Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s “complex specified information”

Elsberry, Wesley R.; Shallit, Jeffrey

doi:10.1007/s11229-009-9542-8

Cited by 18 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Baggott [77] plausibly criticized that such concepts of information are more of a religious, philosophical or metaphysical nature than classical physical science, based on and verified against observational facts. This assessment applies similarly to explanations for information as a result of divine interference [78,79]. In this paper, "information" and the related concept of "values" are not considered intrinsic physical terms, despite the fact that transfer of information and value is always accompanied by a transfer of fundamental physical quantities such as energy and entropy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entropy and the Self-Organization of Information and Value

Feistel

Ébeling

2016

Entropy

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Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Clausius, and Léon Brillouin considered certain "values" as key quantities in their descriptions of market competition, natural selection, thermodynamic processes, and information exchange, respectively. None of those values can be computed from elementary properties of the particular object they are attributed to, but rather values represent emergent, irreducible properties. In this paper, such values are jointly understood as information values in certain contexts. For this aim, structural information is distinguished from symbolic information. While the first can be associated with arbitrary physical processes or structures, the latter requires conventions which govern encoding and decoding of the symbols which form a message. As a value of energy, Clausius' entropy is a universal measure of the structural information contained in a thermodynamic system. The structural information of a message, in contrast to its meaning, can be evaluated by Shannon's entropy of communication. Symbolic information is found only in the realm of life, such as in animal behavior, human sociology, science, or technology, and is often cooperatively valuated by competition. Ritualization is described here as a universal scenario for the self-organization of symbols by which symbolic information emerges from structural information in the course of evolution processes. Emergent symbolic information exhibits the novel fundamental code symmetry which prevents the meaning of a message from being reducible to the physical structure of its carrier. While symbols turn arbitrary during the ritualization transition, their structures preserve information about their evolution history.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entropy and the Self-Organization of Information and Value

Feistel

Ébeling

2016

Entropy

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“…In later work, Dembski (2002b) invokes mathematical information theory and introduces the notion of complex specified information, where in line with his earlier account, 'complex' refers to an extremely improbable event. Dembski's account is more complicated than this, 7 but the details of his mathematical account do not concern us here and have been rigorously criticized by others (Elsberry and Shallit 2011;Felsentein 2007;Fitelson et al 1999;Häggström 2007;Olofsson 2008;Sarkar 2007), with some critics pointing to Dembski's extensive use of irrelevant mathematical formalism, which may impress his intended audience while concealing the actual incoherence of his account (Perakh 2004;Sarkar 2011).…”

Section: Small Probability Arguments and The Nature Of Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In sum, its proponents portray ID as a modest approach, which merely attempts to infer the existence of some kind of design from natural phenomena. However, no such inference to design can be made without (a) providing a specification of the nature of this design and the operation of the designer (Sarkar 2011;Sober 2008), and (b) showing that intelligent design fits the evidence better than other relevant theories, in particular evolutionary theory (Elsberry and Shallit 2011;Sober 2008).…”

Section: Comparative Testing and The Nature Of Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intelligent Design and the Nature of Science: Philosophical and Pedagogical Points

Brigandt

2013

The Philosophy of Biology

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This chapter offers a critique of intelligent design arguments against evolution and a philosophical discussion of the nature of science, drawing several lessons for the teaching of evolution and for science education in general. I discuss why Behe's irreducible complexity argument fails, and why his portrayal of organismal systems as machines is detrimental to biology education and any understanding of how organismal evolution is possible. The idea that the evolution of complex organismal features is too unlikely to have occurred by random mutation and selection (as recently promoted by Dembski) is very widespread, but it is easy to show students why such small probability arguments are fallacious. While intelligent design proponents have claimed that the exclusion of supernatural causes mandated by scientific methods is dogmatically presupposed by science, scientists have an empirical justification for using such methods. This justification is instructive for my discussion of how to demarcate science from pseudoscience. I argue that there is no universal account of the nature of science, but that the criteria used to judge an intellectual approach vary across historical periods and have to be specific to the scientific domain. Moreover, intellectual approaches have to be construed as practices based on institutional factors and values, and to be evaluated in terms of the activities of their practitioners. Science educators should not just teach scientific facts, but present science as a practice and make students reflect on the nature of science, as this gives them a better appreciation of the ways in which intelligent design falls short of actual science.

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“…Suffice to say that its existence is hotly contested by philosophers, scientists, and Dembski's fellow mathematicians. (See, for instance, Elsberry & Shallit, 2003;Stenger, 2003. ) But even if Dembski were right-even if there did not exist other naturalistic hypotheses which could explain the complexity of the natural world-what would follow?…”

Section: Id and The Defeat Of Darwinmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is wrong with intelligent design?

Dawes

2007

Int J Philos Relig

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While a great deal of abuse has been directed at intelligent design theory (ID), its starting point is a fact about biological organisms that cries out for explanation, namely "specified complexity" (SC). Advocates of ID deploy three kind of argument from specified complexity to the existence of a designer: an eliminative argument, an inductive argument, and an inference to the best explanation. Only the first of these merits the abuse directed at it; the other two arguments are worthy of respect. If they fail, it is only because we have a better explanation of SC, namely Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

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Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s “complex specified information”

Cited by 18 publications

References 58 publications

Entropy and the Self-Organization of Information and Value

Entropy and the Self-Organization of Information and Value

Intelligent Design and the Nature of Science: Philosophical and Pedagogical Points

What is wrong with intelligent design?

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