MikeBGene wrote:
[...]
MB> For example, Bill Dembski does not seek out a vital force, he
MB>seeks out empirical detectors of a mind's ability to implement
MB>a plan.
[...]
What I have read of Dembski does not indicate this. Dembski's
TDI proposes that we can detect the "design" which an
intelligent agent has left behind, but Dembski's Design
Inference tells us precisely zip about the intelligent agent.
IMO, DI does not even get us as far as knowing that an
intelligent agent existed, much less acted. Dembski has
recently been struggling with the issue of what evolutionary
computation can do, and has introduced the concepts of "actual
CSI" and the "appearance of CSI" into the discussion. "Actual
CSI" is the CSI that intelligent agents leave behind, while
"apparent CSI" is that stuff that algorithms or processes
leave behind. It is interesting that in order to characterize
evolutionary computation as a "probability amplifier" and thus
incapable of producing actual complexity, Dembski abandons the
formula for measuring complexity that he advanced in TDI.
Instead of calculating the conditional probability of an event
given a *chance* hypothesis, Demsbki now says that for
algorithms and processes one should use a conditional
probability given a *non-chance* hypothesis, or just the odds
that the algorithm or process should give the event in
question. That's bogus. If one calculates the complexity of
event using two different measures depending upon what one
wishes to find, one shouldn't be surprised to find that others
may not wish to buy the argument. If Dembski were being fair
about this, either complexity would always be measured with
respect to the chance hypothesis, *or* complexity would always
be measured with respect to the likelihood that its proximate
cause would yield it. Omniscient, omnipotent entities would
never produce complexity under the latter yardstick, and the
complexity achievable by other less capable intelligent agents
would still be very low indeed. If the latter measurement
option is taken, it becomes problematic as to how to measure
the complexity of an event when we do not have information
concerning the nature of its proximate cause. Yet Dembski has
urged us to explore and resolve events as being due to
intelligent agents where such information is missing. How
this can be supported I do not know.
I mentioned proximate causation above, and that also is
interesting in connection with Dembski. Even if we were to
grant the claim that the Design Inference can identify
intelligent agency, the Design Inference is incapable of
distinguishing between CSI proximately caused by an
intelligent agent and CSI that was ultimately caused by an
intelligent agent removed one or more steps from the event
being analyzed. Even if Dembski is right about what his
Design Inference does, Dembski has done no more than provide
another argument for Deism.
My Dembski link page points to commentary on Dembski.
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/evobio/evc/ae/dembski_wa.html>.
If anyone has further suggestions for links, please send
them to me.
Wesley
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 03 2000 - 13:40:18 EST