Would Mary learn something new when she saw red if Mary were God? — Hanover

I think the more appropriate question is, does God learn something new if Mary sees red. It appears necessary that God must learn something new every time a person learns something new, because God must learn that the person has learned.

This is similar to the problem Augustine addressed concerning the apparent contradiction between a human being's free will, and God's omniscience. Simply put, the idea of an omniscient God appears to imply determinism. Yet human experience appears to justify "free will". I don't think that Augustine came up with a satisfactory answer to this problem, only suggesting that the nature of time is very difficult for us to understand. And I think that's the lesson we ought to learn from problems like this, that we do not have a very good understanding of time.

This is why "experience" is such an important part of knowledge. We can make all sorts of speculations, hypotheses, and theories about the nature of time, but the only way to actually understand the passing of time is by analyzing one's own experience. This is the aspect of knowledge which is provided by experience, which cannot be derived from any other principles, the role of time.

The crux of my disagreement is that you make order synonymous with simplicity
— Hanover

It's not my theory. It's Shannon's. — unenlightened

Where you say "Maximal order is minimal total information," it implies information is an element within a system as opposed to an element within a person's understanding. A more correct statement is that maximum order has a maximum level of predictability and therefore requires fewer binary bits of questions to accurately predict outcome, and thus demands less information. That is, the higher the entropy level, the less predictable the next result, therefore a person is less informed of what will happen next based upon the information he has?

It's not that ordered systems are composed of less underlying causes or actions than an entropic one. It's that entropic ones just require more information to predict results of that system.

This is where I think we're disagreeing, which was in what I took (perhaps mistakenly ??) to be meant by your term "simple," as if something inherent in the composition of ordered systems was less dynamic than in entropic ones.

I think it would be accurate to say that an observation of a chaotic event would yield less information to the observer in terms of what is needed for accurate predictability than an ordered one, not vice versa.

This discussion of entropy therefore doesn't lend itself to the evolutionary debate as I think you suggest, which I took to be that evolution was just another iteration of law of entropy in that it revealed more complex systems from simpler ones.

My position is that complexity in evolutionary biology references the organism's higher levels of organization from a functional level and employs concepts like "organization" and "complexity" quite differently. We would not say a human is more complex than an amoeba because the human is more entropic.

I think the more appropriate question is, does God learn something new if Mary sees red. It appears necessary that God must learn something new every time a person learns something new, because God must learn that the person has learned. — Metaphysician Undercover

This only works if free will is knowledge itself, but I don't think God can't know everything, including what is not known by any person currently. That is, God wouldn't necessarily know if Mary was ever going to choose to step outside and see red under your argument, assuming that was purely a function of her free will, but he would know what Mary will learn upon seeing red, even if Mary never does see red.

God could know the result of every unrealized hypothetical, though. He just couldn't know which choice we're going to make if you believe pre-knowledge entails determinism and therefore negates free will.

I don't see the critical problem of free will to be how we can make it compatible with omniscience (which is really the free will/determinism debate recast), but how it makes sense at all as an uncaused cause. I also don't see how it makes sense to say we don't have free will either, so I just hold it fundamental to the understanding, like time and space.

...I can really see how eyes might roll at this presentation - particularly its bankrolling by the Templeton Foundation. — Wayfarer

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-money-behind-the-climate-denial-movement-180948204/

Disappointing but not entirely surprising, regrettably. Although note the caveat “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”

Nothing is meaningful to a computer, though. You could program the computer to register any combination of pixels as a representation, but that would require an intentional act on the part of the programmer. — Wayfarer

Yes.computers manipulate information; we provide the meaning. The billionth decimal iteration of pi has a value between 0 and 9, and it means nothing to me, but it is a piece of information.

Conversely there is an elaborate machine that generates completely meaningless random numbers with balls being stirred by paddles called a lottery machine: a bunch of completely random numbers that becomes life transforming for the lucky winner. We supply the meaning, the machine the information

Like, if you wanted to encode and transmit white noise, you couldn’t do it, because it would be computationally irreducible, — Wayfarer

Exactly so. total disorder = maximal information.
Order = redundancy.

Now when it is a matter of communication, such wot us is doin' 'ere. sum dundency is agoodthing, cos my mean ing will be 'stood even iv i mean lots of mystics. If a single typo or grammatical error destroyed the entire communication of a post, this forum would be much much quieter.

As anyone will know, I’m fiercely opposed to physicalist reductionism, but for some reason this paper doesn’t ring true for me — Wayfarer

We are of one mind here. I was disappointed. There seemed to be nothing new at all and just this equivocation between meaning and information that actually reduced life to mere physical phenomena like whirlpools.

By contrast, Bateson equates life and mind with meaning and clearly distinguishes meaning, a difference that makes a difference (to an organism) from mere information such as what one hopes to forget as soon as the exams are over.

I have just posted his totally definitive take-down of the fundamentals of behaviourism— a joy! Fear-not, @Wayfarer, Bateson and I are on your side, and Bateson is a very special and deep thinker.

God could know the result of every unrealized hypothetical, though. He just couldn't know which choice we're going to make if you believe pre-knowledge entails determinism and therefore negates free will. — Hanover

That necessitates a division between thinking and choosing. It's part of the reasoning which led Augustine to propose a three part intellect, memory, reason, and will. The will, as "choice" in your example, does not necessarily follow the thought in a cause/effect manner. So the result of a thought cannot be said to be the choice, as there is a separation between these two which allows the choice to be inconsistent with the reasoning.

It really doesn't solve the problem though, because if the choice does not follow directly from the reasoning, as necessitated by the reasoning, then it must be "caused" by something else. If God knows everything, then God must know what that other cause is, or will be, prior to it occurring, and this entails determinism.

If the will is truly free, and God does not know the choice which will be made, prior to it being made, then the choice is caused by something which God does not know. This prevents the possibility of God knowing everything. To maintain this premise, that God does know everything, we'd have to allow that the choice is not caused. This would imply random uncaused actions. That's how I interpret what you say here, that freely willed choices are not known by God, who knows everything knowable, therefore they are unknowable, as completely random, uncaused actions. Or would you propose another category of actions which are unknowable to God who knows everything, but in some way still caused. The cause would be outside the realm of "everything".

Kudos on your review of possibilities.

I'd add a few observations.

First, as metaphysical entities gods to my view can in fact "know" the outcome of random events (which, of course are unknowable to physical entities like humans and computers). For example being able to fool gods with card tricks and coin flips is considered ludicrous to theists and most atheists.

Secondly, humans clearly have a robust ability to make quick decisions in cases with equal supporting data for each choice, or no data whatsoever. This is commonly glossed over by Determinists. Thus there clearly is a separate process from that of memory and reasoning. Whether this is called Will or randomness or whathaveyou doesn't matter but it does explain why to my way of thinking, antecedent state X can lead to multiple possible resultant states, ie Y and Z.

Maximal order is minimal total information — unenlightened
How does that follow? Information is ordered, isn't it? — Wayfarer

I suspect that 's black vs white terminology is giving you problems. Apparently, what he means by "order" is absolute perfect order as contrasted with absolute "disorder". Both of those states provide zero information. For example, on a computer screen, total randomness of pixels (uniform gray) is meaningless. But total order, such as all black or all white, is also meaningless. Hence, useful information requires some degree of distinction (contrast) in order to make a meaningful "difference" to an observer.

Mathematically, Information is defined in terms of Entropy because it's a relative measure in between the ideal extremes of absolute Black or White. In reality, we seldom encounter such unqualified perfection. So, his assertion that "maximal order is minimal total information" sounds counter-intuitive. And the association of Information with Entropy sounds like a negative definition. As von Neumann said : "no one understands entropy". The human mind is not a digital computer (1/0). So, for our meat brains, "meaning" is relative & analog (1/37). :smile:

Entropy and disorder also have associations with equilibrium. Technically, entropy, from this perspective, is defined as a thermodynamic property which serves as a measure of how close a system is to equilibrium—that is, to perfect internal disorder. Likewise, the value of the entropy of a distribution of atoms and molecules in a thermodynamic system is a measure of the disorder in the arrangements of its particles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(order_and_disorder)

For example being able to fool gods with card tricks and coin flips is considered ludicrous to theists and most atheists. — LuckyR

OK, suppose a god can know the result of a proposed coin toss prior to the toss occurring. How would this type of knowledge work if there is no reasonable explanation why one result is favoured over the other? If the result is truly random chance, there could be no explanation, so the god would be just guessing. If the god really knows then there must be a reason which validates that knowledge, and it is not random chance.

Or, are you proposing that the god knows the outcome through some other means, perhaps by actually having observational capacity in the future, while existing at the present? So the god, at the present, would know the future outcome by observing it before it actually happens for us, at the present. But wouldn't this just be determinism, if future acts, which are dependent on present choices, can be observed by God, before they are chosen by the person at the present?

Did you notice the origin of the link between information and entropy that I provided above? In Shannon’s information theory, the term “entropy” is used in a different sense compared to its use in thermodynamics, though there is a conceptual link between the two. Shannon adopted the term with the encouragement of the mathematician John von Neumann because of the mathematical similarities between his formula for information entropy and the thermodynamic entropy equation.

In the context of information theory, entropy represents the amount of uncertainty or information content in a message, rather than the loss or absence of information per se. It quantifies the average amount of information produced by a stochastic source of data, or in other words, the potential information that might be received from a signal. The higher the entropy, the more information the message potentially contains because it is less predictable.

When a signal is transmitted, information theory also considers the concept of “channel capacity,” which is the maximum amount of information that can be reliably transmitted over a channel. If the information transmitted has a higher entropy than the channel capacity, there can be a loss of information due to the need for compression or due to errors in transmission, which is often measured by another concept known as “mutual information.”

So in Shannon’s framework, entropy isn’t about the loss of information per se, but rather a measure of the amount of information and unpredictability in a message before it’s transmitted. The loss of information in the process of transmission due to various factors (like noise in the channel) is dealt with separately within the theory.

But caution is indeed required when comparing the concept of entropy in information theory with its use in thermodynamics or other contexts (let alone in this context where it is being discussed in a philosophical sense as a measure of the overall information content of a given system). While both concepts deal with a statistical measure of disorder or unpredictability, the implications and applications of entropy in these fields are quite different:

- In thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of the disorder of a physical system, with higher entropy indicating more disorder and lower energy availability for doing work. It's a fundamental concept that helps explain the direction of spontaneous processes and the flow of heat.

- In information theory, entropy measures the uncertainty or the average information content in a message. It's a concept that helps in understanding communication systems, coding, and data compression. High entropy in this context means the source emits a very unpredictable signal, which can carry a lot of information.

- In the context of the article which is subject of the OP, there is also the concept of ‘information density’ as a measure of the increased complexity (and therefore development) of various kinds of systems both organic and inorganic. It is in that context that I was arguing that higher degrees of order implies lower entropy (as information is necessarily ordered). I think it’s in that context that living systems have been described as ‘negentropic’.

These different uses of the term "entropy" rely on the underlying mathematics of probability and statistics, but they should not be conflated without careful consideration of the context in which they're being applied. (Tip of the hat to ChatGPT for help with this summary.)

I suppose, from a philosophical perspective, a critique of reductionism needs to be much simpler than trying to prove a kind of ‘law of increasing complexity’ operating throughout the Universe. — Wayfarer

If the formation of galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets results from small fluctuations or irregularities in the very simple CMB, and the formation of more complex elements subsequently results from supernovae, should we not expect an increase of complexity over time?

Not as a result of pre-existing "laws" but from the unfolding of the potential inherent in the simple elements that is enabled by the chance evolutionary inception of suitable conditions. This would seem to be in keeping with Peirce's "tychism".

In the context of information theory, entropy represents the amount of uncertainty or information content in a message, rather than the loss or absence of information per se. . . . .
Did you notice the origin of the link between information and entropy that I provided above? In Shannon’s information theory, the term “entropy” is used in a different sense compared to its use in thermodynamics, though there is a conceptual link between the two. — Wayfarer

I didn't see the post you refer to until after I made my own post regarding your previous exchange with *1. I inferred that he was talking about the extreme brackets within which relative-minded humans are able to detect meaningful information. But that uncertain contingency is not how natural laws are typically defined, hence his doubt that the topical hypothesis qualifies as a "law". So, I shared his skepticism, but on different grounds.

Thermodynamics doesn't deal with Uncertainty, but merely the normal range of temperatures between Planck Heat & Absolute Zero. Yet, Information was defined in terms of a relative position between absolute Certainty and absolute Ignorance. Both mathematically idealized thermal states are devoid of "Difference", being All or Nothing. Anything outside that natural range would be super-naturally Certain.

As usual, your post above is an excellent summary of a subtle distinction : the relative "Difference that makes a Difference" in meaning to an analog mind. By contrast, Unenlightened seemed to focus on a mathematical definition of Entropy instead of a mental meaning. So, I commented on his example of "temporary order" that can be found within a general state of Chaos. That's the feature of Natural Evolution which allows bits of random Freedom within Determinism, making room for organized Life in a mostly random universe of dead matter. Life is always "temporary"& impermanent, hence easy to snuff out. However, since that concept is controversial & complex, I didn't go off-topic to pursue it.

I also didn't mention the potential for bias that might influence the Templeton Foundation in its support for this thesis. But over several years, I have not found signs of its support for any particular religious doctrine. If anything, the foundation seems to lean toward philosophical interpretations of scientific evidence. Hence it tends to contribute to scientific research on the margins of doctrinal Materialism ; not necessarily religious dogma. For example the Santa Fe Institute for the study of Complexity is necessarily Holistic instead of Reductive. On the other hand, for some on this forum, any deviation from Classical Determinism is suspect. :smile:


*1. What I fail to understand at bottom is how this new principle or law or whatever it is is something other than the law of entropy. Energy dissipates, disorder/information increases. this allows that life, or a hurricane can produce temporary order that functions to increase total entropy. — unenlightened

Not as a result of pre-existing "laws" but from the unfolding of the potential inherent in the simple elements that is enabled by the chance evolutionary inception of suitable conditions. — Janus

But that’s where the cosmological constants and fine-tuned universe arguments come into play - Martin Rees' 'six numbers'. They themselves might not amount to laws, but they're constraints in the absence of which nothing would exist (see also 'naturalness problem').

I also didn't mention the potential for bias that might influence the Templeton Foundation in its support for this thesis. But over several years, I have not found signs of its support for any particular religious doctrine. If anything, the foundation seems to lean toward philosophical interpretations of scientific evidence. — Gnomon

I've been aware of Templeton for years, I've often read works by and about Templeton Prize winners, including Paul Davies, Bernard D'Espagnat and others. I think they do attempt to be objective but their attempt to connect science and spirituality makes a lot of people suspicious. (That saying 'the hermeneutics of suspicion' seems apt. There was a link provided above purporting to show their financial support of climate-change denial organisations, but the evidence doesn't seem clear-cut to me.)

. What I fail to understand at bottom is how this new principle or law or whatever it is is something other than the law of entropy. Energy dissipates, disorder/information increases. — Gnomon

From what's been said above, that doesn't necessarily follow at all. There's a very interesting Wikipedia article on Entropy and Life, which talks about this. I think the key idea is that organisms are able to utilise and channel available energy to create greater degrees of order in the form of (drum roll) information, namely, DNA. But I don't think that 'energy dissipates therefore information increases' follows from that. In the non-living universe - from what we know the vast majority of the cosmos - there's no such 'increase in information' at all. Only occurs when organisms enter the picture, and why that should be still remains an open question, doesn't it? ('Warm little pond', anyone?)

@apokrisis ....if you're around, this thread could really use some input from you....

But that’s where the cosmological constants and fine-tuned universe arguments come into play - Martin Rees' 'six numbers'. They themselves might not amount to laws, but they're constraints in the absence of which nothing would exist... — Wayfarer

No, not constraints in the absence of which nothing would exist. Something would exist, we just wouldn't be a part of what exists.

No, not constraints in the absence of which nothing would exist. — wonderer1

Not according to the book cited, Just Six Numbers, Martin Rees, the UK's astronomer royal (and 2011 Templeton Prize winner, as it happens.) Were any of the six fundamental constraints different in very small ways, matter would not form, 'the universe' would comprise plasma or something. Review here.

Were any of the six fundamental constraints different in very small ways, matter would not form, 'the universe' would comprise plasma or something. — Wayfarer

Plasma or something is not nothing.

But that’s where the cosmological constants and fine-tuned universe arguments come into play - Martin Rees' 'six numbers'. They themselves might not amount to laws, but they're constraints in the absence of which nothing would exist (see also 'naturalness problem'). — Wayfarer

However unlikely it might seem that all the cosmological constants just happen to line up such as to allow things to exist. looking at it from the other way around, we would not be here to talk about it if they had not lined up.

The other point is that those constants and their estimated statistical likelihood may just represent human understanding and may not correspond to anything real beyond that. How can we assess the statistical likelihood of things from within the very system that purportedly depends on those very things?

What is your favoured implication; that these constants were somehow established from "outside" of the universe prior to its existence? How could we ever establish that, and even if we could, what implications could it have for life, for our lives?

Were any of the six fundamental constraints different in very small ways, matter would not form, 'the universe' would comprise plasma or something. Review here — Wayfarer

It also pays to remember that this is inference or conjecture, not established fact.

Plasma or something is not nothing. — wonderer1

damn close. No stars, matter or living beings, and certainly nobody to converse about it with.

The other point is that those constants and their estimated statistical likelihood may just represent human understanding and may not correspond to anything real beyond that. — Janus

Your relativism is showing again. Have you no faith in science :brow: ?

What is your favoured implication; that these constants were somehow established from "outside" of the universe prior to its existence? — Janus

It's that naturalism doesn't go 'all the way down'. Naturalism starts with the empirical facts, and discerns causal relationships that give rise to them. But when it comes to such questions as the origin of the cosmic constraints, naturalism can't make such assumptions, because at the point of the singularity all laws break down. What that is taken to mean is then up for debate - natural theology is inclined to argue that the laws are pre-ordained by God. But then Martin Rees, in his book Just Six Numbers, never would make such an argument. He says elsewhere:

I was brought up as a member of the Church of England and simply follow the customs of my tribe. The church is part of my culture; I like the rituals and the music. If I had grown up in Iraq, I would go to a mosque… It seems to me that people who attack religion don’t really understand it. Science and religion can coexist peacefully — although I don’t think they have much to say to each other. What I would like best would be for scientists not even to use the word “God.” … Fundamental physics shows how hard it is for us to grasp even the simplest things in the world. That makes you quite skeptical whenever someone declares he has the key to some deeper reality… I know that we don’t yet even understand the hydrogen atom — so how could I believe in dogmas? I’m a practicing Christian, but not a believing one. — Martin Rees

Me, I'm inclined to a traditionalist view of the 'harmony of the Cosmos'. Call me a romantic but I think it's part of my cultural heritage, and one that I'm not at all wanting to be rid of.

Your relativism is showing again. Have you no faith in science :brow: ? — Wayfarer

This is basic Kant. The observational part of science shows us how phenomena manifest and quantifies, measures and explicates its qualities. The abductive phase creatively imagines hypotheses which either can or cannot be tested. The constants may tell us what is required for matter and life as we understand it (as it appears to us) to exist. That is all it tells us, it doesn't tell us that nothing at all beyond plasma could possibility exist outside of those parameters. How much faith do you have in science? You can't have it both ways.

It's that naturalism doesn't go 'all the way down'. Naturalism starts with the empirical facts, and discerns causal relationships that give rise to them. But when it comes to such questions as the origin of the cosmic constraints, naturalism can't make such assumptions, because at the point of the singularity all laws break down. What that is taken to mean is then up for debate - natural theology is inclined to argue that the laws are pre-ordained by God. But then Martin Rees, in his book Just Six Numbers, never would make such an argument. He says elsewhere:

I was brought up as a member of the Church of England and simply follow the customs of my tribe. The church is part of my culture; I like the rituals and the music. If I had grown up in Iraq, I would go to a mosque… It seems to me that people who attack religion don’t really understand it. Science and religion can coexist peacefully — although I don’t think they have much to say to each other. What I would like best would be for scientists not even to use the word “God.” … Fundamental physics shows how hard it is for us to grasp even the simplest things in the world. That makes you quite skeptical whenever someone declares he has the key to some deeper reality… I know that we don’t yet even understand the hydrogen atom — so how could I believe in dogmas? I’m a practicing Christian, but not a believing one. — Wayfarer

Causal relationships are not discerned but inferred as I understand it. To my way of thinking the (hypothetical) breakdown of physical laws at the (hypothetical) singularity is an inference, a theory, not a fact, and given that we accept it there is no way to even begin to decide what that means, so I don't see it as a matter of debate at all. If we want to believe in some speculatively imagined "pre-singularity" scenario, then it becomes entirely a matter of faith. The closest thing we have that is mathematically supported at least is the 'many worlds' or 'many universes' theory. God is another theory which is not mathematically supported. Can you think of any others?

Rees comes across to me as a Christian apologist who wants to make his claims seem stronger by pretending that, although he practices Christianity, he doesn't really believe in it. Smells fishy to me! If we don't even understand even the hydrogen atom, then how could we know that no existence absent the constants would be possible?

Me, I'm inclined to a traditionalist view of the 'harmony of the Cosmos'. Call me a romantic but I think it's part of my cultural heritage, and one that I'm not at all wanting to be rid of. — Wayfarer

Fair enough, but that is a matter of faith, says more about you than the cosmos and is not something that can be coherently argued for. We know only the order that we interpret as such.

Or, are you proposing that the god knows the outcome through some other means, perhaps by actually having observational capacity in the future, while existing at the present? So the god, at the present, would know the future outcome by observing it before it actually happens for us, at the present. But wouldn't this just be determinism, if future acts, which are dependent on present choices, can be observed by God, before they are chosen by the person at the present?

Ah, you missed my reference to gods being metaphysical. I am not necessarily proposing any particular mechanism for the operations of gods because 1) being personally physical, I (and you, perhaps?) have no experience with the metaphysical and more importantly, it's inner workings and 2) I don't personally believe gods exist objectively (they do exist inter-subjectively).

Though I completely agree with your assessment of the potential situation, logically speaking.

I've been aware of Templeton for years, I've often read works by and about Templeton Prize winners, including Paul Davies, Bernard D'Espagnat and others. I think they do attempt to be objective but their attempt to connect science and spirituality makes a lot of people suspicious. (That saying 'the hermeneutics of suspicion' seems apt. There was a link provided above purporting to show their financial support of climate-change denial organisations, but the evidence doesn't seem clear-cut to me.) — Wayfarer

The mission statement below*1 does include "Theology" & "Philosophy", under the heading of Sciences and Scholarship. Also, "creativity, forgiveness, and free will" would disqualify their subjects from consideration, or to warrant "suspicion", by the Pro-Science / Anti-Religion posters on this forum.

But IMHO, that meta-physical subject matter shouldn't be disallowed on The Philosophy Forum. Their official mission is to promote "human flourishing", not promotion of any specific religious doctrine, as the Antis suspect. A more equal-opportunity posture toward Climate Change might include both Pro and Con research*2. :smile:

*1. What are the priorities of the Templeton Foundation?
We fund work on subjects ranging from black holes and evolution to creativity, forgiveness, and free will. We also encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, theologians, and the public at large. Our grantees produce field-leading scholarship across the sciences, theology, and philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life

*2. Templeton International Climate Change Fund :
An active approach to climate change investing. We favor companies providing low carbon solutions, companies transitioning to a low carbon economy and companies ...
https://www.franklintempleton.com › products › TICGX

What I fail to understand at bottom is how this new principle or law or whatever it is is something other than the law of entropy. Energy dissipates, disorder/information increases. —— unenlightened

Note --- The quote is from , not Gnomon. My response was to suggest an alternative role for Entropy in "information increase" : to include "energy dissipation" as a necessary investment in evolutionary progress. Hence, Information Increase follows from Energy expenditure, which increases Entropy. :cool:

. From what's been said above, that doesn't necessarily follow at all. There's a very interesting Wikipedia article on Entropy and Life*3, which talks about this. I think the key idea is that organisms are able to utilise and channel available energy to create greater degrees of order in the form of (drum roll) information, namely, DNA. But I don't think that 'energy dissipates therefore information increases' follows from that. In the non-living universe - from what we know the vast majority of the cosmos - there's no such 'increase in information' at all. Only occurs when organisms enter the picture, and why that should be still remains an open question, doesn't it? ('Warm little pond', anyone?) — Wayfarer

Yes. My post disagreed that information increase results from Entropy. Instead, "emergence of complex systems" such as Life, results from negative entropy, or EnFormAction*3, or Enformy*4 as postulated in my thesis --- perhaps to close Schrodinger's "open question". Even so, the role of Entropy (Energy dissipation) must be acknowledged as a hurdle for complex systems to overcome, in order for Information to increase.

Why Life & Mind could emerge within a cosmic system that was lifeless and mindless for 14 billion earth years remains an "open question" for reductive & materialistic Science. But, in a Holistic & Information-based world, the eventual emergence of Life & Mind, could be explained in terms of Enformationism*5. :nerd:

*3. Entropy and Life :
The 1944 book What is Life? by Nobel-laureate physicist Erwin Schrödinger stimulated further research in the field. In his book, Schrödinger originally stated that life feeds on negative entropy, or negentropy as it is sometimes called, but in a later edition corrected himself in response to complaints and stated that the true source is free energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life

*4. Enformy :
A quality of the universe modeled as a thermodynamic system. Energy always flows from Hot (high energy density) to Cold (low density) -- except when it doesn't. On rare occasions, energy lingers in a moderate state that we know as Matter, and sometimes even reveals new qualities and states of material stuff, such as Life. Enformy counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress.
The Second Law of Thermo-dynamics states that, in a closed system, Entropy always increases until it reaches equilibrium at a temperature of absolute zero. But some glitch in that system allows stable forms to emerge, that can recycle Free Energy in the form of qualities we call Life & Mind. That "glitch" is what I call Enformy.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

*5. Enformationism :
As a scientific paradigm, the thesis of Enformationism is intended to be an update to the obsolete 19th century paradigm of Materialism. Since the recent advent of Quantum Physics, the materiality of reality has been watered down. Now we know that matter is a form of energy, and that energy is a form of Information : EnFormAction --- A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. .
As a religious philosophy, the creative power of Enformationism is envisioned as a more realistic version of the antiquated religious notions of Spiritualism. Since our world had a beginning, it's hard to deny the concept of creation.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Be wary about trying to form intuitions with regard to whatever Shannon information means outside of the technical context in which it is used.

In daily life, information and knowledge are often used interchangeably as synonyms. However, in information science, they are used as antonyms: zero information means complete knowledge and thus zero ignorance while maximum information corresponds to minimum knowledge and thus maximum ignorance. — Yunus A. Çengel

Information here is a synonym for entropy.

Ah, you missed my reference to gods being metaphysical. I am not necessarily proposing any particular mechanism for the operations of gods because 1) being personally physical, I (and you, perhaps?) have no experience with the metaphysical and more importantly, it's inner workings and 2) I don't personally believe gods exist objectively (they do exist inter-subjectively). — LuckyR

I don't call myself a "metaphysician" for nothing. I think I have a lot of experience with the metaphysical.

Yes, the link between the semantics of words like "information" and the shannon formalism is vague at best. I think entropy is best characterized as uncertainty, not information. Maybe you can think of it as quantifying the capacity of an information source to send different messages. But to me, the concept of information makes sense best as the reduction of uncertainty i.e. reduction of entropy based on an observation, not dissimilar to the formal concept of mutual information. The concept of surprisal/self-information seems even more messy imo.

Okay, then why did you limit the options of gods to the logical?

I did not restrict the options of gods to the logical, because I was not talking about the options of gods. I was talking about the type of knowledge which a god could have, and the question of whether omniscience is compatible with free will. You seem to have jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that I was talking about the operations of gods, when I was just talking about the knowledge of gods. That is a distinction between an active god, and a passive god. I was talking about a passive god, who is supposed to be omniscient.

So, I restricted knowledge, knowing, to the reasonable because that is how we understand the nature of "knowledge". I said that if a god knows something, then there must be a reasonable explanation for the thing known by that god. I then classified a chance or random event as something without a reasonable explanation, and so I questioned how a god could "know" this type of event, according to how we understand "know".

I assumed that the only way to know such an event would be to observe it in its occurrence, because no other information could necessitate the logical conclusion of the event's occurrence. Therefore the event's occurrence could not be known in any other way. This creates a problem if we want to say that the god knows the event prior in time, to the event's occurrence. It implies that the god must be capable of observing the event, prior in time to the event's occurrence. And this appears to imply determinism.

I quickly found several other sites with references to a "missing law" to be added to Darwin's 4 or 5 "principles — Gnomon

A missing law to be added to Darwin's theory? Darwin's theory was made in 1859 and is outdated... Darwin didn't even know about genes, we've unraveled so many other mechanisms for evolution since then, such as genetic drift, gene flow, mutations,...

Nowadays you can't study evolution without genetics, so if a new law is made and doesn't necessarily require genes, it certainly can't be added to our current theory of evolution.

Now, from a rational point of view, the reason why we could build the theory of evolution is because living beings all have nucleic acids molecules (DNA, RNA), so in a way we somehow identified how these molecules behave in the environment, their properties. If we were to make an "evolutionary" theory for non living things, which molecules would we study, all of them?

What makes these molecules unique is replication, and then reproduction of the living beings. If an entity randomly generated laws that prevented it from destruction, in order to last longer, it has to reproduce and mutate to be able to adapt to changing environments. To my knowledge, there are no Non nucleic acids molecules having that property. Sometimes stable complex entity are formed, but without reproduction, they won't "survive" if the environment keeps changing. Crystals can grow but their property don't include reproducing, there is no "release" of baby crystals. It can happen if something breaks the crystal but it's not a property of the crystal itself. This is why living beings are able to "override" the law of entropy by being complex "stable" entities and why non living things are less complex.

I find it odd that the article doesn't discuss the importance of replication or reproduction since they're necessary for evolution.

It's not necessarily obvious that things must become more complex over time — flannel jesus

That's not what the theory says. "the functional information of a system will increase over time when subjected to selection for function(s)." There is a big WHEN. If it was true for everything, it would be in contradiction with the law of entropy.

I might be wrong but the way I understand it is: "the functional information of a system will increase over time when the environment around the system is favorable for that to happen".

I might be wrong but the way I understand it is: "the functional information of a system will increase over time when the environment around the system is favorable for that to happen". — Skalidris

That phrasing borders on tautological. "X will tend to happen in a system when the environment around that system is favourable for X". Replace x with literally just about anything and that sentence structure holds. Right?

That phrasing borders on tautological. "X will tend to happen in a system when the environment around that system is favourable for X". Replace x with literally just about anything and that sentence structure holds. Right? — flannel jesus

Yes absolutely! To me, what they call "selection" has nothing to do with evolutionary selection, they created similar words to state the obvious, unless of course, I'm missing something!