Obtaining Matter from Information

Obtaining Matter from Information *Note: This article is from the book (Cominion: Beyond the Nature of Information) for more please check out the book. Materialist philosophy considers information to be ways in which matter can be constructed. If matter is constructed in a single way to exclude other methods, then it is the transmission of information. But the ability of matter to convey information itself seems unproblematic; information can be contained in matter, and the existence of matter is compatible with information. But the important question for materialism is whether matter alone can provide us because of the appropriateness of information, and the boldest question, is matter itself a form of information? The last two generations have seen information slip out of the grasp of matter; for example, Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, has thought that information cannot fall under matter: "Information is information, it is neither matter nor energy; materialism that does not recognize this cannot live in the present day".[1] For materialism, when matter holds information, it happens by sheer chance, in the sense that it happens by non-finite forces, not by teleological forces. Think of a group of rocks arranged in a certain way at a crossroads, and this arrangement may be a marker for the traveler to take a right, and then this arrangement transmits information. Because intelligence is meant to communicate with another intelligence, and this information (contains meaning) would include semantic information, not just semantic information. But why should we think about the validity of materialism? In fact, there is a reason to think that materialism is wrong, and that information (even information based on purpose or intent) is more authentic than materialism. I remember listening once to a lecture in which a speaker on a desk says: This material is the most real of all, and as the playwrights say this is not bad, but this presentation hides it as a matter of fact. Materialism easily presents a simple conceptual picture of what are supposed to be the basic components of reality, but this picture at its best only serves as an illusion; indeed, it conceals a broad disregard for the true nature of reality. To see why matter is not as clear a concept as the materialists claim, it is useful to see how materialism played its part in the philosophy of science from Newton to Einstein, and I said the philosophy of science and not science itself because science (the advent of Newtonian mechanics) was quite happy with the materialist conception of nature. When the philosopher John Locke (contemporary Newton and the transcendental empiricist) ponders this question in a perfect way, there is something (material) that should lie behind our observations, but what is it? Perhaps the most famous quote from Locke's famous book "An Essay on the Understanding of Man" is his answer to this question: "I don't know what it is."[2] Newton may agree with Newton's mechanics: that absolute matter (the fundamental thing behind our observation) is real matter.[3] I do not argue against the existence of anything that we can perceive either by the senses or by introspection; these things that I see with my own eyes and touch with my own hands really do exist, but what is important is that the only thing we deny is what philosophers call matter or material subject matter, and in doing so there is no harm to the rest of the human race, which I dare say we will never lose, and it is true that the atheist desires the point of a name that they have lost. Matter is an abstraction derived from a variety of things that we have observed with our senses; this makes matter problematic as an ontological basis, and is the old dilemma faced by Democritus (as seen in Chapter 1) who considered that the whole of reality is made up of atoms in a vacuum, but then he could not justify this materialist theory which assumes that all its evidence comes from the senses, giving the senses logical precedence over matter, and thus making matter at best of data. If you wish to be materialistic only by making you a materialistic article of faith, you are welcome, but this materialism based on faith is not the kind of materialism we face today, we are facing a scientific materialism that tries to justify materialism on scientific grounds, but how to use science to justify itself. I would now like to acknowledge some phenomena that seem to be adequately explained on physical grounds, such as the motion of planets and galaxies, but there are many things that are closer to us, such as consciousness, language, and intention, although their attachments to matter are far from fully described from a materialist perspective, despite the objections of materialists such as Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland, who declare that the material solution to all the profound problems of human nature is at hand, and that whoever bets that he will win against materialism will be lost even after.[7] Arguably, material science has become overwhelmingly successful (not as it is now, an explanatory project with wide gaps), but even in this case why should we take matter as the basis of reality? The success of science (as a temporary circumstantial fact) can at best tell us that its current practice has worked on material grounds now, but it cannot tell us that this success will continue in the future on material grounds, and therefore materialism must be taken as a working hypothesis in order to understand certain aspects of nature. But there remains a deeper problem in the construction of materialism as a fundamental principle of science, alluded to by Democritus, and seen more clearly by Locke and his fellow empiricists: that empirical science has never observed matter as it is, but necessarily deduces it from observation; observation from the perspective of empirical science is logically earlier than matter. Now it is interesting to trace where the philosophy of science has gone: science (which does not think for itself) at least as practiced by scientists (there are exceptions such as Beer-Dohem)[8] tends to adopt empiricism, whether of the strict metaphysical type which considers all reality to be matter or of the moderate methodological type which considers science to be a study properly limited especially by material categories, but under philosophy (which values a coherent and coherent system of thought) it is not as scientific practice. The answer to this question is not easy from a physical or other perspective, the problem is that the observation itself cannot tell us what is behind it, and hence Locke said "I don't know what it is", the observation may seem to tell us that what is behind it is matter, but the observation that appears to us is not necessarily in fact, not because things seem material to say: it is, or: it is all there is. There is no way to find out what is outside the act of observation and verify that reality is not really identical with observation (what else does this verification have to do with observation, which frustrates the intended purpose of the practice), so where is that confidence that observation gives us a correct view of the world?[9] To restore confidence, Descartes begged a god who would never deceive us,[10] and took a more secular approach; he saw that our mind had an active role in the synthesis of appearances and phenomena provided by observation[11], and this provided some objectivity to the phenomenological world, but for the noumena that stands behind appearances is unknowable, and thus converges with Locke's saying "I don't know what it is". For him, no mind independent of the world or matter or otherwise can be observed, but only minds (in the act of observation) give realism to things, not denying Barclay's idealism the realism of things, but the ability of things to exist away from minds, for him it is necessary to perceive things (making material objects an expression of the mind and not the opposite) as in the case of materialists[12], Barclay's step may seem a step to the Imam in understanding of the relationship between the mind and the world. At its simplest, observation seems to give us fully competent observers, but rather sensory experiences, and Hume's skepticism may even be considered a reaction to Barclay; pure empiricism leads not to observers, but to sensory experiences upon which observation is based. The philosophy of science from Kant through Ernst Mach to the Vienna Circle in the 1920s and 1930s attempts to construct sensory experiences in a way that avoids doubt, and explains how science can be considered knowledge (in fact it is the best form of knowledge), Kant saw, for example, that the structure required Euclidean (or level) geometry, which helped him secure Newtonian science, but over time the Vienna Circle came with Einstein, and the structure required non-Euclidean (or) geometry. The Vienna Circle focused especially on logic in the synthesis of sensory experiences (hence its description of their movement as "rational positivism" or "rational empiricism"), this was not Aristotle's logic, but a powerful new logic developed by a number of mathematicians such as Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Kurt Goodell[14], but unfortunately sensory experience (even when it was demonstrated in a formal language with a number of stronger regions) could not gain experience. In Chapter 3, we saw what might be called the “Tang Problem,” and we applied that to materialism: once the morning drink “Tang” breaks the orange juice into a powder composed of orange juice figures, it can never be returned to a fresh, whole orange juice, and so the substance, when it is returned to its basic elements fails to get reality in its entirety. In fact, despite the frugal remarks of a number of materialists, materialists do not give us any evidence of having the means to complete the task of returning it; materialists disagree with this pessimistic evaluation of materialism, and thus defend a materialistic reality that is materialistically independent of us; and materialists have always been philosophically realistic, metaphysically adopted or elementary philosophy that the reality behind appearance is existentially independent of us (in this case, purely materialistic). Area empiricists, on the other hand, rejected metaphysics[15], making sense experience (in its most direct and analytical form: "in front of a red color") the basis of their philosophy, and of course they were unable to look beyond the appearance (the appearance lies in sense experience) of any underlying reality (which is concerned with metaphysics or elementary philosophy)[16] and therefore the area empiricists were counter-realists, not realists. The task of materialism is to show how the world is materially reshaped, and the task of logical empiricism is to show how the world is sensoryally reshaped, although logical empiricism collapsed in the 1940s and 1950s, as its verificationist understanding of meaning was found to be either incoherent or unsolvable. Carnap wrote in German, and even this title is translated from the original German title: "Der logische Aufbau der Welt", the word "Aufbau" is a dynamic word referring to a scientific act and construction, and the English word used in its translation "structure" is a static word, losing the purpose of the title as well as the purpose of the book. Carnap's task in his book was to chart how human knowledge can be reshaped by the orderly efficacy of logic over our sensory experience (or more precisely, sensory experience as it is pronounced in formal language), but the book was a guideline for reconstructing the logical empiricism of all science, and even a quick scan of the book shows that this reasoning and sensory experience together are much less important than reconstructing the world, even if the territorial empiricists hold that the world is a world of phenomena (as opposed to the existence of materialists). In his book Logical Constructivism of the World, Carnap attempts to make sense of science according to science (even parapsychology![18]), but he does not provide the details of a complete logical construct in terms of sensory experience, and what Carnap then wrote and his colleagues did not fill in. This brief history of the philosophy of science is undoubtedly oversimplified, but enlightening, not only because it shows how materialism and experimentation (either in combination or in isolation) have failed to support the resources necessary for a proper conception of the world, but because it reveals a way forward, the problem of materialism and experimentation in the reconstruction of the world (whether from the perspective of matter as a basis or other sensory experiences as a basis) is inherently informational. In other words, we are faced with information, and the sensory and physical features associated with these models are secondary, and in fact these same features are modeled, and therefore informational, models (or equivalent types of perceived information) are essential. Taking models as the basis suggests that I am defending Platonism, but I am not; the models I am talking about do not lie (or at least not exclusively) in the Platonic sky, but rather the models I am talking about relate to what is close and personal; think of the late work of the Large Hadron Collider to discover the Higgs boson; the Higgs boson as a fundamental particle in contemporary physics is capable of handling current technology. Physicists actually need collisions operating at energy levels a trillion times higher than the Large Hadron Collider (and thus the diameter of the entire solar system) to detect the X and Y bosons (the fundamental particles predicted by the Great Unified Theory) and the next step is the highest in the particle garden. Fundamental particles are not objects of direct intuition, are not intuitive, and cannot be observed with any direct sense, but rather detect particles that have a distinctive “signature” predicted by a physical theory (physicists talk about “creating” these particles by precisely focusing high energies in precise ways, and then recording scattered pieces of interactions involving these particles). My good friend and colleague Stephen Mayer wrote a book, Signature in the Cell, in which he argues that the cell's DNA contains information of a kind that cannot be reduced to purely physical processes, but requires intelligence. It doesn’t matter whether he is right or wrong about the cell being a product of intelligence. What I want to draw attention to here is that the title of this book rightly highlights all the circulations of science in the processes that leave signatures (which show certain ad hoc models and exclude others), or in other words: all the circulations of science in information in the first place, what I wrote is not an endorsement of the methods or tools that define particles by models of their interactions or their activity, but I am happy to consider the real. As a general rule: we know the object by what it leaves models, for example, the gravitational field leads to certain models of movement between massive particles, and moreover these particles show their mass through certain models of interaction with each other and with the fields of gravity, so we realize in Newton's cradle that the balls have mass because they show models of movement, here circular, but not circular emptiness, and can be avoided, because the models of interaction (once they exist) can not be observed by looking for more patterns. So what is real according to this informational perspective is the ability of an object to produce a distinct set of models, in other words: to say that something exists and therefore is real is to say that it has the ability to produce certain types of information and to exclude others, in Aristotle's terms we might say that realism is a measure in terms of the ability to produce information. Although I sympathize with Plato and Aristotle, none of the things I say here represent an outline of their philosophies, and I work on a level that is quite familiar: we know things by the patterns they follow, and their ability to let those patterns form their identity and make them real. Where do these models lie? They lie in the world (the real world), and we discover them by identifying probability matrices, then determining which probabilities within these matrices have been met to rule out other probabilities (remember Chapter V), and thus to determine whether or not Higgs is a real boson, one looks at the different scatters (the matrix) that a given setting of the Large Hadron Collider might throw at it, and then determine whether a scatter piece actually found causes a distinct model. This is what physicists generally do: determine the probability matrix and then determine the realized probabilities, and all experiments follow these procedures, such as Robert Milkan's Oil Drop Experiment, Charles Wilson's Cloud Room Experiment, Gregor Mendel's Peas Experiment, Arthur Eddington's assertion of general relativity by observing a solar eclipse and even Charles Darwin's use of biological geography to support evolution. Nothing in the informational approach to scientific investigation violates empiricality, either in a spiritual or a literal sense; what the observation tells us is whether a probability has been achieved within a probability matrix, and the informational approach of the observer retains its crucial role in science, but the informational approach to scientific investigation dispenses with the pretense that observation can be independent of the context of the investigation, or worse: it can be constructed from basic sensory experiences.[23] Sensual experiences can never come to us alone, but are always fitted into complete perceptions, and perceptions do not occur in front of a blank page, but are always attentively biased in light of attention and background knowledge, the probabilistic matrix directs our attention and invites us to receive certain models that exclude others. Sensory data for experimentalists are logically flowing from here (by a large margin) and from occasional scientific interest, in fact many different combinations of sensory data can yield similar models of equal scientific importance (as colorblind scientists find disturbing, but not a major obstacle to scientific research). Matter is as wonderful, but not as great as the materialists want it to be: Matter (as an abstraction of different kinds of material objects) leaves no distinctive form or signature, so matter from the perspective of information is not real. All particles that have mass, such as protons, electrons, and almost massless particles, such as photons, neutrons, energy fields, black matter, black matter, strings, superstrings, membranes, etc., can be described as real, but to do so each type of material must display a distinctive signature in specific circumstances (i.e., in relation to things known to be real). Yet the article as such is not real, only abstract, and the idea of "the average child in an American family is 2.3 children" is abstract. If so, it would be very easy, in fact, materialism is still an option, but now it must establish itself with honest toil and not by impersonating the privileges it has not earned. It is not enough for the materialist to say: "Everything is material, prove me wrong", he must establish that everything is originally material, and the way to do so is to provide us with a complete list of fundamental material objects (listing the different types of material objects along with their distinctive signatures), and then show that all reality as we know it can be reasonably reconstructed. Note that we now lack this basic regulation, not to mention how all these fundamental entities (particles) can work together to reconstruct reality, materialism is essentially a reductionist project (reducing to matter), and this reductionism must be separated into certain images taken by matter, not merely emphasizing this reductionism as a belief article. To make information the basis does not mean to diminish the importance of the material, the material is still allowed to prove itself, but not as an abstract idea, but in certain images of it; where the material takes certain images showing distinctive signatures, and with those signatures (not others) we can realize, and anything behind these signatures will be inferred. Take, for example, an alpha particle or a house moving through a cloud chamber, the heavier alpha particle will follow a distinct path (signature) that differs from the lighter beta particle, and from these signatures we deduce the existence of these particles, and differentiate between them. In the case of any material subject such inferences are generally reliable, and undisputed, but the reality of these material subjects is mediated by signatures, which come through forms, through the information characteristic of these subjects. I will say that the information is the most real, the problem is that we cannot get what is outside of the information to hug the material as it is, it is not like the movie "The Matrix", in which people can get out of the matrix and then see themselves inside the matrix brain in a container, we live and move and exist inside an information matrix, and we can not get out of it. Moreover, according to the Judeo-Christian report on creation, there may be no outsiders. If creation is an effective word spoken by God (as this religious tradition teaches), then creation itself is an informational act. Moreover, the extended action of this creation in all its aspects will be a series of echoes resulting from this initial act. [1] Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1961), 132. In this context, the following quotation attempts to clarify material and spiritual themes: "By combining our thoughts, our will, or our ability to move, with substance (of which we have no distinct idea) we have an idea of the immaterial soul, and by combining our ideas of solid, coherent parts and their ability to move with substance (of which we have no positive idea of motion). Presumably I do not know what they are, and to support them we call them coincidences, because of the lack of introspection we tend to think that our senses only show us material things, every act of sensation (when properly perceived) gives us an equal view of the two parts of nature, material and spiritual. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 2.23.15 Newton's next quote essentially points to the same point. Newton would not accept this as a believer, for God has absolute essence: "(God) is completely devoid of any physical or physical image, and therefore cannot see, hear or touch, nor should he worship under any image any material subject. We have ideas about the qualities of matter, but we have no minimum knowledge of the substance of any substance, we only see the shapes and colors of objects, we hear sounds and touch the outer surfaces of objects, we smell, we taste no flavors." Dana Densemore, Newton’s Principia: The Central Argument, 3rd edn., trans. W. H. Donahue (Santa Fe, N. Mex.: Green Lion Press, 2003), 487–8. [4] "For lack of introspection we tend to think that our senses show us that everything is matter." Locke, Essay, 2.23.15. [5] George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, in Howard Robinson, ed., Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 38. [6] See for example Barbara Forrest's defense of systematic naturalism/materialism: Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection, Philo 3(2) (Fall–Winter 2000): 7–29. She wrote: "Philosophical (methodological) naturalism is justified on the basis of the interpretive success of science, which is lacking in supernatural explanations." http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/naturalism.html (Last accessed 5/6/2013). [7] Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to The Philosophy of Mind, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988) and Daniel C. Dennett,“‘A Perfect and Beautiful Machine’: What Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence,” The Atlantic ( June 22, 2012), posted online at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/a-perfect-and-beautiful-machine-what-darwins-theory-of-evolution-reveals-about-artificial-intelligence/258829. I reply to Dennett here: “Dennetton Competence without Comprehension,” Evolution News and Views (June 28, 2012), posted online at http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/06/dennett_on_comp061451.html (both articles last accessed June 5, 2013). [8] See: Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. P.P. Wiener (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991 [1914] and Pierre Duhem, To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo, trans. E. Dolan and C. Maschler (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1969 [1908]. [9] Gilbert Keith Chesterton put the problem more appropriately: “The mind itself is a matter of faith; it is the act of faith to assert that our thoughts have absolutely nothing to do with reality; if you are sceptical you must sooner or later ask yourself this question: why should everything go in the right direction; even observation and reasoning? G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, in Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, vol. 1 (San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius, 1986), 236 [10] Descartes says in Meditation V: But as soon as I realize that there is a God and understand at the same time that everything also depends on him and that he is not a deceiver: I conclude that everything I have clearly understood is necessarily true. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in Donald A. Cress, trans., Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th edn. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1998), 91. [11] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith (New York:St. Martin’s, 1929 [1787]. [12] "Some truths are clear and very close to the mind one needs only to open one's eyes to see them, such as the important fact that all the choirs of heaven and earth's brushes (or, in short, all the objects that make up the great framework of the world) have no existence without a mind that recognizes or knows them, and so if these things are not conscious of me, or do not exist in my mind or any other created soul, they will not exist at all, or exist in the mind of some immortal soul. [13] "Just as the science of human nature is the only solid foundation of other sciences, so the only solid foundation which we can give to these same sciences is experience and observation ... It seems to me that the essence of the mind is as unknown to us as the mind of other bodies, it must also be impossible to form any conception of its capacities and qualities without careful and precise experimentation. David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 [1739], 4–5. [14] See: Jean van Heijenoort, From Frege to Goedel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). [15] Neither metaphysics nor realism of logical empiricism is shown particularly in: A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (London: Penguin, 2001 [1936] and A.J. Ayer, ed., Logical Positivism (New York: Free Press, 1959). [16] The history of logical positivism and the Vienna movement is more complex than what I have drawn here. Logical positivism included inspirational, exciting and diverse figures such as Kurt G del (whose role in logic can be added to Moritz Schlick), Karl Popper, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Otto Neurath. “Sociologyin the Framework of Physicalism,” in Otto Neurath, Philosophical Papers 1913–1946, eds.R.S. Cohen and M. Neurath (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983 [1932], 58–90. [17] Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, trans. R.A. George (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1967 [1928]. [18] Ibid. p. 216. Carnap describes in his "Secret of Living Philosophers" his exchange of opinion with Ludwig Wittgenstein on parapsychology, which exactly defines Carnap's spirit of logical empiricism, saying: "Carnap and Wittgenstein once again touched on the subject of parapsychology, and strongly expressed that he is against it, saying that the alleged messages resulting from the preparation sessions of the spirits are trivial and extremely absurd, but I noticed that the existence of the parapsychology." Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, vol. 11 in The Library of Living Philosophers (Peru, Ill.:Open Court, 1963), 26. [19] David Lindley, The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 173–4. [20] See Book (signature in cell) of Mayer, especially chapters 8-13. [21] See, for example: Christopher G. Timpson, Quantum Information Theory and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 88–90. [22] When National Public Radio (NPR) announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, it published the following as key evidence of its existence: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/12/13/higgs-image_custom-23ab2587699a4f8f99a51641f6dba8aed30fd806.jpeg (Last accessed 10/6/2013). [23] Recognizing that observation involves theory by its very nature was one of the main factors that led to the collapse of logical empiricism, as Peter Cosseau puts it: "An observation in science is loaded with theory, and the observation responsible for the world (the only kind that plays a role in acquiring and justifying knowledge) is accompanied by a theoretical component, we are forced to abandon the idea of pure information that has not changed from the world, and it is better to think that theoretical information is not simply by nature, but by reason." Peter Kosso, Reading the Book of Nature: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 119. [24] The expression "active speech" (or its variants) means that: an actor intended (comparatively achieves this through the initial expression of the meaning of the word), and then broadcast this word through a verbal act, and finally this speech of the word ensures the achievement of the desired effect; for example, when a police officer wants to stop someone uttering the word "stand", but this word is effective (i.e., it comes into effect) only if that person obeys the police officer and actually stops, when it. - Dr. William Dembski. — Source: Brahin Center website - Published 2018-05-13 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/articles/philosophy/الحصول-على-المادة-من-المعلومات