"The distinction between the mind-like action of designing and the hand-like action of actualizing is key. Conceptualization precedes actualization. Thus, detecting design is much more like detecting another mind than detecting busy hands. In fact, if you did not perceive the mind, the hands would not be detected as designing - they’d be detected as doing. Without making any serious and honest effort to detect the mind-like action of designing, a focus on the hand-like action of actualization will not signal design."
UPDATE 05-Jan-2009: The above link is no longer available.
Unfortunately we are better at detecting the actions of hands than we are at mind-reading.
ReplyDeleteWhat kinds of experiments do mind-readers perform? How is this science?
I didn't say it was an easy challenge to detect design. That said, there are some who don't want to face the challenge and others that do. For those that don't, all I can say is keep your criticism constructive and your chirping to a minimum.
ReplyDeletejjs
ReplyDeleteI think it is constructive to point out that this approach merely allows design proponents to ignore science even longer. There has been no progress in detecting the action of the "hands", whether they are "designing" or merely "doing". That should be, in my opinion, a far easier task than mind-reading.
So how, exactly, is this "facing the challenge"? It seems to me that it is avoiding the simplest task and moving on to an even more complicated (and probably impossible) task. Mike's final sentence above, "Without making any serious and honest effort to detect the mind-like action of designing, a focus on the hand-like action of actualization will not signal design" should actually read "We've given up on the effort to detect the hand-like action of actualization because we've failed miserably at this task, and now we'll retreat into the philosophical/theological realm and pretend that we can read the mind of God."