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Author
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Topic: The Characterization of Intelligent Causation
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aiguy
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Member # 3736
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posted 05. May 2007 17:02
Daniel,
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So, by your reasoning we could not determine if a complex mechanical widget found on Mars was designed - since we have never seen observed any Martians. In fact, by your reasoning we could not determine if any ancient artifact found on earth was designed unless we have directly observed humans making that exact type of object.
Think about it. We know that humans build things, and what sorts of things they build. When archeologists investigate a dig, they might find the remains of an ancient pot, a spear, and a tree. Now, of the three, the tree is the most complex, but archeologists don't investigate the origin of the tree; only the pot and the spear. Why? If archeologists really were investigators of the products of all "intelligent agents", they would try to figure out who in the ancient world was building these trees... but they don't. Instead, they focus on the pot and the spear, because even though we may never have seen a human build the exact same type of pot or spear directly, they are sufficienly like what humans do build to infer that humans did build them. Not so for the tree however - trees are nothing like what people have ever built, and so archeologists don't study them.
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Sure, if you're talking about things as simple as a bent wire, we can only really know that it was caused by the application of knowledge if we observe it's creation. This is because natural forces are also observed to bend wires.
And natural forces are known to build trees too. Oh - and people.
Again and again, you are simply invoking god-of-the-gaps. Whatever we happen to be able to explain, no matter how complex, you say OK, no knowledge needed there. Whatever we happen to be unable to explain, you jump in saying "See - must have required knowledge!" This god-of-the-gaps reasoning can't be supported, no matter how you try. It is simply a default explanation for anything unexplained, but we can never test if it's true or not.
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I submit to you that, no, it is not that we have observed humans making "Stonehenges", it's the fact that the pattern of the stones rules out the natural forces as an originator of the structure. Once we have crossed the barrier of "explanation of origination" by natural causes, we have entered into the realm of possible design.
Sorry, but this just isn't true. Of course people have built things all over the world by carving stones! Now, if we came across something very different from anything we've ever seen humans build, and different from anything that we've seen on Earth at all, we would have a question on our hands: Where did this come from? But we wouldn't be able to answer the question "an intelligence" built it - that would tell us precisely nothing. And we couldn't infer that knowledge was required, since all sorts of complex things arise without knowledge.
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But, (as I've shown with the example of my car engine) we can use your reasoning to disprove the application of knowledge in human designs (where we know knowledge was used). This shows the basic flaw in your reasoning. You seem to believe that if science can explain how something works, it has also explained how it originated. Such is not the case. These two concepts are not functionally equivalent, yet you continue to use them interchangeably - as if they were.
When we try to explain how something originated, we can only take our explanation back so far. Take a simple rock. We can explain how it came from a volcano, or from compressed sediment, or (my geology is weak... wherever else rocks come from). And then you could ask, how did the volcano arise? Well, from molten lava within the Earth. And the Earth? How did that come to exist? And so on. Finally, we will say "We do not know how that came to exist", where "it" might even be the universe itself. And wherever our ability to explain stops, that is where you will insist that knowledge was responsible.
So, does this mean a rock is designed? If so, then everything was designed, and all this nonsense about detecting what is designed and what isn't is useless. If not, then your reasoning about not being able to explain the ultimate origin of something supporting an inference to to application of knowledge is invalid, since we can't explain the ultimate origin of a rock either.
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No, that's not it at all. The point at which I claim knowledge is necessary is in the design of the system. We could completely understand and explain every detail of how a system works (like my car), and still determine that knowledge was required for it's design. It has nothing to do with "gaps".
But that's not what you said. We understand lightning, so you say the generation of lightning doesn't require knowledge. We don't understand how life formed on Earth, so you say it required knowledge. If humans tried to make lightning, it would require knowledge, so the only reason you don't say knowledge is required to make natural lightning is becase we happened to figure out how it works - and only a couple of hundred years ago. Before that, you would have agreed with all those people who said knowledge was involved!
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You seem to be intentionally missing the point. I've explained it several times, in a number of different ways and you still want to frame the argument into a "god-of-the-gaps" argument, I assume because that's where you feel most comfortable.
No, it's because that is what your argument is.
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You have not even addressed most of my points.
I think I have. Number your points, and I'll go through them one by one.
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You have never even attempted to explain how any natural mechanism could have created something as complex as the protein synthesis process.
Don't you see? Any failure to explain anything is not evidence for your "explanation"! That is exactly what "god-of-the-gaps" means!
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So far, as refutation of teleological explanations for the origin of complex biological systems, you have offered "lightning" (which has nothing to do with biological complexity), "Crows bending wires" (again, nothing to do with the subject), and "reproduction" (which is part of the very system we are seeking to explain).
1) To the extent that a "teoleogical explanation" means "conscious application of knowledge", then it is no explanation at all as far as emprical science is concerned, since there is no evidence that anything conscious was involved.
2) Lightning is an example of a process that would require the application of knowledge if a human were to try and create it, and people used to think knowledge was involved for just this reason. But when we figured out how it worked, the GAP went away, so people stopped invoking gods at that point. So this is exactly the same thing as you are doing with other things we don't currently understand.
3) Biological reproduction shows that processes that do not involve knowledge create biological complexity. You then reach back and ask how reproduction came to exist, and since we have no answer to that, you see a GAP for your god to fit in. It is just that simple.
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You say "we know how it works, we see it self-replicate, therefore no knowledge is required.". Yet, that explains nothing whatsoever about the origin of the system!
We can never explain ultimate origins - a point I have made a dozen times now. If you believe that we are required to explain the origin of everything, then please explain the origin of this "teleological" entity.
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The more I learn about biological systems, the more convinced of design I become. When I see how coded messages are decoded, copied, edited, corrected, translated and transformed into working, self-replicating structures, I am amazed. I say to myself "there's no way that's not designed. No one can ever come up with a "natural" explanation for that!". And I'm right. No one has. And I predict, no one ever will.
I don't think you are wrong - perhaps we never will. But our ignorance is simply not alleviated by using the magic word "design" - it tells us precisely nothing - not one single thing - that we don't know. We can't say knowledge was involved, and we can't say consciousness was involved.
So please address this last point too - do you think we can scientifically support the inference that the cause of life was conscious? If so, please explain what evidence supports this. If not, then how can ID say that the same thing that humans use when they consciously design something is what is responsible for the origin of life.
[ 05. May 2007, 17:06: Message edited by: aiguy ]
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Ebb_Dimskill
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posted 05. May 2007 18:08
quote:
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What about auditory data? Its much easier to a play a song precisely over and over gain in your head than it is a visual scene. How could you do this unless something directly correlating to it was physically stored in your brain (or somewhere in the sensory organs).
(AIGuy)
The issue here is what you mean by "directly correlating to" and "isomorphic". Obviously some brain changes accompany sensory data in all modalities; the question is what is the mapping from physical stimuli to these initial neural responses, and then encoding into memories. These changes correlate, somehow, but not isomorphically at all; the changes are complex and indirect, and we understand little about them.
In mathematics, a morphism is an abstraction of a structure-preserving mapping between two mathematical structures...In set theory, for example, morphisms are just functions...
Wikipedia
Its conceivable the "iso" part of "isomorphism" doesn't necessarily apply, I don't know. Here are some other definitions:
Isomorphism is a very general concept that appears in several areas of mathematics. The word derives from the Greek iso, meaning "equal," and morphosis, meaning "to form" or "to shape."
MathWorld
The word "isomorphism" applies when two complex structures can be mapped onto each other, in such a way that to each part of one structure there is a corresponding part in the other structure, where "corresponding" means that the two parts play similar roles in their respective structures." (Douglas Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach, p. 49)
Informally, an isomorphism is a kind of mapping between objects, which shows a relationship between two properties or operations. If there exists an isomorphism between two structures, we call the two structures isomorphic. In a certain sense, isomorphic sets are structurally identical, if you choose to ignore finer-grained differences that may arise from how they are defined.
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Here are some everyday examples of isomorphic structures:
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A six-sided die and a bag from which a number 1 through 6 is chosen; although the method of obtaining a number is different, their random number generating abilities are isomorphic. This is an example of functional isomorphism, without the presumption of geometric isomorphism.
Wikipedia
In my thinking, compressed digital audio data, together with decompression algorithms and the hardware for outputting the sound, would collectively be an "isomorphism" for the sound itself - but maybe I'm incorrect about that.
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Anyway, Ebb, I'm having a hard time mapping what you're talking about to the topic of the thread. What we're looking for here is a way to characterize "intelligence" that would enable ID to support its claim that the same thing that enables human beings to design watches is what caused life to exist.
(Note: By "OP" I mean my opening post from yesterday.)
The observation in the OP that as far as you go back in time, you'll find a direct isomorphism for the biological world (and I don't know what other term to use now), - this seems vaguely consistent with a view that the biological world exists because something directly equivalent to it has always existed as part of some eternal diety. Anyway, I guess that's the connection at least philosophically between the ideas I presented in the OP and ID.
However, the conception in ID theory of an "intelligent agent" is incoherent to me. ID says that what enables human beings to design watches is that they are "agents", where agents are defined only abstractly as things that have "volition" "free-will", etc. The notion of an agent in ID thought is completely antithetical to mechanism. This is clear from the fact that a designing "agent" is inferred only after ruling out mechanism and chance in the Design Inference. Here is a much more recent quote from one of the coauthors of The Privileged Planet , which it is my understanding is extremely hot in ID circles:
"Agents have properties and capacities, like self-consciousness, freedom, intentions, and so forth. Agents also can cause certain things to come into existence, including complex things. But as a causal explanation, agency/intelligent design is simple...
Now some hard core, reductionist materialists will want to identify (or rather, reduce) human agents to some physical state, such as a brain state, and say that brain states are really complicated. I think it’s good to surface this reductionist assumption whenever possible, because it shows that materialism is not just incompatible with divine agency, but with agency in general."
Who Designed the Designer
IOW, an agent's decisions are not based on anything we can explicate, e.g. in terms of external stimuli and internal processing. Therefore, an agent in effect becomes a special category of chance. So, the ID conception of intelligent causation is completely incoherent, and I am in no way trying to defend that.
However, the observation in ID that in a causal regression your bound to ultimately hit something that wasn't caused by a mechanism, is to me just common sense. Then from the OP we know that whatever that thing is will be algoritmically equivalent to what exists today. Someone could ask is it reasonable to think that it just came into existence for no reason at all (or in ID thought whether there were sufficient probabilistic resources, etc). But even with a infinite causal regression, no matter how far you go back in eternity, you will find something "algoritmically equivalent" to the biological world as it exists today (For the record, I don't think this idea is profound or anything.)
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The most serious effort so far was to characterize intelligence as "the application of knowledge". We can empirically determine when things have knowledge (if we take knowledge to mean "stored information", say) by testing their ability to recall things and how their behavior changes based on their experiences.
Of course, something has to be amenable to testing. The fact that its not doesn't mean it doesn't have knowledge.
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But as I've pointed out, we cannot infer that something unseen is applying knowledge simply by looking at some system (a flagellum, or a star), because we happen to know that all sorts of things - including biological complexity - can arise without the application of knowledge. Moreover, I've pointed out that even if we could somehow ascertain that knowledge was involved, that still would not enable ID to demonstrate that it had any connection to what humans do when they think, and design things. When we design things, for example, we are conscious of our design decisions, but it would appear impossible to demonstrate that the cause of life also had consciousness.
You are talking about memories, which I would roughly equate with "knowledge" as that term has been used here. So, given this, can you relate your ideas here to this issue?
Yeah, I think an internal representation of the world in a brain is a good definition of knowledge. But as I said previously there's nothing special about brain tissue -its just a storage medium. So couldn't previously existing states of the universe correspond to knowledge as well - I guess so. Also as I've said, I don't know why our subjective experience of our external environment as humans should be a benchmark in assessing any entity responsible for our existence. You could imagine a dog thinking that a supreme being would have to live in a world of smells, and be constantly aware and thinking about smells, or from the dog's standpoint, it wouldn't be intelligent.
I've got to say however, as a Christian, that I think eternal salvation comes down, not to a correct abstract understanding of diety, but instead understanding through the Holy Spirit that Christ was God and paid the penalty for sin, and then becoming a Son of God yourself by believing the truth and Christ dwelling in you. I just felt an obligation to say that. Its something I'm trying to figure out for myself.
[ 05. May 2007, 19:02: Message edited by: Ebb_Dimskill ]
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Ebb_Dimskill
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posted 05. May 2007 18:44
quote:
quote:
(Ebb)
The above should read as follows:
y, the state of the universe at the current instant, is determined by the state it was in the previous instance (y1), and the application of the natural laws, (f). If we go back in time to some arbitrary starting point we would have yn ->yn-1->....y1->y. For any arbitrary yk in that causal chain, f1(yk) = yk-1. Furthermore, fk(yk) is a direct isomorphism for the state y of the universe at this instant, where the function fn is defined as follows:
fn(x) = "apply the natural laws f to x for n time steps".
Note that a time step can be any arbitrary length of time deemed appropriate, e.g. 1/100 of a second, a million years, etc.
(IF)
Isn't that the non-quantum view (i.e. relativistic) of reality in that the clearly demonstrated (proven?) uncertainty principle is not even considered?
Maybe you could explain in your own words the uncertainty principle, and how it invalidates the above model. There's an increasing number of scientists that hold to determinism, and I'm not sure how well I personally understand Quantum Indeterminism. I suppose you mean that in some arbitrary yk, changes could occur that had nothing to do with natural laws. Since a finite amount of time occurs between yn and y, couldn't you just incorporate all those random changes into f itself? So, f would be a simple set of natural laws, followed by a series of exceptions, e..g "if (x == ym) flip bit x to 1; if (x==yp) flip bit z to 0...etc." Does this revision satisfy your objections?
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aiguy
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posted 05. May 2007 19:58
Hi Ebb,
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However, the conception in ID theory of an "intelligent agent" is incoherent to me.
Me too.
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ID says that what enables human beings to design watches is that they are "agents", where agents are defined only abstractly as things that have "volition" "free-will", etc.
Actually, it is sometimes hard to get IDers to admit that an "agent" is defined as something with free will, although that is the meaning within philosophy. Since there is no way to demonstrate that anything has free will scientifically, then if ID predicated its theory on the concept of free will, it would be clearly shown to be outside the bounds of scientific inquiry.
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The notion of an agent in ID thought is completely antithetical to mechanism. This is clear from the fact that a designing "agent" is inferred only after ruling out mechanism and chance in the Design Inference....
Right. But the fact is that mechanism and chance cannot possibly be ruled out, since that would be tantamount to a demonstration of free will. People who haven't thought or read much about science or philosophy imagine that free will is an obvious property of human beings that requires no proof. Read about Benjamin Libet's studies of volitional behavior for a good illustration of why this assumption is unfounded.
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IOW, an agent's decisions are not based on anything we can explicate, e.g. in terms of external stimuli and internal processing. Therefore, an agent in effect becomes a special category of chance. So, the ID conception of intelligent causation is completely incoherent, and I am in no way trying to defend that.
Good then - we agree.
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However, the observation in ID that in a causal regression your bound to ultimately hit something that wasn't caused by a mechanism, is to me just common sense.
It's not my sense; when we hit our boundary of ignorance, my sense is that at that point we do not know. That is also the scientific position.
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Then from the OP we know that whatever that thing is will be algoritmically equivalent to what exists today.
If you assume Laplacian determinism (i.e. "clockwork" determinism), then you could say whatever exists now was entailed by whatever existed beforehand (I think that is what you mean by "algorithmically equivalent"). But quantum physics shows that the universe is not deterministic in this way.
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Of course, something has to be amenable to testing. The fact that its not doesn't mean it doesn't have knowledge.
You are right - it doesn't mean that. But it does mean that its having knowledge cannot be scientifically supported, so it's a philosophical or religious view rather than a scientific claim.
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I've got to say however, as a Christian, that I think eternal salvation comes down, not to a correct abstract understanding of diety, but instead understanding through the Holy Spirit that Christ was God and paid the penalty for sin, and then becoming a Son of God yourself by believing the truth and Christ dwelling in you. I just felt an obligation to say that. Its something I'm trying to figure out for myself.
I wish you the best of luck; you are a curious and deep-thinking fellow. I have my own metaphysical speculations. The reason I post on these boards, however, is to make the point that science is a very different way of knowing, and just because some particular idea happens to appeal to us doesn't make it a valid scientific claim. I think this is very important.
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Maybe you could explain in your own words the uncertainty principle, and how it invalidates the above model.
Quantum uncertainty is not just a limit on what we can know about a mechanism; it is a limit on the laws of nature themselves. If we know the exact position of an electron, then its momentum is not just unavailable to us because we can't measure it. Rather, its momentum is not fully determined at that point, so there is nothing more to know about it. And so, Laplacian determinism is false - the universe is not a clockworks. And so, the present is not entailed by, or "algorithmically equivalent to", the past.
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There's an increasing number of scientists that hold to determinism, and I'm not sure how well I personally understand Quantum Indeterminism.
I do not know a single scientist that "holds on to determinism". It is false, and that has been demonstrated inummerable times.
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I suppose you mean that in some arbitrary yk, changes could occur that had nothing to do with natural laws.
Rather, natural laws are not deterministic.
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Since a finite amount of time occurs between yn and y, couldn't you just incorporate all those random changes into f itself? So, f would be a simple set of natural laws, followed by a series of exceptions, e..g "if (x == ym) flip bit x to 1; if (x==yp) flip bit z to 0...etc." Does this revision satisfy your objections?
A very, very smart person tried his hardest to figure out how to show that quantum indeterminism was a limit on our knowledge rather than an actual property of reality. He was wrong. His name was Albert Einstein.
[ 05. May 2007, 21:57: Message edited by: aiguy ]
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Ebb_Dimskill
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posted 06. May 2007 02:31
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(AIGuy)
I do not know a single scientist that "holds on to determinism". It is false, and that has been demonstrated inummerable times.
I referred to the following in an exchange with you over at ARN several months ago.
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(from Philosophy To Program Size, G. Chaitin, 2003))
(ARN Thread)
1.10 Complexity of the Physical World
Now let's turn to the physical universe! Does it have finite or infinite complexity?
The conventional view on this held by high-energy physicists is that there is a TOE, a theory of everything, a finite set of laws of nature that we may someday know, which has only finite complexity.
So that part is optimistic!
But unfortunately in quantum mechanics there's randomness, God plays dice, and to know the results of all God's coin tosses, infinitely many coin tosses, necessitates a theory of infinite complexity, which simply records the result of each toss!
So the conventional view currently held by physicists is that because of randomness in quantum mechanics the world has infinite complexity.
Could the conventional view be wrong? Might it nevertheless be the case that the universe only has finite complexity? Some extremely interesting thoughts on this can be found in
Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, 2002.
According to Wolfram, there is no real randomness. There is only pseudo-randomness, like the randomness produced by random-number generators, which are actually deterministic sequences of numbers governed by mathematical laws, since computers use algorithms to generate pseudo-random numbers, they don't use quantum mechanics!
According to Wolfram, our universe is actually a deterministic universe that's governed by deterministic physical laws!
So the physical universe, the world, has finite complexity. According to Wolfram, everything happens for a reason, just as Leibniz thought!
Wolfram's book as well as my own work on AIT are both examples of what Edward Fredkin refers to as digital philosophy, a viewpoint that Fredkin also helped to pioneer.6
6For more on Wolfram, Fredkin, Lloyd, Toffoli, Landauer, Zuse... see O. Postel-Vinay, ``L'Univers est-il un calculateur?'' [Is the universe a calculator?], La Recherche, no. 360, January 2003, pp. 33-44.
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In a nutshell, digital philosophy posits that the world is a giant computer, a giant digital information processor, and that, fundamentally, everything is discrete 0/1 bits!
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Wolfram's work, AIT, and Fredkin's digital philosophy are all examples of the convergence of mathematics, theoretical physics, and theoretical computer science! This is an accelerating trend...
Then a couple of weeks ago over at ARN, you had the following to say about a poster named Febble who had been kicked out of UD:
"The response to Febble on UD shows that her argument was both devastating to ID and unanswerable. Her point was one I make incessantly: There is no characterization of intelligent causation that can be distinguished from other types of cause (and this remains true even if a class of "designed" objects can be objectively distinguished). So, by any objective criteria that could be applied in the context of ID, evolutionary processes are themselves intelligent, since they are goal-oriented, purposeful, and able to learn."
Among many other things, Febble said the following:
(I recognize your comments above were not regarding this specifically.)
quote:
Febble at UD
"I think one of the most misleading words in the whole debate, in fact, is the word “random”. Without getting into whether or not the universe is deterministic or not (and I’ll stick with the quantum physicists who say that it is not), for practical purposes, things have causes Chemistry is full of rules. Some things bind to other things in a particular way. Some things have affinities for other things; some things don’t mix, like oil and water. Some things are catalysts, and affect the way other things bond. This system of rules means that natural algorithms are occurring all the time, and varied, often complex structures and compounds are the result... And I see no intrinsic reason to doubt that, given that we are here now, as complex organisms whose minds and bodies function by means of complex cascades of chemical “if…then” algorithms, that we didn’t emerge from much simpler chemical algorithms four billion years ago."
So as evidenced by the highlighted portion above, Febble seemed to be acknowledging, at least in passing, that there is considerable current debate on the subject of determinism in the universe, an opinion also reflected in the following (from an article which I didn't care for, but the quote is nevertheless revealing.)
"As the topic is far from being settled, it is not unreasonable to assume that each individual researcher has his or her personal preferences. We take the position here that these preferences are mostly determined by the person's fears and desires."
-Karl Svozil, "Science at the crossroad between randomness and determinism" (2002)
[ 06. May 2007, 02:44: Message edited by: Ebb_Dimskill ]
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aiguy
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posted 06. May 2007 03:08
Ebb,
quote:
Febble: "I think one of the most misleading words in the whole debate, in fact, is the word “random”. Without getting into whether or not the universe is deterministic or not (and I’ll stick with the quantum physicists who say that it is not)...
Ebb: So as evidenced by the highlighted portion above, Febble seemed to be acknowledging, at least in passing, that there is considerable current debate on the subject of determinism in the universe,...
Febble wisely tries to avoid the philosophical questions, but also points out that physicists say it is not determined. In philosophy, there are shades of determinism, which is why I qualified all of my references as "Laplacian" or "clockworks" determinism. Virtually no scientist believes this is the way the universe works, much less "an increasing number of scientists" as you suggest, and this has been the case way for almost 100 years.
Anyway, taking Febble's suggestion, I suggest we avoid metaphysics entirely, and try to stick to the topic: How might we characterize intelligence such that we could scientifically demonstrate the same thing is responsible for both human cognition and the origin of life?
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Ebb_Dimskill
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posted 06. May 2007 13:42
(IF)
quote:
Isn't that the non-quantum view (i.e. relativistic) of reality in that the clearly demonstrated (proven?) uncertainty principle is not even considered?
I thought since quantum theory was introduced, someone should probably mention the Afshar experiment.
"Afshar's experiment not only falsifies the Copenhagen interpretation, it also falsifies the Many-Worlds interpretation (whew!) and possibly other interpretions as well. So some determinism is leaking back into our view of the world. It does so, however, by stressing the physical reality of nonlocality, especially temporal nonlocality: all events are connected, both in space and in time...neither can we any longer fill quantum mechanics with any amount of mystical crap by appealing to Bohr's paradoxes.
A shame, in a way. I had a soft spot for some of that mystical claptrap."
The Afshar Experiment: Farewell to Copenhagen?
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Daniel Smith
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posted 07. May 2007 01:50
aiguy:
quote:
Number your points, and I'll go through them one by one.
Start with this one:
1. So, by your reasoning we could not determine if a complex mechanical widget found on Mars was designed - since we have never observed any Martians.
quote:
2) Lightning is an example of a process that would require the application of knowledge if a human were to try and create it, and people used to think knowledge was involved for just this reason. But when we figured out how it worked, the GAP went away, so people stopped invoking gods at that point. So this is exactly the same thing as you are doing with other things we don't currently understand.
It's not the same thing at all. I've said it any number of times, but you keep insisting I'm saying something else: It's the design of the system that requires knowledge, not it's day to day workings. I gave you an example from a human design. Remember this one?
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Every day, my car engine turns on without the application of knowledge. All it takes is a physical input from a key; it doesn't take any knowledge of how an engine works; it takes no knowledge of how an electrical system works; in fact, as we've all seen by the stories on the news, a dog or a small child (with no knowledge whatsoever) can provide this input; all it takes is a turn of a key. By your reasoning, my car must not be intelligently designed since it takes no knowledge to start the engine.
You ignored this example.
This example illustrates the difference between our knowledge of how something works and the knowledge required to design it. Many car owners have no clue about how their car works, yet the car keeps right on working - no knowledge required. Despite that, you can't say no knowledge was required to design the car.
Do you see the difference yet?
Now what if someone designed a self-replicating car? Wouldn't that be cool! It'd automatically fix itself; keep it's engine parts fresh and it's tires new. All without any input from us whatsoever! Wow! But wait... It requires no "knowledge" for it to do that... so such a thing as a self-replicating car would require no knowledge to build since - look - it "builds" itself. It would require no knowledge to create either - since it "creates" itself. It would require no knowledge to design as well, since it "designs" itself. I guess you're right, a self-replicating car requires no knowledge whatsoever to build, create or design! I think I'll go make one now... I just have to be careful not to apply any knowledge though...
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3) Biological reproduction shows that processes that do not involve knowledge create biological complexity. You then reach back and ask how reproduction came to exist, and since we have no answer to that, you see a GAP for your god to fit in. It is just that simple.
Now it's my turn to characterize our conversation:
Me: Knowledge was required in the design of life.
aiguy: Life replicates itself.
Me: Yes, that's a big part of the definition of "life" - what does that have to do with the design of life?
aiguy: Nothing, but it self-replicates.
Me: And that's what we are trying to explain. How did such an elegant system come into being?
aiguy: We don't know, but we know it self-replicates.
Me: OK...
quote:
So please address this last point too - do you think we can scientifically support the inference that the cause of life was conscious? If so, please explain what evidence supports this. If not, then how can ID say that the same thing that humans use when they consciously design something is what is responsible for the origin of life.
If the cause of life was intelligent, then I'd assume it was also conscious - since I don't think "Unconscious Intelligence" could exist. Do you?
I don't think I'll ever convince you of anything though, so let me just wrap this up...
I think it can be shown easily that the workings of life's systems are so advanced and so complex, that their design required the application of knowledge. Even if you allow for chance, random variations and all the other forces of nature, the minimum amount of intelligence required for the design of even the "simplest" of life's systems is still astronomical - beyond human comprehension.
(And to this you'll say; "Yes, if humans tried to design life, the knowledge level required would be astronomical, but look - it self-replicates!")
Sigh...
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aiguy
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posted 07. May 2007 04:30
Daniel,
quote:
Start with this one:
1. So, by your reasoning we could not determine if a complex mechanical widget found on Mars was designed - since we have never observed any Martians.
But I've responded to this multiple times, of course. We would in fact infer a Martian - not some abstraction called an "intelligent agent" - because we would imagine that whatever built a mechanical widget like humans do would be a living thing similar to humans.
quote:
It's not the same thing at all. I've said it any number of times, but you keep insisting I'm saying something else: It's the design of the system that requires knowledge, not it's day to day workings. I gave you an example from a human design. Remember this one?
Why are we talking past each other here? You are trying to make this distinction between "day-to-day workings" and "the design of the system", but it is nothing but a causal regress!
It is the day-to-day workings of the cloud that generates the lightning bolt
It is the day-to-day workings of the Sun and atmosphere that generates clouds.
It is the day-to-day workings of the force of gravity, nuclear forces, etc. that generate stars
It is the day-to-day workings of whatever caused the force of gravity... and whatever caused that...
And so you don't even realize that you are doing this, I guess, but you simply follow causal regress until we can't explain something, and that's where you say it is no longer "day-to-workings" but "design"! God-of-the-gaps, pure and simple.
quote:
Every day, my car engine turns on without the application of knowledge. All it takes is a physical input from a key; it doesn't take any knowledge of how an engine works...By your reasoning, my car must not be intelligently designed since it takes no knowledge to start the engine.... You ignored this example.
I don't understand your point. We obviously know car engineers design cars, and it's easy to start a car.
quote:
This example illustrates the difference between our knowledge of how something works and the knowledge required to design it. Many car owners have no clue about how their car works, yet the car keeps right on working - no knowledge required. Despite that, you can't say no knowledge was required to design the car.
Do you see the difference yet?
I'm trying to understand your argument, but I can't. You appear to be saying that since we can start a car without knowledge, that means the car is intelligently designed?
quote:
Now it's my turn to characterize our conversation:
Me: Knowledge was required in the design of life.
aiguy: Life replicates itself.
Me: Yes, that's a big part of the definition of "life" - what does that have to do with the design of life?
aiguy: Nothing, but it self-replicates.
No, that is not what I say, you got it wrong. Here is what I say: So that means that we have proof that a process can create biological complexity without knowledge. And so maybe the process that generated this process was also without knowledge. And maybe the process that generated the process that generated this process was also without knowledge...
You want to say somewhere along the line there had to be knowledge, but science can't address somewhere along the line, as I've pointed out many times now.
quote:
AIGUY: do you think we can scientifically support the inference that the cause of life was conscious?
DANIEL: If the cause of life was intelligent, then I'd assume it was also conscious - since I don't think "Unconscious Intelligence" could exist. Do you?
Yes, I absolutely do, but I can't provide any scientific support for my position. And of course neither can you. An assumption is not a scientifically supported claim!
[ 07. May 2007, 06:06: Message edited by: aiguy ]
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Daniel Smith
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posted 07. May 2007 14:48
aiguy,
It's time we got specific and talk about the subject at hand: biological complexity. You seem to want to avoid the subject and concentrate on things like lightning - as if saying that something as complex as protein synthesis requires a designer is equivalent to believing that God is riding around on clouds pushing a "lightning button" whenever there's a strike.
So let's get specific:
How does the Ribosome know what amino acids to put together? How does it know which codons code for which amino acids? Is the Ribosome intelligent?
How do the 20 or so enzymes that are continually at work proofreading DNA know when there's an error? Are the enzymes intelligent?
How does a cell know what kind of cell it is? If every cell contains the same DNA, how is it that only those sections that have to do with skin get utilized in a skin cell? Is the cell intelligent?
How do proteins know what to do and where to go? Does a fibrous protein know it's fibrous? Does it say "Hey I'm fibrous, I better go where I'm needed."? Are proteins intelligent?
How does the RNA polymerase know to transcribe DNA into RNA? Is the RNA polymerase intelligent?
Are these things intelligent OR are they merely following instructions? If they're following instructions, where did these instructions come from? Do they suggest "knowledge" was involved in their construction?
quote:
We would in fact infer a Martian - not some abstraction called an "intelligent agent" - because we would imagine that whatever built a mechanical widget like humans do would be a living thing similar to humans.
What's a "Martian"? How do we know that a "Martian" would be a living thing similar to humans? Has anyone ever observed a "Martian"? I could infer a "fairy" did it. How could you show me wrong?
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aiguy
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posted 07. May 2007 18:00
Daniel,
quote:
You seem to want to avoid the subject and concentrate on things like lightning - as if saying that something as complex as protein synthesis requires a designer is equivalent to believing that God is riding around on clouds pushing a "lightning button" whenever there's a strike.
At the time, people had no idea how lightning could find a church steeple unless a god was looking around from the cloud. ONLY intelligent agents, after all, could possibly SEE the church steeple and AIM the lightning bolt! No purely mechanical process could possibly explain it. They said "Nobody has an explanation of this - so it must be God".
Now that we understand this, it is obvious that they were wrong to invoke a god for any gap in their knowledge. But now you want to do the same thing. Rather than the problem of aiming lightning bolts, your problem is complex mechanism. But the "solution" is the same: If you don't know how it works, say God did it!
You have not refuted my charge that your reasoning suffers from the god-of-the-gaps fallacy, and the lightning example makes this perfectly clear. Simply pointing to anything we don't understand and saying God did is not a scientifically supportable position.
quote:
So let's get specific...How does the Ribosome know what amino acids to put together? How does it know which codons code for which amino acids? Is the Ribosome intelligent?
That would depend on what you mean by "intelligent", obviously. If I said yes, a ribosome is intelligent, what sort of scientific test might we apply to see if I was correct or not?
quote:
Are these things intelligent OR are they merely following instructions?
I thought your definition of "intelligent" was "applying knowledge". Now you are saying that something cannot be intelligent if it is "merely following instructions"? What gives - you are now changing your definition?
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Do they suggest "knowledge" was involved in their construction?
No, they don't. How can you demonstrate that knowledge was involved? And you are apparently conceding the point that even if knowledge was involved, you could not scientifically support the claim that it involved conscious application of knowledge. So anything that ID claims that implies some conscious mind was involved is purely a religious argument, right?
quote:
What's a "Martian"?
In our hypothetical scenario where some machine that was similar to what human beings build is found on Mars, a Martian would be the biological creature we might hypothesize was responsible for building it.
quote:
How do we know that a "Martian" would be a living thing similar to humans?
We would not know this; it would be an hypothesis offered to explain this machine. Scientists would look for other signs of life to confirm or reject this hypothesis.
quote:
Has anyone ever observed a "Martian"?
No; nor has anybody found a complex machine on Mars except for the ones we've put there.
quote:
I could infer a "fairy" did it. How could you show me wrong
Yes you could, and of course nobody could "show you wrong". That is why science requires positive evidence for claims. I could infer a "fairy" was sitting on your shoulder right now, and nobody could prove I was wrong, but this does not make it a scientific claim. Unless I provide a test to determine if the fairy is there or not, science has nothing to say about fairies one way or the other.
And the same goes for "Intelligent Designers" of course.
[ 07. May 2007, 18:31: Message edited by: aiguy ]
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Daniel Smith
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posted 08. May 2007 05:40
aiguy:
quote:
You have not refuted my charge that your reasoning suffers from the god-of-the-gaps fallacy, and the lightning example makes this perfectly clear. Simply pointing to anything we don't understand and saying God did is not a scientifically supportable position.
When you say "god-of-the-gaps", you make it sound as if I'm appealing to magic, or fairy dust. In reality, what I'm appealing to is a universally accepted explanation for technology - Intelligent Design. It's interesting that all I had to do was mention an undefined "mechanical widget" for you to immediately reject "natural causation" and assume design in our theoretical Martian world. Why was that? Why is it, when you know it's "safe" and involves "no deity", you can readily see design - even in a theoretical, undefined object - yet in some of the most extensively defined technological marvels ever discovered, you act as if you can't even envision design? Why is that?
And what exactly are these "gaps" of which you speak?
The scientific community for centuries held to a teleological view: The world looked designed, no one had come up with a better explanation, therefore Design was the predominant theory. Darwinism changed all that. All of a sudden there was an alternative explanation for "the appearance of design": Unguided natural causes could - with the help of natural selection - create virtually any organ or organism, given enough time.
Science embraced the theory of evolution almost without reservation. Why? Because it explained life - no deity required. It was "scientific" - not "supernatural" (although a careful reading of Darwin's contemporaries' dissenting opinions reveals almost no appeals to supernatural explanations - his views were largely rejected on their merits).
Unfortunately, in the 150+ years that have followed Darwin's theory, what we have learned about life has tended to disprove rather than strengthen his explanations for life. Now, with the discoveries of molecular biology, one has to wonder: If he were alive today, would Darwin have even bothered? The appearance of design has grown stronger - one could argue even insurmountable - while the once heralded "appeal to unguided natural causes" has been reduced to a whimper, and has only raised more unanswered questions.
In short, science - since pinning it's hopes on unguided natural causation - has explained nothing:
The "gaps" of which you speak are the complete inability of science to account for the origin of even one organ (much less one organism).
What we have discovered is that life is made out of nanotechnological machinery. Every cell is a protein factory, with automated assembly lines working off detailed blueprints and producing just the right tool for just the right job at just the right time. In Darwin's day, cells were believed to be balls of goo. We know now that they're much, MUCH more than that. The "simplest" organisms are constructed out of molecular machines that would - if we could shrink down to a billionth of our size and view their inner workings - remind us of some kind of other-worldly alien civilization straight out of the wild imagination of a big time Hollywood sci-fi movie producer.
So, contrary to your imaginary scenario where "the more we learn, the less likely design becomes", it would appear that just the opposite is happening: The more we learn, the more we discover about the technology of self-replicating life, the more "design" becomes the only viable explanation.
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LifeEngineer
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posted 08. May 2007 08:05
BACK TO DEFINING AND UNDERSTANDING INTELLIGENT CAUSATION
Before addressing the dance being performed by aiguy and Daniel, it might be useful to look once again at some of the key properties that at least hard science scientists can agree are associated with intelligent causation.
First, essentially everyone here with a serious interest in intelligent causation agrees that intelligent causation can be defined in terms of results and intelligent results are defined in terms of solutions to problems or more formally goal compatible responses.
The second feature of intelligent causation that SHOULD BE OBVIOUS, is that intelligent causation only occurs at a limited subset of the set of possible space-time locations. If we are looking for a solution to the ‘7+9’ problem, we are likely to get the right answer if we properly ask a functioning adding machine or a properly trained student or graduate. We would not expect to obtain a solution or goal compatible response if we asked a tree in our back yard or a rock on Mars.
Two additional critical properties of intelligent causation are identified by tracking intelligent causation over time and space. The next (third) important property of intelligent causation is continuity. A unit or system that can produce a goal compatible solution at one point in time, is under appropriate conditions likely to able to produce the same solutions at earlier and later times.
The next (fourth) critical property of intelligent causation derived from tracking ‘units or systems exhibiting intelligent causation’ is that they involve ‘discontinuity’ or ‘imperfect discontinuity’. If we track a calculator or student both backward and forward in time, we will find that there was a time in the past when the unit was not capable of solving the ‘7+9’ problem and if we go forward in time we will that the units eventually loose their problem solving ability.
In a more formal framework, we assert that intelligent causation is progressive and creative. This means both that 1) intelligent causation can progress to create problem solving abilities that did not previously exist and 2) the intelligent causation can regress so that an existing problem solving ability is lost.
Three aspects of these properties are critical to a real ‘hard’ science understanding of intelligent causation. First, it is essential to understand that these properties apply equally to complex forms of intelligent causation like ‘successfully building a human being’ and simple forms of intelligent causation like a adding machine or a household thermostat. Second, it is essential to understand that so called conventional scientific theories can not explain or address the progressive and creative properties of intelligent causation. Third, teleological theories, which despite the blithering of academic ideologues are conventional scientific theories, are the only type of hard science theory that can address and explain intelligent causation.
Understand these three aspects of intelligent causation and you will understand scientific ID. Fail to understand these three aspects, and you will never understand any real science dealing with behaviors associated with living systems.
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LifeEngineer
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posted 08. May 2007 09:18
The issue here was ‘developing definitions of intelligent causation that can be used for both human behavior and biological development’. The issue was resolved by noting that not only ID, but all fields dealing with intelligent causation define intelligent causation in terms of observed ‘problem solving’ results or goal compatible results.
But despite the fact that this ‘issue’ has been clearly and unambiguously and scientifically resolved in favor of ID science and ID theories, aiguy and Daniel continue to DANCE AROUND THE ISSUE TO A TUNE THAT CREATES THE IMPRESSION THAT AIGUY IS ALWAYS WINNING.
The ‘interesting and relevant’ aspect of aiguy’s ‘pick a compliant partner and dance’ strategy is not that it appears to work or that he seems to have so little trouble finding appropriate partners. What is interesting and relevant is that his strategy illustrates the extreme weakness of the academic anti-scientific ID position.
Most obviously, aiguy’s strategy shows that he is incapable of addressing the hard science and rigorous mathematical arguments that support hard science ID. He can not, for example, offer logical or valid counter arguments for the accepted scientific position of defining intelligent causation in terms of results.
Almost as obvious as the failure of the anti-ID academics to find material flaws with the ‘define in terms of results strategy’ is the fact that the anti-ID academics don’t have any scientific basis for defining intelligent causation nor do they have a scientific alternative to the ‘define in terms of results’ approach. The surprising reality is that the anti-ID academic position turns out to have no positive alternatives to the scientific ID positions.
Less obvious is the fact that the anti-ID academic position is based in large measure on a lack of basic technical understanding of such essential concepts of Turing machines and Turing computability.
But probably the most interesting aspect of aiguy’s dance strategy is the fact that it should not be difficult to defeat. Aiguy’s strategy would be defeated, and the weakness of his position would become clear, it there were even a handful of supporters of scientific ID who were willing to come forward to consistently express support and understanding of the scientific ID position. Even recognizing the difficulty in finding scientists with the required technical and scientific knowledge, it is interesting to note that it would only take a handful of such individuals to defeat not only aiguy, but the entire anti-ID academic movement.
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LifeEngineer
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posted 08. May 2007 09:39
KNOWLEDGE AND INTELLIGENCE
As discussed above, we define intelligent causation in terms of results or the capacity to find and produce goal compatible results. When we define intelligent causation in terms of results, and when we study and track intelligent causation. we find that it ‘appears and disappears’. Observations confirm that all known instances of intelligent causation involve this appear/disappear phenomenon.
Knowledge or importation of knowledge is the key property or feature that is used to track and predict when intelligent causation will (or will not) produce goal compatible results. In general, or within the constraints of current knowledge, systems or units can produce or be made to produce the appropriate goal compatible knowledge is imported. Similarly any system or unit can be prevented from producing goal compatible results if the importation of knowledge is disrupted.
In the analysis of intelligent causation, we will generally not be able to determine the ultimate sources of all the imported knowledge associated with the production of an intelligent causation result. However, we can know and can experiment with a portion of the actual knowledge imported into specific occurrences of intelligent causation.
The general formula or paradigm involved with intelligent causation has the form
Knowledge > (> is used here to mean leads to) Importation of knowledge > processing> results produced. .
As far as is known, or more accurately within the constraints of human knowledge, there will always be a deterministic or functional relationship form ‘imported knowledge’ to ‘results produced’.
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