the least useful consisting of a paradoxical ‘relation’ of six-dimensional ‘meaningfulness’, and the most dynamic - and potentially confusing - a combination of ‘object’, ‘event’ and ‘potential’ (a differentiated triadic structure of 3-4-5). — Possibility

:grimace: I don't understand this.

IIT is an interesting theoretical approach, but is firmly grounded in Cartesian dualism, and based on an assumption that it’s even possible to qualify consciousness as a consolidated event and then isolate it as a stable evaluation applicable to any interaction. — Possibility

"our model challenges prominent theories on philosophy of mind, which assume that consciousness is a continuous stream." - Time Slices: What Is the Duration of a Percept?

Thanks for the excellent summary. It seems a little like Neural networks, with the Markov chain, just much more complicated. Brains are obviously central to Human consciousness, but as a monist I am much more interested in the source of consciousness, which I take to be the "thing" that causes the information to integrate. I assume there is a singular source that integrates all information, and if you have followed the thread, I am in hot water for stating that everything is information. :lol: I will need to rationalize that at some stage.

What do you think causes the information to integrate. You have described a process that might recognize a pattern and shunt it to an area that might symbolize it. But what do you think causes this to occur? What I'm wondering is if a pattern needs to be shunted to a particular area of the brain, it would seem to suggest it is recognized early in the process, and so escorted to where it should go, but is not actually cognized until the end of the process. - Just a query, any thoughts would be appreciated.

FYI - Neuroplasticity in action:

You provide me with expressions of your consciousness, that contain integrated information about it, whilst rubbishing me and IIT, all the while your expressions prove you wrong. You have got to laugh? — Pop

I gave you the obvious criticisms of ITT that were made even when Tononi first started going down that route. I remember the rubbishing and even some laughter during the coffee breaks at neuroscience conferences in the mid-1990s.

Then when you stop laughing, you have got to come on board. Information is the way to link things. Think about it. — Pop

The thing to think about is that information theory is merely another model of reality. And it is not merely a model, but one - like the materialism it parallels - that explicitly rules out the formal and final causes that Aristotle attributed to substantial being. So it is a continuation of the reductionist project that gives rise to the standard existential crisis that gives rise to the various responses of dualism, Panpsychism and systems thinking or holism.

This is important here especially as you want to conflate consciousness as a phenomenon that is primarily concerned with formal and final cause, with information theory as a modelling paradigm deliberately set up not to talk about formal and final cause.

The reason information theory is useful to humans is that it allows us to atomise the notion of form just as classical mechanics allowed us to atomise the notion of masses and forces - or material and efficient causes. So just as we can mechanically construct systems that are composed of material atoms, so we can construct machines - like computers and communication devices - that are composed of informational atoms. That is, machines that implement logical structures or iteratively generate rule-based patterns.

And just like Newtonian material reductionism, the modelling leaves out final cause completely. Nature is reduced to being arbitrary and random … because that then gives us human maximum freedom to insert ourselves into the equation as the ones who make machines or computers to serve some purpose we might dream up ourselves.

Formal cause is included in the reductionist paradigm simply as unavoidable laws that constrain the space of constructive possibility. They do limit the action - either as physical law or logical law. But they are also somehow placed outside the reality the model is concerned about - a kind of necessary embarrassment of uncertain metaphysical status.

So information theory works really well as a way for us humans to model our physical reality. It imagines nature in terms of the opportunities for technological invention. We can build devices with any form we can conceive, for any purpose we might desire.

But as a model of nature’s causes, it doesn’t even pretend to be complete. It is deliberately a way of telling the story that maximises the creative possibilities for human engineering and thus gets the natural principles of organismic causality quite wrong much of the time.

And yet here you want to conflate a metaphysically truncated model of reality with the primary phenomenon it is so ill-designed to explain.

You can see why I will continue to laugh at the muddled thinking involved.

Information refers loosely to the variability in any interaction. — Possibility

Why does it have to pertain to interactions? There's information associated with a particular photon whether it interacts with anything else or not, right?

I'm just not impressed by your knowledge of the topic so far. You've already presented misinformation about Shannon, so I think I'll rely on other sources than yourself.

"our model challenges prominent theories on philosophy of mind, which assume that consciousness is a continuous stream." - Time Slices: What Is the Duration of a Percept? — Pop

For the record, I don’t assume that consciousness is a continuous stream, nor do I assume the alternative must be discrete packets or ‘moments’ of consciousness. What I’ve read of the article you linked supports Feldman Barrett’s constructionist theory, in which consciousness is constructed as an ongoing predictive event from incomplete, potential and affected ‘information’.

Why does it have to pertain to interactions? There's 8nformation associated with a particular photon whether it I teracts with anything else or not, right? — frank

You can predict information, sure - but until that photon interacts, you’re talking about potential information. It’s a calculation based on potential interaction. This is the problem with talking about ‘information’ as if it has one qualitative definition. I could be referring to the object, event or potential when I use the term ‘information’ - how would you know?

You can predict information, sure - but until that photon interacts, you’re talking about potential information. — Possibility

Because it's in superposition? The potential information is unique to that photon?

This is the problem with talking about ‘information’ as if it has one qualitative definition. I could be referring to the object, event or potential when I use the term ‘information’ - how would you know? — Possibility

So you would advise that we specify what kind of information we're talking about? What modifiers should we use?

So you would advise that we specify what kind of information we're talking about? What modifiers should we use? — frank

Information and the speculative sense of information.

What do you think causes the information to integrate. You have described a process that might recognize a pattern and shunt it to an area that might symbolize it. But what do you think causes this to occur? — Pop

I'm not sure that the integration of information is the correct teleology for the systems Friston describes. The objective is to minimise free energy (to maintain the integrity of one's form). To put it as best I can in terms of information, as that's the thread topic, free energy would be the 'information' contained in the co-occurrence of the sensory input and it's causes. If they are expected to co-occur, then information gain is lower.

So, this relies on the function distribution of the hidden causes being matched to the probability distribution of the model of them. The closer the match the less free energy. A creature which can minimise it's free energy obviously has a competitive advantage over one which is not so able. So that's what I think causes it to occur, the selective advantage gained by the lowering of free energy inherent in matching a model's probability function to the distribution of external causal states.

But, to be clear, integration is a means to an end here, that end being free energy reduction. Information is integrated only to better remove it. Models whose priors better match the posterior distributions gain less information (in terms of surprise). The goal is the reduction, the integration just a necessary tool among others.

Great video, by the way. Good find.

even though no answer can be given for “what is not information?” — Possibility

Hey. I am interested in knowing why you think no answer can be given to such question; it's just curiosity.

I gave you the obvious criticisms of ITT that were made even when Tononi first started going down that route. I remember the rubbishing and even some laughter during the coffee breaks at neuroscience conferences in the mid-1990s. — apokrisis

I can relate to what you are saying in some respects. I also have my quibbles about IIT. But I find Integrated information ( a concept preceding IIT ) to be the best possible definition of consciousness. My interest is consciousness, I don't stray vey far into other topics, so I have a pretty good fix on it. I'm surprised how poorly understood the concept of integrated information is, given some of the queries, perhaps this needs a thread on it's own?

The reason information theory is useful to humans is that it allows us to atomise the notion of form just as classical mechanics allowed us to atomise the notion of masses and forces - or material and efficient causes — apokrisis

Yes precisely, Information needs to be broken down to into small chunks, its finest grains, to be understood, as everything is information. I have an intuitive affinity to an informational understanding of systems, that just doesn't occur with thermodynamics ( for me ). I am not interested in the intricate details, so much as a broad philosophical understanding, such that a singular concept can narrate the big picture in simply understandable and human scale terms. Information is excellent for this, but I don't yet fully understand it. There is a lot to understand. I feel there is quite a lot of "new" philosophical meat on offer, but perhaps this is just new to me.

The entire biomass of the planet occurs due to copying - so it is necessarily information processing. And because all systems evolve, they have to evolve by integrating the disintegrative information effecting them - such as we see in global warming.

@Wayfarer put me on to some excellent stuff from the Royal Society, which even I found surprising:

"We conclude that organic information does not have the status of a derived physical quantity because it cannot be expressed by anything simpler than itself. This means that organic information has the same scientific status as the fundamental quantities of physics."

This conclusion aligns with the Zeilinger paper posted earlier. And I think this is the broad direction understanding is headed towards.

As you say "information theory works really well as a way for us humans to model our physical reality."

Information is a fundamental quantity. It is present in everything.

Call me stubborn, but I keep thinking of information as being subjective; with that I mean that it is not a quality of an object, but it is instead (in its basic form) the effect caused by a given object onto another (the amount of change depends on the "strength" of the effect and on the amount of change the affected object is able to support). Thus, information is a quality of an object if and only if it is caused by something else [and information is not a quality of the object that causes the change but of the object(s) on which the change occurs]; this way, I think information is not a fundamental quality, for in a universe in which there is only one object, information would not exist (although the object does?).

Edit:

We could say information is potentially a quality of an object if such object has the capacity to interact with other objects. But information can only actually be a quality when it has been caused by another object (it is the result of an interaction). I dunno, what do you think?

Wayfarer put me on to some excellent stuff from the Royal Society, — Pop

You should know that Apokrisis is a published author in this field, although that particular author, Marcello Barbieri, has a different approach to the subject in question (code biology as distinct from Peircian biosemiosis.)

What do you think causes the information to integrate? — Pop

Another way of asking that question is, what is the source of the order we see in living organisms? Which amounts to the question 'what is life'? It seems a deceptively simple question, but really it's not at all.

Think about this: science obviously relies on there being predictable regularities and ratios, a.k.a. scientific laws. Through mathematical analysis and prediction, scientists can exploit these laws to marvellous effect, as we see every day in our technocentric culture.

But science doesn't necessarily explain the nature of those laws - like, whether they really are 'laws', or what the concept of 'laws' mean, and so on - none of those are scientific questions. They're prompted by science, but they're not themselves scientific in nature, because they're not subject to experimental verification.

Likewise in quantum physics, all of the discussion about the interpretations - none of that is necessary to understand and apply quantum physics to technology. It works, even if no-one really understands it, as a famous physicist said.

So I think in your analysis, some things that you are taking for granted, or which seem obvious to you, are not actually given. You're reaching for a kind of silver bullet explanation for 'everything' in your definitions - hey, it's ALL information! - but you're obfuscating some fundamental points.

I know what you mean it is a problem everybody experiences, because we tend to think of information only as something we receive. Which is true, BUT, What occurs is that there is a third person point of view, which subsumes to a first person point of view.

In the third person we don't receive the information, in theory, in paradigm. We conceive our self as a passive onlooker watching information link others. Of course, whilst this is conceptually invaluable, in reality it is not the case, we are also informationally linked.

It is to do with the notion of a mind independent reality which some people believe is the case.

So, in the hypothetical scenario in which there exists only one thing, this lonely thing would be in its entirety pure information; is this correct?

what is the source of the order we see in living organisms? — Wayfarer

More then that - What is the source of order in the universe? That which integrates the Universe integrates us!

I value Apo's input, and hope to continue the enquiry with him.

So, in the hypothetical scenario in which there exists only one thing, this lonely thing would be in its entirety pure information, is this correct.? — Daniel

No, there is a primary substance, and then information about it. Those are the two logical necessities that we can never change. That is the metaphysical base .

What's the difference between the primary substance and the information about it?

The information describes a primary substance, but not completely. Potentially there is always a deeper ingredient that creates a primary substance, as I understand it.

Feldman Barrett’s constructionist theory, in which consciousness is constructed as an ongoing predictive event from incomplete, potential and affected ‘information’. — Possibility

So you would agree with the view that we are a body of information integrating more information in our path? :up:

, you are saying information describes a primary substance. If information describes (I am using "information" as the subject of my sentence), how does information describe? In other words, what is required for information to be able to describe.

If you say, every object has the capacity to interact (and thus cause a change in other object), I would agree with you (not that it matters). What I understand, however, is that you believe all is information, and that even in the absence of interaction information prevails (although irrelevant). What kind of information is there in the case of a universe with a single object? As you said, in a universe where everything is grey (there is only one thing), what kind of information could we extract? If information would no exist in a universe covered by greyness, I do not understand how everything is information and how information can be considered a fundamental quality (you said quantity, but I believe you meant quality). If a universe where there is only greyness has no information, then information would not be a quality of this particular object (the greyness). If greyness and some other thing is required for there to be information then I would be inclined to thing that information is not a fundamental quality of an object but a quality produced in an object as a consequence of its interaction with another object. Causes are not information.

In other words, I agree that information is a quality of objects if and only if it is a quality that results from an interaction.

I'm surprised how poorly understood the concept of integrated information is, given some of the queries, perhaps this needs a thread on it's own? — Pop

At a certain level, integrated information is just a truism. It is obvious - once you accept the brain employs some kind of neural code to construct "consciousness" - that a big problem is how all this local information, this individually triggered firing, then gets integrated into a large structured state of meaningful experiencing.

So that sets folk off down a path towards an emphasis on information processing and global self-organisation - a path which leads them towards the age-old habits of Cartesian representationalism and even the faux-monism of panpsychism.

The easy case against ITT is that if people like Tononi and Koch are happy to arrive at a destination like panpsychism, you know that you don't even want to waste time starting going down that particular road.

One can make a more technical case. But like quantum consciousness theories, why even waste your day?

I contrast this with Friston's Bayesian Brain model. Friston worked with Tononi in Edelman's lab as it happens. But Friston's approach struck me as immediately right even before he really got going.

Like most neuroscientists who are serious, he wouldn't even use a dualist and representational term like "consciousness" - except with those scare quotes around them. He understood that we are talking about the brain's embodied and functional modelling of reality - or rather its model of it being a self in a world. So that takes us into a different intellectual space - one where cognition is enactive and semiotic. It is just a fundamentally different orientation that leads to a very different understanding of nature.

Information is excellent for this, but I don't yet fully understand it. There is a lot to understand. I feel there is quite a lot of "new" philosophical meat on offer, but perhaps this is just new to me. — Pop

It is good you say you don't fully understand it. The scientific story is still being written. And my point is that the concepts of both information and entropy are themselves useful modelling constructs - extreme simplifications of the world they thus also make usefully measurable by those extreme simplifications.

So - as Friston keenly understood - information theory creates a cleared ground, one stripped of the quality of meaning, so that science could then start constructing the right kind of metric for measuring systems with meaning. Information theory gave you a basis for more complex metrics like mutual information, surprisal, ascendency, or one of the many other formalisations people have been attempting.

ITT could be considered an effort in that direction. But it is too disembodied. Friston flipped things around to talk about free energy minimisation. That was a clever trick along the same lines that biologists used a generation earlier to understand the phenomenon of life as an evolving dissipative structure. The immaterial information was connected to the material dynamics - the self to the world - via an explicit epistemic cut, or modelling relation.

This conclusion aligns with the Zeilinger paper posted earlier. And I think this is the broad direction understanding is headed towards. — Pop

I've returned to biology because so much has been happening there on this issue over the past decade.

And yes, Barbieri is going down this same semiotic track. I would draw attention to this bit...

Genes and proteins are not produced by spontaneous processes in living systems. They are produced by molecular machines that physically stick their subunits together and are therefore manufactured molecules, i.e.molecular artefacts. This in turn means that all biological structures are manufactured, and therefore that the whole of life is artefact-making

This is where the new science is arriving to change the game.

Life can be divided into genetic information and chemistry. But the missing part of the story is how those two realms are mechanically connected.

And exactly the same intellectual journey is under way in neuroscience - as its tackles its good old dualism of mind and body.

Thanks for the reply. That Channel has a few similar such videos, that I found extremely interesting. I will look into Friston's principle some more. I was originally dissuaded due to this comment :

"The free energy principle has been criticized for being very difficult to understand, even for experts.[3] Discussions of the principle have also been criticized as invoking metaphysical assumptions far removed from a testable scientific prediction, making the principle unfalsifiable.[4] In a 2018 interview, Friston acknowledged that the free energy principle is not properly falsifiable: "the free energy principle is what it is — a principle. Like Hamilton's principle of stationary action, it cannot be falsified. It cannot be disproven. In fact, there’s not much you can do with it, unless you ask whether measurable systems conform to the principle."[5] - Wikipedia.

What is the source of order in the universe? That which integrates the Universe integrates us! — Pop

It bears resemblance to the idea of the Logos, the Tao, Dharma - a principle of organisation which can only be discerned in its effects, never in its essence.

Wired article on Karl Friston. Bearing in mind, he is a neuroscientist, although philosophers find his ideas very interesting.

For the past decade or so, Friston has devoted much of his time and effort to developing an idea he calls the free energy principle. (Friston refers to his neuroimaging research as a day job, the way a jazz musician might refer to his shift at the local public library.) With this idea, Friston believes he has identified nothing less than the organizing principle of all life, and all intelligence as well. “If you are alive,” he sets out to answer, “what sorts of behaviors must you show?”

First the bad news: The free energy principle is maddeningly difficult to understand. So difficult, in fact, that entire rooms of very, very smart people have tried and failed to grasp it. A Twitter account2 with 3,000 followers exists simply to mock its opacity, and nearly every person I spoke with about it, including researchers whose work depends on it, told me they didn’t fully comprehend it.

That rings a bell. Ah, I know: "nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage" - Von Neumann advising Claude Shannon.

what is required for information to be able to describe. — Daniel

Information describes the form of a substance - the edge, shape, perturbations, texture, volume, distinctive features, etc.

Without this information the substance would be grey. As you can imagine, If a primary substance had no edge and was completely featureless, such that wherever you look is the same, totally homogenous, the substance would be a "nothing".

↪Pop In other words, I agree that information is a quality of objects if and only if it is a quality that results from an interaction. — Daniel

Quality, quantity, interaction. I will bear that in mind and try to arrive at a definition that has wide agreement and input.

It bears resemblance to the idea of the Logos, the Tao, Dharma - a principle of organisation which can only be discerned in its effects, never in its essence. — Wayfarer

See my reply to Issac above.

I am searching for a philosophical understanding, and would be quite comfortable with a general principle of what is going on. And in general, Information processing is what is going on, even in Friston's principle.

Pop, something I noticed yesterday (and correct me if I'm wrong) is you claim a monist view but propose that information is a co-element of any substance. A first thought was, matter is physical and information is non-physical, so isn't that dualism?