Bait And Switch (Intuition, Part Deux)
| July 29, 2009 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
Once upon a time people thought that the sun revolved around the earth because this was intuitive. They were wrong. Once upon a time people thought that the moon revolved around the earth because it was intuitive. They were right. Therefore, intuition can’t be trusted.
Good enough. Evidence eventually confirmed the truth in both cases.
Then along came neo-Darwinism in the 20th century. Intuition and the simple mathematics of combinatorics suggest that random errors and throwing out stuff that doesn’t work can’t account for highly complex information-processing machinery and the information it processes in biological systems. There is no evidence, hard science, or mathematical analysis that can give any credibility to the proposed power of the Darwinian mechanism in this regard.
Intuition suggests that step-by-tiny-step Darwinian gradualism could not have happened, because the intermediates would not be viable. A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner. We find no such creatures in the fossil record, for obvious reasons. We find long periods of stasis, and the emergence of fully developed creatures with entirely new and innovative capabilities.
So, the Darwinian argument essentially goes as follows: Because human intuition is sometimes wrong, we can ignore intuition, basic reasoning, historical evidence, and the lack of empirical evidence — but only in the case of the claims of the creative power of the Darwinian mechanism.
This is classic bait-and-switch con-artistry: Intuition can be wrong, therefore evidence, the lack thereof, and logic can be ignored or assumed to be wrong as well.
384 Responses to Bait And Switch (Intuition, Part Deux)
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—Rob: “Who is this Diffaxial guy, and where is he posting.”
OK, humor me. Using the concrete examples that I cited, explain to me why the inferences to intelligent agency apart from natural causes are unjustified. Tell me how the conclusion of agency [in each specific instance] is imbedded in the hyposthesis, which is another way of saying that an inference wasn’t really made at all.
StephenB, if you’re talking about the ransacked living room, I have no problem inferring a burglar. I just don’t know of any empirical test to show that the burglar is an agent according to your definition of the term. (To be honest, I have much bigger problems with the posited law/chance/agency trichotomy than empirical testability, but we’ll start with that.)
—-”StephenB, if you’re talking about the ransacked living room, I have no problem inferring a burglar. I just don’t know of any empirical test to show that the burglar is an agent according to your definition of the term. (To be honest, I have much bigger problems with the posited law/chance/agency trichotomy than empirical testability, but we’ll start with that.)
Your questions are valid and deserve attention, however they are, from my perspective, second order questions. I can’t get intellectual assent to the first order question, namely, that one can legitimately/meaningfully speak of intellectual agency as a distinct cause apart from law and chance.
In any case, I don’t think that forensic scientists would struggle with the definition of these terms when they seek to discover whether someone died by natural causes or was murdered by an [intelligent] agent. To be sure, I can’t conceive of them asking, “Whatever do you mean by injecting this artificial distincion of yours between intelligent causes and natural causes?” Or “Please define homicide in such a way that I can be sure that it is something other than a physical act of nature.” Or, “I have serious doubts that we can provide an empirical test for establishing the presence of a blood thirsty killer?”
Would you buy any of that?
Adel @363:
Given that we’re discussing events that occurred in the distant past, there are no empirical tests. If nothing less will do, than we can only wait for the invention of the time machine and leave a big question mark until then.
What we do have is a rather solid inference on the one hand, and a spectacular something-from-nothing fantasy on the other. The latter is so fantastic, so contradictory of known reality, that nothing but the time machine or a duplication of the accident would suffice.
The only thing more unbelievable than a miracle is an accidental miracle.
StephenB @ 352:
Stephen, you got me there. Its right there in black and white. I’ve repeatedly denied that that no distinction can be drawn between the artificial and the natural, between human actions and natural events:
Like here:
And here:
And here:
And here:
And here:
Stephen, here’s a flat fact: I have repeatedly advanced as valid the distinction between the actions of humans and natural events. I’ve stated that these differing sorts of causation belong in different categories, the conventional categories of natural vs. artificial. I have defined the categories. I’ve stated (in the last passage quoted above) that vandals and tornados may be placed “without difficulty” into these differing causal categories – IOW, that the use of the categories is not difficult.
Nevertheless, you robotically attribute to me claims such as “a tornado’s destructive winds should be placed in the same category of causes as a burglar’s disruption.”
Above, Biped called me a liar for accurately paraphrasing him. I don’t know what to do with this.
—Diffaxial: “Stephen, here’s a flat fact: I have repeatedly advanced as valid the distinction between the actions of humans and natural events.”
Let’s put it to the test:
If you observe what appears to be design in an ancient hunters spear, can you reasonably conclude that the formation was caused by an intelligent agency and was not likely the result of wind, water, erosion, or some other natural cause?
—”I’ve stated that these differing sorts of causation belong in different categories, the conventional categories of natural vs. artificial. I have defined the categories. I’ve stated (in the last passage quoted above) that vandals and tornados may be placed “without difficulty” into these differing causal categories – IOW, that the use of the categories is not difficult.”
Can you, if provided with sufficient evidence, observe an alleged crime scene, conclude that the recent disordered arrangement of furnture did not occur as a result of a natural cause, and therefore could best be explained by an intelligent agency?
StephenB:
I can’t conceive of them asking that either. The terms “natural cause” and “acts of nature”, especially in the context of forensics, typically refer to causes apart from humans, so the distinction is built into the terms.
Contrast that usage with what you claim to be the ID definition:
Note that this statement is true only if intelligence falls outside of law and chance, by definition or by empirical fact. Absent that definition or empirical fact, intelligence could certainly be natural, according to ID’s metaphysical usage of the term.
What has any ID opponent said that would imply the inability to establish homicide?
StephenB:
Of course. We each spend a lifetime, literally starting from birth, immersed in the actions and products of other human beings and navigating the social landscape of others’ motives and intentions (we are adapted to do so) – as well as engaging in actions, generating products, and deploying motives and intentions of our own. Moreover, we spend our lifetimes also encountering unguided physical events such as wind, rain and the general increase of disorder observed in non-living processes over time. As a consequence we are quite adept at identifying the characteristic markers of human actions, products, motives and intentions, and distinguishing them from unguided physical events. Indeed, there are significant reasons to suspect that we are adapted to quickly make these distinctions, particularly the subtle discernment of human actions and motives.
Your notion that it follows from my position that I must answer otherwise is absurd.
BTW, you will notice that the above immersion and resulting adeptness represents experience with human beings, their actions, and products. “Intelligent agency” supplies unnecessary conceptual baggage, obviously planted by the baggage handler to support the unwarranted generalization that is certain to follow. We accomplish these effortless classifications (natural versus non-natural) without reference to or help from this additional conceptual baggage.
If you observe what appears to be design in an ancient hunters spear, can you reasonably conclude that the formation was caused by an intelligent agency and was not likely the result of wind, water, erosion, or some other natural cause?
…
Can you, if provided with sufficient evidence, observe an alleged crime scene, conclude that the recent disordered arrangement of furnture did not occur as a result of a natural cause, and therefore could best be explained by an intelligent agency?
—-Diffaxial: “Of course.”
If we agree that one can draw inferences about intelligent agency apart from natural causes, then we have nothing to fuss about. We can build on that foundation at another time.
—”Your notion that it follows from my position that I must answer otherwise is absurd.”
Based your past writings, I had no reason to believe that you think one can draw an inference to agent causes apart from natural causes.
—-Diffaxial: “Intelligent agency” supplies unnecessary conceptual baggage, obviously planted by the baggage handler to support the unwarranted generalization that is certain to follow. We accomplish these effortless classifications (natural versus non-natural) without reference to or help from this additional conceptual baggage.”
You just acknowledged that we can draw inferences to “intelligent agency”; now you are telling me that intelligent agency supplies unnecessary conceptual baggage.
After over a hundred posts, you finally acknowledge that humans can draw inferences about intelligent agency and then promptly disavow the affirmation.
Are you for real?
Of course. We each spend a lifetime, literally starting from birth, immersed in the actions and products of other human beings and navigating the social landscape of others’ motives and intentions (we are adapted to do so) – as well as engaging in actions, generating products, and deploying motives and intentions of our own. Moreover, we spend our lifetimes also encountering unguided physical events such as wind, rain and the general increase of disorder observed in non-living processes over time. As a consequence we are quite adept at identifying the characteristic markers of human actions, products, motives and intentions, and distinguishing them from unguided physical events. Indeed, there are significant reasons to suspect that we are adapted to quickly make these distinctions, particularly the subtle discernment of human actions and motives.
BTW, you will notice that the above immersion and resulting adeptness represents experience with human beings, their actions, and products. “Intelligent agency” supplies unnecessary conceptual baggage, obviously planted by the baggage handler to support the unwarranted generalization that is certain to follow. We accomplish these effortless classifications (natural versus non-natural) without reference to or help from this additional conceptual baggage.
That’s my response to yours @ 369, which I did not read quite carefully enough before responding.
Diffaxial: You get the last word. Thanks for the dialogue.
ScottAndrews @366:
I agree. I would, of course, put the shoe on the opposite foot from your intention.
A problem I see with your willful miracle-maker hypothesis is that an entity with such miracle-working powers would necessarily be entirely unconstrained from acting arbitrarily at any time in the remote past or the recent past or in the present. Can’t base any science, which depends on some consistency in our interactions with the environment, on that hypothesis. Je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse.
Meanwhile, the science that you reject will continue to stumble along making testable hypotheses about the origin of life and its evolution. Whatever is learned from the results of those tests is a contribution to a time machine.
Adel:
If someone or something (or more than one of such) had the ability to create life, you point out that they could continue to create, and continue to act, and they’re busy interfering with scientific experiments everywhere. That’s right, water doesn’t really boil at 100 degrees, that’s just a designer playing a trick on us.
And based on this logic, you think that life randomly occurring in a chemical accident is somehow less nonsensical. As I’ve said, such a thing is too ridiculous to believe without solid evidence, by which I mean a detailed, repeatable account or a time lapse video.
I honestly wonder if you ever stop to think what a preposterous event you’re proposing. If you believe such a thing, how can you chide anyone for believing in miracles? Is there anything you believe can’t happen by accident? You’ve already surrendered your connection with reality.
What’s more, you’re openly rejecting a hypothesis because you don’t like its implications. That’s good science.
I don’t reject your hypothesis, I only ask how it can be tested.
And how would you know what implications I might or might not like?
Adel,
You said you had a problem with a designer because said designer might be able to act arbitrarily at other times, making science more difficult.
Thus you suggest that the implications of a designer make a designer less likely.
The implication you suggest is real, although, as I said, there’s no reason to think that anyone is throwing off scientific experiments. Planes don’t really fly, the designer was holding them up, and then they crash.
But your logic really fails when you reason that such an implication is, in itself, evidence.
As for your questions about testability, see the FAQ and glossary.
ScottAndrews,
Thank you for continuing this discussion.
If there is no reason to think that anyone is throwing off scientific experiments from time to time, then there is no reason to think that anyone interfered with the history of the universe to create life as a discrete act.
It is the arbitrariness of the notion of special creation that is problematic. Once you start believing stuff like that, where does it end? With special creation of each baramin? With deliberate generation of mutations, which might otherwise seem spontaneous and random, in the present time?
On the other hand, if your “anyone” is omnipotent, there is nothing that would prevent him from creating the universe at the Big Bang complete with all of the elements and conditions to generate life without further intervention. If one could rule out that possibility, then the scientific pursuit of those elements and conditions would be an irrational endeavor.
I would add that believers in the Judeo-Christian creator (who is, I surmise, the one you have in mind) behave in ways that refute your claim that the creator is aloof from current history. They pray for the creator to intervene on their behalf, and they thank him when things turn out well for them. “Thank God!”
Not evidence, an objection.
It would be a kindness if you would tell me directly in your own words.
Adel,
Your reasoning is absolutely fallacious:
Either a thing was designed or it was not. We determine that by the evidence, not by the implications. A thing is neither true nor false because of what it might or might not lead to. (For example, some might argue that if we evolved from lower animals, then our morality is arbitrary. It’s true, but that’s not evidence against such descent.) So perhaps we can leave behind such fallacious reasoning.
I will not address omnipotence or any religion’s belief about God. If you think they are relevant, please consider reading more about ID.
I am intrigued by new arguments, new challenges to my point of view. Questioning the testability of ID is neither. I’m not saying it’s not a valid question, but the question, as-is, is better answered by the available material.
I say not designed on the basis of lack of evidence.
I also say that if you must hypothesize a designer, you cannot evade the implications. Otherwise, you are not doing science. (A hypothesis that leads nowhere lacks utility.)
Speaking of science, I leave you with the following excerpt from a letter to Science by Christoff Koch, of CalTech:
“August Comte, father of positivism, wrote in 1835 that we shall never know what stars are made of (A. Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive (1830–1842)). A few decades later, the chemical composition of stars was deduced by spectral analysis of their light (G. R. Kirchhoff, R. Bunsen, Ann. Phys. (1860); p. 110, 160).”
Do not underestimate science. It has repeatedly confounded philosophy and theology.
Adel:
If evidence is a requirement (and it should be) then you have no alternative.
To argue that A implies B, and I don’t like B, therefore A is false, is not scientific.
To argue that A possibly, might imply B, etc, is even less so.
I do not evade the implications. I remind you again that the implications are not evidence. You seem convinced otherwise, which opens the door to all sorts of “scientific” conclusions based on our preferences and opinions. If water boiled at 100 degrees, it could burn my hand. Ouch! Therefore, water does not boil at 100 degrees.
Your quote and follow-up are irrelevant and, dare I say, pompous. You make a prior assumption that science will one day find evidence supporting a specific conclusion, and anyone who disagrees or waits for the evidence is underestimating science? What?
The prospect of life appearing in a chemical accident is too fantastic and contrary to all available evidence to be taken seriously. When you try to declare the impossible inevitable, speculation and extrapolation don’t cut it. If you want me to believe in perpetual motion machines or accidental life, show me the money. The rest is bluffing.