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William A. Dembski, the Design Inference-Eliminating Chance Tations of How Design Inferenceworks W.A. DEMBSKI, THE DESIGN INFERENCE 473 less resemble Paley's watch. Although the book takes no stand on How Not to Detect Design whethercreationism is more or less plausiblethan evolutionarytheory, Dembski's epistemology can be evaluated without knowing how he CriticalNotice: William A. Dembski, thinks it bears on this highly charged topic. In what follows, we will show that Dembski's account of design inference is deeply flawed. The Design Inference* Sometimes he is too hard on hypotheses of intelligentdesign; at other times he is too lenient. Neither creationists,nor evolutionists,nor peo- ple who are trying to detect design in nontheological contexts should BrandenFitelson, ChristopherStephens, Elliott Sobertl adopt Dembski's framework. Departmentof Philosophy,University of Wisconsin,Madison The ExplanatoryFilter. Dembski's book provides a series of represen- William A. Dembski, The Design Inference-Eliminating Chance tations of how design inferenceworks. The exposition startssimple and Through Small Probabilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press grows increasinglycomplex. However, the basic patternof analysiscan (1998), xvii + 243 pp. be summarizedas follows. Dembski proposes an "explanatoryfilter" (37), which is a procedurefor deciding how best to explain an obser- As every philosopher knows, "the design argument" concludes that vation E: God exists from premises that cite the adaptive complexity of organ- isms or the lawfulness and orderliness of the whole universe. Since (1) There are three possible explanations of E Regularity, 1859, it has formed the intellectual heart of creationist opposition to Chance, and Design. They are mutually exclusive and collec- the Darwinian hypothesis that organisms evolved their adaptive fea- tively exhaustive. The problem is to decide which of these ex- tures by the mindless process of natural selection. Although the design planations to accept. argumentdeveloped as a defense of theism, the logic of the argument (2) The Regularityhypothesis is more parsimoniousthan Chance, in fact encompasses a larger set of issues. William Paley saw clearly and Chance is more parsimonious than Design. To evaluate that we sometimes have an excellent reason to postulate the existence these alternatives,begin with the most parsimoniouspossibility of an intelligent designer. If we find a watch on the heath, we reason- and move down the list until you reach an explanationyou can ably infer that it was produced by an intelligentwatchmaker. This de- accept. sign argument makes perfect sense. Why is it any different to claim (3) If E has a high probability,you should accept Regularity;oth- that the eye was produced by an intelligent designer?Both critics and erwise, reject Regularity and move down the list. defendersof the design argumentneed to understandwhat the ground (4) If the Chance hypothesis assigns E a sufficientlylow probabil- rules are for inferring that an intelligent designer is the unseen cause ity and E is "specified,"then reject Chance and move down of an observed effect. the list; otherwise, accept Chance. Dembski's book is an attempt to clarify these ground rules. He pro- (5) If you have rejectedRegularity and Chance, then you should poses a procedurefor detecting design and discusses how it applies to accept Design as the explanation of E. a number of mundane and nontheological examples, which more or The entire book is an elaboration of the ideas that comprise the Ex- planatory Filter.' Notice that the filter is eliminativist, with the Design *ReceivedApril 1999;revised May 1999. hypothesis occupying a special position. tSend requests for reprints to Elliott Sober, Philosophy Department, University of 1. Dembski (48) provides a deductively valid argument form in which "E is due to Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706. design" is the conclusion. However, Dembski's final formulationof "the design infer- thank William Dembski and Philip Kitcher for comments on an earlierdraft. ence" (221-223) deploys an epistemicversion of the argument,whose conclusion is "S lWe is warrantedin inferringthat E is due to design." One of the premises of this latter Philosophy of Science, 66 (September 1999) pp. 472-488. 0031-8248/99/6602-0009$2.00 argumentcontains two layers of epistemic operators;it says that if certain (epistemic) 1999 the of Science Association. All reserved. Copyright by Philosophy rights assumptions are true, then S is warrantedin asserting that "S is not warranted in inferringthat E did not occur according to the chance hypothesis." Dembski claims 472 (223) that this convoluted epistemicargument is valid, and defends this claim by refer- This content downloaded from 128.6.218.72 on Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:06:28 AM This content downloaded from 128.6.218.72 on Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:06:28 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 474 B. FITELSON, C. STEPHENS, AND E. SOBER W.A. DEMBSKI, THE DESIGN INFERENCE 475 We have interpretedthe Filter as sometimesrecommending that you process. For example, we can rule out the possibilitythat Caputo, with should accept Regularity or Chance. This is supported, for example, the most honest of intentions, spun a roulette wheel in which 00 was by Dembski's remark (38) that "if E happens to be an HP [a high labeled "Republican"and all the other numbers were labeled "Dem- probability]event, we stop and attributeE to a regularity."However, ocrat." Apparently,we know before we examine Caputo's 41 decisions some of the circumlocutionsthat Dembski uses suggest that he doesn't that there are just two possibilities he did the equivalentof tossing a think you should ever "accept" Regularity or Chance.2The most you fair coin (Chance) or he intentionally gave the edge to his own party should do is "not reject" them. Under this alternativeinterpretation, (Design). Dembski is saying that if you fail to reject Regularity,you can believe There is a straightforwardreason for thinking that the observed any of the three hypotheses, or remain agnostic about all three. And if outcomes favor Design over Chance. If Caputo had allowed his po- you reject Regularity, but fail to reject Chance, you can believe either litical allegianceto guide his arrangementof ballots, you would expect Chance or Design, or remain agnostic about them both. Only if you Democrats to be listed first on all or almost all of the ballots. However, have rejectedRegularity and Chance must you accept one of the three, if Caputo did the equivalent of tossing a fair coin, the outcome he namely Design. Construedin this way, a person who believesthat every obtained would be very surprising.This simple analysis also can be event is the result of Design has nothing to fear from the Explanatory used to representPaley's argumentabout the watch (Sober 1993). The Filter-no evidencecan ever dislodge that opinion. This may be Demb- key concept is likelihood.The likelihood of a hypothesis is the proba- ski's view, but for the sake of charity, we have describedthe Filter in bility it confers on the observations;it is not the probability that the terms of rejectionand acceptance. observations confer on the hypothesis. The likelihood of H relativeto E is Pr(EIH), not Pr(HIE). Chance and Design can be evaluated by The CaputoExample. Before discussing the filter in detail, we want to comparing their likelihoods, relative to the same set of observations. describeDembski's treatmentof one of the main examplesthat he uses We do not claim that likelihood is the whole story, but surely it is to motivate his analysis (9-19,162-166). This is the case of Nicholas relevant. Caputo, who was a member of the Democratic party in New Jersey. The reader will notice that the Filter does not use this simple like- Caputo's job was to determine whether Democrats or Republicans lihood analysis to help decide between Chance and Design. The like- would be listed first on the ballot. The party listed first in an election lihood of Chance is considered, but the likelihood of Design never is. has an edge, and this was common knowledgein Caputo's day. Caputo Instead, the Chance hypothesis is evaluated for propertiesadditional had this job for 41 years and he was supposed to do it fairly. Yet, in to its likelihood. Dembski thinks it is possible to reject Chance and 40 out of 41 elections, he listed the Democrats first. Caputo claimed accept Design without asking what Design predicts.Whether the Filter that each year he determinedthe order by drawing from an urn that succeeds in showing that this is possible is something we will have to gave Democrats and Republicansthe same chance of winning. Despite determine. his protestations, Caputo was brought up on charges and the judges found against him. They rejectedhis claim that the outcome was due The Three AlternativeExplanations. Dembski defines the Regularity to chance, and were persuadedthat he had rigged the results. The or- hypothesis in different ways. Sometimes it is said to assert that the dering of names on the ballots was due to Caputo's intelligentdesign. evidence E is noncontingent and is reducibleto law (39, 53); at other In this story, the hypotheses of Chance and Intelligent Design are times it is taken to claim that E is a deterministicconsequence of earlier prominent.But what of the first alternative,that of Regularity?Demb- conditions (65; 146, fn. 5); and at still other times, it is supposedto say ski (1 1) says that this can be rejectedbecause our backgroundknowl- that E was highly probable, given some earlierstate of the world (38). edge tells us that Caputo probably did not innocently use a biased The Chance Hypothesis is taken to assign to E a lower probabilitythan the Regularity Hypothesis assigns (40). The Design Hypothesis is said to be the complement of the first two alternatives.As a matter of stip- ring the readerback to the quite different,nonepistemic, argument presented on p.
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