My question still stands.
First, ID doesn’t have any “scientific arguments,” because science isn’t advanced by arguments.
From your comments, I’m not sure you understand what a metaphor is. Even if you do, I disagree. I think it’s better to point out, as I did to Vlad above, that one can’t even describe most biological mechanisms except in metaphors.
I agree with you, but I’m not sure you are getting @Mercer right. My reading of his excellent comments is that he was focusing on a rigorous definition of “code” that requires the existence of abstraction. And he has been ably explaining/defending the use (indeed the necessity) of metaphors in biology. Combining those two, I think it’s probably not accurate to say that he is “claiming the genetic code isn’t a code,” without noting the context. YMMV.
But back to our agreement: I think it is strategically unwise to insist that biological design isn’t real, or that information in biology isn’t a “code” or whatever. (Dan Dennett argued as much about design.) Whatever anyone means by a code, the metaphors of transcription, translation, reading, writing, and editing are more than just helpful: they capture what is happening. Such things can and do come about without the help of pitifully insecure, genocide-loving, hate-inspired, xenophobic Iron Age deities (not to mention the Morrígan), and that fact is more inspiring than any of them.
If we apply this perspective to a cosmic time scale, then the entire universe was just a giant mechanical system, up until a point in time after early non-abstract biological processes began. What can we say about the realm of biology that allowed information processing systems(the vision system as 1 example, computer processors as another) to eventually arise from a mechanical system?
In otherwords; What is it about biology that makes it a necessary precursor to information processing systems?
And why does it end here
Big Bang - stellar formation - heavy elements - minerals - planets - biology - ends here
Will something eventually be added after biology, to this line of progression?
Alright. I don’t really know much about Stephen Meyer.
I guess what you are saying is that the code is like a mechanical code. It’s just matter doing as matter would be expected to do, and not like a man made code that requires an assigned value or abstraction.
I can understand that. That’s why I tried to define information in my first post. I don’t think we should we should come up with different ways of defining things like codes and information or, just to fit it in the paradigm or model that we want to fit it in to.
I am not Stephen Meyer or some other guy. I am actually trying to not do the thing that I think we should not do.
I think you are misunderstanding. The abstraction that is an essential part of any code is created by its designer(s). That is the logical flaw in arguing that merely because we use the metaphor “code,” that there was a designer.
As a biologist with decades of experience, I have no idea what you mean by “early non-abstract biological processes.”
Lots, using oodles of metaphors. Loads of information is transmitted without abstractions.
So when Darwin says that the Origin is one long argument, that means it didn’t advance science?
What is the difference between a natural and a created code?
I did use the present tense. Do you have anything newer than 165 years?
Darwin said other things that aren’t very consistent with that.
I would also say that the continuing emphasis on what Darwin wrote and said (and not enough on what Wallace observed, as well as the hypothesis testing since then) is a major reason why so few laypeople accept evolutionary theory and think it can be countered with mere arguments from those who deal exclusively in rhetoric today.
I doubt it. Maybe you have an odd understanding of what an argument is. Darwin, as do all scientists, took a numer of facts, connected them, proposed a hypothesis to explain them, and then explained why the facts support his hypothesis. That isn’t an argument? I’d say that any time we test a hypothesis, we’re making an argument.
I recall a Darwin quote, which I can’t at the moment summon up, to the effect that a fact is useless unless it’s used to support some argument.
Sorry for messing things up here, but this is one of those instances where I disagree with many other “evolutionists” in that I think the genetic code is a perfectly good example of a code. Not just like one, that it is one. A genuine code. Of course anyone can offer up their preferred definition of a code (one in which the assignments between symbols, or other entities, are entirely arbitrary, or abstract, for example) and I’ll just respond I think such a definition is unnecessarily restrictive. It is enough for me that the translation system can “interpret” one molecular polymer into another almost entirely dissimilar one, in a systematic manner in which triplets of one polymer can be highly reliably translated into monomers of another, for me to consider it a genuine example of a code.
I just think there’s good evidence that the genetic code and translation system are products of a long evolutionary process. Still a code in my mind.
I do think that @Mercer probably intended to help @VladtheDestroyer, a curious chap who seems to have lapped up a lot of BS “arguments” from The Usual Suspects but needs to get grounded in facts.
But I will go further than @John_Harshman here and say that science IS (to a large extent) arguments. Yes, we have a lot of concepts and theories that we now consider to be facts, and we don’t shelve those with “arguments” anymore. But the advancing of science (that was @Mercer’s topic) is dependent on arguments, especially when causation is the question. You will find thousands of examples of “we argue that” in papers on all topics, as authors take a position on a question with more than one potential answer. Here’s one that jumped out at me today: consider the abstract of this paper, a review article on cancer evolution. The authors are making a clear argument, which they underline explicitly and which they offer as a way to advance the science.
We are all making arguments, all the time, in science.
Nope. Would an argument have spurred anyone to do anything if Darwin had simply sat in his English garden, then offered an argument bereft of any of the observations he had made over decades?
The ID movement offers virtually pure arguments. Are they advancing science? This is the distinction I am trying to convey.
You will indeed. I find such language to be a red flag, as I do the thousands of cases of “prove,” as all truly scientific conclusions are provisional.
It would work better if they more modestly offered a hypothesis instead.
We make arguments to grant review committees. We are implicitly arguing that our proposal is better than the others they have to review.
We make arguments to editors, explicitly arguing that our manuscript is worthy of publication in their esteemed journals.
What those true, more pure arguments have in common is that they are fundamentally subjective. While they are parts of science, they are not its core.
The scientific method, regardless of the sloppy language one uses to describe it, is a rejection of the notion, “Hmmm…that argument makes sense. I agree.” The scientific method (attempting to falsify a hypothesis) requires us to do the opposite: “What do I expect to see if I’m WRONG?”
That’s a really good question. You already noted that a natural code may be “mechanical”, operated on by the laws of physics or chemistry. I’d say a created code may have some attached meaning, written out by the sender and decoded by the receiver.
It’s possible for a sender to create codes that have no meaning, or are random in meaning (not very useful, but possible).
It’s also possible for a receiver to interpret some random or meaningless event and infer meaning from it. I don’t think imagining or inventing some meaning qualifies the event as a code. If the receiver turns around and sends the interpreted meaning to another receiver, then it become a code.
I think the difference here is the intent to convey information; created codes require intent.
Abstraction is the core of a genuine code. The efficacy of the code is the degree to which it is arbitrary. Very few codes are entirely arbitrary.
Take this code that we all agree is genuine:
Confirm Your Identity
We’ll send a verification code to make sure it’s you
Text/SMS Code to *********
Email code to co***@***.com
Why do we agree that this a code? What is its essence?
I agree that if the aim is secrecy (as opposed to information storage capacity, ease of replication, translation, compressibility, and so on) then the abstraction and arbitrariness are key to code efficacy.
Then we don’t agree, because I’m arguing that the abstraction is the essential criterion for describing something something as a nonmetaphorical code.
You and I see science differently. Oh well.
I have a pretty good idea of which Darwin quote you have in mind, though I’m not sure what the original source is. Massimo Pigliucci has it as follows:
“How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!”
The end of theory in science? - PMC
Though I am neither a philosopher nor a biologist, I will go ahead and express my agreement with Darwin on this. Also I would agree where Pigliucci, who is both a philosopher and a biologist, says that science advances “only if it can provide explanations, failing which, it becomes an activity more akin to stamp collecting.”
Yes, that was it.
I think there’s a misunderstanding here.
I’m saying that science provides far better explanations than retrospective ones–the arguments that ID pseudoscientists who don’t produce new data fill whole books with. Does your book contain a testable hypothesis, Don?
The explanations provided by science are far superior because they come from hypothesis testing, which is also where the new data tend to come from. Again, saying to one’s self,
and acting on it is the essence of science, overcomes the limits of our intuitions (especially those guided by metaphors), and is orders of magnitude more powerful than “I argue that I’m correct, because X, Y, and Z.”
I think it’s more that we primarily see scientific semantics differently.