It seems to me that the primary question is not whether one could engineer a percipient being, but what perception really is. It is more than a physics-bound process, even if it's physical. It's more than a physics-bound process even if one could engineer it into existence from inorganic material. I don't think the latter is possible at all, but it would be helpful to grant its possibility so as to be able to make the point that even in such a case, reductionism would not be confirmed. Rather, something more than physics-bound processes would be going on where none had been going on before.
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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