Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 20:45:45 +0100
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Robin Faichney <robin@faichney.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Encoding and Decoding
In-Reply-To: <000601bef89a$506c9d20$fdb606d1@sbosmr.ma.cable.rcn.com>
In message <000601bef89a$506c9d20$fdb606d1@sbosmr.ma.cable.rcn.com>,
Aaron Agassi <agassi@erols.com> writes
>> >
>> >We are talking about the replication of information content, or
>> meaning, by
>> >consciousness, inter-subjectively.
>>
>> No, "we" are not. You can talk about whatever you want. I'm talking
>> about replicating items of objective information, where consciousness is
>> irrelevant.
>So you say. But I will gasp in awe if you can actually pull it off.
Get ready to gasp.
>Where is
>consciousness irrelevant to information? Well, first of all, there is
>information in the Physicist's sense, as in form, low Entropy. But this is
>Ontology, not communication or Phenomenology. Intelligence, if not
>consciousness, comes into the decoding and re-encoding from forms, natural
>or artifact, or phenomena including behaviors.
Intelligence is not required. Any physical process can be characterised
as the transformation of physical (physicist's) information, and that's
precisely what I mean by the en/decoding of memes. Physical processes.
>This leaves the question of
>such a task being performed by a computerized robot of some sort. But even
>to what degree that succeeds, what then accrues? Objective information?
>
>For that matter, what is objective information?
Physical information is objective.
>Truth is a quality of a
>statement of correspondence to reality. Understanding, or information
>content, is a more useful form of truth, the correspondence to reality of
>interrelationships and their ramifications.
You're confusing subjective (context/decoding dependent) and objective
(physical) information.
>So, where is your objective information to which consciousness is
>irrelevant?
Under your nose.
This is all explained at http://www.conscious-machine.com/info
-- Robin Faichney Get Your FREE Information at http://www.conscious-machine.com=============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit