The Definition of Information
The proposed definition of "Information" is : the evolutionary interaction of form. We normally see it as data, but it causes a change in our neural patterning, thus creating the distinction between moments of consciousness, that we perceive as time, thus driving our evolution.
In systems theory, everything is a self organizing system, enmeshed into an environment of other self organizing systems. The systems can have many attributes, both simple and complex and it is these attributes that interrelate to cause evolutionary change. A system is a concept represented in a form. It has various attributes which themselves are forms. So, we can reduce systems to forms. Thus enabling a simple definition of something of enormous complexity, reduced to "the evolutionary interaction of forms." These interactions of forms are information. Information creates a sense of time, and drives our evolution.
New information overlaps old information in a continuous process, thus creating time, and evolution
Please Discuss.
This short 10min video, is a good primer.
In systems theory, everything is a self organizing system, enmeshed into an environment of other self organizing systems. The systems can have many attributes, both simple and complex and it is these attributes that interrelate to cause evolutionary change. A system is a concept represented in a form. It has various attributes which themselves are forms. So, we can reduce systems to forms. Thus enabling a simple definition of something of enormous complexity, reduced to "the evolutionary interaction of forms." These interactions of forms are information. Information creates a sense of time, and drives our evolution.
New information overlaps old information in a continuous process, thus creating time, and evolution
Please Discuss.
This short 10min video, is a good primer.
Comments (241)
processes from the products they produce. In particular, brains make memories, which change the ways we'll subsequently think. The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves. Because the whole idea of self-modifying processes is new to our experience, we
cannot yet trust our commonsense judgement about such matters.â
What is remarkable about this passage is the absence of any notion of representation. Minsky does not say
that the principal activity of brains is to represent the external world; he says that it is to make continuous
self-modifications. What has happened to the notion of representation?
In fact, an important and pervasive shift is beginning to take place in cognitive science under the very influence of its own research. This shift requires that we move away from the idea of the world as independent and extrinsic to the idea of a world as inseparable from the structure of these processes of self-modification. This change in stance does not express a mere philosophical preference; it reflects the necessity of understanding cognitive systems not on the basis of their input and output relationships but by their operational closure. A system that has operational closure is one in which the results of its processes are those processes themselves. The notion of operational closure is thus a way of specifying classes of processes that, in their very operation, turn back upon themselves to form autonomous networks. Such networks do not fall into the class of systems defined by external mechanisms of control (heteronomy) but rather into the class of systems defined by internal mechanisms of self-organization (autonomy). The key point is that such systems do not operate by representation. Instead of representing an independent world, they enact a world as a domain of distinctions that is inseparable from the structure embodied by the cognitive system.
We wish to evoke the point that when we begin to take such a conception of mind seriously, we must call into question the idea that the world is pregiven and that cognition is representation. In cognitive science, this means that we must call into question the idea that information exists ready-made in the world and that it is extracted by a cognitive system, as the cognitivist notion of an informavore vividly implies.â
- @Joshs
Information is not the stored data but the interaction of that data with other data. Information is not representation but the interaction of one representation with that of another representation. This creates the distinction in terms of an established neural patterning, and overlapping patterns, in a continuous process. The established patterning at any particular time can be thought of as a state of integrated information, overlayed by new patterns, thus the new patterns are distinct in relation to the old patterns. This is consistent with constructivism, IIT, and, I believe, Enactivism. It is just not possible to understand, given the vague and inappropriate definitions of information that we have. All definitions of information focus on the data, the quantity of data, or the representations of data - whereas, in fact information only exists in the interaction of data. This is missed because we do not see ourselves in the equation. We do not notice how information changes us. We imagine ourselves as passive observers of and manipulators of information, whereas in fact we are the ones being changedâ due to our neural patterning incurring an involuntary physical change. Thus enacting us. This is why we see an evolving neuroplasticity, because the patterning has to interact, and evolve, as a product of thinking, in a continuous process, but to arrive at some form of integrity, such as to create a moment of clarity â only to be disturbed by further information. I am not saying that clarity is equal to the external world. Idealism has long ago established that.
What do you think?
I do like your emphasis on interaction as being primary. But if the interaction that constitutes information is between two representations, what are the original presentations being re-presented?
Good one.
Two wavicles integrate their information ( frequency and amplitude ) to a resultant wavicle. That is all that ever happens really. The resultant wavicle is integrated information, disturbed by the next wavicle integrated. It starts there and evolves to elementary particles, atoms, molecules, etc. It is an evolution of form - the perturbations of a substance being form, being the property that enables interaction. A system is a something that exhibits such form, and changes in the process of interaction, all the while integrating the interactions.
Everything can be represented by a wavefunction, as it integrates more information, it simply changes form. :smile:
A system can be represented by a wavefunction, as it interacts, the form of the wavefunction will change.
"Information is an interaction of form". This is what occurs as you read this - the form of this sentence disturbs your neural state and is distinct against your understanding, which is a form of integrated information .
Wheeler's idea of information differs from Tononi's. So it's not clear to me how useful this term is. But, people seem to do a lot of work with it, so I could be quite wrong.
shapes the individual politically , morally , creatively, and how language is to be understood. Of course, you want to locate the irreducible basis for your model in order to give it precision and clarity. Youâve attempted to accomplish this by embracing a kind of quasi-physics vocabulary. The problem with this is that it may run the risk of being dismissed by physicists who donât see it as either empirically valid or philosophically coherent.
They may be wrong , but I think what youâre aiming for will be much between comprehended by others of you put more emphasis on the human behavioral implications of your theory ( emotion, intersubjective relations , cognition and perception , psychopathology, language , ethics).
:up: Yes I agree. Most of the time I am just trying to keep my theory afloat by elucidating it with simple unassailable concepts. It is a work in progress. Thanks for you reply. :smile:
They both believe information is fundamental. This takes some appreciation!
Wheeler said "it from bit", whilst Tononi sees everything as "integrated information", and tries to measure it with phi.
What did Wheeler mean by that? What is phi? What is measured? Can you measure a pattern? Say a square or a circle? What are the bits of a circle? What is intergated information.
Prishon already lucky with one answer!
Wheeler's it from bit concept implies that physics, particularly quantum physics, isn't really about reality, but just our best description of what we observe. ... As Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum theory, said:"It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature ......
Phi is the proposed measure of integrated information in any object - still a little controversial.
Quoting Prishon
I can not. :sad: But emergent disciplines such as mathematical biology, and mathematical ecology attempt to.
Mathematical and theoretical biology or, biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of the living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development and behavior of the systems, as opposed to experimental biology which ...
Mathematical ecology is an area of applied mathematics concerned with applications of mathematical concepts, tools and techniques, usually in the form of mathematical models, to problems arising in population dynamics, ecology and evolution.
In Darwin's evolution, there is evolution and natural selection. Theoretically there are explanatory gaps.
Using systems theory and this definition of information we can fill them.
What is evolving is a physical self organizing system, due to the evolutionary interaction of something else physical - something that has physical form, which all systems do. Normally, not all things physical are understood as systems ( though strictly speaking they are ) but all things physical have form.
So, the evolution of a self organizing system is due to information, where information is the interaction of physical form.
I think this way of understanding gets closer to what is happening. It explains informationâs role in the evolution of everything, and particularly ourselves. It explains why everything is information.
Systems are informationally created bottom up, and then they interact laterally with all other systems in the same manner. They are totally enmeshed together. Movement in one system spreads throughout the others, causing what is popularly known as the Butterfly effect.
That gets really close. As Prishon rightly claimed, all organism are formed between the heat of the Sun and the cold of space on the other side of the Earth. The Earth rotates and faces the heat, the cold, the heat, the cold, etc. The periodic flow of heat (inward, outward, inward, outward, etc.) creates the huge variety of patterns in organisms. Not total order nor total chaos but in between. All organisms posses the same relative entropy (just a number) but they show a wide biodiversity. The butterfly effect makes them diverge away from each other. The need each other to realize themselves. A bee is the same as a whale and at the same time completely different. You're not alone... :smile:
This concept from dynamical systems is sometimes assumed to exist in many if not all circumstances. In fact, the opposite can occur: disturbances in one area fritter out and don't really affect other areas. Or, as Stanislaw Lem conjectured, certain movements have lives of their own and are relatively immune to minor disturbances. Rise of the Third Reich, etc.
:up: So good to hear.
As far as I can see, the systems view is relevant in all circumstances. I have only really considered it in very fundamental situations, and not so much in situations of great complexity such as the evolution of the Third Reich. But in considering the history of the build up of the Nazis, it fits very well. In any systems scenario there is a build up of information, such that an informational body evolves and has it's own momentum. It would need to be met with an informational body of equal weight and momentum to be diffused, which it eventually was.
I liken this to the information accumulation and momentum of personal understanding - how it is somewhat like a large oil tanker heading in a certain direction, and will not be swayed by the efforts of one tug boat ( one differing view ) but If enough tug boats join the effort, then it might be veered off course?
Could be. But the Butterfly Effect (In math: sensitive dependence on initial conditions) won't necessarily exist. Takes many tugs. :cool:
:up: Yes, the Butterfly effect is overreach. It is a well known popular idea, that is true figuratively, rather then literally.
One thing's for sure, we can define information any which way we want. The definition, whether the one you advocate here or some other, will have to
1) Either be true to what information really is or approximate it to the extent possible.
OR/AND
2) Be useful in one way or another.
Can you tell us how the definition of information as "the evolutionary interaction of form" meets the two conditions I mentioned above?
I don't think this is true. Information is a very difficult thing to define, because everything is information. Other definitions do not recognize this, so it is very difficult to understand how information works to enact us in the world. How information is something that is incorporated into the person that we become. How there is nothing outside of information.
Integrated Information Theory tells us that consciousness exists as moments of integrated information. Systems Theory tells us that interaction is information, and nothing exists outside of interaction. Enactivism tells us that we are enacted / interacted in the world informationally, and Constructivism tells us that it is a body of integrated information that becomes knowledge, in an evolving and idiosyncratic fashion and what we are is a product of this. All that is missing is a definition of this information, and I think this one fills the bill.
My approach is scientific to the extent I'm capable of that. Your idea of what information differs from the standard set down by Claude Shannon. I reckon that Shannon too must've wondered about how information could be defined - there are so many ways, yours included - but he settled for one that could be quantified (measured) and also had just enough philosophy (uncertainty) to silence his critics.
Shannon did not define information. He quantified it. There is a very important difference.
Do you think even an elementary particle is information?
I can't seem to tell the difference. Kindly edify me.
Yes, Information is fundamental. This is the trend, as I read it, these days. with proposals such as the mass - energy - information equivelence principle.
It used to be that everything was matter, then due to Maxwell, Einstein, and Rutherford, etc. matter became equal to energy. Now there is a push, from various directions to include information in this mix.
"Information" is : the evolutionary interaction of form, tells you what information "is ". That it is the interaction of form .
Shannon's theory tells you how to quantify the amount of information traveling over a wire.
But energy is a particle too. Photons are pure energy, not moving in time. The can give their energy, their pure energy to massive particles like electrons which change their state of motion (the pure energy, kinetic energy through space only, is changed in kinetic energy through space and time). I can't see information in a single isolated particle. If non-interacting its wavefunction will get dispersed over space (or localized in momentum space).
How will you know about it without the information describing it?
In this case it is you who is interacting with a photon.
Well,withou me being informed (informationed?) the particle can still exist.
How would we measure something that hasn't been defined?
Not until somebody interacts with it. Think Schrodinger's cat.
The order of the wire minus its entropy. I think.
Nope, I don't think that's correct.
It was a guess. Its not really relevant for my purposes.
SchrÔdinger's cat is a bit old-fashioned. The particle needs interaction (an observer is not needed) to localize the wavefunction. The cat can die too if we dont look.
Interesting! Whats the order? Form?
To me, it's very relevant. How would your definition of information aid or expand our understanding of information? Shannon's definition is both philosophical and practical.
You need an observer or a measuring device. You don't know the situation of either until a measurement is made. ** You have no information until an interaction occurs.
I have explained above how my definition aids in philosophical explanation. Please enlighten me as to how Shannon's theory does this?
Shannon's definition centers around uncertainty (skepticism).
The superposition can collapse iñto the one that gives life or the one that gives life independently of observers or measuring devices. The cat can thus be dead or alive without us observing or measuring. Of course we will only know upon observing but this observing is not the cause. Some interaction apart from us or measuring device can make the superposition collapse (even the vacuum can do that).
Shannon's theory centres around quantifying the amount of information traveling over the wires of the phone company he worked for. Nothing to do with Philosophy.
Bell phone company needed to quantify the data they were handling, and he found a way to do it.
The observing is the cause of the information. There is no information one way or the other until an interaction occurs. This interaction may also be purely mental, such as when you posit theoretical situations - however that can not occur either until you have the thought, and so this too is an interaction, though a neural one.
How about you take some of your own advice, and also read some background on the history of his Theory of Communication, as it was initially published.
Or simply tells us what information is according to Shannon, and how this is relevant to philosophy. Here is the original paper.
Ok. Here's what I think. Claude Shannon's theory of information is based on how many steps it takes for uncertainty to become certainty.
For example, if the possibility space includes A and B, the message A collapses the uncertaintly A or B (2) to the certainty A (1). Only one step was required; ergo A contains 1 bit of information.
This mirrors epistemology (skepticism & dogmatism): we're uncertain (is it A or B?) which is basically skepticism; then once we know A, we're certain which is dogmatism.
Then what's the cause of the information in the observer? If information is interaction will not the form of the superposition (and its collapse) form a patternn (by interaction or per se) in the mind's world?
What interactions will particles force to form a circle? Or a squaere?
Where have you defined, or even described what information is? As I have said previously, the minimum number of yes / no questions quantifies information. It does not tell us what information is.
Information is not about quantity. Information becomes you!
This is Shannon's original paper. How did Shannon define information? âShannon's theory defines information as a probability function with no dimension, no materiality, and no necessary connection with meaning" -Robert K. Logan. How you connect this with Skeptisism and Dogmatism leaves me speechless. :chin:
According to this interesting paper, an early critic of Shannon's definition was Donald Mckay:
"He suggested that information should be defined as [b]âthe change in a
receiverâs mind-set, and thus with meaningâ[/b] and not just the senderâs signal [6]. The notion of
information independent of its meaning or context is like looking at a figure isolated from its ground.
As the ground changes so too does the meaning of the figure.
Shannon, whose position eventually prevailed, defined information in terms of the transmission of
the signal and was not concerned with the meaning. The problem with MacKayâs definition was that
meaning could not be measured or quantified and as a result the Shannon definition won out and
changed the development of information science". People that shared MacKayâs position
complained that Shannonâs definition of information did not fully describe communication. Shannon
did not disagreeâhe âfrequently cautioned that the theory was meant to apply only to certain technical
situations, not to communication in general".
This is why I have defined it as the evolutionary interaction of form. This definition fits information as implied in those four theories.
In science information is distinction. Note distinction requires the interaction of two forms. One form distinct against the other. This is the fundamental relationship that is the basis of logic. That is the basis of our relational understanding. What is being informed is you.
Life is a procession of such moments of distinction , and what you are is the accumulative sum of those moments.
In the act of observing the form of an object will cause a change to the form of the neural patterning of an observer. The change in the neural patterning in the observer is the information, and this is distinct against the patterning previous to the observation. The neural patterning of one moment of consciousness, is disturbed by the patterning of the next moment of consciousness, this forms the distinction of one part to another that is information. New information overlaps old information in a continuous process, thus creating distinction and hence time, and evolution.
Circles or squares are mental abstractions of information - Platonic forms. As far as information is concerned there is no difference between observed ( sense mediated neural disturbance ) and imagined mental manipulations. The change in neural patterning is similar. It is this change in neural patterning that is information, as per this more detailed comment.
Regarding the wave function collapse.
Pop, Hi,
I'm so glad I checked in and am so surprised at your last post. We are back in agreement but I suspect it won't last long.
I'll check this more often.
Hi Mark, I'm not sure what you mean. I hope I am not giving the impression that I know precisely how neuroplasticity works. I am trying to conceptualize it to some level, which I think is the best one can do at the present moment, given the limited information on hand.
Quoting Pop
As written here, I would agree with this entire section. For most people, defining information will follow their personal use and opinion, but this linking of information to neural patterning and neuroplasticity in a dynamic environment gets at a fundamental that gives a universal definition.
This type of brain held dynamic information matches well with a communication model that uses strict encoding and decoding of physical matter for brain to brain communication.
I really hope that doesn't ruin things for you because I really think you're on track with a good model.
Quoting Pop
Well, no one does, but the science seems to be moving in this direction.
That is the idea. :up:
Quoting Mark Nyquist
If you could provide a link I would be interested too read it?
A contender to Shannon, Donald Mckay suggested that information should be defined as âthe change in a receiverâs mind-set," and this is very similar to my definition. Mckay's definition is prior to Systems Theory, Constructivism, Enactivism, and IIT. I am trying to define the information implied in these theories. It is a panpsychist definition.
Mckay, Don't Know, I'll look.
In the end everything needs to fit together. Matter, brains, information, communication.
:up: Yes, everything needs to be unified and integrated. Understanding how this works and how everything is a product of this, will be the basis of Information philosophy, imo.
Information is that which reduces uncertainty, quantified as the number of yes/no questions required to pare down the possibilities from (say) n to 1 which is equal to [math]log_{2}n[/math].
Quoting Pop
[quote=Wikipedia]1. More technically, information can be thought of as the resolution of uncertainty.
2. Uncertainty refers to epistemic situations involving imperfect or unknown information.
3. In Western philosophy the first philosopher to embrace uncertainty was Pyrrho resulting in the Hellenistic philosophies of Pyrrhonism and Academic Skepticism, the first schools of philosophical skepticism.[/quote]
Quoting Pop
:ok: I'm with you on that. Shannon's definition of informatiom as resolution of uncertainty doesn't go into meaning, in that it's deficient. I wonder if Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory that meaning is use is relevant or not. If yes, then meaning can't be encoded in a message - the same message will mean different things to different people. For instance, the information that a mosque is being built in the locality will impact differently on christians, jews, moslems, atheists, racists, and so on. Perhaps Shannon intuited this and thus, avoided the mess that incorporating meaning into his definition of information would result in.
Quoting Pop
Quoting Pop
I see. You're trying to make everybody happy by taking a syncretic stance - picking up all the essential elements of what information is in these four theories and bringing them under one banner (your definition of information).
Could you expand and elaborate on your definition of information as an evolutionary interaction of form?
1. What does "evolutionary" mean? At first I thought you meant biological evolution but that doesn't seem likely.
2. What does "interaction" mean? What's interacting?
3. What's "form"?
Thanks.
If you read the OP, and watch the video, you will become acquainted with Systems Theory. It sounds complicated but is really quite simple. Order in the universe comes in the form of self organizing systems. It is the form of these systems that interact. A human being is a self organizing system.
The channel that made the video, has many such simple videos on systems theory. Getting acquainted with it is well worth anybody's time, imo.
:ok: Good day.
Your welcome. :up:
To have gone into meaning would have made him another opining poet-philosopher. Imagine sending a stream of bits elsewhere with each bit having a 1/5 chance of flipping along the way. What would you do to counteract that noise? Crude solution: send each bit 9 times in a row. Decode nine-bit blocks by a majority rule. Now what's the chance of losing that bit? It's the chance that 5 or more of the bits are flipped, far smaller than 1/5, but at the cost of 1/9 the speed in transmission. This detail if offered to suggest the flavor of the enterprise. Adding metaphysical blah-blah about 'meaning' would have contaminated it.
There are always divergent vested interests at play. I'm sure mathematicians, physicists, and engineers would have found Shannon's quantification of information more useful. However, this has resulted in much confusion about what information is, and what role it plays in life. There is momentum in the view that everything is information, but because of Shannon's meaningless definition of information, many people are clueless as to what information is.
Information is not about quantity. Information becomes you!
This is the relevant consideration in this information age, and even more so moving forward, imo.
Temperamentally I'm in the pragmatist-positivist-instrumentalist camp. I don't deny that metaphysical talk can make people happier or even help genuine science at times. Nevertheless I can't help but object to 'everything is information.' If everything is, then nothing is (a difference that makes no difference.)
Quoting Pop
If that's the case (and I think it is), it's because info theory isn't sexy to those who aren't technically minded. Error correcting codes appeal to chess players, code golfers, etc. The precision is the appeal. It isn't smoke and hype. Currently I don't see how 'meaningful' uses of information are more than 'feel good' coats of verbal paint on the same old practical reality.
No that does not follow, imo. You will have to contend with a growing realization that everything is information.
Quoting Zugzwang
To some extent that would be the case. But more specifically there is no way you can use Shannon info theory, to understand why information is such a valuable quantity today. How information shapes us. How it can be weaponized. How it can be used to control people, etc.
Before I do a deep dive, would you mind arguing for its practical relevance for me? Or for the species?
Quoting Pop
My sense is that now you are talking about data and AI. This stuff has obvious practical-political relevance.
Information is the fundamental quantity / quality, perhaps non quantifiable observable, that has the potential to completely reshape the materialist paradigm. I am still trying to understand it, so can not give you a complete rundown. Except to say that a definition that gets at the facts of what is happening might bring us closer to be able to understand information, and its full potential.
Quoting Zugzwang
Yes that is part of the mix of considerations. My focus is on elucidating how information causes a change in mind state, similar to Mckay , and how this change in mind state is involuntary / subconscious - as described by enactivism. But really there is enormous potential in information philosophy to reshape understanding on almost all levels.
The Information Philosopher has a well developed web site for more info. I don't agree with his entire interpretation, but it will give you some clues.
Quoting Pop
Shannon's warning is basically my original point. It's technical concept. In fact we do want to transmit bits effectively, and part of that is coming up with a framework for quantifying how well we are doing and how well we could possibly do.
Lots of humans want more than technical knowhow, but they like technical jargon, and so it's common that technical jargon gets blended with traditional spirituality into something new. Or something that seems new. To me, 'all is information' is something like 'all is mind.' 'Matter' is an illusion or a misunderstanding or simply a concept in the system of concepts (and there is only concept-information-mind, something like that.) In general it's not testable, but it's not for digging ditches to begin with but rather (seems to me) for its pleasant psycho-active effects. Perhaps it's answer to the perceived threat of materialism. My question is: does it give us an afterlife we didn't have already? Will it usher in the age of Aquarius? Will we stop waging war, putting carbon in the air? Because we are enlightened finally with the final master word?
Quoting Zugzwang
Regardless of how you personally might relate to the idea that matter and energy and information are equivalent, there is a growing trend toward this understanding. I see it as a monism, where everything is made of matter, energy, and information.
That everything is information is easily falsifiable ( Popper ) by providing something that is not information?
Quoting Zugzwang
Ha, ha. Who knows what might emerge from a shift in paradigm. :smile:
I appreciate your polite engagement with a skeptic. So you are saying matter = energy = information = everything. I'm not up on the latest physics, so I don't deny that some version of that in some context is plausible and maybe even probable. But perhaps we treat the claims of physics differently. I guess I'm an instrumentalist about such things. It's the technology that speaks to me, including algorithms for predication that outperform others.
Quoting Pop
I was just reading Popper earlier. If you want to present your thesis as an empirical claim, you should do something practical with it that couldn't otherwise be done or predict something that other, competing theories don't predict or even contradict. Your challenge is akin to the idealist saying: just show me something that isn't mind. But that's actually a defect, cuz 'everything is X' is basically as good as 'nothing is X' as no sorting of entities is involved. [s]The Absolute[/s] 'Information' is the night in which all cows are black.
A question for you. Is the Donald Mckay you refered to the same as Donald MacCrimmon MacKay?
A british physicist, 1922 to 1987.
He's in Wikipedia. Do you know more on the web? I'll keep looking...an interesting background similar to Harry Nyquist and Claude Shannon in some ways.
Ha, ha, I happen to be an idealist also, though now an enactivist. Information is fundamental. To know anything at all, you have to have information about it. That is the bottom line. This is how we are enacted / interacted in the world.
I'm not sure. His paper is called MacKay, D. Information, Mechanism and Meaning; MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 1969. I can not find a free version.
This is an interesting read: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/3/1/68
I think he was just not very prominent. :sad:
This is a great argument against Shannon's information definition, in that it treats information as finite, which is an error in biotic evolution, given open ended emergence.
Stuart Kauffman: "In POE we argued that Shannonâs [2] classical definition of information as the measure of the decrease of uncertainty was not valid for a biotic system that propagates its organization. The core argument of POE was that Shannon information âdoes not apply to the evolution of the biosphereâ because Darwinian preadaptations cannot be predicted and as a consequence âthe ensemble of
possibilities and their entropy cannot be calculated [1].â Therefore a definition of information as
reducing uncertainty does not make sense since no matter how much one learns from the information
in a biotic system the uncertainty remains infinite because the number of possibilities of what can
evolve is infinitely non-denumerable. I remind the reader that in making his definition that Shannon
specified that the number of possible messages was finite."
Kauffmans definition of information is:
"We therefore conclude that constraints are information and⊠information is constraints⊠We
use the term âinstructional informationâ because of the instructional function this
information performs and we sometimes call it âbiotic informationâ because this is the
domain it acts in, as opposed to human telecommunication or computer information systems
where Shannon information operates ".
That is similar!
I like enactivism, or at least the quote below.
[quote=Wiki]
Radical enactivists often adopt a thoroughly non-representational, enactive account of basic cognition. Basic cognitive capacities mentioned by Hutto and Myin include perceiving, imagining and remembering.[16][17] They argue that those forms of basic cognition can be explained without positing mental representations. With regard to complex forms of cognition such as language, they think mental representations are needed, because there needs explanations of content. In human being's public practices, they claim that "such intersubjective practices and sensitivity to the relevant norms comes with the mastery of the use of public symbol systems" (2017, p. 120), and so "as it happens, this appears only to have occurred in full form with construction of sociocultural cognitive niches in the human lineage" (2017, p. 134).[16] They conclude that basic cognition as well as cognition in simple organisms such as bacteria are best characterized as non-representational.[18][16][17]
Enactivism also addresses the hard problem of consciousness, referred to by Thompson as part of the explanatory gap in explaining how consciousness and subjective experience are related to brain and body.[19] "The problem with the dualistic concepts of consciousness and life in standard formulations of the hard problem is that they exclude each other by construction".[20] Instead, according to Thompson's view of enactivism, the study of consciousness or phenomenology as exemplified by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty is to complement science and its objectification of the world. "The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression" (Merleau-Ponty, The phenomenology of perception as quoted by Thompson, p. 165). In this interpretation, enactivism asserts that science is formed or enacted as part of humankind's interactivity with its world, and by embracing phenomenology "science itself is properly situated in relation to the rest of human life and is thereby secured on a sounder footing."[21][22]
[/quote]
Ok, good luck with it. This would be really interesting stuff If you can find anything. :up:
It's very posible that MacKay's work was covered by the Official Secrets Act.
Maybe that's why Roger Penrose's books seem a little off. They can't publish the good stuff for the public.
The theory was packed with advanced math, far to complicated at least for me. But as far as I understood, the theory postulated a dependence of the material world on its information content. I guess all efforts to establish the theory have been given up, after v. Weizsaeckers death.
There is a summary in English of the so called Ur Theory by Holger Lyre, a former student of v. Weizsaecker, today a prof. for philosphy at the university of Magdeburg.
You're new here. Welcome to the jungle!
Thanks for that info, and welcome to the forum. :smile:
Quite a lot of similar such studies / evidence from various fields was presented in the [url=https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11556/what-is-information/p1]what is information thread.
[/url] Zeilinger concluded similarly. Stating: [b]"It does not make any sense to
talk about reality without the information about it".[/b]
That one can not know anything without information about it seems so obvious, but it is still a big step for anybody to go from there, to state that "everything is information". Yet this is what is required to define it.
All the definitions thus far have been close, but I feel, they just miss the mark, probably because they fail to embrace the paradigm.
It is so hard to jump the fence, given our upbringing. Can you imagine consciousness and information, and nothing else? To some extent this is the implication! It is unimaginable that this could be reality. Most people would consider it impossible, so will dismiss it off hand. However when you examine the possibility logically, and non judgmentally, the argument is incredibly strong - so far on the side of "everything is information", that it is no contest at all. However to embrace the paradigm means to change oneself, so the reluctance is understandable.
If information is everything, then the definition of information is "absolutely constrained" in what it can be.
It can only be one thing, as far as I can see. There is only one thing that is everything, and that is the "interaction of systems, including their subsystems".
It is the form of these systems that is interacting, and causing a mutual change in their "absolute" characteristics, such that their form evolves. This is the process of information, where information is the evolutionary interaction of form. Another way to say it is information = evolutionary interaction. This captures everything, and situates information into it's logically correct position - a position currently occupied by interaction. :smile: Essentially information is interaction.
Understanding information defined this way facilitates further insight into information, which I take to be a non quantifiable fundamental observable ( Barbieri ). Systems are interacting and assembling on their own. This leads to a way of seeing the world , composed of systems, as evolving informational bodies, existing as a function of their historical interactions unilaterally. Hence we are the result of our historical interactions - the result of our historical experiences. What we are, and those experiences are the one inextricable process. @Zugzwang I think this is what Enactivism tries to elucidate also. These interactions are information, and nothing exists outside of these interactions.
Martin Kober
Institut fšur Theoretische Physik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitšat,
Max-von-Laue-Str. 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Conclusion: "In retrospect, regarding the notion of causality, the framework of physics has undergone a paradigmatic changewith the advent of quantum mechanics about 80 years ago.The deterministic character of physics has been abandoned and knowledge and information have become central concepts. The foundations of quantum theory have not only shone new light on one of the deepest philosophical questions, namely the nature of reality, but have in the past decades also led to the possibility of new technologies".
That shows, that even if it was true that the world is made up of information, the subject adds something to make information out of this mere perception.
Wrong matter?
I think you are getting at the mind dependent nature of the world? I think that is the case, and I like the Enactivist version of it - slightly more sophisticated then idealism, imo, given it explains how we are provided with a picture of the world already full of anthropocentric symbiology - already coloured in so to speak. Given science tells us there is no colour, or sound in the "real" world. That instead there is frequencies of light, and vibrations.
This fits with the notion that a self aware symbolic self evolved after an external world picture was already resolved neurally, and so a self interacts with internal neural patterning, rather then an external world. This I think is consistent with the neuroscience model of mind where a Markov blanket initially resolves frequencies and vibrations to ordered symbols, to be processed then by what we understand as mind. I wonder If @Isaac would agree?
I think the way to see it is as a monism, where energy, matter, and information is present in everything. The information theoretic, though still new to me, suggests that immaterial information can not exist.
That information only occurs due to energy congealing to a material - that this process of becoming a substance is itself a process of integrating information, and matter is really "symbolized" amalgams of energy in various forms. That matter exists in solid and stable form is important as form represents the order in the universe, and the fact that something has form allows it to interact with other somethings that have form, and not with something that is immaterial.
Everything that exists, exists in some form. The ordered universe has to exist in a form, hence so too do it's component parts. Hence life exists in some form. Understanding exists in some form. The form of one's understanding interacts with the form of externalities already symbolized to form. This interaction is information, and it's effect is to evolve these forms.
I am convinced this interaction is information, and it is a far bigger deal than what we normally understand it to be.
I found a little more background on the Donald M. MacKay that you referenced. The 'Ratio Club' can be checked on Wikipedia and you will see both Donald MacKay and Alan Tuning were members, so they knew each other. Some of Turing's work was covered by the Official Secrets Act so my speculation that MacKay's might be also is a good guess.
What I think is posible is there are advanced mathematics models (published or classified) of a different type than the Shannon model. It might be what you are discussing - a type of information with meaning.
Fascinating! There are methods of persuasion, as employed by Cambridge Analytica, but to find a theory of persuasion, would be quite somthing else. I will have to study up on cybernetics: The word cybernetics refers to the theory of message transmission among people and machines.
"society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part". - Wikipedia
I assume that the aime should be to define the term as far as possible in such a way that it covers the vague meaning that the word "Information" has in everyday`s language. We think, we know what is meant by statements like: I need more information.
Regardless wether there is a monism of energy, matter and Information or not, it makes no sense to call everything information we may be able to find out about a given object. We may call this complexity or even potential information.
In the same way it makes no sense to refer to everything we already know as information. There are already terms for this: LetÂŽs call it memory or knowledge.
The term "Information" has two aspects, that have not been considered enough so far.
1) The aspect of novelty: A propostion only contains information for us, if we draw new conclusions from it. This is to seperate the term "Information" from the Term "knowledge". But at the same time it does not prevent us from calling "Information" what arises in the moment we become aware of a new idea.
2)The aspect of comprehensibility: A proposition contains information for us, only if we are able to understand it. To do so, itÂŽs semantic elements (what ever this is) must match a part of what we know about the world (or letÂŽs say itÂŽs hypothetical linguistic expression).
I think, there is no sense in trying to determine the amount of potential information contained in a given object in advance. Because the amount of "Information" we may draw from dealing with an object (or a proposition) depends on the way we look at it. LetÂŽs remeber the saying: For the one whoÂŽs only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
PS: During the interwar period there was an attempt by members of the "Wiener Kreis" to quantify the semantic content of a message by means of the complexity of itÂŽs syntactical structure. This attempt failed as did theire attempt to find only one of WittgensteinÂŽs elementary propositions.
Then we have the information (non-quantifiable) contained in forms. There is a huge variety of them. They are contained in the physical world and in the world of the brain, interacting via our body and they are interdependent. The depend on the initial state of the universe.
I was looking for math models of information and found this push me pull you game on Wikipedia.
Push Me Pull You game
If you play the videos it might give you some insights into how math models could be used to simulate brain function. I'm not saying this example is how brain function works, just that this type of simulation could be useful in studying how neuron groups control information.
:grimace: Can you please explain the logic that underlies this expression?
Quoting Gobuddygo
Yes, here we are talking about nonequilibrium, irreversible, dissipative systems, which virtually all natural systems are. So whilst entropy plays a role in their creation of ordered form, it is nothing like the above mathematical expression suggests. The interaction of systems can be reduced to the interaction of one part to another. This coincides with the reduction of logic to one part to another, which is the basis of our relational understanding. This interaction is information, and nothing exists outside of this interaction, "this interaction is everything" - everything is probabilistic outside of this interaction, both forward and backward in time. At the point of interaction, the probability is collapsed to a moment of consciousness - and "nothing" exists outside these moments. The two parts interacting are a brain state of integrated information, interacting with and trying to integrate a brain state representing an externality. Their interaction is largely deterministic, but there is a slight element of randomness, swaying the determinism such as to allow for emergence.
Some of this randomness would be entropy playing its part. Cellular motors are 66% efficient - can convert 66% of energy to ordered form, so 34% is lost as heat and entropy. Seems like a lot of entropy in the mix of what creates order, but it is an open environment so much of this entropy would be dissipated. And a small amount would remain in the mix, perhaps 1% or less, causing a randomness of consciousness, such as to allow for novel form?
What do you think?
The k is Bolzmann's constant. The N is the number of physical states that leaves the system unchanged. The ln is the Natural logarithm.
As you can read in my second part this information=entropy= a number (klnN). This is not the information contained in the forms, which is not quantifiable.
Information is not interaction (the non-quantifiable info of the forms, that is).9
The obvious answer is - show me something that is not information?
It took me several months, perhaps six months to warm to the idea that "everything" is information, so I wouldnât expect you to be able to understand it straight away. I have amassed quite a lot of evidence for it, from diverse and respected opinion in science, physics, biology, philosophy, anthropology, etc, and I have weighed it up against the evidence that not everything is information, which is non existent â it is an assumption without proof. - a belief! So I have weighed up the evidence and decided to follow the logic.
The resultant definition seems to fit. Information is the interaction of form. But probably I have not explained myself well enough. If everything is information, then there is only one thing information can be â it is the interaction of systems. Let me prove it to you by explaining how it works in the situations that you have posted. If you donât mind, I will correct them in terms of my model. My model is not quite complete, and it would take too long to explain in detail, so I will plow straight into prediction, and hopefully you will understand.
Quoting Mersi
According to my model, information only exists at the point of interaction of two systems. Mine is a panpsychic definition, applicable in all situations. But for humanity this interaction is a neural process of distinguishing an externality against the integrated information already established ( knowledge ) as per constructivism.
Quoting Mersi
Yes , there needs to exist an established body of information ( knowledge ) onto which new information must fit, in order to understand it........Can you see how knowledge is a body of information - accumulating this way through moments of consciousness? Read my reply to Gobuddygo above, and Danlager below for more detail.
Quoting Mersi
Agreed, the information outside of a moment of interaction, that creates consciousness, is probabilistic. Schrodinger's cat situation proves it.
Quoting Mersi
In my model, a body of integrated information arises due to the personal experiences of an individual over a life time, so is idiosyncratic. Understanding is idiosyncratic to a particular consciousness, so in order to influence any particular consciousness, one needs to tailor the information specifically to their consciousness.
Wikipedia - "Today in the United States we have somewhere close to four or five thousand data points on every individual ... So we model the personality of every adult across the United States, some 230 million people".
â?Alexander Nix, chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, October 2016
All things in formation constitute information. Thing not in formation don't.
Interaction is no information too. It merely takes care of information.
Yes I understand. But I find such equations frustrating, as no information can be retrieved from entropy which is chaotic. The information retrieved from the Boltzman situation is purely theoretic and nothing to do with the observation of any particular state. It is to do with applying a logic to a theoretical state in thermal equilibrium.
That information = entropy is very misleading, imo. But I understand what you are saying, thanks.
It's just a number. True info lies in the forms. Two books contain the same entropy but very different info. If one is a love story and the other a particle physics roman.
I think it's very abstract but I can relate to it. Can you give a practical example? I don't see interaction is information instead of an intermediary between different forms (litterally, forms, like a circle or square(. The neural forms and forms in the ohysical world interact. My body lies between these worlds.
You should write an essay on this topic! I see it interests you!
Not the evolution of forms?
I take the Enactivist approach, which suggests a mind ( as we know it ) evolved after the symbology of externalities was resolved. So we interact with the symbolized world presented to us by our senses and a primitive mind. This primitive mind resolves the world neural network like, so no reasoning is involved. So information is interaction at all levels, but for us it is interaction of a sophisticated mind, with the primitive mind, which presents us with a picture of the world. In this scenario the subject object distinction ocurrs at the neural level.
Yes I should write something in more detail, I have still not quite put it together, and there are situations I am not certain about, yet! :smile:
Forms might work better.
How do you envision the interaction?
Do you mean with "more sophisticated" us people?
Yeah, the cerebellum would represent us, whilst a more primitive mind would have resolved the external world to a coloured in and symbolized world, during a time when the cerebellum was less developed.
Quoting DanLager
I use a systems logic. I find that logic is equal to informational structure found in the external world. I assume these two are equal, and this gives me confidence in logic. In any pocket of the universe that is ordered, the underlying self organization is causing this. So logic and this order can not be different. This gives me confidence in logic and mathematics as reliable descriptions of externalities.
If it represnts us then who are "us" (we)? Personally I think we are just our body (without brain).
I'm not on your side concerning logic as interaction. Logic connects forms but in a restricted way.
My wife again: "get your ass from behind that phone!". Sigh...women. But its half past one already... ?
:smile: Ha, we are an evolving process of self organization. Which to my mind is equal to consciousness. It is not I think therefore I am, but I am consciousness, in an ongoing and evolving processes.
Quoting DanLager
If order is informational structure, then it would only have one way to present itself. The order within the biosphere is interrelated - interacting all the time creating a whole - it only has one logic, imo.
To some extent, we collapse probability to conception in a moment of consciousness, due to the interaction of externalities, real or imagined, - this change causing process is information.
I looks very similar. :smile:
Actually what I linked to was a ridiculous example and it wasn't a simulation but recorded game play. Still something about the Push Me Pull You game reminded me of brain activity so maybe you saw it too.
There are better brains simulator videos on the web but they are really boring. They will put you to sleep.
Your examples are more fact based and certianly relevant to what information is.
I was also thinking how our brains handle tens of thousands of items of information per day but everything seems to happen on a single stage, almost one at a time. Like there is a central core to how we handle information with a lot of peripherals filling in the details.
Yes, there is only ever a moment of consciousness - the stage. Life can be broken down to progressive moments of consciousness lasting 1-400ms, as we have discussed before. Life is a progression and accumulation of these moments. Whether these moments are like the frames of a movie reel or something inching forward hand over hand so to speak, like push me pull you - who knows?
It amazes me how simple a conception it all can be reduced to.
I have found a definition of information very similar to my own, but put to different purposes.
Not sure this covers the different uses of the term "information", though. Or how solid the relation is.
Landauer's principle
It holds that "any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of a bit or the merging of two computation paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding entropy increase in non-information-bearing degrees of freedom of the information-processing apparatus or its environment". - Wiki.
This is something that may be relevant to consciousness. In the process of information, as an interaction of one part to another, there is an element of entropy which changes the deterministic nature of the relation, such that a tiny degree of randomness arises - perhaps this is what causes emergence?
Could Landauer's principle explain it?
Perhaps this is free will? :smile:
The information contained in a book about a love adventure is about the same as that in a book on quantum fields in curved spacetime. If both books contain about the same number of letters. This equality can be expressed in an equality of numbers. Entropy of book one is the same as entropy of book two. If we look at the letters only (the entropy of the physical books not included). Both books are entirely different though. An alien wouldn't (yet) be able to discern between books.
and as a consequence, raped a physicist. :lol:
:rofl:
"Excitation" wrongly interpreted as "to jump on"...
I have no problem with the equivalence of matter and information. However I see no advantage in this assumption. What is the practical consequence?
So information = matter = structure = form.
Then you say information is interaction. Then you say logic is equal to informational structure found in the external world.
Beside the fact that we now have a new notion: informational structure to deal with, I would say: NO!
Form or what we perceive as form has no logic and needs none. We need logic to deal with forms.
There is no place in the outside world where we could break down logical rules.
The problem is that till now you haveÂŽt defined the term "Information".
This cretes a mess of terms , so part of what you say is lost.
To define the term "information" I suggest to with "Information" contained in propositions. Because most complex "information" travels via the network of language. As Wittgenstein said: Konwledge and language need not be the same, but what knowledge is it, that can not be expressed verbally.
As far as I understand your thoughts move in an area between questions of quantum mechanics and neuro physiology, between structuralism and neo positivism. Even in a more modest area a clarification of the terms would be necessary.
They are not equivalent. Matter can exist and a matter arrangement (a form like a Platonic object) can carry information. You can even say the form is the (non-entropic) information but this is not equivalent to matter (whatever matter may be).
Hi Mersi,
A lot of your questions are answered in the OP and on the first page of the thread.
Quoting Mersi
The world is mind dependent. We can not separate the two. In Enactivism the world is an amalgam of external causation and internal causation. If we look across cultures and through the ages, we can see how this has panned out.
Quoting Mersi
I have defined it in the OP and in my last reply to you. It is a panpsychic and general definition, that fits Systems Theory, Constructivism, Enactivism, and Integrated information theory. When these theories are integrated, they become a pretty good theory of everything. Information is the evolutionary interaction of form, or Information = evolutionary interaction, explains the role of information in our lives. The definition should describe the interaction of any two systems, and everything is a system in systems theory. To make it more user friendly I reduce Systems to form, so it makes better sense when we apply it to our interaction with objects, that we don't normally see as systems.
Quoting Mersi
Yes, I agree, it is all over the place. I hope to write up something complete and coherent in time, but I am still trying to put it all together. I have found these threads and discussions and challenges are helpful toward that end. :smile:
So information is more specifically brain information.
And brain information is dynamic brain states over durations of time.
This includes a defined ability of brain state to hold a wide variety of specific content.
Defining information is this way (definitions are ultimately arbitrary) can give focus to the special circumstance that we have information here on planet earth in the form of human brains in a way that exists nowhere else (that we know, of course). An 'information is everything' definition in this respect is extremely misleading. It completely ignores the uniqueness of our situation.
This is correct, but would be an anthropocentric definition of information. The theories I mention above imply a panpsychism. From the point of view of panpsychism, a theory of everything is possible. When these theories are integrated, then information is the evolutionary interaction of form, which gives rise to new forms, in an ongoing and open ended process.
You have focused on brain, and have touched upon a micro instance, of what happens universally , when understood from the perspective of these theories.
Ultimately order in the universe exists as an evolving body of information. This is the only way it can exist for us. This is consistent with how order exists in the brain.
??? Is everything psyche?
I thought you were asleep. Everything can be understood as an evolving process of integrating information. But only the most complex forms of this can have a consciousness like ours. And then, amongst the forms of consciousness that we have across individuals, cultures, and through history also varies in form, and is open ended. So why limit yourself to a deadpan consciousness of materialism, where you live, work, and die, amen?
Can you give a concrete example?
Quoting Pop
That's a good name.
My argument is that if brains are present and the commom denominator, then I give credit were it's due, to brain based information.
The way I think of brain state is that what your brains mental content is, at any given moment, would physically exist as a specific brain state. So you define information as this relation. Information is specific mental content existing as a specific brain state.
I have applications I like using this definition/relation for and it's what works for me. The Shannon definition or 'everything is information' definition would have applications I would use in their own contexts. Time perception would be an applications of brain based information since brains are how we perceive time.
Whilst you are thinking about this then it is information, but when you stop thinking about this and think about the football, then it is not information, then the football thought is information. Information only exists in interaction.
Schrodinger's cat in a box does not contain information, no matter how certain we feel that it does. It only contains information once we open the box and interact with the cat's form
Information is the interaction of a brain state, with something that has caused a change to the brain state, whether this be an externality, or something imagined.
This gets back to the moment of consciousness we discussed previously. Nothing exists outside of a moment of consciousness, and a moment of consciousness does not exist passively as a brain state, but as an interaction of a brain state with something that is causing it to change.
Likewise outside of brain, when something incurs a change in state, it has integrated new information - it has incurred a change in state, due to an interaction with something.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/586578
Field excitations are particles. Aggregates of particles form quarks, leptons, mesons, hadrons, nuclei, atoms, molecules, structures, cells, organisms, planets that rotate, stars, groups, galaxies, superclusters, on the spacetime of the whole universe.
What do you mean with logical / metaphysical limits? Different forms on a piece of paper?
I suspect that the process that we perceive as an effect of information takes place high up in the ranking of all mental processes.
From the point of neurophysiology the term "information" probably belongs to a certain processing, or even many steps of processing. As far as the processing of messages is concerned, information has to do with the fact that one proposition can verify other propositions. (Perhaps the "Home" of the transitivity of truth is somewhere here)
By this way "Information" guides the mental process in a certain direction, although itself a product of the process.
Perhaps this is even to be taken literally as certain "information" may activate certain areas of the brain, or as Nyquist may say, causes certain brain states.
Now it's going somewhere! There are 10exp10exp40 possible pathways for neural flows of peak potentials. Coordinated concerts, that is. We have potentially virtually infinite memory capacity!
First, did you know the word 'literally' has two opposite meanings. Sometimes you can tell by the context and sometimes you can't. That's just a quirk of language.
Next, my view is that information 'exists' as brain states (not causes). The important implication is that information (this model) can not physically exist unless it's in the form of a completely physical brain state. There may be a tendency to imagine information in a disembodied form but that's not something that can physically exist.
Dynamic brain state = changing synapses = changing neural patterning
Sure, why not? All terms for the same thing unless you disagree.
I don't think it is possible, at present, or ever, to absolutely define the neuroplasticity that is seen evolving, but we need to conceptualize it at some level. I like the way Integrated Information Theory does this by calling consciousness a state of integrated information, and then overlapped by new information. Yes, the information is the physical change in brain state. And the impression arises that consciousness only exists in this dynamic state of change, of information. And what is evolving is the form of the state of integrated information ( consciousness ), in an endless process.
In the abstract, new forms seem to be evolving. A body of past integrated information exists in a form, and this interacts with a novel neural form. So information would seem to be "an evolutionary interaction of form" ??
Bear in mind, such informational structure exists universally, and I am trying to capture a panpsychist definition of information, that is universally applicable.
When you say information exists as brain state is this a conscious state?
I would prefer to reserve the term "information" for the process that precedes the conscious state.
Because in the moment we become conscious of something, we are already separated from the content.
But here we enter the realm of transcendental philosophy, even phenomenology, the realm of the "Schelling" and "Heidegger" fans with theire strange and misleading vocabulary.
LetÂŽs try this example:
Peter says: Company XYZ goes broke. ItÂŽs stocks will soon be worthless!
Tom says: How do you know?
Peter says: Ruth gave me the information.
From Peters perspective the imminent bankruptcy is no longer information. As Tom put it, it is, what Peter knows. RuthÂŽs information was, what got Peter to the point where he activated all necessary brain regions to a point to paint a picture of his future where his XYZ shares are worthless.
Or letÂŽs try this anaology: To cause a certain brain state it is necessary to contact a lot of neurons. LetÂŽs assume they all have numbers like phone numbers. Sort of conference call. The information is now in the numbers dialed, not in the outcome at the end. The outcome is the consious state. ThatÂŽs what we know about. And what we know is what we immediately make subject of the next conference call.
By the way: Each call changes the network at least slightly! So no impression can ever hit twice in the same way.
I try to use the word dynamic as it's used in physics. A momentary state can be static or dynamic. Brain state wouldn't be functional in a static state so a dynamic state should be recognized. You don't know if something is static or dynamic unless you have observations at times t0 and t1 to compare. This involves a duration of time.
Quoting Mersi
If you define information/brain state based on a relation of mapping mental activity to brain state then you could try to map what you observe to be concsiousness to the physical state that supports it. I don't know? It's complicated, isn't it. There seems to be overlap in the physical matter that supports (or is) information and consciousness but maybe not the same depending on what consciousness is. That's really not an answer, just a posible way to approach the problem. Maybe getting an understanding of this relation of information as brain state first will help in understanding consciousness.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
:up: Yeah, that's the way I'm seeing it also.
I think consciousness is effectively work in progress, but not absolutely. There are studies suggesting it lasts 1-400ms, and if this is accurate, then it exists in frames. I think, we can say information is the change of brain state, and consciousness is the integration of this change. This would be consistent with phenomenology. In my understanding feelings cause the information to self organize. In other interpretations, feelings result from this self organization.
But, as you say it is difficult, I doubt it is a single linear process. I suspect there may be multiple streams of consciousness, occurring simultaneously. I imagine those studies can only focus on one stream of consciousness at a time. My wife is able to speak on the phone and type a message to another recipient simultaneously. My head is often in the clouds, whilst I do practical things around the house. Although deep concentration is a single stream, for me at least. How about you?
I think if we can just conceptualize a single stream of information processing that gives rise to consciousness we will have done well. I don't think absolute brain functioning will be resolved any time soon. :smile:
As we analyze information ever more deeply, we will inevitably depart from it's normal understanding.
The normal understanding is that information can be written to a HDD and the HDD moved to another room, so we have moved information. But this is not actually the case. Whether there is any information on that HDD can not be known until it is read in the absolute sense. So it is only probabilistic that the HDD contains information until we prove it does by interacting with it and our brain state is changed due to this information. This is consistent with the Schrodinger cat scenario. This would suggest this is the case for all information. This illustrates the wave function collapse nature of reality, and suggests consciousness is probabilistic, until collapsed to a point. This would validate the notion that consciousness exists in frames - exists at the point of collapse of probabilistic information.
However, thankfully, new information has to fit old information, in a constructivist fashion.It has to fit existing informational structure. So having an existing body of information keeps things on track - to evolve in a deterministic manner, with just a slight element of randomness, to allow for emergent / novel thought.
What is the big deal about all this?? Information philosophy is the future of philosophy, imo. All disciplines are realigning their understandings to incorporate information as the fundamental.
The really fun part about this is that it is all currently emerging, so as we start to develop an understanding about information and how it works, we start to develop an information philosophy. :nerd:
Claude Shannon narrowed his definition of "Information" down to one specific "practical consequence" : either a communication of Information conveys (certain) meaning from sender to receiver, or not (uncertain). But that is just one of many ways to define the term. Pop has developed a more philosophical way to approach the problem of understanding what Information is, in more general terms : "Information is the evolutionary interaction of form, or Information = evolutionary interaction, explains the role of information in our lives." Unfortunately, that definition may be a bit too broad for those who don't grasp the Idealized meaning of "interaction of form". Many posters on this forum don't give credence to Plato's notion of abstract eternal Forms, as the essence of concrete space-time Things.
So, the problem with a comprehensive definition of "Information" is that it is all-of-the-above, and more. I call it a ShapeShifter, because Information takes different forms, depending on the context. In a computer, it can be reduced down to abstract mathematical symbols : 1 or 0, all or nothing. On the other hand, you mentioned that you have "no problem with the equivalence of matter and information". But what does that abstract equation imply about the real world? In what sense are Matter and Information the same thing? To clarify that claim of multiple identities, I would add a third entity : The Matter, Energy, Information Equivalence. The original referent, of the verb "to inform", was to the invisible & intangible contents of a human mind (meaning). But Shannon gave it a mathematical & physical interpretation similar to the quantum collapse of an abstract & random waveform into a specific concrete particle of matter. However, by comparing the uncertainty of randomness to Entropy, he brought-in a connection to abstract causal Energy, which we infer from its effects on Matter.
Therefore, a complete definition of "Information" must cover all of those technical & scientific concepts, along with the philosophical notions of "aboutness" & "meaning" & "cybernetics". In its causal energetic form, I spell it : EnFormAction (the power to cause change in form). Only when you understand the ubiquity of Information in the real and ideal worlds, will you be able to see the manifold practical and philosophical "consequences" of Information, as Spinoza's "universal substance" of the world. :nerd:
The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
Here we formulate a new principle of mass-energy-information equivalence proposing that a bit of information is not just physical, as already demonstrated, but it has a finite and quantifiable mass while it stores information.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794
Matter, Energy, Information :
Unpublished until now, this essay was written in 1969. It takes up the ancient concept of form, in order to interpret the contemporary concept of information and to develop a unified concept encompassing both biology, as understood cybernetically, and physics, as the theory of decidable alternatives
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-03668-7_11
Information :
[i]* Claude Shannon quantified Information not as useful ideas, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful order (1) and meaningless disorder (0) ; between knowledge (1) and ignorance (0). So, that meaningful mind-stuff exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing effects on reality while having no sensory physical properties. We know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world.
* For humans, Information has the semantic quality of aboutness , that we interpret as meaning. In computer science though, Information is treated as meaningless, which makes its mathematical value more certain. It becomes meaningful only when a sentient Self interprets it as such.
* When spelled with an âIâ, Information is a noun, referring to data & things. When spelled with an âEâ, Enformation is a verb, referring to energy and processes.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics itâs called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology itâs called "Conflict".
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
( I was wondering where you were? )
:up: This highlights the potential of information. This is pretty close, and works well in your scheme.
Another aspect of the definition that I thought important, that hasn't been mentioned. Information is always a first person experience, so I was careful to make the definition fit both a first person and third person perspective. Shannon information is well debunked in this interesting read.( download pdf )
"Let us assume that information is the thought process in the mind of the person thinking the contents of the wire. Then what I thought when sending the wire and what the addressee thought on receiving it is not the same information. Information is not one or the other act of consciousness but what is known by the act of consciousness, something that is common to these conscious persons who are otherwise so different". - Carl Friedrich von WeizsÀcker......... original paper:Matter - energy - information 1969
He is wrong!! information is not equal to consciousness. Information is the interaction of information, which when integrated becomes consciousness. Consciousnes = integrated information, which is different to the process preceding its integration?? Information is the interaction between two, or more, forms, and it is different to the eventual singular form it is incorporated into.
He was right.Information is not interaction. Interaction operates on information. It is waht gives form to forms. The forms are the information. Whithout interaction no forms exist. A quantum wavefunction spreads out more and more (or shrinks in momentum space). With interaction oblivion is called back (collapse).
Yes. It's understandable that some might define Information in terms of Consciousness. But they are not the same. And the difference makes a difference in understanding. Information is what we are conscious of : aboutness, relationships, meaningful patterns, structure. In its native "wild" form, Information is meaningless potential, metaphorically equivalent to the static voltage of a battery, compared to the flowing amperage of an electrical circuit. Only when the circuit is complete (whole, unified) is it capable of doing work (energy ; useful relevant meaning).
Likewise, only when integrated into a holistic concept, does information become conscious meaning-or-value-or-significance to the "first person" observer. In terms of quantum physics, an observation extracts information (energy, mathematical values, personal values), which causes the metaphorical "collapse" (manifestation) of an uncertain state into a certain value, such as a vector (position + direction). So consciousness is about information, but is not information per se. You could say that Consciousness is the transformation of Potential information into Actual meaning. Or perhaps, Consciousness is the integration of an amorphous pattern (discrete parts) into a meaningful pattern (a whole concept or image). :smile:
PATTERNICITY
:up: Yep!
1. Potential information exists in the book on a shelf
2. Actual information occurs when we read it - interact with it.
3. Consciousness occurs when this interaction is integrated with past informational structure - ( knowledge).
The wavefunction is probabilistic / potential information, when interacted with it's potential is collapsed to a point, which gives rise to a moment of clarity - which is consciousness.
There is no way in hell you can know this from the currently prevalent definitions of information out there, and I wonder why?? The definition of information as provided by the Information Philosopher is the obvious definition of information - to inform - to literally shape, Is not present in any of the dictionaries, wikipedia, etc.
Information informs, gives shape to things. Only information gives shape to things. Anything that gives shape to things is information. And, everything is information from every perspective.
So, it is plain to see why Information Philosophy is important.
** in systems theory all things are systems.
** I think now it is something like this. This would agree with this and this study which would suggest the information process lasts 1-400ms, and then consciousness arises at the end of this. Must be in between information processing. Of course we can only conceptualize it to some extent.
I took a good look at the second study you mentioned.
Here's a link to the type of head/chin rest used for eye tracking in this study:
chinrest.net
Doesn't that look like a fun day?
Anyway, there are a few things that are salvageable but the authors are completely incompetent They identify information in the motion display entering the senses and being 'delivered' to the brain. And what they call a termination decision time is actually information formation time. They would have had a jewel of science if they had gotten it right. Maybe mutual incompetence is self reinforcing or maybe they are especially stupid.
So salvaging the information formation times in this study is still useful so maybe the poor study participants efforts weren't completely wasted.
Quoting Pop
I'm thinking our ingrained definitions shouldn't override things that are primary. Or, another way, our definitions should be based on what is primary.
This meaning of the word information, has dropped out of common usage, it seems. As has the term Cybernatics.
Yes. The physical "correlates" are visible & tangible. But what does the "meaning" look & feel like? Generic Information takes many different forms, some physical and some metaphysical (mental). I think it's important to emphasize that, in it's meaningful form, Information is immaterial. That's not woo-talk though, because Energy is the same. No-one has ever seen Energy, they only see its Effects on Matter. For example, light rays traveling in dark empty space are invisible, and only become visible when they interact with the chemical Rhodopsin in the eye, thence conveyed to the "neural correlates". If a spacewalker is looking perpendicular to the beam of photons, he will see nothing. Only by putting his eyes directly in the path of the ray does he "see the light".
BTW, I finally got the Patternicity image for my previous post. It's an illustration of the distinction between random background information, and ordered meaningful foreground information. My browser was getting 404 and 403 errors, and it took a long time to realize that the browser was at fault. Fortunately there was an alternative. Like many-faceted information, there's more than one way to "skin a cat" (local idiom). :joke:
Information philosophy considers a material object as an "information structure," from which the immaterial information can be abstracted as meaningful knowledge.
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/introduction/information/
I wanted to emphasize that information is physical in the sense that it causes our brain patterning to change. I respect your interpretation, although I do not agree with it myself, but I don't think we are people who would let a little disagreement like that stand between us. :smile:
:up: Yeah the pattern really illustrates how something might become distinct.
Do you know much about Cybernetics? It seemed to start with a bang, but then fizzled out, any idea why?
So letÂŽs call distinctions of whatever kind we make on objects structure or form.
If this structure is recorded directly or indirectly (e.g. because of a detour via measuring instruments) by sensory cells, I suggest the term perception.
For all the processes that perception goes through on its way, before it is integrated into a complex image with which it occures on the surface of our conciousness, I suggest the trem information.
Thus what is meant with my term is the position, perhaps the number or sequence of neurons that have to be activated in order to create a conciously perceptible image of (supposed) reality.
For the concious state I suggest the word knowledge.
When you see and recognize somebody or something, the information of this process exists only in the position , number and sequence of neurons activated. Is the network damaged or its cells become ill, the information disappears. But that doesnÂŽt mean that the object itselfe had lost its structure.
What I have not understood yet: Do you believe that we influence (In what way ever) the structure of an object when we perceive it and process this perception as information in the way mentioned above?
What do you mean by matter and information being equivalent? What aspects of matter and information have equal values? You refer to entropy and the states of matter?
Certainly, Information has physical effects, but like Energy it has no detectable physical properties (color, size, density). Energy was originally defined as the "ability" or "capacity" to do work, or to cause change in physical things. But Ability and Capacity are qualitative potentials, that have no Actual quantitative substance. However, in a philosophical (metaphysical) sense, Information is the "substance" (i.e. essence ; form) of reality. Aristotle was more of a "realist" than Plato, whose Ideal Forms existed in a non-physical Potential state, until realized into physical Actual things. Of course, that's an abstract philosophical distinction, which may not appeal to some folks.
Even Aristotle made a distinction between "universal" forms and "specific" things. So, his notion of Essential Substance is essentially the same as Plato's Ideal Forms. Philosophically, Universals are Holistic, while Individuals are Particular. Our five senses perceive Individuals, while only the sixth sense of Reason can detect Universals (commonalities, inter-relationships). Such distinctions have been controversial between philosophers even before Plato and Aristotle. That's because only Particulars are Real (empirical ; objective ; quanta ; photons), while Universals are Ideal (debatable ; subjective ; qualia ; redness).
Personally, I resolve such either/or debates with my BothAnd principle. So, you could call me a Pragmatic Idealist. For me, Information exists in both physical and meta-physical forms. :smile:
Ideal Forms are Universal :
Aristotle distinguishes between âsubstantialâ and âaccidentalâ forms. A substantial form is a second substance (species or kind) considered as a universal . . . . Matter, not form, is the principle of individuation.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle/Physics-and-metaphysics
Universals are a class of mind-independent entities, usually contrasted with individuals (or so-called âparticularsâ), postulated to ground and explain relations of qualitative identity and resemblance among individuals. . . . Realists endorse universals. Conceptualists and Nominalists, on the other hand, refuse to accept universals and deny that they are needed. Conceptualists explain similarity among individuals by appealing to general concepts or ideas, things that exist only in minds. Nominalists, in contrast, are content to leave relations of qualitative resemblance brute and ungrounded.
https://iep.utm.edu/universa/
Qualia ; Quale :
[i]Latin term for immaterial properties, such as color & shape, of physical objects. Usually contrasted with Quanta, referring to unique things that can be counted. Qualia are subjective aspects of sensory perceptions (e.g. redness), as contrasted with the presumed objective existence of material things. Yet, all we ever know of real things is the mental images created in the mind, in response to sensory stimuli, not the things-in-themselves.
1. Qualia are metaphysical Properties considered apart from physical Things. Properties are mental attributions or essences (e.g colors), rather than physical sensations (e.g vibrations). Mathematical relationships (ratios) are virtual properties.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page17.html
Pragmatic Idealism :
This term sounds like an oxymoron, combining practical realism with otherworldly fantasy. But together they describe the BothAnd attitude toward the contingencies of the world. Pragmatic Idealism is a holistic worldview, grounded upon our sensory experience with, and knowledge of, how the mundane world works, plus how Reality & Ideality work together to make a single whole. As a personal philosophy, it does not replace scientific Realism â and doesn't endorse fantasies of magic, miracles & monsters â because every thing or fact in the ârealâ parts of the world is subject to logical validation or empirical testing prior to belief.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page17.html
Quoting Pop
Yes. At the early stages of the Information Age and Computer Era, Cybernetics was a novel concept, which took a holistic approach to all processes. But, like computers themselves, that notion has become commonplace, and hence has lost its novelty, but not its utility. :nerd:
I don't agree. The electron and proton in formation have a physical effect. Energy has detectable properties. The frequency of a photon can be measured. Gravitons curve spacetime.
Yes, after some research, it was a very broad interdisciplinary approach - that swarmed around the control of systems, which seems to have led to the concept of holism, self organization, and then later to the Enactivist view of subject / object, amongst many other things.
As I study information in the sense that it informs ( shapes ) its potential power is growing in my mind.
Yes, imo. This is the Enactivist view: that information from the world acts on us, and we in turn act on the world, and what is resolved is an amalgam of the two. We get a sense of this by understanding that colour does not exist in the external world, according to science.
Information in the sense that it informs? What's the driving force of the sellf organizing structures? How do the patterns on insects or tigers, or giraffes come about? What makes them different? How do the wings of a butterfly and the figures on it come about? Is it a coincidence that some patterns have skull shapes? How does the body of the chameleon change color?
It's not that we form mental images of objects and that we don't have access to the objects themselves. That's a kind of logical empiricism that would make my loved ones very unreal indeed. The situation can be compared with that of math in physics. The "shut up and calculate" attitude says that we will never know the objects an Sich. But the math is merely descriptive. It describes some objective properties. Math is merely a mental construction that we project upon the physical universe. The formalist approach is untennable. The intuitive approach bears fruit.
Turing patterns are fascinating. What is the source of self organization - that is the 64billion dollar question - now billions due to inflation. :lol:
Source: initial configurations.
I agree with your first statement. But not with the second. Can you give an example of an Energy "property" that is not known by its secondary "effect" on matter? Effects are caused by an outside force. But Properties are inherent in the object observed.
One Effect of light energy is Color, but color is not intrinsic to photons -- it is a noumenon in the mind of the observer, and is mediated by the structure of the physical object. It takes two to make an observable, measurable property : energy plus matter.
So, Electrons, Protons, and Information have physical effects, but noumenal (metaphysical ; mental) Information has no physical properties : it's colorless, odorless, and shapeless. This is an example of Kant's ding an sich, which some people can't wrap their minds around. Phenomenon versus Noumenom is an ancient philosophical conundrum. :smile:
Noumenon :
In philosophy, a noumenon is a posited object or event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term noumenon is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term phenomenon, which refers to any object of the senses.
Wikipedia
Ding an sich :
(in Kant's philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, not mediated through perception by the senses or conceptualization, and therefore unknowable.
I was not familiar with the term "Enactivism", although I think you have referred to it before. To me, it seems to focus on the two-pronged Informative power of EnFormAction : the ability to create both physical (things) and meta-physical (ideas) Forms. Information is both the physical structure of Material objects and the rational structure of Meaningful ideas. :smile:
Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. ... this domain does not exist "out there" in an environment that acts as a landing pad for organisms that somehow drop or parachute into the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enactivism
Yes. The intuitive understanding of objects is that of naive Realism. And normally, it "bears fruit". But optical Illusions and drug-provoked Hallucinations bear bad fruit. What you "see" ain't always what is out there. :cool:
What is formalist approach? :
Formalism may be defined as a critical approach in which the text under discussion is considered primarily as a structure of words. That is, the main focus is on the arrangement of language, rather than on the implications of the words, or on the biographical and historical relevance of the work in question.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-20768-8_2
Note : sounds like Postmodernism to me. No relation to Enformationism.
What's naive about it? Are there naive realities and adult realities or something like that? Of course drug-induced hallicunations are just that. Hallicunations.
Formalism is a math approach that states that math objects are real. No human inventions.
Photons and gauge fields in general are pure energy.
Do you think that Idealists are uninformed, irrational, or biased? :smile:
NaĂŻve realism :
In social psychology, naĂŻve realism is the human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psychology)
What are the intrinsic physical properties of "pure energy" fields? As noted below, they are imaginary abstract models of hypothetical (immaterial) mathematical "structures". In Architecture school, I built models of buildings that were not-yet-real, and never became real. Their only reality was in their effects on the observer, who might decide to construct a full-scale model.
Those "naive" (pretend) models had some superficial (virtual) resemblance to a real building, but were not suitable for occupancy. They were useful only for thinking and planning for the real thing. So, in what sense is a quantum field real? It affects matter, but is not itself matter, being merely a mental construct. Scientists detect the effects of those ghostly fields with their instruments, but not the field an sich. Likewise, ghost hunters with gadgets search for physical effects of nearby ectoplasm, which they imagine as a pure energy field. But, as far as I know they have never "seen" a ghost with their eyes, only with their imagination.
I don't believe in ghosts, and I don't believe in quantum fields, which like building models are merely useful illustrations . But I can observe the effects of those imaginary objects on believers. At least, the concept of fields is useful for guiding scientists in their mathematical manipulations. Unlike ghost theory, quantum theory sometimes actually leads to real results in the material world. In magic, physical effects are identified with non-physical causes. And in mathematics, physical effects are identified with virtual causes. :nerd:
Pure Energy : uncontaminated with gross matter.
Quantum fields are composed of particles. Okay, virtual particles,
https://www.quora.com/If-the-quantum-field-is-not-composed-of-particles-what-is-the-field-made-of
Virtual : not real ; not actual ; quasi-real
[i]"not physically existing as such"
"being such in essence or effect"[/i]
.
In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity and quantum mechanics.[1]:?xi? QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and in condensed matter physics to construct models of quasiparticles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory
This is new to me. I looked into it a little on Wikipedia and an extension of Turing patterns schematized for biology (to deal with cell structure) can model LALI systems. The application models gene expression in developing limb formation as an example. Small changes in binding constants and diffusion rates can control growth rates to produce different structures. Looks like they can run computer models and various limb structures develop...so yes, fascinating. Probably not advanced enough to model entire organisms or complicated organs like brains.
My opinion, is Turing patterns don't involve information but are entirely physical states.
Like I said, it's new to me and I'm just trying to paraphrase Wikipedia.
Turing was such a brilliant mind. He really deserved to be celebrated like Einstein, not treated the way he was.
I'm starting to see information as an entirely physical process. It seems to be physical everywhere else as the interaction of systems - causing a change in them. But I have some work ahead of me if I am going to convince immaterial minds. :smile:
Quoting Mark Nyquist
Brain state as immaterial mind, is pretty much the end of the road theoretically. Once information becomes something immaterial we can not say much else about it.
If brain state is a physical patterning however, then information is a change to this physical patterning, then a brain is a body of past information, just like everything else is, and this leads to a theory of everything as evolving bodies of information.
Quoting Pop
I agree. The example is just to show how someone could hold this view but in fact it would be held as a physical state...brain state.
Oh, I see. Cool, we can continue to speculate then! :smile:
Quoting Pop
We can be certain that everything exists as a body of information, as that is how it must exist in the physical patterning of our brains. This is not to suggest solipsism, but to suggest that everything physical in the universe exists in the same way - as an evolving body of information, as I see it anyway.
Gnomon
That is at least debatable.
Light has a wavelength, which subject A and subject B perceive as color. For subject A the information taken is: Red. For subject B ( hence color blind) the information taken is green. Its the same wavelength.
One can say: Having always a certain wavlength is propertie of Light.
Ad Enactivist view: This means, the perception of the structure of an object and the resulting information for the subject causes in some way the structure of the perceived object?
A lot of adjustments on the field of inference will be necessary. i.e. What about causality?
I fear this requires a logic which is either so complicated (full of exceptions) that it is useless in everyday life, or so trivial that it is useless too.
Yes. It is quite different to naive realism. It would mean such things as light waves and vibrations interacting with established neural information to create what we normally understand to be matter.
Quoting Mersi
Not sure what you mean? I would say the information philosopher's definition of old fashioned information - to inform - to literally change the shape or form of something, is the obvious definition of information. The information philosophy that then results from this, is pretty complicated, but that is always the case when learning something new.
Yes. I am one of those obstinate "immaterial minds" disguised as a material body & brain. But that ideal ghostly metaphysical Me only exists as an abstract inference from our experience with the physical world. It is not real --- except in the sense of Information Realism.
Mathematicians have no problem thinking of math "objects" as real, in some meaningful sense. That's because they are used to constructing invisible metaphysical "structures" that are an essential part of their personal reality. Of course, being invisible, they must be represented as chalk or pencil marks on a black or white background. For the rest of us, it makes little difference whether such ideas are real or not, as long as we can take them for granted. For example, "Zero", the number with no referent, and the abstract irrational number "Pi", and the abstract ratios of Logarithms are essential to higher math, and modern technology. But, they all are lacking in material substance, even though the concepts of such numbers can be applied to any set of physical objects..
ZERO, by Charles Seife, is a book about literally nothing. Nothing material, that is. But it opened my eyes to the reality of nothingness, and the real utility of the concept of something missing. More recently, Incomplete Nature, by Terrance Deacon, has revealed the reality of Absence in the real world. We use such references to that-which-is-not-here-&-now (physically ; in the flesh) without giving a thought to how strange it is to talk about that which does not exist, as-if it does exist. Yes, that notion allows some people to "see" ghosts, but it also allows scientists and mathematicians to manipulate things, such as Dark Matter, that have no sensible material substance, and are only known by their mysterious effects on the material world. So, we need to be careful, not to throw-out the well-informed Information with the notional nonsense. :smile:
Notional : existing only in theory or as a suggestion or idea.
Informational Realism :
What is the ultimate nature of reality? This paper defends an answer in terms of informational realism (IR). . . . The outcome is informational realism, the view that the world is the totality of informational objects dynamically interacting with each other.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262350693_Informational_Realism
[i]Information Ethics :
The bookâs arguments are situated in Floridiâs contention that we are living through an âinformational turnâ or âfourth revolutionâ, following the scientific revolutions of Copernicus, Darwin and Freud.[/i]
https://theoccasionalinformationist.com/2014/07/29/floridis-information-ethics/
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea :
Some empty-headed genius improved the traditional Eastern counting methods immeasurably by adding zero as a placeholder, which allowed the genesis of our still-used decimal system. It's all been uphill from there, but Seife is enthusiastic about his subject; his synthesis of math, history, and anthropology seduces the reader into a new fascination with the most troubling number.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QUEHLM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
I would say, these all have their physical manifestation as the neural patterning of our brain. The main advantage of this is that it allows a regular treatment of everything, in a monistic manner. This allows one to push through the problem of mind and continue a theory of informational bodies.
Whilst you are free to believe what you wish, an immaterial mind has no information, so it is a dead end theoretically. Note, only physical things that have form have information - there are no distinctions in immateriality. You need those distinctions for information.
Quoting Gnomon
We can not know anything about dark matter because it has no form, as yet. It is effectively immaterial, apart from the neural patterning that gives rise to the dark matter concept.
BTW. I heard an interesting description of reality recently: Information and energy are two different aspects of reality, which when integrated create matter. It made me think, what if information existed in the mind, and external to mind exists an energetic scaffolding, when in Enactivist fashion the two are integrated, material reality is created. It would beg the question - is matter real? :lol:
Quoting Gnomon
:up: This is the new reality.
Yes. I'm obstinate in my belief that Generic Information is, not just "immaterial", but also "meta-physical". Yet I use that term in the Aristotelian sense, not the Aquinas sense. My insistence on using the "meta" word, is what leads some woo-woo-poo-pooers on this forum to label my worldview as "Pseudo-Science". As a long-time Skeptic of pseudoscience, I am keenly aware of the gray area on the fringes of science *. Yet, I think philosophy is the best, maybe only, way to shed light in the darkness. And abusive labels are counter-productive. But now, Information Theory has begun to aim a floodlight into the dim mysteries of both Psychology and Philosophy.
The original referent of Aristotle's "metaphysics" (see below) was to mental concepts, as opposed to the physical things he addressed in The Physics. However, concepts have no physical properties, hence are invisible, intangible, and imaginary. As such, they are easily confused with ghosts & souls. Moreover, abstract Ideas are accessible only to Reason and human imagination, hence not real, as far as our animal senses are concerned. But humans are distinguishable from animals in one essential trait : the ability to know and to communicate abstractions : non-physical mental representations of things and concepts. That's why humans can deal with hypothetical scenarios, and philosophical theories, and what-if scenarios, that are not sensible to our physical means of perception. And it's why I make a distinction between sensory Perception and mental Conception (Ideation). Perception allows us to navigate the Real Natural world, but Conception gives us the ability to know and to communicate the abstractions, such as "Information", that constitute the Ideal Cultural world.
I found your assertion that "there are no distinctions in immateriality" amusing, On this philosophical forum, what do we do, besides draw distinctions (general categories), like lines in the air? Ironically, you referred to "physical manifestation" as-if it was a ghost materializing. By contrast, it's metaphysical conceptions that "manifest". That's what is happening when someone says, "I just realized . . .". By that, they mean an invisible Idea suddenly appeared in their mind, as if it was becoming real. I would hope that, by now, you would realize that my unique usage of "metaphysics" is not a religious or supernatural reference. Instead, it's the Ideal subject "matter" that Aristotle wrote a whole book on.
Since the Enlightenment Era of Empirical Science, word-wrangling philosophers began to be left behind in the dust by scientists, who experimented with real things, and got real results. Which is why scientists, such as Feynman, could express their disdain of feckless philosophers in succinct words : âThe philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.â. And non-empirical philosophers were stung by such derision. One response was to change from metaphysical vocabulary to physical jargon -- displaying what some commentators referred to as "physics envy" -- while others dug-in and couched their sagacity in the impenetrable prose of Post-modernism.
But I am not an academic philosopher, so I don't take such put-downs personally. I merely investigate whatever is of interest to me, and use whatever vocabulary seems to convey my immaterial ideas to other meta-physical minds, locked into calcified skulls. "[i]He who has (mental) ears to hear, let him hear (grasp an abstract concept)". Sorry, my early training was not in Science or Philosophy, but in Bible-ology. :joke: :cool:
Concept : an abstract idea; a general notion.
Universal, in philosophy, an entity used in a certain type of metaphysical explanation of what it is for things to share a feature, attribute, or quality or ...
Note -- Aristotle's Metaphysics dealt with Universals and Generalities, that have no physical instances
Imagination : the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.
* The Demarcation Problem :
". . . the concept of pseudoscience is 'without real content' . . . Instead . . . pseudoscience is simply a term of abuse applied to views that scientists regard as threatening." . . . . "what philosophers call the 'demarcation problem' -- finding a principled way to distinguish science from pseudoscience -- and concludes that the problem is intractable."
Skeptical Inquirer Magazine (09-10, 2021), by Glen Branch
Metaphysics :
[i]1. the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
2. abstract theory with no basis in reality.[/i]
Meta-physics :
[i]The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
1. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
2. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled âphysicsâ - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was labeled âmetaphysicsâ - what we now call "Philosophy" .
3. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: âIdealâ as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal âformsâ (concepts) were prior-to the Real âsubstanceâ (matter).
4. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the âformalâ cause of the thing designed.
5. I use a hyphen in the spelling to indicate that I am not talking about Ghosts and Magic, but about Ontology (science of being).[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
This is similar to the information philosopher, and I'm glad information philosophy can accommodate both monism and dualism, although it will probably lead to two distinct information philosophies.
Quoting Gnomon
These physical manifestations are assumptions based on all external information having a physical basis. But I don't want to get into a debate about it with you. There is room for different understandings.
Quoting Gnomon
At the same time, neuroplasticity is constantly evolving along with these new ideas?
Is the "Enactivist fashion" a physical event, or meta-physical? How do both "aspects of reality" co-exist in a world where two real things cannot occupy the same space at the same time? In what sense, does "Enaction" create material reality? Out of what raw-material? If Energy is Real, what is Information? Can both of those "aspects of reality" be integrated empirically, like fusion, or integrated conceptually, like the notion of Holism?
My own term for that creative & integrative principle in the Real world is EnFormAction. It converts what's statistically Possible or metaphysically Potential into what we know as physically Real, and empirically Actual. But in its statistical state, that not-yet-real stuff is immaterial, and merely a gleam in the eye of the "Creator". Which I call "The Enformer". :wink:
EnFormAction :
The concept of a river of causation running through the world in various streams has been interpreted in materialistic terms as Momentum, Impetus, Force, Energy, etc, and in spiritualistic idioms as Will, Love, Conatus, and so forth. EnFormAction is all of those.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
This needs to be understood within a theory of information, and we are still working on the definition of information.
The theory seems to be pretty simple - If information is fundamental, then everything is information from every perspective. :grin: But what does this mean? It still needs to be interpreted. If we assume monism, it leads to a theory of everything existing as informational bodies, where consciousness is the latest state of integrated information of any object, so panpschism. The more complex the object, the more complex the consciousness. This, I believe, would be the information theoretic running through systems theory, constructivism, enactivism, and IIT, so it has a lot of momentum. It makes the most sense to me. There is only one possibly immaterial thing amongst this, and it would be the source of self organization - the forces causing the creation of ordered / informational bodies. This might be Gnomon's pockets of order - perhaps a phase state off energy, perhaps the anthropic principle, the Enformer, or it might be wisest just to call it consciousness and so leave consciousness as something undefined and fundamental, as people like Donald Hoffman are inclined to do.
There is quite a lot of philosophy in what we choose to call it and how this shapes us, which is very interesting to me. Ultimately, logically, we are, in essence, the same thing as the source of self organization. So we are all the same in essence, just different in formation :grin: I like this view and think it is something worth promoting.
LetÂŽs say, for Information taken from a warning that a cable is carrying current or the Information taken from the perception that the car in front is braking. Situations that are solved now by applying plain vanilla logic.
Actually, Enformationism is dualist in the particular space-time setting, but monist in a holistic infinity-eternity context. It's obvious that the Real world is characterized by oppositions : matter-antimatter, positive-negative, left-right, up-down, good-evil, etc. But on the whole, those opposites tend to balance-out to a neutral state. Yet, it's only in the absence of dichotomous space-time that complete harmony can be achieved. Like any other philosophical position, a single coin has two sides, but what you see depends on how you look at it, your viewpoint or attitude. :smile:
Unity of opposites :
The unity of opposites is the central category of dialectics, said to be related to the notion of non-duality in a deep sense. It defines a situation in which the existence or identity of a thing (or situation) depends on the co-existence of at least two conditions which are opposite to each other, yet dependent on each other and presupposing each other, within a field of tension.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_of_opposites
Quoting Pop
Since philosophy is mainly concerned with immaterial Meta-Physical questions, most answers are uncertain and open-ended. Leaving lots of room for "different understandings". But, as you said, the physical "manifestations" of Information are much easier to pin down. I was simply amused by the image of Philosophers being unable to "draw distinctions" about immaterial non-physical subjects. That would be a gag-order for the whole profession, and for us amateurs. Empirical scientists, studying "physical manifestations" are usually able to come close to a consensus on their distinctions. But philosophers try to accurately dissect things (ideas, concepts) -- that have no physical manifestations -- into neat categories, so it's hard to cut them "at the joints". We could debate those -- ideally pre-divided, but somewhat subjective -- "distinctions" till kingdom come. :joke:
Carving Nature at Its Joints :
Plato famously employed this â carving â metaphor as an analogy for the reality of Forms ( Phaedrus 265e): like an animal, the world comes to us predivided. Ideally, our best theories will be those which â carve nature at its joints. â Such agreement is certainly suggestive.
https://philarchive.org/archive/SLAILF
Yes. I suspect that you envision that Fundamental Information in a form similar to Spinoza's Universal Substance, which is singular, but has "multiple attributes". The Wiki article says : "[i]The single essence of one substance can be conceived of as material and also, consistently, as mental.[/i]" Which is why some interpret that all-encompassing concept as some kind of physical empirical stuff (perhaps like Dark Matter or Dark Energy), while others view it as a type of meta-physical intangible stuff (like Plato's Ideal Forms). Even Spinoza was ambivalent about his ultimate stuff, calling it deus sive natura (God or Nature).
However, in order to account for the contingent existence of the Natural Physical Universe, we are compelled to look beyond the beginning (Big Bang) to a pre-universal First Cause. Spinoza assumed that physical Nature was eternal, but we can no longer take that for granted. And that's where the timeless & spaceless notion of "Meta-Physics" comes in : as 1> an eternal Multiverse, or 2> an infinite array of Parallel Universes, or 3> as a singular self-existent Creator. In the book we call The Metaphysics, Aristotle discussed and analyzed, not physical things, but human ideas about Nature (Physics). He didn't specifically contrast those Immaterial ideas with Material objects, perhaps because he was uncomfortable with Plato's notion of non-empirical imaginary Eternal Ideals. Or because he didn't want to give credence to the popular concept of invisible-yet-real gods in an ideal realm.
I too, am wary of sounding conventionally religious, when I base my worldview on the axiom of a non-physical (ideal ; eternal ; incorruptible) entity that remains hidden from our empirical eyes. But, I see no alternative, if we are to look at our world, in which less than 5% is empirically knowable, "from every perspective". And in which, we still can't agree on a definition for the only thing we know for sure : our own personal non-empirical Consciousness (cogito ergo sum). :smile:
Quoting Pop
That is what, in Enformationism, I call "EnFormAction" (the causal energy or power to create novel forms), or "Enformy" (the universal force opposing disorderly Entropy, allowing the creation of "ordered / informational bodies", including ideas and memes in the mind). :nerd:
EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. Itâs the creative force (aka : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Enformy :
[i]In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress. [ see post 63 for graph ]
1. I'm not aware of any "supernatural force" in the world. But my Enformationism theory postulates that there is a meta-physical force behind Time's Arrow and the positive progress of evolution. Just as Entropy is sometimes referred to as a "force" causing energy to dissipate (negative effect), Enformy is the antithesis, which causes energy to agglomerate (positive effect).
2. Of course, neither of those phenomena is a physical Force, or a direct Cause, in the usual sense. But the term "force" is applied to such holistic causes as a metaphor drawn from our experience with physics.
3. "Entropy" and "Enformy" are scientific/technical terms that are equivalent to the religious/moralistic terms "Evil" and "Good". So, while those forces are completely natural, the ultimate source of the power behind them may be super-natural, in the sense that the First Cause logically existed before the Big Bang.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Without getting into a debate about this. I do not see a reason to assume dualism? If information is fundamental, then the integration of information is also fundamental. That information integrates is due to forces. The information integrating would feel forces acting on it to cause it to integrate. So the world seems monist and panpsychic, and experiential universally, though only some of it can posses self awareness.
Take the God out of pandeism, and you get panpsychism. Put mind into all matter, and you don't need dualism.
So I wonder why the need for an immaterial mind? All the instances you pose can be explained by physical neural pattern, so there is no need to think of mind as immaterial, yet you and others do, and I wonder why? What would you lose if mind had a physical basis? - Of course, what you believe is your own affair, but I would be grateful if you could answer this one question, that I have difficulty understanding.
My strong impression is that order in the universe exists in material form. Things exist in some form - perhaps only temporarily, but in order to know anything we have to know it's form. Information seems to be the interaction of material forms. The change in the form of a material seems to be information. That a material is perceived is information, and the perception exists as a change in neural state, and neurobiology has elucidated a good deal of this.
Quoting Gnomon
No I don't think so at all. The information that Floridi is elucidating is implicit in systems theory and constructivism, which are main stream science, then Enactivism integrates these two from a biological perspective, which neurobiology agrees with, then IIT uses these theories to arrive at an evolving informational body view of everything. These are all logical and philosophical theories that agree with observation. They are accessible to all, no lab necessary, and there is lots of room for interpretation.
I would be looking to elucidate this predicament from an information perspective - how we are constrained by the information composing us- both biological and experiential. And how we are free to relate to this predicament, seemingly as we please, due to the facts of the matter persisting regardless of our interpretations of them. This seems an area worth exploring. There seems to be an information game at play, where information informs and constricts our reality, and how we are in this sense an informational body. So much new philosophy on offer!
I envision a multiplicity creating a system, and that system then interacting with the other systems it is enmeshed with. Similar to Newtons enmeshed clockwork cogs, but caused bottom up in a nonlinear and emergent fashion. This would represent the ordered forms within an ordered pocket of the universe, enmeshed together as informational bodies, ultimately creating the larger body, such as the biosphere, in the case of the Earth.
Information is the interaction that occurs at all perspectives of such systems. These interactions can be reduced to the interaction of one part to another part, which is identical to the basis of logic, which exists in the relationship of one part to another to draw a distinction that is information. Similar to Spinoza, as you describe.
OK. Apparently "dualism" means something different to you. You may be thinking in terms of Body/Soul Dualism, while I'm talking about Property Dualism or Substance Dualism. In any case, it's all Information to me. :smile:
âąWhat is the metaphysical status of IIT? :
[i]âąmaterialism, dualism, idealism,
panpsychism, Russellian monism?[/i]
http://consc.net/slides/iit.pdf
Quoting Pop
The "god" of PanDeism, or as I prefer PanEnDeism, is only invoked to explain the contingent existence of this world. I call it "The Enformer". And as the Eternal Mind, the Enformer puts "mind into all matter". :cool:
[i]Mind/Body Problem :
Philosophers and scientists have long debated the relationship between a physical body and its non-physical properties, such as Life & Mind. Cartesian Dualism resolved the problem temporarily by separating the religious implications of metaphysics (Soul) from the scientific study of physics (Body). But now scientists are beginning to study the mind with their precise instruments, and have found no line of demarcation. So, they see no need for the hypothesis of a spiritual Soul added to the body by God. However, Enformationism resolves the problem by a return to Monism, except that the fundamental substance is meta-physical Information instead of physical Matter.[/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem
PanEnDeism :
Panendeism is an ontological position that explores the interrelationship between God (The Cosmic Mind) and the known attributes of the universe. Combining aspects of Panentheism and Deism, Panendeism proposes an idea of God that both embodies the universe and is transcendent of its observable physical properties. https://panendeism.org/faq-and-questions/
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html
Quoting Pop
I think you missed my tongue-in-cheek point. :joke:
If our reality is a game, who is the player, and who are the pawns? :wink:
That's similar to what I call "inter-relationships"
Systems Theory :
A system can be more than the sum of its parts if it expresses synergy or emergent behavior. Changing one part of the system usually affects other parts and the whole system, with predictable patterns of behavior. More parts, means more interrelationships, and more complex properties & activities, including mental functions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory
Check-out this site : https://www.incrementalcompressionconjecture.com/summary
The link is in the PF thread : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11872/a-conjecture-that-consciousness-is-based-on-quantum-information
I've only read the Summary. But, "incremental compression" sounds like another way to say "integrated information". Some people are looking for the secret of Consciousness in the Quantum Realm, but they may be missing the Whole, while looking at the Parts. Sometimes we can't see the Forest for the Trees. :smile:
:up: Oh, I see.
Quoting Gnomon
:up:
Quoting Gnomon
This would take some explaining, but just briefly - what I am thinking about is what gives us form? And it is information. So whatever we think about, kind of constrains and shapes us.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm glad we have a similar in outlook.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, I agree. I would have to examine it in more detail, but I can not see that information exists at all in the quantum realm. The quantum realm is probabilistic and random. Information, in my mind, only exists in a form, and the quantum realm is formless, at least for now. However, the compression of information, once out of the quantum realm sounds a little like the information game I'm thinking about, and integrated information, as you say. I think the information occurs in pockets of the universe - in these pockets the forms evolve together to create a large self organizing system, which all the subsystems are dependent on and at the same time create. A system integrates information - that is all it does, so I would put my money on a systems understanding.
Nice website and presentation however! This too is something to think about. :smile:
The book I'm currently reading, about The Anthropic Principle, frequently uses the words "crux" and "crucial". The metaphorical reference is to the point where paths cross and change occurs ( a coincidence). Which is also where "interaction" occurs, and where we "see" inter-relationships with the mind's eye of Reason. One example might be isolated sub-atomic particles that come together (accidentally or coincidentally), and are thereafter "entangled", into a holistic system.
Entanglement is a mysterious relationship, but it seems to have something to do with Conscious minds. In some sense, each particle is Informed by the other. And conscious observers are somehow able to measure the meaning (or value) of that inter-action-at-a-distance. Which Einstein thought was "spooky", and couldn't be true, because it seemed Magical instead of Physical. Yet, a century later, we seem to be stuck with that spooky reality. Moreover, the effect of an Observation on the super-position of an intangible "wave", which magically & instantly converts from Meta-physical mathematical "wave-function" into a Physical "particle" of matter, again implies the old mind-over-matter concept that has traditionally been applied to Magic.
Like Einstein, I don't believe in Magic -- in the traditional sense -- but I do believe in the power of Information to affect & influence both Mind and Matter. That's what I call EnFormAction, the power to cause changes in form, of both Objects and Ideas. It's not Magic, it's a Coincidence. And that's the crux of Enformationism. :nerd:
Quantum Entanglement :
Entangled particles can become widely separated in space. But even so, the mathematics implies that a measurement on one immediately influences the other, regardless of the distance between them.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/03/08/20152/einsteins-spooky-action-at-a-distance-paradox-older-than-thought/
The verb "To Measure" originally meant : to extract information from an object into a mind (L. mens-). To take-the-measure of something, is to remove a piece of the "essence" of that thing. And I think that "intrinsic quality" is what we now call Information about the thing.
An entangled system is defined to be one whose quantum state cannot be factored as a product of states of its local constituents;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
The links below compare the notion of the "neural correlates of Mind" with the filamentous structure of the material universe. Some others have proposed that the universe is actually the brain of God. I don't take it too seriously, or literally. It's just philosophical candy for musing & chewing. :grin:
Neural Correlates of Cosmos :
https://nautil.us/issue/50/emergence/the-strange-similarity-of-neuron-and-galaxy-networks
https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/neuron-web-in-human-brain-is-similar-to-the-network-of-galaxies-in-the-universe-9034231.html
Yes, this interaction is crucial- it is the basis of logic, and the interaction of systems can be reduced to this singular interaction of one part to another. I think Landauer's principle might be relevent to it. I think we are saying something similar just with different language and concepts. :up:
Quoting Gnomon
In the double slit experiment, an observer is replaced with a measuring device, and the wave collapses just the same. This leads me to believe information is an interaction of form - that the wave must be collapsed to form before it becomes information. This is also the case for entanglement, there is no information before collapse.
Quoting Gnomon
:up:
I don't think there is much in that either, except that that the laws governing one part of the universe are going to be similar to the laws governing another part, and a brain is one part of the universe, so there will be some similarities, but not necessarily the sorts of similarities suggested in the articles.
However I have only seen a little of the latest deep cellular imaging, and what I've seen does make me wonder. Need more information on this one for sure. :smile:
Some have noted that it's not the dumb measuring instrument, but the intelligent scientist who looks at the abstract read-out, and realizes what just happened. In that case, the collapse doesn't occur until the experimenter opens Schrodinger's Box, and realizes the the cat is not half-dead, or all-dead, but fully alive. In other words, it's not the measuring stick that does the trick, but the extraction of that information into a receptive Mind. The mind is the ultimate "measuring device". Those mechanical devices don't care one way or the other. What matters is the meaning. :nerd:
Does Consciousness Cause Quantum Collapse? :
On this view conscious experience is something in addition to the brain processes that accompany it, something non-physical.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/121/Does_Consciousness_Cause_Quantum_Collapse
What is the meaning of Mensura (to measure)? :
a doctrine first propounded by Protagoras holding that humankind is the measure of all things, that everything is relative to human apprehension and evaluation, and that there is no objective truth.
(Latin, mens- = mind)
mind, intention, brain, intellect, faculties, understanding
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=latin+mind
Landauer says that "erasing" information is equivalent to Entropy, which is the result of deleting Energy from a system. So, extracting Energy is also the removal of Information, and vice-versa. That's why I conclude that when a human observer "measures" an experiment, he is literally extracting Information from that system, into his own mental system. The energy loss may be minor, but the gain in meaning could be significant to the observer. In any case, that act of measurement makes a change in the thing observed : such as a wave collapse. :smile:
Quoting Pop
I would re-phrase that assertion, to say that "there is intrinsic information, but no meaning to the observer, until the collapse. Before the observation, the meaning of that information is merely Potential. But the act of measuring converts it into Actual (manifest) meaning (knowledge) in the mind of the observer. :cool:
Potential :
Unrealized or unmanifest creative power. For example the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps. Potential is inert until actualized by some trigger.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html
Note -- EnFormAction is analogous to Energy : it exists in both Potential and Actual forms.
PS__(re: "different language") I think you have more of a formal philosophical or scientific background than me. I have only seriously pursued Philosophy in my old age. So my language tends to be idiosyncratic and eccentric.
Yes, I understand, the information does not occur for any individual until the externality causes a change in neural state. However I am under the impression that an unattended measuring device collapses the wave, in the double slit experiment, upon measurement. Thereby collapsing it to a point particle - which is necessary to extract information out of it. This is important to the idea that information is an interaction of forms. It would be a helpful if you could confirm, or deny this?
Yeah. I would think of information as being the change in mental state, due to an interaction with an externality. So much the same thing.
I'm not qualified to confirm or deny your concept that "information is the interaction of forms". But I tend to focus on information as meaning, which is something more than a simple collision of "forms". In the absence of an observer, the forms may simply annihilate, like matter/anti-matter. Any meaning of that "interaction" is enformed only in the mind of the independent observer.
However, the Wiki article (below) on the double-slit experiment concludes that a conscious Observer is not the cause of the collapse of the wave form into a particle form -- merely a by-stander. If so, it would imply that the slit effect is caused by a meaningless mechanical interaction of matter/energy (particles), with no input or output of meaning. It would also deny my assumption that the extraction of meaning by a conscious observer is, perhaps not necessary, but sufficient to cause an amorphous wave of potential to convert into a point of actual matter. By that I mean, the interaction could be meaningful or meaningless, depending on the context (the experimental setup). If no observer, there is no memory of that ephemeral event. If no-one ever looks into Schrodinger's box, how would we know what happened?
I have never bought into the woo-ish interpretation that Consciousness is capable of magical mind-over-matter effects. Instead, I imagine the cause/effect in terms of ordinary energy exchanges, which I label EnFormAction. Energy is one form (a waveform) of Generic Information, while Meaning is another form (meta-physical) of the same universal substance. Since I'm not an expert in quantum physics, all I can say is that the "cause" question is controversial and debatable. In any case, I can generally agree with your formulation of the conclusion, that interacting "forms" result in producing new "information", i.e. new forms (particles), that may be different from the original forms (waves). From my perspective though, the original "forms" possess the Potential for causing novelty. And the interaction of two old forms will usually cause a change in both of the originals.
That "interaction of forms" I would liken to the mechanism of Evolution. For example, an existing species can mutate into a potentially viable or non-viable form. Such mutations are equivalent to the non-local un-certain waveform of the slit experiment. But when two or more of those different forms combine (via sexual or asexual pathways), the output of that "interaction" is a novel combination of the original genes (potentials). Then, statistical natural selection weeds-out (annihilates) the non-viable forms, and allows the viable forms to continue the process of evolution. In the slit analogy, the random formless potential of a light wave, when perturbed by interaction with a physical obstacle (the slit), is forced to materialize into specific enformed particles of energy. :smile:
Observer Effect :
The need for the "observer" to be conscious is not supported by scientific research, and has been pointed out as a misconception rooted in a poor understanding of the quantum wave function ? and the quantum measurement process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
Quantum Consciousness :
Does the change in the behaviour of particles seen in Youngâs double-slit experiment really suggest that consciousness can alter matter and exist separately from the brain?
https://medium.com/science-first/the-double-slit-experiment-demystified-disproving-the-quantum-consciousness-connection-ee8384a50e2f
Interacting Waves result in positive (reinforcement) or negative (null) changes :
reinforcement = particle . . . . . null = annihilation
That is excellent!! There is an asymmetry in the interaction of forms, otherwise they annihilate. Wow, this bears thinking about!
Quoting Gnomon
That is how I understand it also - purely an interaction of forms, where the immaterial / formless wave of energy is understood in terms understandable by the measuring device, and then in terms understandable by the observer, which would imply that "meaning" is the last information integrated by a body of information?
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, so much comes to a head in the interaction of forms, which ultimately becomes a moment of consciousness. I'm not aware of any literature specifically describing this, are you?
Thanks for the answer, and for humoring my speculations.
Yes. EnFormAction causes changes in both physical material, and in meta-physical states. It's the subsequent chain-of-causation after the First Cause. That initial impetus necessarily possessed Potential for both physical effects and meta-physical effects. That's why our current reality includes both Matter and Mind. The Big Bang was not just a fireworks explosion of matter & energy -- no room in the Singularity for a universe full of 3D spatial matter. Instead, I envision it as the execution of a no-D Program of Potential EnFormAction, which being metaphysical (mind stuff) requires no space for storage, or time for its virtual static state. That's how a sub-Planck-scale pinpoint of Potential could give birth to a universe, that is currently a zillion times larger, and has existed for zillions of Planck seconds. *
Of course, this being a Real material world, the change in Ideal mental state we call "Consciousness" or "Meaning" is preceded by a change in the physical state of the brain. The "external" patterns we observe make a difference in the mental patterns of our Mind. This may sound like mere semantics to a Materialist, but it helps to explain what Bateson labelled The Difference That Makes a Difference. In other words, its the change that makes a meaning (some pattern that is significant to the observer). The difference is expressed mathematically as a ratio, such as the difference between Life & Death. :gasp:
The Difference :
Gregory Bateson, an English anthropologist is credited with this phrase. He was talking about information and how it can affect things. What information can we know that will completely change the situation/experiment/culture?
https://www.stephanie-burns.com/blog/2017/3/25/the-difference-that-makes-the-difference
Note -- in physical terms : "The potential difference (which is the same as voltage) is equal to the amount of current multiplied by the resistance." And metaphorically, a mental difference has the potential to complete a circuit (meaning ; meme) in another mind.
* Some physicists are still trying to imagine an explanation for the beginning and expansion of the universe, that doesn't require a something-from-nothing beginning.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/09/17/if-the-big-bang-wasnt-the-beginning-what-was-it/
:up:
Absolute symmetry is perfect & changeless. Change requires asymmetry (difference) in order to allow room for something new to happen. :smile:
Quoting Pop
Yes. Metaphorically, meaning is like the right-hand image in my last post. It begins as isolated dots, with no apparent connection. But the mind connects-the-dots or fills-in-the-blanks (integrates), resulting in a meaningful pattern of information. No longer random, that mental pattern relates to our personal experience in some way. :nerd:
Quoting Pop
You're welcome. Us "woo-mongers" don't get much positive reinforcement on this forum. We are talking about unconventional concepts, that sound "weird" (like Quantum Physics) to those with a classical mindset. :joke:
It's by exchanging views that we learn to see things from a different perspective. And we gain a new vocabulary in which to express our private mind-states. For example, I hadn't thought of Information in terms of "self-organization" before your post on a Short Theory of Consciousness. But that's exactly what EnFormAction is. It causes disorganized random patterns to organize into orderly meaningful patterns of information. Although technically, each transformation (change) has an external cause, since that cause is invisible, the new form appears to be "self-organized". Some think that the Big Bang organized itself from nothing-but invisible "Laws", which are necessarily Causal. Only the First Cause would be self-caused.
Even the universe itself can be understood as an Organism. Ironically the question remains : "is the Universe self-organized, or is it organized by an outside Self"? Is our world self-conscious? I don't know the answer, but it's worth looking into. :chin:
PS__Sorry, I got carried away with imaginary nonsense and speculative pseudo-woo. :cool:
Not at all, it is great to have another woo juggler to talk to. BTW I saw a video recently on developments in biology and science in 2020, and they were juggling the same woo that we are - understood in much the same way, in much the same terms - as interactive and evolving informational bodies. :lol:
Yes. EnFormAction causes changes in physical material, and in meta-physical states. It's the subsequent causation after the First Cause. That initial impetus had potential for both physical effects and meta-physical effects. That's why our current reality includes both Matter and Mind. The Big Bang was not just a fireworks explosion of matter & energy -- no room in the Singularity for a universe full of 3D spatial matter. Instead, I envision it as the engagement of a no-D Program of Potential EnFormAction, which being metaphysical (mind stuff) requires no space for storage, or time for its static state. That's how a sub-Planck-scale pinpoint of Potential could give birth to a universe, which is currently a zillion times larger, and has existed for zillions of Planck seconds. *
Of course, this being a material world, the change in mental state we call Consciousness or Meaning is preceded by a change in the physical state of the brain. The external patterns ** we observe make a difference in the mental patterns of our Mind. This may sound like mere semantics to a Materialist, but it helps to explain what Bateson labelled The Difference That Makes a Difference. In other words, its the change that makes a meaning (some pattern that is significant to the observer). The difference is expressed mathematically as a ratio, such as the difference between Life & Death. :gasp:
The Difference :
Gregory Bateson, an English anthropologist is credited with this phrase. He was talking about information and how it can affect things. What information can we know that will completely change the situation/experiment/culture?
https://www.stephanie-burns.com/blog/2017/3/25/the-difference-that-makes-the-difference
Note -- in physical terms : "The potential difference (which is the same as voltage) is equal to the amount of current multiplied by the resistance." And metaphorically, a mental difference has the potential to complete a circuit (meaning ; meme) in another mind.
* Some physicists are still trying to imagine an explanation for the beginning and expansion of the universe, which doesn't require a miraculous something-from-nothing beginning. But so far, all of those woo-ish proposals assume the eternal existence of The Potential for a new world. And like Voltage, Potential is the idea of a future something -- an imaginary state of mind ; a snap-shot of the future -- not necessarily a physical substance -- nor even a ghostly "weird probability field". "Potential" is merely probability with the power of Intention. :chin:
What would have happened if there was no Big Bang? :
What if there was no Big Bang, no dark matter, no dark energy, and everything is swamped in some kind of weird quantum probability field. ... The Big Bang, as we currently understand it, says that everything in the universe started out as a single, infinitely small point, or singularity.
https://www.seeker.com/what-if-the-big-bang-never-happened-1792546415.html
** Pattern is an intelligible form. We see the invisible relationships between a group of material objects, and recognize it as a form we are already familiar with.
I'm thinking a start to a philosophy needs to be the interaction that is information. I'm not at all sure how to do it, but a start at the source and then work outwards as far as is reasonably possible.
This would be a start with consciousness, but with information being the main focus.
Pop, this thread has been running a month now. Something that may be overlooked is the definition of the word definition. In the sense that information is a word, then any usage that exists could be used as the basis of a definition. The comments reflect that and a lot of options have been covered.
You have tried to focus on a universal definition but it still seems to go in every direction. It could be a problem of methodology. Maybe it's setting up a problem in a way that doesn't lead to a solution. Like given the word information, what is its meaning? A better method(or approach to the same problem) would be to start with an identified singular physical state, like brain state, and assign a word to it(like information). That way you avoid the endless posibilities. And you are moving from something that is primary(the physical state) to something that is secondary(the definition).
If you asked in your terms "Is neural patterning the basis of information?" some of us would agree and others would not but it would help focus the issue.
Time flies when you're having fun. :lol:
I think the old fashioned definition of information is the obvious definition to use: Information = to inForm - literally change the shape of, including neural shape?
Information is the evolutionary interaction of form is meaningful, to me at least, as it describes information in a systems setting, where systems are interacting with each other. This definition is a little more predictive, so useful, to me, in predicting the interaction of two or more systems. The definition is important as it becomes the basis of any information philosophy. Ideally a definition should be logically perfect and describe information in every respect, but given everything is information, this might be a little optimistic? :grin:
Quoting Mark Nyquist
Yes I think the change in neural patterning is the basis of information for us. I'm trying to tie this to the accumulation of information, that creates an informational body. Where consciousness is the latest state of neural patterning, which is equal to the latest state of integrated information. Thus it becomes a general and panpsychist definition of information.
Might be time for a new thread ? :chin:
Quoting Pop
This was a good one. I'm sceptical of the comments on information existing as 'form' where you still need a brain as a placeholder for form...forgot who...I forget more in a month than I remember.
I had discussed this theory with Pop on other threads and i agree with it.
For me it looks really simple to understand this definition of "information" and looks correct in all aspects, regarding if is material or immaterial.
I will try to emphasize some examples and i hope it wont confuse people more.
I saw that you are insisting at "the brain state" or an observer, but sometimes a brain state is complex and depends on the observer.
Bellow i will present a biological and non biological example.
Why do you think the living cell DNA information is passed from grandfather/father and grandmother/mother to the son/daughter ? Why when a new human child or animal cubs are born some of the information is passed to the offspring ? They could be born offspring without any resemble to his grandfather/father or grandmother/mother, but this is not the case.
The same is for non-living ordered structures like diamonds or when we try to produce steel.
You need to have a big amount of heat/energy to the iron (which is essentially an energy wave that push information into the iron ) to be able to transform it into steel.
If you apply to much heat you will have evaporated iron (so in essence it will go back to the formation of molecules since it lost the previous information data of iron ). If you apply less heat then required, steel is not formed and you just have again only iron.
The Universe encourage and promotes the law, that you can create another ordered form through interactions (between forms) only if it will contain the previous forms history data(aka information).
It will not matter for "the Universe" how you did it, only the end result will matter. If you are able to create another ordered form using the previous form through interaction and information exchange between the forms, it will be more then enough.
The bellow might not reflect directly to the thread subject on the definition of information, but could resolve some doubts.
On previous posts you mention about the Quantum entanglement and the spooky action at the distance.
This is happening because the quantum particles are so small that from your observer point of view the particles can be in any place at the same time.
This is because the very very big difference in size between you as an observer and a simple quantum particle,
The difference in space and time of a sensorial perception by a quantum particle in comparison with the human sensorial, is like the quantum particle lives in another parallel universe where everything happens in nanoseconds or even picoseconds.With this big gap in the perception of time and space of course the particle can be in any place at the same time from the human observer point of view.
The same rules apply to the perception of gravitational waves.
You need to be as big as a planet to be able to sense the gravitational waves.
You will be most of the time wrong if you try to observe the big and the small "universe" with only your human senses of perception and not using some measure instrument.
That dualistic Cartesian worldview -- mental Form vs physical Brain -- is a common stumbling block for discussions of Information : 1> the ideal essence (concept, design, idea, theory, abstraction) of a thing, and 2> its real physical embodiment. Ironically, for a philosophy forum -- where many posters are influenced by Physics Envy -- the notion of disembodied (non-empirical) ideas seems to be off-limits, because they can't be dissected under a microscope, or accounted with numbers.
We only infer the existence of ideas in another brain, by projecting our personal subjective experience onto the other person. Doubting that inference leads to Solipsism. We can cut the other person's head open to confirm that he has a Brain. But we can't verify that he has a Mind. He might be a philosophical Zombie. However, partly due to our mammalian trait of Empathy, humans have almost always assumed that other humans experience, and model the world, in a manner similar to our own. So, it's that invisible intangible mental model that we have to take for granted, in order to empathize and socialize.
Unfortunately for the Solipsistic Skeptic, Platonic "Form" is the core concept of the modern word "In-Form-Ation". Yet, in modern usage, there are two referents for the same term : the ghostly mental platonic qualities (Qualia), and its tangible physical empirical properties (Quanta). For clarity, I call the subjective qualia "Form", and the objective quanta "Shape". Our physical senses deliver information to our minds about the physical shapes, as abstracted from the world outside our mental model into mentally-meaningful Forms. However, unlike animals in general, rational philosophers do not have to rely on apparent Shapes for all knowledge of the real world. They also construct mental models of their environment, that are imbued with personal meaning. But, when we dissect their brains, those meanings or essences or Forms are nowhere to be found.
It's a simplistic truism that all Information accessible to our physical senses is embodied in physical matter. But, in the process of embodiment, the subjective meanings are stripped-out. So, in order to know what another person is knowing and feeling, we are forced to empathize with them, by imagining what we would know and feel, if we were in a similar situation. By communicating & comparing our mental models (our ideas about reality) via the process I call "Enformation" (the act of communicating Forms between Minds). Therefore, if the brain is nothing-but "a placeholder for Form", we would all be Zombies. :cool:
Physics envy :
"Physics envy" refers to the envy (perceived or real) of scholars in other disciplines for the mathematical precision of fundamental concepts obtained by physicists. It is an accusation raised against disciplines (typically against social sciences and liberal arts such as literature, philosophy, and psychology) when these academic areas try to express their fundamental concepts in terms of mathematics, which is seen as an unwarranted push for reductionism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_envy
Infer : deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.
Google (Oxford Dictionary)
Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds :
Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own.
https://iep.utm.edu/solipsis/
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy
Note -- none of those objects of philosophical study are physical objects made of Matter. Instead, they are all made of Mind-stuff (ideas). And they are all General concepts, that can exist simultaneously in a variety of Brains.
It almost seems this invisible intangible mental model is what you are arguing for. But I'm not sure. Since you mentioned Qualia and Quanta, do you view them as inseparable or stand alone objects? I don't see how Qualia can exist in the absence of Quanta.
Quoting Gnomon
Isn't just a physical signal delivered to our brains sufficient to form mental models? If you are arguing for this kind of externally mobile information you might need to explain how that works. Brain only information is a simpler model as you only need to identify information as brain state.
That's because you are confusing two separate methodologies : Empirical Science and Theoretical Philosophy. Qualia and Quanta are not real things, but ideas about things. And those terms were invented specifically so we could separate them in our minds -- to examine their properties and qualities in isolation. In the real world, Information is always embodied -- as far as our physical senses are concerned. But Rational Analysis is not a physical dissection of objective objects -- it's a meta-physical scalpel for parsing subjective ideas. It does not literally cut any material object, but it metaphorically slices & dices human concepts about such objects. Philosophy is not a physical science ; it's a meta-physical science. Qualia (attributes) can "exist in the absence" of Quanta (properties) only when abstracted into the ideal vocabulary of the rational mind. Where there are Minds, there are Qualia. :smile:
Physics & Metaphysics :
Two sides of the same coin we call Reality. When we look for matters of fact, we see physics. But when we search for meaning, we find meta-physics. A mental flip is required to view the other side. And imagination is necessary to see both at the same time
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
Aboutness :
Philosophers often remind us, and each other, that mental contents have the property of 'aboutness'. Indeed, this is their distinguishing feature.
About Aboutness | Issue 132 | Philosophy Now
https://philosophynow.org âș issues âș About_
Qualia : Individual instances of subjective, conscious experience
Quoting Mark Nyquist
1. Regarding the "mobility of Information", it's what we call "communication". And we don't communicate by boring holes in heads, in order to rearrange their neurons into "states". Instead, we package ideas into Memes, and transmit them in the form of Words. Communication uses physical media, but is not itself physical. McLuhan was not speaking literally, when he famously noted that "the medium is the message".
A statement by Marshall McLuhan, meaning that the [container] of a message (print, visual, musical, etc.) determines the ways in which that message will be perceived.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/the-medium-is-the-message
Note -- I added the brackets, replacing "form", to indicate that the Amazon box your new phone is delivered in, is not the object you ordered, but its easily recognized smile carries a message of its own, that a porch pirate can interpret : valuables within.
2. Since when are philosophers content with simplistic models? Occam's Razor is a pragmatic rule-of-thumb for reductive empirical science. But for holistic theoretical science (philosophy) the situation is seldom that simple. Neurologists study physical neurons. and infer (hypothesize) related non-physical brain states. But they don't claim to actually "see" the states we call "Meaning". Philosophy is all about Meaning. :nerd:
Intel launches its next-generation neuromorphic processorâso, whatâs that again?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/understanding-neuromorphic-computing-and-why-intels-excited-about-it/
An Internet meme, more commonly known simply as a meme (/mi?m/ MEEM), is an idea, behavior, or style that is spread via the Internet,
___Wiki
Note -- a Meme is the meaning (content), the medium (internet) is merely the vehicle (container)
That's the first and last time I will ever use the words Qualia and Quanta. I maybe don't understand parts of it. Thanks for the explanation.
I can't back off on brain only information being the best model... and communication becomes a simple process of encoding and decoding physical matter.
I'm still not sure if you think information should be both brain internal and brain external? The brain external information is what requires a brain as placeholder. There is a huge tendency to do this without acknowledging it or even being aware of it. So if you identify some brain external 'form' as being information then you should understand you are doing it, be aware of it, and acknowledge your brain is the source of it(the perception of information).
FYI -- I do "explain how that works" in my website and blog. If you are really interested, I'll give you some links. :smile:
Unless you are a professional philosopher, you may never have to use those technical terms for the fundamental distinction of Reality (quanta) and Ideality (qualia). But if you intend to post on this forum for amateur philosophers, you will often need to make that crucial discrimination between Things and Ideas-About-Things. :smile:
Quoting Mark Nyquist
If you are a professional scientist, the physical brain is indeed the best subject for study. But if you are a layman, it will be useful to be able to distinguish between Physical Matter and a Meta-physical Process. The process we call "Thinking" does not take place in space, but in time. That's why it is not subject to empirical testing, but only to theoretical modeling. Your "brain only" view is missing half the picture. :cool:
Quoting Mark Nyquist
Let me clear-up that uncertainty. I do think that Information is both physical (brains) and meta-physical (minds). It's common nowadays for philosophers to claim that there is no such thing as a Mind. They justify that view by labeling the Conscious Contents of your brain as "illusions". If that is the case, then everything you think you know, including your model of the world, is an illusion. But the question arises : who is deluding who? Are you constructing a fake world in your brain? If that mental model has no relevance to reality, what good is it? And if the other posters on this forum are likewise deluded by their private illusions, what's the point of communicating with them?
Speaking of communicating, your "brain only" model implies that communication of Information would have to send a little chunk of your brain (the material machine) to the brain of the receiver. But physicist Paul Davies refers to the immaterial contents of your brain as "the demon in the machine" (the Mind or Soul). http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page6.html
Now that I have introduced that taboo term "Soul" into the conversation, let me quote from a book by astrophysicist John Barrow, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. In a chapter on Life and the Final State of the Universe, he says : ".. . an intelligent being -- or more generally, any living creature -- is fundamentally a type of computer [an information processor] . . ." Then, ".. . we may even say that a human being is a program designed to run on particular hardware called a human body . . . the essence of a human being is not the body but the program which controls the body; we might even identify the program which controls the body with the religious notion of a soul". So, the distinction between Qualia and Quanta is equivalent to the ability to discriminate between a Computer and its Program. The machine (quanta ; hardware) without a program (qualia ; software) is a "brick". Likewise, a Brain without a Mind is a Philosophical Zombie. Is your Brain running a Program, or are you a Zombie? :joke:
Zombies in philosophy are imaginary creatures designed to illuminate problems about consciousness and its relation to the physical world. Unlike the ones in films or witchcraft, they are exactly like us in all physical respects but without conscious experiences: by definition there is ânothing it is likeâ to be a zombie. Yet zombies behave just like us, and some even spend a lot of time discussing consciousness.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/
Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Note : in order to avoid the obsolete religious connotations of "Soul", I prefer to refer to the human Program as the "Self" or "Self Concept".
Quoting Gnomon
Sure, provide some links. I have checked your glossary links before.
I do tend to avoid metaphysics because my interest is in physically based processes. Things like the physical basis of information, time perception, artificial intellegence and computing.
Something to laugh about is our over-estimation of our ability to transfer information from brain to brain...it almost never happens in a completely intact form, especially in philosophy.
A special case, were the most techincally accurate understanding of information possible is needed, is in the study of human psychosis. It could be that some psychosis cases could be information processing anomolies and not biological failure. I am especially interested in this mechanism if anyone has an opinion. The specific symptoms might be false beliefs, conspiracy theories, magical thinking which are all things based on information. This is actually an example of how the definition of information can be critical to an application because if you get the definition wrong you will also likely get the treatment of psychosis wrong. Like the wheel him down the hall and give him a good dose of electroshock and see if that helps approach. Or the give him some horse tranquilizer approach. Or the just lock him(or her) up forever approach. Maybe some of us know these people. One week they are normal and the next they are on a mission from GOD, and the next week they are confused or in a psychward. They don't know what happened and their Doctors are doing guesswork or doing experiments on them. (drug studies...here, sign this and we'll go easy on you)
I rambled on a little, so that's one view on why the definition of information can be critical to a specific application.
That's fine with me. But, if you are not interested in metaphysics, my views on Information won't interest you. That's because Enformationism is a philosophical treatise, not a scientific report. In the beginning of philosophy, the Greeks especially, didn't make a distinction between Physics & Metaphysics. They had no sense-expanding instruments, so had no choice but to use their rational faculties to investigate mysteries.
But then, Aristotle wrote two books summarizing the current state of philosophical understanding. The first was labelled The Physics, because it was all about specific aspects of Nature (matter + energy). And the second volume was later designated The Meta-Physics, because it discussed various general notions about Nature (ideas, information). However, by the "age of Enlightenment", knowledge of the physical had made little progress, and the focus was on religious beliefs & speculations, on idealized concepts and spiritual matters. That's why the early scientists, Galileo etc, turned away from ivory-tower ideal metaphysical conjectures, and turned their attention back to the "real" world.
Today, however, modern Science has revealed that the foundations of Reality are not as firm as once assumed. Relativity & Quantum Theory have undermined our Classical worldview, and re-opened our axiomatic beliefs to question. Now, instead of solid Atoms & Matter, scientists talk about Virtual Particles and Abstract Mathematical Fields. As a consequence, even sober scientists are forced to think like philosophers. You might call this era "The Re-Enlightenment" or "The Information Age".
Therefore, while my Enformationism thesis is grounded in modern Physics, and Information theory, it is theoretical, not empirical. The website discusses such things as "the physical basis of information, time perception, artificial intelligence and computing". But, it is more concerned with general & universal concepts, than specific details and data. :nerd:
Meta-physics :
[i]The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
1. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
2. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled âphysicsâ - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was labeled âmetaphysicsâ - what we now call "Philosophy" .
3. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: âIdealâ as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal âformsâ (concepts) were prior-to the Real âsubstanceâ (matter).
4. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the âformalâ cause of the thing designed.
5. I use a hyphen in the spelling to indicate that I am not talking about Ghosts and Magic, but about Ontology (science of being).[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science :
Science is about contingent facts; philosophy is also about necessary truths (if they exist). Science is about descriptive facts; philosophy is also about normative truths (if they exist). Science is about physical objects; philosophy is also about abstract objects (if they exist).
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=science+vs+philosophy+debate
FWIW :
http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/
Science vs Philosophy debate :
https://medium.com/predict/science-vs-philosophy-a-debate-on-youtube-between-physicists-and-philosophers-45c5bc103604
Speaking of "what is information?", which we were discussing way back in the beginning of this thread : I just came across -- in a book I read before but picked-up to browse -- some comments relevant to your "self-organization" definition.
The book is Information and the Nature of Reality, edited by physicist Paul Davies. In a chapter by an American philosopher, Holmes Rolston says, regarding spontaneous patterns of organization in matter such as crystals : "these patterns may further involve critical thresholds, often called self-organized criticality. Such processes are 'automatic', sometimes called 'self-organizing', Initially, the 'auto' should not be taken to posit a 'self' but rather an innate principle of the spontaneous origination of order". In the next sub-heading, he quotes biologist Stuart Kauffman : "spontaneous formation is a starter . . . 'forming' becomes 'informing". Later, he notes that "Darwin could not have suspected the existence of self-organization . . . We may have begun to understand evolution as the marriage of selection and self-organization". Which is the function of what I call EnFormAction. :smile:
Information and the Nature of Reality : From Physics to Metaphysics :
https://books.google.com/books/about/Information_and_the_Nature_of_Reality.html?id=0k6oQq8lN-YC
Heads up! From a review -- "The symposium on which the book is based having been sponsored by the profoundly misguided Templeton Foundation, the last 5 chapters (~120 pages) and some other parts are garbage (theology),"
Actually, I found even the theologian's philosophical understanding of the role of Information to be compatible with my own. Of course, they may apply these ideas to defending Intelligent Design, but that's not so far off from my own myth of Intelligent Evolution.
http://gnomon.enformationism.info/Essays/Intelligent%20Evolution%20Essay_Prego_120106.pdf
:up: In General systems theory we can take any part of the universe and know that it is a self organizing system made up of self organizing subsystems all the way down to plank length and possibly beyond. It is a bottom up self assembling universe, and physical interaction is information, then this is modified somewhat for sensing organisms, in that they can be changed physically from afar due to interpretation of changes in their environment, normally called information.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/591498
But donât all interactions require time in order to occur? Yes they can create a âsenseâ - subjective perception - of time but they still require an objectively existing passage of time in the first place to even occur.
I am trying to elucidate time in the "first person perspective", where moments of consciousness of time is what is relevant to the passage of time. You are applying a "third person realist" perspective to this and so the two do not agree. In line with relativity, your mechanical measure of my time will not agree with my mechanical measure of my time, provided that we are traveling at different speeds. So who's time is right? Einstein decided that it was relative to the first person, which seems reasonable?
It's a good question, and a hard one to answer. We can pose concepts in the third person, but we can only ever experience in the first person. The "experiential" element is messed up in the third person perspective, so is not equally "real" to the first person perspective, imo.
From the empirical point of view time passes independent of everything and everyone, but from my point of view this requires a consciousness to construct such a paradigm through which to view the world through.
However regardless if whether one recalls the past or has an expectation of the future or not the present will of course continue to change. I doubt this state of living is possible as none of our bodies mechanisms can work if there is no recollection of previous states.
How does one become hungry if they cannot remember the development of the sensation, compare it to a point when they were satiated, when they last ate, remember they are looking for food or how to catch and consume it. Without memory our body mechanisms would fail. We would not survive
Yes that is true. And we do have a memory of past moments of consciousness, which I would call a body of information, and it is this body of past information ( made from previous experience ) that we are, and then we incorporate new information ( which is the change that we notice ). This way the body of information grows, and consciousness is the latest state of this.
Be warned however, this is my personal understanding. It is how I have come to understand it. I think it would be the understanding that underpins IIT but I am not sure.
Importantly there is an element of randomness that accompanies the collapse to a moment of consciousness that is descrbed by: Quoting Pop
Postscript to my previous post about the "self-organizing" function of Information. In the same book and chapter, philosopher Rolston mentions "autopoiesis" (self-creating) in passing. That seems to be a more provocative term, in that it could imply a teleological tendency, intrinsic to the mechanism of evolution, toward the emergence of self-aware entities. Such organisms are "unique" in the universe, which remains -- after all these years of incremental evolving -- mostly inorganic, and unaware.
In my own writing I often use "Self" as a bare-bones substitute for the ancient notion of "Soul", which carries a lot of mythical baggage. Even so, the concept of a self-organizing, self-producing, self-creating, and self-aware being is essentially what it means to be human. We don't literally create our bodies from scratch, but we do create our mental self-image from our self-centered experience. And that immaterial image consists of a custom-made pattern of Information.
But that's not the end of autopoiesis. Even dolphins and apes seem to have a self-image of some sort. Yet only humans are engaged in the creation, or re-creation, of a world in their own self-image. If the world today is not entirely suitable for own selfish purposes, we (collectively) are able to imagine giving it a make-over to suit ourselves, Of course, some of us envision going backward to the Garden of Eden, while others imagine going forward to a technological Utopia. Now, isn't that unique? :wink:
"The notion of autopoiesis is at the core of a shift in perspective about biological phenomena: it expresses that the mechanisms of self-production are the key to understand both the diversity and the uniqueness of the living." ___Francisco Varela
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autopoiesis
Self/Soul :
[i]The brain can create the image of a fictional person (the Self) to represent its own perspective in dealings with other things and persons.
1. This imaginary Me is a low-resolution construct abstracted from the complex web of inter-relationships that actually form the human body, brain, mind, DNA, and social networks in the context of a vast universe.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page18.html
Yes, we come from a tradition of thinking of ourselves as the chosen one's at the center of the universe, tended by a benevolent god, etc, and this sort of thinking is so hard to break free from. Yet the idea that information is self organizing certainly puts a spanner in the works! Indeed if information is self organizing, and I am convinced that it is, then who does the thinking? I think what we have to say is that what we are is integrated information, and this body of integrated information does the thinking. In this sense a self is an artefact of this process, consistent with enactivism, and evolutionary psychology, and slightly beyond autopoiesis, to self organization. Varela would "never say self organization", as even autopoiesis was radical in his time. But I think the time is ripe, and in so doing one virtually obliterates all previous philosophy, and in it's place one gains a theory of everything as self organizing informational bodies. Life and consciousness emerge and evolve along with the complexity of information integrated - everything is solved - end of enquiry - How do you like it? :lol:
This is simple and rough indeed, but it does seem to be where information philosophy is heading. What are your thoughts?
Yes. (self-aggrandizement aside) I characterize the Enformationism thesis as a sort of Theory of Everything, because it reveals the foundations of both physical Reality, and meta-physical Ideality. The new Atom is the Bit. Of course, my amateur thesis is not a scientific TOE, but as a preliminary philosophical TOE, it could form the kernel of a new scientific worldview. And I think information-based science & philosophy is already in the early stages of a New Enlightenment.
However, we are still just scratching the surface of a full understanding of the role of EnFormAction in the world. It's not just physical energy, but Enformed Energy : energy with a mission, or programmed Energy, so to speak. It both integrates (organizes) and disintegrates (disorganizes) existing matter, in the process of building a world from scratch. And we seem to be right in the middle of that incremental evolutionary development --- with a long way to go, before the program plays itself out. So, it's not "the end of enquiry", but merely a new path of inquiry. :nerd:
Enformationism :
A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to ancient Materialism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's a Theory of Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
But a bit is not meaningful. We need a meaningful bit. When I first started this thread, I looked through all the dictionary definitions of information, and none were satisfactory. It was only several weeks later that I happened upon the Information philosophers old time definition - to inform - literally change the shape of. If we take this to be the definition then information is not something static, but something dynamic, that exists as a change causing interaction.
The definitions that we have are:
1. Enformation
2. To inform - literally change the shape of
3. The evolutionary interaction of form.
4. Evolutionary interaction.
If we bundle all these together, we get: the evolutionary interaction of different forms of energy, maybe?
If we accept that information is fundamental, then information is everything. The only other thing that is everything is energy, and matter - as different forms of energy. These different forms of energy exist as systems in an enmeshed, and interacting, and evolving process. This includes mental systems. So interaction is also everything.
Therefore information is the interaction of energetic forms? There must be some counterarguments??
FYI: An information theory of individuality
Yes. Any single isolated thing is meaningless. The meaning is in relationships (e.g. ratios ; values). So, if you put two Bits together, the result many be an "interaction". Therefore, the basic element of meaning is the Byte -- an ensemble of bits; a system ; an integrated whole.
Likewise, the basic element of Energy is interchange, an active relationship that causes change. That change may be of physical Shape, as in protein folding, or of metaphysical Form, as in a change of mind or memory. In my thesis, physical Energy is only one facet of cosmic EnFormAction : the power to cause change in both physical Shape, and metaphysical Form. :nerd:
Byte :
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte
Interchange :
the action of interchanging things, especially information.
Note -- interchange of energy/information is what we call Communication of Meaning : the act of enforming a mind.
Ensemble :
a group of items viewed as a whole rather than individually.
Note -- meaning is not in the parts, but in the whole
Energy :
Scientists define âenergyâ as the ability to do work, but don't know what energy is. They assume it's an eternal causative force that existed prior to the Big Bang, along with mathematical laws. Energy is a positive or negative relationship between things, and physical Laws are limitations on the push & pull of those forces. So, all they know is what Energy does, which is to transform material objects in various ways. Energy itself is amorphous & immaterial. So if you reduce energy to its essence of information, it seems more akin to mind than matter. Likewise, all we know of God/First Cause/Logos is what it does : create novel forms. That's why I think of Energy as the âpowerâ aspect of the willpower of G*D, which is guided by the intentional (lawlike) âwillâ aspect. Together I call them : EnFormAction.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Here's an article on the math of Self-Oganization. You may already be familiar with the math of organized chaos. But the article has some images to illustrate the result, based on the mandala math of a fractal sandpile. :smile:
https://nautil.us/issue/107/the-edge/the-math-of-the-amazing-sandpile?utm_source=pocket-newtab
:up: Yes something like this. The interaction self organizes, or integrates, to become a self in some way. Similar to the sand pile, and similar to Wolfram's automata. Lots to consider now - thanks.
Self assembly.
The real issue for me is that this understanding of information ( If we bundle the above definitions into one ) is really quite divergent from the normal understanding, which is various and situationally specific. I have now read more papers than I can remember, and I would estimate only about 30% of the definitions of information focus on interaction, and change in mind state. I find this hard to understand as a change in mind state seems to be the obvious necessary element of information, and this would be a systemic interaction.
That situation is indeed ironic, since the original meaning of "information" referred to ideas situated in an immaterial mind. Before early humans developed explicit speech & writing, they were like chimpanzees, who communicate their ideas in implicit hoots & gestures. Today, we are so accustomed to the ease of moving memes from one mind to another, that we take it for granted. And sharing information is the essence of human culture. Yet, Shannon focused on one specific situation (mechanical movement of information), to the exclusion of other means of sharing memes.
Consequently, most applications of the term "information" now refer to machines instead of minds. And machines only have the values (meanings) that were programmed into them by others. Yet, humans are still capable of self-programming, by actively seeking relevant information*. It remains to be seen, if humans can develop machines capable of a personal self-image, which would add self-reflective value (meaning) to a stream of impersonal data. If and when that happens, we will see the beginning of machine Culture, as envisioned by sci-fi writers, e.g. The Matrix. :gasp:
* Note -- Current AI computers are programmed to actively seek "relevant information". But the motivation (and the relevance) comes from the programmer, not the machine. Hence, lacking freewill, they simulate communication of meaning without the ability to make sense of it. In that situation, they are not even on a level with apes in intelligence. They are merely processors of information, without actually possessing it.