WAD>I'm going to be brief in replying to Wesley Elsberry. I see no
WAD>contradiction in my past writings and my most recent piece to
WAD>which Elsberry is responding. Design inferences are among
WAD>other things eliminative arguments, and what they must
WAD>eliminate is a chance hypothesis (or more generally a family
WAD>of chance hypotheses). If the event under that chance
WAD>hypothesis has small probability, then it is per definitionem
WAD>complex. If not, then it isn't. My most recent post is merely
WAD>a reformulation of my past ideas, nothing new.
Well, I don't recall seeing the latest approach to
disqualifying evolutionary algorithms as sources of CSI in
previous work. The appearance of the categories of "actual
CSI" and "apparent CSI" seemed novel to me. I am trying to
keep a page of links to Bill's work and commentary upon it at
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/evobio/evc/ae/dembski_wa.html>.
If there are resources that I haven't linked yet, I would
appreciate a pointer. (Like Bill's page and links on the
Discovery Institute server once the re-organization is done.)
WAD>It seems that what Elsberry wants to see is an in
WAD>principle refutation of the power of evolutionary algorithms
WAD>to generate certain types of solutions before he will accept
WAD>the applicability of the design inference to biology. Fair
WAD>enough. I'm currently writing a book on just that topic:
WAD>REDESIGNING SCIENCE: WHY SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY IS A RELIABLE
WAD>EMPIRICAL MARKER OF ACTUAL DESIGN.
My stance is that one can accept the finding of
"complexity-specification" for an event without accepting
the argument that "complexity-specification" necessitates the
involvement of an intelligent agency in its production.
Those are two separate arguments, as Bill pointed out no
fewer than three times in TDI.
If, based upon an object alone, we find that it has CSI, we
are left with the conundrum of whether an intelligent agent
produced the object and it has "actual CSI" or whether some
natural process produced it and it has "apparent CSI". The
mere fact that the object has the attribute of "complexity-
specification" doesn't give us any indication of which case
might apply.
I look forward to seeing Bill's new book. I found his
analysis of natural selection in his 1997 paper quite
interesting, as did Bill Jefferys. It will take a better
argument than I have seen so far, though, to do what Bill is
claiming for this new effort.
Wesley