Yeah, if I accepted the disk drive as presented. But if instead the manufacturer had no clue what to do to improve the disk drive other than from my selection of random variants of it, then I think I’d have every right to claim to have designed the improvements to it. (Or the entire disk drive if this process started from scratch.)

“So if selection algorithms are part of the design they have the weird propery that the design takes place after the solution has been produced.”

No they don’t. They have the property that design takes place after slight improvement has been produced. Again and again and again. The solution is produced only after much design has occurred.

Suppose you go on to Google and you choose the fastest widget. Did you therefore contribute to the design of that widget? To make it concrete suppose you wanted an external disk drive and you selected the one with the fastest access time subject to a minimum capacity. I think the manufacturers might be surprised by your claim to have contributed to the design.

You may object that the disk drives were created before the selection process. But that is exactly what happens with Dave’s selection algorithm (or any selection algorithm). It selects from what already exists. It is only the repeated application of the algorithm that hides this rather obvious point. So if selection algorithms are part of the design they have the weird propery that the design takes place after the solution has been produced.

You: “…but the organiser is doing no more than the ‘facilitator’ of the maths competition…” I don’t agree. Because you changed the rules midstream.

Back at (70) you said: “I want to find a solution to a difficult mathematical problem. So I organise a competition and offer a prize to the first person to solve it.” (boldface added) That is why I said that the organizer did not design anything. The organizer did not influence the design, s/he accepted it as presented. I make myself more likely to find a [Widget To Accomplish Some Task] if I take a trip to Sears, or use Google. That doesn’t mean I designed the [WTAST]. I may not know whether the [WTAST] even exists ahead of time. But if I’m willing to expend some effort, I can increase the likelihood of finding it — I can facilitate its finding.

But then at (73), you made a crucial change to the role of the organizer: “The organiser will then subject these solutions to Dave’s selection algorithm (i.e. select the ones with shortest path length) and hand them back to the children to try to find improvements…” You added his/her selectivity to the process of achieving the end product. That is why I said that the organizer is a co-designer.

And I maintain that Dave Thomas can be considered the designer (not special creator) of the Steiner solutions. It is only because of the teleology that he imparted to the system that the solutions were obtained.

In my proposed example with children you cleverly use the word “co-design” but the organiser is doing no more than the “facilitator” of the maths competition – simply selecting the best solution out of many submissions – and we earlier agreed that the facilitator was not a designer. If you accept that selecting the best of several designs is not designing the solution, then your logic seems to imply that whether the organiser designed the solution depends on what the children do and not on what the organiser does. Suppose the organiser did not know whether the proposed solutions were created through intelligence or the roll of the dice?

I will keep checking for a few days in case you (or anyone else) feels moved to respond but will understand if that is the end of the discussion. Thanks for attending.

The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is choice. Even the etymology of the word intelligent makes this clear. Intelligent derives from two Latin words, the preposition inter, meaning between, and the verb lego, meaning to choose or select. Thus according to its etymology, intelligence consists in choosing between. For an intelligent agent to act is therefore to choose from a range of competing possibilities.

(William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design, p. 144.)

You imply that the children use their intelligence in the generation of the proposed solutions. This being the case, then of course they are to be credited with being co-designers with whoever designed the algorithm used to choose among the proposals. However, if they had been generating their proposals by the roll of dice (for example), then they are not to be credited with having contributed to the design. They would have been slavishly implementing a mindless process. A designer is one whose choices lead to a solution. If those choices can be automated (as in Dave Thomas’s program), it makes no difference. All who makes the choices (which algorithm to use, how to initialize it, what “the fittest” is defined as, possibly how to tweak the algorithm, etc.) that result in the solution, is/are the designer/s.

Your evaluation of Edison agrees with this. You say that if his solution was obtained completely by chance, then he did not design it, but if he made choices that were essential to permitting the discovery to be made, then he did design it. Dave Thomas made choices that were essential to permitting the discovery of the Steiner solutions.

I could easily take your hypothetical introduction of intelligent agents into the variation process as an apparent sly ploy to make it seem more reasonable that a totally blind/dumb/purposeless process has powers that it doesn’t have. (Like Darwin comparing natural selection to artificial selection in the Origin of Species.) But I’ll be charitable and assume this wasn’t the case.

[P.S. I'm getting bored with this particular topic and plan to move on.]

Let’s start by summarising where we agree.

1) You say “having the intention is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for designing something”. I absolutely agree. Dave had the intention to create patterns with short path lengths – but that is not sufficient to prove that he designed them.

2) In the case of the competition the organiser cannot be said to have designed the solutions (although he did design the process which lead to the solutions being designed).

I believe that Dave was in the position of the organiser. He created a process where solutions emerged. I can perhaps convince you by imagining a small change to his algorithm. At the moment it creates new patterns through random mutation and crossover of “DNA”. It then selects through choosing the ones with the shortest path length. It is the selection process that Salvador considers to be point where Dave adding his design. OK let’s keep the selection process but change the variation process. This will mean moving the algorithm off a computer. The organiser will start by asking many small children to come up with their best solution to Dave’s problem. The organiser will then subject these solutions to Dave’s selection algorithm (i.e. select the ones with shortest path length) and hand them back to the children to try to find improvements (probably we mix them up so a child is not trying to improve another child’s solution – not their own). The children hand in their improvements and we run them through the selection algorith and do it all again until it looks like we aren’t getting anywhere (assume these are extraordinarly indefatigable children). This looks very like the competition except it has multiple rounds. I seriously doubt you that could say the organiser was designing the solutions – the children are doing that. But the element that Salvador labelled as introducing design (the selection algorithm) is identical. What has changed is the source of variation.

With respect to 1 and 2. You need to be precise about what happens. If Edison simply kept putting things between two electrodes in the hope that one would one day light up – then I don’t think you can say he designed that solution. He just discovered it. He also designed the process for finding a solution (trial and error). If he thought about the kind of properties that would be required for a light bulb, selected suitable elements, tried them out, and the worked out how to package them into a usable offering then he did design the solution and a bit of trial and error helped out. But Dave’s algorithm is not at all like that.

Rgds

As I strongly implied @65, you are using the word “design” in too strict a sense. You’re using it as a synonym for “specially create.” The more general definition is what ID concerns. An engineer who uses a computer program to find a solution (that correspond to a design) is considered the designer. And it’s true. He had “held a particular purpose in view” and undertook “deliberate purposive planning” and “laid down means to an end in a scheme” (See my comment #46)

The organizer of a design competition cannot be said to have designed anything. The proper description of their activity would be “facilitation.” Yes, I did write “If it wasn’t for his intention, they wouldn’t exist.” But having the intention is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for designing something. Obviously, anyone who ever intended to design an airplane before the Wright brothers actually succeeded cannot be credited with designing an airplane. But this is what one would be led to by your interpretation of what I wrote. One has to actually come through with the goods to be considered an inventor. For example, patents aren’t issued to business owners, they’re issued to the employees who contributed substantively to the design.

I don’t quite follow what you mean regarding the Newton-Raphson method.

——————————

Your (Mark Frank’s) criteria @48: “(b) [to be considered a design, it must] achieve the designer’s purpose in the fashion that the designer planned.”

You @70: “Re #68. Neither 1 or 2 [@69] are in conflict with my conditions (a) and (b). 1 and 2 are methods for coming up with a design. This could happen through serendipity, a blinding flash of inspiration or a visit from my fairy godmother. However, once the design has been produced conditions (a) and (b) must still apply for it to be a design and not just a happy accident.”

This makes no sense. If the design existed before the designer even intended to design anything, or if the design is found only by a process of elimination, it cannot be in the fashion that the designer planned.

M-W’s dictionary:

serendipity – the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.

trial and error – a finding out of the best way to reach a desired result or a correct solution by trying out one or more ways or means and noting and eliminating errors or causes of failure; also : the trying of one thing or another until something succeeds.

And my modes (3) or (4) don’t meet your criteria, either.

3) Subconscious daemon (initiated by previous conscious effort). Mathematician Henry Poincaré, after intensive periods of deliberate, conscious effort searching for what he called Fuchsian functions:

…I left Caen, where I was living, to go on a geologic excursion under the auspices of the School of Mines. The incidents of the travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. I did not verify the idea; I should not have had time, as upon taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for convenience sake, I verified the result at my leisure.

4) Conscious inspiration. Mozart:

When I am well and in good humour, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal, or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know and I have nothing to do with it. Those which please me I keep in my head and hum them; at least others have told me that I do so. Once I have my theme, another melody comes, linking itself with the first one, in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole: the counterpoint, the part of each instrument and all the melodic fragments at last produce the complete work. Then my soul is on fire with inspiration. The work grows; I keep expanding it, conceiving it more and more clearly until I have the entire composition finished in my head though it may be long. Then my mind seizes it as a glance of my eye a beautiful picture… It does not come to me successively, with various parts worked out in detail, as they will later on, but in its entirety that my imagination lets me hear it.

(Both quotes from Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind)

Re #65. There is a difference between designing a method for finding a solution and designing the solution. Dave designed a method for producing patterns with short path lengths but he didn’t design the patterns.

Here’s an analogy. I want to find a solution to a difficult mathematical problem. So I organise a competition and offer a prize to the first person to solve it. I designed the method of finding the solution (the competition) but the winner designed the solution. The winner would be justifiably pissed off if I claimed I had designed the solution because “without my intention the solution would not have existed”.

In the case of Newton-Raphson (and indeed Salvador’s example) there is an additional complication – the solution is a single number. You can’t design a number. You can come up with a design which you express as a single number – but that number must represent something more complex where the designer has to think through how the solution solves the problem. This is confusing because it means that in these examples the only occurence of design is in the method of finding the solution – not the solution itself.

Re #68.

Neither 1 or 2 are in conflict with my conditions (a) and (b). 1 and 2 are methods for coming up with a design. This could happen through serendipity, a blinding flash of inspiration or a visit from my fairy godmother. However, once the design has been produced conditions (a) and (b) must still apply for it to be a design and not just a happy accident.

Rgds

If it makes you feel better, my posts get held up as well. Let’s be patient with the volunteer work of the moderators however.

If you are on my threads, and you abide by the spirit of the forum, and I remove something of yours, it will appear on the Cutting Room Floor.

Thank you by the way for visiting.

Salvador