The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[Mister Agenda]

He made a claim that all things are "designable." This is a positive claim (not a theory or even a proper hypotehesis) and needs to be supported to be taken seriously. If he's unwilling to support the claim, we're free to dismiss it with a similar effort. Thanks again for playing.

How do I play your game lol? Consider the following:

"If Intelligent Design is true, then everything is designable."

The above is how you formulate hypotheses in science.  If we conduct an experiment and see that something isn't designable, we conclude that Intelligent Design is not true.  But if I "support" my claim, as you ask, and show that something is designable, concluding that it was therefore designed is fallacious. (The universe could be designable, and not be designed.)

I was taught never to use the words "prove" or "support." The only acceptable term here is "failed to falsify."

Why does everything have to be designable if Intelligent Design is true?

[John 6IX Breezy]

If you don't know what it would look like then in what way have you presented an observation which would be falsifying?

In many ways this is a benefit for your side not mine. There may be a multitude of ways in which things are not designable; just like there are a multitude of ways in which objects are not graspable (e.g. too big, too small, too slippery, too sharp, too spikey). The only general way to describe something as "not graspable," is quite literally to not be able to grasp it. Likewise, the only general way to describe something is "not designable" is quiet literally to not be able to design it.

(I'll look into the Heidegger being and time subject.)

[Mister Agenda]

For falsifying something to have any scientific relevance, it must be falsifiable, at least in principle. There is no property a thing could have that would render it 'undesignable' in principle. It's not valid to make up a quality of 'undesignability' just to be able to make a coherent sentence that something with that quality would falsify design.

I disagree; science is the art of carving nature at her joints. We not only make up qualities all the time (e.g. Gender, Episodic Memory, Consciousness) as an attempt to describe something about the universe, we also come up with operational definitions to make abstract qualities measurable (e.g. Fear means heart rate above 130 bpm).

I've borrowed the "something-ability" concept from a popular theory in psychology about affordances and direct perception. And I've exemplified why "not designable" is a valid proposition, namely, because we frame things as "not-something-else" all the time. These is nothing in what I've said that is in anyway incoherent or unfalsifiable.

So what's the operational definition for undesignability?

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If you don't know what it would look like then in what way have you presented an observation which would be falsifying?

In many ways this is a benefit for your side not mine. There may be a multitude of ways in which things are not designable; just like there are a multitude of ways in which objects are not graspable (e.g. too big, too small, too slippery, too sharp, too spikey). The only general way to describe something as "not graspable," is quite literally to not be able to grasp it. Likewise, the only general way to describe something is "not designable" is quiet literally to not be able to design it.

(I'll look into the Heidegger being and time subject.)

Can you describe one of the possibly many ways something might be undesignable?

[John 6IX Breezy]

So what's the operational definition for undesignability?

I defined it as "not designable" or "unable to be designed." I'll maintain it as that unless someone shows why things like "not graspable," "not bright," and "not on" are likewise invalid descriptions.

Can you describe one of the possibly many ways something might be undesignable?

The best I can do is my beaver example (dams are designable by beavers; Ferraris are not). Somewhere in this example lies one such possible way, albeit exclusive to beavers. I'm also fairly comfortable with "not designable" being just a placeholder, something we understand logically, but have not yet filled in practically. Science sprinkles many such place holders across its theories. I don't think "not designable" is that abstract, but if the forum doesn't accept any of my current descriptions, then it will have to live as a place holder until shown to be logically invalid.

[Rahn127]

Beavers can build a beaver dam.
Humans can build cars.
Unicorns can ...

But there are prerequisites for all of these.
First, as you might guess, the creature in question must exist.
It must have sufficient knowledge to build the item.
The resources must also be present.

A beaver cannot build a dam at the south pole.
200 years ago and long before that, humans didn't have the knowledge, tools or materials to make a car.
Unicorns can't build anything because they haven't been shown to exist.

Intelligent creatures can design a great many things but the prerequisite materials must come first.

Nature provides the environment for life to evolve into intelligent creatures.
Intelligent creatures can build items if the prerequisite materials are available.

A few words about darkness.
Darkness, in my humble opinion, is not the absence of light, anymore than air is the absence of bullets flying through it.
It is always dark even in the presence of light.

Darkness is the label we give to something that we cannot sense.
Imagine you are standing in a vast grassy field. You are blind and deaf.
Someone comes up to you and shakes your hand. You feel the roughness of their hand. Another person comes up to shake your hand. Their hand is soft. You can only sense people through touch.

When no one is touching you, it feels like darkness.
Darkness is simply the absence of touch. The people, like the darkness still exist.
You just haven't touched them.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Intelligent creatures can design a great many things but the prerequisite materials must come first.

Nature provides the environment for life to evolve into intelligent creatures.
Intelligent creatures can build items if the prerequisite materials are available.

First, I want to say that intelligence is the only determiner of design that we are looking for. Nature "designing" a river is not what we are after because nature has no intelligence (and arguably we only call things "nature's design" as a metaphorical extension of our own ability to design). So God doesn't have to exist, only intelligence and its possibilities. Secondly, I agree with the prerequisite of materials for human design. Earlier I posed the question to Belacqua, which maybe you can try answering: Does simulating matter virtually qualify as designing it? In other words, we cannot create it, but we can simulate it, and does that mean we've designed it?

(And I agree with your description of darkness as a product of perception, not necessarily absence of photons; my goal with the analogy is to show we can understand what it means for something to not be something else.)

[The Grand Nudger]

The best I can do is my beaver example (dams are designable by beavers; Ferraris are not). 

Seems like a poor example or poor concept, since both are designed.  

If you're actually asking whether the earth or this universe or the things in it are designable -for a god-..then the answer would be no.  I guess that's that?

[Angrboda]

Intelligent creatures can design a great many things but the prerequisite materials must come first.

Nature provides the environment for life to evolve into intelligent creatures.
Intelligent creatures can build items if the prerequisite materials are available.

First, I want to say that intelligence is the only determiner of design that we are looking for. Nature "designing" a river is not what we are after because nature has no intelligence (and arguably we only call things "nature's design" as a metaphorical extension of our own ability to design). So God doesn't have to exist, only intelligence and its possibilities. Secondly, I agree with the prerequisite of materials for human design, and I posed the question to Belacqua: Does simulating matter virtually qualify as designing it? In other words, we cannot create it, but we can simulate it, and the latter is what we mean by designing it.

(And I agree with your description of darkness as a product of perception, not necessarily absence of photons; my goal with the analogy is to show we can understand what it means for something to not be something else.)

Is there anything that an omnipotent god cannot create? Regardless, you seemed to have confused empiricism with simply jerkin' the gherkin.

A virtual simulation need not even have to have been created for the imagining its particulars to count as design. This is why talk of designed objects is bogus. Design describes a mental act. Evidence of design might exist apart from the designer, but if you want evidence of a specific designer then you need evidence of that mental act.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Why does everything have to be designable if Intelligent Design is true?

Simply because that is a claim of the theory. Design is intelligence-dependent, meaning that it obviously varies across the gradient of species. But Intelligent Design as a theory encompasses everything because that is what it predicts that gods, or simulations, can do.

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Design describes a mental act.  Evidence of design might exist apart from the designer, but if you want evidence of a specific designer then you need evidence of that mental act.

Are you describing mental acts because Belacqua and I discussed it earlier? Or because you are making a new argument? I ask because I've obviously covered many of these things, but I have no way of knowing whose keeping up and whose catching the tail-end of it. That said, I'm not looking for evidence, I'm looking for falsification.

[Belacqua]

There used to be a quote going around among the anti-religion people, about how the earth couldn't be designed because so much of it is ocean. The argument, I guess, is that because people can't live on water then the ocean is wasted space. 

When was this and what was the source of the quote?

Somebody on this forum had it as his signature. It was by H.L. Mencken or somebody like that.