It seems that another response to VS needs to be headlined, the second within a few days. We are seeing here the sort of breakdown of reasoning that seems to be implicit in making ever more determined objections to the design inference on FSCO/I as sign. While we are at it, let’s take advantage of media features of an OP:
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>> This, from 74 above, is a New-Speak classic:
Not unless one tries to sneak in teleology into the word ” directed” , I think Delicate Arch is a non intelligent controlled/ directed configuration.Natural forces cause the pattern of elements , the design.Since ID is agnostic on the mechanism of design,it cannot say where the Fsco/I it detects came from, it may just be in error in its elimination of natural causes as the source, will all due respect.
Delicate Arch and the like natural bridges etc are NOT directed, they are observed to be the products of blind chance and mechanical necessity in concert. They do not exhibit FSCO/I as features of one and the same aspect.
[Let us contrast Mt Rushmore and observe how we readily tell the designed from the natural feature, no matter how dramatic:]
[–> A wireframe of Venus de Milo (HT: Autodesk ) may help us understand how functionally specific nodes-arcs patterns help define interactive functional relationships in ways relevant to much more than statues that are portraits:]
[ . . . for instance, compare a mesh of gear teeth, bearing in mind how an accurate cylindrical disk must be oriented, centred, have a keyed shaft accurately at centre, then just the right number of teeth must be cut in just the right profile to integrate with the rest of the power transmission machinery; necessarily involving a compromise between an integral number of evenly spaced teeth and the irrational nature of pi. That readily puts us beyond 125 bytes worth of descriptive, specifying information . . . we must not allow familiarity to fool us into imagining that gears are “simple.” They have much to teach us about FSCO/I and design. In the case of the main gear for the 6500 reel, the recess for drag washers must be accurately centred and cut in, bearing in mind strength requirements under drag load. A common upgrade, carbontex washers, can lead to stripping off of the brass teeth due to overly high settings . . . yet another subtle set of interactions and constraints. It is worth noting that apparently the very first PhD granted in Engineering in the USA, to Josiah Willard Gibbs, was for his study of spur gears:]
[ . . . where, of course, circuit diagrams are classic cases of node-arc patterns, e.g. an analogue computer circuit that uses operational amplifiers in integrator and simple gain circuits, potentiometers etc:]
[. . . with also, an oil refinery as another classic case of an integrated functionally specific network:]
[–> Observe, how the second decision diamond below uses a joint complexity-specificity criterion, relating to a single aspect:]
Your objection now is trying to force into the word, directed, just what directed does not mean, its opposite. And it does so with a snide accusation that the normal established meaning of directed “sneaks” in purposefulness.
Sorry, ah nuh so it go, mon!
Collins Dict: >> intelligence(?n?t?l?d??ns)n
1. (Psychology) the capacity for understanding; ability to perceive and comprehend meaning
2. good mental capacity: a person of intelligence.
3. news; information
4. (Military) military information about enemies, spies, etc
5. (Military) a group or department that gathers or deals with such information
6. (often capital) an intelligent being, esp one that is not embodied
7. (Military) (modifier) of or relating to intelligence: an intelligence network.
[C14: from Latin intellegentia, from intellegere to discern, comprehend, literally: choose between, from inter- + legere to choose] >>Collins Eng Dict: >> direct (d??r?kt; da?-) vb (mainly tr)
1. to regulate, conduct, or control the affairs of
2. (also intr) to give commands or orders with authority to (a person or group): he directed them to go away.
3. to tell or show (someone) the way to a place
4. to aim, point, or cause to move towards a goal
5. (Communications & Information) to address (a letter, parcel, etc)
6. to address (remarks, words, etc): to direct comments at someone.
7. (Theatre) (also intr) to provide guidance to (actors, cameramen, etc) in the rehearsal of a play or the filming of a motion picture
8. (Film) (also intr) to provide guidance to (actors, cameramen, etc) in the rehearsal of a play or the filming of a motion picture
9. (Classical Music) (also intr)
a. to conduct (a piece of music or musicians), usually while performing oneself
b. another word (esp US) for conduct9 . . . . [C14: from Latin d?rectus; from d?rigere to guide, from dis- apart + regere to rule] >>
VS, your quarrel here is with the English language and with high quality dictionaries. Sorry, New-Speak agenda rejected.
Back on the design inference on FSCO/I as inductively grounded sign, what is OBSERVED is FSCO/I.
[CASE 1: Abu 6500 C3 Fishing Reel]
[CASE 2: Protein Synthesis in the living cell involving co-ordinated nanotech machinery and control tapes bearing 4-state element digitally coded information per A/C/G/U . . . a typical protein involving 300 AA and requiring 900 4-state elements to code it as well as a stop to impose algorithmic halting and special initiation sequences as well, for info carrying capacity 1,800 bits:]
[CASE 2a: The following comparison may be helpful:]
[CASE 3: The wider metabolic cycles and processes in the cell, showing protein synthesis as a component in the upper left hand corner:]
OBSERVED, per Wicken wiring diagram functional, information-rich organisation. As in:
‘Organized’ systems are to be carefully distinguished from ‘ordered’ systems. Neither kind of system is ‘random,’ but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms [i.e. “simple” force laws acting on objects starting from arbitrary and common- place initial conditions] and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an [[originally . . . ] external ‘wiring diagram’ with a high information content . . . Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. It is non-random by design or by selection, rather than by the a priori necessity of crystallographic ‘order.’ [“The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 77 (April 1979): p. 353, of pp. 349-65. (Emphases and notes added. Nb: “originally” is added to highlight that for self-replicating systems, the blue print can be built-in.)]
What is further massively observed is that objects, events, systems, processes etc are often causally shaped by distinct causal factors.
For instance, aspects may represent:
a: blind chance [–> a die tumbles and settles to a value, sky noise id detected on a radio, flicker and Johnson noise are observed in an electronic circuit . . . which points to various ways chance behaviour arises . . . ], and/or
b: mechanical necessity [the die, dropped under gravity undergoes 9.8 N/kg initial acceleration per F = m*a] and/or
c: intelligently directed configuration aka design [a die can be volitionally set to a reading by hand or it can be artfully loaded].
This, we separately and directly experience and observe. In a context where we have no reason to hold or conclude that we exhaust the set of possible intelligences with power to contrive objects etc.
If you would dismiss this basic reality, the very act of composing an objection is an instance of design of an entity exhibiting FSCO/I.
Further to all this, you are back at undermining the logic of science, viz induction, by way of straining to find a rhetorical dismissal for inferring design on empirically observed and tested reliable signs such as FSCO/I.
What is observed is FSCO/I expressed in an object etc. Start with text of posts — including your own — in this thread.
Separately, design and its effects are experienced and observed. Including, on a trillion case basis, FSCO/I. (Start with, the Internet full of web pages etc. Move on to 5,000 years of recorded history and technology. Think about nuts, bolts, gears, pencils, pages of text, bricks and more.)
It turns out there is just one empirically verified adequate cause of FSCO/I.
And no, we do not have to reduce the observation or experience of design to a blindly mechanical computation connected to a set of actuators in order to properly infer design. That is a back-door smuggling in of a self-refuting agenda of reduction of mind to blind mechanism. Haldane, long ago aptly rebuked and refuted all such:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
Instead, we are fully entitled to accept the reality of designs and designers as empirically well grounded first plausible facts. We do not have to undertake an absurd infinite regress on mechanisms or go in mechanistic circles in order to do so. We start from our well grounded ability to function as cognitive agents in a common world in which we have common experiences of designing and of designed objects etc with associated characteristics.
On well substantiated induction, we are then entitled to infer on cases of observed FSCO/I that their best current (and given the needle in haystack search challenge, prospective) explanation is similar to that trillion item knowledge base — intelligently directed configuration, aka design.
Not, by somehow sneaking in design into our thought question-beggingly or similarly demanding reduction of everything to a mindless and blind mechanistic process predetermined as required foundation, but based on well founded direct inductive reasoning.
Where, it can be readily shown that just 1,000 bits of FSCO/I comes from a config space from 000 . . . 0 to 111 . . . 1 that involves 1.07*10^301 possibilities. Where also, we see that a blindly mechanistic needle in haystack, chance and necessity search on the gamut of our observed cosmos (~10^80 atoms, 10^17 s, 10^14 attempts to examine and assess configs per atom per s) will be drastically overwhelmed by the scope to be searched. That is, turning the number of atom level, fast chem rxn rate observations (10^111) into a metaphorical straw, the scope to be searched would be a cubical haystack so large that it would dwarf the observed cosmos within as a comparatively tiny blob.
Blind needle in haystack search is not an analytically plausible source of FSCO/I. Intelligent agents routinely produce it — including text of comments here at UD meant to object to, dismiss or deride it — and demonstrate that intelligently directed creative configuration is sharply distinct from what blind chance and mechanical necessity may reasonably do.
This is often in turn dismissed as appeal to “big numbers.”
Sorry, the search challenge is a real issue that must be faced. Dodgy rhetoric is not good enough.
And so, intelligently directed configuration is not question-begging but an inductive inference to well founded explanation. On pain of trying to burn down inductive reasoning.>>
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We need to carefully ponder what comes out more and more as determined objectors strain every nerve to undermine the design inference on empirically tested signs such as FSCO/I. END