Re: [asa] Innate design detector?

*No she does not provide a test to determine if a design is real or mistaken
and neither does ID.*

Thank you. And IMHO, that makes the paper largely uninteresting.

**

On 11/2/06, Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> An innate tendency may help us understand why humans are often seeing
> design where there is none. That is relevant to ID which relies on humans to
> detect 'design'. If our own mind tends to trick us and if ID relies on no
> false positives lest it be useless, it seems that it makes a lot of
> difference to ID. No she does not provide a test to determine if a design is
> real or mistaken and neither does ID. As such neither give any guidance as
> to the relevance of an ID inference but that's not the point here. IDers
> argue that design inferences are reliable, she shows that this may be a
> flawed premise.
>
>
> Intuitions about design should not be discounted but should also not be
> blown out of proportions until some supporting positive evidence can be
> found. Broadus explains why the innate sensor may be overly sensitive to
> false positive, as missing a true positive can be quite costly... It's
> better to be safe than sorry.
>
>
> As such this work is a real problem for ID proponents who argue that the
> design inference is reliable, free from false positives and have no way to
> show one way or the other if the inference is reliable. In fact, it seems
> that our innate design detector may be overly sensitive to 'design' and be
> triggered by false positives.
> To argue that this affects evolution misses the point. Science does not
> rely on negative arguments but rather on positive arguments. While I can see
> that such an argument may be tempting it also misunderstands the nature of
> science.
>
>
>
> On Nov 2, 2006, at 8:51 AM, David Opderbeck wrote:
>
> *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
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

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Received on Thu Nov 2 12:44:35 2006