Freethought & Rationalism Archive

hezekiah jones · 05-30-2002, 06:35 AM

I notice Jesse has started another thread on this subject at ARN. There was one before ARN's server crashed which consisted solely of IDers whining about the length of Wein's original critique. In fact Dembski himself whines about its length! (They are good at whining, if nothing else.)

Even the formidable Mike Gene thinks Dembski should just ignore Wein in public, claiming he would have "counseled" Dembski against replying in the first place: "If I were Dembski, this is how I would go about it. I'd take Wein's arguments into consideration. Then, I'd respond to those that appear to pose a challenge. But not as a formal response to Wein. I'd do so obliquely, on my own time, in some other format, and as a generic problem to be addressed. That way, the conceptual material can be addressed without getting into a personality/ego battle."

Interestingly this seems to be the tactic that Dembski has adopted in the past. If you take Mark Perakh's word for it in his hugely entertaining review of No Free Lunch, Dembski has presented at least six versions of his explanatory filter, during the evolution of which various components "mysteriously" appear and disappear:

Quote:

Furthermore, there is one more alteration of Dembski's earlier discussion of specification. A fate worse than that of TRACT befell another component of Dembski's earlier scheme, the one he denoted DELIM. Whereas in [NFL] Dembski at least points out the deletion of TRACT from detachability, he does not mention at all the elimination of DELIM, which in his earlier treatment was deemed a necessary and important component of specification.

In his new book, DELIM, which he previously asserted to be a necessary part of specification, has mysteriously disappeared without trace. Using Dembski's favorite method of mathematically looking abbreviations, I could say that he applied to his DELIM an operation ELIM (which stands for elimination). Thus, if I were inclined to mimic Dembski's allegedly sophisticated mathematical approach, I could have impressed the readers with the following expression: ELIM(DELIM)=0.

[...]

Obviously, if that term is not mentioned any longer at all when detachability is being discussed, it was not really a necessary component of detachability, which negates Dembski's convoluted discussion of DELIM in his previous book. Normally in a scientific publication such alterations of the author's earlier position are explained and when appropriate, the errors or inadequacy of the earlier argument are admitted. Of course NFL is not really a scientific book, although Dembski wants it to be accepted as such.

<a href="http://www.talkreason.org/articles/dem_nfl.cfm" target="_blank">Free Lunch In A Mousetrap</a>

[ May 30, 2002: Message edited by: hezekiahjones ]</p>

Principia · 05-31-2002, 09:46 AM

Complaining is what the IDists do best over at ARN. Is it me or is their latest position that ID is a <a href="http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000074" target="_blank">philosophical stance</a> and <a href="http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000070" target="_blank">not a scientific theory</a> a little desperate?

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

05-31-2002, 09:46 AM	#12
Principia Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: anywhere Posts: 1,976	Complaining is what the IDists do best over at ARN. Is it me or is their latest position that ID is a <a href="http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000074" target="_blank">philosophical stance</a> and <a href="http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000070" target="_blank">not a scientific theory</a> a little desperate?

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.