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Where the Design Argument Goes Wrong: Auxiliary Assumptions and Unification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Maarten Boudry  and
Bert Leuridan
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Abstract

Sober has reconstructed the biological design argument in the framework of likelihoodism, purporting to demonstrate that it is defective for intrinsic reasons. We argue that Sober’s restriction on the introduction of auxiliary hypotheses is too restrictive, as it commits him to rejecting types of everyday reasoning that are clearly valid. Our account shows that the design argument fails, not because it is intrinsically untestable but because it clashes with the empirical evidence and fails to satisfy certain theoretical desiderata (in particular, unification). Likewise, Sober’s critique of the arguments from imperfections and from evil against design is off the mark.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 558 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

We would like to thank Stefaan Blancke, Johan Braeckman, José Díez, Heather Douglas, Kareem Khalifa, James Lennox, Sebastian Lutz, Elisabeth Nemeth, Laura Perini, Herman Philipse, Peter Vickers, and John Worrall for their helpful criticisms and suggestions. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of Philosophy of Science, whose critical comments have substantially improved this article.

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