From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 10:32:22 EDT
>From: "Josh Bembenek" <jbembe@hotmail.com>
>
> That's why they call it complex, SPECIFIED, information.
>
Josh is correct here. The Universal Probability Bound requirement is only
one of two. (That still has the P(X|N) incomputability problem, but that's
another matter.) The other requirement is that the structure in question be
"specified."
In No Free Lunch, however, Dembski does some rather peculiar things with
that requirement. He first goes to great lengths to present specification as
the displaying of a "detachable" pattern that is independent of the
structure itself, and he illustrates this concept with examples of letter or
number sequences. Lots of mathematical talk here.
However, when it comes time to determine whether or not the bacterial
flagellum is specified, Dembski settles it in four sentences that
effectively assert that for biotic systems, specification is equivalent to
biotic function. For the flagellum, "rotary propulsion system" is the biotic
function that is employed to settle the specification requirement.
Howard Van Till
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