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Author
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Topic: Engineering & Darwinian Theory
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Jiml8
Member
Member # 242
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posted 13. April 2002 06:21
A general comment on the idea of irreducible complexity:
Were I to build a building, I would find it necessary at various points to employ temporary structural braces, to hold things in place while I completed the structure. After completing that portion of the structure, I would remove those braces.
Another person, when contemplating the completed structure, might label it as irreducibly complex because there would be no obvious way to disassemble it into simpler and more basic components without the whole thing falling down.
The point, of course, is that processes are not necessarily reversible and viewing the end result may provide no insight at all into how it became the way it is.
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James A. Barham
Member
Member # 50
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posted 13. April 2002 07:46
Dennis:
I completely agree with you that life "really stands out." But the question is, What does this entail?
You see the intelligence and the teleology manifest in life as being externally imposed boundary conditions, like those in manmade machines---i.e., you view the living world through the lens of the human being. I, on the other hand, see human intelligence and purpose as naturally arising out of living matter, i.e., I view human beings through the lens of the rest of the organic world.
Now, it is tolerably clear, I think, that we agree on most factual matters, but are operating under these diametrically opposed metaphysical frameworks that force us to interpret the same facts in such different ways. Is there any way we can have a fruitful discussion despite these deep-seated philosophical differences?
Here is a question for you. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that only human beings have instrinsic intelligence, in and of themselves, and that in all the rest of the organic world, there is no more intrinsic intelligence than in a manmade machine.
Are you sure you are quite comfortable with the radical implications of this position? That is to say, you seem to be saying that the apparent intelligence we see in the family dog is illusory, no more real than the simulated intelligence in Rodney Brooks's robot Kismet (which simulates human emotions). Am I hearing you rightly? Is this really your position, identical with Descartes's?
If I am missing something, then maybe there is more common ground here than it appears.
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Dennis L. Feucht
Member
Member # 231
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posted 20. April 2002 18:39
James Barham,
(Please pardon my belated response.)
"You see the intelligence and the teleology manifest in life as being externally imposed boundary conditions, like those in manmade machines---i.e., you view the living world through the lens of the human being. I, on the other hand, see human intelligence and purpose as naturally arising out of living matter, i.e., I view human beings through the lens of the rest of the organic world."
I don't think these views are mutually exclusive. For instance, one can give a completely mechanical description of a computer computing a function and it can be "complete" as a physical description of what the computer is doing. But the programers solving the equation interpret the behavior in terms of equation-solving, etc. Yet it is the same phenomena that are being addressed.
If intelligent beings can arise in a manner describable in terms of physical laws, it would remain to explain the principles corresponding to the mathematics in the computer example above. Some as-yet unknown functional principles must then exist to explain how intelligence arises from non-intelligence, for in our total scientific experience of the world to date, physics acts in a direction to reduce rather than increase intelligence. Brains die, but they are not known to come back to life (according to our physical expectations of them at least).
"Is there any way we can have a fruitful discussion despite these deep-seated philosophical differences?"
Yes. Or, to ask a similar question, is ID dependent upon a particular worldview? I don't think so within some wide margins. As long as the key concepts of the ID subject-matter, such as "intelligence" and "design," can be defined satisfactorily, then their nature and generation/origins can be pursued from a variety of different angles. It is only when a priori philosophical commitments limit what one might find (which to some extent is always the case for finite minds) has a pre-scientific approach been reverted to.
From a wider perspective, it is my view that the issues raised by ID, though intriguing and of great interest to us as human beings, are premature to draw conclusions about _scientifically_. Another 200 years of the study of life, perhaps, will prepare humanity to better consider these questions. In our time, we struggle to even frame the right questions.
"If I understand you correctly, you are saying that only human beings have instrinsic intelligence, in and of themselves, and that in all the rest of the organic world, there is no more intrinsic intelligence than in a manmade machine."
My point was that the human mind is unique in our world. That is, there are no other comparable intelligent beings. While there is a hierarchy of complexity (or intelligence, if you want) to life, the human mind is qualitatively more intelligent than any other known to us.
"... you seem to be saying that the apparent intelligence we see in the family dog is illusory, no more real than the simulated intelligence in Rodney Brooks's robot Kismet (which simulates human emotions). Am I hearing you rightly? Is this really your position, identical with Descartes's?"
I associate intelligence (in the full and usual sense I hear it used) with agency, the ability to freely make decisions and know these decisions are being made. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that advanced machines (or aliens) might be able to have this kind of reflective consciousness, but if they are humanly engineered, then we might say that "And God made man in his own image" is recursive, where "God" is "whoever" created the human mind.
As for Descartes, I do not take his position of ontological dualism but rather one of epistemological dualism. That is, I don't think we can understand intelligence as a special physical component of organisms, but rather, as comprising a set of principles different in nature from those of physical causality (behavior).
I hope I'm coming close to addressing your points here.
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Dennis L. Feucht
Member
Member # 231
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posted 20. April 2002 19:07
Jiml8,
"The point, of course, is that processes are not necessarily reversible and viewing the end result may provide no insight at all into how it became the way it is."
Good point. The "hidden variables," however, constitute additional requirements that must be present. In Behe's view of IC (a conjunction of required conditions or steps), this adds even more conditions/steps.
But your point is different; namely, that (if I may elaborate) one must have an understanding of the relevant functional theory (all the ways the existing thing could have been built) to conclude IC. Quite true; and reverse engineering depends upon such a theory.
As I see it, the essence of IC is a plan being followed to build something that wouldn't have occurred only on the basis of statistical physical events. Whether the IC claim is made in terms of an improbable conjunction of physical conditions, circularity (A depends on B which depends on A), or other bases, what in the end is necessary to be conclusive is a fully-developed functional theory of the kind of things under examination. Otherwise, clever methods of construction not accounted for in a partial functional theory could invalidate claims based on it.
And it has only been a few decades since a distinction between behavioral and functional theories was even recognized. We have a long way to go before any such theories are fully developed, no less for something a complicated as life.
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James A. Barham
Member
Member # 50
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posted 21. April 2002 17:16
Dennis:
Thanks for the detailed reply.
I don't have a whole lot to add at this point. I actually agree with much of what you said. The main difference between us, I guess, is my dissatisfaction with the functionalist idea that intelligence is a matter of "organization," and has nothing to do with the causal powers of matter itself. I believe that it is inherently impossible to get striving or caring or whatever you want to call it---the power in living matter that makes it adjust itself spontaneously to circumstances in order to maintain itself in existence---using inorganic matter. When it is we who determine the boundary conditions in a machine, and nothing intrinsic to the machine itself, then there is no real purpose and hence no real intelligence, only a simulacrum.
Of course, I agree that we are very far from understanding how mere matter can have this intrinsic power of striving. Maybe it will take 200 years to figure this out, although I am a little more optimistic than that. At any rate, if one accepts the principle that "more is different," then it makes sense that the difference underlying the intelligent striving of life must reside somehow or other in the enormous size of proteins (perhaps, with the multiple competing noncovalent bonds, giving rise to a "minimum frustration" principle).
[ 21 April 2002, 17:18: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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kyle7
Member
Member # 191
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posted 21. April 2002 21:47
I just noticed this thread and I cannot help but point out what I see as a fault with the initial post. The premise that an unknown theory (scaffolding) may explain an IC system does not invalidate the IC construct. In science, we work under the constraint of what is known. We put forth theories to explain phenomena that contradicts the established theory. Experiments are then constructed to either confirm or deny the new theories. This is how science advances.
Now there is nothing wrong with theorizing about how an IC system may not be an IC system. But, the scientist must be able to construct an experiment to verify his/her theory. Without any experiment to validate his/her theory, the theorist cannot make gross statements proclaiming he has a validated new theory (or that the contradictions of the old theory have been answered). In other words, speculation is not the scientific method.
The power of the IC construct is that it forces scientists to examine evolutionary theory more critically. It forces them to not blindly gloss over established theory (e.g. the 2nd Law of thermodynamics) in order to justify monogenetic evolution. The burden of proof is on evolutionists to explain IC systems.
[ 21 April 2002, 21:51: Message edited by: kyle7 ]
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Dennis L. Feucht
Member
Member # 231
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posted 05. May 2002 19:23
kyle7,
Yes, I would certainly agree that empirical verification is required to establish both Darwinian and ID (IC) hypotheses of life's development. While IDers have been explicit in acknowledging that ID is a young field and must proceed to offer such testable theories to eventually succeed, Darwinian science appears to take the dominant stance of claiming to have already provided sufficient empirical proof.
Such a claim is controversial at best. Until life as it now exists is better understood, both causally and functionally, it seems to me that any claims of completeness in explaining the development of life are premature.
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Dennis L. Feucht
Member
Member # 231
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posted 05. May 2002 19:48
James A. Barham,
(Again, please pardon my slow response.)
You wrote:
"The main difference between us, I guess, is my dissatisfaction with the functionalist idea that intelligence is a matter of "organization," and has nothing to do with the causal powers of matter itself."
As I understand theories of function, they are expressed in causal language, just as causal (behavioral) theories are expressed in the language of structure. Without causation, function lacks what is needed in order to be expressed.
What makes functional theories rather independent of causal theories are the many degrees of freedom allowed by the causal principles (physical laws). For instance, information stored on a hard disk drive is constrained by the physics of magnetic memory technology, but this physics leaves open just what the stored information is. In this sense, function is independent of causation and we can store arbitrary data of our choosing on a HDD.
Of course, the information is not physically manifested without the behavioral aspect, but it is also not determined by it. The parallel in life is the DNA base-pair programming, in which the base-pair sequences are free to be determined by more than the biochemical laws in themselves. While conforming to biochemistry, there is a sequencing freedom that allows another set of principles to be brought to bear in explaining the significance of particular sequences.
[ 05 May 2002, 19:49: Message edited by: Dennis L. Feucht ]
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James A. Barham
Member
Member # 50
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posted 05. May 2002 23:44
Dennis:
Yes, you have made a nice summary of the functionalist viewpoint. The question I am raising, however, is whether we can really accept this view as an adequate account of life.
I believe there has to be a fundamental distinction between function-as-organization that is imposed on inert matter (inert with respect to the function, that is) by an outside intelligent agent (e.g., computers and robots), and function-as-spontaneous-intelligent-action that derives from the causal powers of living matter itself. That is, I reject the analogy between the brain and the computer, the cell and the machine, etc.
Now, it is true that the functional organization of the cell cannot be explained in terms of present-day physics, and that it appears arbitrary with respect to the underlying material "realization". But I believe that appearances must be deceiving, because I do not believe that life can be explained in function-as-pure-organization terms---neither its origin nor its ongoing, moment-by-moment intelligent striving.
Now, of course, I may be wrong. Maybe it will be possible some day to build truly adaptive and truly intelligent machines out of metal and plastic and silicon that have genuine striving and caring and purposiveness. But I am betting that it is simply an empirical impossibility, and that all of these telological aspects of life are arising somehow out of the physics of proteins and the protein-water gel. In short, I do not believe that any mechanical simulation of intelligence, no matter how clever, will ever BE intelligent (basically Searle's point, only I believe it applies to life as such, not just to brains). The only way in which it may perhaps be possible to build an artificial intelligent agent, from my perspective, will be to use macromolecules with the right intrinsic physical properties (self-organization, manifold low-energy self-interactions, energy degeneracy, frustration, etc.).
The idea that a manmade machine could ever somehow spring to life is just a sci-story, in my view, albeit one that has become a kind of unthinking dogma that almost everyone now subscribes to. But there is no evidence that it is true, and a little thought shows that indeed it cannot possibly be true, or so I believe. The main problem is simply that the cell is rearranging matter constantly in such a way as to keep the second law at bay, while the matter in a machine is constantly being degraded by the second law out of its externally imposed functional configuration because it has no inherent tendency to seek out or strive for that configuration.
The problem can be summarized in a phrase I sometimes trot out: "The Rhett Butler Problem." Like Rhett, machines just don't give a damn. Hence, the living organism (which manifestly DOES give a damn) is in a fundamentally different metaphysical category from the machine.
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