It just dawned on me that ID is dead.
Dembski is off all radar. He doesn’t even show up in the search box at South Carolina bible college or whatever. The last post on the Design Inference is a year old.
Meyer’s book went up like a firework and came down with the stick.
Most of the static websites are moribund. UD has banned virtually all dissenters. The few brave enough to wander over to TSZ bail out after a couple of rounds. The biologic institute inflates its “selected publications” with publications that have nothing to do with the biologic institute and seems to be doing no more than pretending to produce output.
Bio-Complexity is moribund.
Behe doesn’t seem to have much to say.
The big guys won’t come out to debate. The small ones mostly won’t leave heavily censored sites. Even the UD newsdesk peddles 6 year old stories as “news”.
And all the threads are about religion. Or tossing coins.
I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before.
It’s dead.
Posted at “After the Bar Closes on Jan. 05 2014,16:37 by Febble (Elizabeth Liddle)
Does anyone feel like extending or disputing Lizzie’s analysis? What other burning topics are others bothered by? Climate change? Unchecked exploitation of finite resources? Habitat destruction and extinction? I guess many commenters were drawn to this blog by a shared scepticism over “Intelligent Design”. Do we have any other shared interests? Now that ID has declined into insignificance, has TSZ lost it’s raison d’être?
WJM
“The result of such experiments are not unexpected at all in light of a consciousness-centric view of the world”
Really? How does this view explain unexpected results? How does it explain anything?
Since this site is related to biology, why don’t you choose a biological example that can be explained by a consciousness-centric view?
William,
Your point was that specific experiments in quantum physics have disproved materialism.
Which experiments?
No, OM, that wasn’t the point of the posts I made that davehooke was responding to.
What was the point?
William,
I know. And so? About those specific experiments….
William,
Why don’t you choose a biological example that can be explained by a consciousness-centric view, which would be more useful then the current materialist explanation.
If you can’t do that, well, accept your view is sterile.
OM,
I disagree. William was attempting to insert God where His light don’t shine.
It’s all the same game.
“Local realism” is the materialist perspective as it relates to physics. Local realism has been experimentally disproved several times experimentally. You can look up research papers on “local realism” and “delayed choice” (in terms of quantum physics experiments).
One such paper: Violation of local realism with freedom of choice http://www.pnas.org/content/107/46/19708.full
Another: A quantum delayed choice experiment http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.4926v2.pdf
These papers and similar research demonstrate not “unexpected” findings (unless one was ideologically hoping to salvage realism), but rather findings that continue to falsify materialism, building upon the same conclusion held by by Bohrs, Heisenberg and Wigner, among others.
Materialism as a philosophy requires physical realism. Without physical realism, there is no determinate state of “matter” that exists outside of observation, making consciousness an integral aspect of the world, not something generated as a result of a causal chain of material interactions.
William,
Citation please.
You make the claim that this paper disproves materialism. Is that your interpretation or is that supported by the authors in the paper itself?
Odd how the text does not contain the word “materialism” then, if it indeed disproves it. Perhaps you can link to other physicists who share your opinion?
In your opinion, what would have been the outcome of that paper if materialism was true? If you can’t say…..
So would it be true to say that you personally subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation?
If not, then which?
In fact recently I’ve been reading that observers are not necessary in quantum systems, they will evolve regardless.
If that pans out, then will you change you mind about consciousness being the result of a causal chain of material interactions?
No, of course it won’t because you already had that viewpoint, the supporting evidence no doubt came after….
The falsity of local realism doesn’t entail that consciousness produces quantum phenomena. Bohmian mechanics is a fully deterministic, non-local realism. To my knowledge it’s still a viable contender with other interpretations of quantum mechanics.
The more serious problem with William’s defense of “ID”, using that term in his idiosyncratic sense, is that it relies on a mythology of science. I say that because we have pretty good reasons, post-Kuhn, to think that scientific practices simply don’t rely on the assumptions that William claims they rely on. More baldly put, science does not have “foundations”, in the sense that William thinks it does.
When William insists that science relies on “foundations” as the a priori intelligibility of nature as governed by empirically discoverable laws, he is elevating a Newtonian conception of science above all others. But why should Newton’s conception of science have priority over those of (say) Aristotle or Darwin? (Especially when we know that Newton’s laws are, strictly speaking, false?)
Instead of endorsing the Enlightenment’s mythology of science, we should pay careful attention to sociology and cognitive science of science. The results are quite intriguing. The key point to stress, as I see it, is that successful empirical inquiry relies on our ability to “triangulate” on reality: each cognitive agent can compare its own experiences of its environment with those of other cognitive agents, and it can do insofar as there are shared norms (both epistemic and ethical). (Tomasello calls this ‘shared intentionality’ and thinks it is the distinctive cognitive achievement of Homo that makes us different from other hominids.) Empirical inquiry becomes scientific when we deliberately construct artificial scenarios in order to determine which of two or more competing conceptual representations of reality is more likely to yield better predictions, retrodictions, or consilience.
A complete explication of this entire process would involve some metaphysics; I do not think that one can do science without metaphysics entirely, a point that has led me to cross swords with quite a few people here at TSZ. But I do not think that science has “foundations” in the sense that the Enlightenment mythology of science would have it, much less that those foundations only take on an intellectually satisfying shape when put in terms of rational theism.
WJM
Funny thing that you are going roun and round and round to defend that ID is alive. Wouldn’t it be easier to talk DIRECTLY of ID?
A book that might be of interest generally is “Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists” which I happen to have a copy of.
From a review:
As it happens I’m interested in the ultimate nature of reality, so this is of interest to me.
You, however, are not. At least it seems so to me. You don’t need to, you already think you know the answers.
Materialism is disconfirmed.
So why bother searching when you already have it? Why bother talking to people who don’t think as you do, when you could be doing more productive things as you, after all, know what reality is and so are better able to manipulate it.
As such, all your posts on this topic seem to me designed (unconsciously) to support your viewpoint and help you convince you that you are right about all this. Nobody else, just you.
As deep down I don’t even think you believe materialism has been disproved. You are just unwilling to consider alternatives.
If ID can only be defended by conflating “historical ID” (i.e. creationism) with “modern ID” (i.e. design can be detected) then ID has already failed.
It’s worse than that, OMagain. William isn’t defending intelligent design as an empirical, scientific theory; he’s defending (or seems to be defending) the far more dubious claim that “intelligent design” is the foundation of all scientific theories. A few folks at Uncommon Descent have been trotting out this line for a while now. Steven Fuller tries running a version of this claim in his Science vs Religion? and so does Rodney Stark in his The Victory of Reason. Their thesis is (I think) entirely undermined by the pragmatist tradition that runs from Peirce through Dewey to Sellars, Churchland, Rorty, and Dennett — according to which we can, in fact, use cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary theory to explain our ability to do science and our interest in getting it right. So while Christianity played an important role in how the figures of the Enlightenment understood their own activities — Newton and Leibniz being the ultimate exponents of this attitude — there is nothing compulsory about it.
William is a funny guy, at least in terms of his thought process. His argument, such that it is, is the same as arguing that because automotive science was founded on the principles acquired from animal husbandry, we should all learn horse riding so we can make better cars and be better drivers…
I submit that William is just plain wrong; no one need know jack about intelligence or gods to understand and properly use science to better understand the world around us.
OMagain said:
No, I don’t. My point is that over the last 100 years or so, materialism has been disproved by weight of the accumulation of experimental evidence. I’ve provided a small sampling of that evidence. Do with it as you will.
KN said;
It may not entail it, but it supports that position. Experiments have increasingly supported the von Neumann/Wigner interpretation that consciousness/observation is an integral causal factor in determining actual quantum states. Indeed, most recent experiments have been made due to an attempt to salvage realism against the implications that were immediately apparent to those original Quantum theorists and researchers wrt consciousness.
Which is contra-indicated by recent delayed-choice experiments where “hidden-variable” interpretations have been tested.
It seems materialists go where the evidence leads except when 100+ years of accumulated experimental evidence leads to non-materialism. No local realism, no materialism. All the experimental evidence so far supports non-realism.
Acartia_Bogart: Do you seriously think that there are many (if any) physicists who believe this?[that quantum physics is not a materialist science]”
William: “Physicists shy from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics.”
Are you seriously trying to argue that you know more about the nature of quantum physics than the hundreds of scientists who do it for a living. Frankly, I will take their word that quantum physics is materialist than your bald assertion that it isn’t.
William,
I asked what interpretation you hold to. Are you scared if you answer you’ll tell more then you meant to tell?
acartia_bogart,
Yes, he is.
KN,
No its even worse that that! YOU are using as an explanation for all of biology, a theory which you can’t even describe, and doesn’t exist, and for which you throw out a weak smokescreen of….”Well, just go read some books, it must be in there somewhere”
A total dodge.
William,
You really are deep into the conspiracy theory that at all costs materialism must be defended. Scientists are interested in the truth, ideally, and the truth is the truth is the truth.
Your viewing of the history of science as a conspiracy driven war between these viewpoints is laughable. But of course, it neatly ties into the other worldwide conspiracy that scientists are holding ID down because they don’t like it’s implications. So not totally unexpected. You don’t have wrong positions, they are just being suppressed by a conspiracy.
But of course, this is par for the course for you – a right wing ammosexual who no doubt thinks Obama is out to destroy America. You are naturally predisposed to see conspiracy everywhere, when the natural explanation is just that you are wrong. But that’s unacceptable, so conspiracies are invented and proposed as alternatives to simply being wrong.
Robin said:
As I said, one need not be able to build a car in order to be able to drive a car.
phoodoo,
About those unanswerable questions about the CE?
Why don’t you go to university for a few years, take a few courses and see for yourself what is taught as ‘evolution’?
I think you have confused ID with evolution. ID does the book publishing thing, no scientific papers, just books for the masses.
William,
No, but someone who does not understand quantum physics (that’d be you) should not make claims based on it about reality.
You are channeling JoeG now William, when he is asked what recent scientific work supports ID his response is “all of it”. When I ask you what scientific research supports the claim that materialism has been disproved you response the same – all of it.
JoeG is just a less erudite version of you.
OMagain said:
There’s no conspiracy that I know of – just humans being humans as they are in all walks of life, protecting their worldview positions in ways that are both conscious and subconscious, as has been shown time and time again throughout history, even in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Unless science is regarded as some sort of sacred pursuit (which harkens back to its theistic, ID roots), I don’t see how scientists can be said to be more interested in “the truth” than anyone else in any other walk of life.
Obviously, evidence supporting my points here has not been suppressed – it is open for anyone to find and read, published in prestigious journals. The problem is that many beliefs are essential to the self-esteem of people and no amount of contrary evidence can dislodge those beliefs.
I don’t think that evolutionary theory explains “all of biology”. I’ve never claimed that, and I’ve frequently and emphatically denied that. Why else do you think I’m constantly harping on complexity theory?
Putting together Oyama’s insights into developmental systems with related ideas: by “evolutionary theory” I mean that just this:
Such, at any rate, is my attempt to condense my understanding of developmental systems theory and evo-devo into a single sentence. When Oyama proposed this in the mid 1990s it was fairly radical, but now “evo-devo” has been around for about 15 years (give or take) and there’s more work being done now to integrate ecology with evo-devo. That seems like a definite step in the right direction to me!
Lol! Do let me know how much those horse riding lessons improve your driving, William!
Asa rule of thumb, large, rapidly reproducing populations (microorganisms) can invent new proteins. Multi-celled organisms evolve mostly by tweaks to regulation.
As I said, one need not be able to build a car in order to be able to drive a car.
I take it, then, that theism is to science as engineering is to driving? Or something like that?
acartia_bogart said:
Only, William didn’t say that. That was a quote from: The Mental Universe, Nature, Vol 436,7 July 2005, by Richard Conn Henry (born 7 March 1940[1]) is a
author of one book and over 200 publications on the topics of astrophysics and various forms of astronomy including optical, radio, ultraviolet, and X-ray.
Frankly, I will take their word that quantum physics is materialist than your bald assertion that it isn’t.
I wonder if you will live up to your stated, “frank” promise to take “their word for it” now that what you thought was “WJM’s word” has been shown to actually be “their word”.
I’ve provided several quotes from Nobel prize-winning quantum theorists, and from a professor of physics at John Hopkins University, that explicitly state that the materialist view of the universe is demonstrated false by QM. You imply above that there are QM physicists that claim “quantum physics is materialist”; please support that assertion by doing what I’ve done in this thread – provide quotes from QM theorists that claim that QM supports materialism.
OMagain said:
I have only relayed the explicit claims made by well-known, prestigious physicists, some Nobel Prize winners, some who are considered among the originators of QM theory. That you dismiss them and other published papers purported to disprove local realism (and thus, materialism) isn’t my concern.
No. According to William’s basic statements, theism is to science as animal husbandry is to driving. Where do you think the term “horsepower” arose from?
Since we don’t have an edit feature, the sentence:
“Frankly, I will take their word that quantum physics is materialist than your bald assertion that it isn’t.”
in my response to acartia_bogart above was quoted from him.
Robin,
There are many theisms that provide no significant access to the concepts necessary to science, and I have said so. It takes a particular kind of theistic premise to provide the fertile grounds for developing a viable scientific heuristic.
Guillermoe said:
From: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?page_id=2 “About this site ….”:
This site is related to biology only in the same sense that it is related to “everything”.
Similarly, William, I’m sure there are many forms of horse husbandry that provide no significant access to the concept of car driving – dressage comes to mind…worthless sport that it is…
And…so…?
William,
Except presumably you of course? You are able to alter your worldview position in conscious and subconscious ways in order to adjust in light of overwhelming evidence of the way things truly are? I believe you have previously stated as much, so yes, I believe that’s your claim also.
Given that you are aware of this trap and consequently have no need to protect your worldview, and hence can adjust it as required to accommodate overwhelming evidence contrary to your current worldview, how does that comport with your prior claims that it matters not if the things you believe are necessarily true or not?
In addition, when evidence is overwhelming, does it matter if you understand that evidence?
For example, in the first experiment that you linked to, would you have been able to separate out a result due to polarization decoherence from a valid result?
We can duel quotes all night long, but you can see where that get’s you at UD – cargo cult science at it’s finest, with weapons that more often then not turn out to be double edged swords as the wielder is just copy/pastaing it in.
To me science is about two+ people with a shared vocabulary and experience where a shared understanding at some point diverges and then technical arguments ensure until consensus is again reached.
I just gave you a quote that said that many great minds in physics said that they believed in a spiritual world, but could not provide proof for that belief. I told you that some recent work is (seemingly) removing the need for an observer to resolve a quantum state. But you don’t give a shit about any of that do you, even though it would provide fodder for the diverging positions to deal with. I could have dug up a reference, probably. But nooo. You don’t want to actually have a real debate/conversation. You’ll just ignore select bits you don’t want to/can’t respond to. Not like a real debate at all.
As that’s the thing. I don’t think people like Robert and you actually want to have the technical discussion where one or the other of us are ultimately, ideally, shown to be unable to make or to have a faulty support for an argument and thus conceding the point. I’m interested in the truth of the matter and you have already decided. Hence I know what position all your statements and evidence argue for.
So if you want to say that all QM experiments support ID then that’s just laughable – you get that right? That’s you trying to win by default. You don’t get to do that. And that’s why you can’t provide, as claimed, an experiment that disproved materialism. As if it existed it would automatically convince a large % of interested people (as noted above, if I cannot refute it I have to accept it) and there’s your ID research project team ready made. Ten, a thousand, a million people. If you can bring it to the table, they will come.
The reason it never actually happens is that there is nothing to grasp but smoke. The ‘technical discussions’ at UD are a prime example. They never actually do it, but have managed to talk about ‘detecting design’ (and Jesus) for a decade+
There was a point at which I had never heard of ID. Then something happened that made the news, and I looked into it. I was very interested – these people claim to have proof life is designed. What do you suppose happened next?
I can understand how you cannot see that. You yourself have noted, you are not interested in “the truth” either and so I can see how you might not understand that trait in someone else. But the truth is out there 😛
And it all supports ID, yes, I know. But do you understand it sufficiently so you can, for example, take part in the peer review of some project and challenge claims made on technical grounds?
Neither can I. But neither am I making claims for some proof or disproof based on specific papers I don’t fully understand.
I’m willing to read the opinions of people who do understand it all. And, over time, some such sources will come to be trusted over others. And it’s an interesting question about how we choose those sources and how long we continue to listen to them. Who do you trust?
In many ways UD represents the hubbub in a room after the event has ended and the mic turned off. The main event has left the building but the crowd are still talking amongst themselves. Little sub-groups are forming, and dissolving. All scientific evidence supports ID say one group! All QM research supports ID says another!
But without the engagement on the actual level of detail of a shared understanding at the cutting edge you can talk as loud as you like but nobody outside the little clique will ever hear you. People are busy doing real research!
Why is KF so unwilling to engage the outside world on his magic FSCO/I concept? Try searching for FSCO/I outside of UD to see how far the idea has spread. He is unwilling because finding ‘the truth’ is not a concern. He already knows! And he is on a mission to spread the good word.
Every comment on the internet, billions of them, shows FSCO/I is real.
All scientific evidence supports ID!
All QM experiments support ID!
Building a replica runway and tower will bring back the airplanes and their cargo.
Ah, this once more. The refuge of the person who otherwise would have to say just because.
You say that, but I bet you can’t support it. Not in the engaging in a technical way with a shared understanding kind of way.
For example, state such a belief. Note the contrary evidence for that belief. Respond in technical detail to the rebuttal, if contrary evidence can be rebutted. Rinse and repeat as long as necessary.
If you would like to do that I’m sure it would make an interesting OP. Please either note such or do so, as desired.
And that’s exactly how nowhere will be got to fast BA77. So care to play a technical game? How many levels do you suppose we can go down to before we reach bald assertions on either side? Don’t you want to find out? Does that not appeal more then already knowing the answers all the way down to the final turtleaardvark?
William,
Your non-concern is noted. But as I explain above, that’s the opposite of what I’m trying to achieve. If you would like to ignore my points above in light of your non-concern I’ll accept that. But what am I supposed to do, argue the details of the paper with you? As I note above, I don’t think either of us can do that. So we’re reduced to duelling quotes, right?
And there are several camps with differing opinions about QM and materialism. Why have you chosen the particular group of people to listen to as opposed to others? Did you have the belief that they share before you knew they existed? How do we decide between such competing claims between groups of subject matter experts?
Oh, but that’s right. You are not interested, you have already decided (you know the truth, your chosen group of experts just happens to coincide with your beliefs) so perhaps I’ll chat to somebody else about it instead. Thanks for the links however! Good to know what you consider as good papers for the anti-materialist angle. And thanks again. I like meeting true believers, they remind me of what could be.
And my interest in these matters will continue to be one of genuine interest, not simple a re-affirmation of what I already know to be true, as your journey sadly seems to be. I hope that works out for you in the end Mr I believe whatever works best for me at the time.
OM said:
I don’t believe I ever said that. I said that QM experiments disprove materialism, and lend support for another, consciousness-integral interpretation of QM.
In an unrelated argument in this thread, I posited that ID isn’t dead for the simple reason that modern science relies upon ID-necessary premises, concepts and principle, functionally and historically. Also, ID is part of a centuries-old debate between, essentially, ID and non-ID philosophical perspectives. Non-IDism (atheistic materialism) is, historically, a johnny-come-lately to the science show that is employing the tools ID built and claiming them for non-IDism.
The rest of your post, like most of your posts (and like most posts on this site), is nothing but negative characterizations about ID and IDists, and expositions of speculative narrative.
Is astronomy an example of empiricism? Or evolution, as first laid out in the Origin*?
“Empiricism” doesn’t refer to experiments per se, rather to basing knowledge upon sensory data. Experiments seem absent from Aristotle’s writings, but observation of the natural world is utilized, as you noted.
My comment wasn’t meant to be a comprehensive history of the development of modern science.
It seems that my comment took the theistic climate as a given–even as positive for science on the whole. Yet in a sense it’s too much a “given,” because that was simply how philosophy–to an fair extent including natural philosophy–was done back then. There simply are not solid divisions existing between philosophy and religion until later, hence one might credit the (heavily Greek influenced) philosophy or the religion that subsumed it, or both/same.
Glen Davidson
*I know that the “experiments” of animal breeding are mentioned there, but those are more on the order of analogy to natural selection, rather than being experiments using natural selection itself, as later experiments have been.
OMagain said:
We might be reduced to dueling quotes if you (or anyone else here) actually could provide any quotes from physicists asserting that QM experimental results support materialism. The historical fact is that QM challenged materialism right off the bat and – as far as I can tell – has done nothing experimentally since but intensify that challenge by disproving realism of any sort – local and non-local, with hidden variables or without, and by demonstrating quantum eraser effects.
Quoting myself here but
When building something you would typically go through several iterations, starting off with a sort-of working version initially. That might be a computer program, a design for a house or a score for a song. They don’t seem to have reached that first “sort-of” working iteration yet at UD despite a decade+ of trying and that never seems to concern them.
Of course design can be differentiated from non-design. Humans can currently do it easily in many, even most, cases.
But for some reason the technical discussion required to assess the claims of the UD ID community wrt biology never happens. Did you never wonder why all the outsiders were so obsessed with defining terms in discussions at UD William? And you never wondered why, when those terms had as many definitions as UD supporters willing to offer an opinion, nobody was then particular impressed by the case for ID?
I’d say no, you never wondered. Why, if you were winning a race and knew it, would you need to turn and see your rivals? Just keep on running with the wind in your hair! You are winning!
William,
Yes, I’m more then aware. However things lately are somewhat more nuanced.
http://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.4.041013
My bold.
And your money shot-quote, as desired:
Michael Hall
And this from the paper front page:
So, um, about that technical discussion? Or is new information not allowable?
William,
I know what I am, but what are you?
Laughable really, most posts on this site are negative characterizations about ID yet William and phoodoo cannot bring themselves to stay away. I guess the sermons from BA77 and KF get tiring after a while.
Odd how those who are so sure they know the truth seem to do nothing worthwhile with it but instead seem to content to peer at it in the little box they’ve constructed for it.
William,
You’ve reduced ID to both a historical footnote as per that quote and the smallest gap possible – all evolution is true but mutations are not necessarily random as you said at UD. Good work.
I could not have done better myself. Congratulations. I shall be sure to recommend they call on you at Dover II.
William,
phoodoo just dropped this one off at UD:
No need to disprove Cantor at the technical level of detail, just proclaim it. No need to look at the actual debate that was had at the time, the arguments on either side – it does not fit into phoodoo’s brain so it must be wrong!
No wonder you come over here for a breather occasionally. At least you can have an actual conversation, eh? Except with me, of course, as most (all!) of my posts are simply speculative narrative, no need to bother to respond to specific arguments against your specific arguments eh? Wherever would that lead to, dancing I suspect!
There is no functional necessity of a theistic heuristic. We’ve been through this already. Individual events are random, outcomes probabilistic. This does not accord with a traditional “God’s clockwork” view. The classical versions of regularity, homogeneity, and even comprehensibility do not apply.
Exactly so. William is saying without religion science would not, could not have developed. But without re-running history I don’t see how such a claim can be confirmed. And if he’s happy with just that and the failure of modern, contempoary ID to amount to anything other then a stream of books-for-the-already-convinced then that’s a victory not really worth having I think.
I happen to think that people who already know the truth don’t then look for it.
And who is a scientist but somebody who does not know the truth but who is capable of searching for it by parsing reality? Even those who make huge intuitive conceptual leaps must build a more mundane bridge to those ideas, ultimately.
And if you can’t build that bridge to what you are sure is the truth and, like UD, are stood on the edge of the river 10 years later still arguing about what exactly a bridge is then at some point they will have to accept it is not ever going to get built.
William,
OK, done that. What now? Technical discussion? I can’t wait!