Re: Realism and Information

mess. received from jamesbarham@supernet.com (--please, send your
messages from your subscribtion address! --Pedro)
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I would like to second Pedro's suggestion that we take the cell as
foundational for rethinking the concept of information. I believe it is
a fundamental error to reify information or to try to elevate it on an
ontological par with matter and energy in physics. Rather, we must
acknowledge that information is intrinsically related to life processes.

I take two claims as foundational: We know from our own immediate
subjective experience that the human world, including purpose and
meaning, is real. We also know that a real world exists that is external
to our subjective world, and that we are embedded in it, not the other
way around. (In other words, knowing is a species of being, not the
other way around.)

Now, from this realistic perspective, it will be crucially important to
distinguish between information about the external world that is
relative to us as knowers, and information as it exists in itself, apart
from human beings. If I understand Pedro correctly, he is saying that
information in the second, objective sense only exists in conjunction
with living matter. That is, in the case of the cell, we can conceive
of information existing for the cell itself, quite apart from our
investigations. This is not the case with the inanimate
universe---there, information is always relative to us as knowers.

I am convinced that this distinction, which is glossed over by
pan-informationists like J.A. Wheeler and his followers (and, if I
undersand them correctly, by Edwina and Norbert), is of absolutely
fundamental importance for clarifying the concept of information.

But perhaps I go further in the direction of realism than you are
prepared to follow, Pedro?

James Barham
Received on Tue Dec 18 09:58:38 2001