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Author
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Topic: What information is not.
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Matt Connally
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posted 10. December 2006 00:52
Although it can be tricky to describe and define exactly what information is, do we not know with absolute certainty what information is not? It is not physical. It has no mass, charge, or any other physical properties. This is observable, testable, and falsifiable.
The evidence for it is in the translation. Everywhere we look in nature--whether we look through a telescope or look through a microscope or just take a walk in the woods--we discover rational, creative information that can be translated not just into any other language (English, Chinese, etc.) but also through any other physical medium (pen-and-paper, compact disc, electro-magnetic waves, etc.). In other words, the exact same information can be communicated through media that have no physical properties in common; therefore, whatever they do have in common (rational, creative meaning) is immaterial.
Take this very posting as a case study. These paragraphs can printed out and read as hard copy, or they can be read on a computer screen. Perhaps you can take your laptop to a coffee shop and receive the copy wirelessly. That would mean the exact same information in these paragraphs had been translated through black-and-white paper, through lights on a screen, and through electromagnetic waves...and, presumably, through neurons in my brain. Yet those four things—the paper, the screen, and the electromagnetic waves, the grey matter inside my skull—do not have any physical properties in common. So whatever they do have in common (some rational, creative communication) is nonphysical. Thus we can observe the complete absence of physical qualities in information. We can test whether any information can be translated through completely different physical media. And if we ever discovered a physical property of information (or discovered information that could not be translated) then that would falsify its transcendence.
Perhaps we can think of a dozen reason why we think this should not be so, but we cannot find a single example that it is not so. Here is a more challenging example which seems counterintuitive but which nevertheless successfully puts information, communication, and consciousness into coherent context. Consider the DVD for the recent cinematic production of The Chronicles of Narnia. The entire movie—colors, dialogue, music, etc.—is translated onto that little piece of plastic. A DVD player cannot comprehend any of it any more than a movie camera can "see" or a telephone can "hear" or an abacus can count to ten. But somehow, some way, we do comprehend meaning even though meaning is in every way invisible.
There is no coherent alternative. Any attempt to deny the transcendence of information is so nonsensical that it must be hidden in foggy word-play (qualia, memes, items in a superseded ontology, platonic forms, etc.) and then avoided with red herrings. Yet naturalists must deny it. They have no other choice...no more than a scientist can ask how the brain could use the five senses to perceive something that cannot be seen, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled.
"The eternal mystery of the cosmos is that it is comprehensible." Perhaps Einstein was refering to the fact that whatever it is that we comprehend (again, rational, creative data) it is not physical. Neither, then, are the rational, creative authors that live inside these jars of clay.
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JT75
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posted 10. December 2006 06:43
If information is non-physical, as you say and with which I agree, then how can it become an object of scientific investigation, if in fact it can? Isn't this more in the area of philosophy to discuss the nature of purely intelligible, non-physical aspects of reality?
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Klaus Lange
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posted 11. December 2006 08:06
That is a very good question and I agree with your implications.
One aspect of my research about looking for prime numbers in nature - so that is a signal of a designed universe - views that question.
A main concept to understand our world is to add a time and space indipendend dimension to our reality.
We have dimensions of space (three, maybe a three/seven - construction), we have a dimension of time and - think about that - (a) dimension(s) of information.
That new category of dimension i n f o r m a t i o n exist in the one hand in a continua of space and time in our universe but in the other hand truly indipendend from space and time.
That is the reason why information not only seen in living systems programs like DNA but in every quantum of energy and matter, time and space of our universe, too.
So ID better stands for Informational Design.
And than the second step is to ask: Where did information come from???
My answer: From an intelligent designer. In that second step Informational Design becomes Intelligent Design to me.
[ 11. December 2006, 09:00: Message edited by: Klaus Lange ]
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Matt Connally
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posted 11. December 2006 13:57
Whether we label it as science or philosophy it is observable, testable, and falsifiable. And if it is in fact true then all of evolutionary theory totally and completely evaporates in light of it—in recognition of the fact that information is immaterial.
For example, neuroscientists are putting vast amounts of effort into trying to figure out how the brain perceives information. For example, how is vision translated into the brain? How do our conscious minds perceive things we see? But as best I can tell neuroscientists, following methodological naturalism, skip the question, “What are we perceiving?” and go right to, “How do we perceive it?” Yet if we ask the former question the answer is, “We are perceiving information.” (I look around the room and information about what’s there flows through my eyes and is translated into my brain.) Well what is information? And I’m saying that even if we do not know exactly what it is, we do know with absolute, certainty what it is not: it is not material. But the of course the brain could not perceive something that is immaterial. So skip the question and, oh dear, tiptoe on.
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Matt Connally
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posted 11. December 2006 14:21
Klaus, that sounds like fantastic research. One of my favorite books (in fact, one that I recommended here in my profile) is “Prime Obsession” by John Derbyshire though I’m not even close to understanding all of it. (i.e. I’m not a mathematician!)
Now concerning the dimensions, I have spent a lot of time wrestling with whether information flows in anything but 3 dimensions—so far as we know. That is to say, we don’t seem to be capable of thinking in anything but 3 dimensions, and talking of 4, 5 or 11 dimensions is all just analogy.
For example, consider a 2-D plane. What’s your context? It’s always 3-D space. You think of yourself floating above the plane or below the plane or at an angle or passing through it. Regardless, no one can actually think in 2 dimensions. This can be harder to keep track of when it’s translated from geometry into algebra, etc., but I’m persuaded it’s still true that we can only think in 3-D. Each of the three dimensions is perfectly unique and coherent in and of itself, yet the three only exist—both in the physical world and in our minds—as a single phenomenon.
Saying time is like a 4th dimension is a very good analogy, but it is limited. As for 7 or 11 dimensions (M-Theory, etc.), as best I can tell such ideas, even if they are true, will never represent anything but an immaterial (spiritual, supernatural) world.
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Klaus Lange
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posted 12. December 2006 03:13
@Matt:
Your example gives a good picture of the problems we have to see information as spatial dimension, added on space and time.
And yes, information as a added dimension is not a natural one, but a spiritual one. Our universe has natural and non-natural dimensions in that picture.
To give a better understanding I use the complex numbers:
Our space we living is seen in three dimensions.
In analogy of that we add the time dimension to the space dimensions like that:
A point of our three space dimensions (s) be (s, s, s).
To "add" now the time dimension (t) mean to enlarge this point to four entrys like
(s, s, s, t).
And if we know about extra space dimensions (e) we enlarge in the same way like
(s, s, s, e, e, e, e, e, e, e, t).
All of these dimensions are natural ones, not spiritual ones - if e exists.
How to add information dimensions?
In that picture we see the point, as a table of real numbers. Now, to every real number we add an imaginary part, so that we have a complex number.
The information dimensions (i) enlarges the given spacetime point not in this way
(s,s,s,e,...,e,t,i,...,i)
because than we have information as added natural dimensions, and that is not what we see, I agree with you.
No, we have to enlarge spiritual dimensions in this way
(s + i, s + i, s + i, e + i, ..., e + i, t + i)
The operation "+" is not a scalar one, it add a imaginary part to a real number. Our only natural point of view before is seeing the i-part as 0:
s + 0
e + 0
t + 0
So we write it better in this way:
{(s, i),(s, i),(s, i),(e, i), ...,(e, i),(t, i)}
For every real dimension we have a imaginary part. In other words:
For every natural dimension we have an supernatural - or spiritual - information layer corresponding to it.
(By the way: To discripe our world I calculate with cube nets and gets 10+1 spacetime dimensions (the 11 hexominoes that generates a cube) and by transformations up to 13 non-cube-generating hexominoes as corresponding information layers to the other eleven ones. But on that level my research goes on, see my home page, unfortunatly in german language.)
Back to topic: My result is the same that you discuss: Information is a non-natural impact which determines our natural world. And natural science didn't uses the needed tools to handle that non-natural impact.
[ 13. December 2006, 02:33: Message edited by: Klaus Lange ]
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Klaus Lange
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posted 12. December 2006 03:53
@JT75:
quote:
If information is non-physical, as you say and with which I agree, then how can it become an object of scientific investigation, if in fact it can? Isn't this more in the area of philosophy to discuss the nature of purely intelligible, non-physical aspects of reality?
Information could be investigated by mathemtical tools. Natural scientific today is more a naturalistic science and not a science that descripes the nature, but to put naturalistic predicitions to analyse observations.
That science uses mathematical tools, but mathematic is not physical or natural science on its own.
In my opinion: The fact that you can use abstract mathematics relations to descripe our world is a first hint that our nature depends on immaterial laws, given by immaterial source we call information.
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Matt Connally
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posted 12. December 2006 22:37
JT75 and Klaus:
For that matter mathematics is simply the study of patterns, and science is the study of patterns in nature and society. Biologists study patterns among organisms. Meteorologists study patterns in the weather. Economists study patterns in the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Etc. There may be more to science than that but there is not less. And what more there is simply elaborates on the meaning of the word “study.”
And mathematics (patterns) is/are always, only immaterial. Thus the most basic truth that science explores is the truth that there is an immaterial world. Take a really simple example: instead of exploring the more complex aspects of biology, meteorology, or economics, let us ask, “If apples fall in a forest and no one is there to count them, does any particular number of apples fall?” This question is in principle the same as much more complex questions about patterns in nature or society.
And the only coherent answer to the question is “yes.” All of science depends upon such facts being objective rather than subjective. (And the Uncertainty Principle does not apply!)
We know for absolute certain that there is an immaterial world. It is rational and creative and we are not the authors of it. Furthermore, we know that our brains cannot perceive something that is immaterial. That is a non-question, and so the existence of spirituality is, literally, a no-brainer. (It really makes me nervous to speak so audaciously, but the beginning argument of the thread still seems not just observable, testable, and falsifiable, but also undeniable.)
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Matt Connally
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posted 12. December 2006 22:55
Klaus:
Your research sounds really very cool. I wish I could interact more but I'm not a mathematician and really only understand complex numbers in principle. But I think you've done a great job of giving me an intuitive grasp of your work.
So, to clarify: any physical part of the universe is 3-D. If it has mass or charge then it is a medium for 3-D information. (And time itself, failing to be quantized, stubbornly presents itself as immaterial.) But when we find evidence for extra dimensions (such as with spin), it is at that point that we are no longer exploring the physical world but an immaterial/nonphysical world. (I can confuse myself using the words "natural" and "supernatural" because it's all part of nature! But we can use supernatural as a synonymn with nonphysical.)
Does that agree with your work?
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Klaus Lange
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posted 13. December 2006 04:10
@Matt:
Only the information-dimensions are non-physical.
The extra dimensions are physical space dimensions, but very folded ones - some may be close to the planck scale -.
For some of the extra dimensions it could be principle unpossible to detect them, but they are part of the physical world.
Using this picture: A stage of a opera is like the 3D-space and the backstage area - not seen from the public- is like the extra dimensions (for technical support to the actors on stage).
Time is a physical expression of some information.
My picture for this is water:
Some information dimensions are like ice and during a transformation like a melting process it becomes "liquit" time impacting the physical world, bringing direction to it.
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Matt Connally
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posted 13. December 2006 09:57
Klaus:
quote:
The extra dimensions are physical space dimensions, but very folded ones
quote:
Some information dimensions are like ice and during a transformation like a melting process it becomes "liquit" time impacting the physical world, bringing direction to it.
These are both excellent analogies, but I'm very hesitant to say that the first one is any less an analogy than the second one. "What happens at the plank scale follows a similar pattern to spacial dimensions...it's like a dimension." But I don't see the need to say it is another dimension.
If that sounds like a trivial matter, it's just that I want to carefully distinguish the physical world from the non-physical world. And information is always, only nonphysical.
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2ndclass
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posted 13. December 2006 12:44
Matt,
I'm no philosopher, but it seems to me that you're conflating two different dichotomies:
A) Material vs. immaterial (or natural vs. supernatural, or physical vs. spiritual, etc.)
B) Concrete vs. abstract (or physical vs. conceptual, etc.)
When we ask the question, "Is information physical?", to which dichotomy are we referring?
If we're referring to the first, then we're in the realm of metaphysics. I'm not aware of any principled distinction between material and immaterial entities, so I don't see how an answer to the question could be testable.
If, on the other hand, we're referring to the second, then "information" is one of hundreds of abstract nouns, and I see nothing mystical about it. For example, computers can input information from their environment, process that information, and ascribe meaning to it, but nobody sees computers as dual natural/supernatural entities.
So I guess the question is: Are you saying that information is abstract, or that it's supernatural?
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Matt Connally
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posted 13. December 2006 18:52
I’m no philosopher either and so I probably am conflating some things philosophers don’t like to conflate—for certain if the philosopher is devoted to Darwinism. Several times when I have posed this argument to naturalists they have used such complaints to explain why they will not to ask the question, “Does information have any physical qualities?” I’m terribly suspicious of this because, of course, Darwinism cannot tolerate even the possibility that we can know there are any nonphysical phenomena in the universe. But here’s the bottom line: It’s a very good, rational, creative question to ask, and if we ask it, the answer we get is an abundantly loud, clear, testable, falsifiable, and (as best I can tell though again it makes me nervous to be so audacious) undeniable “no.” So as far as winning debates goes, the Darwinist will absolutely have to insist on discrediting the question. All I can say is, “Yes, but if we ask it…”
Now there are some interesting riddles that result:
- How do you distinguish the concrete from the abstract when the word “concrete” is in fact an abstract concept? Or how do you distinguish the physical from the nonphysical with the nature of the word “physical” is in fact nonphysical?
- How can we ask--not to mention answer--the question “What is information?” when the question itself is, in fact, pure information? (Bertrand Russell went off the deep end with that one.)
I think that I have discovered some extraordinarily beautiful, remarkably rational answers to each of these, and I’ll be delighted to elaborate. Whether they are more philosophical or scientific is kind of irrelevant to me. What is relevant is that science is dependant on information and my primary argument is that information, objectively, has no physical qualities.
So, to answer your question, both concrete language (pure information) and abstract language (pure information) are immaterial. How then are we able to perceive, translate, and use information? Strip away all the cultural and religious baggage and yes, I think a good word for this can be supernatural.
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JT75
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posted 14. December 2006 06:49
Matt:
I am certainly no Darwinist, but I am interested in philosophy, namely, the Aristotelian philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The reason for asking the question of the materiality of information is to bring up just the points of: #1 the object of thought and #2 our epistemological apprehension of this object. It seems that you are laboring under a modern distinction between material and supernatural (that is you seem to consider immateriality and supernaturality equal), this is false. The point I was getting at is that the ID program, in pointing out the the irreducible and specified complexity of natural phenomena is pointing to an immaterial aspect of a material fact. This is not supernatural because humans, natural creatures, have an immaterial aspect to their mode of being/knowing. It is because the mind is not identical to the brain that we can perceive and generate abstract concepts (Man, Dog, Horse) and intelligible realities (mathematics). But just as there is not such thing as "Man Exemplar" in nature (unless you are a Platonist) there is also no "information" in nature (that is "in" the electrons, molecules,etc. themselves). The phenomena you are pointing to (such as information, space, and time) are general or intelligible abstractions from the limited, particular realities found in nature by a human mind equipped for such abstractions. Now it is A. Plantinga who has pointed out that the only reason to believe that the intelligible constructs of the human mind are applicable to an extra-mental reality is if these two worlds have been harmonized to one another, something naturalism cannot explain.
The conclusion, therefore, is that in dealing with nonphysical realities and epistemology, ID has entered the world of philosophy and left the world of science. This is only seen as a pejorative statement if one believes that the only truth to be found about reality is scientific truth, I reject this claim. E. Gilson, a french Tomist, explains that when one uses scientific methods to analyze philosophical truths one ends up with monsterous conclusions (see R. Descartes). The beauty of ID is just that it stands equidistant from the realms of science and theology and shows both the theological implications of scientific realism to the scientist, and the supporting role that an honest rendering of natural phenomena plays in evidence for the existence of God.
By calling ID "science" we are unwittingly buying into the naturalist claim that unless something is science it is not true or tells us nothing about realtiy. As theists we should assert that both philosophy and theology are able to get at truths (nonphysical, abstract) that science is unable to approach due to its commitment to materialism. This is not to make the claim, as does the naturalist, that all truth claims deal with material objects. But rather the opposite, that some truth claims deal with immaterial objects (such as God, free will, and immortality), and with regard to these objects science must remain silent.
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Klaus Lange
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posted 14. December 2006 08:52
JT75:
Yes, St. Thomas Aquinas for me is a very important teacher of the church, too.
If we look to information than I ask me, what kind of being it is, because information exist "before" our universe. The reason for that is the eternity existence of the creator/designer. If we use terms like "thinking" for Gods doing to make a plan creating the world and so on, than we see information as a pre-natural category of existence.
So information may be the part of the "heaven of heavens" ore something else out of our universe and nature.
I am not sure, but for me it seems that the biblical term "word" in greek language "L O G O S" deals with this aspect of information and its pre-existance as immaterial being.
Like Aquinas wrote in some explanations there is an eternity - not the same eternety like God - that stands between our material creation and God - information as a timeless creation.
In my point of view information as immaterial timeless creation has those dimensions i and our spacetime dimensions (3D or 11D) are embedded dimensions to it. In that meaning information dimensions are dynamical blue prints of the material creation and still in correspondence (or haves still impacts/influences).
[ 14. December 2006, 10:22: Message edited by: Klaus Lange ]
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