Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
6 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/7


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Detecting Design
Tanndarr
Member (Idle past 5182 days)
Posts: 68
Joined: 02-14-2008


Message 46 of 59 (542692)
01-11-2010 11:10 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by Percy
01-11-2010 8:02 PM


Defining Design
I have a nomenclature question. What definition of the word "design" is in play in the term "intelligent design?" Is it the "intent" definition? Is it the "devised within the mind" definition? Is it the "carefully planned out in advance before constructing" definition? Or doesn't it matter?
Excellent question, and another that shows light on the heart of the issue. Just like information and kind I think design is a word the ID crowd would be happy to leave nice and fuzzy. The re-worded creationism definition applied to ID in Of Pandas and People specifies only that life began through an intelligent agent and doesn't speak directly of design as such. Dembski's Design Inference hinges on the assumption that anything sufficiently improbable is designed. While that may be of interest to philosophers it doesn't help us much.
When I started this thread I believe I was angling more for the intent definition. Human technology has been a gradual progression with few sudden leaps. From stone choppers all the way to nanotechnology we've learned mostly by trial and error. Except for fortunate accidents of discovery, humans advance technology by intent.
If the intelligent designer made errors they tend to be explained in a manner that is strangely consistent with religious beliefs (for example the idea of genetic entropy espoused by others on the board that just happens to match the idea of man fallen from grace). If we take the words intelligent design at face value then we should be able to discover not only evidence of design but evidence of intelligence. I don't know if that subject is worth a thread of its own or not.
For the moment let's associate design with intent. If any of the ID folks care to take issue with that I'd be happy to hear from them.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by Percy, posted 01-11-2010 8:02 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Tanndarr
Member (Idle past 5182 days)
Posts: 68
Joined: 02-14-2008


Message 47 of 59 (542871)
01-13-2010 12:14 PM
Reply to: Message 45 by RAZD
01-11-2010 10:33 PM


Re: Recap - list of possible ways to distinguish design
RAZD, thanks for the list. I've thought a couple of times about trying to condense it somewhat (we've gone from the three rules I posited early in the thread to your twenty-two), but I was hoping we'd get some additional comment from others. I may still try to boil it down some later, I notice some redundancy but a long list of more specific rules is probably easier to discuss than a short list of general rules.
What we both agree on (and I'd say the rest of the contributors so far agree as well) is that there is no way to identify design without studying the properties and nature of the physical object that is supposedly designed. Scientists go into exquisite detail to look for evidence, they don't rely only on large-scale appearance.
The ID crowd appear to me to be the exact opposite. They want to stop at "It looks designed." without investigating detail and context of the find. This leads to Cloud-Cuckoo-Land explanations which the apologists will neither explain or defend.
Dembski's CSI is a great example and brought to mind by Smooth Operator mentioning Dembski's flagellum calculation in another thread. Dembski made the calculation in his book but then immediately refused to discuss or defend the calculation when others showed his calculations were off by many orders of magnitude. He's not interested in "materialistic" applications of his theory. Well if it doesn't have materialistic applications why did he even bother to write it down?
We've got a good set of working rules here. I guess we can just sit back and wait to see if someone from the other side will try to engage this conversation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 45 by RAZD, posted 01-11-2010 10:33 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024