Why doesn't AI Falsify ID?

Hi Nemesis, I have no trouble with people ruminating about minds and what intelligence may or may not be. I am only interested here in discussing what people attempt to pass off as some sort of science. If ID does not position itself as a scientific theory and attempt to be taken seriously as an alternative to evolutionary theory, then I say have a nice time thinking about these things. There really is no "classical" approach at all. However, I think all of your characteristics are off the mark. In my personal opinion: Self-awareness should be excluded, since this has more to do with sentience or consciousness than intelligence. I would also exclude "will", since the subject of free will can't be resolved scientifically. I would also exclude "emotion", since while humans seem to use emotion in their thinking, not all intelligent agents necessarily would. I would say "menial to difficult functions" has no meaning of sufficient precision, and "learning" is non-essential too, since an ultimately intelligent thing would have no need to learn anything.But the point is this: We could argue all day about what does or does not constitute intelligence, but we wouldn't be arguing about anything but the meaning of a word. There is simply no scientific fact of the matter. Currently, AI systems reason, make inferences, learn, re-program themselves, and deal with situations unanticipated by their programmers. It is also true that they are brittle: They generally lack the ability to use common-sense reasoning, and are intelligent only within constrained domains. So, while we have nothing approaching the sci-fi versions of AI, neither is there any evidence of some sort of hard limit as to what mental abilities might be replicated artificially. Let me try to make this point more clearly. Either "intelligence" is a property that can be ascertained to exist in an entity, or it isn't. If it isn't, then ID is a big waste of time. If it is, then entity X is either intelligent or it is not.If X is intelligent, then it makes no difference how X became intelligent. Indeed, when ID critics ask IDists "Who designed the designer?", ID's response is that the ultimate cause of the Designer's intelligence is irrelevant! Therefore, when we look at a computer that does intelligent things, according to ID, we can decide that it is intelligent per se, without considering its ultimate cause.Given we've established that computers are bona-fide intelligent agents, it is irrelevant that they were designed by humans. Again: If you deny computers are intelligent simply because they were designed, you must also deny that human beings are intelligent if you also believe that we were designed.Now, what does this prove? It proves that processes that act strictly according to deterministic natural law, combined with random chance, can be intelligent. Both AI computers, and evolutionary processes, act strictly in accordance with deterministic law plus chance. (Most cogntive scientists believe that human minds also work this way, but that is by no means settled science).The fact that chance plus necessity can yield intelligent behavior does not prove that we were not intelligently designed. It does, however, render the arguments of ID moot. ID claims that something that does not act according to purely natural chance and necessity is required to build the complex machinery of life, but since we have observable proof that nothing but chance and necessity is required for intelligence, ID's claim is unwarranted. I have not equated "intelligence" with anything. I have said there is no scientifically useful definition for the word. For any definition you may care to offer, there is none that is both empirically testable and capable of distinguishing human behavior and the inferred abilities of the Intelligent Designer from things like computers. Therefore, there is no scientific justification for labelling the cause of biological complexity as "intelligent". This is a very naive view of AI. No, calculations are most certainly not "stored in an internal bank" (think about it - there are an infinite number of calculations that can be done in simple arithmetic). Rather, AI computers are "born" with some knowledge and abilities, and given additional knowledge by their programmers and by learning. As my colleague Drew McDermott memorably quipped, "Saying Deep Blue doesn't really think about chess is like saying an airplane doesn't really fly because it doesn't flap its wings." AI has a very clear operational defintion of "intelligence": It is whatever people might generally tend to call intelligence. That's it. It doesn't make any difference at all what that might be. Nothing changes if you decide to call chess-playing, or disease-diagnosing, or theorem-proving, or language-using,... intelligent or not. Again, please remember I am talking about scientific explanation, not causual conversation, philosophy, or theology. There is no scientific way to detect capriciousness. If you choose "teleology" as your definition of intelligence, that's fine. As Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, defined "teleology" about fifty years ago, it is the property of a system to work towards a goal. Weiner also demonstrated that any system that incorporated negative feedback was teleological. Now, a thermostat is a device that works toward a goal (it tries to keep a room at a constant temperature) and incorporates negative feedback to do so. Thus, scientifically speaking, a thermostat is teleological.And so, scientifically speaking, when you say the Designer must have been "intelligent" - meaning teleological - you are saying no more than it has the properties of a thermostat. Again, you may talk all you like of course, and use or make up all sorts of definitions. However, in order to do science, your definitions must be grounded in emprically observable data (i.e. they must be operationalized). Please, Nemesis, try to understand my stance here. I of course do not believe that science can capture all truth (look at my signature line!). I will even tell you that my metaphysics are distinctly mystical! I actually happen to believe that our conscious awareness is something that transcends mechanism. In another context, I would happily discuss the merits of dualism, how quantum mechanics may or may not provide a way to understand free will, and so on.The only point I am making here is that Intelligent Design fails as a scientific theory. That is all. My honest answer is that there is no way to objectively describe what the similarity is between all "intelligent" creatures. Deciding whether or not some critter is intelligent or not is simply an exercise in definition, rather than discovery. I have told you exactly what I think "intelligence" is: A subjective, informal way we refer to some sorts of behaviors. Like "athletic" is a loose way to describe some sorts of physical abilities, or "beautiful" is a loose way to describe some sorts of physical features. None of these words are scientifically useful. I have never said they are meaningless, I have only said they are generally scientifically untestable. You can provide operational defintions for mentalistic terms in order to make them scientifically useful, but once you do that, you have lost the meaning that you wanted to think about in the first place (like I did with "teleology" above).Edited by aiguy, : No reason given.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Nerd, No, I haven't assumed this for any system, only computers. It may be true of human "systems", but it may not be. I love thought experiments. I'm trying to understand what you are getting at here. I understand what you mean by chance (although randomness is in itself a pretty tricky concept, but I think we can avoid that in our discussion here). I also understand what you mean by physics: As far as physics is concerned, everything is a caused by a combination of chance and deterministic physical law. But then you say there is third type of cause involved, which is design. In other words, you seem to take it as evident that there is something called "design" which does not operate according to the laws of physics. But previously you had said that everything operates according to physical law ("Computers operate under the physical laws of the universe, just like everything else does"). So I really do not know what you mean. Again, I will not claim that human minds can be reduced to physics (i.e. chance & necessity). It may be true, or it may not. So, you may reasonably believe that something outside of physics is going on inside of people that enables them to think, and we can't resolve that currently by appeal to science.Here is where we are disagreeing, I think: You insist on considering the origin of something, rather than just the thing-in-itself, when you decide whether something is intelligent or not, or whether something operates according to physics or not. My argument, however, is that this consideration is illicit. Entity X is either intelligent or not, and X either operates according to physics or not, and this is true no matter how X came to exist in the first place. If you wish to say that X is not intelligent because something else designed it, or that X does not operate according to physics because something else that may not be constrained by physical law created it, then you are courting a number of paradoxes. The paradox that I have used to make this point is that in your way of thinking, if you believe human beings were designed, then that means human beings must not be intelligent. Again, I think your argument turns out to be an attempt to characterize ultimate cause, which is outside the realm of science entirely. Let me repeat a point I just made to Nemesis, above:If X is intelligent, then it makes no difference how X became intelligent. Indeed, when ID critics ask IDists "Who designed the designer?", ID's response is that the ultimate cause of the Designer's intelligence is irrelevant! Therefore, when we look at a computer that does intelligent things, according to ID, we can decide that it is intelligent per se, without considering its ultimate cause.The same is true of "operates according to chance and necessity". We may not know if some mind was responsible for creating the universe, but we understand the universe in the physical sciences in terms of chance and necessity, and (currently) nothing else. You could argue that something non-physical had to design atoms and molecules and gravity, too, but that does not mean that our study of all physical systems is really the study of intelligent causation - it isn't. Absolutely true - I couldn't agree with you more.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Mystic, I presume that by "constructed", you mean "designed by human beings". Well, yes, there is an intelligent computer system that wasn't constructed... but we have to define our terms here. By "intelligent" I mean "capable of creating complex form and function". And by "computer", I mean "process that operates soley according to chance and necessity.So, what is this intelligent computer that wasn't designed by humans? Evolution, of course.Allow me to anticipate your objections:Objection: Evolution isn't intelligent! It is a blind, mindless process!
Reponse: By the definition I just gave, evolution is intelligent (capable of creating complex form and function). If you don't like this definition, you can say evolution isn't intelligent... but it doesn't change anything - evolution is still capable of creating complex form and function.Objection: But evolution can not create complex form and function (CFF)!
Response: Even if the currently understood mechanisms of evolutionary theory fail to account for all biological phenomena, we know that pure chance and necessity can indeed create CFF, since computers do it all the time.Objection: But if neo-Darwinism fails to account for biology, how do you know that nothing but chance and necessity were still responsible?
Response: Because chance and necessity is the basis for our understanding of everything in the universe - we know of no other type of cause. And we know that chance and necessity can create CFF, so there is no reason to posit anything else.Objection: But computers are designed by people!
Response: Yes, but evolution was not. Both operate according to purely natural deterministic law plus chance.Objection: But computers can only create CFF because they were designed by people!
Response: Once they are created, computers can create CFF. And they create CFF all by themselves, without guidance, by operating according to pure chance and necessity.Objection: But then evolution must have been designed by something intelligent!
Response: Maybe so, maybe not. I won't argue that point. You can believe that evolution - and everything else in the universe - was created by something intelligent, and it doesn't change science in the least.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Nemesis - I've learned a few things after programming for thirty years: Save, backup, save, backup, save, backup, and then backup some more. Oh, we really do not agree at all! If you ask ten people for a definition of intelligence, you will get more than ten different answers. Right, but it does mean we have no scientific way to talk about it. I think we have no idea. By "will", I presume you mean "contra-causal free will" or "libertarian free will". That is, something with "will" can break the known laws of physics and make something happen that has no antecedent physical cause. Well, there is no evidence that anything of the sort ever happens. No, that isn't true. Computer systems do things that their programmers have never anticipated. If a computer system incorporates randomness, it can come up with all sorts of new ideas, and select the ones it wishes to act upon by evaluating the new ideas according to fixed, deterministic processes. (sound familiar?) Whew... you've gone through a number of different arguments here. First, think about this contra-causal free will thing, and hopefully you'll see that we can't determine if anything is capable of this or not, but we have no evidence that it does, and all of our understanding of the world so far indicates that nothing breaks the laws of physics.Second, I don't think that the fact that computers are not yet as complex as living things is relevant. Why would it be? In any case, computers are as complex as some living things already, and they are getting more complex very rapidly.Third, once a computer exists, it can generate novel, complex functional structures all by itself, purely by natural processes of chance and necessity. Therefore, we know that physical processes in nature, once they exist, can do the same thing. You may wish to argue that both computers and nature itself must have been created by something intelligent - that's fine with me, I won't argue that point. I'm not sure what question you mean when you say "biology is the only acceptable answer to the question". I won't defend evolutionary psychological explanations for morality or aesthetics, even though I find them plausible; I'm willing to say we don't have explanations for these things. But this has no bearing on this point: Why would every intelligent thing have to have human-like emotions?Think about a complete psychopath - a defective human who has no emotions. Isn't it possible that this person could still learn calculus and physics and build watches. Or think about another type of animal that does things you think are intelligent... are you sure that animal has human-like emotions? Again, these questions are simply matters of definition. If you'd like to define intelligence such that learning is a necessary component, then you have just eliminated an omniscient creator as an intelligent thing (since an omniscient being already knows everything, so there is nothing to learn). Which part do you doubt? Reasoning and inferences - standard AI techniques. Learning - a whole discipline called machine learning. Self-programming - artificial neural networks are all self programming, and there are other techniques as well (e.g. Self-programming machines (II): Network of self-programming machines driving an Ashby homeostat - PubMed). Dealing with novel situations - think about the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenge; all the robot vehicles had to deal with all sorts of unanticipated situations. Yes, an ambiguous term. We mean all of the zillions of things that humans beings are born knowing, or learn simply by existing in the world. It turns out that the hardest things for humans to learn - advanced mathematics and theorem proving, championship chess playing, medical and machine diagnosis, etc - these things are relatively easy for computers to learn. Common sense, however - if you turn a glass of water upside-down over your lap, you will get wet - that is very hard for computers. Read about it here: Cyc | The Next Generation of Enterprise AI. What I said was either intelligence could be ascertained to exist or not. This is not the case for everything, no, since in order to ascertain if a property exists in some entity, that property must be coherently defined. I can't answer the question of God eists or He doesn't, for example, because I honestly don't know what you mean by God. No, not everything must be - or can be - tried to see if it offers anything to science. Take my theory of gunderplitzen, for example. I believe that people are intelligent because they contain gunderplitzen. Do you think we ought to give this theory a scientific chance in order to see if it's true? (Don't ask me what gunderplitzen is - I'm not really sure yet). Yes - of course. If X is a tsunami, then X is a tsunami no matter how X became a tsunami. If X is intelligent, then X is intelligent no matter how X became intelligent. I'm not saying that we would not like to know things. I'm saying that the way X became intelligent does not alter the fact that X is intelligent. My point here is that ID itself holds that intelligence can be "detected" without regard to the source of the intelligence. No, I meant that you can decide something is intelligent without any consideration of how that thing became intelligent. Therefore, if a computer does something you think is intelligent, the fact that a human designed the computer does not disqualify the computer from being a bona-fide intelligence. Likewise, if a human does something you think is intelligent, the fact that you think the human was designed by the Designer does not disqualify the human from being a bona-fide intelligence. If you think the term is meaningless, that's great, we're done. A scientific theory can't offer meaningless terms as explanations for things. I have already said many times now what I think the word means (a loose way of describing various things that strike us subjectively as being descriptive of something's mental abilities, like "athleticsm" describes some physical abilities or "beauty" describes some physical features). Come on now. The fact that computers are designed by humans is irrelevant to the question of whether or not computers are intelligent, just like the fact that you think humans were designed by a Designer is irrelevant to the question of whether or not humans are intelligent. Computers can reason, perform inferences, create novel designs of irreducibly complex machinery. They can induce rules from examples, deduce facts from other facts, diagnose strange medical disorders, detect credit card fraud, fix a deep space probe all by themselves, drive a car, and beat the pants off of either one of us in a chess game... Please read my response to Mystic, above. Once the computer exists, it can do all these intelligent things purely by processes of chance and necessity. Once nature exists, then, it can do all these intelligent things purely by processes of chance and necessity. If you would like to argue that both computers and nature itself had an intelligent designer, I won't argue that. However, you can't argue that nature itself cannot do intelligent things (like create complex form and function of biology) all by itself, by processes of pure chance and necessity. I mean the deterministic physical laws (electricity, etc) according to which computers operate. The "chance" of computer systems comes from random (or pseudo-random) input. The analogy is between the computer system and natural processes - like evolution. Both operate according to pure chance and necessity, i.e. physical law plus randomness. My point is that ID offers "intelligence" as the explanation for biology, but "intelligence" has no scientifically useful definition. That isn't my fault. AI defines intelligence simply as "that which, if a person did it, we would tend to call it intelligent". That's all. Most computers have CPUs, yes. But the calculations are not "stored" - the computer figures them out when it needs to. There is no scientific fact of the matter. It is purely a matter of definition, and not discovery. Just like humans are "given" additional knowledge by parents and teachers. And chance does play a part in it when computer systems employ randomness. Just so. The plane does what it does, and it doesn't matter if you call it "flying" or not. The computer does what it does, and it doesn't matter if you call it "thinking", or "intelligent", or not. When we define "flying", we can come up with a definition that independent researchers can measure and agree on. "Flying" can be given an unambiguous, clear, empirically grounded meaning: It can mean "move above the surface of the Earth supported only by air pressure", for example. The same is not true of intelligence - there is no unambiguous, emprically grounded meaning for that term that independent researchers can test and replicate. You are arguing that "intelligence" has no clear meaning that we can agree on. I agree with you!!! So how can you have a scientific theory that offers "intelligence" as an explanation??? Agreed!!! My argument is that "intelligence" cannot be used to explain things. Nothing is explained by saying "it is intelligent".Q: How does a termite colony build those complicated tower complexes?
A: Because termite colonies are intelligent.
Q: How do you know termite colonies are intelligent?
A: Because that is what we tend to call things that build complicated structures. His definition brought goals and purpose into the realm of science. What it leaves out - if anything - is what can't be scientifically analyzed. I have been fascinated by the mind/body problem since I was a little boy, and I've been studying philosophy of mind for more than three decades. Yes, at some point I'll start a thread in another forum, but I can only manage to participate in one thread at a time (I spend too much time as it is on this!!) If you agree that we have no useful scientific definition of intelligence, I will be quite satisfied: My overriding point is that there is no scientific warrant for inferring "intelligence" as the explanation for biological complexity. I always aim for complete disclosure... it's just that we have to talk for a while before we can figure out what each other thinks. Here's an excellent, free, introductory text on machine learning online: Error 404 Not Found | Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Save, backup, then backup some more...

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Mystic, Genetic algorithms are one type of AI program that can create CFF by pure chance and necessity. By "chance" I mean randomness (in computer systems, randomness is accessed either via pseudo-random generators or by physical random process transducers). By "necessity" I mean according to the laws of physics. Once created, both nature and computer systems can create CFF by means of pure chance and necessity. So you already know that some computer programs (like GAs) use random input, and that input can be pseudo-random or "real" randomness (like radio static or radioactive decay intervals). Yes, and yes. Once again:1) Once computers comes to exist, they can do things that ID folks call "intelligent" - like creating irreducibly complex machines. The way computers do this is by operating according to nothing but randomness + deterministic physical law, because that is how computers work.2) Once nature comes to exist, it can do things that ID folks call "intelligent" - like creating irreducibly complex biological structures. The way nature does this is by operating according to nothing but randomness + deterministic physical law, because that is how nature works (as far as we know).If you'd like to say that both computers and nature itself were designed by something intelligent, go right ahead - I won't argue that point.Can you see a flaw in that argument?

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Mystic, I've presented a simple argument that undermines Intelligent Design Theory:Computers can generate CSI
Computers operate according to natural processes
Therefore natural processes (chance and necessity) can generate CSI
Therefore there is no justification to posit anything else to account for biologyYour rebuttal is: Computers don't live very long.Perhaps you'll be able to tie this into my argument somehow, but as far as I can tell, this is what one would call a red herring.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Mystic, I believe the argument I present is a simple, coherent, knock-down argument against Intelligent Design as a viable scientific theory. The fact that we cannot prove that life was formed without design is completely irrelevant, for at least two reasons:1) We cannot prove that life was formed without voodoo either.
2) ID doesn't actually say what "design" means in the first place - it only vaguely appeals to our intuitive notions about mind and God, which does not constitute a scientific explanation.As for the eco-system being self-sustaining while computers are not - I see absolutely no connection to my argument at all.As for my finding design distasteful - actually, you're wrong. My personal beliefs run toward some sort of thing that transcends material causality, and my ill-formed hunch is there is a connection between the quantum observation problem, consciousness, and order in the universe.What I find distasteful is people who try to co-opt science and pretend that their ill-formed hunches are somehow scientifically supportable. That gets my goat. (That isn't a poke at you, Mystic, just a comment at large).

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy,Yes, well said - but let me point out one thing. You're right that CSI is not an objective metric (it's actually that "specified" part that really wrecks Dembski's attempt to position it as such). However, there is a very, very powerful intuition that we all share when it comes to recognizing artifacts that have complex form and function - function that serves some apparent goal.So, the argument I've presented here does not hinge on the fact that this intuition cannot be formalized (even though it can't). Even if one grants, arguendo that we can detect CSI objectively, the fact remains that we have clear evidence that this CSI we recognize in the world can indeed be generated by purely stochastic means.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Mystic, It indicates the prinicple of parsimony, which is an essential component of scientific explanation. CSI is Bill Dembski's invention, and it is the cornerstone of the attempt to position ID as a scientific endeavor. It fails in multiple ways, as has been pointed out here. Nobody defines science that way. Rather, ID is excluded because it can't be empirically investigated, that's all. Edited by aiguy, : typo

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy, Of course intuition is subjective - it is the very epitome of subjective, non-scientific thinking! That is why I said Dembski's work fails in multiple ways, and that these intuitions can not be formalized. IT CANNOT BE! You completely misunderstood me. I look for arguments that will actually convince people that ID is not scientifically tenable. Dembski's formulation of CSI is complete trash, of course, but most IDer's don't even know what "CSI" is! What is the most simple, undeniable argument that one can pose which will convince people that we can't scientifically infer "intelligence" (whatever that is) as an explanation for biology?My point to you was that you will not be able to convince people that complex form and function that evinces purpose cannot be recognized in the world. So what might compel people to stop saying we can use this to detect human-like "minds" at work to create biological structures, we might try another angle. My argument here is another angle, which allows for the "detection" of complex form and purposeful function arguendo - just for the sake of argument. Even if we grant that such a thing could be detected, ID still cannot validly infer anything but blind chance and necessity to account for it, for the reasons I've explained in this thread.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy, No, you don't understand. The form of the argument is this:ID believes X, and that X implies Y.
I believe X is not true.
However, I assert that even if X was true, it would still not imply Y.
Therefore Y is not implied.This is a valid argument (X is "CSI is detectable" and Y is "detecting CSI allows us to infer non-physical causation).Edited by aiguy, : (corrected the logic from "Y is not true" to "Y is not implied", since the former would be a fallacy of denying the antecendent)

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Nemesis, Yes, intelligence is famously like pornography (according to Ed Meese): Can't define it, but we know it when we see it. The problem is we can't give IQ tests to chimps or ravens or cells or the Intelligent Designer to figure out if they're intelligent or not. Just so. Doesn't mean these words have no meaning, just not scientific meaning. Intuitively, people feel that what they decide in their mind causes their bodies to do what they do - "mind over matter" and all that. However, if the world is nothing but deterministic cause-and-effect, then it seems we don't really have any power over what we decide - it has already been decided for us by the laws of physics. One school of thought called "libertarian" or "contra-causal" free will holds that our minds can actually interfere with physical processes from outside, as it were. Others look to quantum indeterminacy to support the idea that mind can act in the physical world without breaking the laws of physics (this has not been very successful, in many people's opinion). Other people (like me) are "compatibilists" - those that believe our actions probably are determined by physics, but for any important meaning of "will", it doesn't matter. Supercomputers are just computers - same deal, just bigger and faster. I'm talking about systems that 1) use randomness and selection, making their actions unpredictable in principle, and 2) those that are so complex and heuristic that the programmer can't possibly ever trace the results of execution without actually running the program. My point is that computers act in accordance with blind, unguided physical laws. Yet they still act design complex machines. Thus, blind unguided physical laws in nature (such as evolutionary processes) can design complex machines (living things) too. Just so. So we leave ultimate cause out of science, and concede that science doesn't explain everyting. Well, we disagree there (I absolutely believe my dogs are happy, sad, frustrated, eager, embarassed, etc). But again, it is very hard to see how we could ever test to see if I'm right. I absolutely agree. Antonio D'Amasio and others have changed cognitive science in the past twenty years or so by explaining now emotions are intrinsic to human decision-making. And I would say that a very small proportion of our knowledge comes from "book smarts". But my point was that if we observe the results of intelligence - as ID would say that biological systems are - we have no justification for inferring emotions along with it, or any other aspect of human mentality. Calculators do what they do. If you want to call them intelligent, or not, it doesn't make any difference. There are various techniques for ML. Basically the software is set up to analyze its experiences and look for patterns and correlations, and then adjust its behavior accordingly. We don't seem to making progress on this point. Once again:
1) They can perform functions that have not been assigned to them
2) It doesn't make any difference whether or not we call them intelligent First, yes it was a joke. My point was that not everything can be scientifically evaluated. In order for something to be scientifically evaluated, the "thesis" must be coherent, and make specific, meaningful statements about what we can observe in the world. I do not believe ID qualifies, because the word "intelligence" has not been given a suitable operational defintion. You're missing my point. Of course we'd like to learn all about causes as far back as we can. But that isn't the point of my argument. The point is that AI computers prove that pure, blind, chance and necessity is capable of building novel complex machines, and that argument is not countered by pointing out that human beings built computers. What I'm saying is that explaining biological complexity in terms of "intelligence" is meaningless (or vacuous):Q: What causes biological complexity? A: Intelligence.
Q: How do you know? A: That is what we call things that can generate complexity. Computers can make up their rules, using induction. And doctors learn from other doctors too (their teachers). So? I'm going to try this just one more time:1) ID claims that natural processes can't design complex machines.
2) Computers design complex machines
3) Computers act according to natural processes
4) Therefore (1) is falseYou will now complain that computers can only design complex machines because they are designed to do so by humans.I will rebut by pointing out it doesn't matter - humans can only design complex machines because they were designed to do so. And nature can only design complex machines (living things) because it was designed to do so. Now - before you get all excited and think that I've just adopted ID - I HAVE NOT. We have absolutely no idea how nature was "designed" such that natural processes could cause life to form. We have no scientific reason to think it had anything to do with a mind. We just don't know. No, I do not believe nature is sentient. But what I'd really like to hone in on is the point that ID's explanation of "intelligence" outside of nature for biology fails as a scientific theory. One simply cannot scientifically infer that anything outside of natural processes was involved. Of course not!!!Q: How does your computer play chess? A: Because it is intelligent.
Q: Why do you say your computer is intelligent? A: Because it can play chess.In general, and in the case if ID, calling something "intelligent" does not tells us anything we didn't already know. I hope you are not saying evolutionary theory invokes "chance" as an explanation for biological complexity - it doesn't. Nobody thinks chance explains biology. Also, we cannot have a scientific theory that explains things by invoking a Designer, because nobody knows what a Designer is. We cannot fix this by saying it is "intelligent", because as we've seen there is no scientific content to this assertion. And the threat is that people will try to use the authority of science to further their own particular opinions about the Designer that have no scientific support. I'm not sure I follow everything you've said, but I agree "chance" is a tricky concept. (There are really two kinds recognized by science - randomness caused by unfathomable interactions of contingent events (like the pattern of raindrops on the driveway) and quantum randomness, which is inherently undetermined). But evolutionary doesn't explain anything by chance except for individual mutations. Well, no, it's not the brevity at issue here. If we say "random mutation and natural selection" did it, we really are making a claim with clear meaning, whether or not you think RM&NS (or any aspect of evolutionary theory) really accounts for living things or not. On the other hand, saying "intelligent causation" explains it is really not saying anything at all - it is neither right nor wrong, because it just doesn't say anything (in science we say it is "not even wrong"). Thank you so much. I've enjoyed it so far - the only cross words I've encountered have come from somebody who actually agrees with me on the main issues of the ID/evolution debate! I enjoy your sincere and polite conversation.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Percy, Once I grant, arguendo, that complex form and function is detectable, we just remove that from the discussion. Actually, where people bog down is that they can't understand why the fact that programmers program computers doesn't invalidate the argument.

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Science is not simply reason - it is much less than that. It is reason constrained by empiricism.

Hi Crashfrog, Yes, just so. The vast majority of IDers have no idea how Dembski has defined CSI (and he's changed it several times!). All people really think about is Paley's watch, and how it implies a watchmaker. My point is that we have observable proof that natural processes can build a "watch" - a complex functional machine.Edited by aiguy, : No reason given.