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The subliminal paradigm of de-facto ID is not much more sophisticated than this!
The "Intelligent Design" website "Uncommon Descent" posted a quote from one of its authority figures (See here). This quote betrays an underlying classically dualist mind vs body, spirit vs matter, ghost vs the machine, God vs natural forces paradigm. Dualism is the knee-jerk philosophy of many who write for Uncommon Descent. Here is the quote:
There is a fallacy about the human mind that regularly
appears in research on animal behavior, and this fallacy is related to the
pervasive misunderstanding about machine “intelligence.”
It is a misunderstanding about the most basic characteristic
of the human mind—that the human intellect and will are immaterial. That the
human intellect and will are immaterial abilities is supported by a mountain of
logic and empirical research. It is precisely this immateriality that animals
and machines lack.
Now I'd accept that machines, as we currently construct them and conceive them, can be no more than crude simulations of conscious cognition and they will never attain consciousness itself for the reason that they are not using the qualities of "matter" in a way which exploits its God given potential for conscious cognition. Conscious cognition is more than just formal structure.
It is almost as if the writers at Uncommon Descent are in thrall to a kind of subliminal Gnosticism which conceives a ghostly world of "spirits" distinct from "matter" and where the material brain of human beings somehow traps the human ghost in the machine. For the Christian there is, of course, always a sharp God vs Creation distinction but apart from that we must concede that God created everything (but Himself!). Let's not succumb to theologies which suggest an "immaterial third world" over and above "material" creation where the latter is thought of as an inferior and profane world; this is gnostic dualism! In any case let the IDists try and define "matter" in way that itself doesn't look suspiciously "immaterial"! .....unless they fall for the naive model of matter as hard, gritty, billiard ball like stuff, which may, in fact, be what the IDists have in mind!
God is the creator, sustainer and sovereign manager of our world and therefore we should never underestimate its propensity for the miraculous. Given this theology and given that God it the creator, sustainer and sovereign manager of the animal kingdom it likely follows that animals, to a greater or lesser degree, possess conscious cognition. After all, the neural technology they reify is very similar to our own. This immediately gives us a reason to treat animals with the greatest respect and not as the logic of the UD correspondent would lead us believe; that is, to treat them as machines. (See also here)
I'm not going waste any more of my time going over the errors of UD's dualist writers. But here are some relevant links:
...and it goes on and on!
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