[ 28 February 2002: Message edited by: Tom Stalnaker ]

As I consider myself a common run-of-the-mill, even amateur, ID theorist, I’ll venture a response (before the moderator gets at us!?). If we allow Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms to stand as a good way of thinking about the concepts of Darwinism and Intelligent Design, then what I have to say will make more sense. (By the way, I’m not willing to accept (whether Kuhn thought so or not) the idea that no paradigm actually “gets at” objective reality. I think that science does often get closer to the truth, though not without sometimes prolonged “retrograde motion.”)

Others have pointed out that new paradigms don’t always completely eradicate those they replace. Oxygen theory probably did eradicate phlogiston theory, but relativity did not eliminate Newtonian mechanics. The present case of ID v Darwinism seems to me to resemble the latter, in that ID would not replace Darwinism, but would serve to define the boundaries within which it operates. Just as relativity transcends Newtonian mechanics for very large velocities and masses, so ID transcends Darwinism for innovations in morphologies.

Now to your question regarding a positive definition of ID. I see ID as an expansion of the philosophy of science from the present naturalistic frame of reference, to one which accepts intelligent agency as a given in the universe. It is directly a question of scientific philosophy, and indirectly a question of methodology. The Chemist Michael Polanyi turned his attention from chemistry to philosophy in order to combat the notion of naturalistic reductionism both because of the harm that the latter did to the culture, and because of the harm it did to science. Although I’m no expert on his writings, it seems to me that he sought to correct the erroneous notions of physicalism, because it missed the important point that intelligent agency could only be discounted at great peril to the future of science and community. (Witness the horrors of 20th century totalitarianism!)

What you seem to be seeking is some kind of positive identification of the Agent to replace the positive identification of the “blind watchmaker” (Variation and Natural Selection.) But Variation and Natural Selection are not being replaced, and what’s more, it is not necessary to identify the designer of life. It would be like asking a forensic scientist to identify a killer before he could justify his craft, or an archeologist to identify the people responsible for the artifacts she exhibits before we allow that archeology is a legitimate science. All that ID theory is asserting is that the history of biological development properly fits into the class of sciences that use Dembski’s explanatory filter to investigate informational sources and structures. Its evidence, experiments, and theories all relate to materials and events in the past. Even if we saw some kind of novel structure appear in a new generation of fruit flies after radiating their parents, we could not say in a deductive fashion that such an event proved that every biological structure in nature came about that way. The whole notion stands on a long string of extremely low probability events, so that there would not be even the possibility that such an experiment could be consistently reproduced. (Remember the cold fusion confusion?) All that could be said is that an extremely rare event lent some support to the notion that chance processes are in fact able to jump across some breadth of probability ravines to generate new complexities. (Of course, no such thing has yet happened.)

Hey, I’m running at the keyboard. Let me know what you think.

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and what’s more, it is not necessary to identify the designer of life. It would be like asking a forensic scientist to identify a killer before he could justify his craft, or an archeologist to identify the people responsible for the artifacts she exhibits before we allow that archeology is a legitimate science.

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Originally posted by Tom Stalnaker:

Hello again Tom:
Good comments. Please allow me to discuss a couple of them... [I'll bracket my comments.]

You wrote:

Suppose that someone found what looked like tools, and these were dated to a period and place in which no known humans were thought to exist. Coming across this piece of data, we, as scientists, would not be satisfied to stop there. We would seek some independent evidence that humans existed in that period and place, such as fossilized bones. If we searched and searched, and no evidence of humans was forthcoming, we might conclude that some mistake might have been made in our design inference -- perhaps we mis-calculated the probability of those apparent tools being made by natural processes.

[If there is amibiguity as to the identity of the artifacts, then there will be ambiguity as to the origin. If the artifact has the complexity and specifity of a turbine engine, then it might be more difficult to dismiss it as caused by chance or law. Other explanations might suggest themselves, such as: visitors from another place, removal of other evidence, etc.]

I can't imagine a case in which we would consider our design inference itself a scientific hypothesis.

[It seems to me that notion of the existence of intelligent agents is a necessary condition in forensics, archeology and the rest. Why not biology?]

So, by analogy, we should feel scientifically dissatisfied until we have proposed some coherent theory regarding how the CSI was instilled in life.

How something was accomplished is not a defeater in science. There are mysterious artifacts all over the place. Two that come to mind are the stone statues on Easter Island, and the circular scars in the skulls of some Egytian skeletons. Further, the ID project does not restrict or discourage the search for the identity or methods of the intelligent agent responsible for life. I think that Francis Crick and Carl Sagan would have looked in outer space for such beings.]

From my very limited point of view, even if no coherent theory of how CSI came to be in life has been proposed (and for all I know there have been some), it would at least be helpful if people would outline what form a possible hypothesis might take.

[This would be difficult until a discovery was made about the agents responsible; their ways, abilities, and thoughts.]

Look forward to your reply.

Columbo

p.s. I posted a paper in the archive. Have you seen it?

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"A properly formed theory of ID would include some coherent theory regarding how the CSI was instilled in life. A design inference only takes us so far and leaves our scientific curiosity wanting. I feel that a design inference should be a call for further investigation, rather than a finished product."

"[The design inference] may lead you to an alternative causal account of the appearance of the various life-forms, but in itself its just an indirect piece of evidence suggesting the need for such an account."

AND

"I would regard a design inference as nothing more than a call for further investigation, rather than a finished product."

AND

"We should feel scientifically dissatisfied until we have proposed some coherent theory regarding how the CSI was instilled in life."

In other words, we need to be able to provide a chain of natural causation for how CSI became expressed in the object of interest. But this is precisely what the design inference is saying is not possible, at least with regard to the origin of CSI. At best a chain of natural causation will re-express already present CSI. I argue this at great length in NFL and I encourage Tom to read it, especially the third and sixth chapter.

Tom is doing science the old way, in which nature constitutes an unbroken nexus of natural causes. This is inconsistent with an information-theoretic conception of nature, and it is precisely such a conception to which ID is committed. Note that information theory cannot be reduced to chains of natural causes. As naturalistic a philosopher as Fred Dretske agrees. Writing in _Knowledge and the Flow of Information_, he remarks:

"It may seem as though the transmission of information ... is a process that depends on the causal inter-relatedness of source and receiver. The way one gets a message from s to r is by initiating a sequence of events at s that culminates in a corresponding sequence at r. In abstract terms, the message is borne from s and r by a causal process which determines what happens at r in terms of what happens at s. The flow of information may, and in most familiar instances obviously does, depend on underlying causal processes. Nevertheless, the information relationships between s and r must be distinguished from the system of causal relationships existing between these points."

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I can't imagine a case in which we
would consider our design inference itself a scientific hypothesis.

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[ 01 March 2002: Message edited by: Tom Stalnaker ]

[ 01 March 2002: Message edited by: Tom Stalnaker ]

[ 01 March 2002: Message edited by: Tom Stalnaker ]

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Originally posted by Tom Stalnaker:

I, more than most people I know, would love to see a paradigm shift from scientific materialism. What I seek, then, is a way that I can imagine an alternative. One of the things the Scientific Revolution was predicated on was an elimination of God and supernatural forces from an understanding of the world; I would argue that this was not some nefarious antireligious plot, but rather was necessary because it was (and is) not clear how God could interact with the world in a well-defined, investigable way.

[I think the ID project is specifically framed so that the question of authorship is left open. In this way, information theory can be utilized without necessarily attaching theological presuppositions. Note that materialists can continue to search for alternative explanaitons outside of ID hypotheses, and theists are free to discuss the harmony of scientific findings with their understanding of theology, ontology and epistemology. "No one gets hurt!"]

It is not surprising that scientists will (as they should, I believe) defend this hard-won elimination.

[Yes, as long as the defense is a scientific, or philosophic one. When either side resorts to indefensible tactics, things go from bad to worse. (That's the beauty of this forum, wouldn't you say? - Thanks to our vigilant Moderator!)]

Until, of course, theistic interaction with the physical world _can_ be shown to be well defined and investigable.

[As I said, investigation in any direction is open: materialistic and theistic. Of course, the theistic search will not be done in a science laboratory. And for theists, this would define the limitations of science. If this troubles you, consider the acknowledged limitation of science to define the cause of the 'Big Bang.' We can get to some rather large negative exponent of time, but not a negative time!]

I am beginning to understand Bill Dembski's way of approaching this, and it's very interesting and exciting for me. However, there still seems to me to be a strange reticence regarding natural causation in his approach (as if he doesn't want to get into that -- too messy).

[I'll let Bill Dembski speak to your perception of reticence on his part. As I see it, CSI cannot be the result of intelligent agency AND 'nature,' unless you except the metaphysical presupposition of naturalism. (I.e. that mind emerges from brain.] I can't fault anyone for not accepting this notion; I don't accept it myself. Read Polanyi, J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig to see why.]

I understand that information transfer can be studied independently of physical causation, but just because it can be studied independently doesn't mean that it is _metaphysically_ independent.

[Physical causation is not metaphysical. It's physical. Metaphysics comes into it when you interpret the data. Nevertheless, information theory acknowledges that the source of transmitted code is an intelligent agent. Preservation of the information is necessary so that the 'message' is not corrupted. But a message is a mental object. (See the string: "Signal agreement, and the role of information in the organization of complex systems" for more on information theory and thermodynamics.)]

Dretske says "The flow of information may, and in most familiar instances obviously does, depend on underlying causal processes." So, what and where is the evidence of these mysterious 'unfamiliar' cases of information transfer not depending on causal processes?

[Be careful not to confuse causes of the "flow of information" with the information itself. When I send this reply, there will be a chain of cause and effect from computer to computer. The information came from my mind. It rides on the physical world, but it is not physical. It is a message. The actual path is arbitrary, so long as there is one.]

When we follow a causal trail backward, my intuition tells me, we will always find either a causal agent or else our own ignorance of what the causal agent is. And I understand that if you follow CSI backwards, you will only find (at best) more CSI.

[Not more CSI, (unless that is what my mind is made of), but an agent, yes.]

So, my question is, what will happen to physical causation at the point at which CSI disappears (which is presumably the point at which the non-embodied designer intervened)? This may be very difficult to determine in practice, and I am sympathetic to that difficulty, but you (ID theorists collectively) must have some ideas about what one _would_ see at this point, if one were there to see it. Why don't you make those ideas concrete and explicit?

[What your looking for is a description of someone's fingertips; God's, an alien's or whatever. Again, no one is suggesting a wall to prevent investigations into physical agency. But there should not be a wall to prevent theological implications from staring at you in the face, if that is where science leads you. Otherwise you are ruling such a result, a priori, out of court. If so, why?]

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If you want more on the metaphysical arguments associated with the rationality of thinking that God can act in the physical world, see "In Defense of Miracles" by Geivett and Habermas (IVP 1997)

As always, I look forward to your reply.

Columbo

[ 01 March 2002: Message edited by: Columbo ]

I just wanted to make a few last points before the thread gives it final death cry. I very much agree with Columbo that "When either side resorts to indefensible tactics, things go from bad to worse." I'm getting to feel some affection for the Moderator now, because he/she seems pretty fair.

When Columbo says "Be careful not to confuse causes of the 'flow of information' with the information itself ... The actual path is arbitrary, so long as there is one." Oh, I totally agree. My question is whether there are cases in which information flows _without any causal link_. In Dembski's post, he alluded to such cases, and so did Dretske in the quoted passage. But I am unable to conceive of such a case. In other words, information passed between two points, and no matter how you disrupted the connections between those two points, the information transfer was not disrupted. If such cases are not possible, then it follows that you can always follow information transfer backwards in time, by following the physical medium that it is riding on. Information analysis, as Dembski does, is therefore a useful mode of analysis, but does not replace physico-causal analyses in conjunction with it.

Also Columbo writes:

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What your looking for is a description of someone's fingertips; God's, an alien's or whatever. Again, no one is suggesting a wall to prevent investigations into physical agency. But there should not be a wall to prevent theological implications from staring at you in the face, if that is where science leads you. Otherwise you are ruling such a result, a priori, out of court. If so,why?

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