From that paper:
In this paper, I will try to show that the Mechanistic Consensus is not the only alternative to Intelligent Design. There is also the possibility that certain forms of matter may be intrinsically endowed with mind-like properties, that these properties are irreducible to mechanistic interactions, but that they may nonetheless be subject to investigation by the methods of empirical science.
I once had a brief online discussion somewhere with Barham; we decided that the primary difference between us is that I'm a 'Right Aristotelian', taking Aristotle in a theistic direction (along the lines of the scholastics), and he's a 'Left Aristotelian', taking Aristotle in a materialist direction (along the lines of the vitalists). We both shared a basic problem with ID as a philosophical position: it's mechanistic, and doesn't have any clear room for intrinsic functions; we both agreed that the mechanisms appealed to in evolutionary theory presuppose rather than replace teleology; and while I've never liked talk of emergence, we both put a lot of emphasis on the problem of the integration of parts into wholes. He's rather more comfortable with the intelligent design movement than I am, though.
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