Object and experience

JJ- you're wrong. Your mind contionously assimilates the information you get from your surroundings. Experience is the accumulated mindframe, a result of the various impressions you're getting at all times.



Are you so sure?

It is not enough to say that information is found in the environment. I do not see with my hands.

I also do not 'receive information'. What is received is information only by virtue of being received. Reception defines information, it does not receive it. I do not receive information from my nose so much as smelling defines a nose.

While reception defines information, reception needs defining. Reception is not a physical process here. If it was a physical process then the receiver could equally be viewed as information. In that case 'receiving information' would simply be describing a causal event, and the term 'information', as applying to both parties of that causal relationship, would be an unnecessary and confusing qualification. It would be sufficient to describe the objects of the causal event.

Reception then, is an experiential event. It is not helpful to coin the term 'information' or 'data' to help us describe reception, if reception is considered as the transfer of physical events to mental events. Why is this? Information and data are terms in either a experiential or physical framework or paradigm. They cannot be in both. If they are experiential then we cannot say that information is in the environment (my first point, above). If they are physical then we have the insurmountable problem of defining and pointing out a structure that translates physical events to experience, where 'information' or 'data' is the last step in the physical chain before the switch to experience. In other words, if information and data are regarded as physical then we would be unable to point them out in physical space. We must point them out where they revert to experience, and that point cannot be found. We might say "the point where information turns to experience is the brain, or the eye", etc, but this simply moves the problem of the 'physical placement of the point of reception' around.

To summarise, I would say that terms like information and data have standard uses and definitions. Problems occur when one term that is defined by another or group of terms, are construed not as definitions translating one term in terms of others, but as causal events, where one term (as object or event) causes another. Another related problem is the impossibility of transferring physical:physical causal events to mind events. The problem is exacerbated because terms like 'information' and 'data' seem to have a foot in both camps- matter and mind, and that once we stop challenging this dual role then it appears that the matter/mind interaction problem is solved. It all comes down to that - the problem of mind/matter interaction, which is not resolved by resorting to terms such as 'information' when explaining experience. It is sufficient to say that experience is its own place and that non-causally associated physical events can be mapped to it.

JJ

An interesting thread with many links to the concept that "reality" is ultimately "social" in that it is embodied in a socially transmitted language (including self1 communicating with self2). My own thoughts are that "objectivity" is meaningless which somewhat throws your opening dichotomy.

(BTW Regards to all !)

Even though I talked within the mind/matter distinction and explored the use of terms that have arisen from that (such as 'information' and 'data') I don't necessarily go along with it. I showed that the distinction has problems, particularly the physical placement of the information/experience transition.

JJ

Yes, you have touched on problems associated with the word "information"......

.......but I think we need to look closely at the term "event"....for what constitutes "an event" other than the perceptual set of the observer ?..and what is "information" other than "that which decides between alternatives" for an observer. ?Thus what we have is an interactional flux between "observer" and "observed" each constantly reconstructing the other. It seems to me that the role language plays in this interplay is to fool us into assuming that there can be "existence" independent of the flux...the act of "naming" being the equivalent of a time independent snapshot(.....this "tree" in my garden is only "the same tree" as it was yesterday for observer specific purposes......) and we cling to such snapshots in our mutual quest for prediction and control.

"Words" in essence constitute nodes of relative agreement and stability within a social framework and according to some writers (e.g. Capra) language is nothing more than the co-ordinator of inter- and intra- personal action.

fresco-

Does that cover forms of words which have no connection with action of any sort but which simply make one laugh. Why is Finnegan's Wake so funny?
Or Stanley Unwin?

spendius

Surely laughter is "social action" ! What is a "successful" joke other than one shared ! ....a subtle and unexpected restructuring of a mutual reality perhaps ...

Do you think the "unexpected" is the key?

In Paris,in the late 19th,the Superintendent of the insane asylums used to conduct denizens of the Faubourg, who had seen the can-can too often,round his zone of expertise as an entertainment.

It hardly seems probable,given the fees,that they went to weep.

Spendius,

You are applying different orders of usage to the word "expect".

Naturally we are attracted to various "spectacles" which we expect will give us glimpses into "unexpected realities".

Since language is itself an action, we can obviously have embedding of structure. This parallels my own interest in "observing the observer" (as discuused by second order cyberneticists such as Von Foerster).

fresco-

I think I also have such an interest but I didn't know it had a label and a constellation of experts.I ought to have known better.

I like to find out about the authors I read from biogs and autobiogs and then relate that to their works.

It might be why I mistrust a great deal of what is called history.Class writing coupled with a supreme indifference is what I like best.I find those two qualities often go together.I don't care for enthusiasm.It gets me in trouble sometimes but who cares eh?Enthusiasm skews the mind.Besides,it lacks style don't you think?

...but for entainment try David Reynolds "In Command of History"...an account of Churchill's manipulation of WW2 documents in his subsequent memoires.....an excellent footnote to the adage "History is Bunk"....

The problem there is that I wouldn't expect anything else of the Great Man.

Actually there's an article in The Sunday Times Culture section,which I keep an eye on,by Waldemar Januszczak which opens with a brief take on the "history is bunk" idea.

Have you read Lord Moran's book?Eye witness stuff like Crossman.I don't think the good doctor had an axe to grind.

I like the way certain revealing anecdotes stick in the mind.I don't know why.Perhaps subjectivity on my part but I'd argue that.It isn't subjective to stick to something that is true.

The pub calls.Cheers.