Richard Wein wrote:
RW> Paul, do you have any examples of calculations
RW>demonstrating the existence of CSI in nature?
This is not a trivial question. Here's a quote from
Dembski:
[Quote]
Thus, to claim that laws, even radically new ones, can produce
specified complexity is in my view to commit a category
mistake. It is to attribute to laws something they are
intrinsically incapable of delivering-indeed, all our evidence
points to intelligence as the sole source for specified
complexity. Even so, in arguing that evolutionary algorithms
cannot generate specified complexity and in noting that
specified complexity is reliably correlated with intelligence,
I have not refuted Darwinism or denied the capacity of
evolutionary algorithms to solve interesting problems. In the
case of Darwinism, what I have established is that the
Darwinian mechanism cannot generate actual specified
complexity. What I have not established is that living things
exhibit actual specified complexity. That is a separate
question.
[End Quote - WA Dembski,
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/dembski_wa/19990913_explaining_csi.html>]
Of course, I disagree that there has been any establishment
that "the Darwinian mechanism cannot generate actual specified
complexity", and Paul's "intelligent agency by proxy" defense
implicitly concedes that point. But of more immediate
interest is Dembski's identification of the assertion to be
established, "that living things exhibit actual specified
complexity". Dembski asserts in "Science and Design" and
later in "Intelligent Design" that this is so, but as Richard
has pointed out, there are no examples given by Dembski where
he "[did] the calculation", as Dembski commands at the end of
"The Design Inference". The references that Paul gives may
have contributed to Dembski's development of his Design
Inference, but since one of Dembski's claims is that his
Design Inference is a novel and rigorous methodology, it
follows that those other references cannot be claimed to shed
light on whether "actual specified complexity" is found as a
property of living systems. That has to be done either by
Dembski or someone applying his Design Inference specifically.
If I am reading Richard correctly, one of the relevant issues
is developing a probability measure for an actual case where
natural selection is hypothesized to have acted. IIRC,
Richard says that this is difficult to impossible to do. In
that case, it falls to Dembski to demonstrate that such
probability estimates are feasible, not to Richard to prove
that they are not. Under the view that natural selection as a
cause is treated as a chance hypothesis, application of TDI to
cases of natural selection can only proceed if such measures
are practicable.
Dembski shows in "TDI" and "ID" that science already admits
explanation in the mode of design. What is desired is not to
identify ordinary design, where we have knowledge of similar
designers and the effects they produce, but rather to
establish rarefied design, where we have no evidence or
knowledge of a designer actually operating to produce the
effects claimed for it. Dembski apparently thinks that
analogy to ordinary design is sufficient to establish rarefied
design. That's his privilege. No one else need accept that
by necessity.
Wesley
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