So then how did it happen?
by BradfordPiattelli-Palmarini: Ostracism W/out Nat Selection, is the title of an article featuring an interview of Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini by Suzan Mazur. It is rich in notable quotes. Although Piattelli-Palmarini has some counter-mainstream ideas he establshes his bonafides with mainstreamers with this comment:
I think that abandoning Darwinism (or explicitly relegating it where it belongs, in the refinement and tuning of existing forms) sounds anti-scientific. They fear that the tenants of intelligent design and the creationists (people I hate as much as they do) will rejoice and quote them as being on their side. They really fear that, so they are prudent, some in good faith, some for calculated fear of being cast out of the scientific community.
How does one develop hatred for those he has never met and knows nothing about other than the singular belief they hold? I'll bet if some critics were fed truth serum and asked if they hate serial murderers like Ted Bundy they would reply in the negative. Yet… Let me bring a fear to fruition. There was this quote:
Look, when Sherman stresses that the sea urchin has, in-expressed, the genes for the eyes and for antibodies (genes that are well known and fully active in later species), how can we not agree with him that canonical neo-Darwinism cannot begin to explain such facts?
Gotta love it. You'd think the man was a double agent posing as an ID hater when he is advancing front loading with a side comment.:mrgreen: How about this one?
Of course, there is natural selection all around us (just think of the flu virus, mutating and adapting every year, to our detriment) and inside us (just think of our antibodies and our synapses and the pancreas cells and the epithelial cells). The point is, however, that organisms can be modified and refined by natural selection, but that is NOT the way new species and new classes and new phyla originated.
For that, major changes in regulatory genes and in gene regulatory networks have to occur. All this is perfectly naturalistic and now well documented. Minor changes in the order of activation of master genes can create vast discontinuous morphogenetic changes. Very similar (in the jargon orthologous) genes in insects and in vertebrates produce an inversion in the development of the nervous system.
I don't understand this man. Follow this reasoning and tell me what I'm missing.
Major changes in regulatory genes and in gene regulatory networks have taken place naturally but not through natural selection right? Piattelli-Palmarini believes that genomes code for proteins involved in biological functions. He knows mutations occur yet discounts selection as an explanation for new species. He also disavows intelligent design and creation. So how did new species come about or is this how gaps are created?
May 14th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Hate and fear. What a sad commentary on the state of science these days.
Comment by nobody — May 14, 2008 @ 12:32 am
May 14th, 2008 at 1:53 am
nobody,
I was lamenting that. There's another article on the Scoop site talking about an upcoming (I believe) meeting of 16 major figures in evolutionary theory - and naturally there's not only a snarl against ID proponents, but the Templeton foundation too (A modest religious organization if ever there was one.) The quote therein basically amounted to 'I don't care if you have to feed your kids or put them through college, you should never cooperate with any religion-based group for any reason as a scientist'.
But, the articles are still very interesting. Looks like there's a lot to debate about evolution even in the mainstream. I suspect that if any truly drastic change in theory ever came to pass, they'd just call it 'neo-darwinism' anyway.
Comment by nullasalus — May 14, 2008 @ 1:53 am
May 14th, 2008 at 2:19 am
nullasalus says:
You're probably correct. I'm sure you're familiar with that old, well-worn consumer marketing phrase: "NEW and IMPROVED!"
Comment by nobody — May 14, 2008 @ 2:19 am
May 14th, 2008 at 9:56 am
As I have been doing for many years, let me point out once again that the real question in evolutionary biology is not "can natural selection produce the things we see around us?" The answer is clearly no; natural selection doesn't "produce" anything, it simply preserves characteristics that are produced by the "engines of variation."
That said, what most people who haven't read Darwin's Origin of Species seem to miss is that the first two chapters of that book are not about natural selection. Rather, they are about precisely what they should be about: variation, which provides the raw material for natural selection and adaptation. As Darwin pointed out in his summary to Ch. 5 of the Origin,
[emphasis added]
http://darwin-online.org.uk/co...
We are today a little closer to understanding some of the causes of variation upon which natural selection and the other "engines of evolution" operate. As I have pointed out in another thread, two properties appear to be inextricably at work in the "engines of variation": emergence and contingency. Both of these contribute to what MikeGene calls "front loading", and must be incorporated into any overall theory of variation and evolution.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 14, 2008 @ 9:56 am
May 14th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Allen_MacNeill:
I've got to make one more comment before tearing myself away from this for awhile. ( This can be addictive. Maybe that's an emergent behavior.) It seems as if emergence is similar to Behe's irreducibly complex idea- the whole being different than the sum of its parts. Behe of course based his ID friendly beliefs at least in part on IC.
You cite other "engines of evolution." Are they known, unknown, partially understood? This looks like a situation begging for a good theoretician(s) to come in and set things straight.
Comment by Bradford — May 14, 2008 @ 10:53 am
May 14th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I think there is a valid reason that serious researchers feel the need to disavow "intelligent design" before exploring these issues.
People (structuralists of all flavors) have been talking about "front-loading" by other names for a long time, and continue to do so, without the anthropomorphically charged and scientifically vacuous notion of an "intelligent designer".
If the universe was front-loaded with constraints that shape biological systems, by all means let us try to characterize and understand this. Lots of smart people are looking at what is wrong with and missing from our current evolutionary theories. They are justified in wanting to distance themselves from those who believe that "intelligence" is a meaningful explanation of natural phenomena.
Comment by aiguy — May 14, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Growing up during the latter days of the Cold War, I saw many irrational fears directed towards the people of the USSR. When the Cold War ended, I think we saw just how irrational those fears were with regards to the people. Too bad some lessons are easily learned.
Regarding the token anti-ID and creationism comments in the Scoop articles, I personally like to employ what I call a "Sharpie policy": any ad hominem attacks are blacked out, just as if I crossed them out using a black Sharpie pen. I then focus on and respond to the remainder of the argument (of course, there may be no argument left, but that speaks volumes towards the actual content of the argument, eh?).
This Altenberg 16 summit looks very interesting. If a new evolutionary synthesis does emerge, I propose when naming it to just add another neo to the front of "Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Synthesis". Just keep adding neo's 'till it's right, sez me!
Dr. MacNeil, I recall that somewhere on your blog you had a list of the various mechanisms for NS & RM. However, I can't seem to find it. If you could please provide the link for this, it would be much appreciated.
Comment by JJS P.Eng. — May 14, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
You're right. There is a valid reason. They want to keep their jobs.
Comment by nobody — May 14, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
JJS P.Eng.:
Ah, yes. Those Russians…
[Sting & Sergei Prokofiev]
Comment by Joy — May 14, 2008 @ 2:45 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
aiguy,
My apologies that I only have time for one comment but I couldn't resist.
I personally don't understand the need to disavow any attempt at establishing a scientific hypothesis. If I personally don't agree with something I state my reasons and then continue on my merry way and let the research that I disagree with either kill itself or flourish … the true scientific way.
IE: psi effects. I personally don't think that there is such a thing but I could be wrong. I wouldn't personally donate money to such endeavors, but whatever … nature has on occasion proven to be stranger than one can imagine.
1. How is "intelligent designer" necessarily anthropomorphic?
2. Also, why would an "anthropomorphic intelligence" necessarily be so evil to consider in a scientific research program? If it is only superfluous, then I agree. We can discuss intelligence (ie: computer based or QM based) without referencing human or animal intelligence — other than comparing the similarities that actually cause the system to be intelligent. After all, anthropomorphic or not, intelligence is fundamentally a type of sufficiently organized information processing.
3. Intelligence is intelligence (an information processing system with foresight and creative ability) regardless of any "anthropomorphizing." Is the AI that you deal with "anthropomorphic?" Does attaching that scary "a" word affect anything by way of research and development?
4. If "intelligence" is a scientifically vacuous notion, then why is there any research being done on artificial intelligence? Are you saying that there is no dividing line between that which is intelligent and that which is not? Are you also saying that there is no way to measure intelligence or its output and the amount of informational input necessary to achieve specific intelligent outputs? Are you saying there is an actual theoretical limitation which would make that type of research impossible?
5. If QM is a source of intelligence as per Hameroff and Penrose, then a sufficiently organized quantum computer may possess true intelligent foresight. How can you say that this intelligent quantum computer is in any way anthropomorphic? If it is anthropomorphic, does it matter? Why?
6. Intelligence is not necessarily anthropomorphic any more than a computer (or any other information processing system including the universe [as per Seth Lloyd]) is necessarily anthropomorphic.
7. If intelligence is seen as scientifically vacuous, it is only because research into its cause and its effects is for some strange reason barred from scientific inquiry. As an artificial intelligence expert, you could probably tell me if that is truly the case. If that is not the case, then what are you talking about when you reference "scientific vacuousness of intelligent design?"
Are you saying that the view that foresight (and the ability to creatively apply foresight) as a necessary cause of an engineers blueprints and the fruition of those blueprints is not even partially meaningful and all scientists ought to distance themselves from the view that foresight is at least one out of many necessary causes for that blueprint for some arbitrary reason set up by yourself? If foresight is necessary for anything, then it is not scientifically vacuous. Is foresight necessary to see the fruition of an engineers blueprint? Excellent research question. If affirmative, then your assertion about the vacuousness of intelligence is incorrect. Either way, it makes for stimulating research.
Of course, you may want to discuss the cause of foresight, but that is different than blatantly denying that foresight (as one aspect of intelligence) is necessary for anything and then assuring us that people who share that opinion of denying intelligence as a necessary cause are somehow justified in disavowing the alternative research questions in favor of their own arbitrary [and non-evident] opinion.
Comment by CJYman — May 14, 2008 @ 3:01 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
JJS P.Eng:
Hi Eng. I think most of those fears were not directed at the people but rather at a government that held sway over them and most of eastern Europe as well.
Comment by Bradford — May 14, 2008 @ 3:36 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
aiguy:
I'm waiting and listening for an explanation of how natural laws generate information in the absence of intelligence. Thinking that intelligence lies at one end of a causal chain does not detract from a need to search for constraints. But the nature of the constraints could differ.
Comment by Bradford — May 14, 2008 @ 3:45 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Here's another quote from the article:
Despite the fact we have some very different paradigms I share some specific views with the interviewee.
Comment by Bradford — May 14, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
The ability to be self critical is fundamental to the practice of science, but when self criticality is lost then science because pseudo-science. What is self criticality but life's innate ability to recognize its own contrivances? And what is contrivance but a code word for intelligent design?
In order for Darwinism to return to science it becomes necessary for Darwinists to rediscover their long lost self criticality. Then they can return to the tree of life.
Intelligent design advocates need only point to contrivances that they believe belong a life that found peace with its self criticality; so these folks are advancing science by carrying the forgotten self criticality.
Comment by Stephen — May 14, 2008 @ 4:50 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
My favorite quote from the interview:
Or already was.
Comment by Bilbo — May 14, 2008 @ 6:44 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
No matter how many times creationists repeat this "biology is broken" mantra it still won't be true. You assume Biology rejects all new ideas simply because they reject one particular completely unfounded idea, namely Intelligent Design. The truth is Biology is a rapidly advancing science and rapid advancement doesn't come by clinging to invalid concepts. Rather rapid advancement only occurs when current ideas are leading to fruitful new discoveries by making successful predictions. Just to be clear:
Biology doesn't reject new ideas, it only rejects your unfounded IDeas.
This does point to a way in which the ID movement is hurting science though. Scientists should be able to more openly discuss different ideas without the fear that various religious and political groups will hijack their research to misuse for political reasons. IDist like to claim science is being squelched when in fact they are simply trying to fight against what they see as religion hijacking science. When scientists are forced into this sort of adversarial mode then its sure to negatively impact their work. It might be a bit strong to claim you hate these people, but if someone was hijacking your life's work in order to support a political cause that you are personally opposed to wouldn't you be upset too?
Comment by Todd Berkebile — May 14, 2008 @ 7:24 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Todd, you feel something that you find irritating; but irritation is the way self doubt feels.
Comment by Stephen — May 14, 2008 @ 7:40 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Hi Todd,
What would lead you to suspect that life was intelligently designed?
Comment by nobody — May 14, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Wow. That's some phenomenal psychoanalysis. I bet if he didn't feel irritation, but bliss instead, you would tell him that he feels bliss only because he is unaware of his self doubt? And if Todd would have said he felt self doubt, would you have told him that that's actually how irritation feels?
And by the way, if this post makes you, or anybody else feel irritated, don't worry, that's just self doubt that you are feeling.
Comment by hrun — May 14, 2008 @ 8:05 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Oh the hype and the drama of it all. One's life's work being hijacked. Whose? Any names? That about gives one the license to do anything. Can't have wanton destruction now. Actually the DI could take a lesson from this diatribe. Threatiness, gross exageration, upset to the point of hate and all justified as a response to politics. Josef Goebbels did not do any better than this.
Comment by Bradford — May 14, 2008 @ 8:23 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Well played, Bradford. Well played.
Comment by hrun — May 14, 2008 @ 8:25 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
hrun, the feeling of hopeful induction corresponds to bliss; so it is not true that bliss indicates a missing self doubt, necessarily. It must return to an oscillation between bliss and irritating doubt. Be aware that bliss and irritation are two sides of the same coin, held by a yin-yang synthesis that is well described by Hegel's logic and by the intuitionist mathematics of Brouwer.
Natural selection running on hopeful bliss is a self blind induction that forgot its most irritating self doubt. You would expect nothing less coming from the said blind watchmaker. But the blind watchmaker will make mistakes, and the only way for the watchmaker to become aware of the watchmaker's mistakes is by the feeling of irritation carried by self doubt. Deductive thinking grew out of self doubt, but deduction is not a one-sided inductive thinking.
You would think that Darwinists would admit that their theory has limits; but they find themselves unable to pull themselves away from the hopeful induction, thereby claiming that the watchmaker is completely blind when there is no ground to make such an absolute claim.
Understand that ID advocates don't need to define the watchmaker, because their job is to carry the self doubt ignored by the Darwinists. Their job is the negative argument, the argument made by deduction that shows the mistakes of inductive thinking. The induction carries the hopeful optimism, so induction must make the positive argument. You would think that a self critical deduction would have a place in science, but we are told that the blind watchmaker is unable to entertain any self criticism that detracts from their exalted euphoria.
Comment by Stephen — May 14, 2008 @ 8:40 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
JJS P.Eng. asked:
Here it is:
http://evolutionlist.blogspot....
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 14, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
They wouldn't be telic thoughts now would they?
Comment by willo — May 14, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
CJYman,
Scientific hypotheses are fine, no matter how strange. But we must have a way of deciding if they are true or not. If I propose, say, "magic" as an explanation for some phenomenon, I expect it will be rejected on the grounds that I have not characterized "magic" in a way that will allow us to decide if magic really is responsible. Likewise, the characterization (or lack of same!) of an "intelligence" capable of creating the original life forms (or the universe) does not enable us to decide if it exists or not. In contrast, the hypothesis "psi effects exist" can be (and has been) tested quite directly (experimentally).
It depends what you mean by "intelligent designer". Perhaps you mean, for example, something that might have no conscious awareness, can't use grammatical language, can't recognize itself (or consciously recognize anything at all), and has no ability to adapt to novel situations, and has no free will? In that case, I would agree - you aren't projecting human traits.
I don't think this is what you mean, though. I think you are talking about an intelligent mind that is similar to a human mind (or maybe similar to what we assume about the mind of an ape or a whale, but maybe not like the mind of a spider or a bacterium.) In that case, you would be projecting traits of living beings onto the cause of a natural phenomenon, in the tradition of animistic explanations that have existed since the beginning of history.
Not necessarily evil - just unwarranted (yes, superfluous).
If you have a theory of intelligence that enables "comparing the similarities that actually cause the system to be intelligent", then I would love to hear it. I don't think "sufficiently organized information processing" is a useful definition for "intelligence" for this purpose, however. In any case, if you believe intelligence can emerge from things like computers or quantum devices - deterministic or stochastic physical mechanisms - without consciousness, then specifying the cause of life was "intelligent" means nothing at all except "it was capable of producing life". If you think it means something else, what would that be? Most scientists consider learning and grammatical language to be essential aspects of human intelligence. Do you?
AI is explicitly anthropomorphic! We try to build systems that do what human beings can do! But nobody in AI would ever try to explain anything by invoking the concept of "intelligence". "Intelligence" is not a thing with causal force that we imagine existing inside the machine. Rather, it is an informal way to refer to various abilities that people (and other animals) have, and some machines have some of these abilities too.
One reason is because we want to figure out how humans and other animals manage to do what they do. Another reason is because it can be handy to have intelligent machines.
Still, "intelligence" truly is vacuous as an explanation - it doesn't mean anything at all. Consider:
Q: "How did Johnny manage to score so well on his IQ test?"
A: Johnny is intelligent
Q: "How did Deep Blue manage to beat Kasparov at chess?"
A: Intelligence
A: How did the flagellum come to exist?
Q: Intelligence
In each case, we learn nothing by invoking the concept of intelligence.
Another way to see it: Say I discover the cause of complexity in biology, and I tell you the cause is "X". So far, you know nothing about it at all. Now, I tell you that X is intelligent. What have you learned? Have you learned anything about what else X can do, or cannot do? Have you learned what it will or won't do in any situation? Have you learned what X experiences consciously, if anything at all? No, you have not a single thing, because "intelligence" is a description of the phenomena we wish to explain, and not an explanation per se.
I'm saying the dividing line is a matter of definition rather than discovery, and that there is no single definition of intelligence, and that without a specific definition, the word is just a vague reference to the sorts of things that living organisms do.
Unfortunately there is an infinite number of different ways to measure "intelligence", but there is nothing to say that all of these different measurements are measuring the same "thing"… because intelligence is not a thing. That is why all scientific research that employs the concept must always provide an operationalized definition. In general, the definition is performance on a particular standardized test of various cognitive functions (e.g. an IQ test). Obviously this particular operationalized definition is inapplicable in the context of ID. If you'd like to offer "intelligence" as an explanation of life, you'll need to come up with some other operationalized definition. Good luck to you! (Make sure you avoid "the ability to make complex designs" or something else that renders ID an empty tautology).
I don't know what you mean by "amount of informational input" or "specific intelligent outputs". And it is not that there are theoretical limits, it is that we have no general theory of intelligence in the first place.
Please tell me what "true intelligent foresight" is (as opposed to "fake intelligent foresight" or "true unintelligent foresight" Also, Hameroff/Penrose do not say QM provides intelligence, only a "Platonic Logic" that mechanisms of the brain interact with to produce intelligent behavior.)
I assure you that nobody has visited my laboratory and told me not to study the "causes and effects" of intelligence. If I produced a general theory of intelligence, and it enabled me to create machines with far greater mental abilities, I would not be barred from anything; rather, I would be rich and famous. And of course we have already built machines that do things which - when humans do them - we call intelligent. But is it "true" intelligence, or "fake" intelligence? (There is no meaningful answer to that question). And again: It would be ludicrous for me to explain how my AI system managed to, say, design a circuit by saying "It is intelligent!"
When some mechanism searches a solution space according to deterministic algorithms and finds solutions that match certain criteria, do you consider this "the ability to creatively apply foresight" If not, then when Deep Blue creates a brilliant, complex and novel strategy for chess, is it not creatively applying foresight? And if you do think algorithmic search constitutes foresight, why wouldn't you consider Darwinian evolution to have foresight? Because it we can actually observe all of its discarded candidate solutions?
Cognitive psychology has been studying this for a long time, of course. The answers tell us about human cognition, however, and not about intelligence as an abstract, general thing.
It's certain that Deep Blue does not work the way human chess masters work. Not only are things different on the lowest levels of abstraction (the physical substrate of neurons vs. silicon chips), but experiments reveal that the machine remembers the board and evaluates moves using very different methods. So in what sense is the operation of Deep Blue the same thing as the operation of a human chess master - besides the fact that they both play good chess? What does it mean to say that foresight is necessary for both of them to play chess?
Comment by aiguy — May 14, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
May 14th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Bradford,
And I'm waiting and listening for an explanation of how intelligence generates information.
It really doesn't mean anything to say "intelligence" lies at the end of the causal chain until you are more specific. But if you are more specific (like saying "human-like consciousness" is responsible) then your claim will be without evidence.
Comment by aiguy — May 14, 2008 @ 11:55 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Describing the designer is less interesting to me than describing physical phenomenon revealing effects not ascribable to chemical determinism or a selection process.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 12:08 am
May 15th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Bradford,
In saying this you are describing a hypothetical designer: You are describing this designer as operating according to some principle that cannot be reduced to "chemical determinism" (which I take to mean physical determinism, yes?)
But why is this particular distinction important - is this what "intelligent" means to you, something that is not physically determined? And also, how do you propose we decide when something is not physically determined?
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 12:31 am
May 15th, 2008 at 9:14 am
I don't mean not physically determined. I mean resulting from determinism. There is a distinction. When combustion takes place and hydrogen is the fuel, water and not carbon dioxide results. That's predictable and predetermined. If I hold a hydrogen fuel tank and a bucket of coal I can make a choice as to which I'll burn and which by-product will result. That would be a physical process too but is the consequence of choice and not predetermined by physical necessity- until the point of combustion.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 9:14 am
May 15th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Haha, thanks for the tip yogi-san.
Evidence of a designer would do it. Space alien artifacts that are four billion years old, for example. A failure of current biological theories to make progress towards eventually explaining the OOL would certainly make me question the validity of current theories, but even if I was convinced that modern theories are 100% wrong that does not provide any warrant to jump to an Intelligent Design conclusion. Of course I might have some sort of stroke or brain injury that alters my brain function turning me into a born-again religious zealot, that would convince me ID is true without the need for pesky evidence.
You do understand that the watchmaker is a metaphor, right? M.e.t.a.p.h.o.r., look it up. There's nothing to explain regarding watchmakers. Thank you for a good laugh though, and keep pumping out that pop psychology! In fact posts like that are why I follow this board, it has nothing to do with irritation and everything to do with the humor provided by ID arguments. If I found this irritating I would simply not do it, but thanks none the less.
So long as they are valid scientific hypothesises it wouldn't matter. Telic thoughts have yet to lead to a valid scientific hypothesis but who knows, they might some day.
Comment by Todd Berkebile — May 15, 2008 @ 10:31 am
May 15th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Ok, but then lets assume for a moment that quantum effects are truly and fundamentally non-deterministic. If that is true then wouldn't quantum effects qualify as your intelligent designer?
Comment by Todd Berkebile — May 15, 2008 @ 10:36 am
May 15th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Todd, metaphor passes over to literalism, and then literalism passes over to allegory. Allegory reconnects meaning to feeling and returns to the middle between literalism and metaphor, much as Hegel declared. And hence allegory is beyond both literalism and the metaphor.
The said watchmaker is closer to allegory, otherwise Darwin remains unconvincing as he merely describes the evolution of metaphors.
And please show me the toaster that feels itself baking bread, otherwise the feeling has never been programed either by ID or by Darwin.
Comment by Stephen — May 15, 2008 @ 10:41 am
May 15th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Stephen, you used a lot of words but I'm not sure you actually said anything. If there was a point in there I was meant to respond to please let me know.
Comment by Todd Berkebile — May 15, 2008 @ 11:02 am
May 15th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Bradford,
If you mean something other than "not physically determined" when you say "not predetermined by physical necessity", then the distinction I'm afraid is lost on me. In fact what you are describing is precisely the distinction that philosophers make between physical determinism on one hand and free will on the other. I find that when ID enthusiasts talk about intelligence this is almost always what they mean: The ability to choose in a way that is not determined by physical law. That is certainly what Dembski means (and has admitted as much).
The problem, of course, is that nobody knows if such a thing as this sort of free will exists. (The sort of "ability to choose" you are talking about is called libertarian free will, in contrast to compatibilist free will which assumes that our choices are just as physically determined as the water resulting from the oxygenation of hydrogen.) Nullasalus and I have discussed this in another thread, and we agree that while scientists have performed experiments that are interpreted by many as speaking against the possibility of libertarian free will, the matter is ultimately undecided and perhaps undecidable by appeal to science.
Again: The notion that minds can transcend physical law is a philosophical speculation, and not an empirically demonstrable fact. So I think you ought to take a page from Nullasalus' playbook: Concede that when you say "intelligence" is responsible for something, you are making a metaphysical claim and not an empirical claim.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 11:33 am
May 15th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Todd:
Quantum effects could be designed as could the universe itself. But that was not the issue I was addressing. The issue is an empirical means of distinguishing results accruing from forces of nature, which are necessarily deterministic in nature, (quantum effects are statistically predictable) and results accruing from choice. Quoting Dembski:
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 11:34 am
May 15th, 2008 at 11:38 am
aiguy:
That's a philosophical position. If philosophy is to govern scientific approaches (and it already does to some extent) then personal preference becomes an empirical determinent.
The negation of the above is equally philosophical.
I'm making a physicall distinction between pathways. One traced to intelligence and the other to brute forces of Nature. It is not necessary to resolve underlying philosophical differences.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 11:38 am
May 15th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Bradford
Well, no, it is a fact: nobody knows. One philosophical position is that free will exists, and another position is that it does not. Nobody can appeal to observable evidence to decide which philosophical position is correct.
ID rests on one particular position - it requires that free will exists, or else it makes no sense. Evolutionary theory, in contrast, has no connection at all to these philosophical issues. That is why ID can't be science, but evolutionary theory is.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 11:43 am
May 15th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Spoken like a true philosphical materialist. I don't have to resolve philosophical notions. Only make empirically distinguishing predictions.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 11:48 am
May 15th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Bradford,
LOL! Evolutionary theory does not rely on materialism of course! There may be libertarian free will, God, demons and devils and witches on brooms, and evolutionary theory still can be true, because evolutionary theory is perfectly compatible with dualism and libertarian free will.
In contrast, if libertarian free will (as Dembski and you describe it) does not exist, then ID makes no sense, because free will is the explanation that ID offers- it is the entirety of ID Theory's explanation!
I think you need to rethink this a bit. There are no empirical tests for free will; no "empirically distinguishing predictions" that can tell us if human beings or anything else in the universe has the power to do anything that is not physically determined just like combustion is.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 11:57 am
May 15th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I never alluded to evolutionary theory one way or the other. You're arguing with yourself.
You're not thinking this through. Tracing the origin of life entails accounting for causal pathways. If you make the assumption that free will is merely an expression of deterministic neural phenomeon and you trace evidence of intelligence to origins then you simply have an alternative set of biochemical pathways to cite as a cause. Instead of the primordial soup scenario you have a directing intelligence at the initiation of the causal pathways. And don't bother pointing out that that intelligent source would not have free will. That origin is a separate investigation involving different hypotheses.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
But Bradford, in ID, isn't the detection of an acting intelligence predicated on the fact that 'intelligence' can do stuff that chance and natural laws by themselves can not do. You know, for example, design stuff, create information, have foresight, …
If, as in your scenario, intelligence can be reduced back to deterministic physical phenomena, then how can you distinguish stuff that could have happened by 'chance and law alone' (e.g. combustion) from other stuff that could not have happened by 'chance and law alone' (e.g. building a combustion engine)?
Comment by hrun — May 15, 2008 @ 12:34 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Bradford,
I was arguing with your charge that I had said something that entailed materialism. I had not; you were mistaken. My point was that science is not dependent on materialism, but ID is dependent on dualism (or at least on libertarian free will, which is typically associated with dualism).
We are talking past each other, Bradford. You want to say that "directing intelligence" is a scientific hypothesis that can be offered as an explanation for the origin of life. I say ok, please tell me what "directing intelligence" means. You explain that it means "libertarian free will". I point out that there is no scientific evidence that libertarian free will exists - it is a metaphysical speculation rather than something which can be empirically tested or observed. In other words, you are offering a hypothesis that can't be tested - we can't even tell if human beings have free will, so obviously we can't test to see if the cause of life had it.
This doesn't mean ID is wrong, but it does mean that it can't be evaluated scientifically.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Those methods were programmed into Deep Blue.
The capacity to anticipate future possibilities is shared by Deep Blue and human chess players.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 12:37 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
This is silly. Of course choice can be tested. Forensics does it all the time. You do not have to go into philosophical speculations about free will to test for choice. In fact I came across a paper in which fruit flies were the object of study and their choices the basis of a test. As I've pointed out before a non-free will approach amounts to a statement about distinguishing biochemical pathways and that's innately scientific.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
So when humans design things, this is an effect of dualism?
ID no more requires free will than the understanding that humans design things.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 15, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Don't you experience it every day?
What has precedence in your philosophy, a direct experience, or the cogitations of mere logic?
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 15, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Bradford,
No, they weren't really. Deep Blue was taught various things about chess, but the moves can't be predicted by anybody - Blue comes up with them all by itself. Kasparov was also programmed/taught various things about chess, and his moves can't be predicted by anybody either - Kasparov comes up with them all by himself.
But it is certain the Deep Blue does not transcend physical determinism, so now you are apparently saying that intelligence does not need to be physically undetermined. This seems to contradict what you had just said (that intelligence "is the consequence of choice and not predetermined by physical necessity"). Deep Blue's moves are predetermined by physical necessity, even though nobody can know what the moves are determined to be. As far as we know this is true of Kasparov as well, but it could be that something mysterious is going on in his head (or soul) that allows him to transcend physical necessity.
Be careful what you call silly, Bradford. Forensics has absolutely nothing to do with tests of free will! There are scientists who study free will, but they are cognitive scientists, not forensic scientists. Forensic science has no tools at all to help decide if free will exists - they are simply looking for signs of the actions of human beings, and nothing else.
First you say that intelligence can't be the result of physical necessity, and then you seem to be saying that it can. You need to take a consistent position here.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Kornbelt,
Nobody knows. I think the evidence speaks against it, but others disagree, and no empirical evidence exists that can determine who is right.
Yes, of course it does. If it turned out that human thought was merely the action of physical necessity, then ID would be saying that "intelligent design" is nothing but physical necessity too. Nothing but blind undirected physical processes that give rise to intelligent effects, just like it happens in human brains (or evolutionary processes).
I do not experience libertarian free will, no. I can't tell if I decide to move my finger based on physical necessity or not. Neither can you.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
aiguy, I don't know if you are doing this deliberately or just being careless but I did not write that forensics tested for free will. I wrote that it tested for choice among other things. There is a difference.
As for Big Blue I wrote that methodology is programmed. The individual moves of course are not. Big Blue's choices are- to borrow a legal adage- fruits of the poison tree. Since the computer was designed by an intelligent source all effects resulting from its operation are effects of intelligent design as well. Very much like DNA.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
You're miscontruing a methodology for distinguishing intelligence from effects of physical laws from the nature of intelligence itself.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
If the movement was caused by either the wind or neural impulses and a determination as to which one is the objective then your beliefs about free will do not matter.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Bradford,
If you claim that there are differences between being "physically determined" or "chemically determined", or between "physically determined" and "resulting from physical necessity", or between "choice" and "free choice", or "ability to choose" and "free will", then you really need to tell us what these differences are. These pairs of concepts mean the same thing to me, and simply saying they are different doesn't help - you need to explain how they are different.
In that case, Kasparov's methodology was programmed by his teachers, the books he read, and so on. The individual moves are his, but otherwise (as far as you can show) his actions come from pure physical necessity.
And since intelligent sources are - as far as you can show - nothing but the operation of purely physical necessity, that means that - as far as you can show - everything is the result of physical necessity. QED.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Bradford,
Nobody thinks the wind moved my finger. Either my finger moved as the result of physical necessity ("blind, undirected, natural physical cause" as IDers would say) or it moved as the result of something in me that can act outside of physical necessity. I have pointed out that we do not know which is the case.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
aiguy claims:
You've got to be kidding me. You are practicing free will to post here.
Comment by nobody — May 15, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I don't care what these things mean to you. The only thing that matters to me is whether or not a series of chemical reactions bears the fingerprints of direction. Your philosophical outlook on whether or not the director has free will are irrelevant to a distinguishing prediction.
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
aiguy,
Even people who take the hardest and most universal view of physicalism and physical determinism don't automatically equate the actions of humans/agents with the actions of every other system in a 1:1 manner. If they draw a line, does that make them dualists?
Besides - an ID proponent could turn around and say that if all processes are 'just' the actions of physical necessity, it indicates that mind is fundamental to nature. After all, we know our minds exist even if they are entirely the result of physical processes, and since (as you seem to argue) there's no essential difference between one process and another, our existence is very likely participatory in a greater mind at the very least.
I suppose you can argue that if that's the case, it's a mind unlike humans' - but ID proponents wouldn't be totally surprised at that claim, and could then point out that we'd be part of that 'ultimate' mind, so presumably we could grasp enough of it to investigate.
Either way, I'd argue that 1: Even the most dualistic concepts of mind don't automatically require libertarian free will, 2: Even the most physicalist views of mind and universe don't automatically write off all processes and groups of processes as ontologically equal, 3: If they did, the result may well be strengthening the ID proposal's validity, and 4: the most purebred physicalism may be losing popularity even among cognitive scientists and philosophers, if the recent conference at Tucson is any indication. There are many 'dualisms' being thrown about; panpsychism, protopanpsychism, property dualism, substance dualism, along with a few brands of emergentism that frankly look a lot like every other dualism despite the insistence that they 'emerge from the physical'.
Comment by nullasalus — May 15, 2008 @ 2:16 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
That's all well and good insofar as your personal beliefs are concerned but what does this have to do with a capacity to determine whether the order of the symbols in this message were made through intelligence or by random depressions of a pet walking across the keyboard?
Comment by Bradford — May 15, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
[duplicate post deleted]
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 15, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
So, to simply, what you're saying is that ID requires an intelligent agent of at least the same nature as human intelligence?
Ideas about "physical necessity" are the productions of logic, which may be right or wrong. Do you consider your immediate experience as a decider to be on the same level as the products of your reasoning?
Of course, any answer you give is going to be via your rational processes. I guess if you're not experiencing what I am with regards to choice, there's no way to communicate about this. (I'm not interested in trying to convince you. You either see it or you don't. Imagine trying to argue a colorblind person into seeing blue. I'm just trying to get a handle on your views.)
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 15, 2008 @ 2:24 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Bradford,
You have said that intelligence means something which is not physically determined (or "results from physical necessity"). Like it or not, this is a metaphysical claim you can't support empirically.
You use the term "fingerprints of direction" but you can't tell us how to operationalize what that means. What is "direction?" Directed by what? An immaterial mind? A physical brain? Something else? If you say you don't know, then you don't know what it means to be "directed"!
You pretend to be using concepts that are obvious, and that people in forensics and other areas of science use, but this is not the case at all. You are pretending that your claims are independent of the concepts of physical determinism and libertarian free will, but they are not.
First, of course you haven't said what "intelligence" is supposed to mean here! If you mean "the ability to order symbols in a message", then obviously this makes your explanation tautological. If you mean "not caused by physical necessity", like you said before, then your explanation is metaphysical. If you mean something else, you need to say what you mean.
Second, nobody would guess that a pet walking across a keyboard would result in English being typed, so that is just a stupid hypothesis. The only reasonable explanation is that a human being who understands English is typing on the keyboard. But that says nothing about not being caused by physical necessity, so apparently it doesn't meet your own definition of intelligent cause.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 3:19 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Kornbelt,
I have no idea what "at least the same nature" means.
I think you're asking me if I think my conscious awareness is the same thing as my reasoning? If that's what you mean, then no, I don't.
I think we both experience conscious awareness. My pains hurt, and my joys feel good. I do not, however, understand the connection between these subjective feelings and my ability to, say, design machinery. And I'm certain you do not understand these connections any better than I do.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 3:19 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
nobody,
I'm afraid you don't understand what is being discussed. Please read a bit about the "problem of free will" and you'll be able to understand what's being argued here.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
nullasalus,
No, but it means they've told us how to draw the line in some manner. If ID is supposed to science, as Bradford is arguing, then the line must be emprically grounded; No such line exists.
What do you mean by "mind" Consciousness as we humans experience it? Then no, I've already argued to you that I think this sort of mind probably exists only in humans, as a result of human brain function (and perhaps something else in addition).
I think you and I are both aware of all of these issues, and hopefully you understand that I do not pretend to have a scientific case for anything resembling materialism. I think you are not pretending to have a scientific case for free will or dualism or anything else. My purpose here is to make people understand the metaphysical commitments they are making, and I think you already understand this.
Actually I mentioned the opposite entailment: typically libertarian free will requires dualism, but there could be an (awkward) position that avoided that commitment I suppose.
I disagree - they are ontologically equal because physicalists are monists and for them there is only one ontological option. The line drawn around agency/intentionality is not an ontological one for a monist.
I disagree, as above.
I think I've already shared with you that I am, and have always been, very very far from a "purebred physicalist"! Consciousness is indeed a hard problem!
This discussion is not about whether dualism or physicalism is true. The point here is that ID requires theorists to say what is meant by (and thus entailed by) "intelligent cause" - in other words, how is this line drawn between intelligent and unintelligent cause. To the extent that proponents wish to claim an empirical foundation for ID, this line must be objectively and empirically decidable.
Comment by aiguy — May 15, 2008 @ 3:37 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I agree that's a bit off. To reword: what you're saying is that ID requires an intelligent agent of at least the same intelligence as you. With desire, will, and at very least your insight into the consequences of your actions and the actions of your productions.) (And please, no quibbling about what "intelligence" means. Use an assessment of yourself as a baseline.)
That question could use refinement too: do you consider your immediate experience as a decider to be on a more primary, less primary, or equal level, as the products of your reasoning?
So, you're not certain if you have free will, but you're certain you understand how I perceive my own mind? How are you so sure that you and I are built the same? Do you believe that people have different mental talents? Can you produce symphonies in your head? How can you presume to know the mind of another?
Ever since I heard about the Turing Test, long ago, in my youth, I figured one of the best ways to determine if the thing on the "other end" was a real person or not was to probe it about consciousness and willful action, which is where I suspect is the jumping off point between humans and computers, and see what kind of answers it would come up with if I attacked at various angles. I've never encountered a computer simulation that was even marginally worthy of a Turing test, but years ago I started surveying people in the same way I might a Turing test in the matters of consciousness and will. And what I find is that there really are two kinds of people with regards to conversations like this. Those that immediately see it the way I do when we "compare notes", and those that never seem to. Apparently, you are in the latter group.
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 15, 2008 @ 3:57 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Don't you yourself have will and foresight that is immediately obvious to you as is your powers of argumentation? Do you have enough logical power to invent complex things with specific goals?
When an ID proponent says that an intelligence has to be at least as intelligent as aiguy, are you saying you don't know what this means?
Comment by kornbelt888 — May 15, 2008 @ 4:07 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
aiguy,
If you're saying that ID must be grounded in libertarian free will to proceed, I disagree. I just don't get why you're even bringing up the distinction; libertarian or compatibilism (probably even incompatiblism, honestly) are compatible with ID considerations. And science is going to hit the same walls no matter which one is taken to be the case.
I know your take on the question isn't strictly (maybe not remotely) materialist - you're trying to illustrate a point here, but I'm running with what you've outlined. Don't take my arguments here as supposing these are your views, it's not meant that way.
If we're arguing that all known consciousness is the stuff of the physical, and that all processes are equal, then it becomes an open question whether there is an ultimate consciousness that not only is its own thing, but also contains the consciousnesses that make up its system. If we go that way, humans can't help but understand a part of this big-D designer.
At the very least, I just don't see the conditions you're laying down as instituting a wall ID can't get past.
Maybe, but only in the broadest sense of dualism. I think everyone from the substance dualists to the quantum mind types to the panpsychists to the wide variety of property dualists to .. etc, could qualify here. And then comes the fight over whether they're really dualists.
But even the monist position has problems when it comes to drawing that line. Is the agent in the brain? The body? The body and anything outside of it that's referred to? Is a crowd a single agent? How about an ecosystem? I remember a case where Putnam had trouble with where functionalism led, since he wanted all the parts that make up a bee to result in an agent, but not all the parts that make up a swarm of bees.
Then that's a challenge for ID proponents to meet, not a statement that sinks their ship, so to speak. They could argue that certain intelligent agents would leave certain agent-specific patterns or clues. They could even go the route of denying unintelligent causes altogether. And even if ID entailed dualism, I'm not sure that would necessarily mean the scientific project can't get off the ground. As far as I know, none of the people rejecting physicalism (at any extreme) think that science therefore can't explore minds or say anything meaningful and unique about them.
Comment by nullasalus — May 15, 2008 @ 4:13 pm
May 15th, 2008 at 4:35 pm