[Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis
Dai Griffiths
dai.griffiths.1 at gmail.com
Thu May 17 13:44:14 CEST 2018
What is a 'thing'?
Perhaps it is more reasonable to think that only processes exist, and
that for human convenience in living in the world we put conceptual
membranes around some parts of those processes and call them 'things'.
From this point of view we do not have two aspects (things and
predictions about those things), but simply the monitoring of processes,
and theorising about what we find. This does not preclude a taxonomy of
processes (e.g. mechanisms might be a special kind of process).
Perhaps our "Is information physical" problem could be usefully
reformulated as "Is information a thing?".
Dai
On 17/05/18 11:47, Jose Javier Blanco Rivero wrote:
>
> Dear FISers,
>
> I recently came across an old interview to W. van Orman Quine and I
> got an idea -maybe not very original per se. Quine distinguishes two
> kind of philosophical problems: ontological (those referred to the
> existence of things) and predicative (what can we say and know about
> things). Against Quine materialism I came across the idea that
> ontological problems are undecidable -I think of Turing's Halting
> problem. The fact is that we cannot leave the predicative realm. All
> we have as scientists is scientifical statements (therefore I think of
> Science as a communicative social system differentiated from its
> environment by means of a code -I think Loet would agree with me in
> this point). As a system (I mean not the social system, but the set of
> statements taken as a unity) they all are incomplete. There are many
> ways to deal with it, as logicians have shown (in this point I confess
> I would need to examine carefully B. Marchal's ideas. I think I have
> many points of agreement with him but also of disagreement -but
> honestly I currently lack the knowledge to undertake a thorough
> discussion). Self-reference, I think, is one of the most coherent ways
> to deal with it. But this means we have to learn to deal with paradoxes.
> Accordingly, as information theorist we would need to identify the
> constitutive paradox of information and next unfold that paradox in a
> set of statements that represent what we know about information. The
> problem is that although we can have the intuition that information is
> real, physical as has been said, it cannot be proved. An external
> reference like "reality ", if we look carefully, acts as regulatory
> function within the system. I remember that in the "Science of the
> Society", Luhmann devised the concept of consistency proofs
> (Konsistenzprüfung).But reality as such, the Ding an sich, is
> inaccessible. In conclusion, Quine would say that we should not be
> asking us a question that cannot be answered.
>
> Best,
>
> JJ
>
> El may 16, 2018 11:24 PM, "Burgin, Mark" <mburgin at math.ucla.edu
> <mailto:mburgin at math.ucla.edu>> escribió:
>
> 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
>>
>> <tozziarturo at libero.it <mailto:tozziarturo at 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
>> marchal at ulb.ac.be <mailto:marchal at 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
>>> <mburgin at math.ucla.edu <mailto:mburgin at 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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--
-----------------------------------------
Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
Professor of Education
School of Education and Psychology
The University of Bolton
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