What Is an Individual? Biology Seeks Clues in Information Theory.

It would indeed be a great shame, but I say so be it. I wouldn't want parapsychology to deliberately or not go down a road leading to falsity and illusion, just to obtain acceptance and funding.

An incomplete view is hardly a false one? Does understanding the biology and physics of how light from the world allows us to have the quales of vision a path toward falsity and illusion? Physics is an incomplete truth, it's Physicalism's insistence otherwise that's the lie.

I do agree that ultimately an information based description of the individual's existence + interaction with its environment under-explains what it describes [this failure occurring at both subject and object poles] but that is the case for all the sciences. Where Information is useful here is to potentially have a way to describe reality that provides continuity between parapsychology and the other sciences. Sometimes the best, if not the only, way out is through.

My view is that the ultimate nature of the psyche or consciousness or mind is basically unknowable to humans. It is the unknowable trying to scrutinize and analyze its own nature, a fruitless enterprise. Its ultimate nature is certainly not information per se. 

Well the ultimate nature of Everything is unknowable, for example every Law of Nature is an admission of an explanatory "how" failure. The question in science is when, exactly, is the right time to accept we've hit a limit?

But physics isn't fruitless, it's how we can have this conversation. Why would an information-based exploration of parapsychology be fruitless then?

Any science that studies paranormal phenomena needs to mold itself around that bitter pill of what reality is starting to really look like, and restrict itself to continuing to build the scientific case for the existence of the  phenomenology it studies, and how it works, but not futilely search for its ultimate essence. If that is just too unfashionable or politically incorrect or paradigm-breaking for acceptance by mainstream science, so be it. The same applies to parapsychology embracing idealism or panpsychism or some other form of Monist philosophy of mind rather than the dualism for which there is much more evidence, merely for the marketing or practical obtaining of support reason that dualism is greatly unfashionable and politically incorrect in academia.

I don't think even the level of QM is seen as the ultimate essence, and surely Information will be replaced as a concept or refined. Pessimistic meta-induction almost guarantees we've a ways to go, that our current in-fashion ideas of the world will be revised by our descendants. But it's the work done today that allows us to be optimistic about that particular "Pessimism".

As for Dualism, I see it as the same path to understanding as Information - a useful stop gap measure on the way toward better understanding. In fact Information, whatever ultimately underlies the term/concept, seems like the right temporary bridge between the mental and the physical. For now, anyway...

It is my personal opinion that in the science of the future reality will neither be "psychic" nor "physical" but somehow both and somehow neither.
  -Wolfgang Pauli

Well, I wasn't really asserting something like "transcends all mathematical modeling". The same issue arises, a mathematical model is a model of something. We can create models of all sorts of things such as road-traffic flows, or a nuclear reactor or even nuclear weapon. It hardly seems necessary in those cases to note that the model is not the thing itself. We can model a nuclear explosion without the risk of vaporising ourselves. But it does seem that when it comes to consciousness phenomena, there is an undue haste to try to ignore that obvious distinction.

I did one ask Stevenw about information transmission:

There was a long and erudite response:
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-u...8#pid14538

However, and with the greatest respect to Stephenw, it didn't seem to move us forward. I'd say the very length of the response worked against it.

I agree there is an issue with recalling models are not the actual concrete realities being modeled. In general I think this problem goes beyond consciousness, in that people think everything can be captured with the right set of equations.

I think Information as a concept is not a complete description - after all nothing qualitative can be described in quantitative models. That being said, how we get to those qualitative experiences - the medium or mediation between our selves and those qualia - can be modeled. Similarly, I do think we can partially describe the individual this way.

What Is an Individual? Biology Seeks Clues in Information Theory.

Jordana Cepelewicz

wow

OK, a lot here to consider.  The conversation in this thread is outstanding.  

The information sciences would have a lot to say about individualization.  I would describe it as a fundamental state that frameworks self-actualization.  From bacteria to professional wrestling, intent is based on being self-interested and socially aware.  My examples exhibit its basic nature and that from intelligent bio-information processing comes mimicry and deception.  (think D. Hoffman)

Objectively - it is factual that nature leverages cellular information as very useful.  Nature developed communication networks long before Bell Labs.

 The first working transistor was demonstrated in Bell Labs' Murray Hill facility in 1947. .....In December 1947, Bell Labs engineers Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young proposed hexagonal cell transmissions for mobile phones

Well, I wasn't really asserting something like "transcends all mathematical modeling". The same issue arises, a mathematical model is a model of something. We can create models of all sorts of things such as road-traffic flows, or a nuclear reactor or even nuclear weapon. It hardly seems necessary in those cases to note that the model is not the thing itself. We can model a nuclear explosion without the risk of vaporising ourselves. But it does seem that when it comes to consciousness phenomena, there is an undue haste to try to ignore that obvious distinction.

I did one ask Stevenw about information transmission:

There was a long and erudite response:
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-u...8#pid14538

However, and with the greatest respect to Stephenw, it didn't seem to move us forward. I'd say the very length of the response worked against it.

Maybe you liked for being an awkward try.  Imaginative is appropriate; as their is nothing of expertise in it.

I have been thinking about how to have a general understanding of IT and its simple "nuts and bolts".  What does it mean to know something new after getting a "message".  Does something physical change?

I'm saying sure, so energy is spent on mentation - but what changes when you know something - are real-world probabilities.      And the measurable is Shannon's mutual information.  The chance for you to use the information is real.

An incomplete view is hardly a false one? Does understanding the biology and physics of how light from the world allows us to have the quales of vision a path toward falsity and illusion? Physics is an incomplete truth, it's Physicalism's insistence otherwise that's the lie.

I do agree that ultimately an information based description of the individual's existence + interaction with its environment under-explains what it describes [this failure occurring at both subject and object poles] but that is the case for all the sciences. Where Information is useful here is to potentially have a way to describe reality that provides continuity between parapsychology and the other sciences. Sometimes the best, if not the only, way out is through.


Well the ultimate nature of Everything is unknowable, for example every Law of Nature is an admission of an explanatory "how" failure. The question in science is when, exactly, is the right time to accept we've hit a limit?

But physics isn't fruitless, it's how we can have this conversation. Why would an information-based exploration of parapsychology be fruitless then?


I don't think even the level of QM is seen as the ultimate essence, and surely Information will be replaced as a concept or refined. Pessimistic meta-induction almost guarantees we've a ways to go, that our current in-fashion ideas of the world will be revised by our descendants. But it's the work done today that allows us to be optimistic about that particular "Pessimism".

As for Dualism, I see it as the same path to understanding as Information - a useful stop gap measure on the way toward better understanding. In fact Information, whatever ultimately underlies the term/concept, seems like the right temporary bridge between the mental and the physical. For now, anyway...

It is my personal opinion that in the science of the future reality will neither be "psychic" nor "physical" but somehow both and somehow neither.
  -Wolfgang Pauli

Physics also really seems to be coming up against what may be a similar limit to what is knowable. A grand universal model covering both quantum mechanics and gravity seems stubbornly out of reach despite decades of work, with no sign of anything in sight. Despite larger and larger higher and higher energy colliders, no sign of new fundamental particles past the Higgs. String theory looked promising but has run into what seem to be insuperable difficulties. Physics has had to increasingly resort to promissory note after promissory note in order to get funding for more and more expensive instruments.

I think that sooner or later physicists may have to admit they have hit the limit to what is humanly knowable. The criteria of beauty and elegance and unified may have to be abandoned as requirements for a theory of everything. There may not ever be a beautiful unified theory of everything. Because reality as designed by the powers that be has no logical requirement to have these qualities. In fact it has no logical requirement to even have the elegant regularity and mathematical comprehensibility that underpins twentieth century physics. We should be thankful for what we have been given.

In the case of parapsychology, I think that the ultimate inner nature of consciousness or mind will turn out to be a similar unsolvable problem, and conceptual stratagems like latching onto information (or Information) as a bridge between the physically objectively measurable and the subjective qualia and other qualities and aspects of consciousness will turn out to be a dead end. For a lot of reasons, including what has been pointed out, that information (or Information for that matter) are abstractions or principles or mathematical constructs, with no "bite" or traction whatsoever onto whatever is the mental. How can information (or Information) possibly be the mysterious essence of consciousness? 

An analogy to this fundamental limit would be the quest by microscopy and FMRI and other scanning technologies to observe the process and objects of consciousness. It has been a futile enterprise, because a thought in mind has no even submicroscopic physical structure even in principle observable with advanced electron microscopes or PET scanners or any other technologies.

Another analogy, very rough in this case: it is impossible even in principle to directly view ones own retina. A fundamental self-limitation to physical perception. Perhaps there is a similar fundamental limitation to self-introspection.

Physics also really seems to be coming up against what may be a similar limit to what is knowable. A grand universal model covering both quantum mechanics and gravity seems stubbornly out of reach despite decades of work, with no sign of anything in sight. Despite larger and larger higher and higher energy colliders, no sign of new fundamental particles past the Higgs. String theory looked promising but has run into what seem to be insuperable difficulties. Physics has had to increasingly resort to promissory note after promissory note in order to get funding for more and more expensive instruments.

I think that sooner or later physicists may have to admit they have hit the limit to what is humanly knowable. The criteria of beauty and elegance and unified may have to be abandoned as requirements for a theory of everything. There may not ever be a beautiful unified theory of everything. Because reality as designed by the powers that be has no logical requirement to have these qualities. In fact it has no logical requirement to even have the elegant regularity and mathematical comprehensibility that underpins twentieth century physics. We should be thankful for what we have been given.

In the case of parapsychology, I think that the ultimate inner nature of consciousness or mind will turn out to be a similar unsolvable problem, and conceptual stratagems like latching onto information (or Information) as a bridge between the physically objectively measurable and the subjective qualia and other qualities and aspects of consciousness will turn out to be a dead end. For a lot of reasons, including what has been pointed out, that information (or Information for that matter) are abstractions or principles or mathematical constructs, with no "bite" or traction whatsoever onto whatever is the mental. How can information (or Information) possibly be the mysterious essence of consciousness? 

An analogy to this fundamental limit would be the quest by microscopy and FMRI and other scanning technologies to observe the process and objects of consciousness. It has been a futile enterprise, because a thought in mind has no even submicroscopic physical structure even in principle observable with advanced electron microscopes or PET scanners or any other technologies.

Another analogy, very rough in this case: it is impossible even in principle to directly view ones own retina. A fundamental limitation to physical perception. Perhaps there is a similar fundamental limitation to self-introspection.

I agree with all this, though I'd say Information, along with other currently promising venues like Magneto & Quantum Biology, are the right tools for the time. As it's stated even in Irreducible Mind, one has to let neuroscience complete its journey before it can accept its limitations.

I'm reminded of Dante's Paradiso and its final conclusion, where only after three long poems does Dante come to the point where all description fails ->

As the geometrician, who endeavours
   To square the circle, and discovers not,
   By taking thought, the principle he wants,

Even such was I at that new apparition;
   I wished to see how the image to the circle
   Conformed itself, and how it there finds place;

But my own wings were not enough for this,
   Had it not been that then my mind there smote
   A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish.

Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
   But now was turning my desire and will,
   Even as a wheel that equally is moved,

The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

In the case of parapsychology, I think that the ultimate inner nature of consciousness or mind will turn out to be a similar unsolvable problem, and conceptual stratagems like latching onto information (or Information) as a bridge between the physically objectively measurable and the subjective qualia and other qualities and aspects of consciousness will turn out to be a dead end. For a lot of reasons, including what has been pointed out, that information (or Information for that matter) are abstractions or principles or mathematical constructs, with no "bite" or traction whatsoever onto whatever is the mental. How can information (or Information) possibly be the mysterious essence of consciousness? 

The information sciences are not looking to address "essences" or mysterious ways.  They look to document verifiable observations about the many modes of information structuring and purposeful communication.  While Shannon excluded "the meaning" as a measured variable from the messages  -- information sciences DO still address it.  Logic is an information science whose outcomes are useful in creating order and organization.  Order and organization can be enforced as command and control.  The key to activating command and control is communication.

 The Science of Linguistics. Linguistics is the science of language, and linguists are scientists who apply the scientific method to questions about the nature and function of language. Linguists conduct formal studies of speech sounds, grammatical structures, and meaning across all the world's over 6,000 languages. 

Life and our natural environments are active with behavior driven by communication.  Understanding nature as having an informational environment and seeing that it is behind anomalous information transfer is not beyond our reach.  We just need to take a simple hard look at how information is real.  And what appears --- shows nature is working really hard to understand and experience  itself thru as many perceiving units as possible.  Each one, transforming a stream of information through its perceptual systems.  A wake of entropy is left - but new and novel information is generated all the time.