Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4966
Joined: May 2002
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posted 2006-01-27 14:33
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Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?
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A lot of people have claimed to have sufficiently answered David Hume on this, yet there seems to be no appreciable progress on this score in over two hundred years. The question itself is tied to religious argument. Ignoring the distinction between ordinary and rarefied design inferences is a hallmark of argumentation on this point by those with a religious axe to grind. The supposed modern approaches of "irreducible complexity" and "specified complexity" each are based upon an argument by elimination, that "design" is affirmed to the extent that "evolution" is disconfirmed.
This point was made in court in the Kitzmiller v. DASD trial last year. Judge Jones took note of it in his decision. The first segment below comes from the section where Jones establishes that the ID argument itself is rendered in religious terms by the ID advocates, and the second is from his section showing that ID is not science.
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[...] Consider, to illustrate, that Professor Behe remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God. (P-718 at 705) (emphasis added). As no evidence in the record indicates that any other scientific proposition's validity rests on belief in God, nor is the Court aware of any such scientific propositions, Professor Behe's assertion constitutes substantial evidence that in his view, as is commensurate with other prominent ID leaders, ID is a religious and not a scientific proposition.
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ID is at bottom premised upon a false dichotomy, namely, that to the extent evolutionary theory is discredited, ID is confirmed. ([93]5:41 (Pennock)). This argument is not brought to this Court anew, and in fact, the same argument, termed "contrived dualism" in [94]McLean, was employed by creationists in the 1980's to support "creation science." The court in [95]McLean noted the "fallacious pedagogy of the two model approach" and that "n efforts to establish 'evidence' in support of creation science, the defendants relied upon the same false premise as the two model approach . . . all evidence which criticized evolutionary theory was proof in support of creation science." [96]McLean, 529 F. Supp. at 1267, 1269. We do not find this false dichotomy any more availing to justify ID today than it was to justify creation science two decades ago.
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The notion that "ID is different from the ID movement" does not get ID into the clear so far as the issue of legal permissibility is concerned. The motivations of the ID movement are fodder for consideration of the "purpose" prong of the Lemon test, but the "logic" of ID goes straight to the "effect" prong of Lemon and the "endorsement" test.
I think the folks who claim that there is some pure, unsullied, pseudo-Platonic form of "ID" that does not bear the taint of the actions of its advocates have been conned. The religious aim is built into the arguments themselves, as Judge Jones quite clearly saw in the extensive testimony given in trial last year. I see some of the "ID is different from the ID movement" promoters as folks who unknowingly go around with a taped placard on their backs that reads, "Sucker!" The best expansion of "ID" that can be made is, in my opinion, not "intelligent design", but rather "intentional deception".
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Javelin,
I put links in my posts for a reason. I have already treated three of your questions at length, in a peer-reviewed philosophy paper, published in [i]Biology and Philosophy back in 2001.
The fourth question deserves some analysis.
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If we can get verifiably scientific tools that can assist in answer the question "Was this object, in whole or in part, designed rather than randomly evolved?", then why would you consider this line of research "illegal" or whatever you are contending?
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Golly, I *did* stop beating my wife some time ago. As a matter of fact, I never started. The quoted question similarly asserts an untrue premise, that I have considered research into "intelligent design" to be illegal. I'm all for anybody who wants to spend their time that way to pursue scientific research... propose theories, generate hypotheses, find out whether the data of the world supports or disconfirms those hypotheses, publish the results to the scientific community, participate in the cycle of criticism and refinement of ideas, and eventually either convince the scientific community that there is a good idea, or abandon it because it failed to accord with the evidence. This is what "ID" advocates have consistently failed to deliver upon.
What I oppose now and will continue to oppose is to take particular religious propositions and promote them in public schools. That's what happened in the Kitzmiller v. DASD case, the Dover school board made a policy that offered the book Of Pandas and People (OPAP) as a legitimate scientific alternative to evolutionary biology. It turned out that OPAP was simply a creation science text that someone did a search-and-replace on "creation" and "creationists" upon, turning them -- hey, presto! -- into "intelligent design" and "design proponents", with one "cdesign proponentsists" along the way. "ID" and "teach the controversy" simply take the same argumentative structure and content of "creation science" and propose that now it is ready to be taught to public school students, without ever having had to demonstrate that it passes scientific muster. As my last post demonstrated, the argument structure of "ID" is inherently religious, without reference to the motivations of its advocates.
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posted 2006-01-27 17:05
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(a) My friggin' quote is right above what you said. Everyone can read that I said "illegal or whatever you are saying" - because I don't understand WHAT you are trying to say in relation to the actual topic at hand - and I'd suggest you aren't saying anything, until this post, about the topic at hand.
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Touchy, touchy. And without justification, too. Everyone can read "illegal or whatever you are saying", sure, but that came conjointly with "consider this line of research" where "this" references producing scientifically investigated and supported techniques. Now, somebody brought up "sophistry" before, and I think that a lexicographer could hardly do better than to use "Javelin"'s approach here as an "e.g." in the entry. The opening post simply referred to "ID" as an argument. The first instance of "research" occurs in "Javelin"'s question. "ID" as an argument is exactly what I addressed in my first response, showing that it, too, fails legal inspection, even without considering the baggage of the "ID movement". The thesis of the opening post is that the arguments made against the "ID movement" do not touch "ID" as an argument:
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So the next time you see an ID critic trying to criticize ID by complaining about the ID movement, think about Ruse’s distinction.
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My response demonstrated that criticism of "ID" as an argument proceeds separately, and directly, upon the content of the argument. This should be easily recognizable as relevant to the thesis stated in the opening post, and thus is about "the topic at hand". If one takes the thesis to simply mean that arguments against the "ID movement" don't impact "ID as an argument", well, then, it would simply be another case of people making much of the utterly trivial and banal. If one takes the thesis as an implicit claim that taking on "ID as an argument" has not actually been done, I've shown that to be false: it's a major part of the reasoning applied in the KvD case.
However, the notion that I was somehow saying that people should not be free to "research ID" to come up with "verifiably scientific tools" is a complete fabrication out of whole cloth. In fact, I have given Bill Dembski and Michael Behe suggestions about how to get started with such a program (see the online video of the 2001 "Interpreting Evolution" conference at http//counterbalance.org ). But none of that is relevant to the discussion of the false claim that separating "ID" from the "ID movement" improves things. "ID" as an argument is not a nebulous hypothetical conjecture; it has been instantiated and stated, at length, in a number of books (see OPAP and the "wedge books" list at the Discovery Institute). It plainly advances a narrow religious viewpoint by examination of its content, even without factoring in who advances the argument.
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posted 2006-01-27 17:16
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Teleologist: And you don't think there are ID advocates that agree with this?
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"This" being the capsule description of the scientific process I gave. Well, if they exist, they seem to have no influence upon the high-profile ID advocates. You know the ones, they organized a US Congressional briefing in 2000, wrote the "Santorum amendment" in 2001, published law review articles saying that ID was perfectly OK to teach in public school science classes, intervened in Kansas to support the changes to science standards in 1999 and in the current revisions, and have worked in many states to encourage the teaching of ID as if it were science well ahead of convincing the scientific community that their idea has merit.
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Teleologist: And you don't think there are ID advocates that are opposed to religious propositions being promoted in public schools?
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Well, if they exist, they seem to be awfully quiet about the efforts of the high-profile ID advocates to do just that. Or perhaps they do not object if it is their own set of particular religious propositions that is being favored.
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posted 2006-01-27 18:46
Contrary to "Javelin"'s claim, I took up the indicated sentence that says "what everyone else is actually discussing" immediately in my first post. It's right there, up the thread a ways. It's what I've been discussing, too. Does "design" have a reliable marker? The arguments that are supposed to establish that, "irreducible complexity" and "specified complexity", suffer from the defect that I documented: they are based on "two model" thinking that itself reliably signals the advocacy of a narrow religious viewpoint. You can disagree with my conclusion if you wish, but it is simply a fact that the argument and conclusion are topical to the thesis of the opening post as it is given.
I should say that my comments on "Javelin"'s ideas and approaches are a mirror of "Javelin"'s commentary on mine. For example, let's take a recent comment by "Javelin" on a post of mine:
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If you want to say that he's wrong, that the label means something else, that's fine. But you can't go from there and say "point A is wrong because, according to my definition of the label he gave, it doesn't logically follow". That's often referred to as sophistry.
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In making my replies a mirror of "Javelin"'s own, I have made the assumption that references to "sophistry" on each hand simply refer to the arguments and claims, not the person. If I stand convicted by "Javelin" on this score, "Javelin" has also convicted himself.
As to "Why do I say this?", I realized that people could be taking the argument of the opening post in two ways, and thus wanted to clarify that the only substantive interpretation of that argument is, in fact, a false claim.
What I've noted in my visit to these fora is that "Javelin" and others, in fact, do not "only go on what I've said". They have asked questions having nothing to do with my actual arguments, as in the 'so, you think reseearch on ID is illegal or whatever' question. When I make a defense against these false implications (yes, there is such a thing as presupposition, which is the problem in the "Have you stopped beating you wife?" example), pointing out a factual -- and easily verifiable -- record of publication and interaction on the topic, I'm told that there is no interest in "researching my accomplishments". That wasn't the point, but I am coming to simply expect these lapses in the level of discourse around here. The level apparently preferred is that only those things which may be concluded in a state of uncontaminated ignorance or unverified assertion are worthwhile. Pardon me if I step out of the norm here and provide actual references, citations, and support for my arguments.
As for "Javelin"'s final comment, it would seem to me that this is a direct attack on my person, and has nothing to do with my argument, despite the lip service given elsewhere to avoiding ad hominem. There is a real problem with the argument of the opening post, one that I believe I nailed in my first reply. And that, I submit, is what is behind this display of personal animus on "Javelin"'s part.
I am prepared to be amused by further histrionics that don't touch the basis of my argument on the topic.
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posted 2006-01-27 19:41
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Interesting that you pick that quote "Doctor" (what's with the quotes around my name, anyway?). That's exactly what you are doing here, again.
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Given that what I did the first time was demonstrate that "Javelin"'s claim was not only unfounded, but in fact would require one to set aside the basic definitions of deductive logic, I'm certainly happy to continue with the same high level of debunking.
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Until you address how ID is being used here (called it "Gidget", if that helps), then you aren't addressing anything in the discussion in this thread.
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I have done this more than once in this thread. Once more, slowly:
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Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?
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That's the quote from the opening post that "Javelin" made much of earlier. There is argumentation that has been offered as instantiating the statement; the "irreducible complexity" arguments of Michael Behe and the "specified complexity" arguments of William Dembski. ID is being used here to refer to these arguments specifically rather than to their advocates. These arguments, which are precisely the stuff of the quoted question, turn out to be based upon a narrow religious view.
I heard heard the general form of argument that "that's not how it is used in this thread, therefore bringing in any knowledge from outside this thread is not topical" several times, and it has struck me as complete nonsense. In this case, it isn't even true that the quoted sentence represents some "different" usage; it has exactly the referents that I've named. In point of fact, "Krauze"'s question is not his own; he stole it from William Dembski. Compare "Krauze"
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Intelligent design the idea is simply the attempt to answer a simple question:
Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?
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with Dembski
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Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?
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There follows a good deal of talk about "specified complexity" and "irreducible complexity", followed by this:
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The implications of intelligent design for religious belief are profound. The rise of modern science led to a vigorous attack on all religions that treat purpose, intelligence, and wisdom as fundamental and irreducible features of reality. The high point of this attack came with Darwin’s theory of evolution. The central claim of Darwin’s theory is that an unguided material process (random variation and natural selection) could account for the emergence of all biological complexity and order. In other words, Darwin appeared to show that the design in biology (and, by implication, in nature generally) was dispensable. By showing that design is indispensable to the scientific understanding of the natural world, intelligent design is reinvigorating the design argument and at the same time overturning the widespread misconception that the only tenable form of religious belief is one that treats purpose, intelligence, and wisdom as byproducts of unintelligent material processes.
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That's what ignoring the outside world and the body of evidence that it provides does for someone: it puts them on the losing side of an argument.
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posted 2006-01-27 20:13
Come now, "Javelin", that weak bit of histrionics is hardly a tickle on the amusement scale.
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Elsberry - forcing the "irreducible complexity" arguments of Michael Behe and the "specified complexity" arguments of William Dembski into this discussion is again, completely irrelevant to the point.
I honestly don't understand where this is coming from.
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There is no "forcing" -- the original quote came from William Dembski's Encyclopedia of Religion entry on "intelligent design", and showed that what the the question referred to was "specified complexity" and "irreducible complexity". What quote? might be asked, so I will refresh "Javelin"'s memory:
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Here's a quote that sums up what the "ID" as an argument (as you call it) is about. Note that the following is from the first post, and is what everyone else is actually discussing here:
quote:Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?
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Yes, indeed, and that quote was lifted verbatim from the article that shows that what was meant by it was "specified complexity" and "irreducible complexity".
Edited by Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 27 2006,20:08
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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