Norbert Wiener has insisted that information is neither matter nor energy but something else! Can that something exist? Have informatics scientists or philosophers of informatics done work to identify what the so-called INFORMATION is? Is information anything existent? If existent, can it be (1) anything other than matter and energy, or (2) at least anything based on matter and/or energy?

If so, how to characterize INFORMATION as matter or energy or anything based on these? If it is something based on these, and neither matter nor energy as such, then what is it? How to describe it?

Raphael Neelamkavil

R. R. Poznansky, I liked your reply: "Information is the modularity of energy."

Only a few suggestions to add:

Modularity is not anything existent. It is an abstract noun. The modules' internal, existent, constitution is in fact the very energy. Then what to do? I suggest that the conglimeration/s of some portions of energy being communicated in space and in matter-energy nexus is being re-interpreted symbolically as a concatenation. As a concatenation not of the energy but of the symbols, which gets re-interpreted and decoded as information. That is, the concatenation of symbols conceived to be and decoded to be something is in fact the communicated information.

Hence, information is the symbolic concatenation behind any communication.

I have recently written a book of about 100 pp. in English and await publication: CAUSALITY IN ARTIFICIAL AND BIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE: NEW PHYSICS, ANALYTIC METAPHYSICS, PROCESS PHILOSOPHY, AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPACE-TIME, UNOBSERVABLES, INFORMATION, VIRTUAL WORLDS, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. Soon will be ready also its Italian and Spanish versions. I think this short book fills a gaping lacuna in Engineering Sciences in general and also in Informatics, AI, Biological Intelligence, Consciousness Studies, Brain Studies, and the Philosophies of Mind and AI.

I HAVE TO LOOK FOR A PUBLISHER FOR THIS SHORT WORK....

Information is a ‘difference which makes a difference’ to a living being, as per Gregory Bateson. Therefore it’s basis is the detection of changes in matter and/or energy.

R. R. Poznansky, your second reply is more convincing and satisfactory. Thanks.

Regarding suggestion on your www.neuralpress.org:

It is a journal. I want to publish this as a book. Moreover, it is not in neuroscience, but in the philosophy of artificial intelligence, informatics, and biological intelligence!

R. R. Poznansky, but my book is not explicitly on non-Turing computation. It is on causality in information, virtual worlds, and consciousness in AI and Biological Intelligence. Moreover, your publishing house does only publish the Journal, not books!

Olivier Denis, very good answer. Congrats. This is what is missing in informatics and artificial intelligence. Many of them think or presuppose and of course insist to be true or to presuppose that information, artificial intelligence, and their virtual worlds are something existing!

There are 2 perspectives on information:

1. Information is an absolute quantity of the Universe as are matter and/or energy.

2. Information is the result of detection of matter and/or energy by living beings as per Gregory Bateson.

Version 1 is based on a postulate that has no basis in fact, but a great percentage of scientists swear as true.

Version 2 is based on observable, everyday occurrences that lead to the conclusion that all existing information in the Universe is the result of infoautopoiesis (information self-production) by living beings. Therefore, all human constructions in the humanities and sciences are syntactic in nature, as are all artificial creations that make our living space more comfortable. Another conclusion is that AI is a human construction that is syntactic in nature and therefore unrealizable as artificial general intelligence (AGI). It also turns out that perspective 1 above is a human construction.

Which one do you believe?

The question that needs an answer is: What is information?

You state in your paper:

“This leads Entropic Information Theory to define the notion of information in a more precise and relevant way; indeed, it can be said by following the theory of entropic information that information is a quantum state change due to the modification of a degree of freedom in the quantum system considered.”

And,

“These perspectives, as part of this generalization of Entropic Information Theory, can lead us to in-depth reflection. Indeed, we can see a new perspective on defining life in the approach of Entropic Information Theory. Based on the mass of the bit of information and entropic considerations, we can see life following Entropic Information Theory as the storage of information and the possibility of updating it through a self-learning process to perpetuate this form of information, because the structures are ordered by storing information, the structure is information building.”

It seems that you assume that a bit has mass, and that bit is somehow stored in living beings and then through a self-learning process more information ensues.

Where does the bit originate to begin with? Maybe information is inherent in the Universe. Though the bit (binary digit) is defined by humans and used by humans. Is the bit a fundamental quantity of the Universe, like Wheeler believed? This is all based on a postulate that has no basis in fact.

Jaime F Cárdenas-García,

My question is this: What exactly is the stuff of information (and a bit), if it is something? And if not, we will have to explain information and bit in terms of the energy that is used to store them in material things that naturally involve also energy....

Am working on a book on this problem. This is why I write this. I have jaded through many books on the question of what information and bit are. Practically none of them, even books in the philosophy of informatics and artificial intelligence says a word on what the stuff of these is....! That is a real pity, given the fact that informatics is highly advanced today and most sought after by the highest number of academicians, scientists and students.

Raphael

The stuff of information is what living beings self-produce to make sense of their surroundings to achieve satisfaction of their physiological and/or relational needs and relies on identifying ‘a difference which makes a difference.’

Thus, what information is depends on the living being and their capabilities to achieve the objective of making sense of their surroundings through a process of infoautopoiesis or information self-production. Semantic information is produced internally to the organism to make sense of the environment. Syntactic information is produced when the organism externalizes what it understands, i.e., its internalized semantic content about the environment in which it dwells. So, everything that we know and have shared about our surroundings is syntactic in nature. I am not aware if anyone knows how we store information in our body, since the types of information that we store in our bodies is multifaceted.

We invented bits to deal with digital information that is part of our syntactic arsenal to deal with our environment. We use bits as a metaphor for information and sometimes pretend to understand more about our Universe than we do.

I have a few papers in Academia that deal with infoautopoiesis.

The article by Vopson mentions Shannon syntactic information: “Shannon gave the mathematical formulation of the amount of information extracted from observing the occurrence of an event…” Several questions come to mind: How and why does the event occur? How is the syntactic information that Shannon considers generated? How is that ‘bit’ of information generated in the first place? Who generates it? Is semantic information generated before syntactic information comes into existence? How does that occur? How does semantic information relate to syntactic information?

Thank you for our response and your comments. I look forward to reading your work and to continuing our interaction.

Information is not necessarily a man-made concept: cf. architecture of structure waves (Structure wave theory on RG).

Consciousness is a productive agent releasing structure waves thru defining observers that both define and build all normalizable content of the conceptual and manifested Mental, the latter being separated from the first merely by number metrics instead of number form metrics (cf. Number form theory on RG) founding the conceptual Mental.

Jean Thill, the problem that I find in your reply of Dec 29 is this: If the mental is separated from other forms, that too merely by number metrics instead of number form metrics, would that mean that the mental is totally different from all others?

Thanks, R R Poynansky

Johannes W. Dietrich, thanks. But in any case, if statistical-causal explanations are fully causal explanations, then we would not have had all these controversies in quantum physics.

Concerning the concept of information and energy. If information is not existent matter and not existent energy, then we have no other way of speaking about it. Hence, we need really existent energy wavicles to carry information. This information being carried is not something else. Information is the name for the causally conglomerative effect being transferred by energy wavicles!

I would invite your comments.

Raphael

My attempt is not to be merely speculative, but at the same time theoretically fundamental and general of all possible notions of information. If the ontology of information in quantum analog approaches is not theorizable, there is need to question its foundations. If it is theorizable, I would like to know of the ontological foundations of the quantum analog approach to information.

Now about biological information. If the brain can process information, it is also a variety of information. Of course, the sort of storing and retrieval in the brain must naturally be more fluent and creative than informatic or quantum analog storing and retrieval. Can the ontology of these three be also studied without being merely speculative?

Thanks for the reply. And thanks in advance for the replies in the future. They are valuable.

Some physicists, AI specialists, brain scientists, and even philosophers think that information is the stuff of all that is. Fantastic. But none of them say whether information is a physical existent or a virtual existent. Many, but, tend to claim that in this manner the virtual is what constitutes all that physically exist. In that case, the absolutely virtual non-existents should be what physically exist! Terrific.

It is for this reason that I attempt to base information on existent matter-energy, clearly showing that this "basing" does only mean "forming conglomeration of energies" and "forming concatenations of merely coneptual connotations and of merely linguistic (symbolic) denotations".

By biology I do not mean the whole of it. I mean the biology of brain science, neuroscience, etc. Now, it is easy to say that even in neuroscience or brain science only meaning has meaning, and that information is impotent. Maybe. What I am speaking about is what some neuroscientists (biologists turned neuroscientists) hold. Some of them think that "information" is something that founds everything that happens in the brain. And I argue that this is not tenable, because INFORMATION is not what physically exists, but instead, the biologically physical matter and energy. Hence, the existent stuff, the CARRIERS of information, must be the foundational stuff.

Thanks. I would add that matter-energy is fundamental even in biology. It was more than 2 decades ago that I came into contact with one biologist-cum-philosopher who argued that information is the stuff of the brain too. I asked what he meant by 'stuff'. His answer was: 'matter'. I asked, 'What then about the energy? Is information also the energy?' He was confused. I said, 'Is it not better to admit that it is matter and energy that carry information?'

Today I reiterate with additional details: 'Information' is not an existent stuff. It is the name we give for the conglomeration of some carriers -- always matter-energy -- of various signals, including those in machines, coded systems, etc. The name is conceptually created by reason of a concatenation of concepts in minds. It is expressed in terms of symbols in language, machines, etc. denotatively.

On my RG, I have uploaded a few short PDFs on these ideas in the last 2 weeks, including yesterday. They are kept short in order to facilitate reading and comprehension even by those who have very little time.

Exactly! This is good. D'accordo!

Raphael

Olivier Denis,

Nuclear physics as is practiced today does not have much in common with biology, perhaps. Of course, in cures it is useful. But can we agree on the following? Biological and non-biological matter-energy are existent physical energy. Both are fully physical. Biological matter-energy have an additional, specific, sort of causal evolutionary history. In that case, biological matter-energy too consist of nuclei. Ok?

NOW TO THE DEFINITION OF LIFE THAT YOU GAVE:

"Structure ordered by information storage, life as the storage of the information and the possibility to update it by a process of self-learning to perpetuate that form of information"

Even if we grant that life may be defined in this manner, one question remains: For all these, should INFORMATION become some existent physical stuff? Or, shall we say that the information that you call stored or is being communicated is the NAME for a conglomeration and arrangement of some MATTER-ENERGY in a specific manner in each instance of information?

OTHERWISE, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN? IN FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS WE WOULD HAVE TO SEARCH FOR AND DETECT "INFORMATION" AS THE FUNDAMENTAL INGREDIENT OF ALL EXISTENTS!!

Olivier Denis, this is wonderful. Mass-Energy equivalence gives us the certainty to physically insist on Universal Causality, against the statistical causalities that some physicists speak of -- as if there existed a sort of causality which chooses objects or processes to cause statistically!

I have developed a detailed system of criticism of statistical causality in QM and in Cosmology. They have been published in the form of books in Germany. Now I proceed to do the same on the question of INFORMATION.

If one accepts the philosophy of physics at least as theoretical clarification of concepts, procedures, and results in physical science, the system of physical ontology / metaphysics that I have developed are useful. In particular, I find the Mass-Energy Equivalence Principle useful for this.

I have dealt with it in detail in my forthcoming book. A few citations from various parts of the book:

(1) Information is either biological or machine-based. Both are based on the movement of energy that causes impact formation. Information is the symbolically connotative concatenation of the pertinents (ontological universals that pertain to existent processes in their natural kinds) of existents, carried via energy transfer and impact transfer. The AI virtual world in itself is based causally on a conglomeration of existents.

(2) This physical effect of information is what I have supported by creating a metaphysical system in Part 2 and extending it further in Part 3, yielding that everything, including information, works under the Categories of Extension-Change, which is the same as Universal Causality.

(3) Similarly, information is not a statistically existent thing. It is something fully based on existent matter-energy, and must treated as symbolic concatenations of conglomerations of energy propagations based in, from, and to matter components.

Hence, it is better to hold that everything is causal – i.e., in Extension-Change-wise active existence – than that everything is statistically, stochastically, probabilistically causal.

(4) The conscious matter-energy could be understood as those various levels together of quantum, sub-quantum, sub-sub-quantum … etc., whereof biological matter-energy is that web of information created by all these levels in an entity – each sub-level of action of which is tendentially ever less affected by the far distant / more coarse levels of quantum fields. This can also be considered as the main reason for the relatively fast growth of self-determination by such consciousnesses.

Hence, it is not appropriate to conclude that biological and conscious information is directly from the quantum state changes that we have already been able to discover. Such a conclusion will be extremely simplistic. Making calculations and mathematical quantum theories of consciousness at this level would thus be primitive. This sort of limiting of conscious action (and even non-conscious material action) to just the stratum of quantum action of state change that we have had access to, would only be comparable to what Newtonian physicists have been thinking of while determining with confidence all that happen in the physical world, just as engineers are sure of all that they calculate on.

There are those who consider the network of action of quantum state change even as the ether that many have been searching for! Still worse when some take gravitation as ether, as if they need somehow to create an ether as the medium of all actions.

In a similar fashion, taking the summation of all the information or the web composed of all actions of the various quantum levels as a sort of universal mind (as is the case with the “world soul” of various kinds, with which individual consciousnesses are said to easily enter into harmony, according to the new age religions today and some esoteric Hindu and Buddhist schools of old) is another charlatan manner of irrationally jumping infinite reasonably acceptable steps into creating a sort of naturally supernatural Entity and its “nature religion”. The metaphysical meaning of Universal Causality is not at all being realized here well enough.

I NEED TO DO A LOT MORE TO FURTHER SYSTEMATIZE THE BOOK.

Poznansky, it is easy to say that there is nothing called information in the biological. The kind of AI and quantum-physical information is not to be found in the biological. But, for this reason, we do not have to say that in biologically based brains there is no information. At least there are many who hold that there is something common between them.

Now, what I do is this: If they say that they are similar or the same, I try to show that these two are causal-historically different and that we can never bring them together or make them converge unless the whole causal evolutionary history of biological brains can be achieved within a few hours or days or weeks of machine-based coding.

But this is only a result of the discussion in the said book. I am trying, in this book, to develop a new concept of Universal Causality and use it to dissimilarize machine-coded information, merely quantum-physical or other forms of physical imnformation, and biological information, whatever they mean by the three.

Eda Alemdar, please read this reply of mine to Poznansky. Your comments would also be valuable.

Olivier Denis, you have just cited these two statements, but not commented!

"without information conscious has nothing to know...."

""There is no such thing as conscious information.""

Thanks Olivier Denis. Now I understand.

Poznansky, first let me address the first of your replies today. I use information as a name. Of course, what happens there is not an existent thing as the exactly corresponding stuff called information. Information is a name for what is transmitted by the conglomeration of a set of physical processes carried by matter-energy. Now, how does it become a verb? David Bohm's "active information" is in fact the activity of matter-energy, and hence 'active information' too is a name for what is being transmitted. This happens physical-processually. For this reason, if I begin to make it a verb, I would have to follow Heidegger who tried to make everything into something verbal and said: "The thing is thinging", "The door is dooring", etc. Funny!

Second: Why should non-felt feeling / physical feeling be termed exactly as Leibnizian? The basic, existent, ingredients of whatever motion happens are for Leibniz the monads. We cannot come out of the vicious circle of monads if we get embezzled with them. They are pure, without extension, but have all activities. Such a thing cannot exist if it is not in Extension and has nevertheless what we understand as Change!

Now coming to your second reply: Chalmers would not have to do brain science, although he had enough expertise in it. He tried to do the philosophy of mind.

Nobody removed all the beliefs (I do not mean here anything religious) about the cosmos. Of course, some have been removed and improved. All of humanity will have continued beliefs. They will never be the same. Again I say, I do not speak here of religious beliefs. Any scientific or everyday notion has some beliefs behind it.

Now, what do you mean by 'phenomenological'? Do you mean the phenomenology of Husserl, or of anyone after him, or of anyone like Hegel who too had created his own kind of phenomenology, OR what today physicists and cosmologists call phenomenology? All these are different. I would suggest: Let us not be so radical as to believe that the sciences take over the object-region of philosophy little by little. It is an old-fashioned concept. In fact, the more the sciences clarify many things for humans, by assuming for themselves some of the questions that the philosophies of the sciences pose, the more does philosophy encroach into the object-regions of the sciences in order to clarify for them what in fact the foundations, procedures, notions, and results of each of these sciences are.

I do not mean by philosophy the wise sayings of some life-philosophers. Please note this. Today there are, e.g., philosophy of medicine, philosophy of chemistry, philosophy of management science, etc. I mentioned this not because you do not know. You do know that.

The mathematical virtue of consciousness science (in general) does not deprive such sciences of the need to clarify their foundations, notions, etc.

Many theories (like IIT) will fall. This is the case in the sciences too. Not merely in consciousness science or in the philosophy or phenomenology of it. And new theories arise. They have or must be such that they have the cumulative effect of improving human knowledge and life in general. This is no argument to discredit the phenomenology of consciousness, if I have understood what you mean by phenomenology.

I am not a fan of Chalmers. Instead, I hold that he has tried to hold the philosophy of consciousness captive for some time, and now things have changed. Natural!

A mathematical modeler need not be contented with a phenomenological description. But there are others who are happy to and need to hear it. Now, we need not conclude that no mathematical modeler will be happy. Some may not be happy, some many not want it, some are unaware of the need, and some would take access to it.

Biology as a science is a positive, experimental, science. Hence, biology must concentrate its methods. Clearly! But should relational biology or relationalism be Leibnizian? I differ. Leibnizian space is too simplistic for a biologist today. Of course, the concept has some affinity with what Leibniz said in terms of relationalism a few centuries ago.

The same can be said also about Aristotelian act-potency relationism. Please note that contemporary dispositionalism (Armstrong, Mumford and Anjum, etc.) is a causal theory. Many of these philosophers take inhertance from Aristotle and consider him more important than any other philosopher for causality! I have difficulties with some details of it. Although they tend to be relational (e.g., even in biological causation), they tend to be substance-philosophers in the end. Even Leibniz has ended up in that manner.

My attitude is not "we have answered it all". We all try for the best and end up with just a small percentage of achievements. Better than nothing! I do not believe merely in my own effort or theoretical advancement. But since I am a human being, I have to work alone and at times get the opportunity for discussion and collaboration with others. I keep myself open to all of it.

By the way, we are not opponents. We state our own positions. Each statement is an affirmative statement. We cannot help doing otherwise.

The theorization on strong and weak AI is good. I confront this problem not with performance, levels of performance, etc. I directly construct a definition of causation and manner of differentiating between causation in AI and living brains. That works out the futility of converging AI with brain-level informatio.

Still, confusion among the "experienced": Some speak of artificial consciousness and suggest that it might come to substitute or supplant biologically evolved consciousness. I do not ignore this. You may. Please continue.

WONDERFUL...

Consciousness is instrumental in these projects merely because it is human brains that work on these? Or any other reason? I agree of the connection between quantum computers and Turing computation. BUT THE FACT REMAINS: they all call mechanical information storage systems as INTELLIGENCE!! Maybe that it is just an analogy. But finally, some even think that they will be a convergence between human and mechanically coded brains! Is it not fantastic?

R. R. Poznansky, this is fully acceptable for all kinds of reasons -- not merely scientific but also philosophical. I am aware of these. What I now try in a proposed book (Causality in Artificial and Biological Intelligence) is to show that there is an important reason why most technocrats, technocratically and scientistically oriented scientists, and scientistically oriented philosophers mistake the so-called artificial and biological intelligences as futuristically convergent. The reason is this: they do not yet know what Universal Causality is, and what the uniqueness of millions of years of biologically causal evolution means. I define Universal Causality in a very new manner and demonstrate its inevitability. Then I show what the difference between the causality in AI and in BI can be.

R. R. Poznansky

Very good. Thanks. In any case, there have been psychologists who used to say that only the experiences are real and not the consciousness, not even as the totality of the mechanism, whatever of it is there. Maybe they were reacting to the old concepts of the 'soul'.

You did not address the question of Universal Causality that I spoke about,

Nice idea, can you please share outline of a book with me?

Thank you

Mubasher Rehman, is your request addressed to me about the new book I am writing, or addressed to R R Poznansky?

R. R. Poznansky,

Could you please give us a short introduction as to what the characteristics of multiscale neuroscience are, and it may be differentiated from other approaches?

Poznansky, it is very clear. Thanks.

There are always many misunderstandings on physics and computation. Check my paper, maybe it could be interesting for you. Article Fundamental Physics and Computation: The Computer-Theoretic Framework

If it adds nothing new it means then you are agree. Sorry, I don't know who you are and why you are angry.

What would be the concept of information if matter and energy are considered as carriers of information?

R. R. Poznansky, it is a very acceptable reply for me. Thanks.

Can we not say that even the biological is basically physical? That is the sense in which I used 'matter' and 'energy' here.

The term 'pan-experiential materialism', of course, is interesting enough for a wider than crass type of materialism. I have been thinking of a future book project:

Pan-Experientialist, Minimal-Physicalist Metaphysics vs. Psychology and Neuroscience.

When I have my own ideas, I write them down. But this is not to be developed in the near future. I said this in the context. That is all.

That is, information @ biological level and @ physical level can be treated differently. Could there be some common aspects between these two?

But Bohmian causality is very mysterious. Hidden variables do not represent the discovered or discoverable amount of causation. In that case, what is the role of causation at least in physical information, and then what about causation in biological information?