Argument from Design (a Teleological Argument)

A word or two about “teleology.”

The word “teleology” comes from the Greek word “telos” (τέλος) which means end or purpose, goal or function; so a “teleology” is a system of goals or purposes or the study of a system of goals or purposes. If you explain someone’s or something’s behavior with reference to goals or purposes, you are offering a teleological explanation. (E.g. She skipped dessert because she is trying to lose weight. The cat is sitting by the hole in the skirting board because she is trying to catch the mouse.) If you have a “teleological worldview” you have a view of reality that is fundamentally shot through with goals or purposes. That means that you think any adequate account of reality will need to reference the goals, purposes, functions or ends of reality. Now these goals or purposes can be global (e.g. The purpose of the entire universe is the realize the will of God on Earth.) or local (e.g. The purpose of the heart is to pump blood.) If you think the universe has a purpose or a function, or even merely think that objects in the Universe must be understood in terms of their goals, purposes or functions, then you are describing these items in a teleological way.[1]

The typical Argument from Design is a teleological argument in that it references the goal directed behavior we see in our biodiverse world and claims that this can only be explained by a designer of that biodiverse world. It claims that, when you look at the order of the universe, it is obvious that there is a maker and this maker is God.

There are many variants on this single theme. Some arguments try to prove the existence of God as the maker/enforcer of the laws governing, constructing, ordering universe (e.g. Aquinas' fifth way). The fact that the universe exhibits an intelligent order is thought to be evidence for the existence of a Designer and that designer is/must be God. Aquinas thought that the fact that the universe behaves in law-like intelligible ways where objects “tend towards” their natural ends (acorns to oak trees, rocks consistently run downhill, electrons orbit their nuclei, etc.) can only he explained by an intelligent director who moves the unintelligent things in intelligent/ intelligible ways. Aquinas maintains that this is caused by an intelligent director who imbues essences with existence, the former being the proximate causes directing the substances to move/developed in predictable, intelligible ways (inner directedness). This is certainly true of organic nature, but even if the university consisted only of a single hydrogen atom, Aquinas “fifth way” would remain unaltered.

Strictly speaking, Aquinas’ 5^th way is NOT a “design” argument in the typical sense, since he is not referencing any particular design features, but merely the intelligibility of the Cosmos. The Cosmos is set apart from Chaos and this could only be accomplished by a non-derivative source of intelligence. A rejection of teleology and essentialism characterizes modern science and (some) modern philosophy. The former appeals to nonteleological mechanistic “Laws of Nature” as an explanatory principle which is often regarded as fundamental to the naturalism of Modern Science and Modern Philosophy. Yet, when the idea that there were immutable, mathematical laws of nature first came to prominence in the seventeenth century, there arose again the question as to how such laws come to be and by what are they sustained. Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727), who is seen by many as championing a non-teleological mechanistic view of physics, nevertheless believed that the very laws of nature themselves were the product of a Divine intelligent will.

Descartes thus imagined laws of nature to be divine commands and attributed their immutability to the immutability of their divine source. For Descartes, Boyle, and Newton, the invariable uniformity of nature was understood as a consequence, not of God’s withdrawal from the world, but of his direct and incessant engagement with it. The Declaration of Independence refers to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” In that context, this is a reference to what philosophers and theologians have called “natural law,” the idea that, in addition to scientific laws, moral laws are grounded in the natural order of things, including human nature and human societies. All these laws are thought to have the same divine author or legislator because nature itself was understood to have such an author. Consequently, moral laws or principles including human rights are grounded, not merely in nature, but in “nature’s God,” the transcendent creator, sustainer, and governor of the natural world.

Back to the Scientific Laws of Nature: As an explanatory resource, this seeks to explain the regularity of the universe, not by appealing to teleology and an internal directedness provided by essences, but rather an external directedness provided by mechanistic scientific laws. Scientists of the era investigated the world empirically because this was the only way in which the otherwise inscrutable will of God could be discerned. Over the course of the following centuries, however, natural laws came to be reimagined as simply observational generalizations, or brute features of the natural world. In other words, they simply stopped asking the question “Where do these laws come from?” and contented themselves with the (unreflective) well.. it just always does that…

Paley’s Design Argument

The more well-known teleological arguments are “arguments from design.” These others try to show that some feature of the world can only be explained by an appeal to an intelligent designer. William Paley (1743-1804) offers perhaps the most famous one. These too refer to function or purpose (telos), but they are more concerned with how remarkably efficiently certain biological organisms or systems are arranged so that they survive, endure or otherwise sustain themselves. He points out that, in some cases, you don't have to see a maker to know that there is one.

He uses the example of finding a watch and inferring a watchmaker. We don't have to see the maker to know that someone made the watch. Well the biological creatures of the world are far more wondrously made than any watch. They stand similarly as testament to a wondrous designer. Historically, this must have been one of the most powerful arguments for God's existence.

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. ...the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (p.9)[2]

The argument from design proceeds something like this:

1. The universe exhibits orderly/design-like existence (Mechanical Ordering, MO).

2. Unintelligent blind forces of nature cannot account for this orderly/design-like quality.

3. Only intelligent forces can account for orderly/ design-like qualities.

Therefore

4. There must be an intelligent force which does account for the orderly/design-like quality.

And even if we discovered a “watch making machine” which was not itself an intelligent designer, we could certainly know that this machine was all the more surely the product of intelligent design. So while the intelligent designer (i.e. God) may not be the proximate efficient cause of the designed creatures, He is the indispensable distal cause, nevertheless.

David Hume (1711–1776) considers this argument in an abbreviated form in the “dialogue" between Cleanthes and Philo.

Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Part II, 143)

Not to lose any time in circumlocutions, said Cleanthes, addressing himself to Demea, much less in replying to the pious declamations of Philo; I shall briefly explain how I conceive this matter. Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.[3]

William Paley makes the same teleological argument.

"the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent designing mind for the contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies bear".[4]

Thus he employs his famous watch analogy. Building on this mechanical analogy, Paley presents examples from planetary astronomy and argues that the regular movements of the solar system resemble the workings of a giant clock.[5]

Some accuse Paley of begging the question:

He assumes the eye has an intended purpose.

But to know that its function is an intended function one would already have to know in advance that it was intelligently intended/designed.

Therefore

To assume that the eye has a purpose begs the question as to whether or not it is the product of design.

...but

he uses the word “purpose” in two different ways.

-function

-intended design

He wants merely to claim that the eye has a function. (Telos)

To avoid the problem we say can use the concept of MO.[6]

Paley is claiming that when we observe the world we discover items with what we might call: "Mechanical Order.[7]"

Mechanical Order (MO)- complexity which achieves a goal and to which any significant alteration to the arrangement would make it useless. The complexity involves a large number of parts having a specific arrangement such that alterations would result in destroying unity and effectiveness of the arrangement. Therefore, chance is not a serious possibility to explain this occurrence because the specific arrangement is improbable.

Now, granted, one might propose a "Natural Law" according to which MO arises, (i.e. The Law of Metallic Watch Nature”) some natural law which we don’t know about, but this does little as an explanation. "Law” just names (abbreviates) elements of the design, but do not explain

Therefore:

The eye is mechanically ordered.

1. Performs a function

2. Has many parts

3. Arrangement of the parts (and many other properties) are essential for the system to perform its function.

4. An accidental arrangement of the parts seems unlikely.

Therefore:

The eye was designed by one or more intelligent persons for a purpose.

So it would seem that the argument from design is an inductive argument. If it is an inductive argument the question arises what sort of inductive argument is it. For instance is it

1. a generalization

2. an argument from analogy

3. a case of inference to the best explanation?

(I think its best understood as a inference to the best explanation. So you can skip a ahead past the blue font unless you would like to know why.)

As a Generalization

1. All things exhibiting mechanical ordering that we have observed thus far are the result of intelligent design.

Therefore

2. Probably everything exhibiting mechanical ordering is the result of intelligent design.

3. The biodiversity of our world exhibits mechanical ordering

Therefore

4. The diversity of our world exhibits is probably the result of intelligent design.

However two questions arises:

1. Whether or not we have a representative sample.

That is, can we know that the things we have observed exhibiting MO and a representative sample of the entire set of all things exhibiting MO? If not this argument fails as a generalization.

2. Whether the first premise is true.

Note, if, in fact, our existing world is NOT the product of intelligent design, then there are in fact lot of cases of things exhibiting mechanical ordering that are NOT the product of intelligent design. So premise one seems to be unknowable and potentially false.

As an Argument from Analogy

If we look at it as an argument from analogy, it suffers from other issues.

Paley’s Argument as an Argument from Analogy

1 In Argument A, the conclusion follows (strongly) inductively from its premises.

2. Argument B is similar to argument A in relevant respects.

Therefore:

3. In Argument B the conclusion follows (strongly) inductively from its premises.

Argument A:

Watch has MO

Therefore

Watch is Designed

Argument B

Eye has MO

Therefore:

Eye is Designed

Paley seems to be saying that while chance producing a MO system is possible, it is so improbable as to be an unreasonable hypothesis,

Thus the “Designer” hypothesis follows with high probability.

Problem with premise number 2- A and B are disanalogous in an important way. In argument A, we know by our experiences with watches that they are designed and we know this independently of knowledge that the watch as MO. What is it about MO per se that supports design independently of other knowledge we have about the origins of watches?

Reformulate:

If certain things are alike with respect to a certain set of known properties, a,b,c,d,e, and if the possession of the known properties a,b,c,d, and e are relevant to the possession of additional property “f”, then these things in question, are probably further alike with respect to characteristic “f.”

Consider:

Bill, Susan, and Mary (+ many others) are all Math Majors with high GPA’s and they got an “A” in symbolic logic.

Fred is a math major with a high GPA.

Therefore:

Fred will get an ‘A” in logic.

Needed is the fact that the shared characteristics which they share are relevant to the characteristic which is unknown. Since Fred is analogous to Bill, Susan and Mary with respect to the first to known characteristics, and since the possession of the known characteristics are relevant to the possession of the third characteristic, the we can infer that Fred will likely be analogous to Bill, Susan and Mary in the third one as well.

Argument would be further strengthened if:

• The sample is diverse in those characteristics which they do not share with the target.

• None or only a small percentage of the sample who shared the known characteristics with the target fail to have the characteristic in question. (i.e. no math majors with high GPA failed to get an “A” in logic.)

• There is a (reasonable) causal connection between having a,b,c,d, and e and the possession of “f.”

So we have something like:

All MO systems have an additional feature of having a designer

The Universe has MO

Therefore

(It is highly probable that) The Universe also has a designer.

Problem:

While we know of zero MO systems which are NOT designed, could we know of any MO systems which are not designed? For instance, if the only math majors with high GPA's we know about are the ones that the Logic teacher told us were high performers in her course, then we would have a biased sample. Or imagine that we formed our list from a list of students with perfect 4.0 GPAs. It would follow that all those Math majors we know about got an A in logic, but that may not be representative of all math majors or even of all majors with a high GPA since we have already excluded any student who did not get an A in logic.

Similarly, do we have a representative sample of MO systems?[8]

What would strengthen conclusion?

- Larger Sample

- W/o exception

- Causal (relevant) link between shared property and inferred property

- Greater diversity among sample members with regard to those properties they do NOT share with the target.

- Reason to believe that the sample is (relevantly) representative of the target.

How could we know of a mechanically ordered system that is NOT intelligently designed? If there's no way we can know about possible counter examples, that removes (all?) inductive force from the argument.

Our sample may or may not be biased. But since we cannot know whether it is representative, it has no inductive force and therefore it is impotent to convince.[9]

As an Inference to the Best Explanation

Perhaps the best way to look at it is as an inference to the best explanation. [10]

Just as the case of the watch, the eye exhibits MO. Just as in the case of the watch, the best explanation of the MO exhibited by the eye is some intelligent force. (No unintelligent forces would constitute a reasonable explanation of the MO.)

1. Eye has MO

2. No non-designer theory can explain it.

Therefore:

C1. Some designer theory must be the best- most reasonable

C2. Since all designer theories postulate a designer, there must be a designer.

Problems 1: Even if successful, is the requisite designer Divine?

Historically, I think this has to have been one of the most powerful arguments for God's existence. Indeed, the whole motivation for Deism, it seems to me, is that they thought you had to appeal to God in order to explain the evidently designed universe. Since there doesn't seem to be any interaction with God currently however, God must not be interested in the daily affairs of humans. Deism seems to present God as a necessary theoretical postulate, but not an object of interactive worship or devotion.

Nevertheless, David Hume, who lived well before the advent of Darwinian Evolution theory, was not much impressed by this argument. He pointed out some important limitations, even if one were to accept the argument and to concede that there is indeed a designer:

The “designer”

· Need not be all good.

· Need not be all powerful

· Need not be all knowing

· Need not be immaterial

· Need not be singular

· Need not still be alive[11]

Hume suggested that any god responsible for the slipshod “design” we see around us would be made fun of by all the other gods for being such an inept craftsman.[12] Notice for instance that the same passage we use to swallow food and drink is the one we need to breathe. Who thought that up? One might expect a better design from a first-year engineering student.

“In a word, Cleanthes, a man who follows your hypothesis is able, perhaps, to assert or conjecture that the universe sometime arose from something like design: But beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance, and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. The world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: It is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity, and is the object of derision to his superiors: It is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him . . . ”[13]

Problems 2: Is it the “Best” explanation? Designer VS Natural Selection and Evolution

But there may in fact be no reason to think there is a designer (no matter how subpar) at all. The power of the argument from design was greatly diminished with the advent of Darwin's theory of Natural Selection. It calls into question premise #2.[14]

1. The universe exhibits orderly/design-like existence (MO).

2. Unintelligent blind forces of nature cannot account for this orderly/design-like quality.

Therefore

3. There must be an intelligent force which does account for the orderly/design-like quality.

Evolution/ Natural Selection can explain the complexity and diversity of life on earth without appealing to an intelligent designer (the Existence of God). Further, it is a theory with the same Explanatory Power (maybe greater) and it has greater Economy.

Philosophers and Scientists evaluate the strength/merit/reasonableness of theories on various grounds. Two such qualities are:

1. Explanatory Power:

A good-making quality of theories and explanations. Theories or explanations are said to possess this to the degree that they put pieces of the puzzle together (unify more experiences). (Like a detective solving a murder mystery) All other things being equal, the greater the explanatory power, the more reasonable the explanation and vice versa.

2. Economy:

A good-making quality of theories and explanations. Theories or explanations are said to possess this to the degree that they make use of less extravagant, less controversial assumptions/presumptions or assumptions/presumptions that have already been accepted for other reasons. (Like making a frugal meal out of what you already have in the house). All other things being equal, the greater the economy, the more reasonable the explanation and vice versa.

The problem is that premise 2 (from my original schematization) seems false given Darwinian Evolution. Evolution theory PREDATES Darwin. But few supported it because no one could provide a plausible account of just how species could evolve. Darwin's unique contribution is that he proposes the mechanism of evolution as Natural Selection.

Natural Selection

· Overpopulation leads to competition.

· Competition plus variation (via random mutation) leads to differential survival.

o (i.e. Some characteristics will be advantageous, others disadvantageous and still others neutral.)

· Differential survival leads to differential reproduction.

· Differential reproductions plus inheritance leads to evolution.

· There is a geometric increase in population so advantageous traits spread quickly through-out the population.

· Cumulative small changes lead to major (species) change.

“Common ancestry” = common “tree of life” This is what Biblical Inerrantists (old style creationism) deny.

Darwinian Evolution does not prove Design Theory false, but merely replaces it as the best explanation for the order and biodiversity we see around us and therefore removes the inductive support for a designer. Evolution seems a more economical (better/ best) explanation.

· We don’t know any designers who could design an eye.

· Nor do we know how a designer would design an eye.

· But we DO know the forces named in Darwin’s theory

If Evolution is more economical, then it is to be considered the better theory. Therefore, Design Argument does not work to prove the existence of God if Evolution is as good or better an explanation of MO then design.

Epilogue:

Does evolution prove that God does not exist? Not necessarily.[15] It proves that God is not necessary to explain the biodiversity and complex ecosystems we see on Earth. If you already believe in God, then claiming that God designed the universe is not an uneconomical theory (for you) since you are only making use of beliefs you already have. However, if you DON’T believe in God, then this argument can provide you with no reason to believe in Him since you have a more economical alternative explanation. Thus, the argument is either unnecessary or useless.

Response:

If an Argument from Design could explain more than Evolution (or other naturalist theories), then this could revive the persuasive force of the argument. It would thus be seen to have superior explanatory power.

For example:

Evolution theory doesn't explain why humans have become so intelligent and dominate the whole world, while the Design hypothesis can.[16]

Problems 3:

An Argument from Design necessarily puts God in the universe; tinkering around within creation, not transcendent or “outside the universe” as the cosmological and ontological arguments do. The problem with this approach, aside from identifying a (seemingly imperfect) designer with “God” is that there is always the chance that evolution or some other scientific theory will come along and offer a more economical explanation. If “God exists.” is understood as a scientific hypothesis, it is subject to scientific revision.

Further, if it is God's policy to interfere in the workings of the world, we'd have to wonder why he doesn't do so more explicitly and why he doesn’t take that opportunity to build a better world, one with a stable crust say, or one where hurricanes stay out at sea.

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[1] Some have suggested that this presents a problem for science. If the language of Biology cannot be fully reduced to the language of Chemistry and Physics, this suggests that our scientific understanding of reality will forever remain disunified. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/

[2] Natural Theology: Chapter 1 (P9-11)

[3] Hume, David Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Part II, 143)

[4] Paley, William Natural Theology, 1802 p. 219

[5] There is a certain ambiguity here. Is he arguing that the order is what needs to be explained (as Aquinas does in his 5^th way), or the complexity of the thing which achieves a useful purpose? The former ideas are found in ancient and medieval writers who note the divine order of celestial movements, etc. These types of examples can be seen in the work of the ancient philosopher Cicero, especially in his De natura deorum. But Paley is most often interpreted as scientifically “modern” and so sympathetic to the view that “laws of nature” need not be explain in terms of an intelligent law giver. Nevertheless, mechanistic laws of nature would fail to explain the purposefulness of creation.

[6] But I’m not convinced that this avoids the charge of circularity. How can judgments of the function of a system be known apart from intention or references to intention? One might claim that Haley’s Comet exhibits MO on the presumption it has been carefully designed that its function to appear every 76 years in the skies of Earth. But no one has ascribed that function to Haley's Comet because that function seems to serve no intentional “purpose,” that is, we can imagine no reason why some agent would be motivated to bring that function about. Notice any judgment of (Purposeful) Function would seem to presume some motivation. If so, any judgment of MO requires knowledge of (Purposeful) function. Can we judge some system to be MO without appeal to intention? If not then claiming that the eye exhibits MO is still begging the question.

[7] Is it the purpose or only the "purposefulness" of the parts which justify the judgment? The very perception of a unity requires seeing the “rightness” of the arrangement.

[8] Remember that a representative sample must not be biased. Ideally scientists seek to avoid a biased sample by trying to get a random same. A random sample is one were every member of the target has equal chance of being in the sample. Our sample of MO systems is random only if every possible MO system has an equal chance of getting into our sample. If we can't know that this is true, we cannot know that our sample it random or representative.

[9] It may be even worse than that. It seems to me that this makes the claim “all mechanically orders systems are intelligently designed” un-falsifiable/verifiable in principle, and arguably meaningless, but at very least, non-scientific. Seemingly we cannot even imagine what experience would disprove the thesis (even if we put a bunch of parts in a bag, shook it up and a watch popped out) because, since even here the mechanism of design is unknown, consequently the “proposition” doesn’t seem to be about or have any connection to experience.

This theory is falsifiable if one restricts talk to immediate cause. But of course, Paley would agree that we are not designed in that sense. Curious, maybe we equivocating here on “cause” because while we are not immediately efficiently caused by an intelligent designer, that is not to say that design/telos/function can be explained in terms of immediate efficient causes.

[10] It certainly isn't a statistical syllogism. We can't know what percentage of things exhibiting mechanical ordering are the products of intelligent design. Therefore, we could not know with what probability the universe even if it does exist mechanical ordering is the product of intelligent design.

[11] I might reference the science fiction movie “Prometheus”

[12] See the Monty Python Song: “All Things Dull and Ugly”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEKDYIYMgBc

[13] Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion p26

[14] This is the reason Richard Dawkins entitled his book about evolutionary design: The Blind Watchmaker.

[15] Some have argued that the facts of evolution do constitute good reason for thinking there is no designing God. For instance, vestigial organs such as the appendix in humans strongly suggest that there was no grand design from the beginning and strengthen the case for successful random mutations as the explanation for the biodiversity of our world. Vestigial organs are just the sort of thing you would expect if Evolution is true, but not at all what you would expect if the Design Theory were true. For instance see Steven Jay Gould’s essay "The panda's peculiar thumb".

[16] If you are interested in pursuing these sorts of arguments further, look at “The Fine Tuning” argument, for instance or Michael Behe’s Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.