"What we understand by information-the elementary unit of information-is a difference
that makes a difference" (Gregory Bateson).
"Reality and information are two sides
of the same coin" (Anton Zeilinger)
"Information means distinction between things"
(Leonard Susskind)
The Concept of Information
The concept of information plays a fundamental role in science and humanism. It is an essential concept in computer science and is the key to the functioning of society because of its fundamental role in human communication and cognition. It is a central concept because everything can be interpreted at the informational level. In this sense, it is a universalistic and profound concept that manifests itself in all domains, so in principle it could be interpreted that information is an archetype.
The term "information" derives from the Latin verb "informare", which means "to shape the mind", "to instruct" or "to teach".
However, the concept of information is fuzzy, not clearly defined. There is no consensus or general definition of the concept of information for two reasons:
Because information has different meanings, depending on the context.
Because it is a deep concept, which can only be explained through examples, that is, through its superficial and particular manifestations. It is the same with information as with consciousness, which everyone knows what it is but no one is able to explain. In fact, information has been equated with consciousness or that information plays a mediating role, connecting the physical world and the mental world, or even that it transcends both worlds.
Some views regarding the concept of information are:
It is a type of input to a system or organism.
A type of pattern that influences the formation of other patterns.
It is what we perceive as a representation.
It is an answer to a specific question.
They are signs that are transmitted as signals.
A kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system.
A sequence of symbols that is interpreted as a message.
It is the same as energy.
For Peirce, information integrates aspects of signs and expressions, covered separately by the concepts of denotation and extension, as well as connotation and comprehension.
For Gregory Bateson, information is "a difference that makes a difference."
For Anton Zeilinger, "information and reality are two sides of the same coin." This statement can be interpreted to mean that reality is the external aspect and information its internal counterpart.
David Chalmers believes that there may be an underlying level common to mind and matter, which can be characterized in terms of information.
The concept of information, being of a general type, is closely related to many other concepts such as: archetype, communication, knowledge, control, data, entropy, stimulus, form, instruction, pattern, perception, representation, semantics, meaning, etc.
Orthophysics
For Mihai Drăgănescu's [1991, 1996] Orthophysics, information is not a primary, but a derived concept. It is not fundamental because it is external, superficial, formal and quantitative. Orthophysics admits this type of information, which it calls "structural information," which applies to physical structures and which is used in what it calls "structural science," a science that cannot explain mind and consciousness.
But, according to Orthophysics, in addition to structural information, there is internal, deep, meaningful and qualitative information, which it calls "phenomenological information". Orthophysics considers that the essence of the concept of information is to be sought in the mind and the brain. All structural information with meaning is based on phenomenological information. It is phenomenological information that gives birth to the structural information we know.
According to Orthophysics, there exists a deep matter (infomatter) in which mathematical abstraction does not exist. It is a realm of "orthoexistence". In the deep matter, the primordial information is phenomenological. Physics must first consider phenomenological information in order to explain and understand structural information. Infomatter intervenes in the process of life through phenomenological senses (orthosenses), as well as mind and consciousness. All physical, mental and biological processes are of a structural-phenomenological type.
Philosophy of information
The philosophy of information is a new philosophical discipline. Luciano Floridi laid the foundations of this discipline in his articles "What is the Philosophy of Information?" [2002] and "Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information" [2004]. It deals with questions such as the following:
What is the nature of information? What are its principles, characteristics or essential aspects?
How do information and computation differ? Is computation the dynamic aspect of information?
How is information transformed into knowledge?
What is meta-information?
What are the domains of application of information? Is it possible to apply the concept of information to philosophical problems?
What is the relation between information and consciousness?
According to Floridi, there are 4 phenomena that refer to information:
Information about something (e.g., train timetable).
Information as something (e.g., DNA, fingerprints).
Information for something (e.g., an algorithm).
Information in something (e.g., a pattern).
Application Domains
Because of its general or universal nature, the information appears in numerous domains:
Computer Science
The English word "informatics" indicates the treatment or processing of information. Information is the foundation of computer science.
Physics
The result of applying information to the physical world has been the development of a new science called "informational physics" or "computational physics," a bridging field between physics and computer science. According to this vision, in order to be understood, physical objects and phenomena need to be described by means of the informational dimension, a dimension deeper than the merely physical one.
"Digital physics" is a type of informational physics based on bits (the units of information) and is the simplest informational physics. In this context, the concept of cellular automaton has strongly emerged as an essential concept, comparable to the concept of field in physics.
A cellular automaton (CA) is a discrete computing system. It consists of a grid of one or more dimensions, made up of cells, where each cell has a state within a finite set of states (e.g., black or white), and a finite set of local rules that establish the evolution of the system in discrete time, such that the state of each cell at time t+1 is a function of the state at time t of its neighboring cells. Each time the rules are applied, a new generation is obtained, thus obtaining a simple dynamic model that can produce complex results.
The so-called "paninformationalism" considers all physical structures as informational structures. And "pancomputationalism" considers all physical dynamics as computations. According to the latter philosophy, the universe is a computer or an information processor performing a computation. And the physical world is an evolving information structure rather than a mechanically evolving material structure.
An attempt to ground physics from the concept of digital information is the theory of Ur-alternatives, by Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, which was initially made known in his book "The Unity of Nature"(1971) and further developed during the 1990's. Its author defines the ur as a fundamental binary alternative or quantum of information, a bit or atom of information. The ur is the simplest possible object, which is applicable to the realms of mind and matter. The theory is of an axiomatic type, based on the distinction between empirically observable binary alternatives. As an information theory, it managed to derive different concepts relating to matter, energy, time, space and entropy.
Informational physics elaborates physical theories based on information, rather than waves, particles, matter and energy. The universe, at a deep level, can be described in terms of information. The dynamics of information is computation. Therefore, the universe can be conceived of as a running computer, computing "something," or at least isomorphic to such a device.
The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was first postulated by Konrad Zuse in his book "Rechnender Raum" (literally, "space that is computing"). The term "digital physics" was first used by Edward Fredkin, although he later replaced it with the term "digital philosophy".
Physicist John Wheller [1990], in his theory "it from bit", argues that information (the bit) is a profound factor that manifests itself in the reality of physical phenomena (the it).
According to Hans Christian von Baeyer [2005], the essence of the universe is information, a concept that could replace in physics traditional concepts such as particles, fields, forces, etc. to unify reality and knowledge, ontology and epistemology. For this author, the concept of information clarifies a great diversity of domains (thermodynamics, communication theory, quantum mechanics, cosmology, etc.), even aspects of quantum physics such as synchronicity, action at a distance and superposition of states.
Quantum physicist Vlatko Vedral says, "Quantum information is perhaps the common thread from which all the rules of the universe derive." And he goes so far as to claim that information is more important than matter and energy.
Gilles Brassard −known for his work in quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation and quantum entanglement, and one of the creators of quantum encryption −is one of the leading proponents of informational physics: digital information is the key to the foundation of physics; the fundamental laws of physics concern information, not waves or particles. His ideas are presented in the article "Is information the key? [2005].
Biology
Bioinformatics is the science that approaches biology from the point of view of information. Information is manifested e.g. in the DNA code. A living being could be considered as an information processor, and where its capacity (its intelligence) would depend on its computational capacity.
Psychology
The so-called "Cybernetic Psychology" is a new science that has been constituted around a new field of study and research: the mental processing of information, including all psychological phenomena associated with the context of techno-human interaction.
Philosophy
Just as we spoke of the "linguistic turn" in philosophy, we also speak of the "informational turn" or "computational turn" in philosophy. The philosophy of information attempts to expand the frontier of philosophical inquiry by incorporating the paradigm of information and computation to address traditional philosophical problems from new perspectives that shed light on those problems.
There is a project along these lines called "The Computational Metaphysics Project" (http://mally.stanford.edu/cm), which pursues the unification of the sciences and humanities through "computational metaphysics", with two aspects: 1) formal axiomatic metaphysics, that is, metaphysics represented by means of axioms or premises concerning abstract objects to derive conclusions; 2) the study of philosophical questions from a computational point of view.
Another project, "The Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project" (in short, InPhO, http://inpho.cogs.indiana.edu) is aimed at constructing a dynamic representation of philosophical issues with the help of computer science.
Medicine
The so-called "informational medicine" is based on the idea that the ultimate origin of human diseases is the information that resides deep inside each one of us. By modifying this deep information, a surface level manifestation experienced as "healing" is possible.
Linguistics
Computational linguistics uses computer science to analyze and treat human language. To do so, it attempts to logically model natural language from a computational point of view.
MENTAL vs. Information
The above questions concerning information and information philosophy are clarified from the point of view of MENTAL, i.e., from the deep viewpoint of the primary archetypes.
From the point of view of MENTAL, information is equivalent to expression. Information is a manifestation of the primary archetypes in a concrete expression, which may or may not correspond semantically to the real world. Information takes many forms or aspects: it can be a number, a quantity, an attribute of an object, a sequence, a set, a function, a rule, etc. These are the infinite expressions that can be manifested by the primary archetypes. Information is not an archetype. It is the manifestation of a profound reality, which is not informational but abstract.
The content of information resides in its structure, for in all information/expression the primary archetypes are present. Information belongs to the abstract world.
To do "information philosophy" is to try to go from the superficial to the deep. In this case, it is to try to go beyond information, because information is something superficial, manifested. It is to look for the root from which all information comes. All particular information refers to the deep, to the primary archetypes. True philosophy resides beyond information: in the primary archetypes.
In MENTAL we start directly from philosophical principles. There is no need to try to look for philosophy. MENTAL is philosophy. Therefore, it is not necessary to make "philosophy of information" because philosophy is already a priori.
Philosophy seeks the deep, the foundation of everything. It seeks wisdom and transcendence. It seeks what sustains or grounds all internal and external reality. It seeks the universal through the particular. But, from the point of view of MENTAL, it does not become philosophy because this language is born of philosophy itself, it has a philosophical foundation, because it is based on philosophical categories, the supreme categories of reality.
All disciplines based on information are only approximations due to lack of foundation. The true unification of all of them is achieved by searching for the common foundations: the primary archetypes or philosophical categories, which are absolute in nature.
Computation is any dynamic expression that can be constructed with the primary archetypes. Computation and its limits are based on such archetypes. It makes no sense to talk about supercomputing.
Paninformationalism is a mistake because it leads to identifying philosophy with the philosophy of information.
Information is not consciousness. But information is not possible without consciousness. Expressions (information) implicitly connect us with the deep, with consciousness. It is the union of opposites through the archetypes: superficial-deep, descriptive-operative, ontology-epistemology, etc. In the primary archetypes resides true reality, truth, consciousness and universal language. Consciousness resides in the primary archetypes, which connect everything. That is why MENTAL is the language of consciousness. Universal language and language of consciousness are synonymous.
MENTAL implies an "archetypal turn" or a "philosophical turn", beyond the "informational turn" and the "computational turn".
It is often said that "information is power". But the real power lies in the primary archetypes.
Bits (0 and 1) have no semantics. Digital information is information at the lowest possible level. MENTAL does have semantics: that associated with the primary archetypes.
The goal of information theory is the analysis and structure of messages, regardless of their meanings. There is no semantics. It is interested in the transmission capacity of communication channels, data compression and error detection/correction in communications.
MENTAL goes beyond information theory, as this theory deals with the superficial, since it is based on 0-1 dualism, i.e. on Boolean values and operations.
In the light of the primary archetypes the following concepts are clarified, where a scale is shown, which goes from the objective, external, superficial and analytical, to the subjective, internal, deep and synthetic. That is, from the consciousness of the left hemisphere to the consciousness of the right hemisphere:
Data is the manifestation of something simple, objective and isolated, without context.
Information is data associated with a particular context. It is also, like data, of an objective, external type.
Knowledge is internal, subjective information. Information becomes knowledge when the connection between the objective and the subjective is realized. With knowledge appears consciousness, by connecting the internal and the external world.
Wisdom is the knowledge common to all disciplines based on the primary archetypes present in all of them.
Transcendence is a wisdom that transcends the standard disciplines to go beyond: to the imaginary and the possible. It is linked to pure consciousness, which has no limits.
In conclusion, with MENTAL the true nature of information becomes clear. Information is an expression of the primary archetypes.
Bibliography
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