On Dec 17, 8:40 am, einseele <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Craig > Nice conversation here, thank you
Thanks, yes, I'm glad to meet you. > > > ...ingredients do I need to get information? What's it made of? > > This is the million $ question. We cannot say what information is made > of but only point to it I think that I can say what it is made of though. It is the sensorimotive interior of matter. The same thing which governs our exteriors as matter across space (we call electromagnetism, gravity, relativity, probability, and entropy) allows our interiors to govern energy through time (being, feeling, doing, perception, volition, and memory, I call sensorimotive orientation, significance, and cumulative entanglement). > For instance a simple dot on any given surface, when considered a bit The idea of a 'dot' on a surface is a generalization abstracted from our human visual sense (presumably other organisms with eyes see in 'dots' but it's hardly a simple case or something that exists independently of our perception. Calling it a bit is further abstracting it to a computer science context. A dot on a given surface might actually be a colony of bacteria or mold. If you reduce it to a bit, you have flattened thousands of fantastically complex living organism into nothingness. > (within a binary context) surrounded by empty space (which we can also > consider as a bit within the same binary context), will be decoded by > a given system which will print on my screen let's say a letter, which > in turn I will read within my language context and I will > understand.... whatever > > In the end we only have a dot. I think that we never had a dot to begin with. Only a person who can see and understand that they have a dot has a dot. 'We' see a dot because the cells in our eyes and visual cortex make sense of the optical exterior of the surface as being dot like. What is to us a dot may be like a town to bacteria or molecules. That we see anything at all is only because on a molecular level, there is a common sense between the molecules of our cells, the molecules of the dotted surface, and the molecules of whatever light source is enabling the visual sense channel. > Neither that dot, or the surrounding space, nor the letter, nor the > language and etc is the information but just pointers. All of those things are information too. All of the characteristics we can sense inform our minds as to the location, relation, and precise nature of the referent in the sensemaking terms which we have access to. The final level of information you are talking about is just the semantic-linguistic tip of the iceberg. You're talking about the kind of sense it makes to the communities of neurons of our frontal lobes rather than our visual cortex, limbic system, skin receptors, etc. > > But of course we cannot say that there is not information, there is > indeed. It's not 'there', it's 'here'. A dollar bill is a piece of paper, but in here, with 'us', it's money. There is no money in the paper. No dollars in the dollar bill. No money anywhere in the literal sense, only in a figurative sense as an aspect of our anthropological- economic perceptual frame of reference. > > Now come the hard part. You used a sharp expression that I will pick > up below, sorry for clipping it, no other way to follow up > > >...Otherwise, you have to think of information > > as some kind of disembodied metaphysical presence that's also absent. > > First I also agree that there are not such methaphysical presence > whatsoever, I believe we agree on this. > But the word "absent" is crucial I also believe. Because absent in no > way means not existent, but something like "not here" I think non existent would be "not there" but since sensorimotive experiences, perceptions, subjects, etc are "in here", then 'information' is, pardon my pun, 'neither here nor there' - in that it is a term of generalizing significance an an a-signifying way. It kills it. Do we say "Damn, look at the information on that chick!" or "This business of getting my teeth ripped out one by one with no anesthetic is quite information dense." Information is a forensic examination of living sensorimotive processes - an occidental abstraction of the concrete subjective realism. The word only has legitimate use in the context of quantitative abstraction, digital data or analog arithmetic. Nothing that we experience directly is mere information, unless we are catatonic or on heavy antipsychotic drugs. > > And to me information has always in all cases that attribute of "not > here" and it is always the absent part of the equation. > > Is there any other option for something which is always absent not to > be a metaphysical concept? Yes. Another option that it is not real at all. It's a way of thinking about reality, no more or less explanatory than talking about aethers, phlogiston, or humors. Information is a mirage. > > Yes I believe there is another option. > > Please allow me to go back to the dot example. The empty space where > that dot is not, is considered in computer science a positive signal. > I mean that "nothing" is represented by "0" (could be any other symbol > as far as we maintain 2 instances, one for the dot and one for its > "absence"). > Two signs are enough to create a number system. (curiously you just > need one presence) > And so the reader part of this primitive information system can "read" > an absence, a string made of a physical presence (the dot), and absent > "not dot". This is not metaphysical whatsoever, but part of a system. What is the reader made of? How does it 'read' anything? What is the number 'system' when it is not being read or written? Why does calling it a system make it not metaphysical? Where is it? What is it's melting point and specific gravity? In what sense can it be called physical? (sorry, not trying to provoke you at all, just questioning the position you're describing) > > I believe as well that the DNA, which can be considered as the > paradigm for the information concept, has a lot to say about absent > instances. > > Does not look to me that the DNA is like a biologic zip which builds > the elephant unzipping anything. On the contrary I think the DNA > builds that elephant reading a "code" in a very similar way that my > poor computer example above. That information is absent, it is not a > methapysical idea, and in the end it is its main "component", if I may > say. As such has no material attributes, can not be "compressed", > "sent", "destroyed", "lost", etc. All these processes happen only to > that part we called here "pointers". Not sure what you mean here exactly, but I think I get the gist. DNA can't build anything unless molecules can read other molecules. The 'information'-centric model presumes that there is this 'code' hovering somewhere or nowhere which somehow makes it's correlations into mechanical instructions. If we turn that model upside down and consider the innate capacity of molecules to learn and remember molecular conditions - to feel them as concrete sensormotive experiences in which they participate (in whatever way that is - collectively, individually, periodic imprints with mechanical consequences, etc.. who knows what a molecule experiences, they are a trillion times smaller, simpler, and faster than we are), then the code just becomes a consensus of habits, like our civilization. See what I mean? Craig PS I hope you don't mind I'm posting this on my blog. I leave the names off. http://s33light.org/ > > regards > > Carlos -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Epistemology" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/epistemology?hl=en.
