Response to Massimo Pigliucci's Review of The Design Inference

Mark I. Vuletic

Massimo Pigliucci's review of William Dembski's The Design Inference puzzles me.
What puzzles me most is lack of substantive comment about
the book itself--Pigliucci's "review" reads for the most part like an extended
diatribe against the intelligent design (i.e. creationist) movement. Do
not misunderstand me--I am unsympathetic towards creationists of all stripes.
But the style in which Pigliucci attacks Dembski's book is
analogous to badmouthing the Principia Mathematica because Newton spent
substantial time working on alchemy, or to trashing Dirac's
Principles of Quantum Mechanics because many crackpots appeal to quantum
mechanics to advance their personal pseudoscientific
agendas.[1]

Although Dembski's book never attacks evolution (not even in the only seven
pages in the book in which he talks about evolution at all)
Pigliucci clearly represents the book as an attack on evolution. The Design
Inference is supposedly "part of a large, well-planned, and not at all
secret conspiracy whose objective is nothing less than the destruction of modern
science and its substitution with a religious system of belief."
And indeed, it is no secret that Dembski promotes creationism, and that he is a
fellow at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture,
which wishes to push precisely the agenda Pigliucci claims. But none of this
says anything about the book. One cannot simply dismiss the
book by virtue of guilt by association--one must assess what it actually says.
Pigliucci fails to make that assessment time and time again:

1. Dembski's book has been hailed "as a revolutionary contribution to design
theory." Indeed it has. But so what? Every New Age guru under
the sun has hailed quantum mechanics as a revolutionary contribution to his or
her nonsensical doctrines. Does that make quantum mechanics
suspect? Does even the fact that some of the founders of quantum mechanics
dabbled in mysticism make quantum mechanics suspect?
Evaluation by association is uncalled for. Besides, if we are going to evaluate
books by association, then the fact that The Design Inference
has been published in the prestigous "Cambridge Studies in Probability,
Induction, and Decision Theory" series--the editors of which are no
slouches when it comes to mathematics and logic--should be sufficient to
overrule any taint creationist connections may place on it.

2. Dembski's book is "soon to be followed by a more explicit attack on evolution
entitled Uncommon Descent." This may well be true (Dembski
has edited anti-evolution books in the past). And should Dembski write such a
book, and should its attack on evolution be unsuccessful, the
scientific community will point that out, as it has done for other flagship
pieces of the intelligent design movement, such as Darwin on Trial
and Darwin's Black Box. But attacking a current book because it is to be
followed by a different book is just nonsensical.

3. Dembski's book attempts to define and defend a "universal small probability"
of 0.5x10150 "that can be used as a universal yardstick for
inferring design." According to Pigliucci, (i) this is done to undergird an
attack on the probability of DNA forming naturalistically -- "if
[Dembski] can demonstrate that the probability of a molecule of DNA forming in
the primordial soup approaches...this 'universal small
probability', then life does not evolve by chance" but (ii) Dembski "missed the
solution to this riddle," namely, that biological evolution (and
presumably DNA formation) is a product of "necessity, which can be caused by a
non-random, deterministic force such as natural selection."
There are two problems here: (1) The design inference (an argument form, mind
you, not an argument itself) which Dembski seeks to establish in
his book explicitly requires ruling out the possibility of the phenomenon under
consideration being produced by a regularity (see Premise 4 on
page 222). So anyone who wishes to make a Dembski-style design inference to the
conclusion that DNA was designed, is automatically
required to consider Pigliucci's natural "necessity"--the format of the design
inference does not contain the oversight Pigliucci attributes to
Dembski.[2] (2) More importantly, Dembski never argues against naturalistic DNA
formation in The Design Inference to begin with. Will he do
so in Uncommon Descent? Fine, then attack that argument in a review of that
book. The merit of the "universal small probability" itself is not
addressed by criticism of bad creationist arguments which employ it, any more
than Kolmogorov's axioms are unseated by virtue of bad
creationist arguments which depend in part upon them.

Pigliucci, in fact, makes only one criticism which is directed at the actual
content of The Design Inference. It is that Dembski "cloak[s] his logic
with semi-obscure (and totally useless in practice) pseudo-mathematical jargon
and symbolism." Presumably the bulk of the book (for instance,
the demonstration of Caputo's rigging) is trivial and obfuscates with jargon
that which should just be left to common sense. I have heard many
of my students make similar criticisms of formal logic. They simply do not
appreciate the importance of attempting to make precise and set on a
rigorous foundation patterns of reasoning which appear common-sensical.
Pigliucci fails to appreciate Dembski's attempt to do the same for the
patterns of reasoning we employ when we attempt to discern whether an
intelligent agent is responsible for certain phenomena we observe.
Dembski's attempt may or may not fail (I am agnostic here) but his project is
neither trivial, nor a gratuitous (or "pseudo") use of mathematical
symbolism.

The aspect of Pigliucci's review which irritates me the most personally is the
insinuation that the dust jacket endorsers--Wiliam Wimsatt and
Jon Jarrett--are part of the intelligent design "conspiracy" by virtue of their
praise of the book and their affiliation with two of the universities
from which Dembski matriculated. Dembski may have received degrees from the
universities at which they work, but we're talking about UIC
and the University of Chicago here, not Bob Jones University and the Institute
for Creation Research Graduate School. In personal
correspondence, Wimsatt wrote "I am an evolutionist to the core, and am not at
all bothered by Dembski's book." Furthermore, he wrote, "I
think [the book] is a double-edged sword, and--properly understood--should give
no comfort to Creationists! i.e., I don't think, by proper
interpretation of the evidence that we have anything like evidence for
intelligent design, but instead evolution emerges by far as the best
explanation of the data." Jarrett, far from being a co-conspirator, was
completely unaware of Dembski's religious views even after reading The
Design Inference, until I showed him a CRSC pamphlet with Dembski's picture on
it (this is an excellent demonstration of precisely how devoid
of creationism the book itself is).

That Pigliucci's accusations of conspiracy unwittingly extend to people on his
own side constitutes, in my opinion, further evidence that his
zeal against creationism (as understandable as it is) has generated in him an
illegitimate negative bias against anything that is in any way
associated with creationism. Once again, I believe Pigliucci's strong dislike
for creationism is well-founded, but it appears to have caused him to
miss the point of The Design Inference, whether the point of the book turns out
to be correct or incorrect.

-- Postscript (2001) -- 

Although I believe the points I have made above are accurate, I would like to
state for the record that I do not mean to impugn Pigliucci's
credentials or qualifications. Some time after writing my response, I visited
Pigliucci's Skeptic and Humanist Web page, and was surprised to
find work of very high quality. I have, in fact, become a fan. I believe
Pigliucci's review of The Design Inference is unfair, and does not provide
the reader with any of the needed relevant criticism that must have been in
Pigliucci's mind as he read Dembski's arguments; however, I am
satisfied that this was an aberration in what is otherwise the fine career of an
impressive mind. It would be a dreadful mistake for anyone to
ignore Pigliucci's wider work because of my negative reaction to this one
review.

I should also note some disappointment with Dembski, for his lame insinuations
about UW-Madison (see the parting shot at
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/bd-analyze.html). Most people would
be thrilled to have scholars of Elliott Sober's and Ellery
Eells' stature review their work. Not Dembski, I guess. I was also saddened by
Dembski's mean-spirited portrayal of a minor slip on Robert
Pennock's part (see
http://www.baylor.edu/~William_Dembski/docs_critics/pennock.htm) as a
"convenient" distortion. I hope such outbreaks
on Dembski's part are also aberrations, and that Dembski is not destined to
trace Phillip Johnson's arc of ever-increasing shrillness, pettiness,
and irrelevance.

Footnotes

[1] Not that I think Dembski's book is of the same caliber as Newton's and
Dirac's. In fact, I'm sure it couldn't possibly be of the same caliber as
the Principia Mathematica. Beyond that, though, Dembski's book is too far over
my head for me to make any assessment of it.

[2] Bill Wimsatt points out that Pigliucci (and Dembski to an extent) is sloppy
in his use of the word "necessity." Natural selection will not bring
about the products we see around us today with necessity. Nevertheless, it acts
as a "probability amplifier [as any multi-stage selective filter
will do], in which the information in the product of a process can grow linearly
(and its improbability decline exponentially) with time."
Presumably, Dembski means to capture processes like this under the rubric of
"necessity." It is unclear whether Pigliucci would agree with the
characterization of natural selection as an amplifier, or stick to his guns and
declare it a "deterministic force."

Oryginal: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/dembski.html