Quantum Non-Linearity: Prediction by Negation

Friday, August 19, 2011

Prediction by Negation

Evolution as a sense making structure joins many of the dots of observation (at least in a post-dictive sense), but my opinion about just where it lies between plausible conjecture and “fact” is reserved. (Although this reserve may be down to me having neither stake nor expertise in biology and paleontology). Therefore I’m prepared to give some space to the anti-evolutionists one finds on Uncommon Descent. And yet in spite of that I find myself frustrated by what I consider to be the unsatisfactory treatment of the intelligent design question on this web site. This post by Barry Arrington is an example of why I think the concept of intelligent design is being mishandled by the out and out anti-evolutionists. In this post we read:

……the [Intelligent Design] hypothesis is, in principle, falsifiable. All it would take is even one instance of CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Such an observation would blow the ID project out of the water.

… in fact it would do no such thing, because in its most abstract form the ID hypothesis is not a basis from which falsifiable statements can readily be made.

What Arrington refers to as “mechanical necessity” is not “necessity” at all, at least in the absolute sense. The outputs from mathematical functions/algorithms (Which I assume is what Arrington inappropriately calls “mechanical necessity”) are at most conditional necessities; that is, conditional on the selection of the particular mathematical functions/algorithms employed. Therefore information is implicit in such functions in as much as they are contingencies and not necessities. If “CSI” was ever found to have a realistic probability of output from the operation of such functions, then that information would be implicit in the selection of the appropriate functions. Ergo, the Intelligent Design question would then shift from the pattern itself to the selection of the pattern generating mechanisms. One would think from the way Arrington is talking that “chance and necessity” (sic) are logically self sufficient processes that answer the problems of Aseity and design. Further consideration of whether or not mathematical functions can generate complex organization can be found in the following links:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/11/self-organisation.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/11/luddites-and-evolution-machine.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/12/anti-evolution-vs-intelligent-design.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/12/beware-luddites-at-work.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/12/evolution-not-wanted-dead-or-alive.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/12/more-on-self-organisation.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/12/blind-alleys.html

The difficulty in making predictions from ID stems from the fact that in most cases the posited creating intelligence is far too alien for us to be sure of its motives and methods; in particular the intelligence is usually envisaged to be a divine entity with omni-powers, transcending the physical status quo. Presumably such an entity would have “chance and necessity” (sic) at its beck and call. Attempting to anticipate just how such a hyper-alien entity operates is likely to prove unreliable. Separated from a specific theology of this Sublime Creator, ID in its most abstract form is all but irrefutable.

But what Arrington really means is that if an example of CSI was found to be sourced in a physical regime it would falsify anti-evolutionist expectations: ID has a more readily scientifically amenable content if it contains an implicit denial of evolution. In fact in North America "ID" is all but synonymous with "anti-evolutionism" and so called “ID predictions” are in many cases simply the negation of evilutionary predictions (I’m taking up the question of ID predictions in my “Can ID make predictions?” series). The implicit concept of ID most Uncommon Dissenters are working to seems to be that of a tinkering genetic engineer/programmer whose methods and motives are very anthropomorphic.

Prediction by Negation; "Oh no it isn't!"

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION

“Ideas Versus Experience!" is a slogan expressing the uneasy relation between what we think the world to be and what our actual experience suggests it is. Experience makes or breaks ideas. But the reverse is also true: Well established ideas can influence the recognition, acceptance and even the perception of experience. In short there is a two way dialogue between ideas and experience. Sometimes that dialogue can turn into an argument, even a row.

The success of Science is based on a formalisation of this potentially contentious relationship as it seeks to support or refute theoretical notions by systematically comparing them with experience. In the far less formalized contexts of daily living we probably are using a similar heuristic when we display a tendency to drop ideas that lose the confrontation with experience, and retain those that win. Winning ideas, like the gladiators of the Roman arenas, live to fight another day. This Darwinian slant on the struggle for ideological survival is itself ideology that must, for consistency sake, submit itself to the very process it purports to describe. For example, it should be able to give account of the resilience of traditional theories in the face of contra indicators. And in the extreme, explanation also needs to be given of how conspiracy theorists continue to hold on to a ramifying structure of untested elaborations.

Human theoretical visions are often grand and sweeping, confidently affirming states of affairs that are far beyond immediate sensation. The vast unseen domains covered by our best theories contrasts with the limitations on human perceptual resources, resources that only allow a very sparse experimental sampling of our most ambitious ideas. Even a professional scientist only ever tests a small portion of any theoretical structure. Moreover, our theoretical concepts are ambitious enough to cover unreachable areas like the center of distant stars, sub-atomic dimensions, events long past into history, and very complex inscrutable objects like the human mind and its societies. Thus, science is metaphysical in as much as it has to admit that it covers vast domains inaccessible to testing in practice if not in principle. For the intelligent layman even the keyhole view of the experimental scientist may not be available. So whence comes the authority to affirm ideas that are often so grandiose in their sweep that they make claim to impinge upon the very meaning of life the universe and everything?

The fact is that for most of us the really big ideas diffuse through to us from our societal context, and at most these big ideas are only illuminated here and there, at a very few places, with actual direct experience of the phenomenon they conceptualise. These big ideas float around in the ether-like-media of society in the form of books, lectures, programmes, and the Internet etc, objects that the postmodernist philosophers call "texts".

For someone such as myself the battle to make sense of life was joined as soon as I was aware of mystery. But looking back it is clear to me that I haven't done an honest scientific experiment in the whole of my life. For me the effort to bring sense and integration to the complexity of life boils down to grappling with the many texts of society; These texts carry both big theoretical ideas and raw data from which ideas crystallize. These texts are compared with other texts in the search for coherence and consistency. These texts take the place and role of experiments as one tests theories using texts. These texts are in effect the experience of life. My own modest attempt at grandiose theorising has already been presented to the world. (See this blog "Physics and the Wild Web") and my excuse is that I have simply inherited the theoretical hubris of the human race.

The postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida said, "There is nothing outside the text". I think he was at least right about the primary role texts play in the life of those like myself whose instinct has been to grapple relentlessly with the riddles of life, and to seek out meaning and go where no man has gone before. But one could equally claim, "There is nothing outside the experience". For one might read the "text" of the clouds in the sky as a predictor of impending weather just as one reads socially generated symbolic configurations as the predictor of certain kinds of thought or potential experience. For the text is just as much an experience as more primeval phenomenon like thunder and lightning. Texts are part of our cosmic experience and they imperceptibly grade into the more conventional notion of experience. Where the crossover point is, is difficult to say.

Postmodernism may have got it right about the primary role of the text, but it has made one very serious mistake. Where I would radically differ from the postmodern view is that I believe the mass of social texts, if we allow them, naturally converge upon grand consistent narratives and those narratives are here to stay. And that is because these texts, I submit, are part of a world with an underlying rational integratedness and that integratedness is being revealed to us bit by bit. For revelation it is: Revelation is what we cannot discover unless God chooses that we discover it. My perceptions and reason, limited though they may be, were not self-made, they had to be discovered as gifts. These gifts are given to all of us; one can but trust and use them. Reason is a grace of Revelation. For this reason the hubris of theory making is justified.

Quantum Non-Linearity

Friday, August 19, 2011

Prediction by Negation

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION