There Can Be Only One!
by DeuceUnder one of our early entries, there was some interesting discussion of eliminative methods for detecting design (a la Dembski), and their validity, or lack thereof. At the risk of becoming the Telic Thoughts lightning rod for all anti-Dembski err… lightning, I'll go on record as stating that I think eliminative methods are perfectly valid. Actually, I'll do one better and state that eliminative methods are the only way that we can decide on anything that needs explaining, not just design, and that elimination is a vital stage in all our explanatory decision-making, although it's usually implicit rather than explicit. Let me elaborate.
Whenever we observe a pattern of any sort, be it a pattern of numbers, a pattern of events, a pattern in the clouds, or a pattern of behavior, there is always a logical possibility that the pattern in question has resulted from chance. After all, anything, provided it is logically possible and finite, is statistically expected to happen given enough tries, and there's always a possibility of it happening on the first try, no matter how ludicrously remote. The likelihood of a particular pattern or sequence arising by chance goes down as the sequence becomes longer, but the logical possibility always remains nevertheless.
Chance is a logically possible alternative explanation not just to design, but also to law. For instance, ludicrous as the idea is, it's logically possible that there is no law of gravity. Sure, there's overwhelming evidence for it - the way planets and stars form spheres, the way some bodies orbit around others, the way light bends near sufficiently massive objects, the way things always fall down instead of up, etc - and it can even be measured. But as extensive as the pattern is, there's still a logical possibility of it occuring by chance. For instance, it could be the case that there is no law of gravity; that matter is just moving randomly, and has just happened to move in a way that matches the pattern of gravity up until now, at least whenever anyone is looking. Absurd as it sounds, it's not logically impossible that matter would just happen to move that way, and given a sufficient number of universes in which matter was moving randomly, it would be expected to happen eventually. It could even be the case in our actual universe. After all, while highly unlikely, it wouldn't be any less likely than any other particular outcome, and something had to happen, right?
Of course, no one gives a second thought to the notion that the universe has just happened to behave as if there were gravity when there is none, as well they shouldn't. The pattern of observed behavior from which we infer gravity is truly and incontrovertibly extensive. My point is that when detecting physical laws, even ones as obvious as gravity, we don't have a strict logical proof of their existence. Rather, the logic we use is inferential and eliminative. We see a pattern that "stands out" from the background of chance events, something that meets some seemingly non-random specification, and we come up with some non-chance explanation for it. If the specification is extensive enough (ie. sufficiently unlikely), we determine that it in fact isn't due to chance, but rather that our explanation is correct. Of course, it's quite possible to come up with non-chance explanations for small events like, say, flipping three heads in a row, which really are due to chance. The way we can know that our explanations don't represent such cases is simply by eliminating the chance alternative as too unlikely. You could, in a way, say that scientific discovery in general is constituted of negative evidence and "gap" reasoning.
This isn't to say that detecting intelligent design is the same as detecting physical laws, by a longshot. The kinds of patterns that fit a design explanation differ from those we use to infer laws (this could make for a whole other entry). And, of course, design in biology isn't nearly the slam dunk that gravity is, to say the least: While the reasoning we use to arrive at physical laws may be implicitly eliminative, nobody has ever tried estimating the actual numeric probabilities of them being illusory. This is because the pattern of evidence for them is so vast that we can disregard chance intuitively. In biology, by contrast, our examples are much more ambiguous, which is why Dembski sets cutoff points and tries to estimate explicit probabilities. Nevertheless, the basic eliminative approach to explanation is not only valid, but a lot more common than you might have thought.
August 13th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
"For instance, it could be the case that there is no law of gravity; that matter is just moving randomly, and has just happened to move in a way that matches the pattern of gravity up until now, at least whenever anyone is looking. Absurd as it sounds, it's not logically impossible that matter would just happen to move that way, and given a sufficient number of universes in which matter was moving randomly, it would be expected to happen eventually."
Indeed, if one believes in the many universes theory that there are an infinite number of universes, and if there was no law of gravity, then there certainly would be universes that have their matter arranged by chance to appear is if there is a law of gravity. In fact there would be an infinite number of such universes. The many universes theory completely wipes out an surety of any kind that we might propose and come to accept by elimination.
Comment by Stuart Harris — August 13, 2005 @ 9:33 pm
August 13th, 2005 at 10:09 pm
The eliminative approach regarding design is actually more straight forward than what people realize. Having the burden of taking Dembksi's formalisms and trying to explain them in public forums, I've learned it is challenging to bring his lofty mathematics down to Earth, but I shall try.
There are statistical reasons why passwords and encryption schemes work to resist chance intrusions into a computer system. It is essentially the same body of mathematics that Dembski used to make his arguments. The formalisms are nasty (like a good legal document), but the concept is fundamentally simple even though, as Dembski aptly shows, the mathematical formalism are horrendous.
We create passwords knowing there is a degree of improbability that someone else can use random chance to arrive at the pattern in our head. So far so good. The mathematics are hopefully straight forward. If someone breaks your password, you can calculate the likelihood it was due to a random accident of some monkey on a keyboard accidentally logging in as you!
Less obvious is that we humans have (for whatever reason) collections of universally recognized "passwords" in our heads. This is very obvious as illustrated by the following experiment:
The experiment has a very high success rate, but the reasons why are not so obvious. Students can invariable build designs which other students will recognize as designed. They are in effect sending a "message" in their design. Walter ReMine's Biotic Message theory is essentially saying biotic reality is one such message from one intelligence (the Intelligent Designer) to another intelligence (us).
Essentially, there are conventions, idiosyncracies, universal "passwords" through which humans can communicate design to one another in physical object like coins, and if need be, even molecules. See:
IBM written in Molecules
There are probabilities associated with these universal "passwords" or human-like idiosyncracies appearing through random chance alone.
Dembski showed that natural selection is even worse than random chance at creating these human-like idiosyncracies in physical objects, thus effectively destroying the claim that some sort of "chance plus natural selection" can form these idiosyncracies in physical objects better than random chance alone.
If one defines naturalism as composed of laws that are:
1. deterministic
2. stochasitc
3. some combination of 2 and 3
Dembki showed that all three will fail to account for the appearance of human-like idiosyncracies in physical objects. It is not an argument from ignorance, but a "proof by contradiction".
Reailize, that 1,2,3 can not account for why your passwords can not be broken by anything except an intelligent act. By way of simple extention, the appeance of "universal passwords" or "human-like idiosyncracies" in physical objects can not be attributable to 1,2,3 either.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — August 13, 2005 @ 10:09 pm
August 15th, 2005 at 11:55 pm
But the problem is that, while Demsbki's approach might eliminate chance to explain the existence of say, the bacterial flagellum, what he can't eliminate is an explanation which isn't dependent on mere chance, and thats mainstream evolutionary theory.
Comment by Aagcobb — August 15, 2005 @ 11:55 pm
August 16th, 2005 at 10:48 am
Hi, Aagcobb, are you saying that the bacterial flagellum couldn't reasonably be attributed to chance alone? Why not? The material elements out of which it's constructed exist around the world. There are plenty of ways they could happen to be arranged, and the flagellum is no less likely than any of the other particular arrangements. Would you say that any old blob of carbon couldn't be explained by mere chance? Why should this one be any different?
Comment by Deuce — August 16, 2005 @ 10:48 am
August 16th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
Because the flagellum is an orderly structure, which doesn't typically arise by chance. For example, stars, planets, solar systems and galaxies require gravity to form and maintain the order we observe. Similarly, the flagellum needed natural selection to form.
Comment by Aagcobb — August 16, 2005 @ 2:36 pm
August 19th, 2005 at 8:40 am
Hi, Aagcobb
So it's the pattern of the flagellum that needs explaining, because it's orderly. In what way can the flagellum, or pretty much any other biological structure of interest, be said to be orderly though? In the case of planets, solar systems, crystals, etc, we can tell that they're orderly because we see the same simple pattern being repeated over and over again, so we eliminate chance and conclude that there's a basic common law behind it. But the flagellum is not orderly in that same fashion. It's a heterogeneous structure, so to speak. That is, you can't produce the pattern that needs explaining by repeating a simple algorithm over and over. Something about the flagellum stands out and seems orderly, but what is it? In what way can it be said to be orderly, such that a better explanation than pure chance is necessary?
Comment by Deuce — August 19, 2005 @ 8:40 am
August 19th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
Hi Deuce,
A flagellum, like other biological structures, serves a function for the organism, and has too many parts to be explainable by a single genetic mutation, so natural selection must have played a role in its development.
Comment by Aagcobb — August 19, 2005 @ 2:44 pm