Can any part of existence be considered as information?

Question

Can any part of existence be considered as information? I was thinking about it and anything that exist literally can be thought as information, but is there an exception to this rule? Is nothingness information, is the lack of matter information, or is anything information? Because you can always point to something in a space and it could physically or not physically contain information. For example, a point you point in nothingness can be expressed in terms of coordinate (x,y,z). By "part of existence" and "information", I am thinking of the broadest, most general definitions possible.

What meaning of "information" are you using? Information theory gives an answer to these questions, but only for its definition of "information." — Cort Ammon, Oct 27 '23 at 03:48
@CortAmmon I'am struggling with a definition of the basic concepts energy, matter, information. Do you have a favorite definition for the latter, or at least a working definition? — Jo Wehler, Oct 27 '23 at 04:47
I like information theory because it has mathematical definitions (although it's up to you whether they apply to any given question). For example, Kullback–Leibler divergence would be applicable here. If you already knew that an object was at (x, y, z), the fact that it is at (x, y, z) provides no new information. But if you didn't know where it was, you would gain information from learning its position. And likewise, if you don't know whether there's something in a box, opening the box and looking in does provide information. — Cort Ammon, Oct 27 '23 at 05:11
Nothing that exists can be literally thought as information other than the information itself, and even that only if one subscribes to existence of abstract objects. This just confuses representations with what they represent. There are metaphysical theories that put information at the foundation of reality, like Wheeler's It from Bit expanded upon by Davies, but it is a small minority view. — Conifold, Oct 27 '23 at 09:08
It can all be considered information. The preservation of information that falls into a black hole is a topic of study: Black hole information paradox - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox — Idiosyncratic Soul, Oct 28 '23 at 16:34
In the physical sense, as used by Stephen Hawking, information is the line of causal facts, so, ideally, following such line upwards, we can find the cause of any consequence, and the original cause of the universe would be at the top. According to Hawing, such information disappears in black holes. — RodolfoAP, Oct 29 '23 at 07:31
When I post a question on another SE and get nothing in the way of response, the information I get from that is that my question is not of interest to those people. Ha ha — Scott Rowe, Oct 29 '23 at 12:35
when you are pointing at a point in space saying it has coordinates XYZ, it's not the point that holds information, it's you assigning it to the point. And the coordonates themselves are not stored in the point, but rather in some other place like a piece of paper or your brain. The point itself is left unchanged. It's like claiming the mount Everest would be changed if I called it "Johny". — armand, Nov 09 '23 at 00:16

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 08 '23 at 11:53

There is no intrinsic “thing” called information. Information arises like waves in the ocean , information changes and information vanishes. Information is impermanent. Information is derived based on the experience in consciousness. When we eat sugar , sweetness is experienced and we develop information that the sugar is sweet based on our speech ability. Sugar does not deliver information but it delivers an experience of sweetness. This experience first generates latent information and then one develops an instinct for what to expect if sugar is eaten again.If one is capable of speech then the experience can be passed on as information to someone or oneself as “sugar tastes sweet”. This information can be lost because it was generated based on conditions namely , tongue must be present , sugar must be present , consciousness must be present. These conditions are impermanent therefore the information can get lost. In other words ,for example ,tongue can loose the capacity to taste. If taste can get lost then so can the meaning of sweetness can get lost.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 07 '23 at 08:11

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The integrated information theory of Tononi and others suggests that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe. It has been developed by David Chalmers.

answered Nov 07 '23 at 08:11

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I answered this question then retracted.it My answer was based upon that information doesn't exist until a concious observer exist. Not invoking God as a concious observer.Is that what you are saying? – 8Mad0Manc8 Nov 08 '23 at 09:48
Yeah, no god. As Laplace allegedly said to Napoleon "I have no need of that hypothesis". – Meanach Nov 08 '23 at 10:29

8Mad0Manc8 · Answer 3 · 2023-10-29T09:26:14.990

Well, with my limited mental capacity, the universe consists of mass/energy, time, space, and information. Howver I think the latter didn't come in to existence until consciousness existed to observe the universe. I would define information as the content of communication and consciousness as the ability to observe . If you do not invoke god as an initial observer then the first observers were life that could sense its environment and exhibit behaviour. Humans observe, exhibit behaviour and can communicate using behaviour and the content of this communication i would call information. We sense light which is energy and light has different colours which have different frequencies this difference our brain recognises such as red or green and we can quantify this relative difference and represent the frequency with quantity or a number and that number is information aswell as the word red or green etc, similarly with the other senses. This ability to recognise difference is not demonstrated with other objects that are not living, such as the a litre jar of water stood beside a two litre jar of water. One jar cannot concieve of the relative difference that the other jar has which is twice the volume of itself, etc, and is unable to communicate that information between each other. So to make a long story short information did not exist before communication and communication exists because of life and life has not existed since the origin of the universe.

Please accept my apologies as the argument may be not very sound I composed the original answer when I was drunk and have now had to revise it using some of the propositions and content i used in the previous draft and now also including some arguments to save face apologies again if its a load of nonsense.

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. — Community, Oct 27 '23 at 13:51
@Community I'm citing the common sense of my brain and those of the people that I surround my self with. Unfortunately, reading is not my strong point I prefer conversation and since I don't know any official philosopher apart from the drunk guy that hangs around at my local church I'm unable to cite references. — 8Mad0Manc8, Oct 27 '23 at 14:01
@8Mad0Man8 I agree with your general answer “no” to the title question. I consider your thesis, that information presupposes the existence of conscious beings, interesting and also a bit challenging. Therefore it would help the further discussion if you make explicit your definition of “information” and of “conscious”. - I like your remark concerning the guy from your church because it brings some sophisticated talking within our blog down to earth :-) But nevertheless, arguments are necessary in philosophy. — Jo Wehler, Oct 28 '23 at 16:03
@JoWehler Well I guess a loose definition of information is the content of communication. such as the information iam writing, and ias its being read the information is transferring from my mind to the page and then from the page to your mind and the medium is the internet and the reson why I said information came into the universe was when something began communicating. As far as I'm aware proir to consciousness nothing in the universe communicated however if you can state something that did then my definition is questionable. — 8Mad0Manc8, Oct 29 '23 at 04:13

Ioannis Paizis · Answer 4 · 2023-11-08T19:11:39.490

Information - that which has the power to inform - is a general term that can represent anything; even nothingness is information: nothing exists. So in order to proceed to a meaning we have to "name" so to speak this information into ontological entities.

(I don't take here information as per se, but also what it represents)

In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being. It investigates what types of entities exist, how they are grouped into categories, and how they are related to one another on the most fundamental level

These entities (categories of information) can be substances, properties, relations, matter, energy, states, events, measurements, colors ... In this sense you start making a representation of reality in the context of these entities.

There exist many "frameworks" in which this process is done, concerning different aspects of reality, ex: physics, philosophy, theology, social sciences etc.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 08 '23 at 22:03

I would challenge the idea that we can say 'what everything really is', ontologically, at least within the methods of science. I make the case that energy is better thought of as a kind of language to cover describing many circumstances in a shared way here: Is the idea that "Everything is energy" even coherent? But also that entropy, and especially Shannon entropy, must be part of fully describing things - ie information. In that sense science is currently property dualist, with an unproved and generally unexamined assumption of substance monism answering the question 'what things really are'.

The case for information transfer and it's constraints, being more fundamental than that of energy, is about it's potential to link Relativistic and QFT descriptions. With light as the maximum speed of causality, and quantum measurements as propagation of quantum correlations into the network at or below that speed - Loop Quantum Gravity is explicitly a model like this, with the quantum spin network as the more fundamental description layer, out of which causal chains are 'crowd sourced'.

Tegmark, and most other mathematical platonists, consider mathematics as sonehow 'more real' than particular events. I'd say that would make information, abstractions relating to the bigger picture, fundamental.

I don't buy that picture of math, and I give my picture how it works here: The Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics in most sciences

I'd argue that subjectivity, in the sense of teleonomic systems, is more fundamental, in relation to a peer-to-peer view if reality On the framing of causality? This is much more primitive than a sense of psychological identity, and I would picture physics as intersubjective abstractions, and subjective complexity, as co-emergent.

Can any part of existence be considered as information?

5 Answers5