Sunday, May 31, 2015

Chapter 8_Design Discourse

I. Michael Behe and Biological Arguments

Irreducible complexity

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.[1]

Alleged examples:[2]
(1) Bacterial flagellum
(2) Cascade of biochemical reactions and events that occur in vision
(3) Blood clotting
(4) Transport of materials within cells
(5) Immune system

The significance of irreducible complexity is this:

An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional.[3]

à Behe says this presents a “Lilliputian challenge to (unguided) Darwinism.”[4]

Obviously the various components of the eye must all work together to enable vision; so all these different parts would have to evolve in tandem. But an improvement to the lens (a step on the way to the present function of the lens) wouldn’t automatically permit better vision, and in fact may interfere with it.
            The problem, then, is to conceive of a series of steps through “design space” where (1) the first point is occupied by a design with no more than a light sensitive spot, as we find with certain relatively primitive animals; (2) each point (except the first) represents a design arising by way of heritable genetic variation (the main candidate is random genetic mutation) from the previous point; (3) divine or other guidance or causality is not involved in the transition from any point to the next; (4) each point is an adaptive step forward with respect to the previous point, or else a consequence, by way of spandrel or pliotropy,[5] of a design that is such a step forward; (5) each point is not overwhelmingly improbable with respect to the previous point; and (6) the last point is occupied by (correlated with) the design of the human eye.[6]

Plantinga: [I]t isn’t required that the Darwinist come up with the actual sequence of design plans here, or a sequence which could have been the actual sequence; what is required for a satisfying evolutionary account of the eye is perhaps more like a reasonably detailed specification of some important stages along the way.[7]

Behe: There aren’t any Darwinian accounts of any of these structures, and, by virtue of their irreducible complexity, there won’t be any; such accounts can’t possibly be given.[8]

Q1: Do you think Behe is warranted in his claim that some physical structures possessed by organisms are irreducibly complex? Why or why not?

à The alternative that Behe famously (or perhaps infamously) proposes to replace Darwinism is Intelligent Design.

Q2: Do you think Intelligent Design is a legitimate scientific theory? What criteria determine whether or not a theory is legitimately scientific, and how does Intelligent Design fare against these criteria?

Paul Draper:
(1) Behe fails to show that the systems he says are irreducibly complex are in fact irreducibly complex (that is, such that if they missed any of their parts, they couldn’t function at all); some biochemists…have argued that they’re not.
(2) There is also difficulty, here, about what constitutes a part: couldn’t some of these systems function perfectly well in the absence of a molecule or two?

à Draper: This response presupposes a new definition of irreducible complexity, one that implies that a system is irreducibly complex even if it has working parts that are not essential for it to function, so long as it has (at least two) interacting and closely matched parts which are essential. Given this definition, it would seem that the biochemical systems Behe discusses are indeed irreducibly complex.[9]

(3) Even if there aren’t any direct Darwinian routes to these systems, there may still be various indirect routes to them.[10]

The sort of route I have in mind occurs when an irreducibly complex and irreducibly specific system S that serves function F evolves from a precursor S* that shares many of S’s parts but serves a different function F*. Notice that the parts that S and S* share and that are required for F need not be required for F* even if they contribute to F*, and parts that are irreducibly specific relative to F may be only reducibly specific relative to F*. Thus, both the parts of S* and their specificity may have been gradually produced by a direct evolutionary path. Then one or more additional parts are added to S*, resulting in a change of function from F* to F. And relative to F, the parts and their specificity, which had not been essential for F*, are now essential.[11]

(4) Behe hasn’t even shown that direct routes to the systems he discusses are impossible.[12]

Q3: How might Behe respond to Draper’s objections?

à Draper: I believe that Behe’s most promising reply to these objections would be to admit the possibility of direct routes to irreducible complexity, but claim that, like indirect routes, they are very unlikely to produce the specific biochemical systems on which Behe builds his case. Of course, it would not be enough for Behe simply to claim that direct routes to these systems are very unlikely; he would need to argue for that claim. And it is an open question whether or not a good argument is available.[13]

[Behe’s 2007 book The Edge of Evolution] argues that there are structures at the molecular level of life that could not have been produced by (unguided) natural selection[, e.g.,  the elaborately complex protein machines of the cell.][14] Plantinga describes this work as “one of the few serious and quantitative arguments in this area.”[15]

[I]f it takes 1020 organisms to develop one new protein-interaction site, then a mutation issuing in two new (simultaneous) protein-protein interaction sites will require 1040 organisms. Estimates of the total number of organisms that have so far come to be in the history of Earth put that lumber at less than 1040. But then, so the thinking goes, it will be improbable that unguided natural selection should produce three protein-protein interaction sites in the history of the earth, and enormously improbable that it should produce the large protein machines involving assemblies of 10 or more proteins of which Alberts speaks.[16]

Q4: Granting that the ordinary physiology of the average organism fails to provide adequate conditions for making the necessary evolutionary advances not prohibitively improbable (in this case, the development of new protein interaction sites), might there not be other factors, whether biotic or abiotic, that serve to influence this rate such that the necessary advances are made more probable? Doesn’t the punctuated equilibrium thesis suggest something like this might be the case? If so, what factors might serve such a function?

Punctuated Equilibrium[17]

Punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that once formed most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state of stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and rapid (on a geologic time scale) events of branching speciation called cladogenesis. Cladogenesis is the process by which a species splits into two distinct species, rather than one species gradually transforming into another. Punctuated equilibrium is commonly contrasted against phyletic gradualism, the belief that evolution generally occurs uniformly and by the steady and gradual transformation of whole lineages (called anagenesis). In this view, evolution is seen as generally smooth and continuous.

In 1972, paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould published a landmark paper developing their theory and called it punctuated equilibria. Their paper built upon Ernst Mayr's model of geographic speciation, I. Michael Lerner's theories of developmental and genetic homeostasis, as well as their own empirical research. Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin is virtually nonexistent in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species.

Cambrian Explosion[18]

The Cambrian explosion was the relatively rapid appearance around 542 million years ago of most major animal phyla as demonstrated in the fossil record, and many more phyla now extinct. This was accompanied by major diversification of other organisms. Prior to the Cambrian explosion most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 or 80 million years, the rate of diversification accelerated by an order of magnitude and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today, although they did not resemble the species of today.

The basic problem with this is that natural selection calls for the slow accumulation of changes, where a new phyla would take longer than a new class which would take longer than a new order, which would take longer than a new family, which would take longer than a new genus would take longer than emergence of a new species but the apparent occurrence of high-level taxa without precedents is perhaps implying unusual evolutionary mechanisms.

There is general consensus that many factors helped trigger the Cambrian explosion, but there is no generally accepted consensus about the combination and the Cambrian explosion continues to be an area of controversy and research over why so rapid, why at the phylum level, why so many phyla then and none since, and even if the apparent fossil record is accurate.

An example of opinions involving the commonly cited rise in oxygen Great Oxidation Event from biologist PZ Myers summarizes: "What it was was environmental changes, in particular the bioturbation revolution caused by the evolution of worms that released buried nutrients, and the steadily increasing oxygen content of the atmosphere that allowed those nutrients to fuel growth; ecological competition, or a kind of arms race, that gave a distinct selective advantage to novelties that allowed species to occupy new niches; and the evolution of developmental mechanisms that enabled multicellular organisms to generate new morphotypes readily." The increase in molecular oxygen (O2) also may have allowed the formation of the protective ozone layer (O3) that helps shield Earth from lethal UV radiation from the Sun.

Q5: Behe sets the “edge of evolution” at the level of orders, families, and genera; unguided evolution, he thinks, could produce new species.[19] What do you think he considers special about this boundary that Behe decides to set his boundary here?

Objection 1: Behe’s sample may be biased; P. falciparum [the Malaria parasite] and the HIV virus involve host-parasite interaction, and perhaps what holds for host-parasite interaction doesn’t hold generally.[20]

à Although some have argued that host-parasite interactions might actually accelerate evolutionary processes by setting up an arms race of sorts in which each organism is forced to adapt to keep up with the constant pressure imposed by the other, just as in certain predator-prey relationships.[21]

Red Queen Hypothesis –

The Red Queen hypothesis, also referred to as Red Queen's, Red Queen's race or The Red Queen Effect, is an evolutionary hypothesis which proposes that organisms must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate not merely to gain reproductive advantage, but also simply to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing organisms in an ever-changing environment. The Red Queen hypothesis intends to explain two different phenomena: the constant extinction rates as observed in the paleontological record caused by co-evolution between competing species and the advantage of sexual reproduction (as opposed to asexual reproduction) at the level of individuals.

The original idea of the Red Queen hypothesis was given by Leigh Van Valen in order to explain the "Law of Extinction". Leigh Van Valen showed that in many populations the probability of extinction does not depend on the lifetime of this population. In addition, the probability of extinction is constant over millions of years for a given population. This could be explained by the coevolution of species. Indeed, an adaptation in a population of one species (e.g. predators, parasites) may change the selection pressure on a population of another species (e.g. prey, hosts), giving rise to an antagonistic coevolution. If this occurs reciprocally, a potential dynamic coevolution may result.

The Red Queen at the genus level. The linear relationship between number of genera and the logarithm of survival times suggests that the probability of extinction is constant over time. Redrawn from Leigh Van Valen (1973).

In another idea, the Red Queen hypothesis is used independently by Hartung and Bell to explain the evolution of sex, by John Jaenike to explain the maintenance of sex and W. D. Hamilton to explain the role of sex in response to parasites. In all cases, sexual reproduction confers species variability and a faster generational response to selection by making offspring genetically unique. Sexual species are able to improve their genotype in changing conditions. Consequently co-evolutionary interactions, between host and parasite for example, may select for sexual reproduction in hosts in order to reduce the risk of infection. Oscillations in genotype frequencies are observed between parasites and hosts in an antagonistic coevolutionary way[8] without necessitating changes to the phenotype.[22]

Objection 2: [W]here two or more protein-protein interaction sites are required, perhaps one of these appears, and is in some way adaptive, so that it persists until the other appears also.[23]

Q6: How might Behe respond to the objections above?

à Plantinga: It’s too difficult to calculate the relevant possibilities so as to build an argument for God on Behe’s premises.[24]

Behe: I strongly emphasize that it is not an argument for the existence of a benevolent God…This, while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open. Possible candidates for the role of designer include: the God of Christianity; an angel-fallen or not; Plato’s demiurge; some mystical new-age force; space aliens from Alpha Centauri; time travelers; or some utterly unknown intelligent being.[25]

Q7: What kind of constraints might be reasonable to put on Behe’s designer? Assuming we do have a designer, it seems that he/she/it would also have a natural history, i.e., an explanation for how he/she/it came to be. Does Behe imagine that there might be alternative natural historical accounts for beings capable of designing intelligent life that are less improbable than the Darwinian one? What might such an account be? If our designer did have such a natural history, shouldn’t we expect him/her/it to have employed those same processes to create life in the present case, or a process at least as simple or efficient? Isn’t the only way to avoid the difficulty posed by irreducible complexity to posit a designer that does not him-/her-/it- self have a natural history, and doesn’t that leave only an eternal being (God) on the table? Would that fact make his theory any less attractive?

Q8: Is Behe’s designer intended to be a creator or simply a guider of evolutionary processes? Does it make any difference with respect to the type of designer needed to fit the data?

II. Perceiving Design

Plantinga: Perhaps [Behe-style arguments,] as well as the fine-tuning arguments of the last chapter, can be better thought of as like what is going on [in the mountain goat case], where it is perception (or something like it) rather than argument that is involved.[26]

Ways to interpret the teleological argument:
(1) Argument from analogy (Hume)
(2) Inductive argument
(3) Inference to the best explanation
(4) As a demonstration of appearance (i.e., properly basic belief)[27]

à Draper’s Interpretation (inference to the best explanation):[28]
(1) Some natural systems (e.g., the human eye) are mechanically ordered (i.e., they exhibit the same sort of order as watches and other machines produced by human beings).
(2) Intelligent design is a very good explanation of mechanical order.
(3) No other explanation (or no equally good explanation) of mechanical order is available.
(4) Every instance of mechanical order has an explanation.
(5) So, some natural systems were (probably) designed.

Q9: Of the above options, what do you think the most natural interpretation of Behe’s argument is? Which interpretation do you think lends the strongest support to theism?

III. Design Argument vs. Design Discourse

Plantinga: I don’t ordinarily form any belief (any explicit belief, anyway) at all as to how Paul is looking: I move directly to the view that he is furious…If we did [form such beliefs on the basis of an inference, they] would not be well-founded and would certainly not constitute knowledge.[29]

Small children apparently form beliefs about the mental states of their parents long before they come to the age at which they make inductive inferences. The capacity for this sort of belief formation is not something one gains by inductive learning; it is instead part of our native cognitive equipment. We might put it by saying that we form beliefs of this sort in the basic way, not on the evidential basis of other beliefs, other propositions we believe. That is to say, we don’t form these beliefs on the basis of inference. It is rather that we are hard-wired, as they say, to form these beliefs in certain experiential circumstances.[30]

Types of belief formed in this way[31]
(1) Beliefs about other minds
(2) Beliefs about the past (memory)
(3) Perceptual beliefs

Plantinga: Indeed, it is exceedingly hard to see how I could acquire the thought that there are past events by way of argument. What would be the premises? The same goes for perception…[32]

Q10: What does it mean to form beliefs in the basic way? How is the way that beliefs are formed relevant to how much warrant or positive epistemic status it has?

Plantinga: How we form these beliefs is important along several different dimensions, but it is particularly relevant to the question how much warrant, or justification, or positive epistemic status the beliefs in question have. Based on a tenuous analogical inference of a speculative explanatory conjecture, these beliefs wouldn’t have anything like the degree of warrant or positive epistemic status they actually do have; this basis wouldn’t warrant anything like the degree of confidence we actually invest in them…On the other hand, if they are formed in the basic way, then they might very well constitute knowledge. For suppose (as it seems to be true) that a belief B has warrant, that property or quantity enough of which is what distinguishes mere true belief from knowledge, just if B is formed b cognitive faculties functioning properly in the sort of environment for which we were designed (by God or evolution) according to a design plan successfully aimed at the production of true beliefs…This sort of belief formation is not a result of movement from one set of beliefs (premises) to another (conclusion), but from a set of circumstances (being appeared to a certain way, for example) to a belief.[33]

Q11: How can we tell if we are exercising our faculties in the appropriate environment (context) so as to achieve warrant for our beliefs? Why think that the perception of design in nature isn’t an instance of a false positive delivered by faculties whose “proper design” was to detect design in the ordinary cases, i.e., for authentic manufactured objects? The same consideration would apply to detecting agency (God) in natural processes or the transpiring of historical events.

Plantinga: So what is [Paley] doing?

à At least two things: Sometimes he is calling our attention to the sorts of beliefs we do in fact find ourselves forming, or inclined to form…Other times what he seems to be doing can perhaps be described as putting us in the sorts of situations in which design beliefs are in fact formed…[H]e is trying to get us to recall design beliefs, and put us in situations in which we form design beliefs.[34]

à We’ll call this activity design discourse as opposed to design argument.[35]

Plantinga: Insofar as design entails mental states on the part of some other person (the designer) the belief that a given object has been designed is a mental state ascribing belief.[36]

IV. The Difference it Makes

Plantinga: What’s the significance?

[T]he suggestion is that you can come to form design beliefs, at least on some occasions, in the basic way. If so, the belief in question can have warrant or positive epistemic status for you, even if you don’t know of any good argument from other beliefs for the belief in question – even, indeed, if there aren’t any good arguments of that sort. As we’ve seen, this is how it goes with out beliefs about the mental states of others; but the same goes for our perceptual beliefs. The same also goes for our beliefs about the past…[37]

Secondly, there is a difference here in the way in which the beliefs in question can be criticized, or refuted. Beliefs formed in the basic way are not, of course, immune to criticism…A belief formed on the basis of an argument, however, can be criticized in a different way as well. When you (properly) form a belief on the basis of an argument, what typically happens is that warrant or positive epistemic status is transferred from the premise belief(s) to the conclusion…A belief formed in that way, as the conclusion of an argument, can be criticized in terms of the cogency of the argument. We can ask whether the argument is valid, i.e., whether the conclusion really follows from the premises; we can also ask whether the premises are true; we can also ask whether the argument is circular, or begs the question, or is in some other way dialectically deficient. None of these sorts of criticism is relevant to beliefs formed in the basic way.[38]

In summary, beliefs acquired via argumentation (inference) are evaluable on the basis of the cogency of the arguments supporting them, while beliefs formed in the basic way are only evaluable on the basis of meta-criteria like:
(1) Whether they were formed with a particular type of faculty (namely, one that was designed to track truth);
(2) The health of that faculty (whether it is functioning as designed); and
(3) Whether they were formed within the appropriate kind of environment

Q12: Do you agree with Plantinga that beliefs formed in the basic way enjoy more warrant than beliefs formed upon inference? Why or why not?

Q13: Do you think that Plantinga sets the threshold for defeat in the appropriate place for beliefs formed in the basic way? Do you think the same criteria can/should apply to all beliefs formed in the basic way, regardless of the belief type? Do you think the threshold for defeat should be the same for all beliefs formed in the basic way as well, i.e., both to beliefs about the past (beliefs produced by memory) as well as beliefs about design, etc.? Why or why not?

Plantinga: How can a design discourse be unsuccessful?

[O]ne way would be to show, somehow, that the design discourse fails to produce any tendency to form the relevant design belief. But there is also another way. A basic belief can be subject to defeaters: one way, therefore to argue that a design discourse is unsuccessful would be to show that the design belief formed in this way is in fact subject to defeat. This would be a matter of producing a defeater for the design belief – that is, getting a person who holds a certain design belief to accept another belief D such that she can’t sensibly continue to hold the design belief, as long as she holds the defeating belief D.[39]

On the other hand, you might become convinced that as a matter of fact the eye was not designed, but came to be in some other way. Then you would have a rebutting defeater: you come to believe a proposition that you see is incompatible with the proposed defeatee.[40]

On the other hand, I might acquire an undercutting defeater. This would happen, roughly, if I come to believe something that undercuts or nullifies or negates my reason for the proposed belief.[41]

Q14: Do you think Plantinga’s criteria for failing a design discourse are fair or reasonable? Why or why not?

Plantinga says that Darwin is often credited with having refuted Paley’s argument.

Some writers seem to believe that Darwin, or current evolutionary science, has provided a rebutting defeater: they believe that evolutionary science has shown that as a matter of fact eyes and other biological structures have not, in point of sober truth, been designed.[42]

Plantinga: Even if (contrary to fact) either Darwin or more recent biology were to have actually shown that the biological structures in question have came to be by way of these Darwinian mechanisms, it wouldn’t follow that they have not been designed; therefore they do not provide a rebutting defeater for Paley’s design beliefs or a problem for Paley’s design discourse. To provide a rebutting defeater here, Darwinian science would have to show that the biological phenomena in question have been produced by unguided Darwinian evolution. But (naturally enough) they haven’t shown that evolution is unguided by God or any other intelligent agent; that wouldn’t be the sort of thing, one supposes, within the capability or empirical science.[43]

Q15: Do you agree with Plantinga that Darwinian considerations fail to provide a rebutting defeater for design hypotheses? Why or why not?

Plantinga: Does Darwinian evolution provide an undercutting defeater for the design belief?

à What the Darwinian has to show, to provide a defeater is an unguided evolutionary path which is not prohibitively improbable.[44]

à Plantinga: The sensible thing to think, here, is that we have a partial undercutting defeater for those beliefs (formed in that way)…Evolutionary biologists present considerations designed to show how it could be that these structures have arisen by way of unguided Darwinian processes; they give us some reason to believe that this is possible. These considerations, when you first become aware of them, should somewhat reduce your confidence that these structures have been designed.[45]

Q16: Do you agree with Plantinga that Darwinian considerations fail to provide more than a partial undercutting defeater for design hypotheses? Why or why not?

Plantinga: What overall conclusion should be draw about these design discourses?

à [W]e have partial defeaters for the design discourses at the level of gross anatomy; we have partial defeaters for design beliefs having to do with the eye, with the structures of limbs, and the like. We don’t have any such defeaters for Behe design beliefs at the molecular and cellular level.[46]

Defeater – A defeater D for a belief B is another belief I acquire, such that as long as I hold that belief D, I cannot rationally (given my noetic structure) continue to believe B (and a partial defeater requires that I hold B less firmly).[47]

Deflector 1 – A belief deflector D* for a (potential) belief B, is, roughly speaking, a belief I already hold such that as long as I hold it (and given my noetic structure) I can’t rationally continue to hold B.[48]

Deflector 2 – A deflector belief D for a (potential) belief B, is, roughly speaking, a belief I already hold such that as long as I hold it (and given my noetic structure) I can’t rationally continue to hold B AND in which belief B is such that in the relevant circumstances, if D were not present in my noetic structure, I would have formed B.[49]

Plantinga: Do Darwinian considerations present a defeater for the design beliefs S forms in response to a given design discourse?

à It depends on who we’re talking about and several other factors.

(1) Theist –

What happens depends on the strength of S’s theistic belief, and also on the strength of her reaction to the potential Darwinian defeating belief. If the Darwinian considerations produce a strong enough impulse to form the belief that the phenomena in question are not designed, if that impulse overwhelms her initial theistic belief, then defeat of the design belief will not be deflected, and indeed S will wind up with a defeater for her initial theistic belief.[50]

(2) Serious naturalist

[A naturalist with a strong belief in naturalism] will have a deflector for the…design beliefs, and will presumably not form such beliefs… - unless, of course, the impulse to form those design beliefs is overwhelming; in that case the impulse to form the design belief will outweigh the potential belief-deflector.[51]

(3) Neutral evaluator

For such a person, encountering a design discourse like Paley’s or Behe’s…will in all likelihood result in a design belief. But also, for such a person, encountering the relevant Darwinian considerations I think, will present her with a partially undermining defeater for those design beliefs.[52]

Q17: Do you agree with Plantinga’s analyses for the various profiles above? Why or why not?

Plantinga: [W]e really can’t tell what sort of support, if any, design discourses offer theism without knowing whether theism is true.[53]

Q18: Assuming Plantinga is right that we can’t tell by any direct means what sort of support design discourses offer theism, are there other considerations that might help us evaluate the significance of apparent design to the debate between theists and naturalists?



[1] P. 233.
[2] P. 233.
[3] P. 234.
[4] P. 234.
[5] Pliotropy occurs when a single gene influences multiple traits.
[6] P. 235.
[7] P. 236.
[8] P. 236.
[9] P. 238.
[10] P. 238.
[11] P. 238.
[12] P. 239.
[13] P. 239.
[14] P. 240.
[15] P. 240.
[16] 241-242.
[19] P. 242.
[20] P. 242.
[21] Popular science writer Matt Ridley makes this case in his book The Red Queen.
[23] P. 242.
[24] P. 243-244.
[25] P. 244.
[26] P. 245.
[27] “I don’t ordinarily form any belief (any explicit belief, anyway) at all as to how Paul is looking: I move directly to the view that he is furious.” If we did [form such beliefs on the basis of an inference, they] would not be well-founded and would certainly not constitute knowledge.” (p. 249-250, 251)
[28] P. 247-248.
[29] P. 249-251.
[30] P. 251.
[31] P. 251.
[32] P. 251.
[33] P. 252.
[34] P. 255.
[35] P. 255.
[36] P. 255.
[37] P. 256-257.
[38] P. 257-258.
[39] P. 259.
[40] P. 259.
[41] P. 260.
[42] P. 260.
[43] P. 262.
[44] P. 263.
[45] P. 264.
[46] P. 266-267.
[47] P. 268.
[48] P. 268.
[49] P. 268-269.
[50] P. 269.
[51] P. 269-270.
[52] P. 270.
[53] P. 272.