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.
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