It is true that Glenn and I have made peace over some issues recently.
Being at peace with Glenn is not much fun though (kind of like Peter
Pan being at peace with Captain Hook, both need a worthy opponent :).
So, I have to take issue with your statement that specificity requires a
specifier. This reminded me of a little argument I got into on talk.origins
awhile back. One fellow over there was trying to dismiss the Anthropic
Principle saying that fine-tuning begs the question of a fine-tuner.
This is not the case though since fine-tuning can be defined objectively
in such a way that it does not beg the question. Similarly, I don't
thing specified complexity is begging the question. For example, Bradley
quotes Orgel as saying "Living organisms are distinguished by their
specified complexity. ...". I don't think Orgel concluded from this that
there must be a specifier ;-). I think the specified part of specified
complexity is just the observation that things like proteins display the
property that functionality requires a bit of specificity. One example would
be invariant sites in proteins. As I mentioned in one of my replies to
Steve Jones on this, the problem comes about in trying to relate
specified complexity to information content in some objective way.
This is where the issue of "meaning" comes in and is also I think
the main point you are getting at (i.e. the above is more or less a
nit pick).
GM:=====
>I
>suspect when they use complexity they mean organized in Yockey's terminology
>(see p. 129 Mystery of Life's origin). But they make a mistake when they say,
>
>"A random arrangement of letters in a book is aperiodic but contains little if
>any useful information since it is devoid of meaning." (p. 129)
>
>The footnote attached has Yockey telling them that meaning is extraneous to
>the sequence. I suspect he was telling them that meaning does not equal
>information but they didn't understand that.
>
Yes, I think you're assessment is correct. Its really hard for me to find
too much fault with Bradley on this though. Awhile back I spent a lot
of time looking through the literature to find examples of this type of
thing. What one finds is a whole host of very prominent folks (including
Manfred Eigen) who have tried to use information theory to separate
messages with "meaningful information" from random sequences.
>But since a highly organized sequence and a highly random sequence look alike,
>one can not tell what process produced the sequence.
>
>"Thus both random sequences and highly organized sequences are complex because
>a long algorithm is needed to describe each one. Information theory shows
>that it is fundamentally undecidable whether a given sequence has been
>generated by a stochastic process or by a highly organized process. This is
>in contrast with the classical law of the excluded middle (tertium non datur),
>that is, the doctrine that a statement or theorem must be either true or
>false. Algorithmic information theory shows that truth or validity may also
>be indeterminate or fundamentally undecidable."~Hubert Yockey, Information
>Theory and Molecular Systems, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),
>p. 82.
>
>This undecidability renders Thaxton, Bradley,and Olson's statement above
>unusable if they meant to imply a specifyer of the information.
>
Again, I tend to agree on this (man, its really tough agreeing with Captain
Hook, where's my worthy opponent? :). More importantly, IMHO, it makes
it very difficult to relate specificity directly to information content, thus
excluding the unseemly situation where random sequences contain the
maximal information content. I think it's this idea that really bugs folks,
not just Bradley.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
Ohio State University