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Some Thoughts about Dawkins' infinite Regress Argument
By: jme

Dawkins discusses three alternative hypotheses that compete to explain nature. His concern is to support one of them and to dismiss the others.

The hypothesis he supports is that evolution by natural selection adequately explains nature, and he argues that neither intelligent design nor chance can.

Dawkins’ positive hypothesis

Nature is composed of complex organisms and structures, like human beings and the human eye. That such complex things should exist is highly improbable, and evolution, he argues, is the only workable hypothesis to explain it. It is a stunningly elegant and powerful solution to the riddle of such statistically improbable complexity in nature:

Natural selection is a cumulative process which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in a series, the end product of the accumulation is very, very improbable indeed.
(TGD p.121)

He introduces the metaphor of ‘Mount Improbable’ to help us understand the process of natural selection. He writes:

On one side of the mountain is a sheer cliff, impossible to climb, but on the other side is a gentle slope to the summit. On the summit sits a complex device such as an eye or a bacterial flagella motor. The absurd notion that such complexity could spontaneously self-assemble is symbolized by leaping from the foot of the cliff to the top in one bound. Evolution, by contrast, goes around the back of the mountain and creeps up the gentle slope to the summit: easy!
(p.122)

This explains the complexity and statistical improbability of things we find in nature, by asking us to picture a movement by degrees or steps up the mountainside towards the summit, with each step forward representing a slight increase in both complexity and improbability.

Intelligent Design – Dawkins’ rejection

To intelligent design (ID) theorists, who suppose that the supernatural intelligent designer, ‘Sid’, adequately explains nature, Dawkins says that they are mistaken in inferring design, which is merely apparent. It helps in following his arguments to look at certain principles to which he thinks ID theorists are committed, but which Dawkins believes make their position untenable.

The first principle is this:

P1 Whatever thing is designed needs a designer.

This principle must be true in virtue of the meaning of the terms used in it. Nothing could be designed if it didn’t have a designer. Dawkins believes, of course, that nature doesn’t have a designer, but his belief isn’t a violation of P1. He believes that since nature is not designed, it doesn’t need a designer.

In addition to P1, Dawkins seems to insist on another:

P2 The designer is more complex than the thing designed.

He bases this on the belief that you never find a table designing a carpenter, or a horseshoe designing a blacksmith, or anything at all designed by anything but a designer that is more complex than the thing designed.

But this means that an attempt to explain things in nature by means of ID would be on pain of positing something, a designer, that is even more complex and improbable than the things to be explained. This consideration alone, he thinks, makes the Sid seem improbable.

But not yet impossible. A thing, such as a Sid, might be thought improbable – even immensely so – and yet still exist. Being improbable does not of itself rule out the possibility of a Sid, for on that account alone his description should not involve a contradiction.

We might question whether P2 has the same logically compelling force as P1. Why should it be that every designer is more complex than the thing designed? Perhaps it shouldn’t, so we try to think of a counter-example that would allow us to reject P2. We would require an instance in which the designer is no more complex than the thing designed. It is not easy to imagine such an instance, but neither is it necessary to do so. An example’s resistance to being discovered doesn’t mean it isn’t out there, somewhere. The most that can be said is that until such a thing is found, P2 is unfalsified, but certainly not unfalsifiable.

Are we allowed to replace P2 with:

P3: Not all designers are more complex than the thing designed?

This far, it would appear that we are, for we may consistently claim that a counter-example of the type we are seeking is possible, whether or not we can find one, and indeed, even if, in fact, there isn’t one.

But this is what Dawkins wants to disallow, for it makes it easier to explain nature via ID. He disallows it only by barricading P2 against further objections and making it true by definition. Such a move has been proposed by Roger Montague in his paper, ‘Dawkins’ Infinite Regress’. On page 3, he says that Dawkins is committed ‘to the idea that any conceivable designer is, and must be, more complex than the thing designed. This becomes true by definition.’ If this step is taken, then we would know a priori that a counter example to P2 is not only elusive, but impossible, and that P3 is necessarily false.

Dawkins might accept this proposal, for it strengthens his position. But then what is made ‘true by definition’, namely, P2, is stipulative. This leads us to suspect that the expressions, ‘designer’ and ‘the thing designed’ have new, non-standard meanings and connotations.

And we find them in the form of a subtle equivocation on the term ‘things’, resulting in a sneaky shift of focus from ‘thing’ understood as ‘that which is designed’ to ‘thing’ as in ‘that which is a designer’. The result of this is an infinite regress of designers (implied by principle P4, below) which comes much closer to making Sid look impossible. The argument would have to run something like this:

1 Whatever thing is designed needs a designer. [P1]
2 Whatever thing is designed has a degree of complexity. [Assumption]
3 Whatever thing has a degree of complexity needs a designer. [Assumption]
4 The designer is more complex than the thing designed. [P2, ‘true by definition’]
5 Whatever thing has a degree of complexity needs a designer which has a greater degree of complexity. [From 1 through to 4]
6 Whatever thing is a designer which has a degree of complexity is, a fortiori, a thing which has a degree of complexity.
7 Therefore, every designer which has a degree of complexity needs a designer which has a greater degree of complexity. [P4, from 1 through to 6]

I can think of no other way of getting from P1 and P2 to the conclusion, P4, than by means of such a spurious argument, with its various assumptions and sleight-of-hand equivocation on ‘thing’. But even if Dawkins allows it (because the infinite regress is a necessary part of his case) there may be unpalatable consequences from which he has to escape.

For a start, would Dawkins allow the force of the infinite regress to extend to absolutely every designer? Would he deny that, for example, the Houses of Parliament have (or had) a designer (Sir Charles Barry)? If he wouldn’t deny this, then, in consistency, neither would he deny that an adequate explanation of the design of the Houses of Parliament stops short of an infinite regress of designers, in which each ‘level of explanation’ would be more complex than the last. The implausible alternative would be for him to admit that there is no proper explanation at all. The infinite regress of designers involved means that not one of them can explain anything adequately. Whichever one we singled out as a candidate for an explanation would be preceded by an infinite number of others to be counted in the explanation as well.

To sidestep this, Dawkins might insist that his infinite regress of designers would operate only in the supposed supernatural realm which, being ex hypothesi infinite in nature, is better suited to accommodating it than the material world which is finite (and hence can accommodate only a finite number of designers). But this would be an arbitrary decision. If P4 is a sound principle, we would need to be assured why it has application in one type of realm while not gaining a foothold in another.

But now, it should be noted that attacking a rival theorist with the sharp edge of an infinite regress is not the sole prerogative of Dawkins; for the weapon can be turned against him as much as if he had been its intended target from the start.

Referring again to his parable of Mount Improbable, we visualise the gentle slope on which organisms and structures march upward, gaining in both complexity and statistical improbability by steps or degrees, as the long process of evolution by natural selection unfolds. We can pick any particular step or degree we like and apply to it the destructive force of an infinite regress. For whatever step we pick, there is another from which, by degree, it has emerged that little bit more complex and improbable. That earlier step, likewise, has yet another from which it too has emerged, and so on, ad infinitum. The result must, in consistency, be that there is no explanation at all for the complexity we discover on the summit of Mount Improbable; for any that would count as adequate would need recourse to an infinite number of others, with the result that such an explanation could never be achieved, and that makes an adequate one impossible.

But there is a hint in Dawkins as to how he might be rescued from this difficulty. He discusses the problem of bisecting a piece of gold, a process which could be carried on ad infinitum because of our intuition that things, just like Euclidean straight lines, are, at least in principle, infinitely divisible. So in our imaginations we bisect the gold block once, then twice, and realise that we shall never finish up with a piece that is too small to proceed with any further. It is here that Dawkins raises the matter of the atom. What we would finish with is, in fact, an atom of gold, which can be bisected no further and retain its identity. That atom, he says, is the true ‘terminator’ to the regress, for if we divide that, whatever we would end up with is not gold.

Using similar reasoning, he might insist that Mount Improbable has a base after all, where the ‘terminator’ of the series, now finite, dwells. He might have in mind a particular atom from which the series sprang, or a certain protein molecule, or a bowl of Heinz Primeval Soup. Whatever it might be, it serves as the point from which the process of evolution by natural selection begins. The series, therefore, has an adequate explanation, rather than an infinite number of others that need to be acknowledged.

In claiming as much, it would appear that Dawkins is tacitly supposing some form of ‘Scientific Foundationalism’, which holds that there are certain entities such as those already mentioned, that are simply supposed or hypothesised, and are the springboard from which other, more complex, entities emerge. The philosophical counterpart to this is that there are certain propositions which justify the build-up of others by a process of inference, but which do not themselves stand in need of further justification. These propositions are foundational, and include those that define gold in such a way that justifies Dawkins in telling his story. Such foundational propositions are also assumed in theories of justice, for example, from which are derived the entire structure of the theories in question.

The ID theorist’s response could be, therefore, to insist on parity of reasoning; if Dawkins can rely upon such foundational entities or propositions, then why can’t he? His would be those that adequately explain nature in his own terms, whether they have ultimate reference to Sid or some other clever designer. Whatever this being might be is the topic for another debate, but my point is that if one side can produce an ‘adequate’ explanation of the things on the summit of Mount Improbable, why can’t the other? They may not need to agree, but they do need to read from the same page of the rules of logic.

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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