Cubist
Posts: 559 Joined: Oct. 2007
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Quote (kn0808 @ April 30 2012,16:14) | While all of you are attacking Dembski, you are not making any kind of argument of your own. No one has even made an argument against one of his statements. |
I've made arguments against his statements. In particular, I've made arguments against (some of) his statements regarding his so-called 'Explanatory Filter'. Dembski has stated that the Filter is simply a formalized, more-rigorous version of the design-detection methodology everyone uses. But the Filter is strictly an eliminative process -- you rule out Explanation A, then rule out Explanation B, and keep on ruling out explanations, and if you run out of explanations to rule out, you conclude 'Design' is the explanation -- and we don't use eliminative processes to recognize design. If we used eliminative processes to recognize who painted a particular painting, that process of recognition would look something like this: "Okay, it's not a Magritte… it's not a Rembrandt… it's not a Picasso… it's not a Van Gogh… (next several hundred, if not thousand, "it's not So-and-so" eliminations omitted 'cause they'd be horribly boring to read) …aha! Got it—that painting is a Rockwell!" But that doesn't happen; nobody recognizes a Rockwell because it's not like [insert list of painters it isn't like]. Rather, we recognize a Rockwell because it is like a Rockwell. You don't recognize Rockwell-style brushstrokes because they aren't the sort of brushstrokes used by [insert list of other painters]; rather, you recognize Rockwell-style brushstrokes because you know the characteristics of Rockwell's brushstrokes, and you can recognize those characteristics when you see them. More generally, we don't recognize any member of Category X on the grounds that it's not similar to things which are not members of Category X; rather we recognize a member of Category X on the grounds that it is similar to known members of category X. Contrary to Dembski's Filter, which is built on the presupposition that we recognize Design on the basis that Design is not like non-Design, how we actually recognize Design is on the basis that Design is like known examples of Design. As well, I've argued that Dembski's Filter cannot do the job Dembski claims it can unless it's being used by an omniscient entity. The Filter is all about elimination of non-Design explanation, right? Fine—but how can you eliminate a non-Design explanation you don't know about? Answer: You can't eliminate a non-Design explanation you don't know about. Therefore, Dembski's Filter necessarily yields a false positive result of "yep, it's Designed" whenever any investigator uses that Filter on a subject that has a non-Design explanation of which that investigator is ignorant. So... Dembski's Filter is not a more-rigorous version of intellectual processes which are in common use, even tho he says it is. Any time the Filter yields a result of 'yes, it's Designed', there is no way to distinguish between (a) the Filter having correctly identified Design in a Designed whatzit, or (b) the investigator being unaware of the non-Design explanation for a non-Designed whatzit. Quote | You have simply discredited him... |
False. The person who has discredited Dembski is Dembski himself. All his critics have done is point out that he is discredited. Quote | While you may not agree with Dembski or Intelligent Design, give me a rational explanation about what specifically is wrong with it and defend your own position. |
Asked and answered. Feel free to show me what's wrong with my criticism of Dembski's Filter.
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