"Stephen E. Jones" wrote:
[snip]
> I was well aware that Dembski's explanatory filter aims to eliminate chance,
> which means "all relevant chance hypotheses".
>
> I regard this as meaning "all" *known* and "relevant chance hypotheses".
>
> I don't regard this as the same as "all possible (non-design) hypotheses"
> because that would require omniscience.
[snip]
> >IY>I substituted
> >>the word "non-design" for the word "chance" because I thought it
> >>would be clearer for people who had not read Dembski's book.
>
> On such matters one should stick to what Dembski actually said. I cannot
> see how "all possible (non-design) hypotheses" is clearer than "all relevant
> chance hypotheses" and in fact Ivar's substitution is: a) wrong, substituting
> "all possible" for "all relevant"; and 2) without the "possible" and
> reinserting "relevant" it is then just a meaningless tautology. *Of course*
> one detects design by eliminating "all [relevant] (non-design) hypotheses".
>
> >IY>Dembski defines design on page 36 as the "set-theoretic complement"
> >>of "regularity" and "chance" and later points out that regular
> >>hypotheses can be treated as special cases of chance hypotheses in
> >>which single outcomes have high probability.
>
> And?
There are only three outcomes from Dembski's Explanatory Filter:
regularity, chance, and design. (See the diagram on page 37 of TDI.)
Further, in a footnote on page 146 of TDI, Dembski writes:
"But since regularity can be assimilated to chance as the special
case of probabilities collapsing to zero and one, in a broader sense
we may say that chance is the primary default option in explanation."
If one applies this to the filter, there are two possible outcomes:
chance and design. Hence, chance is the same as non-design.
Steve is suggesting that chance hypotheses should be divided into
known and unknown chance hypotheses. Wesley Elsberry made a similar
point when he suggested that "unknown cause" should be added as a
possible outcome of Dembski's filter. Both ideas are sensible. The
problem for Dembski is that both destroy the logic of his filter.
Previously, the logic was that if an event wasn't due to chance
(including regularity), then it must be due to design. I doubt that
such a filter is practical but, at least, it is logical. The logic
of the revised filter is that if an event is not due to chance, then
it must be due to design or to some unknown cause. But how can one
now ever eliminate the unknown cause and, thus, deduce design? The
only way that Dembski gets to design is by eliminating ALL other
causes. Assuming that Dembski does lack "omniscience," the outcome
of the filter is necessarily either chance or unknown; one never gets
to design. Such a filter is worthless to Dembski and to everyone
else.
Ivar
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 30 2000 - 22:46:40 EST