information and causality

Philosophical background for the meaning of information cannot be resolved
without our understanding of causality. Causality can be viewed as having
four constituents (in Aristotelian sense): material, efficient, formal and
final. Physics quantified at first the material cause (as mass), then
efficient (as energy). Information means quantification of the formal cause
while the final cause means (in physics) observability, i.e. it is expressed
via anthropic principle. Aristotle called the final cause 'entelechy' and it
is not information in a common sense, but the question exists about
computability from the future state (works of Dubois). Aristotle emphasized
that 'the forms as a knowledge' are inherited, and this was later described
in genetics as a transfer of biological information. I would not accept
information as a primary concept including mind and matter per se, but it
'binds' both as signifiant and signifie, i.e. it has important semiotic
dimension.

Best wishes, Andrei Igamberdiev
Received on Thu Dec 13 15:13:55 2001