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Intelligent Design: Bad Science, Bad Philosophy, or Both? Taner Edis Truman State University www2.truman.edu/~edis Our response to creationism We say creationism is not science––not just that creationists do not practice science, but that the very idea of supernatural design is out of bounds for science. We say creation is an essentially religious or at least metaphysical notion. Science is all about natural explanations for natural phenomena. Totally different. 2003 Intelligent Design 2 Interfering philosophers Some philosophers give sophisticated version. Robert Pennock: science must follow methodological naturalism (MN). Excludes ID, protects liberal religion. No ID in science class! 2003 Intelligent Design 3 But is science naturalistic? Philosophers dictating what science must be do not have a great track record. Historically strange: Biologists adopted evolution as better explanation––they didn’t suddenly decide creation was not allowed. Explanations involving design and intent not odd, e.g. in history. Nothing wrong with ID in biology as a hypothesis. 2003 Intelligent Design 4 Practical naturalism Philosophical ID supporters attack MN, as illegitimately excluding ID. They’re right. Politically bad move as well. Better view: Naturalism is the most successful, best-supported broad description of the world. We expect this to continue. ID could be scientifically correct. It just happens to be wrong. 2003 Intelligent Design 5 ID is a scientific mistake Protecting the integrity of science education should be the job of scientists, more than philosophers! The strongest reason to keep ID out of secular education is that ID proponents do make scientific claims, and they consistently get it wrong. Ask scientists how they explain complexity. 2003 Intelligent Design 6 Bottom-up naturalism 2003 Physical science takes a “bottomup” view. No “life force”; no “molecular soul” to give properties of H2O. Complexity is built up on the simple. Life Biology No life force Mole cules Chemistry No magic Particles & Forces Intelligent Design Physics 7 Chance and Necessity 2003 Physics relies on chance and necessity. Radioactive decays happen at random. H2O structure explained by physical laws; QM. Combinations of chance and necessity! Intelligent Design 8 Rules and Dice 2003 Chance and necessity are inseparable. Intelligent Design 9 Complexity? 2003 How, then, do we explain complexity? Theories of thermodynamics (self-organization), computation, evolution etc. All are related, and all do their work through chance and necessity. Life becomes mechanical? Intelligent Design 10 ID: A separate principle 2003 Intelligent Design 11 “Specified complexity” William Dembski, mathematician and philosopher. Leading theorist of ID. ID irreducible form of explanation, distinct from chance & necessity. ID is a revolution. 2003 Intelligent Design 12 Dembski’s claims Both designed artifacts and organisms exhibit special order: specified complexity. Chance and necessity cannot generate SC, or information. Intelligence is a separate principle. Blind mechanisms (like those of Darwinian evolution) cannot explain life. Artificial Intelligence is impossible. 2003 Intelligent Design 13 Testing for Design Gün aydinlar! Bugün h ava iyi, ancak yarin daha kötü ol acak gibi. Bulut çok, ama ne yapar, belli degil. contingency contingency F G m1m 2 r12 complexity specification 2003 Intelligent Design 14 Why computers can’t create print 2003 Gün aydinlar! Bugün h ava iyi, ancak yarin daha kötü ol acak gibi. Bulut çok, ama ne yapar, belli degil. create Programming and input determine the output of a computer. No new information added. Intelligent Design 15 What about chance? Chance outcomes are not determined by input and programming. And Darwinian variation-and-selection relies on random mutations which might work better… Dembski says nothing changes. In that case, the SC (information) is extracted from the selection criteria. 2003 Intelligent Design 16 How are we creative? Humans are truly creative––we are flexible, not bound by pre-programmed rules. We always might figure out a new way to do things. Gödelian critique of AI: Any system of rules is rigid; it has blind spots. Dembski’s SC + this No mechanism can be creative, including Darwin’s. 2003 Intelligent Design 17 Where is ID mistaken? All the previous claims are wrong. Approach AI aspect first: how can we get flexibility and creativity without magic? ID, and Gödelian arguments, demand that humans are nonalgorithmic, beyond computer programs. This can be achieved by combining programs (rules) with randomness. 2003 Intelligent Design 18 Game theory 2003 In games where the opponent can adapt to a set strategy and exploit it, occasional random behavior can be the best strategy. Not bound by rules. Novelty, unpredictability come from randomness. Intelligent Design 19 Completeness Theorem All functions are partly random (Edis 1998). The only tasks beyond rules and randomness (chance and necessity) are those needing infinite information. We have no way to do these. Any human output, including that with specified complexity, can be produced by mechanisms including chance. 2003 Intelligent Design 20 ID cannot work! 2003 We know what is beyond mechanisms. Not flexibility, not creativity, not specified complexity. Intelligence itself must be built out of chance and necessity. Not a separate principle! Intelligent Design 21 Darwinian Creativity How, then, can randomness give real creativity? Biologists have already solved this problem. The Darwinian mechanism does exactly this––creates information (Schneider 2000). Darwinian thinking has become common in other fields concerning creativity––in AI, and cognitive and brain sciences. 2003 Intelligent Design 22 Darwin takes over the brain 2003 Our own intelligent designs are enabled by Darwinian processes taking place within our brains! Intelligent Design 23 Dembski’s mistake Dembski thinks of evolution as solution to a preset problem. Evolution is no such thing. What is “fittest” continually changes, depending on the organisms themselves. There is no preset or final goal. ID is completely out of touch with today’s science concerning complexity. 2003 Intelligent Design 24 Creationism is futile In Darwin’s time, we could still say intelligence was a principle separate from chance and necessity; but the evidence was that life diversified by blind mechanisms. Today, we can again notice that artifacts and organisms are alike. This is because intelligence itself is absorbed in chance and necessity. Intelligence is itself Darwinian! 2003 Intelligent Design 25 ID gets it wrong! We can see ID has it wrong about complexity, and we see this by doing good, ordinary science––not just philosophy. Politically difficult to say ID is like the flat earth, since ID expresses deep theistic intuitions about divine design. Nevertheless, scientists should at least stand up and say we know better. 2003 Intelligent Design 26 Shameless plugs Chapter in Taner Edis, The Ghost in the Universe, (Prometheus, 2002). In preparation: essays by scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers, criticizing ID. 2003 Intelligent Design 27 My web site www2.truman.edu/~edis Contains all sorts of articles on ID, creationism and other topics, including the slides of this talk. My e-mail is [email protected] 2003 Intelligent Design 28