realism and information

I guess the debate between the 'lowest limit' of the site for
information processing will continue to be debated and I don't see the
point of coming to a single conclusion, for I feel that it would be
not only impossible but counterproductive. Science is about
exploration not about consensus. So- I disagree with a 'lowest limit'
that considers that information processes only take place within the
living organism. James Barham writes about the 'reification of
information' and I don't know what he means by this. A reificiation of
anything, to me, is the transformation of a dynamic process into a
closed symbolic process and I don't see how this relates to my theme
that information processing takes place within physical and chemical
processes as well as within biological and socioconceptual processes.

I agree that we operate within both internal and external realities.
However, I do not agree that information exists 'as itself' . Never.
That's Platonic and I'm a die-hard Aristotelian. Information is
matter-in-relation-to-other matter. Such relations, of both habitual
and immediate type, can take place within all interactional processes
in this cosmos - the physical-chemical, the biological and the
socioconceptual. I therefore don't agree that information exists
"only in conjunction with living matter" (quote from Barham). I think
that the nature of 'what is information' and 'what is knowledge' has
to be very clearly defined by each researcher - and we probably will
not come to a unanimous conclusion. To me, information is, again, the
result of relations. Matter/energy...in relation to other
matter/energy is not longer non-informed but IS informed, it is
information, it operates, in order to be in these relations, as
'information'. A mass of energy, when it is organized such that it has
a particular relation of its energy/mass...with one proton and one
electron, IS informed mass. Its informed nature permits it to enter
into specific relations with other informed mass - ie - more hydrogen
atoms...to become a molecule..or whatever. So, these relations, which
operate according to rules, are most certainly, in my view, actions of
information.

The biological realm operates within a more complex process of
relations - but again, the axioms are the same - ie, with the
necessity for these relations to operate according to codal rules, and
the result of the relations meaning a more complex formation of
mass/energy.

I don't agree that in the abiotic or 'inanimate universe', that
'information is always relative to us as knowers" (Barham quote).
Information is part of the abiotic formation of mass. As I said, an
atom has to organize itself in a particular relation of mass/energy,
in order to be that atom, to be that molecule. That's an informed
relation...and most certainly the molecule doesn't rely on us, as
agents-who-come-along- and -describe, in order to exist as that
organized/informed molecule. Our description is irrelevant to its
reality.

Edwina Taborsky
39 Jarvis St. #318
Toronto, Ontario M5E 1Z5
(416) 361.0898
Received on Wed Dec 19 12:37:04 2001