To define:
NDE (Neo-Darwinian Evolution) = OOL & evolution without prescriptive goals, both being nothing more in essence than functions of material forces & interactions.
ID (Intelligent Design) = Deliberate OOL & evolution with prescriptive goals
(I included OOL because if OOL contains purposefully written code that provides guidelines for evolutionary processes towards goals, then evolutionary processes are not neo-Darwinian as they utilize oracle information).
I’m not an evolutionary biologist, nor am I a mathematician. Therefore, when I argue about NDE and ID, the only cases I attempt to make are logical ones based on principles involved because – frankly – I lack the educational, application & research expertise to legitimately parse, understand and criticize most papers published in those fields. I suggest that most people who engage in NDE/ID arguments (on either side) similarly lack the necessary expertise to evaluate (or conduct) such research on their own.
Further, even if they had some related expertise that makes them qualified, to some degree, to successfully parse such papers, as has been brought up in this forum repeatedly is the lack of confidence in the peer-review process as a safeguard against bad science or bad math, or even fraudulent and sloppy science. A brief search on google or bing for scientific fraud and peer review process will find all sorts of studies about a growing epidemic of bad citations – citations that reference recalled, recanted, fraudulent or disproven research.
So, for the majority of us who are not conducting active research in evolutionary biology, nor are mathematicians or information theorists, what are we really saying if we assert that “evolution has been proven by countless papers”, or “ID is necessary to the formation of DNA”? When one of us claims that Dembski’s work has been “disproven”, or that Douglas Axe has proven something about functional protein probabilities, what does it mean when we (those whom I am referring to in this post) have no personal capacity to legitimately reach that conclusion via our own personal understanding of the math or the research fields/data involved?
All we can be doing is rhetorical characterizing and cheerleading. We argue as if we understand the research or the math, but in fact (for many of us) we don’t, and even if we did, unless we are doing that research, we cannot have that much confidence in the peer-review process. All we can do (outside of arguments using logic and principle) is quote abstracts and conclusions or other people we believe to be qualified (and honest) experts about data and research we don’t really understand and which may or may not be valid. This is really nothing more than just cherry-picking convenient abstracts and conclusions and assuming the peer-review process worked for that particular paper.
Therefore, the NDE/ID argument for most people has nothing to do with (and, in fact, cannot have anything to do with) valid and informed interpretations of biological data or an understanding of the math involved in information theory as it is applied to evolutionary processes – even if they believe that to be the case. Logically, if we admit we are not really personally capable of qualitatively examining and reaching valid conclusions of research that we would somehow vet as valid research, we must admit all we are really doing is choosing to believe something, and then erecting post hoc arguments in an attempt to characterize our choice of belief as something derived from a legitimate, sound understanding of the facts (biological & mathematical) involved.
This means that for most of us, the NDE/ID argument is really a proxy argument that belies the real argument, or the reason we have chosen NDE or ID to believe in the first place. IMO, that “reason” is a disagreement of ontological worldviews, and I think that the two general worldviews that are in conflict which are fighting a proxy battle through the NDE/ID debate are:
1) Humans are deliberately generated entities that exist for a purpose;
2) Humans are not deliberately generated entities that exist for a purpose.
Now, I don’t claim those general worldviews cover every foundational motive or position in the NDE/ID debate. But, I think it is logically clear that most of us must be presenting what can only be rhetorical cheerleading in an attempt to construct post hoc rationalizations for our choice of belief (combined with attempts to make the other “side” feel bad about their position via various character smearing, motive-mongering, name-calling, belittling their referenced papers and experts, and other such invective, and so we must have chosen our belief for some other reason, and IMO the two categories above represent the two basic (and pretty much necessary) consequences of NDE/ID beliefs.
So, to simplify: for whatever psychological reasons, people either want or need to believe that humans are deliberately generated beings that exist for a purpose, or they wish or need to believe the contrary, which leads them to an emotional/intuitive acceptance of ID or NDE, which they then attempt to rationalize post hoc by offering statements structured to make it appear (1) as if they have a valid, legitimate understanding of things they really do not; (2) that they have real science on their side; (3) that experts agree with them (when, really, they are just cheerleading convenient experts), and (4) that it is stupid, ignorant, or wicked to not accept their side as true.
Maus:
An eccentric use of the word ‘theocracy’ – where is the divine guidance in such a policy? Or, for that matter, how does this assumedly-theocratic Government involvement account for worldwide teaching? There are more countries in the world than the US, and they don’t appear to collude in what they teach, and certainly have no common cause to promote atheism.
Of course, I’m sure you’d love to wave bye-bye to evolutionary theory in US schools, and this is one more desperate attempt to achieve that – if you can’t smuggle ID in, let’s boot evolution out. Don’t know much about it, but I know I’m agin’ it – for purely empirical reasons, of course.
What makes you think evolution has not been subjected to empirical tests? Not, obviously, the ones I’m guessing you would regard as sufficient, such as evolving a bird from a dinosaur, but evolution has earned its place in science class. There’s a difference between regular principles and their actions in actual history. You’re looking for an empirical demonstration of an historic series. You want a step-by-step explanation of a transition whose intermediates no longer exist? Or something that would take a million years or so? Can’t be done. I can’t go to a star and demonstrate nucleosynthesis either, nor sum the actual velocities in a gas.
But this ‘evolution-is-a-religious-position’ argument is stale, tired and bollocks.
I think WJM makes a point worth making, applicable to some more than others. It is easy to underestimate “tribal identification,” as Liz aptly describes it.
That said, I think his psychological thesis would be more interesting if there was actually some psychology in it, beyond a sort of implicit acceptance of armchair “belief-desire” psychology (people do/believe things because they ‘want’ to) and an unstated advocacy of a primitive version cognitive dissonance theory. So an irony here is that WJM is advocating a psychological explanation of the behavior of non-expert participants in this debate with no apparent expertise or interest in what are undoubtedly large literatures in social and cognitive psychology relevant to belief formation, community identification, confirmation bias, and so on.
What does the literature say?
I probably could have worded that better – it’s out of context to whom I was replying. What I meant that how one person comes to their beliefs doesn’t affect whether or not ID is scientific.
I’m not making an assertion about “biological evolution” in that quote; I’m making a statement – an obvious one – about the logic contained in Joe F’s O.P. If you begin with X functional info in a genome, and collect all or most of it into a subgroup, and that subgroup becomes the dominant group, you haven’t added any new functional information to the genome, you’ve basically just found a method of copying and pasting it in more organisms.
Joe proposed 0 new functional information in his O.P.; what NS acted on was already there, and at the end of his OP there was no new functional info. Therefore, NS didn’t “put” any functional info into the genome, it just copied and redistributed what was already there.
That’s a logic issue, and can be applied to any group of things or processes one is talking about. I don’t think any of the major ID advocates argue that NS doesn’t collect and redistribute functional information already in the genome.
Joe Felsenstein
Ummm – yes, sorry about the rampant lateral meme transfer!
Arbiting beliefs, “what matters”, “what has meaning”, “what is true” or “what is real” via empiricism ***is*** a form of confirmation bias, because empiricism itself is a belief. Empiricism has not always been the philosophical method of choice for determining “what is real”. And, your claim that it doesn’t matter if one believes what cannot be empirically demonstrated begins with the assumption that empiricism is that which arbits what matters.
Functional information in the genome? Joe’s starting point had organisms with a large variety of genomes. Some were more fit than others and it was their progeny (with the same genomes as the parents) who eventually dominated the population. That demonstrates the ability of natural selection to make the population more fit over time.
If I understand your point correctly, you object that the fitter genomes were present in the population from the start an natural selection only made them more prevalent. That is certainly true. Joe’s model deals with selection only. It does not ask the question of the origin of those fitter genomes.
But let us make s lightly more realistic model that starts with one random genome string containing equal numbers of 0s an 1s. Such an organism would not be particularly fit. Turn on mutations and natural selection. You will get the same result in the end, with genomes containing mostly 1s dominating. We can go through the mathematical details in Joe’s thread if you are interested, but at the moment I am just interested in your take on this model that includes both mutations and selection. Does information content increase in this model? If not, why not?
Arbiting beliefs, “what matters”, “what has meaning”, “what is true” or “what is real” via empiricism ***is*** a form of confirmation bias, because empiricism itself is a belief.
So sez William J Murray. Other metaphysical beliefs: farming, carpentry, cooking.
Empiricism has not always been the philosophical method of choice for determining “what is real”.
Tell that to the farmers, carpenters and cooks.
And, your claim that it doesn’t matter if one believes what cannot be empirically demonstrated begins with the assumption that empiricism is that which arbits what matters.
It matters if you want to build a better mousetrap or telescope.
WJM:
The logic in Joe’s OP derives from Dembski. It’s his model being critiqued. Whether or not it is an error of logic depends upon whether the ‘specification’ being talked of – that in ‘the genome’ – is that of a single organism, or of a particular species. If I soup-up my car, I have a souped-up Fiesta. If all Fiestas are modified in like manner, the specification has changed.
A more definite ‘error’, not definitionally dependent, has been committed by your good self. Elsewhere, you have said that NS cannot add information to the genome, it can only remove it. Whichever definition of ‘genome’ you prefer, so long as you stick with it for both halves of that coupling, it can either do neither or both.
Your definition of “functional informstion” is your own, and not that of Hazen or (as “specified informstion”) that of Dembski. I repeat: I was using their definitions,not yours, and I made no logical error.
You just misspoke: you meant to say “didn’t put any Murrayan Info” into the genome. 😉
Except for William Dembski, who has his Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information.
I see Joe Felsenstein himself has already noted that you either didn’t read or didn’t understand his OP, in which he specifically states what he means by ‘functional information’. There’s no point piling on your glaring error.
I will point out that under your pet definition of ‘functional information’ there can never be any new books written. Authors merely have a method of copying and pasting existing words from the dictionary.
I think WJM’s objection boils down to the observation that the best genomes were already present to begin with and natural selection only helped pick them as winners. If instead Joe started with one random genome and obtained the rest by random mutations then the objection is dealt with.
Incorrect. I’m just pointing out the logical error in Joe’s O.P. I’m not making any claims about what is or is not the “best” genome or if and when it existed. The error Joe F. is making is conceptual.
Joe F:
You are the one that is incorrectly conceptualizing what Dembski means, IMO, much as politicians incorrectly conceptualize what a libertarian means when they say “budget cut”.
From Dembski:
Dembski agrees that natural selection can distribute CSI and populate a species with it, but he states clearly that it cannot originate it. All your example does is distribute already-existing CSI present in the genome to more of the genome’s organisms, changing the ratio of CSI to “noise” (or “0”s in your O.P.) You’ve added no new CSI to the genome whatsoever because all your example does is move around already-existent CSI.
Perhaps you are using some kind of “baseline budgeting” model to make your case that CSI really is being “orginated” by NS, but it obviously is not by how Dembski himself differentiates between origination and distribution.
I fail to see the error then. Could be my fault, but maybe you can spell it out one more time. The word conceptual makes me a bit suspicious, though.
Perhaps the problem with grasping Dembski’s misconception is due to his implicit assertion that it applies only to living organisms.
However, Dembski, as is the case with all of the ID/creationist writers, doesn’t know anything about chemistry and physics.
If you want to talk about “complex specified information,” why is this notion then specific to living organisms? All one has to do is look at simple chemical compounds to see natural selection in action. You can take two kinds of atoms, say, oxygen and hydrogen and bring them together. You get water molecules with properties that are completely different from either oxygen or hydrogen.
Water behaves differently and responds to different forces in the environment than do oxygen or hydrogen. So any natural processes that act on water will sort water molecules differently from how oxygen or hydrogen atoms get sorted.
This example can be applied to any compound you like, sodium plus chlorine and on up the chain of complexity to living organisms. More complex systems have emergent properties that their constituents don’t have by themselves. Those emergent properties become the grist for natural selection.
Even gravity comes into the picture when the weight of a complex system becomes significant in determining the ratios of the dimensions of the object. Surviving structures have to withstand the forces of their own weight.
If you are going to say living organisms are different somehow, you are going to have to show where the laws of chemistry and physics stop operating in the chain of complexity.
Philosopher Paul Griffiths states in Genetic Information: A Metaphor In Search of a Theory:
It is conventional wisdom that insofar as the traits of an organism are subject to biological explanation, those traits express information coded in the organism’s genes. … I will argue, however, that the only truth reflected in the conventional view is that there is a genetic code by which the sequence of DNA bases in the coding regions of a gene corresponds to the sequence of amino acids in the primary structure of one or more proteins. The rest of ‘information talk’ in biology is no more than a picturesque way to talk about correlation and causation. The claim that biology ‘is, itself, an information technology’ (Economist 1999, 97) is on a par with the claim that the planets compute their orbits around the sun. Taking ‘information talk’ in biology too seriously is not merely a journalist’s error. Many biologists, when asked to talk about their discipline in broad, philosophical terms, would represent it in the same light.
This is one of the difficulties of obtaining one’s “scientific education” from popularizations. Metaphors used in popularizations are often very misleading; and this is not just with biology. It occurs in all of the sciences.
For decades now the equating of disorder with entropy has been at the heart of ID/creationist claims that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics.
As we have seen recently with Granville Sewell, David L. Abel, John Sanford, William Dembski, Michael Behe, Werner Gitt, and all the rest of the writers in this genre, this misconception lies at the heart of their attempts to insert “intelligence” and “information” into complex systems in order to account for living organisms and evolution.
I was just lurking over at UD and noting that character Gordon E. Mullings (alias Kairosfocus) pontificating about the second law. He is extremely pretentious, but he has no clue. Neither does that BA77 character.
Norm Olsen,
Philosopher John S Wilkins also writes variously in his paper A Deflation of Genetic Information
You do realize that the concepts in question are mathematical in nature. Your *opinion* about them is irrelevant. You will have to get into the math to show what you think Dembski means, what Joe means, and how the two concepts differ – mathematically.
Mike Elzinga,
Mike, I think you and those people are coming at this thing from the opposite directions. You need to reorient a bit. Start with the certain and unquestionable knowledge, imparted to you by God Himself, that evolution does not happen. Period. Anything that suggests otherwise MUST be some kind of poor observation, misunderstanding, incomplete model, or the like. It must be. This is one of those happy things in life that is Absoutely Guaranteed.
Now, one might take the high road here and say “God says so, therefore it’s true, therefore observations, logic, and facts are irrelevant.” This is the Kurt Wise approach. But most creationists find the high road uncomfortable, because it requires invoking massively wholesale miracles (or a dishonest God), turning all of life around us into a Potemkin village. So they blend some misunderstanding, some misdirection, plenty of semantic sleight-of-hand, and a bunch of bafflegab. Cemented together with the sort of denial that comes with Absolute Certainty.
So I wouldn’t say they have no clue at all. They have the final, complete, incontrovertible Truth. Rationalizing it is sometimes a challenge, but how hard can it be when you are Guaranteed Right before you start?
I really like this.
Seversky,
Thanks, do you have a link to that paper? I was able to find a version from 2009 with a slightly different title (A deflationary account of information in biology), but the link to the updated version from his “Evolving Thoughts” blog, does not appear to be working.
Norm Olsen,
Unfortunately, that is the only link I have. I found it doesn’t automatically open the document onscreen but if you hit the Download button on the upper left it does bring it up after an error message about format, although that may be a peculiarity of the Opera browser I’m using.
Seversky,
Nope, not a peculiarity of Opera, I get an error with Chrome as well. In fact the message states “This file appears malicious”. I’ll just stick with his earlier paper. Thanks.
Divine intervention?
Here is a version of the paper from the University of Pittsburg.
Ha ha! Google’s motto of “do no harm” takes on a spiritual dimension.
Thanks Mike, I found that one as well (from 2009) but apparently there was an update to that paper in 2010. In any case, I think this would make a great discussion, I.E., to what extent is the concept of “information” applicable to biological systems?
That could be interesting. I currently have a very heavy schedule and a cross-country trip coming up in a few days, so I don’t know how much I can participate.
My own impression about “information” in biology is that the word itself carries too much baggage that results in misconceptions and misrepresentations of what is actually going on.
One can use it only in a retrospective manner in attempting to understand how a complex system got from state A to state B. But evolution replayed might not go from A to B but instead go from A to C or to any number of other states depending on contingencies; in which case we would be asking for the track record from A to whichever state pertains.
So it appears to be about possible causal relationships between specified states. If that is the case, the word “information” is not needed except perhaps as a metaphor.
We don’t use that “information” word in physics very much; and when we do, it is pretty clear that it is used as a short-hand metaphor for something requiring more than a sentence to say.
The OP’s whole argument boils down, to my reading, to “None of us really knows anything, so my choice of beliefs is just as good as yours.”
Then follows a defense of ignorance as a virtue.
Sad, really, that this becomes a theological foundation.
It would be interesting to apply this line of reasoning to other intellectual endeavors, such as arguing for a better grade after failing a test. After all, the correctness of answers really boils down to an argument from authority.
llanitedave,
While visiting the Creation Museum a few years ago, I saw a clever bit of propaganda. A diorama showed two paleontologists working side by side excavating a dinosaur skeleton. One was a creationist and the other an evolutionist, and though they were contemplating exactly the same fossil evidence, they held vastly different beliefs about its provenance. The signage explained the discrepancy by noting that the evolutionist began by trusting human reason while the creationist trusted the Word of God. Each man’s interpretation was valid, given his starting assumptions, but because the starting assumptions were so different, they led to vastly different conclusions.
The messages:
1. Creationist scientists are out there working side by side with their evolutionist colleagues, but reaching different conclusions.
2. If a pointy-headed scientist tries to tell you that your biblically-based beliefs are ludicrous, it’s only because he starts with different assumptions. Your beliefs are just as valid as his, given your starting assumptions. No need to consider his arguments, as they simply follow from his alien worldview.
3. Godless scientists trust human reason. Creationists trust God’s Word. Who are you going to trust, God or man? Which worldview will you choose?
It’s interesting how creationists have co-opted postmodernism and deconstruction.
I’m not generally a Stanley Fish fan, but he wrote a good essay on that topic entitled Academic cross-dressing: How Intelligent Design gets its arguments from the left. It was published in Harper’s around the time of the Dover trial. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available online except to subscribers.
OK, that makes more sense – sorry I missed the context!
But I’ll continue to nitpick – some ID arguments are scientific and some aren’t. Some evolutionary arguments are scientific, some aren’t. It’s the nature of the argument, rather than the content, that makes the difference. “ID is true because I believe in God” is clearly non-scientific, as is “I believe in evolutionary theory because I don’t believe in God”.
I’ve read some scientific arguments for ID, and some non-scientific arguments for ID, and the scientific arguments, IMO have been bad science.
That’s why I don’t find them persuasive.
I’m detecting either goal-post shifting or non sequitur here not sure which!
I’m not sure that empiricism is for “determining what is real”. What empiricism is is for is for establishing predictive models, i.e. models that predict future observations.
This project may sometimes be regarded as “establishing what is real”, but in practice, predictive models are all the method gives us. Which is not to be sneezed at. But there is no point in complaining that it can’t tell us about things that are not predictable, but might still be “real”, and, I’d say, the super/extra/non-natural (whatever those words mean) would come into that category, because it inherently cannot. That’s not “bias”, confirmation or any other kind, it’s simply the limitations of the method, just as you can’t complain that a broom is useless for sending emails. It’s the wrong tool for the job.
William, could you explain more precisely what you mean by the part of your post I have bolded above? (I’m assuming, as you’ve cited Dembski, that you are using Dembski’s definition of CSI).
And just to clarify what prompted my question, William:
When you talk of “the genome” I’m not sure exactly what you mean. In Joe F’s example we started with a wombat “genome” with many “genotypes” – i.e. variants of that genome. Each of those genotypes, at the start of the example, were equally prevalent in the population, and the slightly less advantageous alleles were as prevalent as the slightly more advantageous alleles.
After 500 generations, the vast majority of the genotypes consisted of at least 90% the more advantageous alleles.
In other words, the population now embodies as much complexity (lots of loci) but more highly specified (greater probability of “1” type alleles) information (about how to survive in this environment) than it did at the beginning. In the absence of natural selection (for example had all the alleles had the same selection coefficients), a population in which the vast majority of the population had over 90% “1” type alleles, would not only be very unlikely (a subset of a very large number of possible outcomes), but there’d be nothing “specified” about lots of “1” types anyway.
Natural selection, in other words, has sorted out the more advantageous alleles from the less advantageous. That’s why it’s called natural selection.
And no ID proponent denies this. It’s what they call “microevolution”. The puzzle is why they do not see that it increases CSI by at least Dembski’s definition.
Elizabeth,
As with others here, I’m not going to continue correcting you when you respond to posts I make out-of-context with the posts I was responding to, or if you misrepresent my posts.
If Maus hadn’t said,
… then I suppose you could make the case I was shifting the goal posts or introducing a non-sequitur about empiricism.
Empirical experiments do not tell researchers how to interpret the data. Raw data does not tell the researcher anything outside of an interpretive heuristic. Everyone – everyone, including scientists – have interpretive heuristic bias that reflects deep epistemological and ontological assumptions whether they know it or not.
Theists/non-materiaists and Atheists/materialists often substitute their epistemological and ontological assumptions for the “de facto” interpretive heuristic when it comes to processing data towards a conclusion.
So, when you say:
… as if you are not identifying, categorizing, interpreting, processing and evaluating every component of your process to conclusion outside of a biased heuristic, you are really just inserting your ontological and epistemological assumptions into the process blindly as if they are the “de facto”, or neutral, basis necessary for all such evaluations.
IMO, you do not find them persuasive because of the nature of your evaluatory system which you must hold on an a priori basis (consciously or unconsciously) as how one determines true statements about their existence, or else you would not “find” an argument persuasive or not persuasive.
What is computing the “persuasive factor” of the argument/evidence you are faced with? When people “find” arguments or evidence persuasive, or IOW are compelled to accept such conclusions as provisionally true statements about the world, it necessarily means that person holds an interpretive heuristic/computational methodology as so valid that they are compelled to accept (at least provisionally) whatever it says.
If you do not choose what you believe, but rather “find” arguments/evidence convincing, then as another poster said, you do not choose what you believe, but rather are only the functional output of a computational system already accepted as valid – either consciously or unconsciously.
Which leads to foolish statements (not yours) like” either it can be demonstrated empirically or not, as if empirical data and conclusions thereof are not as malleable to interpretive heuristic and epistemological and ontological assumption as anything else. Empiricism is not just a belief system, it also necessarily necessarily contains sub-belief systems that choose how to process empirical data to conclusion.
So, your saying that you do not “find” the arguments/evidence persuasive is like a computer telling me it doesn’t find anything other than what and how it computes conclusions “persuasive”. Well, duh. What you find persuasive is the computational output of your computational system – unless, of course, you believe whatever you wish.
Do you choose your own beliefs? Or do you believe (provisionally) whatever conclusions your computational system outputs as “persuasive”?
The claim that ID requires deliberate OOL mass it pretty clear that this is creationism by the back door. It also makes no sense – Intelligent – or rather, Purposeful design does not need deliberate OOL. Dogs for example are intelligently designed in that we use nature’s processes and human selection in order to come up with a dog that points, or rounds up sheep or warms the laps of heavily made up middle aged women, however the origin of the dog is not deliberate. At least that premise in the OP is wrong.
WJM’s argument boils down to “science is a social construct.” It’s a great example of IDers appropriating post-modernist methods.
William, can scientific theories be wrong, in principle? As an extreme example, take young-earth creationism. Are they entitled to their own theories?
OK, apologies. I’ll make sure I track back in future, as I should have done. My point about empiricism still stands though:
I don’t think empiricism “determines what is real”. It can’t.
I think you are missing a key point about empirical methodology. An experiment is designed to test a hypothesis. The data will either support, or fail to support, that hypothesis. If they support it, they do not tell us that the hypothesis was correct, although they may tell us that it is a better hypothesis than the alternatively hypothesis against which it was tested. So in that sense the data from an empirical experiment do tell us “how to interpret the data” – at least they tell us which of our a priori models is the better fit.
Can you say what you mean by this? What “epistemological and ontological assumptions” are you talking about? And what do you mean by “processing data towards a conclusion”? Scientists do not “process data towards a conclusion”. Or, if they do, their papers should be picked off at peer-review.
No. I am simply applying scientific methodology to evaluating a proposition as science. My ontological assumption is not that the only real things are empirically detectable things, and my epistemological assumption is simply that of empiricism – that what we can know from empirical methods is of the form “if this happens, that will happen”. It’s all empiricism can do.
That doesn’t mean that it’s the only valid epistemology. It just means that if a proposition claims to have empirical validation, then it must be evaluated with the epistemology of empiricism.
And, on conducting such evaluations, I find ID propositions that claim to be scientific wanting. I’m happy to give details – but you yourself have said that you do not yourself have the expertise to evaluate such evaluations! I don’t think that’s true, actually. It’s not that hard, and you are clearly smart enough.
No. That’s what I meant when I talked about the widening goal-posts. You are generalising my statement beyond the domain it was intended to cover. I am saying nothing about whether an ID exists, nor about whether an ID was responsible for living things. Might be, might not be. In my view, empirical evidence gives us no grounds for thinking so, but that does not rule it out at all. Many artefactual events are, by design, indistinguishable from natural events.
I am simply evaluating ID arguments that claim to be “scientific” on the terms in which they are made. I have theological arguments with ID as well, but I wouldn’t evaluate a theological argument for ID on scientific grounds.
Sure.
Well, now, IMO, you are moving the goal-posts again! We can debate the meaning of the word “choose” if you like, but I’m perfectly willing to accept that when it comes to predictive models of the material world, I choose to [provisionally] believe those models I find empirically supported. So yes, I regard empiricism as valid epistemology within the domain of empirical epistemology! I don’t use empirical methods to determine whether one piece of music is better than another though. That’s a different domain.
I disagree that empiricism is a “belief system” at all. I think it’s a model-making system, distinguished from a belief system by the intrinsically provisional nature of its models. I’d still like you to give a concrete example of what you have in mind by conclusions that are “malleable to interpretive heuristic and epistemological and ontological assumptions”. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I may be missing your point.
I think you are jumping levels. A computer program may not run because it has a logic error. I think ID scientific arguments have logic errors in that sense. That doesn’t mean that the script wouldn’t make a nice screensaver. It just doesn’t make a functional program. When I say I don’t find the ID scientific arguments “persuasive” that is a polite way of saying that I think they are either fallacious or not empirically supported by the evidence. Mostly the first thing.
In my view, my choosing system incorporates my computational system.
The thing I refer to as “I” is a decision-maker. One of its tools is predictive models constantly updated in the light of discrepant data. Maybe I should do a thread on that, come to think of it 🙂
Except I never made such an argument. If you wish me to respond to you, please stop paraphrasing what are pefectly understandable, quotable statements. Science is a philosophical construct that begins with ontological and epistemological premises. There’s nothing “post-modernist” about that whatsoever.
Everyone subjects data to an interpretive heuristic. Everyone. There is a difference between an empirical fact – like, whether or not variations occur to genetic material – and theoretical/hypothetical interpretations about what that fact means in a larger perspective. Ideology (beliefs rooted in epistemological and ontological foundation) drives such interpretations, esp. when people “find” evidence/argument to be compelling. It is obvious their computational system – however it is constructed – is doing the driving because they – by their own admission – just find themselves at whatever concluding destination their system brought them to.
Generally, people are unware of their deep assumptions and mistake them for some kind of de facto or neutral position.
So YECs have a perfectly legitimate science, William? You are making my point for me.
Actually, you said “…(ID) that is obviously true in the first place.”. To me that is exactly the same as you saying that you know ID is right.
If your beliefs are not dependent on science, evidence, or argument, why do you argue against the theory of evolution and other fields of science, and in support of ID which is claimed to be based on science and evidence?
IDists say that ID has nothing to do with religious beliefs, but you are bringing your religious beliefs into a discussion about ID versus science, which is actually a debate about religious beliefs versus science, which is what all of these debates are about, and everyone knows it.
I’m curious, why is it that you don’t care whether Dembski, Behe, KF, etc. are wrong or right but you obviously care deeply whether real scientists are wrong or right?
Yes, but the entire point of scientific methodology is to make those assumptions explicit and minimise bias.
You seem to be saying that because no-one is equipped to evaluate all the evidence that no-one is equipped to evaluate any of it and we might as well go with our priors.
It is perfectly possible to evaluate an argument, and its supporting evidence on its own terms, and reach an objective (i.e. one reachable by independent evaluators by the same reasoning) conclusion as to whether it is valid or not.
That includes our own arguments.
I’m going out on a limb here to disagree. I don’t think there is such a difference. Or rather, if we substitute “data” for “facts” then I don’t think is true that there is a fundamental difference between data and models. I’d argue that models at one level are data at the next level up; similarly, data at one level are models at the next level down.
“Data” simply, and literally, means “what is given”.
Facts, perhaps, are a little more than that – they are data embedded in a simple model: it is a “fact” that DNA is composed of sequences of four nucleotides”. That understanding of the DNA molecule is such a reliably predictive one that it can be thought of, safely, as a “fact”. But go a little lower, and that molecule itself is clearly a model: to demonstrate that, look at the data on which Watson, Crick and Franklin based it.
But just because all our “facts” are models doesn’t mean that all models are equally good. To be a good scientific model, a model has to be highly predictive – and its predictions have to be able to be replicated by independent observers. That’s where the rigour comes in, and why even when there are biases against a particular model, ultimately the question is decided not by the loudest voices or the most powerful belief systems but by the objective fit of model to data.
“In your view”? Your view gives you no such grounds. Others are not operating under “your” view, and so are not compelled to reach conclusions generated by “your” view, and in fact reach the contrary conclusion under “their” view.
Both the design and the non-design heuristic are a priori epistemological positions. One either believes the universe and humans are designed for a purpose, and so empirical evidence is filtered through that heuristic; or one believes the contrary, and the evidence is filtered that way. Non-design is not the neutral or “de facto” position. It is a positive ideological position.
The design heuristic incorporates “shoulds” and “whys” into the process, which – technically – would be outside of the purview of a non-design heuristic. IOW, the IDers find a mechanism and assume it has a functional purpose and look for it; non-IDers have no reason to make such an assumption. IDers find a functioning artifact and attempt to reverse engineer it to find design principles they can apply to elsewhere; non-IDers have no reason to assume billions of years of error upon error can be “reverse engineered”, much less find any extractable design “principle”.
Non-Iders apply the principles of parsimony and elegance, but have no epistemological reason to do so (and so, are stolen concepts). Those are design concepts one would expect from a particular kind of designer. IDers assume prescriptive laws govern behavior of phenomena and thus can be relied upon everywhere and all the time; non-IDers have no such luxury of prescriptive law. For them, anything can happen – it’s really all just chaos that happens, by chance, to appear – in some paces, at some times, to some ovbservers – to be regular, predictive patterns.
IOW, most non IDers still use and apply ID-centric terminology and concepts; if they didn’t, they’d be more like other ancient cultures like the Greeks where science essentially languished because the didn’t have the concept of prescriptive, universal physical laws. Non-IDers still employ ID terminology and concepts, although lately they have been attempting to eradicate it from their textual and conceptual lexicon when describing physical features, forces and processes, like trying to sneak in “natural selection” as a substitute for a sound design theory that is patently and obviously necessary to produce novel, highly complex, functional, interdependent devices.
At the end of the day, though, the philosophy of science is self-consuming into nonsense outside of the design heuristic, because there would be no “methodology” whatsoever necessarily considered valid when it comes to how to identify, sort, categorize, and interpret what we empirically experience. No design = no prescriptive laws = no reason to assume anything other than local and temporary appearances of order.
Which is basilly what non-ID science has pretty much come to; “order” has become meaningless (which it should be under non-ID) and our universe just appears to be orderly, and orderly things just apear to happen due to chance in the oceans of choatic multiverse potential. Essentially, the non-Design heuristic languished for centuries unable to produce much of anything until the design heuristic invented, established and developed the Rome of modern science. Now, the non-Design visigoths have invaded and are sacking Rome, claiming they built it and that Rome cannot endure without their stewardship. and point at those that actually built Rome and claim that they are trying to destroy it.
It’s pretty ironic, when you think about it.
Your “view” is manufactured by a fundamental deceit: that any of this (modern science) is possible without operating (essentially, consciously or unconsciously) from the design heuristic.
BTW, I’m only “moving the goalpost” if I am making the argument you mistakenly (over and over) think I’m making. That you don’t understand the nature of my argument is not the equivalent of my moving the goal posts.
No, it is not. The entire point of scientific methodology is to produce repeatable results. How those results are interpreted is the product of one’s assumptions.
No, it is not. Arguments do not provide “their own” epistemological and ontological basis required for evaluating & interpreting the argument. You are, apparently, oblivious to your own fundamental epistemological and ontological assumptions which arbit how you evaluate & interpret any argument presented to you.