I claim my techno-dialectics gets down to the root of things in providing a naturalistic explanation - one that ties the construction of the modern self to the driving impulse of thermodynamic necessity.

But what say you? — apokrisis

I think your starting point is too over-determined and abstract. Individual sense and interpretation get lost when we begin from a monolithic ground of natural objects. It misses where those objects come from, that they arise as fictions of a sort , or better yet, idealizations.
We dont begin with the natural except as a naive presumption. We begin, every one of us, with a constantly changing flow of sense from which we carve out patterns of stability that integrate what we perceive with how we move our bodies to form what we eventually call empirical objects when we correlated our own perspectives with those of others in our communities. But each perspective remains one’s own , even when we convince ourselves that we can be conditioned, shaped, indoctrinated into larger social structures.
We are only indirectly beholden ton techno ,economic -and language structures, but we are , each one of us , directly beholden to our own personal construals of the sense of language , technology, economic structures.

An Apple phone means different things to different people, and its effect on the working of culture also break down to subgroups and those subgroups to even smaller groups and so on , as a function of what each of us brings to our interpretation of the sense and meaning and usefulness of the toys made available to us.

Claude Shannon's information theory seems to treat messages (carriers of information) as the final answer to a series of yes/no questions aimed at narrowing down the possibiilites that the message could be from an arbitrary n to 1. — TheMadFool

Oh I would agree with that. And it explains why a binary code is the ultimate notion of a code. It is the simplest and fastest means to constrain uncertainty.

Think of the game of 20 questions. I could be thinking of anything - here it happens to be a poodle. And you have to zero in on that answer in as few steps as possible. The most efficient algorithm is a series of yes/no questions that exactly bisects the space of all possible replies. So typically you would ask is it living or dead? Is it human or another living form? Is it domestic or wild? Does it live on a farm or in your house? You get the idea. Eventually you get down to the best questions for halving your uncertainty about the breed.

So a binary code offers the simplest way to constrain semantics. It doesn’t have to tick off alternatives in a linear fashion. It can home in on the only possibility at an exponential rate.

So at an abstract level we can define semantic meaning as about erasing information. Each yes/no counterfactual step can potentially eliminate as much as half of all the contextually valid alternatives.

The question then is can we ever arrive at some irreducible quantity which might constitute a semantic atom. Is any reply ever going to be completely sufficient.

This gets us into the essential difference between a pragmatic theory of meaning or truth and the more familiar atomising approaches to meaning and truth as just naked facts.

So all I meant to emphasise is that information - as meaning - is not atomic and therefore never easy to just turn into a counting exercise - a matter of naked quantity. Meanings are semantics that are the results of grammatical frames. Work has been done to constrain the space of possibilities and limit the uncertainties to a “reasonable” degree.

Turning that into a mathematics is difficult. But even so, biologists and neuroscientists are having a go, with Shannon information and Boltzmann entropy being some kind of atomistic foundation.

As I said, the Planck scale at least does provide a measurable limit on uncertainty, and thus also certainty. It tells us how confined quantumness in practice is, and where the boundary of classical atomism more or less begins. That is why information theory is such a big deal in new physics. It introduces the idea that reality is not constructed of actual atoms but, even so, it is fundamentally grainy and atomistic because holographic constraint or thermal decoherence acts everywhere to limit material uncertainty to a Planck constant defined scale.

Now that kind of physics says nothing about our ordinary linguistic notions of meaning or semantics. And yet it also is the same paradigm shift that would be reflected in a move from an analytic philosophy style logical atomism to a semiotic or pragmatic theory of meaning and truth.

The claims I made included models of schizophrenia and
autism. These illnesses involve deficits in empathy — Joshs

These are neurological disorders that strike at brain organisation at a far more basic level than any “cognitive module” like the rather shaky TOM story. They are both about fine grain and pervasive disturbances to the microcircuitry that in general has to achieve a meaningful balance of integration and differentiation in terms of a modelled self-world relationship.

They show as disorders of social thought because social thinking is the most complex and challenging level of human thought. But the dysfunctions are at a deeper neurodevelopmental level.

Trying to fix the empathy circuit is not addressing the root issue. But reframing the social space of the person in a suitable fashion is of course a way to make their lives better.

As Husserl already pointed out in the Logische Untersuchungen, the entire facile divide between inside and outside has its origin in a naive commonsensical metaphysics and is phenomenologically suspect and inappropriate when it comes to understanding the nature of intentionality — Joshs

Great. We can identity a way that phenomenology is clearly wrong. Semiotics says the production of a self in a world is the opposite of a facile distinction. It is the distinction on which life and mind themselves are founded.

Rather, even in this “being outside” together with its object, Dasein is “inside” correctly understood; that is, it itself exists as the being-in-the-world which knows. — Joshs

This is starting the story after the fact. Every child has to go through the neurodevelopmental process of learning it owns its own hands and that a cat disappearing behind the chair will likely re-emerge the other side.

So for the rationalising adult self, the situation is all rather Kantian. We are beings trapped in our representations. But pragmatism then points out that we are “selves” to the degree we have managed to construct the separation that in fact allows us to be in this kind of modelling relation with “reality”.

The world is wholly inside and I am wholly outside myself” (Merleau-Ponty — Joshs

Yes. The usual love of confounding paradox that marks Continental philosophy and thus “others” it from AP’s love of reassuring certitude.

This is why a prefer the third way of pragmatic philosophy and its modelling relation ontology.

We start off in a state of vagueness - a blooming, buzzing confusion - and then sort that out into a dichotomously rational, hierarchically structured, state of being which is “us as selves in a world.”

The inner is a construction, and so is the outer. The two are rationally constructed to be mutual and complementary aspects of the one modelling relation. I am me to the extent I have othered the world. And vice versa. And what then makes this sane is that it delivers in terms of pragmatic optimality. Goals are defined and goals are achieved.

Intentionality isn’t a surprise or a mystery. A point of view is what will be developed - to the degree that a point of view is useful and meaningful.

The next bit of business is then to discover what defines “useful”. Natural science points us towards the perhaps shocking answer - entropy production. It hasn’t so far pointed us to anything in terms of some higher human purpose - something to do with ineffable spirit or feeling or Platonic goodness.

Rather than committing the mistake of interpreting the phenomena mentalistically, as being part of the mental inventory, we should see the phenomenological focus on the phenomena as an attempt to question the very subject­-object split, as an attempt to stress the co-emergence of mind and world.” — Joshs

And so we circle back to the view we share - that mind is an enactive relation. Another way of talking about semiotic modelling. But with a very different evaluation of the role of the epistemic cut.

Semiotics makes the point that it is how a co-construction of mind and world even gets going. It is the feature and not the bug.

. There are a number of fans of the later Wittgenstein on here, — Joshs

The later Wittgenstein who had Ramsey softly whispering the Peircean corrections to his earlier logical atomistic realism in his ear?

I'm assuming monism, where information has it's neural correlates. So information causes a physical change ( in brain structure ), and this physical change embeds and orients an entity to its environment.

So there is a physical thing going on, where environmental information acts upon an entity and changes them physically, thus creating an enactive situation. — Pop

I wonder if all the details of how information correlates to it's neural parts, and the embeddings of the physical changes taking place with the environment ...etc would be philosophically meaningful topics. Would it not be then neuroscience, cosmology or cognitive psychological topic, rather than a philosophical topic?

I believe that true philosophy has element of critiques, clarifying what is not clear in the thoughts, assertions and arguments in the topics, and defining what is the correct way of seeing and resolving the problems by using self reasoning and intuition.

No one would need all the information about everything under the sun in real life. Sure, there is vast amount of information stored on the internet, almost everything about the whole history of the universe. But then it is not information, it is data warehouse.

An individual or organisation would always need some specific data organised in the form they want for their task, project or usage. That is information.

If I want information on how to increase the chances of winning the lottery, then I don't need how the world works, or why the sun rises from the east, or billions and billions of other data etched into some physical organism and changing by its environmental surroundings. I want to know the particular instructions on how to select the 6 numbers and where and how to buy the tickets. That would be it. That is information (not encyclopaedic data), and is the information I want. :D

I wonder if the details of how information correlates to it's neural parts, and all the embeddings of the physical changes taking place with the environment ...etc would be philosophically meaningful topics. Would it not be then neuroscience, cosmology or cognitive psychological topic, rather than a philosophical topic? — Corvus

In my understanding, information plays a deeper role then is normally understood. By understanding information in it's deepest sense a certain picture of the world emerges.

For instance, everything is information from the perspective of everything.

Wouldn't you say that is interesting philosophy?

Wouldn't you say that is interesting philosophy? — Pop

Sure it is. I am just saying from the other side point of view to get the dialectic discourse of the argument. :)

Whenever there is a new OP, if everyone all agrees to it, or says nothing, then that is not philosophy either. We must see, and discuss the points from all sides of angle.

:up:

And then you must come back with your critical attacks to my points, which can be lethal or surrendering. :D

I think your starting point is too over-determined and abstract. Individual sense and interpretation get lost when we begin from a monolithic ground of natural objects. — Joshs

Given I take a process philosophy point of view, that can’t be the case. Semiotics starts from the other end of the spectrum. It begins in the monolithic ground of structuralism if anywhere. And it others monism by being irreducibly triadic.

So on all scores, it stands apart from a metaphysics of "middle-sized dry goods". It is the opposite of an object oriented ontology.

But each perspective remains one’s own , even when we convince ourselves that we can be conditioned, shaped, indoctrinated into larger social structures. — Joshs

As said, I agree that experience is the construction of a point of view that yields a clear distinction between a self and the world this self is in.

Where we differ - or the flaw I read into phenomenology- is that my natural philosophy approach sees this modelling relation as so general that it is the trick that underlies all life and mind. And maybe even - pansemiotically/thermodynamically - the Cosmos itself. Whereas the Continental habit of thought is socially shaped by the ideology of Romanticism and so the “right answer” becomes the one that most celebrates individuation and personalised truths.

To make psychology something owned by an individual, both biology and culture must be rejected as legitimate sources of this selfhood. The constraints that form us in pragmatic fashion are turned into the chains that bind us. To be “true to ourselves” we must learn to hate hierarchy and “monolithic” structure.

But as I argue, that is an entirely false notion of personhood. The Romantic model of self ironically is employed against humanity by fossil-fuel driven modern economics. The entropic game is kept going by the mass production of individuals eager to accumulate some life store of personalising material objects and even socially-ranked bucket list experiences.

The dysfunction stares us in the face. So I asked whose model can better diagnose the human reality we have managed to co-construct as an interaction between information and entropy.

Well, I know whose model is based on that epistemic cut rather than bemoaning the fact of such an epistemic cut.

We are only indirectly beholden ton techno ,economic -and language structures, but we are , each one of us , directly beholden to our own personal construals of the sense of language , technology, economic structures. — Joshs

It is not about being beholdened or enchained by our biological and social contexts. They are the information that informs our being in the first place.

Your phenomenology gets the causality the wrong way around.

And to forestall your next attempt to simplify my irreducibly triadic ontology to some too simple and plainly false monism, the systems view is all about the co-construction of the functional modelling relation.

A society or ecosystem has a natural interest in producing well fitted parts. And those parts have a natural interest in constructing a well functioning whole.

Rather than antagonism, what drives things is the search for pragmatic synergy. A balance of opposites such as competition and cooperation, or plasticity and stability. The kind of dichotomies that characterise a “system”.

No one would need all the information about anything in real life — Corvus

As per the OP, without information, everything would be nothing.

As per the OP, without information, everything would be nothing. — Pop

But everything is nothing if it is just noise with no signal. So you are no better off until you take the next step of producing a theory that offers an epistemic cut that separates signal from noise - something like the algorithm of a Bayesian Brain engaged in minimising its surprisal or free energy.

If you have a TV screen and it is just a display of white noise static, isn’t that both everything and nothing? Every random flashing pixel is some part of the instantiation of both every great film ever made, and even every great film that could possibly either get made.

So you have the problem in saying “everything is information”. It is the kind of monism that is bounded by two self-ridiculing notions - the idea of absolute nothingness and of infinity. Two equally unrealistic notions of “a limit”.

If you can’t introduce an epistemic cut into your ontic model - the constraint that separates signal from noise - then that is how you wind up with metaphysical idiocies like the many worlds quantum interpretation or modal realism. You have the TV screen that is showing you every great movie that could ever be made in its featureless static. You have the panpsychic nonsense where even a stone is conscious because it implements an unbounded number of informational states in the random thermal jiggling of its constituent atoms.

So your approach to the big question of “what is information” is doomed to failure until you can offer a machinery or formalism that separates signal from noise.

When does a difference make a difference? When does it cease to be merely a difference, like the flash of a pixel or a crackle on a telephone line?

(A: When it has a context that could make that the case.)

As per the OP, without information, everything would be nothing. — Pop

Sure, but each individual will only need specific tailored information, and process with it. By definition, I think, information is tailored, abstracted and minimised in content for the purpose. The universe is filled with objects which can be seen as symbols carrying meanings, but they are randomly observed and perceived, and not classed as information. Data is produced by people, but it is not organised, and has no format, random in content. Data in general is not meaningful to most people.

Information is specific and always has seekers and providers for certain purposes.
If one is writing a database software for covid vaccinated population, then they will go through data analysis on the targeted entities (population) with the fields such as name, dob, sex, address, citizens no, date of 1st vaccination, do2ndvac, do2ndvac. The system is abstracted, organised and specified for certain purposes. Data gathered in the format from the real population and facts are gathered and is in presentable form to the seekers (gov, authorities, health officials and media) as information.

That is the way I think what information is, but maybe it is too narrow definition. I stand for correction.

Sure, but each individual will only need specific tailored information — Corvus

As I explore this, and as has been previously mentioned. Information seems to be a fundamental quantity. The universe needs information fundamentally. It could not exist without it. Elucidating this information precisely though is pretty tricky.

And then what you mention is also valid, but comes much later. Ideally we would be able to define a singular information that covers all instances of informational transaction..

Wouldn't you say that is interesting philosophy? — Pop
Whenever there is a new OP, if everyone all agrees to it, or says nothing, then that is not philosophy either. We must see, and discuss the points from all sides of angle. — Corvus

This thread has been unusually calm & rational & broadminded, perhaps because Pop himself is calm & rational & broadminded. However, the philosophical implications of modern Information Theory lie primarily in the general Ontological and Epistemological realms. But this thread has been mostly focused on narrow technical details. Just mention Realism versus Idealism, as in the Antirealism thread, and you'll see a more hotly contested, and interesting, philosophical debate break out. Remember the Chinese curse : "may you have an interesting life". :cool:

But everything is nothing if it is just noise with no signal. So you are no better off until you take the next step of producing a theory that offers an epistemic cut that separates signal from noise - something like the algorithm of a Bayesian Brain engaged in minimising its surprisal or free energy. — apokrisis

Did you see the video that @Daniel posted earlier. There are similar experiments with Killbots from Harvard.

At the heart of systems theory, it is just noise, then particles with noise begin to interact, and form a clump, and soon we are on our way to elementary particles.

So you have the problem in saying “everything is information”. It is the kind of monism that is bounded by two self-ridiculing notions - the idea of absolute nothingness and of infinity. Two equally unrealistic notions of “a limit”. — apokrisis

That everything is information is an easily falsifiablestatement, as mentioned earlier. You really need to acknowledge this, to get a feel for reality, imo. A self is something that forms in the midst of a self organizing informational system. How can the system cut itself off from what it is interrelating with. Sorry, it makes no sense to me.

At the same time, I need to narrate a story in terms of the knowledge that I posses, just as you do. In the end no paradigm can be absolutely true. We mustn't lose sight of that fact.

You mentioned earlier you have explored different paradigms. Did you step over the fence, or did you push the fence further. Do you understand what I mean?

Information seems to be a fundamental quantity. The universe needs information fundamentally. It could not exist without it. — Pop

What if, like some suggest, there was a time when nobody was around who could perceive it? If a tree falls in the woods...

A time before DNA and plants even. Just, whatever you believe, I suppose prevailing theories would suggest empty void of various gases and dust that somehow were present, later coalescing to form stars and planets? Was there really information then? What was the "first" bit of information? The big bang? Perhaps, or perhaps prodding too far will render the mind unable to process information entirely. It's a real head-scratcher, or perhaps just a big knee-slapper. I am without information to discern which is most accurate!

I really like the analogy above about TV static being nothing and everything. It can be compared to atoms. We got satisfying enough answers in the OP already, discernment, patterns, etc. A hypothetical infinite and absolutely gray universe, but even a wall painted one color can show that.. if there is one who can perceive, they will. Naturally not only would there not be sentient life in such a universe there would be no knowledge. Is information reality? It becomes almost metaphysical. What is not available to a person, cannot be known. We allegedly live in a "world" where when your heart stops, you are dead. But do we really know this? I know some claim to, myself included, but I just feel there's some relevance somewhere here in this quest for more information about information.

Edit: I see the black hole information paradox has been brought up already, which to those not familiar is "[the suggestion] that physical information could permanently disappear in a black hole" clashing with some fancy talk about how it can't.

What if, like some suggest, there was a time when nobody was around who could perceive it? If a tree falls in the woods... — Outlander

At metaphysical bottom, there is a stuff and information about it. And If we are to understand the stuff, that is the way it will always be.

What precisely information is, is the question? @Gnomon has some really good info on his website.

Naturally not only would there not be sentient life in such a universe there would be no knowledge. Is information reality? It becomes almost metaphysical. What is not available to a person, cannot be known. We allegedly live in a "world" where when your heart stops, you are dead. But do we really know this? I know some claim to, myself included, but I just feel there's some relevance somewhere here in this quest for more information about information. — Outlander

:up:

We live in a world where we most deeply identify with the feeling we posses at heart. As best I can unravel it, everything in this universe feels it's forces acting on them. If so, then we can never lose touch with that feeling in this universe.

How can the system cut itself off from what it is interrelating with. Sorry, it makes no sense to me. — Pop

If it didn't, it wouldn't be 'a self'. Even the very simplest life-forms, single celled organisms, are separated from their environment by a membrane. If they weren't separated, they would decompose, as would any organism. Being an organism means being separate. Death is precisely the end of that distinction because it results in decomposition.

A self is a transient body of information over a lifetime. In the absolute sense, changes with every moment of consciousness. The materials are regenerated constantly. The constant is the feeling deep inside.

That doesn’t address the point.

When you get mail, it’s addressed to you, not ‘the universe’. The separation of self and world is a basic, or the basic, fact of existence.

If they weren't separated, they would decompose, as would any organism. Being an organism means being separate — Wayfarer

A Cell is an individual organism inside a body. A human is a cell inside the biosphere.

Hope that helps.

I don’t need help, thanks. :smile:

At the heart of systems theory, it is just noise, then particles with noise begin to interact, and form a clump, and soon we are on our way to elementary particles. — Pop

This is bullshit. But you seem happy enough with it.

I didn't bother with the video as a glance at the thumbnail was already enough. The reply to these artificial notions of life and mind - self organisation with no epistemic cuts - is contained in this paper, Artificial Life Needs a Real Epistemology.

A self is something that forms in the midst of a self organizing informational system. How can the system cut itself off from what it is interrelating with. Sorry, it makes no sense to me. — Pop

The question cuts both ways. How can a self cut itself off from the world with which it interacts? And how can a self interact with a world unless it is separated from that world in some pragmatic sense?

If things make no sense, it is because you don't get the logic of modelling relation theory, or biosemiotics, as the right kind of systems theory for systems that have life and mind and which aren't simply physical systems (or their informational simulations).

In the end no paradigm can be absolutely true. We mustn't lose sight of that fact. — Pop

There is a race. But all must win prizes! I remember that from Alice in Wonderland.

You mentioned earlier you have explored different paradigms. Did you step over the fence, or did you push the fence further. — Pop

When I first came across Peirce, I thought it was nuts. Everything I hold true is the product of engaging fruitfully with the opposition.
.

At metaphysical bottom, there is a stuff and information about it. And If we are to understand the stuff, that is the way it will always be. — Pop

Of course, for something to 'exist' be it physical or even a thought it has to have some properties to it. Without turning this into a dreadful discussion of qualia and having to phone up Daniel Dennett, it would seem we equate information with literally anything that exists, form, perhaps. A pure blue sky is information, that it probably won't rain, along with numerous scientific details that can be extracted about weather, climate, atmosphere, etc.

Matter possesses properties aka information, is what you're saying? Sure, it's either small, large, hot, cold, light or dark, inobservable to the human eye (regardless if any alleged humans exist or not) or it is. Descriptions, etc. Dang it, more qualia talk. So this is your (pen?)ultimate definition of information: properties. Matter, even.

Eh. A bit like riding a roller coaster up a steep hill and having it instead turn to the side and gradually return to it's resting place at a speed that wouldn't spill a full glass but, if that's what it is.

The question cuts both ways. How can a self cut itself off from the world with which it interacts? And how can a self interact with a world unless it is separated from that world in some pragmatic sense? — apokrisis

Think of a cell inside a body, and then think of a human as a cell in the biosphere.

When I first came across Peirce, I thought it was nuts. Everything I hold true is the product of engaging fruitfully with the opposition. — apokrisis

From what I know of Pierce, he seemed to be on the right track, but just lacked the concepts in his time. I bet today he would be a panpsychist.

You say you are catching up on biology, that is a real eye opener. Lets take this up again in a couple of months. It's been a pleasure.

A Cell is an individual organism inside a body — Pop

You are thinking of a cancer.

A cell is constrained by a body. It gets the plug pulled by apotosis as soon as it starts to falter in dectable ways. A key step to branching out as a cancer is thus to knock out this self-regulating machinery.

So individuation or differentiation takes place against a backdrop of holism or integration. What is known technically as a nested hierarchy. You have a stable balance between top-down imposed constraints and bottom-up constructive action.

Quanta did a good article on the information theoretic approach to this biological issue - What Is an Individual? Biology Seeks Clues in Information Theory.

And surprise, surprise. It too ends up reacting against the Santa Fe brand of informational complexity to arrive at a semiotic or cognitive model based on Friston’s Bayesianism.

Ramstead hypothesizes that their approach is missing a consideration of how an individual maintains the boundary that delimits itself. “Organisms aren’t just individuated,” he said. “They have access to information about their individuation.” To him, the kind of information that Krakauer and Flack’s framework uses might not be “knowable” to an organism: “It’s not clear to me that the organism could use these information metrics that they define in a way that would allow it to preserve its existence,” he said.

As an alternative, Ramstead is collaborating with Karl Friston, a renowned neuroscientist at University College London, to build a theory around Friston’s “free-energy principle” of biological self-organization. Ramstead sees this line of thinking as compatible with Krakauer and Flack’s formalism but usefully constrained by an account of how a biological entity maintains its own individuality.

The free-energy principle asserts that any self-organizing system will look as if it generates predictions about its environment and seeks to minimize the error of those predictions. For organisms, that means in part that they are constantly measuring their sensory and perceptual experiences against their expectations.

“You can literally interpret the body of an organism as a guess about the structure of the environment,” Ramstead said. And by acting in ways that maintain the integrity of those expectations over time, the organism defines itself as an individual apart from its surroundings.

I bet today he would be a panpsychist — Pop

You wouldn’t win that bet.

This is bullshit. But you seem happy enough with it. — apokrisis

Self-organization, also called (in the social sciences) spontaneous order, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when sufficient energy is available, not needing control by any external agent. It is often triggered by seemingly random fluctuations, amplified by positive feedback. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized, distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation. Chaos theory discusses self-organization in terms of islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability. Wikipedia.

You are thinking of a cancer. — apokrisis

Try Prion. Mitochondria, white blood cells. Think proteins inside a cell, if you are going to be so obstinate.

I'm assuming monism, where information has it's neural correlates. So information causes a physical change ( in brain structure ), and this physical change embeds and orients an entity to its environment.

So there is a physical thing going on, where environmental information acts upon an entity and changes them physically, thus creating an enactive situation.

This is entirely subconscious, similar to the way the skin tans in the sun.

@apokrisis RIP "epistemic cut"

Matter possesses properties aka information, is what you're saying? Sure, it's either small, large, hot, cold, light or dark, inobservable to the human eye (regardless if any alleged humans exist or not) or it is. Descriptions, etc. Dang it, more qualia talk. So this is your (pen?)ultimate definition of information: properties. Matter, even. — Outlander

I've been trying to do this collectively, but we cannot seem to even get to first base.

Ok, perhaps I have a problem. Perhaps I need guidance. You see I'm coherent. So, be as your name suggests. Guide me, please.