Re: Clarifying our aims

Just an added comment from the excellent post by Norbert Fenzl. I completely agree that information is a 'product' of the interaction between energy and matter'. I understand that the one is a version of the other - there is nothing new in that, of course. My definition of 'information' is that it is 'informed matter', which is to say, it is matter (energy) which exists by virtue of being-in-codified-relations with other matter/energy. It is by virtue of these codified relations that matter exists, and it can only exist as 'informed' or organized.

Most certainly the nature of these relations became more complex through evolution. In the physico-chemical realm, the relations are primarily iconic. Norbert has called them 'reactive' but although I would agree in part with this, I want further clarification about the nature of the reaction, which is why I add the term 'iconic'. The interactions are iconic, without room for choice. [I suppose the term 'reactive' suggests no room for choice.] Aristotle used the term 'sensate'
In the biological realm, I consider that the relations become more complex. In addition to iconic, the system adds indexical relations, where one form of matter is a physical version of another (clouds and rainwater; smoke and fire). This addition of a certain amount of 'choice' or diversity of links between matter, greatly increased the complexity of this realm. Norbert has called this mode 'reflective'.
In the socioconceptual realm, I consider that a third mode of relations has been added - the symbolic. Norbert used the term 'self-reflective'. The symbolic certainly enables reflexive analysis, within the individual but I think that reflexive processes are necessary at every level - and are most importantly carried out at the communal level.

As for 'mind' - that's a difficult topic. I don't agree with confining Mind to humans. Instead, I see energy/matter relations as operating within Mind, right from the start. NO. This is not God; it is not any a priori design. It is a theory (Peircean, Aristotelian) that all processes are logical; that interactions of matter are not random and haphazard but integrated and co-ordinated by the matter/energy processes themselves. This process of cohesive organization, such that a hydrogen molecule has a functional role in our total world, playing its role among the organisms ..etc.. is what I call Mind. It is an evolutionary process, becoming itself more complex as matter/energy relations become more complex.

 
Edwina Taborsky
39 Jarvis St. #318
Toronto, Ontario M5E 1Z5
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  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Fenzl Norbert
  To: Multiple recipients of list FIS
  Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2002 4:25 PM
  Subject: Re: Clarifying our aims

  Dear Andrei Igamberdiev
   You said:

  However a significant part of the discussion is rotating
> around the old question what comes first, mind or matter. Is there
> information in non-living physical world or not, etc. etc.

  I would say: this is exactly NOT the question. We should not discuss if matter comes first or mind. First of all because the concept of "mind" is strictly related to human conscience. And second, because this is the old "dialogue" between Hegel and Marx: what comes first: idea or matter?

  What we are saying is that matter and energy always comes together. What changes is the QUALITY of the relation matter- energy.

  Actually astrophysics discusses the validity of the big bang theory, because singularities are not anymore "en vogue". This is obvious, because the idea of a singularity corresponds to the classical paradigm of creation.

  What I mean: the discussion about the concept of information must be completely dissociated from concepts like mind, conscience; understanding, etc.

  Information is a "product" of the interaction between energy and matter!!

  Since the beginning of our limited understanding about the evolution of the universe, we have to admit that energy and matter has always been linked to each other.

  More complex a system, more complex the material organization and its corresponding energy field. At the level of humans, our material organization has a corresponding complexity of its energy field, what we call "mind" or whatever.

  But let's stop to think that we are the absolute last step of universal evolution.

  We think that our question is not if information existed before the emergence of life at this (maybe completely insignificant) planet we call earth (this seems to be a very anthropocentric view) but:

    1.. What is information in its relation to energy and matter
    2.. How the relation energy-matter-information changed through evolution.
  Best regards
  Norbert
Received on Sun May 26 01:11:05 2002