Over at Evolution News, mathematician Granville Sewell has written an article titled, From Barren Planet to Civilization — Four Simple Steps (July 27, 2017). My intention in writing this post is not to critique Dr. Sewell’s latest argument, but to clarify its premises. Sewell’s own comments reveal that it is ultimately a philosophical argument, rather than a scientific one. Although I agree with Dr. Sewell’s key intuition, I contend that his argument hinges on two assumptions: that unguided processes have a snowball’s chance in hell of giving rise to factories, and that mental states do not supervene upon physical states.
The bulk of this post will be devoted to what Dr. Sewell has written in his latest Evolution News article. At the end of my post, I will briefly comment on the thermodynamic arguments in his accompanying video, which I see as peripheral to Sewell’s main point.
I’d like to begin by quoting from the first, second and last paragraphs of Sewell’s article:
In the video “Why Evolution is Different,” above, I make the simple point that to not believe in intelligent design, you have to believe that the four fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone (the gravitational, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces) could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into encyclopedias and science texts and computers and airplanes and Apple iPhones. I show that this belief runs contrary to the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, even if the Earth is an open system.
Whether or not it has anything to do with the second law, I can’t imagine anything in all of science that is more clear and more obvious than that unintelligent forces alone cannot produce such things as Apple iPhones.…
Mathematicians are trained to value simplicity. When we have a clear, simple, proof of a theorem, and a long, complicated counterargument, involving controversial and unproven assertions, we accept the clear, simple, proof, and we know there must be errors in the counterargument even before we find them. The argument here for intelligent design could not be simpler or clearer: unintelligent forces of physics alone cannot rearrange atoms into computers and airplanes and Apple iPhones.…
By his own admission, Dr. Sewell’s argument rests on a simple intuition, that unintelligent forces of physics alone cannot rearrange fundamental particles into science texts and computers. Although Sewell maintains that the second law of thermodynamics prevents the four fundamental forces of physics from rearranging fundamental particles into science texts and computers all by themselves, he insists that his intuition is clear and obvious, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the second law. Since Sewell’s intuition does not appeal to any mathematical reasoning to justify it, and the intuition is couched in non-mathematical language, it is evident that we are not dealing with a mathematical claim here. Nor can it be called a scientific claim, as key terms are left undefined: what is it, exactly, that the four fundamental forces of physics are incapable of rearranging fundamental particles into? Machines, texts or both? Additionally, the only scientific law which Sewell appeals to, in order to support his claim, is one which he says intuition does not require, anyway, in order to grasp its truth.
What does Dr. Sewell mean?
I take it, then, that Sewell’s fundamental intuition is a philosophical one. As a philosopher, I find it somewhat ambiguously worded, in that it fails to distinguish between proximate and ultimate causation. Sewell’s claim could mean either:
1. Science texts and computers can never have, as their proximate cause, the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance
or:
2. Science texts and computers can never have, as their ultimate cause, the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance.
But we are not finished yet. Although Dr. Sewell claims in his article that “unintelligent forces of physics alone cannot rearrange atoms into computers and airplanes and Apple iPhones” (my emphasis), he does not literally mean this. As he explains in an earlier post from 2012, what he actually means is that such an outcome would be “astronomically improbable.” So what Sewell really means to say is either
1(a) It is astronomically improbable that science texts and computers would have, as their proximate cause, the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance
or
2(a) It is astronomically improbable that science texts and computers would have, as their ultimate cause, the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance.
Now, even opponents of Intelligent Design would readily agree with Sewell that claim 1(a) is true. In the real world, science books are always written by scientists, and computers are always built by computer engineers. In both cases, the proximate cause is an intelligent agent. (A robot can build a computer, but it still has to be designed by an intelligent agent.) We never see science texts and computers being put together by the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles. While it’s theoretically possible for the four forces of nature to assemble particles into texts and computers, the odds are so low that we would never expect to witness such an event. So I can only assume that Dr. Sewell means to assert claim 2(a). Sewell confirms this interpretation in his latest article, where he states that materialists attempt to explain the origin of advanced civilizations from inanimate matter, in four steps:
1. Three or four billion years ago a collection of atoms formed by pure chance that was able to duplicate itself. [Life]
2. These complex collections of atoms were able to preserve their complex structures and pass them on to their descendants, generation after generation. [Reproduction and heredity]
3. Over a long period of time, the accumulation of duplication errors resulted in more and more elaborate collections of atoms. [“Higher” animals]
4. Eventually something called “intelligence” [i.e. human beings] allowed some of these collections of atoms to design buildings and computers and airplanes, and write encyclopedias and science texts.
In step 4, Sewell acknowledges that even materialists posit something called “intelligence” as the proximate cause of computers and science texts. What distinguishes materialists from Intelligent Design theorists, according to Sewell, is that the latter would deny that the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance, are the ultimate cause of these remarkable artifacts.
Sewell contends that each of these steps is very difficult to explain scientifically. The origin of life (step 1) is “a very difficult problem which has not yet been solved by science.” Reproduction (step 2) is “difficult to explain without design,” especially when the new entity being constructed is one which has to contain a factory for building yet another entity like itself. The bodies of higher animals (step 3) contain major new features, whose sudden appearance and subsequent refinement “actually looks more like the way human technology, such as software or automobiles, ‘evolves,’ through testing and improvements.” And while the process whereby humans design science texts and computers (step 4) might seem very familiar to us all, “science cannot yet explain human consciousness or intelligence in terms of unintelligent forces alone.”
Some readers might wish to question whether Sewell has an adequate grasp of evolutionary biology. However, as this post is intended to assess his philosophical reasoning, I shall overlook any scientific objections to Sewell’s argument, in his article. Instead, I’d like to focus on his key intuition. Sewell thinks it is clear and obvious that the probability of science texts and computers ultimately arising from the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance, is astronomically low. That is his central claim.
What is interesting here is that Sewell does not assert that it is intuitively obvious that the probability of life ultimately arising from the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance, is astronomically low. He regards the origin of life as “a very difficult problem,” but that’s a much weaker assertion than his central claim. Sewell also acknowledges that the origin of “higher” animals, and even “intelligent humans,” appears at least “superficially plausible (until we look at it in more detail).”
Getting to the roots of Sewell’s key intuition
As far as I can tell from reading his article, there are two classes of phenomena which Sewell regards as truly mysterious: reproduction and creativity – the former, because it involves not only copying something, but building a factory that can continue the chain of copying down through the generations; and the latter, because Sewell does not believe that human consciousness or intelligence can be explained in terms of blind forces.
I am curious to know which Sewell regards as more mysterious: reproduction or human creativity. Although he devotes two entire paragraphs of his article to the marvel of reproduction, I find it very strange that Sewell nowhere claims that it is obvious that the probability of, say, a lineage of bacteria ultimately arising from the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance, is astronomically low. And yet, if he regarded reproduction as the main hurdle rendering the unguided origin of science texts and computers from inanimate matter astronomically unlikely, that is precisely the sort of claim which one would expect him to make.
That leaves us with the mystery of human creativity. And indeed, there is something profoundly odd about the appearance of an animal whose mind enables it to explore the farthest recesses of time and space, and to solve any technological problem that the cosmos throws at it. How did a such a magnificent mind arise, in the first place?
A Darwinist might contend that if we examine the hominin fossil record and the tools made by our ancestors, we can discern no breaks that correspond to any sudden appearance of the human mind. As far as we can tell, the mind arose gradually, over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. Sewell might object that “science cannot yet explain human consciousness or intelligence in terms of unintelligent forces alone,” but Darwinists would call that an argument from ignorance. Or is it? Are there any good reasons to believe that blind forces cannot generate minds like ours?
A Thought Experiment
Instead of putting forward an argument for the immateriality of the mind which is based on Aristotelian metaphysics (as many Thomistic philosophers do), I’d like to cut to the chase with a thought experiment.
Imagine that you’re an astronaut, traveling in interstellar space in the 25th century, and that your spaceship has a super-duper computer. One day, you land on a planet and encounter a race of technologically advanced beings whose science is roughly on a par with your own. One of these beings kindly lets you scan its brain and body, allowing your on-board computer to construct a detailed model in its databank. You also observe the alien being very carefully, monitoring its verbal utterances and its brain waves whenever it communicates with other members of its race.
Now here’s my question for the materialists: do you think you would be able to reconstruct the alien’s thoughts and its language, simply by analyzing its brain waves and bodily behavior? After all, if the mind “supervenes upon” the body, as materialists love to claim, so that two intelligent entities having the same physical states will always have the same mental states, then it should be possible, in theory at least, to infer the latter from the former, given a powerful enough computer. If intelligent beings’ brain processes possess intentionality in their own right, then there is no reason in principle why we cannot “read off” the meaning of these brain processes at time T from their structure and/or the changes they are undergoing, at time T.
What’s more, it shouldn’t be necessary for us to know anything about the alien’s life-history, or the history of its species, in order to determine what it is thinking. For if the content of its thoughts supervenes upon what’s going on in its brain and body right now, as materialists suppose, then a complete knowledge of the alien’s current physical state (and its present surroundings) should be enough to tell us what’s going on in its mind. Otherwise, one might imagine a race of aliens on another planet, having identical brain processes, bodily states and immediate surroundings, but whose thoughts have a different content from those of the first race of aliens, because of different choices they made in the past – for instance, about the rules of their language. This would contradict the physicalist thesis of supervenience, that there can be no mental differences between two individuals without some underlying physical difference.
When my thought experiment is couched in this form, it becomes evident that the materialist’s claim that mental states (including our language and our most creative ideas) supervene upon physical states is highly implausible, and stands in need of justification. One would want to see very good evidence, before accepting such a sweeping claim. Of course, rejection of materialism doesn’t tell us what the mind is. Nor does it establish the truth of any particular version of dualism. One could still adopt some form of neutral monism, where mental and physical properties are regarded as existing side by side, in human beings and other intelligent organisms. But on such an account, the origin and existence of the mind would still remain a profound mystery.
If there is any truth to Sewell’s core intuition, then, it must rest on the materialist claim that mental states supervene upon physical states. The emergence of life, of reproduction and heredity, and of complex animals, are all very puzzling facts, in a world where unguided forces hold sway, but it is not obvious that these outcomes are astronomically improbable. But the origin of a mind which can ask and answer questions about where it – and everything else – came from, and that can solve any technological problem it sets itself, is something truly astonishing. The laws of physics simply express functional relationships between various physical properties; they say nothing about syntax, let alone the semantics of our language. Language is a wholly unexpected phenomenon in a world governed by blind forces. And so are those human creations, such as science texts and computers, which presuppose the existence of language. That, I would suggest, is what lies at the core of Sewell’s big claim.
What do readers think?
APPENDIX: Some remarks on Grant Sewell’s video
Sewell’s 22-minute video, titled, “Why Evolution Is Different,” is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEXXNxjWYE&feature=youtu.be
This video is more scientific and technical than Dr. Sewell’s article; consequently, my assessment of it will be quite different from my overall favorable assessment of the central claim of Sewell’s article.
I’ll keep my comments as brief as possible.
(1) At the beginning of the video, Sewell discusses Le Conte’s axiom: the four forces account for everything else in nature, so why should evolution be any different? For my part, I think Le Conte’s axiom is scientifically plausible, when one is discussing the physical properties of objects. But as we have seen, it is wildly implausible to suppose that the four forces can account for the appearance of human language. Syntax and semantics can’t be explained in terms of functional physical relationships, such as Hooke’s law. That’s why I think Sewell’s central claim is a valid one.
(2) At 5:09, we are told that in his published paper, On “compensating” entropy decreases (Physics Essays 30, 1 (2017), pp. 70-74), Dr. Sewell defined “X-entropy” as the entropy associated with any diffusing component (e.g. heat). And since entropy is a measure of disorder, he defined X-order as the negative of X-entropy. However, it’s a mistake to regard entropy as a measure of disorder (admittedly, it’s a common one in physics textbooks, which originally goes back to Ludwig Boltzmann). Steve Donaldson’s paper, Entropy is not Disorder, is well worth reading in this regard. I shall quote a few of the highlights:
So what is entropy? Probably the most common answer you hear is that entropy is a kind of measure of disorder. This is misleading. Equating entropy with disorder creates unnecessary confusion in evaluating the entropy of different systems. Consider the following comparisons. Which has more entropy?
– stack of cards in perfect order or a stack of cards in random order?
– a Swiss watch with intricate internal workings or a sundial?
– ten jars of water stacked neatly in a pyramid or the equivalent mass of water in the form of 10 blocks of ice flying randomly through space?
– a living, breathing human being or a dried up corpse turning to dust?
– the universe at the moment of the Big Bang or the universe in its present state?
If you think of entropy as disorder, then the answers to these questions may trouble you….A better word that captures the essence of entropy on the molecular level is diversity. Entropy represents the diversity of internal movement of a system. The greater the diversity of movement on the molecular level, the greater the entropy of the system. Order, on the other hand, may be simple or complex. A living system is complex. A living system has a high degree of order AND an high degree of entropy. A raccoon has more entropy than a rock. A living, breathing human being, more than a dried up corpse…
With this clearer understanding of entropy, let’s take a look at those troubling entropy questions posed earlier. Those stacks of cards? They both have the same entropy. On the molecular level, the molecules are not behaving any differently in one stack than in the other. Even on the card level, there is no difference. None of the cards are moving. There is no kinetic energy present on the card level in either stack. There is no difference between the stacks except our subjective sense of order.
As for the watch and the sundial, it depends. If they are both made of similar metals and they are at the same temperature and pressure, then on a molecular level they would have about the same entropy. The molecules in the watch would have about the same diversity of movement in the solid metal parts as the molecules in the metal of the sundial. Ounce for ounce, the heat content would be about the same for both.
On the higher system level, you could say the watch has more entropy than the sundial because it has a greater diversity of internal movement. The watch has more internal kinetic energy than the sundial. What significance you could give this “higher level” entropy is not clear to me.
The water in the stacked jars has more entropy than the flying ice cubes because liquid water molecules have more modes of movement than ice molecules. Again, the heat trapped in the liquid water per degree is greater than the heat trapped in the ice per degree…
…The 2nd law says entropy is always increasing in the universe, so the entropy of the universe at the time of the Big Bang must have been much less that the entropy of the universe now.
This does not mean there was more structure or order back then. It does mean there was less diversity and less space to move around. The evolution of the universe has been characterized by an on-going transformation from a simple, restricted, highly condensed, homogeneous state to an increasingly complex, widely dispersed, dynamic, multipotent, granular diversity. In other words, the universe is not winding down, like a giant soulless machine slowly running out of steam. On the contrary, she is just waking up. (Emphases mine – VJT.)
(3) Later, Dr. Sewell discusses the astronomical unlikelihood of a tornado turning all the houses and cars in an area into rubble, being followed by a second tornado which turns the rubble back into houses and cars. Sewell’s point is that unguided evolution is equally ridiculous. But the origin of life is completely different from a tornado turning a heap of rubble back into a house. In a living organism (e.g. a tiny bacterium), the constituent molecules show at least some tendency to bond together (although we still have no idea how the first organism was formed), and (usually) a very robust tendency to hold together, once assembled. The pieces of rubble from a house destroyed by a tornado show absolutely no tendency to come together again; nor would they show any tendency to hold together, even if they somehow managed to coalesce in some freak event. Also, a bacterium is very small, and a house is very big. From a purely thermodynamic point of view, assembling a house is a lot harder than assembling a bacterium. As for the subsequent evolution of more complex life-forms, Darwinian evolution (supplemented by the neutral theory) provide at least a mechanism whereby complex traits could evolve. No such mechanism exists for houses.
(4) Dr. Sewell contends that major transitions occur suddenly in the fossil record. Evidently he hasn’t read much about the evolution of mammals from mammal-like reptiles, or the origin of birds from dinosaurs, recently. Back in the 1980s, these transitions were still deeply puzzling (especially the latter). Not any longer.
(5) In his video, Sewell explains why the evolution of the automobile engine couldn’t have been natural. I’m sure it couldn’t: cars don’t have babies.
(6) Finally, Dr. Sewell argues that the evolution of life shows the same pattern of careful planning and gradual improvement as we observe in technological design. Convergence, he suggests, explains the similar structures which are sometimes found in different lineages of living things: Ford automobiles and Boeing jets may simultaneously evolve new GPS systems. OK, so here’s a question: why do we never see exactly the same complex structure appearing in different lineages of living things? (The vertebrate eye is not the same as that of the octopus.) This is odd, because human designers typically reuse their designs. And why do novel designs appearing in one branch of living things never appear at exactly the same time, in another branch, as occurred with GPS systems? That does not sound like technological design to me.
(7) Professsor Joe Felsenstein and Mark Perakh have responded to Dr. Sewell’s argument based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics here and here, respectively. I’ll leave it to readers to form their own judgement. Elsewhere, Felsenstein highlights what he sees as two key errors made by Dr. Sewell (emphases mine):
1. His X-entropies, even if the equations for them are correct, isolate the concentration of one quantity from all others, not allowing chemical or nuclear reactions to create or destroy the substance. For example, we could make an X-entropy for carbon dioxide. We could have equations for the changes in concentration of CO2, but these would not have terms for the creation of CO2 by respiration or by some geochemical processes, and they would not have terms for the destruction of CO2 by photosynthesis. So the equations can be correct but their application to the real world wrong.
2. Leaving aside the issue of X-entropies and just looking at the energy flows, Sewell wants to argue that his math shows that evolution cannot make organisms more complex and energy-rich. Here he gets very handwavy and vague, and that is telling. In fact he is ignoring the role of solar radiation in powering the processes in the biosphere. He just says that “all we see entering [the biosphere] is radiation” and expects his readers to dismiss the idea that this radiation could be important. In short, even if his equations are all correct, he has msiapplied them by ignoring a major fact explained in science classes.
Please note that I’m just passing on these comments; I’ll leave it to readers to elaborate on them.
(8) Dr. Sewell’s claim that you can calculate the entropy of a poker hand should be read in the light of Steve Donaldson’s explanation of why an ordered stack of cards has the same entropy as a randomly ordered stack (see above). Likewise, Sewell’s assertion that the Boltzmann formula can be used to calculate “the change in thermal entropy associated with any change in probability: not just the probability of an ideal gas state, but the probability of anything,” has been criticized as a sweeping generalization, which reflects a misunderstanding of Boltzmann’s work.
(9) Sal Cordova points out that not all creationists believe that the Second Law of Thermodynamics precludes the evolution of life.
I shall stop here, and invite readers to weigh in with their comments, both philosophical and scientific.
The word unguided doesn’t even appear in his article. Is that why you call it an assumption?
I guess I need to watch the video. 🙂
Sewell:
I think we’d need a stool sample.
I always deny that I’m a materialist. But I’ll comment anyway.
No, I don’t expect that we could reconstruct thoughts and language based only on brain waves and bodily behavior.
But there’s a problem already in asking that question. Are you asking about syntactic brain waves and syntactic behavior? Or are you asking about brain waves as we normally understand them and bodily behavior as we normally understand that?
I ask, because our normal understanding of brain waves and bodily behavior already depends on our own mental states. That’s where “the hard problem” goes wrong. It wants to remove mental states from the picture, and replace with physical states. But our understanding of physical states already depends on mental states.
Sewell’s argument runs into the same problem, unless by “four forces” he means only syntactic forces. For the forces, as we understand them, already depends on our understanding and thus on our intelligence.
Aside from philosophical problems the brain wave problem is an encryption problem. Find the message without the encryption key. Whether you can do it or not depends on the details of the encryption.
I sometimes cite the Voynich Manuscript as an example of how little text is necessary to present a hard problem. After decades of intensive attempts, we do not even know if the manuscript is meaningful or a hoax? It is not difficult to produce puzzles that cannot be solved.
In biology, it is fairly easy to produce strings representing genetic code without being able to determine if they are “meaningful” or not.
The real question to ask is–why don’t demonstrably designed (designed like we do, not ancestrally derived, that is) things appear in the environment without animals (esp. humans) designing them, while apparently evolved entities indeed do appear in the environment sans any known agent being responsible?
Put that way, though, Sewell would be stuck with the problem that evolution really is very different. And he might for once have to deal with the evidence, which he clearly is loath to do.
Glen Davidson
Well, what’s a “materialist”? An empiricist? Someone who accepts the current knowledge of causation, while recognizing that we don’t know everything yet? If so, I suppose I’d be a “materialist,” but that’s a strange thing to call someone who just uses substantiated knowledge in order to hypothesize, and to study phenomena.
With that caveat noted, of course one couldn’t reconstruct an alien’s thoughts and language using the small amount of information contained in brain waves and bodily behavior. Brain waves don’t reflect thoughts, they reflect coordinated nerve firings that have little or nothing directly to do with actual thought.
I would say that “a complete knowledge of the alien’s current physical state (and its present surroundings) should be enough to tell us what’s going on in its mind,” at least in theory. Extreme computing power might be necessary to figure out its language, and I’m not sure if that sort of computer(s) could even be built, but that would be a practical matter. But then, how would it be at all possible to actually have a complete knowledge of the alien’s current state? Observation changes the observed, especially when one gets to very minute bits, and to really know the alien’s physical state would probably require knowledge of every atom.
In practice, it seems highly doubtful that we’d ever be able to know exactly what the alien is thinking. The observations necessary would destroy the subject being studied and the information being sought at the same time.
Glen Davidson
It’s always refreshing to see IDists come up with novel arguments. Paley’s watch is now an IPhone. Really neat, didn’t see that one coming. Luckily I’m an Android guy so my atheism is safe for now, really dodged a bullet there though…
…but I swear if he somehow manages to mention thermodynamics and tornadoes, my faith in atheism may be gone for good… let’s keep reading…
However, when we do look at the evidence, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.
I will say that I disagree with Granville about biology needing a design explanation and the rest of nature not needing a design explanation.
Haha. I love the Asimov quote. I wonder how he calculated the amount of entropy it required to evolve the human brain. More evolutionist nonsense. Does it never end?
It doesn’t appear in the video either.
here
Vincent,
Your central argument seems to have nothing to do with evolution at all, and everything to do with whether human beings are physical systems. You would appear to be some kind of dualist, and I suspect your alternative to brain states being responsible for thought is that an immaterial soul is pulling strings from its undisclosed location. Is that true?
Vincent, thanks for noting my remarks on Sewell’s arguments (and Mark Perakh”s earlier responses). The fact is, Sewell makes it sound as if he has some mathematical proof that evolution couldn’t happen — buit he has no such proof.
Notice also the way he is using his example. It is implausible, her argues, that elementary particles could assemble themselves into iPhones. But he’s left out a few steps:
1. Elementary particles assembling themselves into atoms.
2. Atoms interacting and forming molecules.
3. Molecules aggregating into clouds of dust in space.
4. Dust collecting into a star, and planets.
5. Geological processes producing oceans, mountains, etc.
Now this far, most of us would say all that happens by ordinary physical and chemical processes. But Sewell has made all this sound implausible too!
So he has no mathematical proof of, well, anything. And his implausibility argument is applied selectively to astronomy, geology, and biology. Concentrating on the same old issues:. the origin of life, the Cambrian Explosion, etc.
In short, not a new argument, and not one based on Sewell’s mathematical background. However much of a mathematician he may be, he’s an ordinary creationist debater when it comes to his videos, or his arguments in print.
1. Elementary particles assembling themselves into atoms.
Implausible.
2. Atoms interacting and forming molecules.
Implausible.
3. Molecules aggregating into clouds of dust in space.
Implausible.
4. Dust collecting into a star, and planets.
Implausible.
5. Geological processes producing oceans, mountains, etc.
Implausible.
Happy now? 🙂
I don’t understand why you see this as a problem. Evolutionists apply their plausibility arguments selectively as well. Take the evolution of the eye, as a for instance.
Hi John Harshman,
Although I don’t think of mind and body as two things, I do hold that some of the actions humans perform (thinking and choosing) cannot be cashed out as bodily actions. I’ve attempted to explain how immaterial acts of will can bring about bodily movements here: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/how-is-libertarian-free-will-possible/ Cheers.
Mung:
Sewell writes: “I can’t imagine anything in all of science that is more clear and more obvious than that unintelligent forces alone cannot produce such things as Apple iPhones.” Note the word “alone.” What else could that possibly mean but “without any intelligent guidance”? After all, no-one would doubt that intelligently guided forces can produce all sorts of things.
I don’t see any logical contradiction in thinking of unintelligent things (or forces) as being guided. Wasn’t that the point of Aquinas’s Fifth Way?
All that does is push the “free” part of free will into an undescribed and unlocated “agent”. On what basis does this agent choose among the random possibilities? On what basis do you suppose that this choice is both undetermined and non-random? What is this “soul” you appeal to at one crucial point in the narrative?
I don’t see this as addressing my questions at all, and anyway the question of free will is irrelevant to whether the mind is physical, which is at least somewhat relevant to whether it could evolve.
John the “I’m not an agent.”
Mung,
Sewell shows the familiar unfamiliarity with chemistry. Everything’s just implausible arrangements of non-interactive ball bearings to them. All these ball bearings are stuck together: it’s a miracle! The perpetual confusion of entropy and order.
The ‘compensation’ argument wouldn’t be made by a chemist. You don’t need to borrow energy/entropy from elsewhere; it’s all there in the serial electronegativity of the different chemical species that are just lying around on the average planet. You do need a means of stopping primitive systems from falling to the bottom of the entropic slope and getting stuck there, which is by no means solved, but it is nonetheless a different issue.
Did Allan’s trip to France make him a little froggie?
Make that “physics”.
With Sewell style reasoning, it is implausible that matter would arrange itself into a hurricane or a tornado.
If one is thinking of random motion of atoms, that would be fair enough. But it ignores the influence of naturally occurring heat engines which spawn these weather systems.
It is a miracle.
Pointed out in the OP. And I have a long and sordid history of opposing it. Just ask Salvador.
Yes, it is implausible. The very existence of matter is implausible, as is the very existence of energy.
Mung,
So we’re defining ‘miracle’ as ‘thing that happens routinely’ now?
I can’t go quite that far. I don’t see anything miraculous in Rumraket being routinely illogical. It would be a miracle if he saw the error of his ways and changed.
If the designer exists would that change the probability?
I can’t see how.
Looks like the Designer is impotent.
Hi Mung,
You write:
I agree. Actually, there’s nothing in Sewell’s argument that requires any act of intelligent intervention. His intuition is that “unintelligent forces of physics alone cannot rearrange atoms into computers and airplanes and Apple iPhones,” but one could argue that a front-loaded universe created by a Designer could rearrange atoms that way. In that case, the guidance would occur up-front, at the very beginning of time.
Here is even better stuff that I wrote a year later (minus a few arithmetic errors):
and
EXCELLENT FIND! Finally, we’re clearing up this disaster of a misconception. The problem began with a pioneers of thermodynamics: Boltzman and Gibbs. It has been difficult to undo all of this because, well, it was Boltzmann and Gibbs and far be it for any physicist to disagree with Boltzman and Gibbs! The problem persists especially in chemistry, even by professors like Larry Moran who know it’s a misconception!
So creationists and IDists have just persisted repeating acknowledged misconceptions and building on misconceptions.
Now regarding ID or miracles for that matter, how would a Designer communicate something miraculous or designed if not through improbable constructs?
Mike Gene pointed out when he asked how an atheist would believe in God, the atheist usually framed that the evidence would have to look like a gap. By way of extension, this applies to a Designer making a design that as intended to be recognized as a design. It creates a gap of some sort.
Gaps can be asserted through things like the law of large numbers. I’ve gone on record as saying Intelligent Design can’t be formally demonstrated since intelligence and consciousness can’t be formally demonstrated either. You can maybe accept your own consciousness, I doubt it can be formally demonstrated.
I think ID in it’s fullest is outside of science. I’ll get flak for saying so from IDists, but that is my view, and I say that as a card carrying IDists and creationist who believes ID is real.
It’s comforting, and humbling, to know that Salvador has been leading the charge all along.
Good question, does it require a miracle in order to design something?
Well, there is something called “communication.”
Otherwise, at least things ought to appear designed if they’re supposedly designed. Not the coccyx or the descent of the testes, for instance.
“Improbable” just means improbable, not intelligent or miraculous. And creationist usage of “improbable” means almost nothing.
Glen Davidson
Hi John Harshman,
My narrative mentions the word “soul” only to point out that it’s not a second thing pushing a body around. Man is “one being, capable of two radically different kinds of acts – material acts (which other animals are also capable of) and formal, immaterial actions, such as acts of choice and deliberation.” As to where the agent is, I would simply answer: in the individual’s body. On a holistic, non-reductionist account of agency, there’s no need to be more precise than that. But if you want to know where agency takes place, then I’d say: in the frontal cortex of the brain, which then relays its commands to the motor cortex, which decides on which muscles to contract. A more detailed account can be found here, courtesy of McGill University:
What I’m claiming is that the choice of goal which is made in the frontal cortex is a top-down act, not confined to any specific point in the brain but only to a region, which constrains (but does not determine in fine detail) the subsequent muscle movements that occur, which are controlled by the motor cortex. The motor cortex activates specific muscles on the basis of its past experience and memory of which ones will be useful for moving a certain body part, in a certain direction. At the very bottom (neuronal) level, any pattern of firings whose aggregate (or sum) is compatible with this particular movement will be accepted by the brain (via sensorimotor feedback involving the cerebellum and basal ganglia), while any pattern whose sum is incompatible with this goal will be rejected. There are, of course, a very large number of possible combinations of individual neuronal firings (which are microscopic and random) which are fully compatible with the individual’s overall goal (which acts as a nonrandom constraint on those combinations). Any such combination will be accepted by the brain, as compatible with the individual’s choices. That’s the point of my illustration with the 1s and 0s. As I wrote: “Each row is still random, but I have imposed a non-random macro-level constraint. That’s how my will works when I make a choice.” The rows correspond to individual neuronal firings over the course of time; the non-random constraint is the individual’s act of will, which is executed over the course of a few seconds. Randomness at the micro-level is fully compatible with non-randomness at the macro-level, and there is no need for determinism to hold.
Thus I believe, as many philosophers do, that agent causality is a basic kind of causality, in contradistinction to event causality.
You add:
Nothing in the foregoing account necessarily implies that an act of will is an immaterial act. It might be. Or it could be a holistic material act involving the frontal cortex as a whole. One can believe in libertarian free will and still be a physicalist of sorts (say, a holistic neutral monist), if one wishes. That’s a position I can respect.
My own reason for believing that acts of will are immaterial acts is that (as I explained in the thought experiment in my OP), it appears impossible for the configuration of atoms in an individual’s brain to fix the meaning and propositional content of his/her thoughts and decisions. Typically, when I make a free choice, that choice has propositional content: “I’m going out now to visit Tom, so I’d better open the front door.” Unless you believe that the scanner I described in my thought experiment could read the propositional content of an alien thinking that thought, there’s no way to construe it as a pattern of events in the brain. It can only be an immaterial action of some sort.
As to how these immaterial actions happen to have the felicitous property of being able to activate the frontal cortex, initiating a cascade of events which conforms to my wishes (I reach out my arm and open the front door), all I can say is: ask my Maker. But if you have a better theory, then let’s hear it.
Depends on how you define miracle. If you view human and animal intelligence miraculous, then yes, if not, then no. But that’s not the point of what I was saying!
If a designer wanted what he constructed to be recognized as intentional, he will choose something that goes against natural (ordinary) expectation. I prefer the notion of “outside ordinary expectation” rather than the word “improbable” since “outside of ordinary expectation” conveys the idea better.
500 fair coins 100% heads is outside of ordinary expectation, whereas a particular a random configuration of 500 fair coins with 50% heads is astronomically improbable but not designed.
I don’t like framing the ID argument in terms of information theory or specified complexity.
If I or an Alien or God wanted to communicate design through dominos, this is one way to do it, or at least make it hard to think otherwise since the configuration violates ordinary expectation. One does not need to invoke gratious applications of thermodynamics, information theory or specified complexity. One merely needs to make the case the configuration is well outside ordinary expectation. This can be done sometimes with the law of large numbers, and in this case adding a little classical physics, noting that dominos inherently “prefer” to be lying flat than on edge.
https://cdn2.listsoplenty.com/listsoplenty-cdn/pix/uploads/2010/05/Dominos-standing-up.jpg
Hi Sal,
Thank you very much for the link to the article you wrote last October, clarifying the concept of entropy, and for the attached quote from Professor Larry Moran.
Barring Divine revelation (which would itself require a further miracle, in order to establish its veracity), I’d be inclined to agree (on the whole) with your rhetorical question:
The only exception I can think of are the laws of Nature themselves. I think one can know that they were designed, without having recourse to the fine-tuning argument. But in order to come to that realization, one must first recognize them for what they are: not merely descriptive statements about the way events happen to occur in this world, but as prescriptive statements about the way in which things ought to behave in this world. (It is rational to expect a prescription to continue holding, because one is then expecting a thing to behave as it should; but there is no reason to expect a thing to continue behaving in accordance with descriptions of its past behavior: Hume’s problem of induction.)
One can then argue that prescriptions which (i) apply to the most basic level in Nature and therefore cannot be reduced to mere descriptions at any more basic level, and which (ii) apply to things (such as electrons) that lack a “good of their own” (such as living things possess) must issue from a Cosmic Prescriber who designed these things to behave in a certain way.
However, the foregoing argument for design is not a scientific but a philosophical one. If one wishes to mount a scientific case for design, one needs to appeal to the improbable.
Why? And how would one know if a one-off occurrence is improbable or not, barring absurd IDist/creationist made-up figures?
More to the point, it’s bizarre to appeal to very improbable design (because not rational, merely hereditary) in order to “establish” design. Which is what IDists effectively do.
Glen Davidson
Agreed.
Sweeping generalizations are un-helpful, whereas specific examples are more helpful. Better to show situations where the laws of physics will tend to prevent spontaneous formation of certain structures from given initial conditions.
We can start off with dominos or coins then move on to studying particular molecular systems. With some work one can show how the laws of physics tend to prevent dominos from spontaneously standing on edge, much less several of them in a row. We can then extend the idea to molecules.
Chemical reactions tend to go in certain natural directions and other directions would be deemed un-natural or far outside ordinary expectation.
For example, in principle, a chemist can construct a molecule he would expect other chemists to deem as man-made because they are far outside ordinary expectation.
The ID argument for origin of life can be framed as the Great-Chemist-In-The-Sky who constructs the molecular systems of life so that chemists on Earth (like James Tour) will view the molecules as outside ordinary expectation of something coming out of a primordial Earth.
Many who accept common descent consider the prokaryote to eukaryote transition to be exceptional. In contrast, certain kinds of anti-biotic resistance evolution is easily repeatable. So from a biochemical standpoint, the Eukaryote looks designed to me. A good example is double-stranded DNA repair mechanisms that are unique to Eukaryotes (depicted below). It just boggles the mind how complex this is.
The more I studied biochemistry, the more it seem there were chemical systems that were far outside ordinary expectation of evolving out of supposed initial conditions. Some examples that I personally find compelling:
1. origin of life from a variety of plausible and even generous primordial conditions
2. origin of eukaryotes from a prokaryote or some uncpecified ancestor that could somehow evolve into a eukaryote and/or prokaryote
3. origin of nervous systems. How did axons evolve to transmit nerve signals between nerves cells unless there had been foresight to do so? Creating an isolated nerve cell with an axon going to nowhere for no purpose gives little to no functional advantage.
Many here at TSZ don’t accept ID. Fair enough. But they have yet to show me the above systems in life are molecular constructs well within expected outcomes from supposed initial conditions. Their arguments strike me like arguments claiming dominos can spontaneously assemble to constructs like the one showed earlier.
I just don’t find the clam believable that biology is an outcome consistent with ordinary expectation. If something is inconsistent with what is ordinary, then at what point is the extra-ordinary to be accepted as a design and/or miracle?
I’m afraid I don’t see how this is libertarian free will at all. These two sorts of acts are not in any way different. The act of choice you describe is just ordinary causality happening in your brain. Where’s the free will in that?
Again, none of this is libertarian free will. Your “will” as you describe it is simply a resut of physical causality happening in your brain, possibly coupled to a bit of quantum indeterminacy. Neither of these, nor their combination, results in libertarian free will. That’s no surprise, since the very concept is incoherent.
Then you, and many philosophers, have merely assigned a name to create a distinction from nothing.
In either case, how could it produce libertarian free will?
Your thought experiment implies that only if we accept your conclusion, which was reached, so far as I can tell, purely by a process of personal incredulity. But anyway, if the will is immaterial, what is it? Are we back to the soul, which you wish to avoid?
John Harshman,
John, thank you for reaffirming for all atheists, that there is no such thing as morality.
I’m not sure what that was about.
We do know that for Christians, there is no such thing as morality. We know this because we saw them voting for Donald Trump.
So basically this method of design revelation requires a particular target and accurate way of determining the probability of that target being acheived by chance alone . And our knowledge of or feeling about those parameters result in our expectation.
Seems like a system prone observer bias. As a young earth creationist your estimate of probabilities for certain observations would differ from someone who thinks the universe is 13 billion years old
Computer programming and fishing reels
Dominos or coins alone in any configuration would communicate design.
Absolute morality
The ends justify the means morality
Yes, but I was referring to the design of the configuration (as in orientation and positioning), not the design of the dominos and coins.
Yes, but so is every measurement in science. I should point out, the notion of natural and/or ordinary expectation is rather fundamental to a lot of experimental science. If one did not have some level of faith that observer bias is sufficiently exorcised out of our measurements, then we may as well forget doing science if one’s epistemology demands absolute proof of every inference. Science moves forward with a certain degree of faith.
If I said this configuration of dominos is outside the expectation of what would be formed by tornados and earthquakes would you have a problem with that? That seems scientific to me.
Ok, so do you think a chemist can make a synthetic substance that he thinks another chemist will identify it as such. On what grounds will such man-made molecules be deemed designed? My answer: molecular constructs outside of ordinary expectation. This is analogous to the configuration of dominos being outside of expectation.
Seems to me that James Tour is open to the possibility of design because the molecules of life have certain properties that distinguish them from molecules he’d expect to pop up by themselves on Earth.
That said, what would convince you God existed except some sort of Gap that is outside of nature. I actually think God of the Gaps is an excellent proof of God. How else will the average individual be convinced of God.
Supposedly, and I believe it to be true, people believed in Jesus because he gave sight to the blind, healed the sick, and raised the dead. You might not believe it since you haven’t seen it with your own eyes. Fair enough, but if you did see it with your own eyes would you invoke observer bias or hallucinations.
I pointed out, there is only one thing we can be certain of, the rest is a matter of reasonable faith:
So getting back to what you said:
I don’t have a problem with that.
Would you be persuaded then of God’s existence if he inflicted some serious pain on you on judgement day? Would that persuade you of design and convince you that you weren’t hallucinating?
I thought about whether I’d choose to have faith rather than absolute proof. Given that the only certainty is pain, and that God to demonstrate his existence might use it pain, I opt for faith instead.
Hallucinations can’t inflict the sort of pain a real BEING can inflict. I’ve opted for some element of faith over proof through the one avenue I can find certainty in, namely, my own personal pain.
CS Lewis paraphrased this by saying, “Pain is God’s Megaphone.”