Animal and Extraterrestrial Intelligent Design?

I hope it's OK with the mods for me to discuss an article I'd written on that subject; I'll present an abridged version here.It is Animal and Extraterrestrial Artifacts: Intelligently Designed? In it, I show that the scientific community has dealt with some important examples of nonhuman and nontheological designers.I start off with animal behavior, noting George Romanes's "Animal Intelligence", which catalogued numerous purported examples. However, Romanes's work has been remembered mainly as an example of how not to do animal-behavior research.Some species of spider build elaborate webs that seem as if the spiders had intelligently designed them. However, the work of Thiemo Krink shows that a simulated spider can build a web with the help of some rather simple algorithms. Furthermore, this simulated spider's performance can be improved with the help of some algorithms equivalent to evolution by natural selection.Turning to other arthropod architects, like ants and bees, much of their behvior can likewise be explained by relatively simple algorithms. In fact, there is a whole discipline of "artifiicial life" dedicated to studying such algorithms.But does such research apply only to very small-brained creatures? Beavers may seem to intelligently design their dams, as William Dembski himself seems to think, but beavers build dams by piling sticks and mud on wherever they hear rushing water.But it's clear that even complicated instincts cannot explain everything, and learning can often supply valuable flexibility. But most forms of learning are difficult to call intelligent design. Baby birds can imprint on entities that do not resemble their mothers very much, and the famous horse "Clever Hans" was inadvertently trained to notice subtle cues from his master.But there is a kind of learning that seems close to intelligent design, "insight learning". This term was coined by Wolfgang Kohler, who noticed that chimps pause for a while and then implement a solution to some puzzle. It is as if the chimps create a mental model of stacked crates or joined sticks, and then implement it. Which may be interpreted as performing intelligent design. But it's the behavior that provides the clue, not the "explanatory filter" of "what else can it be?".Moving to extraterrestrials, the first speculation of design was Kepler's theory that the Moon's craters had been designed by its inhabitants. However, giant meteorite impacts have proved to be a much more reasonable hypothesis.Mars's "canals" were a mistranslation of an Italian word for "channels", and some astronomers, notably Percival Lowell, worked out the features of their alleged designers in great detail. However, some astronomers, like Antoniadi, could never see them, and spacecraft pictures revealed no traces of them. They were perceptual artifacts.However, one picture revealed a "Mars Face", which grew famous among a new generation of Martian-artifact-seekers, notably Richard Hoagland.Beyond the solar system, in 1967, a certain Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered some radio source that made pulses every 1.337 seconds. She and her colleagues soon discovered others, which they half-jokingly attributed to "Little Green Men". However, these sources showed no sign of being in orbit, and astrophysicists like Thomas Gold worked out a more plausible hypothesis: these "pulsars" are rotating neutron stars that are slowly spinning down.Despite such failures, SETI efforts have continued, and search efforts have been directed toward some guesses as to what an ET signal would be like, notably that they are very narrowband signals near important radio spectral lines. These guesses are based on considering what would make a radio broadcast prominent to a possible listener, and not by invoking the Explanatory Filter.These examples show that recognizing intelligent design is much more difficult than it might at first seem, and that Dembski's claim to have solved the recognition problem is very overoptimistic.A parallel case is vitalism, the theory that living things have some special "vital force". It is nowadays thoroughly discredited, not from "mechanistic presuppositions", but from the massive success of mechanistic explanations.So in conclusion, the mainstream of the scientific community has no presupposition against intelligent design. Instead, many seeming cases of intelligent design have turned out to be something other than that.

Peter:
What prompts a spider to form a web?

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For me 'design' can only be 'intelligent' as it implies
some planning process in advance of implementation.

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Even if the 'mental' process is simple, like:

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Hunger triggers web-building.However, that is more likely some reflex action / instinct than serious planning. Like web building itself; spiders likely have some criteria for selecting good spots to build webs.Exactly how spiders select web-building sites is uncertain, but they may do so in a fashion analogous to how honeybees select hive sites.Honeybees choose enclosed spaces with certain dimensions, spaces that open to the outside world toward their bottom. They do that by looking for holes, flying inside of them for a while, and returning to the swarm. They may measure the spaces' dimensions by timing how long it takes to hit a wall, and repeating this measurement several times to obtain an average.And when they return, they try to recruit other swarm members, with the more enthusiastic recruiters getting more fellow bees to follow. Whichever hive site gets the most of this kind of vote is the one selected. This suggests that honeybees have some sort of scoring system for would-be hive sites, with their scores calculated from their scouting efforts.

Peter:
The honey-bees behaviour doesn't sound like something that
would normally be put down to 'instinct' does it?It involves measurment, lobbying, and a democratic process ...Peter, do you mean to imply that honeybees have consciousness?Likewise, we do not know why a spider builds a web, or whether
they choose to do so or are 'programmed' to do so.And do you also mean to imply that spiders have consciousness?The main point I was making, however, was that a computer
model that produces similar results does not prove that that
is how it's done in the real-world system being modelled.True, but that's where principles like Occam's Razor and falsifiability come in. Let's consider two hypotheses for the formation of crystals:Crystals form because their molecules seek the lowest-energy configuration, which is being part of a crystal lattice.Crystals form because little elves carefully place the molecules into crystal lattices.The first hypothesis is much simpler than the second in a certain way; it does not have the rabbits-out-of-hats hypothesis of those little elves. Furthermore there are some computer simulations that are consistent with it.One of the major failings (for me) in most animal behaviour
studies is that humans seem to start with the assumption that
only 'we' have 'intelligence', so that option is ruled out
in other creatures rather than investigated properly.Peter, I'm not sure what you want. The opposite? That every animal be presumed to have human-scale intelligence until shown otherwise?George Romanes had become a subject of ridicule for very good reasons -- his approach was imprecise and anecdotal.I'm not endorsing extreme Skinnerian behaviorism by any means; I think that internal mental states and processing are a legitimate subject for inquiry, even if they can only be inferred. But what internal states and processing can one reasonably infer the occurrence of?'Instinct' covers a lot of bahvaiours in material I have read,
and yet some of the most complex and co-operative behaviours
seem to require communication and action based upon 'new
information.' Even something as seemingly simple as telling
your hive-mates where the good flowers are requires an encoding
of informtion on the one side, and an ability to decode it on
the other ... that sounds like languistic capability to me.Except that I've had several years of programming experience under my belt, and I know that what may seem "linguistic" or whatever can often be produced in the total absence of conscious thought.That bees have some sort of "memory" is very clear, but this "memory" is likely some sort of hardcoded slot, something like what goes on in a computer -- no consciousness needed.Furthermore, I'd noted that if many animals are much smarter than they act, then they are causing themselves needless trouble by acting dumb.

It seems to me that Peter is trying to shift the burden of proof onto whomever claims that most animals do not have human-scale intelligence or something similar. It is as if Peter is following in the footsteps of George Romanes and his book Animal Intelligence.Which has been remembered as how not to do animal-behavior research.I think that the burden of proof should be otherwise. One ought to prefer hypotheses of relatively simple mechanisms without conscious thought unless there is some good reason to believe otherwise. And I reach that conclusion because of the great success of hypotheses of consciousness-free mechanisms, and also out of concern that conscious thought is being used as a sort of deus ex machina, a rabbit out of a hat that can explain essentially anything.As an example, let us consider chimpanzee "insight learning", first observed by Wolfang Koehler some decades back. Chimps would pause and then quickly attempt to implement some solution to the inaccessible-banana problem, like stacking crates. The pause-and-implementation sequence suggests that the implementation was being planned during the pause, which in turn suggests that chimps have some mental-modeling ability. Much like our species, even if not as well-developed.However, most other species do not have that sort of problem-solving ability, at least as far as can be determined. Thus, it is unlikely that spiders, ants, bees, and beavers build their well-known structures with the help of mental models, and the burden of proof ought to be on those who claim otherwise.The closest human analogy to their behavior is certain jokes about following a few simple rules in order to survive in unfamiliar social environments. Such as surviving in the Navy:If it moves, salute it.
If it doesn't, paint it.

Peter, please calm down. I'm willing to accept evidence of mental modeling, but it has to be something difficult to explain by instinct or conditioning or trial-and-error, like chimp problem solving.I am saying that starting with the assumption that they do not
is as erroneous as starting with the assupmtion that they do,
and this results in biased interpretation of behavioural
observations.So both hypotheses deserve equal weight?I disagree. Occam's Razor and falsifiability tend to favor the non-intelligence-based hypotheses.To put it another way, assuming that other animals do not have
an intelligence similar in structure/function to humans precludes
a whole set of possible explanations of some behaviours.Occam's Razor is not the same as dogmatic dismissal; placing the burden of proof on support of certain hypotheses is not the same as ruling them out.Precluded not by reasoning or experimentation, but by assuming
that they do not possess intelligence in the first place. It
closes the door on possible scenarios.There is no need for such sarcasm.Chimps aren't the only ones who appear to reason out solutions
either. Some examples exists of birds that appear to reason ..
oh, but I forgot, the assumption that humanity is the only
source of intelligence on the planet has led mainstream
behaviourists to state categorically (and without investigation)
that it's just trial and error at work ... or instinct ... or ...?Again, there is no need for such sarcasm.I think that the evidence is strong for chimps' reasoning abilities, and possibly those of certain birds. But in most species, such abilities are absent, however useful they might be.

Peter:
The problem for me is not so much that the two hypotheses
need equal weight, but that the 'intelligent' hypotheses
needs at least a passing comment rather than complete
dismissal.In science, one gets a hypothesis taken seriously by proposing some serious explanatory value, not by whining about all the orthodox oxen in the world.I'm willing to accept evidence of mental modeling, but it has to be something difficult to explain by instinct or conditioning or trial-and-error, like chimp problem solving.It implies that 'intelligence' behind a behaviour is the
last port of call.Why not? Why not work out a strategy for recognizing it instead of whining about how rejected it is?Let us consider something that may require intelligence. The Escherichia coli bacterium can eat lactose, turning it into smaller sugars, which are then metabolized. These bacteria do so with the help of the enzyme beta-galactosidase, which they produce only when there is lactose to metabolize.Does a tiny little E. coli bacterium have some intelligence? Does an E. coli bacterium think to itself "I see some lactose; I ought to produce beta-galactosidase so I can live off of it"?Not at all. What happens was discovered by Jacques Monod and other molecular biologists some decades ago. Beta-galactosidase and related genes are grouped together in the lac operon. Near it is a site for the lac-repressor protein molecule to bind to the chromosome; this molecule will inhibit the transcription of the lac genes. But when lactose arrives, it binds to the lac repressor, changing its shape, and such a repressor molecule on the chromosome will fall off, allowing the lac genes to be transcribed for consuming the lactose. And when the lactose is gone, the repressor can again bind to the chromosome, inhibiting the production of now-unnecessary proteins.And numerous other such regulatory mechanisms have since been discovered; here is a nice page on gene regulation.Now consider a certain sort of behavior that E. coli has. This bacterium has a flagellum, and will swim toward higher concentrations of its food. Does it do that by intelligence?However, a mechanism has been discovered for this behavior, which can be expressed as pseudocode:At each time:If Concentration >= PreviousConcentration
Run flagellum forward, making straight-line motion
Else
Run flagellum backward, making random change in direction
EndPreviousConcentration gets ConcentrationEndInstinct or intelligence?Occam's razor is all about the simplest explanations being the
most likely correct ones, but I fail to see how 'instinct'
is any easier to explain than 'intelligence'. Assuming that they
are on some kind of continuum, they are just facets of the
same mental 'feature'.I am a computer programmer. And I know from experience that "artificial instincts" are MUCH easier to produce than "artificial intelligence". Essentially all of the software that we use may be called "artificial instinct" software.Human-scale intelligence has been very difficult to produce in software; most software has fallen far short. From the 1950's to the 1970's, there were lots of optimistic predictions about the progress of AI; however, such predictions have failed miserably. The famous Turing Test is whether one can distinguish some chatterbot software from a "normal" human conversant; all chatterbot software to date has fared miserably. My own experience has been that chatterbots are almost unspeakably dumb.I concede that the thought of honey bees having any form
of reasoning ability is not one that springs readily to
the mind ... but does that mean it is impossible? Have people
studied the possibility?I don't know if anyone has considered it, but bee behavior is mostly unlearned and stereotyped, so instinct is the most plausible hypothesis here.