Information is everywhere in the sciences. And yet scientists often ignore the connection of intelligence to information. This brief post makes clear the connection.
My friend and colleague Gale Pooley (co-author of the fantastic book SUPERABUNDANCE -- please get it) remarked in an email to me about this short piece the following (posted here with his permission): "I would also emphasize that it requires intelligence to recognize information. It’s why innovation is an intelligence activity. Creating things and then judging their value. The freedom to create and the freedom to choose is also key. Economics is the study of how human beings create value for one another. It requires freedom, information, and intelligence. " Gale is an economist.
How does this work with acquiring new knowledge? For example, if I learn of a new local restaurant, wouldn't that add the possibility of me exploring it? Before this communication transfer, going to the restaurant was not a possibility that could be explored. I'm still very naive in this space so I would love to hear your thoughts.
Hi Nicolas. The narrowing of possibilities always occurs within a reference class of possibilities. The relevant reference class of possibilities in your example is all restaurants. The narrowing occurs by identifying a new local restaurant. Only by learning this information will you be in a position to explore the restaurant. If you want a deeper understanding of information, let me suggest my book BEING AS COMMUNION: A METAPHYSICS OF INFORMATION. --Bill
Nice summary of Intelligence and Information. I read Being as Communion in 2016, and re-read it circa 2018. This is your book about the metaphysics of information, so it poses the ultimate questions about intelligence and teleology (goal-directedness). I have been reading a lot of metaphysics in the last 3 years, and read BAC again last month. I must say I got much more out of it this time with this background knowledge. To my mind BAC is your best book (and you've written many).
Nicolas if you read it, start with the last chapter 'The Creation of Information' which is the crux of the matter explaining how information is a communication. The title 'Being as Communion' means 'Existence as Communication between Existents'.
Thanks for these kind remarks about BAC. Yes, I think in some ways it is my most important book because it ties together so many threads in my thinking. That said, I wrote it to fulfill a pledge I made to the Templeton Foundation back around 2000 for a book award. Because the focus is metaphysical and theological, the book seems never to have entered the full conversation it was meant to enter, namely, to challenge the speculations by scientists, such as Paul Davies, Max Tegmark, John Wheeler, etc., who were pushing for information at a fundamental level in the exact sciences. I'm trying to recover the rights to BAC and would like to redo it so that it can properly enter that conversation. Also, I think I need to back off a bit in informational realism, the metaphysical view of information adopted in the book, on it being a relational ontology. The relationality of information is fundamental, but it seems to me that the sources of information, ultimately God, have primary ontology, and information, while crucial in establishing reality, is downstream from the ultimate source(s) of information. I'm shooting a bit from the hip here, and need time to develop this thought more fully. I've been thinking about such possibilities for a time, but it's going to be a while before I can turn to them in earnest. Thanks again, Marc. I hope you write that book (or books) on the eye and the evidence it provides for teleology--a real teleology that's beyond the remit of Darwinian processes.
Regarding the metaphysics of information, I think a 'substantivist' ontology, like Thomas's existentialist philosophy (essence 'is') can really accommodate information. Here is how I see it. Thomas's marriage of the correlative principles of essence and existence as really distinct principles is based on a modified version of Plato's principle of participation in the Ideas. For Thomas, 'essence' is a principle of limitation on the infinite Act of Existence in God (God as Infinite Being or Infinite Existence) that limits the amount of existence that is infused in an essence at the moment of creation. (Infinity cannot be divided, it can only be limited). This limiting essence thus 'participates' in the Infinite Being or Existence of God. Different essences (classes) of being thus attain different gradations of being or existence. This creates a Hierarchy of Being or existence (that Darwin inverted to make a hierarchy of becoming). This hierarchy goes from the limited beings (simple to complex, inorganic to plants, animals, man, angels) to the Infinite Being God. Limited beings thus all acquire an 'act of to be' that can vary in 'amount of existence' permitted by each limiting essence (no-moreness). Again: essence 'IS'. An example here is the gradation of eyes in nature, from the simple to the complex camera eye of man, to perhaps the infinite 'all-seeing' eye of God, who perhaps can see right across the universe (the analogical predication of being is based on all 'actual and conceivable' beings, God being one of them). A simple essence has more 'no-more-ness' than a complex one.
Now here is my point: information can really be equated simply to existence, to being as being. If information is the product of intelligence, God's Infinite Intelligence contains Infinite Information, ALL the information in the universe. His infinite being and perfection IS also his infinite information. In imparting individual 'acts of to be' or acts of existence on different limiting essences emanating as exemplar causes or specifications from his Infinite Imagination, God is imparting different amounts of existence (information) into each essence. Hence the gradation in classes of beings. This means Information becomes a 'transcendental' notion, above all 'universals' or classes of common essence. Information attains the status of being (existence) itself as one of the 4 transcendentals along with Oneness, Truth and Goodness. Oneness derives from the principle of identity (indivisibility), Truth from the principle of intelligibility (sufficient reason, PSR) and Goodness from the principle of finality (love or appetite for a good, a perfected end).
If Thomas were alive today, he might be looking at information itself as a transcendental notion of being, with its own principle we might call the 'principle of sufficient information' that incorporates the necessity of Conservation of Information for explaining grades of complexity, where the greater cannot come from the lesser without the missing information in the more limited essence being added to that less complex form FROM OUTSIDE the system to get to the higher being. In other words our 'sensus communis' can immediately appreciate in an underived fashion the notion of grades of complexity in nature as grades of amount of existence or amount of information that don't appear in nature for free (as in Darwinism).
If we compare a sculpture by Henry Moore and one by Michaelangelo we immediately discern the latter as containing more information. More specified sequential chisel cuts have whittled away more 'possibilities' in that block of marble. Such a principle of sufficient information of course would be very close to the PSR; it would be like a PSR with probabilistic notions implicit in its treatment of complexity, which could give it a mathematical treatment. In that sense it would be more like a corollary of the PSR, like the principle of causality. I think being or existence itself as the supreme transcendental is a good candidate for locating information within an 'existentialist' metaphysics. Most scientists (like the ones you name) likely can't see this because they are 'essentialists', they equate essence with being (as did Plato and Aristotle). Only the 3rd degree of abstraction, what Thomas called 'separatio' can lead us to say 'essence IS'. It would really be interesting to see what a modern Thomas would think of information within his existentialist metaphysics.
The American Thomist metaphysician, Celestine Bittle, has a great chapter on the ultimate ground of 'the possibles' in his 'The Domain of Being: Ontology' (1939). His chapter is a springboard for what follows.
This is a late reply to this thread. I would like to bring some metaphysics into this discussion with some empirical examples. Most of this is my personal take on the Thomistic metaphysics of information as well as ID.
The ultimate ground of 'intrinsic possibility' is that of existence or non-existence. Things are possible beings when they have a capacity for existence. All existent things were once mere possibles that had the potential to gain existence.
Existence vs non-existence in ontology reduces to yes-no decisions in logic. When i say 'yes, that's possible' to a proposition, this means that this 'possible' proposition has a sufficient reason for existing or being real, ie that proposition is 'existible'. The same applies to the essence of a thing in ontology. The sequence of diverse elements in an essence amounts to a series of 'yes-no' decisions for the choice of each element in every step of the sequence. If the sequence of decisions is correct, the essence is existible, it has sufficient reason to gain existence.
The classic example of this is ontogenesis where the epigenetic regulatory networks dictate onto the regulatory genes a sequence of yes-no decisions that are a series of '0-1' logic gates over the genes for the deployment of molecules that act as morphogens. Ontogeny, the formal cause for biology, is ultimately a series of 0-1 or no-yes decisions in the proper ordered sequence just like computer code that has been programmed into an algorithm.
These 0-1, no-yes decisions ARE the biological information, which is why metaphysically all information derives from the essence or formal cause. In ontogeny the information is not in the genes, (contrary to popular opinion which sees the genetic sequence itself as a blueprint); it is in the algorithm of yes-no choices that are imposed ONTO the developmental genes 'from above', ie 'in epigenesis'. This algorithm comes from an intellect, which for a Thomist is the divine intellect, but this need not be so, because a sequential algorithm of valid yes-no choices is a property of ANY intelligence.
For a thing to be possible, hence to exist, meaning to be a real existent, the elements constituting its nature or essence 'must be compatible', meaning non-contradictory. Now this is interesting because the potency in intelligence that has the power to 'make a choice' must decide on 1) the proper 'type' of elements in the sequence and 2) the proper 'sequence' of these chosen elements in the essence, that which assures they are 'compatible'. Compatibility is another word for 'concordance' of diverse elements.
If we look at a camera- eye, the 'sequence' of elements shows that the eye is a 'possible' essence because the bending power of the 2 lenses of the eye, the cornea and crystalline lens, add up to the right amount to focus light into a retina that lies at the right distance behind those 2 lenses. But the retina clearly cannot be in front of the 2 lenses. This latter scenario creates an incompatibility in the constitutive elements of a camera eye whose nature is to 'the focus light by means of 2 lenses into a pixel layer behind them'. The essence of a camera eye is to focus light behind, not in front of its refractive lenses. Placing a retina in front to the 2 lenses in the hope of focussing light 'in front' of the 2 lenses, would be a contradictory to 'behind' the 2 lenses, an incompatibility in the essence of the camera eye.
All this is to say that it is impossible for ANY intellect, human or divine or other, to create an essence or formal cause (a specified sequence of choices or steps towards achieving a goal) without its constitutive elements being compatible or concordant. Concordance of elements is a gift of foresight in being able to choose ahead of time the proper sequence and choice of elements in an essence.
For a Thomist of course, the 'possibles' ultimately exist as imitations of God's Essence as exemplar causes (extrinsic formal causes). These possibles exist within an infinite set of 'conceivable but impossible' things. Even God cannot create a thing that has incompatible or contradictory elements in its essence.
As I see it, for Intelligent Design the possibles would be existible essences of concordant elements within ANY intelligence, human or otherwise. The concordance of disparate elements is a feature of ANY creative intelligence.
All this boils down to information deriving from intelligence only, and since information identifies with essence or formal cause, intelligence is the power to imagine and think out an existible essence or formal cause, a specified sequence of compatible yes-no, exist-not exist, steps. The formal cause for metaphysics is the 'specification' for ID.
Giving a 'possible existent' or an 'existible' a real existence as such will then require a motivated will or efficient causation for its production or creation.
My friend and colleague Gale Pooley (co-author of the fantastic book SUPERABUNDANCE -- please get it) remarked in an email to me about this short piece the following (posted here with his permission): "I would also emphasize that it requires intelligence to recognize information. It’s why innovation is an intelligence activity. Creating things and then judging their value. The freedom to create and the freedom to choose is also key. Economics is the study of how human beings create value for one another. It requires freedom, information, and intelligence. " Gale is an economist.
I've never thought about information that way.
How does this work with acquiring new knowledge? For example, if I learn of a new local restaurant, wouldn't that add the possibility of me exploring it? Before this communication transfer, going to the restaurant was not a possibility that could be explored. I'm still very naive in this space so I would love to hear your thoughts.
Hi Nicolas. The narrowing of possibilities always occurs within a reference class of possibilities. The relevant reference class of possibilities in your example is all restaurants. The narrowing occurs by identifying a new local restaurant. Only by learning this information will you be in a position to explore the restaurant. If you want a deeper understanding of information, let me suggest my book BEING AS COMMUNION: A METAPHYSICS OF INFORMATION. --Bill
Hi Bill, Hi Nicolas,
Nice summary of Intelligence and Information. I read Being as Communion in 2016, and re-read it circa 2018. This is your book about the metaphysics of information, so it poses the ultimate questions about intelligence and teleology (goal-directedness). I have been reading a lot of metaphysics in the last 3 years, and read BAC again last month. I must say I got much more out of it this time with this background knowledge. To my mind BAC is your best book (and you've written many).
Nicolas if you read it, start with the last chapter 'The Creation of Information' which is the crux of the matter explaining how information is a communication. The title 'Being as Communion' means 'Existence as Communication between Existents'.
Marc Mullie MD
Thanks for these kind remarks about BAC. Yes, I think in some ways it is my most important book because it ties together so many threads in my thinking. That said, I wrote it to fulfill a pledge I made to the Templeton Foundation back around 2000 for a book award. Because the focus is metaphysical and theological, the book seems never to have entered the full conversation it was meant to enter, namely, to challenge the speculations by scientists, such as Paul Davies, Max Tegmark, John Wheeler, etc., who were pushing for information at a fundamental level in the exact sciences. I'm trying to recover the rights to BAC and would like to redo it so that it can properly enter that conversation. Also, I think I need to back off a bit in informational realism, the metaphysical view of information adopted in the book, on it being a relational ontology. The relationality of information is fundamental, but it seems to me that the sources of information, ultimately God, have primary ontology, and information, while crucial in establishing reality, is downstream from the ultimate source(s) of information. I'm shooting a bit from the hip here, and need time to develop this thought more fully. I've been thinking about such possibilities for a time, but it's going to be a while before I can turn to them in earnest. Thanks again, Marc. I hope you write that book (or books) on the eye and the evidence it provides for teleology--a real teleology that's beyond the remit of Darwinian processes.
Bill,
Regarding the metaphysics of information, I think a 'substantivist' ontology, like Thomas's existentialist philosophy (essence 'is') can really accommodate information. Here is how I see it. Thomas's marriage of the correlative principles of essence and existence as really distinct principles is based on a modified version of Plato's principle of participation in the Ideas. For Thomas, 'essence' is a principle of limitation on the infinite Act of Existence in God (God as Infinite Being or Infinite Existence) that limits the amount of existence that is infused in an essence at the moment of creation. (Infinity cannot be divided, it can only be limited). This limiting essence thus 'participates' in the Infinite Being or Existence of God. Different essences (classes) of being thus attain different gradations of being or existence. This creates a Hierarchy of Being or existence (that Darwin inverted to make a hierarchy of becoming). This hierarchy goes from the limited beings (simple to complex, inorganic to plants, animals, man, angels) to the Infinite Being God. Limited beings thus all acquire an 'act of to be' that can vary in 'amount of existence' permitted by each limiting essence (no-moreness). Again: essence 'IS'. An example here is the gradation of eyes in nature, from the simple to the complex camera eye of man, to perhaps the infinite 'all-seeing' eye of God, who perhaps can see right across the universe (the analogical predication of being is based on all 'actual and conceivable' beings, God being one of them). A simple essence has more 'no-more-ness' than a complex one.
Now here is my point: information can really be equated simply to existence, to being as being. If information is the product of intelligence, God's Infinite Intelligence contains Infinite Information, ALL the information in the universe. His infinite being and perfection IS also his infinite information. In imparting individual 'acts of to be' or acts of existence on different limiting essences emanating as exemplar causes or specifications from his Infinite Imagination, God is imparting different amounts of existence (information) into each essence. Hence the gradation in classes of beings. This means Information becomes a 'transcendental' notion, above all 'universals' or classes of common essence. Information attains the status of being (existence) itself as one of the 4 transcendentals along with Oneness, Truth and Goodness. Oneness derives from the principle of identity (indivisibility), Truth from the principle of intelligibility (sufficient reason, PSR) and Goodness from the principle of finality (love or appetite for a good, a perfected end).
If Thomas were alive today, he might be looking at information itself as a transcendental notion of being, with its own principle we might call the 'principle of sufficient information' that incorporates the necessity of Conservation of Information for explaining grades of complexity, where the greater cannot come from the lesser without the missing information in the more limited essence being added to that less complex form FROM OUTSIDE the system to get to the higher being. In other words our 'sensus communis' can immediately appreciate in an underived fashion the notion of grades of complexity in nature as grades of amount of existence or amount of information that don't appear in nature for free (as in Darwinism).
If we compare a sculpture by Henry Moore and one by Michaelangelo we immediately discern the latter as containing more information. More specified sequential chisel cuts have whittled away more 'possibilities' in that block of marble. Such a principle of sufficient information of course would be very close to the PSR; it would be like a PSR with probabilistic notions implicit in its treatment of complexity, which could give it a mathematical treatment. In that sense it would be more like a corollary of the PSR, like the principle of causality. I think being or existence itself as the supreme transcendental is a good candidate for locating information within an 'existentialist' metaphysics. Most scientists (like the ones you name) likely can't see this because they are 'essentialists', they equate essence with being (as did Plato and Aristotle). Only the 3rd degree of abstraction, what Thomas called 'separatio' can lead us to say 'essence IS'. It would really be interesting to see what a modern Thomas would think of information within his existentialist metaphysics.
Thanks for reading this long post.
Marc
Hi Bill,
Great article, thanks!
The American Thomist metaphysician, Celestine Bittle, has a great chapter on the ultimate ground of 'the possibles' in his 'The Domain of Being: Ontology' (1939). His chapter is a springboard for what follows.
This is a late reply to this thread. I would like to bring some metaphysics into this discussion with some empirical examples. Most of this is my personal take on the Thomistic metaphysics of information as well as ID.
The ultimate ground of 'intrinsic possibility' is that of existence or non-existence. Things are possible beings when they have a capacity for existence. All existent things were once mere possibles that had the potential to gain existence.
Existence vs non-existence in ontology reduces to yes-no decisions in logic. When i say 'yes, that's possible' to a proposition, this means that this 'possible' proposition has a sufficient reason for existing or being real, ie that proposition is 'existible'. The same applies to the essence of a thing in ontology. The sequence of diverse elements in an essence amounts to a series of 'yes-no' decisions for the choice of each element in every step of the sequence. If the sequence of decisions is correct, the essence is existible, it has sufficient reason to gain existence.
The classic example of this is ontogenesis where the epigenetic regulatory networks dictate onto the regulatory genes a sequence of yes-no decisions that are a series of '0-1' logic gates over the genes for the deployment of molecules that act as morphogens. Ontogeny, the formal cause for biology, is ultimately a series of 0-1 or no-yes decisions in the proper ordered sequence just like computer code that has been programmed into an algorithm.
These 0-1, no-yes decisions ARE the biological information, which is why metaphysically all information derives from the essence or formal cause. In ontogeny the information is not in the genes, (contrary to popular opinion which sees the genetic sequence itself as a blueprint); it is in the algorithm of yes-no choices that are imposed ONTO the developmental genes 'from above', ie 'in epigenesis'. This algorithm comes from an intellect, which for a Thomist is the divine intellect, but this need not be so, because a sequential algorithm of valid yes-no choices is a property of ANY intelligence.
For a thing to be possible, hence to exist, meaning to be a real existent, the elements constituting its nature or essence 'must be compatible', meaning non-contradictory. Now this is interesting because the potency in intelligence that has the power to 'make a choice' must decide on 1) the proper 'type' of elements in the sequence and 2) the proper 'sequence' of these chosen elements in the essence, that which assures they are 'compatible'. Compatibility is another word for 'concordance' of diverse elements.
If we look at a camera- eye, the 'sequence' of elements shows that the eye is a 'possible' essence because the bending power of the 2 lenses of the eye, the cornea and crystalline lens, add up to the right amount to focus light into a retina that lies at the right distance behind those 2 lenses. But the retina clearly cannot be in front of the 2 lenses. This latter scenario creates an incompatibility in the constitutive elements of a camera eye whose nature is to 'the focus light by means of 2 lenses into a pixel layer behind them'. The essence of a camera eye is to focus light behind, not in front of its refractive lenses. Placing a retina in front to the 2 lenses in the hope of focussing light 'in front' of the 2 lenses, would be a contradictory to 'behind' the 2 lenses, an incompatibility in the essence of the camera eye.
All this is to say that it is impossible for ANY intellect, human or divine or other, to create an essence or formal cause (a specified sequence of choices or steps towards achieving a goal) without its constitutive elements being compatible or concordant. Concordance of elements is a gift of foresight in being able to choose ahead of time the proper sequence and choice of elements in an essence.
For a Thomist of course, the 'possibles' ultimately exist as imitations of God's Essence as exemplar causes (extrinsic formal causes). These possibles exist within an infinite set of 'conceivable but impossible' things. Even God cannot create a thing that has incompatible or contradictory elements in its essence.
As I see it, for Intelligent Design the possibles would be existible essences of concordant elements within ANY intelligence, human or otherwise. The concordance of disparate elements is a feature of ANY creative intelligence.
All this boils down to information deriving from intelligence only, and since information identifies with essence or formal cause, intelligence is the power to imagine and think out an existible essence or formal cause, a specified sequence of compatible yes-no, exist-not exist, steps. The formal cause for metaphysics is the 'specification' for ID.
Giving a 'possible existent' or an 'existible' a real existence as such will then require a motivated will or efficient causation for its production or creation.
Thanks,
Marc Mullie MD
Montreal