The lawfulness of higher order forms is either strictly deducible from the lawfulness of lower order ones or it is not. If it is, then it either requires translation principles or it does not. If it does not, the we have eliminative materialism. If it does, then the higher forms are either subjective, something we read into lower order, or they are not. If they are subjective, then once again we have eliminative materialism. If the higher order is real but the causality is one way (bottom up) then the higher order is epiphenomenal. If there is top down causality, then we have either hylemorphism or something else like it. And of course, that top down causality may be either determined or not. If it is determined, its behavior would be lawful, but that lawfulness would not, strictly speaking, be a more complex version of the lower level lawfulness.
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...
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