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Author
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Topic: The Characterization of Intelligent Causation
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Zarathustra
Member
Member # 3407
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posted 27. April 2007 10:08
quote:
LifeEngineer:As has been stated on numerous occasions, those groups and individuals who are unable or unwilling to produce scientific definitions of intelligent causation are in no position to judge the definitions proposed by others.
Since you have presented no such definition yourself, LifeEngineer, you are in that former category. Your statement is nonsense, in any case. If someone presents a definition of intelligent causation that is either daft or unworkable, it is sufficient to show that it is so.
One can but speculate, but LifeEngineer's inability to say anything useful on the topic of intelligence may well derive from the his lack of familiarity with that commodity, both in theoretical terms and on a practical basis.
I've started my stopwatch, just to see how long it will be before LifeEngineer dredges up his facile thermostat example yet again, and invokes the authority of "real scientists", a term that the rest of us take to mean "invisible friends".
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Daniel Smith
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Member # 3004
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posted 27. April 2007 14:05
Zarathustra:
quote:
Smith: You make no sense. I have no idea what you mean by these terms.
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If this is true, then you have disqualified yourself from any further discussion, and force us to disregard your earlier posts as being invalid. Strange, because you seem to have been keeping up until now. If, on the other hand, your statement is false, then you are engaging in intellectual dishonesty.
Thank you for verifying my point. You are right, I do understand what aiguy is saying - and I am pretending not to. This is the tactic aiguy has employed throughout this discussion. He came into it under the pretense of having an open mind - as if he could support ID if only a rigorous definition of "intelligence" could be supplied. It soon became obvious however, that he had already made up his mind and would not accept any definition for "intelligence". He pretended he did not know what the terms "design", "living", "agent" and any other relevant terms meant (even though he regularly used many of the same terms in his own statements). You are right, that is dishonest and should disqualify him from this discussion. The sad thing is it took us this long to realize what he was up to.
quote:
This leads to an infinite number of different intelligent designers, each having been designed by its precursor.
Actually this leads to an eternal being of infinite intelligence.
"Eternal" - because that requires no first cause.
"Being" - because the source of life must be living.
"Of infinite intelligence" - because only an infinite knowledge can account for the origin of all things.
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LifeEngineer
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Member # 3446
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posted 27. April 2007 14:42
Quote: You are right, that is dishonest and should disqualify him from this discussion. The sad thing is it took us this long to realize what he was up to.
Most of us spent a lot of years learning to trust and believe in academic authorities. It is probably not surprising that it takes a while to recognize that most of that authority is based on political techniques rather than scientific knowledge.
On the other hand, it takes a lot less work and a lot less knowledge to get beaten up by academic authority figures than it does to actually develop the skills needed to discuss intelligent causation from a scientific perspective.
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Daniel Smith
Member
Member # 3004
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posted 27. April 2007 14:57
aiguy:
quote:
Me: You tell me. Are human beings capable of programming the kinds of biological complexity we're talking about?
You (4-9-07): I'm not sure what type of biological complexity we're talking about, but I'd say no, since no human has managed to create a living thing. (emphasis added)
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You again (4-25-07): My wife built a very complicated biological system.
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You again (4-26-07):The most complex creations of human beings are their children, and we create those without knowing anything at all about what we are doing. (emphasis added)
It seems you have contradicted yourself here. So which is it? Which of your above statements can be defined as "true"?
Or must we apply the standard "We don't know"?
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aiguy
Member
Member # 3736
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posted 27. April 2007 20:01
Daniel,
quote:
You make no sense. I have no idea what you mean by these terms.
Define: I
Define: pointed
Define: out
...
How can you make that statement when you don't even know what the terms mean? You can't even define them. You have no theory. You're not being scientific. Science needs clearly defined terms. You lost the argument. Blah, blah, blah...
See I can do it too.
Does this mean I win?
Scientists have no trouble communicating in English or other natural languages, but we must provide precise meanings for our explanatory concepts in order to make sure everybody agrees on what the explanation means.
For example, if I wrote a paper trying to explain differential reproduction by saying "Reproductive advantage is determined by an animal's beauty", any journal editor would immediately reject my paper, asking me "How are you defining beauty here? If I said "Everybody knows what beauty is!" or if I said "Beauty is that which determines reproductive advantage!", I still would not (and should not) get my paper published.
ID does the exact same thing with the concept of "intelligence", a word that has no more objective meaning than "beauty". Just because we use these words in everyday conversation does not qualify them as being sufficiently well defined as scientific terms.
If a word like "beauty" or "intelligence" is used in a scientific paper, it is always given an operationalized definition. For example, I could say that we determine the beauty of an individual in a particular context by measuring the number of seconds that other animals of the same species tend to look at that individual in a controlled setting. Likewise, we could measure the intelligence of an individual animal in a particular context by, say, measuring the amount of time it requires for the individual to perform a particular task.
However, using these words without any operationalized definitions is simply meaningless, and it isn't because scientists are closed-minded to beauty or intelligence.
quote:
This is the tactic aiguy has employed throughout this discussion. He came into it under the pretense of having an open mind - as if he could support ID if only a rigorous definition of "intelligence" could be supplied.
No pretense; I am still awaiting some sort of characterization of this concept that could be used in a scientific context. If somebody would offer one, we could discuss it.
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It soon became obvious however, that he had already made up his mind and would not accept any definition for "intelligence".
It's really not a matter of opinion. The criterion for a scientific explanation is simply that we can all agree on what it is we're talking about. When you say "something intelligent created life", I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, and you have provided no means by which we could agree on what is intelligent and what isn't in this context. You could just as well have said "something beautiful created life", and while you might have some nice emotional response to that claim, it is not something that can be scientifically evaluated.
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DANIEL: You tell me. Are human beings capable of programming the kinds of biological complexity we're talking about?
AIGUY: I'm not sure what type of biological complexity we're talking about, but I'd say no, since no human has managed to create a living thing
In this context, I was responding to what I thought you meant by "programming", which (in my view) entails conscious reflection by human beings. However, it is obviously true that human beings create living things, or else we would quickly go extinct. This simply points out the problems we have when we use these words with mentalistic connotations and fail to provide precise scientific definitions. Unless we do, we can never agree on what we're talking about. Science proceeds because people have learned to stop talking past each other, by providing definitions for explanatory concepts which we can all objectively test against our shared experiences. ID, to date, has done no such thing.
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aiguy
Member
Member # 3736
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posted 27. April 2007 20:07
miosim,
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Because you are not proponent of ID theory, the word REVIEWING and your “emotional” responses set the stage for a ideological rather that a scientific discussion.
Eh? I really don't think I'm to blame for ideological responses here. I would be very pleased if somebody actually read the OP and responded to what I said there.
quote:
Can we go back to your original statement about positively characterization of intelligence causation, but without reference to any Ideology?
If you think I've made an ideological claim, please tell me what that is. Again, when I said "positive characterization" in the OP, I meant "not a negative characterization", rather than an "absolute" characterization. In other words, ID must say what intelligence is, rather than what it isn't.
So yes, please, let's simply talk about how science (rather than informal conversation, or religious or philosophical discussion) characterizes intelligence, and how that can (or cannot) be used in ID! That is what this thread is intended to discuss.
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miosim
Member
Member # 4541
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posted 27. April 2007 22:24
Zarathustra, I tried my best to read this discussion from the beginning, but I may miss some points, sorry for that. However I do not want to “slurs” anybody – you can trust me on this. It would be silly for me to insert offensive words into an argument and expecting that my point will be accepted.
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The teleological aspect of intelligence deserves further investigation. True, water can cleverly find the optimal path from mountaintop to sea, and can rightly be said to have a purpose. We do not ascribe "intelligence" to such phenomena, however, because we understand the underlying mechanisms sufficiently well for them to be unsurprising.
Indeed, we do not ascribe "intelligence" to water “that can cleverly find the optimal path…), because WE BELIEVED we fully understand it. However I do not understand any more a majority of so called natural phenomena the way I understood them before. Apparently what is naturally and not surprising to a majority, is pretty unclear and metaphysical to me.
I do not understand any more what physical force is: it is too metaphysical for me (see my post from April 23). Especially I troubled with all type of self-assembly phenomena when atoms are assembled them self into molecules, crystals, snowflakes and so on… . And the rational scientific explanation for this is that it happens as results of random interaction until the principle of minimum free energy is satisfied (some time referred as the most probable state). If we accept this as an explanation it means we found the explanation for everything and Science is done, “mission is accomplished” and we all can go home.
I do not have time today to collaborate more on this, because I have to leave and will spent these weekends on a road. But I will come to this point again, since I believe it is very important for this discussion, regardless that I didn’t even mention Intelligence causation.
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miosim
Member
Member # 4541
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posted 28. April 2007 07:36
aiguy: quote:
“So yes, please, let's simply talk about how science (rather than informal conversation, or religious or philosophical discussion) characterizes intelligence, and how that can (or cannot) be used in ID! That is what this thread is intended to discuss.”
and in the early postings:
“... The "intelligence" that ID offers as its sole explanatory concept is meaningless…
… I think ID is pseudo-science. I think evolutionary theory is perfectly scientific. I also think evolutionary theory might be fundamentally incomplete, and something beyond anything we understand might play a vital role in the creation of biological complexity… “
I do see an ideological inclination in your question, but ideology is a reality and we have to face it.
I agree with you most of the time, but I see some useful ideas in ID theory also.
To ID proponents,
Your voluntarily engagement in this discussion means accepting challenge of aiguy's question. Do you have a brief and direct answer to this? And whatever answer is, we may able to move forward.
I would be interested also to learn about ID theory, especially what kind of scientific challenges this theory is facing today.
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Zarathustra
Member
Member # 3407
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posted 28. April 2007 10:23
quote:
Smith: You are right, that is dishonest and should disqualify him from this discussion.
Aiguy has never resorted to distortions such as yours, Daniel, which can at best be described as jejune. My criticism was directed solely at you for this, and it is shabby of you to suggest that I intended otherwise. You have, ironically enough, given everyone another example of this behaviour. As I said earlier, such tactics belong on religious forums, where they are both appropriate and necessary, but not here.
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Aiguy: The claim that all processes are Turing computable may or may not be true, but even if it is, it isn't much of an explanation of anything.
I, too, have reservations about the utility of Turing computability in the current context, since the model relies on phenomena being both quantizable and deterministic. The real world, as we know, may be neither.
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Daniel Smith
Member
Member # 3004
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posted 28. April 2007 16:14
aiguy,
I'd like to continue this discussion with you but unfortunately you still have this little matter to clear up:
quote:
aiguy (4-9-07): no human has managed to create a living thing.
aiguy (4-26-07): The most complex creations of human beings are their children, and we create those without knowing anything at all about what we are doing.
It would seem you are confused here. When you used the term "create" in the above statements, what exactly did you mean by it? Do humans "create" living things or not? If so, do they do so in the same sense that they "create" paintings, rocket ships, books, songs and sonnets? If not, then exactly what methods commonly associated with the term "create" do they employ?
Either way, it is painfully obvious from the above quotes that either: a.) You do not have a reasonable comprehension of the term "create"; or b.) You are just arguing to argue.
So which is it? (I'm guessing "b".)
Then there's this:
quote:
aiguy (4-25-07): My wife built a very complicated biological system.
I assume you are referring to sexual reproduction here, but your choice of the term "built" is curious. Did she "build" this very complicated biological system in the same manner as a man "builds" a chair? What methods commonly associated with the act of "building" did she employ? Common definitions of the word "build" utilize terms such as "erect", "fabricate" and "construct". Did your wife do any of these things when she "built" this very complicated biological system? Or do you equate the act of "reproduction" with "building"?
So again we must infer that either: a.) You do not have a reasonable comprehension of the term "built"; or b.) You are just arguing to argue.
So which is it? (again, I'd have to go with "b".)
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Melvin H. Fox
Member
Member # 1684
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posted 28. April 2007 17:59
What do you all think of this:
Intelligence is a behavioral vector space in which at least one of the dimensions is that of imaginative creativity. That is to say, the basis of the behavior space of any intelligent agent must include at least one linearly independent vector of creative imagination. All other vectors in the spanning set of the behavior space can be for deterministic dimensions or even random dimensions if one insists, but for the agent to be called intelligent it must have the capacity to cause its own internal combination of abstract imagery for objects not physically present at the time.
-Mel
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IF
Member
Member # 1904
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posted 28. April 2007 18:41
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All other vectors in the spanning set of the behavior space can be for deterministic dimensions or even random dimensions if one insists, but for the agent to be called intelligent it must have the capacity to cause its own internal combination of abstract imagery for objects not physically present at the time .
How could we tell if non-humans have this "ability"?
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aiguy
Member
Member # 3736
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posted 28. April 2007 18:45
Daniel,
quote:
I'd like to continue this discussion with you but unfortunately you still have this little matter to clear up: quote: aiguy (4-9-07): no human has managed to create a living thing.
aiguy (4-26-07): The most complex creations of human beings are their children, and we create those without knowing anything at all about what we are doing.
I have responded to this once; let's try it again.
The first time you brought this up, you provided the context, which you have omitted this time. Again in context:
quote:
Daniel: You tell me. Are human beings capable of programming the kinds of biological complexity we're talking about? (emphasis added)
AIGUY: I'm not sure what type of biological complexity we're talking about, but I'd say no, since no human has managed to create a living thing.
DANIEL: It would seem you are confused here. When you used the term "create" in the above statements, what exactly did you mean by it?
So once again I will explain this to you: In context, you can see I was responding to your question about humans programming biological complexity, and I made certain assumptions about what you meant when you were talking about programming.
So I wasn't confused, no, but certainly there has been nothing but misunderstanding between you and I each time we use these loaded words "create", "design (verb)", "intelligence", and so on. That really is the whole point here! I might mean one thing, yet you think it means another, and vice-versa. This is annoying enough in causal conversation, but it is strictly intolerable in scientific discourse. That is why we need precise, empirically-grounded terms in science, and that is why I started this thread to talk about what sort of precise, empirically-grounded meaning could be given to "intelligence" in the context of ID.
In order to make sure that we are talking about the same thing when expressing some concept in scientific explanation, we must provide a precise characterization of that concept. I have said all of this repeatedly; hopefully you find this clear now. I described in the OP the way science does this when it comes to the concept of "intelligence". I also pointed out that our empirically-grounded, scientific characterizations of "intelligence" fail to support the claims of ID. Since I don't think you have yet read or understood the OP, I will summarize what I said there yet again:
ID cannot use the operationalized meaning of "intelligence" that is used in the neurosciences, since those are predicated on the function of particular neural structures, and ID cannot claim that the Designer had an observable brain. Nor can ID use the operationalized meaning of "intelligence" that is used in human psychology, since those depend upon the statistical results derived from standardized tests, and we cannot administer standardized tests to the Designer.
Moreover, in neither of these scientific disciplines is "intelligence" characterized as something causal, while ID attempts to say that intelligence causes biological complexity. In other words, in the rest of science, "intelligence" is an operationalized description of a class of behavior we seek to explain, while in ID, "intelligence" is supposedly something that can be used to explain other things.
Now, it may be that other sorts of characterizations could be used by ID, but I have said that if this is the case, I am not aware of what sort of characterization that might be. Thus far, nobody in this thread has offered anything that fits the bill: What is required is a characterization that is sufficiently precise to enable us to establish that the same thing which enables human behavior is responsible for biological complexity, and we must establish this by empirical demonstration rather than subjective opinion.
Saying that biological complexity exists because of something "intelligent" is no more scientific than saying it exists because of something "beautiful". In neither case do we have any means to objectively decide what does or does not fit the description.
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aiguy
Member
Member # 3736
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posted 28. April 2007 18:59
Melvin,
quote:
Intelligence is a behavioral vector space in which at least one of the dimensions is that of imaginative creativity. That is to say, the basis of the behavior space of any intelligent agent must include at least one linearly independent vector of creative imagination. All other vectors in the spanning set of the behavior space can be for deterministic dimensions or even random dimensions if one insists, but for the agent to be called intelligent it must have the capacity to cause its own internal combination of abstract imagery for objects not physically present at the time.
You have couched this in terms of multidimensional vector spaces, but I'm afraid I don't see how this helps to operationalize the "imaginative creativity" dimension at all.
IF asks how we can measure "imaginative creativity" in non-humans; I would actually say there are methods to do this (for some reasonable, operationalized definition of this term). Rats, crows, chimps, and other animals are subjected to clever experiments designed to see if their behavior relies on various cognitive functions. For example, it can be shown that explaining chimp's behavior in certain situations seems to require that we posit the chimp has a model of the knowledge of human experimenters. We test crows to see if their behavior indicates consideration of future events, and so on.
These sorts of experiments on non-human animals reveal advanced (human-like) cognitive abilities, and the trend in ethology and animal behavioral research over the past twenty years or so has been to attribute more and more abilities to non-human animals. If we could subject the Designer of Life to these sorts of clever experiments, we could make the same sort of inferences about this Designer, and we could thus come up with a reasonable operationalized definition of "intelligence" (where reasonable here means related to our intuitive notion of intelligence) and provide scientific justification for attributing this to the cause of life.
But of course we cannot subject the cause of life to any experiments at all. We cannot say that the Designer is capable of modeling the knowledge of others, or that the Designer considers the impact of His actions on future events.
What ID tries to do instead is to look at what we see in the world, and simply assume that whatever caused it must have specific knowledge and cognitive abilities relating to these things. But this reasoning is completely unsupportable: All that we know is that complex machinery exists in biology, and as I've shown, we have no reason to attribute knowledge to the cause of biological complexity, since we have an existence proof (biological birth) that biological complexity can be brought into existence without any particular knowledge of biology.
[ 28. April 2007, 19:28: Message edited by: aiguy ]
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aiguy
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Member # 3736
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posted 28. April 2007 19:23
Hi Zarathustra,
quote:
I, too, have reservations about the utility of Turing computability in the current context, since the model relies on phenomena being both quantizable and deterministic. The real world, as we know, may be neither.
Right. There is a set of arguments against thought being Turing computable based on Godel's results (cf John Lucas more than forty years ago, and more recently by Roger Penrose). These arguments in particular have been pretty well discounted, I think, but I'm not convinced in general. I think consciousness represents a hard problem (in David Chalmer's sense), but I also think that speculations along the lines of the "Platonic Logic" of Penrose or sorts of dualism/mental force offered by folks like Schwartz or Hameroff are simply without any sort of conceptual content at all. So my position on mind and computability is not only agnostic, but I tend to agree with Colin McGinn that there is no possible answer to the hard problem of consciousness.
[ 28. April 2007, 19:29: Message edited by: aiguy ]
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