ID proponents often portray ID critics as “materialists”, and recently someone asked whether a force was “material”. Well, if a force isn’t “material” then there are no “materialists”. So yes, is the answer to that question. A force that can move matter is a material force. A force that can’t move matter isn’t a force at all.
And this matters for the Intelligent Design argument, because when we infer that an object has been intelligently designed, we are also inferring that it was fabricated according to that design. And to fabricate an object, or modify it, the fabricator has to accelerate matter, i.e. give its parts some kinetic energy it did not otherwise possess, by applying a force.
While ID proponents are often reluctant to speculate much about the nature of the designer, they rarely even mention the fabrication process. But the ID proposal implicitly postulates that a force was applied to matter by the designer, or her workforce, in order to make it do something other than what it would have done had that force not been applied.
I’d like to ask ID proponents here: what is your preferred hypothesis as to how the putative designer of living things actually made them? What material force accelerated the required molecules into position in the first living cells, converting potential energy into kinetic energy, and since then, guides the nucleotides into the required positions to produce novel proteins and enzymes as required?
What is, in other words, the energy source for the “poof”?
Any fair reader can agree with Erik here. ID has no theory or hypothesis. It is an assumption by default and pure assertion. I’ve been, depending on opportunity at UD (there isn’t any other on-line forum left now), asking for a statement of a scientific testable hypothesis of ID [for years now*]. There was only one purpose for “Intelligent Design” and that failed at Dover. It would be refreshing to drop the pretence that “ID” has scientific merit because that assertion is dead and isn’t coming back to life.
ETA*
That makes sense. You therefore accept an inconsistent literal interpretation. Not that I mind; I’d like to think it’s a free World, at least as far as thought can take us.
Moved a comment to “Moderation Issues”.
OK, but that’s not an argument. It’s just an assertion. Do you have a minimalist version of the argument?
I agree it’s not an argument.
I disagree that it’s just an assertion. It’s a definition.
I have no idea what you are asking for when you request a minimalist version of the argument. It’s not an argument, it’s a definition.
It’s an inadequate or incomplete or insufficient definition. It tells us ID has a better explanation but neglects to mention what that explanation is.
PS moved an OT comment of yours on moderation to the moderation issues thread.
Umm, Mung, did you happen to notice I didn’t ask that question literally, and that a straight answer from you rather proves the point that you take things too literally?
Or did you think I was just feeding you a straight line for a joke?
Anyways, fair enough, you aren’t a consistent bible literalist. (Thank Maude! Those folks are nuts!) Okay, got it, will try to keep it in mind if/when it seems relevant in future discussions.
Not gonna have a discussion about semiosis, though, sorry. Not gonna happen.
sorry, my comments seem to end up in Sandbox or Guano. no idea why. cheers
I’ll assume then that you are not the one moving my posts to Guano and Sandbox.
… anyhooo … back to the OP … the issue is not merely one of violation of energy conservation. If one decides that there is a minimal configuration for a living system, and only Intelligence can bring this configuration into being, one has the problem of suspension of physics. Pass any two atoms within a whisker of each other and their electrons will reorganize to adopt a lower-energy configuration. So while you assemble your super-duper cell, you have to somehow keep everything in a state of suspended animation. Electrostatic forces cannot be permitted to have a causal effect until you want them to. I liken this to assembling a jumbo mid-flight, fuel spilling everywhere while you try and connect the hoses, some components exploding on contact with oxygen while others shrivel to their proper configuration in the absence of water but you’ve got to get them past the water. You don’t want anything to happen till you flick the switch. But then you want the energy to cascade around the system in perfect har-mo-nee.
Well, you were the one who brought it up. As far as I am it’s irrelevant to this thread, which is about how ID proponents account for the energy needed to move matter around in order to configure it according to the design.
Framing the ID argument in terms of materialism vs. non-materialism is unproductive for ID. There are a minority of ID sympathizers that are materialists, and some of the highly important pioneers of the modern incarnation of ID were materialists like Fred Hoyle who wrote the book Intelligent Universe which is sort of a pantheistic materialist ID.
I think it’s unproductive for anyone, given that the word “materialist” is so undescriptive of anyone’s views.
I’d have said the most productive framing of the ID argument would be in terms of hypothesis testing. How would ID proponents test their hypothesis that biological organisms were designed and fabricated by an external designer?
Simply appealing to the practice “design detection” in forensics, archaeology and astrobiology doesn’t really help, because in all those cases, the postulated designer is some kind of biological entity.
The term “force” is nothing more than a reification of a model of a certain class of behaviors – like gravity. Since the sum of these these models (including any currently unknown lawful/stochastic models) are taken to be what constitutes “the natural”, materialists have simply laid the claim that whatever the reason is that matter behaves in these lawful and stochastic patterns is “natural”. I’m not sure that’s logically available but we can accept it as a given that whatever causes these lawful and stochastic patterns can be labeled “the natural”.
How does whatever causes the class of effects known as “gravity” achieve those effects? We do not know, although we have models that attempt to map and predict those effects.
Now, EL asks us about the “force” that a designer uses. That’s rather simple: intention. As a force, and like it’s “natural” counterparts, intention is a term used to describe certain patterns of behavior of matter. The problem with intention, for materialists, is that it is not ultimately predictable in any lawful or stochastic sense; it is only relatively predictable in other kinds of terms – purpose, motivation, capacity, etc.
Just as natural forces do not affect matter in isolation from other natural forces, but are rather a universe-wide framework which somehow (we don’t know how) governs all matter everywhere simultaneously (any matter anywhere is subject to all natural law effects pertaining to that particular matter), we can also say that all matter in the universe is also subject to patterning by intention.
Please note that with natural laws, one natural law does not compel matter to disobey any other natural law, but rather they all represent constraints upon what that matter can or will do. Intention, then, doesn’t suspend the effects of the other natural laws on matter, but like the other forces, can affect the behavior of matter within the parameters made available by the capacity of those natural laws to produce stochastic variety in material effects.
The force of intention, thus, can be said to be a model of the behavior of matter that produces intentional patterns, just as gravity can be said to be a model of the behavior of matter that produces gravitational patterns. What are intentional patterns? Patterns that can best be described in terms of teleology – goal/purpose oriented patterning that cannot otherwise be plausibly explained, in principle, via natural law and normal stochastic distributions which are not taken to be intentional or teleological in nature and produced determined and normal stochastic outcomes.
Now, while the intentional behaviors of matter are not impossible under the lawful and stochastic models of natural forces, they can push the matter towards goals or purposes within the parameters of the other forces and stochastic potentials – just as how any one particular natural force’s contribution to the behavior of some matter is not impossible according to other natural laws affecting that matter, it merely pushes that matter within the possible towards that particular force’s inclination.
Therefore, the intentional force can be said to be like any other natural force in that it is model that describes certain patterns of material behaviors even if it is, in an essential way, unpredictable in terms of particular outcomes. And, that it operates not in violation of any of the other forces that affect matter, but in conjunction with those forces.
Now, can the intentional force be called part of “the natural”? In the sense of it being a fundamental aspect of how the universe can behave, yes. In the sense that it can be predicted according to lawful/stochastic models, then no. Unless “materialism” provides for a fundamental force of intention that can move matter towards purpose/goals, then no, intention cannot be said to be “natural”, but rather “artifice”.
When scientists say that a “force” is the explanation for how matter behaves, they are simply reifying a model of the behavior as the cause of that behavior. Thus, if the IDist says intention (or, intelligent design) is the model of the behavior, they too can reify that model as the “force” cause, and reference goals or purpose as that which characterizes the behavior of the matter in the model.
Just because materialist think in terms that such commodities as intention and purpose are caused by natural forces doesn’t give them the philosophical right to exclude those things as descriptions of forces; they do not need to be explained in terms of other natural laws of stochastic processes.
TL;DR: Intention is the force that moves matter in patterns we call purposeful, yet still within the framework of the possible alongside natural forces/laws/stochastic processes. Demanding that we explain how intention (or intelligent design) can move that matter in that way is like asking how gravity or any other “force” can move matter: we don’t know. A force is a reified description of that behavior, not an explanation of that behavior.
That was as fine an example of an ID hand-waving bullshit non-answer as you’re ever likely to see.
Why don’t you just say “magic!!” and be done with it?
stcordova said:
Seeing that part of the larger concern of many ID proponents is the advance of materialism in society and the problems it entails, then while framing the ID argument in those terms may be unproductive scientifically, it certainly is not unproductive philosophically or socially. I also think it is productive scientifically in terms of calling into question/challenging the materialist conceptualization of science within certain parts of the scientific community – especially academia.
I didn’t suggest that it was. However, to accelerate mass, energy must be shifted from the mover to the moved (which then possesses it in the form of kinetic energy).
If intention is a force, then we should be able to use intention to accelerate mass.
Can you provide any evidence of intention successfully accelerating mass?
If so, where did the kinetic energy imparted to the mass come from?
If not, why should we consider it a force?
Explain how gravity or entropy affects matter without referring to a model that describes the behavior of matter under the influence of gravity or entropy.
That is what EL is asking IDists to do. You do it first.
For years we’ve been asking the IDiots whining about materialiism how you do science when you have to account for non-material gods or other entities possibly mucking with your results? How do you develop a new vaccine when the serum may work great one day and Loki god may change it into a deadly poison the next day?
For all the IDiot bluster about how materialism is so bad I’ve never seen any of them offer a practical real world alternative.
Since you obviously don’t have any clue how your magic Designer manipulated matter and energy just stop at “I don’t know”. The verbal diarrhea about “intention” is just more IDiot bafflegab that explains nothing.
EL said:
I don’t know what you mean by “accelerate mass”. We use intention to move matter all the time, by willing our bodies to do something purposeful. We intend, say, to throw a ball to a catcher, and immediately the otherwise lawfully/stochastic processes of our body act in coordination to achieve that effect. Thosuands? Millions? Billions? of individual physical events occur at the microscopic level that are not derivable merely from the physics and stochastic processes, but which are not impossible under those parameters, to achieve a teleological result.
I’ll take that to mean you also cannot meet that challenge.
The intent doesn’t move the object. The physical contraction of our muscles moves the object.
If mere intent could do what you claim then all our paraplegics would suddenly get up and tap dance.
The challenge to get you to say something that isn’t non-sensical IDiot bafflegab? No one’s been able to do that in years.
Adapa said:
Without the intention, the ball doesn’t move. The intention sets off a chain of physical events that ultimately ends up with the ball moving.
If intent doesn’t do what I said, then nobody would walk in the first place. As I pointed out in my post, intent can only do what is possible given the limitations of natural laws and stochastic processes. It also operates characteristically, like any other force. It can do some things, and cannot do some other things.
I’ll take that to mean you cannot meet the challenge either.
We can map every step in the process of your “intent” to physical processes, from the electrical impulses in the brain down to the mechanical movements of limbs. The OP is asking about the physical processes your magic Designer used in physically creating objects.
You don’t have any idea, no IDiot does. All your smoke-blowing does is stink up the room.
How do you know the designer used intent?
Explain eggs!
Or that the results were exactly what the magic Designer intended?
“Intent” seems to be today’s useless rhetoric catch-phrase like CSI or FIASCO used solely as an evasion. The IDiots can produce them in droves but can never come up with an actual testable hypothesis.
The philosophers will no doubt have a more nuanced take, but I don’t see how this advances our understanding of the situation at all. If you’re a substance dualist, then a nonphysical intention can indeed set off a chain of physical events. But substance dualism doesn’t explain that interaction any more than invoking an intelligent designer explains the fabrication process; all you’ve done is liken one unexplained process to another unexplained process. This lack of explanation is of course one of the strongest criticisms of substance dualism.
If you’re not a substance dualist, on the other hand, then the intention is a description of part of the chain of physical events (or is emergent from those events), rather than something independent of it, and the physical chain can in principle be reconstructed purely in physical terms. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, seems to be all about invoking an intention that is not part of the physical causal chain. In that case, I don’t see the relevance.
That you can map it (describe it) doesn’t mean you can explain it.
I don’t know what you mean by “physically creating objects”. If you mean, what physical processes a designer uses to manufacture a thing, the same physical processes any designer uses to create anything. They manipulate matter via physical laws and stochastic processes to achieve an intentional result. Humans internally intentionalize their bodies and brains, which are physical and operate according to physical law, to produce a wide variety of effects in the world.
If the universe is looked at as the body of god, then god can intentionalize various internal patterns which do not break the physical rules of the body but direct activities in accordance with a goal, much like a human moving their hand or meditating to lower their blood pressure or using mindfulness techniques to increase the production of antibodies.
A couple of good frameworks to see this is quantum entanglement and the Electric Universe theory, where the entire universe is interconnected on a fundamental, actionable level. Quantum physics and quantum entanglement provide a good basis for intention as a fundamental force at a universal level.
If how we organize an experiment here can instantaneously affect the characteristic of a particle half a universe away, then we can easily see how intention is connected to the whole universe in a very actionable sense – much like our intention’s connection to our body.
And yet none of you materialists seems to care much about WHY forces exist.
Alan is always asking for footprints, and you have this whole world full of predictable forces, yet he keeps asking where are the footprints.
Steve Schaffner said:
It provides a categorical, descriptive model for a class of phenomena otherwise not derivable from lawful/stochastic processes.
I’ve done nothing more than categorize a particular set of known physical effects under a descriptive model – like entropy, or gravity. It doesn’t indicate dualism any more than gravity or entropy does.
Is gravity “part of the chain of physical events, or emergent from those event? Or, is it a description of the characteristic behavior of matter, at least in part, involved in the phenomena in question? Gravity cannot be explained “in physical terms”; it is that which is used to explain, in physical terms, the behavior of matter. As such, does it necessarily indicate substance dualism?
Is postulating intention as a “fundamental force” in the same way as gravity or entropy necessarily advocating for dualism? Of course not. It is simply another model of behavior of matter that is not plausibly derivable from other forces. IOW, something other than known chemical laws are necessary to account for the book “War and Peace”. Intention is required.
What materialists insist, for ideological reasons, is that “intention” can be subsumed by other natural forces and stochastic processes. There is absolutely no reason other than an insistence on materialist metaphysics to insist that intention can be accounted for by a combination of other natural laws and processes, nor is there any reason to insist it implies substance dualism.
The fact is, without appeals to deep, raw, blinding chance and magical “emergence” from other physical laws and processes, intention is simply not apparently physically nor logically derivable from those other laws. What is the logical reason, other than adherence to ideology, to insist intention is not a fundamental force that describes certain phenomena?
And materialsim seems to be all about denying intention as a fundamental force capable of producing a certain unique class of effects as part of the causal chain, even when we know it is necessary for some effects and understand that, at least on the surface, it is not the same as the effects generated by other forces and processes.
Adapa,
Lizzie has been arguing that this is a better place to discuss than a site which has moderation.
You have just proved her wrong.
Alan Fox,
The Dover trial proved that ID wasn’t science? WTF does that mean? Because someone who is not a scientist said so?
then
Reflect on this phoodoo.
The whole concept of a “decision” is not material.
Is Lizzie definition supposed to mean that decisions are material? Is there a physical embodiment of a decision?
So no IDiot will address the OP and tell us how the magic Designer manipulated matter to make the “designs”.
No IDiot can tell us how to do science without relying 100% on materialism.
Another day of nothing but BS from the IDiot camp.
Scientists have consistently said so. The trial could not have turned out otherwise, if justice be done.
Erik,
Except for the scientists who say it is?
It provides a descriptive model for a class of human behaviors, and invokes an extensive context of explanatory background and mechanisms. Applying the word “intention” to the (nonhuman) design of organisms leaves behind all of that. It seems to be an assertion that somehow the category includes cases that lack all of the particulars of the original application. It’s either an empty label or an assertion of similarity that you haven’t shown.
Where have you done that? “Intention” does not usually describe a set of physical effects; it describes part of a physical process.
Sure, you can postulate an “intentional” force as a fundamental part of the description of reality, on a par with gravity, and create an entirely new field of science. Good luck with that. At present, there’s zero evidence that such a force exists, no evidence that something other than electrochemical reactions are involved in human intention, and the concept seem to have no predictive ability. A much more reasonable goal would be to show that intention is a useful emergent concept like entropy, one that can be explained in terms of a more fundamental description of a system but that provides a good tool to modeling behavior. The fact that you conflate the two does not bode well, however.
One could make exactly the same argument about humor, Sanskrit and the infield fly rule. If this is your basis for postulating fundamental forces, there must be an awful lot of fundamental forces in your world.
I still don’t see what your argument has to do with Intelligent Design, since that movement’s goal is not to postulate a new descriptive force governing the behavior of matter, but to demonstrate that a nonmaterial entity is responsible for life, or the universe, or something. Everything we know about intention is that it is a characteristic of complex biological systems. Personally, I’m inclined to think of nonmaterial entities as existing (e.g. mathematical truths), so I don’t have any fundamental problem with treating human intentionality as something real, but that treatment seems to have sod all to do with the origin of biological complexity.
It’s a bit more radical than that. “Intention” describes a subjective cause in psychology, never an effect, certainly not a physical effect. This is why I dismiss ID theory as a gross category mistake.
That’s a bit primitive, low-level, but ok for a start before the adults come to play.
You’re a bit late and one doesn’t need luck. The social sciences and humanities widely make use of ‘intention’ already. Those are ‘fields,’ btw. 😉 We don’t need biologists or physicists to tell us what intentional decision-making and goal-orientation based on ‘agency’ is all about, now do we? They usually do a piss-poor job at it (and while doing so think they’re smarter than SSH scholars anyway!).
Note please that not for a second do I mean to suggest that this in any way supports WJM’s heterodox ‘Intelligent Design’ fantasies or the IDM’s double-talk IDT in general or specifically.
Simply put, if one distinguishes clearly and consistently between uppercase ‘Intelligent Design’ and lowercase ‘intelligent design’, the problem here simply goes away. ‘Intentionality’ is certainly not a ‘category mistake’; it is a very important part of understanding society, culture, politics, religion, economics, etc. But the way the natural science-dominant DI & vast majority of IDists frame it, IDism surely is a category mistake. Pouting about that doesn’t change it.
phoodoo, I moved a post of yours to guano, as it broke the game-rules. Feel free to repost it without the broken rule 🙂
ETA also one from OMagain.
phoodoo,
A judge decided based on evidence. That’s their job.
I think this is an important point. I do think that fear of “materialism” as a social phenomenon is a major driver of the ID movement. I’m not sure what the fear is, exactly: can you enlighten? (Maybe better for its own thread). Similarly, I think a lot of what drives ID critics is fear of a conservative theocracy.
I suspect both fears are ill-founded, or, at any rate, ill-targeted. Neither science in general, nor Darwinism in particular, tell us anything about whether “materialism” is true. And if ID is true, there’s no reason why that should make a conservative theocracy more likely. dunno. I’m not an American, and ID simply isn’t an issue in the UK.
Partly right. It’s not fear, its the fact that theology looks impotent compared to it:
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
“FIVE YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN SUMMARY
The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a “wedge” that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. …”
No, it is not what I am asking IDists to do. Let me phrase my request more clearly:
I am asking IDists to explain where the energy comes from when the putative Designer imparts kinetic energy to mass by applying a force to it.
Just as you might ask me where I get the energy from that accelerates my car. The answer is: from fossil fuels (although it’s a hybrid, so temporarily stored in a battery).
Pathetic levels of detail! 😉