Thorton on design detection

-
This is good.

When I asked blipey How do you think people detect design?, Thorton chimed in with:

Humans do it by pattern matching an unknown object with one that is previously known to be designed, and the designer and mechanism of design / fabrication are previously known also.

For one it isn't an unknown object if we know who designed it and how it was fabricated.

Also is Thorton saying we can only detect design if we previously knew it was designed?

And what happens in unique situations? Scenarios in which we don't have past experience?

Are we supposed to just throw up our hands?

But anyway obviously Thorton doesn't have any investigative experience- pattern matching (a specification BTW) isn't good enough because, as Mikey Shermer puts it, "patternicity"- our ability to see patterns when no pattern is really there.

Also nature is good at producing patterns- so we need to be able to differentiate between the patterns nature produces and teh patterns that require agency involvement.

But observing a pattern is a good start but it is the end. "Looks designed", IMHO, is as good of a reason as any to check further to see if the design is real or illusory.

That is where parsimony comes in. If a designer is not required then we don't infer one regardless of the pattern. Otherwise we would be needing designers for snowflakes.

Back to Thorton- With Stonehenge, for example, we didn't know who or how until well after it was determined to be designed.

That is how it goes- determine design and then figure out the who and how.

If you already know who and how then you don't need to determine design or not.

Humans can generate lightning but that doesn't mean there is a lightning god.