That's what I meant. Teleological language is useful to paraphrase stuff like that. — fdrake

Language isn't teleological. It's that most of human minds are, and they project that onto reality in how they use a language. There are others that try to avoid that, and in so doing, recognize the faults of the language and attempt to create new terms to use that doesn't lead to one simply paraphrasing, but actually getting at what it is that we are talking about independent of any subjective projections.

I’m telling you what I find to be a justified belief. I’m not pretending to have transcendent access to absolute truth. — apokrisis

Is it not also a justified belief that there is an "I" telling "me" what the "I" is finding to be a justified belief, or is that really happening? Is there really an instance of you telling me what you find to be a justified belief? If there is, then you do have direct access to reality as it is - that there is actually a state-of-affairs where Apo is telling Harry Hindu what he finds to be a justified belief AND that Apo is not pretending to have transcendent access to absolute truth.

What you're basically saying is that the reality is that you know you don't know - which I already pointed out is a contradiction. To say that you don't know is itself an objective statement about reality - as if you had direct access to some part of it and it's state-of-affairs - that you don't know everything.

You're arguments are so full of contradictions it's absurd that you don't see it.

Anyway, you are still successfully dodging the question of how an apple can still look red to us even when the light it reflects is not in the normal red frequency range. It can’t be then a simple cause and effect relationship in terms of the actual light entering our eye and the way we construe the hue of what we see. What we imagine we should see, given our model of the lighting conditions, takes over.

The point here is that the indirect perceptual route is more accurate in that it sees the apple as it would be understood in ideal lighting conditions. It is the interpretation that can make allowances because the modelling isn’t simply driven in causal fashion by physical inputs. — apokrisis

Hypocrisy. You, the dodger of questions, accuse me of dodging questions? I haven't avoided answering anything. It is you that is doing that. You are either confused or just a blatant hypocrite.

I've asked you several times to describe how it is that you arrived at your notions of pragmatism and semiotics. There had to be a transfer of information by causal processes somewhere.

And this talk of some "model" not being driven by "causal fashion" is preposterous. How can you say that it is a model when it doesn't include information about what caused the model? How can you say that anything that is a model doesn't include information about some cause along the line that preceded it. If it doesn't, then it cant be said to be a model of that thing.

Yes. And why not?

Of course they are also models at completely different levels of semiosis. Colour experience is biological-level perceptual modelling of “the world”. Talk about electromagnetic radiation and wavelength is socially constructed knowledge of the world.

One model can only change over eons of evolutionary time. The other we could reinvent tomorrow. — apokrisis

Again, if it is models all the way down, AND we only have access to models, then we have direct access to reality, and it would then be wrong to call it models. We'd simply have direct access to reality.

As you pointed out, stuff like air-resistance and aerodynamics enables things to fly; but doesn't make an incentive for things to fly. — fdrake

I don't see incentive as part of the equation. Things behave in certain ways as a result of how they were designed. There was no incentive prior to, or the cause of, flight. Flight occurred as a result of natural selection acting on genetic mutations over eons. By saying there is an incentive is projecting your own purposes onto reality, as if reality has reasons, or incentives, to design things. It doesn't. "Design" isn't even an appropriate term to use to describe what natural selection does, as there is no incentive, purpose, reason, or goal that natural selection has prior to the process itself taking place.

I didn't intend to imply that the interaction of charges could exist independent of particles (requires charged particles and carrier particles). Just that it's something particles do, not something that they are. This was meant to highlight that the ontological reduction of stuff to particles doesn't even help much in describing what particles do (other than as an enabling condition for the study of particle behaviour); as an analogy to the reduction of biology as a field of study to physics as a field of study. — fdrake

Then if it wasnt implied that negativity was a separate feature of a particle, then it must be that it is an integral feature of that particle. Repelling other particles is what that particle does as a result of its negativity. If it didn't repel other particles then we couldn't say that possessed negativity.

Everything that something does is limited by and determined by its shape and the laws of physics. Incentives are still limited by the laws of physics.

I don't see how any of that disagrees with what I said. A physical trait or behavior is a different outcome than redundancy. Redundancy has its components that if you take away one, then redundancy can longer be the outcome.

That a biological system does not contradict any physical laws is one of the least interesting features of a biological system: the interesting ones concern its biology. — fdrake

I don't understand the distinction. It is all interesting to me, or at least the part I want to know about at any given moment. I could get all the biological explanations I wanted to, but it would all be without any foundation without physics. Even after answering every "biological" question, you'd still be left with asking, "What governs biology?"

It seems to me that two different domains of investigation that ask different questions and end up NOT contradicting each other is what is really interesting.

A reduction of biology to physics methodologically is pointless, philosophically a reduction of the living to the non-living is interesting though. Perhaps it's useful to say that the living is composed by the non-living in some manner, however. — fdrake

Again, I don't see the distinction you are making. If a reduction of biology to physics is pointless, then so to is reducing the living to the non-living. Our bodies and natural selection must obey the laws of physics. If it didn't then we could all fly without the proper anatomy.

'it's all made of particles!'
'is the tendency of negatively charged particles to repulse negatively charged particles made of particles?'
'no, it's something the particles do' — fdrake

Which is to say that the particle has a particular feature or property (it's negativity) that makes it do what it does. You seem to be implying that negativity could exist independent of particles. If it could, then why did you use the term, "particle" at all?

The idea is that there are multiple 'ropes' which underlie the expression of any one trait, and cutting one, or even rearranging the organization of the ropes, may or may not affect the final outcome. Only by understanding the network and the interactions among it, may we understand how gene expression takes place — StreetlightX

If you cut one, or rearrange the organization of a set, and it doesn't affect the outcome (the expression of that trait), then it would be safe to say that that particular gene that was removed, or that particular arrangement of sets of genes that was rearranged, doesn't affect the expression of that trait. That is to say that there isn't a causal connection between that gene or arrangement of genes and that particular trait.

Biology is beholden to the laws of physics. You can't have the findings of two different fields contradict each other. Biology is just a sub-discipline of physics. Humans tend to put things into little boxes, including fields of science, which is ultimately an explanation of the world as a whole.

So how does colour constancy fit in here? You haven’t explained.

And this talk of apples is just misdirection. A laser beam could be tuned to the same hue as the apple as seen under white light. So trying to treat colour as some material property of an apple is nonsense when we can see red just from the pure shining of a light. — apokrisis

Then talk of light and laser beams are just misdirection. I thought we were talking about waves, not apples, lasers or light. Again, do waves really exist, or are waves simply some pragmatic model that we use, and only exist in our minds? If you say that they are simply another model, then you are using models to explain models, which then makes the term, "model" meaningless.

If you say that it is indirect, or models, all the way down, while at the same time saying, "all we are able to get at is the model", or "all we can do is get at it indirectly", then you are saying that we are actually getting at the truth, as everything is indirect, or just models, then us having models is us having the truth! Your whole argument defeats itself AND relegates the terms, "model" and "indirect" into meaninglessness!

I didn't say color was a material property of an apple. I said it's ripeness and rottenness are. Colors are a material property of the mind. Colors are merely the effect of the state of the apple interacting with light and your visual processing system. If saying that the apple is red is the same as saying it is ripe and what kind of apple it is, then what am I missing? What is the point in saying the apple is red if it isn't to refer to some material property or some state of the apple? When you say the apple is red, are you talking about the apple in your head, or the apple on the table, and what would be your intent in informing me that the apple is red, if not to inform me of the kind of apple it is and what state of ripeness it is in?

But not your direct cause and effect. Instead my indirect causation which is the modelling relation. — apokrisis

An effect is a model of prior causes, as it carries information about the cause. Does your model carry information? If not, then how can you even call it a model? If it is, then what is it that you are informed of when the model appears, or takes shape?

But my argument is indeed that we don’t get at what reality really is. The modelling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality.

You then want to claim there is a problem in that because now I’m making a claim about how things “really are”. — apokrisis

Well, you are. You just did it again by stating, "The modeling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality." Is this statement an accurate statement, or is it what is pragmatic and useful? Is it really how reality, or some part of it, is? If not, then you aren't saying anything informative. I just find it amazing that you keep making these kinds of statements without understanding what it is that you are doing. Every time you make your case for how you think things are, you are attempting to get at and inform me of how things really are.

Well, partly we can know what is real about our own epistemic strategies. Science is about accepting the pragmatism of the modelling relation. But then also it is only you who is concerned about some absolute veridical knowledge of reality in the first place. The high bar you set doesn’t apply to me if my claim to know that this is how the mind works is itself just another testable pragmatic hypothesis. — apokrisis

It applies every time you make those kinds of statements, like, "The high bar you set doesn’t apply to me if my claim to know that this is how the mind works is itself just another testable pragmatic hypothesis." It seems to me that you are concerned about some absolute veridical knowledge every time you state how things are, as in the previous statement and in "The modeling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality." Science is about seeking what is accurate, not pragmatic. We get what is pragmatic by it being accurate. It simply wouldn't be pragmatic or useful if there wasn't some semblance of accuracy to it.

As I understand him, he's comparing the scientific-mathematical aspect of the wave to its sensual aspect. True, what is implied is that the same wave is involved. So the wave itself (as the unity of its aspects) is red. But its mathematical description is not red.

The object-in-itself (perhaps a red apple) is theoretically complicated/questionable but practically almost common sense. It makes sense that our experience of the object is mediated by human nature. Our eye catches reflected photons, etc.

Is the direct realism versus indirect realism debate about anything more than a differing preference for how the same process is described? — t0m

I think the mistake Apo made was making the distinction that a wave is not red. Apples are red or not red. Anyone who knows what they are talking about should know that waves are not red. Apples are.

The apple is what is red and it is red because it is ripe. It is black because it is rotten. Sure, knowing that the apple is ripe vs rotten is useful to human goals, but would the apple still be ripe or rotten if eyes, and the brains with goals that the eyes are attached to, never evolved? Of course it would. It just wouldn't be red or black.

My point is that we are getting at what reality is like (the apple being either ripe or rotten) independent of our goals. It is our goals that simply determine which information is currently relevant, not whether the information is actually accurate or not. Isn't survival the greatest catalyst for seeking knowledge - for being informed about how the world really works and how your body works and how it is all related? To be better informed about the world (how it works, it's current state, etc.) is to be better able to survive in it.

Precisely. Direct needs to said in scare quotes. Indirect is admitting that it is only “as if”. — apokrisis

No. I didn't use the word, "indirect" in my post. If I did, then that word would be in quotes as well because I put "direct" in quotes to refer to it's arbitrariness. "Indirect" is even more arbitrary as it refers to your little boxes that you've put everything in, as if everything isn't interconnected.

The point is, how is it "indirect" or "direct" when you end up getting at what reality is really like? What is the point in using these terms, "indirect" and "direct", when you end up getting at what reality is really like? They become meaningless, just like "physical" vs. "mental" and "inside" vs. "outside", when explaining how we know (are informed of) things.

If you can admit that you are getting at reality as it really is (and it seems that you've admitting that much) in order to make all these objective statements about reality, as if you had a direct line to how it really is, then what is the point in making a distinction between "direct" and "indirect", when you are getting directly at how reality really is in order to make any statement about how reality really is? Or are you saying that your statements aren't how reality really is? If the latter is the case, then what is the point in reading anything you say, as you what you say wouldn't be meaningful or informative.

To say that I got at it indirectly vs. directly is to say that you got to it in a certain amount of causal steps, your arbitrary boxes and categories that you've placed everything in to separate causes from their effects, as if everything is separate and not interconnected.

To even say that it is "indirect" is to admit causation, no? It is admitting that information flows by causal relationships - that you know (you have information about) what reality is really like by looking at an effect and following the "steps" back in time to the cause. I'm trying to get you to admit that you acquired the knowledge you have causally, but you refuse to answer the question. Instead you've resorted to cherry-picking and (purposely?) misinterpret my use of quotes. Your posts are losing their substance.

We've been through this before. How can you claim direct cause and effect if we still see red when the wavelength is not "red"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy — apokrisis

You're right. We have been through this before, thanks to you not reading and not paying attention to my posts and avoiding the difficult questions.

You are asking an impossible question. You are attempting to compare what a wavelength looks like (being red), to what it looks like independent of looking at it. I've already been over this with you. How do you know what a wavelength looks like (is not red) independent of looking at it? How do you know anything about the wavelength at all and that it actually exists, or that there is a relationship between red and wavelengths? How did you get to know any of that, along with semiotics and pragmatism for that matter?

Is not the statement, " ...we still see red when the wavelength is not "red" ", a statement about reality independent of looking at it - as if you had a "direct" view of reality itself? If you say "no", then you end up discrediting the statement itself. If you say "yes", then you have finally seen the light and would be agreeing with me.

How do you know that the wavelength is not red if you don't have some "direct" knowledge that that is the case?

I can't help it if you don't get the difference between direct and indirect. — apokrisis

I can't help it if you don't get my point in questioning the distinction when it comes to causation and information flow.

The cause is NOT the effect. That is an inherent aspect of causation. So, how do you expect to have a "direct" view when what you are is the effect, not the cause? How else could you have a "direct view" other than "being" the thing itself? Views are always third person, and our language is third person whenever we talk about how reality is.

This is how information is carried. The effect carries information about the cause. The mind is about the world and our perceived place in it.

I keep asking you how you came to know semiotics and pragmatism. How did that information get from "out here" to "in there"? Did it take time? Was causation involved?

I only have to find that my states of belief are reliable in minimising the surprises I encounter in the world. — apokrisis

All this is is more naive realism, Apo (you refering to some real thing that is happening with scribbles on a screen, as if you have a clear, unimpeded view of what is really happening in reality). Its what everyone in this thread is doing, everytime they post anything.

Go back and read what I said again in the previous two posts to you, one of which you ignored, but they are both making the same point.

I mean, you just did it again - making an objective statement about reality - that Wayfarer had just said something and you were referring to something specifically just mentioned. How could you know that Wayfarer had just said anything if you don't have some REAL, ACCURATE, TRUE view of reality? Maybe Wayfarer didn't say anything, or maybe Wayfarer doesn't really exist and you are just projecting your own self-interest onto what you are experiencing. This is the implication of YOUR theory, not mine, so I'm trying to show you how you contradict your own theory every time you make an statement that you believe (and you expect others to believe) as if it were objectively true and is an accurate representation of reality itself.

Every time you make a claim AND expect others to believe you, you are attempting to make an objective claim about reality. You are making a claim that you expect to be true and the basis of your argument for or against something. Every time any philosopher makes a claim about some state of affairs, they are making an objective, naive realist, claim about reality - as if they have some clear perception of how reality actually is, or what is actually going on independent of any self-interest.

You still haven't addressed the question of how you came to know about pragmatism and semiotics. How do you know anything about that? How did you acquire information about these theories? Are they your own? Did you get it from somewhere else? Did someone else's ideas influence your own? How did it happen? And when you explain how it happened, are you saying that is really how it happened independent of yours and anyone else's subjective inclinations?

So Information theory has been around 70 years and ignorance remains an excuse? Cool. — apokrisis

Has information theory really been around for 70 years? It seems to me that you have some way of determining that information theory has been around for 70 years to make that claim. You'd need a naive realist view of reality to make that claim and expect it to actually carry any weight to make that argument as if it really were the case, or accurate, or true. Is it objectively true that information theory has been around for 70 years?

And I am pointing out the conceptual confusion that kind of talk produces. — apokrisis

Confusion is subjective. What is confusing to one doesn't mean that it is confusing to others. Per your own argument, something being confusing is the result of one's own self-interest being imposed on what they hear or read.

I am spelling out the ontological commitments of a model. So no, I am stating upfront that this is indirect realism, the proposal of a theory that can be falsified. — apokrisis

And if it isn't, then what then? How can it be falsified?

Is it true that you actually spelling out the ontological commitments of a model? Are you actually stating upfront that this is indirect realism? Would you still be doing this if no one was reading your posts?

It seems to me that you haven't stopped using words to refer to real, objective states of affairs in this entire thread. It seems to me that you have been saying this entire time that you have a naive realist view of reality as you can't stop talking about how things really are - like you pointing out the conceptual confusion my kind of talk produces and how you are spelling out the ontological commitments of a model and stating upfront that this is indirect realism.

A materialist would say that the mind is made of the same stuff "out there".

An idealist would say that the world is made of the same stuff "in here".

Then aren't they both saying the same thing?

Left to its own devices, a pile of pebbles won't convey information; it has to be arranged in order to convey information. — Wayfarer

A geologist would vehemently disagree.

My argument was against naive realism and in favour of indirect realism. And indirect realism accepts both the fact that knowledge is grounded in the subjectivity of self-interest, but can then aspire to the objectivity of invariant or self-interest free "truth" by a rational method of theory and test, or abductive reasoning.

So there is available to us a method for minimising the subjectivity of belief. We know how to do that measurably. It's called the scientific method. Pragmatism defines it.

You seem to both accept and reject indirect realism. It sounds as though you want to insist on some naive realism at base in talking about a cause and effect relation between the dynamics of the world and the symbols then generated within the mind.

The thing in itself is actually a pattern of radiation. The experience we have is of seeing red rather than green. Somehow that is veridical and direct as there is a physical chain of events that connects every step of the way.

But even the fact that the world is constituted of patterns of radiation - everything can be explained by the different possible frequencies of a light wave - is simply another level of idea or conception. It is a further level of theory and test.

Naive realism fails. It is indirect realism all the way down. All we can say is that a particular way of looking at the world is proving to be a good habit of interpretation over some larger scale of space and time. — apokrisis

It seems to me that you are also insisting on some naive realism every time you talk about reality being a triad, as if it were ultimately true. Even saying that it's indirect realism all the way down is an objective statement about reality - independent of any observation of it. It also seems to imply that nothing is real, so it seems contradictory.

How did you come to know about pragmatism and semiotics? Where did you hear about it from? Wasn't is someone else's idea (probably a theory that fit that person's self interest) that you picked up and fit your self-interest, so you ran with it? Either semiotics is simply another level of idea or conception, or it is an accurate and objective (true) explanation (representation) of reality itself. Which is it?

What I'm saying is that the contents of a mind are just as real as everything else. Colors are real. Sounds are real. They exist. They are both effects and causes themselves. They are the cause of me saying, "The apple is red.", or eating the apple because I like red apples. But colors are also an effect - the effect of light interacting with a visual sensory system. If they weren't then how can I say anything about the apple's state (like it being ripe or rotten)?

To say that "there is an experience of the color red" would a truthful statement, no?

If I have a self-interest in eating only ripe apples instead of rotten ones, then isn't my self-interest also a real thing?

Meaning or semantics arises by a symmetry breaking of information. The information must be divided into signal and noise. The greater the contrast - the more information that is discarded as noise - the more meaningful the remaining information which is being treated as the signal.

So that is what the information theoretic approach is about. First establishing a baseline understanding of information in itself - as a physical capacity for variety, as some actual ensemble of possibilities. And then we can get to where we want to go - a principle for extracting the meaning of a message (or the physics of the world).

Semantics can be defined in a measurable fashion as the differences that make a difference ... because they are not a matter of general indifference.

That is why Landauer's principle was one of the important advances in turning attention to information discard or erasure. In the real world, eliminating noise is a big energetic cost. — apokrisis

Are you making more objective statements about reality or not? Is what you are saying accurate? Why should I believe you? What makes your statements more accurate than mine? How did you come by all this information? Where did it come from if not from "out there"?

P1: All that is physical abides to the law of conservation of mass and energy. E.g. if I give you a physical thing, I have less of it.
P2: Information does not abide to this law. E.g. if I give you information, I don't have less of it.
C: Therefore information is not physical. — Samuel Lacrampe

How can you give information without expending energy?

Like I said, Coyne was a tiny, itty-bitty fraction of my input in this thread. Why can't we have it out here on the topic you brought up?

Also, why make a thread on a single person?

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Because I think your fundamental premise of 'information being the relationship between cause and effect', and what issues from that, is plainly mistaken, but that this is something I would be unable to persuade you of. Secondly, because, as I said before, it's pointless to debate philosophy against naive or scientific realism. Saying you're a naive or scientific realist, isn't to say you're naive, because you're plainly not, and it's not intended as a pejorative. But I doubt I could say anything to shift that perspective. — Wayfarer

So, what you're saying is that you're lazy? That can't be the case because I've seen you engage others and attempt to persuade those that don't want to be persuaded.

I have been persuaded before and have taken a 180 on my worldview before. If have done it before, then I obviously have an open mind to do it again. I think it's more that you don't have an argument against it.

I am saying the "reality" is the wholeness of the modelling relation. So it is the co-ordination between the two - the modeller and the world. And then the point that the mechanism of the co-ordination is not some naive realist "veridical representation", but in fact a useful "irreality" in terms of experiential sign. — apokrisis

I'm not arguing for naive realism. I'm not saying that we see the world as it really is, or that we could ever see the world as it really is. Seeing is a process of representing the world via the information in visible light. To ask how the world looks independent of looking at it, as if you were trying to compare how it looks to you to how it really looks, is an irrelevant question. The way the world looks is how the local part of it interacts with a visual sensory system.

What I'm saying is that we are informed about the world through the transfer of information by causation.

By reading your post, am I informed of your intent, or am I informed of my own intent? Am I reading your post as you type it? How do you explain it taking time to type your post and for me to read it? You can only explain communication by using causation. I am only informed of your post AFTER you type it and submit it. How do you explain that except by causation?

That is silly. An epistemology that includes the fact that our view of reality is a purpose-soaked model, a semiotic umwelt, is truer than naive idealism or naive realism.

Explaining why and how the goal of "reaching truth" is naive realism is rather the point here. — apokrisis

How can you go about testing your theory when the outcome of any test will have your purpose imposed on it? All you are saying is your theory is the result of YOUR purposes and your interests, which means that it is only useful to you, not anyone else. I don't see how you don't get that. I think you do, which is why you avoided answering this question from my previous post.

That is contradicted by the facts of psychology and neuroscience.

Just one example that always struck me. Compared to chimps, humans have a proportionately larger foveal representation in their primary visual cortex, a proportionately smaller peripheral vision one.

So we have evolved less need to process the edges of our visual field as we are more certain about where we need to focus our attention. A larger brain makes us better at predicting the part of the world which is going to be interesting to us.

Think also of colour vision. Why do birds and bees have more cone pigments than we do? We make do with just three. They get four or five. And it would seem trivial for evolution to generate any number. Why is less also more in hue discrimination? — apokrisis

This can be explained by conservation of energy. Natural selection must make compromises in "designing" sensory systems as the amount of energy available isn't infinite, and it would probably take an infinite amount of energy to be informed of the world in it's completeness. So, we would be limited by the amount of energy, not some self deciding which parts of a sensory system are more useful than another part.

Yeah. Coyne was part of one sentence in my previous post (the rest of which was on-topic) to you and that is the one thing you focused on.

You're not even making an attempt to rebut what I wrote. All you're saying is "I don't like Coyne's point of view". Idealists reduce everything to mind. Materialists reduce everything to the physical. Apo is reducing everything down to a triangular relationship. So, what's your point?

Information is the relationship between cause and effect.

It makes sense to me that causality should be linked to notions of data and/or information origin and/or history. How would you include it in a definition? — Galuchat

I'm not sure what it is you are asking for - a definition of causality, or a definition of information. It seems to me that when you define one, you are defining the other. It seems to me that you would also be defining "meaning".

I don't like the term "truth". I would use the pragmatic term, justified belief.

Truth is about an absolute claim of certainty. Pragmatism accepts that knowledge can only make claims about a minimisation of uncertainty.

So sure, you can talk about "some degree of truth" as your way of acknowledging the pragmatic approach to knowledge. Truth is the absolute limit. In practice, we can only approach that state of perfect certainty with arbitrary closeness. In the end, you are saying the same thing.

But I prefer to say that upfront and directly. I don't say a truth is (almost) certain. I say the uncertainty of a belief has been measurably minimised.

I am hardly avoiding any hard question. I am stressing the pragmatically provisional nature of any claims to truth or absolute certainty.

And there is no denial of a "world out there" to be read into this epistemic position. It is pragmatism, not idealism. — apokrisis

I never said you denied the "world out there". Idealists don't deny a "world out there" either. It is what keeps them from falling off the cliff into solipsism. They just say that everything, including the "world out there", is mental. What you seem to be saying is that there are two distinct realities. The one out there and the VR in your head. Isn't the VR in your head part of the world out there? If not, then how does information flow between your VR and the world out there?

When some causal sequence occurs, can we not say that the effect carries some truth about the cause? The effect doesn't interpret the cause. The effect is a direct result of the cause. Causal relationships are mindless relationships. There is no interpreting happening until it gets into a visual sensory information processor that has a goal. Once it gets into a visual sensory information processing system that has goals, then we can start talking about the truth getting muddled. But is it really getting muddled? If we are then mixing the information with our goals and then pointing to the resulting effect as if it were the original information, or cause, that is where the problem lies. If we were to prevent the information from mingling with our goal, then the information would still be pure, no? We could point to the information before mingling with our goal as the "truth". If we point to the information after it mingles with our goal and talk about the cause as if it never mingled with our goal, that is where we would be making the mistake. I hope that makes sense.

You are complaining that I am concealing the very point I have attempted to make. I am talking about the triadic sign relation of pragmatism/semiotics. So yes, it is taken as basic that there are three players in the equation. — apokrisis

No. I was complaining that you were being inconsistent. If you say that we can never reach the truth, but only a semblance of it, then your explanation of reality is as irrelevant as anyone else's. How can you go about testing your theory when the outcome of any test will have your purpose imposed on it? It's no different than saying, "We can never know anything.", which is a contradiction. If we can never know anything, then how did you come to know that we can never know anything?

But the wrinkle is that this is a more generic level of analysis than just the usual me/sign/world relation of indirect realism or standard issue psychology. Sure, for us humans and other creatures with complex nervous systems, it is all about the "subjective self" and the "objective world". We are just talking about useful reality models mediated by a sign relation. Nothing to scare any realists. The world is actually out there ... just as the self is actually in here. >:O — apokrisis

Isn't the self out there as well? How else can my self interact with your self? How else can we transfer information between each other if we aren't connected in some way causally?

When you type your post, your idea changes into a physical form of words on a screen. The words on the screen are not your idea, but a representation of it. If no one ever read your post, would it still contain "truth" in that it accurately represents your idea without any mind coming along and muddling it with their own purpose? If so, then how is it that it doesn't contain "truth" when it continues to flow into another mind, like mine when I read it? I'm not trying to impose MY purpose on it. If I did, I'd never get at what YOU were saying. When communicating, we attempt to get at what the speaker, or writer, is saying. We are attempting to get at the speaker, or writer's purpose, not our own.

Anyway, the triadic sign relation is more generic than just our functional psychological relationship with an actual, real, material, completely physical, world. It doesn't even need to care about there being a real world as it is paying attention to the prior thing which is the very manufacturing of a state of information division. It is talking about how "selves" and "worlds" arise as the two complementary aspects of a sign relation.

Which is why Peircean epistemology can become a model of ontological being itself. It drills down to the very causality by which self~world could arise as a self-organising symmetry breaking. — apokrisis

This went over my head. I have no idea what you are saying here. "How selves and worlds arise" seems to me talk about causation and time existing independently of minds. How do selves and worlds arise? Arise from what? How long does it take? What is the causal sequence of events?

How can you make any objective statements about the world when you say that we impose our subjective purposes onto what it is we see and hear all the time?

It seems to me that natural selection would favor organisms that tend to impose their subjectivity on the world less and see the world more as it really is. If what you say is true then that makes makes problems for the theory of natural selection. If what you say is true, then the process of natural selection isn't an objective process out there, but rather a subjective process in here.

Look at how you are having to treat the "self" as real here. You are having to reify this little person in your head doing the looking at the representations, experiencing the qualia. Already an inadequate ontology is going badly wrong, headed off down the path labelled infinite homuncular regress. — apokrisis

But you used the term "self" yourself in saying that "the self is actually in here". You seem to be the one committing the crime of assuming an infinite homuncular regrees. I'm not because I'm saying that the self isn't in here. The self is out there with everything else. There is no out there and in here. That is the fault of dualism.

If the self isn't real, then how can you give it a location which is relative to the location of the world? If the self isn't real, then how do you explain communication at all? Who, or what, is communicating? How do you explain a difference in opinion in how we interpret the world if it isn't a difference in selves? You are not me, and I am not you. If you're saying I am part of you, or vice versa, then you are talking about solipsism.

I never said that the self resides in my head. The self is my entire body, not just my mind. So there is no little self inside my head looking at the qualia. My body is simply taking in information and reacting to it based on my genetic disposition and previous experiences. Simple cause and effect (information flow). This is why you can look at how I am behaving and not only determine how I interpret my sensory information, but what it is that I'm seeing that is causing me to behave this way. My behavior carries information about not just what is in my mind, but what is out there that I'm reacting to. You may react differently but that isn't to say that the thing out there has different properties for both of us. It is saying that we both produce different effects because we ourselves are part of the causal sequence that mingles with the thing out there. We are different causes ourselves, which is why we produce different outcomes (effects) when interacting with the same thing. It's no different than talking about mixing two different ingredients in water. You get different outcomes even though water was an ingredient in both.

Isn't that what I plainly said? The world is what it is. Then we represent it in a way that is useful. What we want to see is reality as it looks through the eyes of our purposes. — apokrisis

And we are part of the world, so we can say that our representations are part of the world as well. They are the outcome of our selves interacting with the world - no different than any other mix of causes leading to other outcomes. To separate our selves from the world as if our selves aren't part of the causal sequence, or information flow, is to make a serious mistake and causes many problems (dualism)

But I don't see black. I see the photic rustle of retinal neurons seeking missing input. I get the vague impression of swirling lights and coloured dots that are my own endogenous baseline brain activity. So actual phenomenology confirms the constructedness of visual experience. Our brains are so hungry to make a visual world that they will restlessly imagine colours and patterns even in the complete dark. That is, unless we stare into the dark and interpret it as black, ignoring this photic rustle that wants to get in the way of our "reality experiencing". — apokrisis

But swirling lights and coloured dots isn't a world. It is just the firing of "bored" synapses. If we created a world when we close our eyes, then why is there a clear distinction between the world I imagine and the world I experience when I open my eyes. I can imagine any world I want in my head, but that world is less vivid than the world I experience when I open my eyes. As a matter of fact, when I open my eyes, the sensory information is imposing compared to the world I create in my head. It imposes itself on me. It's signals are very strong compared to the world in my head.

The real world might be the cause of our having a way of modelling it. But there is no direct reason why the phenomenology of colour experience should reflect the reality of wavelength energy the way it does. — apokrisis

Then there would be no direct reason why a world might cause our way of modeling it. It is pointless to wonder about why a particular effect is the result of a particular cause as if it could be any different.

Yeah. Minds need to be connected by physical symbols. And a lot of energy gets expended in transferring information. Especially because another mind really only wants to see the world in the way to which it has become accustomed. The other mind always wants an easy life where it can pretty much ignore other minds and deal with anything they might say as a labelled, pre-packaged position that can be given a quick tick. Yes for true, no for false. Trip the memory switch flag and move along. — apokrisis

I could see this being the case for non-social organisms, but human beings are highly social. We seek others out for companionship and to share ideas, so I don't see us wanting to ignore each other. That would mean that we aren't a social species. Bees and ants are no different. If ignoring each other is our default disposition, it would falsify that we are a social species.

Our posts are getting long. I'm sorry if I missed something you said. If so, then please point it out.

You ought not to anthropomorphise natural selection, to make of it an agent that 'does' something. Neither natural selection nor evolution 'does' anything. It is simply a description of how species evolve, but by saying that it 'arranges' something, you are attributing to it something that it doesn't have. — Wayfarer

I wasn't. Mindless, natural processes do something. Natural selection is a mindless process, which means that it has no agency. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a description of the process itself. The process of natural selection is environmental feedback where the environment as a whole interacts with it's constituents and vice versa. An example is coat color where one's coat matches the the color of the environment and makes it more difficult to see as compared to other colors, which allows that animal a greater chance of not being eaten. Jerry Coyne calls natural selection the "engine of evolution" in his book, "Why Evolution is True".

Tree rings mean something to an arborist, but nothing to the tree. — Wayfarer

What you're saying here is that the tree rings can't be part of a causal relationship with some visual sensory system of the tree, because the tree doesn't have one. An arborist has a visual sensory system to see the tree rings and then follow the causal sequence backwards to know what the tree rings mean, or what information they carry. How is it that all arborists agree what the tree rings mean and they all point to how the tree rings were caused? Are tree rings the result of how the tree grows throughout the year? Isn't that what the tree rings mean? Would that be the case if there were no visual sensory systems to interact with the tree rings to continue a causal sequence?

When the thing we are talking about continues to interact with things and create new effects (like how it appears to a mind), then we can say that the information about the cause continues to flow through time. If no one ever looked at a tree stump, or ever wondered how those rings got there, would the tree rings still have information? Of course because they were caused. Information is all around us that we simply ignore or filter out. Information isn't made simply by looking at something and interpreting it. The information is already there. It just continues to flow forward in time as it interacts with other things to create new effects where the effects carry information about all the causes that led up to the effect we are talking about.

How does the information in your head get in to mine without causation? When you have an idea, you then need to think about how to say it, and then you need to type it, and then you need to proofread it submit it. I then need to read it and interpret it. If you can agree with this then I don't see why you can't agree that information resides in all causal relationships, including the ones out there that we never notice, or bother looking at. It's just the information doesn't continue to flow, or establish new causal relationships with our visual sensory system, but it does continue to interact with other things when we aren't looking. When we decide to notice it, then it is a particular effect in the chain of causation that we notice, not the original cause. We have to follow the causal sequence backwards to find the particular cause/information we are looking for. We could follow the causal sequence of tree ring formation all the way back to the Big Bang if we wanted to - if that was the bit of information we were after.

Pinker says 'the symbols are physical states of matter', but what does this mean? — Wayfarer

I think he means that they can interact with each other and establish causal relationships.

Notice he actually uses the term 'incarnated as configurations of symbols'. An 'incarnation' means 'made flesh' - but it is generally understood that what is incarnated is, or was, discarnate prior to being incarnated. If you were to say to someone 'you are the incarnation of beauty', you would be implying that the quality of 'beauty' is 'instantiated' by that person (not a very elegant way of explaining it, but the point stands.) — Wayfarer

I think he means that the information, which is a relationship - one between causes and effects - is converted from an analog signal into a digital signal in order to be useful for a purpose.

I also think there is something very wrong with 'If the bits of matter that constitute a symbol are arranged to bump into the bits of matter constituting another symbol in just the right way, the symbols corresponding to one belief can give rise to new symbols corresponding to another belief logically related to it'. First - they are arranged by what? In the case of a computer, they are arranged according to the computer program which is surely the work of a human intelligence. So if the analogy is with a computer, it tends to suggest something very like 'the watchmaker'. If not, they are not 'arranged' at all, or at any rate, the fact of their proximity and relationship can't really be assigned an explanatory role. — Wayfarer

The foundation is arranged by natural selection and then built upon as we experience the world and establish new neural connections.

And how can a symbol be understood as a 'physical configuration' at all? The whole point about symbols is that they are abstract, which is exactly why meaning can be transferred via symbols so easily. Conflating 'meaning' with 'physical dispositions of parts' seems very question-begging to me. — Wayfarer

Read what he says about the tree rings in the tree stump in that same book.

A physical mark can "mean anything" — apokrisis

No. It means what caused it. The physical mark would be the effect of more than one cause interacting over time, and that is what it can be used to mean.

You are missing the point. Yes, the mind needs to relate to the world functionally and so its beliefs need to be "true". But that correctness is in relation to the mindful organism's purposes, not the truth of the thing in itself. So what we perceive are the signs of reality. We want to make "our" reality - our umwelt - easy to see. — apokrisis

No, Apo. I get your point, and I know that you are getting mine. I think you are trying to avoid answering hard questions. How can something be functional in the reality "out there" if there isn't some degree of truth associated with it?

Look at your post. It is an explanation of reality itself, not the virtual reality in your head, but the one out there, and it's relationship with the virtual reality in your head, right? If not, which reality are you talking about? How can you say anything about the one out there and how it relates to your VR if you're implying that we can never get to it, or at least know some truth about it? What part of your post is a truth about your VR and which is a truth about reality out there and how both interact? How do you know anything about the reality out there and your relation to it?

Let's say that I associate red apples as being delicious and green apples as disgusting. In this instance, I'm relating a color to one of my subjective experiences. I think this is an example of what you are talking about. The apples aren't really different colors, except in my head, and they are delicious and disgusting only in my head. But the apples do have different properties that cause a different interaction with the same wavelength of light that gets reflected into my eye and processed by the eye-brain system, which results in me seeing different colors, or interacts with my taste buds and nervous system that results in a taste of deliciousness or distaste for me.

While the apples don't have properties of color or taste in themselves prior to or after any interaction with reflected light and an eye-brain system, or taste buds, they do have objective properties that result in them being represented a certain way for any sensory information processor to use in order to accomplish any purpose (goal) it has at any given moment.

Even our own minds don't have properties of color independent of looking at the world. Even closing your eyes, you end up looking at the inside of your eyelids, which is the dark side of your eyelids, which is why it appears black. Color is the effect of the level of light environment interacting with the eye-brain system, and only appears when light interacts with an eye-brain system. You can't see any other color other than black when there is no light at all. In this sense, light is a cause of color as much as the existence of an eye-brain system is. Color is the effect of both causes interacting.

Both causes have their own objective properties that interact and create a new effect. This is what the effect provides information about - the objective properties of the causes. How is it that your mind has a certain quality, structure, attribute, or property that is persistent and follows certain logical rules that allows it to be functional, but everything else doesn't? If everything else is just a function of the mind, then that would include other people, therefore solipsism would be the case.

So you talk about the information contained in cause and effect. If wavelength energy is cause, why should it look like hue as its effect? Or why should a fragment of an organic molecule smell like a rose? Why should vibrating air sound like tinkling or grating noise?

The way we read information into the world seems pretty arbitrary if we are to take your simple cause and effect view that demands perception is somehow veridical of how the physics really is, rather than as the useful way we interpret it - the way we make the world easy to see in terms of our evolved sets of interest. — apokrisis

I never said that effects and their causes are the same things. That would absurd. Effects are the result of more than one cause interacting over time. This is why effects carry information about ALL their causes. Color carries information about the wavelength of light and the state of your eye-brain system. The question is, which information is it that you want to know right now about the color? What is it that you want to know that some color is representing, or carrying information about - it's wavelength, the state of a particular eye-brain system, the state of the apple (ripe or rotten), the taste of the apple, etc.?

It is your theory that implies that we project our purposes onto reality and would make it pretty arbitrary. I'm not saying that we don't do that. What I'm saying is that there is a two-way street where information flows from the outside to the inside and information flows from the inside (projected by intent) to the outside. This is how we are able to know about the world as well as project our own purposes onto it, which includes making our views known to others and trying to influence them to accept our view.

How else do I or anyone else get the gist of what you or anyone else is saying? The information crosses the boundary between your VR and the real world, back into my VR. If I make your post into what is functional to my purposes, how can you ever expect express yourself at all. How is it that language works at all?

I don't see how that answers my question.

I think you are misinterpreting what I'm saying. What is it about the human experience that a new person has has to be born to experience it? A parent usually does not have an absurdist reason but some actual reason, however garbled or misconstrued. Well, if the basis of life is surviving and dealing with restlessness, it becomes absurd to put more people in that situation in the first place. Why is it necessary for a new person to survive and deal with restlessness when no person needs to be born at all? Somehow experience itself is cherished, which then still begs the question, and so on. — schopenhauer1

Who decided that no person needs to be born at all?

So the mind is a virtual reality - reality as it is meaningful in terms of our interests. We don't just mindlessly process the physical information that is "out there". From the get go, we are symbolising the possibilities of that world in terms that are functional for us. — apokrisis

What is the relationship between the reality and the virtual reality? If there isn't one, then you are arguing for solipsism, as there would be no bearing of the real world on the virtual world. There would be no way for you to even talk about the real world as they would be separate and unable to interact (no relationship). In order for you to say anything about the real world, via your virtual world, would mean that some state-of-affairs in the real world influences the state-of-affairs in the virtual world. If there is no connection between the real world and the virtual world, then how can you even talk about the real world? How can you even say that you are informed about anything in the real world? There would be no causal connection and therefore no flow of information.

That is where I would disagree. Sure it is the usefully simplistic view of what goes on. But my semiotic approach says mind shapes the signs its treats as "information". Out there in the real material world, there is only radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies. The "mind" or brain then does its processing and understands that in terms of colours. It produces its own meaningful symbol that then stands in a mediating relation with the physics.

The primate mind in particular can see the red fruit that is ripe vividly against the backdrop of the green foliage that is of less interest. Well, there has to be some kind of evolutionary explanation for why our primate ancestors dropped a retinal pigment while living their nocturnal existence and then hastily regrew one once they started wandering about the landscape during the day.

So the mind is a virtual reality - reality as it is meaningful in terms of our interests. We don't just mindlessly process the physical information that is "out there". From the get go, we are symbolising the possibilities of that world in terms that are functional for us.

This means that when physicists talk about information and biologists talk about information, it isn't exactly the same.

But then, if we know how it is not the same, that is how we can know the way it is then the same. A mindless theory of information can be the basis for grounding the higher order mindful one. — apokrisis

How can something be functional, or useful, if it doesn't have some degree of truth to it?

To say that there is anything out there that our mind represents is to talk about causation. I have said numerous times that information is the relationship between the cause and the effect. The effect carries information about the cause. The contents of our minds is the effect of the interaction of our senses with what is out there. This is why we can point to the colors in our mind as the effect of light interacting with out eyes and brain system. This is why we can use some color to mean something about what is out there, like a particular fruit being ripe to eat. Is the fruit ripe to eat and others aren't, or is it just a mix of radiant energy that our minds create order from what is ultimately chaos? Do our minds simply make up this distinction that doesn't really exist out there? If so, then how can you say that the mind processes information. It would simply make up it's own world (solipsism) and the contents of our minds wouldn't point to anything, including other minds. Does the distinction in color represent a distinction in radiant energy? If so, then what I'm saying holds true - that distinctions in radiant energy cause our distinction in color and is what the color represents.

Are you saying that other minds are radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies? What does that say about your mind? How does radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies process information? How can something be functional, or useful, to radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies?

There is no point debating philosophy against naive realism. — Wayfarer

I wasn't.

Again, is there an actual three-masted Greek ship on the horizon? If there isn't then how can you even say that any structure (flags, a series of dots on paper, etc.) points to that, or means that, or carries information about that?

How did those flags get situated like that? How did those dots get on a piece of paper? If there isn't an actual three-masted Greek ship on the horizon, then you can only say that the sentry lied when he put up the flags. What is the ultimate cause of the flags being put up in a certain way?

If the sentry lied, the you can't say that the morse code points to, or refers to, a three-masted Greek ship on the horizon. The morse code actually points to, or refers to, the lie the sentry told because there is no three-masted Greek ship on the horizon.

Hmm. It is ironic that a lot of you guys are reacting in horror at physicists who might take it literally that reality is just a pattern of information. It is after all just a modern version of idealism. You have physicists who are denying materialism and saying things are pure information. Reality is even observer created if you go to the quantum extreme.

So here we have science prepared to talk openly about a concrete idealist ontology. And everyone gasps in shock. No they must be wrong. Matter is obviously real. The Matrix could only be a simulation hanging off an electrical plug. — apokrisis

I don't see how "reality is information" necessarily entails idealism. I don't see information as mind dependent. Minds process information, which has to exist prior to being processed. The causal relationships of the universe exist independent of minds. Minds simply stretch those relationships into time and space.

No - but there doesn't need to be, for the point to be made, which is that the physical form and the medium in which the information is transmitted can be entirely changed, but the meaning remain the same. How, therefore, could the 'meaning of the information' be physical? — Wayfarer

It is physical because the cause is physical. Is there an actual three-masted Greek ship on the horizon? Yes, or no? Is that not the cause of the whole string of events starting with the sentry observing the ship on the horizon? Yes, or no? Can you say that any of the forms the information takes would have happened or existed if there wasn't a three-masted Greek ship on the horizon?

What has happened is that the cause has triggered a chain of events that results in some physical structure representing the cause in some way. We can say that the information was processed, or changed, in some way, but we can still point to the initial cause as what this new structure refers to.

The title basically says it. I am questioning whether information, generally speaking, is physical. — Wayfarer

The question is absurd. First of all, what does "physical" mean and how is it different from the "mental"? You start off on the wrong foot by assuming dualism.

Can we please dispense with the use of these loaded, not clearly defined, terms? It would make it much easier. After all, it is this assumption of dualism that creates the problem you are trying to answer. We can simply talk about causation as we all know that the mind can influence the body or the world and vice versa. To separate these things is to create the problem you are trying to solve.

Now, as for what information is and whether or not it exists independently of minds, I can answer that without using those terms.

In your example, is there an actual ship that is three-masted, Greek and arriving this afternoon? And is this true even if there wasn't a sentry providing information to others that this is the case? The information stays the same because we are talking about the same cause. The form the information takes is what changes as the forms are the effects resulting from the cause - a three-masted Greek ship on the horizon.

Let's use another example. Tree rings in a tree stump carry information about the age of the tree. The tree rings are formed as a result of how the tree grows throughout the year. The tree rings are the effect of the cause and therefore carry information about the cause. The tree rings would represent the age of the tree even if there weren't any minds to look at the tree rings. Information is mind independent. Minds are simply information processors. In a way, we could say that information is the actual relationship between a cause and it's effects. Every subsequent effect can point back to the original cause and be said to carry information about the original cause. This is why each new form the information takes in your example can all refer back to the original cause - a three-masted Greek ship on the horizon.

Your post is full of subjective terms like, "wrong" and "better" and "needs", etc., that seem to be applied objectively - as if you think that things can be "wrong", "better", or "needy" independent of some mind with goals. This is absurd. The basis of your whole question is absurd. You seem to be asking if the universe "needs" life to go on, or if it is "necessary", or if it would be "better" or "worse" if humans continued their existence. Such questions are absurd because they misplace these terms, as if the world or universe has goals that "need" to be met, or if the universe seeks a "better" situation with our without life in it.

Such terms only apply to goals and how they are either helped or hindered by certain situations. Minds are the only things in the universe with goals and to project those goals onto the rest of the universe is a mistake and creates this confusion that you are experiencing.

This is why you can't find an objective answer to your question. It is a subjective answer, which is what I've been trying to tell you since I joined this discussion. Only YOU can determine if YOUR life is still worth living. There is no objective answer out in the universe that determines whether or not yours or anyone else's life is worth living, or why we live in the first place. The universe has no goals and therefore no purpose. It just does what it does and we are along for the ride. It is your choice whether or not it is "good", "bad", "right" or "wrong".