Upright BiPed has been proposing what he has called a “semiotic” theory of Intelligent Design, for a while, which I have found confusing, to say the least. However, he is honing his case, and asks Nick Matzke…
…these three pertinent questions regarding the existence of information within a material universe:
- In this material universe, is it even conceivably possible to record transferable information without utilizing an arrangement of matter in order to represent that information? (by what other means could it be done?)
- If 1 is true, then is it even conceivably possible to transfer that information without a second arrangement of matter (a protocol) to establish the relationship between representation and what it represents? (how could such a relationship be established in any other way?)
- If 1 and 2 are true, then is it even conceivably possible to functionally transfer information without the irreducibly complex system of these two arrangements of matter (representations and protocols) in operation?
… which I think clarify things a little.
I think I can answer them, but would anyone else like to have a go? (I’m out all day today).
Upright BiPed,
No it hasn’t!
What a thing to say!
Can I claim you have conceded something to me simply by qualifying it with, “You didn’t do it willingly”?
You still haven’t shown the other side of the “protocol” you are claiming is used for your “information transfer”.
You also haven’t shown how a state can be “semiotic”.
A state of “anything” is simply it’s, …state…!
Upright Biped,
Here’s what you wrote at The Thinking Atheist:
This contains at least two factually incorrect statements. The first is that Lizzie “claimed she could simulate the rise of recorded information like that in DNA.” In fact, as she pointed out to you in that discussion, she was operating under the assumption that you were using the word “information” in Dembski’s sense (as was reasonable from the context). When you finally clarified that you were using a different definition and further refused to provide a rigorous operational definition for your usage, her claim was no longer pertinent.
This was made very clear to you in that thread and others, yet you continue to impugn Lizzie’s character. Your behavior is either utterly clueless or deliberately dishonest.
The second factually incorrect statement is that Lizzie “ceased responding to the debate.” In fact, she continued to engage with your argument, even to the point of starting threads on this blog. You can’t hide behind cluelessness on this point, you deliberately lied when making that statement.
UB:
As I stated earlier, B may entail A for other reasons. But what does not obtain is “A entails B, therefore B entails A.” And that is the logical form of your argument.
Wrong. An internal contradiction of the “square circle” variety is not the only possible outcome of invalid logic.
“All dogs have four legs. This animal has four legs. Therefore this animal is a dog” doesn’t fail due to an internal contradiction, or generate an impossible conclusion of the square-circle variety. It is certainly logically possible that the animal in question is indeed a dog. Nevertheless, the conclusion “this animal is a dog” does not follow from “All dogs have four legs. This animal has four legs.” To argue otherwise is to invoke invalid logic. Your argument invokes invalid reasoning of the same form.
Regarding my stance toward your “evidence,” I’ve made that quite clear. When reasoning over evidence exhibits a fatal logical flaw, as does yours, no examination of the evidence can repair the argument. When one’s reasoning is not beset by fatal logical flaws, the evidence is back in play, and may (or may not) support an argument.
What is so hard to understand about that?
Upright,
You just wasted far more words evading Bill’s question than it would have taken to answer it — that is, if you had an answer that you weren’t embarrassed to offer.
It’s pretty clear that you don’t.
UBP seems to be using the normal creationist “operational definition” of his terms like “information” and “protocol” and “semiotic” – that is, these terms are operationally defined as “whatever their meaning needs to be for my foregone conclusions to be correct.”
But for sheer verbosity of evasion, he and kairosfocus are battling it out toe to toe…
Let me take this first. My first thread on this blog was this one:
And I seem to recall I specifically invited you to take part. I can’t remember whether you did, but I know you saw it, because you seemed to think, at one point, that I had created this blog specifically for the purpose of providing a venue for our conversation (not true, but I did start it, inter alia, for the purpose of providing a slower-tempo site for UD conversations).
Which is incompatible with your belief that I tried to disengage from the conversation.
I’ll get back to your other comments later.
No, as the rest of my post makes clear. I simply regard it as hypocritical to drop out of a thread in which you have accused someone else of having “ceased responding”. Especially, when I, in fact, have not “ceased responding”. As I said, I know your availability is intermittent, and have done my best to keep the conversation here readily accessible to accommodate this (and I note that you have yet to retract or apologise for your insinuation that I regarded you as “unreliably” present and that my de-stickying of this thread was some kind of cop-out, when in fact, it was part of a number of methods I have employed to keep the thread accessible. I have another in mind.)
I do find your attitude towards me offensive. Nonetheless, I will not “cease responding” to you for as long as you want to continue the discussion. So, at the very least, you should post at The Thinking Atheist a retraction of your untrue claim that I have done ceased responding to you. I have not.
Witness this very post.
ETA: and while I’m on a whinge, I’ve asked you, repeatedly, if you would not address me as “Dr Liddle”, but as “Elizabeth” which is my handle on this blog. I don’t mind all that much, but I do find it a bit annoying, for a number of reasons. And I find your refusal to respect my request mystifying. You do not do it out of respect, clearly, because you show me none, nor out of politeness, as I have specifically asked you not to do it. I can only speculate that you do it to enhance your PhD scalp-count.
So, until you stop, I shall address to you as Dr Biped.
*growl*
Please provide a link to the post or posts of mine you are referring to.
Ah, so you do accept that I have continued to address your argument on this website. Weird. OK, I will check that out (are you averse to links, or what? They aren’t that difficult to copy and paste, and I’ve even put a link button in the menu bar for comments.)
Yes, you had posted a long post which I quoted here:
and which I don’t seem to have responded to (although I note, nor did you appear in the thread). I apologise, and will attempt to do so.
However, “ceased responding” is certainly not an appropriate description of what I have done, as in fact, I returned to the discussion by means of this very thread! Which you knew about when you started that thread at The Thinking Atheist, because you’ve actually taken part in it!
Except for the teensy weensy but crucially important detail that I started this thread!!!!!
To “all”?
“face-saving”? Upright BiPed, without an operational definition of the input and outcome measures we cannot do science! Far from “face-saving” the absence of an operational definition was totally incapacitating!
It had indeed. But I would appreciate a link to the text you are referring to.
Please provide links to context. I cannot provide a full response without them. But my immediate response is: you have not understood what is required of an operational definition. That is not surprising, as I don’t think you are an empirical scientist. However, what you have provided is not an operational definition. I provided a number of possible operational definitions. You agreed to none of them. At one point we seemed close, then you added in something that rendered it useless.
However, if you can provide links to the relevant parts of our conversation, I will comment in more detail.
RB,
Your continued incapacity to formulate a valid counter-argument has been noted as well. As has your inability to refute the validity of any of the observations made. .
It’s been answer several times.
The answer to each and every one of these questions is contained in the answers you’ve already been given. I’ve already told you; recorded information transfer entails the transfer of form in order to induce an effect within a system. A semiotic state entails a process that uses representations and protocols. Furthermore, the material details of these terms have been thoroughly and coherently explained several times, over and over again. Their relationship has been demonstrated. Is it that you cannot comprehend that a process might demonstrate qualities which are properly described by words other than the words used to denote the process itself? Does the phrase ‘carbon-based life’ give you pause as well? This seems to be a rather pronounced stumbling block for you. Are you indicating by this stumbling block that you’ve always considered all recorded information transfer to be semiotic; indeed they are the same thing to you, therefore leaving you at a loss to grasp a distinction between them? So, should someone come along and say “information transfer is semiotic” and provide the details of the argument, you are left baffled by the statement itself – incapable of articulating your thoughts, given that you’ve seen it in no other light? Is that it Bill?
Toronto,
Toronto, do yourself a favor and take off the rose-colored glasses for a moment. Re-read the past posts being made here. There are unwilling concessions appearing across several posts. Don’t be such a partisan that you blind yourself. There is no use in that for anyone, regardless of their position.
Patrick, your comment contains so much bunk, it’s hard to know where to start. Let me help you out cowboy:
You are no better at keeping Dr Liddle’s story straight than she is. Elizabeth Liddle did not start this conversation with ‘simulating Dembski’s CSI’ in mind. You say it’s obvious “from the context”, but what do you know about it, Patrick? Did it ever even occur to you that Dr Liddle wouldn’t be asking me for my definition it she was planning to use Dr. Dembski’s? Dembski’s CSI wasn’t even mentioned in the initial conversation, and when she first brought it up, (even then) she wasn’t suggesting she had to use it. She was actually bouncing around from Shannon, to Demski, to dust collecting on a table in her front window. Were you aware of any of this? Dembski’s CSI was an excuse she latched on to when it became clear that I was going to hold her to a simulation of real world observations – ones which are clearly accessible to coherent, rational observation. Ones that her position, her interest and training, left her completely and obviously unaware of. Furthermore, I did not “finally clarify” that I was using a “different definition” to the stunned amazement of Dr Liddle. I told her in post #2 of page #1 exactly where I was coming from. It was my agreed role to give her a conceptual definition and it was her agreed role to operationalize it. And you know what happened? She offered an operational definition, and I accepted it. This was never about me “refusing to provide a rigorous definition”. This was about Dr Liddle finding out that she would be required to actually demonstrate the rise of information transfer in exactly the same manner every transfer of information had ever been shown to exist (by anyone , anywhere, ever, at any time). She would have to demonstrate it materially within her simulation and that material demonstration left her with an ‘operational definition’ which she could not accept. She could not simulate it, she could not agree to it, and she could not concede to these facts. And Patrick, by the end of this post, when it is blatantly obvious to everyone on the surface of the planet that your comments were completely false and that you owe me an apology for calling me a liar – don’t sweat it. You are exactly the kind of HA that I don’t particularly care what you think. Your entire maneuver is to demonize anyone who doesn’t believe as you do, block rational observations, and repeat. And by the way, I noticed you kept out of this conversation other than to throw out two or three barbs when you could see a break in the action.
JUNE 2nd, 2011
Dr Liddle was talking to BA77 about genetic information and said:
To which I butted-in and replied:
And then she stated:
And in return I said:
June 6th, 2011
June 9th, 2011
Patrick,
Her last post was in November to say she would return to answer my rejoinder. That was 200 days ago.
🙂
Dr Liddle, you may call me anything you wish. It doesn’t matter.
RB,
Nothing Bill. You can’t show that the entailments of recorded information transfer cannot logically demonstrate a semiotic state, so your ‘fatal logical fallacy’ evaporates before your very eyes, and you can’t demonstrate an assumption of the conclusion in either the premises or the definitions of the argument. All of this is on top of the fact that you can’t demonstrate that any of the material observations provided in the argument are false, or even offer a conceptual scenario of recorded information transfer that does not entail the very objects and dynamics you wish to refute.
Keiths,
Bill has implied he could mount a crushing defeat of the semiotic argument. I am not obligated to hold his hand, and have no intentions of doing so. If he could have articulated a valid counter-argument he would have done it by now.
What does a “semiotic state” entail that “the transfer of recorded information” does not? If nothing, why invoke it? If something, then what?
UB:
This remains non-responsive. Here is your conceptual problem:
You’ve insisted that “the transfer of recorded information” is “by necessity” also “a semiotic state.” It follows that there are no transfers of recorded information that are not also semiotic states. Stated another way, the entailments of “the transfer of recorded information” include those of “a semiotic state,” since (according to your argument) “a semiotic state,” and therefore the entailments of “a semiotic state” are always, “by necessity,” present when “the transfer of recorded information” is present. The entailments of the transfer of recorded information include the entailments of semiotic states.
Given the above, your only response to my repeated question is, “A semiotic state entails nothing that the transfer of recorded information does not.”*
Because they therefore can’t be uncoupled, these terms denote a single conceptual entity. There is no “C.” Therefore your response to my characterization of your argument as “A entails B, therefore B entails A” – that we have ignored a third term, “C” – fails. There is no third term.
But perhaps you disagree. They can be uncoupled, and “the transfer of recorded information” and “a semiotic states” are distinct conceptual entities. If so, you can uncouple them by responding to the following question:
What does a “semiotic state” entail that “the transfer of recorded information does not?
*Unless Biped would like to postulate that there are processes that use representations and protocols that do not include the transfer of recorded information.
Asemiotic state entails a process that uses representations and protocols.
I’m curious about the representations and protocols part. That implies you could do virtual biology, in a manner analogous to having a virtual machine n a computer. For example, I can run a virtual TRS-80 computer on my PC.
Can you give me an example of virtual biology. If the representation is truly independent of chemistry, then you should be able to come up with novel coding sequences in a virtual environment, and not be hindered by the problem of emergence.
If you can’t, then you have failed to demonstrate representation. You are just putting a fancy label on chemistry.
I’m still searching for the origins of this conversation, but these links should make the story reasonably clear, and, in particular, that I had Dembski’s definition of CSI in mind when I made my original claim (that I could readily demonstrate that evolutionary processes can generate information).
These links also make it clear that I early retracted my claim when Upright BiPed took issue (justifiably) with my generalisation “IDists” when I was actually referring to Dembski, but was willing to rise to the challenge nonetheless if we could agree on an alternative operational definition of information.
I will do some more searching this evening.
He has crushed it, repeatedly, by showing that it is logically invalid. You responded by making a statement that to the rest of us makes no sense. He asked you a question to clarify it.
For some bizarre reason you won’t answer it. Or you say you have done, but won’t link to where.
Please either link or restate your answer.
Upright Biped,
Elizabeth has already dealt with the issue of originally using CSI as the definition of “information” and of your subsequent active avoidance of providing an operational definition of the term. I’ll limit this response to your other disingenuous claim.
You wrote the following with respect to Elizabeth on March 22, 2012:
In fact, one of the first topics on this blog was “Where does information come from” which derived from Elizabeth’s discussion with you on Uncommon Descent. It was posted on July 27, 2011 and the last comment currently is dated August 18, 2011.
Elizabeth continued the discussion again with “Upright BiPed’s Semiotic Argument for Design” originally posted on October 30, 2011 and to which you responded on UD (where she had been banned) on November 14, 2011. The last comment on that thread is currently dated February 15, 2012.
And here we are on yet another thread dedicated to your argument, started on March 29, 2012.
Not only has Elizabeth not disengaged from the discussion, she has kept it almost continuously alive even after being banned from UD and she has repeatedly tried to engage you in a constructive dialog. You are clearly aware of this and yet you still made the demonstrably false claim that she “ceased responding to the debate.”
You, sir, are a liar.
Well, in fairness to BiPed, he wrote those words in a different forum, aiming them at an audience unfamiliar with the historical facts. And this is a time-honored tradition, dating AT LEAST back to Gish repeating his bullfrog argument to each new audience even after he’d admitted he knew it was false. Yes, but the AUDIENCE didn’t know it!
Patrick,
Keep those dates in mind. And let’s add the one you avoided in order to throw your hissy fit.
UB: Here is my response to you Dr Liddle … DATED: November 14th, 2011
EL: Well I’ll get around to responding to Biped someday … DATED: November 16th, 2011
UB: She never responded to my last post … DATED: March 2nd, 2012
EL: Gee Whiz, I think I’ll start a new BiPed post … DATED: March 29th, 2012
– – – – – – –
Now, perhaps you own a calendar with numbers on it. Or do you need me to point it out to you?
Dr Liddle,
I posted the origins of the conversation.
You are being obtuse. Do you not yet realize that your conversation was recorded? The origin of your claim is RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.
– – – – – – – –
You weren’t referring to Dembski, unless “referring to Demski” you mean referring to me, or Dembski, or Shannon, or even yourself. And you did not retract your original claim until much later (after having to be repeatedly goaded by me to retract). Your second claim that IDist had not provided any argument of merit remains un-retracted to this very day, even though this thread itself is a testament to its falsity.
I must say, I have seen for myself when your ability to carry out an intellectually consistent conversation has been called into question by others. Your post this morning is yet another example of why you engender this response in people. It’s a head shaker.
Bill,
Your big “Tah Dah” is a bust, and it’s taken you far too long to get to the reception.
There is no conceptual problem whatsoever. There is nothing whatsoever logically flawed in the conclusion “Demonstrating a system that satisfies the entailments (physical consequences) of recorded information, also confirms the existence of a semiotic state”. There is neither a logical flaw, nor a contradiction, nor even a countervailing principle at work which would suggest the transfer of information cannot have certain characteristics, and that those characteristic cannot be described as a semiotic state.
You took an 1800 word argument and removed the first 1600 words in order to assert a logical fallacy that does not exist, and never did. You and others routinely (and correctly) view these two concepts (information transfer and semiosis) as descriptions of separate phenomenon. Being shown that one entails another does not signify a logical fallacy; it signifies a claim – a claim mediated by evidence. To support that claim, we have on one side the observations of every example of information transfer ever known to exist, and on the other side we have the fact that not you (nor anyone else) can even conceive of a method to record and transfer information that does not entail the very observations which you are trying to refute.
🙂
Liddle,
He hasn’t, and you can’t either.
By all means; show that it is “logically invalid” for the entailments of recorded information transfer to demonstrate a semiotic state.
Upright BiPed,
Information can be transferred without a “protocol”.
A “protocol” is an “agreed upon process”.
There is no “agreed upon process” between myself and any other entity, required to transfer the “information” from my display to my eyes.
**** READ CAREFULLY ****
The “information transfer” is not semiotic in this case, but the …use… of the information …might.. be, though not necessarily.
***********************
Before you reply, can you please rephrase my point so I can tell if you actually understood it?
Upright Biped,
Please provide links to those posts.
I note that your “200 days” has already shrunk down to no more than 20, even if we accept your unevidenced dates above. Given the many long breaks you’ve taken during the discussion, that hardly supports your assertions.
The fact remains that you posted a false claim on The Thinking Atheist. Elizabeth has pursued this topic extensively, despite your refusal to answer direct questions or engage constructively to define your terms. You lied and you should apologize.
Upright BiPed,
To begin with, a “state” of anything is not semiotic.
The “anything”, is actually in a real state.
By simply asserting a “state” as being semiotic, you automatically win your argument.
I think you are back at the stage where we were discussing whether the statement A entails B necessarily leads to B entails A.
Consider how some fossils are formed by transferring the shape of the organic material to inorganic minerals. It’s a physical process; it transfers information, but it does not involve any intelligence.
You have yet to demonstrate that the process of DNA coding and decoding is abstract, that it can be virtualized, that it is possible to determine from the code itself and not using chemistry, the properties of a coding sequence.
If you cannot show this, then the translation going on in the cell is conceptually equivalent to mineralization. It’s just chemistry.
YOU – I repeat – YOU were the one who chose proteins as an example of your “theory.”
YOU – I repeat – YOU asserted that the construction of proteins involves “procedures and protocols.”
YOU – I repeat – YOU concluded from your assumption that proteins are an example of your theory because YOU asserted that the construction of proteins involve “procedures and protocols” which you already ASSUMED without any evidence whatsoever.
YOU – I repeat – YOU sneered at the notion that star formation involves “procedures and protocols.”
YOU – I repeat – YOU refused to list other molecules that are assembled by “procedures and protocols.”
So it is YOU – I repeat – YOU who assumes what he asserts he proves; namely that proteins involve “procedures and protocols” and are therefore an example of your theory. You have not demonstrated that proteins involve “procedures and protocols;” you simply asserted it.
Why do only proteins involve “procedures and protocols?” Why not other molecules? Where along the spectrum of molecular complexity do “procedures and protocols” replace physics and chemistry?
Your “theory” is built entirely on your assertions that proteins are construced by “procedures and protocols.” You have not demonstrated how “procedures and protocols” or “information” push atoms and molecules around. The reason you have not done this is because you don’t have the slightest clue of how this can happen; you simply assert it. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Sneer all you like; but all you are doing is abusing Elizabeth’s hospitality and generosity to grab a soap box on which to push your crackpot “theory.” Using thousands of words to say nothing is one of the hallmarks of a crackpot.
Ah, I think I’ve found my original claim:
To which Upright BiPed replied:
And I responded:
Then Upright BiPed commented:
And indeed, I have demonstrated “that replication with modification + natural selection [can] introduce “new information” into the genome” which was my original claim, using Dembski’s definition of Complex Specified Information. I did it here.
However, it later emerged that you did not count Dembski’s definition as meaningful. I haven’t found the post yet, but you upbraded me for assuming that you meant CSI.
So we tried to find another operational definition that we could agree on.
And here we still are….
My handle on this blog is not “Liddle”, Upright BiPed, it is “Elizabeth”, and I have asked you politely several times to use it. Please do so.
And will you please answer Reciprocating Bill’s question, or link to where you think you have answered it.
Thank you.
I fully concede that I did not respond to the UD post that I had copied over here, here, having said I would. I will do so. However, nor did you respond on that thread, and between November 16th 2011 and March 2nd 2012, you and I had a number of conversations on the subject at UD.
Here, for instance:
Fresh thread for the UD post of Upright BiPed’s that I never responded to here.
Mike, if you are going emote in uncontrollable outbursts, at least get the story straight.
It’s “representations and protocols”.
Odd that you keep choosing to emote assertions, instead of challenging the material observations themselves.
Upright BiPed on May 30, 2012 at 6:02 pmsaid:
I have no idea why you refuse to post actual links when you quote me. It seems deliberately obstructive.
It has been a difficult conversation to conduct, over two sites and many threads, and unfortunately you did not take me up on my invitation to conduct it here, where it would have been a great deal easier. It is perfectly possible that I have been “intellectually inconsistent”, although obviously I don’t think so, but it is impossible to clarify unless you can supply the actual source of the comments that you think are inconsistent, and, for that matter, string the whole conversation together in date-order, because it was, as I said, conducted over many threads, none of them of our making, and with both of us taking extended breaks.
However, I have now posted your UD response to my post here as a new thread (link above) and I hope we can proceed from there.
Upright BiPed,
Alright, how do “representations and protocols” or “information” move atoms and molecules around?
That was the most intellectually dishonest thing I have ever seen coming from a person of your acumen. Its almost as if I never said “Neo-Darwinism doesn’t have a mechanism to bring information into existence in the first place” and you never replied “Well, tell me what definition of information you are using, and I’ll see if I can demonstrate that it can”
Please do not remove this thread Liz. It’s a shining example of an exasperated ideologue literally grasping at anything.
Of course I will not “remove this thread”. Your suggestion that I would is deeply offensive. Also, my name is Elizabeth, not Liz. Lizzie is fine.
Now, can you explain what you think is “intellectually dishonest” about my post?
Upright BiPed,
What Mike did was challenge you and you came up short by simply “asserting” the above instead of rising to the challenge of his comments on your “theory”.
Elizabeth Liddle,
In the above post you said that Bill had “crushed” the semiotic argument by demonstrating a logical flaw inherent in the conclusion ‘the entailments of recorded information transfer also demonstrate a semiotic state’.
To the contrary, I have shown that Bill’s “fatal flaw” is no such thing, and I’ve used Bill himself to show it. Yet, you made the assertion anyway. So I challenged you to state the case. Your response was to go no where near it.
Since you have declined to support your assertion, I will leave it at that.
Upright,
If you had any confidence in your “theory”, you wouldn’t hesitate to answer Bill’s question. You’d know that your response would hold up to critical scrutiny, and there would be no reason to be evasive.
Yet here you are, dodging and weaving. Why are you afraid of Bill’s question?
In other words, you really have no clue about how “representations and protocols” push atoms and molecules around; you simply assert it.
You have never taken a chemistry or physics class, have you. Either that or you slept through them.
You have made no “material observations;” you have simply asserted.
Are you able to do anything other than insult your host and her guests?
Upright BiPed,
A “semiotic state” cannot exist.
You can say a system is in state “S3”, but that code or label is simply what the observer has decided to be a “reference” to the actual state.
States themselves are not “semiotic” only their labels are.
Show me I’m wrong.
I have the feeling that, if Upright Biped were confident that he had a convincing argument, he wouldn’t keep using distractive and evasive tactics like attacking the intellectual honesty of his critics.
But you have not (to my knowledge) shown any such thing. Let’s go back to Bill’s post:
Is this the part you do not agree with? Do you still insist that there is a third term, “C”? As Bill says:
But, oddly, you refuse to answer that question. So we are left with no “C”, and so your objection that we have ignored “C” fails.
Unless, as Bill says:
Is this your position?
Ah, for some reason I missed your response to Bill:
Well, apart from the fact that “characteristics” are not “states”, no. You’ve missed Bill’s point.
Well, no – it signifies a definition. But let that pass for now.
And so your conceptual problem remains.
Here is Bill’s earlier post (or one of them).
But let me try to rephrase your argument as I understand it:
A cell contains DNA, and the specific sequence of nucleotides in that DNA determine which proteins get made. Thus the DNA contains information, according to Merriam-Webster definition, and it is transferred when protein is made (I’ve asked you several times to say just what information is being transferred to what, but you’ve always handwaved it away – but you seem to regard the protein production part as the transfer, so I’ll stick with that).
That information is transcribed and translated into a protein by means of a protocol, in which triplet sequences can be regarded as “representations” of specific amino acids, and the “protocol” is the sequence of process by which those sequences are “read out” as actual proteins.
Because “representations” and “protocols” are involved in this reading process, you regard the relationship between DNA and protein as a “semiotic state”, by analogy with, for example, the relationship between a written word and its spoken version.
And you claim that no transfer of recorded information is ever observed that does not involve representations and protocols, and that therefore all transfer of recorded information is semiotic.
Do I have this correct?
If so, my response is: what have you done apart from define transfer of recorded information as something that requires representations and protocols, which in turn is synonomous with the term semiotic state?
Because we have several times proposed examples of information transfer that you have rejected, apparently because it doesn’t involve representations and protocols (like those cosmological examples Mike gave). So your argument seems to boil down to:
Recorded information transfer is transfer of information that is achieved using representations and protocols, also known as “a semiotic state”.
Which isn’t an argument at all. It’s just a definition.
This might get to the question that Elizabeth was asking earlier about what any of this has to do with ID.
UB has already revealed his agenda by adopting the anthropomorphized description of complex molecules that comes from the socio/political culture of ID/creationism. This picture is already implicit in his application of what he wants to call “representations and protocols.”
The words don’t matter; it is the implicit picture he retains in his mind and projects onto the material world. This appears to be why he claims he is working from “material observations.” He is not; he has simply reified the assumptions of the ID/creationist community and is asserting them as obviously given.
Placing proteins in a larger context of molecules of increasing complexity exposes the problem. He now has to answer why something like water molecules are not examples while proteins are examples. But he refuses to do that.
What he does instead is attempt to bury his reification of ID/creationist misconceptions about matter in an increasingly complex labyrinth of obfuscation and condescension.
I am guessing that the connection with ID has already been made in his mind because of what he asserts about proteins. His excruciatingly complex “semiotic theory” tries to make those assumptions appear to be an obvious given – he simply will not address them – while the “theory” simply gussies it all up and packs it into an air-tight bundle of circular reasoning made to look like “advanced philosophy.”
Another would be ID “theorist” bites the dust.
But, oddly, he accuses us of being anthropomorphic.
His challenge remains interesting: to explain how a code could evolve.
But he hasn’t presented an argument that it couldn’t.
I’m disappointed that he never presented a rigorous enough definition to allow his claim to be tested. I’m quite curious about how complex a simulation of physical and chemical properties would be required to result in that kind of code evolving. I may yet take a stab at it in my copious free time.
Please do let us know if you pursue it.