Surely it's not definitions. — Metaphysician Undercover

OK, when you say something is immaterial, or non-physical, what exactly do you mean? merely that it is not an object of the senses, or something else?

How is a physical law anything other than an immaterial Form? — Metaphysician Undercover

What we refer to as "physical laws" are observed invariances of physical processes. Things seem to reliably behave in certain ways, and we call these ways 'laws of nature'.

Because this is what the evidence shows us, that there are immaterial Forms between God's act of will and physical objects They may be what you call physical laws — Metaphysician Undercover

So, if the 'laws' are observed invariances of action of physical objects and processes, and those invariances are caused by, or reflect, the will of God or the will and/or the nature of the objects and processes themselves what else is required? Why do we need "immaterial forms"?

OK, when you say something is immaterial, or non-physical, what exactly do you mean? merely that it is not an object of the senses, or something else? — Janus

Yes, I would say that immaterial, and nonphysical, refer to things that are not capable of being sensed, so they don't have what we would call spatial-temporal existence, and are not understood by the laws of physics.

What we refer to as "physical laws" are observed invariances of physical processes. Things seem to reliably behave in certain ways, and we call these ways 'laws of nature'. — Janus

So we have inductive conclusions about the way things behave, and they are laws of physics. Do you assume that there is something real behind these laws, corresponding to them? Or are they completely imaginary? Is there a reason why we can describe the behaviour of physical things according to laws? If so wouldn't you agree that whatever this is, it would be non-physical?

So, if the 'laws' are observed invariances of action of physical objects and processes, and those invariances are caused by, or reflect, the will of God or the will and/or the nature of the objects and processes themselves what else is required? Why do we need "immaterial forms"? — Janus

"Observed invariances" is ambiguous. It could refer to the description made by the observer, and it could refer to the thing being "observed". Of course the use of "observed" means that it really refers to the description made by the observer. So we must posit also, a thing which is being "observed". By positing this other thing, we allow for differences, discrepancies, between the "observed invariances" and the thing being "observed". This allows for the fact that we sometimes have error in our descriptions.

Note, that "observed invariances" in the case of physical laws, refers to the activities of things. It is invariances in activities. So when I say that there must be a corresponding "thing" which is being "observed", it is not the physical things which are active, that I am referring to, it is invariance in that activity which is the "thing" which is being "observed". Invariance in activity must be a real thing which is somehow "observed". This "thing" is immaterial, non-physical. Physicalists seem to have difficulty grasping this. The key to apprehending this might be to realized that "observed" is not the best word to use here. Invariance is concluded from inductive reasoning, it is not directly "observed". So we must posit the existence of a "thing", which is not directly observed, but its existence is necessitated by the conclusions of inductive reasoning which can only be true (in the sense of correspondence) if it exists.

The nonmaterial is wholly the function of the unique structuration of neural matter, not so much the matter itself.
And although information, ideas, concept are material, their essence is not to be understood through the material quality reducted from matter.
You cannot understand the meanings of a famous painting through the chemical constituency of the molecules of pigment that it is made of.
Take two sculptures; Venus De Milo and Da Vinci's David. Bother are made of exactly the same substance; marble. What is different about them is their structural form.
When I read information in a book, me neural matter changes in structure to accommodate that information. The transfer of information is not always perfect but I can often repeat what I have understood. And whilst you can make a fake David, there is only one original.
When I die all that structuration ends, back into its constituent parts.

You might say that being consists in the act of being, and so it is ontologically distinct from the totality of beings in that sense. But I think of beings as acts of being, so being would equally be the totality of acts of being, that is one great act of being, and again there would be no ontological distinction. — Janus

Sorry for yet another delayed reply.

This is where the real distinction between essence and existence in the order of finite being again comes to the fore. In Thomistic philosophy, God is the one ultimate, unitary act of the existence - indeed, this is His very essence. For every other being, its essence, or its "what-ness", is other than its existence. As such, the very essence of me, you and every other finite being is radically distinct from what God essentially is, even as we would not exist without participating in His very being. All things are essentially other from God, and yet could not exist apart from God. We participate in God's essence via our very existence, but we are essentially distinct from God.

I still cannot see how you think being unaffected does not imply being indifferent. "Being good and loving" would seem to be meaningless without action, and action implies response, and response just is being affected. — Janus

I hear what your saying, but the response is going to be that God is the one infinitely and eternally good act of pure love and beauty. He never changes from being exactly that, because he never changes at all.

Given this, what does it mean to say that God could enter into a loving relationship with finite beings such as us? I think the answer here will be something along these lines: God sustains finite/temporal existence as ultimate cause via His unitary act of existence. Everything that unfolds temporally in our experience finds its genesis in that single, unitary act. As such, our experience of God will always manifest temporally/sequentially. On this account, it's as if God has weaved interactive manifestations/representations of Himself into the temporal fabric of finite reality through his unitary act of creation.

What are "particulars"? Would that be similar to saying that nature is made up of "information"? — Harry Hindu — Harry Hindu

Not quite. Particulars are individual things that exist (e.g., an apple, Harry Hindu, a chair). This is contrasted with universals which are common to many particulars (e.g, red things, humans, things with four legs).

Information is a universal. A relevant definition in the context of this thread would be, "What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things" (Oxford dictionary). — Andrew M

Doesn't "what is represented or conveyed by a particular arrangement or sequence of things" relate to the cause of "what is represented or conveyed by a particular arrangement or sequence of things"?

What is represented or conveyed by the particular arrangement of dark scribbles on a black screen that I'm looking at now when reading your post? Isn't it your ideas in your head, and your intent to communicate them?

Doesn't the red color of the apple convey or represent it's state, as the apple could be black which represents another state (ripe vs rotten)?

Doesn't the red color of the apple not only convey or represent the state of the apple, but also the state of the light and the state of your visual sensory system? Did Aristotle understand how vision works?

Part of Wayfarer's argument, I think, is that information isn't the sort of thing you can bump into or detect with your senses. Therefore it shouldn't be considered to be part of the material world. Since information is not an illusion and also not reducible to material, it would seem to imply there is an immaterial (Platonic) realm of ideas or forms.

Aristotle would instead say that information is in the particulars (e.g., the flags being waved or the ship log book) and, as a consequence of being intelligent creatures, humans can perceive the information, or form, that is there. This is no different in principle from perceiving that the flag is red or that the ship log book has a rectangular shape, which are also formal aspects of those particulars.

For Aristotle nature is an inseparable unity of matter and form. Whereas for Plato, matter and form (or ideas) constitute separate and distinct natures. — Andrew M

If information isn't the sort of thing you can "bump into, or detect with your senses", then how is that you know anything about the world at all? How is it that the text on this screen got there in the first place for me, or Wayfarer, to read it? How did it go from being an idea in your head, to text on a screen, to the conveying of your ideas to Wayfarer and me? How did your ideas get from your head to ours without using something "physical" to convey it?

Why are the flags being waved? Why is there a log book? The answers are all related to causation. If your information is still there in the log book after everyone living creature is dead, does the log book still contain information?

Think, McFly, Think (and I recommend having a read of the whole post.) — Wayfarer

I finally read this. It was good, and on par with my position; not too surprising as Feser and I are both catholic. And... I once again used the wrong term in my posts when it comes to 'imagination'. I used the term generally to say "thinking about the concept", where as Feser uses it strictly to say 'mental image' or 'physical visualization in the mind'. This may have been one of the sources of confusion throughout the discussion, such as this one.

I myself am not Catholic, but their views are quite philosophically compatible with mine. I see Aquinas as exemplifying a school of the perennial philosophy, and one is that is still extant, on account of it being preserved in Catholicism. Generally speaking I don't much like modern philosophy.

How can one imagine triangle-ness without any physical properties? Isn't that exactly what triangle-ness is, a physical property? — Metaphysician Undercover

Particular objects participate in triangle-ness due to their specific physical properties, but the concept triangle-ness itself is not made of physical properties, as demonstrated in my previous argument. Also, see the response below in case of confusion about the term 'imagination'.

How would you imagine a universal triangle that is not a particular kind of triangle, namely scalene, isosceles or equilateral? I think that fails Chesterton's test. So maybe you're thinking of the definition of a triangle (e.g., a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles). And, yes, we can think coherently about that. But the definition is not separable from particulars either, whether the human being that thinks about it or the books that contain it. — Andrew M

As I read up on this stuff, I see now that I was using the term 'imagination' incorrectly. I indeed meant to say "thinking coherently" about the concept, and not "having a physical visualization in the mind". This may have created some confusions; my bad. So the fact that we can think coherently (without contradiction) about a thing that contains no particular shows that such thing is not essentially made of particulars.

I am not sure what you mean, Andrew, regarding "the definition is not separable from particulars either". Could you clarify?

You can represent it physically, but it's an ideal object in the sense of being a geometric primitive. And surely the triangle I am just now imagining, is not physical, on account of it's a mental image. — Wayfarer

I don't think that an image being mental demonstrates that the image is non-physical. For one thing, mental images are particulars. Do you have a reason to believe it to be so?

I don't think that an image being mental demonstrates that the image is non-physical. — Samuel Lacrampe

Great! Well if you have a mental image which is physical, please mail it to me, I'd like to see it.

I haven't gone through all the pages (so I might be pointing out something that has been already discussed), but there's something interesting that in my view rises from the OP quote:

"whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind."

First, this seems to be a tautology because likely the definition of "finding information" and especially "information existing" is related to something in the physical form. And a stubborn person would stick simply to this. And likely make a whimsical conclusion that information is thus physical.

Yet if we let's say find a thrown away hard-drive having something written on it, the whole piece itself gives us far more information than just what is written on the hard drive. Information like for what kind of Computer basically the hard-drive is for. Just like a historical artifact found by a archeologist can have far more information than just the actual physical object itself has. Where an artifact is found gives a lot of information when we can bind it to other information.

That quote you mention was from a piece by, or about, Rolf Landauer. I found it because I am interested in the provocative idea that information is not physical, and was looking for any references on that idea. But Landauer was an IBM computer scientist who was associated with a well-known paper arguing that 'information is physical'. So I thought it appropriate to include a reference to that. However if you read the detail of Landauer's paper, it has to do with what is required to encode information on magnetic media (which figures, him being a computer scientist), and isn't really about the philosophical question of the nature of information.

Besides, I have decided that what I'm really arguing for is that 'ideas aren't physical'. But that sounds kind of weak - many will say 'we knew that already', others will say 'maybe, but the brain is physical, so ideas are too'. But my view is, I hope, a bit more radical than that - information of any and all kinds, really isn't physical at all, but is only represented physically. This has lead to quite an interesting digression through the history of philosophy and especially Platonist and Aristotelian ideas about universals.

Information like for what kind of Computer basically the hard-drive is for. — ssu

Quite right. That's meta-data - information about the hard drive.

But my view is, I hope, a bit more radical than that - information of any and all kinds, really isn't physical at all, but is only represented physically. — Wayfarer

The real question then, concerning the nature of information, is whether "information" refers to the physical representation, or the thing (idea, concept etc.) which is being represented. Common usage indicates that "information" may be used in both ways, each being equally acceptable. Then the entire thread is just an exercise in ambiguity.

This ambiguity manifests as a real problem in metaphysics which assume information is physical, but not a representation.

This ambiguity manifests as a real problem in metaphysics which assume information is physical, but not a representation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agree! It's the ambiguity which makes it interesting.

Well, if unintelligible or meaningless information is nothing but the arrangement of physical parts in a certain way, then I can definitely mail such info from a mental image: Say I have a mental image of this. I transpose this info on paper, and voilà. And the same can be done with the mental image of a particular triangle, so long that it does not serve to symbolize the concept of triangle-ness. I.e., an animal can have the same mental image when observing a picture of a particular triangle, without understanding the concept of triangle-ness.

As far as I can tell, the hypothesis of info being nothing but arrangements of physical parts seems adequate, when concepts are not involved.

That image imparts no information. When I somewhat facetiously asked you to ‘send me a mental image’ it was just to make the point that you can’t, because it’s mental (obviously).

There’s an interesting concept of ‘information entropy’ which comes out of information theory. It has to do with how likely a particular string of characters is to occur. If it’s structured in such a way that it contains information, then it’s low entropy; if it’s random, then it’s high entropy, and furthermore it doesn’t make any difference if the order is preserved in transmission, because random is random. So your image, being random, conveys or conforms to no particular form.

So isn’t ‘unintelligible information’ a bit of a misnomer? If it is structured in such a way as to convey or encode meaning, but you don’t understand the code or language, then it’s unintelligible to you, but it might not be unintelligible tout courte. Whereas if it is literally random characters, then it’s not information at all.

Also, I don’t know if animals have mental images nor that it would be possible to find out if they do.

The problem here is that space and time are not properties, so neither can place be a property. That's why motion is so difficult to understand, it's not the property of an object, it is a relationship between objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

This seems inconsequential, because a relative property is still meaningful, so long as the standard is the same for all things. If I describe the dog I see as being at the intersection of streets A and B at time T, everybody understands the description of the location, so long as streets A and B don't move.

How would you propose to determine the spatial-temporal location of a concept? — Metaphysician Undercover

Easy: They have none. My position is that non-physical things don't occupy physical spaces. I thought this was a generally accepted claim. Where would the claim that "all things have a spacial-temporal location" come from?

How are you defining "objective" here? — Metaphysician Undercover

Part of reality, independent of a subject. As such, math concepts are discovered and unchangeable. We cannot simply decide that "1+1=3", even if everybody agreed to do so.

Yes, your definition of "ideal" is completely different from mine. Ideal to me means perfect in conception. Therefore a thing cannot be an ideal. You define ideal as the perfect thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Alright, but I admit I am not sure what the difference is between "perfect in conception" and simply "perfect". It seems that if a thing is perfect, then its conception cannot be more perfect.

If conception was as you describe here, experience dependent, then we could never understand things which had just been described to us, but we had not seen. The various fields of science demonstrate that the true nature of conception is within definition, as there is much which is described and conceived of, without having been experienced. — Metaphysician Undercover

A fair point. I reply that it is true, that if we have never experienced basic concepts of shapes, colours, sounds, tastes, and feelings, such as, triangle-ness, redness, a music note, sweetness, and coldness, then we could never understand more complex concepts made from basic concepts, such as house, horse, sun, or law. But if we do apprehend the basic concepts from experience, then I think we can apprehend complex concepts composed of basic concepts, without experiencing them. E.g., I have never observed a chiliagon, but if it is defined as "a polygon with 1000 sides", then I can apprehend it, because I already apprehended the concepts 'polygon', '1000', and 'sides'.

Besides, I have decided that what I'm really arguing for is that 'ideas aren't physical'. But that sounds kind of weak - many will say 'we knew that already', others will say 'maybe, but the brain is physical, so ideas are too'. But my view is, I hope, a bit more radical than that - information of any and all kinds, really isn't physical at all, but is only represented physically. This has lead to quite an interesting digression through the history of philosophy and especially Platonist and Aristotelian ideas about universals. — Wayfarer

I understand your point.

And of course the physicalists usually tend to go for their classic strawman argument that you are implying that ghosts exist. Which shows how they think about the whole question.

I think one perspective is that it's all about just what kind of questions we ask: we have to have abstract concepts like mathematics, but also the concept of information, in order to answer more complex questions about reality.

(Y)

I don't think that an image being mental demonstrates that the image is non-physical. — Samuel Lacrampe


Great! Well if you have a mental image which is physical, please mail it to me, I'd like to see it. — Wayfarer

If you can only convey the mental imagery in your head to others by converting it into a physical format, like the screen with letters on it that you see before you, for others to then receive, then doesn't that show that information is physical? How do you get the information in your head to others, and before anyone reads your post does your post contain information?

As far as I can tell, the hypothesis of info being nothing but arrangements of physical parts seems adequate, when concepts are not involved. — Samuel Lacrampe

I don't think that is adequate. If information is the arrangement of physical parts, then there must be a reason for that particular arrangement being the particular arrangement which it is in order that we can say that it is "information". It must have the capacity to inform us of something. It is the reason for this arrangement being the arrangement which it is, which allows us to say that the arrangement is information. So "information" means more than just arrangement of physical parts, it means arrangement of physical parts with reason for that arrangement.

That is why I said in my last post to Wayfarer: "This ambiguity manifests as a real problem in metaphysics which assume information is physical, but not a representation."

Part of reality, independent of a subject. As such, math concepts are discovered and unchangeable. We cannot simply decide that "1+1=3", even if everybody agreed to do so. — Samuel Lacrampe

I think that this is false. What different symbols represent is not unchangeable, and this is evident in evolving language. So if for some reason the ordering of the symbols which represent numbers gets changed, and this all agreed upon, such that the order is 1,3,2,4, and the symbol 3 starts to mean the same thing as 2 does now, then 1+1 would equal 3.

The point is that there is no necessity between the symbol and what it represents. It doesn't necessarily represent what it does, and this is because what it represents was somehow decided upon. Therefore the relationship between the symbol and what it represents is dependent on the existence of subjects. Since the existence of concepts seems to be dependent on this relationship between symbols and representation, we cannot simply assert that concepts are "objective" if you define objective in this way (independent of subjects).

But you haven't addressed the point of what I said; which is the question as to why we should not therefore think of gravity as 'non-physical". Gravity is considered by physicists to be more than merely "a physical abstraction". There is even a search for 'gravity particles', referred to as gravitons. Neuroscientists believe they have already found 'mind particles'; they refer to them as neurons. (Of course they are not fundamental since they are cells composed of more fundamental particles, but what if there were fundamental mind particles, would we then say that mind is non-physical?). — Janus

No, those abstractions are physical whether or not there are explanations in terms of fundamental particles. We are just describing the same world at different levels of abstraction depending on our purposes, whether in intentional, qualitative or mathematical terms.

If information isn't the sort of thing you can "bump into, or detect with your senses", then how is that you know anything about the world at all? — Harry Hindu

Seeing flags being waved is necessary but not sufficient to know what information is being conveyed. It also requires the ability to think abstractly.

How did your ideas get from your head to ours without using something "physical" to convey it? — Harry Hindu

It did require using physical means to convey it. There is no other way.

The answers are all related to causation. If your information is still there in the log book after everyone living creature is dead, does the log book still contain information? — Harry Hindu

Yes. And that information is, in principle, discoverable by any future creature that has the ability to think abstractly.

I am not sure what you mean, Andrew, regarding "the definition is not separable from particulars either". Could you clarify? — Samuel Lacrampe

Sure, there are the books that contain the definition and the people that know it. The definition, while abstract, is not something ontologically separate from those physical books or people. (It is also implicit in the natural world which means it is discoverable by anyone with the requisite intelligence and skills.)

It seems to me you are conflating explanations with what is being explained.

All things are essentially other from God, and yet could not exist apart from God. We participate in God's essence via our very existence, but we are essentially distinct from God. — Aaron R

This makes sense to me from one angle. It seems right to say that all things are essentially other from God, in the same kind of way that all things are essentially other from all other things. There seems to be a function of degree operating though, because, for example, a tiger is more other from a worm than it is from another tiger. God, looked at in this way, is more other from us than all other creatures, if all other creatures are finite and temporal and God is infinite and eternal. On the other hand God is in all creatures and all creatures are in God, and in that sense it would seem that God is less other from all creatures than all creatures are from all other creatures.

For every position of God there seems to be an anti-position; which I suppose is only to be expected; an infinite and eternal being, if it is to be anything at all beyond merely an imaginary figment must in some sense, also be finite and temporal. And likewise if god is to be in us and we in God, then we finite and temporal beings must, in some sense, be infinite and eternal.

As such, our experience of God will always manifest temporally/sequentially. On this account, it's as if God has weaved interactive manifestations/representations of Himself into the temporal fabric of finite reality through his unitary act of creation. — Aaron R

I like this because it is quite poetic. I do wonder, though, whether our experience of God can really be temporal and sequential. It certainly is in our accounts and descriptions.

Of course the use of "observed" means that it really refers to the description made by the observer. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, logically, the description cannot be the thing described.

Do you assume that there is something real behind these laws, corresponding to them? Or are they completely imaginary? Is there a reason why we can describe the behaviour of physical things according to laws? If so wouldn't you agree that whatever this is, it would be non-physical? — Metaphysician Undercover

I would tend to imagine there is something real that is being described. But I don't see why it would need to be thought to be "non-physical" in anything other than the more or less trivial senses that it is either not an object of the senses, or is not something that could be explained by physics, since physics itself presupposes it. Actually I don't think the idea of the physical is clearly definable, and if this is so, then how much less definable would be the idea of the non-physical. The ideas make a degree of sense in certain connections and contexts; but I don't believe there is any general unifying context in which they are coherent.

No, logically, the description cannot be the thing described. — Janus

What I meant is that in the phrase "observed invariances" "invariance" does not refer to a property of anything at all, so it is not a description. There is no whatness of any thing which is being described, so there is no description here. "Observed invariance" refers to an inductive conclusion which is derived from numerous descriptions, it is not a description. If you were to insist on calling it a description, it is necessarily a description of numerous descriptions. So there is no "thing described".

The difference being that there is a statement being made about numerous things, not a statement made about a thing, which is a description. I can look at my lawn and describe it, saying that my lawn is green, or I could make the inductive statement, "grass is green". The latter is not a description because there is no particular thing being described, it is an inductive conclusion.

But I don't see why it would need to be thought to be "non-physical" in anything other than the more or less trivial senses that it is either not an object of the senses, or is not something that could be explained by physics, since physics itself presupposes it. — Janus

In the field of ontology, or metaphysics, how can you say that this is trivial, that there is something real which cannot be sensed, nor can it be explained by physics? Since this aspect of reality is responsible for the validity of the laws of physics, I think it's very important. How are we going to understand it if we cannot sense it and it cannot be explained by physics?

What I meant is that in the phrase "observed invariances" "invariance" does not refer to a property of anything at all, so it is not a description. — Metaphysician Undercover

If I observe the sun to rise each morning that is an observed invariance.

In the field of ontology, or metaphysics, how can you say that this is trivial, that there is something real which cannot be sensed, nor can it be explained by physics? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but I didn't say that the thing is trivial, I said that it is referred to as non-physical in a trivial sense; which is a totally different proposition.

It seems to me you are conflating explanations with what is being explained. — Janus

Can you be more specific or give an example?

An abstraction is not, by definition, physical; but what it is an abstraction from may be. So gravity is not an abstraction as you previously said it is, but is a phenomenon that may be thought of as physical insofar as its effects are observable even though it is not. My original point was to ask how mind is different than this.

If I observe the sun to rise each morning that is an observed invariance. — Janus

Your missing something which is necessary here. You can watch the sun all you want, and not observe
any invariance. It is your logical conclusion that the sun rises each morning, which is the statement of invariance. The invariance is not observed, it is concluded.

Yes, but I didn't say that the thing is trivial, I said that it is referred to as non-physical in a trivial sense; which is a totally different proposition. — Janus

I don't understand what you are saying. We agree there is some aspect of reality which cannot be sensed, nor can it be explained by physics, and you say that this is "non-physical" in a trivial sense. I think this is "non-physical" in a very important sense. Why do you think it's trivial, when it says that we cannot understand this aspect of reality through sense nor through physics. That seems to make a very important statement about reality and the limitations of the empirical sciences. I'm sure a physicalist would not think this is trivial, because it would mean that physicalism is wrong.

An abstraction is not, by definition, physical; but what it is an abstraction from may be. So gravity is not an abstraction as you previously said it is, but is a phenomenon that may be thought of as physical insofar as its effects are observable even though it is not. My original point was to ask how mind is different than this. — Janus

The mind is not different from this. All that exists are physical particulars and those particulars are identifiable in universal (or abstract) terms. But universals are not something additional to or separate from particulars. (This is Aristotle's immanent realism.)

In the case of mind, the particular is the person that thinks, acts and feels. The effects of a person's intentional activity are observable whether in behavior or brain activity.

So I think the distinction you are trying to draw between physical universals and non-physical universals is not a tenable one.