Michael Behe's latest post at his blog records yet another failed attempt to publish a comment to a paper that supposedly refuted his argument for irreducible complexity. But Behe was quick to note that he's by no means the only one having trouble getting their comments published, and referred readers to this example, by Prof. Rick Trebino. It's a humorous narration of actual events. At the end, Trebino gives his suggestions on how to correct a badly flawed system.
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Yesterday, I read and e-mailed Behe's latest post at his blog. Afterwards, it occurred to me that my friends would notice that his blog now flies under the banner, "Uncommon Descent," and wonder if Behe has now rejected the theory of common descent. Behe has reacted with frustration in the past when his critics have expressed surprised that he accepts common descent. Perhaps he should understand that they may wonder if he's changed his mind. I suggest that he add a disclaimer to his profile. Something simple, such as:
"Even though my blog is now here at Uncommon Descent, where many of the contributors commonly argue against the theory of common descent, I still accept common descent, and believe that there is no good reason to reject it."
It might help prevent future misunderstandings. Maybe.
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Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein has been confirmed Director to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs by a vote of 57-40 in the Senate. Sunstein has been controversial based on his views that the internet should be regulated according to some fairness doctrine and that animals should enjoy the right to sue humans. Undoubtedly Cass has somehow been the victim of wing nuts. I actually have some sympathy for tort reform and have come across a test case which could serve as a legal precedent template in this brave new world.
The incident in question took place in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But although outside the long arm of U.S. law one could imagine parallel circumstances and Cass taking an interest in the legal tort rights of the animal. First the incident. A hippopotamus has been accused on killing a soldier (shudder). But this might have been a rogue soldier nabbed by said hippo in the act of illegally fishing. In other words this soldier likely displayed complete contempt not just for the law but for the environment as well. A militarist, anti-environmental and a violator of human law. Some might say this guy had it coming when the hippo ate him for lunch.
We won't go quite that far but there are some resourceful U.S. lawyers who would make a self-defense case for John Doe Hippo and sue detractors for slander. Imagine if this had been Florida and the hippo was a gator. A protester leaves a town hall meeting, strolls past a canal and carelessly tosses a candy wrapper into a canal. An enraged gator seeing no candy inside confronts the lawbreaking wing nut and hauls him into the canal. A body is found the next day and the gator is accused.
Sounds like species discrimination to me. You know how those gators are. Who are you humans to think you have special rights. After all we're part of one big happy family. And as an animal lover I feel better knowing the gator has a friend in high places looking out for his right to seek redress in a civil court.
First, let me quote part of Michael Behe's argument, from his book, The Edge of Evolution, that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor:
"More compelling evidence for the shared ancestry of humans and other primates comes from their hemoglobin - not just their working hemoglobin, but a broken hemoglobin gene, too. [10] In one region of our genomes humans have five genes for proteins that act at various stages of development (from embryo through adult) as the second (betalike) chain of hemoglobin. This includes the gene for the beta chain itself, two almost identical copies of a gamma chain (which occurs in fetal hemoglobin), and several others. Chimpanzees have the very same genes in the very same order. In the region between the two gamma genes and a gene that works after birth, human DNA contains a broken gene (called a "pseudogene") that closely resembles a working gene for a beta chain, but has features in its sequence that preclude it from coding successfully for a protein. "Chimp DNA has a very similar pseudogene at the same position. The beginning of the human pseudogene has two particular changes in two nucleotide letters that seems to deactivate the gene. The chimp pseudogene has the exact same changes. A bit further down in the human pseudogene is a deletion mutation, where one particular letter is missing. For technical reasons, the deletion irrevocably messes up the gene's coding. The very same letter is missing in the chimp gene. Toward the end of the human pseudogene another letter is missing. The chimp pseudogene is missing it, too. "The same mistakes in the same gene in the same positions of both human and chimp DNA. If a common ancestor first sustained the mutational mistakes and subsequently gave rise to those two modern species, that would very readily account for why both species have them now. It's hard to imagine how there could be stronger evidence for common ancestry of chimps and humans. "That strong evidence from the pseudogene points well beyond the ancestry of humans. Despite some remaining puzzles, [11] there's no reason to doubt that Darwin had this point right, that all creatures on earth are biological relatives." (p. 71-72)
[10] Chang, L.Y., and Slightom, J.L 1984. Isolation and nucleotide sequence analysis of the beta-type globin pseudogene from human, gorilla and chimpanzee. J. Mol. Biol. 180:767-84. [11] Bapteste, E., Susko, E., Leigh, J., MacLeod, D., Charlebois, R.L., and Doolittle, W.F. 2005. Do orthologous gene phylogenies really support treethinking? BMC Evol. Biol. 5:33.
There should be nothing surprising about the fact that Behe believes in common descent. He admitted as much in his first book, Darwin's Black Box, plus in frequent presentations and debates. But it surprised some people, such as Jerry Coyne, when he read Behe's argument for common descent in EOE. Okay, I don't expect critics to pay attention to all the details.
But I do expect fellow proponents of ID to pay attention. That brings me to the blog, Uncommon Descent. There are many critics of common descent at UD. No surprise there. They very often refer to people who believe in common descent as "98 percenters." And the tone they use toward these people seems to be a bit, well, snooty, and occasionally downright hostile. Again, no big surprise there.
What surprises me is that UD has become the second home of Behe's blog. Have people such as Denyse O'Leary and Cornelius Hunter ever read EOE? If not, they may be in for a surprise of their own, someday.
So that no one will think that Behe is saying that neo-Darwinism can account for common descent, I'll add the next paragraph from his book:
"The bottom line is this. Common descent is true; yet the explanation of common descent - even the common descent of humans and chimps - although fascinating, is in a profound sense trivial. It says merely that commonalities were there from the start, present in a common ancestor. It does not even begin to explain where those commonalities came from, or how humans subsequently acquired remarkable differences. Something that is nonrandom must account for the common descent of life."
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Bill Maher, primarily known for his anti-religious views, also harbors deep seated anti-science views. From medicine to HIV, and yet he is apparently being given a Richard Dawkins Award.
Note one of the major criteria for the award: 'Advocates increased scientific knowledge.' Certainly Maher earns an EPIC FAIL on that aspect, at least. Given that Richard Dawkins made an excellent two-part documentary about pseudoscience for the BBC, entitled The Enemies of Reason, the second part of which was primarily about quackery and medical pseudoscience, you'd think that he'd be unhappy about having an award bearing his name be given to a person who would not have been out of place as one of the quacks that Dawkins skewered in the second half of his documentary, The Irrational Health Service.
Since I'm almost done writing my extremely belated review of The Design Matrix , I thought I'd share a tool I wrote for myself for use in future discussions in case anyone else found it useful. Basically it's what I call "D-matrix Analysis Online Calculator" or DAOC. The computation itself isn't very intensive but what I like about it is that it dynamically generates a histogram of your calculation. You can then print this out and save it for your records. As more information becomes available or as you continue to do it for more and more systems (or what have you), you can then compare and contrast and do an overall analysis.
Maybe in the future I'll make it so people can log in and save their calculations online. I would appreciate any feedback/suggestions.
The problem of consciousness is one that materialism hasn't been able to solve. The most popular explanation is Epiphenomenalism - that consciousness is just a by-product of the physical activity of our brains. It has no causal efficacy in and of itself. This seems to be a problem when we consider the most popular explanation of how we got here - Darwinian evolution. According to that theory, we are the product of a blind process that favored organisms that could survive and reproduce more effectively than their competitors.
So what's the problem? The problem then for Epiphenomenalism, is that our conscious beliefs have no causal effect upon our physical states. If we need to avoid a part of the jungle, because a tiger lives there, then it doesn't matter what we consciously believe. As long as we don't go into the jungle, we can believe anything we want to believe. We could even believe that we should not avoid that part of the jungle. In other words, there is no good evolutionary explanation of why any of our conscious beliefs need be true, given Epiphenomenalism. So whatever explanation we offer for the relationship of conscious beliefs to actions, Epiphenomenalism shouldn't be it.
Item Category: Philosophy of Mind Item comments: http://telicthoughts.com/epiphenomalism-and-evolution/#comments
Monton on God-of-the-gaps Arguments focuses our attention on a popular anti-IDist slogan; the familiar God in the gaps characterization. Those using the slogan believe that the failure of the mainstream scientific community to produce empirical data supporting mainstream theories is attributable merely to a lack of knowledge which when eventually acquired will establish said theories. Often the theories in question are focused on the origin of life and for the purpose of this blog entry that will be the primary consideration.
There are theories that have withstood the test of time. Newtonian mechanics has been a valid theory for more than 300 years. Geometrical optics has been around even longer.
This is a good time to examine well supported scientific theories and take notice of a rarely mentioned feature of them which contrasts with origin of life ideas. Newton's first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. I wish to emphasize that the subject matter to which the law refers- objects, motion, direction, speed and force- were all commonly observed phenomenon prior to Newton's formulation. People observed objects in motion, noted their speed and direction and were familiar with the concept of force and variations in its strength. Ascribing to the foregoing descriptive and predictable behavioral norms adds to our depth of understanding about that which we already had observed and whose existence was a foregone conclusion.
The same can be said about Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Celestial bodies were known to exist. Motion was inferred by changes over time in their positional relationships with each other. When Kepler analyzed the paths of planets he was focused on an observed phenomeon. By describing the paths as elliptical Kepler was specifying more precisely the nature of a given: planetary motion.
There are a plethora of examples available and all have the same common denominator- formulating specific information about known physical phenomenon as a result of the insight of a great scientist. The operative phrase is known physical phenomenon. Theists and non-theists alike presume that if something is observed in the physical world it can yield to explanations based on empirically generated data.
Contrary to the stereotying prevalent among theistic critics theists do not look at a hitherto unobserved cosmic phenomenon and think angels must be responsible. That type of nonsense has little relevance to anything other than hoped for atta boys from fellow mockers and scoffers.
Biology has a number of subdivisions correlating to known and observed physical phenomeon. Genetics informs us about inherited traits, cellular biology about the functions of cells, molecular biology about pathways, enzymes etc. We know reproduction occurs and know that cells exist. That studies shed light on these things is not surprising to anyone. Progress in these fields has been great. Gaps steadily filled. Again, no surprise.
Contrast these disciplines with origin of life studies. Despite the claims and the hype, research has yielded little in the way of identifying viable pathways to life. But while we saw objects in motion and noted the existence of cells, living organisms and much more, we have never observed life emerging from a lifeless environment. To hurl God in the gaps charges under these circumstances is to arrogantly presume that one's preconceptions about a process must be right. OOL is not a matter of fleshing out the details of what we can see or touch. It is based on that which we never see and touch. That adds a unique metaphysical component to the gap charge that is not applicable to Newton's or Kepler's laws. Monton's points merit another look.
Reading Bradley Monton's book, Seeking God in Science; an Atheist Defends Intelligent Design, was a fascinating, thought-provoking experience. I recommend it highly for ID proponents and critics alike. There's much you'll like and dislike, regardless of which side of the debate you're on.
Since the objection that ID is just a God-of-the-gaps argument keeps coming up, I thought I would share Monton's thoughts about it. I'm copyng from his book without his permission. I hope he doesn't mind. I hope it will inspire sales. Professor Monton, if you object, just let me know, and I'll delete this thread.
"First, despite how it's typically portrayed in the anti-intelligent design literature, I maintain that Behe's irreducible complexity argument is not a God-of-the-gaps argument at all. Behe is not saying that we don't know (or can't know) how irreducibly complex systems like the bacterial flagellum could plausibly arise naturalistically. Instead, Behe is giving positive reasons that the sequence of events that would have to happen for irreducibly complex systems like the bacterial flagellum to arise via an undesigned process is an improbable sequence, and hence the design hypothesis should be taken seriously....
"Here's the second problem ...of maligning the intelligent design arguments by calling them God-of-the-gap arguments. Just because gaps in the past were filled in with further naturalistic scientific investigation, it doesn't follow that every gap in the future will be similarly filled in. [Denis] Alexander's argument to the contrary is a relatively weak inductive argument. To see this, consider an analogous argument. If one looks at the history of science, one sees that all scientific theories before the ones that we currently favor have been shown to be false. Does it follow that the scientific theories we currently favor will be shown to be false too? While some philosophers have endorsed this argument (called 'the pessimistic induction argument'), most think that the argument is not that strong. The reason the argument is not that strong is that we could well have good reason to think that our currently favored theories are true, reasons that didn't exist for the past false theories. Just as that's a reasonable response to give to the pessimistic induction argument, so Behe could have the resources to give an analogous reasonable response to Alexander. Behe could say that he has good reason to think that the gaps he highlights won't be filled in naturalistically, reasons that didn't exist for past filled God-of-the-gaps arguments.
"Here's the third and final problem with Alexander's critique of intelligent design arguments by way of critiquing God-of-the-gaps arguments. Alexander says that the history of science is full of examples where there was a seemingly insoluble gap in our understanding, but where that gap was filled in naturalistically by further scientific investigation. While this is true, what Alexander doesn't point out is that it's also the case that the history of science is full of seemingly insoluble gaps in our understanding that have never been filled in naturalistically. For example, we don't know what the nature of consciousness is, or how conscious mental activity arises out of physical brain activity. We don't know why the universe exists - we don't know why there is something rather than nothing. We don't know why the universe has three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. We don't know what the nature of mass is. We don't know what the universe is made of (most of it seems to be 'dark matter,' but we don't know what dark matter is). We don't have a single fundamental theory of physics (the two theories we do have, general relativity and quantum theory, are incompatible). The list could go on, but I've said enough to make my point. One can't just say: all gaps in the past have been naturalistically filled in, so future gaps will be naturalistically filled in as well, because in fact there are some persistent gaps that have never been naturalistically filled in. Thus, it's reasonable to be cautious in assuming that any new gap we discover will be naturalistically filled in as well. (p.115-116)
My only comment is that Behe and other ID proponents are careful to point out that they think the evidence for intelligent design is insufficient to prove that the designer is God. So at most, they are presenting an intelligence-of-the-gaps argument.
