Point the following out to him: 1. that we can all use common nouns to refer to many individuals of the same kind, many cats, humans or bear.w And in doing so we recognize that they have something in common with each other (assuming here that nominalism is not a live option for a Whiteheadian). But we could easily include two phases of the same individual. So there must be something common to the same individual at two different moments. The very fat that we can know a multiplicity of members of a the same species entails the identify through time of an individual: our meaningful use of common nouns entails that each individual of a certain kind continues to be the same kind of being, i.e., has an enduring essence.
Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
Comments