ID: What is Specified Complexity?

Or... What is Complex Specified Information ....or who is William Dembski?

"Living organisms are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly specified complexity."  (Paul Davies)



* The idea behind Specified Complexity appears to be one of the more difficult ID ideas to wrap our brains around, in part, because it is so intuitive. Try describing the color red without simply presenting it. (You can but the definition is far more baffling than the experience.)

Complex patterns (suggests substantial content)

Specified Patterns (essential --or functional, specific, often asymmetrical (*Why? )

In his recent book The Fifth Miracle, Paul Davies suggests that any laws capable of explaining the origin of life must be radically different from scientific laws known to date. The problem, as he sees it, with currently known scientific laws, like the laws of chemistry and physics, is that they are not up to explaining the key feature of life that needs to be explained. That feature is specified complexity. Life is both complex and specified. The basic intuition here is straightforward. A single letter of the alphabet is specified without being complex (i.e., it conforms to an independently given pattern but is simple). A long sequence of random letters is complex without being specified (i.e., it requires a complicated instruction-set to characterize but conforms to no independently given pattern). A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified.

Now, as Davies rightly notes, contingency can explain complexity but not specification. For instance, the exact time sequence of radioactive emissions from a chunk of uranium will be contingent, complex, but not specified. On the other hand, as Davies also rightly notes, laws can explain specification but not complexity. For instance, the formation of a salt crystal follows well-defined laws, produces an independently known repetitive pattern, and is therefore specified; but that pattern will also be simple, not complex. The problem is to explain something like the genetic code, which is both complex and specified. As Davies puts it: "Living organisms are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly specified complexity" (p. 112).

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/bd-specified.html



The term "specified complexity" was originally coined by origin of life researcher Leslie Orgel to denote what distinguishes living things from non-living things:

In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.[7]

The term was later employed by physicist Paul Davies in a similar manner:

Living organisms are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly specified complexity[8]

[edit] Dembski's definition

For Dembski, specified complexity is a property which can be observed in living things. However, whereas Orgel used the term for that which, in Darwinian theory, is understood to be created through evolution, Dembski uses it for that which he says cannot be created through "undirected" evolution—and concludes that it allows one to infer intelligent design. While Orgel employed the concept in a qualitative way, Dembski's use is intended to be quantitative. Dembski's use of the concept dates to his 1998 monograph The Design Inference. Specified complexity is fundamental to his approach to intelligent design, and each of his subsequent books has also dealt significantly with the concept. He has stated that, in his opinion, "if there is a way to detect design, specified complexity is it."[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specified_complexity



In simplified sum, a long string of random letters is complex without being specified (that is, without conforming to an independently given pattern that we have not simply read off the object or event in question). A short sequence of letters like "this" or "that" is specified without being sufficiently complex to outstrip the capacity of chance to explain this conformity (for example, letters drawn at random from a Scrabble bag will occasionally form a short word). Neither complexity without specificity nor specificity without complexity compels us to infer design. However, this paper is both specified (conforming to the functional requirements of grammatical English) and sufficiently complex (doing so at a level of complexity that makes it unreasonable to attribute this match to luck) to trigger a design inference on the grounds that "in all cases where we know the causal origin of . . . specified complexity, experience has shown that intelligent design played a causal role."[4]

http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=54



When applying ID to biology, it is observed that all living cells necessarily utilize the functional information found in DNA.

Considering the principle of causality ID asks, “What is the cause of functional information?” In all cases where we know the source of functional information, it always originates from an intelligent and teleological cause. Additionally, there are no verified cases of functional information arising by chance, by atelic processes, or by non-intelligent causes, nor by their cooperation. Complex specified information, the functional information content, is best explained by intelligence. Contrarily, philosophical materialism argues that a directive intelligent cause does not exist; complex living organisms are brought about by unintelligent, purposeless causes alone.

Employing the principle of uniformity, ID proposes that all functional information uniformly originates from teleological intelligence, even the functional information of DNA. Like any other truly scientific endeavor, ID proceeds from current verified knowledge into new knowledge. To accept a non-intelligent source for the functional information of DNA is to deny the verified scientific evidence. Intelligent design then asks what types of new data, concepts, and experiments result from proposing that functional information is teleological.

http://www.researchintelligentdesign.org/wiki/Telelogy


What is Specified Complexity: Life is both complex and specified. The basic intuition here is straightforward. A single letter of the alphabet is specified without being complex (i.e., it conforms to an independently given pattern but is simple). A long sequence of random letters is complex without being specified (i.e., it requires a complicated instruction-set to characterize but conforms to no independently given pattern). A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified.










Specified Complexity = signature of an intelligence is "contingent and therefore not necessary; if it is complex and therefore not easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern" (Dembski)





















Now, as Davies rightly notes, contingency can explain complexity but not specification. For instance, the exact time sequence of radioactive emissions from a chunk of uranium will be contingent, complex, but not specified. On the other hand, as Davies also rightly notes, laws can explain specification but not complexity. For instance, the formation of a salt crystal follows well-defined laws, produces an independently known repetitive pattern, and is therefore specified; but that pattern will also be simple, not complex. The problem is to explain something like the genetic code, which is both complex and specified. As Davies puts it: "Living organisms are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly --specified complexity" (p. 112).









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But this raises the obvious question, whether there might not be a fundamental connection between intelligence or design on the one hand and specified complexity on the other. In fact there is. There's only one known source for producing actual specified complexity, and that's intelligence. In every case where we know the causal history responsible for an instance of specified complexity, an intelligent agent was involved. Most human artifacts, from Shakespearean sonnets to Dürer woodcuts to Cray supercomputers, are specified and complex. For a signal from outer space to convince astronomers that extraterrestrial life is real, it too will have to be complex and specified, thus indicating that the extraterrestrial is not only alive but also intelligent (hence the search for extraterrestrial intelligence-SETI).





















Problem: The term specified complexity assumes part of the point it is trying to prove. It is like asking an atheist if he finds creation beautiful. (The word creation assumes a creator) Even Dembsik realizes this problem when he states “ Does nature exhibit actual specified complexity? The jury is still out.”









In using the concept of specified complexity to argue for design in nature, Dembski assumes his argument to prove his argument.