The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[John 6IX Breezy]

Coleridge, following some German Idealists, wrote particularly well about how creation in the human mind was the same type of thing, on a smaller scale, as the creation done by God. Nobody else here will want to hear about that, of course, but I suspect something like that will turn out to be true, though expressed in different language.

To briefly add to this, there is overlap between perception and imagery. One experiment by C.W. Perky in 1910 had participants stare at a blank screen and imagine a banana. And he would slowly project an image of a banana. Participants were not only unaware of the projection, they mistook it as their own, describing it when asked what they were imagining. 

I'm concerned though that having a mental image of something may fall well short of what we can consider a design for that thing.... Even if I had a detailed knowledge of cat anatomy, my imaging ability would fall well short of what it would take to make a fully functioning cat... Actually designing a cat that could live and move around and walk on your computer keyboard would be far beyond a person's ability. 

I agree; but I think such a wholistic approach might not be necessary. I say this because designs are models; and models can be partial representations. Many of our own projects are too big for a single person, but get successfully broken up by teams working together on individual parts. God himself according to Christianity broke up creation into parts by days and types. So I think designs can be investigated by aspects, without detracting from the whole.

So it is entirely possible that there are things in the world that are designable by some minds, but not by human minds. Either by the mind of God, if there is such a thing, or aliens who evolved differently. That means that we can't conclude with certainty that anything is non-designable, since it might just be non-designable by people, but easily designable by something else.... As I said, we could find things unlikely, but not definitively ruled out.

I agree this is a problem; and it might not be one I can easily solve. I do think that "not designable" is still a valid proposition; it applies to all minds including God's. So the question is, what happens if we find something non-designable? My initial answer is that it still falsifies intelligent design because of how we've defined and constrained the theory. It was formulated as a human-centered idea from the start and it must fall as a human-centered idea.

I think that as long as we can recognize something as intelligence or design, that the recognition itself suffices the criteria. (My own limits to design a Ferrari, do not inhibit my recognition that someone else has.) I think your critique becomes valid, however, when we can no longer recognize intelligence or design in something. For example, some people suggest that slime mold behaves as though it possesses intelligence; others say that photodiodes posses consciousness. These ideas push the limits of what we can recognize as consciousness or intelligence.

In conclusion: If we cannot design, or even recognized something as designable, then the entire theory is falsified. Other explanation might be necessary, but Intelligent Design would no longer be one of them.