Asking, not arguing.

Nature has a "desire" to entropify — apokrisis

An overall - maybe residual - tendency? Life itself does not seem to be, to manifest, 'a "desire" to entropify.' That is, while I understand the tendency to disorder, I don't think it's quite all that simple. Do you care to assay a quick and simple definition of entropy, for present purpose?

So the patterning of nature does have objective existence in that it embodies all four Aristotelian causes. — apokrisis

How do you address the objection that because no two things are ever the same, that there is no pattern except in abstraction, which is a process of the mind of the one perceiving - creating, as it were - the pattern. That is, sez I, no mind, no pattern. No similarities anywhere anytime anyway, except in the mind of those who pick them out.

As to A's four causes, I'm having some trouble identifying the final and formal causes. And until corrected, I'm thinking that those two do not occur in nature, except in the minds that entertain them. On thinking about it, none of the four in nature. We can describe in such terms, but in as much as the causes are really answers to questions, and nature asks no questions, then how can there be causes in this Aristotelian sense in nature?

Which of his books talk about points and quantity? Wikipedia says Whitehead wrote stuff that was wrong about wholes and parts, while Husserl wrote good things. This is stuff that I'm interested in

An overall - maybe residual - tendency? Life itself does not seem to be, to manifest, 'a "desire" to entropify.' That is, while I understand the tendency to disorder, I don't think it's quite all that simple. Do you care to assay a quick and simple definition of entropy, for present purpose? — tim wood

Don't be afraid of the T word. As a natural philosopher (cf: Stan Salthe), we can parse finality into the developmental stages of {tendencies {functions and purposes}}}. Or {teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.

So when we are talking about desires when it comes to plate tectonics, rivers deltas, and other examples of natural dissipative structure, then clearly it is teleology of the dilute kind - a statistically-inevitable tendency of nature.

Then once you have life and mind - systems that can construct informational models of their own worlds - you have now the further possibility of a localised desire for a function (like breathing), and for a purpose (like surviving).

Formally, a simple natural system is just entropic. It serves no other purpose than to accelerate entropy and thus the extremely general desires of the second law of thermodynamics. But any living and mindful system is defined by its countering negentropy. It is in the business of producing local information - memory structures like genes and memes - that encode a local way of being that appears to swim counter to the generalised entropic flow, imposing its own ideas of order on the material world.

Of course, life and mind only exist because, on the whole, they do in fact overall increase the world's entropy. So they don't transcend the limits imposed by the second law's desires. They instead live within those desires as local agents of the entropification process. We use our smarts to produce more waste heat than would otherwise be the case.

So we - as living and thinking systems - are fully part of the great cosmic entropic flow. But being a part of that involves also our being able stand apart from it. To be local stores of negentropic form and finality and so break down "resources" - natural stores of negentropy - and speed their path to becoming waste heat.

How do you address the objection that because no two things are ever the same, that there is no pattern except in abstraction, which is a process of the mind of the one perceiving - creating, as it were - the pattern. — tim wood

That is the principle I am basing things on. Pattern has objective existence in nature as that which can locally suppress uncertainty. So every locale would have fundamental uncertainty - as quantum theory has empirically demonstrated. But then the job of emergent constraints is to produce a localised statistical regularity.

No two things could be exactly the same because the baseline of reality is just a pure uncertainty or vagueness (Peirce's tychism). But then a reality that develops generalised law or habits (Peirce's synechism) will constrain that uncertainty as much as it can be constrained. The statistical fluctuations will be reduced to the absolute minimum - ie: a Gaussian distribution.

So sure, minds can read patterns into nature by learning to overlook individual differences and conceiving of the world in terms of some larger generalising abstraction.

But the Peircean point is that is how nature itself works. For real. It develops the habits of regularity that constrain local irregularity. Laws evolved in ways that make being even possible by preventing absolutely everything just wanting to happen in a radically incoherent fashion.

Every brick that makes up a house is different. But that difference has to become trivial enough that as the houses get bigger, they don't start falling down.

Nature is the same. Its own growth is a constraint on variety. It has to arrive at the most robust patterns of organisation just to exist as a persistent process of being. Or rather, becoming.

As to A's four causes, I'm having some trouble identifying the final and formal causes. And until corrected, I'm thinking that those two do not occur in nature, except in the minds that entertain them. On thinking about it, none of the four in nature. We can describe in such terms, but in as much as the causes are really answers to questions, and nature asks no questions, then how can there be causes in this Aristotelian sense in nature? — tim wood

Aristotle's was a first clear attempt to dissect causality as a logical system. It may be a picture he read into reality - a metaphysical model. But a systems scientist has no trouble seeing it as the right model.

Reductionist science was based on the Platonic/Cartesian trick of splitting off material/efficient cause from formal/final cause. It cleanly divided the world of the Real from the world of the Mind.

Now that is a great model if you are a human wanting to impose some private desires on the world via the patterns of machines and engineering. You can build a science that is all about passive matter and the way it can be bent to serve your will.

But here we are talking about what is really real. And that is a nature which is immanent and holistic - a product of all four causes. With no external help.

Of course, you might find that metaphysical alternative arguable. And the first thing to protest is the idea that nature could have "a mind of its own" - as if finality still equals consciousness or spirit once you have actually shifted to a natural philosophy paradigm where nature starts out down at the maximally "mindless" state of having tendencies or habits. A teleomatic structure rather than a teleological one.

Do you see the difference at play? Once you are signed up to standard issue Western metaphysics circa 1600 - reductionist science tied to Platonic/Cartesian dualism - then any hint of mindfulness in nature becomes the extraordinary problem to solve. And patterns are the famous Platonic bone of contention.

But flip to a systems science or process philosophy paradigm and now the opposite is the focus. We are asking about where "mindfulness" ever actually ceases to be the case. On the local scale, even particles seem either weirdly quantum willful, or secretly following these abstract laws what someone wrote.

Which of his books talk about points and quantity? — Gregory

Peirce never wrote books as such. But his writings were voluminous. So there is no easy way in.

I don't really get what you mean by points and quantity. But if you want to dig into the patterns of nature, you might be much better off with books on fractal geometry, scalefree networks, chaos theory, and those kinds of things. You need the science to give you the conventional story on self-organising patterns in general. Only with that kind of grounding could you see how this relates to the metaphysics developed by someone like Peirce.

As a chess player, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "patterns" is to think of patterns in chess which are really just geometric truths that one either grasps or doesn't. A pattern doesn't not exist simply because no one sees it. In this sense, I see patterns as being objective. If these types of patterns were subjective it would imply that the first player to grasp them brought them into existence which seems strange to me. It makes more sense to me to say that the pattern already inheres within reality and minds can either grasp or not grasp them.

In replying to me, you shall have to write short posts, else I get lost and fail to do justice to them and your effort.

then clearly it is teleology of the dilute kind - a statistically-inevitable tendency of nature. — apokrisis

Very dilute indeed, like the blueberries in my blueberry muffin the label on which makes clear that there are no blueberries at all in the muffin, or the crabcakes at my local grocery store - same business.

Of course, life and mind only exist because, on the whole, they do in fact overall increase the world's entropy. — apokrisis

Only? Is that a teleological only?

So we - as living and thinking systems - are fully part of the great cosmic entropic flow. But being a part of that involves also our being able stand apart from it. To be local stores of negentropic form and finality and so break down "resources" - natural stores of negentropy - and speed their path to becoming waste heat. — apokrisis

I was joking above. Apparently you're not.

Pattern has objective existence in nature as that which can locally suppress uncertainty. — apokrisis

I think you mean laws. With "pattern" I infer you mean some thing or aspect in or of nature in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself that is just there, willy-nilly, and that people - mind, if you will - stumble across it; that pattern is a thing separate from and prior to any mind.

But then a reality that develops generalised law or habits.... — apokrisis

As an idea? Yes? But that the idea has no other existence except as idea? That, or what reality do you mean - on the assumption that it is meaningful to suppose that reality is a one and not a many.

For the rest, it appears to me that you read into nature whatever works for you. As practical science that seems about right. Aristotle had his how, why, of what, from what? Newton had laws and causes, Kant causes, and now we have fields. And fair to say (imo) all based on patterns. Now, however, I must ask you for a rigorous - and short - definition of pattern. We may find our disaccord in that. Because while I suppose it reasonable to read into nature, at the same time it won't do to leave that reading there as if it were nature, as if what was read into was read from.

(If you have already given that definition, just point me to it.)

Or in short, I hold patterns to be templates laid over nature, but not at all in nature.

For the rest, it appears to me that you read into nature whatever works for you. As practical science that seems about right. — tim wood

It is all models. What more are you hoping for here? Revelation? Faith?

Now, however, I must ask you for a rigorous - and short - definition of pattern. — tim wood

In a general way, we are talking about a form or state of organisation that somehow looks habitual, repetitive, meaningful, deliberate, pervasive, ordered. And thus not the opposite of being patternless - chaotic, accidental, arbitrary, lacking predictable structure.

The presence of a pattern implies a pattern generator. A finality. There is some larger process that is placing constraints on irregularity or uncertainty.

Thus a pattern does not simply exist as a result of meaningless accident as you seem to want to suggest. It has to be generated by constraints imposed on otherwise free possibility

Where modern statistical mechanics gets us to is the realisation that even the random and chaotic patterns of nature are also the product of exactly this kind of causal set-up - an Aristotelean or systems causal story. So there is nothing in nature that escapes this causal ontology as even “raw chance” is being shaped into its completely predictable patterns - if you check my citation.

There is always finality present in this sense. Even the random decay of a particle has a (Quantum) generator by virtue of the fact that we can observe its predictable statistical pattern.

If we are merely reading patterns into nature, then there would be no pattern generation machinery for science to discover and model. And really, what else defines nature than it is a pattern - a structure, a process, a system of dynamical generation or becoming?

If you want to argue this is not the case, how does science manage to extract universal strength laws of nature? What is going on there?

deliberate — apokrisis

Nop

The presence of a pattern implies a pattern generator. — apokrisis

And nop. There is no proof there is super daddy out there, or some guy with a long beard and a long toenail. There simply isn't any evidence your mind isn't making this stuff up

Can you supply me with a single example of a pattern in nature for which it is scientifically accepted it has no generating process?

As I have stressed multiple times here, even randomness and chaos can now be described as predictable patterns in terms of their generators.

So it is not I who is invoking supernatural beings. Just you as a way of ducking the argument being made.

I'll be upfront. I don't like Aristotelians. They claim to everyone they can prove that personhood is beyond this universe that is not embodied HERE. No way to do that.. The opposite can be proven

1) The world must reflect God
2) yet theodicy says God can't resolve the human condition without allowing pain, forcing people into situations they weren't consulted about, and doing things God never did
3) God is imperfect

A stronger argument: does God make painful decisions? If he is does, then he is not all actual and in possession of all perfection. If he does not, he is inferior to a good human.

This disproves the God of Aristotle and Aquinas. Another form of God might exist, but Pluto might have a toenail. There is no knowing this with human intellect

Can you supply me with a single example of a pattern in nature for which it is scientifically accepted it has no generating process? — apokrisis

I just corrected the grammatical errors in my last post

Anyway, you proposed a generator. That word means a person who generates. Then you say "find something in nature that you can't go deeper into". Uh, where is this going? We see patterns. They might go on forever (no in time, but in space). That doesn't mean there is a patterner, a causer, or a generator. You need desperately to put down the Aristotle and read some Freud on religion

I'll be upfront. I don't like Aristotelians. — Gregory

You are ranting against theists now. And all my arguments are atheistic.

Anyway, you proposed a generator. That word means a person who generates. — Gregory

It is a mathematical term - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generator_(mathematics)

You need desperately to put down the Aristotle and read some Freud on religion — Gregory

The rant continues. You are unable to furnish an example of a natural pattern that wouldn’t have a generative process behind it. Case closed.

You are unable to furnish an example of a natural pattern that wouldn’t have a generative process behind it. Case closed. — apokrisis

Which turtle do you want to focus on?

In a general way, we are talking about a form or state of organisation that somehow looks habitual, repetitive, meaningful, deliberate, pervasive, ordered. And thus not the opposite of being patternless - chaotic, accidental, arbitrary, lacking predictable structure.

The presence of a pattern implies a pattern generator. A finality. There is some larger process that is placing constraints on irregularity or uncertainty.

Thus a pattern does not simply exist as a result of meaningless accident as you seem to want to suggest. It has to be generated by constraints imposed on otherwise free possibility

Where modern statistical mechanics gets us to is the realisation that even the random and chaotic patterns of nature are also the product of exactly this kind of causal set-up - an Aristotelean or systems causal story. So there is nothing in nature that escapes this causal ontology as even “raw chance” is being shaped into its completely predictable patterns - if you check my citation.

There is always finality present in this sense. Even the random decay of a particle has a (Quantum) generator by virtue of the fact that we can observe its predictable statistical pattern.

If we are merely reading patterns into nature, then there would be no pattern generation machinery for science to discover and model. And really, what else defines nature than it is a pattern - a structure, a process, a system of dynamical generation or becoming?

If you want to argue this is not the case, how does science manage to extract universal strength laws of nature? What is going on there? — apokrisis

The presence of pattern implies a process of pattern generation, which I imagine is what you’re referring to in ‘generator’ as a mathematical term, rather than a being. My background is neither mathematical nor scientific, but I have been exploring the idea of a six-dimensional stochastic process whose dimensional constraints and relational structure manifest an evolution of information: the difference that makes a difference. I’d be interested in your initial thoughts.

As a drastically simplified structure: free possibility is both existent and non-existent; matter in relation to anti-matter manifests as random potentiality; interrelating patterns of potentiality manifest as random energy (wave-particle); interacting energy patterns manifest as diverse localised atomic relations (including atoms); interacting atomic patterns manifest as diverse molecular relations (including molecules); interacting molecular patterns manifest as diverse physical/chemical relations (including organic structures and objects); interacting physical/chemical patterns manifest as diverse localised events (including living organisms); interacting patterns of events/change manifest as diverse conceptual relations (including ecological systems, weather, social groups, etc); and interacting conceptual/predictive patterns manifest as meaningful relations - all in relation to a meaningless (free) objective possibility of existence...

For the rest, it appears to me that you read into nature whatever works for you. As practical science that seems about right.
— tim wood

It is all models. — apokrisis

Unless I'm missing something, this settles the question. Pattern is read into nature. And even Kant's a priori structures are read into. Completely conceded is the practical point that pattern in many cases might as well be deemed as being "in" nature. But at the same time it seems to me desirable not to forget that they never are, along the lines of how we can talk easily enough about seeing, e.g., a tree, but how we ought not forget that we never do, the tree itself being physically and temporally removed and distanced from the seeing.

For clarity I'm taking nature as that that is at the instant, and from one instant to the next is never the same.

Unless I'm missing something, this settles the question. Pattern is read into nature. — tim wood

No, it starts things. It accepts that any ontological enquiry is rooted in a pragmatic epistemology. We can only "know" the world via whatever modelling relation we find to be useful.

It is a statement of epistemic humility. It begins an actual metaphysical-strength effort to talk about the "truth of reality" with an appropriate disclaimer.

So it is why I can say "reductionism" is perfectly fine within its own (restricted) purposes. And why "holism" can be also "just a model" and yet be the model demonstrably closer to the "truth" because it models that reality in terms of all four Aristotelean causes. It treats formal and final cause as also "part of nature", whereas reductionism posits only material and efficient cause as "part of nature", leaving formal and final cause hanging in the air as "super natural".

So a reductionist might claim that nature just doesn't contain its own forms, its own finalities. That becomes an ontological-strength claim they then need to support. You appear to be wanting to argue that.

Or a reductionist might more humbly agree that reductionism chooses to be mute on the question of how form and finality play a part in reality because - for the purposes of pragmatic modelling - reductionism simply doesn't need to include the class of top-down causes. No ontological claim is made. The reductionist model already presumes an intelligent human with some goal in mind and an ability to construct a design. The necessary formal and final cause will be supplied by a "creating mind".

And as I would then say, sure you can just model reality in terms of material and efficient cause, then call it quits. Meanwhile I'll go and join up with the guys who have the ambition of a full four causes model of reality. That is going to be the cutting edge of anyone actually still interested in metaphysics as a totalising inquiry into the nature of nature.

For clarity I'm taking nature as that that is at the instant, and from one instant to the next is never the same. — tim wood

Well there you go. You are taking a basic reductionist modelling trick and convincing yourself that is then "the world" truly described. You presume an atomistic ontology and read that into everything you see - so don't really ever see all that is there.

A systems perspective is holistic and so the whole idea of reality as a sequence of states - one damn instant after another - is clearly a wild over-simplification. A holist would see the same reality in terms of a dynamical flow, a process with structure.

So while things may be different from one instant to the next (they MUST be if the holism presumes that local possibility always has a baseline (quantum) uncertainty), overall everything is being kept on track by a global flow - a generally constraining purpose, direction or finality.

What you are saying is that you presume reductionism, and hence reductionism is what your argument must spit out.

I am saying check your presumptions. Reductionism just isn't a large enough model if you want to do anything as ambitious as metaphysics.

Visually or logically? There's a distinction. Perhaps not a great one.

Would seem to me the mind seems to prefer complete shapes mixed with open accent patterns. Say a marble column accented by a wreath.

Could be wrong but that's just what it would seem based on the prevalence of pattern and design that seems to have gained popularity/stood the test of time.

The deeper mechanics to that (if correct) are at the moment an enigma.

Aesthetics. Ornaments. Etc. Very interesting and worth delving into full discussion about.

Pretty for one. Perhaps mentally invigorating or even occupying for another. Perhaps the concept of "balance" or even symmetry plays a role. Who could say.

Non-visually as in logic or math. Well it's just what happens when your brain connects two and two together. That's, after all, how we advanced so far. Is it simply trying to find shortcuts mentally or something greater? Now there's a debate.

No, it starts things. It accepts that any ontological enquiry is rooted in a pragmatic epistemology. We can only "know" the world via whatever modelling relation we find to be useful. — apokrisis

Maybe it's a word thing, like two people facing each other who cannot get straight which way "to the left" is. Who knows, maybe the first time that ever happened on TPF. Anyway, let me try to put this in the kind of simple terms I understand.

We have data. We both see a pattern. Or perhaps you see it and show it me and I agree. The question, then, the only one I'm addressing, is where the pattern is. I say it's a product of the inquiring mind. And you seem to disagree, yet while at the same saying "is rooted," "we can only," and agreeing that pattern is read into nature.

Well there you go. You are taking a basic reductionist modelling trick and convincing yourself that is then "the world" truly described. You presume an atomistic ontology and read that into everything you see - so don't really ever see all that is there. — apokrisis

Do you "see" a problem with your word "see"? Indeed you see, no question. But then you turn about and appear to say that you're (only?) seeing what is there. I'm saying that what you see is entirely your interpretive creation - if you will your pragmatic epistemology - and as such is no part of nature. That is, just what you say is "there" is not there at all. Your view, our view, is necessarily abstractive and extractive. Is it useful? Of course it is. Is it true, or at least consistent? If it's any good it is.

And do we get to say that's how nature is? That depends on the informality of the statement and the understanding of the listener. Call it the distinction between a practical knowledge of the thing, and the way that knowledge actually works. I'm making that distinction.

------

On this site in a thread on race are referenced several times two videos that establish that there is no such thing as race. Part of the argument (as I understand it) is that notions of race arise out of arbitrary interpretations of data. Given a mass of data points, so-called scientists laid over them such templates as suited there purposes, and then represented their creations as the nature itself. So much for the damage that science can do. Of course we call it a pseudo-science and dismiss it, but the lesson is that they did not. I hold it's a good lesson. Further, I (not a scientist), believe that scientists worthy of the name do not make that mistake, however much informal usage, even theirs, may reify it.

I shall now give a definition of nature, in the hopes that you will endorse it or improve on it. Nature is that which underlies perception and understanding, describable in terms of perception and understanding and reasoning thereon, but not itself knowable (in the Kantian sense). In the practical sense, (again Kantian), as the matter that is perceived, reasoned upon, and understood, eminently knowable.

Is Hoffman claiming that the way a bird sees the world could not be translated into a form that we could understand? — Banno

No. The underlying patterns of information are the same for everyone. It's the "icons", mental constructs, that differ among observers. That's why Science is an attempt to remove the personal bias from our observations. And mathematical models (equations) are about as close as we can get to the fundamental Information patterns of reality. Unfortunately, bird concepts, translated into abstract math, would not mean much to the average human. :smile:

No. The underlying patterns of information are the same for everyone. — Gnomon

Would you accept a correction: No. That which underlies patterns of information are the same for everyone.

I think that what underlies everything is the pure potentiality of Infinity and Finitude. If you have a segment pi in length, then a piece of the segment corresponds to each number. It goes on forever (Infinite) but has a limit (Finite). Where the infinite meets the finite (at the limit) is an infinity mystery. So nature can never even be understood

I hope he is a bit clearer that that in his explanations.

I shall now give a definition of nature, in the hopes that you will endorse it or improve on it. Nature is that which underlies perception and understanding, describable in terms of perception and understanding and reasoning thereon, but not itself knowable (in the Kantian sense). In the practical sense, (again Kantian), as the matter that is perceived, reasoned upon, and understood, eminently knowable. — tim wood

If we talk at cross purposes, it is because you turn the original question about the ontology of patterns - are they real, and thus in what sense? - into an argument about epistemological foundations where I’ve already indicated my general agreement.

Anything we can say about “nature” is going to be a model - a pragmatic business of constructing a general causal theory to be constrained by “the facts” as we then discover them (the facts being of course measurements predicted by our models, so leaving us in Kantian fashion, still on our side of the epistemic bargain).

All this is completely accepted about the relation we would have with “nature” - our Umwelt.

And then there is my point. Broadly there are the two metaphysical models in play here. You - consciously or unconsciously - appear only able to apply a reductionist perspective to things. I am saying that a holist has a larger four causes model that can “naturalise” formal and final cause too. They are fully part of the world being described (and so not left hanging as being supernatural powers, nor simply dismissed as mere human social constructions).

How do you address the objection that because no two things are ever the same, that there is no pattern except in abstraction, which is a process of the mind of the one perceiving - creating, as it were - the pattern. That is, sez I, no mind, no pattern. No similarities anywhere anytime anyway, except in the mind of those who pick them out. — tim wood

This was the question you posed.

So you seem to want to say that abstracting over the particulars is a mental process. The real world is some unpatterned state of affairs, a mereological collection of concrete individuals, and we then invent notions of universals by choosing to ignore all the individual differences by applying some arbitrary, socially constructed, rule.

My reply is that nature itself is organised by abstracting over the particular. That is how the world develops its complex hierarchically structured form. Any collection of Interacting individuals will fall into emergent patterns as they develop a temporal history or memory - become constrained by their own past. Lawful and predictable behaviour will result.

So a pattern in nature is emergent form that serves some purpose. Although that purpose can be pretty humble and statistical. It can be just the finality of arriving at the collective, detail-forgetting, state of an equilibrium balance.

In an ideal gas model, it doesn’t matter what the particles are doing. Their motions are random - in a way then described by a simple globally-constraining mean. The gas has a temperature and pressure. And the temperature and pressure are quite real things, aren’t they? They might emerge at the collective level. But they act on the world in a measurable and not abstract way.

Again, my point was that even if an analysis of the situation in terms of four cause thinking says that any form or finality is mighty dilute in comparison to the kind of intentional twist we would give those metaphysical terms in relation to humans and their “minds”, there still is a need for a four causes model to account for what is going on. Nature actually forms its entropic patterns for causal reasons - such as achieving global equilibrium balances.

To deny this “desire” is to make the Cartesian ontological error of treating mind and world as divided realms. To be quite comfortable with psychologising nature is just a normal step towards being a proper natural philosopher or systems thinker.

A Cartesian thinks of matter as concrete stuff, and mind as an experiencing or rationalising stuff. A systems thinker would say instead that even matter is not as thus imagined (an idealised combination of material and efficient cause, hence little imperishable atoms). Why, our best physical theories confirm that particles are really waves. Of maybe quantum maps of potential. Or just informational constructs of some kind.

Science has dematerialised the material now! Particles are events that only exist with any concreteness in the sense an act of measurement has been recorded. They are purely contextual in their being.

So matter is no longer matter. And equally - as you are no believer in spooky soul stuff - mind is no longer mind. To now talk about Nature with either a super-physicalist rhetoric, or try to over-protect the use of mentalistic terms, is just a cultural exercise in boundary policing. It is preserving the Cartesian world view and not allowing in the clean air of new thought.

I think that patterns are like infinity and the finite, because we all use a subjective mind and an objective mind. A person who doesn't believe in supernatural gods or a god is not a real Aristotelian but that's ok because he was best understood by Hegel and Heidegger. He was ancient but they modern. But again realize that you are using a subjective and objective mind. They don't cancel out. The subjective wins.

Take music as a perfect example. People at the Catholic college i went to insisted Mozart was objectively the greatest secular composer. People with that kind of brain matter exist. Apokrisis is leading people down that path

Splitting up causality into four parts makes it difficult to question causality itself, which Nagarjuna did. Aristotle did the latter to avoid the question. Have the readers read Aquinas. He avoids every question by trying to make distinctions without justifying the ground. Aristotle and Aquinas level jump with knowledge itself. They really have no arguments for anything and Descartes knew this

And mathematical models (equations) are about as close as we can get to the fundamental Information patterns of reality. — Gnomon

Any information can be encoded as a string of bits. We can then calculate the entropy of that string. No 'icons' would be involved - unless bits are considered icons.

Any information can be encoded as a string of bits. We can then calculate the entropy of that string. — Banno

Hmm.

So what is the entropy content of the decimal expansion of Pi? Is the resulting bit string all signal - that is minimally entropic? Or all noise - that is maximally entropic?

It rather depends whether sender and receiver share the same decoding key - the pattern generator or mental construct used to encode the string of bits.

If it is the algorithm for computing pi that was at work, then the string is all negentropy. Even if sent over a noisy channel, the receiver could fill in any gaps or errors by just doing the computation to double check. In fact, simply transmit the algorithm - the pattern generator - and have done with it.

But if the receiver has a different model of the situation - a different theory about the pattern, a different mental construct - then a very different message might be read.

The model in mind might be "this is a perfectly random decimal sequence". And yes, it then passes all the usual tests for being "patternless" - what we would expect to get by drawing numbers out of a hat by chance.

So we have here exactly the same "information", and precisely the opposite conclusion as to the underlying "data generator" in play. And each model can confirm its interpretation as the proper one by the different kinds of measurement it chooses to employ.

@apokrisis

First: welcome back.

Second:
edit: objection: badgering. Sustained, stricken from the record.

So what is the entropy content of the decimal expansion of Pi? — apokrisis

Indeed, that is what I was asking. Do we look to 3.1415... or Machin's Formula? One is finite, and so would seem to be the obvious choice.

And yes, welcome back.