For what it’s worth…
Dr Liddle has described her conception of chance as all outcomes being equiprobable, and has most assuredly used “chance” as an explanation of that outcome. [citation needed]
Sal:
The proper debate maneuver for the ID side, now that we’ve identified the vulnerability is to say:
Question for Lizzie?
Given you think anyone resorting to chance explanations is wrong to do so, do you think the evolutionary biologist Koonin is wrong to assert in
The overwhelming importance of chance in the emergence of life on Earth
or how about Richard Dawkins
If evolution worked by chance, it obviously couldn’t work at all.
Richard Dawkins
etc.
I hold Lizzie too high regard for her hospitality toward me I won’t go to TSZ and post such a discussion. But if I were less friendly, that’s how I would play the game.
Yes, I think “chance explanations” are not explanations. However, I do think that many, if not most, processes are stochastic – in other words they have variable effects, depending on complex interactions between many factors. This is true for the processes that govern mutations, and also for the processes that govern natural selection. Hypotheses about such processes therefore propose probability distributions for outcomes, rather than certainties. For example, instead of saying “If A is true, we will observe B”, we say “if A is true, B will follow probability distribution X”. Both mutation and natural selection are highly stochastic processes. But then so is intelligent decision-making.
What is certainly true is that stochastic processes that are orthogonal to each other are often at work. For instance, it is probably true that the stochastic processes that govern mutation are uncorrelated with the stochastic processes that govern natural selection. But even that may not be completely true – it may be that some of the processes are shared, and that certain mutations are more likely in certain environments.
All these questions are interesting, and the word “chance” is far to ill-defined to play a terribly useful role in them. Nonetheless, I would not say that a man like Koonin is wrong for using it without reading carefully what he is saying, and how he is using the word. My point is much simpler: that we need to be precise when defining our null hypotheses, otherwise our rejection or retention of that null will be meaningless.
And “due to chance” is not a serviceable null hypothesis, even though we may, if we retain our null, informally say that our retention of the null means that we can attribute our actual observations to “chance”, though I wouldn’t recommend it.
It is also worth noting that a two-tailed null is always literally false. Which is one of the many problems with null-hypothesis testing. But maybe we should leave that for another thread.
Blas,
Who believes this, Blas? Name names!
It was a terrible edition. Mine is also falling apart! Cheap nasty paper, cheap nasty glue.
Lizzie,
because it somehow matters to them that ID be proven, because if it fails, then God must not exist. Which is nonsense, of course. IDists simply lack faith
I think they believe a particular god exists not matter what. But using science to prove His existence would be sweet revenge on all those arrogant intellectual elites.
KN,
It isn’t incompatible with all forms of teleological metaphysics, but as I never tire of declaiming, evolutionary theory does torpedo the most commonly offered teleological explanations of life’s diversity: creationism and ID.
Well, I am surprised that others here have read C&N — and delighted!
Is there anyone at TSZ who does think that “science has ruled out God”? I certainly don’t!
Lizzie,
Gregory
Lizzie
That’s correct. I’m a battle-scarred veteran of some of those (on, initially, the ‘wrong’ side 🙂 ). ‘Chance’ and ‘random’ have numerous definitions, and almost all misunderstandings arise because people slip from one to the other without even realising. As I did. Everybody is convinced they know THE correct definition and that’s how everyone else should understand it too.
Evolution is a process whereby random variation is sifted by random processes. But that’s not the same as saying ‘it’s all due to chance’. Mutation is random (aimless, unpredictable, uncorrelated with need, sometimes but not always equiprobable). Selection is random (stochastic, but crucially biased). Drift is random (unpredictable, stochastic, equiprobable when alleles are neutral though not when they ain’t). The upshot – evolution – is actually, in a sense, near-deterministic, because not-evolving is rendered highly improbable by these processes.
I don’t think the threads are available any more. (eta: saving my blushes!)
Right! But let’s be careful here: creationism is refuted because it makes empirical predictions that conflict with geological, paleontological, anatomic, and genetic evidence — one could salvage creationism only with increasingly ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses (as indeed we see in the history of creationism). ID is not refuted, because it’s not yet been framed with sufficient precision to yield testable predictions — all we get is some highly questionable probability calculations. Evolutionary theory torpedoes creationism and ID only insofar as we see how poorly those hypotheses fare in comparison to the hypotheses derived from evolutionary theory.
By contrast, a philosophical interpretation of evolutionary theory can posit real purposiveness as a way of making sense of the whole, as a piece of metaphysical speculation, without infringing upon the empirical domain that belongs to scientific inquiry.
Sal@UD:
Some call Sal ‘Slimy’. But I myself am far too polite to resort to such a low manoeuvre! 🙂
Koonin is right; random processes are very important – just as they are in discussions of entropy, diffusion, Brownian motion etc. But randomness is not causal there either. Dawkins is only right in a restricted sense, where ‘chance’ meant something akin to no selection whatsoever, or completely scrambled inheritance. Not a big deal, and yet another example of the mistaken idea that we are bound by the words of this or that Scribe. When the Scribes disagree, or appear to, are we supposed to explode like the computers in ’60s films when asked to answer paradoxical questions? 🙂
That’s certainly the epistemological method practiced at UD, so it’s no surprise they would assume we use the same method.
Not me. I think it has ruled out certain specific stories about God, or rather rendered them inconsistent (would involve God being deceitful, for instance). But I don’t actually think the God postulate is falsifiable, and in any case, I don’t see why a God who intended us to come about shouldn’t simply actuate, from all possible logically and scientifically consistent universe, one that brings about us.
Specifically, a population of beings capable of figuring out the logic and science that led to them
William J. Murray,
Perhaps you could cite an example, where the phrase in quotes had an actual context?
KN,
I disagree. If theory A fits (and predicts) the evidence trillions of times better than theory B, then we are justified in saying that theory B has been refuted even if it fails to make testable predictions.
ID, like creationism, can only be salvaged through the addition of unjustified, ad hoc assumptions. You can force-fit it to the evidence via those assumptions, but why do that when an alternate theory is available that fits cleanly without resorting to ad hoccery?
William’s new tactic seems to be the [x] bluff. If learning about it takes time, or the subject matter is difficult, just pretend its some sort of bluff so you can continue to argue without factual support.
This is an interesting point that needs to be considered: if a speculative hypothesis does not entail any testable predictions, then it is completely compatible with all the evidence. So if intelligent design doesn’t entail any testable predictions, it’s consistent with everything we observe already.
In other words, the world that intelligent design predicts we would find is exactly the same as what we do find. The ID advocates seem not to realize what a fatal weakness this is — because we want a theory to direct us something new that we didn’t already know. And that’s what ID completely and utterly fails to do. I can’t even call it “the theory of intelligent design” or “design theory” because the term “theory” is inappropriate here.
I will go so far as to call it “the design inference”, and recognize that it could be classified as an instance of what Peirce calls “abduction,” but Peirce points out that abductive inference is not the whole of science — we must test the hypotheses that are generated by abduction, and this is of course what the ID people refuse to do — all the while insisting that their pet hypothesis be recognized as having the same epistemic merits as evolutionary theory. The benefits of theft over honest toil!
KN,
Here’s how I made the point last year:
keiths,
Those are excellent illustrations of the point I was making, too. I couldn’t have improved on them.
Again, I’d ask William to take an honest look at the success of these tactics, as measured outside the walls of fort UD.
What measurable advance have you caused William since you joined the gang at UD? Anything published? Any experiments proposed?
So perhaps there is more to advancing your viewpoint then winning arguments about coins? What do you make of Sal’s “500 all heads = design, homochirality = design” idea?
What do you think of the quality of this as an argument William? Persuasive?
Sal:
RNA molecules preferentially hybridise with others that have complementary bases and possess like chirality. All by themselves. This is not necessarily the Key To Life, but is illustrative of the manner in which certain molecules can crystallise an initially racemic mixture into ‘islands of chirality’. And, for that matter, where do they get the idea that heterochiral peptides could not function? A D acid does not equate to a ‘wrong turn’! It’s just got a hydrogen atom where its enantiomer has a side chain, and vice versa. Neither takes part in the peptide bond.
Coins have absolutely knob-all to do with chirality. (A longer version of that sentiment is currently in preparation, but that’s the tl;dr version!).
Mr Elzinga, who seems went out off the rails are you here bringing in arguments like the second law of termodinamics that was not realated with the discussion.
The point in discussion are very few and simple. Do you beleive that given the same intial conditions you will get always the same result?
That is a yes or no answer, and unfortunatly for TSZ is a metaphysical answer.
If your answer is yes, you can say BA is wrong but also Gould and many here are at TSZ wrong.
If you answer no, then BA is right Chance is the alternative modul for the 500 coins.
Then again you have two options or you go for teleological darwinism or for Chance. Wich is your choice?
I don’t think either option is as plausible as its proponents would have us believe. I’m interested in a middle way between those extremes.
It is logical a middle way? When you have teleology and chance doesn´t mean that chance is a tool of teleology or teleology couldn´t do his job because of chance?