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This is a response to betty's #657.

I've been away for over a week again as I have been out of town doing some contract work, so I apologize for the tardiness of my response.

On Nominalism, let me be clear. There is a difference between calling someone a "Nominalist" and calling an argument a "Nominalist" argument. I have never called Alamo-Girl or anyone else a Nominalist, though I have tried to pin Doctor Stochastic down on the "Universal Objective Truth vs. Nominalist" perspective without success. :-)

I repeat without reservation that Intelligent Design proposes a Nominalist argument when it postulates by definition, without proposing any scientific test which can disprove it, that there is a basic level of complexity in life that is "irreducible" and can only be the result of the work of an "Intelligent Designer." This is truth by definition, which makes it a Nominalist argument.

I am disappointed to see that my raising of the issue of Nominalism has been taken as a personal attack rather than engendering the response I really wished to see, which is an answer to the question as to how individuals such as betty and Alamo-Girl, who I clearly recognize are not Nominalists, could attach themselves to a blatantly Nominalist argument such as that proposed by Intelligent Design. I regard this as an intellectual inconsistency, since they clearly believe in universal truths.

...is an answer to the question as to how individuals such as betty and Alamo-Girl, who I clearly recognize are not Nominalists, could attach themselves to a blatantly Nominalist argument such as that proposed by Intelligent Design. I regard this as an intellectual inconsistency, since they clearly believe in universal truths.

Hello StJacques, and welcome back!

Forgive me, but I'm confused by your post. I do not conflate a "Nominalist" argument with an hypothesis or a conjecture. ID at this point in its development is following a conjecture, and it seems a quite reasonable one to me from an empirical standpoint: that there is a "designed quality" or a kind of "patterning" built into the world, which is a conclusion that can be reached simply by observing the world. ID simply wants to find out how to account for this. It has not produced any kind of a "final" theory. In fact, I think it may be still trying to refine its methods; it is clearly early in its developmental process. What it has done thus far is to open up the conceptual space in which science can proceed to do its work.

If it were at a stage in its research where it proposed a full-blown theory, absent experimental tests, then you might have a point. But it hasn't done that, and I don't expect it will any time soon.