TPF : Ghost in Machine
Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2023 11:42 am
Descartes' 'Ghost in the Machine' : To What Extent is it a 'Category Mistake' (Gilbert Ryle)?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... rt-ryle/p2
I had never thought of it as information until I read a couple of threads on this site on consciousness and information. To some extent, that perspective works, but what seems to be missing is both sentience and narrative identity in the construction of an autobiographical sense of self identity. — Jack Cummins
Yes. Some theories of Consciousness as a form of Information (e.g. Integrated Information Theory) attempt to construct Self-Awareness by adding-up bits of encompassing environmental information until the aggregate seems to automatically point inward toward the Observer. This is a Holistic concept, but reductive analysis will miss the essential element that binds isolated parts into functioning wholes : a complete circuit. Metaphorically, the light goes-on when the circuit is complete.
Self identity is relative to the larger system of which one is a component. So the missing element is what causes material objects to integrate into a hierarchy of systems within systems (entanglement). I call that Causal Cybernetic*1 Information : EnFormAction (Energy + regulation + feedback). It's the internal feedback loops that provide self-knowledge back up to the observing Mind. The whole system is not just internally integrated, but globally coherent. In other words, both independent Whole and interdependent Holon*2.
Yet, to be useful, the Self must be distinguishable from Other, as-if a thing-unto-itself. And that's a whole 'nother story.
*1. Cybernetic :
A communication system in which Information flows both top-down and bottom-up. Like a program with a circular flow of data, beginning with original intention and enhanced via feedback (metaphorically, self-knowledge)
*2. Holon :
An individual is autonomous, but also part of a family, which is part of an extended family, which is part of a community, etc.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/holon
Note : a Holon is a whole/part : it is linked upward & downward within the system
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... rt-ryle/p2
I had never thought of it as information until I read a couple of threads on this site on consciousness and information. To some extent, that perspective works, but what seems to be missing is both sentience and narrative identity in the construction of an autobiographical sense of self identity. — Jack Cummins
Yes. Some theories of Consciousness as a form of Information (e.g. Integrated Information Theory) attempt to construct Self-Awareness by adding-up bits of encompassing environmental information until the aggregate seems to automatically point inward toward the Observer. This is a Holistic concept, but reductive analysis will miss the essential element that binds isolated parts into functioning wholes : a complete circuit. Metaphorically, the light goes-on when the circuit is complete.
Self identity is relative to the larger system of which one is a component. So the missing element is what causes material objects to integrate into a hierarchy of systems within systems (entanglement). I call that Causal Cybernetic*1 Information : EnFormAction (Energy + regulation + feedback). It's the internal feedback loops that provide self-knowledge back up to the observing Mind. The whole system is not just internally integrated, but globally coherent. In other words, both independent Whole and interdependent Holon*2.
Yet, to be useful, the Self must be distinguishable from Other, as-if a thing-unto-itself. And that's a whole 'nother story.
*1. Cybernetic :
A communication system in which Information flows both top-down and bottom-up. Like a program with a circular flow of data, beginning with original intention and enhanced via feedback (metaphorically, self-knowledge)
*2. Holon :
An individual is autonomous, but also part of a family, which is part of an extended family, which is part of a community, etc.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/holon
Note : a Holon is a whole/part : it is linked upward & downward within the system