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Topic: Darel R. Finley: Three Issues With "No Free Lunch"
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posted 10. March 2002 18:43
Three Issues With "No Free Lunch"
by Darel R. Finley
dfinley@mdanderson.org
ABSTRACT—Dembski's book is undoubtedly an important addition to the growing set of books in the Intelligent Design movement, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in that movement. However, when I finished reading the book I was left with the uneasy feeling that a few important points were being overlooked; hence, this paper. I present my points in a non-technical form, based primarily on an analogy to finding a specified square on a large grid. However, I have little doubt that these issues are valid, and that applying them to biology is ultimately unavoidable.
To read the entire paper, please click here
[ 05 May 2002, 14:59: Message edited by: Moderator ]
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William A. Dembski
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posted 21. March 2002 15:24
I want to thank Darel for his thoughtful engagement of my work. Let me briefly address two of his concerns: (1) the question of real vs. apparent specified complexity and (2) the question of CSI begetting CSI.
Ad (1): For something to exhibit specified complexity it must exhibit a detachable pattern that maps onto an event of small probability (the "complexity" in "specified complexity" is a measure of probability). Now, the determination of small probability is made with respect to all relevant probability distributions that might account for the phenomenon in questions. In practice this means limiting oneself to probability distributions induced by all known naturalistic mechanisms operating in known ways. Evolutionary naturalists often cite this as a defect of specified complexity claiming that it merely provides a sophisticated cloak for ignorance.
Two comments on this objection: (i) the great strength of Darwinian and other naturalistic accounts of evolution was precisely to show that known naturalistic mechanisms operating in known ways could produce all of biological complexity, so at the very least specified complexity is showing that the problems claimed to be solved by naturalistic means have not been solved. (ii) The argument from ignorance objection can be raised for any design inference that utilizes specified complexity, including those where humans are implicated in constructing artifacts. There may be unknown naturalistic mechanisms that lead to identical essays being written by independent agents even though now we routinely refer such coincidences to design (i.e., plagiarism).
To come back to Darels' concern, however, about real vs. apparent specified complexity. Specified complexity, by being defined relative to the relevant probability distributions that might account for the occurence of an event, or alternatively by being defined relative to the known naturalistic mechanisms operating in known ways, might always be defeated by showing that some relevant probability distribution was omitted. That's always a possibility (though as with the plagiarism example and with many other cases, we don't take it seriously). As William James put it, there are live possibilities and then again there are bare possibilities. There are many design inferences which, to question or doubt, requires invoking a bare possibility. Such bare possibilities, if realized, would defeat specified complexity. But how would they defeat specified complexity? Not by rendering the concept incoherent but by dissolving it (or as I put it in NFL, but rendering the specified complexity only apparent).
In fact, that is how Darwinists, complexity theorists, and anyone intent on defeating specified complexity usually does it, namely, by showing that the probability or complexity that was thought to be so extreme really wasn't all that extreme after all (cf. Dawkins's _Climbing Mount Improbable_). Those who want to defeat specified complexity therefore try to show that it isn't real -- that the notion dissolves once we have a better understanding of the underlying causal mechanisms that render the object in question reasonably probable. By contrast, the design theorist argues that the specified complexity is real: that any attempt to palliate the complexities/improbabilities is destined to fail. This can in some cases be argued conclusively, as when the geometry of some biological structure allows complete freedom in possible arrangements of parts (cf. the sequencing of nucleotide bases). Michael Polanyi made such an argument in the 1960s.
Ad (2): As for the concern that CSI might always beget CSI and that we might never need to invoke an irreducible intelligent agent (just some preprogrammed bundle of CSI), the problem here is that backtracking CSI always makes the problem worse (cf. Law of Conservation of Information in ch. 3 of NFL). This law allows for one of the strongest anti-regress results that I know. The quantity of CSI to be accounted for, apart from invoking an irreducible intelligent agent (as opposed to a derived intelligence that merely shuffles around preexisting CIS -- I deal with derived intelligences briefly in the preface to NFL), always gets intensified when one tries to backtrack CSI under the operation of naturalistic mechanisms. Explaining CSI in terms of CSI therefore always comes to an end, especially in a finite universe of finite duration. CSI is not self-explanatory.
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Darel R. Finley
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posted 14. May 2002 22:21
William Debmski, et al — Thanks very much for publishing my paper; I'm quite honored! A few quick comments on your post:
Apparent Specified Complexity
I think I see a problem with the "nucleotide sequence freedom" argument. In what sense is the placement "free?" Would it be valid to say that the biologically undesirable, strong bonding of a huge, random, blob-like, 10,000-atom molecule to the strand of DNA is another valid possibility in the scope of DNA freedom? If not, why not? Perhaps because it is biologically damaging and does not permit the DNA strand ultimately to reproduce and to serve its function in the cell and organism. But that is also true of many nucleotide sequences — in fact, it is true of the vast majority of nucleotide sequences. How is this fact interpreted by the real-vs-apparent-specified-complexity framework?
CSI Backtracking
I see your point, but I would add that (1) CSI might not need not grow when going back in time — it might be able to stay the same, and (2) I wasn't necessarily suggesting that CSI is ultimately self-explanatory — but rather that the explanation for it may lie at a level of existence to which our science has no access, in the same category as "who designed the designer?". What I was trying to suggest is that human intelligence (if not a supernatural designers' intelligence) may consist entirely of pre-programmed CSI in the human genome, acquired CSI from our observation of the universe around us, and the appropriate neural algorithms to manipulate that CSI. In this scenario, music appreciation is entirely pre-coded by the author of human DNA, but knowledge of say, North American mountain ranges is acquired.
The specific relevance of the above scenario to NFL is that our general experience of CSI coming from intelligence may be simply the observation of humans expressing CSI contained in the human brain — some of it pre-programmed at the inception of the human race, and some of it acquired from the environment. So, we don't have a basis to confidently assert that intelligence is the source of CSI; for all we know, intelligence may be a label we put on the effects of CSI. (Whether this is true of a supernatural intelligence is, at present, beyond our capacity to study.)
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