Your comments are interesting, in that as I remember the matter (having read it up several years ago) Hubert Yockey, maybe the first to propose that the DNA molecule would prove to be a semiotic code, did so before the details were discovered, around the time of Watson and Crick.
He did not make an intelligent design prediction (steering clear of any such line meticulously and, perhaps, being an atheist). He made merely an information theory prediction. However, there seems a parallel with your scenario in that, the semiotic coded nature of DNA being once demonstrated, he firmly concludes that the code could not have evolved, on similar grounds to those presented at biosemiotic.org, ie that it is conceptually impossible in information theory terms - chemistry, in his view, just cannot do semiotics in principle. Nothing to do with statistics - just the nature of information itself.
This means, of course, that no biologist or chemist should try and refute his reasoning without a thorough grasp of information theory and semiotics - they may end up assuming it’s mumbo jumbo from ignorance.
Accordingly he strongly insists, in the 21st century edition of his book, on strict scientific agnosticism regarding the origin of life (in its semiotic form). That is tantamount to saying that, half a century after his prediction was confirmed, there is no hypothesis to test on its origin.
He did not, of course, suggest intelligent design as an hypothesis - but if he had, as an information theorist of repute from the dawn of the DNA era, he would have been able to suggest no alternative contenders, and therefore nothing available for testing. Does that modify your expectations at all?
Both of you are hitting on the very purpose of Biosemiosis.org, and that is to convey the material requirements of translation to a popular audience. To start the cell cycle, the system must be able to transcribe and translate the amount of information that the system needs to describe itself into memory. That amount of information requires the use of spatially-oriented representations and a reading frame code, and therefore this becomes the minimum requirement for the origin of the system. I would also note that I have tried to steer clear of making pronouncements of what is and is not possible, but only to draw a circle around what is fundamentally necessary.
Bio: …so they use an unambiguous correlate of intelligence that they can indeed empirically measure from billions of miles away - a narrow band radio signal.
Ben: That’s the empirical prediction. Full stop.
If it is just in you to believe that SETI predicts that a narrow-band radio signal is an empirical correlate of intelligence, then I am not going to try to disabuse you of that belief. You are welcome to it. But the entire SETI project would then fail.
As exquisite as this goal may be, I think you are going way out on a limb to try to compare it to the endeavor of proving a Designer for Terran life … let alone for a COSMIC Designer.
Your positions, as complex as they are when based in the circumstances of the SETI project - - face considerable comprehension issues attempting to make it parallel to the Search for a Designer.
As exquisite as this goal may be, I think you are going way out on a limb to try to compare it to the endeavor of proving a Designer for Terr(estrial) life … let alone for a COSMIC Designer.
George, it is simply in my nature to want to try and reach in and get you to set aside your biases long enough to just absorb the information. There is nothing overtly difficult in anything I am saying. If I could just get you to set aside the whole “prove” thing, and the whole “Designer” thing, and the whole “COSMIC” thing, just long enough to understand the actual issues at hand. But alas, I cannot.
Perhaps someday you could type in the words “Periodic Table” into to your browser and just look at the 100+ elements that make up our material universe. What is the inherent meaning in any of them? What is the semantic value in an atom of boron, or helium, or copper? There isn’t any. Perhaps you might ask yourself – if there is no inherent meaning in matter, then how does a codon in DNA specify a particular amino acid when life builds a protein?
The answer is this: you have to organize matter in a very specific type of system. The system is not at all hard to understand, but it does have a couple of specific requirements in order to function. In fact, the system is so specific, that a physicist can identify it among all other physical systems. The only place that such a system can be found (other than inside the cell) is in the use of language and mathematics, which are two unambiguous correlates of intelligence. That empirical observation (as well as others like it) is the basis of the inference to design. “Proving a cosmic designer” has nothing whatsoever to do with the observations being made.
Is Benkirk serious? His responses are simply a semantics olé. Obviously, Biosemiosis does not mean that an abstract lingual term (like “Biological ID”) is capable of thought. Same for the “revolves” around comment. Come on man. Engage the argument. What you’re doing is just childish.
I am a great fan of Hubert Yockey (soon to turn 100 years old), and was quite disappointed to learn that he is (or was a few years back) an atheist. I do agree with Yockey, Biosemiotics and yourself that a straightforward chemical origin of DNA based life (I like to call it the origin of evolution, rather than the origin of life, because some form of proto life, like complex metabolic reactions might be able to form spontaneously) is not possible. Yockey calls the origin of life problem not scientifically resolvable, which is the best answer for an intellectually honest atheist. I guess nobody has yet come up with an analogy to the multiuniverse hypothesis for biology.
BUT…It is not at all satisfying to believe that any phenomenon that is real (like life) has no possible solution as to its origins. Even the idea of a designer or creator (which I believe is the truth) still needs some further exploration. After all, God does use the natural world and the laws of nature to do His work. So the question could become “Yes, God created life, with a marvelous design, that would evolve eventually to us (and beyond?) but how did He do that?”
I am not aware of anyone asking that particular question, and I certainly have no answers. Of course this is off the main topic of how to support the Design hypothesis, after the fact of a semiotic code. And I agree that Yockey’s work on information theory is a good way to start, and I think that is a great suggestion for Biosemiotics to follow up on. But I am still not sure its enough. What is needed is to show that all alternative hypotheses must be rejected. There are, as you said, very few of those, so this isnt easy.
My suggestion in the meantime is for everyone to stress (as I have tried to do for some time) that the problem of the origin of life is exactly the problem of translation, and the origin of a code. I salute Biosemiotics for doing that. It is not metabolic complexity, nor replication, nor energy use, nor the abundance of raw materials, nor the origin of catalysis, nor any of the other myriad issues, which the media loves to trumpet when a paper sheds some light on these issues. (Headline: Origin of Life Solved!!" referring to a paper on undersea hydrothermal vents, for example).
That in itself is a hard task, and I think if we can steer the conversation that way, the rest might be easier.
I just don’t see it. You seem to be dancing around with a Tautological approach, where you first presume that if we see something that is a system, it is designed.
Tornadoes are frequently described as “seemingly alive” or having a “life of their own”. And they develop a highly organized structure. But I would agree with Denton that this is system is replicated by means of a natural order - - a natural order which I would describe as lacking in both Consciousness and Intention.
But you and I STILL agree with each other - - we both believe in a Cosmic Designer. Just not for the same reasons.
I’ve just re-read the relevant bit of Yockey, and see that my post above was too loosely worded, but as you pick up, it’s the origination of the DNA code (not its subsequent evolution) that presents the greatest information theory problems.
If Yockey is right in saying the problem is scientifically unknowable, it is because of a mathematical reason on a par with Godel’s incompleteness theorem (which he deals with). In other words, one can prove that it’s scientifically intractable, which isn’t to say that biologists will accept that it’s intractable, unless biology becomes a mathematically-based science and mathematicians get believed.
If we assume his claim to be the case, it’s not a question of lack of hypotheses to test, but that the whole question lies outside science altogether. For others here I should stress that Yockey does not say the arrival of DNA is impossible, but that how it occurred is unknowable now. But you can’t stop humans (except Yockey, it seems!) being curious about the least unlikely scenario on such an important matter. But if it’s outside science, one has presumably to deal with the plausibility of ideas in philosophy, theology or material affairs that can’t be tested. Strictly, they’re not hypotheses, but (what’s the word?) inferences?
Apart from being unknowable, bizarre solutions in chemistry and so on are intrinsically unlikely, which leads you back to the old Greek philosophical alternatives of Epicurian chance or Aristotelian teleology. Yockey, in fact, is the person who taught me that chance and design are formally indistinguishable: whether a fluke is a miracle or vice versa depends entirely on whether you choose to believe there is a creative agent active in the world, or just a lot of luck.
But the methodological naturalism of normal science surely has no place when the event you’re talking about - the arrival of the genetic code - lies outside science altogether.
It’s just circular. That’s why Bio switches back and forth between portraying the hypothesis as the prediction.
If you disagree, Shane, please concisely state the hypothesis and the empirical predictions. It’s not that hard unless you are avoiding the scientific method.
Ben, instead of pretending there’s no empirical test, why don’t you tell me how the living system differs from the description that follows the bolded title below:
The observations required to return a positive test result:
A semiotic system using physical representations and protocols to translate memory into functional effects. The observable aspects of this system are characterized in the information tetrahedron model of translation.
The use of dimensional representations to encode information into memory; where the individual arrangements in the medium are recognized by their spatial orientations, which are independent of the minimum total potential energy state of the medium.
In addition to translation protocols, the operation of the system will also require systematic protocols to establish the dimensional operation of the system itself.
I’ll be happy to clarify any of these three requirements you wish. Otherwise, I’ll take your non-answer as a concession that you are unable to address the material evidence.
None of those are observations. Scientifically, it’s gobbledygook.
You’re not grasping (or refusing to acknowledge) the fact that the power of the scientific method comes almost entirely from the fact that the hypothesis (which you repeatedly and falsely describe as a theory) has to be specific enough that the predictions pertain to what we DIRECTLY observe, not how we interpret what we observe.
If you have confidence that your hypothesis is correct, you will state it simply and clearly, so that it’s obvious what it predicts that we will observe/measure directly. None of the three are actual, direct observations–they are entirely dependent upon semantics, allowing you to dance around and do nothing.
Real empirical predictions contain no models, no representations, no protocols, no recognitions, just observation and measurements.
You’re fooling yourself. Come up with a hypothesis that makes clear, EMPIRICAL predictions that if observed, require you to abandon or substantially modify your hypothesis with no wiggle room whatsoever.
You’ve been given the hypothesis, you’ve been given the prediction, and you’ve been given the empirical observations required to satisfy a test (and thus, what will be found if the prediction is incorrect).
On item #1 of the test, you are unable to provide an alternate description of the system that deviates from the description given: a) that the arrangement of bases in each codon results in alternate amino acids being presented for binding, b) that the aaRS establishes the amino acid-to-anticodon association, and c) that the amino acid-to-anticodon association is spatially and temporally isolated from the pairing of codons to anticodons during translation.
On item #2 of the test, you are unable to show that the arrangement of the bases in each codon are not independent of the minimum total potential energy state of mRNA.
On item #3 of the test, you are unable to show that the constraints of a reading-frame code (Crick) are unnecessary to proper translation, (example: initiation at a specific location, direction of reading, and stop functions are unnecessary for proper translation).
Demonstrate that any of these observations is false and it will disconfirm the prediction that a universal correlate of intelligence (a semiotic system using spatially-oriented representations and a reading-frame code) can be detected in the organization of the living cell, and I will “abandon or substantially modify my hypothesis with no wiggle room whatsoever”.
Alternatively, if you cannot demonstrate that the requirements are false, then you concede that the requirements of the test are satisfied by empirical observation. And as to your “wiggle room” comment: It goes both ways. You must demonstrate that the above system is not the physical means to translate sequences of nucleotides into sequences of amino acids.
[quote=“Biosemiosis.org, post:58, topic:4328”]
You’ve been given the hypothesis, you’ve been given the prediction, and you’ve been given the empirical observations required to satisfy a test (and thus, what will be found if the prediction is incorrect).[/quote]
Bio, you’re just not getting it. This is not that complicated.
There’s nothing empirical about this. Empirical predictions have zero to do with what you or I can or cannot describe!
Try the right way:
If your hypothesis is correct, you will DIRECTLY OBSERVE OR MEASURE ___________________.
If your hypothesis is incorrect, you will DIRECTLY OBSERVE OR MEASURE ___________________.
A few words are sufficient in each case.
That’s not the way science works, man! Your hypothesis predicts empirical observations. No demonstrations by anyone in particular are required.
However, as a general principle, the more enthusiasm you have for your hypothesis, the harder you will work to try to disprove your hypothesis, and you don’t seem to be trying. Thus I infer that you have no confidence.
No demonstrations nor concessions are required from anyone.
[quote]You must demonstrate that the above system is not the physical means to translate sequences of nucleotides into sequences of amino acids.
[/quote]If YOU are doing real science, what I do or don’t do doesn’t matter. It’s not a debate!!!