Posted on 02/12/2005 4:24:09 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
Nick Matzke has also commented on this, but the op-ed is so bad I can't resist piling on. From the very first sentence, Michael Behe's op-ed in today's NY Times is an exercise in unwarranted hubris.
In the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design.
And it's all downhill from there.
Intelligent Design creationism is not a "rival theory." It is an ad hoc pile of mush, and once again we catch a creationist using the term "theory" as if it means "wild-ass guess." I think a theory is an idea that integrates and explains a large body of observation, and is well supported by the evidence, not a random idea about untestable mechanisms which have not been seen. I suspect Behe knows this, too, and what he is doing is a conscious bait-and-switch. See here, where he asserts that there is evidence for ID:
Rather, the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims.
This is where he first pulls the rug over the reader's eyes. He claims the Intelligent Design guess is based on physical evidence, and that he has four lines of argument; you'd expect him to then succinctly list the evidence, as was done in the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution FAQ on the talkorigins site. He doesn't. Not once in the entire op-ed does he give a single piece of this "physical evidence." Instead, we get four bald assertions, every one false.
The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature.
He then tells us that Mt Rushmore is designed, and the Rocky Mountains aren't. How is this an argument for anything? Nobody is denying that human beings design things, and that Mt Rushmore was carved with intelligent planning. Saying that Rushmore was designed does not help us resolve whether the frond of a fern is designed.
Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too.
No, this is controversial, in the sense that Behe is claiming it while most biologists are denying it. Again, he does not present any evidence to back up his contention, but instead invokes two words: "Paley" and "machine."
The Reverend Paley, of course, is long dead and his argument equally deceased, thoroughly scuttled. I will give Behe credit that he only wants to turn the clock of science back to about 1850, rather than 1350, as his fellow creationists at the Discovery Institute seem to desire, but resurrecting Paley won't help him.
The rest of his argument consists of citing a number of instances of biologists using the word "machine" to refer to the workings of a cell. This is ludicrous; he's playing a game with words, assuming that everyone will automatically link the word "machine" to "design." But of course, Crick and Alberts and the other scientists who compared the mechanism of the cell to an intricate machine were making no presumption of design.
There is another sneaky bit of dishonesty here; Behe is trying to use the good names of Crick and Alberts to endorse his crackpot theory, when the creationists know full well that Crick did not believe in ID, and that Alberts has been vocal in his opposition.
So far, Behe's argument has been that "it's obvious!", accompanied by a little sleight of hand. It doesn't get any better.
The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people part company. Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists' confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.
Oh, so many creationists tropes in such a short paragraph.
Remember, this is supposed to be an outline of the evidence for Intelligent Design creationism. Declaring that evolutionary biology is "no good" is not evidence for his pet guess.
Similarly, declaring that some small minority of scientists, most of whom seem to be employed by creationist organizations like the Discovery Institute or the Creation Research Society or Answers in Genesis, does not make their ideas correct. Some small minority of historians also believe the Holocaust never happened; does that validate their denial? There are also people who call themselves physicists and engineers who promote perpetual motion machines. Credible historians, physicists, and engineers repudiate all of these people, just as credible biologists repudiate the fringe elements that babble about intelligent design.
The last bit of his claim is simply Behe's standard misrepresentation. For years, he's been going around telling people that he has analyzed the content of the Journal of Molecular Evolution and that they have never published anything on "detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures", and that the textbooks similarly lack any credible evidence for such processes. Both claims are false. A list of research studies that show exactly what he claims doesn't exist is easily found.
The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. To evaluate this claim, it's important to keep in mind that it is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self-organization.
How does Behe get away with this?
How does this crap get published in the NY Times?
Look at what he is doing: he is simply declaring that there is no convincing explanation in biology that doesn't require intelligent design, therefore Intelligent Design creationism is true. But thousands of biologists think the large body of evidence in the scientific literature is convincing! Behe doesn't get to just wave his hands and have all the evidence for evolutionary biology magically disappear; he is trusting that his audience, lacking any knowledge of biology, will simply believe him.
After this resoundingly vacant series of non-explanations, Behe tops it all off with a cliche.
The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.
Behe began this op-ed by telling us that he was going to give us the contemporary argument for Intelligent Design creationism, consisting of four linked claims. Here's a shorter Behe for you:
The evidence for Intelligent Design.
That's it.
That's pathetic.
And it's in the New York Times? Journalism has fallen on very hard times.
This article was first published on Pharyngula and appears here by permission.
The ... uh, ultimate shoe re-location test would probably be regarded as a demonstration of insanity rather than free will. Your experiment would seem to fail, just as it approaches certainty. Free will, therefore, can never be demonstrated.
Pul-eeze would you get this straight, RWP: I am not some freaking computer running Unix!!!! And neither are you. Can we get that proposition clear in view, or what?
BTW your "judgment" in this matter pertains just as much to you as it does to me. So, what is it in your theory that qualifies you as an eminent professor of chemistry at a highly respected university? If your brain is doing all the work, then how come you are getting the paycheck? [Would you kindly "get real" here???]
You call it "the ghost in the machine?" Wasn't that Julian Huxley's insight? Have we not moved any farther from that fatuity by now, given the extraordinary achievements in science that have taken place since J. Huxley's time? (E.g., late nineteenth century???)
You wrote: "Thinking about yourself thinking just gives you several trips through your own navel; it doesn't reveal anything."
That is ridiculous B.S. on its face, RWP: The proposed exercise or experiment reveals everything about the way we think, if the person conducting it is really paying attention.
IMHO, unless we hope to continue to slide around on the surface of "expert opinion" that denies the fundamental reality of human experience in principle, we better figure out the way thinking is actually, legitimately done -- if only as an act of self-defense, not to put too fine a point on it. FWIW
Thank you so much for writing!
Perhaps I will.
"I challenged and I kept the Faith
The bleeding path alone I trod,
It darkens. Stand about my wraith,
and harbour me, almighty God."
Well, maybe that's precisely the problem, Physicist. On the other hand, having a highly active will might not get you a better result. I guess the point is that we need to know what is the sound basis for the exercise of will that won't (a) kill ourself and (b) won't kill anybody else. In due course. And just as trees bear fruit, causes have results. And it seems to me that mankind is steadily busy in the "causation business" these days (as usual), with effects that spread, not only to society, but also to the biosphere and presumably beyond.
The minute you say "I could have hardly done otherwise!," you have sold your freedom in principle. A human being cannot continue to be human if he does that.
I'm sorry, these remarks are probably taken as offensive, though I didn't intend that at all. I'm frankly tired, and need to get some sleep. Maybe I'll have a better idea in the morning.
I do wish you a good night, Physicist; and a better tomorrow. May God bless you.
OK, just tell me you're not running Windows XP. I couldn't handle it.
You call it "the ghost in the machine?" Wasn't that Julian Huxley's insight
Gilbert Ryle. It's of course merely a sardonic reference to Cartesian dualism. Is there anything intrinsic about it? It asks the question, must we think of ourselves as mind within a cage of matter, or is it just the way we were taught to think?
That is ridiculous B.S. on its face, RWP: The proposed exercise or experiment reveals everything about the way we think, if the person conducting it is really paying attention.
Since clearly a computer is capable of thinking about itself thinking about itself thinking, in what way does this recursion prove you are different from a computer? And computers mostly pay attention, unless some unthinking boor has run a huge processor-hogging job in the background.
I think 'experience' has everything to do with the way we've learned to interact with the world. These days, people are inclined to look at experience as a sort of movie, viewed by the homunculus inside their heads. I suspect that before TV took up so much of people's lives, people's experience was more verbal; reading Shakespeare, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that he (and his contemporaries) considered experience to be a stream of words, rather than a movie. Before that, experience was a stream of often frightening events, made sense of only in terms of the acts of capricious gods.
Detachment is often a respose to stress. I often wonder if Cartesian dualism isn't a response to the scary realization that we are usually at the mercy of external forces we can't control. So, you can crush my skull, but you can't crush me.
I'll make a confession to you BB. When I haven't eaten breakfast, about 11 a.m. I get really nasty. The glucose levels drop, and it changes me.
I agree, determinism is incompatible with aconservative philosophy and freedom.
Free will is a tricky debate because not everybody defines it the same way.
Unless you can induce a turtle to remove his shoe of his own free will, and place upon the head of the turtle immediately beneath him, and that turtle remove his shoe and place it upon the head of the turtle beneath HIM, and that turtle to.... and so on.
Not killed outright, But uuummmm yeah, common sense says they wouldn't have lasted too long.
They were weak & sick and tossed out into a strange wilderness, It's not like they could go to the nearest Caananite social services department and get on welfare/medicaid. They most certainly died of starvation or exposer or were eaten by wild animals within days.
I don't understand the arguement, Yeah I guess in most cases (though probably not this one because they probably would have died horribly over time) being exiled is better than being outright killed, But it's still not exactly a good thing.
HUH? Now every person who is in any sort of intellectual field is somehow under the evil influence of Darwin?
Science deals with facts, Sure there might be some speculation at 1st, But where ever the facts lead science will eventually follow. History and Sociology while yes they do deal with facts, their very nature means they will be always open for speculation and different interpretations by different people.
For example, Even if Charles Darwin never existed someone else would have come along seeing the same evidence and come up with same Theory of Evolution, while if someone say like Gibson who wrote "The Rise & Fall of the Roman Empire" never exsisted it's not likely someone would have come along and made the same exact conclusions he did.
And again, where is there any proof that Evolution had anything to do with this case?
String theory could successfully account for gravity and predict super-symmetric particles. But until a couple of years ago it had little connection with puzzles in physics. There were no results or concrete predictions to show off. It could have been nothing more than a beautiful mathematical construction.
Things changed in 1996. Andrew Strominger, then at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, and Cumrun Vafa from Harvard University, used string theory to "construct" a certain type of black hole, much the same way one can "construct" a hydrogen atom by jotting down the equations, derived from quantum mechanics, that describe an electron bound to a proton.
Strominger and Vafa confirmed a result derived by Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking back in the late 1970's. Bekenstein and Hawking found that the amount of disorder (or "entropy") in a special kind of black hole was very large. This was a surprising result, since no one could understand (and nor did the computations give any insight) how an object as simple as a black hole (which can be characterized simply by its mass and its spin) could have such a large amount of disorder within it.
As a result of building this special black hole using string theory, Strominger and Vafa were able to obtain the correct value for the disorder predicted by Bekenstein and Hawking. This result electrified the physics community! For the first time, a result derived with "classical physics" could be obtained from string theory. Even though the black holes for which the result was derived have very little in common with the black holes which are believed to sit in the middle of galaxies, this new computation illustrated the connection between strings and gravity. In addition, the computation provides insight into the physical reasons for the answer.
The dismissive reaction you are getting is almost amusing. Personally, I loved your thought experiment and would like to offer a few more for the Lurkers:
Consider the will to live: Imagine a dog whose muzzle is held to completely shut off the air. Or pull a fish out of the water and toss him onto the dry ground.
Consider the willfulness of choice: Imagine a live dog with a choice between a plate of lettuce or a plate of cooked steak. Or perhaps a mouse with a choice of a bottle cap or a tablespoon of peanut butter.
Consider willfulness in anticipation: Imagine tossing a stick for a retriever time and again and then moving the hand without releasing the stick. Or approach a bear cub with a mother bear standing nearby.
Not considering any of the above is also an act of free will.
Both of you, try reading Hilaire Belloc's The Servile State!It sounds like an interesting book. I promise to add it to my Wish List if jwalsh07 will add The Road to Serfdom to his. :-)Perhaps I will.
Actually, someone did. Not just evntually, but before Darwin published.
I was just last night reading a bit more about Darwin and Adam Smith. It seems that Darwin read a summary of Smith's theory before he read Malthus, and it was Smith, not Malthus that provided us with natural selection.
This is fairly well documented in Darwin's notebooks, which even he ignored in later life. I'm not sure why this doesn't get mentioned more, except that Smith isn't politically correct.
I don't see much choice in your examples. How about a cat climbing down from a tree. Have you ever watched? It's really interesting, particularly if there are lots of branches. A cat's preferred method of descending is head first, something that scares the willies out of me. My cats will climb down ladders head first, but you can tell they don't like it much. Their behavior looks exactly like that of a person doing something mildly frightening, like crossing a pond on stepping stones. Or climbing down from a great height.
Free will, or the impression of it, is most evident in situations where there are real choices. The more coersive the situation, the more predictible the response. If you want to observe something that looks like free will in animals, you have to put them in a situation where the outcome isn't predictable.
You're missing the point: it's not a box I have set up for myself. It's a box I deliberately tried to break free of. Only in retrospect, and through serious introspection, did I discover that I had not.
That's not to say that, if I thought about everything I did yesterday, there wouldn't be many moments about which I'd say, "how the heck did I come up with that?" But it's hard to rule out whether that's just a question of not thinking deeply enough to see the (Skinner) box.
"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." --Blaise Pascal
I hope you realize that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else in the near future is going to solve this problem.
What I have to offer are images and analogies. One of my favorite ways of thinking about consciousness is to consider dreams. Are we conscious during dreams? Silly question????
I don't know about you, but in the moments of awakening after a vivid dream, I have the impression I have been conscious. Often I have the impression that I have seen things that I could not possibly have ever seen in real life. Sometimes I have been flying, Peter Pan style. Other times I have been in houses that are similar to my childhood house, but impossibly large, and having rooms that don't exist.
Dreaming is an activity of the brain. All mammals dream. You can watch people and animals dream. You can record their brain waves and tell whether the focus of the dream is vision or movement.
Dreaming, if you assume the world is objectively real, is pure mental experience, unattached to the real world. But it is not unattached to the brain. The brain is doing what it usually does, but with sensory inputs shut down. It is, in a sense conscious and self-aware.
Now I am going to assert that people, more so than other animals, have the ability to dream while awake. We call it imagination. We can have multiple experiences simultaneously. We can respond to decision making situations by imagining multiple outcomes.
The ability to have multiple selves appears to be a defining trait of humans. I personally think some animals have this ability, but limited to the next second or two in time. We have language and culture, which expands the reach of our imagination.
But note that people differ greatly in their abilities, and under stress, our ability to imagine alternatives narrows.
Human freedom is an act of imagination. Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage -- because, at least some of us, can imagine and dream while awake.
I do not see any particular problem with having multiple instances of awareness or consciousness. It's a mystery, but it doesn't require the assumption that our brains have some magic that is totally missing from animal brains.
I think we have been mislead by a couple of bad analogies. For centuries, humans were distinguished from animals by their ability to reason. I happen to think reason is overrated. It is the easiest of all human activities to simulate with computers. In fact we are already obsolete in the arena of reason.
The computer as it is currently constructed, is a lousy analogy for the brain. Brains are not sequential in any sense that is analogous to what happens in a computer program. Brains do not have CPUs that are separate from memory. Brains correlate sensory inputs and responses "instantly". Well not instantly, but not in a linear, logical mode either. Anyone who argues has had the experience of saying something before knowing what he or she is going to say. Athletes do things without thinking. Brains are built first of all, to do. And do it quickly.
When we are thinking, we are doing in our imagination. Multiple instances of our dream selves are living out scenerios of past and future possibilities. It's quite a trick, but it is not qualitatively different from what animals do.
Freeper tortoise has assurred us that AI researches have a handle on what needs to be done to simulate this in silicon, but adds the stipulation that we can't build the hardware yet. I bet.
Watching an African lion stalk and then chase down an impala is also instructive. The lion is aware of himself and his prey, hiding and slowly moving toward his target. When he lunges for he prey, the race is on - the lion anticipating the impala's moves as it tries to make its escape.
Sports are instructive also - whether boxing or football or whatever - anticipating, analyzing, choosing, abstracting - all at a very high speed.
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