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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:
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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.
From:
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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.