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Author
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Topic: Explanations by Design
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 23. August 2003 17:42
Darwin describes the difference between natural selection and 'human selection' as follows
quote:
As man can produce and certainly has produced a great result by his methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not nature effect? Man can act only on external and visible characters: nature cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her; and the being is placed under well-suited conditions of life.
A powerful argument imho
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Nel
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Member # 614
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posted 23. August 2003 18:01
Pim,
No I think homology as currently defined is circular and needs a lot of work. There is an entire chapter in a new book with contributions by scientists such as Simon Conway Morris, Origination of Organismal Form (don't have it one me but I think thats the title) that discusses this. I think they even admit that it can be circular. I'll quote from when I get back home.
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Evan
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Member # 164
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posted 23. August 2003 18:10
I am hoping that this thread doesn't become sidetracked by the homology issue - perhaps Nelson could start a new thread.
The reason I say that is because I am most interested (and this is an admittedly selfish point of view) in the original issue (which Nelson didn't respond to), which has to do with the overall logical structure of the relationship between inferring design and inferring information about the designer; and in particular the circular argument Nelson made about speculative hypotheses about certain characteristics of the designer.
With all that said, I've been working on a response to pim's earlier post, and here it is:
===========================
pim writes,
quote:
I would like to extend the argument namely that even if intelligent design could be (accurately) inferred, this says nothing about the intelligent designer. ... We do not seem to have independent evidence of the intelligent designers in nature, other than of course the natural processes which seem to be included in the term "intelligent designer".
In a way I would like to disagree with pim here, but really I would like to clarify two separate issues.
1) If we could really and accurately infer design in the Dembskian sense, so that we could demonstrate that the probability of natural processes producing something was extremely small (under some agreed upon lower bound,) then I think that the characteristics of what was designed would also tells us something about the nature and characteristics of the designer(s), irrespective of any other evidence about the designer.
[Note:This statement also assumes that the inference of design did not include the kind of faulty argument which is actually the subject of this thread.]
2) However, I don’t believe pim is addressing this point, but rather a broader point. I think pim is saying, and he can correct me if I am wrong, that the characteristics of design that have been offered so far as criteria for inferring design (most notably IC in its various guises) are in fact producible by natural causes. Therefore, natural processes are capable of producing “intelligent design,”, and thus there is no way to distinguish what nature can do from what some purported external designer could do.
Note: this argument assumes that the definition of IC, whatever it might be, does not include the idea that it is unproducible by natural processes. As has been discussed a number of times, if IC is defined in this second way, the question shifts from whether natural process can produce Ic to whether IC exists at all - this type of definitional confusion continues to haunt these discussions.
Similarly, the concept of “intelligent design” can be thought of in two ways, and this is a point that is contained in pim’s post.
1) If we restrict “intelligent design” to refer to a quality of mind involving conscious decision-making, then by definition natural processes themselves are not intelligent and therefore the question of whether design exists is a question of whether something other than natural processed are at work in the world.
But if “intelligent design” refers to any process where appropriate and more highly refined solutions to problems are generated, then we can say that evolutionary processes produce “intelligent design.”
At this point, the mainstream scientific point of view (which is supported by mountains of evidence) is that natural processes can and do produce IC, and that such processes are “intelligent” in a way that is indistinguishable from the kind of external “intelligence” claimed to exist by ID proponents.
So we are back to square one: the challenge for ID proponents is to produce empirical, verifiable, quantitative evidence that certain things happen that are in fact virtually impossible if only natural processes are involved.
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Nel
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Member # 614
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posted 23. August 2003 18:13
Evan writes:
quote:
I just simplified the statement. I could have written “But it does seem clear to me that it is a hollow argument to say that design is an “explanation” of something merely because there are conceptual similarit[ies between] two very unrelated and different systems,” and my point would be the same.
Not at all. If all I was pointing to was the similarity between two things, then your point would have been relevant, because the conceptual similarity between two things can be due to them being very related/similar. However, they are neither.
Evan writes:
quote:
that we also know that different designers of the same designer at different times use different plans.
I don't understand this point, I take it you mean different designers of the same design use different plans. If so I don't see how this is relevant. What I am pointing to is completely different designs using similar concepts.
Evan writes:
quote:
This is certainly circular reasoning - “The evidence that design exists is the design itself.” But how do we know that something is designed?
This isn't circular. How can it be? If SETI finds patterns that are indicative an intelligent agency in certain messages from space then he has found evidence of intelligent design. How is that circular? We infer design by finding those patterns, i.e. irreducible complexity and conceptual similarities.
Evan writes:
Evan writes:
quote:
But my point is that in other situations, known designers use very different plans in disparate situations - therefore different features in different situations would equally be evidence for design according to this reasoning.
But in these situations the only fingerprint we have of design is the patterns and not the conceptual similarity. Thats all that you are really pointing out. If we can't find a conceptual similarity then we cannot say that one exists.
Evan writes:
quote:
RBH’s point is that if you base your argument on the hypothesis that the designer(s) would use similar plans in different situations, but the only evidence you have for such a hypothesis is that in fact we see similar plans in different situations, then you have engaged in circular reasoning.
I didn't base my hypothesis on that. In fact, it was not until a day after I posted the similarity between the ATP synthase and the cilium that it "hit" me like a ton of bricks as I sought to explain the phenonmenon (Mike Gene probably knew it all along and intended for this to happen like the typical professor that he probably is). Much like people are now doing with LE and .NET. THey see conceptual similarities between them, and infer common design. There is no circular reasoning.
Even if I did posit this characteristic it would not be a circular argument. If I start with the hypothesis that if a designer(s) exist that would use similar concepts to solve different problems, then I would predict that we should see such a thing. Then I would go out and look for it. If I find none, my prediction failed and thus my hypothesis is incorrect. If I find one, then there is evidence for my hypothesis.
There is absolutely no need whatsoever to have independant evidence for the designers to make this hypothesis. Thats like saying, in order for homology to a valid inference, I would need to actually see the common ancestors, we have none in the lab.
[ 23. August 2003, 18:44: Message edited by: Nelson-Alonso ]
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 23. August 2003 18:20
Nelson: I think they even admit that it can be circular.
Sure, it can be circular but that's a far cry from "it is circular".
quote:
The historical definition is not viciously circular as long as homologies can be recognized and picked out by criteria other than common ancestry. It is an empirical fact that homologies (as picked out by the criteria below) are arranged among organisms in a pattern that is explainable by common ancestry, and independent evidence from various fields supports common ancestry as a historical fact.
I am not saying that homology cannot be tautological but rather that homology can be defined in a non-tautological manner.
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Nel
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posted 23. August 2003 18:23
I agree Pim. I think that work is currently being done.
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 23. August 2003 18:26
Nelson: I agree Pim. I think that work is currently being done
And has started many decades if not centuries ago with comparative anatomy etc
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Evan
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Member # 164
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posted 23. August 2003 18:38
Nelson writes,
quote:
Even if I did posit this characteristic it would not be a circular argument. If I start with the hypothesis that if a designer(s) exist that would use similar concepts to solve different problems, then I would predict that we should see such a thing. Then I would go out and look for it. If I find none, my prediction failed and thus my hypothesis is incorrect. If I find one, then there is evidence for my hypothesis.
Suppose I start with the hypothesis that if a designer exists, it would design creatures that would be suitably fitted for their environment. Then I go out and find that indeed creatures are quite well suited for their environment. Is that evidence in support of my hypothesis that such a designer exists?
[ 23. August 2003, 18:38: Message edited by: Evan ]
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Nel
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Member # 614
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posted 23. August 2003 18:40
Yes Evan, whats the problem? In fact, if I made that hypothesis, and I found organisms that are poorly suited for their environment, who are barely surviving, that would be evidence against such a designer.
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 23. August 2003 18:51
Nelson: Yes Evan, whats the problem? In fact, if I made that hypothesis, and I found organisms that are poorly suited for their environment, who are barely surviving, that would be evidence against such a designer.
That depends on the original thesis but it's not evidence of such designer as much as reconcilable with a designer argument. But that presumes an independent argument for said designer. In case of Evan's example, the intelligent designer seems to have been natural selection/variation.
Case in point, the fossil record or the distribution of species was used as reconcilable with a natural origin of species once the "designer" was identified as natural selection.
Lacking any independent evidence of an intelligent designer one cannot use speculation about motives or methods as evidence for such a designer.
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Nel
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posted 23. August 2003 18:54
Pim,
quote:
Case in point, the fossil record or the distribution of species was used as reconcilable with a natural origin of species once the "designer" was identified as natural selection.
The situation is identical. Natural selection has never been "identified", we can only infer it for the distribution of species through deep time. In fact, I don't think natural selection is the "designer", and I can say so because we have not yet identified it. However, just as you infer natural selection from these deep time events, I infer intelligent design. Neither of us have independent evidence for the causes, we only infer them.
[ 23. August 2003, 18:54: Message edited by: Nelson-Alonso ]
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Evan
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posted 23. August 2003 19:03
The problem is that you have evidence for a process of some sort that produces creatures that are suited to their environment, but you have no evidence that a designer did this. If your reasoning were valid, the existence of anything would be evidence for a designer who made it that way. This of course is a religious claim that many people believe, but it is scientifically empty because it says nothing that has empirical content - it is, as the opening post said, a tautological and circular. I posit a designer that would design things this way, and now I find that they are this way, so the designer I posited exists - that argument has no weight.
This whole argument is compounded by the fact that we do know of processes that can suit creatures to their environment, and we do have empirical knowledge of these processes - they are not inferred by their products but are rather directly observable and investigatable by themselves. Given that the purported designer that is inferred only because it matches one hypothesis of what such a designer would do is not directly investigatable at all, it is clear to me that the first process - evolutionary processes is a scientifically valid concept, but the inferred designer is not.
Added in response to pim's point: we see the mechanisms of natural selection happening right now, and see the various concrete events which accumulate in the abstract concept of "natural selection." We see no such thing in terms of the designer. The situations are not analogous.
[ 23. August 2003, 19:05: Message edited by: Evan ]
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Nel
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posted 23. August 2003 19:08
Evan writes:
quote:
The problem is that you have evidence for a process of some sort that produces creatures that are suited to their environment, but you have no evidence that a designer did this.
I disagree. I don't think that any natural process can likely produce cilia or ATP synthase.
Evan writes:
quote:
If your reasoning were valid, the existence of anything would be evidence for a designer who made it that way.
No. For example, I don't think hemoglobin is designed, or things without function.
The hypothesis is very specific. I don't say the designer designs and so I go to look for any pattern at all. There is similarity between chimps and humans and I don't think that is a designed pattern, I think the pattern is explained because chimps and humans have a common ancestor (it is designed in the sense that something human-like were probably front-loaded, but that requires completely different type of data).
I am pointing to something very specific, two completely different and unrelated systems use a similar concept, this is evidence that the designer used similar concepts to solve different problems, or for an intrinsic (front-loading friendly) factors.
[ 23. August 2003, 19:15: Message edited by: Nelson-Alonso ]
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Nel
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posted 23. August 2003 19:10
Evan added in edit:
quote:
Added in response to pim's point: we see the mechanisms of natural selection happening right now, and see the various concrete events which accumulate in the abstract concept of "natural selection." We see no such thing in terms of the designer. The situations are not analogous.
We also see how intelligent agents act right now and we extrapolate it to past events. The situtation is analogous. And as nanotechnology continues to advance, the inference will be complete.
[ 18. February 2006, 23:27: Message edited by: Nel ]
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 23. August 2003 19:24
Nelson: The situation is identical. Natural selection has never been "identified", we can only infer it for the distribution of species through deep time.
Both natural selection and mutation are independently observable. You infer "intelligent design" but are unable to reject "natural selection" as its designer. As such your inference is not very useful in furthering scientific understanding. So is the situation identical? As I have shown I believe it isn't.
Natural selection is not only observed in action right now but can be infered from historical data. Intelligent design without a mechanism or pathways is a meaningless concept scientifically, leading to a possible circular logic.
As Evan pointed out so aptly, you have evidence for the process but not who or what guided the process. Thus when Nelson states that "I don't think that any natural process can likely produce cilia or ATP synthase." we seem to have an argument from ignorance which seems to be so prevalent in ID.
Thus when Nelson states '
I am pointing to something very specific, two completely different and unrelated systems use a similar concept, this is evidence that the designer used similar concepts to solve different problems, or for an intrinsic (front-loading friendly) factors."
And yet still no evidence for an intelligent designer and in fact no evidence that a 'natural designer' could not equally well or even better explain these findings.
Nelson tries to expand the argument by adding "We also see how intelligent agents act right now and we extrapolate it to past events. The situtation is analogous. And as nanotechnology continues to advance, the inference will be complete." but we do know that natural selection and mutation are processes which are universally found in time and space here on earth (and perhaps beyond) but there is no evidence of an intelligent designer during these times. We see how intelligent designers act right now and this seems to be hardly supportive and in some ways even disproving of infering intelligent design wrt your examples.
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