Frustration
| May 15, 2008 | Posted by GilDodgen under Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science |
In this essay Richard Dawkins proposes the following:
In fact, natural selection is the very opposite of a chance process, and it is the only ultimate explanation we know for complex, improbable things… We need a better explanation [than design by space aliens], such as evolution by natural selection or an equally workable account of the painstaking R&D that must underlie complex, statistically improbable things.
An equally workable account? An “ultimate explanation”? R&D? R&D is research and development. R&D is design. The logic and terminology of design is inescapable, even by those who deny that design exists.
Richard Dawkins is certainly not a stupid person, but I find it amazing that he cannot see the obvious problem here. Natural selection is not random, but it does not create anything; it only throws stuff out.
The F-35 fighter aircraft (for which our company is designing a new pilot ejection parachute), did not come about by throwing out the Wright Flyer biplane, and then throwing out the Piper Cub, and then throwing out the F-16. The impotence of natural selection as a creative force is transparently and logically evident.
Dawkins:
[It is proposed that] He [God] was always there and always complex. But if you are going to resort to that facile cop-out, you might as well say flagellar motors were always there.
But flagellar motors were demonstrably not always there.
The who-designed-the-designer question is nonsensical when one considers that time had a beginning. This is also transparently and logically evident.
The physical universe (matter, energy, space, and time) came into existence at a finite point. Dawkins must surely admit this. Whatever caused the physical universe did/does not exist in time, because time did not exist. Therefore, the cause of the universe has no past and has no history. That which does not have a past or a history has no point of origin, and thus no designer or originator. The infinite regress logically stops at the origin of the time domain, which is well established by modern science.
None of what I’ve written here is hard to understand. In fact, it’s logically trivial. How the “Professor of the Public Understanding of Science” could have missed these obvious points astounds me.
Is my frustration understandable?
See here for an insightful rebuttal of Dawkins’ logic and argumentation.
38 Responses to Frustration
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JT(#13): “So the point is, if what humans are and do can be explicated purely in terms of a physical mechanism, then why can’t whatever created us have been a physical mechanism.
Come on. For this big “if” to be considered plausible the truth of reductionist materialism and mind=physical brain neuroscience theories must be blandly assumed, thus it is a classic example of assuming an important factor of what is actually in debate.
“To say what humans do is not purely a mechanism, is a religious position, and not even one that I think the Bible espouses.”
It is not a religious position, it is empirical based on observation and experience. To say what humans do is purely a mechanism is a huge assumption, ignoring among other things the mystery of human creativity and the phenomena of parapsychology. Of course to the materialist it’s just a matter of time for an explanation (promissory materialism), or the evidence really doesn’t exist.
“If humans design via some non-mechanistic (i.e. supernatural) “agency” capability (whatever that is) then it might be reasonable to assume that this supernatural agency existed elsewhere previously and accounted for our own agency capability. But there is no proof that we are such agency, nor is it common sense to assume that we are.”
Here we go again. This assumes it is reasonable to simply assume that the human mind must be ultimately material mechanism, ignoring all the evidence. The example previously offered was of a computer design program coming up with a solution, based purely(?) on mechanism. But you can’t get around the unfortunate fact of the need for the creativity and insight of the programmer.
Gpuccio, in that paper you provided (Abel and Trevors’“Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information”) the author discusses all the incredibly complex things a cell does and emphasizes that its only the appearance of choice, and actually how its behavior determined by a complex program. He talks about FST being the output of algorithms. He says the genes are literally a program. So obviously programs do very complex things. He himself characterizes the algorithms in biology as “necessity”. The author himself is somewhat confused because he will intermittantly shift directions entirely and say the program itself could only be generated by something making “uncoerced” choice, even though he’s shown repeatedly how programs (i.e. “necessity”) can accomplish very complex things. So all in all, its muddled thinking, obfuscated by a torrent of arcane verbiage intended to bolster an implicit argument from incredulity.
But anyway, you have a complex program producing a human being (via epigenesis and so forth). Why couldn’t human behavior itself be detgermined a program. And if it not, what is it then? Well, its magic according to ID, or to use their synonym, “agency”. But to go in the opposite direction, since a complex physical mechanism (genes, epigenesis, so forth) creates a human being, why couldn’t there be a physical program implicit in the universe itself that originated biological life? It would be in a different form than DNA, and what its form would be is hard to determine at this point, but to look out at the complex gargantuan universe of energy out there and say that it cannot possibly be a program for us defies credulity (to use my own argument of incredulity for the moment.) That is, if something as comparitively simple as a human brain drives human behavior (and it does.)
Of course if you keep tracing stuff backwards, you’ll hit an incredibly unlikely set of initial conditions in the universe that is responsible for our existence. If you want to label the cause of that as supernatural “agency”, go right ahead. But its outside the realm of science, and it doesn’t mean that humans operate on a day to basis via supernatural magic (which is what “agency” is). Just take humans out of the picture, since you think they operate via magic. If all you had was a world of insects, could you see such a world as product of physical mechanisms in the unverse (or maybe you think insects have non-physical free will too.)
I did read the entire article, and the other posts in this thread, and had intended to right a more thorough response here, with a lot of quotes from the paper you mentioned, etc. However, the fact is I’m facing some difficulties that are preoccupying me somewhat, so I’m conflicted about how much time I shoud be spending here. In fact, I would definitely ask for prayer from anyone who would care to.
Regards.
I will add the following – if you read God’s own accounts of creation in Job 38, he characterizes his direction over elemental physical forces in a lot of metaphoric detail. However, There is not any detail at all or any specific description of how animal and biological life was created. Furthermore, inanimate objects are personifed repeatedly in scripture, and you can dismiss this as pointless metaphors if you want, or see some deeper truth conveyed here – that the entire universe and its elemental physical forces are “alive” and by that I don’t mean they have immaterial souls anymore than an amoeba does (which BTW is also alive).
(Psa 98:7-8) Let the sea roar and all it contains, The world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, Let the mountains sing together for joy
(Job 38:7) …When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy…
(Isa 55:12) …The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, And all the trees of the field will clap hands.
(Luke 19:39-40) Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!”
(Gen 1:24) Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so
Pax.
Some hasty adddendums are necessary here. I had said the author himself characterized the algorithms of biology as “necessity”. I went back to look for that quote and couldn’t find it. The following may have been what I had in mind:
Algorithms are processes or procedures that produce a needed result, whether it is computation or the end-products of biochemical pathways. Such strings of decision-node selections are anything but random. And they are not “self-ordered” by redundant cause-and-effect necessity.
So first he says algorithms produce a “needed” result, and I guess I was thinking of ‘needed’ as a virtual synonym for “necessary”. Its all the more confusing because the word “necessity” is in the same sentence but its to assert that algorithms are not “cause and effect necessity.” What an algortithm is other than complex causes producing a necessary effect (or a “needed” effect to uses the author’s words), I don’t know. But its emblemattic of the sort of ambiguity thats rampant in this paper.
Here’s some of his quotes:
“Other complex structures are the product of digital recipe (e.g., antibodies, signal recognition particles, transport proteins, hormones). Recipe specifies algorithmic function. Recipes are like programming instructions. They are strings of prescribed decision-node configurable switch-settings. If executed properly, they become like bug-free computer programs running in quality operating systems on fully operational hardware. The cell appears to be making its own choices. Ultimately, everything the cell does is programmed by its hardware, operating system, and software. Its responses to environmental stimuli seem free. But they are merely pre-programmed degrees of operational freedom.”
“The digital world has heightened our realization that virtually all information, including descriptions of four-dimensional reality, can be reduced to a linear digital sequence. Most attempts to understand intuitive information center around description and knowledge [41,63-67]. Human epistemology and agency invariably get incorporated into any model of semantics…”
“FSC is a succession of algorithmic selections leading to function. Selection, specification, or signification of certain “choices” in FSC sequences results only from nonrandom selection. These selections at successive decision nodes cannot be forced by deterministic cause-and-effect necessity. If they were, nearly all decision-node selections would be the same” [The last part is erroneous. Cause and effect is contingent on environmental external conditions as well and these external conditions causes differing results.]
“Genes are not analogous to messages; genes are messages. Genes are literal programs.”
“However, DNA programming instructions may be stored in nature (e.g., in permafrost, bones, fossils, amber) for hundreds to millions of years and be recovered, amplified by the polymerase chain reaction and still act as functional code”
JT:
Re your:
First, I have read the T & A FSC, RSC, OSC [peer-reviewed] paper with great interest and do not at all find it ambiguous or hard to understand. (It says things that cut straight across the ideas of those who would imagine that the functionally organised complexity of cell-based life could originate by chance + necessity acting on matter + energy, but that is a very different thing.)
Here is the T & A abstract:
On the strength of your remarks above though, I think some notes on points may be helpful:
1 –> In our direct observation and experience, a program requires an underlying algorithm, codes and language, to set up a process that step by step executes a procedure to solve a problem or achieve a result.
2 –> Such is therefore a matter of high contingency — not a natural regularity — and thus is either chance or intelligent action. [Just as that a heavy object falls is a natural regularity, that if it is a die it ends up with a particular face uppermost is chance and/or agency; dice -- notoriously -- can be loaded. Similarly the orderly pattern of ions in a crystal of Na Cl reflect the strong forces at work, but through the high ordering preclude information storage by coded patterns of the Na+ and Cl- ions.]
3 –> In our further direct observation, programs are functionally specified and complex, being invariably the result of an intelligent actor; hence the “no empirical evidence” in the abstract. This is further supported by the scope of the configuration space that is required to implement any program long enough to do really interesting things, thence the isolation of islands of function in the space. [GA's predictably won't work if we expand the space to the equivalent of say 300 - 500,000 contatenated 4-state elements.]
4 –> E.g. look under the hood of your friendly neighbourhood PC: programs indeed are not physical, mechanical necessity. Nor — pace many rumours on how Microsoft wrote Vista — are they a matter of a million monkeys banging away at keyboards over in Redmond. Programmers use intelligence, knowledge and skill to target and control particular steps to achieve results based on understanding of materials, forces and structures used [in this case the PC's design and the Intel/ AMD microprocessor, which in turn rest on the underlying solid state etc physics and are designed structures], not chance collocations of matter and energy acted on by blind physical forces. Sand is natural, microprocessors and microcontrollers are not.
5 –> So, invariably, when one sees a cybernetic system of known origin, we see that highly skilled designers have made the components and have created the programs and structures that control how they act to achieve the goals. FSC is reliably the product of intelligence, per our empirical observation. So, per induction, FSC is a reliable sign of intelligence.
6 –> In the cell, we have a functionally specified, information-rich complexly organised, algorithmic system, one far beyond the complexity of what we can do to date over in Redmond — on the testimony of one certain William Gates. We know that the search space of the observed cosmos is utterly insufficient to get to such colocations and coordinated function or even to the DNA codes [500 kbases and up ~ 9.91*10^301029 config space states] by chance + necessity per known laws of molecular behaviour. Laws that are very well tested and reliable thank you.
7 –> The proposition that such a system could spontaneously organise itself by chance and/or mechanical necessity on the gamut of the universe is therefore of very little credibility, and this is the root of the utter breakdown of evolutionary materialist OOL research in our time. [Cf Sections A and B and Appendix 1 the always linked.]
In short T & A are precisely correct to say that to get the needed functionality for life [i.e. relative to purpose] via algorithmic processes, we are not dealing with mechanical necessity or blind chance to produce the required functional sequence complexity, as opposed to random sequence complexity or orderly sequence complexity.
Algorithms, as physically instantiated, and per observations, are complex actuating causes set up by intelligent agents, to achieve their ends. That is not at all ambiguous, it is just that you evidently are hoping that such can set themselves up by lucky noise.
That is analogous to the example in Appendix 6 the always linked, where by chance stones falling down a hill form up in the configuration “WELCOME TO WALES.” That would be bad enough — it is probably next to impossible to happen by chance + necessity though it is strictly possible.
Now, there is an additional twist: lo and behold, this happens right on the border of Wales, next to a railroad, too!
By contrast, it is very reasonable that railroad workers will be able to arrange stones intelligently to send such a message. (Just like the arrangement of plants outside my neighbourhood announcing its name are the product of intelligence; not chance seeding.)
GEM of TKI
PS: When I have written machine code programs, the machine did not have a choice itself about how it acted — sometimes, in debugging, I wished it could and would do what I wanted not what I [inadvertently] told it to, which made it crash . . . — but I sure did.
Gil
We don’t know that the universe or time had a beginning. First of all we can only talk about the portion of the universe that we can observe. We don’t know what, if anything, lies outside that region. For the portion we can observe we think we can trace its history back to a point in time where it was much smaller, denser, and hotter than it is today but we can’t trace it back to a moment of creation. Our understanding of physics breaks down under those conditions. As well, there’s always the possibility that our physics, even the part we believe is correct, is substantially wrong. The big bang theory is not written in granite and in fact is still somewhat controversial.
Dave — The big bang theory is not written in granite and in fact is still somewhat controversial.
OTOH, it has succeeded in making predictions (microwave background radiation). Like the 4.5 billion year old earth, it is the best we got when it comes to objective science.
JunkyardTornado:
Thank you for your detailed answer. I think kairosfocus has already given some answers to your remarks, but I would like to add some personal comments:
1) About the Abel and Trevors paper: the problem you perceive is not really a problem at all. You say:
“He himself characterizes the algorithms in biology as “necessity”. The author himself is somewhat confused because he will intermittantly shift directions entirely and say the program itself could only be generated by something making “uncoerced” choice, even though he’s shown repeatedly how programs (i.e. “necessity”) can accomplish very complex things.”
Where is the difficulty? Programs do complex things because they are complex. They work algorithmically, but they do not create new CSI, they just utilize the information they own in various, pre-determined ways. If you read the papers by Dembski and Marks about information (yes, the censored ones), you will see that the concept is that you can indeed improve the power of random search, but only if you incorporate specific useful information in the algorithm. In the same way, an algorithm, or a machine, can do complex things, because it already has that information in its structure.
But the information in the algorithm or in the machine can be produced only by agency. Only agency can produce new CSI.
You have certainly witnessed computer programs who “speak” to you, give you answers in english language, and so on. But, as we know well, those answers are already written somewhere in the program, and their output is purely mechanical. There is no consiousness, there is no perception of meaning. Therefore, there is no new CSI. If a computer tells me “there is an error in your input”, that phrase was already written. And who has conceived it and written it? An agent. Who has conceived and written the algorithm which decides when to output it? An agent.
Computers are not agents. That’s not because they are too simple. There has been a huge increase in computer power and complexity since Turing conceived his proverbial test, and no real improvement has been made toward a machine who can really imitate human behaviour. It’s not a problem of complexity. Computers will never be conscious. They will never represent things. They will never perceive meanings. They will never make choices.
Consciousness is the real difference. When the modern folly of believing that consiousness can arise from software, or from adding parts to our personal abacus, will be over, then we can really begin to study the properties of consciousness and its relatioship to matter, brain, and neural activities. Until then, foolish theories about how consciousness can arise from loops, neural networks or parallel computing will keep us engrossed in idle thinking.
Just to be completely clear: if I (an agent) design the DNA sequence for a new protein (let’s say a new enzyme), on the basis of my understanding of how proteins work, of the genetic code, of the context of the cell, and of the laws of physics and biochemistry, and if I have the protein synthesized in a cell (by molecular engineering), then the protein will certainly be able to accomplish a complex task (its enzimatic activity). Is the protein creating CSI? No. “I” created CSI, when I designed its DNA sequence, which is therefore functionally specified (I wrote it so that the corresponding protein could be functional). Could a computer do that? No, unless I (an agent) had inputted in the program all the CSI which is necessary to algorithmically obtain that result.
So, are we similar to computers? No. We are conscious, computers are not. We represent, computers don’t. We feel, computers don’t. We choose, computers don’t. That brings us to the next point.
2) You say:
“But anyway, you have a complex program producing a human being (via epigenesis and so forth). Why couldn’t human behavior itself be detgermined a program. And if it not, what is it then? Well, its magic according to ID, or to use their synonym, “agency”. ”
No program produces a human being, neither genetically nor epigenetically. What we know is that human beings express themselves through human material bodies, which, in some way (largely not understood) derive from other human beings through complex stages of development, from the zygote to the adult body.
I have to remark again that the concept of “human being” includes, in a very relevant role, the concept of human consciousness. Even if we admit (which I am not so ready to do) that the human “body”, including the brain and nervous system, develops in a purely algorithmic way (through “necessity”), just the same we have not explained what is consciousness, where does it come from, and how does it express itself through the human body. Therefore, we have not explained how consciousness can produce new CSI.
Because, you see, consciousness does produce new CSI. In no way all the products of human thought can be traced to a reshuffling of existing information, as it happens in computers. In no way are the products of human consciousness purely algorithmic.
Although the previous statement should be rather self-evident, I will cite here an extreme demonstration of it, due to one of the best mathematicians and physicians of our times, Roger Penrose. If you read his books, The Emperor’s New Mind and Shadows of the Mind, you will find his famous argument from Godel’s theorem, which shows how human cognitive processes are not purely algorithmic, not even in the strict field of mathematics. In other words, humans can do “cognitive” mathematical things which no computer will ever be able to do. And if that is true for mathematics, how much truer will it be for disciplines like phylosophy, art, psychology, religion, and so on?
So, you see, again consciousness makes the difference. Human cognition is unique in the world we know because it expresses both consciousness and intelligence. That’s why we are the only known source of CSI. That’s why our intelligent agency is the best model for the origin of the only form of CSI (biological information) whose origin is not known. You can call consciousness, intelligence and agency “magic”, if you want. But it’s very empirical magic, magic which can be observed in action everyday, everywhere.
So, to sum up:
- A complex algorithm acts through necessity, but is never written through necessity. Only agents write complex algorithms.
- Agents are always conscious entities.
- No computer or algorithm will ever become conscious.
- Consciousness cannot be explained algorithmically. Consciousness can do things which no algorithm can do. One of them is producing new CSI.
- Algorithmic machines cannot produce new CSI, although they can certainly transform the information they have, so that they are apparently generating CSI. In reality, they are just algorithmically transforming the CSI which has already been inputted in them.
Finally, I will not address your specifically religious arguments, because I never do that here, to respect the principle that ID is about science, not religion.