1. I cannot speak of information as something that is interpreted because that makes us speak of it as a substance. But there is interpretation as the act of an interpreter who exerts a series of effects on a system of signs. For example a person who exerts his language and his context of interpretation on a book, what another person says, etc.

2. Can You give me more context to that question?

3. Since I conceive information as a relation always in act and not as a substance, I cannot say that information resides as an addition to anything. What appears is a system of signs that must be interpreted; and these have the quality of informing, in the sense of con-forming and trans-forming an interpreter.

The interesting question now becomes, if Joe and Jane are both "in-formed" in the same way, or with the same result, what fact about the interpreted (document, e.g.) allows this to be so? — J

In this case it is not so much the properties of the document if is the same for both, as the conditions imposed by the interpreters. Both have the same language for example, and the same context of interpretation.

Information is everywhere you care to look and which information is relevant is dependent upon the goal in the mind of the informed. — Harry Hindu

I would not reduce the interpreter to a mind for all cases. A computer can in-form itself by acting as an interpreter as soon as there is a process leading to a transcription effect. That is to say, as soon as the sign system "USB memory" enters into a causal relationship with the computer and its language.

Give me the information!" i.e., Hand over that document! vs. "What information does that document contain?" — J

In both cases the information is presupposed on the side of the interpreted. A correct expression according to my theory would be, "In-form me!" In the sense of causing something in the interpreter. To in-form him is to give form to the language of the one who says "In-form me!". In no case is something transmitted (like a ghost in sound, in ink, or in electric flow). In this case we are only talking about causes and effects, about how signs affect us and create things on the side of the interpreters.

This is quite counter-intuitive. But imagine it is but it is true theory. This prevents us from substantivizing information and treating it as an entity that passes from one side to the other. Which has many consequences for information theory like the ilusion of transmission.

I have no idea of what This possible means.

The information does exist in the USB stick, in the form of variations in electrical charge in different regions of a flash memory chip. This is why the device works as a memory. — wonderer1

Imagine that you use that USB flash drive to access a Paper you have composed. Now think about the memory itself, do you really see the Paper (the supposed information) inside the USB stick? No. You see exactly what you said, variations in electrical charge. But you don't see the Paper. The Paper is created at the moment of contact and transcription with the interpretant. But before, it did not exist.

Can you give it a name? — Wayfarer

The principle of reason.

Overall, I think that receptivity or hostility to the principle of sufficient reason might be closely tied to theist or non-theist views of the Universe. — Wayfarer

There is a text by Heidegger in which he speaks of the principle of reason and criticizes it in a certain sense. In the text he speaks of something more fundamental of the being of things than their casual reason. There appear phenomenological notions about light in which something is given and appears. Something more proper to the thing (its being) that is differentiated from the reference to something else (a cause or a reason). That is to say the criticism is made that when we speak of reason or cause we speak of something else other than what we should speak of. I recommend reading it. Especially because it is indirectly a critique of the notion of causality and the ontotheology of a causal God.

If we accept the scissors argument, we accept the idea of a universe that is out of the hands of a supposed creator and designer. In other words, God has not foreseen the evolution of the universe. And if this is so then why maintain the idea of a Great Designer? It is like saying that the designer is not such a designer and God who foresees everything does not foresee too much. Do you understand my point?

But as far as that being an analogy or argument for a 'divine creator', that was not the point. — Wayfarer

I claim that it is an argument against intelligent design. We can talk about the creator of the scissors or the creator of the universe. In both cases the becoming outweighs the intention or purpose. And the example of the scissors is important because it refers to the only case where purpose and intention seem to be present and can function as evidence for understanding intelligent design. That is, human action. And I say "seems" because in reality intention and purpose are not really able to saturate the being and existence of things created by man. Or created by God, as its first analogy. We can speak of scissors as of laws of nature, there is no distinction.

So you are not talking about scissors determined by the external agent, the great creator of scissors. You are talking about self-organizing systems. Is the universe a self-organizing system? But that excludes God, as the external cause of the organized being of the universe. So what is your point?

intrinsic reason — Wayfarer

Well, that's a concept. But I'm afraid experience contradicts it. We can give many uses to a scissors, why discriminate between one and another more than by an anthropomorphism?

Anyway I claim that scissors are more than scissors. And this "more" has to be explained, but it cannot be explained by the purpose.

Ok lets talk about scissors.

What I'm saying is actually quite simple. Think of other uses we can put those scissors to - which indeed it has. Those different uses are part of its existence and being. So linking a specific intention to its being is arbitrary. In this case, existence surpasses intention. It does not matter if when you created the scissors you were thinking of a purpose, what matters is also the becoming of the scissors that you were not thinking of, that is, not a purpose. In this sense the existence and being of the scissors surpasses the final cause that supposedly gave rise to it.

If you give an alien a pair of scissors, he might not know what to do with them. Or it could be that it would give them an extraordinary and different use than the great creator of the scissors. That is something that cannot be denied. The being and existence of the scissors surpasses purposes and final causes. So, literally, when we create scissors, we do not know what we create and the supposed main reason for the great creation of the scissors does not saturate the becoming of the scissors.

In reality what happens is that we introduce intentions into the events. But what we introduce (an intention) is never proven, not even a posteriori. When a technological apparatus works, it does so to the extent that we have expectations, but the technological apparatus can always fail. The question is: Where is the intention and the final cause in the technological apparatus that works differently from our expectations? If everything has a reason it should also have a reason for failure too, and we would have to say that we also intended it to fail. This implies that you can introduce any final cause to objects or events as you see fit. Which makes the final cause arbitrary. Actually Ontologically there is a gap between the supposed final cause (our intention) and the caused object. No object or events possess a final cause that passes mysteriously from cause to effect.

And yet we can build a whole body of knowledge, neurology, from the conscious study of what we call the brain. This implies, by right, an epistemological primacy of consciousness over neurology. From neurology we cannot know the consciousness, but from the consciousness we can know the brain.

Thus it is difficult to think of consciousness as simply something enclosed in an interiority (the brain). Consciousness seems to be thrown into the world and in a more direct connection with the world than the physical sciences themselves. For me this is the reason why the question of the external world seems implicated in consciousness, and even a dualism between consciousness and the world is problematic.

But the properties of particles are, in conjunction with other factors, the reason groups off particles have the states they do under various conditions.

Where am I leaping — Patterner

In your example of iron, a path of decomposition, reduction and reconstruction is still possible. In these paths you find the parts that constitute the whole and with which you can reconstruct it. That does not happen with experience. You can have a whole neural complex and establish relationships between each neuron up to a very complex level, and yet you do not know whether you have constructed the experience. You can't even decompose an experience into neural processes. So the idea of composition and decomposition is not useful for understanding this matter of experience and physical matter.

For me it is simply necessary to accept that irreducibility is a fact. The contents of consciousness are not reducible to the contents of physics, but just as the contents of sociology are irreducible to psychology. I think that we have the faculty that many things we perceive are given to us in irreducible ways. But in such a way that the genesis of these things is a closed path for us, but not absolutely closed, since there are connections such as the associations of the brain to thought (but associations), or of the brain to society.

Given the irreducibility, the image that we must have cannot be hierarchical between the different dimensions of reality. But more horizontal, in such a way that it does not necessarily imply the construction thinking from the smallest to the largest. There are times when we can make reductions of the type: we know the building bricks and their relationships and with this we can reconstruct the whole; but there are times when we can go to the building bricks but we cannot reconstruct the whole. The need for a conception of the dimensions of reality cannot be in the form of a pyramid, but in another form, like a rhizome a la Deleuze.

When you speak of principle it reminds me a little of Hegel for whom the spirit is an active principle or process of reality as opposed to the concept of substance as something immobile and static, codified and subsistent by itself.

The movement with respect to the scholastic philosophic is precisely the introduction of notions such as event, process, active principle, etc. From the static to the dynamic, from the cosified to the processual.

But I don't think it changes much about the hard problem of consciousness either. Because we want to be physicalists about something that seems to escape this kind of descriptions. The question is: if it is no longer dualism of subtances what is the ontology that best suits this difference between the mental and the physical?

The question is whether the banana event repeats itself we always have a causal explanation. Hume would say yes. Another thing is to try to know the details in order to have a more detailed explanation that explains the banana event.

The question is in the details.

We must also keep in mind that we already have prior knowledge that explains to us in turn why an event like the banana is not possible or not explainable.

Magic is defined by the inexplicable. So yes there can be magic if an event is not explainable in any possible way. Or maybe there is just unknowing, but we can never rule out magic a priori.

Is our belief that every event is explainable absolutely true? Or is just an induction never proven false?

I am not arguing that coherence is given from the mind. The mind just perceives coherence in the experience. — MoK

Then you are contradicting yourself. Since before you had said that the brain, the subject, the experience made of what the senses give us something coherent. And you did so by denying that you were talking about a tabula rasa.

Don't bother. You really believe that thoughts, feelings, intentions and purposes travel through the air when two people talk to each other. Imagine a tape recording where something you say is recorded. You have the tape and you literally believe that there are thoughts, emotions and so on on the tape. That is a type of mentalism and magical thinking that I do not share and is patently false.

By one agent interpreting the ink and sounds' forms in addition to discerning whence they originated and thereby understanding the intentions of the agent(s) from which these inks and sounds were resultant. — javra

If you look closely at what you have said, in no case is there a transmission of something. You speak of indirect relations as that of an agent presupposing what another agent means. But as it happens you are simply inferring from the ink and sound, but you never get inside the mind of the other agent, so to speak. Since there is no such thing as passing from one head to another, you have to infer from the ink and sound (and also from its context), which implies an active role for both. Here inferring is nothing other than creating meaning for itself which we indirectly link to another agent. But there is nothing that is transmitted.

From my point of view even the notion of transmission is problematic. Intentions and thoughts do not travel through the air. The only thing we have at hand as listeners and readers is ink and sound. So how can anything be transmitted? The thing is that nothing is transmitted. When we open our mouths to emit sounds to a listener what we do is cause meaning effects in that listener, causing the listener to invent meaning for himself. But nothing is transmitted. That meaning that is invented by the listener may be in communion with our meaning, but then it is a case of coincidence in meanings. In this sense sound and ink have an active role in the creation of meaning, because they are direct causes.

I have no problem with an intention being the cause of the characteristics of something written in ink. But it is one thing to be the cause and another to be the ghost in the ink or in the sound. Since the sound comes out of our mouth the intention is left behind.

If there is ghost in the ink it means that the intention and the purpose are transmitted without any imperfection or defect. So the listener or reader receives the intention, purpose and meaning completely, accurately and absolutely clear without any distortion.

There is a 'ghost in the ink' — Darkneos

End of discussion. :meh:

Wouldn't this "ghost in the ink" then be the intentioning of the agent which produced the ink forms on the paper? — javra

Yes, it would. But that is precisely what does not hold. If intentions and purposes were somehow in the ink (for me that is pure fantasy) there would be no possibility of misunderstanding. In this case we are talking about the materiality of the signs, the sounds uttered, the ink, etc.... From a materialistic point of view, mine, there is no possibility that intentions travel through the air or are inside the ink. That is mentalism.

But misunderstandings are a fact of life. Which implies that if we accept the materialist thesis that denies that kind of mentalism we must assume that the medium, the sound, the ink, etc, has some independence with respect to purpose and intentionality, and an active role in the creation of meaning for a receiver (the hearer, the reader, etc).

In fact the purpose is absent in the note. I repeat, this is because if it were not absent we would be talking about something similar to the ghost in the machine, in this case the ghost in the ink.

Uttering words is very similar to leaving a note. Both can lead to misunderstandings. Why is that? Precisely because there is an active part of the "medium", without this active part there would never be a possible misunderstanding. Medium transparency is an illusion you have invented. The possibility of misunderstanding proves otherwise. But in fact there are misunderstandings, ergo I am right. There is an independence of the medium that is active.

Again it's the medium. — Darkneos

The purpose here is absent because the absent of the autor and is partly a cause for misunderstanding. Because the interpretative power of a note by itself can be extremely variable. That is, you can interpret many things from the note. A person can say something to another person and still be misunderstood. Uttering words is like leaving a note on the refrigerator. There is some independence of the "medium" from the message. But this independence is active as I have shown.

The medium in a certain sense can betray the message and the author's intention. But the note as the words we utter imposes its conditions, there is no absolutely transparent medium, which means that there is an active role of the medium beyond the purpose and intention of the agent.

It's not and the mental contents are in the note that is why they wrote it, that's also how poetry works among other writing. The note is not alone or exerting anything, again just imagination. — Darkneos

Or because we just use the same language and understand each other. — Darkneos

You are doing nothing other than categorically denying what I state. But without argument.

That language we share is actively exposed in the note, but not by another person, because this one is absent. But as I said the note acts in the absence of its author, it acts in us who read and understand it. In part the note actively is its ordo cognoscendi, by its syntax, by the place in which it is found (a refrigerator), by its style, etc.

The purpose here is absent because the absent of the autor and is partly a cause for misunderstanding. Because the interpretative power of a note by itself can be extremely variable. That is, you can interpret many things from the note. A person can say something to another person and still be misunderstood. Uttering words is like leaving a note on the refrigerator. There is some independence of the "medium" from the message. But this independence is active as I have shown.

Then it is like when we say that from a given neuronal synapse we cannot deduce a thought.

If so, then there is no reduction and we must say that the sentence is "something more" than a thermodynamic value.

Not really no. The note is just the medium, it's someone else interacting with us. — Darkneos

That is in fact false. Because the mental contents are not in the note as a ghost in the letters. The note is alone and it is exerting a constraint on our language. That's why when you are asked why you interpret the way you interpret what the note says you actually have to show the note and say "the note says so". I maintain that it is because there is an active role of the note in the refrigerator. It is partly the reason why we understand what we understand. Partly because the subject also has an active role and both roles interact with each other.

That's just not factually correct. The formatted disk containing data has a lower entropy than a disk containing no information. And this is so regardless of the data having been interpreted. — Banno

But can you deduce a specific sentence from a given entropy value?

I don't think the note has an active role in anything, it's just a note. We know what it means because we know what the words mean. It's that simple. There is no selecting a use, it's just to communicate. — Darkneos

You are ignoring that the use we think we can make of the note is delimited by the note itself. It is like a command that interacts with us. And above all it is the reason why we understand a specific use and not any other. This is an active role that transcends the subjectivity of the subject and its intentionality. That is why the notion of use falls short, because the use is anchored to a subject, or to a way of life. Today with artificial intelligence we see more clearly how non-subjective sign systems interact with us.

If we see a note on a refrigerator according to our use of words we can understand what it says. However it should be noted that the note has an active role in us shaping our language and selecting the use we are going to give it. But here "giving a use" is misleading, since it seems that the subject is the one who has the only active role. However, we cannot explain our choice of word use other than from the note on the refrigerator. That is, the note has an active role in shaping the use. The role of the note is so active that in my opinion the idea of use is very restrictive to the subject. That is why I prefer to speak of transcription and of active non-subjective sign systems that interact with us.

I didn't say that the experience cannot be coherent. I said that it does not have the capacity to be coherent. I think I should have said that the experience does not have the capacity to be coherent on its own (I changed the OP accordingly). That follows from the definition of experience as a conscious event that is informative and coherent. An event is something that happens or takes place so its coherence cannot be due to itself but something else namely the object. — MoK

You say that experience is coherent because the object is coherent, but at the same time you accept that coherence is given from the subject. Which implies redundancy. Object coherence is no longer a criterion for inferring dualism of subtances, since that criterion is found in both subject and object don't You think?

Even if it's ontologically true that every psychological being is composed of quantum objects. — flannel jesus

But that is really the question. How can you talk about constituents without that being more than a naive intuition that cannot be carried out in scientific or philosophical practice, and above all that you cannot prove.

Well, then it does not explain this specific set of abstract principles. But don't you think that a fundamental and general ontology should explain them?

I doubt it. You have said: "you'll never be able to understand the abstract principles and general patterns of human psychology by speaking in terms of quantum fields, basically".

I didn't say you said that. Rather, I inferred it

The fundamental (foundationalism) is precisely what should be criticized if it is not an explanatory ontology. It would be better to maintain a pluralistic ontology from my point of view.