The Union of Concerned Scientists Explains Their Problems With “Intelligent Design”
In my previous post, people in the comments invoked the No True Atheist defense, saying that I was wrong to claim that many professional biologists, when addressing the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, made sweeping statements that rule out even alien designers. Well, here is the official statement on ID from the Union of Concerned Scientists. I’m not editing out anything, below are some of the bullet points exactly as they present them on their webpage, and in particular its “Section 4: Why Intelligent Design Is Not Science”:
Section 4: Why Intelligent Design is not Science
The intelligent design movement is exceptionally good at creating false controversies and misconceptions. Yet their basic claims are easily debunked.
- There is scientific controversy over evolution: There is no debate about evolution among the vast majority of scientists, and no credible alternative scientific theory exists. Debates within the community are about specific mechanisms within evolution, not whether evolution occurred.
- Structures found in nature are too complex to have evolved step-by-step through natural selection [the concept of “irreducible complexity”1]: Natural selection does not require that all structures have the same function or even need to be functional at each step in the development of an organism.
- Intelligent design is a scientific theory2: A scientific theory is supported by extensive research and repeated experimentation and observation in the natural world. Unlike a true scientific theory, the existence of an “intelligent” agent can not be tested, nor is it falsifiable.
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Most scientists are atheists5 and believe only in the material world: Such accusations are neither fair nor true. The scientific method is limited to using evidence from the natural world to explain phenomena. It does not preclude the existence of God or other spiritual beliefs and only states that they are not part of science. Belief in a higher being is a personal, not a scientific, question.
They don’t even bring up God until the last bullet point. There is no qualification in the earlier bullet points about their remarks being limited to a supernatural intelligent designer. They flat-out say that “the existence of an ‘intelligent’ agent can not be tested.” This is such a ridiculous claim that it would be laugh-out loud funny in any field except biology. For example, if one archeologist says that the pyramids were designed by an intelligent architect, imagine a chorus of others saying, “The existence of an ‘intelligent’ architect can not be tested, so drop your unscientific hypothesis please and stick to explaining how earthquakes and sandstorms formed this thing.”
Last thing: A lot of people (including those who edited my Wikipedia account) publicly claim, with confidence, that I “deny evolution” or am a “creationist.” My actual views on this topic are quite nuanced. Mostly what I have done in my public remarks on this stuff is point out the huge problems in the smug “scientific” handling of these matters, with people saying self-evidently absurd things like “the existence of an ‘intelligent’ designer is unscientific” or “the theory of macroevolution is as well-established as the theory of gravity.”
“They flat-out say that “the existence of an ‘intelligent’ [designer] can not be tested.” This is such a ridiculous claim that it would be laugh-out loud funny in any field except biology.”
Bob,
Please provide the test that can prove the existence of an intelligent designer. It’s a ridiculous claim to say that it cannot be tested so it should be easy to demonstrate.
Thanks,
Knox
P.S. – Still waiting for contemporaneous non-Biblical evidence that the miracle stories are true.
I guess you could video yourself typing on the computer but I fear you still won’t be convinced of intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no_elVGGgW8
Snore
Grane,
You seem to think Bob’s claim is correct. Maybe you should take up the challenge and provide the answers.
I’m sure you can do it too – you are really smart.
Knox
The argument goes like this:
Free will is a description of our actions as free from the constraints of cause and effect (to some degree). We don’t go see Prometheus 2 in 2016 because a butterfly’s death billions and billions of years ago set in motion a determined set of effects.
This ability to be free from cause and effect must have an origin outside of causal chains because the effect of a cause cannot bestow the ability to break causal chains (i.e. cannot bestow free will) – only something with agency can do this.
Having thus ruled out cause/effect origins for free will, we are left with agency origins.
An infinite regression of past agency origins is logically incoherent, so there’s only so far you can go with the rebuttal “Who created God?”.
A finite point in time for an agency-induced origin being the only other logical option, as well as the logically impossibility of an agent having the ability to create itself, we are left to conclude that an uncreated agent is responsible for free will.
What we can’t know from this line of reasoning is the identity or the number of such agents (which is why we are careful, as someone mentioned in the previous post, not to identify God when arguing for intelligent design – ID *cannot* identify God on its own).
Anticipating Major Freedom’s rebuttal: Yes, you need free will in order to contemplate God, but the capacity for free will had to exist before you were able to realize it.
And yes, I meant “noumena”. Oops.
That is not an argument that intelligent designer is testable. It also seems that the logical conclusion scientifically from the argument is that we do not have free will. Why invent a supernatural cause for something which you have just identified as impossible?
If your response is to say “then we don’t have free will”, then we are at an impasse as concerns my ability to convince you of my position. Nevertheless, I maintain that my argument was sufficient.
It’s true that free will can only be observed introspectively; I can’t prove that someone else has free will. This is why we are, technically, at an impasse.
You can safely hold your position that free will doesn’t exist, and that therefore a belief in God is not logically necessary for you.
But your position comes at a great cost to you, personally: Having rejected a belief in free will, consistency demands that you also abandon the belief that anything you have ever said can be a persuasive argument, since all that you have ever said will have been the result of causal chains. That is, you are compelled by the dead butterfly billions of years ago to say what you say, whether they’re true or not.
This puts your arguments on par with everything that everyone else has said: a purposeless effect of the vibrations of vocal cords.
This only applies to you, though, since I can’t prove to you that you have free will; I only have access to what your physical body does, and it would be a leap to infer agency from that. Only you have access to your mind.
For those of us who do believe in free will, consistency demands that we believe in God.
There are different ways to view it. You conclude that a certain thing is impossible within normal physical constraints, yet you believe you have this impossible thing. Therefore you hypothesis another impossible thing to make the impossible possible. My response was to say that if the thing is impossible, it makes more sense to say it doesn’t exist and your belief in it is mistaken. A third resolution is that your initial conclusion was wrong, and both determinism and free will are possible.
Those that believe in both determinism and free will are called compatibilists. You reject this view as inconsistent. I see that this is a recognised school of thought, so I am not quite ready to reject it out of hand. Various factors such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory allow what Dennett called “elbow room” for both to be true. Strong emergence allows “downward causation to be possible, thus the mind is an emergent property of the brain that can affect the brain. The Calvinist view is somewhat similar , I think – that God predestined some to be saved and some to be damned, but the individuals nonetheless get what they deserve. (Apologies if I have mis-represented Calvinism.) Talk of Calvin brings us nicely to Hobbes, who as a classical compatibilist defined free will as being able to do something else if you had decided to, which sort of avoids the origins of the decision.
Whichever is the case, whether an illusion or reality, it makes sense for me to treat it as real, and act as though I have free will.
“Talk of Calvin brings us nicely to Hobbes …”
I see what you did there.
Anyway, I’m content with my progress.
Believe it or not, this topic will come up again when we argue about the Austrian Economics claim of a priori knowledge. Major Freedom should rethink his position, accordingly.
knoxharrington, William Dembski has formally laid out the criteria for “specified complexity.” But am I to take it that you don’t believe pyramids were designed by an intelligent being or beings?
Bob,
I think the evidence shows that the pyramids were built by humans and didn’t evolve. I guess I’m incapable of understanding why you equate man-made objects with the existence of life. I can see a clock and a tree and understand that one was designed and the other was not. Your intuition that life was designed does not make it so. Where’s the evidence to support the “god did it” hypothesis? Does Dembski provide the evidence? I guess I’ll check it out.
Now, about those contemporaneous non-Biblical accounts that attest to the miracle stories …
Knox
” I guess I’m incapable of understanding why you equate man-made objects with the existence of life”
Despite your intuitions I don’t believe I am smart enough to prove anything to you. I apologize if I have upset you, I have trouble remembering how important peoples religious faith is to them.
knox wrote:
I think the evidence shows that the pyramids were built by humans and didn’t evolve. I guess I’m incapable of understanding why you equate man-made objects with the existence of life.
Knox, I’m not messing with you here: You need to please step back and look at what has happened. Last post, I made a simple point that the critics of ID will rule out “intelligent designer” as unscientific per se. But yet, plenty of scientists admit that the theory of alien designers of terrestrial life is perfectly scientific, albeit it needs more evidence.
Some people then said no no no Bob, the critics of ID only rule out *supernatural* designers.
In this post, then, I showed that they are wrong. Plenty of professional biologists, in debates before the public on ID, rule out an intelligent designer in very sweeping terms that would be ridiculous in other contexts.
You then demanded that I provide the test of the existence of a designer, thinking that I would be flummoxed.
And yet, you yourself admit that you think something intelligent designed the pyramids. So clearly you have such a test yourself.
When faced with this problem, you then tell me you don’t see what pyramids have to do with organisms, showing that you have failed to grasp the entire point of the last two posts. Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m wrong, but it’s frustrating that you think you’re zinging me when you (apparently) have truly missed the entire point of the last two posts.
Bob,
Is it your contention that either everything is intelligently designed or nothing is? The pyramids did not evolve over time. The evidence of a designer, humans, does not then allow you to make the leap that, just because something is complex, it must be “designed.”
We can go look at the pyramids and judge the evidence. We can look at the evidence in the fossil record and see evidence of evolution. Where is the evidence of the aliens, or god, or some other designer of life? Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it is probable. It is possible, Bob, that you could play power forward in the NBA. It is just not probable. It is possible that there is an intelligent designer, it is just not probable. Anything we can imagine would be “possible.” That is the power of imagination. The question is whether or not, given the evidence and Occam’s Razor, something is probable.
I am always fascinated when the faithful try to put on the garb of science. Your claims are not scientifically testable so stop trying to make them so. Just admit that you take this stuff on faith and that there is no way to verify its accuracy or truthfulness. That’s all I really want from the faithful – an admission that the absolute certainty available to you through your faith is built, to use a Biblical metaphor, on sand.
I fully understand your point Bob – I just don’t understand why you can’t see it is transparent nonsense. Even the Dembski entry you cite clearly shows that his is an argument from ignorance.
“Is it your contention that either everything is intelligently designed or nothing is? The pyramids did not evolve over time. The evidence of a designer, humans, does not then allow you to make the leap that, just because something is complex, it must be “designed.”’
No, you’re still not getting his point. He is not trying to prove that life was created by an intelligence designer with either of these posts. He’s making a much much smaller point. Namely, that dismissing intelligent design as unscientific per se is wrong. For example, these scientists were using intelligent design as a scientific theory to explain what they found, and everybody explains the pyramids were created by intelligent design. Now, admitting that ID is not unscientific per se doesn’t mean you have to accept that all of creation is explained by ID. His point was much smaller than that. I think you’re letting your hatred for religion blind you to the simple point he was making. It’s like you think Murphy has laid a trap, and if you agree with his obviously correct point that you will be tricked into accepting ID for life on Earth.
Dan,
It’s apples and oranges. We see people design and build things all the time. We have pyramids in other parts of the world. Structures of this type are built by humans. How do we know this? Evidence. Positing a supernatural intelligent designer is by definition unscientific because science operates in the natural world. This is why there is no evidence for ghosts, for example. I get what Bob is saying. Some scientists want to claim that intelligent design is a scientific hypothesis. My perspective is that this is special pleading and Uri Geller spoon bending. It is one thing for a scientist to say that given the limits of our current knowledge we don’t know the cause of X. It is another to say that given the limits of our current knowledge we don’t know the cause of X but a working hypothesis available to us is that a unicorned gnome did it while riding a shetland pony. It is an argument from ignorance to posit supernatural causation for anything because, by that causation’s very nature, it is improbable, unrepeatable and untestable. This is the problem with the Dembski argument. How can these things be specifically complex? Scientists aren’t sure so let’s posit a supernatural origin or, even better, E.T. did it. It is embarrassing to see religionists play Mad Libs and see that the only word used to fill in the blanks is god.
I dismiss intelligent design as it is unscientific. I think Bob is wrong. And his point is not “obviously correct.”
Knox
”
I dismiss intelligent design as it is unscientific. I think Bob is wrong. And his point is not “obviously correct.”’
You don’t dismiss ID as unscientific per se. You dismiss it as an explanation for the origins of life, but you accept it for explaining other things like how the pyramids were created. You just have some mental block that keeps making you equate ID to necessarily relying on a supernatural explanation when that is not necessarily true. If you really understood the point Murphy was making then you wouldn’t keep bringing God into the equation because his point has nothing to do with saying God created the universe. His point is much smaller than that, and it is obviously correct.
I agree that intelligent design is possible. I agree that intelligent design can be a scientific explanation for some things.
I disagree that intelligent design as an explanation for life is scientific. Whether that designer is god or an alien or some other entity for which we have no justification or evidence. Again, the pyramids being designed is not an analogy for the design for life. Anyone who claims to equate the clear design of objects in the natural world with the design of life is engaging in unscientific wish fulfillment.
Who is the designer of life? According to Bob it isn’t aliens – it is the Christian god. Intelligent design as an explanation for life is unscientific. Intelligent design as an explanation for automobiles is scientific. How? Because of observation, replication, tangibility, and so on. Hypothesizing aliens or god or entity X as the designer of life is untenable as a SCIENTIFIC hypothesis because there is no evidence to back up that assertion and no way of obtaining that evidence – at least with regard to god. Given the size and vastness of the universe I think it is possible that alien life (life of whatever variety on a planet other than Earth) may exist. I see no evidence, and no way of obtaining evidence, for a supernatural causation explanation. And, sadly, there is no way for the religious to do this either. There is a higher probability of life on other planets than that a god exists. At any rate, we at least have a chance to prove the former and no chance to prove the latter.
“I agree that intelligent design is possible. I agree that intelligent design can be a scientific explanation for some things.”
OK, then you agree with the small point Dr. Murphy was making.
Correct. I disagree with extrapolating the small point into a justification for life being Intelligently Designed. In other words, intelligent design, yes, Intelligent Design, no.
Does an archaeologist ever unearth a pot and ask whether or not it was “intelligently designed”? No. Why? The reasons are obvious and based on evidence. As such, “intelligent design” may have no real explanatory power because in everyday life it is understood to mean “things created by humans.” Where did that building come from? Humans. Why are the crops growing in straight lines? Humans. What is the origin of life on Earth? An incorporeal being which exists out of space time and for which we have no physical or other evidence created life so that we could worship it, or, an alien left a miniscule metal pod which is the origin of all life, or, we evolved over millions of years from less complex creatures. The first two offer no evidence to sustain themselves. The third does – and it is not Intelligent Design. Smuggling Intelligent Design into the conversation through the backdoor of the obviousness of “intelligent design” is something I would expect from a presuppositionalist apologist – semantic games and bald assertions without any evidence.
My conclusion is KnoxHarrington couldn’t follow a logical argument if he was chained to it.
Gene,
If that criticism came from ANYONE but you I might take it to heart.
Knox
Bob, I’m reminding you again about that post you said you’d do on gov’t spending, WWII, and GDP.
http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2015/01/potpourri-248.html#comments
Good, E. Harding, I will really try to do the investment one (since that’s quick) before I leave town this week. The GDP one will have to wait, because I have to dig up my notes.
Just to be the guy defending the biologists, I think they are happy saying something that is 98% right, only excludes a very unlikely possibility, and might succeed in shutting up ID advocates, or swaying people on the fence. I think the falsifiability arguments are just an easy fall back position for scientists to take. If our alien grandfathers land on Earth tomorrow, biologists will keep doing science. If God comes to Earth tomorrow, their jobs might be moot.
98%
Dean T. Sandin, do you think most scientists would be comfortable in saying something that is 2% wrong, in order to shut up their opponents and persuade people on the fence?
There are a lot of things I don’t get about the Evolution Debate. Here is one of them:
As an explanation for the development of life on Earth, evolution beats ID hands down. It’s not that ID can’t be tested, it’s that it HAS been tested and has been found wanting. The only way to make ID remotely plausible is to accept 95% of the standard evolutionary picture, and then include a designer as an add on (e.g. biologists are right about the last 3.5 billion years of evolution, but before that God created the first single celled organisms).
Instead of pointing to this mountain of evidence, however, a lot of folks instead rely on some dodgy philosophy of science arguments to get ID ruled out of bounds. Even if these arguments were correct (and they aren’t), they make it look like evolution is trying to win on a technicality.
ID and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Only “internet atheists” incapable of actually reading anything written by religious philosphers hold that position.
Was going to reply like this, but you beat me too it.
It’s depressing that there are much better arguments to make, but UCS (and most internet commenters you see) instead prefer to assert blatant falsities like how detection of design is inherently unscientific. Someone alert SETI and the archaeologists!
The fact is, people discern intelligent vs random signals *all the freaking time*. It’s just that the different is usually so stark, or you have so much additional evidence, that you don’t need a precise theory.
The criterion is not intelligent vs random, but intelligent vs non-intelligent. Pulsars are not random, but neither are they intelligent. This is a useful example of the problem we have here – how to you test for intelligence in a non-random signal? The co-discoverer said “we did not really believe that we had picked up signals from another civilization, but obviously the idea had crossed our minds and we had no proof that it was an entirely natural radio emission. It is an interesting problem—if one thinks one may have detected life elsewhere in the universe, how does one announce the results responsibly?” The hypothesis of intelligence was not the front-runner, but it was seriously considered to be a valid hypothesis How was the distinction made? It was the discovery of a second pulsar in a different part of the sky that caused what they called the “LGM” (little green men) hypothesis to be abandoned. Also there was an alternative explanation of a rotating neutron star, which had been proposed as a possibility shortly before the pulsar was discovered.
“Most scientists are atheists and believe only in the material world”
Well, being atheist is not synonymous with being a philosophical naturalist. Of course, philosophical naturalism is not a defensible position. In fact, it’s laughable.
Therefore, scientists who vociferously proclaim that naturalism is the only view any right-thinking person can hold have a real problem understanding basic philosophy.
Since the question of the existence of God is philosophical, not scientific (Point of clarification: science studies the natural world and has nothing to say about the possibility of the super-natural. Just like mathematics per se cannot tell us anything about sociological issues), we should put little weight on what these scientists say and instead discuss the question with people who understand philosophy well.
* we should put little weight on what these scientists say about philosophy
I.D. is a last-ditch attempt by Creationists to insert their non-science into science. Simply put:
1. Why does something that looks “created” actually was created by an intelligence? Constellations are just patterns people see in the sky and weren’t created. Is it coincidence that the Sun and Moon are the same apparent size in the sky? Yes, the Moon was much closer and it’s a coincidence that we live in the time era when the Moon has receded from the Earth enough that it appears the same size as the Sun.
2. Even if existence implies a Creator why then does the Creator become the God of the Bible? Why assume the Creator has to be morally good? Why assume the Creator is human-like and cares about humanity?
“Constellations are just patterns people see in the sky and weren’t created.”
Wow, does that ever beg the question! How do you know they weren’t created?!
Natural selection can select for non-functional things? That makes little sense
I’m not a big fan of ID. The Church’s history of allowing its philosophy to get too close to material science has a habit of feeding its enemies.
On the other hand, reading the “Concerned Scientists’ ” laundry list makes it sound laughably like the laundry list of climate scientists that Bob so ably mocks and discredits (down to 90%+ agreement of specialists).
The amazing disappearing posts!
I’m not a big fan of ID. The Church’s history of allowing its philosophy to get too close to material science has a habit of feeding its enemies.
On the other hand, reading the “Concerned Scientists’ ” laundry list makes it sound laughably like the laundry list of climate scientists that Bob so ably mocks and discredits (down to 90%+ agreement of specialists).
Point 3 is that ID is not a scientific theory. This is true, as theory is a developed idea supported by extensive evidence. cf theory of gravity. This does not per se make it non-scientific, as all theories started as hypotheses, for which evidence was then gathered to support a theory. However, it does make it much less certain than a theory, and thus much less justified in teaching it.
Point 4 is that ID is based on the scientific method. This is only sort of true, as it only takes the first step in the method – the hypothesis. It is not supported by evidence, and does not suggest a mechanism. As the hypothesis is part of the scientific method, one can argue that it is based on the scientific method. One could also argue that you must take more than one step to be a method. This criterion also allows almpst any speculation as science.
Point 5 is totally irrelevant to the question.
Murphy,
What you linked to is a rejection of non-falsifiable intelligent design as the only explanation for complexity in the universe.
All the bullet points are predicated on the intelligent design theory being non-falsifiable. They brought up God in the last bit not it distinguish it from the other points being secular, but to emphasize that God is not even relevant to falsifiable science.
They do not reject intelligent designers building the pyramids, because those intelligent designers are observable. They do use intelligent design to refer to human designers. They are talking about non-falsifiable intelligent designers.
They bring up God in the last point to push back against accusations that they are themselves atheists.
“They do not reject intelligent designers building the pyramids, because those intelligent designers are observable.”
It’s a leap to infer agency from pyramids, or even the actions of people. You observe objects moving their appendages; You do not observe intelligence or motive.
(And even when people speak about their motives, the only thing you’re observing is sound. To infer motives to those sounds is beyond the purview of scientific inquiry.)
What Bob is saying is that the same standard you apply to pyramids and people’s observable actions to infer intelligence is the same standard you should apply when observing the complexity of anything else.
guest:
“It’s a leap to infer agency from pyramids, or even the actions of people. You observe objects moving their appendages; You do not observe intelligence or motive.”
Yes but empiricism does not and cannot deal with actions. It is by design, untintentional or not, limited to non-acting phenomena. Phenomena that is testable, behaving in accordance with constant causal relations, you know the standard argument here.
Sure enough, at least those “I am not 100% sure they are agents” beings’ bodies are observable. I can see your body touching stones to build a pyramid. I can conclude you are intelligent, if I see you react to certain events in certain general ways. Science qua empiricism does not rule out intelligent entities per se. It just does not accept any theory that is not falsifiable through experience as within the realm of science. Yes I am aware of the contradiction there. But that does not mean science owes a duty to accepting in principle a supernatural God.
Yes it is a leap for me to infer that your body is acting as opposed to not acting and just moving. But at least I can in principle see your body, hear your body, touch your body, smell your body, that is, use my sensual perceptions to know that you are there). I might have even seen your body build a pyramid.
But if that is a leap, then inferring a supernatural unobservable God as the agent behind not only pyramids, but us as well, and everything else in the universe, well that is an Olympic sized long jump leap. This is because there is no sense perception of God at all. It not just inferring intelligence from a body we can observe. It is inferring intelligence from a thought concept. Supernatural Gods are spiritual, i e. mental. I am ignoring hallucinations.
I agree with your assessment of empiricism. But everything you say that empiricism suffers from, is multiplied for supernatural Gods. Inferring intelligence from a body you can observe is not in the same league as inferring intelligence from a body that is by definition unobservable.
“What Bob is saying is that the same standard you apply to pyramids and people’s observable actions to infer intelligence is the same standard you should apply when observing the complexity of anything else.”
But if that is the case, then equal standards demands that Bob present an observable entity that he “infers” is so intelligent that it designed the entire universe. But Bob’s intelligent designer is by definition not presentable in that way. Yes, we’re all inferring, but the “concerned scientists”, some of whom are themselves believers in God, want to infer intelligence from beings we can observe. Hence the open door to aliens, but a shut door to unobservable beings.
“But at least I can in principle see your body, hear your body, touch your body, smell your body, that is, use my sensual perceptions to know that you are there). I might have even seen your body build a pyramid.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0yFyW7Ysps
😀
“Inferring intelligence from a body you can observe is not in the same league as inferring intelligence from a body that is by definition unobservable.”
We’re not asking you to infer intelligence from something that’s unobservable. Cops infer things all the time from crime scenes (or replace cops with something free marketty) which they haven’t seen.
Bob is asking you to infer intelligence from objects with more complexity than pyramids and crime scenes. I’m asking you to infer an uncreated intelligence from the intelligence you do, in fact, observe on introspection (I actually don’t like the Blind Watchmaker argument).
guest:
“We’re not asking you to infer intelligence from something that’s unobservable. Cops infer things all the time from crime scenes (or replace cops with something free marketty) which they haven’t seen.”
I believe you’re missing the point. The key is whether or not that which you claim has intelligence, is in principle observable or not. Cops who look for human criminals (and innocents) are looking for beings that are in principle observable.
“Bob is asking you to infer intelligence from objects with more complexity than pyramids and crime scenes.”
Bob is not asking us to infer that the pyramid itself, which is in principle an observable concept, is intelligent. He is asking us to infer intelligence from the ultimate creator of the pyramid that is not in principle observable, or at least has not yet been observed. Cops who keep blaming a mysterious killer for their deeds would at some point become suspects themselves based on the absence of the mysterious killer being observed.
“I’m asking you to infer an uncreated intelligence from the intelligence you do, in fact, observe on introspection (I actually don’t like the Blind Watchmaker argument).”
No, what I am observing are the things that you say were created by a being with intelligence. But you have yet to present this intelligent being.
If someone saw a watch on the beach, science does not say it is unscientific to infer something intelligent made it. Science says it is unscientific to believe as true that an unobservable in principle being with intelligence created that watch. This does not rule out humans or aliens or any other in principle observable being.
This whole ‘ID is unscientific’ quibble is pointless. The vast majority evidence to support Evolution Theory is just as observational as the evidence to support Intelligent Design Theory. For me, the testability argument doesn’t hold water. Once you get outside the fields of physics and chemistry, the scientificness of the tests and experiments falls off and observational evidence fills in the gaps.
The problem with ID is that the new information that it contributes is minimal and it makes ridiculous leaps in logic. “I believe that certain natural biological structures are too complex to be created from the currently understood mechanisms of evolution.” Okay fine. That is a solid statement. But no one would deny this. Evolution Theory is incomplete and requires more research. Heck, parts of evolution may even be wrong. But irreducible complexity does not invalidate evolution, nor does it strongly imply an intelligent creator. If ID theorists want to be taken seriously, they have a lot more work to do. If what they are saying is true, then this is a major scientific upheaval and they will have to endure the extended period of ridicule that every other major scientific upheaval has. It is only fair.
but bob, in the text you quote it does talk ONLY about supernatural intelligence:
“Intelligent design is a scientific theory2: A scientific theory is supported by extensive research and repeated experimentation and observation in the natural world.”
note: experimentation and observation in the natural world.
aliens, if they exist, are subject to observatin and experimentation, given the technology is available.
right?
Bob has identified a problem with the anti ID arguments. It is not a serious one, as it does not affect the worth of actually teaching it or anything like that, but it exists. This is that ID is almost exclusively promoted by those with a religious motivation. To such an extent that the religious element is often assumed. The arguments put forward against it often assume this religious element, meaning they are not always as clear as they could be.
ID per se says nothing about the intelligence that did the creating. If we support this basic ID with a mechanism and testability we offer a stronger scientific case. So if we say the designer was an alien who fired little metal balls of proto-life at the Earth, we can in principle test this. We might find the balls, we might find the aliens as they exist(ed) in our universe, we might find a bloody great cannon on Mars. So we have a scientific theory, although not supported by much evidence. Similarly for panspermiia (that life exists throughout the universe).
If we do not propose a mechanism, we offer a weaker scientific case. We cannot test the mechanism because there is not one. It does not even have to have existed in our physical universe. So a general claim of “intelligence” is a very poor scientific case.
Those scientists claiming panspermia or alien seeding are offering a scientific theory. Those who do not specify a cause are offering a much weaker, but much broader scientific argument. There is a reasonable case that ID is not scientific because it specifically excludes discussion of the nature of the intelligence, whereas theories about aliens are scientific because they do. In effect, ID per se rules out aliens, because ID cannot say anything about the nature of the intelligence and still be ID If you say it is aliens, then it is a theory of alien seeding, not ID. If you say it is God,then it is creationism, not ID.
So what’s the proposed mechanism of Evolution then? Survival of the fittest, and the fittest are defined as whatever survives. That’s a tautology, obviously true but no description of a mechanism.
Biologists don’t test Evolution, they assume it. Oh look, I discovered a new mushroom, must have been put there by Evolution, so I’ll come up with a story about how Evolution made this mushroom.
So it’s completely unconstrained then? Anything can happen, anywhere, anytime, and it’s all Evolution.
Not a falsifiable theory (a tautology never is falsifiable).
“So what’s the proposed mechanism of Evolution then? Survival of the fittest…” Come on Tel, I am surprised at you. The original title was “On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection.” There is no mention of survival of the fittest as mechanism, the mechanism is natural selection. Added to this is the need for small variations to arise between individuals and for these differences to be inheritable. Those that survive propagate their particular difference. Originally there was no known mechanism for the differences, but they were observable in offspring. Since then we have discovered genes and mutations. I can demonstrate the mechanism with a simple example. Start off with a population of 10 number 10’s. The average is 10. Add to each one the a random number from -1 to 1 to create another 10 numbers. The average is still 10 (give or take), but the population is 20. Then remove the lowest 10 numbers. The average is now higher than 10 and the population is the same size as the original. Repeat. You will find the average steadily increases. In this case selection is for larger numbers. Given reproductive variability and selection there will be evolution. Imagine the same, but with giraffes’ necks instead of numbers and you arrive at a long necked species. Given mutation and selection, some evolution is inevitable.
The mechanism is clear.
You just changed “survival of the fittest” over to “natural selection” which provides no additional meaning to the theory.
How do you define “natural selection” then? Merely by declaring that any selection is by definition “natural”. So the Christian makes the declaration that any selection is by definition the will of God. Neither of you has a workable theory, neither of you can male predictions, the only difference is that the so called “scientist” enjoys a feeling of superiority … a better brand of ignorance.
That’s Harold’s Selection, made by the will of Harold, a completely different theory. No one doubts that crops can be bred for greater yield, or horses bred for winning races… this type of thing is a useful theory, and was known long before Darwin. Humans are motivated to improve their lives, and earn money, so breeders will strive to achieve this. We can conclude that a race breeder is unlikely to select the slowest horse, simply because we have a good idea what the breeder is trying to do.
In order to make “natural” selection useful, you would need to have some idea of what “nature” is trying to achieve. Does natural selection always select the largest? Does it always select the smallest, the fastest, the strongest? Hmmm, on observation seems like nature selects all sorts of stuff, without a pattern to it that any biologist has yet published. Next year some other biological odds and ends will be discovered that no one expected and biologists will nod wisely and say, “Yup, yup, natural selection did that, in 20/20 hindsight I totally get it.”
“In order to make “natural” selection useful, you would need to have some idea of what “nature” is trying to achieve.” This does not make much sense. Who says natural selection is useful? Nature does not intend anything, it merely is. Evolution has been called a “self-evident” mechanism because it necessarily follows from three simple facts:
1) Variation exists (and arises) within populations of organisms.
2) Different traits confer different rates of survival and reproduction.
3) These traits can be passed from generation to generation.
It doesn’t matter to the mechanism whether it is Harold’s selection or natural selection, so long as there is selection. And since not every offspring can in turn produce the same number of offspring, there is of necessity some selection. Do you deny that a particular environment will select for particular traits?
“Does it always select the smallest, the fastest, the strongest?” Clearly not. That is why it is survival of the fittest, not survival of the fastest. “Neither of you has a workable theory, neither of you can make predictions,” On isolated islands without predators, for large animals small size is often selected – hence things like dwarf elephants. This is a consistent pattern and this is called insular dwarfism. There is a workable theory with a clear mechanism to explain the selection for small animals in this environment, which is consistently observed. Interestingly, for small animals, the same environment may select for large size – called island gigantism. So we get large rats, and birds like the dodo.
Crazy fool, you may say -the same environment selects for both large and small. That is because fitness changes with the environment and the species. Not only can evolution predict what will happen to the size of creatures in isolated environments, it has even greater explaining powers. Reduction in size occurs about 30 times faster than increases in size (expressed as number of generations). That is because there is a quick mechanism to size reduction called pedomorphism. Animals start off small, so it is relatively easy to retain smallness. Increasing in size requires overcoming challenges the species has not previously met which must be overcome by evolutionary advances. So the observed pattern is predictable, consistent with the mechanism, which explains not just type of changes but the rate of change too.
You know because you asked her? Perhaps you just assume this because you cannot see any benefit in ascribing an intention, without any way to ask what that intention might be. If you make that presumption, you might also discover certain people also don’t intend anything (Fed chair comes to mind for example).
So you are saying it might as well be God’s selection then?
That’s unsatisfactory; if you look at a dog breeder, trying to get an exceptionally fluffy tail on her mutts, in order to win some show ribbon, clearly this is deliberate action, with a purpose, controlled by an intelligent mind.
You already accepted that evolution in the wild cannot operate on the same basis, because you said nature has no intention. Therefore the it does make a difference whether the selection process is driven by an intelligent overseer or by some abstract “natural” process to which no particular purpose can be ascribed. Indeed, that would pretty much be the whole crux of the discussion.
I don’t deny that if you wait a thousand years something might happen, and if you wait another thousand years something else might happen. The problem with your theory is that it comes down to “what happens is what happens” which is once again a useless tautology. It might be nice as a comfort bear to stick under your arm but there’s no advancement of science here.
Sometimes you get dwarfism, sometimes you get giantism, except for those times when you get nothing in particular. It’s like having a theory of lottery numbers that says, “If you want to know the lottery numbers, just buy a newspaper and read out the numbers.” Completely true, but kind of misses the point.
Explanatory power in a theory is a double-edged sword. If there’s something that happens and the theory cannot explain it, then that’s a problem for the theory. On the other hand, if there’s nothing that could possibly happen tomorrow that is not explained by that theory then it isn’t falsifiable, and should be rejected from science.
Anything that ever happens can be explained as God’s will, it has the ultimate explanation power, but you can’t go anywhere after that. God’s will isn’t science, precisely because it explains too much.
So the only example of predictive power is that shrinking species shrink faster than growing species. I’ll take your word on that, but if (just for example) Ebola becomes airborne quite quickly in just a few years, this would be a counter example, such that a species can quickly overcome a fundamental barrier, would biology abandon evolution as a consequence? I very much doubt it, they would just say, “see there’s natural selection again” and off they go.
There is no requirement for nature to have a purpose for evolution to be true, nor any evidence as far as I am aware, that nature does have a purpose.
“So you are saying it might as well be God’s selection then?” It depends very much what question you are trying to answer. Evolution will proceed if there is selection. You breeder selected for a dog with a fluffy tail. Nature has selected for peacocks with spectacular tails. Does it make a difference if the selection is natural or intelligent? Not to the mechanism, but it clearly makes a huge difference to the discussion about whether the selection is natural or controlled by an intelligence. In the dog example we have very strong evidence that selection is controlled by an intelligence. In the peacock example we have none. It is clearly not the case that “it might as well have been God’s selection” any more than it might as well have been the pixies or aliens.
“I don’t deny that if you wait a thousand years something might happen … but if (just for example) Ebola becomes airborne quite quickly in just a few years, this would be a counter example”. I did specify that the speed was expressed in numbers of generations. In a few years Ebola will have as many generations as a mammal does in thousands of years.
“So the only example of predictive power is that shrinking species shrink faster than growing species.” That is not the only example – it is just an example. Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is another. Resistance is not just those bacteria that happened to be resistant surviving. Over time the bacteria develop traits the original population did not have. I predict that if you expose a population of bacteria to a particular antibiotic that population will become resistant to it. Some fish species are becoming smaller in response to fishing selecting for large fish.
Evolution could be disproved in any number of ways. Rabbits in the Devonian is a famous example – more precisely, fossils consistently in places they could not be if they evolved. The idea of evolution was established well before our understanding of genetics. What would have disproved evolution is if the whales were more similar genetically to fish than to mammals. That did not happen. There are vast numbers of findings that could disprove evolution. Rabbits with feathers would be a very serious challenge. There are animals with features of birds and reptiles, and those with features of mammals and reptiles, but none with mixtures of birds and mammals. This is consistent with birds and mammals evolving from two different groups of reptiles. No findings have been found that contradict this. So if tomorrow a rabbit gives birth to a baby rabbit with feathers, that would pretty much disprove evolution. Prove the Earth is 6000 years old or even 60 million– that would also nail it. I could go on, but as the list is essentially limitless there does not seem to be much point.
knoxharrington wrote:
I agree that intelligent design is possible. I agree that intelligent design can be a scientific explanation for some things.
I disagree that intelligent design as an explanation for life is scientific. Whether that designer is god or an alien or some other entity for which we have no justification or evidence.
Knox, you keep saying the most astounding things here, which is ironic, since you are holding yourself up as the beacon of reason.
OK you admit it’s possible that aliens intelligently seeded life here on Earth. But you seem to be saying no scientist is allowed to weigh in on this issue, at least not in his professional capacity? We can have theologians, bus drivers, pizza guys, and novelists talk to us about aliens possibly designing the first cell on Earth, but no biologist, chemist, or physicist could ever have anything to say about it?
And if an archeologist uncovered a flying saucer that was 4 billion years old, in your book that wouldn’t count as evidence for or against the hypothesis that aliens seeded life here?
TIME OUT: I think I figured out why you and I are having a failure to communicate, Knox. Consider this claim:
CLAIM: Gravity is a force of attraction between two objects, proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
I would say that claim is definitely a scientific one–it is part of science–although it is not currently considered correct because it has been supplanted by general relativity. For sure, if someone said “That claim is unscientific because it involves invisible forces” then I would laugh at such a move.
If I understand your handling of this stuff on aliens, you would say the above is not a scientific claim, because it lacks sufficient evidence for its truth.
Does that resolve the different ways you and I are using words here?
The way I understood his point is that intelligent design as the cause for life on Earth as we know it, is unscientific because such a theory has no evidence. There is evidence of complex things yes, it there is no evidence of an intelligent watchmaker.
I bet if I told Knox “Hey Knox, I believe a super intelligent race of aliens designed all life on Earth”, he would not from the outset rule it out, because the concept of “super intelligent alien” is in principle provable by scientific methods. He might say “That may very well be, but there is no evidence of such a race of beings, so IF you were to believe that theory as true anyway, THEN that belief would be unscientific.”
But if I instead said “Hey Knox, I believe a super intelligent supernatural unobservable being of omnipotent and omniscient power designed all life on Earth (and everywhere else in the universe)”, then he would more than likely rule it out from the outset because that theory is by definition not even something science could falsify in principle.
All he is saying is ” Bob, show me an OBSERVABLE something that you say is an intelligent designer of all life on Earth. If you cannot, and yet you continue to believe in it anyway, then your belief is not scientific.”
“If I understand your handling of this stuff on aliens, you would say the above is not a scientific claim, because it lacks sufficient evidence for its truth.”
Major Freedom gets my position on these issues. Additionally, there is the idea of what is probable and what is possible given the evidence. Is it possible that aliens seeded life here? Yes. Is it probable given our understanding of the cosmos, evolution, faster than light travel, etc.? No. That doesn’t mean it did definitively did not happen but there is no evidence supporting the alien-seeding hypothesis. I don’t rule it out conclusively but I’m not going to spend any time on it until we are able to get some data or evidence to support such a theory which would require further testing and so on.
The god created life hypothesis seems to me to be improbable and impossible to prove, not impossible but impossible to prove, given that it requires the creation of life by something that we cannot know to be there. God by its definition exists prior to, and outside of, space and time, is unobservable and untestable therefore non-falsifiable and unscientific – it is a faith claim and not a science claim. My position on faith is that it not epistemologically valid. We cannot “know” by faith but we can believe on faith. Scientists can pursue the alien theory and if they find evidence to back up we can have a Kuhnian paradigm shift to the new alien theory. Again, that could possible happen but it probably will not. Scientists can pursue the alien theory and perhaps find evidence, I don’t think the same can be said for the god theory.
Forgive the typos – writing on a phone.
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/03/god_is_on_the_ropes_the_brilliant_new_science_that_has_creationists_and_the_christian_right_terrified/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
The fundamental problem I see with ID is not about whether life on earth could have been seeded by some intelligent being, aliens or God. Rather, the deeper question is whether life per se, wherever it may have originated, could have been brought into existence by an intelligent designer.
Intelligence is by definition an attribute of some living, conscious being that exists in the first place. Any attempt to say that an intelligent designer gave shape to life must answer the question of how the living, conscious entity with that intelligence came into existence in the first place. It is a contradiction to talk in the same breath about the origin of life per se and about the existence of an intelligent designer (a living, conscious being) prior to that origin of life per se.
So, I am forced to conclude that it is logically impossible for an intelligent designer to have been responsible for the origin of life (wherever in the universe that happened).
We do observe intelligence, if only our own through introspection.
We also know that our intelligence had a beginning, and that therefore a prior intelligence was responsible for its creation.
Infinite regressions being logically incoherent, we are left to conclude that the original intelligence was uncreated (has always existed).
Again, the identity and number of such intelligent beings cannot be known through ID alone.
(It’s been a whole week with a religion post as the latest post. LOL. I blame Valentine’s Day.)
This is false reasoning. You are positing the existence of an intelligence without the existence of a living, conscious entity whose attribute that intelligence is. Reasoning through the term intelligence without properly defining the term itself is the reason for this bizarre error. As a result, at every level of your argument, you are engaging in concept smuggling by surreptitiously bringing a “being” in and finally pretending that some being must have existed.
The argument, incidentally, has nothing to do with regressions, leave alone infinite regressions. It is a simple matter of asking whether there can be an intelligence without a living, conscious entity whose attribute that intelligence is. Attributes are not floating abstractions that exist in their own realm with no mooring to existents. All attributes are necessarily attributes of things that exist or of abstractions linked to our concepts of existents.
“Reasoning through the term intelligence without properly defining the term itself is the reason for this bizarre error.”
Using the term “reasoning” without inferring an intelligence is the real problem, I submit.
But before we go any farther (and here I quite deliberately use distance as a metaphor for degree of progression), can we both agree that the lull in blog posts means that Bob wants us all to fight this out to the death?
(Aside, to the extent that skills “extend”, metaphorically, the Professor was correct to use the term “farther“. Boom!)
The terms “reasoning” and “intelligence” are meaningless if you do not first identify the living, conscious being that is engaging in that reasoning and whose attribute that intelligence is. I do not use “reasoning” ignoring the living conscious being engaging in reasoning. You, on the other hand, are using “intelligence” blanking out the living, conscious being whose attribute that “intelligence” is.
So, I have made no error but you have made a fundamental one. To boot, you are smuggling in concepts to provide fig-leaf cover to your flawed argument.
“You are positing the existence of an intelligence without the existence of a living, conscious entity whose attribute that intelligence is.”
No, an uncreated intelligence is logically implied by the fact of the existence of human intelligence plus the fact that human intelligence came into being at a certain point in time PLUS the logical impossibility of infinite regressions.
Human intelligence exists. It came into being. Intelligence must be responsible for intelligence. Nothing can create itself. Infinite regressions are impossible. A finite amount of time in the past, an uncreated intelligence created intelligent beings.
Er go: god(s).
Vis a vis. Concordantly.
Bala, you wrote:
“The terms “reasoning” and “intelligence” are meaningless if you do not first identify the living, conscious being that is engaging in that reasoning and whose attribute that intelligence is.”
If the first thing of meaning is a “considering”, then you are saying that the first thing of meaning is intelligence.
You say guest is “smuggling in concepts”, but it appears that you smuggled in consciousness without realizing it.
I will say, after having studied Objectivism for many years, and identifying myself as one for a time, there are some missing pieces in it (economics is a weakness), unwarranted logical jumps (Rand’s alleged solution to Hume’s Is-Ought problem), and outright contradictions (Every individual ought to be free to use their reason to improve their lives using their own bodies and property as they see fit, and we ought to trust that…and then…individuals cannot be trusted to use their reason to improve their protection and security using their own bodies and property as they see fit, so the individual must be oppressed by a monopolist in protection).
The act of positing “I am I” is not caused. It is the unique example of an uncaused act. It is a fallacy of induction to assert that because every observable phenomena by an intelligence is caused, that its own self is also caused.
The idea that everything in the universe must have a cause, is not rationally justified. It takes a leap of faith to attribute to the observer everything that is observed.
“You say guest is “smuggling in concepts”, but it appears that you smuggled in consciousness without realizing it.”
Where? It’s not smuggling. I am saying as part of the definition of the concept “intelligence” that
1. intelligence is an attribute
2. any attribute is an attribute of some existent or an abstraction derived from an existent
3. intelligence is only possible to living, conscious beings that exist in the first place
I fail to see where the smuggling is when I am introducing it in the definition of the word as I am using it.
“The idea that everything in the universe must have a cause, is not rationally justified.”
I agree. I am not saying that. Guest is.
Just to add to what I said, intelligence logically presupposes consciousness. Consciousness presupposes life and therefore a living being. There is no smuggling. Just identification of logical prerequisites.
“I agree. I am not saying that.”
Then why would God need a cause, necessarily?
“Then why would God need a cause, necessarily?”
I am not saying this. I am just saying that intelligence can only exist as an attribute of a living conscious being. And if you are talking of the origin of living, conscious beings, you cannot posit the existence of an intelligence, i.e., an attribute of some living conscious, being prior to that origin. After all, the term “origin” has a meaning, right? And that includes non-existence prior to that point in time.
So it is not about God needing a “cause”. It is about the logical contradiction in claiming that X existed before X originated.
“Then why would God need a cause, necessarily?”
I did not say that. I said that intelligence is an attribute of existents of a certain type – the living, conscious ones. I also said that if you are talking of the origin of such existents (that’s what talking of the origin of life is all about), you cannot posit the existence of intelligence prior to THAT origin. This is simply because that would be tantamount to saying X existed before X originated. That is very simple a logical contradiction.
So, your statements on ID reduce to saying “Intelligence existed before the origin of beings capable of intelligence.” The operative word here is “origin”. As I understand that word, X cannot exist before the origin of X.
“I said that intelligence is an attribute of existents of a certain type – the living, conscious ones.”
“Consciousness” implies intelligence.
At any rate, if you prefer: A living, conscious, intelligent being, who was not created – that is, has always existed – is responsible for the rest of the intelligent beings, including humans, which have ever came into existence.
This is the only logical origin for the existence of the human capacity for intelligence.
(By the way, I keep noticing that the issue of free will keeps getting side-stepped. Is this deliberate? I keep noting that free will is what proves god.)
““Consciousness” implies intelligence.”
False. Intelligence follows consciousness. Consciousness is awareness. Awareness is the prerequisite for the living being to make sense of that which it aware of, i.e., use intelligence.
“This is the only logical origin for the existence of the human capacity for intelligence.”
This “logical” explanation is based on a false regression on which you superimposed the impossibility of infinite regression. Given that the original regression is what I am saying is false, the rest of it is pointless. At some point in time, humans came into existence with what we today call intelligence. Period.
“By the way, I keep noticing that the issue of free will keeps getting side-stepped. Is this deliberate?”
No. But then the argument based on free-will gets blown up in no time at all. “Free-will” presupposes a living, conscious being capable of purposeful behaviour. Right there, you see that free-will cannot pre-exist life. This is much the same way as the way the argument based on intelligence is blown up.
“At some point in time, humans came into existence with what we today call intelligence. Period.”
And:
““Free-will” presupposes a living, conscious being capable of purposeful behaviour. Right there, you see that free-will cannot pre-exist life. This is much the same way as the way the argument based on intelligence is blown up.”
If you’re going to say that the capacity to break causal chains – which is what free will is – simply came into existence, “Period”, then why all the fuss about God, since, according to your worldview, God could have simply “came into existence”, “Period”.
You haven’t explained the capacity for free will by noting that a living, conscious being must exist in order to exercise it.
“then why all the fuss about God”
The “fuss” is not about God but about whether an “intelligence” could have been responsible for the origin of life per se. That it was is after all the position of the ID camp.
And my point is that intelligence cannot pre-exist life and ID is just an attempt to reify the zero.
“You haven’t explained the capacity for free will by noting that a living, conscious being must exist in order to exercise it.”
I have identified it as a necessary though not sufficient condition. That is enough to show that the concept of free-will starts off no infinite regression that must necessarily end in the conclusion that God exists. You brought free-will into the discussion to support your position and I just showed that it doesn’t do that. I never attempted to explain free-will or its origin. All I did was to show that your argument from free-will does not establish that God exists.
“That is enough to show that the concept of free-will starts off no infinite regression that must necessarily end in the conclusion that God exists.”
You’re ignoring what it is that free will does: it breaks causal chains.
Therefore no cause that is bound by prior causes (the purview of scientific inquiry) can be responsible for it.
It is logically impossible for something without agency to be responsible for agency.
“And my point is that intelligence cannot pre-exist life and ID is just an attempt to reify the zero.”
And your point is answered by reference to an uncreated intelligent being, something that is a logical requirement for the existence of any intelligent being that has come into existence.
Also, life equals the capacity for intelligence, even if the realization of intelligence must logically follow the capacity for it.
It’s the capacity for intelligence for which you have to account.
“You’re ignoring what it is that free will does: it breaks causal chains.”
Free-will “does” nothing. Free-will is only an attribute of a certain type of living being. It is the living being that acts. Free-will enables the living being to break causal chains. Armed with free-will, the living being is in a position to act in a manner different from that in which another entity without free-will would.
“And your point is answered by reference to an uncreated intelligent being”
No. It is not answered. My point is that intelligence cannot exist before the ORIGIN of life because
1. intelligence is an attribute of living beings
2. origin implies that the living beings that originated did not exist prior to that
3. therefore prior to that, there didn’t exist living beings that possessed the attribute intelligence
4. therefore, created or uncreated, intelligence cannot pre-exist life
“It’s the capacity for intelligence for which you have to account.”
Do I also have to account for the nose and the ten toes?
“You’re ignoring what it is that free will does: it breaks causal chains.”
Free-will “does” nothing. Free-will is only an attribute of a certain type of living being. It is the living being that acts. Free-will enables the living being to break causal chains. Armed with free-will, the living being is in a position to act in a manner different from that in which another entity without free-will would.
“And your point is answered by reference to an uncreated intelligent being”
No. It is not answered. My point is that intelligence cannot exist before the ORIGIN of life because
1. intelligence is an attribute of living beings
2. origin implies that the living beings that originated did not exist prior to that
3. therefore prior to that, there didn’t exist living beings that possessed the attribute intelligence
4. therefore, created or uncreated, intelligence cannot pre-exist life
“It’s the capacity for intelligence for which you have to account.”
Do I also have to account for the nose and the ten toes?
Bal:
If I change my body from one form to another, and then another, self-evolving if you will, then would you still regard my free will as a predicate to my body, or would you regard my body as a predicate of my free will?
“intelligence is an attribute of living beings” There is no reason to believe that only living things can be intelligent. This concept has certainly been “smuggled in”.
“Free-will” presupposes a living, conscious being capable of purposeful behaviour. Right there, you see that free-will cannot pre-exist life. ” Why could one not have free will without a living being?
Bala hit the nail on the head. The true tactic behind this “intelligent design” hypothesis is to kick the can down the road as it were: to avoid the possibility that life emerged from inorganic matter, by positing it was instead planted by a foreign intelligence, thereby creating a new, more comfortable, although smaller, hiding place for God (as a possible creator of that extraterrestrial intelligence, which cannot be scientifically refuted at this point).
“No, an uncreated intelligence is logically implied by the fact of the existence of human intelligence plus the fact that human intelligence came into being at a certain point in time PLUS the logical impossibility of infinite regressions.”
This is the false reasoning I am dismissing. Human intelligence came into existence when humans came into existence. This intelligence does not logically presuppose a disembodied intelligence floating around as an unmoored abstraction. To claim that it is logically implied is the error you think repeating many a time will turn into a truth.
“Human intelligence exists. It came into being. Intelligence must be responsible for intelligence.”
False right there to say intelligence must be responsible for intelligence. You are confusing the identification of intelligence with the existence of intelligence.
This is also why there is no room for regressions in this discussion. The statement “intelligence must be responsible for intelligence” is false to the extent that you are talking of the existence or coming into existence of intelligence as an attribute of a newly-come-into-being existent.
“Nothing can create itself.”
Intelligence didn’t create itself. Human intelligence came into being when human beings did. It came into existence as an attribute of human beings. Period.
“A finite amount of time in the past, an uncreated intelligence created intelligent beings.”
Whose intelligence was this uncreated intelligence that created life in the first place? How could this living, conscious being with intelligence exist prior to the existence of any living, conscious beings. Note that I said “any” and not “any other”. Or are you positing that attributes are floating abstractions that randomly and at whim attach themselves to existents?
This is the error you insist on repeating over and over again.
“Human intelligence came into existence when humans came into existence.”
Except that since intelligence entails the breaking of causal chains (or, at least free will does, which was my original point), something that isn’t bound by causal chains must be responsible for it.
This is why you need an intelligence to create an intelligence.
An uncreated intelligent being is the only logical starting place for an explanation for the existence of intelligent beings which later came into existence.
“Except that since intelligence entails the breaking of causal chains”
There we go again. Intelligence is an attribute of a living, conscious being. A living conscious being must exist before intelligence can come into existence as an attribute of that living, conscious being. Causal chains happen WITHIN existence, not outside of it.
“something that isn’t bound by causal chains must be responsible for it.”
OMG! This is even more hilarious. You just threw causality out of the window. I do understand that once you do that, anything goes. You can visualise attributes as gloating abstractions that latch on to the nearest existent.
“This is why you need an intelligence to create an intelligence.”
False conclusion based on false premises. Intelligence can only exist as an attribute of a living, conscious being. Prior to the coming into existence of living, conscious beings, there could not have been any living, conscious beings. To say otherwise falsifies the “coming into existence” bit and would be a logical contradiction. Therefore, there could have been no intelligence prior to the coming into existence of living, conscious beings. Therefore, an intelligence could not have existed before the coming into existence of living, conscious beings. That which does not exist prior to X cannot be responsible for the occurrence of X. Therefore, intelligence cannot be responsible for the creation of living, conscious beings.
“An uncreated intelligent being is the only logical starting place for an explanation for the existence of intelligent beings which later came into existence.”
If and only if you start with the blatantly false premise that intelligence is an attribute that exists as a floating abstraction as an attribute of nothing at all that exists as a living, conscious being. Reification of the zero is what you are doing. Reification of the zero is what ID is all about.
*floating abstraction
“You just threw causality out of the window.”
Or … “(or, at least free will does, which was my original point)”.
Free will is another way of saying agency of first causes. First causes have no prior causes.
If you want to believe in free will, you have to also believe in the breaking of causal chains. Otherwise, consistency demands that you believe you don’t really make choices.
“If and only if you start with the blatantly false premise that intelligence is an attribute that exists as a floating abstraction as an attribute of nothing at all that exists as a living, conscious being.”
Why would I have to believe that intelligence is a floating abstraction? Free will already breaks causal chains, so why couldn’t intelligece be an attribute of an incorporeal being?
Bala:
“Intelligence is an attribute of a living, conscious being. A living conscious being must exist before intelligence can come into existence as an attribute of that living, conscious being. Causal chains happen WITHIN existence, not outside of it.”
But you were not who you are before you were your self-reflective intelligent being.
You say a living conscious being must exist before intelligence can come into existence as an attribute. But the concept of a living conscious being is already a concept of an intelligence.
There was not an unintelligent lump of matter called “Bala” that subsequently acquired intelligence to become Bala with intelligence. There was no you before there was a you. You came into existence when your act of self-positing took place. You could not claim otherwise without contradiction. If any knowledge of a lump of matter without intelligence is to be had, that itself requires a presence of knowledge.
This is not to say that there was an intelligence at the time of the big bang, only that self-positing is the beginning of all knowledge. What you say about reality, whatever you claim is true about reality, whatever you think about reality, all of it necessarily presupposes an intelligence, namely you. Now you can try to alienate your own consciousness and search for it in objectivity, but you’ll never find it there. You’ll always bring it with you, as you.
Self-positing is not a floating abstraction. It is an absolute. The only absolute.
“But you were not who you are before you were your self-reflective intelligent being.”
This is false. “I” came into existence as a a self-reflective intelligent being. There is no “I” before that coming into existence.
“But the concept of a living conscious being is already a concept of an intelligence.”
Now you are mixing up existence and concepts of existence. I am talking of existence while you are talking of concepts of existence.
“You came into existence when your act of self-positing took place.”
False again. The existent that I have now come to be aware of as “I” came into existence first. It is the concept “I” that came into existence when my act of self-positing took place. More mixing up of existence and concepts of existence.
“Self-positing is not a floating abstraction.”
It does become a weird epistemological inversion when you start thinking that self-positing is the starting point of existence rather than of concepts of existence.
Your “I”ness is not temporally prior to your existence it is logically prior. I had to first exist before I was self aware. Something existed and then it was me. Or how about this; the laws of nature couldn’t come to be until something existed for them to govern.
My “I”ness is a concept of existence. It is my concept of self. Like all concepts, it is formed through cognitive processing of sensory perceptions. The particular concept “self” is formed through cognitive processing of the sensory perception of a certain existent. Without that existent, the concept “self” cannot exist. Only a being that exists can have a concept of “self”. Therefore, I don’t see how my concept of “self” is logically prior to my existence.
Bala:
“But you were not who you are before you were your self-reflective intelligent being.”
“This is false. “I” came into existence as a a self-reflective intelligent being. There is no “I” before that coming into existence.”
That is what I just said. You came into existence the moment your self-reflective self came into being. There was no you prior.
You said there must be a lump of something you prior to your intelligent self coming into being. That there is something about you that must exist before the “predicate” of intelligence.
I was just pointing out that that is wrong. And yet your response seems to be that you understand it to be true.
“But the concept of a living conscious being is already a concept of an intelligence.”
“Now you are mixing up existence and concepts of existence. I am talking of existence while you are talking of concepts of existence.”
No, I am not mixing up the two. I am making a claim about two concepts actually being the same concept, that you said were distinct. They are not distinct.
And the concept of “I am” IS an absolute existence. In this case, existence and concept of existence are one and the same. This is not a flaw. It can neither be proved nor disproved, for any proof or disproof would require more fundamental premises. Objectivists believe “Existence” divorced from Self-positing is the absolute primary, whereas I believe self-positing is the absolute primary.
You are presuming that subject and object can never be identical. That is an unwarranted presumption, carried over from Aristotle’s theory of “substance”.
“You came into existence when your act of self-positing took place.”
“False again. The existent that I have now come to be aware of as “I” came into existence first.”
I see you are confused a little here. You keep smuggling in the concept of self-positing when speaking to me of existents, and yet you then deny any self-positing as a “first”. Your own self-positing you are bringing with you when speaking of existents, but then you drop that context and create two floating abstraction existents, the self-positing and that which the self posits, as if they can never be identical.
That existent you claim must exist “first” before you came into existence, is an existent undeniably linked to your self-positing. You are positing it, and yet to posit anything you must first posit yourself.
“It is the concept “I” that came into existence when my act of self-positing took place. More mixing up of existence and concepts of existence.”
You again seem to agree with what I just said.
“Self-positing is not a floating abstraction.”
“It does become a weird epistemological inversion when you start thinking that self-positing is the starting point of existence rather than of concepts of existence.”
It is an epistemological inversion for “YOU” to think of starting with something other than you when positing anything. Positing existence IS you positing yourself. Subject and object are not necessarily always and everywhere distinct. What you call “mixing up” is no mixing up at all, but a recognition of a singular existence that you are falsely slicing into two when thinking of that which the self posits.
“What you call “mixing up” is no mixing up at all, but a recognition of a singular existence that you are falsely slicing into two when thinking of that which the self posits.”
When you fall asleep and don’t dream, do “you” cease to exist because you cease to posit anything at all?
guest:
If I fall asleep and don’t wake up, is there still a “me”?
To answer your question, if you say “I” am asleep, then you’ve answered your question.
I do not say “I am asleep” when I am asleep. I only say that when I am awake. When the thing that I refer to as “I” is asleep, there is no “I”. It, or something, comes back into existence when I awake. Is it the same “I”? Therein lies a tale dealt with imaginatively in the following cartoon:
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
Major.Freedom,
The safeword is “Hitler”. Pass it on.
😀
“That is what I just said. You came into existence the moment your self-reflective self came into being. There was no you prior.”
But this is not what I said. When I said “I” came into existence, I was referring to the existent that my cognitive faculty subsequently recognises as distinct from other existents and labels as the concept “I”. What this means is that I came into existence AS (not “the moment”) a being with the ability for self-reflection. That blob did not exist prior to the moment of birth. Therefore neither could the concept “I” in my (then) non-existent mind.
“You said there must be a lump of something you prior to your intelligent self coming into being. That there is something about you that must exist before the “predicate” of intelligence.”
That lump is called the just-born, which is born with the capability for intelligence and no pre-formed concepts in its mind. That lump is born without the concept “I”. Sensory perception and cognitive processes together enable the subsequent formation of the concept “I” the way they enable the formation of every other concept.
“I am making a claim about two concepts actually being the same concept, that you said were distinct. They are not distinct.”
An existent and the concept of that existent are necessarily 2 distinct things. One is the material “thing” that exists like all else that does. The other is a mental construct of that material thing with all its identifiable attributes formed by an intelligent being in his mind. To say that they are not distinct is confused thinking.
“In this case, existence and concept of existence are one and the same. This is not a flaw.”
It is a flaw for the reason explained above. The material thing and the mental construct of that material thing with all its identifiable attributes can never be the same.
“It can neither be proved nor disproved”
It is shown to be wrong by asking the simple question “What in the universe is the referent of this concept ‘I’ that you are talking of?” the answer to which has to be “This lump with all its attributes and which I am identifying in my cognitive toolbox as an entity distinct from all else that I sense.”
“whereas I believe self-positing is the absolute primary.”
So what entity does the self-positing? In what material realm is this self-positing happening? Or is the self-positing happening on its own without any related material entity in the real world?
“You are presuming that subject and object can never be identical. That is an unwarranted presumption”
Wrong. I am saying that a concept and its referent in reality are necessarily distinct from each other. The latter is what is while the former is the mental construct I form of it. I see no presumption, leave alone unwarranted presumption.
“You keep smuggling in the concept of self-positing when speaking to me of existents, and yet you then deny any self-positing as a “first”.”
Not at all. You are the one smuggling in the material entity that constitutes the referent of the “I” that is being self-posited. So once again, which entity is doing the self-positing?
“Your own self-positing you are bringing with you when speaking of existents, but then you drop that context and create two floating abstraction existents, the self-positing and that which the self posits, as if they can never be identical.”
You are the one doing the context dropping when you even think you can talk of the mental construct “I” without regard for the material being that is the referent of that mental construct. It is necessarily a material being because the concept “I” is a concept of existence, not an abstraction. Once again, the referent and the concept can never be identical.
“It is an epistemological inversion for “YOU” to think of starting with something other than you when positing anything. ”
Sorry. When you say that the concept “I” precedes any sensory perception by the material entity that eventually turns out to be the referent of that concept “I”, you are indeed engaging in epistemological inversion.
“Positing existence IS you positing yourself.”
No. Positing existence is the material entity that is me recognising that there must be something that exists out there that I am aware (conscious) of.
“that you are falsely slicing into two when thinking of that which the self posits.”
No. You are falsely merging referent and concept into one single entity.
And (borrowing from guest) finally, what happens when you are unconscious?
Bala:
“That is what I just said. You came into existence the moment your self-reflective self came into being. There was no you prior.”
“But this is not what I said. When I said “I” came into existence, I was referring to the existent that my cognitive faculty subsequently recognises as distinct from other existents and labels as the concept “I”. What this means is that I came into existence AS (not “the moment”) a being with the ability for self-reflection. That blob did not exist prior to the moment of birth. Therefore neither could the concept “I” in my (then) non-existent mind.”
Again that is what I just said. There was no you before your self-reflective self.
“You said there must be a lump of something you prior to your intelligent self coming into being. That there is something about you that must exist before the “predicate” of intelligence.”
“That lump is called the just-born, which is born with the capability for intelligence and no pre-formed concepts in its mind.”
Well that is just another falsehood predicated on the flawed epistemology of tabula rasa. A newborn baby is an intelligent being. It is concerned mainly with what it observes, smells, feels, and tastes.
The dictum summarized by Locke, Berkeley and Hume that there is nothing of the mind that is not first experienced, is aptly responded to by Leibniz, and lord satan himself, Kant: Except the mind itself.
“That lump is born without the concept “I”.”
Newborn babies, or what you call “lumps”, self-posit by virtue of positing the not theme, I.e. their parents, their surroundings, by way of perception.
The “concept” of “I” is actually an activity. It is not a rigid thought.
“Sensory perception and cognitive processes together enable the subsequent formation of the concept “I” the way they enable the formation of every other concept.”
Sensory perception and cognitive processes presuppose an “I” that is already sensing and cognitizing and forming.
You are again smuggling in the “I” in your alleged deduction of forming it.
“I am making a claim about two concepts actually being the same concept, that you said were distinct. They are not distinct.”
“An existent and the concept of that existent are necessarily 2 distinct things.”
No, they are not necessarily distinct. You are just asserting they always are based on flawed premises.
“One is the material “thing” that exists like all else that does. The other is a mental construct of that material thing with all its identifiable attributes formed by an intelligent being in his mind. To say that they are not distinct is confused thinking.”
The specific existent and the specific concept of that specific existent, in the case of self-positing, are identical. I am not claiming the thought of a tree or a frog is the tree or frog “in themselves”. I am saying something only about self-positing.
“In this case, existence and concept of existence are one and the same. This is not a flaw.”
“It is a flaw for the reason explained above.”
But you haven’t explained why it is a flaw above. You just asserted that thoughts of material objects, and objects in themselves, are distinct. But I am not making a claim that material objects and thoughts of material objects are the same. I am talking about the sole activity of self-positing. I am claiming that here, subject and object are identical. That the thought of self-positing, and the action of self-positing in itself, are identical and not distinct.
“The material thing and the mental construct of that material thing with all its identifiable attributes can never be the same.”
Neat.
“It can neither be proved nor disproved”
“It is shown to be wrong by asking the simple question “What in the universe is the referent of this concept ‘I’ that you are talking of?”
Merely asking questions cannot show any claim to be wrong.
To answer that question, the answer is ITSELF. The “I” is its own referent.
“The answer to which has to be “This lump with all its attributes and which I am identifying in my cognitive toolbox as an entity distinct from all else that I sense.”
I am not talking about your arms or your legs or anything else about you in terms of matter. I am talking about the activity of self-positing. What you presume not to have in your “cognitive toolbox”, is what I claim is there and yet you do not even recognize it. You smuggled it in and pretended your “I” was not a tool, but created by unexplained tools.
“whereas I believe self-positing is the absolute primary.”
“So what entity does the self-positing?”
The entity in question comes into existence by way of self-positing. There is no “I” before that. Asking me what entity is doing the self-positing is asking me to divorce and cleave a singularity into two. You are asking me to present to you a nonexistent entity whose only tenuous validity rests on the smuggling in of the very singularity you want to split into two.
There is no “entity” that is doing the self-positing. The self-positing is itself the activity from which all knowledge of entities arises.
“In what material realm is this self-positing happening? Or is the self-positing happening on its own without any related material entity in the real world?”
It is uncaused. It is absolutely primary. It is not happening “in” the material world. The world consists of both self-positing Ego, and non-self positing non-Ego. I as I am not “in” the material world. I am its compliment. There is I and there is not I, and those together make up the whole universe.
“You are presuming that subject and object can never be identical. That is an unwarranted presumption”
“Wrong. I am saying that a concept and its referent in reality are necessarily distinct from each other.”
That is what I just said you are presuming. The concept is with the subject, and as far as I can tell you treat the subject as a concept, and the “referent” must for some unexplained reason be with only the object.
You keep assertion a dichotomy everywhere, not realizing that the creation of such a dichotomy is springing forth from your singular I that is both object and subject.
“The latter is what is while the former is the mental construct I form of it. I see no presumption, leave alone unwarranted presumption.”
You don’t see it because you have accepted the belief that you no longer need to think introspectively.
The “what is” and “the mental construct” are not always separate. When I posit myself, I am not separating “I” into two, into a subject and object, into that which is and that which is thought of as is.
You keep claiming concepts and referents are always and everywhere distinct. That claim is unwarranted.
“You keep smuggling in the concept of self-positing when speaking to me of existents, and yet you then deny any self-positing as a “first”.”
“Not at all. You are the one smuggling in the material entity that constitutes the referent of the “I” that is being self-posited. So once again, which entity is doing the self-positing?”
I never denied the existence of the non-Ego, nor has anything I said required its absence, nor have I attempted to explain it away only to then in some way fall back on it. I could not possibly have smuggled it in.
You are smuggling in the self-positing I by trying to convince me that something can be known without my self-positing, despite the fact that any claims of such knowledge have already presupposed a self-positing.
“Your own self-positing you are bringing with you when speaking of existents, but then you drop that context and create two floating abstraction existents, the self-positing and that which the self posits, as if they can never be identical.”
“You are the one doing the context dropping when you even think you can talk of the mental construct “I” without regard for the material being that is the referent of that mental construct.”
But I am not disregarding the non-ego at all. That is the main reason you err here. The non-ego is presupposed when speaking of the ego just as much as the ego is presupposed when speaking of the non-ego.
But THAT knowledge depends on the ego.
You are the one doing the context dropping when you even think you can talk of “material being” without regard for the “I” that is doing the talking of that material being. I am not disregarding either the ego or non-ego. You are disregarding the ego when you claim to know anything abstracted from the ego.
When you talk about material being, you are whether you accept it or not, presupposing the presence of a self-positing intelligence. You can only ignore or pretend that it is not yours when you do that.
“It is necessarily a material being because the concept “I” is a concept of existence, not an abstraction. Once again, the referent and the concept can never be identical.”
Now you’re engaging in the fallacy of the stolen concept. Your very claim that referent and concept can never be identical, rests on a concept identical to referent that is your self-positing.
Once again, in the case of self-positing, the dichotomy you assert without justification, is absent.
“It is an epistemological inversion for “YOU” to think of starting with something other than you when positing anything. ”
“Sorry. When you say that the concept “I” precedes any sensory perception by the material entity that eventually turns out to be the referent of that concept “I”, you are indeed engaging in epistemological inversion.”
No apologies are necessary for your falsehoods here. When you claim to know that the referent of an activity, of self-positing, is something other than itself, then it is you who is engaging in epistemological inversion. You are smuggling in the presence of an intelligence and then claiming that this activity is abstracted from intelligence.
“Positing existence IS you positing yourself.”
“No.”
Yes.
“Positing existence is the material entity that is me recognising that there must be something that exists out there that I am aware (conscious) of.”
I am claiming that that existence you refer to, IS the self-positing. Positing existence presupposes both a self-positing and that which is posited, both itself and the non-self.
What you allege to be a “floating abstraction”, is in fact not floating at all. It is absolutely constrained by the non-ego.
“that you are falsely slicing into two when thinking of that which the self posits.”
” No. You are falsely merging referent and concept into one single entity.”
No, you are falsely divorcing a singularity into two.
“And (borrowing from guest) finally, what happens when you are unconscious?”
I do not claim to know because unlike you I do not smuggle in the concept of consciousness while talking about a reality abstracted from it.