ID maintains that contingent design does not emerge from matter via the chance and necessity as limited by materialism—it is imposed from the outside.

So what has the power to impose it? A chance and necessity machine?

I would suggest that ID does not want to derive agency from the machinery of another genre of “stuff”. Rather we’re talking elementarity. Design is imposed in our world by agency and agency issues from something ultimately elemental. Until we have a theory for how agency emerges from mechanism, “emergence” is simply hand waving. See Angus Menuge’s Agents Under Fire.

#34: “For example, one could begin, as Dewey or Whitehead do, with a concept of process, i.e. a continuum. “Mind” and “matter” would then be labels attached to different aspects of process. Or one could begin, as Merleau-Ponty does, with a concept of “the lived body” and show how both pure physicality/materiality and pure mentality/intellectuality are misleading distortions.”

One can think in many different ways. Personally, I am for a comtinuum between mind and matter, but that definitely arises a lot of questions which cannot, absolutely, be solved from a traditional, materialist point of view.
The fact is that scientific knowledge is not yet available to solve these points, ando so paraklete may well be right in thinking that “From what we know of matter, it is just plain old mindless “stuff” that follows natural laws. Mind is clearly very different.”, or I may be right in thinking that mind and matter are in some way a continuum. We just don’t know, not yet. But that doesn’t mean that these issues cannot be approached, at least in part, scientifically, as our knowledge and understanding develops.

The problem is, current scientism “is” a theory of everything, and it is definitely false. We have to realize that, if we want to go on, and if we really want scientific understanding to grow. True science has never been an acuumulation of technical details, as most conventional science today has become. True science is about new questions, new visions, new paradigms. True science is visionary, and vastly unpredictable.

There are a lot of observable things which scientism cannot even begin to explain, and they are not things beyond human evaluation, and beyond reasonable understanding, at least in part. One of them is consciousness. The current view that consciousness is a byproduct, or an emergent property, or call it as you like, of a ,aterial aggregation of atoms and neurons is frankly ridiculous. Everybody seems to forget two fundamental things:

1) The first has been wonderfully stated by paraklete in post #26, and I paste it here because I cannot express it more clearly:
“Second, how can a complex configuration of matter produce a singular, unfied center of consciousness – the “I”? Where is the “I” located? What unifies all the mental activity, if all we have to work with is matter? How come when large portions of the brain are removed – even more than half the brain – the “I” is still there, unaffected?”

This is perhaps the strongest argument against any theory of consciousness as an emergent property of a physical aggregation. The characteristic property of consciousness, as all of us experience it, is unification of a range of modification under a singularity, which we call the “subject”. The “subject-object” distinction is essential in describing any conscious phenomenon. I maintain that thjere is nothing, in any AI theory, which even begins to explain the existence of a “subject”. The most recent attempt, Hofstadter’s “strange loop”, is as ridiculous as any other. No software can become conscious because of an increase in its complexity, no more than a mathematical formula can be thought as conscious if it becomes long enough. No aggregation of parts can generate the singularity of a subjective I, no matter how complex, or parallel, or looping, or what else, its circuits may be. The strange property of consciousness is its simplicity: it reduces infinite complexitites to a single reality, the perceiver. That’s wht Dawkinn’s, and others’, objection, that complex design must come from a more complex designer, is simply stupid. Design is the product of only one kind of stuff: consciousness. And consciousness, in its essence, is simple, although it can manage, objectually, infinite complexities.

2) In a global cognitive attitude, and if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit a fundamental truth: in our experience, consciousness , a fact which comes before any other fact. We observe and experience consciousness “before” we can experience anything else. And we experience anything else “in” consciousness and “through” consciousness. That’s why, until proven differently, consciousness as a stronger right to be considered essentially existing than matter itself.

I understand that many may think that the proof of objectivity of matter over consciousness has been reached, but I am afraid that it isn’t true. At least they should try to honestly ask themselves how much we really understand of matter, starting with quantum mechanics up to mathematical laws and the reason for their existence, and up to astrophysics with its trivial problems like dark matter and dark energy. And that without even arriving at considering life and its many mysteries.
Consciousness, on the other end, is everywhere, is experienced by all, and explained by no one.
So, I do believe that there must be some continuum between consciousness, mind and matter, but what kind of continuum can it be, and what are the laws which can, at least partially, describe it? I don’t think the answer is easy, but it is, at least in part, scientifically approachable.

Why? Because, whatever you think is the cause for consciousness (a force, a soul, a transcendent principle, a new kind of thing undefinable with current parameters, or just a final mystery), it will always be true that, in some way, consciousness “does” interact with matter (whatever matter may be). “Perception” and “action” are two simple words, easily and intuitively understood by anybody, which very simply scream that fact.
Modern neurologists, who proudly affirm that they can map this and that in this or that region of the brain, and therefore think that they have demonstrated somethin (or, more probably, everything) about the problem of the soul, or rather of the non-existing soul, are merely, and rather boringly, revisiting a very simple truth which all of us have always known perfectly: if I burn my hand, I feel sensation and pain; if I decide to move my hand, it moves. It is just that simple: matter and consciousness interact, in both directions. Mapping the burning at the hand or at the brain doesn’t change anything. The probelm is the same: what is consciousness, and how does it relate to the body, be it a hand or a brain region?

That’s the way scientism blinds us: we get some more knowledge (really admirable in itself) of technical details, and we immediately think we have solved the fundamentals. We map pain or emotions to the activity of some neurons, and we immediately affirm, and write on the newspapers, that we have found the truth about the soul. We extract bacterial chromosomes from one bacterium, mix them with living bacteria of a very similar species, observe a very rare recombination (completely spontaneous, and totally unexplained in its dynamics), or rather the usual horizontal transfer, only of a bigger “item” of DNA, and immediately we write that we have realized a “genome transplantation”, and that we are on our way to a synthetic (???) life. Or we copy a bacterial genome utilizing oligonucleotides and a biologic technology similar to PCR (a technique which has been in use for years), cutting out some parts of it, and immediately declare to an important newspaper that we are on our way to synthesizing a new form of life (before even having completed, much less published, our own experiment).

Please, don’t misunderstand me. In all these examples, the scientific achievements of the researchers are wonderful, and deeply interesting. It is wonderful to map specific neurological activities to some parts of the brain. But that has no relevance to the problem of what consciousness is. It is wonderful to achieve the horizontal transfer of a whole bacterial genome. But that is not a “genome transplantation”. And so on. In each case, it is not the research which is wrong, nor the results. The problem is with the interpretation. The problem is, as always, with ideology, and the desire to support, at any cost, a predetermined philosophy of reality.

The answer to your question may be answered by GFFA

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”

The naturalistic approach is that the ecologies evolved as different organisms adapted to the various niches they found and the resources of the niche determined the quantity and success of the various organisms. This is a plausible explanation and I believe it has happened time and time again and this is what Darwin observed as he transnavigated the world on the Beagle.

But what allows organism to adapt. It is that they have built in variation that allows them to adapt using typical NDE explanations. However, what NDE does not explain is how the variations arose in the first place and were conserved. This is contrary to NDE theory which knocks out variation over time in the various genes and does not develop variation for unforseen niches or environmental changes.

And if NDE is going to claim it can explain the variation then why doesn’t it go further and say that every organism should be continually getting more fit. Eventually one or two will start eliminating the rest of the ecology till all of a sudden the organisms that are most successful because they became the most fit will die out because they will destroy all the necessary resources for them to succeed. After all there should be no limit on how fit an organism gets according to NDE. It is a Malthusian jungle that is out that is propelling each organism to selfishly preserve its genes and to constantly improve itself for success. After all it is blind to the future so an organism cannot forsee that the process of getter fitter may actually destroy itself. Man is the only organism that has that capability.

In other words there is a design limitation built into each genome that limits how far an organism can go. So one of the design questions is how is a throttle on variation controlled in the genome. It would definitely not be an NDE question because NDE by definition would have to say it is not there because no organism except humans can forsee the future and what may be needed.

It is my position that logic, math, and empirical observation warrant a design inference with regard to the machinery of life.

I would be more than happy to extend this to an inference to an identifiable designer or designers. The farthest I have been able to go in this regard is to say that the designer(s) must have some well developed but perfectly material skills in biochemistry in order to have accomplished the design. Beyond that I have nothing further in the way of logic, math, or empirical evidence to further characterize the designer(s).

I believe you know this. If you don’t you’re not as bright as I thought you were and if you do know it then it appears you’re just baiting people into talking about their religious beliefs to bolster the Church Burnin’ Ebola Boy belief that ID is religion in disguise.

Stop it now unless you want to lose your commenting privileges here. I have little patience for either stupidity or disingenuousness from ID detractors.

ID answers the design question. It doesn’t purport to be a universal theory of everything. ID doesn’t have to identify the designer. It seeks to determine if design took place. It is possible to detect design independently of establishing the identity of the designer, is it not?

Imagine that you’re examining artifacts from a Martian expedition. You discover what looks to be a hammer with an iron head and the remnants of a wooden handle. Dating tests determine that it’s between 3,000 and 5,000 years old. No other traces of a Martian civilization have found to date. Can you establish that it was designed when you cannot identify the designer? Must identifying the designer precede or be in parallel to establishing intelligent agency was involved with the hammer? What principles do we use to determine that the hammer is designed? How do we know it is designed?

Bob

thank you for your many stimulating insights. I feel compelled to comment on some of them:

#22: “Since ID as a science can tell us that something was designed, but cannot tell us by whom, or for what purpose, it strikes me that talking about ‘design’ is also talking about “something magical happening without having to explain it or how it happened.””

This is a very important point, which IMO is often misunderstood. ID is not a global theory of everything, either in science or in any other field of thought. Not everynthing begins and ends with ID. In a sense, ID is a minimalist scientific approach to a very important point, that is the presence of design in observable entities, which has been irrationally denied and obfuscated by decades of very bad scientific thought.
When we say that ID is only interested in design inference, and not in other problems like, for instance, the identity of the designer, we are not in any way affirming “a priori” that those other problems cannot be treated scientifically. We are just saying that the ID theory is not attempting that, just as we could correctly say that Einstein’s restricted relativity theory does not address the problem of gravity, while his general relativity theory does. No scientific theory is a theory of everything, and ID is no exception.

I would like to insist on this point, answering also Bob O’H's question to Apollos: “Just out of curiosity, what are the mandatory follow-up questions to the design inference?”

No one can list “all” the possible questions which will arise when (not “if”) the design inference is accepted, at last, by the majority os the scientific community. They will arise naturally, as it always happens when a new scientific paradigm afiirms itself. The important thing is that they will be “scientific” questions, which will be approached in scientific ways, and will obviously have important consequences on the philosophy of science, on philosophy in general, and on religion, as always happens with important scientific results.
But, just not to give the impression that I am speaking of vague and abstract concepts, I will try to list some possible aspects of problems which will have to be scientifically addressed in a ID scenario:

1) What kind of design are we observing in living beings? Is it inspired to the same principles, or can it be interpreted as different kinds of design interacting?

2) What is the relation between design in the inorganic world (universal constants, etc.) and the kind of design we observe in the living world?

3) Are the undeniable apparent imperfections in organic design due to objective constraints, to imperfect design, to different designs interacting, or to something else?

4) When was design added to inorganic matter (OOL) and then to existing organic entities (evolution)?

5) How is design added? Gradually, or in different acute events? Or is it front-loaded, and in that case when and how?

6) What is the relationship between human design and the design we observe in living things? Can we completely understand organic design? Are we imitating it, reproducing it? Can we manipulate it? Can we learn from it, not only at a technological level, but also at an abstract level?

7) What is the relation between design and life? What is life?

What is the relation between design and consciousness? What is consciousness?

9) Last, but not least: Are the laws of nature as we understand them today complete, at least in principle? Or are new laws, new paradigms, necessary to scientifically explain what we observe in the inorganic and organic universe, not only in biology, but in physics, astronomy, etc? Will these new paradigms allow a better understanding of intelligence, meaning, design, life, consciousness?

So, you see, ID is not a science stopper. In the contrary, it is a science redeemer. It redeems science from the trap of materialistic arrogance, from the completely arbitrary conviction, so widespread today, that a reductionist approach to reality can explain everything, that it has alredy succeeded in that.

So, no space for magic in ID. Design inference is a very practical and sound approach to reality, which can help us get rid of a false general theory of everything, and open new scenarios to scientific research.

The only reason for the minimalistic approach of ID (just the design inference) is that a design inference “can” absolutely already be affirmed with the facts we already know, and darwinism can in the same way be alredy falsified. The other questions I listed, instead, are not yet answerable in scientific terms, and need further inquiry.

(Enough for now. I’ll come back with some more comments later)

I think you might be going a bit far from “the bacterial flagellum was designed” to “Why am I here?”

Certainly they are two ends of a spectrum, but there is a cascade of implications from one to another. You can’t conclude (or infer) intelligent design in the flagellum without it immediately raising questions directly related to your own existence. This is the main reason for militant resistance to design concepts among materialists.

I’m not aware, though, of any of the ID illuminaries asking them. Can you (or someone else) point me to where they do this?

It’s not the purview of ID to concern itself with theological or philosophical implications of a design inference. While the inference might open the door to all sorts of questions and observations, ID concerns itself specifically with design detection, whether biological or otherwise.

I found an arrowhead. Is it merely a rock, or was it designed for a purpose? How do I tell, if I know nothing of arrowheads to begin with? Must I understand the source of the arrowhead and the identity of the designer before I can determine it was made for a purpose?

If I understand you, then we agree that only humans are capable of true self-awareness or self-denial; and the observations of human civilization as well as organic biology indicates intelligence, top to bottom.