Thanks for your note Lubomir. I agree that the redundancy of 'Intelligent
design" is silly. A nightmare image of 'stupid design' comes too easily to
my mind, as well.
On your deeper point, getting past the 'culture wars' intent of the phrase
is important for us. In fact, there seems to be no point at all in rising
to any response to the silly phrase. However, issues of transcendence,
spirituality, and related themes can have value for our more serious
discussions. Sophistication will be needed in this matter, since it is
easy to get sidetracked from the real--no pun intended--issue. I, for one,
will be interested to read any thoughts that people may have on this matter.
Just as a teaser (or provocation), the enthusiasm for general systems
theory may be a poor entry point for a discussion that seeks to move toward
'noumenal reality' in relation to design. There are very distinguished
designers who clearly hold beliefs that grow out of a vision of noumenal
reality--George Nelson, for one, but there are others.
Regards,
Dick
Richard Buchanan
Carnegie Mellon University
--On Wednesday, February 23, 2005 2:45 PM -0500 "Lubomir S. Popov"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Just a small remark: do we need to use "intelligent" in front of "design?"
> Doesn't the act of design presuppose intelligence by its very nature?
>
> The term "intelligent design" was introduced by people who have no idea
> what is design and have no idea what is intelligence. Do we, as a society
> (DRS) need to accept this situation? Design implies intelligence by its
> very nature.
>
> If we use "intelligent" as an opposition of "unintelligent," it is OK, but
> when "intelligent" is used as an euphemism, I think it creates confusion.
> I have no problem with supernatural creation, but supernatural creation
> and design should be seen as two different phenomena. How the Supernatural
> created the world is not clear to anyone. Implying that the Supernatural
> "designs" in the way humans do, is simply an anthropomorphism.
>
> A discussion on this list might bring to a new point of view, or at least
> new terminology.
>
> Regards,
>
> Lubomir Popov
>
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