“it should be possible to use specified complexity detection to differentiate between functional (coding or structural) DNA sequences and those alleged to be junk”

It’s not possible to do this as far as I can determine. Specification is determined empirically, not mathematically. For instance, the difference between a flagella and a random pile of protein is that the flagalla has specified function (propelling bacteria) whereas the random pile of protein does not. Both have similar levels of complexity. Functionality is what separates complex information from complex specified information and the functionality is observed not calculated. You are presuming that functionality is a calculable property when in fact it is not.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com...../503280301

Karl Kraus noted: “Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.”
(Half-Truths and One-and-Half-Truths :73)

First off, some biologists reject the idea that information is transmitted (this is the old Shannon-Weaver explanation). Secondly, it depends on what you define information as. Your comment about eye color, finger length, etc presupposes how these traits are “passed on”. Information occurs, not by generation (that is a naive view), but how information is inhibited. As I have noted earlier from Shaw and Turvey (1999), theyy claim that, “Modern physics is not about finding the causes that make something’s existence lawfully necessary. It is about the exclusion or censorship of those things not allowed. And in the case of change, no positive cause for it is required of even possible. For one thing to exist rather than another, it needs to be most compatible to become actualized” (116). Thirdly, information is gathered through what is called circular causality. Information is found to be emergent (I know Dembski wrote against emergence, but he tried to find a causal mechanism in ONE entity, instead of realizing that emergence occurs between two different entities). Information, as I stated above, co-evolves with the organisms motor activities. This is found in the enactive approach in neurophenomenological studies with Francisco Varela, Natalie Depraz, Evan Thompson, etc.

Thus, two different conceptions of information occur. ID proposes that specification must occur through a mental activity. How I am defining it (and others in the ecological and enactive approaches) view that specification is not mental, but rather natural. The natural specification means that the natural world must be redifined. The natural world is now defined as the co-evolution with organisms that is meaningful through this co-evolution. In fact, the meaningful world occurs without organisms if information is defined as a lively interaction field of energy, as Swenson (in my above post) defined it.

To conclude, what you say abouve eye color, finger length, etc., is irrelevant since eye color is not just color (as Gibson has shown, the color of a banana is information about its ripeness). All information is defined as meaningful action. As was seen above, the genes as you speak about are the emergent activities (from exclusion of information) of highly interacting information. Thus, different interactions is how children are born with certain traits. What you are speaking about are the constraints of information. However, constrainsts are still considered action based (another way to think of them are obstacles).

As I have said before, ID has not read the contemporary literature on these subjects. The world does not have to be defined as either material or immaterial. The mind does not have to defined as such either. These have profound implications for how information is defined as well. Information is not these logical names, such as eye color, finger length, etc. These enities occur where the other information is weakened, not generated by some mentalist mind.

Conor

Now, let us return to the point of storage. Prior to transmission of genetic traits, does this information exist anywhere? Is it held in que anywhere? Yes on both counts.

In addition, the post of Penrose against the mind being materialistic does not confirm an immaterial mind. Materialism and immaterialism have the same problems, which deals with (using phenomenological terms) pure beings. A better way to interpret the organism is the both/and structure of quantum mechanics and Eastern thought processes. As James J. Gibson states, “An affordance [what an object means] is neither subjective nor objective, or it is both if you like. It cuts across the subject/object dichtonomy to show its inadequacy” (Ecological Approach to Visual Perception pg. 129). As he saw it, information specifies both the observer and the environment, thus information is not stored anywhere. Furthermore, information (in the natural world) is ambiguous (which moves away from any materialistic interpretation). It is through interaction of the organism with the world that brings the ambiguous to the concrete. This is known as squeezing out degrees of freedom (Turvey and Shaw, 1999; “Ecological Foundations of Cognition I. Symmetry and specificity of animal–environment systems” in Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of Action, Intention and Emotion Ed. by Freeman and Nunez). What is commonly seen as stored information is actually the shaping of the world from the interaction of the organism where the world becomes familiar through this shaping. But it is not stored anywhere.

Conor

I have proposed one way to test ID itself — rather than using it to cast aspersions about evolution. For the 3rd time, by treating DNA as an information stream, it should be possible to use specified complexity detection to differentiate between functional (coding or structural) DNA sequences and those alleged to be junk. If the ID camp were to formulate, develop and run such a research project (heck, just proposing it would be huge), many of the accusations of ID as pseudo-science (due to its lack of testability) would vanish. How about it?