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Author
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Topic: Organisms using GAs vs. Organisms being built by GAs
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yersinia
Member
Member # 324
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posted 05. April 2003 19:52
Nelson, what the heck are you talking about?
quote:
The abrupt appearance of these machines by LGT points to a mechanism used by the intelligent designer.
...but LGT is observed to happen *today* in labs and in the wild, and no designers are to be seen. The physical mechanisms by which it occurs are reasonably well understood. So what justification do you have for saying that modern LGT events occur naturally, but that past ones point to design?
One confusing statement of many, I'm afraid...
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Nel
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Member # 614
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posted 05. April 2003 20:00
Yersinia,
The heck I am talking about is not relevant to whether a particular mechanism is natural. Of course a mechanism used by the designer would be natural. In that the wholesale transfer of components, for their subsequent rearrangement in organisms, is certainly not Darwinian evolution, is actually what complex software can and would do.
[ 05. April 2003, 20:01: Message edited by: Nelson_Alonso ]
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Frances
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Member # 169
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posted 05. April 2003 20:21
Nelson,
The problem is that ID relies on the elimination of natural pathways to infer design. If as you say, ID can use chance/regularity then how can one infer actual instances of intelligent design? You seem to still be making many unsupported assertions about LGT, ID and Darwinism.
Any specific scenarios you have in mind?
As far as your comments to GED, I believe you are confused about his argument. He is not saying that Darwinistic explanations are a priori correct, he is stating that ID which relies on sweeping clean all alternatives for regularity and chance has a problem when is obviously cannot sweep clean due to lack of knowledge. Your representation of GED's argument does not reflect in my humble opinion what GED actually said.
Nelson states that "With respect to ID, this is going a little off-topic but, evidence that contradicts Darwinian evolution can also support intelligent design.". Sure, anything can support intelligent design it seems, even the existence of natural pathways... So what is the relevance of ID, certainly the efforts to disprove Darwinism are insufficient to provide evidence FOR intelligent design.
On the other hand when Darwin argues against design he is not arguing that this is thus evidence FOR evolution. In fact he provides independent scientific arguments in favor of evolution, including mechanisms, hypotheses etc. ID so far has failed miserably in these aspects.
I still find it fascinating how you made an assertion about Doolittle which seems to be unsupportable by the evidence. Your claim that "Doolittle had to practically beg Darwinists to stop resisting LGT for obvious reasons" seems to be a bit overstating the actual statements which were neither begging. But you have yet to explain the use of 'for obvious reasons'.
Nelson now continues to confuse the issues. Nelson suggested that LGT (or bacterial sex) was somehow non-Darwinian and suggested that Darwinian mechanisms for variation were limited to mutation only. I merely pointed out that recombination is a very common and important mechanism for introducing variation into the genome.
I did not say that LGT and recombination were identical, a strawman argument at best. It is clear that Darwinian mechanisms can include the 'wholesale' transfer of genes.
Despite your claim that you believe you find support for your arguments about the red queen, I have yet to see a well reasoned argument.
IC systems are NOT reliable indicators of ID.
When talking about LGT Nelson ad hoc claims that "ID nicely predicts this, Darwinism does not." but Nelson has yet to show what ID really predicts. I have not seen any such 'predictions' and thus Nelson seems to be painting the bulls eye around the arrows, to use a Dembski metaphor.
Since LGT can be shown to be fully naturally and no independent evidence of ID has been provided Nelson's argument seems to have lost any foundation in logic.
Thus so far I believe that we still disagree on the nature of variation in Darwinism, mutation or also for instance recombination, the nature of LGT (bacterial sex) as compared to recombination (sex). But most importantly I would like to point out that Nelson seems to infer ID from the presence of LGT, a fully natural mechanism which can be observed in action without the need of ID. So what evidence does Nelson have that ID was actually required and used in these events? I have seen nothing that indicates such and I would argue that Nelson's own arguments undermine the use of LGT as evidence of ID.
Even Shapiro seems to contradict Nelson
"The very biochemical tools that we now use in laboratories are __evolved__ to modulate local nucleotide variation, to rearrange genomic DNA sequences, and to acquire functional DNA sequences from the environment through horizontal
gene transfer. Shapiro pointed out that we are not the first genetic engineers." "
Nothing in here to suggest the need for ID or even that Darwinism is the opposite of LGT.
[ 05. April 2003, 20:43: Message edited by: Frances ]
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gedanken
Member
Member # 594
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posted 05. April 2003 20:36
quote:
One more question before I go regarding demonstrating IC,
Ged, can you show me the function of the flagellum (motility) reduced to a single component?
Can you describe the method of motility of the organism with the “Type III” secretory system?
And of course we note the claim that the organism with the “Type III” secretory system postdates the flagellum. What organism predates the bacteria with the “Type III” secretory system? Having noted that, please describe the motility of that organism.
Also I have read that the bacterial flagellum itself is assembled by a “type III secretory system”. But the claim was made that the “type III secretory system” postdates the flagellum. How can that be, if it is inherent in the flagellum?
(I note that these answers will be important in my reply. Not being a biologist I will need to defer to biologists in most of these issues. But if Alonso can answer my simple questions, I may be able to provide a useful response.)
[ 06. April 2003, 01:18: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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yersinia
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Member # 324
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posted 05. April 2003 23:53
quote:
Of course a mechanism used by the designer would be natural.
This is far from clear. Most IDists seem to advocate extranatural mechanisms.
quote:
In that the wholesale transfer of components, for their subsequent rearrangement in organisms, is certainly not Darwinian evolution, is actually what complex software can and would do.
Nelson, have you ever heard of "selfish genes" -- yes that book that Richard Dawkins wrote. Well, whatever you think of the metaphor regarding population genetics in higher organisms, it quite literally fits for things like transposons, which appear to mostly exist in order to self-perpetuate and as you may recall are the hypothesized, tested, confirmed and published putative ancestors of the RAG genes.
Now, most people would consider selfish genes the ultimate in ultraDarwinism, but no, here you are telling us that such things are non-Darwinian and furthermore for some completely obscure reason that they are therefore evidence for ID, as if human-written software were predominantly made up of nearly endless repetitive elements with no coding function (like human DNA is).
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Micah Sparacio
Member
Member # 6
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posted 06. April 2003 09:18
yersina,
What the heck are you talking about? ;-)
quote:
This is far from clear. Most IDists seem to advocate extranatural mechanisms.
Before making this claim, it would be good of you to tell us exactly what an extranatural mechanism is, and then give us an example of an IDist who advocates such a mechanism.
As far as I can tell, human design occurs within a fully constrained natural domain. I see no reason to suspect that intelligent design of any kind requires some "extranatural mechanism." Indeed, the only design that we are readily familiar with occurs within the natural order of events, so why would anyone suspect otherwise?
In what way is intelligent causation non-natural?
[ 06. April 2003, 09:20: Message edited by: Micah Sparacio ]
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gedanken
Member
Member # 594
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posted 06. April 2003 09:57
Micah, I’ll leave the interpretation of this paper to others. I present it for inspection to see if it is a response to your question. In all cases emphasis is mine:
quote:
FALSIFIABILITY: Is intelligent design falsifiable? Is Darwinism falsifiable? Yes to the first question, no to the second. Intelligent design is eminently falsifiable. Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity in biology are within the theory of intelligent design the key markers of intelligent agency. If it could be shown that biological systems like the bacterial flagellum that are wonderfully complex, elegant, and integrated could have been formed by a gradual Darwinian process (which by definition is non-telic), then intelligent design would be falsified on the general grounds that one doesn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do. In that case Occam's razor finishes off intelligent design quite nicely.
quote:
Ah, but we have experience with radio transmitters. At least with extraterrestrial intelligences we can guess what might have happened. But we don't have any experience with unembodied designers, and that's clearly what we're dealing with when it comes to design in biology. Actually, if an unembodied designer is responsible for biological complexity, then we do have quite a bit of experience with such a designer through the designed objects (not least ourselves) that confront us all the time. On the other hand, it is true that we possess very little insight at this time into how such a designer acted to bring about the complex biological systems that have emerged over the course of natural history.
quote:
It is no objection at all that we don't at this time know how an unembodied designer produced a biological system that exhibits specified complexity. We know that specified complexity is reliably correlated with the effects of intelligence. The only reason to insist on looking for non-telic explanations to explain the complex specified structures in biology is because of prior commitment to naturalism that perforce excludes unembodied designers. It is illegitimate, scientifically and rationally, to claim on a priori grounds that such entities do not exist, or if they do exist that they can have no conceivable relevance to what happens in the world. Do such entities exist? Can they have empirical consequences? Are they relevant to what happens in the world? Such questions cannot be prejudged except on metaphysical grounds. To prejudge these questions the way Eugenie Scott does is therefore to make certain metaphysical commitments about what there is and what has the capacity to influence events in the world. Such commitments are utterly gratuitous to the practice of science. Specified complexity confirms design regardless whether the designer responsible for it is embodied or unembodied.
-- William A. Dembski, Is Intelligent Design Testable? (originally from Metaviews January 24, 2001)
quote:
The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) is a cross-disciplinary professional society that investigates complex systems apart from external programmatic constraints like materialism, naturalism, or reductionism. …
-- The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design opening web page.
(Just a quick note on Dr. Dembski’s third paragraph quoted above, what Eugenie Scott actually says is that science cannot deal with that which is beyond natural due to problems with testability. Dembski acknowledges same in his article. Of course his claim is that ID is testable. But his defense is based precisely on the claim that science restricts to natural causes. How can this be relevant without some “extranatural mechanism,” as would be defined by Dembski? But my main point re that paragraph is that Scott’s point are that science cannot deal with that beyond natural, not that “such entities do not exist”. This accusation is precisely what Eugenie Scott is saying science does not do, and I think that Dembski is making a false and misleading statement there. Unfortunately I don’t have the source at the moment, but her words are “If science is limited to explaining the natural world through natural processes, we are then constrained from making pronouncements about the supernatural world. We can neither say there is, nor say that there is not, a God or any other omnipotent power. Statements about whether God exists, or interferes in the world, are just plain outside of our job description as scientists, regardless of our personal theistic or nontheistic views.” A link to a similar statement can be found here.)
[ 06. April 2003, 11:29: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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warren_bergerson
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Member # 262
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posted 06. April 2003 10:20
Micah,
Quote: As far as I can tell, human design occurs within a fully constrained natural domain. I see no reason to suspect that intelligent design of any kind requires some "extranatural mechanism." Indeed, the only design that we are readily familiar with occurs within the natural order of events, so why would anyone suspect otherwise? In what way is intelligent causation non-natural?
While I completely agree with your suggestion that design and intelligent causation, are ‘natural processes’, the suggestion, IMO, is simply rhetorical unless it is associated with the advocacy of specific reviewable definitions of design and intelligent causation and unless it is associated with specific reviewable and testable/verifiable hypotheses regarding design and intelligent causation. Given your position at ISCID, it would seem appropriate for you to state what definitions and testable hypotheses you advocate. How do you propose to define, measure and test your interpretation of intelligent design processes?
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charlie d.
Member
Member # 159
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posted 06. April 2003 10:40
Micah:
there is also: quote:
What's more, the energy in quantum events is proportional to frequency or inversely proportional to wavelength. And since there is no upper limit to the wavelength of, for instance, electromagnetic radiation, there is no lower limit to the energy required to impart information. In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all.
Dembski, "Intelligent Design Coming Clean".
I am sure you'd recognize that imparting changes in the physical world with zero energy expenditure is beyond natural laws as we know them (and any entity capable of doing that, supernatural).
More to the general issue, it is in fact impossible, AFAICT, to conceive a coherent theory of intelligent design without supernatural intervention. Even taking seriously some feeble attempts by Dembski and Behe to marry raelian- or Gene-like scenarios of alien intervention with their own ideas, the current "mainstream", information-first ID theories based on specified complexity would require some further causal entity for the alien designers' own SC. Short of infinite regression, you'd have to postulate supernatural causes at some point.
Unless there's some other ID theory I am missing.
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Christopher M. Langan
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Member # 264
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posted 06. April 2003 13:48
No, charlie d. (Why does this sentence ring so many bells for me?)
In physics - the root of "physics", "physis", means "nature" in Greek - energy is the capacity to do work, or action over time. Work is force times the displacement of a chunk of matter in the line of action.
Quantum mechanics is a big part of physics. But in the coherence phase of the wave function, there is no observed chunk of matter on which to perform work (to observe the matter would be to collapse the wave function). You can take it on faith that the matter is there in compact form, e.g. riding a "pilot wave", but you can't back it up scientifically. That's because according to quantum mechanics, its concurrent properties must commute, and due to uncertainty, this rules out half of the observables that we ordinarily require matter to possess. Anything analogous to energy in the coherence phase would be influencing probability, not matter; it is pregeometric in Wheeler's sense of the term. We can call it "meta-energy" if we like, but it doesn't fit the physical definition of "energy" per se.
Obviously, given the etymology of "physics", the inclusion of quantum mechanics in physics implies its inclusion in nature. Therefore, that which is implied by quantum mechanics, including meta-energy, is not "supernatural".
Regarding your exhaustive classification of ID theories, that too is incorrect. In my theory, nature is self-selecting and cannot be distinguished from God on any but the most superficial level.
It makes no difference to me, by the way, how many ID proponents (or non-proponents) have or have not thus far been perspicacious enough to invest in my theory. It suffices for you to know that I'm a fellow of ISCID, that my theory posits a form of "intelligent design", and that it defines nature in such a (comprehensive) way as to require no supernatural intervention of any kind.
Just a little reminder.
Chris
[ 06. April 2003, 13:52: Message edited by: Christopher M. Langan ]
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Micah Sparacio
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Member # 6
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posted 06. April 2003 14:18
Gedanken,
Language limitations. All causation that I know of takes place in the natural world and is thus natural. I'm not sure that I can even conceive of non-natural causation (indeed, my mind can not wrap itself around such a notion).
When Dembski and ISCID use the terms *naturalism* and *natural mechanism* and *natural causes* could it be that they are merely referring to the scientific methodology of reductive science? This methodology, as a matter of fact, is a quite constrained notion of what constitutes "nature" or "what there is." The naturalism that ISCID and Dembski probably see as limiting in nature, is the naturalism that eliminates intelligent causation from the natural order. It is a naturalism that seeks to reduce our ontology and in doing so, eliminates certain explanatory devices from our scientific toolkit.
My point stands. When one is talking about extra-natural causes, I have no idea what one is talking about. My mind hasn't come across such a thing. All causation that I know of takes place in the natural world. This notion of the natural world stands in sharp contrast to the limited notion of "nature" which eliminates or reduces teleology and intelligent causation from its ontology.
ISCID is interested in what I've called an expanded natural ontology which makes room for teleology and takes intelligent causation as a first-class citizen of that ontology.
Still, I'm unclear as to what an "extra-natural thing" is. Almost by definition, it is "that which does not exist." Certainly, the ID theorists are not interested in investigating "that which does not exist."
So there is a distinction to be made:
1. Nature: the ontology available to modern science
2. Nature: that which exists and takes place in the universe
The only way I can make sense of what Nic was saying is to assume that he means "extra-modern-day-physics" causation. Sure, if that is what he means, that intelligent design posits an extra-natural cause. However, if one includes intelligent causation as a part of one's ontology, then there is no reason to suppose that an intelligent cause is extra-natural. Rather, it is perfectly natural.
That is why I've started my thread on "Towards Teleology." I think that differences in ontology, methodology and/or axiology cause a great deal of confusion in these discussions. When the differences are acknowledged and made clear, then the conversation will probably be able to proceed more productively. Until then, we'll continue to see participants in various paradigms demanding that other participants work from within the same ontology, methodology and/or axiology.
The important question, then, is this: "Is intelligent causation natural or extra-natural?" The answer will certainly depend on the ontology from within which you operate.
[ 06. April 2003, 14:30: Message edited by: Micah Sparacio ]
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gedanken
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Member # 594
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posted 06. April 2003 14:54
Micah, I’m personally not sure what “extra-natural” means, except that I think it is simply a different word for “non-natural” and thereby meaning outside of whatever is considered “natural causes” by anyone’s definition. One can make statements with a terminology that is not completely defined, with the intention that whatever definition one plugs in is meant to apply -- and I take this to be the case to some degree here.
Why does Dr. Dembski refer to “one doesn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do”? I take “extra-natural” and “non-natural” to mean whatever is not “purely natural causes” -- and by whatever definition Dr. Dembski is meaning when he states that sentence. If he changes his definition, but sticks behind that sentence and his statements about Eugenie Scott, then we can change the meaning we use for “extra-natural” and continue the same discussion.
If one is dealing in “natural causes” then one can deal with empiricism. One can deal with observation of nature. If intelligence is not “beyond natural” or “non-natural” or “extra-natural” then we should also be able to analyze intelligence itself empirically. I am happy with this -- and think we should agree to continue the discussion of what is using GA vs. built by GA with the assumption that intelligence itself is “natural” and empirically analyzable. By that I mean that the mechanisms of intelligence itself are also available to examination. One can also pose arguments in terms that what is “scientific” can then be subject to rules of empiricism -- namely that if one is making a “scientific” claim, then that claim must be distinguishable or at least falsifiable by observation of nature.
I recognize that Dembski in what I quoted above makes the claim that ID is falsifiable while evolutionary “Darwinian” theory is not -- But Dr. Dembski is incorrect. For example I would like people to give me some answers on my “sequence of tests for IC” thread to help make such distinctions more clear with regard to ID principles. I think that other threads may be more appropriate for this discussion.
But I think the acceptance that a scientific discussion must deal in natural causes would be useful. If not, then I think it is up to one who disagrees with limiting science to “natural causes” to provide the definition of non-natural he/she is meaning to use, and to defend how one uses empirical methodology in such case. In such a defense one can relate back to intelligence and GAs and how one deals in observation of relationships thereof.
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yersinia
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Member # 324
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posted 06. April 2003 16:38
It's quite clear really. By "extranatural" I mean "poof", "theDesignerdidit" and other such infinitely vague just-so stories. Supernatural events would be a subclass of extranatural, as would design events by completely uncharacterized aliens, internal forces, etc. Such vague notions constitute the vast majority of ID "hypotheses".
Until a proposed design event is empirically distinguishable from "poof" then IMO it belongs in the extranatural category.
On the other hand, processes like LGT that can be observed in the lab, readily inferred in many cases from nature, and reasonably well understood in terms of chemistry, statistics etc. are clearly natural processes whether or not one wishes to call them "Darwinian".
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Micah Sparacio
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Member # 6
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posted 06. April 2003 17:19
quote:
It's quite clear really. By "extranatural" I mean "poof", "theDesignerdidit" and other such infinitely vague just-so stories. Supernatural events would be a subclass of extranatural, as would design events by completely uncharacterized aliens, internal forces, etc. Such vague notions constitute the vast majority of ID "hypotheses".
Until a proposed design event is empirically distinguishable from "poof" then IMO it belongs in the extranatural category.
In order to claim the above, yersina needs to take a clear position on the nature of mental causation. The position is this: mental causes are indistinguishable from other sorts of causes and thus not empirically detectable or analyzable.
I'm glad that this belief was able to so clearly "poof" (no argument seen) into your brain. It actually is quite a strong claim, and really says that a whole lot of philosophers and computer scientists are barking up the wrong tree or wasting their time.
[ 06. April 2003, 17:20: Message edited by: Micah Sparacio ]
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Christopher M. Langan
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Member # 264
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posted 06. April 2003 17:35
gedanken:
quote:
If one is dealing in “natural causes” then one can deal with empiricism. One can deal with observation of nature.
Unfortunately, it cannot be scientifically proven that everything relevant to nature, all of which should of course properly be *included* in nature, can be *differentially observed* in nature. One can recite the scientific method like a litany, but that doesn’t help.
Empirical methodology fails to confirm higher-order descriptions (of the structure of reality) because of the observational requirement that structure must resolve to the object level. Because it would be improper to prejudicially limit "nature" to the object level when any meaningful description of nature contains higher-order properties and relationships not necessarily requiring object-level resolution – you can make such an assumption if you want, but being able to back it up scientifically is quite another matter - empirical methodology holds only a limited amount of water.
But that's really not so bad, because science already makes heavy use of rational methodology in the formulation of "empirical" hypotheses, and of course, in the formation of theories. So we can simply widen our definition of "science" and "nature" to include the mathematical sciences and mathematical truth. Scientific methodology would thus be extended to accommodate higher-order causation.
quote:
If intelligence is not “beyond natural” or “non-natural” or “extra-natural” then we should also be able to analyze intelligence itself empirically.
Only if we admit the domain of definition of "intelligence", which is by definition rationalistic (that’s what intelligence means) as opposed to empirical, as a legitimate part of "science". Sadly, the majority of scientists have not yet opted to do this. But until then, no amount of objection will prove that science must admit only the behavioral correlates of intelligence.
Personally, I’ve always found it a bit incredible that people as intelligent as scientists want to exclude from science the domain of definition of that which allows them to do science. But for some reason on which I’m apparently not qualified to comment, it appears that this remains the case.
Chris
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