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Topic: William A. Dembski: Irreducible Complexity Revisited
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Moderator
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posted 14. January 2004 15:04
Irreducible Complexity Revisited
by William A. Dembski
William_Dembski@baylor.edu
ABSTRACT—Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity, and in particular his use of this concept to critique Darwinism, continues to come under heavy fire from the biological community. The problem with Behe, so Darwinists inform us, is that he has created a problem where there is no problem. Far from constituting an obstacle to the Darwinian mechanism of random variation and natural selection, irreducible complexity is thus supposed to be eminently explainable by this same mechanism. But is it really? It’s been eight years since Behe introduced irreducible complexity in Darwin’s Black Box (a book that continues to sell 15,000 copies per year in English alone). I want in this essay to revisit Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity and indicate why the problem he has raised is, if anything, still more vexing for Darwinism than when he first raised it. The first four sections of this essay review and extend material that I’ve treated elsewhere. The last section contains some novel material.
To read the entire paper, please click here
[ 14. January 2004, 15:05: Message edited by: Moderator ]
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Salvador T. Cordova
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posted 14. January 2004 17:40
I am so pleased William Dembski wrote this paper. I have been, for an ID advocate, somewhat critical of his definitions, so much so Wesley Elsberry started a brief correspondence with me pertaining to SAI (Specified Anti Information).
I am very very pleased with the revisitation of Irreducible Complexity.
quote:
Dr. Dembski wrote:
design theorists argue that irreducibly complex systems exhibit specified complexity
Yes indeed! IC and SC are two different, but complementary concepts! Bravo!!!! I have said in
IC vs SC: Never Should the Twain Meet that separation of the concepts IC and SC should be considered, although a biological structure can exhibit both IC and SC, both are separate qualities.
I think Dr. Dembski did a good job of clarifying and improving his arguments. For me personally, having to engage ID critics at the ARN discussion board, I offer only one modification (constructive criticism) to the "definition" of IC systems. This is how I describe it.
quote:
Behe-Dembski Condition:
Necessary but not sufficient condition to qualify as IC. This condition is met if it obeys the definitions Behe and Dembski has provided for IC.
Ussery-Thornhill Condition:
If the system cannot be arrived by direct Darwinian pathways, and satisfies the Behe-Dembski definition, it is a sufficient but not necessary condition to be IC.
Ussery-Thornhill describe how IC systems can not be arrived at by 2 of 4 Darwinian pathways. Those 2 pathways are the direct pathways I mentioned in the above quote. Dembski did a good job of putting focus on the indirect pathways and the associated problems of integration, assembly, and some other things I never even thought of. Awesome!
The sniping between pro-ID vs. anti-ID I believe is usually sniping over whether the Behe-Dembski definition is both necessary and sufficient. I recommend to alleviate the sniping, apply Ussery-Thornhill Condition and we have happy agreement that something is IC.
Well done, Bill Dembski, bravo
Salvador
[ 15. January 2004, 00:57: Message edited by: Salvador T. Cordova ]
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 14. January 2004 23:55
Thank you Dr Dembski,
I have read your paper with much interest and while I am somewhat disappointed in that it seems to repeat some of the errors in your books and papers and that it seems to ignore some of the imho very valid criticisms raised against your arguments, it seems to me that your last section may serve the purpose of bringing your viewpoints and that of Darwinists closer together. Let me try to explain and please let me know if I am not making sense here.
On the one hand you argue from the design perspective
quote:
Moreover, once such proposals are made, they invariably point up the inadequacy of the Darwinian mechanism because the origination probabilities associated with irreducibly complex biochemical systems have, to date, always proven to be small. Design theorists take this as strong confirmation that these systems exhibit specified complexity and are in fact designed.
(Now remember that small probabilities are not sufficient to infer design and in fact small probabilities do not even mean that such processes could not have happened)
on the other hand you argue from the evolutionist's perspective
quote:
Darwinists, by contrast, take this as simply showing that evolutionary biology has yet to come up with the right evolutionary pathways by which the Darwinian mechanism produced the systems in question.
you then ponder
quote:
Who’s right? By now it’s clear that neither party to this controversy is going to give way any time soon. From the vantage of the design theorist, the Darwinist has artificially insulated Darwinian theory and rendered it immune to disconfirmation in principle because the universe of unknown Darwinian pathways can never be exhausted.
The problem is that as I see it, the conflict between "unknown Darwinian pathways can never be exhausted" and "Design theorists take this as strong confirmation that these systems exhibit specified complexity and are in fact designed" can be rather simply resolved by recognizing that the inference to design is not the issue in biology. As you point out so clearly in your own work, the design inference requires not necessarily a designer, and in fact as others have shown, a design inference can still point to a natural designer. So the best we have here is that the design inference has shown that Darwinian processes so far seem to be insufficient, or in other words, that 'we don't know'.
There is nothing wrong with such an inference, there are often very good reasons to admit our ignorance. In this case we are unable to identify what processes led to the particular structure in question.
On the other hand, your argument that the Darwinist proposes unverifiable hypotheses can also be trivially resolved by realizing imho that the Darwinists merely proposes the possibility of such a hypothesis when faced with claims that such paths are impossible. Of course Darwinian theory does not depend on science's ignorance of how particular structures may have come about but rather is based on the building, verification and falsification of hypotheses.
Point in case, the flagellum. Science, instead of being satisfied with the ignorance of how the flagellum may have come about, decided to investigate possible and plausible pathways. Such pathways can be verified, predictions can be made, and falsified or found to be supported by additional data, strengthening the likelihood of the validity of the hypothesis.
When on the other hand the Darwinist is faced with no plausible details he has to consider all options including the possibility of design and in such cases will have to be satisfied with a 'we don't know' position. It is up to the proponents of the various viewpoints to propose scientific hypotheses that may help resolve this situation of our ignorance. And in many cases, we may never know.
I think that the differences between your design position and science's position can be resolved by realizing that both are in fact stating, perhaps in their own words, 'we don't know'.
[ 14. January 2004, 23:59: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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Evan
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posted 15. January 2004 08:10
I appreciate it that Dr. Dembski has posted a link to his paper here. I have not had time to read it, though, as time to think about these things is hard to come by for me these days. However, as with other Dembski contributions, my interest in reading and discussing this paper is substantially diminished by the fact that Dembski doesn’t enter into the discussions that follow his posts. There are many points that I, and others I imagine, would like to follow up on, but doing among ourselves is different than conversing, as we do with other opening posts, with the author of the opening post himself. I know Dembski is a busy person and a publicly published author, and most of us are not, but I guess I feel that it would benefit the development of Dembski’s ideas if he would engage both his critics and his supporters in discussion about the material he posts here.
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Salvador T. Cordova
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posted 18. January 2004 01:25
Addendum:
In conversations over at ARN, I think this would be a useful statement to counter claims that IC systems can evolve through undirected processes:
quote:
There are biological IC systems that are not reachable except by enormous blind luck or intelligent design
This is to negate trivial counter examples against IC.
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Imre Soos
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posted 18. January 2004 09:16
Dr. Dembski’s intelligently constructed and rationally presented exposé has left for me one great question behind, to be answered, however, not by him, but by the Darwinians: How can some intelligently constructed and rationally presented thoughts, which involve also consciousness, creativity and insight, be brought about by his randomly slapped together grey matter? I am forced to use the expression “slapped together”, until I will get explained the second part of the Darwinians’ credo, expressing, that a randomly appeared genetic mutation is consequently selected according to practicability, and perpetuated for further use.
Selection is an action. An action presupposes a subject who/that acts. Has this “subject” ever been identified, or is it just another “deus” dragged forcefully “ex machina”, like the one of the “Big Bang”-ers, for instance? And further: is this “subject” acting, when selecting according to practicability, intelligently, or randomly? In other words: are ad-hoc occurrences haphazardly endowed with practicability, or are uncontrolled and uncontrollable incidents intelligently judged for their merits, and selected accordingly? Or yet in other words: is evolution, according to the Darwinians’ doctrine, a process fully dependent on chance – that is, randomly occurred and randomly selected –, or is it partly chance and partly an intelligent act – that is, randomly occurred and intelligently selected?
In the first instance my very first question is valid; and in the second one: if intelligence can enter at all into a process as an essential ingredient of a part of that process, why not regard it as an essential ingredient of the whole?
According to my holistic approach (and in a nutshell) evolution is a rational process, intelligent design, anamorphosis: an organism's exercise of its potentialities of evolution to create new forms of life, due to – or rather driven by – its own intellect pressure, where the physical survival – while a sine qua non – is not the prime mover, and where diversity and not multiplicity is the dominating tendency. It works through interactions along the whole spectrum of the organism’s constituents right down to the subcellular elements, each responding to the demands according to its “physiological intelligence”. The consequent histological, morphological, physiological and psychical changes are subsequently registered on the genetic material.
It propagates through induction and genetic transmission, creating thus, when sufficiently prevalent, new environmental conditions centred on the ecology niche of the thus evolved new sub-species, involving, through interactions, the whole ecological community.
This is closely followed either by natural individual elimination due to inability to cope with the more demanding environmental conditions the evolved ecology niche represents; or by continuation on a reduced evolutionary trajectory for those, who are able to establish for themselves an altered Lebensraum, which does not interfere with the established Lebensraum of the new sub-species turned species.
The trajectory-bifurcation represents an “evolutionary split”. The evolutionary gap between them is the cause of the “missing link”, and the apparent “evolutionary jump”.
Thank you, Dr. Dembski,
Imre Soos
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Argon
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posted 20. January 2004 09:46
Imre Soos:
quote:
Selection is an action. An action presupposes a subject who/that acts. Has this “subject” ever been identified, or is it just another “deus” dragged forcefully “ex machina”, like the one of the “Big Bang”-ers, for instance?
There is a book titled 'The Nature of Selection' by Elliott Sober. Maybe that could provide some insight. At a bare minimum the book would provide a start for which to pursue your question.
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Imre Soos
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posted 21. January 2004 12:09
Thank you for the suggestion for a book as an answer to my question, to which I could reply, that there is another book titled ‘Living Universe’, part of a trilogy under the collective title of ‘Mind over Matter’ by Imre von Soos, available for a nominal price at http://www.angelfire.com/home/sesquiq/ebooks.html .
This would not get us very far though, because ISCID - Brainstorms is a discussion forum, where the exchanges of thoughts are there to keep them in dynamic motion, and thus in development, letting the originators and the supporters of some ideas stand up themselves for what they profess, and, in the process of the exchanges, evolve them further. An additional great advantage of this procedure is, that various views enter around the same topic and even around its constituting thoughts; as against a book, which is generally idiosyncratic by nature, and presents for the uninformed a preconditioned information-bank, and for the informed often an annoyance, that he cannot retort on what might be just so much nonsense.
I will give two examples, which are actual to the topic in discussion:
In a paper, the author of which is not marked on the copy, and which I have saved on PDF about half a year ago, but could come to its reading only now, I found right at the beginning: “William Dembski claims to have proven, from modern information theory, that the kind of information inherent in the universe cannot be generated by natural causes.” One doesn’t have to read more from Dembski than the above thesis to know, that this sentence contains a complete misinterpretation of his claim through semantic manipulation, which would mislead and precondition most of the readers. The key-expression is “natural causes” replacing “probabilistic chance occurrences” and “random chromosomal variations”, “random” meaning chance, haphazard, indiscriminate, apparently without a cause. The statement actually implies, that “William Dembski claims to have proven, from modern information theory, that the kind of information inherent in the universe can be generated only by unnatural causes.” – e.g. “intelligent design”, as against the “probabilistic chance occurrences” of the materialist science and the “random chromosomal variations” of the Darwinists’ credo, both representing the “natural causes”.
The second one is an example of the hard-headed sticking to preconceived ideas, and the mental blockage towards altering them in defiance of overwhelming facts – thus self-mutilating their own reality – which is well illustrated with the statement of a prominent materialist neurosurgeon: "That mind cannot exist independently of matter and energy I take as axiomatic: that mind assumed certain properties radically different from organizations of matter and energy I take as empirical fact. The reconciliation of these two I regard as a mystery upon which I throw no light." How, for crying out loud, can, not a famous neurosurgeon, but any simpleton, who claims to be able to think at all, take something as axiomatic – a self-evident truth, an established principle –, if he is unable to reconcile it with empirical facts?
The first one, that goes on in the same style, I will answer when I come to it; the second one was in a prominent international periodical specialized on psychiatry and psychology, to which I would have no access.
BTW, the real opposition is not so much between the Darwinian mechanism of random variation and natural selection on the one side, and the Biblical Creationists by an Extrinsic God on the other, but between these two on the one side, and the holistic, pantheistic concept of a Living Universe intelligently self-designed and self-evolved through all its fractions and Itself, on the other.
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RBH
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posted 21. January 2004 12:53
The quotation Soos provided is from is Victor Stenger's Intelligent Design: The New Stealth Creationism available here.
Stenger's assertion is based on his analysis of Dembski's argument in Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology. Dembski's argument is even clearer in No Free Lunch, and in particular Section 4.7 (pp 203-207). Soos's characterization is quote:
"William Dembski claims to have proven, from modern information theory, that the kind of information inherent in the universe cannot be generated by natural causes." One doesn?t have to read more from Dembski than the above thesis to know, that this sentence contains a complete misinterpretation of his claim through semantic manipulation, which would mislead and precondition most of the readers. (Emphasis added)
But in that section of NFL, Dembski asserts that
(a) the universe, including biological organisms, exhibits "specified complexity;"
(b) evolutionary algorithms cannot generate specified complexity, so the specified complexity exhibited by biological systems must be imported from elsewhere (the so-called "displacement problem"); and
(c) specified complexity cannot arise anywhere except as it is generated by intelligence.
Given (c), the specified complexity in biological systems cannot have ultimately originated in the 'natural' physical and chemical universe in which biological systems are embedded. It has to have originated with some intelligence that is non-natural (i.e., is not part of the natural physical and chemical universe). So Stenger's assertion that "William Dembski claims to have proven, from modern information theory, that the kind of information inherent in the universe cannot be generated by natural causes" seems justified and is not "semantic manipulation."
RBH
[ 21. January 2004, 12:57: Message edited by: RBH ]
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rafe gutman
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posted 21. January 2004 14:00
i, like many of my fellow ID critics, have a laundry list of problems with the concept of irreducible complexity and why it is not a reliable indicator of design. if i haven't put forward a specific criticism myself at either ARN or ISCID, i've at least seen another critic do so. i don't know if dembski has read any of these, but i was under the assumption, since many of these critiques were offered in threads that dembski himself has participated in, that he has at least heard about some of them. alas, after reading this 46 page document, none of those issues were resolved for me. instead, what i did read were countless well-choreographed evasions of most of those issues, some of them being so obvious the only logical conclusion i can draw is that dembski has no interest in engaging in a meaningful discussion of irreducible complexity, nor advancing our understanding of it.
this is a prime example of why you shouldn't get your biology from a non-biologist. i'm not saying a non-biologist can't understand biology, or make a good argument using biological principles, but there's no accountability. there's no penalty for a non-biologist to make a statement so ludicrous that it could cost a biologist their job if they uttered it. there is at least one instance here where an erroneous interpretation, by dembski, of an article he cited that was corrected by ID critics on this very forum, was repeated again in this article. if dembski can't even be counted upon to refrain from reusing his discredited arguments, then i don't see any reason why people should take him seriously. i don't want to go into detail of some of the other errors dembski makes, not because i don't want to discuss them, but because they've been brought up numerous times on these fora, and it's clear they will continue to be ignored by ID's main proponents. i really don't see what the point is.
i realize that many supporters of ID will dismiss my opinions as the bias ramblings of a die-hard ID critic, but ask yourself this, if you honestly felt darwinian evolution could not produce systems with property X, would you try to demonstrate that using the most complex system you could find with property X, or the simplest? if you devised a method to estimate the probability of a system evolving, would you demonstrate its accuracy on a system whose evolution was unknown, or known? if an attorney told you that because there is not enough evidence to convict frank for the murder, therefore paul must have done it, would you think he didn't understand the nature of evidence?
just for a moment let's assume i'm right and dembski's article is just a long-winded evasion of key issues. what would be the purpose of writing such an article? to me, the purpose is not to provide material for discussion, or to address critics' concerns. the point is to look like IC is being discussed intelligently, to look the critics' are being silenced. i think it's safe to assume that in the coming months, this article will be added to the pile of references ID proponents cite when their ideas are questioned by school boards or the press. the next time someone brings up a specific critique of IC, some DI rep like dembski will dismiss their critique as having been answered in this article. we've seen it before, we'll see it again. the purpose of all of this is to give the appearance of a controversy.
i think micah and john need to do some serious soul-searching and decide if this is the kind of material they want ISCID to be known for. i realize that ISCID doesn't reject many articles, especially those submitted by their big-wigs, but if the editors of PCID want to continue to call their journal "peer-reviewed", then they need to take responsibility for the material they present.
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Argon
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posted 21. January 2004 18:34
Interesting point about the choice of IC systems to study. See also here.
The topic was 'Suggestion for selection of IC systems for study'.
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Mark Elkington
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posted 21. January 2004 20:37
Page 30: "In attempting to coordinate the successive evolutionary changes needed to bring about irreducibly complex biochemical machines, the Darwinian mechanism therefore encounters a number of daunting probabilistic hurdles. These include the following..."
This statement is applied here to successive changes, but does it imply a prediction about the effectiveness of lateral gene transfer in evolution? In particular, the hurdles of Interfering Cross-Reactions and Interface Compatibility?
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Micah Sparacio
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posted 21. January 2004 22:34
rafe,
as a note, an article published in the Archive is not necessarily published in PCID. Dembski's article, featured in this thread, has not yet been chosen for an issue of PCID.
btw, we're always eager for submissions and would love to get something from you at some point in the future.
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Imre Soos
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posted 22. January 2004 12:04
RBH quote:
“the specified complexity in biological systems cannot have ultimately originated in the 'natural' physical and chemical universe in which biological systems are embedded. It has to have originated with some intelligence that is non-natural (i.e., is not part of the natural physical and chemical universe).”
Does this statement want to suggest, that there exists a “physical and chemical universe”, which is “natural” in its own right; then there exist biological systems embedded into this “natural universe” either (1) through “probabilistic chance occurrences” and “random chromosomal variations” declared to be “natural”; or (2) has “originated with some intelligence that is non-natural (i.e., is not part of the natural physical and chemical universe).” ???
Now I am worried: are the chemical constituents of my (this here) body part of the “natural universe”, into which my (this here) biological systems are implanted one way or the other, while my intelligence – and thus my mind – is non-natural, i.e., is not part of the natural physical and chemical universe? If I have ever heard of a polychotomization, this is it. Quite a “split personality”!
Is it seriously suggested by any scientific credo, that while “probabilistic chance occurrences” and “random chromosomal variations” are “natural occurrences” i.e. part and parcel of the natural universe, into which Nature, the whole Biosphere, what is generally called Life is embedded as their product, while the mind and its manifestations: consciousness, intelligence, intuition, creativity, ethics are all non-natural, not parts of, do not constitute the “natural universe”?
Please, for the sake of the peace of my own mind (non-natural as it may be), would somebody rationally clear up this question?
I will accept that biological systems are embedded in the physical and chemical universe, when it will be proved, that architecture is embedded in the building materials, and all the creative arts are embedded in the materials used in their expression. But not until.
I am not out to defend Dembski in particular; he is quite capable to do this by himself. But I have come across so many statements of even long dead thinkers being twisted to suit actual arguments, that I stand up any time this is happening. And until it is proved, that “probabilistic chance occurrences” and “random chromosomal variations” are synonym with “natural causes”, I stick to it, that Stenger's assertion that "William Dembski claims to have proven, from modern information theory, that the kind of information inherent in the universe cannot be generated by natural causes" is not only a "semantic manipulation", but a straight out misrepresentation.
And the same goes for another assertion, just a few lines down in the same article, that “Biochemist Michael Behe asserts that biological systems exist that cannot have evolved from simpler forms.” Quite obviously, an assertion, that “biological systems exist that cannot have been brought about through ‘random chromosomal variations’ from simpler forms”, is not synonym with “biological systems exist that cannot have ‘evolved’ from simpler forms.”
To get it straight once more, the Biblical Creationism “proven conclusively” by the Biblical Creationists through the “facts” of the Bible, offend my intelligence just as much, as do all the materialist scientific credos, both rejecting even to consider the great and growing quantity of proofs of a non-material underlying principle of all and every material manifestation, that make every whole more than the sum of their parts: an inherent and transcending principle of the Universe.
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