The World's Smartest Man(IQ 200)

[edit]After posting this I saw it might be a good idea to make clear that I am NOT an ID-supporter. It just seems to me that TL.net has given ID an unjustifiably bad rep, especially considering that very few here have bothered to accompany their extended anti-ID shenanigans with even one good bit of reason or justification. That obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but I just thought that perhaps my perspective could shed a bit of light on a subject that is apparently fairly poorly understood.[/edit]

Forget about any of ID's political or religious affiliations, and throw away the superficial stereotypes we've come to associate it with-- Those things are unnecessary and extraneous with respect to ID by definition. If we're really talking about ID, then we're referring to its aspects which distinguish it from all other things. The phrase "Intelligent Design" carries with it a huge amount of extra baggage; It's almost impossible to discuss it now because of the really bad rep its earned on account of the bad press we associate with it. But like I said, ultimately these associations have nothing to do with ID per se, but instead serve only to define the social and scientific contexts from which we approach it. At rock bottom, then, ID is just an idea about the way things might work, as much as is any other theoretical construction. So if we're really talking about ID, then we're really talking about two distinct concepts, both of which are very familiar to us, "Design" and "Intelligence", of which it is the stated goal of ID to unify into a single conceptual framework.

At its most basic conceptual foundation, ID tries to explore the relationship between information-rich systems (of all varieties, both concrete as well as abstract) and 'intelligence'-- a generalized notion which itself has no agreed-upon definition, whose terms and conditions are either largely unknown or not understood, and whose relationship to non-intelligent systems is so utterly and completely hidden beneath centuries-worth of sciences', mathematics', and philosophy's trillions of tangled threads, that it's long been agreed-on by virtually everyone that there exists no model (mathematical or otherwise) where the co-existence of physically-determined processes and self-directed intelligent processes can currently be reconciled in a consistent way.

There are, of course, other theories and approaches to these problems. But ID justifies its theoretical framework on the observation that all such other approaches are predicated on specific assumptions about the relation between information and intelligence, whose collective presence preclude objectivity by constricting the set of possible explanatory or theoretical models to just those which define 'self-directed intelligent processes' in terms of wholly determined physical processes. Such has been the trend of much of modern thought. But to ID'ers, such thinking is either misconceived or circular, since 'self-directed intelligent processes' have been arbitrarily redefined in terms of 'non-self-directed, non-intelligent processes'. Yes, such reductions are (and have been) commonplace in science, and that is most certainly not a bad thing in itself. In this case, however, the problem is that among theories seeking to explore the nature of intelligence and its relation to non-intelligent, information-rich systems, assumptions are being made about precisely none other-than the nature of intelligence and its relation to non-intelligent, information-rich systems. (In case you missed it, that's the definition of a circular or question-begging model). It should be noted that these assumptions really are very rarely accounted for by current models, the reason being that these assumptions are always philosophical in nature and are generally considered as being, to a large extent, either ambiguous or undecidable.

So the point of all this, then, is that ID does in fact have something to offer: Whereas so much of our contemporary theoretical approach to these issues has been constructed by way of a certain, deeply ingrained, "collective-philosophical-consciousness", whose basis is either unjustified or never empirically or methodically explored, ID differs in that it rests on a different set of philosophical and methodological considerations. Note that these considerations have nothing to do with religion or creationism, but instead only with those premises which are fundamentally related to ID's area of investigation-- namely, the nature of intelligence and self-direction, and their specific logical and ontological relations to informational systems of particular varieties.

Forget about any of ID's political or religious affiliations, and throw away the superficial stereotypes we've come to associate it with-- Those things are unnecessary and extraneous with respect to ID by definition. If we're really talking about ID, then we're referring to its aspects which distinguish it from all other things. The phrase "Intelligent Design" carries with it a huge amount of extra baggage; It's almost impossible to discuss it now because of the really bad rep its earned on account of the bad press we associate with it. But like I said, ultimately these associations have nothing to do with ID per se, but instead serve only to define the social and scientific contexts from which we approach it. At rock bottom, then, ID is just an idea about the way things might work, as much as is any other theoretical construction. So if we're really talking about ID, then we're really talking about two distinct concepts, both of which are very familiar to us, "Design" and "Intelligence", of which it is the stated goal of ID to unify into a single conceptual framework.

At its most basic conceptual foundation, ID tries to explore the relationship between information-rich systems (of all varieties, both concrete as well as abstract) and 'intelligence'-- a generalized notion which itself has no agreed-upon definition, whose terms and conditions are either largely unknown or not understood, and whose relationship to non-intelligent systems is so utterly and completely hidden beneath centuries-worth of sciences', mathematics', and philosophy's trillions of tangled threads, that it's long been agreed-on by virtually everyone that there exists no model (mathematical or otherwise) where the co-existence of physically-determined processes and self-directed intelligent processes can currently be reconciled in a consistent way.

There are, of course, other theories and approaches to these problems. But ID justifies its theoretical framework on the observation that all such other approaches are predicated on specific assumptions about the relation between information and intelligence, whose collective presence preclude objectivity by constricting the set of possible explanatory or theoretical models to just those which define 'self-directed intelligent processes' in terms of wholly determined physical processes. Such has been the trend of much of modern thought. But to ID'ers, such thinking is either misconceived or circular, since 'self-directed intelligent processes' have been arbitrarily redefined in terms of 'non-self-directed, non-intelligent processes'. Yes, such reductions are (and have been) commonplace in science, and that is most certainly not a bad thing in itself. In this case, however, the problem is that among theories seeking to explore the nature of intelligence and its relation to non-intelligent, information-rich systems, assumptions are being made about precisely none other-than the nature of intelligence and its relation to non-intelligent, information-rich systems. It should be noted that these assumptions really are very rarely accounted for by current models, the reason being that these assumptions are always philosophical in nature and are generally considered as being, to a large extent, either ambiguous or undecidable.

So the point of all this, then, is that ID does in fact have something to offer: Whereas so much of our contemporary theoretical approach to these issues has been constructed by way of a certain, deeply ingrained, "collective-philosophical-consciousness", whose basis is either unjustified or never empirically or methodically explored, ID differs in that it rests on a different set of philosophical and methodological considerations. Note that these considerations have nothing to do with religion or creationism, but instead only with those premises which are fundamentally related to ID's area of investigation-- namely, the nature of intelligence and self-direction, and their specific logical and ontological relations to informational systems of particular varieties.