Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,
First of all. I support the idea of Mark to write a paper and to publish it in
IJ ITA.
It will be nice to continue our common work this way.
At the second place, I want to point that till now the discussion on
Is information physical?
was more-less chaotic – we had no thesis and antithesis to discuss and to come
to some conclusions.
I think now, the Mark’s letter may be used as the needed thesis.
What about the ant-thesis? Well, I will try to write something below.
For me, physical, structural and mental are one and the same.
Mental means physical reflections and physical processes in the Infos
consciousness. I.e. “physical” include “mental”.
Structure (as I understand this concept) is mental reflection of the
relationships “between” and/or “in” real (physical) entities as well as
“between” and/or “in” mental (physical) entities.
I.e. “physical” include “mental” include “structural”.
Finally, IF “information is physical, structural and mental” THEN simply the
“information is physical”!
Friendly greetings
Krassimir
From: Burgin, Mark
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2018 5:20 AM
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis
Dear FISers,
It was an interesting discussion, in which many highly intelligent and
creative individuals participated expressing different points of view. Many
interesting ideas were suggested. As a conclusion to this discussion, I would
like to suggest a logical analysis of the problem based on our intrinsic and
often tacit assumptions.
To great extent, our possibility to answer the question “Is information
physical? “ depends on our model of the world. Note that here physical means
the nature of information and not its substance, or more exactly, the substance
of its carrier, which can be physical, chemical biological or quantum. By the
way, expression “quantum information” is only the way of expressing that the
carrier of information belongs to the quantum level of nature. This is similar
to the expressions “mixed numbers” or “decimal numbers”, which are only forms
or number representations and not numbers themselves.
If we assume that there is only the physical world, we have, at first, to
answer the question “Does information exist? “ All FISers assume that
information exists. Otherwise, they would not participate in our discussions.
However, some people think differently (cf., for example, Furner, J. (2004)
Information studies without information).
Now assuming that information exists, we have only one option, namely, to
admit that information is physical because only physical things exist.
If we assume that there are two worlds - information is physical, we have
three options assuming that information exists:
- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is both physical and mental
Finally, coming to the Existential Triad of the World, which comprises three
worlds - the physical world, the mental world and the world of structures, we
have seven options assuming that information exists:
- information is physical
- information is mental
- information is structural
- information is both physical and mental
- information is both physical and structural
- information is both structural and mental
- information is physical, structural and mental
The solution suggested by the general theory of information tries to avoid
unnecessary multiplication of essences suggesting that information (in a
general sense) exists in all three worlds but … in the physical world, it is
called energy, in the mental world, it is called mental energy, and in the
world of structures, it is called information (in the strict sense). This
conclusion well correlates with the suggestion of Mark Johnson that information
is both physical and not physical only the general theory of information makes
this idea more exact and testable.
In addition, being in the world of structures, information in the strict
sense is represented in two other worlds by its representations and carriers.
Note that any representation of information is its carrier but not each carrier
of information is its representation. For instance, an envelope with a letter
is a carrier of information in this letter but it is not its representation.
Besides, it is possible to call all three faces of information by the name
energy - physical energy, mental energy and structural energy.
Finally, as many interesting ideas were suggested in this discussion, may be
Krassimir will continue his excellent initiative combining the most interesting
contributions into a paper with the title
Is
information physical?
and publish it in his esteemed Journal.
Sincerely,
Mark Burgin
On 5/11/2018 3:20 AM, Karl Javorszky wrote:
Dear Arturo,
There were some reports in clinical psychology, about 30 years ago, that
relate to the question whether a machine can pretend to be a therapist. That
was the time as computers could newly be used in an interactive fashion, and
the Rogers techniques were a current discovery.
(Rogers developed a dialogue method where one does not address the contents
of what the patient says, but rather the emotional aspects of the message,
assumed to be at work in the patient.)
They then said, that in some cases it was indistinguishable, whether a human
or a machine provides the answer to a patient's elucidations.
Progress since then has surely made possible to create machines that are
indistinguishable in interaction to humans. Indeed, what is called "expert
systems ", are widely used in many fields. If the interaction is rational,
that is: formally equivalent to a logical discussion modi Wittgenstein, the
difference in: "who arrived at this answer, machinery or a human", becomes
irrelevant.
Artistry, intuition, creativity are presently seen as not possible to
translate into Wittgenstein sentences. Maybe the inner instincts are not yet
well understood. But!: there are some who are busily undermining the current
fundamentals of rational thinking. So there is hope that we shall live to
experience the ultimate disillusionment, namely that humans are a
combinatorial tautology.
Accordingly, may I respectfully express opposing views to what you state:
that machines and humans are of incompatible builds. There are hints that as
far as rational capabilities go, the same principles apply. There is a rest,
you say, which is not of this kind. The counter argument says that irrational
processes do not take place in organisms, therefore what you refer to belongs
to the main process, maybe like waste belongs to the organism's principle. This
view draws a picture of a functional biotope, in which the waste of one kind of
organism is raw material for a different kind.
Karl
<tozziart...@libero.it> schrieb am Do., 10. Mai 2018 15:24:
Dear Bruno,
You state:
"IF indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science,
THEN “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e.
“physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
...Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of
description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any
change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the
brain/body at that level of description".
The problem of your account is the following:
You say "IF" and "indexical digital mechanism is the HYPOTHESIS".
Therefore, you are talking of an HYPOTHESIS: it is not empirically tested
and it is not empirically testable. You are starting with a sort of postulate:
I, and other people, do not agree with it. The current neuroscience does not
state that our brain/body is (or can be replaced by) a digital machine.
In other words, your "IF" stands for something that possibly does not exist
in our real world. Here your entire building falls down.
--
Inviato da Libero Mail per Android
giovedì, 10 maggio 2018, 02:46PM +02:00 da Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be:
(This mail has been sent previously , but without success. I resend it,
with minor changes). Problems due to different accounts. It was my first
comment to Mark Burgin new thread “Is information physical?”.
Dear Mark, Dear Colleagues,
Apology for not answering the mails in the chronological orders, as my
new computer classifies them in some mysterious way!
This is my first post of the week. I might answer comment, if any, at the
end of the week.
On 25 Apr 2018, at 03:47, Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu> wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
I would like to suggest the new topic for discussion
Is information physical?
That is an important topic indeed, very close to what I am working on.
My result here is that
IF indexical digital mechanism is correct in the cognitive science,
THEN “physical” has to be defined entirely in arithmetical term, i.e.
“physical” becomes a mathematical notion.
The proof is constructive. It shows exactly how to derive physics from
Arithmetic (the reality, not the theory. I use “reality” instead of “model"
(logician’s term, because physicists use “model" for “theory").
Indexical digital mechanism is the hypothesis that there is a level of
description of the brain/body such that I would survive, or “not feel any
change” if my brain/body is replaced by a digital machine emulating the
brain/body at that level of description.
Not only information is not physical, but matter, time, space, and all
physical objects become part of the universal machine phenomenology. Physics is
reduced to arithmetic, or, equivalently, to any Turing-complete machinery.
Amazingly Arithmetic (even the tiny semi-computable part of arithmetic) is
Turing complete (Turing Universal).
The basic idea is that:
1) no universal machine can distinguish if she is executed by an
arithmetical reality or by a physical reality. And,
2) all universal machines are executed in arithmetic, and they are
necessarily undetermined on the set of of all its continuations emulated in
arithmetic.
That reduces physics to a statistics on all computations relative to my
actual state, and see from some first person points of view (something I can
describe more precisely in some future post perhaps).
Put in that way, the proof is not constructive, as, if we are machine, we
cannot know which machine we are. But Gödel’s incompleteness can be used to
recover this constructively for a simpler machine than us, like Peano
arithmetic. This way of proceeding enforces the distinction between first and
third person views (and six others!).
I have derived already many feature of quantum mechanics from this
(including the possibility of quantum computer) a long time ago. I was about
sure this would refute Mechanism, until I learned about quantum mechanics,
which verifies all the most startling predictions of Indexical Mechanism,
unless we add the controversial wave collapse reduction principle.
The curious “many-worlds” becomes the obvious (in arithmetic) many
computations (up to some equivalence quotient). The weird indeterminacy becomes
the simpler amoeba like duplication. The non-cloning of matter becomes obvious:
as any piece of matter is the result of the first person indeterminacy (the
first person view of the amoeba undergoing a duplication, …) on infinitely many
computations. This entails also that neither matter appearance nor
consciousness are Turing emulable per se, as the whole arithmetical
reality—which is a highly non computable notion as we know since Gödel—plays a
key role. Note this makes Digital Physics leaning to inconsistency, as it
implies indexical computationalism which implies the negation of Digital
Physics (unless my “body” is the entire physical universe, which I rather
doubt).
My opinion is presented below:
Why some people erroneously think that information is physical
The main reason to think that information is physical is the strong
belief of many people, especially, scientists that there is only physical
reality, which is studied by science. At the same time, people encounter
something that they call information.
When people receive a letter, they comprehend that it is information
because with the letter they receive information. The letter is physical, i.e.,
a physical object. As a result, people start thinking that information is
physical. When people receive an e-mail, they comprehend that it is information
because with the e-mail they receive information. The e-mail comes to the
computer in the form of electromagnetic waves, which are physical. As a result,
people start thinking even more that information is physical.
However, letters, electromagnetic waves and actually all physical
objects are only carriers or containers of information.
To understand this better, let us consider a textbook. Is possible
to say that this book is knowledge? Any reasonable person will tell that the
textbook contains knowledge but is not knowledge itself. In the same way, the
textbook contains information but is not information itself. The same is true
for letters, e-mails, electromagnetic waves and other physical objects because
all of them only contain information but are not information. For instance, as
we know, different letters can contain the same information. Even if we make an
identical copy of a letter or any other text, then the letter and its copy will
be different physical objects (physical things) but they will contain the same
information.
Information belongs to a different (non-physical) world of
knowledge, data and similar essences. In spite of this, information can act on
physical objects (physical bodies) and this action also misleads people who
think that information is physical.
OK. The reason is that we can hardly imagine how immaterial or non
physical objects can alter the physical realm. It is the usual problem faced by
dualist ontologies. With Indexical computationalism we recover many dualities,
but they belong to the phenomenologies.
One more misleading property of information is that people can
measure it. This brings an erroneous assumption that it is possible to measure
only physical essences. Naturally, this brings people to the erroneous
conclusion that information is physical. However, measuring information is
essentially different than measuring physical quantities, i.e., weight. There
are no “scales” that measure information. Only human intellect can do this.
OK. I think all intellect can do that, not just he human one.
Now, the reason why people believe in the physical is always a form of
the “knocking table” argument. They knocks on the table and say “you will not
tell me that this table is unreal”.
I have got so many people giving me that argument, that I have made
dreams in which I made that argument, or even where I was convinced by that
argument … until I wake up.
When we do metaphysics with the scientific method, this “dream argument”
illustrates that seeing, measuring, … cannot prove anything ontological. A
subjective experience proves only the phenomenological existence of
consciousness, and nothing more. It shows that although there are plenty of
strong evidences for a material reality, there are no evidences (yet) for a
primitive or primary matter (and that is why, I think, Aristotle assumes it
quasi explicitly, against Plato, and plausibly against Pythagorus).
Mechanism forces a coming back to Plato, where the worlds of ideas is the
world of programs, or information, or even just numbers, since very elementary
arithmetic (PA without induction, + the predecessor axiom) is already Turing
complete (it contains what I have named a Universal Dovetailer: a program which
generates *and* executes all programs).
So I agree with you: information is not physical. I claim that if we
assume Mechanism (Indexical computationalism) matter itself is also not
*primarily* physical: it is all in the “head of the universal machine/number”
(so to speak).
And this provides a test for primary matter: it is enough to find if
there is a discrepancy between the physics that we infer from the observation,
and the physics that we extract from “the head” of the machine. This took me
more than 30 years of work, but the results obtained up to now is that there is
no discrepancies. I have compared the quantum logic imposed by incompleteness
(formally) on the semi-computable (partial recursive, sigma_1) propositions,
with most quantum logics given by physicists, and it fits rather well.
Best regards,
Bruno
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