Is there a legitimate argument for design?

And since it has that in common with lifeforms such as birds, bats, and bees, we can conclude that the helicopter is the product of two helicopters fucking.Oh, wait ... that's not the false conclusion you wish to reach, is it?

My point is that if you try to reason from the fact that they have this one thing in common to the inference that they have a similar mode of production, such reasoning fails every time that we can test it. Helicopters don't hump. Birds aren't made in factories. Helicopters don't undergo ontogenesis. Bees aren't assembled from pre-existing parts. Helicopters aren't produced by a process of reproduction with variation acted on by natural selection, and no-one has come forward claiming to be the inventor of the bat.If a form of argument fails sometimes, it is not conclusive. If if fails every time we can test it, it is not even suggestive; or if it suggests anything, it's that we should believe the opposite of its conclusion.

Results of his experiments to establish human intelligence have been disappointing ...

Ah yes, the Argument From Undesign. Nature is so clearly faulty that instead of being produced by a ramshackle, hit-or-miss, trial-and-error process like evolution, it must be the product of a perfectly wise God who is also a freakin' moron ... ... and who made you in his own image.

I guess it should be answered philosophically, because it's that sort of question. We all know that there are ideas: Pythagoras' theorem is an idea, anarcho-syndicalism is an idea, "aliens kidnapped and probed me last Tuesday" is an idea; we know that people have these ideas. So the question seems to be: what do we want "really exist" to mean? Not many of them. But perhaps there are some. Perhaps we are hard-wired to have some ideas. For example, most of us have the idea that (some) people are nice to look at, they're pretty, they're sexy, etc. Presumably if we were a species of super-sentient purple slime warthogs, we'd find purple slime warthogs sexy and go about grunting "Look at the slime on that. Wow, she's so warty and purple!" The sight of a pretty girl would fill us with disgust because she's so dry and unslimy and has no warts.Or perhaps, to take another example, the idea that the world consists of objects embedded in three-dimensional space is an idea that's built in to us. It's hard to say, because we can't raise a baby on an eleven-dimensional Mbius strip and see if the baby would get the hang of it.But it's surprising what ideas are not built in. Studies on babies suggest, for example, that when they are young they find it more surprising to see a shadow move along with the object that casts it than to see the shadow sit where it is when you move the object. They have to learn this basic fact about everyday objects. This is strange, but apparently true. Nonetheless, some ideas may be hard-wired.Then there is a sort of gray area where ideas might not be hard-wired, but perhaps a tendency to acquire them is. For example, language is not hard-wired, but a human child will naturally and easily acquire language even in cultures where there is no specific effort made to teach children to talk. The same is not true of (for example) cats. Language is not hard-wired, but there is something in our brains that makes us all linguists and grammarians ... perhaps the abstract idea of a noun is hard-wired into all of us, just waiting for us to acquire actual instances.But certainly we get most of our ideas by thinking, by learning from experience, or by listening to other people with ideas. I did not inherit Pythagoras' theorem in any biological genetic sense, and so this has nothing to do with "evolution in the sense it is debated by evolutionists on this forum, not a more general meaning that might be found in common use".---Like Omnivorous, I think that you're trying to work round to something, and I think you should actually get to the point instead of asking questions. The Socratic method doesn't work so well unless, like Socrates, you've got Plato to write the answers for you.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

He means, did ideas literally evolve, in the strict biological sense of "evolve", not in the metaphorical sense that you're using when you write:

Was I uncivil, or did you start composing this post before I'd posted mine?

Sure, but since you're posting questions about the rather abstruse subject of whether ideas "really exist" on a thread on the topic "Is there a legitimate argument for design?"you must somehow have come to the belief that your questions, and the answers, are relevant to the topic of the thread. Omnivorous and I are interested to know what the relevance is.

To expand on my answer, let's imagine a conversation between Alice and Bob: Bob : Does an idea, for example the idea of a vegetable, really exist? Alice : Sure. We both have the idea of a vegetable. You know what a vegetable is, so do I. Bob : I admit that. But does the idea really exist? Does it have substance, is it materially instantiated? Alice : Sure, here's a book on vegetables which contains the definition of the word "vegetable". Also here's a dictionary. The idea is instantiated in ink on paper. Bob : I admit that. I never denied that there were material things in which the definition is given. But does the idea really exist? Alice : Well, yes. I mean, ideas are things in people's minds, yes? And you have the idea of a vegetable in your mind, yes? So the idea exists. Bob : I admit that I have the idea in my mind. But does it really exist? You're going in circles now, I've already conceded that we both know what a vegetable is. Alice : Well, you have the idea materially instantiated in your brain. There is an association of neurons which gives you the idea of a vegetable, and without this you would not have this idea. Bob : Well, I've never been completely convinced by the materialist concept of the mind. How do we know that this is true? Alice : Because people can have micro-strokes that deprive them of the idea of a vegetable. Here are some references. Bob : OK, I admit that. Thanks for the references. Alice : So, you admit that ideas really exist? Bob : No, that's just like the argument from the dictionary. I admit the existence of a physical substratum on which my ability to grasp the idea of a vegetable is dependent. That is not to say that the idea of a vegetable itself really exists. Alice : So what are you getting at? Bob : Well, you must admit that the idea of a vegetable is not a thing like this chair, or this jar of marmalade, that we can simply point to, weigh, measure, subject to chemical analysis? Alice : I admit that. Bob : So you admit that ideas don't really exist? Alice : No. Look, by that criterion we would have to say that inflation doesn't exist. And yet the prices of goods have risen. Bob : I admit that. But ...---So what are they arguing about? They agree as to matters of fact. They agree that (a) they have the idea (b) the idea is defined in the dictionary (c) Bob has the idea as a result of a certain arrangement of neurons in his brain (d) an idea is not something you can weigh, point to, or subject to chemical analysis. Actually, they agree on all the facts. Their point of disagreement, then, is on when it is appropriate to say that something "really exists". This is a philosophical dispute.The school of philosophy that I belong to says that they should realize that they agree as to every matter of fact and stop arguing. If they must argue, I would tend to side with Alice, because if an argument is about how language should be used, then unless there's a really good reason otherwise it should be resolved in favor of the way that language actually is used. Perhaps you disagree. But it is certainly a philosophical dispute rather than a scientific one, since it does not turn on any matter of fact.

I guess whichever suits you better, but please quote what you're replying to. Normally it's considered wrong to answer different posts in the same reply, but that applies to ongoing conversations, there's no rationale for the rule in this case.

Well yes, for the same reason that Alice does in my dialog. I'm not sure why you dismiss psychology as "subjective". How do you feel about neuroscience?If these are not objective studies of ideas, what would one look like if we had one? Is it actually your opinion that a true, "objective" science of ideas would require us to be able to weigh ideas, pour them into test tubes, see what color they are? If not, what are you after? That's a long way to get to a rather forced conclusion. After all, if that line of reasoning worked, well, the theory of gravity is an idea. Quantum electrodynamics is an idea. The laws of thermodynamics ... ideas. The germ theory of disease? An idea. Pythagoras' theorem? Idea. And so on. So if your reasoning worked, you could say of pretty much anything: "If, therefore, the scientific community has not addressed, studied, and developed supportable theory about ideas, the scope of study required to form any conclusions about [fill it the blank] is flawed." You have come up with an argument which, if correct, would stop scientists from sciencing altogether, when all you were aiming at was stopping them from talking about ID. Which is excessive, firstly because we need them to do science and secondly because they hardly ever do talk about ID.(As a minor point, wouldn't your argument also apply to the proponents of ID as well as its critics? I don't see them with an "objective" theory of ideas, whatever that is. "If, therefore, the ID community has not addressed, studied, and developed supportable theory about ideas, the scope of study required to form any conclusions in the ID debate is flawed.")However, your argument is not a good one and does not prove that everyone is wrong about everything. For one thing, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. By your argument, any discussion, by scientists, of the theory of gravity (an idea) would have to be fatally flawed. So how do they get those communications satellites to stay up? Their discussion of the germ theory of disease, likewise flawed ... but they abolished smallpox. All without this objective theory of ideas of which you speak.Or perhaps they have one after all. For there is one sense in which all science is nothing but the study of ideas. It is the study of whether ideas about the natural world are good or bad. It largely ignores what one might call the ontology of ideas, but it is almost nothing but the study of their quality, and it does so with what in human affairs is the acme of objectivity. I would therefore suggest that so long as scientists confine themselves to saying whether this idea of design is a good or a bad one, they're on safe ground.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Sure. A lemon tree. An owl. A moth. A nudibranch.Now you may say that these "reek of sophisticated design"; but I can answer that they actually reek of evolution, and then where are we? Such conclusory assertions can't be used to support design or evolution. No-one has the notion that "huge jumps in complexity occurred", so it is unnecessary to support this notion. People have had similar ideas. But there is a rather fatal objection to them. These genes for the future would be subject to mutation, corrupting the data, but not to purifying selection kicking such corruptions out of the gene pool. Such genes would therefore be strafed into nonsense by mutation before the lineage got around to using them.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

See message #360, this thread.---As to your complaints, I have provided you with civil disagreement, courteously expressed. A troll, you say, is one who posts "inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages [...] with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response". My messages were neither inflammatory, extraneous, nor off-topic; and if they have provoked an emotional response, this was not my intention, that would be on you. If you cannot tell the difference between someone politely disagreeing with you, and someone trolling you, you would be well advised not to participate in discussions of ... well, pretty much anything.The one concrete complaint you have made about my posts is that you can't find where I have written a dialog involving a person named Alice. Well, now you can. Is there anything else wrong with my posts apart from the fact that I have expressed an opinion that isn't yours?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

We're good, then.

I think you may be confusing psychology with psychoanalysis. Suppose someone criticizes the theory of gravity by saying "No, actually it's love that makes the planets go round". People reply by pointing out that the theory of gravity works just fine, is supported by observation, and that his "love" hypothesis needs some work, like any sort of real substance or predictive power."Aha!" he replies. "Exactly! My hypothesis has massive holes in it. For one thing, we don't have an objective science of love as a real phenomenon in nature. Until we have that, how can you dismiss my hypothesis? How can you be comfortable that your ideas are falsifiable? How can such a discussion be declared closed if a science of love is possible but not pursued?"At this juncture we might point out that the holes in his hypothesis are not a problem for our theory, and then maybe throw things at him.