From ResearchID.org

• Name: Alex
• Occupation: student - currently doing third year mathematics
• Location: UK
• Hobbies: wasting time
• Interests: anything geeky

Disclaimers:

• My philosophical leanings are not in favour of ID, but I'll do my best to keep them in check on this wiki (and I hope I'm enough of a man to change my opinion if proven wrong). Please do pick me up on it if I overstep the bounds
• As a mathematical type I am a fully-qualified pedant, so apologies in advance for my constantly requesting precise definitions :)

If you need any help with maths, give me a yell. I'm no information theorist but I've studied enough of the basic material to give a coherent answer 9 times out of 10.

Contents 1 Random stuff 1.1 Quotes 1.2 The Vise Strategy 2 Suggestions 3 Designer Suggestions 4 Original research 5 Teaching ID 6 What makes a good argument 6.1 Dialectic 6.2 Rhetoric 6.3 Science 6.4 Mathematics 6.5 Evolution 7 AFK

Random stuff

Quotes

(Feel free to yell at me if you feel these quotes are a little too pointed)

"Today, at the dawn of the new century, nothing is more certain than that Darwinism has lost its prestige among men of science. It has seen its day and will soon be reckoned a thing of the past."
Eberhard Dennert, At the Deathbed of Darwinism, 1904.

"Evolutionists think the former is correct, creationists accept the latter view."
Of Pandas and People (1987, version 1)

"Evolutionists think the former is correct, cdesign proponentsists accept the latter view."
Of Pandas and People (1987, version 2) - the first book to systematically use the phrase Intelligent Design

"It is my professional opinion, based on my original research, study, and teaching, that creation-science is as scientific as evolution...It is my opinion, although not in the area of my expertise, that creation-science is as nonreligious as evolution.... Creation-science means origin through abrupt appearance in complex form, and includes biological creation, biochemical creation (or chemical creation), and cosmic creation. Evolution-science is equivalent to evolution. Evolution is generally understood by scientists (although some would disagree) to include biological evolution (or organic evolution) from simple life to all plants and animals, biochemical evolution (or chemical evolution or prebiotic evolution of the first life), and cosmic evolution (including stellar evolution) (of the universe). Creation-science does not include as essential parts the concepts of catastrophism, a world-wide flood, a recent inception of the earth or life, from nothingness (ex nihilo), the concept of kinds, or any concepts from Genesis or other religious texts."
Dean Kenyon, affidavit filed during Edwards vs. Aguillard

"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Carl Sagan

The Vise Strategy

I do love a good Socratic dialogue. Being rather bored of the irritating programming task that I'm supposed to be working on, I've scribbled out my responses to Dembski's Vise strategy that I saw mentioned on this site.

I attempted to answer them pretty much on the spot, without doing a massive amount of behind-the-scenes research. That means that some bits, particularly the stuff about the Cambrian explosion, are very sketchy. Note to self: read "Origin of Phyla". However, I'm fairly sure I've managed to kill a couple of the contradictions that Dembski apparently considered to be show-stoppers.

I would appreciate commentary on my answers, and further questions are very welcome. This sort of interrogatory dialogue is extremely helpful for making sure that my beliefs are internally consistent.

Suggestions

(Note: if suggestions disappear from this page that means I've retracted them - if you were arguing against them, feel free to celebrate victory :P)

• ID has tended to be associated with the daftness that was creationism in the mind of the scientific community (and, IMO, with good reason), and it's important to distance yourselves from that. The idea that ID represented a "big tent" is in my experience extremely worrying to scientists - if there's room for more than one distinct point of view in a scientific "tent", that usually means you haven't been conducting enough experiments. Evolutionary biologists, by contrast, are actively working to shrink the range of plausible viewpoints available to EB's proponents - for example, recently the hypothesis that sympatric speciation can't occur was finally laid to rest. I'd say that that attitude was a necessary condition for being considered scientific.

Relative to other scientific views on origins, ID is a very modest claim; it currently only addresses a very limited range of possible subjects. This makes many views possible. It seems to me that EB has many tents: Darwinism, Modern Synthesis, neo-Darwinism, Punctuated Equilibrium, holists, structuralists, theistic evolution, and most recently symbiogenic reorganization. If EB is large enough to simultaneously muster the views of Kenneth Miller, a practising Roman Catholic who believes in God, and Richard Dawkins, a professed athiest who claims that evolution does away with God, surely it suffers from the same illness. If the big tent of ID is a problem seems like anti-design views of EB have the same problem. -- JosephCCampana 14:55, 2 April 2006 (CDT)

As I understand the terms, Darwinism and theistic evolution (and, equivalently, the views of Dawkins and Miller) are both philosophical viewpoints that do not make any scientific claims that aren't also made by evolutionary biology itself. Evolutionary biology does rule out almost all philosophical viewpoints that do make such claims - Raelianism, Scientology, Young-Earth Creationism, Vedic Creationism and the myriad tribal myths and legends. Evolutionary biology also rules out almost all naturalistic origins claims, for example Lamarckism - it certainly doesn't just attempt to rule out design and stop there.

The Modern Synthesis (aka neo-Darwinism?) and Punctuated Equilibrium are (if I understand correctly) both viewpoints relating to which evolutionary factors are more potent, and that's something that scientists are actively working to pin down - ideally, there will eventually only be one viewpoint as to which factors are the most potent in any given situation. It's not an example of an evolutionary big tent; it's an example of an area where the work is in progress. The ID movement, to the best of my knowledge, has shown little interest in pinning down the specifics of the development of life in this fashion - in fact, Dembski has specifically stated that ID is not a mechanistic theory. This would be unacceptable to most scientists - without mechanisms, without any sort of detail, how can you predict what you'll find next?

I have no idea what holism, structuralism and symbiogenetic reorganisation are - I'll look 'em up and get back to you. -- Corkscrew 15:23, 2 April 2006 (CDT)

• Would there be any merit in my doing a page on scientific concepts like predictions, hypotheses, theories, etc? The caveat is that it would be partly framed in terms of how evolutionary biology does things, since that's one of the areas of science with which I'm most familiar.

If you think a clarifying page would be helpful for researching intelligent design, I welcome you to do so. :) -- JosephCCampana 14:56, 2 April 2006 (CDT)

I think it would be useful to help people (not least myself) get their heads round these words mean and how their importance arises from the central goals of science. The completed version is below - what do you think of it? -- Corkscrew 15:23, 2 April 2006 (CDT)

Any thoughts at all? If it's OK I'll probably try to find somewhere appropriate to copy it across to, but if there's large sections that need rewriting (either for readability or because of my biases showing through) then it'd be better to get that out of the way before it goes on show. -- Corkscrew 06:35, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

Sorry, I've been working on the Category Pages (Special:Categories). I like your work, I think it's helpful. Once I finish with Specification, I'll be starting to look into the Phil. of Science again, so I'll be making additions/changes to your work, keep an eye on it to make sure it stays cogent.

I think your work here should have it's own page in the FreeStyle section. Would you like to move it there? -- JosephCCampana 06:53, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

You mean like a FreeStyle:Corkscrew page? -- Corkscrew 07:38, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

More like: The Structure of a Scientific Concept -- JosephCCampana 07:42, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

OK, have transferred it across and am working on my next commentary. It's oriented round showing what sort of arguments scientists won't accept and why. You may decide that it's not suitable for public consumption, but I think it raises important issues.

Currently all of it but the last bit needs fleshing it out, and that's being used as a dumping ground for the list of "arguments not to use" that I've been carrying round in my head.

Designer Suggestions

• How about a page on "defining the designer", to comment on apparent lower and upper bounds to the resources and abilities of the proposed designers of biological and cosmological complexity? My understanding is that the absence of such research is one of the things that really bugs many scientists about ID. In particular, it's noticeable that even daftness like this essay on detecting the presence of angels and demons got a lot of joking praise, along the lines of "at last, someone's actually going into detail on what the designer is...". Without some discussion of the Designer's characteristics, there's no chance of ID ever becoming predictive.

Part of that frustration also arises from the fact that the vast majority of ID proponents are fairly evangelical Christians, so the thinly-veiled implication always seems to be that the Designer is in fact the Christian God. I'm not sure whether an attempt to pin down the Designer's attributes would alleviate or confirm that concern, but either way at least it'd be out in the open. -- Corkscrew 08:05, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Since ID theory is currently dealing with conceptualization, not actualization, I'm not sure what, if anything, can be said about the designer(s). Critics can lament all the day long about lack of actualization and predictions, but until we understanding what we're talking about, predictions are impossible or not of much use. We have to understand what we are dealing with before we can predict what it will do. From our Defining Intelligent Design page, it seems like the only thing we can say about the designer(s) is what is known from the effects of intelligence – congruent to the physical limitations of the universe. This is why I am spending so much time on that 'defining' page; I know that all of our explanatory and predictive research will proceed, in some form, from this page.

I'm still hashing through Dembski's specification document in order to further develop the 'defining' page. It's a slow process, though. I have precious few moments during the day that I am not working at my job, sitting in class, or studying for tests. Dembski has some interesting points in his specification doc; I'm enjoying it. I realize now that we need to generate some good material in the defining page about material patterns and their relation to information and intelligence.

You are welcomed to have a go at the designer(s), not sure that it's worth doing at this point. I think our time would be better spent trying to grapple with the reality of intelligence and how it may, and may not, uniquely interact with the physical universe. -- JosephCCampana 08:36, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Fair enough. Any sort of timeline as to when it would be appropriate to start discussing this in depth? In the meantime I might create a freestyle page for braindump purposes.

Please see: ResearchID.org:Inceptual timeline of content generation -- JosephCCampana 13:23, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Off-topic: the article you linked to said But the ID critic appears to take the question further and now wants to know the specifics about how the biological feature was designed. That is, how was ID implemented? While this is an interesting question, we have to be realistic. That is, how does one determine the actual procedure that implemented intelligent design billions of years ago? Isn't this somewhat in contradiction with the ID claim that the level of detail provided for, say, the evolution of the bacterial flagellum is insufficient? -- Corkscrew 12:09, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

The level of detail provided within the Darwinian or neo-Darwinian perspective is not ID's disagreement. ID's claim is that the blind and random details provided (both quantity and quality) are themselves incapable of attaining the complexity we see in the cosmos and in bios.

Original research

• Would it be appropriate to make it clear in the ResearchID.org:About page that the term "research" refers to collation of information rather than original research? Or do we have original research in the pipeline? I mention this cos I'm fairly sure that most scientists visiting this site will get completely the wrong impression. -- Corkscrew 13:13, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Already covered long ago. It seems like most people who see ID as speculative are not going to come here trusting that our research is confirmed. Given the youthfulness of ID, it would not be possible to do research without using some degree of originality. Original research is fine, we have a page banner for original research:

Original research Attention! This page contains information or ideas that, to our knowledge, are original. Please use with great prudence.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this. -- JosephCCampana 13:33, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Teaching ID

I've been trying to think through what the requirements would be for teaching about ID in science class. I'll list a few point below - feel free to eviscerate them if you think they're dodgy (I'd be surprised if at least one of them isn't dodgy).

• The teacher must not explicitly or implicitly suggest that ID is endorsed by the scientific community. In practice, since the teacher is a representative of the scientific community, this will probably require an explicit statement that ID is not endorsed by the scientific community.

• The scientific community should not be denigrated, nor its authority in scientific matters undermined. This could be achieved by, for example, explaining why it is that scientists don't generally consider ID to be valid science. This boils down to the following beliefs about ID that are widely held by the mainstream scientific community in the relevant fields:
  • That many ID arguments (for example irreducible complexity) are arguments from ignorance
  • That many ID arguments (for example specified complexity) are mathematically dodgy
  • That many ID arguments (for example the claim that bacterial flagella can't evolve) are contradicted by the weight evidence
  • That no ID arguments allow for any testable predictions to be made
  • That many key ID proponents (for example Dembski and Wells) are apparently motivated by religious rather than scientific goals

(Note: I'm not trying to denigrate ID here - as far as I can tell it is factually accurate that these beliefs are held by most members of the mainstream scientific community in relevant fields)

The goal could be less controversially achieved by merely mentioning that the mainstream scientific community has a history of being consistently more correct than other groups, but that could give rise to accusations of argumentum ad verecundiam (argument from authority)

• ID should not be given special status in comparison to other speculative claims.

The problem then is that I can't see any way to teach ID according to these that wouldn't involve completely trashing it, which I doubt is something ID proponents would be particularly happy with, and that wouldn't involve spending time on every single controversy under the Sun, which would be an horrific waste of time.

What makes a good argument

(Is it appropriate to turn this into a freestyle page?)

I'm at work right now, let me take a look at all of this material tonight, then we'll make some articles with it. -- JosephCCampana 11:23, 7 April 2006 (CDT)

There are two distinct ways in which an argument can be considered "good". These are generally referred to as the rhetorical and dialectic approaches. I hope to give some insight into the distinction between the two, and how they relate to science.

Dialectic

The approach known as dialectic reasoning is a hybrid of inductive and deductive logic. It proceeds from premisess and data, and attempts to derive solid conclusions from these. Broadly speaking, good dialectic arguments are those that will only work if their claim is actually true. A dialectician will generally put some effort into discovering the premises that he/she unconsciously uses and testing them for validity.

• The main advantage of dialectic is that it makes it virtually impossible to defend a falsehood
• The main disadvantage of dialectic is that its formal structure renders it very unappealing to most people

Rhetoric

The approach known as rhetoric has one stated goal: to convince the audience that one's position is the best. To this end, an accomplished rhetorician will employ not only the tools of dialectic, but also a range of other techniques that a dialectician would class as fallacy (see the Fallacy Files for a fairly comprehensive list). A good rhetorician will in general put some effort into disguising the premises that he/she unconsciously uses so as not to have any errors in them pointed out.

• The main disadvantage of rhetoric is that it is very easy to defend a falsehood - in fact, rhetoric positively endorses it if articulating that falsehood improves your long-term position.
• The main advantage of rhetoric is that it's very effective at convincing people

Science

Science is an investigative tool that's used to determine how the universe around us works. As such, it has historically tended to be very focused on dialectic reasoning, most recently in the very structured form found in journals. Scientists will generally resist use of rhetorical techniques, either by themselves or by others.

This approach presents an interesting paradox - people following the scientific method are in general vastly more likely to be right about an issue than people taking a purely rhetorical approach, yet the latter are vastly more likely to be able to convince spectators that their claims are valid. This has been the apparent cause of a number of challenges against established science, particularly in politically-controversial areas such as immunology (AIDS denial), climatology (global warming) and religion (the efficacy of prayer). Origins science has in general been one of the worst-afflicted areas, with the result that many scientists are extremely cautious about accepting claims in this area that would appear to support religious belief.

Mathematics

Mathematics proceeds similarly to science, except that it is limited exclusively to inductive arguments based on clearly-defined premises. Mathematical arguments are rigidly formalised to an extent not seen in any other field.

One of the key features of a good mathematical argument is that each step used in coming to the conclusion should be decomposable into substeps, and subsubsteps, and so on until each such component of the argument can be demonstrated to follow directly from the premise. For example, a mathematical argument made about fluid dynamics will generally involve big leaps of logic - for it to be valid, it must be possible to prove these claims in terms of differential equations, which would be provable in terms of functional analysis, which would be provable in terms of set theory and so on.

If someone presents you with an argument that can't be precisely broken down in this fashion, there's a very good chance that that argument is wrong. This is because the reason for this very precise approach is that it is extremely effective at catching mistakes - a single weak link in a mathematical argument can completely destroy the truth of the conclusion, so mistakes aren't something that mathematicians can afford to make. If an argument cannot be broken down in this fashion, that will generally mean that the proponent either is not that good at maths or is attempting to mislead (deliberately or otherwise). Either way, it's probably not right.

Evolution

I'm going to present a few rhetorical arguments that are often employed against evolutionary biology, with a quick discussion of why each is not a valid dialectic argument.

I ain't no monkey man

Despite being the most obviously fallacious example, this is probably the argument that convinces the most people. In general, humans will prefer to believe that humans have a special place in the universe. Whether this is true or not is not a scientifically answerable question (it's not falsifiable and has yet to be verified), but this intuitive idea has been used to great rhetorical effect against evolution, even amongst very smart people.

The fallacy is, of course, that just because you don't like the idea doesn't mean it isn't true. It's interesting to note that a broadly similar line of argument has been used against heliocentrism (and in fact is still used in this role today).

Stuff doesn't change that much (i.e. "microevolution occurs but not macroevolution")

This argument appeals to our Platonic view of species, or groups of species, as being distinct entities in their own right. This black-and-white viewpoint is factually inaccurate - there is no sharp distinction between taxonomic terms like genus, species and variety. However, this statement can be rhetorically defended from falsification by varying the meaning of "that much". For example, if a proponent is presented with an example of speciation occurring (of which there are many), they could claim that they were only referring to genus-level changes. If presented with a well-documented genus-level change*, they could push the dividing line up to family, then to order, then to class, then to phylum.

The most egregious example I've seen along these lines was the claim that, whilst finches might vary greatly in appearance, we never observe one evolve into a bald eagle. The fact that finches and bald eagles aren't in the same species, or genus, or family, or even order, suggests that this is in no way incompatible with evolution - changes at that level can be expected to take millions of years. A more amusing example is that, when presented with a continuous range of fossil skulls with humans at one end and apes at the other, any creationist will happily pick a dividing line with humans on one side and apes on the other - but in general no two creationists will pick exactly the same point.

This argument could be made valid by specifying a distinct cut-off point and providing strong evidence in support of its proposed inviolability.

Evolution is just a theory

This argument conflates the scientific definition of "theory" (an hypothesis that has survived extremely rigorous attempts to falsify it) with the layman's definition of "theory" (a conjecture). The fallacy here is best illustrated by counterexample: gravity is also "just" a theory, but that doesn't mean you'd be happy to jump off a skyscraper.

Information can't increase

This is an interesting argument in a number of ways. The basic problem is that the term "information", without an explicit definition, is extremely fuzzy and can be interpreted in a broad range of ways. Generally, when this argument is presented to the general public, they will assume that "information" refers to "data with meaning", which is a subjective quantity so probably won't be produced by objective processes. This impression can be reinforced by references to volumes of Shakespeare or similar.

However, whilst "data with meaning" can't really be increased by evolution, there is no evidence that biological systems possess much of this sort of information. There is also no evidence that any more rigorously-defined form of information (such as CSI) cannot increase - to the best of my knowledge, this is not something that's been rigorously tested. It is explicitly verifiable that many other versions of information, most interestingly "data that does something", can be generated by evolutionary processes. Thus, the attempt to use this statement to disprove evolution will in general be fallacious, despite its rhetorical appeal.

This argument could be made valid by providing a rigorous definition of information and either proving rigorously that it couldn't increase by natural processes including evolution (this proof would have to be able to pass mathematical peer review to be generally considered acceptable) or demonstrating by experiment that it isn't generated by evolutionary processes.

Thermodynamics says that order can't naturally increase

This is factually inaccurate, yet the apparent veneer of science allows the rhetorician to appropriate some of the credibility that the scientific community has accumulated over the years.

The scientific mainstream is biased against us ("Help! Help! I'm being repressed!")

It's true that science is often slightly biased against "revolutionary" ideas. This is in no way a bad thing, as the vast majority of such ideas will be ludicrously wrong. If presented by a sufficiently good dialectic argument in support of even the most bizarre idea, scientists will generally accept it regardless of their own personal biases. Examples include the Big Bang hypothesis (which was initially loathed with a vengeance by many scientists who felt that it was religiously motivated) and quantum mechanics (which was hated by many scientists who strongly believed that "God does not play dice with the universe"). In general, if an idea is universally rejected by the mainstream scientific community in the relevant field, that idea is highly likely to be inaccurate, unhelpful and/or fallacious.

It is notable that, in many situations where this argument has been used, there has been little or no effort to actually engage with the scientific mainstream. For example, in many cases, the claim has been made that an idea has been kept out of scientific journals, despite the fact that next to no papers referring to that claim have actually been submitted to the journals. This rhetorical technique can thus be used to to defend even the most scientifically vacuous idea.

This argument could be made valid by documenting in depth instances where research had been rejected for apparently inappropriate reasons.

Some biological structures are way too cool to have evolved

This argument basically boils down to "I can't see how it could have evolved, so it didn't", which is, of course, a fallacy - in particular, the same argument has actually been used to argue that the Earth is flat rather than being a sphere.

This argument could be made valid by presenting an objective measure of "coolness" that can be experimentally confirmed not to rise in the context of evolutionary processes.

AFK

Just so you know, the reason why I'm not around much is that I'm having to handle large amounts of mathematical stuff for my degree. Can't guarantee I'll be back before summer, but I'll try to drop by.

Cool, no prob. I have enjoyed our exchanges and look forward to having more. For when you return (copied from Inceptual Timeline):

Corkscrew, question: what do you consider the 10 greatest scientific discoveries or achievements of all time? -- JosephCCampana 08:19, 10 April 2006 (CDT)

-- JosephCCampana 10:48, 12 April 2006 (CDT)