Mike Gene at his blog, The Design Matrix, provides a simple and solid defence against criticisms on FLE. See the following links for the whole story.
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21Dec
Posted by JJS P.Eng. @ 5:42 am
15 Responses
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December 28th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
A much better refutation is buried in the (unpublished) follow-up to my own derivation of front-loading, one that flows from rather simple considerations of Dembski’s ideas. If anyone asks, I will be glad to elaborate.
January 1st, 2010 at 11:00 pm
About front-loading and hockey – is it possible that the builders of Fenway Park knew how great a venue it would be for a singular outdoor NHL game?
January 4th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Happy New Year Art! I hope you had a good break. I know I did.
From your link:
1. Implied by whom? By Mike Gene? By William Dembski? Or by yourself? Just curious.
2. I highly doubt this is what Mike Gene had in mind when he proposed FLE in The Design Matrix:
Nowhere in that statement, nor through the rest of the book do I see Mike even suggesting that “the information content of these ancestors was greater (perhaps much greater) than that of extant organisms”. The main points of FLE that I took from DM were:
a. The mechanics of evolution are not disputed,
b. The Designer acted once at the initial stage of life (first life-forms),
c. The information imparted on the first life-forms by the Designer was done with the knowledge of how the evolutionary mechanisms would act upon the first life forms.
3. I should also note that Mike Gene makes no mention of Dembski’s “Law of Conservation of Information” in DM.
4. Please do elaborate.
5. Did you go to the Winter Classic at Fenway? I’ll say that I liked the Bruins’ yellow jersey for the game. I hope they make it their third jersey next year.
January 6th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Hi JJS,
I’m glad to hear that your break was good. As for your questions:
1. Keep in mind that my “derivation” predates MG’s book by many years. That having been said, if one accepts Dembski’s Law of Conservation of Information, the it follows that the genome of any ancestral organism is going to have CSI equal to or greater than the sum of genome CSI’s of its descendants. If one accepts common ancestry, then big ancestral genomes are inescapable. If one accepts universal common ancestry, then we’re talking about a humungous first genome.
2. I’m not talking about MG per se. My essay was a more general commentary on FLE. That having been said, the place where my essay ends (at least the part before the URD) pretty much is where you are in point c. I just state it in terms of CSI and the LCI, and follow the trail to its only logical conclusion.
3. Doesn’t matter.
4. Where should I begin to elaborate? Perhaps by stating that, IMO, FLE leads ultimately and inevitably to the very beginning of time? That scenarios that have FLE “beginning” at the OOL make no sense, and certainly do not logically flow from any ID theory? Or maybe I should point out how problematic my URD is for IDists. And that this rule also leads to the beginning of time.
5. I wish! I liked the jerseys and the game. If only Orr and Clarke had gone at each other, for old times’ sake.
January 7th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Emphasis on “if” wrt Dembski’s LCI. Any guy off the street can state a “law of nature”, but is there really something to it? I’d like to know if anyone outside of IDM circles accept LCI.
Seeing how your arguments seems to rest on LCI, I’d say it does matter.
That is a definite possibility that I would think any open-minded individual would have to be aware of. However, placing FLE at the beginning of life was a simplifying assumption made by Mike. If the evidence suggests FLE may have occurred earlier in time, then so be it.
My money would be on Orr.
April 17th, 2010 at 7:10 am
Pre-History Of History?
Life’s Genesis Was Not Cells, But
First Gene’s Self Reproduction
A. From “Pre-History of Life: Elegantly Simple Organizing Principles Seen in Ribosomes”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100412151823.htm
- Hints from relics of…evolution left behind in MODERN cells.
- Evolution of the MODERN genetic code likely followed a long period of chemical evolution.
- Before the last universal common ancestor the ribosome emerged from an early evolutionary stage of life to help with the translation of the genetic code.
- We believe:
- that the genetic code was established in two different stages. Our data does not shed much light on the early code, consisting of prebiotically available amino acids.
- once some primitive translational mechanism had been established, new amino acids were added to the mix and started infiltrating the genetic code based on specific amino acid/anticodon interactions.
B. This comment is NOT re the genetic mechanism of specifying amino acids compositions of proteins. It is only re the origin and scenario of life’s genesis.
I have been proposing:
* Life’s genesis was not cell(s), but the self reproduction of yet uncelled ungenomed gene(s).
* There was NOT any “Pre-History Of Life” evolving in an archaic pre-modern life cell.
* Cells were definitely NOT life’s genesis. Cells were products of evolution of Earth’s primal organisms, of Earth’s first stratum organisms, the RNA genes that have always been and still are running the show of life, the energy-storing biosphere survival, since Earth life’s day one.
* A gene’s self reproduction was distinctly an evolutionary, enhanced energy constraint event, above the earlier, random, radiated-energy-induced genes formations.
* Every evolutionary step is inherently an event of an enhanced energy constraint.
* Genomes, RNA and DNA, are functional organs evolved by the primary RNA genes. Cell membranes are also functional organs evolved by the primary RNA gene.
* Life is but one of the many many mass formats in the universe, and its evolution is driven as the evolution of all cosmic mass formats, to gain temporary enhanced energy constraint, i.e. to survive as long as possible.
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
03.2010 Updated Life Manifest
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/54.page#5065
Cosmic Evolution Simplified
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/240/122.page#4427
“Gravity Is The Monotheism Of The Cosmos”
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/260/122.page#4887
April 17th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Hello JJS, long time. Would the Cambrian explosion be considered evidence for FLE? The Cambrian explosion is interesting because we find that suddenly 19 or 20 new animal phyla appear with no evidence in the fossil record to support any notion that they descended from anything. The only problem is that they were fully formed
complex animals. Better explained by “design” for sure.
BTW, I still consider “design” a mechanism. Design is the means by which engineers build sophisticated systems. Design is a tool in the toolkit of the designer. We can say that “design” is driven by intelligence, like “natural selection” is driven by the environment.
Consider the synonyms for “design” and there is no contradiction, they fit quite plainly for those who understand the English language. Mechanism, synonym: means, method, system, procedure. Design is the mechanism for “Intelligent Design.” I really don’t understand what is so difficult about this. The thing that makes it difficult for some is their dogmatic adherence to “everything evolved.”
April 19th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Good day Brent. Talk about a blast from the past!
An interesting question, and one I am not sure if I can answer. Mike Gene is more the FLE expert; I just put an engineering spin on it.
After reading that comment, I recalled who you were.
After much debate and consideration, unless you can “reduce” the actions of a designer to quantum mechanics, my position is that design is not a mechanism.
May 16th, 2010 at 4:56 am
The problem of design is to translate thoughts into actions. Now we are in a bit of a dilemma. All our actions are mechanical, in the most obvious way, i.e., our actions conform to the laws of classical mechanics. Insofar as our thoughts, the contents of our thoughts, our conceptions, are non-mechanical they cannot be translated into mechanical actions or into some mechanical object or process. Therefore, there really is no such thing as “non-mechanical” design. Insofar as all designs are the results of actions and all actions are mechanical, then all design reduces to mechanics. Indeed, much of design deals directly with that very problem—it is the effort to systematically reduce or eliminate the “non-mechanical” aspects of thought into reproducible mechanical actions, procedures, methods, algorithms, etc. The effort to mechanize design. Not just to make mechanical designs, but to mechanize the design process itself—including the thought that goes into it.
Mechanistic philosophy notwithstanding, not all sciences are “mechanical.” (Quantum “mechanics” is not mechanical, e.g.)
And the laws of mechanics contain a loophole… (?)
May 17th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Good day Rock. Welcome to EE!
In an attempt to respond to your thoughtful comment, let me focus on a single sentence:
As I elaborated in my most recent post, this is not quite true. Conceptual design – a crucial and inseparable part of the design process – does not follow the natural cause-and-effect mechanism that the rest of the design process can be subject to. Since one aspect of design cannot be reduced to mechanical processes, it stands to reason that design as a whole is not 100% mechanical, and thus not a mechanism (as a whole).
Now for the rest of your comment:
And yet is it done all the time in the engineering profession.
So far, I’m in agreement with you. But here’s where you lose me:
I’m not clear as to how you connected the dots from thoughts-not-mechanical to design-not-mechanical. If you could elaborate for me on this, it would be much appreciated.
I wish whoever is undertaking this momumental task the best of luck. They’ll need it. IMHO, conceptual design is not 100% reduceable to mechanistic processes. Since conceptual design is an integral part of most design processes, it stands to reason that the design process as a whole cannot be reduceable and hence, not a mechanism.
I appreciate your comment, and look forward to more of your insights in the future.
May 18th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
“I’m not clear as to how you connected the dots from thoughts-not-mechanical to design-not-mechanical.”
It’s not clear to me either how you made the connection between non-mechanical thoughts and mechanical actions:
“Since one aspect of design cannot be reduced to mechanical processes, it stands to reason that design as a whole is not 100% mechanical, and thus not a mechanism (as a whole).”
Non-mechanical thoughts, conceptions, are critical to science. And can be tested. The problem is that they fail every test, because to test is to act and to act is to act mechanically.
See the problem, the dilemma?
May 19th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
The connection is/are the human engineer(s). Both conceptual thought and rational analysis/mechanical actions reside in either the form of a single engineer or the collective body of engineers. Call it an overly simplistic answer, yet it is one that works every day in the real world and not the lab.
…and by extension, engineering. I’m with you so far.
Conceptual thoughts can be subjected to testing. How much that testing will actually say about them depends on your assumptions.
Specifically how do thoughts fail every scientific test? And what is meant by “failure” in this case?
Sort of. IMHO, thoughts cannot be 100% explained by science. The same is true for the existence/non-existence of God. It would appear to me that while some aspects of thought can be explained by science, science on its own cannot give a fully satisfying explanation.
May 19th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Brent is missing the point regarding ID and mechanisms.
One first has to understand that, as defined by IDists, the term “design” means intention/purposefullness/goal-directedness. This is what they claim to have detected when they claim to have detected design.
When ID critics point out that the design argument offers no mechanism, they are saying that IDists won’t/can’t say how these intentions took effect in the world we experience. They want to know something mechanistic about what happened, along the lines of “this physical thing did such-and-such to this other physical thing.”
Brent says:
But the product of engineering design is not a system; it’s a model of a system that is yet to be built. This gets back to the point; IDists can’t/won’t address how the things we see in the world came to be actualized.
Scientists want to know what happened; for IDists it is sufficient to give credit to a designer.
May 19th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
JJS,
I agree with you that, in general, design cannot be treated as mechanistic. It is only in simple cases that engineers can derive, per se, a design from the requirements. An act of invention is usually involved.
IMO, we know so little about the creative process at this point that creativity is effectively magic. I hope and trust that we will learn more about it in the future.
But it seems to me that this issue is different from the one Brent is addressing. I don’t think that Brent is claiming that engineering design is a mechanical process.
May 20th, 2010 at 8:48 am
WOOHOO! Both Rock and Freelurker commenting @ EE! Sweet!
From Brent’s opening comment at Amazon (click on “Show post anyway” to view and scroll down to about 6th paragraph):
IMHO, Brent’s view that engineering design is a mechanism is quite clear.