@TickTockMan,
lol
ok first of all i would remind people of a some very recent history. The multi universe theory. When this idea was being considered in the late twentieth century it was laughed off as star trek weirdness and of no conceivable use. Just a flight of fancy. However, the multi universe theory makes predictions about this universe that are looking good. In other words it seemed like a crazy totally theoretical idea, but in actual fact has now become the ascendant theory of cosmology.
Information theory is looking good too. It makes predictions about for example, black hole evaporation (to conserve information) and quantum computers.
Quote:
paulhanke
... but how would an information monism open the possibility of the thing-in-itself being "in the mind" beyond what is already possible in a material monism or a processual monism?
hi paul
with regard to material monism then information requires a medium. Thus cloned information requires a different space/time on the material medium substrate. This would be enough to distinquish one clone from another. But yeh IF you thought that any thing in itself is information on the physical medium, where the medium has no information quality including time or space, then yes you could say that the thing in itself can exist in and out of the mind. I am not saying that it is unique to info realism. (after all the thing in itself in the mind fits with naive realism)
With regard to processual monism, then it depends if by that we mean information independent of a processor or not. Which of course forms the medium (or not), and is that medium different to what is being processed.
Info realism is usually conceived as holographic. That is that all the information for an identified classical event say, is spread out and multiplied and entangled infinitely. (It even exists before the classical event occurs). But in info realism the only conceivable medium for classical information is information. Generally speaking, what we think of as the medium for information (space time matter energy) is non classical information. All is information in info realism.
So there is only a classical sense in which something occurs outside the brain and is represented within it. This classical idea (the thing in itself and its brain representation) in info realism is actually a part of/encoded within non classical information (which is not classically time space dependent because space time is non classical information in info realism)
However, there still remains the question. Does the representation in the brain of something outside it consist of classical information entangled on non classical information .... or is the representation possibly non classical in itself? If the latter then the representation ceases to be a representation and is (holographically) the thing in itself.
David Deutsch a leading theorist in this stuff claims that perception in the brain (and thought) is classical information (ie a representation). Thus he believes that the classical scheme of idealism (representation being different and at best only a 'classical' approximation of the thing represented) is the best way to understand human thinking and perception. Our reality to us thus appears classical necessarily. Idealism IS classical perception of reality, and we are restricted to it because information in our brains is necessarily classical according to him. He reasons this on the basis amongst other things of scale. At even minute scales to us like the molecular level, classical behaviour emerges. Our processing must therefore be classical because it does not have
direct access to QM entangled information. Instead it is encoded within it.
Quantum Computers are extraordinarily delicate and inherently unpredictable classicaly speaking
