Exactly 'HOW' intelligent must a Designer be ?

Intelligent Design is tautology anyhow.How can something be designed WITHOUT a guiding intelligence ?However we define that intelligence.Perhaps instead if ID it should be called 'Directed Creation'
or just plain old 'Creation'

Not sure whether you got the idea that I was an IDer
from my post ... I'm not.But I'll respond to some of your points anyhow (from MY perspective I might add).Spider webs::What evidence do we have that the spider DESIGNS a web ?If the spider is sans intelligence, then the method for building
a web must be imprinted in its genes ... i.e. instinct.Complexity::Complexity has nothing at all to do with design, and can niether
point to design nor point to a lack of design.If you find a long stick next to a rounded stone, it could be
just a stick and a stone ... or it might be a fulcrum and lever
that somone has thought about, designed, and used then discarded.Efficiency::Has no bearing on whether something was designed or not.It is an attribute of an object/entity which performs a function.In a non-IDist world we see efficiency in many non-designed things
and inefficiency in many designed things.Design without Intelligence::If it was designed then there had to be intelligence behind the
design.Design (unless I'm mistaken) means planning something before you
do it. Planning in advance is an indicator of intelligence.The quesiton here i.e. How intelligent
must a designer be ? in my opinion, can be answered by saying
intelligent enough to plan in advance.The problem being that intelligence and levels of intelligence
are not sufficiently understood to quantify in the first place.All I was saying in any case was that the term Intelligence, in ID,
is pointless ... and we are left with Design ... which is analgous
to Creation ... and hence my view that ID is just Creationsim.Oh, and I agree ... I have seen no science in ID yet.For any IDer's out there ::I think that research effort should be placed into 'Determination
of Design'.If you do not have a peer reviewed, mainstream science accepted
theory for design determination you have NO basis for your
hypotheses ... and are not being scientific.

Since we largely agree I won't belabour the point any
further.I would ask IDer's who debate here (if there are any listening )What definition of design they use, and what definition
of intelligent.

What makes you think you have a soul ?What makes you think that some-one who is mentally incapacitated
doesn't have a soul ?Does personality stem from the soul or the brain ?How about emotions (brain or soul) ?

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:
My meager hypothesis was spoken here on the proof of your psyche/spiritual existence.

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OK, I think that answered the why you believe you have a 'soul'
but what about the other questions ?Could you give some examples of apperceptive phenomena for
me, I think I'm missing something in the post you referenced.

quote:

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Originally posted by peter borger:
Dear Peter
Maybe if one could proof that randomness is not involved we might speak of design?
Peter

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Well I actually wanted to pin down 'design' and 'intelligent'
in the context of ID.Since you bring up randomness (again) perhaps you could elaborate.Mutations DO happen, and cannot be predicted a priori in either
when they will occur or what effect (if any) they will have. That
says 'random mutation' to me.What about that is a problem as far as you can see ?[added by edit]We're not really discussing randomness in ID anyhow are we?The opposition is between design and naturalistic processes, that being the case we don't have a random process, but a deterministic
process explainable by natural means.

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[This message has been edited by Peter, 07-15-2002]

The point I was trying to make, is that randomness IS
involved, so prooving that it isn't cannot be done.If randomness IS involved does that mean we can rule out
design ?

So by apperceptive you mean those mental phenomena for
which we have no current physiological/chemical/nuerological/
quantum-computer or whatever explanation.Because they are not understood, they are automatically
ascribed to God ?Doesn't that strike you, in light of past scientific
discoveries, as a bad line of reasoning ?How much in ancient times was attributed to any one of
various Gods ... until someone figured out how it worked ?

I think scharfinator was pointing to the Japanese
and Chinese langauges.As an indication at the university where I studied for my
first degree the language depratment held aptitude tests
before allowing anyone to take Japanese as a language
option.The reason for this is that, due to the nature of the language,
where the same symbols can mean very different things if pronounced
subltley differently, some poeple cannot learn Japanese to a desirable level of conversational of fluency.That's not my opinion, that's the opinion of the language department's
Japanese experts.I believe then, that perfect pitch being more prevalent in those
societies with the most complex phonetic structure suggests that
music appreciation developed as an aid to communication, rather
than some 'higher' ideal.My opinion is that there is a strong correlation between ANY
human behaviour and survival (in the past more so that now
perhaps).

The human kind is pitifully weak (physically) compared to
pretty much any other mammal on the planet. Proportionally
speaking even a mouse is more robust and better able to survive
than humans are.Look at how long it takes a human to recover from a minor
operation, when a neutered bitch (female dog) is up and about
as soon as she's awake (feeling sorry for herself sure, but
recovered enough to continue). Much more resilient physically.Humans don't have slashing claws, or strong teeth ... and so on.So what advantages do humans have that have allowed them to
survive?Basically it comes down to the ability to co-operate in extremely
complex ways. And that requires a sophistication of language that
is not required by any other animal on earth.... and the subtle intonation I've referred to (as with arabic)
makes the same letter sequence mean different things depending
on the accents ... which only slightly affects the sound of the
word.An arabic speaking friend once showed me (and its was many years
ago so I forget the examples I'm afraid) a few words which only
differed by an accent or two, and when pronounced were almost
indistinguishable to my western ears ... yet they meant very different
things.Most western languages do not have this feature, English certainly doesn't.But I think we are all agreed that middle- and far-eastern
languages require a more acute sense of pitch/tonal recognition
than western languages.So the prevalence of 'perfect pitch' in eastern cultures may be
indicative of a connection between language and music in a
physiological sense.The dissimilarity in western and eastern language is, perhaps,
a result of the Romans never conquering that part of the
world ... which is also why native american langauges are
completely unlike either of those language bases mentioned
so far (and highly intoned, stemming from a very musical
culture).To one extent or another pretty much all european languages
stem from Latin. The Roman world domination eradicated most
traces of original languages, as the many invasions prior upto
1066AD added a mish-mash of other languages into English (english
has far too many words according to my German language teacher).Oh, and computers are absolutely nothing like our brains, even
on a conceptual level. They are very simple electronic machines
with FIXED processing pathways, no pattern recognition circuitry,
and no automatic pattern database to aid learning.

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:
Peter,

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Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Time constraints forbid indepth reply at this time. Suffice me to sum (hand-wave) for now:

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1) The intonations may or may not be developemental vs. genetic; I'm not sure.

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Nature Vs Nurture is always a tricky one, but in this case it
does seem that sufficient 'hearing' of intonation is not something
that can be learned in later life.Doesn't mean it's all genetic, but would suggest a genetic
bias ... in my opinion any how ... not saying I'm right.

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:

2) Intonations and music, in my less-than-trivial opinion, seem perhaps exponentially different in their complexity.

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In what way?Music is a 'language' with only eigth letters each
subject to one accent (sharp/flat they are the same really since
Eb is just D#) and a variable period (1/2, 1, 2, or four beats).Intonation can convey huge amounts of information to the
recipient ... the same words, even in english, can be humerous,
insulting, angry, sad, etc. only differentiated by the 'way'
that they are said (I get into trouble with my wife over many
inoccent statements ... becuase of the way I said it!)

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:

3) Intonations, I think, require a biological mechanism. Written words, thought-concepts, science-constructs, music, and music constructs exist SANS a biological mechanism. Rebut me, cause I may be wrong.

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What do you mean by biological mechanism? They all happen
in the brain ... isn't that biological?

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:

4) Computers, presently weak, have some characteristics of pattern recognition: Speech programs like Dragon Dictate for example.

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Yes, you can right image/speech recognition programs (that's why
it takes so long for the pumps to activate in some UK filling
stations!!), but the major difference between a computer and
a brain (human or otherwise) is that it is fixed, and cannot
create new programming for itself ... it cannot learn.Learning programs to date, do not really learn, becuase we do
not fully understand what learning is ... maybe one-day though.

That was my point ... music isn't that complex.

Tell the truth I only replied to get the 'Yes' out
of the replies waiting box A way of cancelling that would be good

Drat!!

Am I right in saying that you don't beleive certain things
could have evolved, becuase ... well ... you don't beleive
they could have evolved ?That seems to be the gist of your post.Why would anyone want to know how things work?If you wanted to know how things work what would be the best
way to do that?You could read a manual, sure, good starting point, but to
fully appreciate how something operates you need to look at it,
study it ... isn't that empiricism?