Re: SV: [Fis] Re: What is the definition of information ? (fis teamworkship!)

Re: SV: [Fis] Re: What is the definition of information ? (fis teamworkship!)

From: John Collier <[email protected]>
Date: Wed 14 Sep 2005 - 12:24:29 CEST
At 11:08 AM 2005/09/14, Søren Brier wrote:
Dear Igor

This proposal exists in physics for instance David Bohm (information field and the super implicate order) and Eugene Wiener (I think). David Chalmers also seems to rely on such a view in his dualistic theory of consciousness.

There is also the "it from bit" view of Zurek, derived from Wheeler, I understand.


Thus energy and information is the basic stuff of reality. Energy is somehow the evolutionary force and information gives structure to the world as it self-organizes.

Quite


But what kind of definition do you then want to give such a basic type of information?

I cannot see this world in a mechanistic model. It has to be a complexity model with irreversible time as Prigogine argues.

I don't think so, I give an account of causal connection without direction (direction enters only with dissipation) in my Causation is the Transfer of Information. It is completely compatible with mechanism. A copy is at http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/causinf.pdf


As we know we cannot talk of differences without having a system that has perceptions.

I don't see this. There are natural differences, or else there would be no perceived ones. One of the fundamental premises of perception theory is that something has be there in order for us to perceive it. Even Berkeley had the differences in the mind of God.

What are the minimum requirements for that?

This is where Peirce suggests his category of Firstness which is a Hypercomplex chaos with a tendency to take habits. That makes evolution possible.

This is somewhat similar to David Layzer's view in Cosmogenesis. But he thinks the chaos exists (see below).


But he also adds that there must be a kind of pure feeling there in order to make distinctions. This is what I think most of you wants to avoid, because this is traditionally part of the scientific project to explain the wolrd without any mind qualities in the beginning.

Pure feeling does not exist for Peirce. It is real, but only seconds exist. Peirce is very clear on this:       "So, then, there are these three modes of being: first, the being of a feeling, in itself, unattached to any subject, which is merely an atmospheric possibility, a possibility floating in vacuo, not rational yet capable of rationalization; secondly, there is the being that consists in arbitrary brute action upon other things, not only irrational but anti-rational, since to rationalize it would be to destroy its being; and thirdly, there is living intelligence from which all reality and all power are derived; which is rational necessity and necessitation.
      A feeling is what it is, positively, regardless of anything else. Its being is in it alone, and it is a mere potentiality. A brute force, as, for example, an existent particle, on the other hand, is nothing for itself; whatever it is, it is for what it is attracting and what it is repelling: its being is actual, consists in action, is dyadic. That is what I call existence. A reason has its being in bringing other things into connexion with each other; its essence is to compose: it is triadic, and it alone has a real power." ('Some Amazing Mazes, Fourth Curiosity', CP 6.342-343, 1908)

So unless one thinks that perception is merely the having of ideas, perception involves at least secondness. No pure firsts exist.

John


Professor John Collier                                     [email protected]
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292       F: +27 (31) 260 3031
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