This is the point which I objected to in this thread. It is physically impossible to strip away the container from the information package, because then the information would be lost. Without the container, there is no information. So the container, which makes the existence of information possible is just as essential as the contents. There is no contents without a container. Therefore it must be accepted that the container is part of the information package. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that with no container, there is no information. But as I have previously stated, it does not follow that the container is an essential property of information, as it could simply be the cause to its existence. Or to use Aristotle's language, the container could be the efficient cause of information, not necessarily its formal cause. And I claim the efficient cause is the correct one, because I can acquire the same information from different containers which have no properties in common. E.g. obtaining info from a purely visual media like a book, or purely audio media like an audiobook.

Furthermore, we can prove that a container is not essential to information because we can imagine information being acquired directly through telepathy. The fact that we can imagine a thing proves that it is logically possible. And if logically possible, then a container is not an essential property of information.

I have an interesting book by Thomas McEvilly, The Shape of Ancient Thought, which is a cross-cultural comparison between ancient Inndian and Greek philosophy. In the introduction, he says that a professor of his once noted that ‘everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian’. — Wayfarer

Yes I think much of the history of philosophy can be seen as the playing out of Platonic and Aristotelian ideas in different contexts.

I would prefer 'instantiated' to 'grounded'. It's more that particulars are 'grounded in form' rather than vice versa. According to A's 'hylomorphic dualism', particulars are always composed of matter (hyle) and form (morphe) - and the form is what is grasped by the intellect, both the intellect (nous) and form (morphe) being immaterial. — Wayfarer

Hylomorphism doesn't imply dualism. The phrase "hylomorphic dualism" seems to have been coined by David Oderberg as a description of the general Thomist view (see Ed Feser's discussion here).

In Aristotle's ontology, the particular is material in a specific form. But there is no ontological separation of form from the particular as there would be under dualism. Instead the particular is described and explained in terms of material and formal causes.

So, for example, it is Alice, a particular human being, who has intellectual capabilities or acts intelligently. But her intellect is not ontologically separate from her matter, just as the ship information is not ontologically separate from the material flag waving and log book ink.

I would say that is the aspect of Aristotelianism which was rejected by the advent of nominalism and then empiricism, as forms and formal causes. — Wayfarer

Agreed, though the main reason was due to the proliferation of unnecessary entities which I think was really a misapplication of Aristotle's basic empirical approach.

Hylomorphism doesn't imply dualism. — Andrew M

SO you’re saying that Aristotle doesn’t accept the immortality of the soul?

Actually, found a reference on that:

‘the soul neither exists without a body nor is a body of some sort. For it is not a body, but it belongs to a body, and for this reason is present in a body, and in a body of such-and-such a sort (414a20ff).

So on Aristotle’s account, although the soul is not a material object, it is not separable from the body. (When it comes to the intellect, however, Aristotle waffles. See DA III.4)’

https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/psyche.htm


I will keep reading! But I think that as you say, hylomorphic dualism does seem to belong more to Aquinas’ aspect of Aristotelian Thomism, as Aquinas must defend the immortality of the soul as a central dogma of the faith.

According to Bennett & Hacker (Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience 12, 24):

1) "Aristotle ascribed to each living organism a psuche (soul). The psuche was conceived to be the form of a natural body that has life. It was also characterised as the first actuality of a natural body that has organs (De Anima 412 5-6)."

2) "Aquinas, capitalising on Aristotle's obscure remarks about the active intellect, argued that 'the intellectual principle which is called the mind or intellect has an operation through itself (per se) unless it subsists through itself, for activity belongs to a being in act...Consequently, the human soul, which is called the intellect or mind, is something incorporeal and subsisting' (Summa Theologiae I, 76, 1)."

So, Aquinas changed the meaning of "soul" from "form" to "mind" and separated it from "body" for theological reasons.

I think the original terms for 'mind' and 'active intellect' would be worth knowing, in the original lexicon. But having looked a little at De Anima, I think I'm going to have to remain with secondary sources, it is the kind of work that would take months or years to study in any depth. (Same goes for many of these sources!)

But, I still think the passage I provided from a modern analysis of Aquinas really sums up the issue as I see it:

whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand is to free form completely from matter.

Moreover, if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

From Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.; Macmillan Co., 1941.

The theory that I'm working on is that the rational mind - the mind that recognises meaning and can therefore translate and transform ideas between media and languages - corresponds with the 'immaterial intellect' above. After all, the concept of the 'rational soul' is often found in Aristotle's and other Greek writings. I had always wondered why the term 'rational' - but I now see it's not 'rational' in the modern or scientific sense, rather it is 'rational' in that it is the mind that directly grasps forms (or ideas, in the Platonic sense.) Just as the meaning of a text can be distinguished from the manner of its representation, so too the intellect which understands meaning can be distinguished from the sensory apparatus.

And, not co-incidentally, it is just that somewhat archaic sense of the 'rational intellect' which is denied by materialist theories of mind.

Sure do. What does the active intellect do, that the passive intellect can't? — Wayfarer

If I remember correctly the Aristotelian distinction between passive intellect and active (agent) intellect, is not much more than a mention of the need to assume both, to maintain consistency with hylomorphism, matter being passive, form being active. The soul is an immaterial form, while the powers of the soul, the different capacities including the intellect, are potentials, and therefore associated with the material existence of the living body. The potencies manifest as "habit" (another concept not well developed by Aristotle). We look at "habit" as a way of acting, but Aristotle defined it as what the beings "has", and you can check the etymology on this word. The being has the power to act in a particular way.

To the point though, there was discussion among the Arab philosophers who followed Aristotle, as to how to position the passive and agent intellect. One argument was that one is the property of the individual, while the other is the property of a communion of individuals. I'm not sure how Aquinas resolved this (I'll check this and get back to you), but I think that he proposed that each individual has both passive and agent intellect.

Nominalism: the doctrine that universals or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality. — Wayfarer

I'm not too familiar with nominalism, but assuming this definition, and the quoted passage from me, then to make me nominalist you would have to argue that an agreement between human beings is not something real.

Modern realists, following philosophers like Wittgenstein will argue that there are real rules which govern the way that we use words. "Conventional use" implies real conventions. The real rules are supposed to be independent of individual human beings. However, these realists refer to things like definitions to support that position. But definitions are descriptions of how words are used, they are not prescriptive rules which govern the activities of human beings, like ethical rules are. So there is equivocation between descriptive rules and prescriptive rules, and the majority of modern realism is supported by such equivocation. For example, some say that the laws of physics govern the activity of matter. But the laws of physics are human descriptions, produced by inductive reasoning. It is impossible that they could have any governing power over the activity of matter.

thanks to the way we are "designed". — Harry Hindu


According to neo-darwinian materialism - which is why I mentioned Coyne. — Wayfarer

If you have a better explanation, I'm here to be persuaded, but it doesn't seem like you have a better explanation. You're only "argument" is "That's neo-darwinism and I don't like that." - as if labeling some explanation as "neo-darwinian" and that you don't like it, automatically disqualifies it.

I asked what form our language abilities take prior to us learning a language, and you missed that opportunity to persuade me. You just don't seem to have the stamina to support your ideas, nor the open-mind to question your own premises.

The theory that I'm working on is that the rational mind - the mind that recognises meaning and can therefore translate and transform ideas between media and languages - corresponds with the 'immaterial intellect' above. — Wayfarer

The human mind is immaterial and united with a material human body, comprising a psychophysical unity. So, I don't agree with Brennan that, "To understand is to free form completely from matter."

Aquinas's and Brennan's position is dualist, not dual aspect monist (which is Aristotle's and Peirce's position).

Just as the meaning of a text can be distinguished from the manner of its representation, so too the intellect which understands meaning can be distinguished from the sensory apparatus. — Wayfarer

Due to the "ship on the horizon" example provided in the OP, this has become more a discussion of semiosis than of information (although semiosis is subsumed under information). This is because semiosis (sign processing) involves representation and communication.

A sign is an object which corresponds to a representation.

And because this is really a discussion about semiosis, the definition of "representation" should conform to its usage in semiotics, to wit: a representation is a socially conditioned concept, category, or mental model.

The two aspects of a sign (the object and its corresponding representation) can be distinguished, but not separated due to the relation of signification. Therefore, signs are psychophysical objects.

Also, since meaning is an idea which can be described by attribution and/or relation, it is embedded in the representation, not the object.

The same message, transmitted in different codes (physical information), through different physical channels or mediums, conveys the same representations/meanings (semantic information) to a recipient (a psychophysical organism) who has knowledge of the codes used and their corresponding representations.

So what does semiosis say about physicalism and idealism?

What does the active intellect do, that the passive intellect can't?
— Wayfarer

If I remember correctly the Aristotelian distinction between passive intellect and active (agent) intellect, is not much more than a mention of the need to assume both, to maintain consistency with hylomorphism, matter being passive, form being active. The soul is an immaterial form, while the powers of the soul, the different capacities including the intellect, are potentials, and therefore associated with the material existence of the living body. — Metaphysician Undercover

My view also - the active intellect is what perceives the forms or ideas - it is 'intellect' proper. The passive intellect receives sensations. That is what that passage I quoted says.

I think that he proposed that each individual has both passive and agent intellect. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hence, 'hylomorphic dualism', which perhaps means no more than 'body and soul'. The difficulty is, whether the body and soul can exist separately. But Aquinas, for obvious reasons, is required to uphold the dogma of the immortality of the soul, perhaps in a manner which Aristotle was not. (I imagine this is a very well-ploughed field.)

to make me nominalist you would have to argue that an agreement between human beings is not something real. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's real, but only as a matter of convention.

Wittgenstein rejects metaphysics ('that of which we cannot speak') and so his discussions are mainly oriented around language.

The important point about the OP, is articulating an idea of what is real but not material - a genuine metaphysic which grounds meaning in reality, not in social convention or language.

When I say you're modernist in your response, this is not at all pejorative. To be critically aware of the assumptions we bring to this kind of issue means to question what we generally take for granted. Notice in your remarks about physics, and what you're saying here, the tendency towards relativism and perspectivism. Again this is not a slight, but a critical reflection; a sign of the times, perhaps.

You're only "argument" is "That's neo-darwinism and I don't like that." - as if labeling some explanation as "neo-darwinian" and that you don't like it, automatically disqualifies it. — Harry Hindu

Not, it's not that. Nowadays, most people simply assume that evolutionary biology explains everything about humans, so to question that then leads to a whole series of other arguments. So if you assume the neo-darwinian view (which I think you do), responding to that is a completely different question to the questions in this thread.

because this is really a discussion about semiosis, the definition of "representation" should conform to its usage in semiotics, to wit: a representation is a socially-conditioned concept, category, or mental model. — Galuchat

My premise wasn't so much about the nature of representation, but the fact that the same idea can be represented in different languages or symbolic forms. So the question I asked was, if the representation changes, but the idea doesn't change, then the idea - or in this case, information content - may be differentiated from the representation.

But then the next question is: can there be an idea which exists apart from a representation? And I think the response is that it is the act of representing an idea in abstract form, which relies upon the rational capacity of humans. That's what the human brain - the most complex object known to science - does: it abstracts and represents. At issue is the reality of such abstractions and representaions: are they real, or are they 'in the mind'?

It is nowadays taken for granted that the rational capacity has evolved in the same manner as other human attributes - as mentioned to Harry above, it is the assumption that everything about humans can be understood through the lense of evolutionary and neural biology. In other words, it is almost universally assumed that the rational capacity has an ultimately physical explanation, in terms of neurobiology (as was also assumed in the responses of @Πετροκότσυφας). But I am challenging that assumption on philosophical grounds, on the basis that the same differentiation between idea and representation can be applied even to neurobiology; that there is a genuine ontological distinction between idea and representation that applies at all levels of description (See Thomas Nagel: Thoughts are Real.)

...materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself... Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this can leave nothing to be desired. But all this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time. — Schopenhauer

WWR

What I'm working on, is the idea that whilst obviously h. sapiens did evolve as biological science has discovered (although the details are constantly shifting currently), when a certain cognitive threshold is reached, the mind does begin to comprehend transcendent realities - which I think Plato's 'forms' represent. In other words, I don't accept that the Platonic intuition of 'the forms' is merely archaic and scientifically uninformed. So I think there's something in hylomorphic dualism, leaving aside the question of whether the 'immaterial intellect' can exist separately.

what does semiosis say about physicalism and idealism? — Galuchat

Peirce rejected Cartesian dualism, with good reason - he thought the very idea of a spiritual 'substantia' unsustainable. There's an interesting essay on Peirce's metaphysics here, The Intelligibility of Peirce’s Metaphysics of Objective Idealism. It makes it clear that Peirce was much part of the idealist tradition, however he was also a working, hands-on, pragmatic scientist. That's one of the reasons his work has so much value.

A sign is an object which corresponds to a representation. — Galuchat

A more causally-explicit way of saying this would be that a sign has the function of constraining an interpretation.

So the actual physics of a sign falls away - even though a sign, as some kind of mark, is always also physical.

The causally important things going on are that signs are intended to have meanings. A purpose must exist. And signs then have an effect in terms of constraining or limiting some form of freedom or uncertainty.

The relation is causally stronger than a correspondence or association. It narrows a mind - an interpretation - in a fruitful fashion.

The physics then re-enters the picture because an interpretation results in some action in relation to the world. When the light turns red, the car stops. When enemy ships appear over the horizon, the signals back to headquarters lead to cannonballs blasting into the air.

The same message, transmitted in different codes (physical information), through different physical channels or mediums, conveys the same representations/meanings (semantic information) to a recipient (a psychophysical organism) who has knowledge of the codes used and their corresponding representations. — Galuchat

Again, terms like correspondence and representation are problematic because they arise from a passive, information-processing, metaphysics.

Semiotics makes more sense because it emphases the active and purposeful nature of what is going on. And it does that without falling into a mechanical or deterministic view of causality. It takes the probabilistic approach where information constrains action.

So what gets transmitted through a variety of transmissions is not the actual information, like some precious substance or cargo. It is the constraints that would limit another mind's state of interpretance. It is the container rather than the contents that get delivered.

When Amazon posts you a novel, they don't send you the experiences that are the story. What you buy is an artfully constructed set of constraints on your imagination. You expect your thoughts to be limited to some specific parade of imagery. And the mental picture you might have of the main character is hardly likely to correspond to the author's, or any other of the millions of readers.

Information of that kind only has to be conveyed to the degree that the constraint on your interpretive freedoms make a difference.

So Peircean semiosis is a paradigm shift in a number of very important ways.

So on Aristotle’s account, although the soul is not a material object, it is not separable from the body. — Wayfarer

The soul would be the form of the body - the particular way its material organisation is constrained.

So in one sense, hylomorphism recognises that any object can't actually be separated in terms of its material and formal causes. To be an object is to have some organisation.

But constraints are also transmissible - due to semiotics. Genetic information means the "human-shaped soul" can be passed down from generation to generation.

Each actual person is a unique material interpretation of this information. Even twins are not identical. But still, the essential information that makes a biological person is now known to be separable as a physical fact.

But Aristotle is more right than Plato or Aquinas. What gets transmitted by a code is not the contents but the container. So the soul here is not the interpretation - the mindful bit. It is the shape that is getting passed along as a particular way to constrain some set of material freedoms, some heap of fleshy metabolism.

The paradigm you are applying demands the transmission of some substantial essence. Information is its meaning. It is the content that must be passed along.

But semiotics says what gets transmitted is the organising constraints needed to limit material variety. Communication is about the rebirth of functional states of interpretance. Every rebirth will be interestingly different. No two interpretations are ever going to be the same. You never step in the same river twice.

But that is understood. Constraints only need to signal the differences that make a difference.

Which is what information theory measures all the way down to a foundational material level now.

Again, you want information to be a substance - a semantic content. That just seems obvious because matter is its opposite - a meaningless content. The paradigm shift is understanding the shaping role that containment plays. That is the other aspect of a hylomorphic reality.

So semantic information is not a rival substance - a second material. Talk about information is our physicalist recognition that constraints are causally real. We need to include them in our picture as complementary to material causes.

And so there is no mystery when it comes to the "missing interpreter" when taking the information theoretic approach. The interpreter doesn't have to ride along with the transmitted information to underwrite its precious meaning, stop it leaking away. Instead, states of interpretance are the third thing - the actually substantial thing - which emerges when formal constraints and material freedoms come together in an act of interpretance, or a sign relation.

. It is the shape that is getting passed along as a particular way to constrain some set of material freedoms, some heap of fleshy metabolism. — apokrisis

I think you're conflating 'shape' with 'form' here. What is being passed along is more than a shape, it is the entire principle of organisation. (Actually I learned recently that the original meaning of 'organise' is 'to endow with organs'.)

And also, if indeed Aristotle's philosophy of formal and final causation is correct, then the immaterial intellect has a reason for existing - in the same sense that fire is the reason matches exist, fire being the formal and final cause of a match. Aristotle's philosophy is inherently teleological - things exists for a reason; in the case of the rational intellect, that reason being, to perceive the ideas, which the 'rational animal' is alone capable of doing. That is the one faculty or attribute of man that Aristotle says is immaterial (although he seems to equivocate on many of the details.)

you want information to be a substance - a semantic content — apokrisis

Emphatically not. That is the distinction that I am trying to make about the 'ontology of intelligible objects' - they're not existent, they don't exist in the way that phenomena do. In fact even to say 'they' is to improperly reify the subject of the conversation, but that is on account of the limitation of language, which (especially for our culture) is built around 'objectification'.

So I agree that 'the soul' is certainly not any kind of substance, especially in the modern sense. I think that 'soul' might be productively interpreted as a metaphorical expression for the subjective unity of consciousness; it is the principle by which the being hangs together, physiologically, psychologically, and even spiritually (which is also very close to Aristotle's meaning). But when you ask, 'what is this principle' or 'where is this principle', then that is a reification. But it's also not simply non-existent. This is the point that I think perplexes everyone in this conversation - as soon as you name it, you reify it, and then ask 'can it exist'? But that's a reification and therefore a category error.

Furthermore an idea is itself immaterial - it only can be represented materially, because of the brain's ability to abstract, represent and signal. That may seem a physical process but refer to the Schopenhauer quotation in the above post.

Instead, states of interpretance are the third thing - the actually substantial thing - which emerges when formal constraints and material freedoms come together in an act of interpretance, or a sign relation. — apokrisis

'States of interpretance' are invariably associated with a mind, in my view. There are only two broad types of phenomena which I think embody 'interpretance', namely, organisms, and minds.

My view also - the active intellect is what perceives the forms or ideas - it is 'intellect' proper. The passive intellect receives sensations. That is what that passage I quoted says. — Wayfarer

I was just reading up on this in The Summa Theologica. The issue is a bit more complicated. Following Aristotle, Aquinas says that we must assume a passive intellect to account for the difference between potentially understanding and actually understanding. The passive intellect provides the potential to receive the intelligible forms. There are some confusing statements involved here, because the passive intellect must be passive, or receptive, to every possible form in order that we can potentially know all forms. This makes it similar to prime matter, as pure potential, but Aquinas states that it is purely immaterial. I think that because it has no particular form, it cannot be a material thing. In any case, it seems to be what you call the intellect proper, as what receives the forms or ideas

The active intellect is said to be what makes things intelligible. It acts to produce the abstractions which are received by the passive intellect. So he goes into the analogy with light, or the sun, which makes visible things visible. The active intellect must make things intelligible in a similar way. So the questioning turns to where the active intellect is located. Is it something independent from the human being, is it within the human being but the same for each human being, or is it within the human being with particular differences according to the differences of each person? He goes toward the third option, but maintains that there must still be an outside principle, like God, which the active intellect takes part in.

I would summarize by saying that the active intellect makes things intelligible by rendering them into an intelligible form. The passive intellect receives the intelligible form, and this is what is actual understanding. So there are two distinct types of potential involved here. The passive intellect is the intellect's potential for understanding. The active intellect puts the material objects into a form (abstract) such that they have the potential to be understood. These two together produce actual understanding.

It's real, but only as a matter of convention. — Wayfarer

But this is a very important question, what is "a matter of convention"? We have to be able to assign some sort of reality to social conventions, or else everything falls apart, all knowledge, all morality, society, all humanity falls part. we cannot just take these things for granted. The Wittgensteinians argue that there are real rules of language use, which are out there, somewhere, which we must follow, or else we are wrong, not following the rules. But there are no such rules. We are free to use language as we will. They just take it for granted that such rules exist, and really cannot demonstrate the existence of them.

However, formal rules of language use are extremely important to higher education, science, mathematics and logic, just like rules of morality are extremely important to higher living. The two are very closely tied together, as it is by following these rules that we evolve toward "higher" existence. We cannot take them for granted. And if we cannot take them for granted, then we need to create them, and find ways of encouraging human beings to follow them.

The important point about the OP, is articulating an idea of what is real but not material - a genuine metaphysic which grounds meaning in reality, not in social convention or language. — Wayfarer

The examples of the op rely on convention. How does one know what the signal means? By convention. You take the conventions for granted, just like the Wittgensteinian realists. They for their purpose, you for your purpose. The idealist realist is really no different from the materialist realist. By shying away from language and social convention, I think you are missing the essence of the immaterial. What is it which is at the root of all social conventions? The good. What is it which Plato says renders the intelligible as intelligible? The good. What is the active intellect?

In the first section, you haven’t mentioned ‘sensible objects’. They are received by the corporeal senses - ear, eye, etc. The forms are what are not sensible i.e. they’re ‘intelligible’. Hyle - matter - morphe - form = hylomorphic. Trying to keep it simple here. The Thomistic arguments on the nature of the soul are close to those about how many angels could fit on a pin.

The point about the ‘conventional nature of language’ is NOT that judgements are unreal on those grounds. The point I was making was in relation to your posts which seemed to advocate a nominalist response to Samuel Lecrampe’s realist ones. It seemed to me that you were taking the position of nominalism, perhaps without knowing you were doing that. Note that is not a personal criticism but I think in the context it is worth bringing that out.

(This is part of a longer argument, specifically, how nominalism undermined scholastic realism, and with it, the possibility of any real metaphysics. That is why I have referred to an article called What’s Wrong with Ockham: The Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West, by Joshua Horschild. There’s also a somewhat famous book, called Ideas Have Consequences, by a Chicago English academic by the name of Richard Weaver, which makes a similar argument. Perhaps unfortunately, it has now become very influential in American conservativism, but it’s an historical argument I’m very interested in.)

I claim the efficient cause is the correct one, because I can acquire the same information from different containers which have no properties in common. E.g. obtaining info from a purely visual media like a book, or purely audio media like an audiobook. — Samuel Lacrampe

I think that if you push this analysis further, you'll see that you are not actually acquiring the same information in those two cases. This, in my opinion, gives credence to the belief that information is indeed physical, that it is possible and likely that two different information medium share the ability to inform the same particulars, but that in most cases you'll be able to notice differences in the ability of different medium to carry the same information.

So both written language and spoken language can equally inform you of the proposition that "Montréal is in Québec", but a text attempting to describe physically the Mount-Royal will provide an unequal amount of information to a 3D model of the same.

I'm sure that this line of inquiry could be well informed by a bit of information theory. More mathematically inclined minds that mine must have already found a way to calculate the capacity of an information medium to carry information based on its capacity for variation, preservation, etc...

Perhaps put more simply : It is up to the information processor to establish the identity between the information particulars encountered across multiple mediums. This identity belongs to the interpreted information, not to the information medium, and therefore does not inform us on the medium, which means that this does not contradict the claim that information is material.

I think that 'soul' might be productively interpreted as a metaphorical expression for the subjective unity of consciousness; it is the principle by which the being hangs together, physiologically, psychologically, and even spiritually (which is also very close to Aristotle's meaning). But when you ask, 'what is this principle' or 'where is this principle', then that is a reification. But it's also not simply non-existent. This is the point that I think perplexes everyone in this conversation - as soon as you name it, you reify it, and then ask 'can it exist'? But that's a reification and therefore a category error. — Wayfarer

You can name constraints. They really do things causally.

And when we talk about consciousness, that normally cashes out as attentional-level processing. And attention in turn is all about constraint - the limiting of awareness by a focus, or spotlight, or filter, or bottleneck, to use the usual metaphors.

So the soul - in the sense Aristotle seems to be striving after - would be a limitation on material possibility. It is not a substance, but the organisation that gives material possibility its rationally organised form.

And Aristotle wanted to insist that this constraining organisation was physically real and not ghostly or immaterial. He just lacked the modern knowledge to make full sense of that. We now know that the constraints that create bodies with intellects are physically real. They are the information that our semiotic machinery encodes. DNA really exists. Neurons really exist. Words really exist. That information gets made flesh. Animate matter gets its soulful form from a system of symbols interpreted as a state of organisation.

There are only two broad types of phenomena which I think embody 'interpretance', namely, organisms, and minds. — Wayfarer

You really only need organisms. Life and mind are just different levels of the same semiotic modelling relation.

Furthermore, we can prove that a container is not essential to information because we can imagine information being acquired directly through telepathy. The fact that we can imagine a thing proves that it is logically possible. And if logically possible, then a container is not an essential property of information. — Samuel Lacrampe

For me the issue is that language itself is a "container" -- at least to the degree that we believe in translation. Do we think in words? In my experience, we do, with maybe a little wiggle room for some kind of spatial-temporal reasoning. Can we generally strip meaning from its body? It's not so clear. The distinction of information/container strikes me as an ideal distinction like spirit versus flesh. It founds or institutes a continuum. But the poles don't make much sense. They are limits at infinity.

Life and mind are just different levels of the same semiotic modelling relation. — apokrisis

But is inorganic matter on a continuum with life and mind? Or is there a discontinuity there?

But is inorganic matter on a continuum with life and mind? Or is there a discontinuity there? — Wayfarer

When have I ever not flagged the critical discontinuity? It's the epistemic cut. It is only after that that life and mind become a thing.

So that then raises the question of whether there is still a continuity that is "semiotic".

The reply is that if the epistemic cut internalises constraints - this being the information that membranes, genes, neurons, words and numbers encode - then that now raises the definite possibility of constraints which are encoded or remembered externally, out in the world itself. The Cosmos might be understood as a dissipative structure, organised by its historically fixed information.

And this is what the information theoretic turn of modern physics hinges on. Entropy. Event horizons. Holography. Quantum information. Material cause no longer carries the weight of explaining existence. Instead, formal cause provides the intelligible structure.

So it is telling that you ask about a continuity that can connect biosemiosis back to "inorganic matter". You assume that real physics can't afford to let go of material causality. But physics has pretty much let go now.

The symmetries that account for the fundamental forms of reality - the symmetries of spacetime and particle physics - are the part of existence that feel hard, definite, crystalline. They have the force of mathematical necessity.

The "action" that then animates this mathematical pattern must still be part of the physicalist story somehow. But now it feels like the mysterious ghost in the machine. The metaphysical puzzle has been reversed. Matter seems the most immaterial part of the modern physicalist equation.

Check out ontic structural realism to see how current metaphysics is trailing along in the wake of this particular turn of events.

The forms are what are not sensible i.e. they’re ‘intelligible’. Hyle - matter - morphe - form = hylomorphic. Trying to keep it simple here. The Thomistic arguments on the nature of the soul are close to those about how many angels could fit on a pin. — Wayfarer

In this section, Aquinas first makes it clear that the intellect is not the soul itself. It is a power of the soul. So we're not discussing the nature of the soul itself here, and the important thing to notice is that following Aristotle, the powers of the soul are individuated according to the material body of the living creature. So Aquinas explains how the intellect is distinguished from the other powers of the soul, vegetative power, power of sensation, etc.

He agrees with Aristotle, that there is a need to assume a passive intellect, in order to account for the intellect receiving intelligible forms. As such it is of the same nature of matter, which receives forms. This is the proper sense of "inform", to receive forms, be acted upon by forms. Aquinas states though, that the passive intellect is immaterial, and I see this as an inconsistency because he doesn't explain how anything immaterial can be informed. He already agrees that to be informed requires that the thing being informed receives forms in a passive sense, like matter receives forms.

The active intellect is what abstracts, it puts the sensible objects into an intelligible form. We cannot say that the passive intellect receives the form directly from the sensible object, or else it would have the exact same form, and be that sensible object. So it is required to assume an active intellect, which abstracts a form, but not the same form, from the sensible object.

It seemed to me that you were taking the position of nominalism, perhaps without knowing you were doing that. Note that is not a personal criticism but I think in the context it is worth bringing that out. — Wayfarer

I take neither a nominalist nor realist position on this, because both are too simple. The realist position, as I said, takes social conventions for granted, so the analysis which it provides does not go deep enough to understand "the good". "Realism" is a misrepresentation of the Scholastics, perhaps a nominalist "straw man". So the nominalists simplify even further from the simplification already implied by "realism,". There are two levels of simplification, one simplifies the Neo-Platonist/Arsitotelian analysis/synthesis of the scholastics to a realism (which is a faulty representation), and the other, by claiming that realism is inaccurate (which it is, due to the unjustified simplification) simplifies even further.

Obviously, semiosis (in its various forms) doesn't preclude physicalism or idealism. Also, I am familiar with your version of semiosis, but what meaning(s) do you attach to the word "information"?

Not, it's not that. Nowadays, most people simply assume that evolutionary biology explains everything about humans, so to question that then leads to a whole series of other arguments. So if you assume the neo-darwinian view (which I think you do), responding to that is a completely different question to the questions in this thread. — Wayfarer

I'm not assuming anything when I ask the question, "What form does our linguistic abilities take prior to learning a language?".

You were the one that said this in this thread:

However humans have linguistic and rational abilities that animals don’t - they’re born with that, as per Chomsky’s ‘universal grammar’. — Wayfarer

I'm simply asking a question about what you said. If you can't answer it, then I guess your statement isn't anything more than word art. To say, "They are born with that." seem to imply that our linguistic abilities only take shape once we are born. Doesn't that assume neo-darwinism? What is it about being born - about moving from inside the womb to outside of it that gives us our linguistic abilities?

I gave those answers early in the thread. It boils down to a difference that makes a difference.

I gave those answers early in the thread. It boils down to a difference that makes a difference. — apokrisis

Cheers.
In other words, information is a lack of uniformity per Donald MacCrimmon MacKay and Gregory Bateson.

Is information physical (meaningless), semantic (meaningful), or both (independently or simultaneously)?

Can semantic information be received by sensory stimulation and sensation (becoming empirical, or a posteriori, knowledge), by cogitation (becoming pure, or a priori, knowledge), or both (independently)?

If Aristotelian forms exist and constrain material action, what is the source of pure knowledge (i.e., the formal sciences)?

I agree that with no container, there is no information. But as I have previously stated, it does not follow that the container is an essential property of information, as it could simply be the cause to its existence. — Samuel Lacrampe

The container is not the cause of existence of the information, it is part of the information package. The information must be put into the package, so the container cannot be the cause of the information. There is a thing which is said to contain information. The information and the container are two parts of the same thing Certain properties of the information which can be held by the container are restricted, or constrained, by the type of container. The container restricts the information. That is why it is false to say that the same information can be contained in different containers, because each container has restrictions proper to itself only.

And I claim the efficient cause is the correct one, because I can acquire the same information from different containers which have no properties in common. E.g. obtaining info from a purely visual media like a book, or purely audio media like an audiobook. — Samuel Lacrampe

These two types of media do not give you the same information. You are ignoring the accidentals. When the accidentals are ignored, this is insufficient for calling something "the same", according to the law of identity.

Furthermore, we can prove that a container is not essential to information because we can imagine information being acquired directly through telepathy. The fact that we can imagine a thing proves that it is logically possible. And if logically possible, then a container is not an essential property of information. — Samuel Lacrampe

The fact that you can imagine something does not make it possible. Yes, you can create a logical possibility, through definition, like I can imagine that "circle" has the same definition as "square", making a square circle logically possible. And that's all you've done here, defined information as independent from the container, through your imaginary telepathy. But until you prove that telepathy is possible, your definition is meaningless.

I think that if you push this analysis further, you'll see that you are not actually acquiring the same information in those two cases. — Akanthinos

That's right, this is the point I've been making since the beginning of the thread. The faulty analysis is defended by the claim that "same" is used in a casual way, like two different people might be driving the same car. But this is philosophy, and this use of "same" is a premise to a logical argument, so we need to adhere to a rigid law of identity. When we adhere to the law of identity in our designation of "same", the argument fails on the faulty premise that "the same" information is transmitted by different media.

A more causally-explicit way of saying this would be that a sign has the function of constraining an interpretation.

So the actual physics of a sign falls away - even though a sign, as some kind of mark, is always also physical.

The causally important things going on are that signs are intended to have meanings. A purpose must exist. And signs then have an effect in terms of constraining or limiting some form of freedom or uncertainty. — apokrisis

I think that this is an incorrect representation. The sign itself does not constrain the interpretation, it is completely passive in this respect. All constraints on interpretation occur within the mind of the interpreter and this can be expressed as habit, or lack of habit. There are no constraints on interpretation within the sign itself.

So what gets transmitted through a variety of transmissions is not the actual information, like some precious substance or cargo. It is the constraints that would limit another mind's state of interpretance. It is the container rather than the contents that get delivered. — apokrisis

So you carry forward this faulty representation, claiming that what is transmitted within the information package is these constraints on interpretation. But such constraints really only exist within the interpreting mind. The only constraints within the information package, are constraints on the physical world, which have produced the order which is apprehended as information., And this order is interpreted as information, according to the constraints within one's mind.

But constraints are also transmissible - due to semiotics. — apokrisis

This I insist is a false premise. And if you think that semiotics proves that constraints on interpretation are transmitted, you need to demonstrate this proof. The material realist assumes that constraints on interpretation are transmitted, but this is a false assumption, because such constraints are either innate within, or learned by the living being through repetition. They are not transmitted to the living being through the sign. How could they be, if the being has to interpret the sign to determine the constraints required for interpretation?

In other words, information is a lack of uniformity per Donald MacCrimmon MacKay and Gregory Bateson. — Galuchat

It was more than a lack of uniformity for them. A difference that makes a difference also implies reciprocally the existence of differences that don’t. So signals stand out against a background of noise. But that then demands in turn a context of interpretance. Someone must be indifferent to the differences that don’t make a difference.

Thus there is an irreducible triadicy in the concept of information. At least in the way that the cyberneticists were trying to formalise a theory of information. Differences were hierarchically divided into noise and signal. That is, the indifferences and the differences that made a difference - according to some interpretive context.

Is information physical (meaningless), semantic (meaningful), or both (independently or simultaneously)? — Galuchat

The next step then is a more general physical view of information where even indifference or noise gets counted. So in the specific case, the concern was to count the signal. In the general case, the concern is to count any difference, or degree of freedom, that simply could have been a signal, under some context of interpretation.

That was Shannon’s big step, where he connected to concepts of entropy or fluctuation. A degree of freedom is the naked possibility of an action, a surprise, an uncertainty, a bare difference.

You will note how physics’s adoption of the information theoretic view is thus pansemiotic. An interpretive context is still implied - the one that can see the bare difference of noise as potential differences that make a difference. But now this interpreter is so generalised that it appears to drop out of the picture. The interpreter seems so unselective that it is as if the selection were meaningless.

Of course the second law of thermodynamics lurks here in the background. Entropification has become the cosmic purpose that provides the missing pansemiotic interpreter, the context that gives meaning even to physical noise.

So information theory now can count the meaningless differences as well as the differences that make a difference. And it does that by generalising the very notion of interpretance to its pansemiotic or cosmic limit.

Clever stuff.

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All constraints on interpretation occur within the mind of the interpreter and this can be expressed as habit, or lack of habit. — Metaphysician Undercover

The mind is simply the fact of the process of interpretation. You don’t need a further kind of witnessing thing within which the interpretation is interpreted, or sensed, or perceived, or whatever other homuncular regress you want to leap into it.

Yes, interpretance also has variety as it must develop its stable habitual regularity. So the response to a signal may be vague or radically uncertain before an interpretation has become fixed as a habit. And human minds are complicated enough systems of interpretance that they seem a place where new acts of interpretation are always just “taking place within it”. There is hierarchical structure of that kind.

But the generalisation of semiosis, or the information theoretic perspective, is about boiling what is going on down to the barest possible notion of an interpretive relation. Our human-level notion of being a mind making meaning of a world stands at the other far extreme to the generalised or more fundamental notion here.

How could they be, if the being has to interpret the sign to determine the constraints required for interpretation? — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you confirming my point in your repeated failure to follow my meaning?

I’m posting you carefully worded thoughts. I’m hoping they might constrain your state of mind so that we share some point of view. Yet your responses come back as saying your understanding is at best vague or uncertain. Or actually you are in the habit of interpreting signals you can’t follow as “this just has to be wrong - it is not the formula of words that I am accustomed to responding to with the return signal of a thumb’s up,”

So definitely in verbal communication between humans,there are complex language games going on. You are forming your sense of you in terms of whatever you can recognise as “other”. Faced with a message that wants to constrain your understanding in a way not already your habit, you apply your own habit of finding anyway to deny the right of the words to have any force on the pattern of your thoughts. This becomes proof of both your own rational existence and your absolute freedom of will - inside the place that you call your mind.

I doubt therefore I am. The first principle of “philosophy”. :j

So sure. Signs can be intended to function as constraints, but they can regularly fail in that intended function. On their arrival in another mind, words can find that rival formulas of words have already taken up permanent residence. Aquinas might have got there first. And the resident interpretations don’t welcome the threatened intrusions.

The realist position, as I said, takes social conventions for granted, so the analysis which it provides does not go deep enough to understand "the good". — Metaphysician Undercover

That is far from the truth. You yourself believe that the Platonic forms amount to 'social conventions', and then fault the realists for thinking that!

To say, "They are born with that." seem to imply that our linguistic abilities only take shape once we are born. Doesn't that assume neo-darwinism? What is it about being born - about moving from inside the womb to outside of it that gives us our linguistic abilities? — Harry Hindu

Human infants are born with the ability to learn language. It is innate. Certainly it is in some sense a product of evolution, what I'm questioning is the extent to which language and abstract thought can be understood solely through the prism of evolutionary biology. Because to do so, invariably reduces the subject of the enquiry to 'how does that help the species survive?' That is the sense in which biological explanations are often reductive. While the neo-darwinian synthesis is a biological theory, it is often taken as a philosophical principle to support positions and conclusions which are outside the scope of biology per se. But it is, as I say, a separate question.

That was Shannon’s big step, where he connected to concepts of entropy or fluctuation. — apokrisis

You often refer to that, but this was part of his paper on sending and receiving information, wasn't it? It wasn't a philosophical theory as such, was it?

The symmetries that account for the fundamental forms of reality - the symmetries of spacetime and particle physics - are the part of existence that feel hard, definite, crystalline. They have the force of mathematical necessity. — apokrisis

Now I don't expect any of the following to sway you, I am simply spelling it out so as to clarify the point. This still assumes that the fundamental forms are physical. I have been researching the Forms, which is the 'formal' side of hylomorphism, and the original concept of the Forms is that they are outside space and time altogether. The motivation of early philosophy was not instrumental or scientific in our sense- it was as much 'the quest for the transcendent' as the quest for useful knowledge about the sensory domain.