Two new entries at Encyclopedia Philaxiom: Natural Meaning and Physicalism

An entry for Physicalism is the new metaphysics and philosophy of science glossarial entry and primer at Encyclopedia Philaxiom with lots of links to resources and books and plenty of contextual background to help situate the topic for the uninitiated. Refer to Physicalism in Encyclopedia Philaxiom.
The basics of H. P. Grice's natural meaning are explained at Natural Meaning.

Did you know about Ontic Cafe's Youtube Channel?

Check out our Youtube channel for some philosophy tutorials and some laughs... Ontic Cafe on Youtube

Do Complex Replicating Molecular Machines Evolve Using Stored Quantum Information?

The first article in the informationist biosciences section of Informationist eMagazine is an analysis and review of lengthy paper presented by molecular and computational biologist A. V. Melkikh. Melkikh pursues the argument for partially directed evolution of replicators in protein synthesis using evolutionary game theory. He proposes that a lot of information is required to guide the process of selecting workable conformations of biomolecules in order to arrive at new replicators in new environmental niches, and that the most likely source of this a-priori information is the quantum structures of important biomolecules.

Some Thoughts on Evolutionary Debunking, Religious Faith Adherence, Psycho social dynamics, and Psychological Health...

Q: (Andrea Garatshun)
Does this sound true? ... 'When your world view and beliefs align as close to reality as possible, you will have a better chance at being psychologically healthy.' What do you think?

Discussion:

Perhaps this might depend on what criteria are used for measuring psychological health? There are studies that claim that religious faith reduces stress, but I doubt that the dynamics are so simple. It may do so in the short term, but not the long term. Moreover - it may very much depend upon the intelligence, emotional intelligence, and personality profile of the individual. That said, I think that Sagan was ultimately right. Facing reality without delusive narratives is the best way in the end, and better for everyone.

Evolutionary debunking theories like that of Plantinga rely upon the idea that evolution is an off track process - that it does not care about whether an organism's brain evolves to track what is really going on so long as the organism survives: so long as it is fitter and out-competes its con-specifics. However - as Griffiths and Wilkins have argued evolution is not an off track process. Our cognition has evolved to track information in the environment as accurately as resources allow for in the time available. That is why evolution has selected us to have lots of energy guzzling brain matter - to track the information with a minimum of type one errors (not getting the right facts - or getting the facts wrong.) Otherwise the ape gets squashed by falling rocks, and out competed by the other apes.

Religious beliefs seemingly do not have to be directly based upon truth tracking, but it does not follow that faithist's cognition is not indirectly tracking a certain truth - that if they adhere to certain beliefs they will do better in the social group. At this point   it is the health of the social group and the nature of the beliefs that determines the outcome. Group delusion might be okay for some improved outcomes - but not too good for other important things. It is the root of pragmatism applied as James applied it. It does not follow that our cognition is not best served as being truth tracking.

So here is a question - who was more psychologically healthy - Giordano Bruno (whom Cardinal Bellarmine burned) or Galileo (who listened to Foscarini and avoided a roasting.) I think that Bruno was arguably just as healthy, but that his society was pathological. Both he and Galileo were healthier than Bellarmine - who was freaking mad. Unfortunately, brute force has a lot to do with success in human affairs. Best perhaps to pretend in some circumstances - but some faithists don't just pretend - they dissimulate persistently. That is pathological.

Synopsis of upcoming talk to Sydney Atheists on February 14 2014 at Strattons Hotel 249 Castlereagh Street Sydney

For our religionist, theist and faithist brethren in the human family the meaning of life is often bound up with faith or spirituality of some kind. Definitions of these things aside, this is often faith in the existence and reliability of what are usually supernatural entities. There is usually some kind of personal and/or communal inspiration claimed. This in turn is usually in accordance with some doctrine, also often taken to be somehow inspired. For the religionist and faith adherent, the meaning of life must be supplied, inspired, defined, grounded in, and sustained by an external supernatural force, spirit, and/or deity or deities of some kind. Meaning is realized in the nexus of faith based belief in and commitment to the existence of said entities, and the reliability of them for some kind of personal advantage and/or improvement. The meaning of life begins and ends there.

Unlike theologians, professional (and aspiring) philosophers are often quietist about the meaning of life (not venturing to offer any answer, opinion, or solution) or at least resigning about such questions (there are certainly exceptions – most notably perhaps being the Existentialists for whom life was in a very real sense about simply being.) However, in philosophy, the prospect of trying to answer the question of the meaning of life is often treated as something of an in joke: “They’re going to answer what!? Oh well we can all go home then”. Indeed, spend enough time just arguing about meaning, and one of the philosopher’s jobs is to argue, and to challenge accepted ideas. It is not clear what is to be argued, although challenging the idea that an answer is available through faith is more than reasonable.

I will offer neither a quietist nor a positivist answer, but like all aspiring philosophers will try not to embarrass myself pondering the question. I proffer that arguably no philosopher will ever do better than author Douglas Adams, whose characters Loonquawl and Phouchg (Adams frequently righteously lampooned philosophers) and mega computer Deep Thought parlay about the question:

“But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!” howled Loonquawl.
“Yes,” said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, “but what actually is it?”
A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other.
“Well, you know, it’s just Everything… Everything…” offered Phouchg weakly.
“Exactly!” said Deep Thought. “So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.” (The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Chapter 34, Page 32)

A Discussion with Alexander Gillett About The Metaphysics of Information, Physicalism About Information, and Non Eliminative Ontic Structural Realism

Ontic Cafe 6 beans Strength: Academic Specialists and Masochistic Layphilosophers only.

My PhD thesis presents a case for physicalism about information: that information is and reduces to the physical and that there is no information without physical structures. An initial response to this position is often that it is simply a restatement of token physicalism. A lengthy debunking of this response is not within the scope of this post. However, and easy way to demonstrate it is not sound is to point out that numerous philosophers of information and information theorists have proposed that non-spatiotemporal non-causal structures are a sufficient condition for the existence of information. This means that there are non-phuysicalist conceptions of the nature of information itself. There are other such conceptions.
Another philosophical expression of physicalism about information, then, is that it is an anti-Platonist conception of information. This is at best a partial statement, but it serves to highlight the relevance of a physicalist position. Mine is also a non-subjectivist, non-pluralist (nominally) and non-statisticalist conception (the later being controversial.) I will not attempt to explain these positions extensively here. According to subjectivism about information, information is only realised in the context of being received and (usually) perceived by some kind of receiving agent (the agent need not be a cognitive agent - but can be simply an organismic consumer as is the case with the teleosemantic theories of Ruth Millikan and Nicholas Shea.)
The dissertation (Physicalism About Information with Applications) draws on resources from applied mathematical theories of information - algorithmic, quantitative and computational. I use premises and arguments put by quantum computing and information theorists like Rolf Landauer, David DiVincenzo and Daniel Loss. For the metaphysical conception, the argument relies to a significant extent upon the kind of non-eliminative ontic structural realism put forward by James Ladyman and Steven French. However, I do not commit myself to any particular OSR perspective. Teh leading philosopehr of information in the world today - Luciano Floridi - has demonstrated that part of the project of philosophers of information should be to investigate the nature of information. This is, ironically and perhaps unexpectedly at this time in the history of philosophy, a new metaphysical project. Those materialists familiar with the work of Rudolph Carnap and Willard van Ormand Quine will realise the relevance of this.

Recently I gave a presentation at the University of Melbourne Australian Postgraduate Philosophy conference on the subject of explanation in mathematics. The argument I presented, stated briefly, was that if mathematical abstracta are explanatory because they are informational, then there is a strong case to be made that, against the preponderance of philosophical intuition and thought on the matter, abstracta must be physical. This is not the argument that I am interested in making here, however.

To get to the point of this post, an attendee at the conference, Alexander Gillett, was interested in my use of ontic structural realism. Alex is a specialist in OSR, and had some interesting questions and perspectives to offer on the use of NOSR as a partial metaphysical basis for a physicalist conception and ontology of information. Alex kindly agreed to the publishing of relevant parts of our recent email communications on the matter. I offer them here for the interest of the Ontic Cafe audience.

First Exchange

Dear Bruce, Last month I attended the post graduate conference in Melbourne and I found your paper on OSR, information theory and a critique of Platonism (a.k.a. Mark Colyvan) fascinating. I have been researching structural realism for a while now, and having come from a different direction it was interesting to hear you discuss the information-theoretic versions of SR. I have only recently begun examining these approaches and trying to get to grips with them. I have read Floridi's "defence of ISR" - do you recommend any other papers by him or others?

After your talk I was asking you about an adequate definition of nature or the physical, and about Ladyman & Ross' work on real patterns, but unfortunately the time for questions ran out when you were about halfway through an answer on defining the physical. I was wondering whether you would be willing to discuss these issues now. Additionally, you made reference to a paper called "An Informational Physicalist Ontic Structural Realist Conception of Mathematical Abstracta" which sounds really interesting. Would you mind sending me a copy of this paper or any others that I might read?

You also talked about physical information sources or information-bearing structures as the basis of any possible explanatory account. In this regard, would I be right to say that information comes before meaning? Can I also ask, how do you consider information metaphysically? . . . Anyway, thanks for the talk, it was probably the most interesting thing I heard over the course of the conference and I'm sorry I didn't manage to catch up with you in person. Regards, Alex Gillett
Hi Alex,

I am pleased to hear from you Alexander. . . .

Yes I put information before meaning in a sense, but I take information to exist physically and as such to be intrinsically semantic on a particular causal basis.

I have a paper in review called “Information is Semantic but Has no Alethic Value”. [I will upload the pre-pulbishing version of this paper to Ontic Cafe in the next instalment]

I have a couple of papers that I can send you. I have to submit one of them to a journal this week first (Physicalist Ontic Structural Realism About Information in Applied Mathematical Theories of Information). The other paper I will send you tomorrow.

Best Regards,

Bruce.
Hi Bruce, . . . I went to a conference the other week and it left me even more convinced that I need to engage with information theory more. Just a quick question: since I've come at information theory from a structural realist POV, what is it about Floridi's approach that you disagree with? Do you think you're approach is more amenable to some metaphysical version of SR? Regards, Alex
So, brief bio out the way, I'd like to say thanks for the paper, and if you are willing to send anything else I'd be delighted to read it.

Just a few comments vis-a-vis structural realism (SR). Both Ladyman & Ross (2007) and French & Ladyman (2003) - your paper seems to mix references here perhaps? - are more readily seen as promoting an eliminative metaphysical version of SR. They oppose the notion that structure is fundamentally causal, arguing that since fundamental physics is currently agnostic about causality, metaphysics should not posit it as a fundamental feature of reality (see Chapter 5 of Every Thing Must Go, 2007). Additionally, they propose an eliminative account of objects. Some have pointed out that this is inconsistent and they have subsequently relented and allowed in thin-objects - which are purely relational. Michael Esfeld & Vincent Lam have argued for this position more consistently (along with Fred Muller & Simon Saunders) - what they call Moderate Ontic Structural Realism (MSR) - on the basis of empirical evidence from fundamental physics and philosophical arguments surrounding the methodological issues relating to how to cash out objects in an ontology. Additionally, they also argue that reality is fundamentally causal or dynamic. As such, perhaps their approach is more conducive to your own?

In addition to these issues, Ladyman & Ross (2007) propose an ontological reading of Daniel Dennett's 'Real Patterns' as the basis of their ontology, and they couch this in information-theoretic language (see chapter 4). Their reason for doing so is to avoid explicit reference to causal process and to replace this with 'information-bearing'. What interested me about your work, was given your background, you could probably appraise this approach far better than I. I was wondering whether you had had a chance to engage with this material? The reason I ask is that you are the first person beyond Floridi to be explicitly discussing SR and information theory - and you disagree with the former. This is what interested me greatly.

Anyway, thank you for sending the paper and I hope to hear from you soon;
Hi Alex,

Thanks for your response.

I think it is the 2003 paper (it is possible that I have mixed references) where when challenged by Cao to describe the kind of structure that they were talking about.

I have read the material that you are referring to. (Not all of it recently.)

My position is hyper-physicalist. People find it annoying and think I am making a mistake. But I have not heard a good reason to drop it yet. It is difficult to argue for because it requires informational structure to be real structure, and this involves the structural realist mathematician to be a physical structural realist. It also requires that there is a distinction between statistical measures of various kinds and what is being measured. In other words there is only one kind of real structure that is a necessary condition for the existence of information. It is non-eliminative physicalist causal structural realism. Yes – the dumb ass bumping together kind. This is highly unintuitive – but then so is the statistical conception of the measure of information (a MEASURE.)

I cannot do justice to it in one email, but I will send you some papers soon.

Interestingly, they start that paper (‘THE DISSOLUTION OF OBJECTS: BETWEEN PLATONISM AND PHENOMENALISM’) with:

One of the motivations for Ladyman’s ‘ontic’ form of SR is that it offers the realist some hope that she may be able to get away with carrying less metaphysical baggage than the ‘standard’ realist without having to fall into the clutches of the constructive empiricist (2003, 73.)

And in it go on to say that:

Cao persists in lumbering us with two seemingly contradictory identifications that we thought we had rejected in our paper. The first concerns the identification between physical structures and mathematical ones, which Cao then takes to imply that the ontic structural realist must be a Platonist.

I see why Cao does this. Because it looks like the only way that L & F have to go. As I will mention below, I think that Cao’s misinterpretation points to the right view for the metaphysics of information.

Then:

Now, we did say that the distinction between the mathematical and the physical may become blurred, particularly if the mark of the latter has to do with ‘sub-stance’ or individual objects or the like. Nevertheless, blurring does not imply identity. The mathematical can be trivially distinguished from the physical in that there is more of it; there is more mathematics than we know what to (physically) do with, which is what Redhead expressed with his notion of ‘surplus structure’. What makes a structure ‘physical’? Well, crudely, that it can be related – via partial isomorphisms in our framework – to the (physical) ‘phenomena’. This is how ’physical content’ enters. Less trivially, the mathematical can be distinguished from the physical in that the latter is also causal, (2003, 75)

Something very interesting, and controversial, happens with my physicalist conception of informational and real structures, and the concept of mathematical abstracta that goes with it. The distinction between the structural realism of the mathematician and that of the metaphysician in the philosophy of science IS eliminated. Only the latter physicalist conception is retained for structures that can be considered informational or information bearing.

There are lots of ways to approach this unpopular position. First however, here is what Ladyman and French then said to Cao:

Cao understands us as advocating ‘the dissolution of physical entities into mathematical structures’. But, first of all, by ‘dissolution’ we mean metaphysical reconceptualisation. And secondly, as we tried to em-phasise, to describe something using mathematics does not imply that it itself is mathematical – the structures are what they are and we describe them in mathematico-physical terms. Let us put it as clearly as we can: we are not mathematical Platonists with regard to structures (2003, 75.)

So mathematical structure does reduce to physical structure for Ladyman and French. It must. I am saying that this also means that there is no information without physical structure, and that in fact all information must reduce to physical structure.

Shannon’s work creates big problems here, but only because it gets misinterpreted. Shannon does say that the model of a source (stochastic process) is also an information source, and he uses a statistical ‘measure’. But it is the measure that is statistical – not the information. The Boltzmann conception of entropy makes this worse not better. Even though entropy is a probabilistic measure in Boltzmann’s theory, the entropy or disorder is in fact physical. There is no real entropy without the physical configuration of the physical particle system. Saying that information is statistical is nonsensical according to Shannon’s account, especially if information is entropy. The measure of entropy is a measure of physical entropy, and even if you do not apply it to a real physical system, you don’t have real entropy without the physical system. Likewise with information.

What about relations between physical point, entities, and structures? What about mathematical patterns that are not physical structures? Aren’t they informational? Kolmogorov did not think they were even real. Neither do I. I therefore think that they are not informational (neither did Kolmogorov – his data objects were all strings of physical symbols of one kind or another. Tables of random numbers were tables of physical symbols for Kolmogorov.)

What about the fact that mathematical patterns seem to carry information in the sense that they can tell us things about a system even if the system is not realized? This seems to suggest (per Colyvan and Lyon) that there must be real Platonist informational structures. Ladyman and French do not want to be Platonist, but they misinterpret Shannon on the nature of information. I have suggested a way in which possibility spaces and probability spaces can in fact be physical structures (controversial but it is a solid argument) – but this is not what Ladyman and French do.

The best way to bring this out is with an error made by Dretske (and I think that it simply is an error.) Dretske demonstrates (1981, 26-31, 38) that there is a real distinction between causality and information. However, the conclusion that does not follow is that there can be information transmission and generation without causality. This is demonstrably false (I provide an argument in my thesis.) it also follows from this that if Ladyman and French pursue a statistical conception of information like Dennett, they have not eliminated causality at all.

No causal physical structure – no real information.

Kind Regards, Bruce.
Hi Bruce,

Thanks for the emails. I've got to stay in all day waiting for a delivery, so the article on information theory and biology shall be both a great time killer and brain-food.

I really enjoyed the responses to my questions - very much appreciate the frankness. In particular, what interests me is what I shall refer to as the "Blurring problem". I have recently had a paper which gives an overview of OSR and this issue of dissolution of the distinction between the mathematical and the physical accepted to the Polish Journal of Philosophy. In this I explore the various (inadequate) responses to this very problem. Now, although in the paper you cite, Ladyman agrees with French that causation can be used to "trivially" articulate this blurred boundary; mostly Ladyman has rejected the notion of causality as a distinguishing factor in solving this problem (see Every Thing Must Go and a recent interview on rationallyspeaking.org maintains the agnosticism).

Furthermore, I think their attempted response to Cao just begs the question via appealing to a tautology: the physical = the physical.

Additionally, Ladyman's relationship with platonism is also confusing - in some places he rejects it out right, and in others he advocates a naturalised version. And in the interview above he seems affable to pythagoreanism or platonism (a la Max Tegmark's extreme OSR mathematical universe hypothesis) although not committed to either.

For all of these reasons it seems to me that your position is more amenable to Esfeld and Lam's perhaps. For them physical structure is causal and thus distinguished from the mathematical in this sense, and they reject platonism in this sense. (I have attached papers by Esfeld & Lam for your perusal if you are interested)

I think such a view is strengthened by your comments regarding the difference between a measure and the thing that is measured. This seems to be similar issue to the blurring problem, where I think an account of scientific representation is missing. Ladyman & Ross's recent paper, "The World in Data" (2013), combines these two issues. In addition to stating that physical structure is modal, Ladyman & Ross conclude this paper by stating, following CS Peirce, (and presumably extrapolating from their statistical RP approach at representation) that...

The fundamental empirical structure of the world is not mathematical but statistical. And there is no such thing as purely formal statistics. The 'principles' of statistics are simply whatever dynamics emerge from our collective exploration of, and discovery of patterns in, data. [...And this is premised on...] the grandest discovery of the twentieth century, that fundamental physics, and therefore reality itself, are irreducibly statistical. What is the world? It is the endless weave of patterns to be extracted from noise, at an endless proliferation of mutually constraining scales, that we will go on uncovering for as long as we have the collective and institutional courage that comes from love of objective knowledge, the great moral core of the Enlightenment.

On your account I take it this is rather like mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself? However, it could also be interpreted in a more reasonable fashion when read in the light of there comments at the close of chapter 3 ETMG (pg189). In trying to unify fundamental physics with the special sciences they state that there are two options: either [a] reality is composed of infostuff; or [b] the world is not made of anything but that information is the main concept for understanding the objective modal structure of reality. They choose view two, in which case they see some form of information-theoretic notation as the basal and collective account of scientific representation. This would again affirm their refusal that dissolution = identity, but point to an obscure fact that scientific representation is so accurate as to entail partial isomorphism - an astonishing fact colloquially referred to as the Wigner Puzzle by Colyvan. Textual support for this interpretation comes from their quoting of Zeilenger: "it is impossible to distinguish operationally in any way [between] reality and information" (ibid). So although they may be wrong about the statistical aspect - is there a consilience with your view here, or how does it differ? Do you maintain a more robust distinction between informational representation and physical structure as source? I'm guessing this is your view given your last comment, but how do you cash out this distinction in a philosophically robust manner?

I'm not in the best place to judge these views, and I am more interested in exploring the terrain of SR and its connectivity to information theory and an account of scientific representation than throwing my hat in with any side in this debate. As such, I'm throwing out these comments and questions as a devil's advocate and interested to see how you respond.

What I'm most intrigued by is your proposal that possibility and probability spaces are physical. Does this amend the indispensabilitist arguments for mathematical realism in favour of a form of nominalism? How does it relate to other issues with the applicability of mathematics? Could you perhaps spell out the argument in a little more detail?

Looking forward to your responses, Regards,

Alex

Encyclopedia Philaxiom - New Mathematical Platonism Entry.

I have been busy coding updates to the interface in Encyclopedia Philaxiom. There are now two ways to set the search category (the alphabetic field of letter links and a drop down list) and there are four ways to sort the results per category - alphabetically and by date ascending and descending.

Dont miss the new entry under P! This time it is Platonism about mathematics and mathematical entities that gets the Philaxiom treatment.

Below is a list of references recommended in the entry:

New philaxiom.info Article about conformational information in protein folding and the role of chaperone molecules.

A new philosophy of information in biology article Protein Folding Chaperone Molecules: The Importance of Conformational Information. Category: Philosophy of Information in Molecular Bioscience.

3 minute philosophy

If you are looking for the most excellent 3 Minute Philosophy series (not to be confused with the accidentally similarly named 3 Minute Philosophy Short Shots series - now renamed Philosophy Short Shots) then please visit CollegeBinary

Informationist eMagazine: a new online magazine dedicated to the philosophy of information in physics, the computer sciences, and the molecular biosciences

Vist https://www.facebook.com/informationistmag to get insights about the philosophy of information as applied to different scientific disciplines, and for backgrounders in quantum computing and molecular bioscience that help situate discussions of information theory and the philosophy of information within those disciplines.

Encyclopedia Philaxiom: Three New Entries today...

1. The Right of Nature.
2. Law of Nature (17th Century Political and Social Philosophy and Social Contract Theory.)
3. Evolutionary Debunking Arguments - Alvin Plantinga's The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism Analysis and Study Guide

Encyclopedia Philaxiom

The Encyclopedia Philaxiom is a free philosophy and philosophy of science reference resource. Entries range from encyclopedic to glossarial, and are useful as study notes and for getting an understanding of key concepts and relevant sources quickly and easily. The encyclopedia is connected to the philaxiom.info high speed search facility, allowing keyword and phrase searching on the encyclopedia's database.

Nature of information Poll results...

The results of the poll about the nature of information are in. Ontic cafe will run a longer poll within the next day or so. Also look out for an article about the information density of fractals. The next article in the series about whether evolution of the genome and protein synthesis obeys informational laws is also due in the next two days.

One preliminary note about the results of the poll is that there is little to indicate that subjectivism or pluralism are intuitively or perhaps otherwise pre-eminent positions. This is somewhat surprising as pluralism is the position of leading philosophers, and subjectivism has also often been a popular position.

So the  previous poll results were as follows:

Does information exist apart from perceiving agents (without some thinking organism to perceive it)?

Yes (Objectivism about information)	25 (69%)
No (Subjectivism about information)	8 (22%)
Depends upon context (Pluralism about information)	4 (11%)
Information is an abstracta (Platonism about information)	0 (0%)
Information is somehow statistical (Probabilism about information)	3 (8%)
Not Sure	0 (0%)

Change your vote

Votes so far: 36
Days left to vote: 21

The Poll has been relaunched.

Ontic Cafe's What the PH!!?? Series. David Lewis in All Possible Worlds

Questions or comments about the poll (Does information exist apart from perceiving agents...)

If you have any queries or comments about the above poll, please feel free to post them here...

Are There Informational Laws of Genome Evolution? – Part One: Information and Molecular Bioscience

Ontic Cafe Four Beans Difficulty (Detailed but written to be accessible to laypersons)

This post is the first of two. The material is from a quite complex field of the philosophy of biology and information theory in biology. It would normally be at least 5 Ontic Café Beans, but I have watered it down to about three. Nonacademic philosophers should be able to get a reasonable idea what is going on and benefit from an introduction to one of the hottest topics in the philosophy of information and biology.

Different Conceptions of Information

Let’s start with a rapid introduction to the philosophy of information. There are several conceptions of the nature of information – of what information actually is. These conceptions vary dramatically in their details and ontological commitments – the things that are taken to be necessary to have for there to exist some information (in philosophical language we day “the necessary conditions” for information to exist.) Here a couple of quick examples will be instructive.

The most common understanding, and the most common scientific one, is that of quantitative information theories. In these theories one has information on a statistical or probabilistic basis. According to these conceptions information exists when there is a reduction in uncertainty about what is happening at an information source. An information source is any physical process that can be modeled statistically – about which you can say there is a certain probability of the next state of the source based on the current one. A simple example is you reading this sentence. Each word makes the next word more or less likely because of the structure of the English language and the rules (grammar and meaning) for making English sentences. The source is the text you are reading. This is the very example most used by the founder of modern quantitative information theory – mathematician Claude E. Shannon (The Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1948.)

The main alternatives to quantitative statistical theories are algorithmic theories. These involve measuring the complexity of strings of symbols or what are called data objects. Any sequence of elements can be a data object. The longer and more complex the data object – the more information it has. The most famous is that developed  by Russian materialist mathematician Andre Kolmogorov. In Kolmogorov’s theory the amount of information in a data object is given by the length of the program or description required to generate or construct the data object.

Semantic Information

Quantitative statistical measure based conceptions and definitions of information have often been seen as inadequate because as Claude Shannon himself wrote in The Mathematical Theory of Communication, they do not attempt to capture any meaning of the symbols that are transmitted. His predecessor R.V.L Hartley wrote that ``[i]t is desireable therefore to eliminate the psychological factors involved and to establish a measure of information in terms of purely physical quantities'' (Transmission of Information, 1928, 536.)

Shannon’s peer and mentor Warren Weaver first observed that in future it would be desirable to formulate a conception of information that accounted for meaning. Later theorists came to refer to such conceptions as theories of semantic information.  There have been several of these – mostly naturalistic – offered by both mathematicians and philosophers. The first notable attempt was by the famous Vienna circle mathematician and philosopher Rudolph Carnap. Carnap joined with mathematician Yehoshua Bar-Hillel to formulate a theory of semantic information in which the semantic information content of a sentence was determined according a to a logical formulation (1953.) In lay terms the information content of a sentence is the set of all sentences that are false if that sentence is true.

Later various other conceptions of semantic information.  Philosopher Fred Dretske adapted elements of Shannon’s theory (1981 – Knowledge and the Flow of Information.) Mathematician Keith Devlin produced another logical conception (1995- Logic of Information.) More recently, Luciano Floridi has produced a theory of semantic information that extends and adapts ideas put forward by Devlin and Bar-Hillel and Carnap. It is different in that it requires information to have alethic value – to be based upon data which are truthful according to certain fairly complex criteria (Floridi, Information in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information - 2004, Information – A Very Short Introduction - 2011, The Philosophy of Information - 2012.)

The idea of semantic theories of information is that information and meaning are directly related somehow. Usually meaning is thought to involve truth value of some kind.

Meanwhile in Physics and Biology

An enormous part of the story of our understanding of the nature of information comes from physics. I will not say much about that here, except to say that physicists often regard information to be a physical thing. Another pioneer of information theory – the father of Cybernetics Norbert Weiner – once said that “information is information, not matter or energy...no materialism that does not admit this can survive...'' (1962, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.) No physicist has claimed that information is matter or energy, but quantum computing pioneer Rolf Landauer was sure that it is physical (Information is a Physical Entity, 1996.)

An enormous amount of philosophical and technical thought about information comes from biology. This is not so surprising given the importance of the concept of information to genetics and DNA science. Inherited traits from one generation to the next of phenotypes (organisms) are described in terms of information. So is what is referred to as the central dogma of molecular biology: that information cannot go from the phenotype (the developed body) to the genotype (the gene/DNA.) In other words, if I cut my hand it will not mean that any child conceived by me in the future will have the same cut on their hand. More recently the central dogma has come under challenge from the field of epigenetics. In epigenetics, other things in addition to the gene – the DNA itself – are thought to contribute heritable information or information that is passed from one generation to the next. This can include processes within the cytoplasm of the cell, or even things in the organisms environment like the structure of nests in which young are reared. Still - it is often information transmission that is of interest.

At least since Crick and Watson’s discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in 1971, biologists and philosophers of biology have been contemplating and arguing about the nature of information and information transfer in DNA and biosynthetic processes. Biosynthetic processes are processes in which smaller molecules are combined to form more complex molecules that have some more complex function (processes involving such things as the manufacture of protein and other biological structures from genetic material.)  Such processes are frequently described in terms of information.

Codes, encoding, transmission, and even information compression have been discussed as real in the processes of genetic material.

This all raises a question, however. We saw in the previous section that there are many conceptions of information. So which is the right one for biology? Molecular bioscientists and philosophers of biology are still trying to figure that out. There are even arguments about whether genetic information is semantic or not - if it has meaning and if so in what way (See recent work by Nicholas Shea on what he calls Infotel semantics. The idea is that the meaning of genetic information is determined by its function.) Some philosophers of biology even have what is known as an eliminative conception of information in biology: they eliminate it from the discussion completely or partly as a useless metaphor that is confusing and does not explain anything real (See Griffiths, Paul E. Genetic Information – A Metaphor in Search of a Theory http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/89/1/Genetic_Information_etc.pdf.)

Are There Informational Laws in Genome Evolution and the Evolution of Protein Synthesis?

This entire area of the nature of information in molecular bioscience is complex and keenly debated. However, in this two part series I am interested in a very specific part of the debate – one that is perhaps the most exciting and relevant to philosophy in general and not a little evolutionary science today. It involves the question of how protein synthesis evolved by natural selection. The process of protein synthesis is an incredibly complex biosynthetic process that has only recently come to be well understood. The complexity of the processes of protein folding and gene splicing meant that the details of these processes were wholly mysterious up until recently. How such processes came to evolve naturally to their current state is an even more challenging mystery.

Above is an artist's representation of the proces of protein synthesis from DNA via processes of DNA transcription and translation into a chain of amino acids and finally into a folded protein. The process is staggeringly complex, with only the most basic fundamental steps represented here. Molecular bioscientists usually take it for granted that there is information transmitted form the DNA to the protein. A much larger question, however, is how the information of the entire process and the structures involved in it came to be as it is by evolutionary processes. Eugene V. Koonin has proposed that "Although a complete physical theory of evolutionary biology is inconceivable, the universals of genome evolution might qualify as “laws of evolutionary genomics” in the same sense “law” is understood in modern physics." (http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1002173) The details of this theory involve the laws being expressed largely as statistical and informational.

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Superluminal Information Transmission

By Bruce Long (B App Sc, BA Hons 1, MPhil, PhD candidate.)

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The philosophy of physics is all abuzz lately - on top of its usual buzz. The popularization of the failures of string theory and the work of science popularisers like Lawrence Krauss, Peter Woit, John Gribbin, and  Neil DeGrasse Tyson have co-incided with a mounting interest in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics among physicists and philosophers alike.

Spooky Action At A Distance
When Einstein produced his theory of special relativity and work on quantum mechanics, he made a disturbing discovery - what he called "spooky action at a distance". Einstein's Spooky action at a distance is better known among physicists as non-local effects or quantum entanglement.

What is entanglement and what does it have to do with information transmission? Information transmission depends upon cause and effect. If you can make cause and effect happen instantaneously, then arguably so does information transmission.

Briefly, Einstein's theory predicted that two quantum systems (very small systems) like photons or electrons or other particles would affect each other's states instantaneously even if they we separated by large distances. The systems (particles) start out together in the same place in space and time, and then can become widely separated. After they are separated by a significant non-trivial distance - a measurement of one that changes its state will necessarily result in an instantaneous change in the state of the other in the opposite direction (quantum particles have different rates of spin and what is called angular momentum, and there is a direction of that spin - usually up or down.) If one particle is spin up, and you measure it and it becomes spin down - then the other particle will do the opposite even if has traveled a long way off.  Instantaneously - with no delay at all. Spooky, said Einstein.

Now, instantaneously here literally means instantaneously. Not at the speed of light, or near it, but much much faster. In fact - speed or velocity is not even the right thing to talk about. The cause-effect of entanglement or non-local effects is immediate. It would be like the pitcher throwing the baseball, while the batter hits exactly the same ball at exactly the same time - and the pitcher is on Earth and the batter on the moon.

There is theoretically and practically no speed - just instantaneous change of the state of one physical system based upon the change in the state of the other (usually when the other system is physically measured.) It's almost like if a fan watches the baseball pitcher, then the action at a distance will automatically happen. If the pitcher is pitching, you know the batter is batting at that moment - with the same ball. If the fan goes and hands the pitcher a bat, there is extremely high likelihood (virtual certainty) that the distant batter will have become a pitcher at that exact same moment. It is THAT weird.

Einstein did not like spooky action at a distance at all because it suggested that the usual understanding of cause and effect and causal chains in physics was largely wrong for quantum mechanics. Either something was wrong with the mathematics, said Einstein, or there was something very weird going on in the universe. He came to the conclusion that there must be intermediate causal structures between the entangled quantum systems that had not been detected physically yet. This theory is called hidden local variable or local realism theory. The realism means that there is really something there doing the entangling, and local means that spooky action at a distance just does not happen but instead there is a hidden intermediate causal structure that is local to the quantum systems.

A Speed for Entanglement After All

Now many readers will be aware of Einstein's maxim that no body without zero rest mass (no mass when not moving relative to any spatiotemporal frame of reference) can move faster than the speed of light. That's an immutable law of the universe - right? Well - maybe. It is action at a distance. Einstein's hidden local variables have not been found - and in fact the theory has turned out to be unsupported by empirical experimental findings.

Recently some Chinese physicists have tried to measure the speed of non-local effects (refer to the list of reference at Physics News.) I have just said that there is no speed involved - so what is this experiment about? Well, their findings don't provide much comfort. What they proved experimentally - assuming no discovery of errors in the future - is that if there is a speed of entanglement then it has to be at least 10 000 times the speed of light. They do not know if it is the limitations of their equipment that is causing the measurement value. The speed might be even higher - or no speed at all as suggested above.

Bell Theorems- Is Spooky Action at a Distance Real? Or are there hidden local intermediate causal structures?

The theoretical physicist John Bell made things even worse for Einstein in 1964 with a theory that suggested that the mathematical predictions of quantum mechanics did not fit with the mathematical theory of hidden local variables that he himself had developed.

Things got worse still for the hidden local variable theory when Bell's findings were supported by experiment in 1972 by John Clauser and Stuart Freeman. Alain Aspect did it again with experiments in 1981.

What Now - Superluminal Information Transfer?

In the best mathematical and scientific theories of information, information transmission involves loss due to signal noise and is limited by the transmission rates permitted by the transmission medium. Some information theorists assert that information transfer is only about the covariance - the simultaneous changing - of one structure with another in such a way that the state of one system (an information receiver) tells one something about the state of the other (the information source) with a certain degree of probability.

Now, normally entanglement is not regarded by physicists as an information channel on a statistical basis since there is no uncertainty about the state of one system if the state of the other is known. For statistical formal measures of information one requires statistical uncertainty - because according to those measures information just is a reduction in uncertainty or an increase in probability about the next state of the source based on the current state, or else based upon signals received that were caused by the current state. (See John Gray's text Information Theory and Entropy: http://ee.stanford.edu/~gray/it.pdf ; See also Warren Weaver's introduction to Claude E Shannon's The Mathematical Theory of communcation.) 

I will put aside this consideration of the statistical conception of information as an impediment to quantum entanglement channels for information transmission. This is because the statistical conception is only one (albeit very important) element of the transmission of information, and only one conception of information transfer.

Whither the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Entropy defeated?

The point is that if entanglement is a real physical causality - if it really involves some kind of instant physical cause effect interaction, then that means that information can be transferred instantaneously. If that is true, then many things are unclear. Because of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, causality is limited in a causally closed universe. Energy loss and impedance limit transmission speeds in predictable ways. 

However, if non-local quantum information transmission is true, then it looks very much like we might be able to send information without any signal loss at all. Even weirder - information might be transmissable with no intermediate causal pathway or structure. This is spooky indeed.

References:

The Mathematical theory of Communication

J. S. Bell, (1966) On the problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics, Rev. Mod. Phys. 38, 447. 

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Ontic Cafe What the Ph!!?? Series. Bishop Berkeley takes one for the idealist team.

PHILAXIOM.INFO - The Philosophy of Information, The Philosophy of Information in Biology, The Philosophy of Mathematics, The Philosophy of Physics

Interested in the philosophy of information and information theory? Visit philaxiom.info.

The Desert of the Real?

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When the model becomes more real than the reality.

In the cult science fiction movie The Matrix, the character Morpheus reveals to the tale's main protagonist - the cyber culture hero Neo - that his entire life has been a hallucination sustained by an enormous supercomputer run by machines that have long since destroyed the real world of which Neo thought he was a denizen.

The science fiction novums and tropes are thick on the ground in The Matrix, but the desert of the real is arguably a special concept with special relevance for the Internet age - especially the commercialised Internet age.

The idea of the desert of the real was introduced by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. He used a portion of a tail by Jorge Luis Borges in which the leaders of an empire commission the creation of a map that is the same size as the empire and covers it. The map eventually becomes unpopular and disintegrates.

Baudrillard draws parallels between the concept of the map and the media, government, and even science as conducive to the building of models or simulations of the world that become what he calls hyperreal. They are simulations and models that become simulacra, hyperreal misrepresentations that are conducive to dissimulation (pretending that there is no simluation):

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map…Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra – that engenders the territory...(Baudrillard, J., ―The Precession of Simulacra‖ in Simulacra and Simulation, Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, Ann Arbor: the University of Michigan Press, 1994., 1)

The desert of the real is the replacement of the real territory with that of the simulated territory, where the territory is all aspects of life.

Like most continental philosophers, Baudrillard was partial to the odd bit of sophistic word salad:

Simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model, the cybernetic game – total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control...

It is not clear how cybernetics has any bearing here. However, Baudrillard's point is that the media and technology - and science and science fiction writing - all come to be subsumed under the aim of control.

Although as far as anyone knows there has been no technological singularity (the term coined by computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge that denotes the point at which the computers become intelligent and the AI is smarter than us) - perhaps the machines of the Matrix are already with us.
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Ontic Cafe Philosophy Short Shot #4 What are numbers? Part 1

This Ontic Cafe philosophy Short Shot is designed to give an immediate insight into the philosophy of mathematics, its ancient historical foundation, and it's contemporary problems and relevance.

The philosophy of mathematics is an enormous sub discipline in philosophy, and is one of the most interesting and unique fields of philosophical endeavour. Often the philosophy of mathematics involves an understanding of quite sophisticate mathematics, but in this Ontic Cafe Short Shot there is no mathematics.
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Philosophers, Stimulants, and Relaxants.

Do tell. We know that David Hume liked to frequent coffee shops. There were other enlightenment thinkers that did likewise. If you know a good coffee shop tale involving a philosopher - or even a drinking tale, please regale us!

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Ontic Cafe Philosophy Short Shots 3: What is a Self, Part 2

A Metaphorical Coffee Shop

Why a coffee shop theme for a philosophy website and blog?

Philosophers often need coffee to stay awake, but there is no actual coffee to be had here at Ontic Cafe. Anyway, some philosophers prefer a nice red or some of the stiffer varieties of relaxant, rather than a stimulant. The reason for the theme is a historical context.

David Hume, one of the three great empiricist philosophers (John Locke, and George Berkeley being the others), and arguably the most important, never held an academic posting. By the time he began applying for such positions he had already published his work A Treatise Concerning Human Nature (called 'The Treatise'.)

The work was monumental and brilliant and regarded as Hume's greatest, but it attracted the ire of zealots and repressive religionists due to Hume's apparent atheism and disdain for religious enthusiasm. His career in academia was sabotaged and politically stymied from that point onwards.

Hume famously wrote an anonymous article called An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature  to promote his work, and this article served as something of a precis to Hume's Later An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
During his brilliant but troubled career, Hume was a frequenter of coffee houses in Edinburgh and La Flèche in France where he lived for a time to save costs, and where he famously taunted the Jesuits with his writings.
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Ontic Cafe Philosophy Short Shots #2: What is the Self Part 1

 This 3 Minute Ontic Cafe Philosophy Short Shot is a figurative 3 minutes! It is a little longer (more like 5 minutes) and the material a little more wordy. This time your humble philosopher-producer has included spoken narrative. If you wish to use the video for a presentation you will need to turn off the sound!
Hume fans should enjoy it, and I hope that other Ontic Cafe guests get something out of it. 1 and a half beans for this one, because of a couple of technical terms.
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Philosophical Zombie Short Shot

 Daniel Dennett thinks that consciousness is just a product of brain processes doing what they have evolved to do - process information. Others are not so sure. Philosophical zombies threaten!

Ontic Cafe's Philosophy Short Shots

Philosophy is a vast discipline, with many sub disciplines - and that is just Western continental and Anglo American philosophy. Everyone thinks that they are a philosopher, and most people have had what we call a philosophical discussion at some point in their lives.

However, students who come to undergraduate philosophy courses often discover something surprising about formal philosophical training. It can be quite hard. The new terminology and abstract concepts come thick and fast, and it can take a quick mind to adjust to such a new kind of learning.

Then there is the habit many philosophers have of being intentionally abstruse - hard to understand. Even other philosophers don't like it!

The German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger once said:

"Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize "facts" never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light." 

The world renowed American linguist Noam Chomsky once said of the work of the much loved and vaunted postmodern continental philosopher Jacques Derrida that it was impossible to understand. Chomsky has called the work of Jacques Lacan and Derrida absurd, infantile and ridiculous:

Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida).

What hope then have new students and novices got of understanding what is going on with philosophy- and given the kind of infighting apparent in the above, why bother with it at all?

Well, this is Ontic Cafe, and we know the value of good quality philosophy. It i discouraging to the open minded novice that the analytic philosopher John Searle said of 19th century continental philosopher Derrida that:

...Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am ... said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French...[H]e said, "He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.' That’s the terrorism part." 

Here is the interview:

This is all arguably very discouraging, but there is much hope. Paul Grice - another analytic philosopher of the Anglo-American tradition - presented four maxim's for philosophical writing that Searle repeatedly mentions as "be clear, be brief, be orderly, and avoid obscurity of expression." 

You can look up the full set of Grice's maxims of conversational clarity according to his cooperative principle (2) The idea is to help the other person to understand by avoiding the obscurantism that Derrida and Lacan are accused of.

The Ontic Cafe short shots series is to be launched over the next week. We will be selecting some of the best and most interesting dilemma's, paradoxes, and arguments from the analytic tradition and explaining them quickly and basically. We will aspire to adherence to Grice's maxims. 

Here is the list of the first four short shots soon to be released by category or sub discipline:

1. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: Rene Descarte's pineal gland, animal spirits, and the explanatory regress for Cartesian dualism about mind.

2. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: Aquinas' ontological argument.

3. METAPHYSICS AND PLATONISM: The epistemic argument against the existence of Platonic entities.

4. LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS: Russell's paradox: the set of all sets that are not members of themself.

First will be given a short explanation situation the problem, and then the problem will be stated clearly. Short shots are limited to 3 minutes in length.

Stay tuned.

1. Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 307.

2. Grice, H. P. Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1989 26-7.

Ontic Cafe's What the PH!!?? Series. First Installment.