| Subject: A baloney filter |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 04/ 9/05 6:07pm
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "Trigger happy?" on 04/ 9/05 9:15am
>
>Sounds good on the surface, but how well does that
>objection work really? Suppose for instance I claim a
>watch in the desert came about through the currents of
>nature. Appealing to the “humongous ocean” argument
>isn’t going to be plausible. At some point we can
>reasonably say artificial intervention is probably
>necessary.
Not really. As I've stated a million times before, the only reason we know the watch was designed is because we know that watches ARE designed by people, and we've seen a bunch of them and realize that PEOPLE produce them. That is why we can infer a watch was created. If one just showed up in the soil one day and we had NEVER seen a watch, or the parts that make up a watch, we wouldn't know if it had been designed or if this watch occurernce was something that nature produced once upon a time and no longer, or if it happened repeatedly in the past. The important point is that the watch, by virtue of being intricate, does not imply design.
>
>One problem I’ve noticed with such arguments is that
>they’re too vague and strained (reminds me of some
>old-school creationist arguments). We can after all
>legitimately detect design; it’s done all the time in
>and out of science. Strained arguments like appealing
>to natural processes not yet discovered can also be
>applied to the Rosetta Stone.
When we infer design, we do it with reference points that we know humans CAN design. The Rosetta Stone has to do with language, and we know that language is a human invention. Hence, we begin to suspect it was designed.
>
>No middle ground: if the currents of nature at the
>primitive earth were capable of producing life, then
>they were capable of producing life. The currents of
>nature “here” hardly makes sense, since the laws five
>billion years ago still hold today, and we can
>empirically test combinations of those laws today.
You misunderstood. Just because the conditions on EARTH aren't capable of producing life on their own (in theory) does not mean that the conditions ELSEWHERE in the universe weren't capable of producing life.
>
>Or are you actually claiming the laws were different
>back then?
Uh, no.
>>This sounds a little like the old "lord, liar, or
>>lunatic" argument couched in quasi-psychological
>>terms.
>
>Given the premises from which it started from, the
>“lord, liar, or lunatic” is actually quite valid. And
>in any case, you still haven’t shown anything wrong
>with the explanatory filter.
Being valid doesn't make it true, or more importantly, representative. The explanatory filter is a childishly simple model that leaves the concept of the "situation" out of the calculation of the attriubtion, and thereby makes it incomplete; after all, we don't form attributions in a vacuum. So integral is the situation that to leave it out is to make the model worthless. Any basic social psychological text will confirm that this is true.
ng that was shown to be
>>true through research.
>
>Then maybe you should read The Design
>Inference, which successfully passed through heavy
>peer review before being published.
Obviously, the crowd that "heavily reviewed it" did not contain members who were academically astute enough to point out this mistake that any intro psychology student could have highlighted.
Or at least find
>something wrong with it before denouncing it.
It leaves out consideration of the situation in which an attribution is formed. The model should, if anything, have an array of options that depend on the situation. Again, a good model that has been validated and shown to be useful is Kelly's covariational model of attributional thinking. What Dembski has proposed is a model modeling the attributions themselves and then brazenly stated how "hard it is to argue with". It sure is, because the piece he left out happens to be the one wherein disagreement arises.
>It seems evolutionists are a little too “trigger
>happy” when it comes to the explanatory filter,
>wanting to disbelieve it even though there’s nothing
>inherently wrong with it and even though it doesn’t
>inherently confirm that ID theory is true for life on
>Earth. (The same thing holds true for the actual book
>The Design Inference itself.)
If you say so.
>>This is a really shoddy model. If a deck of cards was
>>in alphabetical order the fact of the matter is that
>>there is absolutely no way to choose between chance
>>and design because both are capable of providing the
>>end result.
>
>Technically both are capable, but it is very
>unlikely that chance is the correct
>explanation.
How does one assign odds to design? (hint: one doesn't, but rather it's the SITUATION...the guy being a magician that makes one think that chance PROBABLY isn't the explanation)
To use perhaps a better example, suppose
>the magician said in advance what he was going to do.
>He shuffled the deck, and the cards are all in the
>predefined order. Could chance have done it? Sure,
>but it’s extremely unlikely.
I don't think it's any MORE OR LESS unlikely, as far as the math goes. I think the situation simply makes one form the attribution that it PROBABLY is not chance that makes the cards fall into order.
Design is by far the
>most reasonable explanation (blind faith in chance
>notwithstanding).
Based on the situation, I'd agree. Based on the numbers alone (as I know of no way of saying how likely design is) I'd say I'd disagree and you are equovicating mathematical reasoning with everyday imprecise reasoning.
>
>Supposedly, it’s verified every time we detect design
>(and that’s a lot of times).
In theory the theory is verified. That's reassuring.
.
>
>Who? I don’t even think organic evolutionists have
>such blind faith that they are willing to believe
>their theory even though they know it’s
>probably false! Given that life began to exist, if
>the odds of the theory (of naturalistic origin) being
>true are less than 1 in a trillion, design is the
>logical choice, because artificial intervention was
>probably necessary.
But of course you don't know the situation. The universe is BIG and the time it has existed is also LARGE. A trillon might not be too bad when it comes to odds knowing those two things. The fact of the matter is that when one gets to pondering something the scale of the universe with the TIME the universe has existed, basic human probability calculations begin to fall short.
On what rational grounds
>can you say otherwise?
See above. A trillion ain't so bad when you've got a universe to play in and billions of years to get it done during.
>
>The Design Inference did pass through
>rigorous peer review, so methinks you’re just being
>trigger happy.
I'm sure it did, by a bunch of toddlers.
You haven’t even found anything
>wrong with the explanatory filter and already you seem
>prepared to denounce it.
Yes I did, and I said it twice just to be clear. It's a model that's too simplistic and leaves out the importance of the situation and thereby lacks any real relevence to the conversation at hand.
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