Sometimes a tautology is philosophically fundamental. Shannon defined Information physically, in terms of Energy/Entropy relationships. You seem to be defining Information metaphysically or essentially, in terms of meaningful experience, conscious awareness, or sentient knowing. Are you equating Sentience and Experience with the capability for being affected mentally by sensory impressions from the environment? Can you expand on that notion relative to The Hard Problem? :smile:But, saying that "Information is what it's like to be information" comes dangerously close to a tautology. — Gnomon
Well my notion of information here is even more basic than what you are talking about. Its just about distinctions. Experience and information are both primitive concepts in the sense that they cannot be further defined. So this tautology doesn't really add any danger that wasn't already there. — Apustimelogist
Information used to be defined in terms of knowledge / meaning contained in a mind, especially connotation or denotation that is personally relevant to the receiver. Hence, knowing is experiencing/feeling, either first hand, or from communication. But what is a sentient "person" : the body/brain or soul/mind, or both, in a symbiotic relationship? My money is on the Both/And answer.I am just saying that it is plausible to construe experiences as information. All I really know about my own experiences is that I am making or perceiving distinctions which are immediate to me. — Apustimelogist
One thing I am dropping from my view is that reality - in whatever way you want to metaphysically theorize about it - is not like a set of objects that just permanently exist at one scale and can be arranged in different ways like marbles in a box.
Theoretical physics, from what I have read, seems to characterize particles and forces at the most fundamental level in terms of symmetries and invariances that possibly emerge and dissolve depending on the situation (maybe a good example in physics is that it is thought that during the development of the universe you had symmetry breaking where new forces, particles and even mass emerged where they did not exist before).
So maybe symmetries / invariances are fundamental. — Apustimelogist
Is Consciousness purely a physical or metaphysical phenomenon, or a function of both Mind and Matter? — Gnomon
So, it depends on who's asking. Is the Brain or the Soul the experiencer of incoming Information? — Gnomon
Yes. Unfortunately, some on this forum seem to think that the job of Philosophy is simply to criticize our use of language. Perhaps the noun "being" and the verb "to be" are the most difficult concepts to "grapple with", since we directly experience Being, but can only imagine Non-Being. Likewise, we experience Consciousness, but unconsciousness is the lack of experience. Our language can express "what it's like to see", but fumbles with "what it's like to be".I see philosophy as primarily concerned with the problems of meaning - and that in an existential, rather than a semantic, sense. Philosophy attempts to grapple with the perennial problem of 'what it means to be', and it's not an academic concern, as we are, in fact, beings. — Wayfarer
I'm not very familiar with Vedanta, but that's similar to what I meant by distinguishing between Brain & Soul, or Body & Person. Materialists typically deny the existence of a Soul, probably because it is not a perceivable phenomenon. Yet, Soul and Person are conceivable noumena; even though their mode-of-being is debatable. I'm also not familiar with Materialist literature on the topic of Noumena*1. Is it a legitimate topic of philosophical "grappling"? Or best left to the religious myth-makers? :cool:Recall that in Vedanta, consciousness (citta) is never a 'that'. It is never an object, or for that matter a phenomenon. The phenomenon is 'that which appears'; consciousness is 'to whom it appears'. — Wayfarer
In a philosophical sense, I think of "Symmetries" as logical relationships, which are the essence of Information. Existentially, those inter-relationships may well be fundamental to Reality in it's multiplicity. For example, when a Singularity divides into a Diversity, symmetries are born, and can later be broken : e.g. matter/anti-matter. The immensity of this cosmic notion is astronomically over my head, but I'll put it on the docket for further exploration. :nerd:So maybe symmetries / invariances are fundamental. — Apustimelogist
Good philosophical sense. I was thinking about the minimum possible information and it seemed to me information is something that can be communicated AKA derived from a system.In a philosophical sense, I think of "Symmetries" as logical relationships, which are the essence of Information. Existentially, those inter-relationships may well be fundamental to Reality in it's multiplicity. — Gnomon
I will assume that your philosophical "reality beyond" is something like Plato's Ideality, or Kant's mysterious realm of the ding-an-sich ; not a religious other-world populated with meddling gods & avenging angels. The comments here only skim the surface of my information-based BothAnd Monism. One holistic uber-reality with dual aspects.Now for me, double-aspect is a only in our models and not existing in reality beyond us. — Apustimelogist
Your post reminded me of the old idiom : "that's my two bits worth" ; typically referring to an unsolicited opinion. The monetary reference was to a quarter dollar : $.25. But where did the term "two bits" come from? The explanation I found said it referred to a "spanish dollar" worth eight reales (pieces of eight?). Hence : two pieces = a quarter dollar. But my source says, there was no "one bit" coin.If we say there are two points, one relates to the other and vice versa. Then we have information. — Throng
Yet the latter is literally unrealistic — Gnomon
I will assume that your philosophical "reality beyond" is something like Plato's Ideality, or Kant's mysterious realm of the ding-an-sich — Gnomon
Mind is merely its operational Function, which is only a name for an abstract input-output process of Living & Thinking. — Gnomon
Does that include qualia? — Apustimelogist
The adjective "unrealistic" was intended only as definitive, not derogatory. Matter is "realistic" in the sense of hands-on practical or pragmatic utility, while Mind is "unrealistic" in the sense of literally intangible & immaterial, hence not something you can directly manipulate for real-world purposes.Yet the latter is literally unrealistic — Gnomon
What makes you say this, out of interest? — Apustimelogist
Yes. The physical brain is a quantitative bio-machine, which processes countable units of matter & energy, in order to produce the qualitative products that we know as Ideas, Imagination, Experience, Consciousness, etc.Mind is merely its operational Function, which is only a name for an abstract input-output process of Living & Thinking. — Gnomon
Does that include qualia? — Apustimelogist
...while Mind is "unrealistic" in the sense of literally intangible & immaterial, hence not something you can directly manipulate for real-world purposes. — Gnomon
Perhaps, as an Epistemologist, you are using "information", in an Ontological sense, as a synonym for "experience" or "knowing"*1. Anyway, your what-it's-like formulation of Information may be getting at the essence of what it's like to be human : the experience (feeling ; knowledge ; consciousness) of being an information creator as well as consumer.But, saying that "Information is what it's like to be information" comes dangerously close to a tautology. — Gnomon
Well my notion of information here is even more basic than what you are talking about. Its just about distinctions. Experience and information are both primitive concepts in the sense that they cannot be further defined. So this tautology doesn't really add any danger that wasn't already there. — Apustimelogist
Seems hard for me to rule out that there could be a mapping between experiences and all possible forms of information. — Apustimelogist
however the benefit is that by following an order of operations we might eliminate some physically unsupported mental content that we seem to be prone to. — Mark Nyquist
Yes. I see Information & Consciousness as elements of the same cosmic continuum. But Information (power to enform ; to create meaningful & useful forms/patterns) is divergent, and often takes on physical forms, while Consciousness is emergent, and strictly meta-physical. Unfortunately, human languages are inherently based on sensory knowledge, hence "common usage" is fundamentally materialistic. That's why philosophical language was developed, in order to deal with concepts that go beyond the physical limitations of the senses, such as Potential vs Actual.I like seeing information/consciousness being placed side by side. Do you think, in a technical sense, they are closely related or even have the same physical basis? Words are defined by their common usage so if we use common definitions we may be building in confusion to the problem of consciousness. . . .
Something else that may help in the problem of consciousness is to consider order of operations. — Mark Nyquist
My post spelled the term "Generic", not "Genetic, Information*1. In my thesis, I use GI as a modern version of Plato's "World of Forms" to suggest a singular ideal origin, and shared heritage, for all of the various forms (configurations of matter, energy & mind) in the world. Genetic information, in the form of chemical genes, is one of those manifold offspring of the pre-Bang Progenitor Form. Another philosophical term for that concept is First Cause. It's merely a logical necessity to hypothetically account for Darwin's "forms most beautiful"*2.I think you guessed I would have a problem with GI, genetic information, and I do. I see it as a mental projection only. It exists physically in your brain state and does not exist physically in genetic material. — Mark Nyquist
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