In a recent exchange at Uncommon descent I was referred by the “ineffable” Philip Cunningham (BA77) to an article at Evolution News and Views by the Discovery Institute attorney, Casey Luskin. Onward links lead me on to his Amazon review of Meyer’s “Darwin’s Doubt”. The article appears to be a response to a comment appended to the review by Nick Matzke [ETA Apparently the commenter Nick is not Nick Matzke, as Nick Matzkze points out below.]:
What’s the “scientific theory of ID”? Who or what is the designer and how can we tell? What did it do and how can we tell? How did it do it and how can we tell? Where did it do it and how can we tell? When did it do it and how can we tell?
Calling a book “Darwin’s Doubt” does make it sound like a critique of evolution rather than a presentation of a scientific theory called “Intelligent Design”. Luskin’s piece appears to be written in response to Nick’s [not Matzke’s] comments appended to Luskin’s review of “Darwin’s Doubt”.
On perusing Luskin’s piece, the first part “What Intelligent Design Is Not” is not relevant, so let’s move on hopefully, to the meat in the sandwich – “What the Theory of Intelligent Design Is”!
Intelligent design is a scientific theory that argues that the best explanation for some natural phenomena is an intelligence cause, especially when we find certain types of information and complexity in nature which in our experience are caused by intelligence.
Hmm! So what is that best explanation? And that glib phrase “in our experience are caused by intelligence”? Does this mean we are in for a definition of intelligence? Let’s see!
But where in our experience do things like language, complex and specified information, programming code, or machines come from? They have one and only one known source: intelligence. When we look at nature, we find high levels of CSI [complex and specified information]. A design inference may thus be made. This is the essence of the positive case for design.
A word appears to be missing here. I’d not disagree with the first sentence if it said “human intelligence” though human intelligence is a poorly defined and unmeasurable concept. But the leap in the dark to “A design inference may thus be made.” seems to lack the middle step (shades of the sock gnomes).
The rest of the article continues this conflation of reality to an altogether more amorphous “intelligence” that is a better explanation than evolutionary theory for the observed pattern of extant and extinct life that we see. Along the way, there are some egregiously false statements.
Experimental investigations of DNA indicate that it is full of a CSI-rich, language-based code. Biologists have performed mutational sensitivity tests on proteins and determined that their amino acid sequences are highly specified. Additionally, genetic knockout experiments and other studies have shown that some molecular machines, like the flagellum, are irreducibly complex.
Studies of the fossil record show that species typically appear abruptly without similar precursors. The Cambrian explosion is a prime example, although there are other examples of explosions in life’s history. Large amounts of complex and specified information had to arise rapidly to explain the abrupt appearance of these forms.
But as they don’t concern a “theory of intelligent design” we can leave them on one side.
Where’s the meat?
As Nick [not Nick Matzke] asks:
What’s the “scientific theory of ID”? Who or what is the designer and how can we tell? What did it do and how can we tell? How did it do it and how can we tell? Where did it do it and how can we tell? When did it do it and how can we tell?
and as I said;
…it is apparent there is as yet no scientific theory of Intelligent Design. If there were, it should be easy to rebut my assertion by stating the theory, giving a summary or linking to the appropriate text.
.
Have I missed anything? Is Casey’s article more than a lawyer’s rewording of the usual argument from incredulity over the efficacy of evolutionary processes followed by the “sock gnome” leap to “Intelligent Design”?
Added in edit:
This is a slight enlargement of a comment I posted at Uncommon Descent
There is no theory of Intelligent Design for biological life.
There currently isn’t even a testable hypothesis of Intelligent Design for biological life.
All we have now is unsupported philosophical speculation about Intelligent Design for biological life.
We could get to the testable hypothesis stage IF the IDers were willing to do some groundwork and define some testable parameters.
But they won’t.
“Have I missed anything? Is Casey’s article more than a laywer’s rewording of the usual argument from incredulity over the efficacy of evolutionary processes followed by the “sock gnome” leap to “Intelligent Design”?”
Well, obviously, your whole comment is invalid because of the mis-spelling of “lawyer” 😮
Other than that, UD-ites might claim that you have ignored or passed too lightly over “CSI” and its variants – I think the more sciency of them still hang a good many of their UD-is-science-it-is-IT-IS! hats on that.
However, that whole thing has been deeply interred as a useless and incalculable concept, as far as anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty is concerned, so you’re probably right to ignore it.
Furthermore, if Lacey Cuskin is pinning the future of ID to a claim that all proteins have highly specified aa sequences such that even minor mutations inactivate them, then he’s lost already – even Axe has shown that this is not the case.
No amount of bluster is going to make ID science, and no amount of denial is going to fool people that it’s anything other than religious in nature.
“I say that it looks designed.”*
That’s as close to a theory as they come.
Glen Davidson
*Or, Dawkins says so.
Thanks for spotting that. Corrected!
It’s a curse: I’m doomed to spot these things, they stand out like vicars in a bordello to me.
It’s a bit worse than that. The design of life by any means other than trial and error is impossible. It certainly hasn’t been demonstrated, so the human designer anology is negative.
I challenge any design advocate to come here and refute my assertion. Protein coding sequences cannot be constructed except by stepwise modification and selection. There is no other way.
Prove me wrong.
There is the minor detail that a percentage of random sequences seem to code for function, but this offers no comfort for the concept of ID. Let’s see Axe or someone come here and show us how to optimize a sequence without stepwise selection.
Let’s see the grammar and syntax of the genetic code. Let’s see a non-darwinian way to translate a sequence change into improved reproductive success.
Heya folks, some good points here, but I should mention that the Nick rather repetitively posting things at amazon.com is not me. I don’t know who it is. I’ve posted a handful of times at Amazon, but each time it’s with my full name.
The Nick over there has clarified this himself several times as well IIRC. Someone tell Luskin/UD if you see them!
CSI is just a place holder for ‘looks designed / improbable to me’. As they can never define, defend or calculate CSI vs. a null, its just ‘pretending to have science’.
Unless it’s CAEK, of course.
As usual, Luskin demonstrates that he is the master of the word salad.
I would like to see any ID/creationist write an actual research proposal seeking funding from a funding agency such as the National Science Foundation, NASA, or any agency that funds real science. What would such an ID/creationist research proposal look like?
Peer reviewed research proposals that purport to open up new areas of research are where the rubber hits the road in scientific research. Word salads don’t cut it. Research proposals aren’t for money for plush offices where people just sit around and quote-mine the research of others.
The people submitting such proposals have to demonstrate pretty deep understanding of the science as well as the epistemological and ontological issues that will nail down the phenomena being sought. And their findings, if any, will have to be objectively verifiable by others who are not invested in the new “theory” or, in the case of ID/creationism in particular, who don’t have the same sectarian beliefs about the universe.
All Luskin is capable of doing is using words and word associations that conjure up emotional states in sectarians invested in ID/creationist sectarian dogma. There is nothing in his list of assertions that can actually open up a productive line of research that others can follow.
Furthermore, not one ID/creationist actually knows what it means to write a research proposal. They all think they are being persecuted and “expelled” when real scientists ask them for specifics.
Thanks, NickMatzke_SZ
Your comment was stuck in moderation for a while. This reply is mostly to help bring it to people’s attention.
Actually, I think Kirk Durston could provide Mike with what he is looking for. Send him an email!
By the way, curious why a post here has not been submitted discussing Durston’s guest post at UD: http://www.uncommondescent.com/biophysics/kirk-durston-a-common-either-or-mistake-both-darwinists-and-id-theorists-make/#comment-467599.
We discuss Durston’s ideas all the time. Gpuccio is his big advocate. What do you think merits discussion?
Hi Nick
Welcome to TSZ. Sorry for spreading the confusion. I’ll correct the OP.
I commented a couple of times in that thread. I was hoping to find time to contact Janet Thornton as her work seems to relate to Durston. If anything comes of it, I will certainly put a post up.
funny, i read this blog all the time but I haven’t come across any such discussion….maybe a passing reference…anyway Durston’s guest post I referred to would make for a good discussion here..
….curious to see what a Durston take-down here would look like
petrushka,
What, a scientific theory of ID? If such exists, why don’t you copy and paste it into this thread?
I don’t think Durston offers an alternative. His computer models purport to show problems for an evolutionary process but that is as far as he goes in his papers.
Steve, are you also curious why a post at UD has not been started on Adrian Bejan’s ‘design in nature’ approach, which was expressed in his early 2012 book of that title? Surely a year and a half is enough time for someone at UD to face up to the fact that their (transcendent Designer, shhhh…) ‘Design in Nature’ approach is not the only one. But no, it would make them display their uppercase ID ‘Intelligent Design’ theory, which their fellow religious would (and do) reject as unnecessarily naturally-scientistic.
Gregory, I wonder how you react to the main criticism of constructal law which is its vagueness.
I recall you wrote an OP quite awhile back which unfortunately did not spark much interest at the time. I couldn’t locate it on looking for it just now or I would have linked to it. After the last hack, contributors names were disassociated from posts and I didn’t see a likely post title.
Alan, would this be the thread you are referring to: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=1282?
Re: Bejan, his approach seems to me clearer than much IDism, at least, the IDism which tries to pretend it is unreflexive and has *nothing* to do with philosophy and theology/worldview, only natural science. Bejan rejects IDism, he is not promoting a ‘science’ of lowercase ‘intelligent design’, and admits that what he means by ‘design in nature’ has nothing to do with religion or theology. As an atheist, of course, he really means that, though one can easily link Bejan’s ‘design without a designer’ to his own worldview. He distances himself from creationism, which is the responsible thing for a natural scientist/engineer to do, but which the IDM literally cannot ‘afford’ to do.
I will not go to UD. They banned me in the same sweep as they banned Elizabeth.
But enough of that. You obviously think Durston has something important to say, and I’m asking you to summarize it.
A Positive Theory of Intelligent Design.
As Howard Van Till has observed, Intelligent Design requires both “mind-like” and “hand-like” actions. While it is a commonplace that Design requires the origination of planful, mind-like intentions, it is perhaps less obvious that design also requires a mechanism by means of which mind-like design is impressed, hand-like, onto matter-energy.
What has been lacking in the ID literature is a positive theory of these mind-like and hand-like phases of design, and of their interaction, one that generates testable hypotheses and hence promotes ID to the status of a genuine empirical science. It is my aim here to step up and suggest such a positive theory, one that I hope gives rise to both theoretical and empirical investigation that further shapes and informs the science of Intelligent Design.
What follows is a brief abstract this positive, empirical theory.
I. Biological causality reflects the operation of two basic, complimentary units: Thinks and Poofs. A Think is a mind-like, timeless-sizeless representation of a Thing. A Poof is a hand-like manipulation of matter-energy such that the appropriate Thing is physically instantiated. A Think without a Poof is incapable of interacting with matter/energy, is therefore undetectable, and hence remains a somewhat of a theoretical abstraction. Similarly, a Poof can arise IFF informed by at least one Think. Because they perforce must arise together, a Think and its corresponding Poof are often denoted by the couplet shorthand ‘Think’n Poof.’ When several Thinks give rise to a Poof, a Thinks’n Poof has occurred; when a single Think gives rise to several Poofs, Think’n Poofs have occurred. And so on.
Given sufficient agentic and material resources, a Think’n Poof (or derivatives) gives rise to a Thing. Balanced Think’n Poof calculations give rise to testable empirical predictions arising from the combinatorial mathematics of Thing Theory.
II. Thinks and Poofs are initiated by units of pure intelligent agency known as Rodins. At the current state of theoretical development the Rodin remains a placeholder concept that has yet to be given empirical grounding. It is unclear, for example, whether there is a single Rodin, two Rodins, or countless Rodins and, if there exist more than one Rodin, whether all Rodins give rise to equally efficacious Think’n Poofs. It is also unclear whether multiple Rodins stand in cooperative, competitive, or other relationship to one another, whether Rodins borrow Thinks inferred from the Things originated by other Rodins, whether Rodins have degrees of omniscience, and so forth. However, we have every reason to believe that these questions can be given empirical formulation and resolved through an appropriate combination of laboratory and field investigation.
With the above limitations in mind, we may begin to sketch the moving parts of Intelligent Design, grounding it in a calculus of Rodins, Thinks, Poofs, and Things, and indeed begin to explore the operation of entities in any given instance of Intelligent Design.
IV. Intelligent Design may be said to have occurred when a Rodin gives rise to a Think or Thinks, which in turn invoke(s) a Poof or Poofs in order to originate a Thing.
Rodin-initiated Thinks are mind-like, agentic, timeless-sizeless representations. Poofs do the hand-like work of actually arranging matter/energy to conform to the specification of a given Think, giving rise to a Thing. A Rodin may “choose” to formulate a grand system of interlocking Thinks all apiece, yet implement such a Think-Structure imperceptibly over deep time by issuing Poofs only slowly and sequentially. Alternatively, a Think-Structure may give rise to thousands of simultaneous Poofs, yielding an (only apparently) saltational Thing Structure that instantaneously mirrors the underlying Think Structure. Biological Things that display Irreducible Complexity almost certainly issue from the latter sort of process: a single Rodin exerts its intrinsic intentionality to originates a complex biological Think Structure which is intern effected by means of multiple simultaneous, interlocking Poofs.
(The reader may find it helpful to imagine countless little hands equipped with little minds issuing from a Rodin or Rodins, swarming over and grasping bits of matter-energy – say, base pairs in a DNA molecule – and manipulating them with special tweezers to form irreducibly complex biological Things.)
V. It should be clear from the above that a calculus of Rodins, Thinks, Poofs and a completed, empirical Thing Theory promises to dissolve some of the knottiest problems in biology today. For example, we may now confidently sketch the origins of life on earth: a Rodin or Rodins originated a complex Think-Structure that gave rise to both simultaneous and sequential Poofs that created the first biological Thing, detonating life on earth. All that remains is to supply the details.
In the future we hope to infer the properties of agentic Rodin or Rodins themselves, by tracing Think-Poof-Thing pathways much as the electrodynamic properties of elementary particles may be inferred from the ephemeral trails left within a cloud chamber. We anticipate that the biology of the 22nd century will be characterized by Rodin simulations (e.g. of Rodin belief-desire), the computational modeling of Biological Think-Structures, the detection and deconstruction of Poof-efficacy at the Think-Thing interface, and a completed Thing Theory. We may also confidently anticipate that a bankrupt Darwinism with truly be a “thing” of the past.
To start things off I’ll summarize what little I know about his argument.
He seem to argue that he has a non-circular way of defining CSI. He notices there are sequences that occur over and over in various proteins, sort of like words that form sentences.
He then argues that because these “domains” don’t have any obvious cousins, they are unrelated. If they are unrelated, they didn’t evolve.
They are too long to have occurred spontaneously by chance and they didn’t evolve. Therefore Design.
Does that sound like Durston?
Wut?
C’mon, it’s brilliant. Any theory that includes Think ‘n Poofs and phrases like “the detection and deconstruction of Poof-efficacy at the Think-Thing interface” has got to be right.
Reciprocating Bill 2,
Don’t know if it’s funny or just sad that a parody description has more details that the real supposed “theory” of ID.
I think it fairly represents the ID position. Of course, IDers wouldn’t use that nomenclature (particularly “poofs” 😀 ) themselves, nevertheless….
Genius, Bill. PotW. You could Sokal that.
Richardthughes,
Luskin as usual gets confused about what is a positive and what is a negative argument for ID. There are no positive arguments. The negative argument, really an argument against the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection, is supposed to rely on seeing CSI. Then one uses the supposed fact that CSI only occurs as a result of Design (i.e. not as a result of natural selection).
Of course we’ve seen here in recent months that in Dembski’s more recent arguments, CSI can only be declared to exist if you have already ruled out that the adaptations cannot have been the result of natural processes such as random mutation and natural selection. So the reason natural processes are not seen to produce CSI is — that CSI is defined as never resulting from those natural processes. So seeing CSI is something you only are supposed to do after you have already ruled out natural processes.
The most charitable interpretation of Luskin’s statements is that his friends forgot to bring him up to date on the meaning of CSI.
When ID is formulated that clearly, it is no wonder that we scientists are so jealous and repressive of such ideas. How can we possibly compete against that? 😉
Give that man a double ThD. That’s Doctor of Thinkology.
Part of Durston’s reply to a comment by me
Does seem to be the standard ID inference. People are intelligent. People build computers. Therefore a hyper-intelligence designed living things. And I’m not sure how he justifies ” Real science indicates that the average stable structural domain families are extremely rare in sequence space requiring gigantic leaps in any supposed mindless evolutionary process, essentially falsifying the theory.”
That first paragraph had me going! Had to read it twice to be sure it was a spoof!
Drat!
I had a later version in which the little hands bearing tweezers were called “Behes.”
Srsly, though, this would be a revolutionary paradigm-shattering scientific theory if the Darwinian establishment hadn’t censored me by tricking me into spending all my time commenting on ID blogs and therefore doing nothing and remaining a nobody.
Reciprocating Bill 2,
You did misspell “complementary”, though.
Nah. He meant that Thinks and Poofs are free and unlimited. 🙂
Besides, it wouldn’t be a proper ID theory without at least one error.
Your right.
Id is a scientific theory.
It hypothesis on the origin of complexity in nature.
Then it demonstrates by examination of the evidence of nature and so presenting it why and how nature is to complex at its basic elements to be from chance. Complexity is great and impossible for its origin from chance.
Liking finding a watch in the forest.
Thus a theory is created very well. not just a hypothesis. Evidence is presented justifying ID as a theory or origins at some level in nature.
Clevery done, Reciprocating Bill 2! One additional point to note or error to catch, which of course doesn’t take away from the ‘positivity’ of your IDT, but rather seems to echo the ambiguity, usually intentional, of the IDM’s IDT.
You wrote:
Why did you one time capitalise ‘Design’ and the other two times not capitalise ‘design’? What’s the logic behind it? Was it to echo the intentional flip-flopping between lowercase id and Uppercase ID that the IDM tactically employs but hasn’t yet confronted?
You otherwise seemed careful to capitalise all of the ‘technical’ terms you used/creatively invented.
Thanks for the clarification.
Not surprisingly, I agree with most of what’s been said above — intelligent design is not (yet) a scientific theory. Its status as ‘scientific’ rests on a conflation between inference to the best explanation and testable inference to the best explanation; while it might be the former, it is far too vague to be the latter.
Somewhat ironically (in my view), the loss of specificity — which prevents ID from being tested even in principle — is a direct result of the refusal to even so much as speculate as to the identity of the Designer. In other words, the very move that they make which distinguishes ID from creationism is also the same move which prevents ID from being scientific at all. By my lights, creationism is a scientific theory — just a very bad one, and one that’s been refuted many times. But ID isn’t even specific enough to be refuted. That’s why the ‘negative’ argument — the supposed debunking of “Darwinism” — is all they have.
They don’t debunk darwinism. They quotemine and word lawyer. If Casey Luskin went after his wife the way he goes after evolution she would cut his balls off.
“By my lights, creationism is a scientific theory” – KN/E
By your darknesses, KN/E, you haven’t shown a clear distinction between philosophy and ideology in your repertoire. That is why you are undoubtedly the joker of -isms at TSZ.
Creationism is *not* “a scientific theory.” It is an ideology. Only impoverished ‘philosophers’ (professors of philosophy) would not be able to explain the difference.
The duo ‘creation science’ might be called a ‘scientific theory,’ but I agree that it is a bad one. There are ‘sciences’ of creativity, such as TRIZ, however, which are quite different from ‘creation science.’
Why are you and so many other Americans blind to this way of thinking/perceiving, KN/E?
Likewise, Dembski calls ‘Darwinism’ “a scientific theory.” Why not see an ideology for an ideology? What is getting in your blindspots? Are you folks still so afraid of Marx/Engels (S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-M –> C-O-M-M-U-N-I-S-M) that you can’t openly name ‘ideology’ for what it is? Not yet ready to move beyond critical theory and logical positivism?
Seriously, KN/E, popular philosophy naivete and your sadly weak defense of philosophy on the other thread are not helping matters here. 21st century rule: “There will be no wisdom-loving in the USA; only philo-scientia and technocracy.”
“Where is the life we have lost in living
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
petrushka,
That’s why I said “supposed”. 🙂
Gregory,
I don’t really know what you’re even trying to say, Gregory.
In any event, it seems fairly clear to me that creationism could count as a scientific theory and yet be falsified, or refuted, or what-have-you. If one wanted to say that creationism was a pseudoscience, on the grounds that it has its passionate devotees despite its refutation, I would be the last to object.
(Paul Thagard has a really lovely essay, :Why Astrology is a Pseudoscience“, that I recommend quite highly — he shows how to defend the concept of “pseudoscience” without getting caught up in the demarcation problem.)
But if creationism is a pseudoscience, on the grounds that some people cling to it for religious and political motivations even in light of its refutation, I would hesitate to say that intelligent design is a pseudoscience, since it is not even refuted — it is not formulated with sufficient precision to be refutable.
As for the concept of “ideology”, I’m not averse to using it — quite the opposite, since I work in the Frankfurt School of critical theory (among other things). But it is a loaded term, and it would take considerable doing for me to really vindicate my assessment that the main function of intelligent design/creationism is ideological (in the Marxian/critical theory sense of “systematically false consciousness”) — that the intelligent design/creationist movements and organizations are sustained by treating “Darwinism” as a scapegoat for capitalism.
You’re not used to a non-American dialogue partner, I can see that.
“I don’t really know what you’re even trying to say, Gregory.” – KN/E
Then let me say it again more clearly:
Creationism is *not* “a scientific theory.” It is an ideology.
Darwinism is an ideology.
Why not see an ideology for an ideology?
“creationism could count as a scientific theory” – KN/E
How can an ideology ‘count’ as a scientific theory?
Yes, I’ve read Thagard’s essay. It’s one of the nice links you’ve suggested. Thanks. I appreciate it, as well as that Thagard is a Canadian, though quite typically ‘analytic’ as far as his PoS goes.
“But if creationism is a pseudoscience…” – KN/E
No, just read the signs. Think like your wife has the map and you’re just the driver.
‘Creationism’ is an ideology. ‘Creation science’ is a ‘pseudoscience.’ Please do not tell me I am not being clear or consistent. You may not “really know what I’m trying to say,” but I’m not stuck in the same quandry as American PoS is stuck in, so perhaps you’ll be willing to take some scholarly advice.
“As for the concept of “ideology”, I’m not averse to using it…since I work in the Frankfurt School of critical theory.” – KN/E
Well then start using it and stop shrinking to American PoS’ phobia of ‘ideology.’
“it [ideology] is a loaded term” – KN/E
So is ’emergentism,’ your pet ideology! Have a little courage, American philosopher, and keep ‘capitalism’ out of it, at least for now.
“the main function of intelligent design/creationism is ideological” – KN/E
Of course it is/they are. Is there any doubt?!
I’m puzzled as to why you are using “KN/E” rather than “KN”. Perhaps that’s an expression of your ideology.
In favor of seeing creationism as a scientific theory:
It defines its own methodology, as a science should do. To find the date of a past event, try to match it up with biblical events, and use the corresponding biblical date (from geneologies). To classify a biological organism, find the biblical description that matches best, and classify as part of that same kind.
Against seeing creationism as a scientific theory:
The creationists are not actually following that methodology to investigate nature. They are only using it to further ideological aims.
I took KNs point to be that, if we look at only the things that would count toward considering creationism to be a scientific theory, then ID does not have even those.
I wrote that about five years ago. The lower case “design” was inadvertent.
If one takes a ‘Marxian’ view of ideology (what Raymond Geuss calls “ideology in the pernicious sense”), then I can certainly see how creationism would count.
But I don’t understand the point of drawing a distinction between “creationism” and “creation science” — I use the terms as synonyms. And I don’t see how “Darwinism” or “emergentism” would count as ideologies. I consider “Darwinism” as a sloppy short-hand for a cluster of well-confirmed empirical theories, and “emergentism” as a metaphysical view. But metaphysical positions are not ideologies!
Right! — that’s a much better way of expressing what I was getting at!
“They are only using it to further ideological aims.” – Neil
What “further ideological aims” are you referring to?
Let us see if a non-philosopher/’scientist’ in the American tradition can express himself on this topic. It is obvious already, Neil, that you have backpeddled recently at TSZ.
Let’s not forget that you wrote:
“Philosophers, as a group, tend to look at things from what I consider a[n] intelligent design perspective”? – Neil Rickert
More specifically, you them claimed that you “can’t name names,” like someone who hasn’t the faintest idea what they are talking about. Are you sure people should be taking anything seriously that you write after such empty evidence? I thought your point was a good one, but you don’t seem willing or ready to back up your ‘hunch.’
“I don’t understand the point of drawing a distinction between “creationism” [ideology] and “creation science” [pseudoscience] — I use the terms as synonyms.” – KN/E
Hmmm, and would not understanding (and actually being ready to clearly express) the difference between ideology and pseudoscience here be potentially a corrective outside of American PoS?
“I don’t see how “Darwinism” or “emergentism” would count as ideologies” KN/E
Like I said, impoverished is American PoS. Most scientists have not taken an entry level course in it. Fear of Marx is still rampant in the USA. What’s new? ; )
“I consider “Darwinism” as a sloppy short-hand for a cluster of well-confirmed empirical theories, and “emergentism” as a metaphysical view.” – KN/E
Do you now wish to gloat in your misunderstandings? Have you learned nothing of what differences ‘Darwinian’ and ‘Darwinism’ denote?
p.s. “I’m puzzled as to why you are using “KN/E” rather than “KN”. Perhaps that’s an expression of your ideology.” – Neil
KN/E = Kantian Naturalist/Emergentist. He has declared himself an emergentist. So there’s no point in just calling him a ‘naturalist,’ is there? It has to do with observation.
If KN wishes to claim he is *not* an ideological ’emergentist’ I will desist immediately.