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  Topic: ID and explanatory power, Why ID doesn't explain stuff< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  

Posts: 49
Joined: Sep. 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Dec. 02 2002,21:29   

Last month I gave a colloquium on ID for high school biology teachers, and as a followup, I've been sending them resources.  In aid of that, I put together a short essay, something like theyeti's.  I plan to distribute it to them in the not-to-far distant future.  Comments/critiques welcome.

In his post on ISCID John Wilkins wrote
Let us begin by asking how science tells us anything at all. In my view, science is the recognition of patterns in data, and the generation of models that are adequate to delivering those patterns as explanation. The information in science, the "signal" from the physical world, is the information of measurement - Fisher Information, AKA the Cramer-Rao Bound (which is, roughly, where the second derivative of the estimate of the accuracy of a measurement is zero). In my view, science is induction from data, and the models retain the information content of the measurements just to the extent they are accurate. (Note: induction may not be a justification of models, but it sure as #### is the way we gather our data together so we can make reliable inferences; still, let's not open that can of undergraduate Humean worms.) The information content of a scientific explanation is just the preserved accuracy of the data in the model.

Anything that we know through science we know from empirical data. So a design inference has to be not only consonant with data, but licensed by the patterns that exist in the data. To be achievable, we need to understand (that is, have a model of) design and designers.  (emphasis added)

And consider this from my OP in the Multiple Designers Theory thread on ISCID
D. There is a finite and limited number of multiple designers.  This premise is more difficult to support by empirical evidence than the others, but it is logically necessary to prevent the MDT enterprise from degenerating into a mere list of designed phenomena, a cosmic oddity shop of designs. Scientific theories condense (superficially) disparate phenomena into similarity classes and explain the behavior of instances of the classes by invoking general principles and laws that refer to those classes rather than to individual instances. If the number of designers is unlimited then in the limit each class would have just one member, and (since in that case no multi-member classes exist) no general laws are possible and therefore there is no science. It is logically possible that there is an infinite number of designers, but in that case no scientific study of design is possible. It is therefore a scientifically sterile speculation. (emphasis added)

As I read them, IDists argue that the Explanatory Filter (nowadays pretty much reduced to the assertion that IC structures or processes cannot be produced by evolution) detects a property (improbability) of some objects or processes in the world, and therefore (since that property is asserted to be shared by a set of objects and/or processes), there is a class of natural-world phenomena, a class defined solely by improbability, that evolutionary theory can't explain because it is not a similarity class in the terms of models based in evolutionary theory.  Their only common property, improbability, does not define a class that enters the theoretical laws and models of evolutionary biology.  Therefore the class is asserted to require some other kind of explanation, an intelligent design explanation.

There have been two general kinds of counter-arguments offered in the various critiques of current approaches to ID.  One focuses on the probability estimates.  An important component of this critique is the argument that "improbability" is not a property of an object or process but rather is a characterization of an object or process with reference to some probability density function (PDF), and the alleged improbability of some biological structures and processes is in large part due to an inappropriate choice of PDF for the estimates.  Thus the 'class' formed by highly improbable objects like bacterial flagella and blood clotting biochemical cascades is an artifact of the (idiosyncratic, unjustified) choice of PDF rather than being some intrinsic property of the phenomena.  "Probability" is not an inherent property of an instance; it is a description of a relation between an instance and a PDF.

The second general sort of counter-argument is to the effect that allegedly unevolvable structures and processes (whether the probabilities are correctly estimated or not) can in fact be accommodated in classes appropriate to causal models from evolutionary biology, and are therefore explained by those models.  Thus it is argued that while "direct" incremental evolution of some biological structure may not be possible, indirect routes (cooption, scaffolding, etc.) can account for the naturalistic evolution of the objects and processes.  In addition, "direct" incremental evolution may be actually be possible given that different evolutionary operators induce fitness landscapes with very different topographies, so what appears to require saltational cliff-climbing on one fitness landscape might be simple one-step-at-a-time incremental evolution on a gentle slope of another landscape.  On those arguments the probability estimates do not define a class of phenomena that must be explained in some way that evolutionary theory doesn't provide.

In addition, ID has serious explanatory problems.  By explicitly disavowing conjectures about the number and nature of purported intelligent designing agents and by avoiding hypotheses about the means by which abstract designs are transmitted to or implemented in matter and energy, IDists deliberately eviscerate their ability to provide a scientific explanatory model.  With no hypotheses about designers or mechanisms of design implementation, nothing holds the class of improbable structures and processes together except the (inappropriate) probability estimates.  The examples that have been offered have no properties in common but the probability estimates.  They constitute a mere oddity shop of disparate phenomena bound together by nothing but purported improbability.

The class of allegedly improbable structures and processes offered in the ID literature floats alone in empty conceptual space, unconnected to any causal or correlational explanatory model.  The class of improbable phenomena is not part of a relational structure of classes to which natural (or non-natural) laws and generalities apply.  No laws or generalities have been offered by IDists that go beyond a mere claim of the existence of a class of improbable instances.  IDists offer no testable hypotheses about relationships between the class of purportedly improbable instances and anything else in or out of the world of physical matter and energy, and so there is no scientific explanatory power in ID.

btw, I note with fascination that this board censored John's use of H***!


Edited by RBH on Dec. 02 2002,21:36


  1 replies since Nov. 26 2002,17:20 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >  


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