Richard Wein wrote:
[snip]
> I haven't read Paley. Do you know if Paley's argument is indeed a maximum
> likelihood one?
Here are some excerpts from the book that keeps his memory alive on
creationist web sites:
http://www-phil.tamu.edu/~gary/intro/paper.paley.html
I don't know when the term "likelihood" was first used but I doubt
that it goes to 1800. In any case, Paley was trained as an Anglican
priest, not as a statistician or mathematician. He was not aware, so
far as I know, of the writings of Hume.
Many recent critics of Paley have claimed that he was reasoning by
analogy and that this is bad unless the things being compared are very
similar to one another. Sober claims that Paley was reasoning using
an "inference to the best explanation" and that this is reasonable
except that evolution is a now better explanation.
[snip]
> You seem to be suggesting that "inference to the best explanation"
> necessarily means a maximum likelihood inference. My impression is that it
> has a wider meaning.
I think that you are correct. Here is the definition in the glossary
of "The Philosophy of Science" edited by Boyd, Gasper, and Trout:
"Inference to the best explanation: A pattern of reasoning by which
one infers that a hypothesis is true from the fact that the
hypothesis offers the most plausible or satisfactory explanation of
the evidence."
Maximizing a likelihood function is one way of inferring the best
explanation but it is not the only way.
[snip]
> By tbe way, I note that you didn't reply to the main part of my last post,
> and just when I thought it was getting interesting. Is this because you (a)
> agreed with me, (b) lost interest, (c) thought that we'd come to an impasse,
> or (d) something else? ;-)
I have thought some about the questions that would be raised if
various kinds of signals were received by astronomers. I don't
have any clear answers.
Actually, I generate more questions than answers. Here are some
examples:
When we are trying to determine if something was designed, are we
trying to detect purpose or a construction process or a combination
of the two?
How do we know that the following things are designed or constructed
or both or, alternatively, that they are not:
An automobile (that we have not seen assembled)
The coliseum in Rome
Stonehenge
A bird's nest
A wasp's nest
The paw print of a wild animal in mud
Animal dung
Tree rings
A rock cracked by a tree root.
A rock cracked by freezing water
Lava flows
DNA
Genetically modified corn
Hybridized flowers
The universe
If God makes things happen by magic, do these things appear to be
constructed?
Alternatively, do we identify construction by asking if it looks
like something that a human being has made or could make?
What is the status of things made by machines?
Are machines always designed and constructed by intelligent beings
(assuming that the definition of machine does not require this)?
Which came first, gods or nature or machines, and how do we know?
If abiogenic processes are going on today, is there any way that we
could tell? Might not existing life eat the evidence?
And, finally, what are the rules for deciding whether something is
designed? Words like "implausible" and "intuitive" and "cannot
image" are not very helpful as rules. If we are sure that something
is designed, then we should be able to tell other people what our
rules are if our reasoning is supposed to be scientific. Further,
rules form a scientific hypothesis that needs to be verified (or
refuted)?
Ivar
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