A materialist would say that the mind is made of the same stuff "out there".
An idealist would say that the world is made of the same stuff "in here".
Then aren't they both saying the same thing? — Harry Hindu
The question I asked (also evaded) was that the distinction between the symbolic and the physical that you generally refer to, seems to originate with Von Neumann's idea, as then picked up by Pattee, in the paper, Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis. I am saying, this is distinction that only appears evident in living systems - that is why, in scanning the universe for life, NASA has some idea what to look for. There is a particular order which is characteristic of living systems, is there not? And that is where the symbolic/physical distinction really comes into play. — Wayfarer
In the context of the thread, the original post was about the fact that 'information' and 'representation' can be separated, — Wayfarer
It seems to me that you are also insisting on some naive realism every time you talk about reality being a triad, as if it were ultimately true. — Harry Hindu
What I'm saying is that the contents of a mind are just as real as everything else. Colors are real. Sounds are real. They exist. They are both effects and causes themselves. They are the cause of me saying, "The apple is red.", or eating the apple because I like red apples. But colors are also an effect - the effect of light interacting with a visual sensory system. If they weren't then how can I say anything about the apple's state (like it being ripe or rotten)? — Harry Hindu
Right! Now you're getting it. What I'm saying is, we have an ineluctable tendency to 'concretize, externalise and objectify' - what is real is 'out there'. I think what Platonic realism is about, is not anything 'out there' but the nature of, and the way in which, we know anything. — Wayfarer
That's because it has been bred out of us! It is about the nature of 'transcendental reals', the baby that was thrown out with the bathwater of scholastic philosophy. But it's a distinction which is still alive in e.g. neo-thomism: — Wayfarer
Confusion is subjective. What is confusing to one doesn't mean that it is confusing to others. Per your own argument, something being confusing is the result of one's own self-interest being imposed on what they hear or read.And I am pointing out the conceptual confusion that kind of talk produces. — apokrisis
And if it isn't, then what then? How can it be falsified?I am spelling out the ontological commitments of a model. So no, I am stating upfront that this is indirect realism, the proposal of a theory that can be falsified. — apokrisis
you have not shown that information ever occurs, or can occur, without in fact being encoded in some physical system. — Srap Tasmaner
So again, are you willing to grant entropy the same Platonic status as negentropy, to summarise the nub of our long standing disagreement? — apokrisis
I argue that the erasure of information - the very thing you cited in the OP - is also just as meaningful in being that which is the erased, the ignorable, the definitely meaningless. — apokrisis
From a phenomenological perspective the transcendental is what is primordially given. — Janus
Is that why you like it? — Janus
Are geometric forms, or Euclid's axioms, subject to entropy? Do they degrade over time? — Wayfarer
That fact that it can be encoded in multiple ways,without the meaning being changed, shows that the meaning can be distinguished from the representation. — Wayfarer
f you want the serious answer, the connection that makes these mathematical forms "real" as physicalist constraints is the symmetries they encode. — apokrisis
Does the Platonic apple wither? Does the Platonic white horse grow old and grey? — apokrisis
We have the problem of universals. Two things have the same property, being red, say. Gracious, how is this possible? Is there some thing, redness, besides the two red things? Mysteries! — Srap Tasmaner
The story is often told that in the late 1940s, John von Neumann, a pioneer of the computer age, advised communication-theorist Claude E. Shannon to start using the term "entropy" when discussing information because "no one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage"
A note on Plato's and Aristotle's idea of 'intelligibility':
"in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too."
Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism
that point about the distinction between 'the idea', and 'a synaptic state' is related to the point about the distinction between the physical representation and the meaning. — Wayfarer
The ***** might represent the number five, but only if you tell me that is what it means. And furthermore, only if I can count. — Wayfarer
Has information theory really been around for 70 years? It seems to me that you have some way of determining that information theory has been around for 70 years to make that claim. You'd need a naive realist view of reality to make that claim and expect it to actually carry any weight to make that argument as if it really were the case, or accurate, or true. Is it objectively true that information theory has been around for 70 years?So Information theory has been around 70 years and ignorance remains an excuse? Cool. — apokrisis
To use the currently popular definition of information on this thread, awareness of “sameness” is a difference that makes a difference, and is thereby an awareness of information. Yet sameness, though it can take innumerable phenomenal exemplars, is of itself a meaning that is other than—and a priori to—the phenomenal information which we discriminate as either “the same” or “different from”. — javra
We can never perceive the same river in terms of the same phenomenal information. Yet we can nevertheless acknowledge that what we perceive and interact with is the same river over time, or that we as multiple subjects do in fact perceive the same river at the same time. — javra
To emphasize: where does the meaningful understanding of “sameness” come from, then? — javra
For the record, so far my hypothesis is that sameness is a Kantian-like a priori property of awareness—itself as property being a meaningful understanding regarding what is and what can be, one with which we are birthed with. Be this as erroneous as it may, however, the very awareness of sameness cannot itself be derived strictly from physical information—else one will debate against the very notion that everything phenomenal is in perpetual flux. — javra
All this being a more metaphysical means of arguing that not all meaning is identical to phenomenal information. — javra
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.