Intention, Intelligence and Teleology

On the left is a photograph of a real snowflake.  Most people would agree that it was not created intentionally, except possibly in the rather esoteric sense of being the foreseen result of the properties of water atoms in an intentionally designed universe in which water atoms were designed to have those properties.  But I think most people here, ID proponents and ID critics alike, would consider that the “design” (in the sense of “pattern”) of this snowflake is neither random nor teleological.  Nor, however, is it predictable in detail.  Famously “no two snowflakes are alike”, yet all snowflakes have six-fold rotational symmetry.  They are, to put it another way, the products of both “law” (the natural law that governs the crystalisation of water molecules) and “chance” (stochastic variation in humidity and temperature that affect the rate of growth of each arm of the crystal as it grows). We need not, to continue in Dembski’s “Explanatory Filter” framework, infer “Design”.

The patterns below, also have six-fold rotational symmetry, and the process that created them is also one in which no two are alike.  However, despite this, they were, in fact, designed.  By me.  I wrote the program that generated them, and I can generate as many as I like.  The chances that two will be identical is pretty low (though possibly not as low as that of two snowflakes).  I did this by first of all “designing” a law (one that ensures six-fold rotational symmetry), and then by “designing” a stochastic algorithm that randomly generates “ice” by drawing from a built-in probability distribution.

FourSnowFlakesClearly, applying the Explanatory Filter does not easily allow us to infer design in the second case, but that is not a problem – Dembski does not claim that the ID detecting methods he proposes will not produce false negatives, he only claims a good record for true positives. And in any case, that isn’t what I want to discuss in this post.  I’m not asking people to infer which were designed and which were not.  I know that the second set were designed and the first was not.

What I’d like to discuss is how the processes differ.  Both involve a law (natural in the first, designed by me in the second), and both involve stochastic processes (natural in the first, designed by me in the second).  But we would probably agree that the first was the result of a non-teleological process, regardless of the fact that when the conditions are right for snow, snowflakes of a reliable general pattern form, while the second are the result of a teleological process, namely my intention to make snowflake-like patterns for Christmas cards (yes, I know I’m late) and for this post.

(Have a merry Christmas all, by the way!)

At the moment, I’m reading Dembski’s book, Being As Communion. I was interested to see that he uses “teleology” more or less interchangeably with “intelligence”, which is a change from the definition he used to use (“by intelligence I mean the power and facility to choose between options”), and which unambiguously entails the concept of “intention”, something he back then explicitly claimed was outwith the domain of science (I profoundly disagree), only coming “back on the table” after “intelligence” (old definition) has been established.  He also, in Being As Communion, uses “design” in the sense of “pattern” rather than as in “by accident or design”.  So under his current usage, “Intelligent Design” means “Patterns produced by teleological processes”, which I think is actually clearer.

So I am curious now about his view of the difference between what he characterises as “materialism” and his own view (and interestingly, he places Nagel on the same side of this perceived divide).

I think that Dembski would say that, as a materialist, I could avoid the conclusion that my ersatz snowflakes are the result of a teleological process by claiming that they are, nonetheless, the outcome of interactions between matter in my body and brain, and that thus they are not essentially different from the non-teleological snowflake because I am not really an intentional being – my sense of intention is illusory.

Whereas a non-materialist, or at least someone not a priori committed to materialism would say (as I understand Dembski’s thinking here), would regard the second as a special case of a process (teleology) operating within the world in a way that may also be apparent in such phenomena as the Origin of Life, possibly the evolution of the bacterial flagellum, and possibly in the “fine-tuning” of our universe to be life-friendly.

There are a number of things that could be said about this, but the point I want to make in this post, is that I do NOT think that the intentional processes by which I generated the second lot of snowflakes are illusory.  I think there is a real and major distinction between the processes that created the real snowflake and the processes that created the artificial ones (although I will note in passing that often the way we infer artifice, i.e. intelligent design, is that the results are not as complex as the real thing!)

So what is that distinction?  What is the property of teleological processes that makes them different from non-teleological ones?

I suggest that the answer is fairly straightforward:  a teleological process, whether stochastic or under strict control), entails some kind of prior representation (of something to something, possibly itself) of what the end result of the process will be like.  The only advance “representation” of a snowflake is that inherent in the laws and probability distributions that govern its emergence from non-snowflakeness.  Whereas had you stopped me before I’d finished writing my MatLab code and asked me what I was doing (in the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep) I’d have told you quite clearly: “I’m trying to write some code that will generate snowflake patterns, and I’m fiddling about with possible distributions my code will randomly draw from trying to find one that tends to the most snowflake like patterns”.

I am, in other words, selecting my actions so as to execute those with the greatest probability of producing an outcome that matches some prior template.

In yet other words, I start by imagining a snowflake, then I set about experimenting, trying things out, rejecting those that don’t work very well, dreaming up different way sof doing it, until I end up with a reliable series of snowflakes.

And even as a so-called “materialist”, that process is very different from the one that produces a real snowflake.  The “intentional” component is not illusory – it can be objectively detected as being present in my actions, and not present in the processes that I hope will give us a White Christmas this year.

Intention, in other word, is perfectly real, and “real teleology”, as Dembski calls it, is perfectly compatible with the view he likes to call  “materialism”.

 

[edited to fix grammar!]

223 thoughts on “Intention, Intelligence and Teleology

  1. Thank you for starting a thread about a substantive issue and not more meta. Mo’ meta mo’ problems, I always say.

    I endorse this distinction between, and I think you’re right that representation is the key here.

    At the very least one would need to distinguish between “teleology” in a weak, dispositional sense — a system might have the tendency to maintain a consistent structure despite dynamical changes in the constituents of that system — and “teleology” in the robust sense of intentional. And representations seems really important for the second kind of intentional teleology (even if they are not, strictly speaking, necessary).

    I had a related thought, or a though that I think is related. The other evening I was at a workshop on how to design courses that will improve writing proficiency in our students. So we’re talking about best practices for course design, assignment design, grading rubrics, the purposes of different kinds of writing assignments, and so on.

    One term that comes up a few times is “frontloading”. In this context, it means that the instructor builds into the syllabus up front all of his or her expectations about what the purpose of the assignments is, be completely transparent about all assessment criteria, and communicate to the students what skills they are being asked to work on.

    This got me thinking: how did we realize that a course should be front-loaded in this way? The short answer is, by reflecting on the results of previous trial and error.

    And this has significant implications for the intelligent design hypothesis, because it tells us that intelligent agents have to learn how to frontload information into a designed system. So even if the Designer of Life frontloaded a lot of information into the evolutionary process, it didn’t have a single moment of brilliant inspiration about how to do that. It had to figure out how to do that. It had to learn. (Unless the Designer of Life were a supernatural being, in which all bets are off.)

    Think of this as related to Elizabeth’s point about how representations are constructed by cognitive systems through iterated transactions with their environments.

  2. I do not think designed thing are necessarily preconceived or that they necessarily involved a prior representation.

    I think back to playing with Plasticine. I did not have the patience or inclination to make representational figures, so I made things in the manner of Henry Moore.

    Perhaps Moore started with a mental image (he was, after all, an artist) but I did not. I merely massaged the Plasticine until something happened that I liked, then I smoothed and refined it.

    I suspect much, if not most, art evolves from a stochastic seed. The talent and work is in the refinement, not necessarily in the preconception.

  3. I would disagree as to your initial premise. I think the snowflake not only looks designed it is designed.

    That an algorithm was utilized in the process is largely irrelevant to that point.

    more later after I take some time to contemplate your OP

    peace

  4. from the OP

    quote:
    a teleological process, whether stochastic or under strict control), entails some kind of prior representation (of something to something, possibly itself) of what the end result of the process will be like.
    end quote:

    I would say that the design process is simply the phyisical actualization of “form” that exists in the mind.

    And the design inference is simply the recognition of “form” in an artifact

    peace

  5. petrushka,

    That’s clearly right. A huge part of the education of an artist is experimentation, exploration, and play with the materiality of the media, and getting a ‘feel’ for the affordances of clay, marble, ink, paint, wood, and metal. That processes is central to how representations are constructed.

  6. I am, in other words, selecting my actions so as to execute those with the greatest probability of producing an outcome that matches some prior template.

    I think that says too much.

    What is really needed is measurement. A goal is defined by how you would measure whether you have achieved that goal. This does not require a template. It does require some way of measuring.

    Teleological processes, then, are those that favor changes that improve the measurement of how closely the goal is matched. This can be done with random actions followed by measurement of the result.

    A measurement is, in some sense, a short term representation. I don’t think we need more than that. We don’t need long-term reprentations.

    For biology, natural selection provides the measurements while mutation provides the random actions whose results are to be measured.

    Perhaps it is reasonable to say that atoms, by virtue of favoring particular kinds of bonding, are in effect doing some simple measuring which leads to snowflakes and other crystal structures.

    From my perspective measurement, and particularly self-measurement, is at the heart of perception, human cognition, animal cognition, and human consciousness. And my main criticism of philosophy is that there doesn’t seem to be anything like an adequate philosophy of measurement.

    If we want to say that atoms do simple measuring by favoring particular kinds of bonding, then I suppose we could call that “panpsychism”. But this seem far weaker than what panpsychism is usually taken to imply.

    Engineers design heat seeking missiles. The basis is the detection (measurement) of a heat source and behaving so as to move toward that heat source. The missile does not need to fully represent the path that it will take. It only needs to act in ways that favor improving the measurement (reducing the distance to the heat source). And a heat seeking missile surely has the appearance of teleological behavior.

    Dembski’s initial mistake was to insist on some kind of long term representation (seen as design based on making advanced plans). His move to teleology is in the right direction, though I think he still fails to see that teleogy can come from very simple processes.

    If there is a god behind it all — and I don’t rule that out — it is something like the Deist’s god. That is, it would be a god that set the universe going, and then left it to do its “thing”. That would make God the designer of evolution, rather than a magical “poof” designer that contradicts evolution.

  7. petrushka: I do not think designed thing are necessarily preconceived or that they necessarily involved a prior representation.

    I would agree.

    I think there is a continuum, between artifacts that are conceived almost in their entirety before being executed, and artifacts that arise from a process scarcely distinguishable from evolutionary processes (except for the specification of the environment). My sister is a potter, and she often starts making one thing, and ends up making another, though not so much these days, but then she’s been doing this for nearly half a century now, Nonetheless, that openness to changing something a bit mid-execution is one of the things that gives her pots their life IMO.

  8. From Lizzies’s OP:

    At the moment, I’m reading Dembski’s book, Being As Communion. I was interested to see that he uses “teleology” more or less interchangeably with “intelligence”, which is a change from the definition he used to use (“by intelligence I mean the power and facility to choose between options”), and which unambiguously entails the concept of “intention”, something he back then explicitly claimed was outwith the domain of science (I profoundly disagree), only coming “back on the table” after “intelligence” (old definition) has been established. He also, in Being As Communion, uses “design” in the sense of “pattern” rather than as in “by accident or design”. So under his current usage, “Intelligent Design” means “Patterns produced by teleological processes”, which I think is actually clearer.

    I’ve been following discussions at UD, (the latest thread being this one) between the commenter, Aiguy/RDFish and Barry Arrington and others. Aiguy seems taken by surprise by this comment of Barry’s quoting Dembski in Being as Communion:

    Specifically, Nagel proposes to understand teleology in terms of natural teleological laws. These laws would be radically different from the laws of physics and chemistry that currently are paradigmatic of the laws of nature. And yet, as we shall see, such teleological laws fit quite naturally within an information-theoretic framework . . . I quote his proposal, given in Mind and Cosmos, here in full because it connects point for point with the account of information given in this book. Indeed, Nagel’s teleological laws are none other than the directed searches (or alternative searches) that are the basis of Conservation of Information . . . of this book.

  9. There is, I think, a fundamental difference between searching and probing with feedback.

    Probing explores the possible. Searching seeks something already known.

    I don’t think it is possible to know what is possible in biology. I have said a number of times that design is impossible. By which, I mean it is impossible to preconceive a biological design. I’m not convinced it is possible to design a new protein from scratch, unless one follows an existing template.

    But one can probe nearby space and keep the things that are keepable.

  10. petrushka: By which, I mean it is impossible to preconceive a biological design. I’m not convinced it is possible to design a new protein from scratch, unless one follows an existing template.

    You might be surprised to find I would agree with you. The key word is preconceive.

    There is no preconception from the perspective of an atemporal being.

    It’s also important to say that what you would call a “template” Plato would call a form or Idea.

    peace

  11. If we extend the notion of teleology to include Divine Intent to produce all objects or patterns however apparently random, then we need not be concerned with false positives or negatives, because everything is teleological. Of course, the word then becomes meaningless, since every detail of reality results from intent.

    If we do wish to regard anything as non-teleological, then we need fairly detailed knowledge of the Designer’s intent and methods. Armed with this knowledge, we could categorize things as intended, unintended, or different from what was intended (but the intent was still there, just not the execution).

    Which brings us back to the basic problems with CSI — if we cannot know the specification, we can’t know even if there WAS a specification, much less how closely the spec was met. If we simply decree that all of reality perfectly matches the Divine spec, then this self-evident perfection is irrefutable evidence of Divine Intent, and by tight circular reasoning we have entered the world of faith.

  12. Flint: If we simply decree that all of reality perfectly matches the Divine spec, then this self-evident perfection is irrefutable evidence of Divine Intent

    It’s not a decree it’s a recognition that the patterns we see in nature correspond to the patterns embedded in our own subjective conscious awareness.

    We are made in his image.
    If we are intelligent agents then he is as well.

    peace

  13. petrushka,

    Probing explores the possible. Searching seeks something already known.

    I disagree. It’s possible to search for things that are not already known, like El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, or (in Edison’s case) the best material for the filament of an electric light bulb.

  14. From the OP:

    I think there is a real and major distinction between the processes that created the real snowflake and the processes that created the artificial ones

    Possibly. What allows you to make a distinction is that you are the process that created the artificial one, and you know how you did it, and how that differs from what Mother Nature did when it produced the snowflake.

    But what if we consider a spider web? Is the process that created a spider web closer to what you did with the snowflake, or to what Nature did?

    Are these truly different processes, or perhaps end members of a continuum?

    fG

  15. fifthmonarchyman: It’s not a decree it’s a recognition that the patterns we see in nature correspond to the patterns embedded in our own subjective conscious awareness.

    We are made in his image.
    If we are intelligent agents then he is as well.

    peace

    You have jumped directly from a useful observation about evolution, to a foregone conclusion incompatible with your observation.

    Yes, we (and most organisms) observe patterns in nature around us that we can use to our advantage. Even plants decide where and when to sprout. We do this because pattern recognition enhances survival, not because plants (and paramecia) are made in the image of some imaginary construct.

    What you are doing is starting with the unnecessary, and trying to force-fit something that is fully explained by something testable.

  16. keiths:
    petrushka,

    I disagree. It’s possible to search for things that are not already known, like El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, or (in Edison’s case) the best material for the filament of an electric light bulb.

    Sounds like a semantic difficulty. Many of our searches are more abstract, in the sense that they are searches to find a match for something envisioned, which may or may not exist. Edison knew exactly what he was searching for.

  17. Flint: Edison knew exactly what he was searching for.

    Edison had a fitness function, but he did not have any idea what would best satisfy the function. He started with carbon filaments (some of which are still usable), but the commercial product uses tungsten.

    Anyway, I haven’t said designers never have a preconceived idea, just that there may not be one. It’s not a necessary element of design.

    Edit to add: I misread your post.

    But when you search for something by fitness function, you are actually probing with feedback. You do not know if any actual something will match a preconceived idea.

  18. It is true that we are pattern-seeking and pattern-completing creatures, but there’s still a difference between intentionally creating a website called “The Skeptical Zone” and noticing that the name contains the word “Calzone”.

  19. petrushkaBut when you search for something by fitness function, you are actually probing with feedback. You do not know if any actual something will match a preconceived idea.

    So your distinction has become a scale, depending on how concrete the fitness function is in a particular case. Edison’s function was well defined and very specific. If you’re instead searching for, let’s say, a compatible mate, the zone of acceptability may be so broad as to outright eliminate almost nobody.

  20. I don’t think Edison’s function specified any physical parameters at all for a target.

    If Edison had stumbled on LEDs, that would have been his “target.”

  21. EL said:

    Intention, in other word, is perfectly real, and “real teleology”, as Dembski calls it, is perfectly compatible with the view he likes to call “materialism”.

    So, if I read you correctly, “real” intention (real teleology) requires the presence of a representation, while “illusory” intention (weak teleology) has no such representation – the end product is just produced by chance and law factors interacting.

    I’m not sure where you showed that representations are reconcilable with materialism. Actually, I don’t see where you even defined materialism, so considering how vague a notion it is, what case is it you think you’ve made again?

  22. petrushka:
    I don’t think Edison’s function specified any physical parameters at all for a target.

    If Edison had stumbled on LEDs, that would have been his “target.”

    I’d argue that would have been serendipity. He had a bulb, he had the conditions inside the bulb, he was looking for a filament that would be acceptably durable while producing adequate light. My understanding is that an LED would not have met his operational definition of a filament — that is, it would flunk his test.

    But I would agree that Edison always had a lot of projects going on at once, and occasionally stumbled on something useful for one project while searching for something useful on another.

    I should think there’s always that probing sense. If you’re looking for a known quantity like your car keys, you might run across your wife’s keys and this could satisfy your search criteria.

  23. The Edison bulb was not designed from a preconceived idea. The phenomenon of incndescence was well known. What Edison set up was more like an artificial evolution system to try zillions of variations and cull the weaklings.

    From the standpoint of his time, it was quite possible that no really satisfactory solution would be found.

  24. petrushka:
    The Edison bulb was not designed from a preconceived idea. The phenomenon of incndescence was well known. What Edison set up was more like an artificial evolution system to try zillions of variations and cull the weaklings.

    From the standpoint of his time, it was quite possible that no really satisfactory solution would be found.

    I’m not sure I understand what you are trying to say. Are you drawing a distinction between a narrowly defined search target that is known to exist, and one that is not known to exist? This strikes me as qualitatively different from the distinction between a search (an attempt to more or less match a known target) and an exploration (undirected observation just to see what’s there or what happens).

    I see an important difference between the adventures of Ponce Deleon (find the fountain of youth) and Lewis and Clark (see what’s out there and take notes).

  25. Well, Dembski speaks of a specification, and IDists speak of preconceived designs.

    I suspect all designs evolve. That is to say, they explore possibilities incrementally.

  26. petrushka,

    Flint and I are disagreeing with this statement of yours:

    Probing explores the possible. Searching seeks something already known.

    El Dorado was not already known, but the conquistadores searched for it.

    The Fountain of Youth was not already known, but Ponce de Leon searched for it (or didn’t).

    The best filament material for an electric light bulb was not already known, but Edison searched for it.

    It is possible to search for things that are not already known, contrary to your assertion.

  27. William J. Murray: I’m not sure where you showed that representations are reconcilable with materialism. Actually, I don’t see where you even defined materialism, so considering how vague a notion it is, what case is it you think you’ve made again?

    On the first part of this: if brains represent features of their environments, then there’s no problem. If they don’t, then I’d like to know why the structural homomorphisms between brains and environments don’t count as ‘representations’.

    On the second part: Elizabeth was taking for granted Dembski’s definition of “materialism,” which non-theists are at liberty to revise or reject.

  28. William J. Murray: So, if I read you correctly, “real” intention (real teleology) requires the presence of a representation, while “illusory” intention (weak teleology) has no such representation – the end product is just produced by chance and law factors interacting.

    Yes.

    William J. Murray: I’m not sure where you showed that representations are reconcilable with materialism.

    I haven’t. What I wanted to do, first of all, is to establish what seems to be the key difference between the teleological and non-teleological processes (even though I think it’s a continuum in fact, and that most teleological design processes are iterative, the representation of the goal being modified with each step towards it, please note flint and keiths).

    Actually, I don’t see where you even defined materialism,

    I didn’t. If you re-read my post, I refer to “what Dembski seems to regard as ‘materialism'”. It’s not a term I generally use to describe myself, but Dembski seems to think is word appropriate to characterise what he and Nagel think (i.e. not just theists) but what he thinks I don’t. Certainly I disagree with Nagel.

    so considering how vague a notion it is, what case is it you think you’ve made again?

    It’s a good question, and it’s where I’m going with what I was planning as a series of posts inspired by Dembski’s book. I actually don’t really know what Dembski is railing against. He talks about a “materialist-refuting logic”, and yet the materialism he attempts to define appears to be the believe that everything that is real is reducible to matter. I don’t actually think anyone believes that. In fact, the only serious disagreement I have with Dembski inasfar as I’ve read his book (about half way as of last night) is that I think his characterisation of “materialism”, to which he claims to offer a rebuttal and an alternative, is a straw man.

    But then I’ve always thought that Dembski was trying to defeat a straw man. Shocked though Barry was to discover that Larry Moran thought that it is perfectly possible to infer an intelligent designer from a pattern of matter, that has, frankly, never been in dispute, although Dembski’s methodology certainly has been.

    I actually have no problem with theism in general, or with design inference in general, nor even, in principle, with the idea that it might be possible to infer that the only possible explanation for the Origin of Life is teleological.

    It’s with the arguments made in support of those positions that I have a problem, although not with all. I have no argument to make against your own theism, William, because you do not argue it as truth, but as a useful position to assume.

    The very fact that you find it useful is therefore prima facie evidence that its doing what it claims on the tin.

  29. KN said:

    On the first part of this: if brains represent features of their environments, then there’s no problem. If they don’t, then I’d like to know why the structural homomorphisms between brains and environments don’t count as ‘representations’.

    We can program representations of various things into computers. Does that mean that computers act with intention, then, or are they just law and chance machines that carry out intentions using representation programmed into them by intenders?

    I can draw the representation of a thing on a piece of paper; does the paper then have what Dembski calls intelligence, or intention? Certainly not. So, the mere existence of representations in brains doesn’t give materialism any gained ground.

    On the second part: Elizabeth was taking for granted Dembski’s definition of “materialism,” which non-theists are at liberty to revise or reject.

    I don’t see where anyone has posted Dembski’s definition of materialism in order to make any case against it.

  30. EL said:

    But then I’ve always thought that Dembski was trying to defeat a straw man.

    Until you specifically define what it is you’re making a case against, the same can be said of your efforts here.

    I think the essential definition of materialism is that there are only two fundamental descriptive categories of causation – law-like behaviors of physical commodities, and random behaviors of physical commodities (although the latter might be ultimately subsumed by the former). IMO, materialism is defined by the idea that intention is ultimately subsumed by the other two categories.

    IOW, under materialism an intention is created by physical interactions that are a combination of law-like and random processes. Non-materialists consider intention a third fundamental category of causation that cannot be produced by any combination of the other two categories.

  31. William J. Murray: Non-materialists consider intention a third fundamental category of causation that cannot be produced by any combination of the other two categories.

    Design is the complement of chance and necessity as alleged by Dembski’s “explanatory filter”. This dualist argument is why “Intelligent Design” is not scientific and might explain why Dembski has shifted his ground in Being as Communion.

  32. Kantian Naturalist: On the first part of this: if brains represent features of their environments, then there’s no problem. If they don’t, then I’d like to know why the structural homomorphisms between brains and environments don’t count as ‘representations’.

    I understand your statement as a pure causal theory of representation, and the usual objection to that is that representation must involve the ability to mis-represent, that is it must address the disjunction problem.

    A naturalistic response cannot simply appeal to a judging agent, of course, eg when defining the nature of the homomorphism.

    See here and here

  33. Strictly speaking, “Design” cannot be detected. What can be detected, is “Manufacture”. But seeing as how any Designed whatzit which actually exists must necessarily have been Manufactured (because if whatever-it-is wasn’t Manufactured, it wouldn’t friggin’ exist!), detection of Manufacture does the job quite nicely.

  34. Alan Fox: Design is the complement of chance and necessity as alleged by Dembski’s “explanatory filter”. This dualist argument is why “Intelligent Design” is not scientific and might explain why Dembski has shifted his ground in Being as Communion.

    Why is it a dualist argument? There could simply be another category of causes that is not fundamentally reducible to nor caused by law & chance. We don’t worry that whatever is causing the law-like behavior we call “gravity” requires dualism, we just recognize and admit the behavior and model it.

    I think bringing in “dualism” unnecessarily muddies the waters in this debate, which is – as far as I can tell – about isolating a meaningful definition or concept of materialism that both sides of the debate can agree on (at least for the sake of the argument, and even if we use Dembski’s definition) and then see what happens.

  35. William J. Murray: There could simply be another category of causes that is not fundamentally reducible to nor caused by law & chance.

    I guess it could be invisible pink unicorns that are immortal and capable of anything.

    We don’t worry that whatever is causing the law-like behavior we call “gravity” requires dualism, we just recognize and admit the behavior and model it.

    We have a theory (Newton’s) that predicts the effects of gravity well enough to stil be used to calculate space probe trajectories. We have Einstein’s theory that gives us a more accurate model. Newer theories postulate a massless particle, the graviton, as the carrier of the effect of gravity. Not seeing where we need to resort to the supernatural here.

  36. I see that whilst gravitons as individual particles are likely to remain undetectable, it may be possible to detect gravity waves (theoretically consisting of sufficient gravitons acting together to be detectable) and I see there are two experiments attempting to do this; LIGO and VIRGO.

  37. Alan Fox said:

    I guess it could be invisible pink unicorns that are immortal and capable of anything.

    Ridicule doesn’t really help the debate process, Mr. Administrator.

    We have a theory (Newton’s) that predicts the effects of gravity well enough to stil be used to calculate space probe trajectories. We have Einstein’s theory that gives us a more accurate model. Newer theories postulate a massless particle, the graviton, as the carrier of the effect of gravity. Not seeing where we need to resort to the supernatural here.

    Where has anyone resorted to the supernatural? I haven’t claimed that intention, as a third fundamental causal category, is supernatural in nature. I don’t even know what you mean by the term.

    Here’s the deal: I recognize that intentional agents can produce effects that are deeply different than we expect from non-intentional processes, including any (other) emergent processes arising from law & chance patterns. Right now, it’s really just a matter of ideological faith that the intentional can be ultimately subsumed by the non-intentional.

    I don’t see any reason other than a priori ideological commitments to deny that intention could be a third fundamental causal category (or to attempt to ridicule the idea). It would certainly explain some bothersome teleology issues we find in the world.

  38. William J. Murray
    Ridicule doesn’t really help the debate process, Mr. Administrator.

    I mean that unless we are prepared to give our explanations entailments, construct testable models, we are not doing science. Looking for gravity waves is scientific endeavour. Claiming “design” is an explanation because we cannot explain some aspect of reality yet so we must jump, by default, to “Design” is not.

    Where has anyone resorted to the supernatural?

    The Creationist or “ID theorist” begins with that assumption.

    I haven’t claimed that intention, as a third fundamental causal category, is supernatural in nature. I don’t even know what you mean by the term.

    In this context, I mean undetectable by any scientific means, however indirect. I don’t know what you mean by “intention” in this context. Can you measure your intention? What sort of properties might intention have that we could use to detect it?

    Here’s the deal: I recognize that intentional agents can produce effects that are deeply different than we expect from non-intentional processes, including any (other) emergent processes arising from law & chance patterns.

    Would a human be an example of an intentional agent? A beaver, a spider?

    Right now, it’s really just a matter of ideological faith that the intentional can be ultimately subsumed by the non-intentional.

    I do things I intend. Intention needs an intendor. Do you disagree?

    I don’t see any reason other than a priori ideological commitments to deny that intention could be a third fundamental causal category (or to attempt to ridicule the idea). It would certainly explain some bothersome teleology issues we find in the world.

    I disagree. I bet you can’t give me one example of how such an explanation would add anything to how we understand the external world.

  39. William J. Murray: Until you specifically define what it is you’re making a case against, the same can be said of your efforts here.

    I’m making a case against Dembski’s attempt to defeat a straw man.

    If you are not yourself making Dembski’s case, then no rebuttal is required.

    But Demski, specifically, is claiming to have refuted materialism on the grounds that “real teleology” is not possible under what he characterises as “materialism”. So the point of my OP was to try to unpack what “real teleology” might be.

    William J. Murray: I think the essential definition of materialism is that there are only two fundamental descriptive categories of causation – law-like behaviors of physical commodities, and random behaviors of physical commodities (although the latter might be ultimately subsumed by the former). IMO, materialism is defined by the idea that intention is ultimately subsumed by the other two categories.

    Unfortunately, I’d say that definition, though helpful, begs a lot of questions, for instance what constitutes a “physical commodity”. I actually agree with Dembski that what can be said to be “real” are patterns that we can predict reliably, out of a “matrix” of possible patterns. So his argument that “information” (THIS pattern rather than any of a vast number of possible patterns) is the fundamental stuff of reality, rather than “matter” seems reasonable.

    In that case, I am not a “materialist” by Dembski’s definition, nor am I one by yours, unless by “physical commodity” you include the kind of pattern cited by Dembski.

    If you do, then I possibly am, but then so is he.

    IOW, under materialism an intention is created by physical interactions that are a combination of law-like and random processes. Non-materialists consider intention a third fundamental category of causation that cannot be produced by any combination of the other two categories.

    Well, I don’t think there are three fundamental categories of causation. I think it’s one way of looking at reality, but not a terribly useful one.

    More useful, I suggest, and it is remarkably close to what Dembski seems to be suggesting, is the approach I take myself (well, I would, wouldn’t I?) which is that we don’t actually have access to reality at all, what we have are “models”: – what we regard as “real” are things we can predict (have reliable models for) and we define things we can predict (i.e. real things) in terms of patterns we’d expect to see if our model is good. So “atoms” are real, even though all we can observe are patterns of other things (the movement of pollen on a water surface for instance) that would be unlikely if they weren’t. Dembski gives the example of the Higgs Boson, which we know is “real” because the pattern of traces the scientist observed are very unlikely under the null that there was no Higgs Boson.

    Nothing I have read yet in Being as Communion seems to me at all controversial, nor have much to do with whether a teleological versus a non-teleological view of the universe is more correct.

    But I’m only half way through.

  40. cubist: Strictly speaking, “Design” cannot be detected. What can be detected, is “Manufacture”.

    That does not seem quite right.

    We recognize pottery from ancient peoples before there was any manufacturing.

  41. I still have the feeling people are trying to shoehorn a square peg into a round hole. Law, chance, intention – is that really the axis along which we should place designs?

    Once again a spiderweb. Just law and chance? Intention?

    I once had a manager who used to doodle a lot during meetings. Whilst he was listening, and thinking, he was at the same time drawing very intricate patterns on his notepad. At the end of the meeting he would be surprised himself by what he had drawn! He never consciously intended any of these designs, they just appeared and evolved as the meeting went on. Law + chance? Intention?

    How does the EF deal with such things? Personally I don’t think it produces a meaningful outcome at all.

    fG

  42. Neil Rickert: That does not seem quite right.

    We recognize pottery from ancient peoples before there was any manufacturing.

    If you don’t like the word “manufacture” being applied to ancient pottery, how about “construction” or “fabrication”? My point, which you appear to have missed, is that Design, in and of itself, does not generate any physical object. How can I say that? Because I’ve designed a number of things in my head, and some of those Designed thingies have no more physical reality than the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

  43. cubist:
    Strictly speaking, “Design” cannot be detected. What can be detected, is “Manufacture”. But seeing as how any Designed whatzit which actually exists must necessarily have been Manufactured (because if whatever-it-is wasn’t Manufactured, it wouldn’t friggin’ exist!), detection of Manufacture does the job quite nicely.

    This was my thinking (and confusion with ID) for quite some time. This issue is not helped by the fact that ID proponents tend to be inconsistent in there use of “design” in ID. But, someone did finally explain that for the most part, the “D” in ID does not mean:

    NOUN

    a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is built or made

    But rather:

    NOUN
    purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object.

    So really, ID – for its most prominent proponents – is the study of the supposed intention some feel is exhibited in the world and not really the study of the engineering of the world around us. That, at least, appears to be Philip Johnson’s original concept.

  44. William J. Murray: I don’t see where anyone has posted Dembski’s definition of materialism in order to make any case against it.

    Dembski isn’t terribly clear IMO, but he does seem to mean people who think that everything that is real is made of particles.

    ETA: but then he seems to try to refute (with what he calls “materialism-refuting-logic”) the idea that reality is non-telelogical.

    It may become clearer as I proceed….

  45. Neil Rickert: That does not seem quite right.

    We recognize pottery from ancient peoples before there was any manufacturing.

    I don’t understand this statement Neil. How would ancient people create pottery without manufacturing it? Is there a different definition of “manufacture” other than “to make” that I’m missing perhaps?

  46. Robin,

    Though the etymology of “manufacture” derives from “make by hand” it is usually taken to mean mass-produced by machinery.

  47. cubist: If you don’t like the word “manufacture” being applied to ancient pottery, how about “construction” or “fabrication”

    I would use “craft” or “craftmanship”.

    However, I get your point, that “design” is not a good term and not well defined. And, for that matter, “intelligent” (as used in “intelligent design”) is not well defined.

  48. Robin: I don’t understand this statement Neil. How would ancient people create pottery without manufacturing it? Is there a different definition of “manufacture” other than “to make” that I’m missing perhaps?

    At least, as I use the term, “manufacture” means making many of the same thing based on a design or template. But a lot of ancient pottery seems to be “one of a kind”, which I consider to be craftsmanship rather than manufacturing.

  49. Neil Rickert: And, for that matter, “intelligent” (as used in “intelligent design”) is not well defined.

    “Not well defined” is a bit of an understatement. Aiguy has been doggedly making the point that “intelligence” as used by ID proponents remains vacuous recently at UD and for years there, at ARN and Telic Thoughts.

Leave a Reply