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            Subject: Information Re-defined            Date: 08/31/96 10:38 AM

'Information  ... a better definition'

In all of Chalmers' presentations he proposes that "information" be used as the fundamental universal property of existence.:

"Where there is information, there are *information states* embedded in an *information space*. An information space has a basic structure of *difference* relations between its elements, characterizing the ways in which different elements in a space are similar or different, possibly in complex ways." (Chambers,1995;JCS)

In particular, he states that he understands information "in more or less the sense of Shannon (1948)."(ob.cit.)

Now, in my own writings, "Understanding the Integral Universe" (1992,1995) - and my Tucson II presentation - I establish the recognition that Shannon used Leibnitzian/Newtonian Calculus to define the "information bit" and endemic functions in terms of established entropy dynamics. The interesting twist is this: Integral calculus is based upon partitionings (*different*ials), which
quantity across any spatial or temporal duration increases towards infinity. As explained by Taylor (1961) the delta and epsilon factors are relational in the sense that one part of the function is fine-tuned enough to be sensitive to the presence of the other.

In other words, like any good mechnical sensing apparatus, the delta factor will always be able to detect an epsilon. Only here, the process is a transcendental model, and an epsilon can get infinitely small, and the number of partitions within an integral- span, infinitely great. This was Newton's and Leibnitz's great achievement: creating a process which in effect "names" *infinity* ... formalizes it as a "quantity" without having to numerically pin it down. Establishing a process that *utilizes* infinity without specifying a value for it.

It is the ultimate "difference engine" where the number of "differences" over an integral is "infinite". Where, to use Chalmers' intimation, the amount of "information" (number of partitions) *also* approaches infinity. Now, Shannon *used* calculus to "define" information! An already extant *implicit* "information" function was used to "define" an *explicit* "information function
(!).

We have an interesting tautology here. It took "information" to define "information". In the schemata of the Integrity Paradigm, this foundational tautology doesn't negate any mathematically deduced results, or make them any weaker for being tautologic- ally based rather than a priori based. It merely seems to indicate that existence is its own "justification". Just the same way that consciousness and dynamic self awareness are robust by their own presence, and don't need to answer to external inter- rogations in order to "verify" their existences, presences or de facto functionings.

Information is indeed the fundamental aspect of existence, and it is self-referential from the outset. It has an integrity all its own, and therefore, any and every infinitely small locus of information space carries that intrinsic integrity with it. This holds especially true for dynamic-presences such as energy and mass, and, even "time".

This quality is not "bound", it is intrinsic.

With this understanding, we now have in hand a *limit* to the infinite-regress problem. Pragmatically, we can investigate to and through the region of Planck's constant, and cross vast distances in non-local time. We can also stop looking for Maxwell's demon, or the supra-assembly which constantly orchestrates the behaviors of inner heirarchies (the Chinese Room scenario). Each heirarchy is self competent and intrinsicly self-referential, whether embedded or not in other relationships and other assemblies. And the factors-of-information are transfinite per Cantor for each heirarchy and factorially immense with each and
every potential "difference" that can be added/included/subtended in a system. The heirarchies are exponenetially Nested Cantorian Infinities, where sufficient inner heirarchies use *their* information "bits" to form new secondary "information sets", those new sets having their own independent operators and functions and bit-sizes.

This scenario accomplishes having independent heirarchies, which interact across process boundaries that are present, yet open to information flows in any direction of phasespace. The additional ramification being that there are no Formally Closed Sets, only conditionally-closed sets. This tying in with my previous contention that, post-Godelly, the singularly important aspect of a
Godel Limit or Bound is not the comparative placement of information inside or outside the boundary (the perpetual "incompleteness" of any definitive set), but the requisite of potential compatibility of *all* information *regardless* of
which side of the bound it may be on.

This, is where the level of discussion concerning "information" must rise to, including but not limited to, evaluations of all possible information transactions: transductions, topological codings (expansions and compressions in different dimensional configurations ... like how the information of a 3 dimensional form can remain intact when compacted into 2 dimensional holograms), transformations from radiant energy to neurological impulses.

We take for granted that human expressive language can be converted into other energy forms and states and then be reconstituted again without any problem.... these words you are reading right now for example. They left me chock full of
"meaning" and "relevence" and "passion" for conveying ideas from my brain into yours. In transit, that was all recoded, not "lost". But tap into any of the transmission lines involved and all you'll encounter will be bit streams. All the ideas, emotions, conceptual connections etc that I transmitted are still "in there", but in a form totally unrecognizable by human physiology.

And if we tap into axons and dendrites, or cerebral regions, or microtubules, we would be foolish to expect being able to recognize the information content in any way representationally meaningful to us. That means that "consciousness", the one conventionally referenced as our "alert persona" is very much there, but only a piece of it, caught mid-transaction. Orchestrated OR is not our "whole" conscious persona. It is something else. It is a piece of our highest conscious heirarchy, plus it is the enactment of each of the inner heirarchies (and their conscious self-referential behaviors); any behavioral transactions
observed being relevent to several heirarchies at once.

If a new way of perceiving the universe and consciousness is needed, I recommend the Integrity Paradigm as a potential schemata for incorporating and integrating all the neccesary attributes and topics of concern. We've got to get our hands
dirty (as the old industrial mechanics used to say) and really build something out of all the "information" we've assembled from observing and evaluating "existence" for so long. Everybody's input counts.

Information is not some existential Platonic surrogate. It is real and tangible and dynamic, as well as being relationally trans- cendental. It's not enough to talk about it as being "important". We have to show how and where it functions .. and relates to itself, in whatever forms it can take. 

INTEGRITY PARADIGM