phenomenology might almost be called a new, a twentieth century, Cartesianism.

We must complete the quote:

“Accordingly one might almost call transcendental phenomenology a neo-Cartesianism, even though It Is obliged and precisely by its radical development of Cartesian motifs to reject nearly all the well-known doc­trinal content of the Cartesian philosophy.”

Descartes used the method of radical doubting to uncover the essential indubitable ground of the cogito. It is this drilling down beneath unexamined preconceptions guiding our everyday acceptance of the world that Husserl took from Descartes, not the conclusion that the indubitable essence of being is the cogito. This grounding Husserl rejected. I think all philosophy since Descartes takes from him this spirit of thoroughgoing doubting, with the aim of arriving at a point where skepticism can be dispelled.



“And so we make a new beginning, each for himself and in himself, with the decision of philosophers who begin radically: that at first we shall put out of action all the convictions we have been accepting up to now, including all our sciences. Let the idea guiding our meditations be at first the Cartesian idea of a science that shall be established as radically genuine, ultimately an all-embracing science.

But, now that we know longer have at our disposal any already given science ( after all we are not accepting any given science) as an example of radically genuine science , what about the indubitability of that idea itself, the idea mainly of a science that shall be grounded absolutely?

Is it a legitimate final idea, the possible aim of some possible practice? Obviously that is something too we must not presuppose , to say nothing of taking any norms as already established for testing such possibilities-or perchance a whole system of norms in which the style proper to genuine science is allegedly prescribed.

That would mean presupposing a whole logic as a theory of science , whereas logic must be included among the sciences overthrown in overthrowing all science. Descartes himself presupposed an ideal of science, the ideal approximated by geometry and mathematical natural science. As a fateful prejudice this ideal determines philosophies for centuries and hiddenly determines the Mediations themselves.

Obviously it was, for Descartes, a truism from the start that the all-embracing science must have the form of a deductive system, in which the whole structure rests, ordine geometrico, on an axiomatic foundation that grounds the deduction absolutely. For him a role similar to that of geometrical axioms in geometry is played in the all-embracing science by the axiom of the ego's absolute certainty of himself, along with the axiomatic principles innate in the ego only this axiomatic foundation lies even deeper than that of geometry and is called on to participate in the ultimate grounding even of geometrical knowledge. None of that shall determine our thinking. As beginning philosophers we do not as yet accept any normative ideal of science; and only so far as we produce one newly for ourselves can we ever have such an ideal.

In a quasi-Cartesian fashion we intend, as radically beginning philosophers, to carry out meditations with the utmost critical precaution and a readiness for any-even the most far-reaching transformation of the old-Cartesian meditations. Seductive aberrations, into which Descartes and later thinkers strayed, will have to be clarified and avoided as we pursue our course.

This grounding Husserl rejected. — Joshs

I don't see much rejection of the key thing that interests me here - a rejection of the primacy being given to a homuncular self, the first person point of view, the ego that grounds the rationalising after all preconceptions have been stripped away.

This is the fatal flaw - the one Peircean semiotics fixes. By focusing on the primacy of the modelling relation, both the self and its world become a co-construction. The two emergent poles of the one dialectical process.

This deals with Kant's epistemic strictures without then lapsing into the homuncular regress of a conscious observing ego sat behind the curtain. The "self" becomes just the fact that a set of habits are integrated from "a point of view".

Once psychology is understood as a semiotic modelling relation - one based on a mediating system of signs, and thus a code - then psychological science can get on with the interesting job of seeing the degree that two quite different levels of semiosis, biosemiosis and anthrosemiosis, play their part in shaping some individual psyche.

But if you don't question the central motif that is the dualism of world and ego, then you wind up down the same cul-de-sac as Descartes.

Maybe phenomenology is rescuing itself by a new stress on enactivism or embodiment. But that seems to be just the incorporation of biosemiosis so far. It doesn't appear to involve the socially constructed aspect of mind and selfhood - our enactive embodiment in a shaping cultural environment.

That is the PoMo-Romanticism having its effect. The driving idea there is to reject global constraints on local freedoms. To be shaped is read as being anti-self, rather than the source of selfhood in the first place.

So you are not yet convincing me that phenomenology is anything more than a passing curiosity in the history of ideas.

Enactivism itself is of course a crucial corrective to Cartesian representationalism. But Peirce already founds everything in that kind of pragmatic embodiment. And there are plenty of psychologists, from Helmholtz to Brunner, who got it as well.

Is there some bosonic force creating this order?

This would be the thing doing the thinking? - Integrating the information to various forms. — Pop

That would be you.

That would be you. — Possibility

Or, at heart, you and me are the same, just different in formation :smile:

Hi Pop. I was thinking a week ago that this thread was reaching a point of exhaustion. That's not the case. Sometimes I check a few times a day but eventually something new comes up or you or the commenters go deep on something. That's interesting... I like it.
The physics stuff is beyond me (and most of us because of the math) so sometimes I just try to follow the discussion. Not sure of the Mass = Energy = Information model though. I think you could do a model of everything with just energy - except where does the energy come from?

The physics stuff is beyond me (and most of us because of the math) — Mark Nyquist

Yeah, me too. So it is great to have @Kenosha Kid, and @Prishon to fill in the blanks.

The mass - energy - information equivalence principle, suggests these are all the same thing. We know since E=mc2 that matter = energy. So really we have energy and information left to consider. Do we see energy, or do we see information about energy? Energy must exist, but can not without information, so it is a tricky question. Largely physics has been blind to this, and only lately has it become a consideration.

I think it is largely an issue of paradigm politics. A definition of information, in this day and age, should be out there, but the one we found, which is explanatory, changes its normal meaning, and understanding as a result. Information is almost the same as interaction, in fact. But interaction already has that spot.

I will make another thread soon to explore this, as I think it is important to understand that information changes us. And how this works today is an important consideration.

I didn't need politeness, only careful engagement with the linked wiki page, and the definitions used there.

The wavefunction contains only information about the chances where to find a particle. — Prishon

Yuuuup!!! And thats ALL ( objective) to be found. Its us assigning a variation of that wavefunction. Thats no inherent property.. There is no such thing as an objective wavefunction traveling through momentum space.Sorry...

I don't see much rejection of the key thing that interests me here - a rejection of the primacy being given to a homuncular self, the first person point of view, the ego that grounds the rationalising after all preconceptions have been stripped away.

This is the fatal flaw - the one Peircean semiotics fixes. By focusing on the primacy of the modelling relation, both the self and its world become a co-construction. The two emergent poles of the one dialectical process. — apokrisis

After having now read a number of papers discussing Peircean semiotics in the context of a range of approaches within philosophy and psychology here are my tentative thoughts:

In the wake of Hegel, Darwin and Marx, three distinct schools of thought arose to correct for the inadequacies of Kantianism. Peircean pragmaticist semiotics is a rationalist, progressivist model centering around his triadic logic. It finds general expression in Popper’s falsificationist philosophy science, in which ‘crisp’ truth is progressively attained as an asymptotic limit. One is allowed to talk about progress in attaining scientific truth through falsification only because the methods of scientific validation are presumed to sit still , to be resistant to cultural differences.

The second school is the pragmatism of Dewey, James and Mead, which , while sympathetic to Peirce’s approach , avoids the strict logic of his code-based semiotics in favor of an intersubjectively mediated empiricism. Some of the more conservative versions of enactivism , along with Putnam , endorse this perspective. The third school includes the later Wittgenstein , phenomenology, postmodern and postatructuralisms, radical enactivism
and hermeneutics. This diverse group
rejects representationalism, computationalism and rationality-based progressivism. Their notion of semiotics is not code or logic based but instead compatible with Wittgenstein’s language games as forms of
life. They reject the concept of language as ‘meaning’ , of truth as propositional belief, and critique empiricism and the myth of the given. They prefer the non-rational philosophy of science of Kuhn rather than Popper. Kuhn rejects the idea that methods of coming to agreement on what constitutes validating or invalidating evidence scientific remains fixed, and since it does not remain stable, the determination of empirical truth is more akin to a political than a rational process.

In my understanding, none of these schools begins from a homuncular self or ego. They are all at least as non-Cartesian in this respect as Peirce is. They would instead point out that there is more to Cartesianism that a Kantian self, that a dialectic or triadic rationalist logic perpetuates a different form of Cartesian dualism than that of the Kantian autonomous self. In this case the split is between the forming logic and contingent empirical content.


I suspect that the fatal flaw that Peircean semiotics fixes
is to be found in older cognitive models that are less prevalent these days in the wake of the affective , embodiment and ecological crazes in psychology.

Maybe phenomenology is rescuing itself by a new stress on enactivism or embodiment. But that seems to be just the incorporation of biosemiosis so far. It doesn't appear to involve the socially constructed aspect of mind and selfhood - our enactive embodiment in a shaping cultural environment.

That is the PoMo-Romanticism having its effect. The driving idea there is to reject global constraints on local freedoms. To be shaped is read as being anti-self, rather than the source of selfhood in the first place. — apokrisis

The issue for all three schools is what grounds the ordering that precedes any notion of the subjective and the objective, a self and a world. If the shaping is organized by a rationalist logic , whether dialectic or triadic, no matter how much effort you put into distancing your approach from the old Kantian and Cartesian ideas of subject and object, you end up re-introducing a dualism. This rationalizing , logicizing tendency is what every philosophical figure since Hegel has been obsessed with avoiding , starting with Schopenhauer and on through Kierkegaard , Nietzsche , Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida. Peirce was not able to avoid it.


Enactivism is generally thought as shorthand for 4E: enactive, embodied, embedded , extended and affective. The system is not simply embodied in its biology, it is equally embedded in its physical-social environment and extended into that ecology via tools outside the strictly determined end of the body
that are nonetheless part of its functioning.

As I mentioned before, there is almost no debate these days within phenomenological-pomo-enactivist circles as to whether being shaped is the source of selfhood. The only debate is over whether to jettison the notion of the subject entirely in favor of a social system with no independently identifiable parts, or keep some minimal remnant of the old idea of subject. I don’t think you appreciate how much more radically interpersonally based some of these approaches are compared with Peirce’s quaint-by-comparison code-based model of the social. Have you read any Derrida, Foucault, Gergen or Deleuze? Do you think that the later Wittgenstein held onto a homuncular notion of self?

So you are not yet convincing me that phenomenology is anything more than a passing curiosity in the history of ideas. — apokrisis

Keep in mind that those involved with phenomenology see it as inextricably linked to Wittgensteinian pragmatics, post structuralism, deconstruction, Gibsonian ecological psychology and a host of related ideas. So if it is merely a curiosity , the same would have to be said of the larger tapestry of thinking in the social sciences that it is merely one element of. One would have to include the social activism on campuses which is feeding off of pomo currents. Of course, in one sense, all ideas are just passing curiosities. The question is whether the path of change today is leading the vanguard of psychological and philosophical thinking closer to Peirce or further away from him. They do seem to be moving further away from Schelling , Hegel and Marx, and closer to Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Foucault , Heidegger , Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty.

Enactivism itself is of course a crucial corrective to Cartesian representationalism. But Peirce already founds everything in that kind of pragmatic embodiment. — apokrisis

Those in many branches of the social sciences choosing to bypass Peirce’s semiotic form of pragmatism feel that a pragmatics is severely constrained when it is grounded in rationalistist logic and a notion of truth as a ‘real’ which is progressively attainable.

Energy must exist, but can not without information, so it is a tricky question. Largely physics has been blind to this, and only lately has it become a consideration. — Pop

I think you are getting close! Energy, at least forms of it, needs interaction to have a form. A circle form will "evaporate" if no interactions are considered. Its a pitty you havent studied quantum fields. A free field (without a gauge field to INTERACT with,is a weird thing... To say the least... :smile:

Nice writing. Its indeed all semiotic. The initial state of the universe, causally disconnected to the one proceeding it (though I still have to work out how one big bangs can leave the 5d torus substrate unchanged) contained the seed structures, the seed forms, for all living structures to appear and their connections of a representative internal world to the external one (interdependent) to be formed. The emerged beings are a mere shell, but a living one. The body is the true identity and is the interface between an evoling inner world and an evolving outer one. There are no such things as homuculi. Only the dream part of the inner world (showing itself during nightlh or daily dreamtimes) can show other creatures being appearances letting you know things.

I didn't need politeness, only careful engagement with the linked wiki page, and the definitions used there. — bongo fury

And where do you feel I diverged?

So it is great to have Kenosha Kid, and @Prishon to fill in the blanks. — Pop

Please remember this is the internet. For all you know, I'm just frantically Googling my way through my own bullshit. And Prishon certainly is, don't elevate the guy to an authority.

I think it is largely an issue of paradigm politics. A definition of information, in this day and age, should be out there, but the one we found, which is explanatory, changes its normal meaning, and understanding as a result. Information is almost the same as interaction, in fact — Pop

Both Shannon's classical information theory and modern quantum information theory have their roots in computation, wherein the purpose of information storage is future retrieval. However, both begin with storage. Classically this could be writing something down on paper, saving something to a hard disk, memorising something, etc. In each case, one is speaking of configurations of physical things (locations of ink, polarity of little magnets, network of neurons), so classical information theory does treat information stored in a system well, it's just within a context of transmission.

Quantum information theory on the one hand is more elementary, and any review article will likely start with notion of performing a quantum mechanical measurement of a system, which is just straight QM. The information stored in that system is nothing less than the physical state of that system itself, not just the bits that were intentionally stored

On the other hand, QM is somewhat more transmission-focussed insofar as everything is geared toward an intended measurement by an experimenter (who, in quantum information theory, takes the place of the message recipient) after preparation of that system (which takes the place of sending). The observer plays a more important role in QM than in classical mechanics.

But to an extent this is linguistic. If you save a file to disk, then move that disk an inch, we have transmission of a message. Is this remotely important in talking about the information content? Not at all. Ultimately, information storage is physical configuration of state, therefore the physical configuration of a system has information irrespective of whether it was intended or transmitted. That physical state is (theoretically) completely encoded in the wavefunction (all of the information about that system), hence one can have a purely informational basis for physics.

@KenoshaKid, The guy that should not be taken too seriously. Sometimes though he shows signs of being reasonable. Very sometimes.

And Prishon certainly is, don't elevate the guy to an authority. — Kenosha Kid

This is proof you are a fantast. Who says YOU are not working your way through the internet. I tend to think you do as you show no true understanding of the matter spoken of here. Well, a bit. At starters level.

After having now read a number of papers discussing Peircean semiotics in the context of a range of approaches within philosophy and psychology here are my tentative thoughts: — Joshs

It’s a good post. You set out the positions clearly. :up:

The second school is the pragmatism of Dewey, James and Mead, which , while sympathetic to Peirce’s approach , avoids the strict logic of his code-based semiotics in favor of an intersubjectively mediated empiricism. — Joshs

Yes. But my reason for championing Peirce here is his tight focus on the semiotic modelling relation and the mechanics of codes. This is key because what is generally missing from causal metaphysics is an account of how the two realms of mind and matter interact. Semiosis plugs that explanatory gap.

Peirce himself is pretty weak on how semiosis in fact applies to biology, neurology, psychology and sociology. His own phenomenology, or phaneron, just tries to shoehorn things into a trite trichotomy of faculties - feeling, volition and cognition.

Similarly, his agapism is toe-curling. He was mired in the theism and transcendentalism that was the norm for his cultural milieu.

But on the central issue - the generality of semiosis as a mechanism to connect the two divided aspects of nature - he is sound.

Their notion of semiotics is not code or logic based but instead compatible with Wittgenstein’s language games as forms of
life. They reject the concept of language as ‘meaning’ , of truth as propositional belief, and critique empiricism and the myth of the given. — Joshs

That’s fine. But my reply is that this is the view from just the level of semiosis that is language use, and so just the aspect of human psychology that is socially constructed,

My interest is in countering scientific reductionism and its idealistic counter-response, romanticism, with a systems or natural philosophy metaphysics - the tradition that traces itself back to the four causes of Aristotle.

This view is well developed especially in theoretical biology. As I have described, I was focused first on the socially constructed nature of the human mind (so Vygotsky was my man there), then on neuroscience and philosophy of mind, then on complexity theory, then eventually - as the best unifying perspective I found - the circle of theoretical biologists led by Pattee, Salthe and Rosen. And these guys in turn were moving from a general hierarchy theory and modelling relations perspective to one that acknowledged Peirce as offering a unifying logical story.

But also, biosemiotics now goes far past Peirce in grounding itself not just on a process and probabilistic ontology, but the more specific one of the thermodynamics of dissipative structures. So there is a general theory where the material aspect of being is all about entropy dissipation (with the Big Bang being the most general example). And then semiosis and code explains how informational mechanism can evolve to accelerate entropy production. So the argument becomes that everything - from the Cosmos to Mind - is just a thermodynamic drive. And complexity arises out of that as grades of organismic semiosis.

This is a scientific claim more than a metaphysical one now. It stands or falls on the evidence.

Enactivism is generally thought as shorthand for 4E: enactive, embodied, embedded , extended and affective. The system is not simply embodied in its biology, it is equally embedded in its physical-social environment and extended into that ecology via tools outside the strictly determined end of the body
that are nonetheless part of its functioning. — Joshs

Sure. When enactivism came along as a vogue new term, it was already what I had always argued. But it lacks the emphasis on code as the hinge of everything. It is just a corrective to the general disembodied rationalism of Cartesian inspired psychology. It doesn’t count as an actual new paradigm. It only alerts us to fact that minds are part of the structure of the world - further steps up the hierarchy of infodynamics or Second Law constrained being.

As I mentioned before, there is almost no debate these days within phenomenological-pomo-enactivist circles as to whether being shaped is the source of selfhood. The only debate is over whether to jettison the notion of the subject entirely in favor of a social system with no independently identifiable parts, or keep some minimal remnant of the old idea of subject. I don’t think you appreciate how much more radically interpersonally based some of these approaches are compared with Peirce’s quaint-by-comparison code-based model of the social. — Joshs

Sure. This is what makes it unscientific and headed off into its own familiar culture game based on “othering” univocal discourse. If you can’t win the big game, you pick up the ball and go make your own games.

The question is whether the path of change today is leading the vanguard of psychological and philosophical thinking closer to Peirce or further away from him. — Joshs

I’m more interested in how this plays out for science - metaphysical speculation that is grounded in maths and evidence.

Does psychology even exist as a single scientific field anymore? I found it a mess of a discipline until I realised you needed to listen to those who focused on either mind at the level of the neural code, or mind at the level of the linguistic code. So neural cognition and social construction.

Those in many branches of the social sciences choosing to bypass Peirce’s semiotic form of pragmatism feel that a pragmatics is severely constrained when it is grounded in rationalistist logic and a notion of truth as a ‘real’ which is progressively attainable. — Joshs

So I should follow the crowd rather than follow the evidence? Hmm.

I think you are getting close! Energy, at least forms of it, needs interaction to have a form. A circle form will "evaporate" if no interactions are considered. Its a pitty you havent studied quantum fields. A free field (without a gauge field to INTERACT with,is a weird thing... To say the least... :smile: — Prishon

I used wave theory for illustrative simplicity. The interesting thing to me is that there is an underlying structure that is consistent to all these conceptions.: A wave and its frequency, a field and it's excitation, a string and its vibration, a piece of paper and its scribble, a thing against a nothingness, are all different forms of fundamental conception, that create relational distinction, such that we can understand. These are the limits of relational understanding.

:up: It needs to interact to have a form, and we need to relate it to create a distinction. So a form against a greater form that is our understanding, is a conception of consciousness at its most basic.

The definition of information in this sense is: information enables the interaction of form. or Information = evolutionary interaction [/unquote]

That definition is getting close to what I call EnFormAction, which is the causal & organizing agent of Evolution. That creative force is what was called "the Will of God" in the Bible, or "Logos", by Plato, or "First Cause" & "Prime Mover" by Aristotle, or "Natural Law" by Deists. Like the "Energy" of modern Science, it is known, inferred, only by its effects in the real world. And yes. EFA both causes all interactions, and directs them toward some ultimate destination.

Of course, since motivating & organizing "Cosmic Destiny" is randomized by Entropy (disorganization), each information processing (or integrating) agent in the world has some degree of Free Will (Choice within Chance). Unfortunately, that freedom from Destiny also allows for the physical & emotional suffering of those agents. Why? Maybe it's a test, similar to that argued by Jewish & Christian & Islamic theologians. But, I doubt that it's a test of long-suffering loyalty to the inferred-but-unseen deity, as assumed by those apologists for the Problem of Evil. That would be plain perverse. :smile:


EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (aka : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_of_God

EnFormAction :
* 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 everything 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.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

That creative force is what was called "the Will of God"

I think I underdtand this. All present forms have their origin at the big bang (about which I have some pretty non convential thoughts as well as about the stuff thats in it; the reason for many bans on physics forums). So the initial state had to be slightly nonrandom. The hand of God(s)?

Please remember this is the internet. For all you know, I'm just frantically Googling my way through my own bullshit. And Prishon certainly is, don't elevate the guy to an authority. — Kenosha Kid

I can tell you that I am constantly Googling, checking, and rechecking, and referring to a wide range of opinion from reputable sources. We are all cyborgs these days. We absolutely need to be because of the pace of change. My background is art and IT, but decorative art makes me puke, whereas art that is symbolic of understanding I can really get into. I have a broad range of understanding, but in my fields of special interest, my understanding, I believe, is equal to anyone's. I'm sure you and Prishon feel something similar. Interpretation is a fact, and differences of interpretation exist in any field due to the nature of consciousness - it creates uniqueness- so your interpretation is slightly different to Prishon's, it is to be expected, and it arises at all levels of life.

so classical information theory does treat information stored in a system well, it's just within a context of transmission. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, I agree. It quantifies the information such that you can get a value out of it. A number.

Ultimately, information storage is physical configuration of state, therefore the physical configuration of a system has information irrespective of whether it was intended or transmitted. That physical state is (theoretically) completely encoded in the wavefunction (all of the information about that system), hence one can have a purely informational basis for physics. — Kenosha Kid

:up: Thanks for that. To simplify: The word I am currently typing is a form of the larger form of my thinking. So my form interacts with the form of the keyboard, which interacts with the form of the computer, which interacts with the form of the internet ( this way the information is stored and transmitted, but can be stored indefinitely ) which interacts with the form of your device which interacts with you to change your brain state ( form ) such that you have understanding of my thoughts.
In this view, Information is the interaction of form, Although we say the information is stored, it doesn't become information until it is interacted with - this is true for the device that stores it, as well as the end user.

To put it another way: Information has to have form - that is what we derive from the distinction of the blank sheet of paper and the scribble on it. The scribble makes its way to the end user mind through intermediary interactions - it is those interactions that determine what information is ultimately stored, not the storage of them?? ( Chinese whisper )

This way of understanding information explains the double slit experiment. The interaction of the measurement device collapses the wave, so the information stored is a point particle?

The hand of God(s)? — Prishon

The hand of God. The Anthropic principle. The basis of self organization. Natural Law. The forces we feel at our center all seem to be linked? Different words for the same stuff maybe?

Or, at heart, you and me are the same, just different information :smile: — Pop

Different interaction, too; and form...

Different to some extent in quality and energy for any interaction we might have. Same logical relation, though.

Everything that manifests itself does so in relation to something - I think we need to at least entertain this possibility by Rovelli that the substrate of existence is simply relational. But is this just a case of quantum-mechanical self-awareness? Prior to anything even possibly existing, one might imagine that energy, quality and logic were at least eternally possible in relation, if nothing else.

To understand these three terms, we need to get to the ineffably absolute, infinite ideals they represent.

Logic is commonly defined as ‘a proper or reasonable way of thinking about something’. But what is logic when no one is thinking? Strip away all the assumptions, and logic is the idea of absolute interconnectedness: inspiring the possibility of perfectly true relation, free of inaccuracy. Technically, it’s a mere possibility - impossible in itself, because any potentiality exists only as relation ...to something else. Yet logic - The Way - is clearly fundamental.

QM determines that energy is fundamental, and exists as an assumed potentiality. Energy originally meant ‘an internal source of work’. It refers to the idea of infinite flux: inspiring the possibility of this ultimate source of work, free of limitation. This is also a mere possibility/impossibility in itself - it is describable as potentiality in a true (logical) relation, while also constraining the accuracy of that logic to some extent. And energy’s potentiality is limited, in turn, by QM as an imperfect logic.

QM also assumes that - for all intents and purposes - potential energy has the same value across the board. But most acknowledge that this is incomplete as a description of reality. It works because we, as observers, exist to interpret the calculations as action - to distribute energy as attention and effort. Something is still fundamentally missing when we replace humans with computerised action, even when they surpass us in terms of technical accuracy.

What’s missing from this described relation is quality: from the original Latin qualis meaning ‘of what kind’. To clearly define it, though, we need to embody what is other than quality: this undifferentiated interconnectedness and flux. From this perspective, quality refers to the idea of value in diversity: inspiring the possibility of excellence by differentiation. When we assume reality as merely a relation of logic and energy, then we presume an observer of either infinite goodness or absolute indifference.

In my view, this triadic relation strives to explain the irreducibility beyond assumptions of potentiality/form/intentionality/mind/G*D evident in this thread. It can be found underlying the truth of most (if not all) spiritual, creative and scientific genius, from the Tao Te Ching to QM.

So how does this answer the question: what is information?

When we define information as ‘enabling the interaction of form’, we are assuming that potentiality/form/intentionality/mind/G*D already exists. This is the same gap that Peirce’s metaphysics had: that somehow this “completely undetermined and dimensionless potentiality” transitioned to a “determined potentiality” consisting of qualities that spontaneously self-actualise and then mutually interact to produce factual events. Why? Because of “the power of the human mind to originate ideas that are true”? or:

The hand of God. The Anthropic principle. The basis of self organization. Natural Law. The forces we feel at our center all seem to be linked? Different words for the same stuff maybe? — Pop

It is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency - something upon which our thinking has no effect. — C S Peirce

The aim of this alternative triadic relation has been to incorporate the ‘why’. Why does information change us? Because interconnectedness (logic), flux (energy) and diversity (quality) are fundamentally eternal and absolute possibilities. To ignore/isolate/exclude an aspect of these in our description of reality is to unavoidably embody this incompleteness in how we then relate or interact with reality, and how it interacts with us.

So in fact all men are equal but differently formed inormation structures? To put it in a highly abstract way.

The hand of God. The Anthropic principle. The basis of self organization. Natural Law. The forces we feel at our center all seem to be linked? Different words for the same stuff maybe? — Pop

I think you mention different things here. Natural law (Law) takes care of evolution. Not of initial conditions. The Anthropic Pribciple comes closer but doesnt explain the Natural law. The Hand of God takes care of both.Im not sure what you mean by the force we feel at our center. Is it sexual? Then yes. ;)

Everything that manifests itself does so in relation to something — Possibility

:up: In the distinction of one thing and another arises two distinct forms. Hence energy and information.

Logic is commonly defined as a proper or reasonable way of thinking about something. But what is logic — Possibility

Logic is the only way to understand something, via a structure of knowledge. The thing understood, is understood in terms of the already established understanding.

QM determines that energy is fundamental, — Possibility

How does it do this? would it be via information.


This is an intro to a free course:

Im not sure what you mean by the force we :rofl: at our center. Is it sexual? Then yes. — Prishon

:up: :rofl: :rofl: I was referring to emotions / feelings. I would understand evolution as the evolution of self organization.

So in fact all men are equal but differently formed inormation structures? To put it in a highly abstract way. — Prishon

I think so.

I was trying to think of something new about information that hasn't been covered and I remember doing a rough calculation of how many 'items of information' our brains process in a day.
I used published reading, speaking and typing rates as a basis but really my guess was 20000 to 80000 items per day. Maybe 20000 would be a slow day and 80000 would be a high stress day. I think these are in the ballpark numbers, you may have other ideas, but they seem to be large enough to accompish most tasks we may want to do. Of course this would be 20000 to 80000 items with specific information content so it's not analogous to bits or computer code. Any comments, suggestions or corrections?

:up: I have no idea of your methods, but it sounds interesting. I wonder if you can convert it to MB?
Human DNA has about 875mb of data, or 100 odd volumes of Encyclopedia Brittanicas worth. It would be interesting to compare.

We covered earlier how moments of consciousness can be 1- 400ms long, according to a couple of studies, and this equates to 25 - 35 moments of consciousness per second. This sounds about right, as in the old days movie movie reels used to run at about 25 frames per second, and we couldn't tell the difference between that and normal perception.

QM determines that energy is fundamental — Possibility

QM determines the evolution of mass. To include energy quantum field theory has to be involved, the 7 gauge fields (they INTERACTIONmediating fields) representing energy, like the photon field. Dont be awed by qft. Its very easy conceptually. The math is merely used to impress.

Energy is

So in fact all men are equal but differently formed inormation structures? To put it in a highly abstract way — Prishon

In fact a bee equals a people...