How is ID Different?

_{Barry Arrington

October 4, 2014

Intelligent Design}

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Mark Frank writes in a comment to a prior post:

When reconstructing an evolutionary past I would say that scientists are doing two things which correspond to my Bayesian analysis:

They are proposing explanations that

1) might well have happened – the prior probability is acceptable

2) would have a good chance of producing what we observe – the likelihood is acceptable

When reconstructing a biological past I would say that ID scientists are doing two things which correspond to Mark Frank’s Bayesian analysis:

They are proposing explanations that

1) might well have happened – the prior probability is acceptable

2) would have a good chance of producing what we observe – the likelihood is acceptable

Mark Frank, do you agree that ID proponents and Darwinian researchers are employing identical modes of reasoning?

Comments

Barry:
Sorry, question begging not allowed.
It is my understanding that "question begging" is a logical fallacy of the form: If P, then Q Q Therefore P So if I ask questions for clarification, that is not question begging.
ID predicts that chance/law forces will never produce 500 bits of complex specified information. Therefore, all you have to do to explode ID right out of the water is to show chance/law forces producing 500 bits of complex specified information
My questions: Since entailments are logical consequences of hypotheses, how was "chance/law forces will never produce 500 bits of complex specified information" deduced as a logical consequence of the hypothesis that all life is designed? And how can it be tested? How is it possible to demonstrate that something can never be done?Daniel King_{October 13, 2014
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DK @ 50:
Provide some testable entailments of the hypothesis that the universe and its life are designed I will consider them.
ID predicts that chance/law forces will never produce 500 bits of complex specified information. Therefore, all you have to do to explode ID right out of the water is to show chance/law forces producing 500 bits of complex specified information. Sorry, question begging not allowed.Barry Arrington_{October 13, 2014
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Paul Giem:
I missed it where it was handed down on golden plates, or thundered from the sky, or even was shown by irrefutable logical inference, that “Science must at all costs adhere to” the rule of methodologcial naturalism.
I missed it also. My confidence in scientific method would surely be challenged if i knew of any such events.
The inflexible adherence to methodological naturalism is not a “self-imposed limitation of science.” It is an imposition made on science by certain scientists, who expect the rest of us to follow.
Imposed by whom? Who are those "certain scientists"? Are they living or dead? When did they impose those limitations? On the contrary, what you call "inflexible adherence" looks to me like "sticking to one's trade," and the procedures employed by trades are developed over time by experience. They evolve. Tradecraft: A householder faced with an overflowing toilet would be mistaken if she called an electrician. A physician faced with a case of acute inflammation of the appendix would call in a surgeon, not a shaman.
What happens if the evidence points the other way?
I know, and anyone who wants to practice science needs to know that evidence has to be interpreted by hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Evidence doesn't "point," it either fits or doesn't fit into a hypothetical framework that has testable entailments. So the question boils down to the relative testability of competing hypotheses - natural vs supernatural. Are there any supernatural entailments?
Is there any evidence that could convince you that naturalism was not a complete explanation of the universe...
I haven't encountered a complete naturalistic explanation of anything yet, and I have no expectations of such, so I don't need to be convinced on that point.
...or even that there is evidence for intelligent design, and therefore some kind of a designer for the universe or life?
Provide some testable entailments of the hypothesis that the universe and its life are designed I will consider them.Daniel King_{October 13, 2014
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Paul: "It’s much easier to go the Lewontin route. We simply “cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” But that sounds too much like science versus anti-religion. Those of you who point out that there is the small matter of the origin of the universe, make the appropriate point that this assigning an infinitesimal prior probability to the existence of God is not really warranted given the facts. At that point the argument against God goes down in flames. The same is true for those of us who have experienced God’s action in our lives. But even without them the argument from the existence of life alone can only be countered by multiple universes where anything goes, denial of the improbability of life, appeal to unknown laws, or obfuscation. Mark has thankfully removed the fourth option." :) :) :)gpuccio_{October 12, 2014
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Paul: "The inflexible adherence to this rule is in fact philosophical naturalism, in which case Isaac Newton was not a scientist, which doesn’t make much sense." Excellent. My personal problems with "methodological naturalism" start with the word itself: "nature". I maintain that there is no satisfying, general definition of "nature" (and therefore of naturalism) that is not loaded with philosophical assumtpions. "Nature" is only a particular map of reality, of what really exists, of what is true. "Matter" and "materialism are equally ambiguous concepts, even more restricted. Our nature, today, seems to include quantum mechanics, black holes, maybe many-dimensional strings (?), and many other strange things that two hundred years ago no "nature" would have considered. And still, the general concept of nature, at least in the minds of many, seems not to include, yet, consciousness as a true objective reality, worth of its own place in a map of things. The only real meaning of the word "nature", especially in scientific thought, is: "the way we presently think of reality, in its basic form, the things of which we are so certain and proud that we cannot accept to put them in discussion". So, in the end, any form of "naturalism", methodological or else, is only a form of cognitive bias, nothing else. Not good at all. I definitely prefer the word "reality" and "realism". I am all for methodological, philosophical, you name it, realism. The adherence to what is real is the true, inherent duty of science, indeed of human cognition in all its forms.gpuccio_{October 12, 2014
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Daniel King (#45),
Therefore if one follows science that is practiced by this definition, one will never find evidence for the supernatural.
Indeed, that is a self-imposed limitation of science.
I missed it where it was handed down on golden plates, or thundered from the sky, or even was shown by irrefutable logical inference, that "Science must at all costs adhere to" the rule of methodologcial naturalism. The inflexible adherence to this rule is in fact philosophical naturalism, in which case Isaac Newton was not a scientist, which doesn't make much sense. The inflexible adherence to methodological naturalism is not a "self-imposed limitation of science." It is an imposition made on science by certain scientists, who expect the rest of us to follow. If not, we will be accused of not really being scientists, but wanting "to pose as scientists", because no true ~~Scotsman~~ scientist would not believe in naturalism. What happens if the evidence points the other way? Is there any evidence that could convince you that naturalism was not a complete explanation of the universe, or even that there is evidence for intelligent design, and therefore some kind of a designer for the universe or life? Or are your priors mathematically indistinguishable from zero also?Paul Giem_{October 12, 2014
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kf:
Mung, my take is that as nothing ( non-being, not a relabelled Q-foam) has no causal capability so if nothing ever was, nothing always would be.
But surely nothing must be able to be the cause of something, else nothing would exist. Let's put it another way. Which is more likely, that something which exists is the cause of all else that exists, or that nothing that exists is the cause of all that exists? What are Mark Frank's priors?Mung_{October 12, 2014
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Therefore if one follows science that is practiced by this definition, one will never find evidence for the supernatural.
Indeed, that is a self-imposed limitation of science. Since that does not, in any way, restrict anyone from continuing whatever research he/she cares to conduct along those lines, that would only be a problem if the person wanted to pose as a scientist.Daniel King_{October 12, 2014
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Behold the power of methodological naturalism. Science must at all costs adhere to this rule. And if this rule is followed, no evidence can ever come out of science that supports the supernatural. Therefore if one follows science that is practiced by this definition, one will never find evidence for the supernatural. So when someone points out that the origin of life seems to require intelligence one's response can be, aliens are not very likely as a good explanation, and there is no evidence for the supernatural, and therefore random processes must have done it regardless of how little evidence there is for that possibility. So one is justified in applying methodological naturalism, and the circle is complete. There really is not much point in discussing the likelihood of intelligent design with someone who has decided that no matter what the evidence is, he's not going to believe in the possibility of a God, and he won't even believe in intelligent aliens unless he finds their factory and recognizes it. Lots of people here complain that evolution doesn't predict anything. They are wrong. Quantum mechanics and relativity are only provably accurate to less than 20 decimal places. Darwinian evolution is accurate to gazillions of decimal places. ;)Paul Giem_{October 12, 2014
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Mung, my take is that as nothing ( non-being, not a relabelled Q-foam) has no causal capability so if nothing ever was, nothing always would be. So, there always was something of adequate causal capability for us to be here. That directly implies a necessary and capable being at the root of reality. The debate is really, of what nature. A Cosmos fine tuned for C-Chemistry Aqueous medium cell based protein-using life from the roots of physics on up points to intelligence and purpose. Obviously, a major candidate for that is a Cosmos-creating God, so the attempt to a priori use Bayesianism to set the a priori probability of such arbitrarily low is a worldview level begging of the question. But of course on policy, MF will predictably conveniently take no notice of this unless constrained to do otherwise. KFkairosfocus_{October 11, 2014
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Mark Frank, what is the prior probability of nothing being the cause of all that exists?Mung_{October 10, 2014
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His shadow, Joe. Because it's not material.Axel_{October 9, 2014
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Mark Frank:
I have given a prior for a Christian God that that is not measurably different from zero...
It isn't based on anything but your personal bias. And you cannot give any priors for materialism- what are you afraid of?Joe_{October 9, 2014
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Mark Frank:
One of the more annoying habits of ID proponents on this forum is telling me what my motives are for presenting an argument rather than addressing the argument.
When you present an argument we may address it. Yet since all you appear able to do is flail away at ID with your ignorance we haven't anything to address but that.Joe_{October 9, 2014
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#37 Paul Let's leave my motives out of it.
My point was that you have given a prior for intelligent design that is not measurably different from zero. That is all. If you agree, we understand each other
I have given a prior for a Christian God that that is not measurably different from zero and I hope explained how I came to that conclusion. I am not sure what a prior for intelligent design means. Do you mean a prior for intelligent beings existing somewhere in the universe when life began? That is relatively high but the likelihood of any such form designing life on earth is extremely low.Mark Frank_{October 9, 2014
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Mark Frank (#36), If I have incorrectly attributed motives to you, feel free to state which ones are in error and I will be happy to retract those statements. I thought I was addressing the argument. Again, if you feel otherwise, let me know why and we can discuss that. My point was that you have given a prior for intelligent design that is not measurably different from zero. That is all. If you agree, we understand each other.Paul Giem_{October 8, 2014
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#33 Paul One of the more annoying habits of ID proponents on this forum is telling me what my motives are for presenting an argument rather than addressing the argument.Mark Frank_{October 8, 2014
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Mark Frank mused
Let’s put it more simply. If there is to be some reason for hypothesing an explanation for the origin of life then there has to be some reason for supposing that explanation exists other than it was capable creating life.
That's an interesting question. Let's consider one possibility, Bostrom's simulation hypothesis, the evidence for our living in a large--scale numerical simulation, which some people currently claim is about a 60% probability: http://www.phys.washington.edu/users/savage/Simulation/Universe/ What are the possible rational reasons to go to this much trouble? 1. Amusement 2. Behavioral analysis 3. Historical analysis 4. Filtering or sorting 5. 6. 7. 8. -QQuerius_{October 8, 2014
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Thank you Paul. We can now look forward to the deadpan response. It's always within Mark's capacity to be barren of curiosity.Upright BiPed_{October 8, 2014
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Mark Frank (#28), Thank you for your honesty. You are unwilling to put the Christian God's prior at exactly zero, because that sounds (and is) dogmatic. But you need to make it a very tiny number in order to overcome the high improbability of life arising spontaneously. We can now see what drives your position. I won't argue further. To the rest, Note what is happening. Mark called for a Bayesian analysis. That is appropriate. He noted that the priors are very important. He is right. For him, the priors are doing all the work. What he wanted to do is to say that with low enough priors, one can ignore the evidence against life arising spontaneously. He is right. What he didn't want to come out and say, but has now, is that in order for the final evidence to come out his way (low posterior probability that any intelligence, including the Christian God, some other God or gods, or aliens, produced life), the priors have to be infinitesimal. One can run the Bayesian analysis in reverse. If P(H|E) = P(E|H)*P(H)/P(E), (The final probability of the hypothesis given the evidence is equal to the probability of the evidence happening given the hypothesis, multiplied by the probability of the hypothesis happening before the evidence was looked at, divided by the probability of the evidence happening), that means that P(H) = P(H|E)*P(E)/P(E|H) If we put some numbers to that, P(E), the probability that life exists in a given universe, assuming that God is reasonably likely to create life and that life is improbable in a godless universe, is just about equal to H if H >> (1-H), and thus P(1-H|E) = approximately P(1-H)/PE|H) That means that if the probability of life existing by spontaneous generation is 10^-300, an extremely liberal (large) number, then for the probability of God or aliens to be reasonably remote (say, 1%), and thus the probability for an atheist position being 99%, or effectively 1 - 10^-2, the prior for no intelligent design has to be 1 - 10^-302, and the prior probability of intelligent design has to be 10^-302. That sounds ridiculous, and certainly not a rational position, but that has the weakness that if we discover that the real probability of life arising by chance is 10^-600 instead, the probability of the chance hypothesis now goes down to 10^-298. That is why he didn't want to say the prior probability; he didn't want to explicitly recognize how close-minded one has to be to ignore the evidence surrounding the origin of life. It's much easier to go the Lewontin route. We simply "cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." But that sounds too much like science versus anti-religion. Those of you who point out that there is the small matter of the origin of the universe, make the appropriate point that this assigning an infinitesimal prior probability to the existence of God is not really warranted given the facts. At that point the argument against God goes down in flames. The same is true for those of us who have experienced God's action in our lives. But even without them the argument from the existence of life alone can only be countered by multiple universes where anything goes, denial of the improbability of life, appeal to unknown laws, or obfuscation. Mark has thankfully removed the fourth option.Paul Giem_{October 8, 2014
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@Thomas2 #31 Yeah, that's part of what I was getting at in comment 17. I'm also waiting for an answer to that.HeKS_{October 8, 2014
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Mark Frank (#28) - From a strictly agnostic point of view, why would you not consider that the classical empirically based cosmological arguments for causation would not provide an evidential basis for non-zero priors?Thomas2_{October 8, 2014
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It is very telling that Mark Frank is too afraid to post the prior probabilities for materialism and evolutionism. I say it is because there isn't any evidence for any prior probabilities for such a nonsensical position...Joe_{October 8, 2014
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Because I see zero evidence for it.
Mark, you simply accept zero evidence for design in nature. It is not that coherent evidence is not there, and it is not that you are unaware of it. You simply choose to deny it, and have stated so.Upright BiPed_{October 7, 2014
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OK. In response to the request from VB and Heks a quick word on Bayesian priors for an intelligent source of life. I have done this several times before so please understand if I don't spend much time on it. You need to be clear what the proposed explanation is. If it is the Christian God then some of you will clearly have a much higher prior than I do. So it is reasonable for you to belief in it as an explanation for life. You just need to recognise that is the explanation for which you have evidence. If the explanation is "intelligence" then on theory you need to sum up the prior probabaility of all possible intelligences multiplied by the probability of that intelligence creating life - a profoundly meaningless exercise. Why is my prior for a Christian God effectively zero? Because I see zero evidence for it. What is the probability of something existing for which there is no evidence? I would say that it is effectively zero given the infinite range of things that might exist but for which there is no evidence. By effectively zero I mean that rationally it should be discounted as a possibility and that it is lower than any number you can give - although it is conceivable so I am reluctant to say categorically it is zero. But this is undergraduate or even high school philosophising. Let's put it more simply. If there is to be some reason for hypothesing an explanation for the origin of life then there has to be some reason for supposing that explanation exists other than it was capable creating life.Mark Frank_{October 7, 2014
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mahuna (#3) - it is not the case that "the first [or any] assumption of ID is that some unknown external agency stacked the deck". ID just doesn't rule it out before doing the science. Current evolutionary scientists do: that is, they have decided in advance what science may or may not discover before doing the science: which is why current evolutionary science isn't science at all. Secondly, the fact that nature operates reliably and almost exclusively in accord with identifiable laws has, since the beginning of modern science, often been taken as evidence for God: His actions are perceived in His consistent regular sustaining of the universe when we might otherwise expect utter disorder and chaos, or nothing, (or everything).Thomas2_{October 6, 2014
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My head's exploding well and truly, now, Barry.Axel_{October 6, 2014
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Mark Frank (#9) - wouldn't the classical empirically-based cosmological arguments from causation give us a basis for assigning some cautious but reasonable priors? (Alternatively we could conceive of assigning priors based upon our ignorance: to everything we do not know we assign an equal likelihood to start with).Thomas2_{October 6, 2014
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"When Billy Bean conceived his idea of ‘building a machine to see what it would do" On this side of the pond we had a famous Speaker of the House who urged us to pass a law so that we could find out what was in it. And they did.Barry Arrington_{October 6, 2014
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Joe and Axel (#19-22), Don't let Guillermoe (#18) distract the thread. We are on Bayesian analysis, and Mark Frank is giving us his prior for the existence of God or gods or aliens. Guillermoe can join, but don't follow every red herring he drags across our pathway. What are Guillermoe's priors? This is the key to acceptance or rejection of ID. (It's science versus antireligion)Paul Giem_{October 6, 2014
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