At 0236 PM 10/17/2000, you wrote
Chris
> >This is a too-brief exposition of material from a larger essay that I have
> >not yet typed from my notebook. It is not about ID as such, nor even merely
> >supernaturalistic ID as such, but it deals with and is relevant to both.
> >
> >Problems with Supernaturalism
> >
> >I think it would be good to eliminate a lot of the confusion and silliness
> >from the debate over ID. To promote this goal, I propose that we eliminate
> >references to supernatural designers and methodologically assume that
> >*only* naturalistic designers (i.e., aliens, etc.) be considered as
> >possible intelligent designers. That is, ID proponents should propose
> >naturalistic designers with sufficient definition to be meaningfully
> >identified if we happen to run into them, and that ID proponents *drop* the
> >Rationalistic attempt to define design without respect to the nature of the
> >designer, in the lame *hope* that somehow, if design is ever discovered, it
> >can be attributed to a supernatural being.
[...]
> Richard
> Chris, I fail to see why IDers should accept this suggestion. They claim
> that they have a method of detecting ID without regard to the nature of the
> designer, be he natural or supernatural. They are therefore under no
> obligation to differentiate between natural and supernatural designers. What
> they *are* under an obligation to do (but have failed to do) are the
> following
>
> 1. Define what they mean by ID.
> 2. Establish that their methods can do what they're claimed to do.
> 3. Cease to claim that mainstream scientists reject ID a priori because they
> have a philosophical objection to supernatural explanations. (They may have
> such an objection, but, since ID does not necessarily involve the
> supernatural, the argument is a non sequitur.)
Chris
Well, if they would define what they mean by ID in terms that were demonstrably
sound and empirically testable, that would be fine. But, as long as they
are trying
to sneak supernaturalism in, they can't very well do that because
supernaturalism
has no empirically testable distinguishing features. The moment it becomes
testable, it's no longer supernaturalistic ID. That is, the moment they
define ID
well enough to make it empirically meaningful, it loses any need for a
supernatural designer. Mike Gene's "Paleyian designer" is a case in point. It
supposedly has empirical implications, but in taking them on, it loses its
supernaturalism. It becomes merely *any* being(s) who can design life as we
have found it, who can manipulate molecules in the right ways.
Ralph
> I guess I don't see why this would be such a problem for ID, Chris. You're
> saying that a supernatural agency leaves no empirically testable
distinguishing
> features. If any such features are found, it automatically, by
definition, makes
> the agency non-supernatural. I agree but I don't see why IDers would feel
> compelled to accept such a definition. To paraphrase Steve ID is about
> design, not the designer.
Chris
Well, yes and no. I can come up with a concept of design that would be reliable
and testable in a naturalistic Universe (at least within fairly wide
bounds), but it
would instantly fall apart if we include supernatural beings because we have no
idea of how they would work or even why they *would* work. Jones-type theistic
ID theorists and creationistic ID-theorists will generally not accept such
a concept
of design because it does not filter in favor of arguing that life and
evolution of
life are designed (Howard van Till and other reasonable theists would not
mind, I
think). This is the problem Dembski's theory has: hish filter filters in
favor of typical
ID theory views, but it has no justification for doing so except that
that's the way
he has defined it in order to make it compatible with Jones-type ID theory.
I think there is something to be said for the probability approach, *given*
that we
can effectively and reliably eliminate unintelligent processes that produce
otherwise-improbable structures. This will not be as trivial as some may think
because, in some cases, unknown unintelligent naturalistic processes could
be at
work. It has happened a number of times in the history of science that
things that
were thought to be designed turned out to have perfectly fine unintelligent
naturalistic explanations (the motions of the planets, for example).
The one thing I can see being a reliable indicator of design is strongly
*conceptual* content. Books, much art, and many other designed things have
obvious (though often unnoticed) conceptual content/meaning. If all humans
disappeared from Earth, leaving all human artifacts, aliens could come and
conceptually "reconstruct" our species, including our knowledge and much of our
history, etc. from the things left behind. This would be largely true even
if all bits
of actual language were first removed as well.
This is why I have said that finding the first ten million digits of pi
perfectly and
simply encoded in decimal form in the human genome would be a sign of
*some* design (at least to the extent of figuring out how to insert such a
string of
DNA without corrupting the functionality of the genome and ensuring that this
stretch of DNA was perfectly preserved from generation to generation), at least
in a prima facie sense (we might want to consider whether a naturally-occurring
unintelligent "pi generator" might be possible). Pi (represented in decimal
digits,
at least) is at least quasi-conceptual.
And even better indicator would be discovering a ten-million character book
*about* pi encoded in the human genome in the same way. That is, if a large
amount of mathematical information about pi, including formulas for its
calculation, relationships to e (the base of natural logarithms), and so
on, were
found encoded straightforwardly in a clean, well-defined language
(something like
Loglan, I suppose), I would be inclined to take that as a sign of design at
least
for that stretch of DNA.
Even better, would be a book on physics, which, when translated, yielded ideas
which *vastly* advanced our knowledge of the physical world (perhaps giving us
faster-than-light travel, or something that current mainstream scientists
mostly
claim is impossible).
Why *conceptual* information? Because concepts are the one thing that we
know of that is definitely intelligence-based. Concepts are formed by a
process of
abstraction, and are used by minds to make thinking with large amounts of data
feasible in spite of the limitations of immediate consciousness (such as being
able to hold in focus only a few things at time).
Most machines, as we know them, are conceptual in a closely-related sense, as
are our houses, our clothing, and so on. Aliens, even if they did not think in
exactly what we'd recognize as concepts, would nevertheless produce
recognizably designed things if they were within our realm of understanding
at all,
because of this "conceptual" aspect of their products.
But the Jones-type ID theorists will not accept this, because no such
conceptuality has been found in nature except in conjunction with humans or
other intelligent animals, and because God would have no inherent need for
concepts at all. God's consciousness would have none of the limitations of
human consciousness; *all* details of existence, including all details of
relationships and such of components of existence would be inherently and
statically "in focus" in his "mind."
Thus, without special argument, we'd have to assume that God would design
only things that did not have the kind of conceptual meaning that books
have, or
the weaker conceptual meaning that cars and houses have.
That's if we can make any meaningful design-relevant assumptions at all about
such a being.
Ralph
> Also, I think at least some IDers are banking on the
> idea that, if design is ever validated, most non-scientists (read "the
public") will
> equate design with "god did it" and never mind the nuances of ID theory.
Chris
Yes. In fact, I've been working on a science-fiction story in which just such a
thing happens (not with respect to life, but the entire universe). The
designer of
the Universe turns out not to be supernatural at all, of course (I'm an
atheist,
after all).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 18 2000 - 02:52:11 EDT