You have said:

“Nobody proposed “that we can account for complexity by a mechanism that ignores information”. In fact, I said that in keeping with an extended definition of nature properly incorporating the information concept, the natural mechanisms required by ID must account for the production and transfer of novel phenotypic information.”

I didn’t say anyone in this discussion proposed it, but evolutionists certainly do. I agree that genotypic information must account for phenotypic correlations, but mutations (which are usually degenerative) mar the genetic text, they are “a product of entropy in the genetic endowment.” If not for redundancies within the genome, sex, and the interchangability of amino acids, mutations would have destroyed all genetic text (information).

“Regarding the EF: once again, the EF is an inferential mechanism which either does or does not map to nature. If it does, then its inferential mechanisms reflect natural mechanisms; if it doesn’t, then it’s a scientific no-go. Similarly, either we can show how intelligence produces IC and SC, or we can’t. If we can, then we have mechanisms of production; if we can’t, then we have no constructive relationship at all, and in that case, we can’t exchange our biology-engineering correlations for scientific explanations regarding the generation and embodiment of novel phenotypic information.”

Agreed. The modus operandi would definitely be a major factor for ID to succeed. I do, however, qualify ID as scientific, and more so than neo-Darwinism, at least.

“Some people may be terminally satisfied with an ID theory based entirely on problematical statistical correlations. If that’s what floats your boat, then ID is already right where you want to be. But many others aren’t so easily satisfied, and some of them are determined to prevent IDT from ever being recognized as a part of science. I merely submit that if we don’t want them to succeed, we should take care not to arbitrarily limit its explanatory power.”

Agreed.

Regarding the EF: once again, the EF is an inferential mechanism which either does or does not map to nature. If it does, then its inferential mechanisms reflect natural mechanisms; if it doesn’t, then it’s a scientific no-go. Similarly, either we can show how intelligence produces IC and SC, or we can’t. If we can, then we have mechanisms of production; if we can’t, then we have no constructive relationship at all, and in that case, we can’t exchange our biology-engineering correlations for scientific explanations regarding the generation and embodiment of novel phenotypic information.

Some people may be terminally satisfied with an ID theory based entirely on problematical statistical correlations. If that’s what floats your boat, then ID is already right where you want to be. But many others aren’t so easily satisfied, and some of them are determined to prevent IDT from ever being recognized as a part of science. I merely submit that if we don’t want them to succeed, we should take care not to arbitrarily limit its explanatory power.

I believe the explanatory filter fulfills the formal cause and final cause. The three-part criterion of a design inference is an eliminative process by which only final causes can be deduced. It may not be as straight-forward as you’d like it to be, but one can certainly draw a causal inference from it. ID seperates material causes from formal ones due to the information-rich structures we find in biology. In other words, information precedes the outcome (i.e. genome=species) So, to assume that we can account for complexity by a mechanism that ignores “information,” is absurd. That is what evolutionary theorists do. By proposing that natural selection (a conseving mechanism) is responsible for information, they facilitate evolutionary scenarios. The design inference takes information seriously, and recognizes that information is a product of intelligent causes, as opposed to blind ones. So, in a sort of ambiguous way, ID gives a final cause in that it shows specified complexity to be a product of intelligence, and deriving only from intelligence. This is especially true since evolution and entropy are synonymous.

No, what I mean is that ID must provide an overall explanatory framework in which the four (Aristotelian) modes of causation are naturally related to each other.

It is not enough for ID to lament the explanatory inadequacy of material and efficient causation with respect to natural phenomena, and use that as a pretext to introduce two more independent forms of causation to science. As we’ve already seen, mainstream science simply isn’t having any of that, and for what it considers to be very good reasons. Rather, ID must show how formal and final causation can work synergistically with material and efficient causation to produce better explanations with full causal integration. These synergistic connections among the causal modes would amount to a new level of “causal mechanism”, by the explicit incorporation of which ID would become a “mechanistic theory”.

If this is not a live possibility, then ID has little chance of being generally recognized as science. On the other hand, if and when such a mechanistic theory is revealed, it remains to be seen whether various participants in the ID movement will accept whatever theological implications it might turn out to have.

ID establishes intelligent agency by demonstrating that a formal cause, in addition to efficient causes, is necessary to account for certain objects. “Specified complexity” is a way of ascertaining the presence of a formal cause and its content. It’s not merely the detection of an absence of constraint, but the positive detection of an intelligible principle at work.

Now if the belief is that formal causes are merely an illusion and that they can and must be ultimately explained in terms of efficient causes to be “real science”, then ID is as bankrupt as its critics say it is. It’s just a god-of-the-gaps argument that posits an empty “intelligence” that is in actual fact a mere a placeholder for the efficient causes we have not yet discovered.

But I think the point of ID is, in fact, to demonstrate that objects exist in the universe that require a formal causation that is non-reducible to efficient causation.
If it succeeds merely in doing this, ID will have proven to be of revolutionary significance because it will have broken the ban on formal and final causation. In this sense, I think ID has a very bright future.

neurode said: “Unfortunately, this alone tells us nothing of a constructive nature about how it did arise, and science demands that we pursue this level of explanation. ”

In terms of a science restricted to efficient causes, I agree. But not for a science that recognizes formal causes. Formal causes tell us a great deal about how things arise. The formal causes of dam-building are the principles of civil engineering, and a knowledge of civil engineering will certainly help us understand why dams are built the way they are. The future of ID with respect to biology is to pursue the principles of “biological engineering”, that is, to discover the intelligible principles that serve as the formal causes of biological systems. Actually, this is what most biologists are doing anyway, although they don’t call it that, because they are forbidden to speak in the language of formal causation. Instead, they have to pay lip service to a mythical train of efficient (evolutionary) causes.

“However, absent an actual linkage between the attributes (IC, SC) and the property (”intelligence”), it remains nothing more than a suggestive correlation. ”

The linkage is there in terms of formal causation. If the demand is that the linkage be established in terms of efficient causation only, it can’t happen by the very nature of things, since intelligence is distinguished by the formal rather than the efficient nature of its effects. In that sense, I do think the scientific future of ID is dim.

As I’ve already observed, in the search for signs of intelligence in nature, one cannot simply look for an absence of constraint. Where constraint is identical to information, an absence of constraint equals an absence of information. On the other hand, if we don’t see constraint where we ordinarily expect to find it, then we have what might be loosely described as a piece of “information” to the effect that what we’re looking at did not arise by the usual means. Unfortunately, this alone tells us nothing of a constructive nature about how it did arise, and science demands that we pursue this level of explanation.

ID has made a start in that direction by attempting to correlate certain products of nature with the products of human invention using attributes which are tentatively linked with a nebulous property called “intelligence”. This qualifies as inspired detective work. However, absent an actual linkage between the attributes (IC, SC) and the property (“intelligence”), it remains nothing more than a suggestive correlation.

ID can be called “science” in the sense that correlations can be scientifically useful; they are the raw material from which causal relationships are abstracted. But to qualify as science in the full explanatory sense, the correlation must be refined to a causal explanation. This is the challenge facing ID, and as I’m sure we can all agree, the last thing that ID can afford to do at this point is rest on its hotly disputed laurels.

It looks like I can be counted as one of those who do not think that ID has scientific content in the conventional sense.

I don’t think intelligence is unconstrained and has no definitive characteristics. In fact, it is the characteristics that intelligence definitely has that makes me doubt whether a science of intelligence in the conventional sense is possible.

Intelligence is the faculty of knowing. This faculty may be constrained in various ways. Human intelligence, for example, is constrained insofar as it is an embodied intelligence. Far from doing whatever it wants, whenever and whereever it wants, human intelligence is constrained to act through the body of which it is the form. Are there other embodied intelligences in the universe, and might there be unembodied intelligences? I don’t know. One thing we do know, if intelligence was involved in the development of life, it wasn’t human intelligence, so I’m not sure it would be reasonable to apply the constraints of human intelligence to the question of biological origins.

Science is in a peculiar position with respect to intelligence because science itself is an act of the faculty of knowing. Science is the faculty of knowing achieving a knowledge of causes. Intelligence may then use that knowledge to manipulate nature to its own ends. This reveals one of the constraints of intelligence: Intelligence is constrained to applying only those causes of which it has knowledge. A beaver has no knowledge of causes and is therefore constrained to build dams by instinct. Primitive man has a primitive knowledge of natural causes and can make dams out of sticks and, maybe, rocks. Modern man, with a deeper knowledge of causes, can make dams out of earth, concrete and steel, among other things, and for a variety of purposes including hydroelectric power and irrigation. There may be other intelligences in the universe, or beyond it, which have a knowledge of causes deeper than our own and are unconstrained in ways we cannot imagine. For us to develop a science about how intelligence is constrained to interact with the material universe, we would have to assume that there can’t be an intelligence in existence with a deeper knowledge of causes than our own. ID already hints that this is false, since it suggests that intelligence was involved in the origin and development of life in a manner transcending our current knowledge, since scientists are unable to create life themselves in the lab.

Dave T.

Not at all. The issue here is one of scientific content, and it is easy to state precisely: inferential processes and attributes which fail to map to their natural domains of discourse do not constitute scientific fact, even when this failure attends a deliberate negation of natural mechanisms couched as a form of “transcendence”.

In particular, to assert that ID is a transcendent, nonmechanistic theory whose inferential processes cannot be mapped to nature is to assert that it is supernatural and therefore unscientific in the conventional sense. Thus, even if ID qualifies as “truth” under that assertion, it does not qualify as “scientific truth”. (That’s why IDT proponents can’t afford to let it be considered a transcendent, nonmechanistic theory.)

On the other hand, regardless of one’s particular view of IDT, its basic ideas are conceptually useful even at this early stage of the game, and therefore possess scientific relevance on grounds of instrumentality.

Nowhere have truth and practicality been conflated in the scientific context. Instead, scientific truth and scientific relevance have been properly distinguished.

You’re conflating value and practical application. Scientific truth has value regardless of whether or not there’s practical application for it.

But I won’t argue that value rises in direct proportion to near-term practicality.

Thus the knowledge represented in discovering a cure for cancer is more valuable than discovering whether the universe is open, closed, or flat. The former has immediate practical value and the latter has no practical value ever.