A Working Draft Design Argument

[Belacqua]

OK, let me take a whack at this. I'll try to think of the best rebuttal I can, though I lack confidence. I think your argument is strong. 

Mostly I'm worried that there haven't been any replies for a while, and I don't want the debate to peter out too soon. 

P1- Intentionality gives things value and meaning. Novels possess intrinsic values and meaning, as a result of being authored, designed, endowed by their authors to posses such elements.

Agreed. It is the activity of the mind, pointed intentionally, which gives values and meanings. 

P2-If reality possess value and meaning, we can use logic to infer a cause, from an effect. I.E. That which possess values and meaning, indicate intentionality, authorship, design, etc..

Also true. 

This is good, I think, because it doesn't claim that meanings exist in the absence of minds -- eternal and predetermined -- but that minds, being real and part of nature, assign these things. So even if meanings vary or change, that doesn't affect the argument. 

Meanings really exist because minds are real and a part of nature, and minds really assign meanings. 
And since we are not angels or sparks of Pure Reason downloaded from a divine source, it means that the meanings we assign are derived from the contingency of our physical existence. 

P3-Determinism is true. 

I think for the scale of this argument we'd all agree that's true. In a sense the meanings or values I assign to things are not a free choice on my part but something presented to me. I see something, and its meaning or value seems apparent to me, due to all the conditioning I have had, and all the contingencies of my background, including the history of my dna.

P4-All preceding factors, have preceding factors of their own, until one reaches a point which posses no preceding factors, i.e a first cause, or a type of  uncaused singularity, that’s the ultimate determining cause of all causes, all knowledge, all past and future, events, all values and meanings, etc..

Despite my rant about First Cause arguments earlier, I agree with a temporal chain in this case. You're not working backward to claim a God, but claiming that what we think and do results from causes which have other causes. 

I think that even if we accept an eternal universe with no beginning, the argument would still hold that every part of our minds and ourselves has causes that stretch back out of sight. 

P5- Since reality possess values and meanings, that are ultimately rooted in the first cause, reality is an intentional work, authored designed, a novel.

This is the tricky part, obviously. 

How about this: 

~ Meanings and values need minds to assign them. (intentionality) 

~ Minds came about as the result of a chain of events, theoretically going back to the Big Bang. 

~ The meanings that minds create are not chosen at random but are themselves determined by a chain of causal factors. 

~ While the appearance of minds depends on the chain of events, there is no intentionality in the world until minds appear. 

~ The condition of the Big Bang made it inevitable that minds would appear, and even what meanings they would choose, but is not itself intentional. Because intentionality at that point would require a mind. 

~ Conclusion 1: there is a deterministic chain of temporal events going back to the Big Bang. This made it inevitable that minds would appear, and that minds would reach certain conclusions. The process of meaning-making, however, only appears when the first minds appear. 

~ Conclusion 2: therefore the singularity or Big Bang itself was not intentional -- it had no mind-like choice of meaning.