Yesterday, I wrote about Robert Wright's claim that Daniel Dennett had reluctantly admitted that there is evidence of design in nature. Today, Andrew Sullivan has Dennett's reply:
"This is ridiculous: Wright misinterprets his own videoclip (I am grateful that it is available uncut on his website, so that everybody can see for themselves). All I agreed to was that IF natural selection had the properties of embryogenesis (or "an organism's maturation"), it would be evidence for a higher purpose. But I have always insisted that evolution by natural selection LACKS those very properties. And I insisted on that in the earlier portions of the videoclip."
I guess my suspicions were correct.
Postscript: I should have known that Timothy Sandefur was gonna one up me on this one and post a detailed examination of the interview and debunking of Wright's conclusions. Excellent work as usual, Mr. Sandefur. Also see this post on Majikthise from one of Dennett's former students.
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Wright's response to Dennett's response:
www.nonzero.org/replytodennett.htm
This is really fascinating stuff.
-dk
It's a relief not to have lost Dennett. However, I am not sure what is meant by "embryogenesis". And if natural selection exhibited these properties, why would that be evidence of "higher purpose"? I realize Dennett is arguing against this, but I'm trying to understand the "this" he's arguing against, if that makes any sense.
never mind, I think I got it. All Dennett agreed to is that if natural selection occurred in the same way that humans develop now, that would be evidence for a designer. Of course this is ridiculous. Human embryonic development and maturation took a long time to get this way. Just because we evolve towards a "functionality" doesn't mean anything. Wright clearly doesn't understand how natural selection works. It works blindly and cumulatively. He seems to be implying that Dennet admitted that it looks as if life on earth developed in a straight line to its current state. This is of course highly ridiculous and Dennett certainly wouldn't have admitted to such a thing.
Of course maybe I'm still misunderstanding things. Let me know.
OK, I went and watched the whole boring thing. Just one problem: it was not an interview. I am sure a transcript would demonstrate that Wright did 90% of the talking and was earnestly shoving the discussion toward what he wanted to hear. It was intensely annoying to watch.
When Dennett, after a long series of countering idiotic things Wright said, finally said something like, "Yes, I suppose so under that model" Wright said "Good! I'll just declare victory and go home, and we can go on to talk about other things."
Apparently "embryogenesis" is the flaky idea that evoloution reflects the development of an embryo, even to the extent that our planet itself is evolving. Dennett said something like this as a metaphor in his last book but by the end of the interrogation was probably regretting it and wishing the twerp would just go home, on any tems whatever.
As near as I can tell, Wrights position is that the earth's biosphere as a whole is, in some sense, a "living organism" that has evolved in much the same way that individuals and lineages evolve, but I have not read his book or ever heard of him, so I may be wrong. If that is the case, I don't really see the point of it. It seems to me that it's accurate only as an analogy. The earth itself is not "alive", nor is the biosphere, which contains both organic and inorganic elements. And even if one granted that it was, I don't see any reason to believe it was "directional" in the sense of moving towards a goal, but is only "directional" in the sense that one can perceive patterns in hindsight (in this case, from simpler to more complex). There's no compelling reason to think it had to be that way, or was intended to be that way.
If the earth evolves in the same way that lineages evolve, does that mean that it reproduces all the time, with others that are similar to itself? And that it produces progeny with various slight genetic differences? And that some survive, and some do not?
Wow, the earth really gets around.