Christian apologist (and former atheist) “Jim” Warner Wallace knows quite a lot about design, having earned a bachelor’s degree in design from California State University and a master’s degree in architecture from UCLA. Wallace also worked as a homicide detective for many years, in a job where he had to be able to distinguish deaths that were intentional from deaths that were not. Wallace writes well, and his Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels (David C. Cook, 2013) is an apologetic masterpiece. So naturally, when I came across a post over at Evolution News and Views, featuring his views on Intelligent Design, I was very interested to hear what he had to say.
In his interview with Center for Science & Culture research coordinator Brian Miller, “Jim” Warner Wallace listed what he referred to as eight attributes of design. Wallace emphasized that a strong case could be made for saying that an object was designed, even on the basis of its possessing only a few of these attributes, but that when taken together, they constitute a case for design which is certain beyond all reasonable doubt. The cumulative nature of the case is what makes it so strong.
Without further ado, here are Wallace’s eight attributes of design:
1. Could random processes (i.e. chance alone) produce this object?
2. Does it resemble something that you know is designed?
3. Does it have a level of sophistication & intricacy best explained by design?
4. Is it informationally dependent – that is, does it require information to get it done?
5. Is there evidence of goal-direction?
6. Can natural law get it done?
7. Is there any evidence of irreducible complexity?
8. Is there evidence of decision, or choices, that were made along the way, that can’t be explained by chemistry and physics?
I’d like to offer my own brief comments on Wallace’s eight attributes:
1. Could random processes (i.e. chance alone) produce this object?
By itself, this attribute doesn’t yield the inference that an object was designed. It needs to be combined with attribute 6, which rules out natural law as an explanation for the object. But even if 1 and 6 are both true, it still doesn’t follow that law and chance working together could not produce an intricate object which neither of them could generate alone.
2. Does it resemble something that you know is designed?
Resemblance to a designed object does not justify the inference to design. Wallace’s attribute trades on an unfortunate ambiguity here, confusing (a) a resemblance in structure between an object known to be designed and one which looks designed, with (b) a resemblance in causal history between the former object and the latter. The point of Darwin’s argument in his Origin of Species was that resemblances of type (a) do not warrant justified design inferences, in and of themselves, and that two objects with wildly different causal histories may end up looking alike. Darwin’s theory of natural selection was intended to provide a causal history that was capable of generating objects that look designed, but which have no designer.
3. Does it have a level of sophistication & intricacy best explained by design?
I have to confess that emotionally, my sympathies are very much with Wallace here. Back in the 1980s, the breathtaking level of sophistication that can be found in even the simplest living cell made a vivid impression on biochemist Michael Denton, who wrote:
Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on the earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world.(Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler & Adler, 1986, p. 250.)
However, critics will object that the complexity of a city or a factory is not irreducible: cities, like factories, can be constructed one step at a time. That being the case, they say, there is no reason in principle why blind (or non-foresighted) processes are incapable of producing these complex structures.
Even so, I cannot help wondering whether the cell is in a special category of its own:
4. Is it informationally dependent – that is, does it require information to get it done?
The three tricky questions which leap to mind here are: (a) what kind of information; (b) how much information; and (c) how should the quantity of information be properly calculated, anyway?
5. Is there evidence of goal-direction?
Goal-direction, or teleology, is of two kinds: intrinsic (directed at the good of the entity itself) and extrinsic (designed purely for the benefit of some other entity). Teleology of the latter kind obviously implies design. However, in order to show that even intrinsic teleology indicates design, one needs to appeal to a philosophical argument rather than a scientific one. As philosopher Edward Feser has pointed out, Aristotle’s own view was that goal-directedness does not require a mind which consciously intends the goal. By contrast, the Scholastic philosophers argued, in the Middle Ages, that the very fact that unconscious things exist whose natures direct them towards certain goals can only be made sense of if there is a Divine Intelligence which orders the world. (Feser outlines the Scholastic argument in an essay titled, Teleology: A Shopper’s Guide, in Philosophia Christi, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2010. See also his blog article, Atheistic teleology?, July 5, 2012.)
At any rate, the point I wish to make here is that goal-direction, taken by itself, cannot be said to constitute scientific or forensic evidence for design, unless the goal is an external one.
6. Can natural law get it done?
See my remarks on attribute 1 above.
7. Is there any evidence of irreducible complexity?
It is worth noting that Professor Michael Behe has never said that irreducibly complex systems cannot evolve naturally; rather, his point is that their evolution by a roundabout route (exaptation), while theoretically possible, is practically impossible for any system containing a large number of parts.
In his interview, “Jim” Warner Wallace made much of Behe’s example of the bacterial flagellum. However, the following passage from an article in New Scientist magazine by Michael Le Page (16 April 2008) reveals the weakness of Wallace’s case:
The best studied flagellum, of the E. coli bacterium, contains around 40 different kinds of proteins. Only 23 of these proteins, however, are common to all the other bacterial flagella studied so far. Either a “designer” created thousands of variants on the flagellum or, contrary to creationist claims, it is possible to make considerable changes to the machinery without mucking it up.
What’s more, of these 23 proteins, it turns out that just two are unique to flagella. The others all closely resemble proteins that carry out other functions in the cell. This means that the vast majority of the components needed to make a flagellum might already have been present in bacteria before this structure appeared.
It has also been shown that some of the components that make up a typical flagellum – the motor, the machinery for extruding the “propeller” and a primitive directional control system – can perform other useful functions in the cell, such as exporting proteins.…
…[W]hat has been discovered so far – that flagella vary greatly and that at least some of the components and proteins of which they are made can carry out other useful functions in the cells – show that they are not “irreducibly complex”. (Emphases mine – VJT.)
Nick Matzke’s 2006 article, Flagellum evolution in Nature Reviews Microbiology, over at Panda’s Thumb, is also well worth reading. Intelligent Design advocates have often claimed that the bacterial flagellum contains a large number of unique components. As Matzke convincingly shows, they’re wrong, period.
Of course, this is not the end of the story, and Professor Behe discusses what he views as further evidence for the design of the bacterial flagellum in his book, The Edge of Evolution (The Free Press, New York, 2007, pp. 87-101) – namely, the intricacies of intra-flagellar transport and the precisely co-ordinated timing required for the construction of a single bacterial flagellum. However, the point I want to make here is that the assertion that irreducible complexity, in and of itself, constitutes evidence for design is factually mistaken, as Dr. Douglas Theobald’s elegantly written article on the subject at Talk Origins illustrates so aptly.
8. Is there evidence of decision, or choices, that were made along the way, that can’t be explained by chemistry and physics?
If there were any positive evidence for choices being made in the four-billion-year history of life, then I would certainly regard it as evidence for design. However, in order to infer the existence of a choice, it is not enough to rule out physics and chemistry as explanations; one must also rule out chance. Why, for instance, is life left-handed instead of right-handed? Is this a choice made by life’s Creator, or an accident? Who knows?
Conclusion
I don’t mean to speak disrespectfully of “Jim” Warner Wallace, as I have enjoyed reading his writings. His recent book, A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe, which I have not read yet, appears to have been favorably reviewed and looks intriguing. However, I have to say that Wallace’s eight attributes of design need a lot more work, in order to refine them.
What do readers think? And how would readers modify Wallace’s criteria for design? Over to you.
Of course the “eight attributes of design” are aimed at claiming that life is designed, and not toward actually understanding design. Instead of 1 and 6, the honest forensic or scientific question would be, is the form and development of a phenomenon full of the evidence of “natural processes” having worked on them, and the absence of evidence of intelligent intervention? Can’t ask that, because life is full of “mysteries” that have no explanation save the limits of evolution, from development that harks back to the past, to vestigials, and lack of portability of great innovations (especially multigeneic ones) across separated lines.
2 is idiotic, since many “designed” things look like non-designed things, like King Tut’s death mask (not like a natural face, sure, but close enough that we readily recognize it as a human-type face). One could fuss about it being gold and 2-D, but then we could always bring up statues (stone, but whatever). I can’t say that I agree with Torley that life looks designed, either.
3 just goes to show that he’s trying to define life as being designed. Archaeology more typically finds rather simple (compared with computer chips, or life) items and unproblematically recognizes their design. Life is not like our more complex things, either, being more complex because of its history that unaccountably hasn’t been wiped out by an extremely intelligent designer (supposedly).
4 is one of the worst, as life clearly depends on information, whether or not it was designed. May as well assume that it takes a designer? Only if you don’t really care about any other possibility.
5. Goal-direction. Too bad, there’s certainly no evidence of a goal for life, although I’m sure he assumes otherwise.
7. Irreducible complexity. Oh, life’s complex, so God did it. Completely bogus.
8. How about, were there many important contingencies that seem not to have been decided by intelligence? Like not picking mammal ears for birds, or bird eyes for mammals. Not that bright, even though several of his “criteria” insist on the designer of life being extremely bright.
It’s just apologetics, while actual design criteria are shoved aside to make way for defining life as designed.
Glen Davidson
Thanks for posting this. I think this is one of the more interesting topics discussed here.
Wallace is just elaborating on the failed ID argument of completely ignoring natural selection and assuming that any object, living or not, is the result of a single random event.
Many IDers wont acknowledge that natural processes can generate any amount of complexity or new information. But once that bridge is crossed the way to distinguish between design and natural processes is to look at the object in question and look for coherent evidence of design (particularly with designers known to exist) vs. looking for evidence of an iterative, incremental process that ns must follow. I think when one takes this seriously the evidence for evolution is overwhelming .
There’s exactly ZERO Dembskis of novel information about IDC in Wallace’s compilation of long failed arguments
Don’t we calculate FSCIO or something ? Apply Dembskis filter thinghy ?
In the absence of an objective measure, we are left with the same old mess. Numbering it doesn’t add anything.
There is not one word in the list that can be pinned down. Just starting with no. 1: How/who decides if random processes could produce it ?
And ditto for 2,3, etc.
In the end we all use the same process: judgement. This is illustrated in the current thread over at UD on the subject of the Antikythera mechanism. We look at it and declare it designed. Items 1 to 8 are no help.
yipee!
From the OP:
It’s a mistake to think that chance is the absence of law. There is no place in the universe that we know of where law is not present and operating. So everything, always, is chance and law. There is no chance or law.
Also, it’s simply absurd to speak of chance and law as “working together.” Law “just is.” And chance “just is.” They do not “work together” to accomplish anything.
Which is why materialistic atheism is “it just happened, that’s all.”
Natural selection too is just chance. That’s why no one speaks of the Law of Natural Selection. It’s why evolutionary biologists get laughed out of physics classes.
From the OP:
Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, therefore it’s a duck, is a perfectly reasonable way of making an inference that we use all the time in daily life.
Sadly, it doesn’t explain why the objects look designed. After all, they could look like they were not designed at all, and in fact Darwin, like many of his modern day disciples, makes that same argument. “It doesn’t look designed to me!”
So the theory can apparently “explain” both the appearance of design and the lack of appearance of design. How convenient. How vacuous.
How self-serving. There is, as always, the problem of the rabbit fossil in the pre-Cambrian (and by extension, the fact that descendants are NEVER found in older strata than their ancestors.) Vacuous “theories” can never be shown to be inconsistent, because they are not specific enough. Kind of like, you know, the Designer, being omnipotent, might have intelligently designed anything and everything, so there cannot be anything definitively undesigned.
Now, THERE is vacuous.
A rabbit in the pre-Cambrian would, if unambiguously determined, disprove all aspects of the theory of evolution in a stroke. What would do the same for ID?
Is that right Vj, how interesting. Well, I guess you have just taken away the materialists reason for deciding that a car found lost in the desert is a car. Maybe it just resembles a car, that doesn’t mean it was designed. Heck, unless someone was there watching a product be made, how do we know ANYTHING was designed? Maybe the fancy watch you see a guy wearing walking down fifth avenue he actually found while he was trekking in the Atacama, and it was naturally formed by wind erosion.
Or better still, maybe the guy who sold him the watch found it in the Atacama.
You CAN NOT draw inferences from resemblance! You can however draw a lot of inferences from the nonsense that VJ writes.
I think that in your zeal to mock, you haven’t stopped to reflect. The reason we can reliably identify things known to be designed by people, is because we know a great deal about the designers – what they were like, what they were doing, what their resources were, etc . We also know a great deal about the history of human designs, about how and when and by whom cars and watches were designed. We also recognize animal designs, like birds’ nests and termites’ mounds. We know all these things by watching and recording what people and animals do.
And even so, it’s not all that uncommon for even competent archaeologists to be uncertain of whether some specific object is designed. There’s a reason why modern archaeologists carefully record the context of all findings, and why stuff dug up and sent to museums without any context or history can be ambiguous. The questions of who, why, when, how, and so on are always critical.
You can always draw inferences from resemblance, but without any contextual knowledge, your inferences may include a high ratio of false positives and false negatives.
No you can’t, VJ just said you can’t!
I mean why do you think something you see is a car, just because it LOOKS like a car? That makes no sense right? Didn’t you read what he wrote?? Are we not to take VJ at his words?:
The important one is about whether chance could produce things.
Evolutionists are saying, convincing themselves, that a fish thing can become a rhino in a series of steps based on selection on mutations.
is this reasonable or possible, or embarrassingly absurd??!
If such small steps can create the immune system, memory system, eyeballs, butts, then it could create anything however seemingly impossible.
The glory of complexity from small step evolutionism surely demands a better case then AW SHACK WHY NOT!
The same old Creationist claptrap repackaged and renumbered. Yawn.
I notice the usual “chance can’t do it” and “necessity can’t do it” bullshit. Then I notice the usual omission of the empirically observed evolution process which has a random component (genetic variations which are new information) and a non-random feedback component (selection from the environment which filters and retains the new information). Such a feedback process can and does produce amazingly complex things with zero external intelligence required.
Adapa,
And maybe one day we will even observe it!
The same old usual evolution claptrap…chance can do it, a feedback process can do it, its random but its not random, can make amazingly complex and well honed systems, except when they are not well honed, then it can do that too, its empirically observed, but it takes a long time, so of course we can’t observe it, except sometimes it doesn’t take a long time, because evolution must have favored it not taking a long time sometimes…
Anyway, the important lesson to be learned from VJ’s so stunningly observant and valuable critique is that just because something looks like a Ford badge on a box with four wheels, that in no way means it is a car made by a company called Ford. There is no good reason to assume that natural processes, like wind, or falling paint flecks, couldn’t eventually make something that looks like a Ford logo.
The thing is, given enough time, its almost a virtual certainty that nature would make things that look like Ford logos, its just a matter of numbers and enough time. Most unlikely things will happen eventually after all. So VJ has really cut to the heart of the problem of Wallace’s observations, quite cleverly.
Well done, once again VJ! Its just a matter of time, perhaps a very long time for sure, but only a matter of time before you are recognized as a leading light in critical evolutionary, er religious, er, I mean, well, some kind of thought- we will figure out what that thought is later.
Actually, they speak of it as “key mechanism of evolution”, so it is tacitly smuggled to a not-totally-random law-like status. Of course, when called upon it, there’s retreat.
My problem with the list is that questions aren’t attributes, and although there are eight numerals used in the list, the eight questions aren’t all essentially different from one another. If Wallace thinks there are actually eight attributes of design, I wish he would indicate precisely what he thinks they are.
Phoodoo, there are resemblances and resemblances. That some piece of toast reminds somebody of the BVM is due to resemblance also.
Hi VJ
Regarding the eight attributes, here is my thinking in the case of the bacterial flagellum.
No. Is there anyone on either side of the debate who believes this?
Yes. An electric motor driving a propellor
Yes. It is far more sophisticated and efficient than any human designed electric motor driving a propellor.
It requires the sequential production, movement, delivery and conjoining of countless proteins. Very much information needs to be gained to understand its activity. I’m not sure what is meant by information dependent.
Yes. It serves a specific primal purpose in the bacterium.
To believe in this would be a matter of faith in the ability of the law.
Yes. It is made up of components such as the motor, the drive, the propeller and an export apparatus, any of which if absent would render the function of locomotion defunct.
Nothing in life can be fully explained by chemistry and physics alone.
***
From the op Michael Le Page writes:
Behe does not say anything about the designer or designers in his argument so this criticism is irrelevant. Le Page is assuming there was a single designer. Why?
Le Page mentions the homology of the flagellar proteins. To this Behe, quite rightly, argues that homology alone is not an explanation. He wants to know the details of how the changes are implemented in these proteins in able to form a functioning system. For example the hook protein may be sequentially homologous to other proteins in the system but it has the unique property of joining with other hook proteins to provide a tubular material which as it is rotated, it is able to contract and expand during each revolution and so provide a universal joint. This protein must have this ability and it must also be able to bind to the proteins at the tubes proximal and distal ends, be produced in the correct quantities to make the hook, be delivered to the right place in the right sequence.
Just stating that it is homologous explains none of this.
Le Page continues:
this is false. This does not preclude irreducible complexity. The flagellum includes a type III secretory system. It is necessary to delivery the proteins for the flagellum’s composition and repair. It doesn’t matter if this system is used for other bacterial functions, take it out of the flagellar system and the flagellum becomes useless as a means of locomotion. In fact Behe argues that the type III secretory system on its own is irreducibly complex.
walto,
You mean there are some people who think a piece of toast is the Virgin Mary, or they think it looks like a picture of her? Because I am pretty sure most people don’t think the Virgin Mary was 4 inches tall and two dimensional.
Mr. Mung, are you aware of the Law of Large Numbers? This directly contradicts your statement.
Out of chaos, order.
Many of us have observed the process. You’ll never see it where you keep your head lodged.
I suspect we are interpreting the same words in different ways. To me, an inference is a hint, a clue, a starting point for investigation, perhaps a pointer in the right direction. Apparently for you, an inference is absolutely dispositive, that if A kinda looks sorta like B, than A IS B, no variation allowed.
So for me, an inference could be a false positive. For you, it can’t. I think VJ is using the word in the way I am.
I also notice you carefully omitted mention of the point I was making. I’m not surprised.
I see!
So you mean when VJ says : “Resemblance to a designed object does not justify the inference to design.”
What he means is “Resemblance to a designed object does not justify “”a hint, a clue, a starting point for investigation, perhaps a pointer in the right direction.””
Very very interesting. He must be using the word exactly as you meant it! It doesn’t even justify a hint!
Hi phoodoo,
My statement, “Resemblance to a designed object does not justify the inference to design,” simply means: “If an object A resembles another object B, which we know was designed, then we are not entitled to infer that A was also designed.”
You comment:
Nowhere did I claim, “If an object A resembles another object B, which we know to be an X, then we are never entitled to infer that A is also an X.” So your counter-instance concerning the car doesn’t follow. If the car found in the desert has the same internal structure as a car in an automobile factory, and can be driven just like a car, then we may legitimately infer that it is a car, because “car” is a functional category. “Designed object,” on the other hand, is not a functional category but an aetiological category: it describes an object’s causal history.
I repeat: we cannot legitimately infer from the fact that two objects have a similar structure and even a similar function, to the conclusion that they have a similar origin (or causal history). That doesn’t always follow.
May we then infer that the car we find in the desert was designed? Yes, but only because we know for a fact that there is no plausible natural pathway leading from a heap of scrap metal to a functioning car. in the case of the bacterial flagellum, we don’t know that. Pieces of scrap metal are, for the most part, chemically inert (except for their annoying tendency to rust), whereas life is chemically dynamic – which means that whereas life might arise in an environment where there is energy allowing its constituents to assemble, cars don’t have a hope in Hades of forming in this way. Simple as that.
You might object that the difference between a handful of amino acids, nucleotides, sugars and lipids and a fully functioning bacterial cell is far greater than the difference between a heap of scrap metal and a car. However, this argument does not warrant a design inference, as I explained in a post last year, in which I criticized Dr. Douglas Axe for making the same argument:
Charlie,
Professor Behe has every right to demand details as to how protein X evolved into protein Y which structurally resembles X, but which hooks up to other proteins in a strikingly different way. I don’t begrudge him that.
What I was criticizing in my article was not Behe’s argument for the design of the bacterial flagellum, but Wallace’s. In his podcast, Wallace declared that we can tell the bacterial flagellum is designed, simply by looking at it (17:25), which is a philosophically bad argument, as we saw above. Wallace also argued that the flagellum “requires 40 pieces before it’ll work” (14:00). That’s a factually inaccurate argument, whatever you might think of Behe’s argument. For my part, I would not be at all surprised if the flagellum turned out to have been designed. What I was arguing in my post was that Wallace’s eight attributes of design are too imprecise to reliably distinguish between designed and non-designed objects. That was all I wanted to say.
http://www.thelogofactory.com/seeing-things-in-logos-that-arent-there/
Earlier I wrote to Phoodoo that
You will notice that it didn’t penetrate when I said it either. But you are quite correct, to turn an inference of design into a dispositive conclusion, we MUST know the history, context, and method. Which we know in great detail about the car.
Phoodoo:
Your quote from my post is:
Flint: You can always draw inferences from resemblance
The actual sentence I wrote was:
“You can always draw inferences from resemblance, but without any contextual knowledge, your inferences may include a high ratio of false positives and false negatives.”
How typical that you omitted the rest of the sentence. Can creationists EVER quote correctly?
Really? That’s the reason why you would infer a car was designed?
vjtorley,
Can you support this claim with evidence?
You are evidence. You were gradually formed in your mother’s womb following a natural process.
But I think this conflation of design with formation is problematic
dazz,
How would you support the claim that this “natural” process is not designed?
Then how do we recognize Oldowan tools in paleo-archaeology? Like these.
We really can determine human design and manufacture without the negative process of ID, or we wouldn’t be recognizing stone artifacts that could be produced by natural processes, but that have apparent purpose and a bit of rational working. We really don’t have to figure out that the car is extremely unlikely to form by “natural processes” to recognize the rather positive effects of human thought and manufacture.
Of course one reason we know a car didn’t form naturally is that it doesn’t strongly adhere to inherited information, like evolved life does.
Glen Davidson
Why would I need to support an irrelevant claim I never made? Try thinking logically for once.
How do we know this for a fact?
dazz,
This is VJT’s claim. Energy can allow constituents to assemble. This is the claim that needs to be supported.
You. Mom. Womb. Embryological development. Claim supported.
They think it looks like (resembles) her. As I said, there are many types of resemblance. If it’s going to be used to attempt to prove something, it has to be narrowed down.
Junkyards are evidence too. No cars have ever spontaneously formed. There’s a ton of evidence of this apparent difference. It’s Colewd that needs to produce something showing that they’re nevertheless the same in being the result of an intentional process.
It’s a huge leap he makes, and yet he tries to shift the burden to everybody else.
walto,
I am simply asking VJT to support his claim that energy applied to chemicals can create self organization significant for life. Is it reasonable to just assume this is true without evidence?
Here you go: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/
The paper: http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/2013jcpsrep.pdf
I look forwards to seeing your rebuttal paper in print.
I’ve now supported it with a reference. Do you accept that claim has now been supported?
VJT hasn’t actually made that claim, has he? As dazz has pointed out you can apparently get babies from a cell or two, without any intention involved. While that is not getting life from non-life, it’s still a helluva way distant from what a bunch of junk will turn into in a junk yard. It’s YOU that is making no case whatever here.
There’s much to disagree with here — just another day on the Internet.
Most fundamentally, there’s no good justification for the entire problematic — “if neither chance nor necessity then design”. That’s just an assumption and there’s no reason for granting it.
One problem here is that one can get a firm grip on “design” only if “chance” and “necessity” are adequately characterized. But they aren’t, at least not here. One can find such a characterization internal to Epicurean metaphysics, but it would ruin the entire project to make that explicit — because taking that move would betray that the design inference is parasitic on Epicurean metaphysics rather than being a free-standing commitment of its own.
A related problem is that if we dispense with the Epicurean background and just look at what we get in the sciences, there’s very little room (if any) for either “chance” (“randomness”) or “necessity” (or “law”).
It’s an entirely open question whether there is true randomness in the universe. A little-known fact among non-physicists is that there does exist a fully deterministic version of quantum mechanics, and it’s one that has survived some impressive empirical verification. It’s not as “sexy” as the Copenhagen interpretation because a fully deterministic quantum mechanical universe doesn’t need consciousness to play any special role.
So if “randomness” is supposed to contrast with “deterministic,” then there are some reasons for thinking that “randomness” is not a deep feature of the universe.
The entire concept of “laws of physics” is also contentious (see How the Laws of Physics Lie). Whether there are laws at all, and what the ontological status of those laws is, are really complicated issues.
There’s a further question as to whether laws are essential to science. Is ecology not a science because there are so few (if any) laws? What about neuroscience? Some philosophers are starting to pay much more attention to models rather than focusing on laws in understanding how scientific explanations work.
In short, neither “chance” nor “necessity” (“law”) are notions that are sufficiently clear in contemporary philosophy of science that we can get a really good handle on how “design” is supposed to contrast them.
Conversely, we can get a reasonably clear handle on “design” by emphasizing that it emerges historically through Plato’s oblique criticism of the materialist metaphysics of his time. But that makes the design inference of historical interest only.
Hey, KN. Do you have a link you could provide for this (hopefully one for laypeople)? Thanks!
What I had in mind is Bohmian mechanics. Here’s Wikipedia and SEP.
I thought consciousness had nothing to do with the wave collapsing in the Copenhagen interpretation, that it was measurement that causes the collapsing.
Well, at least that’s what wikipedia says LOL
Oh Bohm, I know about. Got his complete works. (He was quite a character.) But you mentioned empirical support?