Information is causation by variation, when the variation is causative in the effected system. Information is causative not because of the fundamental aspects of the medium of transmission, i.e., energy, momentum, mass etc., but because of some other aspect of the transmission. Information involves a signal, not simply mechanical, fluidic, or even basic electro-magnetic influences.
Information is causal, in part but not totally, in the causal nexus of the processes the information generates. Information is about process, about activity in information sensitive systems. ( “The stone is thinking about Vienna. “ We want to show that this is false on information theoretic grounds and not simply on psychological- physiological grounds. Stones can’t think because they aren’t information sensitive systems.)” Information storage” is a problem in particular technologies, e.g. hard drives, but is not a fundamental problem in information epistemology. Information is transient process, its origins and causes.
The most fundamental idea in epistemic information theory is “conversion with conservation.” The informative media can be coded, converted, changed, altered, translated, yet something is conserved: the information. This is a new idea, an invariance despite gross physical change, a continuity across process, a causal influence that changes form
No comments:
Post a Comment