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A few months ago I had a mini-epiphany about this whole issue of Intelligent Design. It's not actually very useful in the political debate, but I found it interesting in an abstract philosophical way.
I believe in Strong AI. (Well, "believe in" is a loaded term. Let's say "subscribe to the notion of".) Strong AI says, roughly, that any entity or system that behaves like an intelligent consciousness (i.e., that can pass a Turing test) is, in fact, an intelligent consciousness. Another way of looking at it is that there is no distinction between "mind" and "brain"; consciousness isn't something metaphysical apart from the physical brain, it's simply an emergent property of a system, whether it be a functioning human brain or a computer running sufficiently complex AI software. (I guess the bumper sticker would be "Cylons are people too!")
So what does this have to do with Intelligent Design? Simple: the results of the process of evolution over many millennia are indistinguishable from the products of intentional design by an intelligent consciousness; therefore, the process of evolution is an intelligent consciousness. Well, perhaps it's a little weird to ascribe "consciousness" to a process that just performs one specific task (creating new forms of life) and couldn't actually participate in a Turing test. But my point is that it is intelligent, because it produces things that can only be produced by intelligence, and there's no need to posit something metaphysical apart from the physical biosphere of Earth in order to explain humans and finches and platypuses and Venus flytraps.
I believe in Strong AI. (Well, "believe in" is a loaded term. Let's say "subscribe to the notion of".) Strong AI says, roughly, that any entity or system that behaves like an intelligent consciousness (i.e., that can pass a Turing test) is, in fact, an intelligent consciousness. Another way of looking at it is that there is no distinction between "mind" and "brain"; consciousness isn't something metaphysical apart from the physical brain, it's simply an emergent property of a system, whether it be a functioning human brain or a computer running sufficiently complex AI software. (I guess the bumper sticker would be "Cylons are people too!")
So what does this have to do with Intelligent Design? Simple: the results of the process of evolution over many millennia are indistinguishable from the products of intentional design by an intelligent consciousness; therefore, the process of evolution is an intelligent consciousness. Well, perhaps it's a little weird to ascribe "consciousness" to a process that just performs one specific task (creating new forms of life) and couldn't actually participate in a Turing test. But my point is that it is intelligent, because it produces things that can only be produced by intelligence, and there's no need to posit something metaphysical apart from the physical biosphere of Earth in order to explain humans and finches and platypuses and Venus flytraps.
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From: (Anonymous)
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if this were true, so many women wouldn't die in childbirth.
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Actually, I think that's a pretty difficult design project, to make human skulls big enough to hold a brain but small enough to fit through a vagina. There's something about this in How the Mind Works. (Whoa, Google Print rules!)
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Oddly, most of the top hits in a Google search for "vestigial" are "Darwinism refuted" sites. Augh.
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I'm not sure I see your reasoning here. (By the way, this is also an argument used to demonstrate the existence of God. God exists because the universe could only have been created by God. QED.)
Random chance can, in quantum mechanical theory, give rise to an exact copy of our species. The odds are quadrillions to the quadrillions to the quadrillions against. But it can happen. Does that make random chance intelligent?
I think your logical premise (derived from Strong AI) is faulty. (You almost say as much when you mention that the process of evolution could not participate in a Turing test.) You claim a priori the results of evolution are indistinguishable from the products of intentional design by an intelligent consciousness. I can claim that the results of evolution are indistinguishable from the products of an unintentional design by environmental and genetic factors. The point is we have no way of knowing if our intelligence arose from intelligent design or unintentional design.
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Yes.
You claim a priori the results of evolution are indistinguishable from the products of intentional design by an intelligent consciousness. I can claim that the results of evolution are indistinguishable from the products of an unintentional design by environmental and genetic factors.
I agree with both of these claims, because the results are irrelevant of intent. Put another way, the definition of intent depends on the definition of intelligence, and I'm defining intelligence as "that which appears to be intelligent".
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I thought the Turing test defined the appearance of intelligence. Evolution cannot pass a Turing test.
If you define 'intelligence' as "the appearance of intelligence", then it's just a tautology. In my opinion. (I think I understand what you are trying to say, however.)
Doesn't Godel, Escher, Bach have something to say about this? Do you remember the part where they are analyzing an ant colony (or some such) which appears to have the attributes of intelligence, but is actually composed of many unintelligent bits?
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I did say "sort of". Maybe I should have said "has the illusion of being".
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I think the problem is that you still have to assume that intelligence is necessary for evolution. Put another way, if there is an Intelligent Designer, computational equivalence and Strong AI lead to the conclusion that the designer is reality itself. But I don't think it runs the other way.
Along the lines of GEB, electrical impulses in the brain are a necessary component of human intelligence. However, the impulses are themselves not a result of human intelligence.
Even if we conclude that reality is itself intelligent, evolution may be the functional equivalent of the electrical impulses. In fact, I think that model is more consistent with intelligent reality than the conclusion that evolution is the output of that intelligence.
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Did you mean to say "human intelligence is not a result of the impulses themselves"?
Even if we conclude that reality is itself intelligent, evolution may be the functional equivalent of the electrical impulses. In fact, I think that model is more consistent with intelligent reality than the conclusion that evolution is the output of that intelligence.
You're right, the process of evolution isn't enough by itself, it needs an environment to work in. And varying some parameters of this environment might change its results significantly, e.g. increasing or decreasing the amount of cosmic rays that cause mutations. Maybe the analogy is that evolution is the software while reality is the hardware. On the other hand, software is just a particular arrangement of electrons in the hardware, so I'm not sure there's any reason to draw that line of separation.
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intelligent, because it produces things that can only be produced by intelligence
But that's the rub, of course. The process of evolution isn't obviously intelligent and seems to have produced new forms of life even so. There's lots of simpler examples of systems that seem to have no discernable special qualities but whose emergent properties are surprising and seem to speak of a higher intelligence, though-- fractals, various physical processes, the perfect spirals of a snail's shell, etc. Would you say those are intelligent too?
Here's my own version of your thinking: I believe in Strong Divinity. Any entity or system that produces results worthy of being worshipped is divine. So however, whoever or whatever is reponsible for our existence gets my prayers.
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