Intelligent Design in Universities

Still waiting for an answer to the questions asked in Message 178

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I learned something non-reflectively in this thread but the answer was that Fisher's fudamental theorem needs to be altered definitionally before I could order the various series nongenerally. I will propose a new thread to discuss this once I get enough written and %out% of my own mind. This solution however does not "sell" ID as a political movement but an improvement on the failed details of evo theory as it contingently exists.I need to gauge preliminarily how Wright's, Haldane's, and Kimura's contributions would be affected before I release such whim as I could incidentally today. I would be using three formal cateorgies biologically rather than the two (genotype and phenotype).Sorry Jar, I can go no further determinately but I can comment reflexively if others are still thinking it through and as I continue to do so.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 05-07-2005 11:49 AM

You can answer one thing for me.Is it a valid question and do we need to know the answer before we can identify design versus non-design?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

In Message 148, Jar asked Jerry: In Message 155, Jerry answered : I don't know what Jerry meant by 'specified', but it's nonsense to say that group 1 "has the lowest odds of occurring". If the order of the coins matters, which, judging by the fact that the last two groups are mirror images of each other, I suspect is what Jar intended, then each group has exactly the same chance of occurring, namely 1/2¹⁰, which comes down to about 0.00098.Incidentally , Jerry has written this expos (at the site he advertises in his signature), about the so-called "universal probability bound". In it, it is stated that something with a probability of 1/10¹⁵⁰ will never occur in reality.
He uses a coin example to explain this, which makes the following reply to Jar, in Message 169, seem a bit disingenuous: If I understand the article correctly, (which Jerry, if he reacts to me at all, will no doubt tell me in no uncertain terms I don't), then the heads/tails configuration of a thousand numbered coins, released all at once from a container, is impossible. After all, any one outcome has the odds of 1/2¹⁰⁰⁰, or about 1/10³⁰¹, and something with those odds "cannot happen".The error Jerry makes is that he compares evolution to someone who aims for the outcome of all heads. Such a person would have to flip coins for a long, long time before all heads came up, is the argument. But evolution has no goal. Whatever happens, happens. Just like an upended bucket of coins must result in a certain heads/tails configuration, no matter what the odds of that particular configuration are.Back to Jar's question:If I had to say which group has more information, I'd express that in terms of how much information is needed to recreate each group from ten coins.The first group can be specified minimally as follows:
All coins are heads.The second group would be minimally specified thus:
1. The first coin is heads;
2. The next coin is tails;
3. The next three coins are heads;
4. see 2;
5. The next coin is heads;
6. The next two coins are tails;
7. see 5;The description of the third group would resemble that of the second and would be about just as long.The length of the minimal description needed for recreating the group is a measure of the information content of that group. Therefore, group 1 has the least information and groups 2 and 3 have equal amounts of information, but more than group 1.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 07-May-2005 11:34 PM

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Yes, at least to me, it IS an invaluable question. I would guess that some here might not agree but in truth I think that even self-assembly ideas (if in biology) will be subsumed by your question.Gingerich had said on NPR that he felt that ID was "not grounded" *in opposition* to evolution but the difference of biology by the art of theory and formal statistics seems doable logically and thus a design IN ID could exist not only reflextively (as we have discussed it here) but exist in a general deterimination in the empirics of evolutionary theory however increases in fitnesses would have to be related to the different "strings" you presented for example (turning the answer to which string had more information into which string was better fit).I see even Gingerich's stand off of ID VS some science as a consequence of the division of phenotype and geneotype and relatedly the notion of increase in fitness to genetic fitness variance. I would suggest altering the word "genetic" here to be but a formal category rather than an aposteriori empiric as it is currently used in measures of heritibility.Soooo, I think by answering your question we would have reached a period in Kant's writing,

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If, on the contrary, we supply to nature causes acting designedly and consequently place at its basis teleology, not merely as a regulative principle for the mere judging of phenomena, to which nature can be thought as subject to particular laws, but as a constituative principle of the derivation of its products from their causes, then would the concept of a natural purpose no longer belong to the reflective but to the determinate judgement.

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period period periodI was able to judge Fisher today. Gould did not do this. Instead he showed where Fisher's work might not apply. Dembski had said last week that there was no way to have intelligence and evolutionary theory but I think I see a way today. The reason we dont have this seems to be not because there are non-believing IDsts( Jerry, etc) but because we have evolutionists who are not even interested in expanding Darwinism as Gould promoted. I had been having trouble understanding how computational issues were to be resolved biologically but I now read Kant to have subsumed them within his but this does not eliminate asthetic approaches (hence the continde reflection on the object of the thread) but I also find that biological difference(s) of geneotype and phenotype DOES introduce the so named by Kant particular causality (that is why Gingerich thought ID was a a marketable product being sold. He was mistaken).It was funny that he thought himself able to differntiate big I from little i. Aye, I cant find the difference nonasthetically parsed.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 05-07-2005 12:31 PM

Very, very good.Thank you.Now suppose there was a fourth group.H T H T H T H T H T.Does it have more information than either 2 or 3?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I am surprised that no supporters of ID felt the need to criticise this definition of their philosophy. Especially Sal Cordova! According to the article he so gleefully cites, These are two quite different suggestions. Cordova is claiming that the existence of complexity and integration in biological systems is better explained as the product of intelligent agency, whereas you are saying that you are not concerned with the quality of explanation of biological systems, but only with the detection of design in an abstract sense. Cordova, by describing specific hypotheses related to the fossil record, biological complexity and "differences between species", positions ID within science as a testable set of hypotheses, whereas you position ID outside science (it only "employs" science, it isn't a part of science itself). I would like to know your opinion - is Sal a detractor, a media activist or a pseudo-scientific politico? (I am making the assumption that Sal is not Eugenie Scott).To begin, let's focus on your definition. We will come back to Sal when we get to the question of whether ID should be taught in the biology classroom. I don't know quite what to make of your statement that ID is "a methodology". In the same sentence you say that ID employs science, and on other posts you have said that the methodology used by ID is the scientific method, the same as any other kind of research.Barring this confusion, your definition is basically reasonable. You are essentially describing the aim of ID research - that is, to detect the signal of design in the natural world. But as you have said in other posts, the methodology you would use to detect such design would be the scientific method. ID is an "epistemological framework" that is external to science but motivates the kind of scientific questions we might ask. This is why it is meaningless to talk of "ID research" - becase ID research would be scientific research, simply motivated by a search for the signal of intelligent design in nature. In other words, ID is a worldview, an intellectual framework, or an ideology that motivates the kind of questions that we ask, and motivates the kind of research that we carry out. But it is not a part of science. It just "employs" science in order to answer the kind of questions that ID theorists happen to be interested in.This makes ID one ideology among many. The humanist ideology, for example, believes that the increase of human scientific knowledge is a noble thing in and of itself. This is what motivates my own research. Like ID, humanism isn't a research methodology, and it is external to the scientific method. Another example would be Marxism-Leninism. In the mid-20th century, Soviet research was motivated by a need to show that the soviet economic system was capable of achieving equivalent or better scientific research than the capitalist economic system of the US. This competitive ideology resulted in research effort being devoted to weapons technology and the space race. It didn't make that research any less scientific, it just shaped the kind of questions that were asked, and the areas of research that received investment.So, according to your definition, ID is fundamentally external to science. Just as we would not expect "humanist hypotheses" or "Stalinist hypotheses", we don't expect "ID hypotheses". These are all just alternative worldviews, different ways of motivating researchers to ask specific kinds of questions that can be answered by scientific methodology.The examples you have given seem to agree with my interpretation of your position. Harvey presumably believed that the Earth and everything on it had been designed by an creators. Yet because this belief was external to the scientific method, it did not make him incapable of carrying out valid scientific research. Scientific research whose fundamental motivation may have been the glorification of the creator.That's fine.Why would we want to "detect purposeful design in systems and artifacts"? I see a connecting link here. Archaeologists and cryptographers generally study human artefacts. The assumption that human beings design their artefacts in an intelligent way is something with which few people would disagree. We have plenty of evidence for the ability of humans to design artefacts intelligently. Given what we know about human beings, the most parsimonious explanation for the existence of stone arrowheads, burial mounds, or written communication is that they were intelligently designed by human beings. Your list of ID research would have been better if it had left out palaeontologists, who generally do not study human artefacts, and do not seek patterns of intelligent design in their objects of study.Now, I must say, I would not describe any of these scientific disciplines as having the goal of "detecting purposeful design in systems and artifacts". In fact all of these disciplines take the intelligent design of their artifacts as a given. Their aim is to interpret the meaning of artifacts that are known to result from intelligent design. The reason we know they result from intelligent design, is that they are known to be created by human beings.Finally, you ask What "entire story" are you talking about? First of all, let's consider evolution. I have not come across a proponent of ID who has ever suggested that evolution should NOT be taught in the classroom. This is because evolutionary theory is a product of science.You have already stated that ID is not a product of science. At most it is the search for the signal of intelligent design in the natural world. At least it is an ideological motivation for the kind of scientific research we might carry out. ID, therefore, is not a part of the story of science, any more than Marxism-Leninism is.Your main points seem to be that1. ID research aims to identify the signal of intelligent design in the natural world
2. The scientific method permits us to make scientific inferences about the existence, actions and intentions of of historical human (or non-human, in the case of SETI) agents based on the artefacts that they have designed.
3. ID should be taught in schools as an alternative to the theory of evolution.Now, is it me, or does point number 3 not logically follow from points 1 and 2?Perhaps now it is time to get back to Sal. Do you agree that we can explain the patterns of complexity and integration in biological systems better if we incorporate the idea of an intelligent creator? If so, why? Because none of the ID research you describe (palaeontology, archaeology, cryptography and SETI research) has ever come up with a single piece of evidence that organic biological life was intelligently created.A second question for you. Given the clear research achievements of the Soviet ideology, should Marxism-Leninism be taught in the biology classroom in an effort to "consider the entire story". If not, why not?A third question for you (added in edit). given that SETI is the research project that most closely approximates your definition of ID research, why would you have ID taught in biology classes rather than astronomy or physics classes? Sticking with astronomy for a second - one field of intelligent design research you have forgotten is astrology. Astrology is the view that human fates are intelligently designed by the movement of planets. One can believe in astrology and still carry out valid scientific research into the movement of planets. Many early astronomers were believers in some form of astrology. Would you like to see astrology taught alongside ID, in astronomy classes, in order to tell "the complete story"?One more question. According to you, people who claim that ID is more than "a methodology that employs science and mathematics to detect purposeful design in systems and artifacts" are either "detractors and media activists, Eugenie Scott or other pseudo-scientific politicos". Which of these categories does Sal fall into? Because he claims rather more than you are willing to permit him to claim. Specifically, Sal has claimed that the ID concept is that a divine hand has shaped the course of evolution [in the nature article that he has cited].One last question (added in edit). What, specifically, would you "teach" to children in biology classes regarding ID? Would you simply teach that the scientific method permits us to make inferences regarding the actions of intelligent historically-existing agents? Is that it? Because that is essentially all you have said. If that is all you would teach, then Sal, who believes that there is scientific evidence for the existence of Adam and Eve, and who believes that the laws of physics necessitate the existence of God, will no doubt be the first in line to argue with you!This message has been edited by mick, 05-07-2005 03:43 PMThis message has been edited by mick, 05-07-2005 04:37 PMThis message has been edited by mick, 05-07-2005 05:01 PM

Jar:I will try to explain this one more time. You cannot just throw out 10 coins without explaining how you are viewing the systems and expect someone to tell you which pattern is the most complex. You have to set the system up mathematically.If we are viewing each system as random, then we would calculate each pattern via the number of total possible states (heads or tails) taken to the power of the number of units. So each one of your systems come out at 2^10. This works out to about be 10^3.If we want to see the information content measured in bits, then the formula is log10(10^3)/log2 = 10 bits.So none of your patterns have anymore information than any other pattern as they all measure 10 bits of information.But do you want me to measure these systems via Claude Shannon's rules? Then that works this way as described in Shannon's original paper:Shannon relates that certain relays or flip-flop circuits store information. N of
these devices will store N bits, and since the total possible states of these devices is 2N
(off and on) and log2(2N) = N, a device with two stable positions such as these switches
can store one bit of information. When base 10 is used, the units may be called decimal
digits.OK, then you have to tell me if it's heads we are looking to get in the system, or tails because we will have to consider one as off and the other on.If heads is "on," then we have:
system 1: 10 bits,
system 2: 5 bits,
system 3: 5 bits,
system 4: 5 bits.This is why I responded to you that system 1 would be the most complex if I have to name one as such.But what if it's tails we are after? Then the information is bass ackwards:
system 1: 0 bits,
system 2: 5 bits,
system 3: 5 bits,
system 4: 5 bits.We could even look at these systems expressed in macrostates as shown in this chart: So, can you understand why it is impossible to answer your question? The question is nonsensical because you do not give enough information that one can use to answer it!

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Design Dynamics

I don't agree. A noticable percentage of the time the first step is to determine whether the object(s) of study are indeed intelligently designed artifacts.This is presumably the stage at which some ID advocates, such as Sal, claim that the disciplines are using the EF. E.g. Sal wrote in comment 28541 at Dembski's Defense:

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Every successful design detection process is an instance of the EF. To use the EF is equivalently and perhaps more clearly described as using an instance of the EF. The EF faithfully represents ordinary practice.

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Of course this is nonsense; scientists trying to detect design in artifacts use a number of techniques, none of which are even vaguely analogous to Dembski's EF. A good example is Middle Stone Age Shell Beads from South Africa (alas, subscription to Science required for now). This is discussed at The Panda's Thumb at A "Design Inference" in Science magazine!:

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But things only get worse for ID advocates. For their design inference, Henshilwood and colleagues chose - not surprisingly - not to apply Dembski's "revolutionary" specified complexity criterion (which would go something like: these look like beads, therefore they are specified, and they are improbable, that is "complex", ergo they are designed), but to rely instead on the good old-fashioned scientific approach.

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First, the authors established that the shells likely are actual beads because they display a microscopic wear pattern (likely due to friction) not observed in natural shells, but only in known bead samples. Then they considered the possibility that they may have been carried to the site by animals, and found it unlikely because N. kraussianus' only known predator is another estuarine gastropod, and because all the shells were from adults (a predation model would have predicted multiple age groups). The type of perforation in the shells is also consistent with use as beads, and not predator activity. Finally, remains of ochre were found inside the beads, suggesting they might have been painted, as other known bead samples.

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In other words, the authors inferred intelligent agency because they were able to make specific hypotheses about how the perforated shells may have been generated, ruled out the hypotheses that indicated non-human activities, and found empirical confirmation for the hypotheses that pointed to design. Sounds easy, uh? It should be.

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Sorry Jerry, perhaps in your mind recognising that an impossible event is indeed impossible is the secret of immortality. Sadly you are wrong. I don't beleive any of that.
The simple point is that in the example you quoted 2 heads and 2 tails is the maximum entropy possible. Any change in the entropy MUST be a decrease.

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Paul, you simply don't understand this as you are mixing up entropies. Configurational entropy is just the way matter is arranged. This don't have squat to do with how 2LOT works in nature. That's why I razzed you a little bit by asking you if your car gets newer over time rather than older. That is logical entropy, totally a different critter.

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There is no need to calculate any logarithms because all we need to do is observe that the entropy increases the closer the number of heads and the number of tails are to each other. Thus any change which makes the numbers closer will increase entropy and any change which makes them further apart will decrease it.

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Fine, but you have not calculated statistical entropy, because that's what it is!

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Which study ? There are none on that page and a whole list on the "Publications" page.

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Oops. I gave you the guy's home page rather than the paper in Nature. Sorry. It's the same one I've been harping about:http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/...s/eyre-walker_keightley1999.pdf

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Design Dynamics

True enough.I suppose the main problem for ID theorists is that they have no idea what a supernatural intelligent design would look like, which means they have no way of testing whether an observed biological system meets their (nonexistent) criterion.

So to answer the question one must first know the answer one is looking for.Thank you.I believe you have done a great job of explaining ID.Design is were you first decide design is.Clear, short, concise.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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I don't know it depends on how we define our terms I suppose. I could say that there is no probability in horse racing. After all, if we can know all the information about any situation we can deduce who has to win. Unfortunately to do that we have to pull together an obscene amount of information, including the thoughts and memories of all the racers and the horses. In this case calculating who will win is done on probabilities based on what is known, but we cannot calculate the exact probabilities. Hence, our probabilities are unknown.

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No, this is not accurate. Probabilities are known, but probabilities are not sure things or they wouldn't be probabilities. How do you think the bookies make money on horse races? Because they are predictable. They are not deterministically predictable as in the winner is absolutely certain, they are stochastically predictable in that certain horses and jockeys are more likely to win than others. And over the long run as more events occur, they make money.

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Am I barking up the wrong tree here? I think what I am saying is that DNA mutation is unpredictable but its not arbitrarily random.

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Let's forget random and go to the word spontaneous, which in chemistry means something that will happen without a cause, with no inputted energy--for no reason. Some mutations are not spontaneous because they are caused to happen by mutagens--radiation, carcinogens, etc. But by and large, most mutations are spontaneous which means they just happen. And things that just happen are not predictable. Most mutations are spontaneous.

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Design Dynamics

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I believe you have done a great job of explaining ID.

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Design is were you first decide design is.

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LOL...Our converstaion is over. You get the last word and I thank you for your posts.

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Design Dynamics

Well obviously. What I was saying was, that a bookie can't predict the exact probability of a horse winning a race, but we assume that a horse has a probability of winning. Excellent word 'spontaneous', that clears things up a lot, thank you. May I ask though: Are these mutations spontaneous in the same way that a radioactive nucleus decaying at any given moment is spontaneous, or is it spontaneous in that it has a cause, but its impossible to isolate what that cause is?This message has been edited by Modulous, 05-07-2005 06:20 PM