Dear Mark
Using ’physical’ this way it just tends to mean ’real’, but that
raises the problem of how to define real. Is chance real? I Gödel’s
theorem or mathematics and logic in general (the world of form)? Is
subjectivity and self-awareness, qualia? I do believe you are a
conscious subject with feelings, but I cannot feel it, see it,
measure it. Is it physical then?? I only see what you write and your
behavior. And are the meaning of your sentences physical? So here we
touch phenomenology (the experiential) and hermeneutics (meaning and
interpretation) and more generally semiotics (the meaning of signs
in cognition and communication). We have problems encompassing these
aspects in the natural, the quantitative and the technical sciences
that makes up the foundation of most conceptions of information science.
Best
Søren
*Fra:*Fis <fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es> *På vegne af *Krassimir Markov
*Sendt:* 17. maj 2018 11:33
*Til:* fis@listas.unizar.es; Burgin, Mark <mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
*Emne:* Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis
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 <mailto:mbur...@math.ucla.edu>
*Sent:*Thursday, May 17, 2018 5:20 AM
*To:*fis@listas.unizar.es <mailto: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 <mailto: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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