I agree, but it is real.

That's right, my argument is that all interpretations are subjective. Because of this, no two interpretations are the same. — Metaphysician Undercover

The problem though, is that the same word has different meanings dependent on the context of usage. — Metaphysician Undercover

Going back to why you uphold this to be so:

Here again, we have the issue of "the 'same' meaning" assigned to different phenomenal information. As I explained, I take this to be contradictory. If the two distinct phenomenal occurrences really had the same meaning to you, you would not be able to tell them apart, because it is by virtue of differences in what each of them means to you, that you distinguish one from the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your core argument again is that for the same meaning to hold presence nondifferentiable phenomenal information must be apprehended.

So I don’t yet understand how your arguments can support the reality of different subjects sometimes sharing the same meaning.

No two subjects will ever experience identical phenomenal information at any given time, this because each will be a unique first person point of view (nor will the same subject ever experience two identical bodies of phenomenal information during the entirety of its lifetime—but I’ll drop this second line of argument for now as regards stable meaning over time).

Then, how does your argument not result in a solipsism regarding the body of meaning that any individual subject holds?

Seems to me this very conversation would then be nonsensical as a conversation since no meaning whatsoever would be common to us (i.e., the same relative to each of us). For starters, we perceive the phenomenal information on what I presume to be our individual screens differently—and our understanding of the phenomenal information’s meaning will furthermore be dependent on vastly different contexts of experiential historicity (which can theoretically impart both vastly different connotations and denotations to the phenomenal information observed).

It seems to me that whilst the representation is physical, the idea that is being transmitted is not physical, because it is totally separable from the physical form that the transmission takes. One could, after all, encode the same information in any number of languages, engrave it in stone, write it with pencil, etc. In each instance, the physical representation might be totally different, both in terms of linguistics and medium; but the information is the same.

How, then, could the information be physical? — Wayfarer

This seems like the same type/token distinction we've encountered together before.

I suppose the answer depends in part on what we mean by "information". Each of the various token representations comes with more information than the bit that's relevant in the example. For instance, information about the flags or the ink, information about the agent's waving or handwriting, information about the light and atmosphere in which we perceive those signs, information about the state of our eyes.... Is there any information that comes to us by way of perception without some such extraneous features?

What counts as "information" in this conversation, or perhaps especially among information theorists or information scientists? The abstract repeatable type, or the concrete physical instantiation, or perhaps both?

What does it mean to say those outward signs "represent the same fact", or that the inner physiological processes of each relevant perceiver lead him to "grasp the same fact"?

I see no reason to suppose the type is anything but an abstraction, a convenient rule for thought and action, whose real basis lies in the similarity of tokens, not in some putative metaphysical identity of types.

You and I see the same apple, but we don't therefore have the same perception. You and I grasp the same fact, or refer to the same entity by name, but it's only a misleading convention that leads us to say we thus "have the same thought". It seems more fitting to say that the thoughts that run through our heads when we grasp the same fact or refer to the same entity, are about as different as the perceptions that run through our heads when we see the same apple.

When we enjoy adequately similar cognition of the same objects, we might say we have the same "type" of cognition, but to speak accurately and modestly, it seems this only means that we have very similar cognition of the same.

However we choose to tack verbiage upon these appearances, it seems we tend toward harmony, conformity, and agreement in perception, speech, and action, by waving flags, scribbling marks, or uttering noises.


What does it mean to say that something exists but is "not physical"?

Information appears to be massless, is perhaps what you wanted to say, and that is interesting. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, I am saying 'not physical', so that's close!

And if "information" lives out there in the Platonic non-physical realm, what else lives there? The baby Jesus? The flying spaghetti monster? The number 5? Your argument depends on information living somewhere that's not physical. That's a lot of ontological baggage to carry. — fishfry

Natural numbers, perhaps. The flying spaghetti monster is a fictional parody. The Baby Jesus is a religious icon.

But another name for the domain of information is the 'formal domain' - the domain of logical and mathematical truths, generally. I suppose philosophical theology would include 'revealed truth' in that domain. But there are usually at least some mathematicians that are Platonists, for instance, Kurt Gödel.

Gödel was a mathematical realist, a Platonist. He believed that what makes mathematics true is that it's descriptive—not of empirical reality, of course, but of an abstract reality. Mathematical intuition is something analogous to a kind of sense perception. In his essay "What Is Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis?", Gödel wrote that we're not seeing things that just happen to be true, we're seeing things that must be true. The world of abstract entities is a necessary world—that's why we can deduce our descriptions of it through pure reason. — Rebecca Goldstein

Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth.

You're not even making an attempt to rebut what I wrote. — Harry Hindu

Because I think your fundamental premise of 'information being the relationship between cause and effect', and what issues from that, is plainly mistaken, but that this is something I would be unable to persuade you of. Secondly, because, as I said before, it's pointless to debate philosophy against naive or scientific realism. Saying you're a naive or scientific realist, isn't to say you're naive, because you're plainly not, and it's not intended as a pejorative. But I doubt I could say anything to shift that perspective.

I suppose the answer depends in part on what we mean by "information" — Cabbage Farmer

@Apokrisis answered that in terms of it being 'a difference which makes a difference'. I think used as a generality, that is too vague, but look at it in this particular context. Something has to be conveyed to the Harbourmaster, about type of boat, nationality, time of arrival. Without that information, the dock won't be prepared, customs won't be ready, a harbour pilot won't be sent out to meet the ship. So not getting that information makes a difference. Furthermore if the wrong flags are raised, or the right flags read wrongly, then the incorrect preparation will be made - so again, a significant difference.

The crucial point is that information whatever requires a code to convey it. I could spell out the information about the arrival of the ships by using white pebbles on a dark background. But a random pile of pebbles doesn't encode anything, so it doesn't convey anything. There is neither syntax nor semantics involved. It is only when I want to convey information, that a sequence of signs has to be arranged.

Here's an interesting fact. 'Information' in the sense of 'an ordered sequence which conveys a difference' can only be observed, in nature, in two broad instances - in the output of human communications, and in the activity of DNA - in other words, in the activities of life and mind. (I am dubious as to whether there is any point in describing the domain of physics in terms of information.)

You and I see the same apple, but we don't therefore have the same perception. You and I grasp the same fact, or refer to the same entity by name, but it's only a misleading convention that leads us to say we thus "have the same thought". It seems more fitting to say that the thoughts that run through our heads when we grasp the same fact or refer to the same entity, are about as different as the perceptions that run through our heads when we see the same apple. — Cabbage Farmer

In which case, you and I would never be able to converse! If you say 'apple' and I think 'banana', then it's game over for communicating. That's why language and reasoning are essentially universalising activities - they rely on our grasp of types, of generalities - when you say 'apple', any English-speaking person should know what you mean. Given that, it is of course true that we will 'see things differently'. But we have to have something in common to begin with, for language to even work - that is the store of language with all of its subtleties and depths.

(Actually I read an interesting comment the other day on the etymological between 'idiosyncratic' and 'idiot'. An 'idiot' wasn't originally someone who was intellectually disabled, but someone who spoke in a language nobody else could understand.)

What does it mean to say that something exists but is "not physical"? — Cabbage Farmer

It means bad news for materialism.

Because I think your fundamental premise of 'information being the relationship between cause and effect', and what issues from that, is plainly mistaken, but that this is something I would be unable to persuade you of. Secondly, because, as I said before, it's pointless to debate philosophy against naive or scientific realism. Saying you're a naive or scientific realist, isn't to say you're naive, because you're plainly not, and it's not intended as a pejorative. But I doubt I could say anything to shift that perspective. — Wayfarer

So, what you're saying is that you're lazy? That can't be the case because I've seen you engage others and attempt to persuade those that don't want to be persuaded.

I have been persuaded before and have taken a 180 on my worldview before. If have done it before, then I obviously have an open mind to do it again. I think it's more that you don't have an argument against it.

So, what you're saying is that you're lazy? — Harry Hindu

I'll cop to that. Tell you what, start a thread on Jerry Coyne, we'll have it out there.

Like I said, Coyne was a tiny, itty-bitty fraction of my input in this thread. Why can't we have it out here on the topic you brought up?

Also, why make a thread on a single person?

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

P1: All that is physical abides to the law of conservation of mass and energy. E.g. if I give you a physical thing, I have less of it.
P2: Information does not abide to this law. E.g. if I give you information, I don't have less of it.
C: Therefore information is not physical. — Samuel Lacrampe

How can you give information without expending energy?

Well, I am saying 'not physical', so that's close! — Wayfarer

How close?

There's a physical difference between a dog biting a man and a man biting a dog, although these two possible systems have the same total mass.

Arrangement counts for something.

From a phenomenological perspective we are "informed" twice by impressions. First there is the primordial 'whatever it is" that impresses us,affects us, now, and is the condition for the very possibility of our intentional seeing of things as this or that. In that intentional seeing of things they have always already moved from the now to the 'already passed'.

The primordial given-ness of things is not a determinate, intentional meaning. Given-ness, or phenomenality itself, is first given as non-intentional. This is obviously prior to physicality, since physicality is itself an intentional apprehension, an intentional meaning. This does not mean however that the primordial givenness of phenomenality is something non-physical, because the notion of non-physical is also an intentional meaning, and the first givenness is prior to any intentionality whatsoever.

So, determinate information is always given in physical terms, it is always physical. Indeterminate information, the first givenness, is neither physical nor non-physical, because to speak of it in terms of that intentional dichotomy is to commit an error of reification.

There's a physical difference between a dog biting a man and a man biting a dog, although these two possible systems have the same total mass. — Srap Tasmaner

If I wanted to convey information about which of these events had happened, then it would be relevant to the OP. The mere fact that such things happen is not.

Arrangement counts for something. — Srap Tasmaner

Clearly, 'arrangement' - or order - is key to the discussion. In the hypothetical piece, the arrangement of the flags, then the dots and dashes in the morse code, is key - get the arrangement wrong, and the information is transmitted incorrectly. But the information, the message, is what dictates the order. In this case, the order is imposed by conventions governing flags, morse code, and English, respectively - the product of minds. Again, my argument is that what is being conveyed is not describable as 'physical', even if all of the individual components that comprise the messages are physical. What is it that performs all of these transformations between media and symbolic codes? I have said that this is the role of 'intelligence'. As has been observed, there is an implicit, or maybe even explicit, dualism in this argument, by saying that the information must be separable from any form it takes; whereas the view that it is 'only physical' is monistic, the information and the form it takes are essentially the same thing.

So, determinate information is always given in physical terms, it is always physical. — Janus

Hmmm. I *think* you're referring to 'apperception'. But other than, struggling to make sense out of this post. Again, to hark back to mathematics - I am a math student, trying to understand a class in algebra. Teacher writes a problem on the board, and I have to solve the problem. The chalk marks on the board are surely physical, but the algebraic problem that I have to solve, comprises the relationships between ideas, I would have thought. So I don't see any sense in which that is physical.

The chalk marks on the board are surely physical, but the algebraic problem that I have to solve, comprises the relationships between ideas, I would have thought. So I don't see any sense in which that is physical. — Wayfarer

An algebraic cannot be given or understood except in terms of physical marks and symbols; so I'm not sure what you are getting at here. I mean, how could you present any idea to me except in terms of physical marks or sounds?

But other than, struggling to make sense out of this post. — Wayfarer

I am indebted to Michel Henry for his wonderful analyses and critique of Husserl's phenomenology: see Material Phenomenology.

https://www.amazon.com/Material-Phenomenology-Perspectives-Continental-Philosophy/dp/0823229440/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507847278&sr=8-1&keywords=material+phenomenology

How can you go about testing your theory when the outcome of any test will have your purpose imposed on it? All you are saying is your theory is the result of YOUR purposes and your interests, which means that it is only useful to you, not anyone else. — Harry Hindu

My argument was against naive realism and in favour of indirect realism. And indirect realism accepts both the fact that knowledge is grounded in the subjectivity of self-interest, but can then aspire to the objectivity of invariant or self-interest free "truth" by a rational method of theory and test, or abductive reasoning.

So there is available to us a method for minimising the subjectivity of belief. We know how to do that measurably. It's called the scientific method. Pragmatism defines it.

You seem to both accept and reject indirect realism. It sounds as though you want to insist on some naive realism at base in talking about a cause and effect relation between the dynamics of the world and the symbols then generated within the mind.

The thing in itself is actually a pattern of radiation. The experience we have is of seeing red rather than green. Somehow that is veridical and direct as there is a physical chain of events that connects every step of the way.

But even the fact that the world is constituted of patterns of radiation - everything can be explained by the different possible frequencies of a light wave - is simply another level of idea or conception. It is a further level of theory and test.

Naive realism fails. It is indirect realism all the way down. All we can say is that a particular way of looking at the world is proving to be a good habit of interpretation over some larger scale of space and time.

This can be explained by conservation of energy. Natural selection must make compromises in "designing" sensory systems as the amount of energy available isn't infinite, and it would probably take an infinite amount of energy to be informed of the world in it's completeness. So, we would be limited by the amount of energy, not some self deciding which parts of a sensory system are more useful than another part. — Harry Hindu

Sure, the availability of energy is some kind of ultimate limit. But you are missing the point - which is how meaning even arises granted no particular limit to information capacity.

Meaning or semantics arises by a symmetry breaking of information. The information must be divided into signal and noise. The greater the contrast - the more information that is discarded as noise - the more meaningful the remaining information which is being treated as the signal.

So that is what the information theoretic approach is about. First establishing a baseline understanding of information in itself - as a physical capacity for variety, as some actual ensemble of possibilities. And then we can get to where we want to go - a principle for extracting the meaning of a message (or the physics of the world).

Semantics can be defined in a measurable fashion as the differences that make a difference ... because they are not a matter of general indifference.

That is why Landauer's principle was one of the important advances in turning attention to information discard or erasure. In the real world, eliminating noise is a big energetic cost.

An algebraic cannot be given or understood except in terms of physical marks and symbols; so I'm not sure what you are getting at here. — Janus

Of course algebra problems are conveyed by physical (chalk) marks and symbols - I've already acknowledged that in the OP. But I'm saying the substance of the material (irony intended) is the relation of ideas, which are not physical.

Then I don't understand what basis you think there is for thinking of them as "non-physical". You don't seem to have provided any argument for that. All mathematics deals with number and quantity and without physicality there can be no number or quantity, so...

Meaning or semantics arises by a symmetry breaking of information. The information must be divided into signal and noise. The greater the contrast - the more information that is discarded as noise - the more meaningful the remaining information which is being treated as the signal. — apokrisis

There have been huge efforts to detect life on other planets, under the acronym SETI. That search is looking for the telltale signs of life. So far, other than a few anomalous messages, and the strange behaviour of some distant stellar objects, no such telltale signs have been found anywhere in the vast universe - it would be a huge news story if they had been.

So aren't these searches looking for a particular kind of order, the existence of which indicates a footprint of biological order? And it was in the context of that order, in which the division between 'symbolic' and 'physical' was made, wasn't it? How can that be extended to any old matter?

Then I don't understand what basis you think there is for thinking of them as "non-physical". — Janus

There is mental arithmetic, in fact there are many things in maths which are impossible to realise physically.

Think again: the number '7'. Certainly, the symbol is physical - but what does it refer to? It refers to a concept, a quantity, which can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting, of saying that 'this means that', and also of understanding that 7=7, not 6 or 8. It is an intelligible object (using the word 'object' metaphorically), not a material object. Us humans can understand that; my faithful dog cannot, except for perhaps in the most rudimentary way (although I do note the apparent delight people take nowadays in saying that 'animals count'.)

What does it mean to be real?

Why not join a Philosophy Forum! It's all they talk about, there.

my argument is that what is being conveyed is not describable as 'physical', even if all of the individual components that comprise the messages are physical. — Wayfarer

That's because you choose to ignore that the arrangement of these physical components is also physical.

There have been huge efforts to detect life on other planets, under the acronym SETI. That search is looking for the telltale signs of life. So far, other than a few anomalous messages, and the strange behaviour of some distant stellar objects, no such telltale signs have been found anywhere in the vast universe - it would be a huge news story if they had been.

So aren't these searches looking for a particular kind of order, the existence of which indicates a footprint of biological order? And it was in the context of that order, in which the division between 'symbolic' and 'physical' was made, wasn't it? How can that be extended to any old matter? — Wayfarer

I don't get how you don't get that you are restating my argument.

Look, here is the unmistakable evidence of intelligent life on Mars...



Is that physical information a deliberate signal or unintentional noise. You decide. Or rather, it is matter of interpretance. Which belief is going to minimise your capacity to make wrong predictions?

Think again: the number '7'. Certainly, the symbol is physical - but what does it refer to? It refers to a concept, a quantity, which can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting, of saying that 'this means that', and also of understanding that 7=7, not 6 or 8. It is an intelligible object (using the word 'object' metaphorically), not a material object. — Wayfarer

The symbol '7' only exists in different physical forms as representations. What it represents is the idea of a quantity; an idea which can only really be grasped insofar as it refers to physical things.

Think about the Wittgenstein's "The world is the totality of facts, not of things". If we take this to refer to in part to the spatial relationships between things; their arrangement in space, that arrangement is not itself a physical thing additional to the things arranged. It is also not a non-physical thing because an arrangement cannot be conceived at all except in terms of things.

To say that a number is an intelligible object is misleading; it leads to the kind of reification that results in Platonism. Number is an intelligible attribute of physical things. In order that there be things at all, there must be number or quantity; it is something we apprehend in the things. But it is misleading to say that it therefore must be some extra non-physical quality that 'exists' or is 'real' somewhere beyond the things themselves.

All mathematics deals with number and quantity and without physicality there can be no number or quantity, so... — Janus

1 imagined abstraction of some non-physical world (e.g., a heaven or hell) + 1 imagined abstraction of some other non-physical world = 2 non-physical givens consisting of non-physical information. Unless one upholds an epiphenomenal physicalism, there is no physicality involved in this equation—especially since what was counted were abstractions and not concrete particulars. (This will hold even where these abstractions do not correlate with any actual state of affairs—maybe even more so.)

That's because you choose to ignore that the arrangement of these physical components is also physical. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not ignoring it. I'm saying that 'the arrangement' is of a different order to the physical. Semantics is not reducible to physics. Left to its own devices, a pile of pebbles won't convey information; it has to be arranged in order to convey information.

Is that physical information a deliberate signal or unintentional noise. — apokrisis

Unintentional noise.

The symbol '7' only exists in different physical forms as representations. What it represents is the idea of a quantity; an idea which can only really be grasped insofar as it refers to physical things — Janus

That is an assertion without an argument. Mental arithmetic (for example) is not about the relationship between physical things, but the relationship of ideas.

To say that a number is an intelligible object is misleading; it leads to the kind of reification that results in Platonism. — Janus

I addressed the problem of reification previously, which I think arises from a misunderstanding of Platonism, and one essential to this thread. One way of putting it is this: numbers don't exist. You will say, of course they do, here's 7, and 5. But they're not numbers, they're symbols. What they are symbolising is something which only exists in a mind capable of counting. But at the same time, numbers are real - get a number wrong in an engineering calculation, and your bridge will fail. (A Mars Lander failed because someone mistook an imperial for a metric unit.)

What I'm saying is that the physical (or phenomenal) is 'what exists'. Numbers, laws, conventions, logic, and the like, don't exist as phenomena. They're instead the 'furniture of reason', what enables us to realise possibilities, design things, and so on. That's why humans live between the realm of the actual and the possible; that's why the West had the scientific revolution and the East didn't; for that, you can thank Plato. ;-)

//ps// mind you, the above is only an heuristic, it is not a formal theory.

imagined abstraction of some non-physical world — javra

Imagined abstractions are always abstracted from, and imagined in forms derived from, the physical world; the experience of the physical world is the source of all our imaginations and abstractions.

Unintentional noise. — Wayfarer

And how do you know that except you can read the clear sign of a "mindless physical process"?

The point is that a lack of meaningfulness is as much a matter of interpretation as the presence of meaning. Which blows a big hole in any belief in a "Platonic realm of meaning". Unless that Platonia also contains chaos, friction and entropy as part of its stable of perfect ideas ... all partaking in The Good.

Are some of your good things that are up in Platonia also bad things? Seems problematic.

I'm not ignoring it. I'm saying that 'the arrangement' is of a different order to the physical. Semantics is not reducible to physics. — Wayfarer

Whether the dog is biting the man or the man is biting the dog is not a question of semantics.

Left to its own devices, a pile of pebbles won't convey information; it has to be arranged in order to convey information. — Wayfarer

Look again: it is arranged. Or are you suggesting there can be a pile of pebbles that is not arranged in any particular way? And when you look, you capture some of light the pile of pebbles radiates, with no intention whatsoever, and that light also has a particular arrangement.

Imagined abstractions are always abstracted from, and imagined in forms derived from, the physical world; the experience of the physical world is the source of all our imaginations and abstractions. — Janus

It's a presumption not yet evidenced to be true in all possible cases. A telos, for example, would be abstract, non-physical information not itself abstracted from the physical world. A different argument to that of this thread, though.

All the same, how is an abstraction physical information? This even when in fact abstracted from physical information.

What I'm saying is that the physical (or phenomenal) is 'what exists'. Numbers, laws, conventions, logic, and the like, don't exist as phenomena. — Wayfarer

Certainly number, laws. conventions, logic and the like don't exist as objects of the senses. However they certainly exist as phenomena, and we cannot think of any intelligible way in which they could exist apart from objects of the senses; the idea simply makes no sense.

Your reification consists in thinking that they must "somehow" be real apart from, or independently of, the physical world.

All the same, how is an abstraction physical information? — javra

How can an abstraction be communicated or understood except in physical terms? If you think it could then perhaps you could offer an example.

How can an abstraction be communicated or understood except in physical terms? If you think it could then perhaps you could offer an example. — Janus

My question isn't about the communication of abstractions, such as we are now engaged in, but in relation to the abstractions themselves: how are abstractions physical?