Does ID Rest on Metaphysical Claims About Dualism?

_{Barry Arrington

December 15, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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RDFish seems to think so. I summarize his argument as follows:

The ID explanatory filter works as follows:

(a) The explanatory filter first asks whether the phenomenon is contingent. If it is not, then it is probably best explained as the result of a natural regularity.

(b) If the phenomenon is contingent, the filter asks whether it is complex and specified. If it is neither complex nor specified, then chance is the most viable explanation. While there may be false negatives, there can be no reliable design inference.

Therefore, under the explanatory filter design is inferred only after law and chance have been eliminated.

If physicalist monism is true, everything must be reducible to the operation of law and chance.

Therefore, if physicalist monism is true, the residual after the elimination of law and chance is always an empty set.

It follows that the ID explanatory filter sneaks in a base assumption of dualism.

Dualism is a metaphysical proposition that cannot be tested empirically. It follows that ID is based on metaphysical premises that cannot be tested empirically. And because one of its key assumptions cannot be tested empirically, ID cannot be considered a valid scientific hypothesis.

RDFish’s claim is wrong, and I will refute it with a simple thought experiment.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that physicalist monism is true.

Let us suppose that all life on earth dies out.

A million years from now an alien is exploring this barren planet and he finds Mount Rushmore and decides to apply the explanatory filter to it.

The alien concludes that the carving is highly contingent. It cannot be attributed to any law-like natural regularity.

The alien concludes the carving is specified. It is an image of four members of the former inhabitants of this barren planet.

The alien concludes that the carving is highly complex/improbable, i.e., one would not expect the images to be carved by chance processes (e.g., erosion caused by wind and rain).

Therefore, the alien concludes, correctly, that the best explanation for the carving is an intelligent agent carved it.

The alien’s design inference would be correct even if physicalist monism is true, because the plain fact of the matter is that Mount Rushmore was caused by an intelligent agent, i.e., an agent with the capacity to arrange matter for a purpose.

Not so fast, RDFish will probably argue. If physicalist monism is true, then the intelligent agents who carved Mount Rushmore where themselves the result of law/chance and acting according to law/chance. Therefore, the conclusion that Mount Rushmore was not ultimately the result of law/chance would be false.

But RDFish would be wrong. Design exists as a category of causation. To suggest otherwise is absurd and self-defeating. Not only does design exist, designers leave objective markers of design. Therefore, if RDFish is going to stick to his guns and say that design cannot be detected, he is stuck with this syllogism:

If monist physicalism is true, it is impossible objectively to infer design.
But it is possible objectively to infer design.
Therefore, monist physicalism is false.

How can physicalist monism be reconciled with the obvious existence of design as a category of causation? The following reasoning would apply:

Design, meaning the capacity to arrange matter for a purpose, exists as a category of causation.
The capacity to arrange matter for a purpose can be reduced to any force that is able to arrange matter in the present such that it will have an effect in the future.
There are at least two candidates for causal forces that have the capacity to arrange matter for a purpose. (a) intelligent agents who have immaterial mental capacity; (b) an impersonal non-conscious yet-to-be-discovered natural telic force.
The monist rejects the existence of intelligent agents with immaterial mental capacities, because the existence of such agents obviously entails dualism.
Instead, the monist can resort to the natural telic force.
If such a natural telic force exists, the existence of design as a category of causation is no obstacle to accepting the truth of monist physicalism.

This get us to:

If monist physicalism is true and a natural telic force exists, it is nevertheless possible objectively to infer design.
Therefore, design may be inferred under monist physicalism using the explanatory filter.
Therefore, ID does not depend on dualist metaphysical assumptions.

In summary, ID does not depend on dualism. As Dembski has observed, ID is compatible with a natural telic force.

The problem the monist has, of course, is that in order to account for the obvious existence of design, he can no longer say everything in the universe is reducible to law/chance. He has to say everything in the universe is reducible to law/chance/not-yet-discovered natural telic force. ID is OK with allowing such a natural telic force as a candidate for the source of design (and therefore does not depend on dualism). Obviously, however, based on observations of known intelligent agents, ID is also perfectly comfortable with dualism.

Comments

Tiger131: Its not a gap fallacy when design is defined to include not-yet-understood laws. Then the word "design" is being stretched beyond its norms. For instance, if we don't know what keeps planets in their orbits, it's "design".Zachriel_{December 19, 2015
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Zachriel Its not a gap fallacy when design is defined to include not-yet-understood laws.Tiger131_{December 18, 2015
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Dear Mr Cain So you disagree with Mr Arrington's OP?
OP: ... the existence of design as a category of causation is no obstacle to accepting the truth of monist physicalism.

CARM: There is no real difference between materialism and physicalism...

Stanford: Physicalism is sometimes known as ‘materialism’...
Tiger131_{December 18, 2015
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Tiger131: The flowchart assumes currently understood law and chance are complementary with design, where design may arise from not-yet-discovered physical laws. The word "understood" is not in the original post; however, with that qualifier, if it's not currently understood law and chance, then it could be law and chance not currently understood. Assuming that when you don't understand something means it's designed is a classic gap fallacy.Zachriel_{December 18, 2015
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Mapou, It depends on the kind of unity. See 2 Cor. 6:15.EugeneS_{December 18, 2015
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EugeneS:
Mapou, “Everything is based on yin-yang/dualism. No exception.” Sayz who? First, it is a metaphysical stance. Second, your version of dualism equates good and evil as complementary. In my view, evil is no entity. It is the absence of good. Evil is a paradoxical zero-entity ‘thing’, a parasite, an abuse of free will.
Not at all. Good is that which promotes unity. Bad is that which promotes disunity. This is the reason our master said to his master, "Let them be ONE with us as we are ONE together." Unity is the balance of Yin and Yang.Mapou_{December 18, 2015
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If the universe was created by a non-material entity, then how is mind-body dualism even relevant?Mung_{December 18, 2015
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The chart assumes that law+chance is dichotomous with design,
And that is how other scientific venues treat them.Virgil Cain_{December 18, 2015
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No Tiger131, ID is not compatible with materialism. If materialism is true then ID is false. If ID is true then materialism is false.Virgil Cain_{December 18, 2015
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Mapou, "Everything is based on yin-yang/dualism. No exception." Sayz who? First, it is a metaphysical stance. Second, your version of dualism equates good and evil as complementary. In my view, evil is no entity. It is the absence of good. Evil is a paradoxical zero-entity 'thing', a parasite, an abuse of free will.EugeneS_{December 18, 2015
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No Zachriel - per the OP, ID is compatible with materialism:
If such a [not-yet-discovered] natural telic force exists, the existence of design as a category of causation is no obstacle to accepting the truth of monist physicalism.
The flowchart assumes currently understood law and chance are complementary with design, where design may arise from not-yet-discovered physical laws. So it is wrong to say ID assumes dualism, because even a materialistic monist can apply the flow chart and conclude that observed design is the result of mechanistic laws that we don't currently understand.Tiger131_{December 18, 2015
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Z: The chart assumes that law+chance is dichotomous with design, or more specifically, that law, chance and design form non-overlapping sets.Zachriel_{December 18, 2015
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StephenB: To assume dualism is to make an apriori commitment. In order to qualify, ID would have to smuggle a metaphysical presupposition into the explanatory filter in some surreptitious fashion. This is not even logically possible since the model has been made explicit and known to all in the form of a flow chart. The chart assumes that law+chance is dichotomous with design, or more specifically, that law, chance and dichotomous form non-overlapping sets. http://www.ideacenter.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/53d86ee019d30faffea0b57653921eab/misc/explanatoryfilter.gifZachriel_{December 18, 2015
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KF @126 Thank you again for the information. The search narrowed down to these potential sources: https://www.google.com/search?q=+specification+of+organisms+can+be+crashed+out+in+any+number+of+ways&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=%22specification+of+organisms+can+be+crashed+out+in+any+number+of+ways%22 Where the earliest one (September 11, 2007) seems to be this: http://intelligentreasoning.blogspot.com/2007/09/biological-specification-dembski-csi.html It's interesting to see how a misspelled word in a quoted text over 8 years ago still gets referenced and carried over through years without detection/correction. One of the explanations seems to be the fact that most people can read scrambled words and still get their contextual meaning as if the words were not misspelled at all. The complex vision mechanisms can 'correct' the misspelling automatically for us, hence the errors go undetected. This investigative questioning exercise concludes. Again, tank you for your assistance with this.Dionisio_{December 17, 2015
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Everything is based on yin-yang/dualism. No exception.Mapou_{December 17, 2015
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Dualisms in Science: Physics: states and forces Biology: genotype-phenotype Must not rally be science.Mung_{December 17, 2015
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RNA World is proposed as the historical bridge to that physical discontinuity.
Except there isn't any evidence for such a world nor anything that says such a world could be/ build such a bridge. There is just a need for both. Cheers, Virgil CainVirgil Cain_{December 17, 2015
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RDFish Your argument has always been incoherent because you do not define your terms or use them in a consistent way. Among many possible examples I could cite, I offer the following two: "Assuming" metaphysical dualism is by no means the same thing as "requiring" metaphysical dualism. Yet you use these formulations in your arguments as if they meant the same thing. To assume dualism is to make an apriori commitment. In order to qualify, ID would have to smuggle a metaphysical presupposition into the explanatory filter in some surreptitious fashion. This is not even logically possible since the model has been made explicit and known to all in the form of a flow chart. There is simply no way to add a fourth step to a three-step process since-- do I have to explain it?--a three-step process cannot also be a four-step process. So your claim that ID assumes dualism is easily refuted. To "require" dualism, on the other hand, a word you mistakenly interchange with "assume," is to say that ID cannot be true unless dualism is true. The former is a totally different claim than the latter. When you substitute one word for the other, as you often to, you create confusion in your own mind and muddy the debate waters for everyone else.StephenB_{December 17, 2015
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Zachriel: That’s right. They are a hypothetical bridge to translation. The bridge to nowhere.Mung_{December 17, 2015
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Upright BiPed: RNA template replicators do not achieve translation That's right. They are a hypothetical bridge to translation.Zachriel_{December 17, 2015
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As we have already discussed Zach, RNA template replicators do not achieve translation, and nothing in that scenario does anything to establish the reading frame code, which the system requires in order to function.Upright BiPed_{December 17, 2015
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EugeneS: Actually, I was talking to RDF. Sure. You were talking TO RDFish, but not listening carefully to RDFish. The scenario was “Imagine we didn’t understand the Northern Lights”. You answered based on having that knowledge. Upright BiPed: Semiosis is a process whereby an informational medium is translated to produce functional effects. Okay. Upright BiPed: One set must serve as a representation(s), and the other set must establish what is being represented. This is a relational architecture, and it sets up a physical discontinuity in the system. RNA World is proposed as the historical bridge to that physical discontinuity.Zachriel_{December 17, 2015
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Upright BiPed, I will give you one more chance. Then I am done with you sir. Done I say!Mung_{December 17, 2015
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RD, Well, I said up front that you would do anything rather than address the material evidence. I have said this for a long, long time now – always readily confirmed by your next round of comments. You’ve done everything. You tried to just agree with me arguendo in order to avoid the details. You’ve tried to dismiss the argument with pointless comments about fairies and pixie dust. You’ve misrepresented it. You’ve tried to change the subject over and over and over again. As much as anything, you’ve tried to insult me into shutting up and going away. And of course, what good is a line of bullshit without propping yourself up, right? So one of your favorite tactics is to express exasperation at how afraid I am to respond to your cogent rebuttals, yet to show your good faith and willingness to debate the issues, you’ll give me one more try. I’ve watched this ridiculous display of yours for more than a year now, and I wonder if you realize that all of this is recorded in a searchable database. That fact seems to not matter to you. And so what do we have this time? As a counter-example to the Genetic Translation, you now present … drumroll please … the Northern Lights. You sir, are a blithering idiot. Oh, you will say “I didn’t present it as a counter-example of translation, only as a hypothetical thing we can pretend we don’t understand”. But we already understand genetic translation, RD, we’ve understood if for almost half a century. As a physical system, we understand that it has nothing whatsoever in common with the Northern Lights. So what does your last response tell me? It tells me that you want to start all over at the top – to pretend nothing has ever been said – only to argue the whole thing all over again, complete with all of the same delays and distractions of the first go-round. Since it is stupendously clear that you cannot bring yourself to even speak the words in the argument, I’ll turn my attentional elsewhere and make a comment to any poor soul that has followed along this far. - - - - - - - - - - - - - Semiosis is a process whereby an informational medium is translated to produce functional effects. Semiosis exists throughout the living kingdom, but is completely absent in the inanimate world. Such systems are able to produce effects that otherwise would not occur. When you hear a scientist or philosopher make comments about the great importance and unique nature of “information” – it is this quality that they are talking about. It is the distinction between the earth and the moon. In order to do what they do, semiotic systems require two objects (or sets of objects) operating in a very specific way. One set must serve as a representation(s), and the other set must establish what is being represented. This is a relational architecture, and it sets up a physical discontinuity in the system. This discontinuity allows an arrangement of matter to actually be a formal representation. In other words, translation can only occur when a medium is translated to produce effects that are not determined by the physical properties of the medium (after all, they are only representations – they evoke effects, but they do not determine what those effects will be). This architecture establishes a local independence in the system. It allows for the production of the effects that are required to organize the living cell (and all of life that follows its organization). But there are other vital aspects to the system. There two types of semiotic systems. One type uses representations that are reducible to the physical properties of the medium it’s made of. For instance, a pheromone is a perfect example; a chemical compound whose arrangement is recognized in its system by its lawfully-determined three-dimensional properties. This type of semiotic system is found throughout the living kingdom. The second type of semiotic system uses representations that have a spatial-orientation (like the letters on this page) and are not determined by the physical nature of the medium they are made of. These representations are independent of the minimum total potential energy principle, and following on characterizations of this phenomenon by physicists in the field, I have referred to this second type of system as “dimensional semiosis”. The key point of dimensionality is the vast increase in utility it imparts on a semiotic system. First, by being able to control the arrangement of the medium, it begins to enable the system with an open-ended capacity of information. It accomplished this by enabling the physical possibility of combinatorial expansion. This is critical to being able to efficiently record the amount of information required to organize the living cell. Secondly, a spatially-oriented pattern enables the system to efficiently transfer information from one medium to another. This is another critical aspect of a self-replicating cell. However, such systems cannot operate without additional constraints imposed on the system. These additional constraints come in the form of a “reading frame code” (Crick 1961) to establish the dimensional nature of the system itself. In other words, these spatially-oriented “energy independent” patterns (Pattee 1968) must first be established in the system as genuine representations, where the pattern in each representation distinguishes one representation from another. Furthermore, a sequence of dimensional representations must also be read from a particular orientation in order to be properly translated, so a method to establish this orientation must be instantiated in the system as well (along with a method to “start” the translation, to “stop” the translation, and so on). These things are the physical conditions that must occur in order to translate information into physical effects. And whereas a ‘typical” semiotic system can be found throughout the living kingdom, a dimensional semiotic system can only be found in recorded language and mathematics - two unambiguous correlates of intelligence. These are the pesky details that RD refuses to talk about. They are the basis of the operational definition he wants to obscure in a ridiculous comparison to the Northern Lights. He can have his ignorance and his bliss. www.biosemiosis.orgUpright BiPed_{December 17, 2015
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Zachriel, "Try again". Actually, I was talking to RDF.EugeneS_{December 17, 2015
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Exactly Mung... Whahahahahahahahahaha RDFISH does not know.....Andre_{December 17, 2015
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Zachriel:
The scenario was “Imagine we didn’t understand the Northern Lights”
It was that way and we figured it out. Not that you would understand the implications...Virgil Cain_{December 17, 2015
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RDFish:
You won’t tell me what you mean by “specify”, and so you make me guess.
I'm sorry, but this is simply false. Upright BiPed:
I asked you about objects becoming specified so that they may be organized into living things. This is not a topic that is foreign to you, so there is no need to pretend you do not understand it. For a protein to be made up of a sequence of objects such as leucine, bound to glycine, bound to alanine, etc, requires leucine to be specified among its alternatives.
Mung_{December 17, 2015
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RDFish:
The dualism I refer to is “mind/body” dualism (as I’ve pointed out above), not a dualism between “natural” and “supernatural”.
LoL.Mung_{December 17, 2015
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EugeneS: Now about your examples of the Northern Lights etc. These effects are amenable to explanations involving only the default causation categories. The scenario was "Imagine we didn’t understand the Northern Lights". Try again.Zachriel_{December 17, 2015
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