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Author
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Topic: Engineering & Darwinian Theory
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Dennis L. Feucht
Member
Member # 231
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posted 07. April 2002 15:13
In a discussion on Phil Johnson's list-server, Forrest Mims commented on how some knowledge of human design would be of benefit in assessing evolutionary biology, especially by the biologists. Bill Demski thought I should post my (edited) comments, prompted by Forrest, in response.
Forrest's comment is important but often overlooked in the scientific debate about life's development. Science depends almost entirely on analytic investigative skills, though they are often applied in a creative way. Engineering is the discipline whose distinctive subject-matter is design. For biologists to speak authoritatively against design, some experience with design and demonstration of understanding of design principles would add much credibility to such arguments. However, engineering (design) embodies a wide range of principles and methods that do not appear in the field of biology. Some biologists, such as Mike Behe, have an appreciation for the nontriviality of design principles, recognizing for instance that Murphy's Law ("If it can go wrong, it will.") applies also to the development of living systems.
It is no wonder to me, as an engineer, that so many engineers lean toward ID. Try to design a nontrivial system and you develop an innate appreciation for the meaning of irreducible complexity. "Tinker toys for biologists" [an idea Forrest put forward, to give biologists some experience with design principles] is not a bad idea. The rapid development of biotech and molecular engineering will provide this opportunity and bring evolutionary biology and engineering into closer proximity. That will be interesting to watch.
If I were arguing against ID and irreducible complexity, I would think that a most powerful (necessary, not sufficient) argument might be made by starting with well-understood (humanly-designed) systems, and showing that they are not irreducibly complex. For if the IC of humanly-contrived systems (which are so much simpler than organisms) cannot be controverted, then how much more so might partially-understood living systems not be? To argue that life is different than humanly-engineered systems, and that one cannot draw conclusions about life from them, is a kind of concession to vitalism that many IC deniers would not want to make.
In other words, Kenneth Miller's counter-argument against the IC of mousetraps is too simple. A compelling denial of the IC of a computer or television would be better. And if the IC of something so (relatively) simple as a TV cannot be denied, then how much more so for life.
As information-based theory continues to make inroads into biology, increasingly, biologists talk about life in engineering language while denying that life was engineered. The next generation of biologists may well apply Occam's Razor and dispense with the historical obligation to maintain the denial.
[ 05 May 2002, 20:04: Message edited by: Dennis L. Feucht ]
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charlie d.
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Member # 159
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posted 07. April 2002 17:40
quote:
A compelling denial of the IC of a computer or television would be better. And if the IC of something so (relatively) simple as a TV cannot be denied, then how much more so for life.
Well, I am not an engineer, but I am quite confident television can be shown to have "evolved" through progressive evolutionary steps, and that, although certainly its evolution as a human invention was teleology-driven, television as we know it today is not really IC (radio transmission, cathode ray tubes, and several other electronic components of modern TVs were invented separately, and just co-opted into television technology). In fact, according to this very informative web page television apparently even started with the "selectively neutral mutation" of the discovery of selenium: quote:
The idea of sending still images via the telegraph traces its roots to 1839. At that time Edmond Becquerel, a French physicist interested in the study of light, found that when two pieces of metal were immersed in an electrolyte, an electrical charge developed when one of the pieces was illuminated. Although Becquerel had discovered the electrochemical effects of light he did not offer any practical suggestion for its use.
Here is the characterized evolutionary path for television: quote:
1817 - Swedish Baron Jons Berzelius isolates the element selenium.
1839 - Edmond Becquerel discovers the electrochemical effects of light.
1842 - Alexander Bain proposes facsimile telegraph transmission that scans metal letters and reproduces image by contact with chemical paper. ...
1847 - F. Bakewell improves facsimile by creating rotating scanning drums.
1859 - German mathematician and physicist Julius Plucker experiments with invisible cathode rays.
1861 - Italian priest, Abbe Caselli, uses tin foil on facsimile to transmit handwriting and pictures.
MAY 1873 - British scientists, Willoughby Mith and Joseph May noted that the electrical conductivity of the element selenium changes when light falls on it. This property, called photoconductivity, is used in camera tubes.
1878 - M. Senlacq proposes the use of selenium in facsimile machines to transmit paper documents
1878 - Sir William Crookes develops a tube that confirms the existence of cathode rays.
1881- British pioneer Shelford Bidwell demonstrates his scanning phototelegraph that establishes both scanning and the use of selenium in transmitting still pictures.
1884 - German scientist Paul Gottlieb Nipkow patented a device for scene analyzation that consisted of a rapidly rotating disk placed between a scene and a light sensitive selenium element. It became known as the Nipkow disk. ...
1888 - German physicist Wilhelm Hallwachs noted that certain substances emit electrons when exposed to light. Hallwachs demonstrated the possibility of using photoelectric cells in cameras. ...
1897 - German Karl Braun invents the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT).
1904 - First colour television system is proposed based on the principle of scanning three primary colours.
1907 - American engineer Lee De Forest invented the triode electron tube. This made amplification of video signals created by photoconductivity and photoemission possible.
1907 - English inventor A.A. Campbell-Swinton and Russian Boris Rosing independently suggested using a cathode ray to reproduce the television picture on a phosphorous coated screen. ...
1911 - English inventor A.A. Campbell-Swinton proposed an electronic scanning system using a charge-collecting screen and an electron gun to neutralize the charge to create a varying current. ...
1923 thru 1926 - American Charles F. Jenkins developed a working television system based on the Nipkow disk. ...
1923 - Westinghouse, General Electric, RCA, and AT&T entered into television research.
1923 - Vladamir K. Zworykin, a Russian immigrant to the United States, patented the "iconoscope" an electronic camera tube based on A.A. Campbell-Swinton's proposal of 1911.
1923 - Philo T. Farnsworth (13 years old) developed an electronic camera tube, similar tube to Zworykin's named the "kinescope".
1926 - Canadian experiments with mechanical television start in Montreal.
1927 - First long distance television broadcast from Washington to New York performed by AT&T.
1928 - John L. Baird demonstrates a colour television system using a modified Nipkow disk.
1928 - American inventor E. F. W. Alexanderson demonstrates the first home television receiver in Schenectady, New York. ...
1929 - John L. Baird starts transmissions using BBC radio towers in off hours.
1929 - Zworykin demonstrates the all electronic television camera and receiver.
1930 - American Philo Farnsworth patents electronic television.
Now, I am not sure how this particular finding would extend to life as a whole, but I would bet something similar could be done for the evolution of the modern computer. Our lack of understanding of how certain things came to being is often just the result of limiting our attention to the end result, and of our lack of imagination. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
[ 07 April 2002, 17:47: Message edited by: charlie d. ]
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edmund
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Member # 206
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posted 07. April 2002 18:59
quote:
If I were arguing against ID and irreducible complexity, I would think that a most powerful (necessary, not sufficient) argument might be made by starting with well-understood (humanly-designed) systems, and showing that they are not irreducibly complex. For if the IC of humanly-contrived systems (which are so much simpler than organisms) cannot be controverted, then how much more so might partially-understood living systems not be? To argue that life is different than humanly-engineered systems, and that one cannot draw conclusions about life from them, is a kind of concession to vitalism that many IC deniers would not want to make.
I'm afraid I'm simply not following your logic here. "To argue that life is different than humanly-engineered systems, and that one cannot draw conclusions about life from them" is exactly what evolutionists are doing, isn't it? Vitalism doesn't enter the picture anywhere as far as I can tell.
I'm also perplexed as to how it would help for an anti-ICer to argue that manmade systems aren't IC. Designers work teleologically. Non-intelligent natural processes do not. What we want to know is whether or not we can detect teleology in nature. Whether or not we can detect teleology in manmade artifacts is beside the point.
As for your statement that biologists' use of engineering metaphors suggests that they have already tacitly accepted design, I think you are focusing on the wrong part of that analogy. The evolutionist perspective is that natural processes search design space and settle, because of natural selection, on systems with particular functions. This is analogous to engineering, in that engineers also explore design space searching for systems with particular functions. Intelligence merely makes the search more efficient-- you can take the straight path to the answer rather than a winding one. The similarity lies in the functionality of the end products , not in the process behind them. Also be careful about stating that simple systems should always be more evolvable than complex ones. It's not the level of complexity which matters-- it's whether or not foresight is required to reach a particular solution. The wheel is a very simple machine, but approaching it in gradual steps is a real trick.
Have I misunderstood your arguments somehow? They leave me rather puzzled.
--edmund
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Cre8ionist
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Member # 140
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posted 07. April 2002 21:23
Charlie ->
quote:
Well, I am not an engineer, but I am quite confident television can be shown to have
"evolved" through progressive evolutionary steps, and that, although certainly its
evolution as a human invention was teleology-driven, television as we know it today is not
really IC (radio transmission, cathode ray tubes, and several other electronic components
of modern TVs were invented separately, and just co-opted into television technology).
The fact that different parts of a television were originally designed without prior knowledge of
TV doesn't really qualify as evolution in the sense it is used in the IC debate. Behe's argument
holds for neo-Darwinian gradualism, while it wouldn't hold at all for directed evolution. Therefore your statement that the " television as we know it today is not
really IC" seems to miss the mark. In order for it to be on target you would need to build a complete TV, wiring and all in a stepwise fashion, all the while keeping it functional and thus avoiding unselected steps. I'd be a great feat, and if you're serious, I hope you'll publish the steps here. Otherwise, I think the IC of the TV remains.......Cre8
[ 07 April 2002, 21:24: Message edited by: Cre8ionist ]
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charlie d.
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Member # 159
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posted 07. April 2002 23:56
Cre8tionist:
my post was of course tongue-in-cheek. I do not think that looking at TVs, mouse traps or potato peelers is actually telling us anything about nature (well, it may tell us something about the human mind).
I was pointing out however that most, if not all, of the technology in current TVs was developed not for the purpose of building a TV, but just as a result of basic research, or for other applications, and was put together in TVs, and adapted for them, later. Thus, television, like most of human technology, seems to be very much a product of co-option, and not de novo creation.
Co-option is indeed quite common in nature, although for some reason proponents of IC see it as an anomalous "circuitous route", and insist that every evolutionary step to an IC system has to proceed in a linear fashion.
I also think that when Dennis said that TV is IC he didn't mean the actual assembly of a specific TV set, but the inventing of the technology. I would counter that TVs were developed gradually by the addition and alteration of parts that had diverse original uses, that step-wise evolutionary intermediates can be clearly found in the fossil record (TV museums and patent offices), and that their efficiency as TVs was very different than current models, and finally that they most likely were not built with the function of transmitting "The Sopranos", Frontline or saturday morning cartoons.
Thus, in my opinion, television is not IC sensu strictu.
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Dennis L. Feucht
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Member # 231
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posted 08. April 2002 00:44
Charlie D.,
re: IC of TV
What makes a TV IC is not the novelty of the components used but the function that results. There was no historic progression of incremental abilities to format, transmit and display motion pictures and sound before TV arrived on the scene full-blown. The Nipkov mechanical disk was an early forerunner of TV, but it too is irreducibly complex in that multiple components are required to be assembled is a so-so way to function as a TV at all. Zworykin's invention of (what became) the image orthicon (camera tube) was a critical component and was novel. It also requires an irreducibly complex assembly of novel elements, including novel patterning of existing matter such as the selenium (actually, mercury, as I recall) on the faceplate of the tube.
My overall point is that the particular structure of the TV that supported its novel function was itself novel, irrespective of the novelty of some or all of the components comprising the structure.
Furthermore, what I was trying to say in the original post was that in dealing with a leading-edge issue such as determining IC, it is often advantageous to begin on the more solid ground of what is known (human inventions), and then work from there toward the unknown (organisms). If artifacts can be shown to be IC or not, this would help to resolve whether life is IC or not because many of the engineering features of artifacts are evident in organisms.
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Dennis L. Feucht
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posted 08. April 2002 01:12
edmund,
"I'm afraid I'm simply not following your logic here. "To argue that life is different than humanly-engineered systems, and that one cannot draw conclusions about life from them" is exactly what evolutionists are doing, isn't it? Vitalism doesn't enter the picture anywhere as far as I can tell."
If life is essentially no different than humanly engineered systems, then the IC or not of life is linked more strongly to engineering, where IC is not in question (assuming intelligent human designers!). If I were anti-IC regarding life, I would want to distance engineering from life in order to not allow the inference from engineering that life is IC. But in doing so, this plays to the vitalist issue of life being qualitatively different than engineered devices. Most anti-IC-of-life people are not pro-vitalism, and this uncoupling of life from engineering works in this direction.
"I'm also perplexed as to how it would help for an anti-ICer to argue that manmade systems aren't IC. Designers work teleologically. Non-intelligent natural processes do not. What we want to know is whether or not we can detect teleology in nature. Whether or not we can detect teleology in manmade artifacts is beside the point."
Natural systems have features only found otherwise in "intelligently designed" systems by humans. If it could be shown (as in the TV example in this thread) that nothing is IC, then the argument against the IC of life is strengthened. Detection of design in nature requires understanding of the nature of design, which we understand from what we know is designed, namely humanly-engineered systems.
"As for your statement that biologists' use of engineering metaphors suggests that they have already tacitly accepted design, I think you are focusing on the wrong part of that analogy. ..."
It is not an analogy if biologists adapt actual engineering principles in their work, which they are doing.
Also, the analogy you introduced of nature-as-engineer begs the question of whether a truly mindless process produces any functions at all, since functions by definition solve a priori goals deliberately. We humans recognize goal achievement in nature only because we are used to it from our own design experience. If nature is not designed, then it simply has no inherent functions.
The key issue of IC (and ID) is whether an intelligence put in place the existing physical order purposefully (with functions) or not. Any analogy between nature and engineers assumes ID.
Or have I missed your point(s) here?
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James A. Barham
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Member # 50
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posted 08. April 2002 08:19
Dennis:
You wrote:
"Any analogy between nature and engineers assumes ID."
I agree that any such analogy assumes the prior existence of some form of intelligence, but I don't agree that it necessarily assumes ID. It only does that if we further assume the validity of the mechanistic view of matter as completely inert.
We all agree that humans are intelligent. Theists believe this is because we are the imago dei. Naturalists of my stripe believe it is because intelligence is an emergent property of life. The fact that we can draw engineering analogies to organisms makes equally good sense on either interpretation. So, the real issue is, Can intelligence at the level of life itself be given some sort of naturalistic explanation? That remains to be seen, but I don't think it is correct to say that the fact of the usefulness of engineering analogies can decide the issue all by itself.
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edmund
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posted 08. April 2002 15:36
quote:
If life is essentially no different than humanly engineered systems, then the IC or not of life is linked more strongly to engineering, where IC is not in question (assuming intelligent human designers!). If I were anti-IC regarding life, I would want to distance engineering from life in order to not allow the inference from engineering that life is IC. But in doing so, this plays to the vitalist issue of life being qualitatively different than engineered devices. Most anti-IC-of-life people are not pro-vitalism, and this uncoupling of life from engineering works in this direction.
I think the misunderstanding revolves around the use of the phrase "essentially no different". Evolutionists believe that human artefacts and living organisms are made from the same sort of stuff and follow the same physical and logical laws. It would certainly erode the analogy between artefacts and organisms if they didn't, but since it's been proven that they do I don't see the wisdom in arguing against it.
If by "essentially no different" you mean that artefacts and organisms have attributes which could only have been arranged by intelligence and foresight, I would reply that evolutionists think otherwise. This is how I interpreted your post.
If by "essentially no different" you mean that artefacts and biological systems have functions, I would reply that evolutionists certainly agree that they do. But they also argue that there is no necessary link between function and intelligent design.
In sum, the evolutionist position is that artefacts are like organisms in some ways but not in all ways. Because they are not alike in all ways, the inference from engineering to the intelligent design of organisms is not automatically correct. The key lies in identifying what attributes of artefacts could only have been put there by design, and then examining biological systems for evidence of those attributes.
The evolutionist position is not that "organisms aren't like artefacts in general". It is that organisms and artefacts differ in very specific ways. Therefore I don't think that trying to distance engineering from biology in general is a necessary, or even useful, programme.
quote:
Natural systems have features only found otherwise in "intelligently designed" systems by humans. If it could be shown (as in the TV example in this thread) that nothing is IC, then the argument against the IC of life is strengthened.
I agree that if one could show that nothing can even theoretically be IC, it would certainly prove that organisms aren't IC. But showing that manmade artefacts could have been built up through stepwise selection processes doesn't necessarily prove that biological systems could have been.
I think the point of the discussions about how to deconstruct a mousetrap are meant not to demonstrate that manmade artefacts lack IC but that the appearance of IC can be deceiving.
quote:
It is not an analogy if biologists adapt actual engineering principles in their work, which they are doing.
Also, the analogy you introduced of nature-as-engineer begs the question of whether a truly mindless process produces any functions at all, since functions by definition solve a priori goals deliberately. We humans recognize goal achievement in nature only because we are used to it from our own design experience. If nature is not designed, then it simply has no inherent functions.
The key issue of IC (and ID) is whether an intelligence put in place the existing physical order purposefully (with functions) or not. Any analogy between nature and engineers assumes ID.
I am not sure what you mean when you say that the use of engineering language in biology is not an analogy. Physiologists observe that the attachment of muscles around certain joints is such that a relatively small movement of a muscle generates a large movement of the attached limb. This can be discussed in teleological engineering language-- "the design maximizes speed at the expense of torque"-- but that does not establish that the system was created by teleological processes.
If this isn't what you mean when you say that biologists "adapt actual engineering principles in their work", then I'm not sure what you do mean. Biologists recognize that the solutions which natural selection settles on are likely to be similar to the solutions that an intelligent agent might settle on-- because both NS and a designer favor a system which has an effect. The connection between engineering and biology cannot automatically be taken farther than that.
I'm afraid I can't agree with your statement that "functions by definition solve a priori goals deliberately." Perhaps I'm just defining "function" differently. By my definition, everything which a system causes to occur is a function: water functions to oxidize iron, the moon functions to cause the tides, amylase functions to break down starches, a hammer functions to drive a nail. There is no clear way of separating the natural, "unintended" functions from the deliberate, intelligently-designed ones. The evolutionist view would be that natural selection favors unintelligent systems with an increasingly strong and specific effect on their environment.
It is generally true that "if a system is designed to achieve something, it will tend to affect its environment in a certain way." This is certainly true of tools. It seems to me that to reverse this statement is to make a logical error.
--edmund
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Nelson Alonso
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Member # 52
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posted 08. April 2002 17:28
Edmund writes:
quote:
I am not sure what you mean when you say that the use of engineering language in biology is not an analogy. Physiologists observe that the attachment of muscles around certain joints is such that a relatively small movement of a muscle generates a large movement of the attached limb. This can be discussed in teleological engineering language-- "the design maximizes speed at the expense of torque"-- but that does not establish that the system was created by teleological processes.
I think he is referring to examples like these for the F-ATP synthase:
quote:
" With parts that resemble pistons and a drive shaft, the enzyme F1-ATPase looks suspiciously like a tiny engine. Indeed, a new study demonstrates that's exactly what it is."
Science News vol 151, p173
and for the flagellum
quote:
"the flagellum resembles a machine designed by humans."
Cell 93, 17-20
and so
quote:
"we need to think almost in engineering terms about transmission shafts, mounting plates and bushing."
Trend in Genetics, 6/91
In other words, they are not analogies, these systems are machines. In fact, some labs have already attached the flagellar motor to nonbiological surfaces and fed them ATP and they worked as if thats what they naturally did. This is significant, because we are dealing with designed systems, each part is well-matched to the other, their function is beyond the individual components. If an astro-archaeologist on Mars were to discover a large machine he would call it proof of intelligent life.
The question then becomes, as one nanotech article put it in scientific american:
quote:
We can begin to answer these intriguing questions by asking a more ordinary one: What is a machine? Of the many definitions, I choose to take a machine to be "a device for performing a task." Going further, a machine has a design; it is constructed following some process; it uses power; it operates according to information built into it when it is fabricated. Although machines are commonly considered to be the products of human design and intention, why shouldn't a complex molecular system that performs a function also be considered a machine, even if it is the product of evolution rather than of design?
http://www.sciam.com/2001/0901issue/0901whitesides.html
The answer becomes, because evolution is not a designer, it is, at best, a tweaker. So, here Behe's, and Dembski's critique of Darwinian theory become valid. We have essentially come full circle. Here we have machines in nature,
quote:
Issues of teleology aside, and accepting this broad definition, nanoscale machines already do exist, in the form of the functional molecular components of living cells--such as molecules of protein or RNA, aggregates of molecules, and organelles ("little organs")--in enormous variety and sophistication. The broad question of whether nanoscale machines exist is thus one that was answered in the affirmative by biologists many years ago.
and yet, evolution (RM&NS) is not a likely candidate for a machine maker these machines cry out for. If they are machines, they must be a product of "design and intention".
The point however, is obvious. It is not a matter of whether specified complexity exists in nature, but if specified complexity can be generated by naturalistic processes.
[ 08 April 2002, 18:43: Message edited by: Nelson Alonso ]
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Cre8ionist
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Member # 140
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posted 08. April 2002 19:21
Edmund wrote " I am not sure what you mean when you say that the use of engineering
language in biology is not an analogy. "
Nelson addressed it, but I'd like to add one thing:
http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/engineersasknature121201.htm
The above link is one of many out now concerning biomimicry.
If human engineers are using designs directly from nature then it can hardly be called an
analogy...................................Cre8
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Drosera
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posted 08. April 2002 19:31
Howdy,
I note that there is severe confusion in this thread over the definition of 'irreducible complexity' (IC).
Is it:
(a) Something that TVs etc. certainly have, and that a biological system might have, depending on whether or not that biological system evolved?
-or-
(b) Something that both TVs and many biological systems definitely have, but for biological systems may or may not have evolved using natural processes.
In (a), IC can't evolve by definition. This is very similar to Dembski's CSI definition. This begs the question of whether or not anything in biology is IC (as it depends upon whether or not those things evolved).
In (b), IC is a trait that can be identified based on some criteria independent of 'evolvability', and then one makes an argument about whether or not IC can evolve.
This confusion has persisted since Behe's first definition in Darwin's Black Box, and it seems that proponents of the IC argument flip back and forth with regularity (e.g., say "IC is easily identified by such-and-such criteria" (from b) "and therefore by definition it could not have evolved and must be designed" (from a).
It seems to me that (b) is the better option, and probably the one closest to Behe's current usage -- but in this thread many are assuming that the identification of IC equals the identification of design, by definition (IC version (a)). This reduces it to a circular argument that proves nothing.
It seems to me to be perfectly possible that biological systems have plenty of IC (version b), but that it evolved naturally anyway because IC isn't really a barrier to evolution, in which changes of function, cooption, duplication & modification, etc., are very common.
Drosera
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Drosera
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posted 08. April 2002 19:37
Another example of exactly what I'm talking about, this time with CSI/"specified complexity" (SC):
Nelson wrote:
quote:
The point however, is obvious. It is not a matter of whether specified complexity exists in nature, but if specified complexity can be generated by naturalistic processes.
...but Dembski himself has told us many times on these very boards, and in No Free Lunch, that SC is defined as something that natural processes can't produce (or more precisely, have a less than 1 in 10^150 chance of producing, which is close enough to zero for me).
Therefore, on Dembski's usage (and Behe's IC, version (a)), Nelson has got the point exactly backwards -- the real question is whether any SC exists in biology, which is another way of asking whether or not anything that could not have been produced by natural processes exists in biology.
Drosera
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Nelson Alonso
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posted 09. April 2002 02:17
Drosera:
Therefore, on Dembski's usage (and Behe's IC, version (a)), Nelson has got the point exactly backwards -- the real question is whether any SC exists in biology, which is another way of asking whether or not anything that could not have been produced by natural processes exists in biology.
Nelson:
I disagree. It is my understanding of specified complexity that it is a prediction of ID that specified complex systems cannot be generated by naturalistic processes. If the definition of specified complexity was "specified complex systems cannot be generated by naturalistic processes" it would be simply a matter of trying to find what cannot be generated by evolution, and that is specified complexity. This is a sily definition and if it was the definition I would ask if the moon exhibits specified complexity, since no Darwinian mechanism can produce it. Or the Sun for that matter.
Note Drosera's statement in this thread:
Drosera:
"This confusion has persisted since Behe's first definition in Darwin's Black Box, and it seems that proponents of the IC argument flip back and forth with regularity (e.g., say "IC is easily identified by such-and-such criteria" (from b) "and therefore by definition it could not have evolved and must be designed" (from a)."
Nelson:
Note that this statement shows a gross misunderstanding of the definition of IC. Nowhere does Behe define it as a system that "did not evolve". That is more of a consequence of the definition and not a part of it. The definition of IC has been mostly static for quite some time now. Even with Dembski's "fine-tuning" it still hasn't changed much.
quote:
A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensiable to maintaining the system's basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system.
This is a straightforward definition. Perhaps Drosera didn't read the discussion after ICfinal was defined.
quote:
Given this definition, does it immediately follow that if we find a biochemical system that satisies it, that system is inaccessible via the Darwinian mechanism? The answer is obviously no. Extremely simple systems can be irreducibly complex according to this definition (e.g., a system consisting of a single indispensable part-like a rock that is used as a doorstop). What will prove crucial in applying this definition are the [i] auxiliary conditions that supplement it and turn it into an effective invariant for the Darwinian mechanism
What are the auxilary conditions? The consequence of the definition, not the definition itself, is that there will be a time when the IC system does not have the function X that a+b+c gave it. This renders natural selection sterile even for the simplest IC system. Why? Because if you remove a,and have b+c, you do not have X. If you remove b, you will have a + c, but you will not have X. So a + b or a + c or b + c may either be functionless, or be doing something else entirely different (call it Y). Most likely it's doing nothing, but if it is doing something else, that means that function (Y) is being selected for, and that the addition of part c must not only be fortuitous, it must have the ability to change a + b into a completely different system (in that it is now functioning for X instead of Y). For a three part system as I am discussing it here, my discussion isn't all that impressive. But imagine if I were to add 30+ interlocked parts to the above discussion.
[ 09 April 2002, 05:38: Message edited by: Nelson Alonso ]
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Drosera
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posted 09. April 2002 18:40
Hi Nelson,
You write:
quote:
Nelson:
I disagree. It is my understanding of specified complexity that it is a prediction of ID that specified complex systems cannot be generated by naturalistic processes. If the definition of specified complexity was "specified complex systems cannot be generated by naturalistic processes" it would be simply a matter of trying to find what cannot be generated by evolution, and that is specified complexity. This is a sily definition and if it was the definition I would ask if the moon exhibits specified complexity, since no Darwinian mechanism can produce it. Or the Sun for that matter.
Well, first, it's not just the Darwinian mechanism, it's natural processes (chance + law is one way of formulating it) in general. Gravity is the natural process that works for the sun.
I'm glad you agree, though, that "If the definition of specified complexity was "specified complex systems cannot be generated by naturalistic processes" it would be simply a matter of trying to find what cannot be generated by evolution, and that is specified complexity." because that's basically what a number of people on the ISCID board have been saying. You call this a silly definition, but unfortunately it appears to be exactly what Dembski is saying. For example on a recent thread (Principle of Causal Adequacy and Specified Complexity), Dembski wrote:
quote:
In fact, that is how Darwinists, complexity theorists, and anyone intent on defeating specified complexity usually attempts 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.
Which again, directly makes use of Dembski's definition of SC, that specified complexity = specified event that is very very improbable.
You, Nelson, are using the term in a significantly different way, and that is all I was trying to point out regarding SC.
There is a similar problem with IC, but only with IC version (a). To your credit, you appear to favor IC version (b). However, your statement that unevolvability is a consequence of the definition is exactly what I take issue with. It does not logically follow, because systems can change function, therefore the argument against the 'direct', single-function-selected pathway is a straw man.
Dembski's ICfinal makes things worse, rather than better. Note that he tries to shoehorn "no change of function' into the definition with the words "basic, and therefore original, function". But there is no particular reason that the current basic function of a system is the same one that that 'the system' (or it's perhaps simpler ancestors) always had. Are the ancestors of bird wings functioning for flying? No, they are descended from legs, which are descended from fins. Changes of function like this are very common in evolution, and therefore any attempt to define this important fact out of the discussion is simply another version of begging the question.
Drosera
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