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”?
From this, William, it appears that intention serves as a kind of “nudge” in pinball – can exert just enough force on mass to tip it a little one way rather than the other, but well below the level of statistical detectability?
Am I right?
EL said:
You’re begging the question. Where does the potential energy come from? What causes the transfer form potential to kinetic (without referring to a description of that process)? What causes energetic transfers to affect matter the way they affect matter, and not some other way?
So, you’re saying that you can do all this and a god-like designer cannot because ….? You are an intentional designer embedded in the physical system where you are intentionally manipulating energy also embedded in the physical system towards some teleological end. Are you saying that god is not embedded in the same physical system? Are you saying such a god-like designer wouldn’t have access to using the same kinetic and potential energy as you since you are a physical being? If god is embedded in the physical universe, then god is at least physical in nature (whatever that means), so god would have at least theoretically access to the same energy for manipulation that you have access to.
EL said:
Is your intentional capacity only capable of “nudging” things below the level of statistical detectability?
OMagain said:
The building of a functional desktop, HP computer.
Only not below the level of statistical detectability. I think that William might be envisaging something like a run of 100 heads. No special force is required to make each coin land heads – they easily can. But the sum of all that nudging is to bring about a result that would be highly improbable without some hanky panky going on.
Well, I’m aware now that you didn’t mean that it was statistically non-detectable.
But in that case it should be very easy to demonstrate.
Anyway, William I do congratulate you on having addressed my question. As I understand it, you posit “intention” as a property possessed, presumably by both ourselves and God, with the capacity to bring about unlikely configurations that are nonetheless perfectly “legal” according to known laws of nature, possibly by getting in at a kind of quantum level and jiggering with the uncertainties.
Interestingly, that is Ken Miller’s view of how the Christian miracles were produced.
So that’s an interesting bed-fellow for you! A catholic evolutionist!
EL said:
Those “forces” are descriptions of material behaviors, EL. They are not known to be “things”; they are reified as causal “things”. Can you point at a force, or can you only point at the behavior and say “that is because of the force”?
In the same way, I can point at a behavior and reify that behavior as being because of the force of intention. What force does a designer use? Intention. Intention is the descriptive model of behavior reified as a causal agency, in the same manner as any other so-called “force”.
So, no further energy explanation is necessary. Nor is there any so-called “interface” issue, because dualism is not necessarily implied. Intention is the descriptive model of a certain class of material behaviors reified as the cause of those behaviors just like any physical law or force.
The meaningful question here, then, is why do materialists insist that intentionality be reducible to or caused by non-intentional laws, forces or processes? Why can’t intentionality be a fully material, but fundamental and non-reducible, physical force?
I must have missed your scientific demonstration of why such a device which automates calculation is scientifically implausible (“what we would expect”) given the observed universe (minus any actual observed designer intent).
If the laws of physics allow biology, then the possible creations of biology need to be taken into account when determining what is “scientifically implausible” don’t they? And I missed where you did that. And those biological entities create things with intent that are of a (potentially) different class to creations without intent? And so?
Or did you mean to say “in my simplistic billiard ball model of the universe…”?
Not we. You. You can demonstrate the difference by explaining what a universe without intent would look like.
And what particular pattern of matter and energy is it that you claim was designed by your purported designer? Or are you just claiming, as usual, that someone, somewhere, but not you, is making such a claim contrary to some offhand comment Elizabeth made?
What is it, specifically, that you think it took “intent” to create wrt biology William?
There’s nothing else.
It could be. But so could many other things.
But what does it add to say that it is like that? What can we then say or do differently? Have you ever thought about writing science fiction?
Sure, we parse the world into “things” (a process known as “reification”). And we make models of the world. Yes, they are a description of material behaviours. How does that help you?
Neither. We define a force as mass x acceleration. We don’t say “the mass accelerated because of the force”.
OK, then we are back to energy. Where did the energy come from that was translated into kinetic energy?
So where does it get the energy from? You keep answering a question I’m not asking, and not answering the one I am!
And there, oddly, we totally agree. You have neatly reinvented Dennett’s intentional stance!
Absolutely, it can. And, in my view, is.
Or perhaps I misunderstood. I missed the word “fundamental”. No, I don’t think that intention can be “reduced” to something “fundamental”. I think it is, as you seemed to imply earlier,
I would say that we “reify”, or model, as “intention”, the high level output of a system of lower level, more “fundamental” processes. And in that sense it is indeed fully material and non reducible – dismantle the parts and the thing collapses.
Its nature lies in the configuration of the parts, not in the parts themselves.
When a squid causes its muscles to contract and motion to occur, is it using intention? When we blink in response to a puff of air, are we using intention? Probably not. So is it only those muscular actions that an agent recognises as intentional that use the ‘intentional force’?
The point being, there must be some room for ‘material’ causality somewhere in our motor systems. How do we determine where that stops and the more ‘spooky’ leverage takes over? Why is intention not wholly conditioned, in some way, by the material of the brain and its interactions?
That rings bells. I’m sure there was an earlier discussion regarding Dennett and intentionality. Searching finds a thread where there’s even a pic of Dennett. No idea who the other guys are.
I’m not sure William is arguing for “spooky leverage”. I thought he was, at first.
I’m actually interested professionally in “intention” – it’s sort of what a lot of my work is in: selection of action according to current and future needs and goals. I don’t think it’s spooky. Nor do I think it’s “reducible” – I think it can only be understood at systems level. Or, as William might say, we understand it by “reifying” volition as a causal agent. Which is fine.
Ah! I see William is trying to widen the circle of discussants. Here
I wrote to him once, with a specific point, but also thanking him for “Freedom Evolves” which for me dislodged a penny in my brain, causing it to drop with a considerably reverberant impact.
He wrote me a charming reply, attaching an interesting article.
Well, they are all cordially invited to join us here.
Well, I’ve always thought that Gregory has had a point concerning the twisted mental state of the USAian IDist political movement (and the UDists as their witting or unwitting accomplices). As many other folks have also noted, the Wedge and Dover make it clear; they adapted the title “Designer” to circumvent neutral secular policy against christian religion in US public schools. Talking amongst themselves, they seem eager to keep the big-D Designer in view, probably because it reminds and reassures them that they haven’t forgotten their ultimate goal of cozying up to the big-G god.
But, quelle surprise. When they have to talk to a rational audience, suddenly it’s little-d “designer”, as if their Designer of Life could somehow be nothing more than some little guy in a workshop somewhere wishing somehow his marionette boy would become animated.
It would be sad if it weren’t so funny.
I think you need to be careful about characterizing ID as Christian. the majority of IDists in the world are probably Muslim. I recall that Some gathering of IDists in kansas invited Muslims. If England and Canada have not yet encountered a significant ID political movement, they will soon. Europe also.
And Orthodox Jews (did I capitalize correctly) reject evolution.
Oh yes! Insane Clown Posse was the first thing I remembered when I saw William’s fatuous question.
William, just a tip: when your words strike everyone else in the vicinity with your resemblance to Insane Clown Posse, you might want to stop talking for a while and rethink.
I seriously doubt England is ripe for a creationist revival. And ID strategy makes no sense as there is no church/state separation. Faith schools are an accepted part of the education system in UK.
One of the pioneers of the notions of teleology was Norbert Weiner — in guided missile cybernetics we call these “homing laws”.
One UD author went ballistic with fury when I suggested Specified Complexity can be produced by a mindless machine. Machines can implement teleology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology#Cybernetics
Machines can implement intelligence. It was heretical of me to say there can be a non-conscious mechanical intelligence.
Not that I believe it, but one can’t formally prove God isn’t some unconscious computer system, one can only surmise it circumstantially.
If man is created in the image of God, then consider the great Programmer in the Sky has made individuals in his image: Image of the Great Programmer in the Sky
I agree it seems many muslim countries are allowing education to be distorted by religious dogma. It’s possibly a more serious problem for the future than a fundamentalist Christian takeover of the US. The US has the internet to fight for truth, justice etc.
Have you checked that link lately?
I bet a virtual bottle of Bruichladdich, to be redeemed just as soon as Dr. Dr. D fulfils his obligation. And in the same timely manner.
🙂 🙂 🙂
that’s almost what I believe, just slightly different word order:
“God is created in the image of man” (and woman too) *looks nervously at hotshoe_*
Yes: ironically, it seems to be the very lack of state-church separation in the UK that dilutes the influence of religion. Although the Academy movement is a concern from that PoV, and indeed, under Blair, there was a Creationist school in Gateshead or something. Still, it did create a scandal.
But also the good old Church of England is quite a bulwark (at least in England). A deep source of placid inoffensive good will, mostly, these days.
Alan Fox,
Yes – it’s quite funny; it’s the norm, yet we’re as secular as hell!
I think God evolved.
You’re correct. Islam is the world majority religion and is firmly creationist — and if it’s true that they aren’t yet causing problems regarding evolution topics in secular schools in the developed nations, it’s inevitable that they will sooner or later. Or, contra Alan Fox, I predict that England (and other nations) will see the need to crack down on substandard “faith school”, education, because those schools genuinely do harm their children, and thus will precipitate an overt conflict about teaching “ID” vs evolution.
{Edit: I would be thrilled for my prediction to be proved wrong, say, for a few more decades. Please god, just let world peace buy us enough time for widespread internet and neutral education to overcome religious indoctrination in Muslim enclaves.]
But I think we can also agree that Muslims are not a significant part of the IDist movement we’re talking about here and now. They’re not a percent of the posters at UD, they’re not a percent of the DI or the editors/contributors to any of the so-called ID journals, they’re not a percent of the world-wide English-language youtubers / bloggers / twitter users preaching on behalf of their implausible little-d designer.
As for ID, the current political movement, having “invited Muslims”? Well, yeah, maybe, once in awhile, but the kind of christians who inhabit creationist political space in the USA are generally inhospitable to Muslims, and I’m pretty sure that Muslims worldwide return the sentiment. I don’t see the two groups usually being willing to work together, not even to defeat that which they agree is a common enemy (secular humanism / atheism / materialism / whatever-ism).
Oops, this is getting to be a rather long derail from the thread topic. Sorry.
Gregory, Gregory, Gregory. Were other children unkind to you when you were growing up? Did your parents not praise your finger painting? Whence this relentless need to convince yourself that you’re the smartest person in the room?
Interesting rant, but of uncertain relevance. Many fields to indeed treat intention. I’m not aware of any that consider it a fundamental rather than emergent explanation for the behavior of physical systems. Are you? Multiple fields also make use of entropy, and have rigorous and quite useful explanatory frameworks employing it. That doesn’t make it a fundamental property analogous to gravity. Whether the social sciences or humanities are at all relevant here is far from clear, since William wants to deploy intentionality in ways that I, at least, have never seen in the humanities or social sciences.
(You might note, by the way, that I started in the humanities.)
petrushka,
You’re on!
Yes, why?
William, I thought I understood what you might be driving at, earlier, but having read your related piece at UD, I am again puzzled.
You seem to be saying that intention is “a force”. I am willing to accept that as a hypothesis. But if intention is “a force” in the same sense as gravity is “a force” then you still need to show how it exerts that force on an object with mass, say a molecule, if you want to support your hypothesis. For instance, if I bombard a molecule with another molecule, the second molecule imparts its own kinetic energy to the first, slowing itself down, and speeding the other one up.
Or, if the molecule has an electric charge, I can cause it to accelerate by putting in an electric field. But in both cases, I have to find some energy from somewhere to do it.
So let’s say that there is such a thing as an “intentional field”. Molecules placed in this “intentional field” move into the positions intended by the intender. How is that intender fueled? What is the source of the energy it imparts to the moving molecules?
And why should we even think it can happen? Do you have any evidence at all that objects placed in an “intentional field” can be moved into their desired places?
Sure I would agree that we can move things using “intention” – but the mechanism by which I type this post (by intention) or move mountains, or whatever, is by eating my weetabix and using my hands and elbows.
I notice that Barry, in the UD thread, simply appeals to magic. Are you proposing simply that intention is a form of magic? In which case, would you agree that whenever magic operates, the Law of Conservation of Energy is violated?
It’s pretty much an empty wiki listing. Is it supposed to be informational?
You also, I notice, William, raise the hoary old chestnut of SETI:
The simple and utterly straightforward answer is that nobody at SETI is proposing that intentional agents use nothing but “intention” to send their signals. The hypothesis would be that an actual physical intelligent being, embodied like our selves, has breakfast, goes to work, builds a laser, and carefully aims it at earth, first plugging it into an energy source.
Intentional agents aren’t even that hard to build. We have lots of machines capable of identifying novel goals and executing them. But they use nothing but the regular forces of the universe to do so, and whenever they move matter into its intended positions, they have to source some energy to do so.
That’s odd. It works for me. It’s quite a long page. Here’s some key parts:
You seem to be conflating “force” and “energy”. You realize, they are not the same thing, right? Forces are non-contacting. I don’t have to show how a force causes a thing to happen because no force has such an explanation. We don’t know how forces cause the effects they cause. We don’t know how matter is caused to obey natural laws. Forces and laws are descriptions of behaviors, not explanations.
How is gravity “fueled”? How is electromagnetism “fueled”? They are not “fueled”, they are intrinsic properties of the universe. Gravity moves matter according to whatever gravity is and whatever causes it. Electromagnetism affects matter and energy according to whatever electromagnetism is and whatever causes it. Intention is not an energy, it is a property of the universe that moves matter around teleologically. Forces and Laws are non-contact properties of the universe.
EL said:
What ID advocate is proposing that any designer uses “nothing but intention” to build a thing or send a signal?
No, I am not conflating force and energy, William. I have been very careful not to do that. You can have two forces acting on an mass and cancelling each other out, so that the object remains stationary or at constant velocity. However, to impart additional kinetic energy to the object (by applying an oblique force, perhaps), that energy needs to come from somewhere. And to reconfigure an object into something other than what it would be if you didn’t leave it to do its own thing, e.g. configure it to your intended design, you will need to move some stuff in different directions – alter the trajectories of its parts so as to guide them into their intended positions.
Gravity isn’t “fueled”. As you rightly say, force and energy are not the same thing. But if you want to accelerate mass then the extra kinetic energy you need to impart to it has to come from somewhere. Gravity only “moves” matter when that matter had potential energy and something has dislodged it so that it now has kinetic energy. And when it lands on the floor, it has neither, and its original kinetic energy is now sound and heat. If you want to make gravity do more work you will have to put what’s left of it back on the shelf, and to do that you will have to expend some of your stored fuel.
As I said, you could set the whole thing up at the beginning like a Rube Goldberg contraption and watch it do its thing as the potential energy you supplied at the beginning is dissippated into your intended result. But that doesn’t seem to be what you have in mind. You seem to have in mind that an intender can use the force of intention to alter the course of history. But without providing a source for the additional kinetic energy required to achieve the alterations.
Well, you said that intention was a force in its own right. I’m doing my best, here, William – I’m trying to understand what you have in mind. When a SETI researcher decides to look for laser signals, she does so because she has hypothesised that a biological being has found earth and is trying to attract our attention with a laser.
And she will also assume that energy has been expended in the attempt.
What do you have in mind for the Intelligent Designer in ID? The point I keep making is that to produce a designed object, you have to not only design it but fabricate it (or modify a found object). Which means that you have to displace quite a lot of mass, by applying force to it. Which means that work has to be done. Which means you need energy.
Where do you suppose that energy came from?
Elizabeth,
Yep, I got all that.
I particularly like this part:
I think/hope that’s what I always strive for. Laugh at hearing myself say “my GPS doesn’t like this tree cover …” Well, I suppose it might be true that my device doesn’t “like” something (and it almost certainly will be true at some point in the future if we keep up with the trends of smart phonish-type devices with expanded AI capabilities). But it’s not useful. It doesn’t help me predict where I need to move to get a better signal. For that, I need to go back a level, to what Dennett defines as the design level, where I remember that the device is “good for” receiving satellite signals from overhead.
I really like that Dennett sees two levels of abstraction after the physical stance.
And of course, his language is just lovely. I’m not sure where this originally comes from, but here’s a link to one of Dennett’s (new-ish) papers:
Intentional Systems Theory, pdf, 2009
Cue somebody over at UD hissing that that’s what they’ve been saying about ID all along. And completely ignoring the bit about “guarantees that the work is done by testing for success.”
My, my, I do love me some Dan Dennett.
I see BA77 has given your UD post the attention it deserves, WJM.
Tip of the cap to the visiting cdesignproponentist for reminding us again the entertainment provided by IDists isn’t just from the ridiculous things they claim. It’s equally from the turbo-powered tap dancing they do to try and save a bit of face after their idiotic arguments have been vaporized. 🙂
We have quite good explanations for how the electromagnetic and weak forces cause their effects, and a good but computationally difficult explanation for how the strong force causes its effects. We have no mechanistic explanation for gravity.
Now that part is true. Forces can be explained in terms of other processes, but the chain always ends in something that is not explained.
Therefore,
godthe Designer is what pushes and pulls every quark into place.