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Author
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Topic: The Characterization of Intelligent Causation
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Daniel Smith
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Member # 3004
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posted 29. April 2007 01:00
aiguy:
I'm still skeptical of your explanation for your usage of the word "create" - since it would seem that we were essentially talking about the same thing both times.
The first time, I asked if humans could program biological complexity, the second time I said it would take knowledge to design biological complexity. These are very similar thoughts. As I see it, the first answer - that humans do not have the ability (or knowledge) to "create" (your word) biological complexity - was the correct answer. Your second answer - that humans can "create" (again, your word) biological complexity (remember the context was the ability to design biological complexity) because we can reproduce, was definitely a stretch and really didn't address the issue.
Now, in the second response you also said:
quote:
my wife was designed by my wife's mother
So it would seem to me that you also equate reproduction with design. I think this also is a stretch.
So far, you have used the words "create", "built" and "designed" as synonyms for "reproduction". Are you really comfortable with that?
I think that; were you to submit a paper using those words as synonyms, your paper would be rejected.
"Reproductions" versus "creations" or "designs" has a great analogy in the world of art. In the art world, we have original paintings, and we have prints. Only one of these require any art skill, and only one is able to fetch astronomical prices. An original painting, (analogous to "creations" or "designs") is a once in a lifetime - unrepeatable event, a print (analogous to "reproduction") is an everyday occurrence and requires no art skill or knowledge whatsoever to create, and that is reflected in the price.
The act of sexual reproduction is akin to making a print. We are only concerned with the originals however. So using reproduction as a "disproof" of my statements was a case of comparing apples and oranges (or prints and originals).
Now, you'll say, the originals are long gone - how can we study them? By studying the prints. We know that the originals did not come out of a copy machine (reproduction) else they would not be "original", so we must look at the reproductions and ask what types of skills (if any) it would take to create that in it's projected original form.
So I still think that the design of biological complexity requires great knowledge and, unless you are going to submit "reproduction" as a design method, you have not shown the weakness of my position.
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Zarathustra
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posted 29. April 2007 08:19
quote:
Smith: So I still think that the design of biological complexity requires great knowledge and, unless you are going to submit "reproduction" as a design method, you have not shown the weakness of my position.
So, you are suggesting that to "design" something requires knowledge. Why should anyone even bother to disagree with that position here? It has nothing to do with the question Aiguy posed about intelligent causation, nor are you likely to get that phone call from the Nobel Prize committee.
I notice that you have not addressed my challenge regarding the infinite regress implied by your view of intelligence. Is that because I am correct, or is it because you are using the creationists' standard technique of ignoring any question that demonstrates their intellectual bankruptcy?
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LifeEngineer
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Member # 3446
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posted 29. April 2007 10:20
Probably the most interesting aspect of the ‘define intelligent causation’ issue, is the extent to which essentially all real science and real scientists appear to be in agreement that intelligent causation can be clearly and scientifically defined in terms of results. When you look at all the successful efforts to model and simulate complex intelligent causation with computers, you begin to realize just how advanced and sophisticated the techniques for analyzing intelligent causation have become.
When you look seriously at almost any aspect of formal scientific analysis of intelligent causation, you find that there are lots of scientists who have already done the analysis and come up with highly effective solutions to the very difficult technical problems associated with this type of analysis.
I would be interesting to actually discuss some of the real issues associated with intelligent causation with some of the people who actually understand and have studied the issues.
About the only substantive issue relating to intelligent causation that has not been successfully addressed is “How to deal effectively with the large and powerful group of political ideologues who, in modern science, disrupt and corrupt scientific analysis in almost every field of both applied and theoretical ‘science’?”
But again, the most interesting aspect of the ‘defining intelligent causation’ issue is the realization that there is a well established array of formal scientific definition based on the results concept.
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LifeEngineer
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posted 29. April 2007 10:35
WHY DOES DANIEL CHOOSE TO LOSE?
A second somewhat interesting aspect of the ‘define intelligent causation’ issue is the apparent willingness of ID supporters to ‘appear to loose’ debates even when the evidence is overwhelmingly in their favor. In the current debate the positions of Daniel and aiguy with respect to defining intelligent causation are:
Daniel: Intelligent causation can be formally defined in terms of results and this position is confirmed by the many applications where successful analysis has been performed using this general approach.
Aiguy: There is no scientific definition of intelligent causation because based on my personal subjective judgment no definition is acceptable.
Daniel has even been able to clearly document that aiguy uses contradictory arguments in support of his dubious position.
But despite all the strength of his argument and despite his ability to demonstrate that aiguy is using logically unsound arguments, Daniel still succeeds in creating the impression that he is loosing the debate. Why and how is this achieved? An interesting question, at least IMO.
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Daniel Smith
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posted 29. April 2007 14:30
Zarathustra:
quote:
I notice that you have not addressed my challenge regarding the infinite regress implied by your view of intelligence.
I did address it. I also addressed your argument against my position that a first cause must be "eternal".
Both times it was you who failed to respond. Is that because I am correct, or is it because you are using the atheists' standard technique of ignoring any question that demonstrates their intellectual bankruptcy?
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aiguy
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Member # 3736
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posted 29. April 2007 14:30
Daniel,
quote:
I'm still skeptical of your explanation for your usage of the word "create" - since it would seem that we were essentially talking about the same thing both times. The first time, I asked if humans could program biological complexity, the second time I said it would take knowledge to design biological complexity. These are very similar thoughts. As I see it, the first answer - that humans do not have the ability (or knowledge) to "create" (your word) biological complexity - was the correct answer. Your second answer - that humans can "create" (again, your word) biological complexity (remember the context was the ability to design biological complexity) because we can reproduce, was definitely a stretch and really didn't address the issue.
It is hardly a stretch to say that human beings can not create - meaning apply their knowledge and program - a living biological thing. Nor is it a stretch to say that human beings can create life, in the sense of "to be the cause or occasion of; give rise to". The word procreate has a dictionary definition of "to beget offspring, or to produce; bring into being.".
If you think there has been confusion about this, the only way to address it of course is to devise careful definitions of our terms and mitigate the ambiguities of language.
Let's start with the simplest definitions:
1) design (noun): a complex pattern or structure
2) design (verb): to cause a design(noun) to exist
3) create (verb): to design(verb)
If we use these, then human beings are designs (noun), and humans can both design and create living things. Perhaps instead you would like to define "design"(verb) as something else, such as "apply knowledge and consciously reflect upon building a design(noun)". Fine - if we use that definition, then human beings create living things, but we can not design them. Or perhaps you would also like to treat "create" to entail conscious application of knowledge. In that case, human beings can neither create nor design other living things (nor can a bomb create an explosion, nor can erosion create a canyon...)
quote:
"Reproductions" versus "creations" or "designs" has a great analogy in the world of art. The act of sexual reproduction is akin to making a print. We are only concerned with the originals however. So using reproduction as a "disproof" of my statements was a case of comparing apples and oranges (or prints and originals).
Sexual reproduction is not "akin" to making a print, no, it's just an analogy (and not a very good one since paintings do not reproduce themselves). You wish to say that while my wife created (i.e. caused the existence of) a child, she was acting as nothing more than a copying machine (that could somehow produce another copying machine). Sure, fine (though my wife might take issue with that). But I never said that whatever caused life was in any way similar to human reproduction except for the fact that it caused the existence of a complex biological organism. Unless one believes that the first human popped into existence de novo, then the first appearance of human life has very little resemblance indeed to either the operation of a copying machine or biological reproduction. (I don't happen to know your position on common descent; some IDers reject it, others accept it).
My point, once again, was that if a bunch of matter - operating according to the laws of physics and chemistry, and without conscious knowledge - can result in a baby, then there could be other purely physical processes that generate biological complexity without the conscious application of knowledge too. What process could have generated the original biological complexity? Nobody knows. Was it necessarily without conscious knowledge? No - that is a theological question, and there is no scientific fact of the matter. And if it was another mindless process, how did that process come to exist? Nobody knows that either: Remember, if I can't ask you "Who designed the designer?", then you can't ask me "What generated the biological complexity generator?".
quote:
Now, you'll say, the originals are long gone - how can we study them? By studying the prints. We know that the originals did not come out of a copy machine
We don't know what the "originals" were! Was it a primitive self-replicator? Adam and Eve? How in the world could you look at a human being and and tell if it was an "original" or a "duplicate", as you say we can tell when a painting did not come out of a copy machine? Would the original lack a navel?
quote:
So I still think that the design of biological complexity requires great knowledge and, unless you are going to submit "reproduction" as a design method, you have not shown the weakness of my position.
I hope you can see that reproduction per se has nothing to do with my argument. I am arguing that since not all processes that generate biological complexity involve knowledge, you cannot infer that the process that generated the original biological complexity involved knowledge either.
But why would you even bother restricting this "knowledge inference" just to the realm of biology? By the exact same reasoning, whatever creates electrical storms must be proficient in electrical engineering, and whatever creates stars must have knowledge of nuclear physics, and whatever created the universe must have been knowledgeable about everything. (And whatever created that which created the universe must have been even more knowledgeable...)
Daniel, you can refine your analogies, appeals to religious intuitions, and anthropomorphic projections all you'd like, but it's unlikely that you'll express the Argument From Design any better than Aquinas did (no offense). You will not be able to provide the empirical grounding to convert this theological argument into a testable scientific hypothesis.
You can characterize "intelligence" as conscious application of knowledge, and I'm fine with that as a description of human mentality. But in order to show that the same thing was responsible for biological complexity, you need to do more than point to everything you see and simply assert that the conscious application of knowledge was required to cause it.
[ 29. April 2007, 14:39: Message edited by: aiguy ]
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Daniel Smith
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Member # 3004
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posted 29. April 2007 15:09
quote:
aiguy (4-24-07):So here is what we agree on, for the sake of argument:
1) There are some special types of things (Property-X things) in the world
2) Biological structures have Property-X, as do beaver dams, etc.
3) As far as we can observe, only living things can create things with Property-X
4) But living organisms could not have created the Property-X things that we see in living organisms
Obviously we've gone wrong somewhere. There must be something else that create things with Property-X, and this thing is not itself alive. We'd like to see what this thing might be in order to find out how Property-X things got into living organisms. I don't know what it is, and you don't either. (emphasis added)
So here aiguy admits that he doesn't know how this Property-X "got into" living organisms (remember that I defined Property-X as the "property that sets beaver dams, ant hills, bee hives, DNA, protein synthesis, planes, trains, automobiles and Stonehenge apart from rock formations and snowflakes"). Just a little while later though he argues that it was through "reproduction" that Property-X was introduced into living structures and he equates his wife and mother-in-law with designers, creators and builders of this elusive property.
So here again is another inconsistency in aiguy's argument.
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Daniel Smith
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Member # 3004
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posted 29. April 2007 15:15
LifeEngineer:
quote:
WHY DOES DANIEL CHOOSE TO LOSE?
I know what you mean. I am not sure why that is. I think it has to do with the "air of superiority" projected from those on the other side. They lead you to believe that somehow your arguments must meet their standards (and of course they never can because they just keep moving the goalposts).
Then they make statements such as these:
quote:
There is absolutely not one iota of scientific argument in anything you have said this far, much less "serious scientific explanations". If you had a scientific explanation, you could tell me what it was, and explain what your terms meant with respect to what could be empirically evaluated. Instead, you toss around these concepts like "ingenuity" that have no operationalized definitions and are scientifically useless.
Statements like these just serve to deflate your ego and make you feel inferior - although they are disingenuous since what he is really doing is just choosing to ignore all arguments made against his position; dismissing them with a wave of the hand rather than address them. And when you respond in kind (as I did), you are attacked for being a sore loser. You can't win.
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aiguy
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Member # 3736
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posted 29. April 2007 15:22
Daniel,
quote:
So here again is another inconsistency in aiguy's argument.
I hope you will actually read my responses, rather than ignoring them and repeating your own misunderstandings. There are not inconsistencies in my argument; your confusion arises from your misunderstanding of how we are using these poorly defined terms "create", "design", "build", and so on. I have offered clarifying definitions; if you choose not to review them, then we can only assume you desire to keep these words ambiguous, so that you can equivocate on their meaning and build specious arguments for God.
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Melvin H. Fox
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Member # 1684
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posted 29. April 2007 16:53
aiguy and IF,
aiguy wrote:
quote:
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.
Last weekend I wrote an interesting little program. If there is interest I will attempt to have the moderator archive it here at brainstorms; that is, make it available for your perusal. In it I have constructed a 21-by-21 grid where an object exists and moves. Its movement is dictated by some contrived deterministic forces [pull toward the boundaries], some life forces [pull toward goals], and a random force [number generator]. In order for the object to “live” it must stay on the grid and achive four goals in order [these goals also move deterministically]. The object, I have named Paco, achieves goals when it coexists with the goal in any one of the spaces in the grid during any one cycle of the program.
I ran the program thousands of times. It did achieve goal number one on 15 different trials and never achieved goal number two.
I then modified the program, replacing the random movement with an interface function to a human user. I let one of my classes play the program and they had some difficulty but after about a half an hour they started to achieve all four goals in order without leaving the grid [leaving the grid kills Paco].
All of this may not help anyone else “operationalize” imaginative creativity but it has helped me. I conjecture that the four goals will never be achieved without the imaginative creativity dimension. I attribute this to the random walk phenomenon and the relatively small size of the grid. I plan to test my hypothesis soon on the school’s computers [my 1990’s lap top has a fit when I try to loop the program more than 15,000 times].
You are both right to point out the difficulties that arise when trying to show scientifically that imaginative creativity is at work. All I am interested in, for now, is identifying intelligence with imaginative creativity and showing that there exist behaviors that are, in effect, inexplicable apart from it.
I do not know how analogous are the particular contrived processes contained in my program and the processes necessary and sufficient for the inception of life on earth, but from what I have read the inception of life seems much more unlikely then for Paco to achieve all four goals.
IF wrote:
quote:
How could we tell if non-humans have this "ability"?
I don’t know, perhaps infinitesimal probabilities for observed behaviors, phenomena, or artifacts?
-Mel
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aiguy
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posted 29. April 2007 17:36
Hi Mel,
quote:
I then modified the program, replacing the random movement with an interface function to a human user. I let one of my classes play the program and they had some difficulty but after about a half an hour they started to achieve all four goals in order without leaving the grid [leaving the grid kills Paco].
I have written many programs to play various games, and these programs end up playing the game better than I do. I can use my "imaginative creativity" all I want, but the system still beats me. Why? Because simply by virtue of the system's structure, it learns what works and what doesn't, and it does this better than I can using my brain.
What do you think this means for the importance of "imaginative creativity"?
quote:
You are both right to point out the difficulties that arise when trying to show scientifically that imaginative creativity is at work. All I am interested in, for now, is identifying intelligence with imaginative creativity and showing that there exist behaviors that are, in effect, inexplicable apart from it.
When I publish a paper describing some system I've built, I explain how the system works. If I explained the system by saying "it uses imaginative creativity", I would get a letter from the editor kindly asking me if perhaps I was joking. I have written systems that do all sorts of things that people typically think of as "intelligent", and I have yet to use "imaginative creativity" to explain any of their behaviors.
The standard refrain from ID proponents at this juncture is to complain that even if the computer can outperform the programmer on some task, it still required the "imaginative creativity" of the programmer in order to create the program in the first place. The obvious rebuttal of this argument is that we have no reason to think that the processes I use to write the program are qualitatively different from those the computer uses. If you think they are, you need to demonstrate this; you are back to square one.
quote:
How could we tell if non-humans have this "ability"?
I don’t know, perhaps infinitesimal probabilities for observed behaviors, phenomena, or artifacts?
Did you read my response to you on this point?
[ 29. April 2007, 17:39: Message edited by: aiguy ]
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Zarathustra
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posted 29. April 2007 18:25
quote:
Smith: I did address it. I also addressed your argument against my position that a first cause must be "eternal".
Both times it was you who failed to respond. Is that because I am correct, or is it because you are using the atheists' standard technique of ignoring any question that demonstrates their intellectual bankruptcy?
If you do feel the need to deliver insults, it's considered good form to invent your own slurs, rather than simply repeating what the other person said. Try to show a bit more creativity in future, just for the benefit of our other readers.
In my earlier challenge, I asked you which of the postulates A) or B) was incorrect. Instead of presenting meaningless theological dogma (which was not asked for), I want you to address the question directly. Can you answer it without polluting your response with medieval nonsense this time, Daniel?
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Zarathustra
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Member # 3407
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posted 29. April 2007 18:56
Aiguy, you may be interested in the following paper. It involves a simulation of spiders' web-building behaviour using a simple parameterised model subjected to random mutations and refined using selection of the most effective prey-catching structures. What is interesting is how quickly the model converges onto what real spiders actually build. As it is a bona-fide peer-reviewed scientific paper, it is unlikely to be of any value to our creationist friends here.
Analysing Spider Web Building Behaviour with Rule-based Simulations and
Genetic Algorithms
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aiguy
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posted 29. April 2007 21:44
Really great paper, and I'd not seen it - thanks.
Any curious, openminded person would look at this and think We are really making great progress understanding how intelligent behavior arises in the world. In contrast, an ID enthusiast would think But it still took intelligence to write the computer simulation, as if that somehow invalidates the study.
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Daniel Smith
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posted 30. April 2007 05:40
aiguy:
quote:
It is hardly a stretch to say that human beings can not create - meaning apply their knowledge and program - a living biological thing. Nor is it a stretch to say that human beings can create life, in the sense of "to be the cause or occasion of; give rise to"...
My argument, if you remember, was that it would take great knowledge to design life. Obviously then I was referring to "creating" life in the first sense (the applying knowledge and programming sense). You want to argue that it takes no special knowledge to "create" life in the second (procreation) sense, but how does that apply to my argument? It's a forced argument that does not address my position. You've just skirted around it.
quote:
Perhaps instead you would like to define "design"(verb) as something else, such as "apply knowledge and consciously reflect upon building a design(noun)". Fine - if we use that definition, then human beings create living things, but we can not design them.
You're getting warmer. And, it's nice to see that you are finally admitting that it would take great knowledge (beyond that of humans) to design life. That, my friend, was my point.
quote:
My point, once again, was that if a bunch of matter - operating according to the laws of physics and chemistry, and without conscious knowledge - can result in a baby,
You are pretending to be ignorant here I take it? It seems that you've made the intentional understatement of the millennium; characterizing the most complex biological structure on earth as "a bunch of matter - operating according to the laws of physics and chemistry", (as if the human beings were equivalent to a bag of rocks). If you really think that, then we are pretty much done.
quote:
I hope you can see that reproduction per se has nothing to do with my argument. I am arguing that since not all processes that generate biological complexity involve knowledge, you cannot infer that the process that generated the original biological complexity involved knowledge either.
Name a "process" other than biological complexity that can "generate" biological complexity.
(Que crickets chirping)...
And even this process is limited. Can your wife, for instance, generate a dog? Or a fly? No, only a dog can generate a dog and only a fly can generate a fly. So, unless you're prepared to posit that the first cell came from another cell, your argument doesn't hold water.
quote:
But why would you even bother restricting this "knowledge inference" just to the realm of biology? By the exact same reasoning, whatever creates electrical storms must be proficient in electrical engineering, and whatever creates stars must have knowledge of nuclear physics, and whatever created the universe must have been knowledgeable about everything.
I do not restrict the Knowledge Inference (I like that) just to the realm of biology. This discussion however was limited to that subject. If you want to discuss how much knowledge it would take to design a star, then let's go.
quote:
You can characterize "intelligence" as conscious application of knowledge, and I'm fine with that as a description of human mentality. But in order to show that the same thing was responsible for biological complexity, you need to do more than point to everything you see and simply assert that the conscious application of knowledge was required to cause it.
I'm not merely pointing to everything I see and asserting that knowledge was required to create it. I have given you specific examples of biological systems for which there is no natural explanation. I am saying that the conscious application of knowledge was required to design life as evidenced by the sheer complexity of even the simplest projected self-replicating organism. I am also saying that IF life was designed, it would require great, nearly insurmountable knowledge to do so. You yourself have admitted that the programming of biological complexity is beyond the knowledge level and skill of human beings. Perhaps it's time for you to start listening to your own arguments a little more closely.
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