In my view, it is the essence of both Energy and Matter . . . . and Mind. Some would interpret that datum as proof of a Universal Consciousness — Gnomon

Mind and consciousness are rather vague terms with variable meaning in each end user. To overcome this I have accepted that integrated information is equal to a moment of consciousness. A state of integrated information embeds and orients us in our personally construed reality. This way consciousness becomes a logical quantity, as per IIT, and then we can work with it logically and get somewhere.

Since last we discussed this at length, I have been considering the status of information metaphysically. If we say that fundamentally we have energy and its information, how are these different things? To cut a long story short, the only difference between a fundamental substance and its information is the assumption that something more exists. This is similar to Shannon's entropy, so I prefer the simplicity of Pragmatic information theory, for the purpose of describing an enactive world.

Here only the information that is transmitted is relevant and enactive. So in this view, the assumed underlying substance gets dropped, and all that remains is information of it The information becomes identical to the substance. This works for describing a universe that arises due to particles possessing form. Without the form there would be no basis for interaction, so nothing could exist. But because of form, particles can interact, and eventually clump together, and away we go towards elementary particles, and so on. This way everything arises bottom up as a result of the interaction of form. Everything is an intricate vertical build up of form, and then once built up how can a formed substance interact laterally? With form of course. So everything can be captured through an interaction of form. Here Information is a fundamental substance that informs the universe. I am assuming monism, such that anyThing perceived has its neural correlates, and this is how we become informed and embedded in the world through an interaction of form.

This way everything is information from every perspective. And I think this touches on what we sense consciousness to be? An integration of form in all its dimensions. The trick is to define this information if possible. Any ideas?

Thus far I have; "Information is the interaction of form..... In the case of organic form, the interaction causes an internal physical change that entangles an organism with its environment."
( neural correlates )

anxiety is part of the stress response - physiological readiness for fight or flight (or even the third strange choice of freezing). Noradrenaline in the brain goes up to change the signal-noise balance. We become less able to focus on endogenous/dopamimergic planning and more open to the exogenous/readiness response where we have no clear prediction of where the signals we seek might come from. So the brain as a whole is made readier to react to anything that might just normally be treated as peripheral noise. — apokrisis

Is anxiety part of the stress response or is the stress response simply an accompaniment to anxiety? If someone loses sensation, such that the physiological accompaniment is no longer kinesthetically and tactile perceived, do you think the anxiety goes away? All that goes away is the body’s stepping in to help optimize the movements that the anxious or fearful person is contemplating in rapid fashion. The situation as we construe it is what dictates the movements we want to make, not the feedback from our body. This feedback
follows, but does not lead. And when the feedback is absent , we still perform all the typical
actions and thoughts that we think of as
flight or fight, although we may do them more clumsily.

If I see a bear coming toward me, I can process very quickly the potential dangers , options and outcomes. I will do this quickly not because of physiological help , but because I already know that this is a situation that requires split second decision. Fearful situations also imply a rapid oscillation between anticipation of loss or hurt, and hope of escape. This is precisely because the feared event hasn’t happened yet. If what we fear happens, we will no longer be afraid but shift to a different attitude. So fear is a rapidly oscillating attitude between doom and hope. This is its meaning. We can dump all kinds of adrenaline into someone. .Sometimes they may initially confuse it for fear, but when they don’t find a situational cause they will shift attitude.



We can’t concentrate in fear not because of the hormones but because then worry over the situation is a greater priority to us than other interests PTSD isnt a disorder of chemicals , it is a problem of failure to effectively understand events the past that have relevance for ones present and future.

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Anxiety is just a machinery for paying better attention to the uncertain environment when that is the processing mode that makes better sense than remaining head down and focused on some narrow task or activity r — apokrisis

This is redundant. We don’t need the explanation of the machinery stepping in to tell us to focus when the situation as we construe it is already telling us in capital letters to focus on nothing else. Try injecting yourself
with adrenaline and see how it ‘makes’ you focus. It actually has the opposite effect unless you are already gearing yourself up for action, action which ebbs and flows in it’s urgently in precise orchestration to the now imminent, now not so imminent danger. Hormones are dumb, but one’s assessment knows exactly what it is afraid of, why and what it wants to do about it, and it can think all this ina split second.

n

An organism must be able to resist change to its structure of habits so as to persist as that functional set of habits. But the same organism must also have the plasticity to adapt as the world changes in ways it hasn’t encountered. It must have the attentional level of processing to complement the habitual. Paradigms need to be tweakable.

So any systems minded biologist or neuroscientist gets this. Existence for an organism is a dialectical balancing act in terms of staying the same and yet constantly adapting. — apokrisis

I would only add that an organism ‘persists’ as a set of habits only in a relative sense. It is crucial
to bring temporality into the equation and remind that , as Piaget said, each assimilation to ‘habits’ is at the same time an accommodation to the novelties of the environment. The world is always, minute by minute, changing in ways the organism hasn’t precisely encountered. Look at perception. Each moment , the world presents our senses with a slight new set of data. We effortless accommodate our perceptual system to this unless a more significant anomaly occurs and causes us to stop and take notice.
In this way , our perceptions and our languaging are immediately in the world, never merely ‘persisting’. Awareness would be impossible if it didn’t present an always slightly novel world.

This may be an interesting difference between us. What is novelty to you? Do organisms and humans just rearrange previous bits and codes most of the time?

For the same amount of energy, different amounts of information can flow in or out of a system. — Gnomon

So where did "information is a lack of energy" come from?

We test for mental content all the time (tests, quizes, exams) so in practice we ackowlegde mental content exist. I'm wondering if it's falsifiable or unfalsifiable... not sure. My default is that mental content does exist. — Mark Nyquist

Sorry I'm quoting myself here. There is a question of if mental content exists, what it is and is it falsifiable.
I sometimes write BRAIN(mental content) as the form of information we experience, and since the tool of an epistemic cut is being brought up I am looking at making a cut like this: Brain | (mental content).
I don't think you can because the way I was explaining it, the notation was an expansion on something that is singular...brain state.

Brain state (1) is BRAIN(Mental content (1))
Brain state (2) is BRAIN(Mental content (2))

This expansion is useful because you can include mental content such as:
POPS BRAIN( the content of pops last post)

I don't mean this text is information. It's not. It's just coded physical matter. The information would have been active as pop wrote it. Like this:
POPS BRAIN(paragraph 1) , time duration t0 to t1
POPS BRAIN(paragraph 2) , t1 to t2
POPS BRAIN(paragraph 3) , t2 to t3

The time duration shows information as dynamic.
So back to the question of is this model falsifiable. Theoretically it is but in practice it isn't.
It would involve taking an entire dynamic brain state and extracting mental content.
If you really wanted to use an epistemic cut you would need to acknowledge mental content can't exist in a physically divided state.

The way you have set it out is similar to the approach in Integrated Information theory. PHI is what measures the amount of integrated information. It is in its infancy as yet, so whether this will at some stage be possible, who knows? It is not really relevant, we are not scientists here, we are philosophers. And I think the point has been established ad nauseum, and I think that you are spot on.

Great!!! You agreed with me on something. Like you said a few months ago, we are usually oceans apart.

↪Pop Great!!! You agreed with me on something. Like you said a few months ago, we are usually oceans apart. — Mark Nyquist

I've found my own understanding creeps along and changes as new information becomes available. Currently I'm recalibrating idealism in light of enactivism, largely due to @Joshs narrative. It makes better sense.

I did a post on time perception a few months ago and it died. Here are a few examples of that.
If you consider information takes the form BRAIN(mental content) then time as we perceive it as information can take multiple forms, such as:

BRAIN (present clock time)
BRAIN (the past, present or future)
BRAIN(time duration, such as in physics or engineering math problems)
BRAIN(time and location as a meeting point)
BRAIN(time as non-existant-it is always the physical present)
BRAIN(time dictating a series of physical events, task 1, task 2, task 3...)
BRAIN(recurring events, like your dental appointment)
BRAIN(deadlines)
BRAIN(evaluating feasibility based on time constraints)
BRAIN(time based billing)

The point being time perception is inseparably linked to information.

All that goes away is the body’s stepping in to help optimize the movements that the anxious or fearful person is contemplating in rapid fashion. — Joshs

You are pretending my position is monistic so that you can counter it with your own monism. But I’ve already said that “feelings” are an interaction of two varieties of information - biological and cultural.

Biology accounts for states of arousal that are functional in that they prepare us for actions that meet the demands of our world. Sociology accounts for how we must give reasons for our responses in a language that is socially accepted.

Shoot someone up with adrenaline, and no particular situation to frame the feelings, and they will be confused as to whether they are excited, anxious, or in some unspecific way, rushed and unsettled.

Push your kids on to a roller coaster, and if they complain “Daddy, I’m scared”, tell them they are wusses. There is no real danger. What they really need to feel - to justify the money you are spending on them - is thrilled.

All you are talking about is the socially constructed aspect of emotion. I’ve already said that is part of the story. And how there is also the neurology of affect, and how that reflects the evolutionary need to have the whole body reorientate its readiness state in the time it takes to spot that tiger lurking in the shadows.

I offered the cartoon version of oxytocin. But one of the interesting things is how it is neuromodulator that looks designed to override the usual natural fear and anxiety of “being too close” to others. It allows intimacy to override keeping even your social conspecifics at a certain safe distance.

Chimps have mutual grooming sessions as moments of intimacy. Cats prefer a brief sniff of noses. Humans evolved to tolerate the new behaviours of long term pair bonding and prolonged child rearing. That needed more of an off button for the kind of anxiety that being “overly close for too long” is otherwise liable to evoke.

Oxytocin is not, in that light, an on button for intimacy, but an off button on anxiety. Even that is a simplification. But it makes more evolutionary sense and shows how we shouldn’t presume intimacy as some kind of universal good. Biology sets us up to be physiologically intimate as was functional in the typical pre-modern social setting.

So the neurology is remarkably plastic and specific, even if it is an evolutionary adaptation. Our affect system system is precisely calibrated to our million years of hunter-gatherer living.

If folk need lots of psychotherapy these days, that is not so surprising. Society has become its own historical project with its own socially-constructed framing of how to think and what to feel. Biology hasn’t had a million years to catch up with some of the ways we are now meant to live.

I will do this quickly not because of physiological help , but because I already know that this is a situation that requires split second decision. — Joshs

Utter bollocks. You will react physiologically even before you can form a clear conscious picture. Your reptile brain - the amygdala in particular - sits poised to react to any sudden rushing object in a fifth of a second. It will then take half a second at least for the temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex to come to some sort of agreement about whatever the hell is actually rushing us.

And a few days after the fact, you will have reframed the whole thing as a heroic episode where you instinctively kicked the bear in the nose, or an amusing reason for why your bowels let go and you shat your pants and froze rather than ran - or whatever socially accepted narrative helps explain your feelings at the time in a reasonable light.

You have the temporality back to front.

This is precisely because the feared event hasn’t happened yet. If what we fear happens, we will no longer be afraid but shift to a different attitude. — Joshs

Generalised anxiety is a pathological state. Nervous expectation is functional as a way of rising to the expectation of some temporary challenge. It is dysfunctional to get stuck in any particular physiological state for longer than the immediate situation demands.

But of course, culture can frame your reality as a state of constant threat, or a dread of a moment’s boredom. It can play all sorts of manipulative tricks. An animal lives in the moment. Humans learn to inhabit a world where love and hate, strength and weakness, friends and foe, etc, are permanent signifiers of the psychic landscape. You are suppose to maintain the boundaries of this emotional economy at all times - because that is who you are! LOL.

We can’t concentrate in fear not because of the hormones but because then worry over the situation is a greater priority to us than other interests PTSD isnt a disorder of chemicals , it is a problem of failure to effectively understand events the past that have relevance for ones present and future. — Joshs

You say this as if stating facts. And yet you too have an amygdala as well as a prefrontal cortex. The neurology tells you what part of your responses are preverbal - or at least limited to the kinds of shrieks, screams and swear words the amygdala, in cahoots with the anterior cingulate, might cause you to emit even as you are trying to make sense of something scary that is in the middle of happening.

Can we retrain the hyper-sensitivity of an abused amygdala by reliving and desensitising - talk therapy? Sure. To an extent.

Try injecting yourself with adrenaline and see how it ‘makes’ you focus. It actually has the opposite effect unless you are already gearing yourself up for action, — Joshs

The body injects itself with noradrenaline in the brain, adrenaline in the body, in a habitual fashion that hopefully matches your mental state to the situational requirements.

Try stepping out on to a stage or the finals of a tennis tournament and not feel butterflies. It is essential to react physiologically and neurologically in a way that gets you up for the occasion. If you are ready to face any threat, then you can get into the flow of the actual challenge and not stumble and stutter. Well prepared habit can let you deal smoothly with whatever gets thrown your way.

So shooting a relaxed subject up with adrenaline is of course a nonsensical and inappropriate thing to be doing. Anyway, just hold an evil rusty syringe up in your shaky hand, mutter unconvincingly there is no chance it could hurt or harm.. You won’t even have to inject your juice, Dr Joshs. The social framing of the act will have created the adrenaline rush before the needle descends.

It is crucial
to bring temporality into the equation and remind that , as Piaget said, each assimilation to ‘habits’ is at the same time an accommodation to the novelties of the environment. The world is always, minute by minute, changing in ways the organism hasn’t precisely encountered. — Joshs

Yes. But the flip side of the cognitive coin is that habits are the automaticisms which deal with the first 200 milliseconds after something has started to happen. Conscious attention can only follow between 300 to 1000ms - depending on the actual amount of novelty and need for a radical reframing of expectations.

So habits take long to form and a split second to emit. Attention takes longer to develop, but offers more immediate fruits.

The temporality is important. So it is important to actually get it right.

This may be an interesting difference between us. What is novelty to you? Do organisms and humans just rearrange previous bits and codes most of the time? — Joshs

…he says hopefully, seeking to “other” me as already in the camp of shameless mechanical discourse.

Sorry. Did you miss the start of this thread where I pinned my colours to the Bayesian Brain answer on just this?

The point being time perception is inseparably linked to information. — Mark Nyquist

Precisely. :up: you are a dark horse! :smile:

The way I understand it. The "contrast" of one moment of consciousness ( state of integrated information ) and the next moment of consciousness is how we experience time.

Life is a procession of moments of consciousness.

Moments of consciousness can last 1-400ms according to a number of studies. This fact is also important to IIT. So about 20 to 30 odd frames a minute.

Not sure precisely how this is measured, but that it is justifies the "integrated information" view, amongst other reasons.

Maybe in some ways information about time is held in our cerebral cortex just like 'that's a tree' or 'that's a rock'. Someone commented in my time perception post that the temperal lobes play a part...memory maybe, and the examples of brain science you give. You have to go pretty deep into anatomy and function to get a good picture. I try to pick up what I can but go to the experts on this.
I see it as a problem were the end points are known but the intermediate processes need to be solved. For the people who know maybe a lot has been solved. The end points would be the physical brain and mental content.
Mental content, as a concept, is something some people would like to back engineer into computers as in the Artificial Intellegence field.

In that case, what follows is, nature made / caused events or entities are not meaningful in terms of human intelligence, perfect form or logic in its purpose or design.

Nature caused events or entities have been happening randomly without aim, purpose or plans. We can explain the physical cause of the snowfall using the other elements such as humidity, temperature and air pressure, but that is not snow itself.  It is the condition for snowfall, and there is no way to explain why snow flakes looks the way it is without citing God's will.

In that case, I wonder if it could be related to information which is based on predesigned and thought out plans, practical purposes, human intelligence and meanings in abstract form or linguistic content. — Corvus

The first sentence made sense to me. The second sentence makes sense to me. The third sentence makes sense to me. The first half of the fourth sentence makes sense to me. Concluding that it is a god's will that a snowflake takes the shape it takes, does not make sense to me.

Why throw in a god's will or a question of intelligent design?

The first sentence made sense to me. The second sentence makes sense to me. The third sentence makes sense to me. The first half of the fourth sentence makes sense to me. Concluding that it is a god's will that a snowflake takes the shape it takes, does not make sense to me.

Why throw in a god's will or a question of intelligent design? — Athena

Where there seem no reasonable answers to the questions, it is our tendency to rely on God for the answers. If you are a theist, you would accept it. If not, then it is unlikely you would accept it.
It is a question that has two possible answers. One is that it is unknown. The other is God wanted it to be. Saying unknown sounds there is no answer. Saying God wanted it sounds like it is at least an answer. But in essence, they are the same answer.

One metaphysics to rule them all! — apokrisis

You kind of lost me in the explanation of why humans don't agree on the correct information, but I love your use of the concept of fractals. Hum, when the main character of the movie "Inside Out" enters the door of abstract thinking, the 3 characters who entered, started to take different and changing forms. They risked no longer being themselves. Might we say that abstract thinking is chaos that takes form and that form changes? As someone said in this thread, new information changes the thought/ concept of reality.

Because the notion of logos is so strong in my head, my thoughts keep coming back to it. For me, that would be the one metaphysics rule, but it would be a shapeshifter too like the abstract room in the movie. I think we want truth to be one thing and only one thing, but that is not the way it is.

Robin Williams, "reality, an interesting concept."

Religion is an attempt to make reality consistent and unchanging. Science is constantly changing our notion of truth and reality. We have to love Aristotle for giving us the concept of metaphysics, that which is beyond physical limits. :lol: My head is like the abstract room. I attempt to reply to posts and come to realize I don't know what I think because my thinking is a constantly changing process.

But really, the science of how to stop the spread of disease is not new. Somehow turning that information into a religious/political issue, is nuts! I know our environments and limited exposure to others, shapes our thinking, but (strong pagan words) shouldn't it be pretty easy to agree on scientific truth? It is logos, information on the physical level. We need to keep the abstracts of religion and politics out of it.

Where there seem no reasonable answers to the questions, it is our tendency to rely on God for the answers. If you are a theist, you would accept it. If not, then it is unlikely you would accept it.
It is a question that has two possible answers. One is that it is unknown. The other is God wanted it to be. Saying unknown sounds there is no answer. Saying God wanted it sounds like it is at least an answer. But in essence, they are the same answer. — Corvus

:lol: That would not be so bad if that god were an unknown god instead of a god-like Zeus who has human qualities. Doesn't the bible say God is beyond our comprehension, and then along comes Jesus and we get a god we can know because He is like us. Our relationship with the Jesus god is very different from our relationship with a god that is beyond our comprehension. Interpreting the bible abstractly is completely different from interpreting it concretely.

Oh no, there is another complication! Is our understanding of information concrete or abstract?

Heck, let us really complicate things, Daniel Kahneman explains different mental functions as fast and slow thinking. Fast thinking isn't actually thinking. Fast thinking is a knee-jerk reaction to stimulus. Fast thinking is a reflex. Education for technology favors fast thinking, and that is a disaster for democracy.

Slow thinking consumes a lot of energy and we would not have enough energy to make it through the day if we were in slow thinking mode for most of the day. Saying God wanted it, is to avoid thinking. Serious thinking can be as a walk through Hades, a place we must all go to search for the meaning of life events, but we should never go there without the help of the gods, because it is so easy to get lost in Hades. Lost in Hades means to suffer mental dis ease. Christians avoid that by turning everything over to God and trust in the will of God and the power of prayer.

think you need to consider what 'biosemiosis' means (and I'm not an expert by any stretch, I've only learned about the concept on this forum and readings from it. The Wikipedia definition is 'Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος bios, "life" and σημειωτικός sēmeiōtikos, "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, or production and interpretation of signs and codes and their communication in the biological realm.[1] — Wayfarer

I won't quote everything you said because we can refer back to it. I just want to say those thoughts are totally awesome! Now my brain is so overstimulated I have to take a break. There are not words for expressing how much I appreciate your explanation for the Greek words and reasoning, so I will just say thank you plus 100 times thank you.

That would not be so bad if that god were an unknown god instead of a god-like Zeus who has human qualities. — Athena

I think everything is up to interpretation. And if we agree God is out of the boundary of human reason, then it is comforting for some people to base all the mysteries and unknowns to him.

But still, information is something that people seek, provide, supply and use. If something is information, then it cannot be unknown. If something is not unknown, then it must be able to be demonstrated and verified when required. If it cannot, then it is a myth and speculation.

So where did "information is a lack of energy" come from? — frank

What I said was : "Shannon defined his concept of Information in terms of the absence of energy (entropy)". I didn't mean to put words in his mouth, but was merely using my own terminology. As I tried to explain before, Shannon was not thinking in terms of Energy when he borrowed the concept of Entropy from Physics to define the distinction between meaningful information and meaningless noise. For him, Entropy was simply a mathematical statistical measurement of potential to carry content (an empty vessel). And since he was mostly concerned with impediments to communication, his measurement focused on the negative.

So I'm the one who interpreted his definition in terms of Energy -- the opposite of Entropy (Negentropy). For me, "information value" can be defined in terms of positive-potential-for-meaning versus discharged potential -- as in your phone's battery (energy storage). Your cell phone presents that value in terms of percentage of full charge. And it shows the potential for information storage in terms of percentage of memory capacity. Do you see the inverse relationship?

Anyway, the positive association of Energy & Information came later. In my understanding of the broader Information theory, Energy (order, potential, certainty, life) and Entropy (disorder, impotence, uncertainty, death) are two sides of the same coin : Thermodynamics, Causation, Action. Energy can be defined in terms of the mathematical ratio between Potential and Impotence. The best illustrations of that reciprocal relationship, that I'm aware of, is Sagan & Schneider's Into The Cool. :smile:


Entropy :
a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=entropy+is

Communication Entropy :
The basic idea of information theory is that the "informational value" of a communicated message depends on the degree to which the content of the message is surprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)

Negentropy is a construct drawn from physics that can be conceptualized as the opposite of energy losses associated with normal organizational life.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-019-00448-5

Entropy :
A quality of the universe modeled as a thermodynamic system. Energy always flows from Hot (high energy density) to Cold (low density) -- except when it doesn't. On rare occasions, energy lingers in a moderate state that we know as Matter, and sometimes even reveals new qualities and states of material stuff .
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that, in a closed system, Entropy always increases until it reaches equilibrium at a temperature of absolute zero. But some glitch in that system allows stable forms to emerge that can recycle energy in the form of qualities we call Life & Mind. That glitch is what I call Enformy.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Into The Cool :
Scientists, theologians, and philosophers have all sought to answer the questions of why we are here and where we are going. Finding this natural basis of life has proved elusive, but in the eloquent and creative Into the Cool, Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan look for answers in a surprising place: the second law of thermodynamics. This second law refers to energy's inevitable tendency to change from being concentrated in one place to becoming spread out over time. In this scientific tour de force, Schneider and Sagan show how the second law is behind evolution, ecology,economics, and even life's origin.
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Cool-Energy-Flow-Thermodynamics/dp/0226739376

Do you see the inverse relationship? — Gnomon

:up: Yep. Entropy and information aren’t metaphysical substances. They are inverse descriptions we apply to a natural world we are now coming to view as essentially probabilistic rather than deterministic. They are the right kind of maths for capturing reality as an evolutionary process - a story rooted in statistical mechanics or thermodynamics. A story of probability patterns.

So it reflects a shift from stories of mechanical certainty - the material atomism and abstract universal law of Newton - to a post-quantum understanding of reality where the Planckscale defines a fundamental grain of uncertainty that must be now incorporated into any universalising description of nature, And both Boltzmann’s entropy and Shannon’s information do that,

But then it is easy to get confused because we humans also still want to understand the world in terms of familiar substances like energy and meaningfulness. And we can even extract useful measures of these two things as inverses of their “others”.

If Shannon information is just a measure of bare difference - a counting of physical states of possibility, or definite marks found in the world - then we can talk about when they are differences that make a difference … to some organisms point of view. We can talk about the difference between surprises and predictions, between signal and noise.

And if entropy is a measure of physical disorder or a stable equilibrium state - where there is a maximum quantity of difference, and it doesn’t make a difference - then again we can create an inverse metric that speaks to Gibbs free energy or the ability to extract work. Negentropy is minimal entropy - high order - and so a quantity of potential work available to someone who knows how to channel it from its source to a sink.

So science is shifting paradigms by accepting reality is based on developmental patterns that organise fundamental possibilities. Probability theory becomes the deep framework.

Then having redefined reality that way - as low information and high entropy - that sets up the maths to talk about the inverse pattern. States of high information and low entropy.

Our scientific descriptions of nature have thus left behind the substantial notions of Newtonian physics - little lumps of matter, pushed and pulled about by the magic of void filling force fields - to employ the bare language of patterns of possibility. The self-organising tendencies of statistical distributions.

Why, thank you! You're too kind, I was simply quoting wikipedia.

Shannon was not thinking in terms of Energy when he borrowed the concept of Entropy from Physics to define the distinction between meaningful information and meaningless noise. For him, Entropy was simply a mathematical statistical measurement of potential to carry content (an empty vessel). — Gnomon

You might have missed the anecdote I mentioned earlier in this thread:

An analog to thermodynamic entropy is information entropy. In 1948, while working at Bell Telephone Laboratories, electrical engineer Claude Shannon set out to mathematically quantify the statistical nature of “lost information” in phone-line signals. To do this, Shannon developed the very general concept of information entropy, a fundamental cornerstone of information theory. Initially it seems that Shannon was not particularly aware of the close similarity between his new quantity and earlier work in thermodynamics. In 1949, however, when Shannon had been working on his equations for some time, he happened to visit the mathematician John von Neumann, who asked him how he was getting on with his theory of missing information. Shannon replied that the theory was in excellent shape, except that he needed a good name for “missing information”. “Why don’t you call it entropy”, von Neumann suggested. “In the first place, a mathematical development very much like yours already exists in Boltzmann’s statistical mechanics, and in the second place, no one understands entropy very well, so in any discussion you will be in a position of advantage.”

I see it as a problem were the end points are known but the intermediate processes need to be solved. — Mark Nyquist

I think you are referring to what occurs within a moment of consciousness. Yes, there is still controversy about what exactly occurs within the process . At some point the process completes and out of it arises a moment of clarity about current reality, is how I understand it.

That is the point where all information is integrated. The "moment of clarity" though, is not only about brain information. All bodily information, all historical understanding, and all environmental / situational information is integrated to create that moment of consciousness ( you can test this by sticking a pin into your distal toe, to check to see whether it effects your consciousness :smile: )

Within my understanding, all of this can be conceptually represented by a "body of integrated information", which has its physical correlates, as neural patterning and bodily patterning. So it is all a physical patterning. And a continual build up of physical patterning. Understood this way, there is no logical reason to not extend this reasoning beyond the body to all matter ( as does IIT ).

So, I seek to capture all this with a definition of information - "Information is the interaction of form"......... information causes a physical change that entangles an organism into it's environment................Information is causal !!

What do you think?

Time would also have to exist within a moment of consciousness, but as you say, I don't think we can be conscious of that. Cannot be conscious of time within a moment of consciousness, because it is not an integrated state of information. It is still a fuzzy state ( in a process of resolution ) of information, lacking clarity. So we can only be conscious of integrated states of information. Of course, we don't always manage to put it together, and the conscious state then recognizes that - that there are some things we can not be certain about - this too is an integration.

Sorry bout the rant, just thought I'd clarify it in case anybody is interested but still uncertain about how it works.

Entropy and information aren’t metaphysical substances. They are inverse descriptions we apply to a natural world we are now coming to view as essentially probabilistic rather than deterministic. — apokrisis

Describing the natural world as probabilistic is a category error. Probability is about prediction.

The concept of determined events is baked into information theory.

This thread has become a free for all.

This thread gas become a free for all. — frank

They have a life of their own. :smile:

The concept of determined events is baked into information theory. — frank

Yeah. I would say deterministic with a slight element of randomness - is the determinism we are seeing?

Describing the natural world as probabilistic is a category error. Probability is about prediction. — frank

Or maybe you just have a limited grounding in the philosophy of probability?

Propensities are not relative frequencies, but purported causes of the observed stable relative frequencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propensity_probability

The concept of determined events is baked into information theory. — frank

Either that. Or events yet to be determined and hence fundamentally indeterministic and awaiting their constraint by systems of interpretance, or even their physical quantum collapse?

Yep. Entropy and information aren’t metaphysical substances. — apokrisis

Yes, Of course, those abstract terms can be used to describe the statistical energy state of material substances. But, in that symbolic sense, they are mathematical "objects". And what physical stuff is mathematics made of?

Philosophically, I tend to think of Information, because of its ubiquity and universality, in terms of Aristotle's essential "Substance" -- which is not physical, but meta-physical. Moreover, the core concept of the term "information" recalls Plato's Forms, which were abstract definitions of real things. In modern terms we might call Platonic Forms "Programs" for the production of physical products. But those programs contain nothing but the metaphysical Information necessary to create a final physical product.

Spinoza also came close to describing the modern (all-encompassing) notion of Information in his assertion that "Substance" is the only thing that exists. And some cutting-edge physicists have concluded that even physical Matter is made of metaphysical (abstract) Information. That's why I think of Generic Information as a shape-shifter, constantly forming new things, and transforming old things. :cool:

In what sense do mathematical objects exist? :
Whereas the natural sciences investigate entities that are located in space and time, it is not at all obvious that this also the case of the objects that are studied in mathematics.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

Mathematical Objects :
Platonism about mathematics (or mathematical platonism) is the metaphysical view that there are abstract mathematical objects whose existence is independent of us and our language, thought, and practices.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

Substance :
Every being in any category other than substance is a property or a modification of substance. For this reason, Aristotle says that the study of substance is the way to understand the nature of being.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle/Physics-and-metaphysics

Substance Monism :
The most distinctive aspect of Spinoza's system is his substance monism; that is, his claim that one infinite substance—God or Nature—is the only substance that exists.
https://iep.utm.edu/spinoz-m/

Information Realism :
Indeed, according to information realists, matter arises from information processing, not the other way around. Even mind—psyche, soul—is supposedly a derivative phenomenon of purely abstract information manipulation. But in such a case, what exactly is meant by the word “information,” since there is no physical or mental substrate to ground it?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/

Everything is information :
Physicist Vlatko Vedral explains to Aleks Krotoski why he believes the fundamental stuff of the universe is information and how he hopes that one day everything will be explained in this way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfQ2r0zvyoA

Everything is Information, and Information is Everything :
Note -- not really about the philosophical implications of universal information, but the title says it all.
https://www.kmworld.com/Articles/White-Paper/Article/Everything-is-Information-and-Information-is-Everything-123561.aspx

Generic Information :
5. Information is the Promethean power of transformation. Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibility : the Platonic Forms.
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html

new information changes the thought/ concept of reality. — Athena

Information is causal!!

Rocks have their neural correlates, because information is causal ! I think we are getting somewhere?

Yeah. I would say deterministic with a slight element of randomness - is the determinism we are seeing? — Pop

An event that has only one possible outcome has no associated information.

Describing the natural world as probabilistic is a category error. Probability is about prediction. — frank

And some cutting-edge physicists have concluded that even physical Matter is made of metaphysical (abstract) Information — Gnomon

This is the trend in biology also. Particularly cellular biology. To understand life information has to become an observable non measurable quantity - according to barbieri , and this is also the gist of these 21 papers submitted to the Royal Society, on the topic of DNA as Information.