Yes, that's an example of the mistaken thinking I'm arguing against. Do you understand my argument against it? Could you state my argument?

I thought I made my point. If you would like to make another argument, go ahead.

So you don't understand my argument?

So you don't understand my point?

Yes, I do. As I said, it's an example of the position I'm arguing against.

Information isn't everywhere in the universe, it's in minds. It isn't in the tree stump. Your own example partly acknowledges that, in the way you have the observer come along and look at the tree rings. The information is in the mind of the observer. In the tree, there are only the rings.

If you think the information is doing something in the tree, tell us what it is.

And the reason why the information theoretic framework has become so exciting is that when Shannon information is paired with Gibbs entropy, the two mathematical structures are dual — apokrisis

What's the best way to learn more about this?

Information isn't everywhere in the universe, it's in minds. It isn't in the tree stump. — Daemon

It is in the acorn that grows into the tree that is cut down to a stump. It is in the stump that sends forth new shoots. It is in the roots that communicate with other trees. It is in the mycorrhizal networks:

By analyzing the DNA in root tips and tracing the movement of molecules through underground conduits, Simard has discovered that fungal threads link nearly every tree in a forest — even trees of different species. Carbon, water, nutrients, alarm signals and hormones can pass from tree to tree through these subterranean circuits. Resources tend to flow from the oldest and biggest trees to the youngest and smallest. Chemical alarm signals generated by one tree prepare nearby trees for danger. Seedlings severed from the forest’s underground lifelines are much more likely to die than their networked counterparts. And if a tree is on the brink of death, it sometimes bequeaths a substantial share of its carbon to its neighbors.[/quote Trees

Yes, that's another example of the position I am arguing against.

When mycorrhizae are present, plants are less susceptible to water stress. Not only do the fungal threads help to bring water and nutrition into the plant, but they also can store them for use when rainfall is sparse and temperatures are high.

So can you say what the "information" does there, in addition to what the water and nutrition do?

So can you say what the "information" does there, in addition to what the water and nutrition do? — Daemon

The information is about water, nutrients, and temperature. That information can be transmitted throughout the network and adjustments made.

How is the information transmitted?

Click on the link.

Paywall. Just tell me.

Ok, I'll tell you then:

Studies have found that trees can send help to their neighbours via the fungal network. For example, when a tree is attacked, it will release certain chemicals that travel through the fungal network and warn other trees of the danger.

So chemicals travel through the fungal network: can you say what the information does, in addition to what the chemicals do?

'lung reach is a broth dump flu of as it.' — lll

Long reach is a broad dump fluor acid? I love to walk along with you III, but I'm not sure I can follow...

What keeps the circle shape, the cup shape, the shape of a thought, the apple shape, the shape of pain, the shape of the hart, the patterns in smoke, the milk poured in coffee, licking flames, the dreamed street, the moving hand, and all other forms in shape, while the parts have no or little causal connection?

Information isn't everywhere in the universe, it's in minds. It isn't in the tree stump. — Daemon

Let’s talk about minds, then. My surmise is if one takes the position you do that a naturalist explanation demands we be able to reduce all phenomena of life to interactions between biochemicals , and these to the stuff that physics deals with , then the concept and use of information that minds produce must itself be reducible to such physical substrates. So our seeing a set of lines as the mona lisa vs just a random set of lines must avail itself of a reductive empirical analysis that fully explains how our brains are organizing this ‘information’. It turns out we have some choices here. in the realm of psychological models. It seems to me that stimulus-response theory was designed to make psychology compatible with descriptions at the biochemical
level. Skinner’s theory of language learning, for instance, in contrast with cognitive models , avoids informational heuristics. I think he would agree with you that the concept of information doesn’t add anything to a linear causal s-r account of such phenomena as recognizing an array of points and lines as the mona lisa.

Would you agree with this , or do you mean to argue that the concept of information , while adding nothing to our understanding of something like a dna code, does add something to our understanding of perceptual recognition? Put differently, do you think people use the concept of information to describe a particular phenomenon simply because they don’t understand it well enough to use a causal physical account instead(like the choice of cognitive psychological vs neurochemical descriptions )?

An immediate response Joshs is that the concept of information adds a great deal to our understanding of DNA, but information doesn't play a role in genetics itself.

And similarly with perception and the brain. And computers. And tree rings.

When you look at the Mona Lisa (or wonder what Eugene could mean by the shape of a thought) your brain adopts a particular configuration, populations of neurons fire, and so on, and that is what allows you to see and wonder.

Neurons firing etc is what causes perceptual recognition.

Does that answer your question?

the concept of information adds a great deal to our understanding of DNA, but information doesn't play a role in genetics itself. — Daemon

But what is your most empirically rigorous definition of information, then? Would this involve reducing the concept of information to a configured populations of neurons firing? Would you argue that any other account of information is lacking something?

What’s the difference between a configured population of neurons and a random collection of marbles in a jar ? Is the word ‘configuration’ key here , that what distinguishes information from a random collection of particles is a certain order? If so, what is it about the concept of information that allows us to know the difference between a collection that is ordered and a collection which is random?

So chemicals travel through the fungal network: can you say what the information does, in addition to what the chemicals do? — Daemon

This is like asking what information does in addition to what propositions do. Both are means of conveying information.

Thanks. :up:

No Joshs: to inform someone is to provide them with facts, the facts are information. The term information is also used in a technical sense in communications theory, which is where all the trouble started.

During discussions like this one, people are continually switching between the technical sense and the everyday sense of the word. This results in a misguided anthropomorphism. So when chemicals pass between trees through the fungal network, it's reported that the trees are talking to one another, conveying information.

Once you muddle up the two meanings of the word in this way, anything goes, and you end up with nutty ideas like "everything is made of information" or "information drives the universe" or "the brain works by processing information".

I'm not a physicalist.

What's the best way to learn more about this? — Theorem

That's a broad question. But at the physical level, holography makes the case....

http://old.phys.huji.ac.il/~bekenste/Holographic_Univ.pdf

During discussions like this one, people are continually switching between the technical sense and the everyday sense of the word. — Daemon

But that is what you are doing by insisting that "information" should be still synonymous with "meaningful".

The everyday sense of the word embodies the confusion that science - using mathematical formalism - is doing its best to sort.

So by stripping information down to meaningless bit strings, that becomes the foundation for building semantics and semiotics back into the story. Information theory can start constructing new higher level metrics - like surprisal, ascendency, mutual information, free energy - that start to model what you think "information" really ought to mean.

That is the reductionism you seem to so admire. Break things down into their simplest parts so that you can build them back into complex wholes.

Information theory defines reality at an atomic level of form. It counts reality in terms of its naked degrees of freedom - the level where it is shorn of all added meaningfulness, context and particularity.

Then comes the next step of building back up to complex reality, but this time thinking in terms of atoms of form rather than atoms of matter.

to inform someone is to provide them with facts, the facts are information. — Daemon

Given this definition of information as communicating facts, what is key here isnt the notion of communication. In its simplest form , any physical causal interaction between objects is a ‘communicating’. It’s the notion of a fact that seems to be central. What is a fact? How would you define it most rigorously? If animals communicate with each other , then do they know facts? Do bees or worms or even simpler creatures who communicate know facts? If not , then it is not information that they are communicating, and there must be something utterly unique about the human. mind.

I'm not a physicalist. — Daemon

If you’re not a physicalist, then how would you describe yourself? Are you a dualist, placing mind in a separate realm from the physical?

That is the reductionism you seem to so admire. Break things down into their simplest parts so that you can build them back into complex wholes. — apokrisis

that is what you are doing by insisting that "information" should be still synonymous with "meaningful". — apokrisis

That may be the point. I may be mistaken, but I’m getting the feeling Daemon may want to protect an insuperable gap between the meaningfulness of mind (and information as communication of ‘facts’) and the extreme reductiveness of physicalism.

In its simplest form , any physical causal interaction between objects is a ‘communicating’. — Joshs

Information is communicated between persons, not objects. You're doing the anthropomorphising I cautioned against.

Information is communicated between persons, not objects. You're doing the anthropomorphising I cautioned against. — Daemon

I do t want to do any anthropomorphizing. I want to see if this ‘between persons’ nature of information points to a split between mind and nature , between information and the physical, and perhaps amounts to a specific dualism separating subjectivity and the objective world. In short, I want to see if you’re reserving a very special place for anthropos.

My objection to the ubiquity of the use of 'information' in this context, is that 'information' does not have a simple meaning. In other words, there is no such thing as 'information' simpliciter, unlike, say, life, mind, or energy which at least conceptually have a simple definition. Information is a polysemic term - it has many different meanings. And the idea of 'pure information' seems nonsensical to me, as it has to exist in relationship to an agent or interpretive act.

One of the figures in the article Apokrisis provided on When the Gene became "Information" is Norbert Weiner. And one of his famous quotes is:

The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.

It seems to me that many people siezed on this idea, as if now 'information' had been added to the inventory of basic philosophical terms. And what better metaphor, for the nascent 'information age' of computing and high technology? It avoids all the quasi-religious nonsense about 'mind' or 'spirit' and sounds thoroughly scientific.

And yet I feel that something fundamental is being concealed by deploying the term in this way.

I may be mistaken, but I’m getting the feeling Daemon may want to protect an insuperable gap between the meaningfulness of mind (and information as communication of ‘facts’) and the extreme reductiveness of physicalism. — Joshs

Maybe. If so, attention could then more fruitfully turn to the semiotic view of information that bridges that "insuperable gap". As has already been covered in this thread. :grin:

I'm not sure what ism I fall under Joshs. I might be a biological naturalist.