But if all the rocks were precisely the same size and not ordered, then their arrangement contains no information because it’s by nature disordered. — Wayfarer
The point is that you have assumed the capacity to judge between information and disinformation — Metaphysician Undercover
At the bottom level is the natural world, which Deacon characterizes by its subjection to the second law of thermodynamics. When entropy (the Boltzmann kind) reaches its maximum, the equilibrium condition is pure formless disorder. Although there is matter in motion, it is the motion we call heat and nothing interesting is happening. Equilibrium has no meaningful differences, so Deacon calls this the homeodynamics level, using the root homeo-, meaning "the same." There are no meaningful differences here.
At the second level, form (showing differences) emerges. Deacon identifies a number of processes that are negentropic, reducing the entropy locally by doing work against and despite the first level's thermodynamics. This requires constraints, says Deacon, like the piston in a heat engine that constrains the expansion of a hot gas to a single direction, allowing the formless heat to produce directed motion.
Atomic constraints such as the quantum-mechanical bonding of water molecules allow snow crystals to self-organize into spectacular forms, producing order from disorder. Deacon dubs this second level morphodynamic. He sees the emerging forms as differences against the background of unformed sameness. His morphodynamic examples include, besides crystals, whirlpools, Bénard convection cells, basalt columns, and soil polygons, all of which apparently violate the first-level tendency toward equilibrium and disorder in the universe. These are processes that information philosophy calls ergodic.
Herbert Feigl and Charles Sanders Peirce may have been the origin of Bateson's famous idea of a "difference that makes a difference."On Deacon's third level, "a difference that makes a difference" (cf. Gregory Bateson and Donald MacKay) emerges as a purposeful process we can identify as protolife. The quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger saw the secret of life in an aperiodic crystal, and this is the basis for Deacon's third level. He ponders the role of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) monomers in energy transfer and their role in polymers like RNA and DNA, where the nucleotide arrangements can store information about constraints. He asks whether the order of nucleotides might create adjacent sites that enhance the closeness of certain molecules and thus increase their rate of interaction. This would constitute information in an organism that makes a difference in the external environment, an autocatalytic capability to recruit needed resources. Such a capability might have been a precursor to the genetic code.
Deacon crafts an ingenious model for a minimal "autogenic" system that has a teleonomic (purposeful) character, with properties that might be discovered some day to have existed in forms of protolife. His simplest "autogen" combines an autocatalytic capability with a self-assembly property like that in lipid membranes, which could act to conserve the catalyzing resources inside a protocell.
Autocatalysis and self-assembly are his examples of morphodynamic processes that combine to produce his third-level, teleodynamics. Note that Deacon's simplest autogen need not replicate immediately. Like the near-life of a virus, it lacks a metabolic cycle and does not maintain its "species" with regular reproduction. But insofar as it stores information, it has a primitive ability to break into parts that could later produce similar wholes in the right environment. And the teleonomic information might suffer accidental changes that produce a kind of natural selection.
Deacon introduces a second triad he calls Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin (Claude, Ludwig, and Charles). He describes it on his Web site www. teleodynamics.com . I would rearrange the first two stages to match his homeodynamic-morphodynamic-teleodynamic triad. This would put Boltzmann first (matter and energy in motion, but both conserved, merely transformed by morphodynamics). A second Shannon stage then adds information (Deacon sees clearly that information is neither matter nor energy); for example, knowledge in an organism's "mind" about the external constraints that its actions can influence.
This stored information about constraints enables the proto-organism in the third stage to act in the world as an agent that can do useful work, that can evaluate its options, and that can be pragmatic (more shades of Peirce) and normative. Thus Deacon's model introduces value into the universe— good and bad (from the organism's perspective). It also achieves his goal of explaining the emergence of perhaps the most significant aspect of the mind: that it is normative and has goals. This is the ancient telos or purpose. — https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/deacon/
Information increases as order decreases. — unenlightened
. A disordered system contains more information than an ordered one. — unenlightened
Contains the least information of all — StreetlightX
First of all, I think all of this is quite true, so I'm not objecting to the basic principle. But what bothers me a bit, is the introduction of 'information' as a metaphysical simple - as a fundamental constituent, in the sense that atoms were once thought to be. — Wayfarer
"Consciousness" and "mind" are also terms that leave an awful lot of very large, open questions, about what "consciousness" and "mind" is or means or where it originates, yet idealists claim it is fundamental.So - I'm totally open to the notion that 'information is fundamental', but it seems to me to leave an awful lot of very large, open questions, about what 'information' is or means or where it originates.
So when Dennett says, 'oh yes, I'm a materialist, all that exists is matter and energy - and information' - then is he still a materialist? It seems like a very large dodge to me. — Wayfarer
But then what is it? You can’t answer that question - which is the point of the OP. — Wayfarer
Does "information" at all solve anything related to the hard question of consciousness? — schopenhauer1
. A disordered system contains more information than an ordered one.
— unenlightened
Yep. In the below, the second, asymmetric ('disordered') organization of dots contains much more information than the first ('ordered') arrangement of dots. — StreetlightX
Potential information is being confused as actual information here. — Harry Hindu
For example, for any given volume in a state of disorder, in order to be truly random, there must be substructures of a definable size which are actually ordered. If randomness is completely average, you end up with a large scale average distribution, which ends up in fact being ordered, not disordered. — Pantagruel
…but no one seems to understand what its authors are on about. — StreetlightX
A disordered system contains more information than an ordered one. Your intuition is the opposite because the information it contains is boring. Each pebble has its location in relation to the others, but because there is no order or pattern it looks superficially just like any other disordered arrangement - nothing special. — unenlightened
what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things.
"genetically transmitted information"
(In information theory) a mathematical quantity expressing the probability of occurrence of a particular sequence of symbols, impulses, etc., as against that of alternative sequences.
I don't know what Dennett could mean by "materialist" other than meaning that everything is causal. — Harry Hindu
Does "information" at all solve anything related to the hard question of consciousness? — schopenhauer1
image is what it is. It has no potential, and the information content cannot change except by the destruction of the image. — unenlightened
So, if it's random, then it is not ordered. A 40 kilo pile of pebbles doesn't contain twice as much information as a 20 kilo pile of pebbles - it only contains twice as many pebbles — Wayfarer
The pebbles will not all be the same size, so a 40 kilo pile may or may not contain twice as many pebbles as a 20 kilo pile, but it will indeed hold much more information. — Janus
Does "information" at all solve anything related to the hard question of consciousness? Specifically, I am thinking of qualia. I am still seeing the hard question alluding this as well. There is still an unexplained element of how information explains how color and smell are the same as its physical constituents that cause it. There is a bifurcation there that seems to always elude. You can talk meaningfully about information in terms of physical (neural signals, bio-chemistry, physics) and psychological (the color red can indicate certain things- blood, ripe fruit, red is not green, but close to orange, etc.). However, it does not necessarily close the explanatory gap between the two (Ah, so information means X = Y!). Nope. — schopenhauer1
Not in any straightforward way. There have been efforts to use information theory in order to shore up a theory of consciousness that accounts for the hard problem ("integrated information theory") but no one seems to understand what its authors are on about. — StreetlightX
But a bag of rocks contains no information... — Wayfarer
Does a bag of rocks contain what it conveys? — ZzzoneiroCosm
The pebbles will not all be the same size, so a 40 kilo pile may or may not contain twice as many pebbles as a 20 kilo pile, but it will indeed hold much more information.
— Janus
How so? I'm not asking about information ABOUT the pile, but what information it contains. If you see a bag of stones, do you think it contains any information? If so, what? — Wayfarer
It doesn't convey anything. — Wayfarer
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