Thanks for the clarity! I had been wondering what the exact argument was.
(I haven't had time to read the book for myself.) A comment: how is this
really any different from the standard "God of the Gaps" ad hoc fallacy?
The above is worded so as to avoid that interpretation (i.e., premise 5 is
"there is no regularity" as opposed to "we have not yet detected a
regularity"). But nonetheless, I can't see any essential difference.
After all, in a scientific context, all (5) could ultimately reduce to is
"we have detected no regularity". It seems unlikely that Dembski could
really prove the negative assertion in the above formulation of 5. (Does
he try to? If so, what is his argument?)
Moreover, there seems to me to be some basic problem with using the above
in a scientific theory. How is "designedness" an observable property? How
may such a hypothesis be falsified? That is, what criteria exist such as
would allow us to discern a real case of "designedness" from a case where
designedness is simply a groundless ad hoc explanation? No matter how much
one wishes to dim (or deny!) the distinction between science and
nonscience, a valid explanation of any kind must still be verifiable and
falsifiable. Otherwise, we might as well suppose that the regularity in
nature comes from Petersen's "Fortean Drops"! Indeed, if Dembski's
argument is valid, how is removing "designer" and substituting "stuff from
the fourth dimension" any *less* valid? This makes the further point that
Dembski's argument is not a complete disjunct. If we are throwing in
supernatural elements to account for the physical world, why must it be an
"intelligent designer"? Why not magical Petersen-esque comets, or anything
else our imaginations can come up with?
So, to rephrase my argument from the start, I think that Dembski's fifth
premise is more strongly worded than evidence can support. It is probably
impossible to prove the negative assertion that no natural deterministic
process is at work in nature, at least without a truly complete
understanding of nature. (Besides which, many would argue that
deterministic processes have already been discovered...!) It ought then be
reduced to a more limited claim: that no deterministic process has yet been
proven to Dembski's satisfaction. But this, in turn, is no longer a strict
denial of natural regularity, and consequently does not satisfy the
disjunctive syllogism implicit in his argument. He is, then, left with at
least three apparent options: either that there is a natural process which
is not yet been discovered or proven sufficiently, that some supernatural
process other than an intelligent designer is at work, or that there is an
intelligent designer. And the problem of simply proposing a designer (or
some other supernatural element) is that such a hypothesis would be ad hoc,
unfalsifiable, and unverifiable -- i.e., God of the Gaps.
Frankly, I think ID would do better simply promoting the standard Argument
from Design as found in natural theology. (There are problems implicit in
that, too, of course, but it would seem to be a more robust argument than
simply "we can't show it is due to a natural process, therefore God did
it".) Sure, the Argument from Design is pretty explicitly a philosophical
rather than scientific argument. But then, isn't it the ID theorists who
want there to be no distinction between science and philosophy at all...?
I'll be interested in any comments anyone has on this. And before anyone
throws this in my face, yes, I do know that it is somewhat wrong to comment
on a book which I haven't even read. But hopefully, if I have some basic
misunderstandings about the nature of Dembski's arguments, people can just
fill me in.
Regards,
Mike Hardie
<hardie@globalserve.net>
http://www.globalserve.net/~hardie/dv/