Re: [asa] Innate design detector?

I guess if one were interested in a paper that would help ID gain
scientific credibility, then surely this one is not of much help.
But let's explore this issue a bit further: ID on the one hand argues
that it extends scientific methodology while on the other hand
accepts that science is quite successful in making 'design
inferences'. Perhaps we can learn from this internal contradiction
why ID has remained scientifically vacuous?

The answer has been given in a paper by Wilkins and Elsberry titled
"The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing
from ignorance" published in Biology and Philosophy 16 (November):
711-724. http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/theftovertoil/theftovertoil.html

Once one realizes that there exist two kinds of "design", and that ID
focuses on 'rarefied design', the answers become quickly self evident.

<quote>The second way that the inconsistency can be resolved is as we
have already indicated, by recognizing a distinction between ordinary
design and rarefied design. For those events where our background
information includes information about how agents or processes
produce events of high probability, we would assign those to the HP
category and explain them with reference to regularity. This would
preserve a place for a class of rarefied design in the Explanatory
Filter, but Dembski's earlier arguments about design indicating agent
causation because his Explanatory Filter captures our usual means of
recognizing design would only apply to the class of ordinary design,
not the desired rarefied design. It is only by the attempt to
inconsistently treat agent causation as a privileged hypothesis that
Dembski can (erroneously) claim that ordinary design and rarefied
design share a node on the Explanatory Filter.

Where does this leave us? Dembski's filter is no longer looking so
appealing. Now there are many possible reasons to accept alternative
explanations to rarefied design because of uncertainty and on the
basis of different background information. It now has many points at
which elimination of alternative explanations to regularity and
chance through to a rarefied design inference is blocked due to
uncertainty and on the basis of different background information.
</quote>

Once corrected, the Dembski filter has lost much of its appeal but at
least it correctly deals with rarefied design.

A design inference, based on the explanatory filter, is one based on
ignorance and negative, eliminative data and as such is very
sensitive to false positives. On ISCID a poster named Gedanken showed
in exquisite detail the consequences of this problem.

<quote>

     The “eliminative” Explanatory Filter is not reliable, and only
has “no false positives” when one retroactively applies all
information that would be needed to find out if it did have a false
positive. That makes it useless as a test and is the very “cherry
picking” that makes that an invalid induction.

     But if one considers present information, it is not reliable. It
is most unreliable when the probability of making an error in the
analysis of natural causes is greater than the probability of the
“designer did it” scenario. And since the Explanatory Filter makes no
attempt at analyzing or controlling for coincidence with resepct to
“designer” aspects, the Explanatory Filter is of unknown reliability
when taken without further evidence. And one can easily verify that
the worst cases of reliability are the conditions in which there are
likely to be errors in finding a probability of the natural-non-
intelligent cause pathway, and there is no reason, access, or other
consideration for a “designer” to achieve the result. One result of
this is that the ID inference is purely dependent upon belief, and is
thus philosophical and not scientific, a problem that Dr. Dembski
himself warns against.
</quote>

So let's remember Dembski's warning about false positives and the
xplanatory filter

     On the other hand, if things end up in the net that are not
designed, the criterion will be useless.

Dembski, William, 1999. Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between
Science & Theology, p. 141

Seems to me that the criterion is thus useless...
Hope this helps...

On Nov 2, 2006, at 9:44 AM, David Opderbeck wrote:

> 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 Fri Nov 3 12:46:25 2006