Posted on 06/13/2005 7:50:19 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
you haven't asnwered my questions, and, yes, you did commit the fallacies.
Of course. the response is a legitimate analysis of the fallacies. what would be interesting is to read your reasons for bringing up the relations if, in fact, you were not going down the road of the genetic fallacy.
Because your questions have nothing to do with me or what I've posted. If you want to have imaginary conversations with imaginary posters who post imaginary things for you to pick apart, be my guest, but I see no reason to participate in such a thing.
...and, yes, you did commit the fallacies.
So you imagine, but I notice you've been wholly unable to point to where I did that, and every time you try, you resort to inventing things I didn't say in order to make your case.
I leave the argument of logical fallacies to y’all.
But, er, on the semantics issue, I do indeed mean “prejudice” and not “presupposition”. A presupposition merely takes something for granted. In mathematics and physics these are formalized as axioms and postulates.
But prejudice means to “pre-judge”. It means that a judgment has been made before the evidence is heard. This is what I aver science must not do and the reason “methodological naturalism” causes tunnel-vision. It is why I appeal for neutrality in all of science.
If the intelligent design hypothesis made the presupposition that the “intelligent cause” of “certain features” of “living things” was an agent – and could not be a phenomenon as well, such as emergent or fractal properties – then it would indeed be ideological or theological in an unspecified sense - and therefore the intelligent design objections and hypothesis have no place in publicly funded schools, by legal precedent wrt to the establishment clause of the Constitution.
Truly, the intelligent design hypothesis cannot and does not pre-judge the designer. From the beginning, the movement has been “about” getting all of science to elevate to the level of mathematics and physics by removing the prejudice of methodological naturalism, i.e. that the causation of a ‘thing’ must be entirely corporeal.
The objective is crucial at this point in science because methodological naturalism would pre-judge the investigations into information (successful communications), autonomy, semiosis, complexity and intelligence – all of which are necessary to give a complete picture of the origin of species. Fortunately, mathematicians and physicists are involved in all of these and thus will not limit themselves to the corporeal explanations, i.e. they will also consider information, mathematical structures, forms, etc.
I certainly agree with tame that everyone has a worldview which is the prism by which they categorize and value knowledge. It is a most fascinating subject all on its own.
Nevertheless, I aver we should expect no less of biology than we do of math and physics, epistemologically speaking. That is why I support the intelligent design hypothesis.
It is not a replacement for the theory of evolution, it only speaks to “certain features” not “all features” and it does not argue that both mutations and natural selection occur. Rather it posits that “certain features” of the universe and of living things are best explained by “intelligent cause” rather than an “undirected process”.
On the purity of that hypothesis, I assert that the intelligent design hypothesis belongs in the mainstream of science and in the classroom – that the “intelligent cause” is not “pre-judged” to be either an agent or a phenomenon, much less a particular agent or a particular phenomenon.
As we have seen on this thread, many mainstream scientists already accept the possibility that self-organizing complexity can result in the emergent property of intelligence (awareness and problem-solving) which itself may contribute to its own self-organization. That is a valid candidate for “intelligent cause” in the intelligent design hypothesis.
Perhaps in a short while these same mainstreamers will entertain the notion that intelligence may be a fractal property as well – an undecideability like wave/particle duality. That too would be a valid candidate for “intelligent cause”.
And many others in interpreting the evidence may be inclined to an external agency or factors rather than self-organizing complexity. Moreover, such a scientific investigation does not and should not prejudge much less personify the agency. Interpretation is the proper domain of philosophy and theology.
I apologize. I should have pinged you on the above post 324 to tame, general_re and betty boop. My response there goes to some of your concerns.
And yes, I raised Galileo on purpose - for the cause you describe. It was the ideological/theological prejudice of geocentricity which got him into so much real trouble.
Again I assert there should be no prejudice in science, science must be neutral with regard to ideology and theology. Leave it to the philosophers and theologians to find "meaning" in the evidence.
I have a few more for your list, to encourage believers to keep looking but never to let science "get you down":
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified [him] not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. - Romans 1:20-21
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane [and] vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace [be] with thee. Amen. - 1 Timothy 6:20-21
Perhaps, but it seems equally clear that the vast majority of ID people do exactly that. I mean, on the one hand, I'm told that ID theory makes no assumptions about the nature of the designer, and on the other hand, I see that ID theorists are all making assumptions about the designer. And not only are they all making assumptions about the designer, but they're all making the same assumptions about the designer.
From the beginning, the movement has been “about” getting all of science to elevate to the level of mathematics and physics by removing the prejudice of methodological naturalism, i.e. that the causation of a ‘thing’ must be entirely corporeal.
A brave attempt, but unfortunately, that makes no sense. Mathematics is entirely abstract - to talk in terms of "corporeal", or even causality, is a reification error. And physics very much does presuppose that the causes of events are measurable and testable and otherwise able to be examined - that's what science does. Science is about material things and material causes, and does not deal with the immaterial, the non-corporeal, the imaginary, or the wishful, no matter how much we might desire otherwise. It's simply the wrong tool for the job, if those things are what interests us. It's of no use whatsoever in examining such things - you might as well use a yardstick to take your temperature, for all the good it will do you.
Excellent passages. Thank you!
Isa 55:11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper [in the thing] whereto I sent it.
No doubt many believers are encouraged by the intelligent design movement and embrace it because it is seen as a confirmation of what they already believe to be true - and always believed to be true, even if the face of the methodological naturalism of evolution theory.
Conversely, many atheists are encouraged by the theory of evolution and embrace it because it is seen as a confirmation of what they already believe to be true - and always believed to be true, before the theory was accepted by the mainstream of science.
Both are interpretations and have nothing to do with the underlying science except in the eyes of the beholder, i.e. the worldviews.
Just like mathematics will never resolve the Aristotle v Plato debate, it is a matter of ideological interpretation.
Space/time itself is non-corporeal per se - it is geometry. And yet it is the structure (and in my view, the physical causation) of all corporeals - whether matter or energy, whether field or particle.
A Spiritually inspired benediction, bondserv! Thank you so very much!
"Does anyone really want to value a hypothesis by the ideology/theology of its supporters?"
The problem with that argument is that it equates Galileo's and Newton's religious convictions with the convictions of ID supporters. With the former scientists, their religious convictions were not central to their theories. It would have made no difference for Galileo if he had been an atheist when he was working out laws of motion. The religious convictions of ID supporters on the other hand is basic to their hypothesis.
Excellent observations, Alamo-Girl! Thank you!
Thank you for sharing your views!
Obviously this distinction is critical. No way are "presupposition" and "prejudice" synonyms.... Thank you, Alamo-Girl, for making the distinctions between them explicit.
Certainly world views or cosmologies are at the very foundation of our thought. The point is to become aware of them and how they affect one's methods, reasoning, and conclusions. This requires a rigorous self-analysis -- which is NOT the same thing as "introspection."
Socrates urged, "Know thyself." In effect, this is to become capable of objectively recognizing the habits, forms, and tendencies of one's own thought processes. Anyhoot, if one can't get control over one's presuppositions, one is skewing one's analytical findings right from the get-go. JMHO FWIW
Thank you so much, Alamo-Girl, for your excellent post/essay!
Lurkers might be interested in marron's insights as well as he posted on your Cartesian Split thread!
By your argument, the theory of gravity must lead practically to atheism.
And is actually stated as such on their web pages and by some Kansas school board members.
This also makes no sense - science is inherently an interpretive exercise. It is how we make sense of the world around us, how we interpret our senses and our experiences with respect to the material world.
Evidently you have no particular use for theoretical physics, differential geometry, mathematics of communications, etc. String theory, brane theory, cosmology and the ilk are formulated well in advance of the methodology to test them. Ditto for geometries - Riemmannian geometry being the classic example having been developed long before Einstein was able to pull it off the shelf to describe space/time in general relativity.
You are reifying mathematics. Mathematics is an abstraction that we impose on the world to make sense of it. It does not exist in the absence of mathematicians any more than "species" exist in the absence of biologists. Both of them are nothing more than our shorthand which we find useful to describe some aspect of the universe. You can drop all the rocks you like off of all the bridges and towers you like, but neither the rock not the planet know anything about 1/2 g t2 - they just do what they do, and we come along afterwards and use the math as an approximate description of how the rock behaves. And it is an approximation - go find a tall place, measure the height and solve the equation d = 1/2 g t2 for t. Then start dropping rocks and notice how your clever math doesn't appear to be very precise when compared to reality - the approximation neglects drag for one thing. Planets know nothing about elliptical orbits and how clever it is that they should orbit about a common center of graity - they just do what they do, and the mathematics is simply how we describe it after the fact. Math does not exist in any real sense, certainly not in the way that rocks and planets exist. The only existence it has is as an abstract language - just like all language, really - that we use to describe things. To say that we want to make evolution as "real" as mathematics...you might as well say you want to make it as "real" as poetry. The world is the way it is, and both the theory of evolution and Cartesian geometry are our abstract attempts to understand the world as it is. They are both equally real, or equally unreal, because neither of them have any independent existence beyond us, the users of those languages.
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