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Author
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Topic: Validating Design Discrimination Methodologies
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RBH
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Member # 380
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posted 15. October 2002 13:09
This is becoming a little disorienting for me. Discussions of Multiple Designers Theory are active on several threads on two boards, ISCID and ARN. I'm going to try here to consolidate a single response to a central issue that has arisen in several forms in several threads. Given the indulgence of the Moderator, I will post this on ISCID as a new topic and cross-reference to it from the other threads in hopes of consolidating the substantive discussion in one place.
I am finding considerable confusion with respect to MDT in two respects. First, people are taking it to be a finished product, ready to be deployed in full explanatory mode. It isn't. It is a proposal in an early stage of development that appears to have promise of delivering a coherent theoretical structure, empirically testable hypotheses, and novel observational methodologies for testing those hypotheses. But it is far from a finished product. It has only existed (in my head, at least) for a little over a month, and it has been public for less than that. Second, people are jumping ahead, attempting to discern indications of MDs in various phenomena (types of marsupials, marsupials versus placentals, varieties of cichlids, etc.) before the logically prior step of developing and validating the design discrimination technology is even well started.
These methodological issues are central to any ID conjecture or research program. As has been observed any number of times by IDists and critics alike, all we have to work in with science is the world of observed physical phenomena. We don't (yet) have direct observational access to the hypothesized designer(s). Therefore, the effort in SDDID (Single-Designer Dembskian ID) is to merely attempt to discriminate between the presence or absence of design in those phenomena. MDT is in part an attempt to extend that discrimination task to a wider question: is there evidence of multiple designers in biological phenomena? In doing so, it widens the set of potential methodologies ID might use and the set of empirical research pathways that are open to exploration.
Mike Gene wrote quote:
Are these abilities to systemize and formalize dependent on our extensive independent knowledge of human designers? Yes. Are these abilities to systemize and formalize dependent on our extensive independent knowledge of human designers' designing? Yes. Has RBH proposed a way to uncover extensive independent knowledge of the designers in biology. No. Has RBH proposed a way to uncover extensive independent knowledge of biology's designers design methods? No. The "conceptual stretch" is immense. Without independent knowledge of the designers and their methods, RBH's methodology is useless.
Mike's questions are entirely appropriate, though the inference he draws from their answers is exactly wrong. He is correct when he says that we have a great deal of independent knowledge about human artifacts and their design history. That is all to the good! It gives us a rich array of material of known properties on which to empirically validate the various methodologies for design discrimination.
SDDID is saturated with examples and inferences from human design. Dembski asserts in NFL that the Explanatory Filter is 100% accurate in detecting human design: every time the design inference turns up positive on a human artifact, it is indeed human-designed. That is a validation claim. It is a claim that the EF has been validated as a methodology for discriminating between artifacts known to be of human design and objects known not to be of human design, and is therefore a reliable methodology for discriminating between artifacts designed by an unembodied designer(s) and objects not so designed. But that claim is (so far) false.
When proposing a new and potentially revolutionary theoretical structure and associating that theory with a new and untested methodology for evaluating the theory, it is absolutely necessary to validate the methodology. That is logically and practically prior to anything else. Absent systematic and careful empirical validation of the methodology, 'tests' of the theory using the methodology are at best suspect. At worst they can be interpreted to be merely self-serving. Careful and systematic empirical validation of the methodology must be the foundation of, and precede, tests of a theory using that methodology.
In the two varieties of ID that I am talking about - SDDID and MDT - there are novel methodologies for testing the theories. In SDDID, the task set for its methodology is to discriminate between structures and/or processes that are designed and those that are not designed. In MDT the task set for its methodology is to discriminate among structures and/or processes, ascertaining whether they show evidence of being created/designed by multiple designers.
A first step in empirically validating SDDID's design discrimination methodology would consist in showing that it makes reliable discriminations in sets of structures and processes of known provenance. The only structures and processes for which we know the design provenance are products of human design, so they must form the test bed for empirically validating design discrimination methodologies. Thus one expects to see reports of the Explanatory Filter being applied to a wide array of objects of human design and objects of known lack of human design. Empirical validation would consist in systematic quantification of the variables identified by SDDID's methodology as necessary in its discrimination methodology, application of the methodology to a wide variety of objects of known provenance, and showing the numbers that support the claim of discrimination. As far as I am aware, that hasn't occurred. I have seen no systematic empirical validation studies of the Explanatory Filter. I am aware that Dembski has asserted that it has strong inductive support in that on every occasion it has been applied to an object of known human design, it has yielded a design inference, but that is purely anecdotal. An astrophysicist who developed a novel theory of star formation and attempted to validate a new method for detecting properties of stars by asserting that he had looked at a few stars and they were all successfully detected wouldn't get 10 seconds on the Hubble telescope. What SDT has not shown is systematic empirical validation of its design discrimination methodology.
The same is true at present for MDT: There has been no systematic empirical validation of its proposed methodology for discriminating among designers. However, we know that people do it all the time in both informal and fairly formal contexts. I was a professor for many years, and over the term of a year-long course, with a dozen or so students who were required to write an essay of a few paragraphs every week, even though I graded those essays blind I learned over a year to discriminate among students based on their writing. Art historians routinely discriminate among various 'schools' distinguished by stylistic and thematic differences. Literary critics do the same. We routinely distinguish among literary genres based on properties of the texts. Lately there has been a spate of analyses of anonymous texts that attempt to find objective measures of properties of the texts that allow attribution to one or another author/creator. Brauer's proposal of a multi-dimensional representation of 'specification' is one way to start formalizing MDT detection methodology. Discrimination among multiple designers/creators is not a novel notion and Dembski's dismissal of it is premature, if not wholly mistaken.
The proposal of MDT is that those kinds of judgments by humans be systematized and formalized in order to meet the requirement for intersubjective testability. In science we require that given a research paper reporting the results of an experiment, field study, or observational study, the report must contain enough information about the observational methods that another researcher with the requisite technical skills and instruments could replicate the procedures and find the same observed result. That requires that the research methods be researcher-independent, in the sense that application and use of the methodology cannot depend on idiosyncratic characteristics of the person doing the research. Given appropriate instructions for staining a preparation, centering a slide, and focusing, a microscope should present the same image in its eyepiece regardless of who is looking through it. Hence systematization, formalization, and empirical validation of research methods is critical. That is especially the case when proposing and using a novel methodology. The rise and fall of N-rays and Martian 'canals' are instructive cautionary tales in this respect
In developing a design discrimination methodology, MDT has the same task as SDDID. First the methodology must be systematized and formalized. Then it must be empirically validated on test materials for which we already know the histories. As is the case for SDDID, the first goal of MDT is to develop a formalized researcher-independent methodology that, when it is applied to phenomena whose provenance and history we do not know, can be legitimately expected to reliably tell us something of interest about the phenomena.
Whether one is trying to discriminate design from no design or distinguish the work of one designer from another, the task of developing, systematizing, formalizing, and empirically validating the methodology is critical. Absent that, claims about one's theory are not (yet) testable. A theory may have all the promise in the world, but without empirically validated methodologies for making observations and gathering data to test hypotheses, it will remain merely an interesting conjecture with no empirical content.
RBH
edited for a couple of typos and reorganize slightly.
[ 15. October 2002, 13:37: Message edited by: RBH ]
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Evan
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posted 15. October 2002 21:00
I would like to thank RBH for making an attempt to corral some of the many issues that have arisen recently in the threads devoting to adding some detail to design theory, and I would like to add some comments of my own.
1) It is true that the first step has to be the development of a research methodology for detecting design - until “systematization, formalization, and empirical validation of research methods” that are “researcher-independent” are developed, further hypotheses are the nature of the designers (included whether they are singular are plural) will be conjectural. As Dembski said, these further conjectures are “logically downstream” from the detection of design.
However, that does not eliminate the usefulness of such conjectures. It is common in science to explore the logical consequences of an hypothesis in order to better understand the specifics of what might in fact turn out to be relevant support for the hypothesis. Understanding that there might be multiple designers should help pioneering investigators of design look at beginning data in a different light than if there were a unstated and unquestioned assumption that there is only one designer.
2) Establishing such a research methodology was the point of my opening post in the thread “ID Research Program.” Finding some way to calculate the probabilities of events is the key to detecting design. I agree with RBH when he points out that such methodologies need to be first tested on events where the issue is more clearcut, but RBH and I have suggested different avenues. I suggested we (actually biologists, not me ![[Smile]](smile.gif) ) first study biological events for things we are pretty sure are not designed, such as “micro-evolutionary” changes such as might take place in laboratory conditions with organisms which reproduce quickly.
RBH is suggesting the opposite strategy of investigating the probabilities connecting with things that we know are designed - objects created by humans.
3) Mike Gene, as quoted by RBH, writes,
quote:
Are these abilities to systemize and formalize dependent on our extensive independent knowledge of human designers? Yes. Are these abilities to systemize and formalize dependent on our extensive independent knowledge of human designers' designing? Yes. Has RBH proposed a way to uncover extensive independent knowledge of the designers in biology. No. Has RBH proposed a way to uncover extensive independent knowledge of biology's designers design methods? No. The "conceptual stretch" is immense. Without independent knowledge of the designers and their methods, RBH's methodology is useless.
Well, first, I don’t think that RBH has offered a methodology - what he has offered is a strong argument that one is needed, and he has offered what is also in my opinion a strong argument that multiple designers ought to be the starting hypothesis.
But Mike is right in pointing out that there is a large difference between investigating design by humans (for which we have “extensive independent knowledge of human designers” and of them actually designing.) It is an immense conceptual stretch, I agree, to consider biological design by unknown designers who almost certainly possess powers and properties of existence (i.e. - disembodiness) different than humans.
Yet, unless we strive to reach across that conceptual abyss, design theory will get nowhere. There has to be a way to “nail down”, so to speak, the details of what exactly has been designed, and when, in order for design theory to be anything other than conjecture. And once those details do get established, then inferences about the designers will have more substance.
So, even though analogies with human design can guide our thinking (including such aspects of human design as group projects, apprenticeships, cultural differences, etc.), the analogies themselves do not provide empirical data. They can help us think about where to look, and motivate our looking, but only empirical data derived from some type of research methodology will actually lead to definite knowledge.
It is important in this regard to recognize that analogies can mislead as well as lead, and therefore the scientist must be prepared to abandon an analogy if the evidence so dictates.
4) The ARN thread on cichlid fishes serves as both an example of a research possibility and a cautionary tale. According to the opening post (http://www.arn.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000393), there are over 400 unique species of cichlid in a lake that is only 13,000 years old. (I will accept these numbers as well-established.)
Now, if the differences among these various species were designed, then this would certainly be evidence of relatively recent designer activity (as opposed to designers who were only active long ago, such as during the Cambrian); it would be possible evidence, I think, for multiple designers due to the competitive nature of some of the species; and it would certainly be evidence for the argument that what natural causes can do (“micro-evolution”) is relatively limited.
On the other hand, if it could be shown that all these different species came about through natural causes that were probable (above the universal bound), then that would be evidence against at least the first and third proposition.
So this seems like a good place to research. How could we do the work to calculate the probabilities of this much evolutionary change in a 13,000 year period. What methodology could be established, based on both empirical work on genetic change and natural selection, and on mathematical methods for calculating probabilities, to answer this question?
Note that this would be a good test case for an ID scientist who believed, as an hypothesis, that the cichlid fish evolution in this lake was not designed, because it would help him develop his techniques in a situation where just natural causes were hypothesized to be involved. Since the EF functions by eliminating these situations, developing a method to determine what does get eliminated is a first step in being able to determine those which don’t get eliminated, and are therefore designed.
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djmullen
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posted 16. October 2002 07:49
People investigating Multiple Designer Theory might want to check out "Acquiring Genomes" by Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan. Margulis is the person who first theorized that cells with nucleii got that way by "capturing" bacteria. Although she got a lot of flack at first, her theory is now pretty much accepted.
In her new book, she goes into the mixing of genomes in great detail, including bacteria with dozens of other bacteria hanging on to them, acting as cilia, cells with multiple nucleii, photsynthetic bacteria in various organisms, the amazing load of necessary bacteria we humans carry around with us, cross phylum matings, etc. It opened my eyes!
One interesting theory: she thinks that animals that radically metamorphasize(sp?), such as when a worm turns into a butterfly, may once have been two separate organisms that have had their genes mixed together. Thus you would see the worm genes expressed in the first stage of life and then the butterfly genes would take over for the second phase.
The book is worth reading on its own account, even if you don't think too much of IDT, just to see the remarkable amounts of gene transfer that take place at all levels of life. It gives an entirely new perspective on evoluton.
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Jack
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posted 16. October 2002 11:39
Why is the lack of reliable criteria for distinguishing betweeen teleological and non-teleological causes not considered a problem for the blind watchmaker hypothesis? Why aren't the advocates of blind watchmaking working on a "filter" or "test" to rule out teleological causes and thus establish non-teleology? Has the absence of a reliable detector for non-teleological causes stymied the blind watchmaker research program?
Here are some insightful comments from Mike Gene:
"My goal is not to show the non-teleologists wrong. My goal is to determine how productive a teleological approach can be. This, after all, is how non-teleologists have worked for a century. They have not come up with tests to rule out teleological causes (they instead rely on philosophy). The inability to tell the difference between an organism that was designed to evolve, and an organism that evolved by "accidental changes captured by selection, cuts both ways (if you think about it). Instead, they have been focused on the utility of the non-teleological approach, where at some point, a successful track record becomes an argument for validity. I think teleologists would do well to learn from this model. Flesh out a teleological approach that doesn't center around trying to convince non-teleologists they are wrong, but instead seeks to understand biotic reality and its history. Maybe something juicy will eventually shake out....
There are at least two ways teleologists can go about studying the natural world. One way is to look for features that clearly cannot be explained by non-teleological explanations. There is nothing wrong with this approach. In fact, it holds potential for developing new insights and methods, along with helping to better define the dispute. But there is another way that can complement this approach. This way simply begins by looking for things that one might expect to follow from design. This way follows the examples of mainstream science. Take origin of life research. Scientists do not look for things that could not be explained by teleologists. They are not looking for phenomena that rule out telic causes, therefore rule in non-telic causes. On the contrary, they begin with squishy, vague scenarios about how something might have happened and then see if something in the lab or nature can be fitted into such a scenario. What becomes important here is the development of a track record and a scenario that gets less and less squishy. I see no reason why teleologists cannot likewise adopt this approach."
[ 16. October 2002, 12:10: Message edited by: Jack ]
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brauer
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posted 16. October 2002 14:08
Jack:
"Non-teleologists" do not try to rule out teleology because they do not care. They don't address teleology because they don't know of an objective, rigorous way to do so.
Read Mike's second paragraph above. Particularly the part that reads "[scientists] begin with squishy, vague scenarios about how something might have happened and then see if something in the lab or nature can be fitted into such a scenario. What becomes important here is the development of a track record and a scenario that gets less and less squishy."
Interestingly, this quote of Mike's seems to me to be advocating "designer-centric ID", contra Mike's recent statements on this board.
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Jack
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posted 16. October 2002 15:57
Brauer>>Non-teleologists" do not try to rule out teleology because they do not care. They don't address teleology because they don't know of an objective, rigorous way to do so.<<
Fine, but if there is no test to distinguish teleological causes from non-teleological causes then why is this just a problem for teleologists? Why is a non-teleological cause the default explanation for the orign of life, the origin of molecular machines, the origin of the genetic code etc.? Doesn't this mean the whole non-teleological account cannot be tested against its null hypothesis and is therefore a circular account?
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RBH
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posted 16. October 2002 16:06
Jack quotes Mike Gene as writing quote:
Flesh out a teleological approach that doesn't center around trying to convince non-teleologists they are wrong, but instead seeks to understand biotic reality and its history. Maybe something juicy will eventually shake out....
There are at least two ways teleologists can go about studying the natural world. One way is to look for features that clearly cannot be explained by non-teleological explanations. There is nothing wrong with this approach. In fact, it holds potential for developing new insights and methods, along with helping to better define the dispute. But there is another way that can complement this approach. This way simply begins by looking for things that one might expect to follow from design.
Since Mike G has been critical of the MDT enterprise, there is no little irony in the fact that what I have been advocating in the several threads concerned with MDT and validating design detection methodologies is precisely what Mike Gene recommends not only in his first paragraph ("seek to understand biotic reality and its history"), but also in the second alternative of his second paragraph. For example, the methodological suggestions I made in a post above with respect to methods in art history and literary criticism are aimed directly at developing methodologies for "looking for things that one might expect to follow from design." The approach I advocate in those posts is to use a universe of phenomena where one knows the provenance (human designs of single or multiple origin) to develop and validate design discrimination methodologies that one can then deploy in a universe of phenomena (biology) where we don't know the provenance.
Somehow or other the various design discrimination methodologies, whether they are the 'design themes detection' of MDT or the meat axe design/no-design EF discrimination of SDDID, are going to have to be validated and calibrated, and human designs constitute one universe in which to do that. There are others, of course. Evan suggested that using biological phenomena where we are confident that design is not occurring as a test bed for development. That's a good suggestion. Brauer, on the Solar eclipses thread, suggested a physical phenomenon, and I developed that in a discussion of the Oklo reactor. There are a multitude of other physical phenomena where one can do precise calibrations of a design discriminator. So there are at least three suggestions for different universes of phenomena in which testing and development of design discrimination methodologies can occur. That's all to the good, since wider validation testing implies more confidence in the outcomes of research on unknown phenomena.
I'll also remark briefly on Evan's suggestion that while methodological work is logically prior, it is also worth pursuing conjectures about the logical and empirical consequences of various positions. I wholly agree with him. Science is a constant 'conversation' among conjectures, methodologies, hypotheses, theories, and data, and while some may be logically prior to others, in any scientific enterprise that has any intellectual traction at all there are constant and complex (in the complicated sense, not the improbability sense) interactions among them. So I don't disagree at all with Evan in this respect.
RBH
edited for a typo
[ 16. October 2002, 16:09: Message edited by: RBH ]
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brauer
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posted 16. October 2002 17:24
quote:
Brauer>>Non-teleologists" do not try to rule out teleology because they do not care. They don't address teleology because they don't know of an objective, rigorous way to do so.<<
Fine, but if there is no test to distinguish teleological causes from non-teleological causes then why is this just a problem for teleologists?
Hi Jack,
I don't think it is a problem for teleologists. The problem is devising a useful research methodology. This is the only thing that critics of ID are asking for. We don't want a philosphical justification for teleology. We don't want more eliminative arguments for design. All we'd like to see is a specific, workable research program. It's endlessly frustrating to have such a request met with the refrain "but it's logically prior that we first conclusively show ID".
You really don't have to provide that proof. As you and Mike Gene and others have pointed out, practioners of standard, non-teleological biology don't feel bound to "prove" the absence of intent. We aren't obliged to prove every peripheral (or even foundational) assumption before we chart our research directions. If it turns out we're wrong, then at some point the data will tell us so.
I don't think ID should feel so constrained either. Do what every other scientist does: assume you're on the right track and go with it. Either you'll get results or you won't.
If your results are interesting and provocative, and if they open up new avenues of research, we anti-ID laggards will jump on the bandwagon so fast it'll make your head spin. (And we'll probably claim that we knew it all along: be ready for that!)
(BTW, if I hadn't have read his critiques of MDT as "designer-centered extremism", I would've assumed that Mike Gene advocated the "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" strategy for ID. But I guess I'm not quite clear on what the program is here.)
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Jack Foster
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posted 16. October 2002 20:58
Hi Matt:
quote:
All we'd like to see is a specific, workable research program. It's endlessly frustrating to have such a request met with the refrain "but it's logically prior that we first conclusively show ID".
I'm not sure that your level of frustration is pertinent, though I think it's admirable that you should care enough to feel frustration regarding the direction of ID. Some critics are simply trying to debunk it. (By the way, . . . It's safe to say that there's frustration all the way around regarding this debate!)
I don't mean to speak for Dembski, Behe, et al. But it seems to me that if they succeed in "conclusively showing ID", they'll have changed the direction of Science. On the other hand, if they "damn the torpedoes" as you suggest, and choose some unsupportable designer-centric position to pursue, some critics might view their scientific efforts as religious. Just as an example, MDT seems like a religious perspective to me.
[ 16. October 2002, 20:59: Message edited by: Jack Foster ]
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Jack
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posted 16. October 2002 21:07
Matt>>I don't think it is a problem for teleologists. The problem is devising a useful research methodology. This is the only thing that critics of ID are asking for. We don't want a philosphical justification for teleology. We don't want more eliminative arguments for design. All we'd like to see is a specific, workable research program. It's endlessly frustrating to have such a request met with the refrain "but it's logically prior that we first conclusively show ID".<<
Hi Matt,
Well, I guess we are back to the question: what evidence from the natural world would cause you to merely suspect that something was intelligently designed? This is where the ID research program begins. If an atheist and rabid anti-creationist such as Dawkins can say that "biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose," then I have to wonder what's going on in the minds of non-atheists when they claim that nothing in nature looks designed to them. When ID critics tell me that nothing in the biological world causes them to even suspect ID and furthermore that they can't even imagine any evidence that could be found in nature that would cause them to suspect ID then I begin thinking that their calls for an ID research program may be disengenuous. After all, do they really expect an ID research program to show them the designer or find a secret message encoded in the cell or prove blind watchmaking impossibe? If not, what evidence from an ID research program are they looking for?
In my opinion, all we can expect an ID research program to do is discover evidence that will either weaken or strengthen the ID inference. If one is incapable of making a design inference, then there is no way they can interprete evidence as either strengthening or weakening it. I can think of lots of evidence that that ID research program could discover that would either weaken or strengthen the ID inference.
Matt>>You really don't have to provide that proof. As you and Mike Gene and others have pointed out, practioners of standard, non-teleological biology don't feel bound to "prove" the absence of intent. We aren't obliged to prove every peripheral (or even foundational) assumption before we chart our research directions. If it turns out we're wrong, then at some point the data will tell us so.
I don't think ID should feel so constrained either. Do what every other scientist does: assume you're on the right track and go with it. Either you'll get results or you won't.
If your results are interesting and provocative, and if they open up new avenues of research, we anti-ID laggards will jump on the bandwagon so fast it'll make your head spin. (And we'll probably claim that we knew it all along: be ready for that!)<<
Sounds good, so long as by interesting and provocative results you have something in mind other than interviewing the designer, finding a secret message hidden in the cell, or discovering proof that blind watchmaking is impossible. All that really matters is if some ID-type approach gives one an additional perspective, an ability to think/see differently, such that this added element allows one to accurately infer things about the living world in a manner that is likely to be unanticipated from a non-teleological perspective.
[ 16. October 2002, 21:18: Message edited by: Jack ]
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Evan
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posted 16. October 2002 22:04
Some short comments:
Jack writes, “Sounds good, so long as by interesting and provocative results you have something in mind other than interviewing the designer, finding a secret message hidden in the cell, or discovering proof that blind watchmaking is impossible.”
Jack, not one person in any of these recent threads about design theory have invoked any of those three things. You are arguing with people who are not here. The people here have been discussing research methodologies that might lead to some empirical evidence for design. They have been discussing places where one could test such methodologies, such as on human artifacts or on biological entities that we think are probably not designed. Here at ISCID there are not calls for interviews with the designers, the finding of secret messages, or proofs that natural causes are insufficient.
So it seems like your constant refrain about this is misplaced here at ISCID. I am sure it is appropriate in some other venues, but it doesn’t seem appropriate here. I am frustrated because I have participated in a number of threads, and in fact started a few, where the purpose of the thread was to do exactly as you seem to wish - develop some more reasonable way to find evidence for design. I and others are discussing ways to find evidence that is between the type of absolute evidence you correctly dismiss as excessively strong, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the type of “suspicion” of design and related formal eliminative arguments that I see as too weak to count as empirically grounded evidence.
So I personally would hope that you could look at what is really being discussed here rather than continually accusing us of making excessive demands for evidence when we are in fact not doing that. We are looking for reasonable evidence for design - evidence that is empirically based and is, as RBH says, researcher independent. Design theory needs to do this in order to become established, and that is what is being discussed here.
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Jack Foster writes, “Just as an example, MDT seems like a religious perspective to me.”
I don’t understand this comment. I have seen nothing in the discussion of MDT, or in fact in any of the recent designer threads, that have been religious. In looking at the possible evidence for design, and by “brainstorming” about possible designer hypotheses, people have pointed to the fact that it is at least likely that designers are limited in scope (in abilities, in time, in type of organism that they design), possibly with competing and limited interests, and so on. There has been no talk of special relationships with humans, involvement with morality, and any of the other things associated with religion.
There have been a few times where I have written about the possible impact design theory might have on religious belief, depending on what is eventually discovered about design, but that is always true - what we find out about the world scientifically impacts religion, of course, but science is not religious. MDT is not religious, even as an hypotheses. I don’t see why you think this is the case.
Would you care to comment?
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Mike Gene
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posted 16. October 2002 22:56
Hi RBH,
You write: Since Mike G has been critical of the MDT enterprise, there is no little irony in the fact that what I have been advocating in the several threads concerned with MDT and validating design detection methodologies is precisely what Mike Gene recommends not only in his first paragraph ("seek to understand biotic reality and its history"), but also in the second alternative of his second paragraph.
My criticisms of the MDT approach really stem from two primary considerations, both of which flow from the fact that MDT is a designer-centric approach.
1. As I have mentioned numerous times by now, MDT is joined at the hip to the need for extensive, independent knowledge of the designers' psychology and their methods/techniques. Since the truth of any design hypothesis does not entail the ability to acquire such knowledge, I just don't see how MDT can get off the ground. For example, consider the challenge FFX posed to MDT. I wrote:
quote:
Or put your MDT to the test. For example, I recently finished playing Final Fantasy X. When you finally get to the end, there is a list a credits for the game designers.
Now, I don't think it would be difficult to argue that FFX was intelligently designed on several levels. From the Behe-perspective, it is part of an IC system - to play FFX, you need the PS2 console, a game controller, and the game. From a Dembski-perspective, FFX is a high information state beyond the reach of chance and law. In fact, 4 billion years of evolution has failed to produce anything like FFX as its existence is dependent on the existence of intelligence. But here is the challenge to MDT. Take several MDT proponents who have no previous experience/knowledge of software design and video games. Have them play FFX for 12 hours, gathering data along the way (MDT can supply the criteria, indicative of MD, to help them). Then, after the 12 hours is up, have them a) predict the number of game designers and b) the characteristics of each game designer.
Xe's response was instructive:
quote:
Can we, though, after surveying the computer code to FFX determine whether or not the game was the effort of only a single individual or multiple individuals? I submit that we can. Computer code is highly modular, and from experience, redundant code that allows the modules to be compatible with other modular codes is always a sure sign of multiple coders. These 'hooks' allow other programmers to black-box the modules, and is generally considered good programming practice in team projects. One good marker is the existence of 'obsolete' code that passes control to newer code which accomplishes the same function, combined with explicit reference to the older code from another module. However, to appreciate such a feature requires at least someone who is aware of computer programming and maybe game development. Again, the requirement that the putative researchers have no experience in software design is unrealistic. (emphasis added)
In other words, it's not some generic MDT principles that would guide Xe. Instead, it's just extensive familiarity other people and the way they design computer programs. Now, if we don't have experience with life's designers, and we don't have experience with life being designed by these designers, when facing life, we are indeed like the person who has no experience in software design. MDT must find ways to detect multiple designers in ways that are independent of the designer's psychology and methods. In contrast, keep in mind that I have already used my approach to generate several testable hypotheses, some even turning out to be correct.
Perhaps one can, as you seem to suggest, draw analogical guidance from human designs, but it seems to me that you are going to have to depend on layers and layers of assumptions. As I see it, these topics are thoroughly ambiguous, thus I personally think it is good idea for ID theorists to try to keep assumptions to a minimum. The problem with any ID inference is the false positive. The promise of MDT is that this situation will be much worse.
2. My focus as a design theorist is on design, not the designer. I've seen many people claim that the really interesting questions that follow from design are those that point to the designer. Yet odd as it may sound, this is not how I see it. The interesting questions, for me, are about the designs. This means that my focus is on biotic reality. Since the focus of MDT is on the designers, I'm not sure it will offer any real payoff when focusing on biotic reality. My emphasis is on using an ID approach to better understand the biological world . MDT's emphasis seems elsewhere, only paying lip service to the biological world as a springboard to focus on the designers.
Anyway, enough of these general points. What I will do instead is focus on another biological problem and again use my ID hypothesis as a research guide. I'll comment on MDT to see how well its ability to generate hypotheses compares to those my approach raises. For extra bonus, I'll even throw in the research potential that would stem from the blind watchmaker approach. Put simply, we need a concrete biological example with which to compare and contrast.
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Jack Foster
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posted 16. October 2002 23:14
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MDT is not religious, even as an hypotheses. I don’t see why you think this is the case. Would you care to comment?
Sure, Evan. RBH has said that the multiple designers must be unembodied. But the only evidence that we have for the designer is the design; so how do we distinguish between the embodiment or the unembodiment of our designers?
Faith. That's the only way that I can see it. And faith takes us out of the realm of science and into the realm of religion.
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Xenon
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posted 17. October 2002 00:17
"In other words, it's not some generic MDT principles that would guide Xe. Instead, it's just extensive familiarity other people and the way they design computer programs. Now, if we don't have experience with life's designers, and we don't have experience with life being designed by these designers..."
Mike, permit me to give you a crash course here on basic computer programming. Erecting abstraction barriers (i.e. the technique which I described in layman's term for you in the paragraph you lifted from my post) *IS* an MDT principle -- specifically, an applied principle to computer programming. The essence of it is to let multiple programmers add functions onto an existing software base, *without* having to understand the mindset/programming style/idiosyncratic code of other programmers. The logic of abstraction barriers exists independently of the programs and programmers themselves. To see this, we only have to look beyond software design to see the theme of modular development used ubquitously in other types of designs.
As you imply, familiarity with "the way [other people] design computer programs" is a strong asset to MDT, because such knowledge allows us to hypothesize and test MDT principles. But, you are quite wrong to interpret it as evidence that MDT requires specific knowledge of _other people_. The argument fails in much the same way as arguing that the validity of a mathematical theorem depends on one's familiarity with the psychology of mathematicians. As far as MDT is concerned, your focus on 'experience with life's designers,' is similarly misplaced, when instead, it should be placed on _life's designs_, informed by our own experiences in design. After all, design principles, if they are indeed universal, would manifest themselves regardless of the design task or the designers. MDT explores this realm first by observing human designs, much in the same way that ID argues through similar analogical reasoning.
"... when facing life, we are indeed like the person who has no experience in software design."
The problem with this observation is that you are indicting all those human design analogies ID proponents use to further their case. How can you recognize design without having experienced an analogous design *or* without relying on the testimony of some other designers? MDT and ID both depend on this form of second-hand information. Yet, here you are, ironically adopting a common argument of ID critics that human designs only inform about other human designs and human designers. Nevertheless, I am not convinced this argument is any challenge to MDT, since MDT readily embraces human designers as a subset of all designers. As an example, let's consider this quote from your essay on idthink.net:
"But ID allowed me to lay this aside and consider that at least in this case, ATP could be funneled almost directly to the helicase as a consequence of its binding to enolase. This then led me to think of the degradosome as a regulated module which could literally be plugged in to an energy source (where the analogy to man-made machines was not missed by me). This then added to the logic of the system."
From where, Mike, did such notions of 'regulated module' and 'energy source' come? Well, by your own admission, they are indeed human design analogies. But then, does our own experience working with 'regulated modules' and 'energy sources' that can be 'plugged in' to various independent systems... does it make your analogy useless? After all, like a software designer drawing from his experiential knowledge to judge FFX code, you are merely drawing from your own experiential knowledge of power systems (however rudimentary) to judge degradosomes.
See, Mike, MDT must be a reality if ID is to be argued at all. Typically, most people make the distinction between human designs and 'natural' designs. I remind you of your own distinction:
"BTW, I suppose I am a proponent of a constrained version of MDT in that I consider two different designers when trying to account for biological reality - the intelligent watchmaker and the blind watchmaker."
But, ID specifically argues the existence of non-human designs (by definition if not by necessity), and such evidence can only firmly establish MDT. Comparative analysis of the products from (at least) these two categories of designers (rather than merely using one form to argue for the other) can only bring fruitful research.
[EDITS]
Xe
[ 17. October 2002, 01:00: Message edited by: Xenon ]
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Jack
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posted 17. October 2002 01:54
Evan>>Jack, not one person in any of these recent threads about design theory have invoked any of those three things. You are arguing with people who are not here. The people here have been discussing research methodologies that might lead to some empirical evidence for design.<<
Hi Evan,
I find it strange that persons that can't tell us what they would consider evidence for ID are discussing methods for detecting it. If you don't know what evidence for ID would look like then it could be right in front of you and you wouldn't recognize it.
[ 17. October 2002, 02:35: Message edited by: Jack ]
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