The presence of information in even the simplest living cells suggests that intelligent design played a role in life’s origin. After all, we know computer programs come from programmers and information generally — in a book or newspaper, for example — always arises from an intelligent source. … In addition, no alien being within the universe can explain what scientists have discovered about the structure of the universe. … the fundamental parameters of physics have been finely tuned, against all odds, to make life possible. (More by Stephen Meyer, author of Return of the God Hypothesis)

I haven’t read this book, but this article doesn’t make me optimistic about it. However, I was for other reasons recently considering the (to-me-likely-false) hypothesis that our thoughts and feelings are more than complex patterns of physical processes, and in my recent poll belief in this has a big 0.58 correlation with belief in gods, spirits, or other non-physical agents.

People who believe such things often feel that we science types dismiss such possibilities out of hand. And another poll of mine finds that while 25.8% lean toward the “more than” position, 53.4% are “almost sure” of their position, which does seem overconfident. (32.4% of philosophers who take a position so lean.)

Dismissing out of hand does seem unfair here, so it occurs to me to try to explain a more reasonable standard to ask intelligent design folks to meet. A standard for how they could express their theories to enable a careful and systematic evaluation of them. As I see their story as less likely than not, I don’t expect such an evaluation to favor it, but that’s a different issue. However, as someone who recently estimated the prior for if UFOs are aliens, this seems like a task I may be suited for.

In our usual science story, there is all this physical stuff, which started in some initial state, and then evolved according the usual physical laws. In a big enough version of this, eventually some random fluctuations will get a self-reproduction process started, which then develops and spreads according to natural selection. Eventually this creates computers (“brains”) that assess each organism’s situation and calculates its responses. And when those organisms interact, they want to explain their motives and plans to each other, thus resulting in minds who talk to each other about their feelings and thoughts. Which is how under this story we end up with a universe containing both physical stuff and minds, with the experiences of those minds very closely connected to events of particular organisms.

As I understand it, many want to instead postulate that the universe started with minds as elemental primary things. Some of those minds are able to, and choose to, create or change physical stuff and processes, and tie minds to that physical stuff in ways that are highly correlated with the computers of evolved organisms. That is, each tied mind only recalls events after that organism formed, only events which that organism could sense, and only in ways that brain could compute. This mind also only notices causing actions by that organism, and has a mental capacity connected closely to the size and health of that organism’s brain. And all the other elemental minds not attached to organisms (i.e., “spirits”), don’t seem to cause much in the way of noticeable deviations from what simple physical laws would cause in their absence.

Some of these folks claim that some special features of the organisms and their minds that we see are much less plausible under the usual science story than under this alternate minds-as-primary view. These features include the beauty and meaning that these organism-tied minds see, and their mental tendencies toward spiritual experiences.

To compare these two categories of theories systematically and carefully, we want each class to be described as clearly and precisely as possible. And while I’m aware of many ambiguities and issues with the usual science story, it seems to me that the alternative minds-as-primitive story is described with vastly less precision and detail. Some obvious questions about elemental minds:

What sets the capacities and features of elemental minds?
In particular, what sets the capacities of elemental minds to create or experience beauty and meaning?
What sets the capacities of some minds to create or modify or end themselves or other minds?
How many elemental minds are there, and do they exist in time, if not in space?
If elemental minds exist in time, when did that time start and will it ever end?
Are there any resources they need to think or continue existing, and if so what sets the dynamics of those resources?
In the absence of physical stuff, what exactly do elemental minds experience, and how do they interact with each other?
Why do they make or modify minds to become so intimately connected to and limited by physical stuff.
Why don’t they show more clearly that they can create and change physical stuff?
Can physical stuff influence and change elemental minds?
What sets what how much these elemental minds encourage the existence of organisms among physical stuff, and to which organisms they tie minds?

Note that it is fine to get probability distributions over possible answers to each question. But without clearer answers to these questions, I can’t see how to even begin to systematically compare these two classes of hypotheses. Again, while the usual science story still has missing parts, it looks vastly more specified than the alternate story.

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