Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Post 114.February 16, 2021
Introduction to Enformationism
From Cosmic Mind to Human Mind
According to Big Bang cosmology, as energy & matter were coming into existence, space & time were also simultan-eously emerging from infinite Potential10 into finite Reality. You can’t have energy (form change) without time for the trans-ition, and you can’t have solid matter without space to occupy. Hence, space/time and matter/energy co-evolve as our bubble universe expands from a pin-point to cosmic dimensions. Yet, Energy only becomes sensible to the human body when it takes material form. For example, light waves transform the visual purple in your eye into a chemical substance that communicates with your brain to form conscious images. Likewise, space & time are intangible concepts that can only be conceived by a mind; they have no reality except in conscious cognition. The point I’m trying to make here is that energy, matter, space, and time are all re-formulations of the same essential substance, Information.
I emphasize the term “Information” in order to show that ultimately, Mind consists of essentially the same kind of stuff as Matter. Therefore, it should no longer be considered a mystery or miracle that consciousness could arise from material substrates11. Given the eternal power to enform, to create novelty, we can move-on to the beginning of Time. At the start of the Big Bang, all of the blueprints (design data) for creating a physical universe were stored in a hypothetical, nonphysical, nonspatial, nontemporal container, called “The Singularity”12. Next came the creative power of evolution that we call “Energy”. That formless force gradually condensed into Matter13. Which, in turn evolved into the living material we call “Organisms”. The phenomenon of “Life” is, of course, not a material thing, but an energetic (form changing) process. Likewise, the phenomenon we call “Mind”, or “Consciousness”, or “Awareness” is not a material object to be placed under a microscope. Instead, Mind is what a living brain does (its function) as information flows through its circuits. When you are thinking, you are also minding. Mind is not an inert object, but an active subjective viewpoint. Mental stuff (information) was the original input, and Consciousness is the computed output.
The penultimate step in Evolution, so far, was for the emergent phenomenon of Consciousness to become aware of itself. The self-reflective mind can be compared to self-refer-ence in a mathematical equation: Like the Ouroboros hoop snake, self-reference is self-perpetuating; it keeps reproducing and rolling along. According to Enformationism, the concept of Self is equivalent to the ancient notion of Soul. And yet, Self is an integral component of a living, conscious, physical body. So, contrary to Descartes’ mind/body dichotomy, self/soul is a completely natural system of Information→Energy→Matter→Mind flowing in the Real world. As one component of a whole system, Self/Soul is simply the cognitive output of a natural information processor. Therefore, what began eons ago as raw data has evolved into the walking, talking, thinking bundle of information we call “human”. Though, when a living body/brain dies, the flow of information stops. Yet, by analogy to the principle of Conservation of Energy, William Dembski has proposed a law of “Conservation of Information”. If that turns out to be true, then the thinking mind/self most likely also dis-sipates back into the stream of evolving information-energy-matter . . . back to the source, the Cosmic Mind.
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12. Singularity : The thesis presents a metaphor of the universe as a computer, processing internal Information. The external pre-Bang Singularity is imagined as a core program or Kernel. It contains values for Data Structures, Definitions of Energy & Matter, Functions, Variables, Loops, Iterations, Conditional Terms (if-then), and the basic language of Mathematical & Geometric Relationships.
10. Potential : Unrealized or unmanifest creative power. For example the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps. Potential is inert until actualized by some trigger. In the Enformation-ism metaphor, the real world was originally an idea in the Mind of G*D, with the infinite possibilities of Omniscience, that was realized by an act of Will. http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html
11. Brain-Mind Paradox : This is my understanding of how the physical Brain produces the meta-physical noumena we know as Mind & Consciousness. We'll begin by reviewing some theories of what the mind is, and what it does. In the 17th century, Descartes decided that the Mind is a spiritual analog to the brain, just as the Soul is to the body. But modern science has concluded that the Mind is simply what the Brain does, the output of its processing. As usual though, the Both-And position is a synthesis of both views. http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page30.html
Cosmic Mind as Enformer
Enformationism
Website GNOMON Retired Architect & Amateur Philosopher “A philosophical worldview grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe.”
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