>Additional notes on some of the proceedings...
>
>Dembski on CSI (Complex Specified Information).
>
>The word "specify" means "specify in advance."
>
>Question: does the archer have skill?
>
>1. Archer shoots arrow at barn & hits it. Could be anywhere. No. No CSI.
>2. Archer shoots arrow at barn, then draws target around it. No. Looks like
>CSI but is not.
>3. Archer draws target on barn, then shoots arrow to center. Yes. Is CSI.
>
I would like to continue my comments on Dembki's paper with this
point (The word "specify" means "specify in advance.") since I
think this is crucially important. My previous comments can be
found under the subject heading "Bill Dembski and CSI", posted
2/21/97.
This time I will give just short excerpts from Dembski's paper
trusting that those interested will download the paper from the
web site to see the full context. For those who cannot access
the www, send me a note and I can try to send it to you by e-mail
as an attached file.
=====begin Dembski======================================
Specified information is always patterned information, but
patterned information is not always specified information.
For specified information not just any pattern will do.
We may therefore distinguish between "good" patterns and
"bad" patterns. The "good" patterns will henceforth be
called specifications. Specifications are the independently
given patterns that are not simply read off information.
By contrast, the "bad" patterns will be called fabrications.
Fabrications are the post hoc patterns that are simply read
off information.
Unlike specifications, fabrications are wholly uninformative.
We are no better off with a fabrication than without one.
[...]
========== end ============================================
Here Dembski is discussing the archer example given by Burgy
above except he gives the three possibilties in a different
order. In any event, the case where the archer draws the target
after the fact is the "fabrication".
(1) I would like to argue that specified information is not
necessarily patterned information. To see this, consider my example
in another post (Re: design: purposeful or random?, 2/28/97)
involving instructions for getting through a maze. I think my
case (C) is clearly complex information that was specified in
advance and yet it contains no pattern.
(2) My initial reaction to the above was that Newton's Laws (NL)
would be "fabrications" since they were discovered after the fact
by finding patterns in "information" that had already been actualized.
The paragraphs following what I quoted above clarify this point
somewhat. For example:
=======Dembski============================================
What is it for a possibility to be identifiable via an
independently given pattern? A full exposition of
specification requires a detailed answer to this question.
Unfortunately, such an exposition is beyond the scope
of this paper. The key conceptual difficulty here is to
characterize the independence condition that obtains
between patterns and information. This independence
condition in turn decomposes into two conditions:
(1) a condition to stochastic conditional independence
between the information in question and certain relevant
background knowledge; and (2) a tractability condition
whereby the pattern in question is constructible via
the aforementioned background knowledge. Although
these conditions make good intuitive sense, they
are not easily formalized. For the details refer to
my monograph The Design Inference.
===========end===========================================
So, it seems wrt Newton's Laws, the initial discovery from
already actualized "information" would correspond to
"background information" and that future actualizations
can be judged according to whether the pattern actualized
is consistent with the NL patterns which are now specified
in advance. Boy this is tough. Does this sound right?
Now for what may be a philosophical question. Do NL's exist
independently of the observed patterns, or is the Law just
a description of those patterns? I am not questioning whether
Newton's Laws are real. Instead, I'm asking whether it is
correct to say that the patterns are caused by the Law or
whether instead that the Law is just a compact description
of the pattern. Yes, I know this is getting muddy. Remember
my parable about Manuel and the Mechanician. Inertia is just
a name given to an observation that has been made about how
bodies behave. Inertia does not explain that behavior in any
usual meaning of the word "explain". It may be considered a
scientific "explanation" in the sense that such and such
behavior is consistent with a previously observed pattern.
In any event, it is incorrect to say that such and such behavior
is *caused* by inertia.
Well, some may protest my using Newton's Laws to illustrate
since Dembski makes a distinction between complex and simple
specified information with natural laws falling into the simple
category. Based on algorthmic information theory it is easy
to see why natural laws are simple since they are expressible
in terms of very short algorithms. It is not so clear that
they are simple from the point of view of Dembski's approach.
The laws are very simple, but the patterns obtained when
they are actualized can be exceedingly complex, for example
deterministic chaos.
3) Dembski's measure of information [ - log_2(probability)],
requires knowledge of the probability distribution. For complex
phenomena, this distribution would seldom be known a_priori.
Further, I've given some examples in the past showing that the
assumption of equal probabilities can lead to many orders of
magnitude errors. Thus, in complex situations, the probability
distrubution would most likely be estimated from the frequency
of occurence of the various possibilities that have been
actualized. As above, we then have a problem with the independence
of the patterns specified in advance and those actualized.
Next I hope to look at the Law of Conservation of Information.
None of this is intended to be critical of Dembski. He has some
really great and interesting ideas and I hope his monograph
gets published soon.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"Should I refuse a good dinner simply because I
do not understand the process of digestion?"
-- Oliver Heaviside