Telic Thoughts

Mike Gene authored The Designer’s Identity at The Design Matrix. The piece addresses an old objection to ID which appears an opportunistic one in my view. Those posing the objection do not complain for example, that SETI cease and desist unless and until an intelligent designer of a signal is identified in advance. But let's look at what Mike has to say on this. Quoting:

There is nothing arbitrary about the constraint of remaining agnostic when it comes to the identity of the designer in ID. It’s the intellectually honest thing to do. If someone has a method for reverse-engineering the identity of a designer from the artifact, I am all ears (been so for years). But no one seems to have such a method.

That being said, there are forms of inquiry that can get us closer to the identity issue.

I think it is quite fair to ask an ID proponent what was designed. And the answers may not be as neutral with regard to the designer’s identity.

What was designed is a reasonable first question. Why is it believed that x was designed a reasonable follow-up. More from Mike:

For example, if someone proposes that the Universe itself was designed, ETI, which are part of the Universe, would not be a plausible candidate. Or, if someone proposes that a bacterial feature, a vertebrate feature, and a human feature all came into existence through intelligent intervention (due to the insufficiency of natural cause), this entails a designer who intervenes across great spans of deep time, and again, ETI do not appear to be a plausible candidate.

Mike points out that an answer to the what question can indicate our options with respect to the designer's identity. Mike again:

Yet I propose a single event of intelligent intervention – the origin of life, and that this act of design had an eye to the future, such that these original life forms front-loaded the outcome of evolution (the echoes of design). The logic behind all of this is laid out in The Design Matrix. In this case, ETI remains a very plausible candidate (their origin is of secondary concern when focused on the origin of life on this planet). In fact, as I explain in my book, front-loading is the solution to a design problem – how does one design the future if restricted to a single act of intelligent intervention (as in seeding a planet)? This is only a constraint for beings limited by time and space.

Mike adds a link to his article The Rational Essence of Proteins and DNA which is recommended reading. An original thinker, Mike adds this caveat:

What’s more, I have come to view front-loading as a means to guide/design while retaining freedom. In fact, might it be the optimal balance between control and freedom?

Site will be down for a few updates. Sit tight.

Frank Beckwith wrote The truth about me and Intelligent Design which has been panned by some IDists. Beckwith wrote this:

Despite my interest in this subject and my sympathy for the ID movement’s goal to dismantle materialism and its deleterious implications on our understanding of what is real and what counts as knowledge, I am not, and have never been, a proponent of ID. My reasons have to do with my philosophical opposition to the ID movement’s acquiescence to the modern idea that an Enlightenment view of science is the paradigm of knowledge.

Beckwith identifies what may be the most underrated idea motivating both supporters and opponents of ID. Perhaps the most frequent charge leveled against ID is that it is not a scientific theory. That tends to confirm Beckwith's allegation that ID critics view science as the determinant of authentic knowledge in accordance with a worldview deemed modern even as its roots go back centuries. It is not that IDists and their critics disagree about the utility of science or even the validity of the data itself in most cases. The bone of contention centers around the belief that truth is pegged to empirical results. Yet if both sides value science for its practical utility why are there disputes? Disputes center around issues that a scientific approach is ill-equipped to resolve. Whether the issue is mind/brain duality, the origin of life or the anthropic principle, empirical testing is unlikely to render definitive answers fully supporting either IDists or their critics. Critics can complain about God in the gaps but the truth is that an inability to produce conclusive scientific data is attributable to limitations inherent to scientific methodology rather than IDists exploiting a temporary absence of scientific knowledge.

Why would one complain about God in the gaps? Complainers tout themselves as defenders of science, as if a belief in divine causality jeopardizes good science. It doesn't of course. One can correctly identify a scientific law with the cause of a physical event and still attribute a divine hand to the process. Theistic beliefs are not negated by scientific knowledge. Science is ill-equipped to even define valid knowledge or resolve epistemological questions.

Beckwith has a point in that some IDists unintentionally validate the philosophical underpinnings of critics when they engage critics on their own terms. The antithesis of ID is not science. Its antithesis lies in the belief that it is more rational to believe that the physical world supports an ateleological perspective. Scientific data, as opposed to the scientism embraced by many critics, does not support ID's antithesis.

Proteins With 'Cruise Control' Act Like Adaptive Machines

"The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if evolution is completely random, operating like a 'blind watchmaker'?" said Chakrabarti, an associate research scholar in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton. "Our new theory extends Darwin's model, demonstrating how organisms can subtly direct aspects of their own evolution to create order out of randomness."

The paper presents the first quantitative experimental evidence that evolutionary control strategies in the organisms themselves work to maximize their fitness to the environment they inhabit. Chakrabarti calls this an application of "Control Theory," which is basically an appeal to engineering and… design. He of course denies that the findings support the notion of ID, but ID encompasses the notion that design can be entirely 'natural' if one allows for the actual participation of organisms in their own design and evolution. Something biologists have been notoriously reluctant to do for the last 150 years. Looks like now they're going to have to go ahead and admit what the evidence demonstrates to be true.

It's about time.

The Genius Behind the Ingenious is a Biologic Institue article. This appears in it:

Actually, as you may have guessed, attempts to harness the principles of evolution on computers have been underway for many years now. The field dedicated to this undertaking is known as evolutionary computing, and the results are not altogether encouraging for evolutionary biology.

It’s not that evolutionary design has failed on computers—far from it. One of the most celebrated successes, for example, is a NASA antenna that looks like a bent paper clip. [2] It may not be much to look at, but this odd little design works better than any known alternative, which is why NASA has deployed it in space.

A photo of the paper clip can be viewed at the link. The authors explain that the means by which designs are realized entails the assignment of design parameters to virtual prototypes and assessing them with a mathematical model. The idea is to model natural selection by favoring the replication of better prototypes. The better ones would become more prevalent in a virtual population. Mutation is simulated through slight changes in the parameter values of prototypes. Procedural variations to this general approach exist but "culling, replicating, and mutating" persist to derive an acceptable design. This also from the article:

Two major limitations to evolutionary processes seem to assure this. First, it turns out that if you want these processes to go anywhere, you really do need to master the design principles specific to your objective. You’d better believe the NASA team did their homework for the task they were tackling—they knew what materials to use, they knew the range of dimensions to explore, they knew what kind of geometric space to explore, and they knew how to model the performance of any prototype within those specifications. So the software they used was intelligently pre-configured for this particular design task and no other.

This strikes a familiar chord. Pre-configuring software for a design outcome is very much like the concept of pre-configuring genomes to front load them for directed evolution. TT commenter Allen MacNeill recently weighed in on another thread with this comment:

"…natural selection doesn't "produce" anything. As Darwin himself wrote to his friend Charles Lyell, natural selection preserves certain forms and eliminates others. The real "engine" of change in biology is not natural selection, but rather the "engines of variation" that produce the blizzard of new forms, a few of whom survive and reproduce."

Measure engines of variation by the extent of genomic pre-configuration required to enable specified outcomes. The article concludes with these observations:

In the case of antennas, it’s easy to find prototypes that work, and nothing can go horribly wrong if you tweak one of those prototypes. That makes the task of zeroing in on a good design relatively easy. Flash drives, on the other hand, are a different story—no one expects to make a working prototype of one of those by accident, or to improve an engineered version by accident.

The problem, of course, is that the designs of biology look more like flash drives (on steroids) than coat-hanger antennas. Parker definitely got that one right.

So, in light of this, we think it’s time to turn the logic around. If it was reasonable to think that selection ought to be as powerful in virtual worlds as it is in the real world (and we think it was), then the considerable limitations we now see demonstrated (even proven) in virtual worlds should perhaps make us re-think the extravagant claims we make about selection in the real world.

Maybe the intuitions that enable us to recognize brilliant design should be kept in mind when we try to explain it.

The nature of consciousness has long defied empirical resolutions. The First Few Minutes After Death discusses a study which may shed some light on the puzzle. It is known as the Human Consciousness Project and intends to explore what have been dubbed as near death experiences. Reports have depicted near death experiences as analogous to floating outside one's body. So a capacity to see things, that could not be physically observed from the vantage point of an individual undergoing a near death experience, could indicate a mind/brain duality. On the other hand perhaps differences in biochemically based brain states account for the floating sensation. Maybe we'll find out.

How old is the oldest evidence for complex life forms? The Science News article Oldest evidence for complex life in doubt discusses that matter. I would hasten to point out that one of the hallmarks of even unicellular organism is intrinsic complexity. It's not as if simple life forms are available to serve as contrasts. Nevertheless there have been attempts to ascertain when it was that ancient organisms related to cyanobacteria first appeared on earth.

In 1999 researchers published a finding indicating that the origin of cyanobacteria was at least 550 million years closer to the time origin of the earth itself. It is believed that single celled organisms were the first life forms followed by cyanobacteria which had photosynthesis capabilities. That in turn is important in assessing when it was that the earth acquired a significant amount of atmospheric oxygen. The article states:

Results of the first analyses of the Australian rocks (SN: 8/28/99, p. 141) were controversial, says Birger Rasmussen, a geochemist at Curtin University of Technology’s campus in Bentley, Australia. For one thing, the shale — which had been laid down as sediments about 2.7 billion years ago — contained tiny particles of pyrobitumen, coal-like remnants of oil droplets that had solidified as the sediment layers cooked. Pyrobitumen is a sign that the sediments and any organic material they contained experienced temperatures from 200° Celsius to 300°C for an extended time. The rocks also contained significant amounts of kerogen.

Yet the samples also held small quantities of hopanes, a class of organic chemicals produced by cyanobacteria and some other bacteria, as well as steranes, which are produced only by eukaryotes. That the rocks hosted these biomarkers, which should have been destroyed by the heat and pressure required to generate the pyrobitumen, “presented a bit of a conundrum,” Rasmussen says.

Newer more precise measuring instruments were used to find the proportion of the carbon-13 isotope found in kerogen and other hydrocarbons. Between 1 and 3 parts per thousand less than the proportion found in the original derivative organic matter is expected. Yet the proportions of carbon-13 isotopes of the kerogen and pyrobitumen in the Australian rocks examined was between 10 and 20 parts per thousand less than those found in the hopanes and steranes. Based on this researchers found a strong indicator of biomarker migration into rocks thereby indicating that biomarkers were likely to be unrelated to kerogen and the pyrobitumen.

Some though believe the biomarkers could still be legitimate indicators of early complex life. The quest to fix a time to the appearance of complex life forms continues.

“A Universe Built For Us”is the title of the linked blog entry at Tom Gilson's Thinking Christian. That is also the title of an article of Discover Magazine which Tom analyzes. In quoting the Discovery article Tom brings out the point that the universe appears adapted to enable life. Some might wish to put it differently and state that the universe was front loaded at its inception so as to make life possible.

There have been two explanations offered to explain our universe's hospitality toward life. One, of recent vintage, holds that our universe is but one of an infinite number of universes. Infinite varieties conveniently would explain very unlikely things. The alternative explanation is that the universe is a purposeful creation.

Tom notes this quote from the article:

When I ask Linde whether physicists will ever be able to prove that the multiverse is real, he has a simple answer. “Nothing else fits the data… we don’t have any alternative explanations…”

I agree with Tom that the statement is disingenuous. What Linde really needs to acknowledge is that the purposeful creation explanation is ruled out a priori. The significance of that is that scientific inquiries about origin issues are directed toward preconceived conclusions. Sure, there are variations in possible explanations but one of a sub-group is an inevitable choice when artificial restrictions are in place.

To be fair one might reasonably object that an empirical discipline is not equipped to evaluate the purposeful creation option. If so that would say more about the limits of science than it would about the viability of an alternative explanation.

I named this "Open Polls" because I had to come up with a unique Open Thread title, and because America is positively swimming in good news today, for a change! Though polls here in my neighborhood close in just an hour. They're still open out west!!!

Posts here can be about anything, but voting stories, inspirational political encounters, and expressions of hope or fear for the future based on this election are encouraged! Even in the context of the bad ol' Culture War…

The false faith of scientific reason was mentioned previously in another blog entry. The same article will be referenced again although Melanie's own website will be linked to instead and several paragraphs from the article will be quoted. From the article:

No less irrational is the overreach of science which, as London writes, has been hijacked by secular fundamentalists who want to supplant religion by asserting that only in science can truths be found.

The efforts are not explicit because overt attempts to link science to truth would undermine objectivity; a fundamental part of research. Those who use data to debunk or support extra-scientific claims must be more subtle.

Such ’scientism’ — as this overreach is termed — goes beyond the ability of science to explain the nature of the world around us and claims to tell us how life began. Yet the assumption that science provides a complete theory of knowledge is itself fundamentally unscientific.

Precisely. Knowledge is linked to test results. Results are tentative. They are also incomplete with respect to theories encompassing their interpretation. There is no point in testing if the answers are predetermined or artificially confined to a range of options.

Science generates more questions than it can answer. The more science unravels the mysteries of the world for us, the more mysterious it becomes. And, as the many scientists who are also religious believers demonstrate, there is no inherent conflict between religion and science.

The gaps argument has an ugly step-sister which uses data to support metaphysical assertions beyond the reach of science. Dawkins belongs to this faction. For them there can be no gaps that are not already filled with predetermined outcomes concerning how data must be interpreted.

The dogma that science provides the answer to every question and so supplants religion has led to a junking of the moral codes deriving from Judaism and Christianity that underpin western society.

Witness atttempts to incorporate moral precepts within evolutionary explanations. Compose moral precepts to your liking and look for evidence that there is a biological basis for them or conversely a biological basis for a claim that opposing values are a consequence of false beliefs which enhanced survival.

This loss of cultural nerve has created an unwitting collusion between secular zealots and the Islamists who have declared war upon western civilisation, and who believe — correctly — that a secular west will be unable to resist them.

An unwitting but natural non-aggression pact.

Science, rationality and the pursuit of truth are intimately related to the religious traditions of the west. If those traditions are not defended from within against the threat from without, this will be how the west was lost.

Science itself was the offspring of western culture.

A Cosmic Formula? is authored by Phil Berardelli. The article begins with the cogent observation that, like the origin of life, the existence of galaxies poses the conundrum of how they arose. Evidence that some galaxies would have formed relatively quickly after the big bang, when conditions in the younger universe would have disrupted galaxy formation, call into question formation models.

Michael Disney, of Cardiff University in the U.K., led a team of astronomers which investigated shared characteristics of galaxies in the hope of uncovering clues about galaxy evolution. The galaxies studied had diverse characteristics which nevertheless yielded a surprising find. From the article:

They found that if you measure a particular quantity for a galaxy, such as its size, you can infer all of its other main properties, such as luminosity, mass, and gas content. "What totally surprised us is the idea that such a diverse population is nevertheless controlled by a single, so-far-unidentified parameter," says Disney. "If you ask me, this throws the whole troubled theory of galaxy formation back into the melting pot."

Theories about galaxy formation remain unsettled.

Richard Dawkins is giving away money for advertising purposes. Matching funds to be precise. What's the reason? The placing of ads on buses with catchy slogans like "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." As the author explains Dawkins wants people to think. The right thoughts of course. "Thinking is anethema to religion" according to Dawkins. Quoting the linked article:

In any event, like so much of what Dawkins says, the claim that thinking is anathema to religion is simply nonsense, at least if the religion under examination is Christianity. Most of the greatest thinkers in the history of human civilization were religious as are many of the finest thinkers doing philosophy today. If we would like an example of what ideas people propound when they refuse to think it's hard to imagine a better case than Dawkins' own book The God Delusion…

Ouch.

Darwin's Unpaid Debt appears at In the News. Magnuson argues that natural selection is not up to the role traditionally assigned it. It's easy enough to dismiss an IDist but there are non-IDists dubious of the capacities afforded natural selection by theorists. As quoted in another blog entry… "there are other scientists and philosophers of science–avowed non-creationists– who say the Extended Synthesis does not go far enough in relegating natural selection to a reduced role." Tom Magnuson has this to say:

Natural selection is widely supposed to be an information ratchet that gradually accumulates the information organisms need to acquire novel adaptations. Yet natural selection is nothing of the sort. The Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation is a low-level trial-and-error method for solving routine problems that is unequipped to handle the innovative problems that biological systems have solved in the course of natural history. Darwinism and evolutionary biology more generally, committed as they are to unguided material mechanisms, do not have the resources to solve biology's information problem. This talk will indicate why biology's information problem is unresolvable apart from intelligent design.

Will Wright's 5 Prophecies about Artificial Intelligence has a few points to make including an interesting take on intelligence:

MACHINES WILL NEVER ACHIEVE HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
According to Wright, one of the main benefits of the quest for AI is a better definition of human intelligence. "Intelligence is whatever we can do that computers can't," says Wright. One key difference between human and machine intelligence, is that while computers are excellent at problem solving within narrow parameters, "humans can automatically scale the solution to the problem." The problem is one of creativity, which machines are unlikely to ever develop. "Computers aren't great at fundamentally recreating intelligence," says Wright. "But they're great at harvesting intelligence." By harvesting both human intelligence and human creativity, machines can begin the long journey towards their own kind of sentience.

It would be most ironic if undirected processes were able to surpass what advanced intelligence could not intentionally design would it not?

A frustrating view of complexity is the title of the linked column discussing progress toward uncovering deep levels of relatedness among disparate phenomenon. Yet disagreement about basic questions like defining complex systems still exists. This has a familiar ring, sounding much like inquiries about the origin of life. The author demonstrates difficulties with some specifics:

Imagine, for example, three subatomic particles — such as quarks, for example, that make up atoms — that can spin up or down. Suppose the particles are arranged in a triangle, and that each particle is required to spin in the opposite direction of its two neighbors. Unfortunately, no arrangement meets this goal. So in such a system, the particles would flip their spins over and over in complex patterns, frustrated by the conflicting demands and never able to settle into a stable configuration.

And there is this:

Another perspective on complex systems is that their fundamental attribute is that they behave differently on different scales. DNA, for example, functions very differently from an entire human cell, which in turn doesn’t act much like an organ or a whole person. An eddy that overall moves clockwise may have small sub-eddies that turn counterclockwise. The needs of an individual may be at odds with the needs of society as a whole. Binder describes this as “scale frustration.”

And this colorful concluding remark:

Binder says that the situation in complexity science is a bit like the blind men feeling the elephant: The description given by the person feeling the trunk would seem totally incompatible with that of the person feeling the belly. Binder hopes his notion of dynamic frustration may help identify the full animal. “I think it might be more like a platypus than an elephant!”

A common theme to be drawn from all this, it seems to me, is the need to acknowledge that unknowns may be much greater than we imagine. Nature should be approached with humility.

Is Dawkins Still Evolving? Melanie Phillips asks this question. The motivating event? This statement:

A serious case could be made for a deistic God.

(Note: The link can be slow to load. I find: http://www.spectator.co.uk/blogs/ to be quicker and then you need to click on the name Melanie Phillips.)

Speaking of intellectual honesty this looks like a case of academia protecting its own:

"There is a lot of selective indignation in America, and the academic world is as prone to that as anyone else," Leef said. "If Ayers at one point had expressed a favorable opinion of the Ku Klux Klan, I don't think he would have ever lived that down."

The 10 Signs of Intellectual Honesty is posted at The Design Matrix. From the blog:

When it comes to just about any topic, it seems as if the public discourse on the internet is dominated by rhetoric and propaganda. People are either selling products or ideology. In fact, just because someone may come across as calm and knowledgeable does not mean you should let your guard down and trust what they say. What you need to look for is a track record of intellectual honesty. Let me therefore propose 10 signs of intellectual honesty.

The list of ten is at the link.