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Author
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Topic: Summarizing the issues
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Evan
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Member # 164
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posted 30. March 2002 09:12
My apologies for contributing to the fragmentation of the “Is Complexity Relative or Absolute” thread.
One of the tangents that arose there was the question of what might be contained in a positive theory of ID, even hypothetically, as opposed to arguments for the insufficiency of natural evolutionary processes to produce some of what we observe in life. This topic fits better in the Evolution by Design thread, where I was trying to make the conversation more concrete by offering and subsequently exploring a particular set of hypotheses about ID.
As part of this tangential discussion, several of us were trying to find some common ground from where to start, and therefore working to also find areas of disagreement. This seems like a profitable enterprise, so here’s a summary from that discussion.
Questions to be addressed:
1) Does ID theory accept the geological age of the earth and the progression of life forms laid out in the fossil record? It seems that everyone involved does so.
2) Are all life forms (at least from the time of distinct multi-cellular life forms) related by a chain of common descent?
Paul Nelson (going along with Wells, doubts this.) The rest of us in the discussion accept this, I think. This issue is intimately related to the next issue.
3) Does design happen “non-miraculously” (as explained by Dembski in “ID Coming Clean”,) or not?
By “non-miraculously” Dembski means that the natural chain of cause-and-effect is never broken: design events impart information to the world by affecting the probabilities of random events, but not by “moving particles” in a miraculous fashion.
That is, as I had written, “The designer uses exactly the same mechanisms that natural processes use (point mutation, gene duplication. etc.), but manipulates the chance aspect of these so that what would appear random to us is actually, in the long run, a part of a longer designed sequence of changes.”
This question is related to 2) in that it seems to me that the only alternative to common descent is the immediate materialization of new life forms (Paul uses the phrase “radical discontinuity”), and that would certainly imply a miraculous intervention.
Also, I claim that since common descent is true, each act of design is constrained by the fact that the resulting child organism must be enough like the parent that development, birth, and nurturance can take place. Therefore, design proceeds slowly and incrementally, as shown by the fossil record and all the other various lines of evidence about historical relationships between organisms.
I also claim, following Dembski, that individual acts of design are “non-detectable”, in that they are merely shifts in the probabilities of things happening that would otherwise happen naturally. Manipulating these probabilities is how design happens. So any particular act of design would be indistinguishable from a random event. It is only in the cumulative effect of many events that we might find the evidence for an inference of design.
4) Does design happen just in the genetic structure of living organisms, or does (or can) design happen in any or all parts of the world?
I think that James and I believe that design happens within the organism only (although we might disagree on exactly where and when), and we accept the following statement: “that all the other external factors that bear on survival (such as comets hitting the earth, or whether a particular animal survives to reproduce) are adequately explained by a non-intelligent combination of law-and-chance.”
My original hypothesis was that design happens only at the moment of conception, but I think that I could agree with James that it can happen at any time during the life of the organism by affecting the structure of genetic material (and I would add, particularly by acting on the genome of those cells in the organism that are involved in passing genetic information to the next generation.)
5) Is there a designer in the sense of a transcendent entity that exists apart from, and acts upon living organisms; or is design an immanent process that arises from within each organism acting on its own?
If design involves an transcendent entity, and not an immanent process,
a) Is that designer omnipotent and omniscient, or not? I don’t believe this conclusion is justified by the evidence, and it is not consistent with my position in 4) that the non-biological world proceeds by natural laws unaffected by design.
b) can the designer work on populations of organisms in concert, or does the designer work on organisms merely from there own perspective (as would be true, I think, if design is internally generating process of each organism)?
6) Is design a truly creative process, beholden to no rules or regularities, or is design a novelty-generating process that nevertheless can be understood in terms of patterns, possible rules, etc.
For instance, if design is the act of an omnipotent, omnscient free and creative being (although constrained in his design implementation by having to work through the manipulations of possibilities at the genetic level), then he could choose to aim life in many different directions at will: peacock tails, spiders who eat their mates, and so on. In this case, we would never really know whether something developed for a reason or not.
On the other hand, if design is a process,irrespective of whether it can be observed in the act or not, we would expect to be able to reach generalizations, and perhaps even laws, about how it works.
7) And last, a reminder: according to Dembski, the only empirical indicator of design (assuming that any aspect of life contains specification) is improbability. Therefore, actually proving something is designed will necessitate developing methods for calculating the probability of events as if they happened by natural evolutionary processes. Such methods, if they are to be validated, will need to be able to correctly (within reason) establish that things we customarily assume are microevolutionary fall above the improbability bound as well as show that some things fall below the bound and are hence designed.
So these are some questions that have arisen in the discussion. It seems to me that they are questions that need to be addressed by any theory of ID.
[ 30 March 2002, 09:29: Message edited by: Evan ]
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Paul A. Nelson
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posted 30. March 2002 10:09
Evan wrote:
it seems to me that the only alternative to common descent is the immediate materialization of new life forms (Paul uses the phrase “radical discontinuity”), and that would certainly imply a miraculous intervention.
Consider an everyday situation.
My daughters and their friends like to play hopscotch on our driveway. To do this, they draw a hopscotch grid with large pieces of sidewalk chalk. This event takes about 5-10 minutes at most.
Suppose I have a time-lapse camera surveying my driveway, exposing frames of film at 15 minute intervals. When I later develop the film, I see
- a time t0 with no chalk hopscotch grid
- a time t1 with a chalk hopscotch grid
Now, did the grid appear "miraculously"? No. Acting as intelligent causes, a couple of girls drew it. There was nothing miraculous about this event, but neither can it be explained by physical regularities or chance events. If the time-lapse camera were running continuously (e.g., as a movie or video camera might), instead of recording at the relatively coarse grain of 15 minute intervals, it would have captured the entire design event.
But the historical appearance of a designed object or pattern, discontinuously, does not require "miraculous" intervention.
P.S. I'd suggest that if anyone uses the adjective "miraculous" (or its cognate "supernatural"), that they define the term.
P.P.S. Common descent from the appearance of multicellular life forward is a hypothesis with deeply heretical implications. The effect of this idea on currently orthodox (i.e., neo-Darwinian) conceptions of homology, for instance, would be profound. Can you explain, Evan, why you don't advocate universal monophyly -- Darwin's single Tree of Life?
[ 30 March 2002, 10:11: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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Evan
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posted 30. March 2002 12:10
In response to multiple questions from Paul - all good ones:
1) Let me start by discussing “miraculous”.
In “ID Coming Clean”, Dembski wrote,
quote:
Miracles typically connote a violation or suspension or overriding of natural laws. To attribute a miracle is to say that a natural cause was all set to make X happen, but instead Y happened. As I’ve argued throughout my work, design doesn’t require this sort of counterfactual substitution (cf. chapters 2 and 3 of my book Intelligent Design). When humans, for instance, act as intelligent agents, there is no reason to think that any natural law is broken.
Dembski discusses the details of this further in the section entitled “6. How Can an Unembodied Intelligence Interact with the Natural World?” There he points out that even though God (who Dembski is discussing here as the designer) could intervene in ways that produce true gaps in the causal chain, such a view is not necessary. Rather than acting miraculously by “moving particles,” says Dembski, God is acting by imparting information in a way that does not violate any natural laws or produce any discontinuities.
Dembski writes,
quote:
Although a non-physical designer who “moves particles” is not logically incoherent, such a designer nonetheless remains problematic for science. The problem is that natural causes are fully capable of moving particles. Thus for a designer also to move particles can only seem like an arbitrary intrusion. The designer is merely doing something that nature is already doing, and even if the designer is doing it better, why didn’t the designer make nature better in the first place so that it can move the particles better? We are back to Van Till’s Robust Formational Economy Principle.
But what if the designer is not in the business of moving particles but of imparting information? In that case nature moves its own particles, but an intelligence nonetheless guides the arrangement which those particles take.
Dembski then goes on to suggest that God imparts information by manipulating random events - by manipulating the probabilities - in non-miraculous ways.
For the most part, the position I am discussing here adopts these distinctions put forth by Dembski.
2) Now let’s discuss common descent
When I write, “it seems to me that the only alternative to common descent is the immediate materialization of new life forms (Paul uses the phrase “radical discontinuity”), and that would certainly imply a miraculous intervention,” I mean to imply two things:
One is that as far as we know from everyday experience, the only way a new organism comes into existence is by being born of another organism (or by asexual cell division.) If this is true of the past as well, there must be an unbroken chain of parent-child relationships stretching into the past. Therefore, when we find a creature living at time T1 that is quite similar to a creature living at an earlier time T0, then both evolutionary theory and the types of ID theory being proposed here assume that the transition between the two creatures occurred by a chain of parent-child events: i.e., common descent.
Now it may very well be that this transition happened quite quickly, geologically speaking, even perhaps under the guidance of intelligent design, so that it looks discontinuous when seen in “15 minute intervals”, so to speak. But that doesn’t mean there were true discontinuities in the chain of parent-child relationships.
This reasoning can be applied to your hopscotch example. Of course, snapshots taken at 15 minute intervals will show discontinuities, and even the emergence of things that didn’t exist before, but that is true whether the events in question were cause by intelligent beings or natural causes. The same 15 minute snapshot might show a crack in the sidewalk that developed from contraction of the concrete during the same time period.
Similarly, if we had the camera running continuously and watched the girls drawing the hopscotch board, yes indeed we would capture the entire event and there would be no discontinuities. The fact that the activity was of two girls drawing rather than just watching natural processes is irrelevant to the fact that we see no breaks in the action.
So, my question remains: if common descent is not true, than there must be times when new organisms come into existence by some other means than being born from a parent, and I can think of no non-miraculous ways for this to occur. Assuming the camera is running all the time, what would we see happening at the moments of discontinuity that you propose: the immediate materialization of a new creature, or what? This is what I would like you to explain.
3) Last point: you write
quote:
P.P.S. Common descent from the appearance of multicellular life forward is a hypothesis with deeply heretical implications. The effect of this idea on currently orthodox (i.e., neo-Darwinian) conceptions of homology, for instance, would be profound. Can you explain, Evan, why you don't advocate universal monophyly -- Darwin's single Tree of Life?
I mention from the Cambrian on merely to simplify the discussion. I don’t mean to imply that the general principles I am proposing don’t apply to earlier times. There are two reasons for this.
One is fairly well-documented, I think. Earliest one-celled life seemed to intermix genetic material rather freely, so it would be overly-simplistic to claim that there was straightforward chain of common descent from one ancestral organism. Currently, people tend to think of a “bushy” foundation to life rather than a single trunk forever branching out.
The second is that we don’t know how the life originated. The possibility exists that conditions (either designed or not) were such that life began in a fairly widespread fashion, and that multiple similar events got life started in multiple places.
These two conditions taken together imply that in the beginning even thinking of single organisms giving rise to the next organism via common descent might not be a totally applicable idea. We just don’t know.
So in order to skip this part of the situation, I mention the Cambrian as a place where we have definite multi-cellular creatures and the start of a significantly better fossil record. That’s why I mention the Cambrian as I do - not because I think things were fundamentally different in respect to these ID issues before then.
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Paul A. Nelson
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posted 30. March 2002 15:22
Evan wrote:
So, my question remains: if common descent is not true, than there must be times when new organisms come into existence by some other means than being born from a parent, and I can think of no non-miraculous ways for this to occur.
I still don't know what you mean by "miraculous." I can find referents, however, for "intelligent causes" as opposed to "natural causes" -- and I don't think you would say that the origin of organisms must be natural (in the sense of not being intelligently caused). If humans ever construct an organism -- and I see no reason to think that this could not happen -- they will have intelligently designed and assembled a living thing without parents. But the event would not be a miracle, in the sense of contravening or overriding any regularity of nature. It will, however, be intelligently caused.
Evan asked:
Assuming the camera is running all the time, what would we see happening at the moments of discontinuity that you propose: the immediate materialization of a new creature, or what? This is what I would like you to explain.
I have no idea what one would see, but that's exactly the point. It doesn't matter for the sake of a design hypothesis. The hopscotch grid would not exist if the girls hadn't drawn it. It is not a natural object (in the sense of being explicable strictly in terms of physical regularities). To explain the origin of the grid, one needs to postulate the action of at least one intelligence. Now, if a deity spoke the hopscotch grid into existence instantaneously -- i.e., it materialized on the driveway in a nanosecond -- or if the girls drew the grid over a time interval of 5-10 minutes, the effect is the same: a symmetrical chalk outline of several boxes, containing the numbers 1-10, and the words "Start" and "End."
For biology, the effect of interest is the origin of complex specified information (CSI). I think it is possible to identify the appearance of CSI in biological history, and at such points, an intelligence has been active. As I wrote in the anthology Mere Creation, "in 1858, the text On the Origin of Species did not exist. In 1859, it did." The origin of that object represents a discontinuity, properly explained by the action of an intelligence. Would it matter if the book came into existence in a nanosecond? Not really: we wouldn't understand the causal process, but the effect would be the same as Darwin actually writing the text over a period of several months.
Evan wrote:
One is that as far as we know from everyday experience, the only way a new organism comes into existence is by being born of another organism (or by asexual cell division.) If this is true of the past as well, there must be an unbroken chain of parent-child relationships stretching into the past. Therefore, when we find a creature living at time T1 that is quite similar to a creature living at an earlier time T0, then both evolutionary theory and the types of ID theory being proposed here assume that the transition between the two creatures occurred by a chain of parent-child events: i.e., common descent.
That's one possible theory, but the assumption of common descent is not necessary. The rule "all organisms from organisms" does not obtain universally. As you write,
we don't know how the life originated. The possibility exists that conditions (either designed or not) were such that life began in a fairly widespread fashion, and that multiple similar events got life started in multiple places. These two conditions taken together imply that in the beginning even thinking of single organisms giving rise to the next organism via common descent might not be a totally applicable idea. We just don't know.
Indeed we don't. If terrestrial organisms have come into existence via either natural abiogenesis, or intelligent design, then not all organisms require (organismal) parents. The rule omne vivum ex vivo has a restricted domain. In particular, saying that the rule holds irrespective of whatever discontinuities we observe -- which may well represent the de novo origin, via intelligent action, of biological novelty -- elevates it to an unchallengeable a priori principle.
[ 30 March 2002, 15:53: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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Evan
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posted 31. March 2002 09:19
to Paul:
1) Let’s discuss “miraculous” first.
You write,
quote:
I still don't know what you mean by "miraculous." I can find referents, however, for "intelligent causes" as opposed to "natural causes" -- and I don't think you would say that the origin of organisms must be natural (in the sense of not being intelligently caused). If humans ever construct an organism -- and I see no reason to think that this could not happen -- they will have intelligently designed and assembled a living thing without parents. But the event would not be a miracle, in the sense of contravening or overriding any regularity of nature. It will, however, be intelligently caused.
By miraculous, I mean, as Dembski does, something which contravenes the flow of events caused by natural law: “To attribute a miracle is to say that a natural cause was all set to make X happen, but instead Y happened.” If I am walking down the street and suddenly, in one step, am 100 feet further down the street, a miracle has happened, because if natural law had proceeded, I would have only been 3 feet further down the street.
Similarly, if a creature were to suddenly materialize into space, that would be a miracle, because it would contravene substantial and fundamental laws of nature.
Intelligent action by human beings is not miraculous in this sense. Dembski writes, “When humans, for instance, act as intelligent agents, there is no reason to think that any natural law is broken.”
But I am confused as to whether you agree about this. On the one hand, you seem to agree when you write, in reference to humans creating an organism, that “the event would not be a miracle, in the sense of contravening or overriding any regularity of nature. It will, however, be intelligently caused.” However, earlier you write “’intelligent causes’ as opposed to ‘natural causes’ -- and I don't think you would say that the origin of organisms must be natural (in the sense of not being intelligently caused).”
So I’d like to ask if you agree or disagree with the following two statements: Given the definition of “miraculous” as “contravening or overriding a regularity of nature,”
1) Intelligent action by human beings is not-miraculous, and
2) The sudden materialization of a new creature into existence (as opposed to being conceived and born by a parent) would be miraculous.
2) Detecting design versus a theory of design.
When I asked, “Assuming the camera is running all the time, what would we see happening at the moments of discontinuity that you propose, “ you replied,
quote:
I have no idea what one would see, but that's exactly the point. It doesn't matter for the sake of a design hypothesis. The hopscotch grid would not exist if the girls hadn't drawn it. It is not a natural object (in the sense of being explicable strictly in terms of physical regularities). To explain the origin of the grid, one needs to postulate the action of at least one intelligence. Now, if a deity spoke the hopscotch grid into existence instantaneously -- i.e., it materialized on the driveway in a nanosecond -- or if the girls drew the grid over a time interval of 5-10 minutes, the effect is the same: a symmetrical chalk outline of several boxes, containing the numbers 1-10, and the words "Start" and "End."
Yes, I understand that the detection of design is a separate issue, and the one that originates all discussion of design. I also understand that the central issue for detecting design is specification and improbability (i.e complexity.)
However, I believe the further purpose at this point here at Brainstorms is to explore, via hypothesis, additional components of a possible theory of design so as to make possible further exploration of design and make further inroads into being integrated into science.
I, and others, have offered hypotheses about design that accept common descent. You have stated that you doubt common descent. I am trying to understand what alternatives there might be to common descent.
The only alternative I can think of is sudden materialization of new organisms, which I think would legitimately be called a miraculous event.
The question at hand, then is not whether life is intelligently designed or not, but whether intelligent design is done miraculously or not. In the case of human beings, I agree with Dembski that it is not. The hypothesis I offer, which accepts common descent, says also that life is guided to new forms in a non-miraculous way.
So i think it is a reasonable question to ask of someone who does not accept common descent: what do you think we would see, then, at the moment a new organism comes into existence? - a miraculous event, or not?
3) omne vivum ex vivo
I wrote, “One is that as far as we know from everyday experience, the only way a new organism comes into existence is by being born of another organism (or by asexual cell division.) If this is true of the past as well, there must be an unbroken chain of parent-child relationships stretching into the past.”
You replied,
quote:
That's one possible theory, but the assumption of common descent is not necessary. The rule ‘all organisms from organisms" does not obtain universally....If terrestrial organisms have come into existence via either natural abiogenesis ...,
I agreed that the origin of life present its own issues, which is why I am willing to discuss common descent from the Cambrian on.
However, you also write,
quote:
If terrestrial organisms have come into existence via ..., or intelligent design, then not all organisms require (organismal) parents. The rule omne vivum ex vivo has a restricted domain. In particular, saying that the rule holds irrespective of whatever discontinuities we observe -- which may well represent the de novo origin, via intelligent action, of biological novelty -- elevates it to an unchallengeable a priori principle.
But the issue is not whether intelligent design has been at work or not, but whether intelligent design has been at work in miraculous ways, because I think I have offered a solid hypothesis as to how intelligent design could happen without ever contravening a law of nature.
Also, I do not claim that “ the rule omne vivum ex vivo ...holds irrespective of whatever discontinuities we observe.” If we were to in fact observe discontinuities in the chain of biological relationships, then of course we would take that into consideration. But we don’t observe such discontinuities. I don’t think I am elevating omne vivum ex vivo to “an unchallengeable a priori principle,” but I do think I am claiming, as we do with most science, that given the universality with which this rule seems to apply in our experience now, it is reasonable to assume it is true in the past unless we have evidence to suggest otherwise.
And since intelligent design can proceed without miraculous events, I see no reason, based on any evidence, to doubt common descent.
4) Summary:
It seems, then that we have two issues:
1) Whether life, at least from the Cambrian, has been at times intelligently designed, and
2) If so, has intelligent design take place via any type of miraculous events, such as creation de novo.
Irrespective of one’s answer to the first question, I agree with Dembski that the answer to the second question can be, and should be, “no.”
In the absence of any other hypotheses about how new organisms come into existence, I therefore claim that there is no reason to doubt common descent, and that accepting common descent does not conflict with the idea of intelligent design.
[ 31 March 2002, 12:08: Message edited by: Evan ]
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Paul A. Nelson
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posted 31. March 2002 20:15
This will be my last post in this thread, as I seem to be repeating myself.
Evan wrote:
So I'd like to ask if you agree or disagree with the following two statements: Given the definition of "miraculous" as "contravening or overriding a regularity of nature,"
1) Intelligent action by human beings is not-miraculous, and
2) The sudden materialization of a new creature into existence (as opposed to being conceived and born by a parent) would be miraculous.
1. Agree.
2. Disagree.
Here's why. Suppose you're a scribe in Alexandria in the 1st century A.D. I tell you that, in the future, it will be possible to copy -- in a few seconds, and in every detail -- the papyrus manuscript on which you've been working for two years. What's more, it will be possible to send the information in that copy invisibly through the air to another person thousands of miles away, who will then be able to produce a copy for himself in a moment.
Would that be miraculous? From a 1st century perspective, yes. From our perspective -- not at all. It's routine technology.
Do organisms naturally come into existence instantaneously (or even over long periods of time)? No, and the impossibility of this happening is a main line of evidence for intelligent design. Can organisms be intelligently designed de novo, however -- even very rapidly? Perhaps. Nothing we know forbids this from happening. Such a feat is not currently within our causal power, of course, but it may be within the power of other intelligent causes.
The central issue here turns on what is often called Clarke's Law, i.e., the dictum, credited to the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." If the de novo intelligent design of an organism would contravene or override a natural law or regularity, please say what that law or regularity would be.
Evan wrote:
I, and others, have offered hypotheses about design that accept common descent. You have stated that you doubt common descent. I am trying to understand what alternatives there might be to common descent.
The only alternative I can think of is sudden materialization of new organisms, which I think would legitimately be called a miraculous event.
Again, I disagree. If by "sudden materialization," you mean a natural event, then I agree that we have no evidence of this happening. But we also have no evidence of e-mail messages spontaneously organizing themselves -- yet we do have evidence of intelligent agents causing them (indeed such agents are the only known cause of these patterns). The hypothesis of intelligent causation should not be limited to what happens naturally. Thus the de novo origin of organisms (via intelligent design) need not be seen as "miraculous."
Evan continued:
So i think it is a reasonable question to ask of someone who does not accept common descent: what do you think we would see, then, at the moment a new organism comes into existence? - a miraculous event, or not?
One would see an intelligently caused event. "Miraculous" is an adjective doing no work here.
Evan continued:
Also, I do not claim that " the rule omne vivum ex vivo ...holds irrespective of whatever discontinuities we observe." If we were to in fact observe discontinuities in the chain of biological relationships, then of course we would take that into consideration. But we don't observe such discontinuities.
Really? You're more sanguine that most evolutionary biologists I know, who struggle valiantly to explain how evolution bridged the manifold discontinuities in form and function among organisms. The currently unsolved problem of the mechanism of macroevolution rests on the intractable character of biological discontinuities. If you truly do not observe discontinuities among organismal systems, then I've got a long list of open puzzles in evolutionary theory that I'd like to run by you for solution! ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
I'll pass the microphone to Evan for the last word.
[ 31 March 2002, 20:19: Message edited by: Paul A. Nelson ]
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New York Wiseguy
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posted 01. April 2002 07:10
I am posting to this topic because I am still searching for a place where I can fulfill my objective. A preliminary question could be whether this forum's rules will allow me to fulfill my objective. My objective is to learn. The moderator can perhaps tell me how best to use this forum as a learning tool.
As against that objective, Evan, I am very appreciative of your thrust. You announced in starting this topic that you have a desire to make the discussion, or some parts of it, more concrete. It is perhaps more likely that I can learn from a thread on such a theme than from any other.
Firstly, and this is as much aimed at the moderator as it is directly to the topic, I do not believe I can learn much just by reading everything that has been posted to this forum; I say that in case the moderator might be inclined to make that suggestion. In order to learn I have to ask questions, and my style is to ask pointed and challenging questions. That is why the moderator's initial response to me was as if he sensed that I am all to eager to cross swords, or "grind axes". There is a measure of truth in that, but my underlying purpose is to learn.
I could read back through this topic and pick any number of places from which I could quote one sentence or phrase and request further elaboration. But I will restrict this post to some general discussion to establish the ground rules for my participation. And the moderator can then make a decision as to whether he chooses to banish me from the forum. It's hardly life and death with me whether I stay here. I could find other places to go to learn.
Next, this could be a suggestion as to a policy for this forum. From what I've read here, I'm left with one persisting curiosity, which could be summed up as "Where is this guy coming from?" Not in the sense of whether the person has an concealed agenda; more from the standpoint of what intellectual machinery is he/she bringing to the discussion? Now then, I know that, besides yourself, the only other participant in this thread so far has been Paul A. Nelson, a name that was familiar to me, and on cracking open my copy of "Signs of Intelligence", I learn that this is Dr. Nelson, whose discipline is described as "philosophy of biology" on the faculty of U. of Chicago. So I know one of the people with whom I would be conversing here is a person of well-established credentials in Academe. That's fine. And I can hardly think of a more relevant discipline to be applied to a discussion of ID.
Now then, I will offer a brief resume for myself. My formal academic credentials to discuss this topic are nil. My degree is in Electrical Engineering. Not given to false modesty, I consider myself highly intelligent, and reasonably well-read across a broad range of knowledge. I have read some twenty or so books on both sides of the evolution controversy. Some might regard me as a dilettante (sp?). With that background, and because I do not have a day job in Academe in the discipline of philosophy, mathematics or science, I do not have at my command as broad a vocabulary as most of the participants in this forum. I could add that I have found that, in general, when I am in the company of PhD's, I can hold my own fairly well, and have often been accepted as an equal. Not always, of course. But among PhD's who are not intellectual snobs, that has usually been the case.
This is optional, of course, but I would be curious, Evan, to hear a brief resume of yourself.
Some suggestions as to methodology for the pursuit of this topic. I consider semantics highly important. You have pointed out previously in this thread the need for definitions of certain words. I might suggest that the best way to define the entire subject would be to search for dictionary definitions of certain words, and we could start with "Intelligent" and "Design". And by dictionary definitions, I mean definitions which employ a simple vocabulary familiar to the normally well-educated lay person. We could start with definitions read out of existing commercial dictionaries and discuss the merits of various definitions, and their implications.
Another impulse I have is to address Dr. Nelson by giving him my own personal critique of his article in SOI. If he would be open-minded enough to listen to reactions from one such as I who has no formal qualifying academic credentials that would entitle him to offer a critique. Upon my first reading of his article, I thought I did detect some flaws, but perhaps they were not flaws so much as they were questions as just exactly how much he was endeavoring(sp?) to imply.
Evan, you indicate that you believe that most of the participants here do accept common descent. Indeed, this suggests another point I'd like to make. I believe it only confuses the issue when there is introduced into the discussion origin of life questions. I strongly feel that more efficient discussions of evolution result when the origin of life is declared out of bounds. Hubert Yockey has suggested that the starting point for biology should be the first self-replicating organism. I do not deny that speculations on the origin of life can make for very interesting and stimulating conversation, but I also feel that it becomes a noise factor when introduced into a discussion of ID.
Again, as to the acceptance of common descent, I'm very encouraged by your estimation that this is generally accepted by the participants here. It means this is a more congenial crowd from my viewpoint than I might otherwise have expected.
Another reflection, directed more toward the moderator. I very much sat up and took notice at his reference to the "obvious pseudo-/anti-science" in Dr. Dembski's writing. I still am mildly curious as to whether that was tongue-in-cheek on his part. Up to that point I actually wondered whether the moderator was Dr. Dembski himself. I remained with the thought there was a very slight possibility that it was still Dr. Dembski, indicating that he knows he is "pseudo-/anti-science" and this is deliberate and he's proud of it, the explanation lying in his image of "science". But upon later investigation, I found that Dr. Dembski is member #7, and the moderator is #1. Harking back to the question of resumes, I'd consider it helpful to see a resume of the moderator, although I can appreciate that he might consider that inappropriate. I could also appreciate that he might consider it counterproductive to requre resumes from all participants. The option is offered to participate anonymously, and the ultimate anonymity is to conceal one's background and let one's words speak for themselves. I'm respectful of any person's desire to participate on that basis, including you, Evan, and the moderator.
I think I can say with reasonable confidence that the moderator is not Phillip Johnson. How's that for narrowing it down?
I've taken up much space here in what could have appeared to have been largely a self-centered monologue, although I do feel I did make a few substantive points. If I'm allowed to continue to participate, most of what I post in the future will be substantive.
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Paul A. Nelson
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posted 01. April 2002 07:42
Hello to New York Wiseguy:
I'd be happy to talk about my chapter on natural selection in Signs of Intelligence, but not in this thread. I've had my say on the starting topic here. Maybe you can start a new thread focussed specifically on natural selection.
BTW, although I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, I'm not on the faculty there. I'm a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.
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James A. Barham
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posted 01. April 2002 08:12
On Miracles:
I find myself sympathetic to parts of what both Evan and Paul are saying on this subject---i.e., as usual, I am caught in the middle!
I have to agree with Evan that in regard to transmutation of species (which is certainly what the fossil record seems to suggest, and which seems to be by far the most parsimonious explanation, given everything we know), there really is no middle position between some form of natural causation and supernatural intervention. The hopscotch example is not really relevant, since there were no naturally evolved beings with that sort of intelligence around at the time (or even today---we can scarcely control evolution to that degree even now!). If we posit naturally evolved aliens, that is just pushing the problem back a step. All the same issues arise in accounting for the aliens themselves.
On the other hand, I am sympathetic to Paul's request for a definition of "miraculous" or "supernatural." The common tendency (which I detect in Evan's postings, as well) is to identify "natural" with "what we currently understand" (or think we understand, since I would deny that Darwinians really understand what they claim to do). But this just means that anything we currently do not understand is by definition miraculous. Certainly, the origin of life, the transmutation of species, and even the occurrent functioning of organisms are all miraculous on this definition, in my opinion, since we do not really understand any of these phenomena.
My own definition of "miracle" etc. is very simple. "Natural" just means "produced by Nature," via all of Nature's productive capacities, whatever those turn out to be (and we do not know them all, yet). "Supernatural" just means there is a causal contribution to the natural order from beyond Nature, and a "miracle" would be such a supernatural intervention.
Obviously, there is no way to know a priori whether any given phenomenon that we do not currently understand (like life) is a miracle or not, on my definition. I am going to lean toward naturalism, and most of my ID colleagues are going to lean toward supernaturalism, in terms of the burden of proof and the benefit of the doubt. And we will both do this on other grounds---namely, our perception of the overall coherence of all of our experience. Such global perceptions of what makes sense on balance (aka worldviews) cannot be fruitfully debated as such. But if we keep the definition of "miracle" very intuitive and simple in this way, at least we can agree more or less on the terms of the debate about specific cases, or so it seems to me.
New York Wiseguy:
I, too, am an "independent scholar" (as it is delicately put)---i.e., not employed in Academia. So, don't feel alone. You are very welcome to this forum, at least as far as I am concerned.
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New York Wiseguy
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posted 02. April 2002 08:56
I would like to return to Evan's original purpose in this topic to "Summarize the issues", and to probe further into Paul Nelson's comments to define more concisely the area of disagreement. To do this, we need consider, I'd suggest, only the first three of Evan's original questions which he advocated as required to be addressed by ID "theory". I place quotation marks around "theory" for reasons which will be apparent below.
Re Evan's first question:
1) Does ID theory accept the geological age of the earth and the progression of life forms laid out in the fossil record? It seems that everyone involved does so.
I believe the answer to that is very short, and Evan is correct about "everyone", not only on this forum but also among all advocates of ID. I have seen nothing in ID advocacy which disputes the science of geology. ID disputes only some aspects of the consensus of the science of biology. The folks who dispute both geology and biology are the Young Earth Creationists.
Paul Nelson dealt with Evan's following two questions:
2) Are all life forms (at least from the time of distinct multi-cellular life forms) related by a chain of common descent?
and 3) Does design happen non-miraculously (as explained by Dembski in ID Coming Clean or not?
Paul also said he'd be willing to discuss his SOI Chapter 10 with me, but preferred to do so in a separate topic on Natural Selection. I would hope to instead attract Paul back to this topic, because I do not feel "closure" was reached between Evan and Paul. I'm going to attempt some further defining aimed at making more concrete the areas of disagreement. I feel, also, that this will serve the same purpose as any comments I might make about Paul's SOI Chapter 10, because it seems to me his arguments here about natural selection are condensed from the content of that chapter.
Relevant to the issue, I believe, is my misinterpretation of Paul's capsule resume in SOI. Seeing "philosophy of biology" piqued my curiosity, and it struck me as more likely to be a course of study than a title that would be applied to a doctorate degree. Is your doctorate, Paul, specifically identified as granted in the "philosophy of biology"? This is a lead-in to what I feel is a substantive question about Evan's original purpose.
A question to Evans: Are the issues which you seek to summarize conceived by you to be scientific issues or philosophical issues? And to Paul: Do you consider your assertions about natural selection to be scientific assertions or philosophical assertions? How do we define the distinction between the two? "Philosophy of biology", is, I'd assume, a subset of "Philosophy of Science". So the question would become "Is the philosophy of science a branch of philosophy, or a branch of science? My opinion is that it is a branch of philosophy. If anyone disagrees, I'd be very interested in hearing counterarguments.
This is why I do not as yet accept ID as a "theory". I am not convinced that ID advocacy is "science" as opposed to "philosophy". Perhaps Paul will correct me, but I have not understood that the activity of philosophy proposes "theories". ID still interests me very much as a "philosophy".
To get more substantive, I would quarrel with the relevance of both of Paul's metaphors. The hopscotch time-lapse photography example is precisely the same metaphor I have drawn to discuss the fossil record. My problem with it here is that if we are going to discuss the distinction between the miraculous and the non-miraculous, it is axiomatic that we assume we are observing with a camera that is not only running all the time, with a frame rate in the megahertz region, but also with a camera that allows us to observe the state of every particle in every frame.
With regard to the Alexandria librarian and the modern "miracle of communications", this seems to me to be misplaced. We are trying to understand and explain what happened in history. The miraculous vs. non-miraculous decision is a question of how we interpret a past event. The analogy seems to me to conflate mechanism with interpretation.
To explore the distinction between the miraculous and the non-miraculous requires, I'd say, a closer look at Dembski's emphasis on probability. At opposite ends of the spectrum, any event we can directly observe must be classified as non-miraculous. As regards hypothetical mechanisms by which living beings could come into existence other than as children of similar parents, clearly an appearance "in a puff of smoke" would be classified as a miracle. So, I'd assume would be a robin hatched from a dinosaur's egg. Or, for that matter, the birth of a human from the womb of an ape.
Getting back to the hypothetical fast high-resolution camera, with which we can observe every particle down to quantum time intervals, this, it appears to me, is the level to which we must go to find an event whose interpretation might be "fuzzy" as between miraculous and non-miraculous. And the interpretation depends almost entirely on probability. Quantum mechanics tells us that subatomic events are not determinate, but depend on probability. or "chance". To infer design, I would submit that we would have to be convinced that the probability distribution of a certain class of events has become so biased as to be called "unnatural". Would it be acceptable to the Dembski codification of design to say that what the Intelligent Designer is doing is "loading the dice"?
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Paul A. Nelson
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posted 02. April 2002 10:07
To NY Wise Guy:
My course of study at the University of Chicago, after completing the normal distribution requirements in the Department of Philosophy, was the philosophy of biology (with a dissertation on the theory of common descent). This included courses formally listed by the Department of Ecology and Evolution, and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology (e.g., in molecular systematics, evolutionary biology, evolution and development, and so on). Such interdisciplinary work is common at the U of C: the members of my dissertation committee, for instance, each have multiple appointments (e.g., in Philosophy, Evolutionary Biology, History of Science). My Ph.D. was given by the Department of Philosophy (1998), in "Philosophy."
I quit this thread a couple of days ago, but you want to keep it going. I'm not sure the moderator will agree that's a good idea. I would enjoy participating in a carefully focused discussion on the theory of natural selection, or the theory of common descent, or the definition of "miracle" (in relation to intelligent causation), or how we infer the past -- but not on all of these topics at the same time, and not in this thread, which ought to be left in peace.
Please pick one topic from your long list of interests, and start a new thread with a precisely focused question or proposal.
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Mike Gene
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posted 02. April 2002 10:54
New York Wiseguy,
While I can appreciate your sincere desire to learn, it is not my impression that this forum is a generic ID site where any topic related to ID is to be discussed. Nor is it a place where we can call people like Paul Nelson or Bill Dembski to the computer in order to have them explain themselves. Instead, it is a forum "for discussing novel intuitions, speculations, hypotheses, conjectures, arguments, and data related to complex systems that have yet to be developed into full-fledged research projects." I'm am no more involved with this forum than any other contributor here, but I would really like to see this forum develop into something beyond another generic ID/evolution site where dozens of people hash out their hundreds of disagreements that we've heard over and over again. I'd like to see it develop into a place where people put their novel intuitions, speculations, hypotheses, conjectures, arguments, and data related to complex systems on the table.
You asked for resumes. I'll simply point out that I have previously debated hundreds of topics on the ARN forum for a period of more than two years (I contributed 1800+ postings). As such, I consider myself somewhat of an expert on the dynamics of internet forum discussions. Thus, when you want to attract Paul back to this thread for lack of "closure", I am here to tell you that closure rarely, if ever, happens on an internet forum. Instead, what normally happens in an attempt to reach closure is this: one disgreement becomes two becomes five becomes ten. At some point, posturing sets in which then causes the thread to evolve into a "battle." This is the reason I took the initiative and tied my own hands, dropping out of the parsimony thread (although this rubs against my big-mouth cyber-personality). For example, in this thread, you assert that we should consider ID without factoring in the origin of life into these discussions. I strongly disagree. Should I let this unsupported assertion go? Or should I engage it and fray the thread? I'll let it go for the sake of the forum (unless, of course, you want to start a new thread making a positive case why ID should not be factoring the origin of life into the picture).
Now, it's fine to get all the disagreements on the table and attempt to better understand all the various nuances of each other's position. But such a non-focused approach, if typical, will quickly turn this forum into something the creators did not intend (and that would be the real loss). For example, it's hard for me to see how your questions about resumes and personalities really contribute anything of substance. Of course, I now realize that this posting will probably spawn a reply that itself will turn into another meta-discussion, so obviously, I will not reply further.
But if you want to use this forum to learn (your objective), take a positive, focused approach. Take a complex system and propose novel intuitions, speculations, hypotheses, conjectures, arguments, and data related to it. Learning is typically enhanced when one actively tries to create something. But remember that the objective of Brainstorms might not fit your objective, as its objective is not to be "a place where people everywhere can learn about anything they perceive to be related to ID," now is it?
[ 02 April 2002, 10:55: Message edited by: Mike Gene ]
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Evan
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posted 02. April 2002 11:34
It seems like this thread, which was intended to summarize some issues, has splintered. I’ve already started a new thread on common descent. I would also like to address the question raised by NY Wiseguy about probabilities and causality, and I will do that in another post.
So in closing (probably) my contributions to this thread, I will answer this question that NY Wiseguy asked of me, “Are the issues which you seek to summarize conceived by you to be scientific issues or philosophical issues?”
Ultimately, I am interested in what can be considered science. That is why I emphasize (and will discuss elsewhere) the issue of probability which is at the heart of Dembski’s explanatory filter and design inference.
However, many interesting philosophical issues seem to arise when we try to focus on the science. Clarifying them so as to see what relevance they have, if any, to the science, is also one of my interests.
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Moderator
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Member # 1
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posted 02. April 2002 12:26
This is NOT an Intelligent Design or evolution forum. It is a forum for discussion about complex systems (from the perspective of biology, engineering, physics, information science, etc.).
As Mike Gene pointed out, this is not a place for you to come and ask Dr. Dembski or Dr. Nelson your own pet questions. In fact, our hope is that people will make posts that are high enough in quality to attract the comments of certain fellows at ISCID. This should be everyone's goal: to bring insights to the table that are novel and fresh, and that may cause people to look twice.
Rehasing old arguments, or bringing them back on the table only leads to deadlock/gridlock. Asking general questions about Intelligent Design and evolution is better reserved for other boards: http://www.arn.org
Finally, NY Wiseguy, if you are here to learn, then by all means do so. Soak it in. But if you are going to participate, please make positive contributions regarding complex systems. Otherwise, simply lurk and learn.
Good day.
ISCID Moderator
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