Re: [asa] Innate design detector?

*Testable predictions, empirical research... man these seem like virtual
gold mines compared to the ID argument.*

You are missing the point. She provides a way of testing whether there is
any such thing as innate pattern recognition by evaluating that function in
autistic children. Again, so what? She does not provide any test for
determining when recognition of a pattern as designed is legitimate or
mistaken.

OTOH, if you want to suggest that a test for innate pattern recognition is
really that significant, it seems to me that, if anything, this could
support an ID position. After all, ID people say precisely that God has
designed us such that we are capable of recognizing design. An evolutionary
basis for this capability -- recognizing design enhances survival value --
supports the notion that our intutions about the "appearance" of design in
cosmology and biology are sound.

There doesn't seem to be any basis in this paper for suggesting that "false
positives" in recognizing design enhance survival value. This is
particularly so if the autistic child test for the presence of innate
pattern recognition is a good test, because errors in the pattern
recognition function such as those experienced by autistic children would
result in disfunction that would likely decrease survival. We shouldn't
expect that "false positives" would enhance survival value, unless we buy
into the argument that evolution leaves us with no reason to trust our sense
information -- an obviously self-defeating proposition, because then we
wouldn't be able to trust the sense information that leads us to believe in
common descent. This is, of course, a common argument against the coherence
of evolutionary theory.

So, absent some testable hypothesis concerning why the intution of design in
biology is a "false positive" -- and no such hypothesis is presented -- this
paper, if novel at all, might actually lend some support to an ID position,
at least to the position that intuitions about design can't be discounted.

On 11/2/06, Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> It presents a clear hypothesis and ways to test it. Perhaps anyone with
> common sense already knows this but it seems that amongst ID proponents this
> information may be largely absent. In fact, while there exists some parallel
> research, I have seen few people make this quite novel argument. After all,
> it's much easier to play monday morning quarterback and say... of course...
> anyone knew this. It's much harder to write a novel paper on this topic and
> present ways to test the hypothesis. If a design detector innate to humans
> is no big deal then I see no big deal for a moral grammar either. Seems all
> to be common sense :-)
>
>
> As Allen points out
>
>
> <quote>Somewhere in this spectrum is a cross-over point at which actual
> intentionality/agency disappears and facticious intentionality/agency takes
> over. It is the location of that cross-over point that constitutes the hinge
> of the argument between evolutionary biologists and ID theorists.</quote>
> Broadus also makes some interesting predictions
>
>
> <quote>Broaddus's analysis of autism as a possible example of
> malfunctioning "agency detection" is, IMO, brilliant, and presents an
> immediately testable hypothesis: that autistic children lack well-tuned
> "agency detectors," and that this at least partially explains their
> well-known indifference to intentional agents, such as other people
> (including their parents), animals, etc.</quote>
>
>
> MacNeill ends with
>
> <quote>Broaddus not only presents a cogent hypothesis concerning the
> existence of such an agency/intentionality detector/module in humans, she
> proposes several possible ways of testing whether or not such a detector
> actually exists, and to "map" its dimensions, capabilities, biases, and
> limitations. I believe that this opens up a very fruitful area of empirical
> research into such detectors, and can ultimately lead to much more clarity
> about an issue that so far has generated much more heat than light.</quote>
>
>
> Testable predictions, empirical research... man these seem like virtual
> gold mines compared to the ID argument.
>
>
>
> On Nov 2, 2006, at 5:38 AM, David Opderbeck wrote:
>
> What hypotheses? It says people are wired to perceive design because
> recognizing certain designed patterns can enhance survival value; and it
> says that people sometimes mistakenly perceive design when it's not there.
> Big deal. Anyone with common sense already knows that. The interesting
> thing would be a way of filtering true design from false positives. The
> author says nothing about that. It's a nice little undergraduate summary
> term paper, but that's about it.
>
> On 11/2/06, Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > ID is basically useless yes or at least scientifically vacuous. Is the
> > paper useless? It proposes some very interesting hypotheses and how to test
> > them. That by itself places it outside the league of ID which is based on
> > our ignorance.
> > Hope this clarifies
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Thu Nov 2 11:51:34 2006