… I wonder if I could interest you in a little thought experiment, in the form of four simple questions:
1. Is it possible that we could discover an artifact on Mars that would prove the existence of extraterrestrials, without the presence or remains of the extraterrestrials themselves?
2. If yes, exactly what kind of artifact would suffice? Car? House? Writing? Complex device? Take your pick.
3. Explain rationally why the existence of this artifact would convince you of the existence of extraterrestrials.
4. Would that explanation be scientifically sound?
I would assert the following:
a. If you answer “Yes” to Question 4, then to deny ID is valid scientific methodology is nothing short of doublethink. You are saying that a rule that holds on Mars does not hold on Earth. How can that be right?
b. If you can answer Question 3 while answering “No” to Question 4, then you are admitting that methodological naturalism/materialism is not always a reliable source of truth.
c. If you support the idea that methodological naturalism/materialism is equivalent to rational thought, then you are obligated to answer “No” to Question 1.
Well, I can never resist a thought experiment, and this one seems quite enlightening….
1. Is it possible that we could discover an artifact on Mars that would prove the existence of extraterrestrials, without the presence or remains of the extraterrestrials themselves?
Yes. Well, strongly suggest, rather than prove. We don’t prove things in science.
2. If yes, exactly what kind of artifact would suffice? Car? House? Writing? Complex device? Take your pick.
Anything that looked like it was supposed to be for something. I take it that the thing doesn’t reproduce, because if it did, we’d be in the presence of an extraterrestrial.
3. Explain rationally why the existence of this artifact would convince you of the existence of extraterrestrials.
Well, if a thing looks like it was made for some purpose – maybe stones with a sharp edge, with no apparent non-intelligent mechanism for shaping them, or something with a regular shape (a rectangular polished monolith, for instance), again with no apparent non-intelligent mechanism for producing such a thing (crystalisation, for instance), or an intricate systematic pattern and movable parts (like the Antikythara Mechanism), then it would be reasonable to assume that some intelligent purposive agent made it to serve some purpose.
4. Would that explanation be scientifically sound?
Yes, I think so. It would involve generating hypotheses and testing them, including hypotheses about the possible function of the object, and what purpose it might serve its putative designer.
I would assert the following:
a. If you answer “Yes” to Question 4, then to deny ID is valid scientific methodology is nothing short of doublethink. You are saying that a rule that holds on Mars does not hold on Earth. How can that be right?
Well there are perfectly valid methodologies for inferring design from the presence of a non-reproducing object that appears to have been made to serve some extraneous purpose even if that purpose is obscure. And some aspects of ID methodology are relevant – if the thing seems to have some specialness about its form, yet does not itself reproduce, nor does it appear to be the result of some iterative process, such as crystallisation, or deposition, or indeed chemistry, than that might be a design indicator. Where ID methodology is invalid is in dismissing evolution as such an iterative process. It’s perfectly possible that self-reproducing things could be designed by external designers (though it’s not obvious that those designers could themselves be non-self-reproducing), but it’s not obvious that they have to be, which was Darwin’s point. And in any case, here we are not talking about a self-reproducing thing.
b. If you can answer Question 3 while answering “No” to Question 4, then you are admitting that methodological naturalism/materialism is not always a reliable source of truth.
Not at all. Scientific methodology (which is, by definition, naturalist) is perfectly capable of detecting design, with reasonable reliability, even in the absence of the designer.
c. If you support the idea that methodological naturalism/materialism is equivalent to rational thought, then you are obligated to answer “No” to Question 1.
Well, no, because there’s nothing in naturalism/materialism that prevents us from making a perfectly valid design inference. The issue, and I do wish ID proponents would get this, is not that inferring design is in principle non-scientific (forensic scientists and archaeologists do it all the time), but that the method that ID proponents use to infer design from biology is invalid – becauses they fail to take into account (or, if they do, do not specify how, or underestimate) the power of iterative mechanisms to produce entities with features that serve their own perpetuation.
Had you bothered to read and understand the discussion to date, you would know that Liz and I are employing the term “design” as fundamentally meaning “intentional”, in contradiction to any “natural” design, assumed to be “unintentional”.
Liz has already admitted that there is no evidence (from her perspective) in support of “Darwinian” evolution – as the term is being used in this debate – because there is no way (her assertion) to vet any evolutionary process or mechanism as “unintentional”. She admits she doesn’t even know what such evidence would look like (necessarily, since she claims she doesn’t know what evidence for the “intentional” would look like).
Darwinian = unintentional; when you can tell me how any evolutionary process can be vetted as either intentional or unintentional, then you can make an argument that any evolutionary processes are “Darwinian” (unintentional) in nature.
William:
That has become glaringly obvious.
William,
The case for unguided evolution is massively, overwhelmingly stronger than the case for intelligent design.
High school physics and chemistry students can rip your analogies apart quite easily.
What does a burglarized house have to do with atoms and molecules?
Do you understand the vast differences between the energies of interaction among atoms and molecules and the energies of interaction among household items?
How many humans would it take to mess up a house full of furniture and belongings if those items had the same charge-to-mass ratios as protons and electrons?
Do any ID/creationists know how to scale up charge-to-mass ratios to kilogram-size masses and calculate the energies of interaction among such masses separated by meters? High school physics and chemistry students can to this calculation almost routinely.
Why are your analogies to atoms and molecules always neutral things that have to be manipulated into position by sentient beings such as beavers and humans?
You don’t appear to comprehend the significance of any of this.
Do you know why we suspect intelligent intervention in the case of messed up houses but not in the case of atoms and molecules?
Try getting your hands on a high school textbook in physics and look up how to calculate the energy involved kilogram-size masses with the same charge-to-mass ratios as protons and electrons and separated by one meter. Is there any chance you or anyone over at UD could figure out how do to that?
Sneering at science while refusing to learn any science is not a form of argumentation that convinces anyone who has made the effort to learn the science.
I haven’t ignored it at all. You don’t seem to understand the nature of the argument here. Liz claimed there is no evidence of design, and that “what it looks like” is not evidence. I never claimed it was proof. Or that it was compelling. Only that it was evidence – prima facie evidence – of design.
As per my examples above, no, science has not “left behind” prima facie evidence. It has never been taken as compelling evidence, or as final evidence; it’s just evidence that can be used to choose a direction for further investigation. Science hasn’t “left that behind”; it’s still very much a part of scientific theory and investigation.
“What something looks like” is evidence. Not proof. Not compelling. But yes, it is prima facie evidence, and serves to help guide at least initial attempts at further investigation.
That there is an alternative is irrelevant. Even if the alternative was 100% proven, that would still be irrelevant to the fact that there is prima facie evidence for design that virtually all biologists have admitted, even if that evidence leads one in an incorrect direction.
There is no case whatsoever for unguided evolution that I’m aware of, emphasis on the “unguided”.
How can you determine if any sequence of evolutionary events are “unguided” or not?
You mean, besides my having flatly stated so many times on this forum?
No, I have not, William. It seems you do not read my posts in their entirety. I said no such thing. I said that there was no evidence in support of the hypothesis life was intelligently designed (unless we include evolution as the intelligent designer). This is perfectly clear in what I wrote.
William, it just doesn’t work this way. If you think that biology must have been intentionally designed, then you need to provide evidence of what intentional design would like, as opposed to unintentional design, and then provide evidence that that is what we observe. Or, alternatively, evidence of an intentional designer.
The only intentional designers that we know of are biological organisms, and while biological organisms create biological organisms, only humans intentionally design them.
Here’s a challenge: if (as keiths asserts) the case for “unguided” evolution is so overwhelmingly made in science, someone tell me how science figures out if an evolutionary process is “unguided” or not.
Such an exercise would require that YOU make the effort to understand some science.
As near as we can tell from watching the discussions over at UD, nobody there has ever made such an effort.
Start by figuring out how to scale up the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and electrons to kilogram-size masses separated by a meter; then calculate the energy of interaction between two such masses.
If you then add the rules of quantum mechanics and note the magnitude of the energy of interaction, what possible justification can you come up with for using tornados in junkyards as arguments against what atoms and molecules are capable of doing?
The question does not arise due to Occam’s razor. Until there is some evidence that suggests a disembodied “designer” that acts at an unspecified time, in an unspecified way, at an unspecified location, for an unspecified motive, the working hypothesis doesn’t need this speculation.
Designers bring no insights. As Laplace was supposed to have said, science has no need for that hypothesis.
No, it is not “prima facie evidence”. It is a hypothesis. A smoking gun may be prima facie evidence of a murder. But “it looks like murder” is not prima facie evidence of a murder.
You are still confusing explanation with explanandum.
Of course. But the evidence that it’s been burgled (I’ll use the Brit version) isn’t that “it looks as though it’s been burgled” but the broken window and the smashed lock. My hypothesis therefore is that it’s been burgled. My hypothesis is not evidence that my hypothesis is true. Nor is your hypothesis that biology is designed evidence that biology is designed.
State your explanandum in terms that do not presuppose your explanation.
Please distinguish between data and hypothesis. If a sonagram looks like a cancerous tumour, that means that it has characteristics x, y and z that are characteristic of cancerous tumours and not characteristic of benign tumours. In this case we have characteristics x y and z, all of which are characteristics of iterative selective processes (including intentional processes) and characteristics a, b and c that are characteristics of blind iterative selective processes. In addition we have no evidence for any external designer, nor any obvious purpose for which organisms might serve such a designer. In contrast, the clever biological systems you seem to want to ascribe to design serve the function of facilitating reproduction extremely well – exactly the function we’d expect from a blind Darwinian process, not one from an an intentional designer.
Please consider the difference between what you want to explain and the explanation you are providing. I’ve made this point so many times now, I’ve lost count. I understand you missing it the first time, as the word “explanandum” that I used was unfamiliar to you.
Well, it ain’t now.
Here’s a challenge: if (as William J. Murray asserts) the case for “guided” evolution is so overwhelmingly made in Intelligent Design, someone tell me how Intelligent Design figures out if an evolutionary process is “guided” or not.
I said:
Liz said in response:
Okay, then, Liz. Since we have agreed the essential commodity we are using to differentiate between “Darwinian” and “Designed” evolution is “intention”, tell me, what evidence do you have that what evolutionary processes/mechanisms unintentionally produce the novel biological features in question?
What a rebuttal!
I didn’t make the claim that biology “must have been” intentionally designed. Are you making the claim that biology “must have been” unintentionally designed? Of course not. Let’s look at a better worded version of the above.
If you think that biology was unintentionally designed, then you need to provide evidence of what unintentional design would [be? look?] like, as opposed to intentional design, and then provide evidence that that is what we observe.
See how that works? Goose, gander. You don’t get to assume the basis of a positive assertion about the nature of what is going on in the innovation of biological features. If you cannot support your claim that unintentional mechanisms are sufficient (by showing how those mechanisms **are** unintentional), you should admit that you cannot determine if unintentional mechanisms are sufficient.
You can assume and believe that the mechanisms are unintentional all day long, but you cannot claim it as a matter of science unless you have some way of supporting that claim.
You can’t assume the sufficiency of the unintentional, positively claim it, and then shift the burden to me and insist I prove otherwise.
Liz, it just doesn’t work that way.
Snarf.
How can you know what “unintentional” biological product looks like, if you don’t know what “intentional” biological product looks like?
All you have to do is produce some useful novel insight and people will flock to your way of doing things.
If “things look designed and so might be designed (intentionally)” is a useful heuristic then it’ll be taken up. And then some.
But as an “early adopter” you’ll have to do that initial legwork yourself, nobody else seems to be available. It’s catch 22. You complain that it’s not being considered but seem unwilling to give a new reason why it should be (again) considered.
Eat many edible fruit produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants of the genus Musa lately?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana
There are many assumptions in science. When they are re-examined and found to be holding up progress then they will change.
For now, that there are no devious forces manipulating what mutations happen is one of those assumptions.
It makes “Darwinism” unscientific to you, personally William J. Murray. And?
That’s the way the cookie crumbles. How’s your idea getting along? Making much headway in the world? I’m sure you don’t care about such things, but you know they call em memes for a reason.
And yet if examples of “bad design” are brought up as “if that’s what intended design looks like…” I’m sure you’ll have a reason why that’s invalid.
There is a perfectly straight forward answer to this question; get to know the science.
What is your strategy? How does remaining ignorant help?
William,
It doesn’t have to. Evolution might be guided, just as planets might be pushed around their orbits by angels. Neither hypothesis can be absolutely disproven. But why invoke designers and angels when natural explanations are sufficient?
Liz,
When someone says “it looks like burglary”, what precedes “looks like” (“it”, or less conveniently, the broken glass, etc.) is the explanandum; “looks like” denotes the favorable comparison of the current explanandum to known cases of a potential explanans, or “burglary” which is the initial, often intuitive explanans, or hypothesis of explanation for the “it in question.
When one says “it looks like design”, they are referring to the explanandum with the term “it” ( or, less conveniently: integrated, highly complex, highly functional parts) and is making an initial assessment as to what we consider to be the immediate, intuitive, or obvious (even if ultimately incorrect) explanans (as per other cases of known explanandum/explanans relationships) – design (intention), meaning that intentional agency, upon first blush, seems to be the best hypothesis for the “it” we are looking at.
Prima facie evidence means that the “it” (explanandum) we are looking appears to have a certain explanation (explanans) on first blush and in comparison to similar, known explanandum/explanans relationships.
Please stop diverting the argument into further semantic orgies that have no bearing on the concepts being debated – I mean, if you are able.
I don’t care that anyone assumes it; Liz **claimed** it. I’m challenging her claim that “unintentional” mechanisms **are** a sufficient explanation. If it is only her assumption, let her admit that she cannot back that claim up and we can move on.
I didn’t ask for anything to be absolutely disproven or proven. You are the one that asserted that the case for **unguided** evolution is **overwhelmingly** made by science, and when I ask you to show me how science makes it’s case that any process is “unguided”, your answer is “it doesn’t have to”.
So, you cannot support your assertion.
What are you claiming that I claimed?
please link.
It’s interesting that you are mistaking a logical argument for a scientific argument. This argument is about how Liz logically justifies her assertion that “intention isn’t necessary” as part of the explanans. Unless science can provide me with a scientific description of “intention” and what evidence of it will look like (and conversely by the same metric, what “non-intention” will look like), then Liz has no logical means by which to justify her claim that intention is not a necessary part of the explanans.
William, it’s very difficult to carry on this conversation when you seize on tiny bits of things I’ve said and don’t address any of the points I’ve repeatedly made – it seems that you don’t even see them.
Science works by deriving hypotheses from theories, making testable predictions, then testing them.
If ID wants to do science, that’s the way it needs to be done. It is invalid to claim an ID inference otherwise.
Saying “it looks designed, so it probably was” is, essentially, circular.
I am not saying it wasn’t designed. I’m saying there is no reason, absent a testable ID hypothesis, to conclude that it was.
If you disagree, propose a testable hypothesis. No ID proponent has yet done so.
Do you not see it in the very thing you quoted? Are you denying that you claim that unintentional mechanisms are sufficient to explain what we see in biology?
As if anyone says or argues that. You are indeed immune to correction.
They are. And I believe that is what we’ll find all the way down. No turtles, just “unintentional” mechanisms.
So the hair you are splitting here is meaningless. It’s an assumption that is so close to a fact that it’s not worth bothering with, except to score the most trivial point.
So here goes. I say It’s a Fact that “unintentional” mechanisms **are** a sufficient explanation.
What evidence do I have for that?
A) Everything we know about biology currently.
B) Every gap has been filled by an “unintentional mechanism” eventually.
But B) most specifically. When I say it’s an assumption that there are no devious forces manipulating what mutations happen I’m only really saying that because as you know in science there are no facts. I can’t prove that there are no devious forces manipulating what mutations happen, rather it goes into the category of “assumptions that I probably won’t need to question today”.
And so? It’s how it works. And sometimes the box of assumptions get’s opened up by extraordinary evidence that supports extraordinary claims, and lo! The world shifts.
Today is not going to be one of those days however.
KF does it every day at UD or had you not noticed?
@list = (intention, designer, the set of all things designery);
for
item isn’t necessary”
William,
So am I wrong in thinking that your support for ID comes solely from the fact it’s not possible to prove that a designer was not necessary for biological life?
Yes, you are wrong.
William,
Sure I can, and I already referred you to a thread in which I do just that.
Take the two hypotheses: 1) that evolution is guided, and 2) that evolution is unguided. Look at the evidence. Ask yourself which hypothesis fits the evidence better.
If you are objective and rational, you will reach only one conclusion: hypothesis #2 fits the evidence far, far better than hypothesis #1.
We can’t prove that evolution is unguided, because nothing is ever proven in science. But the evidence shows us that evolution is far likelier — trillions of times likelier, in fact (see my thread) — to be unguided than guided.
For anyone who actually pays attention to the evidence and thinks things through, intelligent design is a profoundly irrational position.
It seems that you aren’t even aware of your own ignorance.
Elizabeth has answered many times in language that is perfectly easy to understand.
However, in your case, it is not likely to make any impression because you demand a “logical justification” without the necessity of ANY understanding of hard facts and evidence on your part.
Pretentious “philosophizing” and demands for logic aren’t working for you.
Armchair “philosophers” are a dime a dozen. Elizabeth has been extremely patient and accommodating toward your “arguments;” but your continued nit-picking is simply becoming evidence of rudeness on your part. Everyone can see you are not making any effort to communicate. What do you get out of badgering Elizabeth?
Why is there so much hatred towards her on the part of the UD people? None of you make any effort to learn any science; but you sure as hell can muster-up a bunch of pretentious intellectualism in order to rip into those who do.
It is easy to see why kairosfocus feels his “authority” is threatened by people who really know things; but what is your problem? You don’t seem to be an authority on anything. Is that it?
When are you going to learn high school science?
It’s really a very simple, logical argument:
1. IF science cannot currently determine what “intention” would “look like” in terms of biological mechanisms or outcomes,
2. THEN science is also incapable of determining what “non-intention” would “look like” in terms of biological mechanisms or outcomes (since both would be determined by the same metric, inverted);
3. THEN it would be impossible (currently) to support any claim that any mechanism was operating “unintentionally” (or intentionally), AND it would be impossible to support any claim that the result of any process was arrived at unintentionally (or intentionally), because there would exist no means by which to make such determinations;
4. SO Liz’s claim that “intention” or “intentional processes” are not necessary to explain biological product cannot possibly be supported. It can only be her assumption (given 1, which she agrees to)
See, it’s a debate about the logic, not a debate about the science. If Liz agrees to 1, she cannot possibly support her claim.
It’s not about whether intention exists, but whether the assumption of intention has an heuristic value.
No, William, I’m trying to clarify, not obscure. If you would read my posts with that in mind, we might make more progress.
What I’m trying to get across, and so far failing, is the nature of scientific claims. But instead of attempting to understand this, you insist on continuing to misunderstand the nature of scientific claims (or at least on misunderstanding my view on the nature of scientific claims) and accuse me of trying to evade something.
From my PoV you are trying to force into my mouth claims I am not making It is the nature of scientific claims to be provisional and incomplete. No scientists qua scientist makes the claim that X is ruled out. What we claim is that Y is supported. No scientist rules out intelligent design of biology. What we claim is that Darwin’s theory is supported, and that there is no support for they ID claim, largely because no ID claim is every accompanied by a testable hypothesis.
It’s only astounding because you are not getting my point about the limited nature of scientific claims. All ID proponents seem to do this – they make such vast claims on so little basis themselves, they fail to notice that the “Darwinists” they love to blame for all evil (not you necessarily, by many on UD) aren’t actually making anything like the radical claim that ID proponents are. We have a theory that does not invoke Intelligent Design. It is not part of the theory. The theory is far from complete in detail, and never will be complete – scientific theory never is. But because we have a basic mechanism that accounts for the emergence of functional features in organism that does not require intentional design, adding “intentional design” would be non-parsimonious. On the other hand, were we to come across something that really couldn’t have happened under the Darwinian mechanism, then we might have to look again. The classic example is the rabbit in the pre-cambrian, but a better example would be the sudden apparent emergence, in mammals, of bird lungs, especially if such cross-over of well-adapted features from one lineage to another was found regularly. We might even have to start hypothesising alien genetic engineers somewhere in the past.
I honestly think, William, that some of the problem here is that your background is not in science. That’s not to attempt to “argue from authority” – but it is to say that there is a culture gap here.
Yes. And on past form, my Latin is no worse than yours, and possibly better 🙂 But my point stands – the one I keep making (in Latin!) Prima facie evidence is evidence on which one can build a case. The case you build is not the evidence itself.
“It looks designed” and “it looks like murder” are not evidence for design or murder. What is evidence for design or murder is the evidence that makes it looks designed, or look like murder. In the latter case, a dagger sticking out between someone’s shoulder blades. In the former – what? Feel free to say what, but if you just keep repeating “it looks designed” I shall continue to say: but that is the case not the evidence.
WHY does it “look designed”, William? What features make it look designed, to you? Which is exactly equivalent to my asking you: what are the features that you explain by postulating Design? So to answer “the features that make it look designed” is circular!
No, that is not evidence of design. It’s just a description of certain features, just as “looks like a star” is not evidence that something is a star – it’s just a description of certain features (small twinkly thing in the night sky). For which we can have two hypotheses: a vast ball of burning gas; a planet reflecting the sun’s rays. Each of which generates testable hypotheses, which we can test. Nobody denies that Venus in the evening looks like a star – it’s even called “the evening star”. But nor does anyone think it is one. There is a prima facie case to answer (it’s a small twinkly thing that comes out at night, which stars do) but the fact that we think it looks like a star, and therefore might be a star, is not evidence – that it’s a star; the evidence is that it’s small and twinkly and comes out at night.
So what is the evidence that makes biological things “look designed”?
Nope. Come on, William, tell me what “evidence for design looks like”. I’m calling your bluff here.
I do think that we can describe evolutionary processes as “intelligent” processes, as long as we do not consider “intentional” as intrinsic to the concept of “intelligent”. But there’s nothing “kind of cosmic” about it. I think intelligence is an emergent phenomenon, whether it arises in brains or other systems, and I’m not “co-opting” anything. As for “teleology” what I do “invoke” is Monod’s concept of teleonomy. Here is Wiki’s description:
William:
It’s not an “inane distinction” nor am I “co-opting” anything.
OK, then tell me what the evidence is for design. Don’t just tell me there must be some. I want to know what you think it is. Name it. You can use the one I’ve just given you if you like: “quality of apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms”. Will that do?
It’s certainly been invoked as evidence for a designer. The trouble is that when we actually look at the “apparent purpose” of structures and functions in living organisms they turn out all to serve a single one: that of facilitating the reproduction of the organism, precisely the one that can be readily explained without invoking an external designer with an ulterior goal of his/her own. That is what renders the inference of “Designer” redundant.
I am not denying the “obvious” although my training is such that I do not regard what is obvious as what is necessarily true. But I will say that a debate does become very difficult when one queries the obvious, and presses for specific reasoning, and is greeted with “it’s obvious innit?”
But I’ve helped you a bit now. See above.
But I don’t agree to 1. Intentional processes are what I actually research, as a scientist. I do agree that they need to be understood at systems level, but that’s fine – we can do that. Specifically, I look at networks of neurons, rather than individual neurons, although obviously the mechanisms of neurons, and indeed sub-neural mechanisms necessary subcomponents of the system
More to the point, given that we have an efficient non-intentional but nonetheless “intelligent” (in the sense of being able to find complex solutions to the problems of reproducing in a given environment) mechanisms to hand, and copious evidence that the kinds of problems and solutions found in biology are precisely those kinds that our proposed mechanism is good at finding why should we search for an intentional one, unless someone presents independent evidence for an external intender?
William,
In the thread I linked to above, I made the case that unguided evolution fits the evidence far better than ID does.
I then issued a challenge to ID proponents. See if you can answer these questions:
There is no logical connection between 1. and 2.; they are simply assertions on your part. There is not an IF/THEN connection.
One can study “intention” in humans and other animals; it is done routinely. Look it up on the Internet; it is not hard to find. In fact, ask Elizabeth.
Regardless of 1., it is easy to rule out “intention” – or, at the very least, conclude that “intention” is not necessary – in physical systems; including the molecules of biological organisms.
This is where even a minimal knowledge of physics and chemistry would caution one from making gratuitous assertions of “intention” where it does not belong.
Intermolecular energies of interaction in soft matter are on the order of hundredths of electron volts to electron volts. You are also very likely unaware of the fact that you can get off-the-shelf instruments that can measure picovolts.
When the physics and chemistry of molecules are studied, there is no evidence of “intention” in anything they do; it is all accounted for in the laws of physics and chemistry. But you have to know what those are in order to understand.
Self-imposed ignorance of basic science does not justify “plausible” deniability of basic scientific facts. You can’t compensate for fundamental ignorance by “philosophizing” or engaging in “logical refutations” of caricatures of things about which you have no knowledge.
We’re not engaged, as far as I know, in a debate about the proper nature of scientific claims. As far as I know, we’re involved in a debate about claims you have specifically made in this thread which I am pointing out are not logically reconcilable with each other.
Whatever the quality of observed characteristics is that has made virtually every biologist in history admit that the evidence they are looking at appears to require design in the explanation. Several biologists have attempted to explain those characteristics in terms of function, specificity, contingency, information, etc. IMO, the highly complex, interdependent, nature of precisely shaped and fitted parts that resulted in a highly functioning biological device, such as a human eye, is basically the evidence that one normally associates with design, and why biologists say that life appears to have been designed.
It (explanandum: the highly complex, interdependent, nature of precisely shaped and fitted parts that resulted in a highly functioning biological device, such as a human eye) looks like (is comparable to) design (objects that require intention as part of the explanans, like a watch or a camera).
Now, please note: Liz & I agreed that the essential aspect of Design, in terms of our Darwinian vs Design argument, was “intention”.
I said:
Liz said:
But earlier when I said:
Liz resonded:
So, are you saying that science does know what “product of intention” would look like in biology, but that you personally don’t know what it would look like? Or are you just saying two contradictory things here just to avoid pursuing the logical consequences of your assertions – just to stymie, obfuscate, and avoid?
I also found this little gem:
I asked:
You responded:
You here have admitted that you dont’ know if a designer is necessary to the explanation or not.
But, earlier you said:
Another instance of you contradicting yourself. Is the explanation sufficient without a designer? Or do we not know if a Designer is needed in the explanation or not?
Again, this is a question of logic, not of science.
IF there is no metric available to determine that design is necessary in the explanation, THEN there is no metric available to determine that design is unnecessary in the explanation, because it is necessarily the same metric.
Liz (and everyone here) has asserted that – at least currently – there is no such metric. If so, the positive claim that Liz made that her evolutionary explanation **is** sufficient **without design** cannot logically be supported, because she has no metric by which to make such a determination.
You don’t have to know a bit of science to recognize a failure of logic.
keith,
I read that linked post (and this one) and find them quite interesting. I’m going to respond to them when I can give them more attention.
William J. Murray,
Well, you certainly have bollixed up the logic; and it IS a matter of science.
This is your assertion:
Your assertion is false; but you can’t possibly know this because you don’t know any science and how it is conducted.
This statement is also false; especially given the context in which you are feigning the ability to “argue.”
You don’t know any science, yet you claim to be able to make such a statement. Just what kind of “logic” do you think that is?
You claim to know all about logic; but you obviously don’t know that any conclusions that you draw from false or nonsensical premises are not valid conclusions.
You make all sorts of nonsensical assertions while casting those assertions in the form of IF/THEN statements. You repeatedly make false statements and phony analogies; and then you draw false conclusions from your “logic.” Just who do you think this tactic bamboozles?
Apparently you are a textbook case of an ID/creationist who believes that total ignorance of even the basics of science absolves you of any responsibility for the distortions you fold into your assertions that then lead to your phony conclusions.
What English teacher taught you to use so many words to say absolutely nothing? You argue like a kid who flunked philosophy and logic.
Well, I’d be more positive about intention existing. We can and do investigate the biological underpinnings of intention, and to understand human behaviour, we need to understand how intentions are formed, modulated, and actuated. Evolutionary processes have a lot in common with brain processes, but as postulated do not have the component we invoke to account for intention – the forward modelling component. We don’t need it (biological lineages are notable for not demonstrating the features that we see in human intentional design, such as reuse of solutions from one design lineage to another), and the Darwinian mechanism proposed doesn’t include it.
If it could be shown, however, that variants likely to be advantageous in a certain environment are more likely to be produced ab initio than in an environment in which they would not be advantageous, then that would entitle us to credit evolutionary processes with something resembling “intentional” behaviour – and indeed, it may be that such mechanisms exist. They might conceivably evolve at population level, as Shapiro has pointed out. Not terribly convincingly so far though, IMO. But I wouldn’t rule it out. It could turn out that evolution is even more intelligent than I currently credit it!
In which case we really could say, yes, biology is intelligently designed, and the intelligent designer is biology itself! Begotten not Made.
William,
You seem to be ignoring the fact that virtually every biologist in history thinks ID is bunk. Odd how what “virtually every biologist” thinks becomes irrelevant if it does not support your claim.
Well, there certainly is no metric of “design”. Mainly because there is no defined concept called “design” in relation to biological organisms. There is no metric for “pink invisible unicorn juice” either. I guess we must now consider “pink invisible unicorn juice” as we can’t determine that it is unnecessary!
The logic of William J. Murray is unassailable! 😉
Ah. Well, I am. We seem to have finally hit the problem.
That’s because you have misunderstood the nature (and limitation) of scientific claims.
The bolded part is what I have been after (or something like it). Sheesh that was like drawing teeth, and it still came with gobbets of half hypotheses dangling.
Right. Phew.
To some observers, true. To this one, not so much, for three blindingly obvious reasons: living things self-reproduce (designed things don’t); living things are not fabricated by a designer or artisan, they are generated by another living thing, which did not design them or intentionally make them; the purpose served by an organisms functional parts is capacity of the organism to reproduce itself, unlike the products of intentional design, whose purpose is that of the designer.
Here, by the way, you differ from Dembski. He hasn’t figured that out yet.
William this is becoming very difficult. I didn’t say I knew what the “product of intention” would look like “in biology” (actually there are many things it might look like, depending on who or what you are proposing as the intender) – what I said was that I research intentional processes, and so to investigate whether evolutionary processes are intentional, I’d know the kind of place to start looking. But what we’d be looking for depends, absolutely, on what the Designer hypothesis actually is. If we are looking for Craig Venter, we’d be looking for one thing. If we were looking for evidence evolutionary processes are intentional, then we’d be looking for evidence that novel DNA sequences are “tried out” in some way, and matched against some criteria for future usefulness before being put into an actual offspring. What evidence for a hypothesis looks like depends on the details of the hypothesis.
As you won’t say what the hypothesis is, then I can’t say what evidence for it would look like.
I don’t know whether a designer is needed to explain biology. I don’t see the need, but it may turn out that we do need to invoke a designer.
No, it is not an instance of me contradicting myself. Right now, we have data that fits the evolutionary model very well (we have a considerably less good model for OOL of course). But it is perfectly possible that a) a Designer was, nonetheless, involved at some point, either to get the whole shebang started, or to help with some of the fiddly bits, and b) that we will discover that certain fiddly bits really don’t fit the evolutionary model. Right now, we have no reason to think so.
This is why I keep saying that we are talking about the nature of scientific claims, which are limited, and provisional, with “we don’t know” inserted to cover a lot of gaps. However, there is nothing in the data that contradicts the Darwin’s principle (that falsifies it) and so no reason to reject it, although plenty of reason to expand it and incrementally modify it.
And if ID proponents can come up with specific hypotheses that make different predictions to those of Darwinian evolution, then they can be tested – and if ID proves the better fit to the data, then cool. We prefer ID.
But that’s a heck of a bigger ask than ID proponents generally think it is. They’d have to actually come up with a Designer hypothesis, derived from a theory as to the characteristics and methods of the designer.
I’ve stickied keiths’ earlier post here
If it turns out to be very slow to load, I’ll post a new thread.
ETA: not sure if the post is Alan Fox’s or keiths’ as the attributions got mangled in the hack, but it’s a good OP and an interesting thread!