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Author
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Topic: Is "complexity" relative or absolute?
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Drosera
Member
Member # 139
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posted 29. March 2002 22:02
quote:
Paul A. Nelson:
If RM & NS cause CSI, defined by Dembski's universal probability bound, then we should have plenty, or at least some, examples of that happening.
[Jesse]
You're setting up an impossible task here. Any feature of the biological world that has a reasonable probability of being generated by RM&NS will not exhibit high CSI, by definition. The question is not whether RM&NS can generate specified complexity, but rather whether any structures in the biological world actually exhibit specified complexity in the first place.
Jesse makes a good point I should have mentioned in the previous post. Under Jesse's interpretation of Dembski, then the answer to #1 is "indeterminant" and the whole Dembski argument is the tautology that "things that are specified complex [= wildly improbable under natural causes, by definition] are wildly improbable under natural causes."
If this is the most advanced exposition of ID thus far, it seems that ID has some self-clarification to perform before it can even be intelligibly advocated or criticized.
I would be especially interested in Mike Gene's take on the question of/relevance of Dembski's 'CSI' argument.
Drosera
PS: If Jesse's interpretation of Dembski is the correct one, then the real question is simply "is [insert gene, feature, whatever] wildly improbable under natural causes, crucially mutation and selection?" It seems to me that this question can be asked without all of Dembski's terminology, CSI, etc. If that is the real question then let's have at it.
[ 29 March 2002, 22:12: Message edited by: Drosera ]
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Mike Gene
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Member # 149
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posted 29. March 2002 23:19
Charlie,
I can appreciate that you perceived my discussion of mechanisms as a cop-out, but I think of it as insight that stems from thinking through the implications of design (especially, intelligent intervention). From where I sit, the two objections that you raise don't directly tackle any of the points I made. ID is a mechanism - a free and rational mind imposes boundary conditions on nature to serve a conceptualized end. This is what engineers do. And engineering is a mechanism. I'm not suggesting that any design theorist stop at "it was engineered." But the notion that we need to have the actual design protocols or blueprints (plus an understanding of the technology that implemented them) before we can seriously explore from a teleological perspective makes no sense to me. Is it a cop-out to admit I don't have psychic powers and admit I have no time machine in my basement?
The idea that one must come up with a replacement mechanism before we can dismiss RM&NS behind the origin of something doesn't make much sense either. When Louis Pasteur debunked the mechanism of spontaneous generation, he did so without having to replace it with an explanation for where bacteria came from on the first place.
As for science and teleological mechanisms, I suppose it all turns on how you define teleological. I happen to use the common dictionary definition: the use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural phenomena. From where I sit, a teleological cause ultimately traces it way back to mind. In what sense are you defining adaptive mutagenesis as 'teleological?'
You also contributed some other stuff to this thread worth commenting on.
Actually, Paul, I think there are 2 issues here that tend to become confused, but shouldn’t. The first one is: is RM/NS a sufficiently powerful explanatory mechanism for the generation of biological novelty?
The problem here is what we mean by "biological novelty" and whether all novelties are equivalent. Take erythromycin-resistance in bacteria. When this evolves and spreads, we can refer to this as a biological novelty spawned by RM/NS. But would you now argue that we have demonstrated RM/NS is sufficient cause for the origin of the bacterial flagellum? If so, please spell it out. The attempt to smear biotic reality into some homogenous, blurry mass in order to make it all accessible to RM/NS doesn't make much sense to me. For example, we could go through all the biotic examples listed in this thread to see if they give us any reason to be confident that RM/NS generated the bacterial flagellum and I'd think we (or at least I) would find no such reason for confidence. You also write:
quote:
Incidentally, this approach is used all the time in science: we built ourselves a good model of how stars work based on the laws of physics (as we currently know them), and on a limited number of careful astronomical measurements and observations, and as far as I know nobody seems to insist that we have to check equally carefully every star to avoid “just so” stories about how things work in the Crab Nebula.
Okay, then by all means, lay out in detail why changing color in moth wings in response to industrial pollution is convincing evidence for the non-teleological origin of life and the non-teleological origin of the bacterial flagellum.
So the question is: are these plausible, evidence-based evolutionary scenarios sufficient to nick ID’s IC/CSI armor, or do detailed evolutionary pathways need to be spelled out?
You don't need detailed evolutionary pathways (from my perspective). It's as simple as this - If you believe something like the bacterial flagellum did indeed arise by RM/NS, provide the evidence that the bacterial flagellum did indeed arise by RM/NS. What are the data about the flagellum that tells us this? In a world where both bioengineering and RM/NS can co-exist, it does no good to point to the mere existence of RM/NS over there and over here.
Well, this thread has frayed too badly and too many topics are being discussed. Couple this with my self-imposed 50 message/post limit, and I think this will be my last word here. I trust some of these topics will resurface in other threads in the future.
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Moderator
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posted 30. March 2002 01:40
I'm going to close this thread as it has diverged into many threads. If you would like to continue one of the many discussions, please, by all means, start up a new thread. In doing so, please remember the Brainstorm guidelines regarding new threads...
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