Subject: Re: JH: The Design Argument Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 11:37:03 -0700 From: "Brian Holtz" To: "Paul Filseth" wrote: > It's foolish to prefer "intelligent improbability reducer" to > "improbability reducer" because it's less likely. Who can you cite as saying that (A) is more likely than (A or B)? > There's no reason to prefer > "intelligent improbability reducer" to "unintelligent improbability > reducer" because you have no data pointing to intelligence. This indeed is the heart of the matter, regardless of the facile observation that "improbability reducer" is more likely than "intelligent improbability reducer". :-) I agree the data don't compel the conclusion of intelligent design, but I don't agree they rule it out. There are still around 20 fundamental dimensionless constants along with the various laws and edge conditions of cosmology, and reasonable people can argue that many of these seem tuned to allow life. One such list of 18 tunings is at http://www.reasons.org/resources/papers/astroevid.html, though I bet some of those can already be explained either by anthropic arguments (e.g 10, 12) or as strict consequences (e.g 17) of some other tuning. > > > even though you have an alternative hypothesis > > > that does have a case for being more likely than not. > > > > Is this alternative (B) or (A or B)? > > In this case it's (A or B or C or D), where A is an intelligent > improbability reducer, B is an unintelligent improbability reducer, > C is other ways to implement intelligence in other kinds of physics, > and D is parallel universes. That's an uninteresting "alternative" because it includes A. The interesting alternative is (B or C or D). Is it completely foolish to say (A) is more likely than (B or C or D)? > > I personally would bet on (B), but it's not (yet) completely foolish > > to bet on (A). > > That's not completely foolish -- [..] but it's no excuse to mistake > a premise for a conclusion derived by reasoning. I'm of course not saying that the evidence and argument for (A) are irrefutable. I'm merely disagreeing with your apparent assertion that the evidence is non-existent and the argument is completely fallacious. > > If it were, then you can be sure that (B) would not be phrased as > > "some unknown other explanation". :-) > > It isn't. The unintelligent improbability reducer has already > been expanded into "the not-yet-discovered unity of what we currently > think of as different laws, or some unknown other explanation". "Not yet discovered" is close enough to "some unknown other explanation" that I wouldn't want to try to defend your move here against a theist charge of hand-waving. :-) > it's not obvious that a possible explanation > deserves a boost in our estimate of its probability merely because > we're able to think of it. A theist could just as easily say that an unknown explanation doesn't deserve a boost merely because we haven't yet been able to think of it. Thinking of (A) is of course necessary for assigning it any significant probability, but I don't see anybody arguing that it's sufficient. > No, the weakest is the "Transcendental Argument for God". The > argument from design was the best they had, but Darwin shot it down. > The argument from fine-tuning of physics is not the same argument > as the argument from design, and it's weaker than the AfD was. It's still an argument from design, only it's based on a whole lot less (but far more subtle) design. Darwin gave the argument from design what I think is a fatal wound, but it's not dead yet (unlike e.g. the Anthropological argument). > they are all too weak to qualify as justification for an > inference. I agree the argument from design does not (and will likely never) have compelling force, but I still say it's different from the others in that we haven't put the last nail in its coffin. (You'll know we have when there exists rebuttal explanations for the coincidences like those listed by the theist I cited.) > "hypothesis A" is as > overspecified for the task of accounting for the data at hand as > "96 degrees" is for accounting for the evaporation of some water. Not at all. In your taxonomy of hypotheses you have only four phyla, whereas there are any number of temperature species that can account for evaporation. > > it (i.e. the current apparent design and the current absence > > of such a demonstration) is merely a reason not to consider such > > an inference to be completely foolish. > > So you can't exhibit a reason for the inference but you think > inferring it without reason isn't completely foolish? The "apparent design" is of course itself the prima facie reason theists give for inferring a designer. If there were absolutely no reason for a proposed inference, then of course that inference would be completely foolish. -- Brian.Holtz@sun.com Knowledge is dangerous. Take a risk: http://humanknowledge.net