Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 07, 2022, 08:49 (899 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Surprise, surprise, information is immaterial. If information doesn’t exist until it has a material form, but life is “information that propagates”, what – according to you (or the authors) - interprets what? “Information that propagates” (= life) interprets information? Where have you found mention of chance v. design? How does this conclusion support ID?

DAVID:Information can exist without interpretation: I look up a word in a thesaurus and interpret. Here immaterial information is in material form. This is what the genome is, immaterial informaton expressed in its coded (material) form, interpreteted by it living cell.

Of course information exists without interpretation. I was replying to your own comment: “The only way life can work is that it must interpret the information that guides its processes.” But if life is “information that propagates”, you are telling us that the only way information that propagates can work, is that information that propagates must interpret the information that guides its processes. (And we mustn’t forget that information only exists when it has a material form.) Don’t you find all this a little confusing?

QUOTE: “We then argue that the quality upon which natural selection acts henceforth is also immaterial. Based on these notions, we arrive at the information-centric Information Continuum Model (ICM) of evolution. The ICM asserts that hereditary information is embedded in diverse physical forms (DNA, RNA, symbionts etc.) representing a continuum of evolutionary qualities, and that information may migrate between these physical forms. The ICM leaves theoretical exploration of evolution unrestricted by the limitations imposed by the individual physical forms wherein the hereditary information is embedded (e.g. genomes). ICM bestows us with a simple heuristic model that adds explanatory dimensions to be considered in the evolution of biological systems."

dhw: So now we have information migrating independently of (unrestricted by) the materials without which it can’t exist. So hey ho, evolution takes place independently of the genome, and this offers us “explanatory dimensions”. Again: where have you found the dismissal of chance and the inevitability of a designer?

DAVID: ID produces this to show only a designer can do this, must exist and not by chance. I am interpreting the article in an ID view.

And I am asking what the various statements about “information” and “propagation” are supposed to mean! There is nothing in the article about ID or chance, and you have not explained how evolution, which entails one form of life turning into another, can take place through immaterial information – which can only exist in material form - migrating independently of the materials in which it is embedded.

QUOTE: "We contest that ICM also have countless philosophical implications and find that the most fundamental question the model rises [sic] is: what defines life?"

dhw: That is the example I discussed earlier. Their answer: “information that propagates is life.” Yet again: where have you found the impossibility of chance and support for ID?

DAVID:ID does not support chance. I know ID, do you?

Of course it doesn’t! But the article is not about chance!!! It is about “Evolution as immaterial information”, and since you clearly can’t answer any of my precise objections to the authors’ theories, all you want to talk about is chance and ID, which are never even mentioned in the article!

DAVID: I fully and logically recognize the need for a controlling operative mind, which you refuse to understand as you revert to natural chance as the driving mechnaism. Pure plea from Darwinism. No wonder you are muddled. God does it and doesn't tell us how, so we research to reach as much understanding as we can.

dhw: Nowhere have I reverted to “natural chance”, and nowhere do the authors mention chance or design or God. I have not offered any theory at all. I have simply criticized the article because I find it muddling.[…]

DAVID: Come on, you consantly give credence to chance, and i give that absurdity (IMHO) a poke.

This discussion has become an "absurdity". Instead of dealing with my criticisms of an article about “information” which in my view creates confusion and explains nothing, you preach ID and twist my precise objections to the article’s equation of evolution with immaterial information into giving “credence to chance”. If I gave credence to chance, I would be an atheist, but that too is totally irrelevant. (As recently as yesterday I dismissed “chance mutations” as a “daft” explanation of the giraffe’s long neck with all the necessary adaptations made by the rest of its body.)