[note: the author formatted this is a way that did not leave space for a page break. So I am inserting the break at the top — NR]
- Paley’s teleological argument is: just as the function and complexity of a watch implies a watch-maker, so likewise the function and complexity of the universe implies the existence of a universe-maker. Paley also addressed a number of possible counterarguments:
- Objection: We don’t know who the watchmaker is. Paley: Just because we don’t know who the artist might be, it doesn’t follow that we cannot know that there is one.
- Objection: The watch (universe) is not perfect. Paley: Perfection is not required.
- Objection: Some parts of the watch (universe) seem to have no function. Paley: We just don’t know those functions yet.
- Objection: The watch (re universe) is only one possible form of many possible combinations and so is a chance event. Paley: Life is too complex and organized to be a product of chance.
- Objection: There is a law or principle that disposed the watch (re universe) to be in that form. Also, the watch (re the universe) came about as a result of the laws of metallic nature. Paley: The existence of a law presupposes a lawgiver with the power to enforce the law.
- Objection: One knows nothing at all about the matter. Paley: Certainly, by seeing the parts of the watch (re the universe), one can know the design.
- Hume’s arguments against design:
- Objection: “We have no experience of world-making”. Counter-objection: We have no direct experience of many things, yet that never stops us from reasoning our way through problems.
- Objection: “The analogy is not good enough. The universe could be argued to be more analogous to something more organic such as a vegetable. But both watch and vegetable are ridiculous analogies”. Counter-objection: By definition, no analogy is perfect. The analogy needs only be good enough to prove the point. And Paley’s analogy is great for that limited scope. Hume’s followers are free to pursue the vegetable analogy if they think it is good enough. And some [unconvincingly] do imagine the universe as “organic”.
- Objection: “Even if the argument did give evidence for a designer; it’s not the God of traditional Christian theism”. Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding.
- Objection: “The universe could have been created by random chance but still show evidence of design as the universe is eternal and would have an infinite amount of time to be able to form a universe so complex and ordered as our own”. Counter-objection: Not possible. There is nothing random in the universe that looks indubitably designed. That is why we use non-randomness to search for extraterrestrial life and ancient artefacts.
- Other arguments against design:
- Darwin: “Evolution (natural selection) is a better explanation”. “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.” — The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. Counter-objection: “Natural selection” would be an alternative hypothesis to Paley’s if it worked. But it demonstrably doesn’t, so there is not even a point in comparing the two.
- Dawkins: “Who designed the designer?” Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Dawkins: “The watch analogy conflates the complexity that arises from living organisms that are able to reproduce themselves with the complexity of inanimate objects, unable to pass on any reproductive changes”. Counter-objection: Paley is aware of the differences between the living and the inert and is not trying to cast life into a watch. Instead he is only demonstrating that they both share the property of being designed. In addition, nothing even “arises”. Instead everything is caused by something else. That’s why we always look for a cause in science.
- Objection: “Watches were not created by single inventors, but by people building up their skills in a cumulative fashion over time, each contributing to a watch-making tradition from which any individual watchmaker draws their designs”. Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Objection: In Dover case, the judge ruled that such an inductive argument is not accepted as science because it is unfalsifiable. Counter-objection: Both inductive and deductive reasoning are used in science. Paley’s argument is not inductive as he had his hypothesis formulated well before his argumentation. Finally, Paley’s hypothesis can absolutely be falsified if a random draw can be found to look designed. This is exactly what the “infinite monkey” theorem has tried and failed to do (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Objection: Paley confuses descriptive law with prescriptive law (i.e., the fallacy of equivocation). Prescriptive law does imply a lawgiver, and prescriptive laws can be broken (e.g., speed limits, rules of behavior). Descriptive laws do not imply a law-giver, and descriptive laws cannot be broken (one exception disproves the law, e.g., gravity, f = ma.). Counter-objection: Of all the laws with known origin, all (100%) have a lawgiver at the origin. The distinction between descriptive and prescriptive laws is thus arbitrary and unwarranted.
- Objection: It is the nature of mind to see relationship. Where one person sees design, another sees randomness. Counter-objection: This ambiguity is present only for very simple cases. But all humans agree that organisms’ structures are clearly not random.
- Dawkins: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Counter-objection: Just a corollary: since organisms indeed appear designed, then they are most likely designed according to Occam’s razor.
- In conclusion, Paley is right and his opponents continue to be wrong with not even a plausible alternative hypothesis.
Links:
I mostly agree with that although I would say that we use our brains to recreate three-dimensionality. Our sense of sight gives us a two fragmented, double, inverted images and we end up being conscious of a three-dimensional interconnected external world. What does it mean to say that the brain puts everything together in order to make it coherent and how does this end up being a conscious experience? To say that the brain puts it all together is very convenient but it doesn’t explain much apart from the fact that the whole is directing and coordinating the parts.
And as Jock says seeing and remembering seeing are two separate issues. Did you ever have a go at watching the video I keep posting by Ian McGilchrist?
https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain?embed=true&language=mn
Yes I’ve watched that video a few times and I’m sure I’ve linked to McGilchrist in the past. He is a very entertaining and informative speaker.
Here he says:
And the human brain is often considered to be the most complex ‘thing’ in the universe. So does that mean that we can understand everything but each other? That explains a lot :).
Ask Derren Brown! He seems to have quite a complete understanding of his fellow human!
Good, so we agree that we don’t perceive the workings of neurons, we perceive colours, hues, shapes, sound, textures, etc. the direct sense experiences. The reason that we know neurons are involved is through past experiences and learning which we have remembered, and not through direct peception.
Through a microscope?
Well I will summarize my understanding of how we come to experience the world. We perceive the world through our senses and subsequently add concepts to what is perceived and by the addition of the correct concepts to what is perceived we gain knowledge and come to know reality..
I don’t perceive my neurons directly but I believe I have a good grasp of the concept ‘neuron’ and all that this entails.
How are the neurons in your left eye by the way?
Stop it. I agree to no such thing, as I have made abundantly clear.
We don’t perceive “neurons”. We DO perceive the workings of neurons: neurons firing or failing to fire, all your protestations notwithstanding.
Your behavior here is the reason why I see no point in continuing the discussion.
I already told you. Seriously.
What are your views on Iain McGilchrist who Alan has brought back to our attention? One of the talks he gave at Schumacher College can be seen here. In this talk he says:
I doubt that Alan would agree with his thinking here,
Thank you.
Well better than most but still limited.
As he says, his day-job is psychiatrist. Although, reading only what you quote suggests to me he is distinguishing materialism from physicalism.
…my understanding of physics is that in fact there aren’t solid entities with fixed localities in the universe. seems non-controversial to me.
Btw, I am enjoying your buddy Stuart Kauffman as we speak. Thanks for that… it’s way funnier than [take your pick] the Marx Brothers / Monty Python / ?
And what do your “head in the cloud” poets slash minor philosophers say about Paley’s wonderful and very logic idea?
We’re still discussing Paley in this thread. You know?
Then you agree you got R0 from the news. IOW, “the news” triggered your reply like I said.
So you say, but no one else. And not R0 as defined. Your word is NOT gold.
Clearly right. I am not saying that AT ALL. Read again.
Exactly what I am saying. Also, because it’s a static measure, once that happens (mutation/immunity/environment) the old stats are obsolete. Hence the limitation of R0. But that’s not the issue. The issue is that R0 just isn’t “fitness”.
Nope. Valid only in a status-quo. Might as well throw out the old data once a change intervenes. That’s why they cite so many shortcomings of this R0 with regards to this virus. That’s why we have no RELIABLE forecast whatsoever on the [SARS‑CoV‑2]* Virus!
This is plain stupid.
This is not “additional”. Mutations and enviro changes have been discussed.
Funny no one calls it “fitness” and is not even defined as such. Now, who’s the denialist?
*AF edit
On the contrary, I was already aware of R0, but figured that its topicality would mean others were aware of it too in current contexts.
I already linked a paper discussing the use of R0 in the context of fitness. Your response “but it says here in the Daily Telegraph“. Pardon me while I wipe the tears of mirth from my eyes.
“Read again”. That’s 5 points in nonlin bingo. You used the word STATIC. You even shouted it. Your version of STATIC is therefore ‘can take different values as time goes on”. I’d call that DYNAMIC, but suit yourself.
The old stats aren’t ‘obsolete’; the value has changed. Either way, it is exactly the same for R0 as a measure of fitness. However you characterise one – as a dynamic variable or a ‘series of STATIC ones’ (chortle), the other can be characterised in exactly the same way, and is subject to exactly the same limitations and challenges.
Sez you. Your word is not gold, y’know. It’s measuring exactly the same thing – mean number of new instances generated from each individual instance.
The point was in relation to the use of biological fitness to compare the performance of variants, which you claimed distinguishes the two usages, appearing in one but not the other. But you now appear to agree: that’s not a difference after all. Glad to hear it.
You are. This is in every elementary textbook of quantitative population genetics. Oh, I forgot, you no speaky genetics.
Minor quibble here, you appear to be talking about Re, not R0. I’m surprised that nonlin failed to notice this…
Naaah, I’m not really surprised at all.
CharlieM,
James Jeans was an idealist at a time when that was the dominant metaphysical doctrine amongst formally educated people, so it is not a surprise that Jeans interprets modern physics along idealistic terms.
That doesn’t mean that quantum mechanics logically entails idealism, or that a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is less plausible than an idealist version. Jeans had his share of critics in his day, as does Richard Conn Henry today.
It does not reflect well on Gilchrist that he takes it as settled science when there’s a controversy of which he is only aware of one half, because he didn’t do his homework.
My experience is that physicists like Conn Henry and Kastrup who confidently declare that physics shows that reality is fundamentally mental would benefit from talking with psychologists and cognitive scientists, if (as seems reasonable to me) it takes specialized expertise to understand the underlying reality of the mental just as it does to understand the underlying reality of the physical.
Point taken.
As it happens, I’ve just made an important distinction of R0 and effective R (Re) in another thread. When individual immunity lasts for only a limited time, suppression measures, which reduce Re, can keep herd immunity, which depends on R0, from occurring.
Tom English,
Yes, I smiled when I saw your comment re Re. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of dichotomous thinking going on. Even in our ‘toy’ models, “herd immunity” is an asymptote that one approaches. There’s still some chickenpox, etc., out there. Importantly (and unknown), immunity is a continuum: X years after being infected, any one individual may have different, partial immunities to different strains of virus in circulation: the whole range of sub-clinical infections with or without viral shedding…
DNA_Jock,
True, we more reach a shifting equilibrium than emerge victorious.
‘Static’ means the R0 value is statistically calculated and only valid in a STATIC environment. As soon as something changes, the old R0 is useless and a new one needs to be calculated if everything is STATIC again. In a DYNAMIC environment statistics are incoherent, hence no R0 value is available.
False. R0-1 before mutation A (or enviroment change B) has no relationship to R0-2 after any of those changes. R0-1 becomes obsolete (doesn’t factor at all into R0-2 value)
False. Think about it: if I am “natural selection” in need of a “fitness” number to select A vs B strain, do I look at R0-A vs R0-B? I don’t have those. Instead, only after I (“NS”) select over and over again, there will be a statistical R0-A and R0-B to speak of.
Huh?
The only thing I care about is that R0 and Re are not measures of “fitness”. And since you and English are not supporting your buddy in need, I must have a point. Other than that, I am not, nor am I aspiring to become, an epidemiologist. Happy?
That makes no sense. A change in
is vitally useful information.
Only one thing incoherent round here, matey-boy. R0 changes dynamically, which is why people are talking about it changing, in our present fluid circumstances.
You have a strange take on static vs dynamic, but in any case this is no different from organismal fitness. If a mutation changes the R (reproduction number) of carriers of A vs that of non-carriers, you could just as readily say ‘R1 before mutation A has no relationship to R2. R1 becomes obsolete’. You’d be wrong, in that last sentence, unless the unmutated population went extinct, but you could say it. This is not a grounds for asserting a difference.
Natural Selection is the difference between R-A and R-B. If there is a differential, the higher will tend to spread more than the lower, exactly as in viral transmission. Nothing in nature looks at the numbers, it’s a simple numeric fact, precisely mirroring the case of R0’s in two viral strains in a population with no immunity to either (or Re’s, with some immunity, as has been pointed out).
That’s a pity because there are a few things that I wouldn’t mind clearing up, if you don’t mind answering.
Do you equate ‘the workings of neurons’ with ‘the effects produced by neurons’? Would you say your eye defect is classed as a scotoma?
You said that you were aware of around a dozen neurons failing to fire in a small contiguous region in the retina, and here you wrote:
The blind spot (optic disc) takes up an area equivalent to thousands of photoreceptive cells but we do not normally notice it. You are sensing a purplish blotch in the area where you say a dozen or so neurons aren’t firing. Well if you are having an experience of purple something must be active which is causing this sensation. Could it not be possible that these neurons are active in some inefficient or defective way?
So you did. Still just around a dozen playing up?
I don’t recall you telling us how your brain scan went. All was relatively okay I hope?
And it is only right that he should do so.
It is where quantum mechanics is leading, that is the point. People no longer like being called materialists, most would insist that they are physicalists. This way one can believe that energy rather than matter is fundamental without having to go as far as to say that the mental is more fundamental still. Energy can still be regarded as lifeless.
it doesn’t matter what world view someone holds, everyone has their fair share of critics.
Like I said, everyone has their fair share of critics.
McGilchrist is or was a Consultant Emeritus of the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, London, a former research Fellow in Neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore. So I think he has a fair amount of knowledge of both the physical and the mental aspects of humans.
In Age of Wonder – The Singularity Debate, March 30th 2014 he gives his views on the consequences of treating the human being as a machine. I haven’t watched this video through to the end but I will do soon.
We can all see the results of trying to achieve a lasting perfection in the human form and attempting to resist the inevitable consequences of ageing. Just look at the features of the so called celebrities staring out at you from your TV. All they have succeeded in doing is destroying the very thing that made them human, their individuality. They would prefer to be a plastic clone. If your nose is bulging and bent, so what, it is part of your personal history, part of who you are.
We are not machines in which the worn out parts can be replaced. We are living, constantly changing, beings; wholes which are always becoming. We are not parts that make up a whole, we are always wholes with integral parts that are meaningless on their own.
That’s not how I see QM. Idealism is just a mistake, though there are people who continue to make that mistake.
There are plenty of people who consider themselves to be materialists. They may also consider themselves to be physicalists. They tend to take “physicalism” as a more precise term than “materialism”, but both being near enough to the same.
I consider myself to be neither a materialist nor a physicalist nor an immaterialist.
Well we could call anything a mistake without giving any explanation as to why. But that wouldn’t be advancing much of an argument. In my opinion there is are situations in which idealism is relevant, there are also situations in which materialism and physicalism are relevant. We need not discount the virtues of the other views while focusing on one of these.
There are plenty of people who consider themselves to be materialists. They may also consider themselves to be physicalists. They tend to take “physicalism” as a more precise term than “materialism”, but both being near enough to the same.
I consider myself to be neither a materialist nor a physicalist nor an immaterialist.
What difference if any do you see between immaterialism and idealism?
That seems reasonable.
I see it a mistake to take materialism as something to believe. So I take materialism/physicalism as stances to adopt in circumstances where that is helpful. And one can, similarly, take idealism as a stance.
This is stupid. WTF does “R0 changes dynamically” mean? Of course it changes. And it still reflects an equivalent STATIC environment even with all the fudging (mixing R0-1 with R0-2, etc).
False. A “natural selection” would have to look at something (i.e. “fitness”) and only after it looks, you get your R0’s. “Fitness” is “genome” plus “environment” and then “natural selection” decides “go, or no go”, and after enough samples to do statistics you get R0-1 and R0-2.
I see your scam. Only it doesn’t work like that. Selection needs a criteria, hence the “fitness” function. Darwin’s comparison to “artificial selection” has not yet been repudiated. And in that case, indeed, the human designer actually looks at some features (some fitness to the design intent), and only on that basis selects. And so we get the characteristics of the surviving (aka selected) population, and that includes R0.
Then what’s your perspective? In a few words and without referencing some poet/philosopher if possible…
And what about Paley’s excellent argument? Why would you disagree with him (if you do)?
And to reciprocate, that seems reasonable to me.
Sorry that was poor editing on my part. Those were Neil’s words not mine. But I do empathise with his point. We do like putting others in boxes. What is wrong with looking at each situation in context and adjusting one’s point of view accordingly. In my opinion the material world is real but there are things that are difficult to be judged or accounted for in material terms. Love, thinking and consciousness to name but three.
I can see the value in objective idealism.
I guess I’m a kind of behaviorist. But not a standard Skinner behaviorist.
It is confirmation bias.
The true problem being in thinking of material as referring to matter alone, which seems to be why materialism has been revised to physicalism. Love, thinking and consciousness are “activities”, thus implying actions, time, space, relative positions, etc, all of which are also physical (or “material” if you prefer old terminology and if you can understand that it doesn’t refer to matter alone).
I’m not a materialist or physicalist myself, except as a revisable conclusion. So far I haven’t seen a defence for any form of “non-physicalism” that didn’t imply some sort of equivocation.
If it truly were static, and no mutation occurred, R0 would not change. So – precisely as with quantitative fitness (R: reproduction number) – there is an interplay between the environment and the statistic. Environment changes, R changes. Environment stays the same, R doesn’t change. In both cases.
Natural Selection is not a decision-making capacity. Regardless, all differentials that cause a difference in R end up doing the same thing – increasing or decreasing progression through the population, due to that effect on R. As it is with viruses, so it is with genes.
R0/Re changes need criteria too. They can be affected by mutation, behaviour, density, measures. Once again, your attempt to unearth a difference turns up no difference at all.
Darwin had no input to the mathematical formulations of fitness. This is where your amateurishness is exposed: you can’t think past Darwin. I’m not equating R0 in epidemiology to anything in Darwin.
So, just for the sake of argument, if something else other then the “human designer” was able to compare fitness to some metric and select on that basis, how would we tell the difference between that and the “human designer”.
Let’s say the “human designer” left it’s creations while they went for lunch and decided to “let the environment select the fittest” would we be able to tell when lunch time was or not?
In other words, how do you differentiate selection via humans from other types of selection?
Entropy,
Why do you think some illnesses are called physical and some mental? Are people just dumb, and they actually mean they are all physical?
Thinking is indeed an activity. And from a physicalist’s point of view it involves the brain. And this is true, the brain can be said to be the organ of thinking. Inputs from the peripheral senses are received by the brain and it is thinking that combines these inputs to give us a coherent unity.
But objectivity does not come through the senses which can do nothing but give us a personal perspective. And here I will hark back yet again to my favourite, the triangle.
We can look about, see a shape and recognise it as a triangle. Any directly viewed triangle or mental image retrieved from our memory is subjectively related to the physical world. We recognise these as triangles because aside from these images, through our thinking, we have brought up the concept triangle. But unlike the previous images this concept is not individual and separate. This concept is singular and not dependent on any particular time or space. It is the objectively real entity in which all the individual subjective triangles partake iit is not physical, it is ideal.
I have been asked in the past, ‘where is this ideal triangle that you keep going on about?’ It must be just floating in the air somewhere. Anyone who asks this question does not understand what I am talking about because as soon as you ask, ‘where?’ you have related it to the spacial. But any spacial qualities that it does possess are intrinsic to itself and absolute.
We receive the particular and separate from the physical, we receive the general and unified from the ideal, and the combination of the two, the physical and the non-physical, gives us the reality.
To say that everything stems from the physical is to ignore half of the story.
Because the term “physical” is being used to refer to whether there’s some actual damage to the body, rather than to refer to the nature of being. You’re mistaking two different uses of the term.
They’re not dumb, they’re just using the term to mean something different to what we’re discussing.
Objectivity, if it is attainable, would come from the realization that things are what they are regardless of our preferences, tastes, likes or dislikes. It does not consist on our capacity to build concepts. Without beings who can conceptualize there’s no concepts to talk about. No ideal triangles to talk about. That makes concepts dependent on beings who can conceptualize. Concepts are generic representations, and representations are also physical, as far as I can tell.
What does the concept triangle represent? Physical triangle are instances of the concept. The concept is not a representation of anything. As you say it is what it is regardless of our preferences, tastes, likes or dislikes.
Even before there were any human eyes to behold them the stars, Deneb,Altair and Vega formed an instance of the concept triangle. This relationship does not depend on an observer. We didn’t form the concept triangle, we discovered it.
I don’t agree with that.
You are using “concept triangle” to mean the same thing as “ideal triangle”. And that’s what I don’t think is right. The term “concept” is quite vague, and I’m sure it means different things to different people. But, at least in part, it is connected with how we think. The ideal triangle, by contrast, is supposed to be something like a Platonic entity and thus disconnected from our thinking.
This is clearly wrong. We see a triangular relationship between them. But that relationship is in the eye of the beholder.
Then can you tell me the difference between the concept ‘triangle’ and the ideal triangle? We arrive at both by thinking. What is vague about a two dimensional three sided closed figure?
For me, the concept is how I think about triangles. The ideal triangle is an object of that thinking, albeit a fictional object.
I can’t speak for anybody else. The term “concept” is too vague, and it seems clear people disagree about “concept”. People who can agree about the ideal triangle can still disagree about the concept of triangle.
Well all I can do is ask you what you take the concept triangle to be. It is true that people can have mistaken concepts but this does not mean that there is a true and complete concept which we can all agree on. What is your understanding of the concept triangle?
In my opinion to call something fictional just because it is not congruent with a physical object is the result of thinking in an exclusive materialist/physicalist manner.
Doubtful, Altair is one on the fastest moving stars and closer to the Earth than Vega, the patterns in the sky we see are not fixed.
The relationship depends the position and point in time . Just like a lunar eclipse
Humans formed the concept of concept. I expect we use the concept of concept as a tool to refine our understanding of what a triangle is.
I just answered that in my prior post. Why are you asking again?
Fair enough. But that has nothing to do with why I use “fictional”.
All triangles. You said so yourself before. I didn’t think you’d need that. Concepts represent and summarize.
The other way around. You don’t learn about triangles by looking at empty space, you’re given definitions and “samples” of what the concept represents and you build a concept.
If that were true you wouldn’t be able to point to instances of what the concept represents.
We humans invent those concepts. So they’re what they are because we have agreed to them and shared them with others who also agree, mostly because we teach them so.
They are just there. It’s you who thinks of them forming an instance of what the concept “triangle” summarizes.
Without the observer there’s no concepts. Even “relationship” is a concept referring to a plethora of things. We humans deal in concepts. This is so foundational that we do it without even realizing what we’re doing. We do this so naturally that we often end up mistaking concepts for their referents. We did not discover the relationship, the relationship is one way in which we describe what we discovered, which is those stars and their relative positions.
I must admit I’ve never really understood the difference between “artificial” selection and “natural” selection. In both cases, directed selection is at work, and in both cases that process produces an outcome that is a function of the selection criteria. I guess artificial selection produces poodles and natural selection produces coyotes. But change the selection criteria and it could easily be the other way around, because the process is the same.
And yes, Darwin understood the process of selection as well as any dog, corn, or cattle breeder. His importance lies in recognizing that nature selects just as certainly, by differential survival of those organisms more favored by the selection criteria. And unlike the dog, corn, or cattle breeder, he had a clearer idea of WHY this process works. The concept of selection isn’t about to be repudiated.
And here you are showing your limitation in understanding the concept triangle. The relative locations of the stars does not matter. as long as they are not in perfect alignment and so producing a line segment (although this can still be regarded as a triangle with one apex at 180 degrees) they will always form a triangle.
So pick any position in the galaxy relative to these three stars and tell me why the stars would not form a triangle when viewed from that position?
I don’t think you understand what I am getting at.
So your concept of a triangle is not vague, it is the same as an ideal triangle. I will agree with that.
Well if you are using it as a description of something that is the invention of the imagination, can you tell me what it is about the concept triangle that has been invented and why would it not apply to triangles before humans came along to invent it?