The Chronicle: Colloquy: Responses

Profs. Swan and Okimoto both seem to be driving ID into the category of "meaningless statements." This they do in response to Prof. Moody's holding that a given imagined set of evidential circumstances would falsify ID only weakly. They infer that if ID isn't falsified completely by the imagined set of circumstances, then nothing would falsify it completely, and hence it is meaningless. For a statement is meaningless if we have no idea of what would count as conclusive evidence against it (or for it).

This is a reasonable line of argument for them to take. But eventually, the idea that someone designed life on earth must be admitted to be a meaningful idea and not nonsense. (For we could, after all, imagine evidential circumstances which would confirm it.) I suggest that a more reasonable reply is to say that ID is meaningful, but Moody is just wrong in the first place to say that it has not been falsified completely but only weakly. In other words, Profs. Swan and Okimoto let Moody force them into taking the position that ID is meaningless, a position which will have troubles down the road. But the force is illegitimate, because there is no real distinction between weak and strong falsification.

: -- Jim Ryan, philosophy prof., Huron College (posted 2/12, 3:00 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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