In recent days, objector ES has been twisting the concept of Wickensian functionally specific information-bearing complex organisation into post-modernist deconstructionist subjectivist pretzels, in order to obfuscate the plain inductive argument at the heart of the design inference and/or explanatory filter.
For example, consider these excerpts from the merry go round thread:
ES, 41: . . . If a conscious observer connects some observed object to some possible desired result which can be obtained using the object in a context, then we say that the conscious observer conceives of a function for that object . . . . In science, properties of the material just are, without purpose, because everybody knows purpose is subjective. Functionality comes in when you get engineerial, and then it’s more up to the “objective functionality” of the engineer than of the material . . .
KF, 42: When one puts together a complex composite such as a program or an electronic amplifier ckt or a watch or an auto engine or many other things, function is not projected to it by an observer. I wuk, or i nuh wuk, mon. Was that a bad starter motor, a run down battery, out of gas, dirty injector points and more. Was that a bug in syntax or in semantics. Was that a BJT miswired and fried, did you put in the wrong size load resistor so it sits in saturation when it was meant to be in the middle of the load line, did you put in an electrolytic cap the wrong way around, etc. Is this a heart attack triggered by a blood clot etc. Function is not a matter of imagination but observation. And you full well know that or should.
Joe, 44: Earth to E. Seigner- functionality, ie a function, is an OBSERVATION. We observe something performing some function and we investigate to try to figure out how it came to be the way it is. Within living organisms we observe functioning systems and subsystems. As for “information”, well with respect to biology ID uses the same definition that Crick provided decades ago. And we say it can be measured the same way Shannon said, decades ago.
ES, 46: To an observer it looks like cars take people to work and shopping. But most of the time cars stand in garage motionless, and sometimes they fail to start. If the observer is truly impartial, then it’s not up to him to say that the failure to start or mere standing is any less of the car’s function than the ability of being driven. The car’s function is what the car does and when the car fails to start then that’s what it does and this is its function. Of course this sounds silly, but it’s true . . .
BA, 48: It is clear to me now. You have drunk deeply from the post-modernist/constructivist Koolaid. Kairosfocus and gpuccio be advised — attempting to reason with such as E.Seigner is pointless.
Let’s first remind ourselves as to what the glorified common-sense design inference process actually does as an exercise in inductive, inference to the best current explanation on empirically observed evidence:
. . . and also, of the significance of Wickensian functionally specific, complex information and Orgellian informational specified complexity for a blind, needle in haystack search; as highlighted by Dembski et al:
While we are at it, let us remind ourselves of what FSCO/I looks like in the form of functionally specific organisation in the technological world:
Fig 6: An exploded view of a classic ABU Cardinal, showing how functionality arises from a highly specific, tightly constrained complex arrangement of matched parts according to a “wiring diagram.” Such diagrams are objective (the FSCO/I on display here is certainly not “question-begging,” as some — astonishingly — are trying to suggest!), and if one is to build or fix such a reel successfully, s/he had better pay close heed.. Taking one of these apart and shaking it in a shoe-box is guaranteed not to work to get the reel back together again. (That is, even the assembly of such a complex entity is functionally specific and prescriptive information-rich.)
. . . and, in the life of the cell, as the Ribosome constructs a protein (which is a functionally specific string structure) based on the coded algorithmic information in the mRNA tape:
Step by step protein synthesis in action, in the ribosome, based on the sequence of codes in the mRNA control tape (Courtesy, Wikipedia and LadyofHats)
. . . not to mention, the parallel in the punched paper tape reader used for older computers and NC machines:
Punched paper Tape, as used in older computers and numerically controlled machine tools (Courtesy Wiki & Siemens)
(When things have been strawmannised and twisted into pretzels, it helps to straighten them back out again. Where also, a picture is worth a thousand words.)
However, Mr Arrington has a point.
While those caught up in po mo deconstructionist schemes are hardly likely to have a sudden change of heart on the strength of a mere blog comment or even a headlined post, the rest of us can draw lessons from what we see laid out before us. I therefore crave the indulgence of a promoted comment to headlined status, including a snippet of intensely personal history of my homeland. For, comments get buried and forgotten within hours, but a headlined post is for the record:
It may be entertaining to play semantics games with terms like function, but that simply reveals that your problem is not with science, it is with common sense reality tracing to some of the sillier bits of post-modernist radical subjectivism and deconstructionism.
Perhaps, it has not dawned on you that survival of the fittest or hill-climbing algorithms or natural selection or the like pivot on the objectivity of function. Have you gone to Panda’s Thumb, TSZ, ATBC or the like Darwinist agitator sites to challenge the core concepts of evolution based on differential reproductive success pivoting on functional differences of life-forms? I safely bet not, you are reserving such talking-points for those you object to, regardless of inconsistencies or outright incoherence.
[Ill-]Logic with a swivel.
Patently, revealingly, sadly, you have indulged in incoherent selective hyperskepticism.
And if you genuinely imagine that a stalled car with a dead engine, or a leaky roof, or a crashed computer, or a PA system that distorts sounds horribly are functionally distinct as a mere matter of subjective opinion, your problem is a breach of common sense.
Do you — or a significant other — have a mechanic? Are you a shade-tree mechanic? Do you have even one tool for maintenance? Do you recognise the difference between sugar, salt and arsenic in your cup of coffee? Between an effective prescription correctly filled and faithfully carried out when you get sick and a breakdown of that process? Etc?
I put it to you that you cannot and do not live consistent with your Lit class seminar-room talking points.
And, your evasive resort to clinging to such absurdities to obfuscate the issue of functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information, speaks loudest volumes for the astute onlooker.
Own-goal, E-S.
The bottom-line of the behaviour of several objectors over the past few days, speaks inadvertent volumes on the real balance on the merits of the core design theory contention that there are such things as reliable empirical markers — such as Wickensian FSCO/I — that are strong signs of design as key causal process.
But, many are so wedded to the totalising metanarrative of a priori Lewontinian evolutionary materialism that they refuse to heed the 2350 year old warning posed by Plato on where cynical radical relativism, amorality opening the door to might makes right nihilism and ruthless factions points to for a civilisation. Refusing to learn the hard-bought, paid for in blood lessons of history, they threaten to mislead our civilisation into yet another predictably futile and bloody march of folly. As the ghosts of 100 million victims of such demonically wicked deceptions over the past century warn us.
The folly on the march in our day is so arrogantly stubborn that it refuses to learn living memory history or the history passed on first hand to our grand parents.
Here is Sophia (personification of Wisdom), in the voice of Solomon echoing hard-bought, civil war triggered lessons in Israel c 1,000 BC:
Prov 1:20 Wisdom [Gk, Sophia] cries aloud in the street,
in the markets she raises her voice;
21 at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
22 “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
23 If you turn at my reproof,[a]
behold, I will pour out my spirit to you;
I will make my words known to you.
24 Because I have called and you refused to listen,
have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,
25 because you have ignored all my counsel
and would have none of my reproof,
26 I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when terror strikes you,
27 when terror strikes you like a storm
and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
when distress and anguish come upon you.
28 Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
29 Because they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
30 would have none of my counsel
and despised all my reproof,
31 therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way,
and have their fill of their own devices.
32 For the simple are killed by their turning away,
and the complacency of fools destroys them;
33 but whoever listens to me will dwell secure
and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
A grim warning, bought at the price of a spoiled, wayward son who fomented disaffection and led rebellion triggering civil war and needless death and destruction, ending in his own death and that of many others.
Behind the Proverbs lies the anguished wailing of a father who had to fight a war with his son and in the end cried out, Oh Absalom, my son . . .
History sorts out the follies of literary excesses, if we fail to heed wisdom in good time.
Often, at the expense of a painful, bloody trail of woe and wailing that leads many mothers and fathers, widows and orphans to wail the loss of good men lost to the fight in the face of rampant folly.
But then, tragic history is written into my name, as George William Gordon’s farewell to his wife written moments before his unjust execution on sentence of a kangaroo court-martial, was carried out:
My beloved Wife, General Nelson has just been kind enough to inform me that the court-martial on Saturday last has ordered me to be hung, and that the sentence is to be executed in an hour hence; so that I shall be gone from this world of sin and sorrow.
I regret that my worldly affairs are so deranged; but now it cannot be helped. I do not deserve this sentence, for I never advised or took part in any insurrection. All I ever did was to recommend the people who complained to seek redress in a legitimate way; and if in this I erred, or have been misrepresented, I do not think I deserve the extreme sentence. It is, however, the will of my Heavenly Father that I should thus suffer in obeying his command to relieve the poor and needy, and to protect, as far as I was able, the oppressed. And glory be to his name; and I thank him that I suffer in such a cause. Glory be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and I can say it is a great honour thus to suffer; for the servant cannot be greater than his Lord. I can now say with Paul, the aged, “The hour of my departure is at hand, and I am ready to be offered up. I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith, and henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge shall give me.” Say to all friends, an affectionate farewell; and that they must not grieve for me, for I die innocently. Assure Mr. Airy and all others of the truth of this. Comfort your heart. I certainly little expected this. You must do the best you can, and the Lord will help you; and do not be ashamed of the death your poor husband will have suffered. The judges seemed against me, and from the rigid manner of the court I could not get in all the explanation I intended . . .
Deconstruct that, clever mocking scorners of the literary seminar room.
Deconstruct it in the presence of a weeping wife and mother and children mourning the shocking loss of a father and hero to ruthless show-trial injustice ending in judicial murder.
Murder that echoes the fate of one found innocent but sent to Golgotha because of ruthless folly-tricks in Jerusalem c. 30 AD.
(How ever so many fail to see the deep lesson about folly-tricks in the heart of the Gospel, escapes me. New Atheists and fellow travellers, when you indict the Christian Faith as the fountain-head of imagined injustice, remember the One who hung between thieves on a patently unjust sentence, having been bought at the price of a slave through a betrayer blinded by greed and folly. If you do not hear a cry for just government and common decency at the heart of the Gospel you would despise, you are not worth the name, literary scholar or educated person.)
And in so doing, learn a terrible, grim lesson of where your clever word games predictably end up in the hands of the ruthless.
For, much more than science is at stake in all of this.
GEM of TKI >>
_________________
I trust that the astute onlooker will be inclined to indulge so personal a response, and will duly draw on the hard-bought lessons of history (and of my family story . . . ) as just outlined. END
PS, Sept 30: ES has been making heavy weather over the idea of a primitive tribe encountering a can opener for the first time and not understanding its function (which he then wishes to project as subjective):
A rotating cutter can opener in action
And, a modern development showing meshing serrated gears:
modern rotary action can opener with meshing gears (Both images HT Wiki)
However, this is both incorrect and irrelevant to recognising from aspects of the can opener that exhibit FSCO/I, that it is designed:
1 –> Whether or not the primitive seeing an opener for the first time can recognise its purpose and contrivance that integrates materials, forces of nature and components into a functioning whole, that functionally specific, complex organisation for a purpose exists and is embedded in how the opener is designed.
2 –> Just by looking at the evident contrivance manifested in FSCO/I that is maximally unlikely to obtain by blind chance and mechanical necessity — as with the fishing reel above, the primitive is likely to perceive design.
3 –> The rotating gears with matched teeth set to couple together alone implies highly precise artifice to build centred disks, cut matching gearing, mount them on precisely separated and aligned centred axes, with other connected parts already demonstrates design to a reasonable onlooker.
4 –> The precisely uniformly thick handles joined in a pivot, and reflecting rectangle-based shapes would be equally demonstrative.
5 –> Where, actual intended function has not been brought to bear. (And note, we see here again the implicit demand that the design inference be a universal decoder/ algorithm identifier. That is a case of setting up and knocking over a strawman, where . . . just on theory of computation, such a universal decoder/detector is utterly implausible. The point of the design inference is that on inductively confirmed reliable signs such as FSCO/I we may confidently identify design — purposefully directed contingency or contrivance — as key causal factor. It seems that any number of red herrings are led away from this point to convenient strawman caricatures that are then knocked over as though the actual point has been effectively answered on the merits. It has not.)
6 –> But of course, that functionality dependent on specific components and an arrangement otherwise vanishingly improbable, reeks of design and the function can be readily demonstrated, as the patents diagram shows.
7 –> Where, again, it must be underscored that, per my comment 49 to ES:
[the] ultra-modernist, ugly- gulch- between- the- inner- world- and- the outer- one [of] sophomorised Kantianism fails and needs to be replaced with a sounder view. As F H Bradley pointd out over a century ago, to pretend to know that the external world is un-knowable due to the nature of subjectivitiy . . . the denial of objective knowledge . . . is itself a claim to objective knowledge of the external world and a very strong one too. Which therefore is self-referentially incoherent. Instead, it is wiser to follow Josiah Royce’s point that we know that error exists, undeniably and self evidently. Thus, there are certain points of objective knowledge that are firm, that ground that objective truth, warrant and knowledge exist, and that schemes of thought that deny or denigrate such fail. Including post modernism, so called. Of course, that we know that error exists means we need to be careful and conservative in knowledge claims, but the design inference is already that, it is explicitly inductive on inference to best explanation on observed patterns and acknowledges the limitations of inductive knowledge including scientific knowledge. [A Po-Mo] selectively hyperskeptical focus on the design inference while apparently ignoring the effect of that same logic on science as a whole, on history, on common sense reality and on reason itself, simply multiplies the above by highlighting the double standard on warrant.
8 –> In short, we have here a case of clinging to an ideological absurdity in the teeth of accessible, well-warranted correction.
Comments
KF, you are welcome. Thank you for patiently walking ES through the reasoning for the sake of the lurkers who might have been impressed and/or mislead by his sophistry. You point him to Plato – i.e., you have pointed him to reason and logic. You might as well have pointed a jackass to Mozart. They would both be equally edified.
I take that back. The jackass would likely be more edified; perhaps he might at least take some pleasure from the soothing tones. ES takes no pleasure from instruction, and disdains correction. You see, such as ES in embracing post modernism have rejected what they call “western logic.” Of course, reason and logic are not bound by geography. There is no such thing as “western logic.” There is only “logic.” Reality is the wall you smack into when you’re wrong. Sadly, if ES’s antics are a harbinger (and I fear they are), I see our civilization heading for that wall.Barry Arrington
September 27, 2014
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Mung, Among other things, ES needs to realise the self referential incoherence implicit in the Kantian-style ugly gulch between the inner world and the outer one. As F H Bradley long ago pointed out, to claim that one cannot know external objective reality is an implicit holding of a very strong knowledge claim about such, its un-knowability. That is, it is self-referentially incoherent. Far sounder is the Josiah Royce claim, Error exists . . . which is undeniable and self-evident as I show in my worldview 101 here. That first self evident truth does great execution across the field of radically relativist and subjectivist views; clearing the way for a more balanced view. KFkairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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ES: Perhaps, you can find the time to glance here, and maybe at the Plato's cave parable from the perspective of dealing with a manipulated public, and how sound worldviews thought can help, here -- yes, The Republic. My Worldviews construction 101 here on may just open up a different path to build a saner worldview than what has been drummed into you through clever rhetoric in the name of education. You need to wake up from your dogmatic, indoctrination induced slumbers. KFkairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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BA, thanks for some kind words. I hope our civilisation wakes up before it is too late. KFkairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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Plants and animals really do exist. They are not projections of the human mind.
Square circles do not exist. It is not possible for the human mind to project a square circle into non-existence.
E.Seigner
Projecting some structure or pattern is a necessary precondition to make any sense of anything.
What are these projections based on? From whence do they arise? We must rule out that they arise from observation, because observation is projection.
Further, if there is nothing there to be sensed, what triggers the act of projection?
Perhaps this is just another mis-understanding over terms. What do you mean when you say "projecting some structure or pattern"?Mung
September 27, 2014
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StephenB
There you go. You might as well have said, “guilty as charged.”
Or you could have dealt with the evidence: Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker, the scientific knowledge accumulated in cognitive sciences, and the differences between postmodernism, poststructuralism, classical structuralism, and objectivism. But of course you are more comfortable with your preconceived ideas.
No problem. As cognitive science says, preconceived ideas is exactly how these things work, and your behavior is proving the point. More open-minded people would be more open to evidence, but you are neatly categorizing yourself here.E.Seigner
September 27, 2014
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SB: Thanks, your amplification is well appreciated. One hopes there is enough of a spark left in ES that he will wake up from his dogmatic, indoctrination-induced slumbers. And that many others like him will wake up before the march of irrational folly and disconnect from reality has gone too far. For, folly like that predictably ends in blood. But then, warning in the face of stubborn folly is a bit of a family tradition for me. There are other cases with other members, a lot closer to home. KFkairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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Anthropic, thanks. I suggest the NWE links will prove useful. In addition, when I taught an intro phil course, I spoke to post-/ultra- modernism here, which may prove useful. We must never ever forget that the key lessons of history were paid for in blood . . . an infinitely precious thing. Often, innocent blood like that of my grandmother's great uncle, whose "crime" was to speak the truth in warning to a stubborn and oppressive colonial house of assembly that stirred their ire and then led them to scapegoat and judicially murder him when the explosion he sought to avert came. Five or six hundred were hanged or shot, hundreds more flogged, a thousand houses were burnt, and more. All in retaliation for a riot, admittedly a bloody one, after a petition to Queen Victoria for famine help and relief -- doubtless misunderstood because of idiot advice from the same Governor Eyre who was implicated in the Irish potato famine -- was foolishly answered; a riot triggered in reaction to an over the top flogging sentence against praedial larceny by men with hungry children. Sound history, we must heed, on pain of negligent homicide or worse. A lesson (one of several) literally written into my name in accordance with my family's tradition. KFkairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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SB: We are told that ID, because of its cultural bias, projects design onto the organism; Dawkins, because of his cultural bias, projects non-design onto the organism—and that’s that.
Both ID theory and Dawkins project design onto the organism.
There you go. You might as well have said, "guilty as charged."
SB: We are told that an archeologist cannot detect design in an ancient hunter’s spear. Indeed, he may well project his design bias onto the rock and call it a spear, or he may project his anti-design bias onto the spear and call it a rock—and away we go. Rationality has gone out the window.
No, rationality is not out of the window. This is how rationality works.
Again, you might as well have said, "guilty as charged."
Deconstruction means the same as reverse engineering.
Nonsense
Deconstructionism
“A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings: "In deconstruction, the critic claims there is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various, often mutually irreconcilable, 'virtual texts' constructed by readers in their search for meaning"
or, again,
A late twentieth-century theory of literature that concentrates on finding "ruptures" or inconsistencies in a text, thus enabling the critic to break down or "deconstruct" it. Such deconstruction consists of asserting a personally or communally relative interpretation (usually focused on power relations or class conflict in society) without claiming that any text or interpretation has objective truth or meaning. Deconstructionism is a specific kind of postmodernism, and leans heavily toward subjectivism or even nihilism.
This is the same philosophy that you are applying to the ID debate. You are saying, in effect, that ID (or anyone else) is incapable of drawing an inference from data and can only project "a personally or communally relative interpretation" on the evidence.StephenB
September 27, 2014
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ES: In my life, I have designed many things, from text, to hand carved fishing lures for personal use, to instrumentation to microprocessor controlled systems, to degree programmes to organisations and policies. In none of these systems is the design merely a figment of my imagination. Yes, purpose is mental, concepts are mental. But once a design is effected (even as a sketch much less as an artifact) that framing has moved to objective territory, and the integrated contrivance that results is full of functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information. Which, is manifest in the soundness of the process logic and construction, as well as in the acid test of working robustly and durably. A skilled person can often reverse engineer from such an artifact to design specification by "reading" the embedded prescriptive, function specifying information. In addition, as has been repeatedly pointed out to you -- but obviously has been obstinately ignored in a clinging to patent absurdity -- once the relevant specifying information passes a threshold of 500 - 1,000 bits of information the likelihood that such could arise by blind chance and mechanical necessity is vanishingly small. Now, I cannot make you acknowledge sense, but in the name of blood needlessly shed because of many marches of folly, I can warn. Warn, that the poison of radical subjectivism amplified by ultramodernist fads, refuses to learn from sobering history and as Santayana warned, is doomed to repeat its worst chapters. Warn, with of all people Karl Marx, that this is why history repeats, first as tragedy then as farce. Do not make your father wail, Oh Absalom, . . . KFkairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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StephenB
We are told that ID, because of its cultural bias, projects design onto the organism; Dawkins, because of his cultural bias, projects non-design onto the organism—and that’s that.
Both ID theory and Dawkins project design onto the organism. Dawkins has a book on it, The Blind Watchmaker. The difference between ID theorists and Dawkins is that Dawkins doesn't admit the designer.
Projecting some structure or pattern is a necessary precondition to make any sense of anything. Everybody does it. It's better to know that we are doing it, instead of to be in denial and to assume that it's all objective. For example, mathematically educated people are hard-pressed to not see a rectangle here http://www.tanveernaseer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Kanizsa-Square-optical-illusion.jpg while smaller children only see pacman shapes.
Projection of patterns has nothing to do with postmodernism. It's a well-studied fact of sense-perception.
StephenB
An archeologist cannot detect design in an ancient hunter’s spear. Indeed, he may well project his design bias onto the rock and call it a spear, or he may project his anti-design bias onto the spear and call it a rock—and away we go. Rationality has gone out the window.
No, rationality is not out of the window. This is how rationality works. Rationality is not empirical and objective, but this doesn't mean that it cannot work. It's just that it's better to know how it works. It won't do to reject off-hand what is common knowledge in cognitive sciences.
StephenB
One form of this madness goes by the name of “deconstructionism.” When an author establishes a theme with meaning and expresses that meaning in comprehensible prose, the deconstructionist takes it upon himself to project whatever meaning he chooses onto the written text.
Deconstruction means the same as reverse engineering. Youare doing the same thing under a different name. Besides, can you tell the difference between postmodernism, poststructuralism, classical structuralism, and objectivism, all of which share the concept? Nah, you are not really interested in where I am coming from. You are just interested in bashing, even when you inadvertently ridicule your own methods in the process.E.Seigner
September 27, 2014
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KF, rarely does a blog post rise to the level of literature. This one has. Thank you.Barry Arrington
September 27, 2014
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Thanks for the time & effort you put into this, KF! As you say, the objective (might I say function? ;)) of your disquisition is not to slam ES. Rather, it is to confront post modern thinking.
I'm an educator who touches on worldview/philosophy issues and will use some of your thoughts in class. Bravo!anthropic
September 27, 2014
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kairosfocus, excellent post as usual.
ES holds that design is projected onto the object and is not recognized as existing in the object. In other words, design is in the beholder, not in the object. We are told that ID, because of its cultural bias, projects design onto the organism; Dawkins, because of his cultural bias, projects non-design onto the organism—and that's that. Naturally, this would rule out any kind of design inference in principle.
With this philosophy, humans are simply not capable of inductive reasoning. An archeologist cannot detect design in an ancient hunter’s spear. Indeed, he may well project his design bias onto the rock and call it a spear, or he may project his anti-design bias onto the spear and call it a rock—and away we go. Rationality has gone out the window. This is what post-modernism has done to the human mind.
One form of this madness goes by the name of "deconstructionism." When an author establishes a theme with meaning and expresses that meaning in comprehensible prose, the deconstructionist takes it upon himself to project whatever meaning he chooses onto the written text. Hence, the author's intended meaning is deconstructed and transformed into the biases and prejudices of the reader.
Exegesis = To read out of the passage what is already there.
Eisegesis = To read in to the passage what one chooses to be there.StephenB
September 27, 2014
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F/N: In case the onlooker needs further warrant about the po mo absurdities ES has indulged, kindly note this comment from the merry go round thread in reply to ES' attempt to po mo-ise English rather than acknowledge that a Shakespeare cite is patently FSCO/I but random keystrokes are not and the difference on FSCO/I reliably and correctly indicates design of the clip from Hamlet's Soliloquy:
20 kairosfocus September 25, 2014 at 1:21 am
ES:
You have failed to reckon with the issue I raised above, complexity + functional specificity tied to a given aspect, instead substituting a strawman caricature of the design inference process and resulting explanatory filter.
Complexity by itself is generally explicable on chance.
Toss a string of 500 H/T coins and the resulting 72 or so letter ASCII character string is complex. With all but certainty it will not spell out text in English that is contextually responsive (or evasive).
If you come across such a string of coins with the code equivalent to the first 72 or so characters of this post, then with moral certainty, it was designed.
This has to do with the search-space, search resource, target zone needle in haystack search challenge already highlighted to you but which you refuse to acknowledge as existing.
Based on this from the Feser thread, it seems you are now in the unenviable position of clinging to absurdities to deny the patent but unwelcome:
Feser thread, 314:
E Seigner: There’s no inherent design of English in written text, but a social convention called English.
SB: You don’t think that authors design their paragraphs?
Reductio ad absurdum.
Game over.
kairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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ES: That one is the twist-about, turn-speech accusation. You plainly have tried to obfuscate the concept of specific, observable objective function pivoting on particular organisation, arrangement and coupling of parts, based on injecting subjectivism and semantic techniques championed in our day by the deconstructionists and other so-called post modernists . . . they are actually reductio ad absurdum ultra-modernists, with the dial firmly set on eleven, not a mere ten. When, all along, if FSCO/I was a failure as a claimed reliable sign of design as cause, a direct, credible counter example showing how the needle in haystack problem has been on observation solved by blind chance and mechanical necessity would be sufficient. And, no, given the cost of the lessons, I do not draw back from underscoring what the march of folly predictably leads to. KFkairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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F/N: I have added some more images to make the matter plain. KFkairosfocus
September 27, 2014
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kairosfocus
PS: I regret having to showcase ES, who must be feeling a bit battered, but I believe there is a need to speak for record, not merely in a soon-buried comment. KF
No problem, dude. Let's hope that this thread will become famous so I have the opportunity to deconstruct how profoundly you have misinterpreted and misrepresented me. But I will be telling it to others, not you, because your magnitude of miscomprehension is in a league of its own, something I have never seen before, evidently futile to engage with directly.E.Seigner
September 27, 2014
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PS: I regret having to showcase ES, who must be feeling a bit battered, but I believe there is a need to speak for record, not merely in a soon-buried comment. KFkairosfocus
It may be entertaining to play semantics games with terms like function, but that simply reveals that your problem is not with science, it is with common sense reality tracing to some of the sillier bits of post-modernist radical subjectivism and deconstructionism.
Perhaps, it has not dawned on you that survival of the fittest or hill-climbing algorithms or natural selection or the like pivot on the objectivity of function. Have you gone to Panda’s Thumb, TSZ, ATBC or the like Darwinist agitator sites to challenge the core concepts of evolution based on differential reproductive success pivoting on functional differences of life-forms? I safely bet not, you are reserving such talking-points for those you object to, regardless of inconsistencies or outright incoherence.
[Ill-]Logic with a swivel.
Patently, revealingly, sadly, you have indulged in incoherent selective hyperskepticism.
And if you genuinely imagine that a stalled car with a dead engine, or a leaky roof, or a crashed computer, or a PA system that distorts sounds horribly are functionally distinct as a mere matter of subjective opinion, your problem is a breach of common sense.
Do you — or a significant other — have a mechanic? Are you a shade-tree mechanic? Do you have even one tool for maintenance? Do you recognise the difference between sugar, salt and arsenic in your cup of coffee? Between an effective prescription correctly filled and faithfully carried out when you get sick and a breakdown of that process? Etc?
I put it to you that you cannot and do not live consistent with your Lit class seminar-room talking points.
And, your evasive resort to clinging to such absurdities to obfuscate the issue of functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information, speaks loudest volumes for the astute onlooker.
Own-goal, E-S.
The bottom-line of the behaviour of several objectors over the past few days, speaks inadvertent volumes on the real balance on the merits of the core design theory contention that there are such things as reliable empirical markers — such as Wickensian FSCO/I — that are strong signs of design as key causal process.
But, many are so wedded to the totalising metanarrative of a priori Lewontinian evolutionary materialism that they refuse to heed the 2350 year old warning posed by Plato on where cynical radical relativism, amorality opening the door to might makes right nihilism and ruthless factions points to for a civilisation. Refusing to learn the hard-bought, paid for in blood lessons of history, they threaten to mislead our civilisation into yet another predictably futile and bloody march of folly. As the ghosts of 100 million victims of such demonically wicked deceptions over the past century warn us.
The folly on the march in our day is so arrogantly stubborn that it refuses to learn living memory history or the history passed on first hand to our grand parents.
Here is Sophia (personification of Wisdom), in the voice of Solomon echoing hard-bought, civil war triggered lessons in Israel c 1,000 BC:
A grim warning, bought at the price of a spoiled, wayward son who fomented disaffection and led rebellion triggering civil war and needless death and destruction, ending in his own death and that of many others.
Behind the Proverbs lies the anguished wailing of a father who had to fight a war with his son and in the end cried out, Oh Absalom, my son . . .
History sorts out the follies of literary excesses, if we fail to heed wisdom in good time.
Often, at the expense of a painful, bloody trail of woe and wailing that leads many mothers and fathers, widows and orphans to wail the loss of good men lost to the fight in the face of rampant folly.
But then, tragic history is written into my name, as George William Gordon’s farewell to his wife written moments before his unjust execution on sentence of a kangaroo court-martial, was carried out:
Deconstruct that, clever mocking scorners of the literary seminar room.
Deconstruct it in the presence of a weeping wife and mother and children mourning the shocking loss of a father and hero to ruthless show-trial injustice ending in judicial murder.
Murder that echoes the fate of one found innocent but sent to Golgotha because of ruthless folly-tricks in Jerusalem c. 30 AD.
(How ever so many fail to see the deep lesson about folly-tricks in the heart of the Gospel, escapes me. New Atheists and fellow travellers, when you indict the Christian Faith as the fountain-head of imagined injustice, remember the One who hung between thieves on a patently unjust sentence, having been bought at the price of a slave through a betrayer blinded by greed and folly. If you do not hear a cry for just government and common decency at the heart of the Gospel you would despise, you are not worth the name, literary scholar or educated person.)
And in so doing, learn a terrible, grim lesson of where your clever word games predictably end up in the hands of the ruthless.
For, much more than science is at stake in all of this.
GEM of TKI >>