Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

  Post 123.  April 11, 2022

  What is Information?

  The Ratio that makes a meaningful Difference

 Therefore, in the Enformationism thesis, Information is A> Knowledge and the ability to know ; B> Semantic meaning ; C> Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. “Ratio” is the root of Reason & Rational, hence it's the essence of human Conscious-ness ; D> Information & its communication are measured in degrees of uncertainty, which is a mental state or feeling of Doubt. E> Those statistical ratios are also called “proportions” & "differences".  That's why semiotician (signs, symbols) and cyberneticist (science of control & communication), Gregory Bateson defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference"⁵. The latter distinction refers to numeric "value" or semantic "meaning". Computer pioneer Charles Babbage presciently called his prototype digital device a "difference engine". Difference (e.g. hot vs cold ; more vs less) is the essential cause or agent of Change. In Physics, it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology, differences of goals are called "Conflict". In Psychology it’s known as “Cognitive Dissonance”.

For communication purposes, Claude Shannon quantified Information not as abstract concepts, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful Order (1) and meaningless Disorder (0); between Knowledge (1) and Ignorance (0) ; between Existence (100%) and Nonexistence (0%). So, that formerly meaningful mind-stuff, when digitized, exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing effects on minds & machines while having no sensory physical properties. Like Energy, we know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world. For humans, Information has the semantic quality of aboutness ⁶, that we interpret as meaning. In computer science though, digital Information is treated as intrinsically meaningless symbols, which makes its semiotic (signaling) value more certain, like dots & dashes. It only becomes meaningful when a sentient Self interprets it as such.

Information is the power to enform, to create, to cause change, to convey meaning. It's the essence of human consciousness & awareness. Therefore, it plays various roles in different contexts. For example, When spelled with an “I”, Information is a noun, referring to data & things. When spelled with an “E”, Enformation is a verb, referring to energy and processes. In its role as causal Energy or Force, I call it EnFormAction ⁷. The common metaphor of a river of causation running through the world, in various streams, has been interpreted in materialistic terms as Momentum, Impetus, Force, Energy, etc, and in spiritualistic idioms as Will, Love, Conatus, and so forth. Philosophy associates it with Epistemology & Ontology  EnFormAction is all of those, and more. 

                End of Blog Post 123

5. Difference :
A way to distinguish one thing from another. In Math, you can subtract one value from another to determine the difference in value. In Shannon’s digital inform-ation, the difference between 1 & 0 is 100%. So it covers the entire range of possible values. But, in Semantics, the difference may be a personal meaning versus the dictionary meaning.

6. Aboutness :
Biological Anthropologist Terrence Deacon used this term in reference to the human mental ability of Intention, to direct thought toward a subject or object of interest. Likewise, a symbol or metaphor is aimed at something similar, but not present. It’s not the thing, but about the thing.

7. EnFormAction :
A term (neologism) coined to convey the Creative, Causal, Energy functions of Generic Information. You could say that the program of Natural Evolution is EnFormAction. Potential Causation, Actual Change, Novel Forms, Phase Changes, etc.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

More posts on the nature of Information :

What is information?
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page16.html

Ubiquitous Information
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page13.html

Information Theory
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page29.html

Integrated Information
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page12.html

Self/Soul Informaion
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page67.html

Programmer
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page16.html

Non-Dual / Monistic
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page62.html

Qualia vs Quanta
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page21.html

Generic Information
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page29.html

Aboutness is directed attention

ENFORMATIONISM

 “So, you could say that, in keeping with Ockham's Razor, our perceived & conceived Reality all boils down to the symbolic Binary-Unity of the single continuum from 0-to-1; nothing to everything; the Holistic System of many parts.”