[Fis] Mind, matter, meaning and information

[Fis] Mind, matter, meaning and information

From: by way of Pedro Marijuan <[email protected]>
Date: Tue 13 Mar 2007 - 17:30:41 CET

I'm new to this list, so I will give a brief description of my
background, then a brief account of my understanding of information,
in the hope of eliciting some comments.

I have a BA (Hons) in philosophy and psychology and obtained an MSc in
information technology in 1986. I worked in academic research first in
computing then computer modelling in environmental economics. I left
academia in 1998 to start my own computer maintenance business, but
health problems over the last 2-3 years have obstructed that, and I
have instead been pursuing my long-standing interest in philosophy of
mind. Although I've only recently had much time to devote to such
studies, my ideas have been developing over the last 25-30 years, and
even 3 years ago, I had several tens of thousands of words, though
none of it had ever been published (or even submitted).

I have only quite recently become aware of the new field of philosophy
of information, but I've given a great deal of thought to the place of
information in phil of mind, and have come to some quite firm
conclusions, on which I'd like to get some feedback. I have already
submitted a conference paper abstract but it hasn't yet been accepted
so I guess I could retract it if you people manage to convince me
there's a serious error of some sort. What follows is almost identical
to the abstract.

In this paper I combine and extend some ideas of Daniel Dennett with
one from Wittgenstein and another from physics. Dennett introduced the
concepts of the physical, design and intentional stances (1987), and
has suggested (with John Haugeland) that �€œsome concept of INFORMATION
could serve eventually to unify mind, matter, and meaning in a single
theory.�€ (Dennett and Haugeland, 1987, emphasis in the original)

The concept of physical information is now very well established. The famous
bet between physicists Stephen Hawking and John Preskill that Hawking conceded
he�€™d lost in July 2004 concerned whether physical information is conserved in
black holes. (Preskill, 2004) Physical information is basically material form.
The concept derives from C.E. Shannon�€™s information theory (1948) and has no
semantic component. When this concept is taken to its logical conclusion, an
energy flow becomes an information flow and an object becomes its own
description. The crucial distinction is between form and
substance. Dennett�€™s
physical stance could be renamed the �€œsubstantial stance,�€ while I
introduce an
additional stance to account for information, called the �€œformal
stance,�€ in
which we attend to form rather than substance.

The common concept of information is intentional. Intentional information is
encoded in physical information, being decoded (and re-encoded) in use. This
is consistent with the Wittgensteinian concept of meaning as use in context (or
in a �€œlanguage game�€ (1972)), where the context is the key. Thus the
colour of
an apple is encoded in the characteristics of the light entering the eye of an
observer, where a tree or a fruit bowl and the pre-existing concept of
�€œapple�€
or �€œfruit�€ contribute to the context, and further analysis might indicate
probable degree of ripeness. Human communications involve additional levels of
en/decoding and complexity but the same principle of intentional information
encoded in physical information obtains. Brains encode intentional information
too, provided that we adopt the formal stance and the intentional stance
towards them. (The intentional stance actually implies the formal stance, as
only information can be intentional.)

To adopt Dennett�€™s intentional stance toward an object is to suppose that the
object encodes intentional information. To adopt his design stance is to view
something as the product of an intentional information process.

Though the physical stance is very natural and practical in many contexts, the
formal stance is superior in a certain sense: information is all that our
senses
convey, we do not experience matter directly, it can be considered a
theoretical
entity (or set of entities).

A mind is a user or processor of intentional information. Matter is a
theoretical entity extrapolated from physical information. Meaning is
intentional information (though multiple levels of en/decoding might
be involved), and consciousness is the use or processing of
intentional information. Thus Dennett�€™s prediction is fulfilled.

References

Daniel C. Dennett. The Intentional Stance. MIT Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1987.

Daniel C. Dennett and John Haugeland. Intentionality. In Gregory (1987).

Richard L. Gregory, editor. The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1987.

John Preskill. On Hawkings Concession.
http://www.theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/jp_24jul04.html, 2004. Accessed 12
February 2007.

C.E. Shannon. A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical
Journal, 27:379�423,623�656, 1948.

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell, Oxford, 1972.
Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. First published in 1953.

-- 
Robin Faichney
<http://www.robinfaichney.org/>
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Received on Tue Mar 13 21:09:44 2007


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