Show me the intelligence ...

In the case of a watch it would be our knowledge of watches.
If we had no specific knowledge of watches then our knowledge of other manufactured artifacts would be adequate.The "watch" argument then is not a good analogy because we would immediately conclude that a watch was designed for reasons which do not apply to the biological realm.

I really think that your question has been posed so that it can't reasonably be answered.Any extraterrestrial with a technology similar to ours would use the second criterion I gave. Any extraterrestrial with a technology so dissimilar from ours that he/she/it would not follow that line of thought is sufficiently alien that I can't even say that it/she/he would conclude that the watch was designed.

As I said in message 10 our knowledge of manufactured artifacts would be sufficient to quickly recognise a watch as having been manufacured and therefore designed.What I said in message 12 is that any intelligence that lacked the knowledge necessary to follow that line of thinking is sufficiently alien that I cannot say what it would conclude about a watch or on what basis.

Well strictly speaking it's a "no" - since I do not require the direct knowledge that the watch is designed.But in general you are right - we do not have a general design detection mechanism. All Dembski could manage was the exclusion of all other possibilities.ID either has to produce a workable method or start producing specific design hypotheses which deal with the nature and purpose of the alleged designer (which they won't do for political reasons).

Well that's the problem isn't it - so far the best ID has come up with is eliminating alternative explanations.Now if we have some idea of the capabilities and intentions of a possible designer we can use those to make predictions as to what we expect to see - the current SETI effort made assumptions about possible designers to decide what to look for. The ID movement likes to compare itself to SETI but they won't do that.

ID is as much concerned with life here as the universe itself. Creating life as we know it is ouside our current capabilities - but we're close enough to say that it should be possible. Modification of existing life - another form of ID - is already within our grasp through genetic engineering. Just as we are already capable of producing the sort of radio signals SETI is looking for.So there are possiblities within ID that are open to an approach which starts with a hypothetical designer with assumed capabilties and intentions. Of course it would be better if we had a known designer or at least one whose existence was supported by other evidence but that isn't possible.