The concept of information has been discussed by philosophers, scientists, and experts for thousands of years [1] [2]. In this article I present a model to describe information.
Information is largely a mental construct [3], very much like the concepts of time, space, justice, money, consciousness, or love. As such, it has, evidently, been difficult to define.
However, to contribute to the debate, I offer the following definition:
If a quantum of action [4] [5], such as a photon [6], can be transformed into meaning [7] in the mind, then a quantum of action is a substrate of information. Similarly, if a quantum of vacuum [8], such as in space with the lowest possible energy [9], can be transformed into meaning in the mind, then a quantum of vacuum is a substrate of information.
From the above statement, it may be deduced:
a) that quanta of action and vacuum are not information,
b) that quanta of action and vacuum are transformed into meaning exclusively in the mind, and
c) that information is quanta of action and vacuum transformed into meaning in the mind.
In the rest of this article I will explain this definition.
Types of Information
The concepts of action or the lack of action as substrates of information may be divided in stages depending on what domain they are in nature and what is their effect or use.
Pre Information in Physics
A quantum of action or a quantum of vacuum are not information by themselves, they are just physical or natural phenomena. However, when physical phenomena can produce changes in the state of the mind, in the form of producing meaningful additions or changes, then physical quanta may be considered substrates of information.
Natural phenomena in physics do produce change, motion, and action in nature. For example, a pre form of information, in the absence of a mind to give it meaning, may be the gravitational effect on matter that causes it to be attracted to other matter.
Other examples may be the interactions between quarks and gluons which form protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei, and electrons which are attracted to these positively charged atomic nuclei to form atoms. However, all these types of action and formations, or vacuum in their absence when applicable, are just physical events and objects, not information.
As may be inferred by what I wrote above, information is the product of natural events or objects when these are used as substrates to produce something of meaning in the mind.
Pre Information in Chemistry
As chemistry is basically physics with more complexity at or above the atomic level, then action, or the absence of it, in chemistry may also be a form of pre information.
For example, when hydrogen and oxygen atoms combine in covalent bonds, they form a new substance called water with new patterns that may be interpreted differently in the mind visually or by touch.
Sodium chloride is the electrostatic bond between sodium and chlorine ions that form table salt. Table salt creates a specific sensory experience which is processed in the mind as information.
However, these chemical interactions between elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, and chlorine, and the higher order substances they form, are not information by themselves. They are just physical or chemical phenomena.
Pre Information and Information in Biology
As I wrote in my article about the origin of logic [10], there are kinds of logical patterns in physics and chemistry, but they are not the process of logic as long as they are direct physical or chemical interactions.
Logic is only present when there is a third component in an organism which is a computational component that captures physical interactions, processes them, and produces meaningful outputs.
Similarly, actions and reactions to stimuli in living organisms that do not involve the mind are not informational events. Informational events only occur when physical or chemical action is captured by the senses, a logical process occurs, and meaningful information [11] is produced as an output.
For example, sources of food may create stimuli by way of vapor, light, sound, or other physical action that is sensed by unicellular organisms who can react by eating them, or even moving towards them and then eating them.
This kind of pre information interaction is not information based if there was no organelle in the unicellular organism which received the stimuli, processed it in a computation as a sort of judgement, and then produced a meaningful output in the form of an instruction or action to other parts or organelles in the cell.
An example of true information mediated behavior in biology may be a lion searching for food.
When a lion is roaming in a savannah and looks in a specific direction, but does not see a prey, that absence of physical stimuli in the form of no smell, light, or sound becomes information when it is processed logically in the mind of the lion and produces a meaningful outcome. That meaningful outcome may be a decision to continue searching for food.
The above is an example of the absence of physical or chemical action as a form of information.
On the other hand, when the same lion continues searching and looks in another direction and does see or find an animal to hunt, that interaction is indeed the presence of physical stimuli that is processed by logic to produce a meaningful output, hence information, which leads to a decision to hunt and eat the prey.
A Model of Information
Given the description above, I propose a model of information, represented in the diagram below, explaining the concept based on its stages and flow.
The model is mind centered, therefore information exists, after logical processing, exclusively in the mind. This is represented in the diagram as the orange shaded area.
The grey shaded areas are external to the mind, and represent either the physical sources or substrates of information into it, or their ultimate effects as outputs of the mind.
Following is an explanation of the 5 parts of the model.
1. Physical and Subjective Space
If information exists exclusively in the mind when it is produced in the form of meaning, then outside of the mind is a domain where information substrates exist in physical form, as positive action or the absence of it, but are not information.
The physical space is where physical, chemical, and other action and stimuli, or their absence, exist or are originated, transferred, and transformed. From there, they can be captured by sensory devices and transferred to the mind.
The subjective space is the domain of the mind of organisms where physical or chemical stimuli are received, stored, and processed to produce meaning. Meaningful information can also be produced out of the absence of such stimuli.
2. Input, Processing, and Output
Whether in the physical or subjective space, quanta of action may be originated, captured, and transferred to places in the mind to be processed or stored. This is called input in the model.
When quanta of action, or their absence, are transformed by logic into meaning, thus information, that is called processing.
The information product, in the form of new meaning, is output. Also, the further production of quanta of action, or its absence, and transmission, or the creation of action based on meaningful information, is output as well.
The absence of any physical input does not mean there can’t be processing and output, as vacuum and absence of action can also be logically processed into information.
3. Quantum of Action and Quantum of Vacuum
As mentioned before, a quantum of action or vacuum can both be eventually logically processed into information, which is essentially data with concrete meaning. The terms quantum of action and quantum of vacuum are the hypothetical minimums of action and vacuum, and are singular.
As a quantum of action as a photon may be transformed into information in the mind, then there is a quantum of information which uses the photon as a substrate. The analogous quantity, but of the absence of action, which can also be transformed into a quantum of information in the mind, may be described as the quantum of vacuum.
When a single quantum of action or vacuum is captured by the senses to be stored in the mind it can be called a datum. Datum is the singular for quanta of action or vacuum when they are stored in the mind as substrates to be further processed into information. Data is the plural of datum.
4. Information in the Mind
As may be seen in the diagram above, quanta of action and vacuum are such when they exist in the physical space. There, they have no meaning, therefore are not information.
When a quantum of action is captured and held in some form in the mind, then it may be called a datum. A quantum of vacuum may not be captured physically per se as it is the absence of action. However, the absence of action in physical space may be interpreted logically in the mind and transformed into meaning.
As said above, when a datum, or the absence of it, is held in the mind, it can be processed logically and transformed into information, which is the datum, or absence of it, with meaning.
For example, the logic component of the mind may have some previous rules or conventions where a higher energy photon is “the color blue”, “blue” means “zero”, and “zero” means “no”. A lower energy photon is “the color red”, “red” means “one”, and one means “yes”. No capture of any photon means “just stay alert”.
If a lower energy photon is captured by the senses [12] and moved to the mind, it will, according to the rules above, first be interpreted by logic as “the color red”, then it will be reinterpreted as a “one”, and, finally, it will be transformed into a “yes”.
The concepts of “red”, “one”, and “yes” are all information, therefore the original quantum of action, or photon, was transformed into a datum and then into meaning. These are all outputs of the logical process.
The above flow of data and information show the internal cycle in the mind seen in the model. Data is not only when quanta of action or vacuum are received from the senses and held in the mind, but may also be created by the mind, or be information stored in the mind, and then resubmitted for further processing in cycles.
In the above example, an external quantum of action, the photon, was captured and processed by logic as “red”, then resubmitted to be further processed as a “one”, and then resubmitted to be finally processed as a “yes”. After that, it may be transformed into action or further transmission.
5. Action and Transmission
Once the input, processing, and output cycles of the mind are done, then information or meaning can be transformed into external outputs.
These outputs may take the form of action or further transmission of quanta of action or vacuum.
In the example in the previous section, if the flow of data and information were occurring in the mind of a human, he or she could be a security officer in some sensitive situation. When he or she captured the low energy photon in his or her eye, moved it through the nervous system to the mind, and transformed it from the informational concepts of “red”, to “one”, to “yes”, that may have been the trigger to generate a further external physical action.
The physical action may have taken the form of pressing a button or a trigger to fire a weapon. Or, if the output had to be a further transmission, then it could have been the creation of a voice or radio message of alert to another officer.
An external transmission of a message is a form of action in physical space. It has no meaning nor function other than being collections of quanta of action in space. Just like a photon or undisturbed vacuum.
A message only becomes information when it goes through the flow in this model, where quanta of action, or their absence, are captured by the senses and moved to the mind, for example of another officer in the scenario above, and transformed by logic into information.
Conclusion
Although information is a difficult to describe mental construct, a broad definition is not presented in this article as it has been the case in the long history of its study in epistemology, logic, math, computer science, information theory, communication [13], and other disciplines.
Indeed, the definition of information here is very precise. It is data, which originates and is sourced from physical action or the absence of it, and transformed by logic into data with meaning. That informational meaning can further be reused as input to create more information, or used to create action or further transmission.
As such, this model of information may be part of a subjective theory of information. Information is not mere action or vacuum in physical space, but the interpretation of them in the mind.
A mind can be present in a place as simple as a basic organelle in a unicellular organism, the brain of a lion, a worm, or a human. Outside of the mind of an organism it is not information, but just physical objects, events, or interactions with no meaning.
This is true even in the most sophisticated computer systems, artificial intelligence, or neural networks. Those are just tools and devices that are used to offload the human mind’s work, but they do not create meaning, thus information, in any way, shape, or form.
An output of a computer is just a collection of physical quanta that needs to be picked up by a mind and transformed into information to be such.
Information is exclusively created and used by organisms with that capacity as a way of further solving evolutionary engineering problems such as the need for replication, food, or shelter.
In physics and chemistry, the quanta that are used as substrates to eventually create information in the mind are just physical objects with no meaning. However, they can be useful forms of pre information in organisms with no minds or in computing infrastructure.
The absence of action, in other words vacuum or no action, thus no data, may be interpreted and transformed into information by logic in the mind.
In summary, a quantum of action or a quantum of vacuum can become a quantum of information or meaning when processed logically by the mind.
References and Notes
[1] Information – by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information/
[2] Information – by Marcia J. Bates – Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd Ed.: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/articles/information.html
[3] Construct – by Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/science/construct
[4] The Quantum of Action and the Description of Nature – by Niels Bohr (1929) – on The Information Philosopher: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/bohr/quantum_of_action.html
[5] Planck Constant – by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant
[6] Photon – by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
[7] What is Meaning? – by Donald McIntyre: https://etherplan.com/2020/12/08/what-is-meaning/14028/
[8] Quantum vacuum state – by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_state
[9] Vacuum in quantum mechanics – by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Quantum_mechanics
[10] The Origin of Logic – by Donald McIntyre: https://etherplan.com/2020/07/28/the-origin-of-logic/12219/
[11] Here, the term “meaningful information” is a redundancy as information, to exist, needs to have meaning. However, it is used to illustrate the difference between objects with or without meaning.
[12] People can sense single photons – by Davide Castelvecchi – Nature.com: https://www.nature.com/news/people-can-sense-single-photons-1.20282
[13] A Mathematical Theory of Communication – by C. E. Shannon (1948): https://etherplan.com/a-mathematical-theory-of-communication.pdf
