ID, Heisenberg and Quantum Mechanics
Over on Panda’s Thumb PvM reaches some interesting conclusions from Prof. Psiaki’s guest post of 4/6. He seems particularly drawn to Psiaki’s final sentence:
The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology, but if true, it serves to divert the biologist from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer.
and the connection made in that post with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Somehow this is taken to mean that ID theory is purely vacuous, a god-of-the-gaps argument, and a method for lazy scientists to avoid working on the problems they ought to be solving.
There are two important issues that seem to be misunderstood here. The first is that the Uncertainty Principle, while negative, is not in any way, shape or form an argument from ignorance. When we say "we are never going to be able to determine, simultaneously, the exact position or momentum of a particle" we are not saying that science today is sadly limited, and we have some gaps in our understanding of how things move. Rather we are saying there is a point where even the best research will get us nowhere; in Psiaki’s words: there are some questions to which there is is no scientific answer.
Moreover, like the principle of irreducible complexity in biology, the Uncertainty Principle may not give one all of physics, and yet is critical. When quantum mechanics was still new and untried, this annoyingly negative prediction made physicists like Einstein wish very much the theory wasn’t true. But that does not change the fact that today it is a robust and highly productive field.
Can we choose our science based on what is most comfortable to work with? Or are we really interested in what matches reality?
The important issue that you seem to be misunderstanding is that there is absolutely no relationship between the uncertainty principle and IC. They are not even the same type of argument.
One argument says - we can know A or B but not both at the same time.
The other argument says - we will never find an naturalistic explanation for C.
In what way are these two types of argument related? Because they contain a negative component? So just because an argument contains a negative it must therefore be comparable to the uncertainty principle therefore it must be science?
Fatuous nonsense.
Comment by Odd Digit — April 19, 2006 @ 8:24 am
Odd digit hits the nail on the head, there is no connection with the HUP and IC.
Perhaps the IDEA club should be renamed to the STUPID club.
Comment by maxOblivion — April 19, 2006 @ 8:54 am
Good PT’ers: A reminder that this is not Panda’s Thumb, i.e., calling your opponent stupid does not count for an argument around here.
Odd digit- have you read the post I was responding to? I am not making a case for quantum mechanics and intelligent design theory being equivalent, or for an analogy between the uncertainty principle and irreducible complexity; that is part of another discussion. Rather I was answering an objection raised on your site from a cursory reading of Psiaki’s post.
It was suggested that somehow, with his acknowlegement of the negativity of the IC prediction and the connection he made between Heisenberg’s principle and the principle of irreducible complexity (counted “odd” but not directly challenged there), Psiaki had “displayed the vacuity of ID”. No offense to anyone, and perhaps this just shows the difference between the way evolutionists and physicists think, but to us, that train of thinking seems — well, nothing short of absurd.
Comment by Freawaru — April 19, 2006 @ 12:00 pm
Freawaru says in the original post:
“Moreover, like the principle of irreducible complexity in biology, the Uncertainty Principle may not give one all of physics, and yet is critical.”
This is a comparison of IC and HUP.
Then we get in the comments:
“I am not making a case for quantum mechanics and intelligent design theory being equivalent, or for an analogy between the uncertainty principle and irreducible complexity; that is part of another discussion.”
You did make an analogy between HUP and IC, at the top of this very page….
Comment by Odd Digit — April 19, 2006 @ 12:20 pm
I worked with an existing analogy that had been made previously, in the panel discussion and Psiaki’s post. I did not make any sort of case for why the analogy was valid.
The point in question was whether or not the negativity of the IC prediction and the analogy to the uncertainty principle “displayed”, by any stretch of logical reasoning, the vacuity of ID. This suggestion from the folks at your site seems to me clearly false, as a more careful look at the history of negative predictions in science and quantum mechanics in particular should show.
So far no-one has disputed my claim on this, which is currently the only one I am making. If you think Psiaki’s analogy does display the vacuity of ID, would you explain why?
Comment by Freawaru — April 19, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
It would help if you would make it clear when you were directly quoting someone.
I’ve already stated my position on (apparently) Psiaki’s analogy between IC and HUP - it’s fatuous nonsense. There is no analogy.
I believe the point that is being made on Panda’s thumb is that that the sentence quoted by you above from Psiaki shows all you need to know about the scientific credentials of ID: “The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology, but if true, it serves to divert the biologist from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer.”
So how is this process going to work? Is a practising scientist going to ring up Behe and ask if a newly discovered complex feature is IC or not? Because if it’s IC there’s no point in ‘wasting time’ continuing to study it? I can see that happening… (rolls eyes)
Of course, the key point to that sentence is ‘if true’ and as Behe has yet to actually demonstrate IC for any biological system it’s pretty much a moot point.
Comment by Odd Digit — April 19, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
There are two important issues that seem to be misunderstood here. The first is that the Uncertainty Principle, while negative, is not in any way, shape or form an argument from ignorance
Straw man. Could you please point out where PvM said that the Uncertainty principle is an argument from ignorance? I’ve read the post on PT and I can findd no such statement. Instead I find this:
Psiaki also seems to understand that IC is merely an argument from ignorance although for some reason he believes it to be on par with Quantum Theory’s Heisenberg principle.
It is clear to me that PvM does not hold the UP to be an argument from ignorance.
Comment by ivy privy — April 19, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
When we say “we are never going to be able to determine, simultaneously, the exact position or momentum of a particle”…
Were that the entire content of the uncertainty principle, it would indeed be vacuous. The existence of experimental error already precludes the exact measurement of momentum or position, simultaneous or otherwise. It is precisely because the uncertainty principle is not entirely negative, but makes specific positive statements about where the limits of measurement lie, that it is useful. IC seems to be missing such content.
Furthermore, Psiaki seems to misunderstand uncertainty entirely. Let me quote from his original post:
Psiaki presents this as an example of a ‘limitation of science,’ which is rather ridiculous. He seems to be implying that particles have precisely-defined positions and momenta, but the uncertainty principle prevents us from knowing them. This is not the case. We cannot answer the question he presents simply because the question is meaningless. In QM, particles do not have positions and momenta which are simultaneously well-defined. This is no more a limitation of science than an inability to draw square circles is a limitation of geometry.
Comment by MartinM — April 19, 2006 @ 1:20 pm
Moreover, like the principle of irreducible complexity in biology, the Uncertainty Principle may not give one all of physics, and yet is critical.
Unsupported assertion. What scientific progress has resulted from Irreducible Complexity? You are still making the comparison, just in the opposite direction. Irreducible Complexity is not comparable to the Uncertainty Principle or any other mathematically rigorous negative argument. IR is indeed a ‘God of the Gaps’ argument. Progress has been made in those fields where Behe and Psiaki told us nothing could possibly be found.
Comment by ivy privy — April 19, 2006 @ 1:24 pm
Odd Digit– How can I make this clearer without simply repeating myself? No, I was not “directly quoting” Psiaki. Mark Psiaki made an analogy between the uncertainty principle and irreducible complexity. PvM says this analogy proves that “ID is scientifically vacous”. I say this analogy does nothing of the sort, and to anyone who knows any QM, would lead rather to the opposite conclusion. Whether or not the analogy is valid is a moot point.
The central, badly misunderstood issue here is that the apparent negativity of predictions does not say anything about a theory’s ultimate truth or productiveness. Your people seem to think that the suggestion that there might be “no scientific answer” to a given problem shows that “the scientific credentials of ID” are non-existent, that we are “science stoppers”. This seems to be based on a very– well, interesting–understanding of how science works
Since you don’t like the uncertainty principle, look at the principle of the immutability of the elements in chemistry. I am making an analogy here between that and the IC principle :-) : IC predicts no Darwinian mechanisms will be found, the immutability principle predicts there will be no chemical means found of turning lead into gold. A “science stopper” if there ever was one; an “abrupt halt” to the centuries of alchemical research. But was that a bad thing? I would submit no; certainly we are no longer searching for the secret recipe, but we now have the whole of chemistry.
Comment by Freawaru — April 19, 2006 @ 1:27 pm
No, he doesn’t.
Comment by MartinM — April 19, 2006 @ 1:32 pm
MartinM:
Okay, I was simplifying; on account of having written the whole thing out on this thread twice already. PvM argues that this analogy, together with the acknowleged negativity of the given IC prediction, show that ID is scientifically vacuous.
Comment by Freawaru — April 19, 2006 @ 1:34 pm
He doens’t do that, either. The only sentence in which he so much as mentions the analogy is the one which ivy privy quoted above. He argues that ID is scientifically vacuous because, to quote, “IC is merely the claim that there are certain systems in biology which cannot be explained by Darwinian mechanisms.”
I don’t find that analogous to the uncertainty principle at all, and I don’t think PvM does either.
Comment by MartinM — April 19, 2006 @ 1:44 pm
Class in fifteen minutes, so I shall be leaving this thread. But it is worth noting that the sentance PvM found so illuminating
is part of Psiaki’s analogy to the Uncertainty Principle. Reread the post in question if you doubt this. The question is not whether PvM considers the analogy a good one; I don’t expect he does. But rather than writing a post explaining why he thought it isn’t, he claimed that the attempted analogy, by means of statements like the above, illustrated the vacuity of ID. Maybe it is worth starting another thread for off-topic criticisms, but that is the only claim I am disputing here.
Comment by Freawaru — April 19, 2006 @ 1:51 pm
I think PvM claimed the sentence quoted shows the vacuity of ID. I don’t think he referenced the analogy at all (probably because it’s rubbish)
Comment by Odd Digit — April 19, 2006 @ 1:55 pm
Freawaru says:
“IC predicts no Darwinian mechanisms will be found”
Well, that prediction has been shown to be wrong for every biological system that Behe has claimed to be IC. Not a very good prediction is it?
Comment by Odd Digit — April 19, 2006 @ 1:58 pm
Once again; no, he didn’t. One can make the statement Psiaki made without also drawing the analogy he did. And one can criticize that statement without even mentioning the analogy.
Comment by MartinM — April 19, 2006 @ 2:00 pm
Since elements aren’t immutable — either in nature or in the lab — Freawaru’s unintentionally hilarious analogy is indeed perfect for ID.
Look, the problem with making pop-science analogies is that you’re disregarding the entire actual scientific explanations that make the pop-sci “principle” of value in the first place.
Thus, the “principle of immutability” in chemistry isn’t a “principle” at all; it’s a short-hand way of summarizing 200 years of experimental data that led us to conclude that maybe alchemy wasn’t such a hot paradigm after all. Similarly, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle doesn’t have anything to do with Werner Heisenberg, a ruler, and a lot of head-scratching; it has to do with his positive, documented evidence regarding the nature of light waves.
(Brief educational digression: We ’see’ by means of reflected light waves. To see smaller and smaller objects, we need smaller and smaller waves of light; if a light wave exceeds the size of the object being observed, it will appear invisible. But simultaneously, the energy of a light wave is in inverse proportion to its length, so as we use smaller and smaller waves to try and observe smaller and smaller particles, those waves are higher and higher energy. When you reach a particular size threshhold — here, the electron — you need a wave so small, with an energy level so high, that the act of bombarding the electron with the light wave itself propels the electron to a higher energy state. Yes, this is an oversimplification, but even this oversimplification appears to greatly exceed Psiaki’s understanding. Anyway, back to the argument.)
The problem is that IC lacks anything like this history guiding it. The best explanation Behe has ever offered was his original mousetrap analogy: a system is irreducibly complex if the removal of any of its component parts prevents the system from functioning. Of course, this original forumation was so blatantly incorrect — it disregards the well-documented principle of scaffolding, for example — that Behe quickly backed away from it.
Now, IC lacks any theoretical basis; it amounts to nothing more than a demand for an explanation. And when one is given — as in the Bridgham paper — IDers simply declare that that particular “piddling” example proves only that the system wasn’t IC to begin with, and demands an explanation for some other system.
No serious contribution to science behaves in that fashion, without exception. None. Nowhere. Nobody.
Comment by Andrew — April 19, 2006 @ 2:13 pm
Another thing that is completely missing from this thread is any criticism of the process of “argument by analogy.” Most readers will probably be aware of other forms of logical argument: induction, deduction, abduction, etc. Argument by analogy (i.e. transduction) is by far the weakest form of argument, so weak that it is generally not formally recognized as a form of logic.
The primary reason for this inherent weakness is that all analogies are at some level false. That is, since they are analogies (rather than identities), analogies necessarily are not perfect. Furthermore, their imperfection cannot be “fixed” by reference to the content of the argument itself (if that argument is transductive). That is, the validity of any analogy is neither confirmable nor falsifiable within the terms of the analogy itself. Therefore, all arguments by analogy are necessarily flawed at some level, and cannot be fixed by simply “cleaning up the analogy.”
AFAICT, that is precisely the problem here. As several people have pointed out, the analogy between the HUP and IC is extremely weak (indeed, it is perhaps entirely falacious), and so any argument that relies upon this analogy is at least as weak as the analogy itself (i.e VERY weak indeed).
IMO, until IDers start using standard hypothetico-deductive arguments, they are simply reifying quasi-theological or Aristotelian formal and/or final causes, and as such they aren’t doing science at all, at least not as it is currently practiced by virtually all scientists.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — April 19, 2006 @ 3:38 pm
Andrew– Are you reading what you are commenting on? The chemical immutability of the element is just that — the chemical immutability of the elements. Just as the “irreducible complexity principle” refers only to Darwinian mechanisms, and not, for example, intelligent ones. I’m not using “principle” in any particularly rigorous way here; just the manner we usually do around Baker Lab here at Cornell.
I appreciate the time you took to write your “educational digression”, but in general physicists are familiar with the uncertainty principle, what it entails, and how it is proved, so the simplification doesn’t really help matters.
I’m not going to try to answer the rest of the comments one by one — I have to be in lab very shortly, and, however hard I try, I can’t really see the relevance of most of them. To try to make this whole matter extremely simple: Whenever there are analogies there are disanalogies, and we don’t have to agree on exactly where the analogy breaks down to understand the central issue here.
There is an analogy between the “principle” of IC, the principle of the chemical immutability of the elements, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle insofar as all three tell us what we can’t know/do, and all three are “negative” predictions. This much I think is indisputable.
PvM, Odd digit, and most of the rest of you seem to wish to contest that the “principle of IC” is not on par with the others, but really that wasn’t a claim that anyone around here made to begin with and is irrelevant to the entire discussion.
PvM, while contesting the completeness of the analogy in the only sentence he mentioned it, suggested this negativity implied ID is vacuous. Note that his claim was not simply that he felt the “IC principle” wasn’t as good as the uncertainty principle (for reason a, b, and c) but rather; quoting Psiaki, because he said it gave us what we couldn’t know.
To consider this to be grounds for the “vacuity” of ID is completely unsupportable given what we know of the history of science.
As a side note, I would also disagree with Andrew’s comment that IC has no theoretical basis; but that is, again, an entirely different discussion.
Comment by Freawaru — April 19, 2006 @ 3:48 pm
“As a side note, I would also disagree with Andrew’s comment that IC has no theoretical basis; but that is, again, an entirely different discussion.”
Can you point us to it? I mean, one that’s not based on faulty mathematics?
Comment by Don Baccus — April 19, 2006 @ 4:19 pm
The differences between IC and scientific predictions like Heisenberg Uncertainty is that the latter is based on a scientific theory, the former on our ignorance. IC is based on elimination of any and all evolutionary or Darwinian pathway from consideration. Thus when Psiaki says
The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology, but if true, it serves to divert the biologist from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer. he presumes incorrectly that an IC system can be identified without trying to ‘waste time trying to answer it’.
I see this as a major problem for ID because it is a truely eliminative (negative) argument unlike the Heisenberg which is or can be formulated in positive manner. The confusion among ID’ers about positive and negative arguments and their value seems to run deep. For instance the claim that no perpetual motion machines can exist is not based on ignorance, science will always keep open to possibility that the fundamental laws of thermodynamics were wrong. What science states here and in the case of Heisenberg is that based on known laws or theories, perpetual motion machines are an impossibility or measurement of instantenous velocity and position of atomic particles will have an inherent inaccuracy.
All IC states is that no pathways exist to a particular system but that is either presumed and thus begging the question or it is based on hard scientific work which shows that science is unable to address these questions. That IC then takes this ignorance as evidence for something else makes it logically flawed, that IDers based on the concept of IC state that calling something IC relieves scientists from their basic task of doing hard science, makes it scientifically flawed. That ID states that there will never be a scientific explanation found for so called IC systems makes ID scientifically vacuous.
Point in case how does ID explain a particular IC system like lets say the claim that the bacterial flagella are IC? What scientific knowledge does it add? Psiaki argues that calling something IC makes the system beyond scientific explanations. And yet, science has shown in this instance and others that scientific explanations may indeed exist for systems once thought to be IC.
Comment by PvM — April 19, 2006 @ 4:19 pm
There are two important issues that seem to be misunderstood here. The first is that the Uncertainty Principle, while negative, is not in any way, shape or form an argument from ignorance
Exactly, unlike IC the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a positive argument based on known theories of QM. It merely states that our knowledge will be limited to know the exact position and velocity.
The principle of IC states that since we cannot explain a particular system, it should be considered IC and no scientific time should be wasted on investigating it. But IC is basically a description of our ignorance, our inability to explain something given our present day scientific knowledge or because we cannot fully reconstruct the historical pathways involved. IC is not a prediction of anything.
One cannot classify something reliably as IC unless one has done all the hard work to eliminate any and all pathway, until then the ‘we don’t know’ (Null) hypothesis outcompetes ID. To claim that IC can help identify issues scientists should not waste their times on makes IC scientifically vacuous or misguided. To state that IC is a reliable way to identify something for which no scientific explanation (yet) exists shows that 1) it is based on our level of ignorance 2) shows that ID provides no scientific explanations either for this system.
In other words, what does IC have to add to science? According to Psiaki it helps scientists identify systems that need not be studied and explained scientifically, that’s just a waste of time. But that cannot be a valid position since IC can only be inferred after hard scientific studies looking for any and all possible pathways and even in the end, it can at most conclude ‘we don’t know yet’.
Hope this clarifies
Comment by PvM — April 19, 2006 @ 4:36 pm
Allen wrote: AFAICT, that is precisely the problem here. As several people have pointed out, the analogy between the HUP and IC is extremely weak (indeed, it is perhaps entirely falacious), and so any argument that relies upon this analogy is at least as weak as the analogy itself (i.e VERY weak indeed).
Psiaki’s comments had many problems, the two most troublesome were 1) IC helps scientists identify what not to waste their time on 2) IC is analogous to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
I believe few ID proponents recognize or appreciate the nature of the ID argument which is the “set theoretic complement of chance and regularity” (Del Ratzsch) which makes in basicaly a gap argument. It is an eliminative argument with the additional claim of ‘no false positives’ which is both flawed and as I argue scientifically vacuous.
Let’s look at IC. What Psiaki seems to argue is that IC is beyond scientific explanation and thus IC does not add anything scientifically relevant. In fact it does not even help us understand if the reason it is beyond scientific explanation because of our present state of scientific knowledge, because the historical evidence has been lost unrecoverably, or if there is something more fundamental at play.
The appeal to analogies by ID are also quite troublesome. Calling something a machine does not make it an actual machine. And yet some ID proponents seem to think that the use of teleological and ‘design relevant’ language by scientists is somehow an indication of the veracity of ID. Feedback mechanisms, function, control theory, error correction are conflated with human created systems which show analogous properties.
Comment by PvM — April 19, 2006 @ 5:07 pm
Freawaru can take umbrage at my educational digression, but he obviously doesn’t understand it, or else he would realize that the facts underlying why Heisenberg formulated the HUP eliminate any meaningful analogy between it and IC based upon superficial apparent similarities.
To put it more simply: the degree of correspondence between subject and object counts when arguing by analogy. A tight fit makes for a stronger argument; a weaker fit, a weaker one. I and others have shown that the fit between HUP and IC is incredibly weak; Freawaru just keeps insisting “but it’s there!”
Color me unimpressed. Look, if any analogy counts, then we might as well say that the theory of irreducible complexity is as valuable and as well-proven as the theory of gravity; after all, gravity applies to the attraction of very large rocks, and people who subscribe to IC have rocks instead of brains. QED!
Comment by Andrew — April 19, 2006 @ 5:18 pm
Incidentally, elements aren’t chemically immutable due to natural and man-made radioactive decay (which is what I was referring to in my first post). Ordinarily, I would consider this an oversight, but given that you support ID, perhaps you also think radiochemistry isn’t a valid science?
Comment by Andrew — April 19, 2006 @ 5:23 pm
Andrew– no “umbrage taken” at your educational digression; it was just slightly amusing to see you correct Prof. Psiaki with a high-school level explanation of the uncertainty principle when he works regularly with the concept in a somewhat more exact way. But it was thoughtful of you to provide it.
Maybe you speak of things differently in other fields. In those where I work, though, “chemical” processes are considered distinct from “nuclear” ones. The principle of the chemical immutability of the elements does not claim there is no “scientific” way to go from one element to the other. It does claim there is no chemical way; as it happens, there does exist a nuclear way.
But for the issue at hand:
Ah, I think we may be getting at at least part of the root of our disagreement here. You seem to be under the impression that my argument is of the form: there exists an analogy between the uncertainty principle and the “irreducible complexity principle” (in light of the shared property of negativity). The uncertainty principle is highly productive in physics. Therefore the principle of irreducible complexity will be highly productive in biology.
I would agree with you wholeheartedly that this is a non-sequitor; as I observed earlier, wherever there are analogies there are disanalogies, and how are we to know that this particular property (high productiveness) is not one of those?
But my argument is entirely different. To begin with, my conclusion is not that irreducible complexity will be highly productive in biology, but simply that the claim that negativity implies vacuity is entirely unsupportable. You might phrase it this way: The Uncertainty Principle has the properties of negativity and that it “does not give one all of [insert field here], but if true, it serves to divert the [researcher] from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer.” The Uncertainty Principle is not vacuous. Therefore, the properties of negativity or that a given principle “does not give one all of [insert field here], but if true, serves to divert the [researcher] from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer” are not reliable hallmarks of vacuity in scientific theories/principles.
Comment by Freawaru — April 19, 2006 @ 8:52 pm
The problem with your argument, Freawaru, is that the contention “The Uncertainty Principle has the properties of negativity” is itself contingent upon the argument-by-analogy that I (and others) are challenging. The phrase “properties of negativity” is an analogy between the formulation of the HUP and the formulation of IC. And, as I’ve shown at great length — and which you don’t dispute — it’s an incredibly poor analogy.
Many productive scientific theories can be reformulated to add a ‘not’ component; for example, the theory of gravity predicts that we will not find flying 500-pound granite boulders in New Zealand. That doesn’t mean that the theory of gravity is entirely negative and therefore vacuous.
I’ve shown you that the HUP, similarly, is not entirely negative. It consists of a serious and significant set of affirmative observations about the interaction between light waves, energy, and particles. Irreducible complexity, on the other hand, has no such observations. It is entirely an exercise in (a) whining and (b) moving the goalposts.
Thus, IC is indeed vacuous.
P.S. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m thinking that any professor who can’t spell “lightning” needs all the remedial educational digressions he can get his hands on.
Comment by Andrew — April 19, 2006 @ 9:43 pm
Your rendering of his words is highly uncharitable as Psiaki didn’t say particles have precisely defined positions and momenta. Rather, that is an embellishment which you insinuated, and then you denounced the insinuated position versus position that was actually stated.
If embellishing his words was the modus operandi, one could have just as easily embellished Psiaki’s words by saying, “one cannot know exactly the position and velocity of a particle” because in QM, particles do not have positions and momenta which are simultaneously well-defined. In any case, it’s poor form to be putting words in people’s mouths when the issue of what they believe is not conclusive, and even worse to be making derogatory comments about something they didn’t even say.
Science is limited in what it can say, and in the way that the questions can be framed. Science cannot frame theories in a manner that is inherently flawed. It is limited in that way.
We wouldn’t, for example, try to figure out how an object moves in the universe based on perpetual motion machines, or describe orbital mechanics in terms of epicycles, or describe chemistry in terms of phlogiston.
It is very possible describing biology in terms of blind watchmaker processes is framing the inquiry in a manner just as prejudiced and wrong as trying to solve chemistry via phlogiston.
For example, a pioneer of information theory in molecular biology, Hubert Yockey, believes the origin of the first life (which would be rich with IC systems by Behe’s definition) is outside the realm of scientific inquiry based on logical deduction alone. Though Yockey is no IDer, he shows why framing origin-of-life (OOL) research in a manner which presumes the questions are even solvable is already the wrong way to frame the scientific inquiry.
If not all IC systems, there are at least some IC systems which cannot be resolvable in terms of blind watchmaker theories, or at the very least even if they are of blind watchmaker origin, they can never be demonstrated scientifically to be so. (The assertions I made is the topic of ID literature, and I think very well defended by William Dembski, and I can not possibly delve into all the details in the short space of this post….)
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 20, 2006 @ 12:45 am
Salvador generalises: “there are at least some IC systems which cannot be resolvable in terms of blind watchmaker theories”
Which ones? And please provide evidence that they cannot be resolvable like you say.
Comment by Odd Digit — April 20, 2006 @ 9:58 am
The principle IC system is the self replicating automata. Yockey has published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology and wrote the Peer reviewed book Information Theory and Molecular Biology which was updated to Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life. Peer reviewed literature on the topic is described here:
Another Pro-ID Paper Passes Peer Review. And the higher the amount of specified complexity in an IC system the more difficult it will be to justify blind watchmaker processes account for it’s existence. The math behind it is from the information sciences and cryptography and laid out in Dembski’s literature.
I’ve reviewed the criticisms of Dembski’s work by Shallit, Elsberry, and Perakh and have shown they are nothing more than misrepresentations and strawman knockdowns combined with an occasional smattering of mathematical theatrics. All the other highly negative criticisms of Dembski’s work are just repackaged Shallit, Elsberry, and Perakh.
I pointed out that some of the assertions I made have support in peer reviewed literature, and this has not sat well with the anti-ID nor OOL community. In evidence of this is Adami’s slam of Yockey’s book. Adami is the author of Avida, and I commented on his slam of Yockey at Nasty feelings in the OOL community toward Hubert Yockey?
Here is a relevant quote from Yockey
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 20, 2006 @ 1:55 pm
Sal’s comments show why ID is vacuous scientifically If not all IC systems, there are at least some IC systems which cannot be resolvable in terms of blind watchmaker theories, or at the very least even if they are of blind watchmaker origin, they can never be demonstrated scientifically to be so.
In other words, there are some systems which may be IC while others are apparant IC. When Dembski accepted that there may be systems which are CSI and others which appear to be CSI, he made the same concession which rendered CSI irrelevant.
What Sal is saying that there is always the logical possibility that there exist systems which may never be explained scientifically but we will never know which ones since IC is based on elimination not positive identification of such systems.
Quite a concession Sal
Comment by PvM — April 20, 2006 @ 4:01 pm
Okay, the resolution to this argument should be simple, straightforward, and easy to see for anyone who doesn’t have logical blinders on. First of all, to say that the Uncertainty Principle and Irreducible Complexity are both negative arguments is not really an analogy. It’s a property that they both share. It’s no more analogical than saying that an apple and a fire engine are both red.
Second, if the Uncertainty Principle is not vacuous and useless, then it follows by logical necessity that an argument is not vacuous and useless by virtue of it’s being negative.
If an argument isn’t vacuous and useless by virtue of it’s being negative, then it follows by logical necessity that Irreducible Complexity isn’t vacuous and useless by virtue of it’s being negative. Perhaps it’s incorrect, or useless for some other reason, but not by virtue of it’s being negative.
Hence, if one accepts that the Uncertainty Principle is not vacuous and useless, and if one is a rational individual, then one accepts that Irreducible Complexity is not vacuous and useless by virtue of its being negative - Period, end of story. One might still be against Irreducible Complexity for some other reason (perhaps one thinks the argument is simply incorrect), but they cannot coherently consider it vacuous and useless by virtue of its being negative.
Comment by Deuce — April 20, 2006 @ 4:11 pm
If not all IC systems, there are at least some IC systems which cannot be resolvable in terms of blind watchmaker theories, or at the very least even if they are of blind watchmaker origin, they can never be demonstrated scientifically to be so.
Unknown does not equal unknowable. As Darwin put it:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know the transitional grades, more especially if we look to much-isolated species, round which, according to my theory, there has been much extinction. Or again, if we look to an organ common to all the members of a large class, for in this latter case the organ must have been first formed at an extremely remote period, since which all the many members of the class have been developed; and in order to discover the early transitional grades through which the organ has passed, we should have to look to very ancient ancestral forms, long since become extinct.
Comment by ivy privy — April 20, 2006 @ 4:43 pm
From dictionary.com:
a·nal·o·gy
1. Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
2. A comparison based on such similarity. See Synonyms at likeness.
Comment by ivy privy — April 20, 2006 @ 4:47 pm
The concepts of uncertainty and undecidability have a bearing on what statements can be claimed as scientific. There are true statements about physical reality which can not be resolved scientifically, but are true nonetheless.
For example, I have a box with 13 coins. It is not possible to see the coins. A 1:30pm EST I shook the box virgoursly to simulate the blind purposeless forces of nature and set the box down. At 1:49EST I did the same. One of the two following statements is true about the physical condition of the coins at 1:30pm:
1. All the coins were heads
2. All the coins were not heads
There is a chance #1 is true, but there is no way we can prove it scientifically. We can make statements about the probability that it’s true, but that is as far as it goes in terms of science. We cerainly would be ill-advised to be claiming #1 is as plain a fact as gravity (as many people do about naturalistic evolution).
We can however say #2 is a more statistically likely configuration. The probability #2 is true is ( 1 - 1/2^13) = 99.99%
We can also say that the likelihood of blind purposeless forces making #1 true are 1 out f 8192, or very small.
Thus it is very inappropriate to say that that the configuration at 1:30pm can be solved with the certainty of gravity. It is forcing the scientific method to assert conclusions beyond logical limits. Such is the case then when trying to find blind watchmaker solutions to IC systems with high CSI (Complex Specified Information). To make the assertion blind purposeless forces crafted them from unknown initial conditions with unknown processes and then claiming it is an obvious a fact as gravity is like asserting all coins in that box at 1:30 pm were heads. Information science demonstrates that such assertions are far beyond what the scientific method is justified in claiming. To make such assertions is violating another class of uncertainty principles.
However, in contrast, because an intelligence can work from a variety of different initial conditions, it is not constrained by the same probability issues as the blind watchmaker.
For example, a 10 year-old child can, if willing, take 500 coins from any configuration before him (initial conditions) and make them all heads. If a stranger then happened later upon the 10-year-old’s work, he need not know all the details of the artifact’s history to conclude design. The scientific inference of design in that case is reasonable. One does not need as much information to make a design inference as one needs to make a blind watchmaker inference.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 20, 2006 @ 10:41 pm
“There is a chance #1 is true, but there is no way we can prove it scientifically. We can make statements about the probability that it’s true, but that is as far as it goes in terms of science. We certainly would be ill-advised to be claiming #1 is as plain a fact as gravity (as many people do about naturalistic evolution).”
Sigh … another analogy not in evidence.
Comment by Don Baccus — April 20, 2006 @ 10:57 pm
On the contrary. Firstly, my interpretation is, in fact, more charitable than yours. If I am right, Psiaki is merely ignorant of the finer points of quantum mechanics. Well, so is almost everyone. It’s hardly reprehensible to lack knowledge of a technical scientific subject. On the other hand, if he does understand uncertainty, then his thesis is that science is limited by its inability to answer meaningless questions. That’s far worse than simple ignorance - it’s rank stupidity.
Secondly, Psiaki’s other examples of the limitations of science do not deal in meaningless questions. Were he really discussing two different kinds of limitation, one would think he would say so.
Thirdly, whether or not Psiaki does understand uncertainty is actually secondary to the point. The point is that an inability to answer meaningless questions is not a limitation of science, and it is that point I addressed. This is independent of whether or not Psiaki understands that the question in question is indeed meaningless.
Comment by MartinM — April 21, 2006 @ 10:42 am
That would follow if the uncertainty principle were, in fact, negative.
Without uncertainty there’s no tunneling. No virtual particles. Much less fun with quantum effects in general. Uncertainty is not negative; it makes many positive predictions. It has content by the bucketful.
Comment by MartinM — April 21, 2006 @ 10:45 am
1. All the coins were heads
2. All the coins were not heads
…
We can however say #2 is a more statistically likely configuration. The probability #2 is true is ( 1 - 1/2^13) = 99.99%
Sloppy use of language. #2 seems to be saying that all the coins were either tails or standing on edge. Should we presume that you instead meant “Not all the coins are heads?”
Since you are talking about single probabilistic events, your example is not comparable to bilnd watchmaker hypotheses, which depend on a steady accumulation of small changes. For example, if I have flipped a coin several times, and come up with the series HTHTTTHHT, what is the probability of adding one more flip and coming up with HTHTTTHHTT? It is certainly a lot more probable than if I flipped 9 coins at once.
However, in contrast, because an intelligence can work from a variety of different initial conditions, it is not constrained by the same probability issues as the blind watchmaker.
You are right that an “Intelligent Designer” with the power to design - and implement - “certain features of the universe and living things” is not bound by any constraints at all. Evolutionary theory, on the other hand, involves numerous constraints, which makes it all the more impressive that these constraints seem to be reflected in the natural world as revealed by experimental investigation.
Comment by ivy privy — April 21, 2006 @ 1:39 pm
Sloppy use of language. #2 seems to be saying that all the coins were either tails or standing on edge. Should we presume that you instead meant “Not all the coins are heads?”
Let A = all coins heads
I meant not A
Thank you for the editorial improvement of my statement.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 21, 2006 @ 3:11 pm
“Since you are talking about single probabilistic events, your example is not comparable to bilnd watchmaker hypotheses, which depend on a steady accumulation of small changes.”
This is the same false assumption Sal makes over and over again (along with other ID types). Note that in his answer, he didn’t bother to address it. He just sails on as though the assumption’s defensible.
He did the same just a couple of days ago over at PT.
With the proper set of [false] assumptions you can “prove” just about anything to be more or less impossibly improbable.
Comment by Don Baccus — April 21, 2006 @ 3:30 pm
First of all, to say that the Uncertainty Principle and Irreducible Complexity are both negative arguments is not really an analogy. It’s a property that they both share
I disagree, IC is an eliminative argument, while the Heisenberg uncertainty is a positive statement that can be applied immediately to any measurement. It’s important to realize the difference between a negative argument like IC which is due to its eliminative nature a gap argument and an argument like Heisenberg which can be formulated negatively.
Comment by PvM — April 21, 2006 @ 3:43 pm
Sal wrote
You mean lacking sufficient information one may often reach ‘design’ conclusions which later are found not to be so? History is full of such failures of the design inference. The design inference, especially as applied by Sal above, shows the scientific vacuity of the approach. We observe 500 coins all head and infer design but we do not really know how the series came about. Let’s assume that there was an additional regularity rule which stated that coins are to be selected based on heads or tails?
An ID proponent may argue that this shows ‘design’ but then we have the simple fact that thus any ’selection’ or ‘rule’ whether based on one formulated by a natural process, natural designer or supernatural designer can generate design.
Sal already conceded this when he stated correctly that IC systems may in fact arise naturally, I cannot underline the extent of his concensions enough
If not all IC systems, there are at least some IC systems which cannot be resolvable in terms of blind watchmaker theories, or at the very least even if they are of blind watchmaker origin, they can never be demonstrated scientifically to be so.
Wilkins and Elsberry have explained in exquisite detail the difference between ordinary design inferences and rarefied design inference. The former applies to such areas as criminology, etc which bases their design inferences on such concepts as means, motives, opportunities, physical evidence, witnesses etc. The latter refers to design inference based on our ignorance.
The latter kind cannot even compete with the null hypothesis of ‘we just don’t know’.
See The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance
Comment by PvM — April 21, 2006 @ 3:53 pm
MartinM wrote:
On the contrary. Firstly, my interpretation is, in fact, more charitable than yours. If I am right, Psiaki is merely ignorant of the finer points of quantum mechanics. Well, so is almost everyone. It’s hardly reprehensible to lack knowledge of a technical scientific subject. On the other hand, if he does understand uncertainty, then his thesis is that science is limited by its inability to answer meaningless questions. That’s far worse than simple ignorance - it’s rank stupidity.
MartinM,
The point being is not to go beyond what someone said in order to give onself the opportunity to declare something ridiculous or make speculations about someone demonstrating rank stupidity.
I didn’t want to go down the off topic issue with the finer points of Quantum Uncertainty, but although the interpretation you state of well-defined being meaningless (a position I am somewhat amenable to), that assertion is itself a bit beyond known science. If by well-defined, one means, observable, it really doesn’t resolve the issue of whether the thing in question has a property which we merely cannot observe or if indeed the property is non-existent.
The arguments of what is THE right interpretation are endless, there is the underlying and pervasive issue of positivist metaphysics regarding pairs of observables in QM. We can only state that we can not simultaneously observe position and momentum, we don’t know for a fact if indeed by observing position that it precudes a precise momentum from existing. What we do know is we cannot simultaneosly observe position and momentum, if I say “one cannot know exactly the position and velocity of a particle”, I would argue we cannot know for one of the following reasons:
1. exact positions and momenta do not actually exist simultaenously
2. exact poisitions and momenta do exist simultaneously but we can not observe them simultaneously
Even though I’m amenable to #1 currently, the Heisenberg Uncertainty itself principle preculdes us from arguing strongly in favor of one or the other. From an operational standpoint, both interpretations lead to the same experimental outcomes at this time.
Psiaki’s words were, “one cannot know exactly the position and velocity of a particle”. If he meant #2, I don’t think one can categorically assert he is wrong because the Uncertainty Principle itself will preclude a definitive answer.
I’m sorry I had to digress, here, but since the topic is about the limits of what science can say, this is a good illustration.
And finally, if one insists on the positivist viewpoint that observation is needed to make something physicallly real, that position is highly favorable to forms of cosmological ID (Barrow and Tipler) which invoke the Ultimate Observer.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 21, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
Too bad Sal is redirecting the focus. Let me see if I can encourage him to address the real issues namely the scientific vacuity of ID.
In another thread Kern Reeve writes http://designparadigm.blogsome.com/2006/04/19/id-heisenberg-and-quantum-mechanics/
Kern: The “theory” of intelligent design does not predict irreducible complexity. It doesn’t predict anything. How do we know that a creator wouldn’t prefer to produce life without irreducible complexity?. (After all, it is vulnerable to catastrophic failure!) The hypothesis that irreducible complexity cannot be arrived at through step-wise natural selection isn’t derived from anything
Comment by PvM — April 21, 2006 @ 4:15 pm
Again …
“Since you are talking about single probabilistic events, your example is not comparable to bilnd watchmaker hypotheses, which depend on a steady accumulation of small changes.”
This is the same false assumption Sal makes over and over again (along with other ID types). Note that in his answer, he didn’t bother to address it. He just sails on as though the assumption’s defensible.
(and in a day or two he’ll repeat it in another forum)
Off course, it’s tough to be a YEC if you’re not a bit detached from reality.
Meanwhile, Uncommon Descent has shed any pretense of being anything other than a site to discuss Christian apologetics.
Y’all have got a real strong scientific program going, here!
Comment by Don Baccus — April 21, 2006 @ 4:29 pm
My apologies to the blog as I’m slightly dyslexic and my brain is not optimized for keyboard communication.
I said,”Even though I’m amenable to #1 currently, the Heisenberg Uncertainty itself principle preculdes us from arguing strongly in favor of one or the other.”
with typos removed, it should be,
“Even though I’m amenable to #1 currently, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle itself precludes us from arguing strongly in favor of one or the other.”
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 21, 2006 @ 5:52 pm
Note that Sal still doesn’t address the false assumption in his earlier answer. He just sails on as though the assumption’s defensible.
Sal, when a hypothesis says “X”, you can’t rebut it by saying “Y has a vanishingly small probability, therefore X is impossible”.
Are you dyslexic by design?
Comment by Don Baccus — April 21, 2006 @ 6:55 pm
Don, let’s skip the insults.
Comment by Freawaru — April 21, 2006 @ 6:58 pm
Are you dyslexic by design?
I believe so, and the topic of “bad design” is something IDers should not run from, and it would make a great thread of discussion. Darwin used that argument to great effect, but he is wrong.
I would suggest “bad design” as a topic for another day as I believe the IDEA club will be confronted with this off-the-shelf argument repeatedly. I recommend an answer be explored. There are many good answers to this issue from an ID perspective.
I think there are numerous such canned arguments from critics, and this is one of the best in their inventory, thus it should be addressed.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 21, 2006 @ 9:07 pm
“Don, let’s skip the insults.”
Pointing out that Sal fails to address a false assumption that undermines his probablistic argument is insulting?
Why, I’d put it the other way.
The fact that it needs to be pointed out and is afterwards ignored is the real insult.
Nor was my question about his dyslexia an insult. Sal understood my point. I happen to disagree with his conclusion, as do most who reject the so-called design inference. The designers we know of strive to correct errors. Can’t think of a human designer who would make the kind of design errors the Designer and Chief has made with such frequency and such apparent gusto.
And, of course, evolutionary theory’s notion of reproductive fitness driving selection is analogous to the old saw that “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you”. We expect organizations to evolve adaptations that are not perfect. Human eye, knee, back etc.
Comment by Don Baccus — April 21, 2006 @ 10:26 pm
I meant “Designer-in-Chief”, of course. Heck, let’s just say “G-d” and be done with it…
Comment by Don Baccus — April 21, 2006 @ 10:27 pm
Don,
Attack arguments, not people. I realize you all have different standards where you come from, but while you’re over here we’re going to have to ask you to live by ours.
Discourteous remarks disgrace no-one but yourself; but they do disgrace you.
Comment by Freawaru — April 21, 2006 @ 11:32 pm
Sal, talking about bad design I think there are numerous such canned arguments from critics, and this is one of the best in their inventory, thus it should be addressed.
I would say that Sal is creating a strawman. Bad design is perhaps a good or problematic theological objection to ID, but there are far better rebuttals of the attempts by ID to formulate a scientific thesis. Many of these rebuttals and criticisms are routinely being ignored or downplayed by ID proponents.
Such as the obvious scientific vacuity of ID, the reliance on an eliminative approach while still claiming ‘no false positives’ when such an approach cannot by itself compete with the null hypothesis. Not to mention the fact that ID proponents have yet to apply their ID inference to any non trivial biological problem, or the many problems in their ‘mathematical’ claims. Can we say ‘jello’?
From a theological perspective addressing bad design is indeed something that needs to happen. In fact, I’d argue that without some theological assumptions, ID cannot even address the issue of good versus bad design. It’s ‘foundation’ does not give any guidance in this issue.
Comment by PvM — April 21, 2006 @ 11:32 pm
PvM–
In what sense do you consider the “bad design” argument to be a strawman? Surely not because no evolutionists use it, for I’ve had it given to me dozens of times, and it’s included in almost every major critique of ID that I’ve heard. Even on this thread, was Don not referring to it?
Or by strawman do you mean simply that it is not the most healthy example of an anti-ID argument?
Comment by Freawaru — April 21, 2006 @ 11:43 pm
Since you are talking about single probabilistic events, your example is not comparable to bilnd watchmaker hypotheses, which depend on a steady accumulation of small changes. For example, if I have flipped a coin several times, and come up with the series HTHTTTHHT, what is the probability of adding one more flip and coming up with HTHTTTHHTT? It is certainly a lot more probable than if I flipped 9 coins at once.
Assuming each coin flip is an independent Bernoulli, it really doesn’t matter if you flip all at once or incrementally.
Comment by Art — April 21, 2006 @ 11:58 pm
Freawaru asks: In what sense do you consider the “bad design” argument to be a strawman? Surely not because no evolutionists use it, for I’ve had it given to me dozens of times, and it’s included in almost every major critique of ID that I’ve heard. Even on this thread, was Don not referring to it?
Or by strawman do you mean simply that it is not the most healthy example of an anti-ID argument?
I hope my initial posting made this clear. 1. Bad design example is a theological objection more than a scientific objection since the underlying ‘foundation’ of ID gives us no guidance as to what to expect. 2. Thus when ID proponents respond, they have to assume some characteristic(s) of the intelligent designer and since ID itself cannot or refuses to identify the designer it 2a. has to accept that it remains silent on this issue 2b. has to accept that ID is all about a particular supernatural entity we call God.
I am not even sure that the most hard hitting refutations of ID even address poor design. I am very well aware that some have raised this in response to ID but that mostly seems to address the theological problems facing ID.
Schermer has done a good job at looking at some of these issue http://www.talkreason.org/articles/DumpingonDembski.cfm
So let me ask you this question, what guidance does ID give us about the design found in nature? Should it be benevolent? Malicious? Disinterested? Selfish? What?
Comment by PvM — April 22, 2006 @ 12:24 am
Ok. I understood that your main objection was that it was a bad argument, but I wasn’t sure if you were claiming it wasn’t commonly used. Maybe we just read different objections, or I talk to the wrong people. :)
I would agree that ID theory at its basis doesn’t differentiate between “bad” and “good” design, since to go there we’d have to look at the goals/intentions of the designer, outside the realm of science. ID can’t take us further than whether something is designed; who designed it is a far different question.
But though I don’t think science can ever tell us whether the intelligence at question is natural or supernatural, I would say that– looking forward– we should eventually be able to make a more complete model surrounding ID, based on emperical observations, and from that make positive predictions about what sort of design we might expect.
Comment by Freawaru — April 22, 2006 @ 1:25 am
I would agree that ID theory at its basis doesn’t differentiate between “bad” and “good” design, since to go there we’d have to look at the goals/intentions of the designer, outside the realm of science.
So what can ID really say about design other than that it is something we do not yet understand?
ID can’t take us further than whether something is designed; who designed it is a far different question.
So designed becomes a vacuous position of ‘we don’t understand’… That’s all ID can do, create a gap argument.
But though I don’t think science can ever tell us whether the intelligence at question is natural or supernatural, I would say that– looking forward– we should eventually be able to make a more complete model surrounding ID, based on emperical observations, and from that make positive predictions about what sort of design we might expect
Why? How? I argue that without any such knowledge about the designer, nothing at all can be said. Indeed, science can never answer the question if a supernatural designer was involved, such issues are beyond science. So if the design cannot even distinguish between supernatural design and natural design. And if natural design cannot even exclude logically such processes as natural selection then what exactly does ID have to offer?
Other than an IOU on what it may be able to do in the future? ID has been around how long now? What has it resolved beyond its inference from ignorance?
I was also responding to Salvador who seemed to believe that ID gave some guidance as to what to expect wrt good/bad design.
Comment by PvM — April 22, 2006 @ 1:41 am
———————————–
“Are you dyslexic by design?”
Attack arguments, not people.
————————————-
Did you mean to say … attack flagellum, not people?
Pretty much, in many ways, the same argument.
Sal (as I said above) understood my point. Perhaps you two should touch base, soon.
“I would say that Sal is creating a strawman. Bad design is perhaps a good or problematic theological objection to ID, but there are far better rebuttals of the attempts by ID to formulate a scientific thesis.”
Of course PvM knows that ID is all about theology, not science, and of course that’s the basis for which the argument is made that bad design argues against a [human-[loving G-d.
I still haven’t seen a credible attempt to formulate ID as a scientific thesis. I think it’s a great humanist gesture on the part of PvM to suggest one might exist.
Comment by Don Baccus — April 22, 2006 @ 4:14 am
I would agree that ID theory at its basis doesn’t differentiate between “bad” and “good” design, since to go there we’d have to look at the goals/intentions of the designer, outside the realm of science. ID can’t take us further than whether something is designed; who designed it is a far different question
Looking at the intentions of the designer is not outside the realm of science. Science does it all the time. Unless you presume that the designer is supernatural.
Comment by PvM — April 22, 2006 @ 4:26 am
I still haven’t seen a credible attempt to formulate ID as a scientific thesis. I think it’s a great humanist gesture on the part of PvM to suggest one might exist.
I remain hopeful, afterall ID proponents seem to insist that such a scientific basis exists. When asked, it seems that much is left as a promisory note.
Comment by PvM — April 22, 2006 @ 4:28 am
Pardon me for jumping into the discussion.
Here are some elementary things we know about intelligent design:
1) Intelligence is involved. An intelligent agent can do stuff that blind stochastic processes cannot.
2) Design is involved. There is some underlying purpose or goal to be fulfilled.
ID is a intuition which can potentially motivate the following lines of thought:
1) By comparing biological phenomena to phenomena engineered by human intelligence, one can make sense of the biological phenomena.
2) One could be more inclined to reverse-engineer a biological structure (and figure out how that structure was designed) if one uses the intuition of ID.
3) One could be more inclined to mimic the designs found in nature (biomimetics)
Even if we abstract out the characteristics of the designer, we could still detect design by finding out if there is any intelligent activity at all. Consider the SETI program. They do not know the characteristics of the radio-wave “designer/alien” they are seeking, but they can still potentially detect design if it exists in the signal.
So ID doesn’t have to be a gaps argument (from ignorance). One can figure out how a structure was precisely designed by reverse-engineering it. And the notion of “gaps” implies that the “gaps” will eventually get smaller and smaller with the discovery of new evidence. But what if the “gaps” are expanding with the increase of knowledge?
Comment by Art — April 22, 2006 @ 4:50 am
“Describe a scientific method by which the natural evolution of the flagella can be falsified.”
Well, then, to counter the deep thinkers supporting ID here we have the most vocal blogger at Uncommon Descent making the above statement. In other words, ID is not science…
Comment by Don Baccus — April 22, 2006 @ 5:12 am
Even if we abstract out the characteristics of the designer, we could still detect design by finding out if there is any intelligent activity at all.
That is a statement which I found highly suspicious as no evidence to support this has been presented. And yes I am familiar with the SETI strawman
Consider the SETI program. They do not know the characteristics of the radio-wave “designer/alien” they are seeking, but they can still potentially detect design if it exists in the signal.
The reality of the SETI project as well as the expectations do not support the hopes and arguments of the IDers. In case of SETI, the researchers are looking for particular narrow band signals which they hope will lead them to ways to detect intelligent life ’similar to us’ which uses narrow band technologies to communicate.
And rather than relying on complexity, SETI relies on simplicity. Although the concept of complexity has been muddled by IDers, this shows how ID and SETI may have much less in common than IDers have led to believe.
Also see Wesley Elsberry http://www.biosurvey.ou.edu/oese/Dembski.html
A. SETI is a good example of scientific approaches to “detecting design”. SETI works precisely by taking information from human experience and using that to help decide what would constitute a signal that would indicate the existence of a non-human extra-terrestrial intelligence. SETI does not use procedures such as those talked about by “intelligent design” advocates. Instead, SETI looks for narrowband radio sources, the sort of radio sources that humans would build if we decided to send a radio message to other intelligent beings in space. This has nothing to do with the content that may be broadcast in such a signal, but rather this distinguishes a manufactured radio source from natural radio sources, which typically are spread over many frequencies. Most biological systems do not produce appreciable radio waves, and certainly not narrowband signals of the sort that the SETI project looks for.
Check out the following link http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligentdesign_051201.html
So ID doesn’t have to be a gaps argument (from ignorance). One can figure out how a structure was precisely designed by reverse-engineering it. And the notion of “gaps” implies that the “gaps” will eventually get smaller and smaller with the discovery of new evidence. But what if the “gaps” are expanding with the increase of knowledge?
I agree, ID need not be a gap argument but it presently is and since ID refuses to deal with positive evidence or ways to constrain its designer(s), it will likely remain a gap argument. If we can reverse engineer it then we can understand how it works, not how it arose, after all if we understand how it arose, it would fail to be intelligently designed.
A gap argument, even if it relies on the hope that gaps may become larger, are still gap arguments. And while sometimes gaps become (abruptly) larger due to new technologies, science also seems quick to fill in many of the gaps. Just look at the research on the flagellum, the immune system, the evolution of the genetic code, evolvablility and more. What has ID to offer in this area?
Comment by PvM — April 22, 2006 @ 5:18 am
Or by strawman do you mean simply that it is not the most healthy example of an anti-ID argument?
I hope my initial posting made this clear. 1. Bad design example is a theological objection more than a scientific objection since the underlying ‘foundation’ of ID gives us no guidance as to what to expect. 2. Thus when ID proponents respond, they have to assume some characteristic(s) of the intelligent designer and since ID itself cannot or refuses to identify the designer it 2a. has to accept that it remains silent on this issue 2b. has to accept that ID is all about a particular supernatural entity we call God.
—————————————————————————————–
I wouldn’t call it a strawman so much as an acknowledgement that ID isn’t science, and from this point of view science has nothing to say about its validity.
Perhaps your G-d was a particulary incompetent designer. As PvM states, ID is silent on the matter. But if G-d’s suffering from Down’s syndrome it does sort of spin the Faithful’s dogma a bit, doesn’t it?
Comment by Don Baccus — April 22, 2006 @ 5:19 am
Assuming each coin flip is an independent Bernoulli, it really doesn’t matter if you flip all at once or incrementally.
That avoids the question in a way that shows the weakness of the analogy. Before a fair coins is flipped, the probability of a coin turning up heads is 0.5. After it is flipped, the probability of it being heads is either 0 or 1. If 8 coins have been flipped previously, their outcomes do not affect the probability of a single present flip of a fair coin.
Comment by ivy privy — April 22, 2006 @ 3:33 pm
Let me explain Don’s conclusion when he stated
“Describe a scientific method by which the natural evolution of the flagella can be falsified.”
Well, then, to counter the deep thinkers supporting ID here we have the most vocal blogger at Uncommon Descent making the above statement. In other words, ID is not science…
So either ID is the scientific method by which the natural evolution of the flagella can be falsified or ID is not science although it claims that it falsify the natural evolution of the flagella.
An additional question: Science has identified plausible pathways for the evolution of the flagella, how do these pathways compare with ID explanations?
Let me quote Dembski
As for your example, I’m not going to take the bait. You’re asking me to play a game: “Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.” ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.
http://www.iscid.org/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000152;p=3
Does such an approach not make ID scientifically irrelevant or vacuous?
Comment by PvM — April 22, 2006 @ 4:03 pm
“One can figure out how a structure was precisely designed by reverse-engineering it.”
Well, no, you can’t, actually …
Clean-room reverse-engineering of software doesn’t tell you that at all.
Comment by Don Baccus — April 22, 2006 @ 6:18 pm
PvM,
Thanks for your response to my post. I understand that SETI and ID have some differences, according to the stuff you cited:
1) SETI looks for “artificiality” while ID looks for “specified complexity”
2) SETI focuses on narrowbanded signals, while ID looks at biological artifacts.
These differences are to be expected, since SETI and ID are working in different contexts with different goals in mind. But one can abstract out the differences in points 1 & 2 above:
1) Both SETI and ID are looking for highly improbable phenomena (within the respective context) that cannot be attributed to statistical noise. In the SETI domain, the improbability can manifest itself in a simple & artifical “pure tone.” In the ID domain, the improbability can manifest itself in the complexity of a biological structure.
2) Both SETI and ID focus on places where the artifacts of design are most likely to be detected. For SETI, that means looking at narrow bands in the signals at certain locations in outer space. For ID, that might mean looking at complex biological structures.
The main commonality is that both can potentially detect design without knowing the specific characteristics of the designer. The differences you point out do not harm this proposition.
Comment by Art — April 23, 2006 @ 4:13 am
“The main commonality is that both can potentially detect design without knowing the specific characteristics of the designer.”
Not at all. SETI starts by assuming the alien intelligence being searched for has developed technology similar to ours. SETI is a positive search for the existence of technology we understand in depth in far away places.
Not a negative search for things we don’t [yet] understand.
Comment by Don Baccus — April 23, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
Art: 1) Both SETI and ID are looking for highly improbable phenomena (within the respective context) that cannot be attributed to statistical noise. In the SETI domain, the improbability can manifest itself in a simple & artifical “pure tone.” In the ID domain, the improbability can manifest itself in the complexity of a biological structure.
The problem with this is that ID defines complexity and probability as the same thing. In other words, calling something complex in ID speak merely means “improbable” where improbable basically means that we at present do not know how to explain it.
An example: ID proponents have called the bacterial flagella complex specified information (CSI), let’s see what this actually means:
1. It has a function. In biology function is sufficient for specification.
2. Scientific explanations have gaps which we cannot (yet) fill or gaps which cannot be filled since they are lost in history.
3. Because of 1 and 2, ID considers the bacterial flagella to be specified and complex. The term information is nothing more than a probability. Science typically looks at particular hypotheses and tries to determine how well the perform relative to eachother. In case of ID however there is no competing hypothesis, in fact there is not even a competing hypothesis for the ‘we don’t know’ Null hypothesis. Which means that ID cannot even compete with science admitting that they do not know all the details. However, since science has outline plausible pathways and hypotheses for the flagella, ID has to establish the likelihood of these hypotheses to determine if the system is still ‘complex’, or in other words, if the probability of the system being explainable by natural processes and chance is sufficiently small. ID faces some incredible problems since the calculation of non-strawmen probabilities will be hard if not impossible, which is why ID has not yet taken on this task for any meaningfull system.
2) Both SETI and ID focus on places where the artifacts of design are most likely to be detected. For SETI, that means looking at narrow bands in the signals at certain locations in outer space.
Based on the knowledge that we as humans are using narrow band signals and we hope/assume that others would use a similar approach. In other words, we are making some very basic but constrained assumptions about what a SETI would do.
For ID, that might mean looking at complex biological structures.
What does this mean? Looking at complex biological systems? What would ID proponents do to further the ID hypothesis in any meaningfull manner?
The main commonality is that both can potentially detect design without knowing the specific characteristics of the designer. The differences you point out do not harm this proposition.
You are wrong here. Specific characteristics are being assumed in SETI, they may not be that visible but they are there. SETI is not based on the assumption that a signal which is ’specified and complex’ is designed, merely that a simple signal in a narrow band would be evidence of human like signals. We know that humans make such signals and SETI hopes/expects that life elsewhere would find similar solutions/approaches.
ID has nothing to guide them in this area since their designer is fully unconstrained, the designer can do anything and thus explains nothing.
Second of all, ID claims no false positives, while SETI is very well aware that even the detection of narrow band signals may be a ‘false alarm’. A good example would have been Pulsars.
I understand that ID proponents like to refer to SETI or to other scientific application of design detection as evidence that ID ‘works’ but as with so many analogies, the similarities disappear quickly at relevant points.
Thus when we see such statements like
Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.
http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/
They are simply wrong… Intelligent Design has yet to support this claim in any meaningful manner and I argue that the conflation of design, complexity and information by IDers only serves to hide the superficial similarities while trivializing the immense differences.
In http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_intelligentdesign_051201.html the writer explains how for instance context in SETI and archaeology are very important. Context is basically making assumptions about the designer(s). In criminology this is means, motives, opportunity, in archaeology it is understanding the capabilities of civilization using known/existing processes, in SETI it is the assumption that such signals would be similar to signals we send, and are expected to come from areas that would be similar to our solar system/planetary system.
Comment by PvM — April 23, 2006 @ 6:51 pm
DaveScot on UncommonDescent shows why ID is vacuous
This is all well and good and certainly does not prove Darwin’s theory is wrong because, as even Darwin must have known, proving a negative is impossible. We can never, ever know that no Darwinian pathway is possible. All we can know is that no proposed pathway can explain it. Fortunately for IDists science doesn’t require proofs. According to our most widely accepted philosophy of science what science does require in cases like these is a method of falsification. In science one needn’t prove a negative if there exists a way to falsify the positive. This is what separates pseudo-scientific theories that explain everything, and thus explain nothing from real scientific theories.
Let me emphasize the telling part
We can never, ever know that no Darwinian pathway is possible. All we can know is that no proposed pathway can explain it.
So how does science approach the flagellum? It provides plausible hypotheses and makes predictions about future possible findings. Speculative yes, but unlike ID, it proposes scientifically relevant and scientifically interesting hypotheses. IDers seem to think that once something has been called CSI or IC, science can safely ignore it.
Comment by PvM — April 23, 2006 @ 7:16 pm
Hi Don,
I will use the your two sentences (replacing SETI with ID) to show the commonality:
ID starts by assuming the intelligence being searched for has developed biological technology similar or greater than ours. ID is a positive search for the existence of biological technology we understand in depth in places close to home.
Comment by Art — April 23, 2006 @ 10:00 pm
ID starts by assuming the intelligence being searched for has developed biological technology similar or greater than ours. ID is a positive search for the existence of biological technology we understand in depth in places close to home.
A positive search? That would imply actual experimentation. Are any ID researchers actually running experiments, let alone positive ones? What positive erpeiments for design have been proposed? The Templeton Foundation has oodles of money they offered for ID experimentation. No one even applied, according to a NY TImes article of December 4, 2005 “Intelligent Design might be meeting its maker”, Laurie Goodstein:
The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.
“They never came in,” said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.
“From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don’t come out very well in our world of scientific review,” he said.
SETI is attempting to meet the standards of science, not re-define and lower them.
Comment by ivy privy — April 23, 2006 @ 10:17 pm
“ID starts by assuming the intelligence being searched for has developed biological technology similar or greater than ours. ”
Not “similar” but “greater”, because we don’t know how to do it.
In other words, ID starts by hand-waving. Just saying “well, obviously the designer knows a lot more than us” nothing but that.
SETI , on the other hand, is precise in this regard. The search is for signals of the kind we know we can make now. We know the physics behind our transmitters that make them. We assume that the alien intelligence knows the same physics and can do the applied physics and engineering to produce these signals.
And as PvM points out, Dembski himself has stated that ID has no interest in studying the structures in question in order to try to determine the technology used to build them. This is probably because Dembski, like the rest of the leading lights of ID, thinks goddidit.
Comment by Don Baccus — April 23, 2006 @ 11:26 pm
Art: ID starts by assuming the intelligence being searched for has developed biological technology similar or greater than ours.
Why? That is not a necessary assumption of ID.
ID is a positive search for the existence of biological technology we understand in depth in places close to home.
Not as it is presently formulated. Nor is ID a positive search.
Comment by PvM — April 23, 2006 @ 11:29 pm
“ID starts by assuming the intelligence being searched for has developed biological technology similar or greater than ours. ”
And, of course, this statement of yours presumes the intelligence is not a supernatural being. “biological technology” is a phenomena that exists in the natural world. If the intelligence is not supernatural, then you can’t avoid the “how did the designer form from stardust” problem. Another designer? Recurse. At some point you have to invoke God, you can’t avoid it.
Comment by Don Baccus — April 24, 2006 @ 12:45 am
“ID starts by assuming the intelligence being searched for has developed biological technology similar or greater than ours. ”
And, of course, this statement of yours presumes the intelligence is not a supernatural being. “biological technology” is a phenomena that exists in the natural world.
The issue of design and the supernatural seems inevitable and the works of ID proponents hints at it strongly when it eliminates natural processes to infer design. Additionally, it claims to be a replacement for methodological naturalism. Conflation between natural and supernatural design further confuses the issues.
ID proponents seem to be arguing that any intelligent process should be considered supernatural but that seems to be an untenable position as it now redefines the meaning of the supernatural.
Much of this could have been avoided if ID resorted to positive design inferences but such an approach does not square well with a supernatural designer.
Comment by PvM — April 24, 2006 @ 1:16 am
How can SETI be a positive search and ID negative? They both look to eliminate stochastic processes as an explanation for the artifact under scrutiny.
Comment by Art — May 3, 2006 @ 12:01 am
Regarding the problem of infinite regress, how could this material realm have a materialistic cause?
Comment by Art — May 3, 2006 @ 12:02 am