But sometimes (not always) the appeal to emergence is just as much of a non-explanation as appealing to a notion of God. In both cases, we need convincing details. — bert1

Understandable, but sometimes convincing details are only available to people who study a lot of relevant stuff.

Me, I'm kind of a Fezzik of neuroscience. :strong: :wink: I've seen lots of convincing details, of the emergence of minds from brains.

Anybody want a peanut?

Do you have an opinion of how information exists, mechanistically or otherwise, only an abstraction or something physical? I've noticed some physicalislts use information as an abstraction without identifying a means for it to physically exist. — Mark Nyquist

Learning about Hebbian theory is a good place to start, followed by looking into information processing via neural nets.

Anybody want a peanut? — flannel jesus

:lol:

Thanks, I like it. First time I've come across it.
Hebbian theory. Information existing as neural networks. That works for me. It's a physical basis, has specific location and time frame and is dynamic and fits with how we experience information.

So did Donald Hebb or other neurologists, neuropsychologists identify information as brian state only?
I don't think they did or currently do, but they should.

As for the OP, I see a shortcoming in how a mechanistic view of science deals with the definition of information.

Not being as such, but of the objects of experience. Questions about what objectively exists are different to questions about the nature of existence, which are much broader in scope. — Wayfarer
You are confusing what you would like to be for what is. — Restitutor

Pardon the intrusion, but could reflect that accusation right back at you. You seem to be confusing what you believe with "what is". Yet, your science-based worldview {insert label here} is what you are convinced exists, not by personal perception, but based on hearsay from those who see by proxy for you, perhaps via artificial technology instead of natural perception. Is that an accurate assessment?

But Way is talking about what we know via our innate human Reasoning*1. For example, Quantum Physics includes subatomic Quarks in its list of "what exists" in Nature. But no one has ever seen a quark*2. So, when you say, "if it looks like a Quark, and quacks like a Quark, it must be a Quark", you are stating a belief or opinion, not an objective observation. In other words, if the indirect evidence fits our abstract definition of a Quark, it must be the thing named. That's the Nominal Fallacy.

Do you believe in Mathematics? Is it natural? Is it mechanistic? Are imaginary numbers Real? In what sense does Math exist? Have you ever seen an example with your eyes? How do you know that (2 + 2 always = 4)? By direct observation, or because a teacher told you so, or because you have done the math often enough to infer . . . not that the equation exists physically, but that it is True philosophically? What are the philosophical consequences of mechanistic mathematics with infinities between the inputs & outputs? Just kidding. Don't burn out your brain computing a mechanical answer. :chin:


*1. Nature of Existence :
Existence is comprised of space, time, and consciousness. These characteristics manifest in the perceptible forms of capability, activity, and awareness, respectively.
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=117288
Note --- Space is inferred from observing Matter, and Time is inferred by observing Change. Is Consciousness perceptible or conceptible? Is Awareness a directly knowable physical feature of Nature, or a meta-physical aspect known only via Rational Inference? If Apprehension of meaning is known via perception, what does it look like? How do you know?

*2. How Do We Know Quarks Exist If They Have Never Been Directly Detected?
It comes down to indirect effects — how quarks influence their surroundings.
http://thescienceexplorer.com/universe/how-do-we-know-quarks-exist-if-they-have-never-been-directly-detected
Note --- Reasoning from "indirect effects" to Existence is also how we know Energy exists, even though no one has ever seen, touched, or tasted Energy. For example, a Photon goes from invisible Potential to visible Effects so fast that we never see the particle itself. So, the existence of Energy is not objective, but subjective : known by logical inference, not by observation.

*3. What Does Quantum Theory Actually Tell Us about Reality?
Werner Heisenberg, among others, interpreted the mathematics to mean that reality doesn’t exist until observed. “The idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them ... is impossible,” he wrote. . . . But quantum theory is entirely unclear about what constitutes a “measurement.”
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-does-quantum-theory-actually-tell-us-about-reality/
Note --- A measurement must be perceptible in some sense. Quantum measurements are inferred indirectly via mathematical analysis of abstract scattering patterns. {see image below}
What is the "nature" of Quark existence? Is it Real or Ideal? How do you know?

CAN YOU SEE THE QUARK IN THIS PICTURE?

did Donald Hebb or other neurologists, neuropsychologists identify information as brain state only? — Mark Nyquist

Something I'm confused about is the apparent equation of physical states with symbolic meaning that is implied here. Symbolic meaning is representational, where a symbol or sign represents meaning to an interpreter. (That is basic to semiotics which extends the concept to many organic processes other than language). But does this mean that a brain state is the same as an item of propositional knowledge? I don't see how it can be, as propositional knowledge is internal to the act of thinking, whereas a physical state or configuration of neural matter is objective or external to the act of thought. And even to try and map an item of propositional knowledge between it's linguistic meaning - 'the cat is on the mat' with an array of neural activity, relies on the reliability of symbolic (and therefore logical) representation ('this means that', 'this is the same as that', and so on.)

Do you see the difficulty I'm trying to articulate (probably not very well)?

I might be unsure what you mean by semiotics. To me that means signs and symbols external to brains that by convention or common use can transfer brain state (person) 1 to brain state (person) 2. So communication uses physical matter in an attempt to transfer brain state (information) but it doesn't always work. You are right. I don't quite understand your view.

I can add that once brain state is identified as the physical form of information then a mechanistic theory works for me and the loose ends have been taken care of.

If you are getting at something of a dualist nature I might understand. Brain state is neurons holding mental content. The neurons obey the laws of physics but the mental content does not.
For example mental content can go from nothing to something to nothing again. Does that help?

If you are getting at something of a dualist nature I might understand. Brain state is neurons holding mental content. — Mark Nyquist

But what is 'holding'? Is it 'representing'? If so, that's semiotic - which is not itself physical as it relies on interpretation.

If you say that 'a thought IS a brain state', that 'IS' is not, itself, something physical. You're saying that 'this physical state' means or is the same as propositional content. But that is a judgement of equivalence between a physical configuration and semiotic or semantic content. I can't see how it can be claimed that such a judgement can be understood as a 'brain state'. That's the issue.

The argument of brain-mind identity theorists, who posit that every thought or mental state is identical to a brain state, faces complexities when dealing with semantic content, like 'the cat is on the mat'. The core challenge is this: while neuroscience can identify and map various brain activities and states, it struggles to find a direct and consistent correspondence with the semantic content of thoughts or propositions. This issue arises partly because thoughts and propositions are abstract, involving meaning, context, and interpretation, while brain states are physical, observable phenomena.

Different individuals may have different neural activations for the same thought or proposition. This variability makes it hard to pinpoint a universal brain state corresponding to a specific thought.

The meaning of a proposition can change based on context, individual understanding, and interpretation. This subjective aspect of semantic content is difficult to capture in the objective framework of brain states.

Language and thought are highly complex and dynamic. The same proposition might involve different cognitive processes depending on factors like language proficiency, attention, or prior knowledge.

There's also the issue of subjective experience or qualia. How a person experiences understanding a proposition might not be directly translatable to a measurable brain state. The same proposition might mean something completely different to different people.

Hence my difficulties accepting the equation of brain states and information.

Different individuals may have different neural activations for the same thought or proposition. This variability makes it hard to pinpoint a universal brain state corresponding to a specific thought. — Wayfarer

I've never understood this to be a problem. I mean, you can say the same things about ai. ChatGpt 3 has different array matrices activations for "a cat in a hat" than ChatGpt 4 does. If that makes human minds not physical, then does it also make chat gpt not simulatable? Not digitally encodable?

I don't think so. I think it's completely normal that neural networks encode the same (or similar, anyway - it's never really the same) ideas in drastically different ways. I don't find that problematic at all for physicalist ideas of the mind.

In fact I think it would be incredibly surprising if all humans encoded all learned information in exactly the same way. That would be more weird than what we do see.

So, given two choices:
1) information is an abstract concept.

Or

2). Information is brain state; neurons holding mental content.

Which do you prefer or are there alternatives?
I don't see how a stand alone abstract concept can exist non-physically and where abstract concepts show up a brain is always involved.
You've seen the range of information definitions that show up here. Two that seem to be scientific but are not are Shannon information and what physicists call physical information. Both of these reduce to abstract concepts that must be supported by brain state.
So if we need a singular, universal, physical definition of information then brain state is the answer.

Different individuals may have different neural activations for the same thought or proposition. This variability makes it hard to pinpoint a universal brain state corresponding to a specific thought.
— Wayfarer

I've never understood this to be a problem. I mean, you can say the same things about ai. ChatGpt 3 has different array matrices activations for "a cat in a hat" than ChatGpt 4 does. If that makes human minds not physical, then does it also make chat gpt not simulatable? Not digitally encodable?

I don't think so. I think it's completely normal that neural networks encode the same (or similar, anyway - it's never really the same) ideas in drastically different ways. I don't find that problematic at all for physicalist ideas of the mind.

In fact I think it would be incredibly surprising if all humans encoded all learned information in exactly the same way. That would be more weird than what we do see. — flannel jesus

I think that's the problem. If any given thought can be the result of many different arrangements of matter, then how can it be that the arrangement IS the thought?

This is different from our systems of symbols and meanings. Whether the binary of computers, spoken language, written language, or any other system we have. No symbol has any objective meaning in any system we invent. They only have the meanings we assign to them.

But if brain states = thoughts, then that means the symbols - that is, the arrangements of matter - objectively mean those thoughts. But to whom or what? The laws of physics that are responsible for every arrangement? Further, the idea that many different arrangements objectively mean the same thing seems odd.

I think that's the problem. If any given thought can be the result of many different arrangements of matter, then how can it be that the arrangement IS the thought? — Patterner

Because you're thinking of thoughts as these concrete singular unambiguous thing, but human thought isn't like that. When I think of an apple, and you think of an apple, we're probably loosely thinking of the same sorts f things, but we're not thinking of them EXACTLY the same. I associate it with different things, different flavours, different contexts, different feelings than you do. Maybe you had your first apple as a toddler but I didn't have one until I was 6. Maybe I associate apples more with cider and you don't really think of cider at all.

All of these differences in thought are reflected in differences in structure.

Human thought is more complex than could be accounted for with the idea that 2 people thinking of the same thing must be having their brains activated in exactly the same way - that's just not it.

:100: :up:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147696-blind-people-repurpose-the-brains-visual-areas-for-language/

People use the same parts of their brain for different things.

That's because brains aren't like clocks, brains are a different sort of thing. Clocks have hundreds of moving pieces where every moving piece has a specific function, and if a piece is out of place or removed, the clock stops working.

Brains, on the other hand, are malleable. The stuff your brain can do now, it couldn't do before. There may be something your brain can do tomorrow that it can't do now. But if you've had a clock for 30 years, it can probably only do the same stuff now that it could always do.

I don't want to pretend to know how brains work, but I know how they don't work: they don't work in such a way that there's only one way to accomplish tasks, and everybody accomplishes those tasks the same way. We know at least that about the brain.

Fair enough. Good posts.

Do you think there is a "core" brain state for an apple? (See what I did there?) Perhaps a certain number of neurons are in the same state for every person thinking of an apple, while other neurons are in a different state, due to the fact that no two people are thinking the exact same thing when they think of an apple?

no, I think that's really unlikely. I think there's probably some base structures that are pretty damn similar between humans, but those are things that are pure instinct - all babies, for example, might have extremely similar brain structures for mothers and nipples and milk, and maybe even for processing visual information - you know, things you have out of the gate.

Anything learned is learned dynamically, and an apple is most certainly something learned.

I wish I knew HOW the brain structures dynamically learn things. I know that, even if I store an apple in this part of my brain and that's where you store a tennis ball, that WHERE it's stored matters a whole lot less than what it's connected to. In fact if you moved your Apple storage from here to there, but kept all the connections in tact, it probably wouldn't matter much that you moved it.

Connections are everything. Not location.

Probably.

Do you have an opinion of how information exists, mechanistically or otherwise, only an abstraction or something physical? I've noticed some physicalists use information as an abstraction without identifying a means for it to physically exist.

An observation would be that information has specific content so how would you bridge the mechanistic with specific information content? — Mark Nyquist

I very much love this question. I think that information is really key to understanding mind/brain and key to what information is, is how information relates to physical matter. The core of what I am saying I would describe as accepted science. The framing of what the science says information is as “information-matter dualism” is my framing and I make no claims of intellectual support from anybody for it.

You put your finger on the fact that physicists use the word information differently to normal people. They are multiple different but related meanings of the word information. For physicists’ information is any discernable difference by any measurement you can make of anything. This means that the consequence of matter existing in different places and in different states is that information simply comes along for the ride. If you simplify the universe down to Conway’s game of life, pretending the alive (white) squares are atoms. The information in the system in this analogy would be the relative placement of the white pixels relative to each other. To copy all the information in the system would involve copying the placement of all the white pixels relative to each other. Sabine Hossenfelder describes information as everything you would need to know to make an exact copy of you down to the level of the exact placement of every subatomic particle. If you vaporized your computer hard drive the information is everything you would need to make an exact copy down to the placement of every subatomic particle

This video is of somebody else saying what I said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a35bKt1nuBo Sabine Hossenfelder book “existential physics” also covers it.

You will notice that a physicists view of information is agnostic to if the information that we are looking at has any pattern we can discern or if any such pattern is useful. Using the definition physicists use, TV static has information in it. From a less abstract, more practical human perspective we don’t count it as information unless we can see some kind of pattern in it that seems like it may be of some value to us, which is fair enough from an evolutionary perspective.

Information from the human perspective is still based on the fact that information is the relative position of everything to everything else. Aristotle observed there are two distinct things about wax which are its substance and its shape. The substance and the shape are obviously related, but they are equally obviously not the same thing as you can change the shape without changing the substance. The shape is effectively a product of the placement of all the particles in the wax relative to each other. As Aristotle molded wax in his hands while thinking about the duality between substance and shape inherent in the wax he was shifting the relative position of one atom compared to the other, changing the shape of the wax. Given that shape is a product of the placement of the atoms relative to each other shape is a type of information. Shape is also a type of information that has meaning for construction and many other things making it something non physicists see as containing information.

The first wax records were made by taking a horn, putting a diaphragm at the end of the horn, putting a needle on the diaphragm and spinning the needle across the wax. When you talk or play music into the horn the diaphragm goes up and down, the needle goes up and down which causes the needle to bite into the wax to different degrees according to the specific characteristics of the compression (sound) waves entering the horn and pushing down on the diaphragm. Information in the soundwaves is captured in the exact shape of the groove of the needle cuts into the wax. The shape of the groove cut into the wax is a representation of the sound wave that made it.

After a mold is created from the wax record shaped by the needle, vinyl records are made by getting a molten ball of plastic and pressing it between the molds changing the physical shape of the molten plastic by changing how one molecule of plastic lines up next to another molecule of plastic. The information in the original wax is preserved in the mold making process and is subsequently locked into to every molten glob of plastic pressed between the molds. In this way the information in the original soundwave can be duplicated highlighting that information, unlike matter can be given away repeatedly without ever losing the original information. A record can be copied millions of times from the mold, with the mold changing the shape of molten plastic. An idea, a concept or a skill can in the same way be transferred from the teacher to hundreds of students by changing signaling proteins in the brain by post translationally modifying them with the addition or removal of phosphate being a common example. This work is what Eric Kandel wone the Nobel prize for, he studded it in sea slugs but we create memory in exactly the same way. This is what is happening in your brain as you are read this. As it is with the wax record it is with the brain except in the brain it is the shape of protein altered by posttranslational modifications rather than the shape of groves in a wax disk. Obviously this means that I am claiming mind is made out of information and the brain is made matter. The caveat is that the mind is dynamic, form moment to moment which is reflected in the dynamic nature of the information contained within the brain.

Other instances of what I am calling information-matter dualism I have not eluded to include objects such as cogs, cams and other objects such as the information inherent in the angle of the ball arms relative to gravity in a centrifugal governor. It is worth looking at the documentary about automaton and thinking about information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nt7xLAfEPs as you are watching. Another very good documentary about information is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioP0N4zYJeA They talk about what information is. They have a great example of information in the context of Jacquard machines that weave patterns in fabric accordance to information held in punch cards. It is very clever and a precursor to computer programing.

I have already talked through why I disagree with substance Dualism in a previous post, it is simply not compatible with science, or the observations made by scientists. The truth is however, there is a rather good, scientifically grounded substitute for res-cogitans if you are prepared to sacrifice one of the three key claims made about it. The key claims Descartes made about res-cogitans were 1) it is non-physical 2) it is independent of physical matter 3) it is what our introspective experiences are constructed out of. The thing you obviously realize is that the concept of information is integral to the description of the world provided by science and in this description, information is non-physical in the sense information isn’t made out of physical matter. This is consistent with Descartes’s first claim. In addition, our introspective experiences are inherently informational by any definition of the word informational. This is consistent with Descartes’s third claim. This means that the only difference between res-cogitans and information is the second claim as information is very much not independent of physical matter like is clamed for res-cogitans. This means that to make dualism fully compatible with science all you need to do is stop claiming res cogitans is independent of matter and start calling it information. A phrase that seems appropriate to summaries my view on the relationship between matter and information could be described as information-matter dualism. So that’s what I think, information-matter dualism is how I personally frame what science says about information.

Sorry it was such a long answer. I could have written 10x more. I didn’t even talk about information held in the physical structure of DNA and how that works.

Thank you for the question. I would love to know yours or anybody else thoughts.

:up:

Physics is mechanistic because we constructed the framework for describing and measuring certain phenomena within geometric space-time grids. In other words, it’s not the physical world in itself that is mathematical or mechanistic, it is our template for interpreting it. We could have chosen a different way of modeling it , but so far this way is quite useful for us. It may not always be so. Meanwhile, this mechanistic form of causality is less useful in representing biological and psychological phenomena, so we apply a different descriptive vocabulary. — Joshs

I agree with most of what you are saying. I make use a lot of information as noted in a more recent post which i regard as being what our minds are made up from. The part i would disagree with the last sentence. Scientists do represent biology mechanistically, this is what our understanding of biology is based on. I agree don't describe psychological phenomena mechanistically but i would suggest that this is for two reasons 1) Describing psychologically important concepts mechanistically is something most people find psychologically distressing 2) a failure of imagination regarding how to explain psychological phenomena mechanistically. The "different descriptive vocabulary", is in my opinion somewhat disingenuous people are just talking about there psychology's using different descriptive vocabulary, they are sometimes implicitly but mostly explicitly making ontological claims about the nature of the psychological phenomena. These ontological claims go the the core of how we think about and justify our beliefs about psychological phenomena so they are in no was incidental to the discussion. I am interested in how we should change the ontologies of psychological phenomena to make them consistent with a mechanistic universe and what the effects of doing this would be..

I make use a lot of information as noted in a more recent post which i regard as being what our minds are made up from. The part i would disagree with the last sentence. Scientists do represent biology mechanistically, this is what our understanding of biology is based on. I agree don't describe psychological phenomena mechanistically but i would suggest that this is for two reasons 1) Describing psychologically important concepts mechanistically is something most people find psychologically distressing 2) a failure of imagination regarding how to explain psychological phenomena mechanistically. The "different descriptive vocabulary", is in my opinion somewhat disingenuous people are just talking about there psychology's using different descriptive vocabulary, they are sometimes implicitly but mostly explicitly making ontological claims about the nature of the psychological phenomena. These ontological claims go the the core of how we think about and justify our beliefs about psychological phenomena so they are in no was incidental to the discussion. I am interested in how we should change the ontologies of psychological phenomena to make them consistent with a mechanistic universe and what the effects of doing this would be — Restitutor

I want to go in the opposite direction from you. Rather than accepting a handed down model of mechanism from the physical sciences and trying to force our understanding of human or animal behavior into it, we need to recognize that physics, which was the queen of the sciences a few centuries ago, is behind the curve right now. The concepts of causality and information you are borrowing from the physical sciences, which work so elegantly in constructing machine technologies, are disastrous when we try to apply them to so many aspects of human behavior, such as psychopathology and mood disorders, the nature of language and empathy, models of perception, emotion and intentionality. To translate my argument into more concrete terms, I am an advocate of 4EA models in the cognitive sciences, and of enactivism and autopoietic self-organizing systems approaches. I applaud the way that representatives of these approaches critique authors such as Metzinger and Dennett for their reductionism.

Don’t misunderstand me. I think it’s perfectly fine to strive to reduce higher mental processes to elementary ones, but I don’t think today’s physics is up to the job. It eventually will be though. Until then, it’s important to keep the conceptual vocabulary dealing with the most compact aspects of biological and psychological phenomena separate from that of physical mechanism.

I can add that once brain state is identified as the physical form of information then a mechanistic theory works for me and the loose ends have been taken care of. — Mark Nyquist

The inter-action of neurons may well be mechanistic, but the general brain "state" is a snapshot (static) pattern or relationship, which requires a sentient observer to "see". For example, a political "state" is not a physical object or collection of objects, but the collective opinion of those who identify with that particular polity. In mathematical Statistics, a particular "state" is a datum, that in itself has no value, but only in relation to other states or data. Hence, "data" is relevant to "information" & meaning. :smile:

What are the philosophical consequences of science saying we are mechanistic?

Thus the title, and we have a genuine scientist saying it; but what are the consequences?

On the face of it, the consequences are that, demonstrably, machines can produce moral systems, artistic traditions, religions, science, and philosophies. Who'd of thunk it? Well we would, apparently, because we are simply machines.

I think that's the problem. If any given thought can be the result of many different arrangements of matter, then how can it be that the arrangement IS the thought? — Patterner

That's the idea. It's a refinement of Hilary Putnam's 'multiple realizability'.

You've seen the range of information definitions that show up here. Two that seem to be scientific but are not are Shannon information and what physicists call physical information. Both of these reduce to abstract concepts that must be supported by brain state. — Mark Nyquist

So, do you think in the absence of any mind that basic logical principles such as the law of the excluded middle would not hold? My view would be that the law of the excluded middle and other such simple principles are discovered by rational sentient beings who have the wits to discern them. That such principles are discerned by intelligence, not 'supported by brain state'. The unique thing about them is that they're independent of any particular mind, but only discernable to reason. That is what gives them the status as foundational to rational thought (nous).

I think there's probably some base structures that are pretty damn similar between humans — flannel jesus

What about Chomsky's universal grammar?

In this way the information in the original soundwave can be duplicated highlighting that information, unlike matter can be given away repeatedly without ever losing the original information. A record can be copied millions of times from the mold, with the mold changing the shape of molten plastic. — Restitutor

That analogy can be extended though. If you have an item of information - say, instructions, or a recipe - that can be represented in any number of languages, or encoded in any number of media (digital, physical, and so on). Provided the information is faithfully replicated in each transformation, then the information stays the same, even if the material form of its presentation is completely different. That is the sense in which meaning can be understood as independent from physical form - as you say.

Aristotle observed there are two distinct things about wax which are its substance and its shape. — Restitutor

Not substance and shape, but substance (hyle) and form (morphe). 'Aristotle explained that "By hyle I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined." This means that hyle is brought into existence not due to its being its agent or its own actuality but only when form attaches to it. It has been described as a plenum or a field, a conceptualization that opposed Democritus' atomistic ontology. It is maintained that the Aristotelian concept should not be understood as a "stuff" since there is, for example, hyle that is intellectual as well as sensible hyle found in the body' (wiki). So 'form' is a much more subtle concept than 'shape', recall it is ultimately descended from Plato's 'ideas' albeit modified by Aristotle's 'moderate realism'.

. This means that to make dualism fully compatible with science all you need to do is stop claiming res cogitans is independent of matter and start calling it information. — Restitutor

I almost agree, with this caveat: Descartes' principle error was in regarding res cogitans as an object, something that could be conceived of in an objective manner. Husserl's primary objection to Descartes lies in the latter's approach to consciousness. Descartes regards consciousness as 'res cogitans' (thinking substance) and the material world as 'res extensa' (extended substance). Husserl, a phenomenologist, argues that this perspective wrongly subsumes consciousness under the same category as physical objects - by treating it as objective - thereby neglecting the inherently first-person nature of conscious experience.

Husserl contends that consciousness should not be treated as an object within the world but rather as the precondition for the appearance of any such objects, that through which everything objective is disclosed in the first place. He emphasizes the intentionality of consciousness — its inherent nature of being about or directed towards objects, and how it constitutes the meaning and essence of things rather than merely perceiving them as physical entities.

This critique is fundamental to Husserl's phenomenological project, which aims to return to the 'things themselves' by examining the structures of experience as they present themselves to awareness, free from either preconceived theories or scientific assumptions. This is the 'phenomenological epoché' or reduction.

A phrase that seems appropriate to summaries my view on the relationship between matter and information could be described as information-matter dualism. So that’s what I think, information-matter dualism is how I personally frame what science says about information. — Restitutor

There's an entire massive website, The Information Philosopher, Bob Doyle, which is devoted to this idea. It's a constant reference point for me, I guess you know about it already but for the record it's here https://www.informationphilosopher.com/ . The index of carefully curated articles about individual philosophers and scientists is a fantastic resource.

Where 'information philosophy' doesn't gel with me, though, is that I see philosophy - as distinct from science - concerned with the question of the nature and meaning of being, not the analysis of objects and their relations. There is an irrevocably first-person perspective required by philosophy, as distinct from science. I feel that prior to the advent of modern thought, this kind of went without saying, because humans hadn't yet reached the point of abstraction where we could stand outside ourselves and treat ourselves and everything else as objects of analysis. We had a more embedded and organic relationship with the Cosmos, which was (regrettably) harnessed to an empirically false cosmological picture. So the shattering of the great medieval synthesis was also a huge existential crisis. This is why the 'embodied philosophy' school that @Joshs mentions above is so crucial, as it re-orients science around 'the human condition' and stops treating humans as mere objects (or machines!) That is very much in keeping with existentialism, phenomenology and the continental schools of philosophy, unlike the scientistic reductionism that is so influential in English-speaking philosophy.

That analogy can be extended though. If you have an item of information - say, instructions, or a recipe - that can be represented in any number of languages, or encoded in any number of media (digital, physical, and so on). Provided the information is faithfully replicated in each transformation, then the information stays the same, even if the material form of its presentation is completely different. That is the sense in which meaning can be understood — Wayfarer

I very much Agree with your wider point. I do think there are some finer points in there that may profit in re-thinking slightly. It could be suggested that the information in a record is not the same as the information being produced by the sound waves you get from playing the record, you may said that the information in the record can be processed by the record player into specific sound waives that contain the specific information that were captured by the wax record. In this construction the information in the record would be different to, but encode for the information in the sound waves.

Really, i think this all comes down to a what your definition of information is down to a degree of precision for which we don't normally think down to meaning reasonable people could be forgiven for disagreeing.

There's an entire massive website, The Information Philosopher, Bob Doyle, which is devoted to this idea. It's a constant reference point for me, I guess you know about it already but for the record it's here https://www.informationphilosopher.com/ . The index of carefully curated articles about individual philosophers and scientists is a fantastic resource. — Wayfarer

I hadn't herd of Bob Doyle all the website but i will defiantly check them out. I don't get to talk about this with many people normally so its really great to get suggestions from well read people such as yourself.

So you are not liking this information is brain state idea. If I go from physical matter to human brains that hold mental content that is just setting the physical basis for information to exist in a physical world. So being at that point I don't put restrictions on mental content and your rules of logic are part of your mental content. They only exist as brain state, in my view.