There is a lot of debate in the comments to recent posts about whether the argument from ID is circular. I thought it would be worth calling this out as a separate item.
I plead that participants in this discussion (whether they comment here or on UD):
- make a real effort to stick to Lizzie’s principles (and her personal example) of respect for opposing viewpoints and politeness
- confine the discussion to this specific point (there is plenty of opportunity to discuss other points elsewhere and there is the sandbox)
What follows has been covered a thousand times. I simple repeat it in as rigorous a manner as I can to provide a basis for the ensuing discussion (if any!)
First, a couple of definitions.
A) For the purposes this discussion I will use “natural” to mean “has no element of design”. I do not mean to imply anything about materialism versus supernatural or such like. It is just an abbreviation for “not-designed”.
B) X is a “good explanation” for Y if and only if:
i) We have good reason to suppose X exists
ii) The probability of Y given X is reasonably high (say 0.1 or higher). There may of course be better explanations for Y where the probability is even higher.
Note that X may include design or be natural.
As I understand it, a common form of the ID argument is:
1) Identify some characteristic of outcomes such as CSI, FSCI or dFSCI. I will use dFSCI as an example in what follows but the point applies equally to the others.
2) Note that in all cases where an outcome has dFSCI, and a good explanation of the outcome is known, then the good explanation includes design and there is no good natural explanation.
3) Conclude there is a strong empirical relationship between dFSCI and design.
4) Note that living things include many examples of dFSCI.
5) Infer that there is a very strong case that living things are also designed.
This argument can be attacked from many angles but I want to concentrate on the circularity issue. The key point being that it is part of the definition of dFSCI (and the other measures) that there is no good natural explanation.
It follows that if a good natural explanation is identified then that outcome no longer has dFSCI. So it is true by definition that all outcomes with dFSCI fall into two categories:
- A good explanation has been identified and it is design
- No good explanation has yet been identified
Note that it was not necessary to do any empirical observation to prove this. It must always be the case from the definition of dFSCI that whenever a good explanation is identified it includes design.
I appreciate that as it stands this argument does not do justice to the ID position. If dFSCI was simply a synonym for “no good natural explanation” then the case for circularity would be obviously true. But is incorporates other features (as do its cousins CSI and FSCI). So for example dFSCI incorporates attributes such as digital, functional and not compressible – while CSI (in its most recent definition) includes the attribute compressible. So if we describe any of the measures as a set of features {F} plus the condition that if a good natural explanation is discovered then measure no longer applies – then it is possible to recast the ID argument this way:
“For all outcomes where {F} is observed then when a good explanation is identified it turns out to be designed and there is no good natural explanation. Many aspects of life have {F}. Therefore, there is good reason to suppose that design will be a good explanation and there will be no good natural explanation.”
The problem here is that while CSI, FSCI and dFSCI all agree on the “no good natural explanation” clause they differ widely on {F}. For Dembski’s CSI {F} is essentially equivalent to compressible (he refers to it as “simple” but defines “simple” mathematically in terms of easily compressible). While for FSCI {F} includes “has a function” and in some descriptions “not compressible”. dFSCI adds the additional property of being digital to FSCI.
By themselves both compressible and non-compressible phenomena clearly can have both natural and designed explanations. The structure of a crystal is highly compressible. CSI has no other relevant property and the case for circularity seems to be made at this point. But FSCI and dFSCI add the condition of being functional which perhaps makes all the difference. However, the word “functional” also introduces a risk of circularity. “Functional” usually means “has a purpose” which implies a purpose which implies a mind. In archaeology an artefact is functional if it can be seen to fulfil some past person’s purpose – even if that purpose is artistic. So if something has the attribute of being functional it follows by definition that a mind was involved. This means that by definition it is extremely likely, if not certain, that it was designed (of course, it is possible that it may have a good natural explanation and by coincidence also happen to fulfil someone’s purpose). To declare something to be functional is to declare it is engaged with a purpose and a mind – no empirical research is required to establish that a mind is involved with a functional thing in this sense.
But there remains a way of trying to steer FSCI and dFSCI away from circularity. When the term FSCI is applied to living things it appears a rather different meaning of “functional” is being used. There is no mind whose purpose is being fulfilled. It simply means the object (protein, gene or whatever) has a role in keeping the organism alive. Much as greenhouse gasses have a role in keeping the earth’s surface temperature at around 30 degrees. In this case of course “functional” does not imply the involvement of a mind. But then there are plenty of examples of functional phenomena in this sense which have good natural explanations.
The argument to circularity is more complicated than it may appear and deserves careful analysis rather than vitriol – but if studied in detail it is compelling.
I have never been able to understand how he can fail to see that he is ruling out evolution based on the length of a sequence string while at the same time claiming he is only counting that part of the string that can’t be attributed to evolution.
What about an unintended oscillator?
You design a circuit and all of a sudden you see a sine wave on your scope.
You know you “didn’t design something like this at all”, so you investigate.
You find a component that at a certain temperature, has a sudden change in electrical characteristics, so much so that the circuit starts to swing from one voltage to another, in a completely predictable fashion.
No part is broken and every part is properly installed.
Clearly not random, very complex and highly functional.
There’s your functionality that no one designed.
Gpuccio
I was scouring your posts for hints on how to communicate and came across this:
I am curious as to what you mean by “empirically true by definition”. I always thought “empirically true” and “true by definition” were inconsistent. Was it a typo? If not could you provide another example of something that is empirically true by definition?
How many times does gpuccio have to explain to you that “necessity mechanisms” rule out dFSCI?
That means the statement, “it exists regardless of what caused it”, is wrong according to gpuccio.
Go argue with gpuccio and show him where he’s wrong.
Gpuccio 752
Briefly – yes I still think the statement:
“Everything that has dFSCI is designed” is circular.
I must say I am disappointed by your attitude in this comment. In a philosophical debate of this type there will inevitably be much confusion over terminology. As an extreme example you wrote about statements being empirically true by definition. I haven’t the foggiest idea what you meant. Because of this I have tried:
a) To use your vocabulary and meanings for terms as much as possible
b) Where it has become apparent that the meaning of a specific word is causing confusion, to restate the debate avoiding that word – eventually this extended even to word “circular” itself.
c) To work with concrete examples and anologies rather than just abstract terms
Despite all this, it is in the nature of the subject matter and the medium that there is much confusion. This makes it most important for all of us not to blame others if they don’t understand – and in particular it is not helpful to assume the others are being dishonest or stupid. I can assure you I grow very frustrated at your failure to see what seems obvious to me. But I hope I (mostly) respond by trying a different approach – not by assuming you are dishonest or stupid.
(I would still dearly love to hear you describe an example of a hypothetical observation which would disprove the assertion that all dFSCI is designed. If the statement is not true by definition then this must be possible.)
Toronto – I am pretty sure that Gpuccio would classify the unintended oscillator as a necessity mechanism and therefore the resulting sine wave is not dFSCI (or FSCI as it is not digital).
Gpuccio:
Yes, I still believe and affirm that your argument is circular. See my latest comment for an analogy that is intended to highlight the circularity.
Or correct.
To assert that we haven’t addressed any of your points is ridiculous. Your unjustified and intemperate accusations of stupidity and dishonesty are noted.
onlooker:
Yes. I’m astonished that gpuccio can’t see it.
I took a similar tack in an earlier comment. The punch line was:
I am pretty sure anything that gets close to “dFSCI” will end up either being “designed” or the result of a “necessity mechanism” thereby precluding it from having “dFSCI”!
As far as a sine wave, can we not present a square wave to gpuccio?
The bit pattern would then be, “101010101010101…..”, clearly not random and very functional, specifically as a clocking mechanism.
To be fair, I think GP has “independent reasons for thinking things could not have evolved. We think his reasons are wrong, but to him they are so obvious he cannot see that they all rely on assuming the conclusion.
1. He thinks function is isolated and not bridgeable by mutation and selection.
2. He thinks that isolated protein domain sequences are evidence that 80 base sequences are irreducible and must have come into existence as a piece.
3. He thinks that “multi-part functions are irreducible.
Taken together I can understand why he thinks evolution could not have done an heavy lifting.
The problem is that arguments 1 and 3 all but refuted by evidence, and argument 2 is unsupported.
Arguments 1 and 3 are contradicted by Lenski and Thornton and by the evolution of the inner ear.
Argument 2 is opposed by lots of recent work on protein evolution.
I guess this is why when I’ve asked KF repeatedly for a “map” of his islands he’s only ever been able to come up with “needle in cosmos” responses.
There is no actual evidence for his/Gpuccio’s islands of functionality, if there was they could simply provide it.
The only way they can make these claims is if they have a map. But when called on that, they produce a probability calculation that shows that “yes, some spaces are big. unimaginably big.” but fail to link that to a specific biological process.
I await the first claimed practical application of dFSCI.
Petrushka,
Sure, but he claims that dFSCI by itself is a reliable indicator that something did not evolve. His own definition requires him to decide that a thing couldn’t have evolved before attributing dFSCI to it, so his argument is inherently circular.
gpuccio has abandoned the argument it seems.
Your argument is circular because you use “dFSCI” and “Design” as both assertions and conclusions in your logic.
Let A = “dFSCI”;
Let B = “Design”;
“A THEREFORE B” has been as prevalent in your arguments as “B THEREFORE A”.
What would you call that?
Keiths
I had not looked at your “borky” example before. I like it. It really makes the point that just because you are observing something it doesn’t mean you have avoided circularity (or perhaps I should avoid that term).
I guess we can look forward to a peer reviewed and published version of GP’s argument. At BioComplexity or ENV if nowhere else.
I am somewhat of a loss to explain why GP declines to provide a detailed example of dFSCI and a rigorous discussion of why it could not have evolved. I’m pretty sure he once did this with protein domains. I also know that within the last week or so he was cheerleading Douglas Axe.
I am unable to guess why these arguments have not been presented as evidence against evolution.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6105/384.full
Gpuccio 759
You write:
I too feel that you have not seriously considered all of my points (you haven’t even answered some of them). You seem to find it impossible to imagine that this group – which is about the same size as your group – might seriously believe what they are saying and have good reasons for it. (I might add that they have done this without resorting to calling any of you “wankers” or “morons”.) The search for truth is a serious matter. But if you approach it with the attitude that anyone who has a different opinion is either a fool or a moron you are unlikely to find it.
I think you have given up – but just in case you haven’t:
I am intrigued by
I still don’t understand what it means. It sounds a bit like – “defined so it cannot be false” (which is what I would call circular!) Can you give a non-controversial example i.e. nothing to do with life and evolution.?
Also you wrote
I guess by “the validity of dFSCI” you mean “everything with dFSCI is designed” (see how difficult communication is). But if it is completely improbable we know that it will never happen a priori. That is what “completely improbable” means. So actually you know a priori that you will never come across a counter example to the statement “everything with dFSCI is designed” – so actually there is no need to do any observation – you have made the statement true by your definition of dFSCI.
Unless I am completely wrong, this is tied to GP’s assertion that protein domain coding strings are irreducible and therefore came about as the result of intervention by a designer.
I I have mischaracterized this argument I believe it would be minimally polite of GP to correct my understanding.
Let’s both ask him as he may not see this.
gpuccio, do “necessity mechanisms” rule out “dFSCI”?
Also, do “necessity mechanisms” result in “dFSCI”?
gpuccio,
In response to your 752 (despite the fact that you have ignored every question I’ve raised over the past couple of weeks):
Yes, I believe that your claim that “Things that exhibit dFSCI will never be empirically generated by a random system or by a necessity system, or by a random system helped by necessity effects.” is circular. I conclude this based on substituting in your own definition of dFSCI, which results in “Things that exhibit [high functional information (excluding RV as an explanation) and have no known necessity mechanism that can explain them] will never be empirically generated by a random system or by a necessity system, or by a random system helped by necessity effects.”
That’s a clear tautology, aka circular reasoning.
Or you could just repeat some of Gpuccio’s statements:
Comment 362:
Comment 386
Comment 531
Comment 616
For some reason I anticipate that Joe’s response will include some verbal abuse 🙂
gpuccio,
In your 759 you say:
This is manifestly untrue. A number of people here have spent a considerable amount of time considering your argument. Suggesting otherwise is disingenuous and rude.
I’m sure you genuinely believe that, but arrogance and delusion are not the same as correctness. The multiple flaws in your position have been clearly detailed in several threads here. If you can’t, or won’t, see them, the fault lies with you.
Joe,
Do you think gpuccio thinks “dFSCI” can be generated by a “necessity mechanism” or not?
Also, when kairosfocus tells you to watch your tone, simply ignore him.
The last thing science needs is a civil debate.
I am genuinely annoyed that this discussion never progressed past the definition stage and never dealt with any specifics. As a general rule, people who want to be understood will provide concrete examples and various analogies. Gpuccio has done this in the past. As far as I know he is the only IDer posting at UD who has actually posted calculations for a specific gene.
Some time ago I asked how a designer would go about knowing which strings are functional and which aren’t, and the response centered on intelligent selection.
I would like to know what that means and why it is better than natural selection.
Having seen this discussion, I want to know if intelligent selection can produce dFSCI.
Perhaps GP will post an OP at UD that illuminates some of these questions.
Well let’s look at that.
1. “Anyone who has [insert test procedure and criteria here] has diabetes.”
2. “Everything that has [insert test procedure and criteria here] is designed”
In the case of diagnosing diabetes one could consult any of a number of laboratory references to see how the tests are done and what the diagnostic criteria are.
What’s missing from the definition of dFSCI is the lab procedure, particularly the part of the procedure that rules out incremental evolution. What is the methodology for determining that a sequence could not have arisen incrementally?
You just said the exact opposite in the comment previous to this one!
It clearly does NOT exist regardless of what caused it according to gpuccio.
Is gpuccio wrong?
That’s a big hurdle ID has never even attempted to get over.
How does the designer know what’s going to happen when he tweaks something?
Unless he can see into the future, he is going to face the same sort of “oops” scenarios any designer faces.
Certainly it does. If it is caused by necessity it’s not dFSCI. And stop saying circular.
I think we could easily substitute “miracle” for dFSCI and have the same construction. A miracle is something which is not the result of a natural cause. If something has a natural cause it isn’t a miracle.
Now this can be saved from circularity if you have a reliable procedure for determining whether something has a natural cause.
This is a rather age old problem, one that applies to other phenomena, such as ESP. It also applies to stage magic. If no one knows how a performance was accomplished, was it real magic?
I agree, ….in a roundabout way. 🙂
I’m going to chime in here one more time regarding gpuccio’s diagnosis model of design detection.
Medical tests are replete with false positives. Some tests are better than others, but most have false positives.
All that is necessary to invalidate gpuccio’s claim regarding diabetes is one false positive. Same for dFSCI. Which is why I think he is reluctant to give a specific example. The state of research is shifting rapidly, and protein evolution is at the center of a lot of research.
It seems rather odd that gpuccio would cite medical diagnosis as the prototype for diagnosing design. It has not been too long since medical conditions were considered caused by spirits or were punishment for sin. Diagnosis is a poster child for leaky bucket classification.
Indeed. In the effect on the fold, on catalytic activity, the integration of that activity with the rest of the organism, the organism’s place in the ecosphere … we struggle even to calculate the fold, and real proteins fold a damn sight quicker than we can work it out – the problem is ‘NP-hard’. http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/sb/papers/a-talk.pdf
Our intelligence – the jumping-off point for the ID analogies, the ’empirical warrant’ for the Design Inference – is a piss-poor tool for getting a handle on these chaotic variables. And if all we can do is think, without even acess to computer, pen and paper or prior research, we’re really hamstrung.
Someone thought a few Possums in New Zealand would be kinda neat. What a great idea that turned out to be! When it comes to ecology, Designers are utterly hopeless. If we are anything to go by, I envisage a Designer scuttling around like Mickey in Fantasia, trying to avert ecological disaster at every turn as his adapted-to-order saltations wreak havoc on ecosystems – the “oh, fuck!” school of design.
Joe,
Why is it so difficult to get a direct answer from your side?
Is a determination of dFSCI independent of its source?
gpuccio asked: “Your thread started about the supposed circularity of the dFSCI definition and procedure. I ask each of you, explicitly: after all I have said, do you still believe and affirm that my argument is circular?“
The definition of dFCSI is not circular. Something has dFCSI if it has enough functional information that this cannot have arisen by random processes like mutation, and if that functional information cannot be explained by deterministic processes (which include natural selection). So far nothing circular about that.
Drawing from the presence of dFCSI a conclusion that a genotype is the result of Design is
* redundant. We already concluded that it cannot be explained by nonintelligent natural processes, which leaves only Design,
* unnecessary. For the same reason.
* circular, because we used property X of a genotype to conclude that dFCSI was present in it, but then used the presence of dFCSI in that genotype to conclude that it has property X. (Property X is the our inability to explain the genotype’s presence by random or by nonintelligent deterministic means).
I see that gpuccio is quite angered by characterizations like the above and is calling some of the people who make them liars. His position (in the Jerad UD thread at comment #559) is that there is no circularity because the use of dFCSI works this way: after drawing the conclusion that “1) it is too complex to have come about by pure random variation without selection” the assessment of whether it is explainable by selection is made this way:
Neo darwinists have to propose an explicit and verifiable mechanism to explain what we are observing, otherwise design is inferred on the basis of point 1) (which we have agreed upon) and of the lack of any proposed explanatory mechanism (point 2).”
So I guess that gpuccio cannot apply his own definition without a chorus of “neo Darwinists” also on hand. And they’d better be smart ones or they might have missed a possible explanation, which would be unfortunate.
gpuccio having inferred Design, he points out that this is just an inference, not a deduction. And that it is then validated by the “its 100% specificity in detecting design in all known cases.” And that, he feels, means that he escapes the charge of circularity.
If we could come up with even one case in which there was a “known” case of dFCSI that resulted from natural selection, then this would be a Big Problem for the use of dFCSI to infer Design. But “known” to who? I would say that a simple GA case with enough genes will bring about dFCSI. (But gpuccio rejects GAs as examples, on what I think are insufficient grounds).
In any case, if someone does come up with a natural selection mechanism to explain the presence of a putative case of dFCSI, does that case then automatically become not a case of dFCSI?
That is what the explanation above, immediately after gpuccio’s question, was assuming. My guess is that the answer is “yes”.
And if so, then the argument really is circular.
I would be curious to know the answer to that question.
Just wanted to give my own answer to gpuccio’s question. I am saddened that all that gpuccio could make of my previous comment was that “Joe Felsenstein, I must say with great regret, is beyond any sense.” I am well aware of the limitations of my ability to explain things, but I have written textbooks, including the standard text on inference of phylogenies. Reviews of my writings usually call then “clear” even when I’d prefer to have them called “elegant” or “inspiring”. But “clear” is the adjective people use most often. I fancy my previous couple of comments to have been clear, and am sorry if gpuccio thinks that they are “beyond any sense”, or that I myself am “beyond any sense”.
I’m also grateful for gpuccio’s conclusion in an earlier case that “At least you have avoided an explicit lie.” Gee, thanks.
Thank you for a direct answer.
So if two strings, both of them complex, specific and functional enough to qualify as “dFSCI” before their origins are specified, with the only difference being one’s source was a “designer” and the second was a result of a “necessity mechanism”, they would both qualify as having “dFSCI”, even though only one was the result of an “intelligent designer”.
Is that an accurate thing to say?
A big thanks for a direct answer and I shall mull it over for awhile.
I’ve only been following the half of the discussion taking place here, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this in contradiction to gpuccio’s definition of dFSCI? My understanding from what others have posted is that a non-design source means that dFSCI is not present, by definition.
If I’ve missed something and gpuccio actually agrees with Joe, then any GA that produces something similar to what a human has produced, say an antenna, would disprove the claim that dFSCI is an indicator of design.
Petrushka:
That wouldn’t actually save it from circularity, as I pointed out earlier:
Take a look at this argument:
Definition:
A pog is morpish if 1) it is fleepish, and 2) it is not lufious.
Argument:
We evaluate zillions of pogs to see which ones are morpish.
We observe that every single morpish pog is lufious.
Amazing! Morpishness appears to be a 100% reliable indicator of lufiosity.
Circularity:
We can decide that a pog is lufious by determining that it is morpish, and we determine that it is morpish by deciding if it is lufious.
The circularity isn’t eliminated even if we have an absolutely reliable way of diagnosing lufiosity. Circularity is a characteristic of an argument’s structure, not its empirical content.
Now let’s translate the circular statement, letting
pogs = sequences
fleepish = has dFSI greater than the threshold
lufious = not explained by a necessity mechanism
morpish = exhibits dFSCI
Original:
We can decide that a pog is lufious by determining that it is morpish, and we determine that it is morpish by deciding if it is lufious.
‘Translation’:
We can decide that a sequence wasn’t produced by a known necessity mechanism by determining that it exhibits dFSCI, and we determine that it exhibits dFSCI by deciding that it wasn’t produced by a known necessity mechanism.
That statement remains circular even if we have a reliable means of determining whether a sequence was produced by a necessity mechanism, just as the original statement remains circular even if we have a reliable means of diagnosing lufiosity.
Having dealt with circularity, let’s look at usefulness:
We have to know whether a pog is lufious before we can even decide that it is morpish, so using morpishness as an indicator of lufiosity is pointless. It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.
Likewise, we have to know that a sequence couldn’t have been produced by a ‘necessity mechanism’ before we can even decide that it exhibits dFSCI. Using dFSCI to tell us that it wasn’t produced by a necessity mechanism is therefore pointless. It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.
The dFSCI argument accomplishes nothing, precisely because it is circular.
It does remind me of the days when programmers were evaluated by lines of code.
Even if you had a foolproof way of determining that a sequence is designed, you do not have any way of knowing how many bits were designed and how many are noise.
If random sequences can have some useful level of function, then it may take only a few mutations to bring them close to optimal function. there’s no way of telling.
Measure something.
Exclude all causes except diabetes.
What remains is diabetes (without exception).
Ta dum!
I don’t think that’s a good description of what happens.
Imagine a dog trained to follow a scent.
All he needs is a sample and then off he goes.
His trainer in no way contributes to the solution here, it is the dog that is 100% responsible for finding the “target”.
But “dFSCI” is NOT an indicator of design in any way since the presence of “dFSCI” is independent of its source.
Chance Ratcliff writes:
Chance,
The problem is that your starting point, F => D, is already circular. To see this, consider the following:
1. Gpuccio agrees that the possibilities form a trichotomy, and that design should be inferred only when chance (RV) and necessity mechanisms (NM) have been ruled out. Formally, this means D is defined as ~RV ^ ~NM.
2. According to gpuccio, a sequence exhibits dFSCI, by definition, if it meets these two criteria:
Formally, this means F is defined as ~RV ^ ~NM.
Substituting for F and D in the original implication, F => D, we get:
~RV ^ ~NM => ~RV ^ ~NM
Perfectly true, but perfectly circular. dFSCI tells us nothing that we didn’t already know. It’s useless precisely because it’s circular.
784 Chance Ratcliff
You wrote:
True – but our point is that Gpuccio’s definition of dFSCI includes no necessity mechanism clause. On inspection this turns out to mean ~D(x) ^ F(x) can only arise less than once in the lifetime of the known universe. This is true by definition – not by observation. A necessity mechanism is any mechanism which makes the probability of F(x) ^ ~D(x) high enough to conceivably happen (including making it certain). Any ~D(x) that actually happened would automatically mean ~F(x). So you can observe as many cases as you like of the other three quadrants but if you use Gpuccio’s definition you know a priori that there will be no cases in the falsifying quadrant. The observation was a waste of time.
I think Gpuccio has more or less admitted that the definition has made the observation unnecessary when he wrote:
Although I still find this sentence engimatic.
This is why he is unable to describe what ~D(x) ^ F(x) would even look like in reality. The only examples he can come up our examples which we all know in advance could not happen.
Let’s make this more concrete. Most IDers believe that proteins have dFSCI. Suppose one day scientists observe that during meiosos a full blown functional protein is created simply by jumbling up the base pairs i.e. it is not building from previous components – it is apparently a most extraordinary miracle. This is the only kind of example that Gpuccio can offer of ~D(x) ^ F(x). But what would we actually conclude if that happened? The IDists would take it of evidence of design being implemented (it couldn’t happen by chance could it – the probability is too low!). The scientists would conclude there is some necessity mechanism that we do not yet understand. So both camps would move the example out of the ~D(x) ^ F(x) box.
Now I can see that is the “Sherlock Holmes” method of argument by default. At least circular and default arguments then overlap?
Patrick of course you are right. Gpuccio’s definition of dFSCI also includes that it must not arise from a necessity mechanism.
Gpuccio
I see you commented this morning. So maybe you are reading this. I would like to see you have the courage to correct Joe when he writes:
(A necessity mechanism is a type of source).
Gpuccio at UD:
But how can we look for something that has dFSCI without any clear idea of what dFSCI is in any real object or process that we might care to consider. I see the circularity, now. Define dFSCI as something that is 100% an indicator of design and, bingo, all objects having dFCSI are designed. Circular and default. Just as gpuccio’s diabetes test defaults to the only possible conclusion!
Alan – this is the new way of doing science – “empirically true by definition”. It is so much more efficient. You embark on your observations having defined the concepts so that you are bound to be successful. Saves all that wasted time on unsuccessful experiments and observations and great for personal confidence as well.
(I admit to a couple of a small diversions from Lizzie’s principles this morning – but given Gpuccio’s tirade against all of us, and having been called a “wanker” and “moron” by Joe, I feel I am allowed some license).
DNA has “dFSCI” and there is no evidence of a “designer” being involved.
Our capabilities as designers have hit a wall when it comes to biology.
Since as designers we have failed to design life-forms, that suggests that life-forms are not designable by methods that we understand.
Since we have failed to design life-forms, why would we accept that they are designable by anyone, much less an unseen entity that left no records of having done so?
Circular reasoning: “Wellington is in New Zealand. Therefore, Wellington is in New Zealand.” — Douglas Walton
Walton’s syllogism is deductively sound, but proves nothing. The premise contains the conclusion.
This argument loads the “Exclude all causes except entwerfen” with the conclusion.
Gpuccio’s original definition has created a faulty trichotomy. For instance, it’s not clear where evolution would be excluded. He ‘solved’ this by saying no one has ever proposed a valid theory of evolution (capable of explaining the origin of protein domains), but that claim doesn’t demonstrate that chance, determinism and design form a clear trichotomy. There may be other overlaps between any of these categories that his methodology can’t differentiate.