So does the fact that no such 'perpetual motion' device has ever been made refute that claim? — Wayfarer

No, the way I put that sounds backwards, doesn't it? Landauer's theory blocks some imaginable Maxwell's demon type systems by pointing out the cost of recording the state of the system or resetting the sensor. And there's been some experimental confirmation for that.

I don't think it is the kind of transformation I was talking about in the OP — Wayfarer

Then I think you're not talking about information but semantic content, propositions, Frege's third realm, etc. Every reason to expect those to be connected, but there are steps in between.

And yet here with the turn to information theoretic physics, we have science that is actually now more phenomenological, more idealistic. — apokrisis

Have you ever encountered the (in)famous 2005 opinion piece, published in Nature, by Richard Conn Henry, called The Mental Universe? What about Bernard D'Espagnat's What we call Reality is Just a State of Mind?

I don't regard these as examples of the kind of scientific materialism that you say I'm always intent on criticising. But I'm also not at all sure that either of these would have a lot of credibility amongst mainstream scientists. What do you think?

I think you're not talking about information but semantic content, propositions, Frege's third realm, etc. Every reason to expect those to be connected, but there are steps in between. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, in the case of the transmission of information across diverse systems, then indeed that's what I'm talking about, and I think it is connected to Frege's 'third realm'. The point I'm working on, is that I think there is a belief that what does this transformation is understood, but I'm questioning that assumption.

I think there is a belief that what does this transformation is understood, but I'm questioning that assumption — Wayfarer

I'm with you there. I don't understand it. I can see how a simple "causal" signal between animals would work, but even though language is similar to that in obvious ways, it's different enough that it puzzles me. What exactly happens when you understand a sentence that may or may not be true? Animal signals, by being involuntary, are inherently trustworthy.

I think of this as the "talk is cheap" problem.

I don't suppose you've happened on the writing of a philosopher of biology by the name of Steve Talbott, have you? If not, I will provide some links. He's really interesting on these ideas.

How kind of you to add to my reading list!

Honestly, it seems like what happens is the standard "I've received a signal" response but with language that process is sandboxed most of the time. (Always?) So as the audience I turn your signal into a hypothetical-- if your sound were absolutely trustworthy, this is the signal it would be, that sort of thing.

But in so doing, it also risks losing any relationship with reality. That is why Jim Baggott's book, referenced in the above blog post, is sub-titled 'Farewell to Reality' — Wayfarer

Of course I agree that an idealistic understanding is just as bad as a materialistic one. I'm just pointing out how many physicists are indeed "going over to the other side" and taking information as the literal basis of being. You have scientists actually saying they believe the Universe actually is a hologram, rather than merely like a hologram.

It is the new Platonism.

But I'm still pushing the middle road metaphysics of semiotics. So it is important to that project that we are seeing matter and information being formally granted equal causal weight. Or even more importantly, that we can actually measure both sides of the epistemic cut in the same coin. We can establish the symmetry relation which connects them ... and thus the symmetry relation which pan-semiosis can break.

Actually my point is really rather prosaic. It is simply this: that ideas are not material, but real in their own terms. They are not composed of material units of any kind, and can't be derived from physics, but exist in their own right, and on their own terms. — Wayfarer

Yes. You are concerned with semantics. And from there, with minds, observers, interpretance, spirit, values, etc.

This is hardly a prosaic concern. I agree that even semiotics is not much cop unless in the end it really has something to say about complex lived experience.

But biological life certainly looks well explained by biosemiosis. That is killing the accidentalism of Darwininan reductionism as surely as it is killing the vitalism of spiritualism or theism. Both the brute materialist and the brute idealist has lost out as we come to understand life as a semiotic process.

So now we are seeing physics and cosmology also turning semiotic - or at least building up an information theoretic position to balance the materialistic one. And mind science is also turning semiotic in overt fashion (it always was, but now it has better "physical models" as a result of advances in information theory/thermodynamic theory).

Floridi defines information as well-formed data which is meaningful. Are your viewpoints amenable to this definition? — Galuchat

No, I don't think that I agree with this, because "data" implies that the information has already been interpreted, and this would mean that it cannot be information unless it has been interpreted. So why would we say that relationships which have not yet been interpreted are not information?

There is a dual problem here, two extremes. One is the question of whether relationships between things, which have not yet been interpreted by a mind, can be called information. The other extreme, which I already outlined, is the question of whether described relationships, which cannot be demonstrated to be actual relationships between real things, can be called information. The latter is what we find in quantum mechanics, described relationships (field theory for example) in which the things, particles, which are being related, cannot be demonstrated to actually be in those relationships, or even to actually exist. So in this case, we have "well-formed data which is meaningful", but the question is, is this information or imagination?

Suppose that I don't know about the earth's spin, but I observe the sun setting every evening and rising every morning. So I plot a trajectory, which has the sun moving around the back side of the stars which are behind the earth, every night. Then I hand you this "data". Is this so-called data information or imagination?

No - but there doesn't need to be, for the point to be made, which is that the physical form and the medium in which the information is transmitted can be entirely changed, but the meaning remain the same. How, therefore, could the 'meaning of the information' be physical? — Wayfarer

It is physical because the cause is physical. Is there an actual three-masted Greek ship on the horizon? Yes, or no? Is that not the cause of the whole string of events starting with the sentry observing the ship on the horizon? Yes, or no? Can you say that any of the forms the information takes would have happened or existed if there wasn't a three-masted Greek ship on the horizon?

What has happened is that the cause has triggered a chain of events that results in some physical structure representing the cause in some way. We can say that the information was processed, or changed, in some way, but we can still point to the initial cause as what this new structure refers to.

Hmm. It is ironic that a lot of you guys are reacting in horror at physicists who might take it literally that reality is just a pattern of information. It is after all just a modern version of idealism. You have physicists who are denying materialism and saying things are pure information. Reality is even observer created if you go to the quantum extreme.

So here we have science prepared to talk openly about a concrete idealist ontology. And everyone gasps in shock. No they must be wrong. Matter is obviously real. The Matrix could only be a simulation hanging off an electrical plug. — apokrisis

I don't see how "reality is information" necessarily entails idealism. I don't see information as mind dependent. Minds process information, which has to exist prior to being processed. The causal relationships of the universe exist independent of minds. Minds simply stretch those relationships into time and space.

I don't see how "reality is information" necessarily entails idealism. — Harry Hindu

It doesn't. That is my point. And so it is ironic that some scientist are going overboard with the idealism.

Minds process information, which has to exist prior to being processed. — Harry Hindu

That is where I would disagree. Sure it is the usefully simplistic view of what goes on. But my semiotic approach says mind shapes the signs its treats as "information". Out there in the real material world, there is only radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies. The "mind" or brain then does its processing and understands that in terms of colours. It produces its own meaningful symbol that then stands in a mediating relation with the physics.

The primate mind in particular can see the red fruit that is ripe vividly against the backdrop of the green foliage that is of less interest. Well, there has to be some kind of evolutionary explanation for why our primate ancestors dropped a retinal pigment while living their nocturnal existence and then hastily regrew one once they started wandering about the landscape during the day.

So the mind is a virtual reality - reality as it is meaningful in terms of our interests. We don't just mindlessly process the physical information that is "out there". From the get go, we are symbolising the possibilities of that world in terms that are functional for us.

This means that when physicists talk about information and biologists talk about information, it isn't exactly the same.

But then, if we know how it is not the same, that is how we can know the way it is then the same. A mindless theory of information can be the basis for grounding the higher order mindful one.

The causal relationships of the universe exist independent of minds. Minds simply stretch those relationships into time and space. — Harry Hindu

There is no point debating philosophy against naive realism.

But in so doing, it also risks losing any relationship with reality. That is why Jim Baggott's book, referenced in the above blog post, is sub-titled 'Farewell to Reality'
— Wayfarer

Of course I agree that an idealistic understanding is just as bad as a materialistic one. — apokrisis

Baggott's book is not about idealism, it's about fantastical ideas in modern physics. Idealism doesn't get a look in.

But biological life certainly looks well explained by biosemiosis. That is killing the accidentalism of Darwininan reductionism as surely as it is killing the vitalism of spiritualism or theism. Both the brute materialist and the brute idealist has lost out as we come to understand life as a semiotic process. — apokrisis

I agree about the applicability of semiosis to biology. And that's because living systems are more language-like than machine-like.

But I think the 'materialism vs idealism' dichotomy, whilst not without some merit, is also not the final word. It really developed in the aftermath of Descartes. The practically-minded - engineers and scientists - sought explanations that could be grounded in the certainty of physics and looked askance at 'res cogitans'. Philosophers and theologians naturally gravitated towards the other pole. This set up the dialectic of 'materialism and idealism' which Western philosophy has since vacillated between.

That is true, as far as it goes, but it is not the final say. I am working towards the idea that the 'domain of meaning' really is independent of the physical world. It's not dependent on it for its reality, and it doesn't arise on account of anything that happens on the physical level; it's not the product of evolution (which everything is supposed to be).

When the mind evolves to the point where it can grasp meaning, then it begins to get an insight into 'the formal domain', the domain of possibility, forms and rules (including number). But that domain is not 'something that exists', in the way that material phenomena exist. That is why it is regarded as a 'spooky realm' - but that depiction of it is caused by the habitually naturalistic tendency, which is to try and locate everything within the domain of time and space, amongst the objects of perception. Whereas, the elements of meaning (so to speak) are not 'out there somewhere' - they are instead the constituents of reality, but in a radically different way to objects. They are that which enable us to think rationally, but are not themselves the objects of perception; we see the world through them. The are the 'constituents of the world' insofar as they constitute the very mind which is looking at it (per Kant).

Hence Plato's 'objective idealism' - the notion that ideas are real, independently of anyone's opinion. So I think that amounts to a kind of dualism, with the qualification that Descartes' error was to depict 'res cogitans' as something that could be understood objectively. But there is literally no such thing, there is no 'mind-stuff' anywhere to be found. The reason for that is because it is literally prior to any notion of what exists 'out there somewhere'. It is what informs our thought, by providing us with the ability to see meaning and reason, but you can never see it 'from the outside', so to speak. That is the sense in which it is 'the stuff of thought'.

This used to be understood by pre-modern philosophical theology, which said that there are different levels or layers of reality, and what is true on one level, might not be on another. Whereas it is exactly that 'vertical dimension' that has been lost, or 'flattened', in the advent of modernity, via nominalism and then empiricism. Peirce's semiotics is an attempt to overcome that 'flattening'.

And, speaking of idealistic physicists:

The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds.... The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived out of it.... It is necessary to keep reminding ourselves that all knowledge of our environment from which the world of physics is constructed, has entered in the form of messages transmitted along the nerves to the seat of consciousness.... Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into subconsciousness; and beyond that we must postulate something indefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature.... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference."

— Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 276-81.

Now there can be something similar without life (or an extension of it like the thermostat), in, say, an avalanche. Little input, big output that spends a lot of free energy. And there's an obvious connection in the way life keeps its "subsystems" balanced at criticality. You can get sensitivity by creating tiny avalanche conditions and then waiting, maintaining those conditions, and then resetting after each tiny event. Like a thermostat.

[...]

So yes I lean toward seeing the use of information about your environment, rather than just being shoved about by it, as a hallmark of life. But the information is still obviously physical, just as living things and their environments are. And I don't immediately see the need to describe this use as interpretation. — Srap Tasmaner

One important difference between a squirrel and an avalanche is that the first is negentropic while the second is entropic. Otherwise expressed, the squirrel is autopoietic (self-creating) while the avalanche follows strict paths of least resistance toward an end of optimal equilibrium between all given inanimate entities. Or: the squirrel as given does its best to preserve its self-identity while the avalanche as given has no impetus to preserve its self-identity.

Yet these details overshadow the basic metaphysical point I was addressing. The point being that of causal agency: some givens hold causal agency (e.g. it is the squirrel that hides its nuts and remembers where they’ve been stashed so as to maintain its own livelihood) while some givens are devoid of causal agency: e.g., from the first pebble that commences it to the grand finale of optimal entropic equilibrium, the avalanche was all part of a complex causal chain that neither begins nor ends with the avalanche itself—at no point was there an avalanche-agency that commenced the effects of the avalanche of its own impetus.

To make choices—to hold causal agency—is to necessarily be aware of alternatives (otherwise, no choice can exist). Hence, it is to necessarily hold awareness and, thereby, to necessarily interpret (give meaning to) information. This is one type of given: that of agency. On the other hand there is information devoid of causal agency.

Traditionally, at least, physicalism has attempted to reduce all that is to lack of causal agency. Where causal agency is deemed to be ontic, however, there is obtained an irreducible duality between causal agency and non-agency.

It’s a bit of a catch-22 for traditional physicalism. Either causal determinism and all that we experience as in any way being causal agency being strict illusions (a different metaphysical argument, I suppose) or causal agency and an irreducible duality between two different types of entity or structure or process.

So I’ll ask this in a different way: does information in and of itself hold causal agency in your opinion—thereby holding awareness of different alternatives? If so, please justify you’re stance, for this position seems illogical to me. If for no other reason, because awareness of alternatives is an aspect of mind—and not of the physical. (I so far take if for granted that you know yourself to hold such awareness-required causal agency between alternatives -- such that you acknowledge the presence of causal agency.)

The point being that of causal agency: some givens hold causal agency (e.g. it is the squirrel that hides its nuts and remembers where they’ve been stashed so as to maintain its own livelihood) while some givens are devoid of causal agency: e.g., from the first pebble that commences it to the grand finale of optimal entropic equilibrium, the avalanche was all part of a complex causal chain that neither begins nor ends with the avalanche itself—at no point was there an avalanche-agency that commenced the effects of the avalanche of its own impetus.

To make choices—to hold causal agency—is to necessarily be aware of alternatives (otherwise, no choice can exist). Hence, it is to necessarily hold awareness and, thereby, to necessarily interpret (give meaning to) information. — javra

Does the squirrel know that it is hiding food? Maybe?! Does it choose to do this after considering the alternatives of perhaps leaving it out in plain sight somewhere? Does it know why it's hiding it food? We don't know much about the inner life of any other sort of animal, but it strikes me as implausible. Does the parasitic wasp know why it does those appalling things to beetles? Does it choose to after weighing the alternatives? It's the one doing those things, that much is certain.

I think we can assign agency absent the sort of rational deliberation you're describing. Even way off on the other end, is it really crazy to say the pebble moving caused the avalanche, just because you can find some other cause behind the pebble moving? If we're going to talk about causes in nature, do we have to always answer "the Big Bang" and call it a day? Why did the river flood? Is "Because there was unusually heavy snow in the mountains this past winter" a worse answer than "the Big Bang"? I'm totally confused here, unless this is a reductio of ever talking in terms of causes at all.

All of which leaves me flummoxed. How does this help understand how an organism uses information? Phototropism makes perfect sense without attributing any sort of mind to the plant, doesn't it? The plant responds to sunlight in a way that's advantageous for it, but it no more chooses to than we choose to use our senses. It's a specific way of interacting with your environment, different from sucking water and minerals out of the soil or jamming your roots into it.

How does this help understand how an organism uses information? — Srap Tasmaner

I think something you're missing here is the sense in which DNA encodes information. The difference between squirrels (or organisms generally) and inorganic nature (avalanches or crystals) is that organisms are self-sustaining - they seek homeostasis, grow, heal from injuries, and reproduce. I don't think there's anything analogous to that in landslides and avalanches, is there?

And the thing which enables that in organic nature is DNA. There's nothing corresponding to that in inorganic nature.

But then there's another distinction you're considering, which is that between instinctive behaviour and language - whether animals know what they're doing, in a discursive sense. I think the consensus is that there is a fundamental difference between animal and human communication, because the latter has grammar.

(There) is a radical dissimilarity between all animal communication systems and human language. The former are based entirely on “linear order,” whereas the latter is based on hierarchical syntax. In particular, human language involves the capacity to generate, by a recursive procedure, an unlimited number of hierarchically structured sentences. A trivial example of such a sentence is this: “How many cars did you tell your friends that they should tell their friends . . . that they should tell the mechanics to fix?” (The ellipses indicate that the number of levels in the hierarchy can be extended without limit.) Notice that the word “fix” goes with “cars,” rather than with “friends” or “mechanics,” even though “cars” is farther apart from “fix” in linear distance. The mind recognizes the connection, because “cars” and “fix” are at the same level in the sentence’s hierarchy.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/04/first-words

That is an excerpt of a review of a book by Chomsky, which is about the unique nature of human languages. I think the commonly-held view, practically instinctive nowadays, which believes that animal and human communications function along a kind of linear progression, is not true; there is a radical discontinuity between the two.

All big and meaty questions, no doubt, but they're some of the issues.

@javra - squirrels are not self-creating - they come from mama and papa squirrels. :-)

If a concept is a pattern that is transmitted how can the transmission be physical but not the pattern? — praxis

There are two ways to answer. The first way is just by restating that the pattern is a concept. A book may be translated into a hundred languages and the concept survives regardless of the pattern use to describe it (heiroglyphs, Chinese characters, the English alphabet).

In the second, to use Wayfarer's example, you need to have the interpreter who can:
1. decode the pattern
2. recode the pattern
And you need the end user who understands the concept.

** Oh, and of course encode the initial concept.

Apart from what the messages are about (ships, distance), is there anything other than their representations (inscriptions, morse) and their mental renditions (sentry, officer)? — jorndoe

No - but there doesn't need to be, for the point to be made, which is that the physical form and the medium in which the information is transmitted can be entirely changed, but the meaning remain the same. How, therefore, could the 'meaning of the information' be physical? — Wayfarer

So, the representations fall into Landauer's category. What about the mental renditions thereof? (Don't they have "physical" dependencies at least?)

We very nearly agree, I think. I see squirrels but not avalanches as information-using, until shown the error of my ways.

On the other hand, despite the fact that we design and make thermostats to serve purposes we choose, the fact that they do function autonomously is interesting. The analogy that suggests itself, to me at least, is not between thermostat and organism, but between thermostat and subsystem of organism. There's a whole lot of stuff (parts of) our bodies do on their own, and some of it is information-related. I don't choose to see, do you?

(The technology we create is generally an extension of some capacity or subsystem of ours, in classic Baconian fashion. We can sense the ambient temperature through our skin and flip switches with our fingers-- why not wrap those functions in a box and hang them on the wall so we can go do something else?)

Many people suppose that, but I don't know. There are, I am led to believe, many abstract mathematical problems which could never be physically represented - I mean, you can represent them symbolically, but mathematicians are then grasping relations between ideas, and in what sense could they be physical?

I don't choose to see, do you? — Srap Tasmaner

I agree. - there are many autonomic processes, typically lower-level ones, that run like 'daemons' in a computer network, that look after all kinds of tasks that are beneath the subliminal threshold. That quote I gave from Eddington, above, says that. (Although, interestingly, there has been research done on yogis which appear to demonstrate that they have abnormally high levels of control over such autonomic processes.)

But anyway, the way in which we're NOT simply response mechanisms, is that the mind actively synthesises all manner of inputs and then makes judgements about it, in a way that no simple mechanism can do. Actually the mind 'generates' what Husserl called the 'umwelt', the lived-meaning-world, which comprises 'our world'. The thing which many (not all!) scientists don't see, is the role their mind plays in doing that; they bracket out 'the observer' so as to observe what they think of as a mind-independent reality, but the mind is still instrumental in synthesising all of the information with the theory etc.

I don’t know if you do this intentionally or not, but you get bogged down in details as regard individual particulars. I’m asking a metaphysical question in relation to general ontological givens. To simplify my question even further:

Is information—in and of itself—endowed with awareness?

If yes, this needs explaining since it currently seems illogical to me.

If no, than I argue you have (at some abstract threshold whose particulars need not be here established) a duality between a) awareness to which information holds meaning and b) awareness-devoid information. Here, all meaning will pertain to awareness, which is an aspect of mind. Hence, if any notion of information or lack thereof is in any way meaningful, it will be so due to the presence of minds which interpret the given information.

I’ll for now drop the issue of causal agency—though to me it is a necessary correlative of informed awareness. So yes, to me even a bacterium holds some minimal degree of causal agency between alternatives given that it is endowed with any degree of awareness of stimuli to which it reacts—otherwise it would be a fully entropic entity. It’s not an easy conclusion to establish, and most certainly not mainstream. And in hindsight, as you say, it does appear irrelevant to the thread’s discussion.

BTW, as to whether information is physical or not, be it via an objective idealism or via a dual-aspect neutral monism, my stance is that some information is physical and some is mental. So, I disagree with the notions that all information is physical.

javra - squirrels are not self-creating - they come from mama and papa squirrels. :-) — Wayfarer

Funny, kinda. So homeostatic processes are not self-generating/creating … this as defined by the notion of autopoiesis?

I just don't see the need to jump from information-using all the way to Husserl. Plants use information. Insects. I don't see Mind there, I just see a way of interacting with the environment that isn't eating it or whacking it.

As I understand it, autopoesis was coined by Maturana and Varela, but I don't think it was something that was thought to be explanatory at the level of individual species but as a general characteristic of metabolic systems.

Fair enough.

I don’t know if you do this intentionally or not, but you get bogged down in details as regard individual particulars. I’m asking a metaphysical question in relation to general ontological givens. — javra

Let's say I find the former more interesting than the latter, and you're the opposite. It's nice.

Is information—in and of itself—endowed with awareness? — javra

No-- but then the foundation for this question has not been established. Is information-- in and of itself-- endowed with color? With a sense of humor? With musicality or elegance?

If no, than I argue you have (at some abstract threshold whose particulars need not be here established) a duality between a) awareness to which information holds meaning and b) awareness-devoid information. Here, all meaning will pertain to awareness, which is an aspect of mind. Hence, if any notion of information or lack thereof is in any way meaningful, it will be so due to the presence of minds which interpret the given information. — javra

Okay.

Are you quite certain that when I try to figure out what I'm looking at and what it might mean to me, that it is information I am interpreting?

The only way I can make sense of Rolf Landauer's claim is through the necessity of the physical for information storage, manipulation or its transmission.

Such a view, though, seems vacuous. What have we gained and how can we get a better understanding on the issue through this finding? Perhaps, as your OP suggests, there may be more to information than just physicality and such a view may be more amenable to further analysis.

As I understand it, autopoesis was coined by Maturana and Varela, but I don't think it was something that was thought to be explanatory at the level of individual species but as a general characteristic of metabolic systems. — Wayfarer

Right, but I don’t interpret a squirrel (or any individual lifeform) to be an individual species. TMK, it was conceived to be a characteristic of living systems, as in individual lifeforms, including the individual cell.

No-- but then the foundation for this question has not been established. Is information-- in and of itself-- endowed with color? With a sense of humor? With musicality or elegance? — Srap Tasmaner

What would the foundation be? As to your questions, I again uphold it takes awareness to interpret information thus.So, devoid of awareness so interpreting, no.

Okay.

Are you quite certain that when I try to figure out what I'm looking at and what it might mean to me, that it is information I am interpreting? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, in a non-absolute-certainty sense, to be clear. BTW, information holds multiple viable interpretations. My preference is the non-mathematical interpretation of “that which endows form to” … you might think it a bit Platonic. Did you have a different interpretation in mind? If so, I’m curious to see if there would be no overlap.