What is information?
Granted, a message can be encapsulated and transmitted and received, and decoded, and any or all of those phases can be identified and viewed as a discrete event. But isn't the information encoded in a message only one part of what is really an indivisible, overarching entity, the conversation?
What is information? It has no meaning if not in the context of a context from which a piece of information in transmitted and another, completely separate context, in which it is received.
So, yes, the encoding of information is a discrete and measurable event, but the actual information, which extends and exceeds the statistical measurement, is a function of the ongoing dialogue in which meaning and messages are exchanged and refined and amplified, toward some common purpose. Information qua information, versus information qua this piece of information which is effective in this context now. One bit of information at the right time is worth a billion bits at the wrong time....
What is information? It has no meaning if not in the context of a context from which a piece of information in transmitted and another, completely separate context, in which it is received.
So, yes, the encoding of information is a discrete and measurable event, but the actual information, which extends and exceeds the statistical measurement, is a function of the ongoing dialogue in which meaning and messages are exchanged and refined and amplified, toward some common purpose. Information qua information, versus information qua this piece of information which is effective in this context now. One bit of information at the right time is worth a billion bits at the wrong time....
Comments (112)
Information has both the meaning of the Sender, and of the Receiver, and of the Context. So, like all things in this world, it is relative to the interpreter. :smile:
What is Information ? :
Claude Shannon labeled the basic element of computer data as "Information". That word had long been associated with various aspects of ideas in the human mind : communication, knowledge, reference, meaning, truth, etc. Yet, his quantified definition of the term focused, not on any particular semantic content, but merely the power to represent any meaningful data, from nouns to numbers. It was the comparison of incomplete or uncertain information with the physical concept of Entropy¹, that opened the door to our understanding of the universal role of Information in both the physical (matter) & metaphysical (mind) realms of reality. Some technical examples of those disparate functions are : Fisher Information (probability of X) ; Algorithmic Information (strings of commands & data in a program) ; von Neumann Entropy (quantum decay) ; and so forth. However, as expressed in a paper entitled What is Shannon Information?, “the very interpretation of the concept of information is far from unanimous.“
Excerpt from BothAnd Blog post123
Agree. I don't think the word 'information' is meaningful unless it is specified - what information? By itself, the word is merely a placeholder. In other words, there really is no such thing as 'information' simpliciter.
Consider the definitions:
Note in each case, the context and usage is specified. It's not possible to define 'information' absent those additional qualification.
Quoting Gnomon
The point about Claude Shannon's theory was that it was intended to solve a specific engineering problem, namely, the transmission of information across electronic medium. As for the introduction of 'entropy':
I do wonder if von Neumann said this last with a wink.
I guess for a person everything around them is information; everything one can sense is providing us with information about our environment and informs that which attracts or repels us. What gets hard for me is when we try to isolate information to fit in with our assumptions - when we assemble or choreograph information to provide us with a justification for a belief, especially regarding transcendental matters. I'm very much taken by that curious transformative process when information becomes evidence.
Check this out.
Stay away from the dark side, Tom.
We could, you know, define information as pre-Shannon and post-Shannon.
1. Pre-Shannon: Vague, unquantified, concrete (easily graspable)
2. Post-Shannon: Precise, quantified, abstract (not easy to get a handle on)
Please modify the categories as you see fit.
If it falls short of the mark, apologies. It was my best shot.
:up:
'Precise' could not possibly be a definition of 'information' in the general sense. Why? Because you can have very precise information, or very badly defined information. In both cases, it's still 'information'. So how could preciseness be a part of the definition?
As I said, information does not have a specific meaning, apart from the context in which the word is used, or a description of what information is being considered. Just as the OP said.
Information is contained in matter. The information in the braun is completely and totally different than used to operate on in computers. The Bekenstein maximum information content in the brain, proportional to the surface enclosing it, is valid for a dead brain. The living brain offers a place for all processes in the universe. Unlike a static computer memory chip that contains disconnected ones and zeroes only, connected by a computer program. The number of pathways in the brain by far exceeds the number of patterns of ones and zeroes on the computer memory chip.
But information, regardless of this particular qualification, is really NOISE. It’s not just entropy, but also energy, depending on your focus. When we talk about ‘information’, we are always referring to a certain qualitative reduction that ignores, isolates and excludes some noise, and quantifies or consolidates it as distinct from the rest, if only for the purpose of talking about it.
As is established, Shannon set out to solve a specific problem, namely, the transmission of information through electronic media, and everyone acknowledges that his work was fundamental to the success of information technology. No question. But to then claim that he has ‘defined information’ in any general sense, or that this has profound philosophical ramifications is what I’m questioning. It seems like hand-waving to me.
I got Paul Davies’ recent book on it, The Demon in the Machine. It’s a fascinating book and I’ve always liked that author. But it too contains a lot of breathless gesturing in the direction of ‘hey, this is something really PROFOUND’ in my opinion.
Quoting Possibility
I’m sure that’s not right. I think - someone tell me if I’m wrong - that noise is one of the factors Shannon has to deal with in his attempt to define what amounts to successful transmission of information. Noise interferes with information transmission and if the information is totally degraded, then it just reverts to noise.
Information is first and foremost structured. A pile of rocks is just a pile of rocks, but the same pile laid out to spell ‘this is a pile of rocks’ in structured by the act of laying it out, and is no longer just a pile of rocks. It conveys information (and in this case, irony.)
The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program has been capturing noise from interstellar space for decades, and so far all it has is noise. If if had captured any information whatever, anything that seemed to be a structured signal, then that would be enormous news. And it would be news BECAUSE it wasn’t just noise.
But it hasn’t happened.
I believe I got you. My intuition also concurs. Shannon's definition was tailored to address specific technological issues; don't ask me for details.
You and others who're of the same view are asking a deeper, metaphysical question: what is information...really?
We could keep Shannon's unit to measure information (bit) if it doesn't require us to endorse a metaphysical position that doesn't jibe with our gut feelings.
I'm not entirely sure about this but our instincts that all is not right in re the Shannon definition of information is still very vague/nebulous. I for one am as of now unable to home in on where exactly dear ol' Shannon trips up.
I would've loved to dig a little deeper but alas my math is a bit too rusty to complete the task as it were.
Let's keep it simple. Information as I understand it is just answers to questions.
1. What?
2. Where?
3. When?
4. How?
5. Who?
6. Which?
7. Whose?
8. Why?
An 8-dimensional universe in which information is a particular point described by 8 pieces of information (1 to 8 vide supra).
As you are aware all of the 8 questions above can be reduced to a proposition like so:
9. What is it? = It is an apple OR It is a dog OR...
In my humble opinion, Shannon's theory seems to fit right in - how many yes/no questions do we need an answer to to zero in on the correct answer to question 9? These yes/no answers basically eliminate the possibilities (vide the "OR" in question 9) by halving the possibility space at each step (I was told it bears some resemblance to the game 20 questions).
Basically, if you're familiar with logic, Shannon's notion of information is closely tied to the natural deduction rule called disjunctive syllogism (vide infra)
10. P or Q
11. Not P
Ergo,
12. Q
Please note that this in no way is an official position espoused by philosophers or information theorists. Just how my brain understands it. G'day mate!
The answer to the question ‘what is information?’ Is another question: ‘what information are you referring to?’ It is not a substance - in the philosophical meaning of that term ‘the basic constituents of nature’, yet that is how it is being treated.
Substance? Sorry! File not found!
Searching auxiliary memory...
True, information isn't a substance like, for instance, clay or paper is. If it were matter, my pen drive should gain weight as I continually save files on it. No! Is information energy? Can I perform work with information? How many joules (of energy) is 8 bits of information? Beats me!
End of file!
I said ‘in the philosophical sense’. Go and google ‘substance in philosophy’. Here’s the thing - substance in ordinary parlance means ‘material with uniform properties’ - which is what you’ve said. Substance in philosophy is a translation of Aristotle’s term ‘ousia’, which is actually nearer in meaning to ‘being’ or ‘subject’ than what we call ‘substance’. Examples of the traditional depiction of substance are ‘matter’, not in the sense of some particular kind of matter, but of matter as a kind of generalised abstraction, or ‘mind’, ditto (which are the two kinds of substance Descartes boiled everything down to). But it’s a diversion from this OP, other than to say that to take ‘information’ as a substance in that philosophical (as distinct from everyday usage) sense is, I think, a mistake.
(For a primer on classical philosophical theories of substance, try https://iep.utm.edu/substanc/#H1)
Ok. Will do what you asked.
Au revoir!
A word of caution: Etymological Fallacy
It’s also of note that the original word for ‘substance’ was ‘ouisia’ which is a form of the verb ‘to be’, and so carries a connotation which our word ‘substance’, meaning ‘a material with uniform properties’, does not. I’ve read that the Latin translators of Aristotle laboured long and hard over the translation of ‘ouisia’ before coming up with ‘substantia’, meaning ‘that which stands under’, which then morphed into ‘substance’ - but that word carries meanings vastly different to the original meaning of ‘ouisia’. This is actually a really critical distinction in reading philosophy in my opinion.
I’d be interested in @Galuchat’s opinion on this matter.
Interesting, I used an almost identical example in something I wrote in the early ninties.
I'm pretty familiar with the information theoretic notion of entropy and its interesting corelation with the thermodynamic concept. In that sense, I guess the interesting question is, what is it that makes one collection of things inherently more or less chaotic than another collection of things? And there is the whole 'lock and key' idea of the right information at the right time. If it isn't relevant to the task at hand, information is just noise. Doesn't the concept of information inherently contain the concept of purpose?
Yeah, what *is* the source of order in the universe? :chin:
:grin: Yes! Words are like variables in a computer language. They need to be defined to be used in the program. If not, then they can't be used until they are defined.
Quoting Agent Smith
Uh... wait. If there is no "file found" when using the scribble, "substance", then asserting that "information isn't a substance like..." would produce an error just the same. It seems that you would avoid using the term, "substance" altogether because it hasn't been defined.
Weight is information as in the relationship between an object's mass and the gravitational pull of the Earth. The information has no weight. Weight is the information.
Quoting Wayfarer
A pile of rocks contains information in that the pile of rocks is the effect of some prior causes, just as re-arranging them is another cause and their new arrangement is the new effect - meaning that both are just different information - meaning that different causal processes went into creating them. Information is the relationship between cause and effect. There must be some reason as to how the pile of rocks got there for you to observe, just as there is a reason how the pile of rocks spells out, "this is a pile of rocks". The relationship between how the rocks are arranged and what caused that arrangement is information.
:up:
Information = change.
A by itself is nothing but A in relation to B? Now that’s information. Because they are either qualitatively or quantitatively different from each other in some form or another. Information is the property of contrast, for if something had no matter, no spatial dimension, no mass, was completely uniform in every way with no characteristic dividing it into any other category, it would have no means by which to interact - nothing that can be relative to itself.
“It takes two to tango”
Shannon was trying to measure (quantify) the capacity of a telephone line to carry intentionally ordered messages. He defined this capacity - information - as a measure of the number of possible alternatives for something. Each possible alternative referred to a particular order or arrangement of information. More information meant more alternative arrangements. Minimising the quantity of information to be transmitted at once ensured less possible alternatives in arranging the same information, which maximised the accuracy retained in the transmission amidst the noise.
Scientists use a quantity they refer to as ‘Shannon information’ - the logarithm in the base of N - to define actual information, based on Shannon’s understanding of this capacity, or potential information. The unit of measurement, or ‘bit’, is the minimum number of alternatives: the choice between two possibilities.
So a pile of rocks laid out to spell ‘this is a pile of rocks’ contains much more information than simply these words. There are many, many possible alternatives for these same words to be arranged with the same pile of rocks. And what you might consider to be a pile of rocks may in fact have already been arranged by someone according to colour, shape, size and/or mineral content.
Noise is information whose particular arrangement is undetermined.
Yep, cause and effect are like A and B. Information is the relation between them, or more specifically a spatial-temporal relation between two events.
Von may have been teasing about using an abstruse technical term from physics to describe a mathematical function in computer code, but in retrospect he was prescient. The logical connection of Information to Entropy, led to it's physical equation with Energy. That logical relationship then pointed physicists to the conclusion that Energy & Matter are merely various forms of Generic Information (mathematical ratios). That genius hint also led to my own non-genius inference that Information is the fundamental "substance" (cf Spinoza) of the universe. Hence, referring its formless Potential state, I came to label universal essential Information as EnFormAction (the power to enform, to create). :smile:
The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794
Quoting Wayfarer
That's why I was forced to coin a neologism that encapsulates Information's meaningless,(simpliciter ??), generic, undefined, unspecified, pending, potential Form : EnFormAction. EFA is not-yet-actual Energy or Matter or Mind, but the Potential for all forms in the real & ideal realms of the world. Some posters on this forum will not appreciate my metaphorical use of the ambiguous label "G*D" to describe the ultimate source & generator of all forms of Information. But it has a philosophical heritage in Spinoza's notion of a universal Substance (essence), which he ambiguously labeled "Deus Sive Natura". :nerd:
Potentiality and actuality :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality
Pending : 1. not yet decided ; metaphorically hanging in limbo
EnFormAction :
[i]* Metaphorically, it's the Will-power of G*D, which is the First Cause of everything in creation. Aquinas called the Omnipotence of God the "Primary Cause", so EFA is the general cause of every-thing in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application.
* All are also forms of Information, the "difference that makes a difference". It works by directing causation from negative to positive, cold to hot, ignorance to knowledge. That's the basis of mathematical ratios (Greek "Logos", Latin "Ratio" = reason). A : B :: C : D. By interpreting those ratios we get meaning and reasons.
* 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.[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
deus sive natura :
https://ordinaryphilosophy.com/tag/deus-sive-natura/
Conatus :
a natural tendency, impulse, or striving : conation —used in Spinozism with reference to the inclination of a thing to persist in its own being.
Well, @Gnomon and I discussed this in another thread. Assume the role of God, a creator deity (Bruce Almighty). Your task is to bring into existence a universe from scratch! How would you do it? Wouldn't you first need info ( a how-to algorithm) to begin & complete your cosmic task? To make the long story short, information is (seems to be) most fundamental, even more basic than (any) substance, as far as I'm concerned. Look at it from a God's eye view. How do coders build virtual worlds? I hope I'm not off-topic. Sorry if I am.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I'm a prototype. Still needs work! :joke:
Quoting Harry Hindu
Thanks for clarifying that for me, but I do hope you don't mean that in the literal sense. If I write "my phone weighs 500 gm" does my phone gain 500 gm? :chin:
Great question brother Smith! Consider this. When the circumstances forced heavenly life into a collective research effort to invent particles and vacuum they got involved in a long long process. The initial enthusiasm turned into despair, but the rescue came very unexpectedly, from a most unusual god species... And then it was creation time. Heaven helt it's breath.
:snicker:
I'm waving, brother Smith, like all of us wave. One moment the gods are there in their full eternal heavenly divinity, and the next I think, who ordered them? Wouldn't it be great if the universe was heaven? Without any gods? I can't understand where then where the universal matter came from. Yes, two universes eternally inflate into existence, pair after pair, on a higher dimensional virtual quantum vacuum bulk substrate, so beautifully described by Lao Tse, but where the fuck did that came from?
I’m disputing that the term ‘generic information’ means anything, or that it’s a substance, in the philosophical sense.
As I said bear in mind the origin of the term which is now translated as ‘substance’, namely, ‘ouisia’, which is nearer in meaning to ‘being’ than to ‘stuff’. So another translation of the term in the context of pantheist philosophy would be that the universe comprises, not a single subject, but a singular being, of whom all particulars are modes or expressions.
It's a different question what the actual information is about. The zeroes and ones in a computer are just a means to compare with an actuality that depends on what we give them as a load. Likewise, the maximum information on the surface of a black hole (which is temporary entangled with the inner matter to resolve the information paradox) doesn't mean nothing as long we don't know from what the hole was formed. The surfaces black hole made from a super massive bike and one of a giant rabbit with the same mass, contain the same amount of information, but its obvious that the two pieces of info point to kind of different objects, the bike and the rabbit.
"chèvre is a generic term for all goat's milk cheese"
The reason information can't be generic, is because it has to specify something. It has to be about something, or (in the case of biological 'information') formative of something. It has to convey meaning in some sense. So it has to be specific, otherwise, it's not information. So the concept of 'generic information' is a non-starter.
Like the "self-information" or "information content" (surprise value of an individual message) is relative to the overarching "information entropy" (average surprise value in a whole source or channel of messages)?
Or are you merely surprised (or informed!) that the theory equates surprise value with information?
Sorry, "Generic Information" (Platonic Form) is my alternative term for "EnFormAction" (Energy & Causation) to suit different contexts. I borrowed the notion of intangible "substance" as the Essence of Reality from Spinoza & Aristotle to serve another context : essential Information comes in many forms, one of which is Matter, the tangible substance that we are all familiar with. Informational "Substance" is the formless clay, from which many things are formed.
Unfortunately, metaphors can be confusing when taken out of context. That's why I made a Glossary of technical terms & neologisms to gloss over the non-standard & metaphorical meanings. They are all defined from the perspective of Information as both the Form (source & cause) and the Substance (essence & material) of both Reality and Ideality.
At the top of my Information hierarchy, Mind, Energy, Matter, is absolute Existence, which I label as universal unitary singular "BEING" (not any particular being). It's not a person or thing, but the philosophical eternal (timeless) principle of self-existence. A more familiar, but baggage-laden, term is G*D. But that's a whole 'nother can-of-terms. :joke:
Generic : general ; comprehensive ; generative ; non-specific
BEING :
[i]* In my own theorizing there is one universal principle that subsumes all others, including Consciousness : essential Existence. Among those philosophical musings, I refer to the "unit of existence" with the absolute singular term "BEING" as contrasted with the plurality of contingent "beings" and things and properties. By BEING I mean the ultimate “ground of being”, which is simply the power to exist, and the power to create beings.
Note : Real & Ideal are modes of being. BEING, the power to exist, is the source & cause of Reality and Ideality. BEING is eternal, undivided and static, but once divided into Real/Ideal, it becomes our dynamic Reality.[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
:up:
:ok:
I suggest we "think outside the box". There was a thread not so long ago on how people tend to understand ideas/concepts/phenomena/whathaveyou in terms of things they already do.
Last night I had an interesting experience with a 3 year old. This guy was hungry but he seems to know only one word that meant food viz. "chips". He repeatedly said "chips, chips, chips" and I was trying my best to convince him that chips was junk food and not recommended at his age. Only later did I find out that for this toddler "chips" = food.
As you might've already noticed, I use a computational framework (files, apps, windows, menu, etc.) to make sense of reality. We all do that I guess.
The same thing's happening here too - we're trying to get a handle on information (new) with the aid of substance (old). It's time we did something different in my humble opinion. How? I dunno!
You have to understand something in order to criticize it.
Yeah! Sorry, my wild shots (in the dark) has found an unintended victim it seems. :grin:
Keep on shooting AS. But please turn on the light!
Isn't information just some material stuff we can use to inform each other? Something with no inherent material existence in nature? The surface of a black hole contains information of the stuff inside, the maximum quantity even, but what does that mean?
There is a similar thread: What is information?, started up by the unforgettable @Pop.
For example, imagine a computer memory chip. Say we have assigned color at certain combinations of ones and zeroes. And say we associate with each color a coordinate on a plane. Also in the form of ones and zeroes. With this information we can construct a picture in color. Black and white takes less info. If we want many details more. If we want a picture adequate to sub atomic level, we need a lot of info.
But how we know what the zeroes and ones stand for? We know because we give the info meaning. And meaning has weight! Literally! A memory chip with meaningful information weighs more than one without.
I said that weight is the relation between your phone's mass and the force of gravity on surface of the Earth. How does writing scribbles on this screen change that relation? It seems that to change that relation/information you'd have to add mass to the phone or change the force of gravity on the Earth. You could also go to the Moon and your phone would have a different weight.
If information is the relation between cause and effect (weight as the effect of some mass influenced by the gravity of Earth), then changing the information in your smartphone would require a cause - as in you downloading an app. The installed app is the effect of prior causes - like the lines of code that were written by a programmer to use the electronics of your phone to produce new information depending on the input it receives. It is also the cause of new effects in that it computes input to outputs.
Information is everywhere. The goal in some mind is what amplifies (focuses the attention on) certain information over others. For instance, the scribbles that appear on this screen are the effect of some human having an idea and the intent to share it. The types of scribbles are determined by their idea, the language they learned and are using, their level of understanding of the language they are using, and many other causes. You, as the reader, have the goal of understanding their idea so are focused on that cause of the scribbles being on the screen. You are using the scribbles on the screen to get at their idea (the cause), just as you could use the scribbles on the screen to get at the language they are using and their level of understanding of the language they are using - if that were your goal - and just as the investigator using the evidence at the crime scene to get at the identity and motive of the criminal.
Paradoxically it may sound, but a phone with information on it actually weighs more than without.
You need to provide some kind of evidence for this that shows that downloaded apps on your phone changes the mass of your phone or changes the Earth's force of gravity.
Only in computers (a great part of which is metadata) , books, signs, roads, airplanes, schoolboards, or commercials (so pretty much anywhere!). There is no information inherent in nature. Information is always about something we define. A wavefunction contains no information, neither is there an "it from bit" computed beneath and displayed as matter.
Well, the Gibbs free energy increases. And mass is equivalent to energy. The amount is tiny though. And it depends on how the info is stored.
In making the argument that information is the relationship between cause and effect I am asserting that information is inherent in nature.
What do you mean by "wavefunction"? Are you talking about mathematical equation (a string of scribbles) or what the scribbles represent? If the former then the scribbles are the effect of some observation of what the scribbles represent. If the latter then what they represent may be uncaused - meaning that it would not be information as you say.
In saying that information is about something, effects can be about their causes. The crime scene is the effect and the criminal and their motive is the cause. The former is about the latter.
Tree rings are the effect of how the tree grows throughout the year, not something made-up in the mind of some observer. The mind does not project the age of the tree into the tree rings. The tree rings represent the age of the tree because of how the tree grows throughout the year. The tree rings are about the age of the tree because how the tree grows year in and year out produces the tree rings.
In any kind of strong naturalism (which I would advocate) information, if it is a feature of any realm (and it is) must be a feature of nature. I agree.
The concept of shape-shifting Information that I am proposing is complicated, not least, in that it applies to both Analog/Macro/Classical reality (known directly via senses), and Digital/Quantum/Post-postModern ideality (known indirectly via inference from measurements), plus to Hypothetical/Metaphysical/Speculations (into realms beyond our space-time world). So, do you think we can find a meeting-place somewhere in possibility-space?
I'm currently reading a book on Quantum Physics, Beyond Weird by Phillip Ball, In the first chapter, he says "it is a theory about information". To illustrate the difficulty of discussing such a slippery subject, he points to the presumably "orthodox" Copenhagen interpretation of what's going-on right under our noses, only to conclude that "there is no quantum orthodoxy". Likewise, there is no Information orthodoxy. Computer specialists & Physicists & Philosophers tend to work with different understandings of what it is that they are talking about.
That being the case, he says "if you want to argue [with the Copenhagen interpretation] you must argue with Bohr". But then, he admits that Bohr is "hard to fathom". Yet, he quotes Bohr : "our task is to learn to use these words correctly -- that is, unambiguously and consistently". However, Ball notes that "the problem is that in quantum mechanics it is almost impossible to be unambiguous and consistent . . ." And that's also the problem I have been dealing with in discussions of "Generic Information" : the same word may have a different meaning in each context.
Ball then notes that "the challenge in reading Bohr comes also from the fact that he took tremendous care to say what he meant". Likewise, I take care to define my meaning for each context, including references to a Glossary of Terminology. But the complexity & contradictions within both Quantum and Information contexts makes communication fraught with diverging perspectives from which to view the topic. Therefore, I must ask how your point-of-view on the nature & role of "Information" differs from mine. I suspect that we are often talking about the same thing, but using different words in different contexts. Maybe meeting halfway is all we can expect. :cool:
That's exactly what I'm trying to do in the Enformationism thesis. It's a blend of old (Spiritualism) and modern (Materialism) and novel (Informationism) concepts. The Quantum pioneers also went through a period of groping for ways to interpret the weirdness of quantum phenomena. Some began to use metaphors from Hindu & Buddhist traditions, and others developed novel mathematical language (wave-function) to describe what they imagined as tiny particles of stuff.
Likewise, social scientist, cognitive scientist & cyberneticist Gregory Bateson defined the traditional term "Information" (originally referring to mind-stuff -- ideas) as the "difference that makes a difference". Which I interpret to mean that, in all its various forms, Generic Information is characterized by an essential logical distinction (a : b :: c : d) that our minds interpret as meaning. In its abstract forms, it's a ratio (quantitative relationship, 1/2 or a : b). In computer code, its merely a statistical relationship (percent true/false) between All or Nothing (1 or 0). And in human linguistic intercourse, information conveys the relative significance of a thing to the observer (good vs bad).
Individually, those examples may not seem to have much to do with each other. But Information is a slippery shape-shifting concept. So it's hard to "get a handle on". Yet one pragmatic way to grasp it is to grab a different handle (word) appropriate for each context. :chin:
informationism :
Commitment to the idea that the world is fundamentally composed of, supervenes upon, or reduces to, information of some kind.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/informationism
Note -- in the Enformationism thesis, I note that the term, spelled with an "I", was already in use. So I changed the spelling to emphasize my equation of mental Info with physical Energy.
Dear brother Gnomon, as interesting your thesis truly is, we still have to take into account that the wavefunction contains no information but a means for particles to explore. Information is not contained in the patterns connecting particles, but in the stuff describing them.
SUBTOPIC: The new look...
?? Gnomon, Hillary, et al,
Yes, that term ('information") is rather difficult to define.
Dear brother Gnomon, as interesting your thesis truly is, we still have to take into account that the wavefunction contains no information but a means for particles to explore. Information is not contained in the patterns connecting particles, but in the stuff describing them.
(COMMENT)
Information is anything detected or not, no matter what form the carrier would take; no matter the value or the content. Even the total lack of information is, in itself, the transmission of information.
It is virtually impossible to cite anything in reality that does not convey information.
Most Respectfully,
R
#/=#ss!!@ trt4#@÷÷ fr $%%%$ 4÷=sa y6 yu777
Aa?
True. The wavefunction contains no knowable information. Instead, it statistically describes all possible paths a particle may "explore". But there is no actual (sensible) particle until a measurement (Latin mensura ; root mens- : "mind") by an Observer somehow causes the continuous non-local Wave to "collapse" (emerge) as a single localized Particle.
Likewise, Huygens described light as a field, propagating by analogy with an oceanic wave. So, Quantum physicists were surprised to discover that on the sub-atomic level, light is emitted only in discrete packets of energy. Consequently, the current ambiguous theory says that light is both wave and particle, which makes no sense in classical physics. On the macro scale, to our senses, the world appears to be analog & solid. But at its foundation, it was found to be digital & grainy (90% empty space).
That's why my thesis is based on the BothAnd principle. As Aristotle realized, our real world consists of both Actual stuff (matter) and Potential essence (EnFormAction : the power to enform). To our physical senses, Potential is meaningless & useless, until Realized. But to our rational minds, we know that Potential (e.g. stored energy in an inert battery) can become Actual electricity (by completing a circuit). Likewise, a Potential wavefunction is un-real, until an observer completes-the-circuit (bridges-the-gap) to allow an Actual particle to emerge from thin air. :nerd:
BothAnd Principle :
The Enformationism worldview entails the principles of Complementarity, Reciprocity & Holism, which are necessary to ofset the negative effects of Fragmentation, Isolation & Reductionism. Analysis into parts is necessary for knowledge of the mechanics of the world, but synthesis of those parts into a whole system is required for the wisdom to integrate the self into the larger system.
BothAnd Glossary
I do not think this is Aristotle. Physical stuff is matter and form.
It's my interpretation. Aristotle's "form" is what we now call "information" (a pattern that identifies a thing). Platonic "Form" is Potential, while Matter (hyle) is Actual stuff. (E = MC^2) Potential (energy) can be converted into Actual Matter (mass). :smile:
Okay. But for Aristotle matter only exists with form.
I’ve read some excerpts from that book, published as essays in various places. He’s scathing about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. As far as my limited understanding will allow, I feel that the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ - which is basically a compendium of Bohr-Heisenberg's musings on the meaning quantum physics - is philosophically sophisticated. As has been pointed out, those early figures in quantum mechanics were cultured individuals with a grounding in philosophy, which can't be said of many of the later generations. But I don't think the Copenhagen interpretation is a theory about the constituent elements of reality - in other words, it's not an ontological theory - so much as a reflection on the limitations of knowledge and of scientific method, generally.
You're placing a lot on the equivocation between the meaning of 'form' (morphe, which is part of the root of 'hylomorphism') and 'information' which has a separate etymology (see here.)
To re-iterate: Information has to specify or mean something. 'Generic' means, among other things, not having a specific definition. So if it means something, it can't be generic, and if it doesn't mean anything then it's not information. So I claim 'generic information' is a meaningless phrase.
That remains to be seen. There are different interpretations of the wavefunction besides the Copenhagen view. We can see the wavefunction, as was done initially, before it was decided in Copenhagen what the standard would gonna be, as being a literal stuff accompanying the particle, which has a precise position and momentum all the time, in accordance with the classical view. The non-classicality enters when realizing the strange behavior of the particle. It changes instantaneously between all possible trajectories within the confines of the wavefunction. For example, in an s-orbital around a proton, the electron has zero momentum and hops around erratically within the orbital. Is there information present in the wavefunction? Let's look at a free particle.
A free particle has, in general, a Gaussian shaped wavepacket associated with it. There is an overall mean momentum, and the particle hops around to the front to the back, etc. All the time it has a position and momentum. When you measure it's position the wavefunction literary collapse to a small region within the bounds of uncertainty, and the measurement of momentum, which asks for two position and time measurement likewise.
Think about it. Where is the information?
Yes. But what did Ari mean by "form"? Obviously, something in addition to Matter (hyle). We can assume that Ari never heard of "Information Theory". And, he was trying to distinguish his notion of Real (concrete, physical) "Form" (morph) from Plato's Ideal (abstract, essential) "Form" (eidos). But we now know that Information can be both (see equivalence principle below). So, Ari's combination of Matter & Morph would today be called complex "Information". Ideas in a mind are abstract (form only), while objective things in the world are concrete (matter + form). (Disclaimer : this is not an official academic interpretation.)
For the purposes of my thesis, I was merely interpreting his ambiguous (two part) definition of things & beings in terms of my thesis proposal that both Mind & Matter are forms of Generic Information. In other words, Information is the Essence of all things. In compound things "hyle" = matter (Actual, physical), and "form" = design (Potential, metaphysical). "Hyle" was the kind of stuff he discussed in The Physics, but "Morph" and "Ousia" were reserved for the volume on Metaphysics : not about material things, but philosophical ideas about things & concepts. Below, I have pasted an excerpt from a previous discussion on a similar topic. :smile:
Hylomorphism (also hylemorphism) is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which conceives every being (ousia) as a compound of matter and form, ...
The Ancient Greek term ousia was translated in Latin as essentia or substantia, and hence in English as essence or substance.
Essence is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. ___Wikipedia
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://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019AIPA....9i5206V/abstract
Metaphysical versus Anti-Metaphysical (March 22, 2022)
This is another example of the philosophical problem with our materialistic (matter-based) language. Aristotle defined "substance" from two different perspectives (the "qualifications" I mentioned before). When he was trying to distinguish his pragmatic philosophy from Plato's idealistic ideology, he took matter as the primary. So. when he defined his notion of "hylomorphism", he had to distinguish the Actual material (hyle=stuff) from the Potential design (morph=pattern). Hence you have a which-came-first dilemma : the mental idea or the material actualization of the design?
Since I'm an Architect, I tend to think that the mental image (imaginary structure) is prior to the physical building (material structure), hence primary. And morph/form is what I mean by Aristotelian "substance" as the immaterial essence of a thing. I realize Ari's ambiguous reference is potentially confusing. My Enformationism worldview is plagued by many similar dual-meaning words : such as physical "Shape" vs mental "Form". Do you know of another philosopher who found a non-ambiguous term to distinguish between Substance and Essence?
hylomorphism, (from Greek hyl?, “matter”; morph?, “form”), in philosophy, metaphysical view according to which every natural body consists of two intrinsic principles, one potential, namely, primary matter, and one actual, namely, substantial form. It was the central doctrine of Aristotle's philosophy of nature. ___Wiki
Two kinds of Structure :
[i]1. mathematical structure is an imaginary (idealized) pattern of relationships (links) without the nodes.
2. physical structure is the actual nodes arranged into a pattern resembling the mental design.[/i]
I agree. But, you are using "information" in a specific sense, as is usual in most scientific & technical discussions. In that case, you are correct. But the point of my thesis is that Information is general & universal, hence a philosophical concept, similar to Plato's "Form". I try to make that distinction in the thesis by using a different spelling (EnFormAction ; the potential to enform).
In that abstract form, it's more like causal Energy than meaningful computer data. But then, it's BothAnd. Like Energy, EnFormAction is meaningless & inert until actualized into specific sensible forms. For example, physical Phase Transitions are a result of En-form-action : the same substance (liquid water) takes on a new form (solid ice) with novel properties. This is what we call : "Emergence" and "Holism". :smile:
PS__Some mathematical physicists have postulated that our real world is a mathematical construct, hence pure Information. For me, that's just an illustrative metaphor, similar to The Matrix, so I don't worry about the tricky technicalities. I haven't read Tegmark's book, but I get the impression that he is like some of the Quantum pioneers. using as-if metaphors to explain some of the baffling observations of modern physics.
PPS__Plato also used the term "Logos" (word, reason, plan, principle, intention, design) in reference to the creation of an orderly (and self-organizing) world from primordial Chaos. In my thesis I also call it The Enformer, or Programmer. To Enform is to give meaningful form (pattern) to the formless (patternless).
Physical objects have matter and form. Our thought has the form. An apple on the table has matter and form, our thought of the apple has form only.
In the Physics he names four causes. Material, Formal, Efficient, Final. Anything physical has a material and formal cause.
I am not sure about your use of potential to refer to form. Aristote never talks that way.
Valiant attempt, but I don't think it fits. To be sure, the nature of the Forms or Ideas in Plato is a very difficult subject, but suffice to say that Platonism generally and the "neoplatonism" which developed from it, was closer to what we would understand as 'theism' albeit that the precise nature of the supposed 'first mover' or 'demiurge' was never clearly explained (or perhaps wasn't clearly understood). But the form or idea of something was as much its principle as its shape - for example, there is discussion of the form of health, or of largeness; what it is that makes a particular this kind. In Proclus and Plotinus, there is the idea that the idea resides or originates in the divine Intellect (something clearly later appropriated by Christian theology). But again, the relationship with information is tenuous, afraid to say.
//ps//actually it occurs to me that the role you're assigning to 'information' is analogous to that played by 'prime matter' in Aristotle (ref.)
The weight of information is very small though. Mass is a consequence of particles interacting, but massive particles interacting and forming a pattern, a shape, a form, adds not much to their mass. Ener?y is needed to maintain the shape, but compared to the mass energy this is very little.
What information is contained in the wavefunction?
Is one that fails to take the right sorts of things into consideration.
Point one:Cause and effect is a kind of relationship. Point two:It makes no sense to say that information is the relationship between a relationship. Point three:Saying that information is the relationship between cause and effect fails to take into consideration the first point made above.
Information is often thought about in terms of organized data. That is a definition that's put to use. Sometimes for good. Sometimes not.
Information is arrangement. We assume that it’s arrangement of material stuff. Information describes the qualitative relational structure, or internally ordered (formal) variability, of any system.
When scientists quantified a unit of Shannon’s information (bit) as a measure of variable capacity in a physical system, they took the first step towards constructing a ‘virtual’ reality - a fully contained system of potential change. But this ‘change’ refers to a particular system’s variability: namely the structure of electrons in solid metal. What doesn’t change in this system - and deliberately so - is quality.
So, we have a modern understanding of ‘information’ as the variability in arrangement across a system of consolidated (logical) qualitative structure. Shannon’s contribution, in trying to maximise the quality of telephone communication, was to deliberately exclude the qualitative variability of any system from how we understand ‘information’.
Information systems will always rely on the qualitative variability of humans for the accuracy of its relation to actual reality. The problem is, humans have a fearful tendency in preferring certainty to accuracy...
Yes. Generic Information is meaningless, because it is general & abstract & timeless & potential, like Plato's "Form". It contains the statistical possibility to mean anything, but lacking specificity, it actually means nothing. It is completely random & chaotic (no pattern, pure noise). So, like the pixels on your computer screen, GI, when uniformly white or black, lacks pattern, hence is devoid of meaning (e.g. white noise). But if you begin to change from a uniform (111111) or random (01010101) pattern, to a variable (100101101010001) pattern, a meaningful image will begin to appear from the void. That uniform array of pixels has the potential, when intelligently activated, to draw a picture of anything.
In terms of the current technical use of the word "information" your "claim" is correct. But I am proposing an expanded philosophical definition of Shannon's narrow engineering application. His "information" has been stripped of specific meaning in order to serve as a general carrier of whatever meaning you want to put into it. His 1s & 0s, define the whole range of values from Nothing to Everything. In isolation, a Zero means absolutely "nothing" (black), and a One means vaguely "something" (white). Only when those basic values are combined into variable strings, do they form a pattern that has a particular meaning to the observer. Information is the "difference that makes a meaningful difference" to a rational mind.
However, the "Generic Information" I'm referring to exists metaphorically in the Mind of G*D (Programmer), the originator of all things & meanings in the world. In it's most general & non-specific form, I call it EnFormAction, which is what scientists know as "Energy", and philosophers know as "Causation" : the power to cause change in physical things. In the abstract, Energy is invisible & intangible, so we only know it by what it does, not what it is. For example, a Photon is potential energy. But until it impacts some physical thing, it is essentially nothing, and has no mass. Yet, it can gain mass by slowing down from almost infinite lightspeed to some lower frequency & velocity. Only then does it have meaningful effects that we can observe (transition from Potential to Actual Energy). Ironically, as soon as Potential energy becomes Actual, it converts into Matter.
Therefore, Generic Information is the formless Potential to cause changes in form, which we experience as Meaning or Knowledge or Information (literally, the act of enforming). No change, no meaning. No difference, no meaning. The causal act of enforming is the source of meaning. :nerd:
PS___For another illustration of Generic Information, a human ovum looks like any other mammalian egg, until it becomes differentiated (enformed) into specifically human patterns. So, the egg is generic, capable of generating a wide range of adult animals, with various adult features, tall/short, dark/light, human/pig, etc. (Human DNA is 98% identical with a pig). Small differences in DNA make big difference in final form, hence in meaning.
Enform : (obsolete, transitive) To form; to fashion.
This conversion of energetic light into matter is a direct consequence of Einstein's famous E=mc2 equation, which states that energy and matter (or mass) are interchangeable.
https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=119023
Platonic Form :
Plato thought that the things we perceive on Earth are really composed of ideas or forms. A form is an eternal and perfect concept, something that is strived for but never actualised on Earth.
http://www.thestargarden.co.uk/Socrates-Plato-and-Aristotle.html
Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibility : the Platonic FORM.
BothAnd Blog post 33
MEANINGFUL PATTERN EMERGES FROM RANDOMNESS
Statistical Information. We call it "Probability". Which is equivalent to "Potential". :smile:
I don't think think structures and forms contain information. Entropy yes. A wavefunctions is just a collection of hidden variables with a specific form which is continuously changing shape. Collapsing, taking shape in potentials, It's shape influences the particle directly. There is no information contained in the sense that it refers to something else than the particle, like the information in a computer refers to things we define, giving it meaning.
That is compelling. I once heard "news" defined as "something worth knowing that you didn't already know."
The question then revolves around what is "something."
Sartre, following on his studies with or on Heidegger, would maybe interject that a "thing" is anything that is not nothing. Nothing being the blank page essentially or undifferentiated existence.
I do wonder if this essentially philosophical framework muddies our perspective in a very real sense in relation to physics. If we are inherently incapable of discerning the similarity between nothing and something and this results in the Bohmian tendency to attribute hidden variables to the quantum behavior of particles.
It is an interesting conjecture that the fundamental flaw in mathematics is that it must be intelligible to human beings, but it is not practical, is it? The idea that the ultimate answers to physical questions must either be infinity or nothing doesn't convey a satisfactory understanding to our minds, does it?
Information is anything that stands out from a background of infinity or nothing, but the ultimate paradox is that infinity is nothing.
I can't agree more. The entropy contained in a solid at 0 kelvin is zero and the entropy of that same solid in an ultrahot gas sate goes to infinity. Both states are the same though, in the sense that they are easy to describe. If you know a small part you know all parts (of course the degrees of freedom are each other's inverses, but this only goes to show that total freedom is related to total order). The most interesting state of the material lies between the two extreme temperatures.
Who has that idea then? Isn't the idea that, for example, the big bang arises from a state of infinite density a sign that something's wrong?
A ‘bit’ of information in a computer system, as I described earlier, refers to the capacity or potential for an event in a specific system. The difference that makes a difference. This system, I should note, is not just the static components of a computer, but must be inclusive of the electricity that runs through it - the movement of electrons. The information in a computer system, therefore, refers to an event, as does a wavefunction. Don’t be fooled by the rendered appearance of either.
Don't think so. A zero or one (or combinations thereof) in a computer is a physical structure (a potential, an electron in one of two states, etc.) which we assign a meaning. This information is not inherent.
Quoting Possibility
What difference? Between what? What you consider an event?
Quoting Possibility
Not neccessarily. It depends on what we asdign to the patterns of potentials and currents.
Quoting Possibility
The wavefunction contains no information. It just directs the particle around, The particle hops around within the bounds of the wavefunction.
Quoting Possibility
Indeed, beware!
...with what?
That was what I said - information is the capacity, not actuality. It exists as a variability in the state of an electron. The particular meaning we attribute to that unit of potential (if any) is not essential to its existence as information.
It seems that you may be referring exclusively to ‘relevant information’.
I like your style, assuming I've got a handle on what it is that you're trying to do.
It's midnight, overcast, new moon, there's a power outage - darkness, pitch black. I'm with my friend, Mr. Magoo, blind as a bat for all intents and purposes. My eyesight, a mole could see better. Anyway, we look out the window. I see a man, Mr. Magoo sees a woman. We argue, Man! Woman! Man! Woman! Man!...I'm angry with Mr. Magoo and he doesn't seem all that pleased with me either.
The door opens, Eli walks in, slams the door shut and announces "hey guys, I saw a person outside the window." I look at Mr. Magoo and he looks at me, we never talk about this inicident for the rest of our lives.
Non local hidden variables. The wavefunction is made of it. It could be argued the are the constituents of space.
The wavefunction contains no information in the sense a computer memory chip contains actual information. Nor in the sense that the same chip contains potentially information. We can't project information on the wavefunction like we can to superpositions of electron spins or classical arrays of bits. The wavefunctions contains no zeroes and ones. There is no quantum computing going on beneath the surface of reality. The event horizon of a black hole is entangled with the inside after the formation of the hole. Contrary to what Erik Verlinde claims: quantum bits on the horizon or surface around the observable universe directing the inside.
For the record, I use the term "Information" in a much broader & general sense than Claude Shannon. From that universal perspective, Information is fundamentally Logical Structure : relationships & ratios. For example, Entropy is the breakdown of the structure that bonds matter into the objects & things we know via our senses. By contrast, "To Enform" (to create) is to combine isolated bits into meaningful & functional wholes (forms).
Logical structure is not physical (material), but meta-physical (mental ; mathematical). You can't see Logical structure with your eyes, but with your Reason (ability to know invisible ratios & relationships). Energy (hot) & Entropy (cold) are merely different forms of Information : constructive & destructive; active & inactive. The information of a wavefunction is mathematical & statistical, describing all possible states of a particle in superposition. That abstract knowledge may be meaningless to you, but to a quantum physicist it is elementary. :smile:
Logical structure refers to the way information in a document [or object] is organized; it defines the hierarchy of information and the relation between different parts of the document.
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_213
What is Information? :
So, for the purposes of my philosophical worldview, I have constructed my own definitions, that reflect the ubiquity of Information in all aspects of reality, especially its mental & meaningful functions. Also, its role in Energy & Causation is important at both the Quantum & Cosmic levels of the world. For example, the Observer Effect of quantum theory implies that when a mind extracts information (knowledge) from a quantum system in Superposition (multiple states simultaneously) the waveform of that particle is forced to collapse into a single measurable state. In other words, the particle suddenly changes from Mathematical to Material.
BothAnd Blog, post 123
Note -- since Information is the essence of Energy, measurement of a quantum state extracts a bit of energy (information) from the possible particle, thus triggering the "collapse" from math to matter. (Yes, I know that's hard to wrap your mind around; but hey, it's quantum weirdness).
What information does the wavefunction convey? :
https://www.britannica.com/science/wave-function
Note -- in his book, Beyond Weird, Phillip Ball says "wavefunction collapse is then a generator of knowledge : it is not so much a process that gives us the answers, but it is a process by which answers are created".
Thanks. But your illustration sounds rather bleak. My understanding of Information, on the other hand, is enlightening. It allows us to see (rationally) what can't be seen (visually). :wink:
Quoting Gnomon
Ok. I knew that I wasn't really going to hit the bullseye as to what EnFormAction really is. A ballpark figure of sorts was what I was aiming for. Your thesis does make (strong) claims as to what the underlying first principle of reality is. What got me stoked was how inclusive your system is (BothAnd), something which, to me, requires us to utilize our ignorance rather than knowledge (vide infra, I quote you)
Quoting Gnomon
Sorry, if this is a shallow understanding or worse a complete misunderstanding of EnFormAction. G'day.
Again, you are looking at the negative side of Information : Ignorance. But Shannon's mathematical definition covered the whole range, from Ignorance (zero ; 0 ; blank ; empty set) to Knowledge (all ; unity [1] ; 100% ; full set). Likewise, my worldview is intended to be "inclusive". That's why I call it a Theory of Everything.
The quote above compares Information to Energy. Scientists don't know what Energy is (ignorance), but they can measure what it does (action ; change). So, Energy is not a physical object, but a meta-physical Force. It's essentially the concept of Causation : the universal Actor (EnFormAction). And Change is the relation (ratio) between Cause & Effect ; Before & After. In my thesis, Energy is the Cause of everything in the world that follows from the First Cause. The BB Singularity was close to nothing (pure Potential ; zero Actual), but it has evolved via Causation (Change) into everything in the universe (All ; 100% : Unity).
So, our scientific ignorance of what Energy is (in essence) stems from a Materialist Either/Or worldview : either Physical or Nothing -- essences excluded. By contrast, an Information-based BothAnd worldview does know what Energy is, in essence : Logic ; Math ; Reason --- as applied to a physical world. However, that kind of Rational knowledge is not empirical (physical), but theoretical (mental), not scientific (reality), but philosophical (ideality). Yet, the Enformationism perspective views both sides of the same coin : sensory reality and imaginative ideality.
That's why my personal philosophical worldview is labelled as BothAnd : it is comprehensive; "inclusive" of both Matter and Mind ; both Physics and Meta-Physics. It acknowledges that our world is both Good and Bad; both Positive and Negative; both Potential and Actual. Without those polar alternatives, there would be no Change, no Cause, no Novelty. Only eternal boring BEING would exist in timelessness & spacelessness. :nerd:
Energy : "The simplest definition of energy is "the ability to do work". Energy is how things change and move."
https://www.ducksters.com/science/energy.php
Note -- Ability = Potential ; causal power
It seems I only have a partial grasp of your thesis and here's more of own intuitions on the issue: EnFormAction is a good idea, no, a great idea - it, in my humble opinion, attempts to bring about a synthesis of opposing views in and of the world and all in it.
Yet, please take this positively, I sense a paradox hidden deep within your thesis. Don't worry, either I'm talking out of my hat or the issue isn't a fatal blow to EnFormAction.
The paradox: Information is foundational to EnFormAction, but your BothAnd principle works only if you lack information (you don't know which it is and hence you include both).
Good day.
I'm sure the BothAnd principle sounds paradoxical to many people. But that's only because Black-or-White , Good-vs-Evil , Either/Or thinking is so common. Two-value (divergent) thinking is a short-cut that jumps to broad general conclusions in specific situations, as in Racism. It's a tendency to see things in terms of polar extremes. Which is the conceptual cause of most conflict & suffering in the world.
But BothAnd is a simply a Holistic way of thinking, that can be illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. It looks at the world in terms of Complementarity, Reciprocity, & Holism, which is necessary to offset the negative effects of Fragmentation, Isolation & Reductionism. From a historical perspective, it sees a zig-zagging Hegelian Dialectic (progression-of-evolution), which is a heuristic (searching) process that explores positive & negative alternatives, but always maintains a moderate (balanced) course between the extremes of Good vs Evil.
Conceptually, "Information" (ratio between alternatives ; 1/0) is a calculated Paradoxical (incompatible) Equation that yields a Logical answer to an apparent conflict [a : b :: b : c ; (+X) + (-Y) = (+/-Z)]. You don't passively "lack information", but you lack Certainty, so you actively extract Information into meaning via Reasoning. One of the primary functions of Philosophy is to resolve apparent Paradoxes into practical Wisdom, such as the Golden Rule, and "turn the other cheek". :nerd:
In Ancient Chinese philosophy, yin and yang is a Chinese philosophical concept that describes how obviously opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. ___Wikipedia
Hegelian Dialectic :
A theory of historical development that is often attributed to the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. It proposes that cultural understanding progresses, despite conflicts, via 3 stages labeled Thesis (a dominant cultural worldview or “-Ism”), followed by Antithesis (an opposing view), then to Synthesis (a blend of the prior views). Stage 3 then becomes the thesis for the next round of quarreling belief systems.
BothAnd Blog Glossary
YIN AND YANG UNIFIED INTO YIN/YANG
Not Hegel's concept of dialectic. I forget who said that, but it is not Hegel.
In philosophy, the concept of a historical dialectic, as an interpretive method, is typically associated with Hegel, even though he didn't originate the idea. :smile:
Hegelian Dialectic :
A theory of historical development that is often attributed to the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. It proposes that cultural understanding progresses, despite conflicts, via 3 stages labeled Thesis (a dominant cultural worldview or “-Ism”), followed by Antithesis (an opposing view), then to Synthesis (a blend of the prior views). Stage 3 then becomes the thesis for the next round of quarreling belief systems.
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Hegelian dialectic. / (h???e?l?an, he???i?-) / noun. philosophy an interpretive method in which the contradiction between a proposition (thesis) and its antithesis is resolved at a higher level of truth (synthesis)
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hegelian-dialectic
Okay, I did not make that claim. I only described the method he uses in the Phenomenology,.
Bravo! The meat and potatoes ( :snicker: ) of paradoxes is binary thinking (0/1, not both, not neither, only one). So, really my ill-considered critique falls at the first hurdle; after all your thesis, right from the get go, makes it clear that it eschews this splittist dualistic mindset, preferring instead to unify/harmonize. A contradiction, ergo, is a feature, not a bug of your EnFormAction - BothAnd! G'day señor and good luck!
Spasibo!
Contradiction is indeed a "feature" of EnFormAction (Energy), and of Information-in-general. The conflict derives from the wide range of Possibilities in Nature, as contrasted with the narrow range of legitimate Probabilities (Statistics). Although almost anything (within constraints, as noted below) is possible in the Virtual state, only one Physical (or actual) form can exist in the Real (actual) state. That's why Evolution & History bounce back & forth between positive (Good) & negative (Bad) values, as in Hegelian Dialectic. Fortunately for us observers, the opposing forces tend to offset, and typically result in moderate outcomes, somewhere between the extremes.
The "Range" of values in statistics begins at Zero on the low end, and goes up to 100% probability at the high end. So, Energy is like a Virtual Particle in superposition : in the Potential (virtual) state, it has a full range of Possibilities, but only takes on a specific value upon Actualization or Realization. For example, the phrase "I just realized" can be interpreted as Potential (unformed) Information in the Mind, that is suddenly converted into enformed Knowledge, as a specific concept condensed from general possibilities.
These notes are off the top of my head. So, I thank you for pushing me to expand my own understanding of Universal Information : Matter, Energy, & Mind. :smile:
Statistics :
Probability is quantified as a number between 0 and 1, where, loosely speaking, 0 indicates impossibility and 1 indicates certainty.
Dialectic :
A dialectic is when two seemingly conflicting things are true at the same time.
Note 1 -- The outcome of ongoing competition for Truth (Actuality) creates Reality, both Mental and Material.
Note 2 -- Sorry, such philosophical abstractions may be difficult for binary minds to deal with.
PS___The Dialectic path can be envisioned as waveforms progressing & interfering as seen in the Double Slit experiment of Quantum Theory.
REALITY ALTERNATES BETWEEN LIGHT & DARK, BUT AVERAGES GRAY
Did you know that the Buddhist middle path (madhyamaka deals with opposing pairs of ideas in the following manner.
Is there a soul?
Eternalism: Yes
Nihilism: No
Buddhism: Not yes but not no either (denying both extremes).
I guess that ultimately boils down to Yes & No (BothAnd, affirming both extremes because negation in classical logic flips the sign of propositions) but do notice here that the madhyamaka is more about denial (neither yes nor no) than affirmation (BothAnd).
Comments.
Yes/No. Some philosophers & scientists from both East & West, both ancient & modern, have described the progression of the World System (evolution) in terms of opposing forces (e.g. Yin/Yang) that offset each other, and result in the moderation that allows Life & Mind & human culture to emerge in the habitable zone between extremes. By contrast, "classical (Binary) logic" focused on the margins instead of the middle.
That unambiguous (certain) feature was taken to an extreme in the development of Digital Logic (1/0 ; all or nothing) for computers. Unfortunately, by omitting the middle range, such logic also leaves human meaning behind. Ironically, those empty shells have lots of room in the middle for programmers to insert their own meanings & values. It works like Algebra, in that A + B = C are merely general stand-in-symbols for specified values to be inserted by the calculator for specific conditions.
Paradoxically, binary computer logic has shown us the value of non-binary logic for replicating how the analog human brain works. By that I mean, Fuzzy Logic has been found useful in real-world situations, for which absolute Numerical values are hard to obtain. Instead, it provides imprecise, but meaningful, Truth values. That's why the BothAnd Philosophy and the Enformationism Worldview are based on a fuzzy quantum foundation. As in Quantum Bayseianism (QBism), there are no god-like absolute objective states, only relative human values, and "degrees of belief".
I'm currently reading Beyond Weird, by Phillip Ball, which is an attempt to reconcile the Fuzzy Logic of Quantum Theory with the precise values of Classical Binary Logic. He says, "quantum mechanics might seem 'weird', but it is not illogical. It's just that it employs a new and unfamiliar logic. If you can grasp it --- if you can accept that this is just how quantum mechanics works --- then the quantum world may stop seeming weird and become just another place, with different customs and traditions and with its own beautiful internal consistency". He doesn't call that "new logic" by name, but it's simply Fuzzy Logic. Which seems to be the way human Intuition works, to form beliefs and models of external reality.
Perhaps, the Madhyamaka "nihilism" or "emptiness" doctrine was actually a non-classical, non-binary approach to the non-digital (analog) view of reality that we experience in Intuition and Meditation. :smile:
Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false ___Wiki
Note -- Robotics researchers are attempting to make their bots more human, by using Fuzzy Logic, instead of Digital Logic.
Quantum Bayesianism :
In physics and the philosophy of physics, quantum Bayesianism is a collection of related approaches to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, of which the most prominent is QBism (pronounced "cubism"). QBism is an interpretation that takes an agent's actions and experiences as the central concerns of the theory. QBism deals with common questions in the interpretation of quantum theory about the nature of wavefunction superposition, quantum measurement, and entanglement.[1][2] According to QBism, many, but not all, aspects of the quantum formalism are subjective in nature. For example, in this interpretation, a quantum state is not an element of reality—instead it represents the degrees of belief an agent has about the possible outcomes of measurements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bayesianism
A few points:
1. I haven't the foggiest why classical logic with its principle of bivalence (PB: true/false, nothing else) and the law of noncontradiction [LNC: [~(p & ~pl)] became the standard in Greek and then in Western philosophy.
Even to someone who's never been exposed to formal logic, contradictions feel very counterintuitive and are rejected outright (cognitive dissonance & double think are rather unpleasant states to be in). In other words, the LNC seems hardwired into our brains.
The PB, however, wasn't like that. Aristotle himself, if memory serves, was of the opinion that statements about the future were neither true nor false i.e. a third truth-value was in the process of being proposed viz. unknown (trivalent logic).
Does the above matter to your EnFormAction thesis? My hunch is it does and you're in the know about that. If one violates the LNC, a 3[sup]rd[/sup] truth value (the excluded middle is this 3[sup]rd[/sup] value; vide the law of the excluded middle, LEM) must exist. It gets complicated after this and I have very little experience with fuzzy logic or multivalent logic; I'll leave it at that before I begin spewing nonsense. :snicker:
2. All these different kinds of logic that have been put forth gives me the impression that philosophy & logic, all thinking in fact is, well, play/game. We can, it seems, tinker around with the rules, but not in any which we way we please; we have to ensure the system of logic we invent/develop doesn't reduce to a triviality which has been defined as a schema in which all statements are true (Greek philosophers seem to consider the sophists their nemesis, re relativism).
That's how my brain makes sense of this issue.
Comments...
Sure you do. You said it yourself : the gray middle range of anything & any topic is "foggy", hence unclear. So, ancient philosophers, and enlightenment scientists, developed a binary standard for judgements of Truth and Facts. By setting the standard at the extremes, rather than in the murky middle, they achieved Clarity. But in practice, we tend to judge on the basis of tendencies & inclinations. Even if Hitler was good to dogs & children, we can say that his attitude toward Humanity leaned in the direction of Evil. Fortunately, most of us tend to fall into the mid-range of Ethics, so we are a bit Bad and a bit Good. Hence, BothAnd.
Therefore, the Law or Principle of Non-Contraction is a guide to parsing the nebulous complexities of reality. If we detect a significant inclination toward one extreme (True) or the other (False), usually we can safely treat the issue as either True or False, Good or Bad. But, since our judgement of such things is usually biased by experience, we need to be careful not to push the observed propensity toward a prejudged extreme. For example, American politics, on the Federal level, has always been polarized into Left vs Right, or Liberal vs Conservative. But for philosophical purposes, I would label myself as BothAnd : somewhat Liberal and somewhat Conservative. That's not a logical Contradiction, but a pragmatic concession to non-ideal Reality, which varies between those extremes, but generally follows a wavering path down the middle : BothAnd. :smile:
If a tree falls in the woods and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
The answer to this question is...
Yes it does because logic would have it so, but this sound, to the party that is not around, is just information(et. Of a sound).
The Sky is blue. Data. The Sky is blue- to a newborn- is data becoming knowledge. The Sky is blue- to a persona wise of this- is knowledge. Information is the mode(mathematics) of contexts of data.
Data that is knowledge, must share itself, thus information has mode(in a linguistic and not mathematical sense).
The Sky is blue- in the contexts of a newborn, a wise persona, and empirically- is information(only given all contexts).
Data- in all contexts- is information.
Data-All.