I think the contemporary notion of qualia is helpful insight into the insufficiency of scientism. But that does not mean that its advocates have conceptualized it very well. Something to study more. Meanwhile, I note that Daniel Dennett, true blue reductionist that he is, argues that the notion of qualia is incoherent. The premise in this argument is the list of properties of properties that he kindly offers his reader: ineffable, subjective, intrinsic and private. By setting his argument this way at the beginning, he may be offering a straw man. I dunno: I haven't really surveyed what everyone out there thinks qualia are like. But in any case, later on in the argument on this topic that I listened to in Intuition Pumps, he seems to argue in a very clearly circular manner. I need to find where he does that and transcribe it here ... maybe later this week.
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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