[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

[ian glendinning]

Arlo, Case, David M, DMB, Platt and Squonk and Micah (and Gav and
Laird with questions hanging from earlier ...)

I guess I was not surprised by DMB's response - I appreciate we have
quite different tactics when it comes to tackling the unmentionable
"bogey man" - but I still hold the notion that we are very close in
our actual world-view.

Arlo, may I focus on your surprising response because we must, must,
have misunderstood each other ?

I'm surprised to find you quoting a dictionary definition (well,
wikipedia anyway) as an argument - not usually your style, but in fact
it doesn't support any argument against what I (thought I'd) said.
Note the phrase, in your dictionary quote "best explained by"
intelligent agency .... etc

"best explained by"

ie pragmatically useful to use this (fiction, metaphor) in an
explanation - with the unspoken caveat that it's not literal or real.
It's just short-hand for something more complex and emergent, not
(necessarily) an acceptance of some actual transcendent intelligent
agent. Too mind-boggling to explain in every sentence - as Platt
spotted. Some dimwits will use the language to reify their preferred
models and foist the bogey-man on us - but some (most, all) of us
(here) are too intelligent to fall for it - aren't we Arlo ?

The point I made was that you yourself (as Case and Micah also
mentioned) had used anthropomorphic metaphors for what individual
cells "decided to do", Pirsig does it too (as Squonk observed).
Remember Pirsig's magnet and iron powder - so ridiculed by his
denigrators, even less 'intelligent" than cells.

I didn't for a minute suspect you meant cells contained or were
controlled by highly intellectual agents. Nor you I, I would have
hoped ? Anyway ...

Indulge more of my playful drivel a moment ...

It's a matter of choice how we use these linguistic tools.
You wanna fight, you get one.
I can have one with DMB any day I want, and he with me, but it's
nothing personal, just our bag. As David M says we can choose who we
fight with whichever weapons (critical arguments) we choose, even our
opponent's weapons, if that's our game.
But
You wanna build, you get construction.
(Swords, ploughshares, you get the picture ...)

Jeez, even Dawkins used "the blind watchmaker".
It's a watchmaker Jim, it really is, but not as we know it (ie a blind
one, one that doesn't need omniscience, not even an eyeball, not even
a pinhole camera.)

The higher intelligence is just the emergent sum total of all the
little consciousnesses (excuse my reductionist "just" David M, just
this once anyway.)
It's (conscious, aware) turtles all the way down.

How are we ever going to move on constructively from old battles ?
Ian


On 1/18/07, Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
> [Ian]
> I think we're mixing up "the argument from intelligent design" with
> the drivel of IDC "creationists"
>
> [Arlo]
> According to Wikipedia, "Intelligent design (ID) is an argument that
> "certain features of the universe and of living things are best
> explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as
> natural selection." ... "In a leaked memo, commonly known as The
> Wedge Document, however, the supporters of the movement were told,
> "We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a
> positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories,
> which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design. Design
> theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist
> worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian
> and theistic convictions."
>
> "Intelligent design", at its core, implies an "intelligent designER". No?
>
> [Ian]
> The argument is that, evolved, emerged design IS intelligent. The
> intelligent design IS the process of emergence, with no master plan
> or master intellect required or implied.
>
> [Arlo]
> I'm not sure I understand this. Can you expand a bit?
>
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