Is everything built from information? It's a recurring topic in science and philosophy. John Horgan in Scientific American says it isn't but John Wilkins says he is wrong, even though he agrees it isn't.
Wilkins touches on hylomorphism and the longstanding logos mentality of the western world. Horgan delves into John Wheeler's "it from bit" idea that all physics can be re-molded into a framework of information theory.
Your take on that may be the obvious one; just because all information is physical does not mean all of the universe can be reduced to information.
To mistake the sign (the word, description or formalisation) for the signified (the denotation, extension or reference) is a classic mistake. It goes by the name “reification fallacy” (Marcuse) or “hypostasis“.
writes Wilkins, a mistake people have made for thousands of years (see: Kurzweil, Ray, in virtually everything he has ever written) - like if we can simulate neurons, that's the same thing as thinking, so if we add up a lot of neuronal activity, we can be a computer.
Matter can clearly exist without mind, but where do we see mind existing without matter? Shoot a man through the heart, and his mind vanishes while his matter persists. As far as we know, information—embodied in things like poetry, hiphop music and cell-phone images from Libya--only exists here on Earth and nowhere else in the universe.
writes Horgan.
Two fun pieces on the same topic.
