[Fis] it from bit

[Terrence W Deacon]

Of course we agree at base, but it is one thing to say that we learn about
the world from our interventions, and quite another to suggest that this
intervention itself is what creates that world. Clearly, the knowledge we
gain this way enables us to intervene in small ways to create unprecedented
new versions of nature's furniture (now including spacecrafts and
computers). To echo your point, indeed Life itself is a "strange loop" in
which the information it embodies alters the materiality of its embodiment.
But this very fact, exemplifies what millennia ago Aristotle called
'hylomorphism' and today we should recognize as the necessary (but
flexible) unity of form (constraint, information) and substrate (matter,
energy) - i.e. that there can't be material lacking all form, nor can there
be form that isn't embodied materially. Wheeler's phrase that "all things
physical are information-theoretic in origin" has always implied to me that
his view is not hylomorphic. But I agree that we should be suspicious of
simple notions of material, and for the same reason we should be suspicious
of simple notions of information.

On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 2:07 PM Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <
gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se> wrote:

> Dear Terry and FIS colleagues,
>
>
>
> Thank you, Terry, for reopening this very central question. I agree with
> you. Many forget Zurek's statement from 1994: 'No information without
> representation.' Landauer expressed a similar thought in his 1996 paper
> 'The Physical Nature of Information' (Phys. Lett. A 217, p. 188).
>
> Perhaps there is a circular motion of information. Obviously, 'bit from
> it' (epistemology from ontology), but then also 'it from bit' (ontology
> from epistemology).
>
>
>
> As a physicist, I believe Wheeler was not questioning the material world,
> whatever we mean by matter, certainly nothing supernatural.
>
>
>
> I agree that Wheeler's quote is confusing. Perhaps he was suggesting that
> at the very foundation of existence lies something that is not 'matter' in
> the everyday sense.
>
>
>
> The continuation of the quote is interesting: *'That which we call
> reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and
> the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things
> physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a
> participatory universe.'*
>
>
>
> All our knowledge of the world is informational in origin. This is a
> participatory universe in the sense that an observing agent actively
> perceives the world, processes the informational input, and reconstructs,
> extracting meaning.
>
>
>
> And as you point out, all of this processing is happening in a physical
> substrate. But what is that physical substrate itself? How can we say?
> Again, through observation and measurement, creating an interesting
> recursive process or a “strange loop”.
>
>
>
> All the best,
>
> Gordana
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
>
> Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Professor
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://gordana.se/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Tt8iW-cvR5tS58FvICLG21LHaqy7MnlW8sCEtXsALE4ugTKXBql_UB_-s0FwV459yzXXhe26yMMn10mVSwm2yA$ 
>
>
>
> *From: *Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es> on behalf of Terrence W Deacon
> <deacon at berkeley.edu>
> *Date: *Thursday, 18 January 2024 at 21:43
> *To: *Foundations of Information Science Information Science <
> Fis at listas.unizar.es>
> *Subject: *[Fis] it from bit
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear FIS colleagues,
>
>
>
> Now that the period for responses to Stu Kauffman’s 2024 inaugural FIS
> paper has been completed, I wanted to return to a brief comment I made
> early in the process that was both too brief and too out of context, and
> which also immediately inspired Gordon to write a critical response. Her
> response was fair and warranted given my cryptic comments, but I now want
> to briefly explain why I reacted to the “It from bit” perspective as I did.
>
>
>
> Basically, I worry that there is a strong contemporary tendency to think
> of information in immaterialist terms. I think this is the source of
> considerable confusion. Let me explain.
>
>
>
> Quoting Wheeler’s 1990 defense of this paradigm, he says:
>
>
>
> “It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has
> at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source
> and explanation”
>
>
>
> He goes on to add:
>
>
>
> “that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of
> yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses”
>
>
>
> I suggest that implicit in this way of phrasing the issue is a confounding
> of two distinct uses of the concept of information - roughly, confounding
> structural-statistical-computational uses of the term (a technical
> engineering use) with referential uses (colloquial semiotic uses in which
> "aboutness" is the defining property).
>
>
>
> Though our measuring devices indeed provide what Wheeler describes as
> yes-no (digital) answers to our experimental questions, this answers
> referential questions (knowledge of the world) - epistemology, in
> philosophical terms - but that doesn’t necessarily imply that reality
> itself (ontology) is created by such processes. Nor can we infer from this
> that the yes-no results of such measurements have an “immaterial” form. I
> suspect that even Wheeler would recognize that information is always
> materially embodied (including energetically embodied).
>
>
>
> The bits that we interpret our apparatus to provide are abstracted from a
> physical state of that device, while ignoring the many other physical
> attributes of the substrate of their embodiment. I think this bracketing of
> the physical embodiment leads to a cryptic form of Cartesianism suggesting
> that the information being thereby provided is somehow “immaterial” -
> rather than an abstraction from the materiality. In other words, the bit of
> information is an analytical dissection of some physical property from its
> whole embodiment that we take as an affordance for possible reference.
>
>
>
> My perhaps obvious point is that the abstraction should not be confused
> with what it is abstracted from. I suspect this confusion arises from the
> fact that the same bit pattern can be embodied by many different physical
> substrates and the same physical substrate can afford many different forms
> that can be rendered (described) in bits. But there can be no disembodied
> bit pattern, nor physical substrate lacking distinctions that can be
> abstracted and described as a bit pattern.
>
>
>
> So, to risk contradicting one of the most illustrious physicists of our
> time, I would argue that all bits are abstractions from its - or simply,
> “bits from its.”
>
>
>
> In our explorations of the foundations of information science, I would
> urge us not to be seduced into treating our abstractions from physical
> processes - whether quantum events or computing machine operations - as
> more fundamental than those whole processes that are their necessary
> embodiment. Perhaps I am preaching to the choir, so to speak, when I echo
> the phrase “information is physical.” And yet it seems so tempting to
> follow Plato and Descartes into the Wonderland of immaterial ideas and ideal
> forms.
>
>
>
> If this seems an obvious point, I beg your forgiveness for taking your
> valuable time to read this preachy mini essay. If it seems wrong-headed, I
> at least hope that the irritation it has created will stick with you for a
> while.
>
>
>
> Thanks, Terry
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> *Professor Terrence W. Deacon University of California, Berkeley*
>


-- 

*Professor Terrence W. DeaconUniversity of California, Berkeley*
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