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Author
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Topic: Evolution and Design: a synthesis
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New York Wiseguy
Member
Member # 210
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posted 30. March 2002 12:05
This is my first post. I was going to start a new topic, but find I can get to my favorite issue via a reply to this topic. Dr. Dembski, right near the top, says "Tom is doing science the old way, in which nature constitutes an unbroken nexus of natural causes. This is inconsistent with an information-theoretic ...."
I'd like to stop right there, and ask "What is the basis for an assertion that there is new way of doing science?" I have heard it said that Dr. Dembski has proposed "redefining" science, but I haven't yet seen where he so argues. I assume this line must be in the literature somewhere, I just haven't run across it.
Is the premise "nature constitutes an unbroken nexus of natural causes" equivalent to the definition of science as the activity of explaining natural events and objects in terms of "natural law", or more precisely "sensory observations and experiments conducted in the natural world"? I would suggest that this definition, referred to as "methodological naturalism" has been the rule of science in modern times since Francis Bacon in the 16th century. Is it being claimed by Dr. Dembski that there is any consensus in the community of science for now abandoning that approach?
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Evan
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Member # 164
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posted 30. March 2002 12:12
I think this is an important topic that might deserve its own thread. You might consider posting this as a new topic.
Thanks
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New York Wiseguy
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Member # 210
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posted 31. March 2002 05:40
I took your suggestion, Evan, and opened a new topic, but it appears the moderator did not consider this proper, as it was interpreted as having a purpose solely to clarify the position of someone else.
I am especially concerned by Dr. Dembski's earlier statement that Tom was doing science "the old way", which says that there is now a "new way" and if there is a new way, that has to mean that science has been redefined. I have now read through this thread in more detail, and have seen that it appears to be understood by everyone, including Dr. Dembski, that the effects of the Designer cannot be directly observed. I am concerned by the criticisms one sees of ID from others that ID does not fall within the domain of science. I'd like to ask the participants in this thread how they would defend ID against such criticism. Those critics would appear to me to have a point, and they could say that nothing that is not observationally detectable can be considered to belong under the rubric of science. At least under science as it has been traditionally defined. Is the only answer we could then give be to say "Well, then, we are redefining science."?
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Janitor@MIT
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Member # 125
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posted 31. March 2002 18:54
My apologies once again to Evan. (Is this apologizing getting tiresome yet, Evan?) Obviously, I have “miracles” on the brain. My outlook on life is thoroughly heathen. I see miracles everywhere! And thank you, Mr. Moderator, for your encouraging words. “Creative” is certainly one way to describe my thought processes. (LOL) I realize I’m having a tough time making myself understood, Evan, but let me make another attempt:
How do design engineers deal with randomness? Randomness may be the muse of art, but she is the nemesis of design. This is because the designer has a scientific imperative that overrides the creative imperative. There is an “essential tension” to engineering. The engineer wants to achieve reproducible results while at the same time achieving originality and creativity. Part of the artistry of engineering is in balancing the demands of utility and creativity.
The requirement of reproducibility is exactly where the engineer seeks to silence the muse. In design a considerable amount of labor is invested in identifying, reducing, and eliminating randomness and uncertainty. He can’t achieve reproducibility or utility without doing so. This random element can never be wholly eliminated, so what the designer does is reduce or bound it to either negligible or manageable levels that do not affect the final product or process design. This is exactly why designs are so improbable. Probability is the great leveler of designs. Look at the Parthenon.
This is so fundamental to design that I’m perfectly confident in stating that the residue of irreducible randomness really has nothing to do with “fueling” evolution! It can be regarded as the “white noise” background against which truly evolutionary events occur. This white noise has some interesting properties: it’s a “black body,” absorbing and emitting all signals. In reverse engineering the process design our task is to decompose the noise into its elements and identify the signals that are absorbed by the noise. (If you think about it this is exactly what the ID theorists and their fellow travelers are doing.) These signals will be definitively non-random. There is no short cut here because these signals are the causative factors in evolution. Not the noise, which the designer has systematically eliminated as a causal factor in the design and analysis phases. For the traditionalist the noise is the signal. On engineering principles this is utter nonsense.
Now, I won’t belabor the subject (Of course you will!), but I will point out that this irreducible residue of noise can be exploited by the designer for certain ends. E.g., in certain stochastic filter-control technologies (such as an extended or adaptive Kalman filter), the noise “drives” the process because the controller “feeds off” an error-estimation-prediction covariance and in effect operates with no other “knowledge” of the system. But this system only works if the initialized state is known and the error falls within predictable (i.e., designed) bounds. So there can be no traditionally evolutionary explanation of such a system. But it is interesting to consider if populations implement this kind of filter, rather than the “Darwinian filter.” If they do than “natural selection” is purely epiphenomenal upon an underlying process design principle! (RM&NS isn’t the solution to the problem, its only half the equation to be solved!)
Another way that a designer exploits noise is by, paradoxically, using it to force a system away from an optimal state, to prevent stalling. This is a solution to the “converge and purge” problem in evolutionary computation. The evolving system converges upon and settles in a basin of attraction, an optimum, and in the process purges itself of all its evolutionary potential, its diversity. It is a very fundamental design flaw and usually entails an “appeal to the Oracle.” (What a delicious irony!) The Oracle “dithers,” or reinitializes the system with an investment in diversity. I believe this is something like what you were hypothesizing above. But notice I said that this is a design flaw. Its not the way an intelligent designer would handle the problem, I believe.
One (tentative and partial) intelligent design solution to this problem is what I suggested previously: a very simple and effective implementing of machine learning, such as a covariance regression operator. This implements self-monitoring/control of mutation rates/frequencies by comparison to rates of convergence expressed as a covariance between population mean fitness and an absolute fitness (or some other appropriate measures or referent). It is never ideal for the purposes of adaptation/evolution, strange as it may sound, that an optimum be attained! A design trade-off is exactly what we are looking for: making an asymptotic approach to the optimum while maintaining an essential, indeed critical, minimal or optimal level of evolutionary potential. It is never an intelligent adaptive strategy to become overly-specialized or overly-adapted to an existing set of conditions. Evolutionary biologists themselves recognize the principle; such a state leaves a population teetering precariously on the brink of extinction. Its not the way an intelligent designer would do it. (This design criterion has some interesting implications. First, human beings are truly masterful designs because we specialize in generalizing and generalize in specializing. Although it can’t be proved, human biological evolution is over. There is nothing more “evolved” or more “adapted” that we can become.)
But I don’t want to pretend that “randomness” is not a significant and challenging design problem. The point I wanted to make (no doubt lost in all the usual gibberish) is that the IDers have indeed correctly deduced that design is revealed by “improbabilities.” But a greater appreciation of how a designer reduces, manages, and even exploits randomness is necessary for a coherent theory of intelligent design. It is exactly here that the received theory fails. Any acceptable alternative must deal positively with this failure. I don’t think a positive solution is to posit a designer who surreptitiously manipulates randomness from behind the scenes in a way that makes his activities indistinguishable from what we would expect on given theory. The design inference loses its force if the designer is ultimately indistinguishable from Darwin.
“Even with a considerable wealth of theory and analysis of the algorithms, the difference an adaptive controller makes in a given application is chiefly due to the art of the designer!”—Anonymous FTP, “Advanced Topics in Identification and Adaptive Control” (Sorry, lost link.)
P.S., I read the Dembski article you referred to. Very interesting. I might simply respond to it as Charles Darwin might have responded—my monkey brain doesn’t work on that level. Dr. Dembski’s fully bipedal, while I’m still swinging through the trees.
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Moderator
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posted 31. March 2002 20:54
Dear NY Wiseguy:
I know that you are new and that it may seem that I am picking on the "innocent new guy." Please do note that almost everyone on this board is new within 1.5 months. So, here's your chance to learn the Brainstorm ethos (and go through initiation).
Your post is not on topic. In particular, if somebody was to reply to your post, it would lead the discussion away from the original intent of the thread which is a discussion about whether or not a synthesis theory of design and evolution is possible.
In addition, if you were truly interested in dialogue, and not pointing out the obvious pseudo-\anti- science that permeates Dembski's work, then you might have asked your question in the following way:
Dr. Dembski, in what way do you see information-theory breaking the standard unbroken causal nexus that has been foundational in the development of modern science?
Show some respect, give the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise it will become evident very quickly that you are not here for discussion, but to shut discussion down. This is warning number one which indicates that I am now watching you...closely. I have a nose for axe-grinding.
Good day.
ISCID Moderator
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New York Wiseguy
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Member # 210
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posted 31. March 2002 23:38
Okay, Moderator, if you said this:
"....the obvious pseudo-\anti- science that permeates Dembski's work,....", that can save a lot of time and I can see we might both be inclined to grind the same axe. I wouldn't use quite such pejorative terms myself. I consider it merely that Dr. Dembski may have a different conception of science than I do.
<<....then you might have asked your question in the following way:
Dr. Dembski, in what way do you see information-theory breaking the standard unbroken causal nexus that has been foundational in the development of modern science?>>
I'll accept that that might have been a more graceful way to put it. I'm still curious to see a more clear explanation of just how Dr. Dembski would redefine science. Either from him or someone who knows his writings well enough to speak for him. If that's off this topic, should it be pursued on the other topic which I opened?
If not, is there any other way to pursue it?
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ordinary man
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Member # 188
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posted 01. April 2002 12:25
Please let me know if this is off-topic. I don't think it is, but I could be wrong.
When attempting to infer design, many ID writers use the fine-tuning of the universal constants as a prime example. However, as I have written in another thread (Is the Universe IC?), insofar as universal constants are concerned, I think the first and most important challenge to an interpretation of fine-tuning relates to William A. Dembski's definition of intelligent agency as requiring contingency. (See Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology.)
It is my understanding that in order to reach a strong inference of something being a product of intelligent design -- that is, for intelligent design to be the best explanation -- one needs all three of the items that Dembski discusses: contingency, complexity, and specification. If any one of these criteria is not shown to be present, an inference of intelligent design is not valid.
So, regarding the fine-tuning of the universe, the first question is: What evidence is there of contingency on a cosmological level? What evidence is there that the constants could have taken on (or could still take on) other values but were "dialed" to the right settings by a supernatural intelligence?
Another question is: What evidence do we have that life as we know it could not exist under other universal constants? What evidence is there that other forms of life obeying different rules could not exist under other universal constants?
Simply put, since we have a sample of 1 regarding the universe, we cannot say how improbable these particular constants are. Furthermore, with a sample of 1, we cannot say that any agent chose those values from a range, since we don't even know that there is a range to choose from, empirically speaking.
We have no other universes for comparison. Even in our universe with its putative fine-tuning, our planet contains the only life we know of. So how can we possibly say with any confidence that we have definitive proof of fine-tuning by an intelligence that selected from a range of possible universal conditions? We can't, and so at least at the cosmological level, design is an invalid inference.
[ 01 April 2002, 12:27: Message edited by: ordinary man ]
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Moderator
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posted 01. April 2002 14:11
ordinary man and NY Wiseguy,
This board is not intended to be used as a place to have your general questions about ID answered. It is not the place to satisfy your curiosities or to make your point about the irrelevancy of fine tuning arguments. You can do that elsewhere: www.arn.org. To get a sense of the brainstorm ethos, please read: www.iscid.org/brainstorms.php
You've both already received warnings in the past. From this point on, I will delete posts without warning from the two of you that I feel detract from the conversation. As we've told one member who has been temporarily banned, Brainstorms is a privilege and not a right.
Good day.
ISCID Moderator
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