[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:
That’s because there isn’t one. It’s the same process, genetically. Just plant or animal breeders become part (a very important part) of the niche.
It is vague, which is probably why you did not think I had answered.
No, definitely not the same as an ideal triangle.
Everything. But, again, you are confusing things. I described the ideal triangle as fictional. I did not say that the concept of triangle is fictional.
My concept of triangle consists of my abilities for thinking about triangles. Those abilities did not exist before I existed.
Really? “There is in an important sense only one perceiver, and that this perceiver is one with that which is perceived.”? Wow!
Not how ‘confirmation bias works’. Look it up and try again.
Not what I said. You didn’t understand anything.
It better be. Otherwise it’s just stuff that happens and you have no right to call it “selection”. That’s why nothing ever makes sense in “evolution”. Raping words should be punished by law.
No, they don’t “need” anything. They’re just observations (measurements of what’s observed).
If there were a “mathematical formulations of fitness”, someone would have replied with it. I’ve been asking for a looooong time about that. And crickets. R0 isn’t it. No one is supporting you on this anyway. Give it up.
That’s right, there isn’t. R can be changed by intention just as readily as by some ‘blind’ environmental factor.
Plants and animals also select. This has been answered elsewhere:
“6. Natural Selection is Intelligent Selection which is always done by an Intelligent Selector such as Darwin’s breeder which is an intelligent and willful player that takes intentional actions to reach preset goals. Predators, plants, birds, insects or bacteria, all show intelligence and the willful pursuit of predetermined goals. When interacting with the inert environment, organisms self-select rather than being selected by this environment. As soon as the organism dies and becomes part of the lifeless universe, all selection of that entity ceases. Rocks do not select each other, do not self select and are not selected by the environment.”
Haha. No, he had no freaking idea how stupid he was. And of course, anyone that’s not a moron could have seen back then as we can plainly see today that you can select to kingdom come and you’re still not gonna get a cat out of a fish as his retard “theory” claims.
‘All triangles’ refers to something that is infinite in number. The concept triangle is singular. That is the point.
Well that is the way we learn about most things. Children learning about nature observe particular specimens and slowly learn how they fit into the whole of life. This does not mean that the concept life has no ground in reality. Individual organisms come and go but life remains and will outlast any individual within its domain.
We can all agree that the object in front of us is triangular because we share the singular concept, triangle. The concept does not somehow become multiple just because more than one person is thinking it. We can point to the particular and declare that it is a triangle precisely because we share the concept.
CharlieM:
As you say it is what it is regardless of our preferences, tastes, likes or dislikes.
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.
So what exactly have we invented in the concept triangle?
So humans decide how the stars in the heavens are juxtaposed? There are no angles or relative distances until humans invent them?
So do you think there is any objective relationship between the three stars I mentioned that matches the concept triangle? My thinking on the concept is that it is a a two dimensional three sided closed figure with straight edges. What concept of a triangle do you have that is different from that?
Triangularity is not something we have invented, it is a common relational feature of much that we see in the world.
Then you don’t know what I mean by the concept triangle. How do you recognise that an object is triangular if your concept is so vague?
So in your opinion our conception of a triangle shares nothing in common with the ideal triangle?
You are adding unnecessary complications. If I ask you what your concept of a triangle is, all I am asking is to give me a general description of a triangle. You seem to think that it is too vague for you to be able to do this. So you cannot tell us what a triangle is without being specific?
The concept triangle is singular but it refers to any triangles, that’s the point.
I never said that no concepts have grounds in reality. I said the very contrary, I said that concepts summarize and represent. What they summarize and represent is called “referents”, and such referents can be things in reality, other concepts, etc. We make full systems out of that.
Exactly, and we share it because we teach each other those concepts.
We invented it as a representation of the figures you like so much talking about.
No, humans decide to call that a juxtaposition, to call tha pattern a triangle, etc.
Where are those lines connecting the stars Charlie? Nowhere. Not a single line there. You imagine the lines, and then measure angles and distances accordingly. It’s all conceptual work. The stars never agreed to have relative positions, or to have imaginary lines connecting them, or for those lines to have angles between them, let alone measured in degrees. It’s all our work. Our way of describing what we see given a conceptual framework of our own making. The conceptual frameworks are for us to develop and understand each other. Nature doesn’t care.
ETA: Of course there’s three stars and of course they’re in different places, and of course we therefore can describe them as forming a triangle if we wish so. That’s one of the uses we can make of the concept “triangle”. But there’s really no lines connecting them. No real lines to measure angles for.
Exactly. Do you really think that those stars are adimensional points laying in a bidimensional surface with unidimensional straight lines connecting them? Or, rather, maybe that’s a way we describe them for convenience for some kinds of studies or analyses?
Oh, I think we hold a very similar, if not the very same, concept. At least as far as this conversation goes.
Well, then Euclid was an idiot. He should have left it to The Triangle to reveal itself to us magically, rather than propose some foundational axioms and develop a geometry.
Nonlin.org,
We know someone else like that, don’t we kids?
And yet there’s all this data indicating that is indeed something approximating what happened. How to deal with that? I know – pretend it’s an illusion.
I agree. But that’s because you are far from clear on what you mean.
I take my concept to be a collection of abilities, including my ability to recognize triangles. It is vague only it is not an explicit thing that I can describe. My concept is something to use, not something to describe.
I don’t know about “our conception of a triangle”. As far as I know, we do not share conceptions.
My conception of a triangle is my thinking about a triangle. And I doubt that my thinking has three corners and three sides.
Then why not just ask for a general description of a triangle, instead of confusing it with talk of concepts?
Fixed, I think.
The concept of triangle is not an ideal triangle (whatever that means). An ideal triangle is an object. But concepts are not objects — not even a little bit.
The concept of a triangle is what we use when we recognize “if something is a Euclidean triangle, then then the sum of its interior angles is 180 degrees” is a valid inference. It is not a drawing in the imagination but awareness of a meaning.
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.
Problem is with three dimensions, those three stars could be viewed as one ,two or three points, they may be viewed as a triangular shape from some perspectives.
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?
Viewed? We do not view Castor and Pollux forming a triangle the Earth, we see them as a straight line, and from what I understand that would be a concept triangle.
Would like to, but have questions,
Like what is the difference between a concept triangle and the concept of a triangle and a triangular pattern ?
😂”cat out of a fish” 😂
Keep beating up that straw man.
I don’t see why it’s different. There can be physical causation and there can be mental causation. The former comes from without and the latter from within.
Thanks
I think that statement would take a fair bit of qualifying.
I agree with objective idealism in the fact that I believe that there is a higher reality accessed through my mind but not just confined to my mind and thus it can be said to be objective.
My worldly existence gives me the impression that I am an isolated being confined within my skin. But in my opinion reality is much more unified and our isolation is just a necessary step to a higher unity.
Through thinking I know that to qualify as a triangle a figure must be a two dimensional three sided closed figure with straight edges. Do we all agree on this? Now within these constraints this single concept contains an infinite range of forms.
So any physical triangle has within it the laws of the triangle in a limited form. Whereas the concept itself is archetypal in its dynamism and expresses all possibilities within the law.
It’s different because when they refer to physical illness they mean that there’s actual harm to the body, while the mental the problem is with what the person thinks to be the case. That doesn’t mean that mental activities are not physical, it just means to make a difference between being sick and imagining to be sick sometimes to the point of making you actually sick.
So the term physical has different meanings in each context. Context is important Charlie.
And here I think we are having a problem with what I mean by concept. The concept doesn’t just summarize, it encapsulates the whole. I’ll need to make myself more clear in the way I am talking about concepts, but it’s difficult.
If you have a mental image of any triangle, say an equilateral triangle, and then imagine it to be morphing into all other triangular shapes from sides going from zero to infinite lengths. Then this gets close to what I mean by the concept. A summary leaves details out, this leaves nothing out. It contains the attributes of every triangle possible.
Yep. It summarizes and represent all instances of what we’d call a triangle. As I already said.
That’s just a very weird way to agree to what I said: the concept of a triangle summarizes and represents all instances of things we’d describe as triangles. I do not know why we’re discussing this any more.
Just like we teach the concepts of evolution.
We invent names such as ‘triangle’ but what about the reality behind the name? It is descriptive of a figure with three angles and there are plenty of examples from nature that represent this figure. We invented the name but not the form.
Yes but it doesn’t matter what we call the pattern, it still exists.
In order to summarize and represent, concepts do leave things out. Otherwise you’d be unable to apply it to any other instances of things we’d describe as triangles. The concept only contains the most basic “rules,” while the instances worked out to abstract this concept had dimensions, were drawn on a blackboard and were large enough for the whole class to witness, drawn in our notebooks with a number 2 pencil, or drawn in a computers screen, or were found in the textbook and were very tiny, etc. All those details were left out in order to abstract a minimal thing, a concept, that we can now use as appropriate.
The concept is that plastic because it leaves loads of details out.
We don’t need to draw lines in space to determine whether or not a point is contained within the area of the triangle formed by these stars. I don’t care who agreed with who, it is still an objective fact that there is a specific area between these stars even if it has gone unnoticed for millions of years. We did not invent the relationship.
Do you really need to have the lines drawn in before you can recognise a triangle?
Yep. Just like that.
We decided to abstract those forms into that concept. The concept and the decision were ours.
It’s us who think in terms of patterns and who need the abstractions Charlie. Of course we base those concepts on what we experience. That doesn’t mean that what we experience requires the concepts in order to be. No beings who can conceptualize, no concepts to talk about. Concepts are summaries and representations. Concepts do not rule the universe. No universe: no concepts. No concepts: the universe goes on all right.
No I don’t think that. They do not form an ideal triangle, only a representation of it.
If it is shared then it is not dependent on the individual. We can see the objective fact in our mind whereas the actual physical representation we see with our eyes is a subjective image.
Euclid was in no way an idiot. In his mind he could see and work out the universal laws through the figures that he drew.
I take my concept to be a collection of abilities, including my ability to recognize triangles. It is vague only it is not an explicit thing that I can describe. My concept is something to use, not something to describe.
Okay. forget about how we use the word ‘concept’ Do you agree that a triangle is a two dimensional, three sided, straight edged, closed figure?
Okay, i can see that we’re getting tied up in the word, ‘concept’, so hopefully I’ve simplified things in my previous post. So again, do you agree that a triangle is a two dimensional, three sided, straight edged, closed figure?
Okay, so if you consider an ideal triangle to be an object, then it is objective, right?
The other way around Charlie, You project a representation of a triangle into those stars.
I didn’t say it was dependent on the individual alone. How many times more should I say that we abstract those concept from our experiences? We still have to agree and show each other instances of what we mean by triangle before we can start talking about whether what we see is objective. Once we reach and agreement we can check if we are sharing the same, or similar enough, experience by applying the same concepts to the same features. The rules and laws and whatever are for us, not for the universe. They describe, summarize, represent. The universe goes on all right with or without beings who can conceptualize.
From what possible position could they be seen as one point? Apart from a few very specific positions they will always take up the positions which make up the apexes of a triangle.
I meant viewed from the position of an imagined observer. Please understand me to mean that it is the relative positions from a certain aspect.
From our position on earth it is easy to see Castor and Pollux as forming the other two apexes of a triangle with us being the third.
Yes I can see I was causing some confusion the way I was using the word, ‘concept’ So please think of the entity I am talking about as the ideal triangle.
If by “ideal triangle” all you mean is “a triangle as defined by Euclidean geometry”, as distinct from, say, three pieces of wood nailed together, then sure. It’s an object insofar as it is the content of a thought — it’s what phenomenologists would call an “intentional object”. That doesn’t tell us anything about its ontological status, such as whether or not geometric figures have mind-independent existence.
Mental illness is not a case of imagining oneself to be sick. In many cases of mental illness the subject does not even know that she/he is ill. Perhaps you are confusing hypochondria with mental illness in general.
That’s fine, so long as we agree that the summary is more inclusive than what is essentially triangular in the physical figure or the subsequent mental image brought about by the figure.
You’re missing the point. I’m saying that “physical” in physicalism doesn’t have the same meaning as “physical” in the context of physical vs mental illness. I’m saying that the term “physical” has a different meaning depending on the context.
Before entering a conversation you should make sure that you understand what the conversation is about.
That’s the point of conceptualizing, that we’d have a summary+representation simplified enough to be plastic and thus applicable when confronted with new experiences.
Haha.
Don’t you know the fish came on land and became an astronaut, etc? Craziest story ever.
Back to Spinoza then. Unless you think there’s both a “higher reality” and a “you”. And if so, isn’t the “higher reality” the one that generated the “you” (Paley’s argument)?
That depends on what you mean by “closed figure”.
Nonlin.org,
Haha indeed. The Data Doth Not Exist, Also Sprach Nonlin. Locked-in syndrome.
To get to objective idealism, what you need is an argument that the essence of the world, or what the world is in itself, is essentially mental or mind-like, and that the physical is merely how the world appears.
For what it’s worth, my worldly existence most definitely does not give me the impression that I’m an isolated being confined within my own skin.
That is helpful. When we see the Summer Triangle we are not seeing an Ideal Triangle, we are seeing a pattern which shares aspects of the Ideal.
ETA. Reading your last post , it is more than matching patterns, Something is perceiving a like “substance” or essence , in this case an ideal triangle and the ideal Charlie. More or less.
Uh, no, this sort of plays into nonlin’s delusion. Once again, as has been mentioned many times, the usual knuckle-dragging creationist seems to think that evolution means some CURRENT species somehow morphing into some other CURRENT species. Hence nonlin’s assertion that Darwin’s theory predicts that cats will somehow turn into fishes.
And I suppose we all get tired of saying that someone coming back 100 million years from now will find that all descendants of today’s fish will STILL be fish, perhaps wildly different in shape or life style but still fish. And the descendants of mammals have ALL been mammals since the line diverged, and will always BE mammals.
What all this data indicates is that lineages branch, and the branches branch, but branches simply do not merge. I speculate that nonlin understands that he is just as human as his grandfather. But go back much further than that, and I think his model gets hazy in his mind. The notion of a distant ancestor isn’t actually thinkable.
Flint,
Sure, though ‘approximating’ was intended to give some latitude, compared to the fantastical, extreme version of the notion: a one-generation sideways leap. Because no-one could be so stupid as to think everyone could be so stupid … could they? 🤔
Giv’em an inch!
It would be pretty crazy if that were the correct understanding of biological evolution rather than silly creationist cartoons. You are very familiar with Jack Chick, I suspect.
Binary thinking seems endemic in nonlin. Night, day, sea, land, etc. Intertidal regions, swamps prone to flash-flooding and dessication.