Some thinkers have gone overboard about the concept of
information. Some have suggested that the whole universe can be
described as being fundamentally information. Such thinking seems to
involve a too-broad definition of “information.”
An example of sloppy inconsistent claims about information
can be found on page 234 of the book The Hidden Secrets of Water
by Paolo Consigli. Consigli states the following:
Information operates at every level of
existence....The ordered structures of crystals are information. The
more elaborate structures of all living things are
information...Information is not be confused with mere data. It is
rather the transmission of messages endowed with meaning.
This account of information is inconsistent. If
information is “the transmission of messages endowed with meaning”
(not actually a good definition of information), then how could a
crystal structure be information, when it involves no such
transmission?
Let us consider a rock that has this crystal structure.
Is there any information in the rock? No, there actually is not.
Those who think there is information in a rock with a crystal
structure are confusing information and information potential, or are
confusing order with information.
When I do a Google search for a definition of information,
I get two definitions:
- Facts provided or learned about something or someone.
- What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things.
It is certainly true that each cell has information,
because each cell uses DNA, which does use a symbolic system of
representations known as the genetic code, in which certain
combinations of nucleotide base pairs stand for particular amino
acids. If any thing uses any “x stands for y” arrangement, we
should say it is information or that it uses information.
But a rock does not have information in either of these
senses. I can find out some facts about a rock by measuring it or
weighing, but until I do that there are no facts provided or learned
about the rock. Nothing at all is conveyed or represented by the
arrangement of atoms in a rock. It is true that I can scratch some
words on a rock, or smash the rock into 100 pebbles, and then out
spell out words with those pebbles. But that is information potential
(the potential to make information), not information itself. It
seems a rock has no information, particularly if that rock is buried
far underground or if that rock is found on some distant lifeless
moon or planet revolving around some other star, where it is most
unlikely that anyone will ever make any observation or measurements
involving the rock.
The orderly lattice structure in a crystal is not an
example of information. Consider this example. I go to a web site with
a random number generator. When I press a button, I get a 9-digit
sequence of numbers. Suppose that after many times pushing the
button, I witness the rare occurrence that instead of a
random-looking number such as “235257032,” I get the sequence
“123456789.” That sequence is orderly, but it would not seem that
information has somehow appeared merely because of the orderly
sequence.
If a rock buried far underground doesn't have
information, it seems to make no sense to describe a physical
universe as “just information.”
Others support a less vaunting conclusion, and try to
assert that consciousness is just information. There is a theory
called integrated information theory, which maintains that
consciousness is just information that has become integrated to a
sufficient degree. Such a theory seems to be endorsed in the recent
book Life 3.0 by the MIT physicist Max Tegmark.
Tegmark goes all gaga over a neuroscientist named Giulio Tomoni who has advanced this integrated information theory. On page 301 of his book, Tegmark tells us that Tomoni is the “ultimate renaissance man” and a “fearless intellect” with “incredible knowledge.” Tegmark says, “I'd been arguing for decades that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways,” and that the integrated information theory fits in with this claim. But information doesn't feel.
Tegmark goes all gaga over a neuroscientist named Giulio Tomoni who has advanced this integrated information theory. On page 301 of his book, Tegmark tells us that Tomoni is the “ultimate renaissance man” and a “fearless intellect” with “incredible knowledge.” Tegmark says, “I'd been arguing for decades that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways,” and that the integrated information theory fits in with this claim. But information doesn't feel.
Tegmark says, “In summary, I think that consciousness
is a physical phenomenon that feels non-physical because it's like
waves and computations: it has properties independent of its specific
physical substrate.” But it does not make sense to be describing
consciousness as something physical. A Google search for the
definition of “physical” produces two definitions:
- Relating to the body as opposed to the mind.
- Relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.
Consciousness does not fit either of these definitions
of “physical.”
What about the idea that consciousness is just information? There are some
thought experiments you can try that suggest this idea is not
correct.
Experiment 1: Imagine yourself standing under a waterfall, not thinking about anything, but simply seeing the water drops fall around you. You are unable to see anything but the water falling around you. At such a time you are conscious,
but you are not creating or using information. Some might argue that
raw visual data is information, but it isn't according to the two
definitions previously cited. Seeing disordered raw visual data whiz by in such a place does not
involve using information created using some system of
representations (unlike reading, in which you do process information
created using the systems of representations known as the alphabet
and the English language). And while you can create information by
processing visual data and drawing conclusions or stating facts,
when you are simply viewing a stream of visual data without
processing it or thinking about it or speaking about it, there would
seem to be no information involved in such an activity. It would
seem that at such a time you have consciousness, but there is no
information involved.
Experiment 2: Imagine yourself dreaming. During
your dream you have consciousness, but there is no information
involved. The random visuals you see in your dream cannot be called
“information.”
Experiment 3: Imagine yourself lying awake on
your bed, with your eyes closed as you day-dream some wild fantasy
about living on an extraterrestrial planet. This activity is
consciousness, but it does not involve information. The imaginary
elements that you use to populate your fantasy cannot be called
information. While you might be able to use information if you made
such a fantasy have realistic elements drawn from your memory, if you
let your mind run loose, you could easily think of some really wild
and crazy fantasy not based on any facts or information you had
learned. (Conversely, if you were to write your wild fantasy down on
paper, that would be information, because there would be a symbolic
system of representations involved – the English language and the
English alphabet. The instant you have an “x stands for y”
situation, there is semantic information. So if I write “I flew to
Mars,” then when I write down “M-A-R-S” to stand for the planet
Mars, there is an “x stands for y” situation.)
Experiment 4: Turn off the television and lie on
your bed, with your eyes closed. Repeat to yourself over and over
again a meaningless sound such as “oooooooooooooooo.” While you
were doing that, you were quite conscious. But your mind was not
using information. A meaningless Mantra-type phrase such as
“oooooooooooooooo” cannot be called information. And don't
bother claiming that you were still getting information from your
ears or skin, because you can just as easily imagine this occurring
while you are floating in one of those fancy sensory-deprivation
tanks in which there would be no sensory inputs.
These examples all seem to show that you can have
consciousness without information. It would seem, therefore, that mind is much more than
information, and cannot be reduced to merely “integrated
information.”
I can think of another thought experiment to try. Let us
imagine a source of information such as an online encyclopedia.
Imagine a server farm stores this information in multiple computers.
Now imagine a computer program that processes this information,
creating all kinds of information links and hyperlinks. Imagine after 1000 hours of such processing, the degree of integration in the
information is increased a billion-fold. So, for example, whenever
you come to some text using the word “cow,” there is a link you
can use to navigate to any of a million other places where the encyclopedia text refers
to “cow.” Now, would we expect that all this additional
integration of information would cause this encyclopedia to become
conscious, so that the encyclopedia would start living a kind of
encyclopedia life? Certainly not. Given a body of information, we
should not expect that any level of increased integration would cause
consciousness to appear. So we cannot describe consciousness as
being integrated information.
Tomoni
and Tegmark are off the mark in their thoughts about consciousness,
which cannot be reduced to information. But their thoughts are at
least much more intelligent than the ludicrous thoughts on this topic
recently published by psychologists David Oakley and Peter Halligan.
They recently published a paper with the nonsensical title, “Chasing
the Rainbow: The Non-conscious Nature of Being.” In their paper the
psychologists repeatedly use the term “consciousness” in quotes, as
if it was something that only allegedly exists. They state,
“Personal awareness is analogous to the rainbow which accompanies
physical processes in the atmosphere but exerts no influence over
them.” Which is, of course, an absurd thing to say, seeing that
there are obviously 1001 ways in which our personal awareness can
influence physical processes (as scientists frequently remind us when they tell us to live a more green lifestyle to reduce global warming). When academics in ivory towers try to throw doubt on whether consciousness exists, their prose ends up sounding sillier than the credo of a flat earth believer.
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