Dear George,
Since you have continued to take the points forward, I trust, you are interested in settling the issue.
>> Therefore, either information has a reality of its own in the function of the universe, or it can never come about.
- Not sure I understand that. Once it is realised, say in DNA or a brain or a computer, it has come about in a physical sense and does indeed have a reality in the universe.
My comment was related to the fact that all states of matter naturally correlates with certain information. Consider this from my essay. "If an interaction among physical entities results in an observable state S of a physical entity P, then S of P must naturally correlate with the cause and the context of the transition to the state S. Otherwise, measurements do not have an interpretation relating to the cause. A cause-and-effect analysis of an observed state of a physical entity in a context results in associating certain definite information with the state. Therefore, it is generally accepted in the scientific community that association of information with a state is the consequence of an act of modeling by an intelligent interpreter. On the contrary, given the laws of natural causation, the observed state must naturally correlate with, or bear an association with, or represent, information about the contextual relation among the interacting states that caused the state."
It is not only the DNA, or the brain that happened to represent certain information, all state descriptions of physical entities correlates with certain definitive information. I can only refer to my essay for fuller description. The striking point is then that at each interaction, information processing takes place, then it is a matter of only organizing a system that carries out appropriate high level information processing, as I have worked out. Surprisingly, it is not IF THEN ELSE like.
>> Starting from an example of bacteria, the author lays down a physicalist scenario of how to create more sophisticated form of bacteria (higher level organism), which can deal with more complex contexts. But then, if the bacteria did not have 'aims and intentions' even though it could take right actions, the more sophisticated organism also would have only a sophisticated action selector without having to deal with 'aims and intentions'. Representation of the [abstraction of] information of the 'need' requiring action as a consequence is the key to the 'aims and intention'.
As you continued to take the point forward, it means that you saw the point. Yes, we could create larger and larger systems (brains) to carry out very complex IF THEN ELSE kind of computations in hierarchy, but then if bacteria did not have the sense of Aims and Intentions, at no level of such logical computation in higher order organism can also have that sense. So, it was not a non sequitur.
Top-down causation is discussed often, but without rationalizing exactly how it brings in the elements of abstraction or Aims and Intentions. You suggested a recent paper that challenges the reductionists' view, again without qualifying how it helps to understand the sense of goals. As you yourself showed, bacteria itself has goal oriented behavior, but does it have the sense of the goal? So the pure behavior (action) oriented claim does not meet the need of the sense of aims and intentions.
As you said, "Unlike typical voltage-gated ion channels previously mentioned, NMDA receptors respond to the coordinated input from many synapses leading to global depolarization across the cell membrane before activating and allowing calcium entry into the cell. ... The integrative nature of NMDA receptors illustrates the holistic nature of biological systems."
I can understand that it carries out more complex computation of IF THEN ELSE version, but again how does the information abstraction happen? Moreover, variance of a system with multiple variables would naturally be lower than the sum of variances of individual variables if the variables are correlated.
In all of these discussions, one establishes more and more strongly how a complex system may develop that may exhibit complex behavior (function), but the meaning, the semantics, the abstraction remain unqualified. In my essay, I have attempted to derive each of these objects from first principles of information processing. I would request then, sticking to the definitions there, since each of these terms have diverse senses.
Rajiv
