Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

ENFORMATIONISM

A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.

1. Proponents of     Panpsychism :  
Neuroscientist Christof Koch ; Philosopher Phillip Goff ; Physicist Rupert Sheldrake, among many others.
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2. To Experience :
    “the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience
  Note the reference to “Knowledge”, which – in our experience – is an experience limited to complex animated brainy Sentient organisms like the one reading this.

3. What it’s like :
  “Like” implies an analogy between the private feeling of one person and the personal knowledge of another.

4. Life/Mind Energy :
   Some cultures distinguish the energy flowing in a living organism from that of an inanimate mechanism as a supernatural spirit or soul or aura. That is not what I mean. Instead, I think of human behavior (actions), including communication of information, as a form of natural causal processes.

  Post 130.  August 18, 2023

  Enformation Ontology

Enformationism vs Panpsychism

 “My metaphysical position is a form of idealism that does not deny the reality of any entity discovered by science. Instead it holds that all such entities are nothing other than centres of experience. Moreover, all physical properties can be reduced without residue to structural facts about the percepts of these centres of experience. My position can therefore be regarded as a form of panpsychism.”
https://philpeople.org/profiles/peter-e-ells

My personal Ontology is also a hybrid blend of Idealism with Realism. Unlike Materialism & Physicalism, Enformationism does not view Consciousness as a bogus supernatural notion. But it also does not deny the existence of Sentience as a force of Nature. Instead, it regards Mind as an emergent property from the natural evolution of malleable Matter and instrumental Energy. Except for the “natural” part, the notion of mind-like qualities inherent & essential in the Cosmos goes back to the ancient philosophy of Panpsychism : “all is Mind”. Even some modern philosophers & scientists¹ have begun to admit that Mentalism makes more sense to them than Materialism, as a philosophical explanation for the existence of pockets of Consciousness in an otherwise insentient world. Rather than an imaginary illusion of self-perception, the ability to form abstract representations of reality is just as important, to a living organism, as the ability to digest food.

In his book on the philosophy of Panpsychism, Peter Ells makes an affirmation of belief in a “sensuous cosmos” :  
"To actually or concretely exist  . . . is precisely to be an experiential entity, or to be composed of experiential entities" The language of that assertion is my primary disagreement with Panpsychism : the term “experiential” implying that everything in the universe is sentient (sensing + knowing). But, in what sense is a rock sentient? How does it know? It exchanges abstract Energy/Entropy with its environment. But does a rock remember the “experience” of flowing in the form of homo-geneous red-hot magma inside the Earth, then at a later time, the thrill of being spewed-out onto the surface of a cooling planet, where new experiences as dis-aggregated fragments await?

To experience² is to feel a sensation : e.g. to know what it’s like³ to be a bat or a rock.  I make the comparison between a lifeless inorganic rock, and an animated organic being, in order to make a point. In commonsense language, “to experience” is a mental event, limited to a tiny community of beings existing, and subsisting, on the third rock from the sun : the only place in the almost infinite universe where “experiential entities” have evolved with the rare properties of Life & Mind. It’s true that inorganic entities exchange Physical Energy with their environ-ment. But it’s unlikely that such interaction is a communication of personal meaning. Yet, animated organisms seem to exchange “Organic Energy”⁵. And knowing entities exchange Metaphysical Energy (intention) in the form of  ideas⁴.

Blog Post 130 continued  . . . . click Next             

5. Organic Energy :
   By “organic”, I don’t mean a spooky spiritual force ema-nating from living beings, such as an aura. But merely the form of natural energy that animates a living organism.    The ancients thought of energy as a spirit of some kind. But today, we under-stand it as the mundane & natural, but invisible, force that causes all material change of form. Being imperceptible (we know it only by its after-effects) Energy still sounds sorta spooky, but Mathematics is also the invisible structure of reality. So there’s no need to make-up myths about unseen forces with eerie motives. Neither inorganic nor organic energy knows what it’s doing.
   However, higher level organisms are capable of communicating private meanings by exporting ideas in physical forms, such as sounds, gesture, or symbols. So, the power to push mental knowledge into the environ-ment, and into another mind seems to be analogous to physical energy. I’ll call it “metaphysical” energy”. And sentient organisms seem to know what they are doing.

Pet Rocks
may rock your world,
but they don’t
know what
they’re doing