Provided superposition is common in the brain and elsewhere, the quantity of possible mechanisms available to perception is staggering. This could probably be a new scientific "field". What do you think? — Enrique
Do you have references or materials you can provide to support this theory? — TheQuestion
Yes. Einstein initiated the new paradigm of Quantum Theory, but as a realist, he resisted its idealist implications for years. He also resisted the new paradigm of cosmology that we call the Big Bang, because he believed the universe was revolving in place, hence eternal. However, I think he was open-minded enough that, if he was alive today, he would accept the preponderance of evidence supporting both of those new worldviews.Interesting how Einstein likened the substrate of general relativity to aether. Goes to show how much of a realist he was, — Enrique
"It From Bit" is indeed a counter-intuitive concept. But when you assemble the scrambled pieces of the Quantum puzzle, including the "Observer Effect", the whole picture will begin to make sense. The books you referred to will help you to accept the reification of Information. But, if you don't have time to peruse them all, I have reviews of several of them on my blog.Must admit that I don't yet understand why reifying information has become the standard. Seems strange that the concept of information is so liberally applied to physical structures which are not organized such that they have the capacity to interpret it."It from bit" makes no sense to me except from the perspective of a mathematical modeling that is specific to humanlike minds, but I'll have to check out the books you've recommended and then perhaps I will comprehend better. — Enrique
The Enformationism thesis is my amateur synopsis of another new paradigm : an "information theoretic" worldview. As one writer put it, this is another "Copernican Revolution" in perspective. But, we are still in the early stages of constructing a scientific model around the notion of Information as the fundamental basis of reality. Note that in the links below, it's still posed as a question, not a fact. — Gnomon
...seems to me that the value form is transitioning from labor to information, as you in essence begin to suggest. A single individual (or fleet of robots?) can create huge economic value using minimal amounts of traditional labor via the programming of computer systems with information in various forms. How this will radically change the structure of society remains to be seen...
...The change in value form isn't towards computers as analogous to the technologies that humans operated like machinery prior to the Information Age, but rather consists in the data itself encoded as abstract meaning within software and interfaces. The significance is that physically instantiated work is effectively excised in various ways from its role as focal point of social and economic organization, replaced by information as the engine that drives culture. This has all kinds of ramifications:
The economy can transform more rapidly, making job security vulnerable.
Citizens place less value on employment, giving rise to so-called welfare states.
Exploitative crimes by all classes are easier to commit, transitioning governments into police states with pockets of extremely antiestablishment community.
Demographics can be barred from civic participation via restricting access to information sources.
A majority of human jobs will be phased out by the next decade if automation increases uninhibited via legislation etc.
Communities become more impersonal because every interaction is mediated by software that utilizes remote interfaces.
Human psychology changes due to different forms of stimulation, primarily computer interfaces.
Citizens who have large amounts of access to information become much smarter, while those with restricted access are much less intellectual (but not necessarily less influential).
As computers become more sentient, social dynamics change in fundamental ways.
The huge proliferation of data makes it more possible to objectively track changing social and environmental conditions, but also extremely complex.
What we call information or facts are our subjective determinations and can easily sway one way or another to become mis-qualifications and mis-delineations. It makes little difference if information is retrieved by a person or a machine. Where work is characterized by a certain narrative that is partly a form of expressing a social contract through its form and content, information on the other hand is characterized by almost pure transparent content; once we start to doubt its underlying form it becomes unstable.
The lack of equivalency is exactly what I would focus on: information is a completely new core of culture that is displacing (not blending with) human work as the source of economic and social leverage.
So like you say, the value form as information becomes characterized by skepticism about the social contract, instability, impersonality, subjectivity, basically the postmodern perspective. Rather than being of huge influence, perhaps the seminal postmodernists were way ahead of their time.
This can be contrasted with labor as based around civic reasoning, self-interest, cooperation etc., the Enlightenment perspective which when synthesized with Hegelianism and evolutionary thinking gave rise to a theory of dialectical materialism...
...The nature of human relationships and thinking are changing dramatically. It might be a radical rupture with the past, of the type described by Foucault, that is unless media can sustain a strong cognizance of history.
I do see how money can be made from machines, but they don’t generate value to us in and for themselves...It makes me wonder why there exists this impulse to destroy certain jobs. More often than not the rationale is that it is one job being traded off to create other jobs though usually there is no real measure of these created jobs at hand. It seems unreasonable for individuals seek to lose money by paying more workers when they already pay less, so these new jobs must come as a result of increased overall activity. However, with that activity comes less overall human physical work as more and more of this is automated; and that work is traditionally done by the working class.
It's not the machines utilized in making money that are changing society, it's how every transaction or social interaction is encoded as information in order to be processed, worked with, so that civilization revolves around the psychology of information that you aptly summarized. Perhaps it is a case where economic value loses some of its natural psychological value, so that business is divorced of meaning. Without the meaning that labor as value form attaches to economy, atrocious events can take place, such as rapidly driving the majority of jobs out of existence without reconstituting social organization so that citizens can live securely while lacking employment.
Hypothetically, freeing a large segment of the population from coerced work could result in self-empowered actualization of the human race, but instead dialectical materialism runs its course absent much rational intervention by humans and the system changes as usual through arational upheavals, which are becoming more difficult (but perhaps not impossible) to navigate as even well-educated intellectual capabilities are stretched to the limit while we struggle to theorize these developments. Perhaps if we recognize and seek to understand it we can change it.
As I see it, the existential impact of 21st century Science is 1> to reopen the God-question, that was a closed book since the Enlightenment rejection of biblical authority, 2> to reassess the role of Consciousness in a world of thinking machines, and 3> to undermine the classical physics of Atomism & Materialism. First, the Big Bang theory slammed the door on assumptions of a self-existent world, with no role for a Creator. Then, Information theory called into question the role of humanity as the dominant thinkers of the world. And finally, the replacement of material particles with ethereal Quantum Fields, as the fundamental substance of Reality, pulls the rug from under the classical Physical paradigm of "what you see is all there is".But "it from bit", which he claims as reduction to a "yes and no" interrogation of existence seems manifestly superficial and even pernicious. — Enrique
I have given it some considerable thought. And my Enformationism website was a first step in the direction of constructing a new paradigm upon the ashes of the old. But I'm not the only one involved in this Copernican Revolution. The webpage and the blog have links to many books and organizations that are on the forefront of this emerging worldview. However, I don't expect my puny personal efforts to have much impact on cultural evolution. Only if & when these new ideas catch-on among philosophers and scientists though, will it have a chance for widespread effects around the world.How is a philosophy of information theory going to be integrated into cultural evolution as the predominant paradigm while meeting these challenges? Perhaps you can give this some informed thought. — Enrique
First educate yourself. Then spread the word. Then do what you can do. Unfortunately, at the moment, this is an abstruse intellectual worldview, and it will take time for it to trickle-down, so to speak, to the common folk. And I don't expect to live to see Materialsm and Spiritualism replaced by Enformationism. :cool: .What to do about all of this? — Enrique
Here's a blog post to address the notion of "The God of Science", from the perspective of the Enformationism thesis. :smile:That science has a role in addressing the significance for humanity of what we call God is an interesting proposal. — Enrique
in my thesis that fundamental Substance is more like Energy than Matter. And it's equivalent to Aristotle's definition of abstract "substance" (Ousia), which is what we now call "Essence" or "Potential". For Kant, it was "ding an sich". Those were all logical conjectures, to explain the emergence of new forms from old fhings.I agree with you that matter and mind arise from the same basic substance and knowledge in these domains is mutually reinforcing: they expand together. — Enrique
Me too. When I first started investigating the ubiquitous role of Information in the world, I tried to avoid using the "G" word to describe the logically necessary Enformer behind the Big Bang beginning. But, eventually I gave in to the fact that most cultures are generally agreed on a few essential properties of their "god" models, even as they diverge on specifics : primarily creation of the world, or Ground of Being. And philosophical deities -- such as Brahma, Tao, and Great Spirit -- are more like intellectual Principles than humanoid supermen.I know some get into the "rich" symbolic undertones of religion, but I'm pragmatic and not much mystical (though like most I do get inspired), so not what I think about. — Enrique
what the ancients called "Nature Spirits", causing things to move and change, is better understood as the work of invisible Energy. But, the Enformationism thesis notes that the combination of Quantum and Information theories have concluded that Matter is a tangible form of Energy, and Energy is a causal form of Information. — Gnomon
In general, that sounds like a description of an ineffable god : immaterial, eternal, infinite, omniscient, etc. And such reasoning is how I came to conclude that a non-dimensional (un-measurable) Cosmic Enformer is necessary to explain why & how our 3D universe suddenly emerged from nowhere. That Creative Principle is indeed beyond the purview of our physical Science, but not inaccessible to philosophical reasoning. As a Meta-Physical (outside the contingent universe) entity, the Creator can only be understood in terms of Generic Information. :nerd:Because it is omnipresently aware, it has no need to learn in a way comparable to humanity's and certainly no need to write. . . . . so that as consciousness theory advances we might have to increasingly come to terms with a dimension of existence residing beyond the purview of information. — Enrique
I suppose the next few generations will use the Information Paradigm in the same way humans have always incorporated a novel technical worldview : by making a Religion out of it. It seems to be human nature to worship or fear whatever is beyond common understanding. So, I'm not making any prophecies or promises. :smile:How is an infocentric, technocultural paradigm going to approach this in the advent that it proves vital to constructing an accurate model of the world and perhaps humanity's prospects? — Enrique
I suppose the next few generations will use the Information Paradigm in the same way humans have always incorporated a novel technical worldview : by making a Religion out of it. It seems to be human nature to worship or fear whatever is beyond common understanding. So, I'm not making any prophecies or promises. — Gnomon
I had read Johnjoe McFadden's book, Quantum Information, several years ago. So, I was vaguely aware of CEMI before I came across this thread. However, I just found a PDF of an article by JJMcF, that I had set-aside on my PC desktop a few years ago. So, now I am better able to comment on his "CEMI theory", and on your "Coherence Field" concept. Both seem to be correlates of Tononi's "IIT theory", and assume that an essential feature of Consciousness is "coherence", unity, integration, feedback loops, interconnection, synchronicity, wholeness, and Monism. (i.e. single-mindedness).CEMI (Conscious Electromagnetic Information) theory claims that synchronous neuron firing generates strong electromagnetic fields which build up such that even further neurons are activated via an amplifying feedback loop. Upon reaching a sufficiently robust level within relatively large regions of the brain, EM fields can graduate to CEMI fields, integrating brain matter into the substance of fully conscious awareness. . . .
The following is my similar "coherence field" theory: — Enrique
In the article noted in my previous post, McFadden says : "Consciousness is a product of evolution and, as such, it has a role to play in our survival. What is that role? The most obvious answer may be the right one – we are aware because we then have the power to change our actions. Consciousness endows us with free will". Since human C evolved by the trial & error process of Evolution, perhaps Evolutionary Algorithms are our best bet for cultivating Awareness in artificial Minds.I'm not much of a propheteer either lol I'll just say I think specialized AI, algorithms programmed for specific analytical tasks, are an invaluable tool, but I'm quite frankly afraid of generalized AI, — Enrique
"However, all electrical circuits – and that’s basically all neurones -- generate an associated
energy field, known as an electromagnetic field or em field. This field contains precisely the
same information as the circuitry that generated it." - Johnjoe McFadden — Gnomon
Electro-Magnetism is just one of many ghostly field theories : e.g. Classical, Quantum, Statistical, Gravitational. So what qualifies photon or electron dynamics to produce Consciousness? Do they have some Mental Property that is expressed as Awareness and Self-Consiousness only a high levels of complexity and concentration? Is that latent power a physical or meta-physical property? The inherent "mental property" in physics is what I call "EnFormAction" (causal Information). :chin:What I've discussed so far seems to be based on electromagnetism. . . . . Consciousness explained? — Enrique
I was impressed by Deacon's insights & explanations, and have incorporated some of his ideas & analogies in my blog posts. For example, I refer to Causation in the real world (Energy) as a product of the "power to create novelty". Which is what I also call EnFormAction. :smile:By the way, I gave that book by Deacon a look, seems epic! My first impression is that his concept of absentia simply refers to the predictive capabilities in different arrays of matter and won't provide a unified framework of formal/final causality, but he could have evidence that disproves my intuitions. No doubt an awesome read! — Enrique
Physical Fields as mental constructs... — Gnomon
Electro-Magnetism is just one of many ghostly field theories : e.g. Classical, Quantum, Statistical, Gravitational. So what qualifies photon or electron dynamics to produce Consciousness? Do they have some Mental Property that is expressed as Awareness and Self-Consiousness only a high levels of complexity and concentration? Is that latent power a physical or meta-physical property? — Gnomon
Rupert Sheldrake theorized that Biological Life is characterized by a Morphogenetic (form creating) Field. — Gnomon
EnFormAction is not a physical force, pushing objects around. It’s more like Gravity and Strange Attractors of Physics that “pull” stuff toward them. It is in effect a Teleological Attractor. How that “spooky action at a distance” works may be best explained by Terrence Deacon’s definition of “Absence”. — Gnomon
Those phd's do indeed treat their mathematical fields as-if they are real. But they are "physical" only in the sense that physicists use those statistical models to predict physical behavior. But the ideal points that represent particles are mathematically defined, not detected empirically. So, those hypothetical fields are not "contested" any more than "virtual particles" are contested. But, if you will Google "are quantum fields real?" you will see that some thinkers still worry that ideal "mental constructs", while theoretically useful, are not actually real things, hence un-verifiable and un-falsifiable. Empirical scientists and theoretical philosophers tend to have different standards for what is Real (material), and what is Ideal (mental).. :nerd:I didn't realize the question of whether or not a field is physical remains contested by some of the most accomplished Ph.d's in the world! — Enrique
Is that "infusion" another kind of physical field or a "nonelectromagnetic" mental "field"? Mental (mathematical) fields can't be detected with EM instruments. But they can be inferred by rational methods. BTW, if the EM field of a brain constitutes the mind, according to CEMI theory, does the EM field of the heart also produce a mind? Some fringe scientists believe so, and propose heart-brain coherence as a therapy. That may be possible, but it's not a mainstream idea. :cool:Looking at it from my realist perspective, I think organic bodies are probably infused with nonelectromagnetic substances that instrumentation has not yet been designed to register. — Enrique
The general notion of a morphogenetic field (MGF) makes sense to me. But, like other Mental fields, it remains undetectable by conventional electromagnetic methods. For my philosophical purposes, I simply place the MGF under the broad heading of an Information Field : not physically detectable, but rationally inferable. However, I don't mean that Reason is a form of ESP, in a paranormal sense.. :wink:I also think phenomena akin to a morphogenetic field exist, — Enrique
I agree. :smile:Absence as causal factor is a powerful idea. — Enrique
But the ideal points that represent particles are mathematically defined, not detected empirically. So, those hypothetical fields are not "contested" any more than "virtual particles" are contested. But, if you will Google "are quantum fields real?" you will see that some thinkers still worry that ideal "mental constructs", while theoretically useful, are not actually real things, hence un-verifiable and un-falsifiable. — Gnomon
if the EM field of a brain constitutes the mind, according to CEMI theory, does the EM field of the heart also produce a mind? Some fringe scientists believe so, and propose heart-brain coherence as a therapy. That may be possible, but it's not a mainstream idea — Gnomon
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