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"Supernatural Causation and the Argument that ID is not a Science" (2005)
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Supernatural Causation and the Argument that ID is not a Science
In his “Dover’s Darwinist Judge Rules Against Competing Theory of Intelligent Design,” Jonathan Witt, a fellow at the Center for Science and Culture (or Discovery Institute), the think tank that has become the intellectual center of the current Intelligent Design (hereafter: ID) movement, provided what I take to be an official response by the center to Judge John E. Jones III opinion in the landmark Kitzmiller v the Dover Area School District et al. trial handed down on December 20, 2005. Though Judge Jones’ opinion considered such issues as the history behind the formation of the Dover School Board policy to read a warning to all 9th grade students at the beginning of their section on evolution in science class, as well what doing so would imply to both the students and parents about the state’s endorsement of religious views in light of, e.g., the Establishment clause as laid down in the First Amendment to the Constitution, Witt’s response focuses explicitly and singularly on Judge Jones’ contention that ID is not a science. As Jones puts it in his conclusion
… we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.
Jones’ argument for the claim that ID is not a science (setting aside the issue of “uncoupling”) appears in Section E, Part 4 (pages 64-89) entitled “Whether ID is a Science.” As Witt points out, Jones offers three main reasons for his determination that ID is not a science:
(1) ID violates centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation;
(2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science; and
(3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
(I take it that these arguments, respectively, are laid out in pages 64-71, 71-82, and 83-88.) According to Witt, the three reasons (or arguments) offered by Jones “fall apart on close inspection.” It will be my contention that it is rather Witt’s reasons for rejecting Jones’ conclusions which fall apart on close inspection.
In this essay, I consider the first of these three arguments against ID as well as Witt’s argument that it falls apart under close inspection. I focus on the first argument for, in the first instance, practical reasons inasmuch as a compelling analysis of the second and third reasons will take as much (if not more) effort than this one. I do, however, plan on addressing the other two reasons in future discussions.
There is a good in principle reason to focus on one argument at a time as well. I follow Jones who maintains that any one of these arguments if sufficient to show that ID is not a science (64). If this is correct, and I think it is, we needn’t take them all together to do justice to them.
Call the first reason that Jones finds ID not to be a science “ID’s commitment to supernatural causation,” or the issue of “supernatural causes” for short. Here’s what Witt says in reply to Jones’ assertion that ID is not a science on this first reason (I quote it in full):
No. Design theorists argue that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain features of the natural world. Jones countered this point by noting that most design theorists believe in the Christian God, untroubled by the fact that he is here committing the genetic fallacy, dismissing an argument based on its source (here Christian scientists and philosophers). Commented one legal scholar, “It is worse than horrible, if that is possible. Essentially, what the judge has concluded is that if one is a religious citizen who offers an argument for a point of view consistent with your religious worldview, you will be segregated from the public square. But not because your argument is bad, but because of your beliefs and the company you keep or may have kept. I can’t believe this could happen in America.”
But lest anyone accuse the judge of bowing before the hobgoblin of little minds (consistency), he also in his ruling noted that the Dover school board, in a newsletter, pointed out that even British philosopher and former atheist Antony Flew came to recognize the legitimacy of certain ID arguments. The obvious point of the newsletter passage was to provide evidence that even respected scholars who are not Christians (or even theists) have examined intelligent design arguments and found them both sound and persuasive. But Judge Jones, apparently inhabiting the self-enclosed little world of the dogmatic Darwinists, somehow took this as further evidence that the Dover policy was all about religion (otherwise, why would they mention that Flew was a former atheist!).
Judge Jones was also unfazed by the fact that design theorists rightly infer mere design from things like the sophisticated machines in living cells, realizing that such features do not come with a maker’s signature on the machinery (they would have to move to philosophy and theology to search out the identity of the designer).
Witt says a lot here that we will consider, but before we do so I think we should look to the opinion itself, to it’s logic and evidence, for the conclusion that Jones finds so damming to the view that ID is a science. Only by so doing will we be able to put into context the meaning of Witt’s response.
II. Jones on Supernatural Causes
As noted, the discussion that Witt is referring to starts on page 64. Jones there says, “Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.” (Jones cites Haught, Pennock, and Miller on this, and all citations by Jones are “experts” recognized by the Prosecution, Defense, or, in most cases, both.) The limitation that is referred to here is the systematic excision of “supernatural causes” by the founders of the modern scientific worldview from scientific explanations.
What is a supernatural cause? On this point, Jones cites Haught and Miller, saying that “testiablity” is at the heart of science, and that “thelogical or ‘ultimate’ explanations for the existence or characteristics of the natural world” have been deliberately omitted. This amounts, he thinks, to saying that “science does not consider issues of “meaning” and “purpose” in the world” and is taken to be a “self-imposed convention of science, which limits inquiry to testable, natural explanations about the natural world” (65). Jones notes that this is often called “methodological naturalism” and says that methodological naturalism is at the heart of modern science.
Jones cites numerous sources for this understanding of what science is, including the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Association of Science. Jones notes that the first of these was “recognized by experts for both parties as the “most prestigious” scientific association in this country.” This is an important legal maneuver, for it gives Jones license to “cite its opinion where appropriate” (65). In a helpful piggybacking on this connection, Jones explicitly brings in a notion central to the NAS’s conception of what science is: that of “empirical evidence” (66). He says, summarizing NAS’s view, “Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based upon empirical evidence are not part of science” (66).
Now, supernatural causes, by definition, cannot be investigated through empirical means. This is just what it is for them to be supernatural. But if this is the case, then what happens when a scientific inquiry turns to supernatural causes to explain some phenomenon?
Jones sides with Miller (the Plantiff’s lead expert) that appeal to supernatural causes are a “science stopper” (66). This is because “once you attribute a cause to an untestable supernatural force, a proposition that cannot be disproven, there is no reason to continue seeking natural explanations as we have our answer” (66). Note carefully Jones’ position here: Jones admits that, if there really were a supernatural cause for something that we theorized there to be, we would “have our answer.” This is tantamount to saying that we would have hit upon a truth, or gained knowledge, and therefore would make scientific inquiry pointless. This strikes me as significant, for Jones cannot, therefore, be accused of being against appeal to supernatural causes where supernatural causes in fact exist. Jones is open-minded, then, as to the possibility that science is not the only way to gain knowledge about the world, at least insofar as the world is in fact unnatural in the relevant sense.
Having made this point, a crucial connection is made: “ID is predicated on supernatural causation” (66). It should be pointed out now that this is what ultimately drives Jones to say that ID is not science.
But why think this? Jones cites the expert testimony of Padian, Miller, Alters, and Pennock. Most tellingly is a quote that Jones find in the book Of Pandas and People which he identifies an “ID reference book”:
Darwinists object to the view of intelligent design because it does not give a natural cause explanation of how the various forms of life started in the first place. Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly, through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact—fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc. (p 11, [67 in Jones] emphasis added by Jones)
According to Jones, this amounts to an admission by the authors of this central text, as well as an implicit endorsement by those who defend the use of this text in the science classroom, of supernatural causation which, by the self-imposed definition of science adhered to by the scientists themselves, lies outside the purview of science.
Now, it might be the case that the ID theorists involved in this case, those actually on the stand defending ID felt differently. But Jones finds this not to be the case. He notes that “Defendant’s own witnesses acknowledged this point,” citing Behe who said that it is “implausible that the designer is a natural entity” as well as Fuller and Minnich making similar admissions.
If the ID theorist really is committed to supernatural causation, then he or she sets him or herself against the accepted, long-standing, self-imposed definition of science. It is in this clear sense, according to Jones, that ID is not a science.
Now, Jones cites numerous ID proponents, including the Defense’s own experts, that, in light of this, seek to fundamentally change what science is so as to include supernatural causation (Behe, Fuller, Minnich, Dembski, Pennock). This is so even though this would appear to have negative consequences, as when Behe “admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology” (68). ID theorists, Jones notes, bite the bullet and freely acknowledge that the result of such a re-conceiving of the nature of science would have the effect that “entire fields of inquiry, including especially in the human sciences, will need to be rethought from the ground up in terms of intelligent design” (quoting Pennock, p 68).
It is presumably because of the reasoning outlined here by Jones, that, he notes, “Notably, every major scientific association that has taken a position on the issue of whether ID is a science has concluded that ID is not, and cannot be considered as such” (69), including the NSA which, recall, experts on both sides recognized as an authority on this issue.
Concluding his discussion of this point, Jones says
It is therefore readily apparent to the Court that ID fails to meet the essential ground rules that limit science to testable, natural explanations. Science cannot be defined differently for Dover students that it is defined in the scientific community as an affirmative action program, as advocated by Professor Fuller, for a view that has been unable to gain a foothold within the scientific establishment. (71)
We can put Jones’ argument this way: ID explicitly denies the methods of science as traditionally conceived and as still self-imposed by the scientific establishment. Only something which works within these methods is a science. Therefore, ID is not a science.
But note that Jones makes a further point in his conclusion here. As the argument that ID is not a science relates to the case at hand, and so to the students of Dover in particular, Jones notes that it is not his place to broaden the definition of science in Dover, in what would be a kind of affirmative action for an under-represented viewpoint, so that the school board can mandate ID be taught in the science classrooms there. This clarifies the facts of the state of the debate surrounding ID and it’s viability in the (9th grade) science classroom: only if either (1) the scientific establishment changes its mind about what science is or (2) the highest courts in the land were to change the definition of science would it be appropriate for Judge Jones, a district judge, to stand behind changing what science is in his jurisdiction. In this sense, Jones recognizes that he has no authority here deferring (as he must) to the opinions of the scientists themselves, in the first instance, and the opinions of the Supreme Court, in the second instance. (This, of course, raises the question of what authority the Supreme Court has over the scientists, though I hope that we never see the day when this is a real issue.)
III. An Analysis of Witt’s Response
With this analysis of Jones’ reasoning in hand, let’s get back to our consideration of Witt’s response. Witt seems to respond in three ways to Jones’ argument here, corresponding to the three main paragraphs of this section. Let me, then, quote each section again, though this time individually so that we may examine them more closely.
No. Design theorists argue that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain features of the natural world. Jones countered this point by noting that most design theorists believe in the Christian God, untroubled by the fact that he is here committing the genetic fallacy, dismissing an argument based on its source (here Christian scientists and philosophers). Commented one legal scholar, “It is worse than horrible, if that is possible. Essentially, what the judge has concluded is that if one is a religious citizen who offers an argument for a point of view consistent with your religious worldview, you will be segregated from the public square. But not because your argument is bad, but because of your beliefs and the company you keep or may have kept. I can’t believe this could happen in America.”
Witt seems to take himself to be refuting Jones when he says “No. Design theorists argue that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain feature of the natural world.” The only works as a refutation if Witt believes that an “intelligent cause” is still a natural cause, for Jones’ point, as we saw, was that what makes ID not a science is its commitment to supernatural causation (which, by its own rules, are excluded from science). Witt does not make clear, however, whether an intelligent cause is a supernatural or natural cause, and so the force of this response is unclear. (We’ll comes back to this point later.)
More definitely, Witt makes an argumentative move which is puzzling given the logic of the argument as I have laid it out above. He says, “Jones countered this point [that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain features of the natural world] by noting that most design theorists believe in the Christian God, untroubled by the fact that he is here committing the genetic fallacy, dismissing an argument based on its source (here Christian scientists and philosophers).” This, it seems to me, badly misunderstands the logic of Jones argument.
Jones does not, in order to argue that ID is not a science, need to show that the intelligent designer is “the Christian God.” All he needs to say, and all he did say in his argument here, is that the intelligent designer is a supernatural cause. But if this is right, then Witt’s accusation that Jones “is here committing the genetic fallacy, dismissing an argument based on it’s source” is either (1) a red-herring (i.e., irrelevant) or (2) based on a strawman of Jones’ argument. I suspect the latter, though since Witt does not offer a systematic analysis of Jones’ argument it’s hard to say.
Either way, Witt’s appeal to an unnamed “legal scholar” who finds Jones’ argument here “worse than horrible” is beside the point. Jones is not saying that ID is not a science because it comes from the pens of Christians. His critique is more general than that; it says that anyone who appeals to a supernatural cause has stepped outside the bounds of science, regardless of religious affiliation, etc. As such, the unnamed legal scholar who expresses disbelief (“I can’t believe this could happen in America.”) needn’t worry because it’s not.
Things get a little ugly in the second main paragraph of Witt’s discussion of this point. He says
But lest anyone accuse the judge of bowing before the hobgoblin of little minds (consistency), he also in his ruling noted that the Dover school board, in a newsletter, pointed out that even British philosopher and former atheist Antony Flew came to recognize the legitimacy of certain ID arguments. The obvious point of the newsletter passage was to provide evidence that even respected scholars who are not Christians (or even theists) have examined intelligent design arguments and found them both sound and persuasive. But Judge Jones, apparently inhabiting the self-enclosed little world of the dogmatic Darwinists, somehow took this as further evidence that the Dover policy was all about religion (otherwise, why would they mention that Flew was a former atheist!).
Let me summarily set aside the mudslinging here. The main point of this passage, as best I can make out, is what Witt sees as a misconception that Jones and others maintain that ID is “all about religion” as evidenced by Jones’ reference to a newsletter sent out by the Dover school board which featured a story about Anthony Flew. The idea seems to be that if Jones were treating ID fairly, which means not just as if it were “all about religion,” then he wouldn’t have brought this point under consideration.
I don’t here have the space to get very deep into the role that the discussion of Anthony Flew plays in the opinion, but it should at least be pointed out that Flew comes up only one time in the whole opinion, and that is on page 54, in the discussion of “Whether an Objective Dover Citizen Would Perceive Defendants’ Conduct to be an Endorsement of Religion.” The point Jones is making is that by noting, as the school board did in this newsletter that it sent to the entire community of Dover, that Flew was a “world famous atheist who now believes in intelligent design,” that it was in fact the Dover school board that ensured that ID would be seen to be “all about religion.”
More to our point here, however, it is significant that the argument under discussion here stretches from pages 64 to 71 and that Flew was mentioned in the context of another discussion on page 54. Since Jones nowhere makes reference to Flew in the argument ostensibly under discussion here (i.e., whether ID is a science or not), one must conclude, I think, that Flew is beside the point here. The only way around this conclusion would be to construe the logic of Jones’ argument so as to make the Flew point central to his argument that ID is not science. I can’t see how this could be done in a way that would be charitable to the opinion as written. The burden of proof, then, is on Witt to show how Flew plays a central role in any premise in Jones’ argument to the effect that ID is not a science.
The third paragraph in Witt’s response to Jones’ view that ID is not a science is this:
Judge Jones was also unfazed by the fact that design theorists rightly infer mere design from things like the sophisticated machines in living cells, realizing that such features do not come with a maker’s signature on the machinery (they would have to move to philosophy and theology to search out the identity of the designer).
Again, I think we should set aside the thinly-veiled mud-slinging inherent in the assertion that the Jones was “unfazed by the fact[s]”. The central argumentative point here seems to be that ID theorists “rightly infer mere design” from the complexity of life and, as a result, “would have to move to philosophy and theology to search out the identity of the designer.” I find this claim puzzling, for (as we saw in section II above) it is precisely because ID is forced to “move to philosophy and theology to search out the identity of the designer” that it is not a science.
Indeed, it looks as to me as if Witt is getting tangled in his own commitments here. On the one hand, he wants Jones to treat ID fairly and recognize that it is not “all about religion.” This is why one needs to move to philosophy and theology: so that we can identify the designer who, since it is not all about religion, could be anyone or anything and not just the Christian God. But then we find Witt admitting to just the point that Jones finds damning of ID: that we must move beyond science and into philosophy and theology.
Recall that I said earlier that Witt does not make clear whether an intelligent cause is a supernatural or natural cause, and so the force of his first response to Jones is unclear. Well, we now find Witt committing himself on this point. It is precisely because God is a supernatural cause that we must move to philosophy and theology. But if this is right, then it is clear that Witt fails to offer a convincing response to Jones with his first point.
IV. Conclusion
And so it is here that I really lose the thread of Witt’s argument. Witt admits that ID calls for us to move to philosophy and theology. Doesn’t this mean that ID is not then science? Isn’t this just the point? Either Witt has completely misunderstood the logic of Jones’s argument - which says that if one asserts a commitment to supernatural causation then one ceases to be doing science (according to the scientists themselves) or he has a very different view of what science is (a view that includes supernatural causation) that he either thinks scientists do in fact subscribe to or he has some argument as to why they should.
I thus ask Witt to clarify his position on this central issue.
- Aaron A. Schiller, UCSD Philosophy
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REFERENCES
Jones, John E. III., “Memorandum Opinion in the Case of Katzmiller v the Dover Area School District, December 20, 2005. Posted at http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf, accessed 12/20/05, accessed 12/20/05.
Witt, Jonathan, “Dover’s Darwinist Judge Rules Against Competing Theory of Intelligent Design,” Posted to the Center for Science and Culture’s Website at http://www.evolutionnews.org/2005/12/dovers_darwinist_judge_rules_a.html, accessed 12/20/05.
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(1223/05) A few addendums:
- Jonathan Witt posts, apparently approvingly, a link to an article in the National Review which claims that the Jones works by “disparaging intelligent design as a religion-based and therefore false science.” If what I have said here is correct, this is deeply confused.
- Albert Alschuler, faculty at the University of Chicago Law School does no better at understanding Jones’ argument here, but he does seem to follow Witt’s reading which is no doubt why he calls it an excellent essay.
- Casey Luskin, who works at the same center as Witt, claims himself “jumping for joy” in this post as he finds a third-party source who, he thinks, gives “an excellent definition of intelligent design.” Unfortunately, what makes this definition so excellent is that it calls the mater intellect an “intelligent cause.” He says
Design proponents simply refer to an “intelligent cause” because the available information from the empirical data don’t allow design theorists to scientifically infer any more than “mere intelligence” as a cause. Even Eugenie Scott concedes that “[t]he intelligent behavior of material creatures is therefore natural, and an appropriate subject for scientific investigation.”
This also strikes me as confused. While the intelligent behavior of material creatures is an appropriate study for science, it’s not at all clear that material sciences use intelligence as causal factors in their explanations. And even if so, there are distinctions between those sciences which study intelligent systems and attribute studiable causal powers to them within that explanatory framework (e.g., psychology, sociology, perhaps even cognitive science) and that that do not. For example, intelligence is manifestly not included as a cause in other science such as physics and neuroscience.
But if this is right, then the question is, Should the study of the origins of life and species include intelligence as a causal factor? I don’t think so, but Luskin doesn’t discuss this essential point. It isn’t enough that scientists study intelligence to say that in any scientific discipline citing “intelligence” as a cause would still be within the bounds of the scientific framework of that discipline.
- Other philosophers are talking about this, too. In this post, Brian Leiter covers much of same ground as I do here in discussing what he calls the “guilt-by-association argument” that he finds in the responses of Witt and others (including the UC law professor linked to above). He calls it “a serious misrepresentation of the court’s methodical approach in this case, one that can not be rationalized…”. I think this is right.
