Signature of Controversy: New Book Responds to Stephen Meyer’s Critics

_{William Dembski

May 25, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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Signature of Controversy Critics of intelligent design often try to dismiss the theory as not worth addressing, as a question already settled, even as being too boring to countenance. Then they spend an amazing amount of energy trying to refute it. On this episode of ID the Future, Anika Smith interviews David Klinghoffer, editor of the new digital book Signature of Controversy: Responses to Critics of Signature in the Cell, featuring essays by David Berklinski, David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, Stephen C. Meyer, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, and Richard Sternberg. Listen in as Klinghoffer examines the responses of these various critics in this new volume, available as a free digital book.

Click here to listen.

Comments

Was it really necessary to name the third part of the book Attack of the Pygmies? In the announcement of the discussion with Stephen Meyer at Biola university on May 14, 2010, the pygmy Steve Matheson is described as belonging to a powerful group of credentialed critics of Meyer’s “Intelligent Design” position!DiEb_{May 26, 2010
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Maybe I'm not explaining it very well, maybe you're just not getting it, or maybe you just don't want to. I'm not sure which so I'm going to leave it to someone else who might be able to explain it better. Just to clarify for others, your main question is how are "physical state" and "information" fundamentally different? right?Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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sorry; very different from the information**Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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Physical state, say being hot, is indeed very different if one could devise an information bearing system based on alternating cold and hot things. Say, hot-cold-hot-hot=S.O.S. The particular physical state, being hot or cold, has nothing to do with its use in being used as an information medium. It could just be that you have a bunch of cold and hot things.Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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Phaedros:
The simple point is, information is a separate phenomena from matter and energy. Maybe if you provided me with a couple of paragraphs before the one you cited and a couple after it would help a bit more. Frankly, the point is not overly complicated.
Here is the paragraph from Meyer's book:
The elusive character of information--whether biological or otherwise—has made it difficult to define by reference to standard scientific categories. As evolutionary biologist George Williams notes, “You can speak of galaxies and particles of dust in the same terms because they both have mass and charge and length and width. [But] you can’t do that with information and matter." A blank magnetic tape, for example, weighs just as much as one "loaded" with new software—or with the entire sequence of the human genome. Though these tapes differ in information content (and value), they do not do so because of differences in their material composition or mass. As Williams concludes, "Information doesn’t have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise matter doesn’t have bytes .... This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains."
So his point does seem to be, as you say, that information is a separate phenomena from matter and energy. But I don't see how supervenience can be considered separation. "Information" and "physical state" are two ways of looking at the same thing -- the former just happens to be a higher-level view. Can anyone provide an example of information that exists in any non-trivial sense and does not supervene on physical state?R0b_{May 25, 2010
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That's not what he's saying R0b and you know it. Material composition says nothing of the arrangement of that material. Take the instance of ink on paper. It's always just ink, which has a specific composition, and paper, that also has a specific composition. These say nothing about how they will be arranged and why that arrangement bears different information.Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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Collin, thank you. You're pointing out that two things can be physically different and still bear the same information. This is certainly a fact. But Meyer says the converse of that -- that two things can have the same material composition and bear different information. If by "same material composition" he means physically equivalent, then his point is false. Blank and loaded tapes are not physically equivalent, nor are any other systems that carry different information. It seems that Meyer is trying to divorce information from physical state. If so, his point fails.R0b_{May 25, 2010
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The simple point is, information is a separate phenomena from matter and energy. Maybe if you provided me with a couple of paragraphs before the one you cited and a couple after it would help a bit more. Frankly, the point is not overly complicated.Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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ROb, Maybe this is what Meyer means. Instead of a cell, imagine a computer. Take two computer programs that do exactly the same thing. They each give you the definition to any word. But one is written in C++ and the other in BASIC. The information content is the same: they both contain the definitions of words. But their physical composition may be slightly different due to slightly different arrangements of ones and zeros. But one of the computers might not be digital, maybe it is an analogue computer made with a whole bunch of gears and vacuum tubes. The physical composition is really meaningless. The output of the information is what has meaning. DNA could have been C++ (hypothetically) but it still would have been the blueprint for the proteins.Collin_{May 25, 2010
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Phaedros, okay, composition is independent of arrangement, which means that everything tangible has the same composition, since it's all made out of the same subatomic particles. So what exactly was Meyer's point?R0b_{May 25, 2010
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“Information is Information, neither matter nor energy. No materialism that fails to take account of this can survive the present day.” - Norbert Weiner, MIT Mathematician and Father of Cybernetics I.E. Divorcing the composition from the "arrangement" is not nonsensical. It is in fact that arrangement that determines the information according to some convention and structure. These conventions are separate from the materials that they employ.Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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Phaedros, I suppose that the term "material composition" is subject to interpretation. I took Meyer's point to be that the difference between the two tapes is not physical. What do you take his point to be?R0b_{May 25, 2010
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R0b- Why does it make no sense? Ink has a particular material composition but the material composition does not determine the message(information) that is written with that ink.Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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Phaedros, you're correct. My point to you was that divorcing the "material composition" from the arrangement of the constituent matter makes no sense. I related that point back to my conversation with Upright BiPed -- sorry for the confusion.R0b_{May 25, 2010
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Incidentally, Behe's 'e-book' response can be found both on his Amazon blog as well as his UD blog. BornAgain I listened to the Shermer Prothero / Meyer Sternberg debate. What I found interesting is that the topic of the debate was intended to be a discussion of the positive evidence for Darwinian evolution. Shermer and Prothero began their portion of the debate by attacking the motives of ID proponents, while presenting very little positive evidence for ToE. Prothero started out with the motive mongering, then Shermer started out with the typical 'God wouldn't have done it that way' argument.CannuckianYankee_{May 25, 2010
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R0b- You changed the subject sorry I don't follow. You were asking about: "A blank magnetic tape, for example, weighs just as much as one “loaded” with new software—or with the entire sequence of the human genome. Though these tapes differ in information content (and value), they do not do so because of differences in their material composition or mass." I would say the last sentence is referring to the tape containing software or the human genome and not being blank. While I don't know how magnetic tape works per se am I wrong in assuming it already contains the metal oxide even if it is blank?Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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Phaedros, in that case, magnetic tapes and hot dogs have the same material composition, since they're both made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The point is that a loaded tape is physically different from a blank tape, just as Venter's watermarked DNA molecules are chemically different from other DNA molecules. Were it not so, they would not be informationally different.R0b_{May 25, 2010
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R0b- Orientation, yes. Composition, no, it's still metal oxide.Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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Upright BiPed, can you be more specific? I can't wrap my brain around the idea that two systems can be physically equivalent but informationally different. For example, the following claim from Signature in the Cell has always had me puzzled: A blank magnetic tape, for example, weighs just as much as one "loaded" with new software—or with the entire sequence of the human genome. Though these tapes differ in information content (and value), they do not do so because of differences in their material composition or mass. But my understanding is that it is the material composition, specifically the orientation of the metal oxide, that makes the tapes different.R0b_{May 25, 2010
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re: 10 MaxAug I don't know whether this e-book response idea has been done before, but this may set a trend, turning science books into ongoing conversations and/or discussions. I think it might be even a good idea to allow critics to write a response e-book under the same publisher, and then respond to the critics that way. The problem with peer review is we often never get to hear the opinions, motives and thoughts of the reviewers, which renders it rather suspect, when one side claims to be the only ones to get their writings 'legitimately' peer reviewed.CannuckianYankee_{May 25, 2010
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Rob, Yes. See Craig Venter.Upright BiPed_{May 25, 2010
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This e-book was an awesome idea. I would even like to suggest Dr. Behe to do the same (if possible) and release an ebook answering the various attempts to show his arguments are flawed in the edge of evolution.MaxAug_{May 25, 2010
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semi-off topic: Creation Evolution News has a interesting article up discussing New Scientist piece on "Living In Denial" with a lead off article by the master of denial himself Michael Shermer: Who’s Denying the Evidence? http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201005.htm#20100525a here is a debate between Michael Shermer and Stephen Meyer if anybody actually has any doubts as to who is the one living in denial: Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. Richard Sternberg debating Dr. Michael Shermer and Dr. Donald Prothero. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=001A37EACEAA20BAbornagain77_{May 25, 2010
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Upright Biped:
In other words, the system is not reducible to its chemicals properties alone, it requires information.
Can two systems be chemically equivalent and have different information?R0b_{May 25, 2010
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"And the coded information in cells would be data without a human to ascertain it?" Yes. Oxygen and iron in the presence of moisture results in rust without any exchange of coded information. It is a purely chemical reaction based upon its constituent parts. Cytosine, Thymine, and Adenine results in the addition of Leucine during protein synthesis only if presented in the correct encoded order. It is a chemical reaction requiring control in addition to its constituent parts. Also, it requires proper decoding to achieve the result. Remove Cytosine, Thymine, and Adenine from the informational control of the cell, and there is absolutely nothing you can do with them to result in Leucine. In other words, the system is not reducible to its chemicals properties alone, it requires information.Upright BiPed_{May 25, 2010
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Phaedros:
Yes, weather data is nothing like the coded information in cells. First off, without a human to ascertain that data it wouldn’t be data it would just be a natural occurrence.
And the coded information in cells would be data without a human to ascertain it?
Secondly, it takes humans to create the necessary data processors to use that data.
Granted, humans create computers that process data for human consumption.
Humans did not create the data processing mechanisms inside the cell.
Are you sure? According to your thinking, there were no data in the cell prior to humans ascertaining them, so it would seem that humans converted natural-occurrence-processing mechanisms into data-processing mechanisms simply by studying the cell.
If Dr. Meyer’s critics want to say something like, “One instance of weather codes for the next,” then I think that is a very strange state of affairs for them to take as that would be completely antithetical to their position.
How is that antithetical to our position?
That fact is, though, that weather isn’t an abstract representation of anything but it’s just weather.
Are you saying that genetic information (whether it be specific to an organism or the genetic code in general) is abstract, but weather is not? Weather data supervene on physical states, just like genetic information. Neither exists independent of physical phenomena, so I don't understand the distinction you're drawing. Returning to my original point, I just wanted to see if ID proponents agree with Nelson that computational processes can convert unspecified information into specified information, even though Dembski has supposedly proven that they can't.R0b_{May 25, 2010
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If Dr. Meyer's critics want to say something like, "One instance of weather codes for the next," then I think that is a very strange state of affairs for them to take as that would be completely antithetical to their position. That fact is, though, that weather isn't an abstract representation of anything but it's just weather.Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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R0b- Yes, weather data is nothing like the coded information in cells. First off, without a human to ascertain that data it wouldn't be data it would just be a natural occurrence. Secondly, it takes humans to create the necessary data processors to use that data. Humans did not create the data processing mechanisms inside the cell. Furthermore, the data, such as temperature or pressure, is not "in" the weather but it is ABOUT the weather that humans use to understand it.Phaedros_{May 25, 2010
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Are we all in agreement with Nelson's response to Shallit, namely that weather data are unspecified until we run them through data processors?R0b_{May 25, 2010
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Critics of intelligent design often try to dismiss the theory as not worth addressing, as a question already settled, even as being too boring to countenance. Then they spend an amazing amount of energy trying to refute it.
We're not politically inert. A reaction to political action is not scientific debate.Sooner Emeritus_{May 25, 2010
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