Tim's comments on What if Evolution is Compatible with Design After All?

[Rope (Rope Kojonen)]

The discussion between ID proponents and counter-proponents is what I was referring to - it has made the paper pretty famous with people who are interested in design arguments.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Tim

@Rope

I can understand this wish - but unfortunately the focus of this article was on the philosophy and theology, with only some references illustrating the science.

Then you have woefully misread your audience.

I don’t think anonymous non-academic atheists are, precisely, his audience. He is speaking to philosophers and theologians.

[Tim]

@Rope

The design argument long predates the ID movement though …

I didn’t state that it didn’t. However “the design argument” had been largely moribund since the time of William Paley’s time until the IDM dusted it off when they launched their movement, with expolcitly anti-evolution polemics such as Evolution: A Theory in Crisis and Darwin on Trial.

@Rope

… and the argument as I’ve defended it does not need to overturn any science …

No it merely “need[s]” for the acceptance of ID arguments that are regarded as discredited by the scientific community.

@Rope

… I thought this at least would have been clearly stated in the articles you’ve read?

Your argument for your “conjunctive explanation” relies on the insufficiency of evolution alone.

For this purported insufficiency you rely on ID’s discredited arguments.

Therefore without those discredited arguments, your own argument folds like a house of cards.

@Rope

I am happy to agree that accurately characterizing science is important, but so far I am puzzled at what the mischaracterization would be.

Then you clearly weren’t reading what I had written:

@Tim

I would suggest that in order to make such an ‘evaluation’, you first need an accurate appreciation of what evolution is, which … (ii) is NOT something that can be gained via a group of anti-evolution polemicists, such as the Intelligent Design movement.

A quick look at your book’s table of contents would reveal your entire Section 4.2 as an obvious example (subsections being “The Conservation of Information”, “Irreducible Complexity” and “Protein Evolution”, for those who don’t have it to hand).

@Rope

The focus on the term “laws of form” might explain it is one of the few claims of mischaracterization proposed. I did not use this term in the PS article, since I figured it would need further explanation, but it was used by David Glass and in my book, so it’s understandable that people are interested.

Given that you failed to explicate your argument in your “PS article”, but instead directed us to Glass for it, then yes it almost certainly was going to come up.

The fact that you are claiming that “biologists increasingly talk of” something, when no biologist here seems to have any idea of what you are talking about, is problematical in the extreme.

I will note that you have failed to answer my question:

@Tim

I would also ask that, if we are indeed dealing with “cross-discipline terminological confusion”, what discipline uses the term “laws of form”, and can you please provide us with some examples of its use?

@Rope

I suspect John wanted a more extensive explanation than this though, since what I write is, I think, already apparent from the previous comments in the thread. That will have to wait for the future.

If you cannot even explain what it is that “biologists increasingly talk of” to a biologist, then I would suggest that your entire “Laws of Form and Convergence” section likewise collapses like a house of cards.

[Tim]

In responding to @John_Harshman, Kojonan writes:

@Rope

I also develop this common objection to the explanatory power of theism / design in the book, and provide several replies. First, I think the objection would prove too much, if correct, and falls to a reductio ad absurdum. If theism has no explanatory power because we cannot form a probability distribution of the actions of God, then no conceivable phenomenon could ever provide evidence for a Creator, no matter how obvious. Choirs of angels coming down singing hallelujah, particles arranging to form “GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE”, you name it, nothing could provide supporting evidence for theism.

I find this to be a problematic argument. A reductio ad absurdum relies on showing that the opposite scenario leads to absurdity or contradiction. This is not clear here.

Firstly, your claimed “absurdity” itself relies upon an absurd hypothetical.

Secondly, your hypothetical does not in fact rule out non-divine explanations, such as a hallucination, or a very high-tech trickster – so it fails to demonstrate that that, even if we accept your absurd hypothetical, the result is an absurdity.

Finally, even if we accept it is an absurdity, this would only require a minor alteration to the contention:

@John_Harshman

Thus God explains anythiung equally well and equally poorly.

… to read:

God explains anything equally well and equally poorly, except for something that only the existence of God could possibly explain (acknowledging that it may be impossible to specify such a thing, even hypothetically).

It is however unclear that this caveat has any real world implications, so it can probably be omitted for the purpose of brevity.

Addendum:

On further reflection, it occurs to me that a tighter formulation might be:

An explanation that explains anything equally well is inferior to any other possible explanation. (With the corollary that the explains-anything explanation should only be accepted if all other explanations are irrefutably impossible.)

This of course leaves out the possibility that you have more than one explains-everything explanation. Reformulating for this case:

All explanations that explains anything equally well is inferior to any other possible explanation. (However, if all other explanations are impossible, we are now in a quandary as to which explains-anything explanation to accept.)

I would hasten to add that both of these formulations are equivalent to @John_Harshman’s in real life situations, the reformulation is merely to nail down avoidance of the reductio ad absurdum accusation.

Further Addendum:

On still further reflection John’s formulation does not in fact fall into the reductio ad absurdum trap. He does not state that an explanation that “explains anything equally well” is an invalid explanation, merely a ‘poor’ explanation – and you would still accept a poor explanation, by default, if it was the only possible explanation you have left. At best my reformulations merely make this (perhaps) clearer.

[Tim]

@Rope

Third, it can be argued that theism does not have to give the data a high probability, since naturalism is such a terrible explanation of the data …

It is only “such a terrible explanation of the data” if you accept ID’s discredited arguments.

@Rope

… so theism giving at least some explanation means the data favors theism over naturalism.

What is the ‘theism explanation’? “The Designer designed it” would seem to be the sum of it. A word comes to mind: vacuous:

Not properly filled out or developed.

It is in fact not really an “explanation” at all, merely an assertion.

It does however sound slightly better than “Goddidit”.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Rope

The discussion between ID proponents and counter-proponents is what I was referring to - it has made the paper pretty famous with people who are interested in design arguments.

If you are interested in making serious a philosophical argument for “design” as a concept relevant to evolution, I really don’t see why you would include the ID movement as any part of the discussion, no matter how “famous” they might be. You might, at most, want to make a brief mention of them simply because some readers might be familiar with them, but only to make the point that they have no credibility whatsoever so you will be making no further reference to them.

[Tim]

Unanswered questions

I think now would be a good time to put together a summary of some points that remain unanswered in engaging with @Rope:

1. What are these “Laws of Form” that “biologists increasingly talk of”, without apparently knowing that they are doing so?

2. How does the Fine Tuning argument differ from Kojonan’s argument (simply referring us to Glass is unhelpful, as that article is sufficiently waffley as to obscure rather than elucidate the core structure of the argument)?

3. What part do the ID arguments have in Kojonan’s argument? Given that the scientific community rejects these arguments, any claims based upon them will not be credible to the scientific community.

4. What specifically is it that Kojonan is claiming is designed? Lacking any specifics, this claim can be dismissed as vacuous.

[John_Harshman]

5. What does it mean to say that something is designed? I can design until I’m blue in the face, but nothing actually appears until I do something causal in the world. I can design a house, but somebody has to build it. It’s the building process that leaves evidence. So rather than “What did God design?” it’s really better to ask “What did God make?”.

[Tim]

Returning to Glass, I discovered this to be the only section that appears to directly address Kojonan’s argument (as opposed to waffling around it), a direct quote from Kojonan’s book:

He formulates a design argument as follows:

Premise 1. Some things in nature (or nature itself) exhibit property D (such as complexity ordered toward a purpose).

Premise 2. This property would be well explained if design was the cause.
However, other explanations explain this property poorly.

Therefore, when comparing all available explanations, design is the best overall explanation of this property.

Therefore, property D was probably designed; at least this property provides more reason to infer design over competing explanations. (Kojonen 2021, 78)

The problem is that this formulation is skeletal to the point of being largely unhelpful. Points of concern are:

1. What “propert[ies] D”, beyond the vague claim of “complexity ordered toward a purpose”, are under discussion? (This is my point #4 above.)

2. The first statement of Premise 2 appears to be a malformed sylogism rather than a genuine premise. Even if one thing is indeed the “cause” of something else, it does not make the bald statement “X caused Y” a good explanation. I could claim “I caused the fire”. Even if my statement were true it would still be a poor explanation – as it would not explain whether I caused the fire intentionally or by accident, how I caused the fire, why (if intentional) I caused the fire, etc. (This is also covered in @John_Harshman’s point # 5 above.)

3. The basis for any claim that “other explanations explain this property poorly” (this really should have been listed as a separate third premise). If the basis is (in whole or in substantial part) ID arguments, then the scientific community would reject this premise.

Given that the first statement in Premise 2 appears very similar to ID argumentation, “complexity ordered toward a purpose” is very close to ID language, and "The Conservation of Information”, “Irreducible Complexity” and “Protein Evolution” (that Kojonen discusses at length in his Section 4.2) appear to be the most obvious specific candidates for his “propert[ies] D” and the basis for the claim that “other explanations explain [these] propert[ies] poorly”, it is hard to see any daylight between Kojonan and ID.

I would on this basis strongly suggest that there is good evidence for stating that Kojonan is indeed an ID advocate.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Tim

Premise 1. Some things in nature (or nature itself) exhibit property D (such as complexity ordered toward a purpose).

This is straight up Behe, and indicates that @Rope’s understanding of the philosophical aspects of evolutionary theory is at about the level of @colewd. Which I suppose should make Bill happy.

The theory of evolution provides the explanation for how things with the appearance of “complexity ordered towards a purpose” can arise without being designed. So he needs to provide a different example of D to save his argument.

[Tim]

@Rope

@Faizal_Ali

What is your evidence that “talk of things of this type is increasing” among biologists currently? The fact that none of the biologists engaged in this present discussion seem to even know what you are talking about would appear to argue against that.

I have not done some sort of statistical analysis of the literature on this. This is given as my own impression based on comparing the newer and older biology literature I’ve read, as well as listening to biologists and philosophers of biology at conferences.

I’d like to address two points on that.

1. Except to the extent that your entire book can be considered to be your “own impression”, you gave no indication in your book that this claim was merely your “own impression” rather than a demonstrable fact.

2. I think there is a large potential problem of Selection Bias in the “biology literature [you’]ve read”, the “biologists” you listen to, the “conferences” you attend, and the very fact that you base your “own impression” about what “biologists increasingly talk about” in part on “listening to philosophers”. I find it highly unlikely that this would be representative of what the vast majority of biologists, who are outside the ID and ‘Science and Religion’ echo chambers, talk about.

[Tim]

@Faizal_Ali

This is straight up Behe, and indicates that @Rope’s understanding of the philosophical aspects of evolutionary theory is at about the level of @colewd. Which I suppose should make Bill happy.

Maybe we should encourage Kojonan to hire Bill as a Research Assistant then.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

Regarding your four questions, I think we already have the answers:

@Tim

What are these “Laws of Form” that “biologists increasingly talk of”, without apparently knowing that they are doing so?

All references by biologists to the form of any organism, ever, will do, as the term “laws of form” has no specific meaning as used here whatsoever.

@Tim

How does the Fine Tuning argument differ from Kojonan’s argument (simply referring us to Glass is unhelpful, as that article is sufficiently waffley as to obscure rather than elucidate the core structure of the argument)?

Kojonen’s argument avoids the weaknesses of fine-tuning arguments (and the vast, yawning absence of evidence which would connect those arguments to the world) by being so vague that any deficiency of any specific fine-tuning argument, or any deficiency of the evidence supporting such an argument, can be ignored as not pertaining specifically to Kojonen.

@Tim

What part do the ID arguments have in Kojonan’s argument? Given that the scientific community rejects these arguments, any claims based upon them will not be credible to the scientific community.

They form the entire factual foundation of it, and if you say that ID authors are dishonest you are, as described in his doctoral thesis, a “conspiracy theorist.” If you think that peptidyl transferase is a ribozyme, well, your views are no more worthy of regard than QAnon’s. Note his silly remark that he can’t trust @Mercer to be fair to Stephen Meyer.

@Tim

What specifically is it that Kojonan is claiming is designed? Lacking any specifics, this claim can be dismissed as vacuous.

There are no specifics. And if you call that vacuous, that’s only because you hate philosophy. And besides, you’re engaging in philosophy when you say that, so nyah nyah.

Now, I do have a question which I cannot, for the life of me, answer. Why the hell would anyone ever bring up Kojonen and act as though there were something serious, worthwhile or interesting in it? If ID is crap, this is post-processing sludge from the sewage treatment plant. When I see stuff like this being touted as though it is the worthwhile side of the ID “argument” (and who the hell wants arguments, anyway, when it is evidence, not argument, which ID desperately lacks?), all it does is affirm that there can be nothing worthwhile in any of it.

[WalterKloover]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

All references by biologists to the form of any organism, ever, will do, as the term “laws of form” has no specific meaning as used here whatsoever.

Why limit it to references by biologists? Authors and comedians can express laws of form too!

Four legs good, two legs bad

Dinosaurs are skinny at the end, fat in the middle, and skinny at the other end.

[John_Harshman]

@WalterKloover

Dinosaurs are skinny at the end, fat in the middle, and skinny at the other end.

That law of form actually refers only to the Brontosaurus. And what it is too.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@WalterKloover

Why limit it to references by biologists? Authors and comedians can express laws of form too!

Ack! Don’t say that so loudly! He’ll write another book!

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

A related question, prompted by the posts in the main thread: is it appropriate to say that a pseudoscientific loon has had “his ass handed to him on a platter” when that ass has been so sliced and diced as to be no longer recognizable as an ass? Or do we have to use some modified term like “processed ass food product”?

[Faizal_Ali]

@Puck_Mendelssohn

A related question: is it appropriate to say that a pseudoscientific loon has had “his ass handed to him on a platter” when that ass has been so sliced and diced as to be no longer recognizable as an ass? Or do we have to use some modified term like “processed ass food product”?

The unfortunate thing is this discussion was not initially presented as, and did not need to become, yet another battle in the ID Culture Wars. It could have been an opportunity for someone claiming to be interested in the philosophical implications of particular scientific ideas to correct some of his misunderstandings of those ideas. It didn’t work out that way, and I guess anyone who has been participating in or following the discussion can decide why that was.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

Well, it could have been, if the fellow had been the slightest bit interested in actual biology. I think that as his entire position depends upon ignorance of actual biology, the chances he’d want to watch its demolition were always poor. But as long as there are ignorant people, he will have his meal ticket.