you're right about the book, my bad.

Not at all. He doesn mention Kant, but he doesn't go into all the intricacies. That's one of the good things about that book - mercifully free of jargon and academic philosophy speak.

On that note, I’ll be signing out for Christmas. My dear other has made it clear that festive time is not ideally spent arguing with my invisible friends. All the best to everyone here for the festive season :party: :pray: :hearts:

I imagine DNA is the first appearance of information. — Patterner

As @Wayfarer points out, what information means is quite context dependent. For the specific meaning you have in mind, symbolic or encoded information, I would say, yes! I think you are right. If life arose on earth first, DNA may indeed mark the emergence of symbolic information.in the universe.

What is interesting is how the seed of DNA birthed the Cambrian explosion of symbolic information. From chemical communication to vocal, to language, to our current lives which seem totally dominated by symbols. All this required the kindling of DNA, which launched and spread all the symbolic regimes in the universe.

Marry Christmas!

Information is not a metaphysically basic, because it is not ontologically autonomous. — Wayfarer

This is certainly a reasonable position. And yet, the fact that information can remain constant durung radical transformations of matter does seem to suggest a kind of independence.

If it has true independence, it would be as mathematics. At least computationally, any set of information can be represented as a single, potentially enormous, number. And if anything has a platonic existence, independent of the material world, it is math.

My dear other has made it clear that festive time is not ideally spent arguing with my invisible friends. — Wayfarer

An outrage!!! If I wasn't but a figment of your imagination, I'd be horribly insulted!!!

The problem with 'information' is that, as a general term, it doesn't mean anything. It has to specify something or be about something to be a meaningful expression. — Wayfarer

The is what it means. Information means something that specifies or is about something else. One thing means another thing. Is there any example of information that that does not apply to?

Personally, I don't think that it is even coherent to think of some kind of 'unstructured reality'. Clearly, their 'structure', which might be regarded as some sort of 'information', doesn't exist outside their physical instantations

Yes, this quite the conundrum. We’re either missing something, or have a perspective which generates these paradox’s.
I like the idea that mathematical information is innate in existence when it comes into existence. But it doesn’t solve the conundrum. Only suggests that the rational conclusion is that there never was a before before existence. But that leads to an infinite regress.

That's why I continue to argue that mind is not an emergent phenomenon, an unexplained add-on to the doings of matter and energy but is intrinsic to the order of nature. Not as a consequence but as its ground.

Yes, very much so, for me mind is not just the intelligent part of us we are consciously aware of, but something about the whole being. Also that there is a transcendent aspect to it like the way that mathematic principles have an air of the transcendent about them.
The idea that the physical universe is also a mental construct is what I was getting at, but not in the mind of us little minnows. But greater beings, perhaps in a hierarchy of beings.

Yes, this quite the conundrum. We’re either missing something, or have a perspective which generates these paradox’s. — Punshhh

I would also add that it also appears that some 'physical objects' are more like convenient abstractions that are useful for our purposes. For instance, arguably a 'chair' isn't a physical object but rather a concept.
However, it also seems that physical reality has a structure/order/form independent of us. Otherwise, arguably, our mental faculties could not make intelligible models of it.

I like the idea that mathematical information is innate in existence when it comes into existence. But it doesn’t solve the conundrum. Only suggests that the rational conclusion is that there never was a before before existence. But that leads to an infinite regress. — Punshhh

Given the seeming non-contingent character of mathematical truths, I think that they are aspects of the 'Ground of Being', i.e. aspects of that which makes existence of particular entities -which seem to be contingent - possible.