What Words Are Not

It does not therefore follow that the information content of one thing cannot move to something else without intervention of a person. All it takes is the usual physical causality which demonstrably has the capacity for unlimited complexity. Wind blows and leaf is moved. Wind moves in circle like a whirlwind and a leaf responds by moving in a circle. Or take a cloud with as complicated a shape as you like and the light from the sun makes a shadow which is also displays that complexity on the ground. Complex information thus moves from one medium to another all the time without any personal intervention.

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Good examples.

Sure, the information in DNA is objective: given an appropriate context (sequence context, correct cell machinery), CTT generates a leucine – no brains or subjectivity involved. On the other hand, this information is cannot be transferred between mediums: if I write down ‘CTT’ or store the letters in a fasta file, it no longer generates leucine. It might do something else, to a human brain or a computer program, but as far as cellular machinery is concerned, it’s no longer information. This is one reason that I think you’re conflating more than one concept under the term ‘information’, which makes it hard to discuss your argument.

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I doubt you really mean that. Suppose I record a movie on a DVD and hand you the DVD and ask you to copy the information, and you make a copy of the scratches on the surface, do you really think you’ve copied the information?

Information and data that can be gathered is understood and can be communicated. This is mainly due to an understanding of context and method. When we discuss complex systems, particularly as found in nature, the information regarding the systems is just as relevant to our understanding, as the specific data.

The immaterial aspect of all this may be summarised as the ‘intelligibility’ of nature’s systems by human (intelligence makes it meaningful/comprehensible) beings. This interesting aspect has been discussed for many decades and continues to fascinate us.

Is ‘meaning’ immaterial. (No double entendre intended. :slightly_smiling_face:)

For instance, instances of God’s providence. There is no physical connection, but meaning is imparted due to similarities in context and timing – the world calls them coincidences. Affirmative answers to prayers are one (and only one) type.

An example posted before: Request and Articulate Reply.

Transcendent is the word which comes to mind.

google dictionary
(of God) existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe.

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Good word. :slightly_smiling_face: God’s providence is transcendent, of course (I distracted from my question with that), but is meaning in general immaterial? (Materialists would object, obviously.)

I have a worldview, and in this I have faith in meaning which is beyond the material. I do not believe I can prove this from nature.

A materialist could rationally argue that meaning is emergent, and does not exist independently.

I’ve read discussion somewhere to the effect that math would still be true apart from the existence of the universe, and if true it must have an inherent and independent existence.

I do not really have a lot to offer on this question, and in general am a bit skeptical of the value of philosophy when it comes to metaphysics.

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They have no choice. :slightly_smiling_face: If there is nothing other than the physical, it is rational to argue that meaning is emergent.

So now this has switched to “immaterial”? Is this to build a bridge from ideas to the spiritual? I think it only increases the confusion dramatically over the previous distinction of physical with non-physical.

Merriam Webster

1 : not consisting of matter : INCORPOREAL

2 : of no substantial consequence : UNIMPORTANT

Google

adjective

  1. unimportant under the circumstances; irrelevant.
    “so long as the band kept the beat, what they played was immaterial”
    Similar: irrelevant, unimportant, inconsequential, insignificant
  2. PHILOSOPHY spiritual, rather than physical.
    “we have immaterial souls”

More importantly is the general implication of not matter. And so by making this your link to the spiritual you are making an even better case for the naturalist that science has the better understanding of the non-matter portions of existence. This is ever the problem with trying to prove and push your way of thinking on others is that you typically reduce your own thinking to something far less than it was originally.

So I think this is the absolutely wrong direction for Christian apologetics to go. And I think the correct link to the spiritual is not information, ideas, mind, or immaterial but the subjective aspect of our existence. That is the real reason why I believe in this spiritual stuff because I don’t think the objective is the be all and end all limits of reality. Yes, this means you have to finally accept the inescapable reality that people are going to believe different things. But that is like paying for something with money that is already gone.

So I cut all the strings which tie spirituality to irrelevancy (immaterial) and products of the mind (just in your head kind of stuff), to say that the spiritual is made of the same stuff as everything else. It’s just not part of the space-time mathematical structure of the physical universe (which makes them all subject to death and decay frankly).

And where do I get such an idea? The Bible – more specifically Paul in 1 Cor 15.

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If I gave any impression that I was building towards an apologetic, please be assured that is not my intention or interest. I trust in God, and beyond that I forswear any particular insight into metaphysics.

Okay, 3 arguments:

ONE. Information is objective regardless of whether we perceive it or comprehend what we’re perceiving. Even your average rock is cram-loaded with volumes of information regardless of whether we humans have comprehended or translated any of it—geological information, chemical information, subatomic physics, and quantum mechanics.

Or consider the following sentence (which I’m only giving about a tenth of, for the sake of space): 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000… 00101110 00100000. If you stumbled upon that you would say, “Objectively, there’s some kind of pattern there.” Now there is no way that you could comprehend that pattern without more context, but does that mean that the information does not exist? You’ll need a binary-English dictionary and a trigonometry textbook and then maybe you’ll begin to comprehend a different pattern of black symbols (i.e. the English translation): “The base of the natural logarithm, raised to the product of pi and the imaginary unit, plus one equals zero” (e^pi*i + 1 = 0). But if you don’t speak English, does that information not exist? Of course it does. Just like if you found a fuel line on the road, there’s no way you could know that it had served as a fuel line, but that is irrelevant to the objective fact that it had been attached to a vehicle and had gasoline flowing through it. Or just like if you found a portion of a DNA molecule and had no idea about the objective fact that it had been attached to a cell.

TWO. Information is objective regardless of its function. The above sentence is extremely useful as a tool for developing technology, but that is irrelevant to its objective use. Similarly, when the human genome is recorded on DVD’s, it is objective even if it not directing the functioning of an organism.

THREE. Information has no physical qualities that can be directly or indirectly seen, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled. The meaning of “The base of the natural logarithm, raised to the product of pi and the imaginary unit, plus one equals zero” doesn’t only exist for English speakers. Nor does it only exist for humans. For if we translate it through several different physical media, we can affirm that it does not even depend upon the physical human brain to exist.

  • A pattern of English symbols or a series of binary symbols.
  • A pattern of bumps on a DVD.
  • A pattern of air waves (such as if you read the sentence translated into Arabic)
  • A pattern of electromagnetic waves.

Yes, all those patterns have human authors in common. But they do not have the human brain in common.

No matter what you call it—author, source, entity, etc.—you can’t identify any physical things that they need to have in common. It is a mistake to presuppose that we are our brains. (Okay, yes, this is direct evidence that not only is information immaterial, so also are the authors of information. Am I suggesting that the sentence, “The base of the natural logarithm, raised to the product of pi and the imaginary unit, plus one equals zero”, is “spiritual”? Not necessarily. Are the perceivers/users of such a sentence “spiritual”? That’s an excellent question. Regardless, all I am saying is that both are immaterial.)

Now McKain made the excellent point somewhere that defining the words physical and material can be very tricky. That is why I have often preferred to distinguish between medium and meaning rather than between physical and nonphysical. My main argument is that medium and meaning are absolutely distinct: every physical thing in the universe is a medium for nonphysical meaning. Can such meaning exist apart from a medium? The only such meaning we know of is infinity. But we might make discover more if we ask, “When does information occur?”

And no, Bitikofer, I don’t want to elevate science above philosophy. (I’ve been reading an excellent book on the subject, The Territories of Science and Religion after I heard about it from Stump at the Biologos conference.)

What I take issue with is the arbitrary presupposition that science cannot address the immaterial (provided they take all of mathematics completely for granted!) and, by contrast, that belief in spirituality is purely mystical or even less rational than believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.

@mitchellmckain said:

So I cut all the strings which tie spirituality to irrelevancy (immaterial) and products of the mind (just in your head kind of stuff), to say that the spiritual is made of the same stuff as everything else. It’s just not part of the space-time mathematical structure of the physical universe (which makes them all subject to death and decay frankly).

Frankly I don’t see the harm (indeed I only see benefit) in tying the spiritual to what we know of the cosmos. Indeed the spiritual is made of the same stuff as everything else in precisely the same way as are insight, understanding, meaning and dreams. Everything subjective is manifest in our minds which are tethered to the physical world by way of our brains. We are subjects wondering what sort of object we may be, but that is a category error. The phenomenology of subject-hood, including spirituality, is only observable directly and privately, though we may at least discuss all that with others for confirmation.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

So Paul’s subjective experience was of coming to be animated by what he called the grace of God after a period of doubting and even being hostile to that spiritual dimension. He acknowledges being still what he is, which is something more limited, when he acted without regard to that grace. The spiritual is then a potential available within our subjective experience, but it is not what we take ourselves to be. We are not and never will be divine but we can bring that into the world by way of our willingness to act on that which we perceive to be nobler than mere comfort. It isn’t for the sake of some afterlife outcome but because we wish our efforts to align with what we recognize as more meaningful right now.

These points have already been addressed, so the last word is your’s. Peace out.

Science certainly addresses many immaterial things such as mind, consciousness, information, and energy. What I take issue with is the idea that reality (or at least the only parts which are important) is exclusively objective, which science has the undisputed mastery over. Therein lies an ultimate rejection of the naturalist premise that science is the only reasonable access to knowledge of reality.

My objection depends on what is meant by “tying” for this is a metaphor for both connection and limitation. The latter ultimately amounts to a reduction of spirituality to a subject of science. As a scientist, I am always ready to promote an acknowledgement of the epistemological superiority of science to the point of equating it with objective knowledge. It is the complete limitation of reality and our knowledge of it to science and thus to objectivity alone which I must take a stand against. And this is NOT because of some need to defend some antiquated religious culture – quite the opposite. I who was not raised in any religious culture see value in religious culture BECAUSE of the importance I see in holding onto an understanding of the subjective aspects of our existence. Like I said, the price is an acceptance of a basic diversity of thought – but that is really not a bug but a feature!

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Like consciousness, the spiritual would be an emergent phenomenon supported by life. That is the way in which I see it being tied to the cosmos. Science has done a good job of investigating life which I would characterize as an emergent property of matter and energy, but it hasn’t trivialized the problem of exactly how it emerged. I’m not sure what progress science may some day make in understanding consciousness and how it emerged in the biological world. But personally I would want to know all that can be known about that and I wouldn’t fear that it would trivialize consciousness in general or that which we’re calling spiritual.

Frankly the supposition of a supernatural realm seems to me like the projection of consciousness onto the world. It turns the cosmos into nothing more than an idea in the mind of God, trivializing the actuality of the world. I believe the world is entirely real and complex enough to support the emergence of subjects such as ourselves as well as a spiritual realm within ourselves. Seems to me that we have our being both in the physical world and in the world of our subjective experience. My hunch is that the more complex always emerges from the less complex so I don’t believe God contrived dust and heat as a creative act of a divine being. If there is a spiritual realm I think it must find its place in the wider, simpler cosmos, and not the other way around.

That would be the dreamer god pantheism which I frequently oppose and I think it trivializes both God and His creation to make the universe something which has no independent existence. But I also think this reduction of the spiritual to a physical emergent trivializes the spiritual, turning it into nothing more than an idea in the mind of man. So I see no need to trivialize either one, for we can see both as an embodiment of two different natures namely the objective and the subjective in the same basic stuff of being.

and I think it is the physical universe which has a place in the wider spiritual existence. Emergence is a fine counterpoint to reductionism when comes to questions of causality but it doesn’t really change the basic reality of an existence of mathematically governed particles which frankly has so little to with reality as we experience it. It makes the notion that this is the substance of reality downright absurd. It is frankly much more like a medium of representation like the pixels in a display screen.

But that is demonstrably as erroneous and flawed as the “hunch” that the less complex always emerges from the more complex. I oppose arguments for the existence of God to defend the basic rationality of the atheist/naturalist point of view (and other view in between like yours). But obviously, I will likewise oppose arguments against the existence of God and the nonphysical to defend the rationality of the theist point of view (and of course that is going to include attempts to equate the spiritual with physical emergentism).

[quote="rsewell, post:42, topic:41664

Despite this, I find your argument, that this demonstrates that information is immaterial, to be scientifically wrong and philosophically unjustified. As pointed out repeatedly above, you are erroneously basing it on a muddled equivalence of information and meaning. Information theory is compatible with materialism, just as the scientific “establishment” maintains.

[/quote]

@mitchellmckain, @MarkD, @mattconnally, @Mervin_Bitikofer, @Bill_II, @Dale

“What words are not” is material or physical. This is based on a simple definition. The physical is made up of matter/energy. Words, meaning, information is not made up of matter/energy. Take a book. It is made up of paper and ink. All books are materially the same regardless of language, subject matter, or content, that is meaning of information, because words are not physical.

The issue is not what words are not, but what words are. Western dualism maintains that there are only two aspects of Reality, the Physical or Objective and the Spiritual, which is usually defined as Subjective or arbitrary. This is not true.

What words are is relational. Words relate things to each other and thus create meaning, order, and information.

Along with the Physical and the Spiritual is the Rational, which is not arbitrary. The rational is not arbitrary because it can be backed up by looking at Reality from different perspectives and logic. It is also true that the Physical needs to be closely examined by experiments and field studies As I have repeatedly said Darwin’s understanding of natural selection is incorrect because it has not nor cannot be verified scientifically.

Another issue would be brought up and that is an improper use of the term scientific. Science is rightfully a broad term, which covers many disciplines, which can be generally classified as physical sciences, biological sciences including evolution, and the social sciences.

However in these philosophical discussions about words and meaning, it is assumed that we are talking ONLY about the physical sciences. The difference between the physical sciences and the biological sciences is that living things are able to respond their environment more freely than non-living things, and humans more freely than non-human organisms. If we say that “real” scientific knowledge is about the physical sciences, then we leave out most of the sciences as well as many other types of knowledge.

We also have rational knowledge, or knowledge about how we know, and spiritual knowledge which is knowledge about how we relate to others or about morality and values.

It should be noted that science also deals with the immaterial in that it deals with time and space. Time and space are immaterial in that they are not composed of matter/energy, but they are used in measuring time/energy.

The black marks on a piece of paper only have meaning if your brain can translate those marks into words you know. If they are written in a language you don’t know they might make interesting patterns but would otherwise have no meaning to you. To me when you have to invoke using your brain that makes it physical.