Commenting on Robin's text, he said:
>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)
S: I'm not sure I see a distinction between meaning and mind as they
relate to matter. I suppose matter + meaning might be one perspective on
mind.
>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.
S: So, here we have reflected the Aristotelian causal anlaysis:
material cause (physical stance), formal cause (design stance). For
completion we still want final cause -- directionality, which relates to
intentionality, and efficient cause, which determines 'when', or initiates
the moment to be consdered.
-snip-
> (The intentional stance actually implies the formal stance, as
>only information can be intentional.)
S: This is to say that whatever happens does so in a context.
Contexts embody information, and select what among many possibilities will
occur. So, you are saying that intentionality cannot exist outside of some
context of possible choices.
>To adopt Dennett�*™s intentional stance toward an object is to
suppose
>that the
>object encodes intentional information.
S: That is to say, some directional take upon the formal setup,
pushing a final causality.
>To adopt his design stance is to view
>something as the product of an intentional information process.
S: That would be to say that an existing situation has resulted from
past 'descisions' or initiations that, given past designs, resulted in the
present setup.
>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).
S: The word "experience" here is critical. Our experience
(and
meanings) is engendered by our formal organization. Matter is what is
organized, and so could not itself be the content of experience (or
meaning) even though it is the carrier (channel).
>A mind is a user or processor of intentional information.
S: That is to say, it initiates finality.
>Matter is a theoretical entity extrapolated from physical information.
S: Presumably "physical information", then, relates to an
array of
possibilities generated by a situation, from which the formal setup
(context) will select some given a nudge informed by an intentional
tendency.
>Meaning is intentional information (though multiple levels of en/decoding
>might
>be involved), and consciousness is the use or processing of
>intentional information.
S: Again, then: mind = matter + meaning.
STAN
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 Thu Mar 15 20:45:19 2007
