More questions for Gpuccio: biological or non-biological functional information?

[Dan_Eastwood]

@gpuccio

[…] One last poiny. I have read in my e-mail a comment by you about my arguments here and the semantic argument. I cannot find it here, maybe it is in the parallel thread.

However, I wanted to confirm that you are perfectly right about that: while I believe that the semantic argument is very important and valid, I have not used it here up to now, and I probably won’t. THe reason is simple: the arguments I have presented here do not need it.

So, I confirm that all my arguments here, the statement that no high levels of FI can be found in non biological and non designed objects, the estimate of FI in proteins, the estimate of the biological resources of our biological planet, and everything else, do not depend in any way on the semantic argument, at least not in the form that I have expressed them. They could certainly be strengthened by semantic considerations, and I will probably mention in the future discussion a minor aspect that is probably pertinent to my discussion, but essentially all my reasonings here are independent from that.

I hope this clarifies the point.

@gpuccio The question about the semantic argument was mine, and thank you for responding. Since I’m not one of the main participants my comment got moved, then moved again, finally landing in this new thread.

I did not see any assumptions requiring semantic information (SI), but some of your claims suggest unstated assumptions, and SI would fit in that gap.

However, I still think your definition of FI is inadequate to your purpose. I see nothing that excludes non-biological sources. AND, given the extensive disagreement over examples, I’m not the only one thinking this. The appearance is that non-biological FI has been defined out of existence without adequate justification.