Download Information, Q-Bits, and Natural Reference: a bridge from Bit to It to

Information, Q-Bits, and Natural Reference: a bridge from Bit
to It to Autopoesis to Mind.
Abstract:
In this paper I argue that the traditional matter/mind or matter/spirit dichotomy is a false dichotomy,
and that the traditionally understood mental attributes, such as intentionality, can be understood as
complex constructions of simpler mental and quasi-mental properties of nature such as self-organization
and choice of directionality. I show that a wide variety of such quasi-mental properties occur in degrees
throughout nature, when nature is properly understood.
This argument will rely on replacing the traditional western substance/properties metaphysics with a
metaphysics of fields and processes. Since fields and processes are dynamic, interactive and open
ended, they do not suffer from the static status and boundary limitations that restrict substances and
properties, and so they can act and perform in ways that substances and properties could not. A fields
and processes metaphysics is also more compatible with contemporary physics, cosmology, biology and
computer science, as I shall argue, than is the Aristotelian and Newtonian substance and properties
analysis of reality. Monahan, Paula M. [email protected]
1|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
Information, Q-Bits, and Natural Reference: a bridge from bit to it to autopoesis to mind.
Introduction: A Dynamic Information Continuum supplants the false dichotomy between
mechanical matter and spiritual mind.
This paper argues that information is the most ubiquitous and basic fact about reality; which is
present in compounding and self-organizing forms in nature, from the quantum physics of dynamism
among quarks through the mathematics of size limits for the universe as a whole, and encompassing all
aspects of nature in between, including autopoetic systems, conscious minds, and language. Because
this argument relies heavily on dynamic systems theory, however, it is not a reductionist argument.
Reductionistic arguments, such as Daniel Dennett’s1 or Fred Dretske’s,2 typically interpret the notion of
information as a form of Newtonian logical atomism, and understand the way that information
concatenates on the Turing model,3 as strictly computational and quantitative. My argument for the
organic nature of reality, and ultimately, for the pan-psychic nature of organicism, in contrast, will rely
on a dynamic systems model for understanding information. Because a dynamic systems model for
understanding both physics and information focuses on fields of interrelated processes, rather than
substances and properties, the restrictions imposed by logical and Newtonian atomism will not apply.
Dynamic fields and processes are more amenable to the formation of a continuum that unites large and
small, complex and simple, inside and outside, than static rigid atoms and properties are.
The argument for placing information in this central role must provide evidence both that there
is a systematic, and not merely metaphorical, relationship between information as fact and information
as referential content, and also demonstrate that some recent philosophical approaches to analyzing
information have been, in important ways, incomplete. This paper presents an argument for the
position that once information is adequately understood, especially in its roles in quantum field theory
and its roles in evolutionary and ecological nature, it provides a framework for describing a systematic
1
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, Little Brown, Boston, 1991
Fred Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of information, MIT Press Bradford Books, 1981
3
Alan Turing, ‘Computing machinery and intelligence’, Mind, 50: 433–460; 1950
2
2|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
continuum and underlying unity stretching from traditionally understood conceptions of materialistic
mechanism to traditionally understood notions of organicism, life and mentality.
The argument will show that the traditional philosophical dichotomy between matter, as dead
mechanical ‘stuff’ vs. life and mind as immaterial spiritual substances misrepresented the ontological
nature of all of reality. The false dichotomy relied on
a) a rigid atomistic conception of the diverse bits of nature, and
b) cherry picking several bits out of a uniform continuum that could be
characterized as radically different from each other, while ignoring the
underlying continuum of which the isolated exemplars were both part, and
c) failing to see the continuum, the dynamical information processes, that unite
them.
For example, rocks are paradigmatic mechanical matter on the traditional interpretation, while
minds capable of apprehending infinity are paradigmatic free spirits. In historical context, of course,
Descartes’ Cartesian dualism was so desperate to avoid materialistic mechanism, that it missed the
organic nature of all of reality. Contemporary philosophers who have embraced Newtonian mechanism
as the ultimate story of all reality, have merely continued the Cartesian mistake, perhaps out of
desperation to avoid traditionally understood spiritual substances.
Evan Thompson agrees that the problem of the alleged gap between a mechanical material
world and a spiritual, immaterial mind is that both traditional categories misconceive anything that
actually exists in reality. Thompson characterizes the problem in terms of methodology and perspective
as follows:
To reduce conscious experience to external structure and function would be to
make consciousness disappear (materialism); to reduce external structure and function
to internal consciousness would be to make external things disappear (idealism)…”4
As Thompson observes, this perspectival and methodological problem replaces a universal perspective
on both aspects of reality with two partial ones, then advocates of each partial perspective claim
4
Evan Thompson, Mind in Life, Belknap Press, Harvard University, 2007, p. 225
3|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
universality for their own. The perspective and methodology used to characterize a rock as an external
object is not the same one that is typically used to characterize an autonomous agent. Materialists insist
on using the perspective and methodology appropriate for the rock on autonomous agents as well,
while idealists project the mental perspective and methodology onto the rock. I see understanding
nature as a field featuring a continuum of organicism as a way to include all perspectives and
methodologies, while assigning each to its proper place on the continuum. In my interpretation,
mechanism is everywhere, and can characterize any sufficiently isolated state space, whether
traditionally thought of as material or mental. Likewise, minimal intentionality occurs in the form of
informationally pragmatic reference, even when a quartz crystal forms.
I am responding, as well, to a challenge that William Lycan has posed to philosophers of mind
such as David Chalmers. Lycan argues that “…[I]ntentionality comes in degrees…”5 ranging from
detectors, filters and inhibitors, through human creation of referential meaning, to Brentano’s abstract
ability to focus mentally on inexistent objects of thought and imagination.6 Lycan points out that this
range of intentionalities reveals intentionality to be something that is both more pervasive in nature
than human-like cognition, and also more simple at many functional levels of nature than its most
complex functioning, which seems to occur primarily within neurological networks in brains. Lycan
challenges Chalmers, for example, to explain how the essential unity of mind that he argues for in The
Character of Consciousness7 can occur in degrees, or in modular form, or be built up in degrees from
simple functional signaling mechanisms. In the arguments that follow I will attempt to outline a
preliminary response to this formidable challenge. My first step in the argument will be a largely
expository step, outlining the groundwork for this argument laid by Terrence Deacon.
5
William G. Lycan, “The Continuity of Levels of Nature,” in Mind and Cognition, eds. William G. Lycan and Jesse J.
Prinz, Blackwell Publishing, 3rd edition, 2008, p. 76
6
Ibid.
7
David J. Chalmers, The Character of Consciousness, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK 2010, p. 537ff.
4|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
I claim that a concept of information informed by adequate quantum and natural
understandings does not support the mechanical computer model of mentality presumed in what John
Searle called strong AI8. The AI model presumes that a mechanical and reductionistic account of
mentality can be given in terms of the syntactical functions of symbolic logic. The Turing test9 has been
considered an adequate test for the presence of mental function by many reductionists, and this
mechanical account of mind has been considered the most probably true account by many
contemporary philosophers and cognitive scientists, especially those who consider themselves
materialists, such as Daniel Dennett10 and Patricia Churchland.11 I will spend relatively little time arguing
against the reductionists in this paper, because here I wish to concentrate on the positive task of
building the information bridge between mechanism and organicism. In another paper I will argue that
reductionism is the wrong way to understand the ubiquitousness of information in nature.
In building the information bridge from bit to it to mind I will owe a huge debt to Terrence W.
Deacon,12 whose extension of Claude Shannon’s13 view of information theory has already laid a solid
foundation for this enterprise, and to James J. Gibson,14 whose ecological account of nature enables
expanding Deacon’s insights. Also, the conception of autopoesis, articulated by Francisco Varela,15 Evan
Thompson16 and many others, will play a key role in this argument. In the first section I will briefly
summarize an outline of how Deacon has built on the work of Shannon, and then add my own analysis
8
John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, Bradford Books, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992, p. 44
Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind, 50: 433–4606+5
10
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Co. Boston, MA 1991, chap 2
11
Patricia Churchland, Brainwise, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2002, chap.2.
12
Terrence W. Deacon, “Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin: redefining information, Part 1” and “Shannon-BoltzmannDarwin: redefining information, Part 2” downloaded from http://www.teleodynamics.com/?p=62 Aug.22,2011.
13
Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver: The Mathematical Theory of Communication. The University of Illinois
Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1949.
14
James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates New Jersey, 1979,
Psychology Press, 1986.
15
F.G. Varela, H.R. Maturana, & R. Uribe, “Autopoiesis: The organization of living systems, its characterization and
a model” Biosystems, Volume 5, Issue 4, May 1974, Pages 187–196, Elsevier Publishing, on line at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0303264774900318,
16
Mind in Life, op. cit.
9
5|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
of how Deacon’s proposal can be utilized to show a systematic connection among some of the puzzling
aspects of quantum physics and some of the puzzling aspects of organic life and mental phenomena. In
the process of articulating these connections between information “bits”, physical its, ecological
systems, autopoetic molecules, and phenomenological qualia, I will be agreeing with Lycan that all of
the above may occur in degrees.
A Information: Bit to It: Claude Shannon via Terrence Deacon
Claude Shannon was one of the mathematical masterminds behind much of the computer
revolution of the twentieth century, who used statistical mechanics to analyze what it means for a signal
to carry information. Shannon discovered that if intentionality is read into the reading or interpretation
of a signal at the most basic level, one’s analysis disappears in a regress of progressively less and less
explanatory homunculi. Shannon avoided the homuncular regress dilemma by discussing only
quantities of information; ignoring content and interpretations altogether. He focused on only one
aspect of the information of a signal: how likely the signal was to appear. A signal such as white space
on a page is generally uninformative because of its high likelihood of appearing on the page. But against
the backdrop of the white space, the likelihood of any letter or image appearing can count as signifying
something, namely, a reduction in the open-ended uncertainty presented by the white page. Against
the further backdrop of a language or code, a specific letter or number appearing can bring a
substantive reduction in uncertainty, or noise, and thus constitute a statistically significant signal. So,
Shannon figured out that there was a direct relationship between how unlikely a signal was to appear
and how informative it was when it did appear. He also, thus, enhanced the mechanical view of
information introduced by Turing and touted by proponents of strong AI. Deacon argues, however, that
the reductionistic view of information is only one possible perspective on Shannon’s insight.
Terrence Deacon points out that Shannon’s insight concerning signals and information outlined
in the last paragraph is an insight into the largely negative value of what Deacon calls “constraints”
6|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
imposed on “noise.” Information, as described by Shannon, can be classified strictly quantitatively
because it can be understood as a location in a state of statistical constraint viewed against a
background that furnishes a broader range of possible states that are not so constrained. Unexpected
absences, irregularities, states of disequilibrium, and anomalies provide information against a
background that provides regular expectations, is uniform, contains states of equilibrium, or has no
outstanding features. Deacon puts this insight as follows:
…[T]he very nature of information is a relationship between something present or
proximate and something absent or distal. To put this in even more enigmatic terms:
what makes something information is its relationship to something it is not.17
Deacon points out that although Shannon’s conceptual and mathematical genius was evident in
his capacity to evaluate this relationship in strictly quantitative, statistical terms, Shannon’s artificial
intelligence (AI) successors frequently commit a Whiteheadian “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”18
when they interpret information exclusively as a quantitative quality substantially inherent in a signal
medium. Deacon argues that the currently dominant computer model of information as mechanical
syntactical switching capacity within data storage devises is inadequate for the following reason.
…[W]e currently are working with a set of assumptions about information that are
merely sufficient to handle the tracking of its most minimal physical and logical
attributes but which are insufficient to understand either its defining representational
character or its pragmatic value.19
So, although Deacon is impressed with Shannon’s insight into information as a relationship between a
salient feature and a uniform background, he thinks that the important content of this insight lies not in
reducing information to signal properties, but in identifying Shannon entropy, which he explains as a
capacity to evaluate “the improbability of receiving a given transmitted signal, determined with respect
17
Terrence Deacon, “Shannon-Boltzman-Darwin: redefining information. Part 1”,
http://www.teleodynamics.com/?p=62 accessed August 22, 2011, p. 4.
18
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, corrected edition, eds. David Ray Griffin, and Donald W.
Sherburne, Free Press, New York 1978, p. 18
19
Terrence Deacon, “Shannon-Boltzman-Darwin: redefining information. Part 1”, op. cit. p.3
7|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
to the probabilities of all possible signals that could have been sent.”20 Shannon entropy is not
exhaustively reducible to a mathematical property of a digital bit in a signal medium, for it retains
capacity for contentfulness and interpretation, given the gestalt juxtaposition of background and
foreground within which it functions, i.e., the relationship between the signal and all possible signals.
Pragmatic reference and the intentionality of the signal are thus, not inherent in the signal medium i.e.,
the white page with a letter on it, but rather in the relationship among page, letter and alphabet. Thus,
Deacon claims that Shannon’s insight has enabled the intentional homunculi to be bracketed and
compartmentalized, for purposes of computer programming, but he argues that intentionality is not
ultimately expurged by this maneuver.
Because of the gestalt context, Deacon argues that Shannon entropy is not merely
metaphorically, but literally analogous to Boltzmann entropy in fluid dynamics. Both are physical
relationships occurring within the context of relationships among natural systems. It is the physically
analogous relationship between Shannon entropy and Boltzmann entropy, claims Deacon, that gives
Shannon information its “defining representational character” and “pragmatic value.”21
Deacon’s argument for the literal physical analogousness of Shannon entropy and Boltzman
entropy rests on his analysis of constitutive absence which he explains as a:
…[G]eneric property characterizing everything from biomolecular function to semiotic
activities. Constitutive absence can be defined as the property of being structurally or
dynamically organized with respect to (or by virtue of) attributes present (also potential
or projected) in some extrinsic object or process.22
Deacon argues that such constitutive absences are physical facts about reality that play key roles in
engineering, thermodynamics and evolutionary biology, as well as in semiotics,23 and it is this
connection that makes the statistical relationships between foreground and background physical as well
20
Deacon, Part 1, p.12
Ibid. p. 3
22
Ibid. p. 9 author’s emphasis.
23
Ibid.
21
8|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
as being conceptual, semantic or statistical. Following Charles Sanders Pierce’s discussion of nature’s
“habits of persistency,”24 Deacon points out that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is “nature’s most
basic habit.”25 Deacon points out that because of Boltzmann, or thermodynamic entropy, one can
always assume that if a state of a system is diverging from disorder, “work” has been “done to perturb
the system” and “outside constraints have been imposed.”26 Since the likelihood of disorder in any
system greatly exceeds the likelihood of order, “decorrelation of component parameters”27 is what
should be expected of any system. Therefore, when correlation rather than decorrelation is discovered
in a system, one can justifiably assume “some external interference to push it away from this most
probable state….something non-spontaneous has occurred.”28 In the case of Boltzmann entropy, the
constitutive absence of equilibrium is thus, physically informative.
The sources of entropy in communication channels are the initial improbability of a signal being
sent, given the range of possible signals, and the possibility of noise, or corruption in the signal channel.
An accurate signal is, thus, a physical reduction in entropy, requiring a physical manifestation in some
signal medium, and work to overcome both its unlikelihood of occurring and its surrounding noise.
Deacon explains the role of constitutive absence in Shannon entropy as paralleling the Boltzmann case
because it;
…provides evidence of another absent physical phenomenon—whatever
performed the work on the signal to effect this reduction [in entropy]. Information is
made available when the state of some physical system is different from what would be
expected were its features to be the result of random influences or complete physical
isolation.29
24
Charles Sanders Pierce, “A Guess at the Riddle of the Sphinx, ”in The Essential Pierce, vol. 1, eds. Nathan Houser
and Christian Kloesel, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1992, p. 279.
25
Deacon, Part 1, p. 11
26
Ibid. p. 17
27
Ibid. p. 11
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid. p. 18
9|Information Q-Bits and Natural Reference
Reductionists and Strong AI proponents concentrate on the fact that Shannon’s analysis of
information allows one to abstract away from the semiotic content and pragmatic import of information
to focus exclusively on the quantitative and syntactical aspects of a signal or its communication channel.
Deacon argues that a full understanding of Shannon’s insight requires a natural and contextual
approach, more akin to a physicist’s interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, than to a
logician’s analysis of disjunctive syllogism or a statistician’s analysis of a roll of a die. The claim here is
not that the logic and statistics are not useful and necessary. Of course they are, to give the computer
calculable and mechanical analysis that Shannon devised. Rather, the claim is that the mechanistic
account of information is incomplete because a full understanding of information requires a) the
context of the natural set of relations among background, foreground, and ranges of possibilities for
both, and b) the relationship of Shannon entropy among those sets of possibilities. Intentionality is not
expurgated from this fuller understanding, it is bracketed into the relational context. The context is a
dynamic system of field relations, comprising both foreground and background and the relations among
them.
Deacon demonstrates in Part 2 of his thesis that the natural set of entropy relations discussed in
the last paragraph is also useful in explaining some of the information transfer puzzles that arise in
discussions of evolution. For example, controversies arise over how a signal medium such as a genetic
code can both sustain useful information across many generations and be adaptable to environmental
changes. Extreme responses to the controversy include the reductionistic approach taken by Dawkins
that places the entire burden of explanation for the direction of the processes on the signal medium, the
selfish genes,30 and divine design approaches that place the entire burden of explanation outside the
system, altogether, in divine interference.31 I think that Deacon’s analysis provides a more complete
30
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford university press, UK 1989
St. Thomas Aquinas, “Five Ways to Prove the Existence of God” in Summa Theologica, vol 1. Christian Classics,
Allen Texas, 1981, Pgs. 13-14
31
10 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
account than Dawkins’ and a more simple and reasonable account than Divine Design. Darwinian
entropy is a form of natural and physical relationship among a genetic signaling system with a finite
range of possible states and a natural and physical environment containing a range of possible
constraints and opportunities. Constitutive absences and departures from expected states constitute
signals within the context of this relationship. Neither the genes nor the environment could bring about
change autonomously, or in isolation. But a state of disequilibrium in the relationship between genes
and environment can constitute an informative signal that brings about a physical change without the
intervention of extra-systematic divinities.
To sum up the argument so far, my exposition of Deacon has indicated a way to get from bit to
it. Neither Deacon nor I think that his case is proven, and both of us think that much more work needs
to be done to explore his claims about physical entropy and constitutive absences. However, I think that
Deacon has made a very good start in building a bridge between natural reality and information. I think
he has given a much more complete analysis of Shannon information than one ordinarily sees in the AI
literature, as well as a far better explanation of what happens to intentionality in the its and bits of
nature. He has laid the framework for outlining a response to William Lycan’s challenge: switches and
signaling devices contain ground-floor intentionality in the sense that their its and bits constitute a
physical system representing two sets of ranges of possibility that interact entropically and interpret
difference, absence, or disequilibrium as natural catalysts. The brute, reductionistic mechanism that
views the ground floor metaphysics described in the last paragraph as expunged of all homunculi
focuses myopically on the signal medium, and fails to see the inter-relational nature of the natural
system. So, the Deacon analysis is more complete. But intentionality, in the very minimalist sense of
natural, pragmatic reference, is on the ground floor, in Deacon’s analysis. A difference that makes a
difference is a relational property of both informational bits and physical its, their respective contexts,
and the relationship among them.
11 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
A reader might think at this point, “So far, so mechanical. Where is the promised organicism in
this analysis?” Clearly, the signaling processes and physical processes involved in computers, fluid
dynamics, genetics, and evolution are all classical physics level mechanical processes, for which the
dominant scientific view is that to get intentional elements one would need to add them, and that
would be both unnecessary and unhelpful. Why bother identifying and bracketing the referential
features on the ground floor, when one can simply eliminate or ignore them? To respond to this
question, I will now turn to the quantum piece of this puzzle.
B Information: Bit to Q bit: probability amplitudes, superposition, entanglement and measurement
Part of the reason that the referential features of computational processes can only be
bracketed and not eliminated on what I have, to this point in the argument, called the “ground floor” for
macroscopic or classically mechanical processes, is that bits and its are not really the “bottom or
basement” floor of reality. Quantum physics introduces processes, objects, properties and concepts
that neither Isaac Newton nor Alan Turing considered. Quantum entanglement adds further
intentionality to the operations of Qbits, for the anti-correlation between pairs of Qbits provides both
the power to do teleportation in quantum computing, and also the quality of non-locality for quantum
processes that Einstein found so troubling. It seems that the anti-correlated pairs of particles carry
information about one another despite absence of physical contact. Further, the superposition of states
that is possible for Qbits means that more data can be represented by Qbits than by classical bits, but
the information is not determinate until collapsed (decohered) through a measurement These nonNewtonian properties of quantum bits appear to return ability of particles to cross refer to one another,
at least, to the discussion. The non classical properties are better understood as a relationship between
two undetermined contexts that collapses into a determinate signal at decoherence. The relational
nature of Shannon entropy, as identified by Deacon is uneliminable in the foundational basement of
12 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
reality. While a mechanical perspective remains applicable in the quantum account of reality, the
mechanical analysis cannot be completely isolated from the context, or bracketed into it.
David Deutsch, Artur Ekert and Rossella Lupacchini32 argue for the mutual compatability of
mechanical and computational accounts of quantum information with the physical observations that the
material world, at the basement, quantum level, consists of sets of probability amplitudes that are
superposed, entangled, non-local, and collapsed to particular values by measurement. These authors
argue that the Church-Turing Principle 33can still be considered a thesis about the nature of the quantum
physical world, so computational concatenation is there, as well. However, Deutsch et al. argue that the
Church Turing Principle can not be interpreted as abstractly and exclusively quantitatively, in quantum
computing or physics as it has traditionally been in AI or Newtonian physics. The implications of the
Church Turing Principle in quantum physics are that the world is a set of physical possibilities, exhibiting
features such as probability amplitudes,34 superposition, entanglement,35 interference by
measurement,36 and non-locality. These authors adopt a strongly anti-Platonic stance regarding the
metaphysical implications of these aspects of quantum physics for the nature of information. They insist
that mathematics, including qubits and their functions, are the language of reality because mathematics
is an empirical science that we learn from the investigation of nature that we conduct, including
investigation into the nature of machines such as Turing machines or their quantum equivalents. The
result of reversing the order of metaphysical priority from ‘pure abstract math implies the nature of
reality’, to ‘we derive math from physical reality’ is to supplant the mathematical Platonism and logical
atomism that informed much materialistic reductionism and replace it with a dynamic gestalt
32
33
Church-Turing Principle: a claim that a universal quantum computer can simulate the behavior of any finite
physical system. David Deutsch in “Quantum Theory, The Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum
computer, Proceedings of the Royal Society A vol 400, 1985, pp. 97-117
34
David Deutsch, Artur Ekert and Rossella Lupacchini, “Machines, Logic and Quantum Physics”
arXiv:math/9911150v1 [math.HO] 19 Nov 1999, p. 8
35
ibid. P. 19
36
ibid. p. 5, 10
13 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
relationship between bits and its on the basement floor of reality. Deutsch et. al. use the examples of
quantum logical operations discovered in research into quantum computing, which exhibit
entanglement among qubits,37 to point out that we must accept the most logically counterintuitive
outcomes once machines have shown processes described, thereby, to be real processes.38
Deutsch et. al. propose that we do not apprehend any mathematical forms, including the 1s and
0s of digital information, as abstract forms that exist detached from reality in some pure Platonic space
to which we require reality to conform. Rather, we encounter qubits, bits, numbers and calculations of
all kinds in our empirical investigation of the nature of the world, and we adapt our mathematics to
what we discover. Hence our understanding of logic should evolve to include operations on entangled
and superposed states, and we should not use the violations of traditional logic introduced through
quantum computing as reasons to reject quantum functions to maintain the classical ones. Indeed, the
quantum dynamics is more basic; if anything is artificial it is the contextual bracketing that produces
ground-floor atomistic computability.
Yet, traditional bits and quantum bits are not discontinuous with one another because different
properties are apparent at the quantum level. N. David Mermin used the unorthodox expressions Cbits
for classical computer bits and Qbits for quantum computing units, which I have followed in the title of
this section, to show a systematic relationship between the two concepts. Mermin regards quantum
information theory as an expansion of the resources available within classical information theory, to the
range of possible states for bits. Mermin explains:
A major part of quantum mechanics consists of an … expansion of the notion of
the state of a Cbit, called in this extended setting a quantum bit or Qbit . We
democratically expand the set of meaningful states from the 2n special orthonormal
states, known in this broader setting as the classical basis (or, in the prevailing but less
informative terminology, the computational basis) to arbitrary unit vectors from the
37
38
ibid. p.6
ibid. p. 8
14 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
entire vector space consisting of all linear combinations (called superpositions) of
classical basis states with complex coefficients (called amplitudes).39
….
Physics offers many examples of physical systems—Qbits—whose natural description
is in terms of states that are precisely these peculiar generalizations of the states of
classical bits that expand the constrained set of classical basis vectors to the entire
complex vector space that they span.40
So for Mermin, as for Deutsch, Ekert and Lupacchini, the intimate relationship of bits and its that
exists in the classical basis, persists at the quantum level of reality, but there this relationship becomes a
physical relationship between an expanded and superposed set of possibilities and entangled Qbits
which somehow constitute an indeterminate or non-local reality, which is made determinate only
through measurement.
Mermin points out that the measurement issue, nevertheless, provides a big difference
between Cbits and Qbits, because the measurement process on Qbits is irreversible and never yields a
determinate value.41 Measurement introduces a measurer, and makes central the “defining
representational character” and “pragmatic value”42 of information identified, even in the classical level
bits, by Deacon.
So, the bracketed minimal intentionality from Shannon Entropy on Cbits is clearly uneliminable
at the quantum level. The reappearance of these minimally intentional qualities in the basement and
foundation levels of natural metaphysics is a good reason to concur with Deacon that they can, at most,
be bracketed to the context and background on the mechanistic ground floor level.
C Information: Qbits to a universe that computes
Further, it is reasonable to claim that the informational nature of reality extends further than
the character of Qbits, and functions of quantum computing, to the structure and processes of the
39
N. David Mermin, “From Cbits to Qbits, Teaching Computer Scientists Quantum Mechanics,” arXiv: quant-ph/
0207118v1 19 Jul 2002, p. 9
40
ibid. p. 10
41
ibid. p. 13
42
Terrence Deacon, “Shannon-Boltzman-Darwin: redefining information. Part 1”, op. cit. p.3
15 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
universe, as a whole. In identifying both the informational nature of basic physical reality and the
representational and pragmatically intentional nature of Qbits, and calculations conducted by them,
Paul Davies and Seth Lloyd argue that the universe, itself, is a quantum computer. Davies agrees with
Deutsch, Ekert and Lupacchini, that the traditional understanding of the relationship between
mathematics and physical reality as :
Mathematics  Physics  Information43
Is a Platonic mis-formulation of the character of reality that reverses the order of nature. Davies
advocates a “radical shift in world view” to a new “explanatory scheme:”
Information  Laws of Physics  Matter,44
a formulation which Davies believes better explains the way that information and matter are
interrelated in the cosmos. Davies considers his new explanatory scheme an answer to the question,
Might laws and states co-evolve in such a way that our world is some sort of attractor in
the product space of laws and states?45
Davies replies to his rhetorical question in the affirmative, placing information, once again, in the key
role that Deacon assigned to Shannon entropy, negotiating determinacy between two sets of ranges of
possibility, now laws and states.
Further, Davies argues that the link between information loss and area is a “very deep property
of the universe” explained through the holographic principle. 46 This principle establishes limits on the
informational size and material and temporal extension of the universe that establish a “cosmic
information bound.” The cosmic information bound rules out Platonic understandings of infinite space,
matter, or processes. Cartesian Infinity and non-denumerable real numbers, for example, are not
43
Paul Davies, “Universe from Bit” in Information and the Nature of Reality, eds. Paul Davies and Niels Henrik
Gregerson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2010, p. 75
44
ibid.
45
ibid. p. 73
46
ibid. p. 79
16 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
descriptions of the physical world.47 So the sets of ranges of possibility that can exist on either the
matter or the information side of the laws and states relationship are not infinite, and are determined
by the size of the “cosmic information bound.”48 It follows from the above observations, according to
Davies, that the laws of physics, like the extent of matter, have intrinsically finite sets of possibilities for
realization.49 The constraints imposed on the relationship between matter and the laws of physics by
the information bound are much like the ones imposed by Shannon entropy.
Seth Lloyd has calculated the cosmic information bound of the universe at 10122 bits.50 Lloyd
points out that the Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs analysis of entropy described atomic “bits being
transformed and flipped when atoms collide.”51 He concludes, agreeing with Davies and Deacon, that
the universe “…[I]s literally a computer; a system that can be programmed to perform arbitrary digital
computations.”52 The reason that the universe can evolve and create novelty and more complex sources
of order, however, is that the quantum mechanical basis of the universe is not the classical clockwork
mechanism envisaged by LaPlace and Descartes, but rather a quantum substratum that;
…[P]rovides the universe with a constant supply of fresh, random bits,
generated by the process of decoherence. Quantum fluctuations are the “monkeys”
that program the universe.53
Shannon entropy is, thus, a feature of the universe as a whole, as much as it is a feature operating
among its bits and its. Reality is a representational, pragmatic and evolving attractor relationship that
unites far more than it divides information and matter.
47
ibid. p. 83
ibid.
49
ibid. p. 86
50
ibid. p. 79
51
Seth Lloyd, “The Computational Universe,” in Information and the Nature of Reality, eds. Paul Davies and Niels
Henrik Gregerson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2010, p. 97
52
ibid.
53
ibid. p. 102
48
17 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
So far this argument has attributed minimal intentionality, via information, understood as
Shannon entropy, to bits, qubits, and the universe as a whole. In my floors of a building metaphor, we
have examined the basement (qubits) the ground floor (classical bits and its) and the yard or
neighborhood (the cosmos, and its information boundaries.) This provides a framework for responding
to William Lycan’s challenge. Intentionality, at least in the form of representational efficacy, pragmatic
identification, anti-correlation, and intentional measurement is present in the basement and the yard,
and in a bracketed sense, on the ground floor, via Shannon entropy acting on constitutive absences. It is
now time to look for more traditionally mental forms of intentionality closer to life and consciousness.
More complex self-organization takes place in self organizing ecological systems, on the second
floor of my metaphorical building, to which I will now turn.
D Information: A Computational Universe to Ecosystems54
I agree with Lycan that consciousness occurs in degrees. We have already seen some of the
minimal degrees of intentionality spread broadly through out the quantum world, and preserved in a
bracketed sense even within the levels of reality that are amenable to a more reductively mechanistic
analysis. When one discusses physical and informational systems in nature, ranging from minimal
dynamical systems, such as water boiling in a pot, through biological messages encoded in DNA to
complex ecologies of forests, oceans and weather systems, more prominent aspects of informational corelation, cross-resonance, and intentionality begin to emerge.
Self organization, for example, is a quantum phenomena that occurs even in deterministic
dynamical systems that no one would consider conscious. Gregoire Nicolis explains,
Such ordinary systems as a layer of fluid or a mixture of chemical products can
generate, under appropriate conditions, a multitude of self-organizing
phenomena on a macroscopic scale – a scale orders of magnitude larger than the
range of fundamental interactions- in the form of spatial patterns or temporal
54
This section of the paper is a rewritten portion of a paper that I previously published, “Causation in Field Being”
In the International Journal for Field Being, http//www. IJFB.org, vol. 1 no. 2
18 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
rhythms. … Non-linear dynamics and the presence of constraints maintaining
the system far from equilibrium will turn out to be the basic mechanisms
involved in the emergence of these phenomena.55
Convection in thermodynamics, the formation of chemical turbulence and wave fronts
in vats of chemicals, oceans or weather systems, and chemotaxis and morphogenesis in
biological systems, as well as statistically modeled behaviors of human, plant and animal
populations, all exhibit certain properties in common. What is happening when these
processes take place is something is acting as an attractor other than equilibrium, which is a
universal or default attractor for systems. So, symmetry is broken, and the system must make
an historical ‘choice’ among attractors, resulting in a bifurcation of histories for the system. A
system undergoes radical change when a critical threshold is crossed, breaking symmetry and
resulting in a phase transition. The crossing of the critical threshold forces the system to make
a choice which is governed by chaos theory and occurs according to fractal geometry. The way
the choice falls will subsequently mark the system as left or right handed, and will become selfgenerating of the organization that has been initiated by the choice. Nichols explains the
generation of self-organization in dynamical systems this way.
Now, a very characteristic feature of the vast majority of systems
encountered in nature is that the Fs [fluxes] are complicated nonlinear functions
of Xs [instantaneous states]. In a fluid in motion, this has to do with the fact that
the transport of its properties, like, for instance, energy, is carried out by the
motion itself, whose velocity is one of the variables to be determined. [by an
equation measuring the system’s evolution]. In chemical reactions or in biology
it has to do with the ability of certain kinds of molecules to perform autocatalytic
and other regulatory functions. And, in animal or human populations,
nonlinearity may reflect the processes of communication, competition, growth
or information exchange. In short, the equations of evolution of all these
systems should admit under certain conditions several solutions, since by
19 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
definition, multiplicity of solutions is the most typical feature of a nonlinear
equation.56
So, we see again in self-organizing dynamical systems, the properties that Deacon
attributed to Shannon entropy: relations among sets of possibilities, constrained in some ways,
and detecting an absence or state of disequilibrium, form a directed reference making a
pragmatic difference in a way that is determinate only to a statistical degree, and is made more
determinate through measurement. Nicolis’ discussion of phase transitions and symmetry
breaking adds yet more intentionality to the processes being described since there is a degree
of randomness in the way that these choices are made, and real options exist for the direction
in which the choice will lead the system to develop. Obviously, whether the choice is random
or creative will be relevant at the conscious level of organization, and either irrelevant or
‘creative’ in some very minimalist sense at lower levels of organization. What is more
important to observe here is that the choice in question goes in a specific direction; and it
exhibits behavior that becomes self-generating of a new form of order initiated by the choice. I
think that these points are sufficient to characterize the change as adding to the minimalist
forms of informational intentionality that I have already outlined, and further demonstrating
the dynamical interaction of information and physical reality.
One more statement from Nicholis will further clarify and summarize the
interrelatedness and networked nature of information and physical nature in dynamical
mechanical systems.
In short, we arrive at a simple, appealing picture of how order can emerge in a
system. In somewhat anthropomorphic terms, order appears to be a
56
Gregoire Nicolis, “Physics of Far-From-Equilibrium Systems and Self-Organization”, in The New Physics, op.cit.
20 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
compromise between two antagonists: the nonlinear chemical-like process,
which, through fluctuations sends continuously but incoherently, ‘innovating
signals’ to the system and the transport-like process which captures, relays and
stabilizes them. Disturbing the delicate balance between these two ‘actors’
leads to such qualitative changes as an erratic state in which each element of the
system acts on its own, or, on the contrary, a ‘homeostatic’ fossil-like state in
which fluctuations are crushed and a full uniformity is imposed. Complexity and
self-organization appear, therefore, to be limited on both sides by two different
kinds of states of disorder.57
I hope my reader finds the parallels as striking as I do between Deacon’s descriptions of the
relationship between its and bits as constitutive of a physical system representing two sets of ranges of
possibility that interact entropically and interpret difference, absence, or disequilibrium as a natural
catalyst, and Nicolis’ descriptions of homeostatic and self-organizing relations above. In both cases, a
dynamical relationship between two sets of possibilities is generating a determinate dynamical
outcome, as the fields of possibilities interact with eachother and with sets of constraints and
constitutive absences in the environment. It is further striking that Nicolis feels the need to use the
words “anthropomorphic terms,” “actors” and “sends…innovative signals” in the above passage, but he
also feels the need to apologize for using them by putting them in scare quotes. I think that Deacon’s
argument has provided a good reason to say that Nicolis’ apologies for anthropomorphizing represent
the form of bracketing of intentionality for the purposes of doing a mechanical analysis that Deacon
identified in computer science. The dynamical systems are mechanical, but the bracketed minimal
intentionality, and pragmatic reference, have not been eliminated.
Dynamical systems such as convection in thermodynamics, wave fronts and chemotaxis in
biological systems are small scale ecological interactions. Such systems also function using feed back
loops, energy exchanges with areas outside the system and homeostatic mechanisms to maintain
equilibrium. Disequilibrium in any of the above will initially catalyze more fervent activity to maintain
21 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
equilibrium within the system, followed by radical disruption, should the feedback systems fail to return
the system to homeostasis. The information component of feedback-loops, energy exchanges, and
maintenance of homeostasis encapsulates a more sophisticated distinction between self-reference and
other-reference than we have seen so far on the bridge from it to bit to mind. Even a system such as a
hurricane can be said to be self-maintaining, as long as its supply of warm water is unlimited, but its
equilibrium falters once it moves over cooler water or over land. The classical mechanical description of
such systems brackets the intentionality that Deacon and I have been arguing is really still there.
Bracketing intentionality serves less purpose, however, once one is dealing with living ecological
systems. James J. Gibson has advocated understanding living dynamical systems, such as animals and
humans in their environments, in perspectival terms, revealing rather than suppressing, their inherent
intentionality.
E Information: Ecosystems to Environments
Gibson recommends against using even the concepts or vocabulary of Newtonian physics to
describe the relationships among living things and their ecological surroundings. He argues:
Our failure to understand the concurrence of persistence and change at the
ecological level is probably connected with an old idea --- the atomic theory of
persistence and change, which asserts that what persists in the world are atoms and
what changes in the world are the positions of atoms or their arrangements.58
…So different, in fact, are environmental motions from those studied by Isaac Newton,
that it is best to think of them as changes of structure rather than changes of position of
elementary bodies, changes of form rather than of point locations, or changes of the
layout rather than motions in the usual meaning of the term. 59
Gibson points out that the interaction between a living thing and its environs should be characterized as
a relationship of actor to affordances60, resident to niche61, knower to layout, texture and surfaces62.
58
J.J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis Group, NY, 1986,
p. 14
59
ibid. p. 15 author’s emphasis
60
ibid. p.127
61
ibid, p. 128-130
22 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
The feedback loops, homeostatic relationships and capacity to refer to self and others already noticed in
dynamical systems take center stage and eclipse more mechanical interactions once organic living
systems are the ecological systems under discussion. Here, explicitly intentional notions such as
perspective and perception must be explicitly introduced to understand the role of information in an
ecological dynamical feed back loop.
For example, to analyze the role of information in the environmental feedback loops of living
systems, Gibson distinguishes the role of light as radiant atoms from the role light plays as ambient light,
providing affordances in an ecology for living things, as follows.
Ecological optics is concerned with many-times-reflected light in the medium, that is
illumination. Physical optics is concerned with electromagnetic energy, that is
radiation… The ambient light has structure, whereas the radiant light does not.63
The importance of the difference between structured ambient light and unstructured radiant
light, for Gibson, is that only the former is capable of conveying information to a plant or animal, for by
now familiar reasons cited by Deacon. Uniform light or darkness, like the blank sheet of paper, contains
no information. Gibson explains;
In the case of unstructured ambient light, the environment is not specified and no
information about an environment is available….In the case of ambient light that is
unstructured in one part and structured in an adjacent part, such as the blue sky above
the horizon and the textured region below it, the former specifies a void and the latter a
surface.64
So, Shannon entropy, now with explicit intentionality, is providing the informational capacity for an
environment to furnish affordances for a living system.
Indeed, Holmes Ralston III argues that ecosystems, of the type described by Gibson, are more
basic aspects of reality than the creatures or species that inhabit them. Ralston points out that individual
62
ibid.p. 258
ibid. pgs.63-64 author’s emphasis
64
ibid. p. 52
63
23 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
plants or animals last for short periods of time, ranging from days for some insects to hundreds of years
for some trees. The average age of a species is five million years, and the constant within which species
arise and become extinct is an ecosystem. He points out that species and individual animals are
dependent on ecosystems in ways that ecosystems are not dependent on any animal or species. So he
argues the ecosystems are the most basic facts of nature, not DNA, plants or animals, or species. 65
Moving from the second to the third floor of my metaphorical house, brings us to the level of
field complexity and dynamism characterized by life. Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and many
others have argued that life, starting with bacteria and building to humans exhibits a special feature
which they call autopoesis. Thompson would characterize the auto catalytic activities described by
Nicholis, above, such as the functioning of a hurricane, as failing the test for autopoesis, because there is
no semi-permeable membrane boundary on an autocatalytic set of activities, and the set has no
capacity to reproduce itself.66 Auto poetic systems are more autonomous of the environment, and more
capable of maintaining their own equilibrium. Thompson, likewise, excludes viruses and DNA or RNA
molecules from status as autopoetic systems because they “are not dissipative systems or metabolic
entities… and have no metabolism of [their] own.”67 Thompson argues that “significance and valence”
enter the scene with autopoesis because the clear sense of interiority and value on equilibrium that the
autonomous systems have raises them to a level that surmounts mere exteriority, and mere status as
physical systems.68 For this reason, Thompson, Varela and ultimately, Deacon, as well, resist the move
that I am making from information in physical systems to information in autopoetic systems. All would
insist that life presents a radical break from information systems in the physical world, and mind is an
autopoetic function of life.
65
Holmes Ralston III, A New Environmental Ethics, Routledge Press, New York, New York, 2012, chaps. 7 & 8
Thompson, Evan, Life in Mind, p. 105
67
ibid, p. 123
68
ibid. 225
66
24 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
While I agree with these authors that life, featuring semipermeable membranes and strong
senses of equilibrium, adds substantially to the level of autonomy of a field, I don’t think the break
between life and non-life is as radical as Thompson, et.al. insist that it is. The homeostatic feed back
loops and persistence through change, interchange of energy and resources with an environment, and
ability to react to destabilizing environmental changes were all already there in ecosystems and dynamic
systems. The philosophers of autopoesis all think of minds and lives as embedded in ecosystems in
important ways, and I hope my arguments will encourage them to see more continuity than division
between the embeddedness of live in an ecosystem and the existence of life, itself. In the next section I
will argue that the embedednesss of autopoetic fields within fields of significance for them counts in
favor of seeing the inherent intentionality of information throughout nature, and not only in its
organically living sectors.
To summarize the argument at this point: I have transitioned smoothly, I hope, from describing
a relationship between its and bits at the quantum level, through its and bits at the mechanical level, in
which intentionality is bracketed, to its and bits in the universe as a whole, in dynamical systems and in
ecological systems, and on to dynamical autopoesis. In every case, I have shown the relationship to be
an intentional one. Although the intentionality is bracketed at the most mechanically understood
ground floor level, its minimal manifestations on the ground, basement and back yard levels are growing
substantially on the second floor; among dynamical systems and ecologies. Additional features arise on
the third floor with autopoesis, but the process of accumulating additional intentional properties along
with increasing dynamical field complexity, has been systematic, and progressive. We now have
accumulated the following intentional characteristics for the distributed informational resources of the
natural world: signal recognition, reference, pragmatic meaning, constitutive absences serving as
entropic catalysts, homeostasis distinguishing equilibrium from disequilibrium, self-organization, selfreference and other reference, feed-back loops with an environment, ambient arrays of surfaces and
25 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
textures and affordances. That, I submit, is a whole lot of gradually increasing dynamic intentionality
inherent in the world that Descartes, Newton and Turing characterized as exclusively inert mechanistic
matter. The final section of this chapter will argue that the transition is equally smooth to human
mentality.
F Information: Ecosystems and Autopoesis to Minds
A substantial body of literature has been arguing in recent years that human minds should be
thought of as embodied in an ecosystem,69 rather than as isolated in a brain70 or free-floating, as an
immaterial substance71. Andy Clark,72 and Francisco Varela et.al.,73 for example, argue that a human
mind is as much an ecosystem incorporating a social and ecological niche as it is a functioning brain.
Some of the central features of a mind are its ability to use environmental feed back loops to identify
and exploit affordances of the type identified by Gibson, ability to use space and environmental
structures as markers, and sorting tools and to do active problem solving, and perform memory tasks
using the environment.74 Clark, Varela, and proponents of what Clark calls the ‘extended mind’ argue
that a brain in a vat would not be capable of experience at all, as we know it, much less capable of the
full range of thinking and action that we perform. First of all, unless there were basic motor
relationships such as reaching and grasping, turning ones head to see or hear better, a sense of
locatedness in a space and a sense of self-image as bounded, but capable of moving within the space, as
dwarfed by some of one’s environment, but dwarfing other aspects of it, as upright, sitting or prone, as
needing to approach some aspects of the environment and avoid others, while socially interacting with
69
for example, see work by Jose Bermudez, The Body and the Self (Cambridge MA, MIT, 1995) co-edited with
Antony and Marcel and Naomi Eilan Andy Clark, Being There, and Supersizing the Mind.
70
For example Churchland, op. cit, and Michael Gazzaniga, (Human, 2008)Daniel Dennett (Consciousness
Explained, 1991)and Joseph LeDoux(Synaptic Self,2002).
71
For example, Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
72
Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2008
73
Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1993
74
Clark, Supersizing the Mind, pgs. 81-82
26 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
still others, the brain modules identified by Michael Gazzaniga75 would have little or nothing on which
to operate. While some inclinations to interact with the context may be innate, operating as modules
within the brain as Gazzaniga claims, these inclinations could neither develop thoroughly nor persist
through subsequent evolutionary history if they were as exclusively brain-bound as he claims.
Second, as Clark and Chalmers have argued, there can be modules of the thinking processes that
are stored outside the brain. Their Otto example explains a man with very limited memory capacity who
remembers how to get places by writing directions in a notebook. They argue that his knowledge is
truly in the notebook rather than in his head, and that the notebook is as much a part of his mind as the
memory of the location of a destination is for someone else.76 By extension, of course, most of us now
house considerable portions of our knowledge base and perceptual memory in computers, blackberries,
ipods and the like. I have long argued that our knowledge of the standard height of stairs is in our legs,
and our knowledge of the placement of doorknobs is in our hands, not our heads. This knowledge is for
most of us dynamical and kinesthetic, unlike the case for the construction manager, who must have
cognitive knowledge of the standard regulatory measurements for stair height and doorknob
placement.77
In each of these cases, the information structure is as much in the environment as it is in the
brain or in any potentially immaterial Cartesian or Platonic mental space.
Henry Stapp explains a way for Deacon’s analysis of the dynamical interface among
informational and physical dynamical fields to be realized in the case of the relationship between
physical neurological events in brains and phenomenal experiences of an ecological environment. First,
Stapp describes the quantum condition of the brain;
75
Michael Gazzaniga, Human: the Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique, Harper/Perennial Press, New
York, 2008, pgs. 291-308
76
David Chalmers and Andy Clark, “The Extended Mind” in Philosophy of Mind, ed. David Chalmers, Oxford
University Press, New York, 2008, p.226-230.
77
Laura Weed, The Structure of Thinking, Imprint Academic, Thorverton, UK 2003
27 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
The quantum state of the brain is reduced by …interactions to a collection of parallel
potentialities….[E]ach of the classical possibilities must be slightly smeared out to bring
it into accord with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: the potential location and velocity
of the center of each particle is smeared out over a small region….78
Stapp’s quantum description of the operation of a brain enables him to then describe the interaction of
brain and ecological system as, once again, a system of two sets of probability amplitudes interacting in
conditions in which decoherence will bring about specificity. Disequilibrium creates salience, resulting in
a measurement, which results in the collapse of superposed states to one determinate state, which is at
once a neurological brain state and an informational state, now a full psychological qualia experienced
by a measurer rooted in an ecosystem. As Stapp explains:
According to this picture your physically described brain is an evolving cloud of
essentially classically conceived potentialities. Owing to the uncertainty principle
smearing, this cloud of potentialities can quickly expand to include the neural correlates
of many mutually exclusive possible experiences. Each human experience is an aspect
of a psycho-physical event whose psychologically described aspect is that experience,
itself, and whose physically described aspect is the reduction of the cloud of
potentialities to those that contain the neural co-relate of that experience79.
Stapp is claiming that the same type of dynamic relationship exists between neurons and qualia, or
between brains and experiences, as we have seen between its and bits in the rest of reality. The level of
complexity and the variety of types of intentionality possible have increased many fold in the dynamic
relations between neuronal assemblies and experiences, and in the dynamic relationship between
brains and an ecological environment, over those expressed in the simplest examples of Shannon
Entropy operating on constitutive absences. The basic processes of Shannon Entropy, are still at work in
Stapp’s analysis, however. A qualia is a meaningful, i.e. referential and pragmatic signal, because it is a
relationship between sets of environmental possibilities and sets of brain states that is at once, physical
and informational, building on Shannon entropy and constitutive absences. There is no need to bracket
78
Henry Stapp, “Minds and Values in the Quantum Universe,” in Information and the Nature of Reality, eds. Paul
Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen, Cambridge University Press, UK 2010, p. 109
79
ibid.
28 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
the intentionality into the background, here, and in fact it would be perverse to do so. Lycan can have
his degrees of intentionality, and there is no metaphysical reason to exclude the element of
consciousness from any aspect of reality, although the practical argument for bracketing it off from
mechanical analyses still applies. Also, for practical reasons, Thompson’s arguments for the specialness
of autopoesis can be accepted. Creatures with membranes are intentional creatures operating in
ecological niches in concentrated ways. And mind is special because creatures with phenomenal
experience are exploiting and using their entropic abilities in a very concentrated way in the dynamical
interaction of neuronal assemblies, perceptual systems, experience and an ecosystem. I hope I have
shown that a deeper continuity unites basement, ground floor, second and third floors, attic and yard in
my metaphorical house of nature.
G Conclusion: Panpsychic Nature
In this paper I have outlined a bridge from information through dynamical fields to mind. My
intention is to demonstrate that far from establishing reductive materialism, what this bridge reveals is
the inherent intentionality of all of nature, the naturalness of reference and the metaphysical reality of
information. Understanding reality as dynamical systems of inter-relational fields of information, rather
than as static things with transitional properties, enables the conceptual transition beyond traditional
philosophical dichotomies between material and spiritual substances. Some of the key principles that
have enabled this transition from bits to mind are the following:
Shannon Entropy; which points out the inherently referential, inherently relational,
inherently physical and inherently gestalt quality of information.
Constitutive absences and disequilibrium, as identified by Deacon, which show how
Shannon entropy can produce physical catalysts for dynamical change.
The bracketing of all of the pragmatic reference and intentionality of the above into
the context and the background, for a quantitative analysis required by AI, The
Church-Turing Principle, and a computational account of information. Logical
and Newtonian atomism both depend on the bracketed and exclusively
quantitative account of information. The mechanical analysis of any state space
29 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e
is always possible, and is useful for many purposes, but is misrepresentative if it
is understood to provide a comprehensive analysis of all of reality.
Superposition, entanglement, possibility amplitudes, non-locality and measurement
provide the sets of possibilities to interact in dynamical relations. Decoherence
conditions result from interactions triggered by constitutive absences and
disequilibrium, at the quantum level, introducing an observer and further
showing the dynamic field-like nature of the relationship between information
and matter.
Information is metaphysically prior to matter, the Laws of Physics and Platonic
accounts of mind, as explained by Deutsch et al and Davies et al.
Homeostasis, feed-back loops and self-organization increase the intentionality level of
dynamical systems which form dynamical systems and ecologies, as specified by
Nicolis.
Interactive and intentional dynamics among plants, animals and humans and their
ecological niches promote more meaningful dynamic relationships between
more fully intentional users of an environment and the affordances offered by
the environment, as identified by Gibson.
Autopoetic activities function in living creatures, molecular and organic life, providing
increased autonomy for creatures with membranes, as identified by Varela and
Thompson.
Dynamic interrelations among quantum features of brains and their environments
produce both specific neurological states in human brains and psychological
states of experience, as phenomenal qualia, and environmentally embedded
experience for humans, as identified by Stapp.
Nature so described forms a dynamical system of interrelated fields, some of which are
many times embedded within one another. The principles of operation of the entire system are
consistent at the informational core of reality, although more complex principles evolve in more
complex autonomous and semi-autonomous fields within nature. Basic intentional principles
connected to information, Shannon Entropy, constitutive absences and systemic constraints
operate throughout the system, providing its underlying unity.
This view of nature is a form of panpsychism and not materialist reductionism, for most
of the properties traditionally conceived of as mental have been dispersed through the system
in varying degrees, or (for mechanical systems) exiled to the context, not eradicated. Even in
the mechanical levels of reality in which intentionality has been bracketed to the context, it has
not been expurgated. This is a view of an organically interrelated, semiotically meaningful, and
self-organizing cosmos, not a world of dead, atomistically separate, inert Newtonian matter.
30 | I n f o r m a t i o n Q - B i t s a n d N a t u r a l R e f e r e n c e