205 thoughts on “Semiotic argument for ID: penguin rules version”

1. Upright,

   Does this accurately summarize your argument?

   He’s arguing instead that 1) all semiotic systems are irreducibly complex (and therefore designed), 2) that the protein synthesis system is a semiotic system, and 3) that the protein synthesis system is therefore designed.

   Expanding my earlier synopsis:

   X1. All irreducibly complex systems are designed.
   X2. All semiotic systems are irreducibly complex.
   X3. Therefore, all semiotic systems are designed.

   Y1. A system involving representation(s) and protocol(s) is a semiotic system.
   Y2. Protein synthesis involves a representation and a protocol.
   Y3. Therefore, protein synthesis is a semiotic system.

   Z1. All semiotic systems are designed (by X3).
   Z2. Protein synthesis is a semiotic system (by Y3).
   Z3. Therefore, the protein synthesis system is designed.

   If you think this is an accurate summary, then tell us. If you don’t, then please make corrections while maintaining the explicit and concise format of the summary.

2. Looking back at that early exchange here, I see that Upright Biped rather missed the point of my example.

   I completely agree that the state of the intrusion does not in itself amount to information transfer – that happens when the geologist looks at it.

   However, information was transferred, earlier, from the varves to the intrusion.  And I can’t see any intelligent designer being involved in that process.

   It’s very similar to my snow table of course.  But Upright Biped has not provided (IIRC) a response to that, apart from dismissing it out of hand.

   I think this conversation is probably at an end, given UB’s lengthy absence from it.

   Which is a bit ironic, given the number of times he accused me of bailing, coupled with the number of simple questions waiting here for answers from him.

   But he is of course welcome to return to it at any time.

   Time for a new topic I think 🙂

3. It’s quite possible that at the time UPB composed his ‘state’-not-‘information’ schtick, he may have sincerely believed that he’d provided a genuinely valid answer to the question of why your varve example did not constitute a counter-example to his initial claim. Alas, sincere belief is no guarantee of correctness…

4. UBP swung by a UD thread recently, within which commenters were indulging in head-shaking at the incapacity of ‘evos’ to see what was as plain as the nose on one’s face. His contribution was to point up their inability to see the importance of information, and information transfer. A massive blind spot; how can ‘they’ not get it?

   I think our respective brains just play by different rules. To me, the anticodon is no more ‘representative’ of the amino acid that gets glued on the other end than one end of a stick is ‘representative’ of the other, or a lock is symbolised by its key.

   Even if there is a consistent linkage between what is found at one end and that at the other … so what? The fundamental linkage mechanism is a pair of binding sites in aaRS, one for the acid and the other the anticodon (or rather the anticodon and/or some of the sequence distal to the Acceptor Stem). Enzymatic lock-key relationships can evolve and functionally subdivide, and multiple binding sites can co-evolve in an ‘independent’, if coupled, manner. Unless you really, really, want it to believe they can’t.

5. It still boils down to whether it could have evolved, and you can’t decide that without doing the chemistry.

   ID advocates are terrified of that, assuming they have any sense.

   But considering the recent swerve into creationism — Adam and Eve, YEC stuff — I shouldn’t assume much of that.

   I’s quite interesting to see how quickly the facade  of sciencism has dropped away.

   We should have a thread just to document and discuss the recent changes in the focus of the ID movement. 

6. I agree, Cubist.  In fact, I’d go further in that I believe that Upright Biped created his whole semiotic argument in good faith.  Unfortunately, he demonstrates two problematic behaviors.  First, his unnecessarily dense and complex writing style obscures his intended meaning.  It’s almost like cargo cult philosophy — it’s hard to read so it must be meaningful.

   Second, he seems unable to take any criticism, no matter how constructive or logically supported.  His goal in the discussion doesn’t appear to be to figure out what is true, because he already knows that goddidit.  Being wrong is simply not an option for him.

   Nonetheless, points to him for stepping out from behind Barry “Free Speech” Arrington’s skirts.  Here endeth my armchair psychoanalysis.
    

7. I agree, Cubist.  In fact, I’d go further in that I believe that Upright Biped created his whole semiotic argument in good faith. 

   I think the irreducibility argument is the only “scientific” approach to ID. Unfortunately for them it is Paley’s argument and is the very thing that evolution addresses.

8. It still boils down to whether it could have evolved, and you can’t decide that without doing the chemistry.

   That sounds a bit Joe, if I may say – step up and demonstrate that nature, operating freely … ! That’s an issue in both camps. I don’t expect them to demonstrate it can’t, given that I couldn’t demonstrate it can. Nonetheless, what stops it, in principle, in this particular system? Certainly not the ‘semiotic’ argument. My point is that there is nothing going on in the genetic code apparatus that isn’t going on everywhere else – ligation reactions inevitably involve two binding sites, one for each element being joined. All of them, whether they are charging a tRNA or whatever else. And the ‘code’ is implemented by these paired binding sites – the one, however, in no way ‘represents’ the other.  

   But I agree, the science mask has slipped. Their ‘published creationist’ Todd Wood doesn’t need to worry about the OoL, he says, because he can just open Genesis. Can’t help thinking he’s a little incurious about how, though. And God said: let replication get going, and lo, replication did get going, and it was dead good.

   But the genetic code is not an OoL issue in my view. Shame there’s not a bit in there about how a multi-member tRNA library evolved!

9. I can’t see how the genetic code could not be an OOL issue. Not having a history or plausible scenario does not support ID, any more than the failure for several centuries to have a completely successful predictive account of gravity supported angels.

   It was and still is the task of science to look. 

   It’s just my opinion, but the difference between science and ID is precisely the difference between looking and not looking. 

10. I can’t see how the genetic code could not be an OOL issue.

    OK, strictly speaking perhaps it is an Origin of LUCA issue. But Origin of Life – not necessarily. LUCA is a bottleneck, a singularity behind which comparative methods cannot go.

    But as I’ve attempted to portray, the current scenario could plausibly arise from a replicating precursor whose metabolism was based upon non-protein catalysis. Or, was based upon a different mechanism for generating protein catalysts. The origin of [whichever one, or something else I have not thought of] pushes us further back towards the origin of life, but there is no fundamental requirement to say that a ribosome, or anything like it, was available at or shortly after the first tentative OoL steps towards replication (and hence, Darwinian evolution). 

    The genetic ‘code’ is specifically about rRNA, tRNA and some mechanism of charging the latter with amino acids such that they can be condensed by the former. It’s a way of specifying protein catalysts, but not the only way of specifying some form of catalyst, nor is catalytic protein the only ribosomal product. Initially, I would argue, catalytic proteins could not be produced by this mechanism. But there are plenty of other roles for proteins, and that came first IMO.

    What I think we see are the sparks from an explosion – once stumbled upon, protein catalysis was so successful that Life went ballistic. The fuse was lit by the benefits of specifying non-catalytic proteins, which have less of a requirement for a large amino acid library at the start. Once protein catalysis took hold, prior, non-ribosomal life went extinct, probably in pretty short order. 

11. Biped on the ultimate output of his semiotic theory:

    the conclusion is only that some mechanism is required that can create a semiotic state.

    I asked nicely:

    Upright Biped, please tell us what class of mechanisms you, or semiotic theory, assert is required to create (result in, cause) the entailments/the TRI/a semiotic state.

    Also, please tell us what class of mechanisms you, or semiotic theory, claim cannot create the entailments/the TRI/a semiotic state.

    UB exits. So it goes. 

12. Upright BiPed has appeared at UD and provided the shortest summary of his argument I’ve seen thus far:

    . . . using nothing more than logic and reason, it can be demonstrated that the transfer of recorded information (which makes all biological life possible) requires an irreducibly complex core of symbolic representations and rules. Given that these observations are made only at the level of matter, they can be performed without the slightest deviation from garden variety materialist reductionism. Having in hand these logical necessities, you can then turn to the material evidence, and lo and behold, again without the slightest ambiguity, are the aforementioned logical necessities fully instantiated in matter, operating just exactly as they must in order to accomplish what must be accomplished.

    Hopefully he’ll return here to continue the discussion. Frankly, I need some help parsing this to make it non-circular.

13. I could use some help also. If I understand this, ALL matter can be said to BE “recorded information”. If that matter does anything, then we have the “transfer of recorded information.” This is so general I don’t see the purpose offhand

    But the “symbolic representation” is harder to interpret. When hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water, we surely have the transfer of recorded information as defined, but where are the symbols? If molecules are symbolic representations of themselves, this does real insult to some otherwise useful ideas.

    Then he concludes that by doing what it does the way it does it, matter does what it must do to accomplish what it does. Whatever that means. Apparently the “aforementioned logical necessities fully instantiated in matter” are that that matter is recorded information, that matter is a symbolic representation of itself, and that chemistry is the transfer of recorded information which is reductionist, unambiguous, and irreducibly complex.

    Now, from all this we can conclude…what? That if we use excessive blurry and ill-defined verbiage, we’re justified in making otherwise unsupportable assertions? Perhaps so, considering that if nobody can figure out what’s being said, nobody can dispute what’s being said.     

14. I’d like to ask UPB a series of questions.

    1. In doing translation, does matter do anything that doesn’t follow known rules of chemistry?

    2. Does mutation (all two dozen known types) violate any known rules of physical chemistry?

    3. Does the fact that some variants resulting from mutation hae differential reproductive success — for whatever reason — violate any rules of physics or chemistry?

    4. What specifically in the history of life violates the rules of physics and chemistry?

    5. If there are areas in the history of life that remain unknown, which is the more probable explanation: that the history follows known chemical and physical rules, or that they violate known rules. In other words, is there an incident in the history of life that is best explained by magic?

15. UB asserts: . . . using nothing more than logic and reason, it can be demonstrated that the transfer of recorded information (which makes all biological life possible) requires an irreducibly complex core of symbolic representations and rules.

    It’s probably useless to try to make any sense of UB’s word salads – and I am not going to waste time on it; however, this excerpt may be a clue.

    Scanning over the maudlin kvetching, persecution complexes, and self pity that emanate continuously from the crowd over at UD, one gets the impression that they believe things like the origins of life and evolution are solely ideological positions taken by “materialists” (read evil, god-hating atheists here) trying to avoid the sectarian god of the ID/creationists. It’s a sectarian war in their minds, and it has to be won with “logic” and “reasoning” (word gaming) only; evidence is irrelevant.

    Every important scientific concept in every field of science is mangled beyond recognition in order to “reason” against science; and all this is done with a pretentious air of superior knowledge of science (witness the enormous, copy/paste word-salad dumps by kairosfocus and BA77, for example).

    In their minds secular science obviously can’t be right. Secular evidence must be irrelevant. They are allowed to reject anything they wish on the flimsiest of excuses. They apparently believe that they can arrive at a “superior” philosophical position that is TRUE based on “reason and logic” and “correct definitions” alone. This apparently eliminates any need to learn any real science or weigh any real scientific evidence. And anybody who can’t follow ID/creationist “reasoning and logic” is, a priori, intellectually inferior and morally bankrupt.

    It’s a boring mantra that has been going on for something like 50 years now.

16. It’s a boring mantra that has been going on for something like 50 years now.

    Boring, but still potentially politically dangerous.  I’m hoping my kids live to see the day when the IDers and other creationists are as safe to ignore as the flat-earthers.
     

17. Upright BiPed August 8, 2012 at 2:45 pm

    For Shapiro, “random” means that all combinatorially possible recombinations should be equally probable. For most biologists, “random” means that the recombination are not biased toward producing beneficial variants.

    Wrong.

    For Shapiro, the specific loci along the sequence where recombination may occur is controlled in order to avoid “bad outcomes” and promote specifically beneficial outcomes. He uses terms like “this benefits” and “is advantageous” in order to illustrate his point.

    Which, of course, would mean that control is “biased toward producing beneficial variants”.

    James Shapiro: Genetic recombination is not random

    Shapiro explicitly denies that the variants are the product of foresight.or that there is any mechanism that has knowledge of future need. What he does assert is the that the mechanism creating variants is more adaptive than just waiting around for point mutations. He compares it with the immune system.

    Maybe off topic, but it illustrates something about the way ID proponents misread things, even when the author has taken the trouble to exclude the ID interpretation.

18. I’m not sure why people think random = equiprobable. The summation of two fair dice is random, but not equiprobable.

19. I’m forming a conspiracy theory regarding UD. They are touching the third rail in the “Science of God” thread, and Kariosfocus hasn’t posted in days. and BA77 hasn’t posted on the thread either. and Joe is not on that thread either.

    I’m wondering with the demise of Hunter’s blog, whether UD is evolving into something more “respectable.” So far it’s just a bump in the road. If it holds for a week I will suspect a trend. 

20. I spent a long time arguing against the motion ‘evolution is random’ elsewhere. Eventually, the penny dropped, but not before I had made myself look pretty dumb (in hindsight). I was strangely reluctant to drop my conception of what ‘random’ meant, and I encounter the same in others from my post-Damascene standpoint.

21. What Shapiro means by nonrandom is that large scale genomic rearrangements are more likely to be survivable an useful than a bunch of point mutations. Some system is editing them and tending to keep them aligned. The tendency for more of them to occur during times of stress is adaptive and “intelligent”. Much like the activity of the immune system.

22. This is discussed at position 2675 of Shapiro’s book in case UPB wants to check it (kindle). The book was free for several days. If UPB looks he well also find the statement that cells do not have foreknowledge of adaptive needs. What they have is a method of generating variants that are more likely to be useful than point mutations. Or in the case of duplications, make it possible to test point mutations in a way that is less likely to be fatal.
    Shapiro obviously considers this to be a kind of intelligence.

23. UB sneaks back to the drawing board:

    UB: 

    Good grief. The argument doesn’t claim the entailments cause information transfer; it says they are the necessary material conditions of information transfer.

    RB:

    So, then, the entailments do not cause the transfer of recorded information/a semiotic state. They are the necessary and sufficient material conditions of (for?) the transfer of recorded information/a semiotic state, yet they are not the cause of the TRI/a semiotic state…

    Semiotic theory is therefore silent on the causes of the phenomenon it purports to explain – the events observed in the transcription of DNA into proteins.

    UB to Steve Fuller at UD, yesterday:

    Our existence (as intelligent agents) leaves a physical footprint in matter. It has very unique material characteristics. We can observe them.

    Those physical characteristics are the same ones that are observed to be the proximate cause of all the molecular organization in every living thing on earth.

    (My emphasis).

    The “very unique material characteristics” being “the entailments,” of course. 

    Retreat noted, UB.

    ID as ‘Science of God’ (aka Theology)

      

24. That is a peculiar thread to try to read.  It appears “rational” and “intelligent” on its surface; but it also repeats dramatically what the entire history of ID/creationism has always done, namely, misunderstand and misrepresent basic scientific concepts at the most elementary level.

    Much of the discussion focuses on “philosophical” and socio/political issues in attempting to find some program that will legitimize ID/creationist notions as well as a pogrom to eliminate “materialistic” and “atheistic” science.  Yet never once in that entire thread does there seem to be any awareness of the fact that they get the basic science wrong all the way down to basic physics and chemistry.  They still want to frame the interpretation of scientific evidence as a war against a stubborn atheistic and philosophical world view.

    Some of the participants over there want very much to distance themselves from the socio/political history of ID/creationism; but they fail to recognize that those very misconceptions and misrepresentations inherited from the sectarian ideologies of the “scientific” creationists still tie them forever to those sectarian anti-science roots.

    No matter how much they try to give lip service to the notion that they are not motivated by narrow sectarian beliefs about a particular deity, they nevertheless can’t seem to hide their intense hatred of the “evils” of secular science and the science community.  Their distain for secular science arises as much from those inherited misconceptions about science as it does from their own sectarian beliefs.

    There are thousands of religions in the world.  To which is science supposed to pander?  They seem to think it has to be theirs.  It is unthinkable to them that science has outgrown the need to pander to any given sectarian belief.  Scientists come from all kinds of religious, non-religious, political, and ethnic backgrounds.  Why should that be a problem?

25. Their distain for secular science arises as much from those inherited misconceptions about science as it does from their own sectarian beliefs.

     I’m not sure how to distinguish these. After all, these misconceptions are necessary entailments of their sectarian beliefs. They could not both correct the misconceptions and retain the beliefs, because the two cannot be decoupled.

26. Yeah, they are very likely coupled in a way that the resulting pseudoscience “justifies” their sectarian beliefs; the scientific concepts were originally – and continue to be – bent and broken to do gussy up their sectarian world view.  But then they turn it around and assert that their pseudoscience is right because of their “superior,” more flexible and inclusive world view.  They see themselves as the true defenders of “following the evidence wherever it leads.”

    Despite the many times I have observed it over the years, I still shake my head at how certain ID/creationists are that secular scientists are such stupid dupes of group-think that they can’t see what is glaringly obvious to a mere layperson.

27. Well, as always, when you start out knowing the Truth, then anything that can be construed to support it counts as evidence, and anything else cannot be evidence. After all, we’ve watched for a long time as individual bits and pieces have been “explained” with countless mutually exclusive special pleadings, which makes sense in a universe inflicted with miracles, where consiliance is irrelevant.

    The nice thing about having a hotline to Absolute Truth is, you are never in doubt as to what’s Untrue. And if the entire scientific enterprise holds to Untruths, what else CAN they be but stupid dupes of group-think?

    The plea at the top of the page (“I beseech you…”) is most marvelously ironic, considering that it requests something so unthinkable it’s beyond comprehension, unable to register. Meaningless specifically to those being addressed.   

28.  

    Evolution requires the existence of heritable recorded information, as well as the existence of a mechanism to transfer that information. Recorded information is properly disambiguated as form (i.e. the form of a thing) instantiated in a material medium. As such, it demonstrates material requirements. Our confidence in the existence and validity of these material requirements is supported by both their logical necessity, as well as their direct observation during the transfer.

    These physical requirements include two arrangements of matter; one acting as a representation of form in order to evoke an effect within a system (where the arrangement is necessarily arbitrary to the effect it evokes), and the second arrangement which serves as a transfer protocol (to materially establish the otherwise non-existent relationship between the representation and the effect). These two arrangements of matter form an (empirically and logically validated) irreducibly complex core which is fundamentally required in order to transfer recorded information (i.e. one is entirely useless without the other). These physical requirements also include the dynamic relationship between the two material arrangements just mentioned; that is, neither of them becomes the effect(i.e. the necessarily arbitrary relationship between the representation its material effect is preserved within the transfer by the protocol). Finally, the requirements include the production of unambiguous function in order to be identified (i.e. an arrangement of matter that does not produce a functional effect cannot be validated as ‘containing information’).

     Upright Biped’s honed version of his irreducibly complex argument. Here

29. In that comment, Upright says:

    Evolution requires the existence of heritable recorded information, as well as the existence of a mechanism to transfer that information…
    People can say that such an irreducibly complex system (one that produces every single instance of biofunction observed on Earth) “does not have a purpose”, but then again, people can say anything…
    …the long and short of it is this: This system is not the product of evolution because evolution itself requires the system in order to exist.

    No wonder he’s afraid to make that argument here. He wouldn’t last five minutes.

    Upright,

    Sure, evolution depends on an inheritance mechanism, but who ever argued that the inheritance mechanism didn’t change over time? Do you really think we’re claiming that the modern protein synthesis system sprang into existence with the very first lifeform? OOL researchers recognize that heritability is a prerequisite for evolution, and that the first mechanism of inheritance must therefore have arisen without the aid of evolution. Indeed, a good deal of OOL research is directed at finding simple replicators that could have arisen spontaneously given conditions on earth at the time.

    Crack a book or two, will you?

30. Upright BiPed,
    Do you mean the origin of life?

    mphilips seems to have the measure of Upright Biped. I wonder where (s)he is getting the info.

    Once you have provided the relevant citations for your many claims then perhaps I’ll engage you, once I know what it is you are actually talking about. Until then, if you are looking for a conversation why not go over to TSZ where you have left the conversation unfinished.

    Here

31. PQ4; checkmate. Isn’t that how the ID game is supposed to go?

32. Upright BiPed repeats his flawed understanding of the discussion here, at UD:

    After all, you’ve already stated that I have “fled” a conversation, leaving that conversation “unfinished”. I would, of course, take immediate issue with that particular positioning statement, given that I was one person defending my argument against 8-12 opponents, non-stop for a period of 130+ days (surmounting well over 1100 comments in the process), while not a single person there actually demonstrated that any of the material observations I had made were false.

    For the nth time, Upright BiPed, this isn’t about any “material observations.”  The problem is that you have failed to answer simple questions about both the logic of your argument and its applicability to ID.

    If you could start by directly addressing the summary provided by keiths, we could make progress immediately.

33. UB at UD:

    I argue that the transfer of the recorded information contained within the genome demonstrates a semiotic state, and therefore will require a mechanism capable of creating a semiotic state.  That’s it. 

    Which brings him to the above request. From which he indeed did flee:

    Upright Biped, please tell us what class of mechanisms you, or semiotic theory, assert is required to create (result in, cause) the entailments/the TRI/a semiotic state.

    Also, please tell us what class of mechanisms you, or semiotic theory, claim cannot create the entailments/the TRI/a semiotic state.

    How about it, UB? Of what value is your “semiotic theory” if its only conclusion concerns causation, yet you remain steadfastly silent on its implications for causation?

34. UB at UD:

    This was eventually conceded during the Skeptical Zone conversation by the main proponent of the argument, and that concession (as well as one other) precipitated my leaving that argument after two months:

    ”Of course if the necessary and sufficient conditions of a phenomenon are present, then the phenomenon is present”. – Reciprocating Bill

    Addressing and misrepresenting the significance of statements I’ve made here from behind the skirts of UD is sheer intellectual cowardice, UB.

35. I think UB is claiming that his semiotic transfer of recorded information is necessary and sufficient for his entailments. This is, after all, what you conceded, and why he considers it useless to continue. I think he is frustrated that you simply refuse to SEE this.

36. Actually, he has claimed both: most recently that the entailments are necessary and sufficient material conditions for the transfer of recorded information. 

    It’s a hopeless muddle. That I do see.

37. Assume that UB saw the logical error at last. Do you seriously expect him to admit that his case rests on a logical fallacy? After all that effort? Better to close that loophole, I guess. I would speculate that UB’s thinking is as muzzy as his writing; generally clear thinking and clear writing go together.

    I also speculate that he dropped out when the questions became so clear and so pointed that they could no longer be obfuscated around. And they couldn’t be given clear answers without chucking his whole thesis. 

38. It appears that they are trying to keep the “logic” going over at UD, here and also here.

    Note in the “ARRRG!” post the assertion that “chance and necessity” cannot produce “semiotic” systems.

    There are at least two major problems, both assertions: (1) living systems are semiotic (that is simply an arbitrary designation) and (2) “chance and necessity” – which, according to them, is simply a random search using a uniform sampling distribution – cannot produce order and/or “function” (the hackneyed monkey/typewriter argument).

    The first assertion assumes the consequent in order to say that living organisms are designed. There is a further underlying assumption that anything that can be cast in a language that suggests a semiotic system is therefore semiotic. Well, the scattering of two electrons off each other can be described as a semiotic system, therefore scattering electrons is semiotic and therefore – according to their argument – requires intelligence for it to happen.

    The second assertion is simply dead wrong; as anyone can check by just looking. Matter condenses, and it has been doing so for the entire history of the universe. We know the rules from several centuries of taking matter apart.

    All ID/creationist misconceptions about evolution and the origins of life are based on fundamental misconceptions about basic physics and chemistry. Henry Morris set them on this path, and they have never deviated from it in any of their deliberations and writings. The behaviors of scrambled letters and numbers are nothing like the behaviors of atoms and molecules. ID/creationists never notice this.

    Arrington’s “ARRRG!” post contains every fundamental misconception and misrepresentation. After something like fifty years of watching this stuff, I don’t think it is possible to teach them otherwise. They don’t want to know.

39. Mphillips will not live to see Monday. I’ve saved the big thread as it is now, but anyone who can should save copies over the weekend.

40. heh I see some cross tribal fire from UD and TSZ. UB has been on the road forever (east of Omaha), I don’t blame him for enjoying a little home field.

41. Some time back, someone asked them whether they found it plausible that for 150 years tens of thousands of the brightest and most knowledgeable people on earth, from every society and nearly every faith, had not only ALL somehow got it wrong, but they all got it wrong in exactly the same way.

    This question, as I recall, brought out the groupthink conspiracy theorists who attributed this to secret atheist cabals, internationally poor education, biased research, and on down the list.

    So this might explain Barry’s touchy frustration at the suggestion that all these people doing all that research for all that time might have actually learned anything. And in all that time, not one of them can prove he’s stopped beating his wife.   

42. Your characterization of this discussion as “tribal” implies a false equivalence.  Upright BiPed’s argument has been utterly destroyed logically and never was shown to support the assertions of ID.

    The science that ID proponents rail against is based on more than fifteen decades of research by tens of thousands of highly educated individuals, and represents the best current explanation for all the empirical evidence that has been observed.  The results of this research are derived by the only method we know of for testing explanations against reality.

    There is no objective empirical evidence that ID purports to explain, there  is no scientific theory of ID, there are no testable predictions that could serve to falsify it.  ID is not science and the views of the denizens of UD are not equal in any way to those of the scientists they denigrate.

    If Upright BiPed’s argument were solid, he wouldn’t need a home field advantage.
     

43. When all of the impressively impenetrable verbiage is stripped away, UPB’s arguments are not empirical despite all his repetition about “material entailments”. The argument has been clarified: biology is very complicated. People design very complicated things because they’re intelligent. Therefore intelligent things MUST have been designed by people-substitutes. And sure enough, if we SAY this is true, we just for the life of us can’t find a single example where it is NOT true.

    Life itself can’t be an exception, because we SAID it’s designed. If we SAY everything was designed, then we have defined away any possible exceptions. And THEN we can say there are no exceptions, and therefore everything is designed. Circular reasoning needs no evidence. 

44. I had rarely looked at the UD site until about nearly a year ago when Elizabeth’s comments caught my attention.

    In many ways, that website is hilarious; the pretentious posturing of the people who live over there is a sight to behold.  The kairosfocus and BA77 characters are among the funniest, with their repeated boatloads of copy/paste crap that they pretend to understand.  Joe G is merely pathetic, and Arrington appears to be the Supreme Lord of the Inquisition.

    It appears that these characters have developed a shtick that attempts to give the impression of high intellectualism and vast knowledge of just about any topic you can name.  They clearly have large reserves of copy/paste material they can dump on anyone, especially an intelligent layperson who can easily back them into a corner.  It’s the old Gish Gallop bundled into a mass-produced package of copy/paste references and rhetorical bullying; and not a bit of substance to any of it.

    It is somewhat amusing to have a window that looks into the pristine habitat of such an earnest bunch of ID/creationists going on about their “serious business” as though there is no other universe out there.  While it is occasionally instructive to see how they think, I tend to lose interest after reading a couple of threads. I don’t find anything that is really new over there.

    This “semiotic” argument is just another pretentious attempt to justify rejecting science without ever having to learn anything about science, especially chemistry and physics.  They try to lock in their sectarian dogma by “reason and logic” alone.  Evidence from the real world remains, as always, irrelevant.

    Petrushka may be right; mphillips probably won’t last very long over there.

45. Flint:

    UPB’s arguments are not empirical despite all his repetition about “material entailments”.

    That’s the bottom line. Somewhere along the way UB learned the word “entailment” and saw it in discussions of the (non)scientific status of ID pressed at UD. In those discussions, the request was made countless times (I know because I made it) for advocates of ID to describe an entailment of ID theory that predicts unique observations, such that failure to make those observations places ID or a tenet of ID at risk of disconfirmation. This was a request for an implication that enables testing of ID by means of modus tollens, the heart of empirical science. There was much writhing, speaking in tongues and serpent handling, but no one supplied such an entailment (and I was banned to boot – this on the thread announcing UD’s then new open moderation policy. It doesn’t get any better). 

    Subsequently – but prior to these TSZ discussions – UB began using “entailment” in his argument, although not in the scientifically useful sense that enables the generation of testable predictions. I pointed to his peculiar use of “entailment” (peculiar in a discussion of scientific empiricism) at the outset of these threads. It is absolutely clear that his early formulation took the wholly logically defective form (A -> B [the entailments]. B, therefore A – which only works if you assume the consequent) – and later morphed into a very different argument: A (his “entailments”) represents the necessary and sufficient conditions for B. B, therefore A.

    Perhaps (to be charitable) the latter is what UB intended to convey from the outset, an intention obscured by his dense, idiosyncratic writing, but I don’t believe that. Rather, it seems inescapable that he didn’t understand the (il)logical implications his own assertions, which eventually evolved in response to withering selective pressures applied here.

    Regardless, his new (or clarified) use of “entailment,” however compatible with Philosophy by Dictionary, does NOT enable the generation and testing of useful empirical implication by modus tollens. Yes, one can say “if A represented the necessary and sufficient conditions for B” that “B ‘entails’ A,” but this is a useless, “cargo cult” application of the term that omits the heart of what is scientifically useful about entailment and implication. Indeed, it works, once again, only by means of an assumed conclusion (that A does, indeed, represent the necessary conditions for B).

    The most recent upshot of all this is that, although UB claims that his only conclusion is that semiotic systems must be caused by something capable of creating semiotic systems (has there ever been an emptier statement?), his theory is silent on causation.

    Also equally clear is the fact that UB ran from this discussion at the moment he was asked to discuss causation.

46. I followed UPB’s logic, I think, though Barry summed it up quite nicely.

    1)Let us assume that all complex systems, and especially biological systems, are semiotic as we define the word.

    2) Let’s assume that semiotic systems can arise only through intelligent design.

    3) By assuming our conclusions as our postulates, we arrive at our conclusions. QED.    

47. They seem to have run out of convincing arguments that living organisms are “obviously” designed, so now they are asserting that they are “semiotic” from which it is supposed to “logically follow” (i.e., proof by assertion) that semiotic systems are always the result of intelligent design.  Air tight (and circular)!  (“In other words, you evilutionists, no counter-evidence from science can help evolution, so don’t offer any; we don’t need to look at no stinkin’ science.”)

    This line of “argument” is particularly childish (“I’m standing in the middle of the room with my eyes closed; therefore I am invisible and invincible.”)

48. patrick, If this isn’t tribal i don’t know what you would consider tribal at this point. I don’t think a requirement for tribal warfare is that the sum of the squared difference of tribal elements is 0. I would
    also argue that utterly destroyed is a bit optimistic. To destroy the argument, one would need to:

    1) Demonstrate that a non-teleological process can generate a semiotic system.
    2) Demonstrate that a teleological process cannot generate a semiotic system.

     

49. Are you serious?

50. junkdnaforlife:

    junkdnaforlife: “I would
    also argue that utterly destroyed is a bit optimistic. To destroy the argument, one would need to:

    1) Demonstrate that a non-teleological process can generate a semiotic system.
    2) Demonstrate that a teleological process cannot generate a semiotic system.”

    Patrick: ” Upright BiPed’s argument has been utterly destroyed logically and never was shown to support the assertions of ID.”

    junkdnaforlife: Patrick was referring to the logic in UPB’s position, which is flawed before any data is analyzed.

    The statement A = (~A) is “logically” flawed. There is no reason to assign the value “Jupiter” to A in this case. The flaw exists without regard to any input data.

    The same goes for the statement “A concludes B” THEREFORE “B concludes A”. It is simply flawed from the point of view of the logic only.