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Author
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Topic: Candidates for the EF
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brauer
Member
Member # 398
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posted 20. March 2004 21:49
Continuing the EF game for a bit, does anyone want to analyze the "designedness" of these structures?
For scale, the upper right object is about 4 cm. long. These objects each have a single axial hole through their lengths. They are made of a carbonate mineral resembling concrete.
[ 20. March 2004, 21:50: Message edited by: brauer ]
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 21. March 2004 14:25
Looks like pottery to me. That should do it for specification. As to the probabilities, I have no idea how to even go about such a task, even for this relatively simple geometric object.
[ 21. March 2004, 14:26: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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Matthew J. Brauer
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Member # 819
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posted 21. March 2004 21:59
Anyone else have any ideas?
Note: peeking will be an implicit admission that the peeker has no faith in the reliability of the EF to detect design!
(Micah...) ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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RBH
Member
Member # 380
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posted 21. March 2004 23:08
Oops. I already peeked.
RBH
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Micah Sparacio
Member
Member # 6
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posted 22. March 2004 08:19
Matt,
My raw, unfiltered intuition was that they were designed, if that means anything. But I also had my doubts considering the "scale" - definitely not pottery, maybe jewlery (little beads) of some kind.
Anyway, I peaked (as you noted:-) ). So my thoughts are irrelevant at this point. But that was my raw perceptive intuition: it definitely wasn't as strong an intuition as it could have been though.
Which leads me to what I see as an important point to keep in mind: ambiguity pervades reality. Contemporary philosophy (esp. epistemology, which I am currently studying) thrives off of appeals to "clarity at the edges, vagueness in the middle." So, when you give definitions, or make analyses, there are going to be clear cases, but also not-so-clear cases. However, the vague cases need not compel skepticism about the clear cases.
[ 22. March 2004, 08:21: Message edited by: Micah Sparacio ]
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charlie d.
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Member # 159
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posted 22. March 2004 10:37
Leaving aside the guessing game (I peeked too, anyway - I am the kind of guy who reads the last page of a novel first), I think a more interesting and pertinent question is: how does one even begin to apply the EF to something like that? Or to put it in other terms: is there anything interesting and useful the EF can be fairly applied to (except, that is, to things whose origin we do already know about, or contrived artificial examples, for demonstration purposes)?
This critical problem was highlighted already in an old thread about arctic stone circles. Maybe someone has thought about it?
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Paul A. Nelson
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Member # 26
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posted 22. March 2004 12:21
Hey Matt,
I won't peek, because I'm too clueless even to know where to peek.
Can you give me some more information about these objects, however? E.g., where they are found?
About using or testing the EF -- I'm still interested in putting together a bit string experiment, and would like to organize a discussion/planning session about this at the upcoming design conference in Los Angeles.
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 22. March 2004 12:25
Micah: However, the vague cases need not compel skepticism about the clear cases.
How do we distinguish clear from vague cases? In this instance, a design inference seems logical, we have specifications, the appearance of pottery/jewelry like objects seem to suggest that the EF is not without its false positives. Unless we add additional information such as 'where are they found' or 'follow the link' :-).
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The Deuce
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Member # 992
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posted 22. March 2004 15:36
From looking at the pictures, and the description that was given, I can't really come up with a specification, so I don't see a way to even run the filter without more information. Well, I suppose I could, but I'd have to fail it at the "specified" node, to prevent false positives.
I could use "looks sort of like beads" or "looks sort of like pottery" as a specification, but in doing so, I believe that I would be implicitly including myself as part of the specification, since what I would really be saying is that they look like beads to me, or alternatively, that the objects, combined with my own conscious mind, perform the function of reminding me of beads. Then, I'd have to measure the probabilities behind the whole "my imagination/bead-like things" system, which I'm not quite prepared to do just now :-). For that reason, I think that, most of the time, perhaps it's best to avoid specifications where the function specified includes interaction with the viewer (this would probably include most pictures and writing).
As for possible natural causes of these things, maybe some sort of dripping process could make them, sort of like stalactites? Or perhaps some small wormlike creature could form something like this (though it's fuzzy whether or not that would count as design or not)?
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Doubting Thomas
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Member # 1214
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posted 22. March 2004 16:01
Any of these structures could have resulted from the natural activity of wind, water and sand. I've seen similar structures in the desert areas of the American Southwest. And strangely regular shapes do result from purely natural processes.
Design cannot be inferred without an examination of the process that produced the structure(s).
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Matthew J. Brauer
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Member # 819
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posted 22. March 2004 17:56
Paul,
These items (or rather, some exactly like them) were dredged up from a shallow bay in the Indian Ocean.
The location they were dredged from is thought by some to be near the site of a prehistoric settlement.
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Micah Sparacio
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Member # 6
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posted 22. March 2004 18:45
Pim,
Though you can't tell me a clear way to differentiate red from orange, especially near the place where you have orangish-red, there are clear cases of red and clear cases of orange.
This sorts of vagueness pervades reality.
And, if there are objects that are clearly designed (I'm not saying that biological systems are - though computers and cars are), this point (that some things are designed) shouldn't be muted by the fact that there are some ambiguous cases.
All this to say that merely focusing on the gray areas may not be the best way to make progress. Scientists and philosophers typically start with the clear instances and slowly grind towards the middle as far as reality allows.
[ 22. March 2004, 18:49: Message edited by: Micah Sparacio ]
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 22. March 2004 23:25
Micah:
And, if there are objects that are clearly designed (I'm not saying that biological systems are - though computers and cars are), this point (that some things are designed) shouldn't be muted by the fact that there are some ambiguous cases.
I think we need to distinguish between 'clearly designed' and 'clearly designed using the EF'. While I agree that there are some obvious designed items, I also would argue that we reach conclusions of design not based on anything similar to the EF.
In addition, I find that such ambiguous examples are helpful to explore claims about false positives and the impact of such on the EF.
Rather than this being a 'gray' area it presents us with clear examples that need to be addressed. Using the EF to infer design where such inference is trivial seems rather meaningless. Having said that I am still not sure if we have seen the EF applied to such cases?
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Paul A. Nelson
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Member # 26
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posted 23. March 2004 10:43
Do the objects show any sign of machining or shaping (e.g., when they are sectioned, the exterior surfaces cut across interior structures, such as laminae or rings)?
Still haven't peeked --
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Evan
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Member # 164
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posted 23. March 2004 13:00
Doubting Thomas writes,
quote:
Design cannot be inferred without an examination of the process that produced the structure(s).
This issue is central to what I see a fundamental confusion about how the EF is supposed to work: can design be inferred merely from properties of an object, with all aspects of its history unknown?, or is its history the central aspect of what we do need to know in order to compute the probabilities necessary to eliminate natural processes as the cause?
Related to this is the question of what background knowledge we have about both what natural processes are capable of and what designers exist with what capabilities.
A third question is this: do things made by living but non-intelligent (in what I think is the ID sense) sources count as designed? These objects could possibly have been made by some accretion process of some simple life form, perhaps, but my background knowledge of such possible life forms is too limited to tell. On the other hand, my background knowledge of primitive human artifacts is fairly good, so I lean towards “designed by humans” as my answer.
But notice how much of this is based on background knowledge about what type of processes might have produced the structures, as Doubting Thomas brought up. I seriously don’t understand how the EF can applied to anything without somehow quantifying the potentialities of known causes, both for natural processes and for designers.
And as always, of course, the question of the assumptions we make about the nature of the designers comes into play - how can you quantify the potentiality, for instance, of an omni-everything deity?
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