused and we are descendants of that organism.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Aiguy,
I don't know. Perhaps it (they?) had a functioning brain(s) of some kind. Perhaps we have underestimated the possibility of brain like complexes in nature? Complex functioning physical brains however (like computers and highways) don't just appear do they? Don't they themselves need to be designed?
Comment by William Brookfield — May 27, 2009 @ 3:05 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
William,
I submit that this shows your reasoning is not from evidence to conclusion, but the other way around. On one hand you defend these sorts of inferences when they match your pre-conceived notions of what is responsible (something with conscious intent) but then you deny any inference that doesn't match your ideas (like having a human brain), even though you are supposedly working from the very same evidence (what is true of human beings).
If by "designed" you mean "consciously", then it would seem a brain is necessary for conscious awareness (at least that is what our evidence tells us). If you want to reject that the cause of life on Earth was something with a brain, then I'd say you don't really have any evidence to argue that it was still conscious anyway.
OOOPS –
Sorry William, I misread your reply. You thought maybe something with a complex information processing mechanism might have been responsible after all… well, yes, at least that would be consistent with our experience! So yes, perhaps you're right; but that wouldn't explain how that complex physical information processing mechanism got there in the first place.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
aig:
This illustrates the difference between output of a program and the creation of the programming language itself. The pheromones are possible once the biological version of the latter exists. The pheromones are completely predictable. Encoded DNA is not.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
You don't know that. This is a vast universe. If there were an encrypted stone we would do our best to decipher it. Why go through the charsde of pretending there could be no non-human evidence of consciousness in a universe as vast as ours.
The code was established when codons were mapped to amino acids. That tells you nothing only if you assume the adaquacy of chemically based explanations. But that requires a good deal of faith on your part.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 3:47 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Bradford,
I don't understand. DNA codons encode information that is read by the machinery of the cell. Termite pheromones encode information that is read by other termites.
Sorry, I'm lost. You said that finding a stone pyramid on another planet would be evidence of intelligence; I disagreed, and said the maker of complex form and function is sometimes intelligent (for the pyramid) and sometimes not (for the tower). So if you found the tower on another planet rather than the pyramid, you would have been wrong. You then advocated a more rigorous methodology that would include a Rosetta stone, to prevent these sorts of false positives. But in the examples we were discussing (just finding the pyramid, or finding the termite tower) there was no Rosetta stone involved, so this would indeed have been a false positive.
No, I have no faith in any explanation of how codons got mapped – did I give the impression that I did? In any event, the point remains that finding structures of complex form and function, even when they contain symbolically encoded information, does not imply an intelligent cause, since we can see such things are made by unintelligent cause as well (termites).
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 4:56 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
The encoding convention enables not only the encoding of pheromones but genomic changes. In a depiction of causal flow the programming language structure preceeds a specific programmable output.
Pyramids are not termite towers. The precise geometric shape would clue us in that erosion did not produce that result. If not the precise alignment of the numerous smaller stones surely would.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Bradford,
I'm trying hard to understand what you are saying here… are you saying that the termite's language is hard-coded in its DNA, so its the DNA that is the actual language and the termite's pheromone language is just output from the DNA? If this is what you are saying, I think there are a couple of things wrong with that.
First, the point was that you could find a complex structure including symbols that encoded information and you still couldn't be sure that the maker was intelligent. The pyramid had hieroglyphics carved into stone, and the tower had pheremones laid out on the ground, but both are information encoding schemes.
Second, it's not clear that termite DNA fully specifies the actual language; some of the information may come from the environment. Just like bee dancing; it may be that there is a universal grammar of bee dancing, but specific dialects form via interactions with the environment. The same seems to be true of humans.
If you are saying something else I apologize.
Nobody would mistake a termite tower OR a stone pyramid for something created by erosion. Both are complex structures of obvious function, including doorways, pathways, chambers, tunnels, ventilation systems, and encoded information.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
What makes a termite a termite is coded into its DNA but termite DNA varies with individual termites and over time. Trace this causal pathway backwards. Before you have a viable cell you need some way to store and transmit information. DNA is the vehicle but not the information itself. To proceed further back into the causal history requires an explanation for why a molecule would acquire sequencing compatible with a mapping and synthesis of amino acids into functional proteins. That's the juncture yielding a rational suspicion of design.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Bradford,
If I'm understanding you, I think you are saying that while the termites might not be intelligent, the termites themselves (or their DNA) must have been designed by something intelligent. Is that what you mean?
If that is what you mean… ID claims that the maker of all complex form and function can always be assumed to be intelligent, but when faced with an example where the maker is not intelligent, you hold that ID still isn't disconfirmed; rather "there must be a pony in there somewhere" and you simply say that the intelligence must be somewhere prior in the causal chain. But for every step in the regress you take, you still can't ensure that this step isn't yet another "programmed" agent like the termite.
So maybe the termite's creator was also termite-like in that it wasn't capable of generating new solutions to problems, etc. And maybe the creator of the termite's creator was the same…
And back we go, into the unknowable past. Maybe the very first step in the causal chain was intelligent, and maybe it was wasn't. I don't see how we can ever know.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I don't know where this comes from. I was focused on the origin of biologically functional DNA.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Termite generated structures are not evidence of an "unintelligent cause" making "complex form and function", unless you arbitrarily define termites to be unintelligent, and rule out non-proximate causes. A non-proximate intelligent cause is still an intelligent cause. Like a computer, a termite may be a mediator of intelligence. (Termites certainly do have some attributes of intelligence: goals and foresight.)
So where is the example of "complex form and function" generated by entity that has no intelligence in itself and it is known that there is no intelligence up the causal chain? Of course, there is none. There are only examples of clear intelligent cause (like Rosetta stones), and unknown causes (termite mounds, nobody knows how the termites got their goals and foresight to do the job.)
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 27, 2009 @ 6:45 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
KB,
Please don't blame me for fuzzy definitions of "intelligence" – until somebody decides once and for all what it is supposed to mean in ID theories, we'll always be muddling along. Anyway, I meant "able to solve novel problems, learn and adapt, invent new types of complex structures…"
I responded to this:
You are saying that "no evidence of no intelligence" is tantamount to evidence of intelligence? Of course it is not. The point here is that ID often claims that in all cases of complex form and function where we can identify the maker, the maker is intelligent, and the termite example shows that this is wrong. You can speculate about intelligent prior cause, or even first cause, but none of that has empirical support.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 6:56 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
For someone who doesn't like the word "intelligence", you seem to have no problem using it in conversation:
IMO, "intelligence" entails that and more. But I agree the term should get nailed down. In addition to the aspects of intelligence you have mentioned, I would add goal orientation, foresight and perhaps consciousness. That some people think consciousness is required to be truly intelligent poses no problems if one concedes that in theory computers should ultimately be able to what humans do with regard to the "non-hard" cognitive issues, i.e, just ignore consciousness. (I would be interested in seeing someone make a case that consciousness is required for novel problem solving, learning, adapting, goals and foresight.) At any rate, I'm all for sidelining consciousness in the discussions.
So why not relax and assume that by "intelligence" we mean one or more of the aspects of intelligence that humans exhibit except for the consciousness angle? That's what I do when I'm reading the posts and when I post here, and it does not seem murky to me. It seems to be utterly irrelevant. But I could be wrong.
Right. But the point (at least my point) is that there is no known case of a non-intelligent cause of complex form and function, including termite mound. Only cases that are clearly known to be intelligently
caused (whether proximate or not), and unknown cases. Whether there can be complex form and function from ultimately non-intelligent causes is one of the Big Questions. And it's an open one. And I suspect it is a scientifically unanswerable one.
Right.
Not scientific evidence, but one might make a case that since all complex form and function comes from either intelligent entities, or from an unknown source, it is reasonable suspicion. And consistent with a telic view of reality as well as a non-telic one.
Agreed.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 27, 2009 @ 7:44 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
KB,
As I've explained here before, I have consistently complained about lack of an operational definition of intelligence in ID. However, if I did nothing but harp on this point, I couldn't participate in discussions about any of the other issues. Just as I say, we have to muddle along and risk frequent miscommunication because people mean different things by that word.
Yes, everybody has an opinion…. usually a different opinion
If people would agree that consciousness wasn't one of the mental attributes for which ID can provide evidence, then we could sideline it. As it is, most of the time consciousness is just part of the unspecified, ambiguous meaning of "intelligence" that ID relies on. It is this very equivocation that is the crux of my critique of ID theories in general.
I think there is a huge difference between ostensibly supporting claims to a mind with conscious awareness, beliefs, desires, and intentions on one hand, and a mechanical, determinstic, unconscious process on the other hand, even if both are said to have goals and planning abilities. I believe most people have the first of these alternatives in mind when they use the term "intelligent agent". I am saying that for all their arguments say, their intelligent agent could be of the second variety instead. ID should be clear about that.
In your way of thinking, it simply becomes impossible to know of a case of complex form and function with a non-intelligent cause! One can always speculate a prior, intelligent cause. All I'm saying is that this sort of heads-I-win, tails-you-lose claim can't be used to support a design inference.
Agreed. (As for my personal opinion – I don't really think of intelligence as something that might be true of the cause of life/the universe/and everything. Intelligence, and all of our mentalistic concepts, refer to human minds that arise from – or in conjunction with – human brains. It's just too anthropocentric to think these attributes apply to something so different from us.)
Against this view is the fact that all known intelligent entities are structures of complex form and function! So believing that intelligence existed prior to the first complex form and function is as counter to our experience as believing that complex form and function preceeded intelligence.
And besides, termite mounds do not come from an unknown source. They come from termites, just as surely as stone pyramids come from humans.
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 8:02 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
This is a dishonest distortion. No IDist said this. What I did say was that in all cases where symbolic coding systems are found, like the type you are reading, it's designer is intelligent.
Comment by Bradford — May 27, 2009 @ 8:49 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Stephen C. Meyer, co-founder of the Intelligent Design Movement, Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute: "in all cases where we know the causal origin of 'high information content,' experience has shown that intelligent design played a causal role."
Comment by Zachriel — May 27, 2009 @ 9:40 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
So, maybe we need a specific and focused "What is Intelligence?" thread so we can make an attempt to nail it down?
Who makes this an essential feature of intelligence? Granted, I haven't read a lot of ID literature. What I have, I have not noticed consciousness as being an essential feature, and I am very interested in consciousness, so I think I would have noticed it. But I'll take your word for it.
Negative arguments are not scientific evidence. But it may be grounds for reasonable suspicion. If I read you right, you say that pyramids and scripts, if found on Mars, are reasonably seen to be products of intelligence, because humans make these things like them. This is not a scientific conclusion. You can make a falsifible hypotheses, but a conclusion of intelligence based on the artifacts alone is not scientific conclusion. It's a conclusion that most sane people would think is reasonable. When we look inside the cell we see very sophisticated processes that are like human engineered processes using appropriate materials for the level of scale, and we see a symbolic coding system. It seems the only thing you object to here is the building materials used and the level of scale, but not because of the nature of the processes and code, since the processes and code are like human engineered processes and code. There are pumps and motors and conveyors and power generators and a lot more. While it is not scientific to conclude that it was of an intelligent source. (And the opposite as well.) However, I submit it is grounds, not for merely an "open mind", but for almost as strong a suspicion that intelligence was involved as pyramids or scripts on Mars. Humans make the same kind of things on a different scale with different materials.
A scientific approach then is to form falsifiable hypotheses. This is possible both with a naturalist view and telic view. So far there is no winning horse, obviously.
Which more or less puts you in the same camp as the supernatural-consciousness-is-the-answer camp, ultimately. So it should be understandable why they think that way. Basically, it's the Big Cause Beyond Reason, and by golly, beyond reason is beyond reason. This means it has got to be unimaginable, so why bother? Yep, a science stopper.
But getting the feet back down to terra firma, falsifiable hypotheses for both the naturalistic view and the telic view for the first life form on earth is possible, I think.
While it's true that all known intelligent entities are structures of complex form and function, we don't know where the neural programming came from that make them capable of generating complex form and function. Yes, we know it's passed from parents to child, but the original source is "unknown." Dealing with unknown sources of intelligence and form and function is as much part of our experience as the understanding that all known intelligent entities are complex form and function. (Yes, that was a clumsy sentence
, but I'm not going to edit it. ) So I don't see your point as being "against this view."
Termite mounds come form termites, but we don't know where the neural programming came from that motivates them and makes them know how to do it. (Same for humans.) The source of those aspects of intelligence is unknown.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 27, 2009 @ 9:52 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
The proximate cause of a termite mound is the termite. Everyone knows this and I assume Meyers would acknowledge this. Termites have at least two aspects of intelligence, goals and foresight. So they are intelligent in these two respects. Meyers is not an example of aiguy's point because Stephen would not agree that termites have no intelligence.
(Moreover, The source of the intelligence that any given termite has is unknown except that it was passed on from its parents who likewise have the (epi)genomics for the intelligence.)
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 27, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Bradford,
??? By "complex form and function", I was referring to what is variously called specified complexity, or organized complexity or functional complexity, etc. Here are some quotes from ID authors I found quickly on the web; there are hundreds of other examples of course.
In any event, termites and bees use symbolic coding systems, but they don't seem intelligent in the sense that they can invent new ones. Again, you can always insist that intelligence lurks somewhere up the causal chain, but this is just an assumption rather than an empirical result.
KB,
Yes, I'm always for that.
My point is that the common connotation of "intelligent agent" implicitly carries all sorts of meaning associated with human mentality, including consciousness.
I won't argue whether it is scientific, but certainly we can agree that since we know humans inhabit this planet, and build things like this for their use, then we can safely assume humans were responsible.
Humans make lots of things that are found in nature, but that doesn't mean that nature uses human-like intelligence to make them. It would take a great deal of intelligence for a human to create a high-voltage arc of electricity, but thunderclouds do it without a thought. It would take intelligence for a human to weave a spider web, but the spider does it without a thought. It would take intelligence to invent a dance that conveyed the information that bees convey, but the bees don't seem to think about it. And so on.
Some of the most intelligent animals on Earth design nothing or nearly nothing; some of the least intelligent animals design artifacts of complex form and function.
No, not a science stopper, since I'm not invoking anything unimaginable (nor any something-that-can-do-anything entity) as an explanation for any natural phenomena.
ID claims that it follows from our experience – that complex form and function invariably arises from intelligence. However, the exact same experience shows that intelligence invariably arises from complex form and function. So my point is that the design inference for first life is not in accord with our experience of intelligent agency.
And if the Designer designed the neural programming, we wouldn't know where the Designer came from. (All of the arguments religion and ID have constructed to shield first cause from regress play both ways).
Goals and foresight, yes, but not likely self-awareness, or consciousness of any recognizable form, or desires or intent like humans have them, and so on… I suppose this should wait for our "what is meant by 'intelligence' in ID" thread.
And the same is then true of human beings, and of the purported Designer of life as well!
Comment by aiguy — May 27, 2009 @ 10:54 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Termites build termite mounds using a surprisingly simple set of "decision rules". For example, one decision rule (which is clearly "wired in" to the nervous system of worker termites) is the rule to stack particles of sand on top of each other and glue them together using a material like saliva in such a way as to produce an arch (this is beautifully illustrated in E. O. Wilson's masterpiece, The Insect Societies). In Höldobler and Wilson's new book, Superorganism, they explain in detail how insect societies produce astonishingly complex, adaptive, functional dwelling places, "highways" (army and driver ants), "farms" and "pharmacies" (leaf-cutter ants), etc. without anything that remotely resembles what we would call "intelligence" or "consciousness" (remember, their brains are smaller than a poppy seed and their life spans are measured in days).
Furthermore, none of the instructions for doing all of this "design" is encoded directly into the DNA of any given social insect. Rather, the instructions are "compiled" from the individual activities of thousands of individual insects performing very simple, stereotyped actions (mostly coordinated by chemical pheromones). In other words, the "intelligence" that produces the marvelous structures and functions of insect societies is a collective "intelligence" consisting of a small set of "decision rules" hard-wired into the nervous systems of individual insects.
Might it not be the case that this same process is the paradigm for all biological complexity? This would not only explain where the "designer" is (it's all around / inside us) and who the "designer" is (it's everyone, interacting collectively in producing the "superorganism"), it would also present what ID has so far completely lacked: an empirical research program. That is, one could search for the "decision rules" that produce biological complexity, in viruses, cells, insect societies, primate societies, and human societies, and figure out how the interaction of such rules produces biological complexity.
And when you did that, you would have recreated the already-existing field of biology known as sociobiology. Been there, done that, it's a branch of evolutionary biology. So sorry…
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 27, 2009 @ 11:14 pm
May 27th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Termites do not have "goals and foresight". Rather, they are quite literally programmed (i.e. "hard wired") to perform a surprisingly simple set of simple behaviors. They are born with this capability and do not have to learn it. Furthermore, their behaviors are extremely stereotyped and subject to quite a bit of essentially "random" variation. Despite this, and because there are so many of them (literally millions in some large hives), they collectively produce structures and functions that rival the most complex "artificial" factories and dwelling places designed by humans.
The point here is that "intelligence" is not being defined well at all, if it is restricted to humans and higher vertebrates, but not to insect societies. Each insect is definitely not "intelligent" (any more than each of our individual cells is), but collectively both the insect societies and our multicellular selves are intelligent. "Intelligence" is therefore an emergent property, rather than a pre-existing attribute. And evolution, of course, is all about emergent properties.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 27, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Hi kornbelt888
Aiguy
A dedicated thread sounds like a good idea. Here is my initial attempt at a definition. Perhaps it could serve as a starting point.
Comment by William Brookfield — May 28, 2009 @ 12:03 am
May 28th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Humans were responsible? Wouldn't it be reasonable to suspect that non-humans were responsible who had similar if not the same kind of intelligence? What if the script had no historical connection to any on earth? What if we end up travelling to another solar system and find such artifacts? Still humans?
Do thunderbolts exhibit complex form and function?
Spiders are neurally programmed to do it. "Without a thought" may be true, but they possess goal and foresight, two aspects of intelligence in my view. And the source of it is unknown. Same for bees and their actions. I don't think "invention" is necessary for intelligence if agree that "intelligence" is a rubric that encompasses several aspects. It seems to me that the most basic requirements of some "intelligent system" is goals, foresight, sensors and the physical means of production.
Whatever animals we are considering, what they do involves a goal and foresight if they produce anything with complex form and function.
Point taken.
KB: While it's true that all known intelligent entities are structures of complex form and function, we don't know where the neural programming came from that make them capable of generating complex form and function. Yes, we know it's passed from parents to child, but the original source is "unknown." Dealing with unknown sources of intelligence and form and function is as much part of our experience as the understanding that all known intelligent entities are complex form and function. (Yes, that was a clumsy sentence, but I'm not going to edit it.
) So I don't see your point as being "against this view."
If ID claims that then ID is wrong, IMO. There is one glaring example for which the cause is unknown: the first life on earth. Of course, the form and function of all lifeforms themselves (not what they produce, but what they are) is likewise unknown to what degree it is from an intelligent source.
Actually what is shows is that intelligence invariable arises from the complex form and function of objects that were spawned by a previous object with the same complex form, function and intelligence. "Arises" is too loose a word. "Manifests" is better. "The implicit becomes explicit" is better still. Human intelligence is made explicit from the ontology of a genome programmed to make it explicit. But where does the implicit programming come from? Unknown.
Perhaps. So if the first cell on earth exhibits aspects of intelligence (can produce complex form and function), we should take this, not as evidence of design, but of procreation from somewhere else?
Agreed.
I don't think it can be surmounted. What matters what regards to science is falsifiable hypotheses for naturalistic and intelligent causes.
Sure. But you probably have a good idea what my view is. Playbooks for sale!
If the purported designer of life has genes passed down to him/her/it/them would tend of make said designer not the designer of life in any ultimate way. But maybe life on earth. The origins of the designer would be irrelevant at that point for all intents and purposes. (Although we might like to know about the designer.) What counts is if the designer was capable of doing things that law and chance cannot do. That is the challenge: what, if anything, requires goals and foresight (and perhaps the other aspects of intelligence) in order to bring about the first life on earth? Or any feature of life for that matter. That is the goal of ID, as I understand it.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 28, 2009 @ 12:20 am
May 28th, 2009 at 12:37 am
I don't equate intelligence with consciousness, nor do I think consciousness is required for intelligence. But I do think that termites exhibit some aspects of intelligence: goals and foresight.
Arent the simple stereotyped actions encoded directly into the DNA?
Goals and foresight are there. I'm not saying they have conscious foresight. No termite is dreaming of its new mud home. But their actions have an implicit foresight where individual acts prior to their usefulness add up on the whole to a complex form and function that benefits them. The entire system has foresight. It's the DNA-programmed nature of the individuals acting together that manifest the implicit foresight towards mud structures that termites do in a way dogs don't do.
Would a baby raised by gorillas surpass them in the production of complex form and function? Would it still have powers of reason in ways apes don't have as it matured. I think so. There's clearly more than the "super-organism" or society involved here, in that case. With any organism, super or not, the nature of the individuals are quite determinative of the manifestations of the super-organism or society. That nature is programmed into the genes and perhaps epigenomic factors. And goals and foresight are there. Original source unknown.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 28, 2009 @ 12:37 am
May 28th, 2009 at 12:43 am
I think goals and foresight, whether in individuals or in a collective (due to individuals programmed to act in a collective a certain way), goals and foresight two of the aspects of intelligence.
But I agree we need to hammer out the term. A new thread perhaps.
The goal and foresight the collective exhibit is indeed "emergent". But the predictable way that it emerges comes from the nature of the individuals acting as a collective. All of it is determined by genomic factors. If you change the nature of the individuals you will change the nature of the collective too and the emergent goal and foresight that is implicit in the the nature of the individuals. Collective emergence solves no mysteries here.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 28, 2009 @ 12:43 am
May 28th, 2009 at 7:41 am
It's an incredibly important finding. It shows how complex behavior can result from the interaction of automatons following a simple set of rules. No one had to set up the rules. These sorts of behaviors are evolvable, and therefore consistent with all the other evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution.
Comment by Zachriel — May 28, 2009 @ 7:41 am
May 28th, 2009 at 10:47 am
KB,
Yes, they were.
No, since we have no reason to think any such creature has ever been on Earth.
If we find human-like artifacts on another planet, the reasonable assumption would be that human-like life forms (with human-like brains) had been there. (That is what astrobiologists study, including the so-called encephalization quotients they use to estimate the likelihood that life forms would evolve sufficient brainpower to be technological).
They happen to strike church steeples far more often than random chance would dictate, leading people in the relatively recent past to insist that intelligent agency was required to aim them (how else could lightning bolts possibly start out from a cloud and travel directly to the church steeple, unless something with vision, foresight, and a goal was aiming them?) The point here was more broad than complex form and function – it was that we can see that just because humans must think about doing these things doesn't mean that these things require thinking when they happen without human involvement.
We agree wholeheartedly; here again are a few examples I found in a quick search:
(original citations above)
Indeed – in our experience, life comes only from life. So the most parsimonius theory is that life on Earth came from living organisms elsewhere. (Where did they come from? Who knows – ID doesn't do any better on that score, positing a designer with equally mysterious origins).
A simpler hypothesis would be that no designing was going on at all – just good old fashioned biological reproduction.
There is nothing we know of that has been shown to transcend law and chance (although in the past, things that people swore could only be accomplished by transcending law and chance have been found to be caused by law and chance).
I think we need to talk about what intelligence is, how it relates to free will (transcending law and chance), what goals and foresight are, how this all relates to consciousness, and so on. I find it astonishing that at this point in the ID debate, with the bookshelves brimming with books describing ID, and internet sites proclaiming that support for ID is on the rise, and support for teaching it in schools… at this point nobody has ever written a book saying what "intelligence" is supposed to mean in ID theory!
Comment by aiguy — May 28, 2009 @ 10:47 am
May 28th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Allen_MacNeill Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Termites do not have "goals and foresight". Rather, they are quite literally programmed (i.e. "hard wired") to perform a surprisingly simple set of simple behaviors. They are born with this capability and do not have to learn it.
All you told me, Professor, is that termites don’t have “goals or foresight,” but their programs do. I’m certainly capable of writing a program that has a goal. And I can’t even think of any other reason to write a program.
“Furthermore, their behaviors are extremely stereotyped and subject to quite a bit of essentially "random" variation.”
That pretty much describes human behavior too. (Science is a very highly ritualized behavior. As is some religions.) No doubt human behavior is richer, more complicated, and less understood; but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also “extremely stereotyped” and subject to “random variation.”
What is it, in the most basic terms, that humans do that termites don’t?
Although I’m given to cynicism , I do not follow the fashion of belittling and diminishing human capabilities and accomplishments, so by asking the question I am implying no such thing.
What I am suggesting by the question is that we should try to be as objective as we can in making such comparative evaluations (human termite). I think the average person, upon observation of termites, grants the termite living status because of an immediate, intuitive, and quite intimate identification with the termites’ similar appearance and behavior.
Does the average human think termites are stupid? Probably not. But, on the basis of opinions commonly expressed in these discussions, many of us are unimpressed by their “intelligence,” if any. For the reasons Prof. MacNeill suggests? Maybe. But also possibly because the human observer understands little of what the termites are doing and why (for what purpose, to what end) they’re are doing it.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill —The point here is that "intelligence" is not being defined well at all, if it is restricted to humans and higher vertebrates, but not to insect societies.
I agree. All life forms should be evaluated by the same “IQ Test.”
I have suggested before (I recall in discussions with Prof. MacNeill) a kind of “Turing Test”: A human may instinctually dismiss termites as “unintelligent” bugs, but ask the same human to recreate a termite mound and explain the basic principles of its construction, and the function of its many architectural features. Now if you can honestly say that you wouldn’t find that test intellectually challenging, a meaningful test of your intelligence, then by the same standard, the same test, the mindless bugs are at least as smart as you. LOL You may laugh, but I’m laughing at our shared presumptions and pretensions. We think we are so smart that we don’t think anyone else is smart at all. I think that’s stupid!
I wouldn’t find a termite mound any less remarkable a feat of intelligence [than the pyramids] if it was completely programmed. Indeed! I would find such a program to be an even more remarkable feat of intelligence! (Notice how I always talk about “intelligence” as if it “does” something. I think it was aiguy who told me that “intelligence” doesn’t “do” anything. I understood that to mean intelligence doesn’t even exist. Because everything that exists “does” something. Maybe “intelligence” is a figment of my imagination?–an illusion? LOL)
I share the belief that intelligence is “emergent” from a collective. It seems natural for a computer scientist. But we should not fail to appreciate the sophisticated computationally capabilities of even single celled organisms. After all, your brain is just billions of single-celled organisms, interacting concurrently, in serial and in parallel.
Your symbionts, E. coli, compute continuously updated time derivatives and integrate to successfully acquire, track, and intercept (/avoid) the source of life giving (/threatening) signals, and do all this under extreme conditions, in a very noisy environment. Single cells in your ear are compensators for the disorienting effects of relativistic accelerations. Single cells that know relativistic mechanics! LOL It is a crying shame Einstein didn’t live long enough to learn of the discovery. Single neurons can associate a name with a face!
If it was all pre-programmed it wouldn’t be any less a wonder to me. Of course, that would be my programmed response. LOL
Human designers, e.g., TG, may appreciate the difficulties involved in effectively solving the tracking problem that E. coli and all life forms must solve to survive. The problem of directing a system to a goal.
Norbert Weiner explains, in some technical detail, his pioneering methods and solutions, in communications, control, and computer engineering, in Cybernetics (1948); which I very highly recommend to everyone, and esp. scientists and engineers.
(I read the book in ’68 and vividly recall Wiener’s argument about the necessity of broken time-symmetry for communications. That sciency stuff fascinates the it outta me!)
In the first instance what is a “purpose”? From the root “to propose,” a purpose is a proposition, a hypothesis, a prediction, plan, or program. A specific series of actions to be performed to achieve a certain state (a goal). Seems to me programming is very important to understand viz purpose. If this plan can be reproduced, it is or can be used as a program.
As too "intelligence" not being well "defined," I persist in my dissent. I, as do so many others in fields of computer science, cognitive science, cognitive development, neurobiology, psychology, etc. think of intelligence as adaptive behavior, and therefore “intelligence” is a common attribute of life on Earth.
Comment by Rock — May 28, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Btw, Bilbo, I don’t what changing your name (address, telephone number, and appearance) will accomplish…
We know who you are… [Insert evil maniacal laughter here.]
If you were to change your name according to what your critics say, you should call yourselves “IDiots,” or “TARDs,” “charlatans,” “frauds,” “liars,” “ignoramuses” (Ignoramusae? Ignoramusi?) or any number of other such labels I’ve heard (most of which shouldn’t be repeated in mixed company).
(I have suggested before that you start calling yourselves "Neo-Darwinists." LOL)
Comment by Rock — May 28, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
You usually equate "intelligence" and "life", which I think I think is just fine… except it makes it a bit problematic to attempt to explain the existence of life by appeal to intelligence
Great idea. I instinctively dismissed thunderclouds as "unintelligent". However, I just tried to recreate a lightning bolt, and explain the basic principles of its operation, and found it took a great deal of intelligence. Wow – those thunderclouds must be really intelligent! Using the same method I have discovered that the Sun is incredibly intelligent (how difficult it must have been to figure out how to ignite those fusion reactions – only physicists know how to do that!). The most surprising result was finding something that could compute a minimal Steiner tree – a very difficult (and NP-complete) problem! What could be so intelligent? Soap film! Who would have thought that soap film was so intelligent!
(http://kryten.mm.rpi.edu/scb_pnp_solved22.pdf).
On the contrary, Rock – you have just shown us that everything from clouds to soap film is more intelligent than most humans. Brilliant!
Again – as usual, the concept of intelligence is so muddled that it is synonymous with that other difficult-to-pin-down qualify, life. Try to name something living that isn't intelligent, and try to name something intelligent that isn't living. See what I mean?
So if "intelligence" and "life" mean the same thing, saying life came from intelligence is the same as saying life came from life. Gee, great – there is something we didn't know!
Comment by aiguy — May 28, 2009 @ 5:07 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
That's right. I didn't say it wasn't.
That's right.
You don't know is anyone had to setup any rules.
Prove they are completely evolvable.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 28, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Is it rational?
Is there an absolute moral imperative despite anyone's opinion?
If so, from where or what?
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 28, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Pyramids on Mars, I said. But you answer it with this:
So then, you would conclude that they had human-like intelligence? I seem to recall you resisted that idea in previous months, but I could be wrong.
So do thunderbolts exhibit complex form and function?
K: What counts is if the designer was capable of doing things that law and chance cannot do.aiguy: There is nothing we know of that has been shown to transcend law and chance
Agreed.
Here's your chance for riches and glory!
Interesting post.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 28, 2009 @ 5:42 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Where did you get the idea that I think this? And why would a killing rampage benefit anyone according to my worldview?
And why would you care to ask why I care? After all, don't you believe that death ends all for everyone?
I wish you really wanted to know the answer to that question.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 28, 2009 @ 6:01 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
KB,
If we believed that some life form existed on Mars that built a bunch of artifacts similar to humans, then I think that would be good reason to assume these martians had human-like intelligence in some loose sense. For example, I would guess they had sense organs, and neural mechanisms to process sense data, and the sense data were probably similar to what we see on Earth (light, heat, maybe UV, sound/vibration, etc.)
On the contrary! I'd bet only a very few people would buy a book that points out the term "intelligent agent" is currently meaningless in the context of ID theory as popularly expounded. How many people buy the philosophy books that actually try to work out what term might mean? Of note, however, is Angus Menuge's book (funded by the Discovery Institute) on the topic of agency ( http://www.amazon.com/Agents-Under-Materialism-Rationality-Science/dp/0742534049 ). I happen to think that the book was very poorly argued, but at least Menuge recognizes that ID is meaningless without foundational commitments to a particular philosophy of mind (irreducible, ontologically distinct agency, i.e. dualism).
Comment by aiguy — May 28, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
A very few simple rules leads to complex behavior, including the ability to sense and adapt. It's consistent with an evolutionary process, and consistent with all the other evidence in support of the Theory of Evolution. There are entire fields devoted to eusocial behavior, cellular automata and insect organization.
Sure, we can imagine someone tampered with the process, but as a scientific claim, it's completely superfluous.
Comment by Zachriel — May 28, 2009 @ 6:51 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
That should be attributed to kornbelt888.
Comment by Zachriel — May 28, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
And the motion of planets were consistent with the theory of epicycles once upon a time. The Modern Synthesis and the "entire" sub-fields cannot tell any impressive detail how termites got their neural programming. MET is a good starts. But there's too many Grand Canyon sized gaps yet to have the kind of the confidence you seem to have.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 28, 2009 @ 7:14 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
KB,
I agree.
Comment by aiguy — May 28, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
The claim wasn't that there was a known history of the evolution of social insects, only that there was no need to posit that someone set up the rules. The rules are simple and flexible enough as to be added incrementally. And being *consistent* with the Theory of Evolution means it is one more data-point among a huge amount of supporting data. It's like showing that rocks fall in Pisae, that rocks fall in the Bronx, but maybe not that rock over there. You can't look at the evidence in isolation.
Virtually, every scientist in the field would agree that social behavior in insects evolved, many papers are published on the evolution of social insects, and nothing on someone setting up the rules.
Comment by Zachriel — May 28, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
So, aiguy failed the test. Any other takers?
Aiguy, having failed the test, suggests another test…
Which I passed by scuffing my shoes on the carpet anr running my hands through my hair.
A real challenge to my "intelligence."
(But also falsifying a theory often repeated by Zachriel: It takes a lightnining god, like Zeus, to produce static electricity.)
Comment by Rock — May 28, 2009 @ 7:47 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
The serious point about Rock's confusion is this: Contrary to what Rock proposes, we can't establish a metric for intelligence by gauging how hard it would be for a human being to do something – that's just nonsense. Just because a human being has to think about how some animal does something – or how something occurs in nature – in order to reproduce it does not mean that the animal – or nature – is using thought processes to accomplish it. My examples plainly show that humans use intelligence to recreate what other animals and nature does without a thought.
Comment by aiguy — May 28, 2009 @ 8:02 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Oh yes, the other question Rock couldn't address is equally important: Can anyone think of anything living that isn't intelligent, or anything intelligent that isn't living? I believe the answer is "no". What does that tell us about what it means to be "intelligent"?
Comment by aiguy — May 28, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
May 28th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
One of the points I tried to make earlier is that using human "intelligence" as a yardstick for intelligence in general is like using a Cray XMT as your yardstick for evaluating the "intelligence" of an abacus. In virtually every discussion I have read about "intelligence" at ID blogs, there seems to be an unspoken yet universal assumption that "intelligence" is an either/or phenomenon: either something is at least as intelligent as a human (or the Intelligent Designer aka God) or it isn't intelligent at all.
I was quite serious when I asked how "intelligent" a virus like the lambda bacteriophage is. If "intelligence" is to be a useful (not to mention empirically measurable) phenomenon, it seems to me that it should fall somewhere along a spectrum, from the "intelligence" manifested by simple viruses up through the "intelligence" manifested by complex animal societies such as ours.
The latter point – that "intelligence" must somehow be massively multiplied as the result of social/collective interactions – is also non-trivial. As I pointed out earlier, an individual termite is extraordinarily "stupid", especially by human standards. Indeed, taken out of their social contexts, the behaviors of most social organisms seem pointless and almost random. However, what appear to be pointless and virtually random behaviors when viewed at the individual level become extraordinarily complex and "hyper-intelligent" when one moves up in organizational levels in animal societies.
How "intelligent" would each of us be, if we were forced to live in complete isolation from all other humans? If we were forced to do so from birth, our "intelligence" would be so limited as to result in almost instant death. Ergo, if one uses "able to live independently" as one's criterion for "intelligence", one would have to conclude that oak trees are immensely more intelligent than humans.
In my opinion, until ID theory comes to grips with the concept of "intelligence" in such a way as to make it both empirically verifiable and quantifiable, ID "theory" will continue to be not much more than unsupported speculation.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 28, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 9:03 am
aiguy Says: Contrary to what Rock proposes, we can't establish a metric for intelligence by gauging how hard it would be for a human being to do something – that's just nonsense.
A bit of “nonsense” that our entire educational system is built upon. If you criticize educational methods and standards you’ll find me sympathetic, because I believe our educational system is a national disgrace. But measuring and evaluating learning (part of intelligence) by the increasing degree of difficulty in the achievement is a sound method.
And on that basis we should correctly conclude that any human who can pass the test is smarter than the average termite.
“My examples plainly show that humans use intelligence to recreate what other animals and nature does without a thought.”
Which would be fine with me, trivial, yes, as in commonly understood, but I’m OK with such demonstrations. Except you did no such thing. Remind me of what examples you provided? Clouds that aim lightning at church steeples. A quaint superstition. Soap bubbles that solve Steiner tree problems? LOL I can suggest some more common examples (in this context): snowflakes, puddles, rocks rolling down hills, meteor craters, unicorns (?!)…
Unlike many of the IDers I don’t allow myself to be distracted by sophistry and polemical evasions and obfuscations. This kind of silliness has a strange appeal for many IDers and their critics, but I believe (sorry to have to say it) such “arguments” would insult the intelligence of the average termite.
“Oh yes, the other question Rock couldn't address is equally important…” Why couldn’t I address that? You appear to be arguing with me, but not with anything I actually said. I think you’re arguing with yourself, aren’t you? I wrote that intelligence is a common attribute of life and provided a commonly repeated evolutionary-theoretic rationale for believing so. Even people who don’t believe in evolution understand the relation between adaptation and intelligence.
I did not say intelligence is an attribute exclusive to life forms. What exactly did I say that caused this confusion on your part?
Like aiguy I have some background in AI and the very premise of my work was that intelligence is not limited to life forms, but that definite aspects of intelligence can be emulated by machines. Machines that neither I nor anyone else thought of as being alive. (Maybe we were being prejudiced in that way? One for the biologists, I suppose.)
Like many of the IDers, aiguy is a mystic wrt “intelligence.” Intelligence is an ineffable, immaterial essence, a spirit, a “ghost in the machine.” Scientists cannot hold it in their hands, poke and prod it, measure it, or know what it is. It’s a mystery! Like table rapping, creaking floorboards, and fogged camera lenses. “Intelligence” is a cheap parlor trick.
Phooey.
Comment by Rock — May 29, 2009 @ 9:03 am
May 29th, 2009 at 10:51 am
As a first approach to an operational definition of intelligence, consider whether learning is a necessary component of intelligence. Several commentators have strongly implied that this is the case. That is, the more an entity is capable of "learning", the more intelligent it is.
However, using the ability to learn as a criterion for intelligence is fraught with difficulties. For example, termites do not learn to build termite mounds, yet virtually everyone in this thread has agreed that mound-building behavior in termites indicates that termites (at least as a group) are indeed intelligent. Ergo, it is quite clear that an entity that is utterly incapable of "learning" can still qualify as being highly "intelligent".
This would also apply to some ID supporter's assertion that the Intelligent Designer is the God of the Abrahamic religions. This entity is universally recognized as being a "4-O deity": that is, He is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. However, this last quality also strongly implies that the ID/God does not learn from His actions, as to do so would be directly contradictory with His being forever omniscient (i.e. from the beginning to the end of time, assuming that time does indeed end). Ergo, the ability to learn is quite clearly not a criterion for determining intelligence, if one assumes that the Intelligent Designer of ID theory is the God of the Abrahamic religions.
If one is familiar with so-called "expert systems" in computing, the same would be the case. Expert systems (ESs) do not "learn" to do anything in the sense that animals with "wet" minds do. On the contrary, an ES performs a complex (sometimes recursive) calculation using data embedded in one or more "truth tables", producing a calculated outcome. This outcome is sometimes hedged with statistical error calculations, but it is a calculated (i.e. not learned) outcome nonetheless. While the final calculation produced by an ES can be modified, this happens only when the values in the "truth tables" are modified. Otherwise, the outcome is simply a calculation. Ergo, expert systems do not actually "learn" anything, at least in the same way that animals (and some other living organisms) do.
So, I believe that it is fair to conclude that the ability to "learn" is quite clearly not a necessary criterion for intelligence. Some highly intelligent entities (such as termite colonies and the God of Abraham) are clearly incapable of true "learning". Conversely, some very unintelligent entities, such as bacteria, are nonetheless capable of changing their behavior over time in response to changes in their environment (the standard operational definition of "learning" in the cognitive sciences).
CONCLUSION: Intelligence is fundamentally unrelated to the ability to learn.
Which brings us back once again to the fundamental question: what is "intelligence", how can it be observed, and can it be quantified in any way? If not, then ID is quite literally a "science" without an empirically definable subject, and therefore a pointless exercise in mental masturbation.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 29, 2009 @ 10:51 am
May 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am
One might also be tempted to define "intelligence" as "adaptability". That is, an "intelligent" entity has the ability to adapt its behavior (and, presumably, its underlying cognitive machinery by means of which its behavior is generated and regulated) in response to changes in its environment. However, this presents two serious problems to an ID supporter:
1) "Adaptability" is what natural selection is all about. Why posit the existence of an "intelligent" entity that is capable of "adapting" to changes in the environment, when this is precisely what natural selection is supposed to be able to do?
2) Since ID is supposed to be a theory that explains adaptation, then saying that the Intelligent Designer (i.e. the entity that moulds adaptations) is adaptable is essentially defining "intelligence" via constructing a tautology:
• "intelligence" = "ability to produce adaptations"
• "intelligent design" = the process by which adaptations are created
Ergo, "intelligent design" reduces to "adaptability producing adaptations".
This is what is sometimes referred to in logic as the "dormative principle" argument, from Moliere's "Imaginary invalid". When asked how or why opium produces sleep, the learned doctor replies "because it contains a 'dormative principle'"; that is, it causes sleep because it contains a material that causes sleep. In the same way, defining "intelligence" as "the ability to adapt to changes in the environment" (including changes that have not yet happened, i.e. foresight) reduces to "design that is 'adaptable' because it is 'adaptable'".
Where does this leave us in a search for an empirically quantifiable definition of "intelligence"? And if the answer is, "nowhere", then where does this leave "intelligent design"?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 29, 2009 @ 11:06 am
May 29th, 2009 at 11:14 am
In the same line of argument as my previous post, one clearly cannot define "intelligence" as "that principle/process/quality by which complex specified information is produced". To do so would once more be arguing via tautology:
Question: What produces "complex specified information"?
Answer: Intelligence.
Question: What is "intelligence"?
Answer: That principle/process/quality that produces complex specified information.
Ergo, "the principle/process/quality that produces complex specified information" is what produces "complex specified information".
Again, a pointless exercise in semantic gymnastics.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 29, 2009 @ 11:14 am
May 29th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I have pointed out to Rock was that his suggestion was silly: Despite what he thought, we can't gauge the intelligence of non-human entities (like other animals or natural processes) by seeing how difficult it would be for a human to do what they do. The reason is simple: While we humans can recreate what we see other animals – or natural processes – do, by figuring it out in our minds, that doesn't mean that these other animals – or nature itself – is using thought to accomplish the same thing.
Unless Rock is thinking that we educate non-human animals and natural processes, I'm afraid he has gone off the deep end on this one!
And if Rock knows enough electrical engineering to replicate this feat, then he's as smart as a thundercloud!
(Not bubbles but soap film spread over pins). Again, if Rock can compute the minimum spanning tree as well as soap film, then he has matched wits with soap. But he can't – the math is too hard. So I guess Rock isn't as bright as a pan filled with soap.
These are the sorts of results you get when you guage the intelligence of non-human entities by seeing how hard it would be for a human to replicate their behaviors. So it looks like we need some other metric for evaluating the intelligence of non-human entities.
LOL! After all that you didn't even try to respond to the question! Here again is the question, repeated for your convenience: Can anyone think of anything living that isn't intelligent, or anything intelligent that isn't living? If the answer is "no", then you have confirmed that by the word "intelligence" you mean "living", and vice-versa. So what does it mean to say that the cause of life was intelligence? It means nothing except "the cause of life is life"! Get it?
This is a bizarre misrepresentation of my views; everyone here (except Rock) knows this is the opposite of what I think.
Comment by aiguy — May 29, 2009 @ 11:57 am
May 29th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
aig:
The capacity to generate an entity that utiizes somthing other than advanced cognitive skills to parallel what would result from human reason can be an indicator that human or greater than human intellectual capacites were the causal source.
Comment by Bradford — May 29, 2009 @ 12:22 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
aig:
And if a cause for life cannot be traced to intelligence that means life was caused by non-life. So when we say the cause of life was non-life it means nothing except non-life causes life. Get it?
Comment by Bradford — May 29, 2009 @ 12:29 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Bradford,
Let's try to sort this out:
1) We see that human beings can use thought to recreate things we see in nature. For example, we can solve spanning tree problems using advanced mathematics, while soap film solves the same problem without thinking about it at all.
2) For this reason, for any particular thing we see in nature, the fact that it would take intelligence in humans to recreate the phenomenon does not mean that nature itself is using intelligence to accomplish the same thing.
3) You argue that this means that something intelligent must have designed nature in such a way that humans can recreate phenomena by using intelligence.
I see this as a version of the "intelligibility" argument; what physicists sometimes call the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics (in describing the world).
I agree that it is mysterious that mathematics (and other types of reasoning too) mirrors the way the world works, i.e. it is weird that we can model the world using formal systems. Some philosophers take this to mean that a mind designed the world, others see it as an indication that mathematics is a human invention rather than some part of a pre-existing (Platonic) reality.
These are interesting, and very ancient, philosophical problems. But ID brings nothing new to these particular discussions, and we have no way of resolving them empirically.
As far as ID goes, the point remains: Just because humans would use intelligence to produce some effect does not mean that other animals – or natural processes – use intelligence to do the same thing. I have given a number of examples to illustrate this point, and it is quite easy to think of many others.
Comment by aiguy — May 29, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Bradford,
I agree it means nothing to say life was caused by non-life. Neither of these statements add anything to our understanding at all – they are vacuous statements. In order to move forward in understanding how life began, it doesn't help at all to say that life, non-life, intelligence, or non-intelligence was responsible. Instead, we actually need to posit something meaningful as an explanation.
Comment by aiguy — May 29, 2009 @ 12:36 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Maybe, but I think Dembski and Marks are have raised possibilites with their conservation of information idea. In any case origin issues have defied standard attempts at answers so the best answer might be that empirical approaches do not resolve these conundrums.
Comment by Bradford — May 29, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Meaningful generally means a chemical formula starting with an organic chemical mix and ending with a cell. For reasons grounded in the nature of the physical entities involved I don't think it went down that way.
Comment by Bradford — May 29, 2009 @ 12:43 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Bradford,
Even if "conservation of information" was a well-formed scientific principle, it would not tell us how information was created. Saying information is created "by intelligence" is a vacuous statement until one explains what "intelligence" is supposed to mean in that sentence. So attempts to formalize conservation laws regarding intelligence won't help – for all ID can show, the universe simply popped into existence with the information that has, ever since, been conserved.
I think it is absolutely true that empirical approaches have not yet resolved these questions! I wouldn't say it will never happen though.
No! That's not what I mean by meaningful. I would say the following is a meaningful statement: "Mind was responsible, where 'mind' means a non-physical irreducible force, entailing conscious awareness, that can have causal effects upon matter and energy".
That is a meaningful proposition; I don't think it can be supported by any evidence, but at least it means something. To say "intelligence" was responsible, on the other hand, or "non-intelligence" did it – these mean nothing, because the term hasn't been explained in this context.
Comment by aiguy — May 29, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
The capacity to create information systems is the point of the Marks, Dembski's approach. It can be the defining feature of intelligence relevant for empirical purposes.
Comment by Bradford — May 29, 2009 @ 1:12 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Bradford,
I think "conservation of information" means just that – it is a conservation law, like the other conservation laws (matter/energy, momentum, etc). It doesn't explain how information is created, only that it is conserved. Likewise, the fact that we all believe that matter/energy is conserved does not explain how the matter/energy of the universe came to exist in the first place. The universe may have come into existence with all the matter/energy AND all the information it has now, and we have no way of ascertaining how that happened in the first place.
No, I think Allen just pointed out the problem with this: If you define intelligence simply as "that which creates information", then you can't explain information (i.e. complex specified information) by saying intelligence created it – that is an obviously circular and vacuous statement – an empty tautology.
From what Dembski has written, he really does mean that intelligence is an irreducible, non-physical mental substance that has causal power over matter/energy and transcends physical cause. That is, to my mind, a meaningful proposition – it is Cartesian dualism. Dembski thinks that res cogitans is what creates information.
Unfortunately, rather than being transparent about this metaphysical commitment, Dembski and many others use the word "intelligence" instead, which confuses these discussions endlessly.
Comment by aiguy — May 29, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Information is conserved within the context of a transmission receiving physical system. You can break this message down into bits of information can you not? If I don't type this out what happens?
Comment by Bradford — May 29, 2009 @ 1:51 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Bradford,
I actually don't believe that "conservation of information" is a well-formed scientific principle, because Dembski mixes up various mathematical definitions of information in his work – so I can't answer your question.
But I really don't want to argue about that; I'm perfectly willing to grant for the sake of argument that there is indeed some well-defined, quantified thing called information and that Dembski/Marks have proven that this quantity is conserved. My point is that to apply this conservation law in the context of ID, he has to explain how this information came to exist in the first place, and saying "intelligence" caused it to exist is a vacuous explanation. Dembski can (and does, I believe) say (but not in so many words) that res cogitans exists and is responsible for the creation of information. Again, I consider this to be a non-vacuous, meaningful, but empirically unsupported proposition.
Comment by aiguy — May 29, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
It seem to me that the physical universe is a deconstraining "device" (thermodynamics, black hole dynamics). Information in physical form is not conserved but is instead lost (degraded over time). The only thing that seems to be conserved in a black hole is its mass, charge and angular momentum, but even these become meaningless as its mass goes to infinity and the gravitational tensors go to zero. Mind ("intelligence") on the other hand, (unlike the physical universe) is a constraining "device."
Comment by William Brookfield — May 29, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
William,
I don't know what this means, but I'm pretty sure it is not something we can verify against our experience.
Comment by aiguy — May 29, 2009 @ 4:17 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Hi Aiguy,
If I were to mindfully reply to you –constraining my letter output to a particular narrow set of english letter patterns that conveying a specific (constrained) meaning — I would have verified (within my experience at least) that my mind is opperating as a constraining/focusing/specifying agent. The focusing/constraining nature of my mind seems self evident.
Comment by William Brookfield — May 29, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
May 29th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
William,
Yes, that is how it seems. Nobody knows if mind is ontologically distinct from matter – if it can transcend physical cause. That is what cannot be verified. (I don't expect we'll solve this problem here, since philosophers have been working on it for millenia without resolution).
Comment by aiguy — May 29, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
May 30th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
C’mon, Professor, you’re not going to repeat the creationists’ “tautology” canard. You don’t teach that to your students, do you? I thought we had laws against teaching creationism or doubts about evolution! LOL
Scientists operationalize intelligence in terms of learning measures. The simplest, most reliable, efficient, and effective form of learning is conditioning. Adaptation is, in its simplest form, conditioning.
Programming a machine to emulate intelligence, think and act intelligent, operationalizes intelligence in terms of operations, quite literally. It is not merely “convention” or “arbitrary” that these operations are represented by a two-valued logic and two values.
Operationalizing intelligence in those terms (Boolean algebra; which may be unfamiliar to the average biologist, but quite familiar to systems and synthetic biologists, and, of course, computer and electronics scientists and engineers) and analyzing the genetic system and how it works yields some interesting insights.
The genome is full of learning circuits! Every gene from which we can elicit a conditioned (or conditionable) response.
Termites are a lot smarter than you thought.
Comment by Rock — May 30, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
May 30th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Rock wrote:
Is your statement that: "It is not merely “convention” or “arbitrary” that these operations are represented by a two-valued logic and two values" a reference to Boolean algebra? Is it not true that "higher levels of programming" entail symbols by which convention and arbitrariness completely describe the pattern corresponding to their binary representation? For example, these letters are represented by distinct patterns whose logical origins are sourced in arbitrary mappings are they not?
Comment by Bradford — May 30, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
May 30th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
[...] is expressing a sentiment echoed in the thread PD instead of ID by at least one commenter. But Dawkins is drawing a conclusion supported by an artificial [...]
Pingback by Leaning on Your Own Understanding - Telic Thoughts — May 30, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
May 30th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Sigh. The tautology is different, obviously: If "intelligence" means "that which creates information", then explaining information by appeal to intelligence is an empty tautology.
If learning is requisite for intelligence, as you seem to believe, then we would need evidence that whatever entity ID says is the cause of biological complexity is capable of learning. There is no such evidence, however, since this entity has never been observed in novel circumstance (nor in any circumstance).
Bradford,
Not exactly. Research has revealed that fundamental linguistic abilities are innate, rather than invented/learned. While the particular symbolic mappings (alphabets, word tokens) are in some sense arbitrary (though in fact socially and culturally determined), underlying linguistic rules and constructs appear to be wired into human brains.
Comment by aiguy — May 30, 2009 @ 5:45 pm