1. 'God of the Gaps' reasoning (GGR) is a form of explanation that appeals to divine intervention to bridge what seem to be otherwise unbridgeable gaps in naturalistic explanations. The question is whether GGR is fallacious, and if so, what exactly the fallacy consists in. I will use 'fallacy' as logicians do, to refer to incorrect reasoning rather than to a false belief or proposition.
2. The argumentum ad ignorantiam, or appeal to ignorance, is of course fallacious. If there is no proof that proposition p is false, it does not follow that p is true. And if there is no proof that p is true, it does not follow that p is false. So if GGR is an instance of the argumentum ad ignorantiam, then of course GGR is fallacious. Someone who argues that God must have been involved in the etiology of some phenomenon since divine intervention cannot be excluded is clearly reasoning in a fallacious manner.
3. But how many people actually fall into the ad ignorantiam fallacy? The usual textbook examples in Copi and in those clones who copy from Copi (nice alliterative pun, eh?) are artificial as hell. Who argues that there must be ghosts because no one has been able to prove that there aren't any?
But consider this example (mine, not Larmer's):
1. If there were a lost goldmine in the Superstition Wilderness, then, given the extensive and protracted search operations of generations of 'Dutchman hunters,' it would have been found by now.
2. No goldmine has been found in the Superstition Wilderness.
Ergo
3. There is no lost goldmine in the Superstition Wilderness.
This is a valid argument: the conclusion follows from the premises by modus tollendo tollens. Since premise (2) is true, the soundness of the argument rests on whether (1) is true. Now (1), though not obviously true, is certainly plausible since there is positive evidence for it. The evidence is not merely that no one has discovered the mine, but includes the fact that the geology of the region makes the existence of gold deposits unlikely. Since there is positive evidence for (1), we do not have here an appeal to ignorance.
Note that (1), though a conditional, need not be interpreted as a truncated argument; so it is unavailing to look for the ad ignorantiam fallacy within the bosom of (1).
The argument (1)-(3), then, is pretty good: it is valid in point of logical form, and its premises are reasonably accepted. It is an argument I would lay money on. If there is any problem with the argument it does not reside in its logical structure, but in the truth-value of its initial premise. So there is no question of a fallacy (in the logical sense) having been committed.
What then is to stop a theist, or more particularly an IDist, from arguing, not from ignorance, but from what we know about the operation of natural causes? There needn't be any logical fallacy in GGR since the IDist may be simply asserting a conditional proposition of the form:
If there were a wholly naturalistic explanation for phenomenon X, then, given what we know about the operation of natural causes, and given the protracted attempts to provide a naturalistic explanation of X, we would have found the explanation by now.
The IDist would then argue by modus tollens to the conclusion that no wholly naturalistic explanation for the phenomenon in question exists. If so, then the door is open to an explanation in terms of God or an irreducibly intelligent designer.
There is more to Larmer's article, but I hope to cover that material in a later post or posts.
If there were any reason at all to imagine that we have even come close to exhausting the possibilities for naturalistic explanations of the observed world, I'd be right with you on this one. But I think your goldmine analogy comes up a bit short, as in your example nothing has been found - neither a mine, nor a nugget, nary a timber nor a pan. But in the biological sciences we have all sorts of tantalizing hints and glimpses regarding even the deepest mysteries, and in a very great number of cases we now have coherent explanations where once there were only enigmas. The circle of light is growing steadily, and I see no cause for despair just yet.
Malcolm
1. The “deist” category where the Intelligent Designer is the great “watchmaker” who created the cosmos and the laws of nature to achieve his designs and who lets the cosmos and the laws of nature run their course without further interruption or intercession by the designer.
2. The intelligent designer as “tweaker” who created the cosmos and laws of nature and lets them run their course, but with occasional “tweaking” through “non-natural” or “extra-natural” or “supernatural” (i.e., unexplainable through natural processes or laws -- miracles) intercession to achieve his designs.
3. The intelligent designer as “eternal creator” who constantly intervenes and dictates the course of the cosmos to achieve his designs without there being any underlying and discoverable laws of nature, despite appearances to the contrary.
In other words, at one end of the ID spectrum, the Intelligent Designer created the laws of nature to achieve his designs. Everything we observe in the cosmos can be explained by natural causes (if we are intelligent enough to “discover” the underlying laws of nature), including, of course, evolution, because the intelligent designer does not interfere through non-natural or supernatural intercessions. This version of ID rules out any “God of the Gaps” arguments of non-natural causes or explanations in support of ID theory. In this version of ID, to the extent there are gaps in our understanding of natural phenomena, it is simply that we have not yet completely discovered the natural causes and natural laws the Intelligent Designer created. This is a form of ID that is “compatible” with evolution, as Keith Burgess has said.
However, invoking an Intelligent Designer in this case “explains” nothing more than what we can discover by observing nature. And invoking an Intelligent Designer to “explain” why we have the laws of nature we do is no better than simply giving the child’s answer to a difficult “why” question: “Just because.” In this version of ID, we have no way of knowing anything about the ultimate goals or purposes of the Intelligent Designer’s design. All we know and all we can know is that which we can discover about natural causes and natural laws. One may look at the majesty and complexity of the cosmos and say it could not be the way it is without an Intelligent Designer, but given that laws of nature exist (this form of ID posits that these laws have been created and set in motion by the Intelligent Designer), we could not observe the cosmos to be otherwise! Hence, one can believe that all we observe is caused by natural processes operating as a result of underlying laws of nature, but one cannot infer from the perceived existence of these laws what was their cause or their ultimate purpose.
At the other end of the spectrum, is the “eternal creator” that simply wills the cosmos to be what it is instant by instant. That we seem to observe natural laws and processes is all illusion. Of course, in this case, once again, invoking an Intelligent Designer “explains” nothing about why things are as they appear to be. Invoking an intelligent Designer is entirely ad hoc, reducing the answer to the questions of “why” and “how” for everything to, “Because that’s the way the Intelligent Designer wants it.” One might also wonder why the Intelligent Designer in this case is constantly creating a cosmos that appears to operate, at least in part, according to natural laws, when, in fact, that is not the cosmos he created. (More below.)
Finally, there is the middle ground where the Intelligent Designer created the cosmos and laws of nature, but occasionally overrides the laws of nature in some way to better achieve his design. But this is the most problematic of views. First, how do these non-natural interventions take place? Does the Intelligent Designer suddenly realize that those flagella are just taking too long to evolve to achieve his desired design ends under the normal operation of the laws of nature he initially created, so he decides to engage in a little quick-fix post-creation creation to accelerate the process? And why would he do so? Was the Intelligent Designer not intelligent enough to get it right the first time, so occasionally he has to go back in and tweak the system? If one is willing to accept the “God of the Gaps” argument in favor of ID, then one must assume this Intelligent Designer was either too stupid to design the laws of nature correct initially once and for all, or that he is a constant creator and never created any laws of nature at all. The implications of an Intelligent Designer that occasionally “tweaks” the system by non-natural or extra-natural or supernatural interventions in “his” own laws of nature are so absurd as to call into question the rationality of anyone who would believe this version of ID.
So take your pick: either version 1 or 3 of ID. The implications of “constant creator” (3) are much more severe, since this version of ID implies that we can know nothing by what we observe through natural processes. One might argue that the constant creator behaves in a way that is always consistent with “laws of nature,” but then the “constant creator” is indistinguishable from the “watchmaker” and the implications are the same as for those of the “watchmaker.” If the Intelligent Designer constantly creates most of the time in a way that is consistent with “laws of nature” but not at other times, we are faced with the absurdities of the “tweaker” (2). So if the Intelligent Designer is a “constant creator” distinguishable from the “watchmaker” by not constantly creating in a manner that is always consistent with “laws of nature,” then there are no laws of nature and any appearance that there are, is pure illusion.
While it is possible that an Intelligent Designer could be a constant creator who does not constantly create in a manner that is always consistent with “laws of nature,” this begs the question of what then is meant by the term “design” in Intelligent Design. So although such a designer could exist and could have an intelligent design, we are left with absolutely no way of discerning it or anything else about “nature,” since the Intelligent Designer is constantly recreating based upon no laws or principles we can discover in nature. This is intellectually unsettling and unsatisfactory.
So, in my opinion, the only tenable version of ID is the “watchmaker” thesis where the Intelligent Designer created the cosmos and the laws of nature and otherwise does not interfere or intercede in the natural processes he created (or the “constant creator” who always creates in a way that is consistent with laws of nature). However, while it is correct to say that if there is a “watchmaker” Intelligent Designer,” then we could infer that we could expect our observations of nature to reveal underlying laws, it is not correct to say that because our observations lead us to infer that there are laws of nature, that these observations lead us to conclude those laws of nature were necessarily created by an Intelligent Designer.
So Intelligent Design, in all its guises, is ad hoc speculation with no explanatory power of any kind whatsoever, even in its most tenable form. Which is not to say there is NOT an Intelligent Designer, just that, whether there is or is not is purely a metaphysical question.
Bob Doyle
Regards, Malcolm Pollack
There is a 4th category indeed:
1b. The "natural tweaker", who created the cosmos and laws of nature and lets them run their course, in a way that allows occasional "tweaking" through "natural" intercession to achieve his designs.
This is compatible both with the observation of natural laws and the existing of a (caring?) Divinity.
It solves the paradox of the "stupid tweaker" by assuming that whoever wrote the rules of the game was clever enough to make it run on its own AND allow the occasional intervention
After all no one is scandalized by game programmers inserting their own "cheats" in the game's code
regards
maurizio
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.