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 <collierj@ukzn.ac.za>
Date: Wed 14 Sep 2005 - 12:24:29 CEST At 11:08 AM 2005/09/14, Søren Brier wrote: Dear Igor 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 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 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
collierj@ukzn.ac.za
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041
South Africa
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