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Author Topic: The Characterization of Intelligent Causation
Melvin H. Fox
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Icon 1 posted 09. April 2007 18:38      Profile for Melvin H. Fox   Email Melvin H. Fox   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
2ndclass,

You wrote:

quote:
I'm finding your position confusing.
I don’t blame you. Please allow me some latitude [non-scientific] here as I try to make some sense of these missives I have posted.

quote:
Humans (intelligent agents, and so incomparable to weather patterns), to a large degree, do not behave in a logically coherent way. Therefore, the cause of their behavior may not be explainable [by humans - EDT] in a logically coherent way.
quote:

However, all modifications [to the self-determined set of designs – EDT] are subject to the authority of self and can not be imposed on him by fixed law, chance, another’s will, or even logical coherence.

quote:
I believe that reality is logically coherent. However, two individual wills can be in opposition or contradict each other. Therefore, where two wills contradict, one or both are wrong. There must be then one standard of Truth. This standard is the will of the one who created reality.
There exists overwhelming evidence [large degree] of patterns of individual human behavior that are characterized as logically inconsistent and are therefore incoherent. It is true that every case of this behavior is real and has a cause or causes. Since, we may not be able to put our finger on those causes; our explanation may not be logically coherent. I have already pointed out one illogical explanation that is used often; the behavior occurred by chance [occurred because we don’t know how it occurred]. I do not believe this implies that reality must be logically incoherent.

When the human makes a freewill choice to behave in a certain way, he may even make that choice in the face [in defiance] of his own logical scheme as well as the logic of other humans [logical argument can be valid and not true]. This is done by the authority of self, given to him by the creator. The bottom line is this: If every thing that happens in reality is in accord with the will of the creator, then reality is logically coherent even when that coherence is not apparent to each individual human will [example: evil type people prosper while good folks suffer in poverty].

You have pressed me, and rightly so, for a definition of freewill. I will put forth here a variant of Webster’s 1828 offering as a working definition:

Freewill - The conferred authority and limited power to direct one’s own thoughts and actions without restraint by necessity or fate.

Understand that anything that is done in reality is done by authority. Nothing can be accomplished without it. Humans have been given the authority to decide what it is that they want to do [goal setting] and they can make these decisions, being of right mind [no chemical or other physical imbalance of the brain], without restraint by necessity or fate. Humans have been given limited power to act on these decisions. I can decide that I would like to give the moon to my wife. I lack the power to make that real happen.

I have already admitted that I lack the mental capacity to think up a scientific demonstration of freewill that would be evident to you or any other person, besides myself. I demonstrate it to myself all the time but there is no way that I know of to put you inside my mind.

I see two wills in logical contradiction when the union of their premises leads to a contradiction. Humans have the authority to adapt any premise they desire. You may object and say they can’t adopt one that is demonstrably false. I would only counter with; they do and there is not much you, or anyone else, can do about it. We could call them unstable and lock them up, but they may still persist with the adoption.

Each of the two sets of premises may only contain possible, those not demonstrably false, premises. Each set may not lead to a contradiction and therefore any conclusions drawn from them would be true always or contingent on the truth values of the individual premises. It could be that the union of the two sets also leads to no contradictions [most good discussions result from this case]. It could be that the union of the two sets will lead to contradictions [most good debates result from this case]. This is the case where two wills are in contradiction. Together they have selected assertions for which the truth values are unknown and some subset of these assertions leads to a contradiction. Someone has selected an a priori assertion, manifest to them to be true, that is indeed false as a premise in a logical argument for truth. And, nobody knows for sure which premise is fouling up the works.

The naturalist assumes, by choice, a closed system [no creator] before the bell. The creationist assumes, by choice, an open system [creator] before the bell. Let the fun begin.

-Mel

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aiguy
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Icon 1 posted 09. April 2007 19:09      Profile for aiguy     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Mel,

quote:
I have already admitted that I lack the mental capacity to think up a scientific demonstration of freewill that would be evident to you or any other person, besides myself. I demonstrate it to myself all the time but there is no way that I know of to put you inside my mind.
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself; people have been trying to think of a way to decide if our will is free (in the sense of not determined by antecedent physical cause) for a very, very long time, and nobody else has come up with anything either.

I believe I mentioned Benjamin Libet's classic studies on volitional behavior, first done in the 1950's and replicated by various others since then. Although Libet himself wanted to demonstrate free will, his results did not end up supporting the notion that we consciously determine our own actions. Instead, these sorts of experiments find that brain activity that is associated with preparing for some motor activity (e.g. pressing a button) precedes our conscious awareness of our decision to take action.

The most straightforward interpretation of these results is that our actions are not determined by our conscious decisions, but rather that our decisions become consciously apparent to us only after unconscious brain activity has already determined what we are going to do. Other interpretations are possible, and philosophers have been arguing over what is going in these experiments for decades. Libet himself thinks that the results indicate that while we do not consciously determine what we will do, we still have free choice to "veto" certain actions that our deterministic brains are planning (i.e. we lack free will, but we have free won't).

quote:
The naturalist assumes, by choice, a closed system [no creator] before the bell. The creationist assumes, by choice, an open system [creator] before the bell. Let the fun begin.
The scientist assumes, by choice, that we ought to assume nothing that we cannot empirically demonstrate. That is why science is fun: We can't always have scientific answers to everything, but when we do get an answer, it has a certainty that no other method of inquiry enjoys. Since we cannot demonstrate that anything - even ourselves - has libertarian free will, then science cannot invoke this as a causal explanation for other things we might not understand.

We may certainly enjoy discussing what free will may or may not be, but when we do so we are engaging in philosophical and theological speculation. This is not to denigrate such activities, it is only to clearly distinguish what can and cannot be considered to be empirically supported findings.

[ 09. April 2007, 19:11: Message edited by: aiguy ]

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Zarathustra
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Icon 1 posted 09. April 2007 21:43      Profile for Zarathustra     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Smith: "Secondly, any discussion of first causes ultimately requires an uncaused first cause. For this, there are only two options: Either it is "nothing" or it is "something eternal".

This tired piece of irrelevant tosh has been dead and buried for a long time, Daniel. The only reason anyone could have for disinterring it now is to shake its putrefying carcase around in order to frighten children and small animals.

There are no scientific theories that postulate the existence of "nothing", either now or in the past; it is a notional concept, without any real-world analogue.

This "uncaused first cause" is simply a word-game that creationists play in order to sound clever. It is an impossibility, obviously. Had there been an eternity prior to the universe's being "caused", it would have occurred too late, since such an event must have already happened by that time, and even Daniel is not suggesting that the universe is being "caused" repeatedly.

All this shows is that people who have convinced themselves that invisible super-beings exist cannot be trusted to deploy terms such as "cause" and "eternity" in any way that is either meaningful or useful. What has led them to the conclusion that they are in any way qualified to do so?

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Melvin H. Fox
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 02:18      Profile for Melvin H. Fox   Email Melvin H. Fox   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
O.k. aiguy,

You don’t want me to evoke freewill as a cause of human behavior because it is empirically indemonstrable. I would in turn ask you not to evoke chance as even a partial cause of any event. Just say instead that the cause of the event is inherently undetermined. Further, I must insist that when speaking to the cause of any event you simply state that it is inherently undetermined, since we can never demonstrate scientifically to what extent the event was caused by fixed law. We can only say fixed law was involved. And, since we know not the cause of fixed law, then we should probably keep our scientific mouths closed, inherently undetermined, about its causes as well.

Causation then becomes a closed subject to science. This includes the topic of origins. Do not give me any scientific explanation of the causes of human behavior or biological complexity. Scientifically speaking then, we don’t have a clue how – inherently undetermined - our universe, nor anything in it, came to be.

Or, perhaps you would like to demonstrate empirically exactly how chance is a partial cause of any single event of your choosing [freewill or otherwise].

-Mel

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Melvin H. Fox
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 03:04      Profile for Melvin H. Fox   Email Melvin H. Fox   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
aiguy,

I apologize to all the good scientists who have worked so hard to construct the beautifully predictive mathematical model for the quantum effect. I grossly understated the level of accuracy. I am somewhat amused, aiguy, that you feel that, since the mathematics that predict [not describe] quantum phenomena are inherently probabilistic, then the electrons themselves are not little balls but instead are probability waves that act like little balls, sometimes. So, the electron’s behavior is inherently undetermined? This is not news. My height is inherently undetermined. It appears that everything, by the standard of science, is inherently undetermined. What is a scientist to do, flip a coin?

I agree with Steven Hawking [paraphrase – from “The Universe in a Nutshell”]: I can tell you nothing of reality; all I can give you is the best mathematical model to make predictions. This does not mean the model dictates reality nor does it necessarily describe it. In other words, you can’t demonstrate that the model is reality. If predictive power is the bar, then freewill does the trick for human behavior, however unscientific.

-Mel

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aiguy
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 03:51      Profile for aiguy     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Hi Mel,

quote:
You don’t want me to evoke freewill as a cause of human behavior because it is empirically indemonstrable. I would in turn ask you not to evoke chance as even a partial cause of any event. Just say instead that the cause of the event is inherently undetermined.
I agree completely.

quote:
Further, I must insist that when speaking to the cause of any event you simply state that it is inherently undetermined, since we can never demonstrate scientifically to what extent the event was caused by fixed law. We can only say fixed law was involved.
Well, I don't know how deep you wish to venture into the abyss of epistemology here. Perhaps you refer to Hume's critique of causation - that we can observe only constant correlation and never causation itself? Or perhaps you mean it is not our law that causes things, but rather that which our laws describe that cause things? In any case, I'm sure you'll agree that we can explain and predict a great number of phenomena quite well with the laws of nature that we have discerned and confirmed countless times.

quote:
And, since we know not the cause of fixed law, then we should probably keep our scientific mouths closed, inherently undetermined, about its causes as well.
We certainly should for now, anyway. (Maybe some clever physicist will someday reduce all of the known laws to a simpler factor, which of course would leave that unexplained. I think it's safe to say science will never answer the granddaddy of all questions, Why is there something instead of nothing?

quote:
Causation then becomes a closed subject to science. This includes the topic of origins. Do not give me any scientific explanation of the causes of human behavior or biological complexity. Scientifically speaking then, we don’t have a clue how – inherently undetermined - our universe, nor anything in it, came to be.
Well, we do have some explanations of both human behavior and biological complexity. However, I'm not here to defend any of these theories, so if you don't believe, for example, that neuroscientists know anything about how brains cause behavior, I'm not going to argue that point.

quote:
Or, perhaps you would like to demonstrate empirically exactly how chance is a partial cause of any single event of your choosing [freewill or otherwise].
Again, I do not see "chance" as a cause of anything, and I don't see how this affects any argument I've made. (My main point, remember, is that we can't characterize what we mean by "intelligence" in way that would allow us to conclude that it is responsible for the generation of biological complexity).

quote:
I am somewhat amused, aiguy, that you feel that, since the mathematics that predict [not describe] quantum phenomena are inherently probabilistic, then the electrons themselves are not little balls but instead are probability waves that act like little balls, sometimes.
Or, they are little balls that act like probability waves. Whatever they are, it gets weird down there. Why does this amuse you?

quote:
So, the electron’s behavior is inherently undetermined? This is not news.
Yes, it is inherently undetermined. And no, this is not news. However, it was great big news at the beginning of the last century. It was so big, in fact, that some of the greatest minds of time had a hard time believing it.

quote:
My height is inherently undetermined. It appears that everything, by the standard of science, is inherently undetermined. What is a scientist to do, flip a coin?
Quantum uncertainty is very different from other types of uncertainty, but we are straying too far from the topic at hand I'm afraid. I can make my arguments here without any reference to chance at all.

quote:
This does not mean the model dictates reality nor does it necessarily describe it. In other words, you can’t demonstrate that the model is reality. If predictive power is the bar, then freewill does the trick for human behavior, however unscientific.
I'm trying to decide if you're joking here - the notion of "free will" is the very antithesis of a predictive model, Mel!

Let's get back to the topic here. Intelligent Design Theory claims that "intelligence" is responsible for human behavior, and for the creation of living things. I say this claim is scientifically vacuous, because we have no characterization of the word that can be employed to support this claim empirically. If you wish to characterize it as entailing free will, then you have simply taken ID out of the realm of science. The rest of science remains intact, however, and our scientifically validated models of what causes what represent the most certain of our (always imperfect) knowledge.

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nosivad
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 05:21      Profile for nosivad   Email nosivad   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Free will is a monumental joke as this and every other forum demonstrates beyond any doubt. We are each a victim of our individually "prescribed" fate. Dont take my word for it.

"Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting ARE NOT FREE but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion."
Albert Einstein, Statement to the Spinoza Society of America, September 22, 1932. (my emphasis).

So much for free will, like Darwinism, and religious fundamentalism, just one more figment of an unlimited human imagination.

It is hard to believe isn't it?

I love it so!

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison

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Melvin H. Fox
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 07:05      Profile for Melvin H. Fox   Email Melvin H. Fox   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
John,

How can my thinking be causally bound and my imagination be unlimited?

aiguy wrote:

quote:
Yes. It isn't clear to what extent chance plays a role when we think, but some people believe that quantum effects are important at the level of neural processing, and our understanding of quantum events involves chance. Chance also plays a role in what people encounter in their lives (for example when one happens - by chance - to meet a woman on a bus who changes the way one thinks; or if one happens by chance to get hit in the head with a baseball and suffer a personality change).
And then aiguy wrote:

quote:
Again, I do not see "chance" as a cause of anything, and I don't see how this affects any argument I've made.
My prescribed fate then is to have too simple a mind to see how playing a role that effects human behavior would not be a cause of human behavior. Sorry.

Aiguy, I predict you will continue to cling to your a priori assertions until someone demonstrates them to be false as I will cling to mine until someone does likewise. I will not distract this discussion further with my monumental joke any longer. But, again I caution; any explanation of the cause of human behavior without regard to freewill is incomplete.

-Mel

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aiguy
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 07:05      Profile for aiguy     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
nosivad,

Apparently you have no interest in scientific evidence: We can neither confirm nor deny libertarian free will by scientific means. If you disagree, tell us how we might test the concept.

So no, I don't take your word for it, nor do I take the word of anybody else: You are clearly infatuated with quoting people you like, but only evidence and clear arguments matter, and nothing else. (And by the way, Einstein was wrong about a number of things. Ever hear of the EPR paper and Bell's inequality? Ooops.)

Perhaps somebody would like to actually talk about the topic of this thread? Or shall I take it that since we're off talking about evolution and free will that nobody can actually respond to the questions in the OP?

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aiguy
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 07:17      Profile for aiguy     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Melvin,

quote:
My prescribed fate then is to have too simple a mind to see how playing a role that effects human behavior would not be a cause of human behavior. Sorry.
Well, at least you're self-effacing. Saying that chance plays a role is not at all ascribing a causal influence to chance itself. It simply means that events for which we cannot provide causal explanations play a role in the world.

quote:
Aiguy, I predict you will continue to cling to your a priori assertions until someone demonstrates them to be false as I will cling to mine until someone does likewise.
You would clearly love to believe that I hold some a priori beliefs here, but I've already said that my only assumption is that we require emprical demonstrations for our scientific beliefs. You can't even tell me what this supposed a priori belief is that you claim I cling to! No, I'm afraid there is only one of us who is holding on to beliefs that can't be supported, and you're just lonely for company.

quote:
I will not distract this discussion further with my monumental joke any longer. But, again I caution; any explanation of the cause of human behavior without regard to freewill is incomplete.
When was it that people lost track of what scientific claims require? I suppose we could all just forget about evidence, and say whatever we felt like saying, and nobody would ever agree, and there would be no way to resolve our differing viewpoints. You know - instead of trying to make religion into science, we could just turn science into religion.
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Melvin H. Fox
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 09:57      Profile for Melvin H. Fox   Email Melvin H. Fox   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Hi aiguy,

I don’t intend to frustrate. Look you wrote:

quote:
I'm interested in reviewing Intelligent Design Theory from the perspective of our current understanding of intelligence. If intelligent causation is to be offered as a meaningful explanation of anything - whether it be the behavior of human beings or the origin of biological complexity - we must be able to POSITIVELY [my emphasis] characterize this type of causation in a way that is distinguished from other types.
The assertion you take as true before the argument begins is that there is no way to show intelligent causation. This is obviously important to you because you have made it, by YOUR CHOICE OF DEFINITIONS, impossible to be shown, at least to you. Have you built for yourself a religion of science? I don’t know if I would go that far, but you have some sort of need for ID to fail. It is possible this need springs from your aversion for anything done unscientifically [by your standards]. I don’t know.

You have agreed a number of times now that science can’t know anything about reality with certainty – inherently undetermined. How then can you require ID to differentiate causation scientifically with certainty – positively?

You take Dembski to task for not wanting to clarify a primitive notion [intelligence] and champion Newton for characterizing gravity [primitive notion] as a force and further supplying an equation to predict the magnitude of its effect. First of all, not every scientist [Einstein] is so sure that gravity is a force and we could go round and round about its true nature. Secondly, Dembski has provided equations to determine the presence of design. I believe the reliability of these equations is overstated [Dembski says there can be no false positives] but to ignore them shows once again your a priori assertion. Why are you afraid of ID? If any of its findings prove to be unscientific, that will come out in the wash.

-Mel

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nosivad
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 11:21      Profile for nosivad   Email nosivad   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I see that aiguy dismisses Einstein with the wave of his imperious wand. If aiguy wants recent scientific evidence that Free Will is a joke, I recommend William Wrights's book "Born That Way," based as it is on the shared convictions of monozygotic twins reared separately in drastically different environments. The contest between Nature versus Nurture has clearly been won hands down by Nature as any objective observer can plainly see.

Speaking from over 50 years experience in academe, I can also assure aiguy that the vast majority of my colleagues have simultaneously been both political liberals and rabid atheist Darwinians. There is every reason to believe that atheist Darwinism and political liberalism are pleiotropic expressions of the same congenital irreversible condition.

Gilbert and Sullivan clearly recognized the congenital basis for political tendencies long before Einstein proclaimed "Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control."

"Every boy and every girl,
That is born into the world alive,
Is either a little liberal,
Or else a little conservative."
Iolanthe, 1883.

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison

[ 10. April 2007, 11:25: Message edited by: nosivad ]

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2ndclass
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 13:46      Profile for 2ndclass   Email 2ndclass   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Melvin, just to be clear, when I was talking about logical incoherence, I wasn't referring to people doing or believing dumb things. I was talking about people drawing square circles, or lifting rocks that they can't lift. But our miscommunication isn't really important to this thread.

Thank you for your definition of free will. Philosophers have picked apart such definitions for centuries, and I'm not really interested in retreading that well-worn path, so I apologize for pressing you for a definition. I think that for the purposes of this thread, it's sufficient that we agree that libertarian free will is not scientifically demonstrable.

quote:
First of all, not every scientist [Einstein] is so sure that gravity is a force and we could go round and round about its true nature.
Technically, it was never regarded as a force, although it is commonly referred to as one. The so-called four fundamental forces are actually interactions.

The only part of the "true nature" of gravity that scientists care about is that which can be tested. Other than that, it could be the Irresistible Pull Of Zeus for all they care. The important thing is that gravity can be modeled, and the model makes unique predictions, and those predictions can be tested. That isn't the case for "intelligence".

quote:
Secondly, Dembski has provided equations to determine the presence of design. I believe the reliability of these equations is overstated [Dembski says there can be no false positives] but to ignore them shows once again your a priori assertion.
Dembski's equations don't characterize design any more precisely than his natural language arguments. His equations say that when you can't figure out a plausible cause, then infer design. If that's a mathematical model of design, then what predictions does it make?

[ 10. April 2007, 14:16: Message edited by: 2ndclass ]

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aiguy
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 14:19      Profile for aiguy     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Hi Mel,

quote:
The assertion you take as true before the argument begins is that there is no way to show intelligent causation.
Ah, now I see. Well, it's true that I believe that we have no way of characterizing intelligence as a cause that meets the requirements of ID theory, yes. But that isn't an a priori assumption, it is my conclusion based on my reading of ID theory, and of the way we currently characterize intelligence in science. The OP asked the question in good faith; I simply haven't seen an argument that suggests that my (a posteriori) position is wrong.

quote:
This is obviously important to you because you have made it, by YOUR CHOICE OF DEFINITIONS, impossible to be shown, at least to you.
It is important, yes, but I have not chosen any one of these types of definitions. I have explained the various ways psychologists, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists characterize intelligence, and why those ways fail to support ID's central claim. If there is a definition that can be used in science (i.e. is empirically interpretable), and distinguishes intelligent causation from other types, then I will be shown to be wrong.

quote:
Have you built for yourself a religion of science? I don’t know if I would go that far, but you have some sort of need for ID to fail. It is possible this need springs from your aversion for anything done unscientifically [by your standards]. I don’t know.
I'll tell you exactly my motivation, if you're interested, but this has nothing to do with my argument per se. I believe that while ID purports to ignore the "nature or the identity" of the Intelligent Designer, it actually is crafted to bring a number of specific theological views into science by equivocating on the meaning of intelligence. I have seen, for example, people argue that once we establish ID theory as a well-supported scientific doctrine, we can study what the Designer intended to do with His designs, and use science to adjudicate matters of morality. So I think it's important to make clear that there is no scientific support for either atheism or theism. And yes, I also believe that folks like Richard Dawkins, who attempt to support their atheism by appeal to science, are exactly as guilty, and I speak out against them as well.

quote:
You have agreed a number of times now that science can’t know anything about reality with certainty – inherently undetermined. How then can you require ID to differentiate causation scientifically with certainty – positively?
When I refer to a "positive" characterization, I do not mean "absolutely certain" - I mean "not a negative characterization". In other words, we cannot simply characterize intelligence as "that which is not random nor determined", as Bill Dembski attempts to do. ID must say what intelligence is, rather than what it isn't.

quote:
You take Dembski to task for not wanting to clarify a primitive notion [intelligence] and champion Newton for characterizing gravity [primitive notion] as a force and further supplying an equation to predict the magnitude of its effect. First of all, not every scientist [Einstein] is so sure that gravity is a force and we could go round and round about its true nature.
Of course we are not sure what gravity is! But every proposed explanation must be characterized empirically in order for us to evaluate the truth of each theory scientifically. If we could simply make up a force to explain whatever we wanted to explain, without providing a method by which it could be tested, we wouldn't get very far, as my example with gravity showed. Saying intelligence is a fundamental force that explains mysterious complexity is like saying the "crop-circle force" explains mysterious crop circles, or the "protein-folding force" explains mysterious protein folding.

quote:
Secondly, Dembski has provided equations to determine the presence of design.
No, he has done nothing of the sort of course. Even if we grant that Dembski's "equations" are coherent (and they are not), all he even attempts to do is show that known mechanisms don't account for various things we see. They can not possibly indicate the presence of "design", since nobody in ID can tell us what that word means when used as a verb! As far as we know, "design (v.)" means "that which causes designs(n.)". So ID explains the design(n.) of the flagellum by "that which causes it", which is a vacuous statement.

quote:
I believe the reliability of these equations is overstated [Dembski says there can be no false positives] but to ignore them shows once again your a priori assertion.
I have no a priori assertions; I am arguing my position. Even if Dembski's explanatory filter managed to prove evolutionary theory wrong, that simply would tell us nothing whatsoever about how biological complexity arose, his theologically inspired equivocations on mentalistic terms such as "intelligence" and "design(v.)" notwithstanding.

quote:
Why are you afraid of ID? If any of its findings prove to be unscientific, that will come out in the wash.
I've told you what I am afraid of, but that should not figure in our discussion. And ID has already come out in the wash, because until it provides some positive (rather than negative) characterization of intelligent causation, it is a non-starter.
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nosivad
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Icon 1 posted 10. April 2007 14:23      Profile for nosivad   Email nosivad   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
What CAN be demonstrated and HAS BEEN demonstrated scientifically is that Free Will is a "prescribed" figment of the human imagination just as are both chance-happy atheist Darwinism and Christian Fundamentalism. Neither has contributed anything of value to our understanding of the tangible world. Neither ever will. Actually it has become obvious, at least to me, that they both continue to delay that understanding. The truth lies elsewhere and I think I know where that is. So did Einstein.

"Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control."

It is hard to believe isn't it?

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison

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