Rob
Posts: 154 Joined: July 2007
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Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 27 2007,18:11) | It makes explicit the fact that what antievolutionists are talking about when they say "information" is "meaning". |
That is indeed what IDists mean, even though none of Dembski's definitions support that interpretation. It just goes to show that IDists don't read Dembski -- they just use his buzzwords and make up their own definitions.
I've already corrected Joe on this, but he's impervious to correction. Joe says: Quote | IOW complex specified information is a term to differentiate between Shannon Information and information that has a specific meaning. | Dembski says the opposite on page 147 of NFL: Quote | To define CSI requires only the mereological and statistical aspects of information. No syntax or theory of meaning is required. ... In particular, the intelligent agent need not assign a meaning to the pattern. ... Neither CSI nor semantic information presupposes the other. This in my view is a tremendous asset of CSI, for it allows one to detect design without necessarily determining the function, purpose, or meaning of a thing that is designed (which is not to say that function, purpose, or meaning may not be useful in identifying a specification, but they are not mandated). |
And Joe still doesn't understand that "complexity" in CSI refers to improbability rather than actual complexity. Says Joe: Quote | CSI stands for Complex Specified Information
Complex meaning it is not simple. Complex meaning it is intricate. And complex because it contains many parts or facets. | I've already pointed out to Joe repeatedly that many of Dembski's examples are, in fact, very simple, eg the Caputo sequence, a simple narrowband signal, and the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. And I've provided many quotes where Dembski explicitly equates specified complexity with specified improbability. But like most IDists, Joe doesn't care about Dembski's actual meaning. After all, it's not like anyone actually uses Dembski's methods.
So Joe doesn't understand specification or complexity, which means that Joe doesn't understand anything about CSI.
-------------- -- Rob, the fartist formerly known as 2ndclass
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