Schoenborn On Intelligent Design: Not So Crazy
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn took a lot of heat for recent comments about "Intelligent Design Theory." As you probably know, I'm--to say the least--not a creationist. I'm not even a Christian. I'm not even a theist. And I think that "IDT" is, as a matter of fact, crypto-creationism.
On the other hand, Schoenborn isn't a nut so far as I can tell. For one thing he seems only to have said that evolution can't "explain everything," which is actually perfectly in accordance with scientific orthodoxy. Evolution isn't supposed to explain everything, only certain facts about the history of living things. Not, for example, anything about quarks or quasars. Schoenborn seems to have a more substantial objection in mind, but more on that later.
Schoenborn also indicates that one of his main objections is to "materialism," roughly the view that everything real is made of matter. Not to nit-pick on his behalf, but nobody's a materialist anymore anyway. The closest thing anybody is is a physicalist--that is, they think that everything is physical. There's a difference. There are physical phenomena that are not material. Topological distortions of space-time, are, I think, supposed to be a paradigm example. Now, I don't think that Schoenborn is urging us to be physicalists rather than materialists, but (a) it's not at all clear whether even physicalism is true and, hence, (b) questioning it doesn't make you a kook or an intellectual Neanderthal. I don't even have a position on the debate about physicalism. It's not my area and the discussions of it that I can understand seem to contain a lot of confusions. But many respectable metaphysicians--non-theistic meaphysicians--aren't materialists. If you believe that numbers are real, for example, you are unlikely to be a physicalist.
Finally, I thought I'd mention that I'm currently inclined toward a view that is opposed to both Schoenborn's position and orthodox contemporary science. This is just an inclination, and it's just this year's inclination, and I hold such positions only tentatively if all, so it's not a deep or undying commitment by any stretch of the imagination. It's just a view I find interesting and plausible. At any rate, C. S. Peirce seems to think that the entire universe including its laws did evolve ultimately out of what can loosely be described as perfect chaos. (One might wonder where the chaos came from, but to understand the answer to that you'll need to read some Peirce. The short answer is that, on a certain independently-reasonable theory of explanation, randomness requires no (and is amenable to no) explanation, so the demand for explanation comes to an end with chaos. A neat, Hesiodic solution to the regress of explanations problem.) Although his account is worked out in great detail, he admits that it is no more than a hypothesis--or guess--which is why the title of one of his pivotal pieces on this subject is called "A Guess At the Riddle." Among other things, Peirce's guess about the origin of the universe would explain why we find the indeterminacy we do in the laws of nature.
At any rate, this picture of the universe requires that the ability to take on habits be a (more-or-less) fundamental feature of the universe. This tendency to take on habits is one of the things that will show up eventually in the primordial chaos. Once this tendency shows up, it will spread, and the universe will become more orderly. This hypothesis can be tested, for example, by doing experiments to see whether the indeterminacy in natural laws is diminishing.
But note that if this picture turned out to be true, then evolution--in an expanded sense of the term--would, in fact, explain (not quite but almost) everything about the universe. This might make one side in this dispute happy. On the other hand, it means that a tendency to take on habits--something usually thought of as characteristically mind-like--is a very, very basic part of the universe. Which would mean that a highly-attenuated sense of mind or intelligence is actually fundamental to and at work in the universe and necessary for all evolution. This will dissatisfy both sides of the dispute. It's not God-like enough for the one side, but it's probably too god(small 'g')-like and insufficiently physicalistic/mechanistic for the other side.
Literal creationists are a bunch of crackpots, but these issues are more complicated than most non-creationists realize.
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn took a lot of heat for recent comments about "Intelligent Design Theory." As you probably know, I'm--to say the least--not a creationist. I'm not even a Christian. I'm not even a theist. And I think that "IDT" is, as a matter of fact, crypto-creationism.
On the other hand, Schoenborn isn't a nut so far as I can tell. For one thing he seems only to have said that evolution can't "explain everything," which is actually perfectly in accordance with scientific orthodoxy. Evolution isn't supposed to explain everything, only certain facts about the history of living things. Not, for example, anything about quarks or quasars. Schoenborn seems to have a more substantial objection in mind, but more on that later.
Schoenborn also indicates that one of his main objections is to "materialism," roughly the view that everything real is made of matter. Not to nit-pick on his behalf, but nobody's a materialist anymore anyway. The closest thing anybody is is a physicalist--that is, they think that everything is physical. There's a difference. There are physical phenomena that are not material. Topological distortions of space-time, are, I think, supposed to be a paradigm example. Now, I don't think that Schoenborn is urging us to be physicalists rather than materialists, but (a) it's not at all clear whether even physicalism is true and, hence, (b) questioning it doesn't make you a kook or an intellectual Neanderthal. I don't even have a position on the debate about physicalism. It's not my area and the discussions of it that I can understand seem to contain a lot of confusions. But many respectable metaphysicians--non-theistic meaphysicians--aren't materialists. If you believe that numbers are real, for example, you are unlikely to be a physicalist.
Finally, I thought I'd mention that I'm currently inclined toward a view that is opposed to both Schoenborn's position and orthodox contemporary science. This is just an inclination, and it's just this year's inclination, and I hold such positions only tentatively if all, so it's not a deep or undying commitment by any stretch of the imagination. It's just a view I find interesting and plausible. At any rate, C. S. Peirce seems to think that the entire universe including its laws did evolve ultimately out of what can loosely be described as perfect chaos. (One might wonder where the chaos came from, but to understand the answer to that you'll need to read some Peirce. The short answer is that, on a certain independently-reasonable theory of explanation, randomness requires no (and is amenable to no) explanation, so the demand for explanation comes to an end with chaos. A neat, Hesiodic solution to the regress of explanations problem.) Although his account is worked out in great detail, he admits that it is no more than a hypothesis--or guess--which is why the title of one of his pivotal pieces on this subject is called "A Guess At the Riddle." Among other things, Peirce's guess about the origin of the universe would explain why we find the indeterminacy we do in the laws of nature.
At any rate, this picture of the universe requires that the ability to take on habits be a (more-or-less) fundamental feature of the universe. This tendency to take on habits is one of the things that will show up eventually in the primordial chaos. Once this tendency shows up, it will spread, and the universe will become more orderly. This hypothesis can be tested, for example, by doing experiments to see whether the indeterminacy in natural laws is diminishing.
But note that if this picture turned out to be true, then evolution--in an expanded sense of the term--would, in fact, explain (not quite but almost) everything about the universe. This might make one side in this dispute happy. On the other hand, it means that a tendency to take on habits--something usually thought of as characteristically mind-like--is a very, very basic part of the universe. Which would mean that a highly-attenuated sense of mind or intelligence is actually fundamental to and at work in the universe and necessary for all evolution. This will dissatisfy both sides of the dispute. It's not God-like enough for the one side, but it's probably too god(small 'g')-like and insufficiently physicalistic/mechanistic for the other side.
Literal creationists are a bunch of crackpots, but these issues are more complicated than most non-creationists realize.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:08 AM
11 Comments:
"why we find the indeterminacy we do in the laws of nature."
This is a contentious statement in my view. Anyway I learned a completely deterministic way of calculating the state of the universe in physics grad school. Give me the state at time t0, the lagrangian, and greater facility with math and I'll give you the state at time t1.
p.s. this comment moderation thing sucks. I've turned on the verify-a-word feature at my blog and all the spam went away.
Well, the story I get from people up on the theory of measurement is that there are actual indeterminacies in the laws that cannot be accounted for by inaccuracies in our measuring devices. That is, there's a certain amount of mooshiness in the laws.
I think either they're describing the aspect of the quantum world that some observables are tied up in others and you can't measure one without affecting the others, which doesn't mean you couldn't have measured a different one, or that particular states don't have particular properties; or they're talking about the transition from the microworld to the macroworld, where the physics is very messy and not well-described; or they're obscurantists; or I'm wrong.
Nope, none of those quantum phenomena are at issue to the best of my knowledge. It's rather that the determination of the laws of nature only goes so far. This is one of those things on the periphery of my understanding...something I'll actually look into some day, but don't really know much of anything about other than what I've shot my mouth off about so far.
Needless to say, it could be wrong, but that's the version of the story I've picked up from several reliable sources. It's allegedly well-known in the theory of measurement.
At any rate, C. S. Peirce seems to think that the entire universe including its laws did evolve ultimately out of what can loosely be described as perfect chaos.
In Peirce's time, it was not known that the universe was not infinite either in "size" or age.
This yielded the "monkeys with typewriters" argument (improperly attributed to Thomas Huxley, but contemporaneous, and not unfair).
Under that perception of the physical universe, it was mathematically certain that randomness would create this here monkey (that's me) typing these very words eventually, and your own monkey self (that's you) reading it. An infinity of possibilities, including me typing in the correct word verification code of xgskgfuerh.
However, the last 50 years of scientific investigation has suggested that the universe is of finite age and holds a finite number of stars and planets, not to mention computers. Given those limitations, that I can type this nonsense and then follow it with "xgskgfuerh" defies so many statistical improbabilities that to not wonder at it, but attribute it to randomness instead, accretes a certain burden of proof.
I am not hostile to numbers. I believe they're real, in their way.
(I'm also not hostile to the concept of "continuous creation" that you allude to, WS. But as you say, another time...)
That is my provisional logical argument. Tellya the truth, as a revelationist, and after some 2000 years of silence from Upstairs (1400 if you count Mohammed), I did not and do not expect any further clues. If the existence of God were proved even to the satisfaction of the physicalists, the exercize of free will and the meaning of life itself would be programmatic.
How boring.
"the universe is of finite age and holds a finite number of stars and planets"
The size part is for a funny meaning of "finite". There is no priviliged point in the universe, and wherever you are you have access to stuff in your "light cone" - you can only see stuff that was close enough during the last 13 billion years for its light to get to you. That makes the universe of finite size for you.
Furthermore, respected cosmologists (e.g. Linde) think there are universes being born everywhere all the time.
"The ability [of the universe] to take on habits" sounds like the morphic resonance hypothesis of Rupert Sheldrake.
Like most science, the basket of theories defined by their agreement that the universe is old has some parts that are better confirmed than others. Creationists and crypto-creationists want to fight all of them, and evolutionists sometimes make the mistake of seeming to take just as absolutist a position as their theological opponents. Maybe in simplistic debates this is easier for the public at large to understand, but I don't think it's honest or practical.
We know that life evolves, that new species arise and old ones die out. There's ample evidence of this to anyone who is willing to weigh it.
We don't know, however, that life arose unaided from the primordial soup. We have some suggestions that that could be true and no falsifications, but we have to teach it as quite contingent to teach it responsibly. When it comes to the origin of life, we ought to acknowledge that we're probably at a Copernican level - we've graduated to a heliocentric universe, and that's progress, but it may not stand up. We can't be sure we've reached the much more mature point where Einstein confirms Newton, just in a narrow domain of conditions. (We can be sure that the accounts of Genesis are poetry and myth, not factual.)
This contingency is the essential difference between science and literalist religion. Science is corrigible. Once it reaches a level of maturity, corrections don't falsify everything that came before, but the edges of our knowledge and our understanding of its broader limits are still fluid.
In any case, I think the problem of regress is fundamentally unsolvable. Perfect chaos sounds pretty much like a nice black box for all our hidden premises.
Or, it's only "solvable" with 'God', whose defining attribute is that 'It' is different from everything else and is its own cause. That's a metaphysical (or even semantic) solution, and I'm pretty much with Hume there. And even so, its formulaic logic doesn't connect to a personal God by any force other than the thin reed of psychological need .
Without that connection justified in some rational way, I don't see how implications for my behavior (moral or epistemic) differ between 'God' and incomplete explanation at the very beginning. (Yes, that's why you have to have faith, but I don't.)
No, perfect chaos is no crypto-god. This isn't some (heh) *deus ex machina* invoked to save a theory. Rather, Peirce has independent reasons for believing that perfect randomness requires no explanation (well, there are details here I don't understand, but this is close enough for blogs...). Very very very roughly, explanations are required when we observe a surprising regularity--e.g. the snow melts on the sidewalks before it does on the grass...how come? People who smoke tend to get more cancer. Why? Anyway, no regularities, no need for explanation--in fact, no explanation possible b/c there's nothing to explain. (Damn, there's another half of this I can't remember.)
So, the theory might be wrong--and, as Peirce notes, it probably is. It's just the best guess he could come up with, a better theory than any of the available alternatives. But the chaos bit plays a very, very different role than God. In the Cosmological argument, God's the self-explainer that explains all other things. In this Hesiodic type of theory, we begin with something that doesn't require--and, in fact, is not amenable to--explanation.
"In any case, I think the problem of regress is fundamentally unsolvable. Perfect chaos sounds pretty much like a nice black box for all our hidden premises.
Or, it's only "solvable" with 'God', whose defining attribute is that 'It' is different from everything else and is its own cause. That's a metaphysical (or even semantic) solution, and I'm pretty much with Hume there. And even so, its formulaic logic doesn't connect to a personal God by any force other than the thin reed of psychological need ."
LL,
You could add that God as explanation is useful in that it *works* as an explanation for the lacunae in our understanding. That is, absent some other empirically derived explanation, God will do. As such, the argument goes, the philosophical utility of God's existence is a good reason for believing it's true.
I can't accept this as an explanation for the same reason that I can't always abide by Ockham's Razor, having been burned too many times in the past by a more complex but truthful explanation.
That sort of reasoning reminds me of the intuitively troubling thesis of a book we used in one of my philosophy seminars in college, David Lewis' book on modal realism. The key judgment being that because multiple worlds *work* so well as an explanation for modality, we should prima facie accept that they exist.
LC, I think we basically agree. Usefulness is not a criterion I reject. It just doesn't work epistemologically, as far as I can tell, if the hole that 'God' is spackle for has shrunk as much as it has since the scientific revolution.
If 'God''s purpose is to fill the lacunae, 'God' has the same shape as the hole and nothing more. Whittling 'God' to fit makes me think I'm just making stuff up for my own convenience. Leavening 'God' with other purposes is also making stuff up. It comes down to this: Such a shrinking 'God' has no explanatory power and is identical to our ignorance. I had hoped for and been promised more!
Two other purposes are personal guidance and protection. Belief in a personal God is clearly useful. God makes every day easier, especially the last day.
It's not hard to understand why so many people choose to believe in God. They don't rely on usefulness as justification for their belief; most rely on revelation, which is to say they choose to believe because what they believe tells them to believe. At least there's no paradox!
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