You might want to look at social-anthropological concomitants to your question. But first you have to abandon the weasel word 'information.' You are talking about semiotic content (primarily semantics, and for physical context, probably syntax). The vast superiority of human memory and cognition came about by externalizing it and then retrieving it. You count on your fingers, no other animal does. You read lists and papers, no other species does. And that external storage and retrieval of meaning is all incredibly recent--the last few thousand years or so. And you instantly 'know' that a Blind Venetian is not a backward Venetian Blind, and that 'The notes were sour because the seams were split' is disambiguated by the word 'bagpipes.'

I just published a paper titled "Externalizing memory made modern civilization and created modern humans" (Cosmos + Taxis 12(7and8), open access). It expands that thesis fairly thoroughly (along with the animal correlate, called stigmergy).

With respect to the CNS, all activity is patterns, and we are patterns of patterns, as Hayek said back in 1952. You might want to look at Fuster (2013,) The neuroscience of Freedom and Creativity.

So yes, all 'information' is embodied in context, both is its acquisition and retrieval.

There is no 'weasel' in the word, since in the book (which is a work in progress: Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024) we will be using information theory (Shannon 1948, 1951) to deduce storage and transfer rates in bits and bits per second, respectively, for language and other behaviors. Moreover, we will provide estimates on how the neurons in the neocortex and cerebellum store this information (see: Tehovnik et al. 2013; Tehovnik and Chen 2015; Tehovnik and Teixeira-e-Silva 2014). Once published, you will have an opportunity to critique the work on RG, which we will encourage.

And we have no problem with embodiment and non-representational neuroscience (e.g., Varela et al. 1991).

If you use bits you cannot discuss meaning at all (as Weaver acknowledged long ago), because S & W is PURELY syntactic. It conveys no semantic or cognitive information at all. The research you propose will disclose only physical correlates to memory and cognition. You will then surreptitiously identify bits with psychological 'information' (semiosis) in the analysis, and that is the weasel. You just don't recognize it.

You could learn a lot from foundational studies in epistemology (like my book, Epistemology of the human sciences, Palgrave Macmillan 2023, or good physicists like Howard Pattee, 2012, Laws, language and life, Springer.

You are at present setting up to further the confusion between the physical and functional domains, and you cannot explain cognition in any form by doing so. The functional cannot be reduced to the physical--it is in different phase spaces, and no equation can unite them both at once. You need to read the biosemiotic literature as well.

My take on embodiment:

For evolution to act on the conscious process it must be expressed as a behavioral output (Dawkins 1976). So, thinking about an idea without writing it down or saying it will not do. So far, an algorithm to read the stored content of your neurons is yet to be developed. Once developed, however, do not expect the stored content to be in order and independent of the outside world (Clark 1998; Tehovnik and Chen 2015; Varela et al. 1991). A usable algorithm would need to read the messages transmitted between the hippocampus and neocortex for both memory consolidation and retrieval, which would put the contents in the correct order by noting the memory replay order (Louie and Wilson 2001; Wilson and McNaughton 1994). The items in correct order would then need to be merged with the details of the outside world (including the body) at the time of learning (e.g., Parker, Niell et al. 2022; Meyer, O’Keefe, and Poort 2020; Xu, Niell et al. 2023). We suspect that this is not what Miguel Nicolelis had in mind when thinking about how to upload the mind to the cloud (Nicolelis 2011).

Nope. Dawkins is wrong on one important aspect--he does not account for the time period aspect of evolution to act. The nervous system has, as Robert Rosen emphasized, the ability to compress the time dimension so that it is always anticipatory of the future. The 'teleology' is in a CNS model of the future states that is in the present activity of the organism. Causality is a present tense 'push,' not in any future 'pull.' But you don't as yet have any proposed mechanism for accessing or looking at the enormous amount of activity that can occur between a present state of the CNS and, say, an event that occurs in six months. The act that has evolutionary impact (consequences, whatever) has an intervening train of activity that is enormous. And it may not have anything in common what initiated it. How do you get anything near algorithmic for that? Probably better to focus on the abstract higher order constraints--what Hayek (1967) called explanation of the principle--because there is infinite variability at the level of particulars (bits). Ther4e is also the point that many of us have noted--Deacon (2014) in particular--that the relevant semantic content is often what does not change, or what is not there. There is semantic information without any change in 'bits.' Also deep structural ambiguity in language and cognition, where the 'same' bits have entirely different meanings.

I think you would really benefit from looking at the relevant literature in biosemiotics and Austrian economics, and especially linguistics from the 'transformational revolution' to the present, and the origin of life literature. The bit is too small and not a functional unit of analysis. Cognition (any form) is inherently symbolic and not physical, and quantifying impulse traffic is going to become impossibly difficult right off the bat. I don't like to see expensive and time intensive research winding up with inconclusive results.

Thank you for your insightful comments. Will check out your recommendations. Ed Tehovnik.

Noticed you are on a paper with John Eccles, the father of the cerebellum. What was he like? Interestingly, when I stated at MIT in 1988 in the laboratory of Peter Schiller it was my job to prove that the supplementary motor area is an interface of sorts for consciousness and important for learning. This idea was passed on to Schiller by Eccles. In the end it turned out to be more complicated, which is what science often does.

The 'paper' is actually a transcription (minus a few 'inappropriate' words. It should be available on Academia, if memory serves) of a discussion session at a conference in Newport Beach, Ca. in the early '70s. It included Michael Scriven (all show and no go, in my opinion), Grover Maxwell (quiet, brilliant) Roger Sperry (very quiet, sneaky smart, but then only interested in saving the world from aggressive mankind (sorry, feminists, it was an inclusive term back then), psychiatrist Gordon Globus (organizer, interested in holography and depth psychology), my good friend Karl Pribram, and some lesser lights. The transcript ended with my remark on the role of data changing the mind-body problems over time but never solving them. Eccles was tall, a commanding presence with a deep voice, and very threatened by my friendship with Hayek (whom he knew through Karl Popper). He was pompous (clearly indicating he was properly referred to as 'Sir John"), but sincere in getting across the reality of how little we knew about how the brain supports the mind, and the role of 'ancillaries' like the cerebellum and midbrain structures) and very clearly enjoying a winter vacation at a luxury resort in pre-retirement. His wife (former staff assistant Helena) was delightful, and pulled him up short a few times in conversations. There was sort of a beauty contest between Scriven, Eccles, Pribram, and to lesser extent Sperry, each vying to be the star of the show.

A few Eccles (we all called him 'Dirty Jack' when he and Helena were not present) episodes:

At the Sunday near the end of the conference (at the Balboa Beach Club complex, on the water in Newport Beach), at about 9:15 in the morning, while some of us were moving toward the dining room, Eccles hurriedly and triumphantly announced that he and his wife were taking a taxi 30 miles away to a "fabulous" place that had a "free" California Sunday Brunch (consisting of more options than one could eat with complimentary champagne and tableside preparation of special crepes, etc.), and so he might be late for our afternoon discussion session. So he left, delighting in his quiet one- upmanship, while we peons went into our unannounced because normal "free" California Sunday Brunch right there. I recall the champagne was Tattinger, and the breakfast crepes were wonderful, as were the specialty coffees and liqueurs. I guess Eccles hadn't looked out the window of our rooms, at the plethora of over 100 foot yachts moored less than 50 yards away. Gordy had a pretty good U Cal Irvine conference budget.

Another time found about 6 of us crammed into the car of Keith (Coco) Gunderson's car going to a local sightseeing tour. Gunderson was a Los Angeles native, so that was how the whole thing arouse. At one point a new Ferrari passed by (around a blind curve, in the wrong lane). Helena (who was stuck sitting on, as I recall, Maxwell's lap) exclaimed "Oh Jack, You know how much costs a Ferrari here? Even more than home in Switzerland! I saw one in the dealership when I went out yesterday.

Thanks for the details. Very interesting. Ed.

A response to Walter Weimer:

“What the motor metatheory asserts is that there is no sharp distinction between sensory and motor components of the nervous system which can be made on functional grounds, and that the mental or cognitive realm is intricately motoric, like all the nervous system. The mind is intrinsically a motor system, and the sensory order by which we are acquainted with external objects as well as ourselves, the higher mental processes which construct our common sense and scientific knowledge, indeed everything mental, is a product of what are correctly interpreted, constructive motor skill.” (Weimer 1977, p. 272)

In an effort to merge the sensory, cognitive, and motor domains, we will be unifying the neocortex and cerebellum (which together represent over 95% of the neurons in the mammalian brain, Herculano-Houzel 2009): this should accelerate our understanding of brain, mind and behavior (Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024). Investigators who are committed to working out a segment of the brain (e.g., area V1) will make an insignificant contribution to neuroscience (see: Xu, Niell et al. 2023).

Weimer, B.W., 1977. A conceptual framework for cognitive psychology: motor theories of the mind. In: Shaw, R., Bransford, J., eds., Perceiving, Acting, Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology, Routledge.

Xu, A., Hou, Y., Niell, H.Y., Beyeler, N., 2023. Multimodal deep learning model unveils behavioral dynamics of V1 activity in freely moving mice. bioRxiv doi:10.1101/2023.05.30.42912.