Burgy wrote (back on the 25th):
[...]
>#18. Here Dembski discusses an "unembodied" designer. But this, to
>me, is the weakness of the ID movement. If one posits an unembodied
>designer, the intelligent agent (Newton used this word) is necessarily
>supernatural -- God, or at least a god or an agent working under a
>god. Positing the supernatural is just not necessary. What I see is
>that the ID movement does not have to abandon methodological
>naturalism (which I still firmly cling to). They do have to posit an
>intelligent agent, but that's all.
>The IA need not be supernatural.
>
>What characteristics do we think this IA might have. For 20 years or
>so (on other LISTSERVs) I have argued that we can safely deduce three
>characteristics:
>
>1. The IA (which may be IAs) is technically advanced beyond present
>day humanity.
A civilization whose technology is distinguishable from
magic is insufficiently advanced.
>2. The IA is at least as intelligent as present day humanity.
Or was. It/they could be extinct.
>3. The IA has a distinct sense of humor.
IMHO, humor is a far more reliable indicator of intelligence
than CSI.
>Not that these characteristics are a lower bound. The IA is probably
>a lot more than that.
[...]
Why does Dembksi focus on unembodied design agents? I think it's
pretty simple.
1) He claims to have demonstrated that complex specificity (CSI)
is something that cannot be generated by natural mechanisms
which involve chance or regularity (and it seems, any combination
thereof).
2) He maintains that humans (and possibly, some animals) do generate
CSI. He uses examples of human actions and intentions specifically
as demonstrations of CSI.
3) He denies that mechanisms such as genetic algorithms can generate
true CSI (they only generate "apparent CSI"). An alternative
view presented by others is that GAs demonstrate "intelligence
by proxy", which is a huge, nasty ball of tar, philosophically
speaking.
From this it follows that the CSI produced by humans cannot be
localized to the physical, human body or to the brain specifically,
because they are composed of "mundane" & natural processes (see
#1: chance and regularity cannot produce CSI).
So if humans really do generate CSI then they must have some
"extra-physical" or "unembodied" component which interacts with
matter in some undefined way to effect CSI. It appears that
Dembski may be appealing to the "strange world of the quantum (tm)"
or something like that to bridge the mind/body duality problem and
achieve energy-free information transfer. In effect, we are
"unembodied designers", at least when we're operating in design
mode and not simply scratching our asses because they itch. Assuming
all this, perhaps one could say that Maxwell's demon lives in every
one of our brains. (Although I thought that even Maxwell's demon is
not exempt from thermodynamic limitations, either. There really is
no free lunch, even with energy-free information transfer).
If, on the other hand, Dembski were to accept that CSI can be
generated in blobs of matter such as the human brain, then he
would have to accept that mechanisms like genetic algorithms
might also produce CSI. Worse still, "genetic algorithms"
sound an awful lot like biology, a connection which he doesn't
want to allow. So I predict that won't happen.
Of course, if we're going to open the door to "unembodied"
mechanisms we can't exclude alternatives such as Rupert Sheldrake's
"morphic resonance" (which is not based on intelligent agents per
se). If there are "un-physical" mechanisms at work, then we
certainly don't understand them at all and one would be hard-pressed
to conclude that "intelligence" was involved -- i.e. is it
"intelligence" as we understand it or a basic property of the
"unembodied" world?
As others have noted, even the appeal to "un-physical" mechanisms
does not mean that methodological naturalism must be abandoned.
I think it's only P. Johnson et al's dogmatic conflation of
methodogical naturalism with yellow dog atheism that stymies
thoughts in that direction. How would one know that un-physical
mechanisms could not be subject to scrutiny and testing? Why
jump the gun? For example, morphic resonance is potentially subject
to confirmation and testing.
Aside:
It is interesting to note that while Dembski uses Behe's "insight"
on IC systems as examples of CSI, he must be ignoring Behe's
other claim that life and biochemistry is physical, which would
lead to the conclusion that human CSI has a physical origin.
Regards,
Tim Ikeda (tiekda@sprintmail.com)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 31 2001 - 21:15:09 EST